When MSNBC's Chris Matthews suggested in Denver that Barack Obama earned his present elevation in American politics, unlike "showcase...

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Liberals find no joy when Republicans select women or minorities for top positions. They are all fraudulent traitors to their own apparent group interests. Conservative blacks aren't really black. Conservative Latinos aren't really Latino. Now, conservative women are somehow not really women.

John McCain made a bold choice in not merely picking a woman, but picking a pro-life woman courageous enough to put her motherhood where her mouth is. Now the media want him to pay dearly for it. The idea that they would lecture anyone else about rumor-mongering or "Swift-boating" ought to be laughed off the public stage.

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Now ask yourself this: If you were Sarah Palin and had such a revealing look at Mike Wooten, would you have wanted him on the force? Palin was acting as any concerned citizen should after a close encounter with an unfit cop. If there's abuse of power in this story, it lies on the side of bureaucrats and unions protecting officers whose behavior makes them a danger to the public.

The race to define Sarah Palin

Peggy Noonan on Palin: “A real and present danger to the American left”

New Palin smear: She “slashed” funding for pregnant teens by, um, expanding it

Video: Meet the Palins; Update: McCain tells staffers, “We’re going to fight back”

Organized labor's top priority is the deceptively named Employee Free Choice Act, which replaces secret ballot elections with publicly signed union cards.

Regardless of Gustav's outcome, politicians will likely push for making national disaster preparedness more Washington-centric. Such ideas should be rejected.

Source at TNR: Underestimate Palin at your peril

Oil drops to $106 a barrel

OPEC meets in a week to consider their market position.  If they want to defend the $100 per barrel limit, they will have to cut production.  This will create a false shortage on the market which will cost them money in the short run, but preserve their assets for longer-term pricing.  That will push prices at the pump higher, or at least keep them at current levels for a longer period than American consumers may have expected.

At the moment, because we import so much of our oil, we remain at the mercy of OPEC.  The only way to break that reliance is to massively produce our energy independent of foreign oil, or at least as independent as we can make ourselves.  The more we add our own resources, the less money we send abroad, the more jobs we create here, and the weaker OPEC gets.  They can only play with the market as long as they control it; with the US mostly out of the global market, OPEC might collapse as its members abandon the cartel and fend for themselves instead.

When will we finally begin to take responsibility for our own needs and keep our money in the US?

Biden’s deferments

Does this really make much of a difference otherwise?  Plenty of people took deferments, and as many of them as they could, including Dick Cheney.  Deferments weren’t illegal, although they certainly were controversial at the time and remain so today.  Biden didn’t become a “draft dodger” or a deserter, and as we can see, he became a productive member of American society. Under normal circumstances, it shouldn’t make any difference at all.

However, the same can be said for Cheney — and mostly wasn’t over the last four years.  Democrats who gleefully questioned Cheney’s manhood and patriotism over this issue should now explain why they support a candidate for the same office with the same record of deferments.  This issue shouldn’t be about Biden, who cooperated with the system as it existed at the time.  It should be about holding the hypocrites accountable for their baseless attacks over the years.

Obama’s answer on experience: But I’m such a great campaigner!

Even if they did, it gives him no experience at managing disasters.  Governors and mayors have to manage disasters, and when they succeed, they save lives.  When they fail, as we saw in Katrina, it costs lives.  Legislators have no role in disaster management itself, although honestly, disaster management isn’t usually a resumé point when voting for mayor, governor, or President.  Whatever impulse exists now to make it one stems from the irrational blame heaped on George Bush for the failures of Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco in Katrina, although FEMA certainly had its failures as well.

But the main point here is that Obama didn’t really answer the question, and he set up a straw man argument in response to Cooper.  Governor Palin is, well, governor, and not currently the mayor of Wasila.  As Governor, Palin operates a $9 billion budget, and manages $13 billion in revenue.  Furthermore, she runs a government that employs 25,000 people.

Obama blithely pretends that she’s still the mayor of “Wasilly” in order to boost himself.  However, running for office isn’t executive experience, for one good reason: Obama isn’t the campaign manager.  He has a CEO actually running the campaign, handling the budget, and managing the people while Obama makes the speeches.