Chicago Chutzpah

I stayed up a little past my bedtime yesterday afternoon so that I could watch the 3 p.m. press conference from Chicago, featuring Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (henceforth, "Blago"), who is being pursued by the Feds for allegedly planning to sell the appointment to replace President-Elect Barack Obama in the Senate to the highest bidder. And what was the press conference for? Why, to announce the man that Blago has chosen for that appointment: An African-American politician named Roland Burris. This was despite the fact that other members of the Illinois state government have said that they will not certify anyone appointed by Blago, and despite the fact that the Senate's Democrat caucus has said that they will not recognize a Blago appointee, because of the cloud that the Governor is currently under. Blago, however, is shameless, and proves that one need not be Jewish to have chutzpah.

And then, it got even weirder, when Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Illinois) who is a former Black Panther, played a race card the size of a tombstone, saying that since there were no African-Americans in the Senate with Obama moving up, that the other Senators wouldn't want to be the ones trying to keep another African-American man from joining the Senate. Don't be trying to "lynch" the appointee, you racist crackers!

I watched this and thought, "How sexist! If this is the designated 'reserved-for-African-Americans' Senate seat, then it is only appropriate that African-American women from Illinois should receive equal consideration!"

And I knew exactly which African-American woman from Illinois should be named to fill out the rest of Obama's term. Yes, they should replace one O (that's a LETTER O, not a ZERO!) with another: They should appoint the third-most popular woman in America (behind Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin), Oprah Winfrey.

Yes, Senator Oprah! It makes sense: She meets all three criteria: She's at least 30 years of age, a citizen for at least the past nine years, and a resident of the state that she would represent. And she's richer than Croesus, so when the time came for her to run for election to defend the seat, she would have plenty of financial resources to draw on.

Some might say, well, she has no political experience! But then again, neither does Caroline Kennedy, who is being seriously touted by some for the appointment to replace Senator Hillary Clinton in New York if she is confirmed by the Senate as Secretary of State. And indeed, Senator Clinton herself had no political experience when she became New York's Senator, other than being married to a President. Caroline Kennedy's experience consists solely of being the daughter of a President. Oprah? She's a friend of the incoming President. And in Chicago, it's all about who you know and whose palms you grease.

Monday Quick Hits

While watching the New York Yankees spend over $420 million on long-term contracts for three top free agents last week, all I could think was that it was a damn shame that the Steinbrenners didn't invest with Bernie Madoff.

Who had a worse weekend, the 0-16 Detroit Lions or Hamas in Gaza? I'm thinkin' Hamas...

I don't have much sympathy for the Palestinians in Gaza. If someone was firing a bunch of missiles at us, we'd kick their butts from here to next week. Frankly, the Israelis put up with it a hell of a lot longer than Americans would have. I think our response to the Israelis of "try not to kill civilians while you deal with the terrorists" is appropriate. As for the Hamas guys getting killed, sure hate it for 'em. Next time, don't start something you can't finish, nimrods.

I saw in the news that some bleeding hearts are whining about music being used to "torture" the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Some of the music included the themes from "Barney" and "Sesame Street"! Oh, the humanity! If it was up to me, they'd get a steady diet of patriotic American music, 24/7: "The Star-Spangled Banner," "God Bless America," "America the Beautiful," "Stars and Stripes Forever," "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," etc. All in the public domain, so no whiny little artists would be bitching about their music being used for "torture." And if Lee Greenwood wanted to let them use "God Bless the U.S.A." and Toby Keith wanted to let them use "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue," well, that would be just fine, too.

Merry Christmas To All

I hope that all of you have a joyous holiday with family and friends. For those of you who don't have to work tomorrow, enjoy your long weekend. Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve in Florida

I'm getting ready to celebrate my twentieth Christmas in Florida. I've lived here longer than anywhere else. For about 364 days a year, I'm happy to live where there is no snow or ice. I see people struggling through it on television, and I remember how unpleasant winter can be. But on Christmas Eve, well, like the song says, I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, even though if we actually got one, it would be catastrophic to our local subtropical vegetation.

It actually has snowed here before, five times in the last 150 years. The last time there were reports of snow flurries was my first winter here, during the Great Christmas Freeze of '89. That was a cold, cold day. I had to work Christmas Day at the Division of Forestry, and the building was unheated. It got down to around 28 degrees, which killed off a lot of the palm trees. It also froze the water in the garden hose outside the building. I was bundled up like an Eskimo, wondering if it was typical for a Florida winter (it wasn't). This week will be more representative, with high temperatures in the low 80s.

While people in Florida do manage to decorate festively for the season, it just isn't what I grew up with. I don't know how many times we actually had a white Christmas growing up, but it seems like winters were always cold when I was a kid growing up in Missouri. If we didn't have snow around Christmas, there was always plenty in January and February. As someone who walked to school (uphill, both ways!) the cold temperatures and the snowy conditions were an indelible memory.

So for those of you with snow on the ground as Christmas approaches, enjoy the beauty of the season. I don't envy you, well, not very much. Maybe just a teeny little bit around midnight tonight.

Nazis For Christmas?

Several months ago, I wrote about the upcoming Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie, which opens on Christmas Day. There's now a veritable blitzkrieg of advertising for the movie, both on television and on the Web. If the movie bombs, it won't be for lack of trying to get people to see it.

I'm still skeptical about the movie's prospects. Sure, people like to see a good action-suspense movie, but do they want to see one where both the heroes and villains are wearing Nazi uniforms? And even more importantly, do they want to see a movie where they already know going in that the hero fails? It would be like going to see a Lord of the Rings movie where Frodo fails to destroy the Ring, Sauron wins and Middle Earth is destroyed.

It's not that Americans don't respect a good try in a lost cause, even if it is some other nation's hero making the doomed attempt; Scotland's William Wallace in Braveheart would be a perfect example of such a movie hero, and that was a box office hit. But will they show up to see a movie in which the protagonists and the antagonists were both enemies of the United States? I'm guessing that they won't.

Unintended Consequences

A while back, after the government bailed out financial firms like Goldman Sachs, it was announced that their CEO and six of their other top executives would forego receiving bonuses this year. Well, after running their company into the ground, most of us would say that they really didn't deserve bonuses, right? After all, a bonus should be earned by doing things that improve your company's profitability.

But now, we learn that there are some negative unintended consequences from those fat cats not getting even fatter: New York state is anticipating a tax shortfall of $178 million dollars that they would have received from the taxes on those bonuses that those executives didn't get. Which means, of course, that they'll have to raise taxes and fees on the rest of the people in New York to make up for the shortfall, at least if they want to keep their funding for various programs at the same level.

$178 million is a lot of coin, especially as the taxes from just seven guys' projected bonuses. How big would the bonuses have to be to have generated that much in taxes? We're talking about some serious ill-gotten gains. If they've been giving these guys this kind of money in bonuses every year, no wonder their companies have gone into the crapper.

Toothless Lions One Loss Away From Perfectly Imperfect

There are a number of bad teams in the NFL this year, teams that have only won two or three games. But they all look pretty good compared to the hapless Detroit Lions, who got clobbered by the New Orleans Saints today by a score of 42-7 to fall to a league-worst 0-15. If the Lions lose next week at Green Bay, a place where they have not won a game since 1991, they would become the first team in league history to finish a season at 0-16.

There have been winless teams in the NFL before, of course. The expansion 1960 Dallas Cowboys finished at 0-11-1, but they did at least manage a tie. The expansion 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers have been the yardstick for failure for the last three decades, finishing their first season at 0-14, and then losing the first 12 games of the 1977 season before winning the last two games that year to finish at 2-12. Note that both of those teams were expansion teams, however, so there is at least some excuse for their futility. The Lions have no such excuse. They're just a very, very bad football team. And since even most really bad teams manage to win at least one game in a season, they're a very unlucky team as well. Bad and unlucky is an unfortunate combination, and that's the 2008 Detroit Lions in a nutshell.

So can they manage to avoid the infamy of winlessness next week in Green Bay? Or will they become the new yardstick for failure? Stay tuned.

Busy Day

As Christmas gets closer, it gets busier and busier at the post office. Last night was the busiest night yet. We ran a ton of mail and barely finished everything up in time. It felt like I was running down a mountain, trying to stay ahead of an avalanche. Or perhaps it felt like the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona. I didn't get buried in snow or gored by a bull, but I sure felt wiped out by the end of the day. I'm ready to get past December 25th and see the volume drop a little bit once all of those Christmas cards are out of the system.

