Your call, folks.

Probably not literally, but you never know. The heretic in question is Elaine Lafferty, who is a former Hillary Clinton supporter, former editor-in-chief of Ms. Magazine, pretty decent journalism bio – and current adviser to the McCain/Palin campaign, which will of course permit her critics to redefine her as a traitor to her gender.

Yes, I’m aware of how weird that observation looks. It’s a weird election year, in case you haven’t noticed. Anyway:

It’s difficult not to froth when one reads, as I did again and again this week, doubts about Sarah Palin’s “intelligence,” coming especially from women such as PBS’s Bonnie Erbe, who, as near as I recall, has not herself heretofore been burdened with the Susan Sontag of Journalism moniker. As Fred Barnes—God help me, I’m agreeing with Fred Barnes—suggests in the Weekly Standard, these high toned and authoritative dismissals come from people who have never met or spoken with Sarah Palin. Those who know her, love her or hate her, offer no such criticism. They know what I know, and I learned it from spending just a little time traveling on the cramped campaign plane this week: Sarah Palin is very smart.

I’m a Democrat, but I’ve worked as a consultant with the McCain campaign since shortly after Palin’s nomination. Last week, there was the thought that as a former editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine as well as a feminist activist in my pre-journalism days, I might be helpful in contributing to a speech that Palin had long wanted to give on women’s rights.

Now by “smart,” I don’t refer to a person who is wily or calculating or nimble in the way of certain talented athletes who we admire but suspect don’t really have serious brains in their skulls. I mean, instead, a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had. Palin is more than a “quick study”; I’d heard rumors around the campaign of her photographic memory and, frankly, I watched it in action. She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts. What is often called her “confidence” is actually a rarity in national politics: I saw a woman who knows exactly who she is.

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Between letting the Obama campaign try to offer the novel defense that the RNC controls local television networks…

No, really.

…and what was frankly a long-overdue blindsiding of Bill Burton:

Well. As Ace would say, good times, good times. Unless, of course, somebody starts getting riled up about her.

Moe Lane

He passed away of cystic fibrosis: our prayers and condolences to his family and loved ones in this time of their grief.

Moe Lane

PS: A link to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation may be found here.

KYW caved to the Obama campaign’s bullying after doing its tough interview of Biden:

WFTV, of course, didn’t.

Via Ace of Spades HQ.

Moe Lane

Choice of word deliberate: an article like this is unlikely to not get pushback. The title alone will provoke a certain sort:

Palin deserves our respect

I cannot predict who will win the presidential campaign, but I already know who will lose big: all women.

I realized this when I saw a 20-something male student who attends a class in the community college where I teach, wearing a T-shirt that read, “Sarah Palin is a C-.” He wore it in public, in broad daylight, and without shame or even consciousness of what he was doing.

I took the time to advise him of the “error of his ways” and informed him of the consequences if he wore it to my class.

This encounter shook me right down to my socks.

No, that’s not a “C-minus” that she’s referring to. Although she might as well have spelled out the word: it’s apparently part of reasonable discourse today, at least for a portion of the American electorate.

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It’s the trifecta: anti-Semitism, anti-military, and pandering to Move.On (OK, OK, the first two are common ways to do the third):

Via Ace. Josh Mandel is a state representative, by the way, not a member of the US Congress. But we do like hearing about those races, too.

Hint, hint.

That was what made me decide to front this SNL skit involving Murtha/Biden (via AoSHQ). It’s by no means a game-changer – more of a admission of the damage that these two have already done for their candidate – but it’s funny, which is enough for a lazy Sunday morning.

Now let’s just see if it loads…

UPDATE from Soren: Go help Bill Russell retire Jack Murtha.

Fausta’s Blog reports that WFTV will be getting no more interviews from the Obama/Biden campaign. Which means, of course, that the Obama/Biden campaign just voluntarily degraded its access to central Floridan airwaves for the rest of the election.

Ah, pride. A wonderful sin… in one’s opponents.

This wasn’t pretty: then again, interviews where you’re being asked to distinguish between your running mate’s views and Karl Marx’s rarely are. Head’s up via Ace of Spades:

The interviewer is Barbara West, of Florida’s WFTV News. The interviewee is, of course, Senator Joe Biden, who graced us with his trademark… thoughts. Some points to consider, Senator:

• When you’re pushing back on the perfectly accurate observation that your running mate is attached to the hip to ACORN… don’t quote one of ACORN’s talking points.

• Umm… your guy thinks that “when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody“. Do try to keep up, Senator.

