John McCain has further covered himself with egg — or in this case huevo — in an excruciatingly embarrassing interview with a reporter for a Spanish newspaper in which it was revealed that he didn’t appear to know that Spain is in Europe, or that the leader of Spain is a guy named Zapatero. Anyhow, the reporter said: “Senator, finally, let’s talk about Spain. If you’re elected president, would you invite President Zapatero to meet with you in the White House?”...

The feeling grows that John McCain is not fully in control of himself. That his party’s animal past and legendary inflexibility may be catching up to him. That he doesn’t have the mental agility to stay sharp, let alone face down Barack Obama. McCain seems unsteady without Sarah Palin at his side and is drawing smaller crowds now that he is out on his own. Meanwhile, the post-convention bounce and Palin boomlet have ended with a thud and the Alaska governor’s negatives are intersecting...

Weekly Dow Jones Industrial Average, 2002-2008 When viewed from perspective of an economy on the verge of a nervous breakdown and the battering that venerable Wall Street institutions and the Dow Jones Industrial Average have taken, President Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security would have wreaked extraordinary havoc had it seen the light of day. And if John McCain were to get his way, that may yet happen. In fact, McCain wants to radically transform Social Security and employer-provided...

This review is for Rochelle, my dear departed Buddhist friend Tibet is a land rich not just in history, but also in irony. “The Roof of the World” holds a special place in the popular imagination because of the movie Shangri-La and other gauzy Hollywood treatments, as well as one individual, the Dalai Lama. But those celluloid depictions are fawningly unrealistic, while the Dalai Lama is typically reduced to a caricature. One in five Tibetans has died, one in 10 has been jailed and most...

The state of political discourse in the U.S. was not exactly robust as the Age of Bush dawned, but the downward spiral of the last eight years has been something to behold. And I don’t believe that we have reached bottom yet. That would be when and if John McCain and Sarah Palin are elected not on the basis of a substantive discussion of the problems that are wracking America and how to solve them (because they know they are toast if they take the high road), but because of a campaign pickled...

Isn’t it extraordinary that even though the huge Wall Street firms that keep failing one after another got to write their own rules, they were so greedy that they didn’t even realize it when they began eating their own tails? Merrill Lynch, which agreed to sell itself yesterday to Bank of America to keep from tanking, and Lehman Brothers, which is tanking and will seek bankruptcy protection because it can’t find a buyer, become the latest “venerable” Wall Street institutions...

Joe Gandelman would be living in a cardboard box if his sole gig was being editor in chief of this blog, and his flirtation with homelessness is mitigated only because he has a “straight” job as a ventriloquist. Until I became acquainted with Joe and had basked for a while in the glow of his enormous heart, I never knew that if a traveling ventriloquist is going to make his nut in a given year, summer with its myriad fairs and festivals is it. (Okay, I’m exaggerating the homeless thing....

JOHN McCAIN VISITS “THE RACHEL RAY SHOW” Photograph by David M. Russell

With opening arguments set to begin Monday in the bizarro armed robbery-kidnapping of two sports memorabilia dealers in a Las Vegas casino hotel room, it appears that O.J. Simpson, like the proverbial cat, has finally run out of lives. Simpson and Clarence Stewart, one of the five other men originally charged in the September 2007 incident, face a dozen charges. The four others have pleaded guilty and will testify against The Juice. Simpson and Stewart have pleaded not guilty, while Simpson says...

It was reassuring — in a Nightmare on Elm Street sort of way — that Sarah Palin, in what can be considered her first foreign-policy address, repeated the discredited Bush administration mantra that the war in Iraq is being fought in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Even the president himself has rejected his oft-repeated contention that the Al Qaeda hijackers came from Iraq, but this did not prevent John McCain’s running mate from trotting out the canard in a speech yesterday...

Do being honest and principled count for anything in an era when taking liberties with the truth is taken for granted and the high road is less traveled? The answer is a tentative “yes” coming from someone who could have voted for John McCain not that long ago because he seemed to be a man of conviction whose moral compass was pointed in the right direction, but has watched with a dismay that has turned to horror as he runs what is easily the sleaziest presidential campaign of the nine...

In Part One, we learned that Sarah Palin has taken stands opposite John McCain on open government and sex ed, feuds with members of her extended family, lies about little things as well as big things, has never expressed a conviction on a major issue, attends a church where some pretty weird stuff gets preached, as a true-blue Christianist effortlessly mixes religion and politics, and that there is a concerted effort by the McCain campaign to quash an investigation in which she is accused of firing...

