Here's a metric that might get your attention. Here in these doggiest of August days, Sarah Palin's Facebook page has accumulated roughly the same number of brand new supporters in the last week as Mitt Romney and Bobby Jindal each have in total. That's gotta sting.

(Go here for our live version of the Facebook chart above, which I can't seem to embed correctly.)

Palin's up to more than 805,000 Facebook fans across the board. This latest bump is, likely, thanks to the fact that Palin is using Facebook as a podium. She's been posting op-eds (or maybe we should call them op-wall posts) on everything from the U.S.'s use of foreign oil to health care reform. Oh, and what she charmingly called "Obama's 'death panels'" that "[her] baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of" to justify his care. Such is a system is "downright evil," wrote Palin. Those last statements caught the attention of the White House, which saw fit to respond to Palin's critique. The White House doesn't respond to any ol' body. And you can bet that Palin's Facebook megaphone is as much a factor in their attention as her 3/4 of a term as Alaska's governor.

Inside Facebook has more.