Oh the fun we have, these days, with John McCain and Barack Obama. They are the news, every day, even when the economy fails or something, because now we expect them to fix it. So they're rocketing back to DC or something to work on that bailout plan, with some guy named... Bush? Bush. You know, the guy who weirdly made torture an important tool in the American response to terror. Ha ha remember our moral authority? Just about everyone involved in the Bush Administration probably deserves to be put on trial at The Hague, actually, but that won't happen because no one cares anymore. It just suddenly became "too late" to discuss the massive and unprecedented abuse of power by the executive branch at just the moment when everyone, even Bush conservatives, agreed that things had gotten far, far out of hand. What were we talking about again? Oh, right, everyone is complicit in the torturing. You and me and Condoleezza Rice. Of course she told the Senate yesterday that it is not her fault, this torturing. Everyone is covering their asses now that the Senate Armed Services is looking into just who decided to give the CIA authorization to torture the fuck out of people, but Condi released some documents blaming John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld for everything. Except of course that she was in the same goddamn room and her proud stand against the program was to ask Ashcroft to personally review the legal documents that Bush lawyers used to justify violating the Geneva Conventions. REMEMBER HOW OUR PRESIDENT VIOLATES THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS?? LIKE, REGULARLY, BECAUSE THAT IS HIS POLICY?? WTF! Anyway. This is fun. Our CIA actually began kinda torturing people weeks before our executive branch drafted a legal memo authorizing them to kinda torture people! The FBI objected to the torturing and "ultimately withdrew from Mr. Zubaydah’s interrogation." It's funny when the FBI is the voice of reason! Funny in a "why did we all agree that the last 8 years didn't happen" way. Basically we'd like a 9/11 commission thing, here, to figure out what happened when a bunch of career conservative fuckers and their cherry-picked law school moron lackeys ran the country for eight years and basically blew it up, from the inside. Can John McCain race back to Washington and work on that?

Haha we were going to write about this and then John McCain flew back to Washington DC to solve this economic crisis himself. Before that happened? People were talking about how either John McCain lied to us about his campaign manager's link to Freddie Mac, or that campaign manager lied to John McCain about those ties, or both. How to respond to that charge? Hah. They didn't really know! Twice today—twice—McCain surrogates responded not by denying any of it, but rather by... comparing the New York Times to the Huffington Post. Ok, what? Nancy Pfotenhauer tried this line first on MSNBC this afternoon. Then spokesman Michael Goldfarb tried it later in an press release. That's right, they are saying you can't believe the Times because it's just like the stupid HuffPo with its Nora Ephron blogs and so on. What? Does this argument resonate with anyone who doesn't live online?? Man, the Washington Post is like the "Pink is the New Blog" of newspapers, right?? That MSNBC is pretty much the MediaBistro of television! Nonsensical zing! One understands why they decided to quickly shift gears this afternoon.

Obama on tv earlier responding to the McCain debate stunt: dangerous crisis, lots of blame to go around, everyone has to help this crisis, swiftly. It seemed like the joint statement he was supposed to release with Maverick McCain before McCain ran away to Washington to get in the way! Obama said he had a conversation with McCain today about the joint statement. "When I got back to the hotel, he was already on tv." Jesus Christ. In re. debate suspension: "I thought this was something he was mulling over, it sounds like this is something he was decisive about." Obama sounded like he's going ahead with the debates. More (paraphrase): "We both have big planes, they can get us from Washington DC to Mississippi pretty quickly." FURTHERMORE: John McCain's at CBS right now! No time for debating, always time for Katie Couric!

