The last bits of economic data before the election just came out.  And… it’s a recession.  (You knew this, but the Commerce Department just fessed up.) 

3rd Quarter GDP: 0.3% FAIL.  Initial jobless claims this week?  Well, there are 479,000 new socialists out there.  (Welcome!  Coffee and danish out in the hall if you want some — help yourself.)  Oh: and Exxon Mobil beat expectations on its earnings this morning and had a record-breaking quarter.  (This is a recording.) 

Hopey can spin all three numbers today.  Geezer and Tailbunny have to find a radical professor at Northwestern to harp on (UIC and U of C are tapped out for that at this point) — don’t you worry… National Review is on the case as we speak.

And there it is.  Only two things can save the old man now: something that allows Geezer to spin terrorism (Osama or Mahmoud popping off, the military killing al-Qaeda’s number two for the sixteenth time, etc.), or a massively effective vote suppression effort (which has been a big pile of nope thus far, the efforts of GOPers notwithstanding).  Both still could happen.  But: my cautious optimism meter is ticking upwards, slightly.

We only read Politico when we’re desperate for story ideas — i.e., when Google News doesn’t put out — so it was by chance that we stumbled across this astute analysis from Jeanne Cummings:

Best Decisions

1. Obama’s gamble to stay out of the presidential financing system.

Well, sure, that’s easy to see now, the day Barry was blowing millions on network vanity programming. But what about then, Jeanne, back in September when the insight would have been valuable?

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Our Obamaseltzer Open Thread begins, as is customary, with an invocation from the Most Rev. Howard Beale:

I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be!

We all know things are bad — worse than bad — they’re crazy.

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I’m sorry, but I’m really enjoying this.

The first public poll of Alaska conducted entirely after GOP Sen. Ted Stevens was convicted on all counts in his corruption trial shows a probable Democratic pickup in this deep-red state — but Stevens is doing surprisingly well for a newly-minted convicted felon.

Call me a bad person, but this is fun.

The new numbers from Rasmussen: Dem candidate Mark Begich 52%, Stevens 44%, with a ±4.5% margin of error. Three weeks ago, Uncle Ted had taken a 49%-48% edge over Begich. So apparently getting convicted of a felony a week before the election can be quantified as taking five points off of a candidate’s poll numbers.

More after the jump.

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Sometimes there are flashes of decency over at the National Review. Rarely, but it happens. This is not one of those times:

Try as I might, I cannot really understand how even a minimum standard of voting security can be maintained when, as an Ohio judge did yesterday, you decide to let the homeless vote. If there is no address — how do you check whether someone has voted before or whether they are using a real name? I get that the judge is attempting to enable fraud on behalf of his campaign — but how does this pass even a minimum test of reasonableness?

Obviously. Jesus Himself would haul the homeless into Court and get a permanent injunction against their right to vote. You see, He was a hardass about stuff like that.

Oy.

I’m beginning to think that the most dynamic, persuasive ticket for the 2012 election is going to be a Sarah Palin/ Joe the Plumber partnership. Sam Joe Wurzelbacher the Plumber has all of the electioneering skills of Sarah Palin, beginning with the basics:

Wurzelbacher was doing everything you do on the campaign trail. You know, shaking hands, talking to people, kissing babies, taking pictures. . .

Three of those four things make him more competent than the average voter.  Add this to his $250,000 earnings, and that would make him an elitist.  However, this shouldn’t hurt him too much, since Joe’s elitism is white elitism, and the bitters typically only fear black people who are better than them  (which is why Gary Coleman failed to win the governorship in California).

Anyway, Joe Plumber was on the campaign trail with Sarah Palin in Ohio today.  And he showed us he has what it takes to be VP: Read more »

Talibunny and Psychogeezer no longer even holding hands on the bus. Silly Psychogeezer, you think she gave a shit about your alleged politics, you stupid fucking twit?

Robert Draper in his ‘In the Home Stretch’ column at Blog GQ wrote this week that the Psychogeezer and the Talibunny weren’t talking any more. Their disaffection for each other had reached an apex in which the Psychogeezer refused to sit with the Talibunny during a recent extended stretch on the road with the campaign.

At least that is the way the story was relayed to him but who really knows? The Talibunny may have reorganized her alliances around any number of future scenarios and lined up Psychogeezer stalwarts for her 2012 campaign and begun alienating everyone who didn’t prove apparently useful for her plans, in good auld Talibunny style. Here’s Draper’s tale:

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