There are days . . . and yesterday was one of them.

You try going about your normal activities, and all you do is obsess over epic historical . . . stuff . . . crashing down everywhere around you. (And that doesn't even count the Tigers rolling over to the White Sox.) I mean, does anyone remember those gauzy golden days of just going to work and being distracted by nothing other than what to have for lunch?

This, kids, is one wild ride. The pagan union of right-wing troglodyte Republicans and Michael Moore Democrats sunk the $700 billion "bailout" (gotta get a more specific terminology there), and, as Charlie Gibson noted twice on his show last night, the market—you, me, AND the really rich clods who over-cooked this thing—lost $1.1 trillion in value . . . in one day. (By 6:40 p.m. or so, Chris Matthews was ranting about the Australian exchange cratering 4 percent in its opening minutes, promising another few hundred billion in losses here today.)

The spinmeisters for the two (not so popular) political parties immediately began selling their first drafts of history.

By far the least plausible was the Republicans' spin. As I understood the vote-assembling strategy, Minority Leader John Boehner (no tanning bed joke today) promised HIS PRESIDENT (Bush), HIS CANDIDATE (McCain), and HIS SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY (Henry Paulson) as well as the Democrats that he would deliver eighty votes in favor of the bill. Mixed with the Democrats' counting of their sure votes, that was supposed to have been enough to do the deal. Instead, claiming that Speaker Nancy Pelosi was mean to them, two-thirds of the Bush-McCain-Boehner troops voted against it, and it went down in flames. (The Democrats knew they had no chance with their ninety-four Michael Moore-types and told them to go ahead and "vote their conscience" . . . on the assumption that the combination of Bush, Paulson, and a fully engaged John McCain would deliver the eighty Republicans they had been promised. Oops.)

Here's a good post on the "whys" of who voted against the bill.

By the dinner hour, six hours after the bill exploded, along with our heads, we were into the fifth or sixth news cycle of the day and were getting heavy rotation of the video of Mitt Romney on The TODAY Show crediting McCain for being the key to successful passage of the big bailout bill and then McCain himself, out in Ohio (long ways from D.C., John), delivering a top contender for line of the day.

Said McCain:

"Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process. Now is not the time to fix the blame. It's time to fix the problem."

Please, someone diagram that remark for him.

Meanwhile, CBS let it be known that it has still more quotes from Sarah "Air Space" Palin and that it is planning to parcel them out Wednesday and Thursday, prior to the debate . . . for which she has been flown to Sedona to "cram" with McCain campaign gurus, Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt, . . . simultaneous with calls for her to bow out and "spend more time with her family" before she induces fatal cringing in hardcore Republicans such as Rich Lowry of the National Review and mainstream guys such as Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria.

And you did catch the LA Times story over the weekend where Palin thinks dinosaurs and people wandered around together 6,000 years ago? (As a believer that both creationism and "intelligent design" should be taught in schools, she, of course, has nothing on the guy she beat out for Veep, our own Tim Pawlenty.)

There's simply too much material out there right now. We have truly achieved "Future Shock" (Check out the trippy 1972 documentary hosted by Orson Welles, based on the classic best seller.). Clearly no one, not The Smartest Kids in the Room on Wall St. nor the fawning, sycophantic, so-called "business press" (which quite obviously hasn't come close to applying appropriate skepticism to the wildly successful characters it has covered), understood what was going on . . . until it was too late. Hell, my dog can come close to that.

I was struck by the number of times the phrase, "the problem here is . . . " popped up on Sunday's This Week with George Stephanopoulos. The panel of George Will, ex-Labor Secretary Robert Reich, former Speaker Newt Gingrich, and Washington Post Pulitzer Prize-winning financial columnist Steve Pearlstein (got to sign in) hit "the problem here . . . " button approximately twenty times. Check out the video. They were all verrrrry certain they had the bottom line explanation for what's going down.

It was, however, a better-than-average clutch of talking heads, lead by Will, whose head really is going to explode if his so-called conservative buddies start applying any more Swedish-style socialism to high finance. Watch the video, and when the conversation comes around to how much of the country—not just Wall St.—has been living beyond its means, Will gets off the line about how every politician uses the venerated Average American Family "balancing their checkbook" and "paying their bills" as an example of what the cash-shredding dingbats and scoundrels in D.C. need to do. Problem is—judging by the level of personal indebtedness and lacking of savings in the United States today—a more appropriate comparison would be to say that Wall St. and the federal government have pretty obviously taken their cues from you and me.

It's a shame our so-called leaders are apparently never capable of having the equivalent of "the drug talk" with us credit-kiting citizen types. But as we watch trillions a day melt off balance sheets and our dreams of that mythical "better life" getting pushed another ten years down the road, it'd be oddly reassuring if one of these guys (or gals) could suck it up and step up and explain that because we each in our own way—some small(er) and some on a gargantuan scale—have abetted the construction of a house of cards built on way too much fake/"perceived" value, the time has come for some serious changes.

My head might stop pulsing if I heard someone risk that. 

Even though the first impression polls gave Obama a "win" over McCain in the first debate, it didn't feel that way to me. If repetition is fundamental to successful advertising, McCain ate Obama's lunch.

For every time McCain declared that "Sen. Obama doesn't understand," or " . . . is naive," Obama should have—but didn't—rebut insinuations of naivete with . . . "failure of judgment" . . . the single most powerful and punchy rhetorical weapon in his "quiver" (as he did say).

These debates have almost no meaning to entrenched partisans. They/we long ago decided which way we were going in this election. Every day of the campaign and every minute of free national TV is about convincing the so-called "persuadables," otherwise known as the "knuckleheads" who "don't like" politics, don't pay much attention until a lot of obnoxious advertising starts interrupting CSI: Miami, and often end up being too busy to vote on election day anyway.

Frankly, I don't see how Obama could go wrong framing the entire campaign around "judgment." Pick a topic, and he has a straight-line case convincing the public that McCain has shown "failure of . . . ."

Iraq. A failure of judgment in supporting an unnecessary invasion that lacked even minimal coalition building.

Afghanistan. A failure of judgment in allowing resources to be pulled from a war that needed fighting to one that didn't. (And this gross over-stretching of the military from a guy who claims to know every nook, cranny, and code in the Pentagon and is SO sensitive to the "sacrifices" of military families.)

The economy. Twenty-six years of failed judgment arguing for less and less regulation of "financial instruments." Stuff so complex the Lehman Brothers of the world had to hire physicists to understand the algorithms driving the junk.

"Suspending his campaign" and pointlessly intruding on last week's "bailout" compromise. A failure of judgment and a startling example of McCain putting campaign—not "country"—first.

Sarah Palin. In the judgment of a seventy-two-year-old man with a history of melanoma, this person is qualified to be President of the United States? . . . at ANY TIME in our history, much less in an era when we are in a so-called "war of civilizations" with nuclear-armed terrorists and simultaneously teetering on the brink of financial collapse?

I pretty much made a fool of myself shouting, "failure of judgment, FAILURE OF JUDGMENT" at Obama every time he responded to McCain. But it never helped. Instead of a saying something punchy such as, "John, it's hard to take you seriously on how much you've traveled and all you say you know about the Pentagon when you've demonstrated so many failures of judgment at the most critical moments. I'm happy you're so worked up about $18 billion in earmarks. But considering the influence you say you have, you could have saved American taxpayers nearly $1 trillion by showing good judgment, by separating yourself from George W. Bush, and resisting the rush to war in Iraq. But you didn't. In fact, when it really counts, you never do."

Immediately post-debate, (ABC) George Stephanopoulos joked that Obama was probably already getting an earful from his campaign team about the number of times he said, "John McCain is right." Good God, man, let McCain tell everyone he's right. You stick to what he's done wrong . . . which is plenty.

The (NBC) Chuck Todds of the world have given Obama the benefit of the doubt, assuming that he saw Friday's debate as the first of three acts. (Four, assuming Brian Williams insists on coherent answers from both Joe Biden AND Sarah Palin Thursday night.) The expectation being that Obama will ramp up the Big Theme criticism of McCain more and more as we close in on November 4.

Republicans have an advantage over Democrats in this battle for the "persuadables" in that, historically, most so-called "independents" lean Republican. (The usual expectation is that close to 70 percent will vote Republican.) But also, as I say, being genuinely "persuadable" this late in the campaign, after everything that has gone for the last eight years, strongly suggests a crowd that never pays much attention . . . probably to anything other than football and cooking shows. While Democrats remain captive to their high-minded constituency, the one that values precision and something reasonably close to honesty in debates, Republicans in the age of Lee Atwater-to-Karl Rove-to-Steve Schmidt play the game strictly to win and adjust their rhetoric accordingly.

It's tremendously liberating. If you're not burdened by silly notions of shame, you really can claim anything, as McCain does when he presents himself as a "reformer" and a "maverick," or a "regulator" (for his eleventh-hour call for oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). Republicans know that potential voters who haven't paid attention until now aren't going to suddenly start doing their own brain work to find out if any of what they're hearing is true. (Which is why the Democrat has to slap it down then and there, while 100 million are watching.)

Democrats, Kerry and now Obama, give the "persuadable" public credit for way too much critical awareness. They respond to the most outrageous bulls**t with thoughtful, wonky answers, citing House bills and vetoes and votes on legislation so complicated most of Congress never read the damn things.

The great advantage here is that McCain's judgment has been so bad—precisely in matters of foreign affairs and military strategy where he claims to be so much better prepared—that Obama has no reason to inflate or hyperbolize anything. All he has to do is train himself to frame in an easily digestible way—"failure of judgment"—and say it repeatedly.

"This election is about judgment, and when you look at the truly epic disasters of George W. Bush's term in office, John McCain's judgment has failed this country over and over again."

Barack Obama has taken shots from Democrats for not having a killer instinct. It's part of his "too cool" problem. We saw it again this afternoon when Obama went over to the Mayflower Hotel and held a quick press conference. This was after the fiasco at the White House, where the usual House Republican "populists," essentially the same crowd that sabotaged George W. and McCain on immigration reform, threw a wrench in The Grand Bailout.

