Fair Unbalanced

new definition of "split"

Because Nobody Asked Me

The Democrats in Congress made sure that enough of them voted No on the "Bailout" so that it could not pass unless enough Republicans voted Yes. Enough did not, the vote was No.

Mr. BiPartisan, John McCain, absolutely failed to "bring the parties together" after "suspending" his campaign (i.e. canceling one appearance on Letterman) to try and take all the credit in case a bill was passed.

Mr. New Politics, Barack Obama, is basically letting this thing take its course, while he looks thoughtful, concerned and moderate.

It's a Bush Depression, after all.

England, meanwhile, nationalized another bank today. That would never fly in America, where, according to some Republican congressmen, we would rather starve than give up our precious bodily fluids, er, liberty.

Unless we lowered the capital gains tax. In that case, nationalize whatever. Just don't feed the hungry, educate children, heal the sick, or help the needy. Okay?
Okay.

Governor Sarah Palin is the most pathetic nominee for Vice-President in the history of the United States. It's almost 'Idiocracy'.

McCain-Palin. "They've got stuff voters like".

Socialist Banker's Party

The SBP demanded a trillion dollars from the People today or else they would leap of a cliff and do everything in their power to stop making more money for themselves. The People's representatives in Congress played political football and covered the spread.

Horseshit

Twice McCain said "Horseshit" during the debate with Obama - when Obama was teasing him about not talking with Spain. Andrew Sullivan picked this up and has the video. It's pretty funny. I'm only hoping the comedians pick it up. I even posted it on Saturday Night Live's community board - you can imagine the guy playing McCain pretending to cough every time he says "horseshit", like a kid thinking he's getting away with it. Video also here, although Keith Olbermann thinks he said "coursh not"

Something First

Our electrician has wired the bedroom lights in such a way that they periodically switch themselves on and off, one at a time, in a random manner (one after another, every minute or two), so that he wave a perpetual show. This wasn't exactly what we had in mind when we wanted to add lights to the bedroom.

Is this putting country first? pretending to "suspend" a campaign without actually canceling anything except one appearance on Letterman and one appearance at a long-since scheduled debate, and in the meantime sabotaging a bailout deal that you yourself call critical to avoiding a Great Depression from occurring by next Monday? Leadership means Chaos Theory now.

I've come to the conclusion that the McCain campaign has decided that if they go through the normal paces of an ordinary campaign they will lose, so they've chosen a brand new strategy based on chaos theory, where you go off the deep end periodically just to shake things up, grab the headlines, and see what will happen. it's the theory of no such thing as bad publicity. they did it when the picked the idiot Palin. They did it when they 'suspended' the campaign. They will keep on doing it. They will make Obama look boring, plodding, cautious, a normal politician stuck in the 'old ways' of being rational and methodical, while they are Politics 2.0, keep them guessing, mommy mommy look at me!!

Our electrician has taken a page from their book. He said he was putting in normal, boring, plodding old-fashioned light fixtures, but actually he put in Lighting 2.0.

A Brilliant Move

John McCain's decision to run away from this week's debate in the guise of 'putting country first' and returning to the U.S. Senate (where he has missed more votes than any other Senator this year) is hailed as 'a brilliant move' by many of his stooges and advisors.

Other brilliant moves contemplated by the candidate (and their inevitable media-type responses) include:

Sucking on frog's toes in Florida ('audacious', 'game-changing')

Pooping live on Letterman ('unprecedented', 'thrilling')

Reading 'A Christmas Carol', slowly, to starving children ('stunning', 'unbelievable')

Decapitating plastic Nazi soldiers on Broadway ('exhilarating', 'true leadership')

When it comes to 'shaking things up', nobody's a True Maverick like our man McCain.

