McCain’s appearance on ‘Meet the Press’ was a pleasant Sunday morning experience, akin to tea and crumpets. The genial affair was like one would visualize an after-dinner political chat between the kindly uncle and the wound-too-tight uncle.

Geniality took a sharp dive, of course, when McCain felt the heat on his feet. As soon as Brokaw brought up the perks and tax adjustments of his plan, McCain decided instead to insult Obama’s.

In classic form, he lied at every turn – so many turns it felt like ‘Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.’

Obama would fine small businesses on health care. Lie. Obama would fine people with children who don’t get health care for them. Big lie. Obama voted to raise taxes. Little lie; at least a substantial and slanderous crimping of the truth. Obama loves raising them taxes. Lie.

This kind of soiled the air, and Brokaw was not afraid to wade into the muck. As soon as McCain floated out his quavering jab about “spreading the wealth around,” Brokaw threw right back into his face two facts that wiped the color right out of it:

One, Reagan raised taxes during a recession, and scholars believe it saved the economy. And two, McCain’s own plan “spreads the wealth around” plenty, with massive nationalization plans, buying of failed mortgages and bailouts that would have Lenin winking approvingly right back at Sarah Palin.

McCain just continued to lustily beat the red baiting drum. But I think any creature with higher brain function and an honest heart got the point – by his own definition, he’s as much a Commie, if not more, than Obama.

Of course, the real point is that such characterizations are almost as insipid as they are unhelpful. Socialism – get your gasps out of your system, as I’ll be saying it alot – is a vital part of our nation. It been since Das Kapital and similar tomes inspired people to such radical movements as:

Public fire departments. Public education. Public law enforcement. Public roads.

And of course, the huge elephant in the room is that every medicare, medicaid, social security, disability or unemployment recipient has Karl Marx as the Godfather of their livelihood. If it hadn’t been for hordes of unwashed and fiery-headed intellectuals marching in the streets against the billy clubs and mercenaries of the 19th and early 20th century rich, the state wouldn’t be dropping so much as a penny for the sake of the wounded, the helpless or the elderly.

So McCain’s snide remarks are dumb, and a barb in the shoe of any path to policy in this nation – whether to the left or the right. Without giving due humility and appreciation to the contributions of the state to the free market and society, nobody can think in the appropriate terms to run a country.

For the road we walk was paved by revolutionaries and all manner of unsavory characters. And even if we had a flat tax and paid for the barest of our entitlement programs, we would still be “spreading the wealth around.”

We are guided with that honesty, or, like John McCain, we’re getting in the way.

Today, McCain received the endorsement every American candidate cringes from: Al-Qaeda’s.

On a password-protected Web site, behind encrypted protection, a message in Arabic urged those that knew of this secret extremist enclave on the ‘net to do what they could in supporting McCain’s presidential bid. This included terrorist attacks which, they noted, would vastly increase McCain’s chance of winning, as he would be seen by the American people as a better instrument of vengeance than Obama.

“It will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against Al Qaeda,” said the posting, attributed to Muhammad Haafid, a longtime contributor to the password-protected site. “Al Qaeda then will succeed in exhausting America.”

This is not nearly so significant to the race as a statement as the underlying strategy of it is. It underscores the principle that every guerrilla fighter understands and that many Americans tragically ignore or fail to grasp: That an Empire is not defeated by decisive battle, but by being drained to death.

And this is key when facing an opponent like al-Qaeda, if one seeks to actually achieve victory, and not just look like it: Your enemy wants you to fight them with all that you have; to get hysterical, compromise values, make shaky alliances, tie up vast numbers of troops on inconclusive missions and, above all, spend. Spending without the cash to support it is what cuts the throat of empires – not military defeat in the field.

It has been the same through history. Let’s blow dust off the books and look at the all time greats – the empires that not only hold a candle to America in scope and resources, but surpass it in longevity.

We can start with the Assyrians. They were unmatched in warfare, but mighty Ashurbanipal took it a few steps too far – he got involved in two wars at the same time, Babylonia and Elam, while spending like a mad fool at home on luxury goods and art. As soon as he “left office” by keeling over, his empire slid into economic decline until it was picked apart a few decades later. Ashurbanipal never lost a fight, but by pouring money into the shadow boxing in Egypt, Elam and Babylonia while not looking to his budget, he lost an empire 300 years old.

Then Rome, the classic example. Rome collapsed under its own weight – a bloated giant engaged in bigger and bigger spending projects, teetering on a foundation of abysmally unequal wealth and catastrophically uneducated, hopeless immigrant populations. It had been masterful at spreading economy, organization and opportunity; in its decline, it shunned education, shunned integration, and was constantly at war. Like the Assyrians, it seldom lost on the field, but ultimately crumbled by spending too much and getting too little in return.

Even a modern example is present: Britain. Britain won World War II, but lost its empire in the process of playing the bulwark against fascism in the West. It didn’t crumble because, ever the clever investor, it sold off its Empire in the nick of time. But winning World War I and World War II meant going all-in and losing its chips, leaving America and the USSR to run the table. A dominance of nearly two centuries came to a close gracefully, but to a close it came – thanks again to “victory.”

So when McCain talks of “victory” in the nebulous, bottomless terms he does, I cringe. I cringe not as an anti-war activist – I’m all for projecting our military might abroad to fulfill ends both selfless and selfish. But it’s because I love to be able to annihilate our enemies and throw our weight around politically that I deplore McCain’s comic book talk.