I'm not wild about this thing. Who is?  But by parceling out the dough in increments, adding serious oversight (as opposed the usual Bush Administration "voluntary oversight""), providing taxpayer equity, and prohibiting executive gaming of the pay packages, it's better than Henry Paulson's original three-page edict. By the way, how about this line in a Forbes story  on the bailout? 

" . . . some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

Inspires confidence, doesn't it?

Were I the candidate, and had I flown back to D.C. to show "bi-partisan" spirit on this astonishing rescue operation, I'd be mighty PO'd to have been forced to sit through what Newsweek's Howard Fineman and Politico's Roger Simon said Obama had to sit through. Namely, the latest group of neo-Gingrich/Rove/DeLay miscreants blowing a deal the adults in the room had spent a week putting together. All in a transparent attempt to create a political windfall . . . at the risk of full economic meltdown. Were I the candidate, there would have been FCC problems with at least six of the seven dirty words describing these cynical little . . . well, you can fill in the blanks. And I wouldn't have spared McCain a thrashing for not playing the seventy-two-year-old/twenty-six-year-veteran-of Congress/leadership card and telling these snakey little nobs to "shut the f**k up and get on board."

Of course, McCain would have first had to decide where he is on this thing. Is he for it as it has now been worked out by "King" Henry Paulson, Bush, Christopher Dodd, Barney Frank, etc? Or is he against it as represented by tanning-bed pitchman, House Minority Leader John Boehner and his rump posse? (Isn't part of leadership making up your mind about important things like this? Or at least offering specific direction on where you think it needs to go?)

But no. Obama did his "cool" thing. He talked about "not taking credit or placing blame" in order to reach a compromise. The only hint of what he was really thinking was when he got into that business about "presidential politics" not always being a constructive influence at delicate moments like today's big meeting. Dude, how about just once a two-by-four upside the head?

But this was the moment for which McCain "suspended" campaigning. Remember? He had to stop speechifying—and debating—in order to get back to D.C. and Bigfoot a resolution to this financial mess. Instead, by all reports, he had the exact opposite effect. Reports are he said virtually nothing. He certainly did not quell the House Republican uprising, which you have to assume he could have done had he said something like, "Look, I am now your leader, and I'm telling you to go along with me on this thing, or else." But again, since he hasn't made up his mind which way to go, he couldn't really insist on any direction. Therefore, the question is: Why go to D.C. at all?

And . . . did you read the "plan" offered by the House Republicans? Basically, their solution to an epic financial disaster sparked by non-existent to indifferent regulation was to suggest . . . you guessed it . . . more tax cuts and less regulation . . . you know, to spark "private investment." I mean, that concept has worked so well up until now.

As Reuters reported the story:

"The conservative group called for the U.S. government to offer insurance coverage for the roughly half of all mortgage-backed securities that it does not already insure.

"The Treasury Department, they said, should charge premiums to holders of those securities to finance the insurance.

"They also called for temporary tax cuts and regulatory relief for businesses. In addition, they said, financial institutions participating in their proposed program would have to disclose more about their mortgage asset holdings."

So McCain was essentially stiffed and left looking ridiculous by his own party in a situation where he took a very high-profile gamble on appearing "presidential." That's bad enough for one day.

But then, to truly stick a dagger in the day, his first major demonstration of presidential judgment . . . AKA Sarah Palin . . . managed to make us long for the eloquence of Dan Quayle with a breathtaking display of incoherence to questions posed by Katie Couric. As bad as the Putin-invading-her-"air space" stuff was, and needing to "get back" to Couric for an example of McCain ever regulating anything, did you/COULD you follow her answer to Couric's standard-issue question about the bailout package?

Couric: "Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas, and groceries? Allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?"

Palin: "That's why I say. I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in. Where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh, it's got to be about job creation, too. Shoring up our economy, and getting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade -- we have got to see trade as opportunity, not as, uh, competitive, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs created in the trade sector today. We've got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation."

Whatever she was saying she would have been more coherent and credible had she wrapped her head in aluminum foil and walked up Pennsylvania Avenue chanting, "Klaatu barada nikto!"

No wonder you've got people speculating that McCain wanted out of Friday's debate in order to re-schedule it for next week and blow-off Palin's tete-a-tete with Joe Biden . . . who has been busy being very much Joe Biden.

I don't know if McCain stiffing David Letterman last night was his campaign's "Walter Cronkite moment," but adding another belly flop splash from Sarah "Air Space" to being treated like dithering grampa at the family picnic by his own party warriors has to have the old fighter pilot in a foul mood tonight.

I guess Obama played it right. I mean, what do they always say? "When the other guy is shooting his own feet off, shut up and let him keep on doing what he's doing." 

So now John McCain wants a postponement of Friday's debate, supposedly so he and Barack Obama can get back to D.C. and get involved with this "bailout" package. Really? The percentage of Americans prepared to accept that may be lower than those who believe pixies guided the investment strategies of Wall St. banks.

This latest—let's call it "panicked"—stratagem on the part of McCain's neo-Rove team (guided by Fannie Mae lobbyist Rick Davis and Rove disciple Steve Schmidt) is so outrageously hapless, it can only be aimed at the most knuckled of the Republican party's knuckleheaded base. Upon hearing it, no one else could do anything but guffaw.

Does anyone really think McCain/Davis/Schmidt would be "suspending" the campaign and begging out of a debate if national polling hadn't swung dramatically around since last Friday? Or if the weird confluence of events and their own cynical political tactics hadn't placed McCain in the the Caesar-at-the-Colosseum position of being the one to decide, thumbs-up or thumbs-down, on the God almighty bailout? (Republican tacticians would love to vote "no" on the bailout, assuming it'll pass anyway, in which case  they can lay the coming brutal financial squeeze on the Democrats . . . and George W. But they can hardly do that if "their guy" goes along with it. Hence, McCain gets to decide.)

Even though this Friday's debate is supposed to be on the topic of foreign affairs, allegedly a McCain strong point (for which moderator Jim Lehrer says he's got all his questions mapped out and held closely to his chest), the presumption is it'll be only minutes into the face-off before Obama moves the discussion over to the topic the anticipated audience of 100 million-plus viewers is most interested in . . . namely, their money. If I were McCain, I'd want out of this thing, too. Maybe the whole election, the way it's going.

It goes without saying that neither candidate has any life-or-death reason to rush back to the Capitol. Any level of the bailout discussion can be conducted via phone or the Internet. (I'm assuming one of McCain's aides somewhere knows how to set up a video conference.) Until there's a bill that requires a vote, the two men can continue going about their business, which, correct me if I'm wrong, is convincing the voting public that they've got the chops—i.e. are prepared—to deal with scenarios such as this.

I spent the night at the Metrodome watching the Twins beat the loathsome White Sox. So I missed George W.'s speech (no doubt tremendously reassuring). Likewise, I haven't ingested my usual toxic stew of cable talk shows. That said, I'm willing to assert that this idea of Davis/Schmidt/McCain's to "suspend" his campaign is going to go down as one of the great campaign blunders of all time, perhaps the "Merkle's Boner" of modern politics. ("Merkle's Boner" . . . obscure baseball reference, Google it.)

It screams, "panicked wienie."

With the likes of George Will eviscerating McCain for lacking presidential temperament and even Fox News and Bill O'Reilly . . . Bill friggin' O'Reilly . . . ripping McCain for the ludicrous way they're maintaining a bubble around Sarah Palin, the McCain campaign is entering uncharted waters with the old and new media.

For a generation at least, the American press has been rightly and roundly criticized for allowing itself to be played for "fair-minded" chumps by conscienceless political operatives such as Lee Atwater, Michael Deaver, and Karl Rove. The putzy "old-school" rules that big "J" journalism lives by have provided sharks, such as those in that crowd, easy cover by routinely applying bland "balance" to the most outrageous political ploys. Put another way, whatever atrocity a ruthless tactician might commit against the truth—think Bush vs. McCain in South Carolina 2000, the Swift Boaters, etc.—the press will invariably include a dimwitted reference to some (usually hapless) strategy the Democrats have tried to pull off and leave the public with the impression that "both sides are equally bad."

But in 2008, the rise of the Internet and liberal cable "news" is seriously blunting these tactics. By every indication, the McCain team has grossly over-played the time-honored Atwater-to-Rove tactic of saying whatever it takes about yourself and your opponent to win an election. This time around, fact checkers are all over the place, and the exponential growth in "new media" reporting and punditry—dramatically counterbalancing the self-satisfied and often imprudent "fair-mindedness" of the primary media—is constantly reminding an intensely interested public how egregious, baldfaced, and clumsy some of these . . . lies . . . (Obama peddling sex education to kindergarteners, Palin saying "no to the bridge to nowhere," the "lipstick" BS) . . . truly are.

Knowing a thing or two about the universal "media mind," let me tip you to the real trigger for derision and blowback, such as we're seeing more and more of here with McCain and Palin.

The media are chumps for . . . winners.

Karl Rove got away with his wretchedly dishonest tactics because in the end he won. Most reporters see politics as a game to be observed dispassionately. Oh, they claim to be "passionate about politics." But what they're passionate about is the contest. It's like watching baseball. Winning is what counts, and rather than apply a "subjective," "biased" moral standard to flagrantly heinous campaign tactics, they grudgingly report the punch-counterpunch, admiring the "bare-knuckle" tactics required to achieve victory, no matter how appalling the stench of dishonesty and what such tactics do to the fabric of a decent society.

In McCain's case, with his teetering, doddering, and staggering the past week trying to say the "right thing" . . . hell, anything coherent . . . about the financial meltdown, the media is smelling . . . a loser. (Tuesday McCain said he hadn't even read Paulson's notorious three-page proposal/dictum? Are you kidding me? Three pages? $700 billion?) More to the point, a panicked, frantic, clueless loser. American media hates losers, far worse than it hates liars and thieves.

The transformation of John McCain, from a guy most Americans—and most of the media—admired for his war record and his easy, open give-and-take to this caricature of a stumbling, wild-swinging brawler is quickly approaching pathetic. What has happened to this guy?

