2008 Presidential Election Day

 

So excited. I've been waiting 8 years for this day. It's like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Chinese New Year, and the release day of every video game I've ever wanted. It's time to undumben the Presidential office, and all afflicted institutions.

Thanks to rosstralia for the wonderful Lego Obama clip.

The only thing I will miss about the GOP will be the consistent behavior so fecund for fodder. What will Tina Fey do now, other than make hit TV shows? Will John Stewart still have a job? Will running in a political office still be an attractive lampoon mechanism for Stephen Colbert? Let's wait and see.

On the rare chance that McCain gets elected, I have only this to say: please don't die.

This just in: Democratic administrations better for your investment

According to a NYTimes piece (sourced from Bloomberg Financial Markets), $10,000 invested in the S.& P. stock market would be worth $11,733 if invested under Republican presidents and $300,671 for Democratic presidents, assuming a compound rate of 8.9 percent over nearly 40 years (the period of time during which either a Republican or Democratic president was in office).

They also indicate what the return would've been had Hoover's administration been considered.

Note that the period where the investment has the greatest return is during Clinton's administration.

Hmmm.

Current president: can't think for himself, has difficulty speaking in clear, articulate sentences, dragged America down a couple rungs in the eyes of the world, ran country using fear tactics; the economy suffers.
Note: couldn't get impeached no matter how many child molesters or CIA agent outers he protected.

Clinton: charismatic, intelligent, could articulately speak to any audience, worked with Dems and GOP congresspeople to get a balanced budget (a first in over 30 years, at the time), had crazy dope foreign policy skills (restoration of Haitian president, Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, peace negotiations with Protestants/Catholics in Ireland, etc), 4% unemployment + more; the economy boomed.
Note: Newt Gingrich and Kenneth Starr led the way to waste taxpayer dollars to impeach him for a blowjob.

The Dead Zone 2: Romney's Finger on the Button

McCain's bit is relatively middle-of-the-road, but Catcher Mitt's blathering about Guantanomo Bay prison "doubling", is downright evil. There's not doubt that if this guy won the Presidency, he'd don garb similar to Darth Vader, and he'd start laying a cruel pimp hand on the populace.

Mitt Romney. Wow. He reminds me of a certain Stephen King character in a certain book about a certain man who starts a certain war if elected President.

And apparently, the war effort has become so strained in Iraq that the White House has decided to force military reenactment participants to enlist for combat duty overseas...coming to you from the brilliant minds at theonion.com.

In The Know: Our Troops In Iraq

The big stem cell in the sky

Let's recap a life (points summarized from an AP article):

• His father and his grandfather were militant atheists, he wrote in his autobiography. He said his father made a fortune off his businesses — including bootlegging during Prohibition. [cool!]
• As a student, he was a star athlete and a prankster who was barred from giving his high school valedictorian's speech after he was caught using counterfeit lunch tickets his senior year. [shocking behavior! what a cad!]
• He ran with a gang of juvenile delinquents before becoming a born-again Christian at age 19. [you little rapscallion!]
• He turned down an offer to play professional baseball and transferred from Lynchburg College to Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Mo.
• The fundamentalist church he started in an abandoned bottling plant in 1956 grew into a religious empire that included the 22,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church, the "Old Time Gospel Hour" carried on television stations around the country and 7,700-student Liberty University, which began as Lynchburg Baptist College in 1971.
• He had once opposed mixing preaching with politics, but he changed his view and in 1979, founded the Moral Majority. The political lobbying organization grew to 6.5 million members and raised $69 million as it supported conservative politicians and campaigned against abortion, homosexuality, pornography and bans on school prayer. [good for you - making Momma proud!]
• In 1983, U.S. News & World Report named him one of 25 most influential people in America. [wow! America must be scary!]
• In 1984, he sued Hustler magazine for $45 million, charging that he was libeled by an ad parody depicting him as an incestuous drunkard. A federal jury found the fake ad did not libel him, but awarded him $200,000 for emotional distress. That verdict was overturned, however, in a landmark 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held that even pornographic spoofs about a public figure enjoy First Amendment protection. [damn liberal court system!]
• In 1987, he took over the PTL (Praise the Lord) ministry in South Carolina after Jim Bakker's troubles. he slid fully clothed down a theme park water slide after donors met his fund-raising goal to help rescue the rival ministry. He gave it up seven months later after learning the depth of PTL's financial problems. Largely because of the Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart scandals, donations to his ministry dropped from $135 million in 1986 to less than $100 million the following year. Hundreds of workers were laid off and viewers of his television show dwindled. [awww...poor Bakker and Swaggert gettin' caught swindlin' all them poor folks...I'll take over your racket!]
• He quit the Moral Majority in 1987, saying he was tired of being "a lightning rod" and wanted to devote his time to his ministry and Liberty University. But he remained outspoken and continued to draw criticism for his remarks. ['cause he couldn't shut up...even when he tried, it just made it worse!]
• In 1999, he told an evangelical conference that the Antichrist was a male Jew who was probably already alive. He later apologized for the remark but not for holding the belief. [see above]
• A month later, his National Liberty Journal warned parents that Tinky Winky, a purple, purse-toting character on television's "Teletubbies" show, was a gay role model and morally damaging to children. [what did I say]
• Days after Sept. 11, 2001, he essentially blamed feminists, gays, lesbians and liberal groups for bringing on the terrorist attacks. He later apologized. [what? space aliens aren't fault?!]

