Results tagged “johnmccain”

David Plouffe, at 42-years-old, has likely reached the pinnacle of his career. He successfully guided a little known junior senator from Illinois to the highest echelon of national power while galvanizing an electorate burnt out from eight years of rancorous political discourse. In, "The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory," Plouffe details the campaign from its infancy to present day. He takes us on a highly detailed journey in which he initially demurred at the prospect of managing the campaign, through the difficulties of the two-year campaign and the ultimate elation felt after America elected its first black president. He joined us Monday for a chat about what that experience was like, why he was surprised by McCain's campaigns tactics and what lies ahead for the architect of Change as he readies for an appearance Tuesday in Pasadena.

Senator John McCain has his eye on several transit projects all over the nation that he is labeling "wasteful government spending," including two here in Los Angeles, explains StreetsblogLA. His target is the US Department of Transportation's 2010 spending bill, which comes up "for a vote this week in the upper chamber of Congress."

On Monday night, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann named Chad Michael Morrisette, the West Hollywood resident that took front lawn Halloween decor to new levels with a Sarah Palin effigy and a burning John McCain, as the Worst Person in the World. He beats out Bill O'Reilly and Joe Lieberman.

       

West Hollywood Mayor Jeffrey Prang chimed in on LAist's Sarah Palin effigy post yesterday. Like 99.9999% of everyone else, he's not cool with it.

Alicia Dwyer, a filmmaker from Los Angeles who has directed, edited and produced an Academy award winning documentary and an Emmy-award winning series, recently travelled to Ohio not to film a documentary but to direct and produce advertisements. She produced ads for Local Voices for Obama, an innovative campaign to broadcast local ads featuring local voices and attitudes in swing states. LAist sat down to talk to Alicia Dwyer about her experience.

Next week's election presents a tough choice for some, although others have known for sometime which option is more suited to their taste. Here the dilemma gets a sweeter treatment, in the form of McCain/Palin and Obama/Biden chocolates for your choosing, as caught by LAist Featured Photos contributor C-Monster. These confection candidates were found in Laguna Niguel at Downey's Chocolates--we don't know which one is more delicious, but we did get to sample their nonpartisan--but artisan--chocolates a few weeks ago at the Luxury Chocolate Salon.

LA Times' top blog, Top of the Ticket, spoke to local artist Shepard Fairey about all the spoofs on his Obama "HOPE" poster. One replaces the word "HOPE" under Obama to "HYPE" and another shows Sarah Palin or John McCain with "NOPE" under their faces. Unimpressed, finding them too negative, Fairey told the blog that "when something becomes pervasive enough, it becomes a reference point that people are going to use for commentary and parody. They build their own thing off of it and use it for their own agenda." Fairey will be installing an Obama window display at TenOverSix on Beverly this weekend.

   

Although Republican Presidential nominee John McCain has no plan for pedestrians that we know of, he definitely has some unintended subliminal messages around Los Angeles crosswalks thanks to a company that the city uses at crossings. LAist reader Jon Zack noticed these while at Highland and Franklin in Hollywood and exclaimed "say it ain't so!"

The blog FiveThirtyEight (as in the number of electoral votes) has been going state by state doing electoral projections. Today was California: "Coastally Urban and Maverickily Liberal, California is one of only four majority-minority states (TX, HI, NM) in the nation. It’s a guaranteed 55 electoral votes for Barack Obama, as it has been for every Democrat since 1992. It has the smallest percentage of rural voters in America. Ironically, it's a state both candidates have visited far out of proportion to the closeness of the race, because both sides need wealthy donors who populate the state. Over ten percent of the Five hundred Thirty Eight electoral votes in play in a presidential election are represented by California." The analysis goes on to each of the candidates individually.

Tonight (10pm) marks the fifth annual installment of VH-1's Hip Hop Honors, a program saluting the contributions of the genre's pioneers and players. This year's honorees include: De La Soul, Slick Rick, Naughty by Nature, Too Shot and Los Angeles' own Cypress Hill.

Here's the latest ad from the California Nurses Association.

As his running mate Sarah Palin prepares for her Thursday debate (notice how FOX News is already giving her an out?) with Obama VP select Joe Biden, Republican nominee John McCain will be trying to raise a quarter million dollars at a fundraiser tonight. It's at the Century Plaza Hyatt Regency in Century City, so plan ahead for some extra special traffic tonight if you're in the area. Or maybe you're going to the fundraiser 'cause hey, you get a nifty little McCain-Palin lapel pin for the $1000 to $2500 entry fee. Wow. Life would be just so complete then.

