DINNER WITH SARAH

Sarah Palin is auctioning off a dinner date with herself and her husband Todd. The bids on eBay start at $25,000, but the winner does not necessarily get dinner with Sarah and Todd. “Governor Palin reserves the right to refuse dinner with a winning bidder if, in her sole discretion, the winning bidder is not a suitable bidder based on her subjective standards of suitability, professionalism, background and other factors.” In other words, if she doesn’t like your politics, you don’t get the date, even though you have paid at least $25,000. If you are rejected, your money will be refunded, and the next highest bidder will get the invitation. And the background check.

Retired English professor and presidential candidate Dr. Carl Perrin thinks this is one of the best ideas Sarah has had yet. He’s going to try the same thing. The opening bid for dinner with Perrin will be just $100. You can’t go wrong. Dinner will be at any pizza joint in Ocean County, NJ, as long as it serves beer.

The money raised from dinner with Sarah is going to a charity, Ride 2 Recovery. Any money raised from the dinner with Perrin auction, on the other hand, will go toward buying cheap beer for Perrin.

Sarah is screening bidders so she won’t have to eat with a liberal. Perrin is placing no such restriction on his auction. If the high bidder starts yakking away like a right wing nutcase, Perrin will just shut off his hearing aid.

PRESIDENT TO TALK TO STUDENTS

OMG, on September 8 the President is going to talk to American students about the importance of education and the importance of staying in school! Help! Help! The sky is falling!

Even though George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan gave speeches that were broadcast over public television to a number of school districts, some Republicans believe that Barack Obama’s speech is an obvious attempt to brainwash America’s school children. According to this view, if President Obama speaks to school children, it must be some kind of liberal plot. A spokeswoman for the Florida Republican Party says the President should not be telling children what to do. Evidently that means he shouldn’t be telling them to stay in school. Why doesn’t Obama take a cue from George W. Bush, who was in school listening to children read on 9/11? After he was told about the attack on the twin towers, Bush stayed in the class for another half hour. Perhaps he just wanted to know how the story ended.

If the President is allowed to talk to America’s students, the networks ought to allow Sarah or Rush or some other right wing nut to respond. They can tell the Republican point of view: Education ain’t going to do you no good nohow.

We can understand why Republican think that way. If kids get too much education, they won’t fall for right wing bullshit anymore.

COW SHIT

Leave it to New Englanders not to throw away anything that might be put to good use. Central Vermont Public Service has found a way to create electricity from cow manure.

The cow poop is stored in underground tanks and kept at 101 degrees. The process creates methane, which is used as fuel for generating electricity. Methane is more harmful than carbon dioxide in contributing to global warming.

It is definitely a win-win situation. Instead of creating global warming, the methane helps generate electricity. The dairy farmers get paid for the electricity produced by their cows. This provides a steady income for the farmers, which helps offset the fluctuation in milk prices. Furthermore, since pathogens in the manure are killed by the process, the final byproduct can be used for bedding for the cows.

What is needed now is way spread this program nationwide. We need a commissioner of cow shit. Fortunately, we know just the man to serve in that office. Former English professor, Dr. Carl Perrin, grew up on a dairy farm in New Hampshire. If anyone knows cow shit, it is Dr. Perrin.

We know the president is busy with all kinds of stuff, but someone in the administration should bring to the president’s attention the environmental benefits of a cow shit commission and Dr. Perrin’s qualifications to head that commission.

REPUBLICANS ON HEALTH CARE

Rush is screaming that the proposed health care logo looks like a Nazi symbol. What is the point of that? Does it mean that the attempt to spread health care to more Americans is somehow related to the Nazis? Others are yelling that the ideas being put forth by the Democrats are really socialized medicine. So which is it? Are the Democrats supposed to be Nazis or Socialists?

Now the Republicans are sending goons to disrupt meetings where members of Congress are trying to get ideas from the people about health care. That’s really democracy in action: disrupt exchanges of information on one of the most important issues of the day.

