Rejecting calls for protectionism, collectivism and defeatism

Bush is holding an economic summit of world leaders, who he told, “All our nations must reject calls for protectionism, collectivism, and defeatism in the face of our current challenge.” Collectivism, huh?

Still, it must be awkward when all your soon-to-be exes show up at once.

I’m a market-oriented guy

You know, I waited the entire election for just the right moment to use Lord Randolph Churchill’s jibe against William Gladstone, “an old man in a hurry,” against McCain, but I waited too long, alas.

Today Bush spoke to the Manhattan Institute about the global economy.

WHAT IMAGINARY PEOPLE SAY TO GEORGE: “People say, are you confident about our future? And the answer is, absolutely.”

BUSH CHANGES HIS ORIENTATION: “I’m a market-oriented guy, but not when I’m faced with the prospect of a global meltdown.”

WHAT HISTORY HAS SHOWN: “History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market, it is too much government involvement in the market.”

HE HEARS VOICES: “In the wake of the financial crisis, voices from the left and right are equating the free enterprise system with greed and exploitation and failure.” I thought that was the point.

CAPITALISM DOESN’T KILL ECONOMIES; PEOPLE KILL ECONOMIES: “It’s true this crisis included failures -- by lenders and borrowers and by financial firms and by governments and independent regulators. But the crisis was not a failure of the free market system.”

“At its most basic level, capitalism offers people the freedom to choose where they work and what they do, the opportunity to buy or sell products they want, and the dignity that comes with profiting from their talent and hard work.” What does George know about talent or hard work, or dignity for that matter?

WHAT THE WORLD WILL SEE: “The world will see the resilience of America once again. We will work with our partners to correct the problems in the global financial system. We will rebuild our economic strength. And we will continue to lead the world toward prosperity and peace.” Maybe you need to stop and ask directions.

The transformative and uplifting power of faith

Today Bush spoke at a UN event on “inter-faith dialogue,” or, as he put it, “the transformative and uplifting power of faith.” He started by thanking... wait for it... King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia, and that’s really all you need to know about that.



Here he is putting his hands all over Condi’s bestest pal Tzipi Livni.

I want to do a shoutout to our president and thank him for that

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is issuing a statement saying that if the Democrats protect abortion rights, it will be taken as an attack on the church itself. Yes, bishops, because it’s all about you.

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Sarah Palin has given another 20 or 30 interviews, perhaps under the impression that she actually won the election (and that “progress” is a transitive verb, as in “I would be happy to get to do whatever is asked of me to help progress this nation”), including one with Wolf Blitzer.

She offered to “assist and support” Obama in any way she could, especially by talking some more about his association with William Ayers, “if anybody still wants to talk about it”. Anybody still want to talk about it?

She praised Bush for “reaching out to Barack Obama and to both potential new Cabinet members also, and those who we know will be in the Cabinet, reaching out to them.” Yes, the moron thinks she knows who Obama has picked as Cabinet members.

She also praised Bush for “keeping our country safe for the last seven years with no new attack on the homeland... You know, I want to do a shoutout to our president and thank him for that.”

She also had to be corrected by Monsieur Blitzer about the number of charges Ted Stevens was convicted of (7, not 4), and even had to be told that the Senate election in her state still hasn’t been decided, since votes are still being counted (indeed, right now, Stevens is losing in the count). Details, details. She does say that while she might run for Stevens’s seat in a special election if the people of Alaska “call an audible on me” and if God’s “got doors open for me,” she won’t appoint herself to replace Stevens (which she evidently doesn’t know Alaska law prohibits her from doing), because she isn’t that “egotistical and arrogant.” Yes, no one could accuse Sarah Palin of being egotistical and arrogant.

It was interesting to watch him go upstairs

Condi Rice was interviewed by CSPAN:

Q: So if Condi Rice is writing the first textbook on the Bush presidency, the first paragraph, what would you include?

RICE: The President believed that all men were created equal and that they were – all men and women were created equal, and that they had the right to live in freedom and liberty. That meant freedom from tyranny, but also freedom from poverty, freedom from ignorance. And he made it the purpose of American foreign policy to begin that journey, knowing that it wouldn’t be achieved on his watch -- it’s a generational struggle, but knowing that ultimately, when it was achieved, there would be absolutely no ground and no basis on which terrorists could hold.

