A few more links for today, as my brain is otherwise useless.

* io9 has your Disney/Marvel crossovers in the other direction. I too am looking forward to the Dark Mermaid Saga.

* Again with the Comics has scans from Chris Ware's extremely rare "Floyd Farland: Citizen of the Future." Get them before the C&D.

* Who's ruining air travel now?

* Biden breaks down 2010.

* Today in our awesome post-racial society.

* And could Jennifer's Body actually not be all that bad? Feministe reports.

One exam down links.

* Soundtrack for The Cloud Photographers, the Wes Anderson film Wes Anderson never made. I love this.

* Show us your birth certificate, Joe. Put the ID back in BIDEN.

* All your High Holy days belong to Glenn Beck.

* If Environmentalists Made Star Wars. This is early promotion for END:CIV, the film that asks: "If your homeland was invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air, and contaminated the food supply, would you resist?"

* Also in environmental news: the Yes Men distributed a fake version of the New York Post that actually had factual information inside of it today.

* Doing it wrong: Immigrants’ advocates have been complaining for months now that the Obama administration is cracking down hard on illegal immigration while doing nothing to help legalize their situations and create a workable immigration system.

* “This fellow is a man in his thirties,” he said, “a research physicist with us out here. As far as I can tell, he’s perfectly normal in every way except for a lot of crazy ideas about living part of the time in another world–on another planet. Washington sent him out to do a key job, and until a few weeks ago he was going great guns. But lately he’s out of contact with the work so much and for so long that something’s got to he done about it.” Isn't this the plot of Adam Strange? (via MeFi and Boing Boing).

* And from the Onion: 'George W. Bush Chuckles To Self Upon Thinking About How He Was President Of The United States For Almost A Decade.'

Other stuff.

* William Jelani Cobb: 'Obama absent on gay rights.' Yes he is.

We long ago overdosed on comparisons of Obama and previous presidents, but it's hard to miss the way his administration had begun to echo that of John F. Kennedy. And not in a good way.

During the 1960 campaign, Kennedy ran as a forward-looking Democrat who understood the necessity of civil rights. He promised an executive order banning housing discrimination. Gestures like his phone call to a pregnant Coretta Scott King while her husband languished in an Albany jail and Robert Kennedy's judicial arm-twisting to secure his release endeared the young candidate to millions of African-Americans.

But once in office, Kennedy made civil rights a low priority. By 1962, Martin Luther King was openly critical of Kennedy and bitterly observed that the movement activists had become "pawns in a white man's game." It is worth recalling that the 1963 March on Washington was organized not only to ensure passage of a civil rights bill, but also to ensure that Kennedy would not cave to Southern Democrats on the issue.

Via Kinohi.

* Exactly what we don't want: "VP doesn't rule out his own presidential aspirations on Meet the Press Sunday."

* Can You Afford to Be an Adjunct? Don’t consider using adjuncting as a “back door” into a specific department. You are the academic equivalent of a fry cook. You will not be moved into district manager very easily. Perhaps your department grows their own. Ask. How many tenured, tenure-track profs started out as an adjunct? Take your answer as policy. Adjuncts are seldom promoted. You may, especially in smaller or community colleges, be able to enter by attrition, but this happens rarely and should be considered along the lines of winning the lottery. Think very carefully of your overall plan, especially if you have a family or dependents.

* The Ghostbusters' risky business model.

* Marvel's big Captain America news surprises exactly no one.

* Three-frame movies. Via MeFi.

I liked Joe Biden again for almost one whole day.

Wednesday is the day I historically post links.

* It all finally makes sense; Michele Bachmann says the crazy things she says because she comes from an alternate universe where Jimmy Carter was president in 1976.

* Also in alternate-universe news: South Korean scientists claim to have cloned glowing dogs.

* Tough times in the mother country.

* They're turning Margaret Atwood's (very good) Payback into a full-length documentary about debt.

* "Crazy" Joe Biden was a key figure in the Arlen Specter party switch. Now who's laughing?

* The headline reads: "Student, 11, steps up to lead school band when budget constraints leave PS 37 without band teacher." Get this kid a scholarship anywhere he wants to go, and pour some real money into public schools already.

