Regarding my reference to National Review, it’s interesting to note that an article on the conservative magazine’s online edition today gives the Paulson-Bernanke bailout a qualified endorsement.
Donald Luskin lays out the factors he believes a principled conservative must weigh and comes down to this conclusion:

In the end, each principled conservative will have to use his or her own judgment to weigh the imponderables here and come to a conclusion, yeah or nay. As of this writing, I’m inclined to support the administration’s proposal, although I wish it could be made smaller, at least at the outset.

Luskin makes a strong case but I encourage you to read his article in full before deciding.

… a smoking-ban division?
A Pittsburgh TV station reports that 3,000 applications have been filed for exemptions from Pennsylvania’s smoking ban.
Gosh, can’t this ban get any good press?
First, it goes into effect on the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks, and now we have the image of folks who should be watching out for West Nile virus and getting us ready for flu season instead wasting time on exemptions from a ban most restaurants were adopting in response to consumer demand.
And, beyond that, one must wonder how long it will be until bars that serve food start believing they can get away with ignoring the ban. It’s unlikely that the Department of Health is going to send anyone out to check, so we can imagine a new call from the anti-smoking guerillas who brought us the current ban: Protect our lungs; hire enforcers.

Thirty-one House conservatives, led by Republican Study Commission Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), sent a letter last week to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke urging them “in the strongest terms possible to refrain from conducting any additional government-financed bailouts for large financial firms. Regardless of the precautions taken, the risk to taxpayers and to the long-term health of our economy remain just too great to justify.”
The letter, dated Wednesday, came before the latest bailout proposal. It tallies up more than $600 billion and potentially trillions in taxpayer exposure in the bailouts of IndyMac, Bear Stearns, AIG and Fannie Mac and Freddie Mac.
It reminds one of the founding mission of National Review: to stand athwart history shouting “Stop!”
For all the good it will do now that both parties have decided it’s time to rescue us, the letter does a good job of pointing out that rescuing improvident money managers from their poor money management has three negative effects: it does nothing to punish poor money management (and thus could lead to more of it); it puts taxpayers at risk; and it increases government’s role in areas where it does not belong.

Could be.
The Associated Press reports the following about a poll by Boston’s Suffolk University:

THE POLL: Suffolk University presidential poll of 600 likely Nevada voters.
THE NUMBERS: John McCain, 46 percent, Barack Obama, 46 percent.
OF INTEREST: Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are in a close race in Nevada, which has voted Republican in eight of the past 10 presidential elections. Independent Ralph Nader polled 2 percent and Libertarian Bob Barr 1 percent. McCain may have been hurt by turmoil on Wall Street. When asked which political party deserved blame of the financial meltdown, 41 percent of respondents said the GOP, 16 percent said the Democrats, 27 percent said neither and 16 percent were undecided. More respondents said Obama (40 percent) understands and cares about their problems than McCain (23 percent).
DETAILS: Conducted Sept. 17-21 by telephone survey with 600 likely Nevada voters. Sampling error plus or minus 4 percentage points.

That has to worry the McCain camp a bit.

Readers of this blog will not find me regularly beating up on “the liberal media” (and you’ll NEVER catch me using media as a singular noun, but that’s another matter), but Newsweek’s cover story last week, “From Seneca Falls to … Sarah Palin?” does strike me as an example.
And it does not get that label for outright bias. Rather it’s for attitude and its use of what our friends on the left might call “nuance.”
The striking example is this sentence toward the end of the first page:

These competing arguments are ultimately unsatisfactory because their answers to a crucial question are unnuanced. And that question may be the fundamental one of this election: what do women really want? Men have scratched their heads for centuries over what appears to women to be either a stupid or patronizing question. Pollsters neglected to actually ask them for most of the past century.

