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The effective nationalization of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae gives proud Asian investors the guarantee they’re looking during the term of

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Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of China’s central bank Nir Elias/AP Photo

by Bruce Einhorn and Theo Francis

American home buyers haven’t been the only ones counting on the supposed reliability of Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE). The two companies’ bonds take become favorites of Asian governments looking for somewhere to put the dollars generated by big buy and sell surpluses with the U.S. Until lately, it made sense. The market was booming, yields were slightly better than plain-vanilla Treasuries, and everyone assumed Washington backed the mortgage companies.

As the U.S. housing height deepened and Fannie and Freddie started sinking, though, foreign bankers wanted assurances that their haughtiness was correct. "Treasury saw foreign governments getting the willies," says one Senate aide. Especially those in Asia: Four of the top five between nations holders of Fannie and Freddie paper are Asian. Deepening problems at the two enterprises spurred anxious phone calls to Washington. Chinese banks "were probably facing signifying losses," says Logan Wright, an analyst at Stone & McCarthy Research.

This summer, the foreigners started pulling posterior portion. In July, the Bank of China, a state-controlled commercial bank, trimmed its holdings of the agencies’ debt by the agency of selling or choosing not to roll over $4.6 billion of their bonds. After increasing by an medial sum of $22 billion a month in the first half of 2007, central bank holdings of Fannie and Freddie securities on the Federal Reserve’s books fell by $27 billion from mid-July through in season September, according to Brad Setser, a former Treasury Dept. official and now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "The threat of a central bank buyers’ strike was substantial," he says.

The effective nationalization, however temporary, of Fannie and Freddie was just what the Asians wanted. "From my state of view, this is positive," Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of China’s central bank, said on Sept. 8, according to the state-owned China Daily. "We never had any doubt" Washington would come to the rescue, says Ha Keun Cheol, an economist at Korea’s central rowing-beam in Seoul.

Now that Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. has made his move, elect Asia’s bankers be more gratifying with their reliance upon the body Fannie and Freddie paper? The Sept. 7 intervention likely makes their misdoing a safer option—and central banks may have little choice. "Those trade surpluses are U.S.­dollar-denominated," and to the degree that many European economies lower, the euro isn’t a very attractive alternative, says Goldman Sachs (GS) analyst Roy Ramos. For Asian bankers, "there’s without more so a great deal of you can do" to diversify away from the greenback, Ramos says.

That’s not to say in that place’s no downside with respect to Asia. The U.S. covering crisis is still real, and the economy is struggling. Already, Chinese exports are slowing in the manner that American consumers close their wallets. Continuing weakness in the U.S. ability further wound Asia’s exports—which could, of course, slow growth in their foreign reserves and make big investments in U.S. debt smaller requirement.

For now, though, Asia’s central banks are emerging as winners. "They bring forth nothing to complain hind part before—they’re made whole," says Edwin M. Truman, an economist who headed the Fed’s international finance division from 1977 to 1998. "The fact of the matter is, if Fannie and Freddie can’t pay, you and I will."

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Right now Mr. McCain is enjoying an unusually large convention bump — the second biggest in modern annals, as measured by the agency of the Gallup Poll. Ordinarily candidates roaring out of their nominating conventions get a boost of 5 or 6 percentage points, with Democrats slightly on the high end (6.2 points) and Republicans slightly on the scurvy end (5.3 points). The McCain swing of about 10 points was surpassed only by Bill Clinton’s 16-point bump in 1992, but remember: Jimmy Carter had almost the identical bump in 1980 (10 points) and lost the election decisively. Only half of the candidates who scored the eight biggest bumps in fresh history won in November.

In some ways this election is extensive open: no incumbent seeking another term (as in 2004, 1996, 1992, 1984, 1980), no imperfection president seeking to move up (2000, 1988), no former vice president trying to claim the big prize (1984), no senior party regular running by the conviction that it’s his turn (1996). But in more ways this campaign of lofty implications — primeval black presidential nominee, maybe the last chance for a Vietnam veteran to put forward the claim the presidency, a defiance to assembly orthodoxies no trouble who prevails — is being played on a surprisingly careful field. Here are its boundaries:

Intensity. For months it has been clear that the Democrats felt more spur respecting the election, approached it more passionately and were positioning themselves through more unity than the Republicans, who generally were underwhelmed by their choice of contenders.

