In the October issue of Vanity Fair, a new expose on Sarah Palin.

The Guardian has the highlights in case you don't want to wade through it:

• She managed to spend $3,000 (of campaign funds) on underwear (including Spandex girdles). More on the shopping spree here.
• She calls on angels to protect her from demonic attacks
• She's a bad tipper
• Her Facebook and Twitter feeds may be ghost-written
• The McCain Campaign gave her books to increase her learning curve on issues
• She doesn't hunt

Sarah's response, according to the Guardian: [More...]

De Telegraaf reporter John van den Heuvel interviewed Joran Van der Sloot at Miguel Castro Castro prison last week. The interview is airing on the program "RTL Extra: Joran Speaks" in the Netherlands this evening. This promo for it is pretty funny, you don't even have to understand Dutch to get the point -- or the hype.

Aside from Joran saying he accepted Natalie Holloway's mother's offer of money because she had made his life miserable for five years, there's not much new.

Joran is locked down 23 hours a day. He teaches English to the prison guards in his cell. He's looking forward to moving to the "foreigner's wing" of the prison soon because he won't be so isolated. He's not fearful of the move. [More...]

HBO's new original series, Boardwalk Empire, starring Steve Buscemi, takes place in Atlantic City in 1920. (Full cast and character descriptions here.)If it sounds like the Sopranos in an earlier time era, it may be because Terence Winter and Martin Scorcese are involved.

Will reliving Prohibition's spectacular failure every week reduce enthusiasm for the War on Drugs? It's hard to miss the connection.

The show starts Sept. 19, and from the many trailers, available on You Tube (I skipped the one in the Times, it's preceded by a long commercial), the show looks like a winner. HBO could use a winner after Treme, which I thought was a dud.

(Larger version here.)

I'm back from Aspen. Sunday was another spectacular day. I took these photos of the Roaring Fork River during a morning walk that began in Jaffe Park, about a mile from Woody Creek. The trail runs along the east side of the Roaring Fork River, just south of the Smith Road bridge and joins up with the Rio Grande trail, that takes you into Aspen. (The Rio Grande trail extends 41 miles, from Aspen to Glenwood Springs.)

More photos here and here . [More...]

(Check out the larger version here. I took the picture on my neighborhood walk yesterday. The llamas belong to musician John Oates, who also raises emus, alpacas and peacocks.) For perspective, here's The Barns of Woody Creek from 2005.

Woody Creek is about altered sensibilities, music, art, science, guns, bombs, community involvement and craziness; pure, wonderful, Rocky Mountain craziness. It is also about nature, perfect barns, fresh foals, hunting hounds, elk herds, vistas and views that alter the brain without chemicals, and a state of mind that becomes addictive towards this special place along the banks of the mighty Roaring Fork.

On to some news and political musings: [More...]

Dateline Aspen: Dinner Saturday night at Matsuhisa (Nobu): Anita and I were seated next to Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, their former son-in-law Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes (headlining Jazz Aspen Snowmass tomorrow night), Chris' new wife Allison and their new baby. The baby was adorable. They were having a great time. At first I wondered if I was witnessing a commercial for the modern, enlightened, extended family unit, but they were having such a good time and they seemed so natural and genuine, I ended up wishing there were more families like them.

The soft-shell crab was excellent.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

The town is filling up. Volleyball tournaments are well underway around town.

....nearly every blade of grass in most of Aspen’s major parks — including Wagner, Rio Grande and Iselin, and, of course, the sand courts at Koch Lumber and Willoughby — have been taken over by the event, which has been the largest doubles tournament in the nation for more than a decade.....more than 5,000 players and spectators [are expected to] converge on Aspen for the weekend, where about 600 teams compete for prize money.

We had an excellent dinner at Gisella last night, Anita has this photo up at Owl Farm Blog, taken by our friend and dining companion, Pamela Hart.

It's another picture perfect day, and time to get outdoors. This is an open thread, all topics welcome, and let us know what's on your agenda this weekend.

The first Saturday of the college football season. Here are my picks -- Missouri(-12.5) over Illinois; Colorado St. (+12) over Colorado; Notre Dame(-10) over Purdue; Michigan (-3) over UConn; Kentucky (-3) over Louisville; Northwestern (-4) over Vanderbilt; Oregon St. (+13) over TCU.

Go Gators!

