Lisa Schiffren posted the following on The Corner NRO website earlier today:

Letting the Homeless Vote   [Lisa Schiffren]

Try as I might, I cannot really understand how even a minimum standard of voting security can be maintained when, as an Ohio judge did yesterday, you decide to let the homeless vote. If there is no address -- how do you check whether  someone has voted before or whether they are using a real name? I get that the judge is attempting to enable fraud on behalf of his campaign -- but how does this pass even a minimum test of reasonableness?

Remember how Obama won all of those caucuses, starting with Iowa, where Hillary had been running ahead in polls? According to a bunch of eyewitness, including former candidate Joseph Biden, many Iowa caucuses were won on the strength of voters bused in from Illinois. I hold it against Hillary that she didn't protest at the time. Now, of course, there is no protection to be had. These Chicago Obama supporters can vote in their own district, then get on busses to Ohio where they are now free to cite a given park bench or doorway as their residence, and vote again. I guess that's easier than bringing out the dead, which was the traditional Chicago practice. Although I'm sure they'll be voting too.

One of my colleagues forwarded a wingnut chain email to me that basically made the claim that the economy under Bush was great for 6 years (stock market, job growth, consumer confidence, gas prices, etc.) and didn't start to go to hell until the Democrats took over the congress in 2006.  Many of you have probably seen this little nugget of genius.  My colleague wanted to know whether this made me want to revisit my opinion of Bush.  This is what I wrote back:

He ALMOST got away with it!  Man, what a bummer!  Just three more freakin' months and he could have walked away and left this whole mess for the next guy to clean up.  That would have been the ultimate frat-boy prank!  Dude, that was an awesome party - there are like 18 empty kegs down there and barf everywhere, dude - and I am so out of here tonight.  Those dorks who are renting the house for the summer are going to have a serious shit-fit when they see how much puke is down there for them to clean up.  But seriously, was that a great friggin party or what??  

So: start a baseless war that drains the nation's treasury for five years; let wall street speculators run up a $62 TRILLION credit-default-swap bubble (because, hey, what could go wrong with that?  Is it a problem when the market for a specific financial instrument that nobody ever heard of before equals or exceeds the GDP of the entire world..?); do nothing to develop alternative energy sources that might protect us against a massive spike in oil prices (because that might piss off your oil company buddies and your dad's Saudi pals); and generally turn the nation's biggest surplus into its biggest deficit in history and double the national debt in 7 years - but dude, that was a seriously awesome party.  Did you SEE some of the shit we did in Iraq and on Wall Street?  Legendary, dude.  They are going to be talking about us forever.

I have to say, this makes me almost happy that W won the second term.  Sure, I wanted to die in 2004 when it happened, but even then I thought maybe another 4 years will give him enough rope and this will actually turn back on him.  Maybe the chickens will come home to roost before he can sneak off the farm, maybe he will actually have to pay the piper, in front of everyone, and be totally humiliated and loathed by the 50% of American's who didn't already loathe him before.  So I guess I am happy about that.

The end.

With the debates over, and barring any unforeseen external events, at this point the media is the only meaningful driver in the campaign.  And as far as I can tell, there are only two good stories they can tell from here to the end if they want to make good ratings and sell papers.  Story no.1 is the pendulum, the McCain comeback, the horserace, the momentum shift, the closing gap.  Lord knows we saw that one enough times during the primary.  Story no.2, which is a fresher story, is the landslide, the historic blowout, the implosion and collapse of the conservative regime, the redeeming civil rights moment, the proud national achievement, the accelerating momentum, the widening gap.  

Obama's job, and our job, is to make story no.2 the story, while at the same time trying to guard against complacency and reduced voter turnout.  I think the answer may lie partly in emphasizing that the margin matters, that Obama doesn't just need to win, he needs to win with a decisive, undeniable national mandate which will allow him to govern strongly in what will be extremely difficult times.  People need to get excited about participating personally in this historical event.  I know it is harder to motivate people with hope than with fear, unfortunately.  Maybe Obama can achieve this in his national primetime address on Oct. 29.

So the armies and tactics of Florida 2000 have arrived in Alaska to shut 'er down.  I am really curious to see how much priority Obama and the press are going to give this.  There are a lot of points to make in this campaign and I know we need to keep the message simple, but it seems like this story just sums up so much of what is nauseating about the current White House and the whole republican machinery that would remain in place under McCain, even with two new faces at the top.

The McCain campaign has finally arrived at its inevitable (how did it take this long?) position that any investigation of Troopergate must be delayed until after the election, because otherwise it is a politically-motivated distraction and could, you know, be used to undermine Palin's credibility and taint the outcome of the presidential race.  In the clear, clean air after the election, they will be sure to get right back into the investigation and get to the bottom of the story.

So when the Alaska legislature decided to proceed with the investigation and Palin agreed to cooperate and be held accountable TWO MONTHS AGO, I guess everyone felt it was in the interest of the people (of Alaska) to get all the facts, because, you know, it's important to have a clear picture of how their Governor wields executive power.    

But then that thing happened where McCain called and she didn't blink, and she had to start studying about all the non-Alaska stuff and saying that thing about the bridge and the ebay and the lipstick all the time, and that changed everything, and made it much less important to know anything about how she governs, and whether she is fundamentally petty and corrupt.

So now that she is asking to be entrusted with a vastly more terrifying amount of executive power -- the full power of the Cheney Deathstar -- it is no longer in the interest of the people (of the United States) to have a clear picture of how her white house would do business for the next four or (shoot me) eight or (seriously, shoot me) 16 years.  Because once 300 million people are affected instead of 680,000 (one quarter of one percent of the US, or 8 Obama rallies in Denver) then the governing record and character of a public figure becomes a lot less important.  

George Orwell, call your office.

The uppity story today started off shocking, then got sort of strange, and finally ended up as an interesting insight into something that it did not initially seem to be about.

1. Shocking:  Holy shit! A republican congressman from Georgia just called the Obamas "uppity"??  This is going to be huge!  This is going to sink the republican party!

2. Strange:  Huh, a republican congressman from Georgia just called the Obamas "uppity"?  A congressman made that kind of impossible, too-good-to-be-true gaffe?  huh, and then he said he didn't know it was a racist slur?  He's from Georgia and he doesn't know what uppity means?  Huh, the Obama camp is accepting his explanation on the race issue and giving him a free pass, with a gentle response about McCain and his eight houses..?

3. Interesting:  Oooooohhh... a trial balloon. The republicans send out a congressman from Georgia to make a too-good-to-be-true racial slur. Probably won't hurt him too much in his district anyway -- he's not exactly courting the progressive vote.  But maybe the Obamas will take the bait and start screaming about how offended they are, and how indignant, and victimized, and how, you know, black they are.  Maybe it will be a real jackpot and Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson will issue a statement.  But the Obamas just play it cool and pretend it never happened.  Well, of course they do.  They aren't going to make it that easy for Karl Rove.    

So a little kabuki dance gets played out in the media, a test of the Obama campaign's discipline on the race issue, which they saw coming from ten blocks away.  That was bush league -- next one will surely be more artful.