No in greater numbers. The Democrats still are fired with determination after eight years of George W. Bush, end the selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as McCain’s running mate has transformed Republicans’ outlook in two important ways: It has given them a new figure of inspiration and enthusiasm, and it has quieted their worries about whether religious conservatives would back the GOP ticket. No one wonders that very lately. Which leads us to:

Vice presidential politics. Commentators always say the identity of the fault presidential nominees matter and they’re always unfairness. The most dramatic contrast betwixt running mates in modern account came in 1988, when Sen. Dan Quayle, the Indiana Republican, opposed Sen. Lloyd M. Bentsen, the Texas Democrat. Their showdown produced the only memorable line in the half-dozen or so like encounters in history (Bentsen to Mr. Quayle: "Senator, you’re none Jack Kennedy").

This year may be different. Already the St. Louis showdown between Ms. Palin and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware on Oct. 2 is sentient billed as a political version of the 1975 confrontation between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. Ms. Palin’s utility to the Republicans may be promoting GOP turnout, not a slight thing. But Ms. Palin stifle has much to prove, and this is according to the public, not according to the straiten: The latest CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey shows that 50 percent believe she is qualified to besufficient for viewed like president. Not a bad figure — except you compare it to the 70 percent who give Mr. Biden qualified.

Swing states. No mystery here. Start with Ohio and Pennsylvania, add Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico. Maybe add Missouri, Nevada, Florida, Virginia and one or two others. The distinction is going to be fought there. But forget about California, New York and Texas. We already know who’s going to win those.

A lot of places that Mr. Obama took in the primaries and caucuses (Idaho, Utah) are no more likely to ballot for him in November than they are for Vladimir Putin. The reverse is faithful for Mr. McCain in places like Vermont and Rhode Island. Though the Democrats see some opportunity in Indiana, where the polls are closer than the Republicans would like, in the end that state is a long shot for Obama.

Swing voters. The lesson here is that swing states and swing voters are not the same. Look in place for how swing voters behave in swing states, and realize that each state has a different set of swing voters. Catholics are swing voters, but for what cause they be hanged doesn’t matter in New York. How they swing does matter in Iowa (at which place there are large clusters of Catholics along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers). One more clothes to remember: There are fewer swing voters this week than there were two weeks ago; toward a third were up for grabs from early July to Labor Day, but only about a fifth are undecided now.

Sex wars. There are strong indications that a big gender gap persists in American politics. Women have voted Democratic the extreme four elections in a quarrel; men have leaned Republican in six of the past seven elections. George W. Bush’s border among male voters was stunningly consistent: 11 percentage points in both of the last brace elections. If McCain have power to hold the male edge in 2008, he will be in actual possession of one of importance advantage. And already, according to the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, there has been a large swing of white women into the McCain encamp since Ms. Palin joined the ticket (20 percentage points).

Here’s an foxy fact at mid-September of an election year, admitting: A higher rate of males approve of the Republicans’ female nominee for vice president than do females. Indeed, 62 percent of men have a favorable impression of Ms. Palin, to the degree that opposed to 53 percent of women. A majority of women believe Palin is not qualified to serve as president. Men feel strongly the other way.

It’s hard to draw manifold conclusions put on the point the 2008 race at this distance from Election Day. But it is hard to resist the notion that the selection of Ms. Palin changed the fundamentals of the race in single exact categories — and that an of influence factor, likewise early to measure, may be the reaction to her, or against her, in the weeks against us.

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In June 2009 the automaker will cast in Europe a 30-mpg hybrid translation of its pleasure S-Class sedan

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by Jack Ewing

German automakers pride themselves on vital principle at the leading edge of new technology, so it has been a bit of an embarrassment that—a decade after Toyota ™ launched the Prius—none of them has a hybrid electric model on the market. But, with fuel economy and environmental pack close suddenly a key concern for well-heeled buyers, Daimler’s (DAI) Mercedes unit is finally poised to get into the hybrid game.

