The World's Longest Dither seeks a 'Compromise' war plan

Bill Kristol at The Weekly Standard Blog gives us an update on the world's longest dither as President Obama and his "military experts" continue "developing a new strategy" for the war in Aghanistan. Meanwhile, Gen. McChrystal and the troops continue the fight short-handed.

The McChrystal review was done by August 1st. It is now the end of October.

According to today's Washington Post ("Obama seeking options on forces; President looks to send fewer additional troops"), we'll get a decision by the end of November. That's four months. And it's evident that the review at this point is being driven entirely by White House political concerns. 148 American soldiers have died while the president holds seminars.

It's really outrageous.

There are, though, comical aspects to the Post story.

One is that Army chief of staff George Casey, a stubborn opponent of the Iraq surge at the end of 2006, is using this excuse to oppose an Afghanistan surge: "The Army is particularly concerned that soldiers who spend less than 18 months at home between combat tours do not have enough time to train for high-intensity tank warfare."

Just where are we going to fight that kind of war in the very near future?

Another is this: "But opinion among members of Obama's national security team is divided, and he now appears to be seeking a compromise solution that would satisfy both his military and civilian advisers."

Huh? Who are those "civilian advisers?" Secretary of Defense Gates is with Generals McChrystal and Petraeus, and (I gather) so too are Secretary of State Clinton and Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke -- all the "civilian advisers" who have real responsibility for the situation. But Joe Biden and Rahm Emanuel have political concerns -- so Obama is trying to find a "compromise" that would "satisfy" them too.

Sometimes, in political and public policy, compromise is a good thing. But it's not a way to win a war. Especially when the "compromise" is between what your own military commander judges, based on an extensive review, he needs, and what your political hacks want.

You didn't think Obama was going to interrupt his golf game to make a decision, did you?

Obama's 'I' trouble can't be fixed by an optometrist

President Obama's got "I" trouble. Stanley Fish, a Noo Yawk Times op-ed blogger (seriously. He assumed the role of the token rightwinger after they kicked Bill Kristol out) gives us the chronology on how Obama has advanced from the "Yes we can" of the campaign, presumably inclusive of the voters who he was humbly seeking to include in his ascent to power, to the "royal we" once he assumed power, into the current "I" which is his just plain naked narcissistic hubris.

Everything alters in the inaugural address (Jan. 20, 2009). The promises are now made to an America that is asked only to stand by while they are fulfilled. “Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. “But know America” — or, in other words, “hear me” — “…they will be met.” And later, when he says, “We will build the roads and bridges… We will restore science to its rightful place… We will harness the sun and winds,” the “we” is now the royal we: just you watch, “All this we will do.”

By the time of the address to the Congress on Feb. 24, the royal we has flowered into the naked “I”: “As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress.” “I called for action.” “I pushed for quick action.” “I have told each of my cabinet.” “I’ve appointed a proven and aggressive inspector general.” “I refuse to let that happen.” “I will not spend a single penny.” “I reject the view that says our problems will simply take care of themselves.” “I held a fiscal summit where I pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term.” That last is particularly telling: it says, there’s going to be a second term, I’m already moving fast, and if you don’t want to be left in the dust, you’d better fall in line.

There’s no mistaking what’s going on in the speech delivered last week. No preliminary niceties; just a rehearsal of Obama’s actions and expectations. Eight “I”’s right off the bat: “Just over two months ago I spoke with you… and I laid out what needed to be done.” “From the beginning I made it clear that I would not put any more tax dollars on the line.” “I refused to let those companies become permanent wards of the state.” “I refused to kick the can down the road. But I also recognized the importance of a viable auto industry.” “I decided then…” (He is really the decider.)

And perhaps at long last the voters are beginning to awaken from their long slumber and as the late Sen. Jesse Helms would say, smell the coffee. And guess what? It's burning on the stove. Thomas D. Johnson at the Weekly Standard Blog reports Obama's numbers rising and falling.

It looks like good opinion and bad opinion are starting to meet in the middle for Obama. Rasmussen reports that the President’s "strongly approve" rating has fallen from roughly 42 percent to roughly 32 percent since Inauguration Day, while his "strongly disapprove" rating has risen from roughly 14 percent to roughly 32 percent. Seems like faith in rhetoric is being replaced by frustration with reality.

About time, is all I got to say. But my fear is we won't have a country left come Jan. 20, 2012.

