Cartoon du Jour

Pat Oliphant/Universal Press Syndicate

My Sentiment Exactly

Hat tip to Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture

Is Barack Obama American Enough?

Peter Beinart tells it like it is:

"[S]een in historical perspective, the McCain campaign's strategy against Obama is actually kind of shocking. For years, the recipe for injecting race into a political campaign has been clear. First, invoke the specter of black crime, as Lee Atwater did in 1988 when he vowed to turn murderer Willie Horton into Michael Dukakis' 'running mate.' Second, attack lazy people in the inner city, as Ronald Reagan did in 1976 when he condemned a Chicago 'welfare queen.' Third, bash affirmative action, as the late North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms did in 1990 when he ran an ad showing white hands crumpling a job rejection notice.

"Historically, this stuff has often worked, even against white candidates considered too solicitous of African-American concerns. And yet this year, with a black man actually running for President, the old recipe has been shelved. John McCain hasn't run ads on crime, welfare or racial preferences. At the gop convention, the subjects barely came up.

"Does that mean race doesn't matter this year? Hardly. It just matters in a different way. In the past, Republicans often used race to make their opponents seem anti-white. In 2008, with their incessant talk about who loves their country and who doesn't, McCain and Palin are doing something different: they're using race to make Obama seem anti-American."

More here.

Photograph by Callie Shell/Aurora for Time magazine

Arugula Eaters Unite!

I want to make it clear that I have been eating arugula since long before a rookie presidential campaigner by the name of Barack Obama forever branded this spicy salad green as politically incorrect when he tried to sympathize with a group of farmers before the Iowa caucuses by declaring that

"Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula? I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff."

In fact, I began growing arugula when Obama had barely taken the training wheels off of his bicycle. Arugula tastes great, is less filling, is over the top nutritionally, grows like a weed, and as John Schwnkler explains in a delightful commentary, it also helps keep a guy's pencil sharp, if you catch my drift.

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Dish

'Bring It On Home to Me, Oh Yeah'

BRING IT ON HOME TO ME
By Sam Cooke

If you ever change your mind
About leavin', leavin' me behind
Oh, oh, bring it to me
Bring your sweet lovin'
Bring it on home to me, oh yeah

You know I laughed (ha ha) when you left
But now I know I've only hurt myself
Oh, oh, bring it to me
Bring your sweet lovin'
Bring it on home to me, yeah (yeah) yeah (yeah) yeah (yeah)

I'll give you jewellery, money too
And that's not all, all I'll do for you
Oh, oh, bring it to me
Bring your sweet lovin'
Bring it on home to me, yeah (yeah) yeah (yeah) yeah (yeah)
Yeah

You know I'll always be your slave
Till I'm dead and buried in my grave
Oh, oh, bring it to me
Bring your sweet lovin'
Bring it on home to me, yeah (yeah) yeah (yeah) yeah (yeah)

If you ever change your mind
About leavin', leavin' me behind
Oh, oh, bring it to me
Bring your sweet lovin'
Bring it on home to me, yeah (yeah) yeah (yeah) yeah (yeah)
Yeah (yeah) yeah (yeah)

Photograph from Getty Images

The Most Unlikely Of Heroes

MORE HERE.
Photograph by Tim Shaffer/Reuters

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

A section of blast wall is removed in Baghdad. More here.
Photo by Max Becherer/Polaris for The New York Times

Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Obama and McCain are giving us a clear sense of who they are and how they would lead. It would seem that Obama has been studying the 1932 campaign of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The key to Roosevelt’s victory was not a big program but a jaunty sense of optimism in the midst of despair that led to his signature inaugural line — "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Less famously, Roosevelt declared in his acceptance speech that "this is no time for fear, for reaction or for timidity."

In recent days, Obama has painted himself as calm, pragmatic, open and hopeful. He seemed to be channeling FDR when he told a crowd in Indianapolis on Wednesday: "This isn’t a time for fear or for panic. This is a time for resolve and steady leadership."

