(crossposted at The )

We know that John McCain is perfectly willing to use the economic crisis to advance his political interests, but is he willing to use a 17-year old girl?

In a campaign lurching from cynical tactic to frenzied ploy as fast as John McCain's, it's difficult to guess what tomorrow's political news holds. The senator has now fully committed himself to the kinds of reckless, desperate tactics that have given pause to even steadfast conservatives. How a presidential candidate conducts his campaign is a good indicator of how he will govern his country when in office, and in the conduct of his campaign in the past month we've been given a perfect illustration of why John McCain is the worst possible thing for America at the moment.

When a campaign tries to tilt the pinball machine as often as possible, there's almost no point in trying to guess what strategy will come next. So far these maneuvers almost seem to have been chosen more for unpredictability than political prudence. Not many of us would have guessed that McCain would try to cancel the first debate, and all indications are that it was a risky gambit that did not pay off. The frantic accusations that the New York Times is "not even a journalistic organization" might play well with the GOP base, but I suspect don't even pass the laugh test among the critical undecided voters McCain is trying to court. He and Palin are rapidly becoming a laughingstock and for once, the media is doing its job, calling out their lies and refusing to defer to the usual false balance that is the central linchpin of the Rovian media strategy. The referees have finally realized that they are being worked, and they don't like it.

The London Times is reporting on what I think has a very good potential to be the next bizarre twist in this story: A high-profile storybook wedding between Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston.

In an election campaign notable for its surprises, Sarah Palin, the Republican vice- presidential candidate, may be about to spring a new one -- the wedding of her pregnant teenage daughter to her ice-hockey-playing fiancé before the November 4 election.

Inside John McCain's campaign the expectation is growing that there will be a popularity boosting pre-election wedding in Alaska between Bristol Palin, 17, and Levi Johnston, 18, her schoolmate and father of her baby. "It would be fantastic," said a McCain insider. "You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week."

[...]

Johnston was greeted with a handshake and friendly slap on the back by McCain in St Paul, Minnesota, and treated as a member of the family during the Republican national convention when he appeared on stage after Palin's speech.

The ice-hockey player wrote on his MySpace page he was a "f****** redneck" and stated, "I don't want kids." But a McCain insider predicted he would marry Bristol whenever his future mother-in-law wanted. "It's a shotgun wedding. She kills things," the source joked.

(crossposted at Motley Moose)

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight has an interesting post about why Intrade's futures prices have barely reflected the major upswing in Obama's polling over the last week.  After the GOP convention, when McCain passed Obama in the polls for the first time, bettors priced McCain as high as 54% midday on Sep 13, a really scary number.  But when the polls began to move back Obama's way last week, prices were sluggish to respond, and still have only got Obama at 52, which given the electoral math, is almost certainly undervalued.  Most other betting sites currently price Obama above 60%, while 538 itself puts him above 70%.  For markets to be this far out of sync is bizarre:

This is the equivalent of the Giants being 3-point favorites at the Bellagio Sportsbook, and 7-point favorites at the Mirage down the block. Those things just don't happen in efficient, sufficiently liquid markets, because they create arbitrage opportunities: you'd lay $10,000 on the Giants at the Bellagio and $10,000 on their opponents at the Mirage. Any time the Giants win by fewer than 3 points or more than 7 points, you lose nothing, since your two bets cancel out. But any time they win by fewer than 7 points but more than 3, you win both bets, and take home $20,000 (less the casino's vigorish) for absolutely no risk. Pretty good deal, right? That's exactly what's happening with these futures contracts.

A half hour ago, RNC Co-chair Jo Ann Davidson accidentally referred to Governor Palin as 'Sara Pawlenty'.

"1892 was the last year a Republican National Convention was held in Minneapolis. That was the first Republican convention to seat two women alternates from Wyoming, which you will remember was one of the first states that allowed women the right to vote."

"But the 1892 convention here was another first for Republicans. Judith Ellen Foster, the first president of the National Women's Republican Association and a leader in the women's suffrage movement became the first woman to speak at a Republican convention with these words, 'we are here to help you and we are here to stay.'"

"Her words were prophetic. Ever since that convention, women have been an integral part of the party. And today 116 years later we are holding a convention that will nominate a Republican woman governor - Sarah Pawlenty, our next vice president!"

Watching surrogates try to justify this choice makes it abundantly clear that the outward enthusiasm the GOP is displaying for Palin is only authentic among the religious right.  The GOP is in panic mode, and many republicans are even considering the radical step of selecting a new VP, which means they consider the inevitable damage that would result preferable to dealing with all the controversy she's stirred up so far -- maybe they even know something we don't.  Apparently Ms. Davidson is one of them and made a Freudian slip.  The contract for Palin being withdrawn over at intrade is already up to 15%.

Slashdot reports on a Rasmussen Poll about American preferences regarding equal-time enforcement and the fairness doctrine for various media. "Nearly half of Americans (47%) believe the government should require all radio and television stations to offer equal amounts of conservative and liberal political commentary".  The most interesting part was that they also polled what percentage would like to see websites forced to manage a similar balance.  The overall number: a shocking 31%.

The slashdot summary:

30% of Americans Want "Balanced" Blogging

"In a recent Rasmussen poll looking at the public's attitudes toward a possible revival of the fairness doctrine by the Democrats, a surprisingly large percentage of those polled seek fairness doctrine mandates (originally intended for public airwaves) to cover the Internet as well. It is encouraging that a minority of people feel that way, but Democrats say 'hands-off the Internet ... by a far smaller margin than Republicans and unaffiliated voters. Democrats oppose government-mandated balance on the Internet by a 48% to 37% margin. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Republicans reject government involvement in Internet content along with 67% of unaffiliated voters.'