Miss, will that be on the mid-term?

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Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson gave a press conference today to say that he won’t use the $700 billion the Congress so nicely gave him in the way they gave it to him to use, but he’ll do something else with it which’ll be way better. So that’s okay then.

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CNN interviewed George Bush yesterday.

WHAT HE DOESN’T WANT YOUR TROOPS THINKING: “I don’t want your troops thinking that the decisions I have made were about politics or about my standing.”

INTERESTING: On his meeting with Obama: “It was interesting to watch someone that is getting ready to assume the office of the president. ... It was interesting to watch him go upstairs.” You were totally checking out his ass, weren’t you, George?

WHAT HE REMINDS PEOPLE OF: “And I remind people popularity is fleeting. Principles are forever.”

WHAT HE REGRETS: “I regret saying some things I shouldn’t have said. [CNN: Like?] Like ‘dead or alive,’ or ‘bring ‘em on.’ And, by the way, my wife reminded me as president of the United States, you better be careful what you say. I was trying to convey a message. I could have conveyed it more artfully. Being on this ship reminds me of when I went to the USS Abraham Lincoln and they had a sign that said ‘Mission Accomplished.’ I regret that sign was there. It was a sign aimed at the sailors on the ship, but it conveyed a broader knowledge. To some it said, well, Bush thinks the war in Iraq is over, when I didn’t think that. But nonetheless, it conveyed the wrong message.” Notice that he evidently doesn’t regret anything since May July of 2003. Because everything’s gone swell since then.

WHAT HE KNOWS: “I know I’m going be in Texas. No doubt I’m heading straight home. I miss Texas. I love Texas. I’ve got lots of friends in Texas.” All imaginary.

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Why should we have such unnatural creatures in churchyards?

Today, the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I, the US has one remaining veteran of that war. Britain has 4, France 1. Germany, Austria, and Russia have none.

In Pakistan, Israrullah Zehri, who defended as “honor killings” the burying alive of three girls who demanded the right to choose their own husbands, has been made minister for postal services, while Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani, who presided over an illegal jirga which gave girls, aged 2 to 5, as compensation to the family of a murdered man, has been made minister of... wait for it... education.

Headline of the Day: “Garden Gnomes Banned from Church Cemetery Because They Are ‘Unnatural Creatures.’” According to a spokesman for the Diocese of Bath and Wells, “There is no such thing as a real gnome so why should we have such unnatural creatures in churchyards?” As opposed to your imaginary sky god.

I’ll plow through that door

Headline of the Day/Death of the Day: “Husband’s Coffin Kills Woman in Brazil.”

Unclear on the concept: Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, containing the bodies of illustrious Muslim figures, including Saladin’s warriors, may be partially destroyed to make way for... a Museum of Tolerance.

Sarah Palin, on Fox yesterday, on her presidential prospects in 2012: “I’m like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I’m like, don’t let me miss the open door. Show me where the open door is. ... And if there is an open door in ‘12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I’ll plow through that door.” Don’t let it hit you in the ass, Sarah.

Thirteen

Three 13-year-old girls in the news:

One was an Iraqi, a suicide bomber who killed four people as well as herself.

One is British, a leukemia patient who has been allowed to refuse a heart transplant which her hospital had planned to go into court to force on her against her will.

One was Somali, a rape victim who was buried up to her neck in a packed stadium and then stoned to death by fifty men for “adultery.”

Compare and contrast.

Caption contest

What the hell is that on the wall? The ghost of Hank Paulson?

It’s amazing that we did as well as we did

In her recent interview with local Alaska media, Sarah Palin insisted, as she has in every public utterance since the election, that the Obama victory was not her (or even McCain’s) fault: “If we’re talking change, we want to get far away from what it was that the present administration represented and that is to a great degree what the Republican Party at the time had been representing. So people desiring change I think went as far from the administration that is presently seated as they could. It’s amazing that we did as well as we did.” Last week, she blamed it on the recession. At no point has she ever acknowledged the possibility that anyone voted for Obama because they, you know, wanted him to be president. She is a sore and a graceless loser.

She defended, too, also, her practice of charging the state for living and eating at home, which she intends to keep doing, and even praised herself for “trying to go above and beyond, not accepting any per diem for the kids or Todd at all, they’ve lived outside of the governor’s house.”

