I have decided, upon further reflection and much heavy drinking solemn prayer, that I am no longer worried about the outcome of the 2008 Presidential election. For awhile there, I was genuinely afraid that Oldy McOld and his handpicked cabal of liars, thieves and killers would somehow slither into office in November, insuring Four More Years of neocon reign and guaranteeing that, by November 2012, there would be nothing but a blackened cinder circling the sun where the Earth used to be.

Yes, it seems silly now in retrospect, but once Obama sewed up the nomination, I instinctively winced at the thought of the smear campaign that would soon issue forth from the fetid fever swamp of the American Right. The Rovian playbook would be dusted off once again, and another seemingly easy Democratic Presidential win would dissolve in a hail of manufactured conservative bullshit. After all, it worked for them in 2000 and 2004; why should this year be any different?

But then I got a good look at some of the truly desperate, pathetic b.s. that the 101st Fighting Keyboarders are attempting to sling against Obama, and I knew that there was nothing at all to fear. For instance:

Obama is a “celebrity”and too good looking. And he takes vacations in Hawaii, which is practically a foreign country.

Plus, he’s a Negro.

Also, he’s too healthy and works out too much. No, really. No, really. NO, REALLY!

Oh, and finally, just for good measure, he’s the Antichrist.

Really? That’s it? That’s all you clowns got? I can understand that eight solid years of spewing the most mindbendingly stupid flapdoodle imaginable, all in the increasingly shrill and frantic attempt to prop up the deservedly plummeting approval ratings of the Worst President Ever, must have taken its toll, both mentally and physically. After all, how many Cheetos can a man eat in defense of his Preznit, and how many baldfaced lies can he belch forth, before there simply is no more to give?

Still, this shit is weak, even considering the source. If this is the best they can do, Obama will win by twenty points in November. With any luck, the Republican Party might even go belly-up in the wake of the utter pasting to come, consuming itself in a frenzy of self-flagellation, as the religious crazies and the corporate greedheads turn on one another like rabid dogs.

With any luck, the “Reagan Coalition” that has spent the past thirty years destroying everything that once made this country great may dissolve forever, leaving nothing but nine trillion dollars of debt, the shreds of our Constitution, several endless, unwinnable wars, and a lingering horrid stench to indicate that it had ever been here at all. And we will salt the earth on which it trod, and offer fervent prayer that future generations are not so blind and foolish as to ever let Republicans be in charge of running anything, ever again.

Hey, a boy can dream…

“I’m old, and everything today is worse than it used to be. Even rock stars today are wimps! Look at this tour rider from something called the Foo Fighters.

“Veggie soups? Metal forks and spoons? A half case of local microbrew? VEGAN MEALS??!?!?

“Flibbedy gibbet! Back in my day, when the Led Zeppelins went on tour, Jimmy Page used to have it IN WRITING that his hotel room would contain no fewer than three naked underage girls cavorting in a hot tub filled with baked beans, a quadrophonic sound system loaded up with a 78 acetate of Aleister Crowley reading the Necronomicon backwards, and an incense brazier made from a hollowed-out goat skull pumping clouds of pure Lebanese hashish smoke through the suite!

“Great Googly Moogly! I remember the good old days, when rock stars used to pillage your town like a bunch of naked, crazed vikings! You’d hide your daughters, and they’d find ‘em anyway with their laser x-ray vision! Why, back in the winter of ‘47, I myself was pulled off the street in broad daylight and molested by Mick Jagger and David Bowie at the same time! That’s the way it was and we liked it! We loved it!

“Now git the hell offa my lawn! Gaaaaa!”

(Gets up to leave, trips over colostomy bag, falls down, chokes to death on own dentures)

For the past several years, a favorite annual ritual of mine has been to read and dissect the ranking and relative (de)merits of those individuals in The Buffalo Beast’s 50 Most Loathsome Americans list. Every installment is a treasure chest of hilarious, spiteful mockery, directed at those sewer-swimming politicians, celebrities, pundits, and assorted cultural vampires who so richly deserve it. To paraphrase the late, great Bill Hicks: they are demons from Hell, sent here to Earth to lower the standards. The Beast calls them on it.

