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October 6, 2008
The Tattlesnake – Quiz: Find the Real Palin Quotes Edition
“He who cannot remember the past is condemned to remember the past. Or something.”
– Joe Queenan, channeling a Quayleism in “The Vice-Presidency Is a Terrible Thing to Waste.”
Grab a pen or pencil and some paper and take the quiz, and no cheating with The Google. Which are actual quotes from Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and which are from a beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity? (Answers below the fold.)
1. “I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
2. “I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps, and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq everywhere like, such as, and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., er, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
3. “Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
4. “Patriotic is saying, government, you know, you’re not always the solution.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
5. “Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
6. “It was God who made me so beautiful. If I weren’t, then I’d be a school teacher.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
7. “Well, I’d rather choose to be beautiful, um, because, to be beautiful it’s natural. But being smart you can learn… you can learn, um, a lot of things… a lot of things from the experience… you can learn from a lot of things being smart.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
8. “Maybe he’s for everything as long as it’s not helped forward by the government. Maybe he’s for everything if the free market takes care of it. I don’t know.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
9. “We have to fight for our freedoms, also, economic and our national security freedoms.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
10. “We have got to encourage other nations also to come along with us with the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
11. “So, where’s the Cannes Film Festival being held this year?”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
12. “I make Jessica Simpson look like a rock scientist.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
13. “We are truly the land of the great. From the rock shores of… Hawaii… to the beautiful sandy beaches of… Hawaii… America is our home.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
14. “I would discuss with him having mandatory sex education classes, because if students decide to have sex, they should be practicing safe sex. However, in my opinion, abstinence is always the best way.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
15. “[T]he western part of Pennsylvania is very, uh, Midwestern, and the eastern part is more east.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
(Answers below the fold.)
September 25, 2008
The Tattlesnake – October and Other McCain Surprises Edition
Or, St. John and His Cowardly Lyin’
“Presidents have to deal with more than one thing at a time.”
– Barack Obama, Sept. 23, 2008, as quoted by Business Week.
All politicians lie to some degree; it’s a gloomy fact of national politics in America, and the higher the office sought, the more likely and frequent the infractions of the truth.
Some self-servingly shade reality intermittently, others cross their fingers behind their backs and deliver the quasi-whopper occasionally, and then there are the full-out Nixonian scoundrels who’ll tell a lie at the drop of a hat in the ring.
John McCain, in his conduct since becoming the Republican nominee, has crossed the Nixon threshold of deceit, most recently by calling David Letterman at the last minute and telling him he couldn’t appear on his show September 24th because he had to urgently drop everything and fly to Washington to delve into the bailout crisis.
McCain’s prevarication to Letterman blew up in his face when the talk show host discovered McCain was still in New York City for many hours after that phone call; indeed, McCain was being interviewed by CBS’ Katie Couric not far from the theater where Letterman tapes his show and could easily have stopped in and kept his commitment to Letterman. As Dave said sarcastically, showing a live feed of McCain talking to Couric, “Need a ride to the airport, Senator?”
This is self-destructive blowback of the first order: Letterman reaches tens of millions of viewers across the land, many of them the politically semi-literate that McCain is trying to reach with his over-simplified messages of ‘maverick reformer,’ ‘reliable leader’ and comfortable ‘regular guy,’ and Letterman spent most of the show last night, including his notorious Top Ten list, savaging McCain for his absence, his suspension of his campaign, and asking the pointedly mocking question of why Palin couldn’t simply step in and take McCain’s place. He even had McCain’s harshest Big Media critic Keith Olbermann on to further pound the stake into the Republican candidate. Presidential campaigns in America are really won or lost in the comedy sketches of the late night TV hosts and viewers form their opinions of the candidates’ characters based on the kinds of jokes disseminated – by that measure, millions of late night TV viewers now know that McCain is a bald-faced liar; a treacherous old codpiece willing to deceive their trusted TV friend Dave. Hmmm, what else might he lie about as president? Not only was this a nuclear one-night hit, but McCain has now made a foe of David Letterman, an enmity that will carry on until the election – it could very well make the difference in November.
