The Bill Ayres Well Is Still Dry

And was to begin with, although this hasn't prevented John McCain's elves to dig, dig, dig into the relationship between the former Weather Underground fugitive foot soldier and Barack Obama.

This unholy alliance is back in the news not because of new revelations. We're still stuck where we were months ago.

That is that Obama, in his rookie run for the Illinois Senate, attended a fundraiser hosted by Ayres, and while they had some incidental contact, it was minor, fleeting and so long ago as to not really matter except where it might matter: Did Obama at any time approve of Ayres conduct? Nope. Did Ayres mind meld with Obama and some of his radical drivel rubbed off on him? Nope.

This has not phased Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis, the co-chairmen of the McCain Cue Card Club, who beat the guilt-by-associate drum loudly again this week in a conference call with reporters.

For the record (and doncha love it when a writer says that), I knew several of Ayres' cohorts back in the day and am a longtime friend of one whom I invited into my home when he was a fugitive. Even in the context of those crazy times, the Weathermen were a bunch of zonked-out wannabe revolutionaries who ultimately diverted attention from their occasionally worthy causes by doing a lot of really bad stuff.

Ayres himself remains shamefully remorse free for the role that he and his missus, Bernadine Dorn, played in a 1970 Greenwich Village townhouse bomb factory blast that killed three fellow Weathermen. For what it's worth, and it's damned little, Ayers turned himself in to authorities in 1981 but was never arrested.

Among those aforementioned elves are two right-of-center bloggers with keen intellects.

Both Rick Moran at Rightwing Nuthouse and Ed Morrissey at Hot Air have been all over the Ayres non-story like a pair of cheap suits, most recently because of Republican lapdog Stanley Kurtz's Wall Street Journal op-ed piece headlined "Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism on Schools" that not only failed to deliver but never even explained what the radicalism was.

Kurtz was so determined to find dirt in the dry well that he demanded and got access to the internal files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Ayres helped lead and of which Obama was a board member.

But after sifting through 70 linear feet of material (that's 70 boxes more or less the same size as a case of 12-ounce beer bottles), Kurtz was unable to find anything damaging beyond this smoking gun (and I hope you're sitting down): Ayres was one of five people who signed off on Obama joining the Challenge's board. (Kaboom!!!)

It's easy to say that Kurtz, Moran and Morrissey are desperate to find anything remotely concerning about someone whom they seem to fear if not actively dislike, but that is giving them too much credit. It's simply a matter of them being so far in the well for John McCain (and Sarah Palin, whom Moran waxes about in boy-crush terms) that they don't realize that they're coming up with dust and not dirt.

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

RAINY DAY HOPSCOTCH
By Timothy Toole

Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

The Madman Theory did not die with Richard Nixon. It's alive and well and residing in the heart and mind of John McCain. It's too perfect -- it fits the character of McCain, the most compulsive gambler in American politics, and it fits the nature of his long-shot Hail Mary 2008 bid for the White House. McCain and his Bush-supplied strategists know they can't replace a 24-percent popular president by running on the issues, or even by running a conventional modern campaign of debates and rallies punctuated by a few well-chosen smear ads.

Nope, John McCain knows that the only way he can win this election is to act completely, one-flew-over-the-cookoo's-nest bat-guano crazy -- and to hope that the relatively untested Barack Obama is so rattled that he and the Democrats do something really stupid, and also that voters are so confused by and focused on his stunts there won't be a moment to reflect on Bush's legacy and what this election is really supposed to be all about.

-- WILL BUNCH

It looks like John McCain and the House GOP decided to swoop in at the least minute and scuttle a kinda sorta okay bailout package in favor of a counterproposal of tax cuts for rich people and corporations. . . .

If conservatives won’t play ball, I think the smart move for progressives on the Hill is to come back to Bush and Paulson with a much less palatable plan — huge stimulus, big tax hikes on super-high earners, mortgage cramdowns, etc. Let Bush either cave 100 percent to a Nancy Pelosi dream deal or else let Bush bring McCain and John Boehner to the table. There’s no reason for progressives to be making concessions to the Bush administration and the financial industry if they can’t even get their lackeys to back their own plan.

-- MATTHEW YGLESIAS

[Katie] Couric's questions are straightforward and responsible. Palin is mediocre, again, regurgitating talking points mechanically, not thinking. Palin's just babbling. She makes George W. Bush sound like Cicero.

-- RON DREHER

Reporters have been clamoring for weeks to get a shot at asking Sarah Palin questions in an unstructured setting. When they finally got the opportunity this morning, Palin again demonstrated why the McCain campaign has striven to keep her hidden away. Because during her brief press appearance today, presumably to the horror of the campaign, the Alaska governor wasted no time in linking Iraq to 9/11.

