Dear Tina

I have been a fan for some time. I always thought you had a knack for comedy; I love “30 rock”. Your third Sarah palin impersonation on SNL on October 4, 2008, however, was lacking in creativity. Your performance was nothing more than a mocking of Governor Sarah Palin. A second grader could mock Gov. Palin. Your portrayal of Gov. Palin’s debate performance against Sen. Biden just wasn’t satire – it was mocking ridicule; a type of humor reserved for b-rate gossip webpages. While the situation was appropriate for satire, the skit just was not funny.

Specifically, your act is tired. The first time you did Gov. Sarah was amusing because it was so uncanny. The second time it was simply informative of what happened at the Katie Couric interview. This third time I expected more than just clever winking. Use your creative writing skills and put some satire into it. For instance, the funniest part of your act on October 4, was the reference to a “Maverick” drinking game. Maybe instead of simply mocking Gov. Palin, you can have her be the host of a talk show called “Mavericks!” and let her Maverick her guests into submission. How about “Hunting and Fishing Gov. Palin”. It would be a fish out of water type skit with the sexy Gov. Palin shooting animals; SNL can use that fake blood they love so much and cover you in it as you pretend to be Gov. Palin skinning a moose in high heels and a mini-skirt. The humor would mask the blatent sexism.

That makes me think … where is the Obama satire? Aren’t you the one who said “bitch is the new black“?

TINA FEY: You know what, bitches get stuff done. That’s why Catholic schools use nuns as teachers and not priests. Those nuns are mean old clams and they sleep on cots and they’re allowed to hit you. And at the end of the school year you hated those bitches but you knew the capital of Vermont. So, I’m saying it’s not too late Texas and Ohio, bitch is the new black!

So will Sarah Palin win the election for Obama?

Catch the stream here

Let us know who you think won:

Apparently those who hacked Palin’s email account left a massive “fingerprint” that could lead investigators, the NSA, FBI etc. right to the hacker’s front door. Actually, thier parent’s front door. Hackers like this are notorious for living in their parents’ basement.

Specifically, the hackers used a proxy to try and cover their tacks. The trouble is, they left a finger print as to which proxy service they used. Accordingly, that proxy service can access their logs to grab the IP address (identifying information) and pinpoint the internet service provider the hackers used and then pinpoint the user.

Classic.

Thanks to Gizmodo for the heads up.

If you have not yet heard, some people (who are soon to be in MAJOR trouble) hacked into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo! email account. Read the story here:
Salon and the organization that broke the story report that Palin’s Yahoo! account is immune from the retention rules governing electornic document transmission. Rest assured these people are incorrect. The duty to presesrve follows the the type of document not the form of transmission or the form of email account. Accordingly, if Ms. Palin conducted business using her Yahoo! email account instead of her Alaska government assigned account she is still under a duty to preserve electronic communications which are covered by law and any other applicable retention policy. Unfortunately for her, the contents of the Yahoo! account may subject to a subpoena. Rest assured, even though the account is deleted, the data can still be recovered; quite easily.

Apart from the flagrant disrespect of Ms. Palin’s private life, and despite the fact that in hacking this account the perpetrators have completely flauted the justice system, reporting that Ms. Palin’s habits were conducted to circumvent a law is irresponsible and ignorant.

Update: Apart from the effects of document retention rules, the groups that perpetrated this hack and that are celebrating the “newsworthiness” of Sarah Palin’s personal email photos and contact list are the same groups that don’t want the FBI to looking at terrorists communications. Its quite disgusting to me.

The bold choice of Governor Sarah Palin to be John McCain’s Vice Presidential running mate is one that caught many observers, including some contributors to this blog off guard. It was and remains a risky choice, and Governor Palin is not without negatives, but to Senator McCain’s credit, his choice of running mate has ignited a degree of enthusiasm and support across the political spectrum that has propelled him into the lead for the first time in this presidential contest.  Whether Governor Palin was a wise choice will ultimately be determined on Election Day, and that will partly be determined by whether she can maintain the enthusiasm she has generated despite increasing withering attacks from the Left and sympathetic operatives in the mainstream media. 

There is no doubt that Governor Palin has a narrow and treacherous path ahead, and one that will require extreme discipline, a thick skin and inherent political skill to successfully navigate. Luckily however, Sarah Palin seems to possess these traits, and her RNC address coupled with her subsequent media performances seems to have calmed the nerves of some GOP skeptics, and won her the furious support of many rank and file conservatives – some of who only half-heartedly supported McCain. Whatever Sarah Palin’s faults, at present, the combination seems to be working, politically…and the Democrats know it.

Thus, the Obama campaign and the mainstream media, is busy attempting to define Palin before she becomes any more popular, and have settled on a series of attacks relating to what they contend is her general inexperience in governance, her lack of foreign policy credentials, and a whole cadre of ad hominem attacks ranging from her family pedigree to her fitness as a mother.  The attacks have been ugly, mean spirited, and unfortunately predictable – this after all is the biggest game in politics.

