October 07, 2008

10/7: Turning Up The Heat

John McCain's aggressive speech in New Mexico, in which he delivered a scathing attack on Barack Obama's character and record, generated a lot of commentary in the blogosphere. Conservative bloggers, of course, loved the speech. They were particularly pleased that McCain accused Dems (including Obama) of contributing to the financial crisis by protecting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Righty bloggers love this argument because they believe it is both (a.) true, and (b.) politically effective. As Moe Lane writes: "Sen. John McCain today [laid] plain the crisis on Wall Street -- not to mention Main Street -- firmly on the narrow shoulders of those who caused it in the first place: the Democratic Party in general, and Senator Barack Obama in particular."

Liberal bloggers, of course, were disgusted by McCain's speech. Glenn Greenwald called it "one of the ugliest, nastiest, most invective-filled personality attacks a major candidate has ever delivered." Lefty bloggers were particularly turned off by an uncomfortable moment when McCain asked, "Who is the real Barack Obama?" and someone in the crowd shouted "Terrorist!" Liberal bloggers are criticizing McCain for not pausing to denounce the remark, and they're accusing him of nurturing such ugly sentiments in his supporters. Greg Sargent writes: "No honest observer would dispute that McCain's speech today was about sowing fears of Obama as a risky, unknown, and vaguely sinister 'other,' and this supporter, at least, read the subtext, intended or not, loud and clear."

In other news, conservative bloggers continue to blast away at Obama over his ties to ex-Weatherman William Ayers. Liberal bloggers, meanwhile, are buzzing about the news that McCain's chief economics adviser admitted that McCain "would pay for his health plan with major reductions to Medicare and Medicaid". Liberal bloggers believe that this admission will cost McCain dearly among elderly voters.

MCCAIN SPEECH: Smell The Desperation

Following McCain's scathing attack on Obama's character and record, pro-Obama bloggers are denouncing the GOP nominee in some of their harshest words to date:

• Greenwald: "Just now, John McCain -- speaking in New Mexico -- delivered one of the ugliest, nastiest, most invective-filled personality attacks a major candidate has ever delivered, blatantly designed to stoke raw racial resentments and depict Obama as a Manchurian candidate funded by secret Arab Terrorist sources -- a truly unstable and hate-mongering rant [...], delivered with an angry scowl to screaming, howling, booing throngs, while Cindy McCain stood behind him shaking her head in disgust at each fact she heard about the Black Terrorist daring to challenge her husband."
• TPM's David Kurtz: "John McCain himself just outlined the broad themes of the remainder of his campaign: Obama is a double-talking, not-to-be-trusted Chicago politician with a mysterious past who came out of nowhere...Whatever it takes."
• Arianna Huffington: "Despite its best efforts, the McCain camp's sneering attacks are not proving that Barack Obama is not like the rest of us. They are proving that John McCain is not like the rest of us. Americans are hungry for a serious conversation about the multiple crises we are facing. And by ignoring that conversation in favor of yet another round of fear-mongering, McCain is showing himself to be the candidate who is 'not a man who sees America like you and I see America.' The most revealing thing about the nature of McCain's attacks isn't the contempt he has for Obama (that's been on display for a while now) -- it's the contempt he has for the country he claims to be putting first."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "So now that the McCain campaign has clearly signaled their intentions for the next month, it appears that things are going to get really ugly sooner rather than later. The only problem for McCain is that their gambit is doomed to fail, because the economy just isn't going to listen and will not let him 'turn the page.' As I write this, the Dow is down 300 and about to go below 10,000. Bill Kristol can drool all he wants about a miraculous Rev. [Jeremiah] Wright barrage that turns around the campaign, but it just is not going to happen. [...] For me, the thing that amazes me is how bad of a candidate McCain has turned out to be, and how awful a person he has become. I really can not square the current McCain with the McCain from 2000, other than to say it appears I was a fool about any number of things."
• The Atlantic's James Fallows: "If John McCain has a better set of plans to deal with the immediate crisis, and the medium-term real-economy fallout, and the real global problems of the era -- fine, let him win on those. But it is beneath the dignity he had as a Naval officer to wallow in this mindless BS. I will say nothing about the dignity of a candidate who repeatedly winks at the public, Hooters-waitress style. A great country acts great when it matters. This is a time when it matters -- for politicians in the points they raise, for journalists in the subjects they write about and the questions they ask of candidates. And, yes, for voters."
• The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan: "What we're all dealing with [is] the fact that the myth we had of McCain is, in fact, a lie. The real McCain -- dishonest, dishonorable and despicable -- is now in plain sight. To say I'm disillusioned would be an understatement. The last six weeks have shown us all something we'd rather never have found out. But we can't ignore it now, can we?"
• Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "It's almost sad to see John McCain throw his character and honor under the bus like this...well, it's sad until you realize that he's done so by hurling lies, smearing others, and fostering an atmosphere of hate in a desperate attempt to save his failing campaign. And that's not sad, it's simply dishonorable."

