Why Does Trig Need A Mommy, and Other Questions for the Media

Recently, the Democratic chattering class and the media have developed a fondness for mommies and babies that they have never before displayed (it must have been all those cute pictures of the Palin family with their Down Syndrome child.)

Suddenly, liberals everywhere--especially feminists--are incredibly concerned that if Mrs. Palin becomes the Vice-President of the United States, poor baby Trig might be deprived of 24-hour a day access to his Mommy.

This, we are informed, would be a disaster of epic proportions.

But why?

Aren't these the people who are endlessly scolding those of us on the socially conservative side of the spectrum for our silliness in expecting children to have both a Mommy and a Daddy?

Daddy Todd Palin, currently the First Gentleman of Alaska, is a stay-at-home dad, and plans to continue the practice as the Second Gentleman of the United States. He is, by all accounts, a devoted and wonderful dad. Mommy Sarah takes her baby to work with her as needed, and the family all works together.

But if this is unsatisfying to formerly anti-traditional liberals, would they like to withdraw their support for homosexual couples having and/or adopting children? Particularly when both parties are working?

If it's okay--even, many argue, preferable--to raise a child with two Daddies and no Mommy, or two Mommies and no Daddy, why is it suddenly child abuse to raise a child with a full-time Daddy and a working Mommy, and lots of relatives, sitters, and nannies (as I'm sure will be available to the Vice-President of the United States)?

I'm just asking.

I would also like someone to tell me how old one's children must be before one is allowed to enter the full-time work force? I ask this because I always thought feminists were adamant on getting us all back to work as soon as possible after giving birth, but now Sally Quinn tells me that Bristol Palin--an engaged young lady (when I was a feminist, everyone over 12 was a "woman" (or "womon," if she were a lesbian or an enlightened radical)--requires the care of her mother for an unspecified amount of time:

McCain claims he knew about the pregnancy, and was not at all concerned. Why not? Not only do we have a woman with five children, including an infant with special needs, but a woman whose 17-year-old child will need her even more in the coming months. Not to mention the grandchild. This would inevitably be an enormous distraction for a new vice president (or president) in a time of global turmoil. Not only in terms of her job, but from a media standpoint as well.

So, does that mean that we should not hire as public servants anyone whose children are small, or in poor health, perhaps people whose siblings are on the edge of divorce, or who might have any reason to think about their family--even a little bit--while at work? What about people who have elderly parents who might become ill or die?

And is this requisite judgment retroactive? Do we judge politicians on this behavior in the past? If so, what do we make of Joe Biden, who was sworn in as a Senator at the bedside of his critically ill sons after an accident that took the life of their mother and brother? Was that the wrong choice to have made? Should we now judge him to have been an unfit parent and bar him from the vice-presidency? Or is the Senate so much less stressful and time-consuming than the Vice-presidency that it doesn't matter--and, if so, why is it considered on the Obama side to be so much better a training ground for the office than a Governorship?

And why, oh why didn't anyone question the propriety of John Edwards continuing to ravenously seek the presidency--an office very few people really wanted him to have in the first place--while his wife was, quite literally dying of cancer? Why didn't anyone ask whether that would have been a terrible distraction to the devoted husband he was claiming to be at the time?

Is it because he is a Democrat, and the media rule on Democrats is "touch not mine anointed?" You'll note that the Republicans didn't ask the question; they're too polite. But until the media clarifies its rules on family devotion, I will remain in the dark.

No, really. I just don't understand the rules.

Like, did anyone bother to ask Jack Kennedy about his children? As I recall, they were small at the time (remember John-John saluting the coffin?) I seem to remember that the Kennedy children were all over the White House all the time. Lots of cute family pictures of babies playing near the President's desk and all that. Is it only okay for men to bring their children to work?

The Obamas kids are both girls, both will reach the age to make sexual mistakes before eight years in the White House are up. Is it too much pressure to put them in the White House? Might all that stress lead them to rebellion?

And what about Michelle? She already works. how is she going to handle the pressures of being First Lady, all the travel and entertaining, while trying to be a good mother to two little girls, driving them to ballet and piano lessons? She's already talked about how much time she spends planning their lunches and reading labels on the food she is buying--how will she ever find time for all that in the demanding pressure-cooker that is the life of the First Lady?

I'm not asking these questions, but I do wonder why the media doesn't.

