Joe the Plumber -- might be a McCain plant

He's not listed in the Toledo phone book... read the article about this at: http://steveyoungonpolitics.com/say-it-isnt-so-joe-wurzelbacher-not-a-real-plumber/
He's being interviewed by CNN and MSNBC and says he won't tell who he's voting for -- but he's discussing all Republican talking points with reporters who, right now, are infatuated with him. I'll bet Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are investigating him as we speak, and, if Joe truly is a McCain plant, they will have more to tell on tonight's shows....

It was interesting how McCain was the one who brought up Joe the Plumber -- even tho' the man had talked to Obama at one of his rallies. Why would a Joe the Plumber, conservative Republican that he claims to be, even go to an Obama rally? I could easily believe he was a plant, put there by the Rovian/Machiavellian Machine, all with the idea of having McCain bring him up on the debate in order to embarrass Obama and score points for McCain. Wouldn't it be great if this ploy were to be revealed for all to see as just another dirty Republican trick? One of the readers commenting is a CPA who makes mention that Obama's plan is talking about a NET income of $250,000, not a gross income. I wish Obama had explained that. Stay tuned....

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McCain's Performance in the Debate

OFF THE MEDS
by Nora Ephron

So is this the real John McCain?

No question the man who turned up last night did a better job than he'd done at the previous two debates. But here's the problem for McCain: he's either last week's guy, who seems to be on medication, or he's this week's guy, who seems to have been abruptly taken off it.

He gave the game away in his first answer when, in talking about the economy, he said that Americans were angry. But Americans aren't angry, they're poleaxed. They're terrified. They're afraid they're going to lose their jobs or their homes or their pensions. They're worried they won't be able to send their kids to college. If John McCain thinks they're angry, it's either because he's projecting, or else he's simply been going to too many of his own rallies.

As he smirked and blinked and raised his eyebrows, I couldn't help wondering what tonight's McCain seemed like to all those conservative pundits who'd been hoping a different McCain would show up. Is this what they meant? Is this the John McCain of Bill Kristol's dreams?

Whichever McCain shows up, some things stay the same. He's a towel-snapper. He can't land a joke. He seems old. (As Martin Short said on Letterman just after the debate, "The only time he doesn't have to pee is when he's peeing.") And he's an absolutely terrible actor. Every time McCain went into his Joe-the-plumber-bit, those undecided voters on CNN were unmoved. They were probably not saying barf, like some of us were, but that's only because they're not allowed to talk amongst themselves during the debate.

At the Time Politics conference this week, New York Times columnist Frank Rich asked, "Was there any way that the Sarah Palin choice might have played out differently?" CBS' Jeff Greenfield gave a wonderful answer. He said the question reminded him of a woman friend who'd said of her divorce, "We would have had a wonderful marriage if he had been a completely different person." Isn't that great? It's practically a Zen koan, not that I know what a Zen koan is. But one of the most remarkable things about Barack Obama is that he's the same person every time he shows up. And as for John McCain, a completely different person showed up tonight, and it didn't seem to matter.

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Is John McCain The Penguin from Batman?

Don't Miss This One! Pass it along to your friends!
From The Young Turks with Cenk Uygur:

Is John McCain The Penguin from Batman? Watch this video and laugh (and cry) at how life imitates art.
Look at how prescient the creators of the television series "Batman" were many years ago in predicting our future debates.
Tell me this isn't exactly John McCain's tactics, right down to the "my friends" reference at 1:09 in the video.
You've got to believe McCain watched this Batman episode and stole the lines from the Penguin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjYniYChX3k

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The GOP Is A Mess And A Fraud

I couldn't find anything to dispute in this article -- it is all TRUE.
EXCERPT: When Ronald Reagan was president, I had a sense of what ideas and principles his party stood for. When Newt Gingrich and his "Contract with America" brigade took Washington by storm in 1994, I knew what they believed -- loopy though it was -- and what they hoped to accomplish. I defy anyone to give a coherent explanation of what today's Republican Party, under George Bush and now John McCain, wants to do except perpetuate itself in power.