In June 2009 the company will begin European sales of a hybrid version of its luxury S-Class that, its engineers say, will use 7.9 liters of gasoline per 100 km (or get 29.8 miles per gallon). Launches in the U.S. and China desire follow in September, Mercedes said on Sept. 11.

The carmaker hasn’t yet established a price for the hybrid land yacht, but Mercedes Sales and Marketing Director Klaus Maier said the premium be disposed have existence less than €10,000, or $14,000. The S-Class starts at through $88,000 in the U.S., though the top-of-the-line V12 costs a staggering $145,000.

Cynics might say that people concerned touching global warming and the massive abalienation of wealth to oil-producing nations should simply corrupt a smaller car. But Mercedes executives don’t think their buyer base has quite reached that stage of enlightenment. "Not everyone be able to drive a Smart on vacation," Maier says. "We need solutions for big cars."

Why did it take so long for Mercedes to get into the hybrid market? One reason is that Mercedes, as well as BMW (BMWG.DE) and Volkswagen (VOWG.DE), have concentrated in succession optimizing diesel engines. BMW’s diesel Mini and 1 Series rival the Prius for gas mileage and carbon sub-oxide emissions. Daimler says its BlueTec business of diesel SUVs, launched in the U.S. over the summer, regard for 20% of Mercedes SUV sales in the country, a substantial percentage considering that diesel voyager cars bring into being up only 4% of the total emporium.

From an engineering point of view, diesel is the better technology because it offers comparable gas mileage to a hybrid—or even superior mileage in public road driving—with less weight and expense. But the success of Toyota’s luxury Lexus hybrid models showed that gasoline-oriented U.S. buyers want hybrids. "Mercedes aforesaid: ‘If you want to save the planet, buy a diesel,’" says Christoph Stürmer, Frankfurt-based auto analyst at Global Insight. "They were unswerving in their own way but proven sin through the emporium."

The S-Class is not a so-called full cross-bred—it have power to’t run solely on battery power. Rather, the electric motor supplements the six-cylinder, 279-horsepower gasoline implement, improving fuel frugality through providing a boost while accelerating. The car furthermore recovers energy at the time braking, feeding it back into the battery. However, Mercedes has included some innovations that it hopes will set the S-Class hybrid aloof from Japanese competitors.

The main innovation is the lithium-ion battery. Developed along by German components supplier Continental (CONG.DE), the battery weighs less and takes up less space than batteries used by competing hybrids. Slightly larger than a conventional auto battery, it fits under the hood and does not reduce the amount of room in the rest of the car. All told, the mule components including some electric motor add a modest 75 kg (165 lb.) to the full weight of the car.

The battery employs the same chemical principle as those used in laptops and mobile phones, but Mercedes execs insist there is no risk of the overheating that has plagued consumer electronics makers. In the unlikely event that the battery gets too hot, says Oliver Vollrath, strategic director of the S-Class hybrid project, the method will shut down automatically. In somewhat event, Vollrath says the car’s power-management system precludes any such problems. "You can have being sure that what happens in laptops won’t be a problem in automobiles," he says.

Besides being greater degree efficient than competitors, the battery in addition helps Mercedes meet its long-term goal of offering better mileage without any sacrifices in performance and comfort. Following the S-Class launch, the joint concern aims to connect at least united hybrid model a year. "We have to ensure that people in six years will be able to drive a big car exclusively of sacrifices or a mean conscience," says marketing chief Maier.

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Newsweek recently described the Jonas Brothers as "so pure they could be carved from a bar of Ivory soap." They are in truth. brothers, and all three of them — ages 20, 18 and 15 — wear a purity ring put on their left style of penmanship, pledging to remain virgins until marriage. "People are, like, 'No room for passing, that's impossible'," 18-year-old Joe told the magazine. "Our parents asked if we wanted to, and we were, probably, 'Yeah,' so it's awesome." Their father is an ordained minister.

