Yes, We're Tired of So Much Winning!

Vice President Mike Pence broke a 50-50 tie in the US Senate last night to deny bank and credit card customers the ability to band together in class action lawsuits against Wall Street banks and credit card companies that rip them off.

They say that Trump will sign the bill immediately, probably with a brass band and marching elephants to celebrate getting to sign something, anything, despite how badly it hurts the consuming public. He won't know what's actually in the bill and how it hurts regular, non-billionaire type people, but then, he also won't care.

So who were the two Republicans who forced the tie-breaker? Surprise! Not Bob Corker and not Jeff Flake and not Susan Collins and not John McCain and not Lisa Murkowski. They all voted for it. The two defecting Republicans were Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Kennedy of Louisiana.

Well ... McCain!

Perhaps mortality focused his energies and his resolve, and he came through like he said he would. Perhaps he didn't want a legacy of killing health care for millions as he approaches his own battle with an aggressive brain cancer.

“I’ve stated time and time again that one of the major failures of Obamacare was that it was rammed through Congress by Democrats on a strict party-line basis without a single Republican vote,” he said in a statement explaining his vote. “We should not make the mistakes of the past.”

Two votes were called just after midnight. The first was a Democratic motion to refer the "skinny repeal" back to committee. It failed. The second vote was to pass the "skinny repeal." If you were watching, you know that the second vote prompted a full-court press by Republican brass on Senator John McCain.

McCain was seated next to Sen. Lindsay Graham who had derided the "skinny repeal" earlier in the day as a fraud but who had decided to vote for it anyway because he thought he had a promise from House Speaker Paul Ryan that it would never become law. Hell of a way to govern: "I'm voting for this law because I know it'll never become law."

Lisa Murkowski, one of the three no votes, approached McCain who smiled up at her and gave her a thumbs-down. Susan Collins joined the conversation. All three no votes were now talking.

From the well of the chamber, Majority Leader McConnell dispatched the other Arizona senator Jeff Flake to lobby McCain. McCain wouldn't look at him and continued talking to Murkowski and Collins.

According to reporter Ed O'Keefe, "That left Flake, one of the most polite members of the Senate, leaning into the conversation uncomfortably with a pained look on his face, as if he had to tell his father that he had run over the family dog with his car."

Seeing that Flake was getting nowhere, Vice President Mike Pence joined the conversation, and for 21 minutes he cajoled McCain, Murkowski, and Collins until he was pulled away for a phone call from the White House.

At 1:10 a.m. McCain crossed the Senate chamber and talked to Chuck Schumer and other Democrats. Sen. Dianne Feinstein gave him a big hug. As the vote on passage began, McCain was again off the floor talking to V.P. Pence, but he returned at 1:29 a.m. and delivered his no vote to the clerk.

There were audible gasps in the chamber.

Wonder how his best friend Lindsay Graham feels this morning, having witnessed an actual act of courage last night.

Moscow on the Potomac, Times Two

The Look of Love: Rex Tillerson with
Vladimir Putin. PHOTO: RIA NOVOSTI/REUTERS

So word has leaked that after weeks of considering his options, Vladimir Putin has chosen Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as the next Secretary of State.

After economic sanctions were imposed on Russia following its invasion of the Crimea and its "shadow war" in eastern Ukraine, Tillerson spoke up against the sanctions: “We always encourage the people who are making those decisions to consider the very broad collateral damage of who are they really harming with sanctions,” he said. Apparently, sanctions against the aggressor state were harming Exxon in particular.

Well, yes, they were. The sanctions on Russia ended up blocking the implementation of a deal that Tillerson and Putin struck in 2011 which would have given Exxon access to Russia's Arctic oil resources while allowing Russia’s state oil company, OAO Rosneft, to invest in Exxon concessions all over the world. The following year, the Kremlin bestowed the country’s Order of Friendship decoration on Tillerson.

Oh, they're close, Putin and Tillerson.

Tillerson's Exxon stock (he owns $151 million of it) would increase in value when Russia gets its way -- that is, gets those sanctions lifted. Hacking an election and installing your guy as Secretary of State has its profits!

Senator John McCain said yesterday that Tillerson’s ties to Putin were “a matter of concern to me.” “I’d have to examine it,” he said on Fox News, adding that “Vladimir Putin is a thug, bully and a murderer, and anybody else who describes him as anything else is lying.”

