Zandar's Thought Of the Day

Should Obama win (I know, Dad, Nate Silver has a 96%+ chance of him winning but the GOP will cleat, lie, and steal this election down to the very end) the Village Idiot calls for him to abandon progressives, his entire platform, and the people who elected him and pull out his sextant and compass for some Clinton-style triangulation will come at near relativistic speeds.

They will immediately expect him to prove to them he is "sensible and moderate" and govern exactly like Bush, and will demand he give in at every turn to the GOP minority or else. In this case, "or else" consists of making what they did to Bill Clinton (culminating in his impeachment) look like a walk in the park. Obama will have to work every second of every day to prove he's not a Liberal.

In other words, What Digby Said(tm).

October Surprise!

A week and change before the election, and the US supposedly crosses into Syria with gunships.

Syria's state news agency SANA said four U.S. helicopters crossed the border and struck a farm about 8 kilometers (5 miles) inside Syria before returning to Iraqi airspace.

The raid occurred about 4:45 p.m. (1345 GMT). The helicopters hit a civilian building under construction on the farm, killing killing three men, the wife of a guard and four children, SANA said.

Military officials are investigating the claims, Sgt. Brooke Murphy, a U.S. military spokeswoman, told CNN.

"Unfortunately, we cannot confirm anything at the moment," she said.

Still think the GOP is playing to lose? Not me. Looks to me like Preznitman and the GOP is trying to take the news cycle off permanent "economic disaster" mode.

We'll see if anyone bites. I don't see how this can win it for them.

The Pennsylvania Polka

The GOP dirty tricks brigade in the Keystone State is bad enough to look like the Keystone Kops. First was the EPIC FAIL surrounding Ashley Todd's hoax, and now news that the PA GOP sent an email to 75,000 Jewish voters that warns Obama will cause another Holocaust.

The state GOP is now running away from that email as fast as it can. The AP leads with the state GOP's disavowal of the email, but it seems a bit more complicated than that. There doesn't seem to be any dispute that the state party or one of its committees sent the email. The party's defense seems to be that the consultant who the party hired wasn't authorized to send that particular email and was fired.

Except the AP got in touch with the consultant and that's not quite the story he tells:

Political consultant Bryan Rudnick was identified as the person responsible for it. Rudnick, reached Saturday night, confirmed that he no longer works for the party, which employed him a few weeks ago as a consultant to do outreach to Jewish voters.

"I had authorization from party officials" to send the e-mail, Rudnick said, but he declined to say who had signed off on it. "I'm not looking to drag anyone else through the mud, so I'm not naming names right now," he said.

That's a pretty good story in its own right: Another under-the-radar GOP sleaze tactic exposed and yet another low- to mid-level GOP operative scapegoated because he got caught on the wrong side of the McCain campaign's shifting line between what is just sleazy and what is too sleazy (a line that seems to get drawn immediately after the GOP gets busted).

But it gets better.

Like the state GOP, the McCain camp is running away from this email, and the spokesperson doing the distancing is none other than Peter Feldman. That's the same guy who on Thursday, the day the email went out, was pushing the mugging hoax to reporters as a politically motivated attack by a black Obama supporter, playing to the worst of white fears and racial prejudices.

Speaking of the email to Jewish voters and without any apparent hint of irony, Feldman told the AP Saturday night that McCain "rejects politics that degrade our civics."

Amazing.

No word on whether the AP asked Feldman about his role in pushing the mugging hoax.

McSame has no honor left. None. And yet the righty whackjobs out there are convinced this soulless piece of garbage is going to magically win, because Hillary supporters will defect en masse at the voting booth.

If McSame does end up President, we deserve the hell we cast ourselves into.

Off The Snowmobile Reservation

When you have CNN reporting as its front page story that your own campaign staff has come forward to say that your own running mate has deliberately sabotaged your campaign not ten days before the election, you've lost.

With 10 days to go until Election Day, long-brewing tensions between GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and key aides to Sen. John McCain have become so intense they are spilling out in public, sources say.

