Think it Through . . .

. . . . and then tell me you're not disturbed by this:

At least the Hitler Youth got cool uniforms with Sam Browne belts. These poor offspring of suburban liberal fascism just got stupid t-shirts. I'll bet all the mommies and daddies think this is double-plus-good.

When in Danger, When in Doubt . . . .

Mark Steyn:

As a general proposition, when told by unanimous elites that a particular course of action is urgent and necessary to avoid disaster, there's a lot to be said for going fishing. If the entire global economy is so vulnerable that only the stalwart action of Barney Frank stands between it and ten years of soup kitchens, can it, in fact, be saved?

Scan Toaster?

No, really:

[T]he Scan Toaster designed by Sung Bae Chang of South Korea is a USB-driven toaster for late night work sessions. The toaster prints news, weather and snapshots on to slices of toast.

He said he got the idea from looking at his scanner and printer, and realizing that members of the internet generation like things that are fun and interesting.

One might have thought that pressed ham was a more viable medium. And what happens if you scan the image of a piece of toast onto a piece of toast?

House Votes Down Bailout Bill

Now this . . .

. . . is funny.

In Case You Missed It

Supply Your Own Punch Line

WNBC in New York reports:

VERMONT -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent a letter to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, cofounders of Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc., urging them to replace cow's milk they use in their ice cream products with human breast milk, according to a statement recently released by a PETA spokeswoman.

"PETA's request comes in the wake of news reports that a Swiss restaurant owner will begin purchasing breast milk from nursing mothers and substituting breast milk for 75 percent of the cow's milk in the food he serves," the statement says.

PETA officials say a move to human breast milk would lessen the suffering of dairy cows and their babies on factory farms and benefit human health.

"The fact that human adults consume huge quantities of dairy products made from milk that was meant for a baby cow just doesn't make sense," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. "Everyone knows that 'the breast is best,' so Ben & Jerry's could do consumers and cows a big favor by making the switch to breast milk."

We wonder if adoption of such a plan would spur the creation of a more anatomically correct cherry to use atop sundaes.

[UPDATE (3:45 p.m.): Suggested new Ben & Jerry's flavors include Jenny Garcia, Peanut Butter C-cup, and the observation that Chunky Monkey could be retained.]

Subprime Mortgage Meltdown

We confess that much of what you read here is alarmingly superficial, while hoping that it is at least entertainingly glib. But when you've waded through the posts about high-calorie burgers, and Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and averted your eyes from the pieces having to do with Asian schoolgirls dancing manically, and sighed at yet another love-note to Sarah (do you think she's noticed us?), you really must agree that there are nuggets of insight.

Uncle Michael reminds us that just about 6 months ago

WE TOLD YOU SO

Welcome to My World

According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, as a person ages chemical changes in the brain make it harder for them to feel rewarded.

No shit.

The Good Old Days

Back in the day, there wasn't the kind of negative mud-slinging and sound-bite politics that we've now come to expect. Instead, there was reasoned debate on the important issues, including this contribution (the brainchild of the sainted Bill Moyers) for Lyndon Johnson in 1964:

We Miss Bill Clinton

We really do. He remains the most talented politician of his generation. Sure, he's a slime-ball, but he's like the ex-girlfriend who stole your car, slept with your best friend, and ruined your razor, but who could do that thing that you've never been able to teach another woman to do: you're glad they're gone, but you find yourself wistfully missing them for all that.

Comes now Bill Clinton on the subject of the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee:

Bill Clinton said Monday he understands why Sarah Palin is popular in the heartland: because people relate to her.

"I come from Arkansas, I get why she's hot out there," Clinton said. "Why she's doing well."

Speaking to reporters before his Clinton Global Initiative meeting, the former president described Palin's appeal by adding, "People look at her, and they say, 'All those kids. Something that happens in everybody's family. I'm glad she loves her daughter and she's not ashamed of her. Glad that girl's going around with her boyfriend. Glad they're going to get married.'"