On Troopergate: “It’s done. It’s over. People need to move on.” How can we, when you keep saying stupid things that need to be made fun of?

On it and on it

Governor Terminator suggests that legalizing gay marriage is just like weight-lifting and offers this advice: “They should never give up. They should be on it and on it until they get it done.” Um, yeah...

To do

Something else for Obama’s to-do list: unsign all of Bush’s signing statements.

Something for the to-do list of every Arkansan who voted to ban unmarried couples, especially gay ones, from adopting or fostering: sign up as adoptive or foster parents. Seems only fair, and besides, without parents, where will these poor children pick up values, like intolerance and homophobia and, uh... never mind.

Friday pygmy hippo blogging

Three-week old Monifa, at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney.

Mutts, like me

In his first post-election press conference, Obama addressed the all-important puppy issue, saying that Malia needs a hypo-allergenic dog so he may not be able to get one from the pound because “a lot of shelter dogs are mutts, like me.” He said it, not me. Of course after eight years of seeing the White House occupied by an example of the results of excessive in-breeding, a mutt looks pretty good.


Obama said that he had spoken to all the living former presidents but none of the dead ones. “I didn’t want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about, you know, doing any seances.” Er, right. Wait a minute, as I wrote that I just realized: Nancy Reagan had an astrologer, but it was actually Hillary who had seances with the ghost of Eleanor Roosevelt.


Anyway, we know what the Ghost of Ronald Reagan would have said to Obama: “Mister Mayor, how are things going in your city?”

Arnold Schwarzenegger hates your dog

Gov. Terminator wants to raise the regressive sales tax in California by 1½¢. He also wants to eliminate dental and vision coverage for MediCal, cut various forms of support to the blind and disabled, and drastically cut spending on education, always his first target. But you know what pisses me off the most, personally? He wants to extend the sales tax to, among other services, veterinary bills. I think you should be able to deduct vet bills from your income taxes, just like the medical bills of any other family member; you sure as motherfucking hell shouldn’t be taxed for taking care of your pet.

Can you tell I had heavy vet bills this year?

The governor also appointed his children’s nanny to a paid position on the board overseeing guide dogs.

The contest in my previous post yesterday asked for sample dialog from Bush’s meeting with Obama next Monday. Athenawise offered “Heckuva job, Bammie,” which suggests the topic of our next contest: Bush does have an obnoxious habit of giving people nicknames, doesn’t he? So what nickname will be bestow on Obama? “Bam Bam?”

At least we still have Ted Stevens to kick around

This may well have been the last chance for a Vietnam veteran to be elected president. Think of all the veterans of World War II, a much shorter war, we’ve had as presidents.

I think that in the spirit of reconciliation, Obama should appoint Sarah Palin ambassador to the nation of Africa.

In a perverse way, I’m quite pleased that Ted Stevens was re-elected. I’m looking forward to the Senate debate on expulsion, to watching Republican senators forced to decide whether to stand with the decrepit felon or not. Meanwhile, the odor of greed and arrogance wafting off him attaches itself to the already stinking corpse of the Republican Party. Good times.

Oh to be a fly on the wall when Obama visits the White House Monday. What will he say to Bush? What will Bush say to him? Possible quotes and sample dialog in comments, please.

Election round-up

Bush says “Across the country, citizens voted in large numbers. They showed a watching world the vitality of America’s democracy, and the strides we have made toward a more perfect union. They chose a President whose journey represents a triumph of the American story -- a testament to hard work, optimism, and faith in the enduring promise of our nation.” As opposed to your slackerism and fear-mongering, George?

Note his choice of pronoun: they chose a president.

UR DOING IT WRONG: The US bombed yet another Afghan wedding party, killing maybe 40 and wounding the bride. Said army spokesmodel Col. Greg Julian, “It is the worst possible outcome if civilians are harmed as a result of our trying to defend them.”

Arkansas voters passed a ban on adoption and fostering by anyone who is living with someone to whom they are not married. This was intended to get around a state supreme court decision that a specific ban on gays adopting was discriminatory by banning not just gay couples, but also relatives of the child or people designated as guardians by the child’s parents if they happen not to be (or are not legally allowed to be) married. Given that the number of children needing foster or adoptive families was already several times the number of such families, getting out of orphanages will now be even more of a lottery.

