Parse this, liberal scum!

Sarah Palin graffiti in Paris, a few year ago. The graffiti looked crazy then. Sarah sounds crazy today.

I know, I know, I'm late with this. Others have already commented, but Sarah Palin gave a speech in Iowa the other day that made her sound as if she had been stuffing magic mushrooms up her nostrils while simultaneously trying to inhale some mysterious white powder through her eyeballs.

My favorite sample of Sarah's wit and wisdom, in which she referred to the fact that a lot of other crazy Republicans keep telling us that they want to be president, was this:

“It is good that we have a deep bench and its primary competition that will surface the candidate who’s up to the task and unify and this person has to because knowing what the media will do throughout all of 2016 to all of us it’s going to take more than a village to beat Hillary.”

Right, Sarah.  It's going to take armies of men with butterfly nets scooping up and carrying away anybody who can think clearly, understand logic, and speak a coherent sentence.

 And to think the Republicans wanted you for vice president. Sometimes I think our elections are blessed.

Success at last for Sarah Palin! (She makes it to a graffiti wall in Paris.)

Sarah Palin fans now can find her in Paris. She's up against the wall, just off the Seine, in the 5th Arrondissement, either in a narrow dark alley called Rue du Chat Qui Peche or on another narrow street parallel to it. I forget which.

I do not know whether or not the object that the skeleton is holding is a spear. Nor do I know why whatever it  that the skeleton is holding happens to be pointed at Sarah. I can tell you that the cat who fishes, if it ever actually existed, is dead – probably since the 16th Century.

I find it oddly appropriate that Sarah's portrait appears on a 16th Century wall, in a dark alley named after a dead cat, and is being pointed to by a jolly skeleton. Especially since Sarah reportedly has no love for cats and vice-versa, but says she likes to hold fish. You can't make this stuff up.

I have no further comments, nor do any come to mind, but feel free.

Suddenly everybody’s reading Hitler. But who are those readers? And why are they reading him?

This is not your grandmother's
brand of conservative – but now
he's hot in e-bookstores

I wish this were merely a sendup, a la Mel Brooks’ Broadway and screen masterpiece, “The Producers.”

Alas, no such luck.

An online publishing trade journal called Book Business reports that “Mein Kampf Rises in E-book Rankings.”

Rises? It shoots through the roof, according to the information Book Business offers: 

For a year now, his magnum manifesto has loomed large over current best-sellers on iTunes, where at the time of this writing two different digital versions of Mein Kampf rank 12th and 15th on the Politics & Current Events chart alongside books by modern conservative powerhouses like Sarah Palin, Charles Krauthammer and Glenn Beck. 

Where are the market research people 

 now that we need them?

I wish we knew who’s suddenly in the market for the little racist psychopath’s horrid excuse for a nation building manifesto. Why are they buying it? What do they think of it? How does it fit into their views of politics?

But Book Business offers us no information beyond the titles of books in the political arena that are selling at similar levels (maybe market research people have better things to analyze than Hitler’s book sales.) And a longer article on a website called vocativ.com, from which the Book Business article was derived, also offers no clear explanation. So I’ll have to take my clues where I can find them.

Book Business notes that Sarah Palin, Charles Krauthammer and Glenn Beck are also top-of-chart sellers. Is there some significance to that? Are the right wing heavy readers congregating around Hitler as well as Krauthammer? Can we assume that the crazy Tea Party right is developing a new adoration for der Fuhrer? Is Sarah Palin about to go all Nazi on us – along with Kruathammer, Beck, and also, say, Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz?

Or is this even more ominous than that – say part of a behind-the-scenes push toward a Koch brothers putsch?

Stay tuned. Or, if a more cautious alternative seems to make more sense to you, flee the country and watch from afar.

P.S. On Friday,  January 10th, I ran across this. Could Google be off on a Hitler bender? And could they somehow be what's moving his hate lit? It's only a tongue-in-cheek question, of course. Or is it?

