[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/10/27/art.cnnlive10.cnn.jpg caption="CNN.com/live carried the event."](CNN) - Sarah Palin held a campaign event in Fredericksburg, Virginia earlier Monday.
Earlier, the Alaska governor campaigned in Leesburg, Virginia.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/10/27/biden.3.jpg caption=" Biden warned against the McCain campaign's divisive tactics this morning."]
GREENVILLE, North Carolina (CNN) – As his running mate geared up to deliver his “closing argument” to voters, Joe Biden continued to criticize the McCain campaign’s attacks on Barack Obama, comparing them to those faced by Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy in their campaigns.
“The purpose of it is to deliberately further divide the country, cause they concluded the only way they can win is if they divide us,” Biden told supporters Monday morning at an outdoor rally at East Carolina University.
“Look, let me share a little bit of history with you,” he continued. “The defenders of the status quo have always tried to tear down those who would change our nation for the better.”
“They said Thomas Jefferson wasn’t a real a real Christian. That was the essence of the campaign against him. Well does that sound familiar?” Biden asked. “They said Abraham Lincoln, they said he wanted to take away individual rights. Ladies and gentlemen, they said Franklin Roosevelt would destroy the American system of life. Sound familiar? And ladies and gentlemen, they said that John F. Kennedy was, quote, ‘a dangerous choice in difficult times.’ That’s what they said, they said John F. Kennedy was a dangerous choice in difficult times. Sound familiar?
“Well ladies and gentlemen, new ideas and new leaders are often met with new attacks and almost always negative attacks built on lies which are the last resort of those who have nothing new to offer. And that’s where we find ourselves.”
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/10/27/palin.12.jpg caption=" Palin was introduced by 'Tito the builder' at a rally in Virginia this morning."]
LEESBURG, Virginia (CNN) - Sarah Palin brought along one of her favorite working-class heroes to a campaign rally in northern Virginia on Monday: Tito Munoz, or as he’s better known to Palin and her audiences, “Tito the builder.”
Munoz, wearing a yellow hard hat with a McCain-Palin bumper sticker, introduced Palin at the outdoor rally in Loudoun County, a populous Washington exurb that broke for George W. Bush in 2004 but has gone Democratic in three consecutive statewide elections.
“Everything we stand for is in danger by higher taxes and less freedom,” Munoz said of Obama, earning chants of “Tito! Tito!” from the audience.
The McCain campaign took a shine to Munoz, who owns a construction business, two weekends ago in Woodbridge, Virginia when he was seen accusing a group of reporters of attacking Joe the Plumber for questioning Barack Obama’s tax plan. Palin has since cited Munoz in speech after speech as an example of a hard-worker who would have his dreams crushed by Obama’s plan to raise taxes on high income-earners.
When Palin took the stage, she cracked to Munoz that “not since the Jackson Five has the name Tito been used so often.”
The governor proceeded to deliver a mostly routine stump speech, lacking any of the improvisational riffs like the one she put forth in Tampa on Sunday, when she ad-libbed a four-minute diatribe on the “ridiculous” questions about her RNC-purchased wardrobe.
Instead, Palin stuck to the campaign script and accused Barack Obama of shifting his rhetoric on taxes.
“John and I have a very basic, fundamental disagreement with our opponents on this issue. Sen. Obama has an ideological commitment to higher taxes,” she said. “And though it seems that he adjusts his tax plan pronouncements almost daily now, kind of flip-flopping on what the details are. His commitment to higher taxes never changes, though.”
With Virginia teetering on the brink of falling into Democratic hands for the first time in 44 years, Palin is blitzing every corner of the commonwealth on Monday with four campaign stops and a series of local media interviews. A Washington Post poll released Monday showed Obama leading John McCain by eight points in Virginia, with one half of registered voters holding "strongly" or "somewhat" negative views of the GOP vice presidential candidate.
VANDALIA, Ohio (CNN)– “You will know their names and I will make them famous!"
John McCain once again used that line on the campaign trail over the weekend, as he does in virtually every speech. It refers to pork barrel projects– “You will know their names and I will make them famous!” is his promise/threat to veto all such legislation, and to tell the world who the offending congressional sponsors were.
But the line, if you extrapolate from what people have been telling us on our journey, has perhaps taken on a double meaning– one that could lead to a lucrative, if unlikely, second career for McCain, should he lose the election next week.
“McCain really is the one person who has made these two people overnight stars," said Larry Ealy, 54, of South Bend, Indiana. “It’s pretty amazing, how fast he made it happen."
More from Mr. Ealy later in this dispatch. For now. . . .
If McCain wins, his plate will be rather full for the next four years: president of the United States, commander in chief of the armed forces, leader of the free world. . .all of that.
But should he lose, a strong argument can be made that, over the last several months, McCain has shown an uncanny knack for a line of work you wouldn’t automatically associate with him:
Talent agent.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/10/27/art.yorn.cnn.jpg caption="The music video for American Blues Vol. 1 has become very popular online."]
(CNN) - Indie rocker Pete Yorn was depressed. He woke up in Hawaii on the Fourth of July and read the paper. There was a short article about an Optimist Club disbanding .
“Even they were going bad, on the economy and the state of union, and everyone was just kind of freaking out, ” he said.
So he did what indie rockers do: He knocked out a song and sent it to a few friends.
He says he wrote the song, "American Blues Vol. 1," in about five minutes.
“It was a beautiful paradise and it hit home even more for me. I was feeling all this negativity in such a beautiful place,” he told CNN by phone from Omaha, Nebraska, where he’s working on his next album.
The song touches on the campaign and the economic crisis with lines like: “You love your house/Now give it back,” and “keep beaming through the pledge of allegiance cos you aint dead yet.”
Yorn is a Gold Record-selling artist signed to Columbia records, but he put this song out on his own.
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