Remember when the worst thing about Sarah Palin was how dumb she seemed? Like back in these days, when it seemed like she just wanted to use her God-given talents to do the best for herself (and therefore our nation and humankind, because she’s got something of a Trinity complex going, no?)?

Those were such good times.

The days when the thing I hated about her was her complete rebuke to feminism and my religion and my hopes for my daughters’ futures.

Wow. I wish those days could have lasted forever.

I really miss the old up-do Sarah, who winked and smiled and practically giggled with joy even though her teenage daughter was pregnant and everyone thought that she was really just covering about baby Trig and that Trig was Bristol’s baby.

Because Repunzel Palin scares the living crap out of me. I fully expect her to poison Grandpa McAngrypants now that he’s acting a little bit like his old self.

Finally, I have to admit it. Clearly, Sarah Palin has superpowers. And letting the hair down unleashed the demons of hell. Can somebody please get that up-do back? Before it’s too late?

(And at some point, we’re going to have to deal with Todd…)

Don’t you think it’s been like M*A*S*H* lately? Like we’re all exhausted, frozen and still operating on American soldiers, South Korean orphans, and the occasional cross-dresser? I have no idea what was happening two weeks ago, except that it sucked for Obama and made me stop watching Olbermann.

In other words, the past two weeks have been a blur.

Or, maybe more like a comic.

Ka-Pow! The economy actually melted down.

Wham! The United States Congress had something it actually had to accomplish.

Whahhh? McCain suspended his campaign?

Huh? He wasn’t going to go to Mississippi and debate?

Screeeech! McCain and Obama had to go to the White House but the deal cratered?

Whoa! They had a debate and Obama looked a whole lot less scary than the white guy?

Pow! The bailout failed.

Remember that? Last Monday, the bailout failed to pass in House. The House Republican staged this mysterious revolt (mysterious to all those who hadn’t watched Newt Gingrinch talk about how bad the bailout was on Little Georgie S.’s show the day before) and the bailout died.

Cats and dogs, living together! Barney Frank to America’s rescue! All in the middle of Rosh Hashanah!

Then ultimate sign of the Apocalypse: Dow drops 777. If only it had been 666. Then we’d just be dead and we wouldn’t have to keep track of all this shit. But it was 777, which must have a lot of meaning for a lot of crackpots easily accessible to me via the amazing crackpot-finding machine here at my fingertips. But I was too busy watching the Youtube of the Princeton Economics Department’s forum on the meltdown and trying to figure out just how completely stupid Nancy Pelosi actually is to waste precious time tracking down those particular pots.

Meanwhile, we’re all having this serious drooling problem, reminiscent of the SNL sketch with the drool buckets, because it turns out KATIE COURIC IS THE SAVIOR! She’s the one, the redeemer. Who’da thunk it? Sarah Palin can’t answer questions. She just can’t. She doesn’t remember what she reads. She doesn’t remember Supreme Court decisions. She doesn’t know shit.

(Here’s where maybe, just maybe, the fact that she’s got a SIX MONTH OLD BABY MIGHT EXPLAIN THE PROBLEM. But that would be sexist–as they told me over at Balloon Juice the other day when I commented that the reason conservative men are for her is because they–keep this on the downlow, OK?–want to fuck her.)

Which leads us to Thursday. Remember Thursday? It was just three days ago. There’s only been Friday, Saturday, and Sunday since Thursday. Again, a lifetime. And why a lifetime in 72 hours? Why does that debate seem like it happened when I was in 10th grade?

Because for the last three days I’VE BEEN TRYING TO KEEP MY HEAD FROM EXPLODING WHILE EVERYONE GOES ON AND ON ABOUT HOW SARAH FUCKING PALIN EXCEEDED EXPECTATIONS!

She EXCEEDED EXPECTATIONS! Holy shit–did you hear?–SHE EXCEEDED EXPECTATIONS!