The Revenge of Cheney is aided by Obama's power grab

Take a wild guess what the most-read post on my blog is during its short history?

It's Let's Go Fly Fishing with Mr. Nice Guy, quoting a Weekly Standard report on a fishing trip on the Snake River with Vice-President Dick Cheney shortly before he left office.

The most under-appreciated vice president ever, Cheney didn't care a fig about his popularity while in office, he just quietly did his utmost to protect our country, earning his Darth Vader nickname from the leftwingnuts. Hey, anybody that bunch hates has got to be doing something right.

And Cheney has proven himself to be a valuable public servant out of office by speaking out in defense of our nation once again, blasting the Obama administration for releasing the CIA torture memos that document the terrible waterboarding torture of guess how many terrorists? A grand total of three, all three of which were directly involved in the 9/11 attacks on our nation.

But a funny thing happened to Darth Vader and the left's vilification of this good man. While he was speaking out, he blasted those leftwingnuts in office, like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who knew all about the CIA waterboarding and applauded it shortly after 9/11, only to turncoat in the present political climate and accuse the CIA of lying to them about it. And guess who gets hoisted by her own petard? None other than fancy Nancy from San Fran. Couldn't happen to a nicer gal, could it? There's something delicious about libtards being hung by their own words.

And Bill Kristol points out in a current article in the Weekly Standard how Cheney's courageous stand in the face of withering criticism from the Obamessiah's defenders is defending America.

Dick Cheney is reminding Republicans that they need to defend themselves when attacked.

When President Obama released the Justice Department interrogation memos a month ago, Cheney denounced him for doing so. He explained why it was inappropriate and unwise to release such documents. But he did more. He didn't just defend himself and the administration in which he served. He fought back, and encouraged others to do so.

He challenged the president to release CIA memos evaluating the effectiveness of the enhanced interrogation techniques. He raised the question of whether congressional Democrats--Nancy Pelosi, for one--had known of, and at least tacitly approved of, the allegedly horrifying abuses of the allegedly lawless Bush administration.

Now, a month later, Pelosi is attacking career CIA officials for lying to Congress, and other Democrats are scrambling to distance themselves from her. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has pulled back on threats to prosecute Bush-era lawyers, reversed itself on releasing photos of alleged military abuse of prisoners, and embraced the use of military commissions to try captured terrorists. The administration now looks irresponsible when it lives up to candidate Obama's rhetoric, and hypocritical when it vindicates Bush policies the candidate attacked.

Thank God for Dick Cheney. Along with Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, these three are taking a stand against the lunatic left and finally the Republicans in office are joining the fight.

House Minority Leader John Boehner steps up to the plate and joins the battle at long last.

And it also appears the lynch mob clamoring for Pelosi's head has been joined by Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who Bill Kristol sees as the guiding hand behind CIA Chief Leon Panetta's blast at Pelosi, rebutting her charge that she was lied to about torture by the CIA.

Over at the Washington Post's Post Partisan blog, Kristol writes:

Commentators have been struck -- though not perhaps as much as they should have been -- by the extraordinary character of CIA Director Leon Panetta’s blunt and stark rebuke of Nancy Pelosi. Responding to political debates that “reached a new decibel level [Thursday] when the CIA was accused [by Pelosi] of misleading Congress,” Panetta wrote Friday that “our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah.”

But did Panetta simply decide on his own to send this letter? It’s almost inconceivable. Panetta is a former member of Congress and a former White House chief of staff. President Obama made him CIA director only four months ago. Even if his motivation for the letter was in part driven by an institutional imperative to defend his agency, Panetta would have understood the political implications of humiliating a House speaker of his own party. He surely at least ran the letter by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to get clearance. It’s also possible that Panetta was encouraged to send the letter by Emanuel.

As Emanual has already been quoted as saying about the power grab during the economic crisis, never let a good crisis go to waste. It sure looks like he's using the Pelosi torture crisis to get rid of the Speaker of the House and orchestrate the elevation of someone of his own choosing.

Probably so, but I agree. Off with Pelosi's head and we'll deal with whoever replaces her. In this case, the enemy of my enemy is my friend and getting rid of Pelosi is in the nation's best interest.

And before I leave the topic of our most under-appreciated vice president, guess what the current idiot holding that office shot off his big mouth about? Blogger Stephen F. Hayes at the Weekly Standard comments that Joe Biden has revealed the secret "undisclosed location" where Cheney so famously went when national security issues threatened the Bush administration.

