What's more, there's that other candidate, Barack Obama, who'll probably have the audacity to keep talking about the economy, even when McCain is trying to "turn the page" on the issue. The nerve.

The snark is strong in young master Steve. Use the power of the snark wisely.

Sucks to be Old Spice because the Paradigm has changed. All the tactics that sunk his ass in 2000 are no longer operative. And while people might want to have a beer with Bible Spice, they sure has hell don't want her in charge of anything.

So sad

I wish Obama would use the old Bush "debating with myself" theme and do a whole series of ads showing McCain's contradictory statements about the health of the economy, the bailout bill, the Iraq war and the scourge of lobbyists.

Footnote: Calling the recently passed bill a bailout is like calling medical marijuana a cure for cancer.

I've been wondering why. Surely it can't escape even the most die-hard Rove acolyte that "it's the economy, stupid." So why does McCain do that? Here's a thought: he's incapable of doing so. Be it because of his deteriorating mental skills or having chosen to surround himself only with people who think about campaign tactics, his campaign is not capable right now of formulating a policy for dealing with the financial mess we are in. Hence he defaults to what his campaign does know how to do: smear.

The inability to respond constructively to a crisis is frankly a pretty scary thing. The American people are hungry for leadership right now, Bush having mostly checked out of the job.

More audacity from Obama -- Not only will he not take the Kerry/Dukakis stand of refraining from responding to personal attacks, he's actually launched a pre-emptive attack of his own.

Obama already has an ad out incorporating the Washington Post story about changing the subject to personal attacks into a broad criticism of McCain on his erratic tendencies and his lack of concern with the needs of American people.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/thisyear_ad/

Kind of reminds me how the Democrats were supposed to vote for the AUMF so we could put the war behind us and concentrate on economic issues that were are strong suit. That didn't work out so well.

I am positive McCain will pursue that strategy because there is simply nothing left for him to do. He can't talk about the war or the economy. All he can do is brand Obama as a terrorist sympathizer who will raise taxes.

Hmm. Screaming about terra to distract people from the fact that one sucks and one's suckiness has caused everything else to suck.

Gee. Where have I heard that before?

But you know, the not at all elitist ReThuglicans think the economy is sooo tedious and since they don't want to talk about it any more, no one else is allowed to talk about it any more.

In hindsight, I can now say how happy I am that Obama did not win New Hampshire. None of this crazy Ayers/Pastor Wright/Rezko stuff would not have gotten the proper airing they did. Obama is inoculated from this garbage now.

Thanks Hillary!

This plan reminds me of this:

Rick Davis: So do you have a way to make folks forget the economy?

McCain: One way to get rid of them is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time we went over to shelbyville during the war, I wore an onion on my belt....which was the style at the time...you couldnt get those white ones, you could only get those big yellow ones.................now where was I........oh yeah, the important thing was I was wearing an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time, you couldnt get those...

This might be that rare occasion when going negative really hurts the attacker. McCain needs a positive message. He has nothing.

King Barry must be feeling what its like to fart through silk right now but just one thing Lord King if yr faithful Jester may intrude.
You really want this gig man. I mean it really do you?

The Republicans desperately need a distraction, since their diagnosis (not enough deregulation) and prescription for the situation (more deregulation) flies about as well as a paper airplane in a tornado, but their choice of Palin as hatchet woman is also an obvious attempt to distract voters from her own legal problems by creating an artificial parity of sin.

The WaPo says this morning Palin is being sued in Alaska over her Cheney-like use of private e-mail accounts, and the Alaskan bipartisan commission report on Troopergate is coming out this week, undoubtedly highlighting her arrogance in governing and refusal to cooperate with the investigation after saying she would. But, look over here, Obama served on a charity board with a '60s protester! If he'd only been ten years older, he could have been a Chicago Black Panther! If he hadn't been living in Hawaii then. And interested in a law career.... But, his moose skills are deficient! Can he really be trusted to report the hockey scores? And, you know, he's a body surfer.... All you can surf in Alaska is a melting glacier. Can he really be a true American?

"Professor Rat " said:
King Barry must be feeling what its like to fart through silk right now but just one thing Lord King if yr faithful Jester may intrude.

Clearly you are not a professor of English.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23316912/makebelieve_maverick/print

How can the McCain camp turn the page?

Two words: "Chewbacca Defense"

The next debate will be a different matter. McMaverick will be forced into saying "middle class." So expect to hear it several times. Someone ought to set up a betting site on that...

My dough is on three times. Just for symmetry's sake. As that's the same number of times that the Palinbot uttered the pre-programmed phrase: "Greed and corruption on Wall Street."

The Republicans desperately need a distraction

Politico is already out saying that Obama's response is/will be to blanket the airwaves with "People are losing life savings and houses and all John McCain wants to do is change the topic."

However, IF we do want to go into the realm of Ayers/Rezko then that brings up McCain's associations with Keating, and the more recent associations with all the lobbyists who had to resign from his campaign in the spring, plus Rick Davis' ties to Fannie Mae.

And, IF we want to go into the realm of Wright then it's fair to explore McCain's deal with the "agents of intolerance", Palin's End Times church, and Todd's successionist "God Damn America" AIP ties.

