According to Wikipedia, here are the points of interest in Molalla:

“The Molalla River corridor offers opportunities for outdoor activities, including fishing in the Molalla River, hunting, and hiking. Along the corridor to the east, Table Rock is a favorite local rocky promontory that provides visitors with a view of Molalla and the surrounding countryside for miles in every direction.

“Molalla is the home of the over 80-year-old Molalla Buckeroo Rodeo, the Apple Festival and a miniature steam train at Shady Dell Park. It also hosts the Ross Coleman Invitational, an annual PBR minor-league tour event hosted by PBR bull rider and Molalla native Ross Coleman.”

The Writers Faire should be added. What interested me in particular about this event was the number of people who are writing–fiction, nonfiction, poetry–and are serious about developing their craft. I spoke to them about the situation in publishing today, especially the opportunities now open to new writers to promote, publicize, and publish their work to begin to build an audience. I warned them that the Mainstream Publishing World has changed forever–and although all of us would like to be as famous as Stephanie Meyer, and as rich, few of us will be in this economic and publishing climate.

Much of the writing world, as indeed much of our culture, is focused on celebrity. I suggested to the Molalla writers that they want to be writers not celebrities: they are two different goals. Publishing their own work–”self publishing”–is increasingly a reasonable way to reach a difined market. In time, writers who promote their work in this way might well find publishers willing to take the risk of publishing their work for them.

I spoke at the League of Idaho Writers last summer and encountered a similar group of writers working hard and eager to improve their craft. What strikes me as I look at these two groups is that there is a serious movement among people who are mostly excluded from the mainstream publishing world to organize themselves into publishing cells, if you will, focused on promoting themselves and their work through the new technologies. Print on demand and the web give authors all the tools they need to publish and be read, especially if they support each other.

The workshops for the Faire were on Saturday. Sunday morning, I sat with the conference attendees in front of a fireplace on an elk farm just outside of Molalla. There were about twenty of us inside and seventy elk outside. We could see Mt. Hood in the near distance.

I said, “You can create your own writing and publishing renaissance here in Molalla. You don’t need a New York publisher. And, for the most part, New York publishers do not care about you and what you are writing. Do the best work you can, support each other, publish for your network.”

It may be the way publishing is organized in the future, around local communities of writers who support and promote each other. Portland has some of those qualities; its writer and publishing community is growing and beginning to explore new ways of promoting good work. Many of the city’s literary institutions, such as some of the bookstores and writers organizations and events, seem to be blissfully unaware of the changes occurring around them. But as bookstores close and as publishers cut back on their investment in new work, the communities of writers who can take back their work, will.

I think it’s one of the most hopeful aspects of the current economic crisis. Let a thousand writers bloom.

I read and appreciated a number of books in 2008. As is my habit, I read many of them simultaneously, putting down Matthiessen to pick up James Wood’s How Fiction Works and then Joan Didion’s collected nonfiction in We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live (struck by the continuities between our political past and the 2008 political presence that emerge from her Political Fictions). While reading those books, I went back to Didion’s Play It As It Lays, I don’t know, maybe just to get even more depressed.

Speaking of political fictions, and being depressed, I read Ron Suskind’s The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism, alternating with Didion. The hidden horrors of the Bush years will continue to reveal themselves. Suskind’s book shows us our selves, as well as Bush, but in the end the book wanders off. The interwoven stories begin to feel like only a device, a form of fiction designed to tell us the truth but in the end reminding us that the telling of stories is no easier when they are meant to reveal the truth as it happened not as we experienced it emotionally. And to compound misery, I read Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side, about how we became torturers. It was easy.

For reasons I won’t go into, I read The Strangers in the House, a novel by Georges Simenon—not one of his standard mysteries but what he called romans durs, explorations of the pain of ordinary life. The story is about a man who has lost his self, in a sense, and discovers that his daughter and her friends are leading a dangerous secret life that draws him in and reanimates him.

And there was the Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year, perhaps as reasonable an emblem of 2008 as one can find. The book contains the thoughts of Senor C on the world, which is in a state of moral collapse (see previous books on the horrors of the Bush years). Simultaneously, and running through the book on the same pages of his reflections, we read of his growing interest in Anya, a young woman he hires to type the manuscript of his musings for a publisher. A third strain of the story, recounted on the same page as the other two, reveals the life of Anya and her partner Alan (who has designs on Senor C’s bank account). Each thread is divided on the page by rules: we can follow each on its own or hold all three in our heads, reading each on each page, unpeeling the story’s onion. The device works surprisingly well. But what is the truth or fiction of any of it? Each of us is running along on our own track, waving, but not telling secrets.

