I feel more than justified in having been harshly-critical of mainstream media coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign from the jump because I know of what I speak: This is my ninth campaign as a reporter, editor and now blogger. But that does not explain, let alone forgive, John McCain’s war on the news media — from bristling about being called out on his serial lies to denying any and all access to Sarah Palin that is not carefully-scripted to the big guy’s own disappearing...

(1.) It’s no surprise that senior citizens are among the most vocal opponents of the $700 billion financial bailout plan. Only they can recall first hand the privations of the Great Depression, the last great systemic collapse of American financial institutions. (2.) Efforts by both Republicans and Democrats to the contrary, the meltdown does not have partisan roots. Both parties must share in the blame. (3.) Some shameless commentators are hinting that it’s all the fault of colored...

George has left the reservation and for good measure has slammed the door on the way out. But at least John will always have Rush.

As a very grown-up 18 year old (or so I thought), I traveled to New York City alone for the first time during my senior year in high school. Some 40 years later, I vaguely recall getting off a Trailways bus at the Port Authority and walking out into the teeming throngs on 42nd Street. I lunched on a freshly-sliced roast beef sandwich at an Irish pub near Madison Square Garden and washed it down with my inaugural English ale. I dropped some pocket change into the open guitar case of the first street...

John McCain’s last media availability was on August 13. Sarah Palin has not had a media availability in the 25 days since she burst on the national scene and has sat for only two interviews, one with ABC News at which she took offense because she was asked a few tough questions and one with the ever-indulgent Fox News that was a scripted love feast. The Palin Cone of Silence shtick got old after a couple of weeks because it made light of a situation that is decidedly unfunny: The Republican...

The more I try to digest the $700 billion taxpayer bailout of failing financial institutions proposed over the weekend by the Bush administration the greater my chest pains become. Other than its aim — to buy up distressed mortage-related assets — there is nothing to like about it and much to fear. The prescient Kevin Phillips, the former Republican strategist, explains to Bill Moyers why we should be frightened — very frightened. Hat tip to Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture

I’m not buying into rumors that Sarah Palin is on the way out. If John McCain can’t admit that he misheard an interviewer regarding Spain and its premier there is no way in Hell that he’s going to acknowledge that picking the vetting-free Alaska governor as a running mate is turning out to be a disaster of enormous magnitude. To wit: Palin has cancelled fundraisers in California and Washington state and canceled two rallies in Florida and one in Virginia. Meanwhile, Palin’s...

McCain came home a hero, but has made a mockery of those who didn’t. I have long been puzzled by the troubled relationship that John McCain, a war hero by virtue of his five-and-a-half year incarceration in a North Vietnamese POW camp, has had with veterans in general and Vietnam veterans in particular. The friction has typically been over medical benefits and expanding the GI Bill, but McCain also has a dirty little secret when it comes to his fellow Vietnam era POWs and MIAs. While he has...

We have lost control. We cannot stabilize the dollar. We cannot control commodity prices. — BEN BERNANKE While, as an American taxpayer, I am extremely proud to now own an insurance company and plan to lower everyone’s rates just as soon as I have a chance, the ongoing economic crisis has a different — and decidedly creepy — feel to it than those in the recent past. Perhaps the last eight years of deregulation, rampant greed and an epidemic of book-cooking has bludgeoned...

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.