"I bid thee welcome to the White House
where your true test now begins:

Markets deaf to happy buzzwords
Blind to Shepard Fairey's art,
Heeding laws of economics,
Not the wishful laws of man;

A world of of evil filled with monsters,
who are unmoved by flowery talk,
Invulnerable to race cards
or leftwing blogger insults,
Who Hope for Change in megatons.

Do not despair! For look before you,
The noble army who brought you here:
Thespians and hiphop moguls,
Graphic artists, hipster twats,
The academic scribes of Athens,
basic cable sycophants.

These are the arrows in your quiver,
for the coming epic tests;
Use them well, but first remember:
They're waiting on those magic tricks.

Good luck with that, well-spoken hero,
I think I'll grab a snack and watch."

Just a hick from podunkville

In the meantime, by comparison, Gov. Palin was busy pursuing a career as a multi-term city councilman; then a multi-term city mayor and head of the Alaska Conference of Mayors; then an unsuccessful candidate for lieutenant governor; then the chair and ethics officer of the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission; then a private-citizen reformer who drove from state office first an ethically challenged fellow commissioner and then an ethically challenged attorney-general; then a successful candidate for governor who defeated, in succession, an ethically challenged incumbent and a popular former governor; and then a successful governor who, in less than two years, has helped enact comprehensive ethics reforms, completely revised her state's most important tax structure, and accomplished more than any single other American public servant of any rank or party to help bring us closer to national energy independence, all the while maintaining stratospheric public approval ratings among her home-state constituents.

Bringer of Thunder

When I mentioned my Palin dreams to Slate colleagues, they volunteered their own. One Obama-supporting colleague dreamed she had urged her young son to kill Palin with a string bean. Another dreamed she was at a fashion show and Palin served her crème fraîche on little scooped corn chips. A third says, "In the Sarah Palin dream I keep having, she has superhuman powers but is not really a person at all. In fact, she is more like the weather with glasses and an up-do, pushing clouds around and pitching lightning bolts."

Palin, who is new to the national spotlight, explained in a soft spoken tone that the experience is "unbelievable" and said with a smile, "Is it just me or do things move quick around here? Just a few nights ago I was on the north slope working the night shift and here I am today."

"I don't have to tell you that the Palin family has had quite a week," Palin added. "You never know what the future has in store for you."

"I should've asked a few more questions when Sarah joined the PTA," Palin joked. "When my wife starts talking about reform, corruption and making government work for the American people, it's best to just move out of the way."

A senior campaign official in the John McCain campaign confirmed to FOX News on Friday that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee will name Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

The Clean and Articulate Ticket

Will the Democratic party, which is committed (to say the least) to gender equity, and which in fact has a 50 percent quota for female delegates, accept Obama’s imposition of a glass ceiling at its convention?

A modest suggestion to my justifiably outraged Democratic friends: Hillary’s name should be placed in nomination not for the presidency (Obama won that more or less fair and square)--but for the vice presidency. It would be an interesting roll call vote.