However, I have a major problem with 2007’s list: the curious absence of 2006’s winner, John McCain. Not only did he not repeat as Most Loathsome, he missed the Top 50 entirely! If his behavior in 2006 was so unspeakably loathsome (and it was), his actions last year were even more so, from defending the disastrous war authored by his one-time hated rival George W. Bush to his ludicrous assertion that Baghdad streets are “safe for Americans” to walk on and his subsequent April Fool’s Day stroll through the marketplace:

On the heels of those narrow-scope photos came reports of what McCain’s entourage was actually comprised of. That “safe” Baghdad market had been flooded with more than one hundred battle-ready troops and armored Humvees. Three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache attack helicopters roared overhead, and sharpshooters were posted on the surrounding rooftops. Simply put, McCain’s “safe” street was one overly loud mouse-fart away from being paved with flaming lead during every step of that little walk.

To compound the calamity, a report emerged two days later describing the abduction and slaughter of 21 Iraqis who worked in the marketplace McCain’s mini-Normandy force had stormed the previous Sunday, an obvious act of retribution for his visit by a violent Baghdad militia. Already belied by the revealed firepower he brought along, McCain’s “safe” walk in Iraq led directly to yet another horrific Baghdad bloodbath. There is bad, there is awful, and then there is this thing, this quantum singularity of ignominy that bends the very light now shining upon it.

Call it farce, call it folly, condemn it for its drenching hypocrisy and the mortal consequences suffered by 21 innocent people. One must also see this, in the end, as a true American tragedy of historic proportions.

I’m sorry, Buffalo Beast. For this egregious failure to fully take into account John McCain’s complete and utter douchitude, you must be punished… and there’s only one punishment commensurate with your sins. That’s right, you’re about to be on the business end of a

PRAYER ASSAULT!

I’m sorry to have to do that, but you brought it on yourselves. Perhaps you’ll be constructive and use this as a learning experience. After all, McCain has already provided you with plenty of fodder for 2008’s list, dropping his one remaining principled stance by voting to allow the CIA to torture. And with 2007’s winners, George Bush and Dick Cheney (the Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine of American politics) shuffling off to retirement soon, he should have the field all to himself…

Unless Crazy Mike Huckabee somehow snags the Republican nomination, of course.

That whooshing sound you hear is the last shred of John McCain’s respectability as a human being disappearing into the ether.

The torture victim is now a torture advocate.

Eager to curry favor with the Pro-Torture Douchebag Wing of the Republican Party, McCain has abandoned the last lingering remnant of his legendary principles. So much for the “Straight-Talking Maverick.”

This brings final confirmation of my lifelong conviction that The Only Good Republican Is An Unemployed Republican.

Welp, the votes from Maine’s Democratic caucuses are just about all tallied up, and it looks like Obama won by a landslide. I had planned to attend the caucuses, but it snowed all day, so I stayed home. However, so many people braved the bad weather that the official turnout broke state records. These people are obviously all far better human beings than I am.

This, the latest in a string of consecutive wins for Obama, has triggered chaos and shakeups in the Clinton campaign. It should also pull him just about even in total delegates, despite the most Herculean efforts of those scrupulously dedicated professionals at Fox News to convince everybody otherwise:

In other fantastic news for Democrats, John McCain has received the official endorsement of George W. Bush. Amazingly enough, even at this late date, Dear Leader remains so well-insulated from the undeniable fact of his own staggering unpopularity that he doesn’t seem to realize that his endorsement of McCain’s campaign represents the kiss of death:

Regarding attacks on his performance from Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, Bush said, “If the Democrat party feels like they can win an election by focusing on me, I think they’ll be making a huge tactical mistake.”

Of Obama, the president said, “I certainly don’t know what he believes in.” In response, an Obama campaign spokesman, Bill Burton, said: “Of course President Bush would attack the one candidate in this race who opposed his disastrous war in Iraq from the start. But Barack Obama doesn’t need any foreign policy advice from the architect of the worst foreign policy decision in a generation.”

