O.J. Simpson Draws An Unlucky Thirteen

Some 13 years to the day after he was acquitted of killing his former wife and her friend in the so-called Trial of the Century, a Las Vegas jury returned guilty verdicts against O.J. Simpson after deliberating for 13 hours following an armed robbery and kidnapping trial that had played out as so much faint background noise to the dramas of a presidential campaign, Wall Street rescue plan and other headline-grabbing events.

Simpson and Clarence Stewart, the only remaining co-defendant of the original five who had not pleaded guilty in return for testifying against the former football star, ad pitchman and movie actor, were convicted on all charges and then led out of court in handcuffs.

The panel of nine women and three men -- none of them black unlike the 1995 double-murder trial in Los Angeles -- deliberated more than 13 hours after listening to nearly three weeks of testimony. The case was highlighted by hours of secret audio recordings, victims who professed to like Simpson and witnesses who tried to cash in on their ties to this once enormously popular man.

Prosecutors said Simpson was the mastermind of the robbery of two sports collectibles dealers in a hotel room last year, rounding up the five men and telling two of them to bring guns and ordering one of them to brandish his weapon and "look menacing."

Simpson and Stewart were charged with a dozen crimes, including armed robbery and kidnapping. They had pleaded not guilty, while Simpson said he was trying to recover items stolen from him and did not see any weapons.

And so Simpson, like the proverbial cat, has finally run out of lives.

At the 1995 trial, nine of the 12 jurors were black, while reactions to the verdict broke down along racial lines with most African Americans unconvinced of Simpson's guilt and most whites convinced that the case against him was solid.

My own view as a journalist who covered the trial is that Simpson was as guilty as sin but justice was done in its own messy way because the prosecution did not prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

There is irony in Simpson's contention that blacks were intentionally eliminated from the Las Vegas jury.

This is because in a society that judges a person by the color of their skin, Simpson had something that few well-known black Americans can claim: He was so accomplished and at one time was so popular that, in advertising agency parlance, he was "race neutral."

That is to say that when most people looked at him they saw not a black man who happened to have overcome a disadvantaged childhood in a broken home, but a handsome and gifted athlete who had found fame and fortune by parlaying outstanding college and professional football careers into a successful career off the field selling everything from men's footwear to rental cars, and later as a not-bad Hollywood actor. Who just happened to be black.

Two years after the murder trial, the Brown and Goldman families were awarded $33 million in compensatory and punitive damages in a civil trial that to Simpson seemed like a big joke.

He had bottom crawled to Florida after the murder trial where liberal bankruptcy laws have shielded him from many of his creditors, and aside from an occasional dust-up on a golf course or in a nightclub, as well as his off again, on again "fictional" account of the murders, he was mercifully out of the news if not out of trouble until the Las Vegas incident.

Perhaps no one knows when Simpson hit bottom -- probably not even The Juice himself -- but it probably occurred sometime in the run-up to the murders, which I believe were a consequence of a cocaine-fueled binge, a fit of jealousy, or both.

In any event, it is sadly obvious that Simpson, whose good looks have faded at age 61, has been crawling along the bottom since then. I will leave it to greater minds to do the moral calculus as to whether his conviction in Las Vegas somehow makes up for his acquittal in 1995. In any event, as extraordinary as it seems, he now faces serving life in prison for the second time in 13 years.

More here.

Pool photograph/Getty Images

Ralph Stanley Hearts Barack Obama

THIS IS SO COOL.

Be There Or Be Square

TIX INFO HERE.

Inheriting The Financial Whirlwind

"Many events in Washington, on Wall Street and elsewhere around the country have led to what has been called the most serious financial crisis since the 1930s. But decisions made at a brief meeting on April 28, 2004, explain why the problems could spin out of control. The agency’s failure to follow through on those decisions also explains why Washington regulators did not see what was coming.

"On that bright spring afternoon, the five members of the Securities and Exchange Commission met in a basement hearing room to consider an urgent plea by the big investment banks."

Continue to read here.

Destiny Calls. Will The Phillies Answer?

MORE HERE.
Photograph by Jeff Zelevansky/Getty Images

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

GENERATIONS
By Marcus Bjorkman

Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Millions of Americans were watching Thursday night's vice presidential debate, waiting for a demolition derby moment — another crash by GOP running mate Sarah Palin, another serving of raw material for the writers at "Saturday Night Live."

By that standard, she got out alive, though there were white-knuckle moments along the way: questions that were answered with painfully obvious talking points that betrayed scant knowledge of the issue at hand and sometimes little relevance to the question that had been asked.