The mosque, Ground Zero, and a bunch of U.S. Constitution-hating nincompoops, including Sarah Palin, Andrea Peyser, and Carl Paladino

Back in colonial times, a Quaker passing through the Massachusetts Bay Colony got whipped and had his ears sliced off by the good Puritan colonists for…being a Quaker.

In the name of the Inquisition, hundreds, if not thousands of non-Catholics were tortured, and burned at the stake. Their crime? Not being Catholic.

In France, Protestant Huguenots were enslaved for life on galley ships for being…Protestants.

The U.S. Constitution supposedly

put an end to intolerance

When America was founded, the founding fathers said they’d had enough of this hateful intolerance. The Bill of Rights, the very First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in its very first sentence, even before it got down to Freedom of Speech and the Press, declared this:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”

It didn’t and still doesn't say, “except when a lot of people with money and the media equivalent of loud speakers say differently.”

In New York City, a group of Muslims wants to build a mosque. I have no particular brief for the Muslim religion, and I have a personal loathing for jihad and for the practice of Sharia law in the 21^st Century. But I do have respect for the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

An outpouring of hatred

So I’m horrified at the huge outpouring of hatred from monied and politically devious sources who are stirring up a hornet’s nest of hatred against the Muslim group because the mosque and community center they want to build is two blocks from ground zero.

The operative word is “two” because, of course, none of the people opposing are bigots. Oh no!

“I am not against a mosque. I am against a location of a mosque. I don’t want a mosque on the grave of my son and on the grave of everybody else who was murdered that day,” said one woman while the Fox News TV cameras rolled. Fox. Of course, Fox.

How far away is far enough?

But wait a second, m’am. Your son’s grave is two blocks away. And if that's too close, how far away is far enough? Would three blocks do it? How about four? A mile? Two miles? Or should mosques be allowed on the same island? What about the same coast of the United States, m’am?

But wait, you've got idiot friends seeking to be in powerful places who are backing you up, m’am. Sarah Palin, for example.

In a post to her Facebook page which mysteriously disappeared and then reappeared, Palin declared, and then undeclared, and then re-declared, “Many Americans, myself included, feel it would be an intolerable and tragic mistake to allow such a project sponsored by such an individual to go forward on such hallowed ground. This is nothing close to ‘religious intolerance,’ it’s just common decency.”

Right. Except that, as previously noted, the hallowed ground is two blocks away. (Who hallowed it, by the way? By what authority is land made holy under the First Amendment?) What Palin is doing with statements like this is stirring up religious intolerance, a just plain common indecent thing to do.

At Rupert Mudoch’s right wing New York Post, the mother of all witches, Andrea Peyser, plays fast and loose with the facts. She writes: “Plans to bring what one critic calls a 'monster mosque' to the site of the old Burlington Coat Factory building, at a cost expected to top $100 million, moved along for months

without a peep. All of a sudden, even members of the community board that stupidly green-lighted the mosque this month are tearing their hair out."

Community board had no real say

Witchy Andrea a few paragraphs later finally got around to mentioning that Community Boards in New York have no official say in such matters. So what it boils down to is that their “green light” was the equivalent of a whistling “Melancholy Baby” — a total irrelevance.

Now some upstate New York candidate for Governor who is so-far-right-it’s off-the-charts, a fellow named Carl Palladino claims he will “use the right of eminent domain” to stop the mosque. He

doesn’t spell out what that means, but if it means anything at all, it means that he’ll take a couple of hundred million worth of taxpayer money to buy up commercial property two blocks from ground zero so Muslim worshippers can’t have it.

Good luck to funding education, or highways, or law enforcement, or hospitals, or anything else a state ought to be doing with Palladino’s cut-taxes-and-spend-for-mosque-property philosophy of government.

Of course, the other looney Republican candidate for Governor, Rick The Loser Lazio, who proved what a jerk he is when he walked up to Hillary Clinton during a televised debate and aggressively shoved a pile of paper under her face, also favors repealing the First Amendment — whoops, I’m sorry, stopping the mosque.

