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Senator Obama was in full mockery mode today at his rally in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Deep down, John McCain knows his economic theories don't work. That's why his campaign said if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose. That's why I keep on talking about the economy. They don't want to talk about the economy. But that's what you want to talk about. That's what affects your lives day in and day out. Now, because he knows his economic theories don't work, he's been spending these last few days calling me every name in the book. Lately he's called me a socialist for wanting to roll back the bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so we can give some tax relief to the middle class. I don't know what's next. By next week he'll be calling me a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Look, that's his choice. That's the kind of campaign he chooses to run. But you have a choice, too.

It would be even funnier if it weren't true. Case in point: Neal Boortz in the digital pages of World Nut Daily, arguing that public schools are brainwashing children into embracing communism. I kid you not.

The students are seated, the bell rings. As fast as you can say the Pledge of Allegiance without the "under God" part, the indoctrination begins. The government teacher steps in front of her virtual hostages and promptly delivers the first raw lesson in the power of government. The students are instructed to bring all of their precious school supplies – their property – to the front of the classroom and put them into a huge box. They are told that the supplies belong to all of the class now, and the teacher will assume the responsibility of distributing the supplies as they are needed.

"Whoaa! Hold on a minute here! These are my supplies. My daddy bought them for me. You can't have them! They're mine!"

Nope. Sorry! They were yours. Now all those supplies belong to – guess who? The government!

Behold the leading lights of the modern "intellectual" conservative movement.

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From Countdown, Monday Oct. 27, 2008. Keith tells John McCain that he needs to speak out against those who would use Friday's racist hoax attack perpetrated by Ashley Todd as a means to re-open the racial divide in America.

Transcript available here:

OLBERMANN: Finally, a "Campaign Comment" about the fraudulent race attack claim since acknowledged and recanted by a John McCain campaign volunteer in Pennsylvania. You know the story well, by now. It's a sad and demoralizing tale of a woman who could be summarized by the awful term B actress. Ashley Todd was not sexually assaulted by a big black man. He did not carve the letter B on her face to punish her for supporting John McCain.

It apparently never dawned on her it resembled less a cut than an abrasion done by a weapon no more sinister than a nail file. She was not even at the ATM where she claimed the attack took place. It apparently never dawned on her that the machine had security video and she would not be on it. And clearly, somewhere in her mind was a calculation that a story like this one with layer upon layer of racial threat could be some kind of game changer for the presidential candidate she worked to get elected in at least two states for at least two months. Her saga is pathetic. She now claims mental illness. If this too is not true, Miss Todd might think she's pulling another fast one over on the rest of us. In fact her claim seems to be accurate, whether she knows it or not.

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(Heather co-wrote this post)

This clip has a lot of goodies in it including Palin bring up her clothes right before the election and David's shock at the circling firing squad by the McCain camp directed at Sarah.

What is rare is to have campaign aides putting a harpoon in the candidate, and then some of the candidate's friends firing back.

But on a serious note, As McCain keeps attacking Obama as a "socialist" and a "Redistributionist in Chief," David Gergen reminds us that Ronald Reagan actually starting "spreading the wealth."

Gergen: Now, one of the most effective popular programs we've had in the last three decades. It's called the earned income tax credit. It's a program whereby, if you're a working person, a working couple and you're below the poverty line, the government will actually give you money. That's a redistributed program. It's a program which takes money from the upper classes and gives it to the lower -- to the working poor.

Now who started that program? The earned income tax credit? Ronald Reagan. It was one of the -- it was an achievement of the Reagan administration that Bill Clinton then built on.

The Republican Party has been dancing on Reagan's bones for some time now as THE conservative to emulate. Well, he did raise taxes when he had too and after this tidbit of information I guess he's just a typical socialist after all.

Full transcript available here.

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Today is "Write to Marry Day," a blogswarm against Prop 8 (CA). There are plenty of just plain wrong ballot propositions out there...