. . . [I]t is hard to count any objective measures by which Biden did not clearly win the encounter. She looked like she was trying to get people to take her seriously. He looked like he was running for vice president. His answers were more responsive to the questions, far more detailed and less rhetorical.

On at least 10 occasions, Palin gave answers that were nonspecific, completely generic, pivoted away from the question at hand, or simply ignored it: on global warming, an Iraq exit strategy, Iran and Pakistan, Iranian diplomacy, Israel-Palestine (and a follow-up), the nuclear trigger, interventionism, Cheney's vice presidency and her own greatest weakness.

Asked which is a greater threat, a nuclear Pakistan or a nuclear Iran, Palin seemed to be stalling, or writing a term paper, when she said: "An armed, nuclear armed especially Iran is so extremely dangerous to consider."

-- JOHN F. HARRIS and MIKE ALLEN

Sen. John McCain and his Republican allies are readying a newly aggressive assault on Sen. Barack Obama's character, believing that to win in November they must shift the conversation back to questions about the Democrat's judgment, honesty and personal associations, several top Republicans said.

With just a month to go until Election Day, McCain's team has decided that its emphasis on the senator's biography as a war hero, experienced lawmaker and straight-talking maverick is insufficient to close a growing gap with Obama. The Arizonan's campaign is also eager to move the conversation away from the economy, an issue that strongly favors Obama and has helped him to a lead in many recent polls.

-- MICHAEL D. SHEAR

McCain goes almost 100 percent negative. If that doesn't do something to the polls in the next week, what has he got left? The answer, I'm afraid, is nothing but his fathomless narcissism and vanity.

-- ANDREW SULLIVAN

[D]espite the rapture of college students and the registration of the homeless in Ohio, the common sense of Americans will override curiosity about Barack Obama and infatuation with his celebrity, and trust John McCain to pilot the country for the next four years. ... The hard left’s seven year rage against George Bush has disfigured the politics of the country, but it hasn’t infected the large center or demoralized the principled right.

-- HUGH HEWITT

Wrong. We have an economy that’s in or going into recession. Oh, and there's a massive financial meltdown going on that probably will still be having reprecussions come November. When the economy's tanking, the candidate of the incumbent party will typically lose unless he can turn the debate to an "insurgent" issue other than the economy on which he is aligned with the popular will and his opponent is strongly precommitted to an unpopular position.

-- PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously said of Franklin D. Roosevelt that he had a "second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament." Obama has shown that he is a man of limited experience, questionable convictions, deeply troubling associations (Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko) and an alarming lack of self-definition -- do you really know who he is and what he believes? Nonetheless, he's got both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament. That will likely be enough to make him president.

-- CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

I . . . implore conservatives to stop ignoring reality just because they happen to like a candidate’s personality and biography. Besides being bad for the quality of conservative thought, it embraces the caricature that conservatives are indifferent to knowledge and have no use for expertise, which has become an all too legitimate critique of how conservatives have responded to the misrule of the Bush administration.

That was not always the case, but if conservatives insist on making elaborate arguments that understanding and knowledge are not significant criteria when choosing our top elected officials they will lose whatever credibility they may still have.

More than that, they will be crippled by their embrace of cheerful ignorance when it comes time to oppose the policies of the Democratic administration that is surely about to be elected.

-- DANIEL LARISON

Cartoon by Pat Oliphant/Universal Press Syndicate

A Barack Obama Blowout: The Thing That No One Yet Dares Speak The Name Of

My capacity for being surprised has somehow endured despite writing thousands of news stories, commentaries and blog posts about pretty much everything from the fact that pigs really can fly (in reserved USAir seats) to O.J. Simpson being acquitted for murder (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary). And so it is with signs that Barack Obama may be on the verge of blowing out John McCain.

This outcome, which if it is sustained would easily rank atop a fairly hefty list of surprises in the nine presidential campaigns that I have covered, is heightened by the fact that:

* Going into the campaign, McCain was a widely known and hugely respected veteran campaigner while Obama was a near unknown.

* Obama has had to contend with the bitter aftershock of beating Hillary Clinton and the bitter stain of racism.

* McCain has had at hand shrewd, battle-tested managers, many of them magna cum laude graduates of the Karl Rove School of Divide-and-Conquer Politics.

* Even with the widespread disaffection for all things Bush, Obama's change-and-hope mantra was vague and seemingly naive.

* The ability of the Republicans to rally around a candidate in contrast to the Democrats' hard-earned reputation for grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory.

