The McCain-Palin campaign chartered a JetBlue Embraer 190 to fly Alaska Governor Sarah Palin around the country. It ended its voyage in Anchorage earlier this week, and was returned to JetBlue.

The 2-engine jet then flew the 2694 miles from Anchorage to Buffalo yesterday, setting a world distance record for the E190. The standard range is 2071 miles.

Two DJs from CKOY Montreal pretend to be French President Nicolas Sarkozy and place a call with Sarah Palin. From Les Justiciers Masque.

The New Yorker’s piece begins:

Sometimes, when a political campaign has run out of ideas and senses that the prize is slipping through its fingers, it rolls up a sleeve and plunges an arm, shoulder deep, right down to the bottom of the barrel. The problem for John McCain, Sarah Palin, and the Republican Party is that the bottom was scraped clean long before it dropped out. Back when the polls were nip and tuck and the leaves had not yet begun to turn, Barack Obama had already been accused of betraying the troops, wanting to teach kindergartners all about sex, favoring infanticide, and being a friend of terrorists and terrorism. What was left? The anticlimactic answer came as the long Presidential march of 2008 staggered toward its final week: Senator Obama is a socialist.

Seriously, they accused him of wanting to teach kindergartners sex education, and that didn’t work. Socialism when all we’re talking about is adjustment of the tax brackets? That’s what we call a party that is completely out of ammo, and out of ideas.

The Republican argument of the moment seems to be that the difference between capitalism and socialism corresponds to the difference between a top marginal income-tax rate of 35 per cent and a top marginal income-tax rate of 39.6 per cent. The latter is what it would be under Obama’s proposal, what it was under President Clinton, and, for that matter, what it will be after 2010 if President Bush’s tax cuts expire on schedule

All the baggage that comes with the label “socialism” - expropriation of private property, proletarian revolution, red flags and riots in the streets - you, too can be Rosa Luxemburg if you support the aforementioned adjustment of tax brackets. Idiots.

We know that Bill Ayers, while a member of the Weather Underground, was technically a “domestic terrorist”, and I’ll let that go even though the Weathermen always called in their bomb threats so as to cause mainly structural damage, rather than physical harm.

Anyone who uses his brain even temporarily on any given day can tell you that terrorism doesn’t always come wrapped in 60s radicalism or around an Arabic-sounding name.

Naturally, if one takes it as read that the Weathermen were domestic terrorists, then it is also clear that people who bomb abortion clinics are also domestic terrorists. This is very simple logic - any 5th grader could tell you that bombing for a political (Vietnam-war-related) purpose is equal to bombing for a political (abortion-related) purpose.

Sarah Palin, however, is such a good and loyal culture warrior that she refuses to acknowledge the fact that there really is no difference between what Bill Ayers did and what the radical anti-abortion terrorists have done. I happen to be fascinated by the decline in violence and nonsense by the insane wing of the anti-abortion movement during the Bush years, even though abortions are still taking place every day and according to some, have gone up. But during the Clinton years, the clinically insane were out in full force, bombing clinics, shooting doctors, and murdering even the clerical staff.

If Obama wins, I fully expect a rapid return to those heady conspiracy-laden days we enjoyed from the radical right in the early Clinton years. Militias, anyone?

Barack Obama on the “real America”:

With the challenges and crises we face right now, we cannot afford to divide this country by race or class or region; by who we are or what policies we support. There are no real or fake parts of this country. We are not separated by the pro-America and anti-America parts of this nation - we all love this country, no matter where we live or where we come from.

McCain/Palin, on the other hand, spread around this kind of false, divisive crap:

My take is this. Every part of the United States of America is pro-American. Obama gets it. Palin, especially, seeks to widen what divides us. McCain’s selection of this ignorant culture warrior is his express endorsement of those views.

What’s the difference between a pitbull and a hockey mom?

You can feed a pit-bull for 483 years with 150 grand.

If you think that Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii, forged his birth certificate, or that he otherwise isn’t a natural-born American citizen, then surely you are an idiot. Anything you have to say about anything after persisting in such idiotic idiocy is discredited.

Karl Rove created a permanent Republican majority. (HT TPM)

The Palin pick is being pointed to by more and more conservatives as the exact moment the wheels came off McCain’s campaign. (Some thinking conservatives are deeply concerned about where the movement has gone, what with big spending, anti-science, anti-intellectualism, belligerence, and Christianism). You know when you’re watching “To Catch A Predator” on Dateline, and you can see the exact moment the perv figures out his life’s over. Yeah, like that. If Palin was the wheels coming off, “suspending” his campaign without suspending much of anything ranks a close second.

Michele Bachmann - she who recently advocated for the creation of a latter-day HUAC - is now in trouble in her own race, and the NRCC has abandoned her. Ciao, McCarthyite!

Meanwhile, Fox News Channel is so “fair and balanced”, innit?

It’s quite clear that the vast majority of people (if not every. fricking. person.) don’t quite understand what “socialism” is when they accuse Obama of socialism. For instance, when Marc Ambinder makes the point that Alaska must be “socialist” because it redistributes to its citizens profits from oil sales, the moronic Jonah Goldberg retorts,

In Alaska, the people own the oil as opposed to in Ohio where the people don’t own Joe the Plumber.

