Midday open thread

• Ha ha ha. Jake Tapper is so naive. This, on the other hand, is better.
• Paul Hogarth over at Beyond Chron reviews Taking on the System:
  

  Markos Moulitsas’ new book, Taking On the System, is not really about political blogs. One would expect the founder of Daily Kos to write about the netroots (and his book offers plenty of anecdotes about how they’ve changed politics), but it’s really a guide for how ordinary people can make an impact in the 21st Century. Moulitsas writes about how the Internet has democratized the process – making old gatekeepers like party bosses, media moguls and even record companies less powerful and relevant than before. But modeling himself after the late Saul Alinsky, Moulitsas offers plenty of pragmatic advice for political activists – like “stay on message,” “how to handle your enemies,” and “pick your battles” – that was applicable in an earlier era. In the 21st Century, however, more can play this game. Taking On the System is a resource for progressives hopeful about November – but anxious about how to keep that momentum going in an Obama Administration [...]

  Moulitsas has written a compelling book that illustrates the democratizing impact that digital media has had on political activism, and offers sound advice for how to navigate this medium for your cause.

  Pre-order today!

• Nice how the Politico is fluffing the “uppity Negro” GOP narrative.
• Welcome back, Billmon.
• Gov. Sarah Palin’s scandal hits the WSJ.
  

  ANCHORAGE, Alaska — When Sarah Palin was elected governor as a Republican outsider in 2006, she didn’t just take on an incumbent from her own party. She took on Alaska’s Republican establishment.

  Ms. Palin vowed to clean up a long-cozy political system that had been sullied by an FBI corruption investigation. She endeared herself to Alaskans by making good on her reform promises and showing homey touches, like driving herself to work.

  Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin with husband Todd Palin at her 2006 inauguration.
  Now, one of the bright new stars in the Republican Party has suddenly become tarnished. The state legislature this week voted to hire an independent investigator to see whether Ms. Palin abused her office by trying to get her former brother-in-law fired from his job as an Alaska state trooper.

• Yup, McCain’s press buddies like him less and less.
  

  I’ve spent three days on the road with McCain this week, and except for a couple of public town-hall meetings, where flashes of his old wit and friskiness shone through, I’ve barely clapped eyes on him. The forward compartments of his charter 737—his personal seating area in the front, and the “Straight Talk” suite in the middle—are blocked off from the press section in the rear by dark brown curtains. And as soon after takeoff as F.A.A. rules allow, McCain aides pull the drapes tight, so tight that his press secretary, Brooke Buchanan, spent several frustrated minutes this week fiddling in vain with one that drooped ever so slightly off its last hook, leaving a risky sliver of daylight between McCain’s compartment and the cage of the media beast he once not only fed, but tamed.

  McCain used to call the press “my base,” but if he came back to shoot the breeze with the reporters who cover him now, he’d face a million unhelpful questions that would shake him off his message of the day: Why has Barack Obama got his goat? What does he think of the indictment of Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican colleague with whom he has often tangled, on seven counts related to the kind of sloppy pork-barrel politics for which McCain has long had contempt? Does he worry that the biopsy of what turned out to be a benign little bit of his cheek this week will make voters recall that he is a cancer survivor, and about to turn 72 years old? How does he square his current support for offshore oil-drilling with his past opposition to it, and doesn’t he risk alienating the independent and swing voters who have been the mother’s milk of his political life?

• Chris Cillizza claims Obama’s veep short list isn’t that short. But the names mentioned are the same ones we’ve seen over and over again — Kaine, Biden, Nunn, Sebelius, Dodd and Bayh.
• Nice. Lanny Davis is also on the “Hillary Clinton or no other woman veep” bandwagon. That crowd is all about glass ceilings, obviously. And has there ever been a worse surrogate for anyone than Lanny Davis? Ever?
• Yeah, this isn’t Ben Smith’s best moment.

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