Which Candidate Could Put Their Cigar Out in Your Face Just for Kicks?

I got a start on pulling this post together last night. It's an ongoing struggle balancing the on-line work (reading, prioritizing, and coming up with narrative, etc.) needed to put these posts together, the job, and household responsibilities, not to mention the reading of books. The whole tricky act has gotten more and more challenging as the campaign intensity ratchets up. I'm posting here with regret at having to for the moment forego so many other important links.

For the record, I am starting in on "The Predator State," which seems quite read-worthy but not as straightforward as I had hoped. I took diversion from politics to process "Isaac's Storm," account of 1900 Galveston hurricane debacle. Quite informative in many ways, on the weather service, the primitive knowledge and tracking of tropical storms back then, and the human horror of what must have been a far more serious storm than Katrina hitting a community on an island probably no more on average than 20' above sea level dead on. The death toll reportedly far exceeded the Johnstown Flood and SF Earthquake combined. I found this a little less absorbing than Rising Tide, but on a par with The Johnstown Flood.

In the queue: Gellman's "Angler," an analysis of the Cheney vice-presidency, and "JFK and the Unspeakable," the latest attempt to help us grapple with what was probably for many my age the first revelation that the idea that life wasn't fair extended orders of magnitude beyond our previous myopic focus.

Tell me about your reading, if you would.

Speaking of balancing, I was enamored of recent script in comic Frazz:

I wonder if there is a formula for happiness.
I think it's finding that elegant mean between A.D.D. and O.C.D.

(that from grizzly adults, overheard by student, who then has deja vu with peer:)

I wonder if there is a formula for happiness.
There is. But it sounds like it involves high school algebra.

Getting down to that other business, it is trick-or-treat month, famous for surprises of the sort I have rarely found either enjoyable or amusing. Rany Jazayerli, guest-posting at fivethirtyeight.com (political poll-tracking site well worth a bookmark), offers some great insights on our ongoing relationship with agent-provocateur OBL:

If it’s October, that means it’s the month of surprises, and I’m not talking about the Tampa Bay Rays making the playoffs. (Besides, that wouldn’t be much of a surprise if you trusted Nate’s baseball projections in the spring.)

No, this is the month where dramatic late-breaking news can tip an election. In fact, given the sizable lead that Barack Obama has now opened up – roughly six points in the national polls, with a favorable electoral map – and the crystallizing of opinions among the electorate, it may be that only dramatic late-breaking news can tip this election.

Historically, a six-point lead with four weeks to go is almost impregnable barring unforeseen circumstances. Given that, it’s possible that John McCain is just waiting for the perfect time to drop a bomb on the election process. (Maybe Tucker Bounds is hiding the “kill whitey” tape in a secure vault somewhere.) But realistically, if McCain had any bullets left in his gun, he would have shot them by now. He’s already emptied his nominate-a-woman-for-VP clip and his suspend-the-campaign-for-the-sake-of-the-economy clip, not to mention an entire stockade’s worth of POW ammo. (And now he’s passed on his emergency stash of Reverend Wright and William Ayres cartridges to Lieutenant Palin.) In all of these instances, McCain’s approach to his presidential rival has been of the “ready, fire, aim” variety. Holding on to some incriminating evidence until the final weeks of the campaign requires a level of discipline that McCain doesn’t seem to have.

If there is to be a true October Surprise – a pre-meditated attempt to use unexpected news to alter the course of the election in the 11th hour – it’s unlikely to come from the McCain campaign. Meanwhile, the Obama campaign has its prevent defense on the field right now. The only surprise they’d welcome at this point would be a sudden change in the laws that moved up the election to tomorrow.

That leaves just one obvious person unaccounted for who has both the motivation to alter the course of the election and the means to do so at the last moment: Osama bin Laden.

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Once in my viewfinder (h/t Ashley!) there was no way I could not feature this great post from what appears to be a terrific blog. Enlightened, outspoken, computer-savvy seniors are too few and far between. Helen titled this "Yep. I called her a bitch and I am not taking it back:"

I am so surprised at how many of you have come to my little web page blog. People didn’t think I was 82 so I thought maybe you couldn’t see the pictures but then someone called me old and fat so I guess you can.

If you are looking for my post about Sarah Palin it appears right before this one. I guess I hit a nerve with my little story about the Governor, but I just got so mad when my friend Margaret told me she was thinking about voting for McCain and thought Sarah was kind of interesting. Well, we’ve survived a lot of differences over the years so I guess we can survive this one.
For those of you calling me names. Shoot. I’m 82 and have been called much worse by much better. Margaret all but called me a communist for posting it in the first place and told me my sailor mouth would get me in trouble! I don’t mind. Besides I started it by calling that fool from Alaska a bitch. Surely you could not have watched that debate without realizing she has no idea what end is up. I remember a girl like that in high school. Her name was Sally and we used to say that she wasn’t right in the head.