Open Thread.

The weather in Aspen could not be better. It's sunny, the air is crisp, the scenery picture-perfect. There was zero traffic driving up yesterday afternoon. Today the crowds will begin arriving.

Jazz Aspen Snowmass kicks off tonight with Wilco. The remaing nights:

Glenn Frey and Joe Walsh of the Eagles will headline Saturday at 7:15 p.m., and Martie Maguire and Emily Robison of the Dixie Chicks have formed their own side group — the Court Yard Hounds — which will open for the Eagles duo at 5 p.m.

Sunday: Leonard Skynyrd and the Black Crowes.

The peacocks are still sleeping here at Owl Farm, and so far, the only thing on the agenda is a hike.

Wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday weekend, my posting will be light. Let us know your plans. This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

The American Prospect's Jamelle Bouie wrote a negative review of Markos' Moulitsas' "American Taliban. Joining in the condemnation, even though they have not read the book, were Beltway bloggers Matt Yglesias and Ta-Neheisi Coates (whose critique was particularly noteworthy, given his spirited defenses of Atlantic colleagues Jeffrey Goldberg and Andrew Sullivan.) These writers were very upset that Markos had compared the Extreme Right in the United States to the Taliban. It was a strange complaint in my view, as regular readers know.

But an interesting fact has come to light -- it turns out that Robert Kuttner, the head honcho at The American Prospect, penned an article titled American Taliban in February 2010. The article was a review of Max Blumenthal's book, Republican Gomorrah, which reported on the Religious Right in the United States. Curiously, in defiance of The Kevin Drum Rule (which requires that all "intemperate" attacks on Republicans by the Left must be met by condemnation by the Beltway Left), I found no condemnations of Kuttner's article from the Beltway Left. Accordingly, in keeping with The Drum Rule, Kuttner must be excoriated for his "intemperate" article comparing the Extreme Right to the Taliban. I will do so here, using the template conveniently provided to me by The American Prospect's Jamelle Bouie. On the flip, my review.

David Brooks builds a fantasy world where his favored polices, tax cuts, would have been rational policy in response to the Great Recession:

The Democrats could be heading toward a defeat of historic proportions in November, but it is possible to imagine a scenario in which things might have turned out differently:

On Dec. 16, 2008, President-elect Barack Obama and his senior aides gathered for a briefing on the state of the U.S. economy. It was horrifying. The economy was on the verge of collapse. There was little prospect that robust growth would be returning anytime soon. Many of the president-elect’s advisers had been reading histories of the New Deal. They had ambitious plans to address the crisis: federal jobs programs, new building projects, new spending initiatives. This was no time to worry about deficits, they said. This was an opportunity to address needs that had been neglected for decades.

Obama, in this fanciful version, held up his hand. He told his aides to put away the history books and reject the New Deal comparisons. Unlike in 1932, Americans today have a raging distrust of Washington, he observed. Living through a crisis caused by excessive debt, they will viscerally recoil at the prospect of federal debt without end. “Somehow,” Obama concluded, “we have to address the crisis without further terrifying the American people.”

(Emphasis supplied.) Brooks' fantasy and the reality of policies that would work are unconnected. Consider the words he puts in Obama's mouth. "Unlike in 1932, Americans of today have a raging distrust of Washington." Put aside the new revelation that Herbert Hoover had inspired deep trust in Washington, Brook's imaginary Obama does not ask what the right policy is for the crisis, rather what policy would play best politically. Brooks is not imagining a Profile in Courage here. More . . .

Since actual fiscal stimulus (government spending)is out according to Robert Gibbs, let's hope the next best thing, tax cuts targetted to job creation and the incomes of the working class and the middle class will be the Obama proposal. WaPo reports:

With just two months until the November elections, the White House is seriously weighing a package of business tax breaks - potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars[. . . .] Among the options under consideration are a temporary payroll-tax holiday and a permanent extension of the now-expired research-and-development tax credit, which rewards companies that conduct research into new technologies within the United States.

Coupled with new middle class income tax cuts (and the expiration of Bush tax cuts for the wealthy), this could be good policy. The issue here though is, Atrios explains, this could be creating raionales for Obama's Catfood Commission to cut Social Security.In any event, the BEST policy options have been taken off the table, real fiscal stimulus. A Lost Decade awaits us.

Speaking for me only