* The eleven most endangered historic places.

* Classic science fiction film on the Internet.

* The Bush-Obama position on state secrets takes a much-needed hit.

* The Fight Club Theory of Ferris Bueller.

* An entity passes the Hofstadter-Turing Test if it first creates a virtual reality, then creates a computer program within that reality which must finally recognise itself as an entity within this virtual environment by passing the Hofstadter-Turing Test. So now we just need to get Skynet self-aware.

Obambulate, verb intr.: To walk about.

Palinode, noun: A poem in which the author retracts something said in an earlier poem.

To barrack, verb tr., intr.: 1. To shout in support: to cheer. 2. To shout against: to jeer. noun: A building used to house soldiers.

Bidentate, adjective: Having two teeth or toothlike parts.

Meeken, verb tr., intr.: To make or become meek or submissive.

Wordsmith.org has a timely list of presidential words. Via MeFi.

Debate Day 3. So what are people talking about?

* The head of John McCain's transition team lobbied for Saddam Hussein. Really. Really.

* The Supreme Court has refused to hear the case of Troy Davis, set to be executed in Georgia in the absence of forensic evidence (no weapon, fingerprints, or DNA) and solely on the word of nine witnesses, seven of whom have since recanted their testimony and another of whom is the other primary suspect in the case. More at MeFi.

* Rats-leaving-a-sinking-ship Watch: Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for Bush-Cheney '04, walks away from Team Maverick™.

"They didn't let John McCain pick the person he wanted to pick as VP," Dowd declared during the Time Warner Summit panel. "When Sarah Palin got picked instead of Joe Lieberman, which I fundamentally believed would have given John McCain the best opportunity in this race... as soon as he picked Palin, that whole ready versus not ready argument was not credible."

Saying that Palin was a "net negative" on the ticket, he went on: "[McCain] knows, in his gut, that he put somebody unqualified on the ballot. He knows that in his gut, and when this race is over that is something he will have to live with... He put somebody unqualified on that ballot and he put the country at risk, he knows that."

* The Oliver Stone W film comes out this weekend. Here's an interview from the Times, where Stone doesn't hold back.

Stone has said repeatedly that if Bush had fought on the ground in Vietnam he would never have gone to war against Iraq (he also maintains that if Bush had been president during the Cuban missile crisis, “we would have been in a nuclear war. Definitely. Wiped out. We wouldn’t be here talking.”). So I ask him what he makes of John McCain. After all, the Republican presidential candidate was both a supporter of ousting Saddam and a long-time resident of Vietnam’s “Hanoi Hilton” POW camp.

“I think McCain’s a very special story because he was never a soldier,” Stone says coldly. “He’s said he never saw the results of his own bombing. I saw the damage we did, I saw the corpses, the decay, I smelt the flesh, I saw people who’d been napalmed, people who’d been killed by shrapnel, mutilated. I saw horrible things. McCain was a prisoner and he has a siege mentality. He doesn’t see a balanced portrait of cause and effect – there’s something missing in the man, mentally."

* Nouriel Roubini says the economic hurt has only just begun.

* Biden says we'll win West Virginia. And he has a little bit of fun with it.

According to NBC's Mike Memoli, Biden asked the crowd in St. Clairsville, Ohio, "Which way is West-By-God-Virginia?" He then said, "I want to send a message to West Virginia -- we're going to win in West Virginia! ... We're going to shock the living devil out of y'all!"

* The latest CBS/NY Times poll says we'll win everywhere.

Obama 53 (48)
McCain 39 (45)

* They're still yelling out awful things at McCain/Palin rallies.

* And the Paradise Up North continues to hang with a bad crowd.

This epic Fark thread is my new favorite thing on the Internet.

Millions of Americans were watching Thursday night’s vice-presidential debate waiting for a demolition derby moment — another crash by GOP running mate Sarah Palin, another serving of raw material for the writers at "Saturday Night Live."

By that standard, she got out alive, though there were white-knuckle moments along the way: questions that were answered with painfully obvious talking points that betrayed scant knowledge of the issue at hand, and sometimes little relevance to the question that had been asked.

