safe-haven laws,

or how to make a kid feel wanted.

LOL

I'm there.  

On not mailing it in

Apparently mail hoarding is a little more common than I'd like to think. The upshot is that usually instances of mail hoarding involve only junk mail; in other words, hoarding of this variety is somewhat of a public service.

Make note: don't move to Chicago if that $25.00 Christmas check from Aunt Millie is a key item in your annual budget.

My favorite line: "I'm glad in a way," he told his judge. "It needs sorting."

Breaking: Hitler only had one testicle.

hypothetically speaking

(updated)

Let's say any Republican (or independent who caucuses with the Republicans after his homestate Republican voters effectively ejected him from the party) senator who chairs a committee had gone around the country during the campaign and campaigned for Obama, spoke at the DNCC, supported two Democratic incumbent senators against promising Republican challengers, repeatedly intimated and coyly refused to rule out that Sen. McCain was a fascist ("an interesting idea") and Nazi,* and routinely questioned McCain's patriotism.  McCain then wins the election, and the Republicans end up taking a huge majorities in both the Senate and House.  Does the senator get to keep his chairmanship?  Hell no.  And he'd probably suffer far worse consequences than that.  Do you think a Tom DeLay or Mitch McConnell would put up with that sort of treachery?  Of course they wouldn't.  

But what's really interesting, and I'm just totally conjecturing here, but were a Democratic senator to have done some of the things above viz. John McCain--insinuate he's a fascist and Nazi and openly question his patriotism repeatedly--isn't it probably the case that that senator would get more flak and fallout from the Democratic leadership than what Lieberman's getting here?  I can just imagine the furrowed eyebrows and scowls on Reid's face when dealing with a renegade senator who went "over the line" in his/her rhetoric and would be sanctioned somehow as a result.  Fox News would be in a feeding frenzy, as would talk radio and the rightwing blogosphere.  And respectable liberals would chime in to say how unfortunate Senator X's remarks were (enter stage right: Marshall, Yglesias, et al.).  I could see Sen. X even losing his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Gov't Affairs Cmte; after all, he insinuated that President-elect McCain was unpatriotic and was a Nazi, etc.  That sort of far-out leftist lunatic can't be trusted with something as important as our nation's security!  

Isn't it sad and doesn't it illuminate how the Democratic leadership simply thinks of its earnest leftwing supporters and die-hard partisans who comprise the base as useful idiots and saps?  It's very likely the case that Lieberman will get off with the same sort of punishment (or less!) than hypothetical Sen. X, even though Sen. X merely impugned McCain's patriotism and insinuated he's a Nazi/fascist, but did not campaign for Republicans, speak at the RNCC, etc.  

My point here is that the Democratic Party will treat equally or perhaps punish more severely the rhetorical excesses of those of its own who impugn hard-right, war-mongering Republicans as it will those of its own who savage the Democratic nominee in the most vicious and scurrilous ways on top of a litany of other serious acts of party disloyalty and treachery.  

[*I chose "fascist" and "Nazi" because I think these two terms are roughly the rightist equivalent (at least rhetorically or slander-wise) of "socialist" and "Marxist," respectively.]

Update: And . . . capitulation--standard operating procedure for Democrats when it comes to standing up to the dominant right-wing and imperialistic slant of our politics and discourse.  Taking away that subcommittee chair who no one, including Lieberman, gives a shit about is really gonna teach him.  Reid and most all of the other Senate Democrats are pathetic jokes.   Although I guess the joke's on the Left and the activist base.  We've seen this movie before many times, and I suspect it'll be on heavy re-runs over the next four years.  Notice Sen. Mikulski's obsequious and deferential posture--she'll take her cues from the leadership, which is appropriate enough, and President-elect Obama.  Note to Sen. Mikulski: there are three branches of government and Obama is no longer a member of the legislative branch.  Theoretically, his opinion on this matter shouldn't count any more than mine or yours.  But I guess old habits, deferring to the executive branch no matter who occupies it, die hard.  

This episode with the new White House Chief of Staff illustrates pretty clearly why leftist voters, among other groups, need a vehicle outside of the Democratic Party in which to register their dissent, i.e., America needs (at least) another political party and/or states' ballot access requirements for independent candidacies need to be made less onerous.  It's maddening enough when the Democratic Party can take certain constituencies' support--leftists, blacks, unionists, gays--for granted b/c those groups have nowhere else to go electorally.  Worse is when the Democratic leadership actually uses their base's ineffectual anger at having enabled or ratified Bush lawbreaking to score points with center/right voters, or, as Emanuel put it, to look more "bipartisan."  

Oh never mind.  kos is right, fuck Ralph Nader. 

curious(?)

A major California theater director decided it would be a good idea to fork over $1,000.00 to the Yes on 8 campaign.  Probably not the best idea professionally.  Sort of like a greyhound track owner donating to Yes on 3 in Massachusetts?  

Or the 43rd President of the United States actively supporting the San Francisco sewage treatment plant ballot proposition (Prop R)?

You want self-destructive?  I'll SHOW you self-destructive!!  I fucking wrote, directed and produced self-destructive, and  then set it to a saccharine and absurdly catchy musical tune!  

Master of the House . . . da, da-da, da-da.. .

can someone please kill dead the "open letter" device, or maybe levy a steep surcharge on each usage?  or at least make it vaguely interesting and/or funny, as opposed to the weepy sentimental crap you usually get with the form that makes me want to claw my eyes out?  it's a device where were it to disappear altogether I'd never fucking miss it for one bloody second.  and for whatever reason, big historic events seem to trigger people's open-letter-writing inner dickwad so that you find a sappy one in every corner of the liberal blogosphere.  

An open letter to open-letter writers

Dear fuckwad,

Please stop.  Now.  

Also, I can't tell you how much this moment in history means to me.  

Please use your unique power and role in world history to do X, Y, and Z (in this case, X Y, and Z being the cessation of the production of any further open letters).  

In closing, please close the book on the open letter.  

Breathlessly, 

J

A dubious Rahmulan

See if you can count all of the things that are wrong with this passage--sort of like Highlights, except perverse and without pictures.  

