Jack Kelly had this in RealClearPolitics last June:

There is one potential running mate who has virtually no down side. . . . .
At 44, Sarah Louise Heath Palin is both the youngest and the first female governor in Alaska’s relatively brief history as a state. She’s also the most popular governor in America, with an approval rating that has bounced around 90 percent.

This is due partly to her personal qualities. When she was leading her underdog Wasilla high school basketball team to the state championship in 1982, her teammates called her “Sarah Barracuda” because of her fierce competitiveness.

Two years later, when she won the “Miss Wasilla” beauty pageant, she was also voted “Miss Congeniality” by the other contestants.

Sarah Barracuda. Miss Congeniality. Fire and nice. A happily married mother of five who is still drop dead gorgeous. And smart to boot.

But it’s mostly because she’s been a crackerjack governor, a strong fiscal conservative and a ferocious fighter of corruption, especially in her own party.

Ms. Palin touches other conservative bases, some of which Sen. McCain has been accused of rounding. Track, her eldest son, enlisted in the Army last Sept. 11. She’s a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association who hunts, fishes and runs marathons. A regular churchgoer, she’s staunchly pro-life.

One question: Whom does Kelly pick for the World Series?

Handsome is as handsome does, but she’s off to a very good start:

I love her.

Putin to CNN yesterday:

SOCHI, Russia (CNN) — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused the United States of orchestrating the conflict in Georgia to benefit one of its presidential election candidates.

. . . .  Putin said the U.S. had encouraged Georgia to attack the autonomous region of South Ossetia.

Putin said his defense officials had told him it was done to benefit a presidential candidate . . . . although he presented no evidence to back it up.  [Still checking, he said.]

“U.S. citizens were indeed in the area in conflict,” Putin said. “They were acting in implementing those orders doing as they were ordered, and the only one who can give such orders is their leader.” 

Not David Axelrod, we presume.  Who?

He said

the resulting “hurrah-patriotism” would “unify the nation around certain political forces,” adding: “I’m surprised that what I’m telling you surprises you. It’s all on the surface, actually.”

Obama said last night:

You can’t truly stand up for Georgia when you’ve strained our oldest alliances. If John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that is his choice – but it is not the change we need.  . . . .

But I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and curb Russian aggression.

Tough guy?  Or just confused?  Confusing either way.

The seamy side of Mile High:

During the arrest, one of the officers can be heard saying to Eslocker, “You’re lucky I didn’t knock the f..k out of you.”

One can only wonder how this would be covered if those were Republicans hobnobbing with lobbyists.

Another thing: Isn’t Barack supposed to do away with this sort of lobbyist stuff?

Yet another, moving somewhat in another direction: In a society so full of government regulation as ours, why shouldn’t people do what they can to get a fair shake? 

In Chicago, Mike Royko used to say, restrictions were multiplied to such an extent that the bar owner could be gotten for something any time the cops or alderman wanted.  Mike’s father ran a bar, and he knew from his childhood about this. 

Solution?  Keep cops and alderman on your side.  This is how Dems do it.  Not only they, but they do it best.

James Carville grinds at least two axes these days, his Clinton affiliation and his professional rivalry, but is he right about the dum-dum Dem convention, failing to score, and is it a sign (not the first) of David Axelrod being in over his head once he goes national and general, as opposed to Chicago and primary elections?

This is not Second City for nothing, after all.  Its newspapers limp, its Celebrated Citizens are not articulate — Obama excepted, we have Joe Biden’s word on it — its politics are so far from either the liberal or the conservative ideal — liberal because it’s corrupt, conservative because it’s corrupt and liberal — as to make us nowhere from which a president should come.

Bill Clinton said O. has the instincts of a Chicago thug.  And O’s campaign is stuck on Dem-primary generalization and, when specific, on gross tax-and-spend and enemy-coddling philosophy.  Campaign is stuck and going nowhere.  David Axelroad is in over his head?

Meanwhile, back on the street

In response to a commercial calling attention to Obama’s links to unrepentant terrorist-bomber and 2006 praiser to his face of Venezuela’s Chavez, Dems asked in their own commercial:

“With all our problems, why is John McCain talking about the 60s, trying to link Barack Obama to radical Bill Ayers?” the Obama ad asks. “McCain knows Obama denounced Ayers’ crimes, committed when Obama was just 8 years old.”

The people that ask that have no idea the havoc an eight-year-old can cause.  They’ll never get away with this.  Barack the kid resonated with Ayers’s actions.  He even sent a donation.

And who how he gave his support at this crucial moment in A’s life in 1981, when he and Bernardine Dohrn walked out a court house free as birds?