Dark Star

NYTimes Op-Ed Columnist Bill Kristol:

I asked at the end of our conversation whether Palin, fresh off her own debate, had any advice for McCain. “I’m going to tell him the same thing he told me. I talked to him just a few minutes before I walked out there on stage. And he just said: ‘Have fun. Be yourself, and have fun.’ And Senator McCain can do the same.” She paused, and I was about to thank her for the interview, but she had one more thing to say. “Only maybe I’d add just a couple more words, and that would be: ‘Take the gloves off.’ ”

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And she says she doesn't know why McCain isn't talking about Jeremiah Wright. Love her.

The Weekly Standard

The extent to which Rep. Barney Frank, Sen. Chris Dodd, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama himself are avoiding blame for this crisis despite symbiotic relationships with those who caused it is truly amazing.

The nerve with which they hold forth about "unbridled capitalism" and "deregulation" while conveniently forgetting their culpability in government interference in the market, which first pressured banks (via Community Reinvestment Act) and then incentivized banks (via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) to make risky loans to people with troubled credit history.

Obama has been heavily involved with a certain group of community organizers that encouraged such behavior since the very beginning of his career— ACORN. I'm going to pull out a little bit of Stanley Kurtz's piece on this connection, but read the whole thing. The details are devastating, even if you know the basic outline already:

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ACORN - The Big Picture

Pajamas Media: Ayers-Dohrn-Obama Tie Shouldn’t Be Dismissed

By 1995, Barack Obama had known Bill Ayers at least eight years since their shared involvement in the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools, if not longer. Bernardine Dohrn, once labeled “the most dangerous woman in America” by none other than J. Edgar Hoover, was also well known as the inspiration for the 1988 movie Running on Empty. Subtle terrorists they were not.

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Roger Simon puts it in perspective:

The film Running on Empty was nominated for two Academy Awards for 1988 - one for its young star River Phoenix and the other for its writer Naomi Foner (she won the Golden Globe). I served with Naomi on the Writers Guild Board a couple of years later and we got to know each other pretty well. In those days, we were comrades on the left - more or less - and both “nominated” screenwriters.

Naomi’s movie (an original script of hers) concerned life underground for veterans of the Weather Underground–about a couple and their son (Phoenix). Basically, to most of us, it was a fictional version of the hidden marriage of Wiliam Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. But it was more about Bernardine, really, because she was a hugely famous figure on the left for many years, talked of by some as an American version of Spain’s La Pasionaria. I did not much care for what she did or said, even then. But I certainly recognized her charisma. And I knew that she was close to crazy. (Read the statements at the Bernardine link about the Tate-LaBianca murders.)

1988 was the same year that Barack Obama entered Harvard Law School. It was highly unlikely he did not know about Running on Empty. It was one of the most talked about movies of the year for serious people, like Ivy League law students. The subject of the film was clearly the ramifications of a life of violence on friends and family. And yet he choose to start his career in politics via Ayers-Dohrn (note the emphasis). And now he denies knowing who Ayers was or what he did. Well… as the saying goes… I lost it at the movies.

Courting Voters by Robert Alt on National Review Online

...And yet the issue of judges has largely been an afterthought in this seemingly interminable election cycle. Both McCain and Obama have nodded to their bases on this issue — McCain issuing a major speech in May, and Obama articulating his view of a proper judge in speeches, particularly to pro-abortion audiences — but neither has embraced the topic with the fervor of then-candidate Bush.

Some of this de-emphasis is a natural function of the prominence of other issues, like the economic bailout, or the mini-bar-like prices at the pump. But the downgrading of the judicial issue also seems to be a deliberate calculation by the campaigns that the judicial nominations issue just isn’t as pressing as it was in recent elections. Some Republicans seem to view this election as zero-sum game for the judiciary, reasoning that the two most likely retirees from the Supreme Court — Justices Stevens, 88, and Ginsburg, 75 — are also among the most liberal members of the Court, which would mean that their replacement by liberal judges would not alter the Court. This is wrong for several reasons.

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Founding Brothers by Stanley Kurtz on National Review Online

New evidence strongly suggests that Barack Obama has been less than forthcoming about the role that unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers may have played in choosing him to lead the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, I have obtained an e-mail message from former CAC executive director, Ken Rolling, to Warren Chapman and Anne Hallett, two of CAC’s three co-founders. Bill Ayers was the third founder. In Rolling’s message, sent the morning after I first requested access to CAC records housed at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), he admits to avoiding a reporter’s inquiries about who picked Obama to head CAC.