For that way, dear reader, lies collapse. With $1 trillion dollars paid into Iraq for no appreciable strategic gain, and Afghanistan going from a mere catastrophe into a full-blown apocalypse, we don’t need to just snarl, “All in” whenever our bet is called. We need to realize that in order to last as an Empire, we need to have a strategy that’s focused on lasting. And we need to realize just how fragile our dominance is – and what is a threat to it.

“Victory no matter what” while breaking the pipes of government revenue is a threat – a far, far greater threat than a planner who looks to cut losses in a losing venture.

It wasn’t the courtiers who counseled peace in Assyria that destroyed its unstoppable three-century reign – it was the “rah rah” crowd that cheered on a two-front war without end.

It wasn’t the Persians who destroyed Rome in some arrow-swarmed Armageddon in the desert; it was the Senators who kept chasing the Persians through the Iraqi desert with massive armies for decades, while raking in the ducats and leaving the “barbarian” immigrants to educate themselves.

It wasn’t the Axis that destroyed Britain; Britain sacrificed itself.

And in the end, it won’t be man with a prudent eye and a frugal time table that gives al-Qaeda a chance to exhaust us to death.

It’ll be the man who always says victory’s over the horizon, and leaves the record travel expenses to the credit card.

Not every GOP prominent is lumped with Limbaugh, sneering at Powell’s endorsement as “race patriotism” and swiveling spasmodically on policy positions. Just as we continue to see the violent bent of McCain’s loyalists spike higher, we see the moral and the moderates in their ranks showing spine.

A particular point of contention has been the infamous McCain “robocall” – the ones that claim Obama “works with” a murderous terrorist organization and threaten the annihilation of America’s democracy by a socialist regime.

McCain isn’t backing down on those; he says they’re true. But GOP officials in the states whose populations have had the calls inflicted on them – much to the dismay of parents, let me tell you – are neither support of the McCain camp’s claims of truth or their tone.

First to speak out were Maine’s two Senators – Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. Collins resigned from McCain’s campaigns and Snowe, McCain’s co-chair, roundly condemned the tactics and urged the campaign to stop them.

“She feels they are regrettable and inappropriate, and these tactics should be suspended immediately,” said John Richter, Snowe’s chief of staff.

McCain replied by insisting he was “proud” of the campaign, which to me sounds either like a knock against his honesty or against his morality. GOP State Senator Barbara Lorman didn’t cotton to either, and responded by a step stronger than mere denunciation: She endorsed Obama.

“While my admiration for Senator Obama has grown with his positive approach to addressing the challenges facing our nation, my disappointment with the McCain campaigned has deepened. The negative tactics are inappropriate, downright dishonorable and have no place in the State of Wisconsin.”

This is how movements begin. People’s minds change because their hearts sicken with the ways things are, and they can no longer tolerate the abusive din they’re forced to live in. In essence, people are forced to change.

The first, the bravest, are beginning to emerge. And yet, this is a form of division – separating those who will not stomach assaults on patriotism, fear-mongering and disgusting lies from those who embrace them.

And since this last weekend, when Palin, Pfotenhauer and Bachmann all began talking about the “real America” in terms of contrast, their supporters have become even more bold and vicious.

Rather than denounce, they yell louder. The most recent rally in North Carolina opened with these words from Republican Representative Robin Hayes:

“liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God.”

In Virginia, McCain-Palin supporters tore up a 78-year-old African-American Baptist minister’s Obama lawn sign and replaced it with a Confederate flag, to show who the “real Americans” are.

And in North Carolina, where Obama was greeted with cries of “Socialist, socialist, socialist,” and told to get out by one woman, McCain-Palin supporters took it to another level.

They didn’t just hang him in effigy like in Ohio. They shot a bear cub to death in front of a university building, then pasted Obama’s name all over it.

…maintenance workers found the 75-pound bear cub shot to death in front of the school’s administration building at the entrance to campus. The Obama yard signs were stapled together and placed over the bear’s head.

So we are seeing a new kind of division in America. It is not the “pro-America” and “anti-America” that frames the minds of Palin and Bachmann.

It is between those Americans who speak, struggle, decide against what is wrong, and those who are “absolutely proud” of it – those who perpetuate it and commit it.

We heard which side McCain stands on. Now it just remains to hear from you on November 4th.

I just can’t find cause to promote John McCain. I was dared to by a friend, challenged to for the sake of more balance on a number of occasions, but it’s beyond me. I could do it as an intellectual exercise, like back in high school when you had to debate positions like keeping segregation legal, but not honestly.

I can, however, honestly compliment some of the people on his staff. Today, confronted with the rising tide of racial suspicion among the McCain crowd, McCain supporter Daniel Zubairi and some pro-McCain Muslims fought back. They and a couple of other outraged souls called to task a fellow supporter who was deriding Obama on the basis of the old “Manchurian Muslim” lie:

Good of him to stand up. The press, of course, took immediate attention.

The reaction by the McCain camp has been to shove Zubairi in front of the press as soon as they crammed him full of talking points.  It’s true love on the 24-hour channels – a party loyalist taking a stand for our nation’s proud legacy of diversity.

The media’s message: Some of the people on the fringe of the campaign deserve recognition for virtue. Not the tire-slashing, effigy-hanging, slur-yelling, voter-intimidating crowd, but this group.  They redeem, representing the McCain campaign’s beating heart.

Then again, do they?

Sure, they seem to shout down this particular pusher of the “Ayers-Islam-ACORN Axis”, but aren’t they putting their time, money and passion into a campaign that’s suggesting the very same thing – in oblique, if not direct, terms?

