The verdict is in: another Republican political career has been destroyed by contact with the mind of Tina Fey. This time it's Bobby Jindal, who I don't think will ever recover from this Kenneth the Page thing. (Not that he did so well on the merits, either, as Steve Benen handily demonstrates in a series of posts. "Volcano monitoring"? What, pray tell, is a "volcano"? Even Fox News lays the smack down.)

Meanwhile, in other political news, Ezra Klein looks back on the eventful first month of the Obama administration. That pseduo-State of the Union sounded pretty ambitious; let's go change the world.

Salon's Broadsheet has full coverage of the sexing up of Tina Fey, while Jezebel counters with photos of the provocatively unsexed-up younger Fey. My personal favorite Fey is "Weekend Update" Fey, c. 2003, who I'm certain is still in there somewhere, finding this sort of nonsense completely ridiculous.

A little bit of politics.

* Yesterday's Tina Fey/Sarah Palin skit was another instant classic. It's no exaggeration to say that Tina Fey may have single-handedly saved America from a Sarah Palin presidency, and for that she deserves our deepest thanks.



* As for what Gwen Ifill thought of the debate she (poorly) moderated, on Meet the Press this morning she seemed a little miffed that Palin "blew [her] off."

* For better or for worse Obama has decided that the Keating Five scandal is now fair game. I say "or for worse" only because it's not clear to me that aggressive negative campaign is still necessary anymore; the Ayers smear to which it is a response is very old news, and there's strong evidence that McCain has permanently damaged his own brand through his lying and smearing. There's also good reason to think McCain is already beat, which makes me wonder whether it's worth it at this point to climb back down to McCain's level and potentially damage the Obama brand as a consequence.

* Open Left also has a post on realignment elections with some nice very nice historical maps.

* And Nicholas Kristof tackles privilege in the time.

One of the fallacies this election season is that if Barack Obama is paying an electoral price for his skin tone, it must be because of racists.

On the contrary, the evidence is that Senator Obama is facing what scholars have dubbed “racism without racists.”

Morning politics.

* Landslide ascendant? New polls from Quinnipiac show Obama breaking away in Florida (51-43), Ohio (50-42) and Pennsylvania (54-39). Lots of reasons for this; in addition to the economic crisis that Ben Smith highlights, there's also McCain's increasingly erratic behavior and the snowballing unpopularity of Sarah Palin. Nate Silver of 538.com was on Countdown last night trumpeting a predicted 330-207 Electoral College blowout—an opinion Dick Morris of all people would call conservative—and OpenLeft has a great chart from the Princeton Election Meta-Analysis showing the distribution of all possible outcomes.

* Which means it's time for McCain to get nasty. Again.

* Speaking of Palin, 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. Her recent interviews with Katie Couric have been no better than the early ones—she famously reads all newspapers but won't admit or has no idea what pro-life actually means and it's now been confirmed she couldn't discuss any court decision beyond Roe v. Wade—and the Republicans are working overtime both to prep her and to pre-spin the debate. They're now strongly attacking Gwen Ifill all over. If they're going to cry about it, fine, let's replace Ifill—is Katie Couric available?

* Explosive breaking news from Troopergate probably won't help Palin's popularity.

* What is it about being mayor of New York City that causes people to lust after emergency powers? Now Bloomberg wants an emergency third term.

* And Google endorses marriage equality.

Midday links.

* John McCain advisor Steve Schmidt goes off on the Times for accurately reporting reality's well-known liberal bias.

* According to a recent poll, 0% of Americans believe the economy is improving. You read that right. I don't think I've ever seen a poll report where 100% of the sample agreed on something; Bush truly is a uniter and not a divider. By the way, the Decider's overall approval rating is now a thundering 19%.

* Which is probably why McCain-Palin is using so much of the Bush braintrust.

* McCain says we have to put an end to golden parachutes for bad CEOs like his advisor Carly Fiorina, who received $45 million from HP after running the company into the ground. This follows his blistering attacks on the influence of lobbyists in Washington like his campaign manager, Rick Davis, paid $2 million over five years to lobby on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“The value that he brought to the relationship was the closeness to Senator McCain and the possibility that Senator McCain was going to run for president again,” said Robert McCarson, a former spokesman for Fannie Mae, who said that while he worked there from 2000 to 2002, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac together paid Mr. Davis’s firm $35,000 a month. Mr. Davis “didn’t really do anything,” Mr. McCarson, a Democrat, said.

* And who better to put in charge of rebuilding the economy but the man who destroyed it almost single-handedly, Phil Gramm?

* And Tina Fey has just one wish.

"I want to be done playing this lady Nov. 5," she said. "So if anybody can help me be done playing this lady Nov. 5, that would be good for me."