Most of my liberal friends scorn “Big Pharma” for making profits. (More accurately, they scorn drug companies because they don’t give them drugs for cheap — the sense of entitlement runs deep in Boomers.)

These same people think nothing of shelling out big bucks for vitamins and supplements that have no proven value. Unlike drug companies, which must prove their products are both safe and effective, supplement makers face no such strictures.

When there was a move to tighten this loophole, these otherwise Big Government types turned into raging libertarians, demanding that the government keep its hands off their vitamins.

Now Emily Anthes writes in Slate about the effectiveness of the multivitamin:

Deciding what to eat for dinner can be mind-bending. How do we keep track of the ever-evolving recommendations for what to put on, and leave off, the plate? Red meat might cause cancer! But don’t replace it with tofu—soy concoctions might be carcinogenic, too! Don’t even try to figure out where carbs stand this week. And the verdict on coffee, chocolate, and alcohol changes faster than you can order a mocha martini.

Vitamins—with their promise to bridge the gap between the nutrients our bodies need and those they get—have always seemed reassuringly simple: Just pop a multivitamin and let your body soak in those extra nutrients. But not any longer. During the past few years, study after study has raised doubts about what, if any, good vitamins actually do a body. They could even pose some real medical risks.

Half of all American adults take some sort of nutritional supplement. But research on a wide variety of patient populations and medical conditions has failed to find much evidence that multivitamins, the most commonly used of the lot, prevent major chronic diseases in healthy people. The most recent knock came this spring, when a study of more than 160,000 post-menopausal women, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that the all-in-one pills did not prevent cancer, heart attacks, or strokes and did not reduce overall mortality.

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Individual vitamins and minerals haven’t fared much better under scientific scrutiny, with research debunking some of the reputed benefits of vitamin B6, calcium, niacin, and others. In 2006, the National Institutes of Health convened an independent panel of experts to evaluate the evidence that vitamins could prevent chronic disease. The scientists ultimately issued a report stating that studies “do not provide strong evidence for beneficial health-related effects of supplements taken singly, in pairs, or in combinations.”

The news on antioxidants, the darlings of the vitamin menagerie, is even more troubling. These compounds, which include vitamins A, C, and E, selenium, beta carotene, and folate, fight free radicals, unstable compounds thought to damage cells and contribute to aging. But not only do antioxidant supplements fail to protect against heart disease, stroke, and cancer; they actually increase the risk of death, according to a 2007 analysis of research on more than 232,000 people, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, as well as other studies.

Politico

In a fiery speech Thursday night before House Democrats, Obama rejected the GOP’s characterization that the stimulus package was merely another spending bill.

“What do you think a stimulus is? That’s the whole point. No, seriously, that’s the point,” Obama said at the retreat in Williamsburg, Va.

On Friday morning, McCain fought back.

“The whole point, Mr. President, is to enact tax cuts and spending measures that truly stimulate the economy,” McCain said. “There are billions and tens of billions of dollars in this bill which will have no effect within three, four, five or more years, or ever. Or ever.”

The back and forth is more reminiscent of the sharp attacks the two men exchanged on the campaign trail rather than Obama’s hope of moving past partisanship in Washington. And it comes as McCain has positioned himself to becoming a leading opponent of the Senate Democratic plan, which may cost more than $920 billion if major cuts are not made.

McCain’s criticism comes after a significant period of détente between the two campaign rivals and a direct effort by Obama to woo McCain and get him involved in policy negotiations. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), still a strong surrogate for McCain, told Politico that he believed Obama was “AWOL” on bipartisan negotiations on the stimulus, further showing the discontent on the GOP side of the aisle.

John McCain’s biggest career blunder was co-authoring McCain-Feingold, a clumsy attempt to keep $$$ out of politics that stomped on the First Amendment.

Obama broke his word on accepting public financing, then went on to break fundraising records while, most likely, breaking fundraising rules. For example, Obama’s campaign turned off the security check for online credit card contributions, allowing donors to violate limits and allowing non-citizens to donate. But he’ll never have to defend himself.

The Federal Election Commission is unlikely to conduct a potentially embarrassing audit of how Barack Obama raised and spent his presidential campaign’s record-shattering windfall, despite allegations of questionable donations and accounting that had the McCain campaign crying foul.

Obama is expected to escape that level of scrutiny mostly because he declined an $84 million public grant for his campaign that automatically triggers an audit and because the sheer volume of cash he raised and spent minimizes the significance of his errors. Another factor: The FEC, which would have to vote to launch an audit, is prone to deadlocking on issues that inordinately impact one party or the other – like approving a messy and high-profile probe of a sitting president.

Meanwhile, McCain, who accepted public financing, must account for every penny.

Adding insult to injury for Republicans: The FEC is obligated to complete a rigorous audit of McCain’s campaign coffers, which will take months, if not years, and cost McCain millions of dollars to defend.

A true Maverick: a Republican without money.

Great entertainment.

Two LA Times reporters, one assigned to Obama, the other to McCain, share their impressions of the candidates.

First Peter Nicholas on Obama:

One of the striking ironies is that a man who draws tens of thousands of people to his rallies, whose charisma is likened to that of John F. Kennedy, can be sort of a bore.

Discipline is essential for candidates who want to drive home a consistent message, or avoid the self-sabotage that comes with a careless answer. A steely perseverance helps explain why Obama at this point stands a better than even chance of becoming the 44th president. But when you’re exposed to the guy 18 hours a day, it’s a bit maddening. You want him to loosen up.

I’ve watched Obama demonstrate a soccer kick to his daughter in Chicago; devour a cheesesteak in Philly; navigate a roller rink in Indiana; drive a bumper car; and catapult 125 feet in the air on an amusement-park ride called “Big Ben.” He’s done it all with dogged professionalism, but with little show of spontaneity. After all this time with him, I still can’t say with certainty who he is.

Maeve Reston who followed McCain, confesses to being one reason McCain stopped being informal with the media:

I had headed to the back of his bus with a small group of reporters, where as always McCain warmly motioned for us to squeeze in beside him on the couch.

The questions meandered across more than a dozen topics, but I asked if he agreed with his advisor Carly Fiorina’s recent statement that it was unfair for some health insurance companies to cover Viagra but not birth control — because McCain generally opposed those kinds of mandates.

Liberals and late-night comedians would later revel in McCain’s on-camera discomfort — the widening of his eyes, the awkward silence while he clutched his jaw and formulated an answer. But I had come to respect McCain’s frankness and his willingness to admit he didn’t always have an answer. Watching the question morph into an embarrassing “gotcha moment” for cable television, my stomach churned and my cheeks grew hot.

By July, I had covered McCain for almost seven months. I could recite many lines of his stump speech by heart, dreamed about his events at night and spent so much time scrolling through campaign e-mails on my BlackBerry that my fiance joked to our friends about the other man in my life.

Over those months, McCain had artfully created a sense of intimacy with the reporters who traveled with him. He barbecued for us at his Arizona cabin, and opened up about matters as personal as his faith and his son’s girlfriends. On one of my first days covering McCain, another reporter protectively warned me that it was important to be judicious with the material I used from McCain’s bus rides to keep the conversations in context.