Kaus:

I admire Rahm Emanuel. Without him welfare reform might not have happened in 1996, and the Dems might not have won back a House majority a decade later. (Two milestones that, I think, are not unconnected--welfare reform made liberal government acceptable again.) Emanuel is smart, relentless, disciplined, gets things done, a winner, all that stuff. But here's my problem with having him as chief of staff: Suppose you work for President Obama. You send a memo up the line to the Oval Office. If a week later Rahm Emanuel tells you he's showed it to the President, would you believe him?

By way of an answer, I should add that among Clinton-era welfare reporters, the rule of thumb was that you called Rahm to get the administration's line and then you called Bruce Reed to find out if it was the truth. ... 

P.S.: But Rahm was not the unnamed Clinton official who foolishly boasted to Michael Kramer, early in the administration, that the Clintonites would "roll" Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Ask Lawrence O'Donnell if you don't believe me. ... 8:57 P.M.

Ironically, most community organizers would know these things.  

Droopy

(updated)

can you imagine how Bush and Rove would be dealing with a, say, Lincoln Chafee or someone like that had he committed the same acts of apostasy Lieberman has? would NOT be pretty, and the near-universal view, both among politicians and the media, would be that he made his bed and now he's got to lay in it.  we're talking broken legs territory here.

but not with Lieberman and the Democrats. He can imply the president-elect is unpatriotic and campaign for at least two Republican senators' reelections and speak at the RNCC and, oh, that's just Joe being Joe. Fine, let Joe be Joe. but why on earth should he get to capitalize on the Democratic majority (chairmanships are available ONLY to the majority party) when he actively campaigned against a Democratic majority? yeah, so he contributed money to the DSCC, but that, in my mind, doesn't nearly make up for his vouching (and raising money for in the first instance) on the campaign trail for Sens. Collins and Coleman. whatever--don't have a dog in that fight -the Ds can run their caucus however they see fit. Just seems pretty fucking stupid to me. and all of this nonsense about conciliation etc. rings pretty hollow after Obama just selected Rahm Emanuel as his COS, a guy who's about as conciliatory as a thumb in your eye.

really this seems to be an odd strategy to engender in the caucus the notion of party loyalty, which, like it or not, is important if you want to get anything done. shouldn't you, as a D leader, want folks to think that there are consequences to betraying the caucus and party? if i'm a member of the caucus and I see Reid deal with this situation in this way, I'm certainly not going to be too concerned with any flak I could get from Reid if, in a moment of political expedience, I'm wavering on whether or not to vote cloture. oddly, in the upside down world that is the Washington D.C. Democrat frame of mind, they seem to be offering Lieberman carrots for his perfidy. MORE STICK PLEASE!

Update:

I was going to say, SEE??!!?!!, but then I caught myself b/c I realized this the national Democratic Party we're talking about here and they've long since become every bit as bad as the Republicans when it comes to pro-Israel propaganda and policy--which is saying a lot. If anything, this'll shore up his support within what's now the Democratic Party mainstream.

John Leonard

I'll really miss his great reviews.  I was always so amazed at how prolific the guy seemed.  With each issue of Harper's he'd have his standard review where he gave his shortish take on three or four new books each month.  Then I'd pick up a copy of the NY Review and he'd have a longish review there.  And then he'd have a review in The Nation one month . . . I don't know where he found all of the time to read all of these books, let along write thoughtful, wide-ranging essays on them.  

I'm sorry nation, my hands are tied here

Leave it to TNR to point to the obvious: Obama picked Emanuel as COS because he had no other choice!  

Isn't it obvious, people, that Americans didn't go to the polls in record numbers to elect Barack Obama president last Tuesday.  Nope.  They went to the polls to elect Rahm Emanuel Chief of Staff of the United States of America.  They had to.  Otherwise altering this one immutable, Calvinistically pre-determined certainty of human history would've brought the earth to a grinding halt on its very axis.  Thank God that didn't happen.  

Don DeLillo blogs about the election.

As good as Alan Dershowitz's!

Well I for one feel a lot better now.  

choosing day

From the Boston Glob:

ELECTION DAY, NOVEMBER, 1884

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,

'Twould not be you, Niagara - nor you, ye limitless prairies - nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,

Nor you, Yosemite - nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,

Nor Oregon's white cones - nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes - nor Mississippi's stream:

This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name - the still small voice vibrating -America's choosing day,

wherever you were on the thug and "up to no good" index before, add an arm sling and your score goes through the roof.  

Dr. Pepper and a bag of chips

Sometimes I really don't know why I read the news.  

yeah sure

This Greenwald post almost makes me grateful that some thieving Scottish hooligans used to steal my issues of TNR.  It was tough medicine to swallow at the time, but I now see that it was fundamentally a gesture of love.  

radiating congeniality

From Alexander Cockburn, an interesting (if extremely poorly sourced) take on alleged recent developments in McCain's health status.  Very troubling if it's the case that McCain's received treatment for cancer recurrence as recent as a few weeks ago.  For my thoughts on this, I refer you to my earlier post "a cancer on the presidency."  

If you want an example of someone making quick work of any potential nagging cognitive dissonance, you could do worse than check out Cockburn's second item, where he incredibly suggests that since the bailout vote Democrats' chances of gaining any seats in the House have pretty much evaporated.  He makes vague reference to an unnamed poll, assumedly one that is being maintained by the Republicans in a secret, undisclosed location.  Look out world!

Finally, as a lapsed subscriber to CP, I recall being frustrated that my issues always came long after they were published and the resulting untimeliness convinced me that it wasn't worth the $35, particularly when I could read Cockburn's stuff online either on his own site or elsewhere.  In a bid to be more relevant this election season with this McCain health coverage, I wonder if Cockburn and St. Claire might consider finally ditching the carrier pigeon method of distribution and perhaps consider posting their material directly online and, if necessary, charging a fee--preferably per article?  

candor

10 seats!  Wow, that'd be quite a feat.  I'm sure the war in Iraq would be over in no time in that case.  

But in all seriousness, strange that the most sober bit of candor about Republican prospects on Nov. 4 comes from Republican strategist Ed Rollins, the same dude that once tried to payoff a bunch of black pastors in New Jersey so their congregants wouldn't go to the polls on election day.  From the Nation:

bloodline

With all of this high-minded talk about Obama's bloodline, I thought I'd enter the fray to point out that new evidence has come to light pointing to Palin's obvious bloodline connection to a certain hinterland politician vying to depose Stephen Harper.   

Via Ambinder:

Crookline

Here's a mildly amusing article recounting McCain's "five oldest moments" during the most recent debate.  

