Lileks has the thankless job of once again deconstructing his fellow ten-thousand-lakes scribe:

It’s the usual Keillor twaddle – a humorless, scattershot ramble of run-on sentences and unsourced assertions, and I didn’t see anything that set it apart from the dozens of sour broadsides that preceded it. He doesn’t like Sarah Palin, although if she was on the Obama ticket he would have found a few nice words before falling silent on the matter, just as the wisdom and august judgment of Biden seems to hover beneath his radar. He is also angry about Republican economics, because, as he stated in a previous column, they deregulated everything and caused the whole mess. In his imagination, sixteen GOP Senators dressed like the fellow from the Monopoly game took a break from playing polo – with slaves dressed up as horses, of course, ha ha, capital idea, Smidley – and somehow did something which was totally unrelated to the sub-prime mortgage issue. I suspect he believes that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd woke nightly from sheet-soaking nightmares in which the loan standards were loosened just a bit too much, and every time they went to the office intent on fixing this mess, gol dang it, John McCain dragged them into a coatroom and administered ether. Amazingly strong fellow.

It doesn’t matter what Clinton signed; it doesn’t matter that Bush and McCain tried to raise alarms; there’s not an jot of responsibility on Keillor’s side, because if anything goes wrong it can be traced to the one simple fact that shapes his world: the other side is composed of despicable, cowardly, dishonest, cynical bastards still upset that Jolson’s reputation is sullied by his use of blackface. On his side: angels. The man makes a Manichean look like an agnostic Unitarian.

You have to ask yourself how the media would cover a long-standing association between John McCain and a fellow who, in the hurly-burly-mixed-up-folderol of the Civil Rights Era, went a little too far and burned some Black churches, or led a group devoted to blowing up abortion clinics. Mind you, he was never convicted – technicalities, which was ironic, because Conservatives hate those – but he went on to serve on school boards and charity foundations that advocated for States’ Rights, an issue dear to conservative hearts. Imagine the deets are the same – cozy fundraisers, serving on the same boards, McCain’s name on Bomber Bob’s memoir. Add to that some other parallels – say, McCain attended a church that praised a fellow who believed black people were descended from the devil, and believed Jesus was an Aryan.

John McCain wouldn’t be the nominee, and if by some chance that happened, this association would be draped around his neck every day.

You may disagree with this, but I don’t think I’ve attempted any deceit here. Deceit would entail lying about what Ayers did, and insisting they had a connection when there was none. You could say it’s almost deceitful to say there’s nothing there whatsoever, but that’s up for debate. But you can imagine Keillor writing 14 pre-election columns that never mentioned the McCain friend who tried to blow up a Planned Parenthood clinic. I think it would matter, and it wouldn’t be “desperation” to point it out.

Of course, Keillor’s been full of this nonsense for years. What’s really appalling is that the so-called “objective” media have given up the pretense this year.

A non-humorous post from Iowahawk: “I am Joe.”

There are two Americas: one that is Joe, and one that thinks that Joe should have to show his papers to question the Dear Leader.

[Afternoon update]

“I am Joe. Flush Socialism.”

I can see this really taking off.

[Update a while later]

Mark Steyn says that Joe must be punished because he didn’t go with the flow.

And McCain used the S-word in his radio address this morning. Why not? When you take money from high earners, and hand it over to low earners, and say that you’re doing it to “spread the wealth,” in what way does that differ from “to each according to his need, from each according to his ability”?

Of course there’s no relationship between Barack Obama and ACORN.

Treacher nails it:

The whole “He’s not a licensed plumber!” non sequitur is really fantastic. So, if you happen to be standing in front of Obama when he publicly reveals his socialism, what does the media do? Demands to see your papers. That’s just delicious, is what that is.

Read the whole thing.

Ace has had enough, and thinks that it’s time to start.

ACORN defenders are tellling us that the fake registrations are no big deal, because they don’t result in actual fraudulent votes. Oh, no?

