McCain Banking on a Confederacy of Dunces

By David Sirota —
Is John McCain stupid, or does he believe we are? That’s the question as he criticizes Barack Obama for allegedly trying to “redistribute the wealth” with a plan to lower taxes on the middle class and raise them on the super-rich.

Quote of the day

Democratic strategist James Carville, speaking Friday at a reporters' breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor:

"The reason Republicans are excited about Joe the Plumber is they're glad to have someone hanging around a toilet other than Larry Craig."

Civil War On The Right

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Conservatives are at each other's throats, and here's what's revealing about how divided they are: The critics of John McCain and the critics of Sarah Palin represent entirely different camps.

Bob Cesca: The End of 'Larry the Cable Guy Politics'
Be it Larry the Cable Guy or his Ohio cousin, Joe the Plumber, or their political and spiritual leader, Bushie the Commander Guy, or their newly discovered co-star Sarah the Hockey Mom, it should be obvious to anyone watching that the Republicans have been engaging in a seemingly endless game of dress up, and pretending to be something they're clearly not.

Part II: Are you a Real American?

The Internet and the Death of Rovian Politics

by Arianna Huffington

McCain is running a textbook Rovian race: fear-based, smear-based, anything goes. But it isn't working. The glitch in the well-oiled machine? The Internet.

Noam Chomsky

The Thom Hartmann Program
Thom talks with Mark Karlin, editor of Buzzflash.com, about the real story on Rezko, Ayers and the "Chicago political machine"

If McCain wins, should we all move to Scandinavia?

Imagine a land where presidents don't sprinkle holy water on wars, citizens have good healthcare and governments care about the environment.
By Louis Bayard

Incoherence

Posted by Joe Klein
John McCain had a fabulously loony weekend, flipping out charges and attacks like a mud tornado. The truly remarkable thing about McCain's attacks, especially on Obama's economic policies, is that McCain, in each case, is "guilty" of supporting some version of the policies he's attacking.

What's At Stake
The Supreme Court and the Election
By Herman Schwartz

When The Gloves Come Off

By Jonathan Schell

Reality is that which, when you don't believe in it, doesn't go away.

--Peter Viereck, poet and conservative thinker

The Idiots Who Rule America

by Chris Hedges

Our elites—the ones in Congress, the ones on Wall Street and the ones being produced at prestigious universities and business schools—do not have the capacity to fix our financial mess. Indeed, they will make it worse. They have no concept, thanks to the educations they have received, of the common good.

A devastating blow to McCain

Endorsing Barack Obama, Colin Powell directly rebukes the GOP's fear-and-smear campaign.
by Joan Walsh

From Worst To World Series: Rays Win, Red Sox Go Home

He Just Can't Quit W

By FRANK RICH
OLD Mr. Straight Talk has become so shaky a speaker that when he does talk straight, it’s startling. On Wednesday night, John McCain mustered exactly one such moment of clarity: “Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.”

The Thom Hartmann Program
Thom exposes Joe the Plumber as a Republican plant, related to Charles Keating...if McCain used the internet he'd know this

Fact Checking the ACORN Flap

Not a moment too soon, here’s FactCheck.org’s assessment of the recent hullabaloo over ACORN, the beleaguered community organization that has been yanked into the epicenter of the election battle since Team McCain seized upon it as a Campaign Talking Point™.

Speaking of the McCain campaign, we’re wondering why the opposition to John McCain, in whatever form it might take, isn’t making more of McCain’s own brush with ACORN affiliation in 2006, after this video made the rounds and garnered mention in The New York Times. What gives, people?

Endorsements start rolling in

Daily News editorial here:

Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama
by Andrew Leonard

How's this for some virtuoso news-cycle stage management? First the Obama campaign announces that the campaign raised a stunning $150 million in September. Then Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama on "Meet the Press."

"Because he has met the standard of being an exceptional president...a transformational candidate...I will be voting for Barack Obama..."