Clinton said voters would think, "I like that little Down syndrome kid. One of them lives down the street. They're wonderful children. They're wonderful people. And I like the idea that this guy does those long-distance races. Stayed in the race for 500 miles with a broken arm. My kind of guy."

[snip]

"I get this," Clinton said. "My view is ... why say, ever, anything bad about a person? Why don't we like them and celebrate them and be happy for her elevation to the ticket? And just say that she was a good choice for him and we disagree with them?"

We miss you, Bill!

Barry and the Bomb-Thrower

In today's Wall Street Journal, Stanley Kurtz sets out the result of his research into the relationship between The Chosen One and Bill Ayers in a piece entitled, "Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools." The New York Times and Washington Post may want to use his work as the jumping-off point for their in-depth investigative reports into the nasty world of radical leftist connections trailing Mr. Obama. Keep in mind that -- by any definition -- Bill Ayers is a terrorist:

Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.

The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.

The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them.

[snip]

The CAC's basic functioning has long been known, because its annual reports, evaluations and some board minutes were public. But the Daley archive contains additional board minutes, the Collaborative minutes, and documentation on the groups that CAC funded and rejected. The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.

One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.

The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.

In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.

CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).

[snip]

Mr. Ayers is the founder of the "small schools" movement (heavily funded by CAC), in which individual schools built around specific political themes push students to "confront issues of inequity, war, and violence." He believes teacher education programs should serve as "sites of resistance" to an oppressive system. (His teacher-training programs were also CAC funded.) The point, says Mr. Ayers in his "Teaching Toward Freedom," is to "teach against oppression," against America's history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social transformation.

The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.

Read the whole thing. Of course, inquiry into a Presidential nominee's connection to a known terrorist is not nearly so interesting as exploring whether Governor Palin can pronounce the name of the Minister of Agriculture of Berzerkistan, but maybe when those sorts of more important matters are fully reported, the Times and Post might think about redeploying some of their troops from Nome to Chicago. Just a thought.

Why Didn't We Think of This?

You're heard the candidate, you're read the pundits, now hear the song: "I'm in Love With a Girl Named Sarah Palin."

Via Kathy Shaidle.

Palin Syrah

No, really.

Creative Science Fair Projects

Fair & Balanced

The Editorial Staff at Glib & Superficial have done little to hide their enthusiasm for Governor Sarah Palin. We relish the prospect of a pit-bull in lipstick unleashed on the federal bureaucracy. But it is also our goal that our readers be well-informed, and hear all sides of the important issues of our time.

Herewith, then, a piece by from San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford, that appeared in Friday's edition in the City by the Bay:

Every white woman I know is positively horrified.

Wait, that's not exactly true. It's more accurate to say that every thoughtful or liberal or intuitive or open-minded white woman I know worth her vagina monologue and her self-determination and two centuries of nonstop striving for equal rights and sexual freedom and exhaustive patriarchal unshackling is right now openly horrified, appalled at what the addition of shrill PTA hockey-mom Sarah Palin seems to have done for the soggy, comatose McCain campaign -- that is, make it not merely remotely interesting and melodramatic, but aggressively hostile to, well, to all intelligent women everywhere.

Truly, among women in the know and especially among those who fought so hard to bring Hillary Clinton to the brink of history, nausea and a general recoiling appear to be the universal reactions to Palin's sudden presence on the national stage, stemming straight from the idea that there's even a slight chance in hell such an antagonistic, anti-female politico could be within a 72-year-old heartbeat of becoming the most powerful and iconic woman of all time.

They say: You've got to be kidding me. They say: This is what we get? This could be our historic role model? Two hundred years (OK, more like 2000) of struggle, only to have this nasty caricature of femininity try to hijack and mock and undermine it all?

