Dear Senator McCain:

Even Saturday Night Live has clicked to the fact that the economic crisis is entirely the Democrats' fault, and that taxpayers have just coughed up $700 billion to cover the crap-outs of non-taxpaying parasites and credit-card addicts.

Watch this video of last Saturday's Bailout spoof sketch, here:




......Oh wait. I watched it at 4:00 this afternoon, but it's now 7:30 and SNL has pulled it.



Guess their friends in the Obamarama camp found it an "inconvenient truth" and it has gone POOF! down the memory hole. Too bad. It was quite illustrative and on point. Obama-Ayres, Obama-Wright, Obama-ACORN, Obama-infanticide, Obama-Daley, Obama-Rezko, Obama-Rashid Khalidi & the PLO, heck even Obama-Michelle! all, POOF! down the memory hole, in pursuit of the coronation of the Almighty O.

You have 30 days to figure this out America.

You have about 30 minutes to figure this out, Senator McCain.

HOUSE PASSES GIANT PIG-TROUGH




...And the President just thanked Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank for their help in reaching consensus.





I AM gonna hurl.

Updated!

SAY IT AIN'T SO, JOE

THERE YOU GO AGAIN!


Breathe.

She did fine. She did better than fine. Even Peggy Noonan said, "She killed."

Ball's in your court, Johnny Mac. Stand up and fight!

Heh.


DEVELOPMENTS IN OBAMAWORLD - I

Gateway Pundit [check out their fantastic post-debate rally coverage -- WOOOH!] reveals that the "Asian Americans for Obama" page on the Obama website advertises "Get out the vote" days taking place, illegally, at a list of mosques around the country during the Eid festival, which concludes this week.


Let's see now... checklist: In America it's now okay to break tax laws at

(1) black churches
(2) mosques
(3) Catholic churches

As they say on Sesame Street, "One of these things does not belong."


DEVELOPMENTS IN OBAMAWORLD - II

WATCH MY HEAD EXPLODE

Yes, my friends, there is a website called "Pro-Life, Pro-Obama" devised by no less than (as I referred to Andrew Sullivan once) formerly conservative now alien life form Douglas Kmiec.


Here's Kmiec's startling bio from the website:

Douglas W. Kmiec holds the endowed chair in Constitutional Law at Pepperdine University. Prior to that, he was dean and St. Thomas More Professor of Law at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He also served as Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He is author of the new book, Can A Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Question About Barack Obama.

Among Kmiec's musings on his Cirque de Soleil-like moral contortions is this:

I believe we are all called to build a culture of life - but there's more to it than just hoping that the next Supreme Court justice somehow deals with Roe v. Wade. A bad economy is threatening to human life......

Oy-vay Maria.

Adding his voice to this perverse mix is much-conflicted author Frank Schaeffer. One of his commenters, Bill Bannon, puts his bizarre position into perspective.

So…let’s draw a conclusion for future elections past this one… with another form of pain other than abortion…… if a candidate looks good physically and believes firmly in the legalization of water boarding but is a good speaker and a good writer, he will inspire us so much with hopefulness that we will not want water boarding while he fights to keep water boarding legal. So we should elect him while opposing water boarding ourselves because his charism of hopefulness will make us reject waterboarding while he fights to keep it legal. I think I got it now.

Ouch. Cool, Bill.


SAINTS PRAYED TO (AND NEEDING TO BE THANKED) FOR SUCCESS IN THE VEEP DEBATE:










































St. John Chrysostom [of the Golden Mouth], Our Lady of Guadalupe [Patroness of the Americas], Blessed Marie de l'Incarnation [Pioneer Patroness of Women's Education], Ste. Jeanne d'Arc [Medieval Commander and honorary moose hunter], Ste. Anne de Beaupre [Patroness of Mothers], St. Joseph the Worker [Patron of the United States], and, of course,





Sarah,

who laughed.

ASK ALL THE QUESTIONS YOU WANT TONIGHT,
MS. IFILL --

THESE ARE THE ONLY ONES THAT MATTER TODAY

At the turn of the year 2005 to 2006, I ushered in the New Year with this bit o' wisdom from a fella called Sgt. Grit:

Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your HONOR.