Personally, I have a very hard time believing McCain is calling the shots in his own campaign. (If true, what does that portend for a McCain administration? More governance a la Cheney-Rove?) No man secure in his own sense of himself—at age seventy-two!—could put himself in the unflattering, undignified light McCain has been in for the last two-and-a-half weeks. As a matter of basic instinct, he couldn't do it.

David Gergen, advisor to Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton and who now seen frequently as part of CNN's sprawling panel of talking heads, has never been my idea of a go-to guy for cutting the bulls**t. Gergen's line of wisdom is pretty deeply steeped in maintaining traditional lines of power and authority, which may have been OK for FDR but has been in need of serious reform . . . hell, revolution since the start of the Vietnam War.

But I spent a chunk of Friday night listening to Gergen speak at the Walker Art Center. He had been flown in by local Ameriprise financial advisor David Trysk & Associates, and somehow I got on the guest list. With my titanic portfolio on the verge of the same abyss as everyone else in the (deeply) ironically named William McGuire Theater (here's betting good old Dr. Bill survives what's coming just fine), I was interested in what case Gergen could possibly make for maintaining the status quo.

Gergen has put on these shows many times before. He knows how to walk the thin nonpartisan line. That's usually what annoys me about him. But he was a lot more compelling in long form than he is in forty-five seconds with Wolf Blitzer or Anderson Cooper.

He claimed he hasn't yet made up his mind between John McCain and Barack Obama. But the structure of his speech suggested otherwise. He first set up his admiration for McCain's sense of honor and belief in the great traditions of American life. Then he applied criticism in the form of a kind of sepia-tinted lens of anachronism to McCain's fighter pilot, shoot-first decision-making style, which, as Gergen sees it, manifests itself in impatience with the time required for (re-)building allied coalitions for financial stability and crime/terror-fighting in our fully-wired global community. The "decent guy, but . . . " structure with references to Obama's more deliberative "Team of Rivals" style (Doris Kearns Goodwin's book on Lincoln) implied that even he, David Gergen, as densely woven a piece of D.C. cloth as anyone, realizes that the old regimes—of both finance and foreign policy—have now failed miserably and conclusively and must be replaced. But that's just my interpretation.

As of Friday night, the form of the taxpayers' gargantuan . . . socializing . . . bailout of Wall St. was only just being understood. The reaction from people such as Robert Reich and Paul Krugman—people who have issued repeated warnings about precisely the kind of collapses we watched last week—would come the next day and Sunday. As of Friday, all we knew was that this was going to the biggest shift of public capital for private relief in the history of the world. I certainly had no idea that a key facet of the plan, such as it is, would allow Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, former chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, i.e. a major Wall St. player, free reign to do as he sees fit with all that money with no Congressional oversight or even an accounting of his decision-making for ninety days.

The exact language: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

Are you kidding me? $700 billion to $1 trillion entrusted to the same crowd that has doubled the national debt in seven years and has basically started and fought a $1 trillion war on off-budget money it is borrowing from the Chinese? . . . and no one gets to ask any impertinent questions much less say, "No f**king way."

As Gergen talked about the inevitability of a "New Order" coming—although perhaps after the old guard, preying on the terror a financial meltdown strikes in large numbers of voters, wins one last American election—I laughed to myself at the heavy play of financial service-provider commercials on political talk shows. Big Wall St. firms literally underwrite network punditry. But now . . . all that "trust" and "caring" and "intelligence at work for you" stuff. Who can watch even Sam Waterston . . . Jack McCoy! . . . without throwing up a little bit?

It has been a very bad decade for the old U.S. of A. But until this "sub-prime" thing started stinking up the place (and this meltdown is about much more than bad mortgages), I was confident that our rapacious capitalist bastards were the best on the planet. But now . . . even they are revealed to be yet another pack of bungling crooks.

Gergen's main point was what he sees as the four critical issues—crises—facing the next president.

As he put it, "Normally a new president might have to deal with one of these. But the next president is going to have to face all four at once."

First was putting "our financial house in order." This means not just bailing out Wall St. but getting the cost of health care under control . . . coughbillmcguirecough . . . before getting a knee operation beats gross financial sector fraud and malfeasance in bankrupting us first.

Second was controlling "loose nukes" in the hands of everyone but particularly the Pakistanis. (Gergen believes terrorists will "test the new president in the first ninety days" of the next administration.)   

Third was controlling all the volatile antipathies in the Middle East, which requires a far more committed coalition of allies than we took into Iraq. That 90 percent U.S., 9.9 percent British, and .00001% Cameroonian thing ain't going to cut it anymore.

And fourth was global climate change.

(I know, nothing about stopping gay marriage or illegal immigration. How very odd.)

Gergen's sober note was still ricocheting around my few remaining undamaged neurons when I got home and found an e-mail from a friend mentioning that author Naomi Klein had been on Bill Maher's HBO show. I read Klein's book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism last month, and as the stunning-formlessness-of-this-astonishing-blank-check idea started sinking in, with even George Will . . . George Will . . . calling it "socialism," I'm now as impressed by Klein's prescience as I am by her argument.

And this isn't socialism like the Swedes where they get something for the money they hand over to the government: you know, decent health care and education. Huh uh. This is American socialism, where those of us below the level of a Carlyle Group hedge fund manager get nothing . . . zip . . . other than the bill for the casino operation the "deregulation" crowd (same as the cynical "Government isn't the solution to our problem, government is the problem" crowd) has allowed to run amuck on Wall St.

At its essence, Klein argues that every time there is a cultural shock—9/11, Katrina, and now this meltdown—the majority of the public, overwhelmed by something uglier, nastier, and far more real than American Idol—goes into a kind of shock and either permits or ignores the grossest manipulations of its "leaders" in government and other offices of high power. As we, the public and the press, take our eyes off the ball to get all maudlin, self-pitying, and sentimental, the sharks, AKA the smartest kids in the room, abetted by the usual "small government" crowd, seize the opportunity to get away with major, highly self-serving shifts in law they never could if we—or the press—were paying attention.

As Cokie Roberts . . . D.C. power toady Cokie Roberts . . . said on the same Sunday morning show as Will, it's enough in a situation like this meltdown, where the debt we'll be taking on to "save" Wall St. pretty much blows any chance of getting health care reform, that "conspiracy"-minded people might start thinking this was the plan all along. That is, to so severely cripple the next president with debt that no real changes are possible.

Here's Klein going at it with uber-blogger Andrew Sullivan on Maher's show. Here's Maher interviewing her a year ago. Here's Klein on BBC Newsnight last week. And here is part one of her six-part talk on "The Shock Doctrine" up in Vancouver.

The "shock" is set up this time so that not a day can be lost deliberating possible alternatives to the $1 trillion Paulson plan. And, as with 9/11, the usual pressure is already on skeptics (public and press) to do the prudent and patriotic thing and go along with whatever our "leaders" propose. So it will be a major test of both the Democrats' and media's cojones to stand up and remind the shocked public that we've been down this road with this crowd way too often and that this is much too big of a blank check for us to say again, "We trust you to do the right thing."

A lot of questions have to be asked—and fast.

Here's a (long) set of rules that should be applied to the bailout.

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, "Our [current] leaders aren't the solution to our problem. They are the problem."

That New Order can't get here fast enough, and if it comes with a thick stack of indictments, all the better.

I know shouldn’t wade into this. But as a mere blogger, a lowly life form whose thought processes are not subject to the mediation and groupthink of a journalism bureaucracy, I just have to go on record saying that I haven’t been able to raise much genuine outrage over the Nicaragua-under-Somoza police tactics deployed against protesters and “anarchists” during the Republican National Convention. Sure we looked bad. But everyone knew it was coming.

My usual lefty cronies are indignant, pointing out that the number of arrests in St. Paul and Minneapolis exceeded those in Chicago in ’68, and howling about the treatment of journalists and innocents who got sideways with authorities in their black cyber-ninja gear who were so obviously overreacting to the slightest offense against . . . well, police state decorum.

This inability to achieve outrage has something to do with an admittedly cynical attitude toward mass public theater of all kinds. Whether it’s large white Republicans chanting, “Drill, baby drill!” for their 40 million ill-informed ilk at home and welcoming Sarah Palin like the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan or “anarchists” with their ironically quaint “whole world is watching” chant, trying to recreate a passing semblance of Chicago ’68, both acts are pageants of calculated overreaching if only because both exist solely for the television cameras. Without TV, the few Republicans and anarchists who truly believe you need four days and nights of orchestrated and tightly scripted ritual to anoint or vilify a candidate could have met over lunch at Mickey’s.

Don’t get me wrong. Like the bumper sticker says, if you’ve been paying attention the last eight years, you have every right to be outraged, and the gathering of 2,000 of the biggest offenders against common sense and a culture of accountability and fairness is one hell of a good reason to drive to Minnesota and yell your lungs out. But police “overreaction” was heavily advertised, absolutely guaranteed, and essential to the protesters getting any attention for their arguments.

More to the point, police “overreaction” was essential to getting the kind of camera time required to register a statement against “the man” or “men” and their trophy wives inside the Xcel.

I ran into St. Paul mayor Chris Coleman at the Science Museum on the last night of the RNC and jokingly asked him if anybody told him he looked like Dick Daley. He may have thought that was funny the first time he heard it. But I think I was about 400th in line with that gag.

What I did tell him was what I—Mr. Edina Suburbia—understood from everything that the police/Feds/ninjas were saying prior to the RNC was that nothing beyond the tightest limits of permits was going to be allowed and that when—not “if”)—the inevitable “troublemakers” broke through the lines, they would be met with massive “overreaction." Coleman naturally flinched at the “overreaction” line. Even today he prefers something less pejorative. But come on, Mayor, just between us, “overreaction” was always the operative strategy and clear message.

Through the usual official gobbledygook the warning to protesters was, “We’ve been given $50 million worth of GI Joe/ninja toys and overtime, and by God, we’re going to use it the first time any of you knuckleheads so much as tosses a Snickers wrapper outside your scheduled route.”

And as I say, no protest organizer worth his or her media chops would want it any other way. As it was, “The whole world” watched Sarah Palin, not the protesters. But no one outside of St. Paul would have known there were protests at all if not for the feds/cops/ninjas setting off tear gas and collaring a few high-profile (Amy Goodman) activists. Put another way, from the protesters' perspective: Mission Accomplished.

