HOW THE CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS DECEIVED AND DEFRAUDED THEIR WAY TO "COUNTRYWIDE" ECONOMIC RUIN

Classics Illustrated version

Coda: Bill Clinton distances himself from himself

BILL CLINTON ENDORSES BARACK OBAMA

SORTA.

NOW WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THIS

Want to keep an eye on your kid in Iraq? Join his unit!


48-year-old retired Marine Jane Strand quit the corps, had six kids, waited for her Marine husband to retire, and then joined the North Carolina National Guard. So did her youngest son, Timothy. Now they're both about to deploy. OOH-RAH.

Drudge brings us the story.



TRYING TO FOLLOW THE CREDIT MESS/ELECTION FROM

Québèc City

Hard to collect too many thoughts when left with mere CNN on the hotel TV, and an hotel internet that moves a little slowly.

Having to remind myself that when Sarah Palin's interview performances are pronounced a failure, this is being done by the same people who think she's sub-human because she didn't go to Princeton. (Loved her answer to Katie Perky about not having had the leisure to back-pack around Europe.)

Is there important stuff she doesn't know? Sure. Can she learn it quickly? Absolutely. She's smart and master of all she surveys -- up until now she's been surveying Alaska. Now she'll move on and survey the wider world, with a big staff of people to do the digesting, and her Bullshit-Meter in full working order.

She'll be fine. Cool it, McCain campaign. Chill. Don't overwhelm her with coaching -- she's starting to come off a bit too self-conscious and trying too hard, just as Bush did (fatally) when made to feel inadequate by his handlers.


Been thinking of Ms. Palin and her position a lot while touring around the city here. One of the most powerful forces to settle here in the 17th century was the order of Ursuline Sisters of Tours, who came to this remote and primitive outpost to establish education for women -- both the local native girls (their primary mission) and the daughters of the European settlers. They proved more successful than did the Jesuits with the native boys.

Nearly four centuries later, in a profoundly secularized
(downright irreligious) Québèc, the Ursulines persevere in their vocation to young women, operating an elementary school with 500 students, located on their original grounds -- to say nothing of the vast apostolate which spread across North America from the arrival of a few intrepid French women on the muddy shores of 17th-century Québèc.

[Dare we propose that, um, they don't make Frenchies like they used to?....]


Monument to education of women, in front of Ursuline Chapel, Québèc City.

ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT Updated

A too-typically lame sketch from Saturday Night Live about allegedly dishonest McCain ads. Nothing to lie awake nights about -- but one does long for some equal-opportunity shot-taking at his messianically mockable rival.

The sketch is too weak to warrant much tooth-grinding amongst Republicans, except for the fact that it was apparently the "inspiration" of former SNL writer/performer, and current Minnesota Democratic Senate candidate Al "Stuart Smalley" Franken, a man known both for his limitations and his mean-spiritedness even before he left the show for the second time in 1995.



And another SNL effort, which is taking mucho heat on the grounds that it was aimed, yet again, at Sarah Palin and her family.

Sorry -- I'm in the camp that says it was instead a total burn on the New York Times and its insulated, snobby, deeply ignorant readership. Like much modern satire, it's so close to the truth it's almost not funny.

The controversial "incest" element was, however, unnecessary and should not have passed network self-censorship. that having been said, it did accurately reflect exactly the kind mindless bigoted filter through which the urban chattering classes see the heartland people about whom they understand absolutely nothing. Pulled by NBC -- an attack of decency? Who Knew!

IN OTHER ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

The lowest-rated Emmy award broadcast in history was the occasion of celebrity idiocy on a grand scale. I only watched it while channel-hopping, so I wasn't aware of the full depths of horror purveyed by the five-person reality-tv hosting team, but I gather they SUCKED hugely.

What I did see was Laura Linney -- a beautiful woman wearing one of the ugliest and most ill-fitting dresses I've ever seen an award-winner in who was dressing to be taken fashion-seriously [meow]-- accepting her award for the privilege of playing the towering Abigail Adams. In so doing, she delivered her well-rehearsed innocuous-sounding lead-in to the deranged punch-line that the Founding Fathers of the United States were "community organizers."

P-U-U-H-H-L-E-E-E-Z-E.