This week’s interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson provided fodder for the Democratic narrative that Palin is unqualified. Her hesitating answer regarding the Bush Doctrine was proof enough for Democrats that Palin isn’t ready to be president (a job she isn’t running for). Never mind that Gibson himself incorrectly defined the Bush Doctrine, or that Palin’s redefinition of the question as “his (Bush’s) world view,” was far more accurate, perception is everything.

But if the interview proved anything, it is not the Palin is the dangerously unqualified candidate, but that Barack Obama is. By every reasonable measure Sarah Palin, the nation’s most popular chief executive, is equally or more qualified for the federal executive than Barack Obama.  The argument cannot me credibly made that Palin is unqualified for the number two slot, but that the junior senator from Illinois is qualified for the top job. Indeed it’s laughable, particularly on foreign policy grounds. It is precisely Obama’s utter lack of foreign policy experience that forced him to put the electoral equivalent of a dead battery on his ticket – Joe Biden.

To boil it down, Obama’s supporters must essentially contend that Obama is qualified for the most powerful position in the world because he is a one-term junior senator from Illinois who, after careful consideration, was dead wrong on the central foreign policy question of recent years – the U.S. troop surge in Iraq, yet Sarah Palin is unqualified for the constitutionally weak vice presidency because despite being a popular, successful, reform-minded governor from the nation’s largest state, she hesitated though correctly framed an answer to one question about Bush’s foreign policy in a TV interview with Charlie Gibson.

Compelling argument.

Sorry, if Governor Palin is unqualified to be vice president based on the fact that she is a mere governor, then so was Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, or Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, or for that matter New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt – all Democrats who ascended to the presidency, not the vice presidency, based largely on the qualification of having served as governor of their respective states. Of course it’s an unfair comparison, as Governor Palin has had to contend with two realities that none of the above, and no other state’s governor must – Alaska shares borders with no other U.S. state, but rather with two foreign nations, Canada…and Russia. Based on this fact alone, there is arguably perhaps no other governorship in the country that comes with equivalent foreign policy considerations.

If her past performance as mayor and governor are any measure, Palin will pick up all she needs to know on her way to the vice presidency, and be perfectly capable of serving when the time comes.  Palin is new to the national scene and hasn’t been studying and criticizing Bush foreign policy for 19 months like Obama – she’s been governing Alaska. If given 19 months to prepare and hone her message, and a free ride by the adoring press, Palin would be equally or more qualified to be president than Obama.  Again, however she is running for vice president, not president, and perhaps the most important thing for a vice president is to be ready if and when the president is unable to perform his duties. If after 15 days on the campaign trail, Palin is performing as well as she is, then she has ample time to be ready for the famously undemanding job of vice president, come 2009.

Still, despite the tough questioning, and unfair criticisms, only by being unafraid to answer them and performing in a self-assured, knowledgeable way can Palin win the confidence of the electorate. It is not a task she should shy away from, nor is it a line of criticism that Republicans should be wary of, for the more they question Palin’s readiness, the more obvious it becomes that Obama is truly the most unqualified single candidate on either ticket. This must be the GOP response, and after all, what a welcome debate to have: who is more qualified, the GOP vice presidential candidate or the Democratic presidential candidate.

In the end, vice presidents are allowed a bit of a learning curve, but presidents normally are not, and no one can doubt the readiness of John McCain.

Don’t kid yourself…John McCain just put all his chips on the table and rolled the dice.

Over the past many months, McCain’s team had skillfully underscored the natural impressions of Americans – that Barak Obama was the lightweight in the race; the candidate of risk.  Now, with a single stroke McCain has undercut his most effective argument. He has weakened his case for wisdom and experience, and elevated a one-term governor of a small-population state based on her gender.

McCain had plenty of safe choices. Choices that would have bolstered Americans’ inherent understanding of McCain’s competency and ability; choices that would have underscored the longstanding notion that whatever gimmick the Democrats try, the Republican Party remains the serious one.

With the electorate evenly split, McCain’s first job was to pick a competent running mate that would not undermine his standing, and would reassure voters that should something happen to the oldest man ever to be nominated for president, a competent, experienced leader, ready to serve as commander-in-chief in a time of war, was waiting in the wings.

The former Miss Congeniality, and hockey mom from “the last frontier” is a bizarre choice.

McCain’s pick today has all the hallmarks of a political gimmick and a hail-Mary pass. While it is likely to excite some conservatives, his choice will refocus the entire campaign away from Obama’s status as a political neophyte and will reshuffle the risk calculus in the favor of the increasingly familiar, and always-eloquent Obama. With Biden on the ticket, Obama has lessened the sense that he poses a serious danger to the electorate. McCain’s selection by contrast is likely to shake voters and cast uncertainty on the wisdom and safety of a McCain presidency.

With competent and proven individuals waiting in the wings (such as Governor Mitt Romney), the selection of Sarah Palin is a most unfortunate choice. 

John McCain may have just lost the 2008 election…cue the hurricane.