Maybe someday, months or years from now, over drinks at the St. Paul Grill, the good mayor will concede that “overreaction” was the basic game plan. But he obviously isn’t there yet. But with the Republicans and the Feds having left town, Coleman might start testing language that at least concedes the most obvious fact. Namely, that the display of overwhelming martial intimidation made both Denver and St. Paul look like, as I say, Orwellian-dipped banana republics. It may have been efficient, but it sure as hell wasn’t pretty.

A more interesting facet of the RNC protests was the near total lack of “dialogue” on Twin Cities media. Since I was in the RNC bubble most of the time, I wasn’t monitoring who was or wasn’t getting air time on what show. After the fact, I called around to the usual radio suspects, checking to see which stations and shows bothered (i.e. "dared") bring anyone from any organized protest group on the air so listeners could at least get clear about the grievances involved.

Since TV, with its ten-second “interviews” is a non-factor in “dialogue" and since most local radio is just knuckleheaded-to-sappy filler for advertising, I thought MPR, really the only broadcaster Minnesotans can go to for anything remotely resembling an uninterrupted discussion of issues, would have made a point to offer their listeners/"members" a fair interaction with protest leaders. Unfortunately, calls to MPR news director Chris Worthington and MPR’s publicity department went unanswered.

I’m giving MPR the benefit of the doubt on this since it would be a pretty egregious lapse in journalistic judgment NOT to have offered a “dialogue” with some protest leader somewhere. But since MPR has declined to confirm its diligence in this matter, we are left to wonder if its idea of “civic mindedness” extended no further than City Hall.

Based on what I did hear, various police and government authorities were all over MPR’s air before, during, and immediately after the RNC. St. Paul police chief John Harrington, who is exceptionally good on his feet, had close to a half-hour the day after to self-assess police performance. (News flash: It was fair and appropriate.)

What I’m getting at here is a clear pattern of business-to-business cooperation between local media and the police but not so much in the way of (brave) journalistic inquiry into the root issues of those out protesting. The suspicion—suspicion, I say—is that no local broadcaster was prepared to take the blowback from either the public or police authorities by allowing protest leaders airtime to speak their peace.

Joe Anderson, Dan Barreiro’s producer over at KFAN, said no such persons darkened KFAN's air. Ditto on Chad Hartman's show. Likewise there was no talking with “commie, anarchist bastards” (a producer’s joking reference) over at AM 1500’s Bob Davis or Joe “Soochie Boy” shows. (The thought of Soucheray “dialoguing” with a Pink Lady for a half-hour is so funny, I’d pay $20 to watch.) Forget KTLK.

Neither did any protester of any stripe make Don Shelby’s WCCO show, which is disappointing since Don at least makes regular claims to proper journalistic inquiry. In fact, as far as I can tell, only WCCO’s Jack Rice dared (because courage is what this is really all about) bring on spokespeople for groups such as Iraq Veterans for Peace, the Pink Ladies, etc. (Unlike MPR, which purports to standards of accountability and transparency, producers for AM 1500, WCCO, KFAN, and KTLK spoke freely and openly about their RNC guests.)

The picture here is fairly clear. The RNC, with its promotional potential ( . . . money) for our cities, combined with over-the-top police state preparation and intimidation, appears to have cowed not just politicians but also quite a few self-professed brave media voices into avoiding anything that could be construed as consorting with or encouraging the enemy.

The “enemy” being any organized citizen group sufficiently outraged to come in here and risk gas and arrest for their cause . . . and the cameras.

There is a lot of subjectivity to the objectivity of "Big J" journalism.

For example, I watched Charlie Gibson's interview with Sarah Palin last night (more tonight) and did not regard Palin's declaration, "I'm ready" (meaning to be vice president a heartbeat away . . .), was the big, central, key takeaway news nugget of the night. Silly me, I took her brave assertion that she can do the job (I'm not sure what she thinks the job is) as nothing different than a hoary "Ready to Lead!" campaign ad every candidate runs.

Seriously folks, is there anyone running out there who thinks they're "not ready?"

Obviously I'm not a "Big J" journalism icon because both The New York Times (front page, below the fold) and the Star Tribune (running the same Times story much larger and above the fold), thought otherwise. Above anything else Palin said, her assertion that, "I'm ready" was what each paper deemed headline newsworthy. Really?

(The Strib website links to an AP story on the interview, not the Times story it ran in the dead tree edition.)

Now, there's plenty of blog fodder in the Star Tribune playing provincial translator tower for The New York Times. This morning's Palin story, written by Times veteran Jim Rutenberg . . . who watched on TV like everyone else . . . required no rarefied access or high-level of sourcing. There is no reason why the Strib couldn't have assigned one of its own reporters to produce a story of their own for this morning's paper. But in the parlance of our bare-boned times, this Palin business doesn't meet the "local, local" criteria vital to the survival of local newspapers. (I mean, you don't hear anyone talking about Palin around the Twin Cities, do you?)

In my blogging-in-pajamas-in-parents'-basement view, I tend to define "news" in terms of information that is "new," revelatory, and to some extent unprecedented. There are other criteria, but those will do.

In that context, Palin clearly having no idea what "The Bush Doctrine" is or what it means—you know, that boring pointless stuff about believing we have a right to attack anyone we think might be thinking of attacking us some time in the future—was far more "newsy" than her insisting, "I'm ready." Or, if not the Bush Doctrine business, maybe the conflation of fighting in Iraq to defeat those who attacked us on 9/11 (something even Bush has stopped trying to sell) or that heavily practiced mantra about not "second-guessing" Israel [the evangelical from nowhere must reassure the Israel lobby]. All or any of those struck me as grist for a more valid and relevant next-day headline than "I'm ready."

Further proof of liberal media bias, obviously.

In fairness to The New York Times, its editors did managed to squeeze the two following paragraphs on to its front page. Referring to her declaration of "readiness":

"It was perhaps the most confident answer she supplied in a sometimes tense and generally probing interview with Mr. Gibson. It was her first session with a major news organization since she joined Mr. McCain’s Republican ticket two weeks ago and was immediately transformed from an obscure, first-term governor to a national political star.

"At times visibly nervous, at others appearing to hew so closely to prepared answers that she used the exact same phrases repeatedly, Ms. Palin most visibly stumbled when she was asked by Mr. Gibson if she agreed with the Bush doctrine. Ms. Palin did not seem to know what he was talking about. Mr. Gibson, sounding like an impatient teacher, informed her that it meant the right of “anticipatory self-defense.”

The Star Tribune rearranged those, um, pertinent, relevant observations by Rutenberg off page one to page thirteen.

The Strib's "edit" of The Times's story also deleted these two graphs:

"Ms. Palin came into the interview with heavy preparation from Mr. McCain’s top political and policy advisers, many of whom accompanied her home to Alaska, where Mr. Gibson will be holding a series of question-and-answer sessions with her through Friday afternoon.

"The McCain campaign has kept Ms. Palin away from reporters and off the interview circuit traditionally traveled by vice-presidential nominees, but was under pressure to place her before a nationally recognized journalist. There were conflicting signals from the campaign about whether it would consider Mr. Gibson’s interview session the first of many or one of the few."

The Strib did, however, repeat on its front page . . . above the fold ..  . in bigger type . . . her assertion that "I'm ready."  Did you all see that?

Somewhere it would be . . . legitimate, relevant, and appropriate . . . for a "Big J" news organization to consider publishing a perspective along the lines of, say, author James Fallows, who I suspect knows a lot more about China and Russia beyond the fact that "you can see Russia from Alaska, you know."

Writing on his blog for Atlantic magazine this morning, Fallows says . . .

"Each of us has areas we care about, and areas we don't. If we are interested in a topic, we follow its development over the years. And because we have followed its development, we're able to talk and think about it in a "rounded" way.

"Here's the most obvious example in daily life: Sports Talk radio.

"Mention a name or theme -- Brett Favre, the Patriots under Belichick, Lance Armstrong's comeback, Venus and Serena -- and anyone who cares about sports can have a very sophisticated discussion about the ins and outs and myth and realities and arguments and rebuttals.

"People who don't like sports can't do that. It's not so much that they can't identify the names -- they've heard of Armstrong -- but they've never bothered to follow the flow of debate. I like sports -- and politics and tech and other topics -- so I like joining these debates. On a wide range of other topics -- fashion, antique furniture,  (gasp) the world of restaurants and fine dining, or (gasp^2) opera -- I have not been interested enough to learn anything I can add to the discussion.  So I embarrass myself if I have to express a view.

"What Sarah Palin revealed is that she has not been interested enough in world affairs to become minimally conversant with the issues. Many people in our great land might have difficulty defining the "Bush Doctrine" exactly. But not to recognize the name, as obviously was the case for Palin, indicates not a failure of last-minute cramming but a lack of attention to any foreign-policy discussion whatsoever in the last seven years."

"Big J" newspapering regards that sort of thing as subjective editorializing, which it is. But what do you call the choice of, "I'm ready" as the headline essence of last night's interview if not "subjective?"

The takeaway from this rant is that with its choice of "news" in the first interview with this indisputably unique candidate for vice president . . . (of the United States, not the Wasilla school board) . . . The Times, followed by the Strib, made the decision to draw an editorial circle around a politician's entirely predictable, routine assertion of competence rather than risk the appearance of subjectivity with a headline distilling what was legitimately newsworthy about the interview.

To put a finer point on it, if either Barack Obama, Joe Biden, or John McCain had gone deer-in-the-headlights over a definition of The Bush Doctrine, would either newspaper have run a headline the next morning ignoring that startling nugget of news in favor of something that blandly echoed the candidate's belief that they are "ready," evidence to the contrary?

Let's call a pig a pig here. It's a double standard. And like so much other timidity and anxious calculation, it doesn't speak well for what's left of "The Big J." 

ABC anchor Charlie Gibson is assuring skeptics that his two-day field trip with Sarah Palin comes with no preconditions or limitations . . . to which Gibson's skeptics are muttering, "Right Charlie, other than what you impose on yourself."

