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Anne Kilkenny, A resident of Wasilla and Sarah Palin acquaintance, has written up an extensive debrief over at The Huffington Post on the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee. The result is not particularly pretty, with a number of her positions and actions seemingly well-placed to undercut the McCain campaign’s message of reform, tested stewardship and fiscal responsibility. Here are some of the highlights:

• Experienced: Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has residents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska. No legislative experience other than city council. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; needed help of a city administrator to run town of about 5,000.

• Political maverick: not at all. Open and transparent: ??? Good at keeping secrets. Not good at explaining actions.

• A greenie: no. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots. Is pro-drilling off-shore and in ANWR.

• Pro-infrastructure: no. Promoted a sports complex and park in a city without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. Built streets to early 20th century standards. Pro-small government: no. Oversaw greatest expansion of city government in Wasilla’s history.

Anne Kilkenny, The Huffington Post

It should be noted that Ms. Kilkenny is a self-described opponent of Governor Palin’s, but such a scathing critique from an Alaskan is noteworthy. Read the rest of the article at HuffingtonPost.com.

I think the interview has been a success so far, but we’ll see how things pan out next week (although the interview was taped in one sitting on Thursday afternoon, the folks at Fox have decided to air it over four days). Obama didn’t blink when O’Reilly went after him on the surge and Iranian diplomacy, although I wish he’d taken it to O’Reilly a bit more on his overly simplistic interpretation of Obama’s stance on both issues. It does bode well for Obama’s debate performance though; his answers need to be a bit more concise and soundbite-able, but the substance is there.

It is important to frame Obama’s performance in context; this is a somewhat-hostile audience (Republicans and conservative Democrats), so any inroads he makes here is progress at John McCain’s expense. Also, Thursday’s Factor had the shows second greatest ratings to date, so it is an enormously large somewhat-hostile audience.

…is what Joe Biden’s going to be from now until November.

He’s pretty damn good at it. This is exactly the kind of rhetoric Democrats need this year, and there’s no better messenger than the senior Senator from Delaware.

Wired.com has an extensive write-up on the people and reasoning behind Google Chrome. It’s an interesting read, and helps put the whole venture in context.

Google’s answer to the question no-one asked landed today with the launch of their Chrome web-browser. And it’s actually quite good. It’s light, very fast, very easy to use, and does have some features to love.

Getting the most attention is V8, a new JavaScript interpreter Google engineered from the ground up for raw speed. It’s noticeable too, pages with a lot of client-side code are demonstrably faster than in Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Other distinctions include a very tidy interface that looks great on Windows Vista (Chrome is also available on XP; Mac and Linux users will have to wait a bit longer to get their hands on the beta) and a nice model wherein each tab operates within it’s own process; if the tab content is slow or crashes, the rest of the browser remains unaffected. It even includes a task manager to view the memory and cpu usage of all active tab and plugin processes (in fact, if you have other browsers open, it will include their resource information along side Chrome’s).

It’s not perfect, and is clearly still in beta. While stable, many killer features are still missing, like bookmark management, RSS feed integration and a proper plugin model. Also, the lack of a dedicated search box is really annoying for longtime Firefox users, although this concern may fade with extended exposure (Chrome’s navigation bar doubles as a search box, using keywords and shortcuts to choose a search provider). On the other hand, it does automatically add search engines to it’s collection when you use them (go to amazon.com, and moments later amazon search is listed in your search engine providers).

Overall, Chrome is a very promising entry into the competitive browser market, and while obviously an early product missing some important features, it is stable and usable for those who don’t require some of the complexities associated with Firefox.