MCCAIN SPEECH II: It's Getting Ugly

Several bloggers are buzzing about an uncomfortable moment from McCain's speech yesterday, when he asked, "Who is the real Barack Obama?" and someone in the crowd shouted "Terrorist!" (video here):

• BarbinMD: "We all remember when John McCain didn't have the guts or the honor to step up when one of his supporters called Hillary Clinton a 'bitch.' And today McCain took it a step futher. A supporter calls Obama a terrorist and McCain says nothing. Not that McCain should have been surprised, given that his campaign has been pushing the terrorist card in a last ditch effort to save his failing campaign. But it does say a lot about his lack of character that he doesn't have the guts to confront hate face-to-face."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "So we have McCain today getting his crowd riled up asking who Barack Obama is and then apparently giving a wink and a nod when one member of the crowd screams out 'terrorist.' And later we have Sarah Palin with the same mob racket, getting members of the crowd to yell out 'kill him', though it's not clear whether the call for murder was for Bill Ayers or Barack Obama. It didn't seem to matter. These are dangerous and sick people, McCain and Palin. Whatever it takes. Stop at nothing."
• Sargent: "The moment is uncomfortably revealing: McCain is now dabbling in the tactics employed in the most viral smears of Obama, if not to the same degree. No honest observer would dispute that McCain's speech today was about sowing fears of Obama as a risky, unknown, and vaguely sinister 'other,' and this supporter, at least, read the subtext, intended or not, loud and clear. And when McCain delivered that line there was a gratified, even visceral roar from McCain supporters, as if this attack -- fear the alien in our midst! -- was the gloves-off moment they'd been waiting for."
• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "Are McCain and Palin responsible for lunatics who shout insane comments at their rallies? Of course not. That said, when the Republican campaign, mired in desperation, deliberately stokes the fires of hate and fear, using disgusting lies to argue that Obama is literally dangerous, no one should be surprised when the far-right Republican base becomes frenzied. [...] The responsible thing for McCain and Palin to do would be to turn down the temperature a bit and insist, in no uncertain terms, that they have no tolerance for the kind of ugliness Americans saw yesterday from the GOP."

Sullivan: "McCain asks 'Who is the real Barack Obama?' And he gets the answer Steve Schmidt and Sean Hannity were hoping for. If you thought the McCain campaign couldn't go any lower, you were wrong."

MCCAIN SPEECH III: Finally!

Conservative bloggers liked McCain's aggressive speech:

• Townhall's Matt Lewis: "I'm watching [McCain] on TV deliver [his speech] right now now -- and his delivery is even more passionate and impressive than his written words led me to believe they would be. Sometimes tough words fall flat because they are delivered tentatively. That is not the case today. He is finally setting the record straight on a variety of issues, calling Obama out on several points which, until now, have slipped throught the cracks. If he keeps this up, this race is going to be a dead-heat again..."
• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "John McCain came out swinging against Barack Obama in a speech in Albuquerque today. He did a good job, I think, of tying doubts about Obama's record and his beliefs to the current economic crisis. [...] These are the points McCain should have made when he had the opportunity during the first twenty minutes of the first Presidential debate. Whether it's now too late remains to be seen."

Conservative bloggers were particularly delighted that McCain accused Dems (including Obama) of contributing to the financial crisis by protecting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

"This crisis started in our housing market in the form of subprime loans that were pushed on people who could not afford them. Bad mortgages were being backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it was only a matter of time before a contagion of unsustainable debt began to spread. This corruption was encouraged by Democrats in Congress, and abetted by Senator Obama."

• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "We asked John McCain to take off the gloves -- and he listened. In remarks McCain will deliver today, he blasts Democrats, including Barack Obama, for their market manipulations and defense of Fannie Mae against regulator warnings. [...] This is exactly what McCain must do to correct the record on this fiasco. [...] As late as this summer, Democrats kept trying to tell the American voters that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were stable, when in fact they were collapsing."
• Michelle Malkin: "Maybe McCain does want to win: He finally attacks Obama on Fannie/Freddie."
• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "At long last, the McCain campaign has finally decided to take the gloves off concerning the failures of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, McCain's efforts to warn anyone who would listen concerning the precarious positions that Fannie and Freddie had and Barack Obama's do-nothing response to the storm clouds that had gathered over Fannie and Freddie long ago. [...] These points should make up the meat and bones of every single campaign speech and appearance by McCain, Sarah Palin and their campaign staffers. Every. Single. Campaign. Speech. And. Appearance."
• RedState Moe Lane: "Sen. John McCain today [laid] plain the crisis on Wall Street -- not to mention Main Street -- firmly on the narrow shoulders of those who caused it in the first place: the Democratic Party in general, and Senator Barack Obama in particular."
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "John McCain, today, finally start[ed] talking about Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the irresponsible leadership at both, and the Democrats' efforts to prevent serious oversight. [...] Amen. Finally. Keep doing it -- don't let this be a one-speech wonder. This has to be a huge part of the message for the coming days. Never mind for the presidential election -- if the country is to avoid a similar run of reckless bets in the future, we have to be clear-eyed about what got us into this mess in the first place."

MCCAIN: Is He Writing Off Florida?

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about the McCain camp's admission that "McCain would pay for his health plan with major reductions to Medicare and Medicaid":

"John McCain would pay for his health plan with major reductions to Medicare and Medicaid, a top aide said, in a move that independent analysts estimate could result in cuts of $1.3 trillion over 10 years to the government programs.

The Republican presidential nominee has said little about the proposed cuts, but they are needed to keep his health-care plan 'budget neutral,' as he has promised. The McCain campaign hasn't given a specific figure for the cuts, but didn't dispute the analysts' estimate."

Liberal bloggers believe that this admission is very politically damaging:

• Marshall: "Faced with health care plan numbers that didn't add up, McCain's economics advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin has just announced that McCain will make up the difference with big cuts to Medicare. I guess they really are writing off Florida."
• Benen: "This actually has the potential to be a game-changer. McCain's actual policy, not a caricature of it, calls for massive cuts to Medicare. That's not an attack; that's his plan. I might recommend that Democrats take this message to South Florida. I think there are a few voters there who might find this interesting."
• Ezra Klein: "As a general point, there's nothing in American politics more unpopular than cuts in Medicare. You can talk about means-testing Social Security before you can talk about taking health care from the elderly. But now McCain is promising cuts in Medicare. It's a brutal position to be in, and not the sort of thing he wants going out on mailers to elderly voters in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. But you can bet the printer is already drawing them up."
• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "One might have thought...that McCain would be too averse to the political risks to take up the mantle of Medicare slasher amidst a presidential campaign, but evidently he was just hoping that amidst his campaign's oft-shifting story about the details of his health care plans nobody would notice."
• Oliver Willis: "So, in order to get the budget in order, Barack Obama has proposed rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the top 1%, going through the budget looking for waste, ending the multi-billion dollar war in Iraq, etc. John McCain, on the other hand, thinks that we should screw the poor and elderly by cutting Medicare and Medicaid. I'm not kidding."
• Open Left's Paul Rosenberg: "Letting this slip out now can only be regarded as a form of electoral suicide."
• TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt: "Just another reason not to vote for McCain/Palin."

MCCAIN II: Slashing Medicare And Medicaid?

