Ed Rendell has some advice for Sarah Palin on that whole eBay thing. Turns out there's sort of a Craigslist for airplanes:

Pennsylvania is preparing to turn over the keys to one of its two executive planes to an Illinois company that has agreed to buy it for $1.375 million – above its appraised value and several hundred thousand more than the state paid for it 16 years ago.

Palin, the governor of Alaska, tried to win points as a reformer by declaring at last week's GOP convention that upon taking office, she put her state's jet on eBay. Turns out, she did just that, but in the end, it was sold through a broker for $2.1 million - less than the $2.7 million that Alaskan taxpayers paid for it under a past administration.

"It just goes to prove that a high-flying but inexperienced politician is no match for a down-to-earth professional when it comes to selling state planes," said Chuck Ardo, Gov. Rendell's press secretary.

Unlike Palin, state officials in Harrisburg chose not to bother with the online auction route after Rendell decided in April to sell the plane, a 1981 Beech King Air 200, in a cost-cutting move.

The state wanted to avoid eBay's commission - upward of 2 ½ percent of the sale price - so it instead advertised the plane on two aeronautical Web sites. The total cost: less than $700. It drew four bids, with the highest coming from Midwest Underground Inc., an East Moline, Ill. pipeline contractor.

UPDATE: This email from Danny Diaz at the RNC:

“Ed Rendell needs to get a grip.”

A pre-Palin take on McCain and the ladies:

He is visibly uncomfortable talking about social issues and, when pressed, tends to veer between conservatism-in-a-can (“I agree that marriage, as [a] uniquely important institution, should be protected”) and a kind of jokey admission that he is reciting talking points, his voice taking on a sarcastic tone as he adds, “And every home should display the flag, and every mother should cook apple pie once a week.” When we arrive at the next destination just as he finishes his answer to one such policy query of mine, he says with a wink, “Just in time.”

snip

Usually, having lots of women in one's life is a cure for this sort of myopia. It's McCain's peculiar fate to be surrounded by women—heiresses, CEOs, hard-charging junior staffers without spouses or children—who've been curiously immune to the curse of sexism. He is great for the women he knows; then there are all those other women out there—the ones who might not be able to get birth control, and, perhaps even more to the point, those whose background and income haven't given them the means to combat inequality.

Pay no attention to those top-line numbers. The most interesting stat in the post-convention polling is the dramatic swing toward McCain of white women, a crucial demographic group that pollsters are watching very carefully. Obama has had trouble closing the sale here with one slice of this electorate in particular. They are older and less upscale than their predecessors, the soccer moms of 1996 and the security moms of 2004. Here's a story that I did for TIME.com on the potential significance of this group.

UPDATE: This, from TPM Election Central, suggests the McCain campaign sees opportunity in these numbers:

The unusual ad spending also sheds a bit of light on McCain's demographic strategy. The buys during daytime TV suggest outreach to elderly and female voters, Tracey says, both of whom the McCain camp has aggressively targeted.

"Soap operas and game shows are a way to beef up the older and female demographics," Tracey says, adding that McCain advisers "know they need to get into these older populations that still watch daytime broadcast TV."

The McCain campaign keeps telling us Sarah Palin is the most popular governor in the country. Michael Kinsley explains one reason why: Alaskans like government. And wouldn't you?:

Of the 50 states, Alaska ranks No. 1 in taxes per resident and No. 1 in spending per resident. Its tax burden per resident is 21/2 times the national average; its spending, more than double. The trick is that Alaska's government spends money on its own citizens and taxes the rest of us to pay for it. Although Palin, like McCain, talks about liberating ourselves from dependence on foreign oil, there is no evidence that being dependent on Alaskan oil would be any more pleasant to the pocketbook.

Alaska is, in essence, an adjunct member of OPEC. It has four different taxes on oil, which produce more than 89% of the state's unrestricted revenue. On average, three-quarters of the value of a barrel of oil is taken by the state government before that oil is permitted to leave the state. Alaska residents each get a yearly check for about $2,000 from oil revenues, plus an additional $1,200 pushed through by Palin last year to take advantage of rising oil prices. Any sympathy the governor of Alaska expresses for folks in the lower 48 who are suffering from high gas prices or can't afford to heat their homes is strictly crocodile tears.

Apparently, Kim Jong Il has been dead all along:

He doesn't appear in public very often so it's difficult to verify but there are allegations today that North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Il has in fact been dead for five years.

A Japanese expert on North Korea is claiming that the role of the "Dear Leader" has instead been played by a group of doubles since 2003, when he says the President died of diabetes.

More likely:

WASHINGTON (AFP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has apparently suffered a health setback, "possibly a stroke," a US intelligence official said Tuesday.

"It does appear that Kim Jong-Il has had a health setback, possibly a stroke," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official said it appeared to have happened in "the last couple of weeks."

"Dead" makes him even more scary, right?

