Mickey Kaus has an instant classic with suggested slogans for Chevy (to replace the hideous new “Runs Deep”). Highlights:

Chevy: You Already Bought It!

Chevy: Lean Forward

Chevy: We Killed Saturn. Don’t Mess With Us, OK?

Chevy: Still Too Big to Fail. But Getting Smaller!

Whoa.

Why no, I did not vote for the campaign which was signing my paychecks. And not only am I okay with that, I’m also happy to tell it to the New York Times!

Catching up with Brian Azzarello’s Luthor which is, so far, probably the best Superman story ever. You might remember Azzarello as the guy who wrote the really great Joker graphic novel.

Once you put aside the childish Gene Hackman Luthor and the green power-suited Super Powers Luthor, the only version of the character that really makes any sense is an Ayn-Randian objectivist whose only interest in professional villainy is in seeing Superman put down because of what The Big Red S represents. In the opening of Luthor, Azzarello’s Lex puts a very fine point on this: “All men are created equal,” he says, talking about Supes. “All men. You are not a man.”

In this imagining, Luthor is in some ways just a more extroverted Bruce Wayne. Of course, Bruce and Clark are respectful friends. But as we all know, the minute Batman learns of Superman’s existence, he begins trying to figure out how to kill him. You know, just in case.

Steve Sailer points us to this little item about the movie version of Blink. What does this movie need to save it? Natalie Portman making out with another girl, obviously.

New York Magazine has a long John Heilemann piece on how Sarah Palin’s 2012 run might play out in conjuncture with a Bloomberg third-party run. It’s worth reading.

At this point, the only scenario regarding 2012 which is more likely to happen than not is that President Obama will be the Democratic nominee. Everything else has a less-than-even chance of happening. That said, people should not discount even the less-likely possibilities because the environment is so unpredictable. After Obamacare passed, I wrote the following:

As a political matter this was a destabilizing act. Passing a gargantuan piece of legislation with permanent  consequences for the country using only the support of one party (and against bipartisan opposition) against significant popular unhappiness with the legislation will have large political consequences, both immediate and long-term.

Seats that were safe will not be. Candidates who are not ready for prime-time will find themselves winning the political lottery. ObamaCare will destabilize the political environment in the same way the Iraq war did, upsetting coalitions, elevating new figures, and dooming once solid-seeming politicians on all sides.

I think we’ve seen that come to pass with people like Christine O’Donnell and Joe Miller rising, guys like Bob Bennett and Mike Castle put out to pasture, and warhorses like Barney Frank and Barbara Boxer suddenly running scared. Obamacare will still be looming on the horizon in 18 months–like Iraq, it’s an issue that won’t go away. And coupled with the unemployment numbers, I suspect it will create an environment where lots of outcomes are possible.

People tend to conflate Palin’s chances of political success with their opinions of her. As I’ve said before, I think that’s a mistake.

Finally saw The Social Network and, like everyone else, I liked it quite a lot. Some thoughts:

* Aaron Sorkin is really, really good and to the extent that The Social Network succeeds, it’s almost entirely because of Sorkin’s script. The movie it most reminds me of is Michael Mann’s The Insider, and like that flick, The Social Network has to overcome two gigantic problems: (1) nothing happens; (2) everyone already knows that nothing happens.

Imagine having The Social Network pitched this way: So this kid writes some code for a website. And then people go to the website, and it becomes really popular. But then, two other kids sue him. The lawyers take depositions. But it never goes to trial. And the audience knows all of this because the kid is basically the new Bill Gates and everyone on the planet uses the website.

Yet Sorkin somehow found a structure to give the entire affair a real sense of dramatic tension. People get hung up on how great Sorkin is with dialogue–and there’s a lot of great dialogue in The Social Network. But dialogue is not story. And Sorkin’s real triumph is the story structure he finds his way to.

* Sorkin’s other great achievement is writing really interesting, three-dimensional, characters. Zuckerberg is a nicely enigmatic presence: interesting, offbeat, both easily lead and willful. He has an Asperger’s-by-way-of-Napoleon thing going on. His best friend, Eduardo Saverin, is winsome but also, at times, slightly pathetic. The movie’s best sleight-of-hand job, however, comes with the Winklevoss twins. We are hard-wired to hate characters like the Winklevossi. Blonde, good-looking, rich, jocks–these kids were the villains in every high school and college movie of the 1980s.

Yet in The Social Network, they’re almost the good guys. Sorkin turns everything we think about them on their heads–and here’s the amazing part–without changing their essential characters. For me, the best part of the movie is when Cameron Winklevoss (I think) insists that they should neither sue Zuckerberg nor go after him in the press because they are Harvard gentlemen. And you realize, Holy shit, he actually believes this noblesse oblige stuff.

* All of which leads me to my last observation: Armie Hammer is a movie star. He eats up the screen. He can do both funny and subtle. He does the most convincing job I’ve ever seen of acting twins.

And if I ran Marvel Studios, I would have put him in Captain America and made a lot of money.

If you’ve been following my Twitter feed then you know about the big lifestyle change which has sucked up my time over the last two weeks. No need to recapitulate it here.

Things are finally settling down, though. In the meantime, I’ve got a piece over at the Standard about lefty columnists whipsawing from “America rocks!” in 2008 to “America sucks!” today. It’s kind of low-hanging fruit. But still. You, know what they say about fruit that hangs low.