Sarahbabble, Rushbabble, and a mysterious mango

You can interview Palin, too

The more clips and text that come out from Sarah Palin’s two interviews with Katie Couric, the more people are cringing as they hear her babble her way through incoherent and nonsensical nonanswers. You know it’s bad when “Saturday Night Live” does a parody of her and uses much of what she said word for word in doing so. But why should the evil liberal media elite have all the fun? You can interview her, too! A clever programmer has put up a web page allowing you to ask Palin questions, the answers to which are generated from real responses she’s given. I like this one:

Q: What is your foreign policy experience?

I said, to a position like we are today with so much collapse on Wall Street. That’s to blame. And that violation of the status quo, going with the flow and just assuming that the people of America are not fully satisfied with all the time, I’ll tell you, I still can’t answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the people of America are not given to those hands of Ahmadinejad, not that he would allow terrorists to be all about job creation too, shoring up allies and positions and figuring out what sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what America and American troops are providing in his country.

The sad thing is that it’s difficult to distinguish parody from reality here. As the great Lily Tomlin once said, “No matter how cynical you get, you can’t keep up.” And by the way, if you’re looking for the punchline in all of this, it was delivered by Palin’s father in an interview with CBS:

What part of her personality, or her upbringing, is going to serve her best in all of this? Replied Chuck, “Hard-working, perseverance, honesty. Yeah, honesty. She won’t fabricate things or exaggerate things. She’ll tell it the way it is.”

And said without even a hint of irony.

Stupid quote of the week: Rush Limbaugh

It’s an election year, of course, so this is the high season for absurdity in this country. It’s difficult to narrow down the dumb things being said to even a few really boneheaded quotes, but I’m gonna give it a try anyway and pick this quote from Rush Limbaugh as the single dumbest thing anyone not named Sarah Palin has said in the last week:

These polls on how one-third of blue-collar white Democrats won’t vote for Obama because he’s black, and — but he’s not black. Do you know he has not one shred of African-American blood? He doesn’t have any African — that’s why when they asked whether he was authentic, whether he’s down for the struggle. He’s Arab. You know, he’s from Africa. He’s from Arab parts of Africa. He’s not — his father was — he’s not African-American. The last thing that he is is African-American. I guess that’s splitting hairs, I don’t — it’s just all these little things, everything seems upside-down today in this country.

OK, Rush, I’ll try and make this as simple as possible for you. Obama’s father is from Kenya. Kenya, you see, is in Africa. That would, by definition, make him African-American on his father’s side. And by the way, there’s nothing remotely “Arab” about Kenya. You might be able to apply that label to Egypt or Algeria, but certainly not to Kenya. You can’t even try to make Kenya into a Muslim country because only 10 percent of the country is Muslim. This is all about what one pundit called playing the “otherness” card, trying to paint Obama as one of Them, someone from outside the group and thus a bad guy. It’s a transparent and childish appeal to tribalism being used by transparent and childish people. Like Rush Limbaugh.

Muhammad in a mango

Tired of Christians cornering the market on seeing Jesus in a piece of toast or Mother Teresa in a potato chip, the Muslims are getting in on the act:

Rubina Sheikh from Helsingborg in southern Sweden believes she’s received a message from God – in a rotten mango.

As the two halves of Sheikh’s freshly sliced mango fell away from her knife last Saturday, she discovered what she says is a sign from God.

“When I sliced the mango in two, ‘Allah’ was written in one half and ‘Muhammad’ in the other. It’s a miracle, a sign from Allah,” said Sheikh to the Metro newspaper.

The practicing Muslim is convinced that the black lines emanating through the fruit form characters in Arabic which spell the holy words.

And local Muslims have been streaming in to see the miracle for themselves.

Oh, come on. everyone knows that God doesn’t send messages in a mango. God is hip these days. Unlike John McCain, he uses “the email.”

Praying for gas

Georgia is in the middle of a big gas shortage because the pipeline that brings gas from the gulf region was damaged by the recent hurricanes. The pipeline is back up and running, but it’ll take a few days for the gas to make it to Atlanta and refill the supplies. Despite that, Gov. Sonny Perdue, in Spain on a “trade mission,” wants the federal government to release oil from the strategic petroleum reserve even though that would take even longer because the oil would have to be refined into gas.

To be fair, it’s not the silliest solution to a problem Perdue has ever suggested. A year ago, in the midst of a drought, Perdue hosted a prayer service to ask God to make it rain. And it worked. Well, kinda. The next day there was a storm in Northern Georgia that brought some rain, but not enough to help. It also ripped the roof off a Baptist church, injuring three little girls. Apparently God needs to work on his aim.

OK, who moved Venezuela?

John McCain is clearly jealous of his running mate taking up all the media time by making dumb statements and he’s decided to do something about it. Like move Venezuela to the Middle East. Here’s the video:

This is also the man who once expressed concern over the situation at the nonexistent Iraq-Pakistan border. As usual, Jesus’ General has the most amusing take on the whole thing, sending a letter to National Geographic that says, in part:

I’ve always suspected that National Geographic was a liberal publication. My suspicions were confirmed today when I saw your map of the Middle East. Venezuela is nowhere to be found. Obviously, you put up new maps to embarrass John McCain after he called out Venezuela as a Middle Eastern country.

I also noticed that your maps showing the shape and location of Pakistan, Alaska, Russia, and Spain do not match the descriptions given by Sen. McCain and Sarah Palin.

I’m enclosing new maps that conform to Palin-McCain specifications. Please use them.

Bravissimo!