I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for.

— Thornton Wilder

A classic XTC song from the Todd Rundgren-produced Skylarking.

It’s pretty cool that National Geographic is putting full-length shows on YouTube with minimal advertising, and allowing embedding. Lots of interesting stuff on fireworks in this one…

Little Green Footballs now has its very own, shiny new Amazon Associate Store, with a button at the top right of the page that takes you directly to the Shopping Zone.

This is one of the tools Amazon makes available to members of their associates program; it creates a little LGF-branded subset of Amazon where you can browse and search for products in most of their categories, read product reviews, check out ratings and lists and related products, and buy stuff if you find something you want, need, or can’t live without. And when you make purchases through this page, the LGF Blog fund gets a small cut of Amazon’s price (around 6-7%) — so you can take advantage of Amazon’s usually excellent bargains and help support LGF at the same time.

Republican strategist Ed Rollins says Sarah Palin has made a big mistake: Palin A ‘Shooting Star Crashing To Earth’?

On “The Early Show Saturday Edition,” Rollins, who headed up former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s 2008 White House run, told co-anchor Erica Hill that Palin’s Friday news conference “raised a lot more questions than she answered. Usually, at a press conference, you answer questions. I think the bottom line is you saw a shooting star come crashing to Earth.

”I think the premise that she doesn’t want to be a lame duck governor - there’s people like Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana, (Miss. Gov.) Haley Barbour, Gov. (Tim) Pawlenty, of Minnesota - they’re all gonna run for president, and they’re finishing their job. The job’s very tough now, and for her to bail out at this point in time, I don’t think it is fair to Alaskans and certainly, I think, damages her long-term career.“

Stepping down hinders a potential 2012 bid, Rollins added, because, ”Most political people fight to the end. It’s now tough. She didn’t finish the job.“

Rollins pooh-poohed political pros warning that people shouldn’t underestimate Palin’s ability to come back from any position of relative obscurity into which she risks falling.

”You have to remember, everybody else climbed the mountain; she got put on top of it by John McCain,“ he said. ”We would not be talking about Sarah Palin if John McCain hadn’t picked her (as his running mater). So, at the end of the day, she’s still gotta earn her stripes.“ …

Rollins contended that, ”She diminished the job of governor. I think, at the end of the day, I’ve been in the business four decades, I’ve never seen a governor ever walk away from the job at mid-term, and I think, at the end of the day, that’s what’s gonna affect her.”

The 2009 Tour de France opened today, with a time trial in Monaco. And yes, Lance Armstrong was there, riding with the Astana team — he came in tenth, 40 seconds behind winner Fabian Cancellara.

The BBC has a blow by blow account of today’s race here, and a story with some quotes from Lance here.

“I did not have big illusions”, said the 37-year-old Armstrong.

“I was a bit nervous but it is logical,” added Armstrong, who last rode in the Tour in 2005 when he claimed his seventh victory.

“I’m just happy to be here even if we don’t win because there are a lot of other things I could be doing right now. It is a difficult course for sure but I think it is difficult for everybody. It is very technical, it is hard to find a rhythm but that’s logical after years away.

“What a beautiful race. It was fun. I felt pretty good, overall, I feel good. I was a little bit all over the place.”

And by the way, here’s Lance Armstrong on Twitter.

Happy 233rd birthday, America, and happy Independence Day to all LGF readers!