-- BRANDON FRIEDMAN

Couric interviews Palin. Not as bad as Gibson, but good lord. This campaign is now officially surreal. If Palin is supposed to be the "ordinary American" she passed that test--she really does sound like an ordinary American. Her answers sound like the responses Couric would get if she interview one of my friends. At three A.M. After a night of drinking.

-- TA-NEHISI COATES

COURIC: You've cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?

PALIN: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land-- boundary that we have with-- Canada. It-- it's funny that a comment like that was-- kind of made to-- cari-- I don't know, you know? Reporters--

COURIC: Mock?

PALIN: Yeah, mocked, I guess that's the word, yeah.

COURIC: Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials.

PALIN: Well, it certainly does because our-- our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They're in the state that I am the executive of. And there in Russia--

COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We-- we do-- it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where-- where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is-- from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to-- to our state.

Cartoon by Pat Oliphant/Universal Press Syndicate

The Staggering Cynicism Of John McCain

It's the longest Hail Mary pass in the history of either football or Marys.

-- REP. BARNEY FRANK

The familiar frat boy smirk was absent when George Bush went before the nation last night to cry wolf.

The man speaking from the White House had recently managed the feat of polling disapproval ratings lower than Richard Nixon during the week before he resigned, while the people objecting most vociferously to the $700 billion taxpayer-funded bailout plan being engineered by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the de facto president of the hours, were conservative Republicans.

Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas set the bar high before the president beseached Congress to speedily approve the bailout:

"Those of us that have studied the Bible know that the Lord made the world in seven days. We are now being asked to reshape the financial world in less than half that time and without the benefit of divine powers.

"It defies common sense to pass a potential trillion-dollar bailout bill without having a rational and deliberate conversation about other potential alternatives and remedies. I remain skeptical of the Paulson plan and am utterly unconvinced that this is the only alternative."

The only surprise of the evening was that John McCain didn't sidle up to the president as he spoke to let us know that he was back in the 'hood. And even though he hadn't shown up for a Senate vote since early April, was ready to rumble.

* * * * *

We'll leave it to the historians to sort out the exact sequence of the extraordinary events in the hours before the president's prime-time hankie wringing, but the general outline is clear:

Early on a day when even the national polls showed Barack Obama pulling away from McCain, the Democrat called him and privately suggested that the two issue a joint statement in an effort to keep presidential campaign politics from becoming an impediment to bailout package deliberations. The offer echoed a similar one Obama had made that resulted in the candidates appearing at Ground Zero earlier in the month on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

McCain huddled with his advisers. He finally accepted several hours later, but only after he rejected Obama's call for the bailout package to include oversight provisions, cap executive salaries and help foreclosed homeowners. His campaign then announced then that, in so many words, it was pulling the rug out from under the entire purpose of the joint statement and injected a huge shot of campaign politics into the deliberations. McCain was suspending campaigning, was rushing back to Washington and would skip the first presidential debate tomorrow night.

As the day went on and McCain preened before the cameras not in Washington but in New York City, with timeouts for Katie Couric and Lady Lynn de Rothschild but not David Letterman, one of the candidate's leading surrogates added a further wrinkle: That the first presidential debate should supplant the only debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin.

It is not known if Palin is suspending campaigning since she wasn't doing any of substance in the first place.

* * * * *

Presto change-o! In a matter of a few hours, attention had been diverted from the imploding McCain-Palin campaign. In a matter of a few hours, the bailout deliberations had been unnecessarily complicated.

Except that Obama wasn't buying. And, according to overnight polls, neither are most voters.

Obama cited the gravity of the financial crisis in rejecting McCain's call to postpone the debate:

"It is my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who, in approximately 40 days, will be responsible for dealing with this mess. It is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once."

Ploy. Flailing. Cut and run. Stunt. Bizarre. Choking. Preemptive. Gimmicky. Brilliant. Retreat. Cowardly. Desperate. Surreal. Those are but a few of the words being used to describe McCain, but I think these sum it up best: Staggering cynicism.

From his metamorphosis from Mr. Clean to Mr. Dirty to his selection of Palin, cynicism has been the underlying theme of McCain's run for the roses. It has inculcated nearly everything he has said and done since he became the last man standing after the Republican primaries, albeit the most elderly and addled.

John McCain is gambling that this is a moment -- and perhaps his last -- to prove that he is presidential. His real intention, of course, is not to help rescue the economy, but his own campaign.

That Groaning Sound You Hear . . .

. . . all over this great land of ours is postal workers as they lift bags full of the gadzillion page, hernia inducing, doorstop worthy Vogue fall fashion issue.

