Apparently disagreeing with Palin puts you at odds with the Constitution.

Political Radar: Palin Fears Media Threaten Her First Amendment Rights
“If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,” Palin told host Chris Plante, “then I don’t know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.”

This is so abysmally wrong, so tragically misunderstanding of what our FIRST GODDAMN AMENDMENT is, that I am not going to insult your intelligence or waste my time explaining why. I’m just going to present it as something she said and continue to silently nurse this ulcer that will continue to grow until Nov 4th.

What do you think would happen if, after the votes were counted, the numbers said McCain won with 85% of the vote?

Holy crap, man, there is just something so very cathartic about this.

The Alfred E.Smith Dinner is an annual fund raising event for Catholic Charities. Since 1960, when Kennedy and Nixon were guests, it’s been a traditional stop for presidential candidates. Apparently, in recent years, it’s also become sort of a…well I won’t say roast exactly, but an opportunity to poke fun at politics. I didn’t know these things, I had to go look it up.

I figured that had to be true, because to risk a speech like that, there’d have to be some context. Still pretty cool, though.

I was kinda thinking about liveblogging the debate again, but 1) who really cares and 2) once I heard about the format, I think I’d rather be livewatchin’. Five minute discussion period? Holy crap. I’ve been wanting that for like forever.

I might write something if it’s highly boring or highly interesting. Otherwise I’ll be checking other livebloggin’s while it’s going on.

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I mean…sigh. I mean. I need a word for this. Backwardism? Reverse-fu? I think I’m past the shock of the baldfaced lies that fly into the face of the truth, and I’m just in a state of dull depression.

TPM MUckraker | Palin Falsely Claimed Report Cleared Her of Legal Wrong-Doing

In a conference call on Saturday, after the report on the Troopergate investigation was released, Palin says:

I’m very very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing … any hint of any kind of unethical activity there.

It’s just…its just astonishing. The first finding of the Branchflower report says, quite clearly:

…Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.

That’s not clearing you of legal wrongdoing, that’s finding you guilty of legal wrongdoing. I mean it’s right there. I was going to say that I can’t comprehend the size of the girl-balls needed to so brazenly lie like that—at reporters—who are all taping the conversation—but really, the media’s generally shown them there’s little accountability for doing so.

Edit: oh, I missed McCain campaign manager Rick Davis doing the same thing.

John McCain assures a crowd that you shouldn’t fear an Obama presidency and he’s a decent man. The crowd boos and makes shocked noises, but he pushes it more and they come around. They can take it as an empty proof of their mistaken views on his character, make it into a “look how noble John McCain” is, whatever. I’m just glad he actually seems to be doing something about the angry crowds he was starting to create.

This has been scaring me. And a lot of other people, judging by the blogs I read. Imagine you want to see a movie, but it’s only playing in one theater in the city, so you go. But when you get there you see it’s not a good neighborhood, you’re even kind of concerned about parking your car and the walk to the theater, but you think nah, it’s probably okay against the advice of your subconscious, and you go in anyway. The theater’s packed. A lot of talking, occasional yelling. Ten minutes into the movie the screen goes dark, people yell. The lights don’t come back on. Voices are getting raised. You hear a lot of shuffling. Somewhere deeper in the theater, a glass bottle breaks.

That’s the feel of the tension I’ve been getting about this recently. And damnit I had a great example of an editorial that I was going to point to, it was someone writing in shock with exclamation points about how he was actually worried, a sort of open letter to McCain saying “Senator, you must put an end to this!” But it turns out all you have to do is google “must stop!” mccain rally to see what I’m talking about. Note that these are not generally Obama supporters saying “McCain should stop attacking Obama”. These are people saying “the McCain campaign has to stop bringing people to the edge of violence.” Or Republicans warn McCain he may soon have blood on his hands. I wonder if the Secret Service asked him to take it down a notch.

So to see him start to actively push back makes me feel a little better. Of course that just means I upgrade my opinion of him from “shit” to “shit with a marshmallow on it”, but still.

Two things: one, apparently I was wrong about the results of the VP debate, and two, holy crap I missed the whole raging discussion in there. I’ve been in Java training all week, hadn’t paid a lot of attention. I’ll have to read through it this weekend.

Why not. All the cool kids are.

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Palin didn’t suck.

The polls are going to flatten out. By election time they’ll be close enough that the vote fixing can be hidden in the chaos of small sample sizes.

I was actually starting to get some hope, too.

sigh.