From ABC News:
Senator Obama has postponed his upcoming 'Saturday Night Live' appearance due to Hurricane Ike barreling toward Texas. "In light of the unfolding crisis in Texas, Sen. Obama has decided it is no longer appropriate to appear on 'Saturday Night Live' tomorrow evening," Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki explained in a statement. Obama's appearance will be rescheduled for a more appropriate time. ...Sen. Obama has been monitoring the hurricane thus far from the campaign trail. He received a midday briefing on Friday from FEMA Administrator David Paulison and spoke later in the day with Houston mayor Bill White. White told Obama that Houston is prepared for the hurricane, Obama spokeswoman Linda Douglass said. Obama offered to do whatever he could to help, including using his website to raise funds for relief efforts. Sen. Joe Biden, also scheduled to appear with Obama at the Manchester event on Saturday, cancelled as well due to the hurricane.
From the Washington Post:
"They've been talking about lipstick and they've been talking about pigs and they've been talking about Paris and Britney," Obama told a boisterous crowd of 1,500 packed into a gym at a technical college here. "They will spend any amount of money and use any tactic out there in order to avoid talking about how we're going to move America forward to the future." ... Obama quoted his opponent saying Thursday night that "it's easy for me to go to Washington and, frankly, be somewhat divorced from the day-to-day challenges people have." "So from where he and George Bush sit, maybe they just can't see," the Democrat told supporters and some self-identified undecided voters earlier in the day in Dover. "Maybe they are just that out of touch. But you know the truth, and so do I. . . . We just can't afford four more years of what John McCain and George Bush consider progress." On the stump, Obama focused on his tax plan, which offers sizable breaks to middle-income families, while raising taxes on families earning more than $250,000. He said McCain has been "simply dishonest" about that plan, asserting repeatedly that an Obama administration would raise everyone's taxes. "I will make a firm pledge: I pledge under my plan, no one making less than $250,000 a year will see any type of tax increase, not income tax, not capital gains taxes, not any kind of taxes," Obama said. And he slammed McCain's proposal to tax the value of employer-based health-care plans as income and use that to help finance tax credits to buy health insurance. The senator from Illinois called that "a $3.6 trillion tax increase" on working families.
From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:
Virginia and North Carolina remain central to the Illinois senator's strategy to secure 270 electoral votes and win the presidential election, David Plouffe told reporters in those states on a conference call yesterday. "We're very confident in our strategy and in our message, and we are focused like a laser beam on states like North Carolina and Virginia," he said. Plouffe added that Virginia's viewers will see two new television ads -- one talking about change and another calling McCain "out of touch" for, among other things, not knowing how to send e-mail. President Bush carried Virginia in 2004 with 54 percent of the vote to 46 percent for Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic nominee. Plouffe said he believes Obama can garner more support in Virginia than other Democratic presidential candidates in the recent past. The campaign believes it can do well in Northern Virginia and is showing "surprising strength" in the Tidewater area, Plouffe said. ... Virginia has not backed a Democratic nominee for president in 44 years. ... Obama's campaign will continue voter-registration efforts and watch to see how the independent and undecided voters break, Plouffe said. "It's a dead heat now, it's going to be dead heat in October, and I think it's going to be close on Election Day," he said.
From the Daily Press:
Actor and comedian Marlon Wayans admitted to Hampton University students that he didn't vote in the last two presidential elections. "Bush is my fault," he told them. "The economy is my fault." Now he's on a tour of Virginia colleges to make sure that win or lose, he did everything he could to get Democratic nominee Barack Obama elected. ... Together [with actress Jurnee Smollett], he urged hundreds of HU students to meet Virginia's Oct. 6 voter registration deadline. New and out-of-state voters were encouraged to register in Virginia, a battleground state. Smollett led a chant of "Take the state" in a packed student center, where hundreds of students listened intently as the two spoke. Don't vote for Obama because he is black, Wayans told them, vote for him because of his policies. "Barack comes from people like us, and always has our best interest at heart," he said. Smollett expanded on the Illinois senator's policies, saying Obama would give every college student a $4,000 tax credit, and raise the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2011. ..."Our economy is hurting ... this is not a black and white issue — this is a red, white and blue issue." Moses Wilson, HU senior class president and the state's coordinator for Students for Barack Obama, said the group registered 270 HU freshman last week, and will compete against Howard University today to register the highest number of voters before and during the rivals' football game in Hampton.
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