This is something interesting Joe Klein said...

The story of the day out here in Minneapolis is the McCain campaign's war against the press. This has been building for some time. Those of us who have criticized the candidate--and especially those of us who enjoyed good relations with McCain in the past--have been subject to off-the-record browbeating and attempted bullying all year. But things have gotten much worse in recent days: there was McCain's rude, bizarre interview with Time Magazine last week. Yesterday, McCain refused to an interview with Larry King, for God's sake, because Campbell Brown had been caught in the commission of journalism on CNN the night before, asking McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds what decisions Sarah Palin had made as commander-in-chief of the Alaska national guard. (There was an answer that the unprepared Bounds didn't have: she had deployed them to fight fires.)
So what's going on here? Two things. McCain is just plain angry at us. By the evidence presented in the utterly revealing Time interview, he's ballistic. This is a politician who needs to see himself as the man on the white horse, boldly traversing a muddy field...any intimations that he's gotten muddied in the process, or has decided to throw mud, are intolerable.
The second thing is more insidious: Steve Schmidt has decided, for tactical reasons, to slime the press. He wants the public to believe that there is an unfair--sexist (you gotta love it)--personal assault going on against Palin and her family. This is a smokescreen, intended to divert attention from the very real and responsible vetting that is taking place in the media--about the substance of Palin's record as mayor and governor. Sure, there are a few outliers--and the tabloid press--who have fixed on baby stories. That was inevitable....the flip side of the personal stories that the McCain team thought would work to their advantage--Palin's moose-hunting and wolf-shooting, and her admirable decision to have a Down Syndrome baby. And yes, when we all fix on the same story, whether it's a hurricane or a little-known politician, a zoo ensues. But the media coverage of the Palin story has been well within the bounds of responsibility. Schmidt is trying to make it seem otherwise, a desperate tactic.

There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is "a task from God." The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme.

the sadness of being a republican

The sadness of being a republican.
by jo nathan dudley

So after 7 years of missed opportunities, bungled hurricanes and out right serial lying, the republican convention looked like it might just be a wash. John McCain, once a dignified war hero who ultimately had to cozy up to Bush to get back into the Presidential game, was looking old and stale. This is the same Bush who skipped out of service in Vietnam while flying (when it suited him) National Guard jets in the dangerous skies of Texas and Alabama.

McCain had no hope of being relevant this election other than possibly hammering BO with the experience issue and that only was taking him so far.

But alas, he chose Sarah Palin to be his running mate. The Alaskan savior who leaned on none other than God to get elected governor and to get another oil pipeline.
McCain then switched gears and promised country first but acted like POLITICS first all the while calling Obama elitist. I guess Obama can not hide from his background and his elitist single mother and super elitist Grandparents who raised him in spite of his father. Elitist always buck tradition in favor of liberal survival techniques.

McCain/Palin stood for reform but that was just lipstick on a porky pig. Even though McCain spent his career trying to kill the pork, he still can't convince anybody other than his choir that Palin isn't the queen of pork. Not even lipstick can cover up that lie.
They said she was a reformer with executive experience. They were right. She had reformed her town's budget so much that when she left office the town was in debt and spent the surplus budget the town's previous administration had accrued. Maybe I am missing the underlying point of the McCain Campaign, with all that executive experience w/ pork and overspending, they knew she would be a natural in Washington. However, now I see why McPalin can now go after the change mantra because as soon as she joined the campaign they changed their approach to straight-up-all-out lying as opposed to small lies with bits of truth.

Then after her vast experience was disproved the republicans still kept drinking the koolaid and they spun wildly out of control into McCain/Palin madness. Each trying to out do another in making up excuses in defense of Wasilla's favorite gal. For so long, McCain had bashed Obama's lack of experience and then he turns around and picks someone who was Mayor of a city of 6,000 people and Governor of one of the least populous states. A politician whose foreign policy experience is limited to lying about trips to Iraq and mostly based on her ability to see Russia from an island of the coast of her snow capped dominion.
WAY TO GO GUYS!