Today's Washington Times has an article talking about a battle going on between the Ohio GOP and John McCain:

In Ohio, long-boiling friction between the McCain campaign and the state Republican Party on a variety of issues reached a new intensity over a complicated local gambling question. The state Republican Party's central committee had voted to oppose a proposed state constitutional amendment to permit a casino in Clinton County. The state party included its "vote no" view on the "slate card" of recommendations it sends to early voters.

The McCain campaign unilaterally removed that recommendation from the mailer, overriding Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett and threatening to block funds to pay for the printing and distribution. Mr. McCain favors legalized gambling, and his campaign did not want to appear to support it some states and oppose it in others.

The state party worked with the opponents of the amendment to send another mailing, using the pictures of U.S. Sen. George V. Voinovich, Ohio House Speaker Jon Husted and Mr. Bennett, along with their words of opposition on the gambling question.

"Why in the world would anyone want to amend the Constitution of Ohio and put a monopoly in for one individual to build one casino in the state of Ohio?" Mr. Voinovich asks in his statement.

Joe Sudbay brings up the fact that McCain has serious ties to the gambling industry, which could be his reason for breaking with the Ohio GOP. That is most likely only part of the reason though.

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The wingnut website run by Charles Johnson, who attacked kidnapped journalist Jill Carroll when she was first released channels the ghost of Lee Atwater and says: America is close to electing a President who compares his own country to Nazi Germany.

Oliver Willis explains:

To Attack Obama, Little Green Footballs Defends Segregation

With a week to go it's only going to get worse. I'm waiting for the headline on FOX News that says:

Obama is an Alien, but the MSM doesn't want you to know!

Do everything you can to Get Out The Vote. Our country can't stand four more years of this garbage.

Michelle Obama tells Jay Leno how unimpressed their children are with Barack Obama's upcoming media blitz. Sadly, Malia sounds like my ten year old: as long as it doesn't interrupt their Disney Channel or Nick viewing, they don't pay much attention.

However, Nickelodeon, in an ongoing campaign to get children aware of the election, held an online election between the two candidates, with biographies and education on how we hold elections. Over two million children voted online and they selected Barack Obama as their president of choice. From the mouth of babes...

Boy howdy, Norm Coleman gets some top flight talent to flack for him.

By the way, Al's SNL co-star, Victoria Jackson, had some seriously bizarre stuff to say about Barack Obama:

One of those "celebs," Victoria Jackson, a Saturday Night Live vet (though no Franken admirer) voices rather strong feelings about Barack Obama on her website:

I don't want a political label, but Obama bears traits that resemble the anti- Christ and I'm scared to death that un- educated people will ignorantly vote him into office.

You see, what bothers me most, besides being a Communist, and a racist (Obama writes in his book, From Dreams of My Father, "I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and and animosity against my (white) mother's race.") (Obama's "religion" of the last 20 years is Black Liberation Theology. What is that? "It is simply Marxism dressed up in Christian rhetoric. But unlike traditional Marxism, Black Liberation Theology emphasizes race rather than class. It's leading theorist is James Cone who says Jesus was black, African-Americans are the chosen people, and whites are the devil. Cone says, "What we need is the destruction of whiteness, which is the source of human misery in the world." The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor), is that he is a LIAR. He pretends to be a Christian and he incriminates himself everytime he speaks about Christianity. To lie about being a believer in Christ is very dangerous. Lightning could strike him at any minute! But seriously, he doesn't have a clue what the Bible says and yet he pretends to be a church- going Christian to win votes. That is sooooo evil.

And she actually is worried about un-educated voters. You stay classy, Victoria.

I've been trying to ignore this jerk lately, (it seems McCain has kept him off of the TV screen. Probably bad internal polling numbers) but it's time I did a little update because one of the benefits that we'll all receive if Obama wins the election will be to see Joe Lieberman get his reward for betraying Obama and becoming McCain's side kick just to save a dying political career. Maybe he'll even get a job as a FOX News analyst. He does join the FOX News, right wing chorus when he says:

NAPOLITANO: Hey Sen. Lieberman, you know Barack Obama, is he a Marxist as Bill Kristol says might be the case in today’s New York Times? Is he an elitist like your colleague Hillary Clinton says he is?

LIEBERMAN: Well, you know, I must say that’s a good question. I know him now for a little more than three years since he came into the Senate and he’s obviously very smart and he’s a good guy. I will tell ya that during this campaign, I’ve learned some things about him, about the kind of environment from which he came ideologically. And I wouldn’t…I’d hesitate to say he’s a Marxist, but he’s got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America.

He knows full well Obama is not a Marxist.

And Digby has more.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, one of John McCain’s closest political allies, said Friday he does not believe that Barack Obama is unprepared to be president.

“I’m saying he is less prepared than McCain,” Lieberman said.

But what about Sarah Palin?

Is she ready?