They are, we know from the McCain camp’s own statements, backing a run for the Presidency that insinuates no less than an active terrorist conspiracy with their opponent.

They do cheer for someone who just today characterized Obama’s 3% – gasp! – tax hike for the upper brackets as “socialism,” even when he’s as chock full of tax credits, tax breaks and big spending as the other guy.

From ACORN employees signing up “Mickey Mouse” to pad their paltry paychecks being cast as “threat to the very fabric of our Democracy,” to the callous admission that a “washed up old terrorist” has no real bearing on the race despite the campaign’s fixation on him, the McCain camp behavior has been nothing but a syringe of pure vitriol, shot right into the eyeball of the viewing public.

They peddle fear in place of logic, hate in place of hope, and deride any and everything about their opponent in the most grotesque of terms, turning what’s usually a rough-and-tumble process into an exploitation film.

So no, on second thought, I’m not sure praise is due.

Standing athwart the flood of poison and fighting with all you have to stop it – threatening withdrawal of support, calling for better conduct, struggling for even a glimmer of comity – that’s an earnest effort for virtue.

Tossing out a single gesture of moral rectitude, while otherwise slandering, inspiring fear and sowing confusion is something different. I see it all the time in corporate America.

It’s called CYA.

Too bitter by half?  Perhaps.  But not far-fetched.  Proof is on the tape.

The rabble-rouser in the red shirt is literally shoulder to shoulder with Zubairi for quite some time, able to sling it like he feels it.  This is clear through glimpses of Zubairi at the beginning of the footage:

So “Charlie CHANGE” up there goes on breathing fire about Islamo-Commies in ACORN-academia clothing, all under Zubairi’s silent sentinel.  Silent, that is, until the magic words are said by the Muslim girl:

“You know what?  You just changed my mind.”

And as she stalks off, seen below, time for Zubairi to step in like the cavalry with some righteous, press-friendly indignation.

In short, unless the Kurdish-American girl hadn’t been so incensed as to stalk off and cost McCain a vote, red shirt the anti-Bolshevik bigot would still be yelling “Fire” in the theater of many an explosive imagination, with Zubairi in loyal silence by his right hand.

The campaign drags on – episodes like McCain accusing Obama of hating on Joe the Plumber merging with episodes like a reporter being kicked at a Palin rally, into a single tarry mass – bringing to mind the image from Yeats’ “Second Coming” of a “rough beast” “slouching” toward The End.

And as things veer increasingly toward the violent, the terrified, the siege mentality, another line from the poem echoes fearfully loud:

” The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

Indeed, there is too much passionate intensity among the racists, brutes and bullies. But do the best lack all conviction?

No. In fact, if anything, this fierce reaping has cast the best into relief, as they’re the ones the worst are pointing fingers at. Nowhere is this more evident than on the Right.

First it was Kathleen Parker, conservative columnist for the flagship of conservative publications, The National Review. Parker made waves recently by roundly criticizing Sarah Palin after the Couric interviews, and being reamed by an alleged “12,000 e-mails” and counting – ranging from declarations that she should have been aborted to denunciations of her as not a “true conservative,” and those are the nice ones, according to her.

So it was with a bit more discretion that libertarian leading light and heir to National Review founder William F. Buckley’s estate, Christopher Buckley, endorsed Obama. In his article, “Sorry, Dad, I’m Voting for Obama,” Buckley writes:

“Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.”

For any unconvinced conservatives out there who’ve soured on Obama, this sage, caustic man’s revolutionary appraisal of the candidate is an indispensable read.

The same can be said for the article about his subsequent denunciation by the right-wing and tense resignation from the magazine his father founded: “Sorry, Dad, I Was Fired”

While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance.

Has the modern “conservative” GOP abandoned its conservative roots, and with them, scholarship and intellect? Increasingly this seems so to me. And at the very least, Kathleen Parker argues in her article supporting Buckley’s self-sacrificing stance for his principles, it is separating those who suppress thought from those who champion it even in difficult times:

Radical conservatives are still having an interesting time of it, though these days they are being mutilated by fellow “conservatives.” The well-fed Right now cultivates ignorance as a political strategy and humiliates itself when its brightest sons seek sanctuary in the solitude of personal honor. … Republicans are not short on brainpower — or pride — but they have strayed off course.

How many brightest sons languish in self-exile, or after being swept to the margins? Certainly Frank Schaeffer, pro-life activist, and Douglas Kmiec, conservative legal eminence and acclaimed scholar, come to mind. Both have endorsed Obama as the sole, best hope of reducing abortions available to us, and both have been denounced by the rabble for it – Kmiec even being denied communion one occasion on the basis of that endorsement.

If we can put aside the divisions that old-time partisans have stoked for so long to our disadvantage, more people might see abortion as a product of societal indifference and individual callousness: the former exemplified by economic conditions ranging from inadequate wages to evictions traceable to the subprime fraud; the latter typified by a self-centeredness that sees children as competitors or enemies to personal fulfillment.

And certainly there are the others I have referenced in past posts.

No brightest son better embodies this phenomenon than the man who many expect will, come the end of next week or the week after, capture the news cycle with his endorsement of Obama: Collin Powell.

For many, Powell represents the wise, humble voice that tried to steer the Bush administration away from war and was instead shouted down by the arrogant, self-interested apparatchiks like Rumsfeld, Perle and Wolfowitz. He sullied his reputation for many at the UN, was ignominiously cashiered come the end of Bush’s first time, and as since been out of sight – like an old trophy commemorating the intellectual prudence and moral involvement of the Republican party, now gathering dust.

