elfs | Brains, singing along in Russian...

Bush Administration quietly cuts off birth control supplies to African distributors.: Nicholas Kristof brings us a story about how the US Government has cut off supplies to Marie Stopes International, an organization that distributes condoms, IUDs and other birth control devices in Africa and elsewhere, because MSI operates in China and is therefore, in the views of the state department, complicit in China's one-child policy with its heinous associated consequences. Kristof and others point out that Stopes in the only organization working in much of the rural southern African continent, and the US's decision is likely to result in more deaths among women of childbearing age.
Say it to my face, John!: A good little clip in which Obama gets in a dig at McCain's supposed honesty and character. I can only hope the last debate, next week, creates the fireworks we've all been hoping for.
Hilzoy asks: Has The Corner gone insane?: David Frum at NRO's multiauthor blog, The Corner, asks his fellows "Does anybody really seriously believe that Barack Obama is a secret left-wing radical?"

The rest of the Corner responds with a full-throated "Yes!"

Hilzoy points out: "If Obama were as stealthy as that, if he had lived a secret life for decades, completely concealing his inner Maoist, he would never, ever have blown his cover by getting on a board with William Ayers."
The Mob at a Palin Rally: The second video is priceless, but Ta-Nehisi Coates thinks it's unfair: "This is like when some fool from your local news affiliate goes to interview someone in a black neighborhood and they pick out the most ignorant fool they can find. That dumbass is then taken as representative for us all. Seriously White people, having seen this, you guys should have some idea of what we go through."

Andrew Sullivan responds, "The point of posting the video was to remind people why the McCain-Palin campaign allows speakers at its rallies to describe their opponent as Barack Hussein Obama. Of course, these people are not typical of all white people, or Obama would be at 15 percent in the polls. But the cultural resonance of the name matters. And McCain is certainly not above deploying it. That's the point."
Kathleen Parker's encounter with the ugly arm of her party has opened her eyes.: She chides the lunatic right very gently:
The McCain campaign knows that Obama isn't a Muslim or a terrorist, but they're willing to help a certain kind of voter think he is. Just the way certain South Carolinians in 2000 were allowed to think that McCain's adopted daughter from Bangladesh was his illegitimate black child.
And the response from Townhall's mouthbreathers is breathtaking. Parker is accused of "jealousy at the new female star," is told she has "Palin Derangement Syndrome," she's "elitist" (oh, no, she used a French expression!), and so on. Way to go, guys; eventually, everyone with an IQ above room temperature will have left the Republican party.

(Oh, and there's a bug in TownHall's javascript that makes Firefox suck up CPU like crazy. Just in case you go read it.)
Michelle Malkin hates McCain's new plan!?: He spent the entire debate assailing massive government spending — while his featured proposal of the night was to heap on more massive government spending to pursue home ownership/retention at all costs. If Obama had proposed this, the Right would be screaming bloody murder about this socialist grab to have the Treasury Department renegotiate individual home loans and become chief principal write-down agents for the nation.
The lobbyists get to McCain:: McCain apparently sprung his "American Homeownership Resurgence Plan" on the world at the debate Tuesday without giving his campaign advance warning (there's that "Maverickyness" again, and note the use of the word 'surge'). An initial release draft, referring to the loss of mortgage value to lenders, read, "Lenders in these cases must recognize the loss that they've already suffered." That sentence mysteriously has gone missing from the current version, which now says that mortgages will be bought at face value, costing taxpayers more and benefitting the lenders.
Brad DeLong calls McCain's plan "Worse that I Had Imagined Possible.": Given the new plan shown above (and the campaign's insistence that we are reading it right, now), Brad analyzes the two plans, the Paulson plan (buy up the distressed securities), and the Elmendorf plan (buy the banks themselves and administer the distressed securities accordingly), and then shows that McCain's plan, released today by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, is the worst of all possible worlds:
McCain's plan is for the government to buy up $300 billion of distressed mortgages not at current market value but at full face value. The McCain plan is: (1) Take $300 billion. (2) Pay double current market value to banks that have troubled mortgages on their books, thus: (a) Give a present of $100 billion to the bankers who made the loans. (b) Acquire and regularize the mortgages of only two-thirds as many homeowners as could have been accomplished if the $300 billion were invested wisely.

Democrats want to prevent depression and support the financial markets by investing taxpayer money in banks with troubled assets. Republicans want to give taxpayers money away to the shareholders and managers of banks with troubled assets. I would say that this is unbelievable, but I do believe it.
General Petreus, er, complicates things for McCain.: Petreus yesterday gave a speech at the Heritage Foundation where took issue with McCain's suggestion of a "surge" in Afghanistan, saying, "Some of the concepts used in Iraq are transplantable while others perhaps are not," backing up General McKiernan's opinion that a "surge" in Afghanistan wouldn't work. He also added, "You have to talk to our enemies."
General Petreus, er, complicates things for right-wing pundits: When Petraeus says Pock-i-stahn I have an uncontrollable urge to read the New Yorker and find some Chardonnay. Fortunately I have an old copy of NR and a Coors Light to snap me back to reality. Seriously though — no one in flyover country says Pock-i-stahn. It's annoying." (K-Lo at NRO's The Corner)

Re Gen. Petraeus's ostentatiously exotic pronunciation of Pakistan, one thing I like about Sarah Palin is the way she says 'Eye-raq'." (Mark Steyn at NRO's The Corner)

"Most overwrought pronunciation of the night: The academic way that Petraeus says 'Pakistan,' with a soft 'a' — reminscent of a 1980s 'Saturday Night Live' sketch in which newscasters over-pronounced 'Managua, Nicaragua.'" (Philadelphia Daily News)
If you watch the video, you'll see that General Petraeus does indeed pronounce Pakistan correctly. But if you follow the links, you'll find that they're actually complaining about someone else.
Dean Reynolds at CBS: I still like McCain. His barbecues were better.: This has to be one of the most whiny posts I've read from the "reporters circle" of the blogosphere:
The McCain folks are more helpful and generally friendly. The schedules are printed on actual books you can hold in your hand, read, and then plan accordingly. The press aides are more knowledgeable and useful to us in the news media. The events are designed with a better eye, and for the simple needs of the press corps. ...

Maybe a front-running campaign like Obama's that is focused solely on victory doesn't have the time to do the mundane things like print up schedules or attend to the needs of reporters.

But in politics, everything that goes around comes around.
Good grief, is this guy actually whining because he can't get his RSS reader up and running to pull the schedules off of the press section of the campaign website, and needs it printed out in advance? Is he really whining because the Obama campaign is focused on winning rather than fawning over reporters? And is he really threatening Obama with a "tough" press corp because of this perceived ill-treatment?

Well, it'll be a change from the ass-kissing journamalism of the past eight years.