DailyKos linked to a great article on FactCheck.org that gives the facts on the whole ACORN “scandal.” Basically, the scandal is this. ACORN is an organization serving low-income areas (read: primarily non-white). Part of what they do to serve these low-income areas is sponsor voter registration drives. Because — I know this might seem shocking to some of you — but in America, even poor people are allowed to vote.

Now, some of these newly registered voters filled out their registration forms with fake names. If you have ever been involved in an election of any sort, you know that a certain percentage of the ballots are going to come back with “Heywood Jablowme” in the name field. Some of these fake registration cards were certainly filled out by registered voters. Some were filled out by the people who were paid to do the registering and were trying to get out of work for the day. Is this obnoxious? Absolutely. But is it, as McCain said during the final debate, “one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country” which is “maybe destroying the fabric of democracy”? It is not. It is a shameful attempt by the Republicans to alienate low-income voters who will almost certainly vote for Obama.

And here’s the other point, which Daily Kos makes: registering phony voters is not voting fraud. Voting under a phony name is voting fraud. And there is not a chance in any known universe that Heywood Jablowme and Mickey Mouse are going to show up at the polls to vote.

I’ve said it before, and I’ve said it again: we don’t do that. We don’t start non-profit community service groups as a “front” for voter fraud. We start non-profit community service groups to serve the community. On its very surface, it’s ridiculous … I cannot think of a worse way to try to win an election than by registering phony voters. You’d have to register hundreds of thousands of them, organize them all in secret, and then spend the day driving them around without getting caught in order to even make a dent. It just isn’t practical, and the confusing contortions of logic one would have to go through to accept this as the most likely scenario would make for a lovely dance piece.

Today is our one-year anniversary. It has flown by. It seems like only yesterday you were telling me we didn’t have a chance in Hell. Kidding. It’s been a great year. I love you very much and I can’t wait to celebrate (at least) 50 more anniversaries with you.

Update: By popular demand, here’s another picture. I personally think Sarah looks super cute in the picture above, but apparently I’m in the minority. Here’s another one.

And another, in the interest of giving both the preachers their due:

I’m so happy Kristen Wiig is getting the recognition she deserves. Funniest female cast member in SNL history, hands down. Via Buzzfeed, the Top 10 Kristen Wiig moments. As the Buzzfeed commentator points out, Virgania Horsen was sadly neglected, but the brilliance of Virgania is really only understood by those with impeccable comedic taste, like myself.

Now that we’re FINALLY as-good-as-guaranteed a Democrat in the White House, I think it’s time to revisit the Dean Scream, the ungodly howl that knocked Howard Dean out of the presidential race in 2004. Now, at the time, I didn’t find the endless repetitions of the scream clip amusing … Dean’s candidacy was as exciting then as Obama’s is now and it was pretty disheartening to see the only candidate I could really get behind being turned into a national laughingstock. Now that we’re through the woods, though, I think it’s time I finally admitted to myself that actually, that noise is pretty freaking hilarious. See below.

The Original:

Billy the Bass:

Dramatic Chipmunk:

And my favorite:

Hey YEARRRGHHHHH!

McCain said he didn’t care about Bill Ayers. Obama took the time to describe in full, exhaustive detail, his relationship with Bill Ayers. McCain came back and said, “We still don’t know the details of that relationship.” Did anyone else see this? And I would bet they’ll continue to use that line for the next 3 weeks … that “we still need to know the details of their relationship.” What they are actually saying is, “we still need to know the details of that relationship … as long as the details are that Obama is friends with terrorists because he’s secretly a terrorist. Otherwise, we still need more information.”

I think that whenever someone says something completely ludicrous in a debate we should have a duck drop from the ceiling with a foghorn honk, like on What’s My Line, with a top hat and monocle and a sign around his neck that says “Bullshit!” That would make for an interesting debate.

And another thing … I was reading this morning about Obama’s record-breaking spending on this campaign and it made me a little sad to consider the possibility that Americans are no better or smarter than we were eight years ago … we just always vote for the guy who spends the most money. But then I was thinking, why can’t we apply the team mentality that raises exorbitant amounts of money for political campaigns to things that matter? Like, instead of Republicans vs. Democrats, let’s have a campaign for Healthcare vs. the Environment. Everyone chooses sides based on which thing we want to see fixed first, and then we vote with our dollars. We’ve been going about this saving the world thing the wrong way. Americans don’t contribute because we think we’re going to make the world a better place. We do things because we love to make other people feel like losers.

