Phoenix Woman

Aside from those pundits whose devotion to the GOP or their own meal tickets won't allow them to face reality, the consensus is that McCain lost his third and last debate with Barack Obama. But that's not all he's lost. His reputation as a sensible and decent human being is gone too, and it's his own fault.

While certain print-media folk such as Joe Klein have started refusing to pass on Republican talking points as news, most media outlets, especially radio and TV ones, are still chugging the RNC's Kool-Aid. Case in point: Their coverage of Republican efforts to turn the activist group ACORN into the latest Evil Demon of this year's election cycle.

If you've been wondering why the Republicans have been yammering about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being the alleged root of the financial meltdown when they really weren't, here's a hint: Once again, it's all about blaming poor black people for stuff done by rich white people.

As he reminded us the other day, John Cole nailed it way back in February, when he noted the number of GOP rats bailing from the sinking ship of Congress and McCain in a move they hoped would inoculate them from blame when, among other things, the subprime time bomb blew up:So here is why they are sabotaging McCain- they want him to lose, or at the very least are hedging

What's really interesting to me, in watching the Obama-McCain endgame play itself out, is the differences between the operations of the two campaigns. Ironically enough, straight-up civilian Barack Obama understands the value of an overarching strategy in a way that generals like Bradley and Grant and Sherman would comprehend, while Navy legacy baby John McCain's wild flailings make it clear that he doesn't know the first thing about strategy.

Round Two of the Obama-McCain debates went pretty much as Round One did: As the bitter fruits of Republican wars and deregulation become ever more apparent, people are not in the mood for clowning around. They want to see that whoever holds the briefcase with the launch codes is a sober, steady-minded, competent leader. Once again, Obama passed that test and McCain didn't.

Looking at his actions of the past year, it's hard not to conclude that self-appointed campaign-finance watchdog Fred Wertheimer is utterly in the tank for John McCain. Wertheimer, who is a key official in the groups Common Cause and most especially Democracy 21, has been very quick to attack Obama for any campaign-finance violation, real or imagined. Yet he is slow off the mark to criticize McCain -- he did so in February only after we dirty hippies in the reality-based section of the blogosphere had been hammering him on this for days beforehand.

So now that the desperate Republicans have decided that Bill Ayers is an Evil Terrorist, let's look at the people that Sarah Palin pals around with, shall we? Namely, the Alaska Independence Party, at whose gatherings she speaks and which counted both her and her husband Todd as longtime members -- and which hates America so much it wants to leave it.

People might have been in a mood to put up with cutesy-wootsy stuff back in 2000, when the nation was prosperous thanks to Bill Clinton. They might have willingly taken a flyer on somebody like Jesse Ventura or Arnold Schwarzenegger back then. They aren't going to put up with it now, not with Bush's financial and military quagmires to fix.

Dropping this stuff out of helicopters Sorry, folks, but I'm afraid it's going to be a bad deal or no deal at all. Here's why: The Republicans who voted down yesterday's bill did so in large part because they disliked the few things we liked about it: Namely, some oversight, tax and punishment provisions.