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McCain and the Fact-Checking Fallacy by Byron York on National Review Online

...But if you look at the fact-checking of some of the McCain campaign’s most prominent claims, you’ll see that the objections raised are often matters of degree — that McCain claimed that Obama did this or that X number of times, when in fact Obama did it Y number of times — or of tone, or of verb tense. Which leads to the question: What if McCain adjusted his campaign claims to conform to the fact-checkers’ objections? In a number of cases he could easily satisfy their criticisms and still have a devastating attack against Obama. Would they then pronounce those claims accurate?

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Take a wild guess.

NY Times Confirms Ayers' Role in Obama Appointment as Chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge

I can easily understand why some readers may have become confused by the explosion of stories today on the Obama/Ayers relationship.

The partial story of the Ayers/Obama relationship told by the New York Times today is collapsing of its own weight but has likely added to the confusion. Since I am one of the "bloggers" referred to without an explanation in the Times' story I thought I would summarize the top ten highlights of the current state of play.

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(Hat tip: LGF)

Fire in the Night by John M. Murtagh, City Journal 30 April 2008

In February 1970, my father, a New York State Supreme Court justice, was presiding over the trial of the so-called “Panther 21,” members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. Early on the morning of February 21, as my family slept, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at our home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car. (Today, of course, we’d call that a car bomb.) A neighbor heard the first two blasts and, with the remains of a snowman I had built a few days earlier, managed to douse the flames beneath the car. That was an act whose courage I fully appreciated only as an adult, an act that doubtless saved multiple lives that night.

I still recall, as though it were a dream, thinking that someone was lifting and dropping my bed as the explosions jolted me awake, and I remember my mother’s pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below. We didn’t leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. Sunlight, the next morning, revealed three sentences of blood-red graffiti on our sidewalk: FREE THE PANTHER 21; THE VIET CONG HAVE WON; KILL THE PIGS.

For the next 18 months, I went to school in an unmarked police car. My mother, a schoolteacher, had plainclothes detectives waiting in the faculty lounge all day. My brother saved a few bucks because he didn’t have to rent a limo for the senior prom: the NYPD did the driving. We all made the best of the odd new life that had been thrust upon us, but for years, the sound of a fire truck’s siren made my stomach knot and my heart race. In many ways, the enormity of the attempt to kill my entire family didn’t fully hit me until years later, when, a father myself, I was tucking my own nine-year-old John Murtagh into bed.

Though no one was ever caught or tried for the attempt on my family’s life, there was never any doubt who was behind it. Only a few weeks after the attack, the New York contingent of the Weathermen blew themselves up making more bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse. The same cell had bombed my house, writes Ron Jacobs in The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. And in late November that year, a letter to the Associated Press signed by Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers’s wife, promised more bombings.

As the association between Obama and Ayers came to light, it would have helped the senator a little if his friend had at least shown some remorse. But listen to Ayers interviewed in the New York Times on September 11, 2001, of all days: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Translation: “We meant to kill that judge and his family, not just damage the porch.” When asked by the Times if he would do it all again, Ayers responded: “I don’t want to discount the possibility.”

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(Hat tip: LGF)

LGF: Anyone for Toast?

In Slate Magazine, William Saletan says the polls are so stacked against John McCain, there’s no possibility he can win. The race is over.

Oh, wait. That was eight years ago, and he was talking about George W. Bush.

Why Bush Is Toast.

Since Labor Day, the media have released about 20 polls on the presidential race. Three show a dead heat, one shows George W. Bush leading by a single percentage point, and the rest show Al Gore leading by one to 10 points. In the latest polls, Gore leads by an average of five points. It’s fashionable at this stage to caution that “anything can happen,” that Bush is “retooling,” and that the numbers can turn in Bush’s favor just as easily as they turned against him. But they can’t. The numbers are moving toward Gore because fundamental dynamics tilt the election in his favor. The only question has been how far those dynamics would carry him. Now that he has passed Bush, the race is over.

