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As expected, we are looking at small number changes in the tracking polls in McCain's favor, subject to equilibration in a week or so. The MoE is +/- 2.

Rasmussen: Numbers are  Sun (Sat) (Fri) (Thurs) (Wed). Compare last week, the Sunday after the Dem convention.

Rep Convention
Obama   48 (49) (48) (50) (50)
McCain  48 (46) (46) (45) (45)

Dem Convention
Obama   49 (49) (49) (47) (46)
McCain  46 (45) (45) (47) (47)

The maximum Obama Rasmussen bounce wasn't seen until Tuesday. The "official" bounce day is the Monday poll after the conventions. Last Wed, Scott Rasmussen wrote:

This past Tuesday, Obama’s bounce peaked with the Democrat enjoying a six-percentage point advantage. Before the two conventions were held, Obama had consistently held a one or two point lead over McCain for most of August (see recent daily results).

Looking at max. lead is different than what Gallup does (see below). In any case, the Rasmussen McCain bounce started a few days into the convention later than the Obama bounce.   Some people think that McCain does better in Fri-Sat polling, so it will be interesting to see what this looks like Tuesday. As Obama days fall off and McCain days are rotated in, the McCain numbers are expected to rise. We, of course, don't know where it winds up, but we will measure the bounce tomorrow (and argue about how).

Gallup: Last Sunday, Obama had a 6 point lead, which would max to 8 on Wednesday. This Sunday, McCain takes the lead 48-45. McCain won Fri and Sat (sez Gallup), so there's one more Obama day to rotate off tomorrow, to be replaced by whatever Sunday polling brings.

Gallup does not look at max. lead to define the bounce. The way Gallup measures bounce is on the Monday after the convention compare the candidate's numbers to the Monday prior. Obama went from 45 to 49 (a 4 point bounce) and McCain started at 43.

Rep Convention
Obama   45 (47) (48) (49) (49)
McCain  48 (45) (44) (42) (43)

Dem Convention
Obama  48 (49) (49) (48) (45)
McCain 42 (41) (41) (42) (44)

Diageo-Hotline tracking poll does not publish on weekends. Like Gallup, it is a registered voter poll, whereas Rasmussen is a likely voter poll.

The markets, such as Rasmussen and Intrade have Obama ahead, roughly 57.5 to 42, a pick-up of ~2.5 points for McCain and a similar magnitude to Obama's convention market bounce last week (59.5 to 61.5). The markets react faster than the tracking polls.

It will take another week to see what's sustained and what is not.

For more on the individual polls and expected "house effect" (the observation that, for example, Rasmussen leans GOP a point or two), see Charles Franklin at pollster. com. I have highlighted the trackers in yellow; Diageo-Hotline's is for the poll they do for National Journal (no tracking poll data available.)

What the topline numbers do not tell us are such things as whether people still think McCain is likely to pursue Bush policies (they have up until now), and whether the numbers reflect something seen before: a regional difference in that McCain runs strong in the South but Obama does well elsewhere. That latter is another way of saying that state to state and regional variations are not picked up by topline polls.

Note also these are very small leads either way. It's been many a year since we've seen 12 and 14 point leads, and this is now almost past convention season. A relatively tight topline race is expected at least until the debates if this follows the pattern of recent elections, where there are relatively few undecideds left. Who the undecideds are (older, female., etc) is important.

Regardless, we have a close race and an increasingly polarized electorate. The problem for Republicans is that their base is smaller than other years. But based on the numbers, neither has knocked the other out. Also, each convention did something for their candidate, whereas previous years was not so even-handed (the GOP was credited with winning the convention battle.) And this year there are four extraordinary stories, so media interest will be at a peak.

Ground game becomes vital in this kind of election, and so does news that neither campaign can control. Right now, the news is economic.

Bottom line on the toplines... wait until Tues or Wed.

