memeorandum: Martin: Ayers case is risky for McCain-Palin (Roland Martin/CNN)

4:25 PM ET, October 8, 2008

Top Items:

Gallup Daily: Obama's Lead Over McCain Expands to 11 — 52% share of the vote is Obama's highest to date — PRINCETON, NJ — The latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking report shows Barack Obama with a 52% to 41% lead over John McCain. — These results, based on Oct. 5-7 polling …

Discussion: The New Republic, The Swamp, FiveThirtyEight.com, Firedoglake, Open Left, The Reaction, MyDD and Oliver Willis

Steve Benen / Washington Monthly:

SCRAPPING THE AYERS ATTACK ALREADY?.... The political world was told to expect some ugly, guilt-by-association attacks last night. We'd hear about Bill Ayers. And Tony Rezko. And maybe even Jeremiah Wright. The phrase “unrepentant terrorist” would be bandied about. — And then, nothing.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, TIME.com, Top of the Ticket, Balloon Juice, Newshoggers.com and TPM Election Central

Victor Davis Hanson / The Corner:

2005 — “He [Obama] said they have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Mr. Obama began serving in the United States Senate in January 2005” (New York Times, 10/3) — Why in the world was Barack Obama still communicating on the phone or via email with Bill Ayers up until 2005 …

The Politico:
Campaign shifts back to economic crisis

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Washington Wire, The New Republic, New York Times, TPM Election Central, Hullabaloo, The Nation, The Raw Story and The Swamp

Hotline On Call:
Palin's First Avail — On the plane this afternoon from FL to NC.

Discussion: The Daily Dish

Nitya / Political Radar:

Palin Fields Questions on Plane — ABC News' Imtiyaz Delawala Reports: For the first time in a month on the campaign trail, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin took questions from her full traveling press corps, covering topics ranging from her continued connection of Sen. Barack …

Discussion: Think Progress, Wake up America and The Swamp

Mark Halperin / TIME.com:
McCain Release on Ayers

Discussion: The New Republic

Eric Zorn / Change of Subject:
What is (and isn't)'terrorism'? — It's common these days …

Discussion: NewsBusters.org

Roland Martin / CNN:
Martin: Ayers case is risky for McCain-Palin

Discussion: NewsBusters.org

Brad DeLong / Grasping Reality with Both Hands:

John McCain's New Mortgage Plan Is Worse than I Had Imagined Possibly, Even Given What I Know About John McCain — Douglas Holtz-Eakin says, this morning: … What does this mean? It means that John McCain wants to give $100 billion of taxpayers' money to America's worst-behaving mortgage financiers.

Discussion: Paul Krugman, Matthew Yglesias, Corrente, The Sideshow and Kevin Drum

Marc Ambinder:
The McCain Resurgence Plan

Discussion: Hot Air and Kevin Drum

Ben Smith / Ben Smith's Blogs:
Moral hazard — My colleague Victoria McGrane, late …

Discussion: Jonathan Martin's Blogs and Marc Ambinder

The Huffington Post:

David Brooks: Sarah Palin “Represents A Fatal Cancer To The Republican Party” — In an interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg at New York's Le Cirque restaurant to unveil that magazine's redesign, Brooks decried Palin's anti-intellectualism and compared her to President Bush in that regard:

Discussion: Washington Monthly, The Daily Dish, The New Republic, Taylor Marsh, Wonkette, Hot Air and Bob Cesca's Goddamn …

Jeff Jacoby / Boston Globe:

Obama's 180 on genocide — JOHN MCCAIN'S opening words last night were: “Senator Obama, it's good to be with you at a town hall meeting!” Indeed it was. We now know why Barack Obama declined McCain's invitation earlier this year to appear together in a series of 10 town hall meetings around the country.

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Wizbang, The Corner, Hot Air, Stop The ACLU and Cassy Fiano

Fred Barnes / Weekly Standard:

Paging Rick Warren — Why did a town hall debate in Nashville revolve around what interests an East Coast newsman? — A presidential debate at its best gives voters a glimpse of a candidate's personality, quick-wittedness, likeability, sense of humor, judgment, basic honesty, knowledge, even character.

Discussion: Guardian, Commentary and YID With LID

Salon:

Nobody's dummy — What a powerful letter — which I am pleased to share with Salon readers. Yes, let us not forget the tragic series of dubious political judgments that led the U.S. to lurch into Southeast Asia after the French had prudently packed up and left.

Discussion: The Daily Dish, protein wisdom, Taylor Marsh, Classical Values and five feet of fury.