Perhaps the most interesting reading event, for me, was buying Amazon’s electronic reader Kindle in the early Fall. I have found it to be an exemplary tool. Reading books and other texts (whether blogs or my own manuscripts) on it is easy and easy on the eyes. The type size can be adjusted; type does not disappear in sunlight. I cannot read it in the dark because the screen is not backlit, but that particular sales pitch for eBook readers is probably of little interest to most people. I recommend the Kindle, or its alter ego the Sony Reader. The age of the electronic reader is here and more books and other texts are becoming available every day. (You can also read text on the iPhone, Blackberry, etc.–see Grown Up Digital, above) Reading several books at once, as I do, is easier on a Kindle; I can literally carry dozens of books around and shift my attention among them. I suspect that this aspect of reading on an electronic device will prove to change the way we read toward something approximating the way we surf the web. The Kindle also enables a certain amount of web surfing—and of course one buys books through a wireless connection to Amazon. The other night, near midnight, I wanted to buy a book I read about right then and within a few minutes, was able to begin reading—and for half the cost of the printed book, which I probably could not have found in a bookstore anyway. Many believe that reading on something other than a printed and bound book is a sacrilege. As someone has noted, the regard for the printed object might tip over into fetishism. (James Gleick is a recent example. He wrote in the Sunday New York Times a few weeks ago (“How To Publish Without Perishing”) that publishers should concentrate on producing a few beautiful copies of a few books to counter the wave of electronic degradation that threatens all we hold dear about literate culture. To which I say, why not print one copy and chain it to a table? Whoops. Been there, done that.)

Recall that the iPod was marketed with the question: What’s on your iPod? Soon, we can ask the same question about the Kindle. On mine at the moment (books I am currently reading) are: Moby Dick, The Long Tail (by Chris Anderson), Grown Up Digital (by Don Tapscott), Amerika (by Franz Kafka, in a new translation), and The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita (Swami Kriyana). Also on the Kindle are these books I have finished reading: Richard Ford’s The Lay of the Land, Marilynne Robinson’s Home, Per Pettersen’s Out Stealing Horses, and Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Summary judgments: Moby Dick is still too long but thrilling; The Long Tail is still important; Grown Up Digital is eye-opening if a bit too amblingly self-important (what the young people between 18 and 30 know that I don’t know and boy aren’t you sorry you’re over 60), Amerika is still strange in a new translation, The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita is longer than the original, Richard Ford is remarkably plodding and tells me more about New Jersey real estate than I want to know—and yet I do like the way he writes—, Home is a crashing bore, Out Stealing Horses is lovely and evocative, and For Whom the Bell Tolls does not engage me the way I am engaged by The Sun Also Rises.

And the Kindle is the book of the future, especially as we enter a year in which bookstores will close, publishers will struggle, and the book and how it is published and distributed will change for the first time in four hundred years. Stay tuned.

Ok. As the publisher of a new company with close ties to Governor Palin’s hairdo (see The Palin Prophecies), I am eager to get into this bidding war. KenArnoldBooks may not be the size of Random House, but we have just as much ego. And we love books that are “conservatively-centered,” which seems like a contradiction in terms. Like most Big Apple publishing houses, we too are whores of Babylon, willing to take on an occasional politician without language skills or coherent ideas. Yup yup.

Since we already have a hot Palin property (The Palin Prophecies, as noted), we actually think that Governor Palin may be moved by the Holy Spirit to bring us her next book. We are going to ask our attorneys to pray about it. But since a lot of this work will be done in sophisticated washrooms like The New York Post, I would like to put our offer to Governor Palin right out on the web where everyone can see it and not rely on our attorneys (we have two of them). I think Random House and Mann Media, to name two of our competitors, should do the same. Let’s see the color of your money.

We’re offering Sarah Palin up-front, cash money, $500 for the rights to her tell-all book about running for Vice President. Yup. You heard that right. $500 American–small-town values at a small-town price. Beat that, Random House. Oh, and we will launch the book right here in Portland, Oregon, where we know The Divine Sarah is deeply loved and supported. 

