Oh, Charlie “McCain” Brown…

… will you regret inviting Sarah “Lucy” Palin to play with you?

Mr. Fish captures the feeling with a wink to Charles Schultz in this cartoon, and today the New York Times publishes a poll that shows 59% of Americans do not think that the Alaska governor is ready to be vice-president, up from 50% at the beginning of the month. (Complete poll results here).

The Twitter terror

I thought the only thing one had to fear from Twitter were the compulsive texters, those who can not pass up on sharing a single movement or a single thought with the rest of us.

It turns out I should have been much, much more worried, according to a draft Army intelligence report published by the Association of concerned scientists, quoted by “Wired” (here). Twitter could be used to “coordinate terror attacks”. Like any major technology could, possibly? Never mind…

The part that caught my eye is of course the paragraph in which an astute intelligence specialist notes that “Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audience”.

I fit more than one of these categories, I’ll let your imagination wander… But so do the “others” thrown in for good measure at the end of the list. Could these “others” be the congressmen and senators who are now officially allowed to tweet away at their base? 39 of them already seized that opportunity – check here if your member of Congress or your Senator is a Twitter-er.

And there’s more political twittering coming soon, if this blogger (Allison Fine, of “A. Fine Blog”) has her way – and she definitely has a point – and if the network becomes the instant alert for problems at the polls on election day.

The label week

The week started with a record – Barack Obama collected 150 million dollars in September – and a new tune from the McCain/Palin campaign: their democrat rival is really a “socialist”.

VP candidates caused problems on both tickets. Joe Biden had a “Joe the senator” moment on Tuesday, when he spoke with what the democrats decided to call “flourish” about the international test the new president would be put through within six months of entering the White House.

Sarah Palin showed that her “maverick” temperament could occasionally mean she’d publicly disagree with the decisions of the top of the ticket. It appeared she is the main reason republicans and independents are deserting John McCain. She gave those worriers more to worry about when it became clear she had no idea what the job description of the vice-president is. It also turned out that the reformer had had Alaskans taxpayer foot the bill for her children’s travels, and that the RNC had spent 150 000 dollars making her look good.

On Wednesday night, the “Daily Show” did the journalists work, and unearthed a clip of John McCain, in 2000, arguing about the value and the fairness of a progressive income tax, and explaining to a student that it had nothing to do with socialism. At the time, he was campaigning against George Bush’s tax cut proposals.

In the midst of this week when Barack Obama seemed to firm his lead, John McCain and Sarah Palin gave a duet interview to NBC. Little news was made, except for the fact that the candidates looked awkward together, and that Sarah Palin changed her mind: she’s not a feminist, after all. She does not like labels, she says (except of course when it comes to labeling Barack Obama a “socialist”, or his “pal” Billy Ayers a “terrorist”).

On Friday, hours before her deposition in the administrative inquiry regarding the “troopergate”, Sarah Palin gave her first (and last?) policy speech – about children with special needs. Barack Obama had taken time off to visit his ailing grandmother, the woman who help raise him when he came back to Hawaï at age 10, and his last living relative. What was very obviously an hoax (except for those inclined to believe in big black bogeyman attacking defenseless little white McCain volunteers and carving backward letters in their face) was confirmed to be so.

John McCain concluded the week with an appearance at “Meet the Press”, on the 41st anniversary of his capture in Hanoï. He tried to demonstrate that he is not a prisoner to George Bush’s policies, but the republican rebel he once had been. The papers, at the same time, have already started dissecting the failures of his campaign, while conservative bicker amongst themselves.

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In the French media:

Dominique Nora, who blogs for the NouvelObs, got a dose of guilt-by-marketing that she took in stride – an email campaign to make sure to “get out the vote”: here.

In the midst of the current crisis, Le Figaro talks to the French ex wonder boy Jean-Marie Messier, nicknamed “J6M” (a riff on his “J2M”, turned into “Jean-Marie Messier moi-même maître du monde”, Jean-Marie Messier myself master of the world) who, after his downfall at Vivendi Universal was given a second chance in New York – where else? He does not say much except to preach “moderation”: here.

Greenspan loses his litotes in the financial “tsunami”

A “once-in-a-century credit tsunami”: the hyperbolic statement is unusual, coming from Alan Greenspan, the master of litotes.  The past chairman of the Fed (1987 to 2006) confessed this morning at a House hearing that he is “in a state of shock”, noting that “the whole intellectual edifice” that supported his – and the financial sector’s – reasoning in the past years has “collapsed”. That leaves us with “a rapid contraction in credit availability, threats to retirement funds, and increased job insecurity”. Ah, but not to worry: “this crisis will pass, and America will emerge with a far sounder financial system”. Feeling better already?

Full text of (ex) Chairman Greenspan: here.

Why the GOP is not keen on those “new voters”

Could this explain the GOP obsession with new voter registrations?

An ABC/Washington Post poll shows that Americans who will vote for the first time this year favor Barack Obama by a huge margin (73% – as opposed to 26% for John McCain). By contrast, 50% of those who have voted in previous elections favor Barack Obama; 47%, John McCain.

John McCain ahead in three countries… none of them the US

Today’s polls show John McCain trailing Barak Obama by ten points (NBC/Wall Street Journal, as well as Gallup)…. but  all is not lost.

