The McCain camp is understood to be making tough decisions on where to campaign in the dying days of the race, now regarding Colorado, New Mexico and Iowa as falling out of Senator McCain’s reach. All three states voted for George W.Bush in 2004.
Australian News

McCain is concentrating all his efforts on a last-ditch attempt to win Pennsylvania, in an attempt to squeak by in the election. As 538 notes, his campaign has also stopped allocating money to ads in New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Maine and Minnesota. See also the CNN article on giving up on colorado which raises the point:

The McCain campaign is looking at an Electoral College strategy heading into the final two weeks that has virtually no room for error and depends heavily on a dramatic comeback in Pennsylvania, which hasn’t backed a Republican for president in 20 years.

In some ways, I think the big victor of this campaign is the 50 state strategy that the democratic party switched to using in 2006. Howard Dean’s strategy was to campaign in all the states and try to win in all the states rather than to come up with a game plan for winning just slightly more than 50% of the electoral votes (which was the plan of the RNC (Republicans) and the DLC — a splinter group of democrats run by the Clintons distinguished from the DNC (what folks usually think of when they think Democrat.))

McCain, because he had the now traditional² ‘win just enough’ strategy¹, has been acting on following through with winning the key states and not trying hard in the states he didn’t need to win. Palin, perhaps, is symptomatic of this strategy — since you’re only trying to win the states where you need to win (considering anything else as a bonus), you have to concentrate on appealing to and getting out the base and not the country overall. This is also what conceptually drives the idea of ‘real america.’ Those plans are now upset and he’s now struggling with the narrowing alternatives.

Obama benefits by the work that the Democrats generally have been doing over the last several years, and also by his own campaign, which is quickly becoming omnipresent in towns and areas where you wouldn’t expect them. As the tide comes in, you note other things, like McCain using call centers and having trouble getting volunteers to fill its call centers while Obama’s campaign is relying on volunteers.

Obama’s campaign is a return to the idea sloganeered by “democracy is an efficient marketplace of ideas,”⁴ which is why he’s been moving slowly to the center as the general election proceeds while McCain’s “control from the strong position” strategy moves followers of it inexorably further out to the edges.³ This also gets reflected in the rhetoric — while Obama is now comfortably claiming traditional republican talking points like the middle class and taxes, McCain has the wilder route of negative campaigning left because he has to make sure that all his constituents are as motivated as possible to show up by whatever means he can dredge up.

So, I guess we’ll see.

On a lighter note, hilarious hockey advertisement tangentially related to this post.

¹ and also an inheritor of the GOP’s anti-african american Southern Strategy.
² whose recent implementation was the brainchild of Karl Rove.
³ WJ Clinton’s campaign being an exemplar of this, as he would sit on the center and seize on ideas from both sides like they were hot interns.
⁴ I lifted this phrase from Tongodeon.

Just as only Nixon could go to China, perhaps it takes a supply-side republican, the last of the line of Reagan-derived demagogues with ‘magic’ trickle down theories to go ahead and introduce full-on european style socialism to America. Since GWB comes to praise and not to bury the free market, it makes his incompetence even funnier.

It’s too early to tell whether or not this is a good thing or a bad thing, but one thing is certain: don’t forget this fuckup a year or three from now. Bankers don’t get high-value/high-entropy/non-cashed back toys, there’s a reason that the govt reduced margin buying after the crash in the 30s, and there’s a reason that the market in derivatives collapsed so hard after the farcical mortgage market it was based on failed — and these reasons are about opposite.

Meanwhile, back to the Libretto… The Winter Queen gave her own supporters a verbal lashing at a rally the other day after she mistook their cries for more volume for protest:

The large crowd, more than 20,000-strong, had spread across the car park of Richmond International Raceway and scores of people on the fringes, over 100 metres from the stage, could not hear her.
“Louder! Louder!”they began to chant, some pointing skyward to suggest that the volume be increased.
The self-styled “pitbull in lipstick” looked on bewildered as other supporters began to shout “Sarah! Sarah!”, in an effort to drown out what they mistakenly thought was a protest.
The supporters on the periphery then got a taste of the tongue-lashing normally reserved for their Democratic counterparts as Mrs Palin began a shrill admonishment of their lack of honour.
“I would hope at least that those protesters have the courage and the honour of thanking our veterans thanks for giving them the right to protest,” she said, jabbing her finger at them repeatedly.
Her husband Todd Palin then stepped forward to inform her that “they just can’t hear you back there.”