Because we are interested in big ideas (not just Page Six fluff and big hairdos) here at KenArnoldBooks, I want to mention a few items we will insist Governor (or Senator or President in Waiting) Sarah Palin discuss in her book:

1.  Clothing

2. Talking loud and pointing fingers

3. The future of the English language

4. Shooting God’s creatures from Cessnas

5. Bringing on the End Times for an unbelieving nation

6. Grumpy old men

7. Suntanning in Alaska

I think that the American people will want to know about these issues that have not been much discussed in the past 60 days.

We will be sending our offer to Governor Palin and hope to announce the successful signing of this hot property within the week.

Yes, we will.

Since it’s Halloween, we thought it appropriate to mention Palin’s connection to witches (getting rid of them, that is).  For a thorough review of her engagement with the New Apostolic Reformation movement, Joel’s Army, The Third Wave, Spiritual Warfare, and other really strange religious organizations, visit this roundup story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-wilson/palins-spiritual-war-netw_b_139646.html.

You might also want to read some parts of The Palin Prophecies, which reveal more about Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her interesting ideas on God, witches, and the role of Alaska in the coming End Times.

It has been suggested that November 4, 2008, could be the beginning of the end….If Palin is nowhere to be found on November 5, it may be a sign that the Rapture has begun. Look for a pile of abandoned designer clothes on the floor of the Alaska governor’s mansion.

We have been busy here at KenArnoldBooks with our new publication, The Palin Prophecies: Apocalypstick Now!, which is our effort to help the governor of Alaska reorient herself to reality. We fear, however, that her staff is keeping her from our website too, even though she can go to www.thepalinprophecies.com/thepalinprophecies and read all of her utterances for free! But be that as it may, we just fear for Sarah and the state of her mental health.  And so we ask all of you to take a moment to lay hands on Sarah Palin (metaphorically speaking, unless you happen to be in one of the pro-America small towns she frequents and prefers) and just ask the Lord to make a way for her. Imagine that you are Pastor Muthee and that you have the power in your magic hands to dispel her demons. Take a moment now to do just that.

All together now: DEMONS! BE GONE.

Now, Sarah, isn’t that much better?  Sarah? Sarah? Hmmmm…where’d she go?

Publishing is a surprising business, one part inspiration and many parts just good luck. Imagine our surprise at KenArnoldBooks—a small startup publishing company located at an undisclosed location in downtown Portland, Oregon—when the notorious Brent Mooseburger showed up on our doorstep one morning with a stunning proposal. God Our Heavenly Father had selected him, he announced as we stood there in our robes and clutching our coffee cups, as the man to channel Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s messages to the American people, since neither she nor The God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ trusted the elite “Gotcha” liberal media.

Mooseburger said, “He has asked—no, commanded—me to write a daily blog decoding the Divine Sarah’s prophecies for a nucular age. It was also revealed to me that you—KenArnoldBooks—have been chosen to publish the blog and a book before the election day so that Americans will have the truth before them when they enter the polling booths. Can I come in, please? And how about a cup of the delicious smelling coffee?”

Mooseburger, who was wearing a parka and huge muddy mukluks, stomped across our new living room carpet and flang himself on our white couch. Our marketing director followed him with a vacuum cleaner while I, the founder and publisher, fetched him a cup of fair trade Stumptown coffee.

“But we’re Democrats,” I said as I handed him his coffee. “Are you sure Our Lord and Savior meant this KenArnoldBooks and not a different one?” I actually couldn’t think of another one.

“I thought about that,” mused Mooseburger as he sipped his coffee and nibbled an arugula macaroon our marketing director whipped up for him on the spot. “And I prayed about it. Ya know, in my long career as a sports caster and chaplain for the Alaskan International Bear Wrestling League, I have seldom wanted to have anything to do with the Lower Forty-Eight. In fact, I’m a life-time member of the Alaska Independence Party, which as you know advocates the secession of Alaska from the Union. I am also a member of the Wasilla Assembly of God Church, where we believe that the Lord is coming soon and will take all of us directly to a place with Jesus where we can watch the rest of you arugula eaters get slaughtered by The Son uh God when he returns in glory. So, I was concerned. But I took it to the Lord in prayer and he said that you were the perfect choice because you are unbelievers….”

“But we’re Episcopalians,” I protested. “In fact,” I said, “I am ordained in the Episcopal Church. And my wife is a lapsed but loyal Greek Orthodox.”