Although the relationship was mutually beneficial, McCain offered accessibility and openness that was rare, if not unprecedented, in modern presidential politics. Now, as the presidential campaign plunges into its final days, that intimacy — real or imagined — has evaporated.

No wonder. I’d hazard a guess that most reporters who know them both, if choosing someone to have a beer with, would pick McCain.

But Obama is an unknown, or cipher, as Michael Malone noted (see the post below this):

I’m not one of those people who think the media has been too hard on, say, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin, by rushing reportorial SWAT teams to her home state of Alaska to rifle through her garbage. This is the big leagues, and if she wants to suit up and take the field, then Gov. Palin better be ready to play.

The few instances where I think the press has gone too far — such as the Times reporter talking to prospective first lady Cindy McCain’s daughter’s MySpace friends — can easily be solved with a few newsroom smackdowns and temporary repostings to the Omaha bureau.

No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side — or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del.

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.

That isn’t Sen. Obama’s fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media’s fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

Why, for example to quote the lawyer for Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., haven’t we seen an interview with Sen. Obama’s grad school drug dealer — when we know all about Mrs. McCain’s addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Sen. Biden’s endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?

Mark Steyn: 

…McCain vs Obama is not the choice many of us would have liked in an ideal world. But then it’s not an “ideal world”, and the belief that it can be made so is one of the things that separates those who think Obama will “heal the planet” and those of us who support McCain faute de mieux. I agree with Thomas Sowell that an Obama-Pelosi supermajority will mark what he calls “a point of no return”. It would not be, as some naysayers scoff, “Jimmy Carter’s second term”, but something far more transformative. The new president would front the fourth great wave of liberal annexation — the first being FDR’s New Deal, the second LBJ’s Great Society, and the third the incremental but remorseless cultural advance when Reagan conservatives began winning victories at the ballot box and liberals turned their attention to the other levers of the society, from grade school up. The terrorist educator William Ayers, Obama’s patron in Chicago, is an exemplar of the last model: forty years ago, he was in favor of blowing up public buildings; then he figured out it was easier to get inside and undermine them from within.

All three liberal waves have transformed American expectations of the state. The spirit of the age is: Ask not what your country can do for you, demand it. Why can’t the government sort out my health care? Why can’t they pick up my mortgage?

In his first inaugural address, Calvin Coolidge said: “I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people.” That’s true in a more profound sense than he could have foreseen. In Europe, lavish social-democratic government has transformed citizens into eternal wards of the nanny state: the bureaucracy’s assumption of every adult responsibility has severed Continentals from the most basic survival impulse, to the point where unaffordable entitlements on shriveled birth rates have put a question mark over some of the oldest nation states on earth. A vote for an Obama-Pelosi-Barney Frank-ACORN supermajority is a vote for a Europeanized domestic policy that is, as the eco-types like to say, “unsustainable”.

More to the point, the only reason why Belgium has gotten away with being Belgium and Sweden Sweden and Germany Germany this long is because America’s America. The soft comfortable cocoon in which western Europe has dozed this last half-century is girded by cold hard American power. What happens when the last serious western nation votes for the same soothing beguiling siren song as its enervated allies?

“People of the world,” declared Senator Obama sonorously at his self-worship service in Germany, “look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.”

No, sorry. History proved no such thing. In the Cold War, the world did not stand as one. One half of Europe was a prison, and in the other half far too many people — the Barack Obamas of the day — were happy to go along with that division in perpetuity. And the wall came down not because “the world stood as one” but because a few courageous people stood against the conventional wisdom of the day.

Had Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan been like Helmut Schmidt and Francois Mitterand and Pierre Trudeau and Jimmy Carter, the Soviet empire (notwithstanding its own incompetence) would have survived and the wall would still be standing. Senator Obama’s feeble passivity will get you a big round of applause precisely because it’s the easy option: Do nothing but hold hands and sing the easy listening anthems of one-worldism, and the planet will heal.

Melanie Phillips in the UK Spectator:

… As I have said before, I do not trust McCain; I think his judgment is erratic and impetuous, and sometimes wrong. But on the big picture, he gets it. He will defend America and the free world whereas Obama will undermine them and aid their enemies.

Here’s why. McCain believes in protecting and defending America as it is. Obama tells the world he is ashamed of America and wants to change it into something else. McCain stands for American exceptionalism, the belief that American values are superior to tyrannies. Obama stands for the expiation of America’s original sin in oppressing black people, the third world and the poor.

Obama thinks world conflicts are basically the west’s fault, and so it must right the injustices it has inflicted. That’s why he believes in ‘soft power’ — diplomacy, aid, rectifying ‘grievances’ (thus legitimising them, encouraging terror and promoting injustice) and resolving conflict by talking. As a result, he will take an axe to America’s defences at the very time when they need to be built up. He has said he will ‘cut investments in unproven missile defense systems’; he will ‘not weaponize space’; he will ‘slow our development of future combat systems’; and he will also ‘not develop nuclear weapons,’ pledging to seek ‘deep cuts’ in America’s arsenal, thus unilaterally disabling its nuclear deterrent as Russia and China engage in massive military buildups.

McCain understands that an Islamic war of conquest is being waged on a number of diverse fronts which all have to be seen in relation to each other. For Obama, however, the real source of evil in the world is America. The evil represented by Iran and the Islamic jihadists is apparently all America’s fault. ‘A lot of evil’s been perpetuated based on the claim that we were fighting evil,’ he said. Last May, he dismissed Iran as a tiny place which posed no threat to the US — before reversing himself the very next day when he said Iran was a great threat which had to be defeated. He has also said that Hezbollah and Hamas have ‘legitimate grievances’. Really? And what might they be? Their grievances are a) the existence of Israel b) its support by America c) the absence of salafist Islam in the world. Does Obama think these ‘grievances’ are legitimate?

To solve world conflict, Obama places his faith in the UN club of terror and tyranny, which is currently fuelling the murderous global demonisation of Israel for having the temerity to defend itself and is even now preparing for a rerun of its own anti-Jew hate-fest of Durban 2, which preceded 9/11 by a matter of days.

Charles Krauthammer:

…I’ll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The “erratic” temperament issue, for example. As if McCain’s risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.
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McCain the “erratic” is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the stalwart.

Nor will I countenance the “dirty campaign” pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed that McCain supports “cutting Social Security benefits in half.” And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq.

McCain’s critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What’s astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.

Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama’s most egregious association — with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who’s been cramming on these issues for the past year, who’s never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of “a world that stands as one”), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as “the tragedy of 9/11,” a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

There’s just no comparison. Obama’s own running mate warned this week that Obama’s youth and inexperience will invite a crisis — indeed a crisis “generated” precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?

If Obama wins, will there be any basis for criticism that isn’t racist? Just wondering.

Get this from Kansas City Star editorialist Lewis Diuguid:

The “socialist” label that Sen. John McCain and his GOP presidential running mate Sarah Palin are trying to attach to Sen. Barack Obama actually has long and very ugly historical roots.