Of course, this could all be a ruse. Perhaps Dubya is actually smarter than I give him credit for, and knows full well how disastrous his “endorsement” is for McCain’s chances. Perhaps this is just George’s way of delivering one final kick to the balls of the man he smeared into the ground back in 2000.

Regardless of the reason behind DubYa’s endorsement, the die is cast: he has put his official stamp of approval on John McCain’s campaign, where it will hang like a poisonous millstone for the remainder of this election season. If you think these pictures won’t be showing in every Democratic television ad after the convention, you’re nuts.

   
(Above: candidate, albatross)

Face it, Republicans: this is the final nail in your political coffins. You’re going down like the Hindenburg in November. Granted, your imminent election defeat, while immensely gratifying to those of us who actually want the human race to survive the next four years, is far less punishment than you all deserve for having spent every waking hour of the past eight years doing everything in your collective power to run this country into the ground and turn it into a sick mockery of everything it once stood for.

But it’s a start.

In honor of tonight’s Super Tuesday primaries, I thought I would compose a finely reasoned analysis of what each state’s results mean for the direction of the Presidential race, in the context of a larger essay on the future of American parliamentary democracy.

And then I thought, “who the hell would want to read that?”

So I’ve decided to just make fun of the candidates instead, by choosing an installment of my favorite online comic strip to represent each one. I chose to mostly lampoon Republican candidates, since they’re much easier to make fun of. Some have dropped out, some are unfortunately still running, all are loathesome.

Click each picture to read the corresponding comic strip…

Mike Huckabee:

Mitt Romney:

John McCain:

Ron Paul:

Fred “We Hardly Missed Ye” Thompson:

Rudy!

BONUS: Okay, one Democrat. Guess who?

And, of course, Our Preznit.

Good Lord, have my prayers finally been answered? For months now, I’ve been openly pining for the type of batshit crazy Presidential ticket that would restore my faith in our rapidly disintegrating democracy. But no sooner do I give my highly coveted endorsement to Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul as the standard bearers, when a new pair of power brokers emerge to wrestle for leadership of the fledgling Silly Party.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you John McCain and Joe Lieberman!

To the surprise of no one (Harry Reid excepted) the Connecticut Crapweasle will be endorsing a Republican for President. Showing that he hasn’t a lost his flair for lost causes and politically tone deaf moves, he has chosen to bestow his favors upon John McCain who has already suffered so much in this life.

Does this mean anything? Only if it’s an admission that he sees the writing on the wall of a potential Republican wipe-out in 2008 where Democrats will no longer feel the need to tolerate his presence. Who knows, maybe this is his all-in bet, with an agreement to become McCain’s running mate in the unlikely case that McCain wins the nomination since I can’t imagine any of the other egomaniac nominees agreeing to play second fiddle… with the exception of Mike Huckabee.

Either way, hopefully this will be the last straw for the Democratic party and they’ll boot the malignant little polyp from all committee seats. It’s not like anyone is going to miss him.

While this may, at first, seem like an unusual combination for a political ticket, let us not forget the strong tie that binds these two steadfast American patriots together:

Last Friday, when I had my weekly meeting with my director, she casually mentioned that I wouldn’t be getting paid out for any unused vacation days when I quit at the end of the school year. Apparently, it’s written into everyone’s contracts here: Use ‘Em or Lose ‘Em.

“Well, next week is Spring Break anyway,” I said. “See you in ten days.”

So here I sit on my couch on a drizzly Tuesday afternoon, watching documentary after documentary on the Science Channel, sipping away at a sixpack of Thunderhead IPA. Man, I love having fuck-all to do.

This seems as good a time as any for a link dump:

Seems there’s a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth in the blogosphere about this newfangled Blogger’s Code of Ethics. Would widespread adoption of this code mean that it will no longer be acceptable to call David Gergen a retard? Does it mean I will no longer be allowed to refer to blowhard conservative pundits as Asshelmets? If treating jackasses with the scorn they so richly deserve is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

And speaking of jackasses: obviously, it’s now beyond all doubt that George W. Bush is our Worst President Ever™, but if John McCain somehow slithers his way into the Oval Office next year, Dubya may not hold that ignominious title for long. If you happen to be one of those poor folks still laboring under the delusion that McCain is an “independent maverick” who “possesses integrity,” I invite you to read this. God, what a soulless whore.

