Dense & Intense - This Week On The Web

In the course of keeping up with the news and doing research, I come across some great stuff you might not see in your hometown newspaper or on the nightly news.

Dense & Intense - This Week On The Web is a compilation of longer, more detail-oriented stories and humor pieces that caught my eye during the week.





Barack Obama poll surge makes John McCain comeback unlikely

SUPPORT for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has surged according to a series of polls yesterday.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24437508-2703,00.html

In a worrying sign for Senator McCain, the polls indicated that independent voters had started to drift away from the McCain-Palin ticket. In the most dramatic shift, independent voters went from leaning towards Senator McCain by 45per cent to 44per cent on September 11 to favouring Senator Obama by 59per cent to 29per cent in the Quinnipiac poll.

The polls also indicated that the working-class vote, which had been difficult for Senator Obama to attract, appeared to be now heading towards the 47-year-old Illinois senator.

John McCain's temper is tested as Barack Obama's poll lead grows


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article4870677.ece

His campaign is now at a crossroads. Mike Murphy, who ran his last bid for the White House eight years ago, described how many established Republicans had become exasperated with recent decisions. “Almost to a person they are dismayed by what they see as the stunning lack of competence in the McCain operation,” he said.

The Twelve Tribes of American Politics in the '08 Election

Understanding the twelve religious voting blocs in America may be key to unlocking the 2008 election.

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/236/story_23639_1.html

The Religious Left

Percent of voting-age population: 12.7%

Who are they: Theologically liberal Catholics, mainline and evangelical Protestants. Less orthodox (only 5% say the Bible is literally true) church-bound (about one-quarter report weekly worship attendance) and pluralistic in their beliefs (two-thirds agree that "all the world's great religious are equally true and good".)

What they care about: Liberal on most everything.78% are pro-choice on abortion and just 21% support traditional marriage. Two thirds say the war in Iraq was unjustified, up from just over half in 2004.. Two thirds want strict environmental regulations even if it means higher prices and fewer jobs. An overwhelming majority say the economy is their top political concern, but the Religious Left is also more focused on foreign policy than the rest of the electorate. Two thirds also want churches and other religious institutions to stay out of politics.

Agency’s ’04 Rule Let Banks Pile Up New Debt

“We have a good deal of comfort about the capital cushions at these firms at the moment.” — Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, March 11, 2008.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/business/03sec.html?em

“We foolishly believed that the firms had a strong culture of self-preservation and responsibility and would have the discipline not to be excessively borrowing,” said Professor James D. Cox, an expert on securities law and accounting at Duke School of Law (and no relationship to Christopher Cox).

“Letting the firms police themselves made sense to me because I didn’t think the S.E.C. had the staff and wherewithal to impose its own standards and I foolishly thought the market would impose its own self-discipline. We’ve all learned a terrible lesson,” he added.

The Poetry of Sarah Palin

Recent works by the Republican vice presidential candidate.

http://www.slate.com/id/2201342/

In campaign interviews, the governor, mother, and maverick GOP vice presidential candidate has chosen to bypass the media filter and speak directly to fans through her intensely personal verses, spoken poems that drill into the vagaries of modern life as if they were oil deposits beneath a government-protected tundra.



Thursday's nationally televised debate with Democrat Joe Biden could give Palin the chance to cement her reputation as one of the country's most innovative practitioners of what she calls "verbiage."



The poems collected here were compiled verbatim from only three brief interviews. So just imagine the work Sarah Palin could produce over the next four (or eight) years.

Speak Correctly

Or build a big bunker.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTlhNmYxYmM2Yjc3NDdkMjQyOTQ3MjE2ODMxMGE0MjM=#more

"Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a dumpster, but since she didn’t, I should 'off' myself.



Those are just a few nuggets randomly selected from thousands of e-mails written in response to my column suggesting that Sarah Palin is out of her league and should step down."

Palin’s Alternate Universe

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/opinion/04herbert.html?hp

After Ms. Palin had woven one of her particularly impenetrable linguistic webs, Joe Biden turned to the debate’s moderator, Gwen Ifill, and said: “Gwen, I don’t know where to start.”

Of course he didn’t know where to start because Ms. Palin’s words don’t mean anything. She’s all punctuation.

It's been a great week for some of us.