Here is the deal: Ted Stevens is on trial for taking too many gifts from various Alaska people and not reporting them properly. He was allowed to call a few character witnesses, and one of them was Colin Powell, the once-honorable soldier who has been roundly discredited for staying in the Bush administration a million years too long.

Powell is apparently a great pal of Ted Stevens, because here is what he said about him:

“I had a guy who would tell me when I was off base, he would tell me when I had no clothes on, figuratively, that is, and would tell me when I was right and go for it.”

Powell also said Stevens had a “sterling” reputation. Then he leapt off the stand and presented Ted Stevens with a very special gift: a set of gold-plated anal beads to use on the thousand-dollar husky he had been given, for free, by some other dude.

Colin Powell: Stevens reputation ’sterling’ [Anchorage Daily News]

Now this sounds particularly devastating — to the OBAMABOTS, the Liberals, who don’t care about such Main Street values as exerting undue influence in governmental decisions:

Todd Palin talked with over a dozen state officials, many of them repeatedly, in his crusade to get a state trooper fired whom he considered to be a bad cop, a dishonest person and a threat to the Palin family, according to his sworn statement given Wednesday to a legislative investigator.

The 25-page statement from Gov. Sarah Palin’s husband, in response to questions submitted by the investigator, shows that Todd Palin’s efforts started before his wife became governor and accelerated during the first 19 months of her administration.

If this state trooper was such an unsavory fellow who was making death threats and abusing gals or whatever, why didn’t the Palins just call other police officers and have him arrested, for breaking the law? Because that would be considerably less fun than PULLING STRINGS and using BACK CHANNELS of course.

Palin’s testimony denies that Governor Palin fired public safety commissioner Walt Monegan for refusing to fire this trooper. Instead, it was these weird things:

He said his understanding is that Monegan lost his job due to a “dispute with the governor and her staff over budget issues and failure to fill trooper vacancies.”

He also suggested there was bad blood between the governor and Monegan over two other matters:

1) An inquiry from Monegan to the governor about whether she once failed to put her Trig, her infant, in a car seat while she was driving.

2) The unavailability of a state trooper airplane for the governor’s use when traveling to the Bush.

Ha ha, so she fired Monegan because he thought she was a shittier mother than Britney Spears, and also because he wouldn’t lend her his plane when she wanted to go get some pussy. Also, this was after SHE SOLD HER OWN FREAKING PLANE.

And now Todd Palin is just cold getting stoned and snowmobiling, waiting for that full Troopergate report to come out tomorrow.

Todd Palin campaigned years to get trooper fired [Anchorage Daily News]

The Cody Enterprise reports:

Park County Republican leaders arrived at work Tuesday to find their headquarters vandalized.

The GOP office at Sheridan and 13th had the word “Obama” written on the windows and Obama flyers taped to the windows.

Terry Hinkle of the GOP leadership blames backers of Barack Obama.

“This is truly a crime and we don’t appreciate the vandalism,” he said. “We’re paying rent here and it’s our property for six more weeks.”

Here is a picture of this guy, who is whining about this. Ha ha, he has apparently put his own sticker on the window, with the words “Don’t Touch, EVIDENCE” written on it, so basically he has also committed the same vicious crime as these alleged Obama supporters.

Wonkette Operative Anne Marie Shriver alerted us to this stunning tale of criminality in Cody, which is apparently covered in Obama yard signs. She says the vandalism “consisted of putting up a couple of posters and painting the windows of the HQ with the same type of paint used at the prior week’s high school homecoming event.”

Ha, and guess what kind of kids are often involved with student events such as Homecoming? That’s right, elitist college-bound kids. How disgusting! These kids are “politically involved” and doing harmless pranks against the old Republicans. Why can’t these kids just put up an illiterate MySpace page full of embedded hip-hop and impregnate the easy girl and get a tattoo on their hands, like what’s his name, “Fuckin’ Redneck,” the one who will escape the Palins’ baby-farming grip as soon as McCain loses next month?

FUN FACT: The Cody Enterprise was, like the whole town, founded by William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody! He started the town and a big hotel to serve tourists visiting the new Yellowstone Park. Cody was anti-slavery, pro-conservation and supported Indian and women’s rights. He also brought his Wild West show to Europe. In other words, he was a domestic terrorist.

