Recently in McCain, Mythical Maverick? Category

"'I'm here tonight to say a few words about an American hero I have come to know very well and admire very much -- Sen. John McCain. And then, according to the rules agreed to by both parties, John will have approximately 30 seconds to make a rebuttal.'" Now here's a prez worth hugging...On the eve of his inauguration, Sen. Obama publicly makes nice with his former adversary, John McCain.

And, apparently it's not just for show: According to the NYT, the president-elect has been trying to forge a bond with McCain (and his No. 2, Lindsey Graham) since soon after the election. "Mr. Obama arrived for their Chicago meeting on Nov. 16 with several well-researched proposals to collaborate on involving some of Mr. McCain’s favorite causes, including a commission to cut 'corporate welfare,' curbing waste in military procurement and an overhaul of immigration rules."

Hey, rapprochement is good, bipartisanship is good. And working Senators McCain and Graham (and, I'd presume Maine's moderates, Snowe and Collins) is simply smart politics. Still, when push inevitably comes to shove on Iraq, health care, and a host of other issues, hopefully the president-elect will remember to dance with who brung him.

"'The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of "a few bad apples" acting on their own,' the panel concludes. 'The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees." A new bipartisan report by the Senate Armed Services Committee lays the blame for detainee abuse squarely on Donald Rumsfeld and his top deputies. "Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority."

Also of note, the statement today by Sen. John McCain, the ranking GOP member who signed off on the investigation: "The committee’s report details the inexcusable link between abusive interrogation techniques used by our enemies who ignored the Geneva Conventions and interrogation policy for detainees in U.S. custody. These policies are wrong and must never be repeated." It's good to be on the same page again, Senator.

So, here we are at last. After the interminable Democratic primary, the mile-high heights of Denver, the RNC's sputtering lows, all the ignominious Palin follies, and the ugly throes of conservative crack-up we've witnessed over the past month or so, it's at long last decision time.

Not that it's going to be any big surprise to you, but I myself will be voting for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, for the reasons I listed back in January and for many others, and I strongly encourage you to do the same.

Of course, voting for Obama tomorrow is a much easier call than choosing among the Democratic field a year ago. If any undecided voters actually swing by GitM (a proposition I highly doubt), well, all you really need to know right now is this:

That's it. End of story. If you think Dubya was right 90% of the time, that everything from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina to the sub-prime mortgage meltdown to national embarrassments such as Gitmo and Abu Ghraib were handled smoothly -- heck, even competently -- by this administration, then John McCain is your man. If you don't, then you should vote Obama.

Similarly, if you think Congress should spend more time pursuing the interests of immensely wealthy corporations and K-street lobbyists rather than representing the American people, that criminals like Duke Cunningham, Boss DeLay, and "Casino Jack" Abramoff should be allowed to plunder the nation's coffers for personal gain, and that the House and Senate should really be devoting their time to such all-consuming issues as flag burning and the fate of poor Terri Schiavo, then you should vote Republican. If, on the other hand, you want to finally move past all that, and help see real change enacted in this country under a President Obama, then you should vote for your Democratic House and Senate candidates, as I plan to.

Now, of course, I myself would take it farther than that. Y'see, I personally don't believe that conservatism works as a governing philosophy -- it never has, and it never will. You wouldn't ask a vegetarian to prepare you a steak, and you don't hire someone who despises government and/or sees it only as his personal bankroll to run a country for you. Unlike the faith-based arguments of all too many Republicans out there, I'd submit that we've got almost two decades of data now to back this assertion up. But, you don't have to take it that far, if you don't want to -- Just look at the record of the last eight years, and that should help clarify who to vote for tomorrow.

As for McCain himself, well, I confess, I'm disappointed in the man. If we'd seen the candidate who ran in 2000, the one who deplored all the right-wing pettiness, racism, and wingnuttery he's now wallowing in, we might've had the first win-win choice for president since...I dunno, Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes in 1916? (Update: Upon more reflection, I'll say since Ike and Adlai in '56.) But, the Saruman analogy holds here too. In pursuit of power, McCain turned from that path a long time ago -- he enabled the Dubya administration in its idiocies, he began to coddle the hardcore right-wing fundies rather than stand up to them, he sold out his own campaign finance reform stance, and he even started to traffick in the same lowest-common-denominator, Rovian filth that was used to bring him low in South Carolina eight years ago. His choice of Sarah Palin for veep, so pathetically craven in its attempt to appease the stark raving fundies and grab disgruntled Clinton voters, was merely the cherry on top.

In short, when the worst impulses of right-wing gutter politics came a-knockin' at his door, John McCain -- for whatever reason -- blinked, and completely caved to their onslaught. In this election campaign, he has put His Own Ambition First, and in so doing, he has sold his soul. For the choices he's made during this election season alone, John McCain has lost any credibility he might've had to serve as our nation's commander-in-chief.

Fortunately, I firmly believe that, after tomorrow, John McCain and the sad, tired remnants of his cause will be old news. We have an exemplary, once-in-a-generation-type candidate in Barack Obama, and I refuse to believe I live in a country that would squander the amazing opportunity before us to elect him our president.

But, you never know... So, yes, the polls look great, but they looked good in 2004 as well (even the exit polls did, in fact), and we all know how that story turned out. So, let's handle our business tomorrow, get out to vote, and get to work on rebuilding this country. We have so much work to do.

Vote Obama, 2008.

"When T.R. spoke of 'swollen fortunes' and 'malefactors of great wealth,' socialism was a genuine force in American politics, perceived by many to pose a serious threat to the social order. When T.R. first called for a 'graduated income tax' in his 1907 State of the Union, he was proposing a measure that the Supreme Court had ruled unconstitutional. Indeed, the federal income tax struck down by the Court wasn't even 'graduated,' or progressive; it was a flat-rate tax." One from a few days ago that Ted at The Late Adopter just reminded me of: As Slate's Tim Noah aptly points out, John McCain can either continue to decry Obama's purported "socialist" tendencies, or he can continue to claim Teddy Roosevelt is his hero, but he cannot plausibly continue to do both.

At the very least, it would seem McCain, what with his coterie of lobbyist attendants, has either never read -- or is flagrantly ignoring -- TR's "New Nationalism" speech: "There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done" (See also one of my favorites: "The prime problem of our nation is to get the right type of good citizenship, and, to get it, we must have progress, and our public men must be genuinely progressive.)"

"Briefcase-to-briefcase, wingtip-to-wingtip, the legal emissaries of both Barack Obama and John McCain seem to be taking their cues from the 2000 election, which -- according to some accounts -- was either decided in a Florida skirmish known as the 'Brooks Brothers Riot' that ended the manual recount in Miami-Dade County, or -- according to more mainstream accounts -- in the august halls of the U.S. Supreme Court along crassly partisan lines. Ready or not, here they come. "

How can you tell when Election Day in America is right around the corner? Sadly, it's when both the Dems and the GOP feel compelled to ready their respective battalions of lawyers. With that in mind, Slate's Dahlia Lithwick surveys the massing legal armies. "One can't help but wonder what it says about public confidence in our voting systems, then, that despite our almost complete lack of faith in them, we will rely almost exclusively on lawyers to protect the integrity of this election."

"There's something surreal about how fast the GOP has gone from arrogant triumphalism to its death throes. Just yesterday, the GOP's mighty Titanic was cruising along, its opulent decks lined with fat-cat financiers and neoconservative warmongers, all smoking cigars, drinking champagne and extolling the deathless virtues of their fearless captain. The compliant media issued glowing dispatches. Karl Rove cackled with glee as he plotted out a permanent Republican majority. Then the luxury liner hit an iceberg known as reality...It's a historic shipwreck, and the American people are diving off the foundering GOP hulk in droves."

You already know the story by now. Still, at the risk of further wallowing in (highly dangerous pre-election) schadenfreude, here's another timely obit for the conservative movement, by Salon's Gary Kamiya. Now I know that, no matter how good the polls look, linking these sorts of pieces before the returns are in (one week to go!) is a highly dubious proposition, karmically speaking. As Norman Wilson rightly warned Mayor Carcetti of Clay Davis, "You don’t dance on Clay’s grave until you’re sure the motherf**ker’s dead."

Still, given that the McCain, Palin, and Dubya camps are now all openly shivving each other for spots on the lifeboats -- Team McCain has now taken to calling the governor a "diva" and a "whack job," Palin herself is now apparently eyeing 2012 (ooh, please run!), and everybody is naturally running from Dubya -- the Titanic metaphor, however hoary a cliche, seems a safe bet regardless.

"'In another state, he would be toast,' said Charlie Cook, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. 'In Alaska, you gotta make him a significant underdog.'" How's this for a sign of the times? Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate (and the only one to famously favor a Hulk tie), is very quickly found guilty on seven felony counts of lying on his non-disclosure forms. As you may remember, the indictments broke in July, and Stevens -- asking for a quick pre-election trial -- got one.

And yet, despite the desperate entreaties of Senator McCain and the governor of his home state, one Sarah Palin, Stevens has vowed to fight on for re-election next week, thus further boosting the chances of a Dem Senate pick-up in the Last Frontier...and beyond. "'It's a horrible year for Republicans, in a horrific fall, and this is yet another horrific event,' Cook said. 'This throws them off message; it puts them back on the defensive again. It makes it harder to separate themselves from the party.'" Well, thanks for that, at least, Senator.

"Another Greenville, another Magic Mart, Jeffer, grab your fiddle... So, pop quiz: What do old-school R.E.M. and Sarah Palin have in common? They've both sung paeans to "Little America," or as Governor Palin rather awkwardly put it recently, the "pro-America areas of this great nation." In case you somehow missed what she was trying to get at, NC GOP candidate Robin Hayes said it even more plainly: "Liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God." Or consider Minnesota freakshow Michele Bachmann, soon after deeming Senator and Michelle Obama enemies of the people: "I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out if they are pro-America or anti-America."

Now, I realize the once-powerful conservative movement is now entering the late, terminal stages of its malignancy, that these floundering insults and echoes of McCarthy are all just part of the right-wing death rattle, and that it's probably best just to look away from their interminable gesticulating and shrieking while the right melts away into electoral oblivion. But, really, eff these people. I'm so utterly sick of these conservative assholes wrapping themselves in our flag every time their narrowness and stupidity is exposed before all the world. America is so much more than the pathetic litany of grievances and bigotries these jokers trot out every time their flank is exposed. And if they truly loved America as much as they claim to, they'd know this, and stop embarrassing us all by conflating their ignorant and unprincipled antipathies with what's good and true in our national life.

The consul a horse. Jefferson, I think they're lost.

"Would you think about that a moment, my friends? Whenever you've seen Batman, who's he with? Criminals, that's who!" Before Atwater and Ailes, there was...Cobblepot: I know the comparison was already floating around after the veep debate. Still, this contentious Batman-Penguin matchup of thirty years ago now seems eerily on the money... (Via Neilalien.)

Also, this is unrelated, but while I'm borrowing fun fanboy youtubes from other places, I also got a tickle out of this compelling compilation of Dr. Who clips, by way of Return of the Reluctant a week or so ago. What are you doing here? What are you doing here? What are you doing here? What are you doing here?

"So, I have been effectively fatwahed (is that how you spell it?) by the conservative movement, and the magazine that my father founded must now distance itself from me. But then, conservatives have always had a bit of trouble with the concept of diversity. The GOP likes to say it’s a big-tent. Looks more like a yurt to me." Old news by now, but just to get it on-the-record: Shown the door by the editors of his late father's magazine for his recent prObama apostasy, columnist and satirist Christopher Buckley bids farewell to the conservative "movement". "While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of 'conservative' government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case."

Along the same lines, see also former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan's most recent WSJ column. (Noonan, remember, is also on the outs with the stark-raving fundies because of her recent open-mic remarks regarding Palin on MSNBC.) Buried under the obligatory (if fanciful) McCain-won-the-debate lede is this telling passage: "In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics. It's no good, not for conservatism and not for the country. And yes, it is a mark against John McCain, against his judgment and idealism. I gather this week from conservative publications that those whose thoughts lead them to criticism in this area are to be shunned, and accused of the lowest motives...In all this, the conservative intelligentsia are doing what they have done for five years. They bitterly attacked those who came to stand against the Bush administration. This was destructive. If they had stood for conservative principle and the full expression of views, instead of attempting to silence those who opposed mere party, their movement, and the party, would be in a better, and healthier, position. At any rate, come and get me, copper."

"We thought this election would be a serious fight over the future of this country, but only one candidate showed up...Not even the presidency is worth what it's made John McCain do to himself." While it's been quiet here, Ted of The Late Adopter has been keeping tabs on big newspaper and magazine endorsements. Announcing for Obama of late: The Denver Post, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Seattle Times, The New Yorker (shocking, I know), the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Tribune (its first-ever Dem endorsement), and Esquire (its first-ever endorsement, period -- the quote above is from them.)

Keep in mind, though, that the mainstream media hate Republicans (except, of course, when they're starting wars of choice.) And really, who in the hell do these bigheads think they are, trying to confuse us with their words?

"'They're trying to connect [Obama] to some kind of terrorist feelings, and I think that's inappropriate,' Powell said. 'Now I understand what politics is all about — I know how you can go after one another. And that's good. But I think this goes too far. And I think it has made the McCain campaign look a little narrow. It's not what the American people are looking for. And I look at these kinds of approaches to the campaign, and they trouble me. And the party has moved even further to the right, and Gov. Palin has indicated a further rightward shift.'"

The general is fed up, and he's not alone. On a weekend when the Obama campaign announced a record-breaking $150 million September, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Dubya Secretary of State Colin Powell officially endorses Barack Obama, arguing the Senator he is a "transformational figure" who, unlike his opponent, "has displayed a steadiness, an intellectual curiosity, a depth of knowledge...not just jumping in and changing every day, but showing intellectual vigor."

The GOP's most famous drug-addled carnival grotesque, Rush Limbaugh, has taken to trotting out more sad McNabb-style race-baiting to try to deflect this unfortunate turn-of-events for the right, but other Republicans out there know -- and will own up to -- the score. "'What that just did in one sound bite — and I assume that sound bite will end up in an ad — is it eliminated the experience factor,' said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich...'How are you going to say the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the former national security adviser, former secretary of state was taken in?'...'This Powell endorsement is the nail in the coffin,' said one Republican official, speaking anonymously to offer candid thoughts about the party's nominee. 'Not just because of him, but the indictment he laid out of the McCain campaign.'"

"Mr. Osborne, may I be excused? My brain is full." Have you ever seen that old Far Side cartoon? That basically sums up my overpowering sentiment during last week's third and (mercifully) final presidential debate at Hofstra University. [Transcript.] Now, I think I usually enjoy following politics more than the next guy, but something about that debate gave me the urge to run screaming into the hills (or at least flip over to the NCLS.)...Hence, one of the reasons for the tardiness of this post. I didn't switch over to baseball -- My fellow prisoners, I sat through the whole durned thing -- but the event still left a sour taste in my mouth.

Why such an adverse reaction? I mean, McCain's campaign has been making disturbingly stupid arguments aimed at the lowest common denominator for awhile now. What's another 90 minutes of it? Well, for one, the endless paeans to that ostensibly most American of Americans, "Joe the Plumber" (nee "Sam the Not-a-Plumber"), got seriously old. Now, I know we're all meant to enjoy wallowing in our appreciation for the "real" Americans -- as opposed to us egg-headed surrender-monkey lefty types -- but perhaps we can find a genuine, working-class Joe to discuss next time who isn't yet another obvious McCain plant. (And bonus points if they're not tied to the Keatings.) The McCain team has already force-fed us one one fake working class hero in Sarah Palin. Piling on another one at this point is really pushing it past my (admittedly low) threshold for right-leaning, poor-little-rich-folk. (That being said, I'll concede that the McCain camp could probably really use a good plumber right now, backed up in swill as it is.)

And, hey, speaking of seriously old, McCain's "Crotchety Old Man" routine was jacked up to eleven the whole night, making his usual indefensible contentions that much more irritating. What with all the hemming and hawing and scroonchy faces McCain was making throughout, he made the sighing-Gore of 2000 seem a model of forbearance. (Conversely, I thought Obama's slightly bemused smile, which seemed to suggest that he was getting as sick of all the sideshows as we were, spoke highly of his presidential temperament. In this day and age, a sense of irony about the idiocies of media-driven politics is not a bad thing.) In short, the mythical maverick was a complete mess last Wednesday. Endlessly spewing contrivances and inanities about William Ayers, socialism, and/or the dangers of eloquence, McCain got himself so bizarrely worked up and angry during the debate that I thought he might set off his Life Alert.

If I sound a bit glib, well, I apologize. Just as I eventually grew tired of the inanities of the Clinton campaign, which lingered on for months after its fate was mathematically sealed, I've lost my patience with the sad remnants of the right-wing freak show attending John McCain at this point. This is not to say this election is in the bag, and we can now just sit back and play the Fill the Cabinet game -- Far from it. (Unlike the primaries, there're no points on the scoreboard just yet, and who really wants to wake up a few Wednesdays from now with a President-elect McCain?) But the GOP's Hail Mary strategy has gotten so pungent and idiotic at this point that I'm hard-pressed to treat them with anything but contempt.

Serving on a Republican-financed education committee with an old Weatherman does not make one a terrorist, and tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy is not the solution to every economic problem. What's more, repeating these two obviously stupid contentions over and over again, more and more loudly, does not make them any less false. End of story. If that's all the McCain team has got, which would seem to be the case, then it's time for them to get swept away into the dustbin of history like they deserve. Hey, news flash to the right: We tried governance along the lines of your idiotic talking points, and look where it got us? It's time for a change.

"At McCain-Palin rallies, the raucous and insistent cries of “Treason!” and “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” and “Off with his head!” as well as the uninhibited slinging of racial epithets, are actually something new in a campaign that has seen almost every conceivable twist. They are alarms. Doing nothing is not an option...What makes them different, and what has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies, is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin...By the time McCain asks the crowd “Who is the real Barack Obama?” it’s no surprise that someone cries out 'Terrorist!' The rhetorical conflation of Obama with terrorism is complete. " -- Frank Rich, QFT, October 12, 2008.

It'd be funny, if it weren't so frightening, to see this current version of the GOP end as it began. Forty years after the New Right that coalesced behind Goldwater and Reagan saw its first national victory with the election of Richard Nixon on a, ahem, "law and order" ticket (in no small part thanks to the assassination of RFK), the conservative movement that gave us Helms, Falwell, Reagan, Gingrich, and Dubya is collapsing back into its original base state: a seething, festering cauldron of paranoia, race-baiting, inarticulate rage, and eminently justifable, easily exploitable working-class grievance.

And, with no other game-changer left in the Atwater playbook, McCain the mythical maverick, his "Sarracuda" running mate, and the sad coterie of (lily white) GOP deadenders about them have now taken to doing the very opposite of "Putting Country First" -- Instead, they're stirring this pot, hoping the vile, unstable, and extremely combustible concoction therein can somehow propel them into the White House. Call it the Joker strategy: With no other way to win at this point, the McCain campaign is banking on the American people getting so scared, confused, and enraged by their lies and name-calling that we'll up and decide to blow each others' ferries out of the water. (In fact, now that I think about it, I guess that might go a long way towards explaining McCain's bizarre recent "my fellow prisoners" slip. But, sorry, Senator, the prisoners' dilemma isn't going to play any better in November than it did in Gotham a few months ago.)

