It's been only a week and I've already earned a degree in Palintology. I know way too much about this woman: her education, her eyewear, the origin of her children's names, her religion, her ex-brother-in-law, the number of broken bones she's sustained, her flute-playing... Yet I can't stop reading.

Obviously I'm not alone. The web is burning up with amateur Palintologists searching for artifacts that will shed light on this woman -- authentic pieces of information that will flesh out this authentic iconoclast. (Whoever she is, she's unlike anyone else we've seen in American politics.)

There are two true originals in this race: Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. It's been two years since the Obamarama began, so we've been able to pace ourselves with the Illinois senator. But Palin has just burst onto the scene. And there are barely enough days left before the election to satisy our curiosity.

Some assorted thoughts/questions (synapses firing too quickly to write more cogently):

Miss Oprah Regrets

Honesty and plain talk have always been the coins of Oprah's realm. (She's a rich lady; she gets more than one coin in her realm.) Her excuse for not having Palin on her show is specious and disappointing: she says she's not using her show to promote any candidates. Now that's parsing.

Oprah should have Palin on the show and, if she wants, debate the lady. It's will satisfy Oprah's Republican and Independent fans, showcase a woman who's become a national obsession, and blow the roof off ratings-wise. A win-win-win.

McCain-Palin = Eisenhower-Nixon?

Is this the best comparison? Eisenhower was a war hero whose party affiliation was in question up until he threw his hat in the ring for the 1952 election. (Eisenhower, by the way, was the last president to wear a hat.) Likewise McCain has never been a doctrinaire Republican. In fact rumors persist that he considered running as John Kerry's veep in 2004.

Eisenhower chose Senator Richard Nixon, a red meat conservative and member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, to shore up the party's base -- much like McCain has done with Palin.

McCain-Palin = Charles-Diana?

Have you heard all the chatter about Palin overshadowing McCain at the RNC? Well it's true. So will McCain become consumed with jealousy, just as Charles grew to hate Diana because she was so loved?

Sarah Palin's Triple Crown

She's on the cover of three of America's most important magazines this week. No, I'm not referring to the fading Time, Newsweek or U.S. News. Palin graces the covers of People, Us Weekly and OK!. As I mentioned last week (before the covers were published), she has the makings of a tabloid superstar: looks, power and problems. This will only help the GOP ticket. Tabloid superstars are rarely disliked and usually objects of sympathy or empathy. (See: Kathie Lee Gifford, Naomi Judd, Elizabeth Taylor.) Most Americans don't care about politics - certainly not on a day-to-day basis - so tabloid superstar status is a boon. (Bill Clinton was never more popular than when he became a tabloid A-lister during the Lewinsky scandal.

Of course it's ironic that McCain and Palin are running as anti-celebrities when Palin's the one who's displaced Britney from the covers of all these magazines!

The Reagan Connection

No, I'm not going to be the 4,000th person to compare her speech-making talent to Reagan's. There's another way in which she's similar to the Gipper - and it's why she's so formidable:

She's a happy person. And happy people are likable. They're magnets.

Whatever problems Palin may have, she's comfortable in her skin. It was evident in her performance and when the family assembled on stage. You can't fake that. And when 7 year old Piper licked her hand and stroked baby Trig's head? i suddenly felt a contraction. (And her heroic decision to birth a child with Down's syndrome is impossible not to praise.)

Friends of mine keep calling Palin "scary." If Democrats want to defeat McCain-Palin, they better embargo the word "scary." It's a lazy, meaningless swipe and didn't work against Reagan. Plus the person deploying the swipe usually comes off as unhappy. Better to take a cue from Obama and dispassionately pick apart her ideas and record. Because if it's a personality contest, Happy Warrior Palin will trounce the competition.

I read on CNN that the McCain campaign is being asked, yet again, by another musical group to stop using their music.

This time it's the 70's women rocker band Heart. Since Sarah Palin has been known in some parts as "Sarah Barracuda," the Johnny Mac attack decided to use the 1977 Heart hit "Barracuda" after his speech Thursday when Palin joined him on stage. The campaign had already been asked NOT to use the song earlier that day after it had been used in conjunction with Palin's appearance Wednesday.

Heart's Ann and Nancy Wilson said no way. Via Entertainment Weekly:

Sarah Palin's views and values in NO WAY represent us as American women. We ask that our song 'Barracuda' no longer be used to promote her image. The song 'Barracuda' was written in the late 70s as a scathing rant against the soulless, corporate nature of the music business, particularly for women. (The 'barracuda' represented the business.) While Heart did not and would not authorize the use of their song at the RNC, there's irony in Republican strategists' choice to make use of it there.

Universal Music Publishing and Sony BMG have sent a cease and desist notice to the McCain-Palin campaign.

ST. PAUL, Minnesota -- It is finished. The satellite trucks and diabetic delegates and thousands of seething federal cops have gone back home, deep beneath the earth. I'm already home, too, but there aren't too many opportunities to use the "ST. PAUL" dateline, so I will once again violate every basic AP rule of journamalism.