Read more . . .

The Book of Sarah (Palin)

From the controversy that catapulted her to the governorship, to her ties to the indicted patriarch of Alaska's GOP, to the multilayered nexus of lobbyists and Big Oil interests around her, and, finally, to the Wasilla sports complex that capped her mayoral career, the myth of Sarah Palin, reformer, withers under inspection.

by Wayne Barrett

Bush and McCain: Where's The Difference?

IRAQIS DEMAND FREEDOM FROM US OCCUPATION

Ayers and the McCain-Liddy Symbiosis
by Carl Bernstein
Does John McCain "pal around with terrorists?"
Certainly McCain's continuing "association" and relationship with the convicted Watergate burglar and domestic terrorist G. Gordon Liddy might suggest that is the case, if we are to apply the standards drawn by the McCain campaign.

The McCain Plan for Health Insecurity
By Cernig
At the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. David Blumenthal reviews McCain's healthcare plans - and finds the same old Republican "I'm alright, Jack" philosphy.

America the Banana Republic

The ongoing financial meltdown is just the latest example of a disturbing trend that, to this adoptive American, threatens to put the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave on a par with Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and Equatorial Guinea.
by Christopher Hitchens

John McCain Thinks You Are Stupid

Here's John McCain, speaking today to an audience in Concord, North Carolina:

You might ask: How do you cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans, when more than 40 percent pay no income taxes right now? How do you reduce the number zero? Well, that's the key to Barack Obama's whole plan: Since you can't reduce taxes on those who pay zero, the government will write them all checks called a tax credit. And the Treasury will have to cover those checks by taxing other people, including a lot of folks just like Joe. In other words, Barack Obama's plan to raise taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut; it's just another government giveaway.

And here's McCain, again, in the very same speech:

I will provide every single American family with a $5000 refundable tax credit to help them purchase health care insurance.

This is from the prepared remarks, but I assume that's the way he gave the speech. For the last two days or so, his advisers have been attacking Obama's refundable tax credits as "welfare," "socialism," and a "govenrment giveaway," even though--as countless observers have noted--McCain's own health care plan also includes a refundable tax credit.

Presidential campaigns are full of hypocrisy, of course. But I can't remember the last time a candidate was this brazen about it. It makes you wonder what McCain thinks about the public's power of perception.

--Jonathan Cohn

Story of Joe the Plumber springs many leaks

Senator Honorable in the Sewer
Posted by Joe Klein

Back in 2000, in South Carolina, the robocalls--and calls to local right-wing talk radio shows--were about John McCain's "interracial child" and Cindy McCain's drug addiction. They were a craven, disgusting tactic by the George W. Bush campaign. McCain was, rightly, outraged by them.

Now McCain's campaign is making robocalls distorting Barack Obama's non-existent relationship with Bill Ayers:

The call begins: "Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC," before telling recipients that they "need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home, and killed Americans."

Now this isn't quite the spew that McCain suffered in South Carolina, but hey, he's got three more weeks to descend to that. Certainly, such calls are not the sort of activity normally attributed to "a man whose courage has never been questioned," as McCain described himself last week. Real men don't hide behind robocalls. It is nowhere near honorable.

But, my friends, I give you John McCain, 2008 edition--John McCain for the history books.

Update: Greg Sargent has all the skeevy robocalls...so far at TPM.

Levi Stubbs, Motown legend 1936-2008

Is McCain really proud of these crowds?
A video record of the hate whipped up by the GOP ticket.
by Joan Walsh

Palin supporters fear "blacks may take over"
by David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Supporters of Sarah Palin attending a rally in St. Clairsville, OH on Sunday were not shy about displaying their racist attitudes and their ignorance about Barack Obama -- along with their very real fears and insecurities -- to al-Jazeera reporter Casey Kauffman.

