Getting past Palin

Now that Sarah Palin has the all-time bestselling book among adult illiterates and inbred marginal Yale grads (assuming the latter isn’t a subset of the former), 400-and-something pages in which she ostensibly blames everyone she’s ever met for everything that’s ever gone wrong in her life (hasn’t she ever heard of bitching to a therapist and blaming her parents for it all?), can we possibly get back to shit that matters to those of us who can tell their ass from a hole in the ground? (This just in: Palin has publicly assailed her ghost writer Lynn Vincent for unfairly portraying her as someone with a predilection towards casting blame.)

-Depending on the congressional district in which you reside, by now you may have seen one or more commercials from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce attacking your representative and the federal government for putting forth a health care reform plan that WILL, make no mistake, directly cause rabid mutant orangutans to break in to your home and feast on the heads of your living children. The USCC is, of course, only doing this because it is an organization made up of patriotic Americans whose sole aim is to look out for the little guy who, unlike said patriotic Americans, has to pay the taxes for which the government bills him or her.

-It’s simple. 90 percent tax on all financial services industry bonuses in excess of one million dollars per person. Period. They recovered because the government lent them money. Now the rest of us need to recover. The people giveth, and the people can taketh away in order to giveth to others. That’s not socialism, nor is it capitalism. It’s democracy. You don’t like it? Go trade derivatives and credit default swaps in China.

-Afghanistan, all in or all out. Either we send enough troops to decimate al Qaeda and the Taliban, permanently, and we run the country as a protectorate until our experts are sure it can be run internally without supporting, or being supported by, terrorist activity; or we call it a loss, get the hell out and let the Taliban run roughshod over anyone who ever dared oppose it. This half-assed, “they can keep holding phony elections and let Karzai pretend there’s an actual government” approach is nothing but a recipe for McCain’s prospect of a latter-day Hundred Years War.

-Can Burger King actually believe that its current, long-running campaign, using the creepiest-looking corporate mascot in U.S. advertising history, is actually attracting any new business at all? Piece of advice from Joe Nobody here: If your ad agency insists on using the creative team that did the rewrites on the last three “Nightmare on Elm Street” sequels, just fire them and go back to “Have it your way” until you can pull together some new talent.

-Re: Pelosi’s regrettable “Are you serious?” response: Yes, it’s true, politicians get flustered. Rumor has it that even former President Bush was occasionally unprepared with a wise and coherent answer to a question. But that’s just a rumor started by the elitist liberal intelligentsia that control the U.S. media in their entirety. In any case, no, nowhere in the Constitution does it say anything about health care. Nor is there an article on building interstate highways, a clause on granting broadcasting licenses, nor a single word about standardized testing. You say you’re still a strict constructionist? A luddite? An abject moron? Should we amend the Constitution with each and every technological and economic development? Are you serious?

-Last but least: This morning’s CNN news crawl included the item “Economy not as strong as believed.” Putting aside the repugnant use of the passive voice in news (the official CNN style guide strikes again), we should clarify the lack of attribution. Apart from a small handful of economists who are paid to look at the economy through rose-colored graphics, no one actually believed it.