David Weigel:

It's not like the Ayers attack fell totally flat. Obama's campaign had to spend money on an ad rolling back the attack. But it didn't spend much, and it didn't spend money in Michigan. If the Ayers story was having an impact, you'd expect it to move some number of voters away from Obama. It didn't. It's probably just too tenuous and complicated.

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Maybe. But more likely they haven't heard it explained well. Personally, I'm an advocate of the 'Let's do it all,' plan. For Attacking Obama and solving the energy crisis. And let's face it: Not talking about something because it's 'complicated,' is stupid. We're losing the election because we can't talk about the real reasons for financial collapse because it's 'too complicated,'. And now we're being told the Ayers/Rezko/Wright thing is 'too complicated,' as well? Fine. Let's talk about our cookie recipes. I'm frustrated and insulted they think the electorate is that dense. Let McCain and Palin make the big, bold statements and leave the details to the 527's and viral videos, blogs and ads.

The details are out there. The candidates just need to call attention to them. Making the statements like Plain did over the weekend can only cause people to wonder what she's talking about. And when people wonder what she's talking about, they Google. And when they Google, they find the details.

How is that hard? They have to hit, and hit hard with everything that's available. Starting now, and doing it everyday - sometimes twice or three time a day - until the Election.

It's Over: Why Bill Ayers Won't Save John McCain

Perpetually fretting Democrats will not want to accept it. The campaigns themselves can't afford to believe it. Many journalists know it but can't say it. And there will certainly be some twists and turns along the way. But take it to a well capitalized bank: Bill Ayers isn't going to save John McCain. The race is over.

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Power Line: Biden's fantasy world

Today a Wall Street Journal editorial reviews Biden's performance in "Biden's fantasy world." The Journal asks: "[W]hat are we to make of Mr. Biden's fantastic debate voyage last week when he made factual claims that would have got Mrs. Palin mocked from New York to Los Angeles?"

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Power Line: What Did Barack Obama Know, and When Did He Know It?

Sarah Palin's calling out of Barack Obama over the Bill Ayers connection has finally caused some mainstream outlets to report the story (albeit generally in misleading fashion) and has compelled the Obama campaign to respond. That response is surprising, to say the least: Obama now claims that he didn't know about Bill Ayers' terrorist past through all the years when he worked with Ayers in Chicago!

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Why not? Axelrod and Obama know the MSM isn't going to get them this close and sell them out. 'Just tell them you didn't know. That will hold them until November.'

Tapscott's Copy Desk: Who says the Reagan era is over?

I refuse to accept the notion that the fundamental conservative message about individual freedom, limited government, a strong national defense and a recognition of the special role of America as the shining city on a hill is no longer relevant. To the contrary, I believe it is even more relevant and important to political success than ever. All it needs is a party that is faithful to its tenants and unfailingly tenacious in its application.

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(Hat tip: Instapundit)

GayPatriot: Media Downgrading Gay Relationships by Ignoring Frank Conflict of Interest

You mean like they downgrade women by not taking Sarah Palin seriously? Minorities are not ideals for Liberals - they are tools to be used. But only if they can help the cause. Otherwise the minority is viciously attacked, downgraded, or ignored completely.

This isn't the first time they've all but ignored Barney Frank's relationship issues.

(Hat tip: Instapundit)

American Thinker: Gwen Ifill's VP Debate Bias

The revelation that PBS's Gwen Ifill plans to release a book on Barack Obama on Inauguration Day raised the suspicion that her moderator role at the VP debate might be other than objective. It was. The evidence of her bias is evident in several of her questions to the candidates. Below are a few examples...

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Makes you wonder what it would have been like had the news of her book not become the biggest issue going in to Thursday night.

American Thinker: A Long Term Strategy for a Free Market Bailout

Assuming that this bailout plan was necessary and that it stabilizes our credit (at least for the short term), the time has come for a free market strategy to insure long-term capital growth in America. Here is a list of suggestions...

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Free Speech for Me, Not for Thee by Rich Lowry on National Review Online

Liberal editorial boards have apparently lost their former zest for the First Amendment. Consider this approving sentence from a New York Times editorial: “The wholesale descent into Swift Boat campaigning has been blocked — for now — by a federal judge in Virginia.” It was written about a judge denying an injunction against the Federal Election Commission sought by a pro-life group running radio ads attacking Obama. The group thinks the First Amendment protects political speech; unfortunately, the courts disagree.

