John McCain! I knew it was John something.

Anyway, Alex, beyond your rather obvious observation, Palin is clearly providing something else for McCain. She's providing cover. First, the media has shifted it's focus to her, so his gaffs, missteps, and flip-flops can be even more easily ignored. Second, he can actively hide behind her.

The latter has been clear since the convention, but became damn near impossible-to-miss with the "lipstick on a pig" smokescreen. Obama rightly mocked the McCain campaign's pretense that they're about "reform", and McCain -- rather than responding directly from a position of obvious weakness -- pretended that it was a mean, nasty, sexist comment directed at poor Palin.

Remember all the times Bush has pretended that criticism of him was somehow criticism of the troops? He's always loved hiding behind the troops. Well, McCain's POW card was starting to get overused, so look for him to spend the next few weeks alternating it with Palin's gender card.

National poll numbers in a Presidential election are of limited use, given the Electoral College.

McCain got a fair-sized -- and loudly-trumpeted -- post-convention bump, but most media outlets ignored the folks who pointed out that most of McCain's gain was in deep-red states.

(Not that Obama supporters should relax, of course. Given the now-traditional Republican efforts to discourage the "wrong people" from voting, and under-count them when they do, Obama will need to win some places by large margins in order to win them at all.)

I'm half-way tempted to offer rides to swing states to as many people as I can find who seriously agree with Palin's extreme religious beliefs, and agree that the government should enforce those beliefs. (And I'm not talking about the people who sorta kinda agree with some of her beliefs as filtered through the McCain campaign and MediaCorp.)

Load 'em up with McCain literature and send 'em out there. Sure, maybe they'd stumble across the occasional fellow extremist, but mostly they'd piss off swing voters.

Yeah, yeah. Cat vs. Roomba is better at that sort of thing than you are (for whatever that's worth).

Plus, I suspect he doesn't need a spittle-proof covering on his keyboard.

Maybe Palin was trying to lower the bar for the VP debate, and accidentally dropped it on her foot.

Is she still alive? I mean, I occasionally see a column here supposedly by her, but the one or two I started to read seemed like a spoof of her that wasn't quite funny, so I assumed it was some joke I didn't get.

That is undoubtedly an offensive, inappropriate and sexist objection based on Palin's child-rearing duties. The only problem? It came from CNN's John Roberts, not a "liberal."

But Glen, John Roberts works in the media and he objected to McCain's choice for VP. So it's obvious that he's a sexist liberal.

I'm sure he hates the troops, too.

Don't be too hard on McCain. His campaign is forced by political necessity to use the nasty, divisive, and derisive approach they've used. It's not like they can run on his record (which is mediocre) or his policy stands (most of which changed for the campaign).

Of course, even if he had a good record and consistent stands, he's handicapped by his campaign staff, Rove-wannabees who simply wouldn't have a clue about how to run a campaign that's not nasty, divisive, and derisive.

St. Ronnie did the same thing. McCain is just another borrow-and-spend Republican, and so's his oh-so-reforming VP pick.

"Party of fiscal responsibility"? Don't make me laugh.

The McCain supporters here have now started trying to push the meme that Obama and McCain aren't very different.

I wonder how hard it is to get on the list to get the memos.

Offshore drilling, as part of a comprehensive energy platform that included environmental sustainability, development of alternative sources of energy, conservation and energy efficiency, could make sense, if we had faith in the integrity of the government officials entrusted in implementing the agenda.

Fuck faith. The American system government wasn't designed to work on faith, it was designed to work on openness, oversight, and public participation. The trend away from this has been clear for decades, and massively accelerated in the past eight years. Even if Obama wins, even if Jesus Christ won a write-in campaign with Buddha as his VP, it wouldn't be time to sit back and say, "Phew, now we can trust the government again." We need to crack the government wide open and let the public in.

Having faith in the integrity of people you don't know -- whoever is in the top spot -- is simply dumb. The integrity of the system needs to be restored.

McCain/Palin: "We want to be the new bull in the china shop!"

How? The economic equivalent of abstinence-only sex education?

This morning -- as quoted here -- McCain said ...

"The fundamentals of our economy are strong."

It's not necessary to swiftboat McCain. Simply telling the truth about him is enough.

I mostly agree. Still, I can understand the temptation to mock it.

If I were John Stewart, I would simply read that press release, wait for the laughs to die down, and move on without bothering to comment.

Hey, there's no call for that. I don't think they're insufferable.

The sexist bashing of a democrat wouldn't be tolerated? Where the hell have you been during Hillary Clinton's entire political career?

It started long before that, unless you count being married to a politician as a political career. (I wouldn't, but I can see that a case could be made for it.)

Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild has her spokesman tell the world that she will endorse John McCain for president.

Because -- at least in part -- she feels Obama is an elitist.

Sometimes Jon Stewart's job must be almost too easy. Where's the challenge in making shit like this seem funny?