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1. The polls - a blowout?
- Obama 320, McCain 163, Toss Up 55
Senate Dem 54, GOP 41, Toss Up 3, Other 2
House Dem 241, GOP 178, Toss Up 16
http://www.pollster.com/
2. KEATING ECONOMICS: John McCain & The Making of a Financial Crisis (video)
Watch the 30 second trailer at http://www.keatingeconomics.com/
See the full-length video at http://my.barackobama.com/page/invite/keatingvideo
3. The Hidden Cost of War (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OT5uw1Fb_0&eurl
4. Leaked: Homer Simpson To Vote For Obama (animation)
http://www.wjno.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=244038&article=4338967
5. Joe Biden’s morning after "Can't Explain" Ad (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdnbFlax3fI&eurl
6. McCain-Palin: Extreme and Dangerous (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WL_MvRu6SE
7. SCOTT BATEMAN (animations)
- "I'll get Osama bin Laden, my friends." http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/comedy/2008/10/08/bateman_debate2/
Debating Palin http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/comedy/2008/10/03/bateman_vpdebate/
8. SNL: VP Debate (video)
http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/vp-debate-open-palin-biden/727421/
9. From the DAILY GRILL
- "President Bush, facing demands for more troops in Afghanistan, said the war-ravaged country had made progress despite difficult fighting against determined killers." -- AP, 10/2/08
VERSUS
"Gen. David McKiernan, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan...[said] that he doesn't yet see progress in large swaths of Afghanistan."
-- U.S. News, 10/1/08
"I do not complain about the media." -- Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), 10/2/08
VERSUS
"I love to bash the media all the time." -- McCain, 10/2/08
“He’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” -- Sara Palin 8.05.09
VERSUS
There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now "palling around," or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are. -- CNN Political Ticker 8.05.09
"President Bush made wildlife conservation an early and a high priority of his administration." -- Vice President Dick Cheney, 10/3/08
VERSUS
"[The Bush administration has] granted 57 species endangered status, the action in each case being prompted by a lawsuit. That's fewer than in any other administration in history." -- Salon, 3/27/07
10. Late-Night Political Jokes for Dems
- "But this was what they call the town hall format, and that means that the candidates get to walk around on stage, and it was pretty successful, John McCain only wandered off twice." --David Letterman
"I like John McCain. He looks like the guy who thinks he's the neighborhood sheriff, you know? One of those guys. You better tie up those trash bags or we're gonna get racoons." --David Letterman
"Tonight's presidential debate took place in Nashville, Tennessee, which is perfect, 'cause the economy right now is kind of like a bad country song, isn't it? 'I lost my girl, I lost the house, the dog died, the trailer's gone.'" --Jay Leno
"In fact, John McCain says his wife's cookies are so soft, he can eat them without even putting his teeth in. Well, you see, with all of the excitement of the election, it's easy to forget about President President Bush, because next year, he'll be unemployed and he'll be at that awkward age -- too young to retire, yet too old to decimate another nation's economy." --Jay Leno
"You think President Bush even understands what's going on? Like, today, they asked about the credit crunch, he said it was his favorite candy bar. He has no idea." --Jay Leno
"In a recent speech, Sarah Palin referred to Afghanistan as 'our neighboring country.' Yeah, yeah. Then she promised to find Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Toronto." --Conan O'Brien
"By the way, did you hear this? This just in, a backwoods hiker has found the wreckage of John McCain's campaign." --David Letterman
"John McCain has pulled out of Michigan. I guess the surge wasn't working. Yup, this is stunning to me. John McCain blew off Michigan. Well, I know how they feel. Maybe you noticed that all of John McCain's problems began when he bailed out on this show? Were you aware of that? The road to the White House runs right through here." --David Letterman
"And now we got like 28 more days and the campaign is getting ugly. I love this. ... Barack Obama called McCain erratic. And in response to those charges, McCain responded by yelling, turn down that damn music!" --David Letterman
"Are you excited about Sarah Palin? Well, yesterday she referred to Afghanistan as our neighboring country. Apparently, she can see bin Laden's cave from her house." --David Letterman
"According to a new survey, only 25% of Americans think Sarah Palin is qualified to be president, which sounds bad, but only 10% think Bush is qualified. So, it's really not that bad." --Jay Leno
"During the vice presidential debate, Sarah Palin would wink a couple of times when she delivered a line. Did you see that? She'd kinda wink and try to use a little sex appeal. See, the other candidates could never get away with that. Like, if Barack Obama winked, that would seen as too condescending. If Joe Biden winked, it'd be too creepy. And if McCain started winking, everybody would think he was having a stroke." --Jay Leno
She kept saying that she represents Joe Sixpack. You know what, sweetheart? If you get elected, Joe is going to need a lot more than a six pack. He's going to be Joe Prescription Drug Pack." --Bill Maher
"But, of course, what she's really not having an effect on is the presidential race. Even though she did well in the debate last night, McCain is still sinking in the polls. He's getting desperate. His new campaign slogan is 'McCain: The White Obama.'" --Bill Maher
