Palin is going to hide for two weeks because she's not ready

Hell of an admission, that their candidate is so weak that she has to hide for two weeks, lest she make a mistake. But rest assured, in two short weeks, magically, Sarah Pumpkin will become Sarah Vice President. Read the rest of this post...

Oh right, the Republicans haven't tried to paint Obama as a Muslim

I get annoyed with these kind of stories, because they're the kind of faux-insouciance that reporters, even those we like, sometimes adopt in order to appear fair. Yes, let's all pretend that Obama is simply mad to suggest that Republicans have tried to paint him as an unpatriotic Muslim. Do we have to keep playing this game every time the McCain campaign opens their mouths?

What's the latest count? McCain, defender of race. McCain, defender of women. Now it's John McCain, defender of Mulsims. Oh please. John McCain was opposed to the Martin Luther King holiday. He's horrible on every gay issue, save one - and even on that one, he's got a big "but" attached to it. He's not good on women's issues. Oh, and he used to be okay on immigration, but quieted down about that one too in order to win the GOP nomination. Let's stop pretending that McCain has any right whatsoever to play the civil rights card, because he most certainly does not.

Since reporters are so bully on playing games with Obama's quotes, I hope they'll be dissecting McCain's repeated statements about not loving his country until the age of 31 - he did it again during his convention speech last night. Yes, John McCain said he didn't love America until the fourth decade of his life. (Kind of funny that McCain smears Obama's patriotism, repeatedly and on a regular basis, after McCain himself says he didn't really love his country for three decades.) But you don't hear any reporters talking about that quote. No, they only dissect Obama's quotes, pretending they don't know what he means when they really do.

If we're going to parse words, then let's parse words correctly. Obama didn't say "McCain," he said "Republicans." And in fact, Republicans have done every single thing Obama alleged. So please, stop the parsing games - because if we're going to parse, let's parse the actual words spoken, rather than accept as face the increasingly desperate hysteria emanating from John McCain, great defender of women, blacks, and Muslims - except when he's not. Read the rest of this post...

Samantha Bee goes to the RNC and interviews delegates about Palin

Oh my God. It's only 3 minutes long. Watch it.

Read the rest of this post...

Hillary's silence

Ben raises a good point. Hillary helps with Democratic women, but not necessarily with independents. It's hard to imagine Palin, who doesn't support a single issue that Democratic women care about, peeling Hillary voters away from Obama. Thus, the argument goes, Hillary's weighing in might not help, and could hurt. Still, I have to admit, I'm kind of yearning for Hillary to hoist Palin on her own barracuda. (And Hillary's people are correct - if the Obama people don't ask for their help, they probably shouldn't inject themselves in the race.)

Okay, I take that back - Hillary is doing events with Obama next week. Per the Obama campaign:

On MONDAY, September 8, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York will campaign in Florida on behalf of Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama. Her visit will include a Change We Need rally for voters in Tampa and a community event on the economy in Kissimmee.

At both events, Sen. Clinton will address the choice we have in this election – between a new direction for our economy or four more years of the Bush failed economic policies that McCain-Palin is offering. She will talk about the Obama-Biden plan for immediate and lasting relief for America’s working families.

Read the rest of this post...

U.S. Plans to Seize Fannie and Freddie

I'm going to wait for Chris to wake up in Paris in a few hours to give us an analysis of what this means. NYT:

Senior officials from the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve on Friday informed top executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage-finance giants, that the government is preparing a plan to seize the two companies and place them in a conservatorship, officials and company executives briefed on the discussions said.

The plan, effectively a government bailout, was outlined in separate meetings that the chief executives were summoned to attend on Friday at the office of the companies’ new regulator. The executives were told that under the plan, they and their boards would be replaced, and their shareholders virtually wiped out, but that the companies would be able to continue functioning with the government generally standing behind their debt, people briefed on the discussions said.

It is not possible to calculate the cost of any government bailout, but the huge potential liabilities of the companies could cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars and make any rescue among the largest in United States history.

Here's the Washington Post's take:

The government has formulated a plan to put troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under federal control, dismiss their top executives, and use government funds to prop them up, government officials told the two companies yesterday, according to sources familiar with the conversations.

Under the plan, the federal government would place the firms in a legal state known as conservatorship, the sources said. The value of the company's common stock would be diluted but not wiped out while the holdings of other securities, including company debt and preferred shares, would be protected by the government.