Ok, so this is sleazy, right? Barack Obama and John McCain were on the phone today trying to put together a genuinely non-partisan joint statement on the economy and the necessity of some sort of "package" to fix this mess we're in. Obama called McCain to suggest this at 8:30 this morning. NBC: "McCain called back six hours later and agreed to the idea of the statement, the Obama campaign said. McCain's statement was issued to the media a few minutes later." That is seriously a dick move! Hey: "'The debate is on,' a senior Obama campaign official told ABC News." So there's that. [Earlier]

John McCain has asked that this Friday's first presidential debate be postponed. He says it needs to be put off in order for him to "focus on the financial crisis," and he needs that time to fix this mess in his position as a Senator without any authority over any of it. Wtf. According to MSNBC, he's returning to Washington right now to personally solve this bailout thing. So—"country first," right? No time for debating, because Senator McCain—who is not on the Joint Economic Committee btw!—is asking Obama to join him in Washington. Jesus Christ. We're thinking this will very quickly come off as a "political stunt," and also make McCain look like a moron next time he trots out the "I lie about Obama because he wouldn't debate me 100 times from now until the election" line. But whatever, maybe it'll play well? For a day or two, anyway. But! What does Obama do? He calls it a cheap political ploy, hopefully, says he wants to debate right away. It is a sign, probably, that McCain's debate prep wasn't going well. It's a naked attempt to look on top of the news cycle and to insert himself into the economic debate, but canceling a debate won't instill confidence in anyone, will it? It seems desperate and reactive, especially in the face of bad polling for McCain. He's painting it as a post-partisan 9/11 thing, of course, and maybe that'll fly. Once again, we reiterate: there is nothing McCain can do about this. This is the stupidest and emptiest of political gestures. On the plus side, your Friday won't be wasted watching the debate! Update: Stuff we heard on the tv: The University of Mississippi (they're hosting the debate) say the debate is still going on as planned. Obama's camp is probably going to announce that they're going ahead with the debate soon.

The League of American Patriots, a New Jersey-based white supremacist organization, is apparently distributing these leaflets in Roxbury, New Jersey. "Do you want a black president," the paper asks, noting that Haiti is very dangerous. Sigh. The Smoking Gun has the full-sized copy of the flyer in case you want to get pissed off at some barely relevant neo-Nazis. THEY JUST WANT ATTENTION, GUYS. You know, like the attention we're giving them right now! This will probably help Obama, because it's basically the literal version of the subtext of a million "legitimate" conservative anti-Obama lines (lol inexperienced). Ha ha MEANWHILE the United Auto Workers is maybe (maybe!) sending out literature to Michigan union members announcing that Obama "was raised by all white people." Which, uh, at least the union is... factually more accurate than the internet rumors, right? National conversation on race time! Those always go well!

Whenever the media say anything about John McCain that isn't "he is the coolest hero ever and sooo dreamy" his campaign accuses every journalist in the country of being "in the tank" for Barack Obama. And whenever the press goes a day or two without talking exclusively about John McCain, the McCain campaign accuses the media of ignoring him. Kind of a biased-if-you-do, biased-if-you-don't situation. But we'll give the McCain campaign credit: they're consistent. In their attacks on the media, anyway. The enemy seems to shift a bit. Like, this week, apparently the media is ignoring John McCain in favor of... the rapidly growing financial crisis and the government's unprecedented plan to end it. Seriously, the McCain campaign is totally upset that no one will write about his "commission of technicians" but they all find time to talk about Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson! McCain economic advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin—the guy who said McCain invented the BlackBerry and yet somehow retained his position as McCain's least bad economic advisor—sent a snippy email to like a thousand financial reporters yelling at them for not covering John McCain's secret plan to end the war on banks. "I cannot believe the absence of recognition of the policy substance," Holtz-Eakin wrote, followed by a list of all of McCain's fantastic vague ideas that he can't implement until January. Financial reporters who received the email were like, ok? What? Old man, there are more important things to talk about right now, like the end of capitalism!