Who is he? Well, if you didn't already peep the link above, you'd know he was Jerry Falwell. His actions speak to his...eccentricity? insanity? After looking at how he started to wrap up his role as moral commentator, I bet the world must've been a scary and unfamiliar place. It's a good thing that surgery and arterial stents are ethical, moral, and biblical, otherwise he might not have been around to see the ball drop in 2006. Thanks for the lessons, Jer. Now we know what NOT to do.

As a minor digression, it's interesting how the word "fundamental" was used to describe certain Christian groups like Falwell's Moral Majority. It basically inferred that they were a large group of voters who don't tolerate gays, non-white folks, people who don't think like members of a like cult...in my opinion. Now it's a word getting some negative press because of certain "fundamentalist" Islamic groups. And while many Islamic states have historically shared a hybrid church-state government, throw in the trend of American government getting to home base with our Puritanical roots, and we have a wonderful little board game of Risk all laid out for us. Thanks for helping making the world a more polarized place, Jer!

It's so sweet. These two factions wanting to destroy a global community and eliminate all non-believers...I'm sure it's just what Jesus and Mohammed had in mind.

Speaking of mind and coherent thought, I also wonder what Jerry and the Moral Majority would've done when had Reagan was in office and been grossly afflicted with Alzheimer's...would Ron and Nancy still find their support from Jerry's mob? For that matter, what did Jerry think about Dick Cheney's daughter, who happens to be a lesbian? Did that create a dilemma for him? Maybe he shorted out like so many AIs on Star Trek, where Capt. Kirk always "out-logicked" an alien supercomputer.

Speaking of supercomputers, I'm sure Kurt Vonnegut is staring down at from his celestial Tralfamadorian vessel and chuckling as ol' Jer is being stewed in order to make tallow for candles for the kids being served by the World Bank.

For more Jerry related material, check out the plethora of video material readily available on Youtube. I recommend the Pat Robertson-Jerry Falwell make out *parody* from Family Guy.

Is Al Gore the new Bill Graham?

He used to be called the "dull" one. Now he's nominated for an Oscar for his documentary, at which nay-sayers (read: people who still think the Earth is flat) scoffed at his "facts" and "scientific evidence". He's also recently announced the July-launching campaign: Save Our Selves — The Campaign for a Climate in Crisis. The concert is set up like Live Aid, and according to the AP, is being euphemistically referred to as "Earth Aid". It's got a stellar list of performers...although so far I haven't seen the Dixie Chicks listed, which would be cool given their take on Dubya.

Yes, this is the same Al Gore who was the U.S. VP for 8 years. Not "Bore", as we used to call him. This guy's got stupid crazy charisma now because it seems like he's really finally doing what he cares about, and couldn't do before as a candidate for the White House. Why? Because he would've scared off the conservative vote with his ridiculous and Satanic comments about this great God-fearing nation of carbon emitters. "HE WANTED TO TAKE AWAY MY GOD-GIVEN SUV (read: 2007 Earth Destroyer)! HE'S A COMMIE PINKO TERRORIST!", they'd say. Then they'd burn their daughters at the stake for doing calculus and smack their wives around, "cuz, they were gittin' uppity".