Arkansas voters also passed a measure creating a state lottery.

Washington state passed physician-assisted suicide for terminal patients.

California voted to give chickens more wing space.

Arizona and Florida and California banned gay marriage. Now that little girl will never be able to marry a princess. The Florida measure also banned domestic partnership benefits for all unmarried couples. The California proposition, uniquely, reversed an actually existing right to marriage (and is badly enough drafted that we don’t know if it invalidates gay marriages already enacted). But (with 96.6% of the vote counted), it only did so by 52.2%. The issue is rapidly reaching a tipping point in California if not elsewhere in the country. I say supporters of gay marriage should take a leaf from the people who push props for parental notification for abortion on us every single damn election (this year’s lost, just like in 2006 and 2005), and not take no for an answer. Don’t wait for demographics to create a pro-gay majority in 10 or 20 years, but bring it back in 2 years and 4 years and 6 years, because it forces the anti-gay side to enunciate their prejudices. Half of the function of the abolitionists, the women’s suffrage movement, and now the gay marriage supporters, is to force the other side into revealing the emptiness and mean-spiritedness of their bigotries. Arguably, gay marriage didn’t even lose on its merits, but on the false claim that school children would be taught all about the joys of gay marriage, and their parents couldn’t do anything to stop it , oh won’t someone think of the children. You heard very little from the pro-Prop 8 side about what’s so wrong with the idea gay marriage, except that it’s not “traditional marriage.” The anti-8 side didn’t go after them to demand they be more explicit: “Really, ‘God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,’ that’s the best you’ve got?” Rather, it mostly talked about equality, which is a good argument and a high-minded one, but which (sigh) doesn’t seem to have worked on black voters, who were the one solidly anti-gay-marriage demographic (much more so than Latinos, which I can’t say I understand).

WaPo headline: “McCain Asks His Backers to Get Behind Obama.” Graciousness, or an ominous threat? You be the judge. If I were Obama, I wouldn’t want those people behind me.

Tom Tomorrow: “We’ve regarded our leaders with dread and anxiety for so long, it has come to seem like the normal state of things.” More.

The audacity of pup

CONTEST: Name the promised First Puppy. In comments, Athenawise has already suggested Maverick. I would nominate Joe the Dog. Your ideas?

America gets a new puppy

I think it’s a welcome sign of Iranian rapprochement with the West that when the interior minister decided to fake a degree, it was from the University of Oxford (an honorary degree – who fakes an honorary degree?).

McCain concession speech: his was “the most challenged campaign of modern times.” I think that’s some sort of euphemism.

Obama speech: new puppy! The Obama kids are getting a new puppy!

Medical marijuana wins in Michigan, plain old marijuana in Massachusetts. The abortion ban in South Dakota fails, ditto the Colorado prop. defining human life as beginning “when a guy gets a kinda funny feeling, you know, down there.”

They vote

And then the voting machines recorded all their votes for McCain, the end.

Mac and Puhleeze

One day left. Sarah Palin suggested today that she knows all about discrimination because Todd is part Inuit and asks if Democratic proposals for defense budget cuts show that “they think the terrorists have all the sudden become the good guys and changed their minds”? McCain says that “the Mac is back,” which must be true, because it rhymes.

From the last couple of days of campaigning, the many finger gestures of Mac and Sleaze.









A bonus picture of Sarah Palin speaking in Jefferson City, Missouri, while Thomas Jefferson checks out her ass.

Shoring up the strategies that we need over in Iraq and Iran to win these wars

Yesterday, Greta van Susteren at Fox interviewed Palin. 7-year-old Piper Palin, who is cute as a button and just like her mother. She also doesn’t know what the vice president does:

PIPER PALIN: I like the campaign trail.

VAN SUSTEREN: You like it? What -- any thought on what a vice president does? What’s your thought?

PIPER PALIN: I don’t know.

VAN SUSTEREN: No idea?

PIPER PALIN: No.

GOV. SARAH PALIN: What would a vice president do?

PIPER PALIN: Go to a lot of rallies.

She also answers questions about things she doesn’t understand:

VAN SUSTEREN: Is she the disciplinarian?

PIPER PALIN: Yes.

VAN SUSTEREN: Do you know what that means?