"They determined who got the first question by a coin toss, to which Sarah Palin said, 'Oh, what a coincidence, that's how I got picked.'" --Jay Leno
"Of course, the most controversial thing Sarah Palin said last night was she felt the vice president should have more power. More power? Dick Cheney is shooting people in the face and doesn't even get arrested. You cannot get any more powerful than that." --Jay Leno
"And everybody's been asking me, they said, 'Dave, did you see the debate last night?' And my answer, of course, is, 'Ohh, you betcha!'" --David Letterman
"And I don't know if you saw this, but Sarah Palin, the governor's family, was sitting in the front row, and halfway through the debate, her future son-in-law made a run for it." --David Letterman
"During the debate, Palin winked, wrinkled her nose, and gave a shout-out to a third-grade class. Well, you know, that says commander-in-chief to me right there. You betcha!" --David Letterman
"She kept reaching out to Joe Sixpack. That's because her answers make more sense after six beers." --David Letterman
"This is the first time an Alaskan has ever been on a national ticket, and it also might be the last, depending on how it goes. So across the state of Alaska, all eyes were on the debate. Pipeline workers set aside their wrenches, trappers dropped their beaver pelts, whalers put down their blubber knives, Eskimo families took a break from loading their grandparents onto ice floes. There has not been this much excitement in Alaska since the last time they saw the sun, quite frankly." --Jimmy Kimmel
"And do you know this bailout -- I'm sorry, the rescue -- the rescue bill has grown up to 450 pages. And President Bush's copy is even thicker, because they had to add pictures." --Jay Leno
"Actually, at the urging of my financial adviser, I'm diversifying where I put my money. Yeah, that's what I'm doing. The key is diversification. Well, I got some in the backyard, some in the crawl space, some in the mattress." --Jay Leno
"Did you see that interview with Katie Couric? Oh, man. Katie Couric asked Sarah Palin what newspapers she reads, and she could not name a single newspaper that she reads. Which wouldn't be so bad if she didn't have a degree in journalism." --Jay Leno
"According to a recent poll, 61% of people surveyed said they would rather see Sarah Palin in a bikini than Pamela Anderson. Although 99% said they would rather see Pamela Anderson as vice president." --Jay Leno
"John McCain is putting his Phoenix mansion up for sale. The house has 13 bedrooms, 10 fire places and a Carrows restaurant." --Jay Leno
"The economy is so bad that today, Dick Cheney was waterboarding his stockbroker." --David Letterman
"Have you been watching Sarah Palin's interviews with Katie Couric? Last night, Palin told Katie Couric right here on the 'CBS Evening News' that she can't name a Supreme Court ruling that she disagrees with. The best she could come up with was the time Judge Judy ruled against the landlord. But Sarah Palin did say she objected to several Paula Abdul rulings on 'American Idol.'" --David Letterman
"But say what you will. I got to give Sarah Palin a lot of credit. I thought she did pretty well in the debate. After all, she was in over her hair." --David Letterman
"Well, some people think Sarah Palin took a swipe at Joe Biden's age when she said that she had been listening to Biden's speeches since the second grade. Which is kind of ironic, because Biden has been listening to McCain's speeches since he was in the second grade." --Jay Leno
"See, you've got to admit, Sarah Palin does look great when they walk out, but that's causing a problem for McCain now. In fact, now they call the ticket 'Beauty and the Deceased.'" --Jay Leno
"Political activists are now saying, if Sarah Palin does not do well tomorrow in the debate, she will voluntarily step down from the ticket by Friday. So far, there have been over 2 million emails and phone calls, urging her to stay. All from Tina Fey." --Jay Leno
"Earlier this evening, there was a big Hollywood fund-raiser for John McCain. I don't want to say there weren't a lot of celebrities there, but it was billed of the night of one star. Yeah, I think that was it. I think it was Chuck Norris." --Jay Leno
"Have you been watching the Sarah Palin interview with Katie Couric on the 'CBS Evening News'? Pretty interesting. Sarah Palin could not remember the name of a newspaper or a magazine that she reads. And I was thinking, wow, we could possibly have a leader of the country who doesn't read. And then I thought, well, hell it's worked pretty good for George Bush." --David Letterman
"I don't know if Palin is ready. You know you're in trouble, debating like this, you know you're in trouble when your debate goal is to do as well as Dan Quayle did." --David Letterman
"But Sarah Palin right now is training for tomorrow night's vice presidential debate in Arizona. And she says it has really helped her on foreign policy, because from Arizona she can see Mexico." --David Letterman
"It's been reported that John McCain is taking an herbal supplement to improve his memory. Apparently, McCain is having trouble remembering why he picked Sarah Palin." --Conan O'Brien
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- 11. Brave New Films: Why the Rich Love McCain's Tax Plan (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwtayJCK5LY
12. Andy Borowitz: Palin Blasts Obama's Ties to Weather Channel
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- Alaska governor Sarah Palin went on the attack today, claiming that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama had longstanding ties to The Weather Channel.
