So Long!

image via Slog

The Last Poll

via TruthDig

Its No Secret That I Love the Obamas

But, damn, I kind of hate how constantly photogenic they are. Sheesh.

From The Huffington Post:
The Obamas' Greatest PDA Moments and The Obama Anniversary Album

From Time magazine, Callie Shell's gorgeous, thoughtful collection of Obama candids.

Please notice her notes and comments on each image. The photographs of Obama enjoying a solitary moment are particularly poignant.

David Sedaris on the Undecideds

The New Yorker:

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

I mean, really, what’s to be confused about?

via Slog


and on mavericks:

...calling yourself a maverick is a sure sign that you’re not one.

Tina Fey on Sarah Palin: Not Since "Sling Blade" Has There Been a Voice Like Hers

I'm a couple of days late with this clip of Tina Fey talking to Letterman about doing Sarah Palin. You know I love Tina Fey; Tina Fey doing Palin is utter bliss. Check out this clip of Fey on Friday's Letterman.


via Defamer

Really, Amy Poehler? Really!??

No, really, Amy Poehler. I completely heart you. Please don't leave.

What He Said

Dan Savage:

Why didn’t NBC insist on Palin sitting down for a real, substantive interview—or, better still, calling a full press conference—as a condition of Palin appearing on SNL tonight? Candidates don’t go on Letterman, Leno, SNL, The Daily Show, et al, to take a break from the campaign trail. Comedy programs are stops on the campaign trail. Palin is running from the press, refusing to answer any questions, lying her ass off on the stump, and attacking the people who could call her on those lies—reporters, news anchors, cable news networks—at her rallies. So why the fuck should NBC allow Palin to reap the political rewards of an appearance on SNL if Palin isn’t willing (or able) to answer questions from NBC news reporters?

And now, ladies and gentlemen, Sarah Palin/Tina Fey/Sarah Palin:

via Slog

Powell Endorses Obama

From The NYT:

WASHINGTON—Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell endorsed Senator Barack Obama for president on Sunday morning as a candidate who was reaching out in a “more diverse and inclusive way across our society” and offering a “calm, patient, intellectual, steady approach” to the nation’s problems.

The endorsement, on the NBC public affairs program “Meet the Press,” was a major blow to Senator John McCain, who has been a good friend of Mr. Powell for decades. Mr. Powell, a Republican, has advised Mr. McCain in the past on foreign policy....

Powell, like many others, is concerned by the McCain/Palin supporters:

Mr. Powell, who is of the pragmatist camp and has been critical of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war, was said by friends in recent months to be disturbed by some of the neoconservatives who have surrounded Mr. McCain as foreign policy advisers in his presidential campaign.

This is great news for Obama. We're rapidly nearing the end of the campaign and there's no question that anything that comes from McCain at this point will be increasingly absurd and far fetched. Powell's endorsement will no doubt only boost Obama's already sizable lead.

The Republican Ticket

McCain, via Slog:
Palin, via The Huffington Post


From the Campaign Log:
October 15, 2008

We both managed to do something crazy and/or ridiculous and/or idiotic today. Ony a couple weeks left. Go Team!

The "Libertarian Conservative" has Successfully Reserved a Special Place in Hell for Himself

From Dan Savage, Slog:

Conservative blogger “”The Libertarian Conservative” created the above ad ..., and he says he’s only “doing exactly what the left is doing to Sarah Palin.” Yeah—remember how we lynched Sarah Palin? Good times. The bigoted blogger adds…

We’re at war folks, and I intend to fight this war until my dying breath. We’re at war against terrorists that want to destroy this country and everything it stands for and we are war against godless liberals who hate the very values and freedoms that this Nation was founded upon.

Well, the bigot blogger showed some restraint—he called lynching Obama “The Fucking Solution,” and not “The Final Solution.” Wouldn’t want to alienate those Jewish voters that McCain is gonna need in Florida.

Sure, McCain doesn't directly have anything to do with this hateful, disgusting, racist shit; but he sure isn't doing much to discourage it. This is utterly distressing.

image via Slog

Where are You, McCains?

Well, he is not in Montana. And he isn't on Capitol Hill. According to the WSJ, he is nowhere to be found:

Sen. Barack Obama, his running mate and his wife have appeared at twice as many events in swing states as their Republican counterparts, which may help explain the Democrat’s lead in many battleground-state polls.

In the five weeks since the fall campaign officially began, Sen. Obama, his wife, Michelle, and vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden have appeared at a total of 95 separate events in states that both sides are contesting.