I'm not a high-stakes gambler like McCain, and I'll hedge my sense of surprise by noting that the signs of a blowout come in the closing weeks of a campaign distinguished by enormous swings. This may yet have the effect of neutralizing a truisim of presidential politics -- that voters pretty much make up their minds by the beginning of October.

That so noted:

* Virtually all trend lines favor Obama.

* Obama has broken 50 percent in most national polls and despite the ping-pong dynamic of the polls this season, McCain has had no discernible bounceback in days.

* Obama has moved ahead in Florida, Colorado and several other states crucial to McCain.

* McCain is pulling campaign staff out of the battleground state of Michigan. (Obama has pulled out of North Dakota.)

* Obama's favorables are increasing in tandem with McCain's unfavorables, and at a time when President Bush's unfavorables have reached an historic low.

* Sarah Palin's disapproval ratings have converged with and are passing her approval ratings, while last night's exercise in lowered expectations changed few minds.

And the numbers that ultimately matter the most -- Electoral College projections -- average out at 327 for Obama and 201 for McCain. That, my friends, is a blowout.

It is way too early for post mortems, but try this pre-mortem on for size: McCain may have run out of road because he has based his campaign on shock, smoke and mirrors. And is guilty of grand theft in shamelessly appropriating his opponent's change meme.

In running a campaign a mile wide and an inch deep, McCain has left himself vulnerable to events on the ground, as they say, and nothing is playing bigger on the ground in states like Michigan than the economy. As it is, Obama has had trouble connecting with blue-collar voters in that state and elsewhere, but McCain has proven to be so inept when it comes campaigning on the economy that he had to cut his loses.

It is now way too late for McCain to pull another robbery. That would be stealing a key ingredient that has gotten Obama to where he is -- substance.

One more thought in squaring the surprise circle:

Obama, like the man that it increasingly looks like he will succeed, is largely untested. Like that man, he will need to depend to an extraordinary extent on advisers who are tested.

In that respect voters are rolling the dice just as they did in 2000. Pretty scary, eh?

Photograph by Rick Wilking/Reuters

The Soft Bigotry of Lowered Expectations

Joe Biden didn't put his foot in his mouth and Sarah Palin kept her foot out of hers, and that's really all you need to know about the excruciating 90-minute exercise last night known as the Vice Presidential Debate. But don't take my word for it:

Jim Kuhnhenn of The Associated Press:

"John McCain's campaign aches needed a tonic.

"On a day when he abandoned the fight with rival Barack Obama in one battleground state and national polls showed him trailing overall, running mate Sarah Palin put on a debate performance that soothed the pain. . . .

"But even as Palin reversed some of the harm she had caused herself, Biden was meeting his own tasks as well. Time and again, the veteran Delaware senator tied McCain to unpopular President Bush and managed to connect with the audience on a personal level as much as he did on policy points.

"Disciplined, he defended Obama from attacks, but refused to engage Palin in a tit-for-tat exchange."

Rick Moran at Rightwing Nuthouse:

"No, she's not smoother than Joe Biden. She was not the better debater (she lost badly on points). She doesn’t have the depth of knowledge, the experience, the ease with 'Washington speak' that Biden demonstrated – especially in foreign policy.

"But Sarah Palin has something Joe Biden and every other politician in America would give their right eye to possess – the innate ability to look a camera straight in the lens and make a connection with the hearts of ordinary Americans."

James Poulos at The Confabulum:

"Palin wins on domestic; Biden wins on foreign policy. But Palin's relative strength here can't do much, I don't think, to help McCain's basic disadvantage on the main domestic issue — the economy. To the extent that Palin does well on domestic issues, it's because she's drawing attention away from the basic problem at hand. Drilling may or may not be a great idea on the merits, but it doesn’t make up for $700 billion in oops spending. Not raising taxes? Great idea. But unless you’re really super wealthy, the tax question is an argument at the margins relative to the main question about where the economy’s going. Then again, the real bottom line may be that if a president can’t control the fate of the economy, a vice president certainly can’t."

Daniel Larison at Eunomia:

"I will admit that Palin has avoided disaster. Biden has put in a pretty successful performance. My guess is that Biden will come off as the clear winner in the eyes of viewers, but it will not be as lopsided as her critics expected."

Ben Smith at Politico:

"My quick take is that Palin passed a pass-fail test, though she flagged as the debate went on. Though she was chosen for her emotion connection, she was the drier of the two candidates. But if the central worry was that she'd be a drag on the ticket, she likely returned herself to the same status as Biden and every other running mate in memory: Not, ultimately, a major factor at the polls."

