In the Wall Street Journal, Frederick W. Kagan argues that national security should be the deciding issue in this election.

Here is Obama, speaking in Missouri yesterday:

It's not change when he (McCain) wants to give $200 billion to the biggest corporation or $4 billion to the oil companies when today, Exxon-Mobil announced that it had made the greatest profits of any corporation in the history of the world: $14 billion in one quarter. That's all your money. You are -- you are paying it at the gas station. That's not change when John McCain comes up with a tax plan that doesn't give a penny of relief to more than 100 million middle-class Americans.

Barack, once a person gives his money freely in a voluntary exchange of currency for a commodity, that money does not belong to him anymore. It's not surprising that the Prince of Redistribution does not understand this concept, but it is surprising that he openly talks about it, even in reddish states he'd like to win.

Fishbowl NY has a new online poll: "Both Senator Barack Obama and William Kristol made appearances on the Daily Show this week. Who was better?" As I type, Obama is losing 64 percent to 36 percent.

This is one election I'm sure we can win. Vote here.

John Podhoretz gives 10 reasons why McCain might win.

Krauthammer on the election:

The national security choice in this election is no contest. The domestic policy choice is more equivocal because it is ideological. McCain is the quintessential center-right candidate. Yet the quintessential center-right country is poised to reject him. The hunger for anti-Republican catharsis and the blinding promise of Obamian hope are simply too strong. The reckoning comes in the morning.

Read the whole thing, as they say.

Part one of Krauthammer's case for McCain is here.

Jake Tapper reports that on the stump this week Barack Obama accused McCain and Palin of promoting "selfishness" by opposing tax hikes:

"The reason that we want to do this, change our tax code, is not because I have anything against the rich," Obama said in Sarasota, Florida, yesterday. "I love rich people! I want all of you to be rich. Go for it. That’s the America dream, that’s the American way, that’s terrific.

"The point is, though, that -- and it’s not just charity, it’s not just that I want to help the middle class and working people who are trying to get in the middle class -- it’s that when we actually make sure that everybody’s got a shot – when young people can all go to college, when everybody’s got decent health care, when everybody’s got a little more money at the end of the month – then guess what? Everybody starts spending that money, they decide maybe I can afford a new car, maybe I can afford a computer for my child. They can buy the products and services that businesses are selling and everybody is better off. All boats rise. That’s what happened in the 1990s, that’s what we need to restore. And that’s what I’m gonna do as president of the United States of America.

"John McCain and Sarah Palin they call this socialistic," Obama continued. "You know I don’t know when, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness."

Got that? Obama loves rich people, but he thinks that John McCain and Sarah Palin--and presumably any one else who opposes his tax plan regardless of their income--are promoting "selfishness." In other words, opposition to Obama's tax increases is based on greed rather than a good faith disagreement about what is best for the economy and our country. This isn't the first time the Obama campaign has questioned the motives of those who oppose tax hikes. As you may recall, Joe Biden said that it's "patriotic" for the rich to pay higher taxes (which means that those who oppose tax increases are unpatriotic).

I'd say that these remarks show that Obama's new style of politics is a sham. But from the very beginning the real meaning of Obama's inspirational rhetoric about 'bringing us all together' was that those who opposed Obama and the Democrats were the enemies of "unity" and "hope." In his 2004 convention speech, right after he proclaimed that "we are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America," he framed the election between Bush and Kerry as a choice between "a politics of cynicism" and "a politics of hope." It's not very surprising that Obama and his running mate have now called those same cynics unpatriotic and selfish.

I’m sure the thought has crossed your mind: What happens if, just if, Obama loses? It is certainly something that has haunted überfeminist Erica Jong. In an interview in Corriere della Sera, and as noted in the New York Observer, Jong’s fear is that “if Obama loses it will spark the second American Civil War. Blood will run in the streets, believe me. And it's not a coincidence that President Bush recalled soldiers from Iraq for Dick Cheney to lead against American citizens in the streets.” Highlights, provided to the Observer’s Jason Horowitz by Christian Rocca of Il Foglio include:

"My friends Ken Follett and Susan Cheever are extremely worried. Naomi Wolf calls me every day. Yesterday, Jane Fonda sent me an email to tell me that she cried all night and can't cure her ailing back for all the stress that has reduces her to a bundle of nerves."

"My back is also suffering from spasms, so much so that I had to see an acupuncturist and get prescriptions for Valium."

"After having stolen the last two elections, the Republican Mafia…"

"Bush has transformed America into a police state, from torture to the imprisonment of reporters, to the Patriot Act."

Jong also fancies herself and Michael Chabon as the intellectual heirs to Susan Sontag and Norman Mailer.

A scary Halloween indeed!

The McCain campaign’s high command conducted a conference call this morning and communicated a strong, upbeat message.

Campaign manager Rick Davis kicked things off by predicting we’ll see “the greatest comeback since John McCain won the New Hampshire primary.”

Davis saw “gains in all the battleground states,” and “the best polling results since the convention.”

Pollster Bill McInturf emphasized a closing gap in party identification. He said historically Republicans lag Democrats by 3%-5% in party ID in exit polls. Their polls now see the race closing to that range. McInturff added that “McCain’s pattern of running ahead of his party means this will be very tight race.”

McInturff cautioned that any poll that shows a double digit Republican deficit on party ID is just wrong. He said the assumptions about underlying party ID spreads explains some of the variation we see in recent polling

He also mentioned that all of his research reveals unprecedented levels of interest in the campaign – and not just among Obama supporters. He said 2008 might witness 130-135 million total votes. McInturff said the campaign is very comfortable with McCain supporters’ level on interest as measured by his surveys.

Mike DuHame, the McCain’s political director ran through a number of voter contact metrics demonstrating the campaign’s success in that area as well. For example, he said the Bush campaign conducted 1.9 million voter contacts this week in 2004, while the McCain campaign made 5.3 million contacts during the same week in 2008. Deputy campaign manager Christian Ferry mentioned the campaign’s also meeting its objectives and targets on absentee ballots requested, returned and early voting.

Davis indicated the campaign’s research indicates Obama’s Wednesday night infomercial didn’t have much impact on undecided voters. He also added McCain is doing well in some surprising places – like Iowa, where despite the public polling the campaign numbers show the race a dead heat.

Finally, Davis wrapped up the call by announcing McCain would actually outspend Obama by $10 million in the last several days of the campaign – an impressive statistic given the Democrats’ much vaunted money advantage. He announced McCain would conclude the campaign with a stop in New Hampshire on Sunday night, followed by a seven state tour on Monday to wrap things up, arriving in Arizona late Monday night or early Tuesday morning.

While many have written McCain’s obituary, the conference call participants and their message suggest the McCain and his campaign are still alive and kicking.

In a piece on the economic crisis in Iceland in this week's magazine I noted how the government's inept response to the troubles made a bad situation much, much worse. One of the obvious mistakes the Icelandic central bank made was to lower the interest rate from 15.5 percent to 12 percent, after all the damage had been done.

Well, the central bank has now raised the interest rate--to 18 percent. This was done to secure a $2 billion emergency loan from the IMF.

The interest rate in Iceland went from 15.5 to 12 to 18 percent in the span of two weeks. This does not inspire confidence in the krona, and every scenario for recovery in Iceland depends upon the krona being traded at a "reasonable" rate of something like 150 krona to the euro.

The New York Times editorial board makes the case against extending the bailout to Detroit - before supporting exactly that:

The specific request by General Motors and Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm that controls Chrysler, is preposterous: billions to help pay for a merger of dubious value. Neither automaker has been able to produce cars that consumers want to buy. Both are losing money hand over fist. Gluing them together would not change this dynamic.

Detroit made its own problems. The auto companies have refused to change their product models even as consumers reject those models again and again. The autos signed over-the-top benefits packages with the United Auto Workers that cripple productivity and efficiency (a sign of what could happen, writ large, if Congress passes and a President Obama signs card-check next year). As their market share diminishes, the autos rely heavily on political connections to sustain their enterprises. It's corporate welfare at its worst.

The Times gives two arguments in support of using bailout money to prop up Detroit. Neither argument holds water. The first is that "it is not unreasonable to believe that they might survive as self-sustaining companies if government money can get them over the credit crunch and deep recession that is expected in 2009." Why is it "not unreasonable" to believe this? Because

In 2010, they are expected to offload responsibility for their retirees’ health care onto a new fund. It would cost them some $40 billion but would get the problem off their books and stop the hemorrhaging of money. They have negotiated new contracts with the auto workers’ union that eliminate retiree health care and allow for lower wages for new hires. They are slashing the production of gas-guzzlers. Some analysts believe they finally have a promising lineup of fuel-efficient cars.

But if this is the case, then why do the autos need the money to begin with? Couldn't they simply speed up offloading their pension commitments into the "new fund"? If they are going to make cars that people will want to buy, can't they rush those product lines? "Some analysts" may believe Detroit could pull through with only a few more billion from the federal government. This analyst is doubtful.

The other argument the Times offers is that the government should help Detroit tread water for a year or so, because "the economy and the job market will have their hands full" during this time. The additional responsibility of picking through the wreckage of the big auto companies would prove too much. For whom? The market? Surely there are vulture capitalists who are ready to take over the autos, re-size them, and turn them into leaner, better companies. The government? It's already on the hook.

This is economic reasoning on stilts. The economy is probably in recession. But the sooner we hit bottom, the sooner we'll begin to recover. Government intervention to keep failing enterprises afloat may keep us from hitting bottom. But it will also keep us from recovering. Extending the bailout to Detroit is a bad idea.

Wise words from David Brooks today on the problems with "economic stimulus packages":

The Federal Reserve can effectively stimulate the economy. There are certain automatic government programs, like unemployment insurance, which also do it. But the history of the past century suggests that politically designed, ad hoc stimulus packages rarely work.

Often they get the timing wrong; they come too late to do any real good. Often they get the pressure points wrong; the economy is simply too complicated for lawmakers to know where to apply the stimulus patch. Almost always, they get psychology wrong. When you give people a chunk of money in the midst of economic turmoil, they don’t spend most of it. They save it.

Even so, Brooks argues in favor of "a long-term investment in the country’s infrastructure":

Create a base-closings-like commission to organize federal priorities (Congress has forfeited its right to micromanage). Streamline the regulations that can now delay project approval by five years. Explore all the new ideas that are burgeoning in the transportation world — congestion pricing, smart highways, rescue plans for shrinking Midwestern cities, new rail and airplane technologies. When you look into this sector, you see we are on the cusp of another transportation revolution.

Sign me up! Small problem, though: What guarantee is there that federal spending on infrastructure will actually be spent on new roads and highways? Isn't it just as likely that the folks in charge of Brooks's commission, or Obama's national infrastructure bank, will funnel the money to "light rail" and other transportation projects that nobody uses? Environmentalists and NIMBY activists will oppose government spending on pavement. But they'll support additional spending on mass transit systems that will do little to lighten the burden on suburban and exurban commuters. The pro-pavement constituency is, sadly, small in comparison.

Congress could write-in guarantees to spend the money on new road construction and bring in private companies to build new toll roads and highways. But if you think that's likely to happen without a major fight, I have a bridge I'd like you to help me build in Brooklyn.

The Drudge Report is running a story about three newspapers having been kicked off the Obama campaign plane for the last 72 hours of the race— the Dallas Morning News, the NY Post, and the Washington Times, all of which endorsed McCain on their editorial pages.

The NY POST, WASHINGTON TIMES and DALLAS MORNING NEWS have all been told to move out by Sunday to make room for network bigwigs -- and possibly for the inclusion of reporters from two black magazines, ESSENCE and JET, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Despite pleas from top editors of the three newspapers that have covered the campaign for months at extraordinary cost, the Obama campaign says their reporters -- and possibly others -- will have to vacate their coveted seats so more power players can document the final days of Sen. Barack Obama's historic campaign to become the first black American president.

Some told the DRUDGE REPORT that the reporters are being ousted to bring on documentary film-makers to record the final days; others expect to see on board more sympathetic members of the media, including the NY TIMES' Maureen Dowd, who once complained that she was barred from McCain's Straight Talk Express airplane.

After a week of quiet but desperate behind-the-scenes negotiations, the reporters of the three papers heard last night that they were definitely off for the final swing.

The Washington Times formally protested the move, citing multiple occasions on which the Democratic nominee has used information from Times investigations and interviews in ads and speeches throughout the campaign. Times reporter Christina Bellantoni, after traveling with the campaign since 2007, is being asked to consider traveling on Sen. Biden's plane for the homestretch of the election, where there is of course, plenty of room.

In defending its decision, the Obama campaign said it respected Ms. Bellantoni's reporting and simply ran out of seats on the campaign plane for the finale because of high demand. It also noted that the Obama campaign is allowing some news media critical of the Democrat to travel, including Fox News.

"Unfortunately, demand for seats on the plane during this final weekend has far exceeded supply, and because of logistical issues we made the decision not to add a second plane. This means we've had to make hard and unpleasant for all concerned decisions about limiting some news organizations and in some cases not being in a position to offer space to news organizations altogether," wrote Obama campaign Senior Advisor and Chief Communications Officer Anita Dunn in an e-mail.

This is not the first incident in which critical reporters and columnists have lost their campaign plane seats during this race, but it's certainly the most high profile. Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker was ousted this summer after a critical piece Obama's Chicago political rise. The NYT's Maureen Dowd was left by the McCain campaign in Pennsylvania earlier this year.

In the waning days of this campaign, Obama seems to be succumbing to his worst tendencies. Lofty, presumptuous infomercials. Snarky campaign commercials that take aim at a female opponent in a condescending manner. And, now, the unceremonious dumping of longtime pool reporters. After reading Peter Nicholas' account of life in the robo-candidate's pool, it's not all that surprising that he cuts ties at such a crucial moment with not so much as a second thought:

I've watched Obama demonstrate a soccer kick to his daughter in Chicago; devour a cheesesteak in Philly; navigate a roller rink in Indiana; drive a bumper car; and catapult 125 feet in the air on an amusement-park ride called "Big Ben." He's done it all with dogged professionalism, but with little show of spontaneity. After all this time with him, I still can't say with certainty who he is...

First Clinton, then John McCain made the argument that Obama is someone we don't really know. Obama's supporters counter that we have his record in the U.S. and Illinois senates, two memoirs that reveal his inner thinking and a vast trove of public speaking. Ironically, those of us who were sent out to take his measure in person can't offer much help in answering who he is, or if he is ready. The barriers set in place between us and him were just too great.

Obama's distance, even from those who cover him every day, allows him to coldly calculate about who will be more valuable to him in the final days on the trail. Unsurprisingly, he stuffs the plane with hagiographers over skeptical reporters. Because the thumping he'll receive from the press for this move will be relatively minor compared with the one a Republican candidate might get, the calculation is likely a good one. If one ever has trouble pegging the real Obama, "opportunist" is usually a safe guess.

Iowahawk comes through again: "As a Conservative, I Must Say I Do Quite Like the Cut of this Obama Fellow's Jib" by T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII.

While the U.S. economy’s declining, national polling is a growth industry. Karl Rove noted on last week’s Fox News Sunday that the number of national polls released in October 2008 compared to the same month in 2004 grew by 300 percent (55 national polls were release October 1-23, 2004, compared to 177 during the same period this year).

Examinations into the accuracy of these surveys have already started. This paper paper by professors Leonard Adelman and Mark Schilling argues that broadcast and cable network polling (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox) all tilt more pro-Obama in their results than Gallup and Rasmussen. Adelman and Shilling write this:

We compared polls produced by major television networks with those produced by Gallup and Rasmussen. We found that, taken as a whole, polls produced by the networks were significantly to the left of those produced by Gallup and Rasmussen.

We used the available data to provide a tentative ordering of the major television networks’ polls from right to left. Our order (right to left) was: FOX, CNN, NBC (which partners with the Wall Street Journal), ABC (which partners with the Washington Post), CBS (which partners with the New York Times). These results appear to comport well with the commonly held informal perceptions of the political leanings of these agencies.

It’s important to note the authors make no claims about which polls are more accurate. They simply observe--based on surveys from different outlets that come out the same day--the networks consistently show a more pro-Obama bias (with FOX showing the least Obama tilt and CBS showing the most) compared to Gallup and Rasmussen.

No one from the networks has responded yet. I assume they will wait until after the election. If the networks were right, they’ll claim vindication. If wrong? You probably won’t hear much about it.

HT: Andrew Gelman

This space is not usually reserved for confession, but I have a secret vice to reveal: I close my office door here at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, direct my computer to the YouTube site, and bathe in the sights and sounds of Barack Obama music.

Specifically, I have found myself addicted to four videos in particular. The first, which was produced by rapper will.i.am during the primary season, is called "Yes, We Can" and features Mr. am's fellow celebrities--John Legend, Scarlett Johanssen, and others--lip-synching to Obama boilerplate about the magical phrase "Yes, we can," which (according to Senator Obama) seems to have circulated throughout the populace at choice moments in history.

Then there is a second video, also produced by will.i.am, called "We Are the Ones"--taken from the famous Obamian formula that "we are the ones we've been waiting for"--which also features selected celebrities (Jessica Alba, among others) describing the kind of world they would like to inhabit once Obama is elected.

The third video is the brainchild of a rocker named Dave Stewart and is called "My American Prayer"--although, as the singer renders the phrase, it sounds more like "my 'merican prayer." This, too, is a vehicle for familiar faces (Forrest Whittaker, Seinfeld's Jason Alexander) to move their lips in harmony with Mr. Stewart's lyrics or Senator Obama's oratory.

The final video is not a video per se, but a performance by Little Stevie Wonder at a rally for Obama at UCLA where he exhorts the audience to "remember this melody" and then, singing up and down the scale, repeats "Barack Obama" in a slow rhythmic chant, clapping with the audience, and invoking "Barack Obama" over and over again.

I confess that Little Stevie Wonder's performance has something like a hypnotic effect on me. His grating, high-pitched voice, which was never particularly comfortable to listen to, has a kind of screeching quality which, combined with the endless incantation of "Barack Obama," is very difficult to dislodge from memory. I also admit that the other three videos appeal to me largely for their considerable quotient of kitsch: There is slow-motion imagery of pregnant women, blissful Gray Panthers, solemn dreadlocked hipsters, earnest Young Hollywood, and multitudes of the sort of people you would expect to see shopping at Whole Fields in, say, Cambridge, Massachusetts or Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Yet what is most striking about these sounds and images is their extraordinary solemnity. There is an overarching theme of sadness, melancholy, misfortune, loss, even reproachfulness: The beautiful young things gaze balefully into the cameras, warbling in slow, mournful tempos, swaying and staggering instead of dancing; they appear at times to be on the verge of tears. It is as if they are moaning their way out of Stalingrad, or expect the viewer to crush the dreams they describe. This is as far from 'Happy Days are Here Again' or 'hope' as one could imagine. Even the Obama musical video--"Choose to Unite"--is suffused with candlelight vigils and progressives in pain.

What does this mean? Perhaps the inference is that the United States, after eight years of George W. Bush, is so far down the road to perdition that even the dying words of Martin Luther King (featured in 'My American Prayer') cannot redeem it. Or maybe these long, self-indulgent eulogies are largely a reflection of the copious piety, insufferable self-absorption, and mutual admiration of Senator Obama and his acolytes? Either way, they generate bouts of helpless laughter and genuine astonishment in one viewer, at least.

Barack Obama's running mate, Joe the Gaffe Machine, recently predicted that an international crisis will occur sometime during a President Obama's first year in office. What will it be? Trouble in Iraq? Tension between China and Taiwan? State collapse in North Korea? Crisis in the Straits of Hormuz? War in central Africa? There are so many options. How about a Russian invasion of Ukraine?

Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner of France said Tuesday that Moscow had been issuing Russian passports in Crimea, a region in southern Ukraine where Russia’s Black Sea fleet is based. “We all know that they are handing out Russian passports over there,” Mr. Kouchner said in an interview with Kommersant, a Russian online newspaper. The government of Ukraine has said it wants the fleet to leave the Crimean base in Sevastopol when its lease runs out in 2017. But the Russian naval authorities have indicated that they want to retain the base. Mr. Kouchner said Russia might try to make advances in Crimea after the success of its military operations in Georgia in August.

When you talk to Obama supporters, in particular the younger ones, you get the sense that they believe all the world's problems will disappear if Obama becomes president. Newsflash: They won't.

The morning after Obama's $3-million appeal to people who'd rather be watching "Knight Rider," he hit me up for a couple bucks. This is perhaps a preview of the administration:

Mary --

The next 6 days are going to be the toughest we've seen, and I need your support to reach as many voters as possible.

Donate $5 or more today to strengthen this movement for the final push.

This campaign is in your hands.

Thank you for everything you're doing,

Barack

As Andrew Malcolm notes, "Just to relieve himself of that $150 million before the polls open, Obama will have to spend $12.5 million a day," but he's still asking for fivers from his supporters.

You'd think with his website set up to accept multitudes of fraudulent donations, he wouldn't need me:

Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited...

In recent weeks, questionable contributions have created headaches for Obama's accounting team as it has tried to explain why campaign finance filings have included itemized donations from individuals using fake names, such as Es Esh or Doodad Pro. Those revelations prompted conservative bloggers to further test Obama's finance vetting by giving money using the kind of prepaid cards that can be bought at a drugstore and cannot be traced to a donor.

The problem with such cards, campaign finance lawyers said, is that they make it impossible to tell whether foreign nationals, donors who have exceeded the limits, government contractors or others who are barred from giving to a federal campaign are making contributions.

We can all rest assured, however, that if a Republican candidate had explicitly promised to take public financing only to change his mind once he had gotten the nomination, then went on to raise more than $600 million dollars, roughly two thirds of which may have been raised through fraud-enabling practices, and outspent his opponent by three-to-one on TV, that'd be cool, too. Right?

Credit goes to Campbell Brown of CNN for calling Obama out for his broken promise, and to John McCain for delivering a decent soundbite on it:

In Palm Beach, Florida, today Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., attacked Sen. Barack Obama's pending 30-minute prime-time address as a "gauzy, feel-good commercial," that was "paid for with broken promises."

