Amato and Cheney in a secret love nest?!? Mister Amato rebuffed attempts to question the 'experienced State Department Deputy' at his front door with a curt, "She's busy."

[I sent this to Amato as 'office humor' and he thought you'd enjoy the laugh, too. And yeah, we've heard all the 'not with my father-in-law's tallywhacker' jokes, thanks.]

Open thread below...

When he was elected in 1992, Bill Clinton openly admitted that Hillary Rodham Clinton would be an active and engaged member of his inner team, with jokes about "two Clintons for the price of one!", much to the disgust and outright hostility of the right wing. How dare Hillary Clinton be so presumptuous as to believe that her non-elected status as the spouse of the President gave her the right to sit in policy meetings and advise her husband on matters of national importance?

Don't look now, GOP, but it appears we have another case of "two for the price of one":

Nearly 3,000 pages of e-mails that Todd Palin exchanged with state officials, which were released to msnbc.com and NBC News by the state of Alaska under its public records law, draw a picture of a Palin administration where the governor's husband got involved in a judicial appointment, monitored contract negotiations with public employee unions, received background checks on a corporate CEO, added his approval or disapproval to state board appointments and passed financial information marked "confidential" from his oil company employer to a state attorney.While 1,200 separate e-mails were released this week, 243 others were withheld by the state under a claim that executive privilege extends to Todd Palin as an unpaid adviser to the government. Still, just the subject lines of those e-mails provide a glimpse of the ways the Palins divvied up their responsibilities when she became governor in December 2006, less than two years before Republican Sen. John McCain pulled her onto the national political stage by nominating her as his vice presidential candidate.You can read all those e-mails in msnbc.com's searchable online archive.

While there is no instruction manual for First Spouse involvement, there's little doubt that Todd's input on Alaskan governmental issues was more than merely 'advising' Sarah Palin. Given that they sought to suppress knowledge of Todd's membership in the extremist AIP party, it does beg the question how much his far-right secessionist beliefs played into his influence on matters of judicial appointments and other matters of state.

It also shines a new light on the news that the Palins jointly cheated on their taxes by never declaring two properties built on parcels they owned as Palin ran on a platform of cleaning up Alaskan corruption:

It was things like this that really made Sarah Palin stand out as a gubernatorial candidate. Republicans in the state were sick of the corruption that was running rampant in their own party, and they wanted change. They wanted a "fresh face" who had new ideas and ethical standards. They wanted someone who was actually bothered by a public official who would cheat his community by passing his personal tax burden on to others.

Ironically, Palin refused to do a commercial endorsing another candidate when it came out that he had an unpaid tax debt.

Beggars Can Be Choosers: Vitter? Family Values? Yep.

Post Tenebras Lux: A cheap holiday in other people's misery.

Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes: Bad poetry. Reeally bad poetry.

David Rees: Democratic! Congress! Jokes!

Guest post by Blue Gal. Catch the weekly podcast with Driftglass, which this week mentions the round up but somehow forgot to mention MIKE!!! Here's hoping Mike is enjoying his cruise.

I rarely watch over-hyped television events, but I couldn't tear my eyes away from Teddy Kennedy's wonderful Irish wake last night.

Since I grew up and still live in a largely Irish Catholic cohort, I don't know much about how other cultures usually deal with death. But I can tell you about the Irish side of my heritage: We do like to spit in the eye of death - with prayer, with jokes, with song. (And a side of sarcasm, please.)

And much like my own father's funeral, I got a much bigger picture of Ted Kennedy as reflected in the eyes of those who loved him.

But it wouldn't be a real Irish wake without this, one of my favorite Irish poems:

May those who love us, love us.

And those who don’t love us,

may God turn their hearts.

And if He doesn’t turn their hearts,

may He turn their ankles

so we’ll know them by their limping.

In Teddy's honor, we won't ever stop pointing to those limpers.

The Daily Beast:

Friday night's event commemorated both past and future, again beginning with the site. It was held at the John F. Kennedy Library, in an auditorium where Senator Kennedy used to hold dinners—shadow state dinners, really—to honor foreign leaders such as Czech President Vaclav Havel, Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and a variety of Irish politicians including Mary Robinson and John Hume. But the library is next door to a plot of land where the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate will rise. Boston's mayor Thomas Menino said it would provide "another lasting legacy of the Kennedys in Boston." Contributions to the project, budgeted at $100 million, have picked up since the senator's death, said its CEO, Peter Meade, and the public has been invited to contribute instead of sending flowers.

The night's speeches — a total of three-and-a-half hours that left the audience scrambling for cars in a downpour that is a foretaste of Tropical Storm Danny's promises for today -- alternated between solemn assessments of Kennedy's merits and accounts of his misadventures. The most entertaining of the latter came from John Culver, a former senator from Iowa and a college chum of Kennedy's. He told of being assured by Kennedy that "there's nothing to it" when he enlisted for a sailing race, and then being seasick, rain-soaked, and chilled for 24 hours while Kennedy shouted orders. "We were being bounced all over," said Culver, "and it's all my fault?" And Dodd told of a phone call from Kennedy earlier this month, when he was in a recovery room after prostate surgery. He said Kennedy told him, "Between undergoing prostate surgery and holding town meetings, you made the right choice."