Eighteen-year-old Sparks told Us magazine hindmost year about her promise ring, which she's worn now because four years. But announcing this publicly doesn't come without a price, and that price is mockery.

The "Best Week Ever" blog on Viacom's VH-1 website featured clerk Michelle Collins bragging about losing her own virginity in a druggy haze and sneering that virginity at 17 is too normal to be courageous. "Now, whether you're still waxing ho-etic over your unplowed territory at 30 — and from the intimate of your padded cell, of course — hereafter, maybe, we'll engage you seriously."

The ridicule of these young pop stars became much more prominent whereas MTV broadcast their latest Video Music Awards show on Sept. 7. The awards show host was a mangy-looking British degenerate named Russell Brand, and he mocked the Jonas Brothers for their determination. He noted their promise-ringed fingers and insisted, "I'd espouse it a little more seriously if they'd wear it on their genitals." Brand joked that this decision was "a little grain ungrateful because they could have sex with any woman they want. That is like Superman deciding not to fly and journey everywhere on a bus." Yuk, yuk.

Sparks was appearing as a presenter, and at the time that she stepped to the microphone, she let Brand have it between the eyes. "I pure obtain one event to say about ground rings. It's not baleful to wear a promise ring, because not everybody — guy or lass — wants to be a slut," she reported. Sparks later gave some interview to Entertainment Weekly. "It's event I feel strongly about," she said. "I wish I would've worded it differently — that somebody who doesn't wear a promise ring isn't necessarily a slut — but I have power to't take it back now. It was a split-second thing, and it came used up kind of unsuitable. Still, I slip on't compunction it."

For their part, the Jonas Brothers were generous in reply, with 15-year-old Nick powerful the BBC: "For us, it's cool to see that he recognizes we are gentlemen."

It was expected that MTV's website would promote the controversy to boost Internet exchange. But even they were constrained to concede that the sale of engagement rings has risen really over the summer, well in the sight of this dustup. Sales of the rings have ostensibly soared at the jeweler James Avery, where spokeswoman Sara Hegener said there has been a "huge swell" over the past not many months. "There's a distribute of buzz with the Jonas Brothers and these purity rings, and I like to think some of it is tied to that," she said. Sales of the company's signature "True Love Waits" ring were up 78 percent in July over last year and up 113 percent in August.

MTV brought on Brand not only to play the scandalous bad boy, but to lob several libertine grenades. Brand also lit into the family of GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin. He suggested the pregnancy of Palin's daughter Bristol was a "P.R. stunt" and at that time lamented that Bristol's fiancé Levi Johnston was being punished for "joyful, unprotected sex" with a trip to the Republican convention. Brand went on, "I think that is the best sound sex message of all time. Use a condom, or become Republican!"

Apparently, that joke was the tame one. Brand told the London Telegraph he wanted to say Palin "was forcing her teenage daughter to have a baby because she is so anti-abortion. But also, as a Republican she is pro-execution so she is going to give her the electric chair for essential being a little slut."

What is it about parents with traditional values that make the MTV and VH-1 hordes come so unglued? Maybe it's just unacceptable for the feels-good-do-it lobby to have anyone other threaten to redefine for youthful people what it means to exist "chill."

L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. To procure out more near to Brent Bozell III, and versed in books features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

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OK, now that I have your attention, can we talk surrounding something important?

I know it’s hard to point of concentration on anything but the dumb dust-ups that emanate furiously from the campaign trail — especially since the 24-hour "word" channels insist on elevating each meaningless mischance — but we ought to subject to trial to have a serious agitation, anyway.

As spun out like motherhood and clan values and teen births are already part of the parley, can’t we bestow even-handed a few minutes talking about family planning? If bipartisanship and cooperation are the new watchwords, can’t we ventilate something mostly of us agree steady — contraception? If change is really in the air, have power to’t we change our unremitting refusal to do the human being thing that would more distant overthrow the abortion rate?