Frank Rich is right: Even as a Hail Mary play in anything-goes politics, this is beyond the pale. John McCain should -- and, given his body language of late, does -- know what so often results -- and has resulted -- from that foul brew he's toying with. In short, this is a new low, and half-heartedly attempting to walk back the hate after fiddling with the lock on this Pandora's Box is too little, too late.

Of course, we all eventually expected this of the Republican party -- Their hold on power is at long last dissipating, and their sick, desperate movement, four-and-a-half decades old, is seemingly now in its ugly death throes, so why not trot out the oldest, saddest one-trick pony in their tiny stable? But McCain, from everything we've heard about the man, was meant to be better than this. A straight-talker, a man of honor, yadda yadda yadda. Well, horsepuckey. John McCain has brought everlasting shame on himself, and if there's any justice left in this country, -- and woe to you, Senator, I'm sure there is -- his repudiation at the polls in a few short weeks will be devastating.

"For the reasons explained in section IV of this report, I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act." Well, golly. Just in case anyone didn't already think she was Cheneyesque enough, the Branchflower Report, i.e. the Alaska state inquiry into Sarah Palin's firing of her public safety commissioner, finds that the Governor (and her husband) abused her powers of office to pursue a personal vendetta. "'Gov. Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda." In regards to Palin's early defense that said ex-brother-in-law was a physical threat to her family, "'I conclude that such claims of fear were not bona fide and were offered to provide cover for the Palins' real motivation: to get Trooper Wooten fired for personal family reasons,' Branchflower wrote"

It should be noted, by the way, that the Branchflower inquiry was not only initiated and authorized by a GOP-run state legislature, but released on Friday thanks to a unanimous vote by a committee of 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats. This seems to be in keeping with what we've seen in recent days, where any right-leaning talking head with even a modicum of intellectual honesty, from Chris Buckley to David Brooks, is now repudiating and rejecting Palin as "a fatal cancer to the Republican Party." That she is...although, not to assail Brooks' NYT-and-PBS-certified powers of punditry, it really shouldn't have taken him over a month to realize it.

"There's guards at the on-ramps, armed to the teeth. And you may case the grounds from the cascades to Puget Sound but you are not permitted to leave." Well, it's not falling off the stage, I guess. But McCain's bizarre mix-up on the campaign trail today, an electoral coda for the "all-POW, all-the-time" candidacy if I ever saw one, clearly seems to signal a politician -- and campaign -- in serious decline. At this point, McCain's presidential bid is rapidly progressing from appalling to just plain sad.

"Well, you know, Sen. McCain, in the last debate and today, again, suggested that I don't understand. It's true. There are some things I don't understand. I don't understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, while Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are setting up base camps and safe havens to train terrorists to attack us. That was Sen. McCain's judgment and it was the wrong judgment."

As you know, the second of three presidential debates is now in the books. [Transcript.] And, while it's still way too early to put this election in the fridge -- there's a lot of crucial get-out-the-vote work to be done first, and we all saw how that turned out last time 'round -- we nevertheless seem to be moving away from the closely divided America of 2000 and 2004 and fast approaching an contest similar to Bill Clinton's relatively smooth re-election of 1996. That year, the nation ignored the continued haranguing of an aging war hero about cultural matters to back the candidate with a clearly better grasp on both the economy and the way Americans really live. By all reliable accounts, Sen. Obama, who won the evening handily last night, is the Clinton candidate this time around, and it seems to be helping him across the board.

Sen. Obama not only seemed to have a clearer grasp on the causes, consequences of, and potential remedies for our current economic travails last night, he came across as more competent, more discerning, more likable, and more presidential throughout. Meanwhile, for all McCain-Palin's wallowing in the tired old culture war over the past few days, the Senator from Arizona seemingly left all of his new favorite talking points in his other suit. And, while desperately needing some kind, any kind, of game-changer last night, McCain instead just puttered around the town hall muttering the same stale GOP platitudes -- he'll raise your taxes! he's won't keep you safe! -- that didn't get the job done the first time 'round. In short, let's not count our chickens just yet -- we've got one more of these next week, and three weeks thereafter to keep the pressure on. But, right now, it's looking pretty good, folks.

Well, that didn't take long. As Garrett noted in the comments below, an increasingly desperate Sarah Palin is already namedropping Wright and Ayers whereever she can. But the good news is Team Obama isn't going to take this sort of garbage lying down, particularly from a candidate as compromised on issues of character as John Sidney McCain III. Witness Keating Economics -- It's about time somebody brought that up.

"'We're going to get a little tougher,' a senior Republican operative said, indicating that a fresh batch of television ads is coming. 'We've got to question this guy's associations. Very soon. There's no question that we have to change the subject here,' said the operative, who was not authorized to discuss strategy and spoke on the condition of anonymity."

In related news, why just lose when you can lose and forsake your dignity? Confronted by the fact that their guy just isn't connecting these days, the McCain team gets set to take the low(er) road. (Indeed, their ad buys across the nation are already almost universally negative.) In other words, expect a lot of Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers from now until November.

"'Obama has many more paths to the nomination than McCain,' the source said. 'They think they can defend the Kerry states. Iowa is gone. That's five votes. New Mexico is in the bag. Then Obama has four or five different ways of winning. He can go Nevada or Colorado, Virginia, any of those, even Indiana. McCain has got to run the board, the whole Bush table.'" According to London's Telegraph, Team Obama is feeling confident about victory these days. "We're much stronger on the ground in Virginia and North Carolina than people realise. If we get out the vote this may not be close at all."

In related news, the McCain camp currently seems lost in the quagmire, particularly after Obama's post-debate bounce and recent developments on the economic front. "'What begins to happen is that the margin that's been in place begins to solidify more and more,' said Matthew Dowd, who was Bush's chief strategist in 2004 and is now an independent analyst. 'There's only two ways this can go,' he added. 'It will either solidify with an Obama four- to five- point lead, or it will loosen and go back to close and go back and forth.'" In other words, another McCain campaign stunt incoming.

Update: I know the EW cover below is apropos of nothing above, really. On the other hand, it is election-related, and I found it laugh-out-loud funny. Hat tips to The Oak and Peasants Under Glass.

"'Today's the decision day. I wish it weren't the case,' said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.)." Despite the apparent attempt by divider-not-a-uniter John McCain to kill a compromise he hadn't even read last week, the Dubya White House and Congress hold their respective noses and come to agreement on Paulson's $700 billion bailout plan, with debate in the House starting today. "The proposed legislation would authorize Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. to initiate what is likely to become the biggest government bailout in U.S. history, allowing him to spend up to $700 billion to relieve faltering banks and other firms of bad assets backed by home mortgages, which are falling into foreclosure at record rates. The plan would give Paulson broad latitude to purchase any assets from any firms at any price and to assemble a team of individuals and institutions to manage them."

As I said here, I'm not all that happy about the nation having to subsume the risk, and ride to the rescue of, the many banks and Wall Street types that profited massively from these obviously suspect mortgage deals. But, what else is there to do? As with so much else occurring over the past eight years, it befalls us now to clean up the mess left by the free market fundies of late. I just hope we learn something from the economic consequences of this latest binge of free-market fraudulence, before they grow too dire. To wit, whatever the corporate-funded right tells you about self-regulating markets, we need, and will continue to need, real refs on the field.

Update: Uh oh. The bailout compromise dies in the House, prompting the Dow Jones to swiftly tank 700 points. "The measure needs 218 votes for passage. Democrats voted 141 to 94 in favor of the plan, while Republicans voted 65 to 133 against. That left the measure with 206 votes for and 227 against."

As the TIME article linked above noted before the vote, "the candidate with the most riding on Monday's vote is McCain, who backed the concerns of conservatives in the House over the initial agreement...[I]f a majority of the House Republicans don't vote for the measure, McCain could lose political face. 'If McCain cannot persuade them, it is hard to portray him as a leader,' said Clyde Wilcox, a political science professor at Georgetown University." So, that's the silver lining, I guess. But the bad news now, alas, is considerably worse.

"John, you like to pretend like the war started in 2007. The war started in 2003...You said we knew where the weapons of mass destruction were. You were wrong. You said that we were going to be greeted as liberators. You were wrong. You said that there was no history of violence between Shia and Sunni. And you were wrong."

I doubt y'all missed it (even if the ratings were surprisingly low.) Nonetheless, Senators Obama and McCain held their first of three debates Friday night in Mississippi, ostensibly on foreign policy matters (although the economic situation on Wall Street took up the first half-hour.) [Transcript.] And the verdict? Well, to no one's surprise, I'm going to go with Obama on this one. I'm just not going to pretend to be as fair and balanced as John King, David Gergen, and the other seemingly randomly selected poobahs of our Fourth Estate (who was the Aussie guy holding court next to Christine Amanpour?), who went out of their way on CNN to convince me that McCain seemed knowledgable, spry, and at ease during this event. Nope, I think I'll side with the polls, which have a cool, level-headed, and magnanimous Sen. Obama winning the event handily.

The thing is, even more than with Sen. Hillary Clinton, whom I agreed with most of the time on the issues even when I disagreed completely with her GOP-lite campaign tactics, I just can't take John McCain at all seriously at this point, and particularly after both Palin and the non-suspension suspension. So, when McCain tries to tout a career ostensibly spent in the service of congressional ethics, my inelastic brain just keeps thinking "Uh...Keating 5?" Anybody watching the past few years knows that McCain was as AWOL in the fight against Boss DeLay as he has been in countering Dubya these past two terms. And, whatever happened to McCain since 2000, speaking-truth-to-power is not something that comes readily to him anymore, if it ever did. So most of his early "I'm a proven maverick" speel Friday night fell on deaf ears from jump street in this household, and thus I can't speak to how it might've played to those still-undecideds out there willing to buy into his craven sham.

That being said, I had a sense while watching -- and the polls seem to bear this out -- that McCain was making a critical error with his oft-repeated "Sen. Obama doesn't understand" routine. That might've worked if Obama had seemed greener up there next to McCain, or if Obama was as inarticulate and incompetent as, say, Sarah Palin. But as it was, Sen. Obama came across as unruffled, competent, and conversant on all the issues the mythical maverick tried to paint him as naive on (and/or lie about.) And thus the strategy (or was it a tactic?), imho, backfired massively. Instead, McCain -- missing the soft touch of Ronald Reagan, who turned age to his advantage against Mondale in 1984 with a joke and a smile -- basically came across as a cantankerous old coot, dripping with undeserved contempt toward that damn whippersnapper in his yard.

It's mainly for this reason that I think, however much the debate is being painted as a draw by the punditariat, Obama came out the clear victor: Sen. Obama did not seem callow or inexperienced in the slightest, but lordy did McCain -- squinting, smirking, and drowning in derision -- come across as aged. And I may be wrong about this, but I just don't think the Old Man Withers strategy plays with the undecides. I know that many lefties out there wanted to see a more forceful Obama on the attack Friday night, but I don't think that was his mission: It was more important that he, like Kennedy in 1960, seemed presidential, level-headed, and the very opposite of the risky gamble that the McCain folks would try to make him seem. In that, I think, he succeeded, particularly in contrast to the snarky old man standing across from him. Advantage Obama.

"I am confident that before the markets open on Monday we can achieve consensus on legislation that will stabilize our financial markets, protect taxpayers and homeowners, and earn the confidence of the American people. All we must do to achieve this is temporarily set politics aside, and I am committed to doing so." Uh, but I thought the fundamentals of our economy were strong! Apparently now cognizant of our recent economic travails, John McCain announces he's temporarily suspending his campaign to focus on the Wall Street bailout, and has asked for Friday's foreign policy debate to be delayed.

If we learned anything from the Palin debacle, it's that the mythical maverick isn't above pulling a ridiculous and transparent stunt when he's starting to sweat the polls. Well, here we go again. Update: Sez Obama, the debate is on. Damn right.

"There is no secret about any of this. The figures below are all from the annual Economic Report of the President, and the analysis is primitive. Nevertheless, what these numbers show almost beyond doubt is that Democrats are better at virtually every economic task that is important to Republicans." Not that it's likely to permate the foul miasma of intellectual dishonesty and outright dumbness that today's GOP uses to breathe, but Slate's Michael Kinsley has recently aired some rather telling stats about the respective parties' records of economic stewardship of late. "There is nothing here about how clean the air is or how many children are growing up in poverty. The only point is that if you find the Republican mantra of lower taxes and smaller government appealing, and if you care only about how fast the economy is growing, not how that growth is shared, you should vote Democratic. Of course, if you do care about things like economic inequality and children's health, you should vote Democratic as well."

"Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of 'good old boy' politics and a champion of ethics reform...But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents 'haters' — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image."

As if Sarah Palin's recent spate of lies weren't enough to cast doubt on her fitness for the Oval Office, the NYT delves into the Alaska Governor's backstory...and finds ugly shadows therein. "Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials."

Throw in Palin's attempts to evade disclosure of gubernatorial e-mails, and her refusal to cooperate with the investigation into her illegal firings, and it all starts to sound so very familiar...

"Of all the shortcomings of the establishment press today, none is more central to the corruption of the profession than the decision to prioritize balance over accuracy. That corruption is visibly on display in the current coverage of the McCain campaign's policy of deliberate lies...This is what gives liars a clear strategic advantage over non-liars. And it's an open question whether McCain's level of dishonesty turns out to be so great that it overwhelms reporters' unwillingness to report accurately on it." Over at TPM, Josh Marshall rails against media complicity in the McCain campaign's recent embrace of blatant falsehood as a political strategy. (You know it's bad when even the Post's Richard Cohen is renouncing his McCain-love.)

The other night, I caught the tail end of Bob Schieffer, Jonathan Alter, and Paul Begala on Charlie Rose, and Alter, Schieffer et al were blaming the pathetic, pathetic job by the mainstream media in this election on, of course, the blogosphere (much as Schieffer did in the interview here.) "We can't be responsible for all these bloggers. The Internet is the only vehicle to convey news...that has no editor. Even the worst newspaper has an editor." (Schieffer, 44:30) Uh, Judith Miller wasn't writing a blog, nor was the Gray Lady bereft of editors, when the NYT and the rest of the mainstream media basically inhaled the Dubya administration's lies about the Iraq war without complaint. And the same goes for the MSM's dancing around the obvious tripe emanating from the McCain campaign here in 2008.

Look, blogs aren't the problem right now. As Marshall and many others have noted, the problem is that all too much of the MSM, once again using "balance" as a cover for its cowardice, spends the majority of its time trying to ascertain -- and then straddle -- the exact middle point between the facts as they stand and McCain-Palin's recent spate of ridiculous deceptions. To paraphrase Colbert: If, as it has in recent weeks, the truth has a definite Obama bias, then it befalls the Fourth Estate, as the self-appointed referees of the political ballgame, to set the record straight. And if televised poobahs like Candy Crowley refuse to do their jobs, and even talking heads who should know better, such as my old employer, roll over like puppies in the name of McCain's presumed maverickness, then it's definitely up to the blogs out there to fill the void. (See for example, Andrew Sullivan, who's been compiling a sadly expansive list of the lies of Sarah Palin.)

The depressing slide of our major media institutions into frightened, ratings-fueled irrelevance didn't start with this election, or course. But the stakes are too high right now to sit back and let their abysmal erosion pay any more dividends for the McCain campaign. We need to fight back, and hard. (Ad below via Ted at the Late Adopter.)

"The Glass-Steagall Act is the Depression-era law that separated commercial and investment banking. It was functionally repealed in 1998, when Travelers (the parent company of Salomon Smith Barney) acquired Citicorp. And it was officially repealed in 1999. But recent events on Wall Street -- the failure or sale of three of the five largest independent investment banks -- have effectively turned back the clock to the 1920s, when investment banks and commercial banks cohabited under the same corporate umbrella." As Wall Street takes a dive in the wake of several bank failures and near-failures -- but, don't worry, the fundamentals of the economy are strong and everything -- Newsweek's Daniel Gross briefly discusses the end of the Glass-Steagal era, and what it means for the American economy.

"'The Republicans had a very successful convention [sic] and, at least initially, the selection of Sarah Palin has made a big difference,' says political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia. 'He's in a far better position than his people imagined he would be in at this point.'" As I noted over the weekend, you just can't stop the post-convention bounce...Sad to say, some folks just like buyin' whatever's being sold, I guess. In any case, today's Gallup polling has either McCain/Palin up 10 (USA Today/Gallup) (up 4 with registered voters) or up 3 (Daily Tracker). And, though this could be taken as good news if he maintains his recent record, Zogby also has McCain/Palin up 4.

Yikes. Still, I really wouldn't worry about a little post-RNC turbulence just yet. Even before you factor in the huge problems with assessing "likely voters" this cycle, throw in the pollsters' overreliance on landlines (and subsequent undercounting of Obama support), and look at the very favorable state-by-state breakdowns for us, these post-convention bumps are fickle creatures. Ask Presidents Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry. "[I]n an analysis of the impact of political conventions since 1960, Sabato concluded that post-convention polls signal the election's outcome only about half the time. 'You could flip a coin and be about as predictive,' he says. 'It is really surprising how quickly convention memories fade.'"

So, don't fret. We'll sail through these choppy waters yet, folks. Update: Put another way... (Via MLR.)

Update 2: And, just like that, it's gone.

"I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need. My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God." Wait...John McCain was a POW? Who knew? (And how big of him to run the first completely selfless and ego-free presidential campaign in American History. A true patriot, he.)

I suppose I should've gotten my post up about McCain's speech some time yesterday...but, really, what's the rush? However well-watched, John McCain's nomination address to the nation on Thursday night felt like a virtual political non-event. [Transcript.] I mean, c'mon now: I sat through three days of mind-numbing inanity and blatant falsehoods, distasteful 9/11 videos and endless surge talk, for this? (By the way, memo to Lindsey Graham, Tom Ridge, and anyone who happens to buy into the oft-repeated line of argument that "McCain was right in Iraq because of the surge." Our recent involvement there began several years earlier, with McCain cheering on Dubya's idiotic invasion and boasting of an easy victory. Remember that?)

Now I don't think the speech was as woefully terrible as some -- it was probably better than his last greenscreen speech, for example. (I am struck by the fact that today's decaying GOP is so sickly it can't even manage to exploit veterans for political gain properly anymore. What happened to you guys?) But, to my mind, Sen. McCain's remarks definitely didn't get the job done, unless -- like me -- you think the job that needs doing right now is getting Barack Obama elected to the Oval Office.

The most affecting moments of McCain's speech were, naturally, in his discussion of his POW experience, and if the Republicans hadn't beaten this point into the ground over the past few days, his retelling of those dark days might've packed a real emotional wollop. ("After I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me. ") But, after all the reveling of late in McCain's horrible stay in the Hanoi Hilton, and all the attendant plaudits to military heroism and sacrifice, country first etc. etc. served up as sides by the GOP during thus, McCain's humdrum delivery of an otherwise subpar nomination address reminded me of nothing so much as another praiseworthy war hero wounded in his nation's service: Bob Dole.