That's all the Main Stream Media does, after all: lie, lie, lie. Check the comments at the bottom of this page for proof!

The Republican convention was a neat, quaint operation. Nobody expected anything flashy or fun or interesting, and nobody expected any answer to America's economic and military collapse beyond an oft-told 40-year-old shaggy dog tale of an old man who crashed a plane into the village he was bombing, back when he was young, and his brave story of personal redemption as his father continued mercilessly killing the Vietnamese children for another five-and-a-half years.

When I found out a couple of months ago that I was going to go the Republican convention as the "liberal" blogger and Tommy C. was going to Denver, I cursed Tommy up and down out of pure jealousy. He was going to hang with the exciting Dems and their celebrity friends and I was stuck with a bunch of stick-in-the-mud Republicans and celebrities I could care less about!

As it turns out, I'm glad I got to go to Minneapolis-St. Paul and see a side of the world that I don't relate to very much. Plus, I had the added bonus of being in a hotel that also housed Air America and the Washington Post and found enough liberal media lurking about that I at least had some oasis during part of the days and nights in the hotel bar. Oh, and MInnesotans? Fantastic people. I often forget how rude we are in the Northeast until I travel elsewhere.

The AOL crew was fantastic. Up to this point, the most actual contact I'd had with most of them were emails and a few phone conversations. This gig is part-time for most of the Political Machine bloggers and we don't work out of the NY or VA offices of AOL. My thanks to all of them for making it a great experience for me. Fellow blogger Mark Impomeni was a great help identifying obscure (to me) Republicans and is an absolute doll.

During my downtime not working on blog posts or researching for them, I was able to snap some great pictures in and around the convention area. I met a bunch of great Republican politician and operatives, media and delegates and while I may not agree with them politically, I was impressed with their willingness to open up to a liberal blogger. The overwhelming positive response to Sarah Palin was almost infectious - almost. From what I understand from some others, the Democrats in Denver were not always as open-minded toward Conservative media. Here's a few pictures (click image for larger one):

It has now been ten days since she was nominated Vice President of the United States, and Sarah Palin has still not agreed to meet with reporters to answer basic questions. Given that her stump speech, and the address she made to the GOP National Convention, is brimming with distortions and falsehoods, Palin's strategy seems to boil down to: Ask me no questions and I'll still tell you lies.

We know that Palin is actively cramming for her hypothetical date with a free press, that pillar of any healthy democracy that McCain/Palin seem to disdain even more than Bush/Cheney. With the tutoring sessions underway, there may be hope that Palin will be ready for an interview (to say nothing of the actual job for which she's running) by the time November rolls around. Complete the following sentence: "Ready on day. . . "

In the meanwhile, Palin continues to campaign, to deliver speeches, but refuses to leave the protective bubble that is the Straight-Talk Express. She's popular alright. She's a celebrity in Republican circles. But can she win by thumbing her nose at the press for the duration of the contest?

I had the opportunity Thursday to sit with the New Jersey delegation on the convention floor and speak to two delegates that are charged up and ready to go for the McCain-Palin ticket.

Mr. Chris Smith and Mrs. Mary Devon O'Brien of Maplewood, NJ had some very strong feelings about what John McCain need to say to the assembled and were very vocal in their support of Sarah Palin - soundly putting down any doubters in their own party that might think Palin is not the best choice for John McCain's VP.

Me: There have been some conservative media types who have been overheard saying that the choice of Sarah Palin for the VP candidate is purely political choice - that she's not qualified.

Mr. Smith: Well I think they're wrong. I think she's a real good choice for the ticket - she's what we needed. I think she's going to help the ticket win.

Mrs. O'Brien: I agree I think what she does is she brings is good balance, energy and enthusiasm and good small town values as well as big state know-how to the ticket.

Yahoo! News

Obama has long looked for a way to win the White House without the 20 electoral votes of Ohio, the prototypical swing state. His top aides, including his campaign manager, once said they could lose the state and still win the election by picking off states that typically support Republicans.

...The campaign is quietly eyeing a states' map similar to the one used in past elections, with some exceptions. Obama this week dropped advertising in Georgia, a traditionally Republican state that he considered winnable based on increased voter registration among blacks and young people.

It looks like, just as in 2004, the key state will be Ohio. Historically that's not great news for Barack Obama. In 2000 Al Gore gave up early in Ohio and in 2004 Bush walked away with the state with a narrow but solid victory.

The good news for Obama is that since 2004, OH has swept in Democrats in almost all statewide offices, including Sherrod Brown as a senator over the hapless Mike DeWine. Ohio also has had a record setting Democratic primary resulting in a large registration of new Democratic voters.

The bad news is that most of these turned out to be Hillary supporters. Other bad news is that the northeastern portion of the state, a Democratic stronghold, has been bleeding population at an alarming rate, while the southeastern portion of the state is basically Appalachian and it's worthy to note that Obama is not a hit in Appalachia. But Obama can still win by maintaining a large gender gap among Ohio's suburban women around Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus. Which is something that looked easy for him to do, until Palin shook things up a little. This is going to be interesting.