As someone famous (me) once said, Try this on, Laura: the Founding Fathers "organized" their "community" under one condition certainly NOT shared by metrosexual Harvard boys lately from Chicago: the threat of being captured during the revolution they fomented, and being HUNG for treason. Every one of them risked their lives, whether or not they were ever in an army or militia.

Then we had the spectacle of brain-fried old hippie Tommy Smothers further tarnishing our happy memories of his once-comic persona by babbling anti-war gibberish with spasmodic howls of victimology, as he accepted a fantasy award allegedly delayed by forty years or so, from back when the Brothers' show was cancelled because they skated too near the edges of blasphemy (courtesy of David Steinberg) as much as political tub-thumping.

Oh, Tommy, boo-hoo.
Why didn't you find something else to do?

CANADIAN POLITICAL MIND-BOGGLE

Just saw shreikin' Sheila Copps on Steve Paikin's Agenda, defending the Sarah Palin choice and speaking quite calmly and sensibly, about sexism in electoral politics and about the prospect of La Palin being elected. Carumba. I believe pigs may fly.


THIS TOO

Former British PM Tony Blair put his swell suit in the chair at Jon Stewart's Daily Show tonight. I couldn't watch more than about 30 seconds. I'm sorry. There are some things for which Stewart's excessive glibitude is just too lightweight -- stupid questions about how he (Tony) and Bush decided to go to war. Blair replied that this was a serious decision, not made lightly.

People are dead -- history has been changed forever. Get with it, Stewart. Not the time to sacrifice all other considerations to your need to be cute and clever.

BEEN THINKIN' ABOUT THIS INCREDIBLY

STUPID MEME

now floating about the lefty discourse, from the pursed lips of Congressmen, Actors, TV Talking Headcases, and Moonbat Disciples of Hopey-Changitude everywhere:

Jesus was a community organizer/
Pontius Pilate was a governor.

[For "Jesus" read Barack Obamessiah/
For "governor" read Sarah Barracuda]


So I'm thinkin'.....

Jesus worked to improve living conditions and civil rights for Jews in the occupied Holy Land, which is why the Romans granted them all citizenship and permitted them to form an elected government with laws based on the Torah. And then the Romans outlawed slavery. And eventually they withdrew and let the Jews run their own country, of which the Second Temple, still standing in Jerusalem, is the cultural centerpiece. And Jesus died of a heart attack when Josephus the historian misrepresented and disrespected his public service record.

Yeah, that happened.

Whereas that governor, Pontius Pilate, served as the model for governors of all time -- of cowardice, corruption, cruelty, indifference and irresponsibility, ducking and washing his hands of the difficult, history-making decisions. And it is supremely fair, by association, to tar all subsequent bearers of his title with the faults of his character -- bearers like Sarah Palin, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, Adlai Stevenson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, William McKinley, Mario Cuomo, Anne Richards, Michael Dukakis, and William Jefferson Clinton.

Yeah, that's fair.



Meme retort of the month:

Pontius Pilate voted "present."

SPEAKING OF FANNIE MAE...


No, not that Fannie May.














MORE MELTDOWN RETROSPECTIF:






It's Winter 2000 (Bubba still at the helm).
City Journal's Howard Husock lets fly.

The Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown That Bodes Ill for Cities
The Community Reinvestment Act funnels billions to left-wing activists, while threatening to destabilize lower-middle-class neighborhoods.

The Clinton administration has turned the Community Reinvestment Act...[into a] vast extortion scheme against the nation's banks.

Read the rest here.



BREAKING NEWS!!! (Yeah, I know, it broke last night or somethin'....)

The heinous hackings and postings of Sarah Palin's private emails appear to be the work of ONE LITTLE SNOT-NOSED COLLEGE KID.

Who (it is alleged) just happens to be the son of a Tennesee Democratic State Representative.

[h/t Gateway Pundit via The Anchoress]

MSM strangely MUM on the subject -- and when they finally twig to it, wanna bet we'll be playing "Name That Party" regarding the subject's political affiliations? And that any rumblings about Sarah Palin's inability to control her teenaged daughter's conduct will disappear overnight? Mum's the word!

AND FOR YOU SPANISH-SPEAKERS AMONG US:

Take a gander at the latest excretions from the Obama campaign. Are you buying?



Translation, via FoxNews:

"They want us to forget the insults we’ve put up with, the intolerance," the announcer says in one of the ads as a picture of Limbaugh appears onscreen and the talk show host is quoted saying, “Mexicans are stupid and unqualified” and “Shut your mouth or get out.”

