Brooks: Let's not split hairs here, they were threatening castration...

Lot of different threads today...the first is the vertiginous ascent of the young right wing within the GOP as of this weekend's bailout failure. This is interesting to me because I can see the next generation of GOP leadership (whatever that means for politics in this country, good/ill, we report, you decide) budding beneath the klieg lights, like the 1948 election that brought Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon to Congress all at once, and no wonder McCan, Famous Air Pirate had to jump ship and split to D.C. for a day, because these men, Hensarling, Cantor and Ryan (and how remiss I was to exclude out of ignorance Rep. Hensarling, when he was the main man calling George Bush's plan socialistic; a thousand apologies) are going to be running the show. Cantor reps suburban Richmond, is a huge fundraiser, which presumably is how these (insert a derogation if you must) got into the negotiating room and got John Boehner to put their "plan" forward in the first place. Power is on display.

But not just power; grace. They are demonstrating an ability to see the long march ahead. Realizing that George Bush has crippled their brand for a generation (or whatever period our accelerated media represents as a generation, one possible rule being the distance between Oliver North's testimony before Congress in 1987 to his 1994 campaign for the Senate, so call the media-refractory period seven years), the RSGers have to purge the President and his followers. It's not that Bushites got us into trouble with the war, it's that they've repeatedly sold out conservative principles. Run to the right, on an eternal return to the party's Goldwater core.

David Brooks' problem with this (Nihilists? Really?) is that the short-term destruction wrought by House Republicans (and the story at this point is that liberal Democrats jumped ship when it became apparent that Pelosi had no help across the aisle) is enough to doom McCain and the Party. Perhaps. But the Hensarling clique has to figure that Walnuts was doomed from the start (who's been raising 50 million a month since February?), that the short-term damage is not only inevitable (seriously, Indiana is in play, the financial crisis has scared enough natural conservatives out of voting that Virginia and North Carolina are Obama's by like 5 and 3 points, respectively; these are things that should not occur; for the times, they are a-etc.) but is, as any free-marketer worth his salt will tell you, a form of creative destruction, clearing out the dead wood of leadership for the benefit of new growth. After Republicans lose 30 seats in the House and 5 in the Senate, betcha John Boehner is out of work, Roy Blunt gets to be minority leader, maybe, if by that point he's still considered ideologically pure, and Cantor gets min. whip.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like these men, but it's at least possible to like them. The way one likes Nixon. They do have an ethos. Eric Cantor may be a wild-eyed, exurban crypto-fascist itching for the opportunity to zap Tehran with Rods from God, but on the whole I prefer knowing where people stand, as opposed to having to sift through PR-speak and intentionally foggy jargon and blatant, opaque bullshit to get the nuts. Compassionate conservatism, and all the other 1990s Luntz-Rove memes are now consigned to the ash heap of history.

Now, other thread: what all that means for our continued influence in the multipolar world is anybody's guess. It is, and will be for the next decade, politically expedient to keep American troops out of harm's way. Period. Witness Joe Biden talking about Iraqis rebuilding their own country. But it's clear that Russia can't step into the void; the adventure in Georgia shocked foreign investors and prompted Putin's own bailout. This may be a period more like 1992, where there was a recession, no clear geopolitical balance of power, a rookie president, and all this anxiety about foreign ownership of American assets.

At the very least, our anxiety about our place in the world ought to shut up the Chomskyite "American Hegemon" fringe, because obviously, and you can ask Ho Chi Minh about this, the US was never a hegemon, we just played one on T.V. And again, let's talk about Dagestan, Chechnya, Igushetia, North Ossetia, the Transdnestr: the Russian Federation can't get its pants on straight, much less project power over oceans, or start naming towns "St. Putinburg."

Seriously, would you rather own dollars or rubles?