Courtesy of McCarron.

35 minutes into the debate, and Obama is DESTROYING McCain. It’s painful to watch. I feel like I’m watching a man crumble before my eyes.

Update: Seriously. It’s like watching Muhammad Ali fighting Willie Shoemaker.

Update II: It’s like watching Albert Einstein debate Chris Burke.

Update III: It’s like watching Eminem in a freestyle battle with Ed McMahon.

Update IV: It’s like watching the Visigoths fight a war against the Village People.

Update V: It’s like watching the 1985 Bears play the 2001 Birmingham Thunderbolts.

Matt Taibbi, the best political writer on the planet (and the sane man’s Hunter S. Thompson) puts the smackdown on some National Review douchebag in a conversation with New York Magazine. Not to be missed.

Byron York: I think that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were also major factors. And I believe that many of the problems in the mortgage area can be attributed to the confluence of Democratic and Republican priorities: the Democrats’ desire to give mortgages to people, particularly minorities, who could not afford them, and the Republicans’ desire to achieve an “ownership society,” in part by giving mortgages to people who could not afford them. Again, I believe that if you are suggesting that the financial crisis is a Republican creation, or even more specifically a McCain creation, I think you’re on pretty shaky ground.

Matt Taibbi: Oh, come on. Tell me you’re not ashamed to put this gigantic international financial Krakatoa at the feet of a bunch of poor black people who missed their mortgage payments. The CDS market, this market for credit default swaps that was created in 2000 by Phil Gramm’s Commodities Future Modernization Act, this is now a $62 trillion market, up from $900 billion in 2000. That’s like five times the size of the holdings in the NYSE. And it’s all speculation by Wall Street traders. It’s a classic bubble/Ponzi scheme. The effort of people like you to pin this whole thing on minorities, when in fact this whole thing has been caused by greedy traders dealing in unregulated markets, is despicable.

B.Y.: I was struck by the recent Senate testimony of James Lockhart, who is head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, about the sheer recklessness of Fannie in recent years. Despite “repeated warnings about credit risk,” Lockhart testified, Fannie became more reckless in 2006 and 2007 than they had been in the scandal-ridden tenure of Franklin Raines (who departed in 2004). In 2005, Lockhart said, 14 percent of Fannie’s new business was in risky loans. In the first half of 2007, it was 33 percent. So something terribly wrong was going on there, and it became a significant part of the present problem.

M.T.: What a surprise that you mention Franklin Raines. Do you even know how a CDS works? Can you explain your conception of how these derivatives work? Because I get the feeling you don’t understand. Or do you actually think that it was a few tiny homeowner defaults that sank gigantic companies like AIG and Lehman and Bear Stearns? Explain to me how these default swaps work, I’m interested to hear.

Because what we’re talking about here is the difference between one homeowner defaulting and forty, four hundred, four thousand traders betting back and forth on the viability of his loan. Which do you think has a bigger effect on the economy?

From the AP:

Vice President Dick Cheney experienced an abnormal heart beat on Wednesday morning and will see doctors to “restore his normal rhythm” — the second time in less than a year that he will have the procedure.

My guess? The October Surprise: Cheney dies. (That’s not the surprise, that’s the eventuality.) The surprise is that Cheney dies, and no one notices until well after the election.

I’m watching MTV right now. It’s the show about people who want to be Paris Hilton’s best friend. Let me repeat that: it’s a show about people who want to be Paris Hilton’s best friend. If the goal of the show is to make Paris Hilton look intelligent by surrounding her with developmentally-challenged skeezers, than they’ve succeeded admirably. I feel bad for the poor special needs girls who actually think Paris Hilton might hang out with them, but maybe instead I should pity myself for watching it.

Anyway, my new cable package has all these different MTV channels — MTV, MTV2, MTV Jams, MTVU, etc. And each of these channels features a rotating roster of the same programs, which generally feature half-naked people getting drunk and embarrassing themselves. So here’s my idea: why not add a new channel called MTV Naked? Take all the shows that use the possibility of nudity as their only programming hook and just let them get naked. The audience wants to see nudity, and clearly, the participants desperately want to be naked. Everyone wins!