Of course, it wouldn't be a nomination address in today's GOP without some highly dubious propositions therein:

Y'know, after watching Wednesday's RNC festivities, I'm rather annoyed with myself that I titled the post about Tuesday night "Chimps on Parade." I mean, the dismayingly chimpy Dubya notwithstanding, at least Fred Thompson can sometimes muster up the ornery menace of an aging silverback. But it was last night's warm-up act, with also-rans Romney, Huckabee, and Giuliani sneering and snarling with abandon at Obama, "liberals," the "elite media," the home television audience, and just about everything else that crossed their path, that felt like the real flying monkey attack.

Now, I can't say I have my finger on the pulse of the nation or anything, but, in terms of the sheer quantity of vitriol, last night's flurry of bad mojo felt quite a bit to me like Pat Buchanan's disastrous 1992 "Culture War" speech all over again. (The fur flew so thick last night that even the AP felt compelled to mention the blatant untruths today.) We'll see how it plays over the next few days and weeks, of course, but I get a strong sense that the Republicans didn't help their cause much at all last night. (And, if you were to happen to infer that, by calling that ridiculous trio of GOP Pep Boys "flying monkeys," I was implicitly comparing Gov. Palin, who later dripped with similar derision and contempt from her unfortunate sea of black, to Margaret Hamilton, well, that's all on you...sexist.)

At any rate, to, take 'em in their miniboss order...

Mitt Romney: "Is a Supreme Court liberal or conservative that awards Guantanamo terrorists with Constitutional rights?" This one's easy...Douchebag. [Transcript.] Is there anything else one needs to say about the man? It wasn't so long ago even the GOP was united in their dislike of the guy's patent insincerity. But last night, of course, Republicans hooted and hollered through his manifestly idiotic remarks about a "liberal Washington" like he was Don Rickles killing at the Palms. "Is government spending -- excluding inflation -- liberal or conservative if it doubles since 1980? — It's liberal!" Of course, self-proclaimed conservatives, and darlings of everybody in that room last night, have run the White House for twenty of those twenty-eight years...but you already knew that. "It's time for the party of big ideas, not the party of Big Brother!" Uh...I guess Mitt hasn't been following the news all that much of late, nor did he seem to pre-read his own speech. (See the first quoted sentence above.) I could go on, but you get the point: Douchebag. Let's move on.

Mike Huckabee: "John McCain will follow the fanatics to their caves in Pakistan or to the gates of hell. What Obama wants to do is give them a place setting at the table." Alright, I feel a bit bad for lumping in Huckaboom with the rest of the night's speakers. [Transcript.] He's clearly a smarter, abler politician than 95% of the Republicans out there (even if his weird anecdote about veterans and desks barely made a lick of sense), and his remarks wisely eschewed most of the angry invective that marked all of the other speeches. (His early nod to Obama's candidacy -- "Party or politics aside, we celebrate this milestone because it elevates our country" -- went over like a lead balloon in the auditorium last night.) Still, even with his friendly, aw-shucks demeanor, Huckabee laid on the finger-pointing pretty thick at times, particularly once he set his sights upon the "elite media, whose "reporting of the past few days has proven tackier than a costume change at a Madonna concert."

Governor Huck probably trod onto the thinnest ice last night when he tried to portray the GOP as the "real" party of poor folk and ordinary working joes. This is wildly implausible for many reasons, not the least because Huckabee himself deemed the Republicans "a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall Street and the corporations" only a few short months ago. Plus, it's really hard to buy into this sort of "broke-like-us" tripe when Cindy McCain is wearing $300,000 of bling to the big show.

Rudy Giuliani: "For four days in Denver and for the past 18 months, Democrats have been afraid to use the words 'Islamic terrorism.' During their convention, the Democrats rarely mentioned the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001." 9/11, 9/11, 9/11? Mayor Rudy 9iu11iani, it seems, is not above living down to his caricature. Of the three Pep Boy speeches, this is the one that will probably be remembered as the biggest misfire for the GOP. [Transcript.] Even if Romney's was more intellectually dishonest as written, Giuliani's shrill anti-Obama screed was emphatically the most poorly delivered. (Not that Giuliani scrimped on the intellectual dishonesty. See, for example, his resurrection of the hoary "present vote" meme.) For whatever reason -- some say pique at his speech being moved -- Giuliani came across as even more weaselly and intemperate than usual last night, and -- I say this as someone who, despite everything since, gave him much credit for his original handling of 9/11 -- Rudy seems weaselly and intemperate on the best of days. In any case, however much it may have fired up the faithful, Hizzoner's rant didn't play at all on TV. (While I'm linking TPM, Josh Marshall got off a great zinger last night: "I think I preferred this speech in the original German.")

And then the main event, Governor Palin. [Transcript.]

Over the past few days, I've refrained from posting every single revelation about the seemingly un-vetted Palin here, partly because I think little is gained by poring over the details of the awkward baby-momma story (even if the hypocrisy of the family values crowd has been stunning), and partly because keeping up with every facet of her creepy-craziness would've consumed the entire week. (If the Enquirer affair story gets locked down next week, that might well get a post here, tho' -- as did Edwards' indiscretions. Also, a PSA for any kids who happen to stop by -- watch what you write on your MySpace page, y'all. That's one to grow on.)

So, how did Palin attempt to distract us, however briefly, from the fact that she's an unqualified, uninformed, scandal-ridden, pro-life, creationist, secessionist, wolf-massacring, book-banning Buchananite fundie? Well, mainly by channeling Rush Limbaugh for forty minutes: "When the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away, when the stadium lights go out and those styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot. When that happens, what exactly is our opponent's plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer -- the answer is to make government bigger and take more of your money and give you more orders from Washington and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world." Uh, yeah. 1988 called...they want their talking points back.

I wish there was more to Palin's coming-out address to recommend it, but 99.44% of her speech was just this sort of smarmy, deeply-negative, over-the-top ridicule for Obama-Biden, delivered for the sole purpose of firing up the tired remnants of the fringe right. (Another case in point: "My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of personal discovery.") Even elements of her biography that I somewhat respect were grossly mismanaged. True, being the cleanest Republican politician in Alaska is kinda like being the world's tallest pygmy -- and, as noted above, Palin's hands aren't all that clean anyway. But, still, I'd have respected the Governor more this morning if she hadn't openly lied to us last night about her reform credentials. ("I told the Congress 'thanks, but no thanks' on that bridge to nowhere." -- I believe Peggy Noonan has an apt phrase for this kind of blatant falsifcation. For shame.)

Update: "Obama was working for a group of churches that were concerned about their parishioners...They hired Obama to help those stunned people recover and get the services they needed --job training, help with housing and so forth --from the local government. It was, dare I say it, the Lord's work -- the sort of mission Jesus preached (as opposed to the war in Iraq, which Palin described as a 'task from God.') This is what Palin and Giuliani were mocking. They were making fun of a young man's decision 'to serve a cause greater than himself,' in the words of John McCain. They were, therefore, mocking one of their candidate's favorite messages." By way of DYFL, TIME's Joe Klein angrily rallies to the defense of community organizers.

"You know what's really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical." Oops. When they're on the air, of course, most right-leaning pundits have very little criticism -- indeed, judicious praise -- of the Palin pick. Meanwhile, the media talking heads just nod along and pretend there might possibly some merit to such a ludicrous choice by the mythical maverick. Off the air, however, it's a different story. Just listen to Chuck Todd, Peggy Noonan, and Mike Murphy discuss their real feelings about Palin in-between segments on MSNBC. (They got busted by an open mic.) Says Noonan of the election (when she's not shilling for the right): "It's over." Update: In print this morning, Noonan scrambles.

Well, my original intention was to blog about the RNC speeches here at home in much the same fashion as I did in Denver last week. But, after slogging through last night's ridiculousness on C-SPAN...sorry, y'all. These posts will have to be abbreviated, because I just can't take these fools at all seriously.

For one, it's abundantly clear that the cheering Republican faithful in Minnesota have, by sheer force of denial, somehow crossed over into a bizarro alternate universe, one where Dubya wasn't the worst president this country has ever seen and Sarah Palin is the reincarnated hybrid of Queen Elizabeth and Joan of Arc. (No wonder they couldn't fill the seats: It takes a not-insignificant amount of crazy to think thus these days.)

For another, the strenuous doublethink required to buy into last night's program -- Dubya is wonderful, but change is necessary, for example -- is just beyond my capacity to embrace contradiction...pending more reeducation at the nearest Ministry of Love, of course.

For yet another, it's hard to take the Gustav-related preambles to every speech at face value, given that -- when the writing was on the wall three years ago -- the Republicans' grotesque incompetence and indifference to hurricane prep was on full display, much to the continued woe of New Orleans.

Finally, there was so much kneejerk demonizing of "the angry left" and their tax-and-spend, America-hating ways, particularly by Law & Order actor turned laconic buffoon Fred Thompson, that I just don't feel much inclination to extend the olive branch to these jokers. It'd be nice to say that we just view the world differently and can agree to disagree, patriots on both sides of the issue yadda yadda yadda. But, given last night's performances, these fellows are either unfathomably stupid or just venal, corrupt, and propagandistic liars. To be honest, i'd bet the BOTH line.

At any rate, the main events of the evening started out decently enough with an introduction by First Lady Laura Bush, who's consistently been one of the only grace notes in the conservative governance of the past eight years. But, then her husband popped up, and the night took a significant downturn. [Transcript.] "Fellow citizens," our president chimp-smirked as usual, "if the Hanoi Hilton could not break John McCain’s resolve to do what is best for his country, you can be sure the angry left never will." Of course, John McCain's habitual tendency to fold like an accordion whenever right-wing pressure is applied was in full evidence just this past weekend, when the stark-raving Rovians forced Palin on him. So this, like most Dubyaic pronouncements, should be taken with a few grains of salt.

Next up was Sen. Fred Thompson, who absolutely epitomized, in my friend Dr. Vendre's inimitable phrasing, the central "get off my damn lawn, you crazy kids" nature of the Republicans' appeal this year. [Transcript.] Now, despite his cranky old neighbor act, this was considered a good speech by the media powers-that-be, mainly because Fred managed to wallow in P-O-Wisms for twenty minutes and close by calling Obama a godless babykiller. So, Mission Accomplished, I suppose.

Finally, the GOP wound up and unveiled the Zellout 2.0: "Holy Joe" Lieberman, to tell us that "eloquence is no substitute for a record " and, that -- basically -- John McCain is the honorable maverick the nation needs and Barack Obama a brie-eating surrender monkey. [Transcript.] Now, I suppose this might've played if "Joementum" was an actual honest-to-goodness phenomenon among Democrats. But given that our party has pretty much always been underwhelmed with the guy, and now even his own state of Connecticut has soured on him, he may as well have dropped the bipartisan act and put that all-but-official "R" next to his name. (Today's nonpartisan Fact Checker already has his number: "If Obama voted against funding the troops, so did Lieberman.")

So...to sum up: Country First, a Lifetime of Service, POW POW POW, Liberals hate America, 9/11, 9/11. 9/11. Add several brazen untruths, a smattering of smears, and some healthy dollops of sheer idiocy, and then simmer until Gov. Palin shows up. All in a day's work for the sad and embarrassing conservative wingnuttery that passes for today's irreparably broken Republican party.

By way of Megg, BSG fans marvel at the visual and thematic comparisons between the McCain-Palin and Roslin-Tigh tickets. To be fair, Sen. McCain -- while clearly a patently unstable fellow and a fake maverick who flips into sleeper agent mode whenever he hears His Master's Voice -- didn't actually kill his first wife (Ellen) and bed down with a younger, well-connected Cylon woman (Six). Not quite, anyway. And Gov. Palin, while as pro-life and fundie-delusional as Roslin can be on her bad days, hasn't actually tried to steal the election...yet.

Now that I'm back from Denver and am finally all caught up with my Invesco posts, I may just have to take it easier during the GOP convention. In fact, perhaps I'll procure some choice spirits and play everyone's favorite RNC party game, McCain Bingo...

In the immortal words of Larry David, "BINGOOOOO..." (As seen at Dangerous Meta & Blivet.)

"As one McCain aide put it: "We either get Hillary's voters and we win, or we don't. It's not a mystery." In a move that reeks of desperate Hail Mary strategizing (and, to my mind, grossly overestimates the potential PUMA vote in this country), John McCain chooses Alaska governor Sarah Palin, a woman he'd barely spoken to before yesterday, as his running mate. (I was flying back from Denver when the news hit, and it's safe to say the selection of "Geraldine Quayle" was met with general jubilation throughout the plane.)

Basically, I think Sarah Palin is a wonderful pick...for the Democrats. Palin may have been an excellent governor over the past year -- who knows? -- but she's an astoundingly poor choice for vice-president, worse even than Dan Quayle in the sheer tactical transparency of it. And I have every suspicion this gambit will backfire massively. To my mind, picking a running mate whose only obvious asset to the ticket is her second X-chromosome, and thinking that her sheer presence alone will somehow bring women to vote for McCain in droves, is not only a deeply sexist notion, it's patently idiotic. (Just ask Walter Mondale how well the any-female-we-can-find strategy works.)

Her femininity aside -- and, let's be clear, that's obviously why McCain picked her, unless (I say this as a short man myself) he just wanted a veep smaller than him -- here's a candidate who [a] mayored a town of 7000 people -- college campus presidents have done more heavy lifting, [b] has been the GOP governor, for less than two years, of a state widely known to be a sinkhole of Republican corruption, [c] has her own ready-made scandal attached vis a vis this illegal firing of her ex-brother-in-law, [d] is a pro-life, creationist supporter of Pat Buchanan, and [e] has admitted earlier this month she didn't even know what McCain's stance on Iraq is. Now, that type of blatant ignorance may be what the GOP wants from their voters, but it's damn sure not what voters want from their presidential tickets.

One has to wonder: If the McCain campaign was going to stake everything on such a pathetically obvious gambit for the PUMA vote, why didn't they just pick Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who also has the advantage of actually being qualified for the job? Well, apparently Sen. Hutchison wasn't sufficiently pro-life enough to fend off the fundies. So Team McCain had to venture all the way north of the border to find a pro-lifer up to snuff for the evangelical crazies...but don't worry, he's still a maverick independent and everything.

At any rate, because it's so dead on, here's the quality reaction of a MeFi'er, August Pollak, QFT. [Birddogged by WebGoddess.]

Zing.

Update: Rasmussen has the first post-Palin poll, and it seems a gender gap has already emerged -- Women aren't really buying it. "These numbers pretty much speak for themselves, but men have a favorable impression of Palin by a 35-point margin, whereas women have a favorable impression of her by an 18-point margin. Conversely, by a 23-point margin, women do not think Palin is ready to be President, whereas Palin lost this question among men by a considerably smaller 6-point margin." [Via Firedoglake.]

Well, 162 years is a good run...but, sadly, the lowest-common-denominator, hyper-partisan idiocy derailing so much of the media these days seems to have now infected one of our oldest and most venerable American media institutions, the Associated Press. The handwriting's been on the wall ever since conservative ideologue and almost-McCain-employee Ron Fournier moved up the pecking order. But, in the past two days, AP has completely embarrassed itself no less than twice. First, the AP analysis (by some stone-hearted fellow -- paging Sinclair Lewis -- named Charles Babington) bashed Obama's nomination speech in purely Republican terms. Then, check out Fournier's headline on McCain's grotesque Palin pick: "Analysis: Palin's age, inexperience rival Obama's ." Uh, yeah.

Update: "As many of you know, some political groups and left-leaning blogs have aligned to organize a newspaper letter-writing campaign against AP Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier...Below you will find some talking points to help guide you as this issue plays out." The AP issues CYA talking points to its affiliates defending Fournier.

(That's Obama, our next president, in the spotlight.) So, as a convenient appetizer to next's week convention in Denver, Sen. Barack Obama swung by nearby Oscar Smith High School -- my little sister's alma mater, not five minutes away from my current roost here in Chesapeake -- for a town hall meeting last night. And, not only did I manage to procure a ticket, but my mom and I, for whatever reason, had the requisite "look" to get gold-banded into the premium section, right behind the Senator. (For the full ninety minutes of us nodding along and clapping, the video of the event is here and below.)

As far as Sen. Obama's talk went, it was about what you'd expect, if you've been keeping up with the election so far. It focused heavily on the economy and bread-and-butter issues such as health insurance and education, gave the GOP a lot of guff for their usual idiocies and fear-mongering antics, and was also considerably more earthy and populist than much of his primary rhetoric. (But that's the general for you, and particularly when you're facing a candidate amazingly unable to count up his number of McMansions.) In any case, at the end of the proceedings, I was close enough to shake the Senator's hand on the rope line, and got to tell him "I'm looking forward to January." And, hey, aren't we all?

So, however my flitting around the convention hall turns out next week, I'm happy to say I got in a choice Obama sighting before even getting on the plane to Denver. (And now I feel much less bad about missing out on tix for the nomination speech next Thursday.)

"'We have a text,' Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said after a day-long visit Thursday by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice." How badly do the Republicans want to keep the White House? Apparently enough that the Dubya administration, contrary to its earlier stance (and to McCain's promises of "100 years" in Baghdad), seems to be on the verge of signing a withdrawal accord with Iraq that would have all U.S. troops out by the end of 2011. (Not that we have much choice in the matter, given that Baghdad has already made it clear it wants us gone.) Well, however politically influenced, this is clearly a step in the right direction...but it's way too late in the game to save the GOP now. It's not like we're all going to forget who started -- and enabled -- this disastrous sideshow.

Sure, Reagan did this all the time. Still, it takes either a man whose memory is too wracked by age to be president -- or an inveterate liar -- to simply make up this kind of story. (See also Reagan.) Apparently, John McCain's heartwarming tale of the Christian guard in Hanoi, which he related again over the weekend at the mutual kissing of Rick Warren's ring, was in fact lifted from Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago. (Apparently McCain, and/or his ghostwriters, are fans of the man.) Uh, Senator McCain, did you really feel you had to embellish your time in a Vietnamese prison camp? The situation should speak for itself.

For what it's worth, McCain is blaming the controversy on "the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd." Well, speaking as a member of the prObama World of Warcraft crowd (really, Senator, you're dating yourself -- again), I should note that the story actually originated with the Freepers several years ago, once the mythical maverick felt the need to start peddling false wares to the nation's conservative Christians. For shame, Senator.

Update: Forget Solzhenitsyn. According to scholars (via TPM), this tale isn't from The Gulag Archipelago at all, but rather seems to be a right-wing fairy tale emanating from the likes of Chuck Colson and Jesse Helms.

"Perhaps the most puzzling scene in the ad is an altered segment from The 10 Commandments that appears near the end. A Moses-playing Charlton Heston parts the animated waters of the Red Sea, out of which rises the quasi-presidential seal the Obama campaign used for a brief time earlier this summer before being mocked into retiring it. The seal, which features an eagle with wings spread, is not recognizable like the campaign's red-white-and-blue 'O; logo. That confused Democratic consultant Eric Sapp until he went to his Bible and remembered that in the apocalyptic Book of Daniel, the Antichrist is described as rising from the sea as a creature with wings like an eagle."

You're one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan? In TIME, Amy Sullivan parses McCain's recent "The One" ad to discover that it's basically a dog whistle for Left Behind evangelicals, declaring Obama is the Antichrist. "A new TIME poll finds that the most conservative evangelicals are the least enthusiastic about McCain's candidacy. Convincing them that Obama does have two horns and a tail might be the best way of getting them to vote."

