I was just watching Obama's speech in Coral Gables, Florida, where he was interrupted by some protesters.  They all appeared to be African-American.  The signs they were holding were difficult to read, but they said something about "Blacks Against Obama".  I also saw references to Jesse Jackson, the KKK, and the name Michael Warns or Michael Warn.  Anyone know anything about this?  The whole thing looked like a setup to me.  There was just too much about it that looked like theater.  A little Republican sponsored disturbance, perhaps?

Please--DON'T recommend this post.  I don't want it to spend any time on the list.  But if you know anything, will you please leave a comment?  Thanks.

Now that I've heard the interview for myself, I've gotta say I disagree with Josh Marshall's assessment:

"The most logical explanation of this gaffe is that McCain got asked about Zapatero right after being asked about Chavez, Castro and Morales. Not remembering who Zapatero was, he assumed he must be some other Latin American tinpot dictator and answered the question accordingly."

The most charitable explanation, perhaps, but not the most logical.  For some reason, in his transcript of the exchange, Josh skipped the line that preceded the question.  Here's what the interviewer said:

"Senator, finally, let's talk about Spain."

That's hardly a minor point, so one wonders why Josh decided not to include it in the transcript.  The interviewer told McCain very specifically--before she asked the question--that she was talking about Spain.  So this wasn't some confusion about Zapatero.  It was confusion about Spain.  Clearly, John McCain couldn't remember if Spain, a NATO partner, was an ally.

Here's my read: John McCain, having a senior moment, reached down into the muddy swamp of his old man brain and Googled the word "Spain".  Nada.  Next, he Googled "Zapatero".  "Hmm..." he said to himself.  "Sounds like my old Mexican friend Emiliano, but his last name was Zapata.  Besides, I think he died a few years ago.  It's gotta be someone else.  Spain.  Zapatero.  Spain.  Zapatero.  Oh, wait!  Zapatero.  Iraq!  Troops!  I HATE THAT GUY!"

I believe before November 4th there may still be enough time for John McCain to convince all Americans that, all other things aside, he's simply not mentally competent to be president.  Let's hope so anyway.

Audio of the interview here.

The recent bailouts of Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and AIG led me to wondering how effective these bailouts will end up being compared to offering assistance to struggling homeowners instead.

McCain and the Republicans have resisted bailing out what they refer to as "speculators"--homeowners who got in over their heads with abusive mortgages and overpriced real estate.  One point everyone seems to be ignoring is the fact that it's not a choice between buying a house you can't afford or living nowhere.  It's a choice between buying a house you can't afford or renting an apartment you can't afford.  It's not exactly cheap to rent an apartment these days.  In many ways, the tax advantages of home ownership make taking a risk on an overpriced house far more economical than getting stuck in an overpriced lease.

As usual, the Republicans are talking out of both sides of their mouths.  Do they favor bailing out speculators or not?  It seems to me if those speculators are huge corporations, then they support it.  But if you're a homeowner who's been swindled by one of these huge corporations, not only are you on your own, but you're going to be forced to pay for the bailouts of the very corporations that are ripping you off.  The best part of this is that the Federal government is now in the mortgage business and the investment banking business and the insurance business.  And now THEY will be in charge of ripping off consumers.

We're being screwed in every way possible, and the Republicans are behind it.  The Obama campaign needs to get on this message, pronto.

Yesterday, when I heard John McCain say that he wanted to form a "9/11 commission" to look into the financial crisis, I thought it was an awkward choice of words.  Didn't he mean a 9/11-style commission?  I chalked it up to problems reading the teleprompter and promptly forgot about it.  Later in the day, I heard him use the phrase again in an interview.  And then another.  Each time, he used the same odd formulation: "We're going to need a 9/11 commission"--as if "9/11 commission" is now a generic term for an investigative committee.  Last evening, as I was watching The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, I heard it again--this time coming from Douglas Holtz-Eakin, senior policy advisor to the McCain campaign, and the guy who let it be known to the world yesterday that John McCain had invented the Blackberry.  Check out this exchange between Judy Woodruff, Obama economic advisor Robert Reich, and McCain advisor Holtz-Eakin.

---

WOODRUFF: Robert Reich, let me bring you back into the conversation now.  You've heard Doug Holtz-Eakin say that John McCain was for regulation, but in an appropriate manner--not an excessive amount of regulation.

REICH: Well, Judy, everybody's in favor of appropriate regulation.  When John McCain was head of the Senate Commerce Committee over the past few years, it was just deregulation, deregulation and deregulation.  As Douglas Holtz-Eakin just said, John McCain wants to refer to a commission.  Well, that's Washington shorthand for doing nothing, I'm afraid.  We've had commissions after commissions after commissions looking at this problem.  Look, John McCain's whole record is in favor of a lot of these big companies and a lot of these big investment banks.  By contrast, Barack Obama's economic approach is bottom-up: don't give big tax breaks to the big corporations, don't give even more tax breaks on top of those that the rich have already got from the Bush administration, don't simply push further the Bush administration's agenda for the economy, because it doesn't work.  Barack Obama says, "Instead of top-down economics, let's have bottom-up economics."  Protecting investors, protecting the little guy, protecting jobs, protecting Main Street.  Helping people with tax breaks that go to them.  Helping people with education and health care that goes to them.  You couldn't have two more dramatically contrasting philosophies.

WOODRUFF: Doug Holtz-Eakin, specifically the point about the 9/11 commission.  The argument from the Obama campaign: "That's not needed."

HOLTZ-EAKIN: Well, I, uh, this is, uh, you know, sadly predictable.  I think if you look back, you'll see Barack Obama has said many favorable things about the 9/11 Commission.