I'm not one of the Chicken Littles buying tickets for Tasmania in expectation of a McCain victory in November. As NBC's Chuck Todd said last night, analyzing the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll (that still has Obama up by two), all the fundamentals of this race continue to tilt in the Democrats' favor—the 11 million newly registered voters being just one of them. True, the catalytic effect Palin has had on a certain slice of female voters—older, blue collar, white—is impressive. But as Todd pointed out, we went through this in 1984 with Geraldine Ferraro's first week out of the box. Once reality set in, the buzz faded, and Ronald Reagan won forty-nine out of fifty states. (The wild card is that Ferraro was not an ideologue, personally guided by God, thereby mitigating any blunder she ever made.)

Having witnessed the Palin "effect" firsthand at the Xcel last week, I have to tell you the most apt comparison that crossed my mind was American Idol. Watching the Republicans react to Palin—whom 99 percent of them knew nothing about—zero—was like watching one of these massively hyped prime-time talent shows. A stranger from nowhere appears, and if she looks good and hits the right notes, she instantly becomes your emotional favorite, the vessel into which you pour all your uncritical hopes and dreams. As Americans forever treading water in a regenerating sea of mass-marketed celebrities, we've seen this pop-culture phenomenon hundreds of times before. Hell, we saw it in the run up to the "eagerly anticipated" presidential run of . . . Fred Thompson. He was the last Next Great Standard Bearer of Conservative Values, if I remember correctly.

For all the shots at Barack Obama's "messiah" status, the . . . fact . . . remains that he has been an extraordinarily visible, accessible, regularly interrogated and scrutinized public figure now for more than two years. If you "don't know anything about him," you're either lying or hopelessly clueless. No doubt there are thousands of people investing ridiculously high hopes in Obama, but at this point, his appeal has at least much to do with serious bedrock critical assessments as starstruck delusion. We know what he thinks, and how he thinks. We've seen his "judgment" tested on and off the campaign trail.

I accept the religious-like hysteria over these flaring pop idols as a wearying facet of American culture. It is worse now with the segregating partisan technology of cable news and radio frequencies, each of which can serve up precisely "the facts" its listeners choose to hear. As a result, someone like Palin can accelerate from dead-stop anonymity to wall-to-wall ubiquity literally in the course of several hours. What's wearying is, as I say, the stunning lack of critical thinking. Picking a pop idol, I don't give a damn. But vice president to a seventy-two-year-old man with a history of melanoma—I give a big damn.

Where Charlie Gibson comes in is that we expect better from the press than following the marketing cues. Or at least we did.

I don't want to go all Grand Unifying Theory and macro here, but a significant facet in the declining consumption of "mainstream" news is that, I dare say, millions of regular, serious news consumers, people who regard accurate information as a dietary staple, know they have not been served well throughout the past decade. With TV networks and newspapers caught in the death grip of "shareholder expectations," journalistic courage—of the kind that dares to call out a president with 90 percent approval ratings for a transparently misguided march to war—has not been in anything remotely like sufficient supply.

Major media's timid pursuit of what is true, accurate, and relevant, as opposed to cheap and easy blanket coverage of how spin is playing in the marketplace, gives serious, critical-thinking news consumers every reason to look elsewhere—the Internet—for relevant information.

As far as I can tell, Gibson and ABC beat out Katie Couric and CBS for the first (and quite possibly the last) interview with Palin. I see no one doubting that the McCain strategy will be to sequester her from comprehensive press inquiry as long as they can get away with it. If she "passes" the test with Gibson, there'll be no reason at all to risk her again at least until her October 8 debate with Joe Biden.

My argument last week was that this strategic parceling of someone who could be President of the United States itself rises to the level of a bona fide campaign issue. As in: What legitimate reason could there be for one of four principal candidates to be held to a completely different standard and allowed to be "presented" like a pop idol inside a controlled security bubble? More to the point, it is entirely valid for Gibson and David Gregory, Andrea Mitchell, Candy Crowley, and on and on to hammer this point . . . until Palin plays by the same rules as everyone else.

But that pushes both the envelopes of "objective journalism" and the comfort level of commercial media. There would be blowback after all. You will be accused of "sexism," not showing "deference," and "bias."

Gibson, tainted by his cliched, tendentious line of questioning in April's Obama-Clinton Pennsylvania Primary debate, was seen as the safest choice for her first foray in front of a network anchor. (Couric, smarting from not getting a moderator role during the primary season, and likely eager to assert her "tough gal" bona fides, would neutralize the "gender card" McCain's team is calculating it can play for at least two months. Reviled NBC was a non-starter, and FoxNews, the GOP house organ, would only aggravate assertions of "bubble gal."  It had to be Gibson.)

The way these things usually go, the anchor interviewer actually asks most of the hot-button questions .  . . and having done so declares his job done well.

But the trick—the essential key to truth seeking—is persistence, as in follow-ups to follow-ups. Tim Russert always asked good questions. But he was a captive of his well-prepared list. (That and his chumminess with every veteran D.C. politician.) Once he got an answer, no matter how ludicrously boilerplate, he too often accepted it and moved on. For the sake of his own reputation, if not an informed electorate, Charlie Gibson, knowing he may very well be American and international journalism's only chance to examine the depth of Palin's thinking on vital subjects, had better be prepared to play a significantly different game than he usually does.

The best quote of the day may be this, (drawn from a Washington Post story):

John Feehery, a Republican strategist, said the campaign is entering a stage in which skirmishes over the facts are less important than the dominant themes that are forming voters' opinions of the candidates.

"The more the New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there's a bigger truth out there and the bigger truths are she's new, she's popular in Alaska and she is an insurgent," Feehery said. "As long as those are out there, these little facts don't really matter."

For now, there appears to be little political reason to back down. A Washington Post-ABC News poll taken Sept. 5 to Sept. 7 found that 51 percent of voters think Obama would raise their taxes, even though his plan would actually cut taxes for the overwhelming majority of Americans. Obama has proposed eliminating income taxes on seniors making less than $50,000 a year, but 41 percent of those seniors say their income taxes would go up in an Obama administration.

As they have for a generation, Republicans are betting enough Americans care more about their emotional "feel" for a candidate than any voting record or qualifications. And there is no question there are millions of likely voters who make crucial decisions on exactly that basis. But for those who don't— for those who still watch network news—Charlie Gibson needs to insist on an extraordinary level of truthfulness and disregard the inevitable criticism that he is being too tough, i.e. "sexist," toward a woman.

Personally, I don't believe he can do that.

The Anchorage Daily News offered a series of questions it'd like to hear Palin answer.    

We have a winner in our (possibly first annual) "Can You Out Kersten-Kersten Contest".

Charlie Quimby, well-known local wordsmith, agreed to be identified and issued the following statement:

"My slim victory points up the dilemma that Al Franken faces as a satirist trying to communicate to Minnesotans about Norm Coleman. Does he go for the head-on attack, the salacious satire or the almost-loving parody?"

If this contest is any indication, he's slightly better off with door number three.

I must also thank Katherine Kersten for making this all possible. I'm not sure I out-Kerstened the master/mistress. I just wrote about a subject she hasn't covered yet with all the Kersteness at my disposal."

The voting—with its suspicions of "irregularities"—was subjected to intense examination. We thought of flying Jimmy Carter in but eventually decided we could handle the recount over beers at Grumpy's.

Mr. Quimby, and perhaps his entourage, will soon be enjoying a $100 gift certificate at r.Norman's, on 7th and Hennepin. We thank him and all who took part. As Quimby suggests, it may not be possible to truly outdo a master, but many tried and several came close enough to set off neurological spasms in our judges.

The three finalists' entries are posted under "I Couldn't Have Said It Better," to the right.

[NEW PHOTOS FROM THE CLOSING NIGHT OF THE RNC.]

With the chant of, "Drill baby, drill!" still reverberating in my ears ... wait, I'm having a deja vu moment, wasn't that the same chant from Day #3?

I haven't decided what gets a bigger roar out of your average Republican, the words "community organizer", "no taxes" or anything related to drilling where no derricks exist today. (Like dogs marking their territory, I'm developing a theory that Republicans like to drill just to let other predators know who the alpha is in the 'hood.)

Anyway, that, as they say in Hollywood is a wrap. They have come. They have roared their approval for a kind of hedge fund version of "Leave It to Beaver", and now they're gone. We have 61 days to decide who is going deliver "change". The POW and the "pistol-packin' mama", or the "community organizer" and the guy "who has never made an executive decision in his life". Some things really are that simple.

As I walked back to my car last night a guy in an apron was out on the sidewalk waving RNC evacuees into the huge tented garden Cossetta's had set up for all that windfall business we heard so much about in the months leading up to the invasion of "rich, white oligarchs" as "The Daily Show" puts it. Like every night of the RNC, Cossetta's giant tent was one-tenth full. (The night before a garage band was up on their temporary stage pounding out Neil Young's "Keep on Rockin' in the Free World", as beefy white banker-looking guys puffed on Rush Limbaugh-sized Cuban cigars. Not exactly what Neil had in mind, I'm thinking.)

Stories are already circulating that that windfall was anything but. I'm guessing Cossetta's will be over at City Hall today demanding their $2500 4 a.m. liquor "fee" back.

It was a forlorn scene. But I needed a slice for the road. There was no one in line. 99% of the RNC crowd had poured out of the Xcel, loaded directly on to their buses and shot off to parties in Minneapolis, Bloomington, wherever, or, judging by the back-up of buses at MSP International, directly to planes home. But there was Sen. Norm Coleman. As I mentioned yesterday I've been tipped that there are some hard feelings in the air because of something either I said, or was said here by "others". I told him our mutual friends, the Wilseys ... of Summit Ave. ... are convinced I've ripped him bad.

"That's what I hear," he said. "That's what I hear."

"It had to be somebody else," I told him. But really, Senator, Sarah Palin? Do you think that act is going to play anywhere other than in the GOP bubble? "Look," said Norm, "she brings a lot of energy to the party. You heard her speech last night, right? There are folks up in International Falls and Warroad and places like that all across the country who relate to her and her life-story."  Uh, huh. I don't doubt that. But, you know, qualifications? "She's smart and you'll see, she's savvy, too."