As for McCain, his campaign is trying to sow fear and panic about Obama. That's exactly what Herbert Hoover tried to do with Roosevelt. Days before the 1932 election, Hoover attacked Roosevelt’s "inchoate New Deal." He predicted it would "crack the timbers of the Constitution" and warned voters to beware of the "glitter of promise."

Hoover stopped short of declaring Roosevelt a celebrity. But Donald A. Ritchie reports in his excellent 2007 book, Electing FDR, that Hoover saw Roosevelt as "his weakest and most vulnerable" foe and "did not respect him as a political rival." McCain conveys unmistakably that he feels the same way about "that one" running against him.

It's too early to predict that the 2008 campaign will turn out like the one in 1932. But history suggests that in American elections, the candidate who underestimates his opponent often loses, and hope almost always beats fear.

-- E.J. DIONNE

What made the Great Depression a catastrophe, a leading economist points out, was "that some of the worst shocks occurred right before the 1932 presidential election. There then followed an extended interregnum between the election and inauguration of the new president when no one was in charge."

As Barack Obama and John McCain spend these next weeks trolling for votes, it would be comforting to see each of them set up a council of economic advisors to work on a set of specific measures that the winner would announce on November 5th to start putting a 21st century New Deal into motion.

As Hillary Clinton used to say in another context, the new President has to be ready to move on Day One.

-- ROBERT STEIN

The McCain campaign has famously spent the past week trying to increase doubts as to Mr. Obama's nature, background, intentions. Their crowds have been irascible. Here is a warning for Republicans: When your crowds go from "I love you" to "I hate the other guy," you are in trouble, you are on a losing strain. Winning campaigns are built on love. This is the time for "McCain is the answer," not "The other guy is questionable."

-- PEGGY NOONAN

An analysis of campaign finance records by The New York Times this week found nearly 3,000 donations to Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, from more than a dozen people with apparently fictitious donor information. The contributions represent a tiny fraction of the record $450 million Mr. Obama has raised. But the questionable donations — some donors were listed simply with gibberish for their names — raise concerns about whether the Obama campaign is adequately vetting its unprecedented flood of donors.

. . . There is no evidence that questionable contributions amount to anything more than a small portion of Mr. Obama’s fund-raising haul. The Times's analysis, conducted over a few days and looking for obvious anomalies, like names or addresses with all consonants, identified about $40,000 in suspect contributions that had not been refunded by the campaign as of its last filing with the Federal Election Commission, in September.

It appears that campaign finance records for Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, contain far fewer obviously false names, although he has taken in about $200 million in contributions, less than half Mr. Obama’s total. Mr. McCain did collect about $173,000 from donors who appear in campaign finance records with only a name and have no other identifying information. Mr. Obama collected about $314,000 from such donors.

-- MICHAEL LUO and GRIFF PALMER

“Angry” GOP crowds notwithstanding, all Americans are upset and fearful of the future. It is a fact of life that politicians would seek to capitalize on this fear. Both sides are trying to do it and both have done it in the past. Many voters no doubt will give in to this fear. Perhaps many more will not and it is among those voters that the election will be decided.

-- RICK MORAN

Obama has in him — I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy "We are the people we have been waiting for" silly rhetoric — the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.

So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.

-- CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY

Perhaps McCain can ultimately sow doubts and fears, perhaps not. (The fact that the GOP, at this late date, feels compelled to run anti-Obama ads in red-state Indiana is clearly a sign of weakness.) But what’s beyond dispute is that, by adopting the standard smear tactics of Republicans on the cusp of defeat, McCain has renewed his Faustian pact with the party establishment and forfeited anew any claim to the crown of “maverick.” As former Republican governor William Milliken of Michigan said yesterday, "He is not the McCain I endorsed."

-- DICK POLMAN

There was always going to be a point of revolt and panic for a core group of Americans who believe that Obama simply cannot be president - because he's black or liberal or young or relatively new. This is that point. As the polls suggest a strong victory, the Hannity-Limbaugh-Steyn-O'Reilly base are going into shock and extreme rage. McCain and Palin have decided to stoke this rage, to foment it, to encourage paranoid notions that somehow Obama is a "secret" terrorist or Islamist or foreigner. These are base emotions in both sense of the word.

