It was a typical day in Wasilla, Alaska when the former Mayor and current Governor, Sarah, was whisked far far away to a strange land in a whirlwind with her pet Moose, Toto.

The whirlwind dropped her onto something hard and cold. Looking down, she realized she was sitting on a woman. At this moment, a man in strange dress (actually, a skirt of some sort) approached her and told her she landed on Hillary, the Wicked Witch of the East.

Jumping up and brushing glass shards from her clothes, Sarah exclaimed “I didn’t mean to do that, I’m not even sure where I am.”

The man giggled and exclaimed in a high pitched voice, “Let me explain. You are in the Village of Greenwich in the region of New York. Hillary has ruled this area for some time now, spending her time most recently putting 18 million cracks into the glass ceiling you just crashed through…”

His explanation was suddenly interrupted by the crash of a door flying open. Walking through the door was a severe, unpleasant looking woman.

“This is the Wicked Witch of the West, Nancy, from the village of San Francisco. She’s mean.” Whispers the man to Sarah.

“Who is this and what is going on here?” Screeched Nancy, glaring at Sarah.

Sarah, refusing to fear this woman, stood her ground and said “I am Sarah from the land of Alaska, who are you?”

Glancing again at Sarah, the Witch let out a horrifying scream when she saw her sister, Hillary lying on the ground under a pile of glass, moaning.

At this moment, Sarah and the Witch Nancy realized that Sarah was wearing a strange cloak. “What are you doing with that on?” Demanded Nancy.

Sarah looked down at the garment and said “I don’t what this is but it does seem to fit me nicely, almost if I were born to wear it.”

“That is the Mantle of Feminism, that has been worn up until now by Hillary. How dare you take that from her?” spat Nancy. At that moment they could hear the shrieks of Hillary’s Harpies from throughout the land at the notion that Sarah had appeared to take the Cloak from Hillary. The Harpies had believed that it was Hillary’s birthright to wear the Cloak and the notion of another wearing it was too much for them to bear. “Give the Cloak to me.” Demanded Nancy.

“No” said Sarah, “I think I’m going to wear it from now on.”

Nancy started towards Sarah menacingly in an apparent attempt to remove the Cloak forcibly. Just at that moment, another door crashed open and through it walked a tall, fair skinned woman. This one appeared to be much kinder than Nancy. “Cindy, the Good Witch of the Southwest.” Whispered the man in the skirt.

“Stop” commanded Cindy to Nancy “do not attempt to harm this woman.” To Sarah, Cindy said “Wear the Mantle proudly, it suits you well. Sadly though, there is danger from the Wicked Witch sisters and their Harpies if you continue to wear it. I feel you should go to the Village of Chicago to speak to the Wizard. The Wicked Witch sisters and their Harpies revere the Wizard. The word from the scribes is that he is a kind and even Messianic man, though I suspect this is not true. If you could expose him for what he is, it may keep you safe from the forces of dark.”

Sarah says to Cindy “I am new to this land, how do I get to the Village of Chicago?”

Cindy smiled kindly and said “Why, you follow the yellow brick road”.

Looking down, Sarah saw she did indeed appear to be standing on a yellow brick road.

Just then six strange men, each dressed differently, a sailor, an Indian chief, a construction worker, a policeman, a biker, and a cowboy, began to dance and sing “follow the yellow brick road, follow the yellow brick road, follow, follow, follow, follow the yellow brick road.”

Walking away quickly and nervously, Sarah and Toto indeed began to follow the yellow brick road. Sarah saying “What a strange group of people, I think it’s safe to say we’re not in Alaska anymore.”

Walking down the road a little later, Sarah came across a man standing in an apple orchard. The man was stiff and emotionless and appeared to have been waiting there for at least eight years. As Sarah joined the man, he appeared to come to life a little, though he would forever remain unexcitable. Introducing herself, Sarah found out the man’s name was John.

Sarah asked John if he would like to accompany her to the Village of Chicago to meet the Wizard. She had read in the paper that morning that the Wizard had a dynamic, rock star persona and she was thinking that if they could show that this isn’t true, it may help both of them get what they want. He agreed and off they went.

After a day and a night, they came to a large, sort of grimy village with a huge gate at it’s entrance. Upon Sarah knocking on the door, a window opened and a grumpy man peered out. “What do you want?” said the man who we come to find is named Joe.

“We’ve come to see the Wizard” exclaimed Sarah and John in unison.