After all, they don't seem to have a problem prying into when Bristol Palin might have become pregnant, whether the Palins were married when Track was conceived, what discussions the Palins had with their doctors about the impending birth of their baby (normally, under liberal rules, an unheard-of intrusion into the right to privacy; HIPPA takes a dim view of it, too), and a lot of other things that used to be labeled "off limits."

I'm just asking for a set of written guidelines, that's all. Just tell me the rules.

Democrats Trash Flags, Republicans Wave Them

Not to questions anyone's patriotism or anything, but whatever could have possessed the organizers of the Democratic National Fiasco at Invesco Stadium last week to leave 84 trash bags of flags behind?

If you watched the ascension of Obama to his perch as the official Democratic presidential candidate, you may have noticed the unusual spectacle of tens of thousands of Democrats waving flags throughout the stadium.

But what happened to the flags after the styrofoam columns went back to Hollywood is a pretty interesting story in and of itself--and another example of the genius of the McCain campaign.

It seems that the Democrats left the 12,000 flags in garbage bags, "in and near garbage bins," according to the vendor who claims to have found them. The vendor then gave them to the McCain campaign (quite probably because he figured that John McCain had a pretty good idea how to treat a flag.)

As a result, the McCain campaign was handed a pre-filled template of American iconography:

Boy Scouts were sorting through 84 bags of flags in Colorado on Saturday, before a McCain supporter had veterans distribute them to the audience.

“We want to find good homes for these flags,” radio host Dan Caplis said at the rally, adding that whatever flags remained would be placed at memorials throughout Colorado.

Audience members, who booed when Caplis announced that the flags were left in Denver, waved the flags and chanted “U.S.A” before McCain arrived at the rally with his running mate, Sarah Palin.

How sweet is that? Boy scouts. Veterans. War memorials. "U.S.A." Sarah Palin.

The Obama camp has a lot to learn about politics, if they allowed this to happen.

Caught utterly flat-footed, a DNC convention spokesman could only sputter ineffectively:

Damon Jones, spokesman for the Democratic National Convention Committee, released a statement saying McCain should applaud the fact that thousands of American flags were “proudly waved” at their convention.

“But instead his supporters wrongfully took leftover bundles of our flags from the stadium to play out a cheap political stunt calling into question our patriotism,” he said.

Wow. Another example of total political incompetence. To say that McCain should "applaud the fact" that American flags were "proudly waved" at the DNC convention just underlines the notion that there is something unusual about Democrats waving flags. And it really doesn't matter if the flags were "wrongfully" taken (which is unexplained, as well). The apparent fact that they were in garbage bags is undisputed by Mr. Jones.

The flag code says that a flag is to be disposed of by burning, once it is no longer useful. Or, it can be thrown away if it is "worn, damaged or tattered beyond repair."

So, we are left with two possibilities. Either the Democrats don't know how to treat the flag, or when they are given flags, they destroy them.

Either way, it gave the McCain camp a chance to honor veterans, wave flags, and interact with Boy Scouts.

Grand-slam home-run.

Introducing John Sidney McCain, Political Genius

Though conservatives nationwide continued to doubt the wisdom of selecting Senator McCain as the standard-bearer for the GOP until approximately eleven-o'clock last Friday, over the last week he has proven conclusively that he is the right man for this time to take the reins of the presidency.

For those who doubt, consider the evidence. Prior to the convention, the political buzz was that Obama was going to go to his convention, hit it out of the park, and get a big statistical bounce, after which, the Republicans would put on a lackluster, dispirited convention (assuming the hurricane didn't wipe them out), and eventually lose the election.

What a difference a week makes.

It began the day after the Democrats' overblown finale of their "history-making" convention. Playing up the unity image, Hillary's people were allowed to keep their votes, but Hillary herself, acting as a New York delegate, put Barack over the top and gave him the nomination. Hillary and Bill gave what were considered wonderful, unifying speeches, and the media was in hog-heaven. Chris Matthews' leg was, no-doubt, positively vibrating.

Then, in an astonishing moment of hubris, the One chose to accept his nomination like a rock star--in a stadium, to a cheering throng, at a ticketed event, featuring too many Hollywood big-wigs and high-profile entertainers to count (Oprah, I understand, cried her false eyelashes off.)

John McCain chose to leave the event alone, filming a quick congratulatory video lauding Obama for his historic nomination. At the end of his statement, he said:

"Tomorrow we'll be back at it. But, tonight, Senator--job well done."

Boy, he wasn't kidding.

McCain got "back at it" so fast and so furiously, Obama never knew what hit him (or, rather "who" hit him.)

