links for 2008-10-09

David Brooks spoke frankly about the presidential and vice presidential candidates Monday afternoon, calling Sarah Palin a "fatal cancer to the Republican party" but describing John McCain and Barack Obama as "the two best candidates we've had in a long time."
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David Brooks like Peggy Noonan are through in the GOP. Walking papers anyone? Eastern elitists who need to go back to being Democrats. Bye Bye…..

In an interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg at New York's Le Cirque restaurant to unveil that magazine's redesign, Brooks decried Palin's anti-intellectualism and compared her to President Bush in that regard:

As the McCain campaign ratchets up the intensity of its attacks on Barack Obama, some black elected officials are calling the tactics desperate, unseemly and racist.

“They are trying to throw out these codes,” said Representative Gregory Meeks, a Democrat from New York.

“He’s ‘not one of us?’” Mr. Meeks said, referring to a comment Sarah Palin made at a campaign rally on Oct. 6 in Florida. “That’s racial. That’s fear. They know they can’t win on the issues, so the last resort they have is race and fear.”

“Racism is alive and well in this country, and McCain and Palin are trying to appeal to that and it’s unfortunate,” said Representative Ed Towns, also from New York.
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Yeah Yeah Yeah Every criticism of Obama is racism.

I mentioned a few days ago that Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill's mild affect masks a bit of a killer, and that she's perhaps the Obama campaign's deftest surrogate on the attack.

But I was still kind of amused by her brief interaction with Mitt Romney in the press file just now.

McCaskill was stepping out of her chair at the end of an MSNBC interview, and Romney was up next. She and a staffer unplugged her various wires, and she handed Romney the earpiece the guests use to hear the host.

"I spit on this before I put it in," she said to Romney, with a sweet smile.
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She was joking, Ben. Relax…..

The McCain folks are more helpful and generally friendly. The schedules are printed on actual books you can hold in your hand, read, and then plan accordingly. The press aides are more knowledgeable and useful to us in the news media. The events are designed with a better eye, and for the simple needs of the press corps. When he is available, John McCain is friendly and loquacious. Obama holds news conferences, but seldom banters with the reporters who've been following him for thousands of miles around the country. Go figure.

The McCain campaign plane is better than Obama's, which is cramped, uncomfortable and smells terrible most of the time. Somehow the McCain folks manage to keep their charter clean, even where the press is seated.
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Hahaha Obama's airplane smells bad – now is that a racist comment? Nahhhh it is form the press.

A Tennessee man has been indicted for hacking into the e-mail account of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. David Kernell, 20, was charged with illegally accessing Palin's Yahoo! account "by researching and correctly answering a series of personal security questions," according to an indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Knoxville. A copy of the indictment can be found below. After accessing Palin's account, Kernell, pictured at right, allegedly changed its password to "popcorn" and made screenshots of the account's directory as well as certain messages, photos, and "other personal information." Those screenshots eventually were widely distributed online. If convicted of the felony charge, Kernell, an economics major at the University of Tennessee, faces a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Kernell, whose father is a Democratic state representative in Tennessee, turned himself in this morning to law enforcement authorities and has been indicted