Has Todd Noticed that McCain’s Still Leering at Sarah?

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Turns out it was the First Dude who decided he and the family would be sitting in on Sarah’s debate prep this week. 

For his part, Mr. Palin has worried about the frequent separation of his wife from her family, friends and Alaska staff, an adviser said. Accordingly, her family will be with her in Sedona during this week. Also, a key Alaska staffer joined the Palin operation Sunday.

In fact, the First Dude just decided that Sarah needed him around–she’s already been traveling with Willow.

You think maybe this or this had to do with Todd’s worries about his wife?

Are There ANY Adults Left in the Republican Party?

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The RNC just released an ad attacking the bailout their president and their presidential candidate have been pushing. Sure, ostensibly it’s an attack on Obama’s plan to provide stimulus for the economy–but the whole thing is premised on Bush’s bailout.

It turns out, the ad was sent to stations yesterday morning, before the bailout bill failed.

The ad, however, seems to assume that it can safely attack a successful plan. And the reason may be the timing: Though it started airing this morning, the spot was released to stations yesterday morning, ad executives at stations in Michigan and Pennsylvania said.

Kae Buck of WLNS in Lansing said her station received the at at 7:55 a.m. Monday.  Luanne Russell of Pittsburgh’s WTAE said her station received it at 10:49 Monday morning.

The ad taps into deep resentment of the plan, but it comes at a time when the candidate it supports, John McCain, is urging its package, and asking that it not be referred to as a "bailout," but a "rescue."

If I were Reid and Pelosi, I’d condition any further bailout negotiations on the RNC withdrawing the ad and apologizing for it. It’s bad enough Bush fucked up the economy so badly. Now his party wants to use his own failure to beat Democrats over the head for their plans to fix the broken economy.

Update: Just fixed bone-headed grammar mistake in the title.

Tweety Blames McCain

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And why not? After all, McCain said he was responsible this morning. 

One thing that works in our favor for the CW (in assigning the blame for this to the Republicans) is that most TV pundits are so solidly members of the village, they can’t imagine sacrificing Wall Street to the fates of the free market. So I expect it won’t just be Tweety blaming Republicans–and John McCain in particular.

McCain Says He’s Responsible

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From ThinkProgress:

“[T]his bill would not have been agreed to had it not been for John McCain. … But, you know, this is a bipartisan accomplishment, a bipartisan success. And if people want to get something done in Washington, they just watch John McCain.” — Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, 9/29/08

“Earlier in the week, when Senator McCain came back to Washington, there had been no deal reached. … What Senator McCain was able to do was to help bring all the parties to the table, including the House Republicans.” — Senior adviser Steve Schmidt, 9/28/08

“But here are the facts, and I’m not overselling anything. The fact is that the House Republicans were not in the mix at all. John didn’t phone this one in. He came and actually did something. … You can’t phone something like this in. Thank God John came back.” — Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), 9/28/08

“Before John McCain suspended his campaign yesterday, the situation that we’re looking at today looked very different then. After he showed leadership and called for bipartisanship, for us to partisanship aside and tackle this solution head on, here we are.” — Spokesman Tucker Bounds, 9/25/08

Great work, McCain!! Here we are, thanks to McCain.

Update: Meanwhile, McCain’s hiding in the front of the Straight No Talk Express trying to figure out what he can say about this.

After bragging today about his role in shaping the economic bailout package, Sen. John McCain has made no statement to the press since the defeat of the bill, in part at the hands of House Republicans. McCain boarded his Straight Talk Air charter plane a few minutes ago, but the plane has not taken off yet. McCain is in the front of the plane, separated from reporters by a brown curtain

McCain Campaign So Concerned about Palin, They’ve Forgotten about Joe

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The McPalin campaign warns Gwen Ifill they believe it would be unfair of her to hammer foreign policy questions during Thursday’s VP debate.

The moderator will have some questions to answer themselves if they do go so heavily foreign policy.

Not only is this another pathetic example of McPalin trying to play the ref, not only are they forgetting that Palin has been no whiz on domestic policy issues either, but they’re forgetting that Joe Biden is, himself, quite accomplished on domestic policy issues.

Consider the law of which Biden is most proud: the Violence Against Women Act, a law that, among other things, uses federal dollars to coerce states into making localities–like Sarah Palin’s Wasilla–pick up the tab for rape kits. Not to mention made it a lot easier for women to leave abusive relationships and cops to prosecute such abuse.