Sen. John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, have appeared at 55 events in those areas, with Cindy McCain, the nominee’s wife, adding only one more to the total, according to a Wall Street Journal tally based on schedules provided by the campaigns.

Live! From New York...

Its Thursday night!

SNL is doing Thursday night editions from now until the election. My initial response: hilarious. Check out "McCain" wandering aimlessly around the stage. And the Tom Brokaw impersonation is nearly spot on.

Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers = pure bliss. Aaah.



via NBC

No, Dave! Nooooooooo!

From The Huffington Post:

David Letterman and Sen. John McCain will get a chance to make up.

The Republican presidential candidate is scheduled to appear on Letterman's "Late Show" on Thursday.

It will be McCain's 13th visit to the CBS program but his first since he angered Letterman by canceling last month.

Letterman was unhappy when McCain sat for an interview with Katie Couric instead of him on Sept. 24.

At the time he said he first felt like a "patriot" to let McCain off his commitment to deal with the economy but "now I'm feeling like an ugly date."

A McCain spokeswoman said at the time that because of the economic crisis, the campaign "felt this wasn't a night for comedy."

See also:
Required Viewing Re: Why is McSame in Such a Rush to Flake on Letterman?
AND
Late Show with David Letterman

Jezebel to McCain: Look at This Mess You've Made!

From Jezebel:

John McCain created this hateful monster, and no amount of back-pedaling, especially when he's still running ads trying to portray Obama as a terrorist, is going to stop it. The Straight Talk Express is currently on its Hate Across America tour, and John McCain is slowly becoming the lead singer who can't figure out where all of his rock star dreams went wrong. We'll here's a hint, Senator: when you stoke the fires of paranoia, hatred, and anger, you might just get burned. Or booed. Either way, when your audience can't even accept your own words anymore, you might want to ask yourself why any of us should.

What He Said

Is anyone else experiencing some mild to moderate trepidation?

From The New Yorker's George Packer (emphasis is mine):

A number of people are afraid that the ugly tactics of the McCain-Palin campaign are going to incite violence, maybe assassination. Joe Klein, Andrew Sullivan, McCain’s former adviser John Weaver—even the ultimate sober-sided moderate David Gergen last night on CNN. I hope they’re wrong. It’s a big leap from hateful talking points and shouted epithets to vigilantism and the lone gunman. What’s undeniably true is that Republican rallies and the incendiary language of party leaders are stirring up the darker, destructive mob passions that have a long history in American politics. At the very least, the Republican ticket is making sure that, if Obama wins, he’ll be regarded as an illegitimate and dangerous President by thirty or forty per cent of the country.

Palin is too shallow to understand the weapon she’s playing with; she’s just thrilled to be the birthday girl and the object of so much semi-erotic devotion. But McCain knows better....

via Slog

Furthermore, not only does he know better, McCain is now attempting to control the wild, blood-thirsty beast he has created.

also via Slog

The Right-Wing Reacts to the Debate (Also, in Classic Nelson Muntz fashion: "Ha ha. Ha ha!")

Via Slog, the right-wing reaction to the debate, via The National Review:

Well I have gone outside and pulled up my Mcain/Palin sign. This election is over. I will vote for Mcain but I know that come Nov. 5 Obama will be our president-elect.

I feel sorry for Sarah Palin. A once promising career will be permanently connected to the landside loss of John McCain.

I weep for my children and their families.

The McCain-Obama Post-Debate "Handshake"

via Slog

Will Someone Please Get This Man Some Answers?

Weeks ago, I mentioned Sarah Palin's bizarre behavior during her pregnancy with Trig: she hid the pregnancy for five months, insisted on giving the keynote address at the Republican Governor's Convention in Texas despite leaking amniotic fluid, decided against being admitted into a Texas hospital; instead, she flew home to Alaska and subsequently drove 45 minutes to the Wasilla hospital t0 give birth to Trig. Weird, right?

No one has said much about her weird behavior in the recent weeks but Andrew Sullivan is still asking for answers:

Back in her time as a Christianist culture warrior in Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin demanded total transparency from her moderate Republican opponent:

Within a few months, Palin was officially challenging Stein and exploiting the cultural shift masterfully. She welcomed a national anti-abortion group in to carpet bomb Wasilla with pink postcards affirming her pro-life bona fides. She orchestrated an NRA endorsement and a mailing from the group falsely proclaiming Stein, a lifelong hunter, "anti-gun." (Stein complained to the local newspaper that Palin was telling voters he wanted to "melt down" all the firearms in the state.) And, in a move practically out of Karl Rove's playbook, she dwelled on how Stein's wife used her maiden name, going so far as to demand a marriage certificate as proof of their nuptials. Palin's campaign literature proclaimed her "deeply devoted to conservative family values"--all in the context of an ostensibly nonpartisan election. (Stein himself was a moderate Republican.)

