As I’ve written, Howard Dean insists on emailing this stuff to me

Dear Juan — John McCain is running the sleaziest and most negative presidential campaign we’ve ever seen — his campaign is setting new lows with their lies and desperate personal attacks. Even Karl Rove, the mastermind of George W. Bush’s slash and burn politics, admitted that McCain’s attacks have gone “too far.” The Obama campaign is hitting back hard and letting everyone know the Republicans aren’t going to get away with this again. They’re running a new TV ad that exposes McCain’s dishonest strategy — and they’re aiming for 100,000 donors by Friday at midnight to help keep it on the air. Watch the latest ad and make a donation of $5 or more today. The McCain campaign has defended and repeated their lies, even after news outlets and independent watchdogs called them “shamelessly misleading,” “thoroughly dishonest,” and “a toxic mix of lies and double-speak.” The Republicans even lied about the crowd size at one of Sarah Palin’s rallies — they reported 23,000 attendees when there were only 8,000. These tactics are just more of the same culture of the dishonesty and division that has hurt America so badly the last eight years. And John McCain is fighting for another four years of the same. Last week, he hired a Washington super-lobbyist to handpick potential White House staff. Apparently he wants to run our government the same way he runs his campaign — surrounded by lobbyists. Democrats have less than 50 days to stop the lies and negative tactics of the Republicans from winning again. Help combat John McCain’s onslaught of deception. Make a donation of $5 or more right now: https://donate.barackobama.com/honor Thanks, Howard Dean

In the wake of John McCain’s campaign appearance here in Jacksonville yesterday, Barack Obama announced he’s coming to town, too.

McCain was scheduled to appear at an F.O.P. pancake breakfast and handed out tickets.  There was such a demand, they moved the event to the Jacksonville Memorial Arena, which seemed to be about half full. I would take that to mean that about 4000 people showed up.

Obama has not said where he will appear or at what time – only that the appearance will be on Saturday.

House Speaker Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi took over as Speaker of the House in January, 2007.  The U.S. national average for regular conventional gasoline was $2.13.

On Sunday, September 14, the national average is $3.82 – an increase of $1.69 a gallon.

Here’s the chart.

Good work, Nancy.

We’ll keep up with this figure in the sidebar to the left.

Here in Florida, despite the news reports that gasoline supply is not affected by Hurricane Ike, and despite the fact that the wholesale price of crude has dropped below $100 a barrel, the price of gasoline has risen about 30-cents a gallon in the areas I see.  The state is getting all kinds of complaints about price gouging.

The Democrats blamed Bush and the Republican Congress for the economy – let’s see if they can accept blame for the economy under their watch.

Donate to the Salvation Army

As I write this, Hurricane Ike is battering Texas.  There are reports of heavy flooding in Galveston as well as fires that can’t be fought in the storm.  Houston also reports heavy rain and fires.

The Houston Chronicle is reporting online.

So is the GalvestonDaily News.

I’ve made a donation to The Salvation Army.  It’s easy to do online, and you can designate hurricane relief, or just let the Army decide where best to spend the money.  My research on this organization shows that they deliver a large part of the donation to people in need and use little for administratiove services.