Pew: Obama Leads By 14

Pew: Barack Obama’s lead over John McCain has steadily increased since mid-September, when the race was essentially even. Shortly after the first presidential debate on Sept. 26, Obama moved to a 49% to 42% lead; that margin inched up to 50% to 40% in a poll taken just after the second debate. Currently, Obama enjoys his widest margin yet over McCain among registered voters, at 52% to 38%. When the sample of voters is narrowed to those most likely to vote, Obama leads by 53% to 39%.

Obama’s strong showing in the current poll reflects greater confidence in the Democratic candidate personally. More voters see him as “well-qualified” and “down-to-earth” than did so a month ago. Obama also is inspiring more confidence on several key issues, including Iraq and terrorism, than he did before the debates. Most important, Obama now leads McCain as the candidate best able to improve economic conditions by a wider margin (53% to 32%).

McCain Uses the Unlicensed Tax Owing Plumber in Ad

Do you think McCain just hasn't read the latest on Joe the Plumber?

McCain's Odd New Ad

Demconwatch points out something strange about this ad. I'll point out another thing -- at the end, it doesn't say McCain Palin, it says Change is Coming.

McCain Billboard and a Congrats

McCain congratulates Obama in this new ad. ? Sarcasm ? Heard the crowd tonight was going to sing Happy Birthday to McCain, who is 72 Friday. 

Billboard in the Twin Cities, where the twins will meet, hug, next week at their convention. 

McCain New Ad Says Obama Soft on Terror

What else is new. Pandering to the ignorant. It works. Obama will go down in a flood of smears if the Clintons and the republicans have their way.

AP: Anticipating Wednesday night's focus on national security at the convention, Republican John McCain contended in a new TV ad that Obama showed he was "dangerously unprepared" for the White House when he described Iran as a "tiny" nation that didn't pose a serious threat.

"Iran. Radical Islamic government. Known sponsors of terrorism. Developing nuclear capabilities to 'generate power' but threatening to eliminate Israel," says the ad, which was being run in key states. "Terrorism, destroying Israel — those aren't 'serious threats'''?

Missing from the ad was the context of Obama's remarks last May in which he compared Iran and other adversarial governments to the superpower Soviet Union. "They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us," he said in arguing for talks with Iran. "You know, Iran, they spend one-100th of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance."

Translation: Obama is soft on radical Islam (because he's a secret Muslim terrorist, don't ya know) and isn't inclined to support Israel.

Hillary Supporter Turned Star of McCain's Ad Talks

CBS doesn't go very deep in this interview, but talks to Hillary supporter Debra Bartoshevich, who now stars in McCain's ad.

McCain's Foreign Powers

Hilarious ad about McCain's genius foreign powers, stemming from being a POW. This video comes by way of Old Man McCain.

New Obama Ad Counters McCain

 

McCain's New Ad Lies

He uses visual lies and a big fat lie that Obama voted to raise taxes on the middle class. That has been fact checked here. 

Going forward, Obama has repeated over and over, unless you earn more than $250,000, your taxes are not going up. Watch him say it, (mighty forcefully) here.
Here's a link to a side by side comparison of McCain's and Obama's tax plan. NYT: 

Visually, this is another intriguing spot. One that features Mr. Obama’s visage and his crowds more than Mr. McCain’s. One that uses some far left magazine covers to paint Mr. Obama as an extremist.

Interspersed are images of presumably real people, old and young, as the commercial turns to talk about family and the elderly and what tax increases would do to them and their budgets.

FactCheck.org has already debunked this claim that Mr. Obama’s vote on a budget resolution would have raised taxes on a family making a rather low income. But the McCain campaign keeps repeating this.

FactCheck says in an update: “We reiterate: McCain’s $32,000 figure is phony.” Or on $42,000. “The resolution does not contain a specific provision to raise tax rates, but rather assumes that most of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire as scheduled in 2011,” it said.