Blue Moon, swingin’ hard.

This election is an object lesson in why no sane person would ever run for high office in the United States, so here’s a Columbus Day open thread…

UPDATE at 10/13/08 7:16:52 pm:

On a similar wavelength: Treacher.

The media keep hammering away at the “ugly incidents” at McCain-Palin rallies, but oddly they fail to notice stuff like this at the official Barack Obama blog site: Barack Obama and Joe Biden: The Change We Need | Rhiannon-Marie Volpe.

This is a Google cache link, because the picture of the disgusting T-shirt has already been tossed down the memory hole. If a guy with a monkey doll gets national coverage, why doesn’t this?

(Hat tip: Ace.)

At 4 pm ET, the Dow index is up more than 900 points, for one of the biggest percentage gains in history. The question now is, will it stay there or will the yo-yo swing back down tomorrow?

This is the latest web-only video from the Republican National Committee, on Barack Obama’s connections to former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers.

Here’s an open thread to discuss Barack Obama’s speech on the economy, as the Dow index goes above 9,000…

Bill Kristol says John McCain needs to fire his campaign.

What McCain needs to do is junk the whole thing and start over. Shut down the rapid responses, end the frantic e-mails, bench the spinning surrogates, stop putting up new TV and Internet ads every minute. In fact, pull all the ads — they’re doing no good anyway. Use that money for televised town halls and half-hour addresses in prime time.

And let McCain go back to what he’s been good at in the past — running as a cheerful, open and accessible candidate. Palin should follow suit. The two of them are attractive and competent politicians. They’re happy warriors and good campaigners. Set them free.

Provide total media accessibility on their campaign planes and buses. Kick most of the aides off and send them out to swing states to work for the state coordinators on getting voters to the polls. Keep just a minimal staff to help organize the press conferences McCain and Palin should have at every stop and the TV interviews they should do at every location. Do town halls, do the Sunday TV shows, do talk radio — and invite Obama and Biden to join them in some of these venues, on the ground that more joint appearances might restore civility and substance to the contest.

The hope for McCain and Palin is that they still have pretty good favorable ratings from the voters. The American people have by no means turned decisively against them.

The mainstream media can’t seem to find any cases in which Obama supporters are behaving badly (for example, all this was completely ignored by media), but some idiots on the right are making it into the news regularly.

Man At Palin Rally Displays Monkey Doll Donning Obama Sticker.

McCain Camp Boots GOP Figure After ‘Racist’ Column.