A friend of mine who is the publisher of a very successful news site has a joke: In the future the Internet will consist entirely of Sarah Palin slide shows. Anyone who's ever had occasion to look at traffic statistics for a news website understands what he's saying. Few things draw in readers and garner clicks more reliably than articles (or, even better, pictures) of Sarah Palin. We can't look away. We can't stop talking about her even when we desperately want to. The very fact that we've been blogging about her all week attests to that.

My first experience of this Sarah Palin effect came during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. As a progressive opinion journalist who routinely reports on conservatives, you come to develop a kind of practiced disassociative state when behind enemy lines. You'd never be able to gain any understanding whatsoever if you spent all your time arguing with and hectoring people at evangelical colleges or anti-immigration rallies, so it's both psychologically and professionally necessary to put yourself in a state of mind where you simply listen.

On the night Palin gave her big debut national speech, I sat through the speeches that preceded hers in that same slightly removed state. Then Palin came to the stage. The crowd grew more and more raucous, and the room began to feel like a Roman Colosseum. When Palin went after the "reporters and commentators" in the "Washington elite" for having disparaged and condescended to her, the crowd erupted and began pointing and jeering at Tom Brokaw, sitting in the NBC booth. I watched all this still, I thought, with equanimity.

About a third of the way through the speech, when she delivered her infamous potshot at community organizers--

"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities"--

I suddenly felt like the room was 100 degrees. Realizing my face was burning with heat, I went to touch my cheeks, which felt feverish. I couldn't for the life of me understand what was going on, and was about to get up for a breath of fresh air or water until it hit me: I was furious.

My father is a community organizer and spent years toiling in some of the poorest neighborhoods in New York, doing the painstaking, unglamorous work of attempting to build power among people who were routinely getting screwed over. And Sarah Palin had just spit in his face.

Despite my best efforts, she had gotten to me.

What I was experiencing was a strange kind of dislocation: Palin had managed to bypass one part of my brain and reach down deep into another. There are two kinds of politics: There's politics of the prefrontal cerebral cortex, the politics of analysis and facts and discussion, and there's politics of the limbic system, the sub-rational, emotional, ancient part of the brain that controls the bodily responses like the blood flushing my cheeks in that seat in the Xcel Energy Center.

As degraded as our politics may be, it's impossible for me to imagine a politician as purely limbic as Sarah Palin ever managing to ascend to the White House. But democratic politics in a heterogeneous society like ours is inevitably tribal, and millions of Americans view her as their vessel and their chief. The political potency of someone who can provoke that kind of visceral reaction shouldn't be underestimated.

Chris Hayes, along with Jane Hamsher, Amanda Marcotte and Michael Tomasky, speculate more on Palin's political future and a 2012 run for the Presidency in the closing forum of "Going Rouge: An American Nightmare," from OR Books. Comments and discussion are welcome though: After all we've seen this week, what is she up to? Is she running in 2012, or just trying to cash in?

The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution today which calls for U.N. member states to inspect all ships entering or leaving North Korea if there is a reasonable suspicion that the cargo contains banned nuclear or missile technology. Now, this mission will fall on a little know body, the PSI (Proliferation Security Initiative). The PSI, an activity launched in 2003, meets all the criteria progressive people have been promoting for a new international approach to the exercise of power--yet they are curiously mum about the merits of putting the PSI to work.

The PSI works mainly by sharing intelligence among the participating states, who patrol the seas and interdict ships that are suspected of carrying WMD, their delivery systems, and related materials

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Now that we're entering the Golden Age of Obamanian Socialism, we (you, actually) need some instruction on the concept of redistribution. The word is being thrown around loosely by addled minds on both sides of our political divide. As the only representative of the Spartacusbund on this hopelessly moderate web site, the task of providing enlightenment falls to me.

First we should note that our hero Karl Marx did not dwell on redistribution as an ethical policy to advance equity. For him the distribution of income over classes -- what most economists call the functional distribution of income -- was an analytical aspect of the laws of motion under Capitalism. Sure Marx supported obvious reforms such as a progressive income tax, but that was a subordinate feature of his work. Redistribution from rich to not-rich is a liberal and populist trip.

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When I heard about the flap regarding Governor Palin's inability to cite a Supreme Court case, I paused to reflect on how many case names I could come up with. After a period of some duration, which on television would have looked like an eternity, I came up with Brown v. Board of Education. So I don't put much in that flap. Its currency is yet another flag to the inanity of our campaign discourse, liberal edition.

