AYERS IN HIS OWN WORDS
On March 13 of this year, John McCain sat down for an interview with Sean Hannity. McCain was not yet aware of the narrative Hannity had been spinning for months, and so Hannity filled him in: William Ayers is an unrepentant "terrorist," he explained, "On 9/11, of all days, he had an article where he bragged about bombing our Pentagon, bombing the Capitol and bombing New York City police headquarters. ... He said, 'I regret not doing more.'" McCain couldn't believe it. Neither could Ayers.
(IN THESE TIMES)

MCCAIN'S HOBSON'S CHOICE
McCain has squirreled away enough funds to pay for a raft of television ads in battleground states over the final days. But, the decision to finance a final advertising push is forcing him to curtail spending on Election Day ground forces. The vaunted, 72-hour plan that Too used to mobilize voters in 2000 and 2004 has been scaled back for McCain who is spending half as much as Obama on staffing and has opened far fewer field offices.
(WASHINGTON POST, suggested by fivethirtyeight.com)

DUMB AND PROUD OF IT
Perhaps the most potent reason why intellectuals struggle in elections is that intellectualism has been equated with subversion. The brief flirtation of some thinkers with communism a long time ago has been used to create an impression in the public mind that all intellectuals are communists. Almost every day, men like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly rage against the "liberal elites" destroying America.
(ALTERNET)

CQ Politics | Sorting Out the Truth on McCain’s “Socialism” Allegations

TRICK OR TREAT?
Just in time for Halloween, the campaign's biggest scare tactic is the Socialist Boogeyman. Progressive taxes do indeed spread the wealth a bit. But they do so much more modestly than government owning the means of production. Few serious policy makers — including McCain — consider progressive taxation socialist. In fact, on the October 26, 2008 edition of NBC’s Meet the Press, McCain stood by a comment he made in 2000 that “there’s nothing wrong with paying somewhat more” in taxes when you “reach a certain level of comfort.”
(CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY)

IS THIS ON!
When the GOP nominated John McCain as their candidate many hoped that it meant that the middle and "left" of the party, recognizing not only the mood of the country but that their message was way off base, was wresting control from the on board crazies. When this thing is over there will no doubt be all sorts of things written about how the McCain campaign got kidnapped by the Bush people and turned him into some sort of political Frankenstein, a monster of many parts. The conflicts probably also explain the manifestation of this now-not-so-latent tension between these party tendencies as evidenced by the internal bickering in the McCain campaign and the public breaking of ranks by its politicians and pundits. It might also account for the flareups between Palin and the McCain staffs about her being "off message". But, lest we make the mistake of giving these guys too much due, look at this enlarged sample of self-identified Republicans and independents who identify with Republicans. When asked the question, “who is to blame for John McCain’s possible defeat?” Republicans believe McCain will have lost because of a hostile mainstream media, economic events beyond their control and Democrats having more money and resources. Few have begun to examine the bigger issues. Their views of the current campaign, the mood of the country, the state of the economy and the future of their party and country suggest a party very much out of touch.
(DEMOCRACY CORPS)

E. J. Dionne Jr. - Civil War on the Right - washingtonpost.com

ET TU, BRUTUS?
For years, many of the elite conservatives were happy to harvest the votes of devout Christians and gun owners by waging a phony class war. Suddenly, they are discovering that the very anti-intellectualism they courted has begun to consume their movement. The cause of Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Robert Nisbet and William F. Buckley Jr. is now in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity -- and Sarah Palin. Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda, ideas by slogans, learned manifestoes by direct-mail hit pieces.
(WASHINGTON POST)

Final Presidential Debate Fact Check - Fact Checker

CHECKING THE FACTS
This is a pretty good site for checking facts. This one lays out where each of the candidates stretched the truth.
(Suggested by Donna Soto)

Why I'd Be a Better VP than Sarah Palin

ME JOHN, ME!
Johnny Cash's daughter would like to submit her name as a replacement for Sarah Palin saying that she feels confident that McCain will see in her the very attributes he desires in his VP choice. For your consideration, her big, fat résumé.
(Suggested by MOLLY THOMAS)

SAY IT AIN'T SO, JOE
The news keeps getting "worser and worser" for McCain. Yesterday even the GOP stalwarts started piling on. None other than neocon looney William Kristol and David Brooks, amongst many other commentators and politicians, started railing against McCain and bemoaning the state of their glorious GOP. (See today's Press Register for the Kristol piece.) Given the fractuous animosity and internecine stuggles between their competing party wings, maybe that's not really such big news.
Except they're going public. And, maybe, this is just some sort of tough love lesson for the party: "if you choose to break party discipline (be a 'maverick'), you will pay the price." Hey, I understand. I was so pissed at the Democratic Party, that I voted for Ralph Nader. But, seeing Joe Scarborough on Stephen Colbert - above and beyond being thrilled by what he said about McCain's campaign - was transformational. It went far beyond anything that I've seen on television lately.
I lived in Pensacola when he was coming up and saw how he went from a local dumbass know-nothing to a powerful and somewhat thugish GOP wunderkinder and then to a loud-mouth wannabee O'Reilly television commentator. And that's about all I've really known about him for lo these many years except that during Katrina a lot of folks rallied locally to take up the slack occasioned by the Bush Administration's indifference. Kathryn, Carlos' mom, was one of those that bought things out of her own pocket, generated fund drives, and broke the curfew to ferry the supplies to Mississippi. Scarborough was one of the local luminaries who rose to the challenge by being tremendously instrumental in that process.
Here he was on Colbert last night, not quite the mugwump pushing Obama, but giving his assessment that the election was over.
What really was so surprising and refreshing was the manner in which Scarborough has matured. He stayed on message while still comporting himself admirably against Colbert's antics, jovially giving every bit as good as what he got against Colbert's right wing strawperson. Unfortunately, it ended too soon. I wanted Scarborough to finish his thought process about how he'd gotten to where he was and especially the GOP's Katrina response.
Now, no one thinks that Scarborough is Saul on the road to Damascus. I just wanted to hear what he had to say about expecting someone to remedy a problem - be it a natural disaster or an economic one - if the solution is antithetical to their political philosophy and I wanted to hear it from someone who was out there dealing with the realities of trying to help someone who truly needed help.