Has nobody seen any of the movies? Election? Legally Blonde? Miss Congeniality? La Femme Nikita?

OF COURSE SHE FUCKING EXCEEDED EXPECTATIONS!

Did anyone seriously think she was going to be as bad as she was with Katie? Really? Come on, Katie has superpowers. She’s the Redeemer. Gwen Ifill, she’s some lady who we used to think was going to sit in Tim Russert’s chair of fucking gold. (More on that guy later–how could he be gone, leaving us alone with  Tom Brokaw’s and his last stand against the barbarians at the gate–if I didn’t like the guy and think it really in poor taste to bad mouth the deceased I would CURSE HIS NAME FOR LEAVING ME WITH TOM BROKAW AS THE SUPPOSED FUCKING GROWN UP AT NBC–Tom’s as pissed as Grandpa McAngrypants, in a South Dakota detatched broadcaster kind of way!)*

And now we’re in hour 70 of Operation Exceeding Expectations and it looks like

a) McCain is morphing into a silver back gorilla:

b) The National Review is morphing into a porn site:

and c) Little Miss Double EE is winking her way into a tie with Joseph McCarthy for most damaging demagogue in American history.

Some great clips that have kept me amused as I’ve sniffled and napped through the last three days in the Land of Counterpane to come. Plus, I think I’ve mastered spacetime. And a little something about Jesus. So, yeah, even though I haven’t been (hate to use it as a verb) blogging, I’ve been blogging.

*Maybe not more later.

Clip Number Ten: In Which It Is Revealed that Our Heroine Is a Delicate Flower, Held Against Her Will by Her Guardian’s Boorish Minions

(Sorry for the low quality. The Huffington Post has a better clip, but you can’t embed it. Thanks You Tube for liberating the video for the masses.)

BOTTOM LINE: Palmer Cortlandt is holding Erica Kane hostage SO SHE DOESN’T WILT UNDER THE BRIGHT LIGHTS! WTF? Has anyone every seen Susan Lucci? She lost the Daytime Emmy how many times? Did she ever stop rocking the shoulder pads?

Is Palmer poisoning Erica? Is he in love with her? Is Henry Kissinger a cross-over guest from General Hospital? Is he going to turn on the snow machine?

The Familiar Stranger arrives in town. At first, no one really notices him because they think they’ve seen him around.

[We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog for this ESB News Update:]

Joe Biden is on Twitter.

Repeat. Joe Biden is on Twitter.

[We now return to our regularly scheduled blog, currently in progress.]

Then the people start turning their heads as he passes by on the street. Is it the blazer with the natty pocket square? The jaunty step? As they go about their business, they see their friends, their neighbors gathering around him, nodding, then laughing, then clapping.

He shows up at the labor gatherings.

He shows up at the hall of fame.

And today, he shows up at the ladies gatherings:

He also mentioned the likely impact a president would have on the Supreme Court, with as many as four justices possibly being replaced, ones Biden said would likely be those “who have been the last bulwark against the onslaught of women’s rights.”

“What do John and Sarah Palin say? They say that they want to appoint more Scalias, more Roberts, more Alitos,” Biden said. “These are decent, bright guys, but they are dead, dead, dead wrong. And ladies, once they are on the court, they will be there long after, long after the next president is gone.”[Emphasis added.]

And now my hometown paper answers my schoolgirl crush prayers with this Tiger Beat of an article on the top of the website:

Meanwhile, the Other No. 2 Keeps On Punching

Let’s see how the article begins:

FLAT ROCK, Mich. — As the economy reels, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. — the Other Running Mate — has been absolutely butchering Senator John McCain across the Rust Belt this week. It is not clear who has noticed.

WTF!

Who’s noticed? Who’s noticed! Well, New York Fucking Times, I have an answer for you. I’ve noticed. Prematurely Grey has noticed. I’ve been drooling over You Tube clips of this guy all week. I’ve been cruising Daily Kos, just hoping to catch a glimpse of him. I’ve been emailing my friends, trying to get them to want to sleep with him.

