The Palin bump is over; it's all downhill from here

"McCain is being viewed as running for Bush's Third Term. The Palinpalooza is basically over, despite the attempts of some to keep it going." - From Big Ticket Democrat/Talk Left
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Another piece in Talk Left said: "Obama [is] regaining the momentum in the presidential race and leading John McCain. It's not just the economy. It's also McCain's opportunistic pick of Gov. Sarah Palin for Vice President. A majority of those polled (pdf)find her unqualified and 3/4 of them believe she was selected primarily to help McCain win. "




"More than half of registered voters do not think she is prepared for the job of Vice President, and a majority express concern about Palin being able to take over the presidency, if necessary. Even supporters of John McCain cite “inexperience” as what they like least about her. Palin’s unfavorable rating is also up eight points from last week."
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Palin-McCain Halloween Card

From the often amusing blog site, BartCop.com, a Halloween card. . .
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John McCain: "I have oversight over every part of the economy." Nice job, John. You're starting to look like Herbert Hoover.

"Sen. McCain bragged about how as chairman of the Commerce Committee in the Senate, he had oversight of every part of the economy. Well, all I can say to Sen. McCain is, 'Nice job. Nice job,'" said Barack Obama to a rally at a baseball stadium in Las Vegas.

"Where is he getting these lines? The lobbyists running his campaign?"

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60 Frames campaign ad video: "I masturbated to Sarah Palin."

Get tough. get mad, supporters tell Obama

According to an Associated Press story today, "Worried Democrats want Barack Obama to get tougher, show more passion. Why is he so calm, supporters ask, so close to an election that looks so tight.

"Just keep steady," Obama tells the nervous Nellies. "I'm skinny but I'm tough. I'm from Chicago."

"Obama hears the concern, from senior Democrats and big-money contributors, from columnists and supporters along the rope lines at campaign events. He heard it again as he stood in an hour-long receiving line in Hollywood to pose for pictures with donors who paid $28,500 to be with him Tuesday night." The full story can be found here.
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Holy S**t! The October surprise? It Depends®

By Pablo Fanque,
All This Is That National Affairs editor
Washington, D.C. 9-18-2008 12:15 AM EDT

No one quite expected this October surprise, if it comes to that. All This Is That received a tip over the weekend from a G.O.P. insider that John McCain is incontinent and wears adult diapers around the clock.

I jumped onto the story Sunday, after Jack Brummet called from the All This Is That offices. The first call I made was to sources in the Democratic Party. Interestingly, they wouldn't touch the story. The first two people I called told me to drop it. "Pablo, this story is going nowhere. This is just some crap a blogger cooked up in San Francisco."

My next call was to a Democrat I knew would never lie. She may not tell me the truth, but she would never lie about the facts. "Look, just drop it," she said. "We can't even come within 50 miles of this story. Yeah. I've heard some stuff. But there is no way we're going to touch this story. We have nothing to gain and everything to lose. If it comes out, fine. But no way is it coming out of here."



"How so?," I asked? "Look, Pablo. . .the second this story comes out, the McCain campaign will tie it to the P.O.W. years. This malady, this incontinence, will be attributed to his years in the prison camp. It will become a net positive—another hero's scars—and we will be skewered for playing the politics of personal destruction. And the McCain campaign will milk the P.O.W. angle for another month. I did hear some Dem P.A.C. has been working this, and they have photographic evidence, and someone willing to talk."

I called a Republican friend who works for the R.N.C. "How high are you, Pablo? The Democrats are putting their heads in the sand on this one. They'll bide their time in hopes the story emerges elsewhere. They're way more spooked than we are on this one." "But why has nothing been mentioned in the press? Or the blogs and websites, even?" I asked. "You thought the John Edwards story was bottled up? No one wants to make the first move! Yuk."