The GOP Is A Mess And A Fraud
By Eugene Robinson

WASHINGTON -- Since George W. Bush became president, the Republican Party has presided over massive, out-of-control government spending, converted a federal budget surplus into a half-trillion-dollar deficit, and looked the other way while Wall Street's greed and stupidity turned the hallowed free market into scorched earth. Now the party has to watch as a Republican president orchestrates the biggest government intervention into the workings of the private sector since the New Deal.

Can any Republican candidate claim with a straight face to represent the party of small government? For that matter, can any Republican candidate plausibly explain what the party is supposed to stand for these days?

It's pathetic to hear right-wing talk radio blowhards try to associate Barack Obama with "radical" or "socialist" views when a Republican administration is tossing aside "Atlas Shrugged" and speed-reading "Das Kapital."

The Federal Reserve even announced Monday that it will make unlimited quantities of dollars available for currency swaps with the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank, as these institutions scramble to keep major commercial banks from failing -- and potentially taking U.S. banks with them. None of Bush's Cabinet members could be heard sniffing about the effete irrelevance of "Old Europe."

This attitude adjustment is necessary, mind you. The question isn't whether some kind of drastic, frankly socialistic measures are needed to save the American economy, but which ones -- buying up toxic mortgage-based investments (as the White House said it would do), buying up the troubled mortgages themselves (as John McCain wants to do), or pouring money into selected banks and taking part ownership (as the White House now says it will do). Sitting back and letting the dire situation correct itself is not an option, because the market's phoenix-like solution begins with self-immolation.

Politically, though, there is at least some justice in the fact that a Republican president has to deal with this Republican-made crisis. That little piece of irony isn't worth $700 billion, but so far it's all we're getting.

After eight years of the Bush administration, the Republican Party -- to put it bluntly -- is a mess and a fraud.

There is an intellectual case to be made for the economic philosophy that the party purports to represent. I disagree with it strongly, but I respect its integrity -- in a way that this administration and the Republican leadership in Congress clearly did not.

The Republican Party said it believed in free and unfettered competition, but it picked winners and losers through a system of crony capitalism. All it takes to make my point is a name: Jack Abramoff.

The Bush tax cuts, which heavily favored the wealthy, showed that the president and his allies in Congress didn't believe in progressive taxation. I think that's outrageous, but the administration goes further and actually seems to prefer a regressive tax scheme. That's the only explanation I can think of for why hedge fund managers making hundreds of millions of dollars a year pay taxes at a lower rate than their chauffeurs.

Now that it's election time, the party -- as usual -- is trying to convince Americans that it stands on the side of the little guy. Sarah Palin has been trotted out to convince everyone that the party cares deeply about the eternal roster of cultural issues -- God, guns, gays, abortion, etc. If McCain and Palin were elected, the party would doubtless return these issues to the storage locker until the next election, at which point they would be dusted off once more.

Oh, and isn't the Republican Party supposed to stand foursquare against intrusions on privacy? Then why were Republicans so unmoved when it was revealed that the Bush administration had been conducting unprecedented surveillance of Americans' private electronic communications?

When Ronald Reagan was president, I had a sense of what ideas and principles his party stood for. When Newt Gingrich and his "Contract with America" brigade took Washington by storm in 1994, I knew what they believed -- loopy though it was -- and what they hoped to accomplish. I defy anyone to give a coherent explanation of what today's Republican Party, under George Bush and now John McCain, wants to do except perpetuate itself in power.

When a political party reaches the point of lurching incoherence, the most effective cure is a good, long spell in the wilderness. Americans should help Republicans out by sending them home to get their act together.

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The man who started the lies about Obama

Here is an interesting article for those who are curious about how rumors and lies against Obama were started, made their way around the Internet, and were accepted without question by those who were already determined not to vote for him. The woman who told McCain at a rally the other day that "Obama is an Arab" was at the end of the "disinformation line" started by Andy Martin, who was recently interviewed on FOX by Obama hater Sean Hannity. You can read about Andy Martin here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/us/politics/13martin.html?em

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EVERYBODY KNOWS: Song by Leonard Cohen

Many of the words of this song are particularly appropriate in our world right now....