Seriously, McCain has lost unless Obama, who has run the most disciplined campaign in modern history, blows it big time. McCain now has a choice to take the high road and try to restore his reputation or go further down the Rove path. Ironically, the former option is actually his best choice in case Obama stumbles. However, he'll probably choose the latter.

I predict that he won't run for Senate re-election -- but if he does I predict a "shocking" defeat, as running a lying, sliming campaign can work if you win, but if you do so and lose in a landslide your reputation will never recover.

Relax. Sit back and enjoy, for Pete's sake. The only hope the Republicans have is to arrest Obama, so I'm waiting and hoping.

Bad news for McCain: the Treasury will not start the bailout process until after the election.

Good news for McCain: the next employment report is also after the election.

Throwing bombs into the camp of the candidate who the people identify as best able to confront our impending economic crises is sure to bring the wrath of the American voter.

Swiftboat 101: confuse the present with the past. Tag Obama with a *radical* *leftist*, stoking the old fucks, who'll then vote with their false fears from yesteryear, while forgetting we're all spinning down the same toilet.

PS: professor rat's post is disturbing.

Can I just preface by saying thanks Steve, hilzoy, et al for being the best weekend blog source for online news/analysis? Seriously. While all the other blogs more or less take the weekend off, you guys continue to put up fresh and interesting content - which is great for people like me who actually have more time on the weekends for reading and commenting. I really appreciate it.

Now to the topic: I'm sure McCain WOULD like to change the topic from the economy, and like others have said, it's distressing that we only win when people are concerned they're about to lose it all. But that's our own fault (or the Dems' own fault), Obama included. For example: Joe Biden missed a golden opporutnity the other night when Palin made that crap statement about "not believing in the redistribution of wealth", which is pure-D bullshit. If there is any one thing the Republican party has ALWAYS stood for, it's redistribution of wealth - from the have-nots to the haves. Biden should have said so; instead he cast it as an issue of "fairness". I will credit him with pointing out that under Clinton, with slightly higher income tax rates on the wealthy, EVERYONE made more money, the wealthy included. But most people's level of economic education is not sufficient for them to be able to connect the dots as to WHY that is true. They've been fed a steady diet of trickle-down fantasy and how it's somehow "unfair" to ask people who have benefitted most to pay more for over 30 years now by the GOP; those ideas have become deep-rooted truths in the minds of many, and the only way to change that is to explain to them the reasons why the economy isn't working any more, and won't work again, without some equalization of wealth - which is typically most easily accomplished with a progressive system of taxation - the type of system we no longer have, thanks to the GOP. By 1998 things were already so out of whack that the top 10% owned 70% of the nation's wealth while the bottom 40% owned a mere 2/10ths of 1% - and it's only gotten worse in the 10 years since. How can a consumer economy function when half the population has no money to spend? There's a limit to how much 10% of the population can actually spend and circulate through the economy. We're in a situation now where at best less than half the money supply is in play and that's the half that's keeping the other 270 million of us afloat. It's a situation that's not good for anybody, including those in that top 10%, because lower economic activity means they can't get a return on the massive amounts of money they have that they can't spend and instead invest...and dwindling opportunities for investment are one of the things that drove the housing bust.

People need to understand this stuff, that far from being a "punishment" for wealth, progressive taxation keeps the economy healthy for ALL of us, that there's nothing wrong, evil, or unfair about a system of taxation that protects all of us, including those the GOP has forever been casting as the "victims" of progressive taxation. If the Democrats would undertake the task of educating the populace on some of this stuff, McCain and company would have nowhere left to go. With the added bonus that we might see some sanity returned to the tax system after Obama is elected, with a citizenry pre-inoculated against the caterwauling the GOP will engage in when it occurs. Not to mention that it would collect the money to pay for the bailout from the people most responsible for it, who will feel the bite the least.

Well, now that the bankers and investment people have been bailed out, in Republican's minds, the economy's fixed. Soon, it will trickle on the rest of us.

The economy is not just the hard money that flows.

In essence, for me, there is a theory where many, especially bankers now are more corrupt then lawful, is a basic now, which can easily be developed and argued at this stage in historical time. The Jekyll Island Constitution that established the Federal Reserve is now a glowing example of how the rich have been taking every other cultural class to the cleaners for about a century. Worse this banking scheme is international which has no compassion to follow any Constitution, Parliament, Democracy, just a money tyranny likely in the Wahabbi direction though our Media Mongols, here, money talks.

Of this so called attention, out of the blue, Americans must make the decision immediately to alleviate the most horrible economic disaster since the depression; And is it sure doing it today, remember stuff like this happened pre WWII. Now that is scary. Here America finds itself wrapped in a Media complicit in a three ring circus loaded with time consuming ideas that don’t even get to the point.

I have to defend Barney Frank some what because there are plenty of times that I don’t understand him, though I know Representative Frank is Chairman of that banking committee since January 2007, is such a short time to untangle much of the mess handed to him. Here the Republican base is starting to blame Barney for the decade long disaster of less and less regulation. Of course this will rile the likes of people like Limbaugh, and Hannity, their followers, especially the Neo-Con group such as Fox news O’reilly and analyst Dick Morris who deserves all credit for Fox to have their FCC license revoked for public dissemination of assault and battery on the electorate.

