"Many people will express sympathy, but you don’t want or need that, because Trig will be a joy."

Here's the big NYT story -- pre-touted on Drudge -- about Sarah Palin and her baby:

No one has ever tried to combine presidential politics and motherhood in quite the way Ms. Palin is doing, and it is no simple task. In the last week, the criticism she feared in Alaska has exploded into a national debate. On blogs and at PTA meetings, voters alternately cheer and fault her balancing act, and although many are thrilled to see a child with special needs in the spotlight, some accuse her of exploiting Trig for political gain.

But her son has given Ms. Palin, 44, a powerful message. Other candidates kiss strangers’ babies; Ms. Palin has one of her own. He is tangible proof of Ms. Palin’s anti-abortion convictions, which have rallied social conservatives, and her belief that women can balance family life with ambitious careers. And on Wednesday in St. Paul, she proclaimed herself a guardian of the nation’s disabled children.

“Children with special needs inspire a special love,” Ms. Palin said....

“Many people will express sympathy, but you don’t want or need that, because Trig will be a joy,” Ms. Palin wrote. She added, “Children are the most precious and promising ingredient in this mixed-up world you live in down there on Earth. Trig is no different, except he has one extra chromosome.”

Is there really a public issue here to be discussed? What exactly is it?

ADDED: Did the "belief that women can balance family life with ambitious careers" just become right wing? If so, wow! That is perhaps the most amazing political flip I've seen in my life.

Why did Barack Obama say "my Muslim faith"?

I've seen so many mentions of this in the comments to various posts here today that I can see I need to break this story out into a separate post. Here's the video, from "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos:



The Washington Times has the transcript and a description of how a snippet of the interview has caught fire on the internet:

Within an hour of the interview's broadcast, anti-Obama groups were pushing the issue on blogs and via YouTube.

Someone spliced together only his misstatement and was emailing it with the false claim Obama "admits" the Muslim faith.

It's clear in the full context that he's giving the McCain campaign credit for not participating in spreading the rumor that he is a Muslim. He's not saying he is a Muslim. Quite apart from that, let's not stoop to portraying "Muslim" as the equivalent of evil. That's ugly and destructive.

UPDATE: More here.

Noooooooooo!

Photo by Hiroko Masuike.

This is serious fashion by the seriously creepily named Obedient Sons.

ADDED: But I love this street as the ultimate runway.

The proposed ban on gender stereotypes in advertising.

Don't get excited. Europe will be Europe.

On Sarah Palin avoiding interviews for now... and the dumbest things Obama and McCain have said.

I've been thinking about the way Sarah Palin is avoiding interviews. She can't keep doing that, but I think it's wise for her to take some time to bone up on things and to develop rhetorical strategies. She's going to be severely tested, and she's got to take some time to get ready. Her opponents are right to make a big deal out of every minute she delays, but the price of making a mistake is great. You know any dumb thing that slips out is going to be used to the hilt. And something dumb is inevitable.

With this in mind, I was wondering what is the single dumbest thing Obama and McCain have said? Something has to be the dumbest. I'm thinking, for Obama:



For McCain:



The remix:

Robert Drew's great documentary "Primary" -- about JFK and Hubert Humphrey in the Wisconsin Primary -- free, tonight, at Cinematheque.

New students, old residents, you should know about Cinematheque. Drop by tonight at Vilas Hall at 7:30 for this fine 60 minute film.

And make note of the rest of the films in the "Vote Cinema: American Politics on Film" series. There are various different series and special events this fall, including "Deviants, Delinquients, and Do-Gooders: Hollywood Social Problem Films of the 1950s."

Here's the whole fall calendar.

Cinematheque is one of the coolest things about UW-Madison. And again: It is free.

ADDED: Here is an interview with Albert Maysles (the cinematographer) about the part of the film where we see Jackie Kennedy's gloved, fidgeting hands:



And here's a long clip from [another] film that gives background on Richard Nixon. I love the charming retro "Stick with Dick" sign. And Richard Nixon, turning on the charm for Nikita Krushchev, just hilarious. Lots more too.

[Video previously displayed is no longer available.]

ADDED: Sorry, I misread the label on the second video clip, which popped up in YouTube. It has a completely different documentary style, but some great historical clips. If I remember "Primary" correctly -- I've seen it but have loaned out my DVD -- it's entirely about Kennedy and Humphrey in Wisconsin. Here's some background on the style of "Primary":

[C]inema verite -- choosing moments where action might occur instead of creating it -- ... was the brainchild of Robert Drew, an editor at Life magazine. He believed the magazine enjoyed its success because it brought into the home pictures of action in the midst of happening -- four soldiers struggling to plant the flag at Iwo Jima, for instance -- and he wanted to extend that concept to documentaries. "I thought all we had to do was put a Life photographer who valued candid photography behind a motion picture camera, and we could make a new kind of film." But thanks to an eight-man crew that had to stop and set heavy equipment on tripods, action eluded capture. Then Mr. Drew started to experiment with lightweight cameras and sound recorders. In 1959, under the banner of Drew Associates, he put together a film crew, all of whom went on to write their names on the pages of documentary history: Albert Maysles, Terence Filgate (a film maker well known in his native Canada), Richard Leacock ("Monterey Pop") and D. A. Pennebaker ("Don't Look Back," "The War Room"). The film makers set out in the dark: they were making documentaries with no directors, no scripts, no sets, no lights, little or no narration and no interviews. To be at the right place at the right moment was everything. They considered themselves neutral observers who merely recorded ongoing events and had, as much as possible, no point of view. Their first important work was "Primary," which tracked Senators John F. Kennedy and Hubert H. Humphrey through the cold 1960 Wisconsin Democratic Presidential primarily... Their approach, says Mr. Filgate, offered an alternative to the Edward R. Murrow style of documentaries. "It was as if we were butterfly hunting. We knew there were butterflies in the woods, but we didn't know what kind, and we didn't know how we were going to catch them; whereas in the journalistic documentary, a reporter says, 'On my left, hidden in the bushes, are thousands of butterflies.' And then the camera cuts away to the bushes. Drew, with 'Primary,' broke that mold."

"You know, I actually did" -- Obama actually did consider serving in the military.

So he said, when asked George Stephanopoulos today, on television.

"And I actually always thought of the military as an ennobling and, you know, honorable option. But keep in mind that I graduated in 1979. The Vietnam War had come to an end. We weren't engaged in an active military conflict at that point. And so, it's not an option that I ever decided to pursue."

Because, back in the Vietnam days, that's when young guys felt especially motivated to sign up to fight. Mmm hmmm.

Do you think Barack Obama seriously considered joining the military?
	Yes.
	No.
	Hell no.
pollcode.com free polls

"Portraits of famous people tend to look like the painters because the artists were all simply depicting themselves..."

A new study:

Computer-aided comparisons made between a series of portraits of British monarchs and the self-portraits of the artists who painted them prove that there has always been a hidden agenda in top-level portraiture, argues the art historian Simon Abrahams.

After lengthy research and the examination of hundreds of famous paintings from new angles, Abrahams has launched his contentious theory through his website, ArtScholar.org. He believes it is clear that many portraitists, painters who were often doing this kind of work just for money, chose to assert themselves by reproducing their own facial characteristics within those of their powerful sitters.

Ah, we always knew those artists were big narcissists!



Abrahams says:

"In fact, of course, any art student can paint a pretty good likeness of someone and the truth is that everything that we see in the world, we only see in our minds anyway. We can only interpret what we see through what we already know. Great artists have known this instinctively and so have deliberately painted their own faces, even when they are supposed to be reproducing reality. It is rather like the way that when we look at our own children, all we can really see is little images of ourselves."

Ah, it's not really just the artists, is it? We all see ourselves everywhere. Or am I only saying that because that's the way it is for me, and for me, it's all about me? What about you? Are you like me?

"Entering September -- short pants strictly prohibited."

Please obey the law.

Zogby has McCain/Palin pulling ahead and men, not women, favoring Palin; and I offer a poll about that.