I'll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions, but this sure looks like the genesis of a new bamboozle to me.  Are they seriously considering charging Obama with hypocrisy for being for the 9/11 Commission before he was against it?  Good luck with that one...

Here's a link to the Podcast if you want to hear it for yourself:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rss/media/2008/09/16/20080916_regulation28.mp3

It's about 2/3 of the way through the interview.

Drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay Christopher Hitchens posts a must-read in the current issue of Slate:

http://www.slate.com/id/2200134

It lays out in stark terms one of the most difficult issues facing the next President of the United States.  And don't miss the piece Hitchens cites in his article:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3724/is_/ai_n27994317

According to an article in today's New York Times:

"Four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.

“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”"

This needs to be printed on bumperstickers and t-shirts.  This needs to be the slogan from here on out.  You people should be ashamed.

Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!

My Democrat friends are getting nervous.  They see Obama sliding in the polls and they're beginning to wonder if there's a chance John McCain could actually win this thing.  Could McCain's choice of Sarah Palin have actually turned things around?  Could the lies about Obama be working?  Is Obama hitting back hard enough?

First, the absurdly obvious: NO campaign risks lying about their opponent unless they're already in full desperation mode.  In order to choose the path of lies, you've got to be nearly positive you're going to lose no matter what you do.  Lying during a political campaign is a last-chance suicide mission.  It's the political equivalent of tying a rag around your head, grabbing a machine gun, and running straight at the enemy, screaming, "Die, you pinko sons-of-bitches!"  It's an all-or-nothing gambit, and it rarely pays off.  Hard-hitting negative ads are one thing, but telling flat-out lies is quite another.  Especially when those lies are told repeatedly, well after they've been shown to be lies, and well after they have turned the press against you.  If you're a Republican, and the Wall Street Journal starts calling you a liar, you can know you're in deep, deep trouble.  And when your lie about the Bridge To Nowhere has been thoroughly discredited and is universally known to be a lie, and yet you keep telling it, well, that's just pathetic.  If they had anything else, they'd bring it.  They have nothing else.

Second: McCain's biggest advantage in this race was experience.  When he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, it was a clear sign that team McCain had realized that experience wasn't a strong issue with voters.  So McCain picked Palin, and in doing so, dropped the experience argument, never to take it up again.  When a candidate abandons their strongest argument on the way into the home stretch, that's a very clear sign that something isn't working.  And when they try to steal their opponent's argument, that's an admission that your opponent's argument is working.  The very foundation of McCain's campaign--experience--has been a failure.  He's now competing for the change agent mantle--just as Hillary did during the primary season.  It won't work for McCain any better than it did for Clinton.  The cloak is the clear property of Obama, and the McCain campaign well knows it.  Change IS the issue of this election, and change is what Obama, and only Obama, promises.

Third: the Obama campaign has registered 11 million new voters so far.  11 million new voters who have never voted before.  11 million new voters who are now flying almost completely under the radar.  No statistical prediction or electoral map can accomodate them.  The pundits don't know how they're going to affect the race, and the pollsters don't know how to include them in the polls.  But the Obama people know them very well.  And they know how to get them out to the polls in November.  Remember when the campaign told supporters to sign up to receive a text message when Obama had picked his running mate?  Well, that ain't nothin'.  Wait until election day.  On that day, the Obama campaign will send out the most massive text message bomb of all time.  And the the Republicans?  They will send out nothing.  Because they don't even get how this stuff works.  On November 4th, 2008, 11 million new voters--and many, many more--will come swarming to the polls as if out of nowhere.  The Republicans know this, and they know that they have no way to compete.  It will be a landslide of epic proportions. 

Think about this: even with all of the negative attacks and lies by the McCain campaign, and even with the Sarah Palin pick (and probably because of it) Obama raised a record amount of money last month.  More money than any candidate in the history of presidential elections. Over 79% of the amount he would have received if he had chosen public financing--in a single month.  But more even important: he added 500,000 new donors to his database.  500,000 new donors who will absolutely vote for him in November.  If that many people donated money, how many more people are committed to voting for him even though they may not choose to give money to the campaign?  And there's still a month and a half to go.

The latest Gallup poll sampled equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats.  But we know there aren't equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats.  We know the Democrats outnumber the Republicans this year.  By what measure?  Obama knows.  Biden knows.  David Axelrod and David Plouffe know.  The rest of us are just gonna have to wait until election day and be amazed.

Worth a read:

http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/alaska-women-reject-palin-rally-is-huge/

"Never have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage.  The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators).  This was the biggest political rally ever in the history of the state.  I was absolutely stunned.  The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by.  And even those that didn’t honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute.  This just doesn’t happen here."

1400 people.  That's cute.  But also very telling.  Things like that DON'T happen in Alaska.  People drill for oil.  They work on huge factory fishing boats.  They get drunk and have bar fights.  But they don't have political rallies.

God, I miss Tim Russert.  I'm just watching Meet the Press, and I've decided that Tom Brokaw is completely worthless.  He just sits there like a potato, letting these liars spew their moronic, dishonest crap, completely unchallenged by the facts.  The most important election of our lifetimes, and Tom Brokaw is planning to serve us this lukewarm pablum from now until election day?  America is so screwed.  Right now--today--we need someone with a spine and a little fire in his belly.  David Gregory.  Campbell Brown.  Joy Behar.  ANYONE!  Tim! Come back!

The netroots must organize immediately to put pressure on NBC to replace Brokaw.  Write letters!  Make speeches from tree stumps!  Storm the citadels!

DUMP THE POTATO!  DUMP THE POTATO!  DUMP THE POTATO!  DUMP THE POTATO!