The birth of the Barracuda

From this engaging profile about the political birth of the “Barracuda," here’s a few snippets worth considering:

"… when it came to garbage removal, what Palin seemed to have chafed against was less the substance of Carney's position than what she felt was his elitist, Ivy League bearing. And, over the next few years, she found ways to get him back."

"When he explained that a ban would be unconstitutional, Palin appeared impatient with such legal niceties. 'I would describe it this way: Sarah was not an in-depth person. Never has, never will be,' Deuser says. 'Her instincts are political as opposed to evaluative.'"

"She was kind of like that. She thought she was right."

"I was thinking--these are things she should know better. Why is she asking me these stupid questions?"

"And, in a move practically out of Karl Rove's playbook, she dwelled on how Stein's wife used her maiden name, going so far as to demand a marriage certificate as proof of their nuptials."

"'She wanted yes-or-no answers ... and he would give her more sophisticated answers,' recalls Anne Kilkenny, the local gadfly and author of an anti-Palin e-mail that became nearly ubiquitous after Palin joined the GOP ticket. 'She hated it. ... She'd get very irritated, really irritated.'"

Any of this sound familiar?

UPDATE: Joe Klein elaborately explains why he's dubbing the GOP veep nominee "Embarracuda."

UPDATE 2: I can't really comment on this dispatch from Palin's visit to Clearwater today, for obvious reasons. But here's Steve Benen to fill in the gaps: "Think about this -- it was a public event in which a public official, seeking public office, spoke at a public park. Journalists, bolstered by the First Amendment, were told they weren't allowed to talk to voters. And the rationalization for this is that a political campaign wanted to stifle media access in order to ensure more positive coverage. Unless there's some key detail the St. Petersburg Times neglected to mention, this sounds quite a bit like madness."

UPDATE 3: Timothy Noah points out the fallacy of the narrative that portrays Alaska as the American Heartland and Hawaii as some sort of exotic southeast Asian playground.