Sarah Palin Panties

I bought some new underwear at Victoria's Secret last week.

D and Fern got me a gift certificate a couple of years ago and I was finally using it up.

Below is one of the pairs I picked up.

I've decided to call them my "Sarah Palin Panties"

Notice the stag head, hot cocoa, bunnies, snow flakes and birdies.



So, someday when I come around and tell you that I'm off to shoot a moose, you can think to yourself, "She's got her Sarah Palin Panties on today."

Possibly, I'll just start winking at you and shouting "Maverick" like I have Tourettes Syndrome... and you'll know.

And then someday, I'll decide to go 'rogue' and shout, "Honey, find my 'Sarah Palin Panties', this pitbull's about get herself some lipstick."

Watch out for that.

It means that it's the end of days.

Will They Care?

Today, the report on Sarah Palin's unethical behavior as governor of Alaska came out.

So, I hold my breath. Will the American people care?

"The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a nation or an organization to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions."
- Andrew Hacker

I felt so hopelessly deflated the first time I read this quote. I think it is my fundamental problem. I feel like if people understand, then they couldn't possibly...

But, it isn't true.

A friend of mine from high school recently wrote a blog where she said, "I will have to admit to my kids that this was the first election where I could not give two shits about the little guy, as I was far more concerned with building a nest egg for the family I would eventually start..."

So, she gets it, but is fundamentally more concerned with herself than the welfare of the nation?

Sist-A's boyfriend, KhakiRepublican, tried to justify women having to pay for rape kits in Wasilla by saying "they probably got a lot of false reporting."

While I adamantly disagree with KR's politics, in general, he's not a complete dumbass. He's capable of intelligent conversation, but is he blind or just willing to justify any sort of behavior as long as it's a Republican who does it?

I accept that people have different beliefs than I do. I'm not one of those people who feel like I need to surround myself with people who only believe as I do in order to validate my own opinions.

But, at my core is the belief that you have to care about other human beings. If we care about the lowest common denominator, then the collective welfare of the people improves. I believe that compassion and helping one another out is a good thing.

There are people who don't believe that. They look at the situation and really only care about themselves. It is not only an accepted notion, but an encouraged one in our capitalistic society.

So, back to my original point... will anyone care that Sarah Palin has been called out by her home state for being unethical? The Republican pundits will push their talking points "Obama is a terrorist" and fan-wank for Sarah. To be fair, if the situation were reversed, Democratic pundits would probably do the same thing.

I guess I have to hope Heather is wrong and "hockey moms" and "Joe Six-Packs" do care about crazy things like facts... or at the very minimum factual sound bites that are easily digestible.

I'd apologize for the long, rambling nature of this post, but nobody's forcing you to read it, jackass.

When in Doubt?

I was reading some news on MSN.com this morning, and came across this news item:
Palin pre-empts state report, clears self

She is attempting to preempt the ethics report that is going to be released by Alaska on Friday, by issuing a report of her own, where she is cleared of all wrong doing.
While clearly evil, you have to admire her moxy.

Cause, she couldn't possibly be guilty of an ethics violation if in fact people who support her write up a report saying so...

... wait, isn't that a little unethical?

She must be pretty worried about it, if they are already attempting spin control when they don't know what will be in the report.

I guess the real question is whether "hockey moms" and "Joe Six-Pack" care about ethics?

Horrifying

Every time I think they can't horrify me any more...

This is from the blog of the husband of one of my coworkers:

Absolutely unbelievable

Typically, it's much easier to blame the victim of a crime, rather than the criminal, because the victim goes to police and the criminal hides. It's also incredibly and obviously wrong.

Alaska routinely has the nation's highest rate of sexual assault. To lower the reported numbers, one small Alaskan town had and idea - charge the victims between $300 to $1,200 to report the crime. This was to cover the costs of rape kits (sample containers, swabs and other medical supplies used to collect evidence from women after they are attacked) and the forensic exams. The goal was to push costs of law enforcement onto the victims, which would discourage victims from coming forward, thereby lowering the number of reported cases of sexual assault.

This action was taken by only one small town, and was so abhorrent to the rest of Alaska that, once word got out in 2000, Alaskan state legislators immediately passed a bill making this practice illegal.

That small town was Wasilla. That would be the tiny town left $12,000,000 in debt by the irresponsible deficit spending of their former mayor. The mayor that oversaw the implementation of the "charge the victims" scheme and runaway spending was Sarah Palin.Of course, the neocon viewpoint of reporting on facts would be: Stop picking on our poor, innocent candidates. Bringing up their past record is such dirty politics, that now we'll spread lies about your candidates.

