"She totally reminds me of my cousin!" the delegate screeched. "She's a real woman! The real thing!"

I stared at her open-mouthed. In that moment, the rank cynicism of the whole sorry deal was laid bare. Here's the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.

And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket. And if she's a good enough likeness of a loudmouthed middle-American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant-size bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the Sizzlin' Picante dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his life or anyone else's, but simply because it appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because the image on TV reminds him of the mean, brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning.

The scariest thing about Sarah Palin isn't how unqualified she is - it's what her candidacy says about America | The Smirking Chimp

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (CNN) -- Former gridiron great O.J. Simpson was found guilty of all 12 counts in the armed robbery of two sports memorabilia dealers at a Las Vegas, Nevada, casino hotel last year.

O.J. Simpson guilty in armed robbery, kidnapping trial - CNN.com

Globalisation is at an end; discuss. Because a reregulated globalisation is a contradiction in terms. And I may get the Nobel Prize for economics for having seen it all coming. Maybe I won't.

For I wrote a book, you see, called First Abolish the Customer: 202 Arguments Against Economic Rationalism, which was read in libraries and other people's lavatories by about a hundred thousand Australians with nothing better to do. It was about how, if you sack too many people, or you underpay and impoverish too many people, there aren't enough customers left to sell things to, and the economy goes to hell. I wrote it in 1998 and nobody attacked any one of the arguments. They tiptoed away from the argument. They were above such things.

And lo, it has come to pass. Americans too impoverished to buy houses had stopped making their payments, and cash their creditors owed to lending entities further up the money chain could not be paid either, and like bird flu the illness swept across the planet, and here we are. And I was right; and Michael Costa and Peter Costello and all the neocons and Friedmanites and Tim Blair were wrong. And we are now in big trouble.

Unleashed: The free market that never was

If a Democratic administration were proposing this plan, Republicans would realize that having Connecticut Democratic senator Chris Dodd (the largest recipient of political funds from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) as chairman of the Banking Committee guarantees that the Obama-Reid-Pelosi-Paulson plan that will emerge will be much worse as legislation than it started out as the Paulson proposal.

If this were a Democratic proposal, Republicans would remember that the Democrats wrote a grotesque housing bailout bill this summer that paid off their left-wing allies with taxpayer money, which despite its price tag of $300 billion has apparently failed as of last week, and could expect even more damage in this bill.

But because this gigantic power shift to Washington and this avalanche of taxpayer money is being proposed by a Republican administration, the normal conservative voices have been silent or confused.

It’s time to end the silence and clear up the confusion.

Newt Gingrich sounding... reasonable?

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!?

The Corner on National Review Online

Phil Gramm was one of 5 co-sponsors for the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 which made both the Enron scam and the credit crunch happen!

He is also McCain's go-to guy on economic matters.

Change! Literal pocket Change: coins. FDIC guaranteed $0.10 on the dollar.

Architect of Current Crisis is McCain's Chief Financial Advisor

Electoral map that shows who is ahead where, by how much as well as total delegates for each candidate based on that info.

CNN's Electoral Map: Who's ahead - CNN.com

For that reason, one of the most striking things about Palin's response, to me, was this: in answering Gibson's question, she seemed to think that she was accepting the Bush Doctrine, but what she actually said just restated the old doctrine of preemption. When, as Palin said, "there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people", the claim that we have the right to preempt that strike does not require the Bush Doctrine; it just requires the old, and much more widely accepted, doctrine of preemption. That is: in what Palin says here, she's not actually supporting the Bush Doctrine at all. She's just saying what generations of American Presidents and candidates have said: that when a country is actually about to attack us, we don't have to wait for them to actually land a blow before we can strike back.

The good news, I guess, is that when she's forced to make up an answer out of whole cloth, she goes with preemption, not prevention. She doesn't deny that she accepts the Bush Doctrine; she just doesn't say one way or the other. The bad news is that this makes it pretty clear that the problem isn't just that she doesn't know what the name "Bush Doctrine" refers to. She doesn't seem to know that there was a debate about preventive vs. preemptive war, in which the Bush administration came down decisively on the side of prevention. And that's a pretty important thing to be unaware of.null

Palin And The Bush Doctrine

The Prince George’s County police department is under fire for a recent drug raid on the home of Berwyn Heights mayor Cheye Calvo. Unbeknownst to Calvo, a box containing marijuana was delivered to his home. Shortly thereafter, police officers kicked in the front door and shot both of Calvo’s pet Labrador retrievers. The police have subsequently cleared Calvo of any wrongdoing but are unapologetic about their raid tactics. Are no-knock, paramilitary raids an appropriate tactic for drug investigations? Or do sudden, unannounced entries bring unnecessary violence to police investigations? Join us for a discussion of the Prince George’s incident and, more broadly, the militarization of police work in America.

Cato Institute: Should No-Knock Police Raids be Rare-or Routine? (Policy Forum)

So here's the interesting part: It's surprising that there is an interesting part. Someone like me — someone who has actually sailed on this factory ship long enough to get sick at the first whiff of fish — is instantly dismissive of anyone who dirties himself by entering this world. If the second coming of Jesus Christ stepped on the bus to run on the Democratic ticket, I'd be wondering who paid for his robe and why his message cribbed so much from the New Testament. But even I find myself being seduced by Obama, despite everything I know about the party he represents, its record and where it gets its money. There's just something about the guy; he has that effect.

Obama manages to appeal somehow to that part of us that is tired of there always being another side of the story when it comes to our presidents. We don't want to live in a world where there's always a set of lurid secret tapes that will come out someday, or a mistress with a cigar in her twat hidden off-camera somewhere, or a backroom deal to juice a prewar intelligence report for a bunch of oil-fat-cat golf buddies.

Obama on the Trail: He's delivering the same message Dems always rely on. So why does it sound like a clarion call this time? | The Smirking Chimp

Palin's sister, Molly McCann, and Wooten were in the process of getting a divorce when the judge hearing the couple's case said McCann's family appeared to be putting Wooten's job at risk at a time when he would be required to pay child support.

"It appears for the world that Ms. McCann and her family have decided to take after the guy's livelihood, that whatever who did what to whom has overridden good judgment," Superior Court Judge John Suddock said during an October 2005 hearing. "Aesop told us not to slay the goose that lays the golden egg. For whatever reason, people are trying to slay the goose here, and it tends to diminish his earning capacity."

Abuse of what limited power she had. And limiting his ability to pay child support... small town values at work.

Wonderful.

Judge warned Palin in 2005 to back off brother-in-law's job - CNN.com