Sorry guys, I'm figuring something out.

Two canadians got a hold of Sarah Palin's contact number, pretended to be the French President, and asked her a bunch of questions... Holy shit, you mean it already happened?

Call me a suck up, just don't call me. I hate your phone calls. [/sarcasm]
Seriously, if your in Ohio and can vote on this ballot, do it. I've met the man, he is a solid choice that isn't out to be an activist. He sees things impartially and with sound, constitutional logic. I, from my miniature and somewhat unimportant soap box, am personally endorsing John Fickes for Judge. We need more judges like him.

Apparently, Facebook has found this blog to be "malicious," and is advising users to navigate away from my site. I have contacted them concerning this but have yet to receive a return message. Assholes.

So, let me state this right now: I have not, nor will I ever host malicious content on this webpage. This is a venue for me to discuss issues that intrigue me and for you to reply back. Just so you know, I'm looking out for ya'!

While I normally don't pursue this type of "speculative journalism," an idea popped into my mind that I just can't let go of. The more I think about it, the more fitting the nuances of the whole idea become: That Sarah Palin was not only picked as a last-chance, hail-mary candidate, but also as the one who the GOP could intentionally scapegoat for the failure of the McCain campaign should (read: when) Obama take(s) the general election.

In light of the recent unethical and unlawful violations Palin was found to have committed, a lot of us are simply piling the report onto the mound of evidence that Palin was never capable of being the Vice President. The interesting part is that we already knew this when she was nominated, we knew it when the McCain camp insisted that she had been properly vetted, and we sure as hell know it now after those infamous Katie Couric dialogs. There is no way that the GOP really thought she was a valid running mate. While they may be out of touch, they're not insane. Well, maybe they are insane -- but they're certainly not trying to lose.

So why pick a fringe, hyper-conservative loose canon like Palin to back McCain's run? Answer: to see if she could rattle the base and steal enough Clinton supporters to win the election... and because they knew that if the stunt didn't pay off they could simple say "she couldn't handle the pressure of national politics as she led us to believe she could." Sarah Palin means nothing to McCain or the GOP if she doesn't get McCain the election. They are treating her like an expendable commodity when they refuse to let her speak to non-friendly media alone or reduce her canned speeches to circular talking points.

This alone is enough to make me feel bad for Palin. It's clear she doesn't have the poise to perform on the national stage, but it isn't because she won't try, it's because she isn't at the same level of competition. She is a small town, low-profile governor asked to play the role of big city politician. Frankly, it was never fair, but I digress.

If you'll remember, the Palin pick was announced the day after Obama rocked his DNC speech and put a surge of electricity into the Democrat's battle wagon. Palin obviously shocked the country too, but not for the same reasons. Would we have seen the same response had McCain chosen any of the other names that were thrown around? Certainly Elizabeth Dole, Joe Lieberman, or Tim Pawlenty would have all been solid picks for the ticket. So again, why Palin? Because names like Dole, Pawlenty, Huckabe, Romney, and Thomspon are already established GOPers with something to lose. The country sensed a Dem win in 2008 and so did the Republican strategists. I don't think they wanted to risk tanking the career of another one of their already successful, tenured party members. Palin offered a way out.

She, the great gamble, just might have turned the numbers and picked up the Hillary vote, but if she didn't her failure would be peanuts to the big red elephants. After a loss, she would likely slip back into obscurity in Alaska. While it might end her career, it wouldn't hurt the party elite. So, knowing that she wasn't ready to be on the national level, knowing that she had all kinds skeletons in her closet, but also knowing she was a woman that could draw the conservatives in by the tens of thousands and pull off the miracle of the century, they picked her. Very Bush doctrine, preemptive scapegoating, don't you think?

For the sake of decency, let's hope I'm wrong.

I am not an expert on all of this, nor do I think one has to be to have a reasonable and educated opinion. On the other side, I do think you need to have a brain. So, enjoy this troll pointing out just how stupid some McPalinites actually are and how little effort they put into understanding just what the GOP is teaching them to shit out of their mouths.

In the spirit of the debate as Belmont University tomorrow, I offer you the Sarah Palin debate flow chart. No doubt McCain will have something similar written on his note cards.

A good friend of mine wrote this up today. I think it's a fantastic image of what Bush, Reagan, and Dubyah have done with the budget in the last 20 some years. You should note that the only president since Carter to lower the national debt (as a percent of GDP) was Clinton. Anyway, here is that post:

As of early this morning, the national debt is $10,028,587,281,302. That is such a disgustingly horrible amount of money that it really is impossible to even think about. So, I thought it would be interesting to put something like this into a different perspective.

The $1 bill is 0.51 feet in length. If you lined up $10,028,587,281,302 in a single row of $1 bills and aimed it toward the sky, it would reach 968,670,362 miles into space. The planet Saturn is about 820,000,000 miles away from Earth. So, the current national debt in $1 bills would extend 148,670,632 miles PAST Saturn.

Also, as of this morning, the national debt is increasing at about $2.76 billion a day. Using $1 bills again, that translates into an additional 266,591 miles of extended debt into the depths of our solar system per day. This is the best part: That number can be converted into 11,108 miles of $1 bills per hour. The speed of sound is 767 mph. If our nation's debt was being shot into space, it would be traveling 14.5 times the speed of sound. Mach 14.5!

One more little piece of trivia. The (dwarf) planet Pluto has a minimum distance of 2.7 billion miles away from Earth. Given the distance already traveled, the debt has 1,731,329,638 more miles to go to reach Pluto (which is about $18 trillion). At the CURRENT $2.76 billion increase per day, the national debt will reach Pluto and approach the edge of the solar system in the summer of 2026.

Oh!, these numbers DO NOT include the additional $700 billion that may or may not be added to the national debt as a part of the bailout plan.

Well spoken, Joshua. You're smarter than McCain would give you credit for.

Bill O'Reilly is a joke.

73% of America disapproves of Bush. John McCain voted with Bush's policies 90% of the time. I know this is a little bit of a cloudy figure given that the President's approval rating wasn't always so low, but considering Bush's approval has been dropping for seven years, it means McCain disagrees with America 65.7% of the time. A stat like that can only mean one thing: Time to pull out the Asinine tag!!!

Have a great Tuesday.