“Impossible” growled the man, “the Wizard is too busy and important to be bothered by common people”

“We’ve been sent by Cindy, the Good Witch of the Southwest” stated Sarah, “I have the Mantle of Feminism.”

After approximately an hour and a half debate in which Joe gave several (14 actually) questionable reasons as to why they couldn’t enter, Joe relented and opened the door.

Upon entering the city, Sarah and John were a little taken aback at the apparent decay and corruption they saw about them. These thoughts were interrupted by Joe telling them about the village. He described it as a near fantasy land-type collective where everything is provided for them. Life is good in their own isolated little land. The Wizard has told them that there is nothing to worry about in the world past their borders. Though Joe or the other inhabitants of Chicago have never seen the true Wizard, they could not question his power because he is a benevolent ruler who just by his being keeps the people safe, healthy, and well taken care of. When asked, Joe said they don’t question the fact that they have not seen the real man because he is the Wizard and who would question the Wizard? He seemed very puzzled by all of this.

Joe’s reverent accounting of the Wizard was still ongoing as they approached a great door. As Joe opened the door, Sarah and John peered inside and saw a long gilded hallway stretching into the distance.

At the end of this hallway they came to a smaller, ornate door which Joe opened. As Sarah and John approached the door, Joe bowed and averted his eyes. Sarah looked at John, they both shrugged, and Sarah, John, and Toto walked through the door.

Just as their eyes were adjusting to the dimly lit room, a large, indistinct head appeared and a voice boomed “who dares to disturb the Wizard”

“It is I, Sarah, I have a few questions.”

“Proceed” said the Wizard “I can answer all”.

Sarah questioned the Wizard: What was his stance on the crisis in the Village of Wall? Did he really think he could cut taxes and yet pay for a growth in government spending? How can you possibly give tax breaks to people who do not pay taxes? Just who are these men you have running your Village, Bill Ayers, Rev Wright, Franklin Raines?

The more Sarah questioned the Wizard, the more he appeared to stammer and become less and less able to answer the questions. Just as she was becoming certain that the Wizard was not all the masses thought he was, Toto walked over and pulled a curtain aside exposing a small, skinny man working levers and controls.

“Ignore that man behind the curtain” roared the voice.

“Why your not a Wizard at all,” exclaimed Sarah “your just a ordinary man.”

“Shh” said the now exposed Wizard. “No, I am not a Wizard, I’m Barack Obama. Your messing up my gig here. Now go away.”

“Well, God Bless you.” said Sarah “We can’t let you continue to fool the people. We have to break the spell you have over the scribes and let the public see you for what you are.”

Before Obama could answer, Cindy the Good Witch of the Southwest appeared before them. “Barack, you have been exposed for what you are. It’s time to return to your homeland of Kenya and free these good people of America to live their lives in prosperity.”

Joe Biden is in a commercial now trying to blunt some of the damage to the Obama campaign over the connections the McCain/Palin campaign is making between him and some very shady characters. He says that these are not the people that Obama would name to the Supreme Court or let work in the White House.

First, it’s good of him to clear this up. I, for one, was concerned that William Ayers would be on the SCOTUS. I’m not concerned that he is a terrorist and Obama has been connected to him for years leaving a lot of questions about Obama’s character unanswered.

Second, what was most memorable about the commercial was what was missing. He didn’t actually mention what type of people Obama would appoint.

The task for you, should you choose to undertake it, is this. See how many Obama supporters and/or friends you can list that have not been connected to any wrong doing. Now obviously I am not talking about everybody he knows. None of us could possibly know these people. I’m talking about the public figures who have supported him and the friends we know about.

Now we can obviously exclude any politicians from this list, they are by definition corrupt so they are automatically off the list. And yes, this does go for John McCain’s political supporters too.

I’m talking about the ACORN’s, the William Ayers, the Tony Rezko’s, the Rev Wright’s, the Franklin Raines’, the Jamie Gorelick’s.

This is not an idle question really because these are the people Obama will put on the Supreme Court, in the White House, in ambassadorships. Political appointments, especially to the White House and ambassadorships, are given as paybacks to friends, supporters, and donors.

Watching the news this morning and scanning the news sites, it is incredible how wide the polls are on who won the Vice Presidential debate last night. This I think speaks more about polls than about the debate and further highlights something I believe, who won the debate is an irrelevant and unanswerable question.

The real question is how do you determine who won a debate. What does a “win” look like? Sometimes it’s obvious. If one of the participants would have spent the night stammering or showing a complete lack of command of the issues, one could point to a winner. Neither did this last night so, we can’t use this to decide.