I'm not sure I trust the results of this poll, given its source and the fact that it's very hard to poll about complex technical issues like this.  The Rasmussen analysis seems to have a conservative bias, and since they don't offer the raw data up to nonsubscribers, it's hard to see if its justified.  Assuming these numbers are anything like true, it's discouraging that so many Democrats feel this way about the internet.  It's hard for me to believe that anyone who uses the web could believe this kind of enforcement is even possible.  The sheer number of independent sites online would be utterly infeasible to police without a giant Ministry of Information.  And what about user-driven websites where the administrators have little control over who writes what?  I have no problem with news programs being required to offer equal time, but the poll focuses a lot on talk radio and the web; mainly opinion-based media.  Controlling the expression of opinions is about as antidemocratic as it gets, no matter who it benefits.

The difference between Obama's and McCain's response to the Georgian crisis tells us a lot about what kind of president each would be.  Obama wants everyone to calm down and talk things over; McCain would rather make aggressive speeches that seem to threaten a massive nuclear power.  No one thinks we're going to war with Russia, and even the Obama campaign agrees that save for McCain's belligerent tone, both candidates' actual positions on the matter are very close.  Still, it's disturbing that the McCain campaign has responded so unilaterally.  That their angry, threatening response lacks the nuance and calm of Obama's, and that it fails to take Georgia's own actions into account, isn't surprising when you consider that McCain's top foreign policy advisor is part-owner of a lobbying firm in Georgia's employ.  After all, this is exactly the sort of thing we've come to expect from them.

But this latest statement is just funny:  

"In the 21st century nations don't invade other nations."

Matt Yglesias says what any rational person who sees this is thinking:

We all recall, of course, John McCain's outrage when the United States violated this rule back in 2003.

Of course, we're different;  we're America.  Invasions are only allowed if the other counrty has something you want.  Or if they tried to kill your president's dad.

John McCain talks a lot about energy. It's one of the issues he hopes will win this election for him. He likes to talk about how his energy plan for America includes "all of the above." Maybe at some point in the past, McCain did actually care about energy that we didn't dig out of the ground, but today the truth is that he has become indistinguishable from his Republican congressional colleagues, a friend to the oil companies who thinks that if he uses the word 'green' enough, the American people will not bother to examine his record.

He puts images of windmills in his advertisements and pays lip service to renewables in his speeches, but seems unwilling to back his talk up with substance. The entirety of the GOP plan which he has made his own is summed up by his call at the Sturgis rally to "drill here, drill now", with a thousand motorcycles revving in the background. If he really cared about green energy, why has he missed the vote 8 times in the past year on a vital bill to renew the investment tax credits that renewable technologies desperately need to compete with fossil fuels? John McCain is blatantly greenwashing his record and his policies, when in reality they're nothing but an glass of texas tea with a lump of coal for garnish.

(Edit: crossposted at Daily Kos)

I don't usually write diaries, but the current excess of meta issues on the site has driven me to write about a story circulating today that I think people might be interested in.  

The New York Times is reporting on something that's not surprising but for its shocking scale -- the government of Iraq is sitting on a huge pile of money that they are not using for reconstruction, while Americans in increasingly dire straits continue to foot a bill that only a few of our leaders want to continue paying.

The soaring price of oil will leave the Iraqi government with a cumulative budget surplus of as much as $79 billion by year's end an American federal oversight agency has concluded in an analysis released on Tuesday.

[...]

"The Iraqi government now has tens of billions of dollars at its disposal to fund large scale reconstruction projects," said Mr. Levin, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in the statement. "It is inexcusable for U.S. taxpayers to continue to foot the bill for projects the Iraqis are fully capable of funding themselves. We should not be paying for Iraqi projects, while Iraqi oil revenues continue to pile up in the bank," Mr. Levin said.

It looks like Exxon isn't the only one benefiting from oil prices lately.  There's nothing shocking or wrong with the fact that the Iraqi government has collected oil revenues from the last 3 years totaling $156 billion, but the way they've chosen to spend (or rather, hoard) this windfall does raise some important questions.  More below the fold.

Sorry if it bothers anyone to read about stuff that has nothing to do with politics, but I thought some folks might find this interesting, or even useful, especially if they read this site a lot.

If you're a news junkie like me and you've never heard of Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, you're missing out.  It's essentially a system that lets websites publish their stories in a standardized format so that readers can easily check what's new on their favorite sites  from a program that's similar to an email client.  RSS saves me a boatload of time when satisfying my addiction, because I don't need to load a whole website to see whether there are new stories available -- I can skim story titles and summaries very quickly and if I want to see the full story it's just a click away.  You can even get a beep when there's a new article to read.   If you browse the web on a PDA or phone RSS is just about the only way to get by withot going insane from the wait and/or being robbed blind by data overage fees,

MyDD makes use of RSS, even though as far as I can tell there aren't any links to the feeds anywhere on the site.  This is a shame, but some googling reveals that the main feed is located at: http://www.mydd.com/rss/index.rdf

and the diaries feed is at: http://www.mydd.com/rss/diary.rdf

Instructions for using these feeds are available all over the place, but if anyone has questions, feel free to ask in the comments.  If you need a good web based client, I use both Google Reader(which is more like a dedicated program) and iGoogle(a portal, it only shows story titles, so you can fit more feeds on a page), Either one should provide a pleasant introduction to this essential tool which makes using the internet a lot easier.