Newsweek has the scoop on Troopergate. Apparently Palin and her husband made disparaging remarks about her brother-in-law before she was governor, remarks a judge said bordered on abuse of her brother-in-law’s children.

Definitely worth a read.

Josh Marshall considers the obvious:

Will John McCain bring Sarah Palin to the debates with Obama?

It does seem like McCain can’t campaign without her. Makes sense that he couldn’t debate Obama without Palin at his side. What would he do if he actually had to answer questions on his own? He might explode.

The thing that really gets me about the current narrative about Sarah Palin is that it’s bullshit. She’s not a maverick reformer — the record shows that as mayor and then governor, she actually chased after the same earmarks she’s claiming she fought against.  

Here’s a dissection of the “Original Mavericks” commercial and the questionable facts contained therein:

Even as John McCain enjoys his bounce, it’s hard not to realize that Obama people planned for this. Looking back at the primaries, I recall similar moments of stress and adversity when Obama supporters were convinced that certain death was imminent. And yet, Obama won the nomination, despite some pretty serious attacks.

Polls don’t win elections, and as George W. Bush showed us in 2000, the popular vote doesn’t win the election, either. It’s the electoral college that matters. And with Obama, we’re seeing a similar strategy that we saw back in the primaries when he was racing for delegates, not the popular vote.

Though McCain is still up in the overall polls, the battleground states are another matter. It’s like the Obama people are ignoring the polls, and continuing to execute their plan for electoral votes, just as they did with delegates in the primary.

So to all my friends out there currently freaking out about McCain’s post-convention bounce, take a deep breath. The Obama people know what they’re doing. This is the operation that beat the Clinton machine and the Democratic party establishment. What’s the McCain team compared to that?

Now that it looks like John McCain is ahead about 900% in the polls this morning, take a moment to enjoy this post from a “Republican” regarding his support for the old Maverick.

Yes, things look bleak, but at least we can laugh about it. Once the nukes start flying under a Palin administration and 2/3 of the world is a radioactive wasteland akin to the world of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, we can all look back at a time when we could still laugh in the face of defeat.

I’m covered in sunburn, my party’s losing the election to a doddering old maverick POW and his ultra-right-wing book banning creationist running mate, and I don’t have anything to play on either my PS3 or XBOX 360. What else could be better than that? Oh yeah, the fall television season has begun. At least there’s something to look forward in the midst of all this gloom.

Olbermann and Matthews have been dropped as election anchors, to be replaced by David Gregory. Yes folks, it’s perfectly acceptable for news organizations like Fox can be openly in the tank for McCain, but it’s just not fair if there’s an anchor in the tank for Obama. Why that’s just showing outrageous liberal bias!

But hey, the Republicans are objectively righteous in all things, aren’t they? The Demoncrats, why they’re just a bunch of evil baby killing monsters who don’t deserve a point of view.

Oh yeah, and more good news for McMaverick this morning — USA Today has him with a 10-point bounce.

What’s four more years of incompetence and mismanagement when you have a hockey mom and a genuine POW war hero at the helm? America loves a narrative.

Wow, if I’d known Biden was this good, I would have supported him in the primary. The campaign is brought out the fight and spirit in the man — he’s really transformed himself into an amazing speaker.

Give ‘em hell, Joe!

Fugazi is one of my favorite bands of all time. Here they are performing “Turnover” in Lafayette Park, near the White House, back in 1991:

And here they are at Ft. Reno Park in 1997. Tina and I were actually at this show (trivia alert: we’d been married at a courthouse in Upper Marlboro, MD just a few hours before), and we both remember Ian’s speech about D.C.:

It’s surprising how much youthful nostalgia lives on YouTube. Velocity Girl were a modestly successful DC indie rock band in the mid-1990′s, but legendary around these parts in those days. I was recently at someone’s house and Archie Moore, who was Velocity Girl’s guitar player, was there. It was a bit weird.

I remember walking around the University of Maryland campus, listening to Velocity Girl’s “Copacetic” LP on my brick-heavy “portable” CD player. They weren’t my favorite band by any stretch of the imagination, but I liked them. Their music holds up surprisingly well, too. One of the few bands I liked back then that I’ve never seen live.

Although I’ve always disagreed with Robert Novak, I’ve always enjoyed his columns. He wasn’t always right, but if you wanted to read interesting columns about what the Republicans were secretly thinking, that was the place to go.

This week, he writes about his cancer in The Washington Post, as well as the surprising support he’s found from people he didn’t expect. Definitely worth a look.