I was on my way home from work this morning when I heard our local talk radio wingnut, Jeff Katz, claim that a forensic expert had evidence Barack's birth certificate is a forgery--and therefore, he isn't a native-born American.  

Now, I take anything I hear from Mr. Katz with a truckload of salt (as does any reality-based Charlottean).  I decided to check to see whether he was making this up out of whole cloth or was just regurgitating something out of the wingnutosphere.  Wouldn't you know ... it's the latter.

Well, we're in the homestretch of the first Democratic Congress in 13 years ... so it's worth wondering again, who's got the worst Senate duo?  One would think that being out of power would mellow them out, huh?  Not so much.  The nominees:

*Alabama (Jeff Sessions/Richard Shelby)
*Arizona (John McCain/Jon Kyl)
*Georgia (Saxby Chambliss/Johnny Isakson)
*Idaho (Larry Craig/Mike Crapo)
*Kansas (Pat Roberts/Sam Brownback)
*Kentucky (Mitch McConnell/Jim Bunning)
*North Carolina (Liddy Dole/Richard Burr)
*Oklahoma (Jim Inhofe/Tom Coburn)
*South Carolina (Lindsey Graham/Jim DeMint)
*Texas (Kay Bailey Hutchison/John Cornyn)
*Utah (Orrin Hatch/Bob Bennett)

I came home from work this morning to find an offline message from a friend urging me to join a boycott of McDonald's.  There's even a Website too.  So I checked it out ... and wouldn't you know, it's another production brought to us by the American Family Association.  

WaPo tells us what has the Tupelo Ayatollah so upset.

A group that opposes same-sex marriage has called for a boycott of McDonald's, saying the fast-food giant has refused "to stay neutral in the cultural war over homosexuality."

The American Family Association (AFA) launched the boycott yesterday because McDonald's joined the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce several months ago and placed an executive on the group's board of directors, in addition to donating to the chamber.

To my mind, this boycott is going to be a prime candidate for the "Biggest Waste of Time Ever" award.  McDonald's sales are probably in the tank as it is--after all, who wants to scrounge for Big Macs when you have to pay $4 for gas?

InsiderAdvantage has released another poll that should scare the pants off McCain--yet another statistical dead heat, if it's true.

This poll shows McCain with only 46 percent of the vote to Obama's 44 percent--well within the 4.3 percent margin of error.  Moreover, it shows that 51 percent of voters are willing to take another look at Obama if he picks Sam Nunn as a running mate.

I'm kind of skeptical about this poll--there aren't any internals, and it doesn't show how many McCain voters would be willing to hop the fence if Nunn were on the ticket.  Still, if this is legitimate, it's yet another item in a laundry list of bad news for McCain here in the South--and confirms why to this point, I have Georgia as a state McCain will likely have to break a sweat in order to win (though another poll like this and I might move Georgia to the "tossup" column).  Plus, as a North Carolinian, I want him to blow a ton of money on Atlanta TV--after all, every penny he spends in Atlanta is a penny he can't spend in Charlotte or the Triangle.

(cross-posted at BlueNC)

Recently, I started wondering how to handle redrawing North Carolina's congressional districts.  After all, this state is turning bluer by the minute, and we've got one (and perhaps two) relatively new Dem congressmen to protect.  Something else to consider--two of our districts look VERY vulnerable to Repub takeover once the current incuments retire.  So here's my idea for redistricting North Carolina in a few years ... feel free to quibble.

Well, I figured now's as good a time as any to do an updated electoral college outlook.  In my last update, I figured that Barack Obama can count on at least 257 electoral votes to 151 for John McCain.  How much things can change in a matter of weeks.  How bad is it for McCain?  By my rather unscientific analysis, the best he can hope for is a bare majority of electoral votes.

So let's summarize what we now know for sure about the primary source of the "Obama is a Muslim" smear, Anthony Martin-Trigona, alias Andy Martin.  This, I believe, should be more than enough to blow apart any shred of credibility the "Obama is a Muslim" rumors still have.

I'm hoping to compile enough to send to some of my born-again friends ... granted, quite a few of them aren't voting for Obama anyway, but if I can stop them from spreading these smears it'll make some difference.

Over at BlueNC (hat tip to The Southern Dem), we've been having a real hoot over Robin Hayes (R-NC08)' claim three years ago this week that Saddam was in cahoots with al-Qaeda on 9/11.

When Hayes was told the 9/11 commission found no evidence that Saddam was at all involved, Hayes responded in typical BushBot fashion:

Told no investigation had ever found evidence to link Saddam and 9/11, Hayes responded, "I'm sorry, but you must have looked in the wrong places."

Hayes, the vice chairman of the House subcommittee on terrorism, said legislators have access to evidence others do not.

Think we're kidding?  Crooks and Liars has video (digg it up).

(cross-posted at BlueNC)

Public Policy Polling confirms what we already knew--North Carolina is in play presidentially.  However, news from the Senate race here isn't quite as encouraging.

On the presidential side, McCain only leads Obama 45-41--just one point over the margin of error.  Barr gets 5 percent.  Note, this is a Democratic polling firm--but as with the last poll from NC, from a Republican polling firm, there's virtually no good news for McCain.

On the Senate side, however, Liddy Dole appears to be pulling away from Kay Hagan.  She now leads 51 percent to 38 percent ... and the trends suggest Hagan's got some work to do.

Now that we know the identity of the guy who started the "Obama is a Muslim" rumors--namely, perennial candidate and vexatious litigant Anthony Martin-Trigona, alias Andy Martin--the next question is how to push back against him.  And there might be a way.  Seems Mr. Martin-Trigona is a fugitive.  