But also note Muslim-American

tone deafness

The wannabe builders of this Muslim facility aren’t without blame either. They suffer from a severe case of tone deafness in standing by their proposal.

Nevertheless, last I heard, tone deafness wasn’t against the law and the U.S. Constitution still hasn’t been repealed.

"Drill baby, drill!" Eh Senator McCain?

It's hard to calculate all the damage done by the latest oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. But at the very least:

•50,000 gallons a day of raw petroleum are gushing, so far unstoppably, not into America's energy stream but into the Gulf of Mexico where the toxic goo is...

• Killing fish and birds

• Destroying the fishing industry

• Threatening the economy of Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and the Texas Gulf Coast.

• Creating a future public health disaster.The odds are that 20 to 40 years from now there will be an epidemic of cancer among those who deliberately or by chance eat the carcinogen-laden products of the gulf. Like shrimp? Forget about it now, pal.

Shame on you, Senator McCain. Shame on you Sarah Palin. Shame on you every Republican who either chanted "Drill baby drill," or sympathized with those who did, or took campaign contributions from the petroleum industry.

Nature is a hanging judge. And she is hanging the future of the American Gulf Coast states. You're doing a helluva job, Senator.

Now, watch the video:

John McCain is attempting to sell his soul to the devil. Woe to America if he succeeds.

It’s an old story that gets told in many ways, but the plot is always pretty much the same.

Some person, in search of wealth, or glory, or love, or vast unfettered power, sells his soul in exchange for what he wants.

He bargains away morality, decency, and civility. And then becomes a helpless tool of a devil until he is whisked off to hell.

Such is the story of John McCain.

Once, or at least we are told so, John McCain was a man of honor. Once, at least on some issues, he stood firmly on principle.

Once, his word was trusted.

But then John McCain decided he needed to be President. That personal feeling of need became more important to him than anything. More important than the truth. More important than the future of the United States. More important than his own highly touted honor.

So John McCain lies about his own record, claiming he is a "maverick" — a baldfaced lie from a man who voted with the President 90% of the time to claim.

John McCain directly or through the people working to get him elected lies constantly about his opponent, Barack Obama. McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin incite mob violence and skinhead assassination plots by falsely implying that Obama is a terrorist, or some unstated-but-unimaginable thing worse.

John McCain sews seeds of doubt and hatred in a society that Barack Obama is attempting to bring together.

McCain lies about big things like the economy and the war in Iraq. He lies about inconsequential things like Obama’s heritage. He repeats lies. And repeats them. And repeats them again — all in a desperate sell-your-soul attempt to win the Presidency.

It is a presidency that in the hands of John McCain will create a living hell for most Americans.

It will be a hell plagued by wars, terrorist attacks, the end of the successful Social Security and Medicare programs, increasingly unaffordable health care for most Americans, simultaneous inflation and recession, the U.S. Government's financial collapse, forest and wildlife dieoffs, polluted water supplies, police intrusion into the homes of peaceful Americans, and eventually, as Sarah Palin’s power grows, even the death penalty for first degree murder meted out to hapless young rape victims who dare to abort the babies of their rapists.

But McCain’s deal with the devil only can work if you stay home and fail to vote for Obama.

Please, on Election Day remember this: your vote for Barack Obama will do more than help him become President. It will also save America from a living hell.

Give Barack Obama your vote and let McCain and Palin go to hell by themselves.

"Help, I’m on trial for capital murder! Get me the dumbest representation you can find!"

Actually, none of the people shown above ever came close to a law degree. Which in a way is part of my point. Bear with me through a few hypothetical questions:

If you were in trial for your life on a bogus murder charge, would you want a lawyer who only got into law school because of family connections, and who graduated despite miserable grades — most probably with the help of those same connections?

Yet America has twice “hired” George W. Bush to be President of the United States — a life-and-death matter connected to national security, the economy, the ability of future generations of Americans to survive in this world, and more.