Dick Polman at American Debate:

"After awhile, I started to think I was listening to Marge Gunderson, the pregnant hick cop in Fargo.

"All told, Palin excelled to the best of her abilities - a welcome respite for worried Republican partisans. But, given Biden's solid performance (particularly during the final 30 minutes), it's doubtful that Palin changed the dynamics of a race that appears, by every objective polling measure, to be tilting increasingly Democratic. Indeed, Biden was deemed the clear winner of the debate in polls conducted last night by CNN and ABC. Even if those double-digit margins diminish over the next 48 hours, it's hard to imagine that Palin will ultimately succeed in shifting momentum to McCain."

Ezra Klein at The American Prospect:

"Seems that Palin kept talking about General McLellan when she meant General McKiernan. That's the sort of thing that might stick. Meanwhile, Palin says she loved being able to get up here and answer these tough questions without the 'filter of the mainstream media.' Weird that she used her closing statement so defensively. But whatever: Good for her. She should give up on politics and get a talkshow. Otherwise, she should learn how to answer the press's questions."

Matthew Yglesias at Think Progress:

"I’m not sure if Gwen Ifill was cowed by the rightwing mau-mau brigade or what, but I thought Ifill’s handling of the debate was pretty disappointing. Palin was clearly operating with a game plan that involved simply refusing to answer certain questions in order to drift over to her pre-prepared text, and Ifill didn’t ask any followups or challenge either candidate to address the questions she was asking. Indeed, at time Ifill was barely even asking questions — just suggesting topics."

Ross Douthat at The Atlantic:

"They both won, in the sense that they both did what they needed to do. Palin needed to arrest her slide into political oblivion, to hold her own on the stage with Biden, and to give the TV pundit class - which has the most bizarre love-hate relationship with her I've ever seen them have with a candidate - a reason to switch their narrative from 'Palin flops!' to 'Palin exceeds expectations!' "

Gerard Baker at Times Online:

"Last week, Senator McCain probably lost his first debate against Senator Obama by not winning it.

"On Thursday night Mrs Palin won her debate by not losing it."

Photograph by Don Emmert/The Associated Press

Cartoon du Jour

Tom Toles/Universal Press Syndicate

'And I Believe In A Promised Land'

THE PROMISED LAND
By Bruce Springsteen

On a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert
I pick up my money and head back into town
Driving cross the Waynesboro county line
I got the radio on and I'm just killing time
Working all day in my daddy's garage
Driving all night, chasing some mirage
Pretty soon little girl I'm gonna take charge.

The dogs on main street howl,
'cause they understand,
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister, I ain't a boy, no, I'm a man,
And I believe in a promised land.

I've done my best to live the right way
I get up every morning and go to work each day
But your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold
Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode
Explode and tear this town apart
Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart
Find somebody itching for something to start

The dogs on main street howl,
'cause they understand,
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister, I ain't a boy, no, I'm a man,
And I believe in a promised land.

There's a dark cloud rising from the desert floor
I packed my bags and I'm heading straight into the storm
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
That ain't got the faith to stand its ground
Blow away the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away the dreams that break your heart
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted

The dogs on main street howl,
'cause they understand,
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister, I ain't a boy, no, I'm a man,
And I believe in a promised land
I believe in a promised land . . .

Image by David E. Krech

George 'Wydell' Jones (1937-2008)

The man who wrote Rama Lama Ding Dong is gone.

What Happened To Sarah Jo Carrington?

MORE HERE IF YOU DARE.

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

BUBBLE GIRL
By Faye White

Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

This is the story of the real John McCain, the one who has been hiding in plain sight. It is the story of a man who has consistently put his own advancement above all else, a man willing to say and do anything to achieve his ultimate ambition: to become commander in chief, ascending to the one position that would finally enable him to outrank his four-star father and grandfather.

In its broad strokes, McCain's life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers' powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives' evangelical churches.

In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.

-- TIM DICKINSON

The only thing worse than a sore loser, is a person who's sore even before they lose.

-- TA-NEHISI COATES

Watch Kristol forget that he just told McCain to take credit for getting the bill passed; watch McCain and Palin claim to have killed it on behalf of the outraged taxpayers. However low you bend, you won’t find a standard of truthfulness with this ticket and its backers. The Kristol Plan is the triumph of tactics over everything. It takes years and years spent writing propaganda to achieve that kind of purity.

Meanwhile, it’s left to a relatively young black man, charged by his opponents with being a radical, a liberal, a community organizer, a Muslim, and the anti-Christ, to save the establishment on Wall Street and in Washington.

