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.

I liked him more when he was the future SecState.

...so we'll get the plagiarism, the Dunkin' Donuts line, the clean and articulate flop and God knows what else.

We'll also get a refreshing blue-collar battler who's more than capable of delivering a powerful zinger to an opponent. He's funny and comes off as (sometimes painfully) honest and he's a quick wit. He's genuinely likeable, though, and a good balance to sometimes stiff seeming BHO.

Dear God, please don't let him crack a joke about Mexicans, though.

...none of you nuh better look at me funny....

Just a quick bit on the political future...

NYTimes has got an article on Walnuts' fundraising flaccidity and how BarryHussein could pretty much afford to pay for McCain's campaign and still out spend him by a factor of twelve. Walnuts, of course, then goes to the RNC and Republican machine with hat in hand and hangdog face, seeking some cash and coordination.

But that's all well and known: the old man can't raise any money. Again, my question is: what's up with Mitt Romney?

Mr. McCain is likely to depend upon the party, which finished April with an impressive $40 million in the bank and has significantly higher contribution limits, to an unprecedented degree to power his campaign, Republican officials said.

To that end, Republican officials said they were enlisting President Bush, a formidable fund-raiser who has raised more than $36 million this year for Republican candidates and committees, for three events on Mr. McCain’s behalf. They will appear together at a fund-raiser in Phoenix on May 27, and the next day the president will take part in a luncheon with Mitt Romney in Salt Lake City and then an exclusive dinner at Mr. Romney’s vacation home in Park City, Utah.

Now it's generally agreed upon that McCain needs to pick someone who could credibly step in and take his place should he shuffle off this mortal coil to that great tiger cage in the sky. Romney's an okay bet. The veep status takes the Mormonism thing somewhat out of the spotlight. Romney also brings a certain degree of chops on the economy.

But what's Romney get out of it? If Walnuts loses with Mitt as veep, Romney essentially becomes a Mormon John Edwards--nice try, but you've the stink of loser still hanging about you. If Walnuts wins, Romney is first in line after the one term presidency. But the Vice Presidency isn't as much of a straight shot to the presidency as one might think: only five out of forty-three presidents were elected to the office from the position of Vice President.

So Mittens may not take the gamble. But if he plays a good Mittens and holds the requisite fundraisers for the candidate and makes the right connections, he could come out in '12 as the new face and future of conservatism.

My bet is that he's taking the long con. He's young-ish and still very rich. He could write a book or two on the need for a return to moral purity. Decry the cesspool of the internet and cable television and co-ed colleges and automated can-openers and miscegenation. Hit up the Ingraham-Hannity-Limbaugh Circuit for a couple of years. Not rely on it too much, but have them all there as a base. In the mean time, push your competency as your major selling point. Offer yourself as the aspirin and Gatorade cure for those in the party suffering from a Bush hangover. Re-emerge in 2012 with solid grass roots support as the competent front-runner with enough support from the party's soul to carry you to the nomination.

And, of course, still lose in the general because nobody likes the Mormons.

"none of you nuh! better look at me funny
NUH! you know my name, now gimme my money!"
-Old Dirty Bastard, "Baby I Got Your Money"

The Wes Wing

K:

The Inquirer this morning had a front-page above-the-fold David Petraeus, offering the sage counsel that we stay in Iraq until it is no longer unstable. We have Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden running the CIA. Vice Admiral McConnell (USN Ret.) is DNI. So while one commander in the field runs a rearguard defense of a failing surge -- a policy, it bears repeating, whose so-called gains came at the cost of paying and arming Sunni militants, turning a blind eye to SCIRI/Ministry of the Interior death squads, and calling Moqtada Al-Sadr "Al-Sayyid," in other words, the cost of setting up its own demise -- the other two set picks for the president's drive to the basket on wiretapping and torture.

Deferring to the wisdom of commanders is the last desperate act of an administration with no support in the populace. Saying we will "listen to our commanders in the field" is tantamount to breaking out the batons.

So I ain't part of the Wes Wing. I was pissed that his bumper stickers in 2003 had Clark and four stars. Like fucking Noriega was running for president.

I think it's awesome that you and Larry are on the same page. How he does that cut-to-the-chase dialogue thing is, obviously, beyond me. Plus the piece had some bitchin' cartoons.

But f'reel f'reel, the shit will hit the fan if we as a nation keep assuming that civilians are crass guttersnipes bent on building an impressive retirement portfolio. Civilians aren't, by and large, doing a good job contradicting the only-military-has-gravitas meme. Why is Larry Craig still in the Senate: pensions!

(Can't we stop using the hyphenated-phrase-followed-by-"meme" meme? -- Eds.)

Brian Williams, 08/05/2013: Today in Los Angeles El Jefe Clark declared a condition of unrest, ordering the mobilization of 22 thousand of his controversial new paramilitary clones. Bred from birth to quell violence, able to subsist on a thin gruel of oats and cocaine...

...okay I'm mostly thinking of the Dominion here. My much-maligned secret sci-fi past exercises its long arm, and all the unsettled debts of history come back into play...

But isn't Obama supposed to be the definition of civilian competence? He's so competent, so motivated to solve problems, bind wounds, etc. that his Republican buddies in the Illinois Senate are stumping for him. The advice of a general, the silent presence of Clark's hand on the rudder, contradicts that posture.

I also didn't like the caricature of Gore. Only fat sodomite lieutenant governors want this guy to be president? Was this a Tim Kaine-Haley Barbour composite? That was cold. I think the possibility of his presidency is real, it's just up to him to grab the ring.

Anyway, I could have summed all this up by saying the Obama-Clark power play is an excellent way to run against Hillary Clinton. But it's a shitty way to run against John McCain. By which I mean it's a losing strategy. Picking someone to shore up your credentials is a tacit admission that you lack whatever he has. It's also a Reagan classic: a regrettable echo of this president's hands-off, CEO, don't-mind-me-i'm-just-the-Decider mimcry of the Great Sleepwalker. "The president is going to listen to the counsel of his advisers" is always code for "The president is way way out of his depth. Shit, the president couldn't run the Texas Rangers..."

And what problem does Obama have with rural whites? I mean, the boys here in South Philly are for Rudy Giuly; it's urban whites he's going to lose, like McGovern in 1972. Man won Iowa, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Kansas, the Texas caucus...somebody factcheck me quick....I honestly don't know what Obama needs. I feel like constituencies can't be grabbed by identity alone. Urban and ex-urban whites are going to vote BHO when he disses welfare, disses illegals, disses identity politics. He needs to tack right, and hard, not just as a matter of expediency, but as putting into practice his cross-the-aisle rhetoric. He needs to shape up on Israel -- not for my benefit; shit, he needs to shape up on Palestine for my benefit.

Therefore I give you the next vice-president of the United States: Pat Buchanan! A man who believes the war was botched from the start; who is the greatest attack dog since Spiro Agnew; shit, who wrote "nattering nabobs of negativism" and "effete snobs" and "pusillanimous pussyfooting"; who will probably cause China to call in its T-notes by saying some shit about poisoned toothpaste; who favors a ruthless crackdown on the undocumented; who had the best diss of McCain ever: "The McCain campaign is this: The jobs are never coming back; the illegals are never going away; plus, we're going to have all these wars."

Shit, if you wanna roll right, roll hard...