"What does it say about our opponent that he thinks this nation's weather is so imperfect that he needs to be allied with The Weather Channel?" she asked a crowd in Tampa, Florida. "There's a fine line between hating America's weather and hating America herself."
Gov. Palin said that she learned about Sen. Obama's ties to The Weather Channel last week "when I was trying hard to read The New York Times."
"They said that Sen. Obama was hanging out with weathermen," she said. "Do we really want to elect someone who has been palling around with meteorologists?"
Gov. Palin's latest attacks came on the heels of a new poll showing that the only demographic group that still support her are morons, sometimes referred to by political insiders as "no-information voters."
"It may sound like she spouting idiocy, but there's a method to her madness," said Tracy Klugian, a Republican strategist. "She's speaking to her base."
Elsewhere, Sen. John McCain's practice session for the second presidential debate was cut short when his pants burst into flame. www.borowitzreport.com
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- 13. FactCheck.org: "Dishonorable"
A McCain-Palin ad calls Obama "dishonorable," while distorting his words and votes on troop funding.
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- • It accuses him of saying "our troops in Afghanistan" are just bombing villages and killing civilians. What Obama said, in context, was a criticism of U.S. military strategy, and not of American troops.
• It accuses Obama and "Congressional liberals" of voting repeatedly to cut off funding for troops, "increasing the risk on their lives." In fact, the votes were for bringing the troops home, cutting off funding only if the president failed to comply. 10.06.08 http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/dishonorable.html
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- 14. U.S. to Fund Pro-American Publicity in Iraqi Media
The Defense Department will pay private U.S. contractors in Iraq up to $300 million over the next three years to produce news stories, entertainment programs and public service advertisements for the Iraqi media in an effort to "engage and inspire" the local population to support U.S. objectives and the Iraqi government. Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus 10.03.08 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/02/AR2008100204223.html
15. Say It Ain't So, Sarah: Palin Smears Obama With Year-Old Discredited Attack
During an appearance on Fox News this Friday, Sarah Palin claimed that Barack Obama should be disqualified from serving as president because he had once proclaimed that troops in Afghanistan were "air raiding villages and killing civilians."
In reality what Obama said was: "Now you have narco drug lords who are helping to finance the Taliban,"so we've got to get the job done there [in Afghanistan], and that requires us to have enough troops that we are not just air raiding villages, and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there." 10.03.08 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/03/say-it-aint-so-sarah-pali_n_131841.html
16. 477 - Obama Web video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpIWbYs8sec&eurl
17. Dave Letterman - Palin Debate Recap (video)
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2008/10/dave_letterman_8.html
18. Bush in 2000, Palin in 2008 (video)
http://progressiveaccountability.org/2008/10/02/bush-in-2000-palin-in-2008/
19. Why is the NY Times continuing to ignore McCain's "own Bill Ayers"?
On October 4, The New York Times published a 2,140-word front-page article about Sen. Barack Obama's association with former Weather Underground member William Ayers -- at least the 18th Times article this year mentioning that association. But the Times has yet to mention, let alone devote an entire article to, Sen. John McCain's relationship with radio host and convicted Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy.
Liddy has acknowledged preparing to kill someone during the Ellsberg break-in "if necessary"; plotting to murder journalist Jack Anderson; plotting with a "gangland figure" to murder Howard Hunt to stop him from cooperating with investigators; plotting to firebomb the Brookings Institution; and plotting to kidnap "leftist guerillas" at the 1972 Republican National Convention.
Liddy has donated $5,000 to McCain's campaigns since 1998, including $1,000 in February 2008. In addition, McCain has appeared on Liddy's radio show during the presidential campaign, including as recently as May. http://mediamatters.org/items/200810040004?f=h_top
20. Dems could hit 60 Senate seats
The possibility that Democrats will build a muscular, 60-seat Senate majority is looking increasing plausible, with new polls showing a powerful surge for the party’s candidates in Minnesota, Kentucky and other states.