A Bush Style Whitewash
By Joe Conason —
For anyone who followed the story of how and why Sarah Palin fired her state’s public safety commissioner, last week’s release of a legislative investigation that found she had violated state ethics statutes was anticlimactic.

The Hoover-Palin Ticket
By Robert Scheer —
And the winner is … Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Remember him—the great Democratic president who saved capitalism from the capitalists by reining in their exorbitant greed? Forget the Reagan Revolution heralding a new era of small government, which turned out to be nothing more than a fig leaf for legalized corporate crime. The hero of the hour is FDR.

McCain Loses Again
In a bizarre debate dominated by Joe the Plumber, the GOP candidate failed to break through, and his sarcasm -- again -- will hurt him.
by Joan Walsh

McCain's Last Stand
The Republican senator's final debate performance was marked by oddball characters and marginal attacks, as hopes of his political resurrection appeared to fade.
By Walter Shapiro

THREE FOR THREECBS, CNN, FOX INSTANT REACTION... OBAMA TROUNCES MCCAIN

Watch full debate

Palin Family Values

The damning Troopergate report shows that Gov. Palin is not only unethical, but vindictive.
By Gary Kamiya

What Right Wingers Mean When They Call Obama A "Socialist"
by Adam Serwer
It's no wonder that the tone at McCain rallies reminds Congressman John Lewis of the bad old days. Conservatives are sounding increasingly retro with their attempts to paint Obama as a socialist or communist. These remarks aren't just disingenuous -- they're rooted in a history of conservative smears against black leaders.

The Poor Losers Of The Right

By Cernig

Pundits with conservative sympathies are starting to talk about the "L" word as they contemplate the utter collapse of Republican credibility and a probable scenario where Obama as President is backed by democratic majorities - even fillibuster-proof ones - in both Senate and House.

John McCain's campaign has already tacitly accepted the "landslide" scenario. It's latest tactic is to try to offer a McCain presidency to independents as a balance to Pelosi, something they wouldn't even contemplate if they thought that Republicans weren't going to take a major beating or if McCain had a chance of taking the White House under their own power.

They wouldn't be in such dire straits if the Bush Years hadn't been such a massive disaster in all ways both foreign and domestic, if McCain wasn't seen as just more of the same or if the GOP in general was seen as sensitive to the wants of voters rather than corporate giants and their lobbyists. It's their own damn fault and one of those generational adjustments that takes place whenever a polical party gets too used to idea of power (the permanent Republican majority), too incestuous with the big-money players (K Street Project revolving doors) or too hubristic about its ability to control the world around it (the neocon fantasy of "the end of history" and American hegemony). At some point in the future, it'll be the Democratic Party's turn again, although whether the GOP in its current form will still be around to witness that fall is beginning to be questioned too.

But hardline Republicans' reactions to their impending years in the wilderness are those of sullen and sore losers. They're turning to hate speech, false equivalences, myth-building to cover their own acts and myth-building to excuse their loss.

They're even setting up what Mark Steyn is already calling a "Cold Civil War". As my colleague Ron Beasley writes at Newshoggers:

the bile that will be heaped upon Obama after the election will make even the insanity of the Clinton years look tame in comparison ... the framing of it all being the fault of an illegitimate usurper who befriends terrorists and waves the white flag of surrender to America's enemies will likely find some powerful resonance. Scape-goating our problems always does, which is why we're entering such dangerous times, and it wouldn't surprise me to see Palin carrying the banner for all that insanity as she is now.

The GOP base loves her for it, and are already lining up to defend Palin from the consequences of her abusing power in Alaska, just as she'll be able to count on blaming McCain's "too honorable" campaign as the reason they lost. Get used to her. It's a safe bet you're looking at the future of the Republican Party.

Which is, by the by, why the Republican Party is going to become a whole lot smaller and perhaps even slip into the minor leagues, to be replaced by some new, saner center-right coalition with a new party name.