Further, which part of the debate did either win? Did Biden win the questions on foreign policy? Maybe but how do you measure that absent a knock out? Same with the economy, war on terror, and on and on. So then how do people determine, based on the different questions posed during the debate, who won? Do they keep score at home? Is the last questions, and who won them, stuck in their mind? Is their one or two questions that they remember and this clouds their opinion of the debate?

Finally, there is the question of preconceived bias. The reality, and I am guilty of this myself, is that if you were a Sarah Plain fan, she won the debate. Conversely if you’re a Joe Biden fan, he won the debate.

Some will ask then, what about the “independent voter”?

First, I will go on record to say that I believe this notion of a vast population of independent voters is grossly over reported. I have noticed that over the last roughly 8 years, there has been an increased amount of talk about independent voters. My opinion is that it has taken on the feel of a fad. I can’t help but believe that it has become almost fashionable to say your independent. You have the media clamoring over you and if you happen to be in a diner when the media stops by, you get on the news.

Now this is not to say that there are not voters out there who truly are independent. I believe there are, I just believe it is not in the numbers reported. Actually, I believe that a true independent voter is the best kind. This means they are not blinded by ideology, they look at a candidate and vote according to what they see. They’re a model really for partisans like me.

I believe though that most so called independent voters have an inherent political bias and ultimately vote for a particular party. You will hear qualifiers such as Bob here is an independent who voted Democrat (or Republican) the last three presidential elections. This does not meet my definition of an independent.

Back to our question though, what about the independent voter. The discussion above illustrates that polling this group can be tricky at best. The main problem is what kind of independents are they polling. Do 70% of them lean one way or another, this skews the data.

I think the bottom line is that barring a real obvious win it is hard, if not impossible, to poll on who won a debate. The polls are nothing more than something else to debate and gives the media the opportunity to slant their coverage, a chance the media is taking full advantage of, based on a survey of the sites this am.

The real answer is how they ultimately help their respective campaign. We can ask 400 people who won, or we can see who ultimately wins the election.

Almost more important, I believe, than who is doing better in the “who won the debate question” is the other questions in the poll. Questions such as

-Who was more likeable?

Like it or not, this matters in presidential campaigns. I think it’s an indictment of our system that this is even an issue, but it is. Palin won this on several polls.

So the debate will rage over who won but I feel it’s not a worthy way to spend our time because there really isn’t a good, definitive answer.

John McCain last night announced he was suspending his campaign and wanted to cancel the Friday debate so the candidates could return to Washington as Senators and do their jobs. Obama has refused, opting instead to continue campaigning and fund raising activities.

This may be a case in which Obama may want to listen to his running mate Joe Biden. Biden recently called upon the wisdom of one our past presidents for guidance on how to lead in this fiscal crises. He said that we should use Franklin Roosevelt’s leadership during the stock market crash of 1929 as a model.

 "When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed,"

We will excuse Joe for not knowing that Roosevelt wasn’t president in 1929 or that television was in it’s developmental stage at the time. Liberals have a long history of not letting the truth get in the way of a good attack.

So come on Obama, show the grit Roosevelt showed and get back to Washington. Roll up your sleeves and help save our coutry. If you don’t remember where the Senate building is just go on one of those bus tours, most of them stop there.

I love when my blog is written for me. I haven’t been feeling well lately and Joe Joe “the gaffe machine” Biden gave me an easy day.

It appears that him and Obama are not talking lately and Biden seems to be running his own show. Trouble is, some of the stuff he’s been saying is not in agreement with what Obama wants. This is not only embarrassing for Obama and the campaign but it is exhausting for the campaign spin-meisters.

First up, we have the ill-advised Obama ad attacking McCain for not being able to do e-mail. The ad would have been a good idea except that McCain cannot do e-mail because he has trouble typing due to a war injury. This was an injury sustained while being tortured at the Hanoi Hilton. So, needless to say, that ad was not real popular.

As it turns out, Biden was not one of the fans. According to this story Biden had this to say during an interview on CBS with Katie Curic:

Asked whether he’s disappointed with the tone of the campaign, including the ad that Couric characterized as “making fun of John McCain’s inability to use a computer,” Biden said “I thought that was terrible by the way.

“I didn’t know we did it and if I had anything to do with it, we would have never done it”

Of course by terrible, he didn’t mean it was that bad according to this correction later:

“Having now reviewed the ad, it is even more clear to me that given the disgraceful tenor of Sen McCain’s ads and their persistent falsehoods, his campaign is in no position to criticize,” he said, “especially when they continue to distort Barack’s votes on an issue as personal as keeping kids safe from sexual predators.”