Robert Kagan on American declinism:

[T]he evidence of American decline is weak. Yes, as Zakaria notes, the world's largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore and the largest casino in Macau. But by more serious measures of power, the United States is not in decline, not even relative to other powers. Its share of the global economy last year was about 21 percent, compared with about 23 percent in 1990, 22 percent in 1980 and 24 percent in 1960. Although the United States is suffering through a financial crisis, so is every other major economy. If the past is any guide, the adaptable American economy will be the first to come out of recession and may actually find its position in the global economy enhanced.

Meanwhile, American military power is unmatched. While the Chinese and Russian militaries are both growing, America's is growing, too, and continues to outpace them technologically. Russian and Chinese power is growing relative to their neighbors and their regions, which will pose strategic problems, but that is because American allies, especially in Europe, have systematically neglected their defenses.

America's image is certainly damaged, as measured by global polls, but the practical effects of this are far from clear. Is America's image today worse than it was in the 1960s and early 1970s, with the Vietnam War; the Watts riots; the My Lai massacre; the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy; and Watergate? Does anyone recall that millions of anti-American protesters took to the streets in Europe in those years?

Today, despite the polls, President Bush has managed to restore closer relations with allies in Europe and Asia, and the next president will be able to improve them even further. Realist theorists have consistently predicted for the past two decades that the world would "balance" against the United States. But nations such as India are drawing closer to America, and if any balancing is occurring, it is against China, Russia and Iran.

Kagan has been tough on the "realists" lately, in The Return of History and the End of Dreams, and his appraisal of the Bush legacy in Foreign Affairs, and this piece for the Wall Street Journal from a few months back. All this has me thinking that Kagan's next book ought to be a takedown of the new "realism," and an articulation of what a "real realism" looks like.

The Democratic Party of Idaho has been criticized this week for publishing the social security numbers of GOP Rep. Bill Sali and his wife. The numbers were printed in a Democratic campaign mailer highlighting the Sali's difficulty paying off debts in the 1980s.

The Idaho GOP released a statement that accuses the state Democratic Party of enabling identity theft.

Jim Hansen, the state Democratic Party chairman, released his own statement today that included an apology of sorts:

It is regrettable that the Tax Commission released all the numbers depicted on the document. And it is regrettable that in the press of print deadlines for multiple campaigns, we did not notice that the Tax Commission failed to black out those numbers. As Executive Director, I take personal responsibility for the oversight. We agree that it would have been better to black out parts of the document even though the public agency that released them did not. As we previously stated, this was a completely unintentional oversight.

But...

Of course, if Bill Sali did not want public documents of his tax delinquencies and his campaign finance delinquencies to be made public by a public agency, he should have paid his taxes on time and filed his reports on time.

Sali is an a surprisingly tough reelection bid, probably due to what Congressional Quarterly calls his "manner" rather than his ideology, which is a decent enough match for his reliably conservative district that includes the western half of the state. Apparently, Idaho's other Republican congressman, Mike Simpson, once got so frustrated by Sali that he threatened to toss him out of a statehouse window when they served as state legislators in Boise. Democratic candidate Walt Minnick, a moderate businessman who ran against Larry Craig six years ago, leads Sali by 6 points according to the latest SurveyUSA poll.

Unlike the John Mayer endorsement of Obama, this comes from the counterintuitive celebrity endorsements file. Joe Perry on McCain:

“I’ve been a hardcore Republican my whole life,” he told the Herald. “My mother and father drilled into me from the very start that if you work hard and be positive, you’ll get what you’re working for. I guess I’m living proof of that.”

Of criticism about McCain’s age, Perry said: “My mother’s in her 80s and she does aerobics. My manager’s 70 and he’s right there. That doesn’t bother me.”

And despite lopsided polls, he urged his fans to get out and vote.

“I’m an optimist. It ain’t over till its over,” he said. “I think that he’s got a chance.”

And, Perry was inexplicably able to express all this without a 5-minute high-production-value, low-impact video.

The "don't vote" joke wasn't funny the first time they told it for five minutes, so they're back again with another five minutes of embarrassingly bad self-referential civic humor. Remember, these people are paid millions upon millions to entertain. At least when Obama presents a prime-time snooze-fest, he has the excuse of being a politician:

This and John Mayer's cloying Obama endorsement, "Hope is not a buzz word," taken together should have you welcoming the robo-calls that come into your home around dinnertime this weekend. Just a taste:

To those who question whether hope is a tangible product worth building a campaign around, I'd say take a look at despair and how powerful that has been in reshaping how people think and live. I believe the definition of the "hope" that Barack Obama enthuses operates on the unspoken thesis that there has to be a polar opposite to the despair of 9/11. Because if we accept that there's not, the will to live becomes forever altered. To adults who will vote for him, Barack Obama represents a return to prosperity. To the youth, he represents an introduction to it.

Yes, Rudy Giuliani, I would love to hear more about how Barack Obama is soft on crime. What was it you were saying?

Germany’s demographic troubles are well known: Fewer and fewer women are having babies; and even if they do have kids, it often doesn’t happen before they are already well into their 30s. The long-term economic, social, and political consequences of this unprecedented demographic meltdown in Germany and other European countries are staggering. Given the urgency of the situation, it is absolutely shocking to learn that a growing number of German Kindergartens have recently been forced to shut down because nasty neighbors took legal action against what they described as “noise pollution” stemming from playing children.

So far, German courts in major cities such as Berlin, Munich, and Heidelberg have already sided with the plaintiffs. Unfortunately, the judges failed to ask the plaintiffs two obvious yet important questions: First, who exactly do you expect to pay for your costly “pay-as-you-go” retirement benefits in the future? (Hint: maybe the kids playing next door?). And two, why don’t you just move on and relocate to a place that is really quiet (Hint: maybe closer to a retirement community?). In this context, the proliferating legal actions taken against Kindergartens in Germany could certainly hamper Chancellor Merkel’s ambitious new plan to triple the number of Kindergarten/daycare spots for children under the age of 3 to 750,000 by 2013.

NBC news reports that the Justice Department has begun an investigation into whether Countrywide Financial Corp used the 'Friends of Angelo (Mozilo)' program to buy influence with Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT), Kent Conrad (D-ND), and others. According to a senior Countrywide official who handled its VIP program, there was no way Dodd and Conrad could not have known they were getting a special deal:

...Feinberg says part of his job was to hammer home to the V.I.P. clients that they were getting special deals.

"You spoke in a manner that was different than you spoke with a regular customer," said Feinberg. "'Your loan has been specially priced by Angelo.' 'You're getting special discounts because you're in the V.I.P. loan department."

So what would a "Friend of Angelo" get that an average customer would not? According to Feinberg, the possible benefits ran the gamut.

"They got a discount on the interest rate," said Feinberg. "They got discounts on their fees. They got a free floatdown option before closing..."

"There were many, many taglines we used to let them know their level of importance to make sure that they understand where they're located," said Feinberg. "And nine times out of ten, once you mention 'V.I.P' the person's gonna ask you 'what am i getting for being in this V.I.P department?' Or 'what am I getting because I know Angelo?' Or 'I talked to Angelo and he said I'm getting this...'"

Feinberg says he's not aware of any discounts linked to favors, but he did see e-mails noting the potential value of the relationships to Countrywide's political and business interests. The e-mails noted one particular client was "of importance to Countrywide." Another encouraged a discount, noting "they are incredibly important to us." Yet another asked that the loan officer, "make an exception" in Countrywide's lending rules, "due to the fact that the borrower is a Senator."

If Dodd and Conrad somehow missed the special treatment they were receiving, Feinberg's testimony suggests that it was only because they chose not to listen. Nevertheless, Dodd is still refusing to release the paperwork related to his loans--information he promised to share weeks ago.

Last night's episode of The Barack Obama Show was blog-worthy in several respects. And it raised many important questions, such as, Will it be picked up for a full season? (We find out next Tuesday.)

One thing that struck you as you watched the show was how downbeat it was. All the families Obama highlighted seemed at the end of their ropes. They have trouble paying bills, worry about the kids' future, wonder if they will have health insurance in a few weeks. They feel like the American dream isn't working out. They remind you of something Michelle Obama once said, about how our country can be "downright mean." Every family profiled last night was looking to the federal government to help them out. To save them.

This is a new understanding of the American electorate with questionable results. Americans have typically understood themselves in terms of self-reliance and self-making. As individuals who can shoulder responsibility and strive and succeed. And politicians, especially presidential candidates, tend to appeal to voters' ideals and optimism about the future. A non-incumbent challenger may highlight what's gone wrong, but they also will almost certainly argue that things can - and will - be better. Obama does argue things can improve, but he doesn't exactly strike you as an optimist. He's a realist. There's no guarantee things will improve, Obama says. What is guaranteed is that he will try to mobilize (and expand) the state to alleviate your suffering. Not exactly "build a bridge to the 21st-century," is it?

As one watches the show, one has a growing sense of cognitive dissonance. The characters may be miserable, but they all have nice homes, drive good cars, have happy families, and certainly aren't starving. Surely most viewers noticed this as well. I wonder whether Obama's strategy - always look on the bad side - may go too far.

For the last few months I've been reading that the Reagan era is about to end, or is in the process of ending, or has ended already. Now it's true that the people who have been arguing this have made the same argument, again and again, since the Reagan era began in 1980. But in recent months they've had some facts to back it up: Bush's dismal popularity, the GOP losses in Congress, the Bush administration's embrace of massive government intervention in the economy as a response to the financial crisis, the likelihood of an Obama victory next Tuesday, etc.

Here's the thing, though. If you watched The Barack Obama Show last night, you saw the Democratic nominee for president campaigning on ... a tax cut; "eliminating" government programs that "don't work" and making those "that do work work better" (meaning, "cheaper," presumably); and expanding the U.S. military and increasing U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.

Yes, Obama wants to "end" the war in Iraq and expand government subsidies for health insurance. Those are both major parts of his agenda. But they are just parts. Other parts, a whole lot of them actually, are center-right. The most liberal senator is running as a centrist candidate. Which sets up plenty of expectations for how President Obama might govern. Expectations that would be politically perilous for Obama to dismiss.

The Hill gives a preview of the congressional Democrat agenda once the election is behind them: hundreds of billions in new spending (with more and more governors calling for a state bailout), an end to secret ballots for union organizing, and tax increases:

A certain starting point for Democrats will be the financial crisis, and a stimulus package could be taken up as early as the November lame-duck session. A landslide win will boost the likelihood that bill will lean heavily toward spending on infrastructure, money for cities and states, an extension of unemployment insurance and additional money for food stamps.

Business leaders are anticipating an early push of union-backed bills. At the top of the list is the so-called Employee Free Choice Act, which would eliminate the right of employers to demand secret-ballot elections before a union can be certified. Instead, a majority of workers could sign petition cards certifying a union — a process known as “card-check.” The bill passed the House in March 2007, but failed three months later in the Senate to get the 60 votes required for controversial legislation...

Tax policy may also come up early as lawmakers look for offsets to pay for expensive programs. Two early possibilities include a tax on the carried interest that hedge funds and other financial firms make in compensation and an effort to close several tax haven loopholes. They were both part of a broad tax proposal pushed in late 2007 by Rep. Charles Rangel (N.Y.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

Is this the agenda that Barack Obama is promising the American people? In 1993, voters were surprised when Bill Clinton forgot his campaign promises of welfare reform and middle class tax cuts to focus on gays in the military, public works spending, and BTU taxes. Now it seems that congressional Democrats are planning a near repeat of what happened back then.

Those who don't learn from history...

Gore to close for Obama in Florida. Well, his track record there is so good. In addition to losing the state for Obama, he'll probably make it snow as he rails about global warming. I'm super serial.

Perhaps this is the reason for Obama's positively Kerry-esque numbers in Florida early voting:

Democrats are beaming that their party is outperforming the Republicans in early voting, releasing numbers Wednesday that show registrants of their party ahead 54 percent to 30 percent among the 1.4 million voters who have gone to the polls early.

A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll gave McCain a 49-45 lead over Democrat Barack Obama among Floridians who have already voted.

And Republicans continued to show a traditional strength, leading 50 percent to the Democrats' 30 percent in the 1.2 million absentee ballots already returned.

Kerry lost Florida by five percent after leading early voting by a decent margin.

Other early voting shows similarly underwhelming results for the alleged flood of first-time voters and young voters Obama is supposed to draw:

But serious pollsters know that the electorate may have changed slightly since 2004, but that massive turnout will still reflect past performance. It will be the same, just much more of it. Consider what’s going on with early voters in swing state Nevada.

According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, a quarter of the state’s electorate had already voted by Sunday. But of those voters, just 20 percent were Hispanic, 14 percent were under 30, and 15 percent didn’t vote in the last three elections.

Early voters this year look pretty much like what we’ve seen in Nevada before. If that’s the case, polls based on a huge shift in the electorate that show Obama with a doughty lead would come up a cropper.

Two new polls in closely watched Senate races deserve note. First, in Alaska, Rasmussen released its first results post conviction in the Stevens/Begich race.

Stevens now trails by 8 points. The shift merits mention because, yesterday--before adding this poll into the mix--the Real Clear Politics average had the Alaska race at a near dead heat. Some speculate Stevens might still win despite his conviction. This survey suggests voters are moving against him due to his legal problems.

In Minnesota, the news is better for Republicans. Incumbent Republican Norm Coleman now leads Democratic challenger Al Franken 43 percent to 39 percent. A week ago Franken, the former Saturday Night Live comedian, held a 41 percent to 37 percent edge. The race also includes a moderately popular independent Dean Barkley who draws about 14 percent of the vote. The independent’s presence in the campaign makes for difficult prognosticating. The polls in this race are more volatile than the recent stock market swings.

Still, Coleman may have the advantage in the end. A Minnesota Republican political expert told me this:

“I think Coleman pulls this out. The state still has a bit of collective embarrassment over its last ‘novelty’ choice when it elected former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura as Governor. Franken’s background is working against him because people don’t want to make the same mistake twice.”

Norm Coleman is a truly talented and dedicated public servant. His defeat would represent a major loss for Minnesota and the U.S. Senate. He deserves reelection.

This has got to worry Team Obama:

After several weeks of John McCain’s campaign attacks on Barack Obama’s tax plan and idea of “spreading the wealth around”, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds voters trust McCain more than Obama on taxes, 47% to 45%.

Two weeks ago, Obama had a one point-advantage on the issue of taxes and a month ago, he had a three-point edge. The last time McCain had the advantage on this issue was September 14, just before the collapse of Lehman Brothers started the meltdown on Wall Street.

One month ago, Obama was up nine points on this crucial issue. McCain continues to outperform the generic Republican ticket by a longshot, and while Obama leads in six of ten top issues for Americans, Obama led in all 10 last month.

Now that McCain has a resonant message in Joe the Plumber's plight, is finally matching Obama ad-for-ad in battlegrounds, and Biden has just lowered the Obama campaign's "wealthy" mark to $150,000, it's a mighty good time for things to be looking up for him.

More on the moving target that is the $250,000 threshold for the Obama campaign's tax hikes. The Wall Street Journal reminds, "Just as Bill Clinton promised a 'middle-class tax cut' in 1992 only to raise taxes on the middle class in 1993, Mr. Obama will quickly find that his tax-revenue math doesn't add up. Add in the demands on Capitol Hill to spend more and to offset the Alternative Minimum Tax, and our bet is that even $150,000 would soon prove to be a moving tax target. Remember when the AMT was only supposed to hit 21 millionaires? Next year, without relief, it could hit 26 million taxpayers. Tax increases always hit the middle class because that's where the money is."

Voters are rightfully wary.

Sitting through the Very Special Episode of Obama for President tonight felt awfully familiar. It's like one of those required assemblies from middle school: hectoring, tedious, and transparently silly. But it did have one unexpected effect on me. Never before have I noticed how wonderful commercials are. It's not until you're forced to go without the Geico cavemen for 30 straight minutes that you realize how much you appreciate them.

From Nielsen: "Overall, between Oct. 6 and Oct. 27, Obama placed 153% more ad units (64,917 vs. 25,630) than McCain in ... seven key battleground states."

The LA Times's Andrew Malcolm reports that the FBI caught Massachusetts Democratic state senator Dianne Wilkerson "on videotape stuffing numerous $100 bills into her bra as alleged bribe payments during a meeting in a fancy Boston restaurant."

You know, it's 2008. Isn't it about time female politicians feel free to carry their bribes in briefcases just like their male counterparts?

Hat tip: Kathryn Jean Lopez

One additional note on that state official in Ohio who snooped through Joe the Plumber's records: She gave Barack Obama $2,500. Will Obama keep the money?

Funny how no one is talking about the election being bought by rich Republicans. That’s probably because John McCain is not the candidate who has raised more than $600 million this year. That would be Barack Obama, who is now planning a final blitz, including a 30-minute infomercial on major networks. I haven’t seen this kind of spending since Brewster’s Millions. But some in the mainstream media have caught on. CNN’s Campbell Brown, for instance, takes Senator Obama to task, and rather handily.

The Hill suggests that Harry Reid is preparing to do what he's been expected to do for months:

Lieberman, a former Democrat who supports Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for president, is likely to lose his gavel on the Homeland Security Committee he has chaired since January 2007, say the sources who see him being replaced by Sen. Daniel Akaka (Hawaii), the committee’s third-ranking Democrat...

One Democratic source said Lieberman is not likely to lose his position in the Democratic caucus, even if the party picks up several seats in next week’s election. While Democrats could approach or exceed the filibuster-proof threshold of 60 votes, they may still need Lieberman’s vote often.

“There’s no sense in cutting off our nose to spite our face,” one source said.

It was reported some time ago that Joe Lieberman was no longer attending weekly Democratic Senate lunches. You'd think the self-styled post-partisan Barack Obama would call on Harry Reid to guarantee Lieberman's chairmanship to heal the rift. Of course, Obama doesn't actually have much of a record of tolerating dissent in his own party: He earlier berated Senator Lieberman on the Senate floor for backing John McCain. That classy move was followed by his staff's leaking false smears about Lieberman.

This is an interesting preview of how the Democrats plan to follow through on their pledge to be even more "bipartisan" if they get complete control in Washington.

Rasmussen and Gallup show Obama leading by three points.

Good stuff on the Washington Post op-ed page today.

Alan D. Viard, Alex Brill, and Arthur C. Brooks detail the problems in Obama's tax plan:

While a few of Obama's proposals may be sensible, the overall package would be bad for the economy. Unlike rate cuts for high incomes or reductions in investment taxes, most of Obama's proposed tax cuts would do little to reduce the tax penalty on work and saving. For some households, the penalty on work and saving would even increase because the new tax credits would be phased out as income rises. These proposals wouldn't deliver the economic growth that incentive-based tax cuts would.

Furthermore, there is no free lunch. Obama's middle-class tax relief would have to be paid for, either now or later. Middle-class tax cuts might make sense if they were paid for by spending cuts, but that is not Obama's plan. Like his opponent, Obama points to vague savings from reducing waste, the kind of savings that never seem to materialize. He also hopes to reap savings by accelerating our redeployment from Iraq, a project with an uncertain fiscal impact. At the same time, he proposes a wave of new spending on health-care, education, energy and infrastructure programs and declares his opposition to reforms that would reduce the growth of Social Security and other entitlement benefits.

And Robert J. Samuelson offers some no-nonsense suggestions for a long-term economic stimulus plan. Here's one of them:

[W]e should increase the earliest age that workers can qualify for Social Security from 62 to 64. This change (again) should be phased in over four years. When people retire early, they take a cut in their Social Security benefits to reflect the fact that they'll receive benefits longer. At 62, benefits now average about 75 percent of benefits at the normal retirement age (today, 66 years). Many retirees later regret that, by starting benefits so early, they crimp their monthly payments.

Raising the minimum eligibility age wouldn't save the government much, if any, money on the assumption that the monthly payments at 64 would be higher. Although people would work longer, their retirement would ultimately be made easier by higher monthly benefit checks and by delaying by two years the need to rely on savings. This change would also indicate Congress's willingness to tackle the larger problems of Social Security and Medicare.

Both pieces are tightly argued and well-reasoned. They're sensible, too. And this means, obviously, that absolutely no one in power will listen to them.

Can Democrats reach a filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate? State level polling averages reported in this morning’s Real Clear Politics (RCP) reveal that the road to sixty votes--while not impossible--looks pretty tough for the Democrats. But the numbers also show little margin of error for the GOP.

The surveys reveal Democrats currently lead in six Republican-held states and are tied in two more. If the GOP ends up losing all eight, Democrats would hold a 59-41 margin.

According to today’s RCP poll averages, Democrats command a double-digit edge in three states currently held by Republicans (VA, NM and CO). In New Hampshire, incumbent Republican John Sununu trails by an average of 8.6% points, but the most recent polls show the race tightening a bit. In Oregon, incumbent Senator Gordon Smith trails by 3.5% points. North Carolina incumbent Elizabeth Dole is down by 2% points. Minnesota’s Norm Coleman is in a near dead heat, according to RCP. And recently convicted Alaska Senator Ted Stevens is also in a near tied, based on the averages. But all the reported polling is pre-conviction.

Based on these current numbers, losses for Republicans in the 4-8 seat range appears likely. Getting to the coveted 9th seat and reaching the magic number of 60 looks more daunting. That would require Democrats sweeping the eight seats mentioned above plus winning one of three seats in the South (MS, GA and KY)--all states where Republican incumbents currently lead in the polls.

That’s why this most recent Rasmussen poll showing Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker with a double digit lead probably resulted in a sigh of relief among some Senate Republicans and others hoping Democrats don’t reach a filibuster proof majority. Still, even Wicker’s race will likely tighten depending on African-American turnout in the state.

Obama’s new ad attacking Palin provides an opportunity for the McCain-Palin campaign.