A thug, a bully, and a murderer -- that about sums him up. Putin's also a pussy-grabber. He grabbed Donald Trump a long time ago, but when you're famous and powerful, you get away with shit like that. And he's running the U.S. government now.

Foxx & Ryan, Sitting in a Tree

The most conservative Republicans in the U.S. Congress love themselves some Paul Ryan! He's the five-term congressman from Wisconsin who has written what passes for a current platform for conservative Republicans, "The Roadmap for America's Future," which calls for the privatization of Social Security and the elimination of Medicare (among other sunny concepts that would further consolidate the power of corporations and the rich). Mr. Ryan describes himself on his own website as "Waiting in the Wings to Be Chief G.O.P. Dealmaker." Such modesty! To go with quite the vision for the future.

This a.m. on Fox News Sunday, Sen. John McCain (now that he's safely through his primary) refused to endorse the Paul Ryan roadmap.

No so Madam Virginia Foxx. She's very clearly endorsed the Ryan "roadmap." She's always hated the idea of Social Security (and positively DESPISES Medicare). In her 1st term in Washington, at a meeting in Watauga County, she called Social Security "a broken system":

People have become too dependent on Social Security as their sole source of income after retirement, Foxx said, adding that President George W. Bush feels people should take responsibility for themselves and plan ahead, rather than rely solely on Social Security. [Watauga Democrat, March 28, 2005]

She's gotten a lot cagier about admitting her philosophical attitudes in public. When directly asked where she stood on Ryan's "roadmap," she called the cops on the reporter who asked.

Holy Crist!

The tea party purge of the Republican Party continues apace. Godspeed!

Charlie Crist, prominently trotted out in 2008 as a potential running mate for John Blowing-in-the-Wind McCain, leaves the Republican Party today at 5 p.m.

The poor, poor one-term governor of Florida, who blew a 30-point lead in the Republican Senate primary to tea-party darling Marco Rubio, is now determined to run a lonelier race as an independent.

The likely Democratic nominee Kendrick Meek is generally regarded by the gasbags as a weak candidate, but at this point anything can and probably will happen. Florida's Senate race has just gone from safe Republican to who-the-freak-knows?

The Downside of Prostitution

Jon Stewart destroyed John McCain last night.

Or, if you blanch at seeing the tired old non-maverick exposed for selling himself cheap, you can sample the downside of being anointed by the DSCC.

Doesn't This Make You Hate Politicians?

The man who "made" Sarah Palin, Sen. John McCain, has drawn a Republican primary this year from one J.D. Hayworth, who hates (in no particular order), Barack Obama, immigrants, and John McCain.

According to Jennifer Steinhauer, in the NYTimes:

Mr. McCain now finds himself jammed, moving starkly -- and often awkwardly -- to the right, apparently in an effort to gain favor among the same voters whom Mr. Hayworth, a consistent voice for the far right, [has been wooing for months as a talk-radio host].

Mr. McCain now sharply criticizes the bailout bill he voted for, pivoted from his earlier position that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility should be closed, offered only a muted response to the Supreme Court's decision undoing campaign finance laws and backed down from statements that gays in the military would be O.K. by him if the military brass were on board.

Maybe this "election conversion" will save John McCain from the hell fire of the Right Wing. And maybe not.

Some Balls!

Taking a page from the George W. Bush playbook (speak only before friendly, pre-screened audiences), Sen. Dick Burr did some back flips on health-care reform in Charlotte yesterday, assisted by John McCain and Mitch McConnell, to an invitation-only audience. During which Sen. McCain had the unmitigated gall to praise the screaming mobs who've disrupted Democratic townhalls, which have most assuredly NOT been invitation-only.

Shorthand version: These GOP senators LOVE to see Democrats shouted down by people who don't know what they're shouting about, while the senators bask in the warm puppy-love of invited corporate slaves, who are evidently very comfortable with the level of ignorance among the general public.

However, one doctor in that hand-picked audience yesterday in Charlotte wandered a bit off-message. He had the balls to challenge (finally!) the standard Republican line ("We've got the best health-care system in the world") and challenged McCain's assertion that only 12-15 million Americans are uninsured.

Burr on a Leash

Big phony health-care event in Charlotte today on behalf of Sen. Dick Burr, at which fellow senators John McCain and Mitch McConnell will also appear, saying approximately (1) the U.S. has the greatest health-care system in the world and (2) we're all completely and totally in favor of reforming the greatest health-care system in the world, so long as the big corps get to keep all their profits and even increase them.

