People who go to work for the government with the expectation that it will provide them with retirement security are kidding themselves.

Getting local politicians *and* local unions to think more than a year or two is all but impossible. Do you realize that practically no local jurisdictions even have a Liabilities Budget?

It’s just part of that visionary and long-range thinking on the part of governments.

Here’s a Time article on how the Obama campaign plans to deal with Sarah. I was struck by the very first graf.

Nobody was more surprised by John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate than the people who run Barack Obama’s campaign. “I can honestly say that we weren’t prepared for that,” says David Axelrod, Obama’s top strategist. “I mean, her name wasn’t on anybody’s list. It was a surprise to a lot of Republicans as well.”

Well, why weren’t they prepared for it? A lot of the non-left blogs have been speculating about her for months. Rush reportedly was talking her up months ago, and there have been threads at Free Republic about her. She had come to Arizona to visit McCain’s house there. It was no big intellectual challenge to figure out that she was on the list, if not the short one.

Is this kind of intelligence cluelessness the way they plan to run the country?

Bill Whittle is now sold on John McCain:

I had heard before that John McCain had been beaten in prison, and I admired him for it. But when he said he had been broken . . . I gasped. When this sometimes cocky, arrogant old man told me he had once been a cocky, arrogant young man until he was “blessed by hardship,” until he had been broken and remade — and in that remaking discovered a love of country so fierce and pure that even as a patriot myself I will never approach it — well, in that moment John McCain won my heart, to add to the respect and admiration he had already had.

When John McCain told me what I and untold millions of Americans have always believed, what others tell me to be ashamed of and mock me for — that I live in the greatest country in the world, a force of goodness and justice in dark places, a land of heroism and sacrifice and opportunity and joy — to me that went right to the mystic chords of memory that ultimately binds this country together. Some people don’t know what it is, but there is such a thing as patriotism — pure, unrefined, unapologetic, unconditional, non-nuanced, non-cosmopolitan, white-hot-burning patriotism. John McCain loves this country. I love it too. Not what it might be made into someday — not its promise, always and only its promise — but what it was and what it is, a nation and an idea worth fighting and dying for.

He also points out that Sarah has stolen Barack’s mojo. Read the whole thing.

…do all the people who were predicting that Sarah Palin would drop out within a couple days look now?

[Update a few minutes later]

More thoughts from Ann Althouse, on foolish Eagleton comparisons.

This is just one poll, but it indicates that either Obama didn’t get a convention bounce, or it was negated by events since (and the Republican convention didn’t really get going until last night). If it’s valid, it’s hard to see anything other than the Palin selection as the cause. And note the difference between this poll and the one on the weekend (eight points). As I noted previously, weekend polls are notorious for favoring Democrats.

Also, if valid, it’s bad news for Obama. If McCain gets a convention bounce, he’ll be well in the lead.

You just know the Obama campaign is going to try to scare you out of voting for her. They’re gonna say she can’t manage her family. And that she kills innocent helpless animals. And did we mention that she’s a woman?

If you don’t vote for McCain/Palin, you’re a sexist. And probably a secret misogynist.

What a delicious trap for the identity politics crowd.

Alex Knapp points out that he gets a bad rap, at least in his Senate career. I think that a lot of people tend to focus on all his “present” votes in the IL legislature.

But I don’t necessarily judge a legislator by the quantity of laws generated. The quality matters much more to me. In fact, I’d prefer an effective legislator who did nothing other than preventing bad legislation, even if (s)he never originated any. I don’t think that the country suffers from a shortage of laws, particularly federal ones. And I’d really go for someone who would work to overturn much of the bad law currently on the books.