If all indications are correct, that trophy will soon come crashing down to seal the fate of bullying, gut-based conservatism. I eagerly await that.

The brightest sons and daughters want their party back. With voices like Parker, Buckley and Kmeic, they deserve it.

And all of us deserve a better President than the man who, once as fierce a critic of those “worst” among the right, now fights for them with the “passionate intensity” of desperation.

* UPDATE * The conservative Chicago Tribune just endorsed Obama, their first Democratic Party candidate endorsement in the 161 year history of the paper.

* UPDATE II * In Philadelphia, conservative Talk Radio host Michael Smerconish endorsed Obama on his show today, “for the first time since registering as a Republican 28 years ago … voting for a Democrat.”

The vitriol has hit a high boil on the Wrong Side of this election.

Palin’s continuing rhetoric about Obama “palling around with terrorists” lances right into the cyst of racial, religious, anti-intellectual contempt harbored by many, especially those on the Right wing. It goads the suspicion such people have of those who look and believe different. It skewers together the idea that America’s enemies are a uniform bloc, hippies and Taliban one in the same in hating this country and wishing it harm. And it hits dead-center the notion that to listen to someone with different opinions, even radical or violent opinions, or to share a professional association with them, makes one no different morally or psychologically – the notion that is at the heart of hating and fearing ideas, banning books.

And the people who are vulnerable to such a message have, understandably, become violently angry. They were told Obama is associated with terrorism – and this keys in perfectly with the flocks of e-mails being dispatched, swollen with poison, from concerned local GOP offices, church communities and grandmothers like poor, earnest, ignorant Gayle “He’s An Arab” Quinnell.

It makes sense to them; they knew all along that the dark, calm, smart man numbered among the ranks of the America-hating enemy party was a terrorist.

It enthuses them; they don’t have to doubt the outcome of the Bush years, or fret about whether GOP orthodoxy about de-regulation led to this hideous crisis, or question the qualifications of their spasmodic, ailing candidate and his unschooled second-in-command and likely successor: They have more important things to worry about, like defeating that socialist terrorist.

More than anything, it angers them. It angers them that the media doesn’t repeat the facts as they understand them. It angers them that this “other” – this scholarly man, exotically named man, black man – might assume the post before now reserved for serious old white men. It angers them that despite how loud they yell, the wars their party conceived and executed, and the economic schemes they held as nigh-Biblical truth, might have led to as bad a disaster as America has ever faced – that they might be wrong.

So, angry and afraid, they call, literally, to kill Obama. This is no longer an election in their hearts. It is a war.

To some, a race war against “Arab” or “Black.” To others, against “socialist” or “elitist.” But in any case, they believe Palin and McCain – it is a “fight” as McCain says, against someone who is a liar, a masquerade, a closet terrorist.

And in a fight, we must realize, one doesn’t hold back.

That’s why, though surely you know a McCain supporter or two who is doesn’t call for Obama’s blood, we have heard the exceptions becoming more frequent, more vile.

Today, someone mailed a threatening letter with faux anthrax to shut down Obama’s Philadelphia office.

Rush Limbaugh casts Obama with a “movement” of “militant” America-hating, anti-capitalists, talking about the man’s campaign as if it was a racial-Communist war on the country. Listen below.

And the GOP Chairman of Sacramento, the California state capitol, proudly papers his party’s Web site with bumperstickers suggesting, “Waterboard Obama” and that Obama is the same as Osama bin Ladin, save that he’s a liar, and then blithely dismisses the notion that anyone would find that offensive.

This is not just “lowering the tone.” It is raising people’s emotions to a fever pitch and getting them angry.

And to say McCain is not a responsible party is ludicrous – though he kicked some dirt over this mess last week by suggesting Obama was decent, he still vows to bring these issues up in the debate tonight, he still has Palin yelling as stridently as ever, he still has yet to issue any firm condemnation and he still pours campaign funding into ads, talking points and operatives that foster it.

That is the real vileness of this end of the campaign season: That as bad as those who call Obama a monkey or claim we should set off a bomb and kill his daughters’ father are, worse are those McCain supporters who let that talk go without criticism.

That is how we get here – not only because of those who provoke it, but because of those on that side who tolerate it.

Those who don’t speak up when they hear a racist jibe, further the racism. Those who do not call for a reality check when Obama is called a Marxist, are friends to ignorance.

And to not speak up – to not do something – when Obama, a United States Senator with many, many good public works he struggled for, is called a “terrorist” or an “Arab,” as if that meant the same thing, is to give those who would believe this election to be a war, a killing time, license for their ideas and deeds.

John McCain is not going to stop this Frankenstein monster. Tonight, he has promised, he will “take the gloves off” about Obama’s “associations.” The criticism of the media, of the left, will not stop it.

Not even the election will stop this outrage. For the declining, hardening margin of Americans who believe the hate and fear in themselves first and their love of brother second, the “war” against the “terrorist” Obama will not end November 4th. Not until some bold action ends it.

Only those who stand right there next to them, listening to them yell, can end it. Only those who will break the silence and talk the monster down.

America’s body politic is getting worse before it gets better – John McCain’s campaign has adopted hatred as the one and only plank in its case for power over the free world.

I make note of this because I think everyone deserves to put this in the proper context: There has not, for over a century, been a campaign that has resorted to what McCain is now. Nixon, for all his ruthlessness, did not brand Humphrey or McGovern a terrorist. Clinton’s “War Room” did not fire the salvo that George H. W. Bush was not a real American.

They never resorted to galvanizing rage; to whipping up crowds with claims of their opponent collaborating closely with terrorists. They have lost and won with the understanding that such obscenity is not something Americans do – regardless of policy difference.

