"I think there's some irrelevancy there, to tell you the truth," Palin told Greta Van Susteren. "I mean consider their list of the most influential people in the country and the world, some who have made that list -- yours truly! That ought to tell you something right there regarding the credence that we should give TIME magazine and their list of people."

The comments about TIME are around the 4:20 mark:

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But if Sarah Palin were paying attention to the needs and best interests of her home state of Alaska, it would not be outrageous for her to endorse President Obama for reelection.  In fact, it would be entirely sensible and sane.  Ironically, most red states that vote for Republican leaders fare better economically under Democrats.  In fact, under President Obama, Alaska has fared even better than most.

Alaska received more stimulus dollars per capita than any other state in the nation.  For instance, as of August of 2010 (when the bulk of stimulus spending had been dispatched), Alaska had an unemployment rate of 7.9 percent (two points below the national average) but received $3,145 per person in federal stimulus dollars.  But Florida, with an unemployment rate at 11.4 percent got just $914 in per capita stimulus spending.  And, incidentally, Alaska is not a poor state — with oil revenues that make up 88 percent of the state’s general fund.

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 …Why the dissembling about the cause of the murder of our ambassador on the anniversary of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil? We deserve answers to this. President Obama's shuck and jive shtick with these Benghazi lies must end.

Now the investigation can proceed. Or maybe we can spend a day talking about her. The Romney campaign must be thrilled.

Palin has a built-in advantage when she deploys loaded language: She can always plausibly plead ignorance. In case she didn’t know what “shuck and jive” means, this is from Urban Dictionary’s definition:

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Remember four years ago, when it was all, Oh, hey, isn't it refreshing to have a candidate who looks good romping around in his trunks? When it was, can you believe how hardcore this guy is about basketball? Remember, when the Republican opposition chose a woman who could run a sub-four marathon in her 40s, after four kids? It was kind of nice. Let's face it, after 16 years of watching Bill Clinton chow himself into heart disease, and George Bush nearly die over a pretzel, it was refreshing to realize that leadership need not be synonymous with butt spread.

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The frequency and outlandishness of their conspiratorial imaginations grows in sync with their desperation. With Obama leading in most polls and the election season drawing to a close, it seems like a good time to recap some of the more ludicrous conspiracies hatched by our conservative fearmongers. So with our tin-foil hats securely strapped on, let's  venture down the primrose path of hair-raising hypotheses.

1. Cooking the Unemployment Rate

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The Rogers Flea Market, a weekly event in this northeastern corner of Ohio, draws people from far and wide, combing through mounds of goods in search of treasures. Locals say that if you hit every stand in the giant field where the market rents out space for $20 a shot, you’ll have walked more than four miles.

But on this crisp early fall day, the greatest finds might be the merchants themselves. With Ohio smack in the center of the political world, courtesy of frantic campaigning by both President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, residents seem fairly well informed about the course of the campaign. This does not necessarily mean they like it, though.

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The clear meaning, of course, is that these 47 percent erroneously believe that they are victims. The implication is that the real victims are the wealthy people before him, whose justly earned money is being siphoned off for the benefit of these ersatz victims.

In throwing the word "victim" into a complaint ostensibly about taxes, Romney was handily drawing on a long-standing right-wing riposte to "identity politics" -- the critique of so-called victimology. Faced with the argument from black Americans, women, immigrants and sexual minorities -- many of whom Romney would be correct to say are unlikely to vote for him, especially at the rate he and his party are going -- that structural discrimination undermines the narrative of the "opportunity society," the response is to tell them they've been duped by elites into falsely believing they are victims. In other words, the problem is partly in their heads.

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This is illustrated nicely by a speech  former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum gave this weekend at the Values Voter Summit. Santorum understands that the key emotion that fuels the Republican base is resentment -- and in particular resentment at having their beliefs mocked by the biased Mainstream Media, and the decadent Hollywood blasphemers, and the all smarty-pants professors high up in their ivory towers, etc.:

"We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country.  We will never have the elite smart people on our side, because they believe they should have the power to tell you what to do.  So our colleges and universities, they’re not going to be on our side."

Santorum is of course being sardonic: He’s not really arguing that intelligence disqualifies people from being political conservatives.  Rather, he’s stoking the resentment of the people who make up the GOP base. He’s doing so while drawing implicitly on two classic anti-intellectual arguments, which have been much favored by conservative intellectuals over the past couple of centuries.

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"And now, we're looking at a socialized medicine system that takes away 17 percent of our economy and takes away your ability to manage your own health and puts it in the hands of the government and a panel of 15 IPAB bureaucrats that Sarah Palin correctly identified," King said. Palin famously called the group a "death panel."

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Paul Ryan, we were all told when he was selected, was a wonk; his selection meant that we were going to have a big ideas debate. And yet his vice-presidential speech was anything but, and what substance he did include was blasted by the fact checkers.

Sort of the way another Republican running mate was blasted for inaccuracies in her convention speech four years ago. Remember how she bragged about opposing the bridge to nowhere, only to have it be revealed that she had first supported it?

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“I think he diminished himself by even mentioning my name," Palin said. "How does he even know my name? I mean aren’t these guys supposed to be these big wig elites who don’t waste their time on the little people like me -- me representing the average American."