And finally, on hegemony, the Yankees' and Mets' seasons are over, the Boston Megalith has squeaked into the playoffs by the back door, the glorious Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles, who Pythagorically speaking should have gone like 89-73 instead finish 100-62...the Phillies play the Brewers tomorrow...and there's a one-game play-off for the AL Central today. Holy Cow...
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Form of: Hegemony!

Really, what kind of world do we live in when we've ceded the leadership role on international terrorism to the Russians?

Russia has called for a revival of the global anti-terrorism coalition that formed after Sept. 11, 2001, but that started to unravel with what it called the subsequent domination by a single power - a veiled reference to the United States.

"The solidarity of the international community fostered on the wave of struggle against terrorism turned out to be somehow 'privatized,"' Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia said Saturday at the UN General Assembly annual ministerial meeting.

Oh, I know what kind of world: a multipolar one. Oh, joy!

"It has become crystal clear that the solidarity expressed by all of us after 9/11 should be revived, without double standards, when we fight against any infringements upon the international law," he said.

Lavrov also called for "solidarity" within the international community and a strengthened United Nations, saying that only in the post-Cold War world could the organization "fully realize its potential" as a source of "open and frank debate and coordination of the world policies on a just and equitable basis, free from double standards."

"This is an essential requirement, if the world is to regain its equilibrium," he said.

Beautiful. How much of a clusterfuck has the Bush administration proved to be? Seven and a half years in, we're getting lectured on multilateralism and international law by the Russians. And, strangely enough, world opinion is in agreement:

Some 29% of people said the "war on terror" launched by President George W Bush in 2001 had had no effect on the Islamist militant network.

According to 30% of those surveyed, US policies have strengthened al-Qaeda.

Asked who is winning "the conflict between al-Qaeda and the US", 49% said neither side while 22% believed the US had gained the upper hand. Just 10% said al-Qaeda was winning.

So the Russians--of course, taking their airs of magnanimity with a grain of salt and a ton of vodka--are calling for a strengthened UN and international cooperation regarding terrorism, rightly calling out the US for flouting international opinion in invading Iraq and calling us on "double standards" with regard to Georgia and Kosovo's independence movement. Meanwhile, the Famous Air Pirate is still tipping his Cold Warrior hand, still wanting to keelhaul Russia and make 'em walk the plank out of the G8. And the Beauty Queen continues to ramble on--to the embarrassment of those who should be supporting her--spouting something about the disembodied head of Czar Putin hovering over the Aleutian Islands.

Aurora Putinalis aside, the real issue here is just how right BHO is when he says "McCain just doesn't get it." The Russians get it. The Chinese are counting on it. The Europeans--if we may judge by their reaction to Georgian episode--get it. The Germans definitely get it. But Bush, the Air Pirate, the Beauty Queen, and most of America don't get it: the Post-American Moment is here in full force.

So, while the Air Pirate, et al, wax fanciful about some new Superfriends League of Righteous Democracies--Wonder Twin Powers, Activate! Form of: Eternal Hegemony!--the Rest of the World is very much moving on. One only hopes that BHO, with his talk of being a citizen of the world and the need to fill the position of Leader of the Free World, gets it. Otherwise, it's a harder drop to the level playing field than it needs to be.

Various adventures of McCan, Famous Air Pirate...once more crashing his own plane...

Whoa. About that debate that Walnuts promised not to go to...also re: which see Letterman on getting stiffed...did McCain actually say that he would veto every spending bill that came across his desk? I was at a party at Skylab, watching it on a 9-inch b/w TV, so I had to check the transcript...

As president of the United States, I want to assure you, I've got a pen. This one's kind of old. I've got a pen, and I'm going to veto every single spending bill that comes across my desk. I will make them famous. You will know their names.