But they are also very very dangerous. This is a moment of maximal physical danger for the young Democratic nominee. And McCain is playing with fire. If he really wants to put country first, he will attack Obama on his policies - not on these inflammatory, personal, creepy grounds. This is getting close to the atmosphere stoked by the Israeli far right before the assassination of Rabin.

For God's sake, McCain, stop it. For once in this campaign, put your country first.

-- ANDREW SULLIVAN

A woman at a McCain rally today said into the microphone, "I'm scared of Barack Obama . . . he's an Arab terrorist." According to Ana Marie Cox, who reported this from the scene, McCain interrupted the woman by taking the microphone away from her and stating, "No, no ma'am. He's a decent family man with whom I happen to have some disagreements."

Cox seems to think that this is a way for McCain to have his cake and eat it too; now that the crowds are sufficiently roused against Obama and the smears have a life of their own, he wants to play the noble McCain role again.

Perhaps that's true. . . .We shall have to see, of course, if McCain continues this and if Palin follows suit. But in Lakeville, Minnesota, a group of potential extremists were told by their nominee for President that Barack Obama is not a terrorist, that McCain respects him and that there is no reason to fear an Obama presidency. If this helps a few people to deal with the inevitable in a non-violent way, I will be profoundly grateful.

Good job, Senator McCain.

-- STEPHEN SUH

Dear John & Sarah: We're Still Waiting

The calls for John McCain and Sarah Palin to speak out over the unhinged behavior of their campaign rally audiences are increasing, but the candidates themselves -- who are directly responsible for this troubling trend -- are still AWOL on the issue.

Writes Jonathan Martin at The Politico:

"The unmistakable momentum behind Barack Obama's campaign, combined with worry that John McCain is not doing enough to stop it, is ratcheting up fears and frustrations among conservatives.

"And nowhere is this emotion on plainer display than at Republican rallies, where voters this week have shouted out insults at the mention of Obama, pleaded with McCain to get more aggressive with the Democrat and generally demonstrated the sort of visceral anger and unease that reflects a party on the precipice of panic."

And this from John Weaver, McCain’s former top strategist:

"People need to understand, for moral reasons and the protection of our civil society, the differences with Sen. Obama are ideological, based on clear differences on policy and a lack of experience compared to Senator McCain. And from a purely practical political vantage point, please find me a swing voter, an undecided independent, or a torn female voter that finds an angry mob mentality attractive.

"Senator Obama is a classic liberal with an outdated economic agenda. We should take that agenda on in a robust manner. As a party we should not and must not stand by as the small amount of haters in our society question whether he is as American as the rest of us. Shame on them and shame on us if we allow this to take hold."

Obama himself addressed the issue this morning in an Ohio stump speech, declaring:

"It's easy to rile up a crowd by stoking anger and division. But that's not what we need right now in the United States. The times are too serious. The challenges are too great. The American people aren't looking for someone who can divide this country -- they're looking for someone who will lead it. We're in a serious crisis -- now, more than ever, it is time to put country ahead of politics. Now, more than ever, it is time to bring change to Washington so that it works for the people of this country that we love."

I really don't want to believe that McCain and Palin condone people who shout out "terrorist!" or "kill him!" at these rallies. But their silence is deafening and all it will take is one nut with a gun who has a vision that he should go on a mission to alter the course of history.

As Joe Klein notes:

"[W]e are on the edge of some real serious craziness here and it would be nice if McCain did the right thing and told his more bloodthirsty supporters to go home and take a cold shower. But McCain hasn’t done the right thing all year. His campaign is appalling . . . "

Analyzing A Loser: McCain On The Couch

This is a post that I write with especial care because I understand that we are all complex beings, as well as knowing that a lifetime of achievement and celebrity is no bar to weaknesses and venalities. In fact, I dare you to name a single famous person who did not have foibles if not a dark side.