The story slowly percolates, and it may be only a matter of time before it hits the mainstream media. There are rumors at least one tabloid has enough evidence—flimsy and otherwise—to break the story in the next week.
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Democratic carbon offsets stiff at the box office

By Pablo Fanque
All This Is That National Affairs Editor

The Aspen Canary Initiative to sell carbon offset credits to Democratic National Convention can only be described as pathetically moribund and doomed from the start. The program, set up by the Dem's Host Committee raised a total of $18.34 worth of Canary Tags, offsetting .9 tons of carbon emissions, or, approximately, not enough to offset a fraction of one state's airfare to the convention let alone thousands of delegates and guests.

The offsets were aimed at DNC-goers other than the official delegates, who had a separate carbon offset program through Vermont-based Native Energy. That program, set up in January through the Democratic National Convention Committee, was utilized by 65 percent of the DNC’s 4,440 delegates, and may have actually made a difference.
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An amazing Guiness record

Svetlana Pankratova is the Guinness World Record-holder for the woman with the longest legs.

She recently met China’s He Pingping, who, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is the world’s shortest man.

The photo op you see above took place yesterday at London’s Trafalgar Square. Pankratova’s legs measure 4.33 feet [jack note: my inseam is a meager 29 inches]. She is 6′7″ and the 20 year old He Pingping, is 2′5″.
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From Robo-poet: The Throbbing Vortex

Robo-poet is a cut-up style poetry generator (cut-ups are a form "popularized" by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin).

Clearly they structured this poetry generator around lines beginning with an adjective and noun, and ending with a verb paired with an -ly adverb. This might be OK for a couplet, but any longer generated poems end up seeming rote.

This poem would be better if you deleted all the line-ending adverbs (like most writing), and varied the adjective-noun constructions. However, as I dip into all the internet poetry generators, I do want to give you their flavor. Clearly, moving the verbs around in the sentence would also help.

Robo-poet uses a fairly interesting vocabulary, and you could, with some editing, create interesting poems from its output. Robot-poet would work better without such a fomulaic approach to the line.


aggressive street dies thinly
dingy corduroy sucks impersonally
soundless rider sullies unholily


broken dream capitulates bleakly
throbbing dream usurps perfunctorily
perfect rider nags dimly


vestigal life boils grimly
capricious dope crashes irritably
concrete nothing defies awfully


deliberate enticement sucks triumphantly
uniform body smotes awfully
traveled vortex capitulates dazzlingly


foul light concocts sleeplessly
stout enticement looks hysterically
throbbing vortex shrieks completely


undisciplined entry mars completely
baleful enticement envelops dimly
raveled vowel nourishes dryly
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The Puzzle, my dogtags, my avatar

The Generator Blog leads you to all sorts of internet toys, mostly similar to our beloved church sign generator. Here are my puzzle, my dogtags, and my avatar.

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A poem from the Poetry Generator: The Cloud Endures

1
The cloud endures like a red sun.
Winds calmly rise like a dead captain.

2
Love, adventure, and anger.
Work, anger, and death.

3
Laughter, anger and death.
The dusty skyscraper grabs the truck.
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33 year old mom steals daughter's identity to attend high school and earn her pom-poms

Wendy Brown is shown in a booking mug shot on Sept. 4, 2008, in
Green Bay, Wis. after her arrest for felony identity theft after
enrolling in Ashwaubenon High School as her daughter
(Photo: Brown County Sheriff's Office)

According to sketchy reports stitched together from various media outlets, Wendy Brown is being charged with felony identity theft after enrolling in High School, posing as her 15-year-old daughter, who lives with her grandparents in another state.

Brown wanted to earn her high school degree and become a cheerleader "because she didn't have a childhood and wanted to regain a part of her life that she'd missed," says the complaint.

She attended classes, and even went to cheer practice and a cheer pool party at the coaches' [1] home . If she is convicted, she could face up to six years in prison, and a large fine as well. We have no word if she snagged a boyfriend (which would be good for another six years if she consummated with said BF), or earned her pom-poms in her short stint at Ashwaubenon.


School officials were immediately suspicious and began investigating the long-in-the-tooth freshman after the first day of school.

[ (1) the plural possessive of coach just doesn't look right to us. But it is, at least according to our usual grammar sources.]
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