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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Pent-up Rage and Cowardice, in Approximately Equal Measure

Much to share. I'll be touching on the descent of the McShame campaign into the nether reaches, briefly surfacing to point at ray of hope on the "bailout," and then returning to the hot Dante-esque topic of how slimy and despicable the self-annointed POW-martyr seems willing to be in his desperate but ineffectual quest for power.

First-up, courtesy long-time Whidbey Island correspondent Ashley, is this great editorial from the Baltimore Sun (said city the former residence of correspondent and family):

John McCain: If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as "not one of us," I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence.

At a Sarah Palin rally, someone called out, "Kill him!" At one of your rallies, someone called out, "Terrorist!" Neither was answered or denounced by you or your running mate, as the crowd laughed and cheered. At your campaign event Wednesday in Bethlehem, Pa., the crowd was seething with hatred for the Democratic nominee - an attitude encouraged in speeches there by you, your running mate, your wife and the local Republican chairman.

Shame!

John McCain: In 2000, as a lifelong Republican, I worked to get you elected instead of George W. Bush. In return, you wrote an endorsement of one of my books about military service. You seemed to be a man who put principle ahead of mere political gain.

You have changed. You have a choice: Go down in history as a decent senator and an honorable military man with many successes, or go down in history as the latest abettor of right-wing extremist hate.

John McCain, you are no fool, and you understand the depths of hatred that surround the issue of race in this country. You also know that, post-9/11, to call someone a friend of a terrorist is a very serious matter. You also know we are a bitterly divided country on many other issues. You know that, sadly, in America, violence is always just a moment away. You know that there are plenty of crazy people out there.

Stop! Think! Your rallies are beginning to look, sound, feel and smell like lynch mobs.

John McCain, you're walking a perilous line. If you do not stand up for all that is good in America and declare that Senator Obama is a patriot, fit for office, and denounce your hate-filled supporters when they scream out "Terrorist" or "Kill him," history will hold you responsible for all that follows.

John McCain and Sarah Palin, you are playing with fire, and you know it. You are unleashing the monster of American hatred and prejudice, to the peril of all of us. You are doing this in wartime. You are doing this as our economy collapses. You are doing this in a country with a history of assassinations.

Change the atmosphere of your campaign. Talk about the issues at hand. Make your case. But stop stirring up the lunatic fringe of haters, or risk suffering the judgment of history and the loathing of the American people - forever.

We will hold you responsible.

Well we sure-as-hell better. Right now these sleazeballs are invoking names like Wallace and Thurmond. And the Klan. When will they "allow" (sanction) the first cross-burning? Hanging? I believe your desperate pursuit of power and control have revealed that you are certifiable, John McCain.

But, briefly turning to the destruction of our economy that shrub with the enthusiastic support of McCain and so many others (including many feckless Dems, Obama not immune) has pursued, it appears there is hope the "bailout" may not be quite as profoundly awful as it first appeared:

Laissez-faire taboos and financial benchmarks get knocked down with dizzying speed in recent economic news. But this article just out from the Times seems like a pretty big deal.

As regular readers know, I've been closely following the opinions of economists like Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong and others who have been arguing that the concept behind the original Paulson plan is fundamentally flawed -- not because of the size itself, or even so much because of who might benefit, but because it does not directly address what they see as the fundamental nature of the crisis. Rather than buying up 'toxic debts', they say we should be taking this vast sum of money Congress has just appropriated and injecting the capital directly into the banking system. In more nuts and bolts language, that means the US government buying big stakes in many of our largest financial institutions.

My read of what Krugman was saying a week or more ago was that the bill Congress passed was better than nothing since it was flexible enough to allow either this or the next Treasury Secretary to, in effect, accomplish that recapitalization through the back door

In any case, if this late Times report is accurate, the folks at the Treasury have come around to the idea of doing it through the front door and soon. As an economist friend just cautioned me, the devil's very much in the details. But on the face of it at least the Times seems to be saying that the pressure of events, and the failure of everything else they've tried to date, is pushing the folks at Treasury to embrace some version of the Swedish model Krugman, DeLong and other have championed.

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Ms. Walsh at Salon is properly incensed about the right-wing attempts to blame the melt-down on loans to the lower middle class (I am counting on you to read the full article at link):

I’ve been wanting us to write on the right-wing effort to blame the mortgage crisis on the Community Reinvestment Act and other efforts to bring homeownership to lower-income, minority Americans, but this piece by Slate’s Daniel Gross is so great I’m not sure we could top it in a timely way. I’m going to borrow a big chunk here, but go read the whole thing.