Obama is the Antichrist? Has it really come to this? I know the GOP are feeling on the verge of "Left Behind" this November, but that's gotta be just about rock-bottom. It's hard to even imagine an anti-McCain ad that would stoop that low (well, other than that it would probably have to involve the Queen of Diamonds.) And, what with the crazies already percolating, feeding this type of chum to the confused anti-Greg Stillson types out there borders on the criminal.

Come November, these GOP asshats had better lose, and lose big.

"It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant! They think it's funny that they're making fun of something that's true." I'll be honest: If it seems like political news has taken something of a backseat around here of late, it's mainly because the recent developments on the campaign trail -- tire gauges, Paris Hilton, and the like -- just seem so inordinately stupid to me, not to mention so woefully desperate by the McCain campaign, that I've had trouble mustering up the level of outrage to even post about them. That being said, Sen. Obama's still on his game, and -- in a few arch sentences -- he's made the mythical maverick and his bewildered GOP shock-troops look as ridiculous as they should.

Really, this election shouldn't even be close. McCain's shrill, doddering, and nonsensical campaign notwithstanding, I just can't believe that the good people of this country will turn to the GOP again, after barely scraping through the Dubya years. And, summer polls aside, I'm still feeling very confident that November will witness an Obama-headed Dem deluge. (By way of colleagues at Peasants Under Glass and The Late Adopter.)

“'The most important thing we learned is this: Hillary Clinton won 8 of the last 13 primaries,' said Steve Schmidt, Mr. McCain’s top strategist. 'He is beatable.'" Facing an uphill battle against Sen. Obama, John McCain takes several pages from the Clinton playbook. Well, thanks much for pre-plowing that road, Senator. I don't think it'll make much difference in the end, whatever the polls say at the moment, but we might as well make the GOP work for a strategy next time.

In related news, Bill Clinton still seems stuck in a moment he can't get out of. "'I am not a racist,' he continued. 'I've never made a racist comment and I never attacked him [Obama] personally.'" Uh, riiight. Tell you what, Mr. President: We'll forgive you if you just stop insulting our intelligence about it.

Update: He's still picking at the scab. "'You can argue that nobody is ready to be President,' the former President told ABC News."

After stops in Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, and Israel, Sen. Obama takes his message to the heart of Berlin, before a crowd of over 200,000 at the Brandenburg Gate. [Video | Transcript.] As Der Spiegel's chief foreign desk editor put it after the speech: "No. 44 has spoken."

Well, let's make sure we all do our part on Election Day first. Still, it's safe to say the Obama World Tour has been knocked out of the park so far. Between this and Iraq's backing of the Obama plan earlier in the week, McCain's chances are, at least to my mind, looking downright dismal these days. And whining about the press, a.k.a. the mythical maverick's former "base", isn't going to right the ship for the GOP. Yep, all in all, things are looking pretty good for November...and beyond.

(By the way, when Sen. Obama isn't making the case for world peace, he's also got a pretty sweet jumper.)

"Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes...Of course, this is by no means an election endorsement. Who they choose as their president is the Americans' business. But it's the business of Iraqis to say what they want." While much of the nation watched The Dark Knight, Iraqi prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki shook up our election considerably, perhaps even decisively, over the weekend by publicly backing Obama's troop withdrawal plan in the German magazine Der Spiegel.

The Dubya White House immediately tried to lean on Al-Maliki to get him to walk back his remarks, but some hemming and hawing aside, they would seem to stand. In fact, they were reinforced today by Ali al-Dabbagh, Iraq's government spokesman, upon Sen. Obama's arrival to the region: "We are hoping that in 2010 that combat troops will withdraw from Iraq."

In other words, even the Iraqis believe Obama is right and McCain is wrong on our future in Iraq. Which means the McCain campaign has just lost one of their critical tentpole issues, and has no place to go now except scream "surge, surge, surge." "Via e-mail, a prominent Republican strategist who occasionally provides advice to the McCain campaign said, simply, 'We're f**ked.'"

Of course, McCain's bleeding on the Iraq issue might be better staunched if he didn't publicly refer to the non-existent Iraq-Pakistan border...

"This is the week that should have effectively ended John McCain's efforts to become the next president of the United States...During this past week: McCain called the most important entitlement program in the U.S. a disgrace, his top economic adviser called the American people whiners, McCain released an economic plan that no one thought was serious, he flip flopped on Iraq, joked about the deaths of Iranian citizens, and denied making comments that he clearly made -- TWICE." I may have been slacking of late, but others have been keeping up the good fight. By way of Supercres, HuffPo columnist Max Bergmann lists ten campaign-derailing gaffes by John McCain, from last week alone. (So that's not counting Czechoslovakia, McCain's switch on Afghanistan, or the unfortunate "ape rape" revelations.) I must say, he really is an astoundingly bad candidate.

"The Old Dominion is now the New Dominion, particularly in the suburban and exurban counties north of the Rappahannock River. Barack Obama could not have carried Virginia as it once was. But he is running even with John McCain in a paradoxical state that was home to the Confederacy's capital but also gave the nation its first elected African American governor, Doug Wilder, in 1989." E.J. Dionne takes a look at Obama's prospects in Virginia. I must say, assuming I'm still here and/or around DC by November, it'll be nice to vote in an honest-to-goodness swing state for once in my life.

Also, a programming note: I managed to secure a "new media" press pass for the DNC's "Big Tent" in Denver. (Whether it was due to GitM's longevity, some Dem name-dropping by yours truly, or they just let everyone who signed up through the gates, I know not.) In any case, I bought a (pricey) flight yesterday and will be on the ground and reporting in from the Mile High City during the Democratic National Convention next month. Should be grand. (And if you'll be there too, drop me a line.)

"After a set of primaries that felt like they began about the time Sputnik went up, it is strange to be transported to the static battlefield of Obama versus John McCain. The fundamentals are locked in place -- and seem unlikely to be dislodged by anything less than a shift in the tectonic plates." Walter Shapiro briefly surveys the state of the race (as does the inimitable Akbar Jenkins.)

I know it's been quiet on the electoral front around here of late -- That's partly because my thoughts have been on the 20's of late and partly because I just can't muster any outrage about the New Yorker cover, or much else that's happened on the trail the past week or two. But I'm sure that'll change in due course.

"In the race for the White House, lefties seem to have the upper hand. No matter who wins in November, six of the 12 chief executives since the end of World War II will have been left-handed: Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, the elder Bush, Clinton and either Obama or McCain. That's a disproportionate number, considering that only one in 10 people in the general population is left-handed." In the WP, authors Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt explain why all your Oval Offices are belong to us, the lefties. We also swelled the ranks of both my undergraduate and graduate cohorts, whatever that's worth.

"'She's no longer campaigning for president,' said Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee. 'She's focused on her work in the Senate, campaigning for Senator Obama and other Democrats.'" With the Dems back on the same team, the Clinton campaign scrubs its website of anti-Obama material from the primary era. As such, this seems as good a time as any to definitively put to rest these Penn-inspired primary fictions as well:

"'McCain was down at the end of the table and we were talking to the head of the guerilla group here at this end of the table and I don't know what attracted my attention,' Cochran said. 'But I saw some kind of quick movement at the bottom of the table and I looked down there and John had reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he thought about him or whatever. I don't know what he was telling him but I thought, good grief, everybody around here has got guns and we were there on a diplomatic mission. I don't know what had happened to provoke John but he obviously got mad at the guy and he just reached over there and snatched him."

Um...ok. Senator Thad Cochrane (R-MS), who earlier said the idea of McCain as president "sends a cold chill down my spine," recalls McCain losing his mind on a diplomatic tour to Nicaragua. And before anyone thinks this makes him a tough guy, "easily baited" is a terrible trait in a negotiator...or a president. Update: McCain denies it.

"'As he's said many times before, Senator Obama honors and respects Senator McCain's service, and of course he rejects yesterday's statement by General Clark,' Obama spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement." So...I guess Wes Clark won't be the veep. For some ill-defined reason, the Obama campaign sees fit to throw the general under the bus because Clark, a guy I run hot and cold on, simply stated the obvious. Getting shot down over Vietnam, however ostensibly character-building, in no way constitutes executive experience: ""I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces as a prisoner of war. And he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn't held executive responsibility...I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president."

Said Obama in Independence today: "McCain had 'endured physical torment in service to our country' and 'no one should ever devalue that service, especially for the sake of a political campaign, and that goes for supporters on both sides.'" Fair enough, but that wasn't at all what Clark was doing. McCain's basically getting away with the same sort of resume inflation as Sen. Clinton did in the primaries, and Clark -- a five-star general who knows what he's talking about -- called him on it.

One could argue that there's a method to this move by the Obama campaign, but even that theory suggests a certain ugly political opportunism at work. (One could also argue karma had some part to play in all this, since Clark earlier jumped all over Samantha Powers' gaffe during the primaries.) Nonetheless, between this, the Senator's switchback on telecom immunity (which I discussed in the comments here), and various other recent triangulations, the Obama campaign has had a pretty lousy week. I don't know if it's the recent influx of "veteran" hands, an attempt to beat back the National Journal liberal label, or just an early-summer malaise, but that sickly-sweet smell of Old-School Dem Politics is lingering in the air. Get it together, y'all. I know the polls look good, but this defensive-minded playing-not-to-lose is assuredly not the way to go.

Update: "I've said this for some weeks now, they've been repeated many times." Clark sticks to his guns, and Webb has his back. Meanwhile, Salon's Glenn Greenwald makes the case against Obama's last two weeks: "There is no question, at least to me, that having Obama beat McCain is vitally important...[but] his election is less likely, not more likely, the more homage he pays to these these tired, status-quo-perpetuating Beltway pieties."

Update II: Obama clarifies on Clark: "I don’t think that General Clark you know had the same intent as the swift boat ads that we saw four years ago, I reject that analogy...I think in at least one publication was reported that my comments yesterday about Senator McCain were in a response to General Clark. I think my staff will confirm that that was in a draft of that speech that I had written two months ago.”

Update III: Fred Kaplan has a theory about Clark v. McCain: Grunts are from Mars, Flyboys are from Venus.

So, as you likely heard, John McCain recently took time off from pretending to be Mr. Environment to join Dubya in calling for the resumption of offshore drilling (thus prompting his possible No. 2, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, to also rethink the issue.) As many writers have pointed out, this just so happens to be a switch from what he said three weeks earlier, in keeping with McCain's usual m.o.

Well, the environmental consequences notwithstanding, TIME's Bryan Walsh asks the pertinent question: "Will more drilling mean cheaper gas?" Nope. "Even if tomorrow we opened up every square mile of the outer Continental Shelf to offshore rigs, even if we drilled the entire state of Alaska and pulled new refineries out of thin air, the impact on gas prices would be minimal and delayed at best. A 2004 study by the government's Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that drilling in ANWR would trim the price of gas by 3.5 cents a gallon by 2027." In other words, this is the gas tax holiday all over again. (TIME link via Dangerous Meta.)

Keeping in mind that polls five months out from Election Day are basically meaningless, some good news on the swing-state front: Sen. Obama currently leads in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. (What, you mean Mark Penn's swing-state argument was bogus? Who knew?)

This would seem to hinder McCain's likely strategy of using Florida as a safe electoral base from which to make incursions into possible Obama territory in Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, and elsewhere -- Now, the mythical maverick will have to play serious defense in the Sunshine State. (Again, June polls say next-to-nothing about the state of play in November, but I'm glad we're 4-10 points up rather than 10-15 down. Plus, these numbers are in keeping with my general feeling -- knock on wood -- that Election Day will be a trouncing.)

Update: More fuel for the fire. A new Newsweek poll has Obama up fifteen on McCain, 51%-36%. "The latest numbers on voter dissatisfaction suggest that Obama may enjoy more than one bounce. The new poll finds that only 14 percent of Americans say they are satisfied with the direction of the country...Obama is [also] running much stronger at this point in the race than his two most recent Democratic predecessors, Sen. John Kerry and Vice President Al Gore...In a July 2004 NEWSWEEK Poll, Kerry led Bush by only 6 points (51 percent to 45 percent). In June 2000, Gore was in a dead heat with Bush (45 percent to 45 percent)"

Update 2: It's not an outlier. LA Times/Bloomberg also has Obama up 15 (48%-33%) in a four-way race with Nader and Barr. Against McCain only, our man's up 12.

"'It's not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections,' Obama said in a video message to supporters, circulated by his campaign. 'But the public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who've become masters at gaming this broken system.'" Sen. Obama announces he will forego public financing for the general election.

Hmm. I was originally hoping the two candidates, based on their respective campaign finance reform bona fides, might come to an agreement that would make public financing work. But it's become painfully clear that Sen. McCain has been gaming the system thus far, and at this point I wouldn't trust him as far as I can throw him. The McCain campaign is calling Obama's decision "a broken promise of staggering dimensions," but frankly that dog's not going to hunt. Sen. Obama has not only run a lobbyist-free campaign thus far, but has now even purged the DNC of their taint (give or take a few loopholes.) Meanwhile, the McCain bandwagon is absolutely crawling with lobbyists, and they apparently even feel free to conduct their business with impunity aboard the unfortunately-named "Straight Talk Express."

Plus, with its enormously successful small-donor, Internet-based model of financing, the Obama campaign has brought new meaning to the term "public financing" anyway. So, while I'd ultimately like to see a public financing system that works, Sen. Obama still has enough credibility on this issue, I think, that his opting out doesn't trouble me all that much. Put another way, Sen. Obama has a long way to go before he seems as full of it on campaign finance reform as McCain appears these days.

"When asked if he knew when American troops could start to return home, McCain responded: 'No, but that's not too important. What's important is the casualties in Iraq.'" Not too important to you, maybe. While John Kerry and others jump on the latest McCain screw-up, these handy Youtubes bring us up to date on other recent goings-on aboard "the Double Talk Express." Without the Democratic primary feeding the beast anymore, hopefully Senator McCain's convenient U-turns and gaffe-a-minute tendencies will get more attention from the media powers-that-be.

If that's your man, then tag him in... The dirt off their shoulders, Sen. and Michelle Obama share a brief and touching moment onstage before the nomination-clinching speech on Tuesday. I must say, I greatly prefer this presidential show of affection to this one (or to the Gore make-out session, for that matter.)

Speaking of which, with Isengard subdued, meet the new opponent (via Little Bit Left, and the reverse-angle bump via The Late Adopter):

"We've seen this movie before,' Obama said at a town hall in Rapid City, S.D. 'A leader who pursues the wrong course, who is unwilling to change course, who ignores the evidence. Now, just like George Bush, John McCain is refusing to admit that he's made a mistake.'" One more from the past week: He already has trouble distinguishing Sunni from Shia. Now, it seems, GOP nominee John McCain is woefully unaware of our current troop levels overseas, and yet -- like a certain prez we could mention -- even refuses to admit he made a simple error. Uh, been there, done that.

"Tonight, Iowa, in the fullness of spring, with the help of those who stood up from Portland to Louisville, we have returned to Iowa with a majority of delegates elected by the American people, and you have put us within reach of the Democratic nomination for president of the United States." After winning Oregon 59-41 (with 94% reporting) and, uh, doing less well in Kentucky (although I was heartened to see he took Louisville), Sen. Obama returns to Iowa with a majority of the pledged delegates, thus effectively sealing up the nomination.

It looks like Sen. Clinton has decided to hang around a few more weeks nonetheless (in part, it seems, to expose the "vast sexist conspiracy" which caused her not to contest caucus states or come up with a plan past Super Tuesday), but the focus for Team Obama is now clearly on John McCain and the GOP. "'I will leave it up to Senator McCain to explain to the American people whether his policies and positions represent long-held convictions or Washington calculations,' Obama's remarks continued, 'but the one thing they don't represent is change.'"

Update: By way of The Late Adopter and sententiae et clamores, The Village Voice's Allison Benedikt puts the lie to Sen. Clinton's grappling with sexism of late: "Currently pregnant with the next generation, let me just say this: There is no greater wish that a mother can have for her daughter than that she will exploit poor people, obliterate Iran, and win rigged class president elections, Putin-style. (Mom, I won 100 percent of the vote!)...This War on Women is just like the War on Christmas: imaginary."

"Clearly, and I'm being cautious, I think it's going to be a close race. If Obama wins the 255 votes in the states where he's favored, then to get to 270 he needs to choose from the following menu: 1) Win Ohio, which takes him to 275; 2) win in the West -- Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, for 274; 3) win the three N's (Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire) for 269, plus one other state; or 4) win two of the three N's and either Colorado or Virginia." With the general election begun in earnest, Democratic pollster Paul Maslin surveys the electoral vote terrain for Salon.

"If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting the United States of America, that is a debate that I'm happy to have any time, any place, and that is a debate I will win, because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for." Looks like Sen. Borah will get another news cycle from beyond the grave...Given a golden opportunity to further tie McCain to Dubya, Sen. Obama pushes back hard on Borahgate. "They're trying to fool you, trying to scare you, and they're not telling you the truth because they can't win a foreign policy debate on the merits. It's not going to work this time."

Meanwhile, deeming Obama's wry, measured remarks a "hysterical diatribe," Sen. McCain is now trying to claim that Dubya wasn't even talking about Obama. He is, of course, lying.

And, hey, don't look now, but -- at long last -- the general election has begun!

"'In contrast to earlier times,' the opinion reads, 'our state now recognizes that an individual's capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual's sexual orientation.' More generally, 'an individual's sexual orientation -- like a person's race or gender -- does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights,' it says." A tip of the hat to the Golden State: Joining Massachusetts, the California Supreme Court overturns a same-sex marriage ban, and Gov. Schwarzeneger announces he will honor the court's decision. [Responses: Obama, McCain, Clinton.]

Naturally, I'd expect the neanderthal, culture-warrior wing of the GOP to try and make some hay out of this, and, as with 2006, I'd expect it to make very little difference come November (give or take some fundie votes in California.) True, anti-gay bigotry may have played in 2004, but, with each passing year, it's looked that much more antiquated and ridiculous. And, frankly, the fractured, anemic GOP has vastly bigger issues to contend with at the moment than whether or not gay and lesbian Americans are choosing to get married. In any case, congrats to the many couples in Cali who today saw their life-commitments honored by their state as they should be.

Some amusing pilfered links: Via The Late Adopter, watch every opening Simpsons couch gag, in just under 5 minutes. And, by way of all over the place (see Ted, The Oak, Supercres, Web Goddess, PCJM, etc.) do you know what Velcro, slinkies, Alaska, and Scientology have in common...?

"Thank you all very much. Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."

Do you remember the Iraq War of 2003? Remember those heady days of euphoria when it ended two months later, with only 139 American lives lost? Journey back with me -- TIME-LIFE style, if you will -- to the scene of our triumph: "Chris Matthews on MSNBC called Bush a 'hero' and boomed, 'He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics.' PBS' Gwen Ifill said Bush was 'part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan.' On NBC, Brian Williams gushed, 'The pictures were beautiful. It was quite something to see the first-ever American president on a -- on a carrier landing. This must be very meaningful to the United States military.'"

