cowperthwait | lies, evasion, spin, circumspection and cleverly veiled hype

Kathleen Parker is a kid in a China shop with a toothpaste tube full of metaphor:

"I think they're drinking water from a fire hose even more than we were," a Bush White House official said to me a few days ago. "I actually feel sorry for them."

That fire hose apparently is tapped into the Dasani Aquifer. The plugging-leaks-in-the-dike metaphor is no longer adequate to the titanic episode now engulfing the nation's capital.

—WaPo

yes, you can keep your hat on

The most important change is people get confused and disoriented and begin to take their clothes off because they feel warm.

—Jim Augustine, medical director of the District of Columbia Fire and EMS, predicts an explicable sight at the inauguration [USA Today]

W/r/t Warren, many progressives and gays are denouncing Obama for “crossing the line” by picking this fat nut; they have all promised to vote for Nader in 2012. This furious resistance will last, at most, four days, when new shirtless pixxx of Obama in Hawaii will leak to the Huffington Post and everyone will forget about gay invocations or whatever.

But it was a dick move by Obama, mostly because of all the very recent publicity Warren has received for helping out-of-state Mormons amend the California state constitution to dissolve civil marriages between consenting same-sex adults who live together in private. This was an evil thing, Prop 8, evil and immoral and incredibly hurtful to a lot of people. And when Obama brings in someone so attached to this current ugliness as Warren to give a speech at his Presidential Ceremony, that’s an unusually cruel and timely reminder to the gay community that the Democratic Party will not push for their “equal rights;” for Obama to claim otherwise at this press conference is a lie.

—Jim Newell doesn't much care for political bloggers, Rick Warren

The Friday before the election is supposed to bring big, disruptive news — Bush's drunk-driving arrest, a new Al Qaeda tape, Cap Weinberger's indictment... — but all the McCain campaign can come up with is … this?

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Barack Obama's aunt, a Kenyan woman who has been quietly living in public housing in Boston, is in the United States illegally after an immigration judge rejected her request for asylum four years ago.

The Associated Press has learned 56-year-old Zeituni Onyango, who was referred to as ''Aunti Zeituni'' in Obama's memoir, was instructed to leave the United States by a U.S. immigration judge who denied her asylum request.

A person familiar with the matter told the AP late Friday about Obama's aunt. This person spoke on condition of anonymity because no one was authorized to discuss Onyango's case.

Information about the deportation case was disclosed and confirmed by two separate sources, one of them a federal law enforcement official.

—AP

Lame.

Not even evil, just kind of meanspirited and … lame.

So, are today's polling numbers to be interpreted as glass-half-full or glass-half-Oh-my-god,-Reverent-Wright-is-coming?

Stalwart Obama supporters have called me some mean names for my constant pessimism, so I want to reiterate that I hope they're right. But: when Nate Silver wonders aloud whether Sen. McCain's campaign would pull a "kamikaze" stunt in the final two weeks, I need only point to a campaign full of kamikaze stunts — suspending the campaign to nominate Sarah Palin and her deputy Ed the Dairyman the ambassador of the Moslem caliphate of Ayerstopia... — to justify my expectation that another wild thrash is coming.

This ain't over. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!

If McCain were to make a kamikaze play for Pennsylvania -- as John King seems to imply -- while conceding Colorado, Iowa and New Mexico, this wouldn't seem to make his task any easier. The Kerry states less PA, but plus CO, IA, and NM, equal 252 electoral votes, leaving Obama just 18 votes shy of a majority. Obama could pick up those votes in one fell swoop by winning Florida or Ohio -- or, more plausibly, by winning Virginia plus any one of North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana or Nevada.

It is unlikely that McCain can accomplish this all of this organically, by winning garden-variety news cycles or even by claiming the lion's share of undecideds. Rather, he likely needs some kind of unknown, external contingency to place himself back in the thick of the race.