Ohhh you have to love this week: McCan the Air Pirate (last week I read DFW's essay collection CtL, which has a long-form 2000 campaign piece called "Up, Simba"), hero to the Vietnamese, lies to David Letterman about when he's leaving New York (which is forgivable, because a man has to sleep sometime), flees to Washington in a pale attempt to off the debate (to which BHO said, This is not Nam; here there are rules), plainly realizing that Palin ain't gonna hack it (and what if she doesn't, what if she's a Harriet-Miers-esque smokescreen built to make an unpalatable choice seem palatable just because said choice will actually know you know some things, and if so who is this masked man, and if campaigning in the internet age has sped up the news cycle such that a VP resignation would be destructive for about 48 hours, why not just nominate the obnoxious dude first and let the controversy fade, which brings us to the conclusion that McCan, Air Pirate's real VP is not noxious to the electorate, he's just cranky and boring: he is/will be Joseph Isadore Lieberman), and while negotiators are wringing concessions from Bush (inlcuding caps on executive pay for companies in the New Fund, an equity stake for the American people, extended bankruptcy protection and payouts to homeowners, all of which at week's beginning were poison pills for the WH, all swallowed without complaint by Thursday night), McCan the Air Pirate sweeps in and conjures some far-right Sedona caucus, growing up Rep.s from the ground like Cadmus, whose terroristic threats include the scuttling of all consensus in favor of some far-fetched insurance scheme (Q: If a bank doesn't have the liquidity to lend to another bank because so much of its shit is in credit default swaps, why do you think it has the liquidity to buy insurance from the USG to cover its assets? And a follow-up Q: In the event that the assets covered by this new insurance are unsaleable, isn't the USG more broadly on the hook for covering their full, i.e. original cost? And if not -- assuming we write the coverage to pay companies say 9 cents on the dollar when their swaps hit 0 -- isn't that paltry amount of protection just going to shock the system further? In other words, whose ass-brained idea was this? A: Eric Cantor (R-VA), Paul Ryan (R-WI), et alia. Q: Cantor?! No f'n wonder!), which within hours was scaled back to demanding insurance be only a part of the overall bailout (which is kind of like AQIM capturing a French diplomat, demanding a total retreat of all Algerian gov't forces from the countryside, then settling for a plate of babaghannouj. Send any thoughts on spelling of babbaganoush c/o the Editors, Dark Steer, 1 Terminal Plaza, Cleveland OH); if that didn't constitute an awesome week, then the burgeoning media interest in SP would make it so: Palin got zoning aid, gifts.

If that weren't enough, there are some serious acts of cognitive dissonance in McCan's bran that need to be addressed. For my money the most serious is the one going on between the personal-responsibility-fiscal-probity wing and his maverick-bozo wing. (This is fundamentally a subset of the Big McCain Question: What is it to be a Maverick? Does being a maverick mean making deals with your opponents when your party demands absolute fealty, i.e., is the maverick a pragmatist? Or does it mean bucking the demands of everyone and snarling the works until you get your own way [a la E. Cantor], i.e., is the maverick a fanatic? Seriously, I don't know what you mean by The Original Mavericks. Are we selling jeans?) Witness twice in the debates, McCain's assertion that the system corrupted the people, not (as it is in fact) the other way round:

We Republicans came to power to change government, and government changed us. And the -- the worst symptom on this disease is what my friend, Tom Coburn, calls earmarking as a gateway drug, because it's a gateway. It's a gateway to out-of-control spending and corruption.

And we have former members of Congress now residing in federal prison because of the evils of this earmarking and pork-barrel spending.

Okay, first of all, has Tom Coburn ever smoked weed? That's interesting. But what I really like is that "government" and "spending" are entities that exist outside of individual agency. Government changed Republicans. Spending put people in jail! If only Bob Ney had known about that line of defense at his trial! Nevermind the obvious hypocrisy: when Republicans game the system, it's the system's corrupting influence; when Democrats do it, it's "Chicago-style politics." Which I didn't know was a thing; deep dish, sauce on top politics? Second:

Maybe to Senator Obama it's not a lot of money. But the point is that -- you see, I hear this all the time. "It's only $18 billion." Do you know that it's tripled in the last five years? Do you know that it's gone completely out of control to the point where it corrupts people? It corrupts people.