Well, today marks the five-year anniversary of our glorious victory, the day that "splendid little war" came to a close. Among those honoring the day, and the remarkable achievement of our Commander-in-Chief:

"Judging from Gen. David Petraeus' Senate testimony today, our military commitment to Iraq is open-ended and unconditional...Their unwavering stance amounted to this: Further pullouts might trigger defeat; the costs of defeat are too horrible to ponder; therefore, we shouldn't ponder further pullouts." Slate's Fred Kaplan takes the measure of yesterday's Petraeus hearings, and the performances of Senators Obama [transcript | video], Clinton and McCain respectively. "Near the end of the afternoon, Sen. Barack Obama, the Democrats' likely presidential nominee but a junior member of the foreign relations committee, finally got his turn to ask questions -- and he homed in on one of the administration's key conceptual failures...'I'm trying to get to an end point,' he said. 'That's what all of us are trying to do.' This is what many critics and thoughtful supporters of the war have been trying to do for five years now. The Bush administration hasn't addressed the issue. And, ultimately, neither did Petraeus or Crocker today."

"President Bush believes that every life is precious, and he spends time every day thinking about those who've lost their lives on the battlefield." And well he should: Following soon after our fifth anniversary in Iraq, a roadside bomb kills four soldiers on Easter Sunday, and the American death toll in Iraq reaches 4000, 3863 of which were killed after Dubya's declaration of "Mission Accomplished" in May 2003.

I said when the death toll hit 2,000 in October 2005 that " [t]wo thousand US men and women have been killed in the line of duty, and this blatantly amateurish administration still has no plan either to win or to disengage from a conflict they orchestrated, other than 'stay the course.'" Two and half years and 2000 lives later, it's sadly still true. Worse still, Dubya's heir apparent, John McCain, now advocates extending this administration's catastrophic incompetence into another presidential term. This is not a good idea.

"Senator Clinton says that she and Senator McCain have passed a 'Commander in Chief test' – not because of the judgments they’ve made, but because of the years they’ve spent in Washington. She made a similar argument when she said her vote for war was based on her experience at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. But here is the stark reality: there is a security gap in this country – a gap between the rhetoric of those who claim to be tough on national security, and the reality of growing insecurity caused by their decisions. A gap between Washington experience, and the wisdom of Washington’s judgments. A gap between the rhetoric of those who tout their support for our troops, and the overburdened state of our military...We have a security gap when candidates say they will follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell, but refuse to follow him where he actually is."

On the fifth anniversary of the war, Sen. Obama delivers a speech on Iraq and national security in Fayetteville, NC, and takes time to poke McCain for his apparent and frightening misunderstanding of Mideast affairs. "Just yesterday, we heard Sen. McCain confuse Sunni and Shiite, Iran and Al Qaeda. Maybe that is why he voted to go to war with a country that had no Al Qaeda ties. Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war in Iraq has done more to embolden America’s enemies than any strategic choice that we have made in decades." Really, McCain's oft-repeated error smacks of Dubya-level incompetence, and would be all over the news today if we were in general election mode, rather than collectively continuing to assuage Sen. Clinton's vanity, by assuming she still has a chance. For shame.

"Lisa Bonet ate no basil, Warsaw was raw. Was it a car or a cat I saw? Rise to vote, sir. Do geese see God? 'Do nine men interpret?' 'Nine men,' I nod." By way of THND, Weird Al Yankovic channels Dylan through palindromes, in the manner of "Subterranean Homesick Blues," I'm Not There, and "Royal Jelly." (McCain palindrome via here.)

"Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue."

In response to the burgeoning controversy over remarks by his pastor, Sen. Obama discusses his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright at , and repudiates the recent remarks that have caused so much consternation. I can't say I found myself personally offended by Rev. Wright's remarks, even if I do strongly disagree with them. But, yes, this sort of express air-clearing and establishing of distance by Sen. Obama is assuredly for the best, even if John McCain has his own intemperate clergymen to contend with.

Update: "'I think there was recognition that he’s obviously on the verge of retirement, [that] he’s taking a sabbatatical and that it was important for him to step out of the spotlight in this situation,' Obama said." Wright is officially out. With all the bodies dropping in both campaigns now, I'm reminded of D'Angelo's chess lesson in The Wire: "Pawns, man, in the game, they get capped quick, and be out the game early." (Although I guess, in this case, Obama lost a bishop.)

Update 2: Sen. Obama also addresses the Wright issue on a new Youtube video going around.

“'There are powerful arguments that Senator McCain or anyone else in this position is constitutionally qualified, but there is certainly no precedent,' said Sarah H. Duggin, an associate professor of law at Catholic University who has studied the issue extensively. 'It is not a slam-dunk situation.'" Well, that explains the love for TR's Big Stick diplomacy. As it turns out, Sen. John McCain was born in the Panama Canal zone, potentially complicating his constitutional eligibility for president. "The conflict that could conceivably ensnare McCain goes more to the interpretation of the archaic phrase 'natural born' when weighed against intent and decades of immigration law...Quickly recognizing confusion over the evolving nature of citizenship, the First Congress in 1790 passed a naturalization law that did define children of citizens 'born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States to be natural born.' But that law is still seen as potentially unconstitutional and was overtaken by subsequent legislation, which omitted the natural-born phrase."

Hmmm. Maybe next time the GOP try to ratchet up the virulent xenophobia, we should perhaps remind them that at least our putative standard-bearer is definitively a "natural-born citizen" of the republic. And I wonder, will "activist judges" on the Supreme Court really forego a strict reading of our constitution and let this foreign-born fellow, John Sidney McCain, run for president? Strict constructionists should blanch at the thought. Update: Sen. Obama co-sponsors a bill to help McCain out.

While the NYT's botched bombshell involving Maverick and Iseman has thus far only seemed to help Sen. McCain to make nice with his unreconstructed right flank, the WP posts an A1 follow-up showing how the story may bite McCain yet. To wit, his campaign is completely dominated by lobbyists. "[W]hen McCain huddled with his closest advisers at his rustic Arizona cabin last weekend to map out his presidential campaign, virtually every one was part of the Washington lobbying culture he has long decried."

Meanwhile, concerning the "other" McCain scandal at the moment, the Republican head of the FEC, David Mason, comes down against McCain's attempted gaming of the public financing system, and argues he can't duck out of public financing now. "'This is serious,' agreed Republican election lawyer Jan Baran. Ignoring the matter on the grounds that the FEC lacks a quorum, Baran said, 'is like saying you're going to break into houses because the sheriff is out of town.'"

Update: Newsweek's Mike Isikoff, one of the also-rans for the Iseman scoop, pokes a hole in McCain's denial. Regarding the Paxson letters to the FCC, McCain said yesterday that ""No representative of Paxson or Alcalde & Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC." The problem? This contradicts a sworn deposition by McCain taken in 2002, when McCain said: "I was contacted by Mr. Paxson on this issue." D'oh!

Update 2: Now, Paxson says he met with the Senator, despite McCain's statement to the contrary. "Paxson also recalled that his lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, attended the meeting in McCain's office and that Iseman helped arrange the meeting. 'Was Vicki there? Probably,' Paxson said in an interview with The Washington Post today. 'The woman was a professional. She was good. She could get us meetings.'"

Electability update: In case you missed the recent state poll findings showing that at least nine swing states choose Obama over McCain and McCain over Clinton (totalling 100 electoral votes, if you throw in Michigan below), the polling firms have crunched some more numbers. Here are a few more where the party winner doesn't change, but the margin of victory/defeat is considerably better for Sen. Obama:

"Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers. A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself -- instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity."

Remember the hubbub back in December over a spiked NYT story about John McCain and some lobbyist shenanigans? Well, it finally dropped, and it involves possible favorable treatment for -- and a possible romance with -- a young female telecom lobbyist, Vicki Iseman (who, it must be said, looks eerily like Cindy McCain.) "In interviews, the two former associates said they joined in a series of confrontations with Mr. McCain, warning him that he was risking his campaign and career. Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman." So there's definitely smoke, but is there fire? This story doesn't quite stick the landing on either the romance (both parties deny it, although they did seem to spend some time together) or the lobbyist favors (it does mention McCain urging the FCC in 1999 (before my time there) to back an Iseman client, Paxson Communications, at her request, and it rehashes McCain's involvement with the Keating 5.) But perhaps there's more to the story? If there isn't, I don't really see this having legs. Update: The WP follows up with their own version, which notes that Iseman used to tout her McCain connections to other lobbyists. Still no smoking gun, tho'.

Update: The McCain campaign has responded here, calling the piece a "hit and run smear campaign." (This response, however, sidesteps the question of a possible affair. For what it's worth, McCain has admitted to extramarital affairs during his first marriage. And, while he voted to convict Bill Clinton during the impeachment fiasco, he also said then that "I do not desire to sit in judgement of the President's private misconduct. It is truly a matter for him and his family to resolve...I have done things in my private life that I am not proud of. I suspect many of us have.")

Update 2: It looks like release of the NYT piece was prompted by a TNR story about the Grey Lady holding back, which [Updated] came out today. (Apparently, other news outlets have been chasing the story too.) In the meantime, we can content ourselves with a better documented, albeit less sexy, McCain scandal, namely his obvious gaming of the public financing system: "What we know is that McCain found a way to use the public funds as an insurance policy: If he did poorly, he would use public funds to pay off his loans. If he did well, he would have the advantage of unlimited spending. There's a reason no one's ever done anything like this. It makes a travesty of the choice inherent in voluntary public financing, between public funds and unlimited spending...Legal or not, it should bring to an end whatever tiny thread of credibility John McCain still has as a straight-talker or reformer of the political process."

As posted here awhile ago, national polls have consistently shown Sen. Barack Obama performing better against John McCain than Sen. Hillary Clinton. Well, the polling firm Rasmussen has taken the question a step further, and begun asking swing states what they think of the three remaining candidates. Check these out.

The Senate bans waterboarding by a vote of 51-45 and, surprisingly enough, straight-talker John McCain votes against the bill. "McCain sided with the Bush administration yesterday on the waterboarding ban passed by the Senate, saying in a statement that the measure goes too far by applying military standards to intelligence agencies. He also said current laws already forbid waterboarding, and he urged the administration to declare it illegal." God forbid we take too strong a stance against torture, eh, Senator? For shame.

"'I would simply be uncomfortable being in a campaign that would be inevitably attacking Barack Obama,' said McCain adviser Mark McKinnon in an interview with NPR's 'All Things Considered.' 'I think it would be uncomfortable for me, and I think it would be bad for the McCain campaign.'" McCain advisor (and former Dem) Mark McKinnon says he'll step down if Obama wins the Democratic nomination. "'I met Barack Obama, I read his book, I like him a great deal,' said McKinnon. 'I disagree with him on very fundamental issues. But I think, as I said, I think it would a great race for the country.'"

"Democrats who think it's going to be a cakewalk into the White House next November had best remember one name: Condoleezza Rice." Will John McCain pick Condi Rice as his running mate? A scarily plausible scenario.

And now, 8-for-8. Sen. Obama sweeps the Chesapeake primaries, taking Virginia by 29 (64%-35%), Maryland by 23 (currently 60%-37%), and the District by 51 (75%-24%). Best of all, he won across the board and made clear and undeniable in-roads into Clinton's demographic base. Next stop, Wisconsin and Hawaii, which Sen. Clinton seems to be ceding for her Giulianiesque firewall of Ohio and Texas. (I'm not sure why -- both could feasibly play to her strengths.) Update: Clinton's going to Wisconsin after all.

Capping the night of victories was another splendid speech by Obama, one that clearly and organically weaved some Edwardsian bread-and-butter populism into the existing stump speech. Sen. Obama also spent some time going after John McCain, and, after ekeing out Virginia on his end, McCain returned fire. We still have a ways to go on the Democratic side, of course, and I'm definitely not counting the Clintons out yet. (If anything, they're more dangerous than ever.) But, Obama's definitely got the Big Mo. And, at least during the speeches tonight, it was starting to look and sound like a general election...

Update: The target for the Clinton campaign right now appears to be 56% -- that's the percentage of remaining delegates Senator Clinton need to win to defeat Senator Obama in the overall pledged delegate count. But, according to media poobah Howard Fineman, at least, even the Clinton campaign concedes that's not going to happen, despite all the talk about the firewall strategy in Ohio and Texas. Instead, barring a monumental collapse by the Obama campaign, the Clintons are basically looking for they closest they can get to a photo finish, followed by the superdelegates breaking against the will of the pledged delegates. I seriously doubt that dog will hunt.

Jesse Dylan, will.i.am, and their legion of photogenic hopemongers no longer have a monopoly on the feel-good musical speechifying. Now it's John McCain's turn. 12008? Good luck with that in November... (Via TPM.)

"I must now stand aside, for our party and our country. If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win." With an eye to 2012, Governor Mitt Romney is out, meaning the GOP nominee is now, for all intent and purposes, John McCain.

So, now part of the question for our party becomes, which Democrat is more likely to beat McCain? I'm betting you can guess my answer. As Nicholas Kristof notes: "When pollsters offer voters hypothetical matchups, Mr. Obama does better than Mrs. Clinton against Mr. McCain. For example, a Cook Political Report poll of registered voters released this week found Mr. McCain beats Mrs. Clinton, 45 percent to 41 percent. But Mr. Obama beats Mr. McCain, 45 percent to 43 percent. The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll found similar results."

See also David Broder: "In either scenario, women break for the Democratic candidate. McCain leads Clinton by 13 points among men, but only runs even with Obama. Party lines are sharp, and the battle for independents would be close. Currently, independents give McCain a 12-point lead over Clinton but favor Obama by 6 points over the Republican."

Update: Another TIME poll agrees: "Obama captured 48% of the vote in the theoretical match-up against McCain's 41%, the TIME poll reported, while Clinton and McCain would deadlock at 46% of the vote each...The difference, says Mark Schulman, CEO of Abt SRBI, which conducted the poll for TIME, is that 'independents tilt toward McCain when he is matched up against Clinton. But they tilt toward Obama when he is matched up against the Illinois Senator." Independents, added Schulman, 'are a key battleground.'"

"My friends, as I said the other week in South Carolina, there is nothing in our country that is inevitable. We can overcome any challenge as long as we keep our courage, and stand by the principles that have made our party and our country great."

Florida votes, and Arizona Senator John McCain is the big winner and -- arguably -- now the prohibitive frontrunner for the Republican nomination (much to the consternation of the conservative base.) Given that he's easily the GOP candidate with the most crossover appeal, that's bad news for the Democrats, particularly if we decide to get behind the one person on this earth (well, two people, counting her husband) who could manage to reunite the abysmally fractured GOP.

Speaking of which, Senator Clinton handily won on the (meaningless) Dem side -- prompting much rejoicing and e-mailing by the Clinton campaign. (Although, in a bit of a shocker, it turns out she actually tied the delegate count with Mike Gravel.) Seriously, though, given that Florida is particularly choice demographic territory for Clinton, she'd probably have won the Sunshine State in any event. (As George Will and Slate have both recently pointed out, Florida is known as "God's Antechamber" for a reason, and, as has been the norm, voters over 60 -- 39% of the voting Dems -- went for Hillary 59%-24%.) But, given that this ended up being basically the name-recognition primary, and that no delegates came of it, I'm not too concerned about the results. On to Super-Tuesday.

Update: Looking over the CNN exit poll numbers for the Dem side, this would seem to be the key stat in viewing both tonight and the road ahead:

When did you decide who to vote for?

Today: (10%): Clinton 34%, Obama 30%
Last 3 Days: (7%): Obama 46%, Clinton 38%
Last Week: (7%): Obama 39%, Clinton 31%
Last Month: (16%): Obama 47%, Clinton 40%
Before That: (33%): Clinton 63%, Obama 27%
Absentee/Early Voter: (26%): Clinton 50%, Obama 31%

So, among voters that have decided since the campaign took off in Iowa, Obama does rather well. It's the long-time deciders and absentees -- 60% of the electorate -- where he seriously fell behind. This would indicate name recognition definitely played its part today, and that actual campaigning in Florida could've made a significant difference. Good to know, as we move forward.

Hrm.

Well, that was unexpected...I must say, if nothing else, "false hopes" had a really good night. But, hey, I guess I should've known better. As The Wire continually reminds us, despite all evidence to the contrary, maybe a new day is never dawning. (You know, I should really develop some new interests. Maybe it's time to become a gardening blog or something.)

Anyway, looking at the numbers, it looks like the difference voters in New Hampshire were women, who returned to Clinton's corner in droves (47% to 34%), and older voters, who've been there all along (65 and over: 48% to 32%, 50-64: 39% to 30%, 40-49: 44% to 33%.) Well, at least the kids are alright. (18-24: 60%-22%, for Obama.)

That all makes a certain amount of sense, I guess. Women more readily see Clinton as a candidate of change by her very nature, and, as I wrote at great length about over the weekend, many older voters seem to buy what she's selling regardless: another eight years of cautious, obfuscating, Grand Theft Auto-blaming and very "experienced" incrementalism.

To be honest, on its face, New Hampshire going Clinton doesn't bother me all that much. It's an older, whiter state, and for all its vaunted independence, it's usually just contrarian for its own sake, like bad Slate columns and Armond White. Once Clinton became the underdog after Iowa, it was a natural pick-up for her.

What does concern me, tho', is the bizarre polling problem we saw tonight. Some polls are occasionally wrong, sure, but every poll -- not one poll, every poll -- had Obama up between five and twelve points this morning. Ok, well, there were a lot of undecided voters, and clearly most of 'em broke for Clinton. So be it. More disconcerting, however, exit polls -- taken after the votes were made, mind you -- also had Obama up by five. So, how did we finish down two at the end of the night (with the polls still getting the GOP race exactly right?) How did every poll miss out on that seven point swing, a swing based on post-voting data? I suppose it's still an open question, but the elephant in the room is the Bradley Effect, and, I gotta say, I'm pretty disgusted right now with my fellow white people. Vote for who you want to vote for, but don't lie about it before or after the fact. If someone has a better explanation about the disparity in exit polls, I'm all ears. Update: Pollster has a good overview of the various prevailing current theories.

As for what explains Clinton's victory, I must confess: even given what I said above, I'm at a bit of a loss. This is mainly because I thought the polls reflected, you know, the actual standings. The only real possible game-changer lately, other than just a collective New Hampshire uprising against media expectations (which is stupid - it was their poll answers creating and driving those expectations), was the "Diner Sob", as Slate is billing it, the other day. Apparently, a sizable majority of New Hampshire's older/women voters looked in to Clinton's heart at that moment, and liked what they saw. Iron Eyes Cody for President! I dunno...admittedly, I'm feeling rather Menckenesque at the moment. Still, I'm reminded of Bernie Birnbaum, John Turturro's character in Miller's Crossing: "What were you gonna do if you caught me? I'd just squirt a few and then you'd let me go again."

Bleah. A no-good, lousy night, to be sure. Unless you're John McCain -- for him, the news is great on both sides of the ledger. If the current paradigm wins, so do Republicans. Now, I have no real inclination to vote Republican, but the fact remains: When it comes to campaign finance reform --the change issue -- McCain has far, far better creds than Clinton.

Still, it's not over yet, and adversity builds character, right? We've split the first two games, and now attention moves to Nevada and my home state of South Carolina. Neither are necessarily unfavorable terrain for Obama, so if he can weather the post-New Hampshire bounce over the next week, we're still good to go. But it's definitely harder now, no doubt. Florence, come to our aid! (For old times' sake, if nothing else.)

By the way, New Hampshire? Eff you, you tired, gaseous windbag of an "independent" state. Robert Frost, Alan Shepard, and Christa McAuliffe notwithstanding, you haven't contributed anything to the polity since Daniel Webster. From now on, I'm hiking in Vermont.