Well, actually being able to understand what she’s saying seems to be a real downside for many of her supporters anyway. It certainly is for her running-mate, who is apparently arguing with her over the tone of her attacks:

Palin’s frustration with McCain has led to clashes over strategy. [...]
She also told Bill Kristol, the conservative New York Times columnist, that she wished the campaign would make more of Obama’s 20-year association with the Rev Jeremiah Wright, his controversial former pastor, who said, “God damn America”.
“To me, that does say something about character,” Palin said. “But you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring it up.”
McCain’s allies responded by suggesting that she had her own pastor problems, such as the African minister who prayed to Jesus to protect her from witchcraft when she was running for governor.
McCain has told his campaign that attacks on religion are out of bounds. He declined Palin’s advice to “take the gloves” off in his debate with Obama last week and did not refer to Ayers.

The times (UK) article goes on with some excellent analysis of what this probably means, which is that Palin has given up on winning this year and is setting herself up to run for president in 2012.

Predictably, most versions of Palin2012.tld are now owned by some guy in Alaska, but they forgot to purchase the 2016 variants, which are scattered all over the country and/or world. This one is particularly funny:

Domain Name:                                 PALIN.US
Domain ID:                                   D15977285-US
Sponsoring Registrar:                        .US REGISTRAR L.L.C.
Registrar URL (registration services):       whois.networksolutions.com
Domain Status:                               clientTransferProhibited
Registrant ID:                               41092962
Registrant Name:                             Africa Online Uganda
Registrant Organization:                     Africa Online Uganda
Registrant Address1:                         Plot 7 Kampala Rd.
Registrant City:                             Kampala
Registrant State/Province:                   Kampala
Registrant Postal Code:                      00000
Registrant Country:                          Uganda
Registrant Country Code:                     UG
Registrant Phone Number:                     +256.3122212

So, anyway, that’s the news that I’m spinning today. I hope you enjoyed it.

Update: Apparently, someone found Cheney’s heart; it was hidden inside a needle, which is in an egg, which is in a duck, which is in a hare, which is in an iron chest, which is buried under a green oak tree, which is on the island of Buyan, in the ocean.

Seven years ago on August 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a presidential daily briefing entitled, “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S.” The memorandum noted that al-Qaida intended “to follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Youssef and ‘bring the lightning to America.’” The memo also noted “some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that … bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft …” George W. Bush read that memo and … did nothing. He went on vacation. Either he didn’t take it seriously, or he didn’t understand what he was being told, or he just didn’t care, but for whatever reason, he didn’t respond. At all. It is impossible to know whether any response might have effectively prevented or disrupted the attacks that occurred the following month. Maybe it could have, or maybe a responsible, urgent response to this warning wouldn’t have mattered. We’ll never know. All we can know is that what President Bush did — nothing — didn’t work. He didn’t even try. That should be George W. Bush’s epitaph. It should be carved on his tombstone and engraved above his official portrait: He didn’t even try.

…and so our troubles began.

US President George W Bush has explained the credit crunch savaging US financial markets by saying “Wall Street got drunk”.
“It got drunk and now it’s got a hangover,” Mr Bush said at a private political fundraiser in Houston, Texas.

Good that he’s going with what he knows metaphor-wise.

“The question is, how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments?” the president asks in the clip.

I think there’s probably less prosaic ways to describe the issues, or whether the issues were limits and not fancy instruments. But whatever, this is the festival of bad ideas.

“Not in Houston, evidently not in Dallas, because Laura’s over there trying to buy a house today,” he says to the crowd’s laughter.
Mr Bush said they were looking for somewhere to live when they leave Washington, DC, as Mrs Bush no longer wanted to live on their ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Apparently, some other village in texas is getting a village idiot. Is that a one-per-village job or is there a hierarchy? Calculated Risk is a good place to read about the reality of the housing crisis.  These quotes are from an article in bbc news, which hasn’t yet succumbed to outrage fatigue.