I like this one:

4. Leaving the floor. After the debate finished, both McCain and Obama worked the crowd to shake hands with members of the audience. But McCain departed after a few minutes, leaving the entire place to Obama, who continued to meet and take photos for what seemed like another half hour. Why would McCain allow Obama to soak up the TV coverage of that scene — much of which continued on cable news long after the debate was over — all by himself? Our guess is that he was just pooped after standing and walking for most of the debate.

Mostly because it reminded me of Michael Dukakis in 1988, when he finished one of his debates with H.W. and got the hell outta the auditorium in a hurry.  I remember my mom remarking that that wasn't probably the wisest thing to have done, to leave the cameras with nothing else to film except H.W. shaking people's hands and, while breathing through his mouth like he was in a porta-john, pretending their pedestrian body odor didn't bother him.  

And I also like it because it gives me cause to reprint the following greatest picture from 1988:

And, please, whatever you do today, note the "Mike Dukakis" label on the helmet.  I can see the careful deliberation that went into this by his campaign higher-ups.   "We've got to assure that he has some way of identifying which helmet is his--otherwise those hooligan army boys could run off with his helmet!  But if we put a 'Michael Dukakis' label on his helmet, well, that sounds too stilted and he could get de-pantsed.  So we'll go with the laid back, 'with it' variant 'Mike Dukakis.'  Win/win!"  

Mike Dukakis: I'm gonna shoot your Soviet ass with my label gun!!!

Whatever, the guy lives in Brookline. 

This is how the world will end . . .

. . . not with a bang or a whimper, but with Walt Monegan's mouth.  

why do I have the sneaking suspicion that Walt Monegan's mouth is an emerging black hole that will suck up the entire contents of the universe, leaving nothing behind but perhaps two or three pathetic examples of John McCain's support for more regulation?  

It does look weird, right?  The mustache and all, and the skin around his mouth that's sort of like a sinkhole in the middle of his face?  Am I alone in this?

Better question: am I alone here?   

what ifs

I'm glad somebody finally stated the obvious: if "That One" ends up getting the nod, we're all fucked.  

Roe

Interesting commentary on the past and prospective jurisprudence surrounding abortion rights, with at least a little to say about the impact an Obama administration would have on Roe's staying power.  

He could be

Via the most popular one-man political blog site in the world, perhaps the most illuminating, sobering, yet somehow unsurprising three or four minutes of footage on the campaign to date:

Favorite parts:  

Q: When did you first hear of Obama?

A: Never.  

and

the bit where the legal eagle gives his hand-wench some pretty keen advice to "refuse to answer any questions unless they give them to you in writing."  Brilliant!  

and

Q: Is Barack Obama a terrorist?

A: He could be.

Way to explore the very outer edges of logical possibility!!!  

Seriously, were all of these people just drunk?  

it's good . . . it's natural

TV reader surveys are back and after careful analysis, it appears that a full 1/3 of TV readers have an abiding interest in the native intelligence of swine.  

As such, w/out further ado, here is the latest from Saul Bellow on smart pigs:

When I came back from the war it was with the thought of becoming a pig farmer, which maybe illustrates what I thought of life in general.

Monte Cassino should never have been bombed; some blame it on the dumbness of the generals.  But after that bloody murder, where so many Texans were wiped out, and my outfit also took a shellacking later, there were only Nicky Goldstein and myself left out of the original bunch, and this was odd because we were the two largest men in the outfit and offered the best targets.  Later I was wounded too, by a land mine.  But at that time, Goldstein and I were lying down under the olive trees--some of those gnarls open out like lace and let the light through--and I asked him what he aimed to do after the war.  He said, "Why, me and my brother, if we live and be well, we're going to have a mink ranch in the Catskills."  So I, or my demon said for me, "I'm going to start breeding pigs."  And after these words were spoken I knew that if Goldstein had not been a Jew I might have said cattle and not pigs.  So then it was too late to retract.  So for all I know Goldstein and his brother have a mink business while I have--something else.  I took all the handsome old farm buildings, the carriage house with paneled stalls--in the old days a rich man's horses were handled like opera singers--and the fine old barn with the belvedere above the hayloft, a beautiful piece of architecture, and I filled them up with pigs, a pig kingdom, with pig houses on the lawn and in the flower garden.  The greenhouse, too--I let them root out the old bulbs.  Statues from Florence and Salzburg were turned over.  The place stank of swill and pigs and the mashes cooking, and dung.  Furious, my neighbors got the health officer after me.  I dared him [sic] to take me to law. "Hendersons have been on this property over two hundred years," I said to this man, a certain Dr. Bullock.  

By my then wife, Frances, no word was said except, "Please keep them off the driveway."

"You'd better not hurt any of them," I said to her.  "Those animals have become a part of me."  And I told this Dr. Bullock, "All those civilians and 4Fs have put you up to this.  Those twerps.  Don't they ever eat pork?"

Have you seen, coming from New Jersey to New York, the gabled pens and runways that look like models of German villages from the Black Forest?  Have you smelled them (before the train enters the tunnel to go under the Hudson)?  These are pig-fattening stations.  Lean and bony after their trip from Iowa and Nebraska, the swine are fed here.  Anyway, I was a pig man.  And as the prophet Daniel warned King Nebuchadnezzar, "They shall drive thee from among men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field."  Sows eat their young because they need the phosphorus.  Goiter attacks them as it does women.  Oh, I made a considerable study of these clever doomed animals.  For all pig breeders know how clever they are.  The discovery that they were so intelligent gave me a kind of trauma.  But if I had not lied to Frances and those animals had actually become a part of me, then it was curious that I lost interest in them.

Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King 20-21.  

* * * *

In addition to pig stories, in response to requests from readers from near and far the coming month will bring pictures of both the beautiful fall foliage, a measure of time's ceaseless tumble forward, and my johnson.  

GYWO: Sarah Palin

funny.

getting your money's worth

What a shocker.  

