McCain

When I found out from Wonkette that the McCain-Palin campaign was holding a firesale of campaign sundries — including teevees and laptops — not far from my neighborhood, I briefly thought about driving over to see what deals there were to be had. My wife talked me out of it, telling me that what she wanted for Christmas was a gift “not drenched in the stink of terrible failure.” As it turns out, I should have gone, because the campaign was selling twenty-dollar Blackberries choked with campaign emails and addresses of GOP bigwigs!

This morning, NPR’s Steve Inskeep interviewed the chairman of the Republican party, Mike Duncan, who is trying to hold on to his chairmanship despite the massive GOP loss in November. The most interesting part of the interview wasn’t anything Duncan said. Rather, it was Duncan’s long silence when asked about the perception of the GOP as the party of exclusion. His silence spoke louder than anything that he had said in terms of how incapable the Republican Party still is of recognizing what it did wrong and what it needs to do in order to gain Americans’ trust.

Welcome to your daily alliteration. Colin Powell said on CNN that Sarah Palin was polarizing. Thank you, General Obvious. (I was going to say “Captain Obvious” but I don’t feel right demoting him before I’ve even had my coffee). I think she had something of a polarizing effect when she talked about small town values are good. Well, most of us don’t live in small towns. I was raised in the South Bronx and there’s nothing wrong with my value system from the South Bronx.

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama’s presidential campaign raised $104 million in the weeks around Election Day, a grand finale to a successful bid that shattered fundraising records. Overall, Obama raised nearly $750 million during his odyssey to the presidency, and his spending in the eight weeks before the election vastly outpaced that of his Republican rival John McCain, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. The reporting period covered Oct. 15-Nov. 24.

When President-elect Obama said he’d reach out to the Republicans and all Americans, he was telling the truth. Apparently some people on the left hoped he was lying. Obama’s “sin” in their eyes is that he is keeping his promises. Other than the perpetually aggrieved paranoid cranks on the far right — FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, James Dobson etc., — most Americans (no matter who they voted for) are just glad that someone brimming with confidence, intelligence and good will is in charge of our rescue, at last !

Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s truncated, confused press conference at yesterday’s Republican Governor Association meeting in Miami. Don’t look now, but the national Republican Party is on the verge of becoming the California Republican Party. And that ain’t a good thing. Unless you’re a Democrat. Looking at the debacle of the just concluded Republican Governors Association meeting in Miami, the national Republican Party looks more and more like the California Republican Party.

I have to begin here today by stomping all over a cutesy term the media has come up with for the upcoming economic “summit” George W. Bush is holding this weekend. The newsies, in their exuberance, have taken to calling this meeting “Bretton Woods II.” To which I say: “No, it isn’t. Please stop using this term. Thank you.” Because Bretton Woods “I” was the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, which was held at the Mount Washington Hotel near Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, at the end of World War II.

Appearing on last night’s Rachel Maddow show, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) offered this up , with regard to Joe Lieberman’s campaign activities for the McCain/Palin ticket, as well as against fellow Democratic candidates for Senate: [Y]ou have got to expect an apology, a sincere apology, and you have got to keep — to tell him, look, we’re going to give you a chance here. But if you don’t do the right things as chairman, if, you know, we see any continuation of this kind of behavior, well, then, at that point, you know, the game is up at that point.

You thought we were done for the year, didn’t you? We saw Barack Obama run the McCain-Palin slime gauntlet for months, while watching him called a terrorist and a socialist on a daily basis and witnessed a bottomless pit of ads for Congressional races in which Republicans accused Democratic candidates of everything but the Kennedy assassination — and we thought it would all be over on November 4th. No such luck.

A former campaign adviser to John McCain named Martin Eisenstadt has outed himself as the proud source of the Sarah Palin “doesn’t know Africa is a continent” story. The New Republic and MSNBC have picked up the scoop. But it’s not at all clear that Eisenstadt exists. William K. Wolfrum of Shakespeare’s Sister, who was suckered by Eisenstadt during the campaign, did some digging and concluded , “There is no M. Thomas Eisenstadt. There is no Eisenstadt Group. There is no Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy. M.