Let me get this straight: The idea of the bailout is to let us buy all those great low-fuel efficiency, high-emission sport utility vehicles and dual axle pick-up trucks with crew cabs and iddy biddy beds that General Motors, Ford and Chrysler manufactured last year without having to insure, fuel, maintain, drive, park or, um "own" them. I can see lots of advantages to keeping these misbegotten monstrosities off the road. (Maybe we could use them to for artificial reefs in the Gulf of Mexico?) But rather than pumping tens (or is it hundreds) of billions of dollars into paying American automotive industry employees to keep building these, these, things; let's spend a lot less paying them not to build any more of them. We can accomplish that by devoting a fraction of the cost of an industry wide bailout towards extended unemployment benefits

[EXTERIOR medium shot: Barack Obama plays with a Golden Retriever. The dog runs around him and fetches a red rubber ball for him.]

[EXTERIOR close shot: Barack smiles broadly kneels and the dog jumps up, placing its paws on both of his shoulders.]

[EXTERIOR close up: The dog licks Barack's face and Barack winces. His smile tightens, but does not fade.]

VOICE OVER (announcer): Barack Obama, pallin' around with a dog who probably peed on your eucalyptus bush.

[EXTERIOR long shot: John McCain, standing on a Victorian filligreed porch, lit golden by a setting sun.]

JOHN McCAIN: Keep your dang dog off my lawn!

[EXTERIOR medium shots: the same porch. A screen store swings open and Cindy McCain steps through with a plate loaded with cookies and a glass of milk. The camera follows her as she offers the cookies and milk to John.]

CINDY McCAIN: Calm down, dear. Your heart.

VOICE OVER (John McCain): I'm John McCain and I approved this message.

Cross posted at Args[].

[EXTERIOR montage: Barack Obama plays with his daughters on a public playground on a cool Fall day. One girl runs around laughing. Another, also laughing, plays in a swing. Barack smiles contendedly.]

VOICE OVER (announcer): Barack Obama, pallin' around with kids who probably ran across your yard.

[EXTERIOR long shot: John McCain, standing on a Victorian filligreed porch, lit golden by a setting sun.]

JOHN McCAIN: You kids get off my lawn!

[EXTERIOR medium shots: the same porch. A screen store swings open and Cindy McCain steps through with a plate loaded with cookies and a glass of milk. The camera follows her as she offers the cookies and milk to John.]

CINDY McCAIN: Calm down, dear. Your heart.

VOICE OVER (John McCain): I'm John McCain and I approved this message.

Cross posted at Args[].

For those of you wondering where you've heard Eagleburger's apology before, I think he may have borrowed it from the Archie character in A Fish Called Wanda:

[Otto dangles Archie out a window]
Archie: All right, all right, I apologise.
Otto: You're really sorry.
Archie: I'm really really sorry, I apologise unreservedly.
Otto: You take it back.
Archie: I do, I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, and was in no way fair comment, and was motivated purely by malice, and I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you, or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.
Otto: OK.

Times Online reports:

John McCain paid $175,000 of campaign money to a Republican operative accused of massive voter registration fraud in several states, it has emerged.

Nathan Sproul, in his various corporate incarnations, has been previously accused, by former employees, of dirty campaign tricks that have included setting up registration tables at public libraries that purport to be for non-partisan voter registration drives, then throwing out all democratic party registrants' cards.

In May this year, both ACORN and Mr Sproul were discussed at a hearing of the House subcommittee on commercial and administrative law. One Republican member, Congressman Chris Cannon, concluded: "The difference between ACORN and Sproul is that ACORN doesn't throw away or change registration documents after they have been filled out."

Darn that ACORN!

I've noticed Sen. McCain saying, "I come from a long line of McCains who have served this country" quite regularly recently.

The intent, I believe, is to emphasize ancestry over character or to suggest that ancestry is character: like those tired old 19th century novels that pitted the noble aristocracy against the crass nouveau riche. The Senator sees himself as the patrician who has earned his wealth, position and power the old-fashioned way, by marrying it. He seeks to remind us that he is the regular, white American; and his opponent is The Other.

It's just another, more subtle way of playing the race card.

You've heard the legal aphorism "grandfathered," meaning that some new rule will apply to new situations but people who started out under the old rule can continue under the old rule?
The origin of that name for that legal practice is the Jim Crow South. One way they kept black people from voting without using a more overt racial bias was to qualify voters on the basis of whether their grandparents voted.

If your grandfather voted, you could vote. If your grandfather was a slave, well, sorry ... nothing against you.

We get it. We know John McCain was joking when he sang, "Bomb bomb bomb. Bomb bomb Iran."
That's what makes it so scary.
He was joking ... about bombing another country.
Circumstances may <i>sometimes</i> require a commander in chief to send our soldiers, sailors and Marines into battle. Our president may be required to shed blood.
But circumstances <i>always</i> require that American leaders refrain from joking about the possibility.

from The Public Record (attention Gwen Ifill):

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin – collaborating with her husband Todd and several senior aides – conducted what amounted to a rogue investigation into suspicions that her ex-brother-in-law was faking a job-related injury as a state trooper, according to state documents, law enforcement officials and former aides to Palin.

The investigation was conducted using the resources of Gov. Palin’s office and had the goal of destroying Mike Wooten’s career with the Alaska state troopers, the documents and the interviews reveal.

The governor's staff also got caught with its hands in the trooper's privacy-act-protected personnel file.

Senator John McCain likes to boast about leading the charge against Jack Abramoff. And there are a lot of differences between the McCain gang and the Abramhoff crew.
For one thing, McCain's influence peddlars charge less. For another, when they take money from an Ammerican Indian tribes to help them open a casion (or to prevent another tribe from opening a competing casino) they deliver.
Just ask the Pequot tribe of Conneticutt. Legislation he co-authored helped them establish their Foxwoods Casino &amp; Resort. Legislation he supported won them a tax break. And his staff provided "strategic advice" to the tribe when it set out, successfully, to prevent another Northeastern tribe from opening a competing casino.
Sunday's New York Times (28 SEP 08) reports that McCain's ties to casino gambling run wide and deep -- and that his friends and cohorts have earned millions of dollars with the "access" their friendship affords.
Read the full story: For McCain and Team, a Host of Ties to Gambling