Meanwhile:

MOSCOW, September 9 (Itar-Tass) - President Dmitry Medvedev has congratulated Chairman of the State Defence Committee of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea Kim Jong-il on the sixtieth anniversary of the proclamation of DPRK, the Kremlin Press Service reports.

“A new sovereign state, geographically and historically closely linked with our country, was formed on the land of Korea on September 9, 1948,” the congratulation message notes. “We have accumulated a wealth of positive experience in our interaction and in the implementation of numerous joint projects for the weal of our peoples during the period that has elapsed since that memorable date,” it adds.

“I am sure that the traditionally good-neighbour relations between our two countries will go on gaining strength and developing, thereby notably contributing to peace, stability and security on the Korean Peninsula and in Asia as a whole”, the congratulation says.

The Wall Street Journal today reports out all the evidence showing that Sarah Palin was very much for the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" before she was against it. And she turned on it only when it became politically untenable to be for it. And Alaska got the bridge money anyway. Writes the Journal:

But Gov. Palin's claim comes with a serious caveat. She endorsed the multimillion dollar project during her gubernatorial race in 2006. And while she did take part in stopping the project after it became a national scandal, she did not return the federal money. She just allocated it elsewhere.

In a bit of creative spin-doctoring, the McCain campaign yesterday issued a rebuttal to Democratic attacks about Palin's evolution on the Bridge that cited a Politifact.com assessment saying that, as governor, Palin did "officially kill" the project. Oddly left out of the McCain press release was Politifact.com's conclusion -- that Palin's change of position amounted to a "full flop." No doubt the WSJ is part of the elite media conspiracy unfairly attacking Palin. Politifact, too. In which case I guess she won't drop that "thanks, but no thanks" line from her stump speech.

Yesterday, our colleague Mark Halperin made the point that we should "watch" how the "media" are "framing" the "race." Well, we have our answer!

From Politico:

A TIPPING POINT, OR JUST JOSTLING? Gallup.com – “McCain Now Winning Majority of Independents: Majority of independents now prefer him over Obama, 52 percent to 37 percent” – “John McCain's bounce in voter support spanning the Republican National Convention is largely explained by political independents, who are shifting to him in fairly big numbers … The surge in political independents who favor McCain for president marks the first time since Gallup began tracking voters' general-election preferences in March that a majority of independents have sided with either of the two major-party candidates.”

As my pal Jason put it, "Those numbers have bungeed back and forth over the past three weeks, but I'm sure now they'll settle down! That's what independent voters do, you know."

In 2007 the federal budget deficit shrank to $163 billion, which the Bush Administration hailed as proof of the wisdom of its economic policies. The President even promised a balanced budget by 2012. Today we learn that the deficit has ballooned by 150% in just one year, to $407. And next year is likely to be just as bad.

I'm curious about the decision to slow down the U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq. Earlier in the summer, the feeling was that Petraeus would resume the drawdown this autumn--removing one, perhaps two combat brigades before the end of the year. Now, the Bush Administration is talking about pulling out an Army combat brigade and Marine battalion in early 2009, leaving the next President to decide how and when the rest of the force is withdrawn.

Why? I suspect the newfound caution has something to do with the transfer of the Sunni Awakening militias from U.S. to Iraqi control on October 1. If Maliki's Shi'ite government plays games with this, and refuses to pay the Sunnis their $300 per month--or slow-walks incorporation of the Sunnis into the Iraqi security structure, there may be a renewed burst of violence.

But there's also this: It's never easy to leave Iraq. There's not only the differing views among Iraq's ethnic factions--which seems to have been resolved, sort of, by Maliki's desire to have most U.S. troops out by 2011. There's also the U.S. side of the debate, in which those who believe those withdrawals should come later rather than sooner, have gained the upper hand. The reasoning is that we need to see their Iraqis through their regional elections, and the national elections in 2009. The fear is that Maliki, on his way to a faux-democratic dictatorship, will subvert his opponents in the elections if U.S. troops aren't there to guarantee their fairness.

I'm not sure how I feel about this, although my strong preference is to leave sooner rather than later. I haven't been on the ground in Iraq in more than a year--and the twists and turns of events in that benighted place should have humbled us all by now. If the bottom line is that the bulk of U.S. troops will be out by the end of 2011, I'm not sure it matters all that much if we delay the troop withdrawals to guarantee the elections' peacefulness (I doubt that we can guarantee their fairness). But Churchill's words should always be very present in our minds:

“It seems to me so gratuitous that after all the struggles of war, just when we want to get together our slender military resources and re-establish our finances and have a little in hand in case of danger here or there, we should be compelled to go on pouring armies and treasure into these thankless deserts.”

In the end, my guess is that our efforts to establish a thriving democracy will be fruitless. There will be a Shi'ite regime of one sort or another, with Sunnis consigned to the same powerlessness that Shi'ites experienced under the British and Saddam--and with the Kurds floating gradually off into their own undeclared (we hope) statehood. It would be nice to think we can have an impact on the relative brutality of this new regime, but we have more important things to do with our blood and treasure, especially at home.