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, used the term liberally to describe African Americans who spent their lives fighting for equality.

Those freedom fighters included the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who led the Civil Rights Movement; W.E.B. Du Bois, who in 1909 helped found the NAACP which is still the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization; Paul Robeson, a famous singer, actor and political activist who in the 1930s became involved in national and international movements for better labor relations, peace and racial justice; and A. Philip Randolph, who founded and was the longtime head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and a leading advocate for civil rights for African Americans.

Robeson and Dubois were self-described, proud socialists.

McCain and Palin have simply reached back in history to use an old code word for black. It set whites apart from those deemed unAmerican and those who could not be trusted during the communism scare.

Shame on McCain and Palin.

Jules Crittenden notes:

I’m going to have to call “Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist” code words for “moron.” It’s beyond moronic. To paraphrase MLK Jr, it’s tragic that, at this late date, we cannot judge a man by the content of his political utterances without being accused of talking about the color of his skin.

by Burt Prelutsky

As you may have guessed, I don’t personally know the Republican candidate for president. I’ve never met him and I expect I never will. I’m sure that if I’d been in a position to fork over $5,000 for dinner at a fund-raiser, it could have been easily arranged. However, I have one unbreakable rule: If I pay $5,000 to have dinner with someone, he’s then going to have to cough up $5,000 pretty darn quick to have dinner with me. And, frankly, he’d get a lot more for his money than I’d get for mine. That’s because he couldn’t help me become a better writer, but I could certainly help him get elected.

For openers, I’d tell him to quit treating Obama like an equal. When he keeps calling you “John,” you don’t keep calling him “Senator Obama.” When Ronald Reagan debated with Walter Mondale, he made light of his advanced age by saying that he hoped the voters wouldn’t hold his opponent’s relative youth and lack of experience against him. Of course, McCain lacks Reagan’s personality and ability to deliver an amusing line. Who doesn’t? But that’s no excuse for praising Obama’s background as a community organizer when everybody knows, or certainly should know, that’s code for a left-wing activist.

In Obama’s case, being a community organizer was just a way, like joining Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s racist church, to go about developing street creds so he could get the hell out of the community and into the Illinois legislature.

There was no reason for McCain to avoid tying Obama to Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, the current economic crisis and ACORN, just as there was no good reason to neglect pinning the earmark tail on this particular donkey; especially when Obama has rapidly become one of Washington’s leading pork merchants. Furthermore, when debating their opposing views on taxes, why didn’t McCain mention the fact that Obama has signed on in support of the U.N.’s multi-billion dollar plan to erase global poverty? This would have been particularly telling because, as even Democrats know, just about every bill the U.N. runs up is paid for by the American taxpayer. I say if Obama wants his cousin in Kenya to move out of that unheated shack we keep hearing about, he and Michelle should send him a few bucks and leave the rest of us out of it.

I am troubled by the thought that McCain’s reluctance to tell the unpleasant truth about Barack Obama is because the very junior senator is 50% blacker than he is. It’s bad enough that 90% of black voters decided on no other basis than race to vote for Obama, the allegedly post-racial messiah, when he was running against Hillary Clinton. It will be fatal for McCain if he continues to shy away from confronting his opponent, a radical Marxist and cheap political hack, simply because he lacks the guts to call a spade a spade.

Something else I don’t comprehend is why presidential candidates, who always insist they’re ready to govern on day one, don’t make a point of telling us who will be in their cabinet on that fateful day. I don’t see how it would hurt McCain to let us know that when he and Cindy move into the White House, some of the folks seated around the big table will include the likes of Defense Secretary Joe Lieberman, Treasury Secretary Mitt Romney, Chief of Homeland Security Rudy Giuliani and Secretary of State Newt Gingrich.

In much the same way, I’d love to know what positions Jesse Jackson, Charles Schumer, Richard Durbin, Barney Frank, Barbara Boxer, George Soros and Charles Rangel, would hold in an Obama administration. Of course, I’m assuming that Bill Clinton would be the official food taster.

Karl Rove says there are more undecided voters than in any year since 1968.

Jim Geraghty’s Obi Wan Kenobi says to stay calm.

Of course, a McCain victory is still just a better-than-nothing outcome, like getting into a wreck that puts your car in shop for a week versus having it totaled.

Listening to him pander during the debate on Tuesday, you had to wonder if McCain isn’t just a Democrat-lite.

But Democrat-lite beats a socialist. And heck, if McCain wins, we’ll hear a lot more from Sarah Palin. Cheer up.

Then there’s this from Steven Warshawsky at American Thinker:

Ever since I wrote my anti-Obama piece, I have received numerous emails from Republicans and Democrats alike, asking whether I still think Obama will lose the election. Yes, I do. But what about the polls, they ask? The polls show that Obama is winning. No, they don’t, as I will explain.

But let me note, first, that the widespread, and indeed intentional, misreporting about what the polls allegedly show is one of the most frustrating — and ultimately harmful — aspects of the presidential campaign season. Why harmful? Because if the supporters of Barack Obama, which include the mainstream media, most of the intelligentsia, and almost all black Americans, believe that their candidate is “winning” the race, but then he loses on Election Day, they are very likely to conclude that the election was “stolen.” It will be what we saw in 2000, only worse, because of the intense emotional investment that so many people have in Obama’s candidacy. Whether or not, as some irresponsible commentators have suggested, there will be violence in the streets if Obama loses, it will be deeply damaging to the nation’s social fabric for John McCain’s election to be challenged from the start as illegitimate.

Now to the polls. There are three basic reasons to be skeptical about the validity and accuracy of polls: First, there is the well-known problem of bias that results from how polls are worded. Second, the raw data for the polls almost always is “adjusted” by the pollsters to give more weight to the Democratic responses. And third, the results of the polls almost always are within the reported “margin of error.” The first two issues would require a detailed analysis that is beyond the scope of this article. But the third issue clearly proves my point that Obama is not “winning” the race.

Last night’s dreary 90 minutes illustrated why so many people respond to Sarah Palin: she speaks English, not wonkish.

McCain blew an opportunity to nail Obama on Fannie Mae. His answer came off as nyah-nyah-nyah. It was a sloppy job of explaining the situation.

Here’s how — my imagination, folks — Sarah Palin would have put it:

Back in the Clinton days, Democrats began leaning on lenders to make “sub-prime” loans to poor people and minorities. Sub-prime is politician talk for risky. 

Clinton and them, they all had their hearts in the right place. We all want everyone to live well, to own their home, to have a financial stake in their neighborhoods.

But risky means some loans won’t get paid back. Now, you’ve all heard of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — two quasi-government agencies that were not just busy buying up these risky loans, but pushing lenders to make even more of them.

And Fannie was run by Democrats, many of whom got rich. Franklin Raines walked away with $90 million after cooking Fannie’s books. He was forced out. You’d think he’d be hanging his head in shame, like those guys from Enron, but no, he was advising Obama on housing issues.

As early as April 2001, President Bush and key Republicans warned about the looming sub-prime disaster. They wanted to regulate Fannie and Freddie, but key Democrats threw a fit. One Democrat got so mad, he accused Republicans of “lynching.” Fannie and Freddie also threw a lot of money into their campaign coffers.