Senator, No Won Compares 2 U

second thoughts

someone we hired to do some work for us showed up this morning with a story that he'd been followed by the sheriffs because over the weekend he had assaulted some FBI agents who were intent on depriving him of his civil rights by not letting him perform a citizen's arrest on them after they allegedly ran his motorcycle off the road.

questions for a job interview ... tell me about a time when you assaulted federal agents ...

inevitable outcome

as a lifelong socialist, i ought to be encouraged by the nationalization of the financial industry by the u.s. government - of all ironies, this being achieved by the republican party! but it isn't the socialism we need, nor socialism we can believe in :}

the socialism we need socializes profits, not losses, and insures the people, not the corporations. oh well. what can you expect from these idiots?

the financial crisis was caused by credit being too loose as a result of interest rates being too low. the solution, clearly, is to lower interest rates and loosen up credit. seriously!

because a recession will be caused if the housing market collapses. the housing market collapsed because too many people got loans they could not afford. the solution, obviously, is to shore up the housing industry by issuing more loans to more people who cannot really afford them. really!

the leading cause of problems is solutions - i know this already - but come on. gimme a break. do you have to prove it so resoundingly?

karl marx believed that socialism was the inevitable outcome of capitalism, so are we merely witnessing the inevitable? were all those bloody revolutions for nothing?

the problem is, or, the problem is now, that the same fucking morons who created this crisis are the same fucking morons who are proposing to resolve it, and they get up there and talk and talk and we are supposed to listen to them. why should we?

i really want to buy a parrot, or a mynah bird, and train it to answer all questions with the phrase "supply and demand"

that bird would then be qualified to be the secretary of the treasury.

Missy Tonight

Coming soon to a website near you, Missy Tonight, the novel which will introduce the brand new genre of 'atheist pulp ficiton', the sequel to the stunningly unsuccessful 'Orange Car with Stripes'

This novel may (or may not) answer the question, who knew there was money to be made in atheism?

ergo

have you ever met someone who immediately starts telling you about their entire life, and won't stop, no matter what, and will go on as long as he can, regardless of your interest or lack thereof, and you keep listening because, after all, this person does have interesting stories to tell, and has had an interesting life, and the names he drops are quite famous, legendary in fact, but at the same time you want to laugh out loud and say STOP, gimme a break, let me catch my breath at least.

in the meantime, he reminds you of an old man you know whose life is exactly parallel except that it involves no talent and no famous people whatsoever.

man one has a sweat lodge where men come to have manly meetings, doing manly things and rediscovering their manliness while thinking manly thoughts and drinking manly brews. they leave behind mementos, tokens of this life-changing experience.

man two has a basement where he hosts singles dance parties for the elderly, who get it on in their elderly manner, have a good old time and leave mementos behind of their party-time experience.

A Palin (and McCain) Administration

oops

another slip o' the tongue by "SnowJob SquareGlasses"

pig in a poke

on the wall of an airport men'a room bathroom, a locked steel box with a little sticker on it saying, "$1.00 quarters only"

would you pay a dollar to find out what's in the box?

I'm a (uh, what?) winner!

I got an award at a company meeting today, but it was somewhat of a comic bit lost in the shuffle of a crowd streaming for the exits. the meeting had run long (of course), they ran over time and so everyone was leaving in droves. the corporate big-whig was still on the stage describing the award and saving the suspense of the winner's name. he introduced the winner by describing his field and accomplishments and it clearly wasn't me he was talking about (and they had flown me halfway across the country just to be there) and then, when he pushed a button on his remote and my name came up on the screen he was totally flustered. "Uh' what?", he said, "This is not Anunpar!". He pressed a few more buttons and more lines appeared on the screen, including the name of the next award, the one that Anunpar actually did win, and moved right along after briefly consulting his notes and muttering something like 'this other guy did such and such'.

now i know how john mccain feels when everybody's leaving after sarah palin has introduced him.

Omen Siege

Tonight I have to fly to Seattle on business. Not my business, my company's. And not even anything productive for their business, it's just the way they do business. "Face time" or some such nonsense.

