The Obama campaign ad released a new ad late today to run in battleground states. The ad is a 30 second spot.

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The African National Congress (ANC) has chosen Kgalema Motlanthe, the current Deputy Party President, to succeed Thabo Mbeki who resigned under pressure yesterday. The story from Afrol News:

Ruling African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, has nominated deputy party president, Kgalema Motlanthe to succeed Mr Thabo Mbeki who resigned yesterday as head of state.

Mr Mbeki called it quits after a decision at weekend by party central committee to recall him, in a decision that has set clear divisions among party elites and rank and file.

Mr Motlanthe, who deputises, populist and scandal swamped ruling party leader, Mr Jacob Zuma, will remain in office of presidency until elections are held, which are expected to be held before July next year.

Mr Mbeki accepted defeat yesterday in a moving last state address, in which he vowed to remain a loyal servant and member of ruling ANC. He said he took his recall as part of democracy, having completed many of his mandated assignments.

Mr Mbeki, who showed composure and true statesmanship in his address called on all to focus, however categorically denying any wrong-doing or any of the alleged meddling with national prosecution authority.

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McCain Rally on September 18th in Green Bay, Wisconsin

The story from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

To cheers from a spirited crowd that essentially filled the Resch Center in Green Bay, McCain and running mate Sarah Palin positioned themselves as the true friends of American workers, prepared to shake up “the corruption of Washington and Wall Street.”

Obama Rally on September 22nd in Green Bay, Wisconsin

Obama Rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin

Empty Seats for Obama!

The story from Jake Tapper of ABC News:

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin packed the house last week in Green Bay, Wis., at the Resch Center.

Not so today in the same arena with Sen. Barack Obama.

I wonder if those empty seats are there for the empty suit. Just a thought. Empty Seats for the Empty Suit!

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Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported the McCain campaign was about to start highlighting the past associations of Senator Obama from his days in Chicago and Illinois state politics, the most corrupt in the United States. Today, the McCain campaign released a new ad doing just that. The ad is a 30 spot running in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania.

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There is good news for both candidates from the second series of five swing state polls from Rasmussen Reports for Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia (the links are to US Census Bureau demographic data for each state). While the national polls clearly show a trend towards Senator Obama, the swing polls show little change over last week’s results and if that’s the case then it is a slight advantage to McCain in that race does remain competitive but with Obama’s lead in Michigan now by seven points and in Pennsylvania by three points, it is also reassuring to the Obama campaign that he is holding his ground in these two battleground states.

Polling this week in Florida and Ohio shows little net change from the previous week with McCain holding a very modest advantage in each state. McCain and Obama both increased their level of support slightly in each as the number of undecided/third party voters declined by three points in each.

In Florida, it’s McCain by five, 51% to 46%. In Ohio, it’s McCain 50%, Obama 46%.

Pennsylvania and Virginia also showed little change this week, but both of these states shifted slightly back in the direction of their historic voting patterns after being tied a week ago. Now, Obama is up by three in Pennsylvania (48%-45%) and McCain is up by two in Virginia (50% to 48%).

It would be a mistake to read too much into these minor changes as all four states remain very competitive with just over six weeks to go.

In Michigan, Obama holds a 51% to 44% advantage over McCain. That too is little changed from the previous Rasmussen Reports survey conducted on September 10.

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Two polls out today for Minnesota show very different results. The first from the American Research Group shows Senator Obama leading Senator McCain among likely voters in Minnesota by one point, 48% to 47% with 5% undecided. This poll was taken September 18-20 and has a +/- 4% margin of error. The internals have McCain leading among men 49% to 46% and Obama leading among women 49% to 46% and since more women than men vote that gives Obama an edge.

The second poll is from Rasmussen Reports. This poll has Obama leading 52% to 44%. However Rasmussen Reports notes:

This Minnesota survey was conducted on Thursday night, September 18, in the midst of the Wall Street roller-coaster week. Several state polls conducted that evening showed very positive results for Barack Obama and it was one of his best recent nights in the daily Presidential Tracking Poll. It remains to be seen whether this solid performance was a temporary blip in the race or the beginning of a new trend leading to a significant advantage for Obama.

