Wailing Into The Void

Caribou Barbie makes my hurt again with this gem:

“If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,” Palin told host Chris Plante, “then I don’t know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.”

So let that be a warning to all you you liberal, left-wing socialist haters in the press:  when you’re attacking Sarah Palin for attacking Barack Obama you’re attacking our inalienable constitutional rights.  Got it?  Now go out and attack Barack Obama.

Gallup’s traditional likely voters poll and it’s expanded likely voters poll are now nearly identical as the traditional likely voter’s poll has swung more heavily into Obama’s favor.

Poor Ted Stevens.  He’s either completely delusional or completely full of it.  I suspect he’s likely both.

The NYT has an interesting piece this morning on one of the perils of devising a mortgage bailout plan: that it may provide an incentive for people who don’t really need help to stop  making their payments.

The kid in the upper left-hand corner is typing up this post. The kid in the upper right-hand corner is embarrassing his friends by tagging them in ancient photos from their adolescence on Facebook.

David Broder wrote this about John McCain yesterday:

We suspected, and soon had confirmed, that he had limited interest in, and capacity for, the organization and management of large enterprises. His first effort at building a structure for the 2008 presidential race collapsed in near-bankruptcy, costing him the service of many longtime aides. From beginning to end, the campaign that followed has been plagued by internal feuds and McCain’s inability to resolve them.

The last I checked the executive branch of the federal govenrnment was a very large enterprise and the President managed it (or tried to).   Of course, a lack of aptitude for being a good president hasn’t always stopped people from seeking the office (see George W. Bush), but McCain’s evident limitations make me wonder how he really sees himself in the role of the presidency.  Does he see himself as some sort of conservative crusader like Reagan, or a beloved national hero like Eisenhower?  How about a neo-imperialist like his hero, Teddy Roosevelt?  

McCain strikes me as someone who thrives on excitement, drama and chaos.  When people like that don’t encounter the things they thrive on they have a habit of manufacturing them.  When they do encounter those things they have very little incentive to actually mitigate them.  This actually wouldn’t be all that bad except for the fact that high levels of excitement, drama and chaos tend to lead to disasterous outcomes.

Religious zealots appear to use the Merryl-Lynch bull as some kind of prayer antenna to beseech Jesus to reinvigorate their 401ks.

You know you’ve gone too far when even a Fox News anchor is trying to reel you back in.

Obama holds his rally in the rain in Pennsylvania while McCain uses the weather as an excuse to cancel his.

Princeton neurosciene professor Sam Wang has a fascinating post that helps explain how so many voters can remain undecided, even in an election where the contrasts between candidates are exceptionally sharp.