-- GEORGE PACKER

xxx

The lesson of the last eight years is this: when power is a passport to gamble, people can end up seriously broke or seriously dead.

-- ROGER COHEN

The picture is this: Anyone who dares express an opinion that runs counter to the [Republican] party line will be silenced. That doesn't sound American to me, but Stalin would approve.

-- KATHLEEN PARKER

I think the GOP ticket in 2012 will be Romney/Pawlenty. Romney will brand himself as the new conservative standard bearer in the mold of Reagan and he’ll use the “Sam’s Club Conservative” line that Pawlenty pioneered to win the nomination. Also, he’ll try to frame Obama as an out-of-touch Jimmy Carter liberal who doesn’t understand the needs of the common folk.

You heard it here first.

-- JUSTIN GARDNER

Illustration for Rolling Stone by Robert Grossman

Oh No! McCain Has The Vapors Again

Most of the attention is focused on tonight's vice presidential debate, which is shaping up to be the anticlimactic event of the campaign season. This is because it will take a performance even sorrier than those Sarah Palin already has delivered for her to "lose" to Joe Biden, while anything less than rampant incoherence will be spun as a "big win."

While I will have one eye on the debate and another on the National League Division Series, my heart will be with the unlikely sob sister of this presidential season. No, not Palin. Or Hillary Clinton. I'm talking about John McCain.

McCain has long been known for profanity-laced outbursts and a "Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran" belligerence that is never far from the surface. But he has acted erratically from the outset of the campaign, and his swings from churlish to childish and sarcastic to angry are by now de rigeur. (If you don't know what that means, it's French for "an integral part of his shtick.")

McCain's swooning fits not only belie his Navy pilot tough-guy image, but call into question his emotional maturity.

If these cases of the masculine vapors are orchestrated, then further shame on he and his handlers for running a campaign based solely on . . . um, tactics. These tactics include his repeated inveigling against the news media when they don't hew to his script or when he is called a liar. And most recently siccing his surrogates on the vice presidential debate moderator because she has written a book about the latest generation of black politicians, or because she and Barack Obama share the same skin color, or . . . what the heck are they trying to imply?

But nowhere has McCain seemed more at sea than on the biggest issue confronting Americans -- the beleaguered economy.

From his initial proclamation that the economy's "fundamentals are sound" to his statement that financial markets don't need more regulatory oversight to his statement that markets do need more regulatory oversight, he has been a man less in control of himself than a man who is struggling to keep up with the real world but keeps falling behind.

Lacking any real substance, McCain has repeatedly defaulted to political wand waving, notably his dramatic but stunningly ham-handed decision last week to "suspend" campaigning and race to Washington to bail out the Wall Street bailout, a ploy as transparently phony as a teenager having a hissy fit when grounded by a parent.

And what's with McCain refusing to even look at Obama during their first debate? Or when Obama crossed over the aisle to the Republican side of the Senate chamber last night, stretched out his arm and offered his hand to McCain, who shook it but flashed an unmistakable "go away" look? (Incidentally, after making a huge deal about the bailout vote last week, McCain could barely utter a coherent thought, while he was struck deaf and dumb when his turn came to speak before the Senate vote.)

Obama, on the other hand, is invariably Mister Cool, so much so that his restraint sometimes seems a little creepy in contrast to McCain's mood swings.

Even with Palin's Alaska-sized negatives, it is McCain who seems a bigger drag on the ticket. His overall poll numbers are looking worse by the day, including those in make-or-break Florida, while the fine print in these polls reveals that a goodly number of voters have trust issues with him, and surely some are put off by his crazy uncle affectations.

With less than five weeks to go and the first signs that Obama may be poised for a blowout, McCain has painted himself into a very tight corner -- or alternately is so addled that he has unwittingly allowed his Cue Card Squad to do that. In any event, if his campaign continues to head south, it is a sure thing that he will resort to that old sob-sister standby: Hysteria.

Image: William Blake's "Pity" (1825)

Those Who Forget History Are . . .

. . . condemned to repeat it, of course. Historian Frederick Lewis Allen, looking back at the root causes of the 1929 Wall Street crash:

"What was there to hamper the furious onward march of business? Not the government, whose regulatory officials and commissions seemed to be napping . . . What was destined to halt the forward progress of business was the fact that (Wall Street) had become bemused with paper values - with the piling up of speculative or artificially generated wealth which had little relation to the production of goods . . . The irresponsible actions of men who did not stop to think they were constructing a caricature of the capitalist system were paving the way for disaster . . . Who could have halted the disaster? (The Republican regime) was apparently too wedded to the idea that government must keep its hands of business."