“Precisely my point and the Lord’s point. You are not true believers but an Episcopalian and an icon-loving Orthodoxer who accept gay people and women to be priests and bishops. So, the Lord figured, I guess, that you would be like protective cover for the truth because arugula eaters and gay Episcopalians and icon-kissers will read what you publish and believe it. And I thought that was so clever. So here I am. These cookies are delicious, ma’am.”

“They’re not cookies. They’re macaroons. And they’re made with arugula,” our marketing director announced with a satisfied gotcha grin.

Mooseburger swallowed hard, sipped his coffee. “The Lord asks much of us,” he winced. “But, ok. I’m going to start channelin’ the Divine Sarah tomorrow, September 10, and continue every day until she tells me to stop, which I think will be around October 10, after the second presidential debate, when it will be clear to everyone that Sarah is the One, and I don’t mean The One, like Barry O’Bama, who may be the anti-Christ, That One, but the One who will be the president right after John McCain is president for a little while. We know now that the economy is strong, we are winnin’ in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran is on the ropes, the Bush Administration is growing in popularity, everyone is startin’ to drop their “g’s” from the ends of their words, and Barry O’Bama is, ya know, black. So we expect to win in a landslide on October 10.”

“But the election is on November 4,” I suggested, pulling a contract out of my pocket and beginning to fill in the blanks before he changed his mind. Publishers are, basically, whores.

“Ah, that’s what the American people have been led to believe by the elite east coast gotcha liberal media, especially Katie Couric, who will soon be revealed as the Whore of Babylon, the one who ushers in the era of slaughtering the unbelievers, like yourself, which is why we’ll have to publish my book right after October 10 ‘cause, like, you’ll be history, you and all your cronies.”

“Ok,” I smiled, as our marketing director handed Mooseburger an author questionnaire to fill out so that we could have all the information we need to market his book properly. “And here’s our standard contract. Take it and the author questionnaire home with you, call me if you have any questions, and we’ll get started as soon as you send us the first blog post in the morning. How does that sound?”

“One more thing. You’ll call this The Palin Prophecies, because that’s what the Lord wants it to be called. Just fill that in where it says ‘title.’”

I did as I was told, not the first time, I might add, in what was to become a fraught relationship. But that is a story for another time, or perhaps another planet or dimension or wherever it is we Episcopalian and Orthodoxer unbelievers go when we are vaporized by the Armies of Christ at the End Time.

Mooseburger glanced over the publishing agreement. “You’ll hear from my lawyer in the morning,” he muttered as he strode from our living room and into the sunny, 80-degree Portland weather. We noticed clouds gathering over the Wells Fargo Tower visible from our humble office and dwelling—an unusual and ominous event in the normally sunny Portland, Oregon. I closed the door behind the departing figure of Brent Mooseburger. The marketing director and I burst out laughing and took the rest of the day off to celebrate our publishing coup by eating arugula macaroons and watching old French films.

It opened with soft, serene music playin’ across a landscape of clouds and sky. Big American bomber jets flyin’ quietly in formation, no engine sound, just the cold wind whistlin’ through the clouds. Then it cut to another scene, and I recognized it as my bedroom in the Governor’s mansion. I was stretched out in the tannin’ bed in the corner, getting’ some color on my front side, watchin’ the news. My old annoyin’ pal Katie Couric came on with a news flash.
 
KATIE COURIC: I have just been handed this breaking news bulletin. In what apparently is a terrible accident, Vice President Dick Cheney has shot President Elect John McCain in the face with a shotgun while hunting drugged grouse at a game preserve outside of Waco, Texas. According to several sources, and confirmed now by President-Elect McCain’s campaign, President-Elect John McCain…is dead. That means, of course, that Vice President-Elect Sarah Palin will, just one week from today, be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States…

SARAH: (Propping herself up in the tanning bed on one elbow) Wow, things are happenin’ pretty fast, but then, that must be God’s plan. Yup, yup. Everything happens for a reason, and He musta wanted me to be President. He works in mysterious ways, you betcha.

ONE MONTH LATER

CUT TO: President Palin sitting in the oval office, signing papers. Suddenly the red phone on her desk lights up. She picks up the receiver.

SARAH: Hi. President Palin here.

FIRST DUDE’S VOICE: (Over revving snowmobile engine) Sarahcuda! We got a situation up here in the Great North…

SARAH: Oh, Toddy. This better not be another one of your frozen pizza problems. I told ya, just put it in the microwave for 2 minutes on high. I’m kinda busy, ya know. I got stuff goin’ on here with the Wall Street situation, and the Israelis and Palestinians are in a snit…Again….

