The latest poll from Survey USA (SUSA) in Wisconsin points to yet another break towards Senator Obama in a key battleground state. On September 19th, Obama led by just two points. Today, Obama leads Senator McCain by a full ten points, 52% to 42%. Ten points is, of course, the threshold for a landslide margin.

If an election for President of the United States in Wisconsin were held today, 10/07/08, four weeks till votes are counted and one week until early voting begins, Democrat Barack Obama defeats Republican John McCain 52% to 42%, according to a SurveyUSA poll conducted exclusively for WGBA-TV Green Bay, WDIO-TV Duluth, and KSTP-TV Minneapolis.

McCain leads in greater Milwaukee and among Pro-Life voters. Obama leads, or ties McCain, in all other regions and demographic groups: young and old, male and female, Moderate and Independent, more educated and less educated, lower income and higher income, religious and not so religious.

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The Republican National Committee released this ad today attacking Senator Obama’s spending proposals in the light of US National Debt passing the one trillion dollar mark just last week. What the ad doesn’t tell you is that is largely the Republican Party that is responsible for the run up in the national debt.

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In the latest Rasmussen Reports poll for Pennsylvania (link is US Census demographic data), Senator Obama continues to hold the wide lead he opened up in the past ten days. In the Keystone State, Obama leads Senator McCain 54% to 41%, a 13 point margin. On September 25th, Obama led McCain 49% to 45%, a four point margin.

Heading into the second presidential debate, the polling news is almost all good for Barack Obama, and the newest results from Pennsylvania are no exception.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of voters in the state shows Obama on top by 13 percentage points, 54% to 41%. Following a trend that has been seen all across the country, Obama has gained ground in recent weeks ever since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the growing financial turmoil on Wall Street.

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Polls in the Commonwealth of Virginia tightened this week with Senator McCain gaining ground and closing the gap. Last week, Senator Obama had opened up a five point lead but this week’s poll from Rasmussen Reports gives Obama just a two point edge. Effectively the race is a dead heat once again.

The latest Fox News/Rasmussen Reports poll in Virginia finds Barack Obama leading John McCain 50% to 48%.

This represents the third consecutive poll where Obama has held a modest lead over his opponent. In last week’s Fox/Rasmussen release, Obama led 50% to 47%. Just four days prior, he held a five percentage point lead.

George W. Bush won Virginia by eight percentage points in 2000 and 2004, but Democrats have focused on Virginia this year as a red state they hope to peel away from Republicans. No Democrat has won the state since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

McCain leads among men, 54% to 44%, while Obama has a 55% to 42% advantage among women. White voters in Virginia favor McCain by a 59% to 38% margin, while non-white voters favor Obama, 82% to 16%.

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Just how much has the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) fallen?

On October 9, 2007, the DJIA stood at 14,164.53. Since its peak that day not quite a year ago the DJIA has shed -33.4% of its value closing today at 9,447.11. In just five trading days so far in the month of October the DJIA has lost -13.4% of its value. This week alone, that’s yesterday and today, the drop is -8.4%. Today’s sell off saw the DJIA shed another -5.1%.

The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell by -5.7%, ending below 1,000 for the first time in five years. The S&P 500 has lost more than -17% in just two weeks.

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The McCain campaign released this 30 second spot accusing the Obama campaign of being hypocritical and lying. It should be a fun townhall debate tonight.

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Al Jazeera reports on the early voting in the Buckeye State.

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Here are seven 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.

Obama Counts on Massive Support from 4 Million New Voters
By David Gardner in the UK Daily Mail.

In the past year, according to the Washington Post, the election rolls have expanded by about four million voters in a dozen key states.

Eleven of them have been targeted as swing states that could vote Obama despite being carried by George Bush four years ago – Ohio, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico.

The other make-or-break state coveted by both sides is Pennsylvania, which went for John Kerry in 2004. In Florida, newly-registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans by two to one. In Colorado and Nevada the ratio is four to one and in North Carolina it is six to one. In Colorado, which Mr Bush won by 100,000 votes in 2004, Democrat registration-is up 80,000, compared to 21,000 new Republican voters. Republicans acknowledge the imbalance, but say Mr Obama still has to get the voters to the polls.

Conservatives Question McCain’s Attack Strategy
By Jimmy Orr in the Christian Science Monitor.

New York Times columnist David Brooks, also appearing on Face the Nation Sunday, doesn’t believe a negative campaign can be successful.

“They don’t understand how the same political tactics that they’ve used before, going after liberal, liberal, liberal, that’s not going to work now because something has overshadowed it,” Brooks explained. “And that overshadowing, that economic anxiety is just going to dominate the next five weeks. There’s no way around that. And if they’re not touching that, then they’re not touching the core issue. And John McCain has not done it. And he hasn’t done it over the weekend, where they’ve been attacking Obama for being too liberal or not loving America enough.

McCain Goes for Obama Jugular
By Mosheh Oinounou for Fox News.

In an unbridled attack Monday, John McCain struck Obama on a number of fronts as he sought to characterize his rival as a risky, unqualified candidate who has been deceptive about his experience and background.

The GOP nominee summarized the theme with one question. “Who is the real Barack Obama?” he asked supporters before attempting to answer the question himself.

