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In the news today…

If you pay any attention to news programs and/or election news, it is easy to guess what is the top story of the day. That would be Secretary Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama for president on Meet The Press Sunday morning. I just watched it again, and it is  one of the most thoughtful and articulate listings of the current state of the country and the world, and what is needed to meet the problems that exist, that I have ever seen. The video is here on MSNBC.com.

This is all over the blogosphere of course. The Arena at Politico.com has a large number of comments, from all over the political spectrum, talking about it. There is also a variety of responses at Mike Murphy’s Swampland blog, some well reasoned, others much less so. Some on the left were very happy about the endorsement, others discounted it because of Powell’s history with Iraq.

CNN just had an interesting piece on an encounter outside a McCain rally. Someone was making some nasty comments about Islam, and passing out bumper stickers equating Obama with radical Islam and the Soviet Union. He was confronted by the American News Project reporter about what he was saying, then several Muslims and Christians that are McCain supporters started taking him to task. Then a McCain campaign organizer came up and told him that the McCain campaign did not support what he was saying and did not want him saying it there. The video is not the highest quality but it is a good story.

This is a very good look at the McCain campaign, showing them supporting moderates and repudiating some of the extreme points of view that have been outside their rallies in the past. The sad part is, Rich Sanchez was going to do an interview with the McCain staffer, but had to cancel because the McCain hadn’t given him permission to talk to the press. I can understand the campaigns wanting to make sure their staffers do not say unfortunate things. But it seems to me that stopping a story like this is counter-productive.

It is sad to see how McCain’s campaign has been using innuendo and smears to try and beat Obama. I didn’t like it when it happened to McCain in 2000, especially since he would have been my choice to vote for in the general election that year. (Yes I am a Democrat, but that doesn’t mean I turn off my brain and follow blindly where someone else leads.) His choices since then, especially the way he has ran his campaign this year, have lost him a lot of respect from moderates and even conservatives. He has to have seen this, endorsements like Powell’s, the Chicago Tribune’s, and the Salt Lake Tribune, show how much he is driving away the moderate conservatives. But he continues, using the same kind of negative campaigning that he once denounced so loudly.

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