Thoughts on "Shoe Guy"

You probably saw the story about the Iraqi journalist who threw both of his shoes at President Bush during a press conference in Baghdad over the weekend. The president showed admirable reflexes, ducking both of the missiles. And you could tell the Iraqis are a nation of soccer players; they're used to kicking things, not throwing them. Sorry, Muntazer, but you throw like a girl. That's an insult in our culture, by the way. Shoes don't mean diddly-squat to us. Enjoy your stay in whichever Iraqi jail you end up, idiot!

Another Remake? Why?

Recycled from an e-mail to a friend, since I haven't posted anything lately:

You may have seen that they've remade The Day The Earth Stood Still, with Keanu Reeves as the alien Klaatu, and it opens Friday. This time, though, Klaatu's message is supposedly different: Instead of the anti-Cold War message of the original movie, this time he's going to tell us to stop destroying the planet. For some reason, I expect that he's going to get all Goracle-y on us: TDTESS meets An Inconvenient Truth. Feh! I usually dislike remakes on general principle. To me, it shows a lack of creativity and originality to just re-do something that someone has already done decades earlier. If it was good before, watch the original. If it wasn't good before, why remake something that sucked?

And no, I didn't think that the Will Smith version of I Am Legend was better than Charlton Heston's The Omega Man.

Were They Wearing Prada?

Greetings, my fellow Great Satans and Great Satanettes,

While I was surfing over at Drudge Report this morning, I found this odd story:

Iranian Police Detain 49 For `Satanic` Clothes

Police have arrested 49 people this week in a northern Iranian city during a crackdown on "satanic" clothes, IRNA news agency reported on Thursday.

...

"Police confronted rascals and thugs who appeared in public wearing satanic fashions and unsuitable clothing," Qaemshahr city police commander Mahmoud Rahmani told IRNA.

Rahmani also said that five barber shops were shut and 20 more warned for "promoting Western hairstyles".

So, do you dress like Satan? What are the signs? Is it that pentagram pendant with matching 666 earrings? Or lots of black leather? Maybe a studded dog collar?

Nope, all you have to do is dress like an American. The story continues:

It includes measures against men sporting spiky "Western" hairstyles or women wearing tight trousers and high boots.

Spiky hair? Tight trousers and high boots? I'll bet that blue jeans are on that 'satanic' list, too. It appears that you don't have to dress like a Goth or some kind of death metal fan to qualify as 'satanic.'

Well, mad mullahs, the Billy Joel song lyrics are still relevant: "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners are much more fun..." You guys, not so much.

Aren't you glad that you don't live in a country where the authorities can decide what you can wear, and punish you if you fail to obey their edicts? Yeah, me too.

Only The Upper Lip Is Stiff

From Jolly Olde England, a story that made me laugh:

Lap dancing 'not sexual act' claims head of club organisation

In their evidence to committee, Warr and colleagues from the Lap Dancing Association claimed that their clubs should not be classified as sex encounter establishments because they were providing hospitality, not sexual services.

But Warr astonished the committed when he argued that sexual stimulation was not part of the clubs' attraction.

"One of the biggest problems we face is that not enough people understand the business blueprint of our clubs," he said.

"Actually, our premises are not sexually stimulating. It would be contrary to our business plan if they were."

At this point, Philip Davies, the Tory MP for Shipley who was questioning Warr, said he found that hard to believe.

"You are saying that the purpose of a lap dancing club is not to be sexually stimulating? Most people would find that a rather incredible claim," Davies said.

Warr replied: "Then you need to go to a club, because the purpose of a club is to provide entertainment. It's to provide alcohol, it's a place of leisure.

"All right, the entertainment may be in the form of nude or semi-nude performers, but it's not sexually stimulating."

Davies responded with even more astonishment.

"So if I did a straw poll of all the customers who came out a lap dancing club and said 'Did you find that in any way sexually stimulating?' I would find a big resounding fat zero? On that basis you would have a lot of dissatisfied customers."

Warr replied by asking: "How do you measure sexual stimulation. What is the definition of sexual stimulation?"

The article is even better when read with Monty Python voices. And that last sentence! How Clintonian! And wouldn't you think that the person in charge of the Lap Dancing Association should be a woman? Come on, ladies, empower yourselves!

Messed-Up World

The weekend's news confirms it. The poor man at the Long Island Wal-Mart who got trampled to death on Black Friday by a horde of greedy shoppers. The two men at the L.A. area Toys 'R Us whose wives got in an argument, so the husbands both pulled out guns and shot each other to death. And the story out of India that confirmed that the Israeli hostages had been tortured before being murdered by the Muslim terrorists. The Indian police were none too gentle with the terrorists, though. One was reportedly shot through both eyes, according to the story above. And the only reason that there was a live terrorist for them to grill (again, hopefully none too gently) was because he played dead, then came miraculously back to life when his body was being transported in an ambulance.

For me, the key difference between India and the United States is illustrated in the final paragraph of that story:

A senior National Security Guard officer, who had earlier explained the operation in detail to rediff.com, said the commandos went all out after they ascertained that there were no more hostages left. When asked if the commandos attempted to capture them alive at that stage, he replied: "Unko bachana kaun chahega (Who will want to save them)?"

In America, of course, there would be plenty of bleeding hearts who would want to save them, because they were just poor misinformed victims of oppression by Western civilization. Look at how they cry over the terrorists detained at Guantanamo Bay. The Indians are a little wiser: Dead terrorists have no legal rights, get no trials, don't need to be incarcerated. Dead terrorists no longer cause any problems, other than proper disposal of their bodies. When dealing with terrorists and other irregular military groups, it's best to just kill them all and not take any prisoners. They've already forfeited any claims to humanity anyway by their heinous deeds. The Indian commandos did the country a favor by saving the cost of nine trials. Nine out of ten ain't bad.

And with that, we kick off the festive Christmas season.

Early Morning Channel Surfing

So it was 4 a.m., the History Channel's documentary about the Sputnik crisis was over and the channel had gone to an infomercial. Time to channel surf. I scrolled through the pages of the guide and at the end of the movie channels, Sundance had a 1960 documentary of the Wisconsin Democratic primary race between Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Sen. Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota.

Well, 1960 is of interest to me because it is the year I was born, and here was a documentary that showed not just the two candidates, but the society of the time. The documentary took place from March to April 5th, when the primary election was held. It was the same country that I was born into about three weeks later, one that has changed quite a bit in the last few decades. So I flicked it on.

On shows like this one, I'm just as interested in what the places looked like, what the people looked like, what they were wearing, what they were driving. They say that the past is a foreign country, and this one was very alien to the visitor from 2008.

The cars were all from the 1950s, of course; 1960 had just begun, after all. And they were all American-made, with not a foreign car to be seen. Bulbous Detroit iron with lots of chrome and big tailfins, like the recently invented intercontinental ballistic missiles, meant to impress with their bulk alone. And with gasoline almost as cheap as water, who cared about gas mileage?

The men were mostly wearing suits and hats, although at one rally, Humphrey addressed a group of farmers mostly dressed in overalls, talking about farm subsidies (he was in favor of them). The women all were wearing dresses with long skirts. "Cat glasses" were in vogue for the ladies.

Both candidates spent a lot of time glad-handing the locals in the small towns of Wisconsin, signing autographs, shaking hands. The young people seemed particularly enthused by Kennedy. The graphics in the home-made signs in the background at a Humphrey call-in television show looked amateurish compared to the glitzy campaign signs of 2008.

Humphrey was much younger than I remembered him being when he won the Democratic nomination eight years later. Still, he seemed older than Kennedy, who was a youthful 42 years of age at the time. There was also a marked contrast in styles, with Humphrey always wearing a hat when outdoors, as most men still did at the time, while the trendsetting Kennedy was bare-headed to show off his full head of hair. Jackie Kennedy was with him at some of the campaign rallies, and brother Bobby showed up for one memorable cameo. Amazingly, Humphrey and Kennedy were the only ones campaigning in 1960; according to the Wikipedia article on the 1960 U.S. Presidential election:

[Stuart] Symington [of Missouri], [Adlai] Stevenson [of Illinois], and [Lyndon] Johnson [of Texas] all refused to campaign in the presidential primaries, thus limiting their chances of winning the nomination. All three men hoped that the other leading candidates would stumble in the primaries, thus leading the Democratic Convention's delegates to choose them as a "compromise" candidate acceptable to all factions of the party.