GOP leaders blame Obama supporters for vandalism [Cody Enterprise]

00:00:13 — Cindy McCain walks out to greet her husband, and follows him awkwardly around the room for 25 seconds, until 00:00:39, when McCain finally acknowledges her presence with a quick, one-armed hug and a split-second glance at the side of her head.
00:01:19 — McCain may have patted Obama’s back here. Impossible to tell what exactly he is doing with his left arm. But if it was a pat on the back, however patronizing, it somewhat negates the handshake snub. Somewhat. But not really.
00:01:20 — The snub. Obama reaches out to shake McCain’s hand. McCain makes a weird face and points to Cindy McCain. Nonplussed, Obama smiles and takes her hand, says some pleasantries, and returns to the voters in the audience.
00:01:34 — McCain glances at Cindy, nods towards the exit door, and gives a spastic little bug-eyed wave goodbye to … the exit door he’s approaching?
00:01:35 — That’s it, the McCains are gone.
00:01:36 — Tom Brokaw is in the room, talking to the audience members. Barack and Michelle Obama are in the room, talking to the audience members. It’s almost as if there was an agreed-upon protocol — you know, basic manners.
00:01:36 through 00:11:11 — For the next 10 minutes, Barack and Michelle talk to people, post for pictures, make jokes, have apparently serious conversations with people, sign autographs, shake hands, and otherwise engage with literally everybody in the room, a hundred people or more.

At 00:05:06, a woman slips under Barack’s arm and hugs him. He hugs her back, and she actually dances back to her seat, which makes a bunch of people laugh.

At 00:09:26, Barack starts talking to (we think!) the guy who asked the first question of the debate, the one about everybody losing all their retirement savings in the economic collapse. And he keeps talking to him, and keeps talking to him, and listening to him, for more than a minute.

At 00:10:42, a black guy in glasses and a gray sportscoat asks to have his picture taken with Obama, who motions up to the seats just out of view of the camera, and seems to say he was headed up there, but he’ll come back. At 00:11:15, he comes back to the guy and happily poses for the picture.

And that’s where this C-SPAN clip ends. The live video feed last night went on for another twenty minutes, because that’s how long the Obamas stayed in the little theater, working the room, their “body language” betraying no exhaustion or wish to get out of there and have a beer and relax.

The debate may have been a bore, but what happened afterward was extremely telling.

Thanks to Simon Owens at C-SPAN for digging up this video for us.

This goon, a mop-topped economics major at the University of Tennessee named David Kernell, went to court today and pled not guilty and asked the judge if he could talk about the case with his girlfriend in South Carolina.

If John McCain and Sarah Palin are elected, Kernell will be sentenced without trial to 35 years of hard labor in the uranium mines of Guantanamo Bay, side by side with assorted Wall Street Fat Cats and Keith Olbermann.

Lawmaker’s son, UT student David Kernell, indicted in Palin e-mail hacking [Memphis Commercial Appeal]

First, the CNN instant poll had Obama winning the debate 54-30%, with 59-37% saying they trust Barack Obama more to handle the economy. Game over. Unless Barry rapes someone!!

Ya see:

• Kathryn Jean Lopez of The Corner has a sharp reaction, which is that it probably wasn’t a good idea to open a third bottle of blush: “You Have Got to Be Kidding Me: John McCain just manically pointed out that McCain incorrectly said Petraeus is chairman of the joint chiefs. No one in his right mind thinks McCain doesn’t know who Petraeus is. Which is why Olbermann pointed it out.” WTF?
• TPM gives us what we always want from TPM — a funny clip of Walnuts. Here he is not shaking Obama’s hand; he just points Obama to Cindy. “Here, you want a hand to shake? Shake the cunt’s.”

  UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan checked his DVR of the debate (to be used for his masturbatory purposes later) and finds that there was, in fact, a handshake somewhere. Typical case of the “gotcha media journalists.” We’ll keep this clip up though because why the hell not.

• Andrew Sullivan, who debated in college, says this was a DEVASTATING MONSTER NUKE in favor of Obama: “This was, I think, a mauling: a devastating and possibly electorally fatal debate for McCain. Even on Russia, he sounded a little out of it. I’ve watched a lot of debates and participated in many. I love debate and was trained as a boy in the British system to be a debater. I debated dozens of times at Oxofrd. All I can say is that, simply on terms of substance, clarity, empathy, style and authority, this has not just been an Obama victory. It has been a wipe-out.It has been about as big a wipe-out as I can remember in a presidential debate. It reminds me of the 1992 Clinton-Perot-Bush debate. I don’t really see how the McCain campaign survives this.”
• Oh screw it, that’s enough. Most other people are just quoting the same two people too.