Sadly, No!

Cap’n Ed Morrissey on the Lehman Brothers fiasco and the ongoing death spiral of our economy:

Team McCain did a good job in getting in front of the issue, but today’s turmoil will likely redound to Barack Obama’s benefit unless they can start talking policy and how Obama’s tax and spending proposals will hurt the people most needed to return stability back to the markets. Now more than ever, we need low capital-gains tax rates to encourage investment and risk-taking in order to create more strength in the economy.

Good stuff. We need to encourage even more reckless risk-taking, not put the brakes on the regulatory free-for-all that led to this mess, much less figure out a way to incentivize fiscal responsibility in a nation with negative savings. Let’s go with this, McCain campaign!

PS: Please also talk a lot about how you still want to hand over social security to collapsing investment banks, that will get you lots of votes.

But who should be the face of the McCain ‘let ‘er ride’ platform? HotAir.com commenter ‘jp’ has a brilliant suggestion:

They need to run ads of just Palin, and her speaking to the Energy Inpedence issue and what she did in Alaska and can do for the rest of the country.

Oh, God, please make this happen.

ABOVE: Jeffrey Goldberg, unretouched (left) and McCain, unretouched (right)

About that McCain Photo

• How dare a photographer submit a cover photo of John McCain to The Atlantic without first photoshopping it to get rid of the wrinkles, age spots and old geezer complexion!

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Why McCain’s Campaign Peddles Nonsense

• Instead of concocting silly lies about Barack Obama, John McCain should get back to talking about all the wars he wants to start.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Lehman Brothers is about to file for bankruptcy and there’s a good chance the markets are going to tank across the board Monday.

Clearly this is good news for the McCain-Palin ticket. Voters will be looking for change from the shitty policy that got us to this place. Nobody represents change more than McCain, what with his extension and deepening of the Bush tax cuts, plus his delightful coyness about saying word one about new regulatory policy for the financial markets. ‘Surprise us, John!’, voters are certain to say when they go to the polls in November. ‘Don’t tell us anything about your plan to salvage this shit-spiralling economy … it’ll be waaaay more fun to find out how you’re gonna save us all in January!’

And at the very least, it won’t matter if Palin doesn’t know a lick about Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch, since neither are likely to exist for much longer anyway.

Oh my stars and garters. This WaPo profile of Sarah Palin is terrifying. Here are the key grafs:

In 2006, Palin told the Anchorage Daily News she learned from it all. “At the time, it seemed perplexing that people would object. I was very bold about what needed to be done,” she said. “It was rough with a staff who didn’t want to be there working with a new boss. I learned you’ve got to be very discerning early on and decide if you can win them over or not. If you can’t, you replace them early on.”

Palin’s replacements included a public works director who lacked engineering experience but was married to a top aide to a former Republican governor, and she made a former state GOP lawyer city attorney, according to the Daily News. Langill, the former councilwoman, said the new hires fit Palin’s management style.

“Sarah always did and still does surround herself with people she gets along well with,” she said. “They protect her, and that’s what she needs. She has surrounded herself with people who would not allow others to disagree with Sarah. Either you were in favor of everything Sarah was doing or had a black mark by your name.”

Demanding utter loyalty from surrogates? Intolerance of dissenting viewpoints? Appointing unqualified hacks to key positions? We’ve seen this sort of thing before, my friends. It isn’t change we can believe in.

UPDATE: To repeat myself, I hope that women’s rights groups are planning an ad blitz that attacks Palin for this:

Despite the city’s flush accounts, the police department under the chief Palin hired to replace Stambaugh required women who said they had been raped to pay for examination kits themselves, a policy Palin now says she rejects. State legislation passed a year later required the town to pay for the kits.

Her “rejection” of her town’s own rape kit policy is the same as her “rejection” of the Bridge to Nowhere. She only changed her position when the decision had already been taken out of her hands.

UPDATE II: I have obtained exclusive footage of Sarah Palin teaching the Defense of the Dark Arts class at Hogwarts:

He writes:

Trying to make it funny is not the right approach. Cut out all the attempted humor…

Yeah, that about sums it up.

“Look, Cindy, you can play games on this thing!”

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In order to defend St. John McTheusalah from charges that he is computer-illiterate, Jonah the Whale and some of the other dim bulbs of the blogosphere, have dug up a quotation from an eight-year-old Boston Globe article and played the POW “Get Out of Stupid Free” Card:

McCain’s severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes.

Well, if true, this explains a few other things:

• The reason that McCain wears $520 Ferragamo loafers is because he can’t tie his shoes.
• The reason that his Senate office tried to cover-up Cindy McCain’s drug addiction problem was because, if she went into treatment, there wouldn’t be anyone around to comb his hair.
• The reason that McCain campaign aides took away his unlimited cell phone privileges is because he dialed too many wrong numbers on the cell phone keyboard

There is not going to be any end to this.

UPDATE: Oh my word. I didn’t read the link to Jonah the Whale carefully:

The reason he doesn’t send email is that he can’t use a keyboard because of the relentless beatings he received from the Viet Cong in service to our country.