Still, I worry. The percentage of ultra-right diehards is likely to be enough to kick a few who are crazy enough to try make their long-promised insurrection or armed coup a possibility. Minority nutcases and to be labelled correctly as terrorists - but dangerous nonetheless.

Greenspan’s Reputation in Ruins—Deservedly So
By Amitabh Pal
The biggest bubble blown in the recent past—Alan Greenspan’s reputation—has finally been pricked.

TIME Mag: Troopergate Report Shows Palin Administration "Shockingly Amateurish"

The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama
By FRANK RICH
IF you think way back to the start of this marathon campaign, back when it seemed preposterous that any black man could be a serious presidential contender, then you remember the biggest fear about Barack Obama: a crazy person might take a shot at him.

The Mask Slips

By BOB HERBERT
The lesson for Americans suffused with anxiety and dread over the crackup of the financial markets is that the way you vote matters, that there are real-world consequences when you go into a voting booth and cast that ballot.

Rachel Maddow Discusses Sarah Palin’s Pals With Max Blumenthal

Meet Palin’s radical right-wing pals
By Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert

Panel: Palin Abused Power as Alaska Governor

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Sarah Palin unlawfully abused her power as governor by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper, the chief investigator of an Alaska legislative panel concluded Friday. The politically charged inquiry imperiled her reputation as a reformer on John McCain's Republican ticket.

The Rachel Maddow Show
Rachel talks with Melissa Harris Lacewell about why Obama might not be affected by the so-called "Bradley Effect."

McCain's attacks fuel dangerous hatred
By Frank Schaeffer
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

Moment of Truth
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Last month, when the U.S. Treasury Department allowed Lehman Brothers to fail, I wrote that Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, was playing financial Russian roulette. Sure enough, there was a bullet in that chamber: Lehman’s failure caused the world financial crisis, already severe, to get much, much worse.

Honor Won and Lost
by Joe Conason
Nothing in the presidential campaign so far has been as instructive as its swift descent into the politics of personal destruction. Although voters have probably heard little lately that they did not already know about Sen. Barack Obama, they have learned something very important about Sen. John McCain.

Worst of Times
by Garrison Keillor
Anybody who got whacked and still thinks McCain-Palin is going to lead us out of the swamp and not into a war with Iran is beyond persuasion in the English language. They'll need to lose their homes and be out on the street in a cold hard rain before they connect the dots.

Bill Ayres gutted your 401K. Who Knew?
Posted by Jay Carney
According to a new 30-second spot from the McCain campaign and the RNC, there is a connection between Barack Obama's association with domestic-terrorist-turned-professor-turned-Chicago-citizen-of-the-year Bill Ayers and the collapse of the housing, financial and credit markets. The connection is so obvious, the ad doesn't bother to explain it -- it just jumps from talking ominously about Obama's "blind ambition" in associating with Ayres to, abruptly, the alleged role of congressional liberals in blocking regulation and pushing for more shaky mortgages. And the connection is? As Howard Wolfson says, the ad is schizophrenic. It doesn't make sense. Which means voters probably won't buy it.

Esquire Endorses Obama

Biden: McCain Has Something To Say? Say It To Our Face
by Aaron Bruns

Joe Biden wasn’t impressed with John McCain’s style at Tuesday’s Presidential Debate.

It’s not about policy — where, as Biden told the crowd Missouri Western State University’s Looney Complex, he’s prejudiced towards his own ticket. Rather, it’s about the unwritten rules of the old neighborhood.

“All of the things they said about Barack Obama in the TV, on the TV, at their rallies, and now on Youtube and everything else,” Biden said — referring to McCain and Palin tying Obama to Weatherman bomber Bill Ayers and accusing him of “palling around with terrorists.”

“John McCain could not bring himself to look Barack Obama in the eye and say the same things to him,” he said to cheers. “In my neighborhood, you got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him.“

Biden wasn’t too taken with McCain’s new proposal to use $300 billion in taxpayer funds to buy bad mortgages from banks, either.