The first glimmer of his genius came the next morning, as we all awoke not to glowing reminiscences of the past four days of Democratic politics--but breathless anticipation of who John McCain was going to pick for his vice-president.

It would have been a small story, but as clues began to come out that it might be the female governor of Alaska, it became a news tsunami.

Thus, the Democrats' convention quickly disappeared down the memory hole, flushed even further into the sea when Governor Palin opened her mouth and revealed herself to be an unexpected star.

While Hurricane Gustav threatened to both destroy New Orleans (again) and divert the attention of the media from day one of the Republican convention (scheduled to feature keynoter Joe Lieberman, originally), McCain demonstrated his superlative political instincts by insisting that the convention be scaled back to only the legal requirements, to allow the GOP to pay close attention to the oncoming storm. President Bush and Governor Bobby Jindal (Republican) were graciously granted the spotlight for the duration of the danger, and Laura Bush and Cindy McCain used their personal speeches to appeal to the delegates to raise money for Hurricane Relief.

As if that weren't brilliant enough, he had already--without controversy--permitted the writing of the most conservative Republican platform in decades, which pumped up the delegates quite a bit. It is unclear (at least to me) how much McCain had to do with the selection of speakers, but whoever was, demonstrated sheer political mastery. Knowing when the networks would join the broadcast (not until 10 p.m.--a ridiculously late hour, but the trend in recent elections), the convention planners set up the second night to have Laura and George Bush address the convention delegates. The President appeared via satellite, since he was busy dealing with the Gulf Coast), and was not seen on the network broadcasts--perfectly allowing those in the hall to see the president they still love, while sending the symbolic message that the era of Bush is over, and the new era of Republican reform under McCain is about to begin.

In prime time, Senator Fred Thompson gave a rip-roaring barn-burner of a speech, demonstrating why he had been dragged into the primary in the first place. Some wags and pundits that night even suggested that McCain might not be able to meet expectations in his speech, leading Republicans to wish they had picked Thompson.

Then, for the second time in two elections, a Democrat spoke to the Republican National Convention. And not just any Democrat, but the Democratic party's vice-presidential candidate in 2000! In a convention where political and personal courage were major themes, Senator Joseph Lieberman took his political life in his hands to fulfill his friend John McCain's request to appear and cast partisanship aside, urging all Americans to put country first and elect John McCain. It brought the house down.

Mark this: John McCain, by this point, with the selection of Sarah Palin and the promise to bring the Republican party back to its roots, had brought his base so far back to the fold that they were unabashedly cheering a man they vilified a mere eight years ago.

And he wasn't done yet.

The next night, after revelations of Palin's daughter's pregnancy had ignited a firestorm of attacks and counter-attacks, the also-rans of the primary lined up, one by one, to endorse their former rival, the vice-presidential nominee they didn't turn out to be, and the newly reform-oriented Republican party. One at a time, Romney, Huckabee and Giuliani delivered the kind of speeches they should have given during the primary season if they really wanted to be president.

And then came Sarah.

To thunderous applause, the self-described "hockey mom" introduced herself to the nation, demonstrated her unabashed love for her family--no matter how "challenging" they may be--pledged her fealty to John McCain and the reformist Republican party, and took withering shots--not at Joe Biden, but at Barack Obama, continuing the narrative begun when she first appeared, that she herself is more qualified to be president than Obama (though not nearly as qualified as McCain.)

When McCain appeared faux-unexpectedly (Obama did the same thing at his convention), the screams of the crowd were more likely gratitude to him for picking Palin than expressions of love for McCain, but the delegates were certainly well on their way to fully embracing McCain--moderate reform and all.

On Thursday night, Cindy McCain made her first major speech before a national audience and proved conclusively that she would be a far better First Lady than Michelle Obama, though she said not a word about it. Her speech was about John and her family, the country, and the Palins. But her introductory bio and the details of her personal narrative revealed to the nation for the first time that she has already been essentially doing the work of first ladies for decades--visiting foreign countries, working with the poor, being one of many charity-minded people who serve as the American face of compassion around the world.

It's a powerful image. Who would be a better first lady? The woman who adopted a baby from Mother Theresa's orphanage? Or the woman who makes $100,000 working part-time at the University of Chicago Hospitals, and complains about the price of piano and ballet lessons?

Then, introduced by a biographical video and a stark, dark stage piece voiced-over by Fred Thompson, McCain appeared, again to thunderous applause.