Now, for the past two weeks, Barack Obama has been blaming the financial crisis on Republicans who refused to regulate. It takes a special kind of brass to peddle that whopper, but with the New York Times and other media covering for him, why not?

But if Obama can’t honestly diagnose the cause, how can he honestly expect us to believe he can find a cure? Oh, and by the way, Obama collected the second most money from Fannie and Freddie.

Yesterday, John McCain finally named names in the Fannie Mae scandal, but for readers of the LA Times it won’t be news to them. Which is just what the Times intended.

The Times just cut it out of their story.

What you cannot see on the web is how the Times laid out the story. On A6, there’s a bright 6″ x 9″ photo of Obama grinning at a restaurant with five smiling customers. Cheery.

On A7, there’s a 3″ x 5″ photo of McCain and wife in silhouette. They are debarking an airplane, looking down at the steps, giving them both a slumping demeanor. Gloomy.

 Then there’s the Saturday Night Live sketch that Michelle Malkin noted

Over the weekend, I watched a hilarious, dead-on, and surprisingly honest skit on Saturday Night Live about the craptastic bailout and its Democrat roots. The skit called out Fannie/Freddie and featured Nancy Pelosi dragging out various sob-story “victims” — who turned out to be a parade of deadbeats and schemers. I was going to post the video for you tonight, but I can’t.

Gone. Poof. Even this is gone.

Fortunately, Malkin has a full transcript of the skit here.

The Campaign Spot reports this from McCain on the stump:

Our current economic crisis is a good case in point. What was his actual record in the years before the great economic crisis of our lifetimes?

This crisis started in our housing market in the form of subprime loans that were pushed on people who could not afford them. Bad mortgages were being backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it was only a matter of time before a contagion of unsustainable debt began to spread. This corruption was encouraged by Democrats in Congress, and abetted by Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has accused me of opposing regulation to avert this crisis. I guess he believes if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough it will be believed. But the truth is I was the one who called at the time for tighter restrictions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that could have helped prevent this crisis from happening in the first place.

Senator Obama was silent on the regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and his Democratic allies in Congress opposed every effort to rein them in. As recently as September of last year he said that subprime loans had been, quote, “a good idea.” Well, Senator Obama, that “good idea” has now plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

To hear him talk now, you’d think he’d always opposed the dangerous practices at these institutions. But there is absolutely nothing in his record to suggest he did. He was surely familiar with the people who were creating this problem. The executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have advised him, and he has taken their money for his campaign. He has received more money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than any other senator in history, with the exception of the chairman of the committee overseeing them. Did he ever talk to the executives at Fannie and Freddie about these reckless loans? Did he ever discuss with them the stronger oversight I proposed? If Senator Obama is such a champion of financial regulation, why didn’t he support these regulations that could have prevented this crisis in the first place? He won’t tell you, but you deserve an answer.

From John McCain:

A Partisan Paper of Record

Today the New York Times launched its latest attack on this campaign in its capacity as an Obama advocacy organization. Let us be clear about what this story alleges: The New York Times charges that McCain-Palin 2008 campaign manager Rick Davis was paid by Freddie Mac until last month, contrary to previous reporting, as well as statements by this campaign and by Mr. Davis himself.

In fact, the allegation is demonstrably false. As has been previously reported, Mr. Davis separated from his consulting firm, Davis Manafort, in 2006. As has been previously reported, Mr. Davis has seen no income from Davis Manafort since 2006. Zero. Mr. Davis has received no salary or compensation since 2006. Mr. Davis has received no profit or partner distributions from that firm on any basis — weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual — since 2006. Again, zero. Neither has Mr. Davis received any equity in the firm based on profits derived since his financial separation from Davis Manafort in 2006.

Further, and missing from the Times’ reporting, Mr. Davis has never — never — been a lobbyist for either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Mr. Davis has not served as a registered lobbyist since 2005.

Though these facts are a matter of public record, the New York Times, in what can only be explained as a willful disregard of the truth, failed to research this story or present any semblance of a fairminded treatment of the facts closely at hand. The paper did manage to report one interesting but irrelevant fact: Mr. Davis did participate in a roundtable discussion on the political scene with…Paul Begala.

Again, let us be clear: The New York Times — in the absence of any supporting evidence — has insinuated some kind of impropriety on the part of Senator McCain and Rick Davis. But entirely missing from the story is any significant mention of Senator McCain’s long advocacy for, and co-sponsorship of legislation to enact, stricter oversight and regulation of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — dating back to 2006. Please see the attached floor statement on this issue by Senator McCain from 2006.

To the central point our campaign has made in the last 48 hours: The New York Times has never published a single investigative piece, factually correct or otherwise, examining the relationship between Obama campaign chief strategist David Axelrod, his consulting and lobbying clients, and Senator Obama. Likewise, the New York Times never published an investigative report, factually correct or otherwise, examining the relationship between Former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson and Senator Obama, who appointed Johnson head of his VP search committee, until the writing was on the wall and Johnson was under fire following reports from actual news organizations that he had received preferential loans from predatory mortgage lender Countrywide. (more…)

Is actually a native of New Jersey who went to law school and made her fortune in telecom and other businesses. She was also, until recently, a fundraiser and supporter of Hillary Clinton.

As she was in June when this interview with Conde Nast Portfolio was conducted.

After she switched to McCain, she caught hell from “all the right people.”

McCain sings Streisand! HT: Susan Gertson

by Burt Prelutsky

Frankly, I’m amazed that the Democratic party is anything more than a cult. How in the world do they garner more votes than the Libertarians or the Greens? They are beholden to trial lawyers, teachers unions and the ecological crazies. So, why is it that upwards of 55 million Americans are ready, even anxious, to vote for Barack Obama in November? It’s a scary thought. But not half as scary as the notion of “Hail to the Chief” becoming Senator Obama’s theme song.

Democrats insist that we shouldn’t drill off the Pacific coast or in Alaska or in the Dakotas because they claim we wouldn’t get a drop of oil for at least 10 years. And that’s true, but only if the same left-wing idiots who are more concerned with moose than with people won’t allow the oil companies to build new refineries. Also, even if it were true that we wouldn’t be any better off for an entire decade, what do you suppose they’ll be saying in 2018, when gas is going for 25 bucks-a-gallon?

Speaking of the energy crunch, there’s a guy down in Georgia who claims that he can turn virtually anything, including grass clippings and table scraps, into methane gas. He got the idea while standing downwind from the cows at his food production company. He and the U.S. military are building seven pilot plants they claim will give us a million barrels of oil a day. If everything pans out as they think it will, they claim we’ll be free of dependence on foreign oil within five years. Best of all, it suggests that all those gas bags in the House and Senate will finally be of benefit to America. It’s my guess that hooked up properly, Nancy Pelosi, alone, could supply all the energy needs of Dayton, Ohio. Do you realize that Speaker Pelosi, who is only a few heartbeats from the Oval Office, owes all of her power and prestige to the fact that about a hundred thousand people in San Francisco, a city in which cross-dressers constitute a voting bloc, voted her into the House and about 125 House Democrats then elected her to the speakership. You need more votes than that to be elected the mayor of Fresno.