Read the rest of the article to see how the McCain campaign used the comments to criticize the Obama campaign, call out the NYT again for not reponding to the original ad, and continue the tying of Obama to Chicago style politics.

Bidden was just getting started though. Biden was asked about clean coal plants in the US for energy. This from a story on Ben Smith’s blog, Biden steered away from Obama again by saying:

Biden's apparent answer: He supports clean coal for China, but not for the United States.

"No coal plants here in America," he said. "Build them, if they're going to build them, over there. Make them clean."

"We’re not supporting clean coal," 

This flies in the face of the Obama official position on coal. Another interesting thing is that Obama and Biden sparred about this during the primaries while running against each other. Obama is for clean coal and Biden is against it. This begs the question of who really is in charge here? Naturally we are misunderstanding Biden again and anyone pointing out the discrepancy is vilified:

Biden spokesman David Wade responded by calling McCain's statement "yet another false attack from a dishonorable campaign."

He continued: "Senator McCain knows that Senator Obama and Senator Biden support clean coal technology. Senator Biden’s point is that China is building coal plants with outdated technology every day, and the United States needs to lead by developing clean coal technologies."

How McCain got that Biden doesn’t support clean coal from this statement "We’re not supporting clean coal,"  is beyond me.

For more fun, read this article here about Obama attacking McCain for saying AIG should not have been bailed out when three minutes after McCain said it, Biden said the same thing. This is a good read and contains a real shocker. Matt Lauer actually called Obama on this discrepancy and asked him a tough question. No word yet if Matt has been fired by NBC for making The One feel uncomfortable and pressured to explain something unflattering.

Finally we have a bonus Biden gaffe that Cube posted on her blog today. Biden remarked that when the stock market crashed in 1929, FDR got on television and… Other than the facts that TV was experimental and the public didn’t have them yet and that Hoover was president at the time, his statement was entirely true. The other thing that pisses me off is that this will get no media play. Anyone want to guess what would happen if George Bush or Dan Quayle had said this?

I don’t want to be accused of beating a dead horse but it has gotten to the point that it is difficult to find an article wqritten by the Associated Press or on one of the Big Three network sites that is unbiased. So called “journalists” are now nothing more than editorialists.

The latest example is this article about by Joe Milica of the Associated Press Joe Biden’s comments on John McCain’s economic plan. Article available here

The article has the usual slant, giving one side (not McCain’s) and ignoring that Obama’s plan has come under similar attacks. So, in other words, it is routine fare for the liberal media.

There are a couple of glaring examples of out and out bias though.

First of all, there is the little matter of Joe Biden’s remark that paying taxes is patriotic. The article quoted Biden as saying this: (all emphasis mine)

"We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people," Biden said. Of those who would pay more, he said: "It's time to be patriotic ... time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut."

Somehow McCain took Biden’s remark to mean that it was patriotic to raise taxes, so the article took McCain to task for his misinterpretation.

McCain misstated Biden's remark when he told supporters at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that Biden had said "raising taxes is patriotic."

Then we have this:

In a new TV ad that repeats widely debunked claims about the Democratic tax plan, McCain's campaign charges that Obama would increase the federal government amid an economic crisis. Contending that "a big government casts a big shadow on us all," the ad features the image of a shadow slowly covering a sleeping baby as a narrator misstates the reach of the Obama tax proposal.

widely debunked claims (this is another liberal media trick, who is widely debunking McCain’s claims?)

We also have this fun part, though not quite as obvious, definitely twisting the facts.

Although McCain claims Obama would raise taxes, the independent Tax Policy Center and other groups conclude that four out of five U.S. households would receive tax cuts under Obama's proposals.

This statement is fun in that it may be both true and false at the same time. Maybe 4 out of 5 households would receive tax cuts, by their math though, 20% of the households are missing. Furthermore, Obama himself has said he would raise taxes, it is patriotic after all. Further, the author ignores the fact that not all of the mentioned 80% of households pay taxes and therefore cannot get tax cuts. The author obviously subscribes to the Democratic notion that people who do not pay taxes can still get a tax cut. Finally, the author himself quoted Biden as saying they would raise taxes. Unless I am guilty of misinterpreting this: “Of those who would pay more”.

As I said, it is nothing more than standard fair for the liberal media, that doesn’t mean it is any less tiresome and nauseating. But then again, maybe I’m just misstating the article.