But this morning I'm encountering omen after omen. First, I was "asplundhed" by a slow truck all the way over the hill (so named after the Asplundh tree trimming trucks that often slow us down). Then, in the restroom, the deoderizer machine was literally spitting at me every ten seconds while I was just minding my own business, trying to pee in peace.

Next, while getting my coffee, a plastic cup full of water fell from somewhere overhead and landed right next to my feet, splattering all over the floor.

Now I'm full of trepidation, but I know that, if my flight goes down in the ocean, I will attempt to spend my last moments calmly recalling all of the best moments of my life. Or so I hope. I have scheduled a number of them on my mental Tivo!

Game needing a Name

Our little friend Brooke and her friend Genna came up with a word game that needs a name. It goes like this.

I want the sea but not the sick

I want the butter but not the fly

(I want the vice but not the president?)

Naturally I can't remember the several other cute phrases they came up with!

Suggestions for game-name and miscellaneous contributions welcome

White Privelege

What it is. Very well put.

Double Take

Karl Rove says that Obama is an arrogant elitist and the way he can win is for people to get to know him better.

Come again?

Sarah Palin thought the Tina Fay impression was "spot on", although she watched it with the volume OFF.

What you say?

How can I miss you ...

if you won't go away?

And on a related note, if you don't want me telling the company's secrets, how about not telling them to ME in the first place? Did I want to know? Did I ask? Then give me a break with these "confidentiality" warnings, please.

Invention of the day

new TV show - "That's My Mugger"

could these be the guys who tailed my wife the other day?

treasure trove

the kids and I have a game of "b.b. hunting" where he head out to the local playgrounds and parks and woods and find the leftover airsoft pellets from the teenager's BB gun wars. We find a few and 'pick up the trail' with our 'eagle eyes' and 'eagle noses' and sometimes come across a 'treasure trove' - the site of a standing battle which resulted in dozens of pellets scattered among the acorns and the redwood duff. Even at seven and eight years old, the kids are not quite sick of this game yet. Soon enough they'll be the ones doing the wars and "forgetting" to wear the required safety goggles!

I came across a different kind of treasure trove today, when my favorite used bookstore (Know Knew Books in Palo Alto) yielded all four of the surprisingly hard-to-find books I've been periodically checking for over the past year - Les Miserables, The Count of Monte Cristo, Pickwick Papers and Sketches by Boz. What a find!

I'm halfway through Bleak House right now - astonished and amazed on practically every page. I don't know if I've ever encountered SO MANY deliciously realized characters in one single book.

Given that Bleak House is around 1000 pages and all four of my finds are also really big books, I have a feeling I'm set in reading material for the winter! It's a good thing, too, that since completing my Orange Car with Stripes, I've had no stirrings to write anything at all ever again, and it's my rule to never mix reading and writing fiction; so there will probably be nothing in that department for awhile.

When there is, it's possible I'll revive a character from Orange Car - the bitter and obnoxious atheist talk show host Missy D'Angelo from "Missy Tonight". I have a feeling she might make a suitable subject for a murder, or at least one attempted. I wanted to strangle her myself when I wrote her into that novel :}

good company

Rude Pundit and I agree again

You want the best route? Here it is: emasculate John McCain. Use Palin to cut his nuts off. Constantly say shit like, "Am I running against John McCain or Sarah Palin?" or "If the Republicans wanted her to be president, they should have nominated her" or "Maybe Republicans are used to a vice president that runs the show" or whatever. Make McCain have to defend himself. Turn him into Palin's bitch. It'll make him insane. And if there's one thing that Republicans hate most about women, it's the perception of the castrating bitch telling men what to do (see all the shit about Hillary Clinton).

title-en

it's hard to be a has-been if you were a never-was

relocated

i'm sitting on a park bench with an old memorial plaque. thus bench was
not in this park before. it's recently been moved here from somewhere
else. did the city notify the relatives, or will they have to search
all over town to find their tribute to their relative?

Close Encounters

My wife and I had a bit of a scary incident today around noon, just in front of my office front door.