Liberal bloggers aren't buying the McCain camp's claim that the $1.3 trillion in savings "would come from eliminating Medicare fraud and by reforming payment policies to lower the overall cost of care" (as opposed to reducing benefits):

• Benen: "If you think a McCain administration is going to find $1.3 trillion in Medicare by eliminating 'fraud' and improving the payment system -- without reducing benefits -- I've got a bridge in Alaska I'd like to sell you."
• Mark Kleiman: "Yes, the McCain health care plan is 'budget neutral': by cutting $1.3 trillion over ten years from Medicare and Medicaid. But don't worry: it will all come out of reduced fraud, waste, and abuse. My friends, let me give you some straight talk. This isn't selling the Brooklyn Bridge. This is selling the Bridge to Nowhere."
• Klein: "I'd like to say Doug Holtz-Eakin, an economist who used to have a very good reputation, is being good-natured and silly about the oddities of his profession here, but actually he's probably just lying about what McCain plans to do because he's scared of being called out on the huge tax hikes that are built into the proposal."
• The Huffington Post's RJ Eskow: "McCain's campaign says 'the savings would come from eliminating Medicare fraud and by reforming payment policies to lower the overall cost of care.' Yet I know of no credible studies saying there is that kind of savings to be found in Medicare. By 'reforming payment policies,' they mean paying doctors and hospitals less. That means less treatment, less access to care, and a variety of other drastic problems for the one program we'll all join (if we're lucky enough to live that long.)"

MCCAIN III: It's Hard For Me To Say I'm Sorry

During a conference call arranged by the McCain camp, John Dowd (McCain's lawyer during the Keating Five scandal) described the Senate Ethics Committee's investigation into the matter as a "classic political smear job". Liberal bloggers are pointing out that "the sharp defense of McCain by Dowd was in contrast to McCain's previous contrition about his involvement in the matter". Lefty bloggers are also arguing that Dowd's criticism of the Senate investigation contradicts McCain's own statements about the affair, such as his 2007 admission that "I was judged eventually, after three years, of using, quote, poor judgment, and I agree with that assessment".

• TPM's Eric Kleefeld: "For years, John McCain made elaborate displays of public contrition about his involvement in the Keating Five scandal, admitting that he made errors in judgment when he lobbied regulators on behalf of a corrupt banker who eventually went to prison. But now his campaign is suddenly saying that McCain did nothing wrong."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "If McCain thinks he did nothing wrong, and that it was wrong for the Senate to scold him for his actions during the Keating Five Scandal, then he isn't contrite at all, he isn't sorry at all. He's learned nothing. You can't turn a new leaf when you don't think you did anything wrong. This is one hell of an admission."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "[This is a] stunning admission from the McCain campaign that the Keating 5 investigation was an attempt to politically smear John McCain. For years, we've been hearing that McCain's 'reformer' image came from his claiming to have made amends for that scandal, which sunk 1,000 banks and cost taxpayers billions of dollars. But, now we know that McCain's reform mantle is a fraud. McCain isn't sorry for what happened. He's sorry he got caught. [...] McCain's whole reformer image is built on a lie."
• Benen: "The McCain campaign really hasn't thought this one through. While the scandal was still fresh, McCain cooperated with investigators, acknowledged his mistakes, and accepted his formal rebuke. He took his lumps and vowed to do better in the future. But this message is the complete opposite of what McCain has said for years. [...] The new argument is that McCain was the victim here, and his years of contrition were a sham. This argument, in effect, turns nearly two decades of McCain arguments completely on their head. It's hard to believe, but the McCain campaign has deliberately made this a new story all over again, just when the Obama campaign wants it to be."
• BarbinMD: "For nearly 20 years, John McCain has talked about his involvement in the Keating Five scandal as the biggest mistake of his political career, but now that it's become a part of the campaign conversation, McCain is too much of a coward to stand up and accept responsibility for his past words and actions."
• Yglesias: "McCain now seems to be un-apologizing for pressuring regulators at Keating's behest, instead insisting that he did nothing wrong. [...] Ben Smith points out that this would be the final unraveling of the increasingly threadbare sweater that is John McCain's reformer image."

dday: "This is the usual move for McCain. He admits his own failures only when it's politically convenient. In the moment he's as dishonest and dishonorable as the rest, probably more. But at the proper moment, he returns to the lecturn and somberly recounts his moral failings, weeping at the altar of honor for all to see, and the media responds in Pavlovian fashion with a handkerchief for their fallen warrior and a flurry of encomiums to his great character. Whether that will happen this time around is unclear. But McCain reverting back to the 'I did nothing wrong' side of the Keating Five scandal should make it pretty obvious that to him, 'honor' is a coat that is worn only in winter, only when necessary."