It is not because they were not able. McGovern shook hands with many radical leaders in the 70s. Bush was involved in Iran-Contra, where secret drug-financed funds fed cash to rebels who performed unspeakable atrocities on innocent civilians. The ground for upset, for rage at wrongdoing, could be laid there. It wasn’t.

It hasn’t been until now. And now, with Obama being called a “traitor“, the “pal” of a “terrorist,” and a “socialist,” it is consuming one side of the electorate. It is more than an aspect of the McCain-Palin campaign. It has become the furious, beating heart of it.

Some people are turning away from it, and rightly so. If anything, the conservative elements should be even quicker to excise the cancer from their party, and many have – of late, Maureen Dowd joined the ranks of Noonan, Will, Frum, Brooks and others.

But what is disturbing is that many have embraced it. People were afraid and agitated even before the financial crisis of the last few weeks, and now have been put into a fever pitch. The conservative economic pillars of deregulation and trickle-down were found to be too extreme, too corrupt in their current incarnation, and collapsed. And so those who supported them found themselves having to choose – re-evaluate and change, or dig in and go down fighting.

It is on that last instinct – the stubborn, the willfully ignorant, the prejudiced – that the McCain campaign has depended on. They have taken people’s fear and hurt, and given it a target – just as the Nazis did with the Jews in Germany, just as the Bolsheviks did with the moderates and nobles in Russia. Rather than let people look inward for soul-searching, McCain, and Palin especially, have encouraged them to rage outward.

The results are alarming.  Watch them.

Rather than be alarmed, or even express concern, the McCain campaign has only encouraged the fortress mentality, the crusader anger, of its followers.

That anyone criticizes them, is grounds for them to attack.

It is an understatement to say that this is not Presidential behavior. It is, in fact, behavior that mirrors the very radicalism it supposed denounces: It brings to mind ghosts of the most violent of the Black Panthers, the fury of the American Nazi Party and the accusations of debauched Joe McCarthy. It is the real darkness in America, made all the worse by its perpetrators passing it off with a smile and a wink.

But it is not humorous, nor mere gamesmanship, nor even remotely responsible. It is, as commentator Barry Yourgren observes, the prelude to bloodshed. For as much as people may try to dismiss it as simply another “tactic,” as if that euphemism salved all political wounds, the fact is that violent political speech is the seed of violent political action.

We are only forty years beyond our last major political assassination. Twenty-six years past the last major attempt. Only twelve years ago, a right-wing Israeli shot “traitor” Prime Minister Rabin before he could seal peace with the Palestinians.

Unless we want to go down that same road, we have to correct our course. Those who are already supporters of Obama can do this only by missives like this, for it is in the control of the conservatives – the GOP – to condemn their champion’s crass and dangerous actions.

Hearteningly, the change has begun. As I noted above and in previous articles, many conservatives are criticizing McCain and shifting their support. And on the basis of Obama’s policy and temperament, and McCain’s lack thereof, many voters are changing sides – from Christian independents here in California to small business owners in Florida. We can only hope it continues.

We can only hope that people see that the person best to lead in the future is the one not working to inspire darkness in the soul of our present.

McCain and his compatriots in the GOP have, since 1994, overseen the most total deregulation of business in America.

Regulation was reduced past what it was during the debt-driven expansion under Reagan and the infrastructure-invested, max-tax boom under Eisenhower. It was taken down to Herbert Hoover, pre-Depression levels. Funny coincidence, considering what’s happening today – the whole market speculation and unsound investment collapse.

Now the tiger is fighting hard to scrub off his stripes. Acting as though the platform of the GOP hasn’t been – up until last week – to reduce regulation even further and further, and rely more and more on “trickle down” model of income distribution, McCain has become a populist. Off whips the suit jacket, up roll the sleeves, and suddenly the Milton Friedman “free market” tenets of his party are anathema to him.

As if.

In preparation for your own political conversations, internal or otherwise, watch this video. Consider it an inoculation against the coming McCain line that he was ahead of Obama on this, rather than scrambling to leech off of his opponent’s prudent, well-advised plan.

I can’t make this stuff up, folks. This is no distortion on my part; no partisan argument.

The campaign choice has come down to this: Someone who breezes back and forth with every poll and mode, lying and distorting to promote his points, speaking only in the vaguest terms and having corporate lobbyists as his closest advisers, all so that he can offer policies that are basically just more extreme versions of the same, locked-in formula of the past administration…

…or someone who inspires, someone whose Presidency would make history, who is a talented writer and legal scholar, who is embraced by top minds on both sides of the aisle, and who seeks to bring our country together.

That’s the choice.

And if you differ, by all means, present evidence to prove me wrong. I have heard a lot of opinion from people – “I don’t trust him,” “I think he’s a bigot,” “He wants to destroy America” – a lot of the talk-radio, nothing-but-gut invective. But problems, whether they’re with a sick relative, an ailing business or a threat to your safety, don’t get solved by feeling.

I would like proof that McCain doesn’t change his positions dramatically whenever the wind changes. Proof that he doesn’t run the dirtiest, most perverse ads. Proof that he has a plan, not just a reaction – not just a dramatic gesture.

Because our country needs a plan. Not four more years of drama. Not just more song-and-dance intended to make us feel good when Rome burns.

McCain has, since mid-summer, used fear as his leading campaign strategy: Fear of Obama teaching sex-ed to kindergartners, fear of Obama being inexperienced, fear of Obama’s otherness, fear that borders on the obscene in some cases.