Image courtesy of Gawker

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

1937 DELAHAYE 135M
Photograph by Michael Furman

Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Last week really ought to have been the end of the McCain campaign. With the whole country feeling (and its financial class acting) as if we lived in a sweltering, bankrupt banana republic, and with this misery added to the generally Belarusian atmosphere that surrounds any American trying to board a train, catch a plane, fill a prescription, or get a public servant or private practitioner on the phone, it was surely the moment for the supposedly reform candidate to assume a commanding position. And the Republican nominee virtually volunteered to assist that outcome by making an idiot of himself several times over, moving from bovine and Panglossian serenity about the state of the many, many crippled markets to sudden bursts of pointless hyperactivity such as the irrelevant demand to sack the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And yet, and unless I am about to miss some delayed "groundswell" or mood shift, none of this has translated into any measurable advantage for the Democrat.

-- CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Al-Qaeda leaders, maybe because they spend a lot of time trapped and bored in safehouses, seem to be obsessed with calendars. They like anniversaries and they pay attention to elections abroad. So I'm sure they have the American election in mind. My last well-sourced conversation is a few weeks dated, but last I checked the US intel system was very quiet in terms of "chatter" or other indicators of any attack in the U.S. What seems more likely are more attacks against US-affiliated targets in the Pak-Afghan region, coupled with media tape releases, similar to Osama's election-eve video of 2004. They like to be heard at big moments in American politics, and this campaign is certainly such a moment.

-- STEVE COLL

Biden has outdone himself. First he repudiates Obama's ad calling McCain computer illiterate, then he misstates Obama's position on coal, and lastly he badly garbles his Depression era history. Well: at least he's talking in public. And where the hell are his medical records? C'mon!

-- ANDREW SULLIVAN

I'm going to go out on a limb here and do something I try really hard to never do, make a prediction. Sarah Palin is the nail in the McCain campaign's coffin. No Vice-Presidential nominee--not Vice-President--can be this much drama. Constantly defending old girl's record, having to expend resources to shut down investigations in Alaska, and having to actively shield her from reporters has to exact a price. At the very least it knocks Joe Biden's gaffes right off the radar.

-- TA-NEHISI COATES

An Alaska friend tells me that Palin has always benefited from being underestimated. Maybe I’m doing that. Maybe I’ve been around polished politicians too long to appreciate the unvarnished authenticity that obviously appeals to many voters. But there’s no Palin interview I’ve listened to, before or after her selection, that gave me the sense that she had anything but a millimeter-thin understanding of the issues facing the country she hopes to help lead.

-- RUTH MARCUS

The late selection of vice presidential nominees has led to a gaffe-filled contest in which each campaign is pointing the finger at its rival's running mate.

Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) has, in recent days, lived up to his reputation as a gaffe machine, breaking with his running mate on a few occasions and, in at least once instance, drawing a soft rebuke from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Democrats would no doubt like to return fire, but are left to lament the bubble Republican candidate John McCain's campaign has erected around his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, and note her limited record is hard to contrast with McCain’s 26 years in Washington.

-- SAM YOUNGMAN

Russia's post-Georgia strategic moves — sending warships to Venezuela, making aid offers to Bolivia, etc. — don't make a great deal of sense. Soviet mucking around in Latin America never accomplished much of anything for the USSR, but it was at least in keeping with the broader strategic logic of the Cold War. The current situation is totally different. Russia basically got what it wanted out of the war with Georgia. But it did harm its relationship with the United States and to some extent with Europe. The smart play would have been to consolidate gains in the Caucuses by making nice with the West, and making Americans and Europeans wonder how much we really care about Georgia. Picking new fights just increases the chances that we'll decide to help rearm the Georgians in a robust way.

-- MATTHEW YGLESIAS

When all the banks have been bailed out and all the debts paid off, the big takeaway for the historians from the financial crisis will be the complete and utter failure of President Bush as the nation's leader. Set aside the blame for the mortgage meltdown. Set aside whether the Paulson plan is a good idea. At a time when American taxpayers and global investors need to see a strong, confident president in the White House, they simply don't have one.

-- CLAY RISEN

Cartoon by Ben Sargent/Universal Press Syndicate

Officer Patrick McDonald (1978-2008)

The murder of any police officer is an outrage, but when Highway Patrol Officer Patrick McDonald yesterday became the fourth Philadelphia cop to be gunned down in 11 months, the financial crisis and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, let alone the presidential campaign, seemed ever more like abstractions.

McDonald, a star athlete in high school and eight-year veteran of the force, was widely admired. The 30-year-old bachelor had bought and lived in the house in the Morrell Park neighborhood where he grew up, and neighbors considered him to be their son, their father and their protector.

For what it is worth, McDonald's assailant also died. For what it is worth, it will only be a matter of time before the handgun the perp used is likely traced through a series of legal transactions until it entered the city's thriving gray market in devices the kill. Because, you see, in Pennsylvania just about anyone can buy a gun with few or no questions asked. Just don't get caught smoking on school property or, heaven forbid, enjoy a puff of marijuana once in a while.