A poll out Friday shows Sen. Norm Coleman could now easily lose his Minnesota seat to comedian-turned-candidate Al Franken. A Colorado race that initially looked like a nail-biter has now broken decisively for the Democrats. A top official in the McCain camp told us Sen. Elizabeth Dole is virtually certain to lose in conservative North Carolina. JIM VANDEHEI & MIKE ALLEN 10/4/08 http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14280.html
21. NARAL Pro-Choice America: McCain fails straight talk on birth control and Viagra (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHrMs4XcwTA
22. “Finally, A McCain Statement I Can Agree With,” by Madeleine Begun Kane
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- McCain’s very wrong about war
And on health care and taxes and more.
But he’s right (though it’s rare)
With his “life isn’t fair,”
Cuz what else could explain Bush v. Gore?
http://www.madkane.com/madness/
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- 23. Reliable Sources: Kathleen Parker exposes the right wing attacks against her for speaking out against Sarah Palin (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMLVAU-wfbM&eurl
24. AFL-CIO ad. Straight Talk? (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qnxuqj99y8c&eurl
25. Sarah Palin: Palling Around With Secessionists (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eniG9l_7its&eurl
26. Keith Olbermann Special Comment: It's Palin doing the pallin' (video)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27054958/
27. Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America congressional scorecard for the 110th Congress
Senators:
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- Boxer A+
Feinstein A+
Obama B
McCain D (note: McCain was one of only 4 senators to receive a D)
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- http://www.veteranreportcard.org/reportcard.pdf
For more on McCain’s failure to support the troops and veterans click HERE
28. Jon Stewart: Common Man-Off (video)
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2008/10/common_man-off.html
29. Republican Economic Theories Don’t Add Up
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- Which president produced:
1. The highest growth in the gross domestic product?
2. The highest growth in jobs?
3. The biggest increase in personal disposable income after taxes?
4. The highest growth in industrial production?
5. The highest growth in hourly wages?
6. The lowest Misery Index (inflation plus unemployment)?
7. The lowest inflation?
8. The largest reduction in the deficit?
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- The answers: 1. Harry Truman, 2. Bill Clinton, 3. Lyndon Johnson, 4. John F. Kennedy, 5. Johnson, 6. Truman, 7. Truman, 8. Clinton. In the Economic Sweepstakes, Democratic presidents trounce Republicans eight times out of eight! http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081006_republican_economic_theories_dont_add_up/
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30. Brave New Pac: John McCain's Rage is a National Security Concern (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAyK-enrF1g
31. Global Electoral College
What if the whole world could vote? Find out at http://www.economist.com/vote2008/index.cfm
32. That FiveThirtyEight Guy On ‘The Colbert Report’
http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=187343
For Nate Silver’s electoral projections go to http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/
33. MARK FIORE: John McCain’s Fireside Chat (animation)
http://www.markfiore.com/john_mccains_fireside_chat_0
34. Obama responds to McCain's personal attack onslaught: 'Erratic in Crisis' (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y42RErUjfAc&eurl
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1. Jonathan Raban: Cut, Kill, Dig, Drill
Like Wally the Green Monster, Baxter the Bobcat, the Mariner Moose and other giant furry creatures who accompany major-league baseball teams from game to game, Palin is the adored mascot of the anti-fiscal crowd. Her actual performance as mayor and governor counts for little beside her capacity to keep the fans happy during the intervals between play, which she does in the style she developed as mayor of Wasilla and then perfected in her triumphant gubernatorial campaign in 2006. Transcripts and videos from her time in Alaska show her parlaying the barest minimum of rhetorical and intellectual resources into a formidable electoral weapon. The least one can say of her is that she quickly learned how to make the most of herself.
What is most striking about her is that she seems perfectly untroubled by either curiosity or the usual processes of thought. When answering questions, both Obama and Joe Biden have an unfortunate tendency to think on their feet and thereby tie themselves in knots: Palin never thinks. Instead, she relies on a limited stock of facts, bright generalities and pokerwork maxims, all as familiar and well-worn as old pennies. Given any question, she reaches into her bag for the readymade sentence that sounds most nearly proximate to an answer, and, rather than speaking it, recites it, in the upsy-downsy voice of a middle-schooler pronouncing the letters of a word in a spelling bee. She then fixes her lips in a terminal smile. In the televised game shows that pass for political debates in the US, it’s a winning technique: told that she has 15 seconds in which to answer, Palin invariably beats the clock, and her concision and fluency more than compensate for her unrelenting triteness. 10.09.08 http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n19/raba01_.html
2. Bob Herbert: Palin’s Alternate Universe
Sarah Palin is the perfect exclamation point to the Bush years.
We’ve lived through nearly two terms of an administration that believed it could create its own reality:
“Deficits don’t matter.” “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job.” “Those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere.”