It's 49.7% to 45.9% for September 5-6. It was 47.1% (McCain/Palin) to 44.6% (Obama/Biden) for August 29-30.

I'm surprised how few voters are undecided (or for someone other the major party candidates): only 4.4%. But maybe people are shiftable, and claiming to be undecided just isn't as cool as it used to be. Maybe I should stop doing it! Ha ha. But I am undecided. I insist that the candidates woo me until the bitter end.

Now, an interesting thing is that the August 29-30 poll showed 8.3% undecided, which means that the conventions (or whatever else may have happened in the last few days) pushed 3.9% to take a position. If we were to assume that the change in the numbers represented only people moving out of the "others/not sure" category, then 2.6% went to McCain/Palin, and 1.3% went to Obama/Biden.

Another interesting thing is that the polls come out different if you ask the question using only the names of the presidential candidates, with McCain at 48.8% and Obama at 45.7% (and "others/not sure" at 5.5%). So it seems that Palin helps McCain much more than Biden helps Obama.

Zogby analyzes:

Clearly, Palin is helping the McCain ticket. She has high favorability numbers, and has unified the Republican Party. The striking thing here in this poll is that McCain has pulled ahead among Catholics by double-digits. On the other hand, Palin is not helping with likely voting women who are not aligned with either political party. The undecided independent women voters decreased this week from 15% to 7%, but those women went to Obama. Palin is also helping among men, conservatives, notably with suburban and rural voters, and with frequent Wal-Mart shoppers, who tend to be "values" voters who like a good value for their money.

Fascinating. It's the men who are going for Palin and women aren't buying it? Can we still accuse men of sexism -- if they're fine with women candidates, even excited about them, so long as they support traditional family values? Meanwhile, the women voters stay put and are not swayed by the mere sex of the candidate. I'm trying to speculate about which sex does better at analyzing the candidates without taking gender into account. You could say it's the women, because Palin didn't move them, but they may be taking Palin's sex into account and rejecting her because she isn't hewing to the usual women's rights issues or because they are discriminating against her because of sex. And you could say the men are being gender-neutral and what they like about Palin is not her sex but her good, old-fashioned conservatism.

Assuming it's true that it's men, not women, who are enthusiastically embracing Sarah Palin, why is it?
	Men love her womanly charms, and women are discriminating against her because of her sex.
	Men love her womanly charms, and women soberly judge her to be too conservative.
	Women are discriminating against her, and men soberly approve of her impressive conservatism.
	Both men and women are thinking rationally, but men are more conservative.
pollcode.com free polls

"This isn't about going into the coffee shop business and abandoning the library. There are people who really lament this change."

"But if we hadn't done it, we would have lost the users, the students."

Says Ken Frazier, the University of Wisconsin-Madison director of libraries.

He's talking about the College Library, in Helen C. White Hall.

College Library has long been considered a social space on campus, and librarians appear to be encouraging fraternization.

Meanwhile, there are only about 100 paper journals and magazines left in the library, where previously there were a thousand. Most of them are less academic and more focused on popular culture or current events, such as Bicycling or Time. Scholarly journals are still available, but they're housed at the more traditional Memorial Library or in digital form....

With the changes came more room for study and gathering spaces....

Are you a library traditionalists? Do you want everybody to shush?

You can still check out a book. Like this:


(Photo by pamela-o.)

ADDED: Libraries should be used for socializing. Books are sexually stimulating:

PAM: Oh, hi! I'm Pam. You must be Kramer. [Kramer is smitten with Pam and grins goofily.] Jerry's told me a lot about you. [Kramer continues grinning.] Well, I'm supposed to meet Jerry, it's my day off. I work in a bookstore.

KRAMER (mouths the words): Books. [Knocks over a bowl of fruit on the counter.]

...

KRAMER: She works in a book shop. Her name is Pam.

NEWMAN: "Pam." I don't know the woman, but she sounds quite fetching.

KRAMER: I can't even speak in front of her. [Sits down on the couch.]

NEWMAN: Jerry! What could she possibly see in Jerry? [Walks in front of Kramer and trips over his feet.]

KRAMER: She has delicate beauty.

NEWMAN: Jerry wouldn't know delicate beauty if it bludgeoned him over the head.

...

NEWMAN: With your looks and my words, we'll have built the perfect beast.

PAM: Oh, hi! Kramer.

NEWMAN (whispers through the bookcase): Hi. How are you?

KRAMER: Hi. How are you?

PAM: I'm great.

NEWMAN: I too am well.

KRAMER: I too am well.

NEWMAN: Do I smell Pantene?

KRAMER: Do I smell?

NEWMAN: Pantene!

KRAMER: Uh, Pantene.

PAM: Oh, my shampoo. Yeah, it is Pantene, I got a free sample in with my junk mail.

KRAMER (talks rapidly in an attempt to keep up with Newman): Well, there really is no junk-mail...well, everybody wants to get a check or a birthday card, but...

NEWMAN (frantic): ...it takes just as much man-power to deliver it as their precious little greeting cards...

KRAMER: Newman! [Elbows him through the books. Newman falls over.]

PAM: What?

KRAMER: Uh, human. It's...human to be moved by a fragrance.

PAM: That's so true.

KRAMER: Her bouquet cleaved his hardened...

NEWMAN: Shell.

KRAMER: ...shell. And fondled his muscled heart. He embibed her glistening spell...just before the other shoe...fell.

PAM: Kramer, that is so lovely.

KRAMER: It's by an unknown 20th-century poet.

PAM: Oh, what's his name?

KRAMER: Newman. [On the other side of the bookcase, Newman preens proudly.]

I hope you new college kids have many wonderful conversations through bookcases... or in IMs... or wherever...

Tony Mauro wants to remind people that Joe Biden has treated a few Supreme Court nominees a little shabbily.

He writes:

[Clarence Thomas] has less than fond memories of his treatment by Biden, who chaired his stormy 1991 hearing. In his 2007 memoir "My Grandfather's Son," Thomas recalls that Biden initially kept Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment against Thomas private. Before the firestorm began, Biden called him at home and said, "Judge, I know you don't believe me," but if the allegations come up, "I will be your biggest defender." Wrote Thomas, "He was right about one thing. I didn't believe him."

A bit more at the link. But it would be very easy to comb the old Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for loose talk that poured out of Joe Biden's mouth while an esteemed judge had to sit there and put up with it. I may go back and read the transcripts from the Reagan-Bush I era, but as for the the Roberts and Alito material, I've pre-blogged it, so let's see what I have.

There's this description, from Elisabeth Bumiller, of Biden at Day 2 of the Alito hearings:

"I understand, Judge, I am the only one standing between you and lunch, so I'll try to make this painless," he began, with some promise.

Mr. Biden then dived into a soliloquy on Judge Alito's failure to recuse himself from cases involving the Vanguard mutual fund company, which managed the judge's investments. After 2 minutes 50 seconds - short for the senator - Mr. Biden did appear to veer toward a question, but abandoned it to cite Judge Alito's membership in a conservative Princeton alumni group. Mr. Biden discoursed on that for a moment, then interrupted himself with an aside about his son who "ended up going to that other university, the University of Pennsylvania."

Judge Alito, who had been sitting without expression through Mr. Biden's musings, interrupted the senator midword, got out three sentences, then settled in for nearly 26 minutes more of Mr. Biden, with the senator doing most of the talking. With less than a minute to spare, Mr. Biden concluded, thanked Judge Alito for "being responsive," then said to Mr. Specter that "I want to note that for maybe the first time in history, Biden is 40 seconds under his time."

To which I said:

How appalling! And complimenting himself, in the third person, in the end, as if he's being charmingly self-deprecating?

There's this from Day 3 of the Roberts hearings:

Joe Biden is hamming it up big time, dramatizing the frustration of not getting Roberts to say how he'll decide specific cases. We've been through this so many times, but Biden seems to think that, if he just emotes more than the others, the American public will finally see the outrage of a judge not committing his vote before hearing the case. Yet every time Roberts explains why he won't answer, he sounds so eloquent and even inspiring about the role of the judge, that it ends up making the Senator look childish.

