"More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-“a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy”-and thought it fit her perfectly. When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig’s condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God’s, and signed it “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father."

via: hokey smokes. i will be reading the entire article tonight…

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Kristol cited a passage in Purdum’s piece in which “some top aides” were said to worry about the Alaska governor’s “mental state” and the prospect that the Alaska governor may be suffering from post-partum depression following the birth of her son Trig. “In fact, one aide who raised this possibility in the course of trashing Palin’s mental state to others in the McCain-Palin campaign was Steve Schmidt,” Kristol wrote.

Asked about the accusation, Schmidt fired back in an e-mail: “I’m sure John McCain would be president today if only Bill Kristol had been in charge of the campaign.”

“After all, his management of [former Vice President] Dan Quayle’s public image as his chief of staff is still something that takes your breath away,” Schmidt continued. “His attack on me is categorically false.”

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via: ZING! i’m hoping to see more fallout from the Palin Vanity Fair piece all this week…

the feel good moment of the year (thus far...)

Oh, THOSE Death Panels

kryz:

As a comparative-law guy, I’d like to remind Mr. Obama that America has a conflict-based, winner-take-all political system. This is not European parliamentary democracy, where you need to patch together coalitions to run the country, and everything has to be hammered into some sort of compromise that will please the diverse members of your coalition.

No, this is America, a country in which if you win the Presidential election and large majorities in both houses of Congress, you can do pretty much whatever you want for the next couple of years. I think I speak for a lot of Obama voters when I say: Obama, my man, I didn’t vote for you so you could be nice to Republicans. I don’t give a fuck about the Republicans! As a former Reagan White House official recently said of the Republican party: ‘[U]ntil they do penance they don’t deserve any credibility and should be ignored until they do.’ That’s what happens in a winner-take-all system. The winner takes it all, and the loser gets ignored. That’s called accountability, and it’s a healthy part of democracy. Nobody cares how many Republicans’ toes you step on. In fact, democratic accountability requires that you crush Republican toes into purplish goo. They screwed up! They got shellacked! Nobody trusts them!

Andrew Hammel: Take All, Winner

 it sucks…but it’s true.  just push the legislation through, mr. president.  it’s what we want.