All that aside, the post does contain one very bold and intriguing prediction. I repost it here so that you will know, should it come to pass, that Ebert said it first…

The new issue of Vanity Fair mentions in its profile of Sarah Palin, as a casual aside, that Glenn Beck has booked the Dena’ina Center, the largest venue in Anchorage, for the date of September 11, 2010. What do you think that means? It could mean Beck simply wants to hold a rally in the home state of the woman who shared his podium on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s famous speech.

Beck says he chose that date without realizing its significance. But it cannot be a coincidence that he has chosen 9/11. Nor does it take special insight to connect that date with Palin’s many statements about the “Ground Zero Mosque” and the even more pointed “9/11 Mosque.” The association is obvious: “9/11″ feeds into “mosque” feeds into “Muslims” feeds into the misperception that Obama is a Muslim. Beck and Palin speak about “taking back America.” The buried message is that they will take it back from Muslims. This is a heartless misuse of the tragedy of 9/11 and its victims.

If Beck had planned to come to Anchorage on another date, it wouldn’t have excited much notice. But any meeting in Alaska on 9/11 without Palin also present will be anticlimactic. It’s too far to go not to feature her. The symbolic date of 9/11 invests this event with the inescapable possibility that he and Palin plan to announce their Presidential candidacy for 2012.

Man’s Worst Friend, the stripey menace, tried to attack and kill a 9-year-old boy in Kent, Ohio. And they might have succeeded…had Pinky the Boxer dog not stepped in.

It did not go well.

Here she is in her first introduction to Arizona voters as a candidate. In which she, right off the bat, forgets the entirety of her opening remarks.

Ah, the perils of public speaking.

I’d be inclined to feel bad for her, but she’s kind of a bitch.

Senator Feinstein to chair the “No on Prop 19″ campaign.

Prop 19 being the proposition to legalize marijuana in the state.

Probably a good idea not to read too much into them, but interesting nonetheless.

Huh.

Welcome to The Show.

Which is why I was surprised when I saw this ad last night:

Now admittedly, the ad isn’t from the Toomey campaign. It is instead from something called Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies which, lacking a simple “About” page, struck me as an empty shell/funnel 527. Which, indeed it is, as a sister organization to American Crossroads which, if you’ll remember, is the organization that Karl Rove and Ed Gillsepie started for donors disenchanted with the RNC under Michael Steele but still looking to give money to national Republican efforts.

So, this is essentially a major ad buy on behalf of the Toomey campaign by national Republican leadership.

This is part of a larger trend within the GOP to cast themselves as Medicare’s best friend (see here and here and here and here). Seeing it dispatched on behalf of Pat Toomey though is a bad sign. We already know that national security, defense, and foreign policy are off-limits for spending restraint, and taxes are not just off limits full stop but must be reduced, but I think it’s safe to say, increasingly, that the battle over Medicare may well be over. It, too, is apparently not only beyond discussion (the single biggest spending-suck in the budget), but Republicans will try to bite the head off anyone who proposes cuts to it (in this case, the single most significant cost reduction measure in Obamacare and its major peon to fiscal responsibility). Not just guys like John McCain and Lindsay Graham, mind, but guys like Pat freakin’ Toomey. There are still a few who seem willing to have that fight – notably Paul Ryan and Rand Paul – but by and large, entitlement spending increasingly looks off the table. Indeed, the GOP are now running on their allegiance to it.

In some ways, this whole Tea Party insurgency is a great thing for the GOP. But it’s also a one step forward two steps back sort of thing. They can make Pat Toomey a general election frontrunner, but of course once he is, he runs on scaring seniors into thinking Democrats are out to cut them from the government teat.