That’s the same George Bush who was a Yale legacy and got a “low pass,” from the Harvard Graduate School of Business, most probably because of who his father and grandfather were, rather than his embarrassingly lackluster showing.

Suppose you needed brain surgery. Would you say, “Hey, this is a matter of life or death. Get me a surgeon who was such an irresponsibly wildass student that he graduated fifth from the bottom of his class in medical school?”

Well, if you wanted someone who “knows” national security, economic policy and diplomacy — matters arguably as important to your health and future safety as good brain surgeon — would you ask for the guy who graduated fifth from the bottom of his class at the United States Naval Academy? That would be John McCain.

McCain's grades at Annapolis were "marginal." He drew so many demerits for breaking curfew and other disciplinary issues that he graduated fifth from the bottom of the Naval Academy class of 1958. Despite his low class standing, and no doubt because of the legacy of his family of famous Admirals, McCain was leap-frogged ahead of more qualified applicants and granted a coveted slot to be trained as a navy pilot.

Suppose your house for mysterious reasons suddenly was in danger of collapse. Would you pick up the phone and call for a house engineer, insisting on one who had to go to five different second and third-rate colleges to get a degree — in a subject other than engineering?

Well, the economy is collapsing and if John McCain gets elected President at the age of 72 and anything happens this cancer survivor who isn’t making full disclosure of his medical records, your President will be Sarah Palin.

Palin attended such highly regarded (ahem) institutions as Matanuska-Susitna College (one term); North Idaho College (three terms) Hawaii Pacific University (one term) and the so-so University of Idaho (total of five terms) before she finally got her degree in journalism. Perhaps that helped her get a job as a sportscaster, but she surely didn’t learn very much in her journalism classes about international relations and policy, or economics, or history, or even — odd, somehow for a journalism major — the name of a single newspaper.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, attended highly-regarded Occidental college for two years and then earned his B.A. from prestigious Columbia University, where he majored in International Relations.

He received his Juris Doctor law degree from Harvard University, where he also had the prestigious job of Editor of the Harvard Law Review. (Ask any practicing lawyer.) And he graduated magna cum laude — the highest honor for scholarship in his class.

He got this education without any legacy or family connections.

He is the author of two books on government policy and his own personality history. He taught law at the prestigious University of Chicago law school.

So, with the economy and national security hanging in the balance, with your ability to make a living hanging in the balance, with your 401(k) hanging in the balance, with your ability to keep your health insurance hanging in the balance — with all that, do you once again want to hire the dumbest guys in the room?

Or will you wise up and vote for somebody with the smarts to save this nation from disaster — Barack Obama?

Yeah, let’s deregulate everything. How about starting with traffic regulations? Hungry for a flesh-and-steel sandwich?

What caused the subprime market meltdown?

“Greed,” says John McCain.

“Greed,” echoes Sarah Palin.

Yeah, they say, and we gotta get those greedy, conniving, evil, predatory Wall Street lenders and show 'em what for.

Give me a break!

John McCain—deregulate, baby, deregulate—seems never to have met an economic problem that deregulation (and perhaps a few more tax cuts for rich corporations and individuals) couldn’t fix. After all, “market forces” balance everything out after a while. Right?

Small problem: “Market Forces” are a hanging judge. And the judge is currently hanging the entire economy of the United States from a very tall tree.

Of course the Wall Street guys were greedy. Greed is as American as apple pie. But blaming greedy bankers and predator lenders is like blaming a bullet for shooting you. Greed and predation is what they do. Regulating greed to keep it under control and thwart predatory behavior is what governments are supposed to do.

It’s deregulation that
shot the economy dead

It’s the function of government to protect us from the market manipulations that are a byproduct of rampant greed. Just as it used to protect us from greedy usurers. People used to go to prison for charging the kind of interest rates the banks are getting on credit caards now.

Marketplace regulation is no more onerous than government traffic regulations that help to shield us from highway traffic accidents. In fact, imagine that highway traffic accidents were the major campaign issue now.