Instead of giving each company a big capital infusion up front, the government plans to make quarterly infusions as the companies' losses warrant, the sources said. This would be an attempt to minimize the initial cost of the rescue.

Read the rest of this post...

The numbers don't lie - this economy is terrible

An eye popping graphic on the Reuters front page today that highlights McCain's problem this year. He admits that he knows nothing about economics besides wanting to read Greenspan's book and what Phil Gramm (a central figure on the credit crisis) tells him. Not many people are brave enough to admit admiration for Greenspan at this point and Foreclosure Phil is not a popular fellow either since he can't stop calling voters whiners for being upset about the Republican economy. Keep in mind that the US economy needs to generate roughly 150,000 new jobs per month to keep even with incoming workers. This year is negative and 2007 only offered two piddly months above that mark and one was just barely over the top. McCain can run but he can't hide forever from this disaster. Read the rest of this post...

Newt Gingrich - who left 1st wife stricken with cancer, cheated on 2nd wife, and now is on 3rd wife - does video in support of 'traditional marriage'

Newt is such a fan of traditional marriage, that's why he couldn't stop at one. Or two. Read the rest of this post...

Even the Moonie paper is asking questions about Palin's love of earmarks

We hate linking to the cult-run Republican newspaper here in town. But when even they are writing articles implying that Sarah Palin is a hypocrite for pretending she's against earmarks (she's not against them, and in fact she supported the Bridge to Nowhere, even though now she lies about it) - when she's not - well, let's just say that McCain is going to have a hard time accusing the Washington Times of liberal bias. Read the rest of this post...

CNN reporter Jack Cafferty's Wife Carol Passed Away This Morning

Wow, very sad. From CNN:

Jack Cafferty isn’t here today for the Cafferty File because of some tragic news.

His wife of 35 years, Carol, passed away unexpectedly this morning. Carol was everything to Jack. The dedication of his book reads, “for Carol, my wife, my life.”

Jack wrote about how she was the inspiration for him to get sober and straighten up his life: “In all the years that we’ve been married, she has always brought to the table her unshakable grounding in something a lot more real than being on television or being recognized in the corner drugstore. She has been my rock, having done a magnificent job of keeping me from getting full of helium and drifting off the surface of the earth… She was all the incentive I needed to make painful but transforming changes – to get sober and stop smoking. I knew that I’d lose her if I didn’t. She’s an amazing woman who simply wasn’t worth losing.”

One story Jack loves to tell is how he and Carol met – when he was a local news anchor in Kansas City. They started to meet regularly for a quick meal between his shows and became good friends. Whenever Jack had to leave, his exit line was “We’d better wrap this up. Got to get back to the station.” One night Carol finally asked, “What kind of a gas station do you work at? You’re always wearing a tie.”

Jack explained it was a television station. He loved the fact that she had no clue and couldn’t care less that he had been on air there every night for four years. He later described that as one of his life’s “twenty-four-carat moments” that made his heart soar. He said to himself then that he might marry her because “it can’t get any more honest and pure than that.”

Read the rest of this post...

Biden wants folks to donate. Watch him in action ripping the last eight years of failure. Then Donate.

Check out the video at the end of this post of Biden ripping McCain and Palin, it's great.

Got an email from the Obama campaign in the name of Joe Biden (You can give to Barack Obama by clicking on the box to the left.). Read his email, then watch the video from a Biden campaign appearance today in Pennsylvania today:

John McCain just accepted the Republican nomination and adopted the most conservative platform in the history of his party.

After days of negative attacks -- and no mention of real proposals to fix our economy, get more people health care, or make America safer -- the party that brought you eight years of disastrous policies is asking for four more.

Well, not if we have anything to say about it.

Across this nation, people like you have joined this movement because you believe that we are better than the past eight years. And now that we are entering the final stretch, it's going to take all of us to bring the change we need.

Will you make a donation of $100 or more at this crucial moment to change our country?

After the last eight years, it's up to you to keep America's promise alive.

How can John McCain pull us out of the deep hole we're in when he voted with George Bush more than 90% of the time?

The American people deserve more than a 10% chance at change.

No matter what McCain says, we can't bring about change by relying on the same ideas that have failed us for the last eight years.

Show the McCain campaign that people coming together, giving what they can afford, and working toward a common purpose will transform this country.