I then offered a retrospective in which I dubbed 2005:

"THE YEAR OF THE LIE"

Well, hard as it may be to believe, 2008 may surpass its predecessor for the title of:

"YEAR OF THE BIGGEST BATCH OF LIES EVER"

One is always ready to say that the outrage of any particular day is "unprecedented", but there is no fitter word for what we have seen this past year on the part of the news media, upon whom the average Joe has long depended for a picture of the world as it is. The traditional media -- newspapers, the "big three" of network television with a few of their spin-off brethren, the major news magazines -- have never in the history of American politics been so transparently activist for one candidate over another. Barack Obama is their long-awaited perfect candidate, and they will stop at nothing to put him in office.

And he is, in so many frightening ways, the perfect candidate for the present day: physically attractive, photogenic, smooth-talking (with notes), overflowing with vapid verbal fuzzies and pledges so comforting and lofty that their staggering hubris is lost in the mist. Obama is the perfect candidate for an age when a huge proportion of the voting public is either over-"educated" with fallacies and conspiracy theories, and seething with irrational anger over non-existent injustices (like a "stolen" election or "inside job" terrorism) -- or brain-dead from celebrity worship, with an addiction to fake reality TV and mainstreamed soft-porn serials. Both segments of society are fatally vulnerable to hysteria over a well-packaged candidate whose persona is fundamentally an illusion.

This illusion was founded in the "post-racial, post-partisan" mythology of a candidate who has spent his short but calculated political career caressed in the ample bosom of race-baiting agitation and socialist activism, fused (oddly) to an old-fashioned jack-booted money-grubbing Chicago political machine. The few genuine touchstones of his life about whom we know -- father, mother, spiritual and political mentors -- have been papered over by the same media that celebrates the idea, but suppresses the contents, of Obama's two ridiculously premature autobiographies. (Including those parts now shown to be falsified.) The vast unknowns are being dug out of the crevices by various hard-scrabbling journalists, but will remain untouched by the incurious mainstream.

Hard to imagine that the biggest mountain of B.S. yet to appear would make its debut just a month before the election, but so it has. There has been no bigger lie than the attempt by Obama and his party to hang the economic implosion on the Republicans, when the truth is 180 degrees opposite, and the fault is at least 98% the Democrats'. And the indisputable evidence is everywhere -- except on NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, PBS, MSNBC, and the various self-appointed papers of record.

So 2008 seems poised to be the YEAR OF THE WHOPPIN' BIG LIE, WITH CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY.

As I said more than two years ago, the ORCS are winning.

Back when the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy came out, and there was some controversy over the various actors’ reflections on whether or not it was appropriate to draw parallels between the fictitious battles for Middle Earth and the all-too-real battles against Al Qaeda and its sponsors, my sense was that the left-leaning types who rejected the parallels probably assumed that we pro-war crazies saw in those waves of Orcs, sweeping down upon the cornered Good Guys, the faces of Islamist “militants.” Not, in my view, a wholly unjustified interpretation of those scenes.

However, at the time I expressed a somewhat different take on those brilliantly executed scenes of descending hoards, especially the terrifying attack at Helm’s Deep in film II (The Two Towers). What I saw in the deformed bodies and ghoulish monster faces of the Orcs was the physical embodiment of The Lie, and the overwhelming power of an accumulation of Lie upon Lie upon Lie. This was evil incarnate. This was the vision of why Satan is called The Father of Lies.

Here's just a little sampling of this year's most flagrant use of lies, damned lies, and statistics:

Obama collects illegal campaign contributions in the millions.

Obama's friends, supporters, spiritual mentors, and political resume, and his destructive effect on the community he claimed to be helping -- all completely uninteresting to the mainstream press -- form a saga of radical left activism that should make America shudder.

NBC and the New York Times try to trivialize or cast doubt on McCain's history of torture in Vietnam.

Obama thug squads are trying to suppress criticism of his campaign, much in the vein that he has always been most successful not by winning elections so much as choreographing them, by shoving his opponents off a cliff.

And then, of course, the all-out blitzkrieg against Sarah Palin: Top 7 here , more here.




The Orc is the lie. It is swarming over the hillsides and bearing down upon the hapless Middle Earthlings.

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit contributes this:

A READER AT A MAJOR NEWSROOM EMAILS:
"Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into Obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working."

The fix for Obama is in, and it's wORCing.

UN-FREAKIN'-BELIEVABLE

Vice-Presidential Debate "moderator" GWEN IFILL will release her new book The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009. (Notice that there's no cover image on the ad -- she's waiting for the Obama victory photo.)

Ifill has barely concealed her bias over time. But this is too much. Listen to her gush here.

