From the latest artist’s statement over at The Pain:

With less than a month now to go before election Day and the country in a shambles, Obama is ahead in all the polls and even I am cautiously, against my better judgment, starting to hope that maybe, just this once, the shitheads will not win. Of course I’ve hoped this several times before, only to be sucker-punched and laughed at by the Shithead Nation. Which could well happen again if enough people secretly turn out to be racists behind the electoral booth curtain. Even if Obama does win, it still feels like a depressing confirmation of one’s most cynical and misanthropic suspicions that things finally had to get this bad—the country in ruin, mired in two losing wars and on the brink of a global Great Depression—before people would grudgingly consent to vote for someone intelligent for a change. It’s hard to believe we might actually have someone smart running the country again; as my friend Megan said, “It seems almost bizarre.” No doubt as soon as we’re at peace and running a surplus again the shitheads will vote for another hawkish, tax-cutting demagogue, like an alcoholic with a few months’ sobriety under his belt who decides that things are going so well that a coupla beers aren’t going to hurt anything.

The New Yorker’s endorsement of Barack Obama contains a succinct description of the reason for my now-dislike for McCain:

Since the 2004 election, however, McCain has moved remorselessly rightward in his quest for the Republican nomination. He paid obeisance to Jerry Falwell and preachers of his ilk. He abandoned immigration reform, eventually coming out against his own bill. Most shocking, McCain, who had repeatedly denounced torture under all circumstances, voted in February against a ban on the very techniques of “enhanced interrogation” that he himself once endured in Vietnam—as long as the torturers were civilians employed by the C.I.A.

Jon Stewart:

I was convinced an Obama/McCain campaign would be measurably different on almost all standards. And to watch it become Bush/Kerry, Bush/Gore, has been one of the most dissatisfying experiences.

No kidding.

As scripted by Aaron Sorkin, apparently:

BARTLET: Well, it seems to me your problem is a lot like the problem I had twice.

OBAMA: Which was?

BARTLET: A huge number of Americans thought I thought I was superior to them.

OBAMA: And?

BARTLET: I was.

And this bit:

OBAMA: … They pivoted off the argument that I was inexperienced to the criticism that I’m — wait for it — the Messiah, who, by the way, was a community organizer. When I speak I try to lead with inspiration and aptitude. How is that a liability?

BARTLET: Because the idea of American exceptionalism doesn’t extend to Americans being exceptional. … The people who want English to be the official language of the United States are uncomfortable with their leaders being fluent in it.

I know there are other ways of being exceptional than by being intelligent, but I still think that’s a large part of the problem. Every 4 years it’s a race to the bottom.

In the past I’ve called the McCain campaign’s selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as the senator’s running mate the most cynical move I’ve ever seen. I’m only 26, and I’ve only been paying attention to US politics for the last 5 years, so I don’t think that’s overstating it. She has the fundie Christian bonafides, certainly (just say “I loves me some God and hates me some science!” and you’re there), but so do others in the party who have more experience. She was appointed to the ticket because of Hilary Clinton, and anyone saying otherwise is engaging in willful ignorance (or just plain ignorance). Because the news media has a hard time explaining anything with any force, the Republicans have managed to co-opt the last year or so of Hilary Clinton’s struggle to actually get elected, with Palin. She who was plucked out of obscurity and given her position of power by an old white man. This symbol is supposed to be a positive for feminism how?

So the point of bringing this up? Two things: First, SNL has actually created a somewhat funny sketch. It took a couple of minutes to suppress the wild hatred I have for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, but it actually gets funny. And it addresses what I talked about above. Honestly if they did comedy with even this faint level of insight more often, I wouldn’t get so annoyed when news outlets gushingly fawn over SNL’s “importance” in political comedy.

Second, the NY Times has done a piece on Palin’s time in Alaskan office:

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

Talk about change you can believe in.