More than 100 performers are scheduled to appear at the July concerts, including Melissa Etheridge (whose song in "An Inconvenient Truth" is nominated for an Oscar as well), the Foo Fighters, Lenny Kravitz, Sheryl Crow, John Mayer, Duran Duran, Korn, Pharrell, the Black Eyed Peas, Akon, Enrique Iglesias, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw.

Can't you just see Akon smackin' that a-- for global warming awareness?

Relatedly, and I'll be the first to admit I don't have any data on this, so I'm going straight from the gut on this one (did you know there are more nerve endings in your gut than in your head? Look it up, people), I'm postulating that American children's medical needs are the root cause of the failure of the auto industry. Just allow me some room to drift here...it's all tied up in a neat little package for you:

• Cause A: Kids need good medical attention to become happy healthy members of society;
• Cause B: Medical insurance is expensive to pay for out of one's pocket, and employment that provides subsidized healthcare benefits is the ideal solution;
• Factor A: American car manufacturers produce gas-guzzling vehicles that are of shoddy construction and which pollute the environment and keep us fixed on the sweet tit of foreign oil;
• Primary Effect: Kids get sick from breathing in the crap (this is a scientific term) in the air;
• Secondary Effect: Parents go to work to provide for their families/children illnesses brought on by said crap;
• Tertiary Effect (as related by Factor A): American car manufacturers try to cut costs by reducing healthcare benefits for workers or closing plants altogether (here's where carbon emission pollution and healthcare costs implode upon each other);
• Quaternary Effect: Parents lose their jobs and lose healthcare benefits, thus reducing their socio-economic viability in this country, thus reducing the amount of quality medical care their children can receive;
• Quinary Effect: Children of these parents turn into adults and require even more medical coverage in order to combat health problems that could've been addressed during common preventative doctor visits, of which costs would've been subsidized by the auto maker.

I'm still working on the details, but this is the general gist: get rid of American children and replace them with robots powered by Dick Cheney's evil, soul-sucking smile.

Note that this cause-effect model is intertwined with the issue of carbon emission pollution of which the primary effect is global warming, which effects polar ice caps, which...eh...you get the picture.

Subsidized by you

Outsourcing.

What a nasty word, eh? We hear it all the time. Folks in various industries are "restructured" because of it.

A recent study by the New York Times revealed that the number of government contracting gigs has increased, while open competition between bidders has not. Most of these gigs are for operations in Iraq. Interestingly enough, spending by top contracting firms on lobbying and campaign donations has increased.

While the Times can't say it, I can: sounds like some hot, yet clandestine political pillow-talk going on up on the Hill. This type of behavior looks bad because it's easily interpreted as a case of interest groups directing policy. Also consider the long-reaching effects of outsourcing by the U.S. government when the contractors aren't held to the same level of accountability that public officials are, and compound this understanding with the lack of transparency within these privately-held companies.

It could be argued that the current administration has partnered with groups that will insulate Bush et al from any type of legal or punitive actions. I'm thinking of how the U.S. has farmed out torturing of detainees to countries like Egypt and Syria.

Top this off with the $2.9 trillion (that's: 2,900,000,000,000 dollars) budget the Bush administration submitted to Congress (the Pentagon's portion is $624.6 billion, which is up from last time), and wonder how long it will take to us to learn that the military-industrial complex is not the best way, moral or economical, to sustain one of the largest and most powerful countries in the world.

Interestingly, the budget includes only $50 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in 2009, which is the last year funding is expressly provided. Is this the first sign of when we could expect to see a full-scale extraction from the region?

Y'know...just ran into Barack Obama...he's cool

My buddy Mike from high school is quite active in the quest to make some positive changes in the world.

Just recently he and his family went to D.C. to attend the national Department of Peace conference, and they happened to share an elevator ride with Senator Obama himself. They got a chance to talk with him in his office about his presidential goals, and how much they support him. He seems like a nice guy, but then, we knew that already.To learn more about Mike and what he does, check out his site. He's a motivational speaker, coach, and author. Some of his clients have included: Apple Computer, Lucasfilm, PG&E, UC Berkeley, Oracle, CingularWireless, Yahoo!, Visa, Webcor Builders...you know, some local industry lightweights.