Wednesday News Headlines You May Have Missed-

I suppose that most of you have already heard that Barack Obama was elected to the Presidency last night, but our crack staff at MMB has been hard at work and, having finished off all the beer, have found a few other election-related stories the major media seems to have missed-

George Bush told reporters this morning that he has offered his congratulations to "that other guy, the one who, yuh know, beat John McCain, the same John McCain who was a prisoner of war and has served his country all his life, and uh, well, you know, I guess the country just got all Democratized on us and we gotta roll up our arms and fool me twice, right, you know? Anyone have a pretzel? I wanna give that Obama guy a pretzel."

A spokesman for Governor Sarah Palin announced that as the Governor was packing in her Arizona hotel room this morning she found an entire box full of "g"'s she has been dropping for the last two months. The spokesman said the "g's will be donated to poor, g-deprived Republicans in George Bush's home state of Texas.

Joe The (not really a) Plumber has issued a press release stating that he never liked John McCain that much anyway, and that his new 'Joe the Plumber Action Figures^(tm) are now available on his website, and that his new country single, "I've Got a Plunger for You, Baby", will be available at Wal*Mart next week.

Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin notes in her column this morning that, after a full twelve hours as President-elect, "B. Hussein Obama" has not yet solved the financial crisis, made America energy-independent, or attacked Iran, and termed his Presidency "a miserable failure".

Vice President-for-Life Dick Cheney was unavailable for comment, but trucks of canned food, bottled water, and rolls of barbed wire have reportedly been streaming into the Vice President's compound since midnight last night.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney told reporters last night that he's moving to "either Iowa or New Hampshire, or maybe both" and will begin campaigning for the 2012 election tomorrow, taking a firm stand on "all the issues that are important to everybody, whatever the polls, I mean the people, tell me they want me to be for, which I already am anyway, 100%, and always was, even when I wasn't".

Tina Fey was last seen doing blueberry jello shots in Times Square, table-dancing nude with Susan Sarandon and burning her Sarah Palin wig.

-

CONGRATULATIONS, AMERICA! YES WE CAN!

-

A Modest Proposal-

As Election Day rumbles into its final hours we are once again hearing reports of voters being mysteriously dropped from their local voting rolls, fouled-up machinery, and long lines, up to 6 or 7 hour-long lines in some places in Virginia.

I submit that this is a disgraceful state of affairs for the country that is supposed to be setting the standard for other nations to follow. I have therefor assembled a trio of Modest Proposals I hope the next President and Congress will consider-

-Automatic National Voter Registration. If you are a US citizen, you are a registered voter. Start a Federal Voter Database which is tied to your social security number. When you move your registration is automatically forwarded to your new precinct and deleted from your old one. No need to register, check local voter lists against federal lists, etc. Just a clean, everyone-is-registered system with one list.

-Apportionment of Voting Machines Based on Local Voter Registration. It's a disgrace that there are such wildly disparate waits to vote across the country. We're going to have a fairly high turnout in our town, and FB and I waited five minutes to vote this morning. Federal Law needs to require that an appropriate number of voting machines are available in every precinct based on the number of voters in that precinct.

-Voting Week. The right of an individual to vote is the basis of our country, yet in many states many citizens have to chose between voting and keeping their jobs. Incredible, you say? Tell that to the hourly worker at Walmart who has to vote during lunch hour and finds a six-hour line in front of him/her. Do you think Walmart, or perdue is going to continue employing them if they take the afternoon off to vote? That's highly doubtful (no matter what the law says). But why should the most important collective decision our nation makes every two/four years be packed into a single 9-hour period? We need to have the polls open for at least a week, preferably 9 days, to include an opening and closing weekend. The most precious right we have is the right to vote, and we should honor it by allowing our citizens ample opportunity to assert it. What would that hurt?

It's high time America left the 19th century behind in terms of local and state-control of the basics of voting. The Federal government needs to step in and set some real standards, and take over registration. To ignore this problem is simply going to mean a continuing set of crises caused by antiquated machinery, poor funding and local political skullduggery and party thuggery aimed at disenfranchising certain blocks of voters.

Here's hoping everything goes well this time, but based on current news reports, I'm not betting on it. Enough is enough.

Boo!

There's a lot more at "Yes We Carve" dot com...