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I'm not sure how to preface this. Maybe "Bully gets called out." Major kudos to Obama for calling McSleazy out on his dirty tactics. In essence, "if you have a problem with me, say it to my face!" Of course McSameBushPalin have so many of their own skeletons so much worse than Obama's (Keating, POW confessions, despicable military record, total suck-up to Bush, Alaska separatist party, etc.). But in point of fact, it does come down to the reality that today's McCain is somewhat of a Coward, not at all a man of character, in no way a maverick, and basically a truly vile, desperate, and pathetic loser. But Josh at TPM is willing to settle for Cowardice!

The image is coming into focus. Even McCain's confidants are now suggesting that it was his anger and frustration with Obama that led him to embrace Steve Schmidt's Willie Horton-on-Steroids campaign for the White House. And whether it's the appearance before the Des Moines Register Editorial board or his tense refusal to make eye contact during the first presidential debate, I don't think many people would deny at this point that McCain's hostility and contempt for Obama -- what even Wolf Blitzer calls his "disdain" -- is palpable.

After the first debate many people wondered aloud whether it was hostility and contempt or fear and intimidation that kept McCain from looking Obama in the face even once. But with two weeks and more evidence to consider, it is clear that it was both: Hostility that is magnified by the person's mortifying inability to face the person who inspires it. That's the kind of unchanneled, clogged up anger that makes you unsteady, that makes you make mistakes.

McCain's moral cowardice has been one of the subtexts of this campaign ever since he wound up the nomination and turned his attention to Barack Obama. But I did not realize it would reveal itself in such a physical dimension.

The tell came this week as McCain unearthed the Ayers story which, for whatever its merits, was fully aired months ago and has no clear relation to the particulars of October other than McCain's collapsing poll numbers. He's on it. Palin's on it. He's releasing slashing new TV ads like this one. Both of them are ginning their crowds up into spiraling gyres of right-wing delirium -- a ready-made Lord of the Flies (and let's admit that's a gentle allusion, given the tone of these barnburners) if Obama happened into one of the auditoriums at the wrong moment.

He ever swaggered on for a couple days about how he was going to 'take the gloves off' when he met up with Obama in Nashville. But when the two of them were there in each others physical presence ... nothing. By a myriad of gestures and reactions Obama owned him.

Nor is it a matter of shifting off the tactics, because as soon as McCain made his hasty retreat from the stage at Debate #2 he was right back at it. In every other aspect of life, high and low, refined and unlovely, we have a word for that kind of behavior: cowardice.

And now Obama can lightly taunt McCain with that very cowardice, his inability to just say it to his face. And if my take on the inner workings of McCain's mind at the moment is right that should simply unhinge him even more.

And, speaking of John and his psychopathy or megalomania or whatever it is, these observations by scientists who deal with behavior, human and primate, seem timely:

McCain's unwillingness to make eye contact with Obama through the debate seems to be getting picked up by a lot of observers.

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Here's one comment we got from TPM Reader EO

As a psychotherapist and someone who treats people with anger management problems, we typically try to educate people that anger is often an emotion that masks other emotions. I think it's significant that McCain didn't make much, if any, eye contact because it suggests one of two things to me; he doesn't want to make eye contact because he is prone to losing control of his emotions if he deals directly with the other person, or, his anger masks fear and the eye contact may increase or substantiate the fear.

I noticed him doing the same thing in the Republican primary debates. The perception observers are likely to have is that he is unwilling to acknowledge the opponent's legitimacy and/or is contemptuous of the opponent.

And here's another note from TPM Reader TB. I guess I'm really not sure quite how to characterize it

I think people really are missing the point about McCain's failure to look at Obama. McCain was afraid of Obama. It was really clear--look at how much McCain blinked in the first half hour. I study monkey behavior--low ranking monkeys don't look at high ranking monkeys. In a physical, instinctive sense, Obama owned McCain tonight and I think the instant polling reflects that.

So McCain may have given away his status as a low-ranking monkey. I'd never even considered monkey rank.