Hat tip to Dick Polman at American Debate

Is Palin Inspiring More Women To Kill?

HMM.

Cartoon du Jour

Pat Oliphant/Universal Press Syndicate

Celebrating The Freedom To Read

This is Banned Book Week, an annual event that takes on an additional pungency this year because of the woman who could be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

More here.

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

Children dress up as Indian independence leader Mahatma
Gandhi during peace rally on eve of his 139th birthday today.
Photograph by Agence-France-Presse

Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

[E]mergency cosmetic surgery on the Vice-Presidential candidate is a disheartening reminder that McCain's shoot-from-the-hip style of decision-making does not always work out well, and it evokes sympathy for Mrs. Palin, who has never pretended to the kind of expertise they are now trying to fabricate for her.

If they are going to use old movies as a guide, they may want to try Singin' in the Rain, with someone behind the curtain while Gov. Palin mouths the words.

-- ROBERT STEIN

Asked what newspapers and magazines she reads, Palin -- a journalism major in college -- could not name one publication.

-- SAM STEIN

Expectations for Palin are once again lower than dirt for the debate which means if she shows up, stays awake, gives us some charming one liners, and doesn’t make too many egregious mistakes, she wins hands down. I think Biden will not be able to help himself and will, when he is unaware the camera is on him, smile that condescending smile he is known for and set off the women of America on a tirade against him. He is far too arrogant and has too much belief in his own superiority not to treat Palin as he would some dumb hick from Wasilla. That’ll play great with most women in America, trust me Joe.

With Palin, it’s what you see is what you get. Imagining her as something she isn’t is only deluding yourself.

-- RICK MORAN

I think it is an outrage that they are going to let Gwen Ifill, a woman, moderate a debate between a man and a woman. It's as plain as day that Ifill is completely in the tank for Sarah Palin. She's been waiting her whole life to see a woman elected to high office. Ovarian solidarity assures that she will be biased against Joe Biden and treat him unfairly. They should switch it so Ifill will moderate one of the debates between McCain and Obama. Letting a woman moderate a debate that involves a woman is just one more example of conservative media bias.

-- BOOMAN

I'm still a little amazed that even the most hardcore Republican hacks can't see what an almighty mess they've got on their hands. But they'll be ready an instant after the debate to say that black is white if they have to.

-- ANDREW SULLIVAN

So the big question is, what are the McCain people going to do with her on Thursday night, when she's scheduled for 90 minutes with Joe Biden? Short of contriving a crisis in Alaska that cancels the debate and sends her home, she'll have to duel with a guy who (notwithstanding his verbal loquaciousness and propensity for talking himself into a gaffe) is already viewed by most Americans as far more qualified than she to assume the presidency in an emergency. Every poll documents this fundamental perception. He knows a lot about national and foreign policy, and he arguably talks too much; she knows virtually nothing beyond the talking points that are drilled into her head, and she delivers them in disconnected fragments.

Biden, of course, will have to sufficiently rein himself in, lest he look like an overbearing bully. Palin will have the advantage of low expectations, which means that if she can merely show up, get her nouns and verbs and predicates in order, focus heavily on extolling McCain and maligning Obama, and forge some kind of emotional connection with the audience (I'm just like you, my family has the same worries as you), then the GOP message crafters will be able to argue that she did surprisingly fine.

The problem she has right now, however, is that her lack of qualifications arguably undercut her credibility as a salesperson for McCain and critic of Obama. Her mission, these last few weeks, was to polish her own creds so that she would be viewed as credible during the veep debate. That mission has not succeeded. It raises the stakes for her on Thursday night - and, more importantly, it raises the stakes for McCain.

-- DICK POLMAN

Team McCain is burning through the list of groups to blame at an alarming clip. At this rate, with five weeks left to go, they are at serious risk of running out of ways to paint Palin as the victim of some overarching prejudice. Religious persecution is still available for use, as is the well-documented bias against people who wear glasses. But those two excuses cannot possibly hold all the way through October. Anyone care to venture some more creative cards for them to play?

-- MICHELLE COTTLE

No American mayor resides in a city closer to Russia than Andrew Milligrock, and he says being two miles from Russia doesn’t give him any foreign policy expertise.

-- GARY TUCHMAN

When it comes to Palin, there's an intersection of sexism and age that the Republicans don't understand (which is why they keep crying sexism and wonder why it's not working).

For many Boomer women, the primary sexist experience of their lives is: "Those men gave the job to that guy instead of me, even though I am more qualified and/or have more seniority."