Paging Godless Americans-

Believe it or not, there are still a few honorable Republicans out there. As of today, any chance North Carolina Senator Elisabeth Dole had of being on such a list just evaporated. Dole is in a fierce fight with a Democrat named Kay Hagan, and has just chosen to cross that uncrossable line into religious-hate mongering. I showed this ad to my wife who at first refused to believe that it could even be real (but it absolutely is) -



I don't care if you believe in God or not, this is just waaaaaaay over the line. If you don't think so, take a moment and substitute "Jewish Americans", or "Muslim Americans", or even "Catholic Americans" for "Godless Americans" and see how it sounds. I was so deeply offended I went over to the Kay Hagan campaign site and made a contribution, and then I wrote the Dole campaign to tell them about it.

-

My dear Los Angeles friend Maria has changed her middle name to "Hussein" and taken the month off to go to Nevada to work as a full-time organiser for the Obama campaign. She's blogging about it daily on her blog What Happens in Vegas. She's a wonderful writer, and it's a great read.

-

If you haven't yet spent ten minutes on the hysterically funny 'Palin as President' website, go there as soon as you can! All you have to do is run your cursor over the picture, and whenever it shows a link, click. He updates it with new material when new things hit the news, which makes it a place you can go over and over (not that, um, I waste any time there, nosirree..., not me.) Just don't click the red phone when it rings. Really, DON'T. (Also, don't click Bambi when he shows up in the doorway- you'll be very, very sorry if you do...).

-

For political junkies who need one more fix, there's a great poll website called fivethirtyeight.com, which aggregates each day's polls and then comes out with broader projections. Nate Silver, the site owner, is a full-time baseball analyst-geek and uses the same computer projection techniques for the campaign that he uses to calculate a player's projected home run totals and batting average. The site is heaven for the real politico-geek, not that I visit more than, oh, nine or ten times a day. Well, ok, this past week maybe a dozen times a day, but who's counting?
-

Six days to go. Geez- then what are we going to talk about?

BREAKING CAMPAIGN NEWS-

Joe the Plumber Caught in Love Tryst with Mr. Whipple and the Maytag Repairman!

Sarah Palin Accuses Barack Obama of Wanting to Outlaw Christmas, Make Osama Bin Laden's Birthday a National Holiday, and Kill the Easter Bunny.

McCain Suspends Campaign to Deal With Current Crisis (but can't remember which one).

Obama Announces His Campaign is Buying Ad Space on Monopoly Games, Milk Cartons, & Postage Stamps.

Fox Network Announces "Who's The REAL Barack Obama?" Game Show Hosted by Tom Bergeron Will Debut This Week.

Joe Biden Strips Nude and Dirty Dances with a Donkey in Times Square in Failed Attempt to Get Anyone to Pay Attention to Him.

McCain Drops Palin, Begs Catherine Zeta Jones to Be His New Running Mate.

-

My God is Bigger Than Your God, & Sarah Palin -Traitor??

A few years ago my friend Dr. Dan was fond of saying-

"My God is bigger than your God. My God can whip your God's ass".

He meant this sarcastically, of course. But earlier this week Arnold Conrad, past pastor of the Grace Evangelical Free Church, gave the invocation before a campaign appearance for John McCain in Davenport, Iowa, as follows-

"I would also pray, Lord, that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god — whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah — that his [John McCain's] opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they're going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and Election Day."

Suddenly I feel like I'm in an episode of the Twilight Zone...

- -

Here's an interesting article that appeared today. I was wondering how long it would take somebody to bring up Todd Palin and his past. Hey, if Michelle Obama is fair game, Todd Palin certainly is-

Palin around with traitors

By MIKE ARGENTO
York Daily Record/Sunday News
10/12/2008 12:45:10 AM EDT

John McCain's campaign thinks it's entirely fair to bring up the issue of whether Barack Obama is an acquaintance of a man who performed some detestable acts when Obama was 8 years old, acts that Obama has denounced. Obama has given absolutely no indication that he agrees with the political beliefs that brought them about.

Well, then, if that's so, it's entirely fair to point out that McCain's running mate has had an ongoing sexual relationship with someone who could be considered a traitor, who was part of a movement that had ties to a white supremacist group.

Or that she has ties to a minister who performs witch hunts and was responsible for the murder of a suspected witch's pet snake.

