President-elect Barack Obama, praising former presidential rival Sen. John McCain for bucking the trend of party politics, said Monday that America’s business isn’t about being Democratic or Republican.  “I could stand here and recite the long list of John’s bipartisan accomplishments …” Obama said at the traditional bipartisan inaugural dinner. “Campaign finance reform. Immigration. The Patients’ Bill of Rights. All those times he has crossed the aisle and risked the ire of his party for the good of his country. And yet, what makes John such a rare and courageous public servant is not the accomplishments themselves, but the true motivation behind them.” Now, Obama continued, it’s time to let Monday’s event kick off a new era in American politics. “We will not always agree on everything in the months to come, and we will have our share of arguments and debates,” Obama said. “But let us strive always to find that common ground, and to defend together those common ideals, for it is the only way we can meet the very big and very serious challenges that we face right now.” Showing his comedic side, Obama said, “I’m here tonight to say a few words about an American hero I have come to know very well and admire very much – Sen. John McCain,” Obama said as he opened his speech. “And then, according to the rules agreed to by both parties, John will have approximately 30 seconds to make a rebuttal.”

McCain tells his party to get off Obama’s back. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said it’s high time the Republican Party get behind President-elect Barack Obama and get off his back. When asked by ABC “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos whether he thought Obama was being less than forthright about his staff’s contact with embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, McCain shot back: “I think that the Obama campaign should and will give all information necessary. You know, in all due respect to the Republican National Committee and anybody – right now, I think we should try to be working constructively together, not only on an issue such as this, but on the economic stimulus package, reforms that are necessary…” Read what else McCain said here.

No administrative post is planned for McCain. President-elect Barack Obama and his former rival, Republican Sen. John McCain, met Monday in a 40-minute session at Obama’s transition headquarters in Chicago and discussed where they could work together to better America, according to press reports. Read the rest here.

Voters are most worried about long lines. More than one in three BET.com users say that they worried about long lines on Election Day, while one in four fear they will discover that they are not registered.  Get all the results from our election poll here.

Time is ticking away for candidates. With only 48 hours remaining in the race for the White House, the battleground state of Ohio has seen both presidential candidates come to state their case and deliver their argument on why undecided voters should do more than “lean” their way: They want their vote. Get more at Pamela on Politics.

Kids and coffee voters give Obama the edge. While early voting is taking place in important swing states like Ohio, Florida and Virginia, the votes are in and the results are final from the children’s television network Nickelodeon.  And the winner is…. Sen. Barack Obama.

Polls show Obama with a fat lead. As the presidential candidates prepare to square off in the third and final debate tonight, a new CBS poll shows Sen. Barack Obama with his strongest lead yet in the presidential race with a 14-point lead over his Republican rival Sen. John McCain. The respondents said McCain has spent too much time attacking Obama and not enough explaining what he would do as president. The poll also found that voters trust Obama more than McCain to fix the economy. In a separate survey three weeks before Election Day, Obama leads McCain, 50 percent to 41 percent, among likely voters, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll suggests. In September, Obama had a 49 percent to 45 percent lead. In the weeks between the two polls, the nation’s economy teetered toward collapse, and the poll demonstrated the shattering effect of that upheaval on voters. The latest New York Times/CBS News poll indicated Obama ahead 53 percent to 39 percent and suggested the McCain campaign’s personal attacks on Obama have backfired. Even at that, some analysts question whether the large lead is enough to cancel out the so-called Bradley effect, a reference to when Whites voted opposite of how they told pollsters they would during Tom Bradley’s 1982 California governor’s bid.  But others say polling is much more sophisticated now, and with the economic issues at stake people are being more honest.

Obama has his biggest lead over McCain. Tonight will be the final presidential debate, and Sen. Barack Obama will walk on stage with the largest lead over his Republican rival Sen. John McCain since the two squared off, according to a new national poll by CBS/New York Times. Get more at Pamela on Politics.

