Business

• Television sports reporter, 1987-1989
• Co-owner of a commercial fishing operation, 1988-2007
• Owner, sport vehicle rental business, 1994-1997
• Chairwoman, Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, 2003-2004

Politics

• Governor of Alaska, elected 2006
• Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, 1996-2002
• Wasilla City Council, 1992-1996

Aaaaaand…that’s it.

(And Sarah? It’s pronounced NU-CLE-ER)

Maverick, maverick and the maverick. Maverick mavericky maverickton. Tom Cruise is Maverick maverick maverick Goose.

Friggin’ Maverick.

Mave to the rick.

Maverick.

As Maureen Dowd pointed out on October 5th, “Palin…uses a heck of a lot of language to praise herself as a fresh face with new ideas who has “joined this team that is a team of mavericks.” True mavericks don’t brand themselves.”

Who does something like that? Who refers to themselves with such glowing praise (besides the Idea of Progress, natch)? If I continuously refer to myself as a hero or genius, wouldn’t it make you want to slap me, more than you probably already want to do? For instance:

You should read me every day. Not only am I a hero and champion of the little guy, but I am also extremely handsome and witty.

Which is all true. I wrote it, you read it, and maybe if I say it again it will sink in:

You should read me every day. Not only am I a hero and champion of the little guy, but I am also extremely handsome and witty.

Now to cast some blame on both sides of the aisle: Main Street.

I hate this description. Are Americans so stupid that we will only understand what you’re talking about if it’s in a catch phrase ?

“Yeah, that’s the ticket”
“You’re fired!”
“Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?”
“Where’s the beef?”

Main Street isn’t even the most popular street in the US. In case you’re wondering, the most popular street names in order are as follows:

1. Second
2. Third
3. First
4. Fourth
5. Park
6. Fifth
7. Main
8. Sixth
9. Oak
10. Seventh
11. Pine
12. Maple
13. Cedar
14. Eighth
15. Elm
16. View
17. Washington
18. Ninth
19. Lake
20. Hill

Which means Park Avenue is more common than Main Street. I’m insulted every time I hear Obama and Biden use the term… I expect nothing less of the Republican party, which has done nothing less than attempt to mislead the public that their economic and social policies reflected those of most Americans, that not adhering to these policies makes you somehow unpatriotic. This is while they cry out “Tax Cuts!” and “Abortion!” and “War!”

We’re better than that. I’d hope that they are, too.

It was only a matter of time until Tina Fey played Sarah Palin.

From Funny or Die.

Since I’ve been gone for so long, and I switched over to Wordpress, I don’t even have the blog updated. I can’t figure out how to change the strange pictures of Italy at the top, I don’t know why 100,000 categories appear on the left hand side, and most importantly, I don’t have a blogroll set up anymore.

Until today.

I think I’m going to start the blogroll over, and tell you when and why I add people.

Drumroll please.

Grant Miller Media- The first blog I read with any regularity, Mr. Miller returned the favor by occasionally gracing tIoP with his comments and eventually adding the Idea of Progress to his blogroll, which gained it a number of readers.

Of course, since I disappeared, I’ve been removed from his blogroll and he has vanished, along with my dignity and self-respect. Damn you, Miller!

The International House of Blogcakes- Once my sworn enemy, McGone and I have come to an uneasy peace…much like his Magneto to my Professor Xavier.

Adventures in Self-Loathing- Ever since Laaw-yuhr got a job, she’s been mostly absent, but I’m going to put her down here anyway.

Buckle Up With the Guv’ner- I was a big fan of Psychotic Secretary, but since I have been unavailable, it appears she has moved.

EDIT: It looks like she lives here now.

Rocketradio- Katrocket was I believe the first to notice I was back. For that alone, her wit, charm and talent nonwithstanding, she gets on here.

I have about five more I want to post, but I need to get my day moving, so maybe tomorrow. If you’re not on here and you think you should be, well, I will probably add you tomorrow.

But.

I may as well throw a little politics into the mix. Seems Sarah Palin was actually on McCain’s list of objectionable pork spending. You know, back when he had opinions of his own. Interesting.

We still don’t know a lot about Palin except that she’s better at delivering a speech than McCain and that she defends her own pregnant daughter’s right to privacy even as she would have the government intrude to police the reproductive choices of all other women. Most of the rest of the biography supplied by her and the McCain camp is fiction.

She didn’t say “no thanks” to the “Bridge to Nowhere” until after Congress had already abandoned it but given Alaska a blank check for $223 million in taxpayers’ money anyway. Far from rejecting federal pork, she hired lobbyists to secure her town a disproportionate share of earmarks ($1,000 per resident in 2002, 20 times the per capita average in other states). Though McCain claimed “she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,” she has never issued a single command as head of the Alaska National Guard. As for her “executive experience” as mayor, she told her hometown paper in Wasilla, Alaska, in 1996, the year of her election: “It’s not rocket science. It’s $6 million and 53 employees.” Her much-advertised crusade against officials abusing their office is now compromised by a bipartisan ethics investigation into charges that she did the same.

How long before we learn she never shot a moose?

What happened to John McCain? It seems to me that one day someone will write a play or a movie about his fall from grace, from the one Republican that I liked, respected and yes, might not has been horrified if he found his way to the presidency.

But those days are long, long gone. It started with his insistance that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the antharax attacks and 9/11 and has led down this place where the once pro-choice, envirmentally concerned war hero has become a party tool, who has become anti-choice, anti-enviroment, and has apparently lost sight of anything except te potential prize of the Oval Office.

I wonder what he thinks about when he’s not memorizing new opinions.

It just makes me sad.