Palin should hold a press conference today to respond, and do TV, radio and print interviews. In them, she should take on the Obama campaign on economic policy--the topic on which the Obama ad ridicules Palin’s alleged unpreparedness. In fact, economics--taxes and energy in particular--is an area in which Palin’s been a strong spokesman for the McCain campaign. So put her out there. And let her accept the Sunday shows--and challenge Biden to debate economic policy with her on the Sunday shows. A Palin press conference and interviews today would also 1) step on Obama’s prime time speech tonight, and 2) put to rest rumors of tension within the McCain-Palin campaign, and show that everyone was doing their best to elect the ticket, rather than focusing on defending individual staffers’ reputations or past decisions.

The tracking polls suggest McCain has an outside chance to win. The campaign should go for it.

The great Ken Levine has a collection of notes on the American scene that's well worth your time.

My favorite: "The 82 game NBA pre-season has begun. They play four months to eliminate the Clippers and one other team then start seven rounds of playoffs."

Last week, the Columbus Dispatch reported that it appeared that employees of state and local government agencies improperly delved into Joe Wurzelbacher's personal records after his name was brought up during the last presidential debate:

Public records requested by The Dispatch disclose that information on Wurzelbacher's driver's license or his sport-utility vehicle was pulled from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles database three times shortly after the debate.

Information on Wurzelbacher was accessed by accounts assigned to the office of Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency and the Toledo Police Department.

It has not been determined who checked on Wurzelbacher, or why. Direct access to driver's license and vehicle registration information from BMV computers is restricted to legitimate law enforcement and government business.

The Dispatch reported in an editorial yesterday that "The director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, Helen Jones-Kelley, confirmed on Monday that she approved a records check on suddenly famous Joe the plumber, who was mentioned frequently by John McCain in his Oct. 15 presidential debate with Barack Obama."

Jones-Kelley said checking for child-support data on Wurzelbacher was routine, not political, citing a previous records check on a lottery winner. Checking the child-support status of someone who has come into money makes sense. But that rationale doesn't apply to Wurzelbacher. Jones-Kelly will have to make a much better case that the records check was not politically motivated.

Strickland, who also said there were no political motives in the data-checking, apparently is giving her the benefit of the doubt.

Access to such data is supposed to be restricted to official business of government and law enforcement.

Ohio Inspector General Thomas P. Charles is investigating whether the data-checking was improper or illegal. Through public-records requests, The Dispatch has determined that there were at least four checks for records on Wurzelbacher. That sounds like an effort to dig up dirt.

The LA Times refuses to release a tape in its possession showing Barack Obama at a party for Rashid Khalidi.

The Times is keeping this potentially damaging video of Obama under lock and key because of an agreement with the source who provided the tape, but Jennifer Rubin suggests at the very least the Times

should do a better job describing the scene. Why not a fuller account of what Obama actually said? Who else was sitting at Obama’s table? What did the original report mean by "the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor’s going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say"?

Meanwhile, Ace promises the blogosphere will pay out big to anyone who can produce the tape.

Vets for Freedom will run this ad throughout the week in Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district, where Congressman Murtha is facing a serious challenge from Bill Russell:

From the VFF press release:

"Representative Murtha has said time and again that our Marines ‘killed innocent civilians in cold blood'[Murtha, May 17th news conference, Murtha May 19th, Reuters], and it is appalling. Seven of the eight Marines involved have been exonerated, but Rep. Murtha has not issued an apology. It's time Representative Murtha accept responsibility for his reckless statements and actions," said Pete Hegseth, Chairman of VFF.

VFF Vice Chairman David Bellavia added, "In November 2005, Representative Murtha said in a television interview, 'The soldiers can't speak for themselves.' We are here to tell Rep. Murtha that, yes, we can, and we will speak out in defense of the truth. Vets for Freedom's 40,000 members will not rest until Americans know that our troops are succeeding and doing so with honor and integrity."

Heh.

According to Roll Call, Rangel hasn't yet hired the forensic auditor he promised 6 weeks ago, and there's no assurance from Democratic leaders that they'll renew the ethics investigation next year:

An attorney for House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (N.Y.) acknowledged Monday that more than six weeks after the senior Democrat announced he would hire a forensic auditor to scour his tax and financial records, he has yet to do so, saying an extensive review process has delayed any action...

Rangel is also under scrutiny by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, which voted in late September to establish an investigative subcommittee into a multitude of alleged rules violations by the senior lawmaker.

The panel’s investigation will examine Rangel’s ownership of a Dominican Republic villa — the lawmaker has admitted he failed to report rental income, the nexus of his tax troubles — as well as his use of House parking facilities for long-term vehicle storage, fundraising efforts on behalf of a City College of New York center bearing his name, and the lawmaker’s use of multiple rent-controlled apartments as his primary residence...

However, it remains unclear when the ethics panel would resume consideration of the matter if the report is not completed before that time. The committee would be required to initiate a new investigation at the start of the next Congress.

Rangel's attorney is Lanny Davis, who says that Rangel is in negotiations with an auditor and will likely make an announcement next week. Of course, whatever announcement Rangel makes next week is likely to be drowned out by the noise of election day -- a curious coincidence.

Ted Stevens got a lesson yesterday in what can happen when elected officials make errors in their ethics filings. Rangel hopes to shepherd Barack Obama's tax and health care agenda through the Ways and Means Committee, so he has every incentive to try to make this investigation go away. With the Democrats set to expand their majority in the House, are they willing to take the heat that will come with looking the other way on Rangel's transgressions?

In addition to the obituary linked to below, the Boston Globe published this death notice, which includes information some readers have requested:

BARNETT, Dean M. Age 41, of Belmont, on Monday, Oct. 27, 2008. Loving husband of Kirstan Brooks Barnett. Cherished son of Karen (Daniels) Barnett of Chestnut Hill and Richard Barnett of Natick. Dear brother of Keith & Amy Barnett of Westwood, Fond uncle of Laurel and Grace Barnett. Services at Congregation Kehillath Israel, 384 Harvard St., Brookline, on Wednesday, Oct. 29 at 1 p.m. Burial in Sharon. Memorial observance at the home of Karen Barnett following the burial until 8 p.m. and continuing Thursday 2-6 p.m. & Saturday 7-10 p.m. Please omit flowers. Remembrances would be appreciated to Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, 220 N. Main St., Suite 104, Natick, MA 01760 Levine Chapels, Brookline 617-277-8300

Dean Barnett's friend Thomas Cotton writes:

Thanks for your fitting tribute to Dean. I learned about Dean's death early this morning (local time) before going on my first really long patrol here. We drove about 8 hours round trip, so I had lots of time to think. Like you, what struck me most about Dean was his remarkable courage in the face of his disease. Dean had the heart of a lion, as brave as any soldier I've known.

And there was his generosity. I first started reading Dean's writing while in Iraq and he always returned my emails quickly. When I got back stateside, he went out of his way to meet me when I visited Boston and always made time for a phone call.

Like so many, I was lucky and honored to call Dean my friend. I will miss him dearly.

The tributes of my colleagues and of his fellow bloggers to Dean Barnett are a balm in this time of loss. Of the writers I have worked with over the years, none was sweeter, more cheerful, and less self-pitying than Dean. Like his other friends and correspondents, I cherished his emails and phone calls--among other reasons because they always lightened the day's load, rather than adding to it.

But Dean was no plaster saint. Like all of us in this business, he screwed up from time to time. I bring this up not to speak ill of the dead, but to highlight Dean's virtues. Unlike some of us, he was not defensive about his mistakes but quickly owned up to them and made public amends. He also had a keen appreciation for the visual side of blogging. His posts were enlivened by photos and illustrations. Many of these were funny--some laugh out loud hilarious.

These two traits came together in the most winning, recurring illustration in Dean's work. As his many fans will remember, I am referring of course to the sad puppy who always showed up when penance was owed, for a fact mangled or an opponent unfairly maligned. Here he is, one more time, still sad, forever sad.

A long-time correspondent of Dean's writes:

I didn't know Dean very well on a personal level, but I considered him my friend, as I am sure he was a friend to a great many of you out there. I came to know Dean originally from his first blog, www.dbsoxblog.blogspot.com, after Mickey Kaus gave him his big break, by linking to this post pointing out that John Kerry is, in all probability, not the sharpest tool in the shed. I found that post to be funny, and set upon reading his archieves, becoming a huge fan quickly. He wrote with a sharp, cutting wit and offered smart perspective on politics rarely found, and non existent amongst most of the punditry class.

During this time I started my own blog, which was non-political. You see, I had been "backdrafted" into the army for service in Iraq and wanted to keep in touch with people back home, plus the mission I was on, training Iraqi troops, was unique compared to much of what was out there at the time. As he wrote a lot about Iraq, I sent him a link so he could see another perspective, with the precondition he not link to it so I could maintain some anominity. He gave me some good advice on postings, and he used some of my experiences and insights for posting on military matters. After I shut down my blog for operational security reasons, he made sure I knew Soxblog was open if I ever had anything to say. I took him up one time, when we did a school supplies drive for Iraqi School children and wanted to solicit donations. He posted a nice post which was picked up on a couple of other blogs and drove a lot of donations to our cause (even one from TWS's very own Jonathan Last).

During my tour I kept in contact with him, trading emails and sharing my frustrations at how slowly things were progressing there. When I came back, I waited a year or so and then both Dean and Jonathan helped me publish an article which was subsequently carried by Townhall.com, expressing my frustration with (pre-surge) US policy in Iraq. Dean linked to me and it became one of Townhall's most forwarded and read columns for a week. And, over the past 21 months, we've traded emails and shared perspectives on many current events. Getting an email from him was always special - I've never deleted a one.

I would regularly check the page on the blogs he posted on, and, as I was familiar with his health condition, I knew this day would eventually com. As a "civilian" in this sense, it is amazing how the columnists we love become a part of our lives, even if we never get to converse with them. I have fallen in love with the works of three pundits - Mike Royko, Michael Kelly, and now Dean Barnett. Neither Royko or Kelly ever knew I was a fan of course, but I had the privilege of knowing, in a limited sense, Dean. I am sure I am not alone in feeling the loss of him will forever abate the enjoyment I get from the blogosphere.

Good Bye, my friend.

Forget Fannie and Freddie, Alan Greenspan, collateralized debt obligations and other mortgage-backed securities, and credit default swaps. Who's really responsible for the global economic meltdown? The Guardian notes that the rock band AC/DC always seems to prosper during financial panics:

Those keen to draw wider inferences from its success might note that the last time AC/DC made No 1 in Britain, the country was on the brink of recession. Back In Black, the album that marked their commercial breakthrough and went on to become the second biggest-selling of all time, was released in 1980, just as inflation had reached 20% and unemployment inched towards 2 million. ...

[T]he album that returned the band to its heyday was The Razors Edge, released in 1990 - just as Britain headed towards its last recession.

Maybe it's time to regulate stadium rock?

(A tip of the hat, as they say, to Kai Ryssdal.)

Our first web editor, Jonathan V. Last, tells the intriguing tale of how Dean came to our attention here at THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Read the whole thing. It’s another chapter in the continuing story of how the web has democratized journalism. Dean was trained as a lawyer and then started a headhunting business, at which he was very successful. That’s not exactly how most people who write for a living start out (or used to start out). But Dean always had liked to write, and he could write, as Jonathan recognized simply by reading his emails.

What Jonathan didn’t know was that Dean already was writing for public consumption--just not under his own name. Soxblog--about his beloved Boston Red Sox--was his blog, but Dean wrote his posts under a pseudonym, the very New England-ish "James Frederick Dwight." Dean had to out himself, so to speak--he had to write under his own name--to take up Jonathan’s invitation to contribute to weeklystandard.com. But he happily did so. Dean was breaking into a world different from the ones he had known, and he liked it. You could tell that from his writing, which was engaging and never failed to make a point. Before long, Hugh Hewitt hired Dean, but we got him back last year. In his all too brief life as a writer, he earned a well-deserved reputation across the blogosphere, as evidenced by the many testimonials on this page.

As a colleague here at the STANDARD, Dean not only pulled his oar as a writer but was comprehensively interested in online publishing. He was a student of site architecture and page design, and he understood the importance of site traffic in terms of both advertising and magazine subscriptions. He was also unfailingly upbeat, this despite the relentless march of the disease that took his life. “Inventing the new-new thing may be a little outside our purview,” he wrote me some months ago, in reference to a discussion we’d had about reworking certain aspects of our site, “but we still have a ton of growth potential.” That was Dean, always looking up. We’ll miss you, my friend.

The Globe offers a write-up of Beantown's own "well-known conservative columnist, author, and blogger," which includes some wonderful thoughts from Dean's brother, Keith:

"All his life he's been aware that he had this terminal disease but it never stopped him from doing everything and enjoying life to the fullest," his brother said. "Whether it was writing about politics, or working on his golf game, or spending time with friends and family." ...

"He very much enjoyed that he touched people, inspired people, provoked thoughts. It was perhaps the most fulfilling thing he did professionally," Keith Barnett said. "Although he didn't set out to do this, he was an example to the entire cystic fibrosis community that one could still build a life with meaning and I think he took pride in that."

Judging from the outpouring from fellow bloggers and our readers, he had plenty to be proud of. Read the whole thing for more about Dean from a man who knew him very well.

A funeral will be held tomorrow at 1 p.m. at Congregation Kehillath Israel in Brookline.

Mitt Romney writes:

I remember meeting the Barnett brothers. It was 1994 and I was running against Ted Kennedy. Keith, now a lawyer in Boston, was jovial and enthusiastic. Dean was more laid-back. He had a knowing smile--like he hadn’t caught the canary yet, but he had it locked in a room. Over that campaign and over the years that followed, I got to know Dean very well. And I learned why he was smiling--Dean was “wicked smart,” as they say around here. He had extraordinary perspective and insight. He brought a lot more to our friendship than I ever could have imagined.

Dean didn’t tell me that he had Cystic Fibrosis--I heard it from an acquaintance. Dean was too intent on giving to our friendship to expect me to give something back to him. Over the years, I knew of his visits to the hospital and bouts with complications, but Dean’s smile and generosity of spirit never faltered.

Perhaps his unusual appreciation for the precious value of life enabled Dean to see what others missed, to cut to the nub, and to dispense with excuse and correctness. What it meant to me was advice and counsel that came clean and sharp. What it meant to his readers and listeners was unadorned truth and honest expression. We will miss Dean for what he saw and said. I will miss him for that and for much more. He was the real deal.

Really, anything with the short "i" sound in it will do. After all, it's muddled crowd noise on a CNN feed, and if you're a race-obsessed partisan who is just dying to think the worst of conservatives, you'll hear the n-word or "kill him" in whatever you're listening to. You'll then post video of the muddled crowd noise with your interpretation superimposed upon it on You Tube to the delight of 200,000 other race-obsessed partisans.

Too bad it wasn't the n-word at all. As another Kos diarist confirms, to his/her great, great credit, the person in the crowd was yelling "redistributor," which makes a lot more sense because "redistributor" has been the word of the week on the McCain-Palin team. Unfortunately, the video of the "redistributor" audio has only gotten about 3,000 views to the n-word's 200K.

Keep this video on file for when liberals (or Obama himself) decide to perpetuate this rumor in blogs, on the campaign trail, or in the mainstream media. "Kill him" has become an urban myth that will likely never die now thanks to the uncorroborated account of one reporter, for which the Secret Service and other attendees/media have offered no supporting evidence. Even Obama himself felt it necessary to give the rumor validation in a presidential debate, much to the chagrin of security officials.

Now you know, thanks to an honest DKos poster, that this one didn't happen either, but that doesn't mean the story will go away. Video/audio below the fold.

"Mike Thompson has been a bad boy," said the female voice, "...for backing the bailout."

House Republican Leader John Boehner circulated a memo to all Republican House members and candidates this weekend urging them to get behind a new economic recovery plan he will unveil today.

Boehner writes this in the memo:

Pelosi has declared that Congress will pass a $300 billion "stimulus" spending bill as soon as two weeks after the election. This coincides with Barack Obama's assertion that government's focus should be "spreading the wealth around" and Barney Frank's unapologetic confirmation that a Democrat-dominated Washington will embark on an aggressive government spending spree fueled by higher taxes. The Democrats' tax-and-spend economic scheme is not simply a theoretical campaign promise; it's something they intend to start moving to enact as early as next month.

You can read Boehner’s memo to his colleagues here.

In the memo, Boehner refers to a forthcoming five point economic plan. He will unveil it formally in a press call at 2:00 pm today. Highlights of the proposal after the jump.

Someone should send this to the candidate himself, who is talking about "righteous winds," planning his Election Night bash, and unveiling an unorthodox new plan to deal with an economic downturn by asking roughly 50 percent of the nation not to work for a day. That'll do wonders for productivity.

Look at that smile on Maverick's face as he cruises to victory. Really warms your heart.

Some of my favorite writers have been hard at work lately. Be sure to check them out:

David Brooks on behavioral economics.

Jack Shafer on the coming Obama rapture.

Mike Murphy on campaign hobgoblins.

Robert Kagan gives a wide-ranging interview to Der Spiegel.

Enjoy.

Noah Pollak notes the apparent contradiction between Obama's support for fighting al Qaeda in Pakistan and his silence on the U.S. cross-border attack into Syria on al Qaeda:

Obama says that the United States should strike at al Qaeda in Pakistan without the consent of the Pakistani government. So, he favors attacking al Qaeda in Pakistan, but presumably not in Syria, even though al Qaeda thrives in Syria not because of lawlessness (as in Pakistan) but because the group enjoys the hospitality of the Syrian government. Maybe if the Pakistani government began openly collaborating with al Qaeda, Obama would withdraw his support for military strikes.

If Obama was consistent, he would applaud the Syrian operation. His silence on the matter indicates otherwise. You’d think there were a few curious journalists out there who might wish to get him on the record about all of this…

I emailed the Obama campaign yesterday asking if they would issue a statement on the attack, and I received no response. Perhaps the mainstream press would prefer that Obama not have to take a position on a controversial foreign policy matter just days before voters have the opportunity to make him our commander in chief.

Yes, even some liberals can't stand Keith Olbermann. It sounds like MSNBC could learn a lot if it listened to Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, famed creator of "Designing Women":

Olbermann was criticized by many who attended Monday's luncheon sponsored by the Caucus for Producers, Writers & Directors at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The event was dubbed "Hollywood, America and Election '08."

Bloodworth-Thomason and others seemed especially critical of the way MSNBC -- and other media -- has attacked Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin while demeaning her supporters.

"We should stop the demonizing," she said, adding that Democrats have been worse than Republicans as far as personal attacks on candidates are concerned. "It diminishes us," she said of her fellow Democrats.

Bloodworth-Thomason even suggested a defense of Palin and her supporters should be written into TV programming, just as she went out of her way to portray Southern women as smart in her hit TV show "Designing Women."

Thomason and her husband, of course, were big Clinton supporters, so that may be reason for some of the enmity, but her point is salient nonetheless. Anytime you can get a bunch of Hollywood liberals, Hollywood conservatives, and Frank Luntz to agree on something a week before Election Day, it is a given that whatever they're agreeing on must be true. In this case it's that MSNBC should be left in charge of news distribution like Bill Ayers should be left in charge of childhood education and bomb squad missions.

John McCain released a statement this morning calling for Alaska senator Ted Stevens to resign:

Yesterday, Senator Ted Stevens was found guilty of corruption. It is a sign of the health of our democracy that the people continue to hold their representatives to account for improper or illegal conduct, but this verdict is also a sign of the corruption and insider-dealing that has become so pervasive in our nation's capital.

It is clear that Senator Stevens has broken his trust with the people and that he should now step down. I hope that my colleagues in the Senate will be spurred by these events to redouble their efforts to end this kind of corruption once and for all.

The jury in Stevens's corruption trial convicted him on seven counts yesterday afternoon. The jury decided Stevens was guilty of failing to report gifts of more than $250,000.

The deadline for candidate replacement or withdrawal in Alaska was September 17. If Stevens resigned immediately and/or promised not to serve if he is reelected next week, Alaska voters would have an opportunity to elect a new Republican to the Senate within three months.

Unfortunately, Republicans would have to face an insurmountable hurdle next week in asking Alaskans to vote for a convicted felon. Stevens announced in a statement yesterday evening: “I am innocent. This verdict is the result of the unconscionable manner in which the Justice Department lawyers conducted this trial. I ask that Alaskans and my Senate colleagues stand with me as I pursue my rights. I remain a candidate for the United States Senate. I will come home on Wednesday and ask for your vote.”

Meanwhile, Nevada senator John Ensign, chairman of the NRSC, said, "Ted Stevens served his constituents for over 40 years and I am disappointed to see his career end in disgrace."

Aristotle says somewhere that courage is the first of the virtues, because it makes the other virtues possible. Dean Barnett was brave--to a degree that perhaps only his beloved wife, Kirstan, and others in his immediate family were able to appreciate. Dean rarely talked about what he had done over the years to overcome his disease, and what he had to do every day to overcome it. But overcome it he did--until it finally cut his life short. Too short. But, as one of Dean’s friends put it, “More life in 41 years than 5 people cram in 80.”

Courage is a severe virtue, and those who have courage are usually serious, often stern. Dean, though, was effervescently witty and high-spirited. He had a most unusual combination of strength of character and lightness of heart. And generosity of spirit. I’ve heard tonight from several people whom Dean had befriended, promoted, and helped. He did so without talking about it or taking credit. Dean wasn’t a softy--he had been a headhunter, and he had good judgment about people--but he was kind and good-natured. And there was nothing petty about him.

In the hospital the final three weeks, the staff grew very attached to Dean. They were apparently amazed at how incredibly tough he was in battling for life. Unfortunately, as Kirstan pointed out, they were entirely unacquainted with what she called Dean’s most charming quality, his crackling wit. Those of us who were fortunate to have been his friends--and how we wish we could have been his friends for many more years!--will have the blessing of always remembering his wit, and his courage, and his character.

I’m struck, reading some of the tributes to Dean tonight, how much he affected not only those who knew him personally, but also many who had corresponded with him, and many who simply knew him through reading him. He touched an awful lot of people, of all ages and types, and touched them deeply. Some he taught about politics, some about sports, some about how to write and think--and some about life.

