Pandas: Yes or no?

Years ago when evolution was distributing adaptations, pandas showed up late because they were asleep under a bridge. Most animals got a grab bag of traits, e.g. gorillas came away with Super Strength, Chest Hitting, and Sign Language. By the time the pandas got there, however, all that was left was Insane Cuteness, so that’s what they took. They then commenced to sit in place and rest their paws on their bellies.

After a way better run than anyone could have expected, pandas finally started winding down their little survival operation in the twentieth century. And that’s when the humans stepped in. For years, we have tried to keep pandas from going extinct, and they have done virtually nothing to help. Instead, they just sit there eating sticks, the worst diet you could possibly evolve. Somehow even this is very cute, and humans are even more inspired to try and save the pandas. But are panda salvation efforts really worth it? No.
Consider panda reproduction, which is a cavalcade of laughable failure. In the wild, pandas have about one kid every two years, actually not too bad considering she-pandas are only able to reproduce for, at best, three days out of the year. Assuming the he-pandas can get up the energy to walk over to them that year, and the mating works, which is no guarantee, the she-panda will have one to two cubs. If there are two, she will leave one to die, which I hope has never been captured on film, because it would be weapons-grade sad.
The cubs come out furless, blind, and totally helpless, so they need the mom panda’s total attention. She compromises by leaving them totally alone in the cave for three to four hours a day while she eats sticks. The dad panda helps out by leaving never to return. Panda tots don’t even learn to crawl for the next 75-90 days, meaning they spend about 300 hours just lying there alone on a rock.
Of course, not every panda has that kind of success rate. Conditions in the wild are optimal for panda mating, in that the pandas sometimes try to mate. In captivity they lose all interest. Zoo guys have tried giving he-pandas Viagra, or showing them panda pornography, but it doesn’t work. Also, it’s hard for a zoo to have very many pandas, because they’re the most expensive zoo animal by a factor of five.
Even when a panda survives, it will probably die. They live on a low nutrition food that periodically dies out, and they have to have two types of it around or they’ll starve. They are prone to overeating, which can kill them, and baby pandas have to be rolled around on the ground or their intestines will flatten, distort and fail. Male pandas sometimes kill each other. And wild pandas only live in a tiny sliver of territory located entirely within a country run by insane communists.
Clearly, pandas now exist solely to taunt death. The correct course of action is clear: take as many high-resolution photos and videos of pandas as we can, and then stop paying attention to them. Probably they will be gone within the hour and will become popular mythical creatures, like unicorns, or homunculus man. The world has more important things to do than roll fat bears around to keep their stick-filled guts from pancaking. Pandas aren’t trying, and neither should we. And now, here is a video of a panda sneezing:

Note: This can be a Friendly Fire if anyone wants, but I didn't albel it that way because I plan to put up another one soon.

someecards

The Wednesday Image: Adorable edition

hat tip: Andrew Sullivan

T-minus Fourteen weeks

Hilarious Ineptitude

Earlier today I actually read one of the things I linked to in a previous post, and it turned out to be hilarious. It was a Newsweek article in the last post, and it was embedded in the phrase "fucking up an applesauce purchase". Basically it's about the McCain campaign's numerous failed attempts to have even one good media moment, and as far as I could tell, it's not an opinion piece- it's supposed to be pretty straightforward coverage. This part pretty much sums up his entire campaign so far:

Less than an hour after announcing the photo op, the campaign abruptly canceled, citing Hurricane Dolly, which was swirling near the Texas coast. Worse, a runaway barge along the Mississippi River had rammed into a 600-foot oil tanker that morning, leaving a 12-mile-long oil slick that blanketed New Orleans in diesel fumes.

The campaign's big photo op of the week turned out to be a visit to a supermarket in Bethlehem, Pa.—where McCain was photographed in front of a display of processed cheese. As the candidate roamed through the store, his campaign's lanky cameraman knocked over a shelf of Mott's applesauce. The jars skittered across the floor past the senator's feet. When he paused to take questions from reporters, he was briefly drowned out by an announcement on the store's PA system.