PIPER PALIN: No!

Sadly, Van Susteren did not ask Sarah Palin if she knows what that means, but she did ask her what she would do if she suddenly became president and faced a crisis. Sarah mostly said what she wouldn’t do. No prizes if you guessed “blink”: “But you do not blink when you have to make a decision to defend on the home front, to defend American lives. And that is, of course, the top of any president and vice presidential team’s agenda is to protect American people, so in not blinking there, you -- in assembling your team and your advisers, you make the right call and you make sure that Americans are protected.”

She said that she feared Obama would destroy the American work ethic, and that he “seems to want government to mandate that we be generous and compassionate with one another via spreading the wealth. That is not the American way. We don’t need to go down that road.” The generous and compassionate road? Heaven forfuckingfend!

She accidentally declared war, talking of the need to “really shore up the strategies that we need over in Iraq and Iran to win these wars”.

Todd Palin perhaps gave an insight into his marriage that we did not need to know, saying that “Senator McCain and -- they are so much alike, it’s almost scary.” I’m not sure if saying that McCain and Palin are so much alike it’s almost scary is more insulting to McCain or to Palin. I’m really not sure.

Would McCain have figured out he wasn’t talking to Sarkozy?

And... “Marcel the guy with bread under his armpit”?

Who would you want in that cell with you?

At that campaign event yesterday, Schwarzenegger asked – because this is clearly the test of fitness for public office that all of need to ask ourselves – “If you were in a POW cell, with the threat and danger and torture as part of the daily life, who would you want in that cell with you? A man — you want a man of eloquence or a man of proven courage”? Depends, does one of them have a flatulence problem? ‘Cause 5½ years can be an awfully long time stuck in a cell with a farter, is all I’m saying. Also, it gets pretty boring in a prison cell, so damn right you want “a man of eloquence,” because and how many times can you hear McCain’s repertoire of jokes about women being raped by gorillas before they begin to get a little, you know, old?

Anyway, since I don’t devote as much time to the Democratic side, here’s a picture of Barack Obama with a pumpkin:

I’m going to make him do some squats

Today McCain called Obama “more liberal than a senator who calls himself a socialist [Bernie Sanders].” For somebody who’s so concerned with labeling people’s ideologies, McCain really doesn’t understand where “liberal” and “socialist” are on the political spectrum (of course he also refers to himself as both a conservative and a reformer, sometimes in the same sentence).

Today McCain finally brought out the big gun: Arnold the Terminator. The one man with the credentials to criticize Obama on the most important issue of the campaign: “he needs to do something about those skinny legs. I’m going to make him do some squats.”

ALL KIND OF ACTION: “I only play an action hero in the movies but John McCain is a real action hero. And when John McCain is elected you will see all kind of action.” Somehow, that’s not reassuring.

Let God protect Bosnia and Herzegovina

Robert Fisk: charges against 6 Algerians, some with Bosnian citizenship, held at Guantanamo that they planned in 2001 to blow up the American embassy in Bosnia have been dropped. According to the Bosnian prime minister, American Deputy Ambassador Christopher Hoh threatened to withdraw NATO peacekeeping troops from Bosnia if they were not handed over, and “then let God protect Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

How is it that the only mentions of Hoh on the interwebtubes are about this story?

The Defiant One

Well, I watched the Obama infomercial last night, and here is the sum total of what I took away from it: I never noticed before how much he talks with his hands.

“SPREADING THE WEALTH” REPUBLICANS CAN BELIEVE IN: Banks spending all that government bailout money (all right, half of it anyway) on dividends rather than loans: everyone grab your pitchforks and torches and head over to one of these banks.

Bush went to the graduation ceremony for the FBI Academy in Quantico, you know, the place Jodie Foster jogged through in The Silence of the Lambs. He said, “The FBI has inspired generations of children to dream of joining the force. (Laughter.) Sounds like I inspired one or two myself. (Laughter and applause.)” Oh, George, I don’t think they joined the FBI just on the off-chance that they’d be the ones leading you off in handcuffs one day. (Actually, they may be laughing at his calling the FBI “the force.”)


McCain campaigned today in Defiance, Ohio, just so that this picture would be taken:


Or possibly so that this picture would be taken:


The Daily Telegraph has a photo tribute to George Bush, 29 pictures (of which long-time readers will have seen about 25 here).

