OBAMA'S FANNIE MAE ‘CONNECTION’ … AN ALREADY NASTY PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN IS GETTING NASTIER.  THE MELTDOWN ON WALL STREET HAS TOUCHED OFF FRANTIC ATTEMPTS BY BOTH THE MCCAIN AND OBAMA CAMPS TO SECURE POLITICAL ADVANTAGE AND INDULGE IN GUILT BY ASSOCIATION.

‘Always for Less Regulation’?  —  TO LISTEN to Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. John McCain is a Johnny-come-lately to the cause of regulating financial markets.  “He has consistently opposed the sorts of common-sense regulations that might have lessened the current crisis,” Mr. Obama said in New Mexico yesterday.

McCain's Scapegoat  —  John McCain has made it clear this week he doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does.  But on Thursday, he took his populist riffing up a notch and found his scapegoat for financial panic — Christopher Cox, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Obama Is Stoking Racial Antagonism  —  I understand the rough and tumble of politics.  But Barack Obama — the supposedly postpartisan, postracial candidate of hope and change — has gone where few modern candidates have gone before.  —  Mr. Obama's campaign is now trafficking in prejudice of its own making.

Kurtz: Don't trust Washington Post reporting  —  Howard Kurtz issues a rather amazing analysis of John McCain's ad connecting Franklin Raines to Barack Obama.  The Washington Post media analyst calls the basis of the McCain ad a “disputed premise” — despite his own newspaper's reporting on the Raines-Obama relationship:

Washington Post Faults McCain For Relying On...Washington Post  —  A number of journalists are trying hard to fit McCain's “Advice” ad into the now-established theme of the McCain campaign employing lies and underhanded tactics.  The Obama campaign says the ad is a lie.