She had pulled up in front of the door to meet me for lunch. I was in a meeting at the other building, so I was late, and was coming up through the parking lot to meet her. In the meantime, a late 80's model Honda Civic sedan (black, but with a mismatched white front hood), circled slowly around the parking lot and pulled up right behind her car, and idled. There were two young men inside the car.

As she saw me approaching from the other building, she slowly pulled out to come towards me. At the same time, the other car also pulled out and followed her closely. When she pulled over to stop and pick me up, they went on ahead, but then made a U-turn later in the parking lot and circled back slowly around the back end of the lot, watching us all the time. We waited until they had left the parking lot at one end, and we went out the other exit.

We had the feeling that these guys were up to no good, possibly casing the gym next door around lunch time for victims of opportunity.

It was one of those close encounters that remind you all too sharply that everything can change in an instant.

gak

the out-and-out lying continues unabated ... can it even be countered effectively? people who are just habitual, pathological liars!

What can the Obama campaign do most effectively - to make HIM the father figure and McCain the dotty old man, hiding behind his mother's skirts, afraid to go out without her, using HER gender as HIS only defense against anything, unable to stand up for himself. McCain looks weak to me, and vulnerable, but do the Democrats have any killer instinct?

McCain is a bully who is not expecting to take a punch. They can knock him out by exploiting his apparent dependence on this new bondage mistress.

Chinese Burn / Curve / VP not EP !

I know this song is not about Gov Palin, but still ...

She burns friends like a piece of wood
And she's jealous of me because she never could
Hold herself up without a spine
And she'll look me up when she's doing fine

Because the rage it burns like Chinese torture
She's just someone's favourite daughter
Spoilt and ugly as she willingly slaughters
Friends and enemies they're all the same
They'll burn her name
And crush her fame

She'll break a promise as a matter of course
Because she thinks it's fun to have no remorse
She gets what she wants and then walks away
And she doesn't give a fuck what you might say

Because it cuts her up like Irish mortar
Mother's pride is what we taught her
Soiled and petty as we happily taunt her
Friend or enemy we're all to blame

{She'll burn us bad
She'll flaunt her flame
She'll make us remember, remember her name}

If she sits still like she knows she could
She could win this game and be the queen for good
Save herself up for the cream of the crop
Then she'll look us up when she's ready to stop

Because the rage it burns like Chinese torture
She's just someone's favourite daughter
Spoilt and ugly as she willingly slaughters
Friends and enemies are all that came
To burn her name
Crush her flame
We're all to blame

Oh!

At the in-laws the other day, my seven-year old son and I were playing hide and seek with his cousins, and looking all around his grandparents' big old rambling house and yard. At one point we peeked into the tool shed and, catching a glance of one of his grandpa's playboy pin-ups, my son remarked, "oh, boobs", and moved along.

Big Lie

Let's review. All the Republicans ever do is lie. They specialize in The Big Lie. Sarah Palin pulled off a whopper with the faked pregnancy. She's their girl! They picked her precisely because she's such an excellent liar.

This Just In: Sex Sells

Four years ago Nostrathomas recommended that John Kerry pick Britney or Lindsey as his running mate, and adopt iPod color schemes and the slogan 'skinny black chicks dancing'. He didn't, and the rest is history !

This year, John McCain knows better. 'Vote for the Hot Chick' buttons appeared on old men's jackets at the RNC convention, and Sarah Palin is more popular than either McCain or Obama, according to the polls this morning.

everything they say is a lie

those amazing republicans (the teleprompter was broken (not), she sold the jet on ebay (not)) is a big fat lie. you can count on it. if a republican opens his or her mouth, he or she is lying.

no slogan needed

even the freaking church around here has a slogan - where strangers
become friends. stop with the slogans already! if anybody doesn't need a slogan, it's a church, but it seems that nowadays, you have to have a slogan and/or a 'mission statement'. gawd

Palin Rap

thought for the day

how much of Alaska's budget comes from high oil and gas prices. when you and i go to the pump, are we making Gov Palin a better 'reformer' ?

