Via Ace comes word that Hillary isn’t going to be Obama’s . . . uh, surrogate.

HILLARY Clinton may be the most obvious choice to throw into the ring against the new darling of American politics, Sarah Palin, but the failed Democratic presidential candidate is refusing the job.

“We’re not going to be anybody’s attack dog against Sarah Palin,” a Clinton insider said yesterday.

The L.A. Times Top of the Ticket blog has more. Viva 2012.

I have to say, I found the “Commander in Chief of the National Guard” argument to be laughable — just like the “Alaska borders Russia” argument. My thinking was: why not just admit that she has no genuine foreign policy experience — like virtually every other Governor who ever tried to be President or Vice-President.

But this post by Beldar, and the accompanying video (embedded below) have me thinking twice. I’m still not sold on the argument. But go ahead and tell me why this guy is wrong.

Here’s the video:

Go here and here.

[Guest post by DRJ]

MSNBC has called a halt to the bold experiment pairing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews in the anchor chairs to lead the coverage of the 2008 election:

“After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.

The change — which comes in the home stretch of the long election cycle — is a direct result of tensions associated with the channel’s perceived shift to the political left.”

NBC and MSNBC insiders offered a much more blunt assessment:

“In interviews, 10 current and former staff members said that long-simmering tensions between MSNBC and NBC reached a boiling point during the conventions. “MSNBC is behaving like a heroin addict,” one senior staff member observed. “They’re living from fix to fix and swearing they’ll go into rehab the next week.”

MSNBC claims its coverage is passionate, not biased or left-leaning. Nevertheless, the article confirms NBC anchors Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams were finding it “tougher and tougher” to defend MSNBC’s coverage.

It also suggests Keith Olbermann stayed in New York during the Republican Convention in part due to fear for his safety.

Olbermann probably had little to fear but the same can’t be said for Republicans. Recently published affidavits detail anarchists’ plans to stretch chains across a nearby highway, kidnap delegates and disrupt the Republican Convention with “burning tires, urine and feces, and explosives including Molotov cocktails.” Other plans included “posing as workers or volunteers to sneak into the convention hall and block its outside air intake vent, … using street puppets to hide weapons, and throwing marbles to trip up police horses and pedestrians.”

— DRJ

Armed Liberal phones to say: “Your website is all better.” A tech guy looked at it today and found a bunch of runaway processes. Also, he said, the server wasn’t well configured for large traffic.

The proof of the pudding is in the next big link. Keep your fingers crossed: the outages may be over.

UPDATE: Isn’t irony great? There was an outage within an hour of the publication of this post.

Sigh. I’ll keep you updated. The next time the problem is Definitely Fixed, I’ll tell you again.

Holy cow.

I wonder what kind of play this will get in the papers tomorrow? Can anyone say “bare majority”?

UPDATE: Well, I suppose they could just ignore it entirely.

In any event, the electoral vote projections still aren’t pretty.

We may have another case of an illegal, arrested on multiple occasions and never deported, causing the death of a small child. The Denver Post has stories here, here, here, and here. The second link summarizes the tragic event:

Three people — including a 2-year-old boy [he was actually three, according to a more recent article. — Ed.] sitting in an ice cream shop — were killed tonight after a collision sent a small pickup truck careening into the Baskin Robbins store at South Havana Street and East Mississipi Avenue.

Aurora Police said the driver responsible for the accident fled the scene but was caught. He is now in custody and being questioned.

The boy’s first name was Martin. Here is his picture:

More recent reports (including the third and fourth links above) say that immigration authorities have placed a hold on the suspect.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials sent a faxed detainer on Hernandez, 23, at 12:04 a.m. Saturday, indicating his U.S. citizenship is under question, according to Arapahoe County jail officials and federal authorities.

Hernandez has been arrested 16 times in five years in Colorado but apparently has never been deported, according to Colorado Bureau of Investigation records.

Here’s the whole sordid history:

Dating back to 2003, Hernandez has been arrested for mostly misdemeanor offenses 16 times by police officers in Denver, Longmont, Aurora, Westminster, Lakewood and Broomfield and sheriff’s deputies in Boulder, Gilpin and Arapahoe counties, according to Colorado Bureau of Investigation records. His charges have included forgery, assault, theft, fraud and driving under restraint.

Sopranuk said Friday that Hernandez was born in California and is a U.S. citizen.

But he added that detectives could find no indication that he had ever held a driver’s license in California or Colorado.

Also according to CBI records, Hernandez, who has 11 aliases and two listed birth dates, has four listed birth places, including Mexico.

ICE placed a detainer because of indications he was born outside the country, said ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok. Officers are currently investigating his citizenship, he said.

When ICE did not place a hold on Hernandez following his July 18 arrest, he was released and has since been listed as a fugitive, according to CBI records.

There were multiple warrants for his arrest when the fatal accident happened Thursday, Sopranuk said.

Sopranuk could not be reached for comment Saturday.

Rusnok said it is possible that if Hernandez is in the country illegally that his status was not checked or identified previously despite numerous arrests.

He said in some instances suspects are arrested for minor offenses and they are released on bail or serve short sentences before a citizenship check is done.

We’ll stay on top of this one.

UPDATE: More here from Michelle Malkin.

UPDATE x2: A new article claims that the man is likely not a citizen, but may not be an illegal immigrant:

A man accused of causing an accident that sent two cars careening into an ice cream shop, killing a 3-year-old boy and two women Thursday, likely is not a U.S. citizen, immigration officials said Sunday.

