obama, a socialist? i don't think so. palin is hot? mccain thinks so.

It cracks me up to hear John McCain and the rest of his scurrilous crew calling Barack Obama a "socialist". First, it is simply silly. I haven't heard Obama calling for the nationalization of oh say, the BANKING SECTOR like the de facto Bush administration has been doing. But even more, as Josh Marshall writes,

But does 'socialism', as a cudgel in the context of a national political campaign, not simply sound archaic?

Yep. Of course, this comes from an archaic candidate, one who has spoken in this campaign about remembering the attack on Pearl Harbor. Against a candidate who couldn't even remember that next big touchstone in American history, where he was when JFK was assassinated - because Obama was an infant.

Something else that cracks me up is Kathleen Parker's theory that McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate because she is hot. Actually, I think Parker may have something there - but it's amusing that McCain could allow his judgment to be so easily clouded. Of course, he has shown big lapses of judgment over his entire life, whether crashing airplanes onto aircraft carriers, chasing a hot young woman around and becoming engaged to her while still married, the whole Keating thing, choosing to hitch his wagon to Bush starting in 2005...

It is pretty appalling to hear the anecdote, coming up in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine (already available on-line), that journalist Robert Draper asked McCain's advisers if they knew whether or not Sarah Palin was informed about "the issues of the day" - and the answer was "I dunno." As so many conservatives have said, that alone is enough to disqualify McCain from being allowed to exercise his judgment in the White House.