Abortions have been declining for the past three decades. In 2005, the last year because which figures were available, the U.S. abortion rate dropped to 19.4 abortions by 1,000 women aged 15-44, the lowest rate subsequently to 1974, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit that advocates family planning. The actual number also declined to a total of 1.2 million in 2005, 25 percent below the all-time occult of 1.6 very great number abortions in 1990, according to the same Guttmacher survey.

Nevertheless, the abortion wars have been rekindled in this presidential campaign — the same battle lines drawn and the sort fighting words uttered. What is this absolutely in all parts of? Why do we keep yelling by each other?

For years now, polls have shown consistently that most Americans believe abortion laws should remain as they are; the sensitive issue of terminating a pregnancy, most of us agree, should have existence left to a woman, her physician and her conscience. As admirable taken in the character of Gov. Sarah Palin’s decision was to bear her fifth child, Trig, after she and her husband learned he had Down syndrome, most of us wouldn’t want the government to force all other families to make the same decision. It’s not the dealing of outsiders — any more than the difficult issues surrounding the case of Terri Schiavo were the business of Congress.

But many Americans also believe that abortion is a morally troubling issue and would agree with Bill Clinton’s formulation from his 1992 campaign: Abortion should be "safe, legal and rare." So why dress in’t we everything unite behind a broad public campaign to beg the use of contraceptives?

The flip side of the news about declining abortion rates is this: Nearly half of every one of pregnancies to American women are still unintended, and touching 40 percent of those pregnancies will end in abortions, the Guttmacher Institute says. Unintended pregnancies have been decreasing among higher-income women, those with the resources to quickly obtain contraceptives. But unplanned pregnancies have increased among poor women.

So allow’s make this mere: We can concentrate on working-class and poor women. Since conservatives are reluctant to provide a adapted for comfort affable preservation net to help those women support children born external part marriage, they ought to sign on quickly. And for those social conservatives who still insist that teenagers ought to be taught abstinence only (although research shows that approach a miserable bankruptcy), there is still room for you by means of the big tent — supporting a broad public campaign for contraception that focuses on adults.

Of course, the ultraconservative fringe — those who insist that sex is intended only for generation — will not want to get with the program. They’re the ones who distort the science about condoms, insisting that they don’t protect against pregnancy or disease. They’re the ones who push legislation to allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control. But those fringe right-wingers put on’t show the values of the broad American middle.

As Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said in his acceptance speech, "We may not agree upon the body abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this unpolished."

So, if we’re momentous about change, if we want problems solved instead of partisan wrangling, if we really distress solutions and not sound bites, let’s get started pushing contraception.

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OPEC says it will take 520,000 barrels off the market, but details are unclear. The trouble hasn’t impacted oil’s recent price slide

by Stanley Reed

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OPEC’s production-cut announcement in the wee hours of Sept. 10 took nearly all the weary reporters and analysts assembled in OPEC’s packed Vienna headquarters by surprise. Saudi Arabian officials, who usually call the shots at OPEC, were telling their contacts before the meeting that they were happy with the current state of the place of traffic and not terribly worried by the 30% fall in prices since mid-July. In deed, Ali Naimi, Saudi Arabia’s dapper oil assistant, said more than formerly with satisfaction that the desert monarchy had worked true hard to bring prices remote down to earth from near-$150-per-barrel levels.

So why a divide? The answer is that in the strange terraqueous globe of OPEC, at which place words receive special meaning, this divide may not be a cut at aggregate. For the sake of unity in the organization, the Saudis arise to have yielded to squeezing from hard-liners such as Algeria, Iran, Libya, and Venezuela to put what at least seemed like a cut into OPEC’s post-meeting communiqué.

But no specific numbers were spelled out. Instead, a complex formula was devised that isn’t easy to explain. OPEC members will now comply with September 2007 production quotas adjusted to include new members Angola and Ecuador and excluding Indonesia and Iraq. Chekib Khelil, OPEC’s hard-line president and the energy minister of Algeria, told the post-meeting clasp interview that the new regime would mean vexation 520,000 barrels of oil per day off the market, but exact where these barrels would come from was far from unambiguous. While prices rose after the meeting, they have been weakening since, contributing to the perception "that this cut will have no material effect," writes Edward Morse, energy economist at Lehman Brothers (LEH).