"They made us feel marginalized in a country we love so much,” the announcer continues. “John McCain and his Republican friends have two faces. One that says lies just to get our vote, and another, even worse, that continues the failed policies of George Bush that put special interests ahead of working families.”

Says John Hinderaker (of the Law Firm of Power, Line)

I don't think I've ever seen a more deeply contemptible political ad... In the mainstream media, the last week has been consumed by tut-tutting over the supposed "lies" perpetrated by two McCain ads--which, however, were inconveniently true. It will be interesting to see how liberal pundits react to what must be the most dishonest, racist and hateful campaign ad published in many years.

Dittos.

GET OUT YOUR SHOVELS --
MAJOR TOPSOIL
COMIN' YOUR WAY!!

Remember where you heard it first:
The Sarah Palin Phenomenon is Doomed

Why?

The primary reason why the Palin bubble will burst is that the media will decide that they are bored with her...

The interview with Gibson may be remembered as the first brick being pulled out of the wall. The reviews weren't favorable from the media in the segments when Gibson asked Palin questions about foreign policy...

Gibson, as dignified a newsperson as America has now*, treated Palin fairly and didn't resort to hectoring her with "gotcha" questions, either...

The media aren't the bad guys in the Palin discussion.

Jon Friedman of CBS News says so. So there.

* [sad, but true -- ed. -- all emphases mine]


FINALLY

...light is beginning to be shed upon Barack Obambi's 'Lost Years' of post-law school employment and community organza period. It seems that before he heard the Divine Summons to Chicago's south side, The Chosen One had a hard time getting chosen for employment upon graduating from Columbia. For this we have his own words in the first of his two epic autobiographies, Dreams From My Father.

True enough, we suppose. But a couple of people who worked with him in his early, pre-non-profit days, say his own account of this period of his life, ahem, departs somewhat from the facts as they remember them.
[hat-tip: Sweetness & Light] Read the whole thing and enjoy.

DAVID FREDDOSO has been dropping bits-n-bytes from his new book, The Case Against Obama, about those much-touted 'Daley years'. Bring it on.

John Maki at Windy Citizen reports from deep within Chicago's communities and sets some records straight about what those community organgrinder people (himself included) DO, when they do whatever it is they do.

I can't lie awake too many nights wondering how Barry Obambi misspent his youth. But I do worry about what kind of back-room sell-out he may have been working on with the leadership of Iraq. At the New York Post, Amir Taheri spills the beans on Obama's attempt to play liar's poker with the future of Iraq and with the welfare of American military personnel in order to have the resolution of Iraq's democratic future take place on the watch of the next president (that would be Barry). Check it out.

The Obambi campaign has issued something like a denial, which doesn't in fact deny much of anything about this appalling account. Say again?



NOW ABOUT THAT WALL STREET MELTDOWN:
YOUR PRIMER ON HOW WE GOT HERE

(1) WHAT'S WITH THIS WOMAN AND HER WALLS?


When disaster strikes, up in the skies or down on the streets of New York City, why do we keep finding the fingerprints of this woman, former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, all over the mess? A few interesting summaries here, and here.




The Clinton Administration: continuing to make memories all Americans will treasure.


(2) EARLY WARNING SYSTEM -- New York Times, September 11, 2003

"New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae"

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

Read it all here.


(3) AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED?

Investors Business Daily tells the Rest of the Story:

Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties.

The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but "predatory."

(4) WAS NO ONE WATCHING?

Well, yes. The senior Senator from Arizona.

Congressional Record, May 25, 2006:

For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs--and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO's report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO's report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.

I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.

(5) AND HOW DID THIS END?

S. 190 [109th]: Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005

Last Action: Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of a substitute favorably.

Status: Dead (emphasis MINE)

It never made it out of committee. Chris Dodd, then the ranking member of the Banking Committee and now its chair, was in the middle of receiving preferential loan treatment from Countrywide Mortgage, one of the companies gaming the system in the credit crisis. Meanwhile, Barack Obama took hundreds of thousands of dollars from the lobbyists McCain mentions in this speech, making him the #2 recipient of Fannie/Freddie money. "Obama in just four years in the Senate raked more contributions from Fannie and Freddie than any other Senator in the last 19 years." [h/t NRO, Mark Hemingway at the Corner.

