I love Piper Palin

That girl is a star. The shot of her smoothing down Trig's hair was priceless. And her Miss America waves to the audience at the end of the speech? The girl was born to be on stage. I was actually impressed with Sarah Palin's speech. For somebody who has never spoken to such a large audience, she came across as articulate and confident. Joe Biden might even say clean--ha! I think it was a bit hypocritical to call Obama out on being all rhetoric because I didn't exactly hear concrete plans from her (though the RNC was not exactly the right forum for it), but she will definitely resonate with a lot of people, especially in flyover country. The irony to me is that people view the Obamas as elitist intellectuals, but the truth is they are the very definition of the classic American success story: he's the child of a single mom who pulled himself up by his bootstraps; she's the child of working class parents who dealt with many of the same issues that today's middle-class face. Yet a lot of the country just can't identify with them, whereas the homey-ness and plain talk of McCain and Palin carry a lot of appeal. Before last night, I thought Palin might be a ploy to skate through the convention and then have her withdraw so McCain could pick Lieberman, but now I think Palin is in in for the long haul. Most of my friends are predicting an Obama landslide, but I say don't count McCain out just yet. It's easy to not "get" it living in our urban environment, but I also don't "get" why NASCAR is the most popular sport in the country and the Ford F-150 is the best-selling vehicle in the country, but the fact is, they are.