Right Wing Nut House

I want to congratulate Senator Obama for handing the Republicans a truly awesome line of attack with his “lipstick on a pig” insult. In fact, few presidential candidates have acted as stupidly as Obama the last fortnight, although John Kerry’s late summer silence when the Swift boaters attacked comes pretty close. Or maybe Michael Dukakis’s entire campaign.

The fact of the matter is that Barack Obama and the Democrats haven’t a clue what to do about Sarah Palin. Virtually every time they open their mouths about her, they stick their foot so far down their own throats, they initiate the gag reflex. The little lady from small town USA who is morphing into Everywoman before our eyes (minus Steinem feminists and super-partisans) has the best political minds in the Democratic party well and truly flummoxed, paralyzed with fear or so angry they go off half cocked and say something incredibly dumb.

What a sight it is to behold.

And now Obama, without meaning to, has slit his own wrists with a poorly chosen metaphor for the McCain-Palin idea of change while his running mate, with equally bad judgement, seemed to bring little Trig Palin into a political debate over stem cell research.

First Obama’s gaffe:

Obama poked fun of McCain and Palin’s new “change” mantra.

“You can put lipstick on a pig,” he said as the crowd cheered. “It’s still a pig.”

“You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still gonna stink.”

“We’ve had enough of the same old thing.”

I actually prefer the “pig in a prom dress is still a pig” metaphor but that’s because I’m partial to sleeveless frocks worn by teenage nymphs whose nubile bodies are silhouetted so alluringly in the moonlight on prom night.

(There I go again.)
Did he or didn’t he? Did he actually refer to Palin as a pig? The press, playing it right down the middle, are giving Obama the benefit of the doubt as are some conservatives like Ambinder.

For me, the context is ambiguous enough that at the very least, Obama can shield himself with a “plausible deniability” defense.

But then there’s that second line about “old” fish stinking. One analogy that serves the dual purpose of hitting McCain’s “change” argument and trashing Palin might be defended as Obama simply using an idiom he has used before and that McCain has even employed in the past as Ambinder shows.

But Marc ignores the second metaphorical swipe by Obama about old stinking fish. Taken together it is hard for a reasonable person to come away with any other conclusion than the Obama campaign sliming first Palin and then McCain with schoolyard epithets.

In the end, it really doesn’t matter what he meant. The crowd certainly thought they knew what he was talking about when they roared their approval at the insult. And the McCain campaign came out immediately with a response:

The McCain campaign is holding a conference call with former Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift, who is calling on Barack Obama to apologize to Sarah Palin for his “lipstick on a pig” comment. “We need to continually combat this stream of insults,” Swift said, referring specifically to “what I can only deem to be disgraceful comments comparing our vice presidential nominee, Gov. Palin, to a pig.”

Reporters were a bit skeptical that Obama intended to do that; from the sketchy reports we have, he seemed to be talking about how John McCain can claim to represent change but isn’t really an agent of change. But Swift said, “it’s pretty clear the crowd thought that that was the insult he was leveling.” And Swift made the (hopefully) undeniable observation that Palin is the only one of the four national candidates who wears lipstick.

The Obama people tried vainly to stamp out the brush fire:

Enough is enough. The McCain campaign’s attack tonight is a pathetic attempt to play the gender card about the use of a common analogy – the same analogy that Senator McCain himself used about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s health care plan just last year. This phony lecture on gender sensitivity is the height of cynicism and lays bare the increasingly dishonorable campaign John McCain has chosen to run.

I don’t necessarily think the McCain campaign is playing a “gender card” but rather they appeared to be responding to the base insult of calling someone a pig. After all, Swift never brought up gender in her critique. She specifically referenced Palin as “our Vice Presidential candidate.” Perhaps the unspoken subtext was that Obama had been sexist but the McCain campaign quite cleverly left that to the imagination. Women will be offended because Obama supposedly called Palin a pig. They don’t need a set of instructions to get mad at someone already accused of running a sexist campaign against Hillary Clinton.

Indeed, the McCain camp already have a 30 second commercial on Obama’s double entendre in the can:

It didn’t take Team McCain long to develop a new television spot from Barack Obama’s “lipstick on a pig” comment. They have rolled out this 30-second spot hammering Obama for his sexism, using a Katie Couric quote to remind viewers of Obama’s allegedly sexist campaign against Hillary Clinton. They also note that while Obama isn’t ready to lead, he seems ready to smear:

Ditto Joe Biden who actually seemed to bring the Palin’s Down Syndrome baby into a political argument or at the very least challenge Palin’s deeply held beliefs:

“I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have … the joy and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability,” said Biden…. “Well guess what folks? If you care about it, why don’t you support stem cell research?”

Leave aside Biden’s monumental ignorance of the science of stem cell research, this is dishonest and slimy on its face. Allah at Hot Air:

 He’s not going after Trig, he’s going after Palin for a position she’s taken on a specific policy issue. Compare and contrast with the media’s descent on Bristol Palin last week, which had nothing to do with policy - Palin’s stance on abstinence education was a fig leaf they reached for afterwards - and everything to do with proving that Palin’s a bad mom. I’m with Ambinder on this one, though: It’s worse than a crime, it’s a mistake. For one thing, in true Biden fashion, it’s clumsily phrased. Presumably he means embryonic stem-cell research, not stem-cell research generally; putting it the way he did leaves McCain open to remind centrists that he supports ESCR and Palin open to tout alternatives to the embryonic approach to take control of the issue. For another thing, even partisans as unhinged as Sullivan have felt obliged to praise her for her commitment to life in carrying Trig to term knowing his condition. It’s one of the strongest testaments to her character in her biography. All this does is push that fact back in front of voters. But beyond that, his question is simply stupid and easily answered: She doesn’t support ESCR because she believes in life at conception and isn’t willing to sacrifice it even to help her own son. Unlike Joe Biden, of course, who also claims to believe in life at conception and yet seems willing to sacrifice it at every opportunity.

It boggles the mind that they allow Joe Biden out and about without a muzzle and a handler whose job is to switch off the mike whenever Biden deviates from the script. The guy is a walking, talking gaffe machine and if anyone was paying any attention to what he says, he would probably be in even more hot water.

But Biden’s head exploding gaffe is just a sympton of what ails the Obama campaign. They are off balance, tentative, and clueless when it comes to strategizing a counter to Palin and her popularity which has hit the presidential campaign like a sudden thunderstorm and thrown everything out of whack. And the McCain camp, finally running on all cylinders and demonstrating a competence no one expected from it just a few months ago, is laying the wood to Obama and Biden for every misstep they make. They are making them pay - in spades. (Pardon the idiom but as Obama says, everyone uses it.)

Can they right the ship in time to make a run? Of course they can. It’s only September and we’ve got a long way to go. And Palin is a rookie who will probably be prone to making a few gaffes here and there once she starts doing interviews and participates in the VP debate next month. But already it appears that some states they once thought competitive like North Carolina (McCain +20) and states they believed in the bag like Wisconsin (Obama +3) have changed with the altered dynamics of the race supplied by Palin.

The Obama campaign will never be able to get back the time they have lost with their scattershot, ineffective, and ultimately self defeating attacks on Palin. And in the end, that might spell the difference between victory and defeat.

I would have thought by now that the Obama campaign would have figured out how to effectively attack Sarah Palin and bring her down a peg or two. But it appears that rather than take a studied, reflective approach to determining their best strategy for assaulting her, they have continued to flail about wildly, throwing everything against the wall and watching to see if anything sticks.

So far, no dice. They tried the old “smear and fear” approach but only ended up getting so many facts wrong while appearing mean and stupid that Palin skated merrily away, garnering sympathy for having to endure the baseless, outrageous lies and falsehoods about her family from the press and liberal blogs.