Below the fold is the Rasmussen Reports poll. (more…)

It’s been twelve days since the last poll for North Carolina (link is to US Census demographic data). That poll from Public Policy Polling had Senator McCain leading Senator Obama by four points. Today’s Rasmussen Reports poll shows McCain maintaining a narrow three point lead, 50% to 47%.

North Carolina is one of several traditionally Republican states where John McCain just can’t quite seem to pull away from Barack Obama. The Republican candidate has been at least slightly ahead in six of the seven monthly polls conducted in the state and was tied in the seventh. But, his advantage has always remained in single digits, often the low single digits.

This month, it’s more of the same as the latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds McCain ahead 50% to 47%. That’s not too much different than the results from a month ago.

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Executive Summary: Time to update the favorability ratio. This is the fifth weekly installment. While Senator Obama has taken a narrow lead, the real takeaway is the change in Senator McCain’s numbers. McCain’s favorable rating has dropped and his unfavorable rating has risen. McCain’s favorable rating also declined two points from 56% to 54% and a six point drop since his high on September 8th. Beginning on September 17th, Obama took a narrow in the favorability ratio and now holds a five basis advantage. Obama last led on September 4th. Over the week, Obama’s unfavorable rating fell two points to 43%, his lowest level since September 11th.

The Lemos Favorability Ratio
One of the tools that we use on Wall Street to measure movement is by expressing data as a ratio and then tracking the movement of the basis points. A basis point is a unit that is equal to 1/100th of 1%, and is used to denote the change in any financial instrument. The basis point is commonly used for calculating changes in interest rates, equity indexes and the yield of a fixed-income security. The relationship between percentage changes and basis points can be summarized as follows: 1% change = 100 basis points, and 0.01% = 1 basis point. Tracking any movement is possible and movements can be very clearly delineated. Five weeks ago, I decided to track both Senator Obama’s Favorable versus Unfavorable ratings as well as Senator McCain’s Favorable versus Unfavorable ratings. I take the the favorable rating and divide by the unfavorable rating to get a ratio which I have named the Lemos Favorability Ratio.

I am using Rasmussen Reports Daily Tracking Poll as my raw data. Rasmussen Reports is putting out a daily tracking poll with the national favorability versus unfavorability percentages. Their data extends back to June 4, 2008 and I have created a weekly Excel spreadsheet tracking the data. Here’s that data broken out by candidate and then a side-by-side comparison of the Lemos Favorability ratio is below the fold along with data from a recent poll in Colorado.

McCain Favourable versus Unfavourable Ratings Nationwide

Takeaway
In terms of the ratio, you want a higher number. The higher the number the greater the spread between your favorable and unfavorable ratings. McCain enjoyed his highest number to date two weeks, 1.58 in the favorability ratio but has seen an erosion of 35 basis point erosion over the past fortnight as his favorable rating declined by six points and his unfavorable rating rose by the same amount. However, McCain is now just above his previous lows in the index at 1.23.

Obama Favourable versus Unfavourable Ratings Nationwide

Takeaway
Again in terms of the ratio, you want a higher number. The higher the number the greater the spread between your favorable and unfavorable ratings. Obama gained eight basis points in the ratio with a slight rise in his favorable rating but more from a decline in his unfavorable rating. Obama now stand at 1.28 in the index, five basis points higher than McCain.
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Here are ten articles from both the US and international media about the US Presidential race. Highlights of each article provided with a link to the full article.

McCain: A Profile in Courage and Adaptation
By Kevin Fagan in the San Francisco Chronicle. Note: Last week, the San Francisco Chronicle profiled Senator Obama. This is the profile for Senator McCain.

“To his credit, he learned his lesson from the Keating Five scandal, and actually made ethics reform a focus after that,” said Jerry Kammer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who covered the scandal for the Republic.

That focus, more than anything, earned him the nickname he is now trying to ride into the White House: Maverick.

After Keating, McCain began drawing high notice for authoring successful campaign finance legislation against “soft money” contributions with liberal Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis. He also teamed up with legislators across the aisle to tax Big Tobacco, and derided evangelical Christian leaders as “agents of intolerance.”

For most of the time, he still voted conservatively, rejecting new taxes and taking such a hard line on local “pork” that he refuses on principle to support local earmarks even for his own state.