Now fear seems to be turning against McCain, as the economy struggles and McCain’s reaction is panicked – from saying he would fire the old-hand SEC Chairman, flailing between announcing fundamental economic strength and crisis, and of late portraying himself as a pro-regulation populist, at the very moment an article in which he suggests deregulating the health care industry like we have the finance industry is hitting the shelves.

This was capably discussed on ‘This Week’ by ABC’s round table panel. None on the panel was as precise in depicting the problem as the conservative party stalwart, George Will.

Take my advice – especially if your values are conservative:

WATCH THIS VIDEO.

I could not embed it, given that ABC carefully guards its Web content. Even YouTube did not have the full, in-context segment yet. But click the link and see. It is well worth a watching.

It underscores what is lately becoming the verdict on the McCain campaign by all quarters: That despite reflexive assumptions about his experience, McCain is not the candidate who reacts calmly, with integrity, to crisis.

The article I cited earlier by Wick Allison, the National Review publisher and protege of William F. Buckley, brilliantly asserts the difference between the two candidates and why those with conservative fundamentals have a solid choice in Barack Obama.

If you have not yet read Allison’s essay, here it is again. Definitely read it.

It explains why, in the words of George Will, John McCain has provided ample evidence to make “some of us” – particularly those on the right – “fearful.”

At last, the truth about the American POW/MIA in Southeast Asia has another chance at being investigated.

The investigator writing about it is Pulitzer prize-winner Sydney Schanberg. Schanberg is responsible for exposing Pol Pot’s killing fields. He is a tireless crusader for POW/MIA rights.

Next month, national periodical The Nation will be publishing the investigation that has proven Schanberg’s greatest challenge – revealing the impediment to releasing documents from North Vietnam and around the world that the POW/MIA families have, for decades, been fighting to obtain.

http://www.nationinstitute.org/p/schanberg09182008pt1

Schanberg writes what these families, and those that know them, political spectrum aside, well know:

That the man who has fought hardest, even against a unanimous Senate, to conceal those records, is John McCain.

This is a hard truth to swallow.

McCain endured much, that is certain. But what also is certain is that time and again, the people – both POW/MIA interest groups and Congress – have tried to get the Pentagon to release documents from North Vietnam, and time and again, it was John McCain who was instrumental in blocking them.

This is indisputable fact.

And unlike the partisan slander that it will doubtless be accused of being – some crude incarnation of the Obama-Muslim farce – Schanberg actually does support his claims with sourcing and evidence that has long been in public record.

One may speculate on McCain’s motives. But one cannot speculate that he has stopped, time and again, the release of information about the POW/MIA left in Vietnam to the public. One cannot speculate that people on both the left and the right – Schanberg and Bob Smith and Ed Asner – have been struggling to expose this cover-up.

The media will not like to hear this.

The likes of Hannity on FOX will not like his heroic candidate’s record sullied, even though it is only a concealment of the record – a refusal to admit to hard truth – that makes McCain look clean.

The left is always loath to raise the specter of Vietnam or to challenge patriotism.

And Obama will doubtless say, “I want this campaign to be about the issues. I do not want to discuss personal attacks.”

So it falls to we, the people, again to take a stand for the POW/MIA families. They have no one else.

The media does not support them. The system does not support them. They will be treated as a distraction or a tool in this election.

But this is their chance – now. This story will not be as potentially important as it could be now. The attention paid to it now will likely not come again.

So please, spread the word to others.

Send this in an e-mail. Do the research into it yourself if you doubt or support the facts. Do justice to this cause by working to spread the truth – it has only asked for truth.

If you consider yourself a patriot, do the research. If you feel you support our troops, do the research. If you respect honesty and facts, do the research.

Do the research.  Get the truth and spread it.  Only you can do this.

The time for the truth is now. Forty years of dedication from families that have sacrificed, journalists that have fought the system, voices lost on both sides of the aisle, and the legacy of the abandoned men, have come to this moment – this article – now.

Please support it by sending it on.

I have often said that losing this election will be the best thing that happened to the Republican Party in the last 50 years. It would be like an addict “hitting bottom” – the fear-mongering, patriotism-baiting, sound byte slinging, demagoguery dependent, hysteria-feeding, monolithic thinking, avaricious forces that have increasingly poisoned the GOP would be shown no longer to work.

They would have to be purged. An accounting of morals and priorities would take place. Actual values and philosophies would replace the unthinking commercialization of those terms.

We may be seeing its beginnings now, as increasing numbers of conservatives shove aside the mind-numbing, red meat baggage that calculating smear merchants have piled on Obama’s character. They’re ignoring the media branding, going to the facts and using that virtue they so famously hallow – independence. And despite the Reverend Wright distortions, the Muslim knee-jerk terror and the endless, topsy-turvy drivel about Obama being an elitist – despite all the calculated and cold-hearted slander for political purposes – this group of late converts is listening to the man.

Some are liking what they’re hearing. Former Congressman and actual maverick, Wayne Gilchrest, is among them, as he cross the aisle to endorse Obama. A former National Review publisher and William F. Buckley disciple has followed the footsteps of Susan Eisenhower and done this as well.

Others are long-time supporters, like Hagel and Lugar, who have taken up a recent cause: Reacting to John McCain’s seemingly limitless, morally disgusting lies.

Hagel and Lugar both had to defend truth, decency and Obama today when McCain began to spread the lie that the Illinois Senator had a secret meeting with Iraqis to prolong and worsen the war. They informed the media that there was nothing secret about the meeting – a number of US officials, such as ambassador Crocker, were there, and there was nothing insidious or contrary to US policy happening either. Temperatures have since been running hot.