So, the debates.

Of course, every big show has an opening act, and the undercard tonight was the Republicans. I realize I've been slipping on the GOP coverage around these parts of late, and I apologize...I promise to catch up once the Dem side quiets down (As a show of good faith: hey, look! Romney won Cheney country.) Still, part of the reason I've been losing interest in the GOP's internecine disputes this cycle is because -- even notwithstanding the moldering albatross that is Dubya -- their candidates are all so lousy, and everyone knows it. (The Iowa attendance numbers, where the Dems outnumbered Republicans 2-1, tell most of the story.) Still, my main impressions of the GOP side tonight were thus:

"I do find the timing of this whole issue very interesting. And we're not going to stand for what happened to us in 2000. We're getting close to the primary." Matt Drudge's recent attempts to foist a December Surprise into the Democratic primaries seems to have whiffed. Will he draw more blood in the GOP? John McCain decides to respond forcefully to an unpublished Times story -- held up by editor Bill Keller and leaked to Drudge -- involving some sort of unspecified lobbyist malfeasance. Hmmm. I'm torn on this. Since the NYT story hasn't actually gone live, there may well be nothing to it. As such, this looks a bit like the Choose Your Own Scandal shenanigans that Clinton operatives attempted to unleash on Obama last month. But, then again, the NYT powers-that-be were idiotic enough to hold the NSA wiretap story through the 2004 election, so maybe their judgment about what constitutes newsworthiness around voting time should be in question.

Late to the party on this, but some endorsements of note. The The Des Moines Register backs Hillary Clinton, as does former Senator and Bradley supporter Bob Kerrey (although Kerrey has some nice words for Obama as well.) Says the Register: "Obama, her chief rival, inspired our imaginations. But it was Clinton who inspired our confidence." And, of course, former President Bill Clinton has been touting his wife more loudly than usual of late, including going so far as to disparage Obama on television.

Meanwhile, calling Clinton's campaign "needlessly defensive" and "a backward glance at the bruising political battles of the 1990s," the Boston Globe backs Barack Obama, citing his international experience, judgment, and -- most happily -- his progressive bona fides: "The first major bill to Obama's name in the Illinois Legislature was on campaign ethics reform. In Washington, he coauthored this year's sweeping congressional lobbying reform law...exposure [to government] has tended to give [Obama's opponents] a sense of government's constraints. Obama is more animated by its possibilities."

Finally, while Mike Huckabee may have locked up the home-school crowd, both the Des Moines Register and Boston Globe back John McCain...as does -- continuing his fall from Democratic grace -- formerly Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman. "The problems that confront us are too great, the threats we face too real, and the opportunities we have too exciting for us to play partisan politics with the presidency," said Lieberman. Sigh...And he and Clinton seemed so close in their aghast GOP-lite moralism when they were blaming Grand Theft Auto for all America's ills.

"We don't agree with him on every issue. We disagree with him strongly on campaign finance reform. What is most compelling about McCain, however, is that his record, his character, and his courage show him to be the most trustworthy, competent, and conservative of all those seeking the nomination." In a boon to his flailing presidential hopes, which now rest squarely on a superlative showing in New Hampshire, the right-leaning Manchester Union-Leader endorses John McCain. (IMHO, of course, for all the wrong reasons.) "McCain is pro-life. Always has been." Uh, yeah.

Another new poll, by way of the Des Moines Register, puts Obama slightly in the Iowa lead at 28%, to Clinton's 25% and Edwards' 23%. (All candidates are within the margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.) Also, it seems Obama may well have cut deeply into Clinton's impressive support among Iowa women: "In the new poll, Obama leads with support from 31 percent of women likely attend the caucuses, compared to 26 percent for Clinton. In October, Clinton was the preferred candidate of 34 percent of women caucusgoers, compared to 21 percent for Obama" Still, Clinton maintains her generational ace in the hole: "Clinton is the top choice among caucusgoers 55 years old and older. The largest share of Democratic caucusgoers -- exactly half -- are in this age group." Meanwhile, on the GOP side, Mike Huckabee leads Mitt Romney 29%-24%, with no one else even close. "That's a gain of 17 percentage points since the last Iowa Poll was taken in early October, when Huckabee trailed both Romney and Fred Thompson." We have a ways to go yet, but it's looking like we've got ourselves a barnburner on both sides of the aisle, and I'm obviously pleased as punch that Obama is not only in the running but leading the pack. Onward and upward.

Update: "Now the fun part starts"? Sensing the obvious danger to her candidacy in Obama's Iowa lead, Hillary Clinton announces she's going negative, and illustrates thus by insinuating Obama has character issues. “'I want a long term relationship,' she said. 'I don’t want to just have a one night stand with all of you.'"

Sigh...According to the NYT, a new ad for John McCain by a soft-money front, Foundation for a Secure and Prosperous America, -- which McCain has disavowed -- exemplifies the rush of unregulated, undisclosed money expected in the 2008 race, thanks in part to the Supreme Court's gutting of McCain-Feingold over the summer. "The decision removed virtually any restrictions on [corporations'] ability to advertise, and made nonprofit corporations, with their few disclosure requirements, the tool of choice for big donors looking to influence elections...They can now run explicitly political advertisements that mention specific candidates right up to Election Day, as long as they have some other ostensible purpose -- even one that closely resembles a candidate’s campaign themes."

Meanwhile, on the GOP side: The Republican field shores up its right-wing cred as Moral Majority co-founder Paul Weyrich endorses Mitt Romney, well-known evangelical crazy Pat Robertson backs Rudy Giuliani, and failed presidential candidate Sam Brownback, who I really thought would fill the conservative spoiler role now enjoyed by Mike Huckabee, instead decides to get behind John McCain. Looks like it's still anybody's race over there, even with NH polls currently breaking Romney's way.

There' s no mandate for Rudy or Romney just yet...In keeping with the strong support for none of the above discovered earlier this year, a new poll finds the Republican nomination is more up for grabs than it's been in almost thirty years. "Not since 1979 has the leading Republican candidate had less than 40 percent support in national polls in the November heading into an election year."

"'Democrats are reasonably comfortable with the range of choices. The Democratic attitude is that three or four of these guys would be fine,' David Redlawsk, a University of Iowa political scientist. 'The Republicans don't have that; particularly among the conservatives there's a real split. They just don't see candidates who reflect their interests and who they also view as viable.'" Currently leading the Republican race for President: "none of the above." I wholeheartedly agree.

"'The campaign is imploding,' said one McCain staffer, echoing a word used by others." With his campaign leadership resigning en masse, some serious funding problems looming on the horizon, and a possible mobile phone slip-up that might prove illegal, is John McCain's 2008 bid already derailed? Slate's John Dickinson surveys the wreckage. "Those who remain are trying to argue that McCain is showing leadership by holding his top brass accountable, but the episode looks more like the last scene in Hamlet -- a stack of bodies piled up just before the curtain." Update: McCain circles the wagons.

"'You can look at this stage and see an African American, a Latino, a woman contesting for the presidency of the United States,' Clinton said. 'But there is so much left to be done, and for anyone to assert that race is not a problem in America is to deny the reality in front of our very eyes.'" Unfortunately, I missed the third Democratic debate at Howard University debate last night, so I can't comment on the performances of Clinton, Obama, Edwards et al. I can say that this new NBC poll showing that 52% of the electorate wouldn't consider voting for Hillary under any circumstances conforms to one of my major concerns with her nomination. As I said before, she's a smart, talented, and impressive politico who'd undoubtedly sail the ship of state much more smoothly than the current administration. (Of course, so would you, I, the night-janitor at the local McDonalds, or almost anyone else one can think of.) But, really: [1] she's thoroughly lousy on campaign finance reform, to my mind the issue that bears on virtually all others; [2] she apparently didn't have the wherewithal or leadership instincts to realize the Iraq war was a terrible idea in 2003 (it didn't take all that much to figure it out, particularly when you figure how much more information Clinton had access to than we did); [3] her view of centrism is apparently to act like Joe Lieberman every so often; and [4] most of the nation has already decided for various reasons that they don't like her. With the Republicans scattered and in retreat, their ideology in eclipse, why do we keep throwing up marginal, tired candidates -- Gore, Kerry, Clinton -- on the off-chance that the electorate will manage to surmount their strong negatives, hold their collective nose, and vote for them?

To be fair, the other Dems haven't been all that great at articulating a progressive alternative to Republican-lite DLC-ishness yet either, but at least there's some potential for it there. Sen. Obama's got all the right JFK moves, and this all-things-to-all-people ambiguity may be one of his strongest political assets. But right now I think he's relying too much on his initial spate of public goodwill, and missing a chance to really draw the nation's attention to the issues that concern him. And John Edwards' son-of-a-millworker-made-good brand of populism, while laudable, doesn't yet seem fully formed to me. But, at the very least, Edwards -- unlike some of his more-willing-to-triangulate opponents -- seems more often than not to let his flag fly, and act from the courage of his convictions. Right now, particularly with McCain hopelessly derailed by his blatant compromises of principle, Edwards may be the closest we've got to a Straight-Talk-Express this year (well, this side of Kucinich, Gravel, and Paul.)

At the moment, I'm still leaning towards Obama, just because of his tremendous upside -- he, unlike virtually every other candidate, has the possibility to transform, revitalize, and realign our current political debate if he plays his cards right. But, Edwards is still in my estimation, and I'll be taking a long hard look at him over the coming months (and either, in my humble opinion, are preferable to Senator Clinton, for the reasons listed above.)

The big news last Friday: Dubya and the Senate came to a deal on immigration reform, although the compromise -- supported by Democratic Senators Kennedy, Feinstein, and Salazar as well as Republicans such as McCain, Graham, and Martinez -- faces some major implementation issues and potential fire from both sides of the issue. Among the critics: Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama: "Without modifications, the proposed bill could devalue the importance of family reunification, replace the current group of undocumented immigrants with a new undocumented population consisting of guestworkers who will overstay their visas, and potentially drive down wages of American workers."

Is this it? Is this all you can conjure, Republicans? Perhaps it was because I was feeling mighty under the weather when catching up with it on TiVo, but last Thursday's GOP debate was more than a little underwhelming. Of the top tier, Mitt Romney probably acquitted himself the best: He seemed a bit blow-dried and canned, sure, but we were at the Reagan library, after all, and he didn't do anything to hurt his standing as a front-runner with money to burn. Frankly, John McCain's act seemed stale to me: The "Gates of Hell" notwithstanding, he seemed to possess little-to-none of the from-the-gut, truth-to-power charisma that propelled him through 2000. (And his pained, convoluted stance on Iraq -- everything got screwed up for years but now we're hunky-dory -- doesn't make a lick of sense.) Rudy Giuliani proved once again that he's a better candidate in theory than in practice, and I don't see his half-hearted shrug over Roe V. Wade playing too well to the conservative cheap seats. (Let's not forget, three of these ten folks -- Brownback, Huckabee, Tancredo -- wouldn't even admit to believing in evolution.) Speaking of which, Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback seemed like the two among the rest with the best shot to jump up a notch, particularly as either could conceivably become the favorite son of the Dobson wing of the party. Ron Paul's ardent libertarianism was a surprising X-factor in the debate, and I thought it was kinda fun to have him around. (He also came across better, IMO, than the Dem's official monkey wrench, Mike Gravel.) Jim Gilmore, Tommy Thompson, Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter? Meh. If I were Fred Thompson, I wouldn't be dissuaded from a run by this lot. I mean, the GOP field already looks like one of those WaMu ads with the gang of disgruntled bankers (Indeed, an Obama-and-GOP Youtube remix seems inevitable) -- why not add one more to the mix?

Probably the most telling fact of the evening was the dog that didn't bark: Dubya. Watching these ten prominent Republicans squirm and equivocate every time anyone mentioned the president and his current policies tells you everything you need to know about 2008 -- After eight years of GOP mismanagement and corruption, the election is the Dems to lose.

"'A Democratic candidate could go out there and muck it up and raise questions about his or her competence or judgment,' says Andy Kohut, director of the non-partisan Pew Research Center. 'But the landscape really is tilted in a Democratic direction.'" In USA Today, Susan Page lists five reasons why 2008 is looking Democratic. But, don't tell these guys: The Republicans go at it tonight at the Reagan Presidential Library, 8pm, MSNBC.

Meanwhile, also on the persecuted prosecutors tip, McCain says it's time for Gonzales to go. "I think that out of loyalty to the president that that would probably be the best thing that he could do."

"Americans are acutely aware of our problems, and their patience is at an end for politicians who value incumbency over principle, and for partisanship that is less a contest of ideas than an uncivil brawl over the spoils of power. I want my presidency to be an opportunity -- an opportunity to fix what we all know needs to be fixed. I'm running for president of the United States; not yesterday's country; not a defeated country; not a bankrupt country; not a timid and frightened country. I'm running for president of the United States, a blessed country, a proud country, a hopeful country, the most powerful and prosperous country and the greatest force for good on earth. And when I'm president, I intend to keep it so."

With an eye on Giuliani and a nod to Reagan's "Morning in America," John McCain officially announces his candidacy for president. Well, McCain is -- usually -- good on the question of getting money out of politics, which I still consider to be arguably the most important domestic issue in America, and the one that prevents real, pragmatic solutions from occurring on dozens of other issues, from health care to economic policy to alleviating child poverty. But, let's face it: McCain has proven time and time again by this point that his vaunted reputation for independence is a press-driven ruse, and that he'll fall behind the Dubya line when even slightly leaned upon. The line that keeps coming back to mind when I think of the Senator from Arizona, and I've used it before here, is Senator George Norris' description of the equally reputed maverick William Borah: He only "shoots until he sees the whites of their eyes." That seems to be John McCain in a nutshell, and it's been a long time since he's done anything to prove that sentiment wrong.

"'We tried to explain to the folks in Boston early on that it's a little different here,' says Terry Sullivan, a veteran political operative who is running former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's presidential campaign in the Palmetto State. 'It's kind of a knife fight.'" Meanwhile, right down the road in my home state, the Republicans already seem to be fighting in the gutter, as Salon's Michael Scherer reports. "'The person who wins the South Carolina primary generally becomes the nominee,' explained South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham...'It's a test of a red state. It will be a real test of strength among conservatives in general. So you have to have your best game on.'"

"The government may use its voice and its regulatory authority to show its profound respect for the life within the woman." In keeping with a tendency to move right incrementally, without necessarily overturning any laws (one that may also pose trouble for the McCain-Feingold act in coming weeks), the Roberts Court upholds a ban against partial-birth abortion 5-4, with Justice Anthony Kennedy the swing vote. (He was joined, of course, by Justices Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito.) Kennedy's reasoning? According to Slate's always-perceptive Dahlia Lithwick, it was fear of the Inconstant Woman: "Today's holding is a strange reworking of Taming of the Shrew, with Kennedy playing an all-knowing Baptista to a nation of fickle Biancas." For her part, Senator Barbara Boxer sadly summed it up as such: "'It confirms that elections have consequences,'...alluding to Bush's re-election and the seven GOP Senate wins in 2004 which set the stage for the appointment of Roberts and Alito."

With that in mind, all the major candidates for 2008 obviously weighed in on the decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, although everyone pretty much followed to party script, even the ostensibly pro-choice Giuliani. [Clinton | Edwards | Giuliani | McCain | Obama | Richardson | Romney] "Wednesday's ruling raises the stakes for the 2008 presidential election, which is almost certain to pit an abortion-rights Democrat against an anti-abortion Republican." Let's not make the same mistake again, y'all.

"Two and a half years ago, John McCain swallowed his pride and hitched his ambitions to two stars -- George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. Both have since imploded. And so, as his campaign faces the purple dusk of twilight time, the man who might once have been an honorable president slips and slides on the stardust." Based on a recent NYT interview with the Mythical Maverick, Slate's Fred Kaplan argues that John McCain's Straight Talk Express is now effectively dismantled for good.

Some more fallout (and, in my opinion, auspicious signs) from the first money primary held recently: Hillary Clinton may have more in the bank, but Barack Obama raised more money, has more cap room to spare, so to speak, and has been peeling off some top Clinton donors to back his own efforts. "A list of Mr. Obama's top fund-raisers released Sunday showed the extent to which the Democratic Party establishment, once presumed to back Mrs. Clinton, has become more fragmented and drifted into her rival's camp, lending the early stages of the Democratic primary campaign the feeling of a family feud." Update: In related news, a new poll shows the race tightening on both sides. Clinton's up only eight on Obama, Giuliani has six on McCain (pending GOP reinforcements such as Fred Thompson.)

Yes, folks, this is how we choose a president in this country: Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash. The first primary is effectively over, and Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney lead the begging and scraping for loot at $26 and $21 million respectively. On the GOP side, Rudy came in second at $15 million, with McCain trailing at third with $12.5 million. Meanwhile, for the Dems: John Edwards has $14 million, Bill Richardson $6 million, Chris Dodd $4 million, and Joe Biden a clean, articulate $3 million. Still obviously missing, Barack Obama, who is rumored to be up around the 20 mark. While I hate to indulge this stupid financing system, I hope it's something like that, as I'm still rooting for he or Edwards over Sen. Clinton in the primary, and the Clinton money machine is, without a doubt, a sleek, well-oiled contraption. Update: Make that $25 million for Obama.

"I am announcing that I will be a candidate for president of the United States" With Rudy Giuliani pulling ahead in the still-relatively-useless name game polls, the former captain of the Straight-Talk Express, John McCain, tells David Letterman he's in for 2008. So...Clinton, Obama, Giuliani and now McCain: With a little less than a year before the first primary, the field of major contenders now seems to be set. Gentlemen (and gentlewoman), start your begging.

True colors, or just a victim of the money madness that afflicts our political process? As he gallops off to all-important Iowa (and tries to ignore the furor over Iraq that's gotten him linked inexorably with Dubya's failures), John McCain also appears to be neglecting his campaign finance bona fides in his attempt to gather loot for his presidential bid. "McCain's allies in the campaign finance reform movement seem resigned to the fact that he will not abide by many of the principles he advocated for a decade as a reformer, including public financing and its associated spending and fundraising limits."

"Our troops in Iraq have fought bravely. They have done everything we have asked them to do. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me." I'm still furiously playing catch-up, so I'm obviously a day or two behind on blogging this...Then again, Dubya's just as obviously three or four years behind in announcing it, so I'll call it a wash. Nonetheless, after finally admitting that his administration has seriously screwed up in Iraq, Bush --- sidestepping the suggestions of the Baker-Hamilton commission -- calls for sending 21,500 more troops to the region, in what's being billed as a "surge." (Re: "escalation.") When you get right down to it, Dubya's basic argument in his televised address on Wednesday was this: "Through wishful thinking and outright incompetence, I've dug two nations into a huge hole. Please, please, please let me keep digging..."

Here's the thing -- A massive troop increase would've made a good deal of sense in 2003, during those crucial days just after the fall of the Hussein regime. A show of power then -- and a quicker restoration of order and basic services -- would have paid huge dividends down the road. But, now, all these years later, after so much infrastructure has been destroyed and so many sectarian schisms have been allowed to fester? 21,500 troops -- many of them not fresh recruits but wearied soldiers returning to the region or having their tours extended -- isn't going to make a dent in the Whack-a-Mole game we've been playing against insurgents since 2003. At best, this escalation is a show of good faith to the al-Maliki government, which seems to be not much more than a brittle political arm of Shiite extremists (Exhibit A: the manner of Saddam's hanging; Exhibit B: the refusal to do anything -- until now -- to rein in Al Sadr's Mahdi Army.) Yes, folks, throwing more troops at a losing situation, backing a shaky government that can't handle its own security issues, rattling the saber at Cambodia/Iran...who says Dubya isn't a student of history?