On the day after the Republican Party convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, there are indications that the traditional post-convention bounce usually seen in opinion polling is materializing early for the GOP. The Real Clear Politics polling average has narrowed to show Sen. Barack Obama with a 2.5 point lead over Sen. John McCain. That is down four points in the last three days. The reason for the tightening can be found in two of the components of the average, the Gallup and Rasmussen Reports daily tracking polls.

Gallup shows the race as a 48-44% Obama lead, down from a nine-point Obama advantage on Aug. 29th, the day after his acceptance speech. That was Sen. Obama's biggest lead since Aug. 15th and came on the same day that Sen. McCain announced Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. On Thursday, Rasmussen showed the race as a two point Obama lead, 48-46%. Both polls have very large sample sizes, 2800 and 3000 respectively, and measure public opinion over three days, averaging the result. Gallup measures registered voters while Rasmussen measures likely voters.

The news for the McCain campaign is likely to get better. Both results only include one day in in which voters would have seen Gov. Palin's vice-presidential acceptance speech. With the enthusiastic response to her address, and the fact that Palin is now more popular than either presidential candidate, according to a recent Rasmussen poll, the daily tracking numbers should close even further as the weekend progresses. By Monday, all three days in the rolling average of each poll will include post-Palin speech sampling. That result is likely to show an even race or perhaps a small McCain lead.

The pattern of this election appears to be set. This will be a very close election, just like the elections of 2000 and 2004. Democrats still appear to have the built-in advantages. But the selection of Gov. Palin by Sen. McCain has energized the Republican base like never before in this contest. Conservatives for the first time have a reason to vote for the McCain ticket, rather than against the Democrats. The first Presidential debate takes place on Friday, Sept. 26th. Unless one of the candidates has a major misstep before then, the race is likely to remain even or close until then.

Although Hillary has every right to tell Obama to go fly a kite, her chances of winning the nomination in 2012 in the "I told you so" primary will be greatly enhanced if she appears to actually care this time around. So she's going to Florida.

Obama's erstwhile Democratic rival is scheduled to appear on his behalf in the swing state of Florida on Monday. While both Obama and Clinton aides emphasise that the programme was set before the Republican vice-presidential nominee was chosen, some analysts and Democratic loyalists believe the former first lady is the person best equipped to take Palin down a peg.

"What [the Republican presidential candidate, John] McCain has done with Governor Palin's nomination is aim right at a demographic that Obama needs to address quickly: non-college-educated women," said Mike McCurry, who served as White House spokesman under Clinton's husband, Bill.

Actually that's been in the works awhile, but it certainly does take on some extra meaning now. The trick here is to campaign just hard enough to show she's doing her part, but not hard enough to actually push Obama over the top. You have to admit, so far her statements have lacked a little fire, as noted in the WaPo blog:

"After listening to all the speeches this week, I heard nothing that suggests the Republicans are ready to fix the economy for middle class families, provide quality affordable health care for all Americans, guarantee equal pay for equal work for women, restore our nation's leadership in a complex world or tackle the myriad of challenges our country faces. So, to slightly amend my comments from Denver: NO WAY, NO HOW, NO McCAIN-PALIN."

Clinton has been exceptionally quiet since the selection of just the second female vice presidential nominee in history.

Is Obama likely to admit that he needs rescuing with female proxies like Gov Sebelius and Senator Clinton? And if he does use them, wouldn't that bring back the question about selecting Joe Biden as his VP, who is pretty much useless right now?

According to Fox News, Oprah Winfrey is pushing back on a report posted today on The Drudge Report that she strongly opposes booking Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. "There has been absolutely no discussion," Winfrey said via press release, "about having Sarah Palin on my show." Winfrey reiterated that when she publicly endorsed Barack Obama (on the Larry King Show) she made a decision not to have any guests on her own show that would use it "as a platform". Winfrey expressed interest in having Palin on after the campaign.

Senator Obama appeared on the show twice, both appearances coming before he announced his intent to run for the presidency. The issue, however, is largely a moot point since the McCain campaign has turned down all requests for an interview with Palin.

Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic writes:

A senior McCain campaign official advises that, despite the gaggle of requests and pressure from the media, Gov. Sarah Palin won't submit to a formal interview anytime soon. She may take some questions from local news entities in Alaska, but until she's ready -- and until she's comfortable -- which might not be for a long while -- the media will have to wait. The campaign believes it can effectively deal with the media's complaints, and their on-the-record response to all this will be: "Sarah Palin needs to spend time with the voters."

Verne Gay of The TV Zone argues that Winfrey should capitalize on the controversy while taking the opportunity to support her candidate by offering to openly debate Palin on her show.

When Palin does start doing press, it looks like Larry King has first dibs. Igor at Think Progress reminds us that McCain has already promised Larry King an interview with his running mate. When McCain appeared on Larry King Live in July McCain said, "I want to say that that vice presidential candidate will be on your show. I will not risk the wrath of Larry King. I want to assure you." McCain, Igor also points out, recently canceled an appearance on King's show in retaliation for this classic exchange between CNN's Campbell Brown and McCain adviser Tucker Bounds.