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.

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.

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

Linky at my name. Really, go read it.

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.

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.

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

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.

... 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.

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

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

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.

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

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.)

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.

In this country, that kind of personal bailout is deeply frowned upon. We have to bail out corporate persons, and let the Invisible Fist, sorry, the Invisible Hand help real people.

Corporate persons: too big to fail.

Real people: too small to matter.

... what are the details of the proposal?

(Though I love how the Republicans -- true to form -- saw that "bailout" didn't poll well, so they started calling it a "rescue package".)

McCain and Lieberman were no doubt working on a "bipartisan" bailout proposal.

"He throws the Obama campaign and its supporters (including much of the MSM and apparently David Letterman) for a loop once again and they're unsure how to react."

Letterman publicly caught the McCain campaign in yet another lie, adding more fuel to that narrative.

As for MediaCorp, most of what I've seen so far has -- at best -- grudgingly allowed as to the possibility that McCain may have been sincere, but seem dubious. Hell, Fox News was dubious. The Wall Street Journal's editorial staff -- not exactly Mother Jones -- was pretty clear that they didn't think much of McCain for pulling this stunt.

Seriously, Barr's right about the buffer. I think anyone who consistently polls over, say, 1% should be included. More perspectives is good, even -- sometimes especially -- perspectives that don't fit "common wisdom".