When John McCain goes to war, he goes to war to win. When he got shot down in Nam it was because he went back to make goddamn sure that civilian power plant got bombed. Even after the war, he was pretty sure that a few thousand more bombs would've defeated those commies. So when he went to war against the New York Times and every single major network, we were confident he wouldn't rest until 30 Rock was reduced to rubble and CNN renounced their anti-American ways. But no, he's cutting and running. Before, it was was reported that not a single reporter was going to be allowed to cover Sarah Palin's crazy UN meetings. Now, though? Oh look, CNN gets to send in one producer for a pool report. That's not change we can believe in! What's next, cooperating with the hated New York Times? Funny you should ask! John McCain's war on the Times was going very very well, for him. His campaign was trashing the New York Times and accusing Politico reporters of being "in the tank" and all that, but then some Politico people kept writing about how McCain's campaign kept lying about everything in the world. Then they wrote a story about how McCain actually pretty much lurves everyone at the hated New York Times. Like all of them!

This Friday marks the first presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama. Debate previews are available pretty much everywhere (this one's fine) but honestly you should probably just watch this clip. It's from the 2004 Illinois Senate race, when Barack Obama was up against Maryland talk show host and certified insane genius Alan Keyes. Keyes is talking about gay adoption, and how it leads inexorably to incest. Nothing on Friday will be this entertaining. Oh, those debate preps they're doing? Obama is practicing against some ancient lawyer dude. This is maybe a mistake because the lawyer dude is probably way more well-spoken and, frankly, Obama-like in his answers than McCain will be, but whatever. McCain is debating Michael Steele, who is entirely unlike Barack Obama in every way except for one important thing: his time spent as a college professor. Ha ha ha, just kidding, it's because he's black. This is to teach John McCain not to seem quite as contemptuous of the black guy as he actually is. (Oh wait, update—McCain says now they won't use Steele! We're sure Alan Keyes is available! Do it!)

Hah. So. John McCain's campaign got pissed off at the New York Times for reporting a kinda tenuous connection between McCain campaign manager Rick Davis and Fannie Mae. So strategist Steve Schmidt (pictured), who is increasingly insane and unhinged and so un-Rove-like in his Rovian tactics, held a conference call to attack the Times. "Whatever the New York Times once was, it is today, not by any standard a journalistic organization. It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain Campaign, attacks Senator McCain, attacks Governor Palin, and excuses Senator Obama," Schmidt sputtered. So, hah, if Politico's Ben Smith's writeup of the call is any indication, this media-attacking will backfire! "But the call was so rife with simple, often inexplicable misstatements of fact," Smith writes, "that it may have had the opposite effect: to deepen the perception, dangerous to McCain, that he and his aides have little regard for factual accuracy" Oh no! They certainly wouldn't want anyone to think they play fast and loose with facts! The lies:

This ridiculous gun-owning man whose voice sounds like Keith Olbermann's crappy Bill O'Reilly impression, is concerned that Obama will tax his guns and ammo, which has something to do with gas prices. Obama voted to ban deer-hunting ammunition! "Where is this guy from?" gun guy asks, in what is the single least subtle attempt to paint Obama as a Muslim foreigner ever. (Where is he from? Canada? Saudi Arabia?? San Francisco??) This is a real-life NRA ad that will run in Colorado and New Mexico. Our favorite part is the Dick Cheney-looking guy loading up a rifle as a fat kid stares at him. Enjoy your precious freedoms, assholes!

Every election season, commentators trot out the old statistics about how more education makes people more likely to support Democrats, more studies are published on how liberal Daily Show viewers are so well-informed, and various smart people try to explain why anyone would ever vote for a Republican, against their "self-interest." This month has seen three alarming and remarkable scientific investigations into Americans' inexplicable habit of voting for George Bush and John McCain. Which means: trend! Hooray! Let's take a look at what America's top scienticians say about fucking idiot flyover losers and their stupid voting: Conservatives Are Scared A Lot Rice University Political Scientist John Alford published some research in the creatively named journal Science about a possible biological basis to liberalism and conservatism. Basically, "46 mostly white Midwesterners who self-identified as having strong political beliefs" were shown "threatening images" ("a large spider on someone's face, a bloodied person and maggot-filled wound"). The conservatives were more scared, of all of the images. Or, as Newsweek puts it, "illegal immigrants may = spiders = gay marriages = maggot-filled wounds = abortion rights = bloodied faces. " Liberals were not sensitive to the scary images. Which means they're biologically inferior, because they'd die if a gay spider tried to abort their faces to death. Notable problems with this study: small sample, also wtf this doesn't explain anything. Conservatives Refuse to Believe "Facts" The most upsetting and alarming research? Probably Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler's backfire effect study. In that, the political scientists took two groups of volunteers and gave them the Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq was a threat and had weapons of mass destruction.

