The ugliest, most illiberal political ad of the year may be this one, from Kentucky Democrat Jack Conway:

I actually don't doubt the implication of the ad, namely that Rand Paul harbors a private contempt for Christianity. He's a devotee of Ayn Rand, who is a fundamentally anti-Christian thinker. And much of Paul's history, which he is frantically covering up in an attempt to pass himself off as a typical Republican, suggests among other things a deep skepticism about religion.

The trouble with Conway's ad is that it comes perilously close to saying that non-belief in Christianity is a disqualification for public office. That's a pretty sickening premise for a Democratic campaign.

Here's what the Koch brothers said last summer about their involvement in the Tea Party movement:

Koch denies being directly involved with the tea party—“I’ve never been to a tea-party event. No one representing the tea party has ever even approached me.” … “The radical press is coming after me and Charles,” he said. “They’re using us as whipping boys.”

Then this video came out:

Including this quote:

“Five years ago my brother Charles and I provided the funds to start the Americans for Prosperity,” Koch says, “and its beyond my wildest dreams how AFP has grown into this enormous organization of hundreds of thousands of Americans from all walks of life standing up and fighting for the economic freedoms that have made our nation the most prosperous society in history.”

Now the line is changing:

Facing a new round of scrutiny, Koch Industries is refining its position that it has not directly funded the tea party movement, saying that “until recently” the energy giant “had never been approached by a tea party group for funding.” ...

Rich Fink, executive vice president of Koch Industries, released a statement reading, “We have not provided funding to the tea party organizations which are being organized throughout the country and, until recently, we had never been approached by a tea party group for funding.‪ ‪We have publicly supported Americans for Prosperity Foundation since 1984 and Americans for Prosperity since 2004. We have never considered these institutions to be tea party organizations. Whether or not they are considered to be tea party organizations will not affect our support of them. We believe the tea party movement is a response to the growing frustration of many Americans to government overspending. We share these concerns and encourage citizens to express their opinions in a respectful and civil manner.”

-- Could liberals dump Nancy Pelosi?

-- Kevin Drum offers one impeachment scenario, involving South Carolina, nullification, and a book deal for Mary Landrieu.

-- Tom Scocca has found "the dumbest libertarian quote ever."

Here at Jonathan Chait, we are committed to accuracy. So I should note that my suspicions about the uncharacteristically impolite Canadian attack ad were correct, and my conclusion that it was real was incorrect. It's a farce.

The late Wall Street Journal editorial editor and Medal of Freedom winner Robert Bartley had a saying to describe the ethos of his page: "The ideology finds the news." Of course, the ideology is also capable of fleeing from the news:

"WE'RE NOT AWARE of a single case so far of a substantive error," The Journal's editorial said. "Out of tens of thousands of potentially affected borrowers, we're still waiting for the first victim claiming that he was current on his mortgage when the bank seized the home." The fund manager Barry Ritholtz, who writes the blog The Big Picture, and Naked Capitalism's Yves Smith, whose chronicle of the foreclosure jumble has been encyclopedic, furious and convincing, would disagree. They've linked to stories in papers like the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and The South Florida Sun Sentinel about banks mistakenly taking over homes that hadn't been foreclosed on. Not only was Fort Lauderdale's Jason Grodensky not late on the payments on the house that Bank of American foreclosed on, but he didn't even have a mortgage.

"Thanks for the query," The Journal's editorial page editor said, responding to an interview request, "but I think I'll let the editorial speak for itself."

An encouraging poll from the Volunteer State:

Two-thirds of Tennesseans, 66 percent, “agree” or “strongly agree” that Muslims should have the same religious rights as other Americans, compared with only 14 percent who “disagree” or “strongly disagree.” Only 4 percent say that they “neither agree nor disagree.” …

When presented with the prospect of a hypothetical Islamic community center and place of worship being proposed “near where you live,” poll participants responded similarly. Forty-three percent said that they would “neither support nor oppose” construction, 30 percent said that they would “oppose” or “strongly oppose” construction, and 23 percent said that they would “support” or “strongly support” construction.

Meanwhile, on Fox News, intolerance continues apace:

Really, Brian Kilmeade? You're not aware that there are non-Muslim terrorists? Even in the United States?

I thought she was completely rogue last time, but apparently Palin's rogue-o-meter is like the Spinal Tap speaker that can be cranked up to 11:

After her 30-minute speech, Ms. Palin agreed to take questions from audience members who paid up to $500 each to attend. Many of the queries from the floor allowed the former Republican vice-presidential candidate to tee off on the “lame stream media.” She seemed to agree with one person who suggested she allowed herself to be too programmed by Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s handlers during the pair’s bid for the White House.

“Thanks for the advice,” said Ms. Palin, at the event ostensibly to plug her book Going Rogue. “When I do run again I will be more rogue.”