How times have changed! Can you imagine a candidate today hoping that everyone else will screw up and the nomination will just fall into his (or her) lap?

I was also surprised that only 14 states and the District of Columbia had primary elections in 1960. How did the other 36 states select which candidate to support? Did the state party bigwigs just get together in a smoke-filled room and say, "Joe Blow is our guy"?

Then there was the campaign music. The Kennedy campaign used "High Hopes" with different lyrics, while the Humphrey campaign chose an altered-lyrics version of "Davy Crockett"; one scene has four guys playing it on accordions. Yeah, it was cheesy, but hey, we're talking about Wisconsin, after all!

It was interesting to see more footage of JFK than I've seen in the past. There are a few clips from iconic speeches and the film from the assassination that we've all seen, but not much of Kennedy behind the scenes just being himself. This documentary had some of that, with some behind-the-scenes Jackie as well. It was endearing and more than a little sad, knowing what was to come later.

Hannity Colmes-less?

I read a short article in this morning's newspaper which said that Alan Colmes is going to be leaving Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes show after twelve years. Whatever shall he do? Wherever shall he go? Colmes has been good at what he does, which is to act as the lefty Democrat to balance out Sean Hannity. The show won't be the same without him after he leaves; who else will be able talk as fast as one of those guys reading the small print in the commercials in order to walk all over what conservative guests are saying? That was usually the best clue that the conservative was making a good point, because Colmes would talk faster and faster.

My guess is that he is getting out now in order to try to capitalize on the current vampire craze. You never see Colmes in the day time... Just sayin'.

Cool Pictures

You might not have heard, but Google has links to the digitized photo archives from Life magazine, including a lot of pictures that were never published. If you go to the Google home page, you can click on the Image search tab and currently, there are links to some possible searches of the Life photo archives, including World's Fairs and Marilyn Monroe. You can also click on the link and see some searches by decades, ranging from the 1860s (U.S. Civil War) through the 1970s. Or you can just do a generic image search and add "source:life" to the search string, and it will look only in the Life archives.

I find the older pictures to be especially fascinating. Seeing President Lincoln standing in front of a tent at Antietam in 1862 or Red Cross founder Clara Barton seated next to an ornate clock, wearing a dress with a hoop skirt several feet in diameter, is a window on another time. The people were like us in many ways, but their lives were very different. Technology changes the way we live, but not who we are.

The amazing thing, when you think about it, is how brief our "modern" period really has been. Automobiles, for instance, have only been around and in common use for about a century. My father is 70 years old, and has been around for about 70% of the era of the car. His father was born in 1911, at a time when the horse was still the main mode of transportation for most people; if they were going to travel long distances, it would be by train. Within his lifetime, Man walked on the Moon and sent probes to other planets in the solar system, most people owned automobiles and had flown on airplanes for long-distance trips.

And yet, our photographic archives only go back a century and a half. We have photographs of Lincoln and all subsequent American presidents, but if you want to see what George Washington looked like, you have to depend on the skills of portrait artists. So if you, like me, find the old pictures interesting, feel free to sift through those vintage images of the past.

Every Silver Cloud...

This morning, while driving into town to get my car serviced, I saw that the price of gasoline at some stations had dropped below $2.00 per gallon. Considering that less than three months ago, we saw gasoline at $4.00 per gallon, it seems so cheap that it's like it's almost free. My advice is to enjoy this while we can, because it probably won't last.

To continue the mangled figure of speech in the title, every silver cloud has a dark lining. While we all celebrate the fact that we're going to be sending less money to countries that don't like us much as long as gasoline is cheap by recent historical standards, we should look at the flip side: Those same countries that derive much of their income from oil sales, such as Iran, Russia and Venezuela, will be having less money coming into their coffers. Combine that with the worldwide economic downturn and there could be a rather dangerous situation if one of those unfriendly regimes gets into a desperate financial situation.

On the other hand, if the repo guys show up in Iran to take back the centrifuges that the mullahs can no longer afford to pay for, well, that would be pretty good.

Not All Racists Wear White Sheets

Sometimes they wear "Abercrombie polos and Birkenstocks." (via Instapundit)

A number of Rod 2.0 and Jasmyne Cannick readers report being subjected to taunts, threats and racist abuse at last night's marriage equality rally in Los Angeles.

Geoffrey, a student at UCLA and regular Rod 2.0 reader, joined the massive protest outside the Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Westwood. Geoffrey was called the n-word at least twice.

It was like being at a klan rally except the klansmen were wearing Abercrombie polos and Birkenstocks. YOU N-----, one man shouted at men. If your people want to call me a F-----, I will call you a n-----. Someone else said same thing to me on the next block near the temple...me and my friend were walking, he is also gay but Korean, and a young WeHo clone said after last night the n-----s better not come to West Hollywood if they knew what was BEST for them.

I read this disturbing story and thought about it for a while. It seems that even among the groups that have been most in favor of teaching "tolerance," the lesson still hasn't sunk in for everyone. "Tolerance" for thee, but not for me. But it didn't take long for me to figure out why these people felt so much anger against black voters. Let me explain:

The current incarnation of the Democrat party is based on identity group politics. Various minority groups who believe that they are "victims" of America's society have banded together to act in concert, believing that they will be stronger together than separately. This is the lesson of the fasces: Each of the sticks can be easily broken, but when you bundle them together, they are unbreakable.

The anger among the gays against the blacks who voted against same-sex marriage in California is because they see those voters as having unbundled themselves from the fasces for their own convenience: They welshed on the unwritten agreement that Democrats vote together as a group, "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours." Sure, they're mad at the Mormons and Catholics and fundamentalist Christians and Republicans who voted for Prop 8, but most of those people were not their allies in the Democrat party in the first place. With blacks, however, it's different: "Hey, I scratched your back, I voted for Obama! And now you don't support me?" No wonder there was such incoherent anger.

Trouble In Paradise?

Already? Apparently.

Obama campaign workers angry over unpaid wages

Indianapolis - Lines were long and tempers flared Wednesday not to vote but to get paid for canvassing for Barack Obama. Several hundred people are still waiting to get their pay for last-minute campaigning. Police were called to the Obama campaign office on North Meridian Street downtown to control the crowd.

The line was long and the crowd was angry at times.

"I want my money today! It's my money. I want it right now!" yelled one former campaign worker.

This illustrates the problems that President Obama will have with his supporters. They have very high expectations built up. They want what they have coming to them, and they "want it right now!" Patience may be a virtue, but it's not one of theirs.

Some people weren't satisfied with filling out a claim form for money they felt was still due to them.

"They say that they gonna call you or they going to mail it to you, but I don't know. We'll see what happens," said Antron Grose.

"Talking about they'll mail it to us. I ain't worried about that, man. They're not going to mail nothin'," said Martin.

For people who canvassed for and elected a man running on "Hope," they certainly seem lacking in it.

And Yet...

Bill Whittle speaks eloquently for me at National Review Online:

When he is inaugurated, President Obama will be my president. He cannot be otherwise. I will disagree with him at just about every turn, in all likelihood, and that is my right and duty as an American. However, in an emergency he will have my unqualified support, and I will always wish him wisdom and hope that he may do what is best for this great country of ours. I do not wish — I do not ever wish — to see my country suffer so that I may gain political leverage. If at this same time four years from now, President Obama has acted in such a way as to make us safer, and more prosperous and free, it will be my greatest pleasure to admit I was wrong about the man. I look forward to that day. I hope to see it come to pass.

Amen, brother. Amen.

Dems: Blacks vs. Gays?

I saw from a post at NRO's "The Corner" that California's Proposition 8, which would ban gay marriage in that state, is winning by a 52-48 margin with 92% of precincts reporting. California is one of three states in the country where gay marriage was legalized by the courts. It seems that white voters voted against the amendment by a 53-47 margin, but black voters (who were 10% of the electorate on that issue) voted for it by a 70-30 margin.

What is the fallout going to be if Prop 8 passes because of the overwhelming black turnout for Barack Obama? Blacks and gays are two of the Democrats' most reliable constituencies, and yet here are the black voters raining on the gay voters' parade. This may be a microcosm of some of the conflicting interests of Democrat constituencies in the days and weeks to come. There will be some sharp elbows and sharp knives as the Dems fight among themselves for the spoils of victory.

Obummer!

A few comments about yesterday's election results and predictions for the future, before my freedom of speech gets redefined and banned as hate speech:

Last night's theme music was R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)."