Pop quiz: are you moderating a presidential debate this fall? (Hint: are you old, white, and male?) You may be wondering what you're supposed to ask about! Sure, you could just ask them to talk about their positions on various issues, politely step back as they lay out policy proposals and debate the merits of said proposals, but then everyone will get bored. Your job is to stir shit up and force them both into making gaffes! That is how we decide what to talk about when we talk about campaigns. So. Because we dislike John McCain, personally, we will now explain how best to cause him to say or do something stupid during a debate. But don't worry, Republicans: we have a trick to trip up Obama too! Foreign Policy This one's a gimme, because John McCain doesn't know a goddamn thing about the rest of the world except that he wants to bomb it. There was the "Iraq/Pakistan border" thing, which could maybe be explained by him saying Iraq instead of Afghanistan, and the Czechoslovakia thing, which is pretty much just explained by him being lol old, and mistaking Sunnis with Shiites constantly and also thinking al-Qaeda was training in Iran, which can really only be explained by not giving a shit about minor details like who we're "fighting" besides Muslims in general. But now that his confusion has spread to Western Europe, his handlers should be worried. "John McCain doesn't know where Spain is" is basically a gift to the Democrats. Of course McCain can and will play off any debate question about his gaffes with a condescending "of course I know [blank]" statement, followed by a carefully coached recitation of lessons his handlers drilled into him, which defuses the issue, but it's a clear sign that he'll be tripped up by a different lame gotcha question about world leaders or geography. Do people actually care when a candidate doesn't know "trivia"? Not really, but if he plays further into the "confused old man" routine it'll hurt him way more than idiocy did Bush. The Economy Ask him just about anything about the current Wall Street crisis. Wait for weird disjointed pseudo-Democrat talk about regulation. Followup with any serious statement John McCain has made on the economy during his 100 years as an anti-regulation Republican. Watch him forced to either sell out his Capitalist base or deliver some decidedly not-populist rhetoric. Torture Ask him, Andrew Sullivan style, if he believes the CIA should be allowed to use "interrogation techniques" similar and in some cases worse than the torture inflicted on him by the North Vietnamese. Offer to demonstrate! (Though, of course, 24 viewers definitely think the CIA should be allowed to torture, and McCain is maybe helped by any mention of his POW years, but still, this shit was indefensible.) His Commercials, Campaign, and Surrogates Just ask him if he "stands by" or can defend almost any number of questionable things his campaign has done. As we saw on The View, he will not apologize, but he will look pissed off as he half-heartedly defends shit he used to hate. Which is way worse than apologizing would be. Bonus: How to Trip Up Barack Obama Ask a serious question about a complex and important issue. Make it one that requires Obama to speak extemporaneously. He'll answer, as he thinks through it, with something pretty reasonable, but complex, and he will say "Uh," and then McCain will say "shut up, Brainiac! Babies are tiny angels, why do you want to kill them?" THE END.

Earlier today, we brought you selections from the private email correspondence of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. A look at the contents reveals... well, not much. Whichever /b/tard first hacked into the account didn't actually seem to know what he was looking for and tossed the password into the public before anything that great was tracked down. But still! We can learn a bit from the emails thus far recovered. One, a cryptic, prayerful message from a friend Palin appointed to a nice government job. The other excerpt is maybe more enlightening: an exchange between Palin and her Lt. Governor, complaining at length about the indignities of having to defend their records to the media. Specifically, to one critical right-wing radio talk show host. If Palin can't handle that, it's no wonder she hides from the national press. Read on for the full emails.

