Every appearance he makes dwells on Obama and fails to lay out his own plans in a way that would be attractive to voters. Tonight’s appearance on Larry King seemed almost entirely focused on Obama, his affect on supporters, his fundraising, his platform, etc. McCain really needs to make this a McCain sales pitch in the last 5 days…you can’t run for President on the “I’m not that guy” platform. It didn’t work for Kerry, Gore or Dole.

I guess giving advice as to how he can turn this around in the final five days is futile. At this point, if McCain wants to win, he’s got to locate and publicize footage of Obama performing illicit sex acts, giving drugs to his daughters, flushing a Bible down a toilet, denying the Holocaust, and planning 9/11 at Osama bin Laden’s beach house in France. There isn’t a single blogger or mainstream media outlet predicting anything less than an Obama landslide at this point.

See what I mean below:

electionprojection.com

electoral-vote.com

fivethirtyeight.com

pollster.com

realclearpolitics.com

politico.com

msnbc.com

cnn.com

yahoo.com

From the New Yorker:

For her part, Sarah Palin, who has lately taken to calling Obama “Barack the Wealth Spreader,” seems to be something of a suspect character herself. She is, at the very least, a fellow-traveller of what might be called socialism with an Alaskan face.

The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds finance the government’s activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual check to every man, woman, and child in the state. One of the reasons Palin has been a popular governor is that she added an extra twelve hundred dollars to this year’s check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269.

A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that “we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.” Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it (“collectively,” no less), but finding it would require the analytic skills of Karl the Marxist.

My own emphasis added so you don’t miss the MASSIVELY hypocritical parts…and they are MASSIVE.

Here’s over a dozen reasons not to vote McCain on November 4:

John McCain opposes equal pay legislation, saying it wouldn’t do “anything to help the rights of women” that are paid less for doing work equal to men at their places of employment. He suggested women just needed “more education and training.” Uhh, no Senator…

John McCain opposes requiring health care plans cover birth control, allowing the religious beliefs of plan administrators to dictate access to the pill for millions of women whose employers offer no alternative. If someone doesn’t WANT birth control, they don’t have to take it–nobody is trying to mandate the pill, they’re only trying to protect its availability! McCain misses the point here entirely!

McCain opposes restoring family planning services for low-income women (a program Bush cut during his administration). Real compassionate!

He supports the “global gag rule” which shuts down U.S.-funded family planning organizations overseas if they provide abortions or even provide information about abortions. Is abortion the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge or something? We punish charities just for sharing information now?

McCain promises to actively seek the overturning of Roe v. Wade if elected. It’s right there on his website! He has voted against a woman’s right to choose 125 times.

He said he was “stumped” when asked whether contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV. The answer is “absolutely not,” Senator.

He is a strong supporter of abstinence-only sex education in schools, which has been shown over and over to be totally ineffective at reducing teen pregnancy and STD transmission amongst children and teens.

He voted to prevent people living with HIV and AIDS from permanently immigrating into the United States. How much of a “national security threat” does a knowingly infected person pose? Wouldn’t the real threat come from a person ignorant of their HIV status?

He sponsored a bill to require Internet service providers to become porn police and slap them with a $300,000 fine if they fail to report images on their sites that the Department of Justice decides are illegal, which is a slippery slope to Internet censorship and the Thought Police–who’s the real socialist here?

He opposes equal marriage, and supports the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 which makes a perfectly legal marriage in one state meaningless in every other–directly in conflict with the Full Faith and Credit Clause of Article IV of the U.S. Constitution.

Not only does he oppose equal marriage, but he even opposes domestic partnerships and any sort of civil recognition of same-sex monogamy. Because gays are seen by conservative fundamentalists as promiscuous disease-spreaders, they are not allowed to enter into monogamous relationships recognized by the government which would put an end to the promiscuous disease-spreading. How does that even make sense!?!?

McCain is opposed to gays and lesbians serving in the military. Over 12,500 servicemembers have been discharged since 1993 for being openly gay or being suspected of being gay.

He opposes adoption by same-sex couples.

And, perhaps worst of all, he thinks employers should be allowed to fire people simply because they suspect they may be gay.

From the AFP:

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who has accused Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama of “palling around with terrorists,” has refused to call people who bomb abortion clinics by the same name.

When asked Thursday night by NBC television presenter Brian Williams whether an abortion clinic bomber was a terrorist, Palin heaved a sigh and, at first, circumvented the question.

“There’s no question that Bill Ayers by his own admittance was one who sought to destroy our US Capitol and our Pentagon. That is a domestic terrorist,” Palin said, referring to a 1960s leftist who founded a radical violent gang dubbed the “Weathermen” — and who years later supported Obama’s first run for public office in the state of Illinois.

“Now, others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or facilities that it would be unacceptable to… I don’t know if you’re gonna use the word ‘terrorist’ there,” the ardently pro-life running mate of John McCain said.

Somehow filling people with the fear of random violence at their places of work is only terrorism if it happens in a building with columns and a federally controlled budget. Or perhaps she believes violence against government and businesses is unjustifiable, but violence against family planners and scared pregnant teenagers…?

My parents’ Congressman spoke at a rally recently where he said “liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God.” Not quite sure what it means to be a “fake” American, but I’ll let that slide for now…

Hayes then issued this denial about making the statement: “Hayes absolutely denies making the comments that appear in the Observer article.”