According to an account in Newsweek, Biden did give up one of the country's secrets at another dinner where journalists and politicians make fun of Republicans (and occasionally laugh at each other). Biden told his dinnermates about the existence of a secret bunker under the Vice President's Residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory.
Eleanor Clift writes:

Ever wonder about that secure, undisclosed location where Dick Cheney secreted himself after the 9/11 attacks? Joe Biden reveals the bunker-like room is at the Naval Observatory in Washington, where Cheney lived for eight years and which is now home to Biden. The veep related the story to his head-table dinner mates when he filled in for President Obama at the Gridiron Club earlier this year. He said the young naval officer giving him a tour of the residence showed him the hideaway, which is behind a massive steel door secured by an elaborate lock with a narrow connecting hallway lined with shelves filled with communications equipment. The officer explained that when Cheney was in lock down, this was where his most trusted aides were stationed, an image that Biden conveyed in a way that suggested we shouldn’t be surprised that the policies that emerged were off the wall.

Despite more than fifteen trips to the VPR over the past five years, and despite having conducted dozens of interviews about security precautions taken for Cheney and his staff after 9/11, I was never told such a bunker existed.

I was able to learn and write about Cheney's getaways at Camp David, extra measures taken for him when he traveled on Air Force Two, and even the use of a "dummy" plane sometimes used in combat zones. But no one ever mentioned this secure facility at the Naval Observatory.

The obvious conclusion: Its existence was highly classified.

So what was Joe Biden doing talking about it at the Gridiron Dinner? And, if it was indeed classified, will this disclosure be referred to the Justice Department?

Joe Biden ought to rode out of town on the same rail with Nancy Pelosi. God help our nation.

Bill Kristol, Carlos Slim and The Gray Lady's Last Dance

Perhaps my favorite columnist, Emmett Tyrell, honcho of the best conservative magazine on the planet, The American Specator, has the inside story on why The Noo Yawk Times has seen fit to purge its ranks of the sole token conservative on its op-ed page or the entire staff, Bill Kristol.

I can report on copper-bottom authority that The New York Times let Kristol go owing to public health concerns. As the Times' financial condition has grown fragile, the publisher of the Times, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., has become apprehensive that Kristol's conservative views could endanger the health of some of the newspaper's neurotic liberal readers. During the past year, readers unexpectedly encountering Kristol in the otherwise lenitive company of Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert have complained on the correspondence page of various discomforts. None appeared life-threatening, but what if an aged environmentalist or an infirm McGovernite lost in reveries of 1972 actually suffered a coronary? The trial lawyers would move upon the Times in an instant. Sulzberger might not survive.

Of course, the Times might not survive anyway. It labors under $1.1 billion of debt. So precarious are its finances that it recently had to accept a $250 million loan from a Mexican with the unlikely name of Carlos Slim. Whether he really is a Mexican is not clear, and the Times' team of investigative reporters is now so tiny that executive editor Bill Keller has not been able to spare even one reporter to inquire. So far as I have been able to ascertain, no reporter has even googled to verify Mr. Slim's nationality. He might be Portuguese. He could be dangerously overweight. Actually, I am told that investigative reporters at the Times now, in an effort to economize, rarely leave their offices and conduct many of their investigations on the telephone. Mr. Sulzberger likes them to call collect.

Carlos Slim? I knew the old Gray Lady was on her last legs but I hadn't considered how shaky The NY Times must be if they're staying afloat with a loan from an unknown Mexican benefactor. I'd say since the last conservative has left, it's time to turn out the lights in Noo Yawk. The old Gray Lady is taking her last dance as midnight approaches. All I can say is don't let the doorknob hit ya where the Good Lord split ya. Say good bye to the Noo Yawk Times.

And if you haven't already, say hello to Bill Kristol and The Weekly Standard and especially the Weekly Standard Blog. While there, be sure to read anything by my beautiful young friend, Mary Katharine Ham, who keeps up with the crazy world events in The Daily Grind.

Kristol to McCain: Don't Worry, Be Happy

Charles Krauthammer has written that John McCain has already exceeded his "two Hail Mary's per campaign rule." McCain tossed one long TD when he backed the surge in Iraq in the dark days of 2006. Everybody but McCain, President Bush and General Petraeus said it wouldn't work. It did and the Iraq war turned around miraculously. Hail Mary II was picking Sarah Palin from obscurity as his VP choice.

