Katie, I'd like to use one of my lifelines!

Update: I just couldn't stop myself from adding the link (scroll down) to her BFF from North Carolina, Miss North Carolina. Insight into Palin as runner up for Miss Alaska?


FEY AS PALIN: "I want to phone a friend!"

Oh, what do I do? Update the post of the interview, or just make a new one giving this the very, very special place it deserves?

Can I phone a friend?

Comedy is so much better and smarter than reality, and it just doesn't get better than this, or Palin just doesn't get better than when Fey does her. Remember when everyone was worried the election was about to get unfunny because Obama just isn't comedy material?

Want Obama in a Punch Line? First, Find a Joke
That was back on July 15, before anyone but McCain's camp and GOP visionaries knew who Sarah Palin is.

Well, saved by Sarah! Or Tina. Or, Tina as Sarah.

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin, SNL
September 27

On Alaska's relationship to Russia:

FEY AS PALIN: "Every morning, when Alaskans wake up, one of the first things they do is look outside to see if there's any Russians hanging around, if there are y'gotta' go up to them and ask, 'What are y' doin' here?' and if they can't give y'a good reason then, if they can't then it's our responsiblity to say, y'know, 'Shoo! Get back over there.'"

And on the Wall Street bank bail-out:

FEY AS PALIN: "Like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this. We're saying, 'Hey, why bail out Fanny and Freddie and not me?' But ultimately what the bailout does is, help those that are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy to help...uh...it's gotta be all about job creation, too. Also, too, shoring up our economy and putting Fannie and Freddy back on the right track and so healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reigning in spending...'cause Barack Obama, y'know...has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans, also, having a dollar value meal at restaurants. That's gonna help. But one in five jobs being created today under the umbrella of job creation. That, you know...Also..."

I think I gave the same answer at my interview for Yale with the alumna who seemed to think I was better prepared to be governor of Alaska than attend her alma mater. Thank God Barnard didn't ask.

Wait, how did George get past those interviewers? Oh! Right, his legacy.

And on all those foreigners working at the UN in NYC:

FEY AS PALIN: "And when John McCain and I are elected, we're going to get those jobs back in American hands!"

Pewm! Pewm! Pewm!

....

What Palin might have been like as Miss Alaska

Or is.

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Caviar gauche, or pâté de campagne droite

OK, I'm not beaming about Maureen Dowd's latest sniper shot at Barry in her take on the first debate in her latest target practice, "Sound, but no Fury" -- does she or doesn't she? (support him) -- or, she leaves me feeling like a love-sick campaigner. A little embarrassed for my enthusiasm.

(How does she maintain her razor-sharp edge and infatuation-free distance from him?)

DOWD AS DOWD: "It was quite a memorable moment in history for the M.B.A. president and the nominee of the party of business. Who would have dreamed that when socialism finally came to the U.S.A. it would be brought not by Bolsheviks in blue jeans but Wall Street bankers in Gucci loafers?"

What a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a jewel of a moment to happen to be in Paris, at dinner with friends in their rez-de-chaussée appartment in the 16ème avec notre ami de la gauche en cashmere. On this occasion, we joined forces in idealism, rising to respond to a retired French insurer-banker director for a French bank (I feel compelled to leave the best details out), who admits to feeling a tingling in his soul for US Republicans, Wall Street bankers and the making of money, who argued that if Sarah Palin had made it to this level, "Elle doit avoir quelque chose." [trans: She must have something.] They wouldn't just give the VP job to anyone.

Ah! The sweet naïveté of the priviledged! Always ready to see the best in one's fellow over-priviledged comrades (Whoops! Did I say that?), I mean fellow priviledged men and women.

Oh, but they would, if it suited their purposes. He looked unconvinced. In the mind of Europe's most elderly, most conservative, the Republicans just wouldn't stoop so low, drop so far, he assured me.

Oh, but they would. You musn't, I told him, make the mistake of thinking that today's Republicans in any way bear a resemblance to the ones you knew in your youth.

It's really very endearing, in a sort of terribly out-dated way. I think the elderly should have their voting cards taken away at, say, retirement. They're just way too out of step with where society is going. Leave it to those who will actually have to live with the consequences of their and their leaders' decisions, if they survive them.

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"I'd like to pay for everyone's dry cleaning tonight," Barack told stalwart listeners in Virginia. "But I can't, because we need the money for the campaign. Consider it a modest contribution."

The slideshow

See the Huffington Post piece Despite Rain, 26,000 Virginians Show Up For Obama-Biden Rally for video coverage, including local Fox affiliate, of the Virginia (battleground, swing state), turning a lovely shade of purple-blue.

Way to go Virginia!

Pewm! Pewm! Pewm!

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When you hear the dogs barking

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
Democratic National Convention 2008, Tuesday, August 26th

Part 1 of 3

Part 2 of 3

Part 3 of 3

And here, in the last third of her address, Hillary is at the top of her formidable talent -- she was brilliant.

If Bill Clinton ever fell out of love with his wife and hadn't fallen back into it with her again before last evening, he sure looks as though he did then. He'd have made a wonderful First Gentleman, after all, I think.

Anyone read MoDo today?

I did. Twice. I am getting ready to read it a third time. I guess it's good journalism because no one really gets off free, except Michelle and the kids. By the way, her dress wasn't green. It was (well, appeared to be) turquoise, exactly the same color as the DNC graphic behind her and on the placard on the podium, and while we're at it, orange is the *complementary color of blue.
* "Complementary colors are useful when you want to make something stand out." http://colortheory.liquisoft.com/

Yes, Hillary stands out. Intensity. She has it.

Focus. She never loses it.

