Birtherism: Where it all began

Birtherism: Where it all began - Ben Smith and Byron Tau - POLITICO.com

A brief history of birtherism Birtherism is the latest and most enduring version of a theory in search of facts.
The original smear against Obama was that he was a crypto-Muslim, floated in 2004 by perennial Illinois political candidate and serial litigant Andy Martin. Other related versions of this theory alleged that Obama was educated in an Indonesian “madrassa” or steeped in Islamist ideology from a young age, and the theories began to spread virally after Obama appeared on the national stage – to the casual observer, from nowhere – with his early 2007 presidential campaign announcement. (See: Obama kin: Birther rumors 'a shame')
All through that year, the Obama campaign – with the affirmation of most leaders of both parties – aggressively battled that smear by emphasizing his Christian faith. Obama’s controversial but emphatically Christian pastor emerged as a campaign issue and the belief that he was a Muslim seemed to lose traction. (See: Clinton: Birther claims 'ludicrous')
Then, as Obama marched toward the presidency, a new suggestion emerged: That he was not eligible to serve. (See: Birther debate alive across U.S.)
That theory first emerged in the spring of 2008, as Clinton supporters circulated an anonymous email questioning Obama’s citizenship.
“Barack Obama’s mother was living in Kenya with his Arab-African father late in her pregnancy. She was not allowed to travel by plane then, so Barack Obama was born there and his mother then took him to Hawaii to register his birth,” asserted one chain email that surfaced on the urban legend site Snopes.com in April 2008.

Georgia Administrative Law Judge Rejects Claim That President Obama Isn’t a ...

This won't settle it, of course.

Georgia Administrative Law Judge Rejects Claim That President Obama Isn’t a Natural-Born Citizen

via The Volokh Conspiracy by Eugene Volokh on 2/5/12

This is the litigation I mentioned when the judge allowed it to go forward earlier this year; the judge has now ruled on the merits that the fact that President Obama's father wasn't a U.S. citizen doesn't keep President Obama from being a natural-born citizen: Anyone born in the U.S., with narrow exceptions (such as that for the children of diplomats) is a U.S. citizen from birth, and therefore a natural-born citizen.
I'm not an expert on this area of the law, but the Georgia judge's reasoning, which echoes the reasoning of a 2009 Indiana Court of Appeals decision strikes me as quite persuasive, as does the much more detailed reasoning in a Nov. 2011 Congressional Research Service report, which reaches the same result.
UPDATE: I originally accidentally omitted the link to the Georgia administrative judge's ruling — I've now added it above.

How Obama Got Elected

http://www.howobamagotelected.com/index.asp

 

Voters' Remorse

Laer, at Cheat-Seeking Missiles, has another example of Obama Voters' Remorse (OVR):

My inside-the-beltway mom and former ambassador step-dad are visiting, and much as I love them (unquatifiably), I was fearing the visit.  Politics of course.  It seemed I just couldn't prepare myself for them being all bouncy and bright about how great Obama is; how could I bite my tongue and not show my fear, disgust and anger over the course Rahmbama is steering, the actions they've taken?

But a curious thing happened.  My mom is terribly disappointed in her rock star candidate, and worried about the future. Paraphrasing:

"We had such hope for him.  Of course we thought anything would be better after Bush, and he had such promise.  He was what America needed, half black, half white, with a message of hope that was so well delivered."

Now she's terribly worried about the long-term effect the stimulus spending bill will have on America's economy and strength, she's disgusted with how it was rushed through without meaningful public or Congressional debate and she is appalled by his desire to move the Census to the White House.

How many folks across America are having the same rude awakening, do you suppose?  How many are shaking their heads and asking themselves, "How could I have been so foolish?"  And no, I did not say, "I told you so."  This is my mom, folks!

Was it something she said?

Tammy Bruce was asked to write letters to the Presidential candidates, and The Advocate would publish the one addressed to whichever candidate won.  Her letter to Obama was published, and the readers didn't like it.

So I wasn't surprised at all to find on the Advocate's website comments on my article that were vicious, misogynistic and even somewhat threatening. Even just one letter of dissent is apparently too much for a community which demands acceptance from everyone else. I also know because moderate or conservative POVs are not usually offered by the gay press, moderate and conservatives gays simple don't read magazine's like The Advocate, leaving a ghetto readership of leftists and liberals, hence, the malevolence in the response to my article.