Now comes Ms. Palin, a smiling, bubbly vice-presidential candidate who travels in an alternate language universe. For Ms. Palin, such things as context, syntax and the proximity of answers to questions have no meaning.
In her closing remarks at the vice-presidential debate Thursday night, Ms. Palin referred earnestly, if loosely, to a quote from Ronald Reagan. He had warned that if Americans weren’t vigilant in protecting their freedom, they would find themselves spending their “sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.”
What Ms. Palin didn’t say was that the menace to freedom that Reagan was talking about was Medicare. As the historian Robert Dallek has pointed out, Reagan “saw Medicare as the advance wave of socialism, which would ‘invade every area of freedom in this country.’ ”
Does Ms. Palin agree with that Looney Tunes notion? Or was this just another case of the aw-shucks, darn-right, I’m-just-a-hockey-mom governor of Alaska mouthing something completely devoid of meaning?
Maybe Senator McCain has reason to believe that it would not be the most colossal of errors to put Ms. Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency.
He's got just four weeks to share that insight with the rest of us. 10.03.08 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/opinion/04herbert.html
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3. Anne Lamott: What's missing from this election? Molly Ivins
It breaks a girl's heart to know that Molly Ivins does not get to have a go at the Republican slate this year. I can see that big, rosy, sunflower face watching this all with astonishment and roaring with laughter. Ivins -- the legendary buckaroo populist, journalist, freelance hell-raiser and freedom fighter -- would be pounding her fists on the arms of her easy chair, stomping her feet as if listening to live bluegrass.
She would have had such a ball with Sarah Palin -- the trooper scandal, her love of moose (between buns), the flamboyantly botched television interviews, the bravery of people who hunt wolves for sport, from the air. Even though Molly was a Texan -- who would have been on guard for the sneering tone of liberal criticism toward anyone with a gun or a double-wide -- she still would have obliterated Palin as a faux populist wingnut with a tanning bed instead of a heart. She would have made great hay with the capacity of certain politicians to reinvent themselves in entirely new realities, as newfound populist Brotherman McCain has done, and his desperate, icky laugh of contempt might have raised some worries for her. 10.03.08 http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/10/03/molly_ivins/print.html
4. Francis Fukuyama The Fall of America, Inc.
The implosion of America's most storied investment banks. The vanishing of more than a trillion dollars in stock-market wealth in a day. A $700 billion tab for U.S. taxpayers. The scale of the Wall Street crackup could scarcely be more gargantuan. Yet even as Americans ask why they're having to pay such mind-bending sums to prevent the economy from imploding, few are discussing a more intangible, yet potentially much greater cost to the United States—the damage that the financial meltdown is doing to America's "brand."
Between 2002 and 2007, while the world was enjoying an unprecedented period of growth, it was easy to ignore those European socialists and Latin American populists who denounced the U.S. economic model as "cowboy capitalism." But now the engine of that growth, the American economy, has gone off the rails and threatens to drag the rest of the world down with it. Worse, the culprit is the American model itself: under the mantra of less government, Washington failed to adequately regulate the financial sector and allowed it to do tremendous harm to the rest of the society.10.13.08 http://www.newsweek.com/id/162401
5. Clive Crook: Why it is all uphill for McCain
Time is running out for John McCain’s campaign. He is behind in the polls and the gap is widening. His campaign has decided to shut up shop in Michigan, a state it recently believed it could win. Tuesday’s televised debate with Barack Obama – just one more encounter is scheduled, on October 15 – has therefore assumed an even greater significance. Mr McCain must stop the rot. His disadvantages in the race are such that it is difficult now to see how.
Mr McCain finds himself in a curious position. He entered the race as an experienced and well-known candidate, much-liked, with years in the Senate behind him. He was running against a virtually unknown novice, with barely any legislative achievements to boast of – and a black man with a funny name, to boot. Mr McCain was the known quantity, the safer choice, literally the elder statesman and Mr Obama had everything to prove. Yet with four weeks to go, the election is being run by both sides as though the opposite were true.
Mr Obama looks unhurried and presidential, exuding natural authority. He is running as though he were the popular incumbent. Meanwhile, the eager Mr McCain dashes to and fro, hoping to shake things up, striving for attention with one daring stroke after another.
His boldest move, of course, was to select Sarah Palin as his running-mate. (Yawns had greeted the announcement that Joe Biden would be Mr Obama’s choice.) That wild ride now appears to be at an end – to little net effect. 10.05 2008 More at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a7af50a6-92e0-11dd-98b5-0000779fd18c.html
6. MATT TAIBBI: Mad Dog Palin
The Palin speech was a political masterpiece, one of the most ingenious pieces of electoral theater this country has ever seen. Never before has a single televised image turned a party's fortunes around faster.
