David Brooks in the Times:

McCain and his advisers have been compelled to adjust to the hostile environment around them. They have been compelled, at least in their telling, to abandon the campaign they had hoped to run.

See, it’s our fault. We won’t let him run nice. His blood is on our hands.

Oh, and McCain is a former POW who shared a Christian tryst with a guard. Sorry, contractual requirement.

The Education of McCain [NYT]

“The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous.”
– McCain spokeswoman Nicolle Wallace, responding to allegations that he heard Saturday night’s questions while driving to the event

• “The insinuation that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated on his accident-crippled wife to marry a younger rich heiress is outrageous.”
• “The insinuation that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, would vote to undermine the Geneva Conventions is outrageous.”
• “The insinuation that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, would bully regulators on behalf of major contributor Charles Keating is outrageous.”
• “The insinuation that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, is accepting campaign donations from the Bonanno crime family and once sent Joe Bananas birthday greetings is outrageous.”
• “The insinuation that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, would suddenly call himself a Baptist without being baptised is outrageous.”
• “The insinuation that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, once called Leonardo DiCaprio ‘an androgynous wimp‘ is — wait, who disagrees?”
• “The insinuation that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, would pander about his POW experience in a presidential campaign is outrageous.”

Despite Assurances, McCain Wasn’t in a ‘Cone of Silence’ [NYT]

Darragh Murphy is so angry at Barack Obama, she not only founded pro-Hillary Puma PAC in early June, she also donated $500 to John McCain.

In 2000.

Although the PTO is not yet aware of her temporal transportation breakthrough, evidence of its existence can be found at the FEC, where two bloggers independently discovered records of the five-Benjamin throwdown to McCain’s primary campaign against George Bush.

Murphy is understandably incensed that somebody violated her stealth tech company’s NDA:

“Thank you as well for reminding me that I DID EVERYTHING I COULD in 2000 to prevent GEORGE BUSH from becoming the Republican nominee, including donating money to McCain’s campaign and voting for him in the Republican primary here in Massachusetts because I was confident that my hero, AL GORE, would win the primary for the Democrats.”

The self-described lifelong Democrat must also be concerned that a competitor has stolen one of her time-machine prototypes, since no record of any other political donations by her can be found. Not in 2000, not in 2004, not in 2008.

Some observers have proposed an alternate theory: Murphy is a longtime McCain supporter who conceived and executed a brilliant Black Ops maneuver to take advantage of dissension among Soccer Moms. But skeptics consider that too far-fetched to merit consideration.

Puma PAC’s founder Darragh Murphy (hearts) John McCain [Rumproast, June 25]

PUMAs are Swiftboats [Pandagon, June 28]

PUMA De-Fanged on Hardball [AOL Political Machine, Aug. 15]

It’s not the most sophisticated presentation, and perhaps not the most sophisticated technique, but we’re taking a liking to Electoral-vote.com — mainly because it collates state polls that we’ve had trouble finding, and provides a better daily snapshot of the race than meaningless national polls.

Currently Obama “wins” the Electoral Collage with 275 votes (270 needed), but the master count takes the polls as is, without the margin of error. More helpful is the map itself: anything white is a statistical tossup, and even the lighter reds and blues are so close they might as well be in play.

Only the strong reds and blues are locked down (for now), and those show Obama leading 165-131.

Today, anyway. Back on August 1, it was 197-97.

It’s not easy to jump to any day at will, but the site also offers a nice tracking graph, annotated with signifcant events — including, for comparison, 2004. “Reagan dies”, “Fahrenheit 9/11 opens” and “Swift boat ad” pretty much sum up that summer…

Electoral-vote.com

This week in news guaranteed to blow. your. mind. comes word that God is a hermaphrodite.

That’s right. Not just Alpha and Omega, but AC/DC. Innie and outie. Pistil and stamen. Man and, um, man in the boat.

How do we know? After six thousand years, somebody finally thought to read it backwards.

The journal of Reform rabbis published an article this week proclaiming that if the four-letter Hebrew name of God were spelled backward and pronounced it would sound like the Hebrew words for “he” and “she.”

Actually, HWHY sounds like our aunt sneezing, but bear with us.

The reasoning is that since Hashem — Moses’ name spelled backwards — is Hebrew for “The Name”, perhaps God backmasked Himself as well. (“Hashem” is how you refer to He Who Must Not Be Named, roughly equivalent to “gosh” for Christianists.)

And that would suggest that the ancient Israelites saw God as a self-satisfying deity.

