I feel very maverick about this and wanted to full throated

endorsement of four more years of the same. Red meat on the

issues is very Maverick. Glenn, you are very Maverick and look

extremely red meat and heartbeat away. I full throat endorse

you on key issues like Maverick, fully vetted, and red meat.

It is so maverick that I wonder in terms of hope, when I will

full throated endorse in a way that is maverick enough for

change I can believe in.

My head is going to explode from the assault rifle called buzzwordology. It makes me feel very UN - Maverick.

She's obviously been selected to steal the show. Even as the Republicans are bitchin' about the press coverage, that's clearly all part of their ploy. By the time the media are done with her, nobody will remember anything she said or, even less, anything that their opponents replied to her. Obama and Biden clearly need to reverse that trend. After all, now that we have had an opportunity to take a closer look at her, it shouldn't be too hard to see how people might start to find her boring after a while.

This is going to be a real litmus test of who is liberal in the press and who isn't. Let's see....

Palin: earmarks, bridge to nowhere, vetos.

Confirmed by article that also neglects to mention her opposition to Don Young and the indicted Ted Stevens, members of her own party. I'd say that goes to Palin. The part about $750 million is laughable after seeing all the others go after billions.

Palin: "not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate." LOL. Barring WMD's? Rezko reform? Puhleaze.

Palin: Obama wants to raise taxes? All true and confirmed in said article.

Then this guy switches over to McCain and away from Palin. That's it? That's all? Keep up the good work. And oh yeah, badmouth any of the recently deceased lately?

You seem to forget that the folks who run Democrat campaigns are PROFESSIONAL LOSERS! I wrote an email in 2004 to Kerry's campaign email address that said, when they hit you you have to hit back harder. Instead he went windsurfing. Democrat candidates need to stop paying their managers and consultants until they can actually win something..

in front of a camera most of her life. Pageant Queens do that. That's all they do, vain as they are, usually with professional photographers to minimize the bizarre deformities. The woman has a gigantic square head on a very long thin body. You can even see it in the Vogue cover, and I guarantee you that was retouched, and not to make her head look so big and square on her scrawny long neck. Which it still does,

http://dunningrb.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/sarah-palin-vogue.jpg

Yeah, Wahabbists like bin Laden build daycare centers so their women can go off to their jobs, driving their personal cars because they're just so tolerant of women's rights -- when they're not publicly beheading them for flashing a bit of ankle, that is.

bust this Hero-POW miracle-bubble that McCain has enveloped himself within.

-- Jim

I do not think that will work. McCain's personal story is already well-known. No new information is being brought to the table- certainly nothing in the way of a damaging new revelation.

Therefore, no minds will be changed.

Everyone already knows that John McCain was on a bombing mission over North Vietnam when he was shot down and captured.

And frankly, your characterization that "They had to shoot him down, he was bombing civilians!" is misleading. You're basically saying that the goal of his bombing mission was to murder civilians, and that if he had only been bombing a military target, that the North Vietnamese gunners would have held their fire.

Logically, you can't get much weaker than that. In fact, it sounds like an intentional distortion of the facts.

Have you ever heard John McCain's account of his capture, when the Vietnamese who found him roughed him up? He said "of course they felt hostile toward me- I was dropping bombs on their country!"

In McCain's view, what he did is no different than what a B-17 crew was doing in 1943, in the skies over Schweinfurt, Germany. (They killed civilians, too.)

And- like it or not- most Americans view it more or less the same way.

I know that others don't, and they offer a variety of reasons for their own take on the issue.

But I've never once heard an argument change anyones mind on that matter.

So my advice is to skip it.

That's advice I don't feel that I have to offer to the Obama/Biden campaign, because I'm sure they already know what I'm talking about.

The Right has always been brilliant in tapping into working-class resentments against the 'cultural elites' (progressives and liberals). One comment on Palin's lipstick-bulldog remark said "This might play in Peoria, but..." missed the point. It does play in Peoria and what plays in Peoria can win an election. Palin also adeptly played on Obama's gaffe on 'clinging to guns and religion'.

And here is an excellent point that really needs to be addressed by Obama's campaign; he needs to clarify that extremism (militiamen like Timothy McVeigh, as well as Al Queda) tends to grow in economically desperate situations where desperation and rage loom. Even if their leaders are affluent megalomaniacs like Bin Laden, their followers are often the disconnected, enraged and forgotten. This is what we were supposed to have learned from Germany. Centrists need to step up and defend reason against fanatacism, whether Christian, Muslim or any other kind.

Obama needs to point out that the right has done nothing to prevent jobs from pouring out of the country and would cut safety net programs if they had the chance. He has to call them on their false loyalty to the working classes; this is the only way around the Right's tactic. He also needs to point out Palin's lies on cost-cutting and defecits. He would also do well to remind her that her own running mate stood up against torture and bothered to care about human rights even if she feels that it's an 'elitist cosmopolitan issue' or some such pseudo-folksy characterization.

Unfortunately, like Greenwald says, Dems seem to passively allow the GOP to get in the last word, no matter how deceving it may be. Obama seems to be trying only to take the high ground against some embarrassing sniping. 'Classy', yes, but it's not enough. Yet again, the issues are lost.