It cannot be true, they say. The universe must be joking, would not dare dump such a homophobic, Creationist evangelical nutball on us, this anti-choice, God-pandering woman who's the inverse of Hillary, this woman of deep inexperience who abhors birth control and supports abstinence education and shoots exhausted wolves from helicopters and hates polar bears and actually stands for everything progressive women have resented since the first pope Swift-Boated Eve.

[snip]

Let us analyze. Let me, being a straight white male and therefore only capable of gazing in awe at the spectacle that is the indecipherable female intuitive response, foolishly attempt to decipher some of it anyway, and explain why in hell some women might jump to Palin, despite the fact that she essentially hates them. Shall we begin?

[snip]

Is this all it is? Does "one of us" merely mean white women really believe Palin could, if McCain didn't survive his first term, effectively lead the most powerful, flawed, complicated nation on the planet merely because she's a hard-workin' mom with moxie, that she's managed to raise a gaggle of strangely named kids who hunt and don't believe in evolution and get pregnant before they're old enough to buy a pack of Marlboros?

Or does it mean they agree with Palin about not giving a damn for equal pay, or honest sex education, or separation of church and state, or alternative energy, or a woman's right to choose, or their own daughters' rights if they get knocked up after being raped or incested? Nah, that can't be it.

[snip]

Maybe this is our simple summary, the blaring headline we should be reading in the wake of recent events. "Easily duped Palin supporters prove: Some white women are just as dumb as men." Is that all it is? Maybe so.

A potent backlash is coming fast.

Goodness. We confess that we are unfamiliar with what "God-pandering" might be, nor can we quite sort out what could be meant by the Pope "Swift-boating Eve." "Incested" is also new to us and, even after consultation with our staff grammarian, we can't quite figure out what part of speech it is. We've learned a lot, and hope you have too.

Caturday

Environmentally sensitive paper shredder.

Dr. House Meets Rachel

Palin for President

Gang of Twelve?

A young woman in Texas has been told she can no longer wear certain jewelry because school officials consider it a "gang symbol." Plainly a bigger gang than the Crips or Bloods. Story HERE.

What if Real Life Was Like Facebook?

H/T to Uncle Michael, who plainly has no real life.

Who Do You Hate?

Joe Biden Gets it Right

A reporter for CBS files this report:

When telling the story of how his granddaughters had a slumber party with Barack Obama’s daughters during the week of the Democratic National Convention, Biden equated it to what he says Americans want.

“I believe that's a metaphor, a metaphor for what the country is looking for. They're looking for a sleepover with people they like!”

Damn Right, Joe!

Times Does Solid Reporting on Governor Palin

Finally the New York Times -- reviving the sort of hard-hitting reportage and investigative journalism for which America's newspaper-of-record has long been famous -- has released some of the original material gathered by its army of veteran newshounds air-dropped into Alaska.

Story HERE.

We would ask when a similar report on B. Hussein Obama's stylist will appear, but that would be racist.

Sarah & Hillary

We Told You So

"Eating Veggies Shrinks the Brain"

Our Media Masters

Seems like ABC News and Charlie Gibson, unable to actually make Governor Palin look like an idiot, decided to edit her responses to questions in order to make her seem more like, well, what they all know she is.

One of the most inflammatory teases used by Chuckles was:

EXCLUSIVE: GOV. SARAH PALIN WARNS WAR MAY BE
NECESSARY IF RUSSIA INVADES ANOTHER COUNTRY.

Of course even as aired she said nothing of the kind. She said Ukraine and Georgia (the other one) should be members of NATO -- but so do Joe Biden and B. Hussein Obama. And she said that were such a NATO member attacked by Russia, the United States should defend them. Actually, the NATO treaty (for better or worse) says that an attack on any member is an attack on all members. Thus, an attack on NATO-member Georgia by the Russians would be treated just as if it were an attack on Atlanta. One may think this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it's a thing agreed by all four national candidates.

But to get their tease, ABC did a little creative editing. More HERE.