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When Gore Vidal died a few weeks ago, eulogies quoted his famous observation that “the more money an American accumulates the less interesting he himself becomes.” Vidal originally wrote these words in a 1972 essay on Howard Hughes, but who could read them today and not think of Willard Mitt Romney?

Blessed with parodically presidential good looks, yet cursed with the unconvincing mannerisms of an early-generation android without its update patch, Romney is that most discombobulating of political phenomena—a boring enigma. Trying to figure out his true nature is akin to facing a block of polystyrene. You can’t see inside, and you can’t get a toehold. You’re left with analogies. Romney has been dubbed the next Herbert Hoover, awarded the honorary George H.W. Bush “Wimp” prize from Newsweek, and compared to a porn-movie queen because he changes his positions so often (this last from Arlen Specter, who only changes parties). Those of a more artistic bent have dubbed Romney a latter-day Zelig or, more arcanely, the Man without Qualities, although this is an insult to Robert Musil’s fictional hero, who may have shared Romney’s unwillingness to take a firm position on anything but at least had the courtesy not to seek political power.

The paradox of Romney is that even as he wants to run the world, he’s busy running away from its gaze. Although neither a dope like Dan Quayle nor an ignoramus like Sarah Palin—he has read Guns, Germs, and Steel even if he didn’t quite understand it—he has waged a campaign most memorable for its absence of specific ideas. While implying that President Barack Obama is somehow not a real American—for a phantasm to win he must turn his opponent into one, too—Romney basically asks voters to trust in his economic acumen and his leadership. But how can you lead when nobody can find you? He hides from his religion, his political achievements, his big scores at Bain Capital, his tax records, his old public utterances, his new public utterances—hides from everything that might not appeal to whatever voters he happens to be wooing at that particular moment. “Forget about yesterday,” he seems to be saying, “What matters is who I say I am right now.”

A great many empty suits have run for president, but seldom has one been so willing to flaunt his own lack of vision. Indeed, he’s the only nominee I can remember who, in choosing his running mate, was hoping to gain substance. There is, of course, nothing strange about a candidate pretending to be somebody else, but when Richard Nixon unveiled the “New Nixon” in 1968, you knew who he was pretending not to be. With Mitt, you suspect even Romney himself doesn’t know. He’s something new in American politics, if not American culture: a potential president so weightless that he makes Charles Foster Kane look as grounded as Dwight Eisenhower. At least you could tell what that mogul yearned for deep down inside, even if it was only that stupid sled.

While it would be invidious to suggest that Romney has no inner life (a quality that, to be fair, worked wonders for Ronald Reagan), even veteran Mittologists aren’t quite sure what goes on behind the synthetic smile. But they start with the Oedipal. As the worshipful son of a successful businessman whose “brainwashing” gaffe put the kibosh on his presidential hopes, Romney couldn’t fail to learn lessons from his father’s political failures, although he picked up the wrong ones. Tossing overboard what was admirable in George Romney’s legacy—his principled stands within the GOP on issues like civil rights—Mitt became so cautious that even his sister says that he uses vagueness as camouflage. But as the great Sigmund would remind us, an obsession with bottling up what you think will always produce its own elaborate symptomology. Romney rarely speaks off the cuff without landing in trouble. Even more than Joe Biden, who’s Metternich by comparison, he’s a walking gaffe-o-matic, which may be the most likably authentic thing about him.

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True, her biggest applause line involved a Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum, and the National Review has termed her a "'full service' Republican, a conservative across the board, including on the 'social issues.'" (The magazine also raved that she "expresses some quite hard-line views in a lovely feminine voice."

But as the caretaker of a disabled sister on Medicaid, she has been distinctly unenthusiastic about the budget proposed by Paul Ryan. She was also the only speaker on the convention floor to utter the words "immigration reform," and not mean building a wall.

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If you're in a rush, fast forward to 4:04, via Mediaite:

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Wallace: Let's look at where you stand on the issues. You want to abolish Education, Commerce and Energy Departments, TSA and the IRS. You support a flat tax and you serve Chick-fil-A at your victory party. You are pretty conservative?

Cruz: Without a doubt. And I think the American people are pretty conservative, and I'm certain the people of Texas are pretty conservative... [and] All across the country, the rest of Americans are looking at Washington and saying, what's wrong with you people? The principles that I think voters are looking for are not that complicated. It's live within your means, follow common sense principles, don't spend money you don't have. And that's what American people are standing up and demanding right now. (See the full transcript here.)

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Kristol doesn’t agree with the negative assessments of Iraq or Palin and dismisses the notion that his previous hits and misses have any bearing on Ryan’s future.

“That argument is almost as silly as someone saying that in the 80s I was a supporter of Reagan’s foreign policy, which won the Cold War, and his tax cuts, which led to economic growth; in the 90s I supported intervention in the Balkans and welfare reform, both of which worked; and in the last decade I opposed Harriet Miers, whose withdrawal paved the way for a terrific justice, Sam Alito; and I supported the surge in Iraq, which worked — and, therefore, I’m some sort of prophet!,” he told POLITICO.

“I guess what I’d say is that, I think, on the whole, my batting average isn’t bad,” he said.

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