Several McCain advisers have suggested to CNN that they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin "going rogue." A Palin associate, however, said the candidate is simply trying to "bust free" of what she believes was a damaging and mismanaged roll-out.

McCain sources say Palin has gone off message several times, and they privately wonder if the incidents were deliberate. They cited that she labeled robocalls -- recorded messages often used to attack a candidate's opponent -- "irritating" even as the campaign defended their use. Also, they pointed to her telling reporters she disagreed with the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan.

A second McCain source tells CNN she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.

"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," said this McCain adviser. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.

"Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."

They're done, ladies and gentlemen. It's over. The GOP base will be so demoralized by this that the Obama landslide is all but certain. Palin and her supporters are already angling for 2010 and 2012. The GOP is about to split down the middle, with moderate Republicans (Obamacans? Barackerfeller Republicans?) jumping ship and the diehard Palinites staying on, screaming at their own impotence.

The Schism is here. Politico.com has more.

The emergence of a Palin faction comes as Republicans gird for a battle over the future of their party: Some see her as a charismatic, hawkish conservative leader with the potential, still unrealized, to cross over to attract moderate voters. Anger among Republicans who see Palin as a star and as a potential future leader has boiled over because, they say, they see other senior McCain aides preparing to blame her in the event he is defeated.

"These people are going to try and shred her after the campaign to divert blame from themselves," a McCain insider said, referring to McCain's chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, and to Nicolle Wallace, a former Bush aide who has taken a lead role in Palin's campaign. Palin's partisans blame Wallace, in particular, for Palin's avoiding of the media for days and then giving a high-stakes interview to CBS News' Katie Couric, the sometimes painful content of which the campaign allowed to be parceled out over a week.

"A number of Gov. Palin's staff have not had her best interests at heart, and they have not had the campaign's best interests at heart," the McCain insider fumed, noting that Wallace left an executive job at CBS to join the campaign.

Wallace declined to engage publicly in the finger-pointing that has consumed the campaign in the final weeks.

"I am in awe of [Palin's] strength under constant fire by the media," she said in an e-mail. "If someone wants to throw me under the bus, my personal belief is that the most graceful thing to do is to lie there."

This public, unprofessional, and complete disintegration of coherence 10 days before the election is a sign of just how hopelessly split the entire GOP is over this. There are those who will blame Sarah Palin for the disastrous loss of the ticket, and those who will blame John McSame for the loss.

But they will lose. There is no way this public bloodletting will do anything but completely demoralize GOP voters to the point where the Republican Party may not survive as we know it. from the ashes, who knows what will arise.

It will not be the modern GOP. Whether it's a moderate party or a radical fringe movement, this complete crackup is liable to give the Democrats control of the country for a very, very long time.

Liberalgeddon!

McSame's almost out of time. With ten days to go, he's now making the argument that only he can save America from LIBERALGEDDON.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain on Saturday raised the prospect of a complete Democratic takeover of Washington as a reason to elect him over Democrat Barack Obama in 10 days.

McCain, struggling to defend New Mexico and other Western states that typically vote Republican from falling for Obama on November 4, used the argument to try to change a gloomy election picture.

Obama holds a commanding lead in national opinion polls and leading in several key battleground states that McCain needs to win. In a text of remarks he was to deliver later in Reno, Nevada, Obama hammers McCain as little different than President George W. Bush

At an Albuquerque rally, McCain accused the Illinois senator of seeking to raise taxes on most Americans, particularly small businesses responsible for much of the hiring during a severe economic downturn in which hundreds of thousands of jobs have been shed.

Obama says his plan to tax Americans making more than $250,000 would allow a tax cut for 95 percent of Americans.

McCain said having Democrats in control of the White House, the U.S. House of Representatives under Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and the Senate under Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, would give Democrats unfettered power.

Riding Americans' desire for a change from the Bush administration, Democrats appear poised to make major gains in the House and Senate.

