Sen. John McCain emerged the clear winner of last night’s debate, calling the American people “my friends” no fewer than 22 times while Sen. Barack Obama simply tried to distract voters his superior ability to talk about the issues.

Said one GOP pundit, “The American people needed to hear John McCain call them ‘my friends’ at least 20 times and McCain easily surpassed that goal.” McCain also scored points by “projecting that pent-up anger that Americans are yearning for.”

McCain’s call for a fear-based economy has broad appeal to the far right, said another pundit. “For McCain, the message is simple: ‘I am your pal. My opponent’s pals are terrorists.’ ”

McCain also managed to resist the urge to brand Obama an America-hating, terrorist-loving liberal, instead calling his opponent “that one,” as if he was picking a perp out of a police lineup for trying to steal McCain’s presidency.

Exuding far more sincerity than a used-war dealer, McCain told “my friends” he’ll keep us safe from such rogue regimes as Iran, Russia and Spain, while protecting us from the evil Osamas and Obamas of the world.

But despite McCain’s new strategy of characterizing Obama’s tenuous link to a member of the radical ’60s terror group the Weathermen as “palling around with terrorists,” millions of his “friends” understand it doesn’t take a Weatherman to know when a desperate presidential candidate is blowing noxious slime about his opponent.

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John McCain for the last eight years has been “palling around” with a man who nearly destroyed the United States of America during his deadly reign of error, the mainstream media has learned.

Emerging evidence links the Republican nominee with notorious right-wing error kingpin Abu Dubya, whose international and domestic malfeasance has harmed millions and cost taxpayers trillions.

Pundits say McCain’s close ties to Dubya, described as a high-ranking member of the Bush-Cheney Underground, could hurt him in his quest for the White House. Behind in the polls and reeling from the nation’s economic meltdown, McCain has tried to distance himself from Dubya but has never repudiated him.

Now McCain strategists have alerted the media they’re suspending discussion of the country’s severe economic woes to focus their full attention on smearing Sen. Obama.

Rather than think up some way to help millions of Amercians gripped by economic distress, McCain dispatched co-maverick VP pitbull Sarah Palin to stink up the campaign trail with claims that Sen. Barack Obama “pals around with terrorists.”

In addition to wielding Weather Underground radical William Ayers as a weapon against Obama (who has denounced Ayers’ actions as “detestable”), the McCain camp is said to possess footage of Obama’s former pastor saying, “God damn America.”

Several days before gearing up the Swift Boat Express for a fresh assault on Main Street, Gov. Palin, insisted at the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate that Sen. McCain’s past connections to Abu Dubya should be off-limits.

“Say it ain’t so, Joe, there you go again. … Now doggone it, let’s look ahead,” urged Palin, who said she wants “a little bit of reality from Wasilla Main Street there, brought to Washington, D.C.”

Sources say Palin plans to introduce a series of homespun new policies such as the Church-State United Act and No Joe Sixpack Left Behind.

However, the Obama camp says McCain’s relationship with the enigmatic Dubya is not only relevant but “dangerous.” McCain aggressively campaigned to block Dubya’s rise to power in early 2000, but abruptly flip-flopped that May and was soon photographed hugging the powerful error syndicate leader.

Critics say McCain helped advance the virulent Abu Dubya economic ideology that brought the American financial sector to its knees.

Abu Dubya also claims responsibility for:
– spiking the pre-9/11 intelligence briefing “Bin Laden determined to attack in U.S.”
– worsening the impact of a hurricane that wiped out a major American city.
– invading Iraq without provocation.
– stealing billions from taxpayers and giving it to cronies.

Gov. Palin’s bid to distract attention from the McCain-Dubya connection includes a probe into whether she fired Alaska’s public safety commissioner because he refused to dismiss a state trooper who was Palin’s ex-brother-in-law.

Palin said that if she is “so blessed” to be elected, she hopes to expand the power of the vice presidency to fire U.S. attorneys, “activist judges” and maybe a couple member of Congress.

Palin also assured the American people that, once elected, she “wouldn’t blink” on matters of “wiretappin’, toleratin’ gays and getting’ rid of that pesky women’s right to choose.”

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Gov. Sarah Palin delivered a debate-night wakeup call to all those elite, East Coast liberal, pro-Obama, anti-Main Street, mainstream media critics who say a Joe Six Pack hockey mom can’t be president.

She’s the spunky, lunch-bucket, maverick, moose-carvin’, Putin-huntin’, pitbull America never knew it was waiting for.

Palin erased all doubt about her ability to awkwardly infuse McCain-Bush talking points with a brisk Alaska breeze. Cleverly adopting the disarming verbal strategy of an eager student trying to stretch two pages of material into a 10-page report, she peppered her homespun spin with W-esque presidential folksiness.

Even when bombarded with “gotcha” questions by moderator Gwen Ifill, a card-carrying lefty according to the right, Palin effortlessly summoned seemingly random strings of words to underscore her refreshing lack of knowledge and experience.

She frequently projected a nervous energy that is perfectly normal for someone inexplicably thrust onto the presidential stage by a candidate whose judgment tells him — during this near perfect storm of national crises — to name the Wasilla Wonder his, God forbid, possible successor as leader of the free world.

“How long have I been at this, like five weeks?” she said, reassuring the American public that she understands the economic crisis is “a toxic mess, really, on Main Street that’s affecting Wall Street.”

She also scolded her opponent, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, for suggesting that the destructive policies of the yet-to-expire Bush administration, along with John McCain’s pledge to continue most of them, were somehow relevant to the election.