Then there is John McCain, a man whom I once considered voting for until his own frailties, to put it most kindly, became too big and too numerous to ignore:

* A miserable record as Naval Academy midshipman and fighter pilot that does not negate his war hero status but cannot be ignored as an antecedent to being shot down over North Vietnam and imprisoned as a POW.

* A chronic inability to keep his word, most notoriously his serial confessions of remorsefulness after being caught out in the Keating Five Scandal and a steady slide back into the very behaviors that nearly destroyed his career.

* Incidents that call into question his mental stability and emotional maturity, including a notoriously short temper, impetuosity and proclivity for high-stakes gambling. He probably suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and has to take medication to sleep.

Those threads in McCain's temperament, under the microscope as the first pre-mortems on his disastrous presidential campaign are written, are leading some commentators to suggest another frailty with which I reluctantly agree:

John McCain is a coward.

If one can accept that there is validity to that assessment, and I do, then much of McCain's erratic behavior over the past several months begins to make sense.

There is a sad credibility to persistent reports that McCain is personally repelled by a campaign accentuated by cycle after cycle of personal attacks of the very kind that targeted he and his adopted daughter in 2000, but seems to have been unable to do anything about.

Whenever McCain has met Obama face to face in recent weeks, he inevitably fails to call him out despite boastful assertions beforehand that he is "going to take the gloves off." But the gloves stay on as McCain retreats behind a stage presence that hardly masks his contempt for the Democratic challenger.

This could be seen in his refusal to make eye contact during the first presidential debate and grudging shake of Obama's outstretched hand in the Senate chamber on the occasion of the first bailout vote, while his painfully awkward and glowering incivility was again evident in the second debate earlier this week.

Asked later why he didn't mention the Bill Ayers "connection" that has been the campaign's hot button at the debate, McCain pathetically answered, because because "it didn't come up in the flow of conversation."

* * * * *

An experienced medical professional of my acquaintance, someone who has spent many years in emergency rooms and neurological ICUs, heard but did not watch the second debate.

This person has long admired McCain and was sympathetic and not scornful in offering this prognosis: McCain's brain is addled, and possibly on the way to being wet, and that could be heard in the conceptual and speech patterns to which he repeatedly defaulted. Furthermore, McCain might well be disintegrating under the enormous pressure of the campaign.

My friend's final thought: "It's so terrifying when you consider that he could have been president."

McCain-Palin Trainwreck Excuse du Jour

First in a series on the best
excuses for the GOP disaster

From Daniel Larison at Eunomia:

"Even among McCain critics, there are some who still insist on coming up with excuses for the former media darling, and they echo the excuses journalists have made for McCain for years: sure, he's lying about this or that, but he's clearly uncomfortable doing it, which proves that he's actually a good guy. More recently, McCain has seemed angrier and grumpier than usual, prompting the same excuses: he doesn't enjoy doing this kind of campaigning, and it shows, which somehow makes it better. This has been the strange ethical standard applied to McCain for as long as I can remember. According to this odd view, if someone is not very proficient at lying and smearing his opponents and gives the impression that even he knows what he's saying is nonsense, that somehow proves that he is honest and decent at heart."

More here.

Fixing The Problem & Not The Symptoms

The so-right-that-he's-frightening Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture:

"How did this happen? Why are markets reacting so negatively to a near $1 trillion bailout? The short answer is that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department have been focusing on the wrong issues. They have been treating falling asset prices—houses, stocks, bonds—as well as the lack of confidence between banks, as the actual issue. This is the wrong approach. Falling asset prices and a lack of confidence are a result of the underlying problem. You don’t cure alcoholism by getting rid of a hangover; you cannot resolve confidence issues by merely cutting rates.

"The primary problem is that banks are refusing to extend credit to each other. Why? Because they do not understand the liabilities of their counterparties. Translated into English, that means they don’t know if the other bank whom they are dealing with will still to be standing tomorrow.

" . . . When banks know their counterparties are not in danger of going belly up tomorrow, they will begin lending again. Confidence will return once the underlying problem is resolved, and not a minute before."

More here.

