John McCain wasted his last-chance debate Wednesday by trying to stir up faux class rage against Barack Obama with Joe the Unvetted Plumber instead of tapping into the real class rage the country feels over bailing out ungrateful financiers who gambled away the life savings of working people.
And you’ll note that the bailout is turning out to be far more about benefitting the bankers than saving the economy. Unless, of course, the plan is to save the economy by funding the conspicuous consumption of luxury items. Anyhow, if McCain had come out hard against the bailout, he’d be 10 points ahead in the polls now. Good thing he didn’t or we’d get exactly the same administration, in white, without all the high comedy I’ve been so anticipating.
Who to start, Peyton Manning or Aaron Rodgers? Obviously, I’m hoping for a shootout, but since I have two Packers WR in the lineup, I think I’ll hedge my bet with Manning. As for the Alumni League, it looks like the old Masonville brain trust was rather superior to the present one.
VP-AFL Week 6
124 Masonville Marauders (5-1-0) 85 COS McRays (1-5-0)
112 Supernaut’s Jihad (3-3-0) 106 AZ Hammeroids (5-1-0)
108 Village Valkyries (2-4-0) 102 Bukkakelypse Boyz (3-3-0)
69 Cranberry Bogs (3-3-0) 49 Carpe Oro (1-5-0)
98 The Thunder (4-2-0) 82 Alamo City Spartans (3-3-0)
Colin Powell, a Republican who once aspired to be the first black United States president and later became one of the faces of George W. Bush’s Iraq war, has endorsed Barack Obama for the White House.
For obvious reasons, blacks don’t fear being called racist. They even have a cadre of sympathetic white academics who will argue that they can’t possibly be racist by definition. Therefore, they can always be expected to engage in normal human tribal behavior without fear of retribution or even criticism. I didn’t blog about this before because it never even crossed my mind that Powell wouldn’t endorse Obama.
I’m very much hoping that if Obama wins, he’ll pull a Denny Green and go with an all-black Cabinet, except for one token white woman running HHS. “Black is back, all in, we’re gonna win!” That would simply be too funny for words. Did I mention how much I’m enjoying this election?
As America burned itself away into the ashes of history,at least the survivors could find consolation in knowing that no one would call them racist.
Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, has declared that the government will boost its spending in an attempt to help the economy weather the recession about to grip Britain…. He spoke approvingly of plans to prop up the economy by embarking on big government-spending projects, an interventionist policy in the style of John Maynard Keynes, the 20th century economist.
Increasing government spending to escape a recession? Now, there’s a new concept! Considering that Darling’s brilliant plan has literally been textbook macroeconomics for the past five decades, what are the chances that this is somehow going to fail? Infinity to one against or Infinity squared to one?
No, it’s not a competition involving women of free favors and extensive bacterial collections, merely the latest spin on his weekly literary challenge for aspiring writers:
What do I think? I think it’s a great idea! Not only that, I’ve discussed this with Vox, and he (lower case ‘h’) has given it his blessing. Ergo, this week’s Friday Challenge is: write a short story or pastiche set in one of the worlds of, and using the almost but not quite inimitable style of, the one and only Vox Day!
Please don’t post any such challenge entries here, because in order for an entry to be considered valid and judged by the OC’s elite panel of experts it must be posted at the OC’s Ranting Room. I have no vote in selecting the winner, however, I will post both the winning entry as well as my favorite entry here on VP. These may or may not be the same one. Also, if you’re a writer, it’s worth noting that OpenOffice 3.0 is now available for download. I’ve written my last three books using OpenOffice as well as all of my columns since 2002, so there’s really no justification for throwing away money on Microsoft anymore. Click the banner below to download the new 3.0.0 and don’t forget to add the extension for PDF importing. I’ll have a review of it once I have the chance to play with it for a while.