Leonard Norman Cohen (born September 21, 1934 in Westmount, Quebec) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963.

Cohen's earliest songs (many of which appeared on the 1967 album Songs of Leonard Cohen) were rooted in European folk music melodies^{[citation needed]} and instrumentation. In the 1970s his music encompassed pop, cabaret and world music. Since the 1980s his high baritone voice has evolved into lower registers (bass baritone and bass), with accompaniment from electronic synthesizers and female back up singers.

His work often deals with the exploration of religion, isolation, sexuality, and complex interpersonal relationships.

Cohen's songs and poetry have influenced many other singer-songwriters, and more than a thousand renditions of his work have been recorded. He has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame and is also a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour. Cohen was inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with a speech by Lou Reed on March 10, 2008 for his status among the "highest and most influential echelon of songwriters".

EVERYBODY KNOWS (You can see this song performed in its entirety at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh9AC0jCGjY

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows
...

And everybody knows that it's now or never
Everybody knows that its me or you
...
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old black joe's still pickin' cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows

And everybody knows that the plague is coming
Everybody knows that it's moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows

...
Everybody knows it's coming apart
Take one last look at this sacred heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows

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Amazing regeneration of tissue

In 4 weeks, this man regrew 1/2 inch of his finger that had been severed!

NaturalNews) An Ohio man completely regenerated a severed finger in only four weeks by applying a powder developed by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh. Sixty-nine-year-old Lee Spievak lost a half inch of his finger, down to the bone, to the propeller of a model airplane. "I put my finger in, and that's when I sliced my finger off," Spievak said, "We don't know where the piece went." Doctors told Spievak that the loss was permanent. But then his brother, a researcher in regenerative medicine, sent him a powder and told him to apply it to the tip of his wound. "The second time I put it on I already could see growth," Spievak said. "Each day it was up further. Finally it closed up and was a finger. It took about four weeks before it was sealed." The finger appears to have grown back completely, including the nerves, nail and even fingerprint. Spievak says that he has "complete feeling [and] movement." The dust Spievak used was developed by Stephen Badylak and colleagues, who produce it by scraping cells out of the lining of a pig's bladder, then immersing the rest of the bladder tissue in acid. The last remnants of cells are then cleaned out, and the processed bladder is dried into a powder. According to Badylak, this powder signals cells to regrow tissue, rather than scarring as they normally would. "There are all sorts of signals in the body," Badylak said. "We have got signals that are good for forming scar, and others that are good for regenerating tissues. One way to think about these matrices is that we have taken out many of the stimuli for scar tissue formation and left those signals that were always there anyway for constructive remodeling." Researchers, including some from the U.S. military, hope that the treatment can eventually proceed to the point of treating major burns or regrowing entire limbs. New clinical human trials on the technique are set to begin soon. Sources for this story include: news.bbc.co.uk.

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The Joy Video

Inspiring quotes and beautiful visuals and music. We can sure use them about now! Enjoy!

http://thejoymovie.com/

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The Real John McCain -- Rolling Stone Magazine

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain

BEGINNING EXCERPT:  At Fort McNair, an army base located along the Potomac River in the nation's capital, a chance reunion takes place one day between two former POWs. It's the spring of 1974, and Navy commander John Sidney McCain III has returned home from the experience in Hanoi that, according to legend, transformed him from a callow and reckless youth into a serious man of patriotism and purpose. Walking along the grounds at Fort McNair, McCain runs into John Dramesi, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who was also imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam.

McCain is studying at the National War College, a prestigious graduate program he had to pull strings with the Secretary of the Navy to get into. Dramesi is enrolled, on his own merit, at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in the building next door.

There's a distance between the two men that belies their shared experience in North Vietnam — call it an honor gap. Like many American POWs, McCain broke down under torture and offered a "confession" to his North Vietnamese captors. Dramesi, in contrast, attempted two daring escapes. For the second he was brutalized for a month with daily torture sessions that nearly killed him. His partner in the escape, Lt. Col. Ed Atterberry, didn't survive the mistreatment. But Dramesi never said a disloyal word, and for his heroism was awarded two Air Force Crosses, one of the service's highest distinctions. McCain would later hail him as "one of the toughest guys I've ever met."