Change begins with you. Please make a donation of $100 or more now.

Watch Biden tear into the Republicans. Jed's right. Joe is on fire:
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Anchorage Daily News: Palin is stalling ethics investigation

It's the biggest paper in her own state, and they say she's playing monkey business with the investigation into her own possible ethics violation. You don't run for vice president and do sleazy things like stymie ethics investigations. You really don't do it when you're claiming that you're some holier-than-thou reformers. Reformers don't thwart the legal system like criminals. And, as the Republicans love to say, if Sarah Palin has nothing to hide then why is she using every trick in the book to derail this investigation? Read the rest of this post...

Adopting the typical DC GOP strategy, Palin stonewalls Troopergate investigation, forcing subpoenas.

I am loving my adn.com Breaking News Alerts these days. I highly recommend signing up.

Remember how Sarah Palin said she didn't like the way Washington worked? Sure. She sure knows the Washington way of stonewalling an investigation. What she's doing in Alaska would make George Bush, Karl Rove, Tom Delay and even Dick Nixon proud.

Today, we're learning that subpoenas will have to be issued in the Troopergate scandal. That's because the Governor, Sarah Palin, who previously talked about fully cooperating with the investigation, no longer is:

The Palin administration in recent days has shown resistance to the legitimacy of the legislative investigation.

A press release today from [GOP State Rep. Ray] Ramras and Sen. Hollis French, the Anchorage Democrat who is managing the Branchflower investigation, says subpoenas are necessary to compel cooperation with Branchflower.

Says the press release:

"This week, seven key witnesses informed Mr. Branchflower through their attorneys that they would not provide depositions. Their depositions, which had been agreed to and scheduled earlier with Mr. Branchflower, were cancelled within the last 72 hours.

"Additionally, the governor's lawyer has stated that he represents the governor and the governor's office, and has forbidden any contact by Mr. Branchflower with any member of that office.

"Mr. Branchflower wishes to depose some of those employees. The issuance of the subpoenas is intended to get at the truth and to expedite the completion of his report to the public."

Palin is becoming Bush-like in her capacity to just say things that aren't true.

Palin isn't going to be subpoenaed, but the Alaska legislators who are running the investigation know how to find her:

Another member of the House Judiciary Committee, Eagle River Republican Rep. Nancy Dahlstrom, said lawmakers talked and agreed not to issue a subpoena to Palin.

"She has told the public that she intends to cooperate with the investigation. Indeed, she has told the public that she welcomes the investigation, and I have every faith that she means it," Dahlstrom said. "If necessary we can send Mr. Branchflower to wherever the governor is, or she can give her statement to him over the telephone, whatever is most convenient for her. We recognize that her schedule is extremely busy, and we want to accommodate that."

Don't count on Palin wanting to be accommodated. Read the rest of this post...

CNN & MSNBC call McCain's bluff

(John interviewing CNN president Jon Klein at the Democratic convention)

The media has come a long way recently and I'm glad to to see that times are changing. Hats off to at least some media outlets to giving it right back to McCain.

“It’s a time-honored marketing ploy and, every time they bash the media, it means they’re not talking about a vision or a plan,” CNN president Jon Klein said. “But the best antidote to cynical marketing is solid reporting.”

CNN had a dustup with the McCain campaign earlier this week after Campbell Brown’s persistent questioning of McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds on Palin’s foreign-policy experience as governor of Alaska prompted the campaign to cancel McCain’s scheduled appearance on Larry King Live. (Bounds and CNN have since patched thing up.)

“America has been presented with a total unknown who might be a heartbeat away from the presidency,” Klein said of Palin, “and Americans have every right to expect as much information as possible about this person so that they can make an informed choice. Certainly our critics are in favor of Americans making an informed choice, aren’t they?”

Read the rest of this post...

Tweety gone wild

Me likey the new Tweety. It's like one of those movies where the media is in a coma for 8 years and suddenly wakes up. Of course, in those movies, they then die after 3 days, but still, we do get a gloriously 3 days of democracy.

Read the rest of this post...

That private jet gimmick: She "put it on eBay." She didn't sell it on eBay.

Sarah Palin is crafty in her use of words:

While I was at it, I got rid of a few things in the governor's office that I didn't believe our citizens should have to pay for.

That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay.

Just because she put it on eBay, doesn't mean she sold it on eBay. In fact, she didn't sell it on eBay. That gimmick failed.

