district

I will explain that silly subtitle in a moment, but first we’ve got to delve even deeper into rampant silliness. If such silliness and unseriousness does not appeal to you, then I strongly suggest you skip down and begin reading with this week’s Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award. Consider yourselves warned. This column today celebrates a milestone — triple digits on the odometer! That’s right, as hard as it may seem to believe, this is the one hundredth volume of your weekly Friday Talking Points column.

As the inimitable Sarah Palin gets ready for the unleashing of her memoirs, Going Rogue , she announced on her Facebook page today that she’s “very, very excited about the upcoming road trip for my book.” Of course she is. It will get her out of Alaska and all of the reminders of her failed governorship. Hopefully, she’ll get more than a few reminders of her failed support of right-wing congressional candidate Doug “I Don’t Live in the District” Hoffman, whose defeat yesterday can be directly linked to Palin’s support.

Now that Doug Hoffman has conceded, the only question is who to blame for his spectacular loss of a seat Republicans had held for 120 years. Some teabaggers are already blaming the NRCC , because they chose the local popular candidate who would’ve held the seat for the GOP, and so they suck. Everyone knew that importing a rigid Glenn Beck-ideologue to a moderate northeastern Republican district was a sure-fire path to victory!

As part of its Bearing Witness 2.0 project, the Huffington Post is rounding up a few of the best local stories of the day. State budget cuts have led Michigan to lay off all of its state school bus inspectors, which means that as soon as Nov. 2 schools that can’t pay for the inspections themselves may stop their bus services, reports Ron French of the Detroit News . The inspection program, which costs the state $1.4 million a year, is being eliminated in order to battle a $2.8 billion deficit. It is illegal to operate school buses without yearly inspections.

The next major election on the calendar with any national implications is the U.S. House race in New York’s 20th Congressional District, with a special election to be held on March 31st. (That’s just around the corner!) Though the race has yet to garner heavy netroots attention, it has been the beneficiary of some excellent coverage from The Albany Project and Daily Kos diarist devtob (who also posts regularly at TAP).