Barack Obama suggests we need to consider moral issues in intervening with combat forces. He mentions intervening in the Holocaust and how we should have done that.

Um Senator, we did intervene in the Holocaust. It was called World War II.

America’s involvement in WWII had nothing to do with the Holocaust. We joined WWII formally because Japan attacked us and we gave informal help before because our ally, England, was being bombed. There was some knowledge of the extermination of Jews by our leadership, but it was never elevated to a reason for war for numerous reasons. Post-WWI America was very non-interventionist, there was a strong strain of anti-semitism in America, and we did not know the full extent of the Holocaust.

Eventually the allies did liberate the Jewish people and it became one of the shining moments in American history for which we can all be proud. But that’s not why we got involved in WWII.

I know this because I’ve read a few history books and I didn’t sleep through history class in school.

For the last few days, at a distance the McCain campaign has whipped up a frenzy of nativist sentiment against Barack Obama. They’ve accused him of being strange, not a supporter of America, and of course as a terrorist sympathizer. They’ve done it mostly through Sarah Palin’s forked tongue, but McCain also took a punch at Sen. Obama, powering through an attack as the assembled mob screamed “terrorist” at Obama’s name.

Then a funny thing happened on Tuesday night. John McCain had to go into a room with Barack Obama. He had to stand on stage with Sen. Obama and in front of the entire nation. Surely John Mccain, a veteran of combat, would take the baton from his running mate, get up in front of the naive Barack Obama and show him who the real American in the race is.

Then he fizzled.
He shot blanks.
The horse never got out of the gate.

John McCain suffered from a case of Electoral Dysfunction that no little pill can cure. Because Barack Obama was able to tell America why he disagreed with Sen. McCain right to Sen. McCain’s face in the same tone Barack Obama uses in Chicago, Miami, Indianapolis, Madison, Scranton, and everywhere else across the country.

Because Barack Obama is a man.

Sent via reader S.T.

Background.

The consensus on Twitter. (via)

Sen. Obama won this debate the way he did the last one. Strong and steady. He doesn’t get hyperactive, and that’s what we need.

McCain looked doddering, nasty, and condescending. Not the sort of man we should have as president.

“That one.” Really.

UPDATE:

John McCain refuses to shake Obama’s hand. Refuses.

McCain apparently shook hands right at the end of the debate. He just refused a second shake, I guess.

Polls:

CNN
OBAMA 54%
MCCAIN 30%

CBS

Obama 39-27 McCain - 35 tie

Over on Free Republic they want to commit hari-kari.

I should also note that Tom Brokaw sucked - sucked - at moderating. The moderators job is to be as invisible as possible. Jim Lehrer did such a better job, and Gwen Ifill was superior as well.

“That one.”

No respect.

Now we’ve gotten a hold of another fun little nugget that shows how whacked out this group really is: A newsletter from the group from July 1985 that lashed out at people who criticized Ronald Reagan for visiting the Bitburg cemetery in Germany, which includes the graves of members of the SS.

The Reagan visit was widely controversial among Jews, but the Council newsletter — which you can view right here — was less than charitable towards Reagan’s Jewish critics.

‘Those misguided souls who accused President Reagan of insensitivity for visiting the German cemetery at Bitburg are wallowing in tears of pity over the past crimes of the Nazi regime which collapsed over 40 years ago,’ the newsletter said. ‘They claim they want to keep the memory of the holocaust alive so that it can never happen again.’

‘Crocodile tears! It is happening again,’ the newsletter continues, ‘and again, and again, right now, in the modern world; only the crimes of today are not being perpetrated by the Nazis but by their philosophical and demoniacal soulmates, the communists.’

McCain reportedly was still associating with the group a few months later: A States News Service article from October 15, 1985, found via Nexis, confirms that McCain was on hand at a Council awards dinner.

McCain told the AP that he resigned the group’s advisory board in 1984, and eventually asked to have his name removed from the letterhead. But the State News Service article places him at a group dinner a year later.

De-fense! De-fense!

Nearly 20 years of John McCain’s contrition over his role in a 1980s banking scandal vanished this week in 17 minutes and 30 seconds.

It took that long for John Dowd, McCain’s lawyer in the Keating Five investigation, to make the mea culpas disappear in a telephone conference call with reporters.

Dowd said Monday the Arizona senator, now the Republican presidential nominee, was the victim of “a classic political smear job” and a “cheap shot” by Democrats who investigated him. The lawyer said the Democratic chairman of the Senate ethics committee during the investigation was a “stooge” of his leadership.

When America goes through adversity they need a steady hand at the helm. Part of the reason we’re on such shaky ground is that we are being led by the least popular president since polling began.

Any more of this and there won’t be an America to bail out.

When even the Washington Times realizes you’re a liar, you have problems.

Republican or Democrat, WTF? Is the right so desperate that they not only look at this sort of person and see her acceptable, but in fact find her so worthy of praise many of them wish she were at the top of the ticket?

You have got to be kidding me. Unacceptable.

Barack Obama is outspending John McCain at nearly a three-to-one clip on television time in the final weeks of the presidential election, according to ad buy information obtained by The Fix, a financial edge that is almost certainly contributing to the momentum for the Illinois senator in key battleground states.

From Sept. 30 to Oct. 6, Obama spent more than $20 million on television ads in 17 states including more than $3 million in Pennsylvania and more than $2 million each in Florida, Michigan and Ohio. McCain in that same time frame spent just $7.2 million in 15 states. Even when the Republican National Committee’s independent expenditure spending in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin is factored in (a total of $5.3 million), Obama still outspent the combined GOP forces by roughly $8 million in the last week alone.

It would be a pity for McCain if that ratio went to 10:1.

Less than a week after the federal government committed $85 billion to bail out AIG, executives of the giant AIG insurance company headed for a week-long retreat at a luxury resort and spa, the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California, Congressional investigators revealed today.

“Rooms at this resort can cost over $1,000 a night,” Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said this morning as his committee continued its investigation of Wall Street and its CEOs.

AIG documents obtained by Waxman’s investigators show the company paid more than $440,000 for the retreat, including nearly $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 in spa charges.

“Their getting their pedicures and their manicures and the American people are paying for that,” said Cong. Elijah Cummings (D-MD).