Ooooookay. "And McCain, tonight. How do you give a speech like that with the economy on people's minds the way it is and not lay out a few details of what you're going to do?"

"Oh, he did. He talked a lot about the economy, and I actually thought he got into too much detail."

Jesus, where was I?

"Well," I told Coleman, "I'm still taking Obama by eight points. You want in the pool?" He laughed, just a tad nervously, I thought. "I think it'll be a lot closer than that."

Earlier, after a cocktail thing at the Science Museum with the Minnesota Congressional delegation billed as guests of honor -- I saw none of them -- I stopped by Andy Driscoll's "Truth to Tell" KFAI-FM radio show in Wilkens Auditorium to do a quick interview. U of M Prof. Jane Kirtley, one of those supernaturally articulate types, was plugged into the show but off in a studio somewhere else. She was making the point that the press has to move aggressively past GOP strategies and do substantive reporting on Palin. This means shrugging off the GOP's accusations that "the press" is guilty of "sexism" and "focusing on her 17 year-old daughter", neither of which is accurate. My take was that the press must both make demands for Palin to submit herself to fully open press access like any other candidate and ... this gets into uncharted territory ... make the Republicans' resistance of that an issue, which it legitimately is.

Leaving Driscoll, I ran into a prominent local Republican who repeated the now widely-spread story that Gov. Tim Pawlenty was given every reason to believe he was McCain's pick when he made his hasty departure from Denver last week and that the Pawlenty camp, Mrs. Pawlenty in particular, is royally PO'd. "John McCain, the fighter pilot, f**ked them over," said the loyal Republican.

There's no way Pawlenty (or the Mrs.) will ever say anything of the sort on the record. But you can bet that once the elephant droppings have been cleared from the streets of St. Paul local reporters will be working their gossip/source mills for the poop on that fascinating slice of political history. If they can corroborate anything before election day, that tale of, uh, disloyalty and manipulation could put a dent in McCain's "Straight Talk" shtick ... which right now is looking about as battered as a '74 Mercury Marquis in a demo derby.

I was diverted from my path back to The Liffey by a bad crowd who pulled me over the CNN Grill, easily the go-to destination for roving media types ... since everything, food and booze, was free. John Oliver and Jason Jones of The Daily Show were squeezed into a booth with three women, and actress Rosario Dawson, who, based on her stunning good looks and the executive decisions she's made with regards to her wardrobe is fully qualified to be John McCain's Secretary of State, was milling about, turning both large white Republican and media heads.

If there was a sense of this particular know-it-all crowd it was that CNN's cameras had done McCain a huge favor by finding every person of color in the crowd for his big speech -- clearly contradicting the news yesterday that the percentage of "colored" Republican delegates was down to 1.7% this year, after drawing a barely-proportionate 7% in '04. (The Democrats counted 42% black/Hispanic/others in Denver). And, not that anyone needed to be told after three days working the crowd inside the "X", the Republican male-female ratio was 68%-32%, as opposed to those feminized lefties in Denver who are now operating on a 52%-48% female-to-male split.

The speech itself was largely panned. Once, or I should say, if you got past the image of what is so obviously a very old guy repeating most of the same language we've been hearing for the last years from a very unpopular bunch of guys who have proven themselves both incompetent and corrupt, you'd still be waiting to hear how agent-of-change John McCain, fully supportive of all of Bush's principal economic policies was going to revitalize capitalism to the advantage of middle-class Americans.

The Republican assertion that Barack Obama is going to "raise your taxes" is a card so worn and dog-eared from over-use no one is any longer mistaking it for an ace. We all know who got the candy under the Bush tax "cuts" (which McCain voted against twice before he embraced them to rope in the RNC zealot crowd), and who got/is getting screwed.

While the single most laugh-out loud ludicrous speech of the four days was Minority Leader (and tanning bed pitchman) John Boehner's Tuesday night lapse into psychotic delerium when he declared that only Republicans could be trusted to bring change to D.C., flushing out corruption, beating back the forces of cronyism, sending those big, special interest lobbyists packing, yadda yadda, McCain, with that twitchy, rictus-like grin, wasn't a hell of a lot better. Strip away the character-filler, the POW, military daddy and grand-daddy, the 96 year-old mom, (nothing, oddly about the first wife he dumped aftetr her car accident and weight-gain for the $300 million heiress), the "maverick" and the rest, he was reading straight from Karl Rove circa-2004.

Boiled to its essence: "Because I was a POW, I'll keep you safer from the Muslims ... and the Russians [they're baaaaaack] ... than the community organizer ... who is black, you know."

It was a weird four days. The circus was definitely in town. But the elephants, with the exception of a spritely new female who wandered in out of nowhere, looked flabby, old and tired.

Finally, a ditty, written with the Palin clan in mind by a local media tech guy.

(IMPORTANT NOTE: Photos I've taken of characters and other convention-related nuttiness are available at our special RNC blog. Click on the box to the right. Or go to www.mspmag.com/rnc/ )

"What's the matter with you guys? Why aren't you clapping? Are you Democrats?"

My ears were still ringing with the chant of, "Drill, baby drill!" and Sarah Palin was waving to a delirious crowd, so it took a second before I realized the right and honorable gentleman from California behind us—a guest, not a delegate—was talking to me.

My Palin-watching companion, a highly-remunerated icon of Twin Cities newspapers, told the guy, "We're reporters. We're working. It isn't cool to applaud what you cover." The guy looked around like someone who just caught two satanists in the act of defiling the temple and needed a rope and three more able-bodied Christians to tie us to a stake.

Two things were never in doubt as the crowd gathered for Palin's "big moment" . . . the first of several "big moments" to come as I see it.

First, since she is all about "firing up the base," like an accelerant on a smoldering fire, you knew Palin was going to deliver the flames. You knew she was going to give the truly scary core of the modern Republican party—the malignant offspring of Cold War Reaganism and the big money "godliness" of James Dobson, Tom DeLay, etc.—exactly what they wanted to hear, especially after two days of morticians' convention snooziness. And a big part of "exactly what" is blaming the media.

Second, there was no doubt she was going to be greeted with rapturous ecstasy. (Please note born-again allusion.) After folding the tent Monday night because of the egregious past sins of George W. Bush and sleepwalking through day two, the convention and especially the far-right zealots were kicking in their stalls for something to scream about . . . and be seen screaming about since this whole thing is about getting the Satan-worshipping sexists in the media to play along.

Deep inside the bubble of the Xcel, carefully scripted and presented to a crowd primed for adoration, Palin couldn't fail even if she snapped and started speaking in tongues. What am I saying? If she started speaking in tongues the crowd would have all rent their clothing, flogged their backs bloody, and carried her up the hill to the Cathedral.

Let the record show that my pal, the newspaper icon, told the unhappy gentleman from California that he too thought Palin delivered the goods. What he didn't get into was who she delivered them for.

Before Palin spoke the crowd in the halls, noticeably larger than the nights before, and better-dressed than the crowds Monday and Tuesday, milled and schmoozed with what I'd describe as an air of anxious confidence. "Anxious" about how Palin would play in the media but confident they were all going to do their part bearing her up to the TV cameras as the next coming of Ronald Reagan . . . with very large hair, penciled-in eyebrows, and snow "machine" crede.

I was talking with a couple big-time Norm Coleman supporters, Roger and Shari Wilsey, of St. Paul, when Gov. Tim Pawlenty (and eight "aides") walked by. The Wilseys are friends of mine. Or at least they were until, I'm told, they got wind of a ripping Normie had taken at my hand. (Officially, I'm blaming it on trolls.) But they were as gracious as always.

I mentioned that buzz around the press mob was that the National Enquirer is apparently working on a story about an affair Palin herself has had. (I know nothing more about it, but it is fun tossing it  "out there" for the sake of a reaction. You do silly things to get anything spontaneous out of this crowd.) The Wilseys were flat-affect.

"But there goes the guy who should have been your pick," I said, pointing at Pawlenty.

"No," said Roger with reflexive certainty. "They made the right pick. He doesn't bring the charisma she does."

Pawlenty's lack of "charisma" is, I gather, the new official line. And, of course, there's no way Pawlenty could have done quite the delivery service on the "red meat" that Palin did. To begin with, he'd look ridiculous in hair that big and heels that tall, but her cascading "fall" I thought had echoes of the classic Pawlenty mullet.

A few feet further on, I got wound up with yet another clutch of Ron Paul supporters. This crowd—roughly 300 strong, or one-eighth of the delegates—is particularly interesting if you think as I do that the current GOP, hammered by corruption-based incompetence and cronyism, is teetering on the brink of ideological collapse. With Palin, they've demonstrated they are so desperate for a spark of anything, they're willing to blow their own "experience" complaint out of the water this election with a neophyte from the North Slope, a self-described "hockey mom" (whose gender is an issue only to "the media"), whose greatest appeal is to the Twilight Zone, religion-on-their-sleeves crowd alienating mainstream voters and doing nothing for the only faction in the GOP with any serious energy.

Wayne Johnson, a fifty-four-year-old veterinarian from down state Illinois, spent Tuesday in Minneapolis with Ron Paul. Paul, a lifelong Republican, is barred from the Xcel, BTW. I asked Johnson how he and other open Paul supporters were being treated around the "X." "Like s**t," he said. "They've got those a**holes," pointing at a dark-suited party capo who I thought was Secret Service, "watching us every minute we're in here and radioing back and forth."

As we talked, an alternate from Washington state, John Burke, walked up. Another Ron Paul-ite. He handed me a paper he had written on Paul's mix of Libertarianism and . . . well, I'm not sure what. I told him Minnesotans are wary of these cult of personality things after our experience with Jesse Ventura. Beyond that, if you listen to Paul, you quickly decide he's at least as bat sh*t about "small government" as your average Minnesota Taxpayers League nerd. With the highly-significant exception that in Paul's version of "small government" (And what is that crap about abolishing the Federal Reserve all about, exactly?), their idea of "small" is a government so effectively neutered, it can't go wandering off to war every time it looks like someone is going to pinch our oil supply.

Point being: This Ron Paul crowd has some mojo going and are almost certain to breed exponentially if McCain-Palin self-immolates this fall.

