Most Likely to Suceed: Sarah Louise Heath, Wasilla High School, Class of 1982

Potatoe contributor, Patrick Bateman, shows there is no love lost between him and Sarah Palin, and no blood left for his puny liberal heart to bleed when he makes this smug wisecrack in his recent post about the Governor of Alaska's current cabinet:

"Her administration looks suspiciously like the Wasilla High School prom committee, circa 1982 (no, really - seven members of the '82 prom committee are on her staff. True story. No - it isn't. But you believed it for a second. Doesn't that tell you all you need to know about this person? That you momentarily believed that? Think about it.)."

Typical. Chairman Bateman and the rest of his red comrades getting a good communist giggle at the expense of Governor Sarah Palin. Disgusting. Sarah Palin: A maverick, a reformer, a lipsticked pitbull, a hockey mom, part of the middle class, just like you and me, the genuine article. Truly a rock star, a real bona fide American . . . . . . huh? . . . say what now? . . .

"The New York Times is reporting today that Gov. Sarah Palin appointed close friends of hers to high-paying government jobs and offered them much higher salaries than they would be entitled to in the private sector. Many of Palin’s political appointees attended Wasilla High School, something which has led observers to note that the school yearbook could serve as a directory of state government.

Let’s look at just a few of Palin’s cronies. Palin appointed Mr. Britney, her former junior high school band mate as her legislative director. Another classmate, Joe Austermann manages the economic development office for $82,908 a year. Palin also hired her former schoolmate, Franci Havemeister to head the State Department of Agriculture. Havemeister previously worked as a real estate agent and cited her childhood love of cows as qualifications to run the agency. Ms. Havemeister earns $95,000 a year as director of the agency."

From the impartially-titled blog Sarah Palin Exposed. But every fact from the Times article has been verified.

Um . . . hmmm . . . well . . . ahhh . . . let me tell you about a gentleman by the name of William Ayers.

I got your back, Bateman.

Dem Democrat "Hooligans"

"I am madder than a old wet hen. Let me translate dat der jumble-o-words I just dropped on yah, McCain: I ain't happy as a pig in slog no more. Even dem lipstick pig variety and such. Get dem commie bastards, Pelosi, the lot of em, and that uppity boy Obama. Get him good!"

Get them, Johnny. Go get them!!!! Burst through that door and hack'em up!!!!!

Nothing is more Americana then an ol' country kook cleaning the crust from his mouth, rattling his partisan chains around like Jacob Marley, calling the Democrats "hooligans" and "socialists," atavistically referring to "an Obama" like he's subhuman for having a feasible health care plan, then starting a hackneyed "U.S.A . . . U.S.A." chant just in case you thought McCain was hosting a tea party in Paris.

And the curmudgeon's incendiary red glare, an octogenarians head full of air! Francis Scott Key was the original Toby Keith. Yippeee! U.S.A! Obama is a muslim, terrorist, radical! Kill darky! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

The gap is shrinking between embellishment and what my eyes perceive. That's frightening.

Whether it's Dennis Miller deranged bellicosity on the O'Reilly Factor, looking into the camera and screaming at McCain to "fight, John. Fight!!!" or Michelle Malkin making the case for her own internment because she can't live under a Democratic administration, the Republican Party is fraying at the base (or is it a Socialist administration as the next bucket of radical paint is dumped on Barack Obama for tomorrow's news cycle).

There are many revealing moments in the short video of Waukesha, Wisconsin apoplexy! A complete lack of respect for McCain, the rampaging codger giving the "maverick" senator the business and telling him in campaign speak to "shut his piehole" (ie, "Let me finish, please"). The imbecilic dissonance of two sequential sentences, one saying "and I'm not mad about the economy," the very next sentence shrieking I'm mad "about the socialists taking over our country."

Socialism (as defined by Merriam Webster): Any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.

Hey Wilford Brimley - you're mad at the economy, you f**king wingnut, or at least you will be when they repossess your PT Cruiser, they take your job away greeting at the Wall-Mart and disabuse you of your last five dollars because the church needed it! It's the Christian thing to do.

What's the use. There is an exorbitant premium on making sense within conservative dens during the last throes of what Karl Rove touted "50 years of Republican domination."

I found McCain's instinctual response to the surly fella even more fascinating. It's almost like he's uncomfortable consorting with these vitriolic crackers demanding a political lynching of Obama. "Act together because all of us are Americans first." All of us. And McCain will "work with anyone" and "work together as one nation indivisible."

But the ideological dummies, clod fanatics of neo-conservatism on the wan and firebrand zealots waving their bibles wildy don't want bipartisanship, cooperation or even the "maverick" persona McCain and Palin shill.