Keep in mind, the hate coming from the anti-hate, liberal, tolerant Gay Gestapo as I term it is also meant to send a message to anyone else who might dare to not conform, so I'm asking that you submit a comment to help send a message to young people who read this that many people, gay and straight, do think differently and it's okay. Starting with my first book "The New Thought Police" (7 years ago now!) I'm determined that we make sure that no gestapo makes it too dangerous or threatening to speak out. This is especially important for minorities and all of us who think freedom of expression, being different and the importance of individualism aren't just slogans for the latest protest or banner.

The editors of The Advocate should be praised for being willing to include a conservative POV in this article. Let's make sure they're not frightened away from doing so again by a bunch of Thought Police thugs.

Obama's Shrinking Coattails

Coattails seem to be going out of fashion. 

Mary Katherine Ham notes another reason why Democrats may not be able to count of Obama drawing voters to the polls in the future:

...the Obama turnout effort among blacks may not be replicable. You can only vote to elect the first black president once.

In other news, rain is wet!

Alexander Burns at Politico.com writes:

Media bias was more intense in the 2008 election than in any other national campaign in recent history, Time magazine's Mark Halperin said Friday at the Politico/USC conference on the 2008 election.

 

"It's the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war," Halperin said at a panel of media analysts. "It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage."

 

Halperin, who maintains Time's political site "The Page," cited two New York Times articles as examples of the divergent coverage of the two candidates.

 

"The example that I use, at the end of the campaign, was the two profiles that The New York Times ran of the potential first ladies," Halperin said. "The story about Cindy McCain was vicious. It looked for every negative thing they could find about her and it case her in an extraordinarily negative light. It didn't talk about her work, for instance, as a mother for her children, and they cherry-picked every negative thing that's ever been written about her."

The story about Michelle Obama, by contrast, was "like a front-page endorsement of what a great person Michelle Obama is," according to Halperin.

Targeting Palin

From Patterico's Pontifications:

Howard Kurtz, in accusing Sarah Palin of misstating some facts, misstates some facts:

While taking swipes at bloggers — "probably sitting there in their parents' basement, wearing their pajamas" — Palin also misstated some facts. She complained to Lauer about "the rumors, the speculation, even in mainstream media, that Trig wasn't actually my child, that Trig was somebody else's child and I faked a pregnancy," calling that "absolutely ridiculous."

Wow. That misstates some facts?? Has Kurtz taken on Trig Trutherism? Let's read on:

In fact, no mainstream outlet published the Internet rumors until the McCain campaign issued a statement, during the GOP convention, that Palin's teenage daughter Bristol was pregnant. McCain officials told reporters they were putting out the news because of inquiries about whether the governor was really Trig's mother.

First, how does that show Palin misstated any facts? She didn't say: the mainstream media published scurrilous rumors about Trig's parentage before we announced Bristol's pregnancy. She said: the mainstream media published scurrilous rumors about Trig's parentage. And you people did, Howard. Now you're acting like you had no choice; as if McCain forced your hand by announcing that Bristol was pregnant.

Obama -- The Man Without Fear

....but is that necessarily a good thing?  Abe Greenwald at Commentary thinks maybe not.

Barack Obama's miscommunication of plans to move ahead with an American missile defense project in Poland, and his subsequent contradiction of Polish President Lech Kaczynski's statement, are bigger problems than most are readily admitting. John Bolton, characteristically, calls it like he sees it. In the Wall Street Journal, Bolton writes that Russia's recent vow to place missile assets in Poland was an act of aggression aimed at Obama and at Kaczynski. Obama's mistake and disavowal leaves a Polish-American partnership looking very foolish, because Obama "should have understood that foreign leaders, both friends and adversaries, are in a state of high tension."

But what if Obama doesn't understand "a state of high tension"? For all the talk of his presidential temperament, there was something eerie about Obama's cool that was never brought up. Is it presidential not to get worked up over anything? When John McCain pressed Obama hard in the last debate, it is true Obama did not get rattled. But something noticeable came into his face. It wasn't annoyance so much as the flash of an error message. As if he simply didn't have the software necessary for expressing anger.

What other software is missing? The national guessing game underway right now is a function of the fact that Obama has never unequivocally held an important position. His declarations are four parts wiggle-room, one-part resolve. Either that or they face certain reversal. Missile defense, off-shore drilling, guns, partial-birth abortion, troop withdrawal–there are truly too many examples of lingering haziness to list. Is it presidential to elevate indecision to a kind of intellectual philosophy?

