All eyes are on Wall Street today, but if you’re weary of that, take some time to catch up with other stuff:

• Rolling Stone offers up the make-believe maverickiness of John McCain.  His whole life story is there in 10 screenfuls.  Not much maverick, not much of anything, really.

• The next time one of your Republican relatives emails you the talking point that the financial meltdown is the result of reckless lending to minorities, just have them read this.  It’s riskier to lend to the rich white guys than the “poor minorities.”

• MoJo delves into Sarah Palins foreign policy “experience” and finds it severely lacking.  Who’d a thunk it?  While you’re there, take a look at what the national press has been requesting from the state of Alaska.  There’s a Denali’s-worth of data there, and none of it will be revealed before Nov. 4th. 

Anyway, enjoy the meltdown of the stock market today.  I’m sure the McCain campaign will be grateful for that, instead of the Troopergate report being dropped on us. 

If the stock market continues its nosedive, I think my mutual fund company will start charging me to hold on to worthless pieces of paper.  Meanwhile, this is what the Big Board should really reflect:

via

The lies of Sarah Palin (she seems to me to be genetically incapable of telling the truth about anything) are so long, it takes a certain amount of commitment to keep up with all of them. 

Take the example of charging victims for rape kits.  The controversy boils down to this:  the city of Wasilla either billed a victim’s insurance company for the kits or billed the victim herself.  The reason?  Rape kits contain emergency contraception and that’s a big anti-life choice according to Palin.  While everyone in Palin’s camp wants us to think that Palin had no idea this practice was going on while she was mayor, the Alaska legislature knew about it and passed a state law to prohibit it.  Conservative bloggers and the rightwing media want us all to think this story has no legs, but that’s not true either.  Palin claims that she doesn’t believe in charging rape victims for the collection of evidence, but had nothing to say about charging for emergency contraception. 

It’s almost as bad as trying to ban books from the local library, except in this case we’re talking about forcing women to birth a baby that results from being raped. 

Keep on winking, Sarah.  The base of your party gets it - the rest of us know exactly where you’re coming from. 

We can only hope. 

pic via

So, so sad when that happens...

My fiends, er friends, there’s only 78 shopping days left until Christmas.  I know things are tight with the budget for most folks, but, I beg you, don’t steal for your kids this year.  Listen to the pain in this poor child’s voice: 

Nuff said. 

In the spirit of Out Magazine and the upcoming National Coming Out Day, here are five questions for… yours truly.  Straight up, so to speak. 

Who will play you in the film version of your life story?

Kristy McNichol

What’s your most regretted fashion choice?

Who is your childhood crush?

Richard Carpenter and Sajid Khan - just look at him now!

What’s your vision of hell?

Roomies with Jessie Helms and Jerry Falwell.

What do you hide when your relatives come over?

The liquor cabinet.  They’re all a bunch of lushes. Oh, if I had any assless chaps, I’d probably throw them on top of the sling in the closet. 

Wake up!  I know your eyes are glazed over from the great debate last night - a town hall format which was neither a “town” nor a “hall,” but a carefully selected focus group of boring voters asking stupid scripted questions, with a little Tom Brokaw thrown in for your sleeping pleasure.  This format sucked and all the fun or hope of any true give-and-take on the issues and has been obliterated by the lawyers from both sides to make it more like a coffee klatch get-together rather than a way to find out true differences on a whole host of topics. 

That said, I think Obama did what he needed to do and McCain?  I didn’t see the gloves come off - there was no home run, hell, he didn’t even hit a double. 

I almost wished McCain had started speaking in tongues and pulled some snakes out of his pocket to thrust in Obama’s face to see if he could rattle the scary black man.  Alas, that didn’t happen and the only drama came at the end when McCain wouldn’t shake Obama’s hand:

Way to stay classy, John!

UPDATE:  John actually did shake his hand at the end while blocking Brokaw’s view of the prompter.  See, I’m fair after all. 

In the absence of fireworks last night, we can probably look for more smack on the campaign trail from McPalin today, so fear not.  There’s a lot of time left to scare up some votes.  I suspect we won’t be hearing Obama talkin’ shit about McCain, even though Cindy says Obama has run the most negative campaign in American history.  Cindy, God loves ya and your reward is in heaven, but look in the mirror, honey.  It ain’t pretty and I’m not just talking about your plastered on makeup. 

Elsewhere in topsy-turvy world, we wake up this morning to a global interest rate cut.  Excuse me, but wasn’t nearly free money that got us into this mess in the first place? 

Thought so. 

Having solved all the country’s economic, healthcare (by cutting Medicare?  Yeah, that’ll work) and war problems, the McCain campaign unveiled its strategy for the next four weeks of just throwing shit around and seeing what sticks.  Problem is, it’s been done over and over this election cycle and hasn’t worked yet and probably won’t this time around. 

My only thought is that McCain probably knows it’s over and won’t have to worry about the consequences of the kitchen sink strategy should he win, because if he actually did win, the electorate would be so pissed off at him there’s no way he could repair the damage.  McPalin doesn’t give a good dump at this point, so it’s all a little game for them - until it comes to this.  Not so much fun any more, is it? 

Way to rally that base, y’all. 

Speaking of dumps, the credit crisis continues unabated and Wall Street looks like something you’d see after a Cat 5 hurricane or a nuclear blast.  Not only that, street brawls are breaking out for the leftovers - it’s gotten so bad that the (former) Lehman Brothers CEO was punched in the face at the company gym after announcing Lehman’s bankruptcy. 

Please note:  I don’t condone that sort of violence against anyone.  Next time, somebody just throw a kitchen sink at them and be done with it.  If it works so well in politics, surely it will do when there’s a financial meltdown.