And you know who else noticed? You did. Yes, you, fucking hypocritical New York Times. Acting so clever with you little lede? Who’s noticing?

Hey, wait. Are you trying to change the subject here? Are you picking up the remote for all those New York Times readers (the ones who just drool over the paper on Saturday)? Are you going to put that picture of Joe raising a fist, like maybe he’s going to violate the law he stakes his reputation as a senator on and give Sarah Palin a beat down if she comes anywhere near this crowd, Joe’s crowd, on the front page tomorrow morning?*

To hell with Holy Rosary v. St Elizabeth’s in 1951. I guess the Familiar Stranger heard his father’s words once again this week. Joey, if nothing’s broken son, get up.

*Hey, it looks like this guy beat me to the punch…

But in the midst of following the news out of Houston and making gumbo that tasted like etouffe, I started to have a very good feeling. Something’s shifting out there. Apparently, I’m not the only one who’s found a cure to the pox of Palinmania. First there was the startling revelation that 130,000 people have shared their reasons for thinking Sarah Palin is not qualified to be vice president. There’s a petition. And Eve Ensler. And (of course) every one is sending aroung Gloria Steinem’s piece in the LA TImes. People are beginning to take action. (They’re just not thinking about soap operas while they’re doing it.)

This morning was different. This morning, we knew how good Tina Fey is at Sarah Palin. She’s better at Sarah Palin than Sarah Palin is. If Tina Fey stepped in for Sarah Palin in the vice presidential debate, I’m pretty sure that she’d do a better job than Sarah Palin. First of all, she’s smarter. She can’t help but seem like she understands the question. Plus, it’s got to be impossible to blink/wink/tic as much as Sarah Palin does.  A normal person, even a trained actress, can’t pull it off. So, Tina Fey makes a more trustworthy Sarah Palin than Sarah Palin does. (But we do not wish Tina Fey the fate of bearing Todd Palin’s sixth child, Dank Palin. Girl.)

It was the news from Alaska that did it. I first heard about it from my old tried and true Daily Kos. Here’s the diary that launched a thousand emails:

Alaska Women Reject Sarah Palin Rally

Woohoo! So good that I emailed the link out to my dad and mother-in-law.

But to get an even better feel for the rally, well, it’s time for our buddy Mudflats. Her descriptive style, combined with the fact that she got to the rally after attending Palin’s actual rally in Anchorage, makes for great reading. Obviously, it was an amazing event for the people of Alaska. According to Mudflats, this was the biggest rally in the history of the state. I’m not sure about you, but I’ve been in some pretty big marches. Pro-choice marches. The huge Si Se Puede march in Austin in May of 2006. The biggest was the Sane/Freeze march in New York in June 1982 (right after I graduated from the EUESGS–my mom forced my brother and me out of bed early on Saturday morning). One million people. One million people.

But if you watch the video Mudflats posted, you’ll know that this was just as huge an event. These people are thrilled to be together. They are thrilled to have the right to assemble. They are thrilled to find out that there are more than five or fifty or one hundred people who are willing to put on what would be deep winter clothing in Austin and gather along a library (hooray!) to register their rejection of their own governor. See for yourself:

Clip Number Four: In Which It Becomes Known that We Can No More Blame the Good People of Alaska for This Sorry State of Affairs than We Can the Good People of Texas for the One that Precedes (and Perhaps Precipitated) Our Current Situtation

You will note, as did I, no updo’s among the rabble rousers. Who needs a secret handshake when you’ve got a hairdo at your disposal?

Clip Number Three: In Which the Existence of an Evil Twin is Revealed (and Pheobe Tyler Makes Her First Appearance in the Story)

I’m a little worried about how Tina Fey must be feeling. Hey you Another World fans out there, are you sensing a little Vicky-Marley thing going on? And that would mean Anne Heche will soon be in the house. Then we’ll be in for a bit of TROUBLE.