“Say it ain’t so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let’s look ahead,” said Palin.

“Americans are craving that straight talk,” she said, conjuring up such incisive rhetoric as, “we’ll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation.”

And this curvy straight talk on global warming: “I’m not one to attribute every man — activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man’s activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.” That’ll resonate with the “puzzled” demographic.

Palin achieved her goal of saying the word “maverick” at least six times. But Biden countered with nine reverse kitchen-table “mavericks.”

However, as expected, Biden’s performance included several of his signature gaffes.

Number one: He kept saying, “That’s number one. Number two…”
Number two: He dared make the unpatriotic suggestion that “the last eight years, we’ve been dug into a very deep hole here at home with regard to our economy, and abroad in terms of our credibility. And there’s a need for fundamental change in our economic philosophy, as well as our foreign policy.”

Biden also said something about McCain having debated Harry Truman. However, he did call upon Churchillian reservoirs of diplomacy to resist telling his opponent she was full of Bullwinkle.

Though super slo-mo revealed that Palin blinked on at least several occasions, she did reassure millions of gay Americans that she is “tolerant” of them and said that, despite her opposition to Roe v. Wade, she’ll be a champion of “women’s rights.”

After the debate, CNN dispelled fears of an anti-Palin media by deploying a team of pundits to lavish the possible future president with praise.

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Sen. John McCain has flip-flopped on whether the U.S. economy could survive a presidential debate, saying he now plans to show up at tonight’s forum with Sen. Barack Obama.  

McCain said yesterday that the only way to solve America’s economic meltdown was for Obama to agree to a bipartisan “bailout” of tonight’s planned showdown in Mississippi.

Many pundits agreed, suggesting that proceeding with the debate would undermine America’s confidence in the electoral process by revealing that one of the two candidates for president is intelligent and articulate while the other is almost completely clueless.

“Barack Obama is trying to make the America people believe this campaign is about issues, when we all know it’s really about his crazy pastor, his terrorist pals and his extremist Muslim belief system,” said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.

The McCain campaign is still eager to spare Americans the pain of watching an Oct. 2 debate between Sen. Joe Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin.

“The American people aren’t interested in whether Sarah Palin knows anything about the issues,” said Bounds. “She’s perky; he’s a gaffe machine. That’s all they need to know.”

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Sen. John McCain’s dramatic decision Wednesday to suspend his presidential campaign to rescue American voters from economic doom is already reaping dividends — it is decreasing likelihood of an economically disastrous McCain presidency.

With his poll numbers plummeting, the “economic” situation was so urgent that McCain canceled a taping with David Letterman, probably an even bigger strategic blunder than admitting Tuesday that he had not yet read the three-page bailout proposal.

After praising McCain for his courage and heroism during the Vietnam War, Letterman tortured the Republican nominee with blunt comic instruments.

“You don’t suspend your campaign,” was Letterman’s machine-gun refrain. “Are we suspending it because there’s an economic crisis or because the poll numbers are sliding?”

Letterman said McCain phoned in to cancel with some excuse about having to jet down to Washington to save the economy. Then the late-night host pulled a “this just in” and showed video of McCain down the street taping an interview with Katie Couric.

“This just gets uglier and uglier,” said Letterman, who pretended to yell to McCain offering him a ride to the airport.

“This doesn’t smell right. This isn’t the way a tested hero behaves,” Letterman had said earlier. “I think someone’s putting something in his Metamucil.”

Letterman also skewered McCain’s media quarantine of running mate Sarah Palin, saying that if McCain feels he’s needed in Washington he should simply call upon his “second-string quarterback” to lead the campaign. What’s the problem, he asked. “Where is she?”

Letterman’s nightly Top 10 List also mocked McCain with these “Top 10 questions people are asking the McCain campaign”:

#10: I just contributed to your campaign — how do I get a refund?

#8: Can’t you solve this by selling some of your homes?

#6: Do you still think the fundamentals of our economy are strong, genius?

#5: Are you doing all this just to get out of going on Letterman?

“First of all, the road to the White House runs through me,” Letterman reminded.

“What are you going to do if you’re elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We’ve got a guy like that now!” the late-night jokkernaut continued.

“Do you think he’ll ever come back?” Letterman asked sidekick Paul Shaffer.

“Not after the drubbing that you’ve just delivered.”

Steven Colbert offered his customary ironic support of the Republican, pointing out that when you’re president you’ve got to suspend a lot of things: “Habeas Corpus,” for example.

And noted stand-up comic Sen. Chris Dodd, Democratic chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said McCain’s gambit looks like “more of a rescue plan for John McCain and not a rescue plan for the economy.”

McCain’s rescue plan may have begun with an 8:30 Wednesday morning call from the Obama camp proposing a calm joint statement on the economic situation. Perhaps fearing that Obama might be credited with reaching out, McCain went commando.

According to reports, he finally returned Obama’s call at 2:30 p.m. and agreed to issue a joint statement. But moments later he was announcing the suspension of his campaign and challenging Obama to do the same. No word yet if McCain will arrive at his Capitol Hill crisis-op by parachute.

He also proposed postponing his inevitable dismantling in Friday’s presidential debate, prompting Obama to respond, “This is exactly the time the American people need to hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible for dealing with this mess.”

Now, just as his campaign’s strategic use of dishonesty has begun to draw more media attention, McCain is taking blows from the left and right charging blatant political opportunism and just plain erratic behavior.

However, McCain said there is no need to worry because the fundamentals of his campaign are strong.

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