He's talking now in Norfolk, VA. The discussion is going to be about education, but first he took a moment to address the latest distraction from the McCain campaign. He's basically flicking the McCain campaign off of his sleeve like it's a bothersome fly.
Instead of getting into personal attacks, which is probably what the McCain campaign was trying to provoke, Obama went a different route. He stated that these types of diversions don't hurt him, or the Republican Party, but they are hurting us because this means we will go another year, or another 4 years, without addressing the very real problems that we have today.
He said 'Enough!' of the phoney outrage. He didn't seem angry per se, he looked more sad that once again an election that should be about serious issues is being infected with the same old politics of smear and fear. In truth, I think this response will piss the McCain campaign off more than anything because they STILL haven't been able to make him lose his temper.
So he's not apologizing, instead he's taking it back to the issues.
He's not going to let the McCain campaign get him off message, and we shouldn't either. Lately McCain and his campaign of distractions has been controlling the narrative, even here on Kos. While it is important to fight back against the lies, it's equally important to fight back on the ISSUES. Daily Kos' popularity has been going up lately, this means that we have an opportunity to make a real impact on this election. People may be coming here for real substantive information, and if all they see is 10-12 diaries on the recent or recommended diaries list is information about Sarah Palin's latest whatever, or a poll that we do or don't like, we are participating in the same dog and pony show as the McCain campaign.
You can watch live now at www.barackobama.com/live. They are also showing the speech live on CNN and MSNBC (it may be getting cut soon for the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Memorial)
He is now talking about education and how McCain hasn't been paying any attention to education before now as evidenced by his record. To see more on their respective education policies, please see my diary from yesterday.
(Ugh, MSNBC is going off of his speech, and the first thing the idiot host said was "we'll see what the McCain/Palin response is." Hopefully it will be something to do with the issues).