Rocky lost

Enraged by reports of finger-pointing and defeatism among senior aides -- including a long NYT Magazine piece that's well worth reading -- McCain yesterday took the stage to the theme from "Rocky," declaring he would fight to the end.

Failing to take into account that Rocky was set up to lose and did, in fact, lose. For some reason Americans find this story reassuring; cf. "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," the Chicago Cubs, etc. Well-known Republicans continued their predictions of doom.

But even before this development, someone has identified a new neurosis, maverick personality disorder, to describe the McCain-Palin identity.

technorati: McCain, Republicans, maverick

Today's fake: GOP volunteer charged with making false report

Well, that didn't take long: The young McCain volunteer who said she was attacked by a black man who carved a (backwards) "B" on her face has been charged with making a false police report after admitting the story was false.

I mean:

Police suspected all along that Todd might not be telling the truth, starting with the fact that the "B" was backward, Bryant said.

"We have robbers here in Pittsburgh, but they don't generally mutilate someone's face like that," Bryant said. "They just take the money and run."

On Salon: All Palin, all the time

On Open Salon, I couldn't help myself: I posted an entry about Sarah Palin. In part:

Whatever the likelihood that McCain might die in office, it's 100% probable that if he does die in office, the president will then be Sarah Palin... This darling of religious conservatives who is forcing her own 17-year-old daughter to bear an unplanned-for child and to marry her deer-in-the-headlights boyfriend would be appointing Supreme Court justices until 2012, and maybe for four years after that.

technorati: Palin, McCain

On Salon: God to Republicans: Drop dead

Salon.com started a new blogging-cum-social networking realm called Open Salon, and I started a blog there. My first post is kind of obvious.

The Lord, as His minion Pat Robertson likes to claim, directs natural disasters towards sinners, and thus the destruction wreaked by Hurricane Katrina was punishment for American wickedness... As Hurricane Gustav approaches landfall, you have to wonder, then, why God has it in for the Republicans so bad that He sent a major hurricane to disrupt their convention.

Read the rest of the post.