For someone who claims to eschew the ways of Washington, Sarah Palin has already mastered the double-speak and obfuscation of the Bush/Cheney administration. She's a natural for the third Bush term.

(Hat tip reader DM, Thanks.) Read the rest of this post...

McCAIN-PALIN: A BRIDGE TO NOWHERE

A reader writes:

"McCAIN-PALIN: A BRIDGE TO NOWHERE"

Can you help get this meme out into the world at large - PLEASE???

Excuse my ego-tripping, but this is the kind of catchphrase that will stick right into people skulls once it starts spreading. It ties together that freakin' bridge she was on both sides of (hey, there's ANOTHER metaphor!) with Bob Dole's loser '96 campaign. (Remember his bridge to a better past vs. Clinton/Gore's 'bridge to the 20th century'?).

Read the rest of this post...

Home foreclosures hit record high

Ouch. More results from the Republican economy. So what does McCain have to say about this? Maybe his economic mastermind Phil Gramm can explain how this economy drifted so badly.

Home foreclosures and the rate of homes entering the foreclosure process rose to record highs in the second quarter, the Mortgage Bankers Association said on Friday.

"The national foreclosure numbers continue to be driven by the hardest-hit states continuing to get much worse," Jay Brinkmann, MBA's chief economist and senior vice president for research and economics, said in a press release.

Read the rest of this post...

GOP pundit tells TIME why Palin hurts McCain more than helps him

Mike Murphy, the poor soul who was caught accidentally on mic yesterday dissing McCain's choice of Palin, weighs in further today, on the record, about why he thinks Palin is the wrong choice at the wrong time (the video got 955,000 views on YouTube in just the past day):

I think she’ll ultimately be a polarizer. After last night’s smash, Republicans are in deep love. Nothing thrills ‘em like a good “us vs. them” speech. But I’d guess that most Democrats had the opposite reaction. In a year where the Democrat generic numbers are 10+ points better than the Republican, I don’t like the math of a strategy that just polarized the election along party base lines. Among the vital sliver of voters in the middle, I think Palin’s rock solid social conservatism will be a turn off. And while voters may value vision over experience, Palin’s inexperience is a weakness, denying McCain an argument that has been helping him against Obama. It's not a real poll and therefore should be taken with an Alaska sized boulder of salt, but the Detroit Free Press asked a few swing voters to watch Gov. Palin's speech and then opine. You can read their reactions here:

So that’s my concern with Sarah Palin. Interesting person, bad strategic choice to win the election.

Read the rest of this post...

GOP convention ignored the troops

Bob Geiger, who is a veteran, examined the major speeches at the GOP convention for any references to the men and women who are fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nothing. The top GOPers were too busy fomenting fear to actually say anything about the troops or their families:

What did not one member of the faux, support-the-troops line-up mention -- not even one time?

The sacrifice of our military families, the number of troops who have returned home in coffins since Bush lied us into the Iraq disaster and the trials of Iraq war Veterans.

To steal from the shrill Rudy Giuliani's speech on Wednesday, they said "nada, nothing."

For a party that wants to convince Americans that the entire Iraq debacle can somehow be reduced to the small amount of time spent on the "surge," every major speech was missing any acknowledgement whatsoever of the troops who have died and those still serving on the ground in Iraq -- except the couple of instances where they used the troops to lie about Barack Obama's record.

Even Veteran John McCain who had run the entire Republican convention under the "Country First" marketing label, spent much of his acceptance speech focusing on himself and his POW resume, without one word for the troops still serving in a war of his party's making. He also said nothing about the nearly 4,200 troops who have died or the Veterans who have come back to neglect and mistreatment under the Bush administration.

Read the rest of this post...

McCain's weird green screen? It was a mistake

You're gonna love this. Remember the weird green screen behind McCain as he was speaking last night? As his speech went on, we realized it was grass - grass from a larger photo of a house or some big mansion or something. In fact, the picture was of Walter Reed. No, not Walter Reed Army Medical Center where injured troops are treated - though that was clearly McCain's intent, to use our injured troops as a political prop (just as last night they dared show footage of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center, and the towers falling) - no, in fact, McCain posted a photo of Walter Reed Middle School, a school for kids in California that has nothing to do with Walter Reed the military hospital. They actually thought the school was the Army hospital. Apparently McCain just discovered the Google.