Gary Kamiya does a great job at Salon of getting the viewfinder horizontal again (vs the cockeyed, distorting angles the increasingly desperate McCain campaign is forced to try to fob off on us. You owe it to yourself to pursue the whole article, this is only "short" excerpt

The End of Days is approaching for John McCain and Sarah Palin, and at least one member of the ticket is not likely to greet this development with religious rapture. Their numbers are tanking. Their campaign has had to pull out of Michigan, and they are trailing in most of the battleground states they must hold onto. Even Karl Rove has predicted an Obama win if the election were held today. McCain’s hotheaded behavior during the Wall Street crisis and his numerous other erratic tactical swerves have backfired. And his biggest gamble, choosing Sarah Palin as vice president, is increasingly looking like a disaster.

McCain’s all-too-predictable response: get ugly, as he did on Monday is his disturbing rant against Obama in New Mexico.

The man who incessantly talks about “honor” has checked his own at the door. Back in April, McCain — himself the victim of a vicious, race-baiting smear campaign orchestrated by Karl Rove in 2000 — disavowed a North Carolina ad attacking Obama for his association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. “It’s not the message of the Republican Party,” McCain said. “It’s not the message of my campaign. I’ve pledged to conduct a respectful campaign.”

But that was before McCain faced imminent defeat. His “pledge” has turned out to be about as credible as his sudden incarnation as a lifelong enemy of Wall Street. On Monday, McCain rolled out a new TV ad, “Dangerous,” that accuses Obama of being “dishonorable.” “Who is Barack Obama?” a narrator ominously asks. “He says our troops in Afghanistan are ‘just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.’ How dishonorable.”

Of course, this is an outrageous smear. Obama was simply pointing out the well-known fact that in fighting an insurgency, over-reliance on air power is counterproductive. That’s because airstrikes inevitably result in civilian deaths, which turn the population against the side carrying them out. U.S. airstrikes and the ensuing civilian casualties are one of the biggest points of contention between the U.S. and Hamid Karzai’s regime in Afghanistan, and they are a huge issue in Pakistan and Iraq as well.

But none of those facts matter, because McCain desperately needs to paint Obama as a traitor, an alien, a defeatist, and un-American. The rhetorical question “Who is Barack Obama?” is not accidental: It is intended to raise fundamental doubts about whether he is a real American. It ties into the online smears that accuse him of being a Muslim, a terrorist, of not saluting the flag, hating the troops, attending a madrassa, hating Israel, and so on.

In a fear-mongering speech on Monday, McCain continued this Mysterious Stranger tactic. “Whatever the question, whatever the issue, there’s always a back story with Sen. Obama,” McCain said. “All people want to know is: What has this man ever actually accomplished in government? What does he plan for America? In short: Who is the real Barack Obama?” Cue a subconscious image of a dark, menacing figure planning to impose sharia law on America.

Sarah Palin, confidently pronouncing on Obama’s bona fides despite the fact that she has repeatedly revealed herself to a terrified world to be someone who must be kept as far away from the presidency as possible, joined in the smear campaign. Citing Obama’s acquaintance with former Weatherman founder Bill Ayers, Palin said about the Democratic presidential nominee, “This is not a man who sees America as you and I do — as the greatest force for good in the world. This is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country.”

Never mind the fact that Palin herself supported, and her husband belonged to, a secessionist Alaska political party that advocated armed opposition to the U.S. Never mind the fact that Obama’s relationship with Ayers, as detailed in the very New York Times story that Palin cited as her source, was utterly casual. Facts are for those in the reality-based community. The point is to paint Obama not just as a terrorist sympathizer and America-hater, but as an alien. Hence Palin’s description of him as “not a man who sees America as you and I do.”

McCain is also using Palin to bring up the Rev. Wright. Prompted by GOP publicist Bill Kristol, whose intellectually vacuous, water-carrying New York Times column is one of the biggest embarrassments in that paper’s storied history, Palin said that “I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country … But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up.”

Ah, the joys of having your vacuous, yet robotically perky, running mate do your dirty work for you, while she pretends that she isn’t.

Calling Obama a traitor, un-American and dishonorable may be somewhat effective, but the best thing McCain and Palin have going for them is that Obama is … black. The subliminal message of all their ads is “scary, black, unknown, black, alien, black, un-American, black.” The challenge for McCain, however, is that he can’t be explicitly racist: It’s no longer acceptable to run Willie Horton-type ads. But ingenious minds find a way to get around this.

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And I was very pleased to see this editorial in the Winston-Salem Chronicle (h/t Democratic Underground):

Are we the only ones who are getting a little ticked off by the cut-throat tactics that Sen. John McCain and his airhead running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, are beginning to employ?