At some point, as the Decider-in-Chief, Obama will have to make decisions, hold to them, and act on them.  And not deciding has a way of becoming a "made" decision.  Once decisions are made, wiggle-room has a way of vanishing like the morning dew.

Priorities at 3AM

Abe Greenwald at Commentary:

Sarah Palin stayed on the line a little too long when someone handed her a call from a Nicolas Sarkozy impersonator. Barack Obama made a call to the actual Polish president, who somehow took away a completely wrong idea about future American policy on missile defense (i.e., that Obama supported an American missile-defense presence in Poland, when Obama has now declared himself non-committal.) You tell me which scenario is "scary."

But the media narrative remains: Barack Obama is bright, Sarah Palin is stupid.  Evidence means nothing.

Let's hear it for the fact checkers!

The New York Times reports on how well various news outlets fact-check their news.

 

It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. "Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks," Mr. Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn't exist. His blog does, but it's a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times.

....

But the truth was out for all to see long before the big-name take-downs. For months sourcewatch.org has identified Martin Eisenstadt as a hoax. When Mr. Stein was the victim, he blogged that "there was enough info on the Web that I should have sussed this thing out."

But it did so perfectly fit the preferred "Sarah Palin Is Stupid" narrative...

Left-wing tolerance in action

From the Chicago Tribune:

As the media keeps gushing on about how America has finally adopted tolerance as the great virtue, and that we're all united now, let's consider the Brave Catherine Vogt Experiment.

 

Catherine Vogt, 14, is an Illinois 8th grader, the daughter of a liberal mom and a conservative dad. She wanted to conduct an experiment in political tolerance and diversity of opinion at her school in the liberal suburb of Oak Park.

 

She noticed that fellow students at Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama for president. His campaign kept preaching "inclusion," and she decided to see how included she could be.

 

So just before the election, Catherine consulted with her history teacher, then bravely wore a unique T-shirt to school and recorded the comments of teachers and students in her journal. The T-shirt bore the simple yet quite subversive words drawn with a red marker:

"McCain Girl."

Immediately, Catherine learned she was stupid for wearing a shirt with Republican John McCain's name. Not merely stupid. Very stupid.

 

"People were upset. But they started saying things, calling me very stupid, telling me my shirt was stupid and I shouldn't be wearing it," Catherine said.

 

Then it got worse.

 

"One person told me to go die. It was a lot of dying. A lot of comments about how I should be killed," Catherine said, of the tolerance in Oak Park.

 

But students weren't the only ones surprised that she wore a shirt supporting McCain.

 

"In one class, I had one teacher say she will not judge me for my choice, but that she was surprised that I supported McCain," Catherine said.

 

If Catherine was shocked by such passive-aggressive threats from instructors, just wait until she goes to college.

 

"Later, that teacher found out about the experiment and said she was embarrassed because she knew I was writing down what she said," Catherine said.

 

One student suggested that she be put up on a cross for her political beliefs.

 

"He said, 'You should be crucifixed.' It was kind of funny because, I was like, don't you mean 'crucified?' " Catherine said.

 

Other entries in her notebook involved suggestions by classmates that she be "burned with her shirt on" for "being a filthy-rich Republican."

 

Some said that because she supported McCain, by extension she supported a plan by deranged skinheads to kill Obama before the election. And I thought such politicized logic was confined to American newsrooms. Yet Catherine refused to argue with her peers. She didn't want to jeopardize her experiment.

 

"I couldn't show people really what it was for. I really kind of wanted to laugh because they had no idea what I was doing," she said.

 

Only a few times did anyone say anything remotely positive about her McCain shirt. One girl pulled her aside in a corner, out of earshot of other students, and whispered, "I really like your shirt."

That's when you know America is truly supportive of diversity of opinion, when children must whisper for fear of being ostracized, heckled and crucifixed.

 

The next day, in part 2 of The Brave Catherine Vogt Experiment, she wore another T-shirt, this one with "Obama Girl" written in blue. And an amazing thing happened.

 

Catherine wasn't very stupid anymore. She grew brains.

 

"People liked my shirt. They said things like my brain had come back, and I had put the right shirt on today," Catherine said.

Some students accused her of playing both sides.

 

"A lot of people liked it. But some people told me I was a flip-flopper," she said. "They said, 'You can't make up your mind. You can't wear a McCain shirt one day and an Obama shirt the next day.' "

 

But she sure did, and she turned her journal into a report for her history teacher, earning Catherine extra credit. We asked the teacher, Norma Cassin-Pountney, whether it was ironic that Catherine would be subject to such intolerance from pro-Obama supporters in a community that prides itself on its liberal outlook.

