smearing all the way

From today's Washington Post, an article on the McCain campaign's ads attacking Obama:

The sex education ad referred to legislation Obama voted for -- but did not sponsor -- in the Illinois Senate that allowed school boards to develop 'age-appropriate' sex education courses at all levels. Kindergarten teachers were given the approval to teach about appropriate and inappropriate touching to combat molestation.
The McCain advertisement calls it 'Obama's one accomplishment' in education: 'legislation to teach comprehensive sex education to kindergartners.'
'Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama, wrong on education, wrong for your family,' the ad concludes.

Does it get any dirtier than this? Obama votes for a bill that is intended to protect children from sexual molestation; what the McCain ad implies is that Obama was voting to encourage sexual precocity in children, to destroy their innocence, to deprave them. Obama as child predator.

And today Obama has to shake hands with McCain at a 9/11 memorial event. I'd wear a rubber glove if I were he.

fearful symmetry

From today's New York Times, an article about Russia claiming its own sphere of influence:

"Mr. Putin appeared on Russian television on Sunday from the nation’s far east, where he was inspecting progress on a trans-Siberian oil pipeline to China and the Pacific Ocean, a clear warning to Europe that Russia could find alternative customers for its energy exports. He was later shown in a forest, dressed in camouflage and hunting a Siberian tiger with a tranquilizer gun."

Couldn't we just decide this Georgia thing by having Vlad Putin and Dick Cheney square off for a rousing game of laser tag?