Wednesday: Sarah Palin speaks to a newly invigorated rightwing fringe base and promises to reignite the culture wars.

Thursday: the stock market tanks, losing 300 points and wiping out hundreds of billions of dollars in value.

Coincidence? Or a sign that God doesn't like McCain/Palin?

We report, you decide.

Broadcast apparently right before Johnny McEndlessWar announced his choice for veep, here's an interesting video laying out how some prominent "conservatives" - quote marks because there are no actual conservatives left in this country - really view Sarah Palin.

That's gotta hurt.

Those who have played chess professionally will immediately get the meaning of my title: exclam!
It refers to when a player makes a brilliant move within the game; a move so good that it has the potential to change the outcome from there on in. You see, in the game called chess -one of the oldest in the world- we record each player’s move(s) with symbols; and once you see an exclamation mark in brackets or parentheses (!) recorded next to a move, you are supposed to take a long hard look at the move and its relevance to the later outcome of the game. It sets the stage for the post-game analysis and for later evaluation. At the end of this presidential race in early November, we will all look back at John McCain’s gambit of yesterday and we will all see the genius in this move. Whoever advised him to make this selection deserves a raise. Win or lose it was a brilliant move.

In chess, we also have a symbol for recording a move that we can later deem a blunder (or too speculative); it’s a question mark (?). Sometimes recorders use asterisks (**); especially when they think this move will be the cause of the player’s obvious demise or downfall. Many writers have already questioned John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin (the republican governor of Alaska) as his vice-presidential running mate. They are all wrong.