Falsely?

Forget it, she's rolling.

This may sound like a gaffe, but it's not: This is, after all, the WaPo's/AP's/NYT's actual assertion. That Palin "falsely linked" Al Qaeda in Iraq to Al Qaeda.

Posted by: Ace at 11:20 AM | Comments (45)
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Press release below fold. Former Hillary supporter.

Pumablicans! more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:12 AM | Comments (38)
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Here's the link.

Bumped. I'm bumping this because I didn't read it before linking it; I just wanted to know what "overweening" meant.

I just read it. It's... eye-opening.

The liberal writer here is not merely panicking. And not merely depressed.

She's also exhibiting some amount of thoughtful self-examination, which is incredibly rare in a liberal.

When a liberal actually questions herself and her own overweening sense of self-righteous superiority, Houston, we have a problem.

I’d planned to make attending the McCain/Palin event a silly sort of adventure. I’d invited a friend who has six kids to come with me. I figured funny things were bound to befall us in Palin-Land, where, collectively, we’d have eight children between us (a funny thought in and of itself.) A Harold and Kumar Escape from the Barracuda sort of storyline was the idea – until my friend, done in by one too many sleepless nights, declined to accompany me, and I had to venture off alone.

And, forced to make new friends on the spot, discovered that the Palin Phenomenon is no laughing matter.

...

“Palin Power” isn’t just about making hockey moms feel important. It’s not just about giving abortion rights opponents their due. It’s also, in obscure ways, about making yearnings come true — deep, inchoate desires about respect and service, hierarchy and family that have somehow been successfully projected onto the figure of this unlikely woman and have stuck.

For those of us who can’t tap into those yearnings, it seems the Palin faithful are blind – to the contradictions between her stated positions and the truth of the policies she espouses, to the contradictions between her ideology and their interests. But Jonathan Haidt, an associate professor of moral psychology at the University of Virginia, argues in an essay this month, “What Makes People Vote Republican?”, that it’s liberals, in fact, who are dangerously blind.

Haidt has conducted research in which liberals and conservatives were asked to project themselves into the minds of their opponents and answer questions about their moral reasoning. Conservatives, he said, prove quite adept at thinking like liberals, but liberals are consistently incapable of understanding the conservative point of view. “Liberals feel contempt for the conservative moral view, and that is very, very angering. Republicans are good at exploiting that anger,” he told me in a phone interview.

Perhaps thatÂ’s why the conservatives can so successfully get under liberalsÂ’ skin. And why liberals need to start working harder.

Ah, so one finally gets it. Yes, you're right. We do think like you. We do understand you. Maybe it's because we're better at looking at things from someone else's point of view -- or maybe it's because we can't avoid thinking like you, because the media offers us nothing but your positions, your assumptions, your worldview, your fears and your hopes, 24/7/365.

I think it's a bit of both, really. Liberals have nothing on even the most Church Lady-ish religious conservatives when it comes to smug self-righteousness and superciliousness.

Pretty amazing that Palinmania has provoked this. Palinexistentialcrisis!

The study mentioned is here. I had thought it might be a re-examination of liberal biases and claims to superiority, but from what I've read so far, it's not. It's really an attempt to answer the eternal mystery: "Are Republicans stupid or evil? And what can we do to understand these benighted troglodytes?"

I'll read on and let you know if there's anything here more interesting than that.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:53 AM | Comments (109)
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What an endorsement! Just short of half the country thinks he has the right experience to be president! And just 1% more say he doesn't.

And was Sarah Palin right to say yes to McCain's request to stand for Vice President?

Also yes -- by 70 percent. (PDF file).

On the "right experience" for President, Palin herself scores 41 yes 36 no.

Of course, she's not running for president.

Oh, and McCain-Palin leads Obama-Biden 48-44.

Thanks to WilliamA.

Posted by: Ace at 10:45 AM | Comments (11)
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Funny. Every other day I see him posting long screeds from Talking Points Memo.

