"Sampley says Fox News producers haven't invited him on to bash McCain the way he bashed Kerry." [Daily News]

I always knew Meg Whitman reminded me of someone. Our ruthless commenter spells out why she could cut it as McCain's VP:

Retired eBay CEO and McCain campaign national cochair Meg Whitman will speak on the second day of next month's Republican National Convention. The second day — dedicated to the theme of prosperity in tough times, according to a press release — is also the same day McCain's yet-to-be-named running mate is scheduled to speak. McCain could do a lot worse than to ask Whitman to take the podium for that time slot. Some think he's seriously considering it.Asked recently who were the three wisest people he knows in his life, McCain included Whitman in his answer. McCain's stump speech also regularly includes a claim that 1.3 million people make a living off of eBay and that proves America is headed in the right direction. Of course, some of those 1.3 million people are particularly unhappy with eBay these days, complaining as the auction giant messes with its fees in an attempt to become more like Amazon. Whitman's aggressive stance on the H-1B visas for foreign workers — she thinks there should be more of them — would hurt McCain with the midwestern xenophobes who dread a national anthem sung in Spanish. But then again those people don't like the moderate-on-immigration McCain much already. If Obama doesn't choose Hillary Clinton, it would also be a tactical grab for some of disaffected centrists who might admire a woman who played hardball while leading eBay for 10 years. (Photo by AP/Dharapak)

"Your math is indeed bullshit," writes commenter Jeffrey McManus about yesterday's Zogby poll result that gave John McCain a 5 percent lead over Zogby's usual front-runner, Barack Obama. "The presidential election is chosen by electoral votes selected on a state-by-state basis. Any poll that tries to dumb down the situation by displaying a straight percentage of voters is bullshit." Let me shorten that: "Any poll ... is bullshit." Including the aspiring experts at the poll rollup site McManus recommends, Electoral-vote.com.They called it for Kerry in 2004, by refining a guesswork algorithm until it forecast the electoral vote count almost exactly backwards. The site's editor seems to believe that applying the right mathematical formula to inaccurate poll results will get him accurate results. That's the epitome of the old programmer's saying — Garbage in, garbage out.

So hey, John McCain wants to hold "question time." Have you seen it? It's this thing they do in the UK where the Prime Minister is forced to actually take questions from Parliament, and answer them, and everyone's all abusive and mean and basically hilarious (illustrated in the attached clip). You know, McCain is good at speaking extemporaneously, so he could maybe pull this off. Except that he'd resort to very unPresidential insults and probably cursing when it got too heated (although—with this Senate?—it would not get heated). If it did work, and became tradition, we'd be thrilled! Oh, and the New York Post has another talking-related idea for saving America. Their opinion page today takes a nostalgic look at the legendary Lincoln/Douglas debates of 1858. And they bemoan the current state of political discourse and all that. The scheduled Obama/McCain debates, they lament, will not "even approach the unforgettable exchange of ideas that took place when Lincoln and Douglas shared the stage." The Post, arguing for reasoned, logical exchanges of ideas on The Important Topics!

Michael Goldfarb, one of the propagandists working for John McCain's presidential campaign, has discovered an unknown third rail of politics: Dungeons & Dragons. Attacking critics who suggested McCain plagiarized a touching anecdote about his observation of faith in prison from Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Goldfarb suggested, "It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement."Which of course only served to date a campaign already easily portrayed as old and out of touch — the kids these days play World of Warcraft in their mom's basement. (I'll be playing D&D on a sunny deck in Truckee this weekend, but I'm old). Goldfarb has since apologized, probably once he realized how many Republican-leaning libertarians have a velvet bag of polyhedral dice tucked away somewhere safe: "This campaign is committed to increasing the strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores of every American." Still, it's a little late, as the mockery has begun online in earnest — Wired asks readers to submit McCain-inspired non-player characters for consideration.

At last, pollster John Zogby's methodologies will be rigorously examined by Valley engineers. The latest monthly Reuters/Zogby poll puts John McCain ahead of Barack Obama in the presidential race — 46 to 41 percent. Prior to this, Obama had come out ahead each month, most recently scoring a 7 percent lead in July's poll. Zogby himself attributes the flip to McCain's aggressive campaign to discredit Obama. Valleywag editor Owen Thomas surely blames Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Personally, I'm looking forward to the many, many posts, comments and tweets explaining how this is just not happening.

