Independent Republican Lisa Murkowski—who is about to officially kick Joe Miller's ass in Alaska's Senate race, now that she's overtaken him in the vote count—disses arch-enemy Sarah Palin in a new Katie Couric interview. (Points for doing it with Couric, Palin's other arch-enemy.)

"I just do not think she has that, um, uh, those leadership qualities, that intellectual curiosity that allows for building good and great policies."

I'll take my anti-Palin news where I can get it, now that lead-footed Bristol Palin is swatting down "9" scores (!) from overcompensating judges on Dancing with the Stars and Palin herself is being heralded as the Second Coming for inventing a new word to use when Islam-baiting and getting five million people to watch her TLC show. (Obama drew 15 million to 60 Minutes recently, but whatevvver.)

More election thoughts and observations:

It still sucks this morning...I was thinking of calling in Democratic!

Democrats should be proud of what they accomplished in the past two years. Those who are not proud were either defeated or should be. Stuff got done—big stuff. Americans don't hate Democrats. Americans don't love Republicans. They dislike them both equally, or dislike Democrats a tad less. But voters are fucking pissed off at the economy and at waiting around for their lives to improve. And they hate the idea of a deficit to the point that they blindly don't realize the stimulus helped stave off a second Great Depression. That's all hard to address (for both parties, actually), but it's easier to address than, say, being hated.

Obama's presser today will be historic. I hope in the good or at least not bad way. If I were him, I would sound a conciliatory note (no baseball bats—see below) yet I would draw some progressive lines in the sand. His only hope for re-election rides on re-engaging the left (the youth vote had better things to do last night and the black vote was somewhat depressed) because going even more centrist (he's already more in the middle than Malcolm) is not going to win him even one right-winger's vote. The Blue Dog Democrats were CRUSHED last night—so he shouldn't become one. His differences with Bill Clinton—the last Democratic prez in this position at this point in a presidency—may be skin-deep, but that's plenty deep enough for the teabaggers. Trust. Of course, this presumes Obama is his party's nominee in '12, a provision that had to be made regarding Reagan and Clinton before him at the same points in their presidencies, but one that nonetheless needs to be made here again.

DailyKos has the already infamous video of a reporter who was forcibly handcuffed by the private security force hired by Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller of Alaska...it's just nuts. Until you realize Miller thinks highly of the former East Germany's attention to detail when it came to security.

And then there's batshit-crazy, bald-faced liar Sharron Angle, who is running a so-far winning senatorial race versus milquetoast Harry Reid. After running a blatantly race-baiting ad demonizing Latinos, she had the audacity to tell a group of Latino high school students that (1) her ad was also about the Canadian border; (2) she herself has been called the first Asian legislator from Arizona (she's not Asian...at all); and (3) she can't tell the students apart from Asians anyway. 

Nevada...are you sure being rid of Harry Reid is worth six years of this?

After the jump, check out the nasty throw-down aka debate between Democrat Jack Conway and teabagger aka Republican Rand Paul. Lots of Dems are turning on Conway for being too nasty, but I say bring it on (if it works). Paul's never denied the specific charges, BTW. It's absurd that the folks of Kentucky, hurting as much as anyone in this economy, would decide they'd turn to an Objectivist for the milk of human kindness as opposed to a dude who has sworn to oppose any cuts to Social Security...