The Black Snob: Fear of a Black First Lady.

Jonestown: Red States benefit from "wealth distribution."

Birmingham Blues: No way. That Cindy McCain pumpkin is too scary for my neighborhood.

In other Halloween news, Mock, Paper, Scissors: It's Dead, Jim!

Corruption Chronicles: When I think of all the African-Americans who can't vote because of the so-called war on drugs, I want Ted Stevens's ballot shredded in front of him, after he fills it out.

posted by Blue Gal for Mike, who is touring today and returns tomorrow....

This is my favorite video right now. Says what needs sayin'.

Especially when I read pieces like Noam Scheiber's latest offering.

Wow, Sheppard Smith goes after Joe the Plumber for the insane statements he made at an RNC event today about Obama. Will John McCain still be using Joe the Plumber in all his new ads since he's saying Obama will destroy Israel? (rough transcript)

Sheppard: Why specifically is a vote for Obama a vote for the death of Israel?

Joe: Well specifically, look at his record. Obama's agreed to meet with Israel's enemies with no uncertain terms.. In fact he's letting them dictate terms to him and then look at his past associations, people he talks to...

Sheppard: Like who?

Joe: Quite honestly, you know, the gentleman that approached me with that question I agreed to with what I know...

Sheppard: What I can't figure our is why, let's listen to this clip from earlier.

Q: A vote for Obama is a vote for the death to Israel. I'ss guarantee you that.

Joe: Well, you know what? I'll actually agree with you on that one. I agree with you. I really think that would be a problem.

Sheppard: Joe, do you know Barack Obama's positions on Israel?

Joe: Ahhh, listen, I know you want to really get some answers on this one, I'm just not going to help you out here Sheppard. Let people go out and find it issues....

Sheppard: Do you think John McCain agrees with you?

Joe: No, it's just my personal opinion that I've come up with looking at different facts.

Listen, you don't want my opinion on foreign policy. I know just enough to probably be dangerous.

Sheppard: Well that's what I was kind of wondering. I wonder if you think it's dangerous at all for people to say a vote for Barack Obama is the same as a vote for Israel. If you think that's something dangerous for people to start believing because what happens if the polls are right and he becomes the President of the US and people start thinking this means the death of Israel. Are you worried what people might do if they actually believed something like that?

Joe: Well again, that goes back again to what I've been saying.

Sheppard: I just want to make this 100% perfectly clear. Barack Obama has said repeatedly and demonstrated repeatedly that Israel will always be a friend to the United States no matter what happens once he becomes President, his words.

Nice tag Shep. What a very silly man that Joe is. He couldn't name one thing Obama has done for anyone to say something so outrageous as that. And he refused to even answer Sheppard's questions. He probably thought he would be getting the Huckabee/Cavuto/Hannity treatment. Hey Joe, you ain't pretty no more.

Here at C&L, we try to run funny videos for the open thread and news videos throughout the day, but dang, sometimes they overlap. h/t Heather for the video and the terrific blog Yikes! for reminding me. Open Thread below....

This studio cut from the new album is less aurally interesting and three-dimensional than the live version I heard on the radio machine, but the available YouTube live versions all seem to have have that jittery-cinéma-vérité-shot-with-the-microphone-in-a-coffee-can thing going on.

And it's 1..2...3..what are we not fighting for?

Via Kevin Drum comes a piece in the NYT looking at the powderkeg of factional tensions in Mosul.

The Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is squeezing out Kurdish units of the Iraqi Army from Mosul, sending the national police and army from Baghdad and trying to forge alliances with Sunni Arab hard-liners in the province, who have deep-seated feuds with the Kurdistan Regional Government led by Massoud Barzani.