• I understand that you’re not a drinker, Senator. Good: drunken oblivion is too easy an out for you for dealing with the fact that you had to tell the world that Obama’s mistaken views on Iraq were better than yours, let alone John McCain’s.

And, lastly: “I don’t know who’s writing your questions…” What a charming attempt to diminish a reporter who dared ask you questions that you didn’t want to answer. And, just out of curiosity: would you have said that to a man?

Moe Lane

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In the process of levering a retread out from the site, I came across this video that I had linked to, back in August:

…and I figured that it was worth linking to, again – particularly since he’s been lately revving himself up to Republican-levels of expressed patriotism and love of country. Gotta say: if even Obama doesn’t believe his own rhetoric, I see no reason why I should.

Via Gateway Pundit:

Personally, I think that Alan Colmes should be grateful. I’m given to understand that normally he’d have to pay somewhere around six, seven hundred bucks to get spanked that comprehensively.

Moe Lane

PS: Go, Team Sarah.

Just saying, that’s all.

“Middle Class”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X2uCNIq0dI

“Part of the Problem”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgulGI1IWZc

Contribute here.

But that’s all right: sometimes it’s nice to be the one who gets the obscure ones.

Anyway: via Ace, we seem to have found ourselves on the final approach to the political equivalent of a Singularity.

No, that wasn’t a joke.

Moe

PS: It’s also not “good news” or “bad news” or “peppermint news” or anything else. Kind of the point, really.

If you needed any confirmation that this race was bizarre in ways that would make a neo-anti-anti-Dadaist performance artist on acid scratch his partially-shaved, partially-covered-in-dyed-weasels head, here you go:

“If I’m not mistaken, when Al Gore and his brilliant running mate, about this time in the campaign in 2000, were about six or seven points behind,” Lieberman stated. “And, of course, we won. Or we got more votes, anyway.”

I think that we all need a moment to just sit there and contemplate that one.

This is not an exaggeration or euphemism. This is his intent.

NEW BEDFORD — After the November election, Democrats will push for a second economic stimulus package that includes money for the states’ stalled infrastructure projects, along with help paying for healthcare expenses, food stamps and extended unemployment benefits, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank said Thursday.

In a meeting with the editorial board of The Standard-Times, Rep. Frank, D-Mass., also called for a 25 percent cut in military spending, saying the Pentagon has to start choosing from its many weapons programs, and that upper-income taxpayers are going to see an increase in what they are asked to pay.

The military cuts also mean getting out of Iraq sooner, he said.

Via The Hill, via Commentary.

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There are times where “Joe Biden opens his mouth” is wholly inadequate as a tag. This is one of those times.

Again, thanks for the help, Senator Biden.

Moe Lane

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“Don’t tell me words don’t matter.”

Good. We’ll make this brief.

• The Democrats are proposing to end the tax breaks on 401(k) plans. That means no incentive for employer matching funds, which will promptly go away: you will instead be given up to $600 dollars a year by the government. Hope that you weren’t counting on your employer’s matching funds for your retirement!

• You will also be required to contribute 5% of your gross income per year, which will be locked into a 3% annual rate of return via government bonds. And, no, you do not have a say in how they invest the money. Based on what I can tell about Teresa Ghilarducci – the genius who apparently came up with this exercise in applied looting, and who briefed the Democrats on it last week – she’s about as interested in actual middle-class opinions as the rest of the New School for Social Research. God save us from academic economists.

• Yes, this is a welfare system. Of course, this hurts the poor disproportionately. Indeed, this is a rather drastic, socialist notion that reminds many people of the games that Argentina is contemplating playing with with regard to nationalizing their private pension fund system. And, yes, the difference in what you’re being forced to invest in the government, and what the government will deign to give back to you, can be significant.

• That’s why the Democrats are doing it – particularly Representative George Miller, Democrat from California, and Rep. Jim McDermott, Democrat from Washington. They think that they know better than you do about how to spend your money.

After all, what could possibly go wrong?

Moe Lane

Translation: “What? People were paying attention?”

Even the Seattle Times can’t spin this past an “exaggeration” by Dave Reichert’s challenger:

In recent weeks, Democratic congressional candidate Darcy Burner has touted her Harvard degree in economics when talking about the nation’s financial crisis and her opposition to the bailout package passed by Congress.

At two debates this month, she brought up her academic background in her opening statement.

“I loved economics so much that I got a degree in it from Harvard,” she said at an Oct. 10 debate at KCTS-TV. “Now everywhere I go in this district, the only thing people want to talk to me about is the economy.”

But while she took courses in economics, Burner doesn’t have a degree in the subject from Harvard.

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