One friend of Dean’s, a man of great worldly experience not much given to superlatives, e-mailed tonight: “What a terrific guy--the best.” Dean was the best.

Our friend Dean Barnett died today. In reading tributes to him--dozens of them--it's clear that considering Dean a friend was easy, whether one had met him online or in person. Even without meeting him, knowing him to be a good and good-humored man required only reading his writing.

His passing is a loss for both our hearts and our cause. Having suffered from cystic fibrosis his whole life, he was a guy who was simultaneously frank about his fate and cheery about his future. The combination was striking, and a gift to all who knew him. There's nothing for getting perspective on your own life like listening to a friend talk about how blessed he is to have a relatively "benign" form of a fatal disease.

I had the pleasure of meeting Dean in person, long after he had become a source of encouragement and support while we were colleagues at Townhall. I don't think I'd miss my guess if I said I have him to thank for putting in more than one good word for me with the folks at the Standard, for which I'm grateful. After meeting him at a conference, I read his pamphlet on living with cystic fibrosis--"The Plucky, Smart Kid With the Fatal Disease."

Dean's political writing was never without a personal touch--his beloved Red Sox and thick-as-chowdah accent were ever present--and his personal story likewise reveals how his struggles shaped the optimistic pundit we came to know. He was a man who was only supposed to live to 30 and accomplished enough for 70. He knew there would not likely be a cure in his lifetime, but welcomed each year as a gift and new treatments as grace. He would have laughed out loud if someone had tried to peg him as a "victim" of anything. Those are the makings of the toughest of happy warriors, and that's what Dean became. We were lucky to have him this long, and I wish so much we could have had him around much longer.

Once, by chance, Dean and I realized we happen to share the same favorite song. I had hoped to post it for him when he came back to writing, but tonight with a much heavier heart, this goes out to him nonetheless. He will be so missed.

Dean Barnett, who passed away today, touched the lives of so many with his kindness, courage, wit, and good humor. The outpouring of tributes to Dean and condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues has already been tremendous. Here are just a few from his many friends and admirers.

Hugh Hewitt, Townhall.com

John Podhoretz, Commentary

Jennifer Rubin, Commentary

Jim Geraghty, National Review

Mark Steyn, National Review

Kathryn Jean Lopez, National Review

Peter Robinson, National Review

Ace of Spades

Allahpundit and Ed Morrissey, HotAir.com

Jim Treacher

Patrick Ruffini, The Next Right

Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic

Michelle Malkin

Jon, Exurban League

Ed Driscoll

Paul Mirengoff and John Hinderaker, Powerline

Iowahawk

Stop The ACLU

Gateway Pundit

Sister Toldjah

Neo-Neocon

Dirty Harry's Place

Protein Wisdom

Robert Bluey

Update:

William Kristol

Jonathan V. Last

Mary Katharine Ham

Richard Starr

Mitt Romney

Thomas Cotton

J.B. Smith

Roger L. Simon, Pajamas Media

Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit

Jamie Weinstein

Carol Platt Liebau, Townhall.com

Matt Lewis, Townhall.com

Katie Favazza, Townhall.com

Markos Moulitsas, Daily Kos

Dan Lamothe, Red Sox Monster

Sarah, Life at Full Volume

Dafydd, Big Lizards

Eric, ClassicalValues.com

David All, TechRepublican.com

Quin Hillyer, The American Spectator:

I never met Dean in person, but in addition to being a lively and perspicacious blogger/analyst, he was a delightful correspondent. We disagreed substantially on our assessment of matters relating to golf, and
agreed in a profound way with each other when it came to our beloved Red Sox, but either way--agree or disagree--his missives were full of good humor and a zest for both sport and for life in general. Most of all, though, he loved his country, and his contributions to the cause, in the blogosphere and on radio, were invaluable.

Mickey Kaus, Slate:

I never met Dean Barnett. I don't know what he looked like, never knew what he did for a living or, until today, when he died from cystic fibrosis, how old he was. But as soon as I stumbled onto his Soxblog a few years ago I knew this was a clear-headed, humane, no-BS person--the sort of person the Internet is supposed to discover and promote, which it did. Barnett was a man of the right. Here is the gracious tribute he posted when Steve Gilliard, a caustic Kos blogger whom he admired, died--also at 41.

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com:

Really sad, horrendous news: Dean Barnett has died, at the age of 41, of cystic fibrosis. I wrote about Dean here a couple of weeks ago, in the bottom section of the post. Here's a 2006 article by Dean, bravely writing about his battle with that horrific disease. And here's a very recent interview he gave about many things, including the times he invited me to appear with him when he guest-hosted The Hugh Hewitt Show. Condolences to his family and friends.

It's my sad duty to report that our good friend and valued contributor Dean Barnett passed away today. He was a remarkable man--principled, witty, and to all of us, a model of grace and courage. We mourn his passing and cherish his memory.

--William Kristol

I found this article by Shailagh Murray in the Sunday Washington Post curious. It argues the number of people who say they want the same party to control both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue has reached “new highs.” Murray writes:

The percentage of Americans saying they preferred that the same party control the White House and Congress has reached new highs in the Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll. On Thursday and Friday, the poll showed that 50 percent of likely voters wanted one party to control both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and that 30 percent preferred split-party rule.

The article suggests that one of McCain’s closing arguments--unified Democratic control is dangerous--receives minimal support from likely voters. But looking at the overall numbers masks the preferences of McCain’s real audience in the final week of the campaign--independents.

No surprise, the bulk of support for unified control comes from self-identified Democrats. Republicans also prefer unified control. But as ABC News polling director Gary Langer points out independents (McCain’s real target group) lean toward divided government.

On the question of whether divided or single-party control is better in general, 50 percent overall side with single-party control--Democrats most [63 percent], independents least [34 percent]. Thirty percent favor divided government--independents and Republicans most. And 14 percent have no preference either way.

You can read Langer’s analysis here.

In response to Barack Obama's web ad calling the attack on his votes against the born alive infants protection act a "despicable lie," BornAliveTruth.org is spending about $100,000 to air this ad on TV in Cleveland, and Focus on the Family is dropping $500,000 on a radio version of this spot in Colorado:

This is disgusting. Via Ed Morrissey.

At a rally in Tampa, Florida, yesterday Sarah Palin addressed the RNC's purchase of expensive clothes and accessories for her:

"Those clothes, they are not my property. Just like the lighting and the staging and everything else that the RNC purchased, I'm not taking them with me. I am back to wearing my own clothes from my favorite consignment shop in Anchorage, Alaska. You'd think — not that I would even have to address the issue because, as Elisabeth is suggesting, the double standard here it's — gosh, we don't even want to waste our time."

During her introduction of Palin, Elisabeth Hasselbeck noted the irony that the media largely ignored Palin's speech on women's rights which was delivered just before the story about Palin's clothes broke: "She talked about equal pay for equal work, putting an end to honor killings, aiding women who are being exploited in the sex trade, and ending policies that sanction abortion of a country's unborn daughters." (You can read excerpt's of Palin's speech on women's rights after the jump.) Hasselbeck said that the media were sexist for fixating on Palin's clothes: "Instead of the issues, they are focused, fixated, on her wardrobe. Now, with everything going on in the world it seems a bit odd. But let me tell you, this is deliberately sexist."

(Hat tip: Jonathan Martin.)

Via Hot Air, SNL's opening sketch lampooned Joe Biden for his prophecy that Obama's election would lead to an international crisis and mocked Jack Murtha for his recent statements that his constituents are racists/rednecks:

And this skit, in which Obama turns his 30 minute televised national address into “The Barack Obama Variety Half-Hour,” is worth watching as well:

If the SNL writers really don't let their political leanings get in the way of their jokes, why did they wait until now to introduce a Jeremiah Wright character? Wouldn't it have been more relevant to have run a Wright skit back in March or April? He really provided so much material from his conspiracy theories to his hypocritical denunciations of wealth. Alas, I imagine SNL writers plan on keeping Obama's 'crazy uncle' confined to the attic so as not to offend the Obama-voting demographics that watch the show.

The liberal lion Ted Kennedy still pushing for socialized medicine.

From his sickbed, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has secretly been orchestrating meetings with lobbyists and lawmakers from both parties to craft legislation that would greet the new president with a plan to provide affordable medical coverage to all Americans, a measure he has called "the cause of my life."

Mr. Kennedy has been sidelined for months with a dangerous form of brain cancer. But despite his disheartening medical prognosis - or maybe because of it - aides and activists say, the Massachusetts Democrat's decades-long quest for health care reform may now be closer to success than ever.

"There is a serious process moving forward and that augurs well," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a nonprofit health care advocacy group. "There really is a sea change that should not be underestimated in terms of attitude..."

Mr. Kennedy's goal, his aides say, is to introduce a universal health care bill as soon as the new Congress convenes next year and to push quickly for its passage - a much-accelerated timetable compared with the last time that a health care overhaul was on the agenda, at the start of the Clinton administration.

"Senator Kennedy has spent the last several weeks laying the groundwork for reform so that we can be ready to go in 2009," said his spokesman Anthony Coley. "This is and has been the cause of Senator Kennedy's life."

Given his influence on health care legislation and nearly 60 Democratic votes in the Senate, Kennedy can probably dictate what bill will pass the Senate. If Barack Obama is president, how likely is he to stand in the way of Ted Kennedy's dream?

The McCain supporter who claimed she was attacked by an assailant at a Pittsburgh ATM, who then became enraged by her McCain-Palin sticker and carved a "B" into her face, has admitted the incident was a hoax.

Ashley Todd, a College Republicans volunteer, reported to police that she was assaulted by a 6-foot-4 black man after getting money out of an ATM Wednesday. She claimed she gave him $60 before he was set off by her McCain sticker and started beating her. The police were skeptical of her claims because there were inconsistencies in her story, and the attack had taken out of range of the ATM's surveillance cameras. There were reports earlier today that police had given her a polygraph, but declined to release the results. Questions about her account continued to mount, as it was revealed that she only called police 45 minutes after the attack from a friend's house and that she didn't make any reference to her attacker's political motivations during her first iteration of the story.

Conservative bloggers, to their great credit, examined Todd's claims with a critical eye, noting that the "B" carved into her face was backwards, suggesting she might have done it to herself, and fielding contributions from police officers who said the incident was a bit too perfect to pass the "smell test."

Todd now, unbelievably, says she's upset with the media for having hyped the story.

She has managed to well and truly hurt the very people she purported to be helping, by going from volunteer to vigilante fabricator. The College Republicans have terminated her, as they should have.

Todd claims not to know where the black eye and "B" came from:

Todd confessed to police that she was driving alone, looked in the mirror, saw her black eye and the "B" on her face, and didn't know how they got there. She assumed she could have done it herself, she said, and then she made up the story about the attacker.

"She saw the 'B' on her face, and she immediately thought about Barack," Bryant said.

Kraus said the 'B' was what first led him to suspect Todd's story. He said he was struck by how neatly the letter was etched on her face.

Police suspect Todd's wounds were self-inflicted. She remained at police headquarters on Friday afternoon, because police "have concern for her well-being," Kraus said. He said officials are trying to determine whether she needs psychiatric evaluation.

"She hasn't really shown any obvious remorse," Kraus said. "She's certainly surprised that it snowballed to where it is today."

As if the media needed an excuse to a) paint all McCain-Palin support as unhinged and racist, b) accuse the campaign itself of inciting such behavior or, c) ignore similar rage and incitement on the left, now they have the perfect excuse to do all three, thanks to Todd.

The hate crime hoax is not a new phenomenon, but it's fairly rare on our side of the ideological spectrum. By calling Todd out swiftly and condemning her in the strongest terms possible, we can keep it that way. Bizarre and disgusting.

The McCain campaign issues a statement about Chris Matthews's latest mockery of Sarah Palin:

"Earlier this week Chris Matthews exhibited such a stunning combination of bias and ignorance that we feel compelled to set the record straight.

"Matthews mocked Governor Palin for telling a third grader that the Vice President is 'in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes.' Matthews said 'either she's right about the role of the vice presidency or I'm wrong.' Fortunately for the American people, Chris Matthews is wrong. Though it escaped comment at MSNBC, Joe Biden recently made a comment to the New Yorker promising to play a similar leadership role in the Senate. Biden told the magazine, 'I would see one of my jobs as essentially being the president of the Senate, in the sense of actually not presiding as much as interacting, continuing to interact, talking to Harry Reid every day, or talking to Nancy Pelosi.'

"Chris Matthews further elaborated on his understanding of the role of the Vice President, saying that 'it has nothing to do with policy making, nothing to do with Senate leadership on either side of the aisle. There is no policy role there whatever for the vice president. If you'd even watched 'John Adams' on television a few months ago, you would know that, going into the very beginning of our democracy.' We have little hope that MSNBC will take a more even handed approach in covering this race over these last few days, but it is outrageous that Chris Matthews would rely on an HBO mini-series as the basis for his condescending attacks on Governor Palin. If he wishes to pose as a Constitutional scholar, he should read the document. This campaign has sent a copy to his office." -- Michael Goldfarb, McCain-Palin Spokesman

Early voting has been on the rise. Gallup released a new report today that notes 11% of registered voters have already cast their ballots, with another 19% saying they still plan to vote before Election Day. If 30% vote early it will represent a 7-point increase over the 22% who cast early ballots in 2004.

Early voting as of late October 2008 nearly matches what it was at the same time in 2004. But Gallup also notes a higher percentage of registered voters expressing intent to vote early compared to 2004. Here’s Gallup’s finding:

The pace of early voting so far appears to be roughly on par with 2004. At about this time before that year's election -- Oct. 22-24 -- 9% of registered voters said they had already voted. However, in that 2004 poll, only an additional 13% said they intended to vote early, lower than the 19% who say so in the current Oct. 20-22 average. Thus, early voting this year may end up being higher than it was in 2004. (In Gallup's final poll before the election that year, conducted Oct. 29-31, 17% said they had voted early, and another 4% claimed they were still going to vote before Election Day.) As noted above, projections from this year's data are that as many as 30% of voters could end up voting early.

Gallup also notes that nearly the same proportion of McCain and Obama supporters have cast early ballots. But because Obama leads in the polls, he also has the edge in early voting results:

Obama has been ahead in Gallup Poll Daily tracking conducted while these data were being gathered. Thus, while equal percentages of Obama and McCain voters have voted early, there are more of the former than of the latter, meaning that early voting generally reflects the same Obama lead evident in the overall sample.

This, of course, is not great news for John McCain because even if he surges in the last 10 days, the lead Obama currently enjoys would be locked in among the early voters.

Read the full Gallup report here.

A few years ago, the LOL cat was born. Yes, that's right, as in "Laugh Out Loud" cat. In case you don't know what a LOL cat is, check out this website. It's chock full of oddball photos of cats--fat cats, fluffy cats, scary cats, behatted cats--paired with oddball pidgin-English phrases. You either love or hate this kind of humor.

But you are bound to love what Marianne Goldin, a University of Washington undergrad and freelance illustrator, has done with LOL cats. She wants to make a LOL cat art movement out of them. Wired's blog reported:

"Take ceiling cat," she said. "He's the god of LOLcat land. And to see him re-created in a 16th-century Renaissance-inspired oil painting, it strikes me as a new painting movement."

All this, just when you thought art couldn't get weirder!

With funding from the I Can Has Cheezburger? website, Goldin curated the one-night only show and auction "LOL Art" last night. Proceeds went to an adult literacy program. I guess if you can't help grammatically challenged cats, you help their grammatically challenged owners.

Via The Hill's Michael O'Brien, Barney Frank tells us how he plans to pay for all of Obama's new government programs:

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said Democrats will push for a stimulus package after the November election, and called for a package reducing defense spending by 25 percent while saying Congress will "eventually" raise taxes.

Frank told the editorial board of the SouthCoast Standard-Times that he wanted to reduce defense spending by a quarter, meaning the United States would have to withdraw from Iraq sooner.

(Hat tip: Jennifer Rubin)

The Gormogons point us to this fantastic bit of parody: What it would look like if John Woo, Kevin Smith, and Wes Anderson directed attack ads for McCain. Really top-notch stuff.

Why is it that, without fail, the worst, most tedious, too-long political ads of the season have come from people who are paid exclusively to make films?

One would think that entertainment professionals could at least manage to, well, entertain during a short political ad. But nope. Leonardo DiCaprio, Sarah Silverman, and a host of other stars brought us five minutes of the one-note joke, "Don't vote."

Now, famed director Ron Howard brings us this slightly funnier and mercifully shorter endorsement of Barack Obama, co-starring Andy Griffith and Henry Winkler. It still drags on for 3:40, and the cheap thrill of seeing Opie and Andy fishing together again is offset entirely by watching the sheriff endorse Obama, presumably because he thinks all international crises can be solved if only Obama and Ahamadinejad could settle in for a creek-side chat in Mayberry about Israel, "the stinking corpse" and America, "the Great Satan."

Somewhere, Aunt Bea and Barney Fife are looking down and endorsing McCain: "Nip it in the bud! You got to nip it in the bud!" You can find Howard's stultifying video making ill use of beloved cultural icons, below the fold.

We could have built 1,000 monuments to Obama with all of this money:

The 2008 election for president and Congress is not only one of the most closely watched U.S. elections in years; it's also the most expensive in history. The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics estimates that more than $5.3 billion will go toward financing the federal contests upcoming on Nov. 4.

The presidential race alone will cost nearly $2.4 billion, the Center predicts. Already the candidates alone have raised more than $1.5 billion since the election cycle's start in January 2007. This is the first time that candidates for the White House have raised and spent more than $1 billion, and this year's total is on track to nearly double candidate fundraising in 2004 and triple 2000.

From Politico:

Offered a chance to respond to the suggestion that the McCain campaign is awash in defeatism, a McCain official delivered a decidedly measured appraisal: “We have a real chance in Pennsylvania. We are in trouble in Colorado, Nevada and Virginia. We have lost Iowa and New Mexico. We are OK in Missouri, Ohio and Florida. Our voter intensity is good, and we can match their buy dollar for dollar starting today till the election. It’s a long shot, but it’s worth fighting for.”

Sounds like an honest assessment, and pretty much what the electoral map was expected to look like all along. But if this McCain official recognizes that Iowa is lost, then why is Sarah Palin spending Saturday in Des Moines and John McCain holding a rally in Iowa on Sunday?

Charles Krauthammer:

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic, soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who’s been cramming on these issues for the last year, who’s never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign-policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of “a world that stands as one”), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as “the tragedy of 9/11,” a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign-policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts, but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

Read the whole thing

Fast forward to a little past the three minute mark in this clip of Chris Matthews's exchange with Nancy Pfotenhauer of the McCain campaign. Matthews goes on quite a tear about Sarah Palin's explanation of what the role of the vice president is:

Pfotenhauer says Palin was merely trying to explain the role of the vice president to a young child, but Chris Matthews says that's not true:

She's talking to a news reporter at the time. She's talking to a news reporter at the time. Nancy, she's talking to a news reporter. ...

She said that she had been asked the question earlier in the day by a second grader. In this case she's talking to a news reporter.

In fact, Matthews is wrong. Palin was specifically asked by a reporter a question written by a child in the third-grade, and the governor begins her answer addressing the child by name:

The interesting thing is that that clip of Palin's full statement in context is from Daily Kos, which is now officially more fair and balanced than MSNBC.

(Hat tip: Ben Smith)

While President Bush's legacy with regards to U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan is uncertain and his approval rating stands at about 28 percent, his administration's Africa policy was celebrated this week in Washington.

At the White House Summit on International Development, the president was lauded by Liberian president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Irish rock star Bob Geldof.

Ms. Johnson-Sirleaf, the first female leader to be democratically elected in Africa, has been nicknamed the "Iron Lady" of Liberia. She joked several times about President Bush's February trip to Africa where, she said, he became a "YouTube sensation."

She didn't hold back in her praise of President Bush:

I'm here today to recognize the sick that have been healed, the hungry that have been fed, the livelihoods that have improved, the hopes that have been inspired, and the dreams that have been realized because of President Bush's leadership.

Geldof called Bush's efforts to support international development through the Millenium Challenge Corporation and fight AIDS and malaria "this administration's great legacy."

"Yes, speak truth to power, absolutely. But also speak truth about power," said Geldof.

Yesterday I wrote that the Democratic National Convention Committee spent $140,000 on podium "production"--which I thought seemed to include the cost of of Obama's Greek-columned stage (aka the Barackopolis) at Invesco Field where he delivered his acceptance speech. DNCC spokeswoman Jenni Engebretsen writes in an email that these expenses were "related to podium functions and personnel rather than podium structures," and she does not know how much the stage at Invesco cost.

Greg Pollowitz points out this article, which reported that "Convention expenses paid by the committee included $14.1 million for construction costs, including the stage and lighting, at the Pepsi Center and $5.3 million at Invesco Field." How much of that $5.3 million was spent on Obama's Greek columns is unknown. I took a look at the FEC report, but, shockingly, there isn't an itemized expense for "gaudy Greek Styrofoam columns." I guess the DNC was a bit smarter than the RNC this time.

As the presidential campaign winds down, an important question toward predicting the outcome is how undecided voters break. For years now, the conventional wisdom has held that these voters are unhappy with the incumbent (or his party) and most will vote for the challenger when they enter the polling booth. In the Democratic primaries however, it seems that undecided voters broke heavily away from Barack Obama and toward Hillary Clinton; they viewed the election as a referendum on him. And when he never 'closed the deal,' most voted against him.

So as this election comes to a close, will Obama be able to assuage the concerns of those who still aren't backing him? It probably depends to a large degree on whether the cycle closes with a series of stories that reassure them that Barack Obama and the Democrats can be trusted with both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

For those who wonder whether it's a good idea to elect a Democratic president who's likely to green-light the liberal agenda of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, it might be alarming to hear that they are considering killing 401k accounts:

House Democrats recently invited Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor at the New School of Social Research, to testify before a subcommittee on her idea to eliminate the preferential tax treatment of the popular retirement plans. In place of 401(k) plans, she would have workers transfer their dough into government-created "guaranteed retirement accounts" for every worker. The government would deposit $600 (inflation indexed) every year into the GRAs. Each worker would also have to save 5 percent of pay into the accounts, to which the government would pay a measly 3 percent return. Rep. Jim McDermott, a Democrat from Washington and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee's Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, said that since "the savings rate isn't going up for the investment of $80 billion [in 401(k) tax breaks], we have to start to think about whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that's not generating what we now say it should."