Get Your War On is back and let's just say Senator POW's "cross" story just got funnier.

window.location = "http://www.236.com/video/2008/get_your_war_on_the_cross_8755.php";

Durham v Lancashire

Middlesex 161/10 * v Nottinghamshire 180/10

Warwickshire v Essex

Leicestershire v Northamptonshire

England Women 93/3 * v India Women 90/7

Kent 160/1 * v Surrey 307/9

• Major kudos to the Daily Kos community! Responding to last night's call to make sure there was hell to pay for James Inhofe questioning Barack Obama's patriotism, the community raised $10,797 for Inhofe's progressive challenger Andrew Rice.

  On the web:

  Orange to Blue ActBlue Page

  Andrew Rice for Senate

• Joe Biden is looking forward to debating Sarah Palin, except for one tiny problem:

  "I have no idea what her policies are. I assume they're the same as John's. I just don't know," he said of Palin.

  That's what happens when the unknown, unvetted candidate to be a 72 year old heartbeat away from the presidency refuses to talk to the press. Perhaps someday the media will start reporting on that rather than admiring her taste in mooseburgers.

• Today the Bush administration announced that the federal government is taking over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
• Did the fawning coverage of the Republican Convention get you down? Well, check out this video you may have missed, via Americablog. Now that's some news you can use.
• Atrios notes that Palin continues to lie. And naturally, the traditional media continues to ignore the lies.
• If you're thinking of voting Republican this year, Austin Cline outlines their alternative policy positions so you can feel good about your choice. In Bizarro World.
• With Hurricane Ike's uncertain path, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is worried:

  "Our citizens are weary and they're tired and they have spent a lot of money evacuating ... from Gustav," he said. He added that if Ike were to threaten, "my expectations this time is, it will be very difficult to move the kind of numbers out of this city that we moved during Gustav."

• New research indicates that global warming could make the Midwest "more like Alabama and Arkansas" in the summer, as well as cause the water level in Lake Erie to fall. - Plutonium Page
• Questions are being asked about the FBI's anthrax investigation:

  In a letter sent Friday to Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Democratic leaders of the House Judiciary Committee said that “important and lingering questions remain that are crucial for you to address, especially since there will never be a trial to examine the facts of the case.”

  - Plutonium Page

On Sunday, McClatchy Newspapers published a story on Sen. John McCain's oft-discussed temper, detailing one incident in which McCain allegedly pushed a woman in a wheelchair.

According to McClatchy's report, in 1996, McCain was met in the Senate office halls by a group of family members of POW-MIAs who had been pressing him to pursue more information on their relatives.

Six people present have written statements describing what they saw. According to the accounts, McCain waved his hand to shoo away Jeannette Jenkins, whose cousin was last seen in South Vietnam in 1970, causing her to hit a wall.

As McCain continued walking, Jane Duke Gaylor, the mother of another missing serviceman, approached the senator. Gaylor, in a wheelchair equipped with portable oxygen, stretched her arms toward McCain.

"McCain stopped, glared at her, raised his left arm ready to strike her, composed himself and pushed the wheelchair away from him," according to Eleanor Apodaca, the sister of an Air Force captain missing since 1967.

McCain's staff wouldn't respond to requests for comment about specific incidents.

It's impossible now to determine whose recollection of these events is accurate. But Democrats clearly continue to see McCain's temperament as a potential electoral liability. Appearing on CNN's Late Edition on Sunday, Sen. Barbara Boxer argued that McCain's hot-streak is a legitimate campaign issue that should dissuade voters from electing him commander in chief.

"Just listen to what some of his Republican friends have said about him," said Boxer. "Thad Cochran, a Republican conservative senator from Mississippi says the thought of John McCain in the White House sends cold chills down his spine. I don't agree with Kay Bailey that everybody loses their temper like that. And I think we've all seen it happen. It's not rational when it happens. And because John McCain raised the issue, he actually raised it and says he has the temperament -- you know, I think it should be on the table. And anyone watching, you know, Barack Obama stay as cool as a cucumber under the most unbelievable scathing attacks can see that."