The more you know...

The more I learn about McCain and Palin (like this, this and this, oh and this, too) the more they disturb me.

I think they are both fundamentally dishonest people.
Maybe it goes along with being in politics.

This election is making me crazy.
The hypocrisy is just so fucking rampant that it makes my blood pressure rise just thinking about it.

I hate Sarah Palin's "straight talk" because the more she speaks, the more she lies.
What is fucking wrong with the country?
We have just had 8 years with a douche bag who loves to tough talk with an accent and tell lies, Lies and MORE LIES!!

Are people just masochistic or what?

Who needs an economy?
Let's just continue to invest in the failed politics of the Republican party. It's like the over-the-top method of fighting World War I. They had to invent the fucking tank before they would stop sending soldiers "over-the-top" to be mowed down by machine guns.

Who needs the middle class?
In general, I don't support the idea that a political policy must benefit me to be something I support. Yet, there are scores and scores of people out there that vote Republican when their policies pretty much exclusively benefit the uber-rich.

Who cares about the environment?
Yes, let's stick our heads in the sand and willfully ignore the signs that we are destroying the only place we have to live. Let's drill the arctic... who really cares about endangered species and preserving nature? Let's drill offshore... who really cares about the consequences? I mean in 10 years we might see a 2% decrease in the price of oil. That's good enough, right?

Who cares about foreign policy?
Let's go to war with everyone. EVERY FUCKING ONE. It's really more important to make people feel important with bullshit tough talk than to work on actual solutions with crazy and foreign methods like diplomacy.

Did I mention that this election is making me crazy? C-R-A-Z-Y!!!

Sarah Palin, Glib and Predictable

I watched Sarah Palin, running mate of Republican John McCain in this election, give her speech at the RNC tonight.

She's quite a glib young lady. A snarky comment at every turn. If it were any other platform, she might be a girl after my own heart. This is how you unite our country? You try to pull people from across the aisle with your glib, snarky comments? It's so juvenile and how does it have a place in rational, adult discourse? It doesn't, unless you are pandering to the lowest common denominator.

She certainly pressed most of the Republican buttons on the podium...
... blah, blah "small government"
... blah, blah evil tax and spend Democrats
... blah, blah victory in Iraq
... blah, blah the real workers in America

Sigh. But, what did she really say?

(I think she seriously tried to convince me that if you are suspected of terrorism that you don't need to be read your rights... or perhaps even that they don't have any rights, who can tell? I guess you are innocent until proven guilty, unless charged with terrorism then you are just guilty by taint of accusation)

She introduced her family.
So what?
She talked about her son going to war.
So what?
(I will conceed she has a very good looking family. Congratulations, but so what?)
She introduced her parents.
So what?
She did a lot of talking about Alaska.
So fucking what?

(This is the point at which the husband got annoyed with me for continuing to ask "So fucking what?" every time she paused. His response, "Why do you keep asking me?")

What do you stand for Sarah Palin?

Palin is a virtual unknown to the political arena. I tuned in to find out more about her. Who is she? What does she stand for?

I didn't find anything out by listening to her speak that I didn't already know. That's disappointing, but not unexpected. No one can really bash what you say, if you don't really say anything of import.

A few random thoughts to wrap up:

We watched on ABC where the camera kept cutting away to Fake-bake Barbie and the Crypt Keeper... no wait, I think they were John McCain's wife and mother.
(I know it's mean, but seriously, they were kind of scaring me)

Also, did you see McCain walk out after her speech. I know everyone jokes about how old he is, but OMG did you see him? He's so OLD!! I wanted to grab a walker and a shawl and make sure he got back to "his chair" for "his programs."

I liked how they showed about 10 shots of her daughter licking her hand to mat down the hair of baby Trig. That was kind of awesome.

Well, Naturally!

For a few days Internet rumors have been circulating about Sarah Palin's most recent pregnancy.

Her daughter was suspiciously absent from school for mono for over 5 months.
Even though preggo, she still drank caffeine and went running in the morning.
Etc...

The gist of it being that perhaps in a very Desperate Housewives-esque move, Palin was covering for her eldest daughter's teen pregnancy by pretending to be preggo herself and then raising the baby.

Today, I read an article on MSN (that remained on the front page for a mysteriously brief period of time), that refuted these claims.

Palin has released an announcement, that of course her daughter couldn't have been secretly pregnant before, because the kiddo's actually pregnant now.

Well... naturally.

If I were her daughter, I would be so pissed she was accepting the VP nod. Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't want to be the endlessly debated poster girl for teen pregnancy.

Good luck spinning this to your advantage, Grandma!