Well, America, you've decided to give the keys to the liquor cabinet and the Ferrari to your teenager. Figuratively speaking, of course. I hope your insurance premiums are paid up.

Prediction #1: 2009 will be the Summer of Obummer. The term "Obummer!" will enter the national lexicon as President Obama does things that will disappoint or anger those who voted for him.

"My electric bill doubled last month after Obama signed the Cap-and-Trade Laws!"
"Obummer, man!"

"My kid has to do 100 hours of community service in the Obama Youth!"
"That's an Obummer!"

"I lost my job when Obama raised the taxes on my boss and he had to cut back on personnel."
"Wow, what an Obummer!"

"Obama said I was going to get a tax cut, but now my taxes are going up even more than under Bush!"
"Obummer!"

Prediction #2: By May Day, which will mark the end of Obama's first hundred days, his popularity will fall below 50% and will never go back over that mark for the rest of his presidency, unless there is a terrorist attack that causes the nation to rally around him temporarily.

Prediction #3: Campaign finance reform is dead. No presidential candidate will ever again take public financing.

Prediction #4: I saw Jesse Jackson crying at the Obama victory speech last night. It wasn't "smiling-through-the-tears" crying, though. He looked like his dog had just died. I think the reason why he didn't look happy was that people like him and Al Sharpton are out of a job. The era of the race huckster is over.

If a black man can be elected president in this country, then nobody can blame his or her own failure to succeed on racial discrimination. That crutch is gone for good, even though many will still bitterly cling to it.

Prediction #5: Vice President Joe Biden will be an endless source of amusement over the next four years.

38 Minutes

That's how long it took me to get through the line and vote this morning after the polls opened at 7:00 a.m. I got there a few minutes before that, and there were about forty people in front of me. It went a lot quicker than that line at the Sarah Palin rally!

Anyway, I've done my civic duty. I hope that you do yours as well, and think well and hard about the choices in front of you. It seems like every four years, we hear that it's the most important election of our lifetime. That may or may not be true, but it is certain that the choice America makes today will take us down one of two very different roads. I believe that a McCain presidency would at the very least do America no harm. I cannot say that about an Obama presidency. But that is a choice that the rest of you will all have to make for yourselves.

Throw Us Off the Campaign Plane, Will You?

The other day, the Obama campaign threw the reporters of three newspapers that endorsed John McCain (The New York Post, the Washington Times and the Dallas Morning News) off Obama Force One in order to make room for Jet and Essence and a documentary crew. Just a coincidence, the Obama campaign told us. Not payback, oh no. The Messiah wouldn't do something like that!

Today, the New York Post strikes back:



OBAMA 2012: FOUR YEARS LATER by Jonah Goldberg

OBAMA 2012: A TERM OF FI$CAL PAIN by Nicole Gelinas

OBAMA 2012: HIS TRIUMPHS ABROAD by Ralph Peters

If you think an Obama administration is going to be all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, with everyone getting tax cuts and a pony, you won't want to read those articles. If you're a little skeptical and still undecided... Well, it's your time, and your choice.

Recycled Sip Endorses McCain-Palin

I'm sure that shocks you.

For me, it's not a difficult choice. We know who John McCain is. If elected, he would be a competent president for the next four years. And I like Sarah Palin; I don't buy into all the crap that the MSM has tried to spoon-feed us about her being an idiotic rube. McCain was not my first choice in the primaries, or my second choice, but I'll vote for him as being far preferable to the alternative.

However, at this point, unless the polls are completely off (a distinct possibility), the American people are about to elect a man that we know next to nothing about, and who the MSM has not investigated or vetted; indeed, they have deliberately closed their eyes and avoided reporting anything that might have kept him from being nominated by the Democrats.

Barack Obama is a man whose resume is thin and whose hubris is colossal. He associates with far more unsavory characters than the average politician, and all of them are far left wing extremists, which tells us a lot about his character. CHARACTER MATTERS! I think that he is a very dangerous man. If America elects Barack Obama, there will be buyer's remorse very, very quickly.

America is not a socialist nation, but socialism is what we will get for the next four years from Obama, Pelosi, Reid and the rest of their party. And you don't get a mulligan on this one if you screw it up. The next president will probably name at least two Supreme Court Justices, as well as numerous federal judges on lower courts, and those Justices will likely be on the court for decades. Obama would likely damage our country for four years, but the damage caused by his appointments could last far longer.

You have been warned. Choose wisely. And if you choose Obama, be prepared to hear "I told you so!" from me for the next four years as our country spirals down into disaster.

It Could Have Been Worse...

There he goes again:

Jerry Lewis makes another anti-gay slur

CANBERRA, Australia - Jerry Lewis made an anti-gay slur on Australian television similar to one he apologized for using on his annual telethon a year ago.

Following a news conference in Sydney Friday, Lewis, 82, was asked by a Network Ten national TV reporter for his opinion on the Australian nation sport of cricket.

"Oh, cricket? It's a f-- game. What are you, nuts?" Lewis replied.

The network broadcast the comment in full on its Friday evening news bulletin along with footage of Lewis handling an imaginary cricket bat with an effeminate gesture.

...

Lewis was still in Australia on Saturday and has performances booked there through Nov. 1. His Australian spokeswoman Julie Cavanagh said he did not intend to comment.

The comedian held Friday's news conference to promote his latest stage show that is touring Australia. It is a retrospective of his career that includes show tunes with a 24-piece band, excerpts from his scores of movies and television shows, and his trademark slapstick comedy.

I think the story misses the real point: Lewis didn't just insult gays, he insulted the entire country of Australia. About the only thing he didn't do was tell them that Vegemite sucks and accuse them of being a bunch of sheep-rapers. (Punchline: "The sheep's a liar!")

So, let's see what he managed to do here: He offended the "show tunes" crowd (Not That There's Anything Wrong With That) that would be many of the the paying customers coming to see his stage show (Show Biz Rule #1: Don't offend your paying customers! You can't afford to lose any of them!). And he offended Australia's national sport (probably a different subset of the Australian population, although I'm sure that some of the "show tunes" people are also cricket fans). And of course, it's not just their national sport, but that of the UK and India as well. So in one fell swoop, he managed to offend about a billion people. Nice work, Jerry.

As noted in the subject title, it could have been worse: He could have offended soccer fans (who are well known for their hooliganism), which would have included everyone in the world outside of the U.S. and Canada. Then again, soccer fans don't carry wooden bats...

Solidarity With Joe the Plumber

I agree 100% with Iowahawk's post. And thanks to him for his kind permission to use this graphic to show my solidarity with Joe the Plumber.

Here's a comment I left at the US News site on a post by Michael Barone:

The Mask Slips

Joe's question just caused Obama to slip and accidentally reveal his true socialist nature. He might just as well have told Joe, "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." Yup, just gonna spread that wealth around. It's the Soviet -- err, American way.

The inquisition that the Tanning-Bed Media has visited upon a private citizen who merely dared ask a question of the Obamessiah has been shameful. Too bad they didn't have the professional ethics to investigate Obama himself anywhere near as thoroughly! And this is the kind of fate that the rest of us can expect from Obama's lapdog media and his Kossacks and other digital brownshirts if he is elected.

I AM JOE! It's the "I Am Spartacus" of 2008. Let our elite media overlords know that we won't go quietly!

Curious Ad Strategy

In case you haven't heard, Oliver Stone has made a movie about George W. Bush that is coming out soon. It stars Josh Brolin in the title role. Brolin is the son of Hollywood actor James Brolin and the stepson of liberal Hollywood icon Barbra Streisand. The movie appears to be ready to perpetuate all of the liberal tropes about Bush, and will no doubt be just as fair and accurate [eye roll] as the rest of Stone's films have been. Just from the ads I've seen, Brolin appears to play Bush as a complete idiot who somehow stumbled into power; we are shown how uncouth Brolin's Bush character is by the fact that during meals, he talks with his mouth full.

The odd thing is that the film company has been running saturation ads for the movie on Fox News Channel. I don't know how many ads they're running for it on CNN (which I don't watch because it leans left) or MSNBC (which leans so far left that it's lying on its left side), but the audiences for those channels would seem to be far more likely to go to the theater to watch a Bush-bashing flick. Running ads for W. on Fox News is about as much of a waste of money as some of those loans that Fannie Mae was giving out.