—Today's Polls: T-15, The Plank

CHICAGO (CBS) ― It's not a done deal yet, but all indications are that campaign officials are leaning toward Hutchinson Field on the south end of Grant Park as the site of their election night party.

The field is home to softball diamonds, the popular summer Lollapalooza music festival and was the site of the mass Pope John Paul held in Chicago nearly 30 years ago.

—Obama Election Night Party Likely In Grant Park, WBBM-TV

Another paper's first-ever Democratic endorsement:

We may one day look back on this presidential campaign in wonder. We may marvel that Obama's critics called him an elitist, as if an Ivy League education were a source of embarrassment, and belittled his eloquence, as if a gift with words were suddenly a defect. In fact, Obama is educated and eloquent, sober and exciting, steady and mature. He represents the nation as it is, and as it aspires to be.

—Barack Obama for president, Los Angeles Times

Not once since 1861 had the Chicago Tribune endorsed a Democrat. For Job's sake, they even endorsed George W. Bush in 2004.

What could possibly lead them to break from tradition this time?

Oh, right.

McCain failed in his most important executive decision. Give him credit for choosing a female running mate--but he passed up any number of supremely qualified Republican women who could have served. Having called Obama not ready to lead, McCain chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. His campaign has tried to stage-manage Palin's exposure to the public. But it's clear she is not prepared to step in at a moment's notice and serve as president. McCain put his campaign before his country.

—Chicago Tribune Endorses Barack Obama for President, Chicago Tribune

Does anyone else think that Sen. Obama looks like like a drag queen tonight?

Huckabee Institute scientists make comprehensive discovery about water's wetness:

Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said Friday the John McCain made a "huge mistake" by even floating the possibility he would not appear at the first presidential debate as planned....

—CNN


Wonkette, characteristically, proposes we get drunk:

Whenever John McCain says “My Friends”:
Two drinks (or one shot), poke the breast of the person to your right and smile creepily.

When Barack Obama shakes his head with dignity:
Shake your own head with dignity, take the beverage from the person to your left, and tell them to go get you a new drink because you are not going to get AIDS from their backwash/lipstick....

—IT'S ON! Coward McCain Will (Maybe?) Show Up Tonight, So Here’s Your Debate Drinking Game!, Wonkette


God, has this been a fun week or what?

OBAMA So what about hope? Chuck it for outrage and put-downs?

BARTLET No. You’re elite, you can do both. Four weeks ago you had the best week of your campaign, followed — granted, inexplicably — by the worst week of your campaign. And you’re still in a statistical dead heat. You’re a 47-year-old black man with a foreign-sounding name who went to Harvard and thinks devotion to your country and lapel pins aren’t the same thing and you’re in a statistical tie with a war hero and a Cinemax heroine. To these aged eyes, Senator, that’s what progress looks like. You guys got four debates. Get out of my house and go back to work.

—Seeking a President Who Gives Goose Bumps? So’s Obama, NYT

Just about a week late, Senator Obama finally hits back.

... Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago for more than a decade, said captured suspects deserve to file writs of habeus corpus.

Calling it "the foundation of Anglo-American law," he said the principle "says very simply: If the government grabs you, then you have the right to at least ask, 'Why was I grabbed?' And say, 'Maybe you've got the wrong person.'"

The safeguard is essential, Obama continued, "because we don't always have the right person."

"We don't always catch the right person," he said. "We may think it's Mohammed the terrorist, but it might be Mohammed the cab driver. You might think it's Barack the bomb-thrower, but it might be Barack the guy running for president."

...

"The reason that you have this principle is not to be soft on terrorism. It's because that's who we are. That's what we're protecting," Obama said, his voice growing louder and the crowd rising to its feet to cheer. "Don't mock the Constitution. Don't make fun of it. Don't suggest that it's not American to abide by what the founding fathers set up. It's worked pretty well for over 200 years."

He finished with a dismissive comment about his opponents.

"These people."

—WaPo