I won't go into the speech here. Suffice it to say, by the end of the convention, McCain had done two things that had seemed impossible only a few weeks ago:

He had unified the base of the Republican Party behind his own reformist agenda, and he had re-established the Republican party as a conservative party, with conservative principles, intending to govern from the right, for the good of the entire nation. And to do so in a bipartisan spirit, reaching across the aisle to likeminded people, working together to put country first.

The full impact of this can only be understood when one looks at the world of talk radio. Today, even Rush Limbaugh (who has in his archives, parodying songs ridiculing "Maverick John McCain" for not being a real conservative) is enthusiastically supporting the Republican ticket. And so is the base of the Republican party, who will go home, call someone at party headquarters, and sign up to work their hearts out to get this "change" and "reform" ticket elected to the White House.

If he can do this with the Republican party, I can only imagine what he can do with the nation.

And the clearest sign that his strategy has totally succeeded came this morning, the day after the convention. While last Friday the Democrats' good-buzz aftermath was marred for them by the selection of Sarah Palin, today all the news is about the last night of the Republican National Convention, the newness and freshness of Sarah Palin, and the surprising new fighting spirit of the GOP.

Last Friday, I may have seen a snippet of the Obama megaspeech about six times--and only because it was part of top-of-the-hour news.

Today, the political narrative is all about Republicans, and I have seen many, many repeats of different parts of the McCain speech all day long.

According to the most recent polling, Obama's 8-point lead after his convention has either dwindled to two or disappeared entirely. Add to that the Nielsen overnights that show that McCain pulled even more viewers than Obama's record-breaking acceptance speech (and even though Obama had an 80K headstart) and that Palin's speech drew only a few million less than Obama's--and more than Hillary's or Biden's--and you cannot help but conclude:

John McCain may have the best political instincts we've seen in the Republican party since Ronald Reagan.

Job well done, Senator. Job well done.

Now Is The Time: Come Home to Your Senses, Joe Lieberman

Before he goes back to Washington for the final session of this Congress, there's one more thing Joe Lieberman should do.

Become a Republican.

At the moment, Lieberman is an "Independent Democrat," but he still caucuses with the Democrats. But the word in Washington these days is that the Democrats in the Senate are so angry with Lieberman for having the (excuse the expression) audacity to speak at the RNC convention that they are planning to strip him of his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country--not their party. At the moment, the Democrats control the Senate by a 51-49 margin, with Lieberman technically an independent, but caucusing with the Democrats. Were he to officially become a Republican, it would make the Senate a 50-50 split, with Dick Cheney (a Republican, in case you hadn't noticed) to break the tie.

Were Lieberman to switch parties, the Republicans would control the Senate for the next few months. It would be a risky move for both the Senator and the Republicans in the Senate. Taking the reins of power so close to the election presents both the possibility of total failure and the promise of sweet victory. Taking the power out of the hands of an obstructionist, do-nothing Senate and actually doing something as the election approaches could be just what the country wants to see.

If Republicans squandered the opportunity, however, it could merely mean greater losses in November.

It would mean rolling the dice. But, right now, in the Democratic Senate, Lieberman doesn't have much more left to lose.

Sarah, Plain and Cool, Driving Democrats to Dysfunction

You knew it would happen. It took mere political moments for horrified Democrats around the nation to find sexist, elitist, and downright crazy ways to attack Senator McCain's VP-designate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Although few knew her before last Friday, she has emerged as clearly the coolest Republican that ever lived. She hunts and fishes, her husband is a snow-mobile champion, she's a marathoner and a union member, kicked the crap out of the Alaska GOP on principle, has a son going to Iraq, and was known on her high school basketball team as "Sarah Barracuda" for her tenacity and grit. She even played with a fractured ankle once--and helped win the game, anyway. She eats moose and caribou, brings her 5-month old baby to work with her, and (unlike McCain) can multi-task with baby and blackberry.

It's time to white out all those "Chuck Norris" and "Fred Thompson" jokes and write-in "Sarah Palin." She makes Arnold Schwarzennegar look like Pat Boone.

First, it was the campaign itself, risking its newly-minted image as the party of middle class, small-town voters, by sniffing:

Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Slightly later in the day, The One himself (and his running mate--let's call him "The Other") then quickly tried to mute the campaign's heavy-handedness with a pretense of politeness:

"We send our congratulations to Governor Sarah Palin and her family on her designation as the Republican nominee for vice president. It is yet another encouraging sign that old barriers are falling in our politics," the statement said."