People are still getting killed with a 65 MPH speed limit? Tell yuh what. Let’s deregulate speed and eliminate all speed limits. Get rid of those speed limit signs. Get rid of those rumble speed bumps. Get rid of that radar.

Even more people are getting killed with no speed limits? Easy fix. Just get rid of the highway patrol.

Still more people getting killed? Well, let’s take the dividers out between the eastbound and westbound lanes so that cars can go in any lane, any direction they want. And just to encourage “innovative” driving, we’ll give a tax break to anybody who takes a spin on the Freeforall Highway.

The “gotcha” doofus
will strike again

I should interrupt this rant to mention that some doofus with his finger on the “gotcha” button shoots me either an e-mail or a post every time I discuss this subject, reminding me that Bill Clinton signed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act, one of the more important regulations that used to protect us.

Well, yes Clinton did—when it was attached to other legislation that he really needed and it all got shoved down his throat by mischief-making Republicans. And if Republicans are so offended now by its repeal, why didn’t they reinstate it during the six years they controlled both houses of Congress and the White House? And why didn't John McCain complaint about it once in those eight years?

There's no point in
bailing out the boat if you
don't fix the leak

Bailing out the banks will do us no good at all if once the bankers are bailed out (or even before that) they can jump into their 500 horsepower Greedsters and go roaring down the highway again.

But of course, I never met a Republican—John McCain and Sarah Whatzername most certainly included— who could think ten seconds ahead.

Oh, for those of you who are interested in such things, the Direct Marketing Association— those wonderful folks who brought you spam and junk mail—are holding their convention this week.

And just take a wild guess what they’re complaining about.

The birdbrains who are pecking America to death. Part 2.

Back in May, before the election heated up, I posted a piece called “Pecked to death by birdbrains.” I was railing against the U.S. Post Office. That was nothing compared to what’s going on today.

Now I have to rail against my fellow citizens — a nation overwhelmingly of birdbrains about to pigeon step in single file off a cliff.

As I write this, the stock market is failing. Our savings institutions are trembling on the brink of collapse. The newspapers are beginning to write stories about potential runs on banks, something that hasn’t happened since the Great Depression of 1929, which threw our nation into ten years of abject poverty.

Right now, Americans are still dying in Iraq, while the Taliban is regaining territory in Afghanistan, and Iran may be futzing around with a nuclear bomb.

And how are Americans reacting to this? According to the polls, we’re drifting from favoring Obama to favoring the know-nothing McCain-Palin ticket. Which essentially means four more years of mindless Bush policies that got us into this mess in the first place.

We’re talking, folks, about two people who know zilch about what affects stock prices, less than zilch about banking, and squat about how to deal with the mess we’re in today.

Denial of on-the-record facts

John McCain recently denied he said he didn’t know much about economics. If he truthfully believes his denial, he’s also suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. Here, Senator McCain, is the truth:

Actually, the quote came from a 2005 piece by Stephen Moore, in which McCain said: “I’m going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics that I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.”

McCain also said this, per a December 2007 Boston Globe article: "The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should. I’ve got Greenspan’s book.”

He’s “got” a book? One book, by one at least partially discredited economist? And on that, assuming he ever reads it, he’s going to base policies that could help the United States survive hard times or drown in a sea of red ink? He's going to get an economic education when he gets around to it, and meanwhile sink the rest of us if he gets an F? Or even a C minus?

What McCain, Palin and Bush are for is “less government.” Except, it was “less government” — the elimination, for example, of the Glass-Steagall Act — that sent the banks and brokerage firms of America reeling toward a round of disaster that hasn’t been equaled since, but may be equaled again shortly.

The U.S. Government lacks the money to pay off all the FDIC-insured bank accounts that will become worthless along with the banks that hold those deposits. Yet John McCain, who may or may not have gotten around to reading one not-entirely-trustworthy book on economics, wants to cut taxes as a cure all for everything from low housing prices, to collapsing banks, to failing brokerage houses, to troubled automobile companies to — well, to warts, for all I know.