"Senator Obama's tax increase would put even more people out of work," McCain said. "We've seen this before in other countries. It doesn't work. The answer to a strong economy is not higher taxes."

"But that is exactly what's going to happen if the Democrats have total control of Washington. We can't let that happen. Are you ready for Obama, Pelosi and Reid?" the Arizona senator said.

The answer would appear to be an overwhelming yes, Senator.

America is indeed more than ready for a realignment election that repudiates the GOP totally and completely, and that election is a mere 10 days away.

Ashley Todd's Aftermath

More details have now come to light about the disturbing and disgusting hoax Ashley Todd perpetrated upon America on Thursday and Friday.

Most disturbing are new facts that the McSame campaign did indeed push this story on the media in an effort to harm Obama.

A spokesman for the McCain campaign gave reporters an inflammatory version of Thursday's hoax story about a McCain volunteer being attacked by a man who carved a "B" into her face, Pittsburgh's KDKA reported.

Long before any facts about the Ashley Todd case had been established, McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director told reporters the alleged attacker had told the woman, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson."

The Drudge Report featured a teased story about the incident before any details about it were released. That caused KDKA reporters to contact the spokesman, confirmed as Peter Feldman.

Feldman's presumptuous claims are "significant because it reveals a McCain official pushing a version of the story that was far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time," an election blog at Talking Points Memo reported.

The story could deal a sharp blow to the McCain campaign, which might be seen as having pushed an incendiary story that had no basis in fact and that nearly blew up into a "national incident," said Pittsburgh Police Assistant Chief Maurita Bryant, reported KWTX News.

Obama's campaign has already privately accused the McCain camp of promoting a racially-charged version of the story.

Let's honestly talk about what this means. Despite Pittsburgh cops (and any rational, intelligent human being's reasonable assumption for that matter) believing that the reversely drawn B on her cheek was an obvious sign of a self-inflicted wound and a hoax, and having strong reason to doubt her story, the McSame camp attributed one of Ashley Todd's completely fabricated quotes to the media in an effort to score damage against Barack Obama and try to scare the crap out of (or seriously anger) white people across America.

Let's think about what might have happened if Ashley Todd hadn't confessed until, say, after Election Day, and she had been a slightly more intelligent liar. You would have had a nationalized incident that would have racially divided this country 11 days before the election. You would have massive manhunt in western PA, northern WV, eastern Ohio. It would be the top story in the news: White female McSame supporter attacked by black male Obama supporter! There would SURELY be reprisals against black folk in the area.

We'd stop talking about the issues, of course. We'd be talking about race. This would be the game changer McSame would have needed in PA and OH to win those states, and we'd have Ashley's face on McSame ads across the country. This election would no longer be about the economy, or Iraq, or any of the issues.

It would be an election solely about race. You don't think it would happen? McSame would make it happen. Joe the Plumber would give way to Ashley the Campaign Worker, I guarantee it. Obama's poll numbers would drop like a stone, it would be Obama's Willie Horton moment writ large, and there's a fair chance that it would have cost Obama the election.

But maybe that was the goddamn point. Maybe this was an effort to cost Obama Pennsylvania and Ohio, possibly North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida too. The McSame campaign's Pennsylvania folks were more than eager to pin this all on the phantom black man.

In a real sense, America got lucky. It got lucky because there were so many holes in Ashley Todd's story she had no choice but to recant her story after only 48 hours. If she had been craftier, it's possible that right now we'd be watching the end of Barack Obama's presidential run, and watch a wave of righteous indignation based on a total lie sweep McSame into office, in a worst case scenario.

Here's the most chilling part.

This time we got lucky.

There will be other times. You can count on that. I've given McSame the benefit of the doubt because he has served his country. He did suffer for serving his country. He did survive multiple bouts with cancer. But the sick, disgusting story of Ashley Todd, and what it could have meant to this country, what it could have done to throw race relations in this country back fifty, a hundred years, this is the direct result of the honorless, race-baiting, lowest common denominator, win at all costs strategy that has come from the top of the McSame/Palin campaign. It has come from the top of the GOP.