Philadelphia has been the epicenter of an epidemic of gun violence for years, but it is not permitted to enact its own tough gun laws like, say, New York City, because of an adamantly pro-gun state legislature.

I worked in Philadelphia for 21 years. I knew a lot of good cops and a few bad ones. The tears I shed last night when a television station's news helicopter followed the hearse bearing the slain officer's body from Temple University Hospital down streets, boulevards and freeways cleared of traffic to a mortuary were bitter.

Patrick McDonald didn't have to die, but he did because in Pennsylvania the love of guns is more important than the lives of cops.

Photograph by Steven M. Falk/Philadelphia Daily News

25 Observations On The Great Financial Meltdown Of The Year Aught Eight

(1.) It's no surprise that senior citizens are among the most vocal opponents of the $700 billion financial bailout plan. Only they can recall first hand the privations of the Great Depression, the last great systemic collapse of American financial institutions.

(2.) Efforts by both Republicans and Democrats to the contrary, the meltdown does not have partisan roots. Both parties must share in the blame.

(3.) Some shameless commentators are hinting that it's all the fault of colored people.

(4.) The last major U.S. financial scandal was the Keating Five. It is obvious that we learned little from the $160 billion savings-and-loan bailout (300 billion in today's dollars), least of all John McCain.

(5.) Yes, George Bush is a lame-duck president. But he has so little credibility that his cheerleading seems like so much background noise, and his cancellation of a fundraising trip so he could lead the bailing was appropriately greeted with derision.

(6.) American's faith in its financial institutions has been shattered, while the approval rating of the man who will sign the bailout plan legislation is now lower than Richard Nixon's the week that he resigned.

(7.) And that man's record when it comes to must-have emergency measures with no strings attached is awful.

(8.) It is, in fact, Henry Paulson who is running the show. That means that the Treasury secretary has an obligation to be absolutely clear about the course he is charting. Instead, he has been absolutely vague except when it comes to fear mongering, including the inane claim that the U.S. might slide into a recession if there isn't quick action.

(9.) While there remains some question about whether the U.S. is technically in a recession, most Americans will tell you that it sure feels like one.

(10.) While the recovery of Wall Street and world financial markets late last week was greased by a big down payment on that $700 billion, it was predicated on the belief that the bailout plan will work.

(11.) There is no guarantee that the bailout plan will work.

(12.) The bailout plan punishes the sharecroppers and rewards the plantation owners.

(13.) Beyond malfeasance on the part of the titans of the financial industry and government, the biggest reason for the meltdown is that there is way too much debt. The bailout plan does not address that.

(14.) As it now stands, the bailout plan contains no provisions for judicial review, oversight or pay limits on the executives of firms that would be bailed out. Senator Christopher Dodd's alternative plan does all that and more.

(15.) As well as no punitive measures for the companies being bailed out because, as Fed chairman Ben Bernanke explains, anything short of a handout might discourage them from participating. Duh!

(16.) The meltdown is a pungent illustration of how a free-market economy suffers when the government colludes with and fails to regulate financial institutions.

(17.) As tempting as it is, the bailout plan must not be loaded down with stimulus measures although they are badly needed.

(18.) Homeowners holding the short end of the stick are getting trampled in the mad rush to bail out the bigs. A one-year mortgage foreclosure moratorium on primary residences as part of any bailout package makes sense.

(19.) Pardon me for asking, but how am I and other taxpayers going to be paid back? And no I Bailed Out Wall Street & All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt jokes, okay?

(20.) Iraq is sitting on $80 billion in oil profits. Al-Maliki: can you spare a dime?

(21.) The next president will inherit a $500 billion budget deficit and the costs of the bailout plan. Barack Obama says his spending plans may have to be delayed as a consequence, while John McCain, who also wants to keep the Forever War going, says he will cut taxes.

(22.) But, hey, here's some good news: The collapse of the housing market slowed last month.

(23.) But, hey, here's some bad news:There's still no bottom in sight.

(24.) Unlike the 1929 Crash, there have been no suicides reported, let alone leaps from the windows of bank buildings.

(25.) The Great Financial Meltdown of 2008 is fraught with irony, but none is bigger than the fact that the conservative architects of the deregulation movement have become what they long railed against -- socialists.

Email Banking Scam Goes Big Time

Circulating this week on Wall Street trading desks:

SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

DEAR AMERICAN:

I NEED TO ASK YOU TO SUPPORT AN URGENT SECRET BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH A TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF GREAT MAGNITUDE.