That's why we have, as I said, people under federal indictment and charges. It's a system that's got to be cleaned up.

I have fought against it my career. I have fought against it. I was called the sheriff, by the -- one of the senior members of the Appropriations Committee. I didn't win Miss Congeniality in the United States Senate.

Seriously, who was the last conservative to run on a platform of taking a mulligan on personal responsibility? William Jennings Bryan? Didn't Americans screw themselves to that Cross of Gold? Walnuts sounded like he was reviving the Temperance movement, blaming the ills of Washington not on the people in it, who are of course his friends and neighbors, but on some extra-human miasma, and he might as well be blaming Demon Rum for the evils of our age...dead in the water...
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Once you're off black...

...you never go back. (via the indispensable Juan Cole):

Why wouldn't the Kingdom want to squeeze the maximum out of customers? The Saudis have long memories and recall how high prices can cut into consumption; it happened in the 1980s and it's happening again now. Any threat to oil's leading role as a source of energy is a big worry for a country that sits on reserves of some 260 billion barrels. "We are concerned about the permanent destruction of demand," says a senior Saudi official. "Those who buy hybrid vehicles are not going back to SUVs."

This from Business Week, in an article titled "Saudi Oil, OPEC's Ire," or, maybe, "Once You Go Black, They Never Want You to Go Back."

The Saudi opinion as to American oil consumption, of course, contains No Surprises. Keep them Yankees hooked on their quiet lives and handshakes of carbon monoxide. Fine. How to turn this to politicadvantage? Easy... we stick BHO in Detroit. Speech to an auto workers' union.

"I was reading Business Week on the drive over. You know, they had an article about the Saudis and how their economy is affected by oil prices. And a Saudi minister said... and I'm quoting here... He said "Those who buy hybrid vehicles are not going back to SUVs." [crowd alternately boos and cheers] Now I don't know about you, but it sounds to me like even the Saudis know the way forward for America in the 21st Century. That's why I supported extending aid to the American auto industry so that we can build the cars of tomorrow and jumpstart our economy. That's why I'm calling for investing American tax dollars to make sure blah blah blah..."

Seems so easy. Just wanted to point that out. I'd love to see BHO set out in plain terms exactly how futile the Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less movement is. Say yeah we're going to drill, but it's not our top priority. Twist the blade in Palin, who said we could drill our way out of the problem. Really set out what a 21st Century American energy economy would look like... I think it's coming, and I think it's the knockout blow.

Palin begins to pall...

Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

Do it for your country.

That's Kathleen Parker writing in the National Review. 

The bounce is over, the glory has departed. 

The Palin phenomenon is Ichabod... dead and done. And now all that's left is for Biden to put her away. 

This will go down as Walnuts' biggest gamble, the one that cost him the election.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney bets on the economy tanking and bides his time until 2012.

Technical fouls...

First the attempt at a campaign timeout...



...and then this, via AMERICAblog:



What theee hay-ulll? I honestly don't know what to make of this... it looks like they're imploding...

Professor Henry's Crash Course in International Politics..."Don't give an inch" meets "I can see Russia from my house"...

Kissinger with Bush in Austin, Texas, July 2000 (Birchum Jana / Corbis Sygma) via New York magazine...we've seen this before...a politically skilled reprobate governor from the provinces gets a quickie schooling from HK? Here's Bush with Henry, July 12, 2000:

After meeting with state leaders, Bush turned to international matters in a private meeting with Kissinger, who has been advising Bush on foreign affairs.

Thursday's meeting was the first time the two have met one-on-one, though Kissinger and other Republican experts on international affairs appeared with Bush in May when he proposed cutting U.S. nuclear stockpiles and building a missile defense system.

"We had a very interesting and positive discussion, and I appreciate the opportunity to meet with several of the key staff members of the governor's staff," Kissinger said. "A few weeks ago I stood with the governor when I spoke about present events and nuclear strategy, and my impression is we share very compatible views."