This is what the Republican Party has been reduced to now, a cariacture of sleaze, corruption, and pure hatred. My nightmares feature folks who look like me, getting lynched, in America, in 2008, because of Ashley Todd. It very well could have been the case. We came razor close to an all-out race war in this country.

It's a race war that was ignited by John Sidney McSame III in order to win at any cost. It almost caught fire and obliterated the country. That's what this man and his running mate have descended into in the last month of the campaign...a campaign so vile and manipulative it convinced one of his supporters to try to injure herself and pass herself off as a martyr in order to destroy Barack Obama, race relations, and African-Americans in this country.

Repugnant, hideous, vile, angry, and hateful doesn't begin to describe it. But it is all laid at the feet of this man and the party he represents, and honor he sacrificed to try to win the Presidency.

America was saved this time because Ashley Todd is a terrible liar. Think about that. Think about how the country got to that point...and who took it there.

Then work to make sure we never get to this point again.

Ashley Todd's America...John McSame's America...is not my America. My America is a much, much better place.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition

• Could Joe The Plumber become Joe The Congressman?
• Bush is pushing for Ukraine and Georgia to get into NATO.
• Iraqi PM Al-Makili refuses to sign the deal to keep US troops there past December 31.
• A Princeton study shows how easy it is to hack Sequoia voting machines.
• Treasury may buy stakes in insurers as well as banks.

How Does McSame Win?

With McSame all but surrendering Colorado, Virginia and Iowa, and playing directly for "low-information" white voters in rural Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida, how does he get to 270?

The map for McSame is actually pretty simple: The battleground states are now IN, MO, NV, NC, OH, PA, and FL. McSame must now take ALL SEVEN of those states to win. His firewall, Colorado, Virginia, and Iowa, are gone. His back is against the wall...he simply cannot afford to lose any more states.

Polls are showing Florida and North Carolina may go to his column now, but Indiana, Nevada, and especially Ohio are slipping away, and Obama's lead is just too much in PA.

At this point he's going to need a miracle. We'll know more next week.

The Sad, Strange Story Of Ashley Todd

Ashley Todd is a 20-year-old white female college student who told police that she was assaulted by "a 6 foot 4 black man" at an ATM in Pittsburgh, and when the man saw her McSame bumper sticker, the man became enraged and scratched the letter B into her cheek, for "Barack Obama" supposedly. Matt Drudge ran this as breaking news last night, and the whole world bit.

The McSame campaign seized on the Todd story as proof that Obama supporters are violent, hate filled racists. McSame himself called Ms. Todd, and this morning the right-wing noise machine was up in arms...amazingly enough not over the attack, but that the attack was fishy. Even Malkinvania cried "foul" over the account.

And surprise! It turns out Ms. Todd made the entire thing up.

A John McCain campaign volunteer made up a story of being robbed, pinned to the ground and having the letter "B" scratched on her face in a politically inspired attack, police said Friday.

Ashley Todd, 20-year-old college student from College Station, Texas, admitted Friday that the story was false, police said.

Maurita Bryant, the assistant chief of the police department's investigations division, said Todd is being charged with making a false police report.

Police doubted her story from the start, Bryant said.

"She just opened up and said she wanted to tell the truth," Bryant said, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "She was upset with the media for blowing this into a political firestorm."

I cannot wait for this election season to die. Really.

There are some sick people out there. Really, truly sick people. You have to be a complete sicko for Michelle Malkin to call you out as a liar.

Sarah Palin: Policy Maven

Today Sarah Palin laid out the McSame policy on special needs children and health care:

In her first policy speech of this election cycle, Sarah Palin elaborated Friday on how a McCain administration would help children with special needs, a topic that has become a fixture of her stump speech in cities across the country.

Palin, speaking at a hotel in Pittsburgh, unveiled a three-point plan that would expand educational choice for parents, increase funding for children with disabilities and improve services available to parents, medical professionals and schools.