Jonah, the distinguished historian whose careful review of twentieth century history led him to the conclusion that liberals have always been the real fascists, is completely unaware that the Viet Cong was a communist army based in South Vietnam and that McCain was captured and held by the North Vietnamese Army. Even Lucianne must be embarrassed for Jonah at this point.

Mikey has raised a point that I think many are feeling as the anxiety of this final sprint to the election ratchets up to an unending string of 11s. It’s in response to the wolf-shooting ad in the previous post. Here are Mikey’s thoughts, mine follow:

Are you kidding me? Yeah, I know, it’s “savagery” to shoot wolves from the air. But all these people, even Obama and Biden feel like it’s ok to advocate shooting PEOPLE from the air, and bomb them, blowing up their houses and tearing their women and children into little pieces. In all sorts of places. Missiles in Pakistan. Bombs in Afghanistan. Guns in Iraq. Iran and Syria on the radar screen.

I’m not saying animals don’t count.

But here’s the news. These fucking people are animals. They speak so casually of the brutal destruction of human life on an unimaginable scale. Unimaginable at least to americans, who routinely visit death, destruction and horror on other people without ever feeling the consequences (outside of that pesky 9/11 blowback thingie) of their savagery.

When are we going to talk about that?

What follows is some back-and-forth between Mikey and some other commenters that gets fairly heated, and again, I think it goes to show how on-edge this crazy, crazy time is making many of us feel.

Anyway, here are my thoughts on Mikey’s point:

It sucks that in the course of our efforts towards getting Obama-Biden in and preventing Bush III, we have to in some ways artificially desensitize ourselves to the big picture ultra-violence that’s going to go on regardless of whether it’s Obama-Biden or Palin-McCain in the White House. It really sucks.

But Mikey (and many others) have in past comment threads made the compelling argument that even though we’re faced with a bad choice, as per usual, it’s still a choice that means something. And that it’s the only choice. And that it’s way past the due date for dropping out of the process or voting Green or whatever.

So we need to fight for Obama even though he’s imperfect, even though he sure as shit is going to start another war and send some more shrapnel burning through the limbs and organs of innocent people, because that’s what American presidents do and have always done no matter whether they happen to be nice-enough seeming fellows or raging douchebags. It’s what they do, and our choice is limited to picking the candidate who will probably do such things less than their opponent.

So we fight for that person.

And the thing about fighting for something, even if it’s a lesser-of-two-evils something, is that if you really are committed to it, you can’t go at it in half-measures or with cynicism or plagued by doubt. That is a recipe for losing. So you wind up fighting for this imperfect, pockmarked thing with a zeal that is objectively unwarranted, but situationally appropriate.

That’s all a lot of us are doing in this sprint to the finish of this very important election, man.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present you with the single greatest ad of the 2008 election campaign:

This is the type of awesome viciousness against GOP candidates that makes my black little heart thump with delight. Go forth, yon 527s and NGOs! Kick ass without reserve!!!

Gavin adds:

Whoo-ee. Bartender, make that a double:

[Hanx! Houdini’s Ghost]

Teh Shakes watches Sarah Palin and gets teh shakes:

Terrifying

posted by Melissa McEwan

[…]

When Nightline aired that section this evening, the camera was a tight shot on her face when she says, pitifully, “In what respect, Charlie?” after he asks her if she agrees with the Bush Doctrine, and her expression was just frantic. Total deer in the headlights.

This is not a person who’s remotely prepared to lead this country.

I can’t believe that serious Republican people are not just as scared and horrified watching that video as I am. I can’t believe that partisanship truly trumps all sense and rationality. She has no idea what the fuck she’s doing.

I’m not saying that as a progressive. I’m not saying that as a (historically always) Democratic voter. I’m not saying that because I looked at her résumé and decided it was too thin and automatically assumed she was unqualified. I’m not saying it because she’s a woman, or a Republican, or a conservative.

I’m saying it because it is now patently obvious.

And quite frankly, Republicans, ignoring it just because she’s on your team is not just politics as usual; it’s dangerous and it’s irresponsible.

John McCain has asked you to put your trust in a person who is manifestly unfit for the presidency. Doesn’t that bother you? Doesn’t it piss you off? Doesn’t it scare you?

Because it fucking should.

It should, but it don’t. Oh sure, some of the more literate right-wingers have expressed reservations about Sarah Palin’s qualifications, but most of them see her total lack of knowledge about world affairs to be a badge of honor. Thinking about stuff? Weighing costs and benefits? Pffft, that’s what liberals have done for years and look where it’s gotten us! Think about all the reckless wars we could’ve waged if liberals hadn’t gotten in the way! And they have the nerve to teach our kids that we evolved from apes!!!

The GOP has become one giant St00p1d Machine. They revel in being ignorant about everything, and anyone who actually has knowledge about a given topic is treated at best as suspect. The fact that Sarah Palin has, at least for the moment, been a boon to McCain’s campaign is the dark reflection of a nation that has lost its ability to think. American popular culture has done to us in 50 years what centuries of drinking lead-poisoned water did to the Romans. If you ever wanted evidence that the United States is in its official decline period, Sarah Palin is it.

UPDATE: Totally pwn3d:

The one thing I’ll say, though, is that while Ari is aggressively and smartly playing defense here, he’s still playing defense. Dems need to go more on offense.