The night ended much as it began, over here at The Liffey. Going in with another friend, a highly remunerated major radio executive and I shared a table with John Bettis a nattily-attired—black—delegate from suburban Atlantic City, New Jersey. Like the Ron Paul crowd, the black delegates I've made a point of chatting up—such as Ted Lyons from Miami the day before—feel no special love from the Republican hierarchy. What's more, black Republicans are taking no end of flack from family and friends what with Barack Obama on the scene. But they're hanging with the GOP over money issues, taxes, and security. Not so much talk of social "values" from those folks.

Bettis had two good stories. One about getting bounced out of his last government job for persecuting too many local government capos, which has lead to a deal, maybe, to do some kind of racial-ethnic sensitivity training (or something) with hedgefund pitbull Carl Icahn's big new casino operation. The other one was about being an eighteen-year-old gate guard on an Air Force base in Glasgow, Montana, the day JFK was killed. "We were nuclear-armed. They issued us triple ammunition, gassed up the B-52s, rolled them out on the runway, and they sat here for two days, engines running."

End game had the aforementioned newspaper icon, and I enjoying a nightcap and deconstructing the Palin speech here at The Liffey when thirty-something Garrett O'Quinn, a "contractor" from Massachusetts, still wearing the Star Spangled Dr. Seuss hat I'd seen him in the day before, wandered by. Another Ron Paul guy.

"I was a wild-eyed liberal until I got into business. Once you have to pay taxes, everything changes." To him, the Palin red-meat-for-hyper-religious-social-conservatives gambit is a distraction at best. Put another way, "It's the money, stupid." O'Quinn's dream has everyone in the IRS getting pink slips tomorrow.

"So how do you fix the roads?" I asked.

"Sales taxes, excise taxes, cigarette taxes, liquor taxes . . . "

"All of which would have to get jacked up big time, right?"

He shrugged. "It all depends if you're committed to small government."

If you read this blog regularly, you know it hasn't been three days of cheek-to-jowl contact with Republicans that has me convinced modern conservatives are out of touch with both logic and reality. That's been starkly evident since the Gingrich "revolution." But friction is building between three significant factions . . . the elected elite (those who gain office and their social peerage), the religious rapture crowd that has been tooled election after election by the Karl Rove machine and then essentially ignored until the next cycle, and now this Ron Paul business, orbiting around some notion of more money in the pockets of the middle class. This can't hold together much longer.

If all the satanists in the media—newspapers and TV—are fragmenting into smaller and smaller entities, who is to say it can't happen to a party that's betting everything they can sell the public outside their thick, forty-ply bubble the argument that Sarah Palin is thoroughly prepared to be President of the United States?

Republicans -- like the very large, thirty-something, first-time delegate from Massachusetts slumped on the floor against pillar, head stuffed a foot into a Star Spangled Dr. Seuss hat -- are masters of their own reality. Really. Walk around the Xcel and you might actually believe that The Chosen Two Thousand care deeply about survivors of Hurricane Gustav, the privacy rights of Sarah Palin's daughter and truly believe John McCain is deeply disappointed that his close friends George W. and Dick Cheney can't be with us in St. Paul.

Damn but this crowd can sell, at least to each other.

As everyone, delegates, carnivorous press and RNC bootlickers ... ahhhchooFoxNews ... awaits Wednesday night's appearance of Sarah Palin, us chattering class types are already looking past her highly controlled, deep-in-the-security cordon debut tomorrow. What we can't wait to see, based on all that huntin' and fishin' and talkin' Godly and lovin' and breedin' stuff is the first time she has to take questions without a TelePrompter from real world-class pricks, like, you know, the press.

So this question: "When should Sarah Palin hold her first press conference?" was my gimmick du jour, as I did loops around the Xcel Tuesday night.

Sure, I could have occupied my assigned seat and listened to Norm Coleman describe a St. Paul that sounded like a cross between "Escape from New York" and a Turkish prison before he took over, swept away the hookers and junkies haunting every doorway and built "this beautiful building". Sure, I could have maybe weaseled down a little closer for Michele Bachmann's big moment in the headlights, I mean limelight. But I was close enough to the Hi-Def monitors in the hallways to admire Ms. Bachmann's splendid yellow, but not-too yellow dress. The one with the cute little buckle across the bosom.

A buckle across the bosom.

The first familar face belonged to Gary Bauer, one-time Republican candidate for president and the homunculus face of the way ... way-gone conservative pro-life, anti-tax movement. He was surrounded by a half dozen reporters. A bootlicker with a tape recorder was "asking" Bauer what a brave, courageous choice Ms. Palin was? To my astonishment, Bauer couldn't agreed more. "She is very brave," he replied. But being a minor deity to paleo-Republicans Bauer couldn't resist expanding on Palin's "message" for sexually repressed shut-ins.

Oh, I'm sorry. Did I say that out loud? What Bauer really said was that Palin's life-story should be held up as an example to American voters. 

Here's the shocker. Bauer is a big "abstinence" guy. (I'm guessing that's a tough choice he doesn't have to make too often.)

"Twenty five years ago," he was telling reporters, "thousands of American schools were requiring explicit, hard core sex education. They were handing out condoms like candy all across the country. What did that get us?"

Twenty five years ago? Damn, I missed that. All I remember was one afternoon in Biology class with a bunch of drawings of pretty uninspiring "parts" followed by a dispenser in the men's room of a Willmar truck stop.

"When should Sarah Palin hold an open press conference," I asked, drowning out the bootlicker who seemed poised to "ask" Bauer how much he loved the troops?

"What do you mean? She's speaking here tomorrow night."

"Right. But that's a speech. Doesn't she need to demonstrate to the public she can think on her feet and explain what's come out in the last few days."

" 'What's come out?' Clearly the majority of Americans is choosing to respect the privacy of her young daughter, whom she loves a great deal, and who has chosen the proper course, the pro-life course and is keeping the child."

I would have gotten a more spontaneous answer if I'd asked Bauer how often he experienced tumescence in the presence of photographs of Ronald Reagan.

A few feet down the hall I encountered Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, John McCain's junior partner, having his picture taken with some adoring fans. Same question, Senator. When?

"I think we'll get a very good sense of her tomorrow night, don't you think?"

"But isn't it important that the campaign demonstrate that she is fully capable? Every politician has to submit to press conferences."

An aide tapped his watch, "Senator, we're already late ... ." A woman who I took to be Kyl's wife tugged at his arm.

"I'm sure," he said, eyes fixed for some reason on my feet, "whatever questions the public may have about her will be fully answered by her speech tomorrow. I'm confident of that."

I'm a sucker for a "confident" talking point.

Next was Roger Simon, the lefty-turned-righty Hollywood screenwriter/blogger who the day before had launched his PajamasTV webcast operation.

"When?" asked Simon. "Sometime, I guess. Why is 'when' important?"

"Well, isn't it important to put to rest any questions people might have about her? And do it soon? Now there's this pro-secession business. There's a lot of curiosity out there."

"I'm not concerned about that. The campaign will work it out."

Another expression of confidence.

For a change of direction I collared Newsweek columnist and MSNBC "Countdown" regular, Jonathan Alter.

In his most recent column Alter wrote: "America loves a fresh face, especially one that's a cross between a Fox anchor and a character on Northern Exposure, the old TV show about an Alaska town roughly the size of Wasilla. The problem is that politics, like all professions, isn't as easy as it looks. Palin's odds of emerging unscathed are slim. In fact, she's been all but set up for failure, which is yet another reason McCain's choice may prove to be irresponsible."

"Boy," said Alter in the Xcel, "I'd like to see that. It'd be pretty interesting. But I'm thinking they'll avoid it as long as they can. They'll protect her. They'll start her out with a few turns on Fox, do some very controlled small group things. That kind of stuff."

"Do you think that'll wash with the public?"

"I don't know. I'm sure it'll be OK with these people," motioning toward the roiling mob of bankers, brokers and trophy wives.

"Boy, I don't see playing with the public. Unless of course you guys let it slide."

"Hey, I want it! We'll keep on it."

I returned here to The Liffey to watch Bush's speech ... with a drink in my hand. Watching him congratulate himself for responding to this hurricane is not something you should do without fortification.

Curious about the geek pounding away on his little white Mac a couple from North Carolina sitting at the next table asked what I was up to? They were not revolted to hear I was with "the press". It turns out heir experience in town has not been good so far.

The wife, a first-time delegate, has a spinal cord injury and is confined to a wheel-chair. As they told it it has been a nightmare getting bad-to-lousy directions from cops and "volunteers" around the Xcel. "No one seems to know where anything or how to get anywhere," said the wife. Then there was the "public" food at the Xcel. The same old hockey game junk, with the gourmet catered stuff off-limits even to them in exclusive suites.

"This isn't at all what I expected," she said. "The security around here is like something out of the Iron Curtain," said the husband. "Was it like this in Denver."I told them that from everything I heard it was about the same.

Neither was all that thrilled with their Republican den leaders, either. "For some reason I was expecting a lot more free expression," said the wife. "I thought we'd have debates. But everything is so controlled. Everything. All those microphones you see on the floor? None of them are turned on. Yesterday we had a big meeting, and when they closed it off to reporters they told us exactly what to say if we were asked about why the opening night was being scaled back, that we were putting 'Country First' . 'Country First'. 'Country First'. And that we were concentrating on dealing with the hurricane. We were told to all say the same thing."

Eventually they confided that they were Ron Paul supporters -- who had been required to sign papers obligating them to McCain -- and had spent a big chunk of the day in Minneapolis at the Target Center. The husband whipped out his camera to show pictures of his wife with, you guessed it, Jesse Ventura.

"It was just so much more relaxed and fun over there," she said.

I think Sarah Palin looks fun.

You know how you imagine what you'd say to someone, usually someone famous, or notorious? But when you get the opportunity, it never plays exactly the way you wanted? I had that experience this afternoon after leaving the Xcel.