The event is being paid for by big corp Carolinas HealthCare Systems, which runs 25 hospitals in Charlotte and South Carolina.

No conflict of interest here. None.

Meanwhile, the multi-millionaire CEO of N.C. Blue Cross/Blue Shield, the insurance giant that has grown obscenely rich from maintaining a monopoly over state employees' insurance (among others), says he's against competition (duh) but very much for a public mandate that everyone buy insurance, since that will increase his profits several billionfold.

If these blood-suckers were capable of shame, which clearly they are not, they'd be hiding their fat faces in the sub-basement of the Department of Can We Get Any More Greedy?

Who Is Steve Schmidt and Why Is He Saying Those Things About the GOP?

Steve Schmidt's speech to the Log Cabin (gay) Republicans Friday makes for very interesting reading, and though most people are likely to highlight his advice for the Republicans to get over their opposition to gay marriage, he says a great deal else about the imminent death of the GOP that might give loyal Republicans, not to mention activist Democrats, some pause.

Steve Schmidt's bona fides: He was an acolyte of Karl Rove, a member of the "senior strategic planning group" in the George W. Bush White House, and oversaw the Bush reelection "war room" in 2004. Then he became John McCain's senior day-to-day message manager during last year's disaster.

He told the Log Cabin Republicans on Friday that the Republican Party is shrinking. Most alarming, it's shrinking among voters under the age of 30 and among Hispanic voters. If John McCain had not been on the ballot, he's convinced that the Democrats would have won Arizona last year.

On the issue of gay marriage: "...it cannot be argued that marriage between people of the same sex is un-American or threatens the rights of others. On the contrary, it seems to me that denying two consenting adults of the same sex the right to form a lawful union that is protected and respected by the state denies them two of the most basic natural rights affirmed in the preamble of our Declaration of Independence -- liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, I believe, gives the argument of same sex marriage proponents its moral force."

Sooner or later, Schmidt believes, the Republican Party will be forced to acknowledge the moral rightness of that argument. Sooner would definitely be better, in his view, for the political health of his party. Later, though foreordained, will likely be too late.

And get this: Schmidt believes that a group's notion of the revealed word of God is not a good basis for a political party's platform: "If you put public policy issues to a religious test you risk becoming a religious party, and in a free country, a political party cannot remain viable in the long term if it is seen as sectarian."

Schmidt was making sense. Can we rest secure in our confidence that the leaders of the Republican Party will not listen?

Newt Gingrich, Sob Sister

The things one learns from the Sunday morning gasbags!

First, we hear George Will say the greatest thing that President Obama has done -- really, an act of sheer statesmanship -- is to remove the "buy American" provisions in the stimulus plan.

Less than an hour later, some senator from Arizona (McCain, I think his name was) said that it's just plu-perfect AWFUL that the bill has a "buy American" provision in it.

One of these two gentlemen is right and the other is lost somewhere in the space-time continuum.

But the best yuck of the morning came out of the mouth of Newt Gingrich on ABC's "This Week." Newt was alarmed -- perhaps even a little saddened, in that smug, self-serving way of his -- about the "partisanship" that has reinvaded Washington, all because President Obama thinks that it was Republican policies that got us into this mess. It's just a fact: Newt's shit don't stink.

And, oh yes, via the new chair of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele: a government-created job is not actually a job. It's really more of a social indiscretion, like paying your sister $37,000 out of campaign funds for work she didn't actually do.

Whack Job

First, a top McCain operative said that Sarah Palin behaved like a diva.

Now another McCain advisor is saying privately that she's a "whack job."

We think when the movie is made of the McCain/Palin conjoining, it could be titled "Fatal Attraction." With a moosehead in the stewpot rather than a bunny rabbit.

Barry Goldwater's Granddaughter Endorses Obama

The late arch-conservative Barry Goldwater's granddaughter, C.C. Goldwater, has endorsed Barack Obama. Goldwater ran for president in 1964 against Lyndon Johnson and is credited by many for launching the rightward lurch of the Republican Party that eventually turned them into the party of Karl Rove.

C.C. says that she's not alone among her large Republican family in supporting Obama. Her siblings and several cousins will also be voting for Obama. Most of them live in McCain's home state of Arizona.

Among the other things C.C. writes about John McCain, she takes on his rigid anti-abortion position and the issue of same-sex marriage:

My grandfather (Paka) would never suggest denying a woman's right to choose. My grandmother co-founded Planned Parenthood in Arizona in the 1930's, a cause my grandfather supported. I'm not sure about how he would feel about marriage rights based on same-sex orientation. I think he would feel that love and respect for ones privacy is what matters most and not the intolerance and poor judgment displayed by McCain over the years.

Ouch. And then this:

...the Republican brand has been tarnished in a shameless effort to gain votes and appeal to the lowest emotion, fear. Nothing about McCain, except for maybe a uniform, compares to the same ideology of what Goldwater stood for as a politician. The McCain/Palin plan is to appear diverse and inclusive, using women and minorities to push an agenda that makes us all financially vulnerable, fearful, and less safe.

Double ouch.

Obama, Hagan Expand N.C. Leads

Late-breaking news from Public Policy Polling. Here and here.

From the PPP press release:

Barack Obama is now out to his largest lead yet in a PPP survey of North Carolina, polling at 51% in the state compared to 44% for John McCain. Last week Obama's advantage was 49-46.

Independent voters continue to move toward Obama in droves. He now has a 51-33 lead with them. He's also now up to receiving 82% of the Democratic vote. Staying over the 80% threshold there would almost certainly ensure a victory in North Carolina.

McCain now leads among white voters just 55-39, an edge that's not nearly enough given Obama's 92-6 lead with black voters. George W. Bush won about two thirds of the white vote against both John Kerry and Al Gore in North Carolina....

In North Carolina's US Senate race challenger Kay Hagan continues to lead incumbent Elizabeth Dole, as she has now in PPP's last seven surveys of the race. Hagan's advantage is now up to 49-42. Hagan is annihilating Dole among suburban voters, 56-38. She's also shoring up her support with the key Democratic constituency of black voters, with whom she is now ahead 84-7, an improvement from 78-12 a week ago....

PPP surveyed 1,200 likely voters on October 18th and 19th. The survey's margin of error is +/- 2.8%....

Colin Powell Endorses Obama

Why?

McCain didn't pass the test posed by the current economic crisis.

McCain didn't pass the test posed by his own vice presidential choice.

McCain didn't pass the test of broadening the Republican base, rather than embarking on a William Ayers-fueled witch-hunt that can only narrow the party:

"...I've also been disappointed, frankly, by some of the approaches that Senator McCain has taken recently – or his campaign has – on issues that are not really central to the problems that the American people are worried about. This Bill Ayers situation that's been going on for weeks became something of a central point of the campaign, but Mr. McCain says that he's a watchdog of terrorists. Then why do we keep talking about him? And why do we have these robocalls going on around the country, trying to suggest that because of this very, very limited relationship that Senator Obama has had with Mr. Ayers, somehow Mr. Obama is tainted. What they're trying to connect him to is some kind of terrorist feelings. And I think that's inappropriate...."

Transcript here.

Here's an Idea: Let's Have Us a Witch-Hunt!

The Republican presidential campaign has taken a turn in the last month that makes me nostalgic for the 1960s in Texas. Formed in 1958 by an ex-candy maker, the John Birch Society believed fervently and spread the doctrine that its founder wrote, that "the traitors inside the U.S. government would betray the country's sovereignty to the United Nations for a collectivist New World Order managed by a one-world socialist government."

By 1960 I was a high school sophomore in a west Texas high school, scared to death of "the traitors inside the U.S. government" and convinced by Birch propaganda that some of my farmland teachers might be secret commies. When John Kennedy ran for president that year, I received pamphlets proving that he was actually the puppet of the Pope. Pope ... communists ... they were all the same to me ... foreign and dangerous for being unAmerican.

Later on in a west Texas Baptist college, I began to have thoughts myself that would have gotten me labeled "subversive" by the Birch society. On November 2, 1965, a man named Norman Morrison, a devout Quaker and father of three, used kerosene to burn himself to death outside the Pentagon as a protest against the Vietnam War. I was totally stunned by the TV news covering this horrific event and got myself to the library and read every national newspaper account I could get my hands on. Suddenly, what had seemed remote and beyond my control, took on a personal cost and real pain. I wrote an editorial in the college newspaper not so much praising Norman Morrison as wondering at the enormity of his personal sacrifice for principle, as though I (gulp) actually admired him.