McCain campaign claims not to have known until today.

Shake these people up -- if there's any hope for democracy in America, call or write the McCain people and INSIST that they INSIST that Ifill step down.

http://www.johnmccain.com/Contact/

(703) 418-2008

Lord Save Us.

OBAMA COURTS THE GRADE-SCHOOL KIDS' VOTE

What do you mean, they can't vote? ACORN will fix that.


They'll start with this spontaneous, original, Columbus-Day-type kid-generated pageant, with all its simple, childlike appeal (provided by the CEO of NBC, Jeff Zucker, and a complete professional Hollywood film crew...)




Oddly reminiscent of....



Massive HAT-TIP and thanks to Small Dead Animals

Updated: Even the lefty British Guardian finds the singing Obamabits CREEPY.


This a.m. on Dennis Miller:

"Happy Birthday to former President Jimmy Carter, who turns 84 today, NOW SHUT UP!"

HOW THE CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS DECEIVED AND DEFRAUDED THEIR WAY TO "COUNTRYWIDE" ECONOMIC RUIN

Classics Illustrated version

Coda: Bill Clinton distances himself from himself

BILL CLINTON ENDORSES BARACK OBAMA

SORTA.

NOW WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THIS

Want to keep an eye on your kid in Iraq? Join his unit!


48-year-old retired Marine Jane Strand quit the corps, had six kids, waited for her Marine husband to retire, and then joined the North Carolina National Guard. So did her youngest son, Timothy. Now they're both about to deploy. OOH-RAH.

Drudge brings us the story.



TRYING TO FOLLOW THE CREDIT MESS/ELECTION FROM

Québèc City

Hard to collect too many thoughts when left with mere CNN on the hotel TV, and an hotel internet that moves a little slowly.

Having to remind myself that when Sarah Palin's interview performances are pronounced a failure, this is being done by the same people who think she's sub-human because she didn't go to Princeton. (Loved her answer to Katie Perky about not having had the leisure to back-pack around Europe.)

Is there important stuff she doesn't know? Sure. Can she learn it quickly? Absolutely. She's smart and master of all she surveys -- up until now she's been surveying Alaska. Now she'll move on and survey the wider world, with a big staff of people to do the digesting, and her Bullshit-Meter in full working order.

She'll be fine. Cool it, McCain campaign. Chill. Don't overwhelm her with coaching -- she's starting to come off a bit too self-conscious and trying too hard, just as Bush did (fatally) when made to feel inadequate by his handlers.


Been thinking of Ms. Palin and her position a lot while touring around the city here. One of the most powerful forces to settle here in the 17th century was the order of Ursuline Sisters of Tours, who came to this remote and primitive outpost to establish education for women -- both the local native girls (their primary mission) and the daughters of the European settlers. They proved more successful than did the Jesuits with the native boys.

Nearly four centuries later, in a profoundly secularized
(downright irreligious) Québèc, the Ursulines persevere in their vocation to young women, operating an elementary school with 500 students, located on their original grounds -- to say nothing of the vast apostolate which spread across North America from the arrival of a few intrepid French women on the muddy shores of 17th-century Québèc.

[Dare we propose that, um, they don't make Frenchies like they used to?....]


Monument to education of women, in front of Ursuline Chapel, Québèc City.

ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT Updated

A too-typically lame sketch from Saturday Night Live about allegedly dishonest McCain ads. Nothing to lie awake nights about -- but one does long for some equal-opportunity shot-taking at his messianically mockable rival.

The sketch is too weak to warrant much tooth-grinding amongst Republicans, except for the fact that it was apparently the "inspiration" of former SNL writer/performer, and current Minnesota Democratic Senate candidate Al "Stuart Smalley" Franken, a man known both for his limitations and his mean-spiritedness even before he left the show for the second time in 1995.



And another SNL effort, which is taking mucho heat on the grounds that it was aimed, yet again, at Sarah Palin and her family.

Sorry -- I'm in the camp that says it was instead a total burn on the New York Times and its insulated, snobby, deeply ignorant readership. Like much modern satire, it's so close to the truth it's almost not funny.

The controversial "incest" element was, however, unnecessary and should not have passed network self-censorship. that having been said, it did accurately reflect exactly the kind mindless bigoted filter through which the urban chattering classes see the heartland people about whom they understand absolutely nothing. Pulled by NBC -- an attack of decency? Who Knew!

IN OTHER ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

The lowest-rated Emmy award broadcast in history was the occasion of celebrity idiocy on a grand scale. I only watched it while channel-hopping, so I wasn't aware of the full depths of horror purveyed by the five-person reality-tv hosting team, but I gather they SUCKED hugely.

What I did see was Laura Linney -- a beautiful woman wearing one of the ugliest and most ill-fitting dresses I've ever seen an award-winner in who was dressing to be taken fashion-seriously [meow]-- accepting her award for the privilege of playing the towering Abigail Adams. In so doing, she delivered her well-rehearsed innocuous-sounding lead-in to the deranged punch-line that the Founding Fathers of the United States were "community organizers."

P-U-U-H-H-L-E-E-E-Z-E.

As someone famous (me) once said, Try this on, Laura: the Founding Fathers "organized" their "community" under one condition certainly NOT shared by metrosexual Harvard boys lately from Chicago: the threat of being captured during the revolution they fomented, and being HUNG for treason. Every one of them risked their lives, whether or not they were ever in an army or militia.

Then we had the spectacle of brain-fried old hippie Tommy Smothers further tarnishing our happy memories of his once-comic persona by babbling anti-war gibberish with spasmodic howls of victimology, as he accepted a fantasy award allegedly delayed by forty years or so, from back when the Brothers' show was cancelled because they skated too near the edges of blasphemy (courtesy of David Steinberg) as much as political tub-thumping.

Oh, Tommy, boo-hoo.
Why didn't you find something else to do?

CANADIAN POLITICAL MIND-BOGGLE

Just saw shreikin' Sheila Copps on Steve Paikin's Agenda, defending the Sarah Palin choice and speaking quite calmly and sensibly, about sexism in electoral politics and about the prospect of La Palin being elected. Carumba. I believe pigs may fly.


THIS TOO

Former British PM Tony Blair put his swell suit in the chair at Jon Stewart's Daily Show tonight. I couldn't watch more than about 30 seconds. I'm sorry. There are some things for which Stewart's excessive glibitude is just too lightweight -- stupid questions about how he (Tony) and Bush decided to go to war. Blair replied that this was a serious decision, not made lightly.

People are dead -- history has been changed forever. Get with it, Stewart. Not the time to sacrifice all other considerations to your need to be cute and clever.

BEEN THINKIN' ABOUT THIS INCREDIBLY

STUPID MEME

now floating about the lefty discourse, from the pursed lips of Congressmen, Actors, TV Talking Headcases, and Moonbat Disciples of Hopey-Changitude everywhere:

Jesus was a community organizer/
Pontius Pilate was a governor.

[For "Jesus" read Barack Obamessiah/
For "governor" read Sarah Barracuda]


So I'm thinkin'.....

Jesus worked to improve living conditions and civil rights for Jews in the occupied Holy Land, which is why the Romans granted them all citizenship and permitted them to form an elected government with laws based on the Torah. And then the Romans outlawed slavery. And eventually they withdrew and let the Jews run their own country, of which the Second Temple, still standing in Jerusalem, is the cultural centerpiece. And Jesus died of a heart attack when Josephus the historian misrepresented and disrespected his public service record.

Yeah, that happened.

Whereas that governor, Pontius Pilate, served as the model for governors of all time -- of cowardice, corruption, cruelty, indifference and irresponsibility, ducking and washing his hands of the difficult, history-making decisions. And it is supremely fair, by association, to tar all subsequent bearers of his title with the faults of his character -- bearers like Sarah Palin, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, Adlai Stevenson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, William McKinley, Mario Cuomo, Anne Richards, Michael Dukakis, and William Jefferson Clinton.

Yeah, that's fair.



Meme retort of the month:

Pontius Pilate voted "present."

SPEAKING OF FANNIE MAE...


No, not that Fannie May.














MORE MELTDOWN RETROSPECTIF:






It's Winter 2000 (Bubba still at the helm).
City Journal's Howard Husock lets fly.

The Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown That Bodes Ill for Cities
The Community Reinvestment Act funnels billions to left-wing activists, while threatening to destabilize lower-middle-class neighborhoods.

The Clinton administration has turned the Community Reinvestment Act...[into a] vast extortion scheme against the nation's banks.

Read the rest here.



BREAKING NEWS!!! (Yeah, I know, it broke last night or somethin'....)

The heinous hackings and postings of Sarah Palin's private emails appear to be the work of ONE LITTLE SNOT-NOSED COLLEGE KID.