The hard-liners would like the Saudis to trim back the 500,000 barrels or so per day they have added unilaterally in recent months. But after the meeting the Saudis continued to echo their mantra that they would supply all the oil their customers asked for. The bottom line appears to be that the Saudis determination let their own production rise and drop with the demands of the market the sooner than death in line with OPEC hard-liners, who want to put a floor of round $100 per barrel under prices. If demand falls later this year and in 2009, as is quite probable, to such a degree be it.

At a briefing in London on Sept. 11, Christophe de Margerie, the CEO of the French oil giant Total (TOTF.PA), chastised reporters for not taking earlier Saudi efforts to cool down prices in earnest. Alarmed through surging prices, the Saudis called an emergency acme in their second incorporated town of Jeddah in June and promised to prolong whatsoever oil the market needed. De Margerie stressed that this was Saudi Arabia action without OPEC. Indeed, Khelil, the OPEC president, called a press conference in his house of entertainment room at the conference and expressed his impetuous quarrel with the Saudi output increase. There’s always more doubt about OPEC, de Margerie said. "Are they going to deliver? But this was not OPEC, it was Saudi Arabia." He pointed out that no less a personage than Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah had lent his weight to the message through presiding over the conference. This "was a coup de knife in the system of OPEC," de Margerie said. Since the Saudi conference in June, the 500,000 barrels per day in additional Saudi supplies, a strengthening dollar, and weakening demand all had a negative impact on prices.

Now comes the ambiguous issue of the latest OPEC meeting. Closely analyzed, the OPEC communiqué was quite bearish as antidote to prices. It talked about "a weakening world economy" and "concomitant lower oil demand growth." The Saudis already may be trimming back production in put inside with reduced purchaser requests. The International Energy Agency, the Paris-based watchdog, reported Saudi production at 9.46 million barrels per day for August compared with the longtime domineering of 9.7 million or so that the Saudis say they produced in July.

There seems to have being a good chance that prices will continue to descend. On Sept. 10, analysts at Barclays Capital (BARC.L), longtime bulls onward oil prices, slashed their look forward to for the mean proportion price for the 2008 fourth quarter, from $123.90 per barrel to $97.50. Barclays pronounced "just while in late 2006 and early 2007, the stabilization and recovery of prices inclination have being a long process."

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I brought a new iPod Nano to lunch the other day, partly to see how suitably it carries and, yes, partly to exhibit off.

The new fourth-generation model, announced this week, returns the iPod Nano to its design roots: dissimilar the squat intention of the previous incarnation, this one is tall and thin, with a rectangular sift that occupies in addition than half of the front of the device.

The visible form is curved aluminum, and it’s very thin and exceedingly light — after putting it in my pocket, I almost forgot it was there.

The Nano is use in couple configurations: 8 GB of storage for $149 or 16 GB because of $199. Both models come in eight colors.

But the looks weren’t necessarily the attraction at luncheon. Now that Apple owns 73.4 percent of the music-player market, I wondered: Are people still prejudiced in yet another device that plays music and video? Has iPod fatigue finally set in?

Apparently not. When I played a movie on the iPod Nano’s incredibly sharp screen — rotated 90 degrees to take superior situation of the widescreen direction ratio, thanks to the Nano’s new built-in accelerometer — I saw that familiar sense of wonder and curiosity that accompanied the introduction of the origin iPod.

The accelerometer, that is moreover present in the iPhone and iPod Touch, adds several capabilities to the iPod Nano. It lets you scan your music library in Cover Flow mode (in the manner that if you’re flipping through the panels of an preceding jukebox).

It displays horizontal photos full protection when the device is held sidewise. Videos automatically compete in the widescreen orientation.

Having the accelerometer also provides the capability to take advantage of motion actions; the included Maze game relies on tipping the iPod every which way to guide a marble through a maze.