Photograph by Agence-France-Presse

Cartoon du Jour

Matt Davies/The Journal News (N.Y.)

Why All Politics Are Indeed Local

I come from a long line of political activists, including a grandfather who raised ungodly sums of money from churches for World War II refugee relief and a mother who spent many an Election Day driving voters to the polls while dispensing pint bottles of whiskey as incentives in neighborhoods on the other side of the tracks.

I worked for my first campaign (JFK in 1960) at age 13, while my son has been ringing doorbells in suburban Washington this season.

So the old adage that "All politics are local" was never something that had to be proven to me, but that has been taken to a new level with what is unquestionably the most amazing, and in some respects revolutionary, ground organization in modern American political history -- Barack Obama's New Organizers operation.

More here.

Hey, Hey! Let's Suppress The Vote!

Should foreclosed homeowners be denied the right to vote in the November 4 election?

The Republican Party, whose minions have their grubby mitts all over the economic meltdown caused in large part by the housing crisis, believe so. And are fighting tooth and nail against a lawsuit filed by Obama For America and the Democratic National Committee.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that six swing states seem to be in violation of federal election law, while the perennial ballot mess in Florida continues.

Ya Gotta Believe!

MORE HERE.
Photograph by Shaffer/Reuters

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

A Bengali woman is smothered with vermillion powder as
part of an annual Hindu festival honoring the Goddess Durga.
Photograph by Agence-France-Presse

Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

[Sarah] Palin's hotness is not erotic but, in McLuhanese, an aggressive style that works on the listener to get a pre-determined reaction that leaves no room for ambivalence or ambiguity, eliciting primal responses such as "Kill him" to her attacks on Barack Obama.

Little wonder that conservative David Brooks calls her "a cancer on the Republican Party" out of a populist tradition with prejudices that "scorn ideas entirely."

Michelle Obama, on the other hand, is the essence of cool, shrugging off McCain's calling her husband "that one" as part of the political game and just smiling when Jon Stewart tried to get a rise out of her about Palin.

Cool media and personalities, McLuhan asserted, are inclusive, inviting watchers into their world instead of manipulating them to their own purposes. If the Obamas get to the White House, they could turn out to be the coolest couple since JFK and Jackie.

-- ROBERT STEIN

[Joe] Lieberman is afraid that as President Barack Obama won't bomb Iran. He wants the United States to have a president that other countries fear.

-- THE NIGHTOWL

When will the class war ever finally drown out the culture war, if not in 2008? Under Republican rule in Washington, wages have stayed flat while income inequality has increased; the numbers of uninsured have soared; unemployment recently passed six per cent, its highest level since the early nineteen-nineties; gas and heating-oil prices have doubled, while basic food prices have gone up by fifty per cent; and the country’s financial system has come closer to collapse than at any moment since 1929. More profoundly, Republican dogma no longer offers convincing solutions, and in some cases it doesn’t even acknowledge the problems.

-- GEORGE PACKER

Obama is someone who impresses me as having no real ideology save that which can get him elected. . . .

This is not a man with a radical ideology. It is a man with no ideology at all, no set beliefs in anything save his own supreme abilities. It is this more than anything else that will cause him to fail if he is elected president. When the political winds are blowing the strongest, he will have no set of beliefs he can cling to in order to ride out the storm. His efforts to "reform" Washington will come a cropper because of this and in the end, his empty rhetoric will be all that is remembered of him.

-- RICK MORAN

When Cindy McCain is your attack dog, you're in trouble.

-- TA-NEHISI COATES

Like others, I'm troubled by Ayers. If he were indeed a close friend of Obama, it would be a deal breaker. I couldn't cast my presidential vote for a man who befriended a bomber. It's bad enough for Obama to sit passively through the ravings of a guy like Rev. Wright. But to befriend – or even associate with for the purpose of political advancement – a man who actually attacked the country is entirely another.

But if the facts suggest that Ayers is on the periphery of Obama's public life, it raises a different question: Should candidates be held accountable for the conduct of their acquaintances?

