Say it ain't so Sarah and Joe the (unlicensed) plumber

I knew she would finally go there. Speaking at a rally in Maine today, Republican vice-presidential nominee, Gov. Sarah Palin, made reference to Michelle Obama’s statement from early in the campaign, a statement made even before it was clear that her husband was going to be the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. According to Glenn Adams, writing for the Associated Press:

"Palin also made reference to a remark early in the campaign by Obama's wife, Michelle, who had said that ‘for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country.’ The governor's comments came after country music star Lee Greenwood sang the ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ and ‘God Bless the USA.’"

"’We believe also that there is a reason we all get teared-up when we hear Lee Greenwood sing about America, because we love America and we are always proud of being Americans,’ she said. ‘And we don't apologize for being Americans.’"

This comes three days after Gov. Palin’s Commissioner for Rural Affairs in Alaska, Rhonda McBride, resigned. According to the Associated Press, her reason for resigning is she thinks "it would help to have an Alaska Native in this position". To be fair Todd Palin is part Yup'ik Eskimo and two of Palin's 13 cabinet members are members of Alaskan tribes. Members of indigenous tribes make up 16% of Alaska's overall population. So, her cabinet seems representative. Of course, numbers rarely tell the whole story. According to the same report, Gov. Palin left the Rural Commissioner "position unfilled her first year in office and ignored Native leaders' suggestions on the selection process".

Roger Cohen, who, in an earlier column, figured that the insurance actuarial tables give Palin a 1 in 6 or 7 chance of becoming president should the Republican ticket win, wrote that "Palin, with her vile near-accusations of treason against Barack Obama, her cloying doggone hymns to small-town U.S.A., her with-us-or-against-us refrain, is really an impostor.

"She’s the representative of a kind of last-gasp Republicanism, of an exhausted party, whose proud fiscal conservatism and patriotism have given away to scurrilous fear-mongering and ideological confusion."

Cohen wrote this column, which appears in today's NY Times, before the Maine speech. It is funny how she didn't mention hubby Todd Palin's membership in the Alaska Independence Party, which advocates for secession from this country we love. Such delicious irony and all before getting to the media circus surrounding Joe the unlicensed plumber, who would actually get a tax cut under the Obama plan and nothing under the McCain plan, and who has apparently never been introduced to the idea of a graduated income tax. He is humble, saying, "I just hope I'm not making too much of a fool of myself." I know how he feels, that thought runs through my mind everytime I click on the PUBLISH POST button. I have no problem with Joe. I would like more voters to step up and ask hard questions. It is the media circus, like the whole lipstick on a pig incident, that I deplore.

I have already leaned heavily on one Jewish guy. So, I'll bring in John Stewart to seal the dealio:

I am adding to my list of notable posts for today Suzanne's far too aptly entitled The moral obligation to vote and other forms of torture.