In an upset that has major implications for who might succeed Joe Biden in the U.S. Senate if he becomes Vice President, the state treasurer and Democratic Party maverick Jack Markell squeaked by Lieutenant Governor John Carney yesterday in a primary election that shattered Delaware turnout records. Carney had been expected to win, which meant that Governor Ruth Ann Minner, a Democrat, probably would have chosen Markel to succeed Biden, who remains on the November ballot and is expected to easily...

RHYTHM & ROOTS BREAKOUT DONNA THE BUFFALO The DF&C and I are hopeless music heads, especially when it comes to American roots music — folk, blues, jazz, bluegrass, soul, Cajun, zydeco, swing, and so on and so forth. But we long ago tired of arena- and stadium-sized concerts. We catch the occasional gig at a theater or club, but in recent years have mostly gotten our fix from summer music festivals. We’ve had four festivals in our May-September rotation for several years now....

In Part One, we learned that Sarah Palin has taken stands opposite John McCain on open government and sex education, feuds with members of her extended family, lies about little things as well as big things, has never expressed a conviction on a major issue, there is a concerted effort to quash an investigation in which she is accused of firing a political enemy, she attends a church where some pretty weird stuff gets preached and, as a true-blue Christianist, effortlessly mixes religion and politics. On...

. . . FIRST STEERED THE USS ENTERPRISE INTO WARP DRIVE.

Don’t expect the Bush administration’s embrace of Nazi-like torture techniques to be a talking point as the presidential campaign heads into the home stretch. As despicable as the practice has been — and made worse by the cover-ups, obfuscations and junk-law opinions justifying its use — torture simply isn’t on the radar screen of most voters. That so noted, and overlooking any mental torture that previous presidents may have suffered at the hands of their First Ladies,...

He got invited to the convention because he had pre-marital sex with her. John McCain proclaims that he is for open government. Palin, meanwhile, is for closed government. Palin’s handlers say she and her family have nothing to hide. But fisherman husband Todd Palin’s former business partner filed an emergency motion to have his divorce papers sealed, surely a coincidence in light of the National Enquirer chasing a report that Sarah and the partner did the do-si-do. (The motion was denied,...

Any blog with an audience as diverse as The Moderate Voice is sure to have a few right-of-center trolls lurking under the bridge who rush out and kneecap any commentator with whom they disagree before rushing back to hide in the shadows and nibble on their stash of Gramm crackers. In a spare moment, I reviewed the comments from this crowd — they know who they are, eh AR? — over the past four days and was shocked, just shocked, to discover that of the 67 comments from trolls in response...

(13.) The U.S. has moved so far to the right during the past eight years that people who would have been considered moderates in 2000 are viewed today as liberals and liberals are viewed as leftists. (12.) That’s okay, because thanks to Bush-Cheney we live in a time of prosperity with stable energy prices and diminished dependence on imported oil, there is peace abroad and except for pesky community organizers, America is the envy of the world. (11.) Where does this leave conservatives? If...

It has now been confirmed that Sarah Palin can bite. But can she chew and digest? In a Republican National Convention appearance that was 95 percent theater and 5 percent substance, the Alaska governor broke her silence with an Exxon Valdez of a speech laden with empty rhetoric that was received with roaring adulation by delegates already fired up by the demagogic Rudy Giuliani, whom we can truly thank God is not on the ticket. And oh the quips! “The difference between a hockey mom and a pit...

I would normally defer to Barack Obama’s view that candidates’ families are off limits, something that right-wing bloviators have not afforded his wife. But Sarah Palin deserves no such consideration because this gun-packing, gay-bashing hypocrite of a mommy has made so-called family values a centerpiece of her politics, inevitably shining a harsh light on wayward daughter Bristol, a precocious 17-year-old whose hormones answered the siren call of premarital sex. The mere thought that...

If John McCain’s Trainwreck Express can make it through the next few days without going off the rails, then running mate Sarah Palin probably will survive. But if the revelations continue to roll in — from Palin’s thuggery as a small-town mayor and big-state governor, that she couldn’t even operate a car wash without running afoul of the law, her problematic religious affiliations, to the lack of vetting until after the fact to perhaps the most important determinant, Barack...

Look long and hard at this photograph, America. I mean really long and hard. Because when all is said and done, this is what selecting a vice presidential running mate is all about. Look long and hard at this photograph, America. I mean really long and hard. Now, squint a little and picture Joe Biden raising his right hand to take the oath of office as a stunned Michelle Obama stands at his left side and Jill Biden at his right. A disturbing thought, but at the same time comforting. Because Biden...

There are those, I know, who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American dream. — ARCHIBALD MacLEISH In exactly nine weeks, America will go to the polls in the most important election of my lifetime and, I daresay, for anyone who wasn’t old enough to vote for Franklin Roosevelt or Herbert Hoover in 1932. Why is it the most important? Because even before factoring in the excesses, amorality and criminality...