Maureen Dowd screens “Fair Game,” the new Valerie Plame-Joe Wilson bio-pic, and gives us an account: if we are to rely upon her (a riskyish venture), the flick peddles a glammed-up Vanity-Fairy-tale of a damsel in distress defended against the forces of evil bravely if perhaps overbearingly by her manly husband/protector (oh, straight up the heart-fluttering MoDo alley).

In this weekend's New York Times Magazine, Peter Baker profiles President Obama. He seems to have spent a serious amount of time with Obama and his aides—some on the record, others on background. If you're wondering what is our commander in chief thinking (you might not want to know), "The Education of a President" is worth reading.

In the world of the 20th century portrait there is John Singer Sargent, and all the rest. But first in line, just behind Sargent, is Philip de Laszlo (1869-1937), a poor Hungarian boy who rose to eminence in his own country, and in the wake of a stunning likeness of Pope Leo XII--now in the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest. He arrived in England on the eve of World War I and became Sargent’s successor as portraitist of record for the interwar years.

West Virginia's Democratic governor and Senate candidate Joe Manchin has tried to play up the class warfare angle against his Republican opponent John Raese. In one TV ad, the Manchin campaign cropped a picture of of Raese and his wife in front of their Florida mansion and darkened his wife's skin to give her an orange glow.

Well, it turns out Manchin has some expensive tastes of his own. Ben Smith notes that Manchin is "part-owner of a rather nice 54-foot yacht, called the Black Tie.... Manchin flew down to Mobile Alabama on a state plane to pick it up in 2005, and hastily reimbursed the state $5,400 for the flight after the local press called to ask about it."

Apparently Manchin likes to enjoy the good life on land as well as at sea. From the West Virginia Gazette:

It's getting a little too close for comfort in Alaska:

Is Lisa Murkowski on the way to writing herself back in to the U.S. Senate?

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Alaska shows Republican Joe Miller with 35% support and Murkowski, the incumbent senator he defeated in the state’s GOP Primary now running as a write-in candidate, with 34% of the vote. Democrat Scott McAdams runs third with 27%. One percent (1%) prefers another candidate, and three percent (3%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka:

So while I cheered for the miners coming up from the ground beneath the Atacama Desert, it was painful to recognize yet another sign of the dangerous, corporate-driven agenda that has far more regard for the bottom line than for working people. [...]

Mines don't fall apart by accident. Neither do economies. They crumble from choices and policies that put profits ahead of people -- and leave working people in the rubble.

The Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger:

It needs to be said. The rescue of the Chilean miners is a smashing victory for free-market capitalism.

Amid the boundless human joy of the miners' liberation, it may seem churlish to make such a claim. It is churlish. These are churlish times, and the stakes are high.[...]

Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the U.S., has an op-ed in today's New York Times:

Alaska's Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller's latest ad:

In Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759-67) there is a character called Uncle Toby who had been hit on the head by a flying stone at the Siege of Namur--and never stopped talking about it. Nearly three centuries later, two specimens are sitting on my desk which can only be described as Uncle Toby's in modern garments. One is a DVD of a television documentary, now being broadcast on PBS, about Daniel Ellsberg: The Most Dangerous Man in America.

Rupert Murdoch last night delivered a speech to the Anti-Defamation League on anti-Semitism and Israel. The New York Sun provides a thoughtful editorial on the subject. And here's Murdoch's entire speech, as prepared for delivery:

Rasmussen moves the Pennsylvania Senate race to "solid GOP":

Republican Pat Toomey now holds a 10-point lead over Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak, the widest gap between the candidates since early April in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race.

Toomey has a 7.8% lead in the RCP average of polls.