A Few Links, and Yes Even More Palin

A few links, and yes even more Palin.

* Great moments in disappointed Google searchers: I hope the person who was looking for "megan fox with her ass up in the air" someday finds what they need.

* World's most obscure video game easter egg, revealed.

* Editing Infinite Jest. I think I've linked to a version of this essay before, but I can't find it if I have.

* This story has everything! Operation Midnight Climax is a new web series about how the CIA used prostitutes to test LSD on unsuspecting American citizens.

* The price of oil over 25 years. And the roller coaster's just begun. Via Matt Yglesias.

* And Sarah Palin is giving every indication that she somehow intends to run for office again. Assuming that's really what's going on, and it's not something else, as I understand it the plan goes something like this:

* Quit the only relevant elected experience she's ever had halfway through her first term. (After planning to quit "for months" and having run for vice president after just a year on the job.)

* Raise a lot of money for GOP 2010 candidates and give a lot of speeches. Hope those candidates win and become important establishment allies for her. Hope too that while she's doing this no one remembers how she flamed out halfway through the only real elected experience she's ever had.

* Run for president in 2012. Hope Romney and Huckabee never mention the fact that that she flamed out halfway through the only real elected experience she's ever had. Hope that Obama and the media never mention it either.

* Profit!

Like TPM and MyDD, I strongly contend this is ludicrous. In particular, this from Josh Marshall is entirely correct and bears repeating:

To a degree it goes without saying. But it's worth reviewing just how deeply preposterous Palin's argument yesterday really was when she claimed that she refused to exploit the people of Alaska by serving out her full term.

When you run for governor, as for president, you run for a four year term. You commit, at least implicitly, to serving four years, though many people end up not doing that for various reasons. There's nothing in the implied contract about running for reelection. Indeed it's arguable that the public would be better served by a governor focusing for four years on running the state rather than laying the groundwork for their reelection.

In any case, Gov. Palin, who's served only a little more than half her first term (remember, she was elected in 2006), announces she won't run for reelection. And having decided that she won't run for a second term, she concludes that it would be exploiting the people of Alaska to agree to serve out the remainder of the term they elected her to serve back in 2006. This is apparently because she'll be a lame duck. And, she claims, lame ducks never get anything done and just spend a lot of money going on taxpayer funded junkets. So better to walk away from her job and pass it off to the Lt. Governor who no one hired to do the job at all.

We actually have states, like Virginia, in which governors are term-limited to just one (consecutive) term. Applying Palin's logic to Virginia, anyone elected to the governorship in Virginia should immediately resign because they can't be reelected. Applying this theory to the presidency, second-term presidents should resign in favor of their vice-presidents, again immediately upon their reelection. It makes absolutely no sense and bears no relation whatsoever to the world in which we actually live. And yet I am somehow certain that for the next three-and-a-half years we will be told over and over again how suddenly and inexplicably resigning your high office without warning because you've decided you don't plan to run for reelection is simply the most natural thing in the world. It's mavericky! You betcha.

* Okay, one more Palin one-liner, this one via William Gibson.

That crucial GOP demographic: "Despite the misstep, Palin enjoys an ability to connect with voters that cannot be taught." --AP