Yes, Jonah. If the people own the oil, it’s not socialism. It’s communism. And Joe the Plumber gets a tax cut under Obama’s plan. Thanks for asking.

In the midst of a financial meltdown and bailout of Wall Street, it’s always heartening to learn that the Vice Presidential nominee’s wardrobe is getting covered by the Republican National Committee, and although Governor Palin rails daily against various and sundry elites, I’m pretty sure that getting a $150,000 wardrobe over the course of a month makes you - *gasp* - elite .

According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.

The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.

The RNC also spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup through September after reporting no such costs in August.

The cash expenditures immediately raised questions among campaign finance experts about their legality under the Federal Election Commission’s long-standing advisory opinions on using campaign cash to purchase items for personal use.

Evidently, they grow good clothes at Saks and Nieman Marcus.

The average American family spends $150k on clothes every 80 years. Joe Six-Pack probably shops the sale rack at Sears or Penney’s. Especially in this economy.

A review of similar records for the campaign of Democrat Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee turned up no similar spending.

But all the spending by other candidates pales in comparison to the GOP outlay for the Alaska governor whose expensive, designer outfits have been the topic of fashion pages and magazines.

What hasn’t been apparent is where the clothes came from – her closet back in Wasilla or from the campaign coffers in Washington.

The answer can be found inside the RNC’s September monthly financial disclosure report under “itemized coordinated expenditures.”

It’s a report that typically records expenses for direct mail, telephone calls and advertising. Those expenses do show up, but the report also has a new category of spending: “campaign accessories.”

September payments were also made to Barney’s New York ($789.72) and Bloomingdale’s New York ($5,102.71).

Macy’s in Minneapolis, another store fortunate enough to be situated in the Twin Cities that hosted last summer’s Republican National Convention, received three separate payments totaling $9,447.71.

The entries also show a few purchases at Pacifier, a top notch baby store, and Steiniauf & Stroller Inc., suggesting $295 was spent to accommodate the littlest Palin to join the campaign trail.

Barney’s and Bloomingdale’s? Saks and Neiman Marcus? Almost $10k at Macy’s? OMGOMG She’s just like us!

Very funny, and I’m happy to see that the Governor has a sense of humor. But this skit brings up in a glaring sort of way the fact that the real Sarah Palin has not held a press conference since becoming the Vice Presidential selection or nominee.

She’s a conservative, so you can’t accuse her of being a mean old Marxist-Leninist liberal.

She’s a woman, so you have lost the misogyny card.

Peggy Noonan is appalled by Sarah Palin, as are most people who think about things.

But we have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office. She is a person of great ambition, but the question remains: What is the purpose of the ambition? She wants to rise, but what for? For seven weeks I’ve listened to her, trying to understand if she is Bushian or Reaganite—a spender, to speak briefly, whose political decisions seem untethered to a political philosophy, and whose foreign policy is shaped by a certain emotionalism, or a conservative whose principles are rooted in philosophy, and whose foreign policy leans more toward what might be called romantic realism, and that is speak truth, know America, be America, move diplomatically, respect public opinion, and move within an awareness and appreciation of reality.

But it’s unclear whether she is Bushian or Reaganite. She doesn’t think aloud. She just . . . says things.

Yes, she does.

Contrary to unpopular belief, you don’t have to be a 1st Amendment scholar to conclude that Sarah and Todd Palin improperly and unethically abused her power in order to fire a cabinet member who wouldn’t improperly fire a state trooper against whom the Palins had a personal vendetta.

So, a petition is here for your perusal and signing.

That’s going to be the question over the next 20 or so days. The bipartisan Alaska Legislative Council voted 12-0 to release the report on the investigation into Sarah Palin’s arm-twisting to get a state trooper fired, and her husband Todd’s assistance therewith. I wonder how pleased McCain is with his Veep vetting right now. I wonder whether he now wishes he had selected someone who isn’t a female replica of George W. Bush, right down to the class and cultural warfare McCain once eschewed. The report contains four findings:

The first concludes that Palin violated the state’s executive branch ethics act, which says that “each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.”

Specifically, the report finds that Palin should have - and didn’t - reign in her husband Todd’s inappropriate efforts to use Palin’s office to contact other troopers to get trooper Mike Wooten - who was divorcing from Palin’s sister - fired. The report concluded that Sarah Palin used her power to advance a personal vendetta. That’s not change we can believe in.

“Compliance with the code of ethics is not optional. It is an individual responsibility imposed by law, and any effort to benefit a personal interest through official action is a violation of that trust. … The term ‘benefit’ is very broadly defined, and includes anything that is to the person’s advantage or personal self-interest.”

So, firstly we have an ethics violation and violation of the public trust.

In the second finding, Branchflower says Monegan’s refusal to fire Wooten was not the sole reason for his dismissal but that it was a “contributing factor.” Still, he said, Palin’s firing of Monegan was “a proper and lawful exercise” of the governor’s authority.