I AM MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA. MY COUNTRY HAS HAD CRISIS THAT HAS CAUSED THE NEED FOR LARGE TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF 800 BILLION DOLLARS US. IF YOU WOULD ASSIST ME IN THIS TRANSFER, IT WOULD BE MOST PROFITABLE TO YOU.

I AM WORKING WITH MR. PHIL GRAM, LOBBYIST FOR UBS, WHO WILL BE MY REPLACEMENT AS MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY IN JANUARY. AS A SENATOR, YOU MAY KNOW HIM AS THE LEADER OF THE AMERICAN BANKING DEREGULATION MOVEMENT IN THE 1990S. THIS TRANSACTIN IS 100% SAFE.

THIS IS A MATTER OF GREAT URGENCY. WE NEED A BLANK CHECK. WE NEED THE FUNDS AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. WE CANNOT DIRECTLY TRANSFER THESE FUNDS IN THE NAMES OF OUR CLOSE FRIENDS BECAUSE WE ARE CONSTANTLY UNDER SURVEILLANCE. MY FAMILY LAWYER ADVISED ME THAT I SHOULD LOOK FOR A RELIABLE AND TRUSTWORTHY PERSON WHO WILL ACT AS A NEXT OF KIN SO THE FUNDS CAN BE TRANSFERRED.

PLEASE REPLY WITH ALL OF YOUR BANK ACCOUNT, IRA AND COLLEGE FUND ACCOUNT NUMBERS AND THOSE OF YOUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN TO WALLSTREETBAILOUT@TREASURY.GOV SO THAT WE MAY TRANSFER YOUR COMMISSION FOR THIS TRANSACTION. AFTER I RECEIVE THAT INFORMATION, I WILL RESPOND WITH DETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT SAFEGUARDS THAT WILL BE USED TO PROTECT THE FUNDS.

YOURS FAITHFULLY MINISTER OF TREASURY PAULSON

Hat tip to Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture

'Gonna Bring The Whole Thing Down'

DISORDER IN THE HOUSE

By Warren Zevon

Disorder in the house
The tub runneth over
Plaster's falling down in pieces by the couch of pain

Disorder in the house
Time to duck and cover
Helicopters hover over rough terrain

Disorder in the house
Reptile wisdom
Zombies on the lawn staggering around

Disorder in the house
There's a flaw in the system
And the fly in the ointment's gonna bring the whole thing down

The floodgates are open
We've let the demons loose
The big guns have spoken
And we've fallen for the ruse

Disorder in the house
It's a fate worse than fame
Even the Lhasa Apso seems to be ashamed

Disorder in the house
The doors are coming off the hinges
The earth will open and swallow up the real estate

I just got my paycheck
I'm gonna paint the whole town grey
Whether it's a night in Paris or a Fresno matinee

It's the home of the brave and the land of the free
Where the less you know the better off you'll be

Disorder in the house
All bets are off
I'm sprawled across the davenport of despair

Disorder in the house
I'll live with the losses
And watch the sundown through the portiere

Hat tip to Cogitamus

McCain's War On The News Media

Facts are stubborn things. -- RONALD REAGAN

I feel more than justified in having been harshly critical of mainstream media coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign from the jump because I know of what I speak: This is my ninth campaign as a reporter, editor and now blogger.

But that does not explain, let alone forgive, John McCain's war on the news media -- from bristling about being called out on his serial lies to denying any and all access to Sarah Palin that is not carefully scripted to the big guy's own disappearing act.

Then there was the hysterical tug of war between Palin's handlers and the networks before her meet-and-greet yesterday at the United Nations. Cameras would be permitted but not reporters because they might actually report on what this remarkably vapid woman might say.

When the handlers relented and reporters were allowed access, this is typical of the breathless encounters they wrote about:

"Ms. Palin and Mr. Kissinger sat on blue couches, separated by an end table with photographs of President Nixon and President Reagan on it. As photographers were led in, Mr. Kissinger could be heard saying that he gave someone 'a lot of credit for what he did in Georgia.'

" 'Good, good,' Ms. Palin said. 'And you’ll give me more insight on that, also, huh? Good.' "

To which I can only add, good grief!

There is no question that the war against the media is being choreographed by Steve Schmidt, Rick Davis and their merry band of Rovian pranksters. Yes, the selfsame Davis who hurls fire and brimstone at The New York Times for not swallowing the campaign's lies whole while lying about his involvement with failed mortgage giant Freddie Mac.

These bums understand that the news media is widely reviled by the public. They know that the war on the media is a way of diverting attention from real issues, including Palin's inability to say anything that is not written on a cue card. And that despite rumblings about a rebellion by some of the bigger media outlets, there will not be widespread resistance.

Will the war backfire? Eventually. But it will be the voters and not John McCain and Sarah Palin who will be choking on the smoke.