So John Edwards' maybe-babymama Rielle Hunter was a blabbermouth. Have you ever known anyone who had an affair with a married man? How'd you find out? Rhetorical question, yes! So, Radar wants to know why Rielle couldn't keep her freaking jaw in place about boning John Edwards. She would be so much better off if she'd just had a little discretion! Hey, did you ever think on how a widely-used synonym for "affair" is "indiscretion"? No, it's not so much that they go together like peanut butter and jelly; more like they're the exact same thing. What sort of patently talentless dilettante chats up a politician in a bar and manages to secure a lucrative contract with his campaign and either his or his close confidante's participation in unprotected sex? Answer: someone who shares the personality traits of a Donna Rice or Monica Lewinsky — the kind of woman who to enters beauty pageants, shares her innermost secrets with Linda Tripp or in this case blabs about married John from North Carolina to her web developer and anybody else who'll listen.Why do you think that whenever politicians from Bill Clinton to John Edwards stray, you always hear about the extensive efforts made by their staffers and confidantes to keep them away from their accomplices to infidelity? Because people like Rielle Hunter are not generally subtle; people like Rielle Hunter would equate "subtle" with a gentle snap of one's thong! In my years as a chronic oversharing discretion lacker I have found we often attract the same type. It's no accident Monica gave that exclusive interview to someone who just told the world how she used to screw Alan Greenspan! Which brings us to Rielle's ex Jay McInerney. He says he wrote about Rielle because he was "intrigued and appalled" by her behavior. I bet that in Rielle's case he would switch the verb to "bored" at this point. Which is what is so exceptionally unboring about Rielle Hunter! She changed her name, but unlike anti-pornography activist conservawife Donna Rice Hughes she never changed her ability to summon the energy to hit on powerful men and babble incessantly about it to all her blabbermouth friends. She would probably claim it was because she and John shared True Love. You might claim she is simply an incurable narcissist. I would say you're both right!

The Daily News and the Post today both led with goofy excitable front page stories on Michael Bloomberg's threat to cover our bridges and skyscrapers with hideous power-generating windmills (both front pages: "WINDY CITY"). Both mention that Bloomberg dined with millionaire windpower enthusiast T. Boone Pickens. Page Six also reports on how Rudy Giuliani ignored the advice of Pickens, "a leading advocate for alternative energy," during his failed presidential run. Pickens just did a conference call with Harry Reid. And he just met with McCain. And he's got a book out! The oil billionaire-turned-pseudo-environmentalist is everywhere. And so we ask, upon learning that Obama's met with him too: what the hell? Why is everyone playing nice with the evil old jackass? We'd expect him to informally advise Giuliani. Pickens, the old oilman, is a longtime funder of Republicans. He very very famously is responsible for those Swift Boat people who lied about John Kerry. He's spent the last 30 years ensuring that his business-friendly Republican friends remained in power, and now the old man spends millions pushing... wind power? Alternative energy? It almost sounds like environmentalism! Why waste time trying to convince Republicans to... act like liberals?? The oilman has given up oil, you see. Now he's investing millions in wind power and natural gas. Both are less environmentally terrible than petroleum, but his magic windmill plan does not seem to us to be very viable. Because there's a lot of wind in those big empty plains states, yes, but not any people. So transporting this power across the entire country adds even more to this power's price tag and enriches T. Boone and his investors yet more! But merits of his plan aside, the question is why Democrats like Reid and Obama are giving the jackass the time of day and legitimizing him as anything other than a zillionaire who thinks the presidency and now the energy policy of this country are his to buy. Start a think tank or something dude, don't just get all "rogue vigilante billionaire crisis-solver"! And further, why the hell aren't anyone but random columnists and Cato Institute libertarians examining his plan seriously and reporting on his conflicts of interest? Hell in a week's worth of stories entirely about how important famous elected officials are meeting with Pickens, only today's Obama stories even mention the Swift Boat Veterans. What the hell, T. Boone Pickens. Just because you're rich doesn't mean everyone has to take you seriously.