Or that McCain himself is somehow connected to the infamous suicide of the former treasurer of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, on live TV.

Or that McCain belonged to a group that had ties to Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America.

Or that McCain is culpable for the current financial meltdown that threatens to destroy the world's economy.

Or that McCain is essentially a snake-oil salesman, a narcissistic con artist whose personal ambition trumps his alleged patriotism, a hypocrite who condemns those who secrete sleaze into our discourse while vomiting huge amounts of political bile, all while sporting that reptilian grin of his.

That would be entirely fair under the standards set forth by McCain and his running mate, Caribou Barbie.

Let's start with Sarah Palin and the allegations of having an ongoing sexual relationship with a would-be traitor.

Her husband, the Toddmeister, was a member of the Alaska Independence Party from 1995 to 2002. The Alaska Independence Party has pushed for Alaska to secede from the United States. Advocating secession could be considered treasonous. (And just plain stupid, considering that Alaska is the biggest federal welfare state in the country, getting back much more federal tax dollars than its residents pay, according to the Tax Foundation.)

The Alaska Independence Party has ties to a group called the League of the South, a neo-Confederate organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center considers a hate group with white supremacist leanings.

And Palin lives with a guy who belonged to the secessionist party.

The party proudly displays this quote from founder Joe Vogler on its Web site: "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions."

Palin herself hasn't distanced herself from the group. In March, she sent a videotaped speech to the group's convention thanking it for its "good work."

Palin has also suggested bringing up the issue of Obama's former minister, a man whose wacky beliefs Obama has rejected. If that's fair, let's look at one of Palin's minister buddies, a man whose beliefs she has not rejected in the slightest.

The preacher in question is a guy named Thomas Muthee, an African evangelist known for his witch-detecting skills. Muthee prayed over Palin during a service at her church, asking God to make her governor of Alaska. Palin's response? "That was awesome, Pastor Muthee!"

Leaving aside the theological question of whether God cares who governs Alaska, let's take a look at Muthee. In his hometown of Kiambu, suburb of Nairobi, in Kenya, Muthee identified a woman as a witch, claiming that she used her special powers to cause car accidents.

Seriously.

The pastor led a crusade against the car-accident-causing witch, which prompted police to storm into the suspected witch's home and shoot her pet python.

You can't make up stuff that good.

Anyway, the mob ran the witch out of town, forcing her to relocate somewhere else where she was apparently free to cause car accidents.

And Palin, according to the Associated Press, praises the guy. "Pastor Muthee was here and he was praying over me, and you know how he speaks and he's so bold," she said on a video making the rounds on YouTube.

Call it building a bridge to the 14th century.

Moving on to John McCain, the co-chair of his Pennsylvania campaign is a guy from suburban Philadelphia named Robert Asher, a bigwig in Republican circles.

Asher is also a convicted felon, having been found guilty of perjury, racketeering, conspiracy and bribery charges in the same case that brought down former state Treasurer Budd Dwyer in 1987. Dwyer, of course, is notorious for ending his final press conference with a .357 magnum.

McCain hasn't said anything about that, as far as I know. Nor has he said anything about the multitude of lobbyists for the industries that are currently leading the American economy down the drain who staff his campaign.

He has spoken in the past about his infamous membership in the Keating Five. If you'll recall, the Keating Five stood accused of helping savings and loan swindler Charles Keating avoid federal regulation while he defrauded investors out of more than $1 billion. Keating gave McCain and the four other senators in the group some $1.3 million in campaign contributions.

When his savings and loan collapsed, it cost taxpayers more than $2 billion.

That was a lot of money in 1989.

McCain said he learned his lesson from that, but what the lesson was remains unclear. He still pushes for deregulation of financial institutions, which is what led to the savings and loan collapse in the'80s and the current debacle that may wind up costing taxpayers more than $1 trillion.

And let's not even start on McCain's own preacher problem - such as seeking the endorsement of an evangelist who blamed gays for Hurricane Katrina and supports the state of Israel because it will bring about Armageddon.

Or McCain's membership in the U.S. Council for World Freedom, a group that ran guns to anti-government rebels in Central America and was tied to the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s. The group has been tied to Nazi collaborators and anti-Semites, the Associated Press reported.

