From the top floor of the Alton Weekly Inquirer Action EyeWitness NewsCenter On Your Side, in the true-blue state of Illinois....
Our Top Story Today: The Sarah Palin Express has left the station!
We, of course, watched the debate last night at the AWIAEWNCOYS with a mixture of bemusement and alarm, along with much cringing. How anyone could think this woman is fit to be Vice President--Sarah herself most of all--is beyond our understanding. As opposed to Palin's spackled-on folksiness, Joe Biden had an easy command of the issues that SP could not match. More importantly, he showed strong grace and presence that was, in his own way, as powerful as Obama's was in the first presidential debate. We're all proud of Joe Biden here! Let's go to press!
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Sarah Palin: Pure. Comedy. Gold.
Those trendlines kept dropping for Moose-alini all night; I don't think she won any friends at all. Well gosh darn it, our plucky heroine just couldn't pull this moose out of the creek! (Thanks to the great Al Rodgers for the screencap!)
I think their next gig should be the Levi Johnston-Bristol Palin wedding:
[I]f anything was enough to put you off having sex it would be this Disney-esque image of a male and female condom holding hands down the road.
Maybe Moose-alini should have booked them to work Wasilla say, 4-5 months ago. (via Dave Barry) (BTW, how in the hell is this shotgun nuptial blessed event supposed to help John McCain, assuming they do this before the election?)
Even just the thought of this is cringe-worthy: Wonkette, the onetime font of primo dirt on Katherine Harris, has kept the tradition going with Moose-alini:
Some mysterious ladies in Wasilla sent us a Creepy Rumor a few weeks ago about Sarah Palin’s infamous lipstick, which is not lipstick on a pig (which is sexist), but lipstick used to distinguish a "hockey mom" from a murderous trailer-park dog who eats children. The rumor: It’s not even lipstick on Palin’s smug, dumb face. It’s a white-trash tattoo that is tattooed on the mouth, yuck.
Hey, I used to tattoo pigs when I was on my field service rotation in veterinary school. Does that make me sexist?
Leave Sarah aloooooone! er....Fox News??? Roger Hollander on his blog highlights the positively subversive work of Fox News producer Shushannah Walsh who, against type, is actually reporting damaging facts about our erstwhile future Vice President. According to Hollander, Walshe hid her intentions well:
In early September, on camera with Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren, Walshe acted excited about Palin and her own good fortune in being assigned to travel with the campaign. She may have seemed ecstatic, fairly jumping out of her chair as she talked about the inside access she would have as an embed. But that pretense was undoubtedly part of the scam.
Hollander then goes on to list the legitimately damaging information Walsh uncovered on our Moose-alini, and reported on Fox News. He ends by stating that Michael Goldfarb, the former Weekly Standard writer and McCain campaign flunky, needs to look into Fox News, after he finishes scrutinizing the NYT and HuffPo for damaging anti-McCain-Palin information. Heh.
Page Six!
It's not every week I can combine our two Page Six featured people into one photo, but this is that week:
On the left is Jennifer Love Hewitt, best known these days for the television series The Ghost Whisperer, but also became famous for her roles in Party of Five and the motion picture I Know What You Did Last Summer. On the right is her husband, Scottish actor Ross McCall, who has also appeared in The Ghost Whisperer but is best known for playing CPL Joseph Liebgott in the HBO series Band of Brothers.
Speaking as a raging heterosexual man, I have to wonder if JLH's most-used phrase is, "I'm up here"? I'd certainly have trouble with that if I was her date. Heh.
Seen Sarah Silverman's video for The Great Schlep? Here's why The Big Schlep is on: Adam Smith of the St. Petersburg Times reported on a national poll of 917 Jewish voters has McCain getting 30% of their vote this cycle (Shrub got 24% in 2004). In Florida, there are about 400,000 Jewish voters, so increasing margins for Obama with that constituency from the current 57% is critical to him winning the state. Go to The Great Schlep.com to see Sarah's hilarious (with NSFW language, BTW) video promoting this canvassing initiative. (Oy, messhuginahs! Sarah's video made me verkelmpt!) (via Florida Politics)
Alton, and the rest of IL-12, have themselves a Congresscritter! Jerry Costello, a Democrat from Belleville, explains his "no" vote to the original bailout compromise on Sept. 29th:
"I have not been convinced that it is imperative we act right now, or that this proposal will solve the problem as indicated. In fact, numerous economists insist that the Paulson approach will not work. And I resent being told by the investment bankers in the Bush administration and on Wall Street -- the very people that have railed against government oversight in the financial industry for years -- that the taxpayers must come to their rescue."
Nice job, Jerry. My last Congresscritter was Katherine Harris, so I have definitely moved up from her! (Meantime Michelle Bachman's constituents probably have their faces buried in their hands after this floor speech, as shown on Countdown with Keith Olbermann last Tuesday.)
A hard-hitting Congressional ad--with a tip of the hat to LBJ:
Yes, Aaron Schock really did propose selling nukes to Taiwan; I covered much of the Boy Genius's positively Palinesque (who know he was prescient?) foreign policy utterances some months ago when he first announced he was running for the IL-18 seat. Good to see our candidate, Colleen Callahan, is not shy about hitting back at Schock's naivete.
Attention Pee-Wee League football players--this is what helmet-to-helmet hits can do to you: Blast Off! reports on an in-stadium featurette at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers-Green Bay Packers game last Sunday:
One of my heretofore favorite Bucs, LB Barrett Ruud (right), has let me down by showing his true colors.
In a regular in-stadium feature, "Ask the Bucs," the question today was "Who is your celebrity crush?"
And Barrett -- dear Barrett -- answered, "Sarah Palin."
(sigh)Oh well, he's still playing good defense for my favorite NFC team. (My second-favorite NFC team is any other team playing the Dallas Cowboys.)
This week's Floyd R. Turbo Award: Would you believe that Barack Obama is.....
Worse than Dukakis
For the purpose of this letter, let's say maybe Barack Obama meant no slander toward Sarah Palin. But for a candidate for president to use the lipstick on a pig metaphor in the fashion he did so soon after she did and not know it would be seen as name-calling has to be the dumbest candidate for president since Michael Dukakis. From the reaction of his crowd, he should have known how they took his comments and disavowed things then. But he didn't.
Thomas R. Hall
Swansea
What in the hell is this guy talking about, and why is this faux outrage still out there? I guess "moving on" isn't in Mr. Hall's lexicon. Plus if Obama was "worse than Dukakis" shouldn't we be 20 points down in the polls by now?
Your Moment of Pootie Goodness:
Here is Mocha looking demanding, which he does often. He is usually a demanding kitty (either to watch him eat or to scratch his tushy) but on Wednesday morning he was acting postively strange--pawing at our magazine pile and meowing--so I took him to work to run some bloodwork on him to make sure nothing was going on. Unfortunately, something IS going on. Mocha has early-stage renal insufficiency, which helps explain why he has not been putting on weight, and is more nauseous than the usual kitty. We'll take good care of him, but it is worrisome, even for a veterinary professional like me. Mocha's only 8 years old, so it seems too soon for this to be happening.
What's the News in your world this week?