None of this Roberts-Alito material is anywhere near as awful as what happened to Thomas (and Robert Bork). Biden was just talking too much, in love with the sound of his own voice, and frankly, that let the nominees off the hook.

"He cheated... on her?!"

A fascinating photoset, but why do we imagine that if only one is beautiful enough -- or sufficiently more beautiful than the other -- the other won't cheat? I can think of at least 5 reasons why the opposite would be true:

1. The terribly beautiful partner's beauty may have had a bad effect on her (or his) personality, since people lavish attention on a beautiful person without expecting reciprocal warmth, so the less beautiful one strays into the arms of someone kinder, more interesting, or more sexually energetic.

2. The less beautiful one may feel less beautiful and inferior, undeserving of the prize, and need to go elsewhere to feel more comfortable and less pressured.

3. A person who marries a terribly beautiful person has demonstrated his attraction to terribly beautiful individuals, so why wouldn't he (or she) feel captivated by other beautiful women? That Billy Bob Thorton had Laura Dern didn't keep him from seeing and loving Angelina Jolie.

4. A less-good-looking person who has won admiration for his (or her) ability to stand next to someone very beautiful may want his ego stroked a second (or third) time by getting another beautiful person to do the same. The first one might seem like a fluke, but if he can get another, it will prove there is something truly amazing about him.

5. A person who marries someone very beautiful may be a very shallow person, attracted to surfaces and thus less likely to form the kind of bond to the soul of another that will be needed to keep the couple together when the novelty and heat of passion wear out, as they almost surely will.

Maureen Dowd, assuming Obama will lose because he didn't pick Hillary, pictures the great Hillary-Palin presidential debate in 2012.

It's like this:

PALIN: I’ve got a little news flash for you, Hillary. Your night-shift, blue-collar-waitress, boilermaker routine didn’t fool me. It’s in your polls but it’s in my D.N.A. I’ve actually been up at 3 a.m. — gutting moose. While you got to go to your snooty Wellesley, I had to switch colleges six times in six years. While you got to go to Yale Law, I had to enter beauty contests and turn my back to judges in a bathing suit to get scholarship money.

CLINTON: I’ve got a little news flash for you, Annie Oakley. Dinosaurs disappeared a lot longer than 4,000 years ago. I admit you’ve had a profound influence on America, and I’m not just talking about all the women wearing up-dos and rimless titanium $375 Kazuo Kawasaki designer frames. You and John are now at war with four countries — Russia, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, even as Osama bin Laden has opened a storefront in a strip mall in Pakistan to make TV ads.

(I added those links.)

Does Dowd's comic vision of the 2012 debate amuse you? Maybe not, but I think the picture of Hillary versus Sarah in 2012 is compelling. That could happen.

Meanwhile, we have the little preview of that scenario as Obama attempts to dispatch Hillary as his female surrogate to attack Palin, which is a dubious strategy. Will Hillary fight for Obama with enough vigor to make Democrats believe she's the one to go up against Vice President Palin in 2012? Maybe she'll fight harder for Obama if she thinks that question is about to come up. Fight well, but how do you fight just well enough?

What the women wore on the convention stages.

Robin Givhan observes the fashions of various political women:

It is not sexist to have noticed that Sen. Hillary Clinton delivered her convention speech dressed in head-to-toe mango. Only an obstinately unaware person would have ignored this question: Senator, why are you dressed like a tropical fruit? One assumes it was to ensure an eye-catching photo for the history books and to underscore her "sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits" legacy.

But what about the potential first ladies?

The first lady serves as a reflection of her husband's administration and of womanhood, and one suspects that when there is a first gentleman, he will bear the burden of epitomizing an ideal of manhood and will be forced to wrestle with accusations that he is too much of a metrosexual, a dandy, a he-man or a wimp. Almost certainly, we will obsess about his ties.

When Cindy McCain made her first appearance at the Republican National Convention, she was wearing a buttercup-yellow shirt dress with a flipped-up collar by Seventh Avenue designer Oscar de la Renta. As is the current fashion, the dress looked as though the designer had found some inspiration in the early 1960s world of "Mad Men." It was feminine, reserved and lovely. Ballpark price for a de la Renta dress: $3,000.

I loved that dress. It is the most distinctive thing any political woman has worn this year. I read some bitching on the liberal blogs about how her outfit cost $300,000, but nearly all of that was the cost of some diamond jewelry. It wasn't a $300,000 dress. But you know, that dress was historically beautiful. And I suppose it's worth $300,000 now. The "off-the-shoulder, ink-blue velvet dinner dress that the Princess of Wales wore when she danced at the White House with John Travolta sold for $222,500" in 1997 (before the princess died).

De la Renta also designed the inaugural gowns worn by Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush and that cream-colored suit Laura Bush wore when she stood next to Cindy McCain at the convention, Givhan notes, pronouncing the Republicans "status quo." Meanwhile, when Michelle joined Barack Obama on the stage, she was "wearing a raspberry, lavender and black print silk dress by American designer Thakoon Panichgul," who is not a heavily established designer:

The dress, with its slim bodice and A-line skirt, came from his 2009 resort collection... [T]he Thakoon dress... was too informal and failed to reflect the significance of the occasion. And with that fabric belt hanging down the back, it resembled a child's special-occasion frock rather than something suitable for a sophisticated 44-year-old. The flats reinforced the tea-party aesthetic

Oops. So we want change... but what kind of change? A change might be for the worse. There's a reason why the status quo is status quo.

If you're a SiteMeter junkie like I am...

You'll be interested to know that SiteMeter -- yes, it's SiteMeter, not Site Meter or Sitemeter -- is shifting to a new platform next weekend.

Following the Migration all Premium Accounts will only pay one flat fee of $6.95 a month or $59.00 a year. This applies to new signups and current paid accounts going forward.

This is great news. The current fee structure was based on traffic levels, and I've been paying about $30 a month and expecting to see an increase with recent (election-based) rise traffic. I love the expanded statistics I get with the premium account, especially this page, which shows the websites readers are coming from. I also like -- and sometimes screen-capture and blog about -- this page, which shows the search terms that bring people here. There are always funny things. The terms are listed in alphabetical order, and there's always something in the section beginning with the word "why" that cracks me up.

For example, right now, there's "why does my dog seem mean when im high." I can click on it and get to the search page and see what post of mine was found and where my post ranked in the search. This page of mine came up on the first page of the poignant search that had some poor soul wondering, perhaps, whether his drug use was distorting his perception of the dog or whether the dog was pissed at him for getting high or -- why not? -- whether the drugs are enhancing his perceptions and the dog actually is mean. Of course, my blog post -- about Barack Obama's statement of belief that he has "the right temperament for the presidency" -- is not going to answer the question. There's nothing in the post about drugs: Obama uses the word "high" to refer to feelings of elation. And there's nothing in the post about dogs -- except one commenter's "Temperament. That's a quality dog breeders emphasize."

At one point, I decided I was paying too much for this information and downgraded to the free basic service, but within a few days I was back. I am hooked on the stuff. (Why does my dog seem mean when I smoke too much SiteMeter?) Suffice it to say, I'm happy with the new low price.

Visit Counts will likely be higher

We have now added the ability to track visits using cookies, this allows SiteMeter to distinguish unique visitors far more accurately than on the old (current) platform. For example, in an office building with internet users sitting behind one IP address the old (current) platform would maybe be able to detect unique visitors about half the time. Using the cookie system it’s nearly 100% accurate.

More traffic. Cool.

For those using our Free service with large volumes of visit traffic your visit counts may be lower. Our new platform offers unlimited capacity on visit records which no longer affects visit counts. (for more information on this see http://weblog.sitemeter.com/2007/10/05/sitemeter-visit-tracking-explained/)

Huh? So my traffic would have been higher under the free service? I don't like seeing that, but it only relates to the past. As for the future, it will be interesting to see the reshuffling of traffic statistic as some blogs will see a boost in their numbers and others a reduction.