The lesson, I suppose, is people in glass houses - or in the case of Caribou Barbie, glass igloos - well, you know the rest.

McCain has taken to asking, "Who is the real Barack Obama?"

The question could easily be turned around: "Who is the real John McCain?"

Did he ever have any principles or integrity? Was it all an act? Did he, as some people have suggested, sell his soul to win this election and now the Devil is screwing him over?

Back in 2000, when McCain was the victim of the kind of sleazy politics he is practicing now, he told Jim Lehrer of PBS's NewsHour, "Uh, I, I just have to rely on the good judgment of the voters not to buy into these negative attack ads. Sooner or later, people are going to figure out if all you run is negative attack ads you don't have much of a vision for the future or you're not ready to articulate it."

Sounds about right. He can't win with his ideas, such as they are. He has to resort to sleaze.

Back in March, McCain promised that he would run "a respectful campaign."

It would be more than fair to point out that he was lying.

-

For Joey, & Cissy, & Atlas...

...and all my other fellow-poemers out there. We have anther poemer in our midst, a lady of infinite ability and a big bosom. A lady who makes sounding incomprehensible look incredibly easy.

The good folks at Slate.com have discovered this important new American rhymin' voice, so ladies & gentlemen, I am proud to present-

Sarah Palin, American Poemer!!


"You Can't Blink"

You can't blink.
You have to be wired
In a way of being
So committed to the mission,

The mission that we're on,
Reform of this country,
And victory in the war,
You can't blink.

So I didn't blink.

(To C. Gibson, ABC News, Sept. 11, 2008)


"Haiku"

These corporations.
Today it was AIG,
Important call, there.

(To S. Hannity, Fox News, Sept. 18, 2008)


"Befoulers of the Verbiage"

It was an unfair attack on the verbiage
That Senator McCain chose to use,
Because the fundamentals,
As he was having to explain afterwards,
He means our workforce.
He means the ingenuity of the American.
And of course that is strong,
And that is the foundation of our economy.
So that was an unfair attack there,
Again based on verbiage.

(To S. Hannity, Fox News, Sept. 18, 2008)


"On the Bailout"

Ultimately,
What the bailout does
Is help those who are concerned
About the health care reform
That is needed
To help shore up our economy,
Helping the—
It's got to be all about job creation, too.

Shoring up our economy
And putting it back on the right track.
So health care reform
And reducing taxes
And reining in spending
Has got to accompany tax reductions
And tax relief for Americans.
And trade.

We've got to see trade
As opportunity
Not as a competitive, scary thing.
But one in five jobs
Being created in the trade sector today,
We've got to look at that
As more opportunity.
All those things.

(To K. Couric, CBS News, Sept. 25, 2008)


"On Reporters"

It's funny that
A comment like that
Was kinda made to,
I don't know,
You know ...

Reporters.

(To K. Couric, CBS News, Sept. 25, 2008)

-

Move over, Emily Dickinson...

As I said before, as I said before...

There's an interesting article on Sarah Palin's debating style in today's New York Times. It notes that her demeanor in her debates during the Alaskan gubernatorial campaign was quite different from her demeanor during her recent interviews with Charles Gibson and Katie Couric.

That had me a bit worried, until I got to this part-

"But just as she does now, Ms. Palin often spoke in generalities and showed scant aptitude for developing arguments beyond a talking point or two. Her sentences were distinguished by their repetition of words, by the use of the phrase “here in Alaska” and for gaps. On paper, her sentences would have been difficult to diagram. John Bitney, the policy director for her campaign for governor and the main person who helped prepare her for debates, said her repetition of words was “her way of running down the clock as her mind searches for where she wants to go.”

Then they reprinted a few quotes from her Alaska debates, and it seems that the main difference between now and then is that now she's hesitantly incoherent, and then she was enthusiastically incoherent.

I expect more of the same tomorrow night- you cannot turn somebody into a competent debater in a few weeks, especially if that person has no idea what they are talking about to begin with. At this point I really think she 'd lose a debate on the nation's economy, health care, or foreign policy to a bag of leaf mulch. I just hope people don't wind up feeling sorry for her. She certainly doesn't deserve it.

So Let Me Get This Straight-

John McCain says that yesterday's "no" vote by the House which defeated the "Bailout" plan was Barack Obama's fault.