Until the Alaska governor actually ascended to the podium that night, I was convinced that John McCain had made one of the all-time campaign-season blunders, that he had acted impulsively and out of utter desperation in choosing a cross-eyed political neophyte just two years removed from running a town smaller than the bleacher section at Fenway Park. It even crossed my mind that there was an element of weirdly self-destructive pique in McCain's decision to cave in to his party's right-wing base in this fashion, that perhaps he was responding to being ordered by party elders away from a tepid, ideologically promiscuous hack like Joe Lieberman — reportedly his real preference — by picking the most obviously unqualified, doomed-to-fail joke of a Bible-thumping buffoon. As in: You want me to rally the base? Fine, I'll rally the base. Here, I'll choose this rifle-toting, serially pregnant moose killer who thinks God lobbies for oil pipelines. Happy now?
But watching Palin's speech, I had no doubt that I was witnessing a historic, iconic performance. The candidate sauntered to the lectern with the assurance of a sleepwalker — and immediately launched into a symphony of snorting and sneering remarks, taking time out in between the superior invective to present herself as just a humble gal with a beefcake husband and a brood of healthy, combat-ready spawn who just happened to be the innocent targets of a communist and probably also homosexual media conspiracy. She appeared to be completely without shame and utterly full of shit, awing a room full of hardened reporters with her sickly-sweet line about the high-school-flame-turned-hubby who, "five children later," is "still my guy." It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag. 10.02.08 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/23318320/mad_dog_palin/2
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7. Joe Klein: Embarracuda
I'm of two minds about how to deal with the McCain campaign's further descent into ugliness. Their strategy is simple: you throw crap against a wall and then giggle as the media try to analyze the putresence in a way that conveys a sense of balance: "Well, it is bull-pucky, but the splatter pattern is interesting..." which, of course, only serves to get your perverse message out. I really don't want to be a part of that. But...every so often, we journalists have a duty to remind readers just how dingy the McCain campaign, and its right-wing acolytes in the media (I'm looking at you, Sean Hannity) have become--especially in their efforts to divert public attention from the economic crisis we're facing. And so inept at it: other campaigns have decided that their only shot is going negative, but usually they don't announce it, as several McCain aides have in recent days--there's no way we can win on the economy, so we're going to go sludge-diving.
But since we are dealing with manure here, I'll put the rest of this post below the fold.
It is appropriate that the prime vessel for this assault is Sarah Palin, whose very presence on a national ticket is an insult to your intelligence. She now has "credibility," we are told, because she managed to read talking points off notecards in the debate last week with unwitting enthusiasm. 10.06.08 http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/10/embarracuda.html
8. The Choice
We cannot expect one man to heal every wound, to solve every major crisis of policy. So much of the Presidency, as they say, is a matter of waking up in the morning and trying to drink from a fire hydrant. In the quiet of the Oval Office, the noise of immediate demands can be deafening. And yet Obama has precisely the temperament to shut out the noise when necessary and concentrate on the essential. The election of Obama—a man of mixed ethnicity, at once comfortable in the world and utterly representative of twenty-first-century America—would, at a stroke, reverse our country’s image abroad and refresh its spirit at home.
His ascendance to the Presidency would be a symbolic culmination of the civil- and voting-rights acts of the nineteen-sixties and the century-long struggles for equality that preceded them. It could not help but say something encouraging, even exhilarating, about the country, about its dedication to tolerance and inclusiveness, about its fidelity, after all, to the values it proclaims in its textbooks.
At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader’s name is Barack Obama. 10.13.08 http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/10/13/081013taco_talk_editors
9. Garrison Keillor: Where were the cops?
John McCain is a lifelong deregulator and believer in letting brokers and bankers do as they please -- remember Lincoln Savings and Loan and his intervention with federal regulators in behalf of his friend Charles Keating, who then went to prison? Remember Neil Bush, the brother of the C.O., who, as a director of Silverado S&L, bestowed enormous loans on his friends without telling fellow directors that the friends were friends and who, when the loans failed, paid a small fine and went skipping off to other things?
McCain now decries greed on Wall Street and suggests a commission be formed to look into the problem. This is like Casanova coming out for chastity.
Confident men took leave of common sense and bet on the idea of perpetual profit in the real estate market and crashed. But it wasn't their money. It was your money they were messing with. And that's why we need government regulators. Gimlet-eyed men with steel-rim glasses and crepe-soled shoes who check the numbers and have the power to say, "This is a scam and a hustle and either you cease and desist or you spend a few years in a minimum-security federal facility playing backgammon."
The Republican Party used to specialize in gimlet-eyed, steel-rim, crepe-soled common sense and then it was taken over by crooked preachers who demand Americans trust them because they're packing a Bible and God sent them on a mission to enact lower taxes, less government. Except when things crash, and then government has to pick up the pieces.