But the game was already on. Obama/Biden fears and despises this ticket, because it one-ups them on several fronts.

First, and most deliciously, it provides one person out of four in the race that actually has some executive experience--some real, hands-on, decision-making, voter-serving, budget-crafting, making-it-work executive chops. Obama, Biden, and McCain have never done any of that. They've never run a company, much less a city or a state. They've always been one of one-hundred, individually accountable to no one, and ultimately responsible for nothing. McCain's character, at least, has been forged in the fires of adversity, in the Hanoi Hilton. So we know a bit about his intestinal fortitude.

All we know about the courage quotient on the other ticket is that Joe Biden rides the Amtrak, and Barack Obama made a speech four years ago.

Then there is the "woman thing," so to speak. While the Obama campaign couldn't find any qualified woman he liked and trusted enough to be his number two (go away, Hillary), in a party so woman-centered it requires by rule that the majority of convention delegates be women, McCain effortlessly discovered one last February, and esteemed her enough to put her in the mix. And, as time went on, it was her scrappy life story, her heart, and her values that kept her in there--not her gender.

Because we now know that, in this most intense competition she held her own with all the media's darling front-runners, and made the cut at every turn.

And now the Democrats are wailing like banshees, because that was Hillary's historical moment. It's bad enough that Hillary couldn't close the deal for the top of the ticket--but to be shown up by (gag) Republicans in their open-mindedness and egalitarian feminism!

It is a most miserable day for the Democrats--cheered only by the prospect of a killer hurricane coming to wipe out the RNC convention and showcase the "compassion" of Democrats.

The attacks on the remarkable Sarah Palin have come quickly and ruthlessly, and some of them are some of the starkest examples of lift-wing hypocrisy anyone's seen in years. Let us first look at who she really is, before we put on our hazmat suits and wade into what the Democrats are trying to do to her.

Her political experience (she was on the City Council while Barack was a "community organizer"--one of those people that hoped and prayed that Aldermen and mayors would look kindly on his petitions for help, or at least not wreck his plans) is dismissed as "mayor of a town of 9000." Barack entered the state senate in 1997--a beneficiary of the Chicago political machine, and a ruthless player, having eliminated all his opposition on a technicality, including the woman who made it possible for him to run in the first place.

By 1997, Sarah Palin was in her second year as mayor. By the time young Barack Obama keynoted the Democratic National Convention in 2004, while running to be a first-term Senator, Palin had been term-limited out of her two as mayor, having not only cut her own salary while in office, but taxes by 40%.

By 2004, she had already resigned as Ethics Commissioner of Alaska's Oil and Gas Commission, objecting to the Commission's lack of ethics. When Obama was taking his oath of office, Sarah Palin was driving the resignation of the State Party Chairman from the Commission and the Attorney General from office.

On February 10 of 2007, Obama announced his run for president, effectively ending his attention to the Senate (having been in the Senate barely 2 years). (For example, from September to November of 2007, he missed 80% of Senate votes.)

While Obama was missing votes, Sarah Palin was racking up an 80% approval rating as governor and fighting corruption in the Alaska Republican party. Obama, for all his time in one of the most corrupt political clubs in the nation--the Chicago Democratic machine--never saw fit to challenge it at all.

But the women of the Democratic party are losing their minds. How dare this person call herself a woman! How dare any woman disagree with their pro-abortion, anti-family agenda!

Kim Gandy of NOW called Palin "a woman who opposes women's rights," failing to see that not every woman in America believes that it is a "right" to kill an unborn child. Palin is, in fact, a woman who has paved the way for other women, holding challenging jobs usually reserved for men, while raising a family as well.

The Democrats don't know what to do with themselves. The Republican party has shown them up for the ideologues that they are. The Republican party has nominated a woman more qualified than the Democrats' ticket-topper, without making an 18-month long giant deal about her gender. It has, instead, allowed its candidate to select her on her merits. She is not a crony, and she is not a Washington insider. She promises to bring no state of any electoral heft, nor does she come to the position after years of thirsting to be president.

He has found a woman called by duty to do what's right, and willing to set aside her interests for those of the country.

It's a tremendous coup for the GOP. In their eagerness to quell excitement, the donkey party and its minions have already insulted small towns, women in general, mothers, Alaska--anything they can think of.

First, there is the "why did she have a Down Syndrome baby?" argument (which we've already seen in this very forum.) That seems to take as its base that it is her own fault--she was too busy, she should have stayed home, she should have told people she was pregnant, she shouldn't have flown in the last moments of her pregnancy, and on and on and on--that the baby was born with DS.