Interestingly, Alaska's Republican House member, and all the Republican House members from John McCain's state of Arizona, voted "no".

I wonder whose fault that is?

Dear Senator McCain-

Ccongratulations on finally becoming the Republican party's official Presidential nominee! I know this has not been a great week for you, with the hurricane, and your veep imploding and all, so I wanted to write to cheer you up before tonight's big speech-

-I was happy to hear that you have had more contact with your new Veep selection than any of us had previously thought, since it turns out she made your Shameful Pork Spending List three years running when she was mayor of Wasilla. Damn, it's a small world, isn't it?

-I hear she's pretty smart too- you might have her look at a map and see if she can find that Iraq-Pakistan border you keep talking about.

-Don't worry about her First Dude and his wanting to secede Alaska from the United States. That's nothing that a few years at Gitmo won't cure.

-I was happy to hear about her national defense experience, Russia being across the Bering Strait and all, but you might want to update the Wikipedia page on Alaska history- some liberal has evidently deleted all references to her standing on Attu Island with a 30-30 and taking pot shots at Vladimir Putin when he tried to invade last summer.

-I know it's hard to figure out and remember how many houses you have. Here's a tip- if some liberal press flunkie tries to trip you up on it, make up a number between 5 and 10. If they try to call you a liar, remind them that you were a POW.

-Keep working on getting Wikipedia to change their entry on The Keating Five to be about the punk band. I'm sure they'll give in eventually.

Well, have fun Senator, and remind the floor manager not to play "Barabara Ann" at any point while you're on stage.

-your pal, CC

She'll See You at the Debates, Bitches!

Uh oh, Bitter Old White Guy has pissed off Paris...

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

and while I was looking for that, I found this-

BREAKING NEWS- Perfect Pick for President!!

The Green Party has picked their sacrificial offering Presidential candidate for the upcoming dog-and-pony show election, and it is none other than former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. You may remember her- she is not only on record as musing that George Bush knew about 9-11 beforehand and allowed it happen because the subsequent war would profit Carlyle Group, in which he and his friends have deep financial holdings, and she not only blamed "The Jews" for her defeat in the 2002 Congressional election, she's also the one who slugged a Capitol Hill police officer when he tried to speak to her as she walked into a restricted area of the Capitol building without her Congressional identification badge.

So- she's not only a paranoid whacko, she's a violent paranoid whacko. My first thought about this was that I've had enough of the violent paranoid whacko thing in the White House in the last 8 years, and I was hoping for a change, even if it's as small a change as switching to violent senile whacko John McCain.

But then I thought again (and thinking twice in one day isn't very common for me, so bear with this). My second thought is- she'd make a damn fine President! Just think about it- we always SAY we wish world leaders would get together in a room and slug it out personally instead of sending thousands of young men and women to die as surrogates for their own insecurity and demons- but do we REALLY mean it? Well, here's our chance to find out. Iranian President Achoominidickwad getting rowdy? Cynthy will go over there personally and punch him in the nose. Medvedev causing problems? No problem- Cynthy'll slug him.

No bombs, no missiles, no poison gas- just a good 'ol American President who knows how to use her fists!

I want a button.

How Can We Miss Her if She Won't Go Away?

There's a good op-ed piece by Maureen Dowd on the subject in this morning's New York Times-

"He thought a little thing like winning would stop her?

Oh, Bambi.

Whoever said that after denial comes acceptance hadn’t met the Clintons. If Hillary could not have an acceptance speech, she wasn’t going to have acceptance.

“It’s never going to end,” sighed one Democrat who has been advising Hillary. “We’re just moving to a new phase.”

Barry has been trying to shake off Hillary and pivot for quite a long time now, but she has managed to keep her teeth in his ankle and raise serious doubts about his potency." [read more]

Turning Over a New Leaf-

I did a lot of yard and garden work this weekend, and started a new project-

Neocon Gardening.

Now I know what all you pansy-ass, Liberal America-haters are saying- the Neocon Agenda has been thoroughly discredited by the fucking disasters events of the last few years. Well, Nuke Iran! Pshaw! I say to you brie-eating bed-wetters.