John F. Harris and Mike Allen have a thumbs-down assessment of Sarah Palin's performance in last night's debate. Meanwhile, the Obama camp has already put together a fantastic ad from the debate on a moment I highlighted last night, the $5,000 health insurance tax credit for a $12,000 family-by-family increase in health insurance costs. This is a hilariously bad idea that just about nobody knows about—they should put this ad all over Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Colorado, and Pennsylvania now that it's too late for McCain to run from it.

As promised, the moment Biden won this debate (by nearly tearing up) and Sarah Palin lost (by acting completely inhuman in response):



(via C-SPAN Debate Hub, of course)

CBS poll: 46-21 say Biden won.

...which is good news for people like me, as I can now conclude that my utter disdain for Palin is shared by the Real Americans™ as well. I share Kevin Drum's assessment:

I'll be honest: I genuinely didn't understand about 50% of what Sarah Palin said. She pretty overtly didn't even pretend to address a lot of Ifill's questions — probably because she couldn't — and a lot of her filibustering ended up sounding like random strings of phrases from the Hockey-Mom-o-Bot 3000. This was especially true as time wore on. If nothing else, this makes it almost impossible to judge the substance of what she believes, and despite the fact that she "connects" with ordinary people, I have a feeling that an awful lot of ordinary people weren't impressed with this.

CNN poll: Big win for Biden.

Biden 46%
Palin: 21%
Tie: 33% That was CBS. Here's CNN:

“Who Did the Best Job In the Debate?” Biden 51% Palin 36%

Olbermann is not having the idea that Palin did well. Glad he's out there tonight.

Begala says Palin's running for 2012. Absolutely. And I can't wait.

Think Progress has a good round-up of immediate pundit reactions, which mostly focus on the fact that Palin's answers were rehearsed and often completely off-topic. Rachel Maddow hits the same point as me, that he won and she lost in the moment where he almost teared up and she responded with more empty maverick talk. I'll put video up when it's available. (UPDATE: Here.)

CNN's focus group shows an overwhelming victory for Biden. They're doing their poll now—"results soon."

(new thread)

10:30 PM Biden ends with a strong assertion of Barack Obama's readiness and then his usual closing about "God blessing out troops." And that's it. I'll be back in a few minutes with reactions.

10:29 PM Palin likes being able to answer these "tough questions." Oh, give me a break.

10:21 PM Palin talks about mavericks again. Sweet Caroline actually threw up on my floor. This looks *really* bad against Biden's answer about his kids and the kitchen table answer—this is the answer where she lost this debate.

10:20 PM Biden dodges the Achilles heel question too after a joke. Biden's breaking up a little bit talking about his kids.

10:18 PM Gov. Palin, what is your Achilles heel? Answer: "I am awesome." What?

10:17 PM: Bad news for Palin, Biden knows what the Constitution actually says about the vice president. Good news for Palin: No follow-ups.

10:17 PM: Biden thinks Cheney is a douche.

10:14 PM Palin is interpreting the Constitutional powers of the vice president. She claims to agree with Cheney, but she's just trying to talk her way out of this question.

10:13 PM Ezra's having the same problem I'm having:

10:03 Sarah-Palin-as-Tina-Fey-as-Sarah-Palin says "it's just so clear I'm a Washington outsider" then she tilts her head and smiles and shrugs and accuses Joe Biden of being "for it before being against it" and says "the American people are craving some of that straight talk." With Palin, we have left the age when satire ruled comedy and entered a period in which reenactment reigns supreme.

10:12 PM: Now Palin's talking about elementary school teaching? How the hell did we get here?

10:10 PM Her answer to the question of what she would do if John McCain died devolved to a repetition of her first answer on taxes and government-being-the-problem. That was weird. Now Palin drops a planned line: "Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again," but she flubs it, and the whole thing is just weird.

Why did Ifill ask a question about assassination?

10:09 PM Palin answers the assassination question with a smile. Jaimee says, "She can't wait."

10:08 PM Ifill drops the assassination bomb. Skirting the line there, Ifill. Kendra is visibly shaken.

10:06 PM Those little ums and pauses at the start of her answers are getting longer and longer.

10:04 PM Ambinder: 10:02: Palin gets the name of the commander general in Afghanistan wrong: he's McKiernan, not McClellan. She does not know who he is, clearly.

