Quote of the day

"How on Earth did John McCain let this dim bulb get that close to the White House?"
--Keith Olbermann. And no, your second guess doesn't count (down).

McCain concedes

"Despite our differences, we are fellow Americans."

Well said, sir.

The crowd's reaction was interesting. They booed Obama at first, until he gestured to knock it off. They got it. They showed respect from this point forward.

I think this is the difference between Obama and Bush: a restoration of dignity and respect to the White House. It's about time.

Oh, crap, Palin got the biggest applause yet. Ladies and gentlemen, behold your future Republican party. I think she and Elizabeth Hasselbeck should have their own Fox show. It'd be a drool-fest for neocons.

Wow, is that Jim Brady in the crowd of McCain's speech? I haven't seen him in forever.

McCain conducted himself with class in his concession speech, anyway. One wonders if this is his swan song. He'll be 74 around the time of re-election, and he might not win even if he chooses to run. All I know is this, he can take a break and grab some sleep.

Olbermann: An appeal to McCain

It's been over a week, and it's still relevant.



And McCain is still silent.

Olbermann: On fruit flies and false allegations

One of the reasons I like Countdown is that Olbermann, while being a bit of a screech, has plenty of well-reasoned regular guests. Listen to Richard Wolfe's opening comment about Sarah Palin's fruit fly comment:



And Gene Robinson's final comment on the Ashley Todd crap--that if the McCain campaign jumped the gun alleging the "attacker" was an Obama supporter, someone should fall on their sword:

Obama: The Straight Talk Express shall be mine!

I love the Onion:
Via Sullivan.

Yglesias on Liddy

Bottom line: G. Gordon Liddy is to McCain what Bill Ayers is to Barack Obama. Get over yourself, Mac.

McCain and Obama roast each other

Ed Brayton's already done the heavy lifting. This is really, seriously, non-politically funny. Go here.

Rolling Stone on John McCain

A typically, marvelously comprehensive article. And it should be no surprise that the McCain camp wanted no part of talking to the press. But the money quote is this:

"In some respects, I'm not sure that's the kind of character I want sitting in the Oval Office. I'm not sure that much time in a prisoner-of-war status doesn't do something to you. Doesn't do something to you psychologically, doesn't do something to you that might make you a little more volatile, a little less apt to listen to reason, a little more inclined to be volcanic in your temperament."

That's Larry Wilkerson, US Army Colonel (ret.), former chief of staff of Secretary of State Colin Powell.

And there are plenty of anecdotes that McCain didn't change nearly as much as you thought after getting out. The opening piece speaks of McCain revealing he was looking for a trip to Rio on Navy business...because he stood a better chance of getting laid. And it also speaks of a time when he was arrested as a teenager for cursing out two girls who had laughed in his face at his attempts as a pickup artist. THAT should make the Sarah Palin nomination all the more apparent as the prop that it is.

Oh, and read about his "heroics" on the USS Forestall, too

Vote.

McCain in Des Moines

A press conference with the Des Moines Register's editorial board.



HT: Sullivan.

Fox "News:" Credibility-free zone.

Bill Maher on John McCain's foreign policy

I watched most of the debate last night. Some people would say that McCain was stronger on foreign policy than Obama, but I say McCain was more stubborn, and that Obama has an appreciation for the intricacies of Middle Eastern politics. Bill Maher might have put it best...six months ago:

I don't care if John McCain is better than Bush on global warming or torture or campaign finance, because he's exactly the same as Bush on the war. They both don't get the same thing.

That, as long as we're setting up shop in the heart of the Arab world, we're not keeping America safer. Bin Laden goes ballistic over cartoons in Danish newspapers. And "Goober" and "Grandpa" want to put up a Hooters in Fallujah.

They don't hate us for our freedom. They hate us for our fiefdom. Winning the war on terror comes down to this: what will make us safer from pissed-off Arab teenagers who are willing to die? There are a number of good answers to that question, but occupying their land for the next hundred years is not one of them.

Presidential debate: the overlooked point.

McCain nodded to Ted Kennedy in his opening remarks, saying "the Lion of the Senate" was in the hospital and offering well-wishes.

Kennedy's fine, such as he can be with brain cancer. Yahoo! News reports he suffered a mild seizure and was treated and released.

My own thoughts on Sarah Palin

I've been blasting this...creature for quite some time, now, and I've been using a bunch of other people's quotes to do so. So following this barb from Kathleen Parker, I'll toss in my own:

"If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself."

Say it, sistah.

All right. I am in no position to criticize women in this country for pulling for one of their own. I respect that. But Sarah Palin is simply a less-qualified version of Hillary Clinton who looks better in a bikini (sorry for the mental image). Clinton at least has all kinds of national ties, had a form of access to the oval office, and saw how the real political world works. And that wasn't enough to qualify her, either. Her record in the Senate proved that she might be a competent Senator, but when it comes to being the leader of a whole campaign organization, she surrounded herself with stool pigeons and shameless dirtbags. Palin has been shielded entirely from talking to anyone spontaneously.

If gender or race were the only consideration, I'd be voting for John McCain. I'm not. Competence has to count, too.

Palin doesn't have it.

She's actually an insult to feminism, in that while she earned her right to be the mayor of Wasilla, and she won the governor's post in Alaska, she was picked for qualities besides whatever inherent skills or abilities she might have.

And I remember what Molly Ivins said about Newt Gingrich in a Rolling Stone piece: nincompoopery has never been a bar to high political office. So just because she won at the local level, where the media attention (let's be honest) tends to not be as good or as critical, that doesn't mean the BS will pass the sniff test of Dave Letterman or anyone else at the national level.

Just look at McCain himself. He's gotten by with being a good guy to have a drink with for all of these years. People deferred to him because of his POW status, etc. while not looking too closely at his political record (Keating Five notwithstanding).

But now that Wall Street is in danger of melting faster than Sarah Palin's ice caps, people are starting to do more than just take a snapshot of McCain's voting record. It's a non-stop prison searchlight. And what people are finding out is that McCain basically obeys anyone who pays him a lot of money to get the government off their cases. Including the latest generation of robber barons.

Dave Letterman's pasting of John McCain

Epic. Win. I haven't laughed this hard in a long time. After the day I had at work, I needed this. Thanks, Dave.

From Countdown:



From YouTube:



Man, he just gets more and more steamed as it goes on. I'd really like to have gotten Letterman drunk afterward and heard what he had to say without cameras rolling.

McCain twerp gets grilled over lies--by Fox News

You read that right.

Even "Fixed Noise" as Keith Olbermann would call them is calling the McCain campaign on their outright lies.

Go here to watch a McDrone get pwned by one of Fox's typically hot blonde reporters. And in all honesty, I would have loved to have seen that morning meeting with Megyan Kelly to see what her marching orders were. "Megyan, we need to at least make ourselves look like a legitimate news organization, so go out there and ask questions the other outlets should be asking these hacks. It'll make us look good by comparison."

HT: Ed Brayton.