 

"That's what we discussed," Cassin-Pountney said about the debate in the classroom when the experiment was revealed. "I said, here you are, promoting this person [Obama] that believes we are all equal and included, and look what you've done? The students were kind of like, 'Oh, yeah.' I think they got it."

 

Princess Obama

Peter Hitchens at the Daily Mail:

 

The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship – its nearest equivalent – is focused on a man who actually did something.

 

I really don't see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts.

....

Just look at his sermon by the shores of Lake Michigan. He really did talk about a 'new dawn', and a 'timeless creed' (which was 'yes, we can'). He proclaimed that 'change has come'. He revealed that, despite having edited the Harvard Law Review, he doesn't know what 'enormity' means. He reached depths of oratorical drivel never even plumbed by our own Mr Blair, burbling about putting our hands on the arc of history (or was it the ark of history?) and bending it once more toward the hope of a better day (Don't try this at home).

 

I am not making this up. No wonder that awful old hack Jesse Jackson sobbed as he watched. How he must wish he, too, could get away with this sort of stuff.

....

As I walked, I crossed another of Washington's secret frontiers. There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear. But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy.

 

They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.

 

Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.

 

These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America's conservative party – the Republicans – to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.

 

They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?

 

Maybe he won't govern the way he ran

Melanie Philips at the UK Spectator doesn't seem to think much of our choice for President.

So the answer to my question turned out to be yes, America really was going to do this. A historic moment indeed. The hyperbole for once is not exaggerated: this is a watershed election which changes the fate of the world. The fear however is that the world now becomes very much less safe for all of us as a result. Those of us who have looked on appalled during this most frightening of presidential elections – at the suspension of reason and its replacement by thuggery -- can only hope that the way this man governs will be very different from the profile provided by his influences, associations and record to date. It's a faint hope – the enemies of America, freedom and the west will certainly be rejoicing today.

America has voted for change, apparently. Change from what, precisely? From Bush? But in the second term, Bush stopped being Bush. His foreign policy lurched from paralysis to appeasement (redeemed only by the strategic genius of Gen Petraeus – and what price Petraeus now?) As Frank Gaffney wrote in the Washington Times yesterday, Bush's Treasury is about to open the way for sharia law to be imposed upon America's banking system. And it was a Democrat-controlled Congress that helped provoke the sub-prime lending crisis that triggered the current financial meltdown.

What this election tells us is that America voted for change because America is in the process of changing – not just demographically by becoming less white and more diverse, but as the result of a culture war in which western civilisation is losing out to a far-left agenda which has become mainstream, teaching American children to despise the founding values of their country and hijacking discourse by the minority power-grab of victim-culture.

The reaction of conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic to this undoubted change – not just in the US but in Britain too – shows the intellectual disarray caused by these profound developments. They say politicians must stop trying to hold the cultural line and go instead with the flow of change. In Britain, the Tory party has adopted this strategy. Now there are Republicans saying the same thing.

But John McCain is a Republican who does not fit the old template, who does subscribe to some of this 'change' agenda on a number of issues. As a result, he was incapable of attacking Obama on the most important grounds of all: that he stood for values inimical to America's founding principles. When he did venture into this territory, it was half-cocked and far too late, appearing merely like the desperate throw of a loser. The reason he couldn't do it earlier was that he had no coherent platform of his own. So why vote for a muddled and erratic quasi-'progressive' when the real thing is a rock star? It cannot be said too emphatically -- the Republicans lost this election. Obama ran a superbly disciplined campaign and he was an impressive candidate, particularly in his calm and stately demeanour throughout. The Republicans screwed up in government, they selected a hopelessly frail and erratic candidate, he ran a shambolic campaign. They deserved to lose.

So now we are promised a change in America's fundamental values. And they really will be changed. Obama has said in terms that he thinks the US constitution is flawed. America's belief in itself as defending individual liberty, truth and justice on behalf of the free world will now be expiated instead as its original sin. Those who have for the past eight years worked to bring down the America that defends and protects life and liberty are today ecstatic. They have stormed the very citadel on Pennsylvania Avenue itself.  

Millions of Americans remain lion-hearted, decent, rational and sturdy. They find themselves today abandoned, horrified, deeply apprehensive for the future of their country and the free world. No longer the land of the free and the home of the brave; they must now look elsewhere.