Fortunately, for the first time since the beginning of the war, Congress isn't having it, with even some Republicans joining Dems in rallying against the proposed troop increase and today venting their wrath at Condi Rice before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. (No doubt the poll numbers against Dubya's plan is helping to stiffen some GOP spines.) Still, Dubya has some allies in this fight -- While the Dems are universally opposed to the escalation gamble [Dem Response by Durbin | Biden | Clinton | Dodd | Edwards | Feingold | Obama | Pelosi] and a not-insubstantial number of Republicans are balking, some key GOP pols are still supporting Dubya's move (most notably John McCain, who's been calling for a troop increase since day one, and Rudy Giuliani, likely trying to right the 2008 ship after his recent devastating document dump.)

Is the McCain Train leaving the station? ABC News seems to think so, although they may be jumping the gun a bit here.

"Lame Duck" Dubya and his man behind the curtain, Karl Rove, may be "inexplicably upbeat," but John McCain is apparently contemplating suicide. Meanwhile, Dems Carville and Greenberg suggest breaking out the party credit cards, while the bellwether state of Ohio sours on the GOP completely. Only 20 days left until Election 2006...

"Sen. John McCain has skidded his Straight Talk Express off the highway into a gopher's ditch of slime." As Dubya rejects bilateral talks with N. Korea, Slate's Fred Kaplan puts the lie to John McCain's recent attempt to carry water for the Bushies on the Korean nuclear issue. "McCain's version of history goes beyond 'revisionism' to outright falsification. It is the exact opposite of what really happened."

"Eliminating habeas is tantamount to letting hundreds of Guantanamo prisoners rot in jail." After striking a somewhat nonsensical compromise with the McCain-Graham faction, Dubya gets most of his desired detention and torture bill, one which gives him the authority to interpret the Geneva Conventions by fiat and disallows detainees from either invoking the Conventions or challenging their treatment in any court. "'It replaces the old broken' military trial system ruled illegal by the Supreme Court with 'a new broken commission system,' said Marine Corps Col. Dwight Sullivan, the chief defense counsel for the Defense Department's Office of Military Commissions. He said 'it methodically strips rights' guaranteed by laws and treaties and appears to be unconstitutional." Update: The House GOP get gleeful about the torture bill.

"Purely from a strategic point of view, this is another mess...Every time Republicans think they have an issue to unite them and divide the Democrats, the Republicans end up spending most of the time fighting among themselves." As fear-mongering and falling oil prices perhaps help the GOP get back in the race this November, the WP surveys the political implications of the recent stand of principle by Senators Warner, McCain, Graham, and Snowe against Dubya's grotesque tribunal plan. Politics or no, Dubya's proposed gutting of the Geneva Conventions must be stopped: "'What is being billed as "clarifying" our treaty obligations will be seen as "withdrawing" from the treaty obligations,' Graham said. 'It will set precedent which could come back to haunt us.'"

"He's no longer offering himself as the alternative to Bush. Now he's positioned himself as Bush's heir, a turnaround that makes some people, including McCain sometimes, more than a little uncomfortable." In their Sunday magazine, the WP surveys the sad primary-induced transformation of John McCain from mythical maverick to Dubya stalwart.

"The Bull Moose has temporarily turned into a performing elephant. But the Moose will be back -- around March 2008, if everything goes according to plan." As much of the press hammers John McCain for his blatant re-positioning maneuvers of late, Slate throws a lovefest of sorts for the mythical maverick today, with Jacob Weisberg arguing he's really a TR progressive and John Dickerson promoting him as the happy crusader. I've used this line before, but it fits to a tee. Given McCain's frequent bouts of water-carrying for the Dubya administration, my view of the Senator's vaunted independence -- until proven wrong -- is the same as Sen. George Norris' take on his progressive colleague William Borah, who indulged a similar maverick reputation back in the teens, twenties, and thirties: He only "shoots until he sees the whites of their eyes."

By a virtual party-line vote, the House Republicans pass a campaign finance reform bill that caps "527" contributions while raising the limit on coordinated party spending -- both measures that greatly advantage the GOP over the Dems in the current campaign finance climate. "Organizations such as Common Cause, Democracy 21 and Public Citizen, past legislative adversaries of the GOP, were allied with Republicans in yesterday's floor fight. Democrats had the backing of a long list of conservative leaders opposed to regulation, including Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and Paul M. Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation." Well, they may have been right for the wrong reasons...still, I gotta say, the party spending aside, I'm actually with the GOP on this one. 527 organizations represent a blatant loophole in the McCain-Feingold act, and some 527 reform is clearly necessary if we're going to be serious about restricting the influence of money on the electoral system. That so few House Dems voted for principle over their party pocketbooks is, to my mind, deeply troubling (but, so, for that matter, is McCain's possible side deal to buttress his 2008 war chest.)

"I don't know,' said Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio...'People are not really talking to me directly about lobbying. I think they're concerned about some of the, quote, scandal, but I don't have anybody come up to me and say there's a lobbying problem. It doesn't get that specific.'" As such, one day after voting down an independent ethics office 67-30, the Senate passes a watered-down "lobbying reform" bill 90-8 that, for all intent and purposes. seems to be merely cosmetic. "The Senate measure toughens disclosure requirements for lobbyists and requires lawmakers to obtain advance approval for the private trips that were a central feature of the Abramoff scandal. But it does not rein in lawmakers' use of corporate jets, and it fell far short of the sweeping changes, including a ban on privately financed travel, that some lawmakers advocated in January...'It's very, very weak,' said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona."

Five Republicans and only three measly Democrats voted against the phantom reform bill: McCain, Feingold, Kerry, Graham, DeMint, Inhofe, and the "unlikely duo" of Obama and Coburn. (The West Virginia Dem delegation -- Byrd and Rockefeller -- abstained.) Still, "Mr. McCain predicted that there would be more indictments growing out of the investigation into political corruption, and said that such a development would lead Congress to revisit the issue again."

"'There seems to be a disconnect between the rhetoric in Washington about what this is all about and what we hear here,' Feingold said. McCain responded that he did 'not want to get into a back-and-forth with one of my best friends.'" While visiting Baghdad, Senators McCain and Feingold argue "cordially and pointedly" over Iraq. "Feingold...said he was dismayed not to hear any of the military commanders he met with mention al-Qaeda as a source of the problems in Iraq. The Bush administration and U.S. officials here often point to the radical group as a major source of instability in the country."

"'The short-term politics of this are pretty clear. The long-term politics are pretty clear. And they're both at odds,' said Mike Buttry, a spokesman for Sen. Chuck Hagel." With Republican unity already shattered by Dubaigate, the contentious question of immigration reform threatens to divide Dubya and the GOP anew, as 2008 hopefuls Frist and Tancredo attempt to outflank Dubya on the right on the issue of border security, while McCain tries to shore up his standing with the Bushies. "For Republican presidential candidates, immigration offers up a difficult choice: Appeal to conservatives eager to clamp down on illegal immigration who could buoy your position in the primaries, or take a moderate stand to win independents and the growing Latino vote, which could be vital to winning the general election."

"For the past two years, the Arizona senator has seen his institutional adversaries in the Republican establishment brought low, one by one, clearing away the obstacles to his likely presidential bid in 2008. In some cases, their well-earned misfortune can be attributed directly to him; in others, he has merely observed their fortuitous ruin. What matters is that his worst, most effective enemies are distracted, disgraced or endangered by criminal investigations, and will be in no condition to threaten him in the foreseeable future." Salon's Joe Conason thinks John McCain has his party's green light for 2008 (and sounds more excited about the prospect than I am.)

The Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, which has recently been looking into lobbying reform, votes 11-5 on an amendment by George Voinovich (R-OH) to prevent the creation of an independent ethics office. (Three Dems joined the Republicans, minus Chair Susan Collins, to kill the plan.) While Voinovich claims an independent office would be redundant given the Senate Ethics Committee (which he chairs), watchdog groups such as Public Citizen are livid, and John McCain has already suggested he'll likely renew the idea on the Senate floor.

Still, reformers face a serious challenge in the growing audacity of the GOP, who are banking on the Casino Jack story not catching fire outside the Beltway: "[A]s the legislation has evolved and Abramoff has faded from the headlines, calls for bans have grown scarce, and expanded disclosure has become the centerpiece of the efforts underway." Nevertheless, the Republicans are playing with fire: The ballad of Casino Jack plays on, as attested by prosecutors recently subpoenaing travel agency records of a 2000 DeLay-Abramoff boondoggle to Britain.

"'For people who were really strong for Bush, I feel like this was a dating meeting...He's not quite ready to ask us to go steady. But I was a little surprised at the reaction, including my own reaction. I was much more positive than I thought I'd be going to the meeting.'" Anyone wondering why McCain has been spending recent days badmouthing Obama (and showing up on 24), look no further. Now he's courting the Bush financiers for his own 2008 bid. Well, McCain had best be careful playing the insider, or Chuck Hagel just might steal his maverick crown come the primaries. Then again, the GOP likely prefers mythical mavericks anyway.

My, what a coincidence. New majority leader John A. Boehner is "renting his Capitol Hill apartment from a veteran lobbyist whose clients have direct stakes in legislation Boehner has co-written and that he has overseen as chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee." That's Strike 3: Coupled with his stonewalling on lobbying reform and his passing out Big Tobacco checks on the House floor in 1995, it's becoming abundantly clear that Boehner is just another corrupt GOP party boss in the DeLay mold. I wonder, will that sword of righteousness, John McCain, have anything to say about Boehner's behavior?

In a fit of misplaced pique, John McCain goes house on Barack Obama over his relatively innocuous decision to skip McCain's proposed "bipartisan" task force on lobbying revisions (and, by extension, Obama's point that the Ballad of Casino Jack is primarily a GOP scandal.) I've been generally sympathetic to McCain's work for campaign finance and lobbying reform throughout his career, but, frankly, the outrage of this letter is way outta line. I just posted on this in the comments at National Journal, so I'll just repost here:

"I'd be more impressed with McCain's alleged commitment to bipartisan reform if (a) he could find Dems other than Joe Lieberman and BILL Nelson* -- not exactly the Democratic mainstream -- to back his "task force" play, (b) he didn't consistently allow himself to be used as the "mythical maverick" smokescreen for GOP lobbying abuses, and (c) he displayed half as much righteous outrage when the Dubya administration eviscerated his anti-torture legislation, violated both the FISA Act and the National Security Act of 1947 with their illegal wiretaps, and generally stood in the way of serious campaign finance reform. Sure, McCain talks tough at Barack Obama, but everytime Dubya comes a-knockin' at his door, he folds like an accordion, even despite the ugly incident in the South Carolina primary six years ago.

The Republican Party controls the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and -- arguably -- the Supreme Court at this moment. Is it really McCain's contention that Barack Obama, a freshman Senator in the minority party, is the one stopping real lobbying and campaign finance reform from happening? Please. If McCain wants real reform, he should be directing his wrath at the people in charge. Otherwise, he's even more guilty of putting the partisan game above the public interest than is Obama." Update: Obama answers.

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes." That flaming liberal Dwight Eisenhower's somber farewell address to the nation is the historical and thematic anchor for Eugene Jarecki's documentary Why We Fight, a sobering disquisition on American militarism and foreign policy since 9/11. In essence, Why We Fight is the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 should have been. Like F911, this film preaches to the choir, but it also makes a more substantive critique of Dubya diplomacy and the 9/11-Iraq switcheroo, with much less of the grandstanding that marred Moore's earlier documentary (and drove right-wing audiences berzerk.)

Sadly, the basic tale here is all-too-familiar by now. Ensconced in Dubya's administration from the word go, the right-wing think-tank crowd (Wolfowitz, Perle, Kristol, etc.) used the tragedy of 9/11 as a pretext to enact all their neocon fantasies (spelled out in this 2000 Project for a New American Century report), beginning in Iraq. Taken into consideration with Cheney the Military-Contractor-in-Chief doling out fat deals to his Halliburton-KBR cronies from the Vice-President's office, and members of Congress meekly signing off on every military funding bill that comes down the pike (partly because, as the film points out, weapons systems such as the B-1 or F-22 have a part built in every state), it seems uncomfortably clear that President Eisenhower's grim vision has come to pass.

To help him rake this muck, Jarecki shrewdly gives face-time not only to learned critics of recent foreign-policy -- CIA vet Chalmers Johnson, Gore Vidal (looking unwell) -- but also to the neocons themselves. Richard Perle is here, saying (as always) insufferably self-serving things, and Bill Kristol glows like a kid in a candy store when he gets to talk up his role in fostering Dubya diplomacy. (Karen Kwiatkowski, a career military woman who watched the neocon coup unfold within the corridors of the Pentagon, also delivers some keen insights.) And, when discussing the corruption that festers in the heart of our Capitol, Jarecki brings out not only Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity but that flickering mirage of independent-minded Republicanism, John McCain. (In fact, Jarecki encapsulates the frustrating problem with McCain in one small moment: Right after admitting to the camera that Cheney's no-bid KBR deals "look bad", the Senator happens to get a call from the Vice-President. In his speak-of-the-devil grimace of bemused worry, you can see him mentally falling into line behind the administration, as always.)

To be sure, Why We Fight has some problems. There's a central tension in the film between the argument that Team Dubya is a corrupt administration of historical proportions and the notion that every president since Kennedy has been party to an increasingly corrupt system, and it's never really resolved satisfactorily here. Jarecki wants you to think that this documentary is about the rise of the Imperial Presidency across five decades, but, some lip service to Tonkin notwithstanding, the argument here is grounded almost totally in the Age of Dubya. (I don't think it's a bad thing, necessarily, but it is the case.) And, sometimes the critique seems a little scattershot -- Jarecki seems to fault the Pentagon both for KBR's no-bid contracts and, when we see Lockheed and McDonnell-Douglas salesmen going head-to-head, for bidding on contracts. (Still, his larger point is valid -- As Chalmers Johnson puts it, "When war becomes that profitable, you're going to see more of it.")

Also, the film loses focus at times and meanders along tangents -- such as the remembrances of two Stealth Fighter pilots on the First Shot Fired in the Iraq war, or the glum story of an army recruit in Manhattan looking to turn his life around. This latter tale, along with the story of Wilton Sekzer, a retired Vietnam Vet and NYPD sergeant who lost his son on 9/11 and wants somebody to pay, are handled with more grace and less showmanship than similar vignettes in Michael Moore's film, but they're in the same ballpark. (As an aside, I was also somewhat irked by shots of NASA thrown in with the many images of missile tests and ordnance factories. Ok, both involve rockets, research, and billions of dollars, but space exploration and war are different enough goals that such a comparison merits more unpacking.)

Nevertheless, Why We Fight is well worth-seeing, and hopefully, this film will make it out to the multiplexes. If nothing else, it'll do this country good to ponder anew both a president's warning about the "disastrous rise of misplaced power," and a vice-president's assurance that we'll be "greeted as liberators."

"'In 1994, when the Congress was taken over by Republicans, there were 4,000 earmarks on appropriations bills,' [McCain] told the committee. 'Last year there were 15,000. It's disgraceful, this process.'" A Senate Committee chaired by Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman began discussing the Senate's post-Abramoff cleanup today, with McCain, Feingold and others calling for systematic and comprehensive reform, including the end of "earmarking" (i.e. adding pork to appropriations bills.) "McCain said he was especially bothered that at the end of the last congressional session, various extraneous appropriations were 'larded onto the money that was supposed to be devoted to the men and women in the military and their ability to conduct the war on terror.'"

In the continuing Abramoff fallout department, a disgraced Boss DeLay has picked up a primary challenger, Tom Campbell, in his home district. "'If we don't clean house in March, we'll lose the House in November,' Campbell said." Meanwhile, as the GOP tries to choose between two K-Street darlings for their new majority leader, the House looks to the McCain-Shays bill of last month as a template for new lobbying restrictions."The McCain bill would beef up lobbying disclosure considerably and cover grass-roots lobbying campaigns, which now go unreported. It would also require lobbyists to report each fundraising event that they host or sponsor for candidates for federal office, including the amount raised. In addition, the McCain bill would require lobbyists to report the donations they give to lawmakers directly and at events that honor lawmakers or entities that they created or control. It would also require lobbyists to disclose quarterly -- which would be twice as often as they file now -- any gift worth more than $20 that they give to lawmakers or their aides, including meals and tickets to events." Sounds like a start...but it'll take more than increased disclosure to transform a Washington culture that's turned rancid in recent years thanks to overwhelming lobbyist influence.

Slate's John Dickerson and Bruce Reed try to disentangle Dubya and McCain, with Dickerson arguing McCain's rationale for publicly supporting the prez and Reed explaining why Bush needs the mythical maverick.

"This was a huge 'Congress getting into the ballgame' week,' Mr. Graham said. Mr. Warner said wryly, 'You know, Congress is a co-equal branch.'" Well, make no mistake: They're no Clay, Calhoun, and Webster. Still, the NYT takes a gander at the self-named "Little Triumvirate" of John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and John Warner, three "Gang of 14" members who've become the locus of GOP discontent with Dubya in the Senate.

"'You know what bothers me?' [Sen. Byron] Dorgan asked at the end of the hearing. 'It's pretty clear that this is one of the most disgusting tales of greed and avarice, and perhaps fraud and stealing. It's unbelievable what we have uncovered here. It's almost sickening to see what we have uncovered. And you come to our table and say, "Oh, gosh, this is just about friendships."'" Salon surveys the recent Senate testimony of Abramoff flunky Italia Federici, she of the quarter-million-dollar bribe. And it isn't just the Dems disgusted by the flimsiness of her defense. "'Since your answers are so bizarre, I won't continue," said McCain...'I will let others make the judgment.'"

Update: In related news, Abramoff/DeLay aide Michael Scanlon is charged with fraud. "The filing of a criminal information, rather than an indictment, often means prosecutors have reached a plea agreement with a defendant." Does that mean Scanlon, so eager to turn on the Religious Right, will roll up on Boss DeLay? One can only hope.

As McCain calls for changes in Dubya's Iraq strategy, White House National Security advisor Stephen Hadley inaugurates Dubya's comeback plan, which will get more run in a presidential speech today. Step One: Call the Dems out on their pro-war votes. "'Some of the critics today,' Hadley added, 'believed themselves in 2002 that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, they stated that belief, and they voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq because they believed Saddam Hussein posed a dangerous threat to the American people.'" Well, yes, but if Dems were relying on faulty and doctored intelligence to come to that supposition in 2002, that only brings us back to the $64,000 question: What exactly happened to our prewar intelligence once it reached the White House?

"'The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees,' Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. 'Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them.'" Senate hearings delve further into the exploits of "Casino Jack" Abramoff and former Boss DeLay aide Michael Scanlon, as well as the cynicism and hypocrisy driving the GOP machine.