FIRST DUDE: Sarah Bear, listen to me. I was just out here, zippin’ over the ice flows, trainin’ for The Iron Dog, and I saw him.

SARAH: Saw who, Toddy?

FIRST DUDE: Putin! He’s rearin’ his head again! I just saw him–well, a buncha Russian jets, anyway, zoomin’ overhead, headin’ south, for the lower 48. The Russians are comin’! The Russians are comin’!

Suddenly the door flings open and in walks Vice President Dick Cheney.

SARAH: (A rare aside to me, Brent Mooseburger) You’re probably wonderin’ why Dick Cheney is still  Vice President. See, after he shot John McCain in the face and I became President, I had to get a new V.P., so I put Cheney in charge of the search committee to find me one. Well, he searched through all the names of people I gave him and came back and said that he didn’t think any of ‘em were up to snuff, and the only one he felt comfortable with as V.P. was himself, so doggone it I just went with it and named him V.P.

CHENEY: (Waving papers) Madame President! The Iranians have WMD. I have undeniable proof here, intelligence reports, satellite photos. They have sleeper cells inside the U.S. at this very minute, and, our sources tell us, their plan is to inject this WMD into our water supply. We must attack now!

FIRST DUDE’S VOICE ON PHONE: Sarah, Pooty-Poot’s on his way with the nukes. I suggest you get your butt down to the bunker and launch an all-out attack. I’m headin’ for the bomb shelter myself!

CHENEY: Madame President, have you ever seen a terrorist drink a glass of water?

SARAH: (Hanging up the phone) Now just cool your jets, Dick. Grab a seat. Can I get you somethin’ to drink while I consult my higher power?

CHENEY: (Sits down, scowling) I’ll take a glass of grain alcohol and rain water. Frankly, Madame President, there is no higher power than the President. (Then, mumbling under his breath) McCain woulda nuked half the planet by now…

SARAH: (Gets up, goes to a cabinet, pulls out a bottle of grain alcohol and pours a drink, squirts some seltzer water into it and hands it to Cheney. She sits down.) Sure there is. (Closes her eyes) There’s God. (She prays) Oh, come on, Lord. Pick up, pick up, pick up, pick up…

GOD’S VOICE MAIL: This is the Lord Jesus Christ. I can’t answer the phone right now, but leave a message and I’ll come back to you. Soon. (Giggles.)

SARAH: Dang! It’s time that Son a God grows up. His father must be off somewhere, helpin’ some God-fearin’ halfback score a touchdown.

CHENEY: Madame President, do you realize that in addition to drinking water, that water is in virtually everything we eat and drink? Cows, where our steaks come from. They drink water. It’s in our bacon. Pigs drink water. Kool-Aid, Madame President, children’s Kool-Aid. Were you aware, Madame President, that you, yourself, are 75% water? We must attack! We cannot allow terrorist infiltration, terrorist subversion, and the Iranian Muslim terrorist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids. Why it’ll be Armageddon in the bladders of every American man, woman and child!

SARAH: (Standing up and shouting) Armageddon! Get it on! That’s what this is! The End Times are here! Jesus is comin’ back, just like I knew he would! Oh, praise the Lord! OK, Dick. Get me the nucular suitcase.
 
CHENEY: (His mouth twisting into a crooked half-smile) You mean it, Madame President? Do you really mean it?

SARAH: Yup. This is it. It’s God’s will. Jesus is comin’ to take us all to our reward. Us true believers, that is. All the godless, liberal elites and east-coast gotcha media types, abortionists, fornicators, Katie Couic, and the like, well, they’re just gonna have to burn in the hellfires of eternal damnation. But the rest of us are getting’ raptured! 

CHENEY: Glory, glory Haliburton! (Runs out)

SARAH: (Pushes the “Intercom” button on her phone) Gloria, get Pat Robertson on the phone.

CUT TO: Another room, somewhere beneath the White House. Sarah and her advisors are watching a row of closed-circuit TV screens mounted on the wall, each one showing a live shot of one of the world’s major cities. New York. Los Angeles. Tokyo. London. Paris. Rome. Beijing. Moscow. Wasilla. All of the cities look calm and peaceful, pedestrians walking, cars driving through the streets. Sarah looks over to another screen, which shows the bomb bay of an American bomber in flight. A figure comes wobbling into view on the screen. He is a short, stocky, hunched-over ball of a man wearing a big, white cowboy hat. He walks to the bomb-bay and looks up into the camera. It is Dick Cheney. He reaches over and pushes a button on a panel on the wall, and an intercom burps to life.