So that's the SiteMeter news.

"The question is, will Mrs. Clinton fight Ms. Palin to help her former rival, Mr. Obama?"

Patrick Healy asks:

Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Palin have little in common beyond their breakout performances at the conventions and the soap opera aspects of their family lives. Mrs. Clinton always faces high expectations; Ms. Palin faced low expectations this week, and benefited from them. Mrs. Clinton can seem harsh when she goes on the attack; Ms. Palin has shown a knack for attacking without seeming nasty. Mrs. Clinton has a lot of experience; Ms. Palin, not so much. Mrs. Clinton is pantsuits; Ms. Palin is skirts.

Some Republican delegates in St. Paul saw starker differences.

“Sarah’s smile is sincere, which I never felt from Hillary, who has anger and resentment in her eyes,” said Ann Schmuecker, a delegate from Mountain Home, Arkansas, where she met the Clintons decades ago.

(Song cue.)

But Palin may appeal to the "white working women with children living in the exurbs and in rural parts of battleground states" who stuck by Hillary in the primaries. Obama may look to Hillary to try to deliver those voters to him, but then the question is: Does she want to?

Some of her aides note with a hint of resentment that Mr. Obama did not pick her as his running mate; he did not even vet her fully.

Fully? I thought he didn't vet her at all!

Plus, they add, her fall calendar also includes campaigning for Senate Democratic candidates, not just for Mr. Obama.

Ha ha, yeah. She's too busy!

“Let me tell you something,” said Luanne Van Werven, a Republican delegate from Lynden, Wash., as the convention closed late Thursday night. “I secretly think Hillary loves Sarah Palin.”

Oh, is sisterhood powerful all of a sudden? No. It's just that Hillary may want Obama to lose so she can run for 2012.

ADDED: In the comments, some people are making something of the NYT's use of different honorifics for Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. Why is it Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Palin? The NYT is following a longstanding neutral rule:

The use of “Mrs.” is appropriate whenever a woman prefers it. It isn’t our choice, yours or mine; it is hers. Our style rule calls for us to use "Ms." in subsequent references to a woman unless she prefers "Miss" or "Mrs." and reporters are told that they should ask for the woman’s preference. That holds for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as well as other women (in her case, of course, "Senator" is also an option in subsequent references).

Hillary Clinton is one of those women who asked to be called Mrs.:

THE sign outside Nancy Pelosi's office bears the mark of her feminist roots: it identifies her as "Ms. Pelosi," using the honorific created half a century ago to give women an alternative to disclosing their marital status.

But mostly Mrs. Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, goes by just that — Mrs. Pelosi.

Across the Capitol, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, is referred to as Mrs. Clinton at every roll call. Yet the women in the Senate are split: seven use Mrs., but the other six go by Ms., including three who are married: Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine; Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana; and Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan.

Now, you can analyze the personality or the political strategy of various women as they decide whether to overcome the default and ask to be called "Mrs." (or "Miss"), but put aside your theories about New York Times bias.

"According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used..."

Incredibly weakly sourced anti-Palin crap. (Via Memeorandum.)

But being openly racist is only the tip of the Palin iceberg. According to Alaskans interviewed for this article, she is also vindictive and mean. We’re talking Rove mean and Nixon vindictive.

"Everybody's talking about change now."

Obama's all: John McCain is stealing my meme:



That's today in Terre Haute, Indiana.

ADDED: Everybody's talking about Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism, this-ism, That-ism, is-m, is-m, is-m...

What if you could play like this...

... but only while doing this with your face:



AND: Then there's this:

"3 times in 2 weeks, political speeches were watched by more people than the 'American Idol' finale..."

... or the Academy Awards or opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

We were tuning in like crazy not just for the big new celebrities, Obama and Palin, but even for crusty old John McCain, who, we know, isn't a good speechmaker.

Have we gone mad?

ADDED: Obviously, the election is important, but we aren't voting for best speechmaker. Why are we suddenly so interested in listening to speeches? Isn't that sort of a 19th century form of entertainment? Anyway, observing the trend, I want to propose a new TV show: "American Orator."

"Give me a signal: Adjust your shorts."

It's the commercial that is mystifying and horrifying everyone.

IN THE COMMENTS: Scrutineer says:

One doesn't dissect a Vorshtein.

Choice.

Link.

[I've replaced the embed, which I think is playing havoc with some browsers.]

Regretflix, regretstuff.

Netflix rentals that sit there for months. What were you thinking when you ordered them? That you're the kind of person who watches movies like that? But you're not so why did you get yourself into the situation where a little piece of plastic has invaded your house and taunts you for not being the person you think you should be? Or do you like to be reminded of your lofty aspirations... by objects in your house? There are many worse things you might have around than an unwatched copy of "Hotel Rwanda."

Topics for discussion:

1. What rented movies do you have in the house? How are they making you feel? Do you keep misjudging what kind of person you are? Do you want to become that person or do you think you ought to sharpen up your perception of who you are and rent the movies that person likes to watch? Should you feel worse about not being the kind of person who watches "Hotel Rwanda" or worse about being the kind of person who lacks sharp enough self-perception to know you're not the kind of person who watches "Hotel Rwanda"?

2. Would you feel better if you hadn't rented, if you'd bought the film -- I note my instinctive shift to the term "film" -- and put it on a shelf in a nice bookcase, where it would be part of your "library"? The issue of returning it would cease to exist, and you could think of yourself as the kind of person who has that film in his library. It would be more like all those books you've bought. Or do all those books you've bought and not read taunt you? Are you reading on line now all the time and free of regret because you never remember the pages you've clicked away from, the tabs you never went back to, and the links you might have clicked?

3. What else do you have in your house that is preying on your mind like borrowed or purchased movies and books that you haven't watched/read? Clothes in a size you think you might wear again or with an image that never seems like the way you feel today? Sporting and exercise equipment? Music recordings? (You should like jazz and classical, shouldn't you?) Fresh fruits and vegetables that at least have the decency to decay into a form that forces you to oust them from the premises. Dying plants. And then we slide into the category of things that won't let you stop at mere regret if you fail to turn your attention their way. Those pets. The human beings you live with. No, perish the thought. You're not even allowed to think that you regret bringing them into your house. Your regretspace.

CORRECTED TEXT: Indicated by boldface, above.

The artistic qualities of this McCain ad completely distracted me from whatever words were spoken or shown.

Watching this ad was a strange experience for me. I clicked on the teaser at Politico, so I knew "'Temple' ad mocks Obama's stage," and I'd already decided I was going to watch it, so.... Well, you try to watch it:



Was your experience like mine? I was fascinated by the photographic effects in the beginning, the changing of the image to remove the crowd, and the way the "camera" pulled back from the stage. Then, before other images took over, I fell into a deep contemplation of the music: Was it from (one of my favorite movies) "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control" or some other Errol Morris movie or was it simply music in the style of a sountrack in an Errol Morris movie? Could Errol Morris be making commercials for John McCain? If so, is he only in it for the money, does he actually support John McCain, or does he support Obama and somehow know how to hypnotize us so we cannot concentrate on the overt message, which is what happened to me?

In the end of the ad we are snapped out of it by the cheesy electronic music -- da da da da da da da da -- that ends most McCain commercials. So now that I've come to my senses, let me watch a second time. Okay, I've read the on-screen words and heard the concerned voiceover lady tell me Obama is "not ready to lead." But once again, I was struck by the artistry of the images and the music.

Oh, suddenly the irony of it all hits me. What I think about the ad is what the ad is trying to say about Obama! The style is fabulous, but what, really, is the content?

Surprising fact.

Today, I signed up for home delivery of the NYT.

A big crowd in Cedarburg, Wisconsin for McCain and Palin today.