But there are no facts to this argument, since the Palins knew very early on what the circumstances of their child were to be, and they made the decision to trust God and act out out of love, instead of fear.

Then there is the appalling rumor spread across the lefty blogosphere that five-month old Trig belonged not to Sarah, but to Bristol (some comments have even insinuated that the father is shipping-off-to-Iraq Track, or maybe even the handsome Todd [her father--there is very little that is too abhorrent for the imaginations of these cretins to entertain.])

Of course, now that we know that Bristol is pregnant and engaged, the timeline rules out the possibility that Trig was borne by Bristol. So much for leftist logic.

But if it's not enough to attack her for confusing you with her family, what next? I know--attack her for not being attentive enough to her family! After all, shouldn't conservatives want her to stay home with that baby?

Sally Quin flutters and clucks over Palin's failure to live up to the lifestyle rules she thinks Palin is supposed to play by as an evangelical. (Palin, by the way, is a Pentecostal, not a fundamentalist, and not a Baptist, from whose annals Quinn chooses the requirements to assign the Governor). Then she assigns Palin to monitor her soon-to-be-a-grown-and-married-woman daughter, essentially forever:

And now we learn the 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant. She and the father of the child plan to marry. This may be a hard one for the Republican conservative family-values crowd to swallow. Of course, this can happen in any family. But it must certainly raise the question among the evangelical base about whether Sarah Palin has been enough of a hands-on mother.

Nice feminism, there, Madame Quinn.

Once again, liberals misread the people they most despise, Christian conservatives. Christian conservative women do not live in electricity-free huts, barefoot and pregnant, chained to the stove, waiting for heaven. They are all around you, working in the home and out, and many are twice as smart as any network news anchor parroting DNC talking points from behind a desk.

"Being a mother" does not have to mean staying home all the time, particularly when one's husband is already doing so. Few Christian women these days consider it a requisite of holiness to lock one's self away for 18 years. There are a great many Christian professional women whose mothering skills are enhanced by helpful husbands, older children, and gracious female relatives--all of which Palin has, in abundance. Besides, this is a discussion that should have been settled while she was a mere governor. She's going to be working somewhere, it seems--why not the vice-presidency (which, to be fair, actually isn't as hard as being a governor.)

No one asked Jack Kennedy what he planned to do about his children. No one is asking Barack Obama--whose wife works--how he is going to handle fatherhood and the presidency. And, even more hypocritically, when was the last time someone read Barbra Boxer or Nancy Pelosi or any other woman in elected office the riot act for not being at home "where she belongs?"

The new concern of Democrats with the vice-presidency is comical. After all, wasn't this the same office in which Richard Nixon famously was never allowed above the first floor of the White House? What were John Edwards' qualifications to be president? Gerald Ford? For that matter, by their standards, their own presidential candidate isn't qualified to be vice-president!

And that's another fascinating dynamic of this. As a game-changer, McCain has succeeded admirably, because the comparison is not being made between Biden and Palin, but between Palin and Obama. Every time a surrogate is asked about Palin's inexperience, the conversation is instantly redirected to Obama's inexperience, which keeps the focus of the presidential campaign where it belongs--on the utter unpreparedness of the Democrats' choice to actually be president (we are still waiting for anything Obama has ever done that compares to the things both McCain and Palin have done--or even anything that compares to what Biden has done! Matter of fact, Obama can't even say he lived in the White House and failed to reform health care--and she wasn't even considered good enough to consider!)

But it's not the attacks on her experience that are the most egregious. The worst media behavior has been about sliming every part of her personal life they can possibly grab hold of. Really, think about it: Obama wants to kill babies who have just been born (if their mama meant to kill them); his willing media allies are engaged in trying to destroy a five-month old baby with Down Syndrome.

And the hypocrisy of it all is mind-blowing. The same women who have been haranguing women in the home to get out and make something of themselves, to use their talents for the good of the world, to unchain themselves from the house--and the baby as soon as possible. These are the women who demand government-sponsored daycare (and Obama wants to reach down to age zero to take the babies out of the home) so that mommies can get out and work.

Today they want to steal Sarah Palin's shoes and chain her to the stove.

Keep it up, Democrats. This moose-dressing, gun-toting, corruption-cutting, baby-saving, Superwoman will break you. You can't beat someone who won't quit, and you can't cow the newly energized base by throwing mud.

Sarah Barracuda's in the game now. And she's bringing an army with her.