As I noted a couple posts ago, I have officially become a propagandist, by posting and helping to share the Keating Economics documentary video, which goes into John McCain’s connections to Charles Keating, Jr., and the failed savings and loan crisis of the early 1990s.

The fight between the two candidates is getting nasty, with the worst attacks coming from the McCain camp, and specifically Sarah Palin’s outright exaggerations and bald-face lies … she makes it sound as though Barack Obama’s association with William Ayers includes the planning and planting of bombs back in the 1960s; when Obama was still a young child.

That’s why I’m looking forward to the debate tonight … I want to see how the two candidates do in an open, face-to-face town hall style debate. I want to see if John McCain still has the balls to lie and distort facts. I want to see if Barack Obama continues to slide down the negativity scale towards the low road.

McCain vs. Obama: Round Two - CNN.com

(CNN) — With just four weeks left until Election Day, Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain are preparing to face off in Tuesday night’s high-stakes presidential debate.

The debate comes amid stepped-up attacks from both sides.

Gov. Sarah Palin accused Obama of “palling around with terrorists who would target their own country,” and Obama’s campaign released an ad quoting editorials that called McCain “erratic” and “out of touch.”

On Monday, the Obama campaign released an online documentary that criticizes McCain over his involvement in the “Keating Five” scandal of the 1980s.

The back-and-forth this weekend could set the stage for a more heated event than the first presidential debate — one that had few sharp exchanges as both candidates largely stuck to their talking points.

At a campaign event in Denver, Colorado, last week, a voter asked McCain when he was going to “let the gloves come off and go after” Obama.

McCain’s response: “How about Tuesday night?”

According to CNN’s latest poll of polls, Obama leads McCain by six percentage points, 49-43.

One thing I’m surprised that the media hasn’t really picked up on, however, is that Palin’s current speech’s seem to be inciting people almost to a violent intensity … at least when she’s not speaking at a $10,000 a plate fundraising lunch.

Dana Milbank - Unleashed, Palin Makes a Pit Bull Look Tame - washingtonpost.com

Palin, speaking to a sea of “Palin Power” and “Sarahcuda” T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. “One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers,” she said. (”Boooo!” said the crowd.) “And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, ‘launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,’ ” she continued. (”Boooo!” the crowd repeated.)

“Kill him!” proposed one man in the audience.

I wonder if the Secret Service went after the guy shouting “Kill him!” … since threatening the life of anyone (especially a Presidential candidate) is a felony.

Palin has a lot to learn about how to play to a crowd, however. From the same article in the Washington Post:

“If you turn on the news tonight when you get home, you’re gonna see that, yah, this is another woeful day in the market, and the other side just doesn’t understand — no!” she said at an afternoon fundraiser at the home of mutual fund giant Jack Donahue. “Especially in a time like this, you don’t propose to increase taxes. The phoniest claim in a campaign that’s full of them is that Barack Obama is going to cut your taxes.”

Of course, Obama never promised to cut taxes for people at $10,000-a-plate lunches in air-conditioned tents on waterfront compounds. And the crowd — among them New York Jets owner Woody Johnson — reacted without applause to Palin’s Joe Six-Pack lines. After they didn’t strike up the usual “Drill, baby, drill” or “USA” chants, Palin, rattled, read hurriedly through the rest of her speech.

I wonder how many of that crowd starting thinking “Oh fuck, what are we in for if McCain actually wins this thing?”

LEADING MEN

Can an American team that aims to compete clean help put cycling on the right road?

BOULDER, Colo. — Conditions are cramped in the modest bedroom with burgundy carpeting and busy floral wallpaper at the Boulderado Hotel.

A small antique-style desk has been cleared off and covered with a clean towel, syringes, vials, latex gloves, a tourniquet and a waste disposal box. A second station is set up on a small round table. Coolers and carrying cases are stacked against the walls.

Blood and urine roll call starts at 6:30 a.m. sharp. The riders report a few at a time, with sleepy eyes and hair rumpled from pulling T-shirts over their heads in a hurry. It’s been a scant few hours since the same group gathered at a bar a few blocks away, where everyone had a few drinks and a lot of laughs.

They sit down, verify their paperwork and quietly proffer their left arms to have blood drawn. On the floor next to the bed, a centrifuge machine hums steadily, spinning red blood cells away from serum for analysis.

Cycling’s most secretive business has taken place for years in rooms not unlike the one in the Boulderado. Riders, with or without the help of team doctors and all-purpose staff members called soigneurs, have long used the privacy of a hotel room to undergo transfusions or take EPO, steroids, stimulants and other performance enhancers during races and training camps .

But this team does everything differently. This team has pledged to be open about its operations, right down to the open door of this hotel room on a mid-November morning.

This is Team Slipstream/Chipotle, a team with the uncommon vision of restoring faith in a sport savaged by scandal and disillusionment. Its collective commitment to riding clean is a mantra and a business plan rolled into one — an attempt to persuade fans and corporate sponsors that the team practices what it preaches.

Read the rest of the article at ESPN.com

Ball signs Sevilla, invites Landis to camp
Rubber has yet to hit the road in ‘08, but second-year continental road team Rock Racing continues to generate considerable attention, this time because of reports that owner Michael Ball has been courting Floyd Landis to fill an unspecified team advisory position.

Word of the deposed 2006 Tour de France champion’s involvement with the team came in the wake of director sportif Frankie Andreu’s departure based on “differences” in philosophy with Ball.

Less than two weeks after Ball signed a scandal-tinged Tyler Hamilton, Landis’s email address was included on an internal team message relaying details of an upcoming January 18-31 training camp in Malibu, California.

But beyond visiting the camp, Landis risks having his two-year doping suspension extended if he violates section 10.9 of the World Anti-Doping Code, which prohibits him from participating in “any capacity,” be it in competition or other activities “authorized or organized by any signatory or signatory’s member organization.”

Never one to avoid controversy, Ball has also signed former Kelme and T-Mobile standout Oscar Sevilla, a rider who, along with Rock Racing recruit Santiago Botero, was implicated in Spain’s Operación Puerto doping investigation.

No wonder Frankie decided to leave the team … one rider I can maybe see using the “let’s give Tyler another chance, he’s an American rider, blah blah blah” rationale, and granted, Frankie isn’t entirely snow-white himself, having admitted to using EPO during Armstrong’s 1999 Tour de France win … but throw in Botero and Sevilla to the mix, and it sounds like Michael Ball is really just going for maximum shock value before the team implodes and he pulls the plug mid-season, putting a lot of good, hard-working riders out of work, just to pimp his overpriced clothing line with a bad-boy image.

Who pays $240 for a pair of jeans?

Hey, Michael Ball-sack … we want sponsors, but we don’t need your kind … kindly fuck right off, okay?