But it was unclear Sunday whether Francis Hernandez, 23, is an illegal immigrant. He could have another immigration status.

By the way, the child is three years old and not two, despite any suggestion by one of the earlier articles to the contrary. He had had a birthday recently, as one of the other links makes clear.

Today the Los Angeles Times runs a front-page Sunday-edition story based on interviews with a couple dozen women in Pennsylvania. Here’s a typical passage:

Even if they admire Palin’s attempt to juggle political ambition, an infant son with Down syndrome and a pregnant unwed daughter, these women say that maternal grit is not enough to win their votes.

Wow. Every last one of them says they won’t vote for Palin, huh? I’m sure that fairly reflects nationwide polling. Anyway, get this:

Waitress Judy Artice, “Miss Judy,” as she is known at Glisan’s roadside diner, declared Palin “the perfect candidate” after watching her Wednesday speech. That said, Artice had already decided that her vote would go to the first candidate who mentioned gasoline prices.

“And — I’ll be danged — it was Obama,” Artice, 46, said between servings of liver and onions during the lunch rush.

I’ll be danged!

I guess Obama cares about gas prices more than John McCain!

Or, just maybe, they both care, but Obama mentioned gas prices first because the Democrats had their convention first.

The article doesn’t mention that, of course.

But did John McCain even mention the price of gas in his speech? Let’s look:

We’re not going to allow that while you struggle to buy groceries, fill your gas tank, and make your mortgage payment. I’ve fought to get million-dollar checks out of our elections. I’ve fought lobbyists who stole from Indian tribes. I’ve fought crooked deals in the Pentagon. I’ve fought tobacco companies and trial lawyers, drug companies and union bosses.

(APPLAUSE)

And:

She’s — she’s helped run a small business. She’s worked with her hands and knows — and knows what it’s like to worry about mortgage payments, and health care, and the cost of gasoline and groceries.

And:

We must use all resources and develop all technologies necessary to rescue our economy from the damage caused by rising oil prices and restore the health of our planet.

There’s more about what to do about energy:

In America, we change things that need to be changed. Each generation makes its contribution to our greatness. The work that is ours to do is plainly before us; we don’t need to search for it.

We need to change the way government does almost everything: from the way we protect our security to the way we compete in the world economy; from the way we respond to disasters to the way we fuel our transportation network; from the way we train our workers to the way we educate our children.

And:

MCCAIN: We’re going to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don’t like us very much, and some of that money…

(APPLAUSE)

We’ll attack — we’ll attack the problem on every front. We’ll produce more energy at home. We will drill new wells off-shore, and we’ll drill them now. We’ll drill them now.

I’ll be danged.

Now: Obama did indeed also allude to the price of gas in his own acceptance speech, talking about “cars you can’t afford to drive” and outlining a plan to “finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.”

But it’s unfair for the L.A. Times to leave floating out there the implication that Obama has shown that he cares about the price of gas, and John McCain doesn’t.

The L.A. Times — unfair to a Republican?

I’ll be danged!

UPDATE: Commenter Karl notes that Obama spoke about high gas prices before the convention. He likes them!

If you think you don’t like it, trust me, I’m 1000 times unhappier.

The site has been melted several times in recent days, mostly by Hot Air links. Every blogger out there has noticed a significant spike in traffic since the Palin pick was announced, and Hot Air was already the most trafficked conservative site on the Internet. Hot Air is now getting over a million visits a day. A link in their “Headlines” can easily generate well over 3000 page views in a single hour.

The problem is getting worse and worse. This morning the site went down for hours, and I don’t even have a recent link to explain why.

I’m currently on a single server that I share with Winds of Change and no other site. Apparently the server can’t handle the load of traffic I’ve been getting with these Hot Air links. This has happened several times in recent days — basically, whenever the traffic is good.

I will obviously have to look into a different solution. Any suggestions?

P.S. Don’t recommend Hosting Matters. They put me at risk of losing my entire blog because they got pissy when I publicly complained that they didn’t give a crap about keeping my site up. I’ll never deal with those people again.

[Guest post by DRJ]

This morning McCain-Palin campaign manager Rick Davis told Fox News’ Chris Wallace that Palin was “not scared to answer questions.” Instead, Davis said Palin would be interviewed at a place and time selected by the campaign because “We run our campaign not the news media.”

Now Mike K links a Time Magazine entry that Sarah Palin’s first TV interview was offered to ABC’s Charlie Gibson and is expected to occur later this week in Alaska. The interview offer was reportedly made by the McCain-Palin campaign several days ago.

Here are Mike K’s thoughts [emphasis mine]:

“The Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson of ABC is set up for next week. I thought they would wait until the week before the debate with Biden but she must really be a quick study. ABC was excluded from the debates, no doubt because of Gibson and Stephanopolis’ good questions for Obama. With Russert gone, This Week is the best Sunday show and I thought they would have her there.”

Well done, Mike K, and thanks for the link.

— DRJ

UPDATE BY PATTERICO: There’s no question in my mind that someone will pull a pop quiz on her (“Who runs Podunkstan, Governor?”) like they did with Bush — but like they never do with Biden or Obama. Knowing this, it behooves her to know the answers to those questions, even though I’ll bet big money Biden couldn’t answer the same questions.