I probably shouldn’t belittle those so-called public servants in Washington, D.C. After all, how would you like to have to wake up each day, knowing you are going to have to listen to the likes of Barbara Boxer, Robert Byrd, John Kerry, Barney Frank and John Murtha, flapping their gums, and all the while pretending you’re paying close attention?

But enough about politics. Let’s discuss religion. That brings us to Barack Hussein Obama, the presumptive messiah of the Democratic party. It’s a funny thing about Democrats. Although they tend to be secular in nature, they are strict fundamentalists when it comes to their candidates. They refuse to acknowledge that their standard bearers have any shortcomings. Republicans, on the other hand, when discussing their own candidates, are eager to point out their every conceivable fault. Republicans are simply more honest and far more realistic than liberals. They acknowledge they are not voting for God, merely the better candidate.

For many of us in the GOP, the problem with John McCain is that he strikes us as wrong-headed when it comes to illegal aliens and campaign reform. On the other hand, he is in favor of appointing conservative judges; he is for attacking radical Islam on their home turf; he is for doing anything and everything to prevent a recurrence of 9/11; he is for lower taxes and for drilling our way out of dependence on the sorry likes of Russia, Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia; he is for siding with Israel, America’s single ally in the Mideast, and against the degenerates who support Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, who honor suicide bombers, and who danced in the streets when their friends and relatives brought down the Twin Towers.

But, to be fair, there is much to be said about Senator Obama. Where shall we begin? Perhaps with the fact that he’s married to a bitter, angry, anti-American racist. And let us not forget his minister, who damned this country and white people for a thousand Sundays while Senator Obama sat in a pew and somehow heard nothing offensive being spewed from the pulpit. Not to be overlooked is his friend, Tony Rezko, a Chicago fixer who went to jail on corruption charges, but not before making certain that Obama got a very favorable home loan. Other notables on Obama’s list of friends and associates are Bill Ayers, who was an American bomb thrower, and Father Pfleger, a priest who reminds some of us of the late, unlamented, anti-Semite, Father Coughlin. 

The fact remains that Barack Obama is 47 years old and he doesn’t have a single friend, associate or religious mentor, who isn’t the sort of creep that most of us would cross the street to avoid.

Obama, we’re told, will bring us all together, but during four years in the U.S. Senate, he has never voted for a bi-partisan piece of legislation. His memoirs are jam-packed with illegal drug use, racist rants and sophomoric Marxism. He claims to be post-racial, whatever that means, but the church he attended for 20 years gave its highest honor to Louis Farrakhan just last December. I suppose that also escaped Obama’s notice.

Frankly, I never thought I’d feel sorry for Hillary Rodham Clinton, but I do. Thanks to the mainstream media banding behind her opponent, she lost primary after primary before talk radio hosts and Internet bloggers got the unvarnished, unpleasant truth out about Obama. By the time Americans found out what kind of man her opponent is and she started winning elections, it was too late to catch up. By that time, too many of the so-called Super Delegates had, like those horses in “Cinderella,” turned back into the rodents they really were.

It is my own belief that Barack Obama is the single worst presidential candidate in my lifetime. I bet some of you think I’ve already forgotten about Jimmy Carter. I only wish. To my way of thinking, Carter was undeniably the worst president. Among other things, he saddled America with 21% inflation and 12% unemployment. He also turned his back on the Shah of Iran, thus opening the door to the Ayatollah Khomeini and thirty years of world-wide Islamic terrorism. Then, not one to rest on his laurels, Carter became the worst ex-president in American history, capping it off by accepting the Nobel Peace Prize even after the committee announced they intended to use his selection as a way to kick President George Bush in the fanny. I’m sure that when Jimmy Carter dies, the Nobel Prize will be highlighted in his obituary. What I’m sure the press won’t mention is that it’s an honor he rightfully shares with North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho, Kofi Annan and Yasir Arafat.

Finally, I was wondering if someone could please explain why it is racist to vote against someone who is half-black, but not racist to vote for someone for that very same reason? I mean, it’s one thing for 90% of black Americans to troop out and vote for Obama in November. After all, they’d likely vote for David Duke so long as the Democrats saw fit to nominate him. But it’s quite another thing when they voted 90% for Obama when he ran against the equally liberal Sen. Clinton for no other reason than that he’s 50% blacker than she is.

In conclusion, let me just say that some of you were no doubt pulling for Mitt Romney, some for Rudy Giuliani, others for Mike Huckabee or Fred Thompson or even, God forbid, for Ron Paul. I, myself, backed a couple of those guys once I realized that Newt Gingrich wasn’t just playing hard to get. However, once I understood that John McCain was the one person in a position to make certain that the only way Barack Obama would get to the Oval Office was as a member of a tourist group, I swore my allegiance to the distinguished senator from Arizona, the man who served more time, more honorably, in the Hanoi Hilton than Barack Obama has spent in the U.S. Senate.

Some months ago, I suggested a bumper sticker that read: Better an Imperfect Conservative than a Perfect Socialist. I hope it’s a message that resonates with all of you, come November 4th.

Oh, and by the way, have I mentioned that I’m nuts about Sarah Palin?

Facts are stubborn things. McCain ran this ad:

As Byron York noted:

Within moments of the ad’s appearance, the Obama campaign called it “shameful and downright perverse.” The legislation in question, a bill in the Illinois State Senate that was supported but not sponsored by Obama, was, according to Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton, “written to protect young children from sexual predators” and had nothing to do with comprehensive sex education for kindergartners. In a stinging final shot, Burton added, “Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn’t define what honor was. Now we know why.”

Newspaper, magazine, and television commentators quickly piled on. “The kindergarten ad flat-out lies,” wrote the New York Times, arguing that “at most, kindergarteners were to be taught the dangers of sexual predators.” The Washington Post wrote that “McCain’s ‘Education’ Spot is Dishonest, Deceptive.” And in a column in The Hill, the influential blogger Josh Marshall called the sex-education spot “a rancid, race-baiting ad based on [a] lie. Willie Horton looks mild by comparison.”

The condemnation has been so widespread that the Obama campaign has begun to sense success in placing the “McCain-is-a-liar” storyline in the press. But before accepting the story at face value, it might first be a good idea to examine the bill in question, look at the statements made by its supporters at the time it was introduced, talk to its sponsors today (at least the ones who will consent to speak), and find answers to a few basic questions. What were the bill’s provisions? Why was it written? Was it really just, or even mostly, about inappropriate advances? And the bottom-line question: Is McCain’s characterization of it unfair?

…The second purpose was to increase the number of children receiving sex education. Illinois’ existing law required the teaching of sex education and AIDS prevention in grades six through twelve. The old law read:

Each class or course in comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades 6 through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention, transmission and spread of AIDS.

Senate Bill 99 struck out grade six, changing it to kindergarten, in addition to making a few other changes in wording. It read:

Each class or course in comprehensive sex education in any of grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV.