Great vetting. Read the rest of this post...

Sarah Palin is taking a "Timeout" -- to begin "the education of Sarah Palin"

I mentioned this briefly in the open thread, but it really warrants its own thread.

With 60 days left in the campaign, Sarah Palin is going back to Alaska -- to study.

Jed first picked this up yesterday via Chuck Todd, then Newsweek's Howard Fineman gave a fuller explanation after talking to one of the top McCain campaign officials. Ben Smith heard the same thing.

Jed had the best line:

Forget whether or not Sarah Palin is ready to be president. She's not even ready to be a candidate for vice president.

And, the McCain campaign is proving that point.


The NY Daily News reports that McCain and Palin will be in Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado and New Mexico, this weekend:

The road-show intro of Palin to the lower 48 as part of the official ticket will begin in Wisconsin and Michigan Friday.

It will move west to Colorado and New Mexico tomorrow, a region where the Alaska governor was expected to do the heavy lifting for November.

After that, Palin was expected to break from the trail to return to Alaska and see off her oldest son, Track, 19, who is deploying to Iraq with his Army unit on Sept. 12.

So, the NY Daily News says the "road show" stops because of the son. That's the spin we'll hear over and over and over. (Even though reporting on a deployment date is very dicey and possibly illegal as Jon Soltz explained.)

Be real. It's mostly to duck the national media. Sarah is NOT allowed to talk to the press (except FOX, Rush, probably the Moonie Times). After all, Palin is only running for vice president of the United States -- one heartbeat away from the presidency. Why does the media insist on talking to her? Be interesting to see just how long the McCain campaign can keep her sequestered. Read the rest of this post...

Payrolls drop larger than expected, 84,000 cuts in August

Again, it's obvious now why the GOP refused to acknowledge our economic problems this week. Expectations were for 75,000 job losses so the market is not going to like this news. Also, unemployment jumped to 6.1%. The GOP created this mess but can't live with the results. Where are all of the cheerleaders of this failed economic model now? What a bunch of cowards. Read the rest of this post...

Governor Palin has been quietly undermining ethics inquiry into firing of Public Safety Commissioner

According to CREW, it's politics as usual in Palin's Alaska.

"Alaska Governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has been quietly undermining the ethics inquiry into her firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan from the beginning, even as she publicly pledged her full cooperation. "

CREW has a lot of documentation, check it out via the link above. Read the rest of this post...

Olbermann apologizes for RNC showing graphic video of September 11, Twin Towers falling

Yes, John Mccain actually used the video of the Twin Towers getting hit and falling tonight. No decency whatsoever.

Read the rest of this post...

Friday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

What a week. Wild, just wild.

Last night was a disaster for the GOP. A disaster. McCain just wasn't very good. And, he's too tied to George Bush to talk about change.

I do think it's odd that Sarah Palin is heading back to Alaska. There are only 60 days til the election -- and she's taking time off to do what? Study? Whatever. It's their ticket.

McCain will probably get a bit of a bounce out of the convention...I mean, he should even if his speech sucked, mostly because of all the noise and attention associated with the doings out in St. Paul. God, it was painful to watch. I can't imagine what it was like to be there.

Oh, last night, before I went to bed, I found out we're under a tropical storm watch here in D.C. The last named storm to hit us was Isabel in 2003. So, we'll be battening down the hatches. Read the rest of this post...

Mortgage ARM futures looking bleak

It's understandable why Mr. 90% wants to avoid talking about any substance. What is he going to talk about? His voting record with Bush? His support for Phil Gramm, who ushered in this economy through years of hard work in the Senate on behalf of fancy banks and Wall Street gamblers? The GOP has been hoping that the economic decline has ended but there is nothing that suggests it's over. The 345 point fall in the Dow yesterday is perhaps the start of the second drop, the hard fall that many have been predicting since last spring.

For those in the Republican party who thought that ignoring the housing crisis would someone be a winning strategy, they may want to look at the next wave of failures coming. As unemployment moves up, housing headaches will only get worse.

However, even without reset difficulties, subprime and Alt-A loans are slipping into default at very high rates. The concern about future resets has given way to concern about borrowers equity erosion."