This is going to be fun. And slightly terrifying.

Yesterday I asserted that you never see ads featuring Lebron James going to the park and dunking on a bunch of kids. But a reader points out that you do see ads like this with Kobe Bryant:

I guess what makes this ad work is that you never see the other team, so you don't have to feel bad for a bunch of little kids who showed up hoping to win a kiddie league championship and wound up getting destroyed by a 6'7 NBA All-Star ringer. Still, you're supposed to feel good for a bunch of other kids who win the championship by blatantly cheating.

So i guess the conclusion is that middle America is okay with the idea of professional athletes using their massive skill advantage to dominate regular people, or even children, who are trying to play a game.

Green Party candidates tend to whine about the electoral process a lot, but this strikes me as a legitimate greivance:

The last name of Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney is misspelled as "Whitey" on electronic-voting machines in nearly two dozen wards -- about half in predominantly African-American areas -- and election officials said Wednesday the problem cannot be corrected by Election Day.

I can definitely see how black voters are going to be hesitant to vote for "Rich Whitey."

I wonder if this means that Whitey, I mean Whitney, will pull fewer votes from the Democrats than Green Party candidates usually do. Maybe some Republican voters in the other precincts will see the name and think, "This is the candidate I've been waiting for."

[Guest post by James Downie]

The Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger would like to interrupt your viewing of the Chilean miner rescue with a declaration:

It needs to be said. The rescue of the Chilean miners is a smashing victory for free-market capitalism.

Hoo boy. Now, Henninger is the deputy page editor of an editorial board that has bashed Rahm Emanuel for saying "never allow a crisis go to waste." (The board forgot, one assumes, their utterly disgraceful editorial from eight days after 9/11, in which they asked President Bush to use the post-attacks political situation to push through tax cuts and free trade agreements.) I guess, though, Henninger now has a crisis he can use. But let's hear him out:

If those miners had been trapped a half-mile down like this 25 years ago anywhere on earth, they would be dead. What happened over the past 25 years that meant the difference between life and death for those men?

Short answer: the Center Rock drill bit.

This is the miracle bit that drilled down to the trapped miners. Center Rock Inc. is a private company in Berlin, Pa. It has 74 employees. The drill's rig came from Schramm Inc. in West Chester, Pa. Seeing the disaster, Center Rock's president, Brandon Fisher, called the Chileans to offer his drill. Chile accepted. The miners are alive.

Longer answer: The Center Rock drill, heretofore not featured on websites like Engadget or Gizmodo, is in fact a piece of tough technology developed by a small company in it for the money, for profit. That's why they innovated down-the-hole hammer drilling. If they make money, they can do more innovation.

This profit = innovation dynamic was everywhere at that Chilean mine. The high-strength cable winding around the big wheel atop that simple rig is from Germany. Japan supplied the super-flexible, fiber-optic communications cable that linked the miners to the world above.

A remarkable Sept. 30 story about all this by the Journal's Matt Moffett was a compendium of astonishing things that showed up in the Atacama Desert from the distant corners of capitalism.

Samsung of South Korea supplied a cellphone that has its own projector. Jeffrey Gabbay, the founder of Cupron Inc. in Richmond, Va., supplied socks made with copper fiber that consumed foot bacteria, and minimized odor and infection.

Henninger's point, I believe, is not that the donations themselves are evidence of capitalism - donations are charity, which can exist under almost any political or economic system. And although he glosses over the crucial role of government subsidies and support in stimulating innovation, the connection between innovation and profit is not a silly one.

But why did the mine collapse in the first place? Henninger doesn't mention those details. For that, we have to go to the Associated Press:

[Chilean Senator Baldo] Prokurica said the mine operator had a poor safety record. In 2007, company executives were charged with involuntary manslaughter for the death of a miner. The worker's family settled, but the mine was closed until it could comply with key safety regulations, said Prokurica.

In 2008, the mine reopened even though the company apparently hadn't complied with all the regulations, he said, adding that the circumstances surrounding the reopening are being investigated.

President Sebastian Pinera has fired top regulators and created a commission to investigate the accident and the agency. Since the collapse, the agency has shut down at least 18 small mines for safety violations, a possible sign that lax safety measures are open secrets at many mines.

And who found the miners and brought this to the world's attention so Center Rock, Samsung, and all those other companies could donate their equipment? The Communist propaganda outlet known as the Economist explains:

[President] Piñera was visiting Ecuador with his mining minister, Laurence Golborne, when the accident happened. He immediately sent Mr Golborne back to Chile and soon followed him to the mine, reportedly against the advice of aides loth to see his image tainted by the accident. Finding the mine’s owners overwhelmed by Chile’s worst mining accident in decades, he ordered his government to take charge and called in experts from Codelco, the big state-owned copper producer.

