America does not torture.

Mr. President-Elect, do not shift from this position. Please.

Digby of Hullabaloo:

They've just successfully moved the goalposts. We are now engaged in a battle to persuade Obama that he must unequivocally and publicly disavow what those two jaded, decadent sadists just suggested was necessary lest he risk Americans being killed. Good luck to us on that. Considering Obama's propensity for consensus, I would guess that he will find some way to appease them. (Maybe he'll vow to make sure that the torturers don't enjoy it, as a sop to the liberal freaks.)

But I would suggest that Obama contemplate one little thing before he decides to try to find "middle ground" on torture. It is a trap. If he continues to torture in any way or even tacitly agrees to allow it in certain circumstances, the intelligence community will make sure it is leaked. They want protection from both parties and there is no better way to do it than to implicate Obama. And the result of that will be to destroy his foreign policy.

If the man who represents the second chance this country's been given around the world to repudiate the horrors of the Bush years is revealed to have perpetuated the same horrors, his credibility and foreign policy will be in shambles. And there are many people buried in the intelligence and military establishments who would be happy to make sure that happens.

The best sentence ever explaining why McCain lost.

August J. Pollak: (my bold)

There is going to be a lot of talk about why McCain lost, and I think that's really stupid, because just like the media spending ten hours going over a five-minute revelation, they are likewise going to spend weeks debating an answer that anyone with half a brain cell could tell you- because he pissed away everything he pretended he stood for to have a mentally imbalanced and intellectually defunct pseudo-Christian fundamentalist with a passion for petty grudges and murdering large mammals as his running mate as part of an escalating campaign of fear and racism.

I guarantee you, there will be a painfully large amount of opinions now that this is over using the phrase "I feel sorry for McCain." I don't. He deserves this and he knows it. The last few months of his campaign were evil, and tonight, by an overwhelming margin, we defeated it. We bashed evil in its skull and left it for dead.

A McCain/Palin acolyte

And a fan of Karl Rove:



Via El Gato Negro of Online Blogintegrity

Who wouldn't want an endorsement from the Prince of Darkness?

Update 11/3: He really earned it!

I know it's past Halloween

But I thought I'd scare you a bit more:



How the rightwingers see her:

McCain's indifference to women is obvious

Oh yes we can!

MCCAIN: You’ll have to tell me what’s changed. I love it when they say, “Oh McCain has changed.” And I say, “What have I changed on?” They can’t name a single issue or they’ll name an issue and its false. I’m the same guy. I’m proud of our campaign.

Let me count the ways...

Think Progress' list of 44.

Steve Benen at the Carpetbagger Report's list of 76.

The joke wrote itself at the convention

And it turned out to be true:

Several McCain advisers have suggested to CNN that they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin "going rogue."

A Palin associate, however, said the candidate is simply trying to "bust free" of what she believes was a damaging and mismanaged roll-out.

McCain sources say Palin has gone off-message several times, and they privately wonder whether the incidents were deliberate. They cited an instance in which she labeled robocalls -- recorded messages often used to attack a candidate's opponent -- "irritating" even as the campaign defended their use. Also, they pointed to her telling reporters she disagreed with the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan.

A second McCain source says she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.

Looking out for herself and not giving a shit about anyone else? Isn't that what a maverick is supposed to do? How on earth can anyone be surprised?

Project much, Senator?

SARASOTA, Fla. – Republican John McCain on Thursday spiced up a cross-state bus tour aimed at keeping Florida from swinging to the Democrats by accusing rival Barack Obama of saying "anything to get elected."

Just keeping track of McCain's ability to saying anything even if it's the opposite of what he just said....

McCain! The Flipflopper Express!



crossposted at SteveAudio

Clickable terror

Palin as president.

Annie, get your gun

This is gonna hurt...

For John McCain.

Git off my lawn!!

You damned kids!

Tengrain does it again!! Go and see.

If a candidate is running an ugly campaign

It reflects his desire to run an ugly campaign. John McCain is not an honorable man forced to do what he doesn't want to do. That would indicate a) he's not even able to control his own staff and campaign aides or b) he has no clue what is being done in his name or even worse 3) he's totally clueless because of the onset of senility.

John McCain clearly knows what he is doing. He is playing both sides and playing them for all they're worth.

John McCain may have been at one time honorable. He is no longer.

Glenn Greenwald:

Time's Ana Marie Cox, in a Bloggingheads discussion with Ann Althouse, does an excellent job of expressing what is still, amazingly enough, the prevailing media view of John McCain: namely, that this deeply honorable and principled man is vehemently opposed to running an ugly, dirty campaign against Barack Obama, and that is happening despite McCain's deep opposition to such campaigns and the way it profoundly violates his code of honor.

[snip]

The national press corps continues to revere John McCain despite what is widely acknowledged to be the toxic and ugly campaign he's running because they still think that this campaign is being run despite McCain's character and wishes, not because of them. The idea that someone should be judged by their actual conduct never seems to occur to them, nor do they accept what ought to be the rather self-evident proposition that someone who repeatedly does dishonorable things is, by definition, dishonorable. By their fruits ye shall know them. Or, as former/long-time McCain lover Andrew Sullivan put it:

I'm afraid that [Atlantic Editor] Jim [Fallows] is dealing with what we're all dealing with: the fact that the myth we had of McCain is, in fact, a lie. The real McCain - dishonest, dishonorable and despicable - is now in plain sight. To say I'm disillusioned would be an understatement. The last six weeks have shown us all something we'd rather never have found out. But we can't ignore it now, can we?

Some obviously can -- and are.

Exactly. People in the media would come away from an interview with George Bush declaring he was really a nice guy. As if they couldn't see that both Bush and McCain are ultimate professionals who know how to finesse the media. We who stand back and watch are stunned that the media falls for this trick every single damn time. Cox is just the latest one to fall.

Always going off half-cocked

Tacitly inciting lunatics to violence

What do we really know about Senator John Sydney McCain III? I mean REALLY?

Nobody fucks with John McCain!

See more Hayden Panettiere videos at Funny or Die

Found via Sinfonian at Blast Off!

More like hanging your head over the cliff edge

And seeing which way up the bus lands:

Nate Silver at Fivethirtyeight.com notes that Matt Drudge is hyping the smallest of poll upticks for John McCain and suggests Drudge is "priming a McCain reboot narrative":

Something is a little bit funny when Matt Drudge is treating 1-2 point gains for McCain in the Rasmussen and Zogby tracking polls as "BREAKING" news. Naturally, Drudge ignores other results like the just-released ABC/WaPo poll that show Obama continuing to gain ground.

Drudge has a nose for news, and he knows that a one-point gain in a tracking poll is not news -- unless someone desperately wants it to be.

Drudge's headline, under a picture of a smiling McCain, is "READY FOR COME BACK?" That headline links to a Politico article by Mike Allen headlined "Struggling McCain debuts comeback speech."

Late night movies are usually scary

Go and see.

Temper, temper