And then there's the question of whether the loony left people really want to see a film about Bush. The typical response from those people to seeing or hearing about Bush is identical to the people of Oceania in George Orwell's book 1984 when they see Emmanuel Goldstein on their telescreens: They stand up and bay out their rage during the Two Minutes Hate. I suspect that there will be more than one incident of audience participation when this movie hits the theaters, because they just won't be able to help themselves.

Last thought: The ad ends with the claim "Based on a true story." Yeah, right. Here's your "true story": George W. Bush was twice elected President of the United States, and Hollywood liberals hate his guts. Anything beyond that from Oliver Stone is likely to be fiction at best.

14,164 Minus 8,579 Equals?

Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of the New York Stock Exchange's all-time record high of 14,164. It was not a happy anniversary, however, as the Dow-Jones continued its frenzied plunge, losing another 679 points to fall to 8,579, a loss over the past year of 5,585 points, about 39% of the stocks' value. Even worse, it doesn't appear that the bottom has been reached, as stock markets around the world continue to plummet.

The equation in today's blog post title is more rhetorical than mathematical. The real question is how it will play out in the upcoming election. A lot of people who have lost small fortunes in the past few weeks are going to be very, very angry, and somebody is going to get the blame. They won't connect the dots and see the malfeasance of various Democrats like Chris Dodd and Barney Frank who enabled and exacerbated the housing crisis; they'll just say "Bush is in the White House, so it must be the Republicans' fault!"

I'm afraid that Barack Obama will benefit from the anger of the middle-class voter who has been watching his retirement funds evaporate faster than a puddle in Baghdad, despite the fact that the policies that Obama is likely to implement will probably make the situation worse, not better. In a panicky market, however, it's unlikely that the voters will be any more rational than the traders on Wall Street.

One thing's for sure: I wouldn't want to be one of those Wall Street wheeler-dealers when the Obama administration's Justice Department starts trying "economic criminals." And yes, I have already heard that term bandied about, albeit by Ralph Nader rather than any mainstream Democrat. However, if Obama is elected and brings his pals along with him (Secretary of Education William Ayers, anyone?), Nader will be a typical mainstream voice of that administration.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Here's What Real Justice Would Look Like

It's too bad for Skylar Deleon that Johnnie Cochran is dead, because it sure sounds like he could use a better lawyer:

Defense in SoCal yacht killings says client did it

Defending a man accused of killing three people, attorney Gary Pohlson took an odd angle in his opening statement.

He said his client is "guilty of all three murders."

Pohlson told a jury Tuesday that Skylar Deleon killed Arizona couple Tom and Jackie Hawkins, who were thrown off their yacht and bound to an anchor. He also killed another man he met in a work furlough program, Pohlson admitted. But the lawyer argued his client should not die for his crimes.

"My goal is simply to save Skylar Deleon's life," Pohlson said in a 15-minute opening statement.

Riiiiiiiight. This guy deliberately murdered the couple in order to steal their yacht, by tying them to the anchor and throwing it overboard. You know what they really ought to do to him? They should take him out beyond the 12-mile limit, tie him to an anchor and throw him overboard, just like he did to that couple. That would be justice. Although I might be a bit more merciful: I'd give him a wet suit and an oxygen tank with an hour's worth of oxygen, just so that he would have time to think about what he did. Of course, he'd probably be crushed to death by the water pressure before he ran out of oxygen. Gosh, that would be a shame. But I wouldn't shed any tears for him.

How I Spent Monday Afternoon

I went to the Sarah Palin rally at Germain Arena in Estero yesterday. The rally itself was great. Getting in and getting out were stone cold hassles.

I went with one of my co-workers and her nephew. We got to the Arena around 12:30, and ended up parking at the end of nowhere in the Miromar Outlets parking lot. After a lengthy walk, we found the end of the snaking line to get into the arena. Here is how it looked when we started out:



That's also near the area where I got up close and personal with the pavement. When we were getting to the end of the line, there was a small hole in the ground by the curb, camouflaged by the grass. I tripped over it and fell, landing on my left knee and left hand. I ended up with a small scrape on the palm of my hand and thought at the time that was the worst of it.

The people in the crowd were a cross-section of southwest Florida, although I saw very few minorities. There were a lot of women of all ages, many wearing Sarah Palin t-shirts or buttons. There were also a handful of hippie-looking Obama supporters there to protest. They were about as welcome as a Red Sox fan in Yankee Stadium, or vice versa.

Anyway, we followed the long, snaking line as it wound back and forth, and about 2:15, we finally got to the front door. We were lucky; a lot of the people behind us got turned away because the arena was full. When we got to the door, we spotted this lady. I liked her sign:



When we got into the arena, we had to go through the metal detectors but nobody was checking tickets. The arena has a capacity of 7,000, and there were at least several hundred people on the floor as well. Needless to say, by the time we got in, there were no visible seats left, and no more people were being allowed on the floor. I managed to find some seats in the very last row, directly behind the podium: The worst seats in the place, in other words. On the other hand, I did make it in. The people I went with ended up at the top of the next section over, since Marcella's nephew knew some of the cops running security.

There were a few speeches by other Florida politicians, and then, finally, Sarah Palin made her entrance to thunderous applause from the crowd. I didn't get any good pictures inside, unfortunately. This is the best one I got:



Other then a few protesters, who were widely jeered by the crowd, the rest of us were receptive to Gov. Palin's speech. The crowd was very loud and enthusiastic. Afterward, she shook hands and signed autographs for some of the lucky people on the floor by the podium.

Then it was time to face the gauntlet of getting out. I swear, whoever set the event up did a terrible job. There should have been cops directing traffic out of the arena and the nearby parking lot. There was nothing, and it took us more than an hour to get out of the parking lot.

I noticed that my right ankle was getting more and more sore as we inched our way out of the parking lot. I dropped the others off at their cars and drove home, and when I finally got there, two hours after leaving the arena, I found that my ankle was so sore that it hurt to walk on it. There wasn't any real swelling, and it obviously wasn't broken or I wouldn't have been able to walk all over hell and gone earlier; it had just stiffened up. I took some aspirins and elevated it, but by work time, it was still too sore to walk on, so I called out. It's feeling better today, so hopefully I'll be able to go to work tonight.

Just A Little Tease

I've got something interesting coming up this afternoon. There might even be pictures, depending on whether I'm allowed to bring my camera or not. It's gonna play hell with my sleep schedule, but sometimes, you just have to reach out and grab the brass ring.

All will be explained in good time.

Hard Times On Lake Michigan

Three of the eight teams that made the Major League Baseball playoffs are located in cities on Lake Michigan: The Chicago Cubs, the Chicago White Sox and the Milwaukee Brewers. After tonight's games, those three teams are a combined 0-5. Maybe it's something in the water?

Both the Cubs and the Brewers find themselves in an 0-2 hole, a dire situation in a best-of-five series. This is especially stunning for fans of the Cubs, who have lost their two games at home to the Los Angeles Dodgers by a combined score of 17-5. They now have to go to L.A. and win two games if they want to bring the series back to Chicago on Tuesday.

I switched over to the end of the Cubs-Dodgers game after the debate and the Cubs were down 7-1. The camera crew focused in on various distraught Cubs fans in the stands, including one fellow who was wearing half a watermelon on top of his head with a big C carved into the front. You had to feel bad for them, because their team had played so well during the regular season, and they certainly weren't expecting the Cubs to come out and play so poorly in the first two games of the series. Then again, these are Cubs fans, who have a century-long history of disappointment since their last World Series win. Barring a longshot comeback (maybe a 15% chance), that history will be extended another year.

Fire Bad! Fire Bad!

Things are dumb all over:

In Wisconsin: Man gets burned while using lighter to siphon gas

In Rhode Island: What a show: Cigarette sets off fireworks in car

And talk about a perfect web ad! There's one with both of those stories for some mortgage company, with fireworks going off in the background. It made me snicker.

(The post title references the late Phil Hartman's Frankenstein character on Saturday Night Live several years ago.)

Drivin' With Your Eyes Closed

That's a Don Henley song off the 1984 album Building The Perfect Beast. And while it's a song about love rather than finance, it perfectly describes the situation yesterday with the bungled Congressional vote on the Wall Street bailout (or "rescue plan," if you prefer). I talked to one of my Republican co-workers last night who was ecstatic about the measure going down to defeat. I was less sanguine about it. To me, it seemed that those who opposed it were saying something akin to "I don't like the way they've been driving the car, so let's take our hands off the steering wheel and close our eyes. The car will right itself." And what happens then to those of us who are riding in that car called the American economy?

