Entry One: Early Morning Ramblings

It's 8:11AM, and I've spend the past three hours watching local news channels and googling how to clean guns. Such a combination of inane pseudo-reporting and firearms blended with ungodly amounts of caffeine I pour into myself every night leads to some unusual thought processes. Stuff like "If Richard Nixon were still alive, would he have gotten into a fistfight with John McCain?" and "I should bombard the news stations with bizarre anonymous letters simultaneously praising and condemning every nuance of the program I could possibly think of." And, of course, there was the granddaddy of the strange ideas, the one that still makes perfect sense and probably will until I get some sleep:

"Hey, I've got stuff to say. I should start a blog!"

And so here we are, you and I (whoever you out there might be.) First thoughts of the day are on something I caught on the Channel 4 Power Hour or whatever the hell they're calling these "newscasts" these days. Sarah Palin is on the chopping block again, this time for keeping Q&A session notes written on the palm of her hand. The more tongue-in-cheek commentators have taken to calling this "Palmgate," because the '-gate' suffix won't get old in American politics until we can't actually remember who Richard Nixon was. Whatever your thoughts on Palin's actions and how that reflects on her leadership/intelligence/right to claim that she is, in fact, sentient, what this really shows is that Sarah Palin has now become the GOP's rodeo clown. While the Party scrambles to pull itself together in time for the 2010 elections (and starts pre-gaming for the Big Race in 2012,) they're tossing Sarah "Can See Russia From Her House" Palin, the woman who has been cited as the number one reason John McCain lost the Presidential election, in front of all the cameras for her to do her thing. From making less-than-offhand comments about taking on Barack Obama in '12 to the latest Palin "whoopsie" moment, Sarah is exactly what the GOP could use now: a face to make them look comfortable and ridiculous (certainly anything but a threat!) while the real players get lined up. It's an opossum's play, and it's working fantastically at the moment.

So who are the "real players?" I'm betting Scott Brown; this is a young, charismatic, good-looking guy with a fantastic military record who sits just on the fence enough on major issues to be relatively comfortable to most people. He's certainly bold enough to go for the Big Chair after a two-year stint in the Senate. Word has it that Jeb Bush will run; I wish him the best of luck. He was a miserable soul-sucker of a governer and the brother of the most lambasted president since Jimmy Carter. The Bush name, if you ask me, is still mud in D.C. Some familiar faces, Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney...more thoughts on all this later. Just something to keep in mind: watch how often Sarah is in the media, and remember the giggles when the GOP starts swinging.