Republican candidate Ron Paul appeared CNN this afternoon, with third-party troublemaker Ralph Nader. An excerpt:

BLITZER: So is it fair to say -- you're saying you want a third party candidate to win. Would that candidate be the man sitting next to you right here in THE SITUATION ROOM, Ralph Nader?

PAUL: No. Ralph is a good friend, but we agree on tactics and what we're doing -- we agree on these very important issues, but quite frankly, he probably wouldn't have joined my campaign and I probably won't join his.

BLITZER: So you won't vote for him?

PAUL: No, I don't plan to.

BLITZER: Who do you want to vote for?

PAUL: I plan to get as many votes for him as possible because it will take the votes away from Obama, and that is where we have the agreement.

BLITZER: So you want to stop Obama, is that what you're saying?

PAUL: Well, no. I want to change the system.

Sen. John McCain celebrated an anniversary today, without pomp or confetti. As Fox News's Mosheh Oinounou points out, it has now been four weeks since McCain held a press conference. Back then, on August 13, McCain was down about 4 points to Barack Obama in the Real Clear Politics average. Today he is up about two points in the same poll of polls. That curtain on the "Straight Talk" plane seems to be doing its job.

(H/T to JP, who passed along this news release from ABC.)

ABC'S CHARLES GIBSON TO INTERVIEW GOVERNOR SARAH PALIN TOMORROW,
SEPTEMBER 11 AND FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 IN ALASKA

Exclusive Interviews to Air Across ABC News' Broadcasts and
Platforms Beginning on Thursday's “World News”

Special “20/20” – “The Interview: Sarah Palin with Charles Gibson” – to Air Friday at 10:00 p.m., ET

In her first interview since being tapped as John McCain's running mate, Governor Sarah Palin will sit down with ABC News' Charles Gibson on Thursday, September 11 and Friday, September 12. Gibson's exclusive interviews with the Republican Vice Presidential candidate will take place in Fairbanks and Wasilla, Alaska.

The first excerpts will air on Thursday's “World News with Charles Gibson” and “Nightline,” followed by “Good Morning America” and “World News” on Friday.

A special “20/20” – “The Interview: Sarah Palin with Charles Gibson” -- will air on Friday, September 12 at 10:00 p.m., ET. The hour will feature more of Gibson's interviews with the Vice Presidential candidate from Fairbanks and Wasilla. Kate Snow will report on the personal and professional background of Governor Palin leading up to her nomination, and George Stephanopoulos will moderate a live roundtable discussion on the state of the presidential race.

Additional portions of the interviews will air across ABC News' platforms, including ABC News Radio, ABC News NOW, ABCNEWS.com and ABC NewsOne, beginning Thursday.

• "McCain Speechwriter Trying To Write Lines That Don't Lead To Creepy Smile" [The Onion]

• "I wish she were a fictional construct. I'm not a fan of hers. But I certainly admit that she's got a compelling life story." [Jezebel]

• “They were going with the winner. They didn't care what the loser said. Now they've got a situation where a whole convention full of people are shouting at NBC—and a 50-50 prospect of McCain being the next president. That's enough to scare any head of any network news division.” [NYO]

• "An Obama adviser privy to the campaign's internal thinking on the matter says that,with less than two months before the election and with the realization that Republicans have achieved financial parity with Democrats, they hope that Democratic allies -- what another campaign aide termed 'the cavalry' -- will come to Obama's aid." [Ambinder]

• Various ways the LHC could frak with us. [io9]

His response to the fake fight of the day:

Dickerson's take:

All campaigns must change in order to handle the arrival of a vice-presidential candidate. To accommodate Sarah Palin, John McCain's Straight Talk Express has now installed a fainting couch. It's not for the vice-presidential candidate—she's plenty tough—but for McCain aides who are rapidly perfecting the act of expiring on the cushions on her behalf at every sign of perceived sexism.

UPDATE: As for me, I'll be more sympathetic to their cries of sexism the first time I see one of these in an airport gift shop with Sarah Palin's face on it.

UPDATE2: JP's take, which is an argument that many of our commenters have been making:

Another important reason to mau-mau the press about sexism: when you later gin up a B.S. controversy, enough journalists—you don't need all of them—will feel obligated to report it as a legitimate, he-said-she-said, who-knows-the-real-truth story, even if they really see it to be a baldfacedly cynical campaign ploy.

[By the way: "mau-mauing the press about sexism" does not mean that all charges of sexism in coverage have been false. Just the opposite. In order for this strategy to work, it has to start from a legitimate example. Then you take that example—in this case, reporters asking if Palin can be a good mom and a good VP—and link it to examples of sexism that are only from "the media" in the broadest sense, like late-night comedy jokes. Then you go from there to the charge that any critical coverage is sexist. And hopefully you create an environment in which journalists see the whole thing as a minefield and go the he-said-she-said route.]

I'm on quasi-vacation this week -- posting from lovely Anna Maria Island -- and have been trying to make a dent in my non-work reading list. But it's a bit of a busman's holiday; I've been reading Tom Perrotta's excellent third fifth novel, "The Abstinence Teacher," which turns out, not surprisingly, to have a lot of themes that would resonate with anyone following this election: the place of Christianity in public life, the difference (or lack thereof) between religious beliefs and political beliefs, working moms, gay rights, "soccer parents" and, of course, masturbation.

An excerpt from the audiobook gives you a bit of the flavor of the work: dry, observant, real. Also hilarious.

UPDATE: Thanks for the fact/spell check, Jason! Also, the name is coincidence (and, if you're paying attention: NOT EXACTLY THE SAME).

A different category of dumb charge. This one very much intentionally ginned up by the McCain camp, and the Obama camp is justified in being outraged over its implication that Obama is some kind of deviancy advocate. It was just as dumb and just as calculated when the Romney people were pushing it during the primaries. And the same argument for Obama's ACTUAL position still stands: “Child predators really prey on the ignorance of children. And the kind of education that Obama's supporting is something that would actually put weapons in the hands of children in the form of knowledge.”

In this case, however, I doubt that anyone will turn up proof -- as they did with Romney -- that McCain was once in favor of the same kind of education. As that would suggest McCain once was in favor of SOME kind of sex education.

I don't think Obama meant anything crude with the phrase. And I didn't think the McCain campaign meant to portray Obama as the anti-Christ, either. Neither of these campaigns are quite as together as critics would like to believe.

UPDATE: I should note that one major difference between the two equally dumb charges is that the Obama campaign didn't put out an outraged insta-ad over the anti-Christ thing.

UPDATE: Obama is addressing "fake controversy" right now, and doing so with much grace and class, noting that it's this kind of back-and-forth (or at least "forth") that makes Americans hate politics. "You know who ends up losing at the end of the day? It's not the Democratic candidate or the Republican candidate, it's you, the American people...I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies, and phony outrage, and Swift Boat politics. These are serious times and they call for a serious debate."

Back in 2000, after John McCain lost his mostly honorable campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, he went about apologizing to journalists--including me--for his most obvious mis-step: his support for keeping the confederate flag on the state house.

Now he is responsible for one of the sleaziest ads I've ever seen in presidential politics, so sleazy that I won't abet its spread by linking to it, but here's the McClatchy fact check.

I just can't wait for the moment when John McCain--contrite and suddenly honorable again in victory or defeat--talks about how things got a little out of control in the passion of the moment. Talk about putting lipstick on a pig.

Update: More, from Hilzoy. The Cub Scouts teach perversion too!