Photo by Gary Porter. Click here for the full size and to see the rest of the slide show. Here's the story in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

And here's the blog post by Headless Blogger -- who commented on my earlier post to say he'd gone to Cedarburg. Despite arriving some time after 9 for the 11:30 event -- an outdoor event -- he couldn't get anywhere near the stage. But he did try to figure out whether the women he saw were trying to wear their hair in the style of Sarah Palin.

Another commenter on the earlier post, M.E., said:

Headless Blogger, I was there, too! We arrived just before 10 and gave up on the line as it was easily a half-mile long, maybe more. However, we hung around an intersection a block or so from the rally site, and managed to see the motorcade go by.

... I think McCain has a *chance* at Wisconsin. Without Palin, nothing, but with her ... anything is possible.

However, Bush spent lots of time here in 2000 and 2004 and never got Wisconsin to flip to red. We're blue-purple at best.

I like the small-town America backdrop they got at that intersection in Cedarburg, with a good-looking compressed crowd. Tough luck, though, for the folks who tried and couldn't get near McCain and Palin.

AND: One more story of trying and failing to get into the happening intersection in Cedarburg:

We walked for blocks and blocks trying to try to find the end of the line, yet as far as we walked, we could only see blocks of people stretching before us. The line curved all the way around the downtown Cedarburg area; it was easily over half a mile long but I couldn't see the end, so who knows? Could have been a mile.

"Being read your death sentence is like being a character in one of the old Bette Davis movies."

Bob Novak tells the story of learning about his huge brain tumor and his approximately 6 months left to live.

Here's the movie:



AND: Keep your eyes peeled at 6:06 for a special cameo.

"Evolutionists Flock To Darwin-Shaped Wall Stain."

"My view is that the GOP is now like Wile E Coyote about half a mile off the cliff suspended in mid-air."

That's Andrew Sullivan purporting to explain that new Rasmussen poll that shows Sarah Palin as more popular than either Obama or McCain.

Oh, really? I was picturing something more like this?



And don't be telling me my tags are redundant.

IN THE COMMENTS: Seven Machos says:

Wile E. Coyote is really the perfect metaphor for American liberal elites. In the few cartoons where he speaks, he has this scholarly voice. We find out that he is a sooper-jeanyus. He makes these grand plans and spends vast amounts of money and time bringing them together in order to solve this unsolvable problem. Sadly, the hilarious cartoon laws of unintended consequences always destroy his schemes.

Ha ha. I found one. You're right about the voice (although in this one he's only explaining why he cares so much about catching the Roadrunner).

It's the new Bloggingheads with me and Jane Hamsher.

Here's the whole thing:



The segments are:

Jane reports on the two conventions’ different vibes (04:56)
How America’s obsession with image helps Palin (06:49)
Can pro-life Palin win over Hillary’s voters? (07:14)
Ann accuses liberals of anti-feminist attacks on Palin (05:29)
Jane vs. Ann on prosecuting Bush (11:42)
So who’s gonna win this thing? (04:55)

"Jane vs. Ann on prosecuting Bush" is the hottest part.



I'm especially interested in your comments on that.

They titled this one "Palin Fire," for those think there hasn't been enough wordplay using the Palin name and allusions to Nabokov.

McCain and Palin make their first campaign stop as official nominees in Wisconsin.

Hey, they care about Wisconsin! The rally is at 10:30 a.m., at the main intersection in Cedarburg. Look, I mapped it for Madisonians:


View Larger Map

ADDED: If I'd hopped in my car when I wrote this, I could have gotten there in time. Could have taken some photographs. But I didn't. So don't be expecting that. I have obligations in Madison.

"Obama to Dispatch Female Surrogates" -- that NYT headline I flagged last night -- is now: "Obama Camp Turns to Clinton to Counter Palin."

I was struck, in the midst of my convention live-blogging, that the NYT had such an Obama-unfriendly headline. But now, they've friendlied it up. The original headline, "Obama to Dispatch Female Surrogates," put a picture in my head of Obama releasing an army of programmed fembots.



The new headline, "Obama Camp Turns to Clinton to Counter Palin," flips the image. It's not Obama, but the Obama camp -- a large, faceless group -- and now it's not a large, faceless group of women, but one particular woman, Hillary. Don't pin anything directly on Obama, and don't disrespect women by portraying them as nonindividuals.

And so suddenly, Hillary is the anti-Palin.

Hillary Is... the Palinator.



[ADDED: The image above, pointed to in the comments by Palladian, after I said: Kisses to the reader who Photoshops an image for that. Also, in the comments, was Ruth Anne's invitation: "And while you're photoshopping: Put a buff Sarah Connor body under the Sarah Palin face. No, wait. She's already done that herself."]

So now, let's read beyond the headlines:

Senator Barack Obama will increasingly lean on prominent Democratic women to undercut Gov. Sarah Palin and Senator John McCain, dispatching Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to Florida on Monday and bolstering his plan to deploy female surrogates to battleground states, Obama advisers said Thursday....

With the McCain-Palin team courting undecided female voters, including some who backed Mrs. Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Obama aides said they were counting on not only Mrs. Clinton but also Democratic female governors to rebut Ms. Palin — and, by extension, Mr. McCain. Those governors include Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas.

Another poll:

Which headline was more accurate, and why did the NYT switch to the second headline?
	The first. Changed because it was unfriendly to Obama.
	The first. And websites change these things to add excitement or to balance with other headlines.
	The second. Changed for accuracy.
	The second. But websites just vary the headlines for excitement or balance.
pollcode.com free polls

A very cool, spherically scrollable, panorama of the convention hall.

Lovely!

Obama and McCain tied in a new poll. I attribute that to the attacks on Palin, not the Palin choice per se. And why I haven't been submitted to polls.

Barack Obama and John McCain are now tied, at 42%, according to a CBS News poll taken over the last 3 days. CBS had the race at 48-40 in a poll conducted over the last weekend. Presumably, Palinosity infuses the new results. Yet why didn't it have more effect in that 48-40 poll? Maybe it's not Palin per se, but the attacks on Palin that fired up the support.

Can it be that people really respond to women when they are attacked? It seemed that way with Hillary. Clue to McCain opponents: Be gracious and kind as you undermine confidence in her qualifications and judgments. If you can.

But you can't. Not because you are bastards, but because there are too many different people speaking, and the graciously kind approach will never be adopted across the board. I think Barack Obama himself immediately adopted the graciously kind attitude -- which shows good judgment on his part -- but he's powerless to stop the nastier people from being nasty.

And some will say that's the way he likes it. He can pose above the fray while others do the dirty work. We'll never know what he really thinks, but presumably he likes what works, and ugly attacks on Palin don't seem to be working. Or do you think they just aren't working yet.

By the way, do you believe these polls? Are you getting polled? I must say that I've been getting phone calls every day from people who tell me they are doing a survey. I haven't submitted to a poll yet. Why not? Because the people who call have that terribly weary voice that I've been responding to for years with a reflexive "I'm not interested." If the voice sounded alert and sharp, I'd do a poll, but I instinctively cut off anyone who talks to me in that spam call voice.

A poll about polls:

Do you submit to the phone pollers?
	Yes. I want my opinion recorded.
	Yes. The pollers inspire my compliance.
	No. I want to withhold my opinion.
	No. Like Althouse, I can't stand to talk to those people.
pollcode.com free polls

Another Madison murder.

The Wisconsin State Journal:

A late-night fatal stabbing outside a State Street-area bar Wednesday comes at a time when Madison police have beefed up their presence to combat a wave of alcohol-fueled crime that has Downtown residents and UW-Madison students on edge.

The latest incident — Madison's sixth murder of the year — claimed the life of Juan J. Bernal, 22, of Madison. Police said Bernal was not a student.

Madison police responded to an area outside the Plaza Tavern and Grill, 319 N. Henry St., around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday after a report of a stabbing and later arrested Justin R. Stout, 31, of Madison....

Plaza Tavern owner Dean Hetue said his staff told him the two arrested men left the bar, then waited outside for Bernal. He was stabbed right outside the bar's front door after he came out to have a cigarette, Hetue said....

