You know, it's interesting: McCain releases an attack ad, and the media reports its content like it's news - and doesn't bother to get any rebuttal from the Obama team. I just can't imagine the same thing happening if Obama released an attack ad. You just know there'd be plenty of rebuttal from Republicans being reported, probably in great (and fallacious) detail.

The electoral-vote map shows Obama with Nevada and Montana, now, and North Dakota in play, with McCain's support weakening in South Dakota. (In fact, McCain has been weakening in quite a few of the southern states, although they haven't moved over to blue.) On the other hand, although Ohio and PA are still blue, they're still not as blue as I'd like - and Rassmussen is showing McSame ahead in Ohio, which is pretty worrying. Now, understand, it's early days and all that, but if the polls show McCain close or leading in these important states, that makes the election a lot easier for Republicans to steal. And Ohio is a pretty big state to lose (and Nevada and ND don't make up for it, either.)

Sarah Wildman in the Guardian on "The global war on sex education: In the US and abroad, the Bush administration has severely restricted women's access to contraception." As Scott Lemieux reminds us, the Global Gag Rule was the first things Bush did when he took occupation of the White House, and McShame is likely to continue this war, too.

I think the trouble with Jesse's analysis is that if I want to know what racists are thinking, it's useful to listen to the actual racists. (via)

Apparently, Jonathan Alter regards it as a sign of affection when J. Sidney McSame calls him a jerk.

RIP Estelle Getty, who once played the woman we can only hope to grow up to be.

Readers have pointed out to me that Sam's interview with Siegelman is on the same page I linked earlier, but I thought it was something else because there's a long musical lead-in.