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That is evidently what they are competing for, notwithstanding the unmistakable decline of the U.S.A. relative to the rest of the world in terms of economic, political, and military power.

I was impressed by both candidates, though I agree with neither. McCain clearly has his world view together and has honed his opinions on the full gamut of issues. (On foreign policy. On domestic he's a babbling idiot.) He happens to be disastrously wrong about all of them, but he knows what he knows. That's also the problem. From the view of the debate, you can't tell this guy anything. He's a major dick.

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Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard professor and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, says the U.S.A. needs a $1 trillion bailout.

Today the Bush Administration announced that a deal has been made. In return for a liquidity injection from the Peoples Republic of China and the Japanese Central Bank, the U.S. would change its name to the United Socialist States of America (USSA). Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea would be annexed by the PRC, while the Philippines, Indonesia, Hawaii, Malibu, and the Los Angeles Angels would merge with the Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere. Australia would be given over to the two nations as a dumping ground for waste disposal and malcontents. Mexico is reportedly interested in taking a minority share of the package in return for Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado.

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We recall with delight the G.O.P. claim that Sarah Palin is qualified in foreign policy because Alaska is somewhere near Russia. We have an equivalent, brain-dead assertion from John McCain. (By the way, have you heard he was a P.O.W.?) I must have blocked out the remark as a painful memory, but in one of the debates Gabby Hayes was asked whether the Fed had reduced interest rates sufficiently. Of course everyone realizes this is like asking Lassie to opine on Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind, but in the actual event the response was more stupid than anyone could have imagined. His response was:

"I would like the interest rate to be zero."

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John McCain's business advisor, Carly Fiorina, asserts that Sarah Palin is not qualified to run a major company. This is by way of discounting Barack Obama's experience.

But what about Ms Fiorina? Is she qualified to run a major company? She took over Hewlett Packard when its stock was 45.36. When she left it was 20.14, a performance of -56%. There was also that unpleasant business with corporate snooping. And laying off 7,000 employees. Sounds like the very model of a Republican titan of industry.

On the strength of these accomplishments, she arranged received $21 million in severance pay.

After she left the company apparently did relatively well. Another chapter in the annals of U.S. meritocracy.

You may have noticed the Capitalism, it doesn't work too good. This should not be good news for John McCain. But it isn't very good news for Barack Obama either, since the secret watchword for his economic policy is "nudge," whereas what capitalism needs is more like an ass-whippin. Obama has good and smart economists, but they are so square you could jab yourself on one of their sharp corners.

McClueless is entertaining. By the way, did you hear he was a P.O.W.? He is going to clean up Wall Street, and he wants to free the economy of burdensome regulation. At least, that is the ideology to which he apparently adheres. Free enterprise, individualism, small government, "laissez-faire."

Except the model towards which the U.S. system and its politicians incline, like flesh-eating zombies to a ripe Rotarian, is not laissez-faire at all. It is the unified machinations of big corporations, high finance, and big, bad government, also known as corporativismo. (Sounds better in the original Italian.)

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We are tremendously heartened by the choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for Vice President, since she will lead the Republican Party's march to Socialism. Her state government ranks Number 1 in spending per capita. The State has taken into its hands a good bit of the means of production, owning $28 billion in assets, as well as $36 billion in a "Permanent Fund." They return this hoard to the People, in the form of annual checks. In 2007 it was $1,654 for every man, woman and child, of all races, colors, creeds, sexual orientations, disability, genders, and views on evolution. Free money! You don't have to work for it!! What could be better? And where does all this dough come from, you might ask? The answer is, the state government taxes the bejesus out of its oil production. Obama's pissant windfall profits tax is a pimple on the arse of the Alaskan proletarian's ability to milk the profits of his petroleum reserves. His birthright, or if you move there, his squatter's right.

I have seen the future and it works.

This is tedious, but somebody should drive a stake through the heart of this newspaper's coverage of economics, especially the Federal budget. We are provoked by Lori Montgomery's latest breathless hysteria about budget deficits, which leads to a headline attacking Obama. In fact, one of the candidate's limited number (ahem) of redeeming qualities has been a disinclination to give over to deficit delirium.

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It emerges that Paris Hilton can articulate an energy policy better than the presidential candidate of the Republican Party. My respect for her has grown in leaps and bounds, so to speak, and if she needs any more policy advice I'm totally available.