And you're drivin' with your eyes closed,
Drivin' with your eyes closed,
Drivin' with your eyes closed,
You're gonna hit somethin',
But that's the way it goes...

I can understand the temptation to say, "Screw those golden parachute bastards on Wall Street," but unfortunately, Wall Street and Main Street are joined at the hip. If you have money in a retirement account, you just got a trickle-down screwing yesterday along with the golden parachute bastards when the market tanked. And the golden parachute bastards can probably make up for it by having champagne and caviar for breakfast only three times a week instead of every day. You'll feel it a lot more than they will.

It's like a flea on an elephant's back saying, "I don't care if something happens to the elephant. I'll be fine." Right. You don't even want to know how much money you lost yesterday in your 401K or TSP. It would just piss you off.

Was the Wall Street bailout the right plan, or even a good one? Perhaps not, but unfortunately, we're in a situation that more than one legislator (and more than one pundit) has described as a "crap sandwich." It's bad, but it appears to be better than any alternative that's likely to come down the pike. It certainly seems better than just closing our eyes and continuing to drive, hoping that we won't hit anything.

There were a lot of people who opposed the bailout as bad policy. I think, however, that may have been short-sighted of them. If the failure to pass the bill drives the economy over the cliff, both Democrats and Republicans will continue to point fingers at each other, but it's you and I who will pay the price.

PETA, Ice Cream and Unintended Consequences

It's bad enough that so much corn is being turned into ethanol to burn in our cars that it's driven up the cost of food for many of the world's neediest citizens. But now we have the boobs at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) coming up with a suggestion for ice cream maker Ben & Jerry's that is even more udderly ridiculous: Use human breast milk to make their ice cream instead of cows' milk. All I can say is "Ick."

Not to milk the silliness too much, but have they thought about the unintended consequences if someone should implement their idea? Taking away corn that should be some Mexican peasant's tortilla is bad enough, but taking away human milk that should be nourishing a baby in order to make ice cream? And how much milk is used in ice cream? Probably more than would be available if Ben & Jerry's took all of the milk from every lactating woman in America. Cows make far more milk than women can, which of course is why children drink cows' milk after they are weaned from their mothers.

Fortunately, Ben & Jerry's gave the proposal all of the consideration it deserved and then made the following statement: "We applaud PETA's novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother's milk is best used for her child."

And so common sense has prevailed in this case. Hooray! We don't have to change brands.

This and That, #3 From Slackerville

There's an old Peanuts comic strip that was one of my favorites, featuring Snoopy lying around and saying, "There's no use doing a lot of barking if you don't have anything to say." So I haven't been doing too much barking lately. But this morning, it's time to get back in the swing of things.

I've spent a lot of my free time recently playing Spore, the new computer game that came out a couple of weeks ago. The blurb on the back of the box says, "Your Personal Universe in a Box." That's really not too much of an exaggeration. You start off as a single-celled organism, and have the choice of being a herbivore or a carnivore to start off. The decisions you make early in the game have consequences as the game advances. The game is a lot of fun and like most good games, will eat up enormous amounts of time if you allow it to.

I watched the beginning of last night's game between the Orioles and the Yankees on ESPN. It was the last game ever at Yankee Stadium, with the team preparing to move across the street to its new ballpark next year. As a baseball fan, I appreciated the history of the team and the Stadium when I went there in June. You don't have to be a Yankees fan to do that. However, I'm not sorry that they won't be making the playoffs this year for the first time since 1993. Go Tampa Bay Rays!

I saw in the newspaper that Sarah Palin drew a crowd estimated at 60,000 to a speech in The Villages, north of Orlando. That's a large crowd for a vice-presidential candidate. She's going to be in Naples for a couple of fund-raising appearances in early October, but they're both for the deep-pockets crowd. If you don't have $1,000 to plunk down for the party, you're out of luck. It's not a surprise, really; Naples is the home of the extremely wealthy, and the Republicans tend to view it is a piggy bank.

I read this article in the New York Times yesterday about how Disney is planning on a reviving The Muppet Show characters in a major way. The most stunning thing for me was that many of the kids today had no idea who Kermit the Frog or Miss Piggy were! I guess that means I'm getting old. But as the article notes, they haven't been on the tube in more than a decade.

Not Looking Good For Coastal Texas

Watching the satellite images of Hurricane Ike, all I could think of was the book Isaac's Storm by Eric Larson, which was about the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 that killed 8,000 people. They're talking about a storm surge of up to 25 feet for Galveston when Ike hits. The seawall is only 17 feet high. There are a lot of people, perhaps thousands, who aren't planning on evacuating from Galveston Island, which strikes me as insane. I read a warning issued by the weather service which stated that anyone staying there faces "certain death." I don't know if that's hyperbole or not, but I think we are about to see some serious destruction along the Texas coast, and Galveston may get the worst of it.

Today's probably a good day to gas your car up, by the way, because there may be some serious damage to the oil refining infrastructure in south Texas from this storm. Don't be surprised if we're looking at $4.00 gas (or worse) again in a very short time.

Kryptonite

Sarah Palin and the Peter Principle

You're probably familiar with the Peter Principle, which states that "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence." In other words, people get promoted on the job as long as they are performing their current job competently, but sooner or later, most of them are promoted to a job which they can't do well, and they stop getting promoted at that point. They have reached their level of incompetence and will rise no higher. The big question for all of us is what our own personal level of incompetence is. Selecting people to promote on the job is itself a job that is subject to incompetence.

Enter Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. There are some people out there who are dubious about whether she is qualified for the job of Vice President of the United States, based on her career experience. That leads to two questions: What, exactly, are the qualifications for that job, and are there any indications that she has already reached her level of incompetence?

The qualifications of the job of Vice President are actually quite simple: That person must be able at a moment's notice to take on the job of President of the United States.

The qualifications for that job are that the person who holds it must be a natural-born citizen of the United States who is at least 35 years of age and has been a permanent resident of the United States for at least 14 years. Until quite recently, it was also necessary to be white and male to even receive serious consideration for the job. Thankfully, that's now in the past.

The President is the head of the Executive Branch and makes thousands of political appointments (including the Cabinet, ambassadors and federal judges) with the advice and consent of the Senate. The President sets national policy in many areas, and while he or she doesn't write legislation, the President has the ability to veto legislation sent up by Congress. The President is the Commander-In-Chief of the armed forces of the United States, including its arsenal of nuclear weapons, and as head of government is the most public face of diplomacy in dealing with foreign nations, including the negotiation of treaties, which must be ratified by the Senate.

It takes a person of rather special temperament to make a good President, since the holder of that office will be subject to criticism of every facet of the job from day one. It takes a person with good management skills who can evaluate people and choose those with the proper skills to appoint to those thousands of government jobs which must be filled. It takes someone who is tough enough to stand up to both entrenched interests in Washington and to the machinations of both friends and foes abroad, and it helps if the President has a coherent plan for where he wants to take the nation during his or her term of office. It is, quite simply, the toughest job in the world, and there is some question as to whether anyone can really be completely prepared to do the job on upon taking office.

This brings us to Sarah Palin, who until Friday was almost completely unknown to most Americans. That will change. What we learn is that she started off as a concerned mother who joined the PTA to help improve her local schools, then was elected to the city council, and then became mayor of her small town in Alaska. She ran for Lieutenant Governor and lost, but then defeated the incumbent Republican Governor of Alaska in the party primary and beat back the Democrat challenger to be elected Governor of Alaska in 2006.

At each level of government, she has proven herself to be a competent advocate of honest government, opposing corrupt entrenched interests in both parties. She has shown herself to be capable as the chief executive of a state with a small population, dealing with budgets, policies and appointments, and as the old parable in Luke says, "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much." There's no reason to think that she has bumped up against the Peter Principle yet, any more than Barack Obama, John McCain or Joe Biden have.

So would putting Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency be a reckless gamble? No more so than putting Joe Biden there, since he has no executive experience at all. No matter whether we elect Barack Obama or John McCain as our next President, the winner will have a learning curve when he takes office. And whether it's Sarah Palin or Joe Biden in the understudy role, that person will have a learning curve as well.

P.S. If you'd like to get a good roundup of information about Sarah Palin, I'd highly recommend checking out BeldarBlog. Beldar has been making the case for Governor Palin as a good veep pick for John McCain since back in June; indeed, I found a lot of good information about her on his site back then. The more I read about her, the more impressed I am with her story and accomplishments.