Despite the MSM's wolfpack attacks, the American people still love Sarah amidst all the bad press so Palin is Hail Mary TD No. 2.

Since then, nothing has gone well for McCain and even the economy has conspired against him with the housing credit crisis sucking all the air out of the campaign. With the constant media drumbeat of the impending return of the Great Depression, panic is infecting voters as well as the stock market. But the polls are still tight, showing a slight trend toward McCain and away from Obama's "inevitable win." Today's record surge on Wall Street may mean the sun is shining again on McCain. I can hope.

Yet William Kristol says it's time for one more Hail Mary from McCain: Fire the Campaign and do the unthinkable, go positive to voting day.

What McCain needs to do is junk the whole thing and start over. Shut down the rapid responses, end the frantic e-mails, bench the spinning surrogates, stop putting up new TV and Internet ads every minute. In fact, pull all the ads — they’re doing no good anyway. Use that money for televised town halls and half-hour addresses in prime time.

And let McCain go back to what he’s been good at in the past — running as a cheerful, open and accessible candidate. Palin should follow suit. The two of them are attractive and competent politicians. They’re happy warriors and good campaigners. Set them free.

Provide total media accessibility on their campaign planes and buses. Kick most of the aides off and send them out to swing states to work for the state coordinators on getting voters to the polls. Keep just a minimal staff to help organize the press conferences McCain and Palin should have at every stop and the TV interviews they should do at every location. Do town halls, do the Sunday TV shows, do talk radio — and invite Obama and Biden to join them in some of these venues, on the ground that more joint appearances might restore civility and substance to the contest.

Most on the right are saying McCain has been too much Mr. Nice Guy, time to take to take the gloves off. The left, hypocrites all, are accusing him of running the worst scorched-earth campaign since Attila the Hun, ignoring all the bile spewing daily from their own ranks.

J.R. Dunn of American Thinker is of the "right" persuasion, urging a campaign closer based on Obama's Three Strikes consisting of Bomb-Throwin' Bill Ayers and his equally psychotic wife Bernadine Dohrn, ACORN voter fraud and The New Party socialist revolution.

A terrorist bomber, what may be the largest vote-fraud operation in history, and a political party calling for a socialist revolution in the United States. Obama has certainly been a busy little bee -- though not too busy, it seems, to cover his tracks in all three cases. As well he might -- anybody with such a history has a few questions to answer. And Obama knows this full well, considering the effort he's put into ducking those exact questions since his campaign began.

But those questions must be asked and answered before November 4^th. Which, needless to say, is a job for Superwoman. Sarah Palin's relentless hammering brought the Ayers story back to the surface. She must now tie the three strands together: Ayers, ACORN, the New Party, and pound at it until it can no longer be ignored. (Of course, this will be an extremely upsetting experience for Kathleen Parker and David Brooks, but that can't be helped.)

If the three can be bundled, and the resulting package adequately presented to the American people, Barack Obama is through. American voters have made it clear time and again that they have no use for the political extremes of either left or right. Obama plainly suffers, at best, from a weakness for crackpot left-wing politics, and at worst from a yearning to create a revolutionary situation in American society. The first reveals an immature personality, one easily led and given to romantic concepts of how the world works. The second is evidence of serious maliciousness.

We require neither in the oval office.

And somewhere between right and left, there's Bill Kristol, urging a Monty Python: Now for something totally different. Who knows, maybe The Maverick will zig and not zag.

So why not go for Hail Mary number whateveritis? I can't help but remember another "Happy Warrior," Hubert Humphrey, who never won the big race. A fella named Richard Nixon whipped him soundly.

But what do I know? I'm the stupid schmuck who said the voters weren't stupid enough to vote for Bill Clinton. I was wrong then. Twice.

Palin gets a pass from MSM?! Blindness or Idiocy?

Roger Cohen of The Washington Post has gone way beyond Obama Kool-aid. He's been guzzling the genuine Jim Jones Fake Messiah Juice.