The bill’s third purpose was to remove value-laden language in the old law. For example, the old law contained passages like this:

Course material and instruction shall teach honor and respect for monogamous heterosexual marriage.
Course material and instruction shall stress that pupils should abstain from sexual intercourse until they are ready for marriage…
[Classes] shall emphasize that abstinence is the expected norm in that abstinence from sexual intercourse is the only protection that is 100 percent effective against unwanted teenage pregnancy [and] sexually transmitted diseases…

The proposed bill eliminated all those passages and replaced them with wording like this:

Course material and instruction shall include a discussion of sexual abstinence as a method to prevent unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.
Course material and instruction shall present the latest medically factual information regarding both the possible side effects and health benefits of all forms of contraception, including the success and failure rates for the prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV…

Details, details…

The Sen. Barack Obama campaign is under performing with women, especially older white ones. So, it released a list of female surrogates that will be his force on issues that are important to those women voters — like equal pay. There also will soon be an ad released that will hit Sen. John McCain on the touchy issue of equal pay.

According to McCain-Palin spokesman Brian Rogers, that is a problem for Barack Obama, since he is the one that pays his females staffers less than the men.

Rogers points to Senate Records showing that women working in Sen. Obama’s senate office were paid an average of $9,000 less than men.

It appears that in the McCain senate office, the women on average are paid more than the men.

Gerard Baker in the Times of London: 

This election is a struggle between the followers of American exceptionalism and the supporters of global universalism. Democrats are more eager than ever to align the US with the rest of the Western world, especially Europe. This is true not just in terms of a commitment to multilateral diplomacy that would restore the United Nations to its rightful place as arbiter of international justice. It is also reflected in the type of place they’d like America to be – a country with higher taxes, more business regulation, a much larger welfare safety net and universal health insurance. The Republicans, who still believe America should follow the beat of its own drum, are pretty much against all of that.

The whole article is worth a read.

Camille Paglia always provokes with her intellect and clear writing.

An Obama supporter, she nevertheless appreciates Sarah Palin and can diagnose the pathologies of the current Democrat party.

…I have become increasingly uneasy about Obama’s efforts to sound folksy and approachable by reflexively using inner-city African-American tones and locutions, which as a native of Hawaii he acquired relatively late in his development and which are painfully wrong for the target audience of rural working-class whites that he has been trying to reach. Obama on the road and even in major interviews has been droppin’ his g’s like there’s no tomorrow. It’s analogous to the way stodgy, portly Al Gore (evidently misadvised by the women in his family and their feminist pals) tried to zap himself up on the campaign trail into the happening buff dude that he was not. Both Gore and Obama would have been better advised to pursue a calm, steady, authoritative persona. Forget the jokes — be boring! That, alas, is what reads as masculine in the U.S.

The over-the-top publicity stunt of a mega-stadium for Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic convention two weeks ago was a huge risk that worried me sick — there were too many things that could go wrong, from bad weather to crowd control to technical glitches on the overblown set. But everything went swimmingly. Obama delivered the speech nearly flawlessly — though I was shocked and disappointed by how little there was about foreign policy, a major area where wavering voters have grave doubts about him. Nevertheless, it was an extraordinary event with an overlong but strangely contemplative and spiritually uplifting finale. The music, amid the needlessly extravagant fireworks, morphed into “Star Wars” — a New Age hymn to cosmic reconciliation and peace.

After that extravaganza, marking the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s epochal civil rights speech on the Washington Mall, I felt calmly confident that the Obama campaign was going to roll like a gorgeous juggernaut right over the puny, fossilized McCain. The next morning, it was as if the election were already over. No need to fret about American politics anymore this year. I had already turned with relief to other matters.

Pow! Wham! The Republicans unleashed a doozy — one of the most stunning surprises that I have ever witnessed in my adult life. By lunchtime, Obama’s triumph of the night before had been wiped right off the national radar screen. In a bold move I would never have thought him capable of, McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his pick for vice president. I had heard vaguely about Palin but had never heard her speak. I nearly fell out of my chair. It was like watching a boxing match or a quarter of hard-hitting football — or one of the great light-saber duels in “Star Wars.” (Here are the two Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn, going at it with Darth Maul in “The Phantom Menace.”) This woman turned out to be a tough, scrappy fighter with a mischievous sense of humor.

On feminism:

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. I have repeatedly said that the politician who came closest in my view to the persona of the first woman president was Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose steady nerves in crisis were demonstrated when she came to national attention after the mayor and a gay supervisor were murdered in their City Hall offices in San Francisco. Hillary Clinton, with her schizophrenic alteration of personae, has never seemed presidential to me — and certainly not in her bland and overpraised farewell speech at the Democratic convention (which skittered from slow, pompous condescension to trademark stridency to unseemly haste).

Finally, the intolerance of Democrats.

The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances.

Let’s take the issue of abortion rights, of which I am a firm supporter. As an atheist and libertarian, I believe that government must stay completely out of the sphere of personal choice. Every individual has an absolute right to control his or her body. (Hence I favor the legalization of drugs, though I do not take them.) Nevertheless, I have criticized the way that abortion became the obsessive idée fixe of the post-1960s women’s movement — leading to feminists’ McCarthyite tactics in pitting Anita Hill with her flimsy charges against conservative Clarence Thomas (admittedly not the most qualified candidate possible) during his nomination hearings for the Supreme Court. Similarly, Bill Clinton’s support for abortion rights gave him a free pass among leading feminists for his serial exploitation of women — an abusive pattern that would scream misogyny to any neutral observer.

But the pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand. My argument (as in my first book, “Sexual Personae,”) has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature’s fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.

Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman’s body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman’s entrance into society and citizenship.

On the other hand, I support the death penalty for atrocious crimes (such as rape-murder or the murder of children). I have never understood the standard Democratic combo of support for abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve execution?

What I am getting at here is that not until the Democratic Party stringently reexamines its own implicit assumptions and rhetorical formulas will it be able to deal effectively with the enduring and now escalating challenge from the pro-life right wing. Because pro-choice Democrats have been arguing from cold expedience, they have thus far been unable to make an effective ethical case for the right to abortion.

As John McCain and Barack Obama both claim to be reformers who will cut government waste.  Who put his money vote where his mouth is?

This year both Republicans and Democrats joined hands (oh, sweet bi-partisanship!) to screw the American public with a bloated farm bill. Bush vetoed it, but was overridden.

About the bill, The WSJ noted:

Yet you couldn’t write a piece of legislation that more thoroughly represents the Beltway status quo than this one. In every way imaginable, and even a few more, it repeats and compounds the spendthrift errors of previous farm bills.

Since the last farm bill in 2002, the price of cotton is up 105%, soybeans 164%, corn 169% and wheat 256%. Yet when Mr. Bush proposed the genuine change of limiting farm welfare to those earning less than $200,000 a year, he was laughed out of town. The bill purports to limit subsidies to those earning a mere $750,000, but loopholes and spousal qualifications make it closer to $2.5 million. As Barack Obama likes to say, it’s time Washington worked for “the middle class,” which apparently includes millionaire corn and sugar farmers.