And speaking of soulless whores: 2006 may turn out to be the year when the Southern Strategy, the Republican Party’s (successful) 40 year quest to woo Dixiecrats by appealing to their innate bigotry, may have finally cost them the rest of the country. For the sake of this country’s future, I sure as hell hope so…

The Red Sox won their home opener today, 14-3 over the lowly Mariners. Ichiro struck out three times against the Sox, but he will nonetheless look great in Fenway next season, when he will be wearing a Boston uniform. I would feel sorry for the Mariners, since I have nothing against them, per se (in fact, I root for them whenever they’re not playing the Sox.) But after finding out they have the seventh largest payroll in baseball, my sympathy has disappeared. They don’t suck because they can’t compete financially with the big boys; they suck because their GM is a moron who signs crappy players.

And finally, just for shits and giggles, here’s another Personality Quiz.

Main Type	Overall Self

Take Free Enneagram Personality Test

Of all the year-end lists that populate the blogosphere, by far my favorite is The Beast’s 50 Most Loathsome Americans. Each eagerly-awaited annual installment is a masterpiece of bilious mockery and remorseless character assassination, couched the most spiteful, profane, inflammatory language imaginable. Once the sins of each honoree have been described in all their gory detail, sentence is passed; punishment is swift, severe, pitiless, and most importantly, hilarious. (Example: Rush Limbaugh’s punishment for yet another year of unmitigated douchebaggery is “Parkinson’s disease, triggered by oxycontin abuse.”) The descriptions of and punishment of each vile character would almost be over the top, if everyone on the list didn’t so richly deserve every hateful word.

As always, half the fun is dissecting the list and debating the relative (de)merits of each ranking… (more…)

Halli-freakin-leujah, DOPA is dead! This atrocious bill, passed in July by the House of Representatives, was an election year sop to suburban soccer moms scared of the Big, Bad Internets. In pursuit of the otherwise laudable goal of blocking online predators, this bill would have forced schools and libraries that receive federal E-Rate funding to block access to any website that allows the creation of a profile. In other words, millions of perfectly legal websites such as MySpace, Amazon, EBay, educational and research websites, discussion boards, social networking sites of all kinds, and practically every single blog in existence. And since further definition of what constitutes a blockable site would have been left wholly at the discretion of the FCC, it could easily have expanded. (For instance, most newspaper sites now require the creation of a profile featuring one’s name, email, and demographic information. Why not block them too?)

Remember, we’re not talking about blocking pornographic sites, which are already illegal for minors to access (and are covered under previous laws anyway.) We’re talking about blocking sites that are otherwise completely legal, and doing so, not based on the site’s content, but on its format. And putting a federal agency, consisting of unelected political appointees, in charge of deciding what should and shouldn’t be blocked. All this, from the “party of limited government.” What a joke.

When I heard about this incomprehensively idiotic bill back in August, I frothed at the mouth, as is my wont whenever news of greater than normal governmental stupidity reaches my ears. However, when friend and fellow librarian Chris pointed out that many of the bill’s sponsors were ejected from Congress in the Glorious Republican Rout of November 7th, I began to hope that the insanity would be averted. And yesterday, Chris sent me a link to an article noting that DOPA will indeed die on the vine, since the lack of Senate action last term means that it will have to be reintroduced this year, and several incoming Democratic committee heads are skeptical about its horribly overbroad nature.

I received several cool presents during the holiday season, but this entirely unexpected, tentative baby step back towards sanity on the part of our elected representatives may be the best one yet. My outlook on the universe has been measurably improved since November 7th. It’s so nice to finally have the adults in charge again.

Now, if we can just do something about Batshit Crazy Old Man John McCain and his War on Blogs…