Apparently my earlier understanding was incomplete.  I was under the impression that various Democratic Party-aligned groups and a huge corrupt law firm spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2004 to boot Nader off the ballot and then, once accomplished, in an unprecedented move, went after him and his running mate to recover the court costs in removing him from the ballot, totaling more than $160,000, and going so far as to attempt to attach one of Nader's personal accounts in the District of Columbia.  In reality,this was only part of the story, and, incredibly, the cleanest.   It turns out through the payment of my (meager) taxes, I actually subsidized these corrupt and anti-democratic efforts because state workers were illegally working "all day long" during the 2004 campaign to block Nader's ballot access by invalidating signatures and the like, i.e., being paid by the state to perform work for a campaign, or, in other words, they made a huge in-kind contribution to the pathetic Kerry-Edwards campaign* that was supported financially by the taxes of all Pennsylvanians.  Lovely.  

I hasten to add that Pennsylvania maintains one of the most onerous and indefensibly exclusive ballot access laws in the country, requiring anywhere from 25,000 to 30,000 signatures (depending on the year) in order to be placed on the ballot--that is, only if you're a minor candidate.   It goes without saying that the two major political parties don't face a similar hurdle.  

Relevant passage from the Post-Gazette:

Back in the courtroom, witnesses described the election work being done at state expense between 2004 and 2006.

The work included preparing challenges to 2004 presidential candidate Ralph Nader's nominating petitions, they testified yesterday in Dauphin County Common Pleas Court.

The Nader effort was "massive and completely consuming," testified Melissa Lewis, who worked in Mr. Veon's office and now is caucus director of the Allegheny County delegation. "That's what we did all day long."

*I hope history will record that not only was the Kerry-Edwards juggernaut unable to win fair and square, but it's now clear it was unable to win despite cheating and effectively disenfranchising voters.  Of course, taints like this just undermine Democrats when they begin to, self-interestedly, bleat about voter suppression efforts.  There are no doubt credible allegations of vile voter suppression efforts being perpetrated by the Republicans and their ilk, but when Democrats so brazenly conspire with others to prevent voters from having a choice, well, their credibility to make voter suppression complaints goes out the window.  

Wellstone!

So, I recall back in 2002 when I was doing nothing much of anything except waiting tables and following a few U.S. Senate races pretty closely.  My favorite to follow was the Wellstone/Coleman race in Minnesota.  Recall that this election came right at the heels of the rushed vote for the AUMF and under incredible pressure to vote yes, Wellstone stuck to his guns and voted no, and, as I recall, made a pretty good speech about it on the floor to boot.  

He was always a hero of mine.  I remember in 11th grade (it woulda been 1996, snow was on the ground) me and a friend of mine went up to Minnesota to visit my sister at college and, in a very unserious way, check out a few colleges on our own.  Yes, we were geeks, but we made it a point to head to what I think was Wellstone's St. Joseph, MN campaign office.  We picked up a t-shirt and a bumpersticker or two, probably chipped in a couple of bucks for them as they weren't going to make much of a difference to out of staters, and were on our way back on the road, smoking cigarettes and enlivened by all of the freedom.  I had that green Wellstone! sticker on my bumper for several years and only got rid of it once the old Red Baron died.  True, I think most folks thought the sticker was some strange reference to smoking pot or something, but I was proud to have it on my car.  

So, fast-forward to 2002.  He's a hero of mine still and it's a tight race between Wellstone and the craven Norm Coleman.  All of a sudden, out of the blue, Wellstone's campaign plane crashes in Northern MN, killing the senator, his wife, his daughter, and the pilot.  Just like that.  I'm sure I cried myself to bed that night on my huge pillow, and I always get wistful and nostalgic when I think of what a great senator he was, and, from the anecdotes I've heard from folks who have had first-hand experiences with him, what a great and decent man he was (these latter qualities being pretty rare in politicians as I understand it).  As you probably know, Wellstone was then replaced on the ballot by fmr. Vice President Walter Mondale, who went on to lose the seat to Coleman.  

This is all to point you toward the following video, highlighted by Ezra Klein earlier today.  In it, Coleman's campaign manager tries to evade questions about some suits that someone allegedly purchased for Senator Coleman as a gift and that went unreported (whether for good reason or not).  I don't typically like to watch folks squirm like this, but, well, since 2002 I've pretty much felt like the apotheosis of my political spectating would be reached once Coleman goes down to ignominious defeat of huge, humiliating, world-historic proportions.  Because he's a slimeball, a fake, and basically the perversion of everything Wellstone was.  Oh, and he has funny teeth.  Personally, I think Coleman's routine funding of an unjust war that's resulting in the deaths of all manner of soldiers, civilians, children, etc., should be reason enough to oust the douchebag.  But apparently that's not enough to get you fired these days.  Well, if having a foreign-sounding guy buy your nice suits will do the trick, then I'm all for it.  Again, couldn't happen to a nicer guy.  

Coleman is locked in a tight battle with the very funny Al Franken and former senator and independent Dean Barkley.  I really don't care whether Franken or Barkley wins.  I don't know enough about either of their positions on various issues, but I know enough to know that I don't necessarily find either utterly repellent.  And, of course, anyone is far preferable to Coleman.  So I hope one of the two challengers wins.  And, as Klein points out, and I hope he's right, this Neiman Marcusgate thing just might push Franken over the top, or at least Coleman out the door.  We can hope.  This is one race in which I'll be closely following the returns come election night.  And, if as speculated, Coleman goes on to defeat, I predict I'll have that sort of warm civic feeling I got when I first voted and was (almost) impaneled on a jury, together with the feeling that some things can be made right (or as close to right as possible), but it just takes time.  

I sure hope someone can get it done for Paul come Nov. 4.  

Glamour and culture

My friends, these are not small-town values we can believe in.  

Great article on Palin in the LRB by Jonathan Raban.  Here's a snippet:

Palin’s view of aesthetics was nicely highlighted in 1996, a few months before she ran for mayor, when a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News happened to light on her in an excited crowd of five hundred women queuing up in the Anchorage J.C. Penney’s, waiting to snag the autograph of Ivana Trump, who was in town to hawk her eponymous line of scent.

‘We want to see Ivana,’ Palin said, who admittedly smells like a salmon for a large part of the summer, ‘because we are so desperate in Alaska for any semblance of glamour and culture.’

Here's hoping she was able to finagle a playstation 2 for her trouble as well, or whatever it is people were waiting outside department stores in the cold for in 1996.  

This is just surreal.  

What a wonderful day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

to do

Probably not many people have the following on a to-do list:

Email dad to remind him to wear priest collar on trip home from South America to help avoid being mugged en route.

TMI!

