while she's heading to the front of the 2012 GOP pack

I think this woman will be forgotten about two weeks from today. At best she will be the Gary Bauer or Alan Keyes of 2012.

Kong is shipped in an oil tanker called the Exxon Valez to Washington. Kong gets an expense account and buys new clothes on 5th Avenue. Kong wants to ring Kong's own Kong-gong. Ring master McCampaign won't have it. Kong bends bars. Breaks bones. Storms skyscrapers. Swats F-16s. Catches a freighter bound for Fairbanks. Dreams up new abitious career as an abominable snow person.

I like the original picture better. Don't you?

Agreed; there is quite a bit of shameful behavior to go around. The McCain camp is falling apart. As I occasionally allow myself to imagine an Obama victory, Palin is the big mystery to me. What will happen to her? I can see McCain go on in various ways and nothing feels mysterious about it. But with Palin, I really have no clue. I wouldn't be shocked if slips away into the night or if she has a huge hit daytime talk show.

Earlier today a friend asked me if I feel sorry for her after I viewed the clip of her talking about her clothing at a rally. I don't! I don't think she is merely appearing to be having so much fun out there, and I have no doubt that she feels massive amounts of support.

That said, I agree with you, Joan, that the folks on McCain's staff who are emphasizing how under-prepared she is are sinking very low. However, I don't understand how McCain's "team" is set up and I would not doubt that some of his "helpers" were vocally against choosing her from the beginning. I can muster up a dab of sympathy for anybody who was strongly against the choice yet had to spend loads of time getting her ready.

What an odd election.

When is it over, exactly, Joan? Oh, yea, after the last attack.

She knew she was unprepared (or should have known). As she told "Charlie" in her first interview RE: accepting McCain's offer, the most important thing for her to do was not to think carefully, with humility and genuine self-reflection, but to jump in without blinking.

In her time on the national scene, her entire stock in trade has been snark, ridicule and the assumption of her superiority. Her arrogance and hubris is beyond all comparison; it's off the charts. She travels the country feeding the ignorance and fears of the idiot throng whose understanding of Barack seems limited to the vague half-formed idea that he is a Muslim terrorist, and she flatters them in their ignorance, assuring them that they are America's hope for the future.

Nothing. NOTHING can make me feel sorry for Sarah Palin. She is utterly mediocre, but an unstoppable egotist. Americans seem to love that combination. They know she is great presidential material because she told them so her own self, and they believe it. No matter what happens she will come out of all this in better shape than most Americans can ever hope to attain. Let's save our sympathy for the thousands of people who find themselves suddenly out of work this month, many of them highly competent and good at their jobs.

In the same way that I feel sorry for Ahmad-I-need-a-job's having coming down with some kind of serious stomach flu.

I mean, what's worse? Evangelical Ayatollahs or the Shi'a sort?

Despite a bump immediately after the Repub convention, it's pretty easy to track the selection of Sarah Palin (both her own shortcomings and the shortcomings of John McCain in picking her) as the death blow of the McCain campaign. She's certainly a favourite with the christo-fascist wing of the party, but her candidacy has deepened the divide between the christo-fascists and the fiscal conservatives.

At most, she might manage to be 2012's Giuliani - favoured by the punditocracy early, only to turn out to be dead on arrival.

Any world where she would win the nomination would be a world where the all the moderates and fiscal conservatives have finally given up on the Republican party. That is - a world where the current Republican vote is split, and neither wing has any chance of success.

I cannot muster sympathy for her. Most of what she has been accused of doing is entirely preventable if not foreseeable on her part.

If one is not qualified, decline. If one accepts; so must one honour the responsibility.

Scapegoating is when you haven't anything else upon which to fall back and must therefore manufacture blame. She creates her own bad press.

She sure has that Rudy Ghouliani demeanor

Only in Sarah Palin's case

Ten times meaner

I don't feel sorry for Sarah, nor should you or anyone else.

That said, it is my sincerest wish that Sarah Palin move to the front of the GOP pack for 2012.

But McCain is. He might not even carry his home state, and AZ hasn't voted for a Dem nominee in over 40 years. The anti-Palin leaks from his campaign are just a way for him and his operatives to cover their ass, but I think the Republicans will turn from him as soon as this is over. Say hello to a lot of lonely lunches with Lieberman. Two pols never deserved each other more.

Btw, are any of the national news organizations covering the Senate races? Salon posted an article about Liddy Dole's potential demise in NC, but that's all I've seen (other than the Stevens' indictment). I'd like to see more on these races instead of the false outrage over Palin's shopping spree.

My guess is Obama lands in the 320-350 electoral range. Not a historical landslide but about as much as one could hope for.

I disagree with you, Joan, that McCain's staff were classless for admitting: "Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic." The same aide said it was harder to get Palin "up to speed than any candidate in history."

One of the other posters expressed my sentiments. I would imagine some of these handlers had Sarah Palin dumped on them. They probably had nothing to do with the choice... yet had to suffer the consequences, and a crazy, overwhelming workload - high enough during election year, even if they had a great candidate - of trying to get Sarah Palin aware of domestic and world issues and events, and basic government function. (I guess they didn't have time to explain the role of the VP).

It's the kind of situation where you have someone who is promoted to be your Supervisor, or perhaps even an upper-management position in the company... and the poor schmoes who have to work with that person all know the person knows far less than they do and is a raging idiot. It's the Staff people I feel sorry for: they must be so very frustrated with being forced to work with someone who is truly ignorant.

It is not that Sarah Palin was just too unprepared... it's that she is so lacking in "intellectual curiosity" (to use Powell's praise of Obama), and so lacking in interest and awareness of the world around her. Someone so willfully ignorant will never be ready.

What will be coming out is who, exactly, was responsible for the abominable choice of Sarah Palin. Was it McCain alone? Or was he pushed into that choice by the strategists?