The headline of his latest column is a coffee spitter, so if you're reading this with a mouthful, swallow now. Ready? Media Gives Palin a Pass

Seriously. What universe does this blind, deluded idiot live in? Packs of media, wolves and lawyers (same crowd) have been sifting the weeds in Alaska since McCain picked Sarah Palin as his VP lo many weeks ago, breathlessly blabbing any insane dribbling from the leftwing nutroots as if it was exhaustively fact-checked truth and telling us all this successful wife, mother and governor is at least one step below Neanderthal woman. And Cohen has the gobsmacking audacity to claim the MSM is giving her a pass?! I know where he got that audacity.

Cohen begins by noting William Kristol's NY Times column which quoted Palin saying she does not hold the MSM in high regard. You think?

Cohen said he agrees because the MSM is allegedly giving her a pass and then writes several paragraphs of huge whoppers to "prove" it.

But what seems to have gotten Cohen's knickers into the tightest wad is how unfairly poor ol' Hillary was treated by the media. Boo hoo.

Since I began with the Times' conservative columnist of the moment, I will end with its conservative columnist of years past -- the estimable William Safire. Back in 1996, he called Hillary Clinton "a congenital liar." It was a head-snapping characterization that, alas for Clinton, has defined her for the ages and which she stubbornly vindicates from time to time.

Whoa! Just when did Hillary "stubbornly vindicate" herself from her liar's reputation? When she kept repeating the Kosovo sniper tale which the MSM swallowed hook, line and sinker until some right-wing bloggers blew the whistle? Big Bill and his lovely wife Bruno held the world record for whoppers (Political Division) until along came this nobody who never run nothing but his mouth and took the title away from 'em.

But since Cohen knows his spin about Palin lying won't float, he comes up with a worst offense -- she transgressed via a blink of her eye.

But what about Palin? Can you imagine the reaction of the press corps if (Hillary) Clinton had given the audience a hi-ya-sailor wink?

...Ah, but the scorn, approbation and ridicule that would have descended on Clinton -- I can just imagine the Journal editorial -- have been spared Palin. Much of the mainstream media, grading on a curve suitable for a parrot -- "greed and corruption, greed and corruption, greed and corruption " -- gave her a passing grade or better. I agree with Palin. It's the mainstream media that flunked.

Whoda thunk a little bitty wink would get a fella so hot and bothered? Why you'd think Palin had given Cohen that wink. In his dreams.

Palin's advice to McCain: 'Take the gloves off'

America's favorite "hockey mom" sounded more like the "pit bull" Saturday on the campaign trail as John McCain's VP Sarah Palin assumed the traditional VP role of "attack dog" and slapped Barack Obama for "palling around" with former Weather underground terrorist Bill Ayers.

Ace open bloggers also report Palin campaigned Sunday to overflow crowds in Omaha, Nebraska, and Burlingame, California, where she continued to hammer at the Obama-Ayers association. The Corner on NRO provides a link to this eyewitness account from the California stop.

So what played to this audience? What caused genuine applause? Well, one line, in particular: near the end of her twenty-minute speech, Sarah Palin told the audience that out on the hustings one comment from supporters has dominated, in frequency, all others: tell people about the real Barack Obama. She said this quietly, without drama. But: thunder, hoots, an ovation. It was the one real firework in her stump speech; yet from the cadence of the speech one could tell that it was not intended thus. Audiences know that standing up for one particular line in a political speech is reserved for positive lines—lines that honor someone, or declaim some principle, or express some affirmation, or promise some victory. Rarely are audiences moved to bolt from their chairs over a negative line. (They’re more likely to boo affectedly.) But Mr. Obama’s guile has created considerable resentment—so much, in fact, that even a flat recitation of his positions, with not a drought of oratorical flare, dazzles and refreshes and fires an audience.

William Kristol's op-ed column Sunday in The New York Times reports on a Sunday telephone interview with Palin, who said she would certainly accept another debate or town-hall style meeting with Obama's VP Joe Biden to follow up their first meeting Thursday night.

Palin also made clear that she was eager for the McCain-Palin campaign to be more aggressive in helping the American people understand “who the real Barack Obama is.” Part of who Obama is, she said, has to do with his past associations, such as with the former bomber Bill Ayers. Palin had raised the topic of Ayers Saturday on the campaign trail, and she maintained to me that Obama, who’s minimized his relationship with Ayers, “hasn’t been wholly truthful” about this.

I pointed out that Obama surely had a closer connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright than to Ayers — and so, I asked, if Ayers is a legitimate issue, what about Reverend Wright?

She didn’t hesitate: “To tell you the truth, Bill, I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that — with, I don’t know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn’t get up and leave — to me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up.”