The Plaza Tavern is in an area including State Street where Madison police have launched an effort to control alcohol-related crime and disorder. The Downtown Safety Initiative, which began this spring, employs officers working overtime in targeted areas on selected Friday and Saturday nights to patrol the vibrant State Street area, which draws a sometimes-volatile mixture of drunken students, the homeless and criminals seeking easy prey.

The program was developed in response to an increase in violent street crime Downtown, including a disturbing pattern of weekend bar-time muggings of male college students in the spring of 2006 and the murder the following year of UW-Whitewater student Kelly Nolan, 22. Nolan disappeared after she left a State Street bar in June 2007. Her body was found about three weeks later south of Madison in the town of Dunn.

Madison Police Capt. Mary Schauf said there were no extra officers on duty Wednesday night because "Wednesday night is not one of the nights that's normally targeted for extra resources."

So what do you think, Madison people? Are the police doing enough? I'm not swallowing the it was Wednesday excuse.

Live-blogging night 4 of the Republican Convention.

5:38 Central Time: Just setting up the post, so you'll know I'm going to do this again. Don't expect much for another 2 hours.

6:44: I just recorded a new Bloggingheads, with lots of talk about the convention. Now, I have the time to watch some things. Pawlenty is coming up in the next hour. Brownback. Hmmm.

7:07: Barack Obama gives a good speech, but the best sermons are lived, says Tim Pawlenty. He's trying to get the chant going: "John McCain put our country first." That was a little cheesy. Ah, but it didn't last long.

7:24: Brownback calls McCain "a history maker and a history breaker." That sounds like a line for the Steve Carrell character on "The Office."

8:01: Lindsey Graham says that everyone knows the surge is working. "The only people who deny it are Barack Obama and his buddies at MoveOn.org." Why? Because the Obama campaign is built on losing in Iraq, Graham says. McCain pushed for the surge, pushed against Republicans. It was unpopular. "Some said it was political suicide." John McCain "stopped the Democratic Party from losing this war." Strong stuff. Excellently delivered.

8:10: A little film about Sarah Palin. Co-maverick. "When Alaska's maverick joined America's maverick, the world shook." Some lovely pictures of people and landscapes. I especially enjoyed the shot of shelves of cut up fish meat to illustrate "hard work."

8:23: "It's not about talking pretty; it's about talking straight," says Tom Ridge, putting a lot of effort into sounding tough. "Let's call this maverick forward."

8:35: A nice film about Cindy McCain. Good works. Loving mom. And.... drift racing!

8:43: Cindy is speaking. She says we feel Abraham Lincoln's hand tapping us on the shoulder, then pauses, and it takes way too long for the crowd to pick up the applause cue. She makes a nice contrast -- a good liberal/conservative contrast -- between being concerned about what people in other countries will think and being concerned about what our forefathers would think.

9:02: "Obama to Dispatch Female Surrogates" -- NYT headline.

9:04: Excellent film presentation of the story of John McCain. Most notable is the idea that he survived the Forrestal fire because there was a plan -- God isn't named outright -- for him to do something more. Nice but intimidating contributions from Mother McCain.

9:17: McCain's speech. It feels rote sometimes and has an actorly passion sometimes. "I hate war," woke me from one of my dozes. "I've never lived a day, in good times or bad, that I didn't thank God for the privilege.... I was blessed by misfortune." The speech felt very long and had its ups and downs. After many diverse phrases, he got it together over the idea of service and the slogan "Country First." He spoke clearly and well about his early life, as a cocky selfish man, and his transition to a man in love with his country. Now, I'm watching the final waving, with the family and Sarah Palin. Where are the balloons? I obsess over the balloons. What if they never fall? Obviously, there is a huge balloon snafu. Finally, balloons. Why were balloons important? Ah, why is a speech important? The big idea is John McCain's life, and somewhere along the way tonight that point was made. It was made over and over. It's now for us to decide if we want this man to lead us for the next 4 years.

"51% Say Reporters Are Trying To Hurt Palin; 39% Say She Has Better Experience Than Obama."

Rasmussen polls. And 52% had a favorable opinion of Palin before her speech last night.

Eighty percent (80%) of Republicans say reporters are trying to hurt the GOP vice presidential nominee, and 28% of Democrats agree. Only six percent (6%) of Republicans – and even fewer Democrats (4%)– think the reporting is intended to help her. Most Democrats (57%) think the reporters are being unbiased, but just nine percent (9%) of Republicans concur.

Among unaffiliated voters, 49% say reporters are trying to hurt Palin, while 32% say their coverage is unbiased. Only five percent (5%) say reporters are trying to help her.

I love that people are so skeptical about journalism.

Here, let me do some (unscientific) polling:

Do you think reporters are trying to hurt Palin?
	Yes.
	No.
pollcode.com free polls

Does press bias backfire?
	Yes, people perceive it and react against it.
	No, people either don't perceive it or perceive it and go along with it or ignore it.
pollcode.com free polls

David Axelrod on Sarah Palin: "For someone who makes the point that she is not from Washington, she looks like she would fit in very well there."

Politico reports:

“She is deft at going on the attack. For someone who makes the point that she is not from Washington, she looks like she would fit in very well there,” Axelrod told reporters on the campaign plane in Pittsburgh, Pa. “These attacks all felt very familiar to Americans who are used to this kind of thing from Washington.”

Axelrod said her speech was riddled with distortions.

“Right down the line,” he said. “She tried to attack Obama by saying he had no significant legislative accomplishments – maybe that’s what she was told – but she should talk to Sen. Lugar, talk to Sen. Coburn, talk to people across the aisle in Illinois where he passed dozens of major laws to expand health care reform welfare, reduce taxes on working families. So I think she had an assignment and she went out and she discharged it.”

She's an automaton, programmed to carry out a mission. Possibly raised hydroponically by Karl Rove in a basement in the White House.

By the way, I keep hearing that Obama has executive experience qualifying him to run for the presidency in that he has run a campaign for the presidency. Does that mean Axelrod -- and Rove -- could run for President? I mean, isn't Axelrod really the brain behind it all?

He founded a political consultancy and soon made his mark running the re-election campaign of Chicago's first African-American mayor, Harold Washington. He has since done work for clients ranging from the current mayor, Richard M Daley, to presidential hopefuls John Edwards and Hillary Clinton. But the Washington campaign proved a template for helping other African-American mayoral candidates, leading one commentator early in the Obama campaign to remark that Axelrod had 'developed something of a novel niche for a political consultant - helping black politicians convince white supporters to support them'.

Yet in Obama, almost from the moment they met, Axelrod seemed to sense something on a far grander scale: a potential for what he described to friends as a 'historic' agent for change in American politics on the scale of the hero he had seen as a five-year-old. He helped to run Obama's campaign for the US Senate in 2004 and was also credited with helping to craft the powerful Democratic convention speech in July 2004 that put him squarely on the national political stage.

"This woman is an Obama-level political natural."

Says Megan McArdle. Indeed.

It's like some bizarre nightmare/dream (depending on your party preference). The Dems had Obama, and then... suddenly Sarah.

It's as if some mad right-wing scientists designed and built an android to counter all the things that Obama is. Can she be real? Can it be that there was this actual human entity, on ice in Alaska, waiting for this moment to be thawed out and set loose in the lower 48?

IN THE COMMENTS: Simon:

Ann, remember Jon Turley's line about John Roberts et fam. at the 7th Circuit Bar meeting last year? "Hydroponically raised by Karl Rove in the White House basement" or something to that effect.

Good memory. Here's Turley:

Roberts is a handsome, perfectly groomed man who looks like he was raised hydroponically by Karl Rove in the White House basement.

"Many will find it ironic to read Peggy Noonan — who was Ronald Reagan's speechwriter – claiming that Republicans are not very good at The Narrative.

"George Lakoff made a name for himself as a political commentator by expressing, at length, a contrary view."

Nice discussion, by Mark Liberman, of Peggy Noonan's open mike confession.