On the grounds between the two brick colleges, the chitchat between the scion of four-star admirals and the son of a prizefighter turns to their academic travels; both colleges sponsor a trip abroad for young officers to network with military and political leaders in a distant corner of the globe.

"I'm going to the Middle East," Dramesi says. "Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran."

"Why are you going to the Middle East?" McCain asks, dismissively.

"It's a place we're probably going to have some problems," Dramesi says.

"Why? Where are you going to, John?"

"Oh, I'm going to Rio."

"What the hell are you going to Rio for?"

McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.

"I got a better chance of getting laid."

Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. "McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man," Dramesi says today. "But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in."

McCAIN FIRST

This is the story of the real John McCain, the one who has been hiding in plain sight. It is the story of a man who has consistently put his own advancement above all else, a man willing to say and do anything to achieve his ultimate ambition: to become commander in chief, ascending to the one position that would finally enable him to outrank his four-star father and grandfather.

In its broad strokes, McCain's life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers' powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives' evangelical churches.

In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.

To see rest of article, go to:  http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain

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Frank Rich column -- an important one to read!

NY Times columnist Frank Rich tells the ugly truth of what has happened in the McCain campaign and how their rhetoric against Obama has gotten out of hand. You can read it at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/opinion/12rich.html?_r=2&ei=5070&emc=eta1&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

McCain is in deep trouble and he knows it. If anyone assassinates or attempts to harm Obama in any way, all fingers will RIGHTFULLY be pointed at McCain and Palin. He is trying now to undo that huge mistake of inciting violence against Obama--but it appears the bigots and other ignorant right wingers are out of hand and won't be controlled. They actually believe Obama is a Muslim and a terrorist and think a good solution would be to kill him. From some of the "literature" that has been sent to me by right wing friends and relatives, I have to wonder how many racists are among them, which saddens me greatly. Today I received in my e-mail from a cousin an essay by Monica Crowley, a right-wing columnist/pundit, in which she actually incites the Republican base more by saying:

There’s a fine line between “maverick” and “ass.” On Friday, John McCain crossed that line right into ass-dom. .
At a campaign rally, McCain stood in front of his own supporters and told them Barack Obama isn’t so bad. We need not fear an Obama presidency, he said. After all, Obama is a “decent” man. McCain went on to say he still believes he’d be the better president.

Thanks, Mac. How about a cocktail with that grenade you just blew up in our faces?

McCain understandably–and justifiably–got booed by those at his rally. They were there to support him. To cheer him on. To buoy him at a time of sinking poll numbers. To give him the energy to fight on.

What they got in return was a suggestion from their guy that it was OK to vote for the other guy.

Well, Senator McCain: you may not be angry, but we are. You may not be upset that Obama is about to walk away with this election, but we are. You may not be concerned that ACORN is making off with stuffed ballot boxes, but we are. You may not be teed off about the economic mess, but we are. You may not be upset about America’s enemies–from Russia to Iran to North Korea–reasserting themselves, but we are. You may think an Obama presidency won’t be “scary,” but we do.

You may be willing to toss in the towel, but we aren’t.

Senator: you’ve got 3 weeks to turn this sucker around. Three weeks to remind us how “scary” an Obama presidency will be: from appeasing our enemies to filling 3 Supreme Court vacancies to taxing us to death and killing whatever’s left of the economy.

Maybe that doesn’t scare you, but it scares us to pieces.

We are fighting for you. We expect you to do the bare minimum in your own fight. And right now, you’re not even doing that.

Many of the McCain voters seem not to recognize the alarm in their candidate's eyes as he tries to distance himself from the nut cases among his supporters who ask him questions filled with ignorance/hatred against Obama. He and Palin have set loose a very ugly element in our society who think they are being encouraged by their candidates to do violence to the opposition candidates. This is a VERY SERIOUS ERROR on the McCain/Palin part. When your base is composed of people who have been brought up on fear and hatred, and have been controlled by Bush/Cheney propaganda for the last eight years, and you fire up that fear and hatred with your rhetoric, you are responsible for what those ignorant people may do. McCain has belatedly come to realize that -- Monica Crowley and the Republican base have not.