10:00 PM Interventionism. Palin calls Biden a flip-flopper. She is reading from a piece of paper.

9:58 PM Biden: "Facts matter, Gwen."

9:56 PM Palin's pretty obviously reading from her notes here. I hope somebody's getting clips of this. (Debate Hub is still the best application for this in the world.) (UPDATE: Here.)

9:55 PM Do you know what I like about best about Sarah Palin? The generalities. I can't believe there's 35 more minutes of this. At least Biden is killing on the "more of the same" line: "I don't know how his policy is going to be different from George Bush's."

9:54 PM Ezra Klein: "9:52: Like John McCain, Sarah Palin is firmly against a second Holocaust. The silence of the Obama/Biden ticket on this issue is deafening."

9:51 PM Biden drops the Spain-bomb.

9:50 PM There's a little bit of shouting at the TV in my house right now.

9:49 PM Dictators hate our freedoms. Check.

9:48 PM Palin calls Obama naive and dangerous, but unlike John McCain she can say "Ahmadinejad" on the first try.

9:45 PM Biden is doing really well on Pakistan and terror. Palin tells us to trust al Qaeda when it says that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. Trust al Qaeda? Really, Governor? That's not change we can believe in.

9:43 PM Biden: "John McCain voted against funding the troops." "John McCain and Dick Cheney said..." "John McCain has been dead wrong." Good answer, Joe.

9:42 PM Democrats want to wave the white flag of surrender in the face of "the Talibani."

9:41 PM Biden says what Obama should have said last week: John McCain is the only one who doesn't want to leave.

9:40 PM Here comes the surge. Palin tries to pit Biden against Barack by reading his own words to him. That's good note-carding.

9:38 PM Biden wins the gay marriage dispute, but only on points.

9:36 PM Biden keeps getting in the last word. That's good stuff. Next question: gay marriage. Biden just came out very strongly in favor of marriage equality, though he tries to dial it back a bit at the end of the sentence and begins to crouch it in Constitutional terms. Palin chooses to insist that she's tolerant and mentions that some of her best friends are gay.

9:32 PM Biden: "If you don't understand what the cause is, you can't come up with a solution." Right.

9:30 PM Drill, baby, drill. Here comes climate change. Palin doesn't want to argue about the causes—didn't Jon Stewart decimate this line last night?

9:29 PM Michael Crowley is on Palin note-watch.

The camera behind Palin's podium just caught her furiously (but discreetly) shuffling papers as Gwin Ifill was asking her question; and Palin took at least one glance down midway. Something to keep an eye on over the next 90 minutes.

9:26 PM Tim gets a gleam in his eye when she uses one of her catchphrases: "rears its head."

9:25 PM Biden is taking a "There you go again" tack. It seems to be working, at least where I'm sitting.

9:23 PM I just noticed her flag pin. I think it's Bejeweled. Meanwhile, Palin's off on energy. Then she admits that she's only been at this for five weeks—that was a weird line.

9:22 PM Marc Ambinder: I just got 5 fact-check e-mails from the Obama campaign...can't look at 'em all when they arrive at once.

9:19 PM Biden kills on it, uses his first punchline: "I call that the ultimate Bridge to Nowhere." But he really does need that eyelid lift.

9:18 PM $5,000 tax credit issue. Palin bungles it badly, Biden smells blood.

9:18 PM Biden loves the middle class. Kendra says he needs an eyelid lift, and you know, she's right. Palin is turning into Tina Fey before our eyes.

9:14 PM Things are blowing up already. Biden says she didn't answer the question, Palin says she'll answer the questions the way she wants. Biden's walking a fine line on the "don't be a bully" issue, but it looks like he's not interested in treating Palin with kid gloves.

9:13 PM Now we need to learn to live with less, says Palin. That's change we can believe in.

9:12 PM Palin drops another "darn right." Folksy!

9:12 PM Biden goes after McCain, deregulation, and the cost to blow up your gas tank.

9:10 PM The sub-prime lending meltdown. Who was at fault? Palin blames the predatory lenders. Now she's telling us not to live in debt. Interesting lecture from a millionaire.