The printing press was a problem for 16th and 17th century despots. The mimeograph and xerox machines were problems for 20th century despots. And now the internet is quite a problem for our 21st century media masters, in the tank for Barry.

An interesting question is how they expect to get away with things like this. Here's how: out of the millions who watched the clumsily edited interview, how many will read the full transcript, or surf the net to find out what really happened? Just so.

Caturday Morning

It Doesn't Get Better Than This

Maybe it's Sarah Palin. Maybe it's the bottled water on the campaign airplane. But the Democrats appear to be Hell-bent on doing themselves in. The McCain camp has been quick to capitalize on Sarah's star-power, but that will pass. They've been quick to seek to collect former Hillary supporters drawn to Senator Clinton by identity and pride, rather than policy, but that won't win the election.

What may win the election for Sarah and the old guy is Obama's campaign, which is increasingly inept, clumsy, and incoherent.

You can almost see the childish glee with which some bright young fellow (I refuse to believe a woman could be so dumb) decided that now was the time to go after John McCain's age: he's out of touch! he's old! he's not one of us post-modern with-it sort of guys! Hence this new advertisement:

"It's extraordinary that someone who wants to be our president and our commander in chief doesn't know how to send an e-mail."

Except for one small point. As the Boston Globe reported eight years ago: "McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes."

More HERE and HERE.

Way to go, Barry. Keep it up. Keep it up. Remember: you're on a mission from God.

Large Hadron Collider

If, like many, you're concerned that physicists playing with the Large Hadron Collider will destroy the earth, have no fear. You can watch live webcams in real time HERE.

Everything I Needed to Know About Politics

I learned from Monty Python. Herewith, a lesson from "The Life of Brian":

September 11

Barry Loses It -- Paglia Gets It

We're beginning to see what a "transcendent" candidate -- the Anointed One -- who wishes the campaign to be about issues, is really like: "You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig."

Wow! We're making book on how long it takes "trailer trash" and "beauty contestant" to slip off the honeyed tongue of B. Hussein Obama.

Lost in this is that, in his frustration at the presumptuous claim by Senator McCain that not all Americans might share Senator Obama's view that he is The Way and The Truth, the Democratic nominee for President of the United States is making playground personal attacks on the Republican's Vice-Presidential candidate, while nobody has the faintest idea of the current location of Joe Biden. It just doesn't get better than this.

Meanwhile, no less a post-feminist feminist than Camille Paglia writes:

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

In the U.S., the ultimate glass ceiling has been fiendishly complicated for women by the unique peculiarity that our president must also serve as commander in chief of the armed forces. Women have risen to the top in other countries by securing the leadership of their parties and then being routinely promoted to prime minister when that party won at the polls. But a woman candidate for president of the U.S. must show a potential capacity for military affairs and decision-making. Our president also symbolically represents the entire history of the nation -- a half-mystical role often filled elsewhere by a revered if politically powerless monarch.

As a dissident feminist, I have been arguing since my arrival on the scene nearly 20 years ago that young American women aspiring to political power should be studying military history rather than taking women's studies courses, with their rote agenda of never-ending grievances.

[snip]

The gun-toting Sarah Palin is like Annie Oakley, a brash ambassador from America's pioneer past. She immediately reminded me of the frontier women of the Western states, which first granted women the right to vote after the Civil War -- long before the federal amendment guaranteeing universal woman suffrage was passed in 1919. Frontier women faced the same harsh challenges and had to tackle the same chores as men did -- which is why men could regard them as equals, unlike the genteel, corseted ladies of the Eastern seaboard, which fought granting women the vote right to the bitter end.