A few months went by. One of my friends who worked part-time as a receptionist for a local dentist, who also happened to be a big commie-hunter for the Birch Society, pulled me aside and told me I should be worried because her boss had a file with my name on it, and inside the file was a clipping of my editorial. "These people are dangerous," she suggested.

I did worry. I was a junior in college, a very religiously conservative son of the soil who cared deeply what people thought. If they came and asked me, "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party," I would of course answer no, but national experience had already taught me that in a country divided against itself, a denial was only taken as evidence of lying. The more you said you WEREN'T something, the more you obviously WERE.

We seem to have arrived at the 1960s again, led there by accusations of "palling around with terrorists" among other noxious insinuations. Behold the pattern as it has now gelled:

1. October 5, 2008, in Loudon County, Va., John McCain's brother Joe referred to Arlington and Alexandria in Northern Virginia as "communist country." He quickly apologized and called the remark a joke. At the time he said it, however, it was no joke, and he only apologized because the comment made it into the press.

2. On Oct. 16, 2008, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, at a private fundraiser in Greensboro, N.C., made a point of mentioning that she loved to visit the "pro-America" areas of the country, of which North Carolina is apparently one. "No word on which states she views as unpatriotic."

3. This last Friday night, Oct. 17, 2008, in an appearance on Hard Ball with Chris Matthews, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) escalated the assault on Barack Obama's supposed lack of American-ness -- he in fact has, according to Bachmann, anti-American views and values, and furthermore the press corps needs to expose which members of the U.S. Congress may be unAmerican, and by the way, American college campuses are just chock-a-block full of professors who hate America. Here are the relevant exchanges between Bachmann and Matthews:

REP. BACHMANN: ...Most Americans, Chris, are wild about America, and they're very concerned to have a president who doesn't share those values.... Absolutely. I'm very concerned that he may have anti-American views. That's what the American people are concerned about. That's why they want to know what his answers are....

MR. MATTHEWS: Sarah Palin was around today talking about pro- American parts of America, and assuming there's other non-parts of the country. What parts of America would you say are anti-American? What parts of this country?

REP. BACHMANN: Well, I would say that people who hold anti- American views. I don't think it's geography. I think it's people who don't like America, who detest America. And on college campuses, a Ward Churchill, another college campus, a Bill Ayers, you find people who hate America. And unfortunately, some of these people have positions teaching in institutions of higher learning. But you'll find them in all walks of life all throughout America.... I think the people that Barack Obama has been associating with are anti-American, by and large, the people who are radical leftists. That's the real question about Barack Obama -- Saul Alinsky, one of his teachers, you might say, out of the Chicago area; Tony Rezko, who is an associate also.

MR. MATTHEWS: He's a leftist? I thought he was a business guy.

REP. BACHMANN: These are very concerning figures that are in Barack Obama's past.

MR. MATTHEWS: I thought Tony Rezko was some business guy. I didn't know he was a leftist, anti-American guy.... How many Congress people, members of Congress, do you think are in that anti-American crowd you described? How many Congress people do you serve with? I mean, it's 435 members of Congress.

REP. BACHMANN: Right now --

MR. MATTHEWS: How many are anti-American in the Congress right now that you serve with?

REP. BACHMANN: You'd have to ask them, Chris. I'm focusing on Barack Obama and the people that he's been associating with. And I'm very worried about --

MR. MATTHEWS: But do you suspect that a lot of people you serve with --

REP. BACHMANN: -- their anti-American nature.... What I would say -- what I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think people would love to see an expose like that.

4. October 18, 2008, also on MSNBC, Nancy Pfotenhauer, a top aide to John McCain, argued that despite polling and all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, her boss has a strong chance of winning Virginia because of his support in "real Virginia," that part of the downstate far removed in distance and political philosophy from the more liberal northern part of the state, what Joe McCain called the "communist" part.

Evidently, I have once again achieved the distinction of being a bad American, not a real American, an American who could safely be knocked to the ground at a Sarah Palin rally, while the knocker-down is applauded for his superior American-ness. (Judge for yourself the glee of those who were glad that Greensboro News & Record reporter Joe Killian got kicked down ... by some of the reader responses on that link.)

The McCain/Palin campaign can claim all it wants that it is not encouraging an atmosphere of fear and violence. The evidence speaks volumes.

Haiku

McCain, smelling rout,
asserts his Wright to sniff the Ayers.
Are ACORNs falling?

By RR

John McCain, Get Some Counseling, Please!

