It's difficult to even find the words at this point to describe McCain's campaign. Never have I witnessed such troglodytic behaviour by a major party's candidates.

McCain's campaign is beginning to remind me of Ross Perot's.

Perot had some interesting things to say. But his campaign? All over the place.

Gov. Palin has become a lose/lose for the McCain campaign. Does it hurt the campaign more to keep her on, or to replace her?

(And sure, Biden goofs up sometimes. But there's still a sense that he knows what he's talking about, even when his mouth outruns his brain.)

Sweet Jeebus, don't say that! It ain't over until Diebold ... excuse me, Premier Election Solutions finishes miscounting the votes.

I said it when McCain first picked Palin, and I still think it's true -- I think the Repub leadership has no intention of letting Palin sit behind that big ol' desk in the Oval Office.

The only questions are the matter of timing (before or after Inauguration?) and whether they already have her replacement picked out or plan to knife-fight for the spot later. Oh yeah, and whether or not they've told her.

Are you having trouble sleeping lately or something? Maybe an afternoon nap would help ...

Repubs will also blame Dems for anything that doesn't get done. They like having things both ways, and MediaCorp rarely disappoints them.

... and bears shit in the woods.

Sure, Krugman's correct. But this column is one of his shallower ones, and this blog entry is even more shallow.

1) So, if in this case we've found the WMDs, why are they being left in place? As far as I can tell, this plan does nothing to defuse the conditions that led to the problems.

2) Despite the hyperventilating of some Republicans, this is nowhere near "the nationalization of the financial economy". It's the nationalization of (some of) the risk to (some of) the major players. They would've liked it better if Paulson had gotten it without strings (except when they thought about the possibility of an Obama Administration), but to call it "New Deal-style government intervention" is laughable.

3) Well, you think the situation has only embarrassed us in front of the rest of the world, not angered them. Well, I guess that really does prove it's different.

Maybe we should call it the Diebold/Blackwell/Harris effect.

Isn't it funny how the same conservatives who argued for deregulation are now using the deregulated economy fiasco to complain about somebody who, we’re told, has no policy accomplishments and yet somehow is still to blame for the financial mess we’re in?

I guess "It's all Clinton's fault" doesn't work anymore.

Despite all the talk about expanding the map, Obama's own strategists don't see much of a path to the White House if he doesn't carry Michigan's 17 electoral votes, and neither do Republicans.

"Despite"? That sentence doesn't make any sense. "Expanding the map" necessarily includes trying hard to hold on to what we already have.

Add my recommendation to those praising David Sirota's coverage of the proposed bailout.

Linky at my name. Really, go read it.

An unnamed source inside the McCain campaign told Baxter, "It would be fantastic. You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week.”

I can't decide whether this person is deluded, or if they hope to delude someone over at the Obama campaign. The attention would last for far less than a week, and much of what attention it did get would be people trying to figure out who's holding the shotgun.

A wedding as political theater? Wow, that's really family values.

What great video that would be, if Bristol, Levi or both were weeping openly as they said their vows.

-- FredBizzle

Tears of joy. Yeah, that must be it.

I think the real October surprise will be...

Bristol Palin weeping at the altar while her young swain is kayaking madly across the Bering Strait.

-- area woman

I'm sure Sarah Palin would explain to us that -- as a patriotic American -- Levi is heading over to challenge that dastardly Putin to single combat.

CNBC Wall Street Shenanigans

The reporter on the floor said, that the traders don't want the market to rally, they want it close down at least 500 today, to send a message.

You can write you own idea of what that message is...

Great. The Wall Street equivalent of suicide bombers.

What really amazed me was the roll reversal of the Republicans and Democrats. Dems came out swinging to pass this bill, but the republicans actually stuck their heads out and said no.

It's generally worth reading the article before commenting, even if all you're doing is link-spamming.

This was a bi-partisan "no".

If it really is her "fault" that this thing crashed, then we should all send her thank-you cards.

Maybe I'm totally misreading the polls I've seen, but I'm not sure why there's a downside with the public with being "blamed" for this thing not getting passed. Even the people -- non-punditry people, at least -- who wanted it to pass were pretty half-hearted.

If it's so damned important for the Future Of The Republic, then come up with an honestly different approach and try again. There are no shortage of alternate proposals out there. Sure, some of them are goofy, but some are not-so-goofy, just less beholden to the status quo.

... there's still no explanation for why the Dem leaders could not keep their coalition together.

I haven't heard an explanation for why they wanted to.

$700,000,000,000 for something that might not help in the short term and doesn't change the basics of the situation? Fuck that.

Excuse me if I'm dubious of more sky-is-falling arguments in favor of something that seems to amount to a very, very expensive umbrella cobbled together from thin paper and cocktail-party toothpicks.