Who (it is alleged) just happens to be the son of a Tennesee Democratic State Representative.

[h/t Gateway Pundit via The Anchoress]

MSM strangely MUM on the subject -- and when they finally twig to it, wanna bet we'll be playing "Name That Party" regarding the subject's political affiliations? And that any rumblings about Sarah Palin's inability to control her teenaged daughter's conduct will disappear overnight? Mum's the word!

AND FOR YOU SPANISH-SPEAKERS AMONG US:

Take a gander at the latest excretions from the Obama campaign. Are you buying?



Translation, via FoxNews:

"They want us to forget the insults we’ve put up with, the intolerance," the announcer says in one of the ads as a picture of Limbaugh appears onscreen and the talk show host is quoted saying, “Mexicans are stupid and unqualified” and “Shut your mouth or get out.”

"They made us feel marginalized in a country we love so much,” the announcer continues. “John McCain and his Republican friends have two faces. One that says lies just to get our vote, and another, even worse, that continues the failed policies of George Bush that put special interests ahead of working families.”

Says John Hinderaker (of the Law Firm of Power, Line)

I don't think I've ever seen a more deeply contemptible political ad... In the mainstream media, the last week has been consumed by tut-tutting over the supposed "lies" perpetrated by two McCain ads--which, however, were inconveniently true. It will be interesting to see how liberal pundits react to what must be the most dishonest, racist and hateful campaign ad published in many years.

Dittos.

GET OUT YOUR SHOVELS --
MAJOR TOPSOIL
COMIN' YOUR WAY!!

Remember where you heard it first:
The Sarah Palin Phenomenon is Doomed

Why?

The primary reason why the Palin bubble will burst is that the media will decide that they are bored with her...

The interview with Gibson may be remembered as the first brick being pulled out of the wall. The reviews weren't favorable from the media in the segments when Gibson asked Palin questions about foreign policy...

Gibson, as dignified a newsperson as America has now*, treated Palin fairly and didn't resort to hectoring her with "gotcha" questions, either...

The media aren't the bad guys in the Palin discussion.

Jon Friedman of CBS News says so. So there.

* [sad, but true -- ed. -- all emphases mine]


FINALLY

...light is beginning to be shed upon Barack Obambi's 'Lost Years' of post-law school employment and community organza period. It seems that before he heard the Divine Summons to Chicago's south side, The Chosen One had a hard time getting chosen for employment upon graduating from Columbia. For this we have his own words in the first of his two epic autobiographies, Dreams From My Father.

True enough, we suppose. But a couple of people who worked with him in his early, pre-non-profit days, say his own account of this period of his life, ahem, departs somewhat from the facts as they remember them.
[hat-tip: Sweetness & Light] Read the whole thing and enjoy.

DAVID FREDDOSO has been dropping bits-n-bytes from his new book, The Case Against Obama, about those much-touted 'Daley years'. Bring it on.

John Maki at Windy Citizen reports from deep within Chicago's communities and sets some records straight about what those community organgrinder people (himself included) DO, when they do whatever it is they do.

I can't lie awake too many nights wondering how Barry Obambi misspent his youth. But I do worry about what kind of back-room sell-out he may have been working on with the leadership of Iraq. At the New York Post, Amir Taheri spills the beans on Obama's attempt to play liar's poker with the future of Iraq and with the welfare of American military personnel in order to have the resolution of Iraq's democratic future take place on the watch of the next president (that would be Barry). Check it out.

The Obambi campaign has issued something like a denial, which doesn't in fact deny much of anything about this appalling account. Say again?



NOW ABOUT THAT WALL STREET MELTDOWN:
YOUR PRIMER ON HOW WE GOT HERE

(1) WHAT'S WITH THIS WOMAN AND HER WALLS?


When disaster strikes, up in the skies or down on the streets of New York City, why do we keep finding the fingerprints of this woman, former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, all over the mess? A few interesting summaries here, and here.




The Clinton Administration: continuing to make memories all Americans will treasure.


(2) EARLY WARNING SYSTEM -- New York Times, September 11, 2003

"New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae"

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

Read it all here.


(3) AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED?

Investors Business Daily tells the Rest of the Story:

Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties.

The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but "predatory."

(4) WAS NO ONE WATCHING?

Well, yes. The senior Senator from Arizona.