99 and 44/100 percent of the American people are going to make a decision on who is best to lead this country

John McCain was interviewed by fellow decrepitudinous oldster Larry King today. Judging by the transcript, he fumbled rather a lot, and lost track of exactly whose guilt-by-association he was accusing Obama of, saying that the LA Times had a tape of Obama and William Ayers. He meant Rashid Khalidi. I guess all the insinuations run together after a while.

Oh O!

He said he hadn’t expected Palin to be so controversial but “I got to tell you, every time I’m around her, I’m uplifted.” Eww.

He said that the government should not do the only thing that governments do: “But it is not the job of government that I believe in, that would take a group of Americans who have some money and say, we’re taking your money, and we’re giving it to others.”

How will he eliminate the deficit in a single term? “By growing the economy. By growing the economy. You know, when Ronald Reagan came to office, inflation was double-digit, interest rates were double-digit, unemployment were double-digit, and everybody said, you can’t do it by cutting taxes and by increasing wealth and having our economy improve.” So his model for reducing the national debt is... Ronald Reagan.

HE WAS ONLY A HUMBLE ADMIRAL’S SON: “You know, I’m a guy that’s had a little bit humble beginnings, who only wanted to be a Navy pilot.”

IT FLOATS!: He doesn’t think racism will play a role in the election: “It -- look, there is racism in America. We all know that, because we can’t stop working against it. But I am totally convinced that 99 and 44/100 percent of the American people are going to make a decision on who is best to lead this country.” 99 and 44/100ths is of course how pure Ivory Soap advertises itself to be. Ivory, as in, well, white.

Took godless money

An Elizabeth Dole ad you’ve probably already seen:



Isn’t all money pretty much godless?

Or, alternatively, how can money be godless when money is in fact God?

Palin, a few days ago: “Friends, now is no time to experiment with socialism.” But you’ll tell us when it is a good time, right?

Caption contest

About time

Sarah Palin: “It’s about time we had a dude in the White House.”

John McCain makes a campaign promise: “No one will delay a World Series game with an infomercial when I’m president.”

Another “Proposition Hate” commercial, featuring adorable miniature musical homophobes (can anyone read what her shirt says?).

But did someone think to take a picture? No they did not.

Headline of the Day: “Man’s Arm Trapped in Train Toilet.” A mobile phone was, naturally, involved. “The man was carried away by emergency services, with the toilet still attached to his arm.”

Syria is claiming the American raiders also seized two men. They’re not best pleased.

Of rubber bands, cats and killing Syrians

Did I really just wash off a rubber band my cat dropped on the bathroom floor, rather than throw it out, because it’s her favorite rubber band?

Okay, who had “war with Syria” in the October Surprise office pool? Launching this splendid little war from Iraqi soil should make any status-of-forces agreement with Iraq impossible.

Anti-abortion propositions

Did a quick trawl for ads for anti-abortion ballot initiatives in California, South Dakota and Colorado, because that’s what my Saturday nights are like.

This ad for California’s Prop. 4, for parental notification for minors seeking abortions, is a dramatization based on actual facts!



The proponents of Measure 11 in South Dakota are pushing the claim that it would only ban abortions performed for the purposes of birth control. However they also claim that 99% of all abortions are performed for the purposes of birth control.

The initiators of Colorado’s Prop. 48, whose website’s banner



for some reason features the profile of Alfred Hitchcock,


have this ad, which I think you’ll agree proves with impeccable logic why “human life” must be defined as beginning at conception:




The rather anodyne ads opposing Prop. 48 all say, more in sorrow than in anger, that 48 “goes too far,” a phrase I find obnoxious because it suggests that there is some acceptable compromise with the anti-choicers.

What the stories of Albania and Croatia will be

Today Bush held a signing ceremony for the accords for Albania and Croatia to join NATO, saying, “May the stories of Albania and Croatia be a light to those who remain in the darkness of tyranny.” Yes, I’m sure people who remain in the darkness of tyranny comfort each other by whispering tales of Albania and Croatia.

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His Irrelevancy also went to the National Security Agency today. “We have been here at NSA, which is on the front line of protecting the American people.” If by “front line,” you mean a building in Maryland where they listen to your phone calls and read your emails.