So I was pleased to see that Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund have an ad that’s being promoted on Daily Kos right now. Frankly, it’s brutal. It shows aerial hunting. And it pretty much stages a reenactment of Sarah Palin shooting a wolf from a low flying plane. (I guess that makes it another installment in WWSPD. WWSPD? Shoot a wolf from a low flying airplane. What would I do? Not shoot a wolf. Hey, I probably wouldn’t get in that fucking plane.)

But for those of you who hate Sarah Palin, it’s must see TV.

Here’s to C. for fighting the good fight long before any of us were trying to shake the image of Sarah Palin in a Wonder Woman bikini, complete with AK-47 (I’m right about that, right. Any gun enthusiasts out there want to help me out here?), from our minds’ eyes. Here’s to the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund for raising all that money for all those years so the people of Ohio could feel nauseous while just trying to unwind after a long day endless political advertising. And here’s to the the EUESGS for educating C. to become the kind of person who devotes her life to defending wildlife (and me to become the kind who can link to it).

Here’s a link to the Daily Kos diary. Beware: Daily Kos is like going to the opera. There are a lot of divas over there and the fat lady is constantly singing.

*I read C.’s first email while sitting in the Denver airport waiting for my plane on Friday evening. It was the second indication that Palinmania was going to be bad. The first was the woman on the tram who told me, unsolicited, that Sarah Palin was a bad mother. She then proceeded to tell me that no woman should put her career before her children. She had three children. She’d turned down a job with Andrew Young. She was going home to Chicago. Early 60s. African American. All this in a three minute tram ride.

Is there anyone out there who could have predicted how completely great from the batshit crazy plotline perspective that all of this was going to be? I mean, people are not leaving their computers because they don’t want to miss the next tiny juicy tidbit.

So, ladies and gentlemen, may I please introduce you to Mudflats–your one stop blog for all Palin, all the time.

And here’s the cover of the National Enquirer that the McCain campaign is suing over:

Apparently, they’re sitting on the affair story for another week. Why does that music from “Days of Our Lives” keep playing in my head? This is so obviously an ABC 1980s storyline. I’m waiting for the multiple personality diagnosis. And the revelation that McCain is really Sarah’s father. Then Bristol and Hockey-Hair will run away and we’ll follow them all the way to Seattle. They might even meet a black person while they’re there.

Stay tuned.

1. I read on Daily Kos that Kay Hagan is now leading Elizabeth Dole in the North Carolina senate race. Keep hope alive! I then got in the game of commenting on DKos. Having a mom who’s hated Elizabeth Dole since she was at Duke gains me a little traction.
2. I managed to make a joke in the comments on 538. Not that I advocate subverting important discussions about web polls of whom the 538 readership believes is currently the third most likely person to become president (Obama and McCain weren’t allowed as choices); I simply subvert these important discussions by asking why not me? I added that I could have two teenage daughters pregnant for the 2012 race. Take that, Sarah Palin.
3. I got out of my house and actually went over to the Travis County Democratic HQ. Guess what? We still have Texas House races to win and a senate contest and maybe a couple of guys running for Congress. Who knew?
4. I followed the McCain speech live blogs on a couple of sites and then watched the post-game show. I have to share this video, because it’s too good (hat tip to Balloon Juice–the best place to find people who are more outraged than I am–go there now–stop reading my crappy blog!). Watch someone actually say the truth on TV! On CNN of all places! Watch this, please:
5. And then came the game changer. Drumroll please. Judy Warner expressed feminist angst for all. And I had to call bullshit! Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty, I’m free at last. Judy, you cannot have my feminist rage. It’s mine, I tell you, all mine!

Not that anyone cared how I cured myself of Palinmania. But in case you’re trying to get over it, well, get over it.

Watch this. Yes, it’s edited. But it’s just too funny not to share before today’s episode of All My (Grand)Children knocks us for another loop.