Another purported change is the arrival of “fiscal discipline,” in Nancy Pelosi’s favorite phrase from the 2006 campaign. Yet it turns out this farm extravaganza may bust federal budget targets even more than we thought a week ago. That’s because the new price supports – the guaranteed floor payments farmers receive for their crops – have been raised to match this year’s record prices.

Mad yet? Keep reading.

The USDA reports that if crop prices fall from these highs to their norm over the next five years, farm payments will surge. For example, if corn prices return to $3.25 a bushel from today’s $6, farmers would get $10 billion a year in support payments. If bean prices fall to their norm, they’d get $4 billion. Thus, if farm prices stay high, consumers face higher grocery bills and farmers get rich. If farm prices fall, taxpayers kick in the difference and farmers still get rich.

Sugar producers also make out like Beltway bandits, receiving the difference between the world price of sugar, which is now $12 per pound, and the guaranteed price of about $21 per pound. That’s a roughly 75% subsidy for already wealthy cane growers and a nice payoff for the $3 million they contribute to House candidates each year.

Any wonder why food prices are going up?

All of this is a status quo that both political parties can believe in. More than a few liberal Democrats are privately embarrassed by this corporate welfare spectacle. But they’ve been mollified by Speaker Pelosi, who spent the last week assuring her left that the bill also includes another $10.4 billion for food stamps and nutrition programs.

This entitlement expansion comes only days after the Congressional Budget Office reported that paying the bills for existing entitlements could require tax rates to climb to 80% in the future. Yes we can!

So the American taxpayer gets screwed coming and going. Now, guess who voted for this piece of crap?

Sen. Barack Obama voted for the bill.

Sen. John McCain voted against it.

McCain knows how to surprise. Big Baloney had no idea Palin was on his shortlist, thus her selection had to be a snap decision and “insufficiently vetted.”

Carly Fiorina, the former head of Hewlett Packard and now a McCain advisor, says Palin was on the shortlist from early summer. But that not be the biggest head fake writes Tigerhawk.

The received wisdom has been that John McCain selected Sarah Palin to attract women, including those who might have voted for Hillary Clinton had she been the Democratic nominee. I have thought since the weekend — an eternity! — that the received wisdom is wrong. I believe that Sarah Palin will attract male voters, including particularly “Reagan Democrats” who do hard physical work in their jobs, hunt, fish, love sports, fly the flag, believe in American national greatness, and cannot understand why we would not drill for oil anywhere there might be oil, but who are insecure in their economic circumstances and do not trust big business or politicians of either party. Me:

I think the McCain campaign has faked us all out. The Palin nomination was not an attempt to attract disgruntled female supporters of Hillary Clinton; it is a bid for the vote of just about every man in the United States.

Imagine my delight to read that Sarah Palin has emerged from her speech Wednesday night not only more popular than all of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, or John McCain, but more popular among men than women:

She earns positive reviews from 65% of men and 52% of women. The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows that Obama continues to lead McCain among women voters while McCain leads among men.

Here the press believes that McCain is trying to close the infamous “gender gap,” when in fact the strategy may be to widen it. Indeed, I think that some proportion of Palin’s support among women probably derives from the ridiculous and obviously sexist press coverage of Palin in the five days before her convention speech and her strength in the face of it. Rank speculation: If the left and the press had acted with more dignity and professionalism, respectively, Palin’s gender gap would be even wider than Rasmussen reports.

Sarah Palin is under attack from almost all quarters of the liberal media. I suppose I should be used to rank liberal hypocrisy, but this is pretty breathtaking.

Newsbusters.org has a roundup including:

• In today’s “Do As I Say, Not As I Do” moment, MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell, currently miles away from her three children that are all under the age of two, questioned whether or not Sarah Palin would be neglecting her four-month-old if she became vice president.
• US Magazine headlines its cover: ”Babies, Lies and Scandal”
• Less than an hour after reporter David Gregory incorrectly huffed on Wednesday’s “Today” show that the media have not questioned whether Sarah Palin can balance motherhood with serving as vice president, NBC correspondent Amy Robach explicitly did just that during a segment on how moms were reacting to the Alaska governor. Operating under a loaded either/or premise, she derided, “The broader question if Sarah Palin becomes vice president, will she be shortchanging her kids or will she be shortchanging the country?“
• Republicans really hold racist double standards when it involves teenage pregnancies and marriages. This according to Joy Behar, who shared such a sentiment on the September 3 edition of “The View.” Discussing the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s daughter, Bristol, Behar expressed sympathy for the father and fiancé, Levi Johnston.Behar exclaimed it’s “the end of his life” because “he’s married at 17″ (Johnston is actually 18, which is the legal difference between a child and an adult) When Elisabeth Hasselbeck asked “why isn’t that the beginning of another [life]?” Joy Behar, implying Republicans are racist, rebutted “if this was a black teenage couple, you wouldn’t be saying it so easily. Not you, but the Republican party would be all over that.” Behar subsequently added “they’re white, they’re Christian. Everybody loves them on the right wing.”
• Rod Lurie, the liberal creator of the President-Hillary-imagining ABC TV series “Commander in Chief,” thinks the Sarah Palin pick makes him look prescient. “I think Geena [Davis] and I need to be paid royalties by the Republicans.” “People who understand politics know anything is possible,” he said. “Picking a woman is an absolute strategic idea from McCain’s point of view. He’s not talking about governing right now. The idea of this woman actually facing down [Vladimir] Putin and negotiating with [Dmitry] Medvedev is idiotic.”

Jim Geraghty at the Campaign Spot, has his own list:

• Sure, one of the first inquiries from CNN’s John Roberts was, “Children with Down’s syndrome require an awful lot of attention. The role of vice president, it seems to me, would take up an awful lot of her time, and it raises the issue of how much time will she have to dedicate to her newborn child?”
• Sure, ABC News correspondent David Wright said, “In small groups, Palin can seem like the young, trophy running mate.”
• And sure, the Washington Post’s Lisa de Moraes did write, “John McCain will have to do better than naming Tina Fey his vice presidential choice.”
• And perhaps it may have appeared to be sexism when liberal talk show host Ed Schultz declared a “bimbo alert.” And admittedly, liberal columnist Richard Cohen compared McCain naming her to Caligula naming his horse to be a consul and a priest. And yes, even Fox News interviewed her dentist about her smile.
• Sure, on MSNBC, the phrases “daughter’s pregnancy” and “Palin’s judgment” were used in conjunction so many times, liberal bloggers who disagree with Palin were grinding their teeth.
• Sure, Maureen Dowd calls her the “Vice in Go-Go Boots.”
• Sure, the Baltimore Sun’s Susan Reimer dismissed her as “a skirt on the ticket.”
• And when Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton declared that Palin would make a “pretty fragile” president, one might be left scratching the head at that label, knowing that Palin hunts caribou moose. But clearly, sexism could not have been what prompted that unflattering stereotypical adjective.

How does fighting political corruption in Alaska affect gas prices? This July 11 interview with Investors Business Daily sheds plenty of light:

Palin: Alaskans are frustrated because there is opposition in Congress to developing our vast amount of natural resources. We want to contribute more to the rest of the United States. We want to help secure the United States, and help us get off this reliance of foreign sources of energy.