Audio then surfaced of his original comment and proved he lied about not saying it:

As a response to being caught red-handed, Hayes issued this clarification:

“As a conservative, I fight for lower taxes and policies that strengthen our values. Liberals are advocating higher taxes, which I believe punish success – and they are advocating policies like gay marriage that I feel undermine strong families.”

Still following me? Okay, well in attempting to halt the s**t storm that his first comment ignited, the man who represents my parents in the House of Representatives managed to do even more damage. He had no reason to say anything further than “punish success,” but he did and it was vile.

There is absolutely no justification for this sort of hatred, and it should definitely not be guiding the policy decisions of Members of Congress. To say that same-sex marriage “undermine[s] strong families” is to say that same-sex parents cannot have “strong families” themselves; it also says you believe that same-sex parents living down the street will somehow weaken the home life of different-sex parents in that neighborhood. Nobody can offer (and will ever find) support for such statements.

Mom, Dad, Patti, Kerri, and my friends in the 8th District of North Carolina–please vote for Larry Kissell on November 4.

Like a true Maverick, John McCain is purposely losing this election so as to flout “public opinion,” go “against the grain,” and avoid adopting a “pack mentality” like his friends, the voting “elite.” That’s gotta be the reason he picked a running mate who is now his biggest liability. Right? Someone?

Given her seclusion from the lower 48 states, I am hardly surprised but deeply saddened that Sarah Palin has just injected the issue of a constitutional ban on gay marriage into the national discussion even though it hasn’t been on the table since it was roundly killed SEVERAL times before and after the 2004 elections by both parties! The GOP is getting desperate to fire up their base, it seems, and no frightening minority group will be spared. Muslims, blacks, educators and gays be afraid…be very afraid.

From the Christian Broadcasting Network:

“I am, in my own, state, I have voted along with the vast majority of Alaskans who had the opportunity to vote to amend our Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. I wish on a federal level that that’s where we would go because I don’t support gay marriage,” Palin said.

“I’m not going to be out there judging individuals, sitting in a seat of judgment telling what they can and can’t do, should and should not do, but I certainly can express my own opinion here and take actions that I believe would be best for traditional marriage and that’s casting my votes and speaking up for traditional marriage that, that instrument that it’s the foundation of our society is that strong family and that’s based on that traditional definition of marriage, so I do support that.”

For the record, when a federal marriage amendment was being debated in 2004, John McCain broke from his party’s leadership and took to the Senate floor to denounce it:

“The constitutional amendment we’re debating today strikes me as antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans,” McCain said. “It usurps from the states a fundamental authority they have always possessed and imposes a federal remedy for a problem that most states do not believe confronts them.”

So if you say you’re a ‘maverick,’ and then you pick a ‘maverick’ as your running mate, your campaign can effectively say anything it wants in order to please as many groups as you can find, even if your messages are fundamentally contradictory?

How’s that working out for you?

The video distracts from the lyrics a bit, but it’s amusing (while the lyrics are not). The words are, to me, the utmost expression of human love, pure and unending:

“If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied
And illuminate the “no”’s on their vacancy signs
If there’s no one beside you when your soul embarks
I’ll follow you into the dark”

Are your eyes welling up with tears yet?

City: Arlington, VA
Neighborhood: Crystal City
Address: 556 22nd Street South

On Friday, Dave and I ventured all the way to Athena Pallas (about a block and a half from our apartment) to try out the Greek cuisine. We were pleasantly surprised.

Athena Pallas isn’t much to look at from the outside (or the inside, for that matter). The artwork on the walls is lovely, though not exactly hung with purpose. The work of creating atmosphere is thus left entirely to the music, and it does alright.

But the food is great. We opened the meal with the Saganaki (fried sheep cheese) as an appetizer. As the cook brought it to our table, she squeezed half a lemon over it and we really enjoyed the mix of bitterly sharp cheese with the citrus juice. Definitely not something your kids will like, but if you enjoy true Mediterranean fare, you’ll dig it.

For dinner, Dave had the Pikilia Ellinike (Greek Combo), which had a bit of everything: Moussaka, pastitsio, dolmades, spanakopita, soutzoukaki. I wasn’t as hungry, so I just ordered the spanakopita. As was expected, we both received huge portions of food. The feta, the spinach, the green beans, the carrots, even the bread they brought at the start of the evening were all deliciously nuanced–again, this is not a place you want to bring finnicky kids. In fact, the patrons were mostly older than my parents.

On the beverage front, the fountain Diet Coke tasted a little funny–we’ve been more and more aware of how some restaurants fail or succeed at mixing their sodas, so I thought I’d start including this information in these reviews.

Overall, a quiet evening with good food you don’t often eat (unless your last name ends in “-oros” or “-ius”).

Ray’s Rating: B

Have a listen here!

From TPM:

McCain said his robo-slime was highlighting “a legitimate issue,” which is the question of whether Obama is “being truthful with the American people,” a clear reference to his robo-call attacking Obama’s association with William Ayers…

McCain’s Ayers robo-slime is not about Obama’s honesty at all. Rather, it’s all about Ayers’ domestic terrorism, and it’s all about the false insinuation that Obama has “worked closely” with Ayers in his capacity as a terrorist and killer of Americans.

We’re now at the point where John McCain has been reduced to distorting his own distortions — he’s not only running a robo-slime campaign that is totally at odds with his previously claimed principles, but he’s now lying about it, too.

Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, emailed this morning with news that Obama raised an extraordinary sum in September: over $150 million in just 30 days! He added 632,000 new donors, bringing the campaign’s total number of donors to over 3 million, whose average donation for the month was around $50.