We didn’t think so.

As this long, long race for the White House enters the final stretch, the race car with the name “Obama” on it has pulled away, according to all national and statewide polls. So no one was surprised when the McCain camp started to throw harder jabs. It’s normal for the underdog to go into October fighting, but not to hit so far below the belt.

Palin is being directed (she surely is not smart enough to conceive strategies of her own) to try to convince voters that Obama is a covert radical who “pals around” with terrorists, anti-American black pastors and God knows who else.

She has delivered this nonsense at rallies before audiences of thousands of white, conservative Republicans – folks who don’t need much motivation anyway to distrust and dislike blacks. At one such rally, one member of the crowd yelled out that Obama should be killed. Palin didn’t take a minute to tell the overzealous supporter that his suggestion was inappropriate; she just continued to read the script the campaign provides her with.

Palin’s charges are as baseless as the claim that she is qualified to be vice-president. But they show that the next few weeks will get uglier as the Republicans try to derail the Obama train. Sadly, they know that they can gain some ground by feeding some white Americans this type of garbage. The Republicans know that on the issues, they can’t get voters on their side. But racist innuendo has always served the GOP well. Remember Willie Horton?

The Democrats are vowing to swing back against these attacks while also staying focused on the issues that are most important to voters, such as jobs and health care. Obama is not perfect, no doubt, but compared to McCain and Palin, he is a class act. He would never stoop to their level, although his surrogates might.

Obama would never bring up the contradictory nature of such charges coming from Palin, whose own morals are far from solid gold. After all, it was her church in Alaska that invited a man famous for condemning Judaism. Her church also believes in praying away homosexuality.

Obama is too focused on the issues of the land to mention that while Palin was busy misusing her authority as governor to fire a top law enforcement official, her daughter was out getting knocked up. Of course, teen pregnancy is a major issue across the nation. But Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy stands out because the governor has been outspoken about abstinence and has supported measures barring the teaching of sex-ed to students. Sex-Ed was surely a course her daughter failed, if she took it at all.

Obama has too much tact to mention that Palin attended five different colleges in order to earn just one bachelor’s degree. This should come as no surprise to those of us who have seen the interviews where the governor has shown that she is completely clueless. And we all thought that President Bush was the dumbest person on the planet.

These criticism of Palin are harsh, we admit. But she is a big girl who knows how to throw a punch so she should be receiving some as well. Palin, like her adulterous, gambling-addict running mate, has no room to talk about anyone, especially Ivy-League educated Obama.

Like the old folks say – Palin needs to sweep around her own front porch first.

It Don't Come Easy

Richard Starkey had that thing about "paying your dues if you want to sing the blues." It still works for me. Personally, hiatus in blogging after intensive stretch last week has me both paying and singing, overwhelmed with material. And of course the debate tonight showed an underdog who has switched into slimy character-assassination mode after a long career on the public dole (or, as he would pretend, "public service" with little in the way of actual dues-paying).

But I have a lot of material to squeeze in here, leaving little room/time for me to go loquacious. It's a mix that extends from reactions to the VP debate to even a bit of preliminary reaction to tonight's "town hall." I did, btw, get a bit of feedback on last post, to the effect that I was too easy on Palin. Fair enough.

Chronology for this post is out the window.

I've got Joan Walsh at Salon up first:

The McCain campaign may be going off a cliff. Sarah Palin hit a new low -- and that's hard for her -- when she smeared Barack Obama with his association with '60s radical Bill Ayers, by claiming that Obama sees America "as imperfect enough to work with a domestic terrorist who tried to kill his own people" -- as though Obama's concerns about American society led him to ally himself with terrorism.

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There seems to be no bottom for the McCain campaign. The candidate himself joined his running mate in the gutter Monday, with a stream-of-consciousness rant against Obama in New Mexico:

My opponent's touchiness every time he is questioned about his record should make us only more concerned. For a guy who's already authored two memoirs, he's not exactly an open book. It's as if somehow the usual rules don't apply, and where other candidates have to explain themselves and their records, Senator Obama seems to think he is above all that. Whatever the question, whatever the issue, there's always a back story with Senator Obama. All people want to know is: What has this man ever actually accomplished in government? What does he plan for America? In short: Who is the real Barack Obama?