John McCain is ahead by eight points in Georgia.

No, not the Atlanta Georgia – the Tbilissi Georgia, the one he was ready to fight for this summer. He could get elected in the Philippines as well. Or, just barely, in Lao.

And the rest of the world, as represented by this poll? It’s voting for Barack Obama who enjoys a popularity not seen since the Clinton era. He has George Bush to thank for that.

Plumbing the week

This was the week of the last debate, when John McCain asserted that “the very fabric of democracy” was put in danger by ACORN’s less than perfect efforts to register new voters and hoisted “Joe the Plumber” to national fame.

On Monday, Barack Obama started the week with a 10 point advantage in the polls. “Right where we want him“, said John McCain. Oh, really?

On Tuesday, John McCain retooled his economic message, and introduced the country to Joe the Plumber and attacked Barack Obama for talking of “spreading the wealth”. The republican candidate also gave new emphasis to his guilt-by-associations attacks on Barack Obama, and insisted that a massive electoral fraud was about to be perpetrated by ACORN.

On Wednesday, John McCain had his best debate performance ever, but that was still not enough to close the gap. Reluctant to give the victory to Barack Obama as the polls had, he declared: “Joe the Plumber is the winner”.

The next day, of course, we learned that Joe the Plumber was neither a Joe nor a plumber, and that he was a republican voter. We also learned that his last name was misspelled on his electoral registration – which added a dose of irony to the Ohio republican party’s legal proceedings regarding the 200 000 names of local voters that did not seem to match the public database.

On Friday, the Supreme Court sided with the Ohio secretary of State in charge of elections, a democrat. The federal appeals court was not competent in the matter; its order was void. However, that same day, the information was leaked that the FBI had followed up on the request by several republican member of Congress to open an investigation on ACORN.

On Saturday, a lawyer for the Obama campaign also wrote Attorney General Mukasey – this time to ask that these maneuvers by the RNC be examined, and added to the task of the independent prosecutor currently looking into possible indictments after the firing of US prosecutors by the Bush administration.

On Sunday, Colin Powell made the most complete case for his choice to vote for Barack Obama… and a total indictment of John McCain: “unsure” on the economical crisis, with questionable judgment as he selected Sarah Palin “incompetent to be President” as his running mate. The centrist republican hits every note that might resonate with independent undecided voters: his anxiety regarding appointments to the Supreme Court, the tone and the divisiveness of the republican campaign. He denounced in particular the vitriolic “robocalls” that the McCain/Palin campaign had launched in swing States.

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READ THIS WEEK (a little extra from the French viewpoints):

President Sarkozy’s visit to Camp David (with the president of the European commission) gets more play in the French press, obviously, than it does in the US. The financial summit to be organized in November, after the American presidential election, will be the ultimate lame-duck experience for President Bush, a fact not entirely lost on the vocal Europeans.

The internal investigation of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s conduct at the IMF (revealed by the always zealous Wall Street Journal, when it comes to such matters) also gets a different play – if only because the notion of private and public life are markedly different in each country… or should I write “were different”, considering the increased “pipolisation” – as in “people-ization” of French politics by Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy? In this case, DSK’s wife is famous in her own right. She’s a well-known journalist; she writes a blog on which she thanked those who sent her sympathetic messages and assured them that, as far as she and her husband is concerned, this brief incident is already in the past. She hopes for swift conclusions from the investigation, a desire that can only be shared by the many that think that, in the midst of the most consequential economical crisis in recent history, the IMF has more pressing issues to consider.

Joe the plumber, vetted just as well as Sarah Palin was?

So “Joe the Plumber” is not a Joe after all… He’s at best a “Sam”, as in “Samuel J. Wulzerbacher”. And he’s not really a plumber either. And he is in no imminent danger of being hit by the tax increase Barack Obama proposes for those who earn more than $250 000 a year. Well, at least we know he’s a republican, thanks to his vote in the republican primary last March – we won’t nitpick on the fact that, while the Ohio republican party is frantic about the risks of registration fraud, he’s actually registered to vote as “Wolzerbacher”.

It just begs the question: who, in the McCain team, suggested turning “Joe the Plumber” into the star of the presidential debate (actually, its “winner”, according to John McCain) and did not do a basic check before casting the bold bald-headed unknown under the national spotlight? Ah, must be that same person who thought it would be fine to check Sarah Palin’s possible liabilities after she would have been announced as McCain’s running mate.

Joe the plumber did not save John McCain

… just finished the French language wrap-up of the debate, and that was my impression – John McCain may have invoked Joe the Plumber 18 times, but it did not save him. He was on the attack, as he had advertised he would be, but he seemed to be bouncing helplessly against the wall of composure erected by Barack Obama.

I guess this video clip is as good as any summary for those who missed the debate, or did not have the side by side image, since once again very little news was made.

My new favorite word: “femafication”

Why the lack of American leadership in the current financial crisis?  Could it be that the “Femafication of government under President Bush” has something to do with it, wonders Paul Krugman in today’s column praising Gordon Brown’s action.

There is no Nobel prize for neologisms, as far as I know, but there ought to be one… and Paul Krugman could definitely be a candidate. Heck-of-a-word!