Under the plan, federal money would be used to give parents the opportunity to send their children to a public, private or religious school of their choice.

"Because even the best public school teacher or administrator really cannot rightfully take the place of a parent making these choices," Palin said. "The schools feel responsible for the education of many children, but a parent alone is responsible for the life of each child and how to make that life better."

She also proposed expanding funding of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which was signed into law in 1975 but has never been fully funded. The McCain campaign estimates that fully funding the program will cost an additional $45 billion over five years, money that Palin said could be found by cutting federal pork barrel spending.

"We've got a $3 trillion budget in this country," she said. "And Congress spends some $18 billion on earmarks for their political pet projects, and that right there is more than the shortfall to fully fund IDEA."

It's nice and all, but the Obama response has rather killed any chance the McSame camp has of making this work:

The Obama campaign called the attack a “hypocritical” one. “This is a blatantly false, desperate political attack made by a campaign that’s out of touch, out of ideas and running out of time,” said Pennsylvania spokesman Sean Smith. “Senator Obama has consistently been clear that he would not increase taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year.

“As the Wall Street Journal reported, John McCain’s own health care plan would actually cut $1.3 trillion from Medicare and Medicaid that children with disabilities truly depend on, which makes this attack especially hypocritical. Senator Obama has a comprehensive plan to support families that have children with disabilities and empower all Americans with disabilities.”

Arguing to fully fund this program for $45 billion looks rather bad when making $1.3 trillion in Medicare/Medicaid cuts, huh?

Nice try Sarah. Go back to calling attacks on your $150,000 clothing bill "sexist". I'm sure that'll stick too.

Obamanomics Crashing The Markets

The latest GOP screed (and you can count on US News hack Jim Pethokoukis to spew it out) is that Obama and the Democrats are sinking the stock markets.

Are investor concerns about an Obama presidency influencing the stock market? And by "concerns" I mean "existential panic." And by "Obama presidency" I mean "a tax-hiking and regulatory reign of terror." And by "influencing" I mean "eviscerating." At least that's the overwrought take I get from a few of my more skittish E-mailers. Chillax, y'all!

Now a few of my own (more tranquil) observations about a possible jittery Investor Class, the plunging market, and the now famous Obama Discount Theory:

1) I find it hard to believe that fears about a deep recession are suddenly dawning upon investors and thus are solely responsible for kneecapping the market. I've been hearing such dire forecasts for weeks from top Wall Street economists, and I really think they're already baked into the cake. (And credit markets actually look like they are finally picking up a bit—a plus for stocks.) So with that perception locked in, maybe the future political landscape is finally playing a greater role in the minds of investors, especially with polls showing a possible landslide Obama win and big Democratic congressional majorities. Is it really more plausible to suggest no effect whatsoever from a possible once-a-generation, political sea change, especially one that moves away from the winning economic formula of the past 25 years ? Not even a smidgen of worry? C'mon, now.

The article continues on like this for a good bit, the practical upshot is that the markets are so terrified of the Democrats being in charge that smart conservatives are selling, selling, selling and that Obama deserves most of the blame for the Dow not being about 10,000 again after we "solved the credit crisis". I mean it's not like there could be another reason why the markets are falling, could there?

But the GOP is already blaming Obama for the mess because the market is terrified of what he might do in the future, like, I don't know...regulate it.

US Goes Limit Down

World economic numbers are out today, and they are nothing short of catastrophic.

The pound tumbled below $1.53 in its biggest drop in at least 37 years after a report showed the U.K. economy contracted more than forecast in the third quarter, bringing the nation to the brink of a recession.

The decline surpassed that of Black Wednesday in September 1992, when the U.K. was driven out of Europe's Exchange Rate Mechanism. Gross domestic product contracted 0.5 percent in the three months through September, the Office for National Statistics in London said today, more than the 0.2 percent forecast by analysts in a Bloomberg survey. The FTSE 100 index slumped as much as 9.1 percent and the yield on the U.K. 10-year gilt headed for its biggest weekly decline in a decade.