Confirmed: McCain Is A Good Kisser

Former Brazilian beauty queen and dancer Maria Gracinda Teixeria de Jesus confirms that she is the hottie whom John McCain met in Rio in 1957 and wrote about in his memwow.

"He was tasty, loving and romantic," says De Jesus, now 77.

More here.

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

SUNRISE
By Ahoi

Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

-- GEORGE WILL

Are GOP partisans as dumb as they seem? My answer to this query is "at least as dumb as turkeys, the mouths of which have to be shut when it rains, lest they swallow too much water and drown." How else does one explain the continued enthusiasm shown by conservative-GOP activists for the "conservative" McCain-Palin ticket?

-- PAUL GOTTFRIED

The rise of Sarah Palin inevitably prompts me to ponder the demise of meritocracy in America.

Never mind the fact that her presidential readiness is measured by the proximity of Alaska to Russia, or the fact that the McCain camp listed Ireland as one of her foreign visits until it turned out that her plane had merely refueled on Irish soil. I'm more interested in the simple test that she has twice flunked about her own state – and the fact that John McCain, using grade inflation, gives her an "A" anyway.

She stated on ABC News that Alaska produces "nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy." The accurate energy statistic, according to the federal government, is 3.5 percent. She subsequently amended her boast, claiming during a stump speech that Alaska produces "nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of oil and gas." Wrong again. The accurate oil and gas statistic, according to the feds, is 7.4 percent.

Yet none of this matters to McCain, and why should it? In America these days, we award everyone for merit, from the brilliant to the mediocre. Just as in Little League, everyone gets a trophy. It’s the ultimate in populist democratization. Which is why McCain insists, despite all empirical evidence to the contrary, that Sarah Palin "knows more about energy than probably anybody in the United States of America."

-- DICK POLMAN

Todd Palin is Hillary Clinton circa 1992.

-- MICHELLE COTTLE

It's clear that the McCain campaign has basically decided on using the Bush playbook for handling the press. But I think the campaign made one critical error. The whole bully/lie/clamp-up method of handling reporters works swimmingly if you're already in power. Not so much if you're still trying to get power. It's fine to appoint unqualified hacks to office, especially if you're in your second term. Not so much when you're still running for your first.

The McCain folks have really pushed the envelope on this press-manipulation thing, which ultimately, I think, will prove to be a costly mistake. First, as I said, these dudes aren't in power yet. But second, and most importantly, anyone who's ever gone to public school knows that even the meekest, most bespectacled, nerdiest kid has a breaking point.

-- TA-NEHISI COATES

Another state drifts out of reach and Obama pulls the plug. This time it's North Dakota; over 50 Obama staffers stationed there are heading to Minnesota and Wisconsin. Reportedly, the Obama campaign opened 11 offices in North Dakota while McCain opened zero. Yet, Obama finds himself down by double digits. Time to call it quits.

-- JONATHAN STEIN

The presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin has taken effective charge of the Alaska state government's response to the legislative investigation into abuse of power allegations against Palin. An investigation that began on a bipartisan basis with several pledges from Palin to participate, is now being manipulated to protect Palin by campaign attorneys who appear to be directing the Palin administration's response, top legislators say.

-- PAT FORGEY

The first debate, on Friday, will be at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, where in 1962 the enrollment of James Meredith, its first African-American student, touched off a deadly riot. The debate commission had directed that this debate would cover domestic issues, but the two campaigns agreed to change it to foreign policy. Sen. McCain's advisers wanted to lead off with his strong suit, foreign policy. Sen. Obama's advisers wanted to have the last debate center on domestic issues, particularly the economy, which they believe will benefit their candidate. Also, some Obama advisers said they didn't want the issue of race "front and center" during a debate.

-- MONICA LANGLEY

At some point, the Goodyear Tire company is going to wish it had simply paid Lilly Ledbetter like a man.

-- STEPHANIE MENCIMER

The press is beginning to resist the incredibly sexist handling of Palin by the McCain campaign. There is a simple point here: any candidate for president should be as available to press inquiries as humanly possible. Barring a press conference for three weeks, preventing any questions apart from two television interviews, one by manic partisan Sean Hannity, devising less onerous debate rules for a female candidate, and then trying to turn the press into an infomercial for the GOP is beyond disgraceful.

Fight back, you hacks! Demand access. Demand accountability! It's our duty. If we cannot ask questions of a total newbie six weeks before an election in which she could become president of the country, then the First Amendment is pointless. Grow some!

-- ANDREW SULLIVAN

Cartoon by Ted Rall/Universal Press Syndicate

The Bloodbath Continues In Philadelphia

Five cops murdered in two years. More here.
Photograph by Mike Levin/Philadelphia Inquirer

What's A Trillion Bucks Among Friends?