We find the whole notion far-fetched, although it was probably handy to fend off nosy neighbors who asked why there wasn’t a Mrs. God.

Is God a hermaphrodite? [Chicago Tribune]

What’s that, Flipper? You say the presidential candidates are debating at a church? Only it’s not really a debate, more like dueling interviews, and not really a church, more like a Mall of Christ?

Or are you bitching about the headline? Dolphins, porpoises, nobody gives a flying backflip about your evolutionary turf wars, and you all taste the same to my friend Shamu across the I-8.

So quit yer yap-yap-yap yap-yap-yap yap-yap-yap-yap-yappin’. We have some serious typing to do in about twenty minutes. Here, go fetch this can of tuna.

7:43: It’s actually 4:43 in Sandy Eggo, but we’ll try to transpose the hours, at least through the first couple of beers.

7:48: CNN’s chattering about some JeezusFest in D.C. — anti-abortion, anti-gay-marriage, yadda yadda. Note to self: Find the place in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says “Blessed Are the Cretins”.

7:54: CNN talking head: “A lot of people do get their information from the Internet, and they’re cynical.” Drink!

8:00: LET’S GET READY TO RUMMMMMMMBLE!!!

8:02: Pastor Rick bringz da rimshotz.

8:08: Barry drops Matthew on “America’s greatest moral failure”, successfully evades three days of headlines.

8:15: Commercial break? “Resting on the seventh day: Priceless.”

8:27: Barry does a soft-shoe around abortion, comes up with “civil unions” for gay marriage, yadda yadda about stem cells. Whatever happened to Liberation Theology?

8:32: Given the opportunity to knock off a Justice, Barry picks off Thomas first, then Scalia. Thomas may be “incompetent”, but isn’t that better than if he knew what he was doing?

8:41: So here’s the news: Pastor Rick is asking better questions than most network anchors. He actually drove through the hot buttons rather quickly, almost apologetically, and the lack of high-five gotchas is a nice change. We can almost forgive him for the goatee.

8:57: Barry’s done, no howlers. What a disappointment. Bring it on, Geezer, we need to drink.

9:02: And Geezer opens with a shout-out to Petraeus. Game ON!

9:04: Greatest moral failure? “The failure of my first marriage.” No details, but give him credit.

9:07: Shout-out to Reagan! Shout-out to Thatcher! Please, don’t everyone yell Bingo at once.

9:08: Offshore drilling! DJ Geez is picking ’em up and laying ’em down!

9:09: Nukes! Oh sweet Jesus, the crowd is about to spontaneously rapture! GEE-zer! GEE-zer!

9:11: POW! Dude, even Cher saves something for the encore.

9:16: Is it the POW Christmas story? Is it? Cross in the sand? Come on, come on…

9:17: YESSSS! Pandermonium breaks out!

9:19: Hey, PUMA! “I’ve got a 25-year pro-life record.”

9:22: Bin Laden, Gates of Hell, etc.

9:23: Iraq! Iraq! Iraq!

9:24: Is it just us, or did Geezer just put his stump speech on shuffle?

9:29: And we thought Reagan governed by index card. Geezer plans to govern by bumper sticker.

9:33: Typical example of wasteful spending: $3 million on bear DNA. Um, what about the trillion in Iraq?

9:37: McCain feels strongly about your Constitutional rights. But it seems he can’t count to Four.

9:39: In case it’s not yet apparent: Barry tried to engage the questions (within political limits, of course), while Geezer just twists them into a talking point. Why do we suspect McCain will get the credit for a “strong performance”?

9:41: Second or third Reagan reference, plus at least two Petraeuses. Full house!

9:44: Hey, fundies: “Georgia was one of the earliest Christian nations.” Well, that cuts through the complexities.

9:47: Another Reagan. That’s four Ronnies. Call.

9:51: “I put my country first during the S&L crisis.” Hold on, we think we got the audio wrong.

9:53: And… scene! Now on to CNN, so they can tell us how they watched a different event entirely.

(From left: Barack Obama, Rick Warren, Rick Warren, and Sam Brownback.)

The Saddleback Roundup starts at 7 8 p.m. Eastern, CNN, MSNBC and Fox will be broadcasting it, and we’re desperately seeking excuses not to liveblog it.

Unless Bob Barr storms the sanctuary, of course. Nothing spices up an event like a purpose-driven Libertarian.

Update: Make that 8 p.m. Eastern. We’ll be lining up our livebrews around 7:45.

Barr goes to court to demand entry into Saddleback Church [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]