But wait, there’s more!
Like starting a nuclear war!

Georgia invades South Ossetia. So Russia invades Georgia. And suddenly, we’ve got Bush-McCain-Pallin responding to this near-nuclear situation by pouring gasoline on the fire and encouraging NATO membership for Georgia. This would require us to invade Russia. And you know what that means in terms of nuclear war.

Kaboom!

McCain-Pallin agree with Bush that we should surround the Russians with NATO nuclear missiles, right in the countries that border them. When the Russians tried the same trick in Cuba back in 1962, we wouldn’t stand for it. The event was called the “Cuban Missile Crisis” remember? We nearly risked World War III to get the Russians out of a neighboring country. Why should the Russians stand for it when we wouldn’t?

We’re heading for a meltdown — financial, international, diplomatic, nuclear. When it comes, most of the people reading this won’t be alive long enough to get past the next sentence.

But America “feels good” about the McCain-Palin continuation of the Bush program of national suicidal idiocy.

P.T. Barnum and the
North American Birdbrain

P.T. Barnum, the father not only of the three-ring circus but also of the theatrical con job once said that, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”

But today’s North American Birdbrain exceeds anything even P.T. Con-em could have imagined.

The one thing I don’t have to worry about is this: When your bank collapses and your city explodes, you won’t come running to me. The reason?

Both of us will be nothing but a small, radioactive cinder.

Mayor Sarah Palin to Wasilla rape victims: “I want to rape you again! Here’s a bill for getting violated. Have a nice day.”

Shocker: When Sarah Palin was Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, her appointed police chief fought to stick rape victims with the bills for rape kits the local hospital used.

The kits help to establish there was a rape and identify the rapist.

Said Palin’s Police Chief Charlie Fannon: "I just don't want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer."

Oh dear, the Palin administration didn’t want to stick the taxpayers with the bill for rape kits when they could stick it to the victims, instead.

Points out the blog Daily Kos, the total bill to Wasilla for all this forensic work on behalf of its rape victims would have been between $5,000 and $14,000 a year. And that’s less than Sarah billed the state of Alaska for sleeping in her own home.

I mean, talk about her "small town values!"

See the post, “Justice, Maverick Style,” here for the details about the small-minded excuse for a human being that John McCain wants to succeed him as president.

A pit bull with lipstick? This is what pit bulls do to babies. What ‘till you see what a McCain-Palin mad dog administration does to your family.

The photograph was published some time ago in The Baltimore Sun. It shows what a pit bull did to a baby.

The Republican party has declared Sarah Palin to be “a pit bull with lipstick.” 

Don’t you believe it. Truth is, Sarah Palin is Senator McSame’s lap dog, his More-Of-The-Same-Dame:

"Pit bull" image with
no-change lap dog politics

• Same unchanged deference to lobbyists who have secretly been writing the laws for their well-heeled clients instead of the American people. Republicans  talk a good game about "country first." But what they're really doing is putting profits for their greedy corporate donors and lobbyists first and the rest of America behind the eight ball.

• Same unchanged disregard for any proposal that will really fix the unemployment mess.

• Same unchanged disinterest in America’s rotting infrastructure which only the government can fix.

• Same blithe disregard for any measures that would really protect the environment.

• Same emphasis on cutting taxes for corporations and billionaires. Meanwhile, they want to tax your healthcare benefits.

• Same unchanged hatred for the kind of government regulation that used to prevent messes like the subprime mortage meltdown until Republicans repealed the regulations.

• Same unchanged lack of a meaningful proposal that would get every American citizen who wants it some form of affordable healthcare coverage.

• Same unchanged endless war in Iraq.

• Same unchanged financial responsibility that is digging a deeper and deeper grave for the United States of America, as foreign powers grab up our national wealth and laugh all the way to the bank.