(And yes, it irks me that Mark spells it "mic." A lot.)

"She seems like a real fighter, someone who would stick it to the lobbyist and special-interest groups that have run ramped in Washington."

Writes one of the Detroit Free Press readers who are weighing in on Sarah Palin's speech:

Originally, I was a not too happy about McCain’s choice for a running mate, Sarah Palin … However, after her speech tonight I am beginning to see her in a different light. She seems like a real fighter, someone who would stick it to the lobbyist and special-interest groups that have run ramped in Washington. Her perspective between Obama and McCain was brilliant. … Palin hit it on the nail, the Democratic Party is about big government and high taxes. McCain has walked the walk on change while Obama has to date only talked the talk about change.

Hey, somebody notify Language Log! "Run ramped" is a fabulous eggcorn -- "a kind of word creation due to a mishearing that a glance at the written form would normally have corrected." The writer obviously meant "run rampant."

I love the association with the vogue use of the phrase "ramped up," which William Safire wrote about in his "On Language" column here:

Who is there to restrain this kudzulike growth of ramp, up and down? A myriad of readers (including those who prefer the adjective form, as in ''myriad readers'') have urged this department to take to the ramparts. In Old French, ramper was ''to creep or crawl.'' Its first appearance in English was in a 1390 poem: ''A litel Serpent on the ground, Which rampeth al aboute round.'' Three centuries later, John Milton contributed to its meaning of crawling upward: ''Surely the Prelates would have Saint Pauls words rampe one over another, as they use to clime into their Livings and Bishopricks.'' Shakespeare's contemporary Ben Jonson used it to lead off the couplet that has become the epitome of realism: ''Ramp up my genius, be not retrograde; But boldly nominate a spade a spade.''

Now, now, Ben Jonson wasn't talking about Obama, and I didn't read that part of the paragraph until after I pasted it in. I'm just interested in this word-root "ramp" and its present-day manifestations "ramp up" and "rampant" and how they converged in that eggcorn."Rampant" denotes a virulent growth, while "ramp" mostly refers to rising up. Not really that different, but "run ramped" seems like something from the 16th century.

Republicans for Obama.

Let's talk about the dangerous, lurking issue of "card check."

"Several moderate-Democrat friends of mine have been emailing--few if any would ever vote for McCain--but all agree that Palin was very strong."

Writes TNR's Michael Crowley, adding that "[t]he more liberal among them are a little panicked."

Crowley also talks about how "negative" she was, which he "completely misjudged," which makes me wonder why he made the judgment he did. Because Sarah Palin is female? Because she's a socially conservative female?

Her lines about Obama were brutally cutting and possibly over the top in places.

When a man agonizes that a woman is "brutally cutting," I reach for my Freud text.

IN THE COMMENTS: Doyle writes:

It was definitely well-executed, but I thought the speech was too sarcastic.

Oh, yes, sarcastic. That reminds me. I saw Paul Begala on some morning show and he was using that word. He said that Palin was excellent when she was telling her life story, but then when she got into the criticisms of Barack Obama, she was sarcastic, and that wasn't good.

Step back, little lady. Be good. Be nice. Tell us about your children and what you like to cook for dinner and how much you love your hubby.

Grrrr... my feminist blood boils.

Biden says a President Obama might pursue criminal charges against George Bush.

Now, this is loose talk from Biden, saying the one thing which, if I believed it, would force me to vote for McCain.

Please follow up with Obama himself, because I'd really like to know. Oh, and when you're asking Obama this question, please needle him with the Eagleton scenario, because that's the way they talk about McCain and Palin, and I like to see good turnabout.

ADDED: The linked article quotes what Obama said on the subject a while back:

"[I]n April, [Obama] vow[ed] that if elected, he would ask his attorney general to initiate a prompt review of Bush-era actions to distinguish between possible "genuine crimes" and "really bad policies".

"[I]f crimes have been committed, they should be investigated," Obama told the Philadelphia Daily News. "You're also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we've got too many problems we've got to solve."

That's different from pursuing Bush specifically. I can't believe Obama would want his administration consumed with the past and all about Bush. I know I don't want that. But then, I voted for Gerald Ford, long ago. (And I was the kind of person who voted for Jimmy Carter in 1980... and Mondale and Dukakis and Bill Clinton, twice, and Al Gore.)

ADDED: And McGovern.

AND: Please understand that my opinion here is not just about the advisability of pursuing criminal charges against a former President. This goes to the more general question of judgment. I will not trust the presidency in the hands of a person who thinks this way.

IN THE COMMENTS: Of Biden's idea, Joe says:

This is banana republic material.

Palladian quips:

Let's hope Biden and Obama slip on the rhetorical peel and go down in a hilarious pratfall before they're elected.

AND: Here's the video:

I love the first part where he inanely lectures us about the word "estoppel." I guess the Obama campaign has decided to go with the law professor vibe. But Senator Biden, I am a law professor. I work with law professors. Law professors are friends of mine. Senator, you're no law professor.

"First of all, I don’t know the governor. There’s no reason not to respect her and I believe she’s qualified to be the vice president."

That's what Joe Biden said.

At first, I was all oops -- Biden's putting his foot in his mouth again.

And then, it was more oh, yeah, right.

Sarah Palin was forced to give half of her speech from memory, without the use of the Teleprompter.

Or that's the word from the McCain campaign. The same thing, they say, also happened to Giuliani. Both had to rely on memory and improvisation.

Now, who can say whether that's really true? Yes, they both deviated from the text that was sent out to the press. But it would be so easy -- easier than faking a pregnancy -- to send out one speech and load a slightly different one into the teleprompter and then lie about it.

Given the virulent meme about how Obama can't speak when he's off the teleprompter, it would be delightfully useful to get people to think Sarah Palin does brilliantly well without the device, even when she's under the highest pressure, when the stakes are highest, and when the need to go without it is a sudden surprise. It proves she's smart and able to deal with a crisis. It flaunts intimidating superpowers.

What's with these stories of unverifiable wondrous feats?

I want a DNA test.

AND: There's obviously a conspiracy theory available in the other direction. Was Sarah sabotaged?

Highlights of last night's Sarah Palin speech.

Did it seem to as though Sarah Palin "came out of nowhere"?

Look how much VP buzz there was about her long before last Friday.

Now, blogs have Facebook pages.

Come join mine.

Now, what's the right way to fix a baby's hair?

So what did you think of Sarah Palin?

A new thread, so you aren't buried down in the 600s in the comments on that last post. But stay on the precise topic to belong under this heading. The issue is only: How did she do?

IN THE COMMENTS: Revenant saiD"

From now on, when a Democrat says "But what if McCain drops dead on his first day in office?!?!?!" I'm going to say "dude -- don't tease me like that."

Prosecutorial Indiscretion said:

The response from the left tells us all we need to know: "You know someone else wrote that speech, right?"

When that's all you have, you don't have much. The speech was awesome, Palin is awesome, and there is palpable fear from the left as they realize that the woman they denigrated as a backwoods PTA mom is going to give them all kinds of hell for the next two months with a big and sincere smile on her face.

john(classic) said:

Given all the slime thrown at her over the last 5 days, I feel like I just watched one of those action films where the hero disappears in debris, smoke, and a roar, the music pauses, and the hero steps forward out of the smoke, samurai sword slung over his shoulder. The music swells.

But I gotta get used to saying "heroine."

Beldar said:

First-inning grand-slam.

By the vice presidential debate, they may have Biden fake illness, give her an intentional walk. She's going to kill them at every single at-bat.

Well, speaking of fake illness, maybe Biden is so ill, he needs to step down. You know, he's reminds me so much of Eagleton. (Just reversing that idiotically insincere Eagleton meme.)

Dark Eden said:

One word: Thatcher

Live-blogging night 3 -- Sarah Palin alert! -- of the Republican Convention.

5:43 Central Time: I'm just setting this up so you can get started talking and to let you know that I'll be here -- on what is obviously a very exciting night.

