John Hinderaker wants you to know that he masturbated today.

Also. He reads Runners World for the fine fiction and  interviews:

The interview reflects her generous, good-humored personality, as well.

(Thanks to Jonathan. I think)

Un-retouched Palin family portrait taken at Sears, courtesy of Something Awful

I agree with Jason Zengerle that you have to feel kind of bad for  McCain strategist Steve Schmidt even if he did have a hand in picking the Nome Nitwit as McCain's running mate. As a candidate, McCain was shit-on-a-stick and rolling him in the nuts that is the Palin snowbilly circus sideshow didn't make him any more appealing. But, in the face of the Obama Megatron Steamroller,  the McCain campaign had little choice but to throw the Hail Mary pass that was Bible Spice and then pray that they could keep the media at bay by dazzling them with winks and Wasilla Valley cornpone.

As they say on the midway: 'you pays yer money and you takes yer chances' and the McCain campaign  bet big and  lost bigger. Now Conservatives want to blame it all on Steve Schmidt because he wasn't huckster enough (see: Rove, Karl)  to sell it to people they think are bigger  rubes than themselves.

Over at Conservatives4Palin  (which makes Jonestown look like a YMCA daycamp) they're all:

That's funny coming from someone who doesn't have all that great of a resume according to Wikipedia:

• 1995 - Schmidt managed Will T. Scott's unsuccessful campaign for attorney general of Kentucky.
• 1998 - Schmidt managed Tim Leslie's unsuccessful campaign for lieutenant governor of California.
• 1998 - Schmidt was the communications director for the unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign of Matt Fong.
• 1999 - Schmidt was the communications director for Lamar Alexander's unsuccessful presidential run.
• 2004 - Schmidt was a member of the senior strategic planning group that ran President George W. Bush's successful re-election campaign
• 2006 - Schmidt managed the successful re-election campaign for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
• 2008 - Schmidt headed up the day to day operations for Senator John McCain's unsuccessful bid for U.S. President.

You would think they would take some pride in the Bush and Schwarzenegger campaigns, but then I keep forgetting that those two guys aren't "real Republicans", so fuck them and the Schmidt they rode in on.

Also. Zengerle points out that the RedState Operation Leper show trials have begun.

Judge Moe presiding:

If you are a McCain staffer who did not talk to VF, I suggest that you find some way to demonstrate that you aren’t one of the people in the first paragraph.  Because until we know who talked, the default assumption is going to be that you may have talked.  This will not wreck your career, but it will blight it if the base has anything to say about it.  On the bright side, a simple and declarative denial will do; of course, if your denial is a lie and we catch you at it, brush up on your typing skills.

Moe Lane

Loyalty oaths and purges are the new black Republican Party.

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money of their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made." - The Great Gatsby

The Economist points out the poison pill that is Bill Kristol:

Bill Kristol, as the editor of the Weekly Standard, did more than almost any magazine editor in 1999 and 2000 to build up John McCain as a serious politician, not just a military hero (those guys often falter in presidential bids), but an innovative foreign-policy thinker who could shape the future of the Republican Party. He carried water for the 2008 campaign like a sherpa, even defending Mr McCain's disastrous decision to "suspend his campaign" during the financial crisis: "If the race is between an energetic executive and an indecisive talker, the energetic executive should win."

So Mr Kristol was the perfect press ally for Mr McCain. He's also somewhat dangerous for Republicans. The vanquished 2008 candidate had a fly-by-night attitude that led to all kinds of bad decisions—the campaign suspension, the pick of Mrs Palin, the idiotic month of campaigning with Joe the Plumber. He's irrelevent(sic) to the next Republican renaissance, but Mr Kristol is very relevant, and everything he says about Republicans—on strategy, foreign policy, health care, and probably the best way to pick a cantelope(sic)—is taken seriously. If Mr Schmidt is trying to warn Republicans, good luck with that: Mr Kristol has the stage.

It's probably a good time to remember this:

Though McCain didn't bring it up in the debate, since then, the campaign has followed Kristol's advice, talking about Ayers more than any other single topic. But now that it is conclusively clear that these attacks are failing -- that they are actually backfiring and making Obama more popular and McCain and Palin more unpopular -- Kristol went on Fox News this morning and attacked the McCain campaign for running what he called a "stupid campaign" and "a pathetic campaign" because the attacks "haven't worked" and they're "doing things that don't work and they keep doing them" -- without ever bothering to mention that he, Kristol, just last week, was one of the loudest and most vocal advocates for relying on these character attacks against Obama

That's typical Bill Kristol -- not only chronically wrong about everything, but far worse, completely incapable of acknowledging mistakes.  He just suppresses them, pretends they don't exist, and in that regard is the perfect face for the right-wing movement that is dying a painful, harsh and profoundly well-deserved death in front of everyone's eyes.

Bill Kristol is Tom and Daisy Buchanan rolled up into one smug and repellent package.

And Republicans continue to listen to him.

Awesome.