Because if we begin to judge people’s character based on those in their orbit with whom they have no real relationship, I may as well surrender my pen.

While no one in any circle of my life has bombed a building in the U.S., there are some real characters – a few have done time, some have probably cheated on their wives, one I suspect of tax fraud and quite a number are in the DUI club. Should my acquaintances hinder my ability to be a journalist?

There's even a guy I know who is 50ish and still smokes pot. A better concert companion you will not find.

I have a distant relative who relishes paying the IRS far less than his fair share of taxes.

I remember when a onetime neighbor attempted to off herself. And another who, unfortunately, was successful.

Some guys I went to high school with ran a big bookmaking ring. One former public servant writes to me from prison and I write back.

-- MICHAEL SMERCONISH

The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game

There is little question that the presidential race will tighten as Election Day approaches. It always does. But absent an apocalyptic event, Barack Obama will cruise across the finish line ahead of John McCain in the most important election since Franklin Roosevelt beat Herbert Hoover in the depths of the Great Depression.

I do not make that cross-generational comparison lightly because in 1932 things were sucky in a way that none of us -- excepting a precious few long-lived grandmothers and great uncles -- are able to recall.

And while I do not have the chops to predict whether we are on the verge of another depression, it is clear that no one in a position of responsibility -- whether they work on Wall Street, in Washington, the City of London or Tokyo -- has a clue as to how the global economic conflagration of the vanities can be extinguished since throwing trillions of dollars, euros and yen into the flames in the form of rescue packages has had little effect in restoring confidence in what obviously is a badly broken economic system.

This brings me to the second presidential debate and the sit-up-in-bed realization (because I happened to be lying down at the time) that even if McCain had the chops and even if Obama had a resume longer than a page and change, the cold fact of the matter is that they have been battling for the privilege of sitting in the cockpit of an airplane that has become aerodynamically unstable, to paraphrase an astute antipodean blogger.

* * * * *

The title of this post is cribbed from "When the Hunter Gets Captured By the Game," a song that Smokey Robinson wrote for the Marvelettes back when Barack Obama still had training wheels on his bicycle.

"Hunter" seems to be about love, but like many great songs its lyrics have a timeless universality that fit events years in the future that would seem to have nothing to do with it's surface theme -- a romancer who chases someone for the thrill of the hunt only to find that they have become the prey.

That is a pretty close approximation to what has happened to Obama, who is trying to stay on a bicycle of another kind as he pedals toward November 4 and Inauguration Day.

I do not believe that Obama expected to outlast a primary field chockablock with veteran Democrats, let alone become the 44th president of the United States. This man, an African-American no less, has earned his improbable front runner status by dint of being able to channel a big ego, extraordinary self confidence and enormous cool into themes that are resonating with anxious voters, but could not have anticipated having to confront a conflagration so enormous that a task like ending the war in Iraq seems so much less treacherous.

* * * * *

I was relieved that Obama bobbed and weaved when debate moderator Tom Brokaw asked him who he would choose to be his Secretary of the Treasury. An October evening in Nashville is no time to be making premature commitments.

While Obama is being accused of being vague beyond some spot-on finger pointing about the conflagration's underlying causes, that's just fine with me because stabilizing the economy is not the half of it.

Easing the transition to the radically different place the U.S. will become in the post-bonfire world is the other half.

This includes building in the systemic checks and balances to prevent future disasters and this is going to take an effort that will require a heck of a lot more than massive bailouts, tinkering with interest rates and throwing a few Gordon Gecko types in the slammer to appease the lynch mob.

Obama also caught flak for saying during the debate that any recovery plan should have a green component; that is, building a new clean-energy infrastructure that won't merely provide jobs to building trades people idled because of the downturn, but will lay the groundwork for beginning to wean the U.S. from its addiction to fossil fuels. And while he's at it, how about addressing that hallmark of the Age of Bush -- spiking income inequity -- which also is long past due. Seriously.

Is the hunter Obama, having now become the prey, up to the task?