McCain's "base" is a boiling volcano getting ready to erupt. I doubt that he will be able to contain the racists among that base who will apparently do ANYthing to prevent an African-American (in their eyes, an "Arab terrorist"--God help them for their ignorance) from being voted in as President. They were perfectly willing to vote in an idiot who has torn our country to pieces in the eight years he has reigned. And they will be perfectly happy to vote into office an angry, temperamental man who graduated at the bottom of his naval academy class and made many pilot errors that resulted in the loss of his planes, and who cheated on his wife when she became crippled and married a young heiress whom he now abuses, actually calling her a "c--t" in front of witnesses. And they are perfectly happy to vote in another total idiot from Alaska who thinks she has foreign policy experience because she can see Russia from her home through her binoculars and can't relate the names of any papers or magazines she reads.

BUT THEY WILL NOT VOTE for a man who graduated at the top of his Harvard law class, who was the president of the Harvard Law Review, who is obviously a good family man in love with and faithful to his wife, who demonstrates his intelligence every time he gives a speech or answers a question, and who has used his life to help others to lift themselves from poverty. They will not vote for him because he is half black. And that is the very sad truth of it. We are a nation divided between those who are fearful of anything different and can be ruled by fear propaganda -- and those who are tired of hearing fear tactics from our leaders and want intelligence and tolerance to be criteria for electing suitable people to high office. Like it or not, we are a polarized nation. The Crowley article that labels McCain as throwing a grenade at the base is proof that Republicans and Democrats see through far different lenses. I see McCain trying to rein in the stupidity that prevails in his base. He will not be able to do so, and I fear for what will erupt because of the dangerous firestorm of vitriolic hatred he and Palin have set in motion by their inciting, lying rhetoric against Obama.

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John McCain's Rage is a National Security Concern

Watch this short video of clips and statements from those who know him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAyK-enrF1g

Then decide for yourself if this is a man you want in the White House with his finger on the nuclear buttons.

If you find the video to be of interest, please pass it on to your friends.

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Firing Up the Crazies

Conservative Republican columnist Kathleen Parker is sending out an important warning to the McCain campaign, but they are not heeding it. Already there have been calls of "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" from the crowd when Palin incites the right wing with mud-slinging charges against Obama, without thought or concern as to the kinds of mentality that are listening and ready to obey any"command" they think they are hearing from her. If, God forbid, a low-level nutcase believes Sarah and John McCain want Obama to die and decides to carry out that action to please them, or because they've convinced him that Obama is a terrorist, the blood will be on McCain and Palin's hands. In a country that has seen far too much of this kind of horrific violence against its political figures, you would think they would want to keep their words measured to prevent history from repeating itself. But no -- in desperation at their sinking poll numbers, they are willing to pull out all the stops and appeal to the lowest levels and basest elements of human nature. Unfortunately, there seems to be a great deal of that basest element in the crowds that gather to hear Sarah shout out her invectives at Obama.

In April of this year and at several other times, John McCain repeatedly talked about how he loathed dirty politics. He vowed he would not use those tactics in this race, since they had been used against him in previous races (by Bush) and he wanted to run "a respectful campaign." Hmmm.....it looks like either John McCain is no longer running his own campaign -- or he has had a blood transfusion from Karl Rove and the long-dead Lee Atwater (who repented on his death bed all the dirty tricks he pulled without conscience during his political years with George H.W.Bush). Will we have to wait till John McCain is on his deathbed before he repents of what he is doing now? Sarah Palin seems to have no pangs of conscience at all about it. Her "Christian" principles seem to have been thrown aside. It makes you wonder if she's ever asked herself, "What would Jesus think of this?"

Read Kathleen Parker's thoughtful column by clicking on the link below.

