Will the real Sarah Palin please stand up? The Republican V.P. candidate made her first appearance on Saturday Night Live this weekend with a faux-surprise interruption of the opening sketch, in which Tina Fey, now famous for her impressions of the Alaska governor, was giving a press conference. Palin later bobbed her head to the beat and threw her hands in the air as a pregnant Amy Poehler rapped about Eskimos and shooting moose. Very funny, but at the same time, it seemed to me Palin was cringing throughout, like she was taking medicine for her sick campaign (see below).
Obama’s pushing for out-and-out socialism, McCain said over the weekend. By taxing the rich and redistributing the wealth through government programs, he is turning the IRS into a giant “welfare agency.” Obama responded quickly, telling an audience of 100,000 in St. Louis that “John McCain is so out of touch with the struggles you are facing that he must be the first politician in history to call a tax cut for working people ‘welfare.’”
Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama on Sunday. At the same time the former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff announced his support for the Democratic presidential nominee, Obama set a fundraising record with $150 million in September.
As oil prices drop, so might hopes of transitioning to alternative energy, or so reports the Washington Post. On Friday the price of oil dropped to $71.85 a barrel, lower than it was one year ago before the rapid climb that led to record-high prices at the pump this summer. The idea is that consumers may get complacent when gas is cheaper and ease some of the pressure on auto manufacturers to build electric or other alternative-fuel vehicles. What would Joe the Plumber say? [Ed note—who cares? He's a fraud].
Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan called for greater interfaith friendship on Sunday and called organized religion a failure at a dedication ceremony for a mosque in Chicago. Farrakhan has been criticized before for making anti-Semitic remarks, but apparently has tried to tone it down in past years. Thousands of people of various faiths attended the event.
The new Robinson Crusoe just might be gay escapism, writes Heather Havrilesky of Salon.com. The title character and his sidekick Friday seem to have created a paradise for social outcasts in NBC’s new drama, and the two get along almost too well. But that’s just the hook for Havrilesky’s broader critique of the show, which she says may get monotonous after a few episodes despite good writing and solid acting. She also panned the new TV show Crash for reinforcing the same stereotypes and contriving the same almost-unbelievable scenarios that she says plagued the Oscar-winning film on which it is based.
Slate released an iPhone application for political junkies on Sunday. The online magazine’s Poll Tracker ‘08 delivers the latest state-by-state polls and election data directly to the phone. Would Google get moving on its mobile operating system already? Maybe we can get a phone for less than $500 again soon…
Tags: alternative energy, Amy Poehler, Barack Obama, Chicago, Colin Powell, Crash, electric cars, interfaith, iphone, John McCain, Louis Farrakhan, mosque, muslim, oil prices, rap, Religion, Robinson Crusoe, sarah palin, Saturday Night Live, snl, TV shows