“If, God forbid, an accident occurs or something of that kind?” Lieberman said. “Um, she’ll be ready. You know, she’s had executive experience. She’s smart and she will have had on-the-job training.”…

“[McCain] is ready to be our president at this very difficult time,” Lieberman said. “And Sen. Obama is not as ready. It’s as direct as that.”

Bob Cesca caught this interesting top item at Drudge last night:

This headline of a mad man doesn't link to anything, it just sits there like something rapped out on the keyboard out of frustration. It seems like Drudge is implying that everyone is wrong but him. Perhaps he is upset that the media didn't take his lead and report on the unreliable poll he posted a couple of weeks ago showing Obama with only a two point lead. Maybe he is just trying to steer away attention from the story turned hoax that he pushed so hard last week of Ashley Todd.

No matter what the reasoning for this odd headline, it is obvious Drudge has had a rough time lately pushing his misleading and just plain wrong stories. As matter of fact times have been so rough for Drudge that it looks like he just want to end 2008 now:

Notice the title of his page? Poor Matt Drudge has now transported himself to 2009. I really doubt 2009 is going to be much better for him.

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Sarah Palin embarrassed herself pretty badly when she practically admitted on national television (in her first serious interview) that she had no clue what the Bush Doctrine was. Last night on the Late Show with David Letterman, BillO showed that he's just as brain dead as the Alaska Governor. The only difference is that he spent much of the last eight years actually defending the overarching premise of Bush's foreign policy.

"The Bush Doctrine? Remember that, when Charlie Gibson went, 'what's the Bush doctrine'? You got the nose with glasses on and all that. I'm sitting at home going 'what Bush Doctrine'? Is that the doctrine where I go to Crawford Texas five times a year? What Bush Doctrine is that? I don't know what that is. That was just ridiculous. It's all gotcha gotcha gotcha."

Is he serious? I could care less if Bill O'Reilly knows what the Bush doctrine is, even if he has been defending it for years now. But I certainly expect someone who could easily be the President in three months to have an opinion on whether or not it's right for the United States to attack countries that we think may present a threat to us sometime in the future. Call me an elitist, but things like that matter.

I swear, this is the best Republican circular firing squad evah!

According to Sarah Palin, it was the RNC

According to the RNC, it was the McCain campaign

And Fred Barnes throws consultant Nicole Wallace under the Straight Talk Express and says it was her.

Unsurprisingly, now it's suspected that Nicole Wallace is the "unnamed McCain campaign worker" feeding the media all the stories about the diva-like behavior of Sarah Palin. Rachel Maddow talks about the McCain campaign meltdown:

It is just too schadenfreude-licious

It's nice to see at least some people in the McCain campaign still have standards.

TPM:

Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents.

Nina Williams, a stay-at-home mom in Lake County, Indiana, tells us that her daughter recently called her from her job at the center, upset that she had been asked to read a script attacking Obama for being "dangerously weak on crime," "coddling criminals," and for voting against "protecting children from danger."

Williams' daughter told her that up to 40 of her co-workers had refused to read the script, and had left the call center after supervisors told them that they would have to either read the call or leave, Williams says. The call center is called Americall, and it's located in Hobart, IN.

Gee, imagine that. A GOP bloodbath over Evita Sarah Palin:

But the real bile has been saved for those conservatives who have balked at the selection of Sarah Palin.

In addition to Mr Frum, who thinks her not ready to be president, Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's greatest speechwriter and a columnist with the Wall Street Journal, condemned Mr McCain's running mate as a "symptom and expression of a new vulgarisation of American politics." Conservative columnist David Brooks called her a "fatal cancer to the Republican Party".

The backlash that ensued last week revealed the fault lines of the coming civil war.

Rush Limbaugh, the doyen of right wing talk radio hosts, denounced Noonan, Brooks and Frum. Neconservative writer Charles Krauthammer condemned "the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama", while fellow columnist Tony Blankley said that instead of collaborating in heralding Mr Obama's arrival they should be fighting "in a struggle to the political death for the soul of the country".

During the primaries the Democratic Party was bitterly divided between Barack Obama's "latte liberals" and Hillary Clinton's heartland supporters, but now the same cultural division threatens to tear the Republican Party apart.

Jim Nuzzo, a White House aide to the first President Bush, dismissed Mrs Palin's critics as "cocktail party conservatives" who "give aid and comfort to the enemy".

He told The Sunday Telegraph: "There's going to be a bloodbath. A lot of people are going to be excommunicated. David Brooks and David Frum and Peggy Noonan are dead people in the Republican Party. The litmus test will be: where did you stand on Palin?"

But the best quote in this UK Telegraph piece was this one from Nuzzo:

"Win or lose, there is a ready made conservative candidate waiting in the wings. Sarah Palin is not the new Iain Duncan Smith, she is the new Ronald Reagan."

No doubt Palin is already the GOP frontrunner for 2012. (Sorry, Mitt.) Guess we'll be seeing the Republican Party finally decay into all-out right-wing populism. Which means: It's gonna get real ugly over the next four years.