Congressman says McCain sowed seeds of hate. Like segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace did in the 1960s, presidential candidate Sen. John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, are “sowing the seeds of hatred” in the way he is going about trying to discredit his rival, Sen. Barack Obama. The civil rights veteran leader and Democratic Georgia congressman said on Saturday that McCain’s increasingly negative campaign tactics were reminiscent of the segregationist era of Wallace, a divisive political figure in his day, who, Lewis said, “created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. … What I am seeing today reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.” Even as McCain, who is trailing Obama in the polls, was running ads calling his opponent a liar and questioning whether Obama can be trusted, McCain was quick to labeling Lewis’ remark as “shocking and beyond the pale.” He called for Obama to repudiate Lewis’ remarks. The Obama campaign also said that while Lewis was right to condemn “hateful rhetoric,” the Illinois senator did not believe McCain or his policy criticisms were comparable to Wallace or his segregationist policies as governor of Alabama in the 1960s. Meanwhile, both McCain and Palin, during campaign stops on Monday, seemed to change the tone and dial back their attacks against Obama, pointing up differences between the presidential rivals instead of launching more character attacks. 
U. of Wisconsin apologizes for “Blazing Saddles” clip. The University of Wisconsin-Madison has apologized to a Black student who during a class last year was shown a clip of the movie “Blazing Saddles” that features racial epithets, The Associated Press said. During a seminar for working professionals, an instructor showed a scene of the 1974 comedy in which Blacks are shown working on a railroad, according to a complaint filed by the student. Whites call the workers racial epithets and an overseer orders them to sing like slaves. The student complained and the school’s Office of Equity and Diversity, which investigates racial discrimination, got involved. Other students reportedly were offended by the clip and discussed their concerns verbally. The university would not release the name of the instructor or precisely why the clip was shown, other than to “help make points in the curriculum.” The workshop dealt with mental health assessment and diagnosis.  The student’s complaint said two of the 40 students in the class were African-American. “I did not attend the training to hear this type of derogatory, inflammatory, humiliating, painful and non-educating language,” the student wrote in the complaint. “This was a pointless and racist act on the part of your instructor.” The complaint prompted an apology in March from the Department of Professional Development and Applied Studies, which offered the course. “It was an insensitive error to use a video clip that included inflammatory and offensive language, and it will not happen again,” department official James Campbell wrote. “We strive to plan and offer quality programming that meets the needs of an array of professionals and are sorry we fell short of that goal in this instance.” Campbell said the student’s employer received a refund of the $230 cost of the training workshop, which the department decided not to offer again after “closely reviewing the evaluation comments.”
Former Atlanta cop is featured in Oprah’s “O” magazine. A former Atlanta police major who was fired last summer and got her job back last week is featured in the November issue of Oprah Winfrey’s “O” magazine. Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis, 48, of Douglasville was one of 80 women selected for a leadership training contest, “Women Rule!” The contest was for women involved in a project, such as a nonprofit organization or public policy initiative, who “wanted to take it to the next level,” according to the story. It drew 3,000 applicants. Davis’ project is listed as “Sisters-in-Law,” described as “a support network for women in law enforcement that also encourages girls to consider the profession by offering real-life role models,” the article states. The contest winners’ reward was three days of leadership training in New York in June.” Before the trip, Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington demoted Davis and then fired her a week later in connection with a botched sex crimes investigation involving the husband of an Atlanta police sergeant. “I wasn’t going to go,” Davis said in a phone interview Monday with The Atlanta Journal Consitution. “I said, ‘They’re talking about disciplining me.’ I was more sick about it than anything.”  Family and friends convinced her to take the New York trip, and she’s glad she did. The feedback and camaraderie at the conference was exactly what she needed, she said. “The people at O magazine were so receptive to women’s issues.” Davis appealed her firing to the city’s Civil Service Board, which last week reversed her firing. It’s unclear whether Davis will return to the department at the rank of major, which was her position before she was demoted shortly before her firing.

McCain retires inflammatory comments. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has toned down his rhetoric, even going so far as to tell supporters, Obama is “a decent man,”  and their is no reason to “fear” him. Get more at Pamela on Politics.

John McCain adviser fired for racist hip hop jabs.

The controversy over a Ludacris rap song in support of Barack Obama has circled back to haunt a John McCain supporter. McCain’s campaign released adviser Bobby May after he wrote a column in The Voice newspaper, attempting to poke fun at Obama’s Kenyan background and his support base among rappers. May quoted Luda’s controversial summer release, suggesting that Obama would hire the rapper to paint the White House black, if elected. He also joked that Obama would appoint 50 Cent treasury secretary and include daytime diva Oprah on the faces of currency. Luda’s lyrics were criticized this summer because of their tone against Obama’s opponents.

High Court denies famous inmate a new trial.

Mumia Abu-Jamal, the journalist and former Black Panther convicted in the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia Police officer, will not get a new trial, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday. In issuing their ruling, the justices were silent, leaving intact an earlier appeals court decision that upheld Abu-Jamal’s murder conviction but granted him a new sentencing hearing. Abu-Jamal’s plight has gained international attention. Many foreign dignitaries have called for the death-row inmate either to be released or granted a new trial. Prosecutors claim that Abu-Jamal ruthlessly gunned down Daniel Faulkner, a 25-year-old cop, after the officer pulled over the defendant’s brother late one night. For many years, Abu-Jamal has argued that a thoroughly racist judicial system undermined his chance for a fair trial.Obama is outpacing McCain in the polls. Democratic Sen. Barack Obama appears to be stretching his lead against his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, in the race for the White House. After shadowing each other over the past several weeks, Obama appears be gaining some traction, as his flimsy 2- to 3-point lead in national polls is now a full 6 to 7 points in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. On Monday, the poll showed Obama ahead 49-43. “Over the past couple of weeks, McCain has absorbed a very tough, one-two punch,” says Republican pollster Neil Newhouse, who conducted this survey with Democrat Peter D. Hart. “First, the financial crisis… Second, the debates. These two things have clearly led to a momentum shift in this campaign, where Obama has slowly started to [increase] his lead.” There is now less than one month before Election Day – a bad time to be trailing in the polls. “I think John McCain finds himself in a hole no candidate wants to be in,” Hart added.