So it is part of Palin's record to demand the marriage license of a fellow Republican, but to ask for any medical confirmation of the mysterious birth of Trig earlier this year, any affidavit from the obstetrician, any objective evidence at all that Trig is indeed Sarah Palin's biological child is, well, in the words of John Podhoretz, "virtually unspeakable." Look: this is usually not hard at all. Births are recorded at the hospitals where they occur. And, as you might expect, there's a long list of babies born at Mat-Su Medical center, where we are told Trig was born on April 18 this year. But for some reason, Trig Palin's name is not among them.

Why would a hospital exhaustively record all births on their premises and leave out easily the most famous baby ever born there? There were only 24 births at Mat-Su in April of this year: it's not like they could have mislaid one. So why is there no formal record of Trig's birth? This is not an "unspeakable" question. It's a simple factual one. Presumably there's an explanation. Perhaps the Palins decided that it would be an invasion of Trig's privacy to have the birth actually recorded in the hospital where he was born. But at least they should be able to tell us that. Or perhaps the hospital decided for some reason not to record that one birth. I have no idea. I do know that if Sarah Palin were running against Sarah Palin, she would demand evidence, as she did with something just as accessible with respect to John Stein's marriage license.

How much longer are we supposed to put up with the far right running on different standards than everyone else? Hand over all the medical records and put Sarah Palin in front of a press conference now. We need answers to an almost dizzyingly long list of questions and accountability for an equally long list of public lies.

Palin: Appealing to 3 Year-Olds Everywhere

via Daily Kos

One of These Things is Not Like the Other; One of These Things Just Doesn't Belong

From The New Yorker (emphasis is mine):

What most distinguishes [Obama from McCain]... is character—and here, contrary to conventional wisdom, Obama is clearly the stronger of the two. Not long ago, Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, said, “This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.” The view that this election is about personalities leaves out policy, complexity, and accountability. Even so, there’s some truth in what Davis said––but it hardly points to the conclusion that he intended.

Echoing Obama, McCain has made “change” one of his campaign mantras. But the change he has actually provided has been in himself, and it is not just a matter of altering his positions. A willingness to pander and even lie has come to define his Presidential campaign and its televised advertisements. A contemptuous duplicity, a meanness, has entered his talk on the stump—so much so that it seems obvious that, in the drive for victory, he is willing to replicate some of the same underhanded methods that defeated him eight years ago in South Carolina.

Perhaps nothing revealed McCain’s cynicism more than his choice of Sarah Palin, the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, who had been governor of that state for twenty-one months, as the Republican nominee for Vice-President. In the interviews she has given since her nomination, she has had difficulty uttering coherent unscripted responses about the most basic issues of the day. We are watching a candidate for Vice-President cram for her ongoing exam in elementary domestic and foreign policy. This is funny as a Tina Fey routine on “Saturday Night Live,” but as a vision of the political future it’s deeply unsettling. Palin has no business being the backup to a President of any age, much less to one who is seventy-two and in imperfect health. In choosing her, McCain committed an act of breathtaking heedlessness and irresponsibility. Obama’s choice, Joe Biden, is not without imperfections. His tongue sometimes runs in advance of his mind, providing his own fodder for late-night comedians, but there is no comparison with Palin. His deep experience in foreign affairs, the judiciary, and social policy makes him an assuring and complementary partner for Obama.

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

By contrast, Obama’s transformative message is accompanied by a sense of pragmatic calm. A tropism for unity is an essential part of his character and of his campaign. It is part of what allowed him to overcome a Democratic opponent who entered the race with tremendous advantages. It is what helped him forge a political career relying both on the liberals of Hyde Park and on the political regulars of downtown Chicago. His policy preferences are distinctly liberal, but he is determined to speak to a broad range of Americans who do not necessarily share his every value or opinion. For some who oppose him, his equanimity even under the ugliest attack seems like hauteur; for some who support him, his reluctance to counterattack in the same vein seems like self-defeating detachment. Yet it is Obama’s temperament—and not McCain’s—that seems appropriate for the office both men seek and for the volatile and dangerous era in which we live. Those who dismiss his centeredness as self-centeredness or his composure as indifference are as wrong as those who mistook Eisenhower’s stolidity for denseness or Lincoln’s humor for lack of seriousness.

via Bitch PhD