Over the Labor Day weekend, with most of the big enchiladas of the major media on vacation, the vacuum was filled with a hallucinatory hurricane in the leftist blogosphere, which unleashed a grotesquely lurid series of allegations, fantasies, half-truths and outright lies about Palin. What a tacky low in American politics -- which has already caused a backlash that could damage Obama's campaign. When liberals come off as childish, raving loonies, the right wing gains. I am still waiting for substantive evidence that Sarah Palin is a dangerous extremist. I am perfectly willing to be convinced, but right now, she seems to be merely an optimistic pragmatist like Ronald Reagan, someone who pays lip service to religious piety without being in the least wedded to it. I don't see her arrival as portending the end of civil liberties or life as we know it.

One reason I live in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia and have never moved to New York or Washington is that, as a cultural analyst, I want to remain in touch with the mainstream of American life. I frequent fast-food restaurants, shop at the mall, and periodically visit Wal-Mart (its bird-seed section is nonpareil). Like Los Angeles and San Francisco, Manhattan and Washington occupy their own mental zones -- nice to visit but not a place to stay if you value independent thought these days. Ambitious professionals in those cities, if they want to preserve their social networks, are very vulnerable to received opinion. At receptions and parties (which I hate), they're sitting ducks. They have to go along to get along -- poor dears!

It is certainly premature to predict how the Palin saga will go. I may not agree a jot with her about basic principles, but I have immensely enjoyed Palin's boffo performances at her debut and at the Republican convention, where she astonishingly dealt with multiple technical malfunctions without missing a beat. A feminism that cannot admire the bravura under high pressure of the first woman governor of a frontier state isn't worth a warm bucket of spit.

[For those of you burdened with a public school education, John Nance Garner is famously quoted as having described the Vice-Presidency as an office that wasn't worth "a bucket of warm spit." And even mildly well-read students of American history know that Cactus Jack didn't say "spit."]

Finally, is it just us, or does the part-time, part-term Senator and former community agitator look angry these days?

Maybe Rock, Paper, Scissors Would Make More Sense

A new Rasmussen poll found:

While 82% of voters who support McCain believe the justices should rule on what is in the Constitution, just 29% of Barack Obama’s supporters agree. Just 11% of McCain supporters say judges should rule based on the judge’s sense of fairness, while nearly half (49%) of Obama supporters agree.

Nice Ride

A low and respectful bow to Uncle Michael, who asks, "What else do you need to know?"

Today's WTF Video

. . . is brought to you by something called "Axe Body Spray." Setting aside for the moment WTF "body spray" is, WTF is this commercial:

G&S Likes Craig Ferguson

Creepy, Part Dieux

Some things are just plain wrong. For example, "office shorts." Wrong. Just plain wrong.

And Speaking of Creepy . . . .

. . . on so many levels:

Providential?

Sunday's Old Testament reading was Ezekiel 33:7-9:

Now as for you, son of man, I have appointed you a watchman for the house of Israel; so you will hear a message from My mouth and give them warning from Me. When I say to the wicked, 'O wicked man, you will surely die,' and you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require from your hand. But if you on your part warn a wicked man to turn from his way and he does not turn from his way, he will die in his iniquity, but you have delivered your life.

And today we have this story in The Hill:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has accepted an invitation from San Francisco’s archbishop to discuss whether she should continue to receive communion at the Catholic Church in the wake of comments she made about abortion.

Of course, our Catholic friends are uncomfortable with this sort of specific connection, which they deem unacceptably "evangelical."

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Well, Hell . . . .

. . . I could have told you this: "The research is said to provide the first evidence that consolation in primates, such as hugging and stroking, can reduce stress levels after a fight."

Of course, it helps if the primate in question is cute.

September is the Cruelest Month

Wow!

Not The New York Times

Today's lead editorial in the Washington Post: "Ms. Palin's Pipeline."

The Coolest Cake

You'll ever see.

An Idea . . . .

. . . . whose time has come. We wish we had thought of setting up the Sarah Palin Sexism Watch. It's entirely serious, and it's a little shocking (and we are not easily shocked at the lengths to which the Left is willing to go to keep women in line) how many links have already been posted.

