"The rest of him is mostly Arab, which he hides but is disclosed by his non-African Arabic surname and his Arabic first and middle names as a way to triply proclaim his Arabic parentage to people in Kenya.  Only a small part of him is African Black from his Luo grandmother, which he pretends he is exclusively.

"What he isn't, not a genetic drop of, is 'African-American,' the descendant of enslaved Africans brought to America chained in slave ships.  He hasn't a single ancestor who was a slave.  Instead, his Arab ancestors were slave owners.  Slave-trading was the main Arab business in East Africa for centuries until the British ended it.

"Let that sink in:  Obambi is not the descendant of slaves, he is the descendant of slave owners.  Thus he makes the perfect Liberal Messiah."

"We think of places like Argentina and Egypt and Iran, of multitudes brought together by their zeal for a Peron or a Nasser or a Khomeini. In these kinds of societies, the crowd comes forth to affirm its faith in a redeemer: a man who would set the world right."

"Much as I admire Fouad Ajami, he, too, should stick to foreign affairs - in the Middle East!!  What he doesn't understand is that there is absolutely no parallel between an American crowd and the 'Arab street.'  They differ in literally every conceivable respect except numbers! The only thing [equivalent] we have here in America is a large pool of devout racists, some of whom, under sufficient, intemperate incitement, might decide to take this matter into their own hands."

For a Vice Presidential candidate who didn't own a passport until last year, Sarah Palin's brief passages on national security Thursday night were perfectly tailored to her lack of expertise or experience in foreign affairs.

But it hit the spot -- the oil spot, to be precise -- in a rollicking acceptance speech spent mostly ridiculing the Democratic ticket and extolling the expertise hockey moms bring to high office.

The Alaska governor's office floats in a sea of oil politics. During her 20 months in office, Palin threw herself into ramping up exports of North Slope supplies to the lower 48. In fact, she accelerated the construction of infrastructure to deliver fuel.  

It's hard to imagine an Alaska governor not knowing at least something about what's going on in the rest of world's energy markets.

But it's a sure bet that the average Alaskan is as familiar with the intricacies of crude futures as ordinary Iowans are with the price of ethanol or, for that matter, Third Worlders with the price of kerosene.

But otherwise, Palin has shown little interest in the world outside the United States.

Her first, and apparently only, foreign travel came last year, to visit members of the Alaska National Guard stationed in Kuwait, and wounded troops in Germany, according to her deputy communications director, Sharon Leighow.

That was roughly equal to the travels of George W. Bush when he entered the White House in 2001. The erstwhile Texas governor had visited China when his father was ambassador to Beijing in the 1980s, and Israel, and there were the famous "lost weekends" in Mexico  during his drinking years -- all of which, critics say, left him woefully unprepared for the rigors of the post-9/11 world.

Historians will have the final call on that.

Palin sounded authoritative when she mentioned "Russia wanting to control a vital pipeline in the Caucasus and to divide and intimidate our European allies by using energy as a weapon...."  

Critics have credited speechwriter Matthew Scully, late of the Bush White House, with writing the words Palin merely sang.  

But as tidy a line as that was, it's likely Palin had at least as much a hand in drafting it as Scully, considering her involvement with oil infrastructure during her term as governor, no matter how brief.

She went on to talk about the scary what-ifs:

To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of the world's energy supplies, or that terrorists might strike again at the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia, or that Venezuela might shut off its oil discoveries and its deliveries of that source, Americans, we need to produce more of our own oil and gas . . . .

Big applause.

And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: We've got lots of both.

More big applause.

If Palin didn't write that line, she sure had obvious fun delivering it.

The next lines, though, came right out of the Republican boilerplate for the past eight years.

Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we're going to lay more pipelines, and build more nuclear plants, and create jobs with clean coal, and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative sources . . . .

The problem is, it's a script grounded more in the kind of kitchen-table, hockey-mom talk that makes so much sense to so many people, until it's tested against the complicated real world.
Washington has shown only fitful interest in alternative energy supplies (the technology for which, most energy economists say, doesn't exist yet to generate meaningful amounts of power) .

And nuclear is a non-starter, unless she and McCain win the election and the Republicans take both houses of Congress -  not -- unless we want to buy them from France; U.S. companies deserted the business years ago.

Nor is there's going to be any explosion of offshore drilling, which all the Republicans, except those who actually would have to look at them from their patios, seem to be for. (Likewise, look up Ted Kennedy's position on windmills in Nantucket Sound.)

Meanwhile, even capitalist icons, notably, T. Boone Pickens, have given to issuing Al Gore-like pronouncements that natural gas, not oil, is only a temporary solution to our energy problem.

So, like it or not -- and nobody outside Saudi Arabia does -- we'll be mired in global oil politics for decades to come, particularly in the Middle East

So when Palin falls back on right-wing red-meat rather than thoughtful alternatives, as she did Thursday night, she sounds like nothing more than an echo of Harry and Louise on the Republican ticket -- not a serious contender for the second highest post in the land.  

"Victory in Iraq is finally in sight, and he wants to forfeit," she said of Barrack Obama, in a disturbing slander. (Has anyone noticed that the Iraqis themselves have forced the Bush administration into adopting Obama's position?)  

She goes on, in a similar vein:

Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay; he wants to meet them without preconditions.

and:

Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he's worried that someone won't read them their rights.

The Republicans lapped it up. 

Do they really believe it? Does she?

If so, God help us.

Russia's punishing attack on Georgia has already harvested bitter fruit beyond the Black Sea.

On Thursday U.S. and Polish officials reached agreement to install a battery of American  missiles in Poland, a plan sure to infuriate Russia and escalate tensions with its former  puppet states in Eastern and Central Europe.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the deal includes a "mutual commitment" between the two nations -- outside of the NATO alliance -- to come to each other's assistance in case of danger.

With a wary eye on Russia's lightening attack on Georgia, Tusk said NATO would be too slow to act if it was threatened by Moscow, according to an A.P. report from Warsaw.

"Poland and the Poles do not want to be in alliances in which assistance comes at some point later -- it is no good when assistance comes to dead people. Poland wants to be in alliances where assistance comes in the very first hours of -- knock on wood -- any possible conflict," Tusk said.

Russia, meanwhile, has positioned ballistic missile launchers in Georgia, WIRED's Noah Shachtman reported Thursday, based on a transcipt of a little noticed briefing by Deputy National Security Advisor Jim Jeffrey and other Bush administration officials earlier in the week.

"The President was informed immediately on Friday, when we received news of the first two SS-21 Russian missile launchers into Georgian territory," Jeffrey said.

On Capitol Hill, some Republicans think they can use Russian aggression in Georgia to bludgeon the Democrats into supporting the deployment of an American "missile shield" in Eastern Europe, according to a story by CQ's enterprising Josh Rogin:

In September, lawmakers will resume their debate over the missile sites -- this time amid fresh concerns over Russian threats to U.S. allies in eastern Europe. Though the administration has presented the missiles sites as a defense against Iranian attack, missile defense advocates say they now plan to cite the Russian threat as a way to get Democrats to let construction begin...

"Russia's actions represent compelling data that should be convincing to Democrats that we don't want to delay this thing," said Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., a leading missile defense champion.

"This is not just about missile defense; this is about demonstrating to Russia that America is still a nation of resolve . . . and we're not going to let Russian expansionism intimidate everyone."

But some key congressional Democrats aren't budging from their opposition to the plan, Rogin reports.