MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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Palin

Say hi, Vlad

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HuffPo

Wanda Sykes

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SYKES: Well, you know, I watched the convention. you know, watching the Democratic Convention, it felt like America. You know, it looked like America. It was hopeful and it was positive and, you know, everybody holding hands. And then I watched the Republican Convention. It was like watching a meeting in Dr. Evil’s lair.

LENO: Wow.

SYKES: It was like all of the evil people got together, and they were having an evil board meeting.

LENO: Really?

SYKES: And each of them, you know, at the board meeting all got up, and each one would tell their plan of how they’re gonna, what they’re going to do with the evil. and it was just so tense and scary. ‘Cause you know those Dr. Evil board meetings, somebody gets it. You know, they usually —

LENO: Oh, they press the button and —
SYKES: Press the button and —

LENO: Go through the floor.

SYKES: You go into a pile of alligators or something.

LENO: Right, right.

SYKES: And I was tense. and it’s usually the weakest one. And I figured that’s why Bush didn’t show up. he was — Bush is, like, “I’m doing this via satellite,” ’cause, you know, he was scared. He was like, next thing you know, Giuliani runs up behind him with a baseball bat.

LENO: Wow, wow.

SYKES: He walks out on the — you know, walks out on that stage, and he’s like, “Why is this plastic on the floor? what’s going on?” Like the scene from Goodfellas.

LENO: Wow, you seem to know all these moves. Now, what are you expecting on the debate Friday? You gonna watch? It should be interesting.

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September 24, 2008
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In jest, maybe

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Alright, this piece by New Yorker magazine’s Hendrik Hertzberg is funny, I think:

PALINOPSIA

A neurologist friend, Dr. Richard Ransohoff, has drawn our attention to an early contribution to the suddenly burgeoning field of palinological studies.

It is hoped that this paper, published, in 1989, in the Swiss-based journalEuropean Neurology (Vol. 29, No. 6) may illuminate the phenomenon, often seen in Republican patients, whereby failed Bush policies are retained in policy-processing areas of the brain long after these policies have demonstrated themselves to be abject failures.

Continue . . .

September 15, 2008
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Sarah Palin: Foreign Policy Heavyweight

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I take back everything I ever said about Gov.Sarah Palin’s lack of foreign policy experience. It turns out that Palin is, indeed, a world traveler.

We already knew that Palin visited Kuwait to visit members of the Alaska National Guard. We already knew that she visited Ireland on her way to Kuwait. (Okay, it wasn’t really a visit. It was more like a refueling stop.)

Now. thanks to an article in today’s Boston Globe, we learn that Palin has also been to Mexico and Canada. On vacation.

I’m so relieved.

September 13, 2008
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“Respect” and other words

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There’s this new political advertisement out from the McCain-Palin presidential campaign that again tries to stoke the anger of those Hillary Clinton supporters, you know, “white,” “working-class” and “women” voters still mad at Sen. Barack Obama about the alleged disrespectful treatment of Mrs. Clinton during the primaries.

In the McCain campaign’s calculation, Gov. Sarah Palin is interchangeable with Sen. Clinton and any criticism of Mrs. Palin is another slap at women.

ANNOUNCER:

He was the world’s biggest celebrity, but his star’s fading.

So they lashed out at Sarah Palin.

Dismissed her as “good looking.”

That backfired, so they said she was doing, “what she was told.”

Then desperately called Sarah Palin a liar.

How disrespectful.

And how Governor Sarah Palin proves them wrong, every day.

JOHN MCCAIN: I’m John McCain and I approved this message.

This is a despicably racist political advertisement and here’s why:

The ad takes up the “uppity” angle because of the sensitivity of women, especially white women, to being criticized by black men. But let’s put aside, for now, the historical clash between the struggles for the civil rights of women and people of color in this country and let us focus, instead, on the code words employed in this political advertisement.

The word “disrespectful” in this context is so loaded, especially when you consider our nation’s history and culture. In this ad, it is not just a man disrespecting a woman, or men disrespecting women. It is a black man, Obama, disrespecting a white woman, Sarah Palin. And he has a history of doing this. Remember Hillary Clinton, the ad, without saying so (it doesn’t have to), reminds viewers.

But Obama’s crime here, whether he was the one who said the actual words or not, is more egregious: He dismissed Palin as “good looking.”

Noticing a white woman throughout the history of this nation got black men lynched and murdered.

The whole rationale for McCain’s candidacy in hinging on this: Don’t let this uppity black man violate our cherished White House.

I won’t ask how long Sen. McCain will continue putting his name to these disgusting, underhanded and shameful campaign advertisements. I have never labored under the illusion that McCain was an honorable man. This unscrupulous campaign is exactly who John McCain is, a corrupt, craven politicians who will use anything, including racist codes, to get elected.

McCain says he’ll stop this gutter politics only if Sen. Obama agrees to go on a barnstorming nationwide tour of town hall style debates with him. The “I’ll stop sliming you if you debate me” strategy? How do you define Chutzpah?

McCain does not want a debate. He is doing exactly what he wants. Obama should call his bluff and agree to appear on stage with him.

September 12, 2008
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Bridge over ethics

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Ethics Adviser Warned Palin About Trooper Issue

Letter Described Situation as ‘Grave,’ Called for Apology By JIM CARLTON, Wall Street Journal, September 11, 2008; Page A8

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — An informal adviser who has counseled Gov. Sarah Palin on ethics issues urged her in July to apologize for her handling of the dismissal of the state’s public safety commissioner and warned that the matter could snowball into a bigger scandal.