Next time someone tells you they're in favor of "choice" remember this.

Fight! Fight!

There's nothing we like better than a good girl fight. Amy Holmes observes:

The New York Times reports that “Mrs. Clinton’s campaign event in Florida, her first for Mr. Obama since the Democratic convention, will serve as a counterpoint to the searing attacks and fresh burst of energy that Ms. Palin injected into the race with her convention speech on Wednesday, Obama aides said.”

So, let’s get this straight. They didn’t choose her and her 18 million voters to put on the ticket. They gave the VP spot to Joe Biden. But now that Sarah Palin has arrived on the political scene, they’re promoting Hillary as the female answer to the Republican VP nominee. Awkward, to say the least.

p.s. Why does the flagship of the legacy press refer to "Mrs." Clinton, but "Ms." Palin?

Credit Where Credit is Due

You should read Bill Kristol's editorial in the new Weekly Standard:

The editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD believe in giving credit where credit is due. The presidential race looks a whole lot better today than it did two weeks ago. For this, thanks are owed to two men--Barack Obama and John McCain--and to that herd of independent minds, the liberal media.

[snip]

A special thank you to our friends in the liberal media establishment. Who knew they would come through so spectacularly? The ludicrous media feeding frenzy about the Palin family hyped interest in her speech, enabling her to win a huge audience for her smashing success Wednesday night at the convention. Indeed, it even renewed interest in McCain, who seems to have gotten still more viewers for his less smashing--but well-received--presentation the following evening.

The astounding (even to me, after all these years!) smugness and mean-spiritedness of so many in the media engendered not just interest in but sympathy for Palin. It allowed Palin to speak not just to conservatives but to the many Americans who are repulsed by the media's prurient interest in and adolescent snickering about her family. It allowed the McCain-Palin ticket to become the populist standard-bearer against an Obama-Media ticket that has disdain for Middle America.

By the end of the week, after Palin's tour de force in St. Paul, the liberal media were so befuddled that they were reduced to complaining that conservatives aren't being narrow-minded enough. Thus, Hanna Rosin--who has covered religion and politics for the Washington Post, and has also written for the New Yorker, the New Republic, and the New York Times--lamented in a piece for Slate: "So cavalier are conservatives about Sarah Palin's wreck of a home life that they make the rest of us look stuffy and slow-witted by comparison." I suppose it was ungenerous of conservatives, in our broad-mindedness and tolerance of human frailty, to have let Ms. Rosin down, just when she was counting on us to bring out the tar and feathers. But she gives us too much credit when she suggests we make the liberal media look stuffy and slow-witted. They do that all by themselves.

For instance, what in the world can she be thinking when she refers to "Sarah Palin's wreck of a home life"? The only "domestic irregularities" (to use Ms. Rosin's loaded term) she cites are "two difficult pregnancies--Palin's with a Down syndrome baby and now her unmarried teenage daughter's." The second of these is a situation that the young woman and her family seem to be dealing with appropriately by their own lights. "Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family," the Palins said. But what is "irregular" about bringing to term a Down syndrome child? Is Rosin suggesting--without having the courage to say so--that Mrs. Palin should have aborted the baby? Is it upsetting to her to have a prominent woman choose not to do so?

And there is much more in next week's issue, which appears to be all Sarah, all the time.

All Sarah, All the Time

Some of our correspondents have asked when we will post on any subject other than Governor Palin. Recalling St. Augustine's prayer, we have asked for guidance. "Give us perspective, Lord, but not yet."

She's a 10

Your humble and obedient servant has a strict bed time: 10:00 p.m. That's eastern time. Last night, we made an exception, and watched Governor Palin live.

If we were selling, we'd urge our readers to vote for Senator McCain. We'd extol his virtues, and praise Governor Palin.

We're not selling.

