Let's take a short break from the hyper-partisanship. Here's Barack Obama and John McCain roasting each other, gently and kindly, at last night's Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner.

Barack Obama:

John McCain:

(h/t NCDemAmy)

This was the moment that John McCain sealed not just his fate, but the fate of the Republican Party this year. There will be no comeback in 2008:

John McCain cedes the "health" of the mother to the Democratic Party, thus alienating women voters. But I see something deeper in this clip. It cedes "health" altogether. It admits that to the Republican party, the healthcare crisis is not of concern to them. "Health" is, to McCain and the Republican Party, so unimportant that it gets put into finger quotes. John McCain has just defined "health" as nothing but a rhetorical talking point.  read more »

In my continuing coverage of Republican racism and anti-Semitism, one of the stupidest Republican memes was "gee, uh, duh, isn't Obama a Moooslim?"

My first reaction was "so what if he was?" Why couldn't a Muslim be an American leader? But that is beside the point. There has never, ever been the slightest evidence that Obama was Muslim.

Those who listen to this lie and believe it are, quite honestly, abyssmally stupid or amazingly gullible.

But who originated the "duh...Obama is a Moooslim" lie?

Seems an unstable anti-Semite, named Andy Martin, started it. And Fox News let this unstable anti-Semite assert lies without questioning him...yet another connection between Fox News, lies, and anti-Semitism.  read more »

There is a protest today in front of The Waldorf-Astoria brought to you by PinocchioPolitics.org.

They are staging a "Lie-in" at 10:30am at the Waldorf, where they are trying their best to have Sarah Palin meet with foreign leaders behind closed doors and without any media scrutiny.

I actually have to go up that way today. I'll drop by around 11am and see what's going on.

More later.

Here's the infamous, ghoulish video that ran during the Republican National Convention. This is republicans ripping the remains of the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks from their graves and rubbing them in the faces of the electorate in their desperate plea to stay relevant.

Dead Americans, dead New Yorkers, used, dishonored, exploited. It's shameful. Republicans think they died to give them dramatic footage.

They weren't murdered in their thousands, on the watch of a republican administration, to be a tool of sleazy republican operatives. On 9/11 itself, it didn't matter what your party affiliation was; not to the hijackers of the planes, not to the victims in the towers, not to the police officers and firemen who died trying to save lives.

It shouldn't matter now. So what to do?

The best way to stop republicans from dishonoring our dead is to hold them to account. Call them, and demand that they repudiate their nominee's sickeningly cynical exploitation of dead Americans. Contact info for New York City republican Senators and Majority Leader Skelos is over the fold.  read more »