If you're not so much into reading, watch the exciting climax of this epic drama here:




Makes you kinda go, "Hm-m-m-m."

Just wish this particular Arizona Senator would speak up about what he saw and what he tried to do. Have you forgotten, Johnny Mac? Don't fuel those rumours about senility, PLEEEEZE!.

SEEN IN THIS MORNING'S NATIONAL POST,
AND I'M NOT KIDDING

This photo:


And this caption:

Brad Pitt knows the travails of trying to foster socially responsible consumerism. When the actor had to choose a scent for his new line of environmentally friendly body wash for Kiehl's, he ran into a problem: "Not much biodegrades," he said. "There were only three scents to choose from. I chose aloe."

Brad Pitt -- St. Francis of Ass-hatsy.

From the preamble to the North Carolina Democratic Party Platform:

We take pride in our Democratic heritage as a party of spiritual and patriotic values; a party of inclusiveness; a party of diversity; a party of compassion; a party of educational and economic opportunities; a party of social justice; and a party of responsible leadership."

This item is NOT official
campaign gear



from state or national Democratic Party affiliates-- but sometimes the genealogy of inspiration is traceable.


Stay classy, libs.

[hat-tip: Kathy Shaidle, via Malkin, via somebody else I can't remember....]

Just when you thought it couldn't get worse for the Obama campaign....

Greta Van Susteren interviews ALASKA 'FIRST DUDE' TODD PALIN -- and -- DAMN! the guy can talk!!!!

DAMN!

If this is what constitutes a high school education in Alaska, then good for you Alaska. Todd Palin is charming, chatty, well-spoken, good vocab, ready to engage and answer at length. Not a rube, not a hillbilly, not a red-flannel-shirted red-state red-neck, not a duh-h-h-h, yup, nope, fer shure, land'o'goshen ma'am, ah couldn't rightly say, gun-totin', beer-swillin' MORON.

NOT, NOT, NOT!

DAMN!

This is not what was supposed to happen. How dare he?! He's an accomplished, natural, reflective man, as worldly-wise as he needs to be, and perfectly presentable when it comes time to meet those Heads of State Charlie Gibson is so concerned about impressing.

Damn, double damn, with an extra helping of damn on the side!




SPEAKING OF SARAHS

Like, I so TOTALLY KNEW that Dr. Sara Tancredi on FOX's Prison Break was SO NOT DEAD, even when Linc was supposed to have found her HEAD in a box -- I just KNEW this couldn't be the end of the barely budding affair between her and Michael. (Actress Sarah Wayne Callies was preggers and took a season off. Nice to see her back in one piece.)

Duly noted: Domenic Purcell is now getting first billing in the credits,


ahead of Wentworth Miller. This probably has something to do with contract haggles, Domenic perhaps feeling that he had a more pivotal role than his second billing would indicate, especially since he stopped being the guy off someplace on death row, only heard from in passing, as he was during season one.


Glad the show is back. I hardly watch any TV entertainment shows with regularity (news junkie that I am), but for some reason I'm hooked on two of the most brutally violent ones, Prison Break and CSI:NY. Downright kinky sometimes (the shows, that is -- me, not so much). But I like the characters, and the writing is good (CSI not so good sometimes). And of course, I'm always happy to support the work of troop-supporter and Iraqi-kid benefactor Gary Sinise.

Rock on, Detective.
Semper Fi.

LOTS OF SERIOUS DIRT to shovel today

but time is short this a.m., so I'll just proffer THIS, because Republicans have a sense of humor.

You just gotta laugh -- I mean, you GOTTA.



[hat-tip: RealClearPolitics]


Fey -- she's da BOMB. Brilliant.

WHO WON?














ABC's morning anchorperson took on Governor Sarah for her first Most Excellent TV Interview Adventure.




She had her weak moments. But at the end of the day, the imperious, supercilious, self-important Professor Gibson just made himself look...small.



H-m-m-m-m

It has come to me recently that I have one very, very big fear about the 2008 U.S. election:

I fear that at some point, Sarah Palin's mountain man husband, Todd

is just gonna HAVE to CLOCK somebody!!!

And I would SO want to be there when it happens! Please, somebody, have the camera rolling!