LOL from HuffPost:

 "I've been in an underdog position quite often in my life and so has John McCain and we've both come out victoriously from that underdog position."

the debate

I thought Obama did a lot better last night.  In a few exchanges, Obama was masterful and fluid, particularly where he rebuffed McCain on his "he doesn't understand" line.  I'm happy to see that Obama improved, showed more fight, and certainly had a presidential air of confidence and authority, whereas McCain's shallow, labored breathing, his constant incantations of "my friends," and his adept use of the third-person pronoun "that one" to describe someone standing 10 feet away from him, all fell flat and were evidence of a generally languid performance.  Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.  

I still feel like Obama speaks in this halting sort of way.  On the plus side, it's likely that he's simply being very deliberate about what he says, editing along the way so as not to commit some gaffe that wouldn't be forgiven a black guy running for president.  On the negative side, it really makes it sound like he's one of those translators at the U.N. or somewhere, listening to the original in a headset, translating instantaneously, and (inevitably) rendering it in an uneven and halting manner.  

Substance-wise, it strikes me how much, even in this overwhelmingly Democratic election, the discourse and policy prescriptions are heavily skewed toward right-wing orthodoxies.  With the major exceptions of Obama's insistence that taxes for those with incomes above $250,000 will go up and all other rates will either stay steady or decline, and his (typically) hedging claim that health care "should" be a right, he's no leftist; rather, he's a garden-variety centrist Democrat.  At least that's what his campaign (and his tenure in the U.S. Senate) have shown him to be thus far.  

In other words, again I seem to be in agreement, more or less, with this guy.  Although I wasn't as bothered by the candidates' unwillingness to answer the question asked as he apparently was, though this is probably due to being completely inured to this phenomenon after the Palin non sequitur marathon the other night.  

BREAKING * * * EWOKS BACK MCCAIN!

In the furious battling between the candidates over the heavily sought-after Ewok vote, it appears the Ewoks finally settled upon their candidate: John McCain ("McCain is only carrying Andorra, Georgia, and Macedonia.")--no doubt due to the likeness of physical characteristics.  Ewoks will begin phonebanking and registering voters in an effort to prop up McCain's flailing campaign.  

Oh right, it's Endor, not Andorra.  Whatever.  Ewoks!

My friends!

Another prick in the wall

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that Marc Kaplan of North Fayette, Pennsylvania, is speaking from experience.  In today's Post-Gazette letters to the editor:

Treadmill safety

With the Sept. 17 Health and Science section article "Surge Training Promises to Work Off the Weight," there was a photograph of Ann Caldwell running on a treadmill. Anyone thinking of buying a treadmill and placing it in a small area should know that it is extremely dangerous to have it positioned with the back of it against a wall. In case of a sudden problem resulting in a loss of leg speed turnover, a person can be thrown into the wall. The back of the treadmill should always be facing the open end of a room.

MARC KAPLAN
North Fayette

Let's hope that "anyone" never makes this foolish mistake again.  

Gotta love it when the David Duke set shows more circumspection and restraint in its statements about an Obama presidency than the Republican ticket.  

You want a hand to shake?

Man, Wonkette's funny.  

On McCain's refusal to shake Obama's hand, "Here, you want a hand to shake?  Shake the cunt's."   

What?  I didn't say it.  

I report, you decide. 

Oh, and here's that great moment where McCain swallowed his pride and actually acknowledged the existence of his sub-human opponent, very decorously referring to him as "that one." Ah, watch your head on the ceiling, the level of the discourse is getting so, so high!

(update below)

So, when the inevitable credible assassination attempts come against President Obama, I hope folks look back at moments like this and those highlighted earlier this morning and note that these speeches were stoking the flames of the violent extremism to come.  John McCain and Sarah Palin should now be held morally responsible for any harm that should befall Obama on account of racism or xenophobia.  

McCain's a dishonorable cretin.  Always has been, always will be.  Palin is someone who is so out of her depth and, regrettably, dangerously, compensates for her utter ignorance with zeal and contempt.  There were moments early on when I felt pity for her because she is so obviously not fit for running for vice president (or any other office really).  But after her sneering and veiled racist comments about community organizers and now her de facto fanning the flames of violent extremism in the name of white pride, I think she's easily one of the most ridiculous yet execrable characters to come along in modern politics in a very long time.  

p.s. Yglesias: This is on her.  

You know that new sound you're looking for?

As I said originally (and I stand by it), why not just call it a mini-mall to begin with?  Just saying.  

and here we have Acapulco.

That white man is flying.

Take it from me, parents just don't understand.  

antz

Via Sullivan et al., the world's air traffic simulated over a 24-hour period.  Notice half-way through when it gets dark.  Cool.  

 

Have to admit though, if I were an alien I'd be tempted to start stomping.  

Waiting for the worms

From the WP:

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

what's in a name?

A newspaper industry analyst proposes the following model to save the newspaper from the same fate as the town crier (the town crier!):

"A smaller, less frequently published version packed with analysis and investigative reporting and aimed at well-educated news junkies that may well be a smart survival strategy for the beleaguered old print product."

Let’s see.  Smaller.  Less frequently published.  Analysis and investigative reporting.  Aimed at well-educated news junkies.  Hmm.  

I guess we could call this new-fangled thing a ‘serialized fortnightly news and analysis delivery system.’  Or better yet, how about ‘Arthur Sulzberger’s self-edification method.’  No, doesn’t really have any sort of ring to it.  What about, oh, I don’t know, ‘magazine.’  Or, I know I may be going out on a limb here, but why not ‘periodical’?  And perhaps some of these new-style newspapers could even be published online, like Slate or Salon.  There.  Problem solved, newspapers saved! 

 

(Via the most popular one-man political blog site in the world*)

 

*Oh, and by the way, the most popular one-man political blogger in all of the world (Oceania, Eastasia, and Eurasia!) actually has a significant team of interns  and other support helping him to produce his blog.  So really a corrective is in order.  It’s not quite accurate to refer to oneself as the “most popular one-man political blog site in the world” so much as it would be to refer to one's blog as “the most popular one-man political blog site in the world that’s written, researched, edited, etc., by a team of folks but for whom all of the credit for such work is given exclusively to one individual.”

Where the girls are the fairest and the boys are the squarest

We are getting pretty boxy I suppose.  

Some guy here says that Tracy Flick was more likely than not being less than truthful about her desire to head to Nebraska to see the famous Omaha foliage.  Disagree.  She said: "And I so wanted to reach into that TV and say no, I'm going to Nebraska because I want to go to Nebraska."

