Monday morning links

Monday mornings are usually very busy for me and this one is no different. Here are some links to get your day started – hope to be back in the early afternoon to blog some:

—– Ed Morrissey’s got the story, via Jawa Report, on a brewing controversy that may involve David Axelrod trying to underhandedly target Gov. Palin that is hard to explain in just a few words. Make sure to read both posts in full. If what the Jawas have researched and concluded is accurate, Axelrod will have a lot to answer for. Memeorandum has the growing list of reactions from bloggers to this story.

—– Michelle Malkin has a good post up with questions regarding Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the $700B bailout (which we know is going to be much bigger than that). The big question: Should we trust him without oversight to use the mega-billion dollar check the government’s going to give him? Answer? No. Bring on the oversight, bring on the agency reviews.

And while on the subject, Team McCain needs to keep hammering home the point that one of the two nominees for president actually tried to do something about this mess before it happened, while the other one turned the other cheek.

—– Did Gov. Palin’s campaign stop in The Villages, FL attract a crowd of 60,000? There are varying reports that suggest it was between 25,000 and 60,000. Either way, it was a record crowd for a big ticket GOP’r since McCain won enough delegates to put him over the top earlier this year. The mediots, predictably, are saying it was such a big crowd because it’s a town that is reliably Republican (Jay Nordingler notes the theme here). Funny how they rarely mention the “reliable” factor when it comes to Obama’s big rallies in reliably Democrat cities like Portland, OR and Philadelphia, PA.

—– And speaking of the O-man, the count on the Sunday rally here in Charlotte was somewhere in the neighborhood of 25-30,000.

—– Here’s the speech Gov. Palin would have given had she not been disinvited from an anti-Iran rally in front of the UN after Hillary Clinton pulled out once she found out Gov. Palin was going to be there as well. Read more on that here and here.

—– It’s about time: Campaign notebook: Campaign notebook: McCain plans to boost effort in N. Carolina. Nothing on any potential future visits from McCain and/or Gov. Palin, but this is a good start – they need to know they can’t take this state for granted, as it has become very competitive and “less red” over the last 10 or so years.

—– Phyllis Schlafly slams feminists who are whining about Gov. Palin’s candidacy here.