"It was February 2006 in Munich, and John McCain's eyes were flashing with the mischievous spark that comes when he's about to fire a verbal rocket. 'I've got a zinger coming,' he told me, referring to a speech on Russia he would give a few hours later at the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy." Wow! What sort of zinger did McCain have planned for the Munich Conference on Security Policy? Did Gunther Beckstein, Minister-President of Bavaria, look like a painted trollop? Or was it the one where a gorilla rapes Richard Holbrooke? Tell us, David Ignatius, what was this zinger you've set up so thrillingly?

Wait, what? In the middle of an otherwise routine NY Daily News article that details the trouble Republicans have convincing celebrities to attend their upcoming convention (but wait, don't they hate celebrities?), this little bombshell is dropped: "When asked about Republican stars like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dennis Hopper, Kelsey Grammer and Chuck Norris, G.O.P. convention spokeswoman Melissa Subbotin said the party was not ready to announce its roster at this time." Dennis Hopper? Did we miss the memo that said the countercultural director of freaking Easy Rider was a Republican? We'd assumed his appearance in the right-wing Zucker film An American Carol was a strict paycheck gig, but no — Wikipedia confirms it, listing two donations the actor has made to the RNC. We'll leave the blacklisting to Jeffrey Wells, but we hope this doesn't portend an eventual run for office from the actor. After all, if Gopher could do it... [NY Daily News]

You know how John McCain knew his captors were gay? The guards that bound him with ropes and beat him nightly for hours were wearing sweaters. Ha ha ha. No, seriously though, the actual funny new joke about John McCain is that he was not even tortured! Andrew Sullivan argues that all the shit that happened to McCain—"sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating"—now falls under the category of perfectly legal enhanced interrogation, as practiced by the United States across the world. With McCain's approval! Hooray! (Of course U.S. law requires that detainees are treated to one night of a guard quietly scratching a crescent into the sand every year on a holy day of their choosing.) Oh, and no one yet knows when McCain first remembered the guard that drew the cross in the ground with a stick or why he did not mention this fact until 1999, but the story is not from Solzhenitsyn at all but rather from Watergate crook turned evangelical wingnut Chuck Colson, who claimed he heard it from Jesse Helms, who said he heard it from Billy Graham in 1977. John McCain seems to have a habit of making up his own biography to fit whatever his circumstances require and then seeming like he believes his own nonsense. Maybe it relates to those years of torture, during which he'd only give up useless information to his captors, like the starting defensive line of the Pittsburgh Steelers (sorry, wait... that was the Packers.).

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes working for his campaign, text messages and email alerts set up, 1,349,295 supporters signed up on Facebook, Silicon Valley's money in his pocket, and a fresh Google-esque brand image manufactured. But the Grand Old Party gets the tech youngs, too, OK? Hence BarackBook.com, on which you can read Barack's "Friend Feed" and learn, for example, that "Barack Obama is now friends with Jodie Evans," whom you may be shocked and alarmed to learn is an anti-establishment, anti-war activist! Anyway, according to its legal disclaimer and joke explainer, BarackBook.com "is a parody of Facebook.com." See a screen grab, below.

Cruising for no-strings-attached relations with power players? That's what Manhunt's gay users thought they were getting from each other, not from Manhunt founder Jonathan Crutchley. Crutchley made a $2,300 donation to the hetero-lovin' McCain campaign, which sparked a minor mutiny on the sex site that made him rich, leading to his resignation as chairman. At least he got his money back from McCain, who wanted to do nothing from gay-hookup bucks. Honestly: We thought sugar daddies were always the very height of discretion. (Photo via Out.com)

Back in 1973, when young John McCain had just been released from his five hellish years of torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese, he became a media sensation back home. His tale of heroism inspired the nation, and his refusal to back down and give in to his captors demands was thrilling stuff. Queerty tracked down what may be McCain's first personal account of his captivity and torture, for US News & World Report in May of 1973. They posted it online in January, but maybe it's because we're all so familiar with his tale at this point that no one noticed, until now, the bit where he says all his captors were homosexuals who got off on whipping him. No, that is not made up.

