The McCain Palin Lies and the Neil Armstrong Principle by Paul Begala. Via Princess Sparkle Pony’s Photo Blog, the site that always makes me laugh.

If John McCain and Sarah Palin were to say the moon was made of green cheese, we can be certain that Barack Obama and Joe Biden would pounce on it, and point out it's actually made of rock. And you just know the headline in the paper the next day would read: "CANDIDATES CLASH ON LUNAR LANDSCAPE."

Why the Press Can’t Report the Campaign by Ezra Klein. There are some really important ideas in this post, brief as it is.

I think one aspect of the modern press that doesn't get enough attention -- either among folks in the media or folks critiquing it -- is the transition from the fundamental scarcity being information to information being in abundance and the fundamental scarcity being mediation….

[The press] fill this new role through the methods storytellers have always used to tell stories: the repetition of certain key themes and characters, which creates continuity between one day's events and the next and helps the audience understand which parts to pay attention to….

I think it's important that one of the central arguments the McCain campaign is making for Palin is a lie. I think that should be reported a lot, at least as often as the McCain campaign repeats it, and then if the McCain campaign doesn't stop repeating it, their lying should be emphasized a lot, because that's also important. On the level of first order principles, I know the press agrees with me, because they did this with John Kerry. The crucial problem in this discussion comes here: The press isn't allow to admit that they construct these narratives at all, and so can't transparently justify why they choose to use one and not another….

Pissed About Palin by Cintra Wilson (Salon.com requires you to watch a brief commercial before accessing their content). I loved this piece. But then, I am all but speechless that the GOP would pair such a frightening and inexperienced ideologue with a 73-year-old candidate. If words were swords, there’d be a lot of blood on the floor:

I confess, it was pretty riveting when John McCain trotted out Sarah Palin for the first time. Like many people, I thought, "Damn, a hyperconservative, fuckable, Type A, antiabortion, Christian Stepford wife in a 'sexy librarian' costume -- as a vice president? That's a brilliant stroke of horrifyingly cynical pandering to the Christian right. Karl Rove must be behind it."

Palin may have been a boost of political Viagra for the limp, bloodless GOP…. But ideologically, she is their hardcore pornographic centerfold spread, revealing the ugliest underside of Republican ambitions -- their insanely zealous and cynical drive to win power by any means necessary, even at the cost of actual leadership.

We’re all pretty sick of hearing about Sarah Palin at this point, and I apologize for adding even a little bit to the pile. But this is maddening: to make such an obvious move of political expediency to shore up the right wing of the party, and then to lie, lie, lie about what she’s done. I mean, you can argue that being a small town mayor or governor of the 47th most populous state is better preparation than being in the US Senate; it’s laughable, but you can argue it.

But to loudly maintain that she killed the Bridge to Nowhere and that she opposes government pork is a lie. It is demonstrably untrue. And the fact that they are willing to maintain that lie, to insist over and over that white is black, that day is night, confident that they can make the American people think it’s so as long as they keep shouting that it is, is really all the proof any of us should ever need that a McCain-Palin administration would be a continuation of what we’ve been through for the last eight years.

Maverick, my lily white ass.