Clearly McCain's campaign is being handled by unspeakably cruel Democrats. Consider: Why else would you schedule a major media event on a grotesque eyesore in the middle of the ocean? Especially during a disaster so big that people could literally see it from outer space days beforehand? A runaway barge? Did you have to spray diesel fumes on the Katrina victims? And assuming it was a good idea to make your "big photo op" a trip to the grocery store, couldn't you at least put the candidate in front of the good cheese? And not kick over the damn applesauce? And ask the PA guy to shut up for ten goddamn minutes while the potential next President tries to talk to the three reporters in not even the sixth-biggest city in Pennsylvania?
Amazingly, the rest of the article pretty strongly proves that this is not Democratic sabotage, but the tattered remains of GOP strategy, which could be loosely described as the blind eating the blind. Other quotes from the article:

• "Even Fox News broke away from live coverage of the senator's town-hall meeting to follow the plight of Lil' Smokey, a black bear cub rescued from the California wildfires."
• "McCain has resisted pleas from his aides to cut back on the visually dull town-hall meetings he loves..."
• "His staff can spend weeks organizing an elaborate campaign appearance, only to have McCain ignore his stage directions."
• "McCain aides ordered reporters not to turn to look at the senator as he walked to the microphones, fearing he would catch sight of a familiar face and start talking before he reached the photogenic backdrop."
• "Instead, he has memorized his remarks to make his delivery more natural—and to help him stay "on message." This has been especially difficult for McCain, who continues to riff on any topic that comes to mind..."

McCain's aides are literally pleading with him to just go all the way to the podium and say the stuff he agreed to say, the stuff that is written on a teleprompter he can look at if he just walks all the way over to it. But no, he wants to go to visually dull places and veer off to talk about the North Dakota/Mexico border with a random reporter standing in front of the Hideous Burn Victims for McCain. You deviate from that plan and you get hurricanes, oil spills on poverty victims, and destroying tiny grocery stores where the owners don't even stop working for your visit.
Somehow McCain is still competitive in this race. The best candidate from either party in decades is losing to an irritable doddering old man who can't even live up to to the stupidest campaign tactics in generations. With just a little savvy, or "the combined efforts of every working mind in the GOP", a McCain/Lil' Smokey ticket will trounce Obama come fall.

What the hell

Lately, John McCain has been on a tear of weird, unnecessary gaffes. At the current pace, his advisors are going to have to work really hard to maken sure he only names his Vice President once, and that it's a real person ("McCain/Mr. Magoo '08!"). Normally it's petty and useless to focus on gaffes, but it's starting to seem like this is some sort of perverse attention-grabbing scheme. Or maybe Curtis was right, and McCain is a true patriot desperately trying to get Obama elected for the good of America.
Either way, the McCain gaffes break down into three basic categories. First, we have Probably Just Senility, which includes:

• Confusing Somalia and the Sudan
• Referring to Putin as the President of Germany
• Referring to Czechoslovakia three different times, even though it has not existed for over 15 years
• Mentioning the Iraq/Pakistan border (roughly the equivalent, in terms of distance, of the North Dakota/Mexico border)
• Describing his Vice Presidential vetting process as "a Google"
• Describing his favorite blogs , which "Brooke and Mark" show him, as Drudge (not a blog), Politico (not a blog), and RealPolitics (not a thing)
• Screwing up his own anecdote about giving his Vietnamese captors the names of various Green Bay Packers (recently he said it was the Pittsburgh Steelers), even though he has told this story probably hundreds of times for forty years, and it's his own fucking story

The second category is Horrible Judgment Calls, which includes the subcategory Why Would Anyone Tell This Joke, which includes:

• Two different jokes about killing Iranians
• A joke about how then-teenaged Chelsea Clinton was so ugly because her dad was Janet Reno
• A joke about a gorilla raping a woman

And in the non-joke section, we have:

• Pressuring Obama into going abroad, where he sank three pointers and inspired nations, then criticizing him for going abroad
• Scheduling a press conference for an oil rig, right before a hurricane
• Having his wife put plagiarized recipes on the campaign website, instead of just not putting recipes on the campaign website
• Hinging his energy plan on gas taxes and drilling, even though he himself admits that neither will do anything
• Countering Obama's success abroad by fucking up an applesauce purchase on TV

Finally, we have Not Knowing Basic Facts About His Only Political Interest, Which Is War. This includes:

• Thinking that the Anbar Awakening was caused by the surge, even though it happened six months before the surge, and then getting mad at Obama for disagreeing
• Five years after the war started, not knowing basic facts about Al-Qaeda, Iran, the difference between Sunni and Shi'a, and Iraq, all at once
• Saying that troops were down to pre-surge levels when they were actually 20,000 troops above them
• Thinking that the Iraq War was a good idea in the first place

What the hell? What does his campaign staff even do? Are they literally just there to drive his bus? Has he given up? Maybe at the convention he'll change "Peace Prosperity Reform" to "Apathy Confusion Whatever" and the Straight Talk Express will become the "Ah, Fuck It Express". Maybe he's self-handicapping so he won't feel bad, i.e., "Hell, I came in second and I didn't even do anything." Maybe he just expects to be dead before the election. The debates this time around should be awesome.

You Heard It Here First!

One the Other Hand, Death: A Donald Strachey Mystery raced to the #106 spot at the box office last weekend with a total gross of $74 in one theater, for an astounding per-theater average of $74.

