It was an easy to miss paragraph toward the end of Obama's speech tonite: 

To preserve our long-term fiscal health, we must also address the growing costs in Medicare and Social Security. Comprehensive health care reform is the best way to strengthen Medicare for years to come. And we must also begin a conversation on how to do the same for Social Security, while creating tax-free universal savings accounts for all Americans.

Now, TPM folks are already well aware that the "crisis" in Social Security funding is mostly a fiction; and we just gave Bushco a thorough beatdown on this whole thing a couple of years ago.  So someone please translate that last sentence for me.  What exactly is the President talking about, and why does it sound to me like Social Security Privatization has just risen from the dead?

To coin a phrase, I may need to be talked town here.

Everyone should look at the video Josh put up on the front page of the first moments of the rescue, and give a shout out not just to ol' Sully, but to the ferry pilots and crews.

As a Long Islander (hence the username), I've got a very limited amount of sailing experience, & I've taken my share of ferry rides.  I've felt how huge & difficult to maneuver those massive tubs are; and I've also experienced how tricky it is just to coax a 19-foot sailboat into a nice sheltered marina berth.

The video shows how the plane is turned sideways, and drifting quite quickly with the tide down towards the Battery.  For those ferry captains to so quickly sidle up to a moving target, close enough to get the people aboard, without making potentially disastrous contact, is one fuckin' awesome bit of piloting, and the work of the crews is some bitchin' seamanship.   Their job is nowhere near as glamorous, or well-paid, as an airline pilot's, but in my view their skill and coolness under pressure is every bit as impressive.  They're heroes too.

Don't know why it took me so long, but it's pretty obvious just where the McCain campaign turned for inspiration in creating their first general election commercial.

Obviously McCain's team ...


...is learning from the master:


Hey, boss!  I got an idea!  Sure, we've succeeded in making the Senator look sickly and pale, but not enough people think of him as scary and possibly mentally damaged!  Let's try something with the lighting here...

[oh for the ability to embed...]

[partially cross-posted from Al Giordano's wonderful The Field]

Today's town-hall invite letter from McCain is a first sign that maybe there are some synapses firing in Phoenix after all.  It's a clever ploy to neutralize Obama's advantages, particularly the money gap, and invoking JFK was a nice touch.  How Obama should respond, I'm not sure, except that the hasty scheduling is a nonstarter -- if only because Barack needs and deserves a vacation.

Only time will tell if the McCain campaign will fully learn the lessons of last night's disaster and overcome their congenital Republican risk-aversion.  If they ignore meaningless five-month-out polls and instead look honestly at their candidate's strengths and weaknesses, and at the daunting fundamentals, they'll see that a radical change in the playbook is the only way to keep this close & give their guy a puncher's chance.

Some things I'll be watching for to see if they're wising up:

1) He shouldn't make more than half-a-dozen formal teleprompter addresses (especially ones like last night before tiny, sleepy lily-white crowds) between now & the election.  Even stump speeches & rallies should be minimal.  He needs to treat this as a giant New Hampshire primary & stick to the "town hall" Q&A stuff--where he's frankly better than Obama, who rarely engages the questioner as an individual & tends to tack back into the stump speech a bit too much.  The risk is more "make it a hundred" moments, but again, their risk/reward calculus has to be much more generous than it has been.

2) If he so much as mentions Obama's name again (never mind repeating BO's slogans over & over) it's a mistake.  The whole right wing noise machine will be shoveling plenty of manure Barack's way; McCain can only get in their way, and get himself slimed in the process.

3) Work his real base: the press corps.  Grant a different "exclusive" interview every day.  Let Timmy or Steph or Brit or Tweety kiss his ass at least once a week.  Do Leno & Letterman & Stewart & Colbert at least twice each.

4) Find something, anything, on which to vote against Bush in the Senate.

5) Insofar as he can afford commercials, they should be either Q&A excerpts or talk-to-the-camera spots.  Enough with the bio & the grainy POW shots -- anyone who cares already knows.  If it's about you & not the voters, it's not worth the $$.

