Aside from the lunacy inherent in the idea of turning KSM from unaccustomed taciturnity into a garrulous professor through torture, it appears that the ticking time bomb must tick rather patiently while you waterboard this or that HVD for a month....

Is it worth noting that the language stuff is feeble, even by the standards of such things?

- Aramaic is not "the most ancient form of Hebrew," as claimed in the video. It's another language altogether, though related, which had largely displaced Hebrew in Palestine by the time of Jesus. It arrived in Palestine long after Hebrew.

- The Hebrew word 'bamah' is singular. The plural 'heights' is 'bamoth'. It is used in the plural to mean heights.

- The particle 'w' , which become 'u' before labials, means "and" and such-like things. The collocation 'baraq ubamah' if it means anything, means 'lightning and height'. No way does 'u' mean "from." And we're missing a definite article here.

- Luke has Jesus saying 'as lightning from the sky' [ek tou ouranou], using the ordinary Greek word for sky. There's no reason to believe that this translates an obscure poeticism that would have inserted an archaic word from another language into ordinary speech.

- If you want even to reach the starting block, you must (a) determine the Aramaic words for "lightning" and "sky", and (b) figure out what the Aramaic phrasing might be for the target sentence. The Greek has, word for word, 'as lightning from the sky falling' -- but that's Greek. If, for example, the natural form would be something closer to "lightning that fell from the sky," then "lightning" and "sky" would be mighty far from adjacent.

Now, on to the theology...

Isn't this another one of those incessant "Obama's problem with X" articles? Had Obama accepted public funding, it would be all about how the limitations that come with it are killing him.

Particularly intriguing is this:

Obama has to devote a substantial chunk of his time to fundraising, time he could otherwise spend campaigning.

As if the two were entirely distinct activities.

Admittedly, state-by-state polling is really the only barometer that matters, but there are not yet any real guideposts from post-convention polls in key states.

This is the part I love. A dim glimmer of recognition that the US electoral system awards precisely nothing to the winner of the national vote count. Followed by an enthusiastic pursuit of supposed stats about.... the national vote count.

The role of these utterly pointless polls is stir up or dampen enthusiasm for one candidate or the other. They are more a part of the process than about it. Unreal.

In fact, it is difficult to imagine two more unlikely presidential nominees -- a survivor of a brutal prisoner of war camp and the first African-American to transcend American's segregationist past.

Yeah, sure: but what a dumb characterization. The one constant of McCain's campaign is the POW drama; everything else is fragmented, shifting, falsified differently from day to day. Obama radiates intelligence, level-headedness, and a focused adult sensibility; the obsessed can't get away from his racial make-up, but his case has always been about something else entirely.

And of course millions of African-Americans have transcended, and daily transcend, America's segregationist 'past'.

But the biggest speech of the night will be made by presumptive vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin; after having dominated the news all this week, she'll be closely watched, and she can certainly use a good night.

But let's keep in mind that not one word of "her" speech will be written by her.

The good night that she may or may not have depends entirely on her speech-reading skills and not at all at any virtue, skill, or attitude of hers that is relevant to anything else.

The rules of the judgment game require that we ignore this -- but we're all adults here, aren't we?

Palin, swiftly sinking in her own effluvia, seems to be vindicating Obama's gentlemanly campaign strategy.

Jaysus man -- do you have the slightest inkling of what a McCain presidency would mean for the country?

Hillary, and every Dem with any kind of prominence, should be out there day and night.

Latest intercept from Planet JW:

Still, I can't help being a little pleased at the social change the pick makes real. A night after watching the first African-American accept the Democratic nomination, we woke to find the first woman had been chosen to be the Republican vice-presidential nominee. The race just got a lot more interesting.

If you can't see that the choice of a pathetically unprepared woman is grossly demeaning to women -- then quit.

If you still can't see, after all the feedback on your racial spew during primary season, that Obama is the candidate because he is the best candidate -- then quit.

If you can't grasp the horrific danger to the republic in the supreme cynicism of this choice -- then quit.

And it's over. McCain -- or whoever pulled his strings on this one -- has put the entire country at risk.

After the hoo-haa and knee-jerking dies down, the enormity of the nose-thumb will sink in. Dangerous, demeaning, cynical to the point of buffoonery, this move ought to drive the Feds to ask for their money back.

In two years, will anyone even remember who ran against Obama in '08?

La fraise, ferchrissake. And enjoy the eptness of the literary reference in violet hour:

His vanity requires no response,

And makes a welcome of indifference.

Link at sig.