OBAMA: The Ayers Up There

Conservative bloggers continue to buzz about Obama's ties to Ayers:

• NRO's Mark Levin: "As someone who has written critically of John McCain on a host of issues, including the Keating Five, none of it compares to the life that Barack Obama has led and his belief system. Obama is not merely associated with domestic terrorists, Palestinian radicals, Marxists, and black liberation ideologues -- he was their favorite candidate. They groomed him. They befriended him. He befriended them. He socialized with them. In other words, these people saw Obama as representing their views and aspirations and he saw them the same way."
• Geraghty: "Obama's insouciance in dealing with a man who was part of a group that tried to kill the children of state supreme court judges reveals a glaring moral blind spot. It is fairly obvious that Obama would never associate with a former right-wing domestic terrorist, no matter how much he was told that this person was reformed. But violence from the left is, apparently, not only not worth objecting to, it's not even worth discussing."
• NRO's Victor Davis Hanson: "When the world knew via the New York Times, and a much publicized book tour in 2001, that Ayers felt no remorse about his bombing spree and terrorism, did Obama continue with his association? If so, ipso facto that is proof both of Obama's poor judgement and his later lack of candor in recalling his association with his terrorist-associate."
• Moe Lane: "A helpful reminder: the Weathermen were out to kill people. [...] It doesn't hurt to remind the rest of us that this particular bunch of fantasy ideologists were targeting real people, not conveniently animated cardboard cutouts. Oh, and let's save time: by putting up that Hoover Institution link, I am in fact explicitly comparing the Weathermen to groups like al-Qaeda. Because, you know, both groups were made up of terrorists. It's not my fault that the Chicago activist set is apparently a bit more tolerant of that particular lifestyle than you or I would be."

OBAMA II: A Media Cover-Up?

Many right bloggers are accusing the media of downplaying Obama's connection to Ayers:

• Power Line's Scott Johnson: "The mainstream media are of course collaborating with Barack Obama in his efforts to downplay his relationship with Bill Ayers, to cooperate with Obama in his efforts to dissociate himself from Ayers and to portray Ayers as a former radical turned respectable."
• Hinderaker: "The mainstream media have bought Barack Obama's spin on his relationship with Bill Ayers -- I was only eight years old when he was trying to commit mass murder! -- hook, line and sinker. [...] One wonders, sometimes, what it would take to convince an American reporter that a Democratic Presidential candidate has poor judgment."

That said, conservative bloggers are praising CNN for running a video detailing Obama's ties to Ayers:

• NRO's Stanley Kurtz: "I'm delighted to see that the team of CNN reporters I worked with on the Obama-Ayers connection has gone ahead with their report. [...] My hat's off to CNN for being willing to air this. Also, while I knew about the Annenberg phase of this report, I had not known about the extraordinary revelation on the 1995 political coming-out party at Ayers' and [Bernardine] Dohrn's home. Previously we'd thought that Alice Palmer, who introduced Obama as her chosen successor at that event, was the moving force behind the party. Now it seems that Ayers and Dohrn were actually the folks who arranged the event and apparently planned it with Obama. That is a very important revelation. Congratulations to Drew Griffin and his crew at CNN."
• Morrissey: "You'll want to double-check the logo at the bottom left corner during this report. It really is CNN and Anderson Cooper fact-checking Barack Obama's claims to have barely known William Ayers -- and calling it dishonest. [...] Obama has lied repeatedly about his relationship with the unrepentant domestic terrorist. He spent years working for Ayers, promoting Ayers' causes. Even CNN won't buy the Obama line any longer. Expect John McCain to raise this point tonight in the debate."
• RedState's Kevin Holtsberry: "I think we can definitively put the 'he was just some guy in my neighborhood explanation' behind us. Noted racist right wing organization CNN has a report on the relationship between Obama and William Ayers and they found 'the relationship between Obama and Ayers went much deeper, ran much longer, and was much more political than Obama said.'"