Good quality control is in any business. America can have this kind of regulation in the open without laws with the help of the media. That’s were the corruption flies in your face, it’s so oh, oh, obvious. Only once in a while the electorate gets their anger defused by watching Keith Olbermann sounding off with the worst person of the world. Well that few minutes for that exhibition of shame is not good enough anymore. Other wise these first line news casters appear to not know what is going. So here is an Oxymoron square in this Journalistic culture we have these six figure persons in a full time job to find out whats going on, but don’t know. This is a Doctor “Do little event� you never saw anything thing like it. Or the Journalist never saw anything. Like Sargent Shultz, I see nothing.

Please America anyone on the job takes about year to understand the business cycle let alone the none sense, or back doors, closed doors creating language riddled by the Republicans that are built into escape the system from criminal actions. That is the essence of today’s Culture of corruption it is the written legislation. Here, I am not going to be easy on Democrats especially with this trillion dollar bail out Wall Street corruption package. Pelosi said the president lifted up a rock to reveal vermin or economic hidden rats. America should be sanitizing and cleaning, here, rather than throwing more fuel to feed the corruption beast, a trillion dollars worth of tax payer money is not the best cure for this horrible situation.

For me, why can not America take the problem on in the Congress one catastrophe at a time? Why give Bush and Company all this money? It baffles me! Or is this the clincher to follow the money trail to find out what the hell is going on. Giving America the eager chance to finally put George and Company in Orange suits send him with his administration along the Texas high ways in humiliation picking up empty beer and gas cans for the next twenty years.

I hope, if Obama starts mentioning the lies of the Corkscrew Express and the Alaska Bubblegum, he includes her whopper about divesting in Darfur from the debate.

Her representative at the hearing said
""The legislation is well-intended, and the desire to make a difference is noble, but mixing moral and political agendas at the expense of our citizens' financial security is not a good combination," testified Brian Andrews, Palin's deputy revenue commissioner, before a hearing on the Gara-Lynn Sudan divestment bill in February. Minutes from the meeting are posted online by the legislature."

Two months later Palin reversed her stand publicly, "But by then the legislative session was almost over, and there wasn't enough time to get it passed."

But they didn't even need a law. (And, btw, didn't you get the idea from the debate that Palin had made sure the divestiture had already happened?) "The Alaska Permanent Fund currently holds $22 million in Sudan-linked investments, according to the non-profit Sudan Divestment Task Force. Divestment advocates say the fund does not need an act of the state legislature to divest itself of those holdings."

All quotes from http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=5948944&page=1

It makes no difference which canidate wins. This country is going to fail until we quit borrowing money. The government is the worst offender.We are gorging on natural resorces and borrowed money. Their solution to credit crises? Borrow more money. Hell on the bail out the Democrats lead the way. I bet the republicans are laughing their ass off. If this country survives fifty more years, it will require greater stratigic thinking than has been demonsrated so far buy either party. They will not adress the issue!!

Would someone kindly explain to McCain that the economy is not going away? It isn't like the monster in the closet. You can't just turn away from it and say, "I don't believe in you, you're not there, lah lah lah." It's THERE, old man and you can't turn your back on it.

This smear campaign won't do anything except destroy what remains of McCain's reputation. Sad to see him wreck everything in his desperation to be president.

The economy as an issue isn't going away. We'll likely have bad jobless reports every week at a minimum. And then the biggie:
3rd quarter GDP numbers out Oct. 30, where the big question will be are they in negative territory or just at 0?

Actually swarty, the rat is a professor of Olde English, as in ye olde.

Actually swarty, the rat is a professor of Olde English, as in ye olde. -- captain dan, @15:01

As someone who had been forced to study Old English (Beowulf era), I have to say: Nope. Not Old English. Not even Middle English (Chaucer). The very mention of Jester puts him squarely in the Renaissance (Shakespeare), at the earliest.

Unless you truly mean "Olde English", which is the fake abomination invented somewhere toward the end of the Victorian/beginning of the Edwardian era.

Otherwise, the "rat" must be one of those less endowed with intellect than most of his brethren and "professor" is just one of those mocking nicknames which mean the opposite.

"... he only thing that could swing voters' attention away from the economy would be a flashy terror attack. And no, I do not believe these guys are above rigging something if need be."
Posted by: Bernard HP Gilroy on October 5, 2008

Well, there was the pirates taking an Iranian ship. That was pretty flashy, but it was nipped in the bud.

Big things take time to plan, so don't expect something else to just appear. We've had pirates, Sarah Palin, mortgages, Georgia/S.Ossetia, Russian aircraft visiting Venezuela, Israel planning to attack Iran and many other lesser events which could have distracted Americans from incredibly high gasoline prices, home foreclosures, crashing financial firms, a very weak economy with growing unemployment, political malfeasance by Bushies and the fact McCain simply has nothing to offer America.

My guess is they just can't gen up something distracting that's gonna do the job. But, they are creative destructors, so who knows.