“He wasn’t going to buy them for what the bank paid for them, he was going to buy them for their market value was. And then on Wednesday morning, he said — his campaign said no, we made a mistake. We are going to buy them exactly what the bank paid for them,” Biden said. “He’s gonna spend $300 billion of your money so the banks don’t lose a single penny.”

“I know it sounds like fiction, but I’m not making this up,” said Biden. “He’s gone to the point of actually wanting to reward banks and lenders for their greedy behavior. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a steady hand.”

Since Biden returned to the trail, his attacks on McCain have focused on his negativity and inability to take a position; Biden referred to McCain “lurching” from position to position three times in today’s event. But Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill chose to focus on the increasingly ugly nature of the campaign in her introduction - calling McCain’s campaign “petty, small, and personal.”

“The politics of fear and smear,” McCaskill called the McCain strategy. “They want America to be afraid of this inspirational, smart, strong, humble, patriotic, god fearing family man. That’s what they want. I’ll tell you what the United States of America should be afraid of. They should be afraid of four more years of Bush economics.”

Palin's Kind of Patriotism
by Thomas Friedman
Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”

Clearing the Ayers
by Gail Collins
John McCain traces the rancorous tone of the presidential campaign back to last summer when he invited Barack Obama to have lots and lots of town-hall meetings with him all around the country. When Obama turned him down, obviously McCain had no choice but to start depicting his opponent as a terrorist-loving advocate of talking dirty to kindergarteners.

A Plague Upon The White House

By Robert Scheer —
I am not a conventionally religious man, or even a very superstitious one, but I do wish George Bush would stop asking God to bless America. Every time he does, we seem to be visited with another plague, suggesting divine wrath over our president’s evil ways. How else to explain the persistent calamity that has marked this administration?

David Brooks: Sarah Palin "Represents A Fatal Cancer To The Republican Party"

Not "The Senator", But "That One"
by John Nichols:
John McCain knows political etiquette, but his disdainful reference to Obama took Tuesday's debate down a low road. It isn't playing well.

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

FOX, CNN, CBS REACTION GROUPS:OBAMA WON

A debate for sobering times
With the economy nose-diving, McCain did not achieve the surge he needed, while Obama looked masterly as the candidate of reassurance.
By Walter Shapiro

Arianna Huffington: The Winner Of Debate II? "That One"...


Here's complete video of the debate if you missed it:

Sarah Palin's museum of trite right-wing tactics: 1980-2008
by Glenn Greenwald
Listening to a Sarah Palin rally is like visiting a museum exhibit of every empty, trite, manipulative right-wing political slogan from the last three decades.

The Palin's Un-American Activities
Imagine if the Obamas had hooked up with a violently anti-American group in league with the government of Iran.
By David Talbot

Republican Crowds Getting a Little Nuts

Chalk it up to the trickle-down effect of the recent mudslinging or simply the desperation of watching John McCain's prospects dwindle, but the crowds at McCain-Palin events are getting kind of out of control recently. Yesterday someone shouted out "Terrorist!" when McCain asked rhetorically, "Who is Barack Obama?" At another rally, when Palin mentioned Obama's relationship with William Ayers, someone yelled out "Kill him!" — though it's unclear whether that was directed at Obama or Ayers. And today at another Palin event, someone in the audience shouted "Treason!" after Palin told the crowd that Obama said "that our troops in Afghanistan are just 'air-raiding villages and killing civilians.'" Basically, these rallies are turning into a sinister form of $20,000 Pyramid: "This is what we call it when a presidential candidate hates American troops." "Treason!" "Okay, and this is what you call a presidential candidate who hates America." "A terrorist!" "Okay, and this is something you do with a terrorist." "Umm … Kill him!" Bzzzz. Time's up.