It is quite the speech. Some of it fair, some of it more open to interpretation. Still, I did enjoy this:

My opponent has invited serious questioning by announcing a few weeks ago that he would quote — “take off the gloves.” Since then, whenever I have questioned his policies or his record, he has called me a liar.

Rather than answer his critics, Senator Obama will try to distract you from noticing that he never answers the serious and legitimate questions he has been asked. But let me reply in the plainest terms I know. I don’t need lessons about telling the truth to American people. And were I ever to need any improvement in that regard, I probably wouldn’t seek advice from a Chicago politician.

Chicago politician is about right. (more…)

News from South Asia.

Sri Lanka Offensive Aims At Tamil Rebel Headquarters
The Sri Lankan army is closing in on Kilinochchi, the de facto capital of Tamil Tigers (LTTE). For more than two decades, the country has been entangled in a bitter civil war. More than 50,000 people have been killed in the conflict between the military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE.

More Violence in India’s Assam
India’s northeastern Assam state deployed paramilitary troops Monday to quell clashes between Muslim migrants and tribal groups that have left almost 50 people dead. Some 100,000 people have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the violence that broke out Friday and swiftly spread through three districts of the state.

The death toll rose to 49 on Monday after eight people injured in fighting over the weekend died in hospital and nine more bodies were recovered from the violence-hit areas, state health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told reporters. A senior Assam police official said an additional 2,100 paramilitary personnel had been sent to the affected areas, where curfews with shoot-on-sight orders have already been imposed. More from Agence France-Presse.

The War with the Taliban
With Britain’s commander in Afghanistan saying the war against the Taliban cannot be won, and with Afghan President Hamid Karzai inviting Taliban leader Mullah Omar back to Afghanistan to join the political process, the Western coalition is trying a new approach of reconciliation.

“We’re not going to win this war. It’s about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that’s not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army,” Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith was quoted in the British media at the weekend as saying.

More from the Asia Times.

And a report on the war in Afghanistan from Al Jazeera:

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Here is the Tuesday, October 7th, 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.

Commodity Prices Crash Sending Emerging Markets Tumbling
Deflationary Asset Spiral. That’s a very real risk right now. Here’s the scenario: damage to bank balance sheets lead to tighter credit conditions, lower asset prices, lower consumption and deferred investment. These then form a severe feedback loop into more losses for banks and leading to more credit restriction, lower asset prices, a further reduction in consumption and deferred investment. The feedback loop becomes a spiral. Stories on commodity prices and on emerging markets in Brazil, Russia (15% drop in the Moscow Stock Market) and the Asia Pacific Region.

From the New York Times:

Emerging markets took one of their biggest collective tumbles in a decade Monday as stock markets from Mexico to Indonesia to Russia were gripped by fears of a collapse of Europe’s banking system and concern that a global recession could drag down the price of commodities, forcing a steep slowdown in emerging-market growth.

From the UK Telegraph:

The entire complex of commodities and emerging market stocks, bonds, and currencies is now in free-fall as the economic crisis spreads like brushfire, threatening to draw every corner of the globe into the vortex of recession.

India Loosens Cash Reserve Ratio
The Straits Times that India’s central bank has reversed months of monetary tightening, as concerns about liquidity take precedence over the bank’s long battle against double-digit inflation. The Reserve Bank of India announced Monday night that it would cut the cash reserve ratio – the amount of cash banks have to keep on hand – by 50 basis points to 8.5 percent, releasing 200 billion rupees (S$6.6 billion) of funds into circulation.

More Protests in Bangkok Leaves Scores Injured
At least 65 people were injured in Bangkok today after riot police broke up a blockade of parliament using teargas. More from the UK Guardian.

Japan Central Bank Maintains Key Interest Rate
Japan’s central bank left its key interest rate unchanged Tuesday amid heightened anxiety that the U.S. credit crisis was quickly spreading from Wall Street to Europe and beyond. In a widely expected decision, the Bank of Japan voted unanimously to maintain the uncollateralized overnight call rate at 0.5 percent for the 20th straight month, citing a “sluggish” economy along with high inflation rates. More from the Associated Press.

German Bank System May Have to be Restructured
The German government may be forced to take further action to shore up, and ultimately restructure, its banking system following its rescue of Hypo Real Estate this weekend, warn bankers and analysts. HRE received a €50bn ($67.4bn) funding package after an earlier €35bn lifeline proved inadequate. The move was accompanied by an informal government guarantee on retail deposits. While most other German lenders may not suffer HRE’s multiple handicaps, they are nevertheless vulnerable to the same problem that got HRE and DePfa into difficulty, namely having much of their funding liabilities at a shorter-term duration than their assets. They are also highly leveraged. Many believe Berlin must take further action to support banks, including extending the state guarantee beyond retail depositors to institutional providers of funding in the money markets and requiring German banks to keep liquidity in the country. Bankers also expect the crisis to spur the government to respond to calls for publicly owned savings banks, or Sparkasses, to merge with the wholesale-funded Landesbanks. More from the Financial Times.

Australia Cuts Benchmark Rate
Australia stunned markets with its steepest interest cut in 16 years on Tuesday and investors expected that other central banks would follow suit in a coordinated move to combat the global credit crisis. The 1 percentage point reduction in the Reserve Bank of Australia’s benchmark rate was twice as big as expected, underscoring the increasingly strong medicine needed to jolt the world’s financial markets back to health. More from Reuters.

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