[I'm sure I'm not the only one picking up on McSlime projecting his own famous shortcomings onto his opponent. He'll probably be trick-or-treating as a staggering Psych 101 exhibit!]

As War Room reports (with a Mark Ambinder video), a McCain fan yelled back, "Terrorist!" Should that be a surprise?

Republicans aren't even being clever or secretive about their fear and smear campaign strategy. "It's a dangerous road, but we have no choice," a senior McCain strategist told Tom DeFrank of the New York Daily News in a Monday report. "If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose."

Chances are, they're going to lose anyway. McCain is down an unbelievable 10 points in Virginia (it's the communists, of course). He's in trouble in Florida.

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Faced with that bad news, trust McCain-Palin to hammer away at the Bill Ayers connection, even though Ayers' terrorism was 40 years ago, when Obama was 8. Is Palin saying the Democratic nominee was a member of WeatherKids?

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Obama is fighting back with some old news for McCain: His involvement as one of the "Keating Five" in the savings and loan deregulation scandal of the late 1980s. The campaign released this 13-minute video, "Keating Economics," laying out McCain's role in deflecting government pressure on campaign contributor Charles Keating.

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Fallows shares some ludicity on the VP debate:

Ifill, moderator: Terrible. Yes, she was constrained by the agreed debate rules. But she gave not the slightest sign of chafing against them or looking for ways to follow up the many unanswered questions or self-contradictory answers. This was the big news of the evening. Katie Couric, and for that matter Jim Lehrer, have never looked so good.

Palin: "Beat expectations." In every single answer, she was obviously trying to fit the talking points she had learned to the air time she had to fill, knowing she could do so with impunity from the moderator. But she did it with spunk and without any of the poleaxed moments she had displayed in previous questions. The worst holes in her answers - above all, about the Vice President's role, also either mishearing or ignoring the question about her "Achilles heel" - were concealed in ways they haven't been before.

Biden: No mistakes. This is a bigger deal than it seems, since Biden could easily have seemed bullying, condescending, chauvinistic, or whatever. He didn't. And while he was woolly-sounding in the beginning, he was commanding and authoritative - from his side's perspective - on issues of foreign policy and constitutional balance. And to all appearances sincere in his choking-up near the end when talking about having a child in peril. Overall, don't see how he could have balanced all the conflicting pressures on him much better.

The race: No fundamental change. Which is better news for Obama than McCain.

Update: How was it, considered strictly as a debate? Of course Biden did a far better job -- he answered the questions rather than moving straight to talking points, he drew on a vastly broader range of factual references, he attacked his opponents in ways that were relevant to the subject under discussion. But this is not how the event was being watched or scored.

I admit I was briefly flummoxed by Palin wink when she mentioned dad in the audience. It was far too broad and coarse a gesture for the setting. Others noticed other winks, and took a far dimmer, but probably more accute and perceptive view of this stageplay:

For the record, I hate when male politicians wink too. Someone in the Senate--it might even be Joe Biden (though he certainly didn't do it last night), or maybe Chuck Schumer--does it, and it infuriates me that a politician would diminish his work by incorporating such smarmy body language into his shtick.

But it especially pisses me off that Palin did it.

It may not be fair, but as one of the trailblazers for women in politics, all women will be judged by the manner with which Palin approaches her campaign. And it is equally unfair, but a wink from a woman means something totally different than a wink from a man. From a woman, a wink is flirtatious. At best. To these commenters over at Reddit, it was far more than that.

I bet she gives awesome head.

She wants to sleep with me!

I believe that wink was aimed at myself. Which is why I immediately proceeded to masturbate.

Yes, it is disgusting that these slobs immediately made this sexual--but they were simply projecting a common connotation onto Palin's gesture. Whether she intended that sexual connotation or not, she used a gesture that--particularly coming from women--has that connotation.

And so, from being a trailblazer that finally brought the Republican party to the place the Democrats were at in the mid-eighties, Sarah Palin has demeaned that trailblazer role, mobilizing all the tired notions about trampy women who will use sex to get power.

How dare you, Sarah Palin, take the responsibility you've been given and use it to cheapen the work that all female politicians do.

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And the comments on that post are rich with insights also, e.g.:

Yes, it is disgusting that these slobs immediately made this sexual–

Count me among the slobs. The way I put it was:

She’s a cross between a fucking infomercial, a high school pep rally and an ad for sex talk.

