Sarah Plain is a profoundly stupid woman.

[From TBogg » Open mouth. Remove all doubt. ]

Some of the folks in the “Film is not dead, it just smells funny” Flickr group are down on cross-processing (processing E6 slide film in print or C-41 chemistry: you end up with negatives instead of positives and can get all kinds of wild color shifts and contrasty weirdness).

So I found it interesting that this image made it into the curated pool.

Just because you live in the middle of nowhere doesn’t make you more authentic than me. It just means you have a much longer drive to the airport.

Now, ever since Sarah Palin came along, this election has been falsely framed as a contest between salt-of-the-earth, small-time maverick westerners and snooty eastern elites. You know, there’s people who go to church on Sunday, and there’s people who go to brunch.

Even fast-talking, cross-dressing Rudy Giuliani – the former mayor of New York City – accused Obama of being too cosmopolitan. That’s like being called a douche-bag by Andy Dick.

And…and listen to Mitt Romney from the same convention. He said, “If America really wants change, it’s time to look for the sun in the west, because it’s about to rise and shine from Arizona and Alaska. Of course, if the sun actually did rise in the west, that would mean the earth is spinning backwards and we’d all fly into space. But, then Mormons were never big on science. As you well know.

But, what Mitt was getting at is that the East Coast is where all the liberals, with their bad ideas, come from. You know, bad ideas like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. As opposed to the brilliant ideas that have come out of the west like frontier justice and wearing cowboy boots with a suit.

The ideas this nation was founded on came from the most cosmopolitan people of their day, the founding fathers, who believed in science, who looked to Europe for wisdom, and who had no use for ignorant hicks like Bush and Palin.

Truth is – the truth is, as America moved west and got farther away from its birthing in Boston and Philadelphia, it became less American, not more. We keep hearing about small-town values, you know, like shooting wolves from an airplane or forcing your daughter into a doomed, loveless marriage.

Cities are about diversity of thought. Small towns are about…well, crystal meth. And, last year, police found 42 meth labs in Sarah Palin’s home county. Drug addiction is a terrible thing, but apparently it beats living in Wasilla sober.

There’s so much meth in this town, I’m surprised the Palins didn’t have a kid named ”Tweaker.“

So, now I know what they mean when they talk about the Alaska spirit. Ah, yes, Alaska, where the townsfolk are jittery and the hockey players screw right through the condoms.

Shorter version:

Dear Madame Speaker,

Believe and say what we tell you to believe and say or else.

Sincerely,

Money
[From TPM Election Central | Talking Points Memo |]

Here’s a response I would sign:

OK, just sent $100 to BHO, and this letter to Speaker Pelosi, CC’d my Gov and Congressional delegation as well.

Dear Speaker Pelosi-

Thank you for your service to our country, and to the Democratic Party.

I read today with disgust a letter, addressed to you, which can only be interpreted as an attempt to blackmail the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the most powerful woman in the United States. This letter from so-called significant Clinton donors implies their money will dry up if you do not publicly endorse their scheme to throw the Democratic nomination to the candidate with fewer votes, fewer delegates, and the fewest states won. I ask simply that you hold your ground, for the good of the country and our Party.

Perhaps I am especially sensitive to this scheme, as I am a local Party leader in a red state- one of the states that Senator Clinton and her surrogates say doesn’t matter. I am only too aware that a Clinton candidacy will mean no money and no support for my state, while simultaneously punishing Congressional candidates simply for being associated with her toxic campaign.

These tactics are too frequent, too pointed to ignore. For years, I have consoled myself that even in lost campaigns the Democratic Party was fighting for the common people and the common good, for civil rights and economic fairness. Foreign investors do not write our foreign policy, oil corporations do not write our environmental policy, multi-billion dollar corporations do not write our labor policy and tax code, and we do not use the politics of fear and race baiting. This blatant effort by twenty individuals to hijack the nomination process because of their corporate interests, combined with the gut-wrenching tactics of the Clinton campaign, flies in the face of all I have believed of the Democratic Party.

Please help me fight for what’s right, what’s good in this country. Please stand up and defend the millions of us who do not make millions of dollars, who do not have the option to buy our place and the political table, and who don’t happen to live in Democratic strongholds. We matter, too.

Again, many thanks for all your efforts.

Posted by Veronica Corningstone

Or as a comic store employee explained to me back then, the problem with Sandman was that people bought it to read, and they couldn’t be persuaded to just buy lots of copies as investment items. [From little bit of politics]

<scratches head> People really do that?

We have a tyrant in the White House. To argue otherwise is foolish. And we should be afraid. President Bush has nothing to lose: he’s comfortable with his 30% approval numbers; he’s a lame duck; he seemingly doesn’t care about his legacy or the GOP’s future; and he’s willing to shred the Constitution, with a smug grin on his face, in order to achieve his goals. This is a perilous time for the nation. [From The Rule of Law]

Finally, Rumsfeld managed to be the first secretary of defense in history not just to botch two wars, but to botch two wars simultaneously. For that, no one should ever listen to this man ever again. Whatever he says is discredited by the sheer fact that he’s the one saying it. He should be legally obligated to end of all his sentences with, “…but, on the other hand, I’m a total jackass.” [From old man, take a look at your life]

Andrew Olmsted, who also posted here as G’Kar, was killed yesterday in Iraq. Andy gave me a post to publish in the event of his death; the last revisions to it were made in July.

[From Obsidian Wings: Andy Olmsted]

My feeble words here and here. The official confirmation.

[Wolf] Blitzer has the air of a man who never earned a game uniform in his life but is now a fanatical fantasy sports participant, with a closet full of replica jerseys. [From The Year of Tragical Thinking]

I’ve believed since the mid 1990s that a virulent tax revolt (as in, no Republican government at any level is permitted to collect taxes) on a national scale, from the Left, would introduce a sexy new element into one of the radical Right’s long-juiced wet dreams.

Further, arming this citizen tax revolt with the guns and the lusty rhetoric about guns thrown around by the unAmerican cowardly Right like Viagra to their testosterone caucus would satisfy their other masturbatory fantasy.

Can you imagine Sean Hannity and Tom Delay and Dick Cheney and Wayne LaPierre (the dickless poodle of lock and load) and Grover Norquist and Erick Erickson and a cast of thousands huddled in the FOX studios letting the spittle fly at their last working microphone as the government they hate is destroyed by the very tools they lovingly and so determinedly demagogued for so long and by their most hated enemies.

It would be like being inside Robespierre’s head as he took that last look into the basket below.

I doubt they have enough working synapses to realize it’s the end of their movie.