Friendly Fire: United for McCain for Obama: My Two Cents

So, I forgot to respond to this/blog for the past little while, but I think you should get off your ass and go see The Dark Knight if you are reading this. I don't care if you "already saw it." And don't see it because a) Heath Ledger died b) Christian Bale hits his mom (a former circus clown named Jenny James) or c) Maggie Gyllenhaal is kind of hot. Aaaand, yeah, McCain should endorse Obama "when the time is right" like how Alfred knew the time was right, but it really kind of wasn't and then he burned the letter and shit.

Robber Barons!

We all know that the American economy is in a profound state of "Oh shit." Obviously, no one can fix it, but we can take small steps to make things better. With that in mind, I propose that we resurrect common usage of the term Robber Barons.

Robber Barons, or bulbous corporate tycoons, were invented by Thomas Nast in the 1860's (see Fig. 1, right). As a hack Coca-Cola ad man, he felt that they made his job easier by having hilarious and easy-to-draw features. As usual, reality soon warped to fit delusional whimsy, and Robber Barons ran roughshod(?) over America, smelting things, building the railroads with clever "millions of Chinese people" machines, shooting the oil underneath Texas into the air, and trading the U.S. Presidency among themselves for that whole weird period between when Lincoln died and 1901.

Nast had unleashed a horrible blight on America, but he was right about one thing: Robber Barons look hilarious when you draw them. They are so rotund that you can draw them in MS Paint without ever using the pencil or the paintbrush: All you need are the circles, the lines, and those other lines that curve when you click near them.

Unfortunately, Robber Barons fell out of style when Teddy Roosevelt's "War with X" model of horrible-power-abuse swept the nation. Executive boards soon became populated by non-bulbous men with nary a moustache.

Of course, the comic-book villainry of everyone who runs the American economy refused to go gentle into that good night. In our lifetimes, for instance, we have seen the Keating Five thing, the Microsoft thing, the Enron thing, the real estate bubble thing, and many other things like these things. But in spite of their shriveled blackened souls, the new executives just aren't the same as back in yore, when men were men, dogs were birds, and CEO's were titans who would poor liquid iron on an immigrant's face if he so much as didn't work until he died right in front of them.

Anyway, within the last decade we've had a glorious resurgence of the old style of Robber Barons, thanks to the oil industry. Of course, we all know that the guys who run it are evil. We have proof that they caused 9/11, and obviously we won't leave Iraq until they figure out how to keep the terrorists from setting all the oil on fire all the time. But there are less obvious links to Classic Robber Baronism. For one, oil executives are often hideous, unsightly people who would look much better as circles produced in MS Paint. For instance, this thing on the right became famous when Exxon paid it $400 million to stop running the company. If the image link is broken, you can find it by Googling "Exxon jowls".

Even more subtly, the oil industry shares the old Robber Barons' affinity for comically inept government figures. Back in the Gilded Era, so called because factory workers kept getting embossed in horrible accidents, the President would traditionally be a large moustache attached to a man who ignored immense economic corruption. Today, the President likes to be intimately involved with said corruption, but that's close enough.

The obvious question is, what do we get from saying Robber Baron all the time? Well, as you know, the GOP is collapsing. At first we all thought they let the obviously incompetent George W. Bush become president out of immense cynicism, but now we know that they actually just have no one left to put in any races. McCain won the GOP nomination even though everyone in his party hates him, because he was running against an adulterous ferret mayor, a widely reviled fatuous asshole, and an Arkansan who doesn't know anything. And now the second guy stands a good chance of getting on the ticket too.

I say we dissolve the GOP and start a new party. This party would be called the GORB, and instead of an elephant, which the GOP traditionally kills with anti-environmentalism or sometimes just bullets, their mascot would be that fat guy I drew in Paint. He even looks like he could be called Gorb.

The GORB could retain the GOP's casual exploitation of racism and homophobia, but move the focus to the extremely wealthy people who make all the policy anyway. "Tax cuts for just Warren Buffett!" could be their 2012 slogan. They could make a bumper sticker where Gorb is stomping on Obama's head, shouting, "He looks DIFFERENT!" and another, "Give me a STEAK!" Together these send an undeniable message.

And how would this benefit the economy? Well, aside from enormous sales of Gorb golf merchandise, it would mostly help by ensuring that the GOP never wins again. Which looks like it might happen anyway, but it would be nice to be sure.

not even a little surprising

As a follow up to this post, I would like to refer you to this article.

Seems we got us another Cuban Missile Crisis brewin.

T-minus Fifteen weeks

Friendly Fire: United for McCain for Obama: part my turn

You guys are ridiculous. