Vancouver, for those of you who don't know this, is a big city bumped right up against mountainous wilderness. In winter, of course, those mountains get covered with snow. Snow brings skiers and snowboarders. Many of them are confident. Some of them are so confident that they regard the "Out of Bounds" signs as just something to scare people. So, they go off down one of the so-marked slopes. And they die.

Sarah Palin is confident. Not qualified. Not experienced. Not even very bright. But, she's confident. And - the scariest thing? - the media are treating her with respect. Americans are treating her with respect. Never mind that her pipeline is a pipe dream. She's confident. Never mind that she thinks it would be a good idea to bring Georgia and the Ukraine into NATO (hey, what's a minor war with Russia going to cost anyway?), she's confident. In fact, as she says in this interview, she's "wired in". Oh, boy.

Of course, so was Dumbya when he declared that victory had been achieved in Iraq.