You tell 'em, sister!  I am so with you.  

I'm willing to say that this is probably the first thing she's said all campaign long, or in at least the last five weeks of her life, that I'm willing to credit as truthful.  Who wouldn't want to head to Nebraska for its own sake?   I don't get it.  The Civic Auditorium?  COME ON!  

You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

tell-tale.

Most people would know they lack the decorum or temperament required of a lawyer were they, in a not very subtle way, to suggest to their torts professor during the course of a lecture to 90+ students that he has a small penis.

Truth is a defense.  

Citizen's arrest

In reality, there's probably no such thing as a citizen's arrest.

my sweet coconut

Really I'm speechless.  Except that I agree wholeheartedly with Ms. Teixeira de Jesus, learning how to kiss oneself is a worthy life pursuit; living any other way is just pure self-abuse, plain and simple.  

''I called him John but also my darling and my sweet coconut,'' she said. ``He was a great kisser. I liked it so much that I bought a book to learn how to kiss myself.''

Uh, Ms. de Jesus, I think I'll be writing that book.  

'ALSO' DEFEATS MCCAIN!

Yep, it's 'also' in a landslide.  

By the way, did Sarah Palin really say "John tapped me"?  A scientific composite photo of what their kid would look like has surfaced:

It checks out.  Same teeth and ghostly pallor as McCain.  And by appearances alone looks to be about as credible of a candidate for VP as its governator mother.  

we suck young blood

An expert on awkward faces vile people make had the following to say about McCain's weird "smiles" during the debate:

Hill’s dissection: “You can see Obama’s smile is a true smile. It’s about twice as barring [sic--ed: did he mean "jarring?" I hope so] McCain’s. McCain, when he smiles, it’s always really more of a grimace smile. There’s a tension that permeates McCain’s personality.”

Exactly! And that tension would be that the Hamburglar is constantly stealing all of his hamburgers when he's not having press conferences or unsuspending his pants. McCain's erratic temperament can lead to indiscriminate retaliation against those he fears have stolen his hamburgers and won't stay off his lawn: namely, children. Here he is sucking the brain out of one plump specimen in order to feed his tumor farm.




























And here the vengeful flesh-eating mutant has run amuck and is actually trying to devour the President right on stage! My friends, ehs ken haz POTUS?

why is the 21st amendment so pernicious?

via LG&M, a bit of presidential history. Good to bear in mind as the cold season approaches.

a possible explanation?

I think in time historians will view this past month for the McCain campaign as one of the strangest and most surreal episodes in the history of modern presidential politics. In an effort to understand, Mickey Kaus calls on Tom Wolfe:

P.S.: Remember Tom Wolfe's description of a fighter pilot's decision-making protocol: "I've tried A! I've tried B! I've tried C! ..." Update: Delmarva Now's J. Fisher has posted the Wolfe quote in full. It's eerily resonant! ...

This is the passage he has in mind:

Being a fighter pilot... presented a man, on a perfectly sunny day, with more ways to get himself killed than his wife and children could imagine in their wildest fears. If he was barreling down the runway at two hundred miles an hour, completing the takeoff run, and the board started lighting up red, should he (A) abort the takeoff (and try to wrestle the monster, which was gorged with jet fuel, out in the sand beyond the end of the runway) or (B) eject (and hope that the goddamned human cannonball trick works at zero altitude and he doesn't shatter an elbow or a kneecap on the way out) or (C) continue the takeoff and deal with the problem aloft (knowing full well that the ship may be on fire and therefore seconds away from exploding)?...

Sometimes at Edwards they used to play the tapes of pilots going into the final dive, the one that killed them, and the man would be tumbling, going end over end in a fifteen-ton length of pipe, and he knew it, and he would be screaming into the microphone, but not for Mother or for God or the nameless spirit of Ahor, but for one last hopeless crumb of information about the loop: "I've tried A! I've tried B! I've tried C! I've tried D! Tell me what else I can try!" And then that truly spooky click on the machine. What do I do next? (In this moment when the Halusian Gulp is opening?) And everybody around the table would look at one another and nod ever so slightly, and the unspoken message was: Too bad! There was a man with the right stuff.
-Tom Wolfe, "The Right Stuff," 1979

Interesting.

Letting down your (Republican) guard

(multiple updates below)

I agree entirely with Chris' take on the debate. Anyone who hasn't decided who they're voting for in this election by now is a low information voter, someone who's incapable of discerning the instances where McCain was intentionally (or worse, unintentionally) misleading and/or factually inaccurate. With little more than a basic grasp of the complex financial issues at issue and having only a limited understanding or awareness of world events, the swinger is going to look to the candidates' tone, confidence, and fighter instinct, among other qualities that are assessed on the visceral, rather than intellectual, level.

In this regard, McCain came in like a charging bull, a scrapper, yet, improbably, showed himself to be polished, steeped in historical context, and even steady. He played it like an underdog, effectively sticking the shiv to Obama every time he had the opportunity (the "shiv" is the appropriate weapon of choice, as McCain (hilariously) referred to "when [he] got out of prison," leaving out the ubiquitous POW modifier). How many times did McCain note that "Sen. Obama just doesn't understand"? To my surprise, by the end of the debate, it was Obama who seemed to border on the minature and McCain who towered over his opponent in stature.

An exaggeration? I don't think so. While I found plenty on an intellectual level with which to fault McCain, that stuff just doesn't seem to matter here. No, for the swinger what matters is the healthy and winning sheen of a JFK, the self-effacing and humorous quips of a Reagan, the pathos and ability to connect of a (Bill) Clinton. Obama delivered no memorable line, he stammered, had no coherent organization to his answers, and, most damaging, unlike McCain, he didn't have a consistent message or soundbite that he continually drove home throughout the debate. I don't remember a damn thing Obama said. All I remember is McCain having his way with him, swatting his feeble protestations away like pesky flies, and Obama = doesn't understand and Obama = lacks the experience. This was the worst debate performance by a Democratic nominee for president since Dukakis got all wonky about his hypothetically brutally beaten and raped wife in 1988, courtesy of Bernard Shaw. Sort of makes me realize what all of those yahoos were saying in the primary about wanting Hillary over Obama because she's at least a fighter (granted, she's most often fighting for the wrong things, so maybe it cancels out).

