Let her remove all doubt

From a TPM reader post, some entertaining video and a knock-down Lincoln quote:

The best part is watching Campbell try to keep a straight face. The media knows darn well why the McCain campaign is keeping Palin away from reporters - and it is not because she is a "delicate flower".

I guess they are taking a cue from a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln:
" 'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt."

I wonder how long this sequestering of Palin can last. A month? Six weeks? Till election day?

Executive experience

I get the feeling that this Steven Warshawsky is a bit of a troll, so I feel a little iffy about even commenting on his article, but it's worth it I think just to bring up this issue of executive experience. Warshawsky believes that Obama cannot win the election, and that one of the reasons is because he's too inexperienced:

If elected president, Obama would be the fifth youngest president in U.S. history. The only younger presidents would be Teddy Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Ulysses S. Grant, all of whom were much more accomplished than Obama. Grant, Roosevelt, and Kennedy were war heroes. (Not Clinton, notoriously.) Roosevelt and Clinton had served as state governors. Grant had been the general-in-chief of the Union Army during the Civil War. The least experienced of the four, Kennedy, had served twelve years in Congress, six in the House of Representatives and six in the Senate, and had been a serious candidate for vice-president in 1956.

Well. Just because the five youngest presidents had more experience than Obama does not mean that all presidents have had more experience than Obama. There was an obscure president in the mid-nineteenth century whose only experience was a stint in the state legislature and a single term in the House, but he did alright.

The five cent penny

An emotional case for mothballing nickels and upgrading pennies is made:

The nickel is a misshapen fraud with a beastly portrait of a godless slaveowner. The penny is a pure classic that bears around the world billions of images of the Great Emancipator in all his Christian mercy, from the filthiest whorehouse to the bedsides of tykes. After all the work it’s done for us, now it’s our turn to give the penny a leg up. Ditch the nickel. Promote the penny to five-cent status.

Works for me. Though why are we always so stuck on Presidents (Ben Franklin notwithstanding)? How about some Senators--like Daniel Webster, for instance? Or how about a genius, like Einstein? I'd be down.