And it is this constant lying that has conservative commentators beginning to protest. So far, it is happening in small numbers, but significant ones nevertheless. Outside the hate-based slop on talk radio, right-wing pundits are beginning to feel the truth is being bent too much for them to support the man appointed to champion their policies.

The Wall Street Journal hit McCain for his assault on the SEC and mischaracterization of it. FOX objected to McCain distorting the words of one of their journalists and threatened action.

Ross Douthat at The Atlantic takes particular issue with the McCain camp’s winging about how Palin needs to be protected from the media. But it is Richard Cohen, a former ardent supporter of McCain like myself, that has the most emphatic and eloquent reaction to McCain’s distortions:

McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. He tells the truth. He internalizes the code of the McCains — his grandfather, his father: both admirals of the shining sea. He serves his country differently, that’s all — but just as honorably. No more, though.

“No more” is right. And many on the Right are coming to feel that. It is a hard thing to admit one’s appointed champion is not worthy of one’s values; to denounce him.

But it is necessary for the survival of those values.

Lies.

It’s said every politician commits them. Its said that’s to be expected. It is, therefore, assumed that it balances out.

I reject this at least in part – the part that finds a moral equivalence between all untruths. The term “little white lie” can be dismissed by a truth-stickler as just an excuse, but the premise that there are degrees of dishonesty is no excuse.

If someone lies about whether they returned your call, it’s one thing. If they lie about you having molested or murdered children, it’s another.

If your President lies about his sex life, it’s one thing. If they lie about an imminent nuclear threat that needs to be countered by vast, heart-wrenching sacrifice by hundreds of thousands, it’s another.

So here I have decided to do a thorough vetting of lies told by both sides – all four candidates on the major tickets. I do this in the interest of research – so that you can tell your friends that you are abreast of the issues; you know what’s going on.

So that you can decide which lies matter most to you, and which suggest a sin of omission as opposed to deliberate and cynical treachery.

And so that you can do an audit of your own feelings about honesty, about how much of a premium you put on it, and why. Mind you, I will not be including accusations of “lies” that were exposed as lies themselves. I will, however, be noting blatant flip-flops. If you say your position is something, then specifically oppose it three hours later without noting that you changed your position, that is a lie.

You can review them in alphabetical order, below or in linked articles, by last name.

Biden

McCain

Obama

Palin

Conclusion

Joe Biden

* The Veep Lie: Joe Biden said a few days before he was announced as Obama’s running mate that, “I’m not the guy.” He is the guy.

I mention this given that a huge number of “conservative” commentary on the internet is devoted to how this “malicious lie” shows you can’t trust Biden about anything.

* The Accident: Biden has made the claim that alcohol was allegedly involved in the truck collision that killed his family. He admits to having not looked into the involvement of alcohol. Legal investigations do not support the involvement of alcohol.

* The Kinnock Plagiarism: In the 1988 Presidential race, Biden often quoted British Labor leader Neil Kinnock’s speeches in his speeches, giving him credit. One time, he didn’t credit him. His Democratic colleague-opponents dismembered him for it.

That’s all for Biden. Good show, Joe.

John McCain:

* Economic Expertise: McCain claimed he had never said he didn’t know much of the economy. He did. Then he admitted to this. Then he lied about it again and stuck by the lie.

* The Pig Lie: McCain aired a multi-market ad campaign claiming Obama had called Sarah Palin a pig, stating he “approved” the message. When asked if it was true, or even if he thought that was what Obama meant, he said, “No.”

* Sex With Children Lie: McCain claimed Obama wanted to teach kindergartners “comprehensive sex education,” which I guess implies about everything from anal to abortions. The bill he refers to was intended to protect children from sexual predators. He has stuck by this lie.

* Lying About Obama Having Lied: Rumors and lies about Sarah Palin abound on the internet, and a recent campaign ad from John McCain claims they come from Obama. It cites sources, and I now cite those sources saying that John McCain is lying about them.

* Obama-Cheney Energy Bill: McCain claims in a series of ads that Obama “gave billions to big oil.” The bill he cites, even including the perks in it, raised taxes on oil companies overall.

* Iran Tiny Threat Lie: McCain claimed Obama said Iran was a tiny threat. Obama was comparing it to the U.S.S.R., but McCain took the word out of context to make Obama look like a moron or feeb.

* Baby-Killer Lie: One of my personal favorites, this lie indicates that Obama supported post-birth abortions. Yes, he “approved a message” that flatly says Obama wanted to kill babies after they were born. Of course, the bill Obama blocked actually was to give fetuses or their relations the right to sue in the event that an abortion failed and the child wasn’t given full medical aid, and has been widely criticized for being poorly written, besides.

* Obama Tax: McCain claims Obama wants to raise your taxes. For 90% of Americans, this is a lie. The same goes for Small Business Owners. McCain claims that Obama wants to harm “23 million small business owners,” and this is a bald-faced lie. Especially when most small business owners would benefit more under Obama’s plan than McCain’s.

* Renewable Energy Lie: McCain ran an ad touting his renewable energy plans, but very little in his plans have to do with renewable energy.

* The Rezko Lie: One of the most enduring lies, McCain need merely show Rezko’s picture or mention his name, and people think Obama was involved in criminal dealings with him. This is a lie. Rezko is, indeed, a convicted criminal, but he was also a real estate owner, and his deals with Obama were limited to Obama buying a house at market value, having Rezko’s wife buy the lot next door, and then Rezko’s wife selling the lot at a profit. McCain, however, claims through ads some “$14 million in land deals.” This is a total lie.