Some say the tab might come to a trillion dollars. Nobody knows. And McCain has not one moment of doubt or regret. He switches from First Deregulation Church to Our Lady of Strict Vigilance like you might go from decaf to latte. Where is the straight talk? Does the man have no conscience?
It wasn't their money they were playing with. It was yours. Where were the cops?
What we are seeing is the stuff of a novel, the public corruption of an American war hero. It is painful. 10.06.08 http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/25/opinion/edkeillor.php
10. Michelle Goldberg: Flirting her way to victory
At least three times last night, Sarah Palin, the adorable, preposterous vice-presidential candidate, winked at the audience. Had a male candidate with a similar reputation for attractive vapidity made such a brazen attempt to flirt his way into the good graces of the voting public, it would have universally noted, discussed and mocked. Palin, however, has single-handedly so lowered the standards both for female candidates and American political discourse that, with her newfound ability to speak in more-or-less full sentences, she is now deemed to have performed acceptably last night.
By any normal standard, including the ones applied to male presidential candidates of either party, she did not. Early on, she made the astonishing announcement that she had no intentions of actually answering the queries put to her. "I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also," she said.
And so she preceded, with an almost surreal disregard for the subjects she was supposed to be discussing, to unleash fusillades of scripted attack lines, platitudes, lies, gibberish and grating references to her own pseudo-folksy authenticity.
It was an appalling display. The only reason it was not widely described as such is that too many American pundits don't even try to judge the truth, wisdom or reasonableness of the political rhetoric they are paid to pronounce upon. Instead, they imagine themselves as interpreters of a mythical mass of "average Americans" who they both venerate and despise.
None of Palin's children, it should be noted, is heading off to college. Her son is on the way to Iraq, and her pregnant 17-year-old daughter is engaged to be married to a high-school dropout and self-described "fuckin' redneck". Palin is a woman who can't even tell the truth about the most quotidian and public details of her own life, never mind about matters of major public import. In her only vice-presidential debate, she was shallow, mendacious and phoney. What kind of maverick, after all, keeps harping on what a maverick she is? That her performance was considered anything but a farce doesn't show how high Palin has risen, but how low we all have sunk. 10.03 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/03/sarah.palin.debate.feminism
11. Garrison Keillor: Palin's future
It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman for national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could skate through two months of chaperoned campaigning, but the truth emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about. The American people have an ear for B.S. They can tell when someone's mouth is moving and the clutch is not engaged. When she said, "One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just every day, American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars," people smelled gas.
Some Republicans adore her because they are pranksters at heart and love the consternation of grown-ups. The ne'er-do-well son of the old Republican family as president, the idea that you increase government revenue by cutting taxes, the idea that you cut social services and thereby drive the needy into the middle class, the idea that you overthrow a dictator with a show of force and achieve democracy at no cost to yourself -- one stink bomb after another, and now Governor Palin.
She is a chatty sportscaster who lacks the guile to conceal her vacuity, and she was Mr. McCain's first major decision as nominee. This troubles independent voters, and now she is a major drag on his candidacy. She will get a nice book deal from Regnery and a new career making personal appearances for forty grand a pop, and she'll become a trivia question, "What politician claimed foreign-policy expertise based on being able to see Russia from her house?" And the rest of us will have to pull ourselves out of the swamp of Republican economics. 10.07.08 http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/382133_keilloronline08.html
12. David Talbot: The Palins' un-American activities
"My government is my worst enemy. I'm going to fight them with any means at hand."
This was former revolutionary terrorist Bill Ayers back in his old Weather Underground days, right? Imagine what Sarah Palin is going to do with this incendiary quote as she tears into Barack Obama this week.
Only one problem. The quote is from Joe Vogler, the raging anti-American who founded the Alaska Independence Party. Inconveniently for Palin, that's the very same secessionist party that her husband, Todd, belonged to for seven years and that she sent a shout-out to as Alaska governor earlier this year. ("Keep up the good work," Palin told AIP members. "And God bless you.")
AIP chairwoman Lynette Clark told me recently that Sarah Palin is her kind of gal. "She's Alaskan to the bone ... she sounds just like Joe Vogler."
So who are these America-haters that the Palins are pallin' around with?
Before his strange murder in 1993, party founder Vogler preached armed insurrection against the United States of America. Vogler, who always carried a Magnum with him, was fond of saying, "When the [federal] bureaucrats come after me, I suggest they wear red coats. They make better targets. 10.07.08 http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/10/07/palins_unamerican/index.html
13. Dana Milbank: Unleashed, Palin Makes a Pit Bull Look Tame
John McCain is collapsing in the polls in Florida and other swing states, but Sarah Palin, God bless her, has a solution.