Given the long-term Social Security insolvency problem, private retirement accounts have become far more important to working Americans. Why would senior Democrats want to confiscate these retirement contributions and replace them with a program that is almost the same is the insolvent Social Security program?

Via Hot Air:

Politico reports:

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a watchdog group, has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against Sarah Palin and the Republican National Committee claiming the RNC violated campaign finance laws when it paid for $150,000 for clothes for the party’s vice presidential nominee and her family.

Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director, said the purchases should be disallowed under campaign finance rules that prevent candidates from using campaign cash to buy items of “personal use,” including clothing.

Campaign finance experts say those rules have never been applied to party committee accounts.

While Politico merely describes CREW as a "watchdog", last year Roll Call exposed CREW as an organization funded by liberal money that almost exclusively targets Republicans. The group has gone after opponents of Big Labor, same-sex marriage, and the Castro regime. Read the whole Roll Call story, and you'll see that CREW has more than a few ethical blindspots and is about as nonpartisan as the DNC.

Obama at a press conference yesterday:

In 2002 I said we should focus on finishing the fight against Osama Bin Laden. Throughout this campaign I’ve argued that we need more troops and more resources to win the war in Iraq. But we also need a new strategy that deals with Pakistan that deals with issues of corruption that deals with issues of narco-terrorism. We need a comprehensive strategy and approach to confront the growing threat from al Qaeda along the Pakistani border.

Did Obama forget which war he doesn't mind losing? Obama usually says he wants to "end" the war in Iraq and "win" war in Afghanistan. Throughout the campaign he has argued that more troops and resources would lead to success in Afghanistan, but he said that that same policy would lead to failure in Iraq. He must have meant to say "Afghanistan" instead of "Iraq." That's a pretty big mixup. As far as I can tell, this false impression Obama gave voters about his position on Iraq has gone uncorrected.

According to Chuck Todd, John McCain and Sarah Palin had no chemistry while they were interviewed by Brian Williams yesterday, but it seems to me that they had a pretty strong showing. They hammered Biden on his warning that Obama's election would "guarantee" an "international crisis," and McCain's defense of Palin's ability to lead is solid, too. See for yourself:

Good video--except for this line: "We are close to making that $250,000 mark, and we shouldn't be punished for succeeding." Is the McCain campaign conceding that Obama won't raise taxes on any one making under $250K? What happened to the argument that, based on Obama's record and his spending proposals, he's going to raise taxes on the middle class? Bill Clinton abandoned his middle class tax cut campaign proposal. Why do we expect anything different from Obama?

Even if you take Obama at his word, it might be more effective to point out that McCain's tax proposals, including his health care plan, would leave most middle class people better off.

As it turns out, jokes comparing the late Jörg Haider to an SS man are entirely offbase. Ernst Röhm is more like it. Today’s Times of London reports that the far-right Austrian politician and his anointed successor Stefan Petzner were lovers.

The Times quotes Petzner from interviews with Austria’s national broadcaster and a newspaper:

“He was the man of my life. Our relationship went far beyond friendship,” Mr. Petzner, 27, said after only a week in the job, adding that Haider’s wife, Claudia, 52, “did not object” to their relationship.

And maybe his job would still have been secure had Petzner left it at that. (It wasn’t exactly shocking to learn Haider was gay.) But he went on: “I only had him. Now I am all alone. I would spend nights with him and his family and that was important for me because I often was afraid to be alone in the dark.”

As the Times elaborates: “Outraged by the interviews, the party felt compelled yesterday to dismiss its leader amid reports of his alleged role in Haider’s tragic death. Local papers said that, on the night of his accident, Haider and Mr. Petzner had a row at a magazine launch party. Haider left in a hurry and drove to a gay club in Klagenfurt, his home town, where he drank vodka with male escorts.” (The Alliance for the Future of Austria’s new leader is Josef Buchner. Petzner remains as a deputy.)

It’s bad enough to admit you had an affair with your boss and had something to do with his fatal binge. But being afraid of the dark was probably the final straw.

A new web ad from McCain, as he embarks on the "Joe the Plumber" tour through Florida:

And, in perfect contrast to the honest, normal concerns of hard-working Americans about their is yet another freaky, self-serious video from hypnotized Obama supporters. They present, without irony, "Yes, We Carve:"

Given the hype of the Obama candidacy and his campaign’s massive mobilization effort, will America’s youth deliver for “The One?”

Millennial voters certainly have a lot of encouragement this year. As Tom Edmunds points out in this recent piece in Politics magazine:

Judging from all the hype, you’d think that the Illinois senator is poised to surf into office on a cresting tsunami of the youth vote. Labeled the “Year of the Youth Vote” by Time magazine, called “The Year the Youth Vote Arrives” by Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, 2008 is supposedly when the wireless and digitized Millennial generation will register its power by selecting Obama as the next commander-in-chief.

But according to a new report released by Gallup, all the hullabaloo about Obama’s appeal to younger Americans is a bit overblown. A couple surprising findings:

First, Obama isn’t polling much better among young voters than John Kerry was in 2004:

This strength of support for a Democratic presidential nominee among the youth is not a new phenomenon. In Gallup's final poll before the 2004 election, the Democratic nominee John Kerry received 59% of the support of 18- to 29-year-old registered voters, while the Republican George W. Bush received 36% support. That compared to the overall sample of registered voters in which Kerry was leading Bush by 2 points, 48% to 46%. (Bush led Kerry among likely voters by 49% to 47%.)

Of course turnout matters here too. Getting 60 percent of a bigger slice of electoral pie could help. Yet Gallup raises these questions about turnout:

Gallup Poll daily tracking suggests that 18- to 29-year-olds are not nearly as likely as older voters to be registered to vote, to say they are thinking about the election, or to express strong intentions to vote. Thus, as of mid-October, there is not convincing evidence in the Gallup data that young voters will in fact vote at higher rates than in past elections.

Edmunds may be right when he concludes:

But the vision for the near term seems very clear. 2008 will once again be a year in which the anticipated youth vote did not materialize.

CNN fact-checks Sarah Palin's statement that Obama only had 300 days of experience in the Senate before officially announcing his bid for the presidency. This statement is "misleading," according to CNN, because Palin was only counting the days the Senate was in session:

But lawmakers also work when the Senate is not in session. Obama served 743 days in the Senate from his swearing in to the announcement of his exploratory committee, the first official step when considering a run for the presidency. He served 768 days from the start of his career in the Senate to February 10, 2007, when he formally announced his candidacy for president. Palin served as governor of Alaska for 634 days before Republican nominee Sen. John McCain named her as his running mate.

So the Democratic presidential nominee has 109 days more experience as a senator than the Republican VP nominee does as a governor. Of course, the length of their respective careers isn't as important as what they accomplished. If you read Byron York's "How Palin Governed," I think you'll agree that the Alaska governor's record is impressive--especially compared to Obama's scant accomplishments.

When Sarah Palin spoke in Grand Junction, Colorado the other day, a group of protesters tried to block her motorcade. CNN caught the incident on camera:

Here's a pretty pathetic video put up by the protesters, hoping to catch an example of the police abusing them. That effort is utterly wasted, as the police handle themselves appropriately and with class throughout -- including at the end, when the nearest police officer says "thank you" as he walks away from the frustrated cameraman (language warning):

The protesters begin by shouting 'off the sidewalk and into the street.' They continue to play the victims, as they seek to silence Governor Palin. All along they act as if they're being treated harshly, and at the end the cameraman is reduced to sneering like a grade schooler. The local community is currently voting pretty heavily that they were in the wrong on the local news website. Be sure to watch their report on this as well, to see just the sort of dim bulbs the police are dealing with.

Politico's Charles Mahtesian assesses McCain's chances of winning Pennsylvania. Rich Lowry thinks it would be smarter to forget the Keystone state and focus on winning red states.

Via Hot Air, French TV has released new, moving footage of John McCain as a POW:

Fox News's Shushannah Walshe reports:

GREEN, OHIO –- After some subdued crowds for the top of the ticket at his solo campaign events, John McCain and Sarah Palin joined back up today and were greeted by a boisterous crowd of thousands on a high school football field here.

Sarah Palin took the stage to introduce her running mate and she acknowledged country star Gretchen Wilson who had serenaded the crowd with her song, “Redneck Woman” before the ticket took the stage.

The GOP Vice-Presidential nominee seemed star struck, but told the singer they have something in common, “I see Gretchen Wilson over there and I need to get your autograph before we leave! Hello! Yes! Someone called me a redneck woman once and you know what I said back? I said, ‘Why thank you.’”

You can watch Wilson's "Redneck Woman" music video here.

The Washington Post published a story Thursday about a minor terrorist's ranting on a website about his support for McCain.

The McCain campaign points out that the Post didn't find it worth reporting the recent praise Hamas's spokesman has offered for Biden and Obama. The Post also didn't include in it's story today, entitled "On Al-Qaeda Web Sites, Joy Over U.S. Crisis, Support for McCain", that Ahmadinejad implicitly endorsed Obama last month.

Now, the Speaker of the Iranian parliament expresses his support for Obama. I don't suppose you'll read about that in the Post any time soon.

Kirsten Powers explains why Biden's prophesy/mega-gaffe just isn't a big deal for the press.

Yep, got it, Joe.

Everyone is talking about Sarah Palin's $150,000 in clothing and accessories from department stores like Saks and Neiman Marcus. To echo my colleague, Palin is a woman who presumably had few television-worthy outfits (or accessories or makeup or haircuts), nor the personal income to buy them herself. In Alaska, Palin shopped at consignment stores and wore $89 pumps, so it's not as if she is an extravagant woman (see Michelle Malkin for pre-makeover photos).

As Glamour's fashion blog notes, Palin's look is "that difficult combination of pretty, polished, down-to-earth, professional, and most importantly, electable." And like it or not, a woman in the spotlight like Palin needs to maintain that look.

But is $150,000 unreasonable? New York magazine's fashion blog breaks down outfit costs from Saks and Neiman Marcus and discovers that just six outfit combinations alone cost over $16,000. For $150,000, Palin could purchase approximately 34 outfits. Fashion blogger Amy Odell concludes,

Now, McCain picked Palin on August 29. That's 67 days of campaigning until November 4, so in theory she has enough clothes to repeat outfits just once, maybe twice as we get closer to Election Day--or, with smart mixing, maybe she doesn't need to repeat at all! After all, she's giving televised speeches daily and being photographed, so wearing repeats is a no-no...

In conclusion: A $150,000 clothes budget might not be the wisest use of campaign money. But given the demands of Palin's job, the figure is not as outrageous as it seems at first.

After all, have Michelle Obama, Cindy McCain, or Hillary Clinton worn the same dress or pantsuit for more than one major appearance yet?

As uncomfortable with victory at home as abroad, Democrats freak out at the good electoral forecast many are giving them:

Obama himself has reacted to the dismal drumbeat of good news. At a fundraising concert in Manhattan last Thursday featuring Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, Obama got up and said: “Don’t underestimate the capacity of Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Don’t underestimate our ability to screw it up.”

Which is the prevailing mood in the top echelons of the Democratic Party right now.

And, then there's this from the party that's pitching us one of the least experienced candidates of all time, who is guaranteed to be tested by a created crisis from our global adversaries, according to his own VP candidate:

The Democrats are fearful of all this. The Democrats are always fearful.

Tell us about it.

“We have been on the precipice of victory before,” Dan Pfeiffer, an Obama spokesman, told me. “You have never seen a more superstitious campaign than ours. We do not talk about victory.”

"We do not talk about victory." Pfeiffer, you sound like you're writing for a Palin stump speech. A few more rhetorical flourishes from The One and The Mouth, and you never know...

At the very least, Republicans should be doing their partisan duty by just scaring the ever-loving jodhpurs off their local limousine liberals with tales of impending Rovian tactics on a scale never seen before.

With all the hullabaloo surrounding the RNC's expenditures on Sarah Palin's clothes, I thought it would be interesting to find out how much money was spent on Obama's Greek-columned stage at Invesco Field. You remember the Barackopolis--those "styrofoam Greek columns"--don't you?

It turns out that the Democratic National Convention Committee spent over $140,000 on "podium production" (you can see the individual expenditures after the jump). It would seem that the construction of the Barackopolis would be included in this amount, but I can't tell how much money was spent on the Greek-columned stage at Invesco and how much was spent on the podium at the Pepsi Center. I've sent an email to the DNC asking them to break this down and will post a response if and when I get it.

Update: DNCC spokeswoman Jenni Engebretsen writes in an email that these expenses were "related to podium functions and personnel rather than podium structures," and she does not know how much the stage at Invesco cost.

Greg Pollowitz points out this article, which reported that "Convention expenses paid by the committee included $14.1 million for construction costs, including the stage and lighting, at the Pepsi Center and $5.3 million at Invesco Field." How much of that $5.3 million was spent on Obama's Greek columns is unknown. I took a look at the FEC report, but, shockingly, there isn't an itemized expense for "gaudy Greek Styrofoam columns." I guess the DNC was a bit smarter than the RNC this time.

The World Series starts tonight. Ken Levine's take is extremely enjoyable. He laments the fact that baseball games seem to be growing longer and longer, while network executives schedule them later and later:

"This year’s All-Star Game was a thriller. The American League won in a five hour, 15 innings affair. The dramatic ending was seen in the east by eight 7-11 clerks (five. Three were robbed and tied up in the back)."

And:

"Baseball is a sport that is passed down from generation to generation. It needs to attract kids to ensure its future. Name me one kid who fell in love with the grand old game by watching Jeannie Zelasko’s pre-game show with in-studio analysts Kevin Kennedy and Mark Grace. Children have bedtimes and they’re usually not 1:37 AM."

Levine is always worth checking out.

Ben Smith reports:

Answering questions after a meeting with Biden and national security advisers, Obama insists that Joe Biden intended to say that the next president will be tested by foreign powers, regardless of who is elected.

"Joe sometimes engages in rhetorical flourishes, but i think his core point was that the next administration is going to be tested, regardless of who it is," he said at the Richmond, Va., event.

"I think the point that Joe made is actually very similar to the one that Secretary Chertoff made today or yesterday, which is that whoever is the next president is going to have to deal with a whole host of challenges internationally, and that a period of transition in a new administration is always one in which we have to be vigilant, we have to be careful, we have to be mindful that as we pass the baton in this democracy, that others don’t take advantage of it.," Obama said, stressing that either he or McCain would be tested.

Read the the full Biden quote in context, and decide whether Biden was merely saying that the next president will be tested "regardless of who it is" (emphases mine):

"And here's the point I want to make. Mark my words. Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And he's gonna have to make some really tough - I don't know what the decision's gonna be, but I promise you it will occur. As a student of history and having served with seven presidents, I guarantee you it's gonna happen. I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate. And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you, not financially to help him, we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right. Because all these decisions, all these decisions, once they're made if they work, then they weren't viewed as a crisis. If they don't work, it's viewed as you didn't make the right decision, a little bit like how we hesitated so long dealing with Bosnia and dealing with Kosovo, and consequently 200,000 people lost their lives that maybe didn't have to lose lives. It's how we made a mistake in Iraq. We made a mistake in Somalia. So there's gonna be some tough decisions. They may emanate from the Middle East. They may emanate from the sub-continent. They may emanate from Russia's newly-emboldened position because they're floating in a sea of oil."

After again touting Cantwell's judgment, Biden told the crowd to "gird your loins."

"Only thing I'm asking you is, you know, gird your loins. We're gonna win with your help, God willing, we're gonna win, but this is not gonna be an easy ride. This president, the next president, is gonna be left with the most significant task. It's like cleaning the Aegean stables, man. This is more than just, this is more than - think about it, literally, think about it - this is more than just a capital crisis, this is more than just markets, this is a systemic problem we have with this economy."

Is there any doubt that Biden meant that our foreign adversaries would seize the unique opportunity to "test" the "mettle" of the untested 47-year-old Obama? McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann acknowledged on Monday that "the next president of the United States will be tested," but he argued that Obama's weakness on foreign policy "invites testing."

"In foreign policy, it is weakness real or perceived weakness that is provocative. Weakness invites challenge, invites testing, invites attack," Scheunemann said, as he went on to point out that Obama has shown signs of weakness repeatedly. Obama said Georgia should "show restraint" after it had been invaded by Russia. He opposed trade pacts with our allies. He opposed the surge and would have accepted a defeat to Al Qaeda in Iraq rather than alter his plan for withdrawal. He pledged to meet with Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, the Castro brothers, Hugo Chavez, and Bashar al Asad. Even if Obama intends to give all these tyrants a good talking to a la Lee Bollinger, does he really think that presidential summits--without precondition--will do anything but embolden our enemies?

As always, these are polls with margins of error, and this one seems decidedly different from others recently released, but it shows gains with exactly the kind of voters who would find the Joe the Plumber's question, Obama's answer, and McCain's message pertinent:

The presidential race tightened after the final debate, with John McCain gaining among whites and people earning less than $50,000, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll that shows McCain and Barack Obama essentially running even among likely voters in the election homestretch.

The poll, which found Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 43 percent, supports what some Republicans and Democrats privately have said in recent days: that the race narrowed after the third debate as GOP-leaning voters drifted home to their party and McCain's "Joe the plumber" analogy struck a chord.

Three weeks ago, an AP-GfK survey found that Obama had surged to a seven-point lead over McCain, lifted by voters who thought the Democrat was better suited to lead the nation through its sudden economic crisis.

The article offers a thorough perusal of the less McCain-friendly polling numbers of the week, where McCain has taken a dive among all-important likely voters:

Obama and McCain were essentially tied among likely voters in the latest George Washington University Battleground Poll, conducted by Republican strategist Ed Goeas and Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. In other surveys focusing on likely voters, a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed Obama up by 9 percentage points, while a poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center had Obama leading by 14. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, among the broader category of people registered to vote, found Obama ahead by 10 points.

An interesting note about the poll's methodology:

A significant number of the interviews were conducted by dialing a randomly selected sample of cell phone numbers, and thus this poll had a chance to reach voters who were excluded from some other polls.

Cell-phone users are supposed to be left-leaning demographic historically missed by pollsters (though the vast unpolled cellular herd has never been vast enough to change the game on Election Day). Why would McCain be gaining in a poll with cell-phone users included, and if he is, isn't it exceedingly promising for the Republican candidate that the numbers are this close? Perhaps they're polling a disproportionate number of "push-to-talk" Nextel users (read: Joe the Plumber and Tito the Construction Worker) and undersampling Sidekick users.

McCain's numbers are lower among registered voters:

The AP-GfK survey included interviews with a large sample of adults including 800 deemed likely to vote. Among all 1,101 adults interviewed, the survey showed Obama ahead 47 percent to 37 percent. He was up by five points among registered voters.

Well, I think it's safe to say contingent of people pleasantly surprised by Sarah Palin's abilities has grown by at least two since her appearance on "Saturday Night Live" this week.

First Lorne Michaels:

Q: What do you think Palin gained from her appearance?
I think Palin will continue to be underestimated for a while. I watched the way she connected with people, and she's powerful. Her politics aren't my politics. But you can see that she's a very powerful, very disciplined, incredibly gracious woman. This was her first time out and she's had a huge impact. People connect to her.

Q: She's a ratings magnet, too — do you think she can land a development deal if this VP thing doesn't work out?
She could pretty much do better than development. I think she could have her own show, yeah.

He even goes on to sympathize with her rapid and rough introduction to the nation, and applaud her convention speech:

She was fresh casting. The fact that no one knew anything about her, the fact that the audience got to go with her from Wasilla to Minneapolis. Literally six weeks ago she was in another world. I think there's a lot of sympathy for anybody who can step forward and handle that level of pressure. That thing on a human level was fascinating to watch. She was characterized so quickly by the media. She got a really tough welcome. So when she introduced herself that way at the convention, people went, oh, I see. She gave a great performance.

Second, Tina Fey's comment, which I confess to reading on a celebrity gossip blog, but will oblige you with a link to an actual news source:

"I'll tell you, that lady is five times better-looking than I am," she admits. "She's 44? She's got none of that droopy [expletive]. She's keeping it tight!"

All right, so that comment isn't as dignified as the one from Michaels, but it does come from Palin's tormenter-in-chief, and a woman who would have much to gain in her political circles for slamming Sarah publicly.

Such compliments from those who would gladly ridicule her, on or off the set, illustrate her power as a performer and a political figure moving forward. It's something the Republican Party and conservatism must figure out how to harness, no matter what happens November 4. As Fred Barnes puts it, in this week's print edition:

Republicans, even some McCain advisers, have yet to realize the enormous asset they have in Palin: She's the party's most crowd-pleasing and exciting figure since Ronald Reagan. Okay, she's not a "new Reagan." That role will remain eternally unfilled. Palin lacks Reagan's decades of political involvement, his knowledge, and especially his grounding in conservative thought.

Sarah Palin, to "People" Magazine, in an entertaining interview with the Palins. She also reveals they are done having children now that they have their "starting five," she's reading "The Looming Tower" right now, and the "kill him" myth lives on:

"I haven't heard anyone yell 'kill him' at a rally. ...If I heard someone say something like "Kill him," I would certainly not condone that, and I would say something."

As the Secret Service has found upon investigation, no one can recall having heard the fateful shout heard only by a Scranton newspaper reporter.

But hey, why should "People" refrain from propagating this falsehood when Obama referenced it the last presidential debate himself, even after being informed of the Secret Service's findings? Who knew there was such thing as playing the assassination card?

But even before Obama cited "reports" of the threats at the debate, the U.S. Secret Service had told media outlets, including NEWSWEEK, that it was unable to corroborate accounts of the "kill him" remarks—and according to a law-enforcement official, who asked for anonymity when discussing a political matter, the Obama campaign knew as much. Now some officials are disgruntled that Obama gave added credence to the threat by mentioning it in front of 60 million viewers. At this point in the campaign, said one, candidates will "say anything to make a particular point."