So the pressing issue to my mind isn't "Where's the Eagleton treatment?" nor is it "What advice will a war criminal, a drug dealer, and an oil executive give Palin?"

My question is this: "Will another dim-bulb far-right know-nothing governor with a pretty smile hem and haw her way to the presidency?" And a follow-up: "How can liberal democrats get us some of that electoral crack?"
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Well, so long as she's meeting with Kissinger...

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has begun filling up her dance card for Tuesday's visit to the United Nations General Assembly.

She'll be meeting with Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State and Nobel Peace Prize winner; President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia; and Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, according to a campaign official.

Tuesday's trip gives Palin a quick taste of foreign policy before her one-and-only debate Oct. 2nd with Sen. Joseph Biden, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

The fact that this woman wasn't Eagletoned inside of two weeks is a stain on the nation's political history. Alas and alack...

But, you know, she's meeting with Kissinger, so it's all gravy and napalm.

Nouri al-Maliki preps for the big dance...kill the lights...

Last week, ethnographers at UCLA revealed evidence for the Balkanization of Iraq.

Our findings suggest that the surge has had no observable effect, except insofar as it has helped to provide a seal of approval for a process of ethno-sectarian neighborhood homogenization that is now largely achieved.

Analyzing patterns of light and darkness in the Baghdad night sky, they discovered that Shia areas of Baghdad remained unchanged, and Sunni and mixed areas were abandoned, leaving the city pacified by February 2007.

Ethnic cleansing -- which we've all known about via anecdotes -- turns out to be not the thing the surge was meant to end, but its core building-block.

'Bout a year ago, when the surge had begun and Sunnis were blowing each other up to figure out which among them would get guns from the al-Amriki tribe, Inquirer columnist Trudy Rubin responded to an unhinged screed of mine, elucidating the reasoning behind the surge:

[...]unless every last ditch effort is made to temper the consequences of a pullout, the results will be even more horrible for Iraqis, the region and us than what you see now. And I don't mean some slogan of "they'll follow us home" - I mean total collapse in Iraq, even more bloody fighting, a return of Al Qaeda there in force and negative consequences for the rest of the region.

And the reasoning for extending the "surge" indefinitely rests on the same ground: we have to square this country away. This week we learned that between Sadr's truce and the complete ethnic partition of Baghdad, the country was pretty well squared away 18 months ago...

Which brings us to what the future holds...oil wealth, a speculative boom, rampant unemployment and a host of splinter-regions...this is Russia at the dawn of the Putin era. The combination of crony capitalism and a crackdown on opposition parties that Nouri al-Maliki has been overtly orchestrating for the past year is pure Putin, as the man says...so expect two Maliki versions of the Chechen war, arguments with Turkey, and an Iraqi Guggenheim branch, built by Shia oligarkii...
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...briefly...

David Foster Wallace was found dead on Friday, an apparent suicide. Here are the Google ads beside the NYT's death notice:

Less expensive than a
Collection Agency - Automatically reach your past due customers
www.ARconnection.com
Suicide Prevention
Learn why people commit suicide and find resources to help them.
RevolutionHealth.com
Bipolar and Suicidal?
How I learned to manage my suicidal Bipolar Disorder mood swings.
www.BipolarHappens.com/Suicidal

I'm stunned by the suggestion that creditors are so prone to suicide; thankful, but stunned. And for what it's worth, I really dig Broom of the System.
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It's been a cold world, we just getting flurries now?

The recent demise of the Democratic ticket is exaggerated, no? The need-to-attack meme, the loss-of-momentum meme(with us since the primaries!), the failure-to-connect meme are more confused media responses to a good McCain week than they are arguments for course correction or predictions of the future.

I counsel patience. Palin's incoherence on foreign policy isn't really a strike against her; what is a strike is she hasn't read a newspaper. Her willingness to accept federal pork isn't the problem; lying about her past in order to run as a reformer is the problem. Phrasing the issues as matters of competence is a losing strategy, practically and ethically. (Practically, because so few Americans think of themselves as "worthy" of higher office. Ethically, because the point of democracy is that it is, in Jacques Ranciere's formulation, rule by those unequipped to rule.)