"For me, the heels are on, the gloves are off," she announced at high noon Monday to a group of Republican donors at the Naples Beach Club.
You betcha.
As the donors sipped their bloody marys and mimosas, she added, in a conspiratorial stage whisper, "I'm sending the message back to John McCain also: Tomorrow night in his debate, might as well take the gloves off."
Darn right.
Of course, it's not only gloves and heels; headgear has a role, too. "Okay, so, Florida, you know that you're going to have to hang on to your hats," she said at a morning rally in Clearwater, "because from now until Election Day, it may get kind of rough."
Say it ain't so, Sarah!
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a McCain confidant, told The Post's David Broder that the campaign would "go down in history as stupid if they don't unleash" Palin. Well, the self-identified pit bull has been unleashed -- if not unhinged. 10.07.08 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/06/AR2008100602935.html
14. Politics of Attack
It is a sorry fact of American political life that campaigns get ugly, often in their final weeks. But Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin have been running one of the most appalling campaigns we can remember.
They have gone far beyond the usual fare of quotes taken out of context and distortions of an opponent’s record — into the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia. Senator Barack Obama has taken some cheap shots at Mr. McCain, but there is no comparison.
Despite the occasional slip (referring to Mr. Obama’s “cronies” and calling him “that one”), Mr. McCain tried to take a higher road in Tuesday night’s presidential debate. It was hard to keep track of the number of times he referred to his audience as “my friends.” But apart from promising to buy up troubled mortgages as president, he offered no real answers for how he plans to solve the country’s deep economic crisis. He is unable or unwilling to admit that the Republican assault on regulation was to blame.
Ninety minutes of forced cordiality did not erase the dismal ugliness of his campaign in recent weeks, nor did it leave us with much hope that he would not just return to the same dismal ugliness on Wednesday.
Ms. Palin, in particular, revels in the attack. Her campaign rallies have become spectacles of anger and insult. “This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America,” Ms. Palin has taken to saying.
That line follows passages in Ms. Palin’s new stump speech in which she twists Mr. Obama’s ill-advised but fleeting and long-past association with William Ayers, founder of the Weather Underground and confessed bomber. By the time she’s done, she implies that Mr. Obama is right now a close friend of Mr. Ayers — and sympathetic to the violent overthrow of the government. The Democrat, she says, “sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”
Her demagoguery has elicited some frightening, intolerable responses. A recent Washington Post report said at a rally in Florida this week a man yelled “kill him!” as Ms. Palin delivered that line and others shouted epithets at an African-American member of a TV crew.
Mr. McCain’s aides haven’t even tried to hide their cynical tactics, saying they were “going negative” in hopes of shifting attention away from the financial crisis — and by implication Mr. McCain’s stumbling response. 10.08.08 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/opinion/08wed1.html
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15. Maureen Dowd: Mud Pies for ‘That One’
Some of John McCain’s friends, from the good old days when he talked straight, feared that his Greek tragedy would be that he would be defeated by George Bush twice: once in 2000, because of W.’s no-conscience campaigning, and again in 2008, because of W.’s no-brains governing.
But if McCain loses, he will have contributed to his own downfall by failing to live up to his personal standard of honor.
John McCain has long been torn between wanting to succeed and serving a higher cause. Right now, the drive to succeed is trumping any loftier aspirations. He cynically picked a running mate with less care than theater directors give to picking a leading actor’s understudy. And he has been running a seamy campaign originally designed by the bad seed of conservative politics, Lee Atwater. 10/08/08 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/opinion/08dowd.html
16. Sara Robinson: Postcard from Wasilla
Present-day Wasilla is Palin’s lasting monument. It sits in a broad alluvial valley, puddled with lakes, boxed in on three sides by sawtoothed Jurassic mountains, and fringed with woods of spruce and birch. Visitors usually aim their cameras at the town’s natural surroundings, for Wasilla itself – quite unlike its rival and contemporary in the valley, Palmer, 11 miles to the east – is a centerless, sprawling ribbon of deregulated development along a four-lane highway, backed on both sides by subdivisions occupied by trailer-homes, cabins, tract-housing and ranch-style bungalows, most built since 1990. It’s a generic Western settlement, and one sees Wasillas in every state this side of the 100th meridian: the same competing gas stations, fast-food outlets, strip malls and ‘big box’ stores like Wal-Mart, Target, Fred Meyer and Home Depot, each with a vast parking lot out front, on which human figures scuttle with their shopping trolleys like colored ants, robbed of their proper scale....
Wasilla is what inevitably happens when there are no codes, no civic oversight, no planning, when the only governing principle in a community is a naive and superstitious trust in the benevolent authority of the free market. 10.04.08 http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2008104004/postcard-wasilla
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