The reporter with whom the report originated now says that "kill him" was uttered casually, not yelled angrily, and admits he was unable to identify its source, either.

Politico reports that the RNC has spent $150,000 on clothing, accessories, hair care, and makeup for Sarah Palin. McCain-Palin spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt responded to the story, writing in a statement: "With all of the important issues facing the country right now, it’s remarkable that we’re spending time talking about pantsuits and blouses. It was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign."

According to Marc Ambinder, Republicans are "disgusted" with the expenditures:

There is already an attempt to blame the media -- as in, the liberal media would have looked askance at Palin if she wasn't clad in Neiman Marcus, but this won't wash. Republicans, RNC donors and at least one RNC staff member have e-mailed me tonight to share their utter (and not-for-attribution) disgust at the expenditures.

This sort of spending is without precedent -- the closest approximation for any campaign I've ever covered is make-up expenses for television interviews and commercial shoots -- , and Schmitt's weakly defensive response tonight indicates that the campaign is deeply embarrassed by it and has nothing to say in their defense.

Is attacking Palin or the RNC going to have the kind of punch that, say, mocking John Edwards's haircut did? I don't think so. As the breadwinner of a family of seven, Palin is the only one on either ticket who isn't wealthy. Obviously she hadn't built up the kind of wardrobe that a woman in the national spotlight has. What's a reasonable cost for a woman on TV almost everyday? I have no idea, but it would be helpful to know how much Hillary Clinton's entire wardrobe is worth as a point of reference.

At any rate, if RNC donors are upset that the clothes are going to charity, here's an alternative suggestion: Sell the clothes on eBay, and turn a nice little profit. If copies of Obama's the first edition of book are going for $12,000, I'm sure that the jacket Palin wore at the RNC could be sold to a collector for a lot more than the original price.

We used to have “tax and spend” liberals. Today we have tax “as” spend politicians. The Tax Foundation argues Washington policymakers increasingly use tax policy instead of direct spending to channel government money to favored groups and causes.

Scott A. Hodge of the Foundation writes:

Over the past two decades, lawmakers have increasingly turned to the tax system rather than direct spending programs to funnel money to targeted groups of Americans, furthering some social or political goal. As a result, millions of Americans have been effectively removed from the income tax payment system while the tax code has been made more complicated to comply with and more difficult to administer. The tax plans of both the presidential candidates would exacerbate this situation greatly.

Due to the growth in tax credits, a record number of taxpayers have zero liability. This chart demonstrates the dramatic growth in the number of those who don’t owe taxes. Looks like both Obama’s and McCain’s tax plans leave nearly half of all filers--over 60 million people-–owing no taxes after claiming all their credits and deductions.

Adam Lerrick, writing in the Wall Street Journal this morning, considers the implications of this new trend in tax policy.

Sen. Obama is promising $500 and $1,000 gift-wrapped packets of money in the form of refundable tax credits. These will shift the tax demographics to the tipping point where half of all voters will receive a cash windfall from Washington and an overwhelming majority will gain from tax hikes and more government spending.

Where this all is heading, according to Lerrick:

The plunder that the Democrats plan to extract from the "very rich"--the 5% that earn more than $250,000 and who already pay 60% of the federal income tax bill--will never stretch to cover the expansive programs Mr. Obama promises.

HT: Greg Mankiw

Since attempts to silence McCain supporters have escalated from mere boycotts to arson and physical violence, I guess this isn't too shocking.

CNN reported on an inaccurate AP story that said Sarah Palin paid for her kids' travel expenses with state funds in order to bring them along to events to which they weren't officially invited. Anderson Cooper corrects the record here:

Now when is CNN going to apologize for this egregious distortion?

Paul Rubin warns Americans to get ready for a new New Deal:

But if the coming wave of new regulation from an Obama administration is harmful to the economy, Mr. Obama will take a page from FDR's playbook. He'll blame Republicans for having caused the market crash in the first place, and so escape blame for the consequences of his policies. It worked for FDR and, so far in this campaign, blaming Republicans and George W. Bush has worked for Mr. Obama.

Democrats draw their political power from trial lawyers, unions, government bureaucrats, environmentalists, and, perhaps, my liberal colleagues in academia. All of these voting blocs seem to favor a larger, more intrusive government. If things proceed as they now appear likely to, we can expect major changes in policies that benefit these groups.

If those of us who favor free markets for the freedom and prosperity they bring are right, the political system may soon put our economy on track for a catastrophe.

Rubin is right, and he may not know just how right he is. Everywhere you turn, Democrats are talking about recreating the New Deal. USAction is pushing for 'the Next New Deal,' and has lined up a range of influential Representatives and Senators behind their plan. Congressman Chris VanHollen -- whose chairmanship of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee earns him dozens of loyal followers -- says of the plan "after the election, we'll put it into effect." What does it call for? An immediate end to the war in Iraq, and trillions in tax increases -- so the government can take the lead in designing, regulating, and funding health care, education, and energy.

It's not just a few Members who've signed onto the 'Next New Deal'' either. Chairman Paul Kanjorski said months ago "All we're doing is going into the basket and saying, 'Damn, what did they do in '32, what did they do in '34, what did they do in '36,' and we're pulling them out, dusting them off, giving them a paint job, correcting the fenders a bit, and we're using them." Barney Frank echoed his thoughts. Democratic Chairman Rush Holt (NJ) calls the recent $700 billion bailout "a band-aid," and says we need to look to -- you guessed it -- the New Deal for lessons on what to do next. The San Francisco Chronicle is cheering for a New New Deal. So is Helen Thomas.

Perhaps most tellingly, Democratic powerhouse Rahm Emanuel has been pushing a New New Deal for months. Emanuel is perhaps the most important powerbroker on Capitol Hill, widely seen as the architect of the Democratic majority, and he's close to Barack Obama.

It's clear that congressional Democrats are clearing the decks for an orgy of spending like we've never seen.

As president, would Barack Obama -- the most liberal member of the Senate and a friend to progressives everywhere -- be likely to press for fiscal responsibility? Just like in foreign policy, he will be tested right away by leaders who are up to no good.

CNN horribly rips a quote out of context to sandbag Sarah Palin in an interview.

Update: Allahpundit has the transcript and points out:

The freakiest thing about this? Drew Griffin, the reporter, is the same guy who’s been doing good work on Ayers and ACORN. Exit question: Blame the researcher, or was he looking to make amends to the left?

Update: Griffin did say immediately after the clip cuts off, “But they were talking about the fact that your experience as governor is not getting out,” which is at least true to York’s ultimate point. Still doesn’t excuse imputing to him the views he was imputing to the media, though.

He may appear on SNL Nov. 1, which if it's anything like his last appearance, will feature him expertly standing, smiling, accepting applause, and delivering stump speech lines without nearly enough irony. Truly, it was electrifying.

Looking back at all four of the major political cameos on SNL this year— Obama, Hillary, McCain, and now Palin— it's clear that, despite their vaunted "cool" quotient the Democrats were given much less responsibility on the show, and delivered far blander performances.

Obama stands around acting like himself, the height of his performance coming at the moment he takes off his mask, the impact of which can be credited to the reveal and the adoration of the audience, but not any particular ability. Though his "Live from New York" is the best of the bunch.

Hillary almost literally delivered a stump speech from a desk, the height of her performance coming at the moment Amy Poehler joined her on stage in a matching outfit and hairdo. Hillary's best line, "Why? What have you heard?" is funnier than anything Obama managed, though stilted.

McCain was given an entire skit to handle, during which he argues for a presidential candidate that's "experienced enough to be president, but most importantly, old enough. It's important to have a president that's very, very old."

Palin was asked to deliver plenty of lines and react appropriately to Alec Baldwin, Tina Fey, and the SNL rap. She did so with charm, humor, and pretty good timing. Just imagine Hillary trying to pull off all three of those scenes, if you will.

Obama's performance will undoubtedly be heralded as ground-shatteringly great, if he does indeed appear. He got at least some practice at self-deprecation last week, at the Al Smith Dinner, and perhaps learned a few things from McCain's more comfortable act. I wonder if SNL will take any decent whacks at him, or make him make fun of himself.

It's only polite of them to afford each politician a couple gags that play to their political strengths, though they didn't do too many favors for Palin. What she gained from the appearance, she earned on her own. One hopes The One will be subjected to at least some substantial razzing (please, Jim Downey?), but we're more likely in for a barrage of knee-slapping pseudo-parodic exaggerations of Obama's total awesomeness.

But who knows? SNL has surprised us a couple times this year. Here's hoping they've got some kind of minor comic wedgie prepared for Obama.

Below the fold are Obama's, Hillary's, and McCain's performances, for comparison. Palin's performances are here, and here. McCain's scene is nowhere to be found on NBC's site (Hmmm....) but I grabbed a YouTube video that features it.

In response to Republican demands that Congress investigate how Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae imploded, Barney Frank said today:

“In an unusual event, even by this year’s standards, House Republicans appear to be demanding a criminal investigation of their failure to legislate,” said Frank in a statement.

“The Republican demand that their legislative record of non-action be investigated appears to be the political equivalent of the note left to the police by serial offenders: stop me before I do not legislate again.”

This is the same Barney Frank who said in 2003:

''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.'

Perhaps it would have been reasonable for Frank to argue that the GOP-controlled House should have been able to pass reform legislation with or without Democratic support if congressional Democrats hadn't just blamed Republicans for scuttling the first bailout bill vote.

Exit question: Wouldn't it be nice if the congressional Republicans had money to run this ad?

If even Dan Rather thinks you're in the tank...just, wow.

"Certainly, if Sarah Palin had said this, it would be above the fold in most newspapers."

A statement from McCain-Palin spokesman Michael Goldfarb:

"Joe Biden's commented on Sunday that Barack Obama's election as President would, within six months, result in 'an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.' Biden further added that the American people would not perceive Barack Obama's response to this crisis as correct. 'It's not gonna be apparent that we're right,' he said. Biden's remarks capture perfectly the message of this campaign: Barack Obama is too risky, too inexperienced, to serve as commander in chief--that his election by itself will provoke our enemies, and that his brief record raises serious questions as to how an Obama administration would respond to such a challenge.

"This campaign highlighted Biden's remarks throughout the day yesterday. We held a conference call with Mayor Giuliani who asked what Joe Biden meant. We released a statement highlighting Biden's remarks and asking what kind of crisis his unconditional meetings with the leaders of rogue states might provoke. Our surrogates and spokesmen also noted the comments in radio and TV appearances. Yet on NBC Nightly News last night, when Andrea Mitchell reported on Biden's remarks, she failed to play the relevant portion--the portion that this campaign and a variety of news outlets had found controversial, or revealing as the case may be. Instead, Ms. Mitchell played a tape of Joe Biden talking about how Barack Obama has 'steel in his spine.'

"This morning, on MSNBC, the network again aired the tape of Biden, and again they aired the segment in which Joe Biden heaps praise on his running mate. But Joe Scarborough noted that the network had played the wrong clip, and that what Joe Biden said directly reflects the central criticism this campaign has made of Barack Obama: that his inexperience, his poor judgment, and his foreign policy proposals will, in Joe Biden's words, 'guarantee' a crisis.

"So how is it that NBC repeatedly failed to play those remarks?"

Here's the video of Scarborough on MSNBC:

Mother Jones has a great video of McCain supporters arguing with David Corn about media bias, taxes, and more:

You may have first read about Tito Munoz, the construction worker in the video, in Byron York's excellent write-up of the rally. Curiously, Corn leaves this portion of his conversation with Munoz, as reported by York, on the cutting room floor:

“Let me talk,” Munoz said to Corn. “I know the Constitution, and I know my First Amendment — ”

“I’m not the state,” Corn said. “I can’t take that right away from you.”

“No, no,” Munoz shot back. “Even the state, the state cannot take that right away.”

“Right, right,” Corn quickly agreed.

“Nobody can take that away,” Munoz said.

Hat tip: TPM

Doesn't common sense dictate that we ought to do the opposite of whatever Barney Frank says?

In her prepared remarks today in Reno, Nevada, Sarah Palin tees off on Joe Biden's prediction that there would be "an international crisis" created to "test" Obama. Video via Hot Air

Two weeks from today, Americans will be asked to cast their vote for the next president of the United States. There’s no time to wait. Let’s get right to it.

Did you hear what Senator Biden said at a fundraiser on Sunday? He guaranteed that if Barack Obama is elected, we’ll face an international crisis within the first six months of their administration. He told Democrat donors to mark his words – that there were “at least four or five scenarios” that would place our country at risk in an Obama administration. Thanks for the warning, Joe!

He didn’t specify what all those four or five scenarios will be, but for clues, let’s review the Obama foreign policy agenda.

Our opponent wants to sit down with the world’s worst dictators. With no preconditions, he proposes to meet with a regime in Teheran that vows to “wipe Israel off the map.” Let’s call that crisis scenario number one.

Senator Obama has also advocated sending our U.S. military into Pakistan without the approval of the Pakistani government. Invading the sovereign territory of a troubled partner in the war against terrorism. We’ll call that scenario number two.

He opposed the surge strategy that has finally brought victory in Iraq within sight. He’s voted to cut off funding for our troops, leaving our young men and women at grave risk. He wants to pull out, leaving some 25 million Iraqis at the mercy of Iranian-supported Shiite extremists and al Qaeda in Iraq. By his own admission, this could mean our troops would have to go back to Iraq. Crisis scenario number three.

After the Russian army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence – the kind of response that would only encourage Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine next. That would be crisis scenario number four.

But I guess the looming crisis that most worries the Obama campaign right now is Joe Biden’s next speaking engagement. Let’s call that crisis scenario number five.

The real problem is that these warnings from Joe Biden are similar to his earlier assessment of Barack Obama. It wasn’t so long ago that he said Barack Obama wasn’t up to the job, and that, quote, “the presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.”

The same Joe Biden said he would be honored to run on the ticket with John McCain because, quote, “the country would be better off.” And here we have some common ground. I want a president who spent 22 years in uniform defending our country. I want a president who isn’t afraid to use the word “victory” when he talks about the wars we are fighting. I want a president who’s ready on Day One. I want a president with the experience and the judgment and the wisdom to meet the next international crisis – or better yet to avoid it. I want John McCain as our commander-in-chief.

Guy Benson, Ed Morrissey and I decided it was time to put together a one-stop shop for legitimate, sober arguments against Obama.

At Hot Air, Ed is hosting the finished product, which I encourage you to send to allies to arm them, and skeptics to convince them. We've addressed abortion, taxes, foreign policy, disdain for small-town America, radical associations (yes, including Rev. Jeremiah Wright), and lack of concrete accomplishments, with plenty of links and lots of video.

Below are the videos I produced, using Obama's own words as often as I could, to illustrate his troublesome positions on all these issues. I tried to be fair and entertaining. I tried not to take his frequent spin at face value, but I also tried not to take him out of context. Luckily, he makes the case against himself without manipulation, and I hope folks will find selections from this little library useful in sending to friends as we go down to the wire. Below the fold are all the videos (each about 1-2 min):

Marc Ambinder reports that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has a new anti-Card Check ad, featuring a real life angry union boss (as opposed to fictional ones you might have seen in this ad):

Here's another ad the Chamber is running in Minnesota:

Bryan O'Keefe wrote a couple weeks back that the McCain campaign would be wise to focus on this issue, especially during a time of economic upheaval. Card Check would certainly be a disastrous blow to our economy and basic workers' rights, and McCain could always point out that Obama is to the left of McGovern.

I still remember when parents worried their kids watched too much TV. Never mind. The Internet solved that problem.

Pew released an interesting new report this week called “Networked Families,” exploring how technology affects family communications and lifestyles. It looks at how the proliferation of cell phones, computer ownership and broadband access impacts our daily lives.

One of the most fascinating parts of the study focuses on how increased Internet usage decreases television viewership, with the largest drop among adults 18-29 years old:

Most internet users say that the internet has not changed the amount of time they spend with friends, with family, and attending social events or activities. However, 25% of online adults say that the internet has decreased the amount of time they spend watching television. Especially among younger adults the importance of television has diminished while the internet has gained enhanced importance.

You can view the entire Pew report here.

Hey, there's a card for everything.

Via Jonathan Martin, who reports that "The piece is hitting voters ID'd as pro-abortion rights in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia."

The McCain campaign refutes CNN's report that the campaign is abandoning Colorado.

In an interview with Stephen F. Hayes, John McCain strongly criticized the Bush administration's decision to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism:

"I don't agree with it, and I think we have basically contradicted Ronald Reagan's great dictum of trust but verify. And particularly--many aspects of this are disturbing--but we told the South Koreans and the Japanese after we had made the decision. That's not a partnership with the allies."

McCain livened up a bit as he talked about the North Korea deal, at one point comparing the Bush administration's efforts on North Korea with the Clinton Administration's failed diplomacy. "It's a decision that I hope we don't regret over time because the North Koreans have a long pattern of breaking--a long history of breaking agreements that are not verifiable. I was very critical of the Clinton agreement--the Agreed Framework as I recall--because I didn't think that one was verifiable and I don't think this one is verifiable."

Engaging the North Koreans in face-to-face talks at the presidential level as Obama has promised to do would present serious risks, McCain argued, with the potential not only for bad deals but embarrassment. He pointed once again to the Clinton administration, citing Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's meetings in Pyongyang. "She had a very nice experience with children dancing while the gulag--the largest gulag in the world continued to function," he said with obvious contempt.

Read the whole thing here.

Factcheck.org calls Obama's TV ads, which say that McCain will cut Medicare benefits, "a rank distortion."

John McCain took note Monday of Joe Biden’s remarks the day before at a Seattle fundraiser (where Biden apparently didn’t realize at first there were media present). But there’s more McCain could say.

Here’s McCain, in Belton, Missouri:

Just last night, Senator Biden guaranteed that if Senator Obama is elected, we will have an international crisis to test America’s new President. We don’t want a President who invites testing from the world at a time when our economy is in crisis and Americans are already fighting in two wars.

What is more troubling is that Senator Biden told their campaign donors that when that crisis hits, they would have to stand with them because it wouldn't be apparent Senator Obama would have the right response.

Forget apparent. Senator Obama won’t have the right response, and we know that because we’ve seen the wrong response from him over and over during this campaign. He opposed the surge strategy that is bringing us victory in Iraq and will bring us victory in Afghanistan. He said he would sit down unconditionally with the world's worst dictators. When Russia invaded Georgia, Sen. Obama said the invaded country should show restraint.

McCain is right that the last part of Biden’s statement is the most troubling--that when Obama is tested, it won’t be apparent that his response is correct. But what does Biden mean by this? What kind of response by Obama is Biden forecasting?

Take another look at what Biden said:

It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking.... Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy....

I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate… And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you - not financially to help him - we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.

So Biden expects a test of the kind Kennedy faced after his disastrous meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in June, 1961, less than five months into Kennedy’s presidency. Biden’s presumably thinking of the Soviet-backed construction of the Berlin Wall a couple of months later. Kennedy did nothing, and was criticized for his weakness back home.

So--leaving aside the merits of what Kennedy did or didn’t do in 1961--Biden is forecasting that Obama will have what seems to be a weak response to a provocation from, say, Iran or Russia, and he’s urging the liberals of Seattle and elsewhere to stand with Obama against the expected domestic criticism.

In other words, Biden is forecasting inaction by Obama in the face of testing by a dictator. I suspect he’s right in this forecast. McCain might want to clarify this point. It’s not just that Obama’s own running mate expects an international crisis early in his presidency. It’s not just that Obama has a weak foreign policy record. It’s that Biden himself expects what will appear to be a weak response from Obama to testing by a dictator.

Now Biden presumaby thinks such an apparently weak response would be in our long-term interest. But McCain needs to force that debate: “Sen. Obama, will you in fact do nothing in response to a Putin provocation against Ukraine or a final push by Ahmadinejad toward nuclear weapons? Isn’t that what your running mate has forecast? Isn’t it awfully dangerous to forecast weakness on the part of an American president?”

Christopher Hitchens has a piece up at Slate titled: "Speak Up! Stop covering Palin until she gives a press conference."

Hitchens writes that he would like to query the Alaska governor about her views on teaching creationism in school. "There are several other questions I would like to ask her, as, no doubt, would you," he writes. "Lots of luck with that, because it seems that the Grand Old Party intends to go all the way to Election Day without exposing the No. 2 person on its ticket—the person who would become chief executive if President John McCain succumbed to illness—to a press conference."

Tiny problem: Contrary to the impression one might get from watching Palin's SNL skit, the Republican VP nominee held her first full-scale on-camera press conference on October 17. Per CBS News:

"For the first time since becoming a candidate for the vice presidency in late August, Sarah Palin held an on-camera press conference with her full travelling press corps on the short flight from Ohio to Indiana this afternoon."

Now, according to CBS, Palin fielded only 13 questions in this press conference that lasted all of 7 minutes, so one might say this doesn't count as a true press conference. To which I'd respond: "Guys, I mean come on. I just answered like eight questions."

Oh, and I'd also add this CBS News report from today:

In the past two days alone, Palin has answered questions from her national press corps on three separate occasions. On Saturday, she held another plane availability, and on Sunday, she offered an impromptu press conference on the tarmac upon landing in Colorado Springs. A few minutes later, she answered even more questions from reporters during an off-the-record stop at a local ice cream shop.

By contrast, Biden hasn’t held a press conference in more than a month, and Obama hasn’t taken questions from his full traveling press corps since the end of September. John McCain—who spent most of the primary season holding what seemed like one, never-ending media availability—hasn’t done one since Sept. 23.

Though she often turns the “mainstream media” into a punching bag on the stump, Palin clearly enjoys interacting with reporters. She seems to relish the opportunity to demonstrate that her breadth of knowledge far exceeds what she offered to CBS News’ Katie Couric in a series of interviews that were marked by vague, often convoluted answers to straightforward questions.

