Sarah Palin. To Drop First Puck. At Flyers Opener.

Let the “Hockey Mom” puns begin. Sarah Palin is dropping the puck at the Flyers opener. I assume that Sarah Palin, being a true blue fan of the game and an aw-shucks folksy Alaskan, is not doing any sort of “ceremonial” nonsense; she is probably refereeing the contest as well.

Comcast Spectacor’s press release says otherwise; they must just be pulling our chain. An excerpt:

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the nation’s most popular hockey mom, will join the winner of the Philadelphia Flyers regional search for the “Ultimate Hockey Mom” contest and drop the puck at the ceremonial opening face-off as the home team Flyers host the New York Rangers at the Wachovia Center on Saturday, October 11 at 7 p.m.

“Because of the tremendous amount of publicity she has brought to our sport, we invited the most popular hockey mom in North America to our home opener to help us get our season started,” said Comcast-Spectacor Chairman Ed Snider who founded the Flyers in 1967. “We are very excited she has accepted our offer and we are very proud of the publicity she is generating for hockey moms and the sport of hockey.”

See, they’re bringing out a regular hockey mom along with Palin so you can’t boo her. (This is like when Pat Croce introduced Sugar Ray before Game 5 of the 2001 NBA Finals.) Also, why only a regional search for the Ultimate Hockey Mom? Pretty soon John McCain’s going to suspend his campaign to say we should only vote in Alaska.

It’s a good thing Palin finally got some publicity for the sport of hockey, though.

Meet the Flyers new hockey mom: Sarah! As in Palin! [Inquirer]

Meghan McCain Will Soon Have 2 More Published Books Than You Do

John McCain’s daughter, Meghan, was recently in Philadelphia stumping for dear old dad. She also stopped by McCain’s Bucks County headquarters and revealed her plan for literary world domination:

Meghan, who bears a striking resemblance to her mother, Cindy, recently authored a children’s book, “My Dad, John McCain,” and plans to write a satirical account of her campaign experiences after next month’s election.

She described the experience of watching her younger brother, Jimmy, deploy to Iraq two years ago as “a big motivator” to begin stumping with her father and to begin writing her blog.

Typical reaction, actually: Seeing a younger sibling go to war frequently causes the urge to blog. Seriously, go look it up. Anyway, I certainly cannot wait for her satirical account of the election. Ooh, maybe she can then write a couple episodes of Futurama like Al Gore’s daughter!

Meghan McCain stumps for dad [Bucks County Courier Times]

Arlen Specter Tired Of This Crap

I just want to find Jessica Griffin right now and thank her for this photo in today’s paper (and currently on the front of Philly.com). There’s John McCain and Sarah Palin, apparently doing a cheerleader routine. (Either that, or Palin doesn’t know how to signal touchdown.) Then there’s ol’ Arlen Specter, the only man in America older than John McCain, looking like he just wants to go home and bitch about politics for a while. I can only imagine his thoughts. “I’ve been a politician since the Depression and she gets to be vice president because she hunted a few moose?”

Or maybe he just wants to get this over with so everyone’s Facebook status messages go back to being regular annoying instead of 2008 election annoying.

Update: Oh, I almost forgot, Sen. Specter even appeared much more gracious when he had to deal with a question about the North American Union and the new “amero” currency. I’m going to print this photo out and hang it on my wall.