Last night Sarah Palin told Joe Biden, “You had supported John McCain’s military strategies pretty adamantly until this race.”
Not true, as we detail at TPM Election Central.
The House just started voting on the latest version of the bailout plan. Stay tuned …
Late Update: The vote hasn’t been gaveled yet, but looks like it will pass by a comfortable margin.
Later Update: It passes 263-171 (final number subject to change).
Latest Update: Still not clear if a majority of House Republicans came on board. We’re double checking that now.
McCain Lost the Caucus Update: A majority of House Republicans voted against the bailout this time around, too. That’s not leadership we can believe in.
Sarah Palin says she learned that the McCain-Palin campaign was conceding Michigan to Obama when she read about it in the newspaper this morning:
Bonus Flub Update: And, yes, as readers have pointed out, Carl Cameron mistakenly identifies Palin as the Democratic nominee for vice president.
Great catch from Krugman: The Reagan quote Palin used at the end of the debate came from a 1960s recording he made for the AMA for doctors’ wives to play at coffee klatches to rally opposition to that totalitarian evil: Medicare.
Late Update: The Reagan audio is here.
Nearly 100 percent of the McCain campaign’s TV ad spending is now going to attack ads, TPM Election Central reports.
Fox gives Sarah Palin a second bite at the Supreme Court question she flubbed so badly with Katie Couric:
You get sense that if Cameron had interrupted her at any point there, she would have had to start her answer all over again from the top.
From the “you can’t make this up” file, a McCain foreign policy adviser claimed today that the candidate’s decades-long interest in Latin America is exemplified by the fact that he had a girlfriend in Brazil 50 years ago while he was in the Navy:
Speaking at an Americas Conference panel discussion Friday on the next U.S. president’s Latin American policy, McCain advisor Richard Fontaine started out by mentioning an old Brazilian flame of McCain’s, who recently emerged in the press.
”Talking a little about his personal experience, he was famously born in Panama and has traveled all over the hemisphere for many years.” Fontaine said. “In fact, I saw, I guess it was last week, that his old girlfriend in Brazil has been found from his early days when he was in the Navy and was interviewed. She’s a somewhat older woman now than she was then, but it sorta speaks to the long experience he has had in the region — in the most positive terms.”
Fontaine was referring to former model Maria Gracinda Teixeira de Jesus, who recently gave an interview to O Globo saying the former sailor was quite the kisser. According to McCain’s memoirs, `Faith of My Fathers,` they met in 1957, when his ship, the USS Hunt docked in Brazil.
”I called him John but also my darling and my sweet coconut,” she said. “He was a great kisser. I liked it so much that I bought a book to learn how to kiss myself.”
She goes on to say that if McCain wins the election, she’ll send him a telegram.
Not just a rhetorical question. What do you think has John McCain so angry? It’s like anything could send him over the edge. Look at the video (the McCain vids start about 30 seconds in). Send me your thoughts …
Why did the Couric interviews go so badly for Palin? As Palin herself explains to Fox, it was because she was “annoyed”:
She gets another chance to provide her reading list, too. It includes … The Economist.
From TPM Reader PM …
Speaking of McCain’s temper, does anybody remember the whole 2006 ethics reform matter. I have been thinking about this for days, ever since the first debate. I didn’t remember all the details at first, only that McCain had responded to a cordial, inoffensive letter from Obama with some unhinged rant. At the time Obama’s star was definitely rising and I remember thinking this old guy is mad as hell that he is being shown-up by this “young upstart”. Perhaps it was even more calculated than that. Certainly in 2006 McCain already had this election in mind and the word presidential was being applied to Senator Obama. I felt at the time it was a preemptive smear, trying to knock Obama down a few pegs before he became too much of a threat. Thank God for Google, a search for “Obama McCain letters” brought up this:
I didn’t remember Obama’s reply but upon reading it all I could think was how consistent it was with the sort of campaign he has run. Unfortunately it would seem McCain has been consistent as well.
Check out the link and relive the early days, when the bile was just beginning to rise.
It so happens I do remember this. And very well actually. I remember blogging about it at the time.
This was McCain’s response to Obama’s pretty anodyne letter …
I’m embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics, I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in politics to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble. I understand how important the opportunity to lead your party’s efforts to exploit this issue must seem to a freshman senator, and I hold no hard feelings over your earlier disingenuousness.
You can really see the kernel of this campaign’s psychodrama (in more than one sense of the word) in this first exchange. Here from February 2006 are some more thoughts I had then about what was going on.