After her plane [landed] in Colorado Springs, Palin answered no less than 14 questions from the media. It took traveling press secretary Tracey Schmitt three attempts finally to get the governor to move along.

And the New York Times has even more on Palin's latest attempts "to wriggle free of her handlers."

On Sunday night, she twice took questions from reporters, the first time on an airport tarmac without her press staff’s knowledge.

After landing in Colorado Springs late Sunday, Ms. Palin marched over to a local television crew and began answering questions on camera, sending the traveling press corps sprinting in pursuit, and her press staff scrambling. ...

A reporter who transcribed her comments for a pool report later Sunday evening sounded his approval. “In her continuing evolution from the least accessible to the most accessible of the four candidates, Palin took questions from your pooler at the Coldstone Creamery in Colorado Springs.”

(Hat tip: Tom Maguire)

The Washington Post reports: "In the week since posting McCain-Palin signs on its front lawn, a Clinton hotel has reported receiving threatening calls but losing little business in predominantly Democratic Prince George's County, according to a hotel manager and the owner's son."

Michael Chiaramonte, 46, the hotel owner's son and chief executive of Southern Maryland Hospital and chairman of the Greater Prince George's Business Roundtable board of directors, said, "We have gotten to the place where intimidation is used over political disagreement, sadly, and it hurts a little coming from the same community we've worked to support." ...

"There are some who seek to redirect the focus," said Arthur Turner, a community activist. "In Prince George's, where there are no Republican elected officials and voters are overwhelmingly Democrats, to thumb their noses by putting up those signs is likewise disrespectful."

After watching Penn State cream the Wisconsin Badgers a couple Saturdays ago, I caught the local DC metro newscast (which covers Northern Virginia) for perhaps the first time ever. In the two minutes the program dedicated to the presidential campaign, the news anchor slipped in the critical facts that someone had yelled "terrorist" in reference to Obama at a McCain rally and that McCain had shifted from his series of "personal attacks."

Now, the American News Project has a video of McCain supporters confronting a couple of nutjobs preaching the "Obama's a Secret Muslim" line at a McCain rally in Woodbridge, Va. Hopefully this video will help put to rest the notion that McCain rallies have a disproportionate number of crazy people. But for some reason, I doubt it will get much, if any, air time.

(Hat tip: Ben Smith.)

Barack Obama is a generous reviewer, if he offered such kind words about a book written by a guy he hardly knew.

Obama spokesperson Bill Burton says that Barack Obama "did not write a blurb" about the book. When Obama strategist Robert Gibbs was asked if Obama blurbed Ayers's book, Gibbs said "No." The Obama campaign is either lying or parsing language in a way that would put Bill Clinton to shame.

HT: Southern Appeal

Breaking news from Newsweek's Jon Meacham:

"Contrary to caricature, to be conservative is not necessarily to be racist, or retrograde, or close-minded."

Whew. Glad we got that cleared up. (Though you gotta love that "not necessarily," don't ya?)

A growing number of Americans now cast their ballots early. In 2004, more than one out of five voters (22.5%) cast ballots either through absentee or some other form of early voting. That number is expected to rise even more in 2008--maybe as high as 25% nationally, and in some states, even higher. For example, four years ago, early voting accounted for nearly half of Colorado’s turnout (48%) and a third of California’s (33%).

George Mason University political scientist Michael McDonald recently started a blog devoted to monitoring and reporting on early voting. As McDonald notes, some states, such as Georgia, have already surpassed their 2004 early voting totals. He presents state-by-state data analyzing 2004 patterns and the early results for 2008 here.

Update: The McCain campaign hasn't heard anything about the report of a bus being attacked. This makes the following report seem highly unlikely. Neither Raton police nor state police have received reports about such an incident.

The blog item below was posted by Mark Williams, former talk-radio host turned spokesman for Our Country Deserves Better PAC, a group committed to working against an Obama quest for the presidency. He has been on the group's Stop Obama tour, which arrived in Raton about a day after a McCain/Palin bus came through, he said. Williams said he heard the story from several residents of Raton, who said the bus had a shattered window when it arrived in town, and that it had been shattered by some kind of shot during its trip up from southern New Mexico, but he never saw the bus.

A Raton Police spokesperson, who said he's been on his phone all day long with reporters, said if the incident happened, it happened far south of Raton. Several calls to offices south, such as Chavez County Sheriff's Department and the Roswell Police, however, turned up nothing. Looks like this one is firmly in the debunked rumor pile for now, and not likely to move anytime soon.

A report from New Mexico:

We learned at this morning’s Stop Obama Rally here that the McCain/Palin Straight Talk Express came through town yesterday. It arrived with a window shattered by a .22 caliber weapon. It had also been hit by an unknown number of paint balls from a paint ball gun or guns. There were reportedly no injuries and neither candidate was on board.

Get ready for the media saturation! The wringing of hands, the concern about "incitement," the indictment of Obama and Biden for daring to criticize McCain and Palin in such a way that would drive their supporters to this.

H/t Hot Air.

Update: More rage you won't hear about on TV: Obama supporter steals McCain supporter's sign in NYC and bashes her over the head with it.

Update: Don't look now, but here's another one. If only we conservatives would just follow Jon Stewart's example and treat our political adversaries kindly, we wouldn't be in this position.

Michael Tomasky, the liberal editor of Guardian America and a regular contributor to the New York Review, had a fascinating piece in the fortieth anniversary issue of New York magazine last week. It's called "The Day Everything Changed," meaning, the day everything changed for the better in New York. And, perhaps surprisingly (though pleasantly so), Tomasky says that day was January 1, 1994. The day Rudolph W. Giuliani was inaugurated as the mayor of New York City:

By the end of Giuliani’s first year, the city was a visibly different place - made safe, Toronto-ized, starting down the road toward being Olive Garden–ized (yes, there were downsides!); a place that suddenly was no longer the city where Travis Bickle prayed to God for the rain to wash the trash off the sidewalk and where - in real life, not the movies - display ads for porn films actually ran in the Post right alongside the display ads for Smokey and the Bandit (it’s true; a few years ago I went to the Post’s morgue and looked through old issues and saw the ads, and their blurbs screaming 'Full Erection!,' with my own disbelieving eyes). That is inconceivable to us now. But it, and a score of cankers like it, used to be the reality in New York. Lots of forces combined to change that, but the biggest force of all was Rudy.

It's worth noting, of course, that the economic boom of the late 1990s also played a major role in New York's transformation. Which means that the economic downturn will probably have worrisome consequences for America's greatest city (though not worrisome enough to change the laws to satisfy power-hungry billionaires!).

Here's senior Obama military adviser Maj. Gen. Scott Gration (Ret.), to The New Yorker's Nicholas Lemann:

Gration was impatient with the idea that conflict is the natural state of the world, to be managed rather than resolved. “People are more alike than their cultures and religions,” he said. “When Obama talks about global citizens, it’s the same framework. You see, religion and culture - they’re the way people communicate their values. They want stability, order, education. This is just humanness. Then you add on your religion, your culture - that’s how you execute it.” His implication was that if we can get past the religious and cultural identities that serve as host organisms for conflict, and deal with people at the level of their humanity and their basic needs, then we can make real progress - especially if Obama personally holds an office that permits him to set the tone and lead the effort.

Coming soon to an Oval Office near you: the return of Kumbaya foreign policy.

Anger at a McCain-Palin rally, for the press:

“Are you going to check my license, too?” he asked me. “Are you going to check my immigration status? I’m ready, I have everything here. Whatever you want, I have it. I have my green card, I have my passport — “

I was a little surprised. Did Munoz really bring his papers with him to a McCain rally? I asked.

“Yeah, I have my papers right here,” he said. “I’m an American citizen. Right here, right here.” With that, he produced a U.S. passport, turned it to the page with his picture on it, and thrust it about an inch from my nose. “Right here,” he said. “In your face.”

Munoz said he owned a small construction business. “I have a license, if you guys want to check,” he said.

Someone asked why Munoz had come to the rally. “I support McCain, but I’ve come to face you guys because I’m disgusted with you guys,” he said. “Why the hell are you going after Joe the Plumber? Joe the Plumber has an idea. He has a future. He wants to be something else. Why is that wrong? Everything is possible in America. I made it. Joe the Plumber could make it even better than me. . . . I was born in Colombia, but I was made in the U.S.A.”

The scene turned into a mini-fracas when David Corn, of Mother Jones, defended press coverage. Munoz was having none of it. Why, he asked, would the press whack Joe the Plumber when it didn’t want to report on Obama’s relationship with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber? “How come that’s not in the news all the time?” Munoz said. “How come Joe the Plumber is every second? I’m talking about NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN.”

A black woman with a strong Caribbean accent jumped in the fray. “Tell me,” she said to Corn, “why is it you can go and find out about Joe the Plumber’s tax lien and when he divorced his wife and you can’t tell me when Barack Obama met with William Ayers? Why? Why could you not tell us that? Joe the Plumber is me!”

“I am Joe the Plumber!” Munoz chimed in. “You’re attacking me.”

Corn then decided to tell the woman she was better than Joe the Plumber because she pays her taxes. Brilliant move, Dave. Read the whole thing. Many Americans simply don't believe what Obama is serving on taxes.

There are a lot of people, apparently, who really, really dislike Sarah Palin. Fine. They are entitled to their opinion. But their visceral distaste obscures the fact that the public remains fascinated with the governor of Alaska. Consider:

1) Palin's speech at the Republican convention was the highest rated convention speech in history.

2) Palin's debate with Joe Biden was the most-watched of this year's presidential debates, the highest-rated veep debate in history, and drew more viewers than the 1992 three-way presidential debate between Bush 41, Clinton, and Perot.

3) Palin's appearance on Saturday Night Live this weekend gave the show its highest ratings in 14 years.

Shouldn't pundits be spending less time dismissing Palin, and more time investigating the strong pull she exerts on the public?

Joe the Plumber has helped give the McCain campaign its closing economic message. Now Joe the Senator has pitched in by helping frame the national security message. And the McCain campaign needs to get the national security issue back front and center--at least close to the front and near the center--in the final two weeks.

Here's the ad, simply quoting Joe Biden, speaking at a fundraiser in Seattle Sunday:

Mark my words...It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama...Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy....And he's gonna need help....Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right.

ABC News reports that Joe Biden said the following at a fundraiser in Seattle yesterday: "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. ... Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

Translation: Electing Obama guarantees an international crisis. And this is an argument for Obama?

Actually, Biden is probably right. But, if Obama is elected, the question isn't what form that crisis will take. It's when Obama drops Biden from the 2012 ticket.

Joe Biden warns his supporters:

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

Not only will the next administration have to deal with foreign affairs issues, Biden warned, but also with the current economic crisis.

"Gird your loins," Biden told the crowd. "We're gonna win with your help, God willing, we're gonna win, but this is not gonna be an easy ride. This president, the next president, is gonna be left with the most significant task. It's like cleaning the Augean stables, man. This is more than just, this is more than – think about it, literally, think about it – this is more than just a capital crisis, this is more than just markets. This is a systemic problem we have with this economy."

But don't worry. Joe Biden says he'll be Obama's foreign policy tutor: "I've forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know, so I'm not being falsely humble with you. I think I can be value added, but this guy has it."

I don't think anyone has ever accused Joe Biden of being "fasely humble", but at least he has a high enough IQ to realize he ought to shut up after he saw a reporter in the back of the room: "I probably shouldn't have said all this because it dawned on me that the press is here."

Then again, I probably shouldn't give Biden such a hard time. Perhaps he just helped sound the alarm for voters to take another look at Obama and let pre-election buyers' remorse set in. Is Obama really the one we want facing down these threats?

Charles Kesler, editor of the Claremont Review of Books, has a brilliant new piece in the CRB's fall issue outlining Barack Obama's political thought.

Kesler explains Obama's estimation of his ability to change the world:

Eager to find himself by finding a community to which he could belong, he was struck, nonetheless, by the flaws or limits of every race, culture, and country he encountered. Unlike other intelligent human beings who have made the same discovery, Obama did not lower his expectations but decided that, just as he could and did choose to refashion his own identity, communities could do the same, with a little help.

Kesler is especially critical of Obama's interpretation of the American Founding:

Obama soon makes clear that Jefferson and the other founders were less than faithful to the universal principles they proclaimed. Like a good law professor, he lines up evidence and argument on both sides before concluding that, in fact, the founders probably did not understand those principles as universal but rather as confined to the white race. The "spirit of liberty," he writes, "didn't extend, in the minds of the founders, to the slaves who worked their fields, made their beds, and nursed their children." In the end, then, Obama's interpretation is the opposite of Lincoln's, who devoted some of his finest pages to proving that the founders regarded slavery as a moral and political evil because it violated the rights of man.

As it happens, Sen. Obama's understanding of the Founders' political thought on the slavery question isn't entirely unlike another Illinois senator from long ago.

And, on the audacity of hope:

Audacity is a curious word with two meanings, which reflect a genuine moral ambiguity. It means both boldness, daring, confidence--and reckless daring, rashness, foolhardiness. It can be a good or a bad thing, a virtue or a vice. Hope, by contrast, is a passion; in the language of the medieval schools, hope aims at a future, arduous, and possible good. It doesn't always attain that good, however. There is also hope as a theological virtue, but presumably Obama doesn't mean to offer eternal happiness to his followers. His vision is of earthly happiness, wholeness, and justice. As he explained to Americans in 2004, in his debut at the Democratic National Convention, his name, Barack, means "blessed."

Kesler also takes a look at Obama's health care dreams for the day when Americans are able to come together in unity and elect large majorities of Democrats in Congress with a Democratic president. Read the whole thing.

Barack Obama's short time on the national stage means he offers little in the way of a track record as to how he would govern as president. One of his great successes as a candidate is to be all things to all audiences. As National Journal points out, that's particularly true on school choice. It's one issue where he has an official stance -- he opposes it -- but it doesn't stop him from seeming to agree with whoever the current audience is:

In February, Obama seemed open to the idea of private-school vouchers. In an editorial board meeting with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, he was asked about his opposition to Wisconsin's voucher program. If he saw more proof that vouchers are successful, Obama said, he would "not allow my predispositions to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn.... You do what works for the kids."

But at the American Federation of Teachers convention this year, Obama repeated his attack against spending government money to help low-income students attend private schools. He criticized John McCain's school-choice reform as "using public money for private-school vouchers," and he called instead for overhauling public schools.

The blogosphere has been buzzing over Obama's perspective on vouchers. Pro-voucher blogs praise the Democratic nominee for showing some willingness to consider vouchers as a viable alternative. Some critics, meanwhile, say that Obama flip-flopped in the Milwaukee interview, and some argue that the interview did not indicate a shift toward vouchers.

So Obama opposes vouchers, but he won't 'stand in the way' of a better education for our kids. What a concession. And now, in the latest debate, he sent signals to supporters of public school choice that he's really with them after all! That's according to Mickey Kaus. Kaus points out that in the latest debate, Obama had kind words for D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. Rhee is pretty unpopular with the D.C. teachers' union, notably because of her openness to school choice.

Speaking to a college audience in Boston, Mass. Friday, "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart used his stand-up routine to respond to Sarah Palin's comments about "pro-America" parts of the country, shedding the profanity restrictions that govern his Comedy Central show.

"She said that small towns, that's the part of the country she really likes going to because that's the pro-America part of the country. You know, I just want to say to her, just very quickly: [expletive] you," Stewart said to raucous applause.

Palin addressed a North Carolina fund-raiser Thursday night saying, "We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. We believe...that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation."

The comment was quickly picked up by media outlets and the Obama campaign, whose spokesman Bill Burton asked in an e-mail to reporters, "What part of the country isn’t pro-America?"

Stewart didn't let his own harsh language stop him from criticizing John McCain and Palin for divisiveness.

"I can't take it anymore...After eight years of this divisiveness, we're back to this idea that only small-town America is the real America," he said.

The Manhattan native accused the Republicans of "writing off whole swaths of the country," saying "cities are just a lot of towns piled on top of each other in one place. "

During the same routine, however, he seemed to write off Palin's rural swath of the country, referring to the governor's home not as Alaska, Wasilla, or Juneau, but as "the woods."

"McCain made an interesting vice presidential choice," he said. "I like the woods...I just don't know if I would pull my vice president out of the woods randomly."

Stewart also joked about Palin's recent statements on Barack Obama's links to domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and Obama's abortion stances, distorting her statements:

"I've never seen someone with a greater disparity between how cute they sound when they're saying something and how terrible what they're saying is," he said, launching into an impression of Palin. "Don'tcha know, Obama, by golly, he just is a terrorist?... Oh, you know, he just, gosh, kills babies, you know."

Palin has referred to the relationship between Obama and Ayers by saying Obama "pals around with terrorists." She has also attacked his opposition to a state version of the federal Born Alive Infant Protection Act during his time in the Illinois senate, which would have required that medical care be given to infants born alive during attempted abortions.

The media has devoted hundreds of stories of late to the tenor of audience comments at McCain-Palin rallies, fretting about "rage" and "incitement" by the campaign, but the only account of Stewart's appearance is a one-sentence mention in the Boston Globe, and his abusive Palin comments are not included.

Below is video of Stewart's comments, with the audio improved as much as possible (earphones may help). A rough transcript of the video is after the jump. Please observe a content warning for bad language and some crass jokes:

You can tell she's a Republican. They were meaner to her than they have been to other candidates— Alec Baldwin calling her "that horrible woman"— and did little to lift her up aside from Alec Baldwin calling her "way hotter in person." Palin performed very well, though, reacting appropriately to Baldwin's razzing rather than standing there vacantly, as most politicians would. Her close on "Weekend Update" is also expertly done. Anyone can say what they will about her— the woman is a performer.

They should have done her a solid by adding a "spreading the wealth" joke that would have played to her political strengths. It's the least they can do for pounding on her.

The rap is funny, ridiculous, SNL fare, and Palin does Republicans proud by finding the beat as she dances along and "raising the roof" more than respectably. The reaction moment when Fey and Palin cross paths in the first scene is totally wasted, but that's SNL's fault for not writing it longer.

Despite the legendary "cool" quotient of Democratic candidates, McCain and Palin perform worlds better than either the stilted Hillary or the humorless Obama have on SNL. I bet even Fey would have to admit it after last night.

In Miami, Fla:

You may have noticed -- there was a lot of talk about Senator Obama's tax increases and Joe the Plumber. Last weekend, Senator Obama showed up in Joe's driveway to ask for his vote, and Joe asked Senator Obama a tough question. I'm glad he did; I think Senator Obama could use a few more tough questions.

The response from Senator Obama and his campaign yesterday was to attack Joe. People are digging through his personal life and he has TV crews camped out in front of his house. He didn't ask for Senator Obama to come to his house. He wasn't recruited or prompted by our campaign. He just asked a question. And Americans ought to be able to ask Senator Obama tough questions without being smeared and targeted with political attacks.

The question Joe asked about our economy is important, because Senator Obama's plan would raise taxes on small businesses that employ 16 million Americans. Senator Obama's plan will kill those jobs at just the time when we need to be creating more jobs. My plan will create jobs, and that's what America needs.

Good for him. Meanwhile, Obama's out there mocking Joe:

“A plumber is the guy he’s fighting for.”

The crowd laughs at Joe the Plumber.

Obama: “How many plumbers you know are making a quarter-million dollars are year?”

Update: Allah Pundit's post on this exchange has a more full quote than the above, which he suggests changes the nature of the exchange. I don't think it gets Obama off the hook, as the second part of the quote was just as offensive as the first part could have been considered, but here's the whole quote, nonetheless.

“He’s trying to suggest that a plumber is the guy he’s fighting for,” Obama said. “How many plumbers you know that are making a quarter-million dollars a year?”

While the media and Left blogs continue to dig into Joe's personal life and affairs for asking The One a question.

If Obama were truly a purveyor of a new kind of politics or a decent leader, in any sense of the word, he'd stick a different sentence into his stump speech. Something like, "Hey, everyone chill out. Joe is a man who asked me a question. As presidential candidates, John McCain and I have faced plenty of tough questions. The good citizens who ask those questions don't deserve to be torn down for their efforts."

Obama's frowning upon the practice would go a long way toward quelling the bad practice of vetting every townhall and ropeline questioner as if he were a Supreme Court justice.

But you see, Obama is not a man of new politics or leadership. He is a man who endorses raising the cost of free speech for everyone who disagrees with him. He is a man who sends out Action WIre alerts to mobilize voters to shout down detractors who appear on the radio. He is a man who sends letters to the Department of Justice to ask it to investigate political ads that aren't even inaccurate, much less criminal.

Joe's experience is making every sensible American voter wonder whether it's worth asking their representatives that question they have on their minds. The man who talks endlessly about the value of getting new Americans involved in the democratic process is allowing their intimidation without comment.

It seems Obama only approves of getting dead people, cartoons, and the Dallas Cowboys involved, via voter registration fraud. Mickey Mouse just don't talk back like Joe the Plumber does.

Exit the hullabaloo of American politics for five skinny minutes.

Why? Well, to see history happen: Across the pond, Queen Elizabeth II just posted her first YouTube video at Google’s British headquarters in London. And, of course, someone YouTubed her majesty YouTube-ing. Check it out here. You won’t be disappointed--unless you expected Her Majesty’s merry Corgis to make cameo appearances. Maybe they’ll give a yap or two on the next royal vid.

An AP caption describes those pictured in this photo as "Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., [who] are dressed as Joe the Plumber":

But CBS News reveals that one of the guys is a leader of the College Republicans, and although another is, in fact, a plumber, he's not even an American! So it turns out McCain supporters dressed up as Joe the Plumber are really McCain supporters ... dressed up as Joe the Plumber.

In other news, John McCain is not really a Georgian.

An ordinary citizen speaks up about how federal policies affect his family and his pocketbook, and bloggers dive into his personal life. His finances, his address, his background and family connections are all splashed all over the Internet as bloggers line up to debate whether the instant celebrity is all he appears to be. Many feel he's concealing enough about his background to make his opinion worthless.