6) The fall debates will be make-or-break for him.  He should push for town-hall style if he can, and fight any attempt to allow the candidates to question each other.  He should ignore Obama as much as he can & only engage on issues (again: risky, since he's on the wrong side of every issue, but he has no choice).  If he condescends to Obama or comes across as angry or mean in any way, he loses -- big.

I still think he'll lose, but if he plays to his strengths, leaves the bullshit to "independent" surrogates, and maybe smiles once in a while in a non-cringe-inducing way, he might make it interesting.

    [apologies for length; it's hard to be brief trying address an idea that's this stupid on this many levels.]

I've been trying hard to get my head around the rampant speculation about Hillary becoming Obama's running mate.  Lately there've been broad hints from Hillary surrogates that they think it's a boffo idea, and incessant gossiping from the Villagers that her continuing campaign is an effort to secure the #2 slot.

The ways in which this makes no sense could fill dozens of posts.  First from the Obama perspective:  His whole campaign narrative depends on being the "turn-the-page", transformational outsider, promising to renew the country's political discourse by moving beyond old resentments and starting again.  What could undermine that more than using his "first Presidential decision" to partner with a living symbol of the divisions of the last 20-40 years, whose Gallup "unfavorable" ratings have stayed well over 40% for over a decade?  The nearest parallel I can think of would be if Bill Clinton had chosen Walter Mondale or George McGovern as a running mate in 1992.

What does Hillary bring to the ticket, exactly?  If Obama really thinks he needs to shore up New York, he's in much bigger trouble than any of us ever thought.  Meanwhile her presence on the ticket would be an engraved invitation for the Republicans to rehash nonstop every attack (including the race-baiting ones) ever launched at Obama by Senator Clinton, President Clinton, Terry McAuliffe, Mark Penn or any other surrogate over the last 6 months.  Not to mention it would signal his being too weak to resist political blackmail.

Still, the flogging of this idea among the villagers is no more inane than we've grown to expect from them.  What's harder to comprehend is the stoking of it by Clinton surrogates like McAuliffe; perhaps there's a Trojan Horse strategy at work here that's beyond my comprehension.  Because what, exactly, is in it for her? 

I thought Josh did well the other day in outlining her options.  She's already a Senator from New York, occupying what has to be judged one of the safest seats this side of Robert Byrd.  Her party looks likely to achieve a commanding majority, affording her growing power to influence legislation.  While this year's endorsements don't speak greatly for her popularity in the caucus, most reviews judge her to be an able and respected legislator who has grown into the job well.  Certainly important leadership posts and/or plum committee chairs beckon in the near future.  The Governor's Mansion in Albany is a strong possibility if she wants it.  And if, God forbid, Obama loses, she could still look toward a 2012 run on the "I told you so" platform.

And what should she give this up for?  Well, she could run as Veep and lose.  Many, many Dems would blame her for helping to lose in a won year.  Certainly she would go forward saddled with the Loser mantle that hasn't exactly helped Geraldine Ferraro or Joe Lieberman or even John Edwards. 

Or she could win... what then?  Recent history has inflated our opinion of the office of VP.  But certainly the role of a Vice President Clinton would be nothing like that of the svengali Dick Cheney or even the sympatico junior partner Al Gore.  There is, however, a fitting parallel: a primary runner-up chosen to placate the Party establishment:  George H. W. Bush.  Yes he eventually won the Presidency (just in time to take the blame for the bad policies and rotting institutions left him by Saint Reagan), but first he spent 8 years as an irrelevant joke, jetting off to third-world funerals and being ignored by the rest of the administration.  And Bush in 1980 was 5 years younger than Clinton is now; and nowhere near as well-known or powerful. 

Finally there's the simple question of temperment:  How can anyone who's watched either Clinton for the past 20 years see either one embracing or even tolerating the subservience required of a running mate (mates) or a Second Couple?

To correctly quote John Nance Garner, from Hillary's perspective the value of the Vice Presidency is indeed roughly that of a bucket of warm piss.  And her value as Barack Obama's running mate isn't much greater.