Other than a vague knowledge of astronomical distances, I really have a hard time getting my hands around the concept of a trillion anything. But I'm at a total loss when it comes to a trillion dollars, a number being kicked around with abandon in connection with the Wall Street financial bailout.

So what's a trillion dollars?

It's $1,000,000,000,000, or 12 zeroes to the left of the decimal point.

A trillion is a million million dollars.

If you laid a trillion one dollar bills end to end, you could make a chain that stretches from earth to the moon and back again 200 times before you ran out of dollar bills.

One trillion dollars would stretch nearly from the earth to the sun. It would take a military jet flying at the speed of sound, reeling out a roll of dollar bills behind it, 14 years before it reeled out one trillion dollar bills.

Meanwhile, the cost of not bailing out Wall Street is said to be $30 trillion.

Feel better?

I didn't think so.

Cartoon du Jour

Ben Sargent/Universal Press Syndicate

McCain & Palin: Party Like It's 1958

MORE HERE.
Illustration by Stephen Miller via Group News Blog

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

SHROUDED
By Jan Pillar

Quotes From Around Yon Bailoutsphere

As a housing crisis worsened in the summer of 2008, Congress debated a variety of different bailouts. The current insanity includes an outrageous bailout of nearly a trillion dollars, proposed by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. It is terribly expensive, prevents judicial review, and is fraught with moral hazard, rewarding bad judgment and excessive risk. It focuses on all the wrong issues. It punishes the prudent and rewards the profligate.

Worst of all, it is unlikely to work.

-- BARRY RITHOLTZ

The collusion between financial interests and the government is an old story, and it is one viewed with hostility by the Country tradition, a significant part of the American political tradition, dating back before Jefferson inveighed against “the moneyed interest.” Nothing can better demonstrate how antithetical this collusion is to a free market economy than the last week’s events. And what does the conservative movement, supposedly so energized and dynamic now that Sarah Palin has arrived on the scene, to say about any of this? Very, very little. These are the people who will refer to prominent figures in the movement’s past, will name-check their books and will talk about reducing the size of government, but they are ultimately quiescent, or even actively supportive, when an administration that they have empowered oversees one of the largest expansions of the state in U.S. history. Absurdly, their new champions, including the mighty Palin, talk about fiscal responsibility and restraining spending…while more or less signing off on some of the largest spending measures ever undertaken that will ultimately add over one trillion to the national debt.

-- DANIEL LARISON

As best as I can tell, the Bush administration has convinced itself that it has brought on the Second Great Depression and it is desperate to do something to prevent a full meltdown on their watch.

-- BOOMAN

The crisis in the financial markets didn't come about because American workers are less productive or our families less prudent with their household budgets. It didn't come about because we're a nation of whiners. It didn't come about because of greed on Wall Street, as if that's news.

Instead the crisis came about because, once again, Washington allowed the wizards of Wall Street to tell us that this time they really have discovered something so clever and foolproof that we didn't need to worry about old fashioned notions like matching assets and liabilities, maintaining reserves and oversight of the capital markets.

-- THOMAS NOYES

I tend to think that voters are really, really stupid. But I am optimistic that they will sense that the Paulson plan is not in their best interest. My guess is that if Congress goes home and faces the voters before they pass the bill, rather than the other way around, the plan will die a well-deserved death.

-- ARNOLD KLING

The Bush administration has done this before. Many times. It’s always worked till now, so of course they’re going to try to do it again, what can simply be called the rape of America by emergency legislation.

The recipe is simple enough:

Take a crisis, real or imagined. Create a whole lot of fear around it. Propose an emergency legislative solution. Persuade Democrats — who don’t seem to take much persuading when it comes to such claptrap — that, despite its evident flaws, opposing said solution will be political suicide. Ram through the thoroughly flawed emergency legislation with zero discussion or debate. Try not to smirk when Democrats slowly realize in retrospect exactly what they have allowed themselves to be manipulated into supporting. Try not to remind Democrats how many times they’ve fallen for the exact same trick.

-- SARABETH

Republicans have decided that their argument on the credit crisis will be to argue that Democrats created the crisis by forcing banks to give too many loans to black people and other minorities.

-- JOSH MARSHALL

Trying hard to find empathy here. And failing miserably. I want to feel badly for folks on Wall Street who are losing their jobs right and left during this (is there a term for this?) not a depression, but whatever the heck it is. I want to feel empathy for anybody who loses a job. But what pops into my mind isn't a family struggling to survive with both parents working 2+ minimum wage jobs apiece. What pops into my mind are money-mad men and women who hopped onto a train heading for a shaky bridge. People who either couldn't or wouldn't see the shaky bridge and those who were on the train for whatever money they could before the crash. Either way, not a lot of sympathy here for these folks. The power lunch crowd, the folks who dropped $150 for a hamburger because it was Kobe beef.