They want leftist blood. They want to murder liberalism. They have no idea why. The rhetoric is a hodge-podge of hate, fear, insecurity, a dollup of subconscious racism (a bigger helping for some folks) and confusion. They cannot formulate sentences to express this madness. It's a venomous melange of terrorism, communism, socialism, radicalism, liberalism, nihilism and any other "ism" reduced and muddled into formless chimeras haunting the good neighbors on Main Street, Mayberry as they slumber.

It's a request for grotesque and unseemly tactics that John McCain may not fulfill - for two reasons:

One, a political view, that this election is not won by preaching to the converted at Republican rallies, but by appealing to the whopping 40% of the electorate that consider themselves independent, many of them rational thinkers, unfettered by party talking points.

And two, a moral view (really, an American view): that I will not spark a match and set this country ablaze when the blood in my veins pulses with doing the right, but sometimes unpopular thing and working with members of both parties if that's what it takes to accomplish it.

How ironic: McCain might lose this election because he truly does put "country first." As dirty as it's getting, McCain may not be willing to cross every line, only most of them. And that will come up short.

Classy Enough to Leave Him at the Footstep of the Woodshed - Round 2 All Obama

I was hyper-critical of Senator Obama's performance during the first debate at Ole' Miss. He was diffident, impassive and projected an "aw shucks, don't say that" vibe that infuriated me and must have trigger unhinged bellicosity in the true believers of liberalism. He was playing "not to lose" - a tremulous, pussy-footing performance.

Not tonight.

And probably not for the rest of this election.

Barack Obama was downright presidential this evening. John McCain was a spent force eight years removed from the window's closing. A loyal soldier who served his country for 70 years, but retired in 2006. Please go with grace.

We can debate nuances until the bovine, partisan cows come home. That's not what tonight was about, suprisingly - not the issues. It was about appearances. And, strangely, for the first time since President Clinton, a Democrat - a wonderful Democrat, his smile, oh that smile, did he just wink at me, oh my god, there are the little starbursts in my living room, I'm mesmerized, I am definitely sitting up straighter on my couch. Does this make me gay? - DAMMIT LOWRY, GIVE ME BACK MY KEYBOARD. GO BACK TO THE NATIONAL REVIEW AND ATTEND TO THE LAST SHRED OF ITS DIGNITY. Barry Goldwater has placed a coffin above his own coffin and Ronald Reagan's coffin. By the end of this thing, lots of coffins to go around. A funeral pyre for Karl Rove would be a nice closing ceremony.

Ahem.

As I was saying, a Democrat looked like next year's prototype, rakish and cherry, right off the factory line. The new model. The crusty, starchy Republican was a refurbished product, a collection of misfit parts, held together by spit and glue and the faint whiff of 20th Century cognition.

Obama sat there casually. Casually confident. And the "straight talk" express blew a tire and desperately needed a figurative and literal oil change (please see the previous post). The message was stale and message is king in presidential elections. The scuttlebutt is that Palin tried to storm the set with a life-sized poster of Bill Ayers, but secret service confused her for Cindy Sheehan and used the taser.

And you could smell the fear on the right-wing pundits in the post game. They see it slipping away. The Republican fembot on ABC conceded McCain didn't score "the knockout blow" or submit "the game changer." Yeah, no kidding. Even the conservative assassins on FoxNews tonight adopted a defeatist air. Glenn Beck, the very foundation of Goldwater's revolution, could only offer "we don't mind losing, but at least we want to lose fair" in the wake of McCain's lackluster turn and voter fraud allegations in Ohio from the RNC (losing like the Detroit Pistons in the 1990 Eastern Conference finals I see - not even shaking hands, walking off the court with time left in the fourth).

Voter fraud - we have no comment. But I (unlike some) can name a Supreme Court case: Bush v. Gore.

Let me remind you this playful parry comes from a registered independent. Check the rolls. I voted Nader in 2000 and Badnarek (be still my Libertarian heart) in 2004.

As things stand at 10:13 pm PST, I will vote for Barack Obama for President of the United States of American on November 4.

The man and his core beliefs are certainly big factors, but more so: I vote for the future. I vote for my family (my girlfriend now 10 weeks pregnant). I vote for the former glory of America and may it return as the erstwhile beacon of light that guided a world. I vote for tolerance, intelligence and foresight.

Unbelievably, without a scintilla of mockery or hyperbole (can't believe I'm saying it) - I vote for CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN.

Who am I voting for you ask?

"That one." Thanks for pointing him out, John McCain.

Posted by Warm Apple Pie.