Call Off the Pit Bull
By Kathleen Parker

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/07/AR2008100702436.html?nav=hcmodule

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David Brooks: Sarah Palin represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party

Of all people, ultra-conservative David Brooks is telling the truth
about how far the Republicans have sunk with McCain's choice of Sarah
Palin as his running mate.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/08/david-brooks-sarah-palin_n_133001.html

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Winking Sarah is today's Betty Boop

CNN compares winking Sarah Palin to Betty Boop

See video of Betty Boop/Sarah at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFPVCfQ7uxM

CNN may now have found the ultimate Palin comparison -- a 1932 cartoon titled "Betty Boop for President," in which Betty winks broadly while singing, "Some of you have money, while some are poor, you know. If you send me to Washington, I'll just divide the dough, oh!"

No doubt Palin, who insisted at the debate that paying taxes is "not patriotic," would consider Boop's plans for income redistribution -- along with her promises that "we will get things for nothing, movies, cabarets and jazz!" -- to mark her as a wild-eyed radical and probable associate of the Weather Underground.

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NY Times Editorial on the damage McCain is doing to himself

I shudder to think of how much more our country would suffer if he and Palin should get into the White House. Eight long years of Cheney and Bush have brought us to our knees. A Palin/McCain presidency would deliver the death blow.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/opinion/08wed1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/opinion/08dowd.html?hp -- Maureen Dowd on the same subject

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A good one by Erica Jong

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erica-jong/is-john-mccain-really-our_b_132838.html

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Media gives Palin a pass

The conservatives love to rant and rail against the "liberal" press -- but they run in the other direction when you ask them why Palin is getting an easy pass from most journalists. I fear for our country in so many ways -- but the ignorance of the Palin supporters and the journalists who help to keep them ignorant is beyond the pale. As the following article points out, do you think Hillary Clinton would be getting a pass for winking at the audience, being unable to think of a single Supreme Court decision, saying she had foreign policy experience because she could see Russia with her binoculars, and not knowing what papers and magazines she reads? Palin is a joke (thank god for Saturday Night Live and Jon Stewart's Daily Show!) but many mainstream journalists (or what passes for them these days) are praising her as if she were a credible candidate for the highest office in the land. God help us if she and McCain win this election! Can you imagine her dealing with other world leaders with her winks, "gosh darns" and "you betchas" ?

Media Gives Palin a Pass

By Richard Cohen

Reading William Kristol's column in The New York Times, I discover that Sarah Palin and I have something in common. Kristol, who was once Dan Quayle's chief of staff and therefore, shall we say, has a Mister Rogers approach to certain politicians, got Palin on the phone and reported Monday that she does not "have a very high opinion of the mainstream media." This is where we are in agreement. On account of Palin, neither do I.

In the debate, she mischaracterized Barack Obama's tax plan and his offer to meet with foreign adversaries. She found whole new powers for the vice president by misreading the Constitution, if she ever read it at all. She called one moment for the federal government to virtually disappear and a moment later lamented the lack of its oversight of the financial markets. She asserted that she "may not answer the questions the way that either the moderator or you (Biden) want to hear" because, apparently, the rules don't apply to her on account of her being a soccer mom. Fer sure.

Not enough? OK. Palin also said that she "and others in the legislature" called for the state of Alaska to divest itself of investments in companies that do business with Sudan. But, as the indefatigable truth-hunter at The Washington Post found out, the divestiture effort was not led by Palin. In fact, her administration opposed the initiative and Palin herself only came around to it after the bill had died.

In spite of it all, much of the media saw a credible performance. I could quote the hosannas of some of my colleagues, but I spare them the infamy that will surely follow them to their graves. (The debate's moderator, Gwen Ifill, used the occasion to catch up on some sleep.) Many of them judged Palin simply as a performer and inferred that this would go over well in homes with aboveground swimming pools.

A perfect example is The Wall Street Journal, a paper whose (conservative) editorial page has been absolutely fixated on a strict (Scalian) reading of the Constitution. Did it wonder what in the world Palin meant by the authority she found in the Constitution to increase the role of "the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate"? What? Oh, never mind. The Journal chivalrously never brought up the matter. Palin is excused from knowing the limits of the office she seeks.