For many Gen X women like myself (and Palin is Gen X) the primary sexist experience is: "Those men gave the job to that clueless chick instead of me, because the boss thinks she's hot and/or will be a yes-man with no ideas of her own."

If, for some Boomer women, Obama's win over Hillary represents the guy they lost the promotion to, Palin's selection plays the same role for Gen X women. We've seen it: first the incompetent yet babelicious woman is promoted over her head, then the boss orders the attention of the entire team/department/etc. to focus on ensuring that "we" shield her from "mistakes" (or worse, we get blamed for her mistakes). Palin reminds us of when we got screwed by this sort of bullshit. And it shows in voters' response to her.

-- ZACKSBACK COMMENTER

Throwing overboard someone who has already been lauded as the next Reagan will provoke a grassroots fury that will make the anti-bailout protests to Congress seem like a mild difference of opinion. Some over-enthusiastic admirers may have compared her to Joan of Arc (never a good idea), but they are not now going to accept betraying her for what they will perceive to be the appeasement of the enemy.

-- DANIEL LARISON

Repubs Confuse Talk Radio With Reality

Props to New York Times columnist David Brooks for the divine turn of phrase in the headline above. Props to House Republicans for not only confusing talk radio with reality, but being so maliciously partisan that they preferred to set up Democrats for being blamed for a Wall Street bailout gone awry than to reach across the aisle to help hammer out a deal, no matter how flawed, that might forestall a deepening financial crisis.

The proof that these Republicans were much more interested in acting in bad faith five weeks before the most important presidential election in decades is that they have voted with President Bush on every issue of consequence over the last eight years.

These range from tax cuts for the rich to war funding to the use of torture, but when it came to the most important piece of legislation -- again, albeit admittedly flawed -- they yarbled that they could not betray the party's "principles."

Those "principles" revolve around misty memories of Ronald Reagan. In fact, Reagan's name seemed to be cited more than President Bush's in the wake of the defeat of the $700 billion bailout package on Monday at the hands of the Republican back benchers.

But the Reagan Revolution is dead because its most vociferous adherents, including those selfsame Republican nihilists, put a stake through its heart by forcing the very government intervention that the Gipper eschewed because of years of a less-celebrated revolution: The Deregulatory Revolution. And while those talk-radio listeners and many other Americans are deeply cynical about a Wall Street bailout, they ultimately will hold accountable the politicians who failed to rescue them from the crisis.

This does not excuse the grandstanding of Nancy Pelosi and John McCain, let alone Treasury Secretary Paulson's mismanagement of the crisis. In fact, McCain's quest for the White House may have taken a fatal hit because he was cut off at the knees by those Republicans amidst his own grandstanding. At least his running mate Mitt Romney still has the credibility to address economic . . . Oh, wait a minute.

There eventually will be a bailout deal because there has to be.

And you can bet your last nickel that when the Senate takes up the issue tonight even its most conservative Republican members will be a good deal less doctrinaire -- and I daresay more courageous -- after the destructive behavior of their peers in the House.

Who will be given a second chance to save themselves from themselves when the whole mess is dumped back into their laps for final passage.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, the Dow was up 485 points yesterday after plummeting a record 777 points on Monday after those Republicans crapped on the bailout plan.

The reason that there was "a major correction," as the talking heads termed the turnaround?

It certainly didn't have anything to do with the financial crisis in Europe, which with every passing day is looking as grave as the homegrown crisis.

It certainly didn't have anything to do with Wall Street's faith in Congress gift wrapping those hundreds of billions sooner rather than later.

What it had everything to do with was the usual institutional game playing, in this case money market managers buying up shares at the end of the day to enhance their performance figures for the quarter that ended at the close of business yesterday.

This would have been business as usual under other circumstances. You know, the stuff that these guys do all the time with our 401k plan monies, but the last-minute buying frenzy was notable for all the battered financial stocks that were bought up.

I don't know about you, but the feeling of having my pocket picked is palpable.

Oh Boy, Oh Boy, Oh Boy, Oh Boy, Oh . . .

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Photograph by Yong Kim/Philadelphia Daily News

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

COLOURS
By Samo Lesek

Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Republican John McCain has maneuvered himself into a political dead end and has five weeks to find his way out.

-- STEVEN R. HURST

The forces of history that are driving the Chinese miracle, the Islamic fundamentalist revolution, the ascension of Europe to a position of near equality with us, the leftward lurch in Latin America and other massive changes in our world wait for no country. You either deal with the changing world or you watch as the panorama slides by, waking up a decade later wondering "What happened?" Right now, these forces of history are working against the United States. Can we adapt and make the right decisions that will keep us strong, safe, and pre-eminent in so many things?