Boxer's comment, the crux of which had been raised earlier in the segment, came in the midst of what was a heated exchange between her and Senate colleague Kay Bailey Hutchinson. The Texas Republican laughed off the idea that McCain was any more volatile than other senators. "It is just ridiculous to say he doesn't have the temperament," she remarked. "I mean everybody gets upset at some point."

More on John McCain

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin plans to sit down later this week for her first television interview since John McCain chose her as his running mate more than a week ago.

The first-term Alaska governor has given speeches, alongside McCain and at the Republican National Convention, since McCain introduced her as his surprise vice presidential pick on Aug. 29.

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said Sunday that Palin would be made available "when we think it's time and when she feels comfortable doing it."

Later, a McCain-Palin adviser said Sunday that an interview was offered several days ago to Charles Gibson of ABC News. The adviser spoke on condition of anonymity because an official announcement had not been made.

The adviser said the interview was expected to take place later this week in Alaska. Palin is expected to return to her state at midweek after more joint appearances with McCain.

An ABC News spokeswoman said the network had no comment.

McCain, who appeared on CBS' "Face the Nation," said he expected Palin to start doing interviews "in the next few days."

Davis complained that the media has focused too much on the 44-year-old Palin's personal life. Many of those stories came after McCain's campaign announced that Palin's 17-year-old daughter was pregnant. News reports also have questioned her record as a reformer in Alaska.

"She's not scared to answer questions," Davis said on "Fox News Sunday." "But you know what? We run our campaign, not the news media. And we'll do things on our timetable."

Palin won over GOP loyalists with her speech last week at the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn. But Democrats and even some Republicans have questioned whether she is ready to answer unscripted questions about national and international issues.

"Why would we want to throw Sarah Palin into a cycle of piranhas called the news media that have nothing better to ask questions about than her personal life and her children?" Davis said. "So until at which point in time we feel like the news media is going to treat her with some level of respect and deference, I think it would be foolhardy to put her out into that kind of environment."

Palin's Democratic counterpart, Sen. Joe Biden, a veteran of the Sunday talk show circuit, challenged Palin to sit for interviews.

"Eventually she's going to have to sit in front of you like I'm doing and have done," Biden said on "Meet the Press" on NBC. "Eventually she's going to have to answer questions and not be sequestered. Eventually she's going to have to answer questions about her record."

More on Sarah Palin

England continue their remarkable unbeaten run, going 4-0 up in the series against India with just one match of their summer remaining.

The expectations of fans back home may get "out of control" but Mohammad Ashraful, the Bangladesh captain, wants his team to be among the top five in the world.

UPDATE: "Republican vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin is offering her first televised interview to ABC News in the coming week in Alaska," AP reports.

"A McCain-Palin adviser says an interview was offered to ABC's Charlie Gibson several days ago and that they expect it to happen in the latter part of the week in Alaska. Palin is the governor of Alaska and is expected to return home at midweek after more joint appearances with McCain."

ORIGINAL POST: It's been nine days since Gov. Sarah Palin was tapped to be John McCain's vice president, and the Alaska Republican has given nary an interview since then. Her absence was acutely felt this Sunday, as both presidential candidates and Sen. Joseph Biden took to the morning shows to plead their cases for election day.

Palin came up primarily in the context of her refusal to appear.

On NBC's Meet the Press, Biden told Tom Brokaw, "Eventually, she's going to have to sit in front of you like I'm doing and have done. Eventually, she's going to have to answer questions and not be sequestered. Eventually, she's going to have to answer on the record." Later, Brokaw told viewers he had reached out to the Delaware Democrat's Republican counterpart to no avail.

McCain, appearing on CBS's Face The Nation, was asked about Palin's absence as well. He hinted that his number two would be taking questions soon, but dismissed the inquiry with a humorous dig at the number of times he himself has gone on the show,

"We just finished the convention but within the next few days and I am strongly recommending that she come on Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer and that will be the first of her 65 appearances," said the Senator.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama, appearing on ABC's This Week, made a sly joke about Palin's eagerness to throw a political punch but shyness about taking press questions.