Something else that will make a difference, and also presents McCain as a perpetual dispenser of falsehoods and humbug, is his bizarre abandonment of his former friends in the Big Media and Punditrocracy. McCain’s campaign has lately made it a badge of honor to snub and treat with contempt the very same ‘Guys and Gals on the Bus’ who protectively guarded and excused McCain for his gaffes and deceptions in the past. Once heralded for his access to the media, now only pre-tested loyalists are invited to speak with the coddled candidate on his campaign jet, and the rest are shuttled off like cattle to stand behind a shield of sour-faced campaign staff. The turning of opinion amongst the press corps is growing obvious.
September 1, 2008
August 4, 2008
Quayle Again?
VP Reprise with McCain? Quayle Says He’s ‘Rested and Ready’
By Mo Larkey
Continental-Affiliated Press International
August 3, 2008
INDIANAPOLIS – At a press conference here today, former vice president Dan Quayle told reporters he’s “rested and ready” and prepared to “help Sen. McCain win the White House” in 2008.
The Indiana Republican, a former US senator and vice president in the administration of George H. W. Bush from 1988 to 1992, claimed that he had the “kind of wide-body life experiences” Mr. McCain needs in a vice president and would “be assetable” to the Republican candidate’s chances.
“I believe that I have been road-tested and trialed and I have found myself willing,” said Mr. Quayle, “and I could do for Sen. McCain what I did for President Bush’s father – put him over the top with the Republican Party baseline.”
“I’ve been there and done that,” continued the former vice president, “and I can do it all over again. I’m rested and ready and set to rip into this campaign like a tissue paper tiger.”
“Look at it this way,” Mr. Quayle summed up, “if we can deposit men on Mars, as we have been doing, we can get a Republican elected president this year, and I’m just the astronaut to help Sen. McCain win the White House.”
As he left the podium, Mr. Quayle mimicked dialing a phone and whispered, “Johnny, call me.”
Reached last night, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis had no comment on the former vice president’s offer.
Copyright 2008 Continental-Affiliated Press International
Matching Prominent Republicans with Appropriate Film Titles
The story is Dan Quayle saw the 1972 Robert Redford film ‘The Candidate’ and thought it was a primer on entering politics instead of a warning about selling out one’s principles. Ronald Reagan is said to have had a regular weekly ‘movie premiere night’ while in the White House. Then we had GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy using a clip from the 2010 Ben Affleck crime saga ‘The Town’ to make a point to Teabaggers in Congress. For a party that has so much enmity towards Hollywood, seems the GOP loves itself some flicks, which got me to wondering what movie titles would accurately reflect certain prominent Republicans. For better or worse, here’s what I came up with, in no particular order:
– Rick Perry: ‘They Live!’
– John Boehner: ‘The Lost Weekend’
– Mitch McConnell: ‘Hell Comes to Frogtown’ (or, ‘White Hunter, Black Heart’)
– Mitt Romney: ‘Liar, Liar’
– Michele Bachmann: ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’
– Tim Pawlenty: ‘The Incredible Mr. Limpet’
– Sarah Palin: ‘Mars Needs Women’
– Allen West: ‘Watermelon Man’
– Paul Ryan: ‘Throw Momma from the Train’
– Herman Cain: ‘Blackula’
– George W. Bush: ‘Moon Over Parador’ (or, ‘Wag the Dog’)
– Dick Cheney: ‘Above the Law’
– Scott Walker: ‘Gone with the Wind’ (or, ‘The Great Dictator’)
– John Kasich: ‘Joe Dirt’
– Rick Snyder: ‘Shadow on the Land’
– Rick Scott: ‘The Hucksters’
– Rupert Murdoch: ‘Citizen Kane’
– Rush Limbaugh: ‘It Came from Outer Space’
– Glenn Beck: ‘Dumb and Dumber’
– Bill O’Reilly: ‘The Mouse That Roared’
– Sean Hannity: ‘Frances the Talking Mule’
– Ann Coulter: ‘Heathers’
– Michael Savage: ‘Home Alone’
– Frank Luntz: ‘The Phantom of the Opera’
– David H. Koch: ‘The Magic Christian’
– Karl Rove: ‘Revenge of the Nerds’
– Ron Paul: ‘Dr. Strangelove’
– Rick Santorum: ‘Look Who’s Talking Now’
– Newt Gingrich: ‘No Country for Old Men’ (or, ‘Goldfinger’)
– Donald Trump: ‘Mr. Bug Goes to Town’ (or, ‘Hairspray’)
© 2011 RS Janes. www.fishink.us