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Scraping Away the Lipstick

09/10/08

LNW_lipstickpigmccain The clever folks at TalkingPointsMemo.com designed this perky little porker, and now you can buy T-shirts from Zazzle.com by clicking here for women’s and for men’s.

On a slightly more serious note, in “My Fair Veep” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd poses some questions that ABC’s Charlie Gibson might consider asking in his exclusive, special, prime-time interview with Sarah Palin Friday night. Gibson’s problem, she says, “isn’t coming up with a list of questions, but finding time to drill deeply enough into all the unknown territory of her life. It’s a task that dwarfs the drilling job the oil companies are doing on Alaska’s North Slope.”

What kind of budget-cutter makes a show of getting rid of the state plane, then turns around and bills taxpayers for the travel of her husband and kids between Juneau and Wasilla and sticks the state with a per-diem tab to stay in her own home?
Why was Sarah for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against the Bridge to Nowhere, and why was she for earmarks before she was against them? And doesn’t all this make her just as big a flip-flopper as John Kerry?
What kind of fiscal conservative raises taxes and increases budgets in both her jobs—as mayor and as governor?
When the phone rings at 3 a.m., will she call the Wasilla Assembly of God congregation and ask them to pray on a response, as she asked them to pray for a natural gas pipeline?
Does she really think Adam, Eve, Satan and the dinosaurs mingled on the earth 5,000 years ago?
Why put out a press release about her teenage daughter’s pregnancy and then spend the next few days attacking the press for covering that press release?
As Troopergate unfolds here—an inquiry into whether Palin inappropriately fired the commissioner of public safety for refusing to fire her ex-brother-in-law—it raises this question: Who else is on her enemies list and what might she do with the F.B.I.?
Does she want a federal ban on trans fat in restaurants and a ban on abortion and Harry Potter? And which books exactly would have landed on the literature bonfire if she had had her way with that Wasilla librarian?
Just how is it that Fannie and Freddie have cost taxpayers money (since they haven’t yet)?
Does she talk in tongues or just eat caribou tongues?

Palin horrifies Cintra Wilson, who writes a red-hot rant at Salon titled “Pissed About Palin.” Must-read. Great lines. Palin, she says, is a “Republican blow-up doll,” and, in effect, the lipstick on that party’s “new authoritarianism.” Strong
stuff. Then, to cool down a little, read Gail Collins’s “Misery Loves Democrats.”