Agita: Heartburn, acid indigestion, an upset stomach or, by extension, a general feeling of upset.

John McCain had a ripe case of agita last night. Gave us all the fidgets.

McCain: Don't gimme that "health of the mother crap!"

Classy.

McCain: I had to go sleazy because Obama wouldn't do dozens of town-halls with me.

McCain: "Angry and hurting -- c'est moi!"

While the senator was basically proving that his court-ordered class in anger management had been less than successful, what were we to make of his man-crush on Joe the Plumber?

Our Mailbag Floweth Over

Just this week has brought a plethora -- a PLETHORA, we tell you! -- of political mail, some of which deserves actual reading:

1. Today, a letter from John McCain: "Dear Friend, We've reached a critical juncture in the campaign...."

Surely you jest, Sir. An actual "critical juncture"?

"...I would not ask for your help if the circumstances were not so dire," John continues.

We know. We've been actually paying attention. Sarah Palin turned out to be a bit of a problem, right? and that Christopher Buckley endorsement of Obama was a bit of a slap.

But still, Senator, you're trying to get big bucks out of us and you don't even use the adjective "liberal" once? Not ONCE?? Just how desperate are you, anyway? And you don't even want the money yourself. You want me to send it to ... the Republican National Committee? Death by proxy?

2. Speaking of ambiguous gestures, one of our pieces (actually, we got two, which doesn't speak well about the GOP's wasteful habits) was from that selfsame Republican National Committee ... a four-color, four-page item headlined "AMERICA, The Land That I Love" ... at which point we have to turn the page to discover that Barack Obama will take away "our traditional American values." Then on the third panel, it quotes the National Journal, the very publication that yesterday accepted the resignation of Christopher Buckley for endorsing Barack Obama, because of his love of America. Ooooh. Damn inconvenient irony, that!

3. "Meet Jerry Butler," suggests a third piece, its message of friendly neighbor-over-the-fence introduction undercut somewhat by that big off-putting photo of the candidate. Eighty percent of success is good lighting, we've always heard.

4. The biggest, the glossiest four-color, four-page piece comes from The Madam, with multiple photographs of Virginia Foxx wedging herself into family reunion shots with lots of creeped-out children. If the goal here is to try to humanize the inhuman, we're afraid it doesn't quite work. While the people she's pictured with seem secure in their ordinary reality, Madam Foxx stares down the camera like a tensed up puma, waiting to spring.

5. Another big glossy mailing attacking Barack Obama, from the Republican National Committee. Looks like they've got plenty of money, John.

6. Dan Soucek, posing in his military uniform. Interesting special pleading, that. "Paid for by Soucek for NC House."

7. "Republican Dan Soucek: Proudly Pro-Life." "Paid for by the North Carolina Republican State Executive Committee."

8. through 13. Attack pieces against U.S. Senate candidate Kay Hagan (and suddenly, true political desperation has an outline). Heavy involvement here by outside groups. Three of these five pieces were paid for by the Associated Builders and Contractors Free Enterprise Alliance. One of their pieces is proud of Elizabeth Dole because she'll drill for oil everywhere immediately. The other claims that North Carolina has the highest tax burden in the Southeast and blames the patently pro-business Kay Hagan for that. (That first claim is just pure buffalo dust; the second, laughable.) The third uses "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!" as though Kay Hagan were the Washington insider rather than Elizabeth Dole. The last two anti-Hagan pieces came from Freedom's Watch, which, according to Wikipedia, was formed in 2007 primarily to support the Bush administration and especially the Bush administration's policy in Iraq. Apparently, Kay Hagan is a threat to the Bush legacy.

Nothing Could Be Finer Than To Be in Carolina ... in the Morrrn-ning!

Does that look like a deer in our headlights, or what?

Best McCain quote, maybe of the millenium: "My friends, we've got them just where we want them."

John McCain, bless his heart. First, he filches "change" from Obama. Now he's stolen "comeback kid" from Bill Clinton. Has the man had an original thought all year?

What he can't seem to transcend are the hateful trajectories of his own campaign. Outside the Wilmington rally today, a sign was posted attacking Obama. "NO BAMA!" it read, and it showed side-by-side images of Obama, Osama bin Laden, and Thomas Wright, the former African-American state legislator from Wilmington who was expelled from the legislature because of financial corruption. Blacks and terrorists are sooo hard to tell apart.