In effect, columnists, bloggers, talk-show hosts and digital lamplighters everywhere have adopted the ethic of the political consultant: what works, works. It did not matter what Palin said. It only mattered how she said it -- all those doggones, references to her working-class status (net worth in excess of $2 million), promiscuous use of the word "maverick," repeated mentions of "greed and corruption on Wall Street" (Who? Be specific. Give examples. Didn't anyone here go to school?) and, of course, that manic good cheer. Palin knows that the standard is not right or wrong, truth or lie, but the graph that ran under both debaters on CNN, measuring approval, disapproval or, maybe, the blood sugar levels of certain people in their focus group. Things have changed. Might used to make right. Now a wink does.

Since I began with the Times' conservative columnist of the moment, I will end with its conservative columnist of years past -- the estimable William Safire. Back in 1996, he called Hillary Clinton "a congenital liar." It was a head-snapping characterization that, alas for Clinton, has defined her for the ages and which she stubbornly vindicates from time to time.

But what about Palin? Can you imagine the reaction of the press corps if Clinton had given the audience a hi-ya-sailor wink? Can you imagine the feverish blogging across the political spectrum if Clinton had claimed credit for stopping a bridge that, in fact, had set her heart aflutter? What if she showed she didn't know squat about the Constitution, if she could not tell Katie Couric what newspapers or magazines she reads or if she claimed intimacy with foreign relations based on sighting Russia through binoculars?

Ah, but the scorn, approbation and ridicule that would have descended on Clinton -- I can just imagine the Journal editorial -- have been spared Palin. Much of the mainstream media, grading on a curve suitable for a parrot -- "greed and corruption, greed and corruption, greed and corruption " -- gave her a passing grade or better. I agree with Palin. It's the mainstream media that flunked.

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Keith Olbermann says what NEEDS to be said!

Special Comment: Hockey Moms in Glass Houses..

From www.crooksandliars.com

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Now that the McCain campaign has made abundantly clear that their only shot at salvaging this election is by going full-bore negative against Barack Obama with despicable, disgraceful and dishonorable smears, Keith responds with another great Special Comment.

"The Governor of Alaska wants to start calling people terrorists -- and insisting of Senator Obama that quote "this is not a man who sees America like you and I see America" -- and whose rhetoric like that and the "pallin' around with terrorists" line were rightly described by the Associated Press yesterday as a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing kind of way of slipping racism into the equation because it's a nifty trick to remind the white folk that (psst) Obama is black.

But overriding this sleaziness -- and dog-gone it, the Governor of Alaska has got to be the sleaziest politician working the stage at the moment -- there is the sheer blessed stupidity of letting herself become the bomb-thrower when her own life is full of domestic terrorists.

Governor -- Bill Ayres? Your hubby was in this secessionist hate group for which you recorded a video.

Governor -- Jeremiah Wright? That pastor you credit with helping you become Governor, is either a con man or a psycho who believes he can tell which woman in the village is the witch and which is the governor."

Full transcript below the fold:

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As for Obama being a Muslim, as desperate right wingers are charging...

The Campaign is Entering Silly Season
By Dave Lindorff

I've been getting some emails that refer to Barack Obama as a "Manchurian Candidate," a guy who is somehow hiding a secret radical and/or Muslim jihadist agenda that will burst forth if he's elected president. There is a certain idiot factor at work here, since if Obama were a closet Weatherman, who somehow learned of and adopted that 1960s college dropout organzation's creed at the tender age of 8, it would have clashed badly with any Muslim teaching he might have picked up as a student in an Indonesian public school at the same time (he attended an Indonesian public schoolfrom the age of 6 to 8 before transferring to a Catholic-run institution).

But since some low-wattage and conspiracy-minded people seem ready to believe this kind of stuff, let's consider John McCain's early background, and the possibility of his being a Manchurian Candidate too. Fair's fair, right?

