Palin Invents TelePalmer!

Former governor Sarah Palin demonstrated her innovative "TelePalmer" during her $100,000 speech at the Tea Party Convention.
Words such as "tax cuts," and "lift American spirits" were clearly visible written on her hand in an AP photo of the speech.

The genius part of her "TelePalmer" is that she did not use it to get through her speech. She's had plenty of time to practice that.

What she needed a middle-school cheat sheet for was the Q-and-A following the speech, where she was caught on video referring to her hand-written notes to answer a hard question. Here's the video - in seconds 47 through 49 the interviewer gives her an easy question ("What are the 3 most important things to do?") and when that stumps her, she just stops, looks at the notes written on her hand, and then gives an answer based on what she'd written there ("energy"). You won't believe it until you see it, and then you won't stop laughing:

As pundit Stephen Sirucek put it:

"This potential presidential candidate and "movement" leader was using crib notes to answer basic questions?

This would mean:

A) That she knew the questions beforehand and the whole thing was a farce. (Likely.)

and

B) That she still couldn't answer the previously agreed-upon questions without a little extra help.

If true, this is supremely rich coming immediately after a speech in which Palin took a shot at President Obama for using a teleprompter to read his prepared speeches.

You can bet that the President wasn't reading scribbles off his extremities while he sparred with Republicans and Democrats in an unscripted format in his recent Q&As.

Palin, on the other hand, seems to need a cheat-sheet just to get through a contrived lovefest with a smitten interviewer and an adoring audience.

I'm no fan of the Tea Party movement - if it can be called such - but if this is their leader I actually sympathize with them."

Actually, I have a much simpler explanation.

But first, a digression: 

I know a lot of  garden-variety, all-American working-class conservatives who are pretty angry at getting shafted by our nation's leadership: jobs shipped overseas, land wars in Asia unrelated to America's safety, government spying on citizens without court supervision, our money supply being controlled by private interests who won't even let themselves be audited. And so on and so on; the list is long. These people (like the rest of us) have a right to be angry, but they are being used by the same-old crowd of corporatists and aristocrats, and wannabes like the Palins, who just mouth whatever focus-group-tested keywords sound best. If the aristocrats have to write their keywords on their palms to remember them, so what? Their contempt for ordinary Americans is so great that even when we see them reading notes scribbled on their hands, they figure it doesn't matter!

I mean, really. Couldn't Palin have been just a little more subtle? You're gonna betray us, o.k., but do you have to insult our intelligence too?

Now, the simple explanation: Palin condemns Obama all the time for using a teleprompter because she thinks a teleprompter user is not fit to be president.

Formerly, I had thought this was due to typical rightwing technophobia. However, TelePalmGate has brought to light numerous photos of Palin herself using a TelePrompter.

The obvious answer is that, from some deep down well inside her, she is telling America that she is not fit to be president.

Let us praise her for her honesty, and accept her self-evaluation!

Sirocco the Sexually Confused Parrot Now Has a Job on the Internet

BBC's "Last Chance to See" made a star out of this randy parrot ...

... and now he's a spokesbird for conservationism at http://www.spokesbird.com/

You can help this happy bird! Start by sending a friend one of Sirocco's internet card for conservation: http://www.sirocco2010.com/

...which incidentally ties in nicely with this week's Change the World Wednesday challenge:

This week, send at least one electronic greeting card to friends and/or family (imagine their smiles). Then, come back here and share your favorite e-greeting link. I'll start you off with my favorite: Care2 Free eCards. 

A Penny for Your Banker Holiday Proposed

One penny out of every dollar spent in the United States of America in 2009 went for salaries and bonuses at Wall Street firms, prompting demands for a new federal holiday.

"We awarded ourselves $140 Billion in salary and bonusses in 2009," explained one investment banker, "That's about 1 percent of the $14 Trillion U.S. GDP. An accomplishment like that deserves a federal holiday. We call it 'A Penny for Your Banker Day!'"

Pundits cheered this accomplishment, "Every time you buy a 99 cent hamburger, what happens to that other penny?" one asked. "Don't worry, it's not lost! One way or another, it will end up safely in the pocket of a Wall Street banker!

"For example, if you spend $100 on groceries, a dollar of that goes through a complicated network of financial finagling to the people who helped collapse the economy. If you spend $10,000 on a used car, that's $100 for Wall Street - almost enough for a champagne lunch or half an hour with a moderately-priced hooker. If George Washington gets a holiday for something he did over two hundred years ago, why shouldn't Wall Street bankers get a holiday for something they're doing right now?"

Congress is expected to act quickly on the proposal. "There's an election in November," said one campaign manager, "And we all know that a happy Wall Street banker is a generous Wall Street Banker!"

===

(Even Fox News is boggled by the bonusses)

Best No-cook Meal: Fresh Mozzarella and Tomatoes

The key ingrediant to this quick, no-cook meal is a loaf of fresh Mozzarella cheeze. This is NOT the same as the stuff you might get in a block or shredded in a bag to put on pizza; it's softer, looking perhaps like pure white bread dough. I'll admit, when I first heard of this stuff, I was sceptical but one taste turned me around.

I get loaves of this at Costco, because their quality is fine and the price unbeatable, but a lot of stores carry it now. Last year, the Cheese Festival at Pike Place Market feature a guy making it from scratch and, reportedly, 5-minute-old fresh Mozzarella is an entire quantum level jump into transcendant realms of tastiness!

But for us mere mortals: cut up the cheese into one- or two-bite sizes. Cut some tomatoes to about the same size; use tomatoes that emphasize flavor rather than shippability for this (it's only half-a-pound of them, so splurge on a nice heirloom tomatoe if you can!) Sprinkle a little green herbs on top, preferably whatever you have fresh from the garden or, in the winter, your windowsill: chives, cilantro, whatever.

This is key: arrange nicely on a dish! It costs nothng and adds so much to the fun.

You're done!

Some people like to sprink a little sea salt or kosher salt on top. This definitely makes the taste more intense, at the cost of higher sodium. Check your body's needs and proceed accordingly.

Your wife will be pleased and happy that you've made her a quick dinner that didn't heat up the kitchen. For extra credit, add a side of sliced hard boiled eggs (you always keep a half-dozen boiled eggs in the fridge, right? right!) and some artichoke hearts (from that handy large Costco jar.) You are well on your way to cooking studery, with a minimum of effort!

Today's report was inspired by this week's Change the World Wednesday challenge:

"This week, plan an oven- and stove-free day, and no cheating and going out to eat! Have sandwiches, cut up fruit, veggies with dip, leftovers from a previous dinner .... Plan ahead and make a pasta salad you can eat cold for a few days. Have hummus, feta cheese, and spinach on a pita or wrap. There are tons of healthy, delicious meals you can have without having to turn on the stove! As an added plus, many of the meals are quick and easy to prepare!"

Due to the "leftovers" option, this was not a terribly difficult challenge as written; we typically cook a large meal on Sunday and then enjoy leftovers for a couple of days before freeing the rest (our freezer has three kinds of soups from as many weeks. If there's every a power outage, we'll we eating a lot of soup!)  However the challenge did help me realize that some of our favorite meals involve no cooking, or more precisely, no more cooking than went into preparing the goods before we got it. (I must ponder the energy impact of enjoying fresh tomatoes in the winter; they had to be shipped from somewhere other than my garden but somehow canned tomatoes would just not be the same!)

Anyway, even without the energy savings aspect of no-cook cuisine, this fresh mozzarella-and-tomato combination is so darn tasty that I really wanted to share it. Enjoy!