Last night Barack Obama had a fundraiser in Beverly Hills. It was terrible! He raised a zillion dollars from these out-of-touch movie stars while decent, hard-working Americans lost their jobs on Wall Street. Famous people were there, like Steven Spielberg and Will Farrell. And BARBRA STREISAND! The McCain blast email paints a portrait of Caligulan decadent excess:

The Palin story? It was basically the only thing the press covered this month, up until now. But it's peaked, right? The Columbia Journalism Review hopes so! The Associated Press all but declares the end of silly season, thanks to WALL STREET CHAOS. Hooray! No more fucking Palin stories. Except, of course, that now Katie Couric is interviewing her for a sexism-off, she's making an almost-joint appearance with Hillary Clinton, and People keeps telling us things we didn't know about her (not the juicy things, either, but stuff like "she's against waxing" [oh christ]). But People misses something very important about Sarah Palin that we did not know! Her involvement with an insane witch-hunting Kenyan pastor. You heard that one yet? So in one of those nutty church visits Sarah Palin has, occasionally, where she says God wants us to win in Iraq and ban books about dinosaurs, or whatever, Palin talked about how a pastor named Thomas Muthee laid his hands on her and prayed for her to get everything she ever wanted which is how she became governor of Alaska and got a pony for her birthday. Muthee founded the Word of Faith Church, you see. That is apparently the same thing as "The Prayer Cave," which he launched in his native Kiambu, Kenya, in 1989, in order to chase out that "spirit of witchcraft resting all over the place," according to Muthee. Turns out the "spirit of witchcraft" was a local lady who had a pet snake.

On the whole, the journalists who've TURNED AGAINST their former boyfriend John McCain are some of our least favorite journalists in the nation, embodying as they do everything insular and adolescent about the Washington Press Corps. They loved John McCain when he could convince them that he was only bullshitting to the voters, not to them. Now, he won't speak to them! And hey, he's lying about shit, too, but whatever. Today, another media person handed McCain back his class ring and ran home, weeping. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, explain yourself!

Now that the McCain campaign has decided on its "all easily disproved lies, all the time" strategy (with, so far, great returns!), they are finding it hard to even come up with relevant or convincing things to lie about. Which is why McCain policy advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin today held aloft his BlackBerry and announced to confused reporters, "you're looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create." Wait, what? The AP is already comparing this to Al Gore's "I invented the internet" claim, which as everyone but Maureen Dowd hopefully now knows, was actually mostly true, in that Gore actually said he "took the initiative to create the Internet," in the context of his being the only Senator in the 1980s who kept babbling about the importance of national computer networking initiatives. So by that measure, how true is this? What is the supporting evidence? Ha ha it still seems like crazy bullshit.

"Celebrities have taken a serious drubbing from Republicans this political season," The Politico reminds us. (How odd that no one noticed Jon Voigt at the RNC! Or the fact that Robert Duvall narrated that video they showed about "service"? Or the fact that McCain was introduced by famous Hollywood actor Fred Thompson, former Law & Order actor and Republican candidate for President? Or that McCain was in the film Wedding Crashers and used to make dinner dates with Arianna Huffington and West Wing castmembers? Whatever.) Oh, right. Obama's "celebrity" problem. Matt Drudge would like you to know that Obama is raising money with a $28,500 a plate fundraiser featuring—horror of horrors!—Barbra Streisand!!! So now let's care about that, shall we?

The Museum of the Moving Image recently launched what is basically our new favorite website: "The Living Room Candidate," a repository of (embeddable!) presidential campaign ads spanning Stevenson v Eisenhower through Obama v McCain. So, so much fun for political and advertising junkies. Also it is the history of how the United States of America killed itself. This ad will make you cry. It's Michael Dukakis responding to unfair attacks from George H. W. Bush. It's also every loser Democrat since Humphrey. Click through to watch. Click to view [Via Radosh]