Drill, drill, drill, says the lady Veep (to be?), in this CNBC interview “days before” McC picked her, in which she notes that Biden voted against the trans-Alaska pipeline 30 years ago (about halfway thru interview) and calls him and Obama “naive” in saying or implying that “renewable” alternate energy supplies can make a short-term difference.

I think the O-B campaign should pay close attention to this interview, which reminded me of the champ’s handlers urging him to pay attention to the TV shot of challenger Rocky pounding at a frozen meat carcass in a packing-plant icebox. 

“You’re breakin’ the ribs. You do that to Apollo Creed, they’ll put us in jail for murder,”

his friend Paulie told him.

The overconfident Apollo ignored them, to his hurt.

Quibble here: Palin is sharp and quick and cogent in reply (to admittedly sympathetic interviewer) but might consider her reference to our being “in a world of hurt” if such and such happens as one to be tightly rationed in interviews and in the Coming Debate — once per interview is enough.

Later:  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Jack Kelly, who promoted Palin in June, looks ahead to her campaigning:

if I were Joe Biden, I’d be worried. A former journalist, Sarah Palin is careful about what she says and says it well, qualities for which Mr. Biden is not renowned. Mr. Obama picked Mr. Biden in part because of his reputed skill as a hatchet man. But if Mr. Biden comes on too hard in the vice presidential debate, he’ll look like a bully. And Alaska is littered with the bodies of those who tried to bully Sarah Palin and failed.

Do we cast Obama as Apollo Creed?

On the other hand O-Creed has his influential friends, says Palin and media skeptic Scott at PowerLine Blog:

The experience question — implicit in Kelly’s concern about Palin’s campaign performance — remains a kind of trap door on her candidacy. Obama’s endless parade of ignorant gaffes are walled off by a bodyguard of media fans. Governor Palin will have no such margin for error.

In other words, like the tree falling in the forest primeval, will voters not hear of O– and B-gaffes?  Or will they hear of P-ripostes that hit the mark?  Put another way, what have we heard more of, O’s Rezko house or McC’s seven?

In Alaska, Sarah Palin shot down her homegrown “good old boy network”:

[She] put her political career on the line by challenging the corrupt, old Alaskan Republican bulls on their sleazy pay-for-play politics and their use of the public trust to fill the pockets of their friends.

That’s John Kass today.

She didn’t merely talk about abstract change in Washington. She challenged corruption at home, challenged her own party bosses—some of whom are already in prison—at great risk to her political future.

Change we can believe in where all politics is located, according to Boston pol Tip O’Neill.

It is something I’ve begged and begged Obama to do with the ham-fisted pols in Chicago and Illinois—to not merely talk about change far away, but to take a principled stand even if that stand runs counter to his political interests at home; to challenge the thugs [italics added] of his own party, to give us a reason to believe he’s the man he says he is. He has politely declined.

Of course he has.  He owes everything to Chicago’s ham-fisted pols, with whom he has played ball into extra innings, with more to come.

Can you imagine what’s in it for connected people in Chicago for O. to win?  The corruption prosecutions that will fall by the wayside?  The prosecutor Fitzgerald who will be reassigned?  The contracts that will dry up?  The entire sense of ease and comfort that comes from having one-of-us in the White House?

And by the way, we had another Fitzgerald, another senator, did we not, who went after ham-fisted pols in Illinois — Sen. Peter, who also laid his career on line, settling for one term after giving them fits, if you’ll pardon the (I swear) accidental pun.

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?