I have grave doubts that he is, but that has less to do with his skimpy resume than the institutional, social and political forces (the latter including vengeful Republicans) that will line up against what will have to be a revolution in governance only slightly less profound than that which confronted FDR.

Why John McCain Is In Such Big Trouble

This Little Piggy . . . Glows In The Dark

And is a product of a breakthrough that has netted two Americans and a Japanese the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. More here.

Then there is this year's Ig Nobel Prize for Chemistry, awarding one-half of the prize to a team of scientists for discovering that Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide and the other half of the prize to a second team for proving that it is not. More here.

Where Do They Learn This Stuff?

The National Enquirer, which has an excellent batting average on such matters of national import, reports that Jaimie Lynn Spears, little sister of pop tart Britney, is pregnant only three months after giving birth.

Seems she didn't think that she could get knocked up while she was breast feeding.

More here if you dare.

'What's This Whole World Comin' To'

THE HUNTER GETS CAPTURED BY THE GAME
By Smokey Robinson

Everyday brings change,and the world puts on a new face
Sudden things rearrange, and this whole world seems like a new place
Secretly I been tailing you
Like a fox that prays on a rabbitt
Had to get you and so I knew
I had to learn your ways and habits
Ooooooh, you were the catch that I was after
I looked up and I was in your arms and I knew that I was captured

What's this whole world comin to
Things just ain't the same
Any time the hunter gets captured by the game

I had to lay such a tender trap
Hoping you might fall into it
Love hit me with a sudden slap
One kiss and then I knew it
Ooooooh, my plans didn't work out like I thought
'Cause I had laid my trap for you but it seems that I got caught

What's this whole world comin to
Things just ain't the same
Any time the hunter gets captured by the game

Ah yeah, yeah yeah, hey yeah

Image: "Spirit of the Hunter" by K.C. Snider

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

UNTITLED
By Michael Woods

Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

[T]he words "William Ayers" appeared nowhere in yesterday's debate, despite the fact that the McCain campaign hinted for days that McCain would go hard at Obama's associations.

Now Politico reports that McCain advisers are privately indicating that Ayers, and Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, may be off the table for good.

If it's really true that the McCain team is holstering this pistol, it suggests that the McCain campaign's internal polling on how the Ayers stuff is playing is just brutal, likely among independents. It also suggests that Obama's counter-attack -- lambasting McCain's campaign for wanting to change the subject from the economy to personal attacks -- has been effective.

-- GREG SARGENT

John McCain may not be toast, but he's certainly approaching English muffin territory.

-- AMY SULLIVAN

Once there was a president in the Oval office who understood the ramifications of killing innocent civilians abroad, even for an operation that might appear on its face to advance American interest. . . .

That happened in 1985, and the president was Ronald Reagan, the man that Sarah Palin and John McCain have practically nominated for sainthood. But Palin and McCain have in fact dishonored Reagan, and all the leaders from both parties who have come before them, with their cavalier attitude toward how America treats other people around the globe, and how other people should perceive us. We see this in their vicious and petty high school pep rally approach to politics -- where chants of "drill baby drill" seem to be morphing dangerously closer to "kill baby kill" every passing day.

-- WILL BUNCH

John McCain is in deep trouble. In spite of some incremental gains that McCain has made in some national tracking polls, the state polling . . . is so strong for Obama that he continues to hit record marks in all three of our projection metrics. We are now projecting Obama to win the election 90.5 percent of the time, with an average of 346.8 electoral votes, and a 5.4-point margin in the national popular vote.

-- NATE SILVER

Tribal politics assumes some affinity, whether based on real or fictive kinship, and speaking for myself I find that I have few affinities with the tribe I am usually expected to defend and support. Belonging to a political team presupposes that you are pursuing the same goals, and to the extent that being a movement conservative means having a goal of supporting the GOP more or less regardless of what it does then I don’t share those goals, either. This logic of being a team player has been taken to absurd depths in the last eight years, as anyone who broke with "the Family" has been penalized for violating the political equivalent of the code of omerta. In "the Family," when someone ends up at odds with the boss he has to go to serve as an example to others. Disloyalty is not good for business, and if you know what’s good for you you’ll keep your mouth shut.

