1281: Chinese throw gunpowder bombs at charging Japanese Chinese claims that they were responsible for hundreds of mankind’s most familiar inventions — including explosives, printing, the compass, hydraulics, ceramics, suspension bridges and even toilet paper — were long viewed with skepticism by Westerners who were smugly certain that these ancient people were incapable of such advanced innovations. That was until Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham came along. The story of...

Yes, there are three and a half weeks to go until Election Day, but the news that Sarah Palin violated ethics laws and abused her power as Alaska governor has the air of a coda. It is not merely further confirmation that John McCain’s running mate is a venal incompetent and pathological liar, but that her time on the national stage should be fittingly short. As political scandals go, Troopergate is small beer. And just another instance of Palin, with a big assist from the thuggish First Dude,...

The calls for John McCain and Sarah Palin to speak out over the unhinged behavior of their campaign rally audiences are increasing, but the candidates themselves — who are directly responsible for this troubling trend — are still AWOL on the issue. Writes Jonathan Martin at The Politico: “The unmistakable momentum behind Barack Obama’s campaign, combined with worry that John McCain is not doing enough to stop it, is ratcheting up fears and frustrations among conservatives. “And...

This is a post that I write with especial care because I understand that we are all complex beings, as well as knowing that a lifetime of achievement and celebrity is no bar to weaknesses and venality. In fact, I dare you to name a single famous person who did not have foibles, if not a dark side. Then there is John McCain, a man whom I once considered voting for until his own frailties, to put it most kindly, became too big and too numerous to ignore: * A miserable record as Naval Academy midshipman...

With even many sycophants in the right-of-center punditocracy saying that the McCain-Palin ticket is toast, it was with more than the usual amount of interest that I waited for what the campaign promised would be a major announcement this morning. The major announcement: A 90-second Internet commercial beating the Bill Ayers-Barack Obama dead horse a few more times. With millions of Americans feeling like they’re being beaten, this is the best the campaign could come up with? Puh-thetic. ...

There is little question that the presidential race will tighten as Election Day approaches. It always does. But absent an apocalyptic event, Barack Obama will cruise across the finish line ahead of John McCain in the most important election since Franklin Roosevelt beat Herbert Hoover in the depths of the Great Depression. I do not make that cross-generational comparison lightly because in 1932 things were sucky in a way that none of us — excepting a precious few long-lived grandmothers and...

To say that tensions are extremely high on the Republican stump with the race slipping away is an understatement. That the hardest of the hard core are crawling out of the woodwork probably was inevitable. But there has been some pretty ugly acting out, as reported here and here, because of the way that John McCain and Sarah Palin have been baiting campaign rally audiences, and the Secret Service is now on the case. Writes Ta-Nehisi Coates: “I don’t hold McCain or Palin accountable for...

With Barack Obama finally breaking 50 percent in national public-opinion polls and John McCain sinking like a stone, the town hall face-off in Nashville last night was the Democrat’s to lose, but the feeling persisted throughout the 90 minutes (which felt more like 900) that both men understand that fixing what ails the economy is bigger than either of them. With financial markets having a nervous breakdown, the Crew Without a Clue madly rearranging deck checks in Washington and a largely...

John McCain delivers yet another invective-filled stump speech, this one at a rally in New Mexico. He asks rhetorically: “Who is the real Barack Obama?” Someone shouts: “A terrorist!” The crowd cheers. McCain remains silent. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin is doing her part in Clearwater, Florida, telling a rally where reporters are herded away from the audience by campaign workers, that: “I was reading my copy of the New York Times the other day.” The crowd boos. “I...

Times could not be tougher for the John McCain-Sarah Palin punditocracy. It’s bad enough that the approval rating of George W. Bush, their hero of the last eight years, has reached a historic low. And, inconveniently for these Bubba-Bashers, Bill Clinton ended his second term with a robust 70 percent rating despite lying about sex. Or that the revolution fostered by Ronald Reagan, their hero of the last century, has been sacrificed at the altar of greed through a deregulation movement nurtured...

The Bush administration’s refusal to follow the rule of law on a wide range of issues is by now monumental, but it nevertheless is shocking that despite three Supreme Court rulings striking down key aspects of its extralegal system for detainees at Guantánamo Bay, it continues to argue that it’s all a big misunderstanding. The push-back is part of a larger strategy for George Bush, a man equal parts arrogant and cowardly: Major decisions, whether they concern Iraq, Afghanistan or the...

And so in the first week of the last full month of the 2008 presidential campaign, a desperate John McCain has sent Sarah Paln back to the well to try to exploit the long-ago and passing relationship between Bill Ayers, the former Weather Underground fugitive foot soldier, and Barack Obama. This unholy alliance is back in the news not because of new revelations. We’re still stuck where we were months ago. That is that Obama, in his rookie run for the Illinois Senate, attended a fundraiser...