Today, news out of New Mexico, the state GOP looked at information for 92 newly-registered voters in one district, and found 28 had “missing or inaccurate Social Security numbers or birth dates. In some cases, more than one voter was registered using the same Social Security number. In others, people who the Republicans said had no Social Security number on public record were registered.” All of these are of individuals who have already cast ballots in the June New Mexico state legislative Democratic primary.

Now, unless A. Serwer thinks that there is actually a registered voter named “Duran Duran” in New Mexico, he ought to refrain from sputtering that those who disagree with him are ‘racist’ and ‘paranoid.’

The person who is “Duran Duran” almost certainly voted under their real name, and thus got two votes in the primary. God knows how many of those 27 others exist; for all we know, one person might have cast all of them. Anybody who voted once had their vote diluted by the guy who cheated to vote two to twenty-seven times.

As usual, the people who project, and accuse Republicans of stealing elections are about to do it on a massive scale.

[Update mid afternoon]

Good line. I heard that Governor Palin just said in Ohio, “Don’t let them turn the Buckeye State into the ACORN State.”

Jonah Goldberg has thoughts on the financial crisis.

My big concern is that some slopes are very slippery, with nasty things at the bottom of the hill, and that politics can often be like a ratchet. If Obama wins, I fear that it will be very difficult to undo the damage of the most left-wing, “progressive” government since the nineteen thirties.

SInce some commenters are too stupid to get it, Betsy Newmark writes that this may have been Barack Obama’s “macaca” moment:

For those on the left who think that this whole story is about Joe’s personal background, let me put in in terms they should understand. Think of Joe as a symbolic construct whose situation is “fake but accurate.” The left always seems to like that sort of approach to what they regard as underlying truths. Think of him as the left thought of Rigoberta Menchu, the Guatemalan writer who won the Nobel Prize for literature with her autobiography of how, as an indigenous Mayan, she and her family had suffered at the hands of the Guatemalan army. Except it turns out that many of the details in her autobiography were fabrications. That didn’t matter to the left or the Nobel Prize Committee because they regarded her story, true or not, as an essential expression of suffering that could have been true.

It doesn’t matter if Joe is secretly a multimillionaire plumbing magnate or an apprentice plumber with unrealistic dreams. What matters is how Obama answered his question and what it revealed about his approach to redistribution of wealth. We’re not about to elect Joe the Plumber.

She has another thought:

I would have thought that Democrats would have learned the dangers of going too far in sliming an opponent or anyone who doesn’t support their guy. They helped promote Sarah Palin to a phenomenon by their relentless pursuit of anything that could be used against her. Questioning whether or not she was really the mother of her baby and if she could serve as vice president with a Down Syndrome infant set her up not only for a backlash among ordinary people but helped innoculate her against more substantive criticisms.

Obama suffered some of his biggest setbacks in the primaries after he was taped describing Pennsylvanians as bitterly clinging to their guns and religion. Now John Murtha is having to backtrack after calling his own constituents in western Pennsylvania racists because they might not support Barack Obama. And Obama’s followers are now all outraged that a guy asked the senator a question that evoked a revealing answer when Obama popped into his neighborhood for a photo op. It wasn’t Joe’s question that was so important, but Obama’s answer.

Are they trying to demonstrate that they have actually no real care for ordinary people unless those people are falling in line to vote for The One? They really ought to be more careful not to let that mask slip before the election is over.

The thing is, they never learn. Smearing and sliming comes naturally, and is always their first resort. And of course, like their lies and racism and generally fascist tendencies, they project it on their political opponents.

Instapundit:

They’ve done more investigations into Joe the Plumber in 24 hours than they’ve done on Barack Obama in two years…

They’ve also had more interviewers with him lately than they have with Bill Ayers. Aren’t they curious at all as to what he thinks? I mean, he was brought up in the debate, too…

[Friday morning update]

Is Joe the Plumber the forgotten man?