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Cooler headed, morning-after update:
Yep, still a liar.
Probably the best example is that she says she's against earmarks, but as mayor of Wasilla-AK she hired the town's first ever DC lobbyist and got $27 million in earmarks from the federal government. (In fact, the state of Alaska is one gigantic earmark. Here's another one, and it actually has her hand-written notes on it.)
Palin said literally nothing of substance last night, and most of the character-defining statements she made completely twisted the truth. Meanwhile, Obama and Biden are momentarily pretty quiet, campaigning in Ohio and elsewhere and respectfully allowing the Republicans to have their little hate summit (and it is little, compared to the DNC). I hope when they get back to the hotel each night, they're sitting up with their team devising some genius way to take this monster down, once her party's over.
Obviously this is not a political blog, and when I start to get into politics I remind myself of Fred Armisen's Nicholas Fehn character on Weekend Update...
...so how 'bout we just finish it up with this, from Andrew Sullivan:
Increasingly, it seems to me, the GOP reflects some of the most A.D.D. elements in the culture. There is no sense of accountability, no real pretense that anything is for much more than the present, and reality is constantly shaped to fit the demands of the micro-news-cycle. I thought McCain was unlike that. But he's the leader of this party, and he cannot change it overnight. My worry is: he doesn't seem to be trying any more.
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The Palin pick says much more about McCain than it does about Palin (all it says about her is that she didn't have the good sense to turn it down). What it says about McCain is that he is more interested in politics than policy, more interested in campaigning than governing, tactical when he should be strategic, and reckless when he should be considered.
He is as big a gamble as president as Palin is as vice-president. This decision was about gut, about politics, about cynicism, and about vanity. It's Bushism metastasized.