But the Times goes beyond mere legalities. It asserts with no evidence that the group’s advertising is “lies,” then urges the FEC to “be vigilant for what will inevitably be fresh attempts to mislead voters with fresh lies.” Here’s a newspaper charging a governmental agency with policing and shutting down campaign ads it doesn’t like.

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Do Facts Matter? by Thomas Sowell on National Review Online

The current financial bailout crisis has propelled Barack Obama back into a substantial lead over John McCain — which is astonishing in view of which man and which party has had the most to do with bringing on this crisis.

It raises the question: Do facts matter? Or is Obama’s rhetoric and the media’s spin enough to make facts irrelevant?

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Hugh Hewitt:

Obama would be a huge risk in even placid times of peace, full employment, and robust growth, a radical break with America's political traditions even as measured against the McGovern candidacy of 1972.

In a time of war and precarious economic uncetainty, it would be near suicidal to turn the world's most important job over to him.

The hard left's seven year rage against George Bush has disfigured the politics of the country, but it hasn't infected the large center or demoralized the principled right. Three quarters of the country know the sort of enemy we face around the globe and sense as well the seriousness of the economic risk that faces us and which must be met and managed from maturity and a belief in growth and capitalism's essential genius. The country has never embraced class warfare, and knows that a lurch to the left now would cripple the vast engine of productivity that is the key to a steady recovery of confidence.

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Power Line: Campaign Finance Fraud: the Associated Press Covers Up

Barack Obama's fundraising has been riddled with fraud from the beginning. In a case of "better late than never," the McCain campaign announced in a press conference today that it will file a complaint with the FEC.

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Yahoo! News: Palin defends terrorist comment against Obama

"The comments are about an association that has been known but hasn't been talked about," Palin said as she boarded her plane in Long Beach, Calif. "I think it's fair to talk about where Barack Obama kicked off his political career, in the guy's living room."

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Patterico’s Pontifications: Maybe It Wasn’t Sarah’s Fault

I’m beginning to think I may have seriously slandered Sarah Palin. I’m serious about this. Let me explain.

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I posted the "reason" we aren't hearing about Democrats role in the events that led to the bailout from the McCain camp. It's not good enough, I agree. McCain et al need to boil it down to 30 seconds or less and set the town hall on fire with it.

LGF: Fluffy Bunnies: Harmless?

The Associated Press seems to sense, in some dim way, that they may have gone a little over the line with that ludicrous “analysis” by Douglass Daniel that tries to accuse Sarah Palin of racism for mentioning Barack Obama’s association with former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers.

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Follow the link, read the post, watch the video.

Jonah Goldberg:

Because I'm so cool, I'm watching a tivo'd "This Week" and Stephanopolous said that one of the ways the polls may be "undercounting" is that they aren't counting all of the people who won't vote for Obama because he's black. Nonsense. The people who aren't voting for Obama "because he's black" have undoubtedly already told pollsters they're not voting for Obama. If there's much undercounting because of race, it's overwhelmingly because non-racist people are afraid to tell pollsters they're not voting for the black guy for fear of people like Stephanopolous calling them racist.

And, if there are racists who might be costing Obama the election, they're Democrats.

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My thoughts exactly.

Lobbyists, who had little influence in the development of the $700 billion economic bailout, are angling to play a greater role as Treasury implements the plan and Congress debates how best to strengthen financial market oversight.

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This is incredible.

WASHINGTON (AP) - By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is "palling around with terrorists" and doesn't see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign.

And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.

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Calling this attack "unsubstantiated" is only credible if you consider something unsubstantiated simply because the MSM has ignored it. In other words, the MSM gets to decide, at will, whether something has truth or not by virtue of choosing to report it or not. The relationship with Bill Ayers is real, longstanding, deep, and important.

This switcheroo is really something to behold. Ignoring exactly what Palin is talking about by calling it untrue or false, then trying to convince people what she's really trying to do is tie Obama to radical Islam. This is stunning.

Barack Obama was much older than 8 when William Ayers was photographed stepping on a US flag in 2001, for an article in which Ayers said he had “No Regrets” for his violent actions in the Weather Underground.