* Pro-Life Lie: McCain claimed in speeches, forums and to the press that he has a 25-year pro-life record. Er, well, considering that one of the reasons I found him appealing in 2000 was his quote that, “I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations,” I think it is tough to say what his position is, besides thoroughly inconsistent.

Alright, that’s all of August and September for McCain. For lies like linking Obama to Castro, Obama to HAMAS, Obama snubbing our troops, Obama not voting to support the war, Obama raising taxes on electricity, Obama hating immigrants, Obama’s opposition to the gas tax holiday causing prices to remain high and Obama having no alternative energy plan – all lies that McCain paid much money to proliferate and never recounted – see this link.

Not more than a month after The Economist wrote of an American rebound for the dollar and investments, the economy has suffered another severe shock.

Goldman-Sachs, lauded in that very aforementioned issue, is taking a beating that would make Rocky Balboa tap out, with 71% losses. Lehman Brothers has exploded and is being scraped off the floor. And this all follows on the heels – not coincidentally, I should note – of the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac collapse.

In the midst of this, McCain has acted with characteristic integrity, which is to say like a spastic chameleon.

First, in order to slop some gravy to his high finance friends and throw cake from Versailles to the unwashed masses, he stood in the whirlwind of Black Monday and said “the fundamentals of the economy are strong.”

In the same breath, he condemned the “fat cats” of Wall Street. Only in the drive-thru intellect of the modern American era could such an argument be other than laughable and repulsive.

Both counts are due to the fact that McCain will adopt any stance, spew any platitude, to win the brass ring of power. If that isn’t the very incarnation of cynical self-interest, I don’t know what is. The lack of integrity, of course, comes from the fact that according to McCain’s own Web site, the “fat cats” have in store for them a cleansing of the regulations that might have them on a leash:

Corporate tax cut by 10%. Dividends and estate taxes vanishing. McCain’s plan throws table scraps to small businesses and the little guy, but feeds any creature in the high six figures as if it were a goose destined for pate’.

It is that very perversion of the conservative party’s platform that has turned the mess of the mortgage crisis into a debacle: Corporate socialism. For contrary to McCain’s patriotic pap, the “fundamentals” of the American economy are anything but strong – they are on the life-support of massive infusions of cash straight out of the pockets of the tax payer.

Conservatives of the old school rail, and rightly so, about the incompetence of some social programs – be they school boards, welfare programs or the IRS. Yet we have heard nary a peep from the custodians of the “conservative” legacy about the fact that we are dumping far, far more billions into the mismanaged, disastrously inept financial industries.

Just today, the sole thing that saved Wall Street from disemboweling itself and the ailing Euro and Japanese markets with it, was a shot of no less than $70 billion dollars. Allow me to put this in perspective, as perhaps someone like Goldwater – a conservative of principle, rather than the Corporate-Commies like McCain, would say:

$70 billion could buy an education for every child in the system for two years. It could pay for the senior prescription drug entitlement nearly twice over. It nearly pays for the entire Veterans’ Affairs for a year.

What it bought us today was time.

It did not, in any way, cure our problem. At word that the federal reserve would not be cutting interest rates below 2% for now – most likely to keep the euro area from collapsing under the combined weight of its inflating economy and useless American debt – the market plummeted again. The second safety net was deployed when the government intimated it might bail out the teetering insurance giant, AIG – another example of the public sector propping up the private.

More obstacles lie ahead. Goldman-Sachs will perish if Japan and the euro area don’t get their act together soon and start moving the investment group’s sluggish ducats. The next big black eye will land when the global economic growth reports are released, an indicator that most expect will be at only half of what people had hoped.

In short, the whole of the globe is ailing because Americans were allowed to rack up massive debt and then turn their pockets inside out when the chips began to be cashed. Japan and Europe are wringing their hands over diminishing American buying power, while China and India to keep their boom running full tilt on American debt that’s drying up. Now is /not/ the time for supply side, debt-based economics.

Without cutting federal spending substantially, all one does is swell and increasingly depraved and worthless American debt. Without giving the American middle class more buying power, all it does is demand that American corporations go to China and India for cheaper goods. The combination of these two factors can be a disastrous – essentially like drinking more so that you forget how drunk you are.

The press piddles away with its “he said, she said,” nonsense while Rome begins to smolder. We get the standard talking points that are no more than a boxing match in cheap ties anyway, and each channel tries to paint this like Armageddon. It isn’t Armageddon. It was just another Black Monday, and we survived it.

But we need to realize that we’re having too many Black Mondays, and too often. We need to get the simple fact that there is a relation between the economic choices we make and the results that occur. There is no more important economic choice in the entire world this season than the American vote:

We can no more vote for the guy we “feel” like voting for, than we can spend money like we “feel” and expect that we can just get more debt. Eventually the bill comes due. Corporate Communism is not the answer.

We must make the intelligent choice to get the intelligent result.

And so we are faced with the critical decision: Do we vote for the man who will say anything to make us feel good about electing him, or the man who is smart enough to make the right decisions – according to 66% of economists – now and in office?

Increasingly, we see the former having more appeal. All indications are that this campaign is now propelled by personality, not by policy: The crucial question is not “who do the experts support?” but rather “are you with Palin, or against her?”

Let us hope that the country wakes from its strange, self-indulgent, masturbatory dream about tanning beds and bridges to nowhere, and starts trying to put its house in order: Not by speeding up along the wrong path that it’s on, but by making a change.