Uh-Oh

Hurricane Gustav is looking pretty damn scary for those people in New Orleans. I hope that this time, the people there are listening to Mayor Ray Nagin and evacuate, because it sure looks like this storm has their name on it. It may be even worse than Katrina was, depending on where it makes landfall and how strong it is when it hits.

Why worse than Katrina? Well, contrary to what you might think, that storm wasn't a worst-case scenario for New Orleans (although it WAS the worst-case scenario for the Mississippi coast, which got the brunt of Katrina's winds and storm surge), because Katrina went east of the city. The current track for Gustav has it going just west of New Orleans, meaning the the front right quadrant of the storm, which has the strongest winds and the highest storm surge, would hit southeastern Louisiana and Lake Pontchartrain. That would increase the likelihood of the city's levees failing or being overtopped by the storm surge, and New Orleans once again being flooded. In addition, the city could see Category 4 winds of 140 miles per hour or more, much stronger than they did during Katrina.

It's raining here in southwest Florida right now as we are on the outer edges of the storm. There's a bit of a breeze, but nothing major. This isn't our storm. Tropical Storm Hanna, which is slowly meandering toward the Bahamas, might be, or perhaps one of the other tropical waves coming off of Africa. During hurricane season, you have to remain alert.

If you're a praying person, say one for the people on the Louisiana coast. They're going to need it.

Update 8:45 p.m.: Gustav looks to have weakened a bit, down to a Cat 3 at 115 mph. The 8 p.m. EDT update has the center of the track moving a little farther west, which means that New Orleans may (may!) dodge the bullet and just get a really bad storm instead of a catastrophic one. They're still going to be on the wrong side of the storm, but the further west the landfall is, the better for the city. Keep your fingers crossed for them.

Scene Shift

From Denver (yesterday) to Dayton (today) to St. Paul (Monday).

Yesterday, Senator Barack Obama accepted his party's nomination for President of the United States. His earlier choice of Senator Joe Biden of Delaware as his vice-presidential pick was uninspired in my opinion. This isn't change, it's business as usual in Washington, just under different proprietorship.

This morning, the rumors are running wild that Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska will be announced today as Senator John McCain's running mate. If true, this would be an interesting pick. I've been saying for a long time that McCain needs a game-changer for his running mate: A fresh face who is someone other than another white male. Picking a woman or a person of color would show that the Republican party can be just as inclusive as the Democrats. Another name mentioned earlier was Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, an Indian-American.

Both Palin and Jindal are relatively youthful and thus relatively inexperienced compared to someone like Biden. However, when compared to Obama, the man at the top of the Democrats' ticket, they are no more inexperienced than he is, and thus, it is no more of a stretch to visualize them in the Oval Office if something should happen to a hypothetical President McCain.

We'll find out officially at noon today. Personally, I'll be quite pleased if it is Gov. Palin. Then on to St. Paul, and let the games begin!

Update: As of 10:30, Fox News is reporting that Sarah Palin will indeed be John McCain's running mate. It's a bold move, and I like it.

The Circus Comes To Denver

The seemingly interminable 2008 political season is heading for the home stretch, with the two major parties' national conventions taking place in the next two weeks. This week, it's the Democrats in Denver; next week, it will be the Republicans in St. Paul, Minnesota. Of the two conventions, this week's promises to be the most entertaining. While Barack Obama's nomination as the Democrat presidential candidate is a foregone conclusion, there still promises to be a lot of drama this week, both from the wackadoodle protesters from groups like Recreate68, and from the jilted Hillary Clinton supporters who feel like their candidate got a raw deal and have created groups with names like JustSayNoDeal and P.U.M.A. (Party Unity My Ass!)

We've been told how hip and tech-savvy Senator Obama and his team are, but events over the weekend have definitely caused some doubts. First, there was the method of notifying his supporters of his vice-presidential nominee choice: The Obama team was going to send out text messages to all of their supporters, letting them know first who it was going to be. Unfortunately, they waited way too late to send out the messages: They sent them out at 3:00 a.m. Saturday morning, even though the major media had figured out that it was going to be Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware a few hours earlier. 3:00 a.m.! Brilliant! If I was an Obama supporter and my cell phone had gone off at 3:00 a.m. and woken me up, I'd have been more than a little peeved. Talk about inconsiderate!

Not to mention incompetent from a media standpoint. They'd worked the media into a fever pitch and then just left them standing around in a circle jerk. Unfortunately, they missed the window of opportunity to break the news during the Friday news cycle. If they'd been smart, the choice would have been announced around noon on Friday, with wall-to-wall Biden coverage the rest of the day. Instead, by breaking it in the middle of the night, they only got the attention of news junkies who watch the Saturday morning news shows. Keep in mind that Friday late night was the same period that the disgraced John Edwards chose to make his confession on a late night news show. It's the time of the week where news goes to die. Not savvy at all.

And then there's the Biden pick itself. Senator Obama ran off his early string of caucaus and primary victories by running as the candidate of "change," as someone who was different from all of the other politicians and would change the way that Washington works. This was enough to get the attention of all of the starry-eyed naive young people who actually bought into the hype. Biden, however, is a six-term Senator, a consummate Washington insider. If you want to change the way that Washington works, Biden is part of the problem, not part of the solution. The only "change" an Obama-Biden ticket represents is a change in the party label of the bagmen upon whom the Washington lobbyists bestow their largesse. Sorry, kids; you've been pwned. Keep this in mind the next time some politician comes along and tells you he's not like all of the rest of them.

By Hooker By Crook

It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it:

Cop: Sex With Hooker Wasn't Fun, It Was Work

A suspended Texas police officer testified Thursday that he was forced to have sex with two prostitutes during an undercover sting operation, saying he was "paid to do it."

...

"If you are asking if I had an orgasm, yes. It was a job, sir," Breiner reportedly said during testimony. "I didn't have pleasure doing this. I was paid to do it."

Riiiiiiight. It's obvious that the poor man was being sexually harassed on the job. If there's any justice in this world, the City of Beaumont will have to pay for the counseling he'll need to move past this traumatic incident.

Meanwhile, here's a story that confirms that if you want to be a criminal, you're far better off doing it in the Great White North:

Flaming relapse -- convicted drunk driver's naked joyride with hooker

James Boppre broke all the rules of house arrest when he went for a late-night drive in his pickup truck last month.

He did not observe his curfew.

He did not remain sober.

He did not keep the peace.

And as he crashed into a Kitchener car lot -- driving naked while speeding, drunk, high on crack cocaine and next to a naked prostitute -- he was not being of good behaviour.

"This is one of the most flamboyant, flaming relapses I've ever seen," defence lawyer Brennan Smart said. "It's almost the stuff of comedy writers."

Boppre, 39, of Waterloo, already had a drunk driving record when he was convicted last year of two weapons offences and breach of recognizance.

He received a nine-month conditional sentence of house arrest and went to a rehabilitation facility, where he was an "exemplary resident."

Once out and living with his sister, Boppre thought he had his problem under control and gradually began drinking and taking drugs again.

Then, on the night of July 30, he completely snapped.

"He just jumped in with both feet," Smart said. "It's astounding."

The former owner of a landscaping business with a six-figure income, Boppre got drunk, went out in his truck and picked up a prostitute at a Kitchener intersection.

Crown prosecutor Mark Poland said Boppre then parked on East Avenue and smoked crack with the woman before they both took their clothes off.

Boppre sped away on East, masturbating while watching the woman masturbate, then missed a curve, went over an island and crashed into a parked car at the intersection of Weber Street.

Witnesses saw Boppre grab his clothes and dress while running away, leaving the accident and the naked woman behind.

He was arrested after one of the witnesses followed him behind a nearby plaza and gave police a description.

"I think Your Honour would struggle to find a more egregious breach," Poland told Justice Colin Westman.

"It holds the conditional sentencing regime up to ridicule."

Poland argued for a six-month jail term after Boppre -- supported in court by two rows of friends and relatives -- pleaded guilty yesterday to impaired driving, possession of crack cocaine and leaving the scene of an accident.

Westman, however, disagreed the house arrest was a failure because Boppre unravelled with about a month to go.

He credited Boppre with doing well for so long and gave him just four months in jail -- the minimum penalty given his three previous drunk driving convictions.

"I want to reward you for the efforts you've made," Westman said.

Boppre was also prohibited from driving for five years and placed on probation for three years, with a term he get recommended counselling.

Smart said Boppre has a supportive family and wants to try rehab again to beat his "debilitating addiction."

