“For the complete story on Sarah Palin – including how her family deals with Trig’s condition, and how they are embracing Bristol’s pregnancy – pick up this week’s PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.”

Well, that’s nice, and it’ll certainly make our next visit to Ralphs more entertaining while we suffer that idiot writing a check ahead of us in line.

And for now, that’s all we’ll hear from Sarah Palin in her own words.

It’s been a week, and the Republican nomineee for Vice President of the United States has not spoken in an unscripted or uncontrolled setting. She hasn’t held a press conference. She hasn’t chatted with the boys in the back of the Straight Talk Express. Heck, she hasn’t even shown up in the warm confines of a Fox News studio.

What’s she afraid of? Is the future understudy leader of the free world too scared to talk to even cuddly Chris Wallace? (Stay tuned on that.)

To be fair, she’ll be busy — she has thirty fundraisers scheduled over the next sixty days. (Not for the campaign, which is sucking at the public teat this fall, but the RNC and state parties.) But if Barry can face down Papa Bear, surely she can drop by Chris Matthews to show us who has the hardballs.

Unless she’s a chickenshit. Are you a chickenshit, Sarah Palin? Because we just said you are — all talk, no stick. And we think you’re too chickenshit to prove us wrong.

Sarah Palin Talks About Her Family Struggles [People]

When Will Palin Meet the Press? [Newsweek]

Whatever the demographers say, to be a Boomer you had to come of age during the Sixties. If you grew up in the Seventies — like Barack Obama, like Sarah Palin, like me — you’re not a Boomer. You’re not really Gen X, either — that’s Eighties. We weren’t born with Sesame Street, we didn’t go to high school with MTV. Video games? Pong.

We don’t have a label. We’ve rarely been pandered to — Dazed and Confused, Wayne’s World, that’s about it. (Rocking out to Queen in a Pacer? That’s ours, baby.) We’re in the shadows of two mountains.

Let me tell you a few things about the Seventies. It was the decade when retro first hit the market, when America started looking back instead of forward. American Graffiti. Happy Days. Grease. Animal House. We didn’t have our own moment. We had a rerun of the Fifties.

And at the end of the decade, we embraced Ronald Reagan.

Not all of us, heavens no. But enough to make it noticeable. Some of the smart kids were tired of the Democrats, tired of Jimmy, tired of Teddy, who wasn’t yet the Lion of the Senate but the idiot brother who drowned a chick and supported what we called fascist legislation. No, he wouldn’t do.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness. (Even our protest lines were borrowed from the Fifties.) My co-editor of the student newspaper’s annual satire supplement — who loved the Who, who as a copy editor suggested “All We Are Saying” as the perfect headline for a John Lennon candlelight vigil — would a few years later start a campus neocon tabloid.

I followed Carlin. He followed P.J. O’Rourke.

This fall, we’re taking over the country. The torch has been passed to a new generation, and this time it’s personal. It’s the Barry & Sarah Show, hosted by Jon Stewart, fortysomethings all. Joe and John will have walk-on parts, but they’re both irrelevant to the story. It’s our world now, and you kids will just have to deal with it. You’ll get your turn soon enough. If anything’s left.

Counterclockwise from left: Non-pregnant daughter, caribou, blood, Sarah Palin. Enjoy your breakfast!

A Hunting Trophy [LAT, via SanFranLefty]

This is why you don’t want to plan too far ahead: We were all set to run with Mary Tyler Moore gags this week.

Disclosures on Palin Raise Questions on Vetting Process [NYT]

Back before they weren’t talking to each other, Shrub and Geezer shared a warm moment on the tarmac at Arizona’s Luke Air Force Base. The occasion was Geezer’s 69th birthday (how young he looked then!), and about an hour later Shrub was chatting up the crowd at the Pueblo El Mirage RV Resort and Country Club.

Twelve minutes before Shrub began his remarks, CNN posted the day’s Gulf Coast forecast:

Flooding from Hurricane Katrina’s Monday landfall could wreak catastrophe on New Orleans, overwhelming the city’s water and sewage systems and leaving survivors in a bowl of toxic soup, a top hurricane expert said.

It was Monday of Katrina Week — August 29, 2005. We wouldn’t learn of the flooding until Tuesday, but it was Sunday that we learned the definition of “contraflow” as we watched nonstop live coverage of the mandatory evacuation of a major American city.

“It just wouldn’t be appropriate to have a festive occasion while a near tragedy or a terrible challenge is presented in the form of a natural disaster,” McCain said as he sliced the cake.

Hold on, our producer’s screaming something in our earpiece — oh, McCain said that this time, about possibly canceling the Republican convention. Please accept our correction and apology.

To be fair, McCain wasn’t the Decider in 2005, and as a senator he has since “supported every investigation and ways of finding out what caused the tragedy.”

Wait, damn producer again — okay, he voted against an independent Katrina commission. Twice.

Katrina Kerfuffle [FactCheck.org, 6/5/08]

• On a conference call with reporters just now, senior Obama foreign policy adviser Susan Rice argued that there is “a pattern here of recklessness” when it comes to McCain’s approach to various national security issues. (TPM, August 20)
• Rice says the Republican’s “tendency is to shoot first and to ask questions later,” saying he “cheerled Bush’s decision to take our eye off the ball and start a war in Iraq that had nothing to do with 9/11.” (Time, August 20)
• [Richard] Clarke compared McCain to “extreme neo-conservative” policy types because of his early support for the Iraq war and suggested he was “reckless” and “trigger happy.” (MSNBC, August 20)
• Democratic Congressman Adam Smith of Washington, sitting in the audience, rose to ask [former Navy Secretary Richard] Danzig for advice on how Democrats can deliver a tough foreign-policy message that will be credible to voters. When Danzig started to back euphemistically into the question, Smith — a proponent of tougher Obama campaign tactics generally — jumped back up. “Don’t be subtle!” he implored. “Just hit! Just say, ‘John McCain does not have an even temper, and how is that going to factor into national security?”
   
  At that, Danzig played ball.

  “I think John McCain is well-known for ‘losing it’ in a variety of circumstances,” he said — something which has potential policy implications. (TNR, August 26)

• “He has a huge anger problem,” [Barbara] Boxer said. “And he never hid that… I have seen it happen on the Senate floor many, many times… He has exploded at me a couple times.” (Politico, August 26)
• If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament, and judgment, to serve as the next commander in chief, that’s a debate I’m ready to have. (Barack Obama, Thursday night)

Senator Hothead [Washington Monthly, August 27]

The Geezer has a Dayton playdate with his new Vice Geezer on Friday, although there’s some buzz that he might try to steal some headlines by announcing today. If so, it could be Droopy, the Baby Killer, the Mormon, Governor Placenta, or even Kay Bailey Hutchison (nickname pending), but since we haven’t been paying any attention, we’ll wait for the “surprise”.

Why the quotes? Well, the Post reports that McCain “dropped from public view after a fundraiser Tuesday night in San Diego.” We won’t tell you the identity of the confused elderly gentleman we found wandering on Washington Street that night, but as he watched the convention on our couch, we heard him mutter “Fuck. Now I’ll have to go with that exorcist.”

McCain Is Said to Be Set to Unveil Running Mate Tomorrow [WaPo]