Look, maybe Obama's performance would be understandable and perhaps even passable if he were leading in the polls by 20 pts. But he's not. So maybe the best explanation for his performance is that he's a fucking sucky debater.

Other observations:

- McCain mistakenly referred to the Iranian Republican Guard (it's the Revolutionary Guard; the Republican Guard was defeated and then disbanded when the US of A invaded Iraq in 2003); of course, Obama ratified this gaffe by making the same mistake when he got the mic. Woulda been nice to be able to have a surrogate mention that as yet another example of McCain losing his marbles.

- I think the foil/inverse relationships between some of the candidates in this race are fascinating: McCain: God awful at giving a stump speech (or, fuck, any speech for that matter), but excels at debates (if you can get over his evidently irrepressible condescension, self-satisfaction, and perpetual sneer); Obama, on the other hand, excels at giving a stump speech, and in fact I far prefer to listen to one of his speeches to one of (Bill) Clinton's, but when debating he's drained of any hint of eloquence and prattles around ineffectually and with no real sense of purpose or urgency. With each point McCain makes about Obama's inexperience and lack of understanding, he effectively undercuts his nimrod running mate and bolsters Obama's running mate; likewise, each time Obama effectively demonstrates that experience doesn't matter as much as judgment does (clearly this is a hypothetical since he amazingly doesn't seem up to the task on this score), he undercuts Biden's central appeal as a candidate and excuses Palin's singular deficiency.

- As Josh Marshall has aptly pointed out, mockery is a very important tool in one's arsenal in combating the Republicans' shenanigans and outright lies. As he's also pointed out, Obama has shown real promise in deftly mocking McCain in some of his speeches before supporters. Why not begin tonight's debate by simply saying after thanking folks, the university, etc., "And Sen. McCain, I'm really glad you decided to join us tonight after all." Oh, I don't know, that might've been memorable, you know, something quip-y yet still totally respectful and something that the newsbots could've latched onto and mentioned after the debate and used as a means of bringing up McCain's crazy-ass behavior over the past few days. Screw that idea, let's instead spend a significant chunk of the foreign policy discussion talking about preconditions and preparation and lower level and higher level and fucking A!!!! What the fuck was he droning on about??!! And, uh, didn't he actually say in that YouTube debate, point fucking blank, that he would in fact meet with Chavez, Castro, Ahmadinejad without preconditions, full stop?! Well, now that he spent significant time hemming and hawwing and amending and interjecting this whole "preparations" non-distinction, the McCain folks can keep this baby alive for a few news cycles, even maybe generate a good scary attack ad over it, which would say that not only would he put us in mortal danger(!) by eating from the same cookie plate as Raul Castro, something only an inexperienced pol would've offered, but he then flip-flopped or lied about his position on the matter.

- Did you notice the camera angles that rendered it nearly impossible to see the left side of McCain's face? The campaigns must've reached some sort of agreement about that, or at least I'd think they would've had to, as the asymmetry of the camera angles was pretty apparent to me half-way through the debate. Even though the guy's paying someone thousands of dollars to cover up the scars he has on his face, along with the copious wrinkles, he's gotta still be worried about folks' reactions to glancing even a bit of the disfigurement that's nakedly on display here. It wouldn't surprise me if the Obama folks had decided to give the old guy a gimme on the camera angle thing, as it appears they're bending over backwards to make sure Palin's stay is as pleasant and comfortable as possible:

Advisers to Mr. Biden say they were comfortable with either format.

That's awesome! I'm sure they'll also be comfortable winning or losing the election to the most unsteady, unstable, erratic, and bellicose opponent to come along since Nixon under the most favorable conditions to Democrats imaginable. Six to one, half dozen to the other. Either way, democracy wins!


p.s. I know I paid him a compliment above, but if you want to get a glimpse of some Obama supporters who downed the Kool-Aid and aren't looking back, check out TPM's post-debate coverage, specifically the bit on monkey cognition and what this reveals about McCain's latent fear of Barack Obama. Please. Get over it. The wind beneath your wings was totally f-ing schooled tonight.

p.p.s. Marshall:

My own sense remains that this was basically a tie between these two candidates, with both bringing their A game.

Agree! They both brought their A games. It's just that McCain's A game is pretty solid whereas Obama's pretty much sucks ass.


p.p.p.s. Victory! Oh if only the entire country were hearing impaired!

p.p.p.p.s. Apropos my observation above about camera angles, Yglesias notes that the cameras were also seemingly manipulated in such a way so as to obscure McCain's relative smallness. Perhaps that accounts for my impression that McCain wasn't seeming quite his usual Keebler Elfish-self tonight.

p.p.p.p.p.s. This ad was up immediately after the debate. Not sure how they pulled that off so quickly. In any event, really hope that deference thing works out for ya.

p.p.p.p.p.p.s by the way, not that I have any dogs in this fight, but I'm imagining Ole Miss's win over the fourth-ranked Gators, coming on the heels of successfully hosting a pretty substantive presidential debate with no evident hitches, makes for some pretty sweet icing on the cake for folks in Oxford.

p.p.p.whatever --- Update: While I believe Obama did not come off looking particularly well-versed and responsible during the debate, I really enjoyed Fallows' take on the debate and the strategy underlying each candidate's approach. I respect Fallows' experience and depth of knowledge about these types of things, and I particularly find noteworthy his reminder that Obama lamentably has to consider how he'll come off as a black man facing off against an older white guy. Haven't seen footage of Obama's debate against Keyes. I'm eager to see how his performance differed in that circumstance. More interesting analysis from Fallows.

Thomas Friedman's belly button

Man I love this guy's stuff.

kill whitey

Say what you will about McCain, but it's quite a feat to get an entire town in Mississippi to hate your guts when the main alternative in the election is a black dude.

Fact

The bailout should be financed by $700 billion of the roughly $1 trillion in American quarters the Canadian government has over the years secretly replaced with worthless canuck quarters in our $10 rolls of quarters, cleverly placing exactly one Canadian quarter in each roll to avoid detection and thereby stealing from America's college students, dads who have gotten too friendly with the nanny, renters, and other sundry losers.

It's not even a real country anyway.