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Thandie Newton is Sarah Palin, in the performance you didn’t know you were waiting for:



Thandie, it’s called eating, you might want to look into it.

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Finally, what’s the point of having a blog is you can’t run pictures of baby pandas whenever you feel like it?

I don’t know if you’re gonna use the word terrorist there

Daily Telegraph headline: “McCain Turns to Elderly in Drive for Votes.” Twenty miles under the speed limit, with the turn signal blinking the whole way.

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This week, McCain has repeatedly brought up his bit role in the Cuban Missile Crisis to show that he has been “tested”: “I had a little personal experience in that. I was a navy pilot on board the USS Enterprise. We were training to go into combat at any moment. I know how close to a nuclear war we came.” Is it my imagination, or is he trying to con us into thinking he was one of the guys who would have dropped the nukes?

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I read the People Magazine interview with Sarah and Todd Palin, so you don’t have to.

VULNERABLE: Todd: “When she’s working for me out there in my fishing boat, she’s pretty vulnerable. It’s my element.” Sarah: “He’s the boss out there on the boat while we commercial fish. Yeah. That’s a different story then.”

I ARE A INTULEKSHUAL: Sarah, do you think you’re an intellectual? “Yessss.” “You have to go with what the foundational knowledge is that you have on issues in front of you”.

WHAT INTELLECTUALS NAME THEIR CHILDREN: “I always wanted a son named Zamboni.”

BRISTOL AND LEVI WILL BE LEFT ON AN ICE FLOE: “they’re not going to be looking for anybody to hand them anything.”

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In the second part of the Palin-McCain NBC interview (video here), Palin said that William Ayers is a domestic terrorist “on his own admittance,” but abortion clinic bombers, “I don’t know if you’re gonna use the word terrorist there.” She did add that bombing abortion clinics was “unacceptable.” No, “unacceptable” is when Piper leaves her Louis Vuitton bag just lying around; blowing up clinics, that’s terrorism.

Brian Williams asked Palin to define “elite”: “just people who think that they’re better than anyone else.” So they’re not people who live in the anti-America parts of America. McCain disagreed, saying they live in New York City and D.C. Sarah wouldn’t know, he said, because she’s never been invited to a Georgetown cocktail party. McCain is oddly obsessed with Georgetown cocktail parties.

Are you a feminist, Governor Mooseburger? “I’m not gonna put a label on myself.”

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Speaking of designer labels, in an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Sarah says of the $150,000 in clothes and whatnot, “that is not who we are. ... Oh, if people only knew how frugal we are.” Well, no one’s accusing you of spending your own money. She says the clothes weren’t really worth that and were just a loan anyway – “that’s not even my property” (otherwise known as the Ted Stevens defense).

I see all these attacks on Governor Palin. I don’t live in a bubble.

Last night NBC aired part I of an interview with McCain and Palin.

Asked whether she’d release her medical records, Palin said people, who she called “curiosity seekers,” would be reassured “if” she released them.

They’re trying to make hay over Joe the Biden’s stupid comment about foreign countries creating a crisis to test Obama, although McCain was remarkably unprepared to respond to being confronted with Joe the Lieberman’s similar remark that “Our enemies will test the new president early.” McCain: “I -- look, I don’t know when Joe Lieberman said that. [WIIIAI: June] Joe Lieberman is supporting me.”

McCain did make a guarantee of his own: “And when I’m president, there’s not going to be an international crisis that he can -- that Senator Biden can guarantee.” Elect John McCain, nothing can go wrong can go wrong can go wrong.

Palin added that Biden’s was “the most telling comment that has been made yet on this campaign trail in all of these months.” She didn’t say what it told.

Addressing Colin Powell’s remarks about Palin being totally unqualified, McCain testily dismissed them as ill-informed, saying that Powell hadn’t even bothered to meet Palin and “obviously... does not know Gov. Palin’s record.” In fact, everyone who criticizes her “obviously are either not paying attention to, or don’t care about, the record of the most popular governor in the United States of America.”

McCain and Palin are showing increasing exasperation with anyone who dares to question them or otherwise show less than the deference they feel due them. People who want medical records are “curiosity-seekers,” people who think Palin unqualified are “obviously” ignorant. The Chimperial Presidency lives.

Tom Toles: