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August 30th, 2008 | Uncategorized
My Provincetown vacation is over and my mind is wiped clean.
I saw Kate Clinton perform Thursday night, and it was like watching one of those Japanese chefs slicing and dicing faster than the eye can see. I kinda wished I’d gone last night, so I could hear her take on McCain’s VP. But word on the street has it Kate summed her up as “Dan Quayle in a bun.” Kate has an awesome website, you should check it out.
31 Responses to “blank”
This is somewhat off-topic.
I love your blog, which is something I have in common with a lot of people. But in case there are a stray half-dozen folks out there who don’t yet know how wonderful you are, I’ve nominated you for a blog award, in the hopes that the readers of my own blog will read yours and be changed as well.
To find out more about the “I Love Your Blog” award, and to collect the graphic if you’d like to post it, drop by Quaker Pagan Reflections, to the entry, Too Much Love? (Hm–will your blog accept hyperlinks? Guess we’ll find out.)
And please keep blogging! Your writing–and art–mean a lot to me. I _love_ the short little movies about your creative process. I love the drawings, the updates, the conversations with your readers… all of it.
You’re just amazing.
I always wanted to see Dan Quayle in a bun.
Or Dan Quayle on a bun (since he was such a weenie).
The only part that scares me about that….?
Dan Quayle was our VP… ugh… Goddess help us…
or please wipe my mind clean!
Everyone… even if you are a cynic who thinks it doesn’t matter
and that all American politicians are exactly the same…
please vote for Obama. for me? please?
thank you.
you spell potatoe and I’ll spell potato
you spell tomatoe and I’ll spell tomato…
potatoe, potato, tomatoe, tomato,
let’s call the whole thing off.
What does a VP do, asked Palin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4gkPXSDtGQ
I find this pick so… disturbing. The folksy ditz thing masking the retrograde principles… UGH.
I like “Baked Alaska” as a nickname for Gov. Palin.
(Because she has acknowledged past pot-smoking. This suggests at least a moment of open-mindedness in her history. May have been her last.)
Alison, I liked the video! Did it wipe the slate clean?
So far as the VP choice, it’s also insulting in the same way the Quayle choice was–about Quayle “He’s cute! Women will vote for him!”; about Palin “She’s female! Women will vote for her!”
She’s verrrrry verrrrry conservative and not at all experienced–scary indeed.
I just tried to access the Kate Clinton link, and got a message that it was blocked by KANGUARD, the library’s robocensor. Hmmmm…. why would something like THAT happen??? Now, I feel like I’M the one who had my mind wiped!
When I found out about Palin, I just larfed and larfed. What a bone headed and cynical move. The only consolation I have is that I’m a dual citizen with Ireland and if McPalin gets elected, I can relocate.
I am currently gearing up for the big “welcome” we are going to throw for McCain, Palin, Bush, and the rest of the cabal here in St. Paul- ideally, they will leave our fair state wishing they had never even heard of Minnesota. I’ll give ’em hell for all of you!
Palin is Atwood’s Serena Joy come to life. *very* scary. or that Orwellian prof in the Harry Potter books who likes frilly things, forced Harry to carve cruel and ultimate irony into his own hand, and brought totalitarian rule to the school.
(the Anchorage Daily News, as quoted on the Doonesbury site, wrote “She can look you in the eye and tell you black is white.”)
just shows how ‘on it’ lit is (and kid’s books!)
anyone who names their two sons Trig and Track…
something just ain’t right there…
Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig.
Those are her kids’ names.
The baby’s full name is
Trig Paxson Van Palin
No pretense there… sheesh…
Keep on keepin’on,Land. Those Repubs will be saying “ya sure,you betcha…we better get out of Minnesota.”
(Sorry, if it’s a repost. I got that “every 15 seconds cowboy” warning.)
First, Palin would more rightly be called “Half-Baked Alaska.”
Second, Alison, your movie fails the Bechdel Test! Now, if you had been walking on that beach, telling another woman that sometimes you don’t feel so fresh …
(Sorry. I couldn’t resist. Hey! Maybe Mo could do an advert for the Massingill people? You know, just during the hiatus.)
Oh, poor New Orleans. Poor all of us if McCain/Palin gets elected. What do you think would happen if the first woman president in the United States turned out to be Palin. I mean, it’s so grotesque it’s almost horrifying.
don’t know about others, but Alex the Bold when you write “what do you think would happen if the first……?” I notice my breathing changes, my ribcage tightens…. i mean, what would happen if Palin is the first woman president of the USA…? ….. it’s really possible….. wow…..
….over here the reporting on the convention has been very sober, I think the Brits are always surprised by the pomp and ceremony – even though they/we were kind of responsible for sharing something of that … but Palin… augh…
my distance vote is registered… hoping all us overseas citizens are doing what we can….
In all the discussion of Palin as the first woman Republican candidate for Vice President, speculation about her as possibly the first woman president, I keep thinking of Ginger saying “How do you know it’s a woman? For all you know, it could be Christine Todd Whitman.”
Why all the angst about Palin? You’ve just had Bush for 8 years and she just sounds like more of the same to me, just with less jalapenos.
I hate to change the topic and maybe this has already been posted here but
have y’all seen this?
http://gracethespot.com/?page_id=112
crack me up… not as funny as dtwof but in the void you gotta entertain yourself somehow… not that the American political scene isn’t funny enough, or Alison on the beach… which was amusing because she was bored
but what I couldn’t understand was why Alison wasn’t balled up under an umbrella, an spf t-shirt and six blankets to avoid sun exposure
(ie, a horrible death by skin cancer) the way Mo and I would be.
Dan Quayle? I think more like Ronald Regan in drag!
The political landscape might be fraught but the good news is that the upcoming Essential DTWOF is one fabulous book. Some indy bookseller friends got their hands on an advance reading copy and passed it along to me. Pub date according to the back of the book is November 12th which means at least there’s one great thing we can count on in November. It would be nice, of course, to have a book with every single strip ever published, plus all the extras and intros, and I’m sure that’ll happen, but in the meantime this is a good solid collection, beautifully presented, with a cool Cartoonists Introduction.
I don’t know anything about Sarah Palin, but I want to know why she was picked. I mean, ok, she’s the governer of a very large state. But other than that, what? What, besides her gender and her conservatism, is the appeal, from the Republican point of view? Didn’t they want someone who could actually take over if necessary? Or are they planning on having a phalanx of shadow administrators to do all the work like Rove, et al? Honestly, I am beginning to feel paranoid about this election. Are they going to throw it? Is there going to be some kind of major disaster that necessitates Bush staying in office past Jan. 19th? These two are so under qualified. What on earth is the Republican party thinking? I don’t expect any answers this week via the RNC, so I figured if anyone is going to answer my semi-rhetorical questions it will be you-all. Or at least some sympathetic clucking.
Alison (or anyone else out there)- have you seen this?
http://www.mahalo.com/Sarah_Palin_Pregnancy_Rumors
Perhaps Big Mac should’ve taken a wee bit more time vetting his veep…
McCain/Palin = The Manchurian Candidate meets The Handmaid’s Tale
….Except now with Hurricane Gustav coming and the convention pared down and possibly postponed, I’m thinking that tomorrow the cops will take advantage of the lack of actual Republicans and media presence to swoop down on the excess of protesters and round them up before things finally get started. And the Republican party will capitalize on this disaster to make it look as though disaster relief is somehow partisan. fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck……
Palin as a choice was not vetted (McSame had met her exactly once and was apparently unaware, for example, of her current investigation on abuse of office charges) nor was she cleared through the RNC. It appears to have been a desperation move on his part. There’s many theories about WHY he went this course. Here’s the predominant ones floating around on progressive blogs:
(1) She is cloud-cuckoo-land Religious Right crazy. They are ECSTATIC at this choice, and have reversed their move away from McSame now to raising money hand over fist for th RNC. She is far more to the right than Reagan, Quayle or Dubya himself in terms of religious fanaticism. Like, she may be part of that small subgroup of fundie who believe the Earth is flat (because the Bible doesn’t say it’s round — we have a member of the Texas House of Reps who has attempted to stop schools from teaching “round earth theory” — I’m not making this up.) Therefore, he took his orders from Dobson via Cheney.
(2) Tim “We don’t need no stinkin’ bridge inspections” Pawlenty, Mitt “Magic Underwear” Romney, and Joe “Slip Me Some Tongue Dubya” Lieberman all said no to McSame because after the Democratic National Convention, it was clear he was going to lose.
(3) He succumbed to his need to be surrounded by beauty queens on all fronts, and he thought it would make him look better standing next to her.
(4) He thought those who had supported Hillary would vote for any vagina at all.
(5) It’s a brilliant Roveian plot to draw out the massive lefti woman-hating and rural-bashing rhetoric that was exhibited on far too many blogs during our own nominees campaign, disgusting women (especially working class women) and those who identify with rural values (not necessarily those who live in rural areas) to such an extent that they will swing to McCain for the election. I have to admit, some so called “liberal” males out there are already proving this one right, they just cannot pass up the read meat of attacking a woman on gender terms.
I personally think it’s mostly #1, with maybe some or all of the others playing a role. What seems definite is that she would not have been the first choice of his advisers/handlers, and it’s 50/50 at this point whether she’ll stay the nominee. Especially with the news that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant — which I think is nobody’s business but theirs EXCEPT for her vicious stance against birth control, against teaching real sex education in schools, and against abortion even in the case of rape and incest. This calls HER values as a leader into question, but I don’t fucking want to hear anyone bashing her kid.
It has also come out that when Palin’s water broke with the last pregnancy, she got on a plane for an 8-hour trip to Alaska rather than check into a big hospital in Texas. With a high-risk pregnancy which they already knew was Downs’, this is extremely irresponsible. Interestingly, for the seven months prior to that birth, her other teenaged daughter had been absent from school and public view with mono. Currently that baby, now five months old, is in the care of that teenaged daughter. Again, the only decent thing to do is congratulate them on pulling together as a family and stick to the issues, which center around making birth control, family planning, and special needs care available for all those who don’t share her religious views.
Other Palin pluses, by the way, as a nominee include:
–Alaska as a state is completely wedded to Big Oil. (But it’s not counted as a large state, except geographically — it has less than half a million in population, so no electoral votes to speak of.)
–She comes off as “spunky” and “regular folks” (as opposed to intellectual elite) to those who aren’t especially progressive.
–Her beauty pageant background makes her very adept at media handling and presentation.
–She is disposable, should the need arise, without pissing off anybody except Alaska and the Jebus fanatics — and the latter can be appeased if she is “driven” from her candidacy by the evil liberals making a big issue about her as a woman or her private life.
Maggie,
My inner BS clock is thinking this pregnancy story is just cover for the other pregnancy story; in any other circumstance, I wouldn’t care about any of it, except for Palin’s views on birth control, etc. I too, am offended by McCain and frankly, other male commentators who think Hilary’s supporters only cared about her gender—I mean come on!
On another note, doesn’t she look like a cross between Will & Grace’s Karen Walker and Tina Fey? I’m writing the Saturday Night Live sketch in my head right now….
What this Palin-bashing is starting to remind me of is the Ferraro-bashing in 1984, though from the opposite side of the political spectrum, of course. If this runs in parallel, we’re due for about another week of putting Palin through the wringer, then we’ll all go back to focussing on the head of the ticket, with a blip for the Palin scandal of choice, corresponding to the Zaccaro failure to file tax returns.
I think my main concern about Palin as a candidate is that she presumably believes she is prepared for the job of president should McCain become unable to complete the job, which seems to speak volumes about her ego. She is as weak in foreign affairs as Obama, having dealt with foreign government agencies and investors only as governor of a single state, and in times like these it’s hard to see how she could perform well. Plus she is as gaffe-prone as Truman and Ford.
Meanwhile, back in London I’ve re-joined the Green Party!
Londonboy, I don’t think it’s bashing to point out where she stands on issues, especially since she’ll be VP to an elderly man who’s had cancer four times, won’t release his medical records, and spent five years being tortured (all medical risks). For me, the main point is that McSame selected her, which speaks to his judgment. Interestingly, I’d posted at Group News Blog the day before her announcement as VP as to the unfitness of McSame to lead. He’s mentally unfit to the same extent that Dubya is/was.
But Palin is worse. She’s the chosen candidate of a group who is open about wanting to convert the United States into a theocracy. The Margaret Atwood references others have made are quite apt. Our Constitution is in dire peril, and we have, I believe, THIS election to restore both it and our continued existence as the country we have been in the world prior to 2000.
I’m voting against the Right Wing revolution more than I’m voting for Obama. He was not even my third choice (nor was Hillary), but what he lacks in experience and actual insight (not the rhetorical kind) is made up by advisers who are not bat-shit crazy End-Timers. He’s a politician, not so much a leader, but a politician is sufficient to stop our decline while we wait for an FDR or Harriet Tubman.
And Shado, I know it looks suspicious, the overlapping pregnancies, but there are photos of Palin very pregnant. It does sound nutty for her to risk her baby on a long plane flight in order to have it born in Alaska, but it’s her particular bent to be that reckless, it’s not a cover-up for her daughter’s pregnancy. I wish all those children well.
P.S. For those who wanted documentation on Palin’s extremist views on specific reproductive issues, you can find them in this Youtube video.
The text reads:
Does John McCain’s choice for Vice President share your family’s values?
Sarah Palin opposes the use of birth control pills and condoms—even among married people.
Source: Political Wire, 8/30/2008
Sarah Palin opposed sex education in Alaska schools.
Source: The Politico, 9/1/2008
She even opposes abortion even in cases of rape.
Source: The Huffington Post, 9/1/2008
Are these your family values?
According to Time Magazine, while she was mayor Palin tried to fire a librarian who refused to go along with her plans to ban books.
Don’t Mess With Our Librarians!