SARAH PALIN READS EVERYTHING

Every newspaper, every magazine, every bit of journalism on the face of the planet. She said so herself, in an interview aired Tuesday on CBS.

An excerpt from the interview:

Couric: And when it comes to establishing your worldview, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?

Palin: I've read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.

Couric: What, specifically?

Palin: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.

Couric: Can you name a few?

Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news, too. Alaska isn't a foreign country, where it's kind of suggested, "Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C., may be thinking when you live up there in Alaska?" Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.

Who's in charge of making sure Palin doesn't sound like a fool?

Oh, she's also pro-contraception, and says it doesn't matter what causes global warming, because "it's real; we need to do something about it." Something for everyone to criticize.

GHOSTS FROM BACK THERE

Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah wants everyone to donate $7 to stop Sen. Barack Obama from becoming president. Being the unimaginative sort, Hatch begs for bucks in a fundraising letter that epitomizes the problem with today's GOP -- it can't stop living in the past.

Writes Hatch:

You'd think it was the 1970s all over again.

Barack Obama is resurrecting Jimmy Carter's failed tax, energy and economic plans.

Iran is saber-rattling against the West.

And, Hanoi Jane Fonda is stumping for liberal Senate candidates.

That's right, tonight Jane Fonda and all of her far-left Hollywood liberal friends are expected to raise $1 million for Democrat Senate candidates with one goal in mind -- to break our Senate firewall and seize total control of our government!

"Everything now is 'Obama, Obama, Obama,' but we're also concerned about the Senate, which is critically important no matter who wins the White House. We need to give the Democrats a majority totaling at least 60 senators."

These Hollywood liberals understand the stakes. A 60-seat filibuster-proof super majority means conservatives would be powerless to stop the liberal agenda in the Senate.

Hollywood may not be on our side, but we have you.

Reds under Hollywood's beds, all that. Dusty bluster. No new ideas.

PAUL NEWMAN, 83

Lung cancer claimed the actor's life on Saturday. The natural-born world-shaker now resides in memory.

WELCOME TO THE EVOLUTION

Monday marks the 173rd anniversary of the fateful landing of the HMS Beagle on the Galápagos Islands. Aboard that day in 1835 was Charles Darwin, whose five-year journey would bring us natural selection and the rise of the neocreationists.

Monday will include a clearer picture of the messy natural selection well underway on Wall Street. Bank of America Corp. will buy Merrill Lynch & Co. for about $29 a share, according to The Wall Street Journal. BofA paid a premium, of course, because it's only money, scads of money. No one outside the loop understands how BofA, a company with declining profits and an albatross named Countrywide Financial in its portfolio, can afford to pay $29 a share for Merrill Lynch, a company trading at $17 a share on Friday. Such is the weekend deal.

Lehman Brothers is in the toilet. Washington Mutual and A.I.G. could be goners by the end of the week. Britain could soon slide into recession.

A "once-in-a-century" financial meltdown, Alan Greenspan says, and "it still has a way to go." Already a notch past the teeter stage, we've yet to see the bottom. Extinctions will continue.

We will evolve and the good guys will win. Now we wait for someone to win, so we can call them good.

WWET?

What Would Eisenhower Think? By 11:45 p.m. Friday, Sept. 12, Hurricane Ike was acting more like this Ike, beating the daylights out of the best-laid plans.

And still the reporters journeyed into the wind and rain and lights, Murrowesque only in that this is real-life See It Now, a gathering of moths to the news flame.

We don't blame them; it's their kick-ass job. Wish we were there right now.

In lieu of that pleasure, it's Geraldo on the seawall, battling the surge for Fox. MSNBC has a crew at the wall, too, shooting a sat signal from a dish no bigger than a laptop. Photog was steady and dry inside the SUV. Reporter was the Brave Soul against The Elements. And the MSNBC signal didn't cut out like Geraldo's. Money, man. Bet Geraldo was pissed.

Anderson Cooper is waiting in Houston, sounding a little too eager when talking about flying shards of glass from high-rise buildings. Such is the price of fame.

LIKE 1968, ONLY BETTER

Forty years ago. The Election of Attrition. A political year of blood and mayhem, with the pitiful survivors of November crawling into an arena frequented only months earlier by the stars of their sport. Lyndon Johnson took a powder. So did Robert Kennedy, literally. Nelson Rockefeller was figuratively killed by his party for being too liberal, too Happy.

Democrats were left to front Hubert Humphrey, the happy-faced, fast-talking vice president. Republicans backed Richard Nixon, a paranoid scowler who'd already blown one bid for the White House. Everyone else got George Wallace, a racist still unaware of the bullet and wheelchair in his future.

We flash forward to four decades later and the circle is closed. The best candidates -- at least on the Democratic bench -- are back to flipping impeachment burgers (Dennis Kucinich) and minding the Senate store (Chris Dodd, Hillary Clinton). The Republicans overlooked an optimist and a Mormon.

Who would have bet six months ago that John McCain might beat Barack Obama? Bill Clinton:

"[H]e has some redeeming qualities for a Republican: he doesn't believe in toture, he supported campaign finance reform and he doesn't think global warming is a myth ... So it is not gonna be all that easy to beat him."

The Obama faithful sniffed and barked at the Big Dog for not snapping a stiff-armed salute at their Leader, but the Dog knows the truth: This is politics, not the debate club. Want to implement the ideas, the ideals? Win. Or at least act like you want to win, and try to keep your nutty fan club (relatives, close associates, pastors, pill-popping spouses) in the basement until the polls close in the general election.

Obama should be 10, maybe 12 points ahead of McCain at this point, getting ready to vet the cabinet. Bill Clinton was beating Bob Dole like Balboa beats beef slabs in August 1996. Because Clinton knew it's all about the lowest common denominator. Save the oration for the inauguration.

We said last January that McCain was off-his-rocker crazy -- a clinical term, not tossed around lightly -- and thus unqualified to be President of the United States. He's still all that, but turns out he's fox crazy, too, cunning and willing to use the WASP knife in battle. Hence the priggish Sarah Palin, a meaty bone to the GOP base that can't stand McCain (McPain is one of the nicer nicknames the far right uses).

McCain knows he's using his base to win. He knows he's using Palin, even if he believes she's unqualified. He's already on record belittling wanna-bes:

"I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn't a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn't a governor for a short period of time."

Democrats will try to use McCain's words against him, but it won't work. They're too angry at Republican hypocrisy to think straight. They're baffled by the bullshit, belittling Palin at their peril. Wily Willie Brown, the best political animal ever to set foot in California, hailed the Palin pick as a brilliant political move:

"Republicans are now on offense and Democrats are on defense. And we don't do well on defense."

Joe Biden has been defanged by the choice of Palin. That attack dog won't hunt. Obama is spending too much time talking about the Republicans' veep pick, not enough time keeping it simple. And raising money, given his flip-flop on public financing of his campaign. He's got to raise $100 million a month to meet his fundraising goals, and he's falling short. While Obama begs for bucks, McCain campaigns.

Democrats don't get it. John McCain wants to win. They want to whine.

A MONTH AND FOUR DAYS

That long since we last did any typing that didn't involve a TAKE WXMON or CG command. Look, Ma -- upper and lowercase letters!

Our apologies for the unexpected vacation from Blogistan. A bit of news from up north pushed CHATTER to a back burner. Rest assured, our focus has gone back to being unfocused. Summer reruns are over. A new season is here.