It isn't news every time a political candidate misspeaks. But when John McCain makes an unintended funny, it's worth a blog post.

In a campaign with plenty of gaffes to go around, John McCain added one to the mix Wednesday. The Republican vice-presidential candidate addressed a crowd in Pennsylvania as “my fellow prisoners.”

He meant to say "my fellow citizens." Freudian slip? Is the senator feeling a bit confined as the race draws to a close? Let's hope he's not having P.O.W. flashbacks.

Ah, I should have known there would be a catch in McCain's endorsement of HOLC and Brad DeLong spots it:

[McCain advisor] Douglas Holtz-Eakin says, this morning:

[W]e would in fact be taking the negative equity position and putting it on the taxpayers books instead of putting it on the private lenders books [BTD's emphasis] or the homeowners books. We think the balance of risk has shifted to the point where this is the way to go...

What does this mean? It means that John McCain wants to give $100 billion of taxpayers' money to America's worst-behaving mortgage financiers.

So McCain's idea is to give money to the mortgage lenders, not help the homeowners. No way, no how, no more corporate giveaways McCain. HOLC is this - the government buys the loan at market value, the mortgage lender takes its hit and the homeowner keeps his/her house on new affordable credit terms. That is HOLC. McCain's plan is nonsense.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Joe Biden is pushing back against the McCain-Palin claim that Barack Obama is a mysterious figure who "pals around with terrorists."

“The one they have chosen is to appeal to fear with a veiled question: ‘Who is the real Barack Obama?’ Ladies and gentlemen, to have a vice presidential candidate raise the most outrageous inferences, the ones that John McCain’s campaign is condoning is simply wrong,” said Biden, who blamed McCain’s Republican strategists - the ones that successfully deflated McCain’s chances against George W. Bush in 2000 with sensational rumors and attacks.

“These same people, they’re attacking Barack Obama in the ugliest of ways,” said Biden. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is beyond disappointing, this is beyond disappointing. This is wrong.”

Ugly is all the McCain campaign has left. As Biden said, the attacks on Obama’s character are "an attempt to get you to stop paying attention to what’s going on in this country." It won't work. This year, voters couldn't stop paying attention to reality if they tried.

Ipsos/McClatchy (10/2-6) has Obama up 7, 47-40.

Gallup has Obama up 11, 52-41, the biggest lead he has had in the entire campaign in the Gallup poll.

I'll say it, Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Brokaw: How can we apply pressure to Russia for humanitarian issues in an effective manner without starting another Cold War?

More....

NYTimes:

The mortgage renewal idea actually originated with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, said Charlie Black, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain. And Mrs. Clinton, who proposed the idea in a recent newspaper column, borrowed it from a Depression-era New Deal agency, the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation.

Obama left this door wide open by not adopting the Clinton proposal earlier. He needs to close it. NOW.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Every now and then, Thomas Friedman gets it right. It's rare but it happens. After trashing Sarah Palin's assertion that it isn't patriotic to ask citizens to pay the taxes that need to be paid to fund two wars and a bailout (not to mention government in general), Friedman echoes what many of us have been saying for some time: Palin has no business holding the vice presidency, and John McCain's choice of Palin reflects his impetuous judgment.

How in the world can conservative commentators write with a straight face that this woman should be vice president of the United States? Do these people understand what serious trouble our country is in right now?

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Matt Yglesias writes:

Here’s the CAP [HOLC] plan. All joking aside, it’s genuinely true that a progressive policy operation is always hoping some Republicans somewhere will cotton to some of our ideas. It’s genuinely difficult to achieve anything legislatively in the United States without some bipartisanship. Obama has made some similar noises in the past. Hopefully McCain’s embrace of this idea means something like it can actually get done.

(Emphasis supplied.) Um, how about more than "some similar noises" from Obama? How about a little leadership on the issue?

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Not as new as you think - from April 2008:

McCain’s aides said his home mortgage plan could help 200,000 to 400,000 people and cost $3 billion to $10 billion. That would be far less than the proposals offered by Clinton and Obama, but McCain aides said it would be bigger than the efforts envisioned by the Bush administration. The plan would retire old loans that homeowners no longer can pay and replace them with less expensive, 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages that are federally guaranteed. McCain said families would gain “the opportunity to trade a burdensome mortgage for a manageable loan that reflects the market value of their home.”

Last night, McCain just added $290 billion to his April 2008 plan. Strangely enough, in april 2008, Barack Obama said it was too little and too late then. Today, he seems to think it might be too much, based on the reactions of his surrogates :

Hotline has the race narrowing to a 1 point Obama lead. In two days, according to Hotline, Obama's 6 point lead has dwindled to a statistical tie. Battleground has Obama's 7 point lead yesterday dwindling to 4. The charlatan Zogby has Obama's 3 point lead yesterday cut to 2. The NYTimes/CBS poll has Obama up 3. And the Democracy Corps poll has Obama up 3. Take these 5 polls, and you have a 2.6 point Obama lead.

Here are the polls McCain does not like -- DKos/R2000 has Obama up 10. Ras has Obama up 6 (down 2 from the past 2 days). Gallup has Obama up 9. CNN has Obama up 8. NBC has Obama up 6. Obama leads by 7.8 points in these 5 polls. A 5 point Obama lead when you put all 10 polls together.

Of course this is all pre-debate. I think the election is over.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

A few weeks ago, Hillary Clinton said:

[W]e need a government entity, a modern-day Homeowners Loan Corporation, referred to as HOLC -- H-O-L-C . . . Now, I personally believe and was among the very first to suggest that a HOLC, a Homeowners Loan Corporation, could be a preferable way of unfreezing and beginning to fix our struggling mortgage market.

Last night, Barack Obama said:

The middle-class need a rescue package. . . . It means help for homeowners so that they can stay in their homes.

Last night, John McCain said:

As president of the United States . . . I would order the secretary of the treasury to immediately buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes -- at the diminished value of those homes and let people be able to make those -- be able to make those payments and stay in their homes.

So now that we have all agreed, it is time to move to implementation of a new HOLC.

More . . .

Post Debate Polls are coming in:

• CNN: Obama 54, McCain 30.

• CBS: Obama won among undecideds, 40% to 26%.

  Forty percent of the 516 uncommitted voters surveyed identified Barack Obama as tonight's winner; 26 percent said John McCain won, while 35 percent saw the debate as a draw. (As you might have noticed, these percentages add up to 101 percent; the reason for the additional percentage point is rounding of each of the individual totals.)

  After the debate, 68 percent of uncommitted voters said that they think Obama will make the right decisions on the economy, compared to 55 percent who said that before the debate. Fewer thought McCain would do so – 48 percent after the debate, and 41 percent before.

You know Obama won when even the right-wing blog Powerline says so.