It may be helpful to keep in mind that since I do not happen to be an author of wereseal fiction myself, a torrid romance between a strong, independent, but lonely lighthouse keeper and a handsome, rugged, but respectful wereseal is unlikely to prove successful, however well-executed. This, on the other hand, is an actual example, albeit one tainted by the OC himself:
Aboard Assault Shuttle LST(N)-14 7 November 2069, 06:00 GMT
“No, you’re wrong!” Faroukh ibn Yusef exclaimed to Walid ibn Walid. “The Prophet prohibited images of people because we are made in the image of Allah, who is infinite. Images can be reduced to binary, to numbers, thus placing a finite limitation on the infinite, which is blasphemy!”
“That’s ridiculous, Faroukh. The very concept of digital information didn’t exist until a hundred years ago. You’re saying the Prophet foresaw the development of computers? Pfah!”
A third man, like the others wearing a UN blue battlesuit that concealed all but his head, spat onto the black plaz deck. “The Prophet prohibited nothing. He communicated the vision that was sent to him through the archangel, that is all. The law is of Allah!”
Faroukh smiled. “Hamal is right, Walid. Only in modern times are we able to understand the wisdom behind that particular law. But would you dare to argue that Allah did not understand the truth of binary, even in the Prophet’s early days in the desert? And is not the nature of man’s soul itself binary, forced to choose between good and evil?”
Captain Eileen “Devil Bunny” Mahoney decided enough was enough, and butted in. “Stow it, Sergeant!” She shook her head in exasperation. Five minutes to insertion in a hot LZ, and her boys were debating the nature of God. Again
Bunny was pissed. In her initial briefing on Operation Restore Justice, she’d been relieved to learn that she’d been assigned as cadre officer to a Palestinian unit. At least the Palestians could fight, she’d thought at the time, remembering the Intra-Arab war of the 2050’s, and they never tried to eat the enemy dead, like the New Guineans sometimes did.
That was before she’d actually met her troops, and discovered that she was stuck with a bunch of would-be Sufis. And the ones who aren’t mystics want to die in battle. It’s the express ticket to Paradise.
Uh oh. Faroukh was staring at her, for daring to interrupt again. She tried to shrug it off. “Well, binary or ASCII, Faroukh, right now I’m sure Allah wants you to make sure your weapon is charged up and set on full.” She tried a smile.
Oops. Wrong move. Faroukh turned to Walid, and the two of them began jabbering heatedly in Arabic, their sparsely-bearded chins working with great vigor, their dark eyes darting narrow glances toward her.
Enough of this, Bunny decided. If I can’t get them to like me, then they damn well better respect me. She bounced to her feet. “Speak English, troop!”
Walid looked at her, with casual disdain. “Ah, the woman of scarlet has made a sound.”
ENOUGH! It was bad enough that they had to argue incessantly over the Koran. It was bad enough that they’d spent the last five days arguing over whether the current Sharif of Iran was in fact the seventh incarnation of the second imam. But she’d be damned if she let Walid call her some kind of hooker again!
Bunny charged forward, simultaneously slapping the oversized button that took her battlesuit up to full power and slamming her helmet over her head. Before Walid could react, she’d grabbed him by the gap between his breastplate and abdominal webbing, and lifted him high over her head. Walid kicked once, then relaxed, quickly realizing that even a large and angry man could not overpower a woman in a powered battlesuit.
“Get this, private,” Bunny spat out. “My name is Captain Mahoney. You will call me captain or sir. If I hear you refer to me by any other name, or if I hear you imply even one more time that I am a woman of ill repute, I will rip your genitals off with my bare hands. Is that clear?”
Walid nodded, slightly. “Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yessir, Captain Mahoney, sir.”
“Very good.” For a moment Bunny considered dropping him, then decided against it. It was one thing to instill some healthy fear in the man, quite another to humiliate him, especially as he might soon be standing behind her, holding a loaded weapon.
Bunny gently lowered Walid to the floor. “As you can see,” she said through the suit comm system, “my face is now properly covered, so I won’t be tempting you to sin for at least the next six hours. Will this do?”
Ron Paul appeared on CNN’s “American Morning” on Friday, pushing the same apocalyptic message he served up during the Republican primaries, with one difference. His prediction of doom makes a heck of a lot more sense now than it did then.
