Gripedujour

From the Associated Press:

When Palin needed to sell her house during her last year as Wasilla mayor, she got the city to sign off on a special zoning exception— and did so without keeping a promise to remove a potential fire hazard.

She gladly accepted gifts from merchants: A free “awesome facial” she raved about in a thank-you note to a spa. The “absolutely gorgeous flowers” she received from a welding supply store. Even fresh salmon to take home.

More on this story here.

Really funny clip of Bill Clinton on Saturday Night Live throwing his “support” behind Obama.

Here’s some old tape of Sarah Palin from the 1984 Miss Alaska beauty pageant. This particular piece of footage is from the swimsuit competition, but the guy who posted it promised “more to come.”

Click here for the footage.

Via Shattermatch: Two days after a presidential debate many commentators scored as a tie, it’s beginning to look like the public saw things differently, as several polls show a small but significant post-debate boost for Barack Obama. A USA Today/Gallup poll released Sunday showed 46 percent of debate-watchers believed Obama outperformed John McCain, while just 34 percent said McCain got the better of the exchange.

Thirty percent of debate-watchers said they had a more favorable opinion of Obama following the debate, compared with just 14 percent who said their opinion of him had worsened.

Respondents whose opinion of McCain changed as a result of the debate were evenly split, as 21 percent said their view of McCain had improved because of it and 21 percent said it had worsened.

The poll surveyed 701 adults who watched Friday’s debate, and all interviews were conducted on Saturday.

More here and here.

Frank Rich has delivered another great piece in this Sunday’s New York Times. The op-ed takes a harsh look at McCain’s recent campaign suspension and what McCain’s behavior might mean to the country. Full piece here.

Opening with this barn burner, Rich comes flying out of the gate and never looks back:

WHAT we learned last week is that the man who always puts his “country first” will take the country down with him if that’s what it takes to get to the White House.

Moving on to:

When John McCain gratuitously parachuted into Washington on Thursday, he didn’t care if his grandstanding might precipitate an even deeper economic collapse. All he cared about was whether he might save his campaign. 

By the time he arrived, there already was a bipartisan agreement in principle. It collapsed hours later at the meeting convened by the president in the Cabinet Room. Rather than help try to resuscitate Wall Street’s bloodied bulls, McCain was determined to be the bull in Washington’s legislative china shop, running around town and playing both sides of his divided party against Congress’s middle. Once others eventually forged a path out of the wreckage, he’d inflate, if not outright fictionalize, his own role in cleaning up the mess his mischief helped make. Or so he hoped, until his ignominious retreat.

And this gem:

Yet even as he huffed and puffed about being a “leader,” McCain took no action and felt no urgency. As his Congressional colleagues worked tirelessly in Washington, he malingered in New York. He checked out the suffering on Main Street (or perhaps High Street) by conferring with Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, the Hillary-turned-McCain supporter best known for her fabulous London digs and her diatribes against Obama’s elitism. McCain also found time to have a well-publicized chat with one of those celebrities he so disdains, Bono, and to give a self-promoting public speech at the Clinton Global Initiative.

There was no suspension of his campaign. His surrogates and ads remained on television. Huffington Post bloggers, working the phones, couldn’t find a single McCain campaign office that had gone on hiatus. This “suspension” ruse was an exact replay of McCain’s self-righteous “suspension” of the G.O.P. convention as Hurricane Gustav arrived on Labor Day. “We will put aside our political hats and put on our American hats,” he declared then, solemnly pledging that conventioneers would help those in need. But as anyone in the Twin Cities could see, the assembled put on their party hats instead, piling into the lobbyists’ bacchanals earlier than scheduled, albeit on the down-low.

The only way to do the thing justice is to read the whole piece here.

Tina Fey was back for another stint as GOP VP candidate, Sarah Palin, on SNL last night and recreated key moments from the CBS Katie Couric interview.

Among the highlights were, “meeting the King of Ireland, Bono.” And her request to use one of her “lifelines” when pressed for specifics by Couric.

Watch video here.

Courtesy of Shattermatch:

 

 “W.,” starring Josh Brolin as the 43rd president, is shaping up as a hit — if not a blockbuster, at least a moneymaker poised to score multiple award nominations. That’s joke, right?

Apparently not. People who have seen the film, and there are not many at this point, have said the most astonishing part of the movie is that Josh Brolin has positively nailed Dubya. Insiders say Brolin channels Bush’s very soul in the same way Jamie Foxx inhabited Ray Charles’ skin in “Ray,” or the way Joaquin Phoenix captured Johnny Cash in “Walk the Line”. Brolin is said to be so impressive that there has been discussion of using his performance to market the entire picture. 

 

Read the rest of the story here.

And oh yeah, the story contains info on how to win a free Apple laptop, Video Camera and other stuff via some kind of Lionsgate “W” promotion.

“W’ Trailer here.