If you are honest with yourself, you will agree that neither John McCain or Barack Obama have the ideas, the courage, or the foresight to bring us through to the other side of this epoch safely and still the dominant military and economic power on the planet.

-- RICK MORAN

Whether or not the Republican presidential ticket wins in November, Alaskans are already living in McCainistan.

-- BRENDAN JOEL KELLEY

The great insight of the Palin VP choice is that huge chunks of American voters no longer even demand that their candidates actually have policy positions; they simply consume them as media entertainment, rooting for or against them according to the reflexive prejudices of their demographic, as they would for reality-show contestants or sitcom characters. Hicks root for hicks, moms for moms, born-agains for born-agains. Sure, there was politics in the Palin speech, but it was all either silly lies or merely incidental fluffery buttressing the theatrical performance. A classic example of what was at work here came when Palin proudly introduced her Down syndrome baby, Trig, then stared into the camera and somberly promised parents of special-needs kids that they would "have a friend and advocate in the White House." This was about a half-hour before she raised her hands in triumph with McCain, a man who voted against increasing funding for special-needs education.

-- MATT TAIBBI

So the latest spin is that Palin's problem wasn't a shocking ignorance of the issues, but that she was being "too scripted" by the McCain campaign. This is a pretty laughable bit of science fiction, an attempt to bend the fabric of reality, by reciting the problem backward, In fact the whole reason that Palin was "too scripted," is because she is shockingly ignorant of the issues.

-- TA-NEHISI COATES

Is it even possible to unpack this? McCain-Palin is all for equal pay for equal work in theory, they just don't want to pass any new laws that will let you do anything to get it. And of course, they're all for enforcing existing laws which, in the case of Lilly Ledbetter, demonstrably didn't help her achieve equal pay for equal work. But Palin can't support a law that would have remedied the situation, because she claimed it would "turn into a boon for trial lawyers who, I believe, could have taken advantage of women" by, you know, use them to get rich by filing a large number of very small claims that turn out not to be merited.

-- NICK BEAUDROT

Given the way he's run his campaign, I'm convinced [McCain] would authorize any attack he thought would work. I think the reason we haven't seen the Wright card played yet is that McCain and his advisers are genuinely not sure how it would go over. Could it scare some voters away from Obama? Certainly. Could it look like an overt appeal to racism and generate a backlash, especially among the media? That's also a distinct possibility.

-- THE ANONYMOUS LIBERAL

In the closing moments of the presidential debate last Friday, John McCain said something that now seems particularly ironic. He told the folks at home that he’s ready to lead; in fact, “I’m ready to get at it right now.”

But the problem is that, in his eagerness to “get at it,” to demonstrate his alleged political leadership skills by riding to the rescue in the Wall Street crisis, he came up with nothing. He raised the bar on his own performance by touting himself as the ultimate high-stakes problem solver, and he wound up solving nothing. In his attempt to score political points for his candidacy, to show that he can indeed excel on the economic front, he wound up damaging himself politically.

Over the past five days, he has failed at every standard that he set for himself. He said he was suspending his campaign in order to return to Washington, where he would use his skills to work out a deal, and that he would not debate Barack Obama on Friday unless that deal was done. His people raised expectations that such a deal, thanks to his participation, would indeed be done; as spokeswoman Kimmie Lipscomb put it, “We’re optimistic that Senator McCain will bring House Republicans on board without driving other parties away, resulting in a successful deal for the American taxpayer.” But in the end there was no deal, so McCain simply ignored his own ultimatum and flew down to the debate.

-- DICK POLMAN

Palin is tough as nails. She will bite the head off a moose and move on. So, no, I don't feel sorry for her. I feel sorry for women who have to live with what she and her running mate have wrought.

-- REBECCA TRAISTER

Much has been written about McCain's multiple personality disorder over course of this campaign season, most notably among the pundit class and their visible sense of betrayal at what has become of the former straight-talkin’ maverick.

Very little, on the other hand, has been said about consistent and steady persona of Obama. He's been criticized — from the left and the right, for being too sharp or too passive, too this and not enough that — and he's just remained unfazed through it all, sticking to his gameplan and projecting the same sense of self. And I'm not talk about just going back the campaign season. You watch or listen to interviews of him from 4 years ago, when he was running for senator, of him in action as a state legislator from 10 years ago, and even before he entered politics back in 1995. Same guy.

-- SEBASTIAN

Cartoon by Tom Toles/Universal Press Syndicate