“This system that we’ve had since 1971 is nonviable,” he said, “and it’s coming to an end.”
Hence the world political leadership is contemplating a new Bretton Woods under the aegis of British socialist and failed Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Financial crisis followed by massive left-wing government intervention… it seems to me that we’ve heard that song before.
Michelle Obama apparently decides to shoot off her mouth again at the expense of Mr. Snorey Stinker:
Accusing API of colluding with American internet bloggers in an effort to bring down her husband, Mrs Obama said she decided to call API because of what she termed, API’s help to spread rumours created by American bloggers and other racist media outlets in their efforts to damage a black man’s name, saying she hopes African Media was mature enough to be in the front to give unwavering support to her husband, a man Africans should identify themselves with.
When API told her that our online news media was only relaying what the American Bloggers and other media outlets had discovered through their investigations, Mrs Obama was angered and she came out loud with the following: “African press International is supposed to support Africans and African-American view,” and she went to state that, “it is strange that API has chosen to support the racists against my husband. There is no shame in being adopted by a step father. All dirt has been thrown onto my husband’s face and yet he loves this country. My husband and I know that there is no law that will stop him from becoming the president, just because some American white racists are bringing up the issue of my husband’s adoption by His step father. The important thing here is where my husband’s heart is at the moment. I can tell the American people that My husband loves this country and his adoption never changed his love for this country. He was born in Hawaii, yes, and that gives him all the right to be an American citizen even though he was adopted by a foreigner; says Michelle Obama on telefon to API.”
The hysterically fearful reaction of the Obamanists tells you all you really need to know about the likelihood that the API report is accurate. No doubt that if the recording is made public – as API indicates it will do – the truth squad will shift their argument to insist that the tape is faked.
This isn’t just the most importantest, it’s the bestest presidential campaign ever!
If there were no CNN, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, CSPAN, PBS, NPR, the LA Times, the New York Times, and every other major paper in the country, a radical socialist with insufficient experience like Obama would be down in the polls about 30 points.
You want to talk about an entire industry – an entire apparatus – designed to perpetuate a cultural schism, to give one guy an edge over another guy based on soundbites and bias? You want to talk about that? And you think it’s WORKING AGAINST YOU, SENATOR BARACK OBAMA???
Sorry for all the yelling. I just simply cannot believe my own eyes on this one. I truly cannot FATHOM that this man, who is supposedly intelligent and “aware”, would actually say with a straight face that there’s an entire industry – in the form of the media – that is anything other than his own personal cheerleading corps.
Of course, Fox News is about 10 percent to the right of the rest of the mainstream media, so it’s not as if it makes any difference anyhow. But I’m enjoying the pre-Obama administration period already; that pragmatic Karl Rove Republicanism really worked out well, didn’t it?
It’s such a good thing Republicans didn’t stick to republican principles, because otherwise they wouldn’t be so popular with the electorate and might well be looking at a Democratic White House, House, and Senate.
The weird thing about the left is that they incessantly worry about creeping fascism even as they embrace it:
The Racine school district’s use of an eighth grade textbook that includes a chapter on Democrat Barack Obama but nothing on his opponent John McCain is unfair and troubling, the Wisconsin Republican Party argued Thursday.
I couldn’t care less about the “unfair” aspect as this relates to the election, but there is something unusually creepy about these Obamanation phenomena. As enthusiastic as people could be about Reagan, Clinton, and Bush the Younger – no one particularly liked Poppy – they’ve never been the beneficiary of this ludicrous Soviet-style beatification.
Most telling passage:. Two times, if I remember right, McCain rattled off long lists of occasions when he had gone against his party, and each time he left off “immigration,” his most salient anti-GOP heresy. Once Obama had an opening to back up his charge that McCain was an unreliable champion of “comprehensive immigration reform.” He didn’t take it. This suggests that both candidates recognize that pushing “comprehensive immigration reform”–i.e. legalization–is a loser with the general electorate. Or it’s at least very risky.
A salient observation. Isn’t it also telling how in supposedly democratic America, there’s never any substantive national debate over the important issues that have long-term impact on the direction of the country?
