McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, speaking in Colorado Springs, Colo., said Fannie and Freddie had “gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers.” The companies, however, aren’t taxpayer funded but operate as private companies. The takeover may result in a taxpayer bailout during reorganization.

Granted, the only folks who will find that funny are the handful who know how Fannie and Freddie work. And granted, that handful doesn’t include their managements. But it’s a start.

Candidates briefed on seizure of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac [McClatchy via TPM]

Q. Are you a liberal partisan hate rag?

A. No. We hate all idiots equally.

Q. Why are you using a derogatory term against women?

A. You mean “cunt” and “trollop”? You must have us confused with Maverick McCain.

Oh, pussy. Right. Actually, “you’re a pussy” is a common expression accusing someone of lacking courage, especially in an athletic context such as hockey games. But if you’d like, John McCain is a dick. Fair’s fair.

Q. I get it. People think differently than you so they aren’t thinking for themselves.

A. No, people reading from someone else’s canned scripts aren’t thinking for themselves. People who think differently from us are merely wrong.

Q. This is liberalism to its core: I’m smarter than you are and I’m going to yell and rant till you agree with me.

A. We are, we will, but we don’t expect you to agree with us. To quote Lex Luthor, “My genius is no match for your ignorance.”

Q. She ain’t gonna find an unbiased network except for Fox.

A. If the survival of the human race were dependent upon your acuity, we’d be worried. Which, come to think of it, we are.

Q. She has a major in journalism and a minor in political science. She was also an on-air sports reporter, so I think she knows how to handle the media and their pettiness.

A. It’s not Chris Matthews we’re worried about, it’s Vladmir Putin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hu Jintao, Kim Jong-il, and whoever has the launch codes in Pakistan, for starters. If Sarah Palin is too chickenshit to chat up even Katie Couric, we fear for the Republic when John McCain is taken out in a tragic motocross accident next year.

Q. Perhaps, and I’m really going out on a limb here, she’s spending some precious time with her family before she hits the road. You know, with that baby with Downs and with her pregnant daughter.

A. Or maybe, just maybe, John McCain selected a manifestly unprepared governor of Alaska with no known interest in national or international issues as his running mate to appease the Fundamentalist power brokers in his party and skim off a few Hillary voters in the bargain, handed her a prewritten and hastily revised speech to deliver at his convention, sent her on the road with a teleprompter to make sure she sticks to the script, and is taking pains that she avoid any extemporaneous contact with a microphone for fear she says something that reveals how little she knows or how divisive her views on social issues are.

But that’s just us spitballing.

Q. Palin has agreed to an interview with Charlie Gibson of ABC. What do you have to say about that, smartass?

A. We welcome the opportunity to drop “pussy” and switch over to the more delightful “Talibunny.”

Can Sarah Palin think for herself? [Debate Policy]

We hope you enjoyed the Keith & Chris Show at the conventions, because it’s just been canceled.

David Gregory will be anchoring MSNBC coverage of the debates and election night. Viewers complained that Olbermann and Matthews were too interesting and lacked the soporific run-on mastery of Wolf Blitzer.

Joe Scarborough was shoveling out back and could not be reached for comment.

MSNBC Drops Olbermann, Matthews as News Anchors [WaPo]

Sarah “Pussy” Palin, craven understudy leader of the free world, remains too chickenshit to face the public without a script written by somebody else, raising serious questions about her ability to answer a 3 p.m. call from David Gregory, much less a 3 a.m. alarm about Vladimir Putin.

John McCain, Barack Obama and Joe Biden will all be appearing on the Sunday chatterfests today. Cuddles Wallace held open a slot for Palin, but she had a nervous fit and will be flying back to Alaska to shoot things that don’t shoot back. “She calls herself a pit bull, but she’s acting like a poodle,” says a well-placed blogger, speaking on condition that the neighbors turn down their fucking TV at night.

We’re now in Day 10 of Pussy Palin’s Campaign of Zen, and desperate acolytes are searching for something, anything, to prove to doubters that she’s capable of speaking her mind, and not her speechwriter’s.

Perhaps this will tide us over:

“Turning maybe purple in the state means, to me, it’s more independent, it’s not the obsessive partisanship that gets in the way of doing what’s right for this state, and I think on a national level that’s what we’re gonna see,” Palin said about Obama’s prospects in Alaska before aliens abducted her. “I’m a mom, and my son is going to get deployed in September, and we better have a real clear plan for this war. And it better not have to do with oil and dependence on foreign energy.”

We feel better now. She said that only a few weeks ago.

Palin on Obama [New Yorker]

Remember that scene in Fargo? No, not that one. The nice little moment where Frances McDormand’s husband is preoccupied with entering the federal duck-stamp painting competition.

The competition is real. Every year, duck hunters need to buy a license before heading out to do an Elmer on Daffy. And every year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issues a Migratory Bird Conservation and Hunting Stamp for the purpose.

Joe Hautman of Plymouth, Minnesota, won this year’s competition. He’s one of “those Hautmans,” the brothers Norm Gunderson frets about to Margie.

The stamp looks like a postage stamp: Beautiful waterfowl painting. Dollar amount. And the toll-free number for a phone-sex service.

Oops.

Not Joe’s fault, just some dyslexia in the layout department. The number to buy more stamps is 1-800-782-6724, but someone typed it as 1-800-872-6724.

No big deal. The first translates as 1-800-STAMP24. The second is 1-800-TRAMP24.

Duck Stamp includes phone-sex number [StarTribune.com]

Looks like Nancy Wilson will have to get in line, because “Barracuda” ain’t the only thing the Geezer stole last night.

As he spoke, a number of images appeared on the Plasma of Liberty behind him. And the folks behind one those images aren’t happy.

TPM has been following the big story all day: a photo of a white building wasn’t Walter Reed Medical Center (as presumed), but Walter Reed Middle School in Los Angeles.

“Permission to use the front of our school for the Republican National Convention was not given by our school nor is the use of our school’s picture an endorsement of any political party or view,” said Principal Donna Tobin.

California dems are staging a press conference there any moment.

Meanwhile, second-string scandal-monger Daily Kos has identfied at least four photos from the Geezer’s video intro that came from an online stock-photo agency. (Good shots, good prices — we use them all the time.) What the Kos Kiddies find intriguing about the selections is that they feature black people, who otherwise were MIA during the convention.

School Raps McCain For Using Image As Speech Backdrop Without Permission [TPM]

McCain Winning Coveted “Stock Photos” Demographic? [Kos]