Camille Paglia / Salon:
Nobody's dummy — Liberals underestimate Sarah Palin's vitality …

Discussion: Commentary, The G Spot and pandagon.net

The Jed Report:

McCain Loses It: Calls Americans ‘My Fellow Prisoners’ — Update (12:26pm): I've posted an extended version of the clip in the vodpod so you can see the context. McCain was talking about his domestic policies, and clearly meant to say “Americans” or “countrymen” or somesuch.

Discussion: Think Progress, Campaign Silo, Majikthise, Wonkette and Daily Kos

Josh Marshall / Talking Points Memo: LOSING IT? — In most political speeches, the common refrain is “my fellow citizens”.

Thomas L. Friedman / New York Times:

Palin's Kind of Patriotism — Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can't just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw.

Discussion: MoJoBlog, The Daily Dish, TalkLeft, The Next Right, Lean Left and Buck Naked Politics

Tom Shales / Washington Post:

A Showdown That Was More of a Letdown — Considering how adamantly John McCain advocated a “town hall” arrangement for this year's presidential debates, viewers might justifiably have expected him to thrive in the debate held last night in Nashville, since it followed that format.

Discussion: The Corner

The Politico:
Debate II: McCain struggles to derail Obama

Discussion: USA Today, Salon and The Live Feed

CNN:
Transcript of second McCain, Obama debate

Matthew Weaver / NO QUARTER:

Obama is Hiding a Radical Past! — Edited and updated at 8:50 p.m. ET. — Did you know that Barack Obama was affiliated with a leading national socialist party? Barack Obama didn't include in his 2008 resume that he entered politics in the mid-1990s endorsed by Chicago's leading socialists.

Discussion: Confederate Yankee, The Corner and THE CITIZENS JOURNAL

Jbrown / Politically Drunk On Power!:
Web Archives Confirm Barack Obama Was Member Of Socialist ‘New Party’ In 1996

Discussion: The Corner, DBKP and JammieWearingFool

Time Edit / Swampland:

They Liked Him, They Really Liked Him — From TIME's Amy Sullivan: — As he did for the first presidential debate, Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg gathered a group of undecided voters in a swing state (this time Colorado) to watch the town hall, polling them before and after to gauge …

Discussion: Newshoggers.com, The Swamp, The Daily Dish, Jonathan Martin's Blogs, American Street, The New Republic and Firedoglake

Wall Street Journal:

Housing Pain Gauge: Nearly 1 in 6 Owners ‘Under Water’ — More Defaults and Foreclosures Are Likely as Borrowers With Greater Debt Than Value in Their Homes Are Put in a Tight Spot — The relentless slide in home prices has left nearly one in six U.S. homeowners owing more on a mortgage …

Discussion: Hot Air, The Swamp, The Big Picture and Fraters Libertas

Lisa Rein / Washington Post:

Md. Police Put Activists' Names On Terror Lists — The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.

Discussion: Reason, ACSBlog and Open Left

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

John Boehner on Barney Frank: 'He's from Massachusetts, although he can't say the word 'Massachusetts" — House minority leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), one of the GOP architects of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, outlined a few Republican talking points for the final weeks of the election Tuesday …

Discussion: The Crypt's Blogs and Think Progress

Andy McCarthy / The Corner:

You Guys Are Nuts — We have a disaster here — which is what you should expect when you delegate a non-conservative to make the conservative (nay, the American) case. We can parse it eight ways to Sunday, but I think the commentary is missing the big picture.

Discussion: Eunomia, Newshoggers.com, CBS News, The Opinionator, Balloon Juice, Campaign Silo and No More Mister Nice Blog

Ross Douthat:
The Unplayed Card — Andy McCarthy isn't pleased:

Discussion: The Corner and Kevin Drum

Jim Tankersley / The Swamp:

McCain's ‘suspension’: not quite — Turns out John McCain never did quite “suspend” his campaign during negotiations over the federal bailout plan, at least on television. — Tucked into a new report today on the campaign air wars from the Wisconsin Advertising Project is this factoid:

Discussion: TPM Election Central

Marc Ambinder:
Ad Spending Update: McCain's 100% Negative

Discussion: Washington Monthly

Knoxville News-Sentinel:

UTK student David Kernell indicted in Palin e-mail hacking case — David C. Kernell, 20, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Knoxville, Tennessee., for intentionally accessing without authorization the e-mail account of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. — More details as they develop online and in Thursday's News Sentinel.

Discussion: The Smoking Gun, Michelle Malkin, JammieWearingFool, The Jawa Report, Gateway Pundit, Pat Dollard and Patterico's Pontifications

Julian Sanchez / Ars Technica:

750,000 lost jobs? The dodgy digits behind the war on piracy — A 20-year game of Telephone — If you pay any attention to the endless debates over intellectual property policy in the United States, you'll hear two numbers invoked over and over again, like the stuttering chorus …

Discussion: Matthew Yglesias and Outside The Beltway