I'm your biggest fan

And another thing, what possible reason would there be for the fundamentalist Christian governor of a state containing perhaps two Jewish residents (not counting the native Alaskans, all of whom would be counted as Jews according to Steve Young) and who has never visited Israel to have only an Israeli flag in her state office?

p.s. and, based upon one possible reading of my wording above, it would be funny (and send quite a message!) if the contents of her governor's office consisted entirely of one single Israeli flag--no chair, no window, no paperclips--just one Israeli flag. And a tanning bed.

Mary had ten babies . . .

. . .and, sadly, her head did pop off. While I can't imagine the strain of caring for 10 children, let alone a gerbil, I love the fact that the article almost seems to laud the man for stopping short of dropping off his oldest child, you know, the legally emancipated one, or, what's the word??? Oh right, adult!

off with his head!

Man, give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile.

bad joke

This guy's campaign is more and more looking like a really bad joke.

No more funny stuff

Great catch by Ken Silverstein. Give us the fucking money, Bernanke, or we'll cut off your johnson!

I mean, who are we to quibble over right and wrong?

Farley/Greenwald smackdown

In a post I shared on the side pane a day or two ago, Greenwald worried about the implications of the domestic (and possibly indefinite?) deployment of a U.S. Army brigade. In it he discusses the apparent violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. In response, Robert Farley offered this stinging rebuke, noting that the PCA wasn't designed to safeguard democracy, but instead was enacted to safeguard southern white supremacy. Interesting exchange, particularly as I know very little about the legal and legislative history behind the applicable laws.

With friends like these

Yglesias vents his frustration about Bill Clinton giving the stage to McCain at his Global Forum, which gives him the veneer of bi-partisan cooperation and high-mindedness:

You might think a former President would be so committed to an axe-grinding agenda that he couldn’t see the big picture.

As with most things relating to Clinton, once you hear more or look closer, it gets worse. Apparently McCain's call to delay the debate(s) was made in "good faith," which I think is crediting this bizarre conduct every bit as much as Lieberman or Graham would. This comes on the heels of an appearance on the Daily Show (part 1, part 2) where he could hardly muster up even the most milquetoast of praise for Sen. Obama while having an "aww shucks" moment in response to Stewart's playful entreaties to have him get back in the fray and beat all of the other presidential contenders. Oh right, William Jefferstein Clintonowitz has apparently also decided not to campaign for Obama in the crucial swing state of Florida during the Jewish holy days (twelve days in all). And I imagine harvest season will preclude him from visiting the midwest, and New England is out of the question because he couldn't possibly think of intruding on folks' enjoyment of the fall foliage. With friends like these . . . .


p.s. Lemieux agrees, and posts a hilarious segment of Letterman with Chris Rock.

smokescreen

This is a compelling theory:

The more I look at what happened today, the more I think it was all an elaborate attempt to stem the fallout from the truly disastrous interview Sarah Palin taped this morning with Katie Couric.

At first I was incredulous, but now having looked at the relevant footage, via Greenwald's excellent post on the topic (almost all of whose sentiments contained in the post about Palin, Washington experience in general, and Obama I agree with), it seems pretty plausible.

tag-teaming?

Why does this give me the uncomfortable feeling that Obama is walking right into a trap? Will McCain be there too? If not, why not? Even if McCain and Bush aren't in cahoots, it still doesn't necessarily strike me as sound idea to meet with the most unpopular president in modern history on the eve of (apparent) passage of what looks to be a very unpopular bailout--which Obama has indicated he'll support.

Uncle!

It appears that McCain's gambit of forestalling the campaign and debates has no historical precedent--not during the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Great Depression, or World War II. The claim that the present financial problems necessitate the suspension of the campaign when these far more emergent past circumstances did not is without merit. But I suppose when McCain sizes up the past week or so, what with his plummeting poll numbers, his mute running mate's continued avoidance of the press, the emerging details of his campaign manager's Fannie Mae connections, etc., circumstances around McCain camp HQ must take on the feel of the cataclysmic.

p.s. No wonder he wants to make it all go away. Wow. It just doesn't get much more painful than that.

suspending the campaign

In light of this bizarre development, I think Obama's response, while remaining high-minded and all that, should be sure to point out that it's not surprising that someone would go into panic mode around a financial crisis when he has a history of saying things like this:

I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues.

Update: It'd be nice if they'd highlight this ridiculousness too. Clearly McCain's asserting that his presence qua senator will be helpful in dealing with this crisis. Well, if that's the case, his presence qua senator in the preceding six months might have allowed him to understand that, no, the fundamentals of the economy are not in fact strong, which knowledge would've given him at least a fighting chance to fashion preventative, ameliorative measures. The guy hasn't cast a vote in the Senate since April 8. What a surprise that, only a couple of days before he goes head to head with his opponent in a debate and on day 28 or 29 of no (meaningful) press access to Palin and in the face of plummeting poll numbers and embarrassing news stories about his campaign manager's $15,000/mo. paycheck from Fannie Mae, he'd decide it's imperative he head back to D.C. What a joke. In addition, it shouldn't escape notice that he's, in the process, not just proven himself to be disingenuous, out of touch, and hypocritical, but also, apparently, he's a ratfucker.

Update: I think they (the McCain camp) clearly see the writing on the wall. McCain's known for a while that he's going to lose. The choice is to either lose by a respectable margin by playing it conventionally or throw the Hail Mary and hope that you bet right and win, even though the odds are clearly against you. This is what Palin was all about (and man, did that not pay off; consider how much better it'd be for McCain to have Romney by his side during the financial crisis as opposed to Palin) and this is what this bizarre campaign suspension is all about; it fits perfectly with his documented high stakes gambling persona. However, I don't want to discount altogether the possibility that this impulsive move was somehow prompted by some freakish scandal that's about to come out about Palin, such as an affair or what's becoming apparent with each passing day, namely, that she's utterly incapable of being in front of the public without having her hand held tightly, or, perhaps, some health issues McCain's having. Afterall, as Atrios notes, his left eye did look awfully weird during that press conference, and he's just generally looking pretty haggardly lately.

Update: Marshall is right. The only thing I'd quibble with is that, in an ideal world or even in a functioning democracy, having additional press resources in D.C. while this deal is being hammered out (for better or for worse) should facilitate a resolution, namely, by better educating the public about the nature of the "crisis" and its causes, by instructing the public about the various solutions being offered and who stands to gain from those solutions, etc. The fact that this isn't the case, that Marshall (rightly) feels that having the press around would muddy the waters rather than be a benefit, is depressing.