For a while we couldn't pay them to visit Los Angeles and now we can't get rid of them. Fresh off a visit by her father, Sen. John McCain, Meghan McCain will be showing off her newest ode to literature tomorrow when she reads, signs and talks about her recently penned children's book "My Dad, John McCain" at two exalted outposts of Republicanism: The Americana at Brand and then at USC.

Governor Sarah Palin is a woman of many interests. We've seen her lean out of an airplane to gleefully shoot wolves, and we've delighted in her ability to catch and gut a fish. And now, thanks to a recent L.A. Times article, we also know that she loves to gamble.

Now that Water Reed Middle School in North Hollywood unexpectedly and mistakenly has become part of the debate about John McCain (read the background on this story here), principal Donna Tobin posts a statement on the school's blog:

An announcement for Labor Day (or it just happened to fall on it), John McCain's VP running mate Sarah Palin said that her daughter Bristol Palin, 17, is five months pregnant. Palin most recently gave birth to her down syndrome son Trig in April, but rumors spread on the internet that it was actually Bristol's. Today's announcement was in effort to debunk that rumor. Sarah and Todd Palin said they were proud of Bristol's decision to keep the baby and were even prouder to be grandparents. Also: David Markland at California Faultline points out that governing the state of Alaska (pop. 670,000) is like being mayor of Los Angeles, if it were a sixth of its current size.

John McCain's web people were a little busy this morning prepping the "Ticket for America." (Is it just us or does the photo have SNL skit written all over it?)

As we were watching The Today Show this morning, trying to wake up, Matt Lauer came on live with a bit of an eye opener: Sen. John McCain, the Republican presumptive nominee for POTUSA, took a little bit of wind out of Democrats' sails this morning with the announcement that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has been picked as his running mate. Now we don't know a lot about the Alaska governor, but we do know that (a) she is 44 years old and a mother of five (b) conservative and (c) a former Miss Alaska runner up. More updates as they come. But what do you think? Shocking? Pandering for women's votes? Smart choice?

Yesterday brought both presumptive Presidential nominees to Orange County to Pastor Rick Warren's Lake Forest mega-church for question-and-answer sessions that overlapped only briefly. It was the first time John McCain and Barack Obama shared the stage for quite some time. Warren posed the same set of questions to each candidate, and both seemed to frequently frame their responses in the context of Christianity in light of their audience, reports KNBC.com. The questions covered several of this campaign's primary areas of interest, including abortion, gay marriage, and other topics from a "range of moral, foreign and domestic issues."

Tonight at 6pm, Adam McKay will talk to Larry King about the new Funny or Die video featuring Paris Hilton. In the 24 hours since the Paris for President video premiered, it has been viewed more than 4 million times. Tonight on Larry King Live we can find out how it all went down. You can see it for yourself right here.

Would you vote for Paris?

Not too soon after McCain was berated for avoiding Los Angeles on the campaign trail, an announcement comes this morning that he's opening a campaign headquarters in Torrance at 23211 Hawthorne Blvd.

Presidential candidate John McCain is saying it is now unlikely they will host any town halls with Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama. All this could mean California being left out of the mix. Earlier this month, McCain proposed the two of them hold ten town-hall style debates, but Obama said five would be suffice. "That package of five engagements would have been the most of any Presidential campaign in the modern era," wrote the Democrat's campaign manager.

The LA Times and Bloomberg just released a poll at 2 p.m. on the presidential race. Obama now holds a 12 point lead over McCain. Perhaps the most interesting part of the poll is that among white voters, Obama and McCain are dead even at 39% each. Also, the Gallup Daily shows a much tighter margin with "Obama winning on key issues." Today, Obama is in Los Angeles at the Music Center fundraising with Hollywood.

Barack Obama is scheduled to ask Hollywood's most celestial bigwigs to open up its pocket books on Tuesday during a fundraiser in the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama took a relaxing Sunday bicycle ride with his family to a friend's house and then on a beachside ride. It's sexy that he's sporting a helmet, too (even if some say it was an unflattering choice).

Matt Welch, editor of Reason magazine and author of McCain: The Myth of a Maverick will be providing his take on the Republican Presidential nominee at the Deconstructing McCain chat. Sure to be a thought provoking and stirring presentation and of growing importance given the fast approaching election.

When it comes to basketball, anyway. The Republican nominee today unveiled a new feature on his website: compare your picks for the 2008 March Madness tournament with his picks. You can even donate your points to the university of your choice so your school can win. Gimmicky? Absolutely. But brilliant. In order to compare your picks, you must create an account; the only required information is your email address and zip code. That’s golden demographic information for campaigns.

As the country waits to see what the future holds for crusader turned illicit copulater Eliot Spitzer, it is worth examining what impact his prostitute predilection might have on the Democratic Party.