Martin ran for a Florida State Senate seat in 1996, but it came unraveled due to anti-Semitic remarks he'd made a decade earlier while running for Congress from Connecticut.  After the election, he assaulted two TV cameramen and was sentenced to a year in jail.  And then ...

He was freed pending an appeal but was ordered right back to jail -- this time for seven months -- for contempt of court when he turned to television cameras inside a civil courtroom to say that the sitting judge was "bought and paid for" and a "psychiatric case."

After Martin served the first month, deputies released him prematurely by accident. Martin didn't look back, so a warrant was put out for his arrest. After losing his appeal on the criminal charges, he owes Palm Beach County about 16 months in jail.

Survey USA just released a new poll showing Obama ahead of McCain by 2 points in Ohio--a statistical dead heat, since the MoE is 4.2 percent.

I don't know what to make of this poll.  On one hand, it shows Obama leading by four in Cincy--the definition of a purple metro area (Cincy itself is light blue, but the suburbs are crimson red).  He's also beating McCain like a rented mule among moderate voters, 55-36.  It also shows McCain up six in Columbus--as I understand it, the Columbus burbs are even redder than the Cincy burbs.  But on the other hand ... 90 percent of Latinos prefer McCain, and Obama's only up 11 in Cleveland, the most Democratic area of the state.

If this poll is true, a poll done a few days earlier by Dem firm Public Policy Polling is officially an outlier.  It shows Obama up 50-39--results even I have trouble believing because if Obama were up that much in Ohio, this race would be over.

In the past few weeks, we've seen the delightful sight of Obama being competitive in states no Democrat should even be thinking about ... Georgia, Indiana, Nebraska and now Mississippi.  It raises the obvious question--how close does it have to be in normally crimson-red states to know McCain's been capsized by an Obama tsunami?

A few weeks ago, I did some admittedly unscientific analysis and concluded that while Obama has 171 electoral votes in the bag, McCain's got only 85.  Which means there's a whole lot of normally red territory that McCain's going to have to work harder to defend than normal--Kansas, Nebraska, Georgia, Indiana, Montana and even Arizona.  Granted, many of these states will go for McCain except if Obama manages to rack up 380 votes or more.  While my best-case scenario presently has Obama winning by "only" 369-169, here's my rough guess as to how close it has to be in some red states for there to be a complete wipeout.  

Just off the wire from CNN ... the UN has called for Robert Mugabe to postpone the presidential runoff in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe's government should put off Friday's scheduled presidential runoff, since a vote held under current conditions "would lack all legitimacy," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said Monday.

Speaking as the Security Council prepared to hold talks on the issue, Ban called the withdrawal of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai "understandable" and said a runoff "would only deepen divisions within the country and produce a result that could not be seen as credible."

"There has been too much violence, too much intimidation," he said.

Tsvangirai has taken refuge in the Dutch Embassy, and is also calling for a UN investigation of Mugabe.  For his part, Mugabe is blowing it off--he's claiming he's already won since Tsvangirai is out of the race.

In a bit of irony, Condi calls Mugabe's actions a "continuing campaign of violence against its own people."  Next step, I would think, would be sanctions.  But should we wait for the UN on this, or impose sanctions ourselves?

A few days ago, I wrote about my frustration at having one of my pentecostal/charismatic friends jump on my case about my support of Obama.  Well, I think I may be close to winning over one of them.

Pat McCrory, the Repub candidate for governor of North Carolina, has been the mayor of my hometown, Charlotte, for 13 years.  He's been able to pull it off in an increasingly blue city because he's a moderate Republican by North Carolina standards--and in part because the Democrats haven't put up a real fight in a mayoral race in recent memory despite a huge advantage in registration.  

So you'd think that he'd want to stay away from the most unpopular president in recent memory, right?  Wrong.

A fundraiser today for Republican gubernatorial nominee Pat McCrory is set to feature a big name and a small profile.
President Bush is scheduled to visit the North Carolina capital to help raise money for the Charlotte mayor's statewide campaign. But the event -- at a private home and closed to the media -- is not designed to draw attention.

Proof positive of the fact there's something close to a Democratic lock in the Electoral College ... by my analysis, Obama starts out with a sizeable electoral vote lead, even more than the media's reporting.  How's that?  More below the fold.

Late Saturday night, I had the first of what I expect to be many conversations jumping on me about being a pentecostal/charismatic Christian who supports Barack Obama.

I buzzed an old friend of mine after seeing her on Myspace--I hadn't seen her in forever.  She's a charismatic Christian--and an ardent Republican.  After a little bit of small talk, out of nowhere she said, "There is no way in heck that Obama is a Christian."  Apparently she noticed that I have a link to Fight the Smears on my status message in Yahoo.  It went downhill from there ... more after the jump.

Not entirely surprising--RedState blogger Mark Impomeni is urging Shrub to disregard Boumediene v. Bush.  What is surprising, however, is the line he's taking--SCOTUS itself may have committed an unconstitutional act.

The unpleasant fact overlooked by Justice Anthony Kennedy and the four justices who signed on to his majority opinion, is that in ruling the military tribunals set up by the Military Commissions Act to be unconstitutional, the Court itself committed an unconstitutional act. Congress, acting under its Article III power to regulate the judicial branch, stripped the Supreme Court of the jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from detainees in the custody of the United States when it passed and the president signed the Military Commissions Act.

Just one problem with that ... a problem named the Suspension Clause of the Constitution