McCain will make today's
bad situation even worse

A McCain-Palin administration will not only continue the situation but worsen it, lowering the already low international regard for the United States which has destroyed our worldwide leadership and which will keep us oil-dependent for many more years (That’s what “drill-drill-drill” is really-really-really all about. Making money-money-money for the swimming-in-profits oil companies while diverting major efforts from solar, wind and other energy sources.)

Ever see lipstick
on a real pit bull?

Yeah, sure — McCain is for “change.”

He’s about as much for change as a rabid four-legged pit bull will convince you it’s a hockey mom if someone paints lipstick on its drooling jowls.

Meanwhile, although she has finally — finally! — scheduled one measly press interview with Charlie Gibon, Sarah Palin has thus far refused to hold any full-court national press conferences where Americans can learn the answers to the questions we have on our minds instead of just the answers Republicans want to give us.

Maybe Sarah thinks it’s cute as a pit bull that she wants America wants to vote for her without knowing anything about her.

Well, here is one of the few things we do know about the woman who John McSame says will help him create “change.”

Sarah's shady college record?
Let's shed some light on it.

Sarah Palin thus far has offered no explanation of why she went to five different (mostly second-rate) colleges in six years before she got her four-year degree. In the absence of Palin’s willingness to divulge facts, we’re free to speculate on this national political figure. So permit me a few crankily speculative question:

• Despite her ability to make a fine speech, is Sarah Palin such a scholastic dimwit that she managed to flunk out of college one or more times?

• Was she caught cheating on exams or upsetting somebody else’s lab experiment so she’d come quit higher on the curve one or more times?

• Did she have one or more mental breakdowns?

Did she have to drop out of college (and — heaven forbid! — have an abortion because she was pregnant?)

The colleges themselves are forbidden by law to divulge their records. So we’ll just have to wait and see whether the Republicans and Sarah will share their secret information.

Wait a second! Wait a second! Did a right wing blog just lend credence to rumors that she had an extramarital affair?

Ordinarily I'm not big on directing readers to Republican-slanted websites the likes of Matt Drudge's. But I'm making an exception in this case because it relates to the very newspaper that had some Republicans rejoicing when, with remarkable accuracy, it outed John Edwards and his extramarital affair.

And Edwards wasn't even running for any thing. Anyway, now that same newspaper is suggesting that Sarah's been up to some extramarital hanky-panky.

Matt Drudge reports. You decide.

Barack, dude: If you want to win this one don't get sidetracked by an Alaskan barracuda

Dude, I know it isn't easy, what with the Republicans trying to refocus attention from the real issues in this campaign to their nomination of a "hockey mom" who's evidently under some kind of criminal investigation for abuse of power in office. 

I know that raises questions as to whether McCain and the people around him have either the integrity or the competence to vet a cow in a milking barn, much less a vice-presidential candidate who's a heartbeat away from a doddering old dude with a history of cancer.

But when it comes down to pulling that lever for you (or making an x, or stabbing a chad, or touch-screening your name) only one thing matters.

As a Democrat who built a successful economy before the Republicans wrecked it kept reminding himself, "It's the economy, stupid."

So dude, keep reminding people that with or without Barracuda Sarah (who evidently, in violation of the law, fires civil servants if they're not political hacks) the Republicans want to kill Social Security. The Republicans want to kill Medicare. The Republicans want to kill your job, your income and your future.

The Republicans want to screw over the average American by cutting taxes for the rich again and meanwhile running up an even bigger national debt for our children – all this while the rest of America tries to hang on to our houses, pay off our mortgages and college loans, and hang on to our jobs (if we still have a job that hasn't been "outsourced" to India or China.)

Dump McCain by voting for Barack and we also get to dump the war that's draining your tax money and pouring it into that leaky sieve called Iraq instead of into medical care and infrastructure and job creation for America.

Dump McCain and America has a chance. And that hockey mom will be free to go back to Alaska and ask the criminal lawyer she's hired to defend her how her case is going. 

Hey man, I've just got back from almost three weeks of vacation. And whaddya know? I'm still cranky.