So he reads blogs.

But only liberal blogs. Also known as "the Media's new unimpeachable anonymous sources."

Posted by: Ace at 10:33 AM | Comments (23)
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"We"?

Two possibilities:

1) John Roberts is asking what he, as a Democrat, must do to win.

2) John Roberts is actually just soliciting the media's marching orders from the DNC right on television now, without the discretion and pretense of doing it via email or at a bar.

Most likely possibility? Both, of course.

Thanks to CJ.

Posted by: Ace at 10:21 AM | Comments (26)
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Rasmussen shows McCain finally out in front with a 3 point lead. Previous polls have showed McCain either tied or behind by one (among leaners).

And, as noted, Rasmussen weights by party, which they adjust each month. They're currently assuming the big Republican response they're getting is an aberration, and so are knocking down McCain's numbers as he's getting support from "too many Republicans" in the sample. They'll change that if these aberrant numbers prove to not be aberrations at all. (It's actually possible they already did this adjustment -- but if they did, one would imagine they would have noted it in their explanation as to why the numbers shifted so much. They mention other explanations, but not this one.)

And the bad news? The Gallup generic congressional tracking shows Republicans behind by a scant 48-45, which means there is an outsized chance we could pick up seats in November.

The bad news in that?

Well, Republicans can't win in Congress in November, I don't think, due to the fact that we had a very poor recruitment season, and in many races, we simply don't have a seriously competitive candidate. The generic number may look better than reality. Unfortunately, Republicans' fortunes were so down from 2006 through this year that many would-be candidates didn't bother to run.

Still, it's possible we could hold steady or even gain a seat here or there.

If only The Jews had let everyone in on the secret They were going to engineer Sarah Palin's candidacy. But The Jews work in mysterious ways.

Is that annoying? Maybe a little. But we can't second-guess them.

William Russell, who hopes to kick Jack Murtha out on his corrupt, cellulite-marbled old pale ass, might benefit from a little dollar-love.

Better Bets? Russell has a lot of money as it is and DPUD tells me he's unlikely to win.

He suggests donating to these Pennsylvania candidates if you're so inclined:

Chris Hackett and Lou Barletta.

Posted by: Ace at 10:08 AM | Comments (37)
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Slublog wrote about this ad and suggested some substantive McCain responses below. He asked if Obama is falling into (another) trap. I think so.

I had pretty much the same reaction as Allah when I saw it. It's a great one --for McCain.

What’s especially stupid about the spot is that it’s a line of attack with a lot more downside than upside: No one outside of The One’s core nutroots constituency is going to be offended at the thought of McCain relying on one of his thousand aides or secretaries to answer messages, but there may be some offense taken by the 20 percent of Americans who don’t use e-mail themselves — many of whom are no doubt senior citizens.

As strange as it may be to imagine, there are Americans who don't use email, many who use it rarely, and many who don't like it. Implying that they are stuck in the '80s does not seem like a smart move. A lot of these folks are sensitive to being called "out of date" or "out of touch."

What starts as an attack on John McCain--"he can't use a computer"--sounds a lot like an attack on everyone who doesn't. As Allah says, that's a lot of seniors. But not just seniors. It's a personal attack on anyone who doesn't switch on their computers right after they switch on their coffeemakers.

Sure, it squeezes in an attempt at a substantive issue--"he doesn't understand the economy"--but the gist of the whole ad is that McCain is old and old things aren't cool. That's what the shot of the brick cellphone and the rubix cube are all about. But something that Obama obviously didn't consider is that old people hold grudges, especially when some half-grown dandy spits in their faces.

Obama keeps complaining that he is portrayed as a sneering, snobbish elite. Rhetorical question: I wonder why that is?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:15 AM | Comments (112)
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You go now. Do picks.

Remember, if you don't think too good, don't think too long.

Also, the Houston - Baltimore game got moved to Monday night, on account of Ike.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 08:01 AM | Comments (12)
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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:38 AM | Comments (26)
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