Next the media steps in to defend the ordinary guy. Time Magazine's Karen Tumulty says he's being swift-boated. The New York Times says he's being slimed. One partisan blogger says the other side ought to stop 'snooping around.' Another accuses adversaries of launching 'a baseless smear campaign.' Commenters at Democratic Underground label those at Free Republic 'scum' for investigating his personal life.

That's right: Democratic Underground, Paul Krugman, DailyKos, Crooks and Liars, ThinkProgress, Time Magazine, and lots of others on the Left were defenders of privacy when Graeme Frost delivered the weekly Democratic radio address regarding SChip. To the Left, it didn't matter that Frost, with his parents' approval (prodding?), had specifically chosen to make himself a spokesman of the Democratic party; his personal life was still sacrosanct. Those who investigated his background were beneath contempt.

'Joe the Plumber,' on the other hand, simply asked a question and state a position when Barack Obama knocked on his door. And that was enough for the defenders of privacy on the Left to scour his background and destroy his livelihood.

Barack Obama has improved his standing among a variety of voter subgroups since mid-September based on Gallup’s recent polling. I noted his positive move among seniors in a post last week. The latest subgroup analysis released from Gallup reveals another interesting shift: a notable swing toward Obama since mid-September among men. But in this highly volatile economic and political environment, it’s possible these numbers might have shifted back toward McCain in the last week.

Looking at the Gallup tracking since early August, McCain consistently led among men by 5-8 points (he also trailed among women by double digits expect for a week or two after the GOP convention when the gap narrowed, but Obama now leads among women by 14 points).

But in the most recent voter analysis, McCain trails Obama among men by 5 points, the first time he has not led this subgroup in the Gallup tracking.

These numbers, however, are only based on data from October 6-12, and don’t include the most recent tracking data Gallup released last night.

The newest Gallup numbers show Obama leading the horserace matchup by 6 points (51%-45%) using their “expanded” turnout model that assumes higher than normal turnout among minorities and younger voters. It also shows a 2-point difference (Obama 49%-McCain 47%) using Gallup’s traditional turnout model.

While Gallup won’t post the gender breakdown of the most recent tracking until next week, I assume McCain has closed the gap again among men within the last week if McCain has indeed turned this into a 2-6 point race overall.

You can read Gallup’s full subgroup analysis here.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton sends an email to reporters with the subject line: "Just asking: What part of the country isn't pro-America?"

Burton writes:

From the Washington Post today: …Palin also made a point of mentioning that she loved to visit the "pro-America" areas of the country, of which North Carolina is one.

To answer Burton: the home of former domestic terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn--where a campaign event for Obama was held in 1995--is at least one place in the union that isn't "pro-America". Also, Burton might recall there are a few radical churches in America that hate this country. You know, places like Fred Phelps's Westboro Baptist Church and Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church.

A few weeks ago Congressman Tim Mahoney led his Republican challenger by 7 points, according to the challenger's own polls. Now he trails by 26:

A new Republican poll indicates Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Fla.) is the most endangered incumbent in the country days after a news report showed he paid a former mistress hush money.

The poll, released Friday and conducted for Republican Tom Rooney’s campaign and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), shows a big shift in the race, which Mahoney had been leading. He is now behind Rooney, 55 percent to 29 percent, with 16 percent of voters undecided.

House Democratic leaders are hoping to avoid any questions about Tim Mahoney, and what they knew about his affairs. As Politico reported last night, Minority Leader John Boehner is pushing hard to make sure that the Democratic leadership is properly investigated:

The Associated Press reported today that the FBI has begun a "preliminary investigation" into the Mahoney case. Both Mahoney and Pelosi have already called for a House ethics committee probe into the matter.

“I am requesting that you immediately take all steps necessary to ensure the offices of Rep. Rahm Emanuel, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Rep. Tim Mahoney, the Office of Compliance, and House Information Resources, as well as your own office, preserve and protect all documents, e-mails, electronic communications, transmissions, and the like related to allegations surrounding Ms. Allen’s employment until an investigation into this matter is complete," Boehner said in a letter today to Pelosi, House Administration Committee Chairman Robert Brady (D-Pa.). Clerk of the House Lorraine Miller and Chief Administrative Office Daniel Beard.

In case you missed it, country singer Hank Williams Jr. performed his new song "The McCain-Palin Tradition" at the McCain-Palin rally in Virginia on Monday:

Lyrics after the jump:

Jonathan Martin reports:

Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana governor widely seen as a Republican rising star, will keynote a high-profile Christian conservative fundraising dinner next month in Iowa, his office confirms.

Jindal will speak at the Iowa Family Policy Center's “Celebrating the Family” banquet in suburban Des Moines on November 22nd, according to his spokeswoman, Melissa Sellers. While in the state, he also may to go to Cedar Rapids to see some of those areas impacted by the summer floods. Jindal, of course, has led his state's recovery from Katrina since being elected in 2007.

It will be Jindal's first visit to Iowa, Sellers said.

The trip is a reminder that, even with a presidential election looming, caucus politics is never far away in the Hawkeye State.

Members of the press were quite pleased that their muckracking exposed Joe the Plumber's lack of a plumber's license and unpaid taxes.

Turns out Obama's campaign treasurer owes taxes as well. When will the media vet Obama's associates? And Obama?

In his comments at New York's Al Smith Dinner, McCain had the audience in stitches from start to finish. My personal favorite line: "It's gonna be a long, long night at MSNBC if I pull this off."

HT: Ace

Via Ed Morrissey, USA Today has an editorial against Card Check--a provision in the Employee Free Choice Act that would deny workers the right to a secret ballot in elections to establish unions:

This misguided measure passed the House shortly after Democrats took the majority in 2007. But it needs several more votes in the Senate and a president who will sign it. Barack Obama supports it; John McCain does not. It's no surprise, then, that the AFL-CIO plans to spend an eye-popping $200 million this election cycle to support Obama and Democratic candidates for Congress. A win for Obama and big gains for Senate Democrats could remove the remaining obstacles to the euphemistically named "Employee Free Choice Act."

Cajoled choice is more like it. The proposed change would give unions and pro-union employees more incentive to use peer pressure, or worse, to persuade reluctant workers to sign their cards. And without elections, workers who weren't contacted by union organizers would have no say in the final outcome.

Labor leaders, such as AFL-CIO President John Sweeney in the space below, argue that the proposed law wouldn't prohibit private balloting. This is accurate but misleading. Union organizers would have no reason to seek an election if they had union cards signed by more than 50% of workers. And if they had less than a majority, they'd be unlikely to call for a vote they'd probably lose.

John McCain has an unlikely ally in his opposition to this bill: George McGovern. The former Democratic presidential candidate has cut an ad and appeared on TV news programs to sound the alarm about this anti-democratic legislation that would almost certainly be enacted under an Obama administration:

Focusing attention on the EFCA might help McCain make the case for divided government and highlight Obama's extremism. On the other hand, a GOP congressional campaign manager tells me that this issue won't move votes, saying that "no one understands it" and "when you only have limited ammunition you pick your spots. Taxes and spending are the best hits we have" in an environment where the economy is voters' top concern. If that's the case, McCain could do worse than continue to hammer Obama's professed desire to tax and "spread the wealth."

Via Ross Douthat, read Jay Cost's analysis of the "Palin Effect".

Last week, Michael Barone wrote a column about Obama supporter's various attempts to silence critics titled "The Coming Obama Thugocracy." Sunday's Washington Post carried another example to be added to the list.

Last week a hotel in Prince George's County posted a McCain message on its maquee, reading: "Country first. McCain-Palin." There was an outcry from local citizens who threatened to boycott the hotel unless the owner took the sign down.

That's not particularly noteworthy--direct action and talking with your wallet is how these things are supposed to work. What is exceptional, however, is the language used by some of the people who were upset that the hotel's owner would dare support McCain or double-dare advertise said support. A sample of the hysteria:

"Businesspeople have to be mindful of the sentiments and sensibilities of their market trading area, and Prince George's County is overwhelmingly for Obama," said community activist Arthur Turner of Kettering, who was among those advocating a boycott. "People I have talked to look at the sign as a slap in the face. They feel it was blatant disrespect."

And:

The marquee supporting the GOP ticket in "an area that is strongly African American was like putting a stink bomb in the middle of the living room," said University of Maryland political Professor Ron Walters.

That's right, supporting John McCain is blatantly disrespectful, like a stink bomb in someone's living room. Imagine how unbearable it would be for people to actually criticize a President Obama.

John Murtha has taken some pretty stiff criticism for slandering his constituents as racists -- and deservedly so. But it's worth looking at the rest of his recent interview to get a sense of how he views the credit crunch. Here's how Murtha describes how we got into this financial mess:

Six months ago they said to me... Paul Kanjorski - who's on the Banking Committee said 'Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac aren't going to make it. A hundred banks are going to go bankrupt.' I said 'well what the hell are we doing about it? What do you mean?' I could hardly believe that. Finally the president kept saying things are all right. Well the president has no credibility. When he says something nobody believes that.

And so finally Bernanke and Paulson came over. Scared the hell out of us. I mean, scared us... made us... convinced us that we had to do something. And of course they sent a 3 pages thing over -- an open door.'

It's amazing that even after all the discussion about this crisis over the last few weeks, Murtha is either so oblivious to current events, or so non-plussed about not telling the truth. In September, 2003, the president proposed a new agency to oversee Fannie and Freddie because they were extended too far. In May, 2005, John McCain warned of the threat faced by the two GSEs. There were literally dozens of warnings from the White House. And John Murtha takes so little interest in the issue that the first inkling he had of trouble was when Paul Kanjorski told him 6 months ago? Murtha paints a picture that does not reflect reality. He is either foolish or dishonest--or both.

And what of Kanjorski? Murtha says that Kanjorski knew 6 months ago that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were going under. That was well before the severity of the problem became fully apparent.

Where were Kanjorski's warnings, and call for an immediate response? There's nothing on his website to indicate that he warned of the coming trouble. There's nothing in the Congressional Record from the period. No alarmed letters to the Treasury Secretary. No television interviews where he warned of impending trouble. As far as can be discerned from the public record, Kanjorski saw what was coming and did...nothing.

Of course, Kanjorski had a good reason to avoid being seen as a critic of FNMA and FMAC. But if he knew the trouble that was coming -- as Murtha asserts -- and still did nothing, then Kanjorski has more questions to answer.

During last night's debate, Obama claimed that all of John McCain's ads have been negative:

Obama: And 100 percent, John, of your ads -- 100 percent of them have been negative.

McCain: It's not true.

Obama: It absolutely is true. And, now, I think the American people are less interested in our hurt feelings during the course of the campaign than addressing the issues that matter to them so deeply.

But professor Ken Goldstein of the Wisconsin Advertising Project issues a statement that the candidates have aired about the same amount of negative ads:

from June 4 to October 4, we found that 47 percent of the McCain spots were negative (completely focused on Obama), 26 percent were positive (completely focusing on his own personal story or on his issues or proposals) and 27 percent were contrast ads (a mix of positive and negative messages).

But what about Obama? Our analysis reveals that 39 percent of all general election Obama TV ads have been positive (solely about his record, positions or personal story), 35 percent have been negative (solely focused on McCain) and 25 percent have been contrast ads - mixing a bit of both. So, on a proportional basis, the McCain campaign is and has been more negative than Obama.

But, Obama has aired over 50,000 more ads than McCain. So, hasn’t he simply aired more of everything - including negative ads - than McCain has this year, or than anyone in history, as McCain may have alleged?

If one just looks at pure airings of negative ads, McCain has aired more than Obama. If one allocates contrast ads as half positive and half negative or considers contrast ads as negative - as the Advertising Project does - the tone of the McCain and Obama campaigns has been absolutely identical.

I've long thought that Starbucks was an excellent indicator of America's economic health because it was a well-run company whose product is the perfect embodiment of affordable, expendable luxury. If consumers really are anxious about their economic lives, a daily SBUX purchase is the easiest thing to do without.

Earlier this year SBUX announced the first store closings in company history on the heels of its first-ever decline in sales. That looked pretty grim. Chief Howard Schultz did a lot of other tinkering, including closing every store for a couple hours on a February to re-teach the "art of coffee." Schultz maintained that SBUX's core concept was still viable and that the problems the company was experiencing were of its own making: that they had gotten away from selling good coffee and become too invested in side-missions.

The blog Starbucks Gossip carries an item reporting on a new corporate directive from Seattle: During the "art of coffee" in service, baristas were taught to pull espresso shots into glass shot glasses so they could inspect the quality before tossing the shot into your drink cup. Now that's out the window: Starbucks baristas are being told to pull espresso shots directly into the end-user's cup.

Here's the note of one barista:

According to the action item, Starbucks labor scheduling system added 5 seconds labor for each drink to use the shot glasses. Apparently that five seconds per drink is just too expensive for the company and they will now withdraw the five seconds labor and allow baristas to drop shots directly into the cup.

Why is this noteworthy? Because it signals something foundational about Starbucks: The company has decided that the quality of its product isn't what has hurt them. Instead, the new espresso regime is an admission that it's the economic environment that is weighing on SBUX. This may seem obvious to you or me, but it wasn't obvious to the management at Starbucks. And now that they've come face-to-face with reality, they'll finally start grappling with the question of whether or not there's actually a market for $4 lattés in the current environment.

We should all hope the answer is yes.

It's more volatile than the stock market!

Yesterday, western Pennsylvania was a "racist area" according to its Congressman John Murtha.

Today, it's no longer racist. Whew!

He issued the following statement today: “I apologize for making the comment that ‘Western Pennsylvania is a racist area.’

“While we cannot deny that race is a factor in this election, I believe we’ve been able to look beyond race these past few months, and that voters today are concerned with the policy differences of our two candidates and their vision for the future of our great country.

An interesting take from Windsor Mann in the Examiner today.

Why is Obama, who spent the first half of 2008 denouncing the politics of fear, all of the sudden trying to scare voters? The candidate of change changed his mind, I suspect, because he decided it was time to face reality.

He recognized a basic truth: Fear is what successful campaigns are all about, and pretending otherwise is stupid and naïve. Candidates can’t be scared of scaring voters if they want to win. There’s a reason politicians use fear: It works.

So, Mann argues, Obama is practicing "the economics of fear."

In a speech last week, Obama suggested that, without him in the White House guiding the economy, “it will be harder for you to get a mortgage for your home or the loans you need to buy a car or send your children to college…. Thousands of businesses could close. Millions of jobs could be lost. A long and painful recession could follow.”

Not exactly a message of hope.

An avid reader of old Democratic playbooks, Obama is doing his best to scare the bejesus out of old people. His campaign is running ads warning seniors that John McCain’s Social Security policies will “gamble with your life savings.”

Another Obama ad says McCain supports “cutting Social Security benefits in half”—a claim that FactCheck.org called “a falsehood sure to frighten seniors who rely on their Social Security checks.”

I have to leave town before Sarah Palin speaks near Greensboro today, at Elon College, which is a shame because she's appearing with Hank Williams, Jr.

Her visit will be the third this week from the candidates in what has been a solidly Republican state in presidential elections for decades. John McCain will be here again on Saturday.

It's by no means a good sign that they're having to spend this much time in the Tarheel State just a couple weeks before Election Day, but I'm heartened by the fact that they're still spending significant time in Pennsylvania, and popping up in Maine and N.H.

Barack Obama still faces challenges in North Carolina. Parts of the Sandhills and the Appalachians are full of blue-collar Democrats who have been in play in presidential politics since Reagan turned them into Reagan Democrats. The polls are close here, but they were also close pre-Democratic primary, when Obama beat Hillary by 14 points.

It's not inconceivable that Obama's support is being underestimated once again, but in a tour of several counties that fit the blue-collar, Southern Democrat profile this week, the Obama apathy was palpable. These places went for Kerry in 2004, though not happily or overwhelmingly, but the number of signs and stickers posted for the Democratic candidate this time around were far fewer than I remember in the last presidential election year.

"The lesser of two evils again," they griped. "I don't see what people see in him (Obama). He's an empty suit."

Most of the folks in these counties will likely vote for Democrats for governor, but they haven't been reliable Democrats for presidential candidates for years. Obama's liberalism and his well-publicized comments about rural voters combined with McCain as a known and admired quantity made for much more overt support for him than Obama among people I spoke with, and along the roads I drove.

Survey USA now reports the number of people who say they have “already voted” in many of its pre-election polls. This is an important tool to gauge how the presidential race is unfolding among those who have already cast their ballots.

Nate Silver looks at these results from five states (NC, GA, OH, NM and IA). It appears Obama’s efforts to boost turnout through a strong ground game are paying off. The Survey USA polls show large double-digit leads for the Democratic nominee in four of the five states (NM +23, OH +18, IA +34 and NC +34). Obama holds his “smallest” lead among early voters in Georgia, +6.

A few important caveats are in order. First, these are poll results, not actual vote counts. So like with any survey, there are issues such as sampling problems and margin of error. Second, as Silver notes, early voters are staunch partisans, which means John McCain is probably not losing a big share of the “persuadable” universe. Very few of those who already voted would have changed their minds in the last three weeks of the campaign.

You might also ask if Democrats traditionally make up the biggest proportion of the early voting universe. Not so, writes Silver:

According to a study by Kate Kenski at the University of Arizona, early voters leaned Republican in both 2000 and 2004; with Bush earning 62.2 percent of their votes against Al Gore, and 60.4 percent against John Kerry

Here’s the bottom line according to Silver:

What these results would seem to suggest, however, is that there are fairly massive advantages for the Democrats in enthusiasm and/or turnout operations. They imply that Obama is quite likely to turn out his base in large numbers; the question is whether the Republicans will be able to do the same.

Good question….

Joe's all over the place today. On "Nightline" last night, he told Terry Moran:

"To be honest with you, that infuriates me," plumber Joe Wurzelbacher told Nightline's Terry Moran. "It's not right for someone to decide you made too much---that you've done too good and now we're going to take some of it back."

"That's just completely wrong," he added.

He went on to rail against progressive taxation further:

"I don't like it," said Wurzelbacher. "You know, me or -- you know, Bill Gates, I don't care who you are. If you worked for it, if it was your idea, and you implemented it, it's not right for someone to decide you made too much."

Joe Biden kept it classy by questioning the motives and honesty of Joe Wurzelbacher:

Our friends on the Left show their respect for the working men who happen to ask them inconvenient questions by putting up "crack" pictures, alleging he's a McCain plant, and devoting multiple discussion threads to tearing him down on DU.

Ben Smith is looking into whether Joe is registered to vote.

God speed, Joe. The national election arena can be a rough one to be thrown into. Just ask Sarah Palin. But all the hassle, background checking, and even abuse is in a politician's job description, not a plumber's.

Update: He is registered, as a Republican:

Linda Howe, executive director of the Lucas County Board of Elections, said a Samuel Joseph Worzelbacher, whose address and age match Joe the Plumber’s, registered in Lucas County on Sept. 10, 1992. He voted in his first primary on March 4, 2008, registering as a Republican.

All those on the Left who have been touting Obama's ability to pull Republican voters will now suddenly decide that being a Republican invalidates Joe's criticism entirely.

Joe's feeling the spotlight's heat:

"There's a lot more important issues than me, and I'm starting to feel a little uncomfortable with it," he said. "Everyone's more worried about what Joe the Plumber has to say than what Obama or McCain has to say."

The New York Times's Julie Bosman writes:

Memo to Barack Obama: It could be dangerous to mess with the national pasttime.

Yet that is what Mr. Obama has done in trying to buy a 30-minute block of time on Oct. 29 on three networks — including Fox News, which just happens to be running the World Series.

Because of the request, Major League Baseball has agreed to push back the first pitch that night.

That immediately drew the rebuke of the Republican National Committee, which portrayed the ad buy as another example of Mr. Obama putting himself first. (The theme of Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, is “Country First.”)

“It’s unfortunate that the World Series’ first pitch is being delayed for Obama’s political pitch,” Alex Conant, a spokesman for the R.N.C., said in a statement. He added later, via instant message, of Mr. Obama: “He puts himself first – literally.”

I'm not sure, tactically, that it makes sense for the McCain campaign to use the Bill Ayers attacks against Barack Obama. But I do think it's a perfectly legitimate issue and one that has been sidelined by the news media who have refused to ask what I consider to be a pretty obvious question: If Chicago Mayor Richard Daley says of Barack Obama and Ayers "they're friends," why is it improper for Sarah Palin to call them "pals?"

I put this question to David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs, two of Obama's top two advisers, in the spin room after the debate.

Here is the Axelrod exchange:

TWS: If Mayor Daley has said that they're friends -- quote, unquote -- about Ayers and Obama, why is it out of line for Sarah Palin to say that they're pals? What's the difference there?

Axelrod: Well, I think Senator Obama explained what the relationship was. He served on boards -- on school reform boards with him, along with the publisher of the Chicago Tribune, the head of the biggest business organization in the city, some of the corporate leaders there, and so on, and if they were guilty of "palling around" under the Palin -- then Senator McCain should say so. Several of those people were Republicans. I would daresay some of them are supporting him. I don't -- let's call this out for what this is. It is exactly what the McCain campaign said: They don't want to talk about the economy because they feel if they have to talk about the economy, they will lose. And the problem is that the American people are losing every day and they need us to discuss the economy.

TWS: But how do you explain Mayor Daley's comments. I mean, why would he say that they're friends if you say that they're not?

Axelrod: Well, I don't know. I can't speak --

TWS: That's a direct quote.

Axelrod: Ask Mayor Daley about that.

And Gibbs:

TWS: On Obama and Ayers. You've got Mayor Daley saying they're friends. Why can he describe Barack Obama and Bill Ayers as friends but Sarah Palin can't say they're pals? What's the discrepancy there?

Gibbs: Well, I -- now I -- I don't want to -- I don't know what Mayor Daley said and I don't want to get into the business of parsing the words of Governor Palin. I think what you heard tonight and what you've heard for the last two weeks is Senator Obama describe -- describe what he knows and describe what John McCain says the American people need to know. And I think -- then he went on to talk about the issues that the American people care about. You know, I think if you look at some of the national polling