It was a risky move, but it paid off. Probes by Codelco’s engineers found the miners still alive 17 days after the rockfall. Codelco mobilized contractors and equipment from around the world to drill three separate rescue shafts...The government has not specified the cost of the rescue operation, though Codelco says its share has cost $15m.

In short, it was the state-owned company, not the private one, that found the miners in the first place, and spent the millions of dollars necessary to rescue them. Indeed, the private company in charge of the mine is so broke that, a few days after the men were found alive, the company announced it had "neither the equipment nor the money to rescue the men." The rescue would not have been possible without state intervention.

The point here is not to claim the rescue as a victory for statism. Far from it. Yes, the mine owners re-opened their mine before meeting safety standards because they wanted to start profiting again, but the Chilean government only had eighteen safety inspectors for the entire country. While business may have influenced that woefully inadequate number, the buck still ultimately stopped with the political leaders.  Neither the collapse nor the rescue can be solely attributed to capitalism or government. The credit, and the blame, lie with both.

The Weekly Standard's Matthew Continetti, author of "The Persecution of Sarah Palin," takes to the Washington Post to expose the "myth" that Sarah Palin cost John McCain the election:

She didn't. CNN's 2008 national exit poll, for example, asked voters whether Palin was a factor when they stepped into the voting booth. Those who said yes broke for McCain 56 percent to 43 percent.

Before Palin's selection, remember, McCain suffered from an enthusiasm gap. Republicans were reluctant to vote for the senator from Arizona because of his reputation as a maverick who'd countered his party on taxes, immigration, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and "cap and trade" climate legislation. But Palin's conservative record in Alaska and antiabortion advocacy changed the Republican mood. With her by his side, McCain's fundraising and support from conservatives improved. It wasn't enough to beat Barack Obama -- but McCain probably would have lost the presidency by a greater margin if he had, say, selected independent Sen. Joe Lieberman as his running mate, further alienating the GOP base.

Yes, it's possible that Palin's conservatism and uneven performance on the campaign trail shifted some voters to Obama's column. But even if Obama picked up some anti-Palin votes, he surely didn't need them: The economy was in recession, Wall Street was in meltdown, and the incumbent Republican president was incredibly unpopular. Of course, in the end, it's impossible to know how McCain would have performed if he hadn't selected Palin -- politics does not allow for control experiments.

Note that Continetti begins by flatly asserting that Palin didn't cost McCain the election, proceeds to imply that she helped him, than finally winds up with the conclusion that her effect was unknowable.

Is the impact of Palin unknowable? Well, you can't prove anything. But political scientists have tried to measure it and found that she had an extraordinarily large, and negative, impact. Political scientists Richard Johnston and Emily Thorson wrote a paper concluding:

Judgment on her was incontestably important. The correspondence between dynamics in her ratings and dynamics in McCain vote intentions is astonishingly exact. Her marginal impact in vote-intention estimation models dwarfs that for any Vice-Presidential we are aware of, certainly for her predecessors in 2000 and 2004. And the range traversed by her favorability ratings is truly impressive. But why? We are unaware of any theory that opens the door to serious impact from the bottom half of the ticket.

GWU's John Sides broke down the data:

Graph #1 is the poll standing of the two candidates. The two vertical lines demarcate important moments where McCain's poll standing dropped.

Graph #2 is the average assessment of the economy. Assessments of the economy were always negative and became more negative as the campaign wore on. But the drops in economic assessments don't really correspond to the drops in McCain's poll standing. The first drop in poll standing pre-dates the drop in economic assessments by a few days. The second drop in poll standing comes 8 days after another drop in economic assessments.

Graph #3 is the average favorability toward the presidential and vice-presidential candidates. The trends in feelings toward Palin match McCain's poll standing almost exactly. The "drops" occur at the same time. It's eerie.

And yet another paper estimated the impact of Palin as minus two points, which, again, is extraordinarily large for a vice-presidential nominee.

Now, again, this doesn't prove anything, although it's pretty suggestive. And, as Continetti notes at the end, it's not the same as saying Palin alone cost McCain the election, since he lost by 7 points. But his point that Palin is probably the most politically damaging vice-Presidential nominee in American history, but McCain was bound to lose anyway, is not really much of a defense.

[Guest post by Isaac Chotiner]

Fox News just started a segment by referencing increasing chatter among government officials about a possible terrorist attack. Anchor Bret Baier, using the weasely formulation of "some people will say," went on to speculate that either the government's concern, or the threat itself, arose from a desire to keep people away from the polls on election day. This would hurt Republicans, he noted, because they are especially excited about the election.

Perhaps Baier is being too naive. Perhaps the Pakistani Taliban and the Obama administration are working together on this dastardly plot.