San Juan, Puerto Rico

Above: El Nuevo Día, from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Check in with Newseum daily.
Front pages and links to newspapers around the world.

The Día scores the debate 5-4 in favor of Obama, a mixed review shared by Der Spiegel in Germany and elsewhere abroad (Guardian). In a flawed debate where McCain, constantly repeating that he has reached across the aisle to work with Democrats, made exactly the opposite impression in that he couldn’t even bring himself to look at Obama once during the entire evening.

By contrast, Obama’s consensus style, often acknowledging agreement where he perceives it between the two, is being criticized for being a bit too diplomatic in his approach to debate. Nan desuka?

McCain claims victory before even committing to debate

Above: Screenshot from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Online 10:16AM EST,
via the Washington Post.

Above: Desperate times call for desperate measures–preemptive banner ads.
In a stunningly cynical move, but one that also illuminates the perceived effectiveness of planting online banner memes, the McCain Campaign posted internet adds yesterday morning making the above claim, before they confirmed that McCain would even attend. Ja, true story.

This story was reported in The Washington Post but also spotted early on by Crooks and Liars in yesterday morning’s Wall Street Journal Online (screenshot).

Above: Speaking of viruses and memes, this internet banner that ran yesterday on CNN is clearly, and poorly, mimicking a style more closely associated with Obama’s grassroots aesthetic, non?

A small visual victory, at least?