I was standing in front of the Liffey, where I've set up shop for these four days of hunting fish in a barrel, reading an e-mail. Old pal David Carr—who is now name-drop worthy (very weird)—wanted to hook up somewhere in the bowels of Wilkins Auditorium. But the radiation meter on my chest was glowing a hideous yellow from hours of overexposure to the Republicans' witches' brew of predatory lenders, I-got-mine capitalists, religious messianics, and overstarched dweebs embodying the old line about the danger of "a little information." I wasn't going back in.

But as I looked up, all I needed was a little Ennio Morrricone snake-rattle soundtrack. There, not ten feet from me, being hustled along by not one, but two burly security bouncers (Blackwater, I'm guessing, via a Halliburton no-bid contract) was the anti-Christ himself. The man whose manifest cynicism and contempt for both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution has twice sold America's gullible, fearful, and craven the most incompetent man ever to sit in the Oval Office.

Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove! Practically skipping down West Seventh, grinning broadly, like maybe he just fired another dozen or two U.S. Attorneys or outed a CIA agent.

In a reflex, my hand rose up from my Crackberry. "Karl . . ." I said, immediately catching the eye of the bouncer closest to me. Rove reached out, "Nice to see you," he said grabbing my hand.

Ignoring the fact his soft, tender hands have the grip of a pampered old woman, I did a brain scan for my next line. It was like that scene in The Terminator when the manager of the cheap hotel knocks on Schwarzenegger's door and his onboard computer runs through eight or nine possible replies. (I think he goes with, "F**k you, a**hole.")

At the rate Rove was being hustled through the mix of rabidly loyal Republicans (good) and ordinary Americans screwed over by the hapless chump he planted in office (very bad), I couldn't go with anything windy. There would be no dream scenario with me reciting Rove's myriad crimes as he was held clamped in public stocks, his porcine pink tuckus bursting out of his Masters of the Universe BVDs.

"Time to testify." That's all I got out. "Time to testify." And the bouncer still shot me a look. Why not, "Under oath and in public, Karl?" Or, "Beware the karmic wheel, Karl," or hell, "F**k you, a**hole?" Very disappointing. But oddly thrilling, too. I'm sure the average good German felt the same way meeting Josef Goebbels.

Earlier, the only excitement at all inside the Xcel was when the Stepford sisters, Cindy McCain and Laura Bush, decked out in the finest of oligarch doyenne attire, took to the mike and revved up the sparse late-afternoon crowd, telling everyone ("Hello, anyone up there in the CBS suite?") what a super, super job their Republican governors are doing with Hurricane Gustav. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who was supposed to host a fat cat bash at my favorite bar, Nye's Polonaise, was instead beamed in from a military airfield with three "brave airmen" standing behind as props. ("Brave airmen?" Say what? For flying an airplane from one American city to another? By that logic, every Northwest pilot becomes a "brave airman" for making it from Minneapolis to Detroit. Right?)

Obviously the Republicans think they're stunningly slick with the over-the-top display of "compassion" and "attention" they're showering on this latest hurricane. But really, is there an adult anywhere in the USA—I mean, other than those who flew a private jet to the Twin Cities this week—who isn't thinking, "If these diamond-studded rubes hadn't so totally screwed up Katrina, they wouldn't be looking up from the seafood buffet right now." Gov. Perry concluded his remarks with a line about, "This is how Republicans and Republican governors take care of their people." Except of course when they don't.

I had a kind of senior moment while chatting with a few of the local Fox 9 crew. When anchor Jeff Passolt walked by, I asked him if the Republicans had got their Tuesday schedule under control? Not so much, he said. But "they are planning to get 80,000 kids over to the Convention Center tomorrow morning for hurricane relief." "What? Eighty thousand? Tomorrow? No way!"

"No really," Passolt said, "I've got something right here." He ducked back in Fox 9's suite and reappeared with a sheet of paper, pointing to the line that said the Republicans would indeed be showing off 80,000 disaster kits Tuesday morning in Minneapolis. Kits, not kids. The ears. Not so good. I think it was that last Who concert just before Keith died.

Over in Rice Park, outside the security perimeter (which is only slightly shorter than the wall the delegates would like to build from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico), the rabble was desultory at best. A kid named Alex and a half dozen others had come in from Florida and were giving away literally dozens of boxes of a DVD titled, Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West. The cover art includes blurbs from the producer of 24 and movie critic Michael Medved. "One of the most powerful, expertly crafted and undeniably important films I've seen this year . . . " says Medved. I'm mailing my copy to Katherine Kersten.

A couple from San Diego sat on a bench in front of the Rice Park fountain and the deserted MSNBC set. "Office of Blame" read their sign, leaning against a table with a small red antique dial phone. "Who do you want to blame?" they asked. "Don't get me started," I warned. "No really, fill out this form." The woman handed me a clipboard, "and we'll file your complaint." "Oh, I get it. It's a pimp on bureaucracies. I blame someone and all that happens is that it gets filed. Right?" "Kind of."

I blamed Dick Cheney for everything from bird flu to Menard's switching to a different brand of vinyl gutters and felt better knowing it was now filed. 

It was a long and winding road last night, but I finally made it to The Liffey, directly across from the Xcel Center, which you can almost see through the metal pens, caging, and security equipment barricading downtown St. Paul.

Democracy. It's a beautiful thing.

Saturday night's media bash on the river was light on national notables and very heavy on the usual suspects, which is to say hungry, thirsty wretches like us drawn, like moths to flame, by the promise of free food and booze. (Nice touch on the part of the city to dispense beer (well, Budweiser) in plastic bottles. It was the media after all, and brawling with the usual broken glass could present legal problems.

The "get" of the night, as far as my collection of cronies could tell, was MinnPost's David Brauer stalking Star Tribune editrix, Nancy Barnes—the executive of a major first amendment-driven local business—who deigns not return phone calls or e-mails from, you know, reporters . . . much like the dozens she employs. It was a game for Brauer to see if he could both catch and engage Barnes, and as he tells it, once he cornered her, their "interaction" lasted barely ninety seconds before she seized on . . . "oh, look . . ." and "had to go."

Mayor Rybak and wife Meg, looking fresh there at the start—despite having spent a week in Denver—were both shaking theirs heads over McCain's Sarah Palin pick. "I don't see what it does for him," said R.T.

Local Republican muckety-mucks in the crowd were all saying that Pawlenty and his people feel used by McCain's operators. Those who knew anything about Palin—two out a dozen—regard her as "another Michele Bachmann . . . " and fear what two months on the stump will do to an act McCain has only just met. (And those were the Republicans.)

My favorite interaction was with four kind of geeky kids . . . Young Republicans from Indiana State . . . in town (for the first time) "working for FoxNews." Really? Doing what? "Just helping with stuff." We exchanged cards. If I catch these guys ringside at Deja Vu Wednesday night waggling $20 bills in their teeth . . .

Yesterday's first act was the inter-party love feast/media party at Sam and Sylvia Kaplans. The Twin Cities' first family for fundraising and political schmoozing. Amy Klobuchar's "brief" remarks, although funny, went on long enough for her co-guest of honor, Jim "The Rammer" Ramstad, to get off a line about how she reminds him of Hubert Humphrey. As Larry King would say, whatever happened to Republicans like Ramstad?

The event was "off the record," which in this context means it's bad form to report dialogue and displays that might offend anyone. But I did have a chance to get my concerns about Al Franken across to his new manager (ten weeks ago) Stephanie Schriock, the woman who guided Jon Tester's senate campaign in Montana in '06. As you might expect, she believes Al is much better at the retail political game than he was months ago (His problem is delivering the consistent person-to-person "charm" required of any successful pol.), and she says she likes the way the polls are trending. Nothing earthshaking there, but I still didn't detect a formula for rebutting the next round of "Al Franken pornographer" ads the Coleman team will be cooking up.

Self-exiled MPR diva, Katherine Lanpher, was discovered holding court with the bard of Minnesota, Bill Holm, covering the Republicans for our sister publication Law & Politics. Fox . . . hen house. La Lanpher (another crony from PiPress days) was resplendent. (I'd have to say that even if she wasn't . ..  but she was. Really.)

Congressman Tim Walz stepped in while my former radio combatant, Sarah Janecek, and I were reminiscing about the scar tissue we picked up in our seven months working for Clear Channel. I told Walz it's become a cliche now when every Democrat big thinker declares the secret to beating Michele Bachmann is to find another "football coach like Tim Walz," like the football thing is what'll turn the Sixth District away from a delusional dim wit. Walz told the story of out campaigning a couple years ago when some heckler demanded to know what a "football coach" would ever know about China trade policy . . . and Walz, who lived in China for awhile, answered him . . . in Chinese.

KARE news director Tom Lindner, linked in to the NBC apparatus, seemed eerily sanguine about the resources being spent on RNC coverage this week. He seemed pretty amused at the MSNBC family soap opera in Denver but could not promise any on-set hair pulling this week, especially since Keith Olbermann has "decided" to handle his duties from New York. Lindner was relieved to hear the cops had busted the big urine depository. Few TV stations have the budgets any more for large-scale dry-cleaning.

After a stop at a lavish backyard party in south Minneapolis hosted by an obviously very well-paid Star Tribune reporter—who his boss, Ms. Barnes, probably would not like consorting with a low-rent blogger like me—it was into the maximum security chain link "security" colony formerly known as St. Paul. The twenty-minute walk after parking to The Liffey wasn't bad, considering the pleasant weather, but the sight of (serious, not farcical) McCain paraphernalia in the windows of Maharajah's . . . uh . . . paraphernalia emporium was disquieting. Judging by the wall-to-wall Republican jokes (George W. and Dick bailing on Minnesota to sandbag in Louisiana . . . to McCain's enormous relief), I think there's still a juicy market for anything that rips the oligarchs.

All the faction at The Liffey was upstairs, outside. The Strib's Neal Justin was holding court for two CNN publicists. The ladies were enthralled. Justin remains convinced McCain will win. He'll owe me $20 if that happens.

With the Strib and every TV station descending on this afternoon's protest march—hoping like NASCAR fans for some kind of spectacular pileup—Sunday was night for mainly girding the loins and, with the Republicans madly back-filling their appalling performance during Katrina, rejiggering schedules by the hour, reassessing what's left to cover.

More later . . . from The Liffey.