How did “spreading the wealth” become a dirty deed?

Of all the criticism lobbed at Barack Obama over the last week, the one that gets the biggest hoots and hollers from John McCain supporters is that Obama wants to, in McCain air quotes, “spread the wealth.” Crazy, right? Crazy that a candidate would invoke, as the New Yorker notes, the godfather of free-market capitalism, Adam Smith, who wrote in “The Wealth of Nations” that, “It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”

While Obama lowers expectations, McCain declares victory

This morning an online advertisement appeared on the Wall Street Journal’s web site heralding, over an image of the Republican presidential candidate before a flag, “McCain wins debate!” This…

The great bundle: Wall Street’s biggest losers this week among McCain and Obama’s biggest supporters

It’s called a “bundle,” and it’s a wad of campaign cash collected by a supporter’s friends, family members and associates and delivered in one lump sum to the candidate as a gift from the supporter. According to a story…

Obama announces plan to jump-start Great Lakes restoration

With six of the eight Great Lakes states being hotly contested battlegrounds, this election year the protection and restoration of the Great Lakes is being elevated to a major campaign issue.

Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama today proposed a major plan to jump-start the process. The Obama-Biden Great Lakes Restoration Plan calls for $5 billion over a 10-year period to go toward sewage treatment improvements, rehabilitation of toxic sites and wetlands restoration.

Doctors: McCain’s health “an issue of profound importance”

Nearly 600 medical doctors have signed a statement calling for Republican presidential nominee John McCain to issue a full and public disclosure of all of his medical records. McCain is a 72-year-old four-time cancer survivor who has lived…

McCain connected 35W bridge collapse to Palin’s pork

The infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” may never have been built, but the state of Alaska and Gov. Sarah Palin got to keep $233 million in ear marks anyways. Republican nominee John McCain connected that $233 million with the collapse of the 35W bridge on the campaign trail.

“Maybe the 200,000 people who cross that bridge every day would have been safer than spending $233 million of your tax dollars on a bridge in Alaska to an island with 50 people on it,” McCain said at a campaign stop last year in Ankeny, Iowa.

Obama widens lead in Minnesota

While Republicans are conducting their convention business in the Twin Cities, they may want to take a moment and attempt to woo a few more Minnesota voters on John McCain’s behalf. A new Time/CNN poll of Minnesota…

Craigslist RNC ad of the week: The ‘McCane’ is easy on the eyes, joints

The “McCane,” a special patriotic cane handcrafted from Minnesota birch, can be in your hot little hands for a mere 20 bucks. A crafty Craigslist seller posted this lovely red-striped walking stick (pictured) that apparently is so…

Campaign songs: The good, the bad, and the ABBA

Choosing a campaign song isn’t an easy task. Just look at all the difficulty the McCain camp has had in trying to find a theme song. McCain first swiped John Mellencamp’s “Our Country” from the John Edwards…

Video: All three presidential candidates unfit for Dancing With the Stars

Remember the Hamster Dance? The only redeeming thing about that awful web hit was that it became an actual album misspelled as Hampster Dance, a somehow acceptable dumbing down of culture far more hilarious and oodles more collectible than Fergie’s…