Sarah Palin

After crashing and burning, the McCain-Palin campaign, along with the Republican party, continues to implode.

Here's the Republicans at Fox news on just how clueless Palin is:

Meanwhile, Palin is catching widespread media ridicule for getting fooled by a Montreal phone prankster pretending he was the president of France:

Remember the $150,000 in campaign funds Palin blew on a designer clothing shopping spree? Newsweek reports it's even worse than it appeared:

An angry [Republican] aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

Wow, um, this was really fairly funny. And not just Tina Fey.

To paraphrase The Atlantic's James Fallows, there's just no way McCain would have done this if he thought he had any chance of winning.*

Here's the "this" (and don't miss the pork knives! Niiice.):

*What I wouldn't give to see Jim Torrey on the Eugene equivalent of SNL.

Before I embed the Rachel Maddow interview with my buddy Barry (I still haven't given him my ZIP code, no matter how many texts come to my cell — I like to keep the mystery alive), let me share the great genius that is Hockey Mama for Obama:

OK, through the tears of laughter (even though the magistrate line is wrong, and the line about Mexico worries me — oh, and don't you think the moose husband dude playing the piano looks like Eugene First Husband David Piercy's more bulky older brother?), I also wanted to watch Obama on Rachel Maddow.

But first: Until this morning, I had not watched a second of Rachel Maddow. Wait, there's a liberal lesbian with her own talk show? I'm kind of ... I'm ... really?

Yes, Virginia, there is. Now that is cool.

Here's the Maddow/Obama interview, Part One:

And here's Part Two:

Enjoy!

Down in the polls with a week to go, the McCain/Palin campaign appears racked by infighting:

Forget about Joe the plumber, what about Amy the makeup artist and Angela the hairstylist?

The New York Times reports that the McCain campaign pays makeuper Amy Strozzi
$11,400 a week to work on "Carribou Barbie" Palin. That makes Strozzi the highest paid campaign worker on the McCain/Palin payroll.

Joe the plumber makes nowhere near enough to pay more taxes under Obama's tax increase for the rich. But Strozzi might.

Running not far behind the makeup artist is Palin's California hairstylist Angela Lew at $5,000 a week, the Times reports. This on top of reports that the McCain campaign earlier spent $150,000 on designer clothes for Palin.

So much for fiscal conservatism. So much for the average Joe facing mass layoffs. Hundreds of thousands on makeup, hair, designer boots? Think of all the six packs that money could buy.

It's so funny. And yet funny in that all Tina Fey has to do is repeat the bizarre things Sarah Palin says to be funny way.

If you haven't already checked out PalinasPresident.com and clicked on all the little details (Maverick!) then do so now, laugh, then feel little frisson of horror when you realize how damn close to the truth it is.

With laughably incoherent interviews and a finding Sarah Palin abused her power against a state trooper, many Republicans are regretting John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as Vice President. But not Oregon Senator Gordon Smith. Here he is in an Oct. 9 debate:

Yeah so, the Human Rights Campaign (which, yes, has its problems) popped a supergay DC dude on a plane to Alaska, where he went in search of Sarah Palin's gay friends.

I don't think he looked super hard, but he sure didn't find any in Wasilla:

**Yes, believe me, I do know that National Coming Out Day is on Saturday.

I often write my family a silly little email telling them that I'm a lesbian. But I gotta say that the original coming out experience was neither silly nor little, and it wasn't over email (which wasn't a big thing then, before Teh Interwebz even existed. And I had it comparatively easy; it's not like they kicked me out or anything (though luckily I was headed to London the next semester).

Imagine being a queer kid of someone like Palin. To quote "Rock Me, Sexy Jesus," Jesus H. Christ.