Go to town.

Via Josh Marshall:

If Sarah Palin’s $150,000 wardrobe had a life of its own, it would get a tax cut from a President Obama.

Vent.

I know times are tough, but if you are so inclined to toss a few bucks to a good friend of this blog, I would appreciate it.

A present:

Rhode Island in the fall, sent in by a reader. The colors mirror what we see all over West Virginia this time of year (but with more mountains!).

Thread it like you mean it.

I just tripled my 401(k) contibution to 24% of my salary. I can’t afford it, but I also can’t believe how cheap this stuff is now. I’ll make the cuts elsewhere to make up for it.

Steve Chapman lays waste to the myth that, somehow, country folk from rural areas are morally superior to those of us city folk with edumacations.

“We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity and dignity,” [Sarah Palin] declared, quoting the late journalist Westbrook Pegler. “They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food, run our factories and fight our wars. They love their country, in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America.” Not like those idle, insincere, lying city folks who dare to suggest that America can sometimes be wrong.

But no one seemed to take offense. The myth of rural virtue and urban vice is an old one in this country, and it persists no matter what the changes in the landscape. And whatever questions Palin may face in her debate with Biden, her paeans to small-town virtue aren’t likely to be among them.

Most Americans, it seems, can tolerate hearing of the superiority of the small town, as long as they don’t have to live in one. You wouldn’t know it from listening to country music stations, or to the governor of Alaska, but four out of every five Americans choose not to reside in rural areas.

Because they are elitists! City dwellers obviously haven’t discovered that the best meth is served up in the sticks!

Not about elections. Not about humor. I just committed to $20 a month, forever, to the World Food Program via the Letterman site (the head of WFP was on his show this week.) You can donate here. FWIW, 93% of what they raise goes directly to feed people. While you’re donating to Obama, donate to WFP. 25¢ a day feeds a child!

That is all. Back to your regularly scheduled political programming.

Serious question- is Steve Schmidt running the worst campaign ever:

David Axelrod was surrounded by a pack of camera-toting, mike-wielding, pushing-and-shoving media types, one of whom asked whether his man Barack Obama had been “too nice” in the just-completed debate with John McCain.

“I don’t think he was too nice. . . . There were clear differences. . . . He made a very strong case, absolutely,” the onetime newspaperman said in his meandering style.

Twenty feet away, McCain operative Steve Schmidt was robotically hammering home a single number.

“Senator Obama was right tonight when he said John McCain was right 11 times. . . . It was a home run for Senator McCain. . . . The person who is losing the debate, the person who is on defense, is the person who says his opponent is right 11 times,” the shaved-head strategist declared.

I don’t know how much of the fail from the McCain campaign the last few months is is a clash between John McCain’s erratic urges and lack of impulse control (remember the aide who responded that the reason they were in Colombia during an election cycle was because McCain wanted to be in Colombia, andwhat McCain wants, McCain gets) and Schmidt’s style, but this is terrible. Let me explain some more- by every account, Schmidt is an on message kind of guy, and just likes to find one thing and drill it until it is dead. The problem is that when you have a campaign that operates like that, you can not have John McCain running out and shifting the message every few days.

For example, it was taunts of “celebrity, celebrity, celebrity,” then McCain goes on the View and SNL and pictures of him boating in the Mediterranean with Anne Hathaway appear and so on. Then the most important thing ever was “experience experience experience,” and McCain picks Palin. He continuously asserts the economy is strong, then the next day this is the worst crisis ever.

Today is just the latest installment. Spend weeks talking about bi-partisanship, spend weeks saying how McCain can work across party lines, jab Obama during the debates because he is so liberal he can not work with Republicans, spend the week saying the financial crisis needs a bi-partisan solution, and then your idiot campaign manager and ad team want to pretend that agreeing with the opposing candidate is bad.

And so on. They drive their point home as if it is the most important thing ever, make sure everyone knows what their point is (Schmidt is not subtle), then the next day they pull the rug out and something else is the new most important thing ever. The cumulative effect of all of this is to create a staggering level of incoherence, and it is rational to think these guys are insane or full of shit or unstable, or maybe all three. Add to it the foolish jihad against the media, and you have the current disaster.

Don’t forget, new Entourage and Little Britain on HBO tonight. I have given up on Trueblood. It is just terribad.

Dead at 83

1.) I can’t find gas anywhere in Atlanta. Seriously. Every gas station within 20 miles of my house has plastic bags covering the gas nozzles. WTF?

2.) Watching James Carville on Late Edition. He looks ill. He really does look awful.

The top news at memeorandum is the Palin email thing again, and that reminded me of a case from a few years back, but I can not remember the details.

Didn’t a prominent pol have his private cell phone calls about something get intercepted and recorded?

Or am I just making this up and thinking I am remembering it?

*** Update ***

Lot of suggestions, including the call in the movie Primary Colors, but I am sure it was the Jim McDermott/Newt Gingrich thing that I was thinking of.

I heard on CNN this morning that the Red Cross is in the red. They are operating on borrowed money because donations are not what they’ve been. You can give here. The Salvation Army has delivered over 20,000 meals since Friday. You can donate to them here. They’re doing a great job.

Good live coverage here, and the reports make this sound like it is going to be a real bad one, despite being only cat two.

If you are reading this from Galveston, or if you have friends from the Galveston area, it is time for you to get out:

On the hurricane’s present path the surge will certainly top the Galveston sea wall, and he estimates that if the path holds your chances of living through the night if you’re still on Galveston island are probably less than 50%.

Seriously, folks. Grab the kids, the pets, and GTFO.

Brendan Loy has the coverage.