On the nuke front, somebody should ask that silly little man what he would do with nuclear waste. Nobody should be allowed to advocate more nuclear power without being obliged to disclose a plan for disposing of the inevitable waste products. Where are you going to put it, how are you going to get it there. How about Arizona? It's like proposing specific tax cuts along with non-specific spending cuts, all the while trumpeting your intention to balance the budget.

A little more arcane but in the same vein: would the tribune of free markets eliminate any subsidies for nukes, including Federal coverage of liability in the event of accidents? And how would our addle-pated conservative improve our swiss-cheese system of regulation, to guard against accidents? After all, a nuclear mishap is not quite like a toxic Jalapeno pepper.

Belated Postscript: Don't let any pseudo-economist tell you a windfall profits tax is nutty. It doesn't solve a world of problems, but there is nothing wrong with it either. See Mark Thoma, Robert Waldmann, and Andrew Leigh for details.

P.P.S. Since people are saying my portrait frightens the children, I have submitted one with a more noble aspect.

Kidding! We kid the Obama people! We kid because we love! Ha-ha. We wouldn't vote for Nader if he peed a Starbucks double shot espresso roast with syrup and ice. As for Gabby Hayes, don't even ask.

But we are concerned. You could call us the campaign concern troll. Maybe we should start our own Obama Facebook group. Some sh*t really needs to be trolled, so a trolling we will go. Merrily we troll along. The object of our disaffection tonight is one Anthony Lake, who tries to make clear that the Obama Administration will be ready to go to war with Iran, if need be. Those last three words can bring us to a world of hurt.

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When John McCain does public policy, it's not a pretty sight. Children run and hide under the bed. Women play "Gloomy Sunday" on the old Victrola. Strong men look down and spit on the ground. John is tackling the growing scarcity of fossil fuels and global warming that could exterminate the human race. What's the answer? A prize for a better car battery.

Prizes can be good, as a substitute for patents and copyrights. In return for a prize, a discovery could be put in the public domain for use by all, as that Dean Baker person has explained. Not quite that much thought has gone into the McCain idea, however.

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[Note: The following is a sign-on letter to ABC to which I was a signer. I am posting it in my slot at TPMCafe to help circulate it, not because I played a lead role in drafting it.]

We, the undersigned, deplore the conduct of ABC's George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson at the Democratic Presidential debate on April 16. The debate was a revolting descent into tabloid journalism and a gross disservice to Americans concerned about the great issues facing the nation and the world. This is not the first Democratic or Republican presidential debate to emphasize gotcha questions over real discussion. However, it is, so far, the worst.

For 53 minutes, we heard no question about public policy from either moderator. ABC seemed less interested in provoking serious discussion than in trying to generate cheap shot sound-bites for later rebroadcast. The questions asked by Mr. Stephanopoulos and Mr. Gibson were a disgrace, and the subsequent attempts to justify them by claiming that they reflect citizens' interest are an insult to the intelligence of those citizens and ABC's viewers. Many thousands of those viewers have already written to ABC to express their outrage.

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Now we have facts:

"More than 10 million viewers tuned into Wednesday's Democratic debate on ABC, making it the most-watched debate of the primary election season.

The debate, the first to air on a weeknight on a broadcast network, attracted an average of 10.7 million viewers between 8 and 10 p.m., according to Nielsen Media Research.

The debate topped the "reality" fare of "Deal or No Deal" on NBC and "Big Brother" on CBS during the 8 p.m. hour."

So from ABC's perspective, and certainly for George S and Charles G, the raucous, murderous, sharp-edged, animalistic idea-free style worked perfectly -- unless Nielsen also reported that many people turned off during the debate. I bet that didn't happen. Like the crowds of the ancient Coliseum, millions watched to see if vulpine George or ursine Charles would slash or bash to political death either of the two gladiators, or whether the two would otherwise finally conclude their andabatarian struggle, live, on the studio stage, with one fallen and the other triumphant.

So, blame the audience, ABC is concluding. They watched it, so they must have wanted it the way we gave it to them.

A curious noise emanates from the great Southwest (probably just the cat), the conservative blogosphere is quite sure it’s never heard of this Ted Haggard fellow, and THE BIG 3 is back to a round number! The Midterm Roundup has run out of ideas for the final sentence of its intro and there’s still 4 mornings left! Suggestions appreciated!

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A curious noise emanates from the great Southwest (probably just the cat), the conservative blogosphere is quite sure it’s never heard of this Ted Haggard fellow, and THE BIG 3 is back to a round number! The Midterm Roundup has run out of ideas for the final sentence of its intro and there’s still 4 mornings left! Suggestions appreciated!

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