I tried to succinctly put into words how she makes me feel, and this is what I’d say: “How could any self-respecting person want to be talked to this way?”.

Particularly, how could any self-respecting man want this? Middle-aged ones who have schoolteacher fetishes, who want to be spanked with rulers, or put in dog collars and pissed on. That’s what I’d say to any man who liked her verbal chastisement. And women? Did you see the rape kit commericial immediately following the debate? Devastating. I’m surprised our corporate overlords allowed it on tv.

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I think you nailed it, Marcy.

Palin’s mannerisms and folksy comments were programmed, encouraged by her McCain handlers. Does anyone think she went through two weeks of practice without doing those things and then just did them spontaneously last night? If she had done that once in practice, and they didn’t want it to happen, her eye lids would have been bolted open last night and we wouldn’t have heard a single dawgonit.

They wanted her to do this, repeatedly, lay it on thick, so she did.

So the question is: what did the McCain handlers seek to accomplish by having her wink, flirt, aw shucks in front of 50 million viewers when answering questions about serious national issues in a nationally televised debate for the Vice Presidency of the US? It obviously had nothing to do with competence or how they’ll lead the country.

Last night was possibly the McCain campaigns most cynical attempt at dumbing down America, the culmination of the belief that with sufficient distractions — this time in the form of a flirtatious high school cheerleader — you can get voters to forget there’s any connection between the abysmal state of the country and the mental derangement and intellectual incoherence of the Party that brought us to this point.

McCain’s campaign’s new motto is: Let them eat eye candy . . . and masterbate in front of their screens while the country goes down the tubes and they steal yet another election.

Spencer Ackermann might be seen through this post to be on a vendetta-course, but he has a very good point. McSame has done the fake-rehabbing thing before (Keating). Taken with that embrace of the low-life whose gutter tactics took him down, I think we know that scruples and Johnnie Mac are not on speaking terms.

Melissa, Josh and Baratunde have truly excellent posts cataloging the McCain-Palin campaign's descent into outright bigotry and Nixonlandia. Earlier this week I suggested that the progressive counteroffensive should aim to destroy McCain's reputation for all time. After an evening discussing this with friends over beers, I'm wondering about the logistics of such a campaign.

Remember in 2000 when McCain refused to call for the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse? It was a blatant play to the ugliest aspects of American politics, an unsubtly coded attempt to identify himself with white resentment. But what was even more astonishing was what happened after he lost the GOP primary. Here's CNN from April 19, 2000:

Former GOP presidential candidate John McCain called for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from atop the South Carolina Statehouse on Wednesday, acknowledging that his refusal to take such a stance during his primary battle for the Palmetto State was a "sacrifice of principle for personal ambition."

This was pretty widely hailed as a triumph of straight talk. McCain admitted such transparent cynicism! What a breath of fresh air! Now, there's another way of looking at this moment. One that a less, frankly, white group of trail reporters might have picked up on: despite finding the flag personally offensive -- because it is a symbol of racial subjugation; and treason in the interest of white supremacy -- McCain didn't mind exploiting it. He didn't mind aggravating the most noxious division in America if it served his ambition.

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Ackermann ever-so-astutely suggests that we cannot afford to allow such an absurd punch of the "Reset" button by this slime-ball ever again. He should be out of our political life, once and for all.

McSlime indeed.

And, as sign-off, here is Josh Marshall of TPM on tonight's debate:

As I said in my initial reaction, I thought this was a victory, though not a big one, on points for Obama. But in the context of the campaign, I think that's a substantial win for Obama. And like the first debate, I suspect this will continue the solidifying, reassuring effect that -- in retrospect -- was the key result of Debate #1.

One thing that occurs to me after taking some time to mull the exchange is this: where were McCain's new fisticuffs? Bill Ayers, Obama as a liar, terrorist, all the sludge we've seen over the last 72 hours? Yes, he was aggressive on policy. But that's what debates are about. But McCain didn't take any of the shenanigans from the campaign trail into this debate. Almost like he was unwilling to say any of it to Obama's face. Or at least that he knew he couldn't get away with it in front of a non-party-line audience.

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I'd be more blunt. Given the low-life slime-ball tactics that both of the GOP candidates seem to have adopted, who was this strange frail creature doddering around in the "Town Hall" setting of McShame's own choosing? If you can't look your opponent in the eye and call him a terrorist-supporter, John, it sure suggests that you are a coward. Of course that is the usual case with bullies who get called on their crap.