Phrase the issues on their terms, and it's a win. Claiming insight into Russia because you can see Kamchatka on a clear day from Alaska is egotistical and disingenuous; risking the nation for your party's benefit is not patriotism. Lying about your past, then repeating the lie; advocating abstinence only education, then concealing your teen daughter's pregnancy; trying to get your sister's ex fired, asking about the "process" for banning books (I love how asking about process is anodyne in this case. If I asked someone about the "process" for blowing up a mall, I would be arrested for conspiracy to commit mass murder, making terroristic threats etc.. Process matters.) these are the actions that speak to character. Character counts, as the man said...

But even if Barry and Joe decide not to waste any moreenergy on this thing, my guess is the Palin will fall of her own weight. Her husband has been subpoenaed, her neighbor Vic is doing time, the tabloids are on dirt patrol, the Debbie Richter-Scott Richter-John Bitney-Sarah Palin love quadrangle has yet to fully flower...the harbingers of the shitstorm are already visible. Bloomberg, for instance, shows a woman who sees herself beneath the law, impunity by insularity:

Palin's office approved a state job for a friend and campaign aide with whom she shared a land investment, financial records and interviews over the past two weeks show. She hired a former lobbyist for a pipeline company to help oversee a multibillion-dollar deal with that same company.

She named a police chief accused of harassment to head the state police. And she sent campaign e-mails on her city hall account while serving as mayor of Wasilla -- conduct for which she later turned in an oil commissioner on ethics charges.

Ted Stevens is going to blow up, somebody's going to find Palin at a Department of Interior cocaine party...in terms of gossip, this candidacy is a never-ending fountain. All Alaska seems some evil version of Mayberry, small-town venality unseen since Babbitt. There won't be anything of Palin left before the debates.

That, or, Americans will realize that she opposes abortion even in cases of rape, fought big oil to get more oil drilled, und so weiter...wait for it...we're going to find it's a cold world for city-council types
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In What Respect Charlie?

Ah, there's the video...

Those should be the last four words of Palin's career...the transcript isn't up yet...

Gibson asks: "What do you think of the Bush Doctrine?" And there's a terrible pause as she realizes she has no idea what specifically Gibson is talking about, not because she was busy running Wasilla, or her own complicated family, or her complicated love-life, but because she evidently hasn't read a newspaper in 10 years. And finally she says, with ironic resignation:

"In what respect, Charlie?" Like, what do you want from me? And then she goes on a tirade about the terrorists who are "hellbent on destroying America and our allies"

Does Palin know what mutual defense means? Franz Ferdinand? Anyone?

Asked by interviewer Charles Gibson whether under the NATO treaty, wouldn't the United States be obligated to defend Georgia if Russia invaded, Palin replied: "Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help."

Perhaps? That's not what NATO means?

So so far what we have from the newbie is a limitless commitment to Iraq, carte blanche for Israel if it wants to nuke Natanz, the right of incursion into Pakistan at all times and outside of hot pursuit, and a boneheaded commitment to putting Georgia and the Ukraine in NATO -- a provocation that the leaders of those countries don't necessarily want...

Kevin, it's time to run for mayor...
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Where the cash at, where the stash at...MMS, pimps, hos, cocaine, bubble baths...Last Days of Disco at the Department of the Interior...

...this shit is ridiculous...the news last night said as many as a third of the employees of MMS royalty-in-kind office were implicated in some element of Oil-for-Coke. WaPo has Gregory W. Smith in

an inappropriate sexual relationship with a subordinate whom he paid to buy cocaine, allegedly promising her a $250 bonus in return.

They also have:

a Shell Pipeline representative asking a woman in the royalty office to attend "tailgating festivities" at a Houston Texans football game: "You're invited . . . have you and the girls meet at my place at 6am for bubble baths and final prep. Just kidding."

