• 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. 

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. 

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. 

Things are just getting bat-shit stupid out on the campaign trail.  My dogs, you’d almost think there’s only a month to go until the election and one of the teams is getting desperate.  Take a look, if you’ve got the stomach for it: 

• Joe McCain, John’s brother, called parts of Northern Virginia “communist country” because it’s more Democratic than the better parts of the state (like Richmond and Newport News, perhaps?) Heckuva way to bring folks together, huh?

• Sarah “Barracuda” is running around the country - save Michigan - and telling regular hockey moms and Joe Sixpacks that Obama is “palling around with terrorists.” Not so surprisingly, that’s a lie, but even more surprising is an AP commentary that her attack is “racially tinged.” McPalin had to go there, didn’t they?  By the way, if we’re playing guilt by association…

• And, speaking of lies, Palin claimed during the VP debate that the Alaska Permanent Fund had divested itself of investments in Sudan.  That was a big lie as well.  Can she tell the truth about anything?  Don’t answer that, just think about it. 

• Fox News declared Sarah Palin a winner of the debate because her flag pin was bigger than Biden’s and sparkly too.  I guess that makes Madeline Albright, seen here during the 9/11 hearings, the new Savior of the world:

Size matters, and Maddie’s got ‘em all beat to hell. 

And, also (ahem), as noted in the comments, Palin was wearing an Alaska pin above the Stars and Stripes.  That makes her a big failure in the flag etiquette department - not to mention a c-c-c-communist.  So there. 

Thing is, Marge is actually pretty bright. 

1) The format of this “debate” sucked.  No follow-up questions at all, and that’s exactly what the McCain campaign and Palin wanted.  If you drill down (pun intended) below the surface of Palin’s talking points, there’s no there there, as evidenced in her Couric interviews. 

2) Gwen Ifill, while fair, sucked at moderating this mess.  I don’t know if she tried too hard with the questions, but it all came out as some sort of haphazard mish-mash.

3) Sarah Palin’s schtick of winking, “darn it"s, “you betcha"s and folksiness gets really old after the first time.  Joe Six-Pack she ain’t. 

4) Palin can’t pronounce “nuclear” either, but she does a slightly better job with it than George Bush.

5) Palin wants more Constitutional power for the VP.  If that doesn’t scare the bejesus out of the country after Cheney, I don’t know what does.

6) I want to know who in Palin’s family is gay.  She said:  “… I am tolerant and have a very diverse family...” I want names and I want them now. 

Overall, Palin got all her soundbites in (over and over), Biden beat up McCain better than even Obama did. 

I’ll take the substance over the winks any day.