Meanwhile, more DeLay flunkies are found to be greasing the wheels for Abramoff, and the stench of corruption spreads to Interior Secretary Gail Norton's office. There, it seems an aide, Italia Federici, received a $250,000 bribe from Abramoff clients (in the form of a payment to an environmental group she co-founded with, natch, Grover Norquist), in return for White House access. Says Senate panel chairman John McCain, it's "a complex and tangled web...a story alarming in its depth and breadth of potential wrongdoing. It is breathtaking in its reach."

As the Cheney-Addington gang work to strip the Geneva Convention from prisoner treatment manuals, the Washington Post uncovers an overseas network of CIA "black sites," a.k.a. gulags, some of which actually use old Soviet compounds in Eastern Europe(!) "It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas...Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing."

Whatsmore, these gulags, created under this administration since 9/11, "were built and are maintained with congressionally appropriated funds, but the White House has refused to allow the CIA to brief anyone except the House and Senate intelligence committees' chairmen and vice chairmen on the program's generalities." There's no other way to look at this: By appropriating the tactics of our enemies, as John McCain warned earlier this month, we have abandoned our most fundamental principles and shamed our nation. Evildoers? Please. Dubya need look no further than his own White House and CIA. Update: Congress and the EU want answers.

"We are Americans, and we hold ourselves to humane standards of treatment of people no matter how evil or terrible they may be. To do otherwise undermines our security, but it also undermines our greatness as a nation." Behind Sen. John McCain, who knows as well as anyone why we must set limits on our interrogation policies, the Senate votes 90-9 to rebuke the White House and constrain future interrogation abuses at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and around the world. For his part, Catkiller Frist earlier tried to smother the amendment, but ultimately ended up voting for it. Wouldn't want a vote for torture on our 2008 transcript now, would we?

Bucking the Dubya trend, Bill Frist comes out for expanded federal stem cell research. Evidently, Catkiller's 2008 gurus decided he should hype his M.D. and/or tack moderate -- which is probably a mistake...the GOP moderates will likely stick with McCain, while the fundies may now look to Sam Brownback or some other winger freakshow as their primary hopeful. But, hey, the right thing is the right thing, even if it's for the wrong reasons.

Much to the consternation of the Dubya White House, a handful of GOP Senators, including Gang of 14'ers John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), are trying to establish congressional oversight over prisoner treatment at Guantanamo and elsewhere. McCain's proposed amendments include restricting interrogation techniques to what's in the Army field manual, stopping the practice of "extraordinary rendition," forcing the government to register all detainees with the Red Cross, and prohibiting "cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody no matter where they are held." For his part, Graham's amendment appears just to rubber-stamp the current Dubya policies...but apparently even that's too much legislative oversight for Cheney, Rummy, and the rest of the admin whip-hands, who are trying to enlist their Senate allies to offer up a watered-down, smoke-and-mirrors version instead. For shame.

"'Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality,' said Hagel, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. 'It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq.'" Two quality links via the consistently splendid Follow Me Here: First, Republican Senators McCain and Hagel call out Dubya on the war. Between this and "Freedom Fries" Jones, are the floodgates opening in GOP-land?

And, on an altogether different note, physicists cast doubt on the possibility of time travel paradoxes "When Greenberger and Svozil analysed what happens when...component waves flow into the past, they found that the paradoxes implied by Einstein's equations never arise. Waves that travel back in time interfere destructively, thus preventing anything from happening differently from that which has already taken place." (Well, looks like time-traveling historians won't need to worry about any Primeresque recursions, then.)

"Frist had only eight years of Senate experience when he succeeded Lott, and some colleagues felt he was more Bush's choice than the GOP caucus's. He was bound to need more White House help than did up-through-the-ranks predecessors such as Lott and Dole, they said, but sometimes Bush seemed to dump tough problems at his door and walk away." As right-wing Republicans hammers the GOP moderates who crafted the nuclear compromise, Charles Babington examines the political import of Catkiller's lousy week. Meanwhile, Frist's possible primary nemesis John McCain calls for a compromise on Bolton, in which the White House would release the info they've been holding in exchange for a vote.

In very primary-friendly fashion, John McCain announces a federal anti-steroids bill for all professional sports, to be administered by the US Anti-Doping Agency.

Nuclear negotiations break down between Reid and Frist, setting the stage for a cataclysmic Senate meltdown this week over Karl Rove's pet judge, Priscilla Owen. (That is, unless the Ben Nelson-John McCain compromise -- which seems a considerable capitulation by the Dems -- gains currency with the GOP.) Can Catkiller really have the votes? Surely, there are more than three so-called "conservatives" in the Senate who would vote against this type of radical rule change. Or has the GOP sunk so low? Update: A few days old now, but ah well: Salon offers a handy nuclear primer.

With Catkiller's nuclear primary gambit waiting in the wings, the GOP and Dems try to rally Republican moderates to their side on the judicial filibuster question. With John McCain (R-AZ) and Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) already against the proposition and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) also doubtful, the swing votes include John Warner (R-VA), Susan Collins (R-ME), Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Gordon Smith (R-OR), and Arlen Specter (R-PA).

"'I think Senator Frist has backed himself into a corner where I don't see how he can avoid pulling the nuclear trigger,' said Charlie Cook, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report." According to the WP and various lookers-on, the Senate Majority Leader is "all but certain" to go nuclear on the question of judicial filibusters in the next few weeks, mainly so he can shore up his possible presidential candidacy with freak-show conservatives. In addition, his nascent 2008 bid also explains why Catkiller has chosen to appear on a forthcoming fundie telecast that claims Democrats are "against people of faith." That's a low blow even from you, Senator...How dare you? Update: Election 2008 maneuvering heats up among the GOP as Frist's allies go after John McCain for his apostasy on the nuclear option.

"George W. Bush's plan to remake the Social Security system is kaput. This is not a value judgment. It's a statement of political fact." While Dubya, Cheney, and McCain (carrying water for the administration as usual) continue their respective privatization dog-and-pony shows, Slate's Jacob Weisberg puts PSAs in the fridge.

John McCain, to many the face of campaign finance reform in Washington, struggles to avoid the appearance of impropriety regarding recent donations by Cablevision to the Reform Institute, an independent group with ambiguous ties to the Senator. After his awful performance prostrating himself before Dubya in 2004, I've run sour on the mythical maverick -- to paraphrase Progressive era Senator George Norris (R-NB) speaking of his colleague William Borah (R-ID), McCain "shoots until he sees the whites of their eyes." But, still, he's campaign finance reform's biggest blue chip, and he should know better than to endanger the cause with this type of shadiness...particularly with anti-reform forces gunning for him. What would be plausible deniability for anyone else seems rather implausible coming from McCain, given his place at the head of the movement.

By way of Uncorked/Medley, a Federal Election Commissioner warns that political blogging may have to be regulated under the McCain-Feingold bill. Hmm. Well, obviously that wouldn't work. But, I get the sense that Bradley Smith, a GOP anti-campaign-finance ringer, knows this, and is raising the black flag of Internet Regulation just to get the blogosphere up in arms over McCain-Feingold in particular and campaign finance regulation in general. Well, I'm not biting. Sure, the FEC needs a new direction when it comes to addressing the Internet, but I highly doubt Agent Smith here is the guy to provide it. Better someone who at least recognizes the utility of and need for comprehensive campaign finance reform.

It's a pile-on. GOP Senators Trent Lott (who knows how these things work) and Susan Collins join John McCain, Evan Bayh, Bill Kristol, and Chuck Hagel in calling for Rumsfeld's removal. (Naturally, this White House is responding by hugging him ever closer.) Update: Dubya praises Rummy's 'really fine job.' In comparison to yours, perhaps...)

Speaking to the Associated Press yesterday, fair-weather maverick John McCain gives Donald Rumsfeld a vote of "no confidence." As usual, this seems like the type of key reservation McCain should have expressed before last month's election.

Content to play the iconoclast again now that election 2004 is over, John McCain calls out the Bush administration on global warming. Too little, too late, Mr. Senator...given the water you carried for the Bushies this last cycle, your free-fall on the Murphometer at this point looks permanent.

Looking to recess in time for some electioneering, the House and Senate both pass a pork-swollen corporate tax measure by comfortable margins. "[C]ritics -- including budget watchdogs, liberal activists and Treasury Secretary John W. Snow -- decried what they saw as a cornucopia of special-interest tax cuts that would complicate the tax code, favor companies doing business overseas and ultimately worsen the budget deficit. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) pronounced it 'disgraceful' and 'a classic example of the special interests prevailing over the people's interest.'"

At the behest of McCain-Feingold's backers, a federal judge eliminates 15 of 19 FEC rules designed to gut the 2002 campaign finance law. "'We began to wonder what law they were implementing,' [Congressman Chris] Shays said. "They were simply trying to rewrite the law to weaken it and put in loopholes.' Obviously, this decision is coming too late to affect this election cycle much, but perhaps we'll be able to get a honest sense of McCain-Feingold's impact in stemming corruption during the 2006 midterms. Update: As you might expect, the FEC will appeal the decision.

While the Senate (led by Senators Lieberman, McCain, Bayh, and Specter) has crafted a bipartisan security bill that encompasses all of the 9/11 commission's suggestions, Tom DeLay and the House GOP are, as per usual, off the reservation. "DeLay said the House will rely largely on its own expertise and insights, adding that 'we have plenty of experts on our committees.'" Well, what was the point of having a commission, then? And, I don't care how big the roaches are in Sugarland, Texas, Tom. Your "expertise" as a bug exterminator just isn't going to cut it.

"If they question Kerry's medals, they question everybody's medals...We've got to get that garbage off the air as soon as we can." So says John McCain of the Swift Smear in private, and to his credit, he at least hasn't lied about his personal stance as brazenly as Bob "Democrat War" Dole. But, Senator McCain, if you're so "nauseated" by the Swifties, one would think you could leverage your vaunted (and quickly deteriorating) prestige a bit more mightily. You had the ear of the political world last night, and you chose to spend your time unabashedly conflating 9/11 and Iraq to benefit Team Dubya, the author of those ads. For shame.

I often run cold on Will Saletan, but I thought his summary of last night's GOP speeches was dead on. On the subtext of John McCain's remarks: "Forget the tax cuts. Forget the outsourcing. Forget the dividend tax breaks and the estate tax repeal. Pay no attention to the hand in your pocket. Close your eyes and think of America." On Giuliani's fib-filled suck-up to Dubya: "[T]he most important characteristic of a great speaker -- contrary to the view of my colleagues who are raving about Giuliani's speech -- is being honest. Bush wasn't right, and Giuliani isn't honest, and no amount of bullheadedness can make up for that."

Whatsmore, Saletan has kept his current streak going with today's piece on the problem with Dubya's so-called courage: "Pardon me for asking, but where exactly is the heroism in this story? Where, indeed, is the heroism in anything Bush has done before 9/11 or since?...This is Bush's heroism? Showing up three days later, 'remaining in the area,' and enduring a hug?"

Say what you will about the Dem ticket, but at least they understand the importance of protecting our precious bodily fluids from terrorist and Communist impurifications. This October, John Edwards will introduce Dr. Strangelove for Turner Classic Movies. (By way of Quiddity.) For the rest of the "Party Politics and the Movies" series, John McCain chose Paths of Glory, Joe Biden picked Dead Poets Society, and Orrin Hatch took To Kill a Mockingbird.

With visions of the 2000 primary perhaps dancing in his head, John McCain asks the White House to repudiate the recent Swift Boat Veterans garbage. (Naturally, they didn't.) The real ugliness begins.

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns joins with civil rights leaders, John McCain, and - oddly enough - Orrin Hatch to obtain a retroactive pardon for Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion in history. A hero to black America during the Progressive Era, Johnson was convicted under the 1913 Mann Act for the then-heinous crime of dating a white woman. You'd think Jackson's story might cause Senator Hatch to reflect on the appropriate role of the State in private relations and persuade him to rethink his support of the pathetic Marriage Amendment. Baby steps, I guess.

At least McCain gets the message. The Senator from Arizona came out forcefully against the doomed and ridiculous amendment yesterday, arguing: "The constitutional amendment we're debating today strikes me as antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans." Um, have you looked around your own party lately? It's not the Dems pushing this garbage.

Ticked by the choice slots allotted to Schwarzenegger, McCain, Giuliani, and other GOP moderates, the social conservatives angle for more convention time. By all means, please give it to them.

For their part, the Bushies try to counteract the Edwards pick with a new ad featuring John McCain, which you can watch over at Dubya's campaign site. Um, is this really the best they could do with a blue chip like McCain? Giving a thousand-yard stare off-camera into the distance, reading from a prepared speech, looking away as Bush simpers on stage, McCain's tone and body language hardly seems that effusive an endorsement. In fact, I'm surprised he didn't rattle off his serial number or blink S.O.S during his remarks.

As Dubya tries to rally the worried Republican troops, Speaker Hastert questions John McCain's GOP cred. Hey, if you don't want him, we'll take him. Didn't you guys learn anything from the Jim Jeffords defection?

Earth to Inhofe? Earth to Inhofe? Nope, no answer. While several GOP leaders are turning on Dubya (and Rumsfeld) after recent events, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) is not among them. To the contrary, he lost it in committee today, proclaiming that he is "probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment" of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. (For their part, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) disavowed Inhofe immediately.) One would be tempted to write Inhofe off as simply a crank, until you peruse the many similar responses emanating from the Right about the relative newsworthiness of US soldiers engaging in torture and assorted other depravities. Mind you, these are the exact same Defenders of American Values who wore moral outrage like a cheap cologne all through l'affaire Lewinsky...some people have no shame. Update: Sure enough, the Right rallies around Inhofe.

Reformers rejoice as interest groups on the left and right sputter to make sense of the brave new McCain-Feingold world. Everyone seems to agree that McConnell v. FEC is both a surprisingly bold decision and bad news for the Dems in the short term. Well, so be it. With the Supreme Court finally admitting that dollars debase democracy, the door is now open for tougher campaign finance laws in the very near future.

By a vote of 5-4 (Justice O'Connor the swing vote as expected), the Supreme Court upheld the McCain-Feingold soft-money ban today in McConnell v. FEC. Well, Scalia may call this a "sad day for the freedom of speech," but I for one think this is great, great news. "Money, like water, will always find an outlet," as the majority put it, but at least the highest Court in the land has now recognized the corrosive impact of unregulated loot on the political process. This decision will hopefully do much to disentangle the pernicious conflation of speech and money in Buckley v. Valeo, and set the stage for continued meaningful campaign finance reform in the years to come. While McConnell v. FEC doesn't eliminate the bad taste of Bush v. Gore, it is a huge step in the right direction by this Court.

In a boon for President Bush's reelection chances, the GOP succeed in remaking Medicare. (At least the Dems can content themselves with defeating the energy bill.) To be honest, I haven't been following this bill as closely as I should...I always get a bit annoyed when both parties prostrate themselves before the AARP, far and away the richest (and most likely to vote) portion of the electorate. In fact, the US spends 12 times more on its oldest, wealthiest citizens than it does on its children, even though kids are three times more likely to live below the poverty line. Hence, budget and deficit-busting prescription drug giveaways in the midst of child poverty...great investment.)

All that being said, Medicare is one of the foundations of the American social safety net, just as AFDC was until 1996, and as such this act is a biggie. Mickey Kaus of Slate seems to think the bill is actually good for Dems, while Urban Institute experts believe the back door to privatization is in fact only "window dressing." But still, most Senators I trust came down against it (including John McCain, who railed against the giveaways to drug-makers in the bill.) And, while I still find it absurd that we're giving prescription drug benefits to a select portion of the electorate before finding a way to insure every citizen, even paying lip service to the idea of privatizing Medicare does not seem a step in the right direction towards universal health care.

Finally, if this bill is so innocuous, why are the GOP so gung-ho for it? I hope it's because they believe they wrested the Medicare issue away from the Democrats rather than due to any real movement towards privatization in the bill. Still, I fret. I mean, would you trust a prescription filled out by a cat-slaughterer?

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, generally a straight shooter (despite being on the wrong side of campaign finance), calls out Congress for abdicating to Dubya's foreign policy. "We probably have given this president more flexibility, more latitude, more range, unquestioned, than any president since Franklin Roosevelt -- probably too much. The Congress, in my opinion, really abrogated much of its responsibility." Well said, Chuck...now when is your buddy John McCain going to say the same?

Oh, there's nothing halfway about the Iowa way to treat you when they treat you which they may not do at all. Wesley Clark and Joe Lieberman plan to skip the Iowa caucus in 2004...I'd say that's a smart call for Clark (my thoughts on Lieberman are below), given how Iowa treated Bradley and McCain respectively last time around -- Bradley came in second after Gore's debate lie (actually penned by my roommate at the time), while McCain had the sense to stay out in the first place.

As noted yesterday, the Court heard arguments this morning on the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold). And, in spite of reformers' earlier hopes, it seems Chief Justice Rehnquist was predisposed against the law, meaning that the fateful decision is probably in the hands of Justice O'Connor, as per usual. Politically speaking, I'd think this Court would have to uphold reform after thrusting themselves so deeply into the Bush v. Gore fiasco, but I guess we'll see. (Speaking of which, on a side note, conservative zealot Ted Olsen apparently referred to his friend and fellow Richard Mellon Scaife patron Ken Starr as "Justice Starr" during the proceedings, telling him he'll "have to wait" for his spot on the bench. Sorry, Ken, not in a million years.)

As the Republican rift over the Dubya tax cut widens, conservatives prepare to oust anti-cut GOP moderates like Olympia Snowe, John McCain, and Arlen Specter. As a result, Specter tries to shore up his freak-show-right creds by joining Majority Leader Bill Frist in defending Rick Santorum's outbreak of gaybashing (calling Santorum a "voice for inclusion and compassion" is a bit much, isn't it?). Snowe and Chafee, for their part, have condemned Santorum's remarks (Via Medley.) While I'm all for the GOP imploding, isnt it about time for the Dems to pile on the heat? To paraphrase Carville, when your opponent is drowning, throw him an anvil.

Yum. Both the Dubya administration and the Senate bloat up the war bill with pork barrel spending. As John McCain put it, "I didn't realize that Al Qaeda had reached all the way to the South Pole." Speaking of wartime handouts, Dems Henry Waxman and John Dingell want further scrutiny into contracts given to Halliburton subsidiaries by the GAO. All I know is, if the Clinton administration were involved in this type of quid pro quo, Dan Burton would have had an investigation up and running weeks ago.

John McCain joins the Dems in fighting the Homeland Security Bill, mainly because it has swollen 450 pages since election day with ridiculous helpings of GOP pork. Looks like the only entities with security in Dubya's universe are pharmaceutical companies and the anti-terrorism industry. Update: Despite McCain's vote, the Dems lose again. (Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, and Zell Miller voted with the GOP, as did Wellstone's current replacement, Dean Barkley.)

John McCain gets flak from Drudge and elsewhere for missing a Defense spending vote to prep for Saturday Night Live. Hmm. I think you can go ahead and file this complaint along with the ones about Cornel West being in The Matrix sequels. While it's true that all the rehearsing in the world isn't going to make 75% of today's SNL skits funny, the bill in question passed 93-1. I'm not sure how McCain voting on it would have made much of a difference. And it's not like this is last week's Iraq vote, where every Senator should be on record for or against ceding their Constitutional authority to the President. In fact, I think you can argue it'll make more difference to have a few grotesquely apolitical Americans see "that cool senator" on a late-night show.