But I sure hope it doesn't turn out to be former-conservative-turned-alien-life-form Andrew Sullivan, cuz Andrew's, er, "husband" is a REALLY big dude too,


and he might decide that, like Mr. Palin, he has to step in and..., um,... defend his woman.... as 'twere.

Among Sullivan's early reactions to the Palin pick [even before he became an irresponsible smear-monger in the National Enquirer mode]:

Squaring The Christianist Circle

29 Aug 2008 11:35 am

Now I understand: she's a pro-life mother of a Down Syndrome child. And she's not from the South.

And later, after flogging every scandal he could scrape off the bottom of his shoe [about Bristol being Trig's mother, about an affair with a business partner, you name it, he disseminated it]:

She is a long-time member of the Assemblies Of God. That's all you need to know.

Sully, we hardly know ye..... Well, yeah -- we do now.


Hurricane Ike -- bearing down on my little niece's house! STOP THAT!

STILL STANDING


The Marine Corps flag hangs straight and still, in the corner of a Pentagon office blown open by the deliberate crash of Flight 77, September 11, 2001.







We mourn and remember:

Ken Basnicki
David Barkway
Jack Charles Aron

and

Rick Rescorla

and the 2996.


And we celebrate
and pray for
the living --
those who were left behind,
those who survived,
those who protected,
repaired, nursed,
sheltered, rebuilt.

And those who fought, died fighting, still fight, will fight,
and who will, in the end, be the best of our peacemakers.

Let us give [vote] them leadership worthy of their sacrifice.
























[Three photos above by Michael Yon]

I TAKE IT ALL BACK

Here I was, feeling like I had to soften the blow of a mouthy Canadian newsbabe who fired off a bazooka-sized bitch-slap on Sarah Palin, via the CBC webpage [scroll down].

Well, why should I be surprised that once again America has built something bigger and better. Or in this case, badder and bitchier. Check out the Malign-a Monologue by some mistress of the frickatives named Cintra Wilson at Salon.com. I won't even quote any of it here. Reading it once was too exhausting.

Re: the weird tilt toward Puritanism exhibited by the most lefty of the left when they take on a person of sincere traditional moral convictions. Strange how Mrs. Palin brings out the over-sexed smut-mouthed prose stylings in these feminist columnists, who sex-up every angle of every argument, but do so with this bizarre, dripping disgust -- you can almost see the lace hanky being brought to the turned up nose and the cry for smelling salts, like a spectator at the Ascot races who just heard Eliza Doolittle holler, "Come on Dover, move your bloomin' arse!"


Or, more to the point, they are as seized by seething shock as the nice little church ladies who sat at their dinner table and endured Borat Sagdiyev (Sacha Baron Cohen's on-screen alter ego) gracing their gathering with a bag of feces and a two-bit hooker.

Spare us the gasps and squeemish dry heaves, ladies. Go ahead and strike something, if it makes you feel better, but not this particular pose.

TRANSCANADA GAS PIPELINE, or

CANADIAN WOMEN JOURNALISTS STRIKE!

Many a Canadian is delighted that before becoming internationally famous, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin pushed to seal the deal on the gas pipeline that will bring north Alaska gas to the lower 48 via western Canadian territory. (details here, maps here)

That project will take some years to come online, but in the meantime there's been a blast of Canadian unnatural gas that is blowing all across the United States, and nations abroad. ** Journalista Heather Mallick, a viciously anti-American asp who has worn out readerships in newsprint and codex form, and is now on her last legs on the CBC website. Marshalling all the poisons in her alchemical closet, Mallick churned out a piece called A Mighty Wind Blows Through Republican Convention a few days ago. It starts like this:

I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right.

Then builds to stuff like this:

Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by this decade's woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently alarmed expression. Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look of the teen mum, the "pramface." Husband Todd looks like a roughneck; Track, heading off to Iraq, appears terrified. They claim to be family obsessed while being studiously terrible at parenting. What normal father would want Levi "I'm a fuckin' redneck" Johnson prodding his daughter?

You get the picture.
[**Mallick also re-worked her malice for Britain's Guardian]

Fortunately, one of the people who made this column famous was James Lileks, who conducted a world-class fisking on it here. Even more fortunately, Canadian journalist Jonathan Kay dismantled Mallick, and her employers, in today's National Post, with Another week, another disgrace at the CBC.