Their efforts to paint Palin as an extremist were even less successful. Even FactCheck.org referred to the charges that she cut funds for special needs children, banned books, endorsed Pat Buchanan, and belonged to the secession-minded Alaskan Independence Party as “sliming” Palin. She also does not support teaching creationism in public schools although she’s one of those “let’s allow the kids to debate evolution and creationism” folks that makes me want to throw my copy of Origin of the Species through the wall. And her pastor apparently believes that gay people can be “cured” - of what, I’m not sure except he might want to pray for himself so that God allows him to move forward in time so that he can live in the 19th century.

No word on whether Palin believes the same thing and until someone asks her, we won’t know. But don’t you find it a touch ironic that GOP efforts to tie Obama to his kooky preacher are met with cries of “guilt by association” by the left while it is apparently perfectly alright to make Palin’s preacher and his views fair game?

No matter. The Democrats seem to have realized the backlash created by their smears and have now tried a few other tacks - at least one of which has backfired almost as badly as the smears against her family.

I’m talking about “Troopergate” where Palin apparently pressured the Public Safety Commissioner to fire her state trooper ex-brother in law. The press tried to paint the entire matter as Palin improperly interfering in an internal police matter because she was being vindictive. Unfortunately for the Democrats, the truth came out about her sister’s ex drinking on the job, tasering his 12 year old stepson, and finally threatening her father’s life.

Funny how those details were included in stories about “Troopergate” as insignificant asides - or not included at all. At any rate, Palin may indeed be censured because technically, it appears she exercised influence where she shouldn’t have. The Democrat’s problem is that no one blames her for doing so because of the threats and the beastly behavior of the ex.

I note on Memeorandum that stories of “Troopergate” have disappeared entirely. They have been replaced by articles about how Sarah Palin is lying when she says she fought the “Bridge to Nowhere” which actually was a “Bridge to Somewhere” - specifically an island with 7,500 inhabitants. Palin says wants to use state funds to build it but a couple of years ago, she was singing a different tune:

“We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge,” Gov. Palin said in August 2006, according to the local newspaper, “and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative.” The bridge would have linked Ketchikan to the airport on Gravina Island. Travelers from Ketchikan (pop. 7,500) now rely on ferries.

Apparently, she eventually did kick the residents of Southeast Alaska under the bus and oppose the bridge - but only after conservative bloggers had made it a cause celebre.

OMIGOD STOP THE PRESSES! A politician is exaggerating! Maybe even lying. I would find this a cause for concern if liberal bloggers and the media were one tenth - make that one one hundredth - as interested in Obama’s whoppers and exaggerations as they are Palin’s.

Face it guys. Politicians are liars. They lie for a living. They lie at the drop of a hat and will continue lying because it works. To suddenly acquire religion and decry politicians lying is an absurdity I didn’t think even the left was capable.

Only 12 year old children and liberals believe politicians like Obama which is why they can become so disillusioned with politics. When their heroes are shown to have feet of clay, they don’t blame their own naivete and child like belief in those who seek great power but rather they blame the “system” or they become even more infantile and blame their hero’s opponent for making him something less than what he purports to be. I’ve seen it for nearly 40 years and it never ceases to amaze me.

So the Plain fib about opposing the Bridge to Nowhere is getting them exactly that - nowhere. Josh Marshall is hopeful.

We’ve now had a week of blaring headlines and one-liners about Sarah Palin as the mavericky, pork-busting reformer from Alaska. But we seem to be witnessing the first stirrings of a backlash and a dawning realization that the ‘Sarah Palin’ we’ve heard so much about over the last few days is a fraud of truly comical dimensions.

The McCain camp has made her signature issue shutting down the Bridge to Nowhere. But as The New Republic put it today that’s just “a naked lie.” And pretty much the same thing has been written today in Newsweek, the Washington Post, the AP, the Wall Street Journal. Yesterday even Fox’s Chris Wallace called out Rick Davis on it. (Do send more examples when you find them.)

On earmarks she’s an even bigger crock. On the trail with McCain they’re telling everyone that she’s some kind of earmark slayer when actually, when she was mayor and governor, in both offices, she requested and got more earmarks than virtually any city or state in the country.

As you can tell, Josh has been using the Hadron Collider to split hairs about what constitutes Palin “fraud” and what is revealed as lefty hyperbole. Exaggerating accomplishments and diminishing negatives is a part of politics. Grow up Josh. Or better yet, be a journalist and start listing Obama lies and whoppers on your site. I won’t hold my breath for that.

Nor will I waste my time waiting for Marshall to list our “Change and Hope” candidate’s hundreds of millions in earmarks - some of which went to his political cronies and his wife’s employer. This doesn’t include using his influence while state senator to enrich his patrone, convicted felon Tony Rezko. These items seem to disappear into the ether between Marshall’s claim to be a “journalist” and the rank partisan stench that emanates from his blog.

But Josh has a weird habit of thinking that whatever people inside the beltway believe about an issue or a candidate that the rest of the country shares those attitudes. I daresay he will be greatly disappointed if he thinks that Palin’s convenient dodge about the BTN will resonate with anyone save his fellow lefties.

So far, nothing appears to be sticking to Palin that would destroy her or even lessen her popularity. And despite efforts to paint her otherwise, she appears to be a genuine reformer. And it is an historical fact that she ran against the establishment Republicans and won. The parsing of words, the effort to blow up the most insignificant appearance of impropriety into a major scandal, and the still whispered smears against her and her family have all failed to make a dent in Palin’s shining armor much less throw her off her white charger.

The ghosts of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley can rest easy now.

The two NBC news icons who for years consistently topped CBS and Walter Cronkite in the ratings and set a standard for political coverage unmatched since, no doubt would have been flabbergasted at the idea of a former sportscaster and unabashed liberal screamer being taken seriously as the anchor of the network’s political news coverage. That “experiment” is now over as Olbermann, along with his loudmouthed, ignorant sidekick Chris Matthews, have been tossed from anchoring political coverage on MSNBC.

Thankfully, both men died before Keith Olbermann began to run MSNBC. In this New York Times article, a staffer is quoted as saying what anyone could see; that the inmate was running the asylum; “They have banked the entirety of the network on Keith Olbermann,” said the staffer.

Any network news executive who would build political coverage around that shrill, partisan, conspiratorial-minded boob should first, have their head examined to see if there is any gray matter present and then summarily fired.

God knows what the worst imitator of Edward R. Murrow in history would have made of the wry wit and incisive analysis of a David Brinkley or the authoritative voice of knowledge and experience of a Chet Huntley. No doubt he would have given them short shrift since they wouldn’t have been in the tank enough for Barack Obama. And if he shared the stage with either of those two, he would have been exposed as … well, a former sportscaster who doesn’t know anything about politics.

But Olbermann didn’t need Huntley or Brinkley to reveal his ignorance. He does it on a daily basis all by himself, thank you. It still would have been priceless to see Brinkley - who was known to be brutal in correcting errors of correspondents on air during election night telecasts - throw a few wry observations about the role of a news anchor at the clueless Olbermann.

MSNBC was obviously trying to duplicate the success of Fox News and their sometimes biased news coverage that slants toward conservatives and Republicans. But what MSNBC President Phil Griffin just doesn’t get is that Fox News also does a lot of straight news programming as well with respected journalists like Brit Hume and Chris Wallace playing it pretty much down the middle most of the time. Instead, Griffin believes that all news should have an ideological bent: “In a rapidly changing media environment, this is the great philosophical debate,” he says.

This is pure baloney. There is nothing philosophical in trying to save newspapers or garner more rating point and please don’t insult our intelligence by pretending otherwise. This is a debate about the bottom line and whether it is worth the loss of integrity in order to pander to one side or the other. The idea is tempting because it is the way news used to be disseminated. In the days before radio and TV, newspapers and magazines as a matter of tradition were either Democratic or Republican organs. There were a few independent outlets but they were never as popular as the party rags that waged political war on the front pages of their newspapers. The publishers took great pride in their ability to move people through fear and smear tactics to vote for their preferred candidates.