-- LaPOPESSA

Imagine it is 1998, and you are a writer for the online version of the National Review. In the past couple of weeks, President Bill Clinton has nationalized hundreds of billions worth of hospitals, and is now proposing a close to $1 trillion giveaway to the health insurance industry. First, imagine for a moment what the collective freak-out would be like from the right. Christ, you would be able to hear the hysterics coming from Rush Limbaugh without a microphone.

Then write your headline and put it in the comments. My headline:

Liberal Fascism One Step Closer to Fruition as Soros Stroked Adulterous Celnis Seizes Assets From Citizenry to Liberally Redistribute Them to Fat Cat Big Healthcare.

Fiscal conservatives, my ass.

-- JOHN COLE

Palin: An Apocalypse Of A Different Kind

John McCain's last media availability was on August 13. Sarah Palin has not had a media availability in the 25 days since she burst on the national scene and has sat for only two interviews, one with ABC News at which she took offense because she was asked a few tough questions and one with the ever indulgent Fox News that was a scripted love feast.

The Palin Cone of Silence shtick got old after a couple of weeks because it made light of a situation that is decidedly unfunny: The Republican campaign's claims that the vetting-free Alaska governor is ready for prime time -- and absolutely the gal to be a heartbeat away from the presidency of a septuagenarian with health issues -- when she is being hidden from any semblance of it.

The WaPo notes that:

"Mr. McCain is entitled to choose the person he thinks would be best for the job. He is not entitled to keep the public from being able to make an informed assessment of that judgment. Ms. Palin's speech-making skills are impressive, but the more she repeats the same stump speech lines, the queasier we get. Nor have her answers to the gentle questioning she has encountered provided any confidence that Ms. Palin has a grasp of the issues."

Meanwhile, the one encounter with participatory democracy that Palin apparently can't duck is the vice presidential debate, but even here there is mischief afoot.

Reports The NYTimes:

"At the insistence of the McCain campaign, the Oct. 2 debate between the Republican nominee for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin, and her Democratic rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., will have shorter question-and-answer segments than those for the presidential nominees, the advisers said. There will also be much less opportunity for free-wheeling, direct exchanges between the running mates.

McCain advisers said they had been concerned that a loose format could leave Ms. Palin, a relatively inexperienced debater, at a disadvantage and largely on the defensive."

Meanwhile, the daily round-up of lies and obfuscations about Palin's career as a small-town mayor and then governor continue to pile up. And then there's her belief in the end times, that Alaska that will be the refuge for the faithful in the lower 48 states when the Rapture comes

Sam Harris calls her out:

"Palin's spiritual colleagues describe themselves as part of 'the final generation,' engaged in 'spiritual warfare' to purge the earth of 'demonic strongholds.' Palin has spent her entire adult life immersed in this apocalyptic hysteria. Ask yourself: Is it a good idea to place the most powerful military on earth at her disposal? Do we actually want our leaders thinking about the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy when it comes time to say to the Iranians, or to the North Koreans, or to the Pakistanis, or to the Russians or to the Chinese: 'All options remain on the table'?"

It must be set again. And again and again and again. Sarah Palin is a huge liability. Grossly inexperienced and particularly unsuited for this moment in American history.

Photograph by Jack Dempsey/The Associated Press

Missus Edwards & Feeding The Monster

I piled on Elizabeth Edwards pretty hard last month in a post titled "Elizabeth Edwards & Hillary Clinton: A Cautionary Tale Of The Lure of Power."

Its crux was that the more I learned about John Edwards' romp with Rielle Hunter, the more Mrs. Edwards reminded me of Hillary Clinton. This is because both women worship at the altar of political prominence, so much so that they overlooked clear evidence of their husbands' violation of their wedding vows, contributed to their husbands' phony public personas as straight arrows and then circled their own wagons when confronted with the truth.

Well, Mrs. Edwards has finally broken her silence in an interview with the Detroit Free Press.

"There's a lot of adjustment to make," she said. "When you mention trust, that's probably the most difficult hurdle."

All true. But when asked if she forgave her husband, Mrs. Edwards said, "I don't want to feed the monster, if you don't mind" because she wants her children to have an image of their father as "an advocate for poverty, not for this current picture of him."

Far be it to tell Mrs. Edwards, who continues to undergo chemotherapy for Stage 4 breast cancer, how to live her life or handle interviews.

But she has misidentified the monster. It is within her. And it is within Hillary Clinton and other political wives who put prestige and power before all else.

Cartoon du Jour

Tom Toles/Universal Press Syndicate

Cease & Desist Letter Du Jour

McCain's campaign doesn't get it. More here.

McCain Meets The Common Folk . . .

. . . at his 70th birthday celebration. More here.
Photo courtesy of The Nation