The first thing I'm doing is making sure that all the plants are With Us, not against us, and making sure they're all-American. No more French Endive- I now grow Freedom Endive. Tomatoes are Mexican, and I'd rip them all up, but they're used to make an important All-American Vegetable, ketchup, so for the moment they stay, but I'm keeping a close eye on them.

Now on to Anti-Terrorist Anti-Pest activities. As we all know, our Freedoms gardens are at risk from aphids, and aphids are often found on roses, so yesterday I ripped up all the rose bushes and burned them. Now, some of my terrorist-loving pest-loving neighbors objected to this. They pointed out that the rose bushes were in their yard, not my yard, and there were not actually any aphids on them at all. Well, to them I say, you can never be too careful, and anyway, I had been reliably informed that there were aphids on them before I dug them up and burned them.

As for ongoing garden maintenance, I'm going to use the same theory the Neocons are using with our public school system- punish failure. If some slacker of a plant is wilting in the hot sun, I'm sure you do-gooder Liberals would suggest giving it water. Fuck that. Slacker plants don't need water, they need to be encouraged to do better, so from now on there will be no more water for wilty plants! All my water will now go to plants that already have more than enough water. When the wilting plants see that, they'll buck up and pull themselves together and do better, and only then will they get water!

So there you are, my new Neocon Gardening Project. I'll keep you all updated.

Here's How to Make Politics More Fun-

Russian chess master-turned-politician Gary Kasparov was giving a speech when he was interrupted-

I Know It Must Be True, I Read It On The Internets-

This campaign season has been very confusing for me. So many facts flying around, and debates, and all that crap. But like the song says, I'm just a Simple Man, so I decided to go up on the web and find out the truth about the candidates without being distracted by irrelevant stuff, like the candidates themselves. What I learned was really eye-opening let me tell you, and I am so glad that I decided to become an Informed Voter.

So, for those of you voting today, or who may vote in the future, here is some of what I learned on the interwebs-

-Barack Obama is a secret Muslim who was recruited by Osama Bin Laden to become President, and once he does he is going to burn all our Bibles and make Scarlett Johansen wear a burkah.

-Hillary Clinton wants to take away all our guns and sell America to the United Nations.

-John McCain is actually a secret agent for the Red Chinese.

-Hillary Clinton will only appoint lesbians to the Supreme Court, and she's going to paint the White House pink.

-John McCain is Ted Kennedy's secret gay boy-toy.

-Barack Obama's willingness to talk to foreign leaders we don't like will destroy America, turn our kids into Muslims, and give us all scabbies.

-Barack Obama flew one of the planes into the World Trade Center.

-John McCain is really no different than Dennis Kucinich, even though Kucinich has a hotter wife.

Hillary Clinton cut off Bill's balls and had them surgically implanted in her you-know-what.

Mike Huckabee is a nut job. (well, I actually knew that before I went on the internets).

I hope you found this as educational as I did. I am going to go vote for Chuck Norris now.

This is Getting Fun-

Things are really starting to get fun on the Democratic side of the Presidential race. I assume that most of you following the campaign have by now heard about Hillary Clinton's new "3 a.m." ad- it asks who you'd want to have answering the telephone at the White House at 3 a.m. when a world crisis erupts- and pictures a couple of sleeping kids ("it's 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep, but at the White House, the phone is ringing...").

It's a pretty scary ad, and people are comparing it to the famous "Daiosy" ad run briefly by Lyndon Johnson in 1968 when he was running against Barry Goldwater-



So here's Hillary's new ad-



But the Obama campaign has shot back just a day later with this-



I think this round goes to Obama. It's good to see a campaign that can think quickly and come up with good responses without missing a beat.

BREAKING NEWS!!!!

you always sorta knew, deep down in your heart, didn't you?

Food for Thought-

Both Hillary Clinton and John McCain are making much of Barack Obama's lack of "experience", and suggesting that it makes him unfit to lead the nation. I have to admit that personally I don't give "experience" a lot of weight when it comes to supporting Presidential candidates. In fact, I think that when weighed against qualities such as the ability to weigh both sides of an argument rationally, the ability to listen to those who disagree with you openly, and the ability to work with others cordially to achieve your goals, experience means nothing.