However, the Option ARMs and Interest Only (IOs) loans scheduled to reset in the next few years will add more trouble. These loans represent about 15% of securitized loans and some have negatively amortized, increasing the payments and making refinancing more difficult. According to data from Barclay's, about $300 billion in option ARMs and $820 billion in IO's are set to recast. The results could be payment shocks over 80% for option ARMs and over 60% for IOs according to Barclay's.

Read the rest of this post...

Dow tumbles almost 350 points

Brace yourself for an ugly autumn with more days like this. No wonder CNBC is wondering if the Republican economy will sink them in the elections. This collapse is their making and they own it. Phil Gramm can call us whiners every day of the week but it won't change his failures as a Senator and an expensive lobbyist for elite Swiss bank, UBS. Remember, Gramm is the guy McCain wants running the economy. It's no wonder McCain avoided any discussion on the economy this week. Voters are looking for answers on the economy and McCain has nothing to offer, though I hear he's reading Greenspan's book. Read the rest of this post...

McCain/Palin now lying in order to raise money

(Before you go to bed tonight, donate to Barack Obama by clicking on the box to the left. He doesn't have to lie to raise money.)

Palin must think her fundamentalist base is pretty stupid if she thinks he has to lie to them in order to fundraise. Then again, Palin lied to the American people when she said she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere (she supported it only two years ago), she lied when she said visiting Ireland is part of her extensive foreign policy experience (she stopped in Ireland for a brief stop-over and some duty-free shopping). So we've gotten used to Palin's lies already. It comes with the territory. When you've got nothing good to say about yourself - or in Palin's case, nothing to say period - you have to make stuff up. And she does, like a pro.

Here's NBC's take:

This afternoon, the McCain campaign issued a Palin fundraising solicitation for the joint McCain-Palin-RNC fund. (After this week, McCain no longer can raise money after accepting $84.1 million in public funds, but the Republican National Committee and state parties can.) "I cannot tell you how special last night was for me and how enthused I am to be John McCain's running mate," Palin said in the email solicitation, adding: "Unfortunately, as you've seen this week, the Obama/Biden Democrats have been vicious in their attacks directed toward me, my family and John McCain. The misinformation and flat-out lies must be corrected." Unless we're mistaken, neither Obama nor Biden nor the campaign has attacked Palin's family. In fact, Obama said this after it was revealed that Palin's 17-year-old daughter is pregnant: "I have said before and I will repeat again: I think people’s families are off limits, and people’s children are especially off limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics, it has no relevance to governor Palin’s performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories." Reached for comment about the charge, RNC spokesman Danny Diaz cited a comment Obama's Florida spokesman made noting (incorrectly, it seems) that Palin supported Pat Buchanan, whom Jews -- at least according to this spokesman -- have called a "Nazi sympathizer." But Diaz didn't cite a single Obama or Biden charge against Palin's family.

Read the rest of this post...

AP's Liz "The Donut" Sidoti delivers for McCain -- AGAIN

NOTE FROM JOHN: Get a room, Liz.



A couple hours ago, I wrote this:

Last week, almost before Obama had finished his speech, AP's Charles Babington pumped out a hatchet job. Watch how quickly the article praising McCain gets published tonight. It's probably already written. You know Sidoti and Fournier fought over who got to write it.

Sidoti won. Tonight, the McCain speech is being widely panned. Yet, as expected, Sidoti delivered for John McCain:

Not merely a Republican. Not merely a candidate. John McCain cast himself as a leader for all Americans, regardless of party or status.

Sidoti's admiration for McCain is unwavering. And, while I'm not comparing the AP writer to Shakespeare, she could have just used this passage from Julius Caesar and saved some time:

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.

McCain should be delivering donuts and coffee to Sidoti. Read the rest of this post...

Bush speechwriter/Washington Post columnist Gerson slams McCain speech

Ann Curry interviewed Michael Gerson tonight. Expected the usual GOP pablum. But, Gerson slammed McCain:

Read the rest of this post...

CNN's Jeffrey Toobin says McCain was "shockingly bad"

Jeffrey Toobin on CNN

“I thought it was the worst speech by a nominee that I’ve heard since Jimmy Carter in 1980. I thought it was disorganized, I thought it was it was theme-less, I thought it was very, very boring…I personally cannot remember a single policy proposal that he made because they had nothing connecting them. I found it shockingly bad.”

Read the rest of this post...

Sarah Palin killed your pet moose

After you click, keep refreshing the page you land on. Read the rest of this post...