I once had a dream in which two lions of classical music played the leading roles — pianist Martha Argerich and conductor Charles Dutoit. The dream was set in the kitchen of a Mediterranean villa. Dutoit was backing out of the room as Argerich threw china plates from a sideboard at him. They missed their mark and only feelings seem to have been hurt. I know not whether Argerich and Dutoit were married in my dream, but once upon a time they were in real life and so my nocturnal interlude involving...

My capacity for being surprised has somehow endured despite writing thousands of news stories, commentaries and blog posts about pretty much everything from the fact that pigs really can fly (in reserved USAir seats) to O.J. Simpson being acquitted for murder (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary). And so it is with signs that Barack Obama may be on the verge of blowing out John McCain. This outcome, which if it is sustained would easily rank atop a fairly hefty list of surprises in the...

Most of the attention is focused on tonight’s vice-presidential debate, which is shaping up to be the anticlimactic event of the campaign season. This is because it will take a performance even sorrier than those Sarah Palin already has delivered for her to “lose” to Joe Biden, while anything less than rampant incoherence will be spun as a “big win.” While I will have one eye on the debate and another on the National League Division Series, my heart will be with the...

Props to New York Times columnist David Brooks for the divine turn of phrase in the headline above. Props to House Republicans for not only confusing talk radio with reality, but being so maliciously partisan that they preferred to set up Democrats for being blamed for a Wall Street bailout gone awry than to reach across the aisle to help hammer out a deal, no matter how flawed, that might forestall a deepening financial crisis. The proof that these Republicans were much more interested in acting...

With Election Day five weeks away, here is the state of the game in the presidential race: * Saturday Night Live’s Tina Fey is more qualified to face Joe Biden in Thursday’s vice-presidential debate than Sarah Palin is. * Some six percent of voters tell pollsters that they will not vote for Obama because of his skin color, but the number probably is higher. * John McCain needs a game-changer but has painted himself into a very tight corner because he continues to run a campaign that...

It comes as no surprise that there was a steady drumbeat of partisan politics in the drafting of the $700 billion financial bailout plan that was defeated this afternoon largely because of defiant House Republicans. But both parties turned up the vitriol in the wake of the stunning no-confidence vote in President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and global markets dutifully reacted. As one leading economic light wrote, “Yes, Virginia, this is a crash.” As the following summary...

The first of Paul Newman’s extraordinary 10 Academy Award nominations was for his superb portrayal of Brick Pollitt, the alcoholic former football star and under-performing husband, in the screen version of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I hadn’t realized until Newman’s passing at age 83 on Friday that, of his many roles, this had become my favorite over the years, in part because of the powerful interplay between Brick and wife Maggie “The Cat” Pollitt,...

“This really is pathetic. . . . Anyone who has been to high school immediately recognizes the terror of facing a pop quiz or an oral exam when you just have no idea what you’re talking about.” — JAMES FALLOWS The estimable Mr. Fallows does not choose his words lightly and he may have spent more time in Alaska than I have. But being of proximate ages, we both surely have met our share of people who behind their attractive and earnest exteriors are lightweights. People who...

I had forgotten about how much I dislike campaign debates. Not because they aren’t important. Last night’s certainly was because it was a “crucial face off” minus only a drum-roll intro between an experienced political icon about whom we know so much and a relative newcomer about whom we know so little. (The same certainly will be true of the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate if Sarah Palin doesn’t announce that she is suspending campaigning to rush back to Juneau because...

UPDATE: Blaming Barack Obama and Congress, in other words everyone but himself for the failure of his latest and boldest attempt to game voters, John McCain has announced that he will be in Mississippi tonight for the first presidential debate. McCain reversed field after having declared that he couldn’t face off against Barack Obama unless a deal was reached on the Wall Street financial aid bailout. A campaign spokesman cited progress in bailout negotiations as the reason McCain relented, but...

The familiar frat boy smirk was absent when George Bush went before the nation last night to cry wolf. The man speaking from the White House had recently managed the feat of polling disapproval ratings lower than Richard Nixon during the week before he resigned, while the people objecting most vociferously to the $700 billion taxpayer-funded bailout plan being engineered by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the de facto president of the hour, were conservative Republicans. Representative Jeb Hensarling...

As noted here, last week was the game changer in the 2008 presidential campaign and that finally seems to have sunk in this afternoon as John McCain announced that he was suspending campaigning to help fix the economy, urged Barack Obama to do the same and, oh, wants to hold off on that first debate. The McCain-Sarah Palin campaign is imploding. After campaign spokesmouths criticized one national poll earlier in the day showing Obama and Joe Biden pulling away as an outlier, Fox News‘ own...

The murder of any police officer is an outrage, but when Highway Patrol Officer Patrick McDonald yesterday became the fourth Philadelphia cop to be gunned down in 11 months, the financial crisis and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, let alone the presidential campaign, seemed ever more like abstractions. McDonald, a star athlete in high school and eight-year veteran of the force, was widely-admired. The 30-year-old bachelor had bought and lived in the house in the Morrell Park neighborhood where...