Dodd turned serious then, listing some of the laws Kennedy sponsored in education, health and other areas, and compared him with his brothers: "John Fitzgerald Kennedy inspired America. Robert F. Kennedy challenged America. Our Teddy changed America."

Vice President Joe Biden told of how Kennedy "took on the role of being my elder brother" when he was in despair after his wife and daughter were killed and his sons gravely injured in a car crash just after he was first elected to the Senate. Kennedy urged him, again and again, to give the Senate a chance. He got him committee assignments, encouraged him to get involved, and then, when Biden suffered from brain aneurisms in 1988, took over his committee for him for months until arriving unexpectedly in Delaware to tell Biden he was needed and it was time to return.

Then Biden turned to the dozens of young Kennedys in the hall and said pundits were making a mistake when they said the era of Kennedy was over. "Because of you," he said, "the dream still lives."

The evening's final speaker made the same point. His niece, Caroline Kennedy, said, "We are the ones who have to do all the things he would have done, for ourselves and for our country."

Then the audience stood and all sang a favorite song of Kennedy's: "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling."

I realize this is a little old-news-cycle, but it did amaze me this past month that Sarah Palin went massively ballistic in defense of her daughters re: David Letterman's jokes, but a localized threat like Levi Johnston, who actually had sex with her underage daughter? Not so much. The Obama daughters are more 'off-limits' than you know, Governor. Ask their grandmother.

Open thread below.

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While talking about the dustup between David Letterman and Sarah Palin, Republican strategist John Feehery instantly tried to say that no one made jokes about Chelsea Clinton. Contessa Brewer wouldn’t let that go and stopped him right in his tracks, which led Feehery to try and claim that Chelsea wasn’t 14 when the jokes were being made. Brewer then corrected that and reminded him, complete with finger wag and all, that Chelsea was only 12.

Considering how offended Sarah Palin is by Letterman’s jokes, I am sitting here wondering if she will boycott Rush Limbaugh now. Ok you caught me – I’m not wondering. We all know the answer to that, just like we saw how she never seemed to worry about the “jokes” her former running-mate made about Chelsea. 

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This comes out just two days after my birthday. Guess how I'm going to celebrate?

Michael Moore wants his money back. Actually, he wants your money back, if you lost any in the financial meltdown.

And though he knows that probably won't happen, the filmmaker at least wants to stick it to the people who took it.

The still untitled film, which opens Oct. 2, will zero in on the corporations and politicians he says caused the global financial crash.

Wall Street robber barons are Moore's new on-screen enemy.

"The movie is not going to be an economics lesson; it's going to be more like a vampire movie," the filmmaker jokes. "Instead of the main characters feasting on the blood of their victims, they feast on the money. And they never seem to get enough of it."

When the collapse walloped the country last September, Moore says he knew not only that it would matter to regular people, but also that the inherent decadence was ripe for his style of satire.

"If you go to see my movies, even if you don't agree with everything in the movies, you're going to have a good laugh," Moore says. "I want them to walk out at the end saying 'Wow, that was something!' And in this case, maybe they also walk out asking the ushers, 'Um, excuse me. Where are the pitchforks and torches?' "

Threat Level: House members in tight November elections scuttle bailout

Just Indignation: Dear Members of Congress

Crooked Timber: Republican talking point whack-a-mole, yet again

Undiplomatic: Psychogeezer compares Palin to Reagan

It's been five years since the Rude Pundit emerged to spread democracy and sodomy jokes to the blog world.

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Stinque, DeRosaWorld,That's So Maverick, Democracy Hypocrisy

In an earlier post, C&L and many other sites caught David Brooks say this:

DAVID BROOKS, “NEW YORK TIMES: Obama‘s problem is he doesn‘t seem like a guy who can go into an Applebee‘s salad bar and people think he fits in naturally there. He has to change to be more like that Applebee‘s guy and as he‘s done that he‘s become much more transactional. Much more, I‘m going to deliver this and this and this to you on policy.

C&Ler Mitzi left this in the comment section:

I called my Applebee’s today to make sure I was correct and they do not have a salad bar. Just goes to show how much these people who make these comments have no idea how “regular people” live their lives.

I called an Applebee's also and they told me that none of their restaurants have a salad bar. David, sometimes the jokes write themselves. What an idiot.

Sometimes the jokes just write themselves:

While grappling with MSNBC and CNN for viewers, Fox News has also been battling a smaller, more insidious enemy closer to home: bed bugs in its Midtown Manhattan newsroom. In an interview on Monday, Warren Vandeveer, senior vice president for operations and engineering at Fox News, said the cable channel had realized it had a problem a few weeks ago, when an employee “caught a bug and showed it to us.” An exterminator determined that the incursion was limited to a “very small area in the newsroom.” But the source of the bugs was not determined until the exterminator inspected the homes of about 20 employees. Mr. Vandeveer said the exterminator later described one employee’s home as having “the worst infestation he had seen in 25 years in the business.”

Open Thread below... and rest in peace, Anthony Minghella and Arthur C. Clarke.