9:08 PM Everyone in the room is enjoying Palin's winks. Sweet Caroline says, "I can't believe she's flirting with us."

9:05 PM That's it? They don't get to talk back and forth at all? That's ridiculous.

...okay, Biden doesn't want to let that be the rule. Good on him.

9:04 PM The bailout. So far Joe Biden has not said anything stupid, mission accomplished. Palin does okay too.

9:00 PM Here we go. Olbermann is comparing Biden-Palin to the Patriots-Giants last January. I thought this guy was supposed to be on our side.

8:36 PM My band is now fully assembled: I've got Tim, Kendra, and Sweet Caroline here on backup.

8:14 PM TPM Understatement of the Night: For the McCain camp to be conceding that the must-win battleground is comprised of red states, some of which Obama holds leads in, and that two states that haven't voted Dem in decades are now real battlegrounds, doesn't seem like a very strong position at all.

8:04 PM How crazy is America c. 2008 that shooting a man in the face isn't the worst thing Cheney has done?

8:02 PM Pre-spin watch: Palin to attack Biden?

Sarah Palin plans to go on the attack in tonight’s debate, hitting Joe Biden for what she will call his foreign policy blunders and penchant for adopting liberal positions on taxes and other issues, according to campaign officials involved in prepping her for tonight’s showdown.

7:57 PM Some might ask why I'm starting my VP debate liveblogging an hour before the debate actually begins. Because I forgot Missouri was in the central time zone I'm a maverick, that's why.

I'll repeat what I said the other morning:

I'm reserving judgment on the debate until I actually see it. It's very hard to say how the expectations game is going to work; traditionally, the candidate perceived as unimpressive benefits from asymmetric expectations and thereby "wins," and in that sense Palin can't lose. But I'm not sure there's ever been a candidate as manifestly unprepared as Sarah Palin—and basically any mistake she makes, even relatively trivial ones, will serve to ratify the Tina-Fey caricature that has achieved critical cultural mass. In that sense she can't win. So I have no idea what's going to happen.

I still have no idea what's going to happen. I think Biden will do fine—he's an old hand at this, and well-aware of the pitfalls. The sole question is whether Palin can fake it on substantive questions for several minutes at a clip, whether Ifill will let her get away with it, and whether Biden will be able to call her out on it without looking like a jerk.

It's a low bar, but seeing her on Couric, I'm genuinely not sure she can cross it. Here's hoping for an implosion.

The much-hyped Supreme Court section of the Katie Couric interview aired a few hours ago, and it's just as cringe-inducing as anticipated.

COURIC (to Palin): Why, in your view, is Roe v Wade a bad decision?

PALIN: I think it should be a states issue not a federal government -- mandated -- mandating yes or no on such an important issue. I'm in that sense a federalist, where I believe that states should have more say in the laws of their lands and individual areas. Now foundationally, also, though, it's no secret that I'm pro life that I believe in a culture of life is very important for this country. Personally that's what I would like to see further embraced by America.

COURIC (to Palin): Do you think there's an inherent right to privacy in the Constitution?

PALIN: I do. Yeah, I do.

COURIC: the cornerstone of Roe v Wade

PALIN: I do. And I believe that --individual states can handle what the people within the different constituencies in the 50 states would like to see their will ushered in in an issue like that.

COURIC: What other Supreme Court decisions do you disagree with?

PALIN: Well, let's see. There's --of course --in the great history of America rulings there have been rulings, that's never going to be absolute consensus by every American. And there are--those issues, again, like Roe v Wade where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So you know--going through the history of America, there would be others but--

COURIC: Can you think of any?

PALIN: Well, I could think of--of any again, that could be best dealt with on a more local level. Maybe I would take issue with. But you know, as mayor, and then as governor and even as a Vice President, if I'm so privileged to serve, wouldn't be in a position of changing those things but in supporting the law of the land as it reads today.