And Sarah—God bless her—is charging that the president’s health plan is “downright evil.” She says, "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care."

Where do these people get their ideas? How could anyone think of her as a plausible candidate for the presidency of the United States?

SARAH RESIGNS

Most people don’t know this, but Sarah Palin is resigning as Governor of Alaska effective later this month. This news is little known because in front of an audience of dozens, the governor announced the resignation on the eve of the Fourth of July weekend when the media were already preoccupied with the death of Michael Jackson. However, the people who read this blog, all 25 of you, will know, and I hope you will spread the word to the rest of the country.

She is resigning because of apathy, not her own but that of the rest of the country. “It would be apathetic to just hunker down and go with the flow,” she said, but she is not going to do that. She is going to leave office before the end of her term and leave the state in the good hands of Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell. Wow, I don’t know why we didn’t think of that before.

Sarah went on to say that she chooses “to work very hard for fruitfulness and productivity.” It goes without saying that she also chooses to fight for truth, justice, and the American way and all that kind of stuff.

Ultimately Sarah is making this sacrifice for the good of the citizens of Alaska. With only a year and a half to go in her term, she is a lame-duck. We all know that lame-ducks cannot accomplish much. She is not going to be like other lame ducks and become a burden to tax payers. “Many,” she said, "just accept that lame-duck status, hit the road, draw the paycheck and milk it.” But not Sarah. “I’m not putting Alaska through that.”

A lot of people used to think that Sarah Palin is an airhead, but the logic of her resignation announcement should put an end to that kind of talk.

REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS

Where is South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford? He is so tired after trying to refuse money from the federal government for education and economic stimulus that he’s just worn out. So he’s hiking along the Appalachian Trial, communing with nature, and renewing himself spiritually. So what if the state police, the lieutenant governor, and his wife don’t know where he is. He just needed to get away.

No! That’s not it at all. He took a quick trip to Argentina, no doubt on some kind of state business.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney denies that Sanford conferred with him about some good undisclosed locations to go to.

Oh no! He was in Argentina, but instead of state business, it was monkey business! It turns out he was having a little fling with someone he met in Argentina a year ago when he went there on an economic development trip. He is resigning as head of the Republican Governors Association. A few months ago some crazies were talking about Sanford as a Republican candidate for the presidency in the next election. I guess that’s all over now.

Meanwhile Alaska Governor Sarah Palin got some “great news for Alaska.” The Supreme Court said it was okay for an Alaskan gold mine to dump waste into nearby Lower Slate Lake, even though the dumping will kill all the fish in the lake.

Palin is calling on other polluters to dump their crap into Alaska’s lakes. She says the Supreme Court’s ruling is "is a green light for responsible resource development."

NIGHT ON THE TOWN

OMG! President Obama took his wife out on a date for dinner and a Broadway play! To hear Republicans react to it, you would think that he started an illegal war, lied to the American people, squandered a financial surplus and left the country with a huge deficit, hired incompetents for various federal agencies, or something like that.

But no! Instead he took his wife out on a date. How much is that date costing the American people? the Republicans fumed. Why couldn’t he take her out on a date in Washington, D.C., where there would not have been the cost of flying the president and his wife to New York?

Why not, indeed? Well, Mr. Big-Bucks Republican, if you promised to take your sweetie pie to see a Broadway show, would you (and she) be willing to settle for dinner at a local diner and a community theatre production? Why should the president deserve anything less? It’s not like he’s taking golfing trips to Scotland paid for by a since-convicted lobbyist (like a former House Republican).

The expense you seem to be object to is evidently the cost of flying to the Big Apple. Would you have the president book a civilian flight to the city and stand in line to board the flight? Maybe you would prefer that he just stay in the White House and watch a video.

Come on, Republicans. Face it, you don’t have a platform. You just want to go back to the good old days of George W. Bush. How pathetic!