In the same issue of the Post, Jonathan is one-upped by his mom, Barbara Kay, who writes this!:

I imagine his pre-speech expression as alert, but relaxed paternalism, like a chief surgeon set to supervise a lowly resident's clumsy initial attempt at an appendectomy. Then puzzlement as the surgeon realizes that he's to be the patient, and finally horror as, strapped to the table and, before a nation of fascinated onlookers, he is subjected to ... a palinoscopy!

Oh, she got through to him all right. For eight months critics haven't really laid more than glancing blows on Obama, because they were jabbing away at his exterior. Sarah got him right in the gut.

Palin's mockery tickled Obama's worrisome polyps of swollen self-regard (the "styrofoam pillars"), his history of words over action ("two memoirs, but no major bills"), his curious pattern of risk avoidance (unlike community organizers, mayors have "actual responsibilities") and his tendency to solipsism(presidential journeys are not "voyages of personal discovery").

Bottom line:

...Palin wasn't ever committed to any collectivity but America itself. She was never "I am Woman, hear me roar." She was always, "I am Sarah, watch me act."

Mama Mia!

Just passin' this on, so's people don't assume from the 'Mallick aforethought' that everybody in this banana-like republic is certifiably bananas.






NOT A PICTURE OF HEATHER MALLICK --

NOT, NOT, NOT

WHAT DOES A "COMMUNITY ORGANIZER" DO?,
PART DEUX

The blogosphere's favourite law firm, Power Line, has the complete round-up on why the Big O's background as a Community O [seen at right during his First Temple period] is such a mockable thing, both in the specifics and the generalities. Drink deep -- it would be funny if it were not so sad.

Power Line also digs into some of the Big O's claims about his legislative triumphs in the Senate, which, to no great surprise, he has inflated out of all compass.


BLUE STATE BABY BLUES?

Mona Charen at Jewish World Review is chewing on the decidedly distasteful notion that the media blitzkrieg of Sarah Palin has something to do with her having been distasteful enough to choose life for a Down Syndrome child, and then trot it [him] out before the public eye -- rather than doing what 90% of the other Americans in her same position would have done: abort the poor blighted thing. Tom Smith at TheRightCoast thinks it might be even simpler than that: it's the reaction of people who see kids generally as having a great big "ick factor." Rich Lowry at NRO has some related thoughts on the subject. They are all probably on to something.

This is a very special and complex brand of hypocrisy. The merchants and apostles of "choice" and of hedonism (if that's your choice) have the oddest way of turning Puritan when someone on the right wing tumbles to transgression. Their attitudes toward those within their own bubble are not only different, they are at the farthest extreme of different.

They think Bristol Palin is fit for nothing other than that antiquated concept of a woman's "confinement" for the duration of her nasty condition, but Demi Moore is celebrated for being nakedly, aggressively pregnant on the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991 -- pregnant with a child by husband Bruce Willis, from whom she split 11 years after a Hollywood wedding that cost almost $900,000 in 1987. Three daughters in tow, she eventully took up co-habitation with boy-toy Ashton Kutcher, 15 years her junior [he was ten years old when her first child was born]. They married two years later. Wow, folks, here they come down the red carpet! -- aren't they just GREAT???!!!! One of Hollywood's HOTTEST COUPLES!

Perhaps Bristol Palin should have shown up on stage with her mother, wearing some tight double-knit shirt that didn't quite cover her belly, itself hanging out over a non-maternity set of skin-tight leggings -- haven't we all seen a lot of these types tooting around the shops lately? It's a symptom of the Aggressively Pregnant fad, almost literally "in your face" with the belly [that's La Britney in the picture, by the way, but she has many non-famous imitators], which is often followed by the in-your-face Hummer-sized stroller and the noisily public "negotiations" with unruly toddlers who won't eat their Whole Foods multi-grain flax cookies.

But remember, please, this condition is just for wymin who CHOSE to be pregnant -- or maybe those who got caught by surprise but are so RICH and FAMOUS and COOL that any act of spontaneity is, like, WOW, I can so cope with this! It's AWESOME! The father? He's my trainer, my DJ, my rockstar live-in, and if he and his tattoos fly the coop it SO doesn't matter -- I've got money, hear me roar.

Daughters of conservative politicians from Hicksville, however, are just dumb sluts who are fit for The Shunning, especially by their close-minded crazoid churches.

I'm just sayin'.

Well, that was fun.


The Republican convention has unconvened, closing out with clear demonstrations of just how close we all came to going down the plughole, as evidenced by the whining cadences of McBuddy Lindsay Graham (Senator from South Carolina and a long-shot for Veep) and the embalmed rhetorical stylings of Tom Ridge (former Pennsylvania Governor and a near miss for the Veep slot). God preserve us! And He did. (Also from Romney and Pawlenty, who were equally Not Exciting.)

McCain himself had a checkered speech with a checkered delivery -- it had a discernible arc to it, sometimes weighed down by a bit of boilerplate, then periodically roused to swirling broadsword -- but all was salvaged in the home stretch with deeply personal poignancy, rising to an almost "once more unto the breach, dear friends" climax.

There have been various pundit-based complaints over the past couple of days about the fact that McCain's POW story was told several times by several people, plus a video, and finally by the man himself -- that somehow this was overkill. Maybe so. But my feeling was that each person presented a slightly different subset of the facts -- no one individual told the entire story, and it took the cumulative narrative to put it all together. McCain provided the most naked fact -- that his captors broke him -- and how it became a turning point in his life. In any case, I think he put the lid on that box and that we will not hear too much more about it from this point on.

I don't know how McCain has campaigned locally throughout his career representing Arizona, but my sense is that, on the whole, he doesn't trade on the POW experience that much. I know he certainly didn't do it in 2000 during his primary run, and that it only came to the fore in 2008 when the timing seemed to require it. Besides which, it's a great story, requiring no fudging or exaggeration. It has at least as much place (let's face it: much MORE place) as the war-and-remembrance of Old Shrapnel-Butt Cambodian-Christmas-hat, John Fitzgerald Kerry.


ON THE STUMP


Sarah Palin has navigated through the gauntlet of media-smear and bitter feminist hostility with grace so far. I'm sure it will only get worse before it gets better, but one senses that she will be just fine. If there's anybody looking ahead to the Vice-Presidential debate with dread, I'm bettin' it's old Joe. She's a woman who hasn't flinched at the prospect of taking aim and blowing out a REAL jugular on a sweet-looking caribou -- I can't imagine she'll go all wobbly when she's got Jabbering Joe in her sites, no matter how much he leers at her with the big teeth and the small Irish-smiling eyes. KABOOM.

Ms. Palin positively dripped sarcasm as she dealt with the concept of "community organizing" -- perhaps she went a bit over the top? In any event, she has offended at least one community organizer with Presidential ambitions, our friend Iowahawk, who vents here.

Money quotes:

When I listened to the snarky and demeaning and condescending remarks of former beauty pageant loser Sarah Palin at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night, I could scarcely believe what I was hearing:

"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

Ooo-oooh, Caribou Barbie makes a funny, hardee-har-har. Well yuk it up now, little miss former junior college baby machine, because your sarcastic attempt to belittle America's community of hardworking professional community organizers is about to backfire -- big time. Because, for your information, I am America's community organizer community...

What do community organizers do?...

• reach out and work with communities in various ways.
• liaison with, and for, community agencies for service within affected areas.
• fight to make a difference.
• raise awareness.
• deal with community issues.
• raise awareness in the community of how we are making differences about undealt-with issues.
• when necessary, refer inquiries to outreach coordinators.
• Help coordination agency administrators identify and address outreach opportunities.
• model timetables and conceptualize benchmarks.
• issue guidelines for poster contests and interpretive dance festivals.
• Gather voter registrations, win valuable prizes.

SEE? SEE?
Sheesh.


DON'T QUESTION MY PATRIOTISM, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Q: What's the difference between a Democratic Convention and Barry Obambi's lapel?

A: Nothin' much.

FLAG MODE: ON
FLAG MODE: OFF
FLAG MODE: ON
FLAG MODE: OFF


Neatly rolled or jammed in the bag, the gaia-friendly, organic arugula conventioneers in Denver were not so mindful of waste when they threw out over 10,000 American flags they had been using as photo-op props on the convention floor. They claim these things were awaiting return to the donating company -- in black trash-bags, next to the dumpster?













Bottom line is, they sat outside the Invesco Temple for just over a week after the Second Coming, and were then reclaimed and recycled into the hands of sneaky Republican operatives, who distributed them here:







As Grande Dame Bette Davis was once heard to intone:
Fasten your seatbelts. It's gonna be a bumpy night.