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From the prior "Bitch" post:

Who can turn the world on with her smile?Who can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?

Well it’s NOT you girl…

Look. I am going to say what everyone at CNN, CBS, ABC and NBC is thinking but is afraid to say. Governor Palin is a stupid, conniving bitch. And it’s not because she is a strong woman - I like strong women… worship them… It’s actually the opposite. She is a weak, pathetic woman who thinks big hair, winking, baby talk and self deprecation is somehow becoming of a woman who wants to lead the free world. My god, where is Margaret Thatcher when you need her!

But what really makes me mad is the hypocrisy. She claims to be a Washington outsider and yet is the worst kind of politician. She will say anything and avoid answering any question instead choosing to spout whatever line or soundbite some adviser put into her mouth a few hours earlier. And exactly when did sounding like a hick make someone “more like us”. Last time I checked we were a country striving to educate our children to be intelligent and honest. I think I would die if my daughter came home from school and said something like “I gotta tell ya. Change is a comin’.” At the very least I would remove the Beverly Hillbillies from her approved TV viewing list.

And then there is Alaska. Have any of you been to Alaska recently? Although the largest State geographically, it has less than a million people - about 700,000. (The city I live in now is bigger. ) Fewer population issues exist for lawmakers to address. And because they make so much money from the oil companies, the Alaskan government actually gives it citizens an annual dividend check (this year $3,200). Exactly what Governor wouldn’t be popular under those circumstances? No wonder they can afford to elect a governor who only has an undergraduate degree in journalism and a few beauty pageant awards. By the way, when you got that journalism degree did they teach you that some journalists actually ask hard questions like what newspapers do you read?

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The hateful crowd noise at recent McSame-Palin pep-rallies has turned into an Issue. There's no question the foundering candidates have stimulated these awful public spectacles with their desperate crowd-hectoring, sleazy appeals to the lowest common denominator. How much of their crowds are made up of the sick sorts we may remember from racist rallies of the past is uncertain. What is clear is that they attract some truly disturbed people who have not been properly rebuked or rejected by either their peers in the audience or, more shamefully, the candidates, who as a result stand fully slimed by this.

Oh yes, there were (finally!) a few mild wrist-pats by John the self-annointed saint, whose every action must be viewed through his POW-ness. Truly pathetic, both his behavior over the last several months at the least and John McShameless hisself.

Greg Sargent at TPM heads his post Note To News Orgs: McCain And Palin Are Largely Responsible For Unhinged Tone At Their Rallies:

The news orgs are beginning to weigh in with big takes on what is unquestionably one of the most important stories of Campaign 2008: The pathologically-unhinged tone that McCain-Palin supporters are displaying at rallies of late.

The New York Times has a write-up here; The Washington Post has one here, and The Politico has one here.

This is a welcome development, and the stories are pretty good. But the news orgs are still dancing around the central story here: That McCain and Palin themselves are largely responsible for what's happening.

The Times, for instance, does say that McCain's rallies are worse than Obama's, but nonetheless bemoans negative campaigning on "both sides." WaPo very politely notes that McCain and Palin "drew on the crowd's energy" as they attacked Obama yesterday (actually, they fed the crowd's "energy"). And Politico says that the anger is driven by Obama's momentum and fears that McCain will lose.

No question, there are a number of factors at play. But surely the most important one is the role that McCain and Palin themselves are playing in creating the toxic hysteria that reigns at the rallies they are running.

Let's consider a partial list of what the McCain camp has done recently:

* The McCain campaign is going well beyond raising questions about Obama's association with Ayers, repeatedly insinuating that Obama is currently in league with a current terrorist.

* Palin has repeatedly accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists."

* McCain himself has embarked on an effort to paint Obama as a vaguely sinister enemy within, with lines like this: "Who is the real Barack Obama?

* When a McCain supporter at a rally yesterday ranted that the country is being taken over by "socialists," and called Obama and Nancy Pelosi "hooligans," McCain didn't utter a peep of protest, and basically agreed.

* Cindy McCain basically accused Obama of endangering her son and other troops serving in Iraq with his vote against an Iraq funding bill, even though McCain also opposed a funding bill because it contained a withdrawal timetable.

* Palin attacks the media almost every day, even though her supporters are abusing reporters at her gatherings.

* Palin attacked Obama over Reverend Wright, and the campaign didn't disavow it -- even though McCain himself said in April that his campaign supposedly wanted no part of attacks on Wright.

But here's the most important point: To my knowledge neither McCain nor Palin has uttered a single syllable of protest as their crowds indulged their fear and loathing of Obama. It's hard to overstate how reckless and lacking in leadership this is -- and how dangerous this is, too.

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