``This is once-in-a-lifetime stuff, we're all sat under our desks with tin hats on,'' said Neil Mellor, a currency strategist in London at Bank of New York Mellon Corp. ``The U.K. is in the first step toward a recession and the dollar's bid because of repatriation flows.''

Similar news in Japan and China earlier this morning has led to a disintegration of world markets today. Nikkei down 800 points, European markets are down 7-9% at this hour, and US stock futures have reached limit down numbers.

According to Reuters data, December S&P futures hit a low of 855.20, while Dow Jones futures touched a low of 8,224 -- the lowest levels at which both contracts could trade in a session.

"We are in a panic mode, I don't know how else to describe it and when you're in panic mode, all rational thought goes out of the window," said City Index chief market strategist Tom Hougaard. "We've just got to let this thing rage. I think we'll see the Dow below 8,000 today."

With global recession numbers showing that the UK, China, and Japan may actually be in worse shape the US right now, world markets have now thrown in the towel. LIBOR numbers are still high, having only fallen another miniscule less than 2 BP, and the overnight rate went UP 8.

This is going to be a horrendous day on Wall Street. Despite the global bailout efforts, the markets are once again in total freefall. Confidence is a casualty. This was the week where Wall Street tested the waters, and failed miserably. The Dow's been floating around 9,000 for the last couple of weeks, and Monday's close of around 9250 was a good sign that the worst might have been over.

I said then more pain was coming. Surprise! Folks, when Dow futures hit limit down 2 hours before the markets open, it's a disaster. I've been saying for six weeks now I fully expected the Dow to set a new Bush era low under 7,200.

We may very well be there next week. The next couple of days are vitally important. If we drop through the floor today under 8,000, then I honestly think we're heading for a complete meltdown.

What more can world governments do? The US, Japan, Canada, Australia, UK, and Eurozone took unprecedented action to prevent a meltdown just two weeks ago. That action has now failed. The wheels are off, folks. It's sinking in just how bad this is going to be...it's going to be brutal, and it's going to be global.

You will be hearing those two words often in the next several days, I will wager: limit down. We're approaching the point where trading circuit breakers will kick in and stop the markets, and it will happen if not today (we'd need to see an 869.1 point drop before 2 PM to hit the 10% circuit breaker for an hour time-out) then it will happen at some point soon.

After all, the lower the Dow gets, the lower the 10% circuit breaker level gets.

StupidiNews!

• A family emergency has come up for one of the Senator Toobs jurors.
• Karl Rove is blaming the prospect of Obama in office as the main cause of the economic crisis.
• Here in Kentucky, Obama is down by 16 points.
• Broadband internet through power lines? Deader than Nixon.
• The Rays tied up the World Series with a win last night at Tropicana Field.

Zandar Is Wise, Grasshopper

Me, two days ago:

I got a fiver says somebody on the GOP (not a blogger or El Rushbo, but an actual state/national GOP party official or McSame campaign official) denounces Obama's trip to Hawaii as:

1. a campaign stunt to elicit sympathy,
   
2. something that proves just how out of touch Obama is for being able to fly to Hawaii at a moment's notice,
   
3. proof that Obama is using all that "suspect campaign money illegally for personal reasons",
   
4. some combination of the above.

Just sayin.

McCain douchebag Brad Blakeman, today:



Do not doubt the Zandar, people.

Do You See What I'm Up Against?

And every now and then I find folks that make me look perfectly sane here on the internets. Bonus snippet:

I suspect that the media-manipulated polls could lead to violence if Obama is not elected, including injuries to innocent citizens, rioters, and law enforcement officials.

Or in other words BLOOGITY BLAH BLAH SCARY BLACK MAN AND HIS LIBERAL FRIENDS ARE GONNA KILL SOME WHITEYS WHEN MCSAME WINS! GET YOUR SHOTGUNS AND CANNED FOOD NOW!