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Yes, the Hardball host started a fundraising phenomenon in the 6th congressional district in Minnesota with his Oct. 17 MSNBC interview with incumbent Michele Bachmann. She called for a media investigation into members of congress to see which of them might be anti-American.

But, Chris, come on. Be a little generous to the internet effect. You implied on Monday night's show that it was entirely the power of your show that drove outraged viewers to contribute hundreds of thousands to Bachmann's opponent.

You did good, but what you did was to start a viral effect. Check out the blogs that helped spread the influence of your interview in the first few days. Factor in the rabid use among politics junkies of microblogging tools like Twitter that have replaced our RSS readers to pass around these blog and video links, and there you go.

A single interview in isolation would not have caused the Democratic National Committee to take notice of Elwyn Tinklenberg's campaign. Thank you for getting the snowball rolling, but individual contributions flooded in from the combined influence of your interview and the net effect. The DNC recognized the resultant phenomenon. There was a team at work here, and as quarterback it would be gracious of you to acknowledge the whole squad.

See the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report for details.

Don't be fooled by John McCain's shell game. It's not plumbers that he and the Republicans are concerned about. All the railing against "spreading the wealth around" is focused on keeping the trend going just the way it's been headed.

The GOP always uses small business as a dodge to persuade ordinary folks they should favor policies benefiting the base that Republicans listen to when it's not election season -- big companies and the very rich. George Bush was fond of traveling to little machine shops or other blue-collar settings to talk about business taxes. Nice trick.

The heartland buys it, too, and that worries me a little. We're still living in the Cold War era in so many ways. The Red Scare still works.

Fact is a lot of economists, including Alan Greenspan, think the growing disparity in income in the U.S. is dangerous for the economy. The gulf hasn't been this wide (.pdf file) since that other depression.

Hasn't it been interesting to note how many of Barack Obama's newspaper endorsements mention Sarah Palin as a reason to distrust John McCain's judgment? Colin Powell featured the VP pick in his bill of particulars against McCain, too. You could almost pick up his thought waves saying "I'll be damned if I'll ever address her as 'Madame President.'"

You have to think McCain must wince each time an Obama endorser brings Palin into the equation, but maybe not. He's lacked that GOP adoration for so long, it could be he's seduced by the cheering throngs, and it blinds him.

But if I were McCain, here's the thing that would bother me: Palin contradicts his message of bi-partisan harmony -- just grinds it up and stomps on it. She's so polarizing that she erects a barbed wire fence in that aisle he says he likes to reach across.

Terri Ann Wintermute, running for Illinois State Senate, is all over the news shows with her TV ads. She's a Republican, though you'd never know it, since the fact isn't mentioned in audio or even on an end tag in her commercials.

The campaign must have calculated that Barack Obama's approach in tying John McCain to the president is paying off because Wintermute borrows the line and brings it down to the state level in stating that her opponent has voted with the governor 90% of the time.

Now a new ad rides on the faux coattails in another way, by charging that her opponent wants to give tax breaks to the wealthy. Come on!

Advice to the low-info voter:

• Wintermute is a Republican.
• Republicans always want to give tax breaks to the wealthy (they still want you to believe it will trickle down to you).
• Her opponent is Linda Holmes. She's the Democrat. Vote for her if you live in Illinois's 42nd District.

What a crazy mixed-up set of ideologies this financial and McCain meltdown has thrown us into. GOP candidates are likely to lay claim to any old position that sounds like it might be popular. Voters will have a hard time sorting it out since McCain -- who should serve as the party's leader -- is no compass for them. He's eager to play populist and to please the base at the same time. He's all over the place, and so is every other GOP candidate.

What's a voter to think?

Just vote a straight Democratic ticket. It's a much safer bet this time around.

What persuaded John McCain to see that the hateful course his campaign has been pursuing for the past 10 days is counterproductive?

I'd like to think part of it was common decency. Another part may have been a wish to inoculate himself from blame if, God forbid, some horrible act should be carried out by a whipped-up partisan.

Other factors might include the growing number of Republican politicians and talkers who have come out to say he's going down the wrong road, and the polls that show his attempts to soil Obama's character can be brushed right off like so much clean sand.

If McCain is smart, and I do think he's at least shrewd, the tipping point may have been his realization of the truth in this statement by John Weaver, a former adviser who was sent away in last summer's campaign staff housecleaning:

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Filed Under: Politics

Submitted by amyloo on Sun, 10/12/2008 - 05:30.

Chorus from "Kill the Beast," Disney's Beauty and the Beast:

We don't like what we don't understand
In fact it scares us,
And this monster is mysterious at least.
Bring your guns, bring your knives,
Save your children and and your wives.
So save our village and our lives,
KILL THE BEAST!

Get Meg Ryan to play Cindy McCain.

Newspapers, magazines, politics blogs, network news and cable news: please don't be seduced by the controversy the McCain campaign is introducing into the race.

You know they're angling for wall-to-wall coverage on a Rev. Wright level in an effort to distract us from news about the economy. It can't work this year unless you enable it. Do you imagine we care about what some old hippie did 40 years ago when our personal economies are crumbling around us this morning?

If you must, give the latest smear four inches or two minutes -- the way you might treat whatever happened in Iraq or Afghanistan today.

Same goes for liberal bloggers and Olbermann and Maddow. Sure, you want to lead the outrage, but doesn't that only feed the beast? People are interested this cycle. They're going to watch and read anyway. You don't need to stoop to this.

Do the right thing. Don't buy into the contrived drama. You're better than that if you want to be. Thanks.

"Some of Palin's interview responses can't even be critiqued on their merits because they're so nonsensical," Kathleen Parker says in her op-ed about the hate mail the conservative writer has received since calling for Sarah Palin to drop off the GOP ticket.

What if Gwen Ifill, moderator of the VP debate, didn't discriminate against Joe Biden by giving Palin a pass on her public statements? What if she made an assumption that all candidate statements are equal, and examined Palin's speaking in tongues at face value? What if she gave Palin the honor of pretending she is a serious candidate?

It's not uncommon for a debate moderator to cite a candidate's public comment and ask each participant to remark. For example, Ifill might quote from this part of the Katie Couric interviews on CBS.

Ultimately, what the bailout does, is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the -- oh, it's gotta be all about job creation, too. Shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reigning in spending. We've got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we have, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing, but one in five jobs being created, in the trade sector today. We've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

A couple thoughts on Mrs. Palin:

On being a quick study: She can have street smarts and be a quick study, but pouring over briefing books and practicing interviews and debates for two or three weeks can't supply the wisdom or erudition that we might want the leader of the free world to possess.

But she's not running for president: The power to make fateful judgments can land in a vice president's lap even while the president lives. Dick Cheney gave the order to shoot down Flight 93, and believed his order was carried out.

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