OBAMA III: Ayers Ain't Enough

A few conservative bloggers believe that tying Obama to Ayers won't be enough to win the election for McCain:

• The Atlantic's Ross Douthat: "Bill Ayers can't win you an election -- he can't come anywhere close, in fact -- because unlike Willie Horton, Bill Ayers isn't tied to any of the issues that are uppermost in voters' minds. He tells you something about Obama's judgment, maybe, and his ideological biases, maybe -- and yes, yes, with enough innuendo and doomy music, you can imply that he tells you something about Obama's softness on Islamist terrorism as well. [...But] unless there's some way I haven't thought of to link the Weather Underground to the global stock market, or the subprime mess, or the cost of health care, or anything else that's actually high on the voting public's list of priorities, this 'gloves off, dammit!' strategy will only serve to confirm the public's perception that John McCain -- and the ticket he heads, and the party he leads -- are completely, utterly, and hopelessly out of touch."
• NRO's David Frum: "My pals over at the Corner are very excited by the last-minute attempt to transform Bill Ayers into the Willie Horton of 2008. Well, good luck. In 1988, crime was a huge and rising problem -- and Democrats still by and large resisted the effective crime control policies being developed at places like the Manhattan Institute and that would achieve such great results in the 1990s. So Willie Horton, the furloughed rapist and murderer, symbolized in very graphic terms something important and significant about Michael Dukakis the candidate. But Bill Ayers? Does anybody really seriously believe that Barack Obama is a secret left-wing radical? And if not, then what is this fuss and fury supposed to show? It's like Ronald Reagan's opponents trying to beat him by pointing out that Birchers once supported him. Negative campaigning only works when it offers a new data point to support a convincingly drawn hostile image."
• AmSpec Blog's James Antle: "The Willie Horton and [Jesse] Helms 'white hand' ads weren't effective merely because they were culture war dogwhistles. Those ads actually spoke to pressing voter concerns and reinforced already existing negative images the electorate had of the Democratic candidate. Crime, jobs, and working-class whites' concerns about affirmative action were real issues in those races. The Weather Underground, however loathsome, is simply not an issue in this year's election and a zillion conservative blog posts can't make it so. Hitting the Ayers connection in October during a slide in the polls, rather than in July when Obama was still being defined in the minds of the voters, looks less like Willie Horton and [George H.W.] Bush '88 than attacks on Bill Clinton's Vietnam-era activities by Bush '92. [...] Do I think an association with an unrepentant terrorist should matter? Absolutely. It would be fair game if McCain were palling around with an abortion clinic bomber. But Bill Ayers isn't going to put John McCain in the White House."
• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "An Ayers/Wright offensive simply isn't going to hack it; even I can't be bothered with it today between covering my face and peeking through my fingers at the sinking Dow. A sustained attack on the left over Fannie/Freddie will help, but I don't know how you push that message through to low-information voters with the time left. It seems unlikely in the extreme that people who don't follow this from day to day are to going react to a meltdown on Wall Street by electing the guy from the party commonly derided as a pawn of big business. On the contrary, the worse things get, the better The One's vacuous rhetoric sounds. [...] Horrifying exit quotation from an unnamed McCain advisor suggesting they're ready to give up: 'If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose.' Note to Team Maverick -- you have no choice."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Who Cares About "Honor" When The Stakes Are This High?

Yglesias:

"I'll give McCain this. While conventional wisdom holds that it's admirable for a politician to put a sense of personal 'honor' over a desire to win the election, I think that CW comes from a place that ultimately trivializes the stakes involved in big time politics. The outcome of this election will have a meaningful impact on literally the entire population of the planet, and Presidential decision-making often turns out to be a life-or-death decision for tends of thousands of people. McCain thinks that advancing his agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, indefinite occupation of Iraq, and starting 'other wars' is important enough to be worth risking his reputation over and on some level I can't help but admire his willingness to go all in."

LEST WE FORGET: Some Things Are Just Inexplicable

Radar's Neel Shah:

"Perhaps the most telling indicator that people are actually freaking out now that the Dow has dropped below 10,000 for the first time in four years: Beverly Hills Chihuahua grossed a staggering $29 million at the box office this weekend.

The correlation between a struggling economy and increased movie ticket sales is well-documented, so it's not surprising that people are turning out to the theaters at a higher rate now than when they used to be able to afford groceries and houses and stuff. (The gross for the top 12 movies this weekend was up 42 percent from the same weekend a year ago.) But still, the success of Beverly Hills Chihuahua -- a movie about a pampered pooch named Chloe who winds up lost in Mexico 'without a day spa or Rodeo Drive boutique anywhere in sight' -- is difficult to comprehend."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at October 7, 2008 01:14 PM