I guess so. And I guess we’ll soon know McCain’s call on whether he wants to bring Wright up — perhaps at his debate with Obama Tuesday night.

Kristol said he then asked Palin if she had any advice for McCain about what issues to raise in his second debate with Obama?

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.’ ”

And maybe I’d add, Hockey Mom knows best.

Buckle up Barack. Sounds like the hockey mom/pit bull has set the stage for an interesting Round Two of McCain vs. Obama. We shall see.

‘God, Guns, Lipstick’ issues spark leftwing frenzy

William Kristol pens an op-ed piece for the New York Times that offers the best bird’s-eye view of this strange election season I’ve read so far. He calls the choices facing voters this year a “God, guns and lipstick” election. You’re either for it or against it, take your choice and vote on it.

The good news is that 2008 has been a thoroughly refreshing year. After two decades of Bush and Clinton and Bush presidencies, we’re getting change.

On the Democratic side, the Clinton machine supposedly couldn’t be beaten. It was. In the first real upset in either party’s nominating process in a long time, first-term senator Barack Obama mobilized new voters, volunteers and donors in a way that hadn’t been thought possible, and defeated Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party — which had nominated a Bush for president or vice president in six of the last seven elections — chose as its nominee a troublemaker who was George W. Bush’s main challenger in 2000 and his sharp critic for much of his administration. John McCain wasn’t on particularly good terms with either the G.O.P. establishment or the leaders of the conservative movement — yet he won. He then put on a Republican convention that barely acknowledged the existence of the current Republican administration.

And he chose as his running mate Sarah Palin, one of the least-known outsiders to be picked in modern times, and the first woman on a Republican ticket. This in turn sent other establishments into a frenzy.

Kristol explains why McCain’s Palin pick has created such “frenzies” in not only political establishments but also media, academics and feminists.

Is 2008 just a strange year, or is something big happening? Are we seeing one of America’s periodic political and cultural awakenings, one of our occasional, almost-convulsive democratic reactions to what is felt to be too great a distance between the people and their “establishments”? Such awakenings can be sudden and can come at once from different directions. They often have a theme in common, which is an indignant popular demand: “Stop speaking for us and start listening to us.”

We’re gonna get change, no matter which party wins control of the White House and Congress. Question is, which kind of change will we get?

We’re either going to make a sharp left turn toward socialism and bigger government or a sharp right turn toward “God, guns and lipstick.”

These three yardsticks offer the widest possible differences of viewpoints in the two presidential campaigns. McCain-Palin’s traditional church view of God and country vs. Obama’s 20 years in not-reverend Wright’s Black Liberation Theology church and his “God D---- America!” rants.

McCain-Palin’s long record of support for the 2^nd Amendment’s individual right to keep and bear arms vs. Obama and Biden’s gun-control record.

And the lipstick issue is just as stark between the two camps: women as feminists, career first, family last; or the working mom’s family first.

And believe it or else, Kristol finds agreement on Palin vs. Obama from that flaming red-headed liberal op-ed writer at the NYT, Maureen Dowd!

Sarah has single-handedly ushered out the “Sex and the City” era, and made the sexy new model for America a retro one — the glamorous Pioneer Woman, packing a gun, a baby and a Bible.

Her explosion onto the scene made Obama seem even more like a windy, wispy egghead.

Of course, Maureen really wasn’t trying to approve of anything Palin stands for or oppose anything Obama advocates, she somehow she let that pro-Palin, anti-Obama comment slip into her latest screech about how Sarah Palin threatens to bring about the end of the world as we know it.

But if Charlie Gibson can cherry-pick quotes out of context in his interview with Palin, I reserve the right to do the same with Maureen’s screech.

Maureen’s slip of the pen in her anti-Palin column is the classic definition of a political gaffe: “When a politician accidentally speaks the truth.”

Now if we could only get Maureen to read her column aloud on Youtube. That would make a great 30-second commercial for McCain-Palin.

We could call it “Pioneer Woman packing a gun, a baby and a Bible takes on the Windy, Wispy Egghead from Chicago.” Pioneer 1, Egghead 0.

Mercy, Maureen, well played! With friends like you, Obama doesn’t need any enemies. And with enemies like you, Palin needs no more friends.

But something smells sorta funny about Maureen agreeing with Bill Kristol. Is this another deep, dark plot hatched for a Hillary and Bill comeback?