It's not all fun and games, however, for the journalists covering the events, like the ones met with obscenities and racial epithets at the Palin rally in Clearwater yesterday, as reported in the Washington Post. Maybe it's a blessing, then, that the journalists covering Palin were forbidden to roam outside their designated press area to talk with supporters, so as to prevent "negative things" from being written. With audiences like these, can you really blame them? The mind reels at what priceless nuggets of wisdom reporters could gather if the people in these crowds were given the chance to express themselves with a full sentence.

Update: Radar reports that the Secret Service has contacted Post reporter Dana Milbank to investigate the threat he heard from the crowd.
Unleashed, Palin Makes a Pit Bull Look Tame [WP]
Press kept under a watchful eye [St. Petersburg Times]

The GOP goes back to its ugly roots

McCain is resurrecting the GOP's oldest tactic: Smearing Obama as a scary black terrorist sympathizer. But he may meet the same fate as Barry Goldwater.
By Gary Kamiya

How low will McCain and Palin go?

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.

by Joan Walsh

Arianna Huffington McCain's Desperate Claim: Obama is Dangerous. Vote for Me If You Want to Live!

John McCain's unprecedentedly ugly speech today
The increasingly petty and ugly attacks on Barack Obama by a desperate, dying movement are a microcosm of the last eight years.
by Glenn Greenwald

KEATING ECONOMICS: John McCain & The Making of a Financial Crisis

Thirty Lies Refuted About Ayers And Obama
by John K. Wilson
The gutter politics of the McCain campaign is reaching down once again to denounce Obama for his distant past links to Bill Ayers in an unprecedented guilt-by-association attack for a presidential campaign

Make Believe Maverick

A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty.
by TIM DICKINSON

A Country in Shambles, Under GOP Rule
by Glenn Greenwald
The overarching reality of the country is that we've lived under unchallenged Republican rule and the country has virtually collapsed on every level. No matter how dumb Rich Lowry and David Brooks fantasize The Regular People to be, those facts are far too glaring to suppress.

The Non-Debate
by Juan Cole

It was not a debate. Just as television in prime time has been largely emptied of drama and innovative comedy, with a few exceptions, in favor of empty-headed "reality shows," so the political debates have mostly been gutted.

Judging "how the candidates did" is rather like weighing in on the wittiness of the libretto of "Big Brother" or the pace of character development in the latest episode of "Keeping up with the Kardashians." The genre of the political review assumes that both candidates are credible in their roles. It becomes self-parody when one candidate is a ditzy nonentity cynically foisted on the public in the same way a 'reality show' is, based on a targeted demographic and without regard to quality.

It reminded me of the excruciating first episodes every season of "American Idol," when a single candidate is found who has the voice of an angel and then everyone else auditioned sounds like fingernails on a blackboard.

The news organizations and civic groups that sponsor political debates have allowed the campaigns to push them around so vigorously that nothing like a debate is any longer possible. The Bushies even tried to force the networks to hide the fact that John Kerry was taller than his rival in 2004. It is not about debating but about how your candidate looks on television.

Not only was there no debate but Sarah Palin was not required actually to answer any of the questions put to her, and she announced before she began that she was just going to throw up on us all the talking points that she had binged on in Arizona for the past few days.

She mugged for the camera, winked like a bar fly, and just went on talking and talking and talking, oblivious to whatever anyone else said. Not only did she ignore most of Gwen Ifill's questions,she paid no attention to what Joe Biden said. When he choked up over the loss of his family, she did not have the decency to express any kind of condolences. It is almost as though she is narcissistic and unable to connect with human beings.

Not only was it not a debate and not only did Palin answer virtually none of the questions put to her, but the whole idea of such an event was ridiculous.

Joe Biden has been either the chairman or the ranking minority member on the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee for many years, and is one of our foremost foreign affairs experts and legislators. His acumen and expertise are wide-ranging.

