Obama has leads in swing states such as Florida, Ohio and Nevada by about 2-4%.  Both candidates are tied in Missouri, which has traditionally been a reliable red state in the last two elections.

McCain needs to make up this gap - and quickly.  All that Obama has to do until November 4 is play it safe and avoid making any significant mistakes, and he’s the next President of the United States.  McCain must switch gears and do something different in the next week or so, and he must do well in the next debate on October 15.  Another “draw” just isn’t going to cut it.  Unfortunately, the next debate focuses on domestic policy - and Obama is aptly situated to use the recent economic panic to his advantage.

McCain still has some options that he can explore, though.

• ACORN fraud - The non-profit heavily associated with Obama has apparently been hiring shifty volunteers who are registering vast numbers of imaginary clones in several states.  This incident won’t sit well with many who remember the rampant mistakes in 2000.
• Roll out a four-year plan for dealing with the current economic crisis and cleaning things up for future purposes, but without inviting government overregulation.  Denounce the two-year lowering of interest rates and CRA amendments made during the Clinton administration.  Advocate rolling back those changes and take other measures to make it easier for banks to refuse loans that they feel are too risky.
• Attack Obama’s association with William Ayers directly.  So far, this has gone on through lower-level people but hasn’t come up in a debate.  Obama may have a hard time giving a clear explanation as to why he hung around Ayers and Dorhn years after they had bombed government buildings.
• Take a hard line on the currently relevant issue of piracy off Somalia, and ask Obama how he would handle it.  Negotiate with the pirates?  Fly them around on Air Force One until they nod off to sleep?
• Get Bristol married to Levi at a key point on the calendar:

Bristol’s birthday is on the third Saturday in October. News of the wedding could be leaked the week before, but could really take hold from the 19th to the 25th with speculations over location, attendees, and so forth. The 27th or 28th might be the ideal day for the actual event - keeping the media talking clear through the last week in October, which is the biggest time for early voters and only a couple of days before November 4.

• Point out Obama’s dealings with other odd ducks, like communist Frank Marshall Davis, Rashid Khalidi, and the guy who might possibly be Barack’s version of David Addington, Khalid al-Mansour.
• Modify his position on Iraq.  Make the point that had he been President and had access to all of the relevant information that we now know, he would not have invaded.  The surge has been effective at making a bad situation work better and he would withdraw most forces from Iraq within his first term, but in a way that maintains stability.

McCain must change his campaign’s focus and start motivating the base - which as shown in recent hostile episodes of anti-Obama anger, has become fearful that their candidate is becoming too passive.

Video game designer Richard Garriott has paid $35 million (the majority of his money, he says) to be the next space tourist, launching on a Russian Soyuz capsule in only a couple of hours along with American Mike Fincke and Russian Yuri Lonchakov, each of whom will spend six months in space.  Garriott, the son of former astronaut Owen Garriott, will be the first American child of any US astronaut to travel into space.  He will go on Soyuz capsule TMA-13, dock with the Zarya module, and return on TMA-12.  Here’s a detailed breakdown of the mission (click for more information)…

Expedition 18 commander Mike Fincke, flight engineer Yury Lonchakov and Richard Garriott, a computer game designer and son of former shuttle astronaut Owen Garriott, are scheduled for liftoff at 3:01:29 a.m. EDT Sunday from the same pad used by Yuri Gagarin. If all goes well, Lonchakov will guide the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft to a docking at the downward port of the central Russian Zarya module around 4:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The mission will last 10 days, and Garriott will return on October 24.  While on board the ISS, he will work on a project called Windows on Earth, which involves a camera that observers on the ground can determine optimum locations on the globe for photography.

Liberal documentaries rake in big bucks at the movies while conservatives opt to just stay home or tune out Hollywood entirely. Santorum encouraged everyone in the room to go out and see the new film, An American Carol. He stressed that liberals are successfully dominating American culture only because conservatives are choosing not to contest the battle.

Unfortunately, as there were a couple of open bars in the room and everyone was tired and unwinding, the crowd was quite loud. But I did manage to catch most of his speech on video and I will attempt to post that when I return home.

There’s an interesting mixture of high-energy power ties, rank and file grassroots activists, and scruffy new media types in here. I’m not sure what group I fall into. But I do know that is smells a bit like feet and B.O. in the hallway outside the main hallway.

I’ve encountered bloggers from huge sites like Townhall.com and RedState, all the way down to local bloggers who write for their University’s College Republicans website. But the mix includes quite a few mid-sized state and national blogs, the “meat and potatoes” of conservative new media.

I had the chance to meet George Will for a second as he was leaving the “Radio Row” conference room. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen many bigwigs in the “Bloggers Row” room… most of the folks in here seem to be networking and posting stories about voter fraud and the election. While the networking is excellent, as fellow blogger The Republic of Dave points out, most of this blogging could be taking place at home. So I’ve come to believe that the main reason we’re here is to network and build community. And I think that’s been wildly successful.

The music selections are vastly superior to the Republican National Convention. A collection of soaring balads and optimistic modern rock songs greet each speaker as they make their way onto the stage. AFP’s president Tim Phillips makes his way to the stage as U2’s ‘Beautiful Day’ echos in the ballroom. Matchbox Twenty’s “How Far We’ve Come” is used to introduce a slick video recap of the day’s rally on Capitol Hill.