Former federal prosecutor decries William Ayers link - Los Angeles Times

AYERS CASE PROSECUTOR SPEAKS OUT
A former United States Attorney has publicly taken issue with the characterization that the case against William Ayers was dismissed for "prosecutorial misconduct." The government dropped the case after the Nixon administration's "illegal activities, including wiretaps, break-ins and mail interceptions," were exposed, he said.
(LATIMES)

The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time

VIRTUAL CITY
IBM and China’s Palace Museum have created an exact replica of the 178-acre Forbidden City. After working meticulously for three years to recreate every building and thousands of major artifacts, the virtual Forbidden City is now available for download free. Once inside, you can choose an avatar, dress him or her up in Qing Dynasty-era robes, take virtual tours, play Go with computer-controlled characters, call up maps, explore buildings and objects that allow you to click for deeper information.
(IBM, suggested by Tech Crunch)

The Nation - Who You Callin’ a Maverick? - NYTimes.com

A DIFFERENT BRAND OF BULL
To those who know the history of the word "Maverick", applying it to John McCain is a bit of a stretch — and to one Texas family in particular it is even a bit offensive.
(NEW YORK TIMES, suggested by Devon Hanks)

America’s Voice | Blame the Immigrants!

AND THE WINNER IS.....
Michelle Malkin wins the America’s Voice "Blame the Immigrants!" contest. Oh, no, wait, she doesn't win the contest, she's the watershed. This site had run a contest asking what immigrants would be blamed for next, giving a list of possible disasters. "Did you know that immigrants are to blame for Global Warming?", they asked. That was the conclusion of a recent "study" released by the Center for Immigration Studies, anti-immigrant "think' tank". Sad news, though, no one thought it would be the Wall Street meltdown. As Jon Stewart would say, "Damn youuuuuuuuuuuuuu Michelle Malkin!!!!" But, fear not, you can still vote in the poll. The blame game continues.

Steering the McCain Campaign, a Lot of Old Bush Hands - washingtonpost.com

BUSH WARMED OVER
The clutch of Bush veterans helping to coach Palin reflects a larger reality about McCain's campaign: Far from being a group of outsiders to the Republican Party power structure, it is run by skilled operatives who learned their crafts in successive Bush campaigns and various jobs across the Bush government. This has caused distress for some Republicans, who had hoped for a new brand of Republicanism. "It's insane to me that at the same time that it's running saying it's not going to be the Bush administration, this campaign looks like the Bush campaign on steroids," said one Republican strategist.
(WASHINGTON POST, suggested by AlterNet)

PSSSSST! DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT....
There are some little ironies that make me grin. Like Republicans are from the "Red states", that "Right brain thinking" is creative and intuitive, that "right" means "moral", left, sinister. But the email I got recently about the latest "political rumor" is not just comical, it shows some interesting dynamics at work in the political process and the disconnect in supposedly "right thinking" people.
The email, forwarded to/from groups of medical and legal professionals, claims that they have information that:

"On or about October 5th, Biden will excuse himself from the ticket, citing health problems, and he will be replaced by Hillary. This is timed to occur after the VP debate on 10/2."

Heavy stuff, no? Now, where did our intellectual think tank get this chestnut that they clearly acknowledge is only a rumor? From "a man who generally checks things out before sending," a man, who they claim, is in the DNC.
This would be pathetic except that this is the kind of nonreality-based wishful thinking pap, like the supposed Palin affair, that seriously distracts us from the discussion that we need to have. And, what is really scary about this email is to see just exactly how a whisper campaign is intentionally set out by these fools.
Again, the email:

"There have been talks all weekend about how to proceed with this info. Generally, the feeling is that we should all go ahead and get it out there to as many blog sites and personal email lists as is possible. I have already seen a few short blurbs about this - the 'health problem' cited in those articles was aneurysm. Probably many of you have heard the same rumblings."

"However, at this point, with this inside info from the DNC, it looks like this Obama strategy will be a go. Therefore, it seems that the best strategy is to get out in front of this Obama maneuver, spell it out in detail, and thereby expose it for the grand manipulation that it is."

"So, let's start mixing this one up and cut the Obamites off at the pass - send this info out to as many people as you can - post about it on websites and blogs - etc."

What could the intentional spreading of a lie hope to accomplish? And, what happens to the credibility of the folks spreading the lie after the date comes and goes for the unveiling of THE SECRET PLAN? Well, first, its spread anonymously. Secondly, even when pegged as a prevaricator, one can fall back that it was "just a rumor". Most importantly, it keeps the "faithful" pumped up and if you're driven by faith you can avoid reason. That's how we spend time on irrelevant issues like someone's middle name or the wearing of a flag pin and avoid topics like a melting economy, the effects of deregulation or any of the other really important issues that we have before us. Unfortunately, it has always worked in the past. It scuttled Kerry and was effectively used by the right wing against McCain himself. SEE SWIFT BOATING VIDEO USED AGAINST MCCAIN BY CLICKING HERE.
But the fact that McCain and Obama are the candidates left (oops) standing this year may signal a move away from the effectiveness of such silly crap. Let's hope so.