Or what about the COPS program, which tried to make policing more effective? Given Palin’s current and past problems with law enforcement in her state, Biden’s proactive efforts to improve policing make her look like a thug by comparison.

Or how about Biden’s recent work to make college more affordable–an issue that many of the still-undecided swing voters may value highly? 

Frankly, I’m sort of glad they’ve got Palin sequestered at McCain’s "ranch" cramming about foreign policy. It leaves them unprepared and vulnerable on areas that are just as much Biden’s strength as foreign policy is.

And those areas, particularly this year, are going to sway undecideds more than foreign policy will. 

Update: Meanwhile, the bulldog in lipstick is talking some trash:

“And I do look forward to Thursday night, and debating Senator Joe Biden,’’ said Ms. Palin, whose uneven performance in interviews and unscripted events have sown seeds of doubt in recent days among some conservative commentators who support her.

“I’m looking forward to meeting him, too,’’ she said. “I’ve never met him before, but I’ve been hearing about his Senate speeches since I was in, like, second grade.’’

“I have to admit, though, he’s a great debater, and he looks pretty doggone confident, like he’s sure he’s going to win,’’ Ms. Palin, 44, said of Mr. Biden, 65. “But then again, this is the same Senator Biden who said the other day that University of Delaware would trounce the Ohio State Buckeyes. Wrong!”

Read more →

The Klan Was in the Audience

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Reading Pat Lang’s discussion of the possibility that McCain’s studied contempt for Obama the other night was crypto-racist reminded me of something I read before the debate. The Klan was in the audience for the debate–or at least they announced publicly beforehand they planned to be there:

The Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan plan to be on campus for the face-off between Republican nominee John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, the first African-American nominee of a major party, according to a Friday report in the university’s student newspaper.

University officials haven’t commented. But, since winning the bid as host a year ago, they have used the attention to promote the university’s efforts toward racial reconciliation.

The university newspaper, the Daily Mississippian, first reported earlier this month that the white supremacist group planned to appear among the throngs expected on the Oxford, Miss., campus. The emperor of the White Knights group, whose identity was withheld as a condition of the interview, said his members would be “invisible … Our people won’t be in regalia or demonstrating. So, I guess you’ll just have to guess which of the people present are Klansmen.”

Frankly, I don’t think McCain’s refusal to look at Obama was racism. McCain treats everyone who does not treat him as America’s savior with performed contempt. And I agree with the primate scientists weighing in to note that McCain’s behavior had the mark of fear and subordination, not dominance.

Nevertheless, I thought it worthy to recall this detail, as we continue to discuss the dynamics of the debate last Friday. 

The conventional wisdom about the debate seems to have solidified around the conclusion that McCain came off as angry while Obama seemed sane and presidential, particularly by contrast. Given how unbalanced McCain is right now, that doesn’t so much surprise me–the contrast between the two was bound to elevate Obama by comparison.

But I do think it remarkable that Obama achieved precisely that effect–upending years of racial stereotypes about angry black men–in the presence of those trying to use intimidation to sustain those stereotypes.

McPalin Campaign on TrooperGate: Shut Up! Shut Up! Shut Up! Shut Up!

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Walt Monegan, the guy Sara Palin inappropriately fired, just revealed he has emails proving the McPalin campaign’s latest lie–that Monegan was insubordinately seeking earmarks in DC–was a lie.

Former Public Safety commissioner Walt Monegan said he’s turned over e-mails not yet released that prove he was responsible with the budget and not insubordinate.

Monegan said his e-mails provide a bigger picture because they include messages between other people, including his legislative liaison.

[snip]

Monegan said he often printed out e-mails to read them when he was in transit to Juneau and that’s why he still has them.

The McPalin campaign, realizing they’ve been caught (again) in a lie, responded in a manner worthy of Bill O’Reilly.

A spokesman for Gov. Sarah Palin said Sunday that Monegan is acting in an inappropriate manner.

"The deal is you serve at the pleasure of the governor, and when the governor is no longer pleased, you leave and you’re supposed to walk away quietly," Bill McAllister said in a phone interview. [my emphasis]

"Why didn’t you just let us fire you as part of a personal vendetta and move on?!?!?!? Why does it seem like we no longer have any power over you?!?!?!? Why oh why oh why oh just shut up!?!?!?!"

Nice to see the McPalin campaign is proceeding just as professionally in Alaska as it is in DC.

Playing Pakistan

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The NYDN captured both aspects of McCain’s mistakes last night on Pakistan (Update: here’s a much better article from Strobel and Landay).