McCain Strikes Bipartisan Notes in 60 Minutes Interview
By Jonathan Martin writing for Politico. The McCain interview is here and the Obama interview is here.

Certainly knowing that it would raise eyebrows, McCain told CBS’s Scott Pelley in a “60 Minutes” special featuring interviews with both candidates that he might look to New York Attorney General and former Clinton HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo to head the SEC.

“I think he is somebody who could restore some credibility, lend some bipartisanship to this effort,” McCain said of Cuomo after being asked who he might like to see replace Chris Cox, the former Republican congressman who now heads the commission and who McCain said last week should be fired.

Reminded by Pelley that Cuomo served in the Clinton administration, McCain quickly responded: “And he did a good job and he has respect and he has prestige.

The Battle for Votes in Pennsylvania’s Clinton Country
By Walter Shapiro writing for Salon.

Lackawanna County (Scranton) and neighboring Luzerne County (Wilkes-Barre) are traditionally blue-collar Democratic areas where the party’s margin has narrowed in recent presidential elections. (Bill Clinton’s margin in the two counties was 36,000 votes in 1996; it was 32,000 votes for Al Gore in 2000; and it slipped to less than 20,000 for John Kerry last time out.) Small wonder that Monday morning John McCain will be participating in an Irish-American forum and holding a town meeting here in Joe Biden’s birthplace. As Terry Madonna, a pollster and political historian at Franklin and Marshall College, put it, “If the Republicans take 3 points from the Democrats in northeastern Pennsylvania and 3 points in the southwest, it gets very, very close here in Pennsylvania.”

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Here is the Monday, September 22nd, 2008 edition of what’s making news and interesting reads from around the world. Also please note that off to the left there are two widgets with updates on news from Asia and the world in a separate page: Around Asia & Around the World New Feeds.

And Then There Were None
The age of independent bulge-bracket investment banks is over. There are none left. Numerous mid-tier and and smaller players still abound but Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the last big independent investment banks on Wall Street, will transform themselves into bank holding companies subject to far greater regulation but allows them to open commercial branches, the Federal Reserve said Sunday night. As a former employee of Goldman Sachs, I am rather sadden by this development. The story from the New York Times.

Thebo Mbeki Resigns in TV Address in South Africa
Thabo Mbeki yesterday resigned as South Africa’s president and said he will leave office on a date set by parliament, after he was toppled by his own party following a long and bitter power struggle with his former deputy, Jacob Zuma. Mbeki called an emergency meeting of his cabinet as many of his ministers threatened to resign in solidarity after the African National Congress on Saturday told the president to agree to step down or face being removed by parliament. Mbeki handed his resignation letter to the speaker of parliament yesterday and in an unusually humble speech broadcast on national TV broadcaster SABC said he had decided to quit out of loyalty to the party that is rejecting him. Stories from the UK Guardian and from the Johannesburg Business Day.

Malaysia’s Anwar Moves Closer to the Endgame
As the opposition leader increases the pressure, the nation’s biggest political party asks the prime minister to leave. Malaysia’s 50-year-old political infrastructure is in danger of coming completely apart, with opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim amping up the pressure to replace Prime Minister Ahmad Abdullah Badawi unless the government goes after him with the draconian Internal Security Act, which provides for indefinite detention without trial. Anwar, who leads the Pakatan Rakyat, or People’s Alliance, demanded Thursday that Prime Minister Ahmad Abdullah Badawi convene by Tuesday an emergency session of parliament, which is now in recess for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, to allow a no-confidence vote against the premier. The full story from the Asia Sentinel.

A Close Election in Slovenia
Slovenia’s opposition Social Democrats held a razor-thin lead over the ruling center-right party of Premier Janez Jansa in parliamentary elections Sunday, nearly complete results showed. But the vote was too close to predict the outcome with certainty. More from the International Herald Tribune and from Euro News.

Taro Aso To Become Japan’s New Prime Minister
Taro Aso, a comic-loving outspoken nationalist, has been chosen by Japan’s ruling party to be the country’s next prime minister in a landslide vote this morning. More from the Times of London and from the Associated Press. I’m underwhelmed. Not what Japan needs an abrasive brash nationalist. Given the rotating chair in Tokyo, let’s be generous and say he lasts 18 months.

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