Keep talking Sarah, you're helping the Democrats.

The spinmeisters will be working overtime in McCain-ville. Every time Sarah Palin opens her mouth more junk comes out. Here are a few excerpts from her interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson:

Vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's assertion that she believes humans play a role in climate change — made in her first major interview since joining the Republican ticket — is at odds with her previous statements.

Palin said she didn't disagree with scientists that the problem can be attributed to "man's activities."

"Show me where I have ever said that there's absolute proof that nothing that man has ever conducted or engaged in has had any effect or no effect on climate change. I have not said that," Palin told ABC News in an interview broadcast Thursday and Friday.

OK, since you asked:
She has told the Internet news site Newsmax, "A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. ... I'm not one, though, who would attribute it to being man-made." That's one.

In an interview with a Fairbanks newspaper within the last year, Palin said: "I'm not an Al Gore, doom-and-gloom environmentalist blaming the changes in our climate on human activity." ABC cited the interview as being at odds with her statement.

Questions about Palin's knowledge of foreign policy dominated the interview with ABC's Charles Gibson. Palin repeated her earlier assertions that she's ready to be president if called upon, yet she sidestepped questions on whether she had the national security credentials needed to be commander in chief.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain has defended his running mate's qualifications, citing her command of the Alaska National Guard and Alaska's proximity to Russia.
Pressed about what insights into recent Russian actions she gained by living in Alaska, Palin told Gibson, "They're our next-door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska."

That statement is so ridiculous I find myself at a loss to comment. Discuss amongst yourselves. Russia? What year is this? Following that logic, if I can see Philadelphia from my back door that qualifies me to run the city.

Palin said that other than a trip to visit soldiers in Kuwait and Germany last year, her only other foreign travel was to Mexico and Canada.

Well, you have to go through Canada to get to the rest of the United States, so it figures that she would have been to Canada, and all you have to do is keep driving and you'll be in Mexico. I’m impressed. I’m also thinking my veal calf reference from the other day is entirely accurate.

I can see why the McCain campaign is anxious to keep Palin out of the spotlight.

Why do we do the things we do?

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. - Searching for an economic boost and home to perhaps the most compelling story of 9/11, rural Somerset County is trying to pull off a balancing act: Remembering the victims of United Airlines Flight 93 in a way that encourages development and job growth without devolving into tackiness and disrespect.

I'm not sure about where you live, but around here we memorialize places where cars skid off the road and crashes occur with flowers and the occasional wooden cross. It's a morbid reminder of something horrible that happened.

Now, construction is underway in the tiny town of Shanksville (heretofore a bypassed town off the Pennsylvania Turnpike) to build a memorial to Flight 93. We want to remember stuff like that, even though while we're there, we realize that we would rather forget it.

Meanwhile, business in Shanksville is booming, presumably because tourists are turning off the Turnpike to gaze upon the sacred ground where the crash occurred. The idea that business is profiting from disaster somehow does not seem to make all of this seem like ... well ... a sickening display.

Something tells me that somehow ... it's going to devolve into "tackiness and disrespect." Why? Because there's money involved.

During an appearance on Good Morning America this morning, Jessica Simpson screamed "Go Cowboys!" Her blondeness — at least we think she's a blonde — later added that when her beau Tony Romo and the Cowboys play the Eagles Monday night that, "We're gonna kick your butts, too!"

We? Football fans, moreso than other fans, tend to use the terms we and us rather than them and they, which is only proper since the fans have little if nothing to do with the team's success or failure. I suppose it's because fans like to attach themselves to the team and feel like the team's success enhances their personality somehow.

The downside of that is when the team loses, it only serves to enhance the idea that the fans are also losers, which may not necessarily be so.

Unless you're from Dallas.

NEW YORK - Charles Gibson's interviews with Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin will form the basis of a special prime-time edition of "20/20" Friday, ABC said Wednesday. Gibson is traveling to Fairbanks and Wasilla, Alaska, for the first TV interviews with Palin since she was selected as John McCain's running mate. The first excerpts of the talks will be shown on "World News" Thursday. Gibson is having three separate interviews with Palin, ABC said. Parts of the interviews will be spread around other ABC news programs, including "Nightline" and "Good Morning America."

Sure. It's only the presidential election, so let's ham it up by cross-promoting it with our junk programs on the network.

How much do you want to bet that the interview will be filled with softball questions about Sarah's eyeglasses, her stupid names for her kids and the "small town flavor" of that backwater town in Alaska that she presided over? I'm betting a bundle.

