I just want to say that Sarah Palin has the kind of hard, closed face and erotically null "beauty" of one of those creepy "dirty housewife" posters on amateur porn sites. She also seems full of a certain kind of stone-cold ruthlessness and resentment particular to certain women.

Sarah Palin gave a classically scabrous Bush/Rove speech this evening and she undoubtedly fired up the base. But that's about it.

I think Mrs. Palin should enjoy her moment in the partisan sun...because it's going to be all downhill from now. The outright lies her speech contained this evening will surely be dissected by the press and while the conservative base couldn't care less, millions of other voters won't fall for the vacuous propaganda.

Cynical, snide and disingenuous, Sarah Palin is nothing more than Dick Cheney in lipstick, to use the operative word of the night.

If Americans fall for her pump and pony show, they'll get what they deserve. Nothing.

FYI, it's spelled Wasilla not Wassila

QUICKIE QUIZ: NAME THAT FEMALE POLITICIAN!

She’s a female politician with 5 children, one of whom is a 17 year old girl in her senior year of high school. Her hubby is supportive of her ambitions. She’s in her mid forties and her political duties consume much of her time. She is determined, forceful, and confident. Name that politician! For the correct answer scroll down………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The answer: Mrs. Nancy Pelosi, less than affectionately known in some quarters as Bela Pelosi, now Democratic Speaker of the House. She entered Congress when she was 47 when her youngest daughter was 17 in her senior year of high school. That was in 1987 and, just coincidentally, since then her family fortune has grown so impressively that she is now a multi-millionaire.

Some quiz-takers may have guessed...

(For the rest of this article, please see http://genelalor.com/.)

i'm afraid the mccain campaign is now officially dripping with flop sweat. the moment: when john mccain walked out on stage tonight. did you feel it? it was like dragging a needle across a vinyl record. the dancing stopped. drinks were spilled. i felt myself gasp -it was like a bob hope walk-on. when mccain said his remarks, then just stood there with the mic and let the moment pass i honestly felt sorry for the guy. tomorrow night, he'll get folksy and quiet and make americans believe he's a rational, kind-hearted hero. (and it will work) but the shark has been jumped. the election will be a referendum on the top of both tickets, and it's no contest. it's not even close.

did mitt romney talk about the sun rising in the west? or was i dozing off and heard it wrong?

they cut the palin video intro. it must have been terrible! much harder to hide the truth in photos. (all they had work with were beauty pageant photos and moose hunting pix.) i was hoping the GOP had photoshopped her into important world events, like peace negotiations and G-8 summit photos. just for laughs. they'd try that.

her speech was sneering and self-satisfying. it will be a huge hit with the gop base -and i expect mccain/palin to be up by 8-10 points in most polls by early next week. but drip, drip, drip - the flop sweat is there. look for it. be patient.

I can now understand how an anti-choice hockey-mom can garner the votes of women. "Progressive" men simply need to tell us what they really think

isn't getting the community organizer vote.

I think people need to repeat the fact that at around 700,000 people, the population of Alaska would rank below the top 70 metropolitan areas in the US, including the Albuquerque and Baton Rouge areas. (I only mention these two cities because I've lived in them, and in my experience their mayors were certainly not VP material.) If executive experience is the key issue, then there are literally hundreds of people out there of both sexes and all races that are more qualified than her.

And is anyone else here making the mistake of calling her home town Wasabe? I'm doing that a lot for some reason. I'll go back to eating my arugula...

Just want to disagree with a point Mr. Shapiro made that it would be impossible to imagine Palin browbeating CIA analysts to get the facts desired by a McCain administration. Walter might want to go read Glenn Greenwald's article on Palin. Not only is it easy for me to imagine Palin browbeating anyone under her, I am quite sure she will do just that if elected to office. Just look at her history. First thing she does upon getting elected to office in the past is start firing and browbeating underlings who she susspects as being somehow not loyal enough in order to get her way. Same old bush/Cheney MO. Nothing will change with a Palin/McCain administration but things can sure get alot worse.

"Even as an angry "hockey Mom," it is impossible to imagine her browbeating CIA analysts to concoct new rationales for invading Iraq."

Why do you think that? She's on record as having her husband and a half dozen of her staffers browbeat Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan in an attempt to get him to fire State Trooper Mike Wooten. Wooten's "crime"? He was in a nasty custody suit with Palin's sister.

She eventually fired Monegan for not firing Wooten.

No decent person is safe from Palin if they have something she wants.

That anyone at all sees this person as viable as the potential leader of the USA is just so profoundly sad. I feel that people like Palin - the Republican base, (really??) - are addicts to some kind of hate-candy; 'Jesus is my savior and I get to hate, too!' And somehow that never seems dissonant to them. The creepiest thing I've seen since Palin was named is the film of her at her old church (@Huffington Post). She seems like a gushy twelve year old - not even an adolescent's maturity level, but a child's - who's never even thought through what humility might mean in a mature relationship to God. Altemeyer's definitely nailed this as authoritarianism, but there's more. There's the angry, spoiled child's tantrum, the selfishness of the bully. The Republican base is apparently where America's little not-so-christian haters go to not feel so alone. Ugly.