....“It’s the perfect storm against the old festering background,” warned Brig. Gen. Raymond A. Thomas III, who oversees Nineveh and Kirkuk Provinces and the Kurdish region. Worry is so high that the American military has already settled on a policy that may set a precedent, as the United States slowly withdraws to allow Iraqis to settle their own problems. If the Kurds and Iraqi government forces fight, the American military will “step aside,” General Thomas said, rather than “have United States servicemen get killed trying to play peacemaker.”

As one of Drum's commenters notes:

As I recall it, the program was: (1) increase troop levels (2) to reduce the violence to make space for (3) political reconciliation that will provide the foundation for (4) a reduction in violence not dependent on American troops (5) that will enable us to gradually withdraw without having to worry about whether Iraq will blow up again.

We never got past step 2. Now the reckoning.

That reckoning will involve violence, in more than one place and between more than just two factions, in the lead up to Iraq's provincial elections. The only real question is: how bad will it get? I totally understand Brig. Gen Thomas' wish not to have his people die policing a civil war six years into the U.S. occupation but doesn't this blow wide open the conservative talking point, so beloved of both Bush and McCain, that US troops have to stay in Iraq to help prevent such violence? Why are we still there?

Of course, if there's no new status of forces deal by January Thomas' plans become moot, since it's likely US forces would be confined to base anyway. In fact, they're using the threat of exactly that to try to strongarm Iraqi into accepting an agreement it isn't happy with. McClatchy reports:

The U.S. military has warned Iraq that it will shut down military operations and other vital services throughout the country on Jan. 1 if the Iraqi government doesn't agree to a new agreement on the status of U.S. forces or a renewed United Nations mandate for the American mission in Iraq.

Many Iraqi politicians view the move as akin to political blackmail, a top Iraqi official told McClatchy Sunday.

In addition to halting all military actions, U.S. forces would cease activities that support Iraq’s economy, educational sector and other areas _ "everything" _ said Tariq al Hashimi, the country’s Sunni Muslim vice president. "I didn’t know the Americans are rendering such wide-scale services."

Hashimi said that Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, listed “tens” of areas of potential cutoffs in a three-page letter, and he said the implied threat caught Iraqi leaders by surprise.

But if the US military is planning to stay out of any faction fights anyway, just how much of a threat is that?

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Even in its last throes, the Bush administration continues its uninterrupted lawlessness. As two recent stories by Charlie Savage of the New York Times revealed, President Bush ignored Congressional statutes requiring privacy disclosures by his Department of Homeland Security and non-discrimination in hiring by faith-based groups receiving federal funds. In twice turning his back on the rule of law, Bush again resorted to his favorite executive power-grabbing tools, the signing statement and "interpretation" by the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel.

Savage, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 2006 expose of Bush's unprecedented use of signing statements, revealed last Friday that the President is at again. The White House informed Congress that it is bypassing a law passed as part of the package of recommendation from the 9/11 Commission. Designed to prevent political interference with the Department of Homeland Security:

The August 2007 law requires the agency’s chief privacy officer to report each year about Homeland Security activities that affect privacy, and requires that the reports be submitted directly to Congress “without any prior comment or amendment” by superiors at the department or the White House.

But in a move ranking the Republican on Senate Judiciary Committee Arlen Specter (R-PA) deemed "unconstitutional" and "dictatorial," DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff told Congress the administration would not "apply this provision strictly" because it infringed on the president’s powers. And as Savage detailed, President Bush used a signing statement to thwart the will of Congress - and the law of the land:

The Bush administration defended the decision not to obey the statute. Erik Ablin, a Justice Department spokesman, said its legal view was consistent with what presidents of both parties had long maintained.

Mr. Ablin also said the administration had told Congress that the provision would be unconstitutional, but Congress passed the legislation - which enacted recommendations of the 9/11 Commission - without making the requested change. So the administration decided to sign the bill and fix what Mr. Ablin called its "defects" later.

In condoning illegal discrimination in hiring by religious charities receiving funds from American taxpayers, President Bush turned to his Office of Legal Counsel.

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