There's an example in the news right now- Obama said he would be willing to talk with the new leaders of Cuba without preconditions, while Hillary Clinton would refuse. John McCain probably still wants to bomb them. I know McCain wants to bomb Iran, because he's said so. That's really helpful. When the most experienced foreign-policy guy in the race wants to bomb Iran, I throw experience out the window as a qualification for a President.

We now know that when another inexperienced former-Senator faced a military crisis, all his far more experienced advisors gave him advice which he ignored. It turns out that JFK was right during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and his advisors were wrong. His gut feeling that he needed to give the Soviet leadership a bit more time to save face let him defuse the issue and bring it to a peaceful and successful conclusion. Recently-released Soviet records now tell us that if f he had followed the hawkish advice of his experienced advisors and faced down the Soviets it would have started World War 3.

George Bush had all sorts of experience to rely on after the September 11th attacks. I may not agree with Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, George Tenet, et al, but I cannot deny their deep and long experience in world affairs. So that all turned out well, didn't it?

Finally, I caught this historical tidbit in George Will's column yesterday. Yes, I know, you won't find me quoting George Will very often, but in this case it provides further food for thought-

"The president who came to office with the most glittering array of experiences had served 10 years in the House of Representatives, then became minister to Russia, then served 10 years in the Senate, then four years as secretary of state (during a war that enlarged the nation by 33 percent), then was minister to Britain. Then, in 1856, James Buchanan was elected president and in just one term secured a strong claim to being ranked as America's worst president. Abraham Lincoln, the inexperienced former one-term congressman, had an easy act to follow."

Experience. It's a good quality in airline pilots and hookers, but I don't count it so highly when I'm choosing a President.

Souper Tuesday-

Well, we're almost at SouperTuesday, as 24 states will vote or caucus¹ to pick some poor schmoe to run for Official Dickhead President of the United States. Adding to the misery suspense, while the Democratic contests tend to award delegates based on percentages of votes, the Republican contests are pretty much winner-take-all affairs. Well, that makes sense- to Republicans, if you come in second, you deserve to be fucked.

I know all the political asshats pundits are predicting results, so I thought I'm at least as much of an asshat as they are why not make a few predictions of my own?

ALABAMA: A surprise on the Republican side, as the frantic candidates discover there are actually no registered Republicans in Alabama. When an ABC News reporter poses the question "Then why did Rudy Guiliani spend $7 million campaigning there before he dropped out of the race?" a political analyst answers, "Because he's an idiot."

ALASKA: Since the Alaska caucuses are held about 18 hours after everyone in the rest of the country goes to bed, nobody will ever know, much less care, who wins there.

ARIZONA: John McCain scores an easy win on the Republican side, but loses points when a You-Tube video surfaces showing an out-of-control, obscenity-spewing McCain beating a 90-year old Romney poll watcher over the head with the man's own walker.

CALIFORNIA: No results are available in the Democratic races as Republican Governor Arnold Schwartzenaeger declares all Democratic voters to be "Sissy Girlie Men", who are "probably illegal immigrants anyways", and suspends the Democratic primary until everyone can prove they are U.S. citizens. On the Republican side everyone in Orange County votes for Ron Paul, who wins handily.

MASSACHUSETTS: John McCain surprises everyone by beating former Governor Mitt Romney 87% to 13%. Romney faces reporters in front of his longtime home in Belmont, Massachusetts and heatedly denies ever having been Governor of Massachusetts, ever having been to the state, or ever having heard of it before. Fox News airs the tape without comment, and Roger Ailes delivers a harsh diatribe accusing CNN, which questions Romney's truthfulness, as being "part of the Liberal-Homosexual Anti-American Left Wing Media Conspiracy."

MINNESOTA: According to the state's new Diebold voting machines, former Richard Nixon aide General Alexander Haig wins the Democratic primary with 36,000,000 votes in a state that only has 166,000 registered Democrats.

NEW JERSEY: Returns are not in yet, as New Jersey's governor holds polls open until all the dead citizens can vote. He declares he'll announce the results sometime after the Conventions.

OKLAHOMA: Mike Huckabee wins the Republican contest, after promising to ask God to divert all of next year's tornadoes to Texas.

UTAH: In an effort to "streamline" the election process, the state announces that Mitt Romney's will be the only name to appear on the Republican ballot. He loses to John McCain anyway.

- -

¹ From the Latin, "carcass" -a putrid, smelly dead thing nobody really wants to touch.