Allah admits he is 'a horrifying candy-ass'

And about time, too. The occasion? The escalating war between Steve Schmidt and Sarah Palin. As I point out in the Hot Air comments, my paleocon nemesis Clark Stooksbury and I unwittingly played a signficant role in this strange little saga. (Reports of ghostly laughter, apparently emanating from the vicinity of Forest Hills Cemetery and clearly audible as far away as Collegedale and Ringgold, could not be confirmed.)

Meanwhile, also in the comments, I remind Hot Air's Christian readers that Allah seems to have a healthy sense of humor about himself and understands blogging as a commercial enterprise. There's something about the profit motive that can unite people despite their disagreements.

Kind of weird finding myself as the lynchpin holding together this unlikely alliance, the coalition known as . . . The Flemish Menace!

UPDATE: A friend just mentioned to me Thurday's profile of Lynn Vincent in the Politico, which amounts to free advertising for Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption, the favorite book of Adrienne's Catholic Corner. I'm hurt and disappointed that my good buddy Ben Smith didn't feel the need to call me and ask about Lynn -- who speaks fluent Belgian, I should mention. (If you don't get these inside jokes, be grateful. The people who do get them are wiping coffee off their computer screens.)

Meanwhile, The Classical Liberal comments on John McCain's mission to destroy the GOP:

The Bailout Maverick and the rest of the Establishment, intend to continue moving left.
Funny, isn’t it? Considering the only excitement McCain’s campaign could drum-up last year, was from Sarah Palin. And she’s still more popular than he is.

This is classic Crazy Cousin John: He did exactly one thing right during the 2008 campaign, and has been regretting it ever since.

Not a sore loser, just a loser

McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt explains that it's not his fault:

The moment that I will look back at as the moment deep in my gut that I knew, was September 29, when I was flying on a plane with Governor Palin to Sedona for debate prep, watching the split screen on the TVs . . . and it showed the stock market down seven, eight hundred points; it showed the Congress voting down the bailout package on the other side, and then, House Republicans went out and told the world that the reason that they voted against this legislation, allowed the stock market to crash, allowed the economy to be so injured, was because Nancy Pelosi had given a mean and partisan speech on the floor. And this was their response. And I just viewed it as beyond devastating, and thought that at that moment running with an "R" next to your name, in this year, was probably lethal.

Got that? House Republicans "allowed the stock market to crash," and that's why John McCain lost, rather than because of Schmidt's insistence on Sept. 24 that the candidate suspend the campaign, call for a postponement of the debate, and fly to Washington to push for the unpopular $700 billion bailout. Classic.

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

Schmidt pushed McCain to back bailout

New York Times:

On the morning of Wednesday, Sept. 24, John McCain convened a meeting in his suite at the Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Among the handful of campaign officials in attendance were McCain's chief campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt, and his other two top advisers: Rick Davis, the campaign manager; and Mark Salter, McCain's longtime speechwriter. The senator's ears were already throbbing with bad news from economic advisers and from House Republican leaders who had told him that only a small handful in their ranks were willing to support the $700 billion bailout of the banking industry proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. . . .
Schmidt pushed for going all in: suspending the campaign, recommending that the first debate be postponed, parachuting into Washington and forging a legislative solution to the financial crisis for which McCain could then claim credit. Exactly how McCain could convincingly play a sober bipartisan problem-solver after spending the previous few weeks garbed as a populist truth teller was anything but clear. But Schmidt and others convinced McCain that it was worth the gamble.
Schmidt in particular was a believer in these kinds of defining moments. . . .

"Defining moments" = idiotic stunt that blew the election.