Wow, just wow. How on Earth did this woman get past the vetting process? Oh yeah, there was no vetting process for Palin, McCain was told to offer her the nod and he blindly followed. What a joke.

In a recent interview, Palin suggest that the US is somehow involved in a war with both Iraq and Iran. While, I seem to remember something about bombs over Baghdad, I missed the part where we were trying to also take on the Iranians. Obviously many of us just aren’t as well-qualified as Sarah Palin, as her and McCain appear to already be planning their mission accomplished speech on a war with Iran that doesn’t even exist.

We realize that more and more Americans are starting to see the light there and understand the contrast. And we talk a lot about, OK, we’re confident that we’re going to win on Tuesday, so from there, the first 100 days, how are we going to kick in the plan that will get this economy back on the right track and really shore up the strategies that we need over in Iraq and Iran to win these wars?

And here’s the video to accompany her brilliance.

John McCain’s campaign took another odd twist today when they announced that the star of the official election night watch party may only appear briefly in front of his supporters at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona. Instead, McCain plans on delivering his post-election remarks to a small group of reporters and invited guests on the hotel lawn.

McCain’s remarks will be piped electronically into the party and media filing center, aides said. Only a small press “pool” — mostly those who have traveled regularly with the candidate on his campaign plane, plus a few local Arizona reporters and others — will be physically present when he speaks.

Obama, by contrast, plans to address a giant outdoor celebration election night in Chicago’s Grant Park. The event is free and open to the public, but the campaign was charging media organizations a hefty fee for close-in spots on the camera risers and platforms and for cable and wireless Internet at those spots.

That “hefty fee” by the way is commonplace for news organizations at election night viewing parties and rings up to a whopping $935 per press agent. McCain is charging a “hefty fee” of $695 per press agent.

But as Obama spokesman Bill Burton pointed out, “Anyone credentialed for our filing center will also be able to watch the event live and in person, unlike the McCain event.”

The great mind of Seth McFarlane, creator of Family Guy on FOX, is known for coming up with quite some exaggerated, sometimes controversial opinions on world views and pop culture. In a recent episode, the popular TV show brings in a bit of Nazi-themed humor into the Republican campaign, by suggesting that modern day nazis support John McCain and Sarah Palin.

The bad news keeps on coming for the Republican party. According to Marc Ambinder of the The Atlantic, Republican sources in Colorado and Washington are confirming that the National Republican Senatorial Committee are pulling their ads out of the state by next week. With ads running throughout Colorado for now, an NRSC spokesperson stated that advertising decisions are made on a week to week basis and would comment no further.

The man revealed to be “Joe the Plumber”, everyone’s favorite new drinking game character after last night’s presidential debate, has given more press interviews than Sarah Palin, the woman running for Vice President of the United States. In fact, it’s becoming apparent that the Secret Service are now working in conjunction with the Palin campaign to limit the movement of reporters at Palin ralleys, preventing them from interviewing crowd members or from identifying those who scream out hateful and threatening comments in regards to Obama.

This from Dana Millbank over at the Washington Post

I wasn’t at the Scranton event, but I have to say the Secret Service is in dangerous territory here. In cooperation with the Palin campaign, they’ve started preventing reporters from leaving the press section to interview people in the crowd. This is a serious violation of their duty — protecting the protectee — and gets into assisting with the political aspirations of the candidate. It also often makes it impossible for reporters to get into the crowd to question the people who say vulgar things. So they prevent reporters from getting near the people doing the shouting, then claim it’s unfounded because the reporters can’t get close enough to identify the person.

But back to John McCain’s new best friend, Joe the Plumber, who is beginning to look more and more like a Republican shill. As it turns out he doesn’t even have a plumber’s license and doesn’t necessarily have to worry anymore about his taxes being raised by Obama, because he doesn’t pay them anyways, owing back taxes in the state of Ohio to the tune of $1,182.92.

I think CNN commentator and former democratic political consultant Paul Begala described John McCain the most accurately after last nights debate: Grumpy McNasty.

There were always inklings and rumors about McCain’s temper, but tonight his hot-hotheadedness was up front and center. McCain was fidgety, crotchety and blinked several thousand times during last night’s 90 minute debate. I understand he wanted to try and fire up the base and re-ignite his campaign, but his constant interruptions, his erratic and downright schizophrenic meanderings over a mixture of topics and his scoffing at Women’s health issues were downright disturbing and quite honestly, seemed a bit out of touch. Obama on the other hand was calm, cool and collected, and above all, on-message the majority of his camera time. From a strategic point of view, brilliant. Let McCain come at you with everything he thinks he’s got, brush it off, stay collected, on-message and keep the focus of the debate on what it should be about, how you (Obama OR McCain) will help this country and it’s citizens.

I have to admit, impressive on Obama’s part, disappointing and downright confusing on McCain’s part, though I have to credit ole’ Grumpy McNasty for his restraint, many years of anger management instruction certainly paid off last night..

As always, we need some interesting after-game commentary, this time from CNN:

Keith Olbermann, on his MSNBC show Countdown, once again delivers a startling and refreshing commentary on John McCain and Sarah Palin’s ability to ignore the hate they are passively encouraging among their farther right supporters. As more and more McCain / Palin supporters come out of the woodwork to scream “Kill him” in regards to Obama, or “Obama bin Laden”, McCain and Sarah Palin become more and more schizophrenic and un-apologetic.

Sen. McCain, your supporters, at your events, are calling Obama a terrorist and traitor and are calling for him to be killed. And yet you keep bringing back these same rabid Right Wing nuts to deliberately stir these crowds into frenzies. And then you take offense when somebody who remembers the violence in our political past, calls you on it. You, sir, are responsible for a phalanx of individuals who are shouting fire in a crowded theatre. There are some things to respect and honor about you, Sen. McCain.

But on this, you’re not only a fraud, Senator but you are tacitly inciting lunatics to violence. If you want to again grand-stand and suspend your campaign here’s your big chance. Suspend your campaign now, until you, or somebody else, gets some control over it and it ceases to be a clear and present danger to the peace of this nation.

As the McCain campaign continues attempting to discredit Obama in anyway possible, another of McCain’s aides sabotaged his campaign by again attempting to tie Obama to ACORN in a deeper way, failing to bring up the fact that McCain was also actively involved with several ACORN-sponsored rallys around the country.

In the video below, McCain addresses a rally sponsored by ACORN and their community-organization allies in 2006, with his speech starting around the 1:50-mark.

Hours prior to the release of the findings for the now infamous Troopergate 3 scandal, Sarah Palin and John McCain’s campaign released their own report, clearing Palin of wrongdoing.

Unfortunately reality set-in for the McCain campaign a few hours later when the official report was released, concluding that Sarah Palin unlawfully abused her power as governor of Alaska, by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired from his position as an Alaskan State Trooper. Yikes!

Finding One
For the reasons explained in section IV of this report, I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39/52/110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) provides

The legislature reaffirms that every public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.

Being the lovers of word clouds, we ran transcripts from Sarah Palin and Joe Biden through one of our favorite sites, Wordle, to come up with a lovely cloud showing the top 150 terms used most through the debates by the candidates. We’ve removed many of the common words to get down into the terms being thrown around the most. Then for a little added word-lust, we added Gwen Ifill’s transcript.

Joe Biden

Sarah Palin

Gwen Ifill