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In an article that by chance was published on Sept. 11, 2001, The New York Times wrote about Mr. Ayers and his just-published memoir, “Fugitive Days,” opening with a quotation from the author: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.”

Three days after the Qaeda attacks, Mr. Ayers wrote a reply posted on his Web site to clarify his quoted remarks, saying the meaning had been distorted.

“My memoir is from start to finish a condemnation of terrorism, of the indiscriminate murder of human beings, whether driven by fanaticism or official policy,” he wrote. But he added that the Weathermen had “showed remarkable restraint” given the nature of the American bombing campaign in Vietnam that they were trying to stop.

Most of the bombs the Weathermen were blamed for had been placed to do only property damage, a fact Mr. Ayers emphasizes in his memoir. But a 1970 pipe bomb in San Francisco attributed to the group killed one police officer and severely hurt another. An accidental 1970 explosion in a Greenwich Village town house basement killed three radicals; survivors later said they had been making nail bombs to detonate at a military dance at Fort Dix in New Jersey. And in 1981, in an armed robbery of a Brinks armored truck in Nanuet, N.Y., that involved Weather Underground members including Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, two police officers and a Brinks guard were killed.

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Is this man not a terrorist simply because he's not Muslim?

Steve Chapman, a columnist for The Chicago Tribune, defended Mr. Obama’s relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., his longtime pastor, whose black liberation theology and “God damn America” sermon became notorious last spring. But he denounced Mr. Obama for associating with Mr. Ayers, whom he said the University of Illinois should never have hired.

“I don’t think there’s a statute of limitations on terrorist bombings,” Mr. Chapman said in an interview, speaking not of the law but of political and moral implications.

“If you’re in public life, you ought to say, ‘I don’t want to be associated with this guy,’ ” Mr. Chapman said. “If John McCain had a long association with a guy who’d bombed abortion clinics, I don’t think people would say, ‘That’s ancient history.’ ”

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Considering the number of posts I have written about Barack Obama's friendship and collaboration with unrepentant former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers, I guess I should acknowledge -- however grudgingly -- that the New York Times has (on a Saturday, as Glenn noted) finally reported that the connections between these men are deeper than previously acknowledged.

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We’ve posted five articles now about serious mistakes and/or outright lies in Joe Biden’s performance last night—but if you read what the mainstream media have written about the debate, you won’t find a single one of these falsehoods. The media have almost unanimously declared the debate a win for Biden, and they’re ignoring his lies to focus on bashing Sarah Palin in article after article like this one from TIME magazine: Why Some Women Hate Sarah Palin.

Here are the five articles we’ve posted, backed up with video evidence and citations from media or the Obama campaign’s own statements:

Biden Lied About Supporting ‘Clean Coal’
Biden Lied About Obama Not Supporting Hamas Election
Biden Doesn’t Know the Difference Between Gaza and the West Bank
Biden’s Lebanon Nonsense
Biden’s Big Lie

UPDATE at 10/3/08 3:36:01 pm:

The Associated Press assigned five writers to “fact check” the debate, but somehow they missed every single one of these lies and gaffes: Some facts adrift in veep debate.

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Links are on LGF

Michelle Malkin: Bottomless bailout: Now, they tell us it’s not enough

They put a gun to our heads. They ate Crap Sandwich 2.0. Washington’s pork-stuffed panic mob forked over $700billion/$850billion/$1 trillion-plus of our money over to the Chicken Littles, who handed it over to Foxy Loxy at the Treasury Department.

And now?

And now, they tell us it’s not enough.

It’s never enough.

A Senate staffer compiled these headlines. Read ‘em and weep:

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The End Of An Era

Marxists and statists of all stripes are, as one might expect, rubbing their hands in glee and declaring this the final death crisis of Capitalism. But I think just the opposite is occurring. What we are in fact seeing are the final death throes of governmental social engineering.

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Dick Morris:

She showed originality, charisma and sass - a style that is refreshing and different in our politics. She didn’t just win the vice-presidential debate, she showed that she belongs with Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton as among the best communicators of our modern political times.

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Why McCain Goes Easy on Fannie and the CRA

Here is the big question of the moment that many GOPers are asking: Why is John McCain not tearing into Barack Obama and the Dems on the huge role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Community Reinvestment Act in the financial crisis on Wall Street? In fact, the biggest criticism by conservatives of Sarah Palin's debate performance last night was that she had the opportunity to talk about Fannie/Freddie and the CRA but instead criticized the role of "predatory lenders."