It’s a very nonsensical position we’re in right now. We send President Bush and Secretary (of Energy Sam) Bodman overseas to ask the Saudis to ramp up production of crude oil so that hungry markets in America can be fed, (and) your sister state in Alaska has those resources. But these lands are locked up by Congress, and we are not allowed to drill to the degree America needs the development.

When we became a state 50 years ago, we struck a deal with the federal government where we said, “Let us in a union where we will be as self-sufficient as possible.” And the federal government said, “Come in, you’ll be our 49th state, and you’ll do it by developing your God-given resources.”

Fifty years later . . . we’re living up to our end of the bargain, and now we need the rest of the U.S. to live up to their end of the bargain, to lead America toward energy independence. Alaska should be the leader of an energy policy that gets us there.

IBD: Why does Alaska find it so hard to be listened to? The state’s senators have tried many times to get legislation through that would allow drilling, and they’ve been shot down every time.

Palin: There are great misconceptions about the developments up here. Take ANWR. The misperception is that this is a huge swath of pristine land, full of mountains and rivers and wildlife. Those are the pictures seen on TV. But what we’re talking about with ANWR is a 2,000-acre plot of land that is a smaller footprint than LAX or big airports outside Alaska.

It’s not mountainous, and there aren’t rivers flowing through it. So even the perception of what ANWR would entail is wrong, and we need to correct that.

But even more important than explaining the geography and physical aspects of this plot of land is that I have to show that Alaska will have the prudent oversight that Alaskans and Americans will expect as we develop our natural resources.

Here in Alaska we love our clean air and our clean water and our abundant wildlife. We will protect Alaska. I’m a Republican, and when I got elected, some accused me of being anti-development. I created a new office to just concentrate on oversight of resource development on the North Slope.

We’re putting our money where our mouth is. We’re budgeting for strict oversight so we can prove to the rest of the U.S. that we will have safe, clean developments and will do this responsibly (and) ethically.

IBD: Does the rest of the U.S. have reason to doubt you?

Palin: In the past, Alaska’s reputation didn’t lead the rest of America to believe we were adamant about safe, clean, responsible development here.

I say that because we had legislators who are now serving prison time because they were found guilty of being corrupted for their votes on oil and gas taxes by oil and gas industry players. That reputation has really hurt Alaska, and it’s no wonder that some have not wanted to believe that we are opening a new chapter in Alaska’s life.

IBD: What’s your best assessment of Alaska’s ongoing oil and gas potential and especially how much can be gotten from ANWR?

Palin: There are billions of barrels of oil underneath the ground up there on the North Slope including ANWR. In Alaska alone we can supply seven years of complete crude-oil independence, and eight years’ supply of natural gas for Americans with ANWR (and) other areas of Alaska that we want to allow for development. That’s proof that Alaska can be a significant player in the world market.

IBD: How long will it take to develop these areas? Critics say five to 10 years.

Palin: ANWR would take five years to begin providing crude oil to our pipeline. But you have to consider that if we’d started this five years ago, then we wouldn’t be in this position right now. And who knows where we’re going to be in another five years.

There are even bigger sources of crude than ANWR . . . such as offshore areas like the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea. Congress can help us with those areas right now, bringing even more energy than ANWR and bringing it quicker.

We frequently find ourselves at the mercy of those who think that we must be protected from ourselves. Shell is up here wanting to drill offshore, but they’ve been fighting various environmental groups through the 9th Circuit Court and are running into very fierce pushback. In this area, Congress could help us with the development and bring those sources of energy to market quicker than ANWR.

IBD: Some politicians and presidential candidates say we can’t drill our way out of our energy problem and that drilling in ANWR will have no effect. What’s your best guess of the impact on prices?

Palin: I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can’t drill our way out of our problem or that more supply won’t ultimately affect prices. Of course it will affect prices. Energy being a global market, it’s impossible to venture a guess on (specific) prices. We never would have thought oil would reach $140. Only a few months ago, we thought $100 would be the peak. And here it is at $140 (with) no end in sight.

It’s very difficult to determine, but we do know the demand is going to continue to increase. The demand in Asia especially is one reason why prices are going to increase. But if I could predict energy prices, I wouldn’t be sitting here today.

David Freddoso

…the most impressive part of Palin’s resumé, and the sharpest contrast with Obama’s, is how she has taken on Alaska Republicans, fighting against political corruption in her own party and taking on some of the biggest names in the state. She may not have as much time in elected office as Obama, but Palin at least has a reform resumé, something that Obama cannot legitimately claim.

Facing an environment much like Chicago — corrupt, one-party rule, dominated by long-entrenched incumbents and special interests — Palin has rocked the boat. This year, the powerful 18-term Republican congressman Don Young has been under investigation for gifts he may have taken from VECO, a corrupt and now-defunct oil services firm whose CEO had bribed several state legislators. Palin did not just endorse Young’s primary challenger, but she actually surprised and delighted attendees of the state party convention by announcing the challenge there for the first time.

This alone is more than anyone can say about Obama, who has never challenged the corruption of his city and has frequently backed its perpetrators. He has demonstrated a craven willingness to endorse anyone favored by Mayor Richard M. Daley, no matter how crooked or damaging to the city. Obama’s record has frequently placed him in opposition to the bipartisan reformers who have tried to clean up Chicago’s massive and systemic corruption problem. He endorsed Daley last year and in 2006 he endorsed Todd Stroger, whose cronyism and machine politics are well-documented in the Chicago press. In the 2006 primary, Obama endorsed Dorothy Tillman, an Alderman who pulled a gun on her colleagues during a redistricting hearing, and who (as was explained to me only recently) had in fact become a Daley ally out of necessity after opposing him earlier in her career.

Palin, in contrast, has fought Republicans when necessary. In 2004, she stuck her neck out when she backed Mike Miller in his primary challenge to Republican senator Lisa Murkowski. The moderate Murkowski’s appointment by her own father, Gov. Frank Murkowski, had broken the latter’s trust with voters, which he never regained. Conservatives cried nepotism. Miller lost that race, but two years later, Palin would challenge and defeat Gov. Murkowski by a 30-point margin. His administration was by then scarred with scandal — his chief of staff was forced to plead guilty for $69,000 in illegal in-kind help from VECO in the governor’s campaign.

Palin also clashed with Randy Ruedrich, chairman of the state Republican party, and forced him off the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, where she served as ethics chair. She also tried, unsuccessfully, to have him replaced in his party position. Palin accused Ruedrich of seeking reimbursement from the state for partisan political activity. He had also colluded with energy companies that he was supposed to be regulating on the commission, leaking a confidential commission memo to them and at times acting like their unofficial spokesman in interviews and meetings with communities.

The Anchorage Daily News later reported how the issue was resolved: “[W]hen Ruedrich settled state ethics charges June 22 [2004] by paying a record $12,000 civil fine and admitting wrongdoing, Palin said she finally felt some measure of vindication for bucking Ruedrich and members of her party.”