Go find a recording of Governor Palin's speech. Don't read the text. Don't rely on the 175-year-old Bob Sheiffer to tell you what happened. Don't review Keith's countdown. Listen. Watch. Decide.

Miss Sarah is exactly who we hoped she was. Smart. Clever. Talented. Like Ronald Reagan, she cares what you think, but not too much. She's delivered five children. She knows she's adorable. Before her speech, to put her at ease, her husband promised that when they got back to their hotel, he'd do that thing she likes so much. You know, the thing that's illegal in Illinois.

I feel a little sorry for Joe Biden.

[UPDATE] Here's high praise from the other side:

The speech that Governor Palin gave was well delivered, but it was written by George Bush's speechwriter and sounds exactly like the same divisive, partisan attacks we've heard from George Bush for the last eight years. If Governor Palin and John McCain want to define 'change' as voting with George Bush 90% of the time, that's their choice, but we don't think the American people are ready to take a 10% chance on change," said Bill Burton, Obama Campaign Spokesman.

When the best you can do is hurumph that someone else wrote the speech that just left your candidate slack-jawed, you're in trouble. Possibly the Barry & Joe Show will now hire some of W's speechwriters. It's a thought.

Jonah Goldberg suggests: "She was put on this earth to do two things: kill caribou and kick butt. She's all out of caribou."

[UPDATE - II] Here's a "best of Sarah" clip:

"I'm the Freaking Governor of Alaska!"

This is hilarious. The difference between conservatives and the left is that we have a sense of humor. Some mildly NSFW language:

Via the divine Professor Althouse.

Our Kind of Girl

Attention middle-school boys everywhere: sure she's cool, but you'd best not break her heart.

Under McCain/Feingold . . .

. . . does this sort of thing count as a campaign contribution?

Once Upon a Time

Actually, we can be more specific. In 1988, when she was 24, the next Vice-President of the United States was a sportscaster at a local Alaska TV station. Unfortunately, the clown who uploaded the video couldn't control himself, and so added a couple of inane bubbles. Ignore them:

Perspicacious Punditry

A columnist in the Philadelphia Daily News predicts:

If McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring crime, homelessness - and hopelessness!

Of course, upon reflection, we can't help but observe that the last time a presidential election sparked a Civil War, he was a Republican, too!

Palin Update

Quote of the day:

"The media doesn’t understand life membership in the NRA; they don’t understand getting up at 3 a.m. to hunt a moose; they don’t understand eating a mooseburger; they don’t understand being married to a guy who likes to snowmobile for fun. I am not surprised that they don’t get it. But Americans get it,” said Florida Rep. Adam Putnam. “A mooseburger means she is like one of us. She is not some jackass who’s ‘gone Washington.’”

Over the weekend, as the left-wing, angry Democrat chickenshit machine was unleashed on the Governor, we had the growing feeling that the nutroots had made a major mistake.

First came the rumor -- energized by no less than Andrew Sullivan -- that her 4-month-old son Trig was not actually her son, but the son of her eldest daughter, Bristol. The relevance of this revelation, apparently, was that Governor Palin had lied, and was involved in a "cover-up." Presumably this would demonstrate a moral failing. Only on the left -- where the homosexual caucus refers to normal folks as "breeders," and the word "family" must always be accompanied by a modifier ("blended," "non-traditional," "single-parent," and so on), would this be viewed as involving some shocking, morally bankrupt, sleight-of-hand. Out here in the real world, such things -- if hardly common -- are understood. It's the sort of thing that families do to make the best of real life.

Then came the news that 17-year-old Bristol is herself pregnant. Again the left, wholly out of touch with America, assumed that this would put an end to the admiration for Governor Palin expressed by the evangelical community. We thought, correctly as it turned out, that this is a non-story in that world: things happen, you try to do the right thing, and move on.

If every family with a pregnant teen, and every woman who was pregnant on her wedding day, votes for McCain, he'll carry every state.

More in this vein HERE.