Here is what Team McCain is telling me:

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(Hat tip: Michelle Malkin)

The Independent: Democrat fingerprints are all over the financial crisis

Of all the characteristics of a successful politician, none is more essential than bare-faced cheek. Never has this been more evident than in the past fortnight, as senior Democrat members of the US legislature have sought to lay all the blame for the country's financial crisis on the executive arm of Government and Wall Street.

Neither of these two institutions is blameless – far from it. Yet when I see such senior Democrats as Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Christopher Dodd, Chairman of the Senate's Banking Committee, play the part of avenging angels – well, I can only stand in silent awe at the sheer tight-bottomed nerve of it. These are men with sphincters of steel.

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It's easy when NOBODY is calling you on it from the opposition party. And regarding that last line, I seriously wonder how you can say Barney Frank has a sphincter of steel. Herb Moses seems to have found it plyable enough.

The Corner on National Review Online

It comes as a surprise to us in Delaware that Joe Biden recently had a meal and talked with patrons at “Katie’s Restaurant” on Union Street in Wilmington.

Katie’s Restaurant closed years ago. It was on Scott Street in Little Italy, not on Union Street. To the best of my recollection, it closed in 1990 or thereabouts.

Now tell me, who is it that “doesn’t get it” and “is out of touch?”

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Power Line: Grace under pressure

Reviewing the transcript of the debate this morning confirms my impression of last night. I thought that one of Governor Palin's strongest moments came in talking about foreign policy when she addressed Biden:

[I]t's so obvious I'm a Washington outsider. And someone just not used to the way you guys operate. Because here you voted for the war and now you oppose the war. You're one who says, as so many politicians do, I was for it before I was against it or vice-versa. Americans are craving that straight talk and just want to know, hey, if you voted for it, tell us why you voted for it and it was a war resolution.

And you had supported John McCain's military strategies pretty adamantly until this race and you had opposed very adamantly Barack Obama's military strategy, including cutting off funding for the troops that attempt all through the primary.

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Power Line: Biden Mangles the Constitution

This isn't what's conventionally described as a gaffe, and it won't swing any votes, but last night Joe Biden garbled the Constitutional role of the Vice President.

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Here

Fred Barnes:

The moment when Sarah Palin knew she was winning last night’s debate with her vice presidential opponent Joe Biden came after the subject had turned to nuclear weapons. Palin had talked about nukes as a deterrent and said it was important to keep them out of the hands of dictators who are enemies of America. Then she turned to moderator Gwen Ifill and asked, “Can we talk about Afghanistan real quick?”

Afghanistan? The impression Palin had left in television interviews with ABC’s Charles Gibson and CBS’s Katie Couric was that she was ill-equipped to discuss issues like that. She just didn’t know enough to talk about foreign policy and other weighty matters with even a minimal level of comfort. And this meant she simply wasn’t up to being vice president should John McCain win the presidency.

But by that point in the debate--two-thirds the way through--Palin was brimming with self-confidence. She knew she could handle any issue likely to be thrown at her by Ifill. She knew Biden would not outmatch her. So she purposely tackled an issue on which he was expected to have an advantage.

He didn’t. She insisted the “surge principles” that had proved effective in Iraq would work in Afghanistan. Biden claimed the commanding general in Afghanistan disagreed. Then Palin said, no, the general didn’t disagree, and she spelled out how “the counterinsurgency strategy” favored by McCain (and her) would work.

If that episode didn’t demoralize Biden, a senator from Delaware for 35 years, it should have. For it showed she had passed the biggest test any vice presidential candidate faces--a test the media was ready to declare she’d failed. Was she capable of being vice president? Based on her debate performance, the answer was yes.

Not only that, but she called the "commanding general" by name, and when Ifill went back to Biden, it was clear he wasn't sure what to say in response, so he just repeated what he said. It threw him.

If that episode didn’t demoralize Biden, a senator from Delaware for 35 years, it should have. For it showed she had passed the biggest test any vice presidential candidate faces--a test the media was ready to declare she’d failed. Was she capable of being vice president? Based on her debate performance, the answer was yes.