The two honchos, Smith and Denett, have already resigned. Smith is still in the industry. Denett's husband, who had worked at OMB, actually retired before she did. What did he know about this and when? Also, why did Justice decide not to prosecute the higher-ups?
IG's reports here and here.
To recap: a handful of people pilfered 4 million out of a 4 billion-dollar-a-year program, allowed companies bidding for extraction permits to revise their winning bids downward, received Abramoffian perks in order to gain preferential treatment, and had nothing better to do on the taxpayer's dime than fuck and snort blow...and now is the time to vote on offshore drilling! The evil genius of Harry Reid! Viz. this deadpan tidbit just before the IG report came out:

We are offering Republicans multiple opportunities to vote for increased drilling.

We are giving those who see government as a field for entreprenuerial exploitation enough rope, in other words...
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Just moved to Columbus OH...promise to get pictures of Schmidt's Fudge Haus und Political Tombstone...right now i'm just trying to get the trash picked up...you know, some retail politics...
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Will He Hide Behind Her Skirt?

Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall gets it right in a simple question:

Will John McCain bring Sarah Palin to the debates with Obama?

Hits on a major belief of mine about this campaign: the polls will stay close until the debates, and then I believe you'll start to see BHO pull away. More later on that.

Palin II: Clean Coal-Powered Boogaloo

Nothing is fucked here, Dude. They show us a beauty queen giving a competent red meat speech and we're supposed to shit ourselves in fear? Amateurs.

Wunderkind Matthew Yglesias--who really is the man--knows the score:

It was competent, but no more than that. And it wasn’t a speech that even tried to do either of things that John McCain’s campaign needs to do — separate McCain from George W. Bush or convince people that McCain can improve the economy. It didn’t even try to address those subjects.

Exactly. It was red meat thrown to starving jackals. And that's fine. What's not fine is for the Democrats and the left to piss themselves in fear and overreact. Nothing is fucked here, Dude. There's no reason to go after her family. They need to find the big holes, the big lies, and then spend the rest of the time lashing her to Bush.

People need to stop acting so un-Dude.

Palin...

Initial reactions:

She's okay with a speech when she knows what she's talking about. The folksy bits are key for her. But look at where she's talking about foreign policy: she stumbles, she falters. Biden will eat her alive, for sure, but the key is making sure he's not mean about it.

She's good with the snippy comment. She's good with the sly joke. Good delivery on turns of phrase. Not quite as good at moving into her applause lines, but she'll get better as she goes along.

More thoughts soonish.

A Palinode is a Retraction of an Earlier Ode...Palin Investigates Self!

Accident, or foretelling?

What is Sarah Palin's relationship to VECO? Ever since Ted Stevens' office got raided she's bruited about her "bad relationship" with the Big Alaskan...surely there's something more...Her neighbor Vic Kohring is doing three and a half for bribery...Here are possible phone numbers for Vic: 907-373-1842

907-269-0153

907-465-2186

...where's his lawyer? Where's her lawyer?
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**update**
Okay, she's hired a lawyer for the AK legislature's Troopergate inquiry. (Unfamiliar? Palin fired her public safety commissioner for his refusal to fire her sister's ex-husband, a state trooper. It's like Attorneygate, just smaller; personal loyalty as the shibboleth of holding non-partisan office...) Now what's weird, according to Sen. Hollis French (D-Anchorage) is

Usually, the attorney general would represent the governor's office, "at least for anything that happens I think in her capacity as a governor, which is clearly this,"

So perhaps getting private counsel is just one-stop shopping, preparing for the Ted Stevens phone calls to make it to trial, or preparing for revelation of her connections to VECO when she was mayor of Wasilla AK...
Or, she's just trying to keep all legal action in-house. Filing an ethics complaint against yourself is just another way to investigate parallel to the legislature's investigation. Which, again, Bushites know all about.