(Photo by the Associated Press: Alaska State Trooper Mike Wooten (right) answers questions about the ‘Troopergate’ investigation on Tuesday)

He also said, in a letter reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, that she should fire any aides who had raised concerns with the chief over a state trooper who was involved in a bitter divorce with the governor’s sister.

In the letter, written before Sen. John McCain picked the Alaska governor as his running mate, former U.S. Attorney Wevley Shea warned Gov. Palin that “the situation is now grave” and recommended that she and her husband, Todd Palin, apologize for “overreaching or perceived overreaching” for using her position to try to get Trooper Mike Wooten fired from the force.

Continue . . .

September 11, 2008
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Kinsley’s take

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Sarah Palin’s Alaskonomics By Michael Kinsley, Time magazine, Tuesday, Sep. 09, 2008

Sarah Palin thinks she is a better American than you because she comes from a small town, and a superior human being because she isn’t a journalist and has never lived in Washington and likes to watch her kids play hockey. Although Palin praised John McCain in her acceptance speech as a man who puts the good of his country ahead of partisan politics, McCain pretty much proved the opposite with his selection of a running mate whose main asset is her ability to reignite the culture wars. So maybe Governor Palin does represent everything that is good and fine about America, as she herself maintains. But spare us, please, any talk about how she is a tough fiscal conservative.

Palin has continued to repeat the already exposed lie that she said “No, thanks” to the famous “bridge to nowhere” (McCain’s favorite example of wasteful federal spending). In fact, she said “Yes, please” until the project became a symbol and political albatross.

Back to reality. Of the 50 states, Alaska ranks No. 1 in taxes per resident and No. 1 in spending per resident. Its tax burden per resident is 2 1/2 times the national average; its spending, more than double. The trick is that Alaska’s government spends money on its own citizens and taxes the rest of us to pay for it. Although Palin, like McCain, talks about liberating ourselves from dependence on foreign oil, there is no evidence that being dependent on Alaskan oil would be any more pleasant to the pocketbook.

CONTINUE . . .

September 9, 2008
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We should all be Republicans!

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Alright, calm down. Let me rephrase.

It just should not be possible that Republicans stand any ghost in heck of a chance of winning any office on Nov. 4, let alone the presidency of the United States.

Yet, here they are and here we are.

Sen. John McCain is buoyant, ascendant, barnstorming the nation, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin beaming on his arm, both confident of a romp in November.

Sen. Barack Obama, meanwhile, is beginning to rue forgoing Federal financing for his political campaign. His message of change, after being brilliantly co-opted by McCain and Palin, sound shopworn.

Bill Clinton’s eight years in office, dogged every step of the way by rapacious Republicans, ended with the nation at peace, the economy robust and in surplus. Clinton handed off to George W. Bush a stable nation on sound economic footing. The question was what to do with the surplus.

George W. Bush, appointed President of the United States by a majority of Republicans on the United States Supreme Court, then proceeded to fritter away the nation’s good fortunes with unfunded tax cuts for the very rich (“the haves and have mores,” as Bush called them, “my base”).

As it turns out, Republicans have not been in power the last eight years, including controlling of all branches of government the first six. Both houses of the Congress acted as the lookout while the Bush administration violated every tenet of the Constitution of the United States, made short shrift of American rights and values, and undermined every national institution.

Didn’t our national legislature dote on this Republican administration as it slept at the switch while terrorists trained on American soil, hijacked American planes to attack Americans in America without anyone so much as raising a finger to stop them.

Exploitive RNC 9-11 Video

Then, when it turned out the men who attacked America were mostly from Saudi Arabia, this government, this administration mounted a Republican headwind to get approval from Congress to attack . . . Afghanistan, then Iraq.

No, it was not really Republicans who started these two costly wars, finishing neither, even as the Congress eschewed any oversight of the corruption and pillaging that took place by Republican functionaries and appointees on the ground in Iraq.

I would call it their mismanagement of the economy if the eventual outcome has not been what Republicans intended.

I would call it mismanagement what happened in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a major American city and American citizens literaly drowning as the world watched, without their government raising a finger to protect them, had it not been Republican blueprint of how government should function, which is not at all.

The list grows but not the outrage.

Because, it turns out, Republicans had not been in charge, did not do these things all these years. Sen. Obama was responsible for the high energy costs. Democrats were at fault for all these things.

And it’ll take a Republican, that maverick John McCain, and his moose-hunting sidekick, Sarah Palin, to set things right. McCain, the Charles Keating consort, and Palin, she of that welfare state, Alaska.

That’s my point. Republicans should have no leg to stand on, no argument to muster in the national debate on how make right what is wrong with our nation.

Wasn’t it Republicans who presided over the deterioration of the nation’s infrastructure, watched a major bridge collapse in Minnesota and then had the audacity to hold their national convention in that state, despite not raising a finger to fix that bridge?

So, you have to ask that old Harry S. Truman question:

“I wonder how many times you have to be hit on the head before you find out who’s hitting you? It’s about time that the people of America realized what the Republicans have been doing to them.”

Yet, here they are and here we are.

Which has led me to this ledge. If Republicans manage to win in November–and the polls show McCain-Palin either ahead or about even with Obama-Biden–then we should all join the Republican Party and change it from within.

Democrats, by losing an unloseable election, would have forfeited the right to be called a major political party.

September 9, 2008
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