Congressional Record, May 25, 2006:

For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs--and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO's report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO's report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.

I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.

(5) AND HOW DID THIS END?

S. 190 [109th]: Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005

Last Action: Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of a substitute favorably.

Status: Dead (emphasis MINE)

It never made it out of committee. Chris Dodd, then the ranking member of the Banking Committee and now its chair, was in the middle of receiving preferential loan treatment from Countrywide Mortgage, one of the companies gaming the system in the credit crisis. Meanwhile, Barack Obama took hundreds of thousands of dollars from the lobbyists McCain mentions in this speech, making him the #2 recipient of Fannie/Freddie money. "Obama in just four years in the Senate raked more contributions from Fannie and Freddie than any other Senator in the last 19 years." [h/t NRO, Mark Hemingway at the Corner.

If you're not so much into reading, watch the exciting climax of this epic drama here:




Makes you kinda go, "Hm-m-m-m."

Just wish this particular Arizona Senator would speak up about what he saw and what he tried to do. Have you forgotten, Johnny Mac? Don't fuel those rumours about senility, PLEEEEZE!.

SEEN IN THIS MORNING'S NATIONAL POST,
AND I'M NOT KIDDING

This photo:


And this caption:

Brad Pitt knows the travails of trying to foster socially responsible consumerism. When the actor had to choose a scent for his new line of environmentally friendly body wash for Kiehl's, he ran into a problem: "Not much biodegrades," he said. "There were only three scents to choose from. I chose aloe."

Brad Pitt -- St. Francis of Ass-hatsy.

From the preamble to the North Carolina Democratic Party Platform:

We take pride in our Democratic heritage as a party of spiritual and patriotic values; a party of inclusiveness; a party of diversity; a party of compassion; a party of educational and economic opportunities; a party of social justice; and a party of responsible leadership."

This item is NOT official
campaign gear



from state or national Democratic Party affiliates-- but sometimes the genealogy of inspiration is traceable.


Stay classy, libs.

[hat-tip: Kathy Shaidle, via Malkin, via somebody else I can't remember....]

Just when you thought it couldn't get worse for the Obama campaign....

Greta Van Susteren interviews ALASKA 'FIRST DUDE' TODD PALIN -- and -- DAMN! the guy can talk!!!!

DAMN!

If this is what constitutes a high school education in Alaska, then good for you Alaska. Todd Palin is charming, chatty, well-spoken, good vocab, ready to engage and answer at length. Not a rube, not a hillbilly, not a red-flannel-shirted red-state red-neck, not a duh-h-h-h, yup, nope, fer shure, land'o'goshen ma'am, ah couldn't rightly say, gun-totin', beer-swillin' MORON.

NOT, NOT, NOT!

DAMN!

This is not what was supposed to happen. How dare he?! He's an accomplished, natural, reflective man, as worldly-wise as he needs to be, and perfectly presentable when it comes time to meet those Heads of State Charlie Gibson is so concerned about impressing.

Damn, double damn, with an extra helping of damn on the side!




SPEAKING OF SARAHS

Like, I so TOTALLY KNEW that Dr. Sara Tancredi on FOX's Prison Break was SO NOT DEAD, even when Linc was supposed to have found her HEAD in a box -- I just KNEW this couldn't be the end of the barely budding affair between her and Michael. (Actress Sarah Wayne Callies was preggers and took a season off. Nice to see her back in one piece.)

Duly noted: Domenic Purcell is now getting first billing in the credits,


ahead of Wentworth Miller. This probably has something to do with contract haggles, Domenic perhaps feeling that he had a more pivotal role than his second billing would indicate, especially since he stopped being the guy off someplace on death row, only heard from in passing, as he was during season one.


Glad the show is back. I hardly watch any TV entertainment shows with regularity (news junkie that I am), but for some reason I'm hooked on two of the most brutally violent ones, Prison Break and CSI:NY. Downright kinky sometimes (the shows, that is -- me, not so much). But I like the characters, and the writing is good (CSI not so good sometimes). And of course, I'm always happy to support the work of troop-supporter and Iraqi-kid benefactor Gary Sinise.

Rock on, Detective.
Semper Fi.

LOTS OF SERIOUS DIRT to shovel today

but time is short this a.m., so I'll just proffer THIS, because Republicans have a sense of humor.

You just gotta laugh -- I mean, you GOTTA.



[hat-tip: RealClearPolitics]


Fey -- she's da BOMB. Brilliant.