The one that leapt out was McCain, kinda like George Bush in 2000, getting the name of Pakistan’s president wrong. (Bush didn’t know it.)

“Now, the new president of Pakistan, Qadari (it’s actually Asif Ali Zardari), has got his hands full,” McCain said.

He also said, “I don’t think that Sen. Obama understands that there was a failed state in Pakistan when Musharraf came to power,” referring to former President Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a coup 1999. Although Pakistan sure had problems, many people didn’t regard the country, then a nuclear-armed one, as a failed state.

Admittedly, I once starred as the villain of a Matt Bai novel because of my obsession with Pakistan, so I’m surely biased. 

But unlike McCain’s mangling of Ahmadinejad’s name, I think these two mistakes ought to qualify as a significant issue.

Central to the debate over who has better judgment in foreign affairs, after all, is whether or not it was correct to draw troops away from Afghanistan in 2002 and dump them into Bush’s war of choice. McCain maintains that was a smart decision, whereas Obama has been saying we should have–and still have to–focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan for some time. 

McCain botching the name of a guy who just became Pakistan’s president–that I don’t so much mind (though someone following closely enough to understand Benazir Bhutto’s role in the country would have known Zardari’s name from his time as First Gentleman). 

But for someone running on a neocon platform of supporting the spread of democracy to explain away Musharraf’s coup by claiming Pakistan was a failed state is just inexcusable. If you don’t even know which countries have democratic elections and which don’t, after all, you’re bound to find yourself invading Venezuela in the name of democracy (heh). Furthermore, if Pakistan had been a failed state at any time since 1998, when it tested nukes, it would completely undermine the logic behind McCain’s myopic focus on Iraq and Iran at the expense of Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

In other words, McCain’s mistakes on Pakistan last night ought to be definitive proof that Obama’s claim–that McCain has focused unwisely on Iraq to the detriment of the more urgent central Asian war–is correct.

And while we’re talking about Pakistan, it’s worth looking at how well Eliza Doolittle learns. Read more →

The Debate

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Just wanted to make two points about the debate as a whole.

This was a good format. Kudos to the debate folks and Jim Lehrer for allowing the candidates to go after each other. Their responses to each other really revealed their personalities.

And then my personal impression. I got off the plane at almost exactly 9PM. Which mean I had a half mile walk, through an airport of people waiting for late night flights, watching the debates on huge TV screens high up on the walls. 

And everyone was rapt.

I’m sure most people had a tough time hearing what the candidates said–DTW has these huge TV screens but the sound only works when you’re reasonably close.

But, again, everyone was rapt. 

We might yet get our democracy back, if people are going to watch late night Friday night debates with rapt attention.

Time to Revisit McCain’s Love of Craps

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craps.jpgGiven events of the last few days, I thought it was time to revisit one of the most interesting articles of this election season, comparing McCain’s big money, showy love of craps with Obama’s cerebral love of poker.

The casino craps player is a social animal, a thrill seeker who wants not just to win but to win with a crowd. Unlike cards or a roulette wheel, well-thrown dice reward most everyone on the rail, yielding a collective yawp that drowns out the slots. It is a game for showmen, Hollywood stars and basketball legends with girls on their arms. It is also a favorite pastime of the presumptive Republican nominee for President, John McCain.

The backroom poker player, on the other hand, is more cautious and self-absorbed. Card games may be social, but they are played in solitude. No need for drama. The quiet card counter is king, and only a novice banks on luck. In this game, a good bluff trumps blind faith, and the studied observer beats the showman. So it is fitting that the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, raked in so many pots in his late-night games with political friends. [my emphasis]

Mostly, though, I’m amused by reading about McCain’s staffers’ desperate attempts to prevent McCain from caving to his addiction to gambling.

Only recently have McCain’s aides urged him to pull back from the pastime. In the heat of the G.O.P. primary fight last spring, he announced on a visit to the Vegas Strip that he was going to the casino floor. When his aides stopped him, fearing a public relations disaster, McCain suggested that they ask the casino to take a craps table to a private room, a high-roller privilege McCain had indulged in before. His aides, with alarm bells ringing, refused again, according to two accounts of the discussion.

"He clearly knows that this is on the borderline of what is acceptable for him to be doing," says a Republican who has watched McCain play. "And he just sort of revels in it."

Maybe if McCain’s staffers had just allowed him to enjoy that private room high-roller game he wanted, McCain wouldn’t be gambling the US economy along with his buddies from the hard right.

Photo by Phil Romans.