F**kin' A

Gotta love Vice President Joe Biden. He talks like an American:



In case you couldn't hear, Biden told Obama this was a BFD, as if Baracky needed to be reminded. He does know that it ain't the world-ending disaster the GOP and their 'bagger buddies threatened:



And by far my favorite victory photo:



I've said it before and I'll say it again: Hillary '16.

As a Zionist

As a Jewish American who supports the State of Israel, I've always been against Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu and his Likud Party, especially now that it is in coalition with the Far Far Right Shas Party. It is repeatedly annoying that the U.S. appears powerless to stop Israeli settlement expansion into lands seized during wars, no matter our rhetoric and attempts to portray America as an honest broker between Israelis and Palestinians.

But maybe something is about to change.

Bibi stepped in it when his government humiliated Vice President on a peacemaking trip last week to Israel, just as some sort of "proximity negotiations" were established. Netanyahu claims he didn't know that the Shas minister(s) had approved even more new settlements in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians hope will be their future capital, but whether he did or not, he actually pissed off Biden, one of Israel's staunchest supporters for decades.

Biden responded by showing up ninety minutes late for a state dinner and twice upbraiding the Israeli government in public, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took it a step further by chewing out Bibi in a 45 minute phone call. Nice.

The upshot seems to be that this type of behavior on the part of Israel actually endangers American troops -- American lives -- overseas. This isn't just a haphazard opinion, but that of esteemed Gen. David Petraeus, per his briefing to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. No joke.

Per Jeffrey Goldberg, here's President Obama's strategy for Israel in the Administration's response to this affront:

The goal is force a rupture in the governing coalition that will make it necessary for Netanyahu to take into his government Livni's centrist Kadima Party (he has already tried to do this, but too much on his terms) and form a broad, 68-seat majority in Knesset that does not have to rely on gangsters, messianists and medievalists for votes.

Here here. There is opportunity in this fight. Yes, various Palestinian factions including Hamas have been bad actors in the past. Yes, the Palestinians are often their own worst enemies. But how long can the status quo go on? Can the Far Right in Israel really colonize their way out of this historical problem?

Of course, the flip side is true: can a contiguous Palestinian state be created and eventually live side-by-side in peace with Israel?

When Joe Works

Here's why I'm happy President Barack Obama chose Joe Biden as his running mate:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

All about the facts. Not about amateur psychology on motives. Best phrase regarding Cheney: "Either misinformed or misinforming."

Will out mainstream media continue to play stenographer to the ex-President -- I mean, of course, Ex-Vice President?

Steamroller

It's comedy, like a cartoon now. The GOP leaks out their airtight case against Judge Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court Justice, Obama headfakes with his old friend Judge Diane Wood leaked as visiting the White House, instead has Sotomayor in last Thursday without the press getting the least wind of it, and today announces her as his first nominee. And Wile GOP Coyote suddenly finds itself run out of cliff beneath its feet, puff of smoke, long fall.

There will be conservative talking points and smears and no one will be listening this time because Obama has selected the perfect replacement for David Souter, similar in judicial temperament, but a wildly groundbreaking choice, another Obama star-making ceremony today. And who could fail to be moved by the now commanding President, this Horatio Alger story judge representing the hopes of American women and Hispanics -- double sticks of Roadrunner dynamite -- accompanied and blessed by the older Catholic man who will make certain her path through the Senate confirmation process is a successful one.

At the announcement they had her mother, who worked six days a week as a nurse to raise her in the Bruckner Blvd. projects tens of thousands drive by daily. The President reminded us that Sotomayor is the judge who saved baseball. All that was missing was the apple pie:



There's no real play for the GOP, not unless something freaky comes out of the woodwork, because they can't afford to alienate every last Hispanic or non-reactionary woman in the country, even in their current state. But of course, as scripted as a sarcastic prime time cartoon, out comes Boss Limbaugh:

Do I want her to fail? Yeah.

He's so funny when he's fat. But for c-h-u-t-z-p-a-h, how about an instant (as in previously written) oppositional opinion from noneother than war criminal and conspiratorial co-architect of U.S. torture policy, Attorney (for now) John Yoo. I'd quote him, but then I'd have to waterboard you.

What's happening now is The Summer of Shove. Obama had the agenda forced on him by economic meltdown even before he was sworn in. He's handled that well enough that his real agenda -- the one America voted for -- can begin. And per Al Giordano, the President will be backed up by the same grand-scale community organizing that won him the job: grassroots action:

The political class of the Republican and Democratic Parties may plan on spending the summer on Martha’s Vineyard, or in the Hamptons, or in Newport, or in Mountain West resort towns, or along elite California beaches, or at country clubs all over, but like NFL players and soldiers at war, community organizers will be at boot camp: sweltering the summer of 2009 door to door with the rest of America for whom such paradises are out of reach.

The door knocking won’t get much, if any, mass media attention, in this season between Memorial Day and Labor Day (did I mention that the news editors and star pundits will be off rubbing elbows with those same elected officials in those same vacationlands?). The Supreme Court nomination spectacle in the Senate – one in which the final result is has a 99 percent probability of raising Justice Sotomayor up on high through a sleepy summer Senate going through the motions of looking busy – will provide cover for the grassroots push from below.

But the real history will be made, this summer - as during the last two - by the unsung heroes and heroines: the organizers. You know who you are. You’re the ones without a second home, or that valiantly choose to skip that beach house, in order to bend the arc of history toward justice once again.

New national healthcare policy legislation, climate change control legislation and Justice Sonia Sotomayor all by the end of this summer.

Don't forget how fast he moved to win both the primaries and the Presidency.

Beep-beep!

Conservative Success

The hard right wing of the Republican Party has won another battle. They have forced 29-year Senate veteran Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania to switch sides. Now former Club For Growth President Pat Toomey will likely win the 2010 GOP nomination, while Specter is likely to slide into the Democratic spot with the active support of a bunch of top Dems -- Gov. Ed Rendell, Vice President Joe Biden (who evidently had much to do with the switch), and Mr. 81% himself, President Barack Obaaaaama.

Even the GOP itself now realizes that it is a regional rather than a national political party:



Let's let the gloating subside and talk about the future. This certainly doesn't mean that everything the Democratic leadership wants will sail through and, in fact, may even embolden the "Blue Dog" Dems like Nebraska's Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman (I-Dem), Evan Bayh of Indiana and others. However, this victory must also be chalked up to Obama's huge turning of the tide in this past Presidential election, hence a call from the Prez to Specter should help grease the wheels. I expect he'll use it rarely and with great care, and let's not forget the more conservative aspects of the President's own leanings. He's progressive and arguably "liberal", but he's proven himself more pragmatic than ideological.

Which brings us to the real problem with today's Republican Party: it has shown no recent ability to govern on a national level. It's policies have proven disastrous and its management capabilities have proven inept, i.e. in response to actual disasters, even those not of their own creation.

One of the diminishing GOP "moderates" in the Senate, Maine's Olympia Snowe, lays out what is on the face of it an appealing bare bones ideology for that party in response to the loss of Specter and increased GOP purity wars:

It is for this reason that we should heed the words of President Ronald Reagan, who urged, “We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only ‘litmus test’ of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty.” He continued, “As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.”

In practice, this will become the thinking of an arm of the Big Tent Democratic Party, which will require a strong, charismatic, focused and popular leader to keep herded; so as it was with Reagan it is with Obama.

As for the Republicans, it will take a generation of breeding out for them to return, accompanied by some eventual corruption within the Democratic Party (power tends to do this to any organization over time), and eventually there will be smart leaders running on the GOP side just because the Dem side has locked them out for the wrong reasons. Witness Mayor Bloomberg, who switch to GOP because he knew the NYC Dems would never give him the nomination. Witness Arlen Specter in 1966, who switched from Dem to Rep because he wouldn't have won the nom in Pennsylvania against a corrupt machine.

There is one other possibility. There's still the chance that, once the last of the GOP "moderates" bites the dust the party will fracture further. What do social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, Libertarians and hawks have in common?

Enough for another charismatic leader to emerge and unite them again?

Give Him Hell, Joe

Judge for yourself. Grand Inquisitor Richard Bruce Cheney came on TV last week to call the nation less safe under President Obama because he's not a Torturer-in-Chief:



Compelling stuff, if you ignore his record of being wrong over and over again these past eight year.

Now Vice President Joe Biden bites back:



I saw Joe da Plummo on Bill Maher last week criticizing Obama for admitting some of America's faults even while using it as a way to make his criticism of Europe's faults so much more credible than when we pretended we were perfect and the world had best take our orders. Joe said that he always thinks you have to be in the position of strength, which tragically misconstrues what real strength is.

It's not just might, or the willingness to waterboard, and this fatal error of the Bush Administration, which seems indeed the dominant hard right ideology, must be pointed out as much as possible.

Never forget.

Hail

The prodigal son returns, and ma is very, very happy:



Meanwhile Obama makes the brilliant choice of Leon Panetta, not a career intelligence guy, to head the CIA, is adding an almost Jacksonian, affordable Neighborhood Ball to the Inaugural festivities, makes cool unannounced appearances...and he's sending Joe Biden on a mission to Southwest Asia.

It's already a relief.

Civics Lesson

There's a great quiz that I managed to score higher than average on (but still not an "A"), the Civics Literacy Report. Take it here.

I liked how Joe Biden started talking about civics a few years ago, particularly one Bill Maher appearance where he decried the lack of civics teaching in high schools anymore, something quite common before the 1970's. Understanding civics leads, I believe, to a broader commitment to service and greater understanding of how The Common Good functions via our system of democracy. What we have right now is an opportunity in reverse, where the political activism of this month's election (yes, it's still that fresh!) can lead to greater citizen learning about and involvement in government.

One shining example: the first Barack Obama Elementary School:



Initiated by the students, who could very well turn out to be future political leaders on a grander scale themselves.

I particularly like the young, African-American version of Vice President-Elect Biden.

How apt!

Big and Little

It seems that the Obama campaign can do big -- as in 100,000+ crowds at Denver's Civic Center Park today. The link takes you to photos that actually impress, even after all the crowds he's drawn so far, reminiscent of his Berlin speech.

And it also inspired the little guys out there to do their best work:



Somehow the idea of an Obama win in nine days makes the notion of this young reporter's prospects (and his cameraman sidekick) all that more imaginable, and that this will be the "look at him back then" clip that accompanies him to the top.

The Ugly Train Express

First off, credit where credit is due. Kudos to some of the very reasonable, respectable McCain supporters (the kind he might have had more of, were it not for his catastrophic -- to his campaign -- choice of Sarah Palin as VP running mate) who take on (and drive off) the racist rightwingers who showed up with their printed hate:



If we all make it through this campaign and Obama is elected, there's a place at the table for these non-hating McCain voters. However, the candidacy of Barack Obama is bringing to light the ugly side of America, the side most Americans hope is behind us. Maybe it's hate that's not just tied to race but to political belief, but what grown up really believes that. Racism gives it the vicious, lethal kick.

How long until an anti-Obama instigated fatality? There are already death threats to average citizens for supporting him:

A 74-year-old woman and a 46-year-old man with Obama signs in their front yards near the 600 block of South Villa Avenue received similar letters that had a Villa Park Village Hall return address. "Get the Obama signs off your property—now," the letter reads. "Failure to obey this order will result in the immediate death of all family members." Both residents said they will not remove their signs, though the man, who had voted Republican for 25 years before switching parties this year, said his wife is worried about letting their 7-year-old son play alone outside.

There's auto vandalism to Obama supporters in North Carolina:

Authorities say someone slashed tires on at least 30 parked vehicles while their owners were attending a Barack Obama rally in a North Carolina coliseum.

The tires were cut Sunday outside Fayetteville's Crown Coliseum, The Fayetteville Observer reported Monday.

And Texas:

My "Obama 08" bumper sticker was torn off the right rear bumper, a 20-lb rock was dropped through the back window, 2 stolen Obama yard signs were shoved through the gaping hole in the window, and a cryptic almost "OBAHA" (or something...) was scrawled in orange spray-paint on the drivers side front and back doors and windows.

Campaign sign replacement with the flag of slavery:

On Friday night, a large Obama sign was stolen on Bailey Bridge Road. It was replaced with something that has shocked the community.

In the sign's place was a confederate flag.

"I was kind of upset and shook up," said Reverend Leroy McLaughlin, the signs owner.

Some McCainiacs are openly trying to intimidate likely Obama voters:

Photographer Joe Eddins and I headed over to the closest one and found a steady line of voters hoping to cast ballots early. Most seemed to be Obama supporters and several had come from the rally. Nearly all the voters were black.

Also at the polling site was a group of loud and angry protesters who shouted and mocked the voters as they walked in. Nearly all were white.

As you can see from these videos, no one held anything back. People were shouting about Obama's acknowledged cocaine use as a young man, abortion and one man used the word "terrorist." They also were complaining that Sundays are for church, not voting.

And some McCainiacs are getting physical:

In an exclusive interview with 12 News, 58 year-old Nancy Takehara of Chicago says she was going door-to-door when she came across a disgruntled homeowner.

“The next thing I know he’s telling us we’re not his people, we’re probably with ACORN, and he started screaming and raving,” Takehara said. “He grabbed me by the back of the neck. I thought he was going to rip my hair out of my head. He was pounding on my head and screaming. The man terrified me.”

As far as political murder goes, do bears count?:

Maintenance workers reported about 7:45 a.m. finding a 75-pound bear cub dumped at the roundabout near the Catamount statute at the entrance to campus, said Tom Johnson, chief of university police.

“It looked like it had been shot in the head as best we can tell. A couple of Obama campaign signs had been stapled together and stuck over its head,” Johnson said.

And thanks to McCain/Palin anti-ACORN smear rhetoric:

Earlier Friday, ACORN told McClatchy that one of its senior staffers in Cleveland had received a death threat and that its Boston and Seattle offices had been vandalized sometime Thursday, reflecting the mounting tensions over the group's role in registering 1.3 million mostly poor and minority Americans to vote...

...Kettenring said that a senior ACORN staffer in Cleveland, after appearing on television this week, got an e-mail that said she "is going to have her life ended." A female staffer in Providence, R.I., got a threatening call from someone who said words to the effect of "We know you get off work at 9," then uttered racial epithets, he said...

...Separately, vandals broke into the group's Boston and Seattle offices and stole computers, Kettenring said.

The incidents came the day after McCain charged in the final presidential debate that ACORN's voter-registration drive "may be perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history" and may be "destroying the fabric of democracy."

Here's the scoop: it may be too late for McCain to save his reputation, and no matter what she says to try and cover her ass, Palin doesn't care -- this is her base. It's already on them. It's already on John McCain. Barack Obama -- and Joe Biden -- is running a campaign of inclusion. McCain is betting on division and his rhetoric for the past several weeks, as if taking a lead from his running mate, has centered on this in lieu of actual vision or statesmanship.

This appeal to division and, yes, racism, is going to be his last Hail Mary drive to squeak an Electoral College victory by focusing on (Western) Pennsylvania.

And, at this point, should a single Obama supporter lose their life to a McCain supporter, it will damn him -- and Governor Palin -- for eternity.

Sixteen Days

That's all that's left until November 4th, and today a few good things happened for the Obama campaign. He received Colin Powell's endorsement, he announced raising an earth-shattering $150,000,000 in September at an $86/contribution average and including over 600,000 new donors, and he had my eldest son on the phone here in Santa Monica calling Obama voters in North Carolina to urge their early voting and provide an 888 number for them to find out the One Stop Early Vote polling place nearest to them.

The Powell endorsement is incredibly sober, truly what Prof. Juan Cole (who's criticized Powell for his role, however neutered, in the Iraq War build-up) calls "Powell's Finest Moment." If you want to see it and haven't yet, here you go:



Powell undermines every argument for a McCain Presidency, including all the contradictory Ayers posturing. He was even harsher talking with reporters outside after the on-air, especially on the vile McCarthyite Congresswoman, Michelle Bachmann. (More on her shortly.) But one of the earmarks of this election is that the racists are making themselves known, specifically today Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan who both insult the hell out of Former General, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, and Secretary of State Powell by saying he only endorsed Obama because of their shared skin color.

Disgusting. Like McCain's new red-baiting strategy, drinking from the same filthy trough as Palin and Bachmann. And his level of rhetorical self-delusion is profound -- compare this two-faced defense of smear-fest robocalls, having hired the same firm that the Bush campaign used in 2000 to ruin McCain with targeted lies:



What an incredible slime McCain has become, a kind of political Dorian Gray where in return for a hoped-for point or two poll bounce his reputation becomes uglier and uglier. And his camp is now acting in tell-tale loserish ways, banking on division to eke out a tiny victory, easy to target stuff, as Joe Biden slams home like a rock star:



You know you're losing when even your latest drummed up diversion ditches you for Mike Huckabee -- who isn't even running anymore. You know you're losing when a company doing fake voter registration and affiliation switches for your Party gets arrested for trying to subvert democracy. When yet another dyed-in-the-wool conservative newspaper endorses your opponent, in large part due to your disastrous VP choice. You know your losing when attacks on patriotism by surrogates like this:



...leads to her opponent suddenly raising $450,000 from 9,000 donors in the ensuing 24 hours. And with a name like Elwyn Tinklenberg (yes, really), that's got to be an otherwise unattainable campaign warchest.

Complacency is a killer, but Andrew Sullivan has it right that at least Obama has built a machine -- and a message -- with the shot at a rare landslide victory. There is nothing wishy-washy about Obama at all -- he's in it to win it.

As for his opponent, maybe not so much?

Belief

A night to look back, as we prepare for really big changes -- no matter how Nov. 4th turns out.

On January 4th of this year I wrote "Wow." This was the night that Barack Obama won his first official voting contest of this entire Presidential cycle, the night that the Obama campaign won the Iowa Democratic Caucus and I watched his extraordinary speech, and when he opened with, "Y'know, they said this day would never come," switched my allegiance from John Edwards:



That post includes this vision of Obama vs. McCain:

Back two years ago, in February 2006, Obama reached out to fellow Senator John McCain on ethics and lobbyist reform, and got slapped down in in letter form, by what could be read as a pique of that famed McCain temper or maybe brutal political posturing with an eye to 2008, or maybe just putting the young'un in his place.

McCain calls Obama a liar more than once in the letter for wanting to do the legislation a different way. Obama's response, however, is profoundly consistent with the tone of his campaign:

For this reason, I am puzzled by your response to my recent letter. Last Wednesday morning, you called to invite me to your meeting that afternoon. I changed my schedule so I could attend the meeting. Afterwards, you thanked me several times for attending the meeting, and we left pledging to work together.

As you will recall, I told everyone present at the meeting that my caucus insisted that the consideration of any ethics reform proposal go through the regular committee process. You didn't indicate any opposition to this position at the time, and I wrote the letter to reiterate this point, as well as the fact that I thought S. 2180 should be the basis for a bipartisan solution.

I confess that I have no idea what has prompted your response. But let me assure you that I am not interested in typical partisan rhetoric or posturing. The fact that you have now questioned my sincerity and my desire to put aside politics for the public interest is regrettable but does not in any way diminish my deep respect for you nor my willingness to find a bipartisan solution to this problem.

I've heard it described as Obama taking conservatives at their word, and then hanging them by it if they play a trick. It's very above board, very good lawyerly style, and may work better than an Edwards-type us vs. them approach. Hopefully more effective, if Obama wins the big job.

But imagine this letter exchange in the context of a potential November victory for Obama head-to-head against McCain.

Shakespearean?

The difference between January 4th and October 11th is that as of this week, everyone believes that Barack Obama can be President. It's not just hope anymore. Not a lock, but no longer inconceivable in these United States.

I've written about how if Obama wins it will be because he's actually our Second black President. Dennis Haysbert -- President David Palmer -- is the model. Obama's close enough.

Most of all, I've called John McCain a litany of nasty names. Deadly John. A McCainiac who makes McStakes. McBush. McSame. McCatastrophe, McConfused, McChaos. McIncoming, McCrazy, McLurch, McAngry, McOver. McToast.

The McNasties. McDesperate. McVile. McSinner, McPussy.

Maybe it's time to stop the McNamecalling. Frank Rich lays it out -- America is getting it's pass/fail test on racism Nov 4th, but John McCain, Sarah Palin and the Republican leadership have failed theirs, and any blood will be on their hands. Gov. Palin's being booed at the Flyers game in Philadelphia. A McCain supporter shows up to his rally with an Obama monkey doll. Lamely tries to conceal it when he realizes he's making YouTube.

So look back at how far we've come from the turn of the year. How far down, yep, in the economy, but with big hope slowly morphing into cautious belief, all the more with Joe Biden right there with him on your ballot.

As Obama activates what promises to be the largest and best run ground game in U.S. electoral history.

Joe Biden

While Sarah Palin did well enough to stay on the ticket, she didn't do a damned thing to advance the "Obama is too dangerous to be President" narrative for the McCain campaign, focused much more on damage control for her own career and, as Paul Begala rightly pointed out, 2012. If McCain continues to sink in the polls, look for her to move away from him emotionally (even further) in the final week or two. He needs her now more than she needs him, especially to get big crowds and especially after tonight, and since the only ideology she truly seems committed to is her own ambition I'm imagining the repellent nature of the loser stench will extend from downticket Republicans to Palin herself by November 4th, unless he pulls within 5 points and 20 Electoral College votes of Obama again, seriously.

On the other hand, Joe Biden successfully advanced the narrative tying John McCain to George W. Bush as more of the same. He was particularly brilliant in taking apart the maverick meme, finding a perfect opening after Palin relied on calling herself and McCain their own nickname a third time too many. (Who gives themselves nicknames or even touts them in the real world without looking like a fool?) He knowledgeably took apart that meme, so now the more McCain says it, the more we'll remember Joe proving that McCain has never been a maverick where it really counted in people's lives.

The other phrase for such a non-helpful maverick is, of course, juvenile delinquent.

Biden also took apart Dick Cheney, wailed on McCain as wrong on the war etc. in perfect echo of Obama's strongest moment last Friday night, offered real rather than index card, off-question answers, and had the perfect demeanor vs. the over-wired, winking and jiving Ms. Palin. While she was a little less snarky than in the past, a little less McNasty, she nonetheless blew not only the name of a general (hearkening back to the Civil War), but she blew the biggest moment of the debate, when Joe Biden revealed his humanity and she could only respond with another rehearsed, off-moment talking point:



But the real campaign news of the day is that McCain is pulling up stakes in Michigan. He's on the run now, trying to hold the states George Bush won in 2004. While there could still be a mini-swing or two back to McCain before the election, this does mean he's making hard choices on where to put diminishing resources, which also means Obama can get aggressive more places, maybe lead McCain to have to defend, say, North Carolina more aggressively. This also means McCain will go untethered now -- expect to see vicious smears both above and below the radar of the most dishonest or immoral kind.

Maybe there's a moment when McCain realizes he can't win the election, or when some GOP honchos make that realization and put a bridle on him for the good of the country or just to start rebuilding the reputation of the Party. As Biden said in the debate, McCain is offering no coherent, realistic plans for anything, so what does he have to run on but negative campaigning?

But I think guys like McCain go down the hardest. And for Republicans, when all else fails, there's still this angle to fall back on:



As they say in Chicago: Vote early, vote often.

McCatastrophe

John McCain started the day by losing his temper through gritted teeth and coming off, well, like what he often calls "a little jerk":



Damn, I may not even have to wait for minute 45 of that first debate on 9/26 for him to snap.

Meanwhile, his so-called economic advisor, the loser-CEO who only raised HP's value by leaving, Carly Fiorina, hit a double today, first saying that Sarah Palin was unfit to head a major corporation, then taking the self-correction opportunity to extend that cogent analysis to the top of the ticket as well:



By knocking herself off the air -- or, as a McCain spokesperson put it, will be "disappeared" like a government enemy in Pinochet's Argentina, canceling further TV appearances this week -- she has knock another leg of McCain teetering stool of viable campaign spokespeople:

"Carly will now disappear," this source said. "Senator McCain was furious." Asked to define "disappear," this source said, adding that she would be off TV for a while – but remain at the Republican National Committee and keep her role as head of the party’s joint fundraising committee with the McCain campaign.

Fiorina was the only ubiquitous woman beside the increasingly icky Sarah Palin to boot.

All Obama has to do is play McCain's own quotes in his ads:



The fact is that no matter what he flip-flops, McCain is losing the confidence of the American public that he can handle the economy by the day, i.e. by 4 points over the past 24 hours. Between his lies and those of his chosen running mate, along with her stonewalling of the Troopergate investigation which can now only fester and his loss of control over his own temper as metaphor for losing control over Fiorina and his campaign, the only question is whether it is all enough to send his polling numbers into Bush-like freefall.

Meanwhile, not only does such an authority as Warren Buffett believe that Obama could run a business, here's how the Dem candidates are looking out there, starting with "Riding the Rails with Amtrak Joe" in The New York Times:

The train arrived in Wilmington at 3:16 p.m. Amtrak Joe walked the platform, shaking hands with cops and Amtrak workers.

At one point, he reached into an open door for one last hand-shake with another Amtrak employee and the automatic doors nearly closed on his arms. “You’re like family,” Biden said, pulling his arm away.

And the top of the ticket -- as the financial meltdown reinforces his longtime message, he's on fire:



A helluva lot less gloomy that the other side, even as he tells the truth.

He saw it coming. What more needs to be said?

Joe's Right

Clear away the b.s. from the past week and here's the truth:



Unlike his opponent, Obama made a Presidential choice.

The difference is obvious.

Hang Time

How long before Gov. Sarah Palin is off the GOP ticket?

I'd give it 12 more days. Maybe Gustav manages to save her and the GOP with McCain able to grandstand on Monday rather than have Bush and Cheney speak at the Convention. Maybe it just gives them more hang time.

Easily the most telling news I've read these past 24 hours is that the vetting process was so deficient that a Democratic opposition researcher has revealed that he was the first to contact her hometown newspaper for the archived stories not available on the paper's Website. Word is that the McCain campaign only today sent eight "researchers" (ratio of researcher to fixers?) to the town, but the Dems obviously got there first.

This tells us two things: Sen. John McCain made an ill-prepared decision, and the Dem side just made sure they can't be cut in line by McCain's team without everyone knowing it's a fix.

And they can pass stories to the press first, too.

The more current stuff, her "Troopergate," is starting to come out. The potentially damning story begins :35 in.



Look, I've read the suppositions and question-provoking time-line and photos about her family and wonder if it's the greatest Karl Rove plant ever, so I think it's a place to tread carefully, and ultimately only germane as yet another demonstration of John McCain's dangerously unsuited-to-the-Presidency decision-making style. This wouldn't even be a question if we'd already gotten to know her nationally, or via a major state. Or if she'd be 100% vetted.

It also calls into question two other core McCain strengths: his honor and integrity. It also calls into question just how adolescent is his personality -- per Hilzoy:

The more I learn about this choice, the more it reminds me of Bush's choice of Harriet Miers. I don't think it's at all similar in its political ramifications -- Miers' nomination was seen as a betrayal by social conservatives, the very people who are thrilled by Sarah Palin. But it is similar in the manner in which each was chosen. In each case, the person who made the choice had wanted to pick someone else, someone he regarded as a close friend., In each case, he was told that he couldn't choose that person because it would be politically disastrous. In each case, the person who made the choice responded not by sitting down and thinking about who might fill the role s/he was to be nominated for with distinction, but by making a quick and ill-considered choice of a plainly unqualified person, a choice that seemed like an insult to the office that person was nominated to fill.

Moreover, in each case that choice reflected the fact that the person making it was chafing at the discipline required of him. As far as I can tell, Bush reacts very badly to the idea that his powers as President are limited in any way, or that he owes anything whatsoever to his party or his allies. McCain is similarly undisciplined: he has been willing to do what his party requires of him, up to and including sacrificing his honor and his principles, but he visibly bridles at it, and he seems to be thrilled at the chance to be a maverick again. If that requires picking a vice presidential nominee who is wholly unprepared to take over as President, without doing anything like the vetting a Presidential campaign would normally require, then so be it.

I heard someone working at the supermarket who was clearly leaning to embrace the Palin pick today say that it showed McCain was a gambler -- as if that was a good thing. We know Obama plays poker and used those skills to recognize when Hillary had revealed her "tell" -- an in-person encounter during the Primaries when he knew he had gotten to her. We know McCain loves to play craps, throw those dice, and he did it again on Friday. Both are a form of gambling, but Michael O'Hare explains the difference:

Poker is a game of nearly infinite subtlety and complexity, in which money is managed across a constantly changing information landscape as deep as the psychology and perspicacity of all the players. Smart poker players are much better at it than dumb ones, though smart in the usual sense is not enough to be good at it. Some people are bored with poker and can't concentrate on it well enough to succeed, but not because it's beneath their intelligence. The nearest analogy is investing in securities, or perhaps commanding small units in combat, except for the team aspect of the latter and the impersonal dimension of the former.

Craps, like roulette and a slot machine, is a simpleminded exercise whose players pay a fee for a particular kind of reptile-brain excitement. It is not social, and no player can change the odds on the next move, which are a set of nine numbers that never change (though more complicated side bets are possible, they also depend on a fixed small set of probabilities). There is no such thing as being good at craps, and no such thing as being a steady winner.

But let's let some video tell the story. Is Palin somehow a foreign policy expert due to geography? Ask expert Cindy McCain:



Is she, after just one date, what John McCain described today as his "soul-mate?"

Is there anything telling about this hilarious and maybe unfair video dissection from The Jed Report?:



Now, compare all that drama, which the McCain campaign clearly wanted to stir up in hopes of catching the news cycle and from there the campaign in an exponentially greater way than even the Clinton tried back during the primaries, with the Obama-Biden team, interviewed in Denver by 60 Minutes just minutes after Obama's historic acceptance speech Thursday night:


Watch CBS Videos Online

Which team seems more trustworthy to run this great country?

My next prediction: with Huckabee chafed for not being vetted, with Romney pissed that he did so much to defend McCain these past few months after coming in second but got dissed, Pawlenty probably thrilled that the convention in his city is being shortened after being told he all but had the job last Wednesday/Thursday morning and ending up with eggface, and even some serious neocons offended, McCain either makes Palin work or by a month from now, especially if she does an Eagleton, he'll be like kryptonite -- radioactive.

My earlier prediction that by November 4th voting for John McCain over Barack Obama is still on track. Maybe they can whitewash Palin fast enough, but her first two weeks may be the hardest to survive. Troopergate questions at the Biden-Palin debate could be devastating just for being asked, and I don't think the GOP elders would let her get that far.

There's a reason that McCain's choice is sucking all the air out of the campaign, and there will be reason why we'll be grateful for more Obama when he chooses to expose nationally again (I'd bet not until the debates) rather than his increasingly popular state/local visits. We don't want to be disappointed, we want this country run right again.

Maybe I'm mistaken, maybe it'll take longer than I'm thinking to metasticize, but with Palin I'm thinking John McCain just rolled snake eyes.

The Aliens

After so many months and surely so many more planned spending countless dollars attempting to frame Barack Obama as as The Other -- celebrity, foreigner, radical, hustler -- it's all gone to waste in one single announcement.

Here's my new theory:

In selecting, at this particular historical juncture, Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential running-mate, and as immediately evidenced in the jarring optics of the announcement event, and coming exactly on the heels of the blockbuster Democratic National Convention that successfully introduced Barack Obama and his adorable, Christian American family, in symbiosis with Joe Biden and his awesomely Catholic American family, as perfectly normal yet just acceptably exceptional enough to be White House worthy, John McCain has flipped the equation and flushed all his money down the toilet.

Because now his ticket is the one looking like aliens.

I'll explain, but first let's be clear: Obama and his campaign made John McCain blink. Worse than that, and they must be pretty blown away themselves at their success, hence their buttoning down on any criticism of her by name, just sticking it to McCain on judgment with Palin implicit, they made him make an error. A huge one.

He'll get his Republican Christianists (while her pastor problem and fervent support of Pat Buchanan may spook every elderly Jew in Florida), and via the orchestrated media moments might scoop up some low-information voters, but anyone remotely serious and fair-minded about how they use their Constitutional vote is unlikely to squander it on a man who's integrity, judgment, temperament and management style are now called into question. The numbers on this choice are historically bad out of the gate.

Now that we're learning -- apparently at the same time as John McCain -- that Sarah Palin has potentially multiple abuse-of-power scandals (involving her husband and family) way the hell up in odd Alaska, a state visited by infinitely fewer Americans than Hawaii, a state most American view as stranger than Idaho and certainly more remote, and that there may even be a family planning cover-up in the wings, Gov. Palin is doing no favors for the image of her home state. I wouldn't even be surprised if they lose it (before or after she Eagleton's off the ticket) since those that know her there don't think she's qualified for V.P. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if she only serves out one term as Governor, if not indicted.

But more than that, she and McCain just look so odd together.

Marc Ambinter has a comparison of the key images from both campaign Websites. Obama and Biden look like they're having a great time together because they are -- it's from the Convention. And Obama is clearly the boss. McCain and Palin, however, appear interchangeable, equals in some sort of real estate company, McCain generic and diminished by the equal size, but Palin popping way too much with the same creepy wide-eyed grin and glare she had at the announcement event.

You look at Obama and Biden and see two men in the middle, one in his late 40's, one in his early 60's, i.e. both middle aged. And you know that one of them knows how to lead a team and has a plan while the other knows how the system works and can be a partner in making his plans law.

You look at McCain and Palin, you see a gap, essentially an unfilled chasm between them. She's early 40's, he's early 70's. He's just made a decision that creates questions (while the choice of Biden was a comforting answer of great finality) so now we're all wondering again, and not in a hopeful way. She's a great big question mark, with only sixty days for us to vet her from zero, no previous national (only Party) profile. While she has only 60 days to get the basic requirements in national security and foreign affairs knowledge for the job.

McCain and Palin is a great big nothing. Everything is in freefall in-between them.

Whether McCain's decision betrays desperation or gambling, his arrogance or cynicism, his process as hectic or improvisational, this is a perilous way to introduce a new face, and the bottom line is simply dissonance.

On the other hand, here's the Obamas and the Bidens out on Main Street tour, eating ice cream, hanging together at gazebos. Looking like America.

Looking wholesome.

Shiny

Although it's a bummer that I'm participating in the same cheap political ploy that has, as even the Obama campaign expected, taken the media's eye off the epic glory of Barack Obama closing the deal last night (and without a goddamned teleprompter!), it's just too perfect. In fact, if anecdotal reports are correct, McCain flipped the last few customers over to Obama for good this morning.

What have we learned from the past 24 hours?

About John McCain, I've learned that he's attracted to shiny, newish things. For his first Presidential decision, he hired the person who could very possibly replace him before the end of his first term, whom he had met exactly one time before this week, and spoken on the phone with once. Because, according to McCain camp and GOP reports, he wanted someone from outside Washington who would reinforce his defunct "maverick" image. So he went as far out as possible. To Alaska.

He either did little vetting of her, or thought she could pick it all up really quickly (meaning, of course, that his "experience" slam against Obama is bullshit), or in some sort of ragingly egotistical way thinks it won't matter because he will never die or be debilitated in office, even after four bouts of skin cancer and a current medical report totalling over 2,000 pages. So he clearly believes the campaign can somehow bamboozle the news media into co-selling a Sarah Palin narrative they are feverishly concocting as I write this for injection into Monday's Republican National Convention.

He stopped thinking with the big head and went for the shiny object.

Look, we all know John McCain likes being around great looking younger (than him) women. He likes charming them, he likes their admiration, if they're lobbyists he shuttles them off with him (Where in the World is Vicki Iseman?), he has dumped a sick wife for one who also happened to be loaded with beer money.

Shiny shiny!

I learned that John McCain is a coward. He wanted to nominate his friend, Joe Lieberman, but his party insiders howled over the Senator's party affiliation and liberal social views. He wanted to nominate his friend, Tom Ridge, but his party insiders told him he would lose the fundamentalist base due to the former Governor's pro choice views. But he had ridiculed former Governor Mitt Romney during the primaries and thanks to his own house counting gaffe they couldn't add another bushel of 'em. And Governor Tim Pawlenty was being laughed about on the air last night, which was when McCain made the final decision.

A snap, reactive, ill-considered, small-ball decision dressed up as big-ball but ah obvious sham to all but the most deluded believers.

McCain was too much of a coward to go with his first choices so he decided to say f.u. to everyone and pulled a 20-month Governor of a tiny population state who's previous job was Mayor of a 6,000 person town, and who has shown absolutely no in-depth study or thought about national security, foreign affairs, or nationwide economic policy.

Think she'll be vetted for potential Commander-in-Chief over just the remaining sixty days? ("Way to go, Brownie!") Way to make us all feel that much more secure, John.

Way to put your own ambitions first and country way behind.

I guess Barack was right last night: John McCain just doesn't get it.

About Sarah Palin I learned that she is not related to Monty Python's Michael Palin. I learned that she's not the breath of fresh air that John's campaign is trying to sell, she's actually a plain ol' Bush-era Republican. After all:

• Due to her ego, she made terrible fiscal decisions that cost her town exponentially more wasted public money than it should have, and left the wreckage for others to clean up.
  
  
• She believes in Creationism and thinks it's fine to be taught in schools as an alternative to proven science.
  
  
• She's against a woman's right to an abortion, even in cases of rape or incest.
  
  
• She doesn't believe global warming has anything to do with man-made factors.
  
  
• She is ignorant of the actual function of government.
  
  
• She rewrites history.
  
  
• Her close GOP party buddy and endorser is in a bribery scandal.
  
  
• She wants to open up protected lands in Alaska for big oil drilling.
  
  
• She hates bears.
  
  
• She's under government investigation for abuse of power.
  
  
• She likes to point out whiners.

What did I learn about Hillary Clinton?

That for all my complaints about her during the primary season, when she finally accepted that she had lost the battle and the dust cleared, she rose to the occasion and, by way of her graciousness and forcefulness, came out more appealing than she went in.

And, praytell, what did I learn about Barack Obama?

He knows how to play big-ball. He knows the right way to go about making a momentous decision and come out with the best possible answer. He doesn't make crucial long-term governing decisions for short-term political gain.

He knows how to manage a media drama, giving the MSM what it needs (Obama/Hillary rift) and then paying it off exactly the way he intended. He knows how to successfully mount a massive event. He knows how to deliver at a crucial moment. He can draw 38 million viewers, more than the Oscars, the Super Bowl, the American Idol finals.

He won't back away from any challenge. He's smarter, more qualified, more suited and ready to be Commander-in-Chief than John McCain.

Today John McCain closed the deal for Barack Obama. John McCain not only proved the truth of the meme that he'd be Bush's third term with his Harriet Miers-esque decision, he actually echoed the first President Bush's choice of the prima facie unsuited Dan Quayle -- as well as Richard Nixon's choice of conservative-appeasing, under-experienced Spiro Agnew, who preceded Nixon prematurely out of office in disgrace.

Taken against Barack Obama clearly, reasonably, and forcefully laying out of where he wants to take this country last night, one now knows everything one needs to know about this crazy, egotistical, dangerous gambler, John McCain, who I learned turned 72 years old today, not a lot of time left to rectify mistakes.

I learned that he's actually unfit for the office of President of our United States of America.

Third Night

Well, that's history in the making, with Barack Obama as the first mixed race candidate ever nominated for President of the United States of America by a major political party. Since George Washington got the first nod.

A lot more red meat tonight. Last night, I think Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) had the best single non-primetime line, taking a huge shot McCain's supposed independence:

John McCain calls himself a maverick, but he votes with George Bush more than 90% of the time...that's not a maverick, that's a sidekick.

Tonight it might be Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), old enough himself to get away with hitting McCain on age, who had the best line not in primetime:

Speaking at the Democratic National Convention, the Nevada Democrat likened McCain to a bogus doctor, calling him “kindly old Doc McCain” and comparing his plan for expanded offshore drilling to “snake oil.”

“Kindly old Doc McCain would like to sell it to you anyway,” Reid said.

Much of tonight was about vouching for Obama as Commander-in-Chief, using his own yardstick, judgment. Bill Clinton did a great job and got the most delegate love. Joe Biden did fine as well.



But it was the man who appear between them who gave the best speech of his life:



His most damaging passage to McCain, hitting him up as either opportunist or weak-minded:

I have known and been friends with John McCain for almost 22 years. But every day now I learn something new about candidate McCain.

To those who still believe in the myth of a maverick instead of the reality of a politician: I say, let’s compare Senator McCain to candidate McCain.

Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once called irresponsible.

Candidate McCain criticizes Senator McCain’s own climate change bill.

Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote.

Are you kidding? Talk about being for it before you’re against it!

Let me tell you, before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself.

How addled is McCain?

He's thinking it might be a smart move to pick Joe Lieberman as his VP.

Biden

Sorry I've been on a bit of a break, to end shortly, but if you really want to know my opinion of Barack Obama's VP choice, this may help:



Conservatives pray for Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE). Seems like he's thoughtful and genuine with regular citizens one-on-one as well.

Most of all, it's great casting. What a great personality to have in the White House with Obama, coming over to hang in the Oval Office, getting the latest mission from his boss, then opening the doors for him to succeed.

Biden's smart, candid, seasoned, well-liked. He'll attack McCain on policy and maybe go up against Mitt Romney.

What's not to like?