Most corrupt election in half a century?

Jonathan Adler at the Volokh Conspiracy has a couple of lengthy posts on the subject, in response to Jim Lindgren.
So does Orin Kerr.

The Post's election coverage

Jonathan Adler at the Volokh Conspiracy notes:

According to Howell, the Post's coverage was too poll-drive and "horse-race" news stories outnumbered issues-oriented stories over the past year by two-to-one. The balance of positive and negative coverage of the two candidates was equally lopsided in both the news and op-ed pages. Howell offers this explanation:

Post reporters, photographers and editors -- like most of the national news media -- found the candidacy of Obama, the first African American major-party nominee, more newsworthy and historic. Journalists love the new; McCain, 25 years older than Obama, was already well known and had more scars from his longer career in politics.

Because Post reporters "love the new" they offered favorable coverage of Sarah Palin, right? Not exactly. Here's Howell's take on the Post's coverage of the veep candidates:

One gaping hole in coverage involved Joe Biden, Obama's running mate. When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, reporters were booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought The Post went over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden. They are right; it was a serious omission. However, I do not agree with those readers who thought The Post did only hatchet jobs on her. There were several good stories on her, the best on page 1 by Sally Jenkins on how Palin grew up in Alaska.

Loyal opposition

Also from Powerline. Conservatives are going to oppose Obama.  That's part of the definition of conservative.  But we don't need to descend into Obama Derangement Syndrome.  We can be better than that.  Some of the suggestions made are:

Don't assume that Obama is always wrong. Judge all of his positions on the merits; don't conclude that a position is wrong just because he takes it. Republicans tended to fall into this trap with President Clinton. For example, some opposed our military involvement in Kosovo based not on an analysis of the situation there, but rather on a knee-jerk anti-Clinton response. This approach is irresponsible and unpatriotic.

Be loyal in your opposition. As my blog partner Scott Johnson puts it, paraphrasing Steven Decatur: "May he always be in the right; but our president, right or wrong."

Be patient in your opposition. Don't mimic the left (this is always good advice) and conclude that because the country isn't getting mad about policies that bother you, Obama is therefore a "Teflon president." In fact, you should stop reading the first 10 pundits who call him that. Americans are fair-minded. They will give Obama time to succeed, as they should. The mainstream media will buy him additional time. But eventually the honeymoon will end.

Be fair in your opposition. None of the 101 things that you criticize Obama for should be illegitimate or trivial. Remember that the president isn't responsible for every adverse development that occurs on his watch. Even sound decisions often produce adverse consequences. Don't judge Obama's decisions in a vacuum; compare them to the alternatives.

"Secede" from the mainstream media. After Republican victories, some leftists like to talk about moving to Canada or somehow "seceding" from the U.S. Such talk, and that's all it is, is unpatriotic and should be avoided. However, "seceding" from the mainstream media (MSM) is another matter.

Independent media watchdog groups, and even some members of the liberal MSM, have confirmed what was obvious throughout the campaign: coverage of Obama was vastly more favorable than coverage of McCain.

Seceding from the MSM doesn't mean no longer accessing the information it provides. The goal here isn't to exist in a conservative echo chamber; the goal is to withdraw financial support from our political adversaries. The MSM's content generally is available for free online.

Don't obsess. Spend as much time as you see fit following, discussing, and participating in public affairs. But don't think about them the rest of the time. Life is full of beauty and wonder. Don't let politics blind you to it. Life is full of opportunities for personal and professional fulfillment. Don't let politics distract you from them.

Smearology

Power Line looks at what it takes to buy in to some of the smears that go around -- a special kind of gullability:

I don't think we've commented on the anonymous trashing of Sarah Palin by unknown McCain campaign staffers. It's abhorrent, obviously, but I want to comment specifically on one aspect of the unsourced smear: the claim that Governor Palin didn't realize that Africa was a continent, but rather understood it to be a country.

This is a good example of a claim so ridiculous on its face that it requires a special kind of gullibility to believe it. It reminds me of a similar smear that was directed at Dan Quayle when he was Vice President: the assertion that he thought people speak Latin in Latin America. This line originated as a joke, but was later taken seriously and repeated as fact by many liberals. Who could be dumb enough to fall for the claim that Quayle, who had graduated from high school, college and law school, served in the U.S. Senate and as Vice President, somehow had remained ignorant of the facts that Latin is a dead language, and Latin Americans speak Spanish and Portuguese? I don't know, but I suspect some of the same people are now telling each other that Sarah Palin didn't know Africa is a continent. Which would mean, I suppose, that South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt are states. Or provinces, maybe.