Determination. She's defined by it.

Intelligence. It's hers in spades and to spare.

Watching her and listening to her, I would have voted for her without a regret, and with pride, had she won the primary, and were she to have been the nominee. I even felt some that I will not be able to.

MoDo, I think felt it, too, as much as she was never for Hillary Clinton. She also never came out in direct support of Barack Obama, like some of her colleagues who also earn their living typing columns of opinion editorial for the New York Times.

The PUMA's. Go look them up. Néo-cons (I can't take credit for this beautiful alignment in French and English, someone I admire came up with it) in Hillary-supporter clothing, able to convince some among her own that they really are some of hers, and not the reprehensible agents of the right wingnut agenda.

Worst of all, those among her most recalcitrant supporters who have been tricked -- and if I am wrong about this, it would be one of my greatest disappointments -- do her and the Democratic Party, -- which, if you want to place it at the top of one column and the Republican Party at the top of another, while coming perilously close to looking nearly as ridiculous on occasion, has at least the merit of actually trying to work for the people of the Unites States of America, and not thoroughly manipulating them into believing that serving the interests of corporate America, and its representatives in the legislative and executive, is somehow working for their best interests -- , the disservice of perpetuating ugliness in American politics.

I know that Hillary Clinton's supporters are not characterized by this extreme, and that they far outnumber it. I also know, as Patrick Healy writes in his article in today's New York Times, that it is Hillary herself who holds more sway with them than Barack Obama, that it is she who can bring the Obama/Biden ticket their votes, not Barack Obama himself. I also believe that most of her supporters, as angry and as disappointed as they have the right to feel, are above all committed to the causes and the values of the Democratic Party, and could not bear to see what 4 more years of Republican control of the White House, as that party stands, would do to Americans and our country. Her, their and our best chance will be with all of us shouldering together to do the nation's business as we believe it should be done, and according to the will of the majority of the people.

The PUMA's are an indication of the measure of the desperation among the neo-con leadership of today's Republican party, and the presence of Republicans in the listservs of the Barack Obama campaign, who say they are there because they "feel that the Republican Party National Leadership has betrayed Republican principles and have gone so dirty" acts as its yardstick. These Republican Obama supporters say that "most Republicans don't agree with [the Republican Party national leadership], even if a lot of Republicans who don't agree with them vote Republican out of habit and fear".

Fear of what, we ask. "Fear of change," comes the reply from Republican Obama supporter Chuck Lasker. "Change," he writes, "as in change from voting Republican," and continues:

"In general, Republicans will choose the devil we know versus the devil we don't know. That's why Republicans keep electing older candidates. Change like new social programs that cost too much and create more dependent citizens. Change like letting our moral base slide (something Republican candidates are good at making it sound like Democrats want). Change to something unknown. Honestly, Republicans have been so programmed to see the Democratic Party as evil, the party of free-spending, homosexual, free-sex, drug using socialists having abortions every week and cursing God while burning the flag, that it's hard to break past that. In a Republican view, voting for Obama is a massive risk that he will be just like all the other Democrats of the past.

As a Republican for Obama, I even feel strange when I go to the Obama campaign headquarters here in Indiana and see all the Democratic Party stuff, when someone in the office talks about "turning Indiana blue," when I see Ted Kennedy speak for my candidate, when I start liking Hillary Clinton (somewhat), etc. etc. It's like leaving a cult after 27 years - very hard to do.

I know that I'm on a path that will lead to my being either an Independent, or even a Democrat, eventually, like Susan Eisenhower just did, but it takes time!!!"

Chuck contributes to The Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chuck-lasker) and participates in several mybarackobama.com listservs.

Fear makes the manipulation easier. Change begins in individuals who can't afford any more to fear -- we're past that, way past it -- and, those individuals coalesce together to make a movement for change. In this case, a change for progress, social, economic, diplomatic and legislative progress. It takes a critical mass to effect change outside of the individual, and that critical mass in a two-party society can only -- and Barack Obama knows this -- be reached by joining enough of the two camps, with their previously opposing views, to overcome the extreme elements who would prevent that.

But, this is the time.

Make no mistake that the single greatest contribution to the Obama campaign beyond his ideas and his ability to given them voice (enough on his limpidity, Mo, puh-lease) was the forum his campaign gave people who support him to come together, to exchange and argue and insult one another, and, finally let the strongest voices -- like Chuck's, among others -- tell us what is happening inside our own ranks, and let civility in political discourse demand its due because Republican, or Democrat, or Independent, sophisticated human life-forms possessing normal to above normal intelligence understand that our government has insulted it, the situation for our country is critical, and that we can't survive 4 years more years of under-preparedness and greed in and cynical abuse of our citizens, our soldiers and our institutions and our Constitution by the White House.

“Whether you voted for me, or voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose,” Mrs. Clinton said, beaming as the convention hall burst into applause. “And you haven’t worked so hard over the last 18 months, or endured the last eight years, to suffer through more failed leadership.”
-- "Clinton Delivers Emphatic Plea for Unity", by Patrick Healy, August 27 New York Times.

No way, no how, no McCain.

Let's hope this signals a change of colors among the Republican leadership who still care about the fundamentals of their party the way the Democrats have not failed to continue to defend and to promote their own so that people who differ in opinion respectfully can find an opposition of integrity, with a willingness to work together with respect.

....

On that note, I'm taking my sorry behind out for a run. I saw those pictures my loving brother posted of me. I also remember the ones of me from nearly three years ago that spurred my last call to action. Sigh. If I don't ever actually look better -- which, by the way, Hillary Clinton is -- at least I feel better.

PS: Snooker's back!
....