And then there was Rick Davis. McCain's campaign manager, appearing on the Fox New Channel, told Chris Wallace that Palin would not be subjected to reporters questions "until the point in time when she'll be treated with respect and deference."

Ripping the fourth estate for a perceived bias towards the Alaska Governor, Davis went on.

"She's not scared to answer questions," he said, "but you know what? We run our campaign not the news media... Sarah Palin will have the opportunity to speak to the American people. She will do interviews, but she'll do them on the terms and conditions" the campaign decides.

Days earlier, Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic reported that a McCain aide said it would be a while before the Governor is subjected to direct questions from the press. The campaign, Ambinder wrote, will "effectively deal with the media's complaints, and their on-the-record response to all this will be: 'Sarah Palin needs to spend time with the voters.'"

Said David Chalian, political director for ABC News, in a Politico story on the matter: "There's no doubt in my mind that the McCain campaign would like to run out on the clock on this."

Already, members of the press and Democratic activists are irked by the absence and trying to make political hay from it. Moveon.org has even started a clock tracking how long it has been since Palin fielded a question.

More on Sarah Palin

Trish Heckman, a 49-year-old restaurant cook and disappointed Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter, watched last week as the country's newest political star made her explosive debut.

She followed the news when John McCain introduced Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate, paid attention to the raging debate over her qualifications, even tuned in to watch her dramatic speech at the Republican convention.

More on Sarah Palin

Some people should not make a habit of smiling. On most people it looks good; some, though, seem not to have the proper face for the task. When John McCain smiles, the look is reminiscent of a skull wrapped tightly in a large wet sock. He smiles so rarely during speeches that it is disconcerting; he does it with such a pained grimace that it is very nearly frightening.

If I were to come up with an overall theme for the Republican National Convention -- and fortunately for both me and them, I am a partisan of the opposite stripe, and therefore unlikely to ever be hired on for such a task -- it would have to be The Grinning Corpse. I picture a happy, stoic stiff, unconcerned with its own demise, unaware that the hands of the clock have kept moving in its absence. It smiles broadly, very nearly daring the world to kill it off once again, just so the bag of bones can laugh it off yet one more time. That is my overall impression of nearly everything involved with this administration, and of the party that has wrapped itself so tightly around them. The remaining Bush days, filled with happy talk of Iraq, and of torture and crime, and drill baby drill. A middle finger to any patsies still concerned for the environment; a halfhearted grunt in response to any plea for an energy policy more substantive than a longer-handled shovel; a vacuous stare towards any of the rest.

That is not to say I consider the election over -- far from it. If modern elections have taught us anything, it is that polices, strategies, and realities hardly matter. You could nominate a dog for President, and it would have a decent chance, so long as it were handsome. You could even get the Supreme Court to approve of the whole thing. No, elections are about narratives, and narratives are about talking points, and talking points are about replacing the good, wholesome reality that exists outside of every window with a version more friendly to your interests, and easier on the eyes of the voter you are trying to woo. And it all works. The tasks of actual government and policymaking is, after all, a triviality to pass the time between election seasons.

Partisan snipe or not, the Republican convention was, in a single word... redundant. The event was so predictable as to pass for, what? A lackluster reenactment of another convention, perhaps? The primary and nearly sole noteworthy decoration was a behemoth screen onto which patriotic treacle could be spread like butter on bread -- and that was it. It was a magnificent design decision, for on that towering screen the Party could represent any America they needed to, and gladly did. Cornstalks, sunsets, people saluting flags. People riding bicycles while happy, and incidents of horrific bloodshed, all set to music and the needs of the Party. No need to look outside: watch the screen. No need to ask difficult questions: look at the fluttering flag.