So, What do women want is simultaneously a “stupid or patronizing question” and one pollsters “neglected to actually ask.”
Incredible.
So, women are double victims.
They are insulted or patronized and ignored at the same time.
As I read this, I imagined the editor of the piece pouting to him/herself: How dare America do that to its women!
From a purely rational (i.e., conservative) perspective, of course, if the question is either stupid or patronizing, it’s either insulting or unnecessary to have asked it.
But liberals just love to use words like “patronizing” and “unnuanced,” even if using them together in a certain paragraph is a tangle of logic.

Gallup’s Daily Tracking Poll has the race for the White House in a dead heat: Barack Obama 47 percent to 45 percent for John McCain.
The trend is toward Obama, since he trailed after the GOP convention but, gosh, in what should be a year for a Democratic slam dunk, McCain’s doing very well.
Wow, this is a fun race to watch!

The following Associated Press report is troubling in two ways.

CHICAGO (AP) — Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said Monday the upheaval on Wall Street was “the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression” and blamed it on policies that he said Republican rival John McCain supports.
“This country can’t afford another four years of this failed philosophy,” Obama said after the shock-wave announcements that financial giant Lehman Brothers was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy while titan Merrill Lynch was being bought by Bank of America for about $50 billion.
Obama’s statement, issued as he prepared to fly to Colorado to begin a swing through contested Western states, was intended to serve two purposes: to link McCain with the unpopular presidency of George W. Bush and to express sympathy with the anxiety of most Americans who say the economy is issue No. 1 in the election.
“The challenges facing our financial system today are more evidence that too many folks in Washington and on Wall Street weren’t minding the store,” Obama said in a statement. “Eight years of policies that have shredded consumer protections, loosened oversight and regulation, and encouraged outsized bonuses to CEOs while ignoring middle-class Americans have brought us to the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression.”
“I certainly don’t fault Sen. McCain for these problems,” Obama said, “but I do fault the economic philosophy he subscribes to.”

First, to the closing quote above: Yes, Senator Obama, you did just blame McCain.
Second, and this is the more troubling part, Obama suggests that the Bush administration “encouraged outsized bonuses to CEOs” and that the collapse of two financial institutions is “the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression.”
Well, gosh, I guess I think the market’s working just right. Knock the idiots out of business so they can’t mess things up any further.
The idea that the government should set CEO pay and/or could have saved us from this is absurd. Federal intervention (A) can, at least partially, be blamed for the needed takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (since they were pressured by Congress to extend home loans to people without the collateral and earnings the private sector would have required) and (B) likely would have only made matters worse (see item A above).

… unfortunately, in my view, in the wrong direction.
The liberal in this case is another friend and former colleague of mine. (She lives in New York, so the fact that Sarah Palin has turned her into a Barack Obama fan is probably not so important Electoral College-wise. But her e-mail does reflect an interesting reality: There might be a downside for McCain in all of the excitement Palin spurs on the right; she might turn the Clinton-fan left toward Obama.)
Anyway, here’s her e-mail:

Joe,

I really, really, really tried not to write you an angry email. But I couldn’t help myself. … I read your posts on Sarah Palin and I wondered what got into you!
I’m not going to argue McCain should not have picked Gov. Palin. It’s obviously that he picked her so he could win the election by shaking up the Republican “base” and getting people excited about the ticket. But now that she has joined the ticket there is no possible way I can vote for John McCain.
I found Gov. Palin’s convention speech to be insulting (to me professionally and personally), condescending and divisive. I thought her delivery was excellent. And I’ll give her credit where its due…She actually did what no one (not even Hillary) could have, she made me a Barack Obama supporter and donor.
I’ve never felt comfortable with Barack Obama (and I can’t stand Joe Biden) and I’ve always liked John McCain because despite the fact that I disagree with him on almost every issue (with one exception: Iraq) I firmly believe he wants to do a good job for the country. I was wavering because I like McCain and think he has more experience, but most of his policies are shockingly misguided.
The post on your blog that inspired me to write this email at all was “Biden on Palin,” which I had to read twice because I was confused about your point of view.
If Biden is in the dark about Sarah Palins views and positions, he’s not the only one. I have NO idea what she believes in other than that she’s pro-life and wants to drill for oil. I searched JohnMcCain.com for 20 minutes, trying to figure out exactly what to expect from her. What about the issues that I care about? Shouldn’t she tell me what she believes? Isn’t running for office, kind of like interviewing for a job? And last time I checked she’s going to work for me.
How does she stand on health care and poverty and education? What does she think should be done about the state of our infrastructure and the fact that more and more children are dropping out of high school? And how is she going to fight for me and for my family (which includes a special needs child)? And what will she do to help the small towns AND the big cities (8 million New Yorkers are dying to know)?
What I heard from her on Wednesday night was: “I’m a woman and a working mother and I stopped the bridge to nowhere.” Hardly the stuff of global leadership…

And my response:

OK. Your confusion about my post about Sarah Palin’s stands on issues makes me realize that I left a key part of my argument unstated.
Here goes: The vice presidential candidate does not set policy; she or he follows the lead of the top of the ticket. (Although some believe conspiracy theories to the contrary in the case of Vietnam, this is exactly what Lyndon Johnson did on civil rights and the Vietnam War. Dean Rusk, secretary of state to both JFK and LBJ, says emphatically in his book, “As I Saw It,” that LBJ’s policy in Vietnam was a natural extension of JFK’s. Both saw communism as a threat and wanted to stop it.)
Joe Biden knows that the top of the ticket sets policy. What he was criticizing Palin for was her failure — surprise, surprise — to adopt Democratic talking points about the environment and the middle class.
Sarah Palin’s own views on things will count a lot more should she run for president. If McCain were to die in office, she would be bound, largely at least, to the stands that got McCain/Palin elected. She would have no mandate to do anything else.
Sorry for leaving all that unsaid. It just seemed so obvious to me.

So, there you have it. Palin switches a potential McCain backer to Obama. Oh, well.

OK, so Bill Neff, described by the Sunday News as “the write-in candidate for the 13th state Senate seat,” says he will participate in an Oct. 14 debate being put on by the Lancaster Foundation for Educational Enrichment.
I put some of those words above in quotes for a reason.
If someone else, really just about anyone who lives in the 13th District, shows up at McCaskey High School on debate night and says, “Hey, I’m a write-in candidate, too. I want to participate,” what exactly can the debate organizers say?
“We believe Bill. He has a Web site and everything”?
The Sunday News also reports that Neff “is hoping to be included in other debates, despite his independent status. Neff said he sent a ‘Declaration of Intent’ to the state and county elections offices to notify them of his candidacy.”
The problem, of course, is not Neff’s “independent status.” It’s the fact that his name will not appear on the ballot.
A “Declaration of Intent” hardly overcomes this hurdle.
My suggestion to other debate organizers: Politely tell Mr. Neff participation is limited to those who have their names on the ballot. If he objects, note that thousands of people could claim to be running as write-in candidates, and the debate stage could not accommodate them.

So, now Barack Obama acknowledges having been “too flip” with his “above my pay grade” answer to when life begins.
The trouble is his stance in favor of “choice” on abortion either (A) makes the call that life doesn’t begin until the U.S. Supreme Court says it does or (B) says murdering an unborn child is OK, if the kid’s going to be an inconvenience to a mom who might vote Democratic.
Here’s more on Obama’s pathetic copout, in his own words:

“What I intended to say is that, as a Christian, I have a lot of humility about understanding when does the soul enter into … It’s a pretty tough question.
“And so, all I meant to communicate was that I don’t presume to be able to answer these kinds of theological questions,” he said in an interview broadcast Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

And his running mate’s answer was no better:

A Roman Catholic, Sen. Biden said he accepts his church’s teachings that life begins at conception, but that the issue is personal for him. He said it wouldn’t be right to impose his views on others who are just as religious as he is.
“I’m prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception. But that is my judgment,” Biden said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “For me to impose that judgment on everyone else who is equally and maybe even more devout than I am seems to me is inappropriate in a pluralistic society.”

Really? So we must err on the side of murdering an innocent child, in the name of pluralism?
As a fellow Catholic, all I can say is “EEEEK!”