. . . Loyalty and power rise and fall, as I suppose they have always done, in direct proportion: as Mr. Bush has become weaker, the more willing his former supporters are to turn against him. The disloyal ones are no longer penalized, and it is taken for granted that this new disloyalty is necessary. Indeed, under the new boss, it is positively vital to make clear that you believe that the new boss is nothing like the old boss. The scramble to flee from Bush after years of shameless support shows that the collective good of the team/tribe takes precedence, except when it doesn’t. Turning on the boss and his people if it helps "the Family" in the long term is considered acceptable, but I suppose that is the kind of decision that can only be made at the Don level. It’s not for mere peons.

-- DANIEL LARISON

[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican Party.

-- DAVID BROOKS

Obama's supporters, as they push to win this dead-even battleground state, are talking directly about race, betting that the best way to raise their neighbors' comfort level with the prospect of the first black president is to openly confront their feelings.

When Cecil E. Roberts, president of the coal miners union that shapes politics in much of this mountain region [of Buchanan County, Virginia], talks to voters, he tells them that their choice is to have "a black friend in the White House or a white enemy." When Charlie Cox, an Obama supporter, hears friends fretting about Obama's race, he reminds them that they pull for the nearby University of Tennessee football team, "and they're black."

Union organizer Jerry Stallard asks fellow coal workers what's more important: improving their work conditions or holding onto their skepticism of Obama's race, culture or religion. "We're all black in the mines," he tells them.

-- PETER WALLSTEN

I think McCain is down to seeds and stems.

-- RICK HERTZBERG

It seems to me that in the absence of a real press conference, the networks and cable news networks should simply cease broadcasting her speeches live and demand of every Republican guest that they explain this descent into anti-democratic territory. Bush and Cheney despise the press and despise the constitutional balances that restrict their dictatorial impulses. They don't recognize the rule of law as an impediment to the exercise of their power and they don't acknowledge any democratic input, apart from a single "accountability moment" every four years. And now they want to prevent the public's ability through the press to ask the toughest questions and toughest follow-ups even during that one "accountability moment".

This is how Putin behaves. It is anti-American. It has never been tried in modern times before. It is a chilling attack on an open society and the accountability of its leaders to the people they serve. The press has a duty to stand up against it - and to care more about the process than its own precious reputation in the mouths of Hannity, Steyn, Palin and the rest of them.

-- ANDREW SULLIVAN

The next debate will be the most important debate of the campaign – yet neither Barack Obama nor John McCain will be present. The next debate is about what happens to conservatism after John McCain's defeat in November.

-- DAVID KUO

Cartoon by Pat OLiphant/Universal Press Syndicate

(Updated) John & Sarah: We're Waiting

To say that tensions are extremely high on the Republican stump with the race slipping away is an understatement. That the hardest of the hard core are crawling out of the woodwork probably was inevitable.

But there is some pretty ugly acting out, as reported here and here, because of the way that John McCain and Sarah Palin are baiting campaign rally audiences, and the Secret Service is now on the case.

Writes Ta-Nehisi Coates:

"I don't hold McCain or Palin accountable for the incredible hatred that we've seen at their rallies as of late. Let me rephrase--I don't think they're accountable for everything they're knucklehead supporters say, anymore than Obama is accountable for every comment on DailyKos. But they should be shook by the people they're attracting. We are getting a good look at the elements of the base now. These are not people just posting anonymously in internet forums--these are people who literally believe Obama is a terrorist and showing up at rallies. These guys need to watch what they say. Somewhere, slumbering in this country, there are men who aren't clued in that this whole 'terrorist' thing is mere strategy. They have guns, and all their lives they've wanted to be famous. Don't give them a reason. This is still America. We are never that far from the past."

Even if they apparently are now backing off from their guilt-by-association strategy (because it has been such a disaster), it is incumbent on McCain and Palin to state unequivocally that hateful outbursts will not be tolerated and do not reflect their views.

We're waiting.

Photograph by Jewel Samad/AFP-Getty