Love sponge

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of Cali. says that Sarah Palin "will get to be qualified" by the time of the inauguration. The reason for his optimism?

Do you have the will to get up to speed? Are you a sponge that absorbs information very quickly? That's the kind of person she is.

If she's such a sponge, how come she hasn't absorbed a little more information at the age of 44? Has she kept her sponge in a vacuum-sealed wrapper all these years?

What a joke: Republicans are trying to paint their veep candidate as a towering intellect -- as maybe the only person in America who can go from "I don't know what the vice-president does" to "Totally the best choice in America to be Vice-President" in just five months. Amazing!

I'm sure there are many brilliant women in Alaska, but none of them are governor. Sarah Palin is a woman of average intelligence and very average education who was plucked from an aerobics class to help put a youthful, energetic face on a plan by Wasilla elders to implement a local sales tax. She discovered that her good looks, naive self-confidence, her penchant for snark and her churchy bona-fides made her a darling to a particular political group which is ascendent in Wasilla and in Alaska generally.

Her approval ratings? It's easy to get good approval ratings when you replace an absolute scoundrel, your state budget is paid for by the oil companies, the roads are paved with federal gold, and you get to send every Alaskan a refund check for several grand each year. Being governor of Alaksa is unlike running any other state in the country -- most governors have to struggle to balance budgets and have to figure out where they're going to get the revenue they need to pay for basic government services. In Alaska, the money just comes out of a spigot.