Every such convention is mired in forced sentiment and over-the-top displays of national emotion, but setting it all upon a single screen, so that there is nothing else to look at, nowhere else for the eye to wander... you almost have to admire it, as simple tool of indoctrination. A single canvas, upon which their America could be painted, an America where war is simple, and funerals burst with patriotic pride. An America where ethnic people are quiet and happy, and nobody is ever behind on their mortgages. But all of it is so paper-thin that it would vanish as rapidly as flicking off a light, if a Democrat was elected to the most solemn post. Or if anyone looked outside.

It was either a most dour party or a most ripping wake. But aside from the sheer spectacle of the Palin speech, the event was noteworthy primarily for being so perfect a copy, in sentiment, of every other Republican national event of the last decade. Nothing was different from the conventions of 2000, or 2008; the faces changed, but the speeches were utterly interchangeable. A happy corpse in deed and tone; a Halloween ball, complete with masks. Or maybe, more simply, a televised echo. An eddy of politics just now dislodged from eight years ago, ready now to be made anew.

Indeed, there seemed a palpable sense of relief when the convention was all but canceled for the first day thanks to hurricane Gustav. The pundits made no bones about it: the Party had "dodged a bullet" because President Bush, their President Bush, was obliged to cancel his appearance. The perfectly obvious and purportedly rational reasoning behind the punditry: the Republicans intended, as much as possible, to pretend that he and his administration did not exist. The convention was designed to exist in an absolute vacuum. There was the screen, and nothing else. There was relatively little interaction with the host city. There was almost no mention of the current administration. According to news reports, the convention schedule was carefully tailored so that television pundits would have little chance to weigh in with commentary of their own, during the proceedings.

In the absence of Bush, or his administration, or his policies, or their outcomes, the Republican Party was free once again to set the sails of their political fantasies, and shout -- once again -- how grand and different it would be once they were put in charge of it all. Again, that is. And it was uncanny:

Instead of Zell Miller, ex-Democrat turned bitter, self-parodying curmudgeon, the role was played this time around by Joe Lieberman. His duty: to assert that regardless of facts on the ground, all sensible people know that conservatism is still the beacon it once was, and will be again, because the other party is mean.

Instead of George Bush as lovable but dazed and addled-sounding speaker, serving up the words from a teleprompter as if they were moths fleeing from his mouth, the role was taken on by John McCain. His identical duty: to assert that he is a different kind of conservative from the much-despised last version, and has, among other things, the basic human empathy and awareness that his dunderheaded predecessor lacked.

In the honorary Reaganesque role of new hyper-conservative star to be heralded by the party as their savior, their primary if not sole qualification being that they are one of the few members of the party not well enough known in Washington to have yet been discredited, the part was ably filled by Sarah Palin. Her duty: to get through the evening without screwing up, thus exceeding all declared expectations.

The rest of the Party was admirably played by caricatures of themselves, at least insofar as time permitted.

The War On Terror was portrayed by a short film, in which the deaths of thousands were replayed and the narration featured a deep voice of the sort that would otherwise be doing movie trailers. The film had all the subtlety and nuance of a Bugs Bunny vs. Hitler cartoon, and it was held up as representation of what the Republican Party thought terrorism meant, as concept and as enemy. In its Orwellian ham-handedness, it was terrifying.

The McCain role is noteworthy since, after all, he is the actual nominee. After watching an entire evening of slide shows narrated by people who likely looked and sounded like your grandparents, one could have forgiven the audience for nodding off before his speech -- but they did not. And they were rewarded in the manner Republicans have become accustomed to, for the first part of McCain's victorious speech was, whether this be taken as partisan snipe or not, dismal. It was disjointed. It was abominably written, and read worse. It bore no common theme, at least none that could be easily plucked out of it. Most of all, it was agonizingly generic -- a zombie speech, a Frankenstein's monster of a speech, stitched together from the dried corpses of better speeches. It seemed intentionally generic, in fact -- spoken in front of a screen that was at intervals an emerald green, or mottled green, or eventually Generic Sky Blue With Generically Waving American Flag, Sans Landscape -- an intentionally monochromatic creation.

