Why is Cindy McCain so angry all of the time? Can America afford to have a first lady who is such an angry angry harridan? What a terribly scary woman, with her angry rants! Ah well, at least she is not as terrifying as Michelle Obama, who has a classy hairdo and says classy things on Larry King Live all the time. [YouTube]

Todd Palin talked with over a dozen state officials, many of them repeatedly, in his crusade to get a state trooper fired whom he considered to be a bad cop, a dishonest person and a threat to the Palin family, according to his sworn statement given Wednesday to a legislative investigator...

"We had a lot of conversations about a guy who threatened my family and verbally assaulted my daughter. We talked about my concerns. We talked about Wooten possibly pulling over one of my kids to frame them, like throwing a bag of dope in the back seat just to frame a Palin," he said of his conversations with one Palin aide...

"I had hundreds of conversations and communications about Trooper Wooten over the last several years with my family, with friends, with colleagues, and with just about everyone I could -- including government officials," Palin said.

"I talked about Wooten so much over the years that my wife told me to stop talking about it with her."

He said by taking his concerns to Monegan he was following the instructions regular citizens get for complaining about troopers.

"There is absolutely nothing improper about lodging concerns about Trooper Wooten with Monegan or his predecessor -- complaints about State Troopers are supposed to go to the Commissioner," he said.

"I make no apologies for wanting to protect my family and wanting to publicize the injustice of a violent trooper keeping his badge and abusing the worker compensation system. The real investigation that needs to be conducted for the best interests of the public at large is the Department of Public Safety's unwillingness to discipline its own."

The literary agent Curtis Yates sent [it] to publishers in New York last week.  When Media Mob reached Mr. Yates by phone on Monday, he'd already given up on trying to sell the book.

"The idea was to tell the story behind the effect that Sarah Palin has had on this election and how it is and why it is that she has basically turned the election around for McCain and why it is that she is resonating with so many people in the country," he said. "The intent was to finish the book by a week after the election, and to have it out before the inauguration."

TECHNICALLY the new video, while called “Let’s Learn Judo with Vladimir Putin,” is not actually like an instructional dealy by him. It features various judo masters such as Boba Fett, and Putin just pops in every now and again to throw an old man to the ground, judo-style.

And thus are fulfilled the fantasies of veritable dozens of gay martial-arts KGB bare-breasted fishing freaks around the world.

Macho Putin in yet ANOTHER display of masculinity as he releases ‘Let’s learn judo with Vladimir’ DVD [Daily Mail]
Putin Stars in Instructional Judo Video [New York Times]

The Task Force believes the current U.S. policy is failing and it presents a new realistic, robust, and comprehensive approach “incorporating new diplomatic, economic and military tools in an integrated fashion” that can deter Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons-capability.  The Task Force recommends the incoming U.S. President simultaneously build diplomatic, economic and military leverage with the Iranians from the first day of his new Administration in order to negotiate from strength and to be prepared for all contingencies.

It advises the new President to engage Iran in negotiations with a pre-determined timetable once our European allies impose greater economic sanctions.  If negotiations fail, the report advises the U.S. to pursue more aggressive tactics, including possibly blockading Iran’s gasoline imports and eventually its crude oil imports.

The gasoline import blockade is something Obama mentioned in the second debate. Worth exploring. My core belief is that the Iranian people are on our side. The key is to somehow leverage them against their repulsive regime. It's going to be very hard and very treacherous. But it's the biggest national security challenge facing the next president.