We’ve eaten our slightly stale salads and are waiting for George Will to speak while our chicken dinners are being delivered by a team of ninja waiters.

The event went ahead and now it seems that the farmer may be fined $100 per pig.

“They’ve got qualified people here, videotaping the pig mud wrestling. All they had to tell me was they felt the pigs were being mistreated and I would have said OK and stopped,” said Dabkowski.

He canceled planned pig mud wrestling for the following three Saturdays.

Dabkowski no longer has the pigs.  He says he is inviting the entire community to a free pig roast, Saturday, Oct. 18.

With all the concern over children living overprotected, inactive lifestyles in suburban communities, the health department and other groups seem a little disingenuous in their attempts to prevent people from actually interacting with animals and getting some exercise at the same time.  Is the health department going to cite people for chasing their dog through the sprinkler next?

Don’t let your kid go to the beach, or they might drown, get stung by a jellyfish or get eaten by a shark.  Make sure they wear sunscreen, lest the angry talons of Sol slightly increase their risk of skin cancer.  Force them to wear a helmet - and knee pads, elbow pads, a reflective vest and three forms of identification.  Wrestling pigs?  That’s a sure path to injury, a hoofing, or mud-borne diseases, or…etc.

This also seems to be reminiscent of the general contempt that, all too often, misguided environmentalists have for agriculture.  Certainly there are issues of humane treatment and environmental impact that have to be considered, but in many areas (Jacksonville, for example), farms have simply been regulated out of existence.  Demand for agricultural products doesn’t go down when that happens - the supply simply expands elsewhere, and “elsewhere” is often overseas.

As we’ve seen lately with products coming from China, products from who-knows-where sometimes adhere to no guidelines whatsoever, and there is little quality control.  Some fish farms are more like vats of fish with some slime in the middle, and antibiotics thrown in to kill what doesn’t asphyxiate from the algae.  I’d rather deal with the minimal problems that we have in American agriculture, than the frightening situations that are common elsewhere.

Anyway, these types of events are best left alone.  It’s not the “First Annual Pig Torture Gala” or anything.  The Baltimore County Health Department clearly needs something more serious to worry about.

In a closed-door session with House Republicans, Boehner called the financial rescue deal a “crap sandwich” – and then said he’d vote for it when it came to the floor Monday. What a confidence inspriring message to your caucus, Congressman Boehner!

Boehner’s leadership, if you can call it that, has been wildly uninspiring and he’s been unable to bring forth an alternative proposal that could get any sort of support. Instead of doing his job by engaging in compromise and negotiation, Boehner played politics and undermined the work that was going on.

When the bill was defeated, he blamed a controversial speech by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. While it’s very true that Pelosi’s speech was a politically stupid and extremely harmful development that may have tipped a few votes against the bill, Boehner is just as bad for trying to score points off of it.

Boehner should be removed from his post by the Republicans in Congress. Even if you don’t agree with the bailout proposal as it was voted on, all Republicans should agree that we can find a better leader than this crap sandwich.

And more…

Note that these songs are just as substantive as every one of Obama’s speeches.

Change the world, yes we can, la, la, la…

I don’t like the Wall Street clowns that have been taking $50 million Christmas bonuses and manipulating markets while padding their own pockets. And I generally don’t support government intervention in the free market. We need less of it on a day-to-day basis.

But, this is beyond all of that.

We face a catastrophe of staggering proportions if something isn’t done to stabilize the credit markets. It’s not just Wall Street bozos and investment bankers who are going to suffer from this.

The credit market collapses. Businesses can’t borrow money. So, businesses in debt can’t refinance their debt when they need to. They are forced to sell assets and lay off employees. Or they declare bankruptcy. Businesses that can’t borrow can’t invest in capital improvements. People lose their jobs. Many, many people lose their jobs.

Those masses of newly unemployed people may lose their homes, further flooding an already flooded housing market. And those people then don’t have the income to shop at Wal-Mart or make their car payments. Wal-Mart closes stores, cuts spending, lays off people. It spirals. These unemployed folks continue to default on their credit cards and auto loans. The banks that are left are hit with even more bad consumer debt. More bank failures, more unemployed people, more economic destruction.

Welcome to the second Great Depression.

Two things need to happen to prevent this.

One, the government needs to become massively pro-active here. The Fed needs to cut rates dramatically and the Congress needs to stop playing politics and pass a massive investment package.

Two, the next administration needs to slash spending in a legitimate fashion. No more deficits. Begin to pay down the national debt. And absolutely no excuses. Once this crisis is over with, the Fed needs to raise the rates and make sure that credit is restricted in a more normal fashion. Make it clear that there will be no future bailouts and that the days of sub-prime mortgage lending are over with.

And a lesser point, but still very important, is energy independence. We must stop the export of our wealth to nations like Saudi Arabia and the UAE. They’re taking the income from oil sales and coming back over here to buy our corporations and physical assets right out from under us. It is absolutely insane.

But it starts with Congress and a bi-partisan rescue package. And it needs to happen now!