And McCain doesn't know how to get on the internet.

Quoted: Talk about a distributed campaign. This is big news. The app works on iPhones and iPod Touches. It allows people to research Obama’s positions, find local events and contact voters. People powered campaign.

Quoted: So perhaps that's the reason the media has been able to really key in on what she's doing. Doubtless there was already some sense that they'd be able to see cracks in the armor just because she was being tested nationally for the first time. But the cracks turned out to be bigger than expected, given her sterling performance at her RNC debut. And what is she doing? Nothing different than most GOPAC-trained Republicans do. At least not on paper. She's rhetorically shifting the ground underneath so that the discussion ends up being about the talking points she's been trained to deliver, rather than what the question was actually about. Gingrich himself could do it so seamlessly that most people never noticed, unless or until they went back and read a transcript, and noticed that the question he answered bore hardly any relation to the one asked. Whether it's nerves or just incomplete training, though, Palin isn't clicking on all cylinders. That may work with smaller audiences or local press who have some vested interest in not calling out hometown powerbrokers, but it doesn't seem to be cutting it for Palin on the national scene.

Experienced. Knowledgable. McCain.

Quoted: You could say, Look, is this guy, Laden, really the bad guy that’s depicted? Most of us have never heard of him before. And where there is a parallel with Vietnam is: What’s plan B? What do we do next? We sent our troops into Vietnam to protect the bases. Lyndon Johnson said, Only to protect the bases. Next thing you know…. Well, we’ve declared to the terrorists that we’re going to strike them wherever they live. That’s fine. But what’s next? That’s where there might be some comparison.

Great video in the link.

Quoted: Letterman became especially upset when he caught the Republican presidential nominee in a live feed from New York being interviewed by his own network's Katie Couric. McCain had personally told Letterman he was canceling because he was headed back to the capital to handle the financial crisis. Whoops.

Interesting. Looks like Obama's campaign reached out behind the scenes and McCain's responded by one-upping him publicly. Damn, this campaign is interesting...

Quoted: In response to McCain's announcement today that he is suspending his campaign in response to the meltdown, the Obama campaign is arguing that Obama is the one who made the first suggestion to McCain that the two candidates act jointly in response to the crisis.

Quoted: Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah "Evita" Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state.

Totally alarmist. Totally justified.

Quoted: I realized early on with horror what I was seeing in Governor Palin: the continuation of the Rove-Cheney cabal, but this time without restraints. I heard her echo Bush 2000 soundbites ("the heart of America is on display") and realized Bush's speechwriters were writing her -- not McCain's -- speeches. I heard her tell George Bush's lies -- not McCain's -- to the American people, linking 9/11 to Iraq. I heard her make fun of Barack Obama for wanting to prevent the torture of prisoners -- this is Rove-Cheney's enthusiastic S and M, not McCain's, who, though he shamefully colluded in the 2006 Military Tribunals Act, is also a former prisoner of war and wrote an eloquent Newsweek piece in 2005 opposing torture. I saw that she was even styled by the same skillful stylist (neutral lipstick, matte makeup, dark colors) who turned Katharine Harris from a mall rat into a stateswoman and who styles all the women in the Bush orbit --but who does not bother to style Cindy McCain.

Quoted: Then I saw and heard more. Palin is embracing lawlessness in defying Alaskan Legislature subpoenas --this is what Rove-Cheney, and not McCain, believe in doing. She uses mafia tactics against critics, like the police commissioner who was railroaded for opposing handguns in Alaskan battered women's shelters -- Rove's style, not McCain's. I realized what I was seeing.

Quoted: Reports confirmed my suspicions: Palin, not McCain, is the FrankenBarbie of the Rove-Cheney cabal. The strategy became clear. Time magazine reported that Rove is "dialed in" to the McCain campaign. Rove's protégé Steve Schmidt is now campaign manager. And Politico reported that Rove was heavily involved in McCain's vice presidential selection. Finally a new report shows that there are dozens of Bush and Rove operatives surrounding Sarah Palin and orchestrating her every move.

Once again, if these guys actually knew anything, they'd be investing their own money, not making money telling us where to invest our money.

Really, it's no different than the 900-number guys you hear at 8 am on Saturdays on sports radio, telling you they have their pick of the year against the spread. If anything, they should be telling everybody to bet the other way so that they can get a more favorable line.

Quoted: In December, Fortune magazine admitted it had been remiss naming insurance giant AIG one of its "10 Stocks To Buy Now" before a yearlong 18 percent decline. "We... didn't expect [the] mortgage unit to be such an albatross," editors wrote. To correct the error, the magazine had a fresh list of "The Best Stocks For 2008" — including Merrill Lynch. "Smart investors should buy this stock before everyone else comes to their senses," Fortune wrote, calling a recent correction in Merrill stock "an overreaction." Investors who followed this advice are now down [61] percent. All the big financial magazines butter their bread with dubious prescriptions for how hobbyist investors can beat market professionals, so Fortune is hardly alone in being humiliated by the ongoing market meltdown. We'll spread the embarrassment around after the jump.

Read John Cole.

Quoted: The funny thing about all this is that the new savior of the GOP, Sarah Palin, is the one who is finally waking everyone up to what the Republican party really is all about. They are not serious about foreign policy (Fallows is just brutal). They are not serious (or honest) about scientific policy. They are not serious about economic policy (other than cutting taxes). They are not serious about an energy policy (just drill, baby, drill).

Quoted: They just are not serious about, well, anything.

Quoted: And Sarah Palin is the distilled essence of wingnut. She has it all. She is dishonest. She is a religious nut. She is incurious. She is anti-science. She is inexperienced. She abuses her authority. She hides behind executive privilege. She is a big spender. She works from the gut and places a greater value on instinct than knowledge.

Quoted: And most dangerous of all, she is supremely self-confident to the point of not recognizing how ill-equipped she is to lead the country.

Useful