Okay. McCain, it turns out, was actually born outside the US, in the Panama Canal Zone, which in 1936 was territory leased from Panama. His father, a Navy officer, was stationed there with his wife at the time of McCain's birth. Now it's a safe bet that McCain was largely raised--fed, diapered, and spoken to--at that age by a local Panamian woman. That's what, after all, you do when you are an elite officer and the wife of an elite officer in a foreign country where low-wage help is abundant. Who knows what subversive ideologies were poured into the young McCain's tender ears at that vulnerable period of his life by his Panamanian nurse? Maybe that would explain McCain's support for an amnesty program for immigrants from Latin America a few years back. Does he have a secret agenda to throw open the doors of America to Latin American immigrants once in the White House?

And worse yet, maybe his Panamian amah was a Marxist! Lord knows that Central America in the mid-1930s was a hotbed of revolution. The dreaded Augusto Sandino had only just been executed in Nicaragua, just north of the Zone, two years before McCain's birth, following a bloody guerrilla war against US Marines, and the region was full of bitter and vengeful nationalist and Marxist revolutionaries bent on throwing the US out of Latin America. Could his nurse have been one of these people, whispering and implanting the language of liberation into the young boy's still unformed mind, ready to spring to life once he assumed high office in Washington?

Then we turn to McCain's prisoner of war days in the hands of the North Vietnamese. Certainly his mind was weak and vulnerable to control. While many of McCain's fellow POWs endured five, six or more years of torture without cracking, he is said to have begun spilling secrets and agreeing to broadcast anti-American propaganda statements after only four days of torture shortly after his capture. We also know that the Communists had a sophisticated system of mind control developed, which was shared among the Communist nations of the USSR, China, North Korea and North Vietnam. Were these techniques applied to the captive McCain, and did they leave him after five long years of captivity robotically programmed to seek and win the presidency, only then to launch a campaign of sabotage to soften America up for Communist takeover?

This prospect seems much more likely than that some Muslim teacher got to Obama in his grammar school in Indonesia.

Actually, I find the Obama Manchurian Candidate theory much weaker than the McCain Manchurian Candidate theory, just based upon my own experience. I was, after all, put through some serious indoctrination by my own family. My parents sent me to Sunday School at the local Congregational Church, from the age of six to the age of about 11. I can still remember the earnest parent volunteers teaching us all the nonsense about the earth being formed in six days, about Adam and Eve, the burning bush, the parting of the Red Sea, the Virgin birth (What was a virgin, I wondered? They wouldn't say...), and the crucifixion and resurrection. None of it stuck. The only thing I really learned in Sunday School was how to smoke--something a number of us learned together while skipping class and hiding out in the church attic. Is Christian dogma that much weaker that it can fail to impress a young mind while Muslim dogma can take a firm hold in an even shorter time? What an insult to Christianity!

My daughter too, is testimony to the limits of early childhood propaganda efforts. At the age of 7, we brought her to Shanghai, China, where for a year, she attended first grade in a local Chinese public school. She learned excellent Chinese there, but though there was considerable indoctrination in Maoist theory, with special focus on the life of the young Mao and also of the selfless workers' hero Lei Feng (they actually had one daily class called "Loving the Country class" and most other subjects had a propaganda aspect), and though she also attended a fifth grade Chinese public school when we returned to China a few years later, for a stay in Xi'an, at 24 she is hardly a Commie or a Maoist. I'm sure though, that should she someday decide to run for president, some of the same people who suspect Obama of being a closet Muslim terrorist will say she harbors secret Communist sentiments from her early school years.

Such is the state of some American minds.

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New Yorker Editorial: THE CHOICE

Excellent presentation of THE CHOICE we have to make on November 4th. Read entire article at: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/10/13/081013taco_talk_editors

EXCERPT:

The longer the campaign goes on, the more the issues of personality and character have reflected badly on McCain. Unless appearances are very deceiving, he is impulsive, impatient, self-dramatizing, erratic, and a compulsive risk-taker. These qualities may have contributed to his usefulness as a “maverick” senator. But in a President they would be a menace.

By contrast, Obama’s transformative message is accompanied by a sense of pragmatic calm. A tropism for unity is an essential part of his character and of his campaign. . . . it is Obama’s temperament—and not McCain’s—that seems appropriate for the office both men seek and for the volatile and dangerous era in which we live.

. . . 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.

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