"We declare this race well and truly over and congratulate all those who backed Obama."
--Paddy Power, Ireland's biggest bookmaker, Oct. 16th.

While John McCain keeps rolling gutter balls and his Slime Talk Express derails any decency and honor his campaign once claimed to represent, the Irish, as they often demonstrate, are way ahead of the game.

Paddy Power, the Dublin-based bookmaker told Reuters news service he made the "unprecedented decision" to pay on the bets he's taken so far on the U.S. presidential race.

Power said he's already taken more than 10,000 bets with the trend of "one-way-traffic" for Obama and the odds now shortened to 1-9, meaning a better must slap down 9 euros to make a 1-euro profit. Power made his payout decision last Thursday after watching Obama's performance in the debate at Hofstra University.

"Although he seemed a little out of sorts in last night's final debate, we believe he has done more than enough to go over the line on November 4," Power said. Many more people concluded the smirking, grimacing John McCain was the candidate clearly "out of sorts."

McCain, a betting man himself, is gambling on the hope that the American people care more about an obscure 60s radical than the fractured financial markets, free falling economy, drained 401 K accounts, rising unemployment, declining real income and the fiscal mess massive borrowing to cover tax cuts for the wealthiest has brought the nation and will curse our children and grandchildren.

McCain loves to play craps and he's rolling the dice of desperation, praying that the American people will again buy into the politics of fear, alienation and diversion -- the game Karl Rove, George W. Bush's political brain, has played so cynically for so long.

The McCain campaign and Republican reptiles are slithering in Rovian slime, turning to the despicable in a vain attempt to steal another election. They have no honor and will use any means and lies necessary trying to keep Barack Obama out of the White House.

In a piece in The Wall Street Journal last week, Rove argued: "The outcome of the race isn't cast in stone yet," and went on to offer advice to the McCain campaign pretending issues should be the focus in the closing two weeks of the race.

Rove wrote that McCain is "bowing to reality and devoting his time to the economy," and argued: "His narrative is he's a conservative reformer who'll lead and work hard to get things done, while Obama is a tax-and-spend liberal who's unprepared to lead and unwilling to act."

Rove sounds almost civilized, pretending to discuss issues, however superficial and partisan. He admits the financial crisis "has taken an enormous toll on the McCain campaign." But what Rove writes publicly is a convenient screen for what he does privately.

Rove is the serpent of intolerance and he turns to his vat of vipers in the right wing media to bite with the venom of hate and spew fear. They are the dominating voices in McCain's ever descending campaign.

The candidate who claims he's a maverick is really an old, gray gelding willing to abandon serious discussions of public policy and issues important to the American people in his quest to defeat Obama. McCain left honor, civil restrain and decency in the barn.

During last week's debate, speaking of former Weatherman William Ayers, McCain declared: "I don't care about some washed up terrorist." Then he added, sanctimoniously: "Every time there's been an out-of-bounds remark made by a Republican, no matter where, I have repudiated them." Sure, John.

McCain must have had hearing problems when he and his running mate, the vacuous and pitifully unfit for high office, Sarah Palin, sat silently at a rally in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania as Bill Platt, the G.O.P chairman of Lehigh County, asked the audience members how they would feel waking up on November 5th and learning "Barack HUSSEIN Obama" had been elected president of the United States.

McCain uttered not a word of repudiation this past weekend while campaigning with Jeffrey Frederick, the Virginia Republican Chairman. Frederick recently urged volunteers to tell voters about "the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden."

Frederick says claiming the link is fair since "Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon. That's scary." Such smears apparently don't reach McCain's threshold of "out-of-bounds."

Just hours after those words passed through McCain's crooked lips, his slime machine was busy using the filthy tactics right out of Karl Rove's well-known playbook that were ironically used on McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries.

Voters in about 10 swing states began receiving hundreds of thousands of automated phone calls with scurrilous messages attacking Obama. One "robo call" links the Democratic candidate with William Ayers, a founder of the 1960s radical Weather Underground.

"You need to know Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers," says the ominous recorded voice. Ayers' group "killed Americans" and Obama is a member of the "extreme left," Mr. Scary Voice adds.

Rove used robo calls during the South Carolina primary in 2000 with the voice raising innuendos about McCain's family and his mental stability. In his desperation to win, McCain is now choosing the dark side he once denounced. Rove covered his tracks when he spread muck for Bush. But now, the McCain-Palin campaign and the Republican National Committee are shamelessly taking credit for the robo calls.

Ayers is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He and Obama served on a couple of philanthropic boards together, along with several prominent Republicans. Obama -- who was 8 years old -- when Ayers lead the Weather Underground has specifically and repeatedly condemned the group's violence.

The McCain campaign is "waving the bloody shirt" writes The Wall Street Journal's Thomas Frank. That's a reference to the post-Civil War Republicans who for decade would parade out old Union soldiers to remind voters of the conflict and keep Democrats out of office.

Frank, an oasis of common sense in the dry wasteland of thought generally found in the Journal's editorial pages, is a friend of Ayers whom he describes as "a dedicated servant of those less fortunate than himself; because he is unfailingly generous to people who ask for his help; and because he is kind and affable and even humble."

McCain needs Ayers. He is a diversion to distract voters from the truth that -- in spite of what he says -- McCain truly is another George W. Bush on the essential issues and especially in the way he campaigns.

"The McCain campaign has made much of its leader's honor and bravery, but now it has chosen to mount its greatest attack against a man who poses no conceivable threat to the country, who has nothing to do with this year's issues, and who cannot or will not defend himself. Apparently this makes him an irresistible target."

McCain often bellows on the campaign trail "Who is the real Senator Obama?" Through his Ayers diversion and campaign we now know who the real Senator McCain is.

"There are a lot of things to call this tactic," Thomas Frank concludes, "but 'country first isn't one of them.' The nation wants its hope and confidence restored, and Republican leaders have chose instead to wave the bloody shirt. This is their vilest hour."

The vile John McCain rolled snake eyes. Paddy Power saw it coming.