CHENEY: Madame President, we are rapidly approaching the moment of truth. Tehran. Our boys up here will give you the best kind of start on the terrorists, and hopefully our boys heading for Moscow will do the same for the Reds. 20,000 megatons worth. God willing, we will prevail, in freedom and democracy, and in true health, through the purity and essence of our natural fluids.

He salutes, then turns to the bomb, climbs down on top of it, like a cowboy straddling a bull. Then he reaches up and pushes a button on the panel above him. Suddenly the bomb bay doors open beneath him. Below, sky and clouds zip by, and, thousands of feet down, barely visible through the wispy white clouds, we see land. He reaches back up to the panel and pushes another button and the bomb is released. As it falls, Cheney takes his cowboy hat off and waves it back and forth, whooping, “Wah-hoo! Wah-hoo!” The bomb falls with Cheney riding it, whooping and waving his cowboy hat, growing smaller and smaller as he falls atop the bomb, until he disappears from sight. A moment later, there is a white flash, the camera shaking violently, and then the flash transforms into a mushroom cloud, billowing up, closer and closer to the camera, and then suddenly the screen turns to snow.

SARAH: (Stands up, arms upraised): It’s the be-all, end-all! (Begins speaking in tongues) Ulohahayimhuminabuhbuhzibzoolimloolalalalalalalala!
 
Suddenly, Sarah disappears. Her clothes lie in a heap on the floor. And then everything vanishes in a blinding flash of light.

Fade back to Sarah lying on her hotel bed under a pile of miniature liquor bottles. She smiles beatifically, mumbling, “It’s the be-all, end-all. It’s the be-all, end-all. It’s the be-all, end-all….” The First Dude enters and gently shakes her awake. Sarah opens her eyes.

SARAH: Oh, Toddy, why’d you have to go and wake me? I was havin’ the most wonderful dream….

THE BE-ALL, END-ALL, Goodbye, y’all….

Then there’s all of John McCain’s associations, like the U.S. Council for World Freedom, which was this anti-Semitic group that aided the Contras back in the ‘80s and had ties to right-wing death squads and former Nazi collaborators in Central America. Apparently The Maverick served on the advisory board of this group back when he was first elected to Congress. The elitist east-coast liberal media hasn’t talked about that at all, they like to point out, as if they’re, like, doin’ us a favor.

Or the Oregon Citizen’s Alliance, a right-wing anti-gay hate group which The Maverick supported back in the ‘90s. I guess John-John went to a fundraiser for this group in August of 1993. During that fundraiser, a woman who had firebombed abortion clinics and even shot a doctor who performed abortions spoke, and The Maverick sat there and listened and he never got up and walked out or anything. Later the woman was convicted and sent to jail by a judge who said she was a terrorist. So does that mean that John McCain pals around with terrorists, they asked? As if.

Boy, this is all so confusin’ it was makin’ my head spin around like that girl in The Exorcist. So last night after a hard day of race-baitin’ I just went back to my hotel in Florida and went straight to bed. I was gonna order room service, but they didn’t have a mooseburger on the menu, or even some moose stew. What the heck’s that all about? So anyway, I just flopped into bed and turned on Fox News and watched Sean Hannity (he’s so cute–he sounds just like Porky Pig when he gets all flustered!), and I musta fell asleep.

I musta had another one of my weird dreams. Or maybe it was a vision, beamed down from Heaven through my bouffant radio ‘do. Whatever it was, it sure was strange, I’ll tell ya that. It was all about what would happen if Barack Hussein Obama won the election, how he’s a secret Muslim, a sleeper cell terrorist, like that movie, The Mongolian Candidate. Yup, yup, he was brainwashed when he was a small child in the secret Muslim school he went to, and the terrorists’ plan was to send him over to America and have him become President, and then they could work on our country from the top down! Oh, it was a terrible dream or vision or what-have-ya!

It started on Inauguration Day, and Barack Hussein Obama is standin’ there, and just when they hold out the Bible for him to swear on, Reverend Wright pops up, pulls out a Koran and says, “We’ll use this, suckers!” And then Obama laughs, with his big, white teeth shinin’ in the sun, laughs and laughs, and Michelle Hussein Obama pulls out this machine gun and starts blastin’  away like Patty Hearst, blastin’ the Lincoln Memorial, she shoots the top-hat right offa Abe Lincoln, and then she shoots out a couple a Thomas Jefferson’s teeth over at the Jefferson Memorial, and says, “Take that, honky! That’s for Sally Hemings!” And she laughs and laughs, and then Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson come down and they took over America from the top down! Just like that Mongolian guy.President Obama painted the White House black, changed the American Flag to a big peace sign, and then made everyone convert to Muslimism. They made the theme from “Shaft” our national anthem and changed all our holidays. Xmas became Malcolm Xmas, Halloween became Allahween, and Easter became Esther, after Esther Rolle, that black ‘70’s sitcom actress. It was not good times. And then before you could say, “What’s happenin’?” he blew up the Mt. Rushmore heads and replaced ‘em with Martin Luther King, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and Snoop Dogg. He freed O.J. and put Fred Goldman in jail, let Bill Ayres blow up the Pentagon, named Louis Farrakhan Secretary of State, Willie Horton Secretary of Homeland Security, and Marion Berry Secretary of Gettin’ It On. He cancelled the Fourth of July and rescheduled all the fireworks for Kwanzaa. He made Ebonics the national language, tore down the border fence with Mexico, and put out a big welcome sign. In Spanish! Denzel Washington and Halle Berry won all the Oscars, even when their movies weren’t any good. He forced the military to stop salutin’ each other and instead give each other those terrorist fist-bumps. He tore down all the MacDonald’s and replaced ‘em with Falafel Huts, replaced the bald eagle with a camel and made all the women wear burkhas. Then he invited Ahmbumdnmad to the White House and sat down with him–without preconditions! The next day he nuked Israel off the map, waved the white flag of surrender in Iraq, and let the terrorists win. And after all that, just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, he did the unthinkable. You’re darn right. He raised taxes!

Oh, say it ain’t so, Jesus! Luckily for us up north in Alaska, we just went to our buddies over in the Alaska Independence Party and we all seceded, but then Barack Hussein Obama said we couldn’t and sent the troops up to stop us. All the red states joined our side and it started another civil war. It was brother against brother, sister against sister, and everyone was sittin’ around in tents playin’ the harmonica, just like the first civil war. It was awful. And Todd went off and married his cousin, and General Sherman burned my house down, and pa went crazy, and I married Rhett Butler but he didn’t give a darn. It was the worst dream or vision or what have ya ever! Then, just in the nick a time I woke up from the dream or vision or what have ya and counted my blessings that it hadn’t happened. Yet.

Ah, say it ain’t so, Joe Sixpack. Our opponents want to keep goin’ back to the past, playin’ the blame game and pointin’ fingers at all the blunders of the current Republican administration, pickin’ on every little thing President Bush has done, like when he allowed 9-11, and lied us into a war in Iraq, and Katrina, and Enron, and illegal wiretaps, and Abu Ghraib, and torture, and rendition, and failin’ to get bin Laden, and the Valerie Plame scandal, and the Justice Department scandal, and the other Justice Department scandal, and the terrible economy, and the giant financial collapse that happened way back in September. Talk about nitpicky! Get over it! That stuff’s in the past. It’s time to move on and quit playin’ that blame game. Heck, you might as well go all the way back to the time 6,000 years ago when the world was first created, back when humans and dinosaurs walked the earth together. But ya know what? Me and John McCain, we’re gonna keep pointin’ forward so we can bring positive change to Washington. Yup, yup. North to the Future. That’s the official motto for the great state of Alaska, the state where I’m the executive of, and that’s where me and John McCain are headin’. The future! And you can tell from our recent campaign stops.

When John McCain was speakin’ at a rally in New Mexico the other day, he asked his crowd, “Who is this Barack Obama?” and someone in the crowd yelled back, “A terrorist!” And then when I was speakin’ at a rally in Clearwater, Florida, and I started bringin’ up all these old charges about what Bill Ayers did back in the ‘60s, when Barack Obama was 8 years old, and whippin’ up the crowd by callin’ Obama a terrorist, someone in my crowd yelled out, “Kill him!” Now that’s a shout-out–to the KKK! Yup, you’re darn tootin’. Our Republican rallies are startin’ to sound like good old fashioned lynchin’ parties! Heck, I guess we’re gonna have to start handin’ out white hoods and nooses at our “Maverick” rallies.