It was revealed last week that Jonathan Crutchley, chairman of popular gay hookup site Manhunt, had donated $2300 to not-so-gay-friendly John McCain's campaign fund. And now, amid a a furor of hurt feelings and un-nursed booboos, he has resigned. Site founder Larry Basile issued a statement today, decrying Crutchley's hoodwinkery and affirming his and the site's (but most importantly his) devoted slobbering for Obama:

The only news that actually happened during that unprecedented Saturday debate at the Saddleback Church is that John McCain spent the Obama-questioning portion of the evening in his bus instead of the "cone of silence." Then, when Andrea Mitchell mentioned this on TV the next morning, his campaign sent out one of those furious letters that NBC News head Steve Corpus keeps getting from various outraged candidates. Of course the story was confirmed by CNN and Rick Warren and Kit Seelye but no matter. The entire debate was already a pointless exercise with a predetermined winner, designed to help McCain appeal to the wary nut vote and make Obama look good just for showing up. What's funny about this "debate" before cartoonish Stuart Smalley-esque touchy-feely evangelical megachurch pastor Rick Warren and his million followers is that we know Obama's gone to church every week for years and the closest we've seen McCain to worshiping Yahweh is when that North Vietnamese prison guard he borrowed from the Solzhenitsyn anecdote scratched that cross in the sand. (Amusingly, this plagiarism was first noted by the right-wingers of Free Republic back when Conservatives hated McCain for being a MAVERICK.) But what matters, obviously, is not actual religion conviction-or even the facade of conviction that actual church-attendance lends-but kowtowing to morons. McCain, who first bit his tongue to appeal to his party's idiots about five years ago and has not yet let up on it since, won the debate by proudly announcing that he has the moral authority to recognize and personally wipe out evil in all its forms, while Obama foolishly went for the "humble and meek" vote. The pundits will probably call it his "complexity" problem but he actually erred in sounding like a real Christian. McCain, not even sure which denomination he is supposed to pretend to be, only had to assuage these politically exhausted evangelicals that, like Republican presidents before him, he would ban abortion forever and shut down the ACLU and make it a crime for newsreaders to not wear flag pins. And, while everyone rightly says Obama "lost" the debate, it also happened on a Saturday night during the damn Olympics, and as we already said, just showing up for the photo-op was more or less the entire point of his attendance. Hooray for Michael Phelps! Click to view

Note to Bay Area liberals: This is how the Republicans win. Skip the tedious read of John McCain's predictable technology policy statement. All Valley entrepreneurs really need to know is that McCain wants to cut corporate taxes from a maximum 35 percent to 25 percent. The change would leave money on the table for any company whose annual income exceeds $75,000, and let every big employer in the Valley keep an extra 10 percent of its income. By contrast, Barack Obama has only pledged to protect R&D tax credits and to "reform" the patent and copyright laws that Ars Technica readers love to hate. Dude, 10 percent tax cut. Had Bill Clinton done this, the Schwarzenegger Republicans who fill the upper ranks of tech companies would've been glad to spot him a blowjob or two. (Photo by AP/Mary Altaffer)

Like every other brand seemingly desperate to court the dressing-up-as-animals-to-have-sex market, the Barack Obama and John McCain campaigns have purchased lots in Second Life. The virtual world's few active users aren't bothering to visit. Which is probably a blessing, because the best chance for the projects to gain publicity is for griefers to show up with pooping cats and flying penises.Scratch that last one: Even the winged-phallus contingent has given up on Second Life and moved its penile protestations back into the real world. Internet politics has yet to prove it can reliably turn up voters willing to put on pants and leave the house to vote — the Second Lifer group on Barack Obama's social network has made all of 6,652 calls and raised $19,355.66.

Alan Colmes is famous as a nightly sacrifice victim to the Repubican Gods who run Fox News Channel. Al Franken once called him the "zeta male" of the duo Hannity & Colmes and joked that Colmes' duties included making coffee and cleaning Fox honcho Roger Ailes' private bathroom. But something has transformed the little runt. Maybe he's taken heart in the nation's mounting hatred of all things Republican. Or maybe the John Edwards scandal has energized him. Or perhaps he just really, really hates John McCain. Anyway, here's a great clip in which Sean Hannity almost beats him to death. Click the video icon. [YouTube via Wonkette]