Palin has revealed her real self in the Gibson and Couric interviews, and clearly knows nothing and offers only rubbery expressions and glib repetition, for all the world like a rasping myna bird, of a stream of memorized slogans that sound as though they were disinterred from a time capsule originally buried in William F. Buckley Jr.'s back yard several decades ago.

It was not a debate, and pretending that it was and judging "performance" is to fall into the trap set by the campaign spinmeisters and talking point pimps.

Pitbull Palin Mauls McCain
by FRANK RICH
The 2008 election is now an Obama-Palin race about “the future,” and the only person who doesn’t seem to know it is Mr. Past, poor old John McCain.

Palin's Alternate Universe
By BOB HERBERT
Sarah Palin is the perfect exclamation point to the Bush years.

Sarah's Pompom Palaver
By MAUREEN DOWD
I had hoped I was finally done with acting as an interpreter for politicians whose relationship with the English language was tumultuous.

Sailing Over the Low Bar
By TOBIN HARSHAW
“She killed,” writes Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal, and there’s no need to ask who “she” is.

The Dumbing Down of the GOP

Why aren't more conservatives disgusted that their party nominated a person devoid of qualifications for the vice presidency (again)?
By Joe Conason

The Man's A Champ by Noam Scheiber

Hockey Mom On Thin Ice
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Early in last night's vice-presidential debate, Sarah Palin said that she might not answer the questions as moderator Gwen Ifill posed them. This was the Alaska governor's way of saying she was going to stick to the talking points she had stuffed into her head, no matter what the subject.

How Sarah Palin Blew It
She asked for more vice-presidential power on the heels of Dick Cheney's abuse, and she failed to show simple decency when Biden referenced his family tragedy.
by Joan Walsh

Sarah Palin exceeds expectations--and still loses
Debating Joe Biden, Palin avoids another train wreck, delivering Republican talking points with robotic determination. But she also fails to convince undecided voters to stop their movement toward Obama.
By Mike Madden

Arianna Huffington: VP Debate: McCain's Big Gamble Comes Up Snake Eyes
After Thursday night, the only thing Palin proved herself good enough for is starring in her own reality show.

Here's complete video of the debate if you missed it:

Sarah Six-Pack Needs To Put Country First By Stepping Down
by Bob Cesca
Sarah Palin is, by all indications, a bonafide hooplehead -- so dangerously out of her depth and so delusional -- perhaps blinded by ambition -- that she is in total denial about the real-world ramifications of her ineptitude. Instead, she's excusing her embarrassing television interviews and farcical candidacy as an historical breakthrough for "normal Joe Six-pack Americans."

Homer tries to vote for Obama

The MSM's Shameless Fear Mongering
Now that the House has rejected the $700 billion bailout, what we have to fear is not fear itself, but fear-mongering--particularly by our leading news organizations.
Katie Couric opened the "CBS Evening News" last night with video of the House clerk declaring the 205-228 vote, and then she said, "That sets off the biggest decline in stock prices ever."
Wrong.
by David Cay Johnston

Boston Tea Party 2008
By Robert Scheer —
How dare you throw that tea into Boston Harbor! Such is the anti-democratic arrogance of the fear-mongering pundits and politicians who tell us if we taxpayers don’t instantly give the Wall Street banking bandits a $700-billion bailout, we are destroying America.

Banking Collapse Lands on America's Schools
By Bill Boyarsky —
One of the worst casualties of the Iraq war and the Wall Street failures is the U.S. public school system, which is central to the nation’s economic, intellectual and social health. With financial resources being consumed, education cuts are on the way. Thank you, John McCain and President George W. Bush.

Thank You Katie Couric

It took a woman to expose Palin.
CBS News' Katie Couric's empathetic interviewing style and smart (but not tough) questioning fully and finally exposed that vice-presidential nominee Governor Sarah Palin is not qualified to be vice-president.

by Katrina vanden Heuvel

Religuluous!

Religulous: Official Site