Palin has been hammering home the alleged link between Obama and terrorism for weeks. And there’s a deliberate intellectual dishonesty of using the plural form of “terrorist” for describing what was meant to be an allusion to William Ayers alone. But just as telling as her assertions is the way in which she phrases them. Obama is not consorting with terrorists, in her formulation, he’s palling around with them. I’m not one of those overbearing language nerds who’s chiding her for using informal speech; instead, I want to point out a deliberate and telling choice of grammar that she’s employed.

In an interview with the New York Times newspaper on Monday, Mrs Palin also suggested that voters should pay more attention to Mr Obama’s relationship with his former church pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
“I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country,” she said.

That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, we’re ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the — it’s got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.