Just the other day John McCain’s brother, Joe, told some arugula-eatin’ reporter that northern Virginia was “Communist country.” Say it ain’t so, Joe! And then I talked to ol’ Bill Kristol about how the elite media’s been ignorin’ Reverend Wright. You remember him from the primary campaign, when he was all the elite media talked about for weeks? Yup, yup. And speakin’ of our personal spiritual guides, I just wanna give a shout out to my very own personal witch doctor, Pastor Muthee, who’s visitin’ Wasilla for about the 10th time right now from Africa. Pastor Muthee saved his hometown over in Africa from a witch, and he gave me a special blessin’ before I became governor that protected me from witches. Yup, yup. North to the 13th century! 

Heck, can you imagine if it was Barack Obama that had an African witch doctor castin’ blessin’s over him? I’ll bet that liberal media wouldn’t even ask him one gotcha question about it, but you knowdarn well those east coast media types are just sittin’ back there in their ivory towers waitin’ to ask me those gotcha questions. You’re darn right. I’m just waitin’ for them to ask the question. I’ve been waitin’ for about a month now, cause it’s been common knowledge, and heck, there’s even a video of it out there on the Your tubes. Yup, yup. I’m on to you, liberal east coast arugula-eatin’ media.

So while we’re talkin’ about witches and Communists and the 1960s, Barack Obama and Joe Biden want to keep goin’ backwards and harpin’ on the olden days, ya know, back to 2003 when that pesky Iraq war began, but John McCain and me, we know that nothin’ really counts over there until 2007 and the Splurge. You remember the Splurge, don’cha, implemented by that great American general, General David Petraeus? When we started payin’ those Sunnis and Sheilas 300 bucks apiece so they’d stop fightin’ us and we could finally have some success? And now’s not the time to wave the white flag of surrender, just when we’re about to achieve victory over in Iraq. Just ask General Petraeus’s second in command, General Sherman. He’ll tell ya. We’re gonna stay and keep spendin’ $10 billion a month and losin’ soldiers until the Iraqis tell us they’re ready to take over for themselves, and then and only then will we consider leavin’. Heck, it’s only been five-and-a-half years, 4,300 Americans killed, and a million dead Iraqis! What’re you so antsy about? 

And in Afghanistan, the Splurge will work there too, as our commander on the ground there, General Robert E. Lee, has said. Although we have to be careful there with Pakistan, which is a nucular power, cause if there were a nucular war, that would be the be-all, end-all for so many people. And it would be really bad for the environment.

Ya know, there’s blunders in every administration. In the Bush administration, like I said, there’s been the blunders. 9-11, Iraq, Enron, Katrina, Guantanamo Bay, all the Republican scandals, and the
biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression. And in the Bill Clinton years, there was Monica Lewinsky. So that’s blunders on both sides. Yup, yup. They kinda even out there.

So, yup, you’re darn right the government needs to just get outta the way and let freedom reign. Like the way it has the past eight years with Wall Street, or like it did durin’ Katrina. You don’t want all those pesky FEMA folks descendin’ on ya, tellin’ ya what to do, like, “Here, eat this!” or “Hey, Joe Sixpack, here’s a house for you and your family to live in, instead of that rat hole you’re curled up in there,” or “Here’s some bottled water for ya. Drink it or you’ll die!” Hey, whaddaya think we are, Socialists? Get outta my way, government! Like when some girl’s been raped and doesn’t want to have the baby. We don’t need government bustin’ in and sayin’, “OK, go and have your abortion.” Nope, we need government to step outta the way and let the states decide, so the state governments can step in and stop that abortion, like they did before Roe v. Wade. North to the 1950s! Yup, the states should be able to decide all that stuff. Heck, what do they think this is? One united country or somethin’? 

But now don’t go gettin’ the idea that I’m not tolerant. I’m very tolerant. Like with the gays. I’m tolerant of those gay people that made that choice to be gay, even though it’s obviously not a choice I would have made. ‘Cause they’re all gonna burn in hell for bein’ an abomination in God’s eyes, but you’re darn right that’s their choice. And that’s what America’s all about. Freedoms. Like the freedoms the terrorists over in Iraq hate us for, which is why we can’t afford to wave the white flag of surrender over there. We’ve gotta keep fightin’ ‘em over there so we don’t have to fight ‘em over here, as General Stonewall Jackson has said. And then if we have to go invade Iran, well, that’s somethin’ we’ll just have to do. And I know just the general to lead that charge. General Custer! Yup, yup.