Open thread - Aaah...

I'm going to be busy in the next few hours, so I'll leave you with a shiny new open thread. Enjoy the weekend!

Bonus:

Graphic created by: dependable renegade (click for another version)

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Looking into Sarah Palin's mirror

This landed on my comments box:

Lambie has left a new comment on your post "Sarah Palin's ineptitude":

"Franklin Graham's circus" ?? Look in the mirror, Regina. What did you or your crowd DO about the plight of people caught for six weeks in the energy crisis in western Alaska? You blog while people starve. Some people carp, and some people act. If Franklin Graham taking action to deliver food and supplies was a circus, then I say less blogging and more circuses.

Dear Lambie,

The bloggers collected thousands of dollars and organized food and supplies boxes to be sent to more than one village, the ones actually affected by the energy crisis, not the two villages where people were amused and very surprised to see Sarah Palin arriving with the Evangelical circus, bearing boxes of food, pamphlets and some cookies. They were grateful, but didn't need them. What Sarah Palin achieved with her photo-op trip was to insult a village elder from Emmonak, one of the villages facing hardship.

None of the bloggers involved in the appeal went to the villages for a photo-op, they just helped publicize the villagers plight and made sure they received the help they needed some 6 weeks before Sarah Palin and attending circus made any effort to help at all.

We forged lasting friendships with some Alaska Natives and have started another appeal on behalf of a dear friend who lost her husband recently. She has one little daughter and is due to have another baby in November, facing a very bleak winter without her beloved husband as she's unable to hunt or earn enough money to heat her house or feed her children.

We blog for a reason, a very good reason. We were the first ones to turn the attention of the rest of the world to the crisis in Western Alaska and we haven't stopped after a photo-op. Donations poured in during those 6 weeks from all over the world and we will continue to be vocal about the problems the villagers face each winter, about all the issues that affect their livelihoods, such as the salmon by-catch by industrial trawlers from out of state that ruined the villagers ability to fish and sustain the local fisheries.

Unlike Franklin Graham's circus, we didn't flood the villages with Evangelical propaganda, our help had no strings attached. We respect the villagers religion and traditions, they don't have to worship at our altar. We helped people out of human solidarity and don't need temples built or any recognition or grovelling gratitude.

The villagers don't know our faces or our names, we don't need the publicity, we have no hidden agenda. We preserved the dignity of a very proud people because we didn't demand any public show of gratitude, we accepted their friendship instead.

Yes, Lambie, I look in the mirror. What I see is a face that doesn't need to be photographed, a name that doesn't need broadcasting. I am but one of the thousands of people from all over the world who look in the mirror and like what they see and only wish they could do more. We sent what we could to people thousands of miles away from our heated, comfortable homes.

I don't know what Sarah Palin sees when she looks into her mirror... but I guess it's not pretty.

How about you, Lambie? Where did you send YOUR money? SarahPac? The Alaska Fund Trust? The Samaritan Purse?

If you did, go and have a look in the mirror. You will see the face of a sucker.
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Let them eat cookies

Sarah Palin's response in times of crisis always appear to involve cookies.

She handed out cookies in Marshall and Russian Mission when she visited the villages with the evangelical circus. But that blogger, Nick Tucker, was so ungrateful and wanted more than cookies!

On Saturday Sarah helped some girl scouts sell their cookies in a grocery store in Juneau because the girls had been robbed. This time she took the family circus. It went much better on this occasion, the girls were very grateful and thought she was really cool.

Saturday's efforts paid off. Sarah managed to show her generosity and had the chance to plug a few lines to prove that she really was pregnant with Trig: Palin made several sweeps of the store ("Come buy cookies!) until she was diverted by an aisle of exercise equipment on sale. "Wait a minute, we need this for when it rains and I can't run," said the Governor, closely examining an elliptical trainer. PEOPLE asked Palin if she'd lost weight since the election. "I've lost weight since I had my baby," she said. "Thanks for noticing!"

Sarah wants to be president. She would revolutionise the whole concept of aid. Hurricane in Louisiana? Famine in Africa? Tsunami in Asia? No problems, send them cookies! With the help from one of her travelling circuses and a few carefully chosen soundbites, Sarah would be an instant hit worldwide!
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