Transcendentally bad. But Matt makes the point that Palin's Couric problem has come from the fact that Couric asks follow-up questions—indeed, that she is gently insistent on getting a substantive answer to every follow-up—and that Ifill will have far less opportunity to do the same tomorrow, especially given the last-minute criticism of Ifill's long-announced book:

Meanwhile, if you watch Palin’s interviews you’ll see that she’s perfectly capable of parrying an initial question with some nonsense and then shifting to her pre-prepared talking points. What was so devastating about the Katie Couric interview is that Couric would gently — very gently — prod Palin with follow-ups that revealed she doesn’t know anything about anything. But with this cloud of suspicion hanging over her, Ifill will probably treat Palin with kid gloves and she’ll be able to turn in the sort of competent performances she offered on the Hugh Hewitt and Sean Hannity shows.

For this reason I want to remind everyone that a Palin meltdown is by no means guaranteed tomorrow—it depends on her ability to spontaneously improvise non-answers to tough questions and Ifill and Biden's willingness to let those non-answers stand. Biden in particular is in a tough spot—he can't allow himself to look like a bully, which means he'll either have to point out that she's speaking nonsense very carefully, with kid gloves, or else hope the comparison speaks for itself.

So Palin may muddle through with nonsense, or she may completely implode. We won't know till it happens.

Too bad no one watches MSNBC: Joe Biden is doing some great post-debate analysis on Olbermann.

UPDATE: Here's the video. Say what else you might about him, this is something Biden does very well.

More on G.C.S.G. '08.

* It's being widely reported now that McCain is threatening to not show up to the debate if a deal hasn't been reached by Friday. Just who is this supposed to threaten?

* By the way, contrary to reports, Friday's debate will not focus exclusively on foreign affairs—Jim Lehrer informed the campaigns last week that there would be economic questions too.

* From the Dept. of You've Got To Be Shitting Me: Ben Smith reports that the McCain campaign has generously offered to move Friday's presidential debate to next week's VP debate, with the VP debate rescheduled to some unknown date in the future.

* Edge of the American West has an exclusive copy of the email McCain sent to Ole Miss asking for an extension.

On Tuesday, September 23, 2008 at 12:00pm, John McCain wrote:

sorry to bother you and i know this request is late but i have been really busy and i want to call an emergency meeting with the president and understanding all the material is taking up a lot of my time so i find myself woefully underprepared and i am throwing myself on your mercy. can i get an extension over the weekend on the debate so i can present my best work to you? or should i get a dean’s excuse?

thanks,

john

* And slightly lost in the midst of all this is the fact that McCain gave Letterman the finger to do it. Letterman's not happy.

David Letterman tells audience that McCain called him today to tell him he had to rush back to DC to deal with the economy.

Then in the middle of the taping Dave got word that McCain was, in fact just down the street being interviewed by Katie Couric. Dave even cut over to the live video of the interview, and said, "Hey Senator, can I give you a ride home?"

Earlier in the show, Dave kept saying, "You don't suspend your campaign. This doesn't smell right. This isn't the way a tested hero behaves." And he joked: "I think someone's putting something in his Metamucil."

"He can't run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second-string quarterback, Sarah Palin. Where is she?"

"What are you going to do if you're elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We've got a guy like that now!"

Brave New Films has a three-and-a-half-minute compendium of McCain's most major lies. It's a message that's long been seen on the blogs, but is finally taking hold in the mainstream media; a Daily Kos diary compiles "McCain is lying" stories from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Seattle Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, the Times again, and the Dallas Morning News. (If only people still read newspapers!)

Rope-a-dope or just plain lucky, the Obama campaign has begun to speak on this:

“We will take no lectures from John McCain who is cynically running the sleaziest and least honorable campaign in modern Presidential campaign history. His discredited ads with disgusting lies are running all over the country today. He runs a campaign not worthy of the office he is seeking,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

Good. Every surrogate should be saying this, and no Democratic surrogates should be praising McCain's integrity, personal courage, or fundamental decency. Not anymore. Not after the McCain campaign all has but admitted that it doesn't give a damn about the truth:

“We recognize it’s not going to be 2000 again,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said, alluding to the media’s swooning coverage of McCain’s ill-fated crusade against then-Gov. George W. Bush and the GOP establishment. “But he lost then. We’re running a campaign to win. And we’re not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it.”

That means you, too, Joe Biden.

That means you, too, Barack Obama.

I expect the basic, inescapable dishonesty of the McCain campaign to be a major issue both in the coming week and at the first presidential debate on September 26. Even the media has caught on to the fact that McCain/Palin hasn't said a single true thing in weeks. When you've lost The View, you've lost America.