It is now a mere few days since that speech, and I cannot remember a single thing said during the vast majority of it. Not a stick. It was not policy based, or history based, but a series of assertions and platitudes heard in other campaigns of the last two decades. It made scant reference to the last years, but asserted success in the next. It made the same attacks against the other party that are always made, except more woodenly. It railed against big government in the same manner as every conservative speech ever rails against big government -- and ignored that conservatism, itself, had bloated it. It railed against entitlement programs, and the incompetence of government, and scary judicial ideas, and not a stick of it was different from the speech given by Republicans before they held the reins of power. The professional Senator railed against Washington. The professed Maverick ticked down the list of doctrinaire conservative bugaboos. The skilled enabler of earmarks thundered against earmarks, as all conservatives always have, every year, to absolutely no effect once they return to the Capitol to divvy up the next batch.

One of the few memorable parts of the speech, for me, was the inexplicable trundling into education policy. What? McCain is no more known for his interest in education policy than he is for his trapeze skills, so to suddenly devote an extended portion of his speech to it gave the impression he might be having an out-of-body experience. The language, though, was the key. It was, in tone and policy, the exact copy of the Bush administration rhetoric on education. It was uncanny: Bush himself could have read the same speech, and not changed a single word -- in fact, he may have said it word for word, for all I know, in some State of the Union Address or election-season oration.

And that is the damnedest thing, because for the life of me I cannot fathom why John McCain would be going to the Education well, and proposing policies that he himself had decades to turn into law, and never had, and the Bush administration itself has had eight years to implement, and never did. It is representative of the worst of the conservative failures: the failure to actually do anything, once in full and complete power. Conservatism unleashed has proven skilled in exactly two things, in government: coming up with creative rationales for ignoring existing law or gutting its intent or enforcement, and at staffing every nook and cranny of government with more conservative cronies. It is superb at the machinery of destruction; it has never built a single thing, and mocks the very premise.

Then, at the end of the speech, John McCain retold the story of the time he was once a hero, decades previous. He retold it from his previous retellings, using the same words and phrasings, but no matter. It was indeed compelling, because it would be nearly impossible for it to be otherwise. And that was it. The rest of the speech was packing peanuts, simply there to fill the space around the Heroic Thing, the sole justification for trusting conservatism yet again, the sole justification given for why a McCain is not a Bush.

And that was the convention. A rerun, played in a darkened convention center, and not ten percent of it would have to have changed in tone or substance if it had run it a decade ago. Scarce mention of Bush, and scarcer mention of Cheney. The Iraq War mentioned only in the same way that the Iraq War has always been mentioned by Republicans, for the last half-decade: something that is simultaneously a great victory and never-ending. Ethnic bugaboos; Democrats are not patriotic; we are at the brink of a great and threatening social chaos, caused by all the foul people who do not think like us.

Even before the convention was over, a few detractors here were referring to McCain as Zombie Reagan. It is certainly a more fitting nickname than Maverick. The entire Party shuffles forward on the corpse of their old ideas; they are impervious to any notion of failure or even self-awareness. Family values can be the mantra one moment; the next they are welcoming onstage the child that impregnated a governor's child as if he was the Jesse Owens of teenage sex. Allow me to introduce the woman I cheated on my first wife with: she will be your First Lady, and we will finally have decorum in the White House. The rest of you adulterers, however, will be going to Hell. Let us reform the cretins of Washington; never mind that they are us. Experience matters, except that it was all the most petty of election season lies, and you'd have to have been extraordinarily gullible to have thought otherwise.

There is nothing satisfying about watching a party reanimate itself based on nothing but blind self assurance and ideological dismissals of all previous error. It is depressing.

Pet Sematary Conservatism, should we call it? I'm not sure.

And I am not sure I want to know what might be coming next.

Middlesex go to the bottom of Pro40 Division One after losing to title-hunters Nottinghamshire by 19 runs in their clash at Lord's.

The Olympic torch relay before the 2012 Olympics will be limited to Britain after protests spoiled the worldwide relay ahead of the Beijing Games.