7:48: I'm just settling in for some serious blogging, and the first thing I notice is this open mike eavesdropping on Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan. Peggy: "The most qualified? No! I think they went for this -- excuse me-- political bullshit about narratives... Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it."

8:11: It's Mitt Romney. He's got a peppy, plastic style. It's hammy in a way that might work from farther back in the room. Down with the "eastern elites"! It's time for sun to rise in the west -- in Arizona and Alaska. Now, he's getting an audience chant going: "It's liberal!" "We need change all right. Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington." Liberals don't understand business. They grow government and dependency. It's "death to initiative." Fight dependency "like the poison it is." "It's time for the party of big ideas, not the party of Big Brother." He does a pretty good job of sharpening up the line between conservatives and liberals and making the conservative side seem better -- especially in economics.

8:28: I'm watching on CNN, with a TiVo assist. I'm keeping up with the speeches. But I pause when a speech ends and then scroll through the commentary when it's time for the next speech. Are the CNN commentators interesting? I don't have time for it all. Let's stop. Here's Jeffrey Toobin saying that bitching about the news media is hypocritical coming from John McCain, because they always used to love him. How come suddenly they seem "hypocritical and biased against him"? Huh? What's hypocritical? That sounds like they were always biased, but they just aren't supporting John McCain right now. What the hell kind of a defense of journalism isn that supposed to be? I mean, I can see why McCain is pissed about it. But it's an embarrassing defense.

8:33: Candy Crowley snags Mitt on the convention floor. She poses a hypothetical. Hey, what if John McCain drops dead on day one, huh? What do you think about that? How is Palin up for it? Mitt responds exactly the way you'd expect: Well, Obama, if elected, would be Prez on day one and how's he going to do it? Yeah, you don't even need a death scenario for that, you know, Candy. Mitt-quote: "The question about experience raises a lot of questions about Barack Obama."

8:36: Now, Mike Huckabee is up. He admits he's disappointed not to be the nominee. But McCain was his second choice, he says. He's got "the character and the stubborn kind of integrity that we need in a President." He thanks the MSM for uniting the Republican Party. Obama "will elevate our taxes and our risk in a dangerous world." He's got a chant he's trying to get going: "You want something to change." But don't forget about the things you don't want to change, like our freedom. He mocks "Barack Obama's Excellent Adventure to Europe." We don't like "European ideas." We like our freedom -- in other words, we don't like big government. This is the anti-dependency message again. It's not what government will do for you, it's what you will do for yourself if government gets out of the way. "The only soap we ever had in my house is Lava." That's a great line. "I'm not a Republican because I grew up rich. I'm a Republican because I didn't want to grow up poor waiting for the government to rescue me." Hey! This is an excellent speech. Much better than Romney's. Nice rhetoric and delivery.

8:46: The digital backdrop -- a flag, I think -- is, on these closeups, just a throbbing red. It's hard on the eyes. They need to blue it up, like normal TV. [ADDED: When Sarah Palin speaks, they just turn if off and have a black background.]

8:51: Huckabee ends with a long, folksy story about a teacher with a lesson to students about how they could "earn their desks." Veterans carrying desks are involved. I respect respecting veterans, but don't really see what's so wonderful about taking little kids and lengthily instructing them about what men have done in far away wars. It's a little too Captain-Koons-Hello-Little-Man for my taste.

8:58: I just corrected a typo in the 8:11 entry. I'd written "It's hammy in a way that might work from father back in the room." My son John emailed me about the typo, and I indicated that maybe it was Freudian, and I really wished I could have Mitt Romney for my dad, and John sends me this pic...



... and reminds me that he always said that Mitt looks like the dad on "The Donna Reed Show."

9:05: It's Rudy Giuliani, and this should be good. He was great at the RNC in '04. (Closeup on Cindy McCain who suddenly has her hair curled. Did the memo go out to soften her up?)

9:07: Rudy is saying that electing a President is basically hiring someone to do a job. He recites McCains résumé. Then we have another man. "He worked as a community organizer." He pauses. Mutters "what?" The audience reacts. Rudy repeats: "He worked as a community organizer." "Maybe this is the first problem on the résumé." And: "He immersed himself in Chicago machine politics." (That's an important line that could take a lot more play.) The audience boos Chicago machine politics. On to the Illinois state legislature where he couldn't figure out whether to vote yes or no. "It was too tough!" "I didn't know about this vote 'present' when I was mayor of New York City." And Sarah Palin couldn't vote "present" as Governor of Alaska. Being able to vote "present" means you weren't in an executive position.

9:17: Barack Obama has never led people in times of crisis. "He is the least experienced candidate for President in at least the last 100 years." He's never led people in anything -- "nada, nothing." Hey, that's unfair! He led the Harvard Law Review.

9:19: And don't forget: He led his campaign for President.

9:23: Rudy says Obama talks about change, but it might be the wrong kind of change. We want the right kind of change. Like, we should drill for oil. The crowd is all: "Drill, baby, drill!"

9:24: The Dems worry that it's politically incorrect to say "Islamic terrorism." They're afraid of insulting terrorists. The big digital screen is used to show a big skyline of NYC.

9:26: The surge was right. McCain got it right and Obama got it wrong. John McCain has taken unpopular positions and political risks. When, Rudy asks, has Obama ever done that? He was for an undivided Jerusalem for one day, only one day, when he was in Israel. The idea is that Obama is a man who played it safe, ingratiating himself in one way after another.

9:31: Palin has had "more executive experience than the entire Democratic ticket combined." He doesn't throw in John McCain and say she's had more executive experience than all 3 of them put together. He mocks the Dems for mocking her for being a mayor of a small town... where they cling to religion and guns. And now she's the most popular Governor in the country with an 80% approval rating. "You never get that in New York City." She fought corruption. She stood up for what is right. She and McCain "are going to shake up Washington." And "how dare they question whether Sarah Palin has enough time to spend with her children and be Vice President. When do they ever ask a man that question? When?!"

9:36: And now! It's her! Sarah Palin! Black skirt. Silver jacket. Oh, when do they ever say that about a man?

9:37: Huge cheers. Cute kid closeup. "Thang-Q. Thang-Q. Thang-Q so much."

9:38: She introduces her family -- her son, who is going to Iraq, her 3 daughters -- the cute youngest waves -- and the baby Trig, the special needs child. And she looks out directly on America, as though she sees all the people who have special children in their families -- and pledges that we will have a friend and advocate in the White House.

9:48: She tells us about Todd, the fisherman, her "guy," and don't forget that Yupik ancestry. She's got a Native American husband.

9:50: She praises small town Americans (like her!). Don't disrespect them! They are the salt of the earth.

9:52: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer... except that you have actual responsibilities." And in small towns, they don't know what to make of a candidate who "lavishes praise" on them when he's around and then, behind their backs, "talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns." Don't talk about us "one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco." Ouch. John McCain is the same man wherever he goes.

10:00: In power, she fought corruption and government excess. "That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay." "Nearly half a billion dollars in vetoes."

10:11: She's laying into Barack Obama. What is he, once those styrofoam pillars are dragged off the stage? It's all show. And the real plan is the old tax and spend.

10:13: "The American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of personal discovery."

10:19: She retells the story of John McCain, with the emphasis on character and authenticity. Elect "a great man" as the next President, she implores... to fabulous applause. We see the newly-curly-headed Cindy in the audience. She's pumped. The Palin family files out onto the stage. Trig is awakened. No baby would understand what the hell is going on, but he's gazing around at the lights and colors. The pregnant Bristol is there with her hunky hockey boyfriend. And now McCain trundles out. He raises his arms as high as he can to wave to the crowd. His tie is the color of the pantsuit Hillary wore for the DNC. [ADDED: He's sending the secret tie signal.] "Don't you think we made the right choice for the next Vice President of the United States? And what a beautiful family." He leans over to respond to something the little girl said. He shrugs. I guess he didn't know whatever it was that she didn't know.

10:32: Maybe it was: "Are you the next President?"