Michael Kinsey's answer to Jonathan Chait's classic anti-Delaware screed, "Rogue State," is up at Time: "Alaskanomics."

Back to reality. Of the 50 states, Alaska ranks No. 1 in taxes per resident and No. 1 in spending per resident. Its tax burden per resident is 2 1/2 times the national average; its spending, more than double. The trick is that Alaska's government spends money on its own citizens and taxes the rest of us to pay for it. Although Palin, like McCain, talks about liberating ourselves from dependence on foreign oil, there is no evidence that being dependent on Alaskan oil would be any more pleasant to the pocketbook.

...

As if it couldn't support itself, Alaska also ranks No. 1, year after year, in money it sucks in from Washington. In 2005 (the most recent figures), according to the Tax Foundation, Alaska ranked 18th in federal taxes paid per resident ($5,434) but first in federal spending received per resident ($13,950). Its ratio of federal spending received to federal taxes paid ranks third among the 50 states, and in the absolute amount it receives from Washington over and above the amount it sends to Washington, Alaska ranks No. 1.

On the politics front, the new GOP line (apparently) is that Sarah Palin isn't ready to be president after all—yet.



I'm certain that over the next couple of weeks the press will be pounding her and the campaign wanting to know where the access is. There'll be a lot of process stories about why isn't she talking to reporters. There'll be a lot of noise that voters, frankly, don't really care about—and as frustrated as the press is gonna be it's a smart move by the campaign because, like I said, voters don't really care about these process stories, but if she goes out and makes a mistake, that is something that [voters will] care about, and that's something that will haunt [McCain] for awhile, so I think this is a smart move.

GOP strategist Todd Harris goes on to say that she'll be getting prepped for as long as two weeks before she talks to anyone in the media. The Jed Report says it best:

This has got to be one of the craziest messaging decisions ever: Harris is conceding that Palin’s not even ready to be a vice presidential candidate, let alone be president.

Kevin Drum, too:

The McCain campaign is scared to death. They knew nothing about Palin before they announced her, they relied on a cursory vetting process that has turned out to be shot full of holes, they realize now that she has no settled views on any issue of national importance and could blurt out anything at any time, and they're terrified about what might crop up next. So they're keeping her in the deep freeze.

Has it really come to this? The absolute lack of confidence McCain has in his own pick to be vice president is mind-boggling; the absurdity of this past week truly marks a singular event in the history of our Republic, and if things go wrong it'll be probably be used (alongside Florida 2000) to mark the start of its final decline.

This is monarchism, not democracy. A candidate for office needs to be accountable to the voters, not to a vague mish-mash of identitarian buzzwords. If we as a nation passively accept the Palin candidacy, if we demand nothing more than this from the Republicans or from ourselves, then American democracy is simply dead.

(Of course, a candidate should also be trusted to talk about something other than their own love of self, but we're sitting by and letting John McCain fail that test, too.)

In more positive news, at least Joe Biden continues to win my respect. Give 'em hell, Joe.

Here's the Biden speech. I find that I'm happier and happier with this choice as time goes on, though I almost can't listen to Biden talk for fear he's going to say something stupid and completely ruin the election.



McCain VP selection said to be made, to be announced Friday morning...

Tonight was the first night of the Democratic National Convention that was better in its entirety on C-SPAN than abbreviated on the networks. (Too bad I had to miss most of it.) Aside from the big, primetime speeches, the first two nights were fairly disappointing affairs—too much light, not enough heat—but tonight things at last began to come together. Clinton, Biden, and Kerry each in their own ways took the fight to McCain, and all three were extremely effective, and for the first time we finally look like a political party and not a Hatsfield/McCoy reunion.

After two weak nights, I'm feeling better.

Here's Clinton's speech. I'll try and put Biden and Kerry up as they appear on the blogs...



UPDATE: John Kerry—almost certainly the least-watched, but I loved the Senator McCain vs. Candidate McCain stuff. (He had definitely some fun with the "Talk about being for it before you were against it" line.)



It's almost cliché to ask of Kerry, "Where was this guy four years ago?" but seriously, where was he?