The third finding says a workers compensation claim filed by Wooten was handled appropriately. Number four concludes that the attorney general’s office failed to comply with Branchflower’s Aug. 6 request for information about the case in the form of e-mails.

Recall that the McCain campaign intervened to quash subpoenas and attempt to kill this investigation out in Alaska with its own high-falutin’ brown-shoe Washington lawyers. It didn’t work. The subpoenas were upheld, and the investigation went forward.

Luckily, Governor Sarah Palin has already been cleared of all wrongdoing.

By Palin.

Officer Barbrady, The Onion, and 80s-era Pravda are all very proud.

The Pennsylvania GOP sends out a release entitled “A Terrorist’s Best Friend“. See if you can find the punctuation mistakes in said release.

When McCain asks “who is the real Barack Obama” someone in the audience yells out “terrorist”. McCain pauses, but keeps going without commenting on the accusation.

When Sarah Palin mentions that Barack Obama is an acquaintance of William Ayers’, someone in the audience yells out “kill him!“.

Palin also goes after that mean, old, nasty media that - you know, asked her questions.

Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric’s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”

If you vote for McCain and Palin, change is comin’, alright. But it’s change backwards. Far backwards.

But the Reagan quote wasn’t from his presidential years.

It was from a recording he did in the mid-sixties to urge people to vote against Medicaid and Medicare, because they would lead to socialism.

Yep.

I’m cribbing this wholesale from Roatti at TAP, but I thought this was not only Biden’s most compelling moment last night, and Palin’s inability to diverge from her talking points (”mavrick”) is underscored here.

Note also that the question had been, “what is your achilles heel”, and Palin answered first. Her answer was replete only with her recounting her supposed vast executive experience - she either didn’t hear, didn’t understand, or ignored the question. You betcha.

To my mind, the folksy way of speaking is an affect. I’ve seen and heard video and audio of Sarah Palin speaking in her role as Alaska governor, and she doesn’t ladle out “gee, ya know” or “there ya go, Joe” I think she was told to play that up because some people think it’s charming. It began grating on me after about 2 minutes. Like nails-on-a-chalkboard grating. Like when George Bush opens his mouth grating. She was able to string sentences together, yes. She definitely exceeded the extraordinarily low expectations for her, (soft bigotry thereof notwithstanding). I also got the sense that she’d whistle a happy tune while stabbing you in the back.

On the other hand, Biden’s demeanor was too stuffy, wonky, and patrician at times, and given the fact that she came out swinging, he should have scored a few more points against her given her aggression. The “bridge to nowhere” line got big hoots and hollers last night at Morrissey’s, but other than that it was clear to me that Biden was counseled to lay off Palin, and he did what he was told to do.

All in all, she started stronger, but gradually weakened throughout the night - especially on foreign policy. Biden started out off-stride, but got stronger and stronger - especially on the Israel question, and we had something of a “you’re no Jack Kennedy moment” when Biden swung back at Palin for suggesting that she’s the only one on the stage who’s had a tough life and is more in touch with middle class concerns and values.

The reason I say she got weaker has to do with the fact that the non-responsive answers stopped being cutesy pretty much the second she told Ifill that she wasn’t going to answer her questions, and that was a mere 10 minutes in. Palin talks and talks and oftentimes says nothing in that folksy way. Biden was detailed and specific and although he had a tendency to sound too Washington at times, he was very strong when rebutting some of Palin’s charges, and did a phenomenal job attacking the “maverick” myth. He was great on the Cheney/legislative branch question.

She was arrogant without having earned it. Biden sounded professorial towards the beginning, sounded passionate towards the end, could seem haughty, but he has earned it. Every time she advocates for being a fresh voice and change, she inadvertently is stumping for Obama. Every time she attacks Biden, she’s inadvertently criticizing her own ticket-mate.

Although Palin did well, McCain is in so much trouble right now that it will have a negligible effect. Over the past couple of weeks, many conservatives have been doubting the wisdom of the Palin selection. What she managed to do last night was at least quell right-wing concerns that she’s a complete idiot. She can hold her own in a debate. But I don’t think she’s going to do anything to help earn McCain any more independent votes at all. The biggest story today won’t be the debate, it’ll be the House vote on the bailout. The center is most concerned about the economy - not whether Sarah Palin scored a point against Biden or whether Biden swung back. Her relatively good performance notwithstanding, it’s not going to make a stitch of difference.

McCain just shut down his operation in Michigan, and is turning all of his efforts and resources into battleground states that Bush won in 2004. If McCain loses even one of those states (Ohio, MO, PA, FL, CO, VA, e.g.) he’s done.

In the end, the Biden/Palin debate was a fascinating and much-anticipated sideshow, but a sideshow nonetheless. It won’t change any measurable number of votes. Vice Presidents are, for the most part, history’s footnotes and this year will be no different.

Howdy to GlobalPundit.org, who covered debate night, and Scott Leffler who also hosted a liveblog.

This Thursday, join WNYMedia.net at W.J. Morrissey’s Pub at 30 Mississippi Street in Buffalo’s Cobblestone District, to watch the Vice Presidential debate between Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Delaware Senator Joe Biden, live from Washington University in St. Louis, MO.

The festivities begin at 8pm.