On Saturday, Sarah Palin will be appearing before 8,000 rabid supporters at the Home Depot Center Tennis Stadium in Carson, California. A member of our community suggested that the best way for the Courage Campaign to "welcome" her would be to rent an airplane and fly a large banner over the event.

And that's exactly what we're going to do. With the national spotlight shining on Sarah Palin right now, we want YOU to send her a message she will never forget. [...] The big question: What should the banner message say, in 50 characters or less?

Hm. I have a suggestion.

SARAH CAN SEE US-DOES THAT MEAN SHE'S A PILOT TOO?

Fifty characters. Exactly.

Republicans today voted 2-to-1 against a 700 BILLION spending bill to bail out the American economy. Who do they hold responsible for failing to pass the measure? The Democrats who voted 2-to-1 FOR the failure measure, of course!

Their logic? Nancy Pelosi gave a speech they didn't like.

I'm not kidding.

Clearly they didn't have the votes to begin so hey, why not take another trip to the distraction well that has served them so generously for the last decade?

I've got a really simple question for the thin-skinned GOPers who claim Pelosi's speech tainted their vote; Were you going to vote yes before the speech?

If not then it's a lie and they now all stand guilty of doing precisely what they're accusing the Speaker of the House of doing.

If so, and they truly believed that this spending bill was the correct and necessary thing to do, they're really willing to let the economy go tits-up because their feelings got hurt?

Liars or wimps. Take your pick.

Dig it.



Life in Troy is good. Working some part-time retail, some web design work (for a company I worked for eleven years ago and, oddly enough, purchased by a company I worked for five years ago), some photography. Mostly keeping busy, mostly.

Every bloody bodega sells scales here. I think that's a hoot.

Perestroika can kiss my shiny, white ass.

"You know it's been five days."
"Five days?"
"Five."
[holds up fingers] "Five?"
[grabbing my fingers, clearing throat] "This little piggy went to market. This little piggy stayed home. This little piggy had roast beef, er, roast tofu..."
"Roast beef!"
"Roast tofu. This little piggy had none. And this little piggy went weeee wee wee wee wee wee five fucking days."

Holy fuzzing shizzle. Starts great, ends twice as good. Ow.

That's an embryonic stem cell.

Think about it.

Obama says families of politicians are off-limits and doubly so for their children. Clearly the conservatives have different plans.

Notes CNN:

...Sarah Palin's announcement Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant -- and she supports her daughter -- shows that the Alaska governor is steadfast in her support of family values, GOP loyalists and anti-abortion groups say.

So the wingnuts are not only using the daughter's decision as a political marker but lauding Palin for a decision she didn't actually make.

Well ...OK, we all know that the conversation didn't involve the phrase "whatever you decide, we support you."

Which makes me wonder how the wingnuts would respond if Bristol opted for an abortion and Mrs. Palin stood beside her?

Is abandoning your daughter a family value too?

The last 24 hours have been the political equivalent of crack cocaine.

First, Daily Kos murmured that Palin's fifth child, Trig (who has Down's Syndrome), wasn't actually hers. This evidenced by the fact that Palin, despite having been pretty goddamn round during previous pregnancies, was imperceptibly pregnant this time around. She didn't announce the pregnancy until her seventh month and even her staff was baffled.

Meanwhile Palin's daughter, Bristol, was sporting what appeared to be a baby bump while taking five months off school for "mono." Hm.

Finally, the official narrative was that Gov. Palin's water broke before she was due to give a keynote speech to an energy summit of governors in Dallas. Not only did she give the keynote speech anyway, she subsequently hopped on an 11-hour flight back to Alaska for no other reason than to insure the child was born in the state in which she holds office.

"You can't have a fish picker from Texas," said her husband. Very nice.

Turns out Palin really is the mom. How do we know this? Because her daughter, now seventeen, is five months pregnant (and therefore could not be the mother of a baby that was born in April).

Was it reasonable to wonder aloud if Palin was actually Trig's mother? I think so. Was it responsible for Kos to declare Palin's assertion of maternity "lies" without something more substantial? No.

Having said that, what can we make of Palin's decision to put off her delivery of a baby known to have Down's Syndrome for 22 hours so she could deliver a keynote speech and, by her own admission, not have the child born in Texas?

Seems a bit reckless, don't you think? Maybe like her priorities are just a little out of whack?

And while I'll grant that Bristol's actions are not her mother's, this is where the story makes me warm and slightly giddy. The wingnuts have been the ones caterwauling "it's a private family matter!" Leaving aside their rather selective application of this standard, guess which demographic this is likely to have lasting resonance with?

Yep. The fundamentalists who wonder how an abstinence-only supporter could wind up as a shotgun wedding doyenne.