This was in the day when large cities routinely had at least a dozen or more dailies - both morning and evening editions - and papers fought to sensationalize everything. The more partisan the slant, the more readers. And yet, there was also a healthy dose of straight news reporting as well - mostly on local matters. But very little news from Washington or the state capitol was unbiased.

Then around the turn of the 20th century, that began to change as the progressives sought to make journalism if not unbiased then certainly less partisan. The people responded by rewarding those publications that offered a more balanced view of politics with more success and gradually, the rank partisanship of most news outlets became less obvious and was generally confined to the Op-Ed pages.

The new medium of TV had barely any news programming at all and what there was of it consisted of a news reader sitting at a desk, facing the camera and largely reading wire service copy. Edward R. Murrow at CBS changed that, bringing in his “boys” who revolutionized radio journalism in the 1930’s. Murrow was even more liberal than Olbermann and made no bones of it on his show See it Now.

But Murrow had two things going for him that Keith Olbermann could never dream of having; integrity and an overriding sense of fairness. Where Olbermann was overheard during the convention trying to cut off a GOP strategist Mike Murphy with his “Let’s wrap him up” aside that was caught by a live mike, Murrow made it a point of immense pride that he gave equal time to the targets of his show. He saw the enormous potential power of TV news and felt that too much partisanship would destroy the credibility of the new medium.

But MSNBC’s Griffin thinks that this “great philosophical debate” over whether to throw journalistic integrity to the winds in order to improve the bottom line should be foisted on an unsuspecting public:

Mr. Griffin, MSNBC’s president, denies that it has an ideology. “I think ideology means we think one way, and we don’t,” he said. Rather than label MSNBC’s prime time as left-leaning, he says it has passion and point of view.

But MSNBC is the cable arm of NBC News, the dispassionate news division of NBC Universal. MSNBC, “Today” and “NBC Nightly News” share some staff members, workspace and content. And some critics are claiming they also share a political affiliation.

Indeed, Griffin thinks that simply putting Olbermann in the anchor chair defines the ranting nutcase as “unbiased:”

In May, MSNBC President Phil Griffin said in an interview that during live events Olbermann and Matthews “put on different hats. I think the audience gets it. . . . I see zero problem.”

But NBC News journalists, who often appear on the cable channel, did see a problem, arguing behind the scenes that MSNBC’s move to the left — which includes a new show, debuting tonight, for Air America radio host Rachel Maddow — was tarnishing their reputation for fairness. Tom Brokaw, the interim host of “Meet the Press,” said that at times Olbermann and Matthews went too far.

How an adult can look at Olbermann and see a non-biased observer is a mystery. Jennifer Rubin asks the same thing:

The Left has compared MSNBC to Fox, but the analogy has always fallen on exactly this point: Fox separated talk-show partisans (e.g. Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly) from news anchors and reporters ( e.g. Brit Hume, Chris Wallace) while MSNBC did not. This move is a small but essential corrective step.

From the outside one can easily ask, “What took so long?” But the temptation to give into bullies and to seek some small ratings/monetary advantage is great. It is no easy thing to say “enough” and somebody –or somebodies — at MSNBC/NBC did just that. But whether this is part of a greater course correction, one that will be reflected in more than a shuffling of the anchor chairs on the deck of the MSM Titanic remains to be seen.

When even the sane left agrees that Olbermann as anchor was a loony idea, you realize the titanic blunder made by Griffin and other MSNBC execs. Jeralyn Merritt:

Sure, it was his and Matthews’ abysmal coverage of the primaries that ensured millions of viewers wouldn’t be back. But it’s more than that. Who wants to watch an hour of Keith Olbermann’s opinions, backed up by reporters and pundits selected only because they share his view? It’s no different than watching Laura Ingraham or Lou Dobbs.

Good for MSNBC for recognizing, however belatedly, that news coverage of live events like debates and election night, should be anchored by journalists with an assist from pundits on both sides. They shouldn’t be the main event.

Ron Chusid:

Having Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews anchor political coverage was often more interesting than the other networks, but it was, to be mild, journalistically flawed. This especially proved to be a problem as the reputation of MSNBC also affected the reputation of NBC. The New York Times reports that Olbermann and Matthews are to be removed as anchors for the remainder of the coverage of the election.

Matthews, who at times seemed to be trying to match Olbermann’s partisanship, never belonged on an anchor desk either. But at least he knows something about politics. Watching Olbermann’s painfully amateurish and simple minded “analysis” was actually funny at times. He seemed like a little boy who had wandered by accident into the after dinner gathering of adult men who were smoking cigars and drinking Courvoisier while talking talking politics and world affairs. He was wearing short pants in a long pants world.

David Gregory, who will take over the anchor duties for the debates and election night, is an improvement but hardly someone who has demonstrated fairness in his coverage of the campaigns. But he has an excellent grasp of politics and the issues and should at least give the viewer the benefit of some expert analysis.

Meanwhile, one wonders how MSNBC can get its soul back. A good start would be to fire Griffin and bring in a genuine news executive. After all, Griffin is the man who gave Keith Olbermann his head and allowed him to run the NBC News brand into the toilet. Someone should pay for that or the ghosts of Huntley and Brinkley may haunt the network for eternity.

With “Palinmania” continuing to grow at every stop on the campaign trail, John McCain and his advisors are suddenly faced with a most unique and troubling problem; his Vice Presidential pick is much more popular than he and will almost certainly draw bigger crowds than the presumptive presidential nominee once she goes out and campaigns on her own. This will no doubt be pointed out by the press and the Obama campaign (is there a difference at this point?) and might serve to underscore McCain’s relative weakness and the tepid level of enthusiasm he generates even among party faithful.

The campaign is vamping a bit, extending the scheduled 3 day joint tour of the two for a few days, no doubt to both take advantage of Palin’s extraordinary popularity and to try and come up with a solution - or at least a decent response - to questions that will arise about McCain’s drawing power. Frankly, I’m not sure there is anything they can do. The press is going to be counting noses at the separate events for the two and will try to spin the difference as detrimental to McCain no matter what the campaign does or says about it. It is probably best that McCain simply ride the wave of Palin’s celebrity as far as it will take him. And if she gets millions to the polls who might have stayed home otherwise, it may give him the presidency.

Sarah Palin is something new in conservative politics; a figure actually adored by millions of ordinary Americans, many of whom are not Republicans. To say that this turns the idea of celebrity on its head is an understatement. Conservatives are not supposed to be pop culture icons in that traditionalists are what popular culture seeks to rebel against. But many of the same mothers who take their daughters to Miley Cyrus concerts (and probably took their older sisters to Britney Spears events) would have no trouble taking both to an appearance by Palin.

That’s because Palin has transcended what she stands for as a politician and is admired for who she is; a mother of 5 kids, a wife of 20 years to a working class hero kind of guy, and a woman with a career who tries to balance it all while looking like a million dollars. She is what millions of middle class women aspire to be and recognize as a kindred spirit.

I have a feeling that the women quoted here are representative of a new group of swing voter;

“She’s a real woman, she’s a real feminist but she’s not strident — she’s like us,” said Hauswirth, a middle-aged mother who didn’t offer her age. “She’s strong, powerful and opinionated, all the things a women should be, while still retaining her femininity, her womanhood.”

[ . . . ]

But for the many who showed up to see the newly minted Republican team, it wasn’t any issue or political posture that had brought them out.

It was just a woman that they saw a lot of themselves in. Or, as one homemade sign put it, “Pro-Life Hockey Moms 4 Palin.”

“She’s got a real family with real troubles, just like the rest of us,” said Melody Halstrom, a middle-aged women from River Hills, Wis., who came over to the Cedarburg rally. “You know, she’s got teenagers,” Halstrom said, alluding to without actually bringing up the well-publicized pregnancy of Palin’s unwed 17-year-old daughter.

(HT: Right Wing Prof)

These are traditional women playing non-traditional roles who see the 44 year old Alaskan governor through the prism of their own life experiences and can identify with her choices. Her struggles are their struggles. Her crisis are theirs.

How many of them are out there? I am not speaking of the millions of GOP partisans who admire Palin for her stand on abortion or any of the social wedge issues. The women of whom I am thinking more than likely voted for Hillary Clinton or are independents who would have supported her in the general election. There may be enough of them in Ohio to secure that state for McCain. And they might even help McCain in states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan if this Palin boom continues through the election.

Unfortunately, this may not occur simply because it is unthinkable that the campaign will allow the nominee’s running mate to upstage him from now through November 4. It is a situation unique in American politics even though there has been a woman on a major party ticket prior to Palin’s ascension. Geraldine Ferraro may have been the first woman nominated as Vice President on either the Republican or Democratic slate. But it is safe to say that despite being a smart, capable person, Ferraro never generated even half the excitement Palin is creating out on the hustings.

The easy answer to that is that Ferraro was a dyed in the wool feminist and a liberal to boot. But that ignores the more important cultural ramifications of Palin’s candidacy. Ferraro, I’m sure, was a good mother and loving wife but there was never a sense of the modern balancing act women with careers have to perform on a daily basis with kids, and hockey practice, and family problems, and the whole slew of issues middle class women have to deal with in order to keep the family happy and close knit.

Most women work because they have to in order to make ends meet or give the family those vital little extras not to mention the fulfillment many women get from the feeling of independence and pride that having a job brings. Politicians have tried for years to address these women directly with varying degrees of success. Democrats have offered child care, family leave, job protections for pregnant women, and the child health insurance program S-CHIP among other programs. Republicans haven’t ignored these women but have not offered much government assistance, preferring tax credits to ease the financial burden on the family.

Palin is the first Republican politician with which these women can truly identify. She speaks their language. She sounds like them. Her family looks like their family. And when she speaks of the mixing of her career and family, she can look directly at the camera and give them a knowing smile of solidarity - as if they were neighbors casually talking over the backyard fence.

It is true many of these white, working women are socially much more liberal than Palin. But one might note that in their appearances together, McCain and Palin eschew the normal panders to the right wing social conservatives and talk about issues of national concern instead. I find this highly significant because one of the ostensible reasons McCain chose Palin was as a sop to the evangelicals. And yet I note in both their acceptance speeches, abortion and gay marriage were never mentioned (Palin referred elliptically to her “choice” of having a child with Downs Syndrome).

I celebrate that change from past conventions because it welcomes into the Republican party millions of women who are marginally pro-choice but who are troubled by the moral implications of unlimited and unfettered abortion. Say what you will about the Clinton’s but they triangulated the issue of abortion beautifully by supporting choice but saying that we should work to make abortion the least performed operation in the country. Not that McCain-Palin would ever go so far as that but the idea of dialing down the rhetoric and pushing abortion down the list of agenda items for a GOP administration can only help with independent voters.

With Palin set to steal the show from McCain in the coming weeks, the campaign will no doubt let the press and the Democrats draw their own conclusions. And why not? The immense assistance that the press has already given to Palin’s popularity by going after her so viciously may be augmented by trying to paint John McCain as a mere appendage of Palin’s celebrity. Every time the press tries to belittle Palin, the Republican base rallies to her and independent women resent the attacks.

It must be driving some of them stark, raving mad to realize their smears are having the exact opposite effect that they intend.

I’m back safe and sound in Streator, my own bed a welcome place to rest my head after 4 tiring days of fighting crowds, deadlines, and my own cynicism.

That last has stood me in good stead over the years as well as being an impediment at times. On the one hand, it has allowed me to view politicians and politics with a jaundiced eye and the proper skepticism one must have when listening to people who lie for a living make promises they have no intention of keeping or present themselves as something they are not.

But the downside to cynicism is that it tends to narrow your view so that when seeing the people and the process through a very dark prism, you miss the occasional bloom in the rose bush - that tiny spark of genuineness that while rare, nevertheless makes American politics so unique and inspiring.

Such was my problem with watching and listening to Sarah Palin. My initial thought was that this was the greatest act since Houdini - a politician trying to convince people she was a real person. But viewing the speech a second and third time changed my mind. There really was little artifice in this woman. She was a breath of air as fresh as a mountain breeze in her home state. She was tough, strong, easy to look at, and when she spoke, the thunder rolled and lightening flashed. Sparks flew from the stage. I had never been in a venue where the atmosphere crackled with anticipation, the crowd hanging on every word, their voices causing the very air to shake when they showed their support and appreciation.

This presented a problem for me. Clearly McCain had struck gold by choosing this woman. But after a couple of days and some time to reflect on what both McCain and Palin had to say, there are a few observations I need to share with you about Palin and McCain’s idea of “reform” that may be my cynicism showing through but are also grounded in history and common sense.

Sarah Palin is like a virgin in the Sultan’s harem. She is so fresh, so new that it seems to me the corrupting influence of power has yet to perform its dastardly sorcery on her and turn the pure-as-the-driven-Alaskan-snow child into the coldly calculating political computer that will probably be her legacy once history is done with her.

To say that Sarah Palin will eventually become just another Washington pol if she is elected to high office may be taken by many readers as sacrilegious, akin to pronouncing the death of Santa Claus or exposing the tooth fairy as a fraud. Such criticism misses the point. Palin will become what she has to become in order to succeed. And to succeed in Washington, one must adopt the ways of our capitol city - the artful dodge, the 1,000 word answer to a question that reveals nothing and says even less; the thousand tiny compromises with principle in order to get things done; the deal making, the log rolling, the white lies that eventually turn into nose-growing whoppers - all of this and more will turn Palin from a Shield Maiden of Rohan into a female ork, a corrupted elf whose fall from immortality and goodness will become just another sad commentary on our political culture.

And lest we blame Washington for being the only outpost of cynicism and corruption, one might wonder what Palin would have become with just a few more years of experience even in Alaska. For proof, look at the current state of corruption in that state - corruption that Palin helped expose and was fighting even as she was chosen as McCain’s running mate. Would she have been so eager to take on the powers that be in 5 years? In ten? An honest answer would have to include the near certainty that over time, Sarah Palin would be absorbed by the very system she took on with such passion.

There have been a thousand Sarah Palin’s in our history and to each has come the decision whether to play ball or go home. Most have chosen the easy path of least resistance. Those that haven’t have been largely forgotten, casualties of their own conscience and history’s relentless judgment that in order to achieve some of your goals, you must compromise with the devil. Some, like John McCain, make the adjustment and learn to live with losing at least part of their soul. Others can’t abide the hypocrisy, the groveling for money, the back scratching, the trading of favor for favor and quit in disgust. They realize that real “reform” would include the reformation of something that not even Barack Obama and all his powers can effect; the reform of human nature.

Our Founders recognized human frailty and how the temptation of self aggrandizement can rob the people of their liberty. It is why they created a federal republic with mechanisms to spread the corrupting power inherent in all governments around and not allow a deadly concentration in a single political entity.

Past “reformers” took the exact opposite tack; that concentrating the power of government in one place made it easier to keep an eye on the shysters, the hustlers, the jobbers who beg, plead, and bribe their way to influence. That and the necessity of using the vast power of the central government to break the back of abominations like predatory capitalists, industrial and financial trusts, and finally the evils of segregation and Jim Crow made it imperative that we grow government to protect us from those who would abuse freedom to deny others their liberty.

Corruption was as much a part of early America as it is today with one significant difference; the ability of that corruption to dramatically effect the health of our democracy and the liberty of its citizens. Times change. And as America grew, corruption and the abuse of power grew with it. It took the idealism of early 20th century reformers to save democracy and keep America from turning into a plutocracy where the few oppressed the many and workers would have been little better than wage slaves, toiling away 12 hours a day, six days a week in mines and factories with no rights and fewer prospects to realize their dreams of a better life for their children.

But the way they accomplished this magnificent feat was to vastly expand the powers of the federal government. They sought to “scientifically” perfect society by applying new fangled theories advanced by a new kind of scientist; sociologists and the science of trying to predict and codify how and why people behave the way they do.

With the purest of intentions they and their descendants in the Wilson and FDR administrations destroyed the idea of federalism in favor of trying to “solve” the problems of poverty and inequality; as if there are laws that can be passed that can govern human nature and the natural state of man.

It is the reason I am a conservative. I do not believe in the “perfectibility” of society any more than I believe in the Easter Bunny. Nor do I believe - as the Communists still believe - that man himself can be changed and once put through the proper “re-education,” a “New Man” can emerge and create the perfect state that doesn’t even require a government. This is not to say that society can’t be improved or that we can, as humans, resist our basest impulses and act in the common good. It only means that you will never, ever be able to legislate such things into effect and anyone who tries is daft.

So just what is it that Obama and McCain want to “reform?” Do they wish to scrub original sin from men’s souls? Both wish to mitigate the effects of corruption by curtailing the activities of lobbyists. But we have tried such “reform” before with campaign financing.

And we know how well that has worked out, huh?

It seems to me that John McCain’s attempts to “reform” or, more accurately, improve the way that government delivers services and bring it into the 21st century is slightly more realistic than Obama’s crusade to remake America into some kind of social democracy. But neither has a clue really. They, and America, will continue to muddle through while the bureaucracy goes its merry way and lobbyists find their way around whatever legislation is passed to ostensibly hold them in check. Real reform would require a groundswell of grassroots support so stupendous that politicians could only ride the wave and not control it. It may come to that someday.

But not this day. Not this time. Not with these two candidates.

I’m leaving shortly for the airport to fly out to Minneapolis and the Republican National Convention.

I will be covering it as part of the Pajamas Media team - the only online publication granted a booth above the Excel Center floor. Not sure what my responsibilities will be but I will almost certainly do a little writing, a little editing, and no doubt a little partying as well.

I might mention that PJTV will be making its debut at the convention. Read here what it’s all about - sounds new and exciting. It’s a subscription service but I think it has a chance if what they’re talking about as far as programming is concerned. I intend to pony up and I hope you at least give the idea some consideration.

This Palin smear on her baby that I write about below is incredible. It is based entirely - entirely - on supposition. Things like how a woman is supposed to look when she’s six months pregnant and the tiny bulge in her daughter’s teen age tummy being seen not as evidence that she eats too many Ho-Ho’s but that she is with child is “balmy” is the Brits would say.

It’s daft. It’s nuts. It’s cuckoo. It’s every adjective you could possibly come up with that denotes unhinged idiocy on the part of the left. I was joking yesterday when I wrote that the left would demand that Palin take a DNA test to prove the child is hers. Judging by how this story is spreading like wildfire across the leftysphere, my joking may become a reality sooner than I ever dreamed.

Coupled with the other major attack meme that is emerging - that Palin should be staying home and taking care of her Down Syndrome kid - and you have an interesting contretemps for the left; that for all their whining about how low and dirty the GOP and conservatives play the game, they have proved they can get in the gutter and root around with the worst the GOP has to offer.

I will try and post on this site during the convention but time factors may make that an impossibility. If not, catch my stuff at Pajamas Media as I’m sure I’ll have a few things to say about the RNC.

This is actually pretty interesting, as far as political smears go. Driven entirely by the internet, the thought that Sarah Palin’s 5th child, born in April and afflicted with Downs Syndrome, is not really hers but her daughter’s should be exhibit “A” in any study of how low the left can go in attacking their opponents.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air had all the nauseating details:

This popped up on a Daily Kos diary and has unfortunately been repeated by bloggers who should know better.  The rumor is a weird reversal of the John Edwards story, only this time, critics refute Palin’s maternity.  Supposedly, so the story goes, the baby really was their eldest daughter’s (currently in high school), and not hers.  The proof?  At six months, Palin didn’t “look pregnant”, and supposedly her daughter had mono and took some time off from school. 

That’s it.

This is, simply, despicable.  Babies born to teen mothers rarely have Downs Syndrome anyway, whereas the possibility for that with a mother in her 40s is about 1 in 20.  Athletic women sometimes do not show until late in the pregnancy.  The whole rumor rests on the notion that the state’s most visible woman could carry out a fake pregnancy in front of the press while simultaneously hiding her daughter, and then pull a switcheroo - and for what possible purpose?  To cover up a teen pregnancy, in this day and age?  Give me a break.

Note how without any proof whatsoever, the diarist at Kos simply pulls random events out of thin air and connects them.

My friend Jazz Shaw has more, quoting from the actual Kos diary:

;…the oldest girl is rumored to have actually been the one who had the last baby, the one with Down’s Syndrome. She was taken out of school the last 4 or 5 months of her mother’s pregnancy.

On March 5th, 2008 Alaska’s Republican Governor, Sarah Palin, announced to the media that she was 7 months pregnant with her 5th child. She is currently 44.

Palin’s daughter Bristol is 16 and attends an Anchorage high school. Students who have attended class with her report that she has been out of school for months, claiming a prolonged case of mono.

Palin does not appear pregnant in any recent photographs. The announcement came as quite a shock to people who had worked closely with her, and have been quoted as saying that she did not appear pregnant whatsoever during the prior 7 months. While this is debatable, you can judge for yourself here: http://gov.state.ak.us/photos.php

Palin “doesn’t appear” pregnant. “Students report” her daughter has been out of class. Palin aides “have been quoted as saying…”

How does a pregnant woman “appear” at six months? Which students “report” that her daughter was out of school? Where were the quotes? Why no link? Ditto Palin “aides have been quoted…”

This is the very definition of a smear - wild charges made with absolutely no verifiable proof.

Just for comparison purposes, Jazz has a picture of Palin when she was 6 months preggers that the Kos Kooks believe “prove” she wasn’t with child and hence, the only possible explanation in all the universe is that she’s covering for her teenage daughter.

How about Angelina Jolie at 6 months?

Still not convinced? Let’s take a peek at Brazilian Super Model Ambrosia at 6 months:

(For you doubters, here’s a link to the Jolie image and Ambrosia picture with the accompanying story saying they are six months pregnant.)

NO WAY Palin can look as good as she does at 6 months preggers, right?

But do you think that is going to stop the left? Not MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow:

Reader johnkelley e-mails to remind me of a segment which I saw on MSNBC earlier. Rachel Maddow (yes, I know… I know) told what sounded like a completely obscure, irrelevant story about Palin giving birth to her last child. Apparently, as she noted, Palin’s “water broke” while on an extended trip to Texas, but she hopped a plane back home immediately to give birth in Alaska, “so desperate was she not to have her child born in Texas.” Is Maddow on to something related to the first story in this piece but not ready to take it to the airwaves?

This is one of those blog stories that will percolate a few days and then explode on to the screens and pages of the MSM. Before you know it, the left will be demanding Palin take a paternity test to “prove” the child is her own.

This, coupled with “Troopergate” -  where Palin fired the Commissioner for Public Safety because he wouldn’t fire a state trooper - her sister’s ex-husband - for gross violations including tasering her stepson and drinking on the job - will no doubt be played to the hilt by lefty blogs and their allies on MSNBC. It remains to be seen if they get any traction out of it.

If you are totally in the tank for Obama, no doubt you loved the speech and thought it was one of the greatest in history. That’s fine. I’m glad you’re proud of your candidate and believe he did a great job.

But you will forgive me if my own, somewhat more honest and analytical take on what Obama said doesn’t quite match your gushing, effusive, unrealistic assessment.

It was a very good political speech and unmatched political theater. As I pointed out in my post on the Top 10 American Speeches of all Time, there are three elements that make a great speech. The first is the moment in time when the speech is delivered. The second is the venue where it is delivered. And finally, the words themselves must be as powerful when read as they are when spoken.

Obama did very well with all three, although the last element dragged down the overall ranking a bit. Without a doubt, the moment in history was there - first black man to accept the nomination of a major party is a huge historical deal and is one of those identifying moments in history; a “hinge” of history, if you will.

The venue was good but more because it was the Democratic convention and because of the number of people watching it rather than the speech having a grand backdrop like an inaugural address or King at the Lincoln Memorial. (As a convention speech having a lasting impact, it fell far short of Kennedy’s 1980 speech or - love it or not - Pat Buchanan’s 1992 barn burner, not to mention Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” stemwinder in 1896.)

Where the speech failed the test of historically “great” were the words themselves. In places, it soared. In others, it was just liberal boilerplate. Rereading it this morning, I was struck by how ordinary it truly was. There was hardly a policy proposal we haven’t heard from Democrats over the past 2 decades. To say that this represents “change” is arguable.

So not one of the great speeches of all time but a very good address that accomplished some of the things Obama set out to do. Obama. Obama got “specific” in the sense that he attached some concrete proposals to the idea of “change.” But he was no more forthcoming in how he was going to achieve this “change” as he has been in the past.

Case in point:

That’s the promise we need to keep. That’s the change we need right now.

So — so let me — let me spell out exactly what that change would mean if I am president.

Change means a tax code that doesn’t reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it.

You know, unlike John McCain, I will stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America.

I’ll eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.

I will — listen now — I will cut taxes — cut taxes — for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.

1. What does it mean when he says he will give tax breaks to companies that create “good jobs right here in America?” Eliminating capital gains for small business that create high tech jobs sounds fine but we are talking about jobs in the thousands not millions. And is that part of his plan to give tax breaks to companies that “create good jobs right here in America.” What’s a “good” job? What kind of tax break? Who gets it?

And doesn’t Obama realize that 45 million Americans already pay absolutely no federal income tax? Hard to cut someone’s taxes when they’re not paying any. There are another 18 million taxpayers who pay less than $500 in federal taxes. The point being, somebody has to pay for what you are proposing in the rest of your speech. And after you’re through upping the tax burden on the richest two percent (who already pay 88% of all the taxes from individuals in America) and carry through with your Carteresque idea to reduce domestic oil production by taxing “windfall” profits from oil companies, the well goes pretty dry.

Then there are these “specifics” on energy policy:

And in that time, he has said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels. And today, we import triple the amount of oil than we had on the day that Senator McCain took office.

Now is the time to end this addiction and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution, not even close.

As president, as president, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I’ll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America.

I’ll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars.

There are a couple of jaw droppers in there. First, if this is his energy “plan” I would start laying in a generous supply of firewood and go out and buy a good bicycle. The government doesn’t “invest” in clean coal technology. It can incentivize the changeover or mandate it by simply changing the clean air standards for coal fired power plants. And if Obama thinks his own party - his own liberal base - is going to allow him to start building nuclear power plants, he doesn’t read blogs very much nor does he listen to his own members of Congress.

But “helping our auto companies retool?” Is he planning on making the government a partner with Ford, GM, and the rest? Auto companies don’t need to retool, they need better leadership. Relying on profits from gas guzzling SUV’s and trucks is why automakers are in such dire straits today - despite signs all over the place that the price of gas was going to go up because of tight supplies. Executives at the auto companies took the easy road of short term profit and sacrificed the long term viability of their companies.

And Obama wants to reward this bad behavior by helping them “retool?” It would be nice if the designers actually had cars for which the retooling would be necessary. Maybe we should solve that little problem first and then think of big giveways to giant corporations and big labor.

And then there was Obama’s “chicken in every pot” line, promising to ” make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars.” Can he get any less specific than that? I leave it to your imagination for how this particular giveaway might work.

Finally, there was this:

And I’ll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy — wind power, and solar power, and the next generation of biofuels — an investment that will lead to new industries and 5 million new jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced.

It might seem like a lot of money - $150 over the next decade - but it is less than a drop in the bucket compared to what we spend every year on energy. And Obama wants to spread that paltry sum out over 10 years.

No we will not drill our way out of this crisis. But wind and solar power are not the answer to our long term energy needs either. Those technologies too, will be stop gap measures and never supply more than a couple of percent of our energy needs. The answer is the most abundant element in the universe - hydrogen. And Obama never mentioned it in his speech.

So Obama’s specificity on how he will bring about “change” was slightly better than in the past but not much. Education, health care, paid sick leave, and the rest of liberal policy proposals all sounded wonderful. But as far as how he was specifically going to implement them or even what some of them meant, we are still in the dark.

He even borrowed from Republicans:

Now, many of these plans will cost money, which is why I’ve laid out how I’ll pay for every dime: by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don’t help America grow.

But I will also go through the federal budget line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less, because we cannot meet 21st-century challenges with a 20th-century bureaucracy.

I believe Gerald Ford was the first candidate to make this promise at a convention. The Democrats had Bill Clinton and Al Gore making similar promises. It is a ridiculous political premise that the president (actually whoever he chooses to head up OMB) will go through the budget “line by line” and find savings. The old Grace Commission did something similar and had less than 10% of their recommendations passed by Congress.

The fact is, many of those “obsolete” programs benefit someone somewhere. Trying to cut programs much less eliminate them causes such screams of anguish that no president has come close to realizing significant savings in the federal budget. With only around 15% of the budget “discretionary” spending with the rest tied up in defense and entitlements, there is only one place Obama can go to pay for his “change;” the Department of Defense.

He has already said he will cut tens of billions by slowing down programs and eliminating others including missile defense. This doesn’t “save” much at all because what you do by cutting a defense contract in the “out” years is simply extend the contract while the contractor keeps adding “cost +” accounting.

But Obama didn’t say he was going to cut the military budget in Denver:

I will end this war in Iraq responsibly and finish the fight against Al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan. I will rebuild our military to meet future conflicts, but I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and curb Russian aggression.

I will build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century: terrorism and nuclear proliferation, poverty and genocide, climate change and disease.

First, the next person that tells me Obama was being “specific” last night is going to make me scream. This is about as non-specific as you can get and still be on the stage. Just how does he create a world without nuclear weapons? It is nothing more than liberal pablum and for people like Andy Sullivan to gush about Obama “specifics” last night is simply ignoring reality.

But Obama’s talk of “rebuilding our military” flies in the face of what he said last year:

Second, I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems…and I will institute an independent Defense Priorities Board to ensure that the Quadrennial Defense Review is not used to justify unnecessary spending.

Third, I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal I will not develop new nuclear weapons…I will seek a global ban on the development of fissile material…and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off of hair-trigger alert…and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals.”

Which is it, Barack? “Rebuild” the military or tear it down?

Obama’s speech last night still fell way short of specifics - despite what shamelessly gushing reporters had to say. I nearly had a stroke when Carl Bernstein, appearing on CNN as an “analyst” said that this was “the greatest convention in modern times” - as if the first two nights weren’t incredible yawners not to mention near disasters for Obama. And apparently, the press showed their true colors during the speech:

Several members of the media were seen cheering and clapping for Barack Obama as the Illinois senator accepted the Democratic nomination Thursday.

Standing on the periphery of the football field serving as the Democratic convention floor, dozens of men and women wearing green media floor passes chanted along with the crowd.

Two members of the foreign press exchanged opportunities to take each other’s picture while wearing an Obama hat and waving a flag.

Several others nearby screamed “woo” during some of Obama’s biggest applause lines.

No doubt they just couldn’t help themselves.

Overall, not bad at all for Obama. Lacking many specifics (although more specific than he has been in the past) with his usual excellent delivery made the night a triumph for him.

I would grade him out at a B minus. It should give him a bounce in the polls even when McCain names his choice of running mate. The question will be, how long that bounce will last and what will things look like after the dust settles from the Republican convention which, as we speak, may be postponed due to Tropical Storm Gustav.

My guess is that by mid September, we will be back to the 4-6 point Obama lead from July. And the number of days that McCain will be able to carve into that lead will start to dwindle.

With many liberals cheering them on, the Obama campaign is putting on a full court press on several fronts to silence critics and quash Conservatives attempts to publicize the candidate’s relationship with former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers.

In effect, the Obama camp is putting the entire nation on notice; screw with us and we will make your life so miserable you will wish you had never heard the name “Bill Ayers.”

I can sympathize with their frustration. Their attempts to carefully craft an image and narrative of a political moderate who could bring both sides together may not be able to stand the revelation that not only did Obama seek out radicals in his spiritual life by joining the church of a conspiracy minded bigot but also made alliances with political radicals like Ayers (and the Maoist New Party) to advance his career.

We are still waiting for an explanation from Obama why in the name of all that is good and holy did he actually seek out and ask for the endorsement of a proudly Maoist organization like The New Party? Why did he knowingly, eagerly accept volunteers from this organization to staff his campaign for his first state senate run? What possessed this self proclaimed moderate to make common political cause with a group whose goal was to remake the Democratic party and infuse it with Marxist principles?

Perhaps a better question would be why the press has failed in their responsibility to make this fact known to the public. How can it not be relevant to the debate over Obama’s claims to be a political moderate? If John McCain had sought out the endorsement of an avowedly racist organization and used their members as foot soldiers in his campaign, we could rightly question his fitness to be president. But here we have The Messiah cozying up to far left radicals and despite the fact that the information is available to anyone with a modicum of ambition to uncover Barack Obama’s murky past, (It’s right there on the New Party website ) the press seems singularly disinterested in the matter.

Bias? Perhaps. But I take the much more realistic view that most of the press is just plain lazy. This causes them to miss as much stuff about McCain as they do Obama. They are - with precious few exceptions - lazy, cynical, ideologues who don’t want to be bothered with anything that changes the revealed truth they dispense to a public they care little about and indeed, see as ignorant yahoos not worthy of their brilliance.

Conservatives have taken it upon themselves to fill the void. Enter Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons who created the most devastating ad of the political season so far, asking viewers “How much do you know about Barack Obama” and then proceeding to outline the colorful and violent career of William Ayers, terrorist. There is nothing untrue in the ad. Every fact about Ayers, every quote from him is on the record - much of it taken from Ayers’ own book! The Obama take on the ad is that it smears him by connecting him to Ayers bombings. I don’t see that at all and, in fact, the ad goes out of its way to connect Obama to Ayers in his incarnation as a professor of education at the University of Chicago.

Judge for yourself:

“Do you know enough to elect Barack Obama?” is not violating the law by asking people to vote against him. If it is a violation, then every ad ever put out by Moveon.Org would have to be pulled and the Board of Directors arrested. It isn’t even close.

But Obama decided to write the Department of Justice anyway and ask them to prosecute. They also asked Justice to prosecute Simmons.

Can the DOJ really do that? Would they do that?

Technically, they could. But in practice they almost never do. It is a damned effective strategy anyway because just the threat of a DOJ investigation is enough to scare a lot of people off - those without the deep pockets of Mr. Simmons who can’t afford the thousands of dollars in lawyers fees they would incur if Justice were to turn their legal eye in their direction.

The Obama campaign knows this which is why it is so insidious. Obama is not asking Justice to enforce the law. They are using a Justice as a club to knock their opponents out of the game and to silence critics.

In a similar manner, the gambit of using their lawyers to send letters to TV stations airing the ad is pure intimidation, nothing more. The Obama campaign can take no legal action and they know it. It is impossible to prove slander (in this case because the facts presented are all true) but again, the threat of using the legal system is usually enough to force those without the means to defend themselves against even a frivolous lawsuit to stop airing the ad.

So Obama’s campaign against broadcasters like Sinclair and donors like Harold Simmons are not serious attempts to have the Department of Justice enforce the law but rather pure hardball politics, played to the hilt by people who evidently do not mind chilling free speech when it gets in the way of their ambitions.

One can usually gauge how badly an opponents attacks are hurting a candidate by the virulence of their response. Nowhere is that more evident than in the additional campaign by the Obama camp to stifle opposition and keep the lid on the Ayers matter by, in effect, trying to shut down one of the most respected talk radio shows in America while using extraordinarily and unusually harsh language to describe a journalist.

Milt Rosenberg’s talk show on weekday nights is a must listen for those interested in politics and culture. Sophisticated, urbane, witty, and intelligent, Rosenberg can be counted on for lively conversation with guests that run the gamut from best selling authors to bloggers.

Last night. Rosenberg invited conservative journalist and intellectual Stanley Kurtz on to talk about what he had learned so far in his examination of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge documents that the University of Illinois released to the press on Tuesday. It was a foregone conclusion that the documents were going to make Obama out to be a dissembler - perhaps even a liar - about his relationship with Ayers. Despite Obama’s claims that Ayers was “just some guy in the neighborhood,” the two worked closely together, attending dozens of meetings together and even going on a retreat.

But that didn’t stop the Obama campaign from calling Kurtz a liar:

Barack Obama’s campaign hasn’t advertised this a great deal this week, but the campaign’s “Action Wire” has been waging large-scale campaigns against critics. That includes tens of thousands of e-mails to television stations running Harold Simmons’ Bill Ayers ad, and to their advertisers — including a list of major automobile and telecommunications companies.

And tonight, the campaign launched a more specific campaign: an effort to disrupt the appearance by a writer for National Review, Stanley Kurtz, on a Chicago radio program. Kurtz has been writing about Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers, and has suggested that papers housed at the University of Illinois at Chicago would reveal new details of that relationship.

The campaign e-mailed Chicago supporters who had signed up for the Obama Action Wire with detailed instructions including the station’s telephone number and the show’s extension, as well as a research file on Kurtz, which seems to prove that he’s a conservative, which isn’t in dispute. The file cites a couple of his more controversial pieces, notably his much-maligned claim that same-sex unions have undermined marriage in Scandinavia.

“Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse,” says the email, which picks up a form of pressure on the press pioneered by conservative talk radio hosts and activists in the 1990s, and since adopted by Media Matters and other liberal groups.

“It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves. At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz’s lies,” it continues.

The results were beyond the Obama’s camp expectations.

Zack Christenson, executive producer of “Extension 720 with Milt Rosenburg,” said the response was strong.

“I would say this is the biggest response we’ve ever got from a campaign or a candidate,” he said. “This is really unprecedented with the show, the way that people are flooding the calls and our email boxes.”

Christenson said the Obama campaign was asked to have someone appear on the show and the headquarters declined the request.

“He got into the files just yesterday, so we wanted to have him on to find out what he found and, if at all possible, we wanted to get the Obama campaign to get their side of the story,” Christenson said. “That’s why the uproar is kind of amazing, because we wanted the Obama campaign’s take as well to kind of balance it out.”

The show’s producer said the calls dropped off after the show’s first hour. He did not have a count of calls, but said it was “non-stop.”

Obama’s campaign has launched similar offensives against stations that have run campaign ads that it did not like.

The point is not that these Obamabots didn’t have the right to call in and complain. They most certainly did. The question is just what is it that Kurtz or Simmons, or anyone else is saying about Ayers and Obama that is untrue? The callers could not give specifics of “the smear.” The Obama camp has yet to be specific about how Kurtz is “smearing” Obama.

Apparently, Milt Rosenberg spent so much time dealing with these fanatics that Kurtz could barely get a word out (you can hear the audio here).

As I mentioned the other day, this is playing politics “The Chicago Way” - perhaps more Sicilian than South Side, “back of the yards boys.”

And the Obama campaign is using the DOJ as their own hit men.

Allow me to take off my partisan hat for a moment and try to give a coldly analytical view of the Democratic convention at the halfway point.

It seems to me that the major themes of the convention have largely been subsumed by the Clinton drama and that the more the Obama camp tries to assuage the hurt feelings of the PUMA’s, the Hillraisers, and the bitter end Hillaryites, the more they become resistant to the call for unity. Frankly, I don’t know what else the Obama people could be doing to rectify this situation. They have bent over backwards to accommodate the wishes of Hillary’s campaign and, by extension, her supporters. And all that they seem to be getting for their trouble are leaks about how “arrogant” they are and how they have been disrespectful to Hillary and her supporters.

What this has done is elevate the level of tension in the hall so that rather than coming off excited and confident, the Democrats seem hesitant and worried. And the speeches - with a couple of notable exceptions - haven’t helped matters.

True, political oratory is a lost art on both sides of the aisle and I expect the GOP convention to feature equally snooze-worthy addresses. But if you look at the major addresses so far, you can be forgiven for being a little perplexed.

The success of the Kennedy and Michelle Obama speeches can be attributed to their emotional appeal on a personal level and not to how they fit into any overall attack strategy or even how they fulfilled the particular theme of Monday evening - “One Nation.” Yes, the minor addresses did that quite nicely with a wonderful rainbow of people testifying to how the last 8 years have been detrimental to America. But no one saw those speeches unless you were watching C-Span or PBS. The Kennedy-Michelle speeches were personal triumphs and dramatic, heart tugging political theater. But what did they accomplish for the Obama campaign?

Just for contrast, look at the first night of the 2004 GOP convention. Giuliani and John McCain brought the crowd to their feet with attacks on Kerry and the Democrats. The Rudy speech had the dual kicker of 9/11 still being relatively fresh in people’s minds and the convention being held in New York City. McCain’s ringing endorsement of Bush that night contrasted with Hillary’s rather desultory unity speech last night tells the story.

I’m not the only one mystified by the first night’s speeches. James Carville, Paul Begala, and other partisan Democratic commentators also talked about the lack of a unifying message and the fact that the Democrats were wasting time by not going after McCain and the Republicans. Many lefty bloggers were also disappointed although they were effusive in their praise for Michelle Obama’s home run of a speech about her family. Again, if the goal were to capture an audience with drama and hold them, the Obama campaign succeeded. But as far as getting out a specific message and savaging the Republicans? Not so much.

They did a much better job last night but Holy Jesus someone give Mark Warner a shot of Vitamin B. Thankfully, his “Keynote” address lasted only about 15 minutes because I haven’t seen a keynoter that bad since Clinton’s 45 minute drone in 1988. I hesitate to bring up Zell Miller’s rousing killer of a speech from 2004 if only because you can’t compare apples and Sominex. Still, Warner gave an interesting speech even if it had no partisan red meat for the faithful to gnaw on. The question is was anyone in the TV audience listening after 5 minutes?

This brings us to Hillary’s roof buster. She has improved her public speaking skills enormously in the last 18 months. The transformation has been remarkable. I would say the last third of her speech was the best part of the convention so far for the Democrats and the best I’ve ever seen from her.

Josh Marshall also noticed the vast improvement:

That was quite a speech. It occurred to me as she built to the conclusion in the last few minutes, that the pre-2008 Hillary Clinton would not have been capable of that speech. That’s not a dig. But she grew incredibly as a candidate over the course of this campaign. And this was an immensely powerful delivery, and a richly woven together speech. The beginning seemed fine but not remarkable. But it slowly built into something very powerful.

But I somewhat agree with this analysis by Ron Fournier of AP that she never personalized her endorsement of Obama and that by making her support for the nominee an extension of her own campaign, she lessened its impact:

She took the high road Tuesday night because it was also her best road politically; if Obama wins, she still emerges as a central voice in American liberalism, replacing the ailing Sen. Edward Kennedy. And if Obama loses, as Hillary said he would during the campaign, she is blameless and the party can turn back to her without guilt in four years.

Behind the scenes Tuesday, the Obama and Clinton camps struck a tentative deal that would allow some states to cast votes in a roll call before somebody — possibly Clinton herself — cuts short the tally and asks the convention to nominate Obama by unanimous consent. This was her price for ending her historic bid for the presidency in a manner that, however messy, still left Obama in a stronger position than Kennedy left Jimmy Carter in 1980, when the Massachusetts senator extracted platform concessions and shrank from the traditional unity show at the final gavel.

But she did extract her price.

The bill came due Tuesday. The crowd. The applause. The promise of a vote Wednesday, and a speech laced 17 times by some variation of the pronoun “I.”

She barely mentioned Obama for the first 2/3 of her speech (3 times by my count) and then poured it on during the last third. Did her call for unity fall on deaf ears? This piece in WaPo tried to gauge reaction by interviewing a dozen or so Hillary supporters - many of whom had variations of this response:

Most delegates agreed that Clinton’s impassioned speech marked a step toward reconciliation. The crowd in the Pepsi Center stood to applaud almost every time she mentioned Obama by name.

John Burkett, a Pennsylvania delegate and staunch Clinton supporter, attached an Obama button to his shirt. A New Mexico delegate said the “H” on his shirt will be replaced with an “O” come Thursday.

The last survey I saw had about 30% of Hillary supporters saying they would either stay home or vote McCain. I think most of those started on the road to the realization that Obama is really their only choice and will vote for him in November. In the end, given history and the partisan times we live in, I would expect that 30% to fall far below 10% by election day.

One other note on the speeches. I thought that Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer was outstanding. I can see how he won in such a heavily Republican state. Very personable and likable.

The LA Times’ Peter Wallsten added that party activists “got a glimpse Tuesday of a surprising new breakout star: a jovial, round-faced warrior with a bolo tie who managed to attack Republicans while keeping a smile on his face.”

Keep an eye on Schweitzer. We’re likely to hear more from him in the future.

I’ll agree with that except any politician from a small state - Republican or Democrat - is always at a disadvantage in a national race. Not impossible to overcome but they start out behind because of a bias in the MSM against them. I might add that candidates from the deep south have the same problem.

Overall grade for the convention so far? I give it a C+. Obviously some of that was beyond Obama’s control given his problems with Hillary Clinton and her supporters. And his campaign has done everything they can, going more than halfway to meet Clinton’s concerns. But the impression I’ve gotten is that many Hillary supporters don’t want to be convinced and their tepid support is dragging down the convention a little.

The Democrats have a case to make and they are not consistently making it - too many tangents, too many other stories about Hillary, Bill, and that whole drama are distracting from what should be their main message; the country can’t afford 4 more years of a Republican in the White House. I think the country is ready for that message, will be receptive to it - if they ever get around to consistently hammering it home.

The press is to blame for stirring the pot but a good campaign will do things that take the press by the scruff of the neck and force them to cover their themes, their issues. Both Democratic and Republican candidates have been able to do this before under worse circumstances. So far, the Obama campaign has perhaps not failed but could certainly be doing a better job.

It’s not too late to turn this thing into an A+ triumph for Obama. But tonight must be a real grand slam of an evening if the country is going to be properly prepped for Obama’s big night on Thursday.