Such gullibility stems from a willingness to believe anything bad about people with whom one disagrees or whom one dislikes. We saw the same phenomenon throughout the Bush administration, as the most absurd claims about President Bush were leveled, with apparent sincerity, by large numbers of liberals. It's a good lesson for us conservatives: let's not fall into the trap of believing everything we hear about Barack Obama and his associates, no matter how patently absurd, just because we disagree with their policies.

Beldar on Palin

...and the merits of anonymous claims being made about her.

The single most frequently recurring theme was that Sarah Palin's political opponents underestimated her. In every campaign, her opponent attacked her as inexperienced. None of them argued, however, that she was stupid. The closest any opponent ever came to that was one of her two opponents in the 2006 gubernatorial race, Andrew Halcro, who claimed that she didn't immerse herself in the minutia of policy detail in which he himself reveled. Halcro is a wonk, and an annoying, patronizing twerp, and a sore loser, and the people of Alaska recognized that by leaving him an embarrassing distant third in that race, with less than 10% of their votes. But even Halcro didn't claim that Sarah Palin was stupid.

....

Because she was relatively unknown outside Alaska, however — and, very frankly, because she is an attractive woman who could therefore be easily tagged with the most cruel and sexist of stereotypes, the airhead — from the day John McCain announced her as his vice presidential nominee, her political opponents simply began manufacturing lies about her, many of which were designed to reinforce that airhead stereotype.

It did not surprise me that partisans opposed to the GOP ticket would believe these lies. But it very much surprised me that some smart centrists and even nominal conservatives did too.

....

The latest of the deliberate liars — the people who are inventing stuff out of whole cloth, maliciously and without any pretense of a factual basis, without any regard for their utter implausibility — are the cowardly, sniveling pieces of garbage who've been masquerading as "campaign aides" for the McCain-Palin campaign. They are the worst kind of traitors in politics. Like the scumballs who invented the list of books that Sarah Palin had supposedly wanted burned when she was mayor of Wasilla — and who included in the list Harry Potter books that hadn't even been written when Gov. Palin was mayor — these anonymous assassins don't even bother to come up with plausible lies: Why bother, when mainstream publications like Newsweek will uncritically regurgitate them to millions without doing the most basic fact-checking?

....

To Carl Cameron and others at Fox News: Shame on you for granting these people anonymity. There is no basis in journalistic ethics for you to do that. Shame on you for reporting this garbage at all.* With the exception of a few there like Greta Van Susterin who've refused to buy into this nonsense, you are rapidly eroding such credibility and respectability as your network had earned among Americans disgusted with the mainstream media in general. Stop what you're doing immediately.

To Sen. John McCain: Although you were far from my first choice as the GOP nominee, I've spent hundreds of hours working on your campaign's behalf, as have many others who were thrilled by your selection of Gov. Palin as your running mate.

I never thought I would have cause to label you, of all people, as a coward or dishonorable. You're acting in a cowardly and dishonorable fashion, however, by permitting people identified with your campaign to make these anonymous attacks on Gov. Palin. Identify them. Make them famous. If what they say is true, then make them back it up. If it is not — and I believe it is not — then expose them as liars so that no GOP politician will ever again dare hire these sniveling worms. They have no honor, but they are besmirching yours. And your silence is compounding this problem with every hour that passes. It's time, and past time, finally, for your long-suppressed temper to be unleashed, because you finally have targets who deserve the worst public tongue-lashing you can deliver.

Challenges elect

Under the heading of Now You Tell Us, Patterico writes:

The L.A. Times reveals a truth many of us already knew, but that the electorate at large evidently did not — namely, that Obama oversimplified the foreign policy challenges he faced:

The other truth is that, even with wider international support, it may be impossible for Obama to win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, broker peace between Arabs and Israelis or stabilize African countries beset by civil strife. As Times correspondents explain on this page, the realities on the ground are more complex than presented by Obama the candidate.

and:

The L.A. Times reveals a truth many of us already knew, but that the electorate at large evidently did not — namely, that Obama's economic policies are terribly worrying to many knowledgeable investors:

[P]lenty of people believe Obama's ideas will be somewhere between hurtful and ruinous for investors over time.

And as he notes,

It's OK to say . . . now that he's safely elected.