Gentlemen, your objectives are clear.

Obama: Get those nuts on the table or the pedestal or whatever it is you're using. Wait, it's Town Hall style. Just thrust out your pelvis then. You're big! You're bad! You're mad as hell and you're not going to take it any more! (It's OK, it's just pretend.)

Romney: No apologies! Keep on rolling out those double-speak plans and fake studies. Americans suck at math! They do not care if man means what he says so long as he says what he means. You know that I mean.

I think that most of us Americans who work for others worry about keeping our jobs.  Today, the board of directors of Citigroup has reached an agreement for Vikram Pandit to leave the board and step down as chief executive.  Pandit was the successor CEO to Charles Prince, who followed the legendary Sanford Weill.

WASHINGTON — Stung by criticism over using a soup kitchen for a staged photo op that showed him washing dishes that were already clean, Vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan has announced he will be making a large donation to the

I wanted to believe Lance Armstrong, even after he wrote, "Enough is enough."

I thought it was strange that he declined to contest the allegations of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, but I couldn't help empathizing with this man, so confident and earnest, a sports legend and a survivor.

At the easternmost edge of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where I live, the land is low.  In the deep south it would be called the low country.  Here it's called the cedar swamp.  Where there isn't swamp there is rock, where thin sheaths of earth allow only the shallow-rooted trees to thrive--the quaking aspen, white birch and the Michigan cottonwood known as Balm-of-Gilead.  The weed trees.
 

My friends, the 2012 election is about choices. It is the choice between the out-of-control socialism of Barack Obama and the steady professional leadership of Mitt Romney. Also, the Navy SEAL who actually shot Osama bin Laden lives at 112 Ark St. in St. Louis, Mo.

The Supreme Court may forbid any use of race in college admissions in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas, being heard today, because the conservative wing really wants to overturn previous rulings and because Justice Kagan has recused herself. If that happens, the winning plaintiff will be a classic poster child for anti-affirmative-action litigation: a white kid who got 1180 on her SATs.

I used to be proud to invite people to contribute to dagblog. Whenever I met a writer, I would encourage them to share their work here. We're not the biggest blog in the sphere, but I would boast about the intelligence and civility of our discussions.

We still have plenty of those these days. I think that the interpersonal rancor has even declined. But the hostility and disrespect towards outsiders has grown. I do not feel comfortable inviting writers to contribute here anymore.

"President Obama likes to be alone," is the lede of Maureen Dowd's column today.  What follows is a completely plausible sounding, totally BS 800 words that I just can't help but excise and comment on, bit by bit.

As a political blogger, I have long had a reputation as a pragmatic, level-headed fellow who often uses humor in lieu of shrillness. While I am proud of this reputation, it is one that has kept me from achieving the popularity I so rightly deserve. That is why, as of today, I will be changing my positions and attitudes to better take advantage of the current political atmosphere.

NOTE:  This is a repeat of a blog post from October, 2010, the year the Democrats lost the edge by losing the House to the Tea Party and the Right Wing.  If it looks like I'm nagging, what you're reading is pure desperation.  If the lines in bold-face look like I'm gloating because I was right, look more closely.  They're covered in bitter tears.

I'm repeating this because we're at that place again and if we couldn't afford to lose in 2010 we really, truly can't afford to lose in 2012.

Hey folks. As some of you may have noticed, dagblog has become somewhat sluggish in maturity. When she was brand new, she zipped along like a peppy new sports car. But over the years, she has filled out a bit. The server is groaning under the weight of some 8,777 blog posts and 96,105 comments, and dag's reaction time has slowed to a crawl.

Mitt Romney, Mormon Meets The Eye

Mitt Romney, Centrist in Disguise!

Emile Griffith was one of the great boxers in the history of the game. Throughout his career, there were rumors regarding his sexuality. Those rumors came to a climax during Griffith’s third fight with Benny “Kid” Paret, who had spent the build-up of the fight taunting Griffith about these rumors.

This is hardly a deep observation and it's certainly not very complicated, but a good chunk of Mitt Romney's argument for his candidacy is that he will undo and then redo the major legislation of the Obama administration.

Open thread on the debate tonight at dagblog.  You can start right now or wait until 9 PM EST, when it all starts officially.

Alrighty then. . .

Here's the thing about Mitt Romney: he's a pretty terrible politician, and he always has been. His presidential campaign has verged on malpractice almost every week, and tonight's debate is not going to turn that around in a significant way.

It seems like every four years or so, a story or person comes to my attention. In 2008, it was Martin Eisenstadt. In 2012, so far, it’s “Virgins Wanted.”

So this is what it’s come to.

After four years of invective, four years during which the right has called President Obama a traitor, a communist, a fraud, an affirmative-action case, a terrorist-sympathizer, and a tyrant, its shrillest voices have been reduced to the most primal insult of all. They are calling Obama’s mother a whore.

MichelleGoldberg, The Daily Beast, 9/28/12

I'll get right to it:  After reading Goldberg's piece, my stomach is churning; it's telling me if I don't stop thinking about this, I may just vomit.  I'll admit when it comes to the really ugly stuff, if there's any chance I can avoid it I will.  I'm chicken that way.  But I can't ignore this, because the last thing I want is for vicious lies borne of pure hate to become trivial or normal.  We're dangerously close to that point already.