Otherwise, why would she submit to it? The McCain Campaign (heretofore known as The Circle of Evil) is raising her like a veal calf. Her head is sticking out of a box and they feed her 7 times a day and once in a while they let her see some sunlight - where she gets to introduce "a genuine American hero" (see Flight 93) and show off her gams and her designer eyeglass frames.

They're smart enough to know that we (Americans) fall for form over substance 9 times out of 10, so it's a safe bet that we'll drool all over the hot MILFy Veep with little or no regard for the nonsense that comes out of her mouth.

How do you think I'm voting in November?

Grand old what now?

It isn't easy keeping up with this. I'm moody, and for those of you old enough to remember the "Mister Ed" TV show, you'll remember the song lyric: Mister Ed will never speak unless he has something to say. That's the way it is with Mister Me. I'm not much for small talk and I don't yammer on about anything unless I feel strongly about the subject.

Such has been the case lately, and whenever I'm feeling that way I know that all I need to do is turn on the TV news.

So, there's CNN's Jeannie Most doing a fluff piece about Sarah Palin and the sensation that has resulted over her eyeglasses. Jeannie was in a mall showing people a photo of Palin and asking whether they liked her glasses. Most of them said yes, and one said that her glasses were the best thing about her. A backhanded compliment if ever I've heard one.

As it turns out, optometrists are swamped with orders from people who want to be "Palinized". One presumes being Palinized stops at the eyeglasses. Otherwise, I'd figure we would develop into a race of women who spout reactionary right wing politics and name their children after high school geometry subjects.

Such is the shallowness of the current presidential campaign, and methinks that the McCain camp (heretofore known as The Bunker) knew that her MILFness would translate into at least a percentage point of voters who care more about appearance than substance. We Americans are all about appearance.

The third strike came when Most unveiled the latest Action Figure based on her MILFness. Replete with black-rimmed eyeglasses (where did they come from?).

The dolls are $26.95, but for an extra two bucks you can make her look like a real Republican with a simulated leather coat, white mini skirt and thigh-holstered gun. The gun makes it more realistic, don't-cha-think?

Of course, to be a real action figure, one must first have taken some action, and I'm thinking that Sarah falls short on that minimum requirement.

The front page of the web site proclaims:

WHEN SARAH PALIN BECOMES VICE PRESIDENT THESE POLITICAL ACTION FIGURES/DOLLS WILL BE HOT COLLECTIBLES.

I would counter that:

WHEN SARAH PALIN FADES INTO HISTORY AS PART OF A LOSING PRESIDENTIAL TICKET, THESE ACTION FIGURES/DOLLS WILL MAKE FINE CHEW TOYS FOR YOUR LARGE DOGS OR SMALL CHILDREN.

Who's up for lifting the little skirt and checking to see exactly what G.O.P. stands for?

For those with the need of another hole in their head

I'm sitting here with Kitty beneath my feet - as usual, if you're scoring at home - and I just finished watching a TV program that said cats have almost no frontal lobe in their brains, meaning that they pretty much remember the present and recent past, and place no emphasis on what happened years ago and have no compulsary emotions other than to react to current events.

If that is the case (and who am I to doubt what I see on TV?) then I suppose I can take heart in knowing that the only place the cat wants to be, based on nothing other than his base emotions, is near my feet, sleeping with his paws in the air. There's something comforting in that, and something I wish more humans had - at least the humans I'd like to have around me.

Maybe we could extract a little frontal lobe from a few people? Isn't that what happened to McMurphy in "One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest?" It seemed to quiet him down.

The executive functions of the frontal lobes involve the ability to recognize future consequences resulting from current actions, to choose between good and bad actions (or better and best), override and suppress unacceptable social responses, and determine similarities and differences between things or events.
The frontal lobes also play an important part in retaining longer term memories which are not task-based.

The struggling artist.

Saturday's wind and rain inspired me to grab my camera and move five feet from the sofa to the window to capture some images of the rainfall. It's the same sort of artistic inspiration that da Vinci must have felt before he painted that ceiling in Rome just prior to drinking himself into a coma and collapsing in a heap. Later, I spread my arms and discovered that a man's reach equals his height. I'll draw it up later.
Think about how the world would have changed if da Vinci had a Nikon D40.

Born as the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci and a peasant woman Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo's ideas were vastly ahead of his time. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics and hydrodynamics.
So, for all you people who think great genetics produces great children, suck on that. Find yourself a peasant woman and have at it.

My parents were married. Art is funny.