Brain: Midday edition. I feel like I need meds.

[elfs]

"Voters need to be reminded what McCain offers (to the extent that McCain knows what that is), and they need to be reminded that they don't know Barack Obama."

Did Yuval Levin just admit that John McCain's understanding of what John McCain offers the American People may be limited? Is McCain "confused?"

McCain campaign says the Keating Five scandal was "a classic smear job," and McCain's not sorry at all.

This just blows my mind.

One of the main arguments in favor of the "Maverick" title is that John McCain acted poorly during the Keating Five scandal, was busted for it, was contrite in his censure, and has spent the rest of his career acting as a reformer seeking out the kind of corruption epitomized by the Keating scandal. His "maverick" status comes from his willingness, supposedly, to act against the wishes of his own party and pass laws that will prevent things like Keating from happening again.

Now, McCain's spokespeople are saying that the Keating scandal was "a smear job," and that the Senate was wrong to determine that McCain used "poor judgement" in his dealings with a mere "social friend."

So McCain's not a maverick. He's not repetent. His whole reputation is built on a lie.

Term of the day: Dead Cat Bounce

A dead cat bounce is a term used by traders in the finance industry to describe a pattern wherein a spectacular decline in the price of a stock is immediately followed by a moderate and temporary rise before resuming its downward movement, with the connotation that the rise was not an indication of improving circumstances in the fundamentals of the stock. It is derived from the notion that "even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height".

Palin's staff don't want the press talking to her supporters!?

All right, boys and girls, the McCain/Palin ticket is pulling out the feces-and-carrion encrusted knives. This is about to get ugly.

At a rally in Clearwater FL, McCain personnel prevented the press from leaving the press box to speak to rally attendees because "negative things have been written" about Palin.

Yeah. Preventing the press from speaking to private citizens will really get you positive press.

McCain becoming vile and repulsive

This was on all the TVs in the gym this afternoon. FOX on every TV. It was Hell. And I winced as McCain said time and again that there was something wrong with Barack Obama, that all of the nasty questions about McCain's houses, his scandals, his marriage, were coming from the Obama campaign and not from lots of little individuals all reading the news, remembering different details, and ferreting out the narrative that John McCain isn't a nice or honorable man at all. He doesn't understand the Internet age at all. He doesn't get that the Invisible Hand now works just as well in politics as it does in the marketplace. (Yes, I wrote that without irony.)

And the audience was just scary. They cheered when McCain said "Who is the real Barack Obama," as if the press hadn't been doing absolutely everything it can to uncover exactly that story.

Jesus, it's gonna get bad.