... if they have the guts.

"McCain is already practicing for Bush's third term by carrying on with business as usual while a killer hurricane bears down on New Orleans."

"So Bush finally decided to do something about a hurricane? Great, it only took him three years to figure that out. How long will it take McCain?"

"McCain was going to fly down to Louisiana and check things out, but they were afraid he'd crash the plane on the way."

That kind of thing. Unfortunately, that would require a Democratic Party that's smart enough to realize that the time to play nice is long past.

Anyone who thinks he was just crying wolf wasn't paying attention. New Orleans came through Gustav okay because -- and only because -- the storm made landfall well to the west of N.O. If the eye had hit nearer the city, it's almost guaranteed that it would have been another Katrina-level disaster in property terms ... and the only reason the human tragedy would have been less was Nagin's evacuation order.

... Pakistan is our ally in the War on Terror! They're supposed to be the good little brown people!

Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston are, at best, collateral damage. At worst, they're illegal combatants. Either way -- if this is unpleasant for them, well, that's just too damn bad.

Those of us fighting on the side of the United States of America need to remember: never apologize, never back down, never give up, and go for the throat. The Republicans have shown that they will stop at nothing to tear this country down. We need to be smarter than our enemies, but just as ruthless, if we want to win. So a couple of stupid teenagers get caught in the crossfire? So it goes.

... but then, she doesn't know what the Vice President does, either, so it all balances out.

Someone ought to ask Gov. Palin what she thinks of these verses, since she's so big on Biblical literalism.

This is a truth the Democrats should repeat over and over again. America's strength is gold, not blood. We don't pour out the lives of our soldiers on the battlefield the way other nations do -- instead we train our troops thoroughly and supply them with the latest equipment. When we succeed in this strategy, as we did in WW2, we achieve victory at a far lower cost in lives than any other combatants. When we fail by trying to fight wars we really can't afford, such as in Iraq, we throw away lives to no good purpose.

This is a strategy only a rich nation can pursue. The Bush/McCain economy will send us down the road of Russia, "the Third World with nukes." American voters have to realize that their sons and daughters are far more likely to come back home alive when the economy is strong.

... where he says with that trademark easy grin of his, "I'd like to thank Gov. Palin for her endorsement of my position ..."?

Barak Obama spent a considerable portion of his youth in poverty. He worked his own way to the top.

John McCain -- John Sidney McCain III -- is the son and grandson of admirals. He's American military aristocracy. And he married, as aristocrats often do, into serious money.

Any blue-collar voter who thinks McCain is more "people like us" than Obama has to be, I'm sorry, a complete goddamn moron.

Okay, maybe I shouldn't have used that word. "Barack Obama spent a portion of his youth in poverty," how's that?

Because yes, damn it, if your mother has to apply for food stamps to keep you fed, you are poor. You may not be as poor as some other people -- poverty is always relative; most poor people in America are rich by comparison to what passes for the middle class in much of the world -- but you need food stamps, you are not middle class and you are damn sure not rich.

Rich, as in John Sidney McCain III. Who had his Annapolis appointment handed to him on a silver platter because of who his daddy and granddaddy were, who couldn't fly worth a damn and who was only given a flying post because of his lineage, whose incompetent piloting gave him the opportunity for his oh-so-heroic POW experience (after he had already crashed four planes!), who dumped the wife who waited for him through the years of his captivity so he could marry from "comfortably wealthy" up into "obscenely wealthy." Who can't remember how many houses he owns. Who thinks that if you make four million dollars a year, you're middle class.

And yes, any poor or middle-class person who thinks this coddled aristocrat is somehow more like them than a man who worked his way to the top, a true Horatio Alger story of the type conservatives claim to love but clearly loathe (remember what they did to a guy named Clinton?) is beyond hope.

... Knowles will probably be dismissed as bitter, because he lost the election to Palin. It's the same problem Gore and Kerry have with criticizing Bush, though Gore, at least, has done a good job of moving beyond the 2000 election in the public eye.

What we need is for more current members of Alaska's political establishment to step forward and give us the dirt on Palin. There's plenty of it, I have no doubt, and most likely everything Knowles said is true. In a better world, the messenger wouldn't matter so much as the message, but this campaign season has already shown (as if we needed reminding!) that in the real political world, who's talking is more important than what they're actually saying.

I'm still hoping that the results of the Troopergate investigation will prove to be the ultimate October Surprise. It depends on how firm a control Palin's political Mafia actually has on Alaska politics -- and on whether Alaskans have the will to do anything about it.