Not that she came close to matching Biden’s experience or extensive knowledge of issues, especially foreign policy issues. But she was conversant with every issue, domestic and foreign, that came up in the 90-minute debate and talked with seeming confidence about them.

She may have passed two other tests as well. Did she once more energize the conservative base of the Republican party as she had when McCain picked her a month ago? Probably. And was her performance strong enough to change the direction of a campaign that has seen Barack Obama widening a lead over McCain in recent weeks? Maybe.

For sure, she did one remarkable thing aside from handling Biden with ease. She undid the negative impression that had been created by her avoidance of most of the media and hardened when the two TV interviews went poorly. Her image was that of someone unqualified to be vice president and uninformed on major issues.

Changing an image overnight is difficult. Ronald Reagan managed it when he debated President Jimmy Carter in 1980 and blew away the widespread notion that he was a warmonger. But I can’t think of other examples of this, at least in presidential or veep debates.

Two more things. Palin appeared to be in a good mood during the debate, just as she was when delivering her acceptance speech at the Republican convention four weeks ago. That made her more appealing than Biden, who came off, at times anyway, as less cheerful than he normally is.

And Palin wrote her own closing statement, or so I was told. It included what seemed like an invitation to Biden to have more debates. “I would like more opportunity for this,” she said. I suspect Biden wouldn’t.

I'm not too sure about the last part. I think Biden would like to have another crack at her. I'm sure the excuses were ripe in the dressing room afterwords. I was tired, etc. But if he debated her again, he would try to change his approach. The problem is, he took the only approach he could have. She just beat him. So while Biden might like another shot at her, Palin would LOVE to have another shot at Biden. She will only get better.

Vice Presidential Debate big loser: the MSM

Tonight, Sarah Palin drove another stake in the heart of those fuddy-duddy reactionaries that constitute our mainstream media. Going toe-to-toe with a senator with decades of experience, she more than held her own, giving lie to the media constructed narrative that she was an inexperienced hick from nowheresville Alaska. It demonstrates once again why the media is held in such contempt. For economic and ego reasons, they consider themselves to be our gatekeepers, but frankly they are not that smart. They are not rocket scientists – figuratively or literally. They are certainly no smarter than Sarah Palin. I would be willing to bet that in a free debate with Katie Couric, Palin would come out the victor. (Frank Luntz’s focus group saw her winning literally by acclamation over Biden.)

I actually had some sympathy for Joe Biden tonight (who we all know thinks John McCain is better than Obama anyway – he’s said so, as Palin was correct to point out). He was an aging fellow (like me) forced to debate a young and much more charismatic woman who was easily his equal. You could see in his body language that he knew it.

But if McCain-Palin actually pull this one out, it is the MSM that will be the big losers here. They have put heart and soul behind Obama without really knowing him. For shame.

(BTW, was I missing something or did that aspiring author Gwen Ifill give Biden both the first and last words? Is that legal?)

Biden is telling absurd lies about Afghanistan tonight. In particular, he's repeatedly claimed that "we've spent less in Afghanistan in seven years than we spend in a month in Iraq."

He's made that claim, or claims to that effect, repeatedly. It is, to put it bluntly, a complete G_________d lie.

According to the Congressional Research Service, spending on the war in Afghanistan since 2001 has been $172 Billion. Spending in Iraq is, as the Democrats repeatedly mention, a little under $10 Billion a month.

In other words, Biden's number is off by, oh, something like 2000%. Perhaps Obama's Sub-Committee ought to have held some hearings on Afghanistan after all.

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(Hat tip: Instapundit)

Communication skills he hasn't seen since Reagan.

A "Superstar" he says.

Map from RealClearPolitics.

McCain laments selection of Ifill - Mike Allen - Politico.com

Hours ahead of the vice presidential debate, Sen John McCain (R-Ariz.) criticized the selection of PBS's Gwen Ifill as moderator because she is writing a book called "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama."

“Frankly, I wish they had picked a moderator that isn’t writing a book favorable to Barack Obama — let's face it," McCain said on "Fox & Friends." "But I have to have confidence that Gwen Ifill will handle this as the professional journalist that she is."

"Life isn’t fair, as I mentioned earlier in the program," he added.

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This page is a big list of all the Palin rumors circulating and addresses them.

Palin Rumors | Explorations

http://www.palinrumors.com

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