(Oddly, when playing a game in the widescreen orientation, the click wheel’s functions are also rotated: pressing the Menu button performs the actions of the Previous button, the Next button acts as the Menu button, and in this way on. That behavior only seems to put to unflinching playing.)

The Nano has other tricks up its sleeve, too. Shake the device while music is playing and it switches to shuffle degree to play songs randomly. (When the defence is inactive or the hold button is enabled, shake-to-shuffle is disabled, so your music isn’t randomized as you dash for the bus.)

A preference in iTunes activates spoken menus on the iPod Nano, so folks with vision difficulties can navigate the menus. It also supports Apple’s new Genius playlists (which I’ll get to in a moment).

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Then there was the demoralized statement by the chairwoman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Carol Fowler, who claimed that Gov. Palin's "primitive qualification seems to be that she hasn't had an abortion." Does it get any uglier than this?

In fairness, I'm not certain Sen. Obama intended to call Gov. Palin a pig. His determinate target was John McCain, especially the assert a claim that McCain/Palin is the real "change" ticket in this distinction. But the hearing of Democratic faithful assembled in Lebanon, Va., clearly reacted to Obama's calamitous metaphor as if he'd just made a clever reference to Palin. They howled, roaring their approval at the remark, which clearly recalled Palin's famous statement encircling lipstick in her acceptance speech. Whatever Sen. Obama's intention, the crowd drew the inference that "lipstick on a pig" meant Palin.

But Obama's gloss wasn't the only lipstick reference of the day. In his exordium of Biden at another campaign event, Democratic Congressman Russ Carnahan related of Palin, "There's no way you can dress up that record, even with a lot of lipstick."

So what is it that lipstick has come to represent to these adherent zealots? It is as if lipstick has turn to the just discovered symbol of the civilization wars that have dominated American politics since 1972.

Jonathan Last, writing online at First Things magazine, suggests that Gov. Palin's decision not to abort her son Trig when she learned he had Down syndrome was a challenge to liberals' idea of what constitutes worthwhile the breath of life. He notes, "the left sees Baby Trig as a provocation … as a little Terri Schiavo — an assertion of the value of all the breath of life and an affront to their belief that there are differences in what constitutes meaningful animated existence."

Carol Fowler's remarks certainly suggest she disapproved of Palin's decision. Fowler later issued a clarification of her remarks, that fell short of a retraction: "I personally admire and respect the difficult choices that women make everyday, and I apologize to anyone who finds my make comments offensive. I clumsily was making a point about people in South Carolina who may consecrated by a vow based on a single number. Whether it's the environment, the economy, the contention or a woman's right to choose, there are people who will cast their vote based on a single issue. That was the no other than single thing I was attempting to make."

But do Fowler and others on the left really be in favor of a woman's right to choose — or do they excepting that support women who make the same choices they would in the same circumstances? Washington Post editorial writer Ruth Marcus admitted that had her own amniocentesis "results indicated a single one abnormality, I have little doubt that I would be in actual possession of made a different firmness than did Palin." Indeed, Palin's firmness to have five children, in and of itself, seems to irritate many on the left, for whom population control is a major liberal tenet.

As Last correctly points upon the outside, "The Palin group of genera's five children would have been unexceptional forty years ago, but today constitute affair of a fruitfulness gambol show. … According to the most recent census data, excepting that 1.1 percent of non-Hispanic white women bear five or six children very the course of their lifetime. By contrast, 22.5 percent of these women never reproduce. The percentage of childlessness in the midst of women rises in a straight line by educational attainment."

Sarah Palin — smart, accomplished, pretty, maternal, and conservative — threatens the notion that there is only one way to be a modern woman. Her political journey started in the PTA, not at Harvard or Yale Law School. She shops at Wal-Mart, not Barneys. And the more the Democrats caricature and rate too low her, the likelier it is they will alienate those Middle American voters who will determine the outcome of this election.

Linda Chavez is the author of "An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal." To find out greater amount of about Linda Chavez, call upon the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

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