(links footnoted in the comments because, as EPU has noted, footnotes make the text look all scholarly and shit…or, if you prefer a more ruthless intellectual honesty, lazy old dogs don’t dig new tricks)

***

The two hot topics in the penultimate weekend before the election are Sarah the Rogue and A. Todd the Fraud. Neither one of them have a future in American politics, but both Sarah Palin and Ashley Todd have bright futures on reality TV!

If there has been a single beneficiary of the Economic Fail of 2008, it’s Sarah Palin.

Prior to the 9/15 bankruptcy of Lehman Bros and the inception of the "financial crisis," the Alaska governor was Topic #1 in Campaign ’08, and John McCain’s judgment in picking her was Topic #1A.

EconFail08 largely changed the subject, which at that time was Palin’s clueless performances with Charles Gibson and, especially, Katie Couric. The more the American people saw of Palin the less they liked her. Obama’s poll numbers had already started to pick up prior to EF08.

While the emerging MSM narrative is that McCain was undone by EF08, the fact is his goose was deep fried by his daily blundering, which started as far back as May and which has continued unabated daily ever since.

McCain’s Keystone Kops Kampaign culminated in the suicidal pick of Sarah Palin to be one old man’s heartbeat away from the most powerful position in the world.

John McCain sold out his country to his own ambition when he picked Palin. &This weekend finds Ms. Alaska First back in the center focus — nothing but bad news for McCain.

This inventory of Palin Problems doesn’t include the $150-large-on-clothes buzz, which is so, like you know, yawn, mid-week!

*Reports are coming in that Palin has sold out John McCain to her own ambition among the Republican base, and is thus Sarah the Rogue. (1)

It’s a meme she’ll get to keep going forward to 2012, but only because EconFail08 became the main story heading into the fall campaign. If she had remained Topic #1 and received even more attention — she’d be Sarah the Toast.

*Palin’s centerpiece accomplishment in Alaska, the natural gas pipeline, turns out to have been a shady deal on behalf of allies. (2)

*Palin and her husband Todd testified under oath in the Troopergate Ethics Scandal. The prospect of a November Surpise looms ominously over the McCain/Palin camps. (3)

*The continued documentation of cronyism in Palin’s administration further shreds her already-well-tattered Reformer brand. (4)

*Even Fox News is raising her affinity with the separatist Alaskan Independence Party. (5)

*She’s a jinx on ice. (6)

Point #5 above marks Sarah Palin as permanently damaged goods. The Obama campaign has ignored the anti-American under-belly of Palin’s politics, but rest assured Mitt Romney will be all over it by the end of 2011. First Dud Todd Palin and his erstwhile membership in the AIP will make a big fat target for the Mitt$ter and her other gooper rivals.

A. Todd the Fraud.

A Traitor Todd.

Good thing these popcorn boxes come with a scorecard.