Wow! DUI with three previous DUI convictions, possession and use of crack cocaine, speeding, leaving the scene of an accident, indecent exposure, lewd and lascivious behavior... And he only gets four months in jail? In Florida, he'd be probably be spending several years in jail for all of those offenses.

The most unbelievable line in the story is when the judge says, "I want to reward you for the efforts you've made." You've got to be kidding me! If he'd made any more effort, he'd have killed somebody! And the prosecutor was going for a stiff six-month sentence. Boy, that'd show those scofflaws up in Canada that the law is not a joke, wouldn't it?

Fayed To Black

What a difference a day makes! Today, it's not raining and the winds are almost completely calmed. It's still overcast, but you can't have everything. It looks like Fay may yet become a hurricane and whack the northeast part of Florida, and then sweep west across the Panhandle. If it does, then just about the entire state will eventually be affected by the storm, from the Keys up to Jacksonville and across to Pensacola. The rainfall has been beneficial for most areas, however.

Yesterday was an excellent day for sleeping, and I got several hours worth. It wasn't much of a day for anything else. I told a friend at work that I'd had enough of the tropical storm season for this year, and that someone else would have to get the rest of the action in 2008. That may be too much to ask for.

Noon Fay Update

So far, so good. The power has stayed on. It's windy and rainy outside, but the storm's center of circulation has gone to the east of me and is currently about 30 miles away and moving away from me. The west side of the storm, where I am, is the "weak" side. I don't think that the sustained winds have been much over 30 miles per hour, with higher gusts.

I've probably gotten about four inches of rain here so far, and it doesn't show any sign of stopping soon. However, it hasn't rained hard enough to disrupt DirecTV, which happens whenever I get a really bad rainstorm coming from the south. It's just a continuous rainfall. Flooding on the roads is going to be a major concern in this area for the next few days, and could make driving to work tricky tonight if my normal route has deep standing water on it.

"Business As Usual"

That's what the hotline recording said when I called it last night to find out if work was on or not. The recording had last been updated at 3:45 p.m. by some pencil-pusher in Tampa. I was amazed. Here we are, under a hurricane warning all up and down the coast, and it's "business as usual."

Well, not exactly. If it was really business as usual, I'd still be at work. We were told when we got in that when we finished running the mail for our machines, we could leave if we wanted to. In my case, the answer was, "I'm outta here as soon as I'm finished." We were done and dispatched by 4:00 a.m., and that's when I left. I didn't take a lunch today, which means that I only took two hours of vacation time in order to split. I figured that was a good trade-off, since the longer I stayed there, the closer Tropical Storm Fay would be when I left and the worse the driving conditions would be on my 22-mile commute home.

The drive home wasn't too bad, actually. I've seen worse wind and rain during regular thunderstorms. I'm sure it would have been worse if I'd stayed until 6:30. And the roads were almost empty -- I could count the total number of cars I saw on my fingers. Most days, even at 4 a.m., there would have been more traffic on the road.

Anyway, I'm home now and can wait for the heavier wind and rain to arrive in the next few hours. It's going to be a fine day to be indoors.

And the theme music for work last night? Vintage Neil Young: "Like A Hurricane."

Tuesday's Gone With the Wind

Well, maybe. The latest advisory on Tropical Storm Fay from the National Hurricane Center puts me under a hurricane watch for Tuesday. The current track looks a lot like 2004's Hurricane Charley, which caused a lot of damage in Lee and Charlotte Counties, although Fay is nowhere near as strong as Charley was crossing Cuba. It looks like either a strong tropical storm or a minimal Category 1 hurricane are the likeliest possibilities. Some wind, lots of rain, little or no major damage, and hopefully the power stays on.

I'm guessing that I may not be working Monday night for Tuesday, since they close the bridges when the winds go over 50 mile per hour. If we have a tropical storm or hurricane here on Tuesday morning, there almost certainly won't be any mail delivery that day. It also means that Wednesday, which is normally the slowest day of the week, would be more like a Monday, with two days worth of mail to deliver. Gonna have to play it by ear and keep an eye on the weather web sites.

A Limerick

Not to hide my light under a bushel:

While perusing the TalkLeft web site's post about whether Hillary Clinton might have won the Democrat presidential nomination if John Edwards had been forced to drop out before Iowa, I saw this exchange:

Isn't Hunter not her real name?
by sarcastic unnamed one on Wed Aug 13, 2008 at 03:24:45 PM EST

It's her married name
by Jeralyn on Wed Aug 13, 2008 at 03:27:33 PM EST

She changed her last name to Hunter when she married Alex Hunter III (son of former Boulder District Attorney) in the 90's. There's no requirement you change it back after divorce.

Her birth name was Lisa Druck.

[ Parent ]

Lisa Druck?
by Robot Porter on Wed Aug 13, 2008 at 04:03:30 PM EST

That name would have made for a more interesting limerick.

;)

Well, I was inspired to write a limerick. Not for them, since they wouldn't let me post there (I'm not registered there, and I'd quickly get banned as a site violator if I told them what I really think!). I'll pass it on to you instead!

There was a gal named Lisa Druck,
Who said, "Poverty sure does suck,
"I recommend highly
"living the life of Rielle*,
"And John says I'm a helluva f...riend."

:-)

* - Note that this would not rhyme if her name was pronounced "ree-ell," as most people pronounced it when the scandal broke. However, her mouthpiece told the press that the preferred pronunciation is "riley."

Thoughts For Today

I haven't watched much of the Olympics, but it was on in the break room at lunch time, so I watched some women's gymnastics and men's swimming. The biggest name we've heard is American swimmer Michael Phelps, who is winning gold medals left and right, both individually and with the American team. One thing I heard is that they've been setting world records in several different events. In the men's swimming, the records have not just been broken but blown away.

So I'm curious: Is it that the athletes themselves are better than in the past, or is it superior training and equipment? Or perhaps a combination of the two? One thing's for certain: The new high-tech equipment (swim suits, running shoes and clothing, etc.) that the athletes have can't hurt. And in sports where records are measured in tenths or hundredths of seconds, every little advantage helps, even if it's ergonomically designed clothing that is lighter and enables the athlete to move faster.

Second thought for the day: I saw in the entertainment news a couple of weeks ago that one of the movie studios is getting ready to do a remake of 1984's Red Dawn. With recent events in the Caucasus, it appears that this one should be set in Georgia rather than Colorado, although that would be the Georgia whose capital is Tbilisi rather than the one whose capital is Atlanta.

I wonder how you say "Wolverines!" in Georgian?

Perseid Watch

I went out around 2:30 and spent about an hour watching the Perseid meteor shower. It wasn't a total bust, because I did see six meteors over the course of the hour, and two or three other flashes on my peripheral vision that might have been something or might not have been. The main problem was some low, milky clouds that obscured a lot of the portion of the sky I was supposed to be watching. The other problem was mosquitoes. There weren't many, but there were enough that I retreated inside my car and watched the sky to the northeast through my driver's side window.

I'm probably just jaded, because I saw both the 2001 and 2002 Leonid meteor showers, which were spectacular. Mid-November is a much more pleasant time for being outdoors at night in Florida, since the mosquitoes are usually gone by then and we are more likely to get a completely clear sky. Tonight actually wasn't bad; the temperature was pleasant and the humidity wasn't too high. And I did see a few meteors, so we'll give this one a C grade. It could have been worse.

Chuckles

In the news, this funny story, about a man in Longmont, Colorado, who tried to get an "adult novelty store" to give him free porn by posing as an "age verification inspector" from the local police department. He tried not once but three times, to no avail. After the third try, the store manager called the cops, who are looking for the con artist. I guess they'll go after him for impersonating a policeman (badly), but in my opinion the real crime was walking around with sunglasses on top of his head.

And talk about a chilling effect: The dude was caught on surveillance video in an "adult novelty store." Yeah, the cameras are everywhere, but you'd hope for a little privacy while you were trying to scam the store out of a copy of Barely Legal #37. Well, you would if you were the faux Porn Inspector dude. Lesson to be learned: If you don't want to appear on surveillance cameras while purchasing "adult novelties," the internet is your best bet.

And for another laugh, check out this post from Iowahawk. Seems he got a threatening letter from the digital brownshirts at Accountable America, a left-wing fringe group that threatens to dig into the personal lives of Republican campaign donors. On a serious note, is this what politics has degenerated to? If so, then maybe we deserve the John Edwardses, the Barack Obamas and the John McCains. That's the best we're likely to get. Ugh.