Game Plan

Seriously now, inside the minds of the Palin Pick

1) any criticisms of her at all are played as SEXIST, causing a female backlash a la Hillary in New Hampshire (result: could cause some PUMA-creep)

2) her background underscores several good anti-Obama talking points - inexperience, "small town America", Hillary (result: reminds people of Obama-wariness without having to say these things out loud or too loudly)

3) she energizes the fundamentalists to get out the vote (result: more red state voters turn out for McCain)

4) channeling Sally Field, people genuinely like her (result: people might like McCain a little more too. Now everybody's more likable!!)

5) turn negatives into positives
(unwed teen pregnancy is GREAT if you're a Christian)
(secessionist tendencies play well in the South - state's rights)
(firing people for personal reasons is DECISIVE and EXECUTIVE experience)
(God started the Iraq war? Good for God!)
(hate the flag? that's okay. see Dixie reference above. not everybody loves the freaking flag)
(hates wildlife? that's okay. So does God)

(result: bad is good, good is bad, ignorance is truth and peace is war)

6) out-and-out lie about her record (in reality, she was FOR the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it, she lobbied FOR earmarks, she INCREASED sales taxes in her town, she INCREASED spending, she BALLOONED the deficit) and again, as in item one, any questioning of these lies by the media is SEXISM. (result: same as item one. backlash)

7) make a mockery of common wisdom (got foreign policy experience? yes, if you simply live in a border state) (result: Joe Biden's 36 years in the Senate reduced to nothing)

8) laugh in the face of crises (climate change? no such thing. abstinence-only, unless you're family. women must carry rape and incest pregnancies to term; it's probably good for their souls. war with Russia AND Iran AND Afghanistan? bring it on, baby) (result: shows BOLDNESS, not ignorance)

9) CALL THEIR BLUFF! The Democrats think they can get an African-American elected President? Well, try this on for size, you little rats!

McCain is nothing if not nervy

Now, here's what Nostrathomas predicts:
Obama wins by virtue of carrying either Colorado or Virginia. McCain gets his red states, Obama gets his blue, and one or both of those states turn(s). With Palin, McCain shores up his base and wins bigger in the red states than he would have without her, but he doesn't gain much from independents or moderates in blue or purple states.

Electoral Collage: 273 Obama, 265 McCain.

Alaska First, Alaska Always

People are trying to find an explanation as to why Gov Palin would, after her water broke in Texas, take an 8+ hour flight to Alaska and then drive another hour to Wasilla in order to deliver her high-risk baby.

One likely explanation I came across was that Texas soil was not good enough for their child to be born on. It had to be born in Alaska. After all, the Alaskan Independence Party says Alaska First, Alaska Always

Sorry, Sarah Palin

You are the weakest link. Goodbye

Extreme Right Wing Nut Job

summary:



former member of secessionist party whose leader refused to be buried under the American flag

pro-creationist-teaching

global-warming disbelieving

polar-bear anti-protecting

abstinence-only unwed-teenage-pregnant-daughter rearing

Down Syndrome baby-risking-neglecting

'Alaska First' sloganeering

power-abusing petty tyrant given to firing police chiefs who refuse her illegal orders

bridge-to-nowhere supporting but lying about it

anti-corrupt-Senator-Stevens-alleging but lying about it, was actually a top fundraiser

millions-of-millions of dollars of earmarks lobbying for and obtaining and lying about it

this extreme right wing nut job is going to be vice president?

extreme-nut-job-church-attending pastor of which told parishioners, among other things, that voting for John Kerry would condemn them to hell.

of what? the Taliban?

Secession

Astounding that the Republican Party - the Party of Abraham Lincoln - is nominating, for Vice President, a former member of a political party that advocates the secession of their state (Alaska) from the United States!!

As if the Democrats put up Jefferson Davis!

It's going to take a whole truckload of flag lapel pins to cover up this heresy!!