I don’t know what it is about her, but she creeps me out.

We’ve already had the worst news we’ll get this election season: Dean Barnett has passed away at age 41 from cystic fibrosis. He was one of my favorite bloggers, as he had just the right combination of smarts and humor. And though I only know him from a couple e-mail correspondents, I can say he was a great guy. It’s hard to think that next year — however things end up — we’ll be going into it without his wit and wisdom.

You can probably find tributes to him at about every blog, but here’s one from Hugh Hewitt who he sometimes subbed for (and also mentions a short essay Dean wrote on his condition called The Plucky Smart Kid with the Fatal Disease).

Here’s how best to remember him. Here’s one of his famous FAQs (which were perfect for someone as ADD as me) on what the surge was and why it would work.

Rest in peace.

John Hawkins as a poll of right-of-center bloggers on their feelings about the election. Do we think the media is biased in favor of Obama? You’ll only find out if you see the results!

Laura Ingraham is trying to do an intellectuals for McCain/Palin movement:

I don’t know if I count. I gots me my smartie bona fides: I was valedictorian, got 1570 on my SATs, and graduated Carnegie Mellon University with over a 3.8. Also, I support McCain/Palin. Still, I don’t know if I’m really an intellectual because my degree is in Electrical and Computer Engineering which can be used for — ya know — useful stuff.

Since McCain has Palin and everyone can relate to her, maybe they should play up how detached Barack Obama is from the average man. Have a commercial with ominous music saying something like:

“Could you imagine hanging out with Barack Obama? You’d want to watch the sports game, but he’d insist on watching a pretentious French film and discussing what he just read in the Economist. ”

Then it could end with this slogan:

“Barack Obama: Not ready for the presidency. Not ready for some football.”

The New York Times endorsed Obama, but why do they even bother? That’s like announcing who the DNC has endorsed. The last time the NYT endorsed a Republican was Eisenhower in 1956. They might as well write their next twenty years of presidential endorsement now and just leaves blanks for the name of the Democrat to be filled in later. If I were to predict whether the NYT is going to endorse the Democrat nominee in 2028, the only variable I have to worry about it is whether the NYT will still be around.

So I will not make that prediction.

A good part of being conservative is being positive because we’re awesome and we know it. While liberals bitterly cling to their Noam Chomsky and paper mache protest puppets, we’re generally happy and go about doing our useful day to day work. So, let’s just choose to believe everything here and keep positive about the upcoming election. And we should probably buy some earplugs because if McCain actually wins the high-pitched whining will be unprecedented. I’m not exaggerating. For a while, you’re going to wish we didn’t win. The negative coverage McCain and Palin will get will trump any treatment of Bush. Conservative pundits going on news shows are probably going to need tasers. Keith Olbermann will deliver a comment so special it will just be incomprehensible screaming. The Kos Kids will start to attack and eat each other. It will be horrible and awesome. It will be hawesome.

MIAMI, FLORIDA (AP) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has fallen ill due to exhaustion brought on by his nonstop door-to-door campaigning for Barrack Hussein Obama in the South Beach area of Miami, Florida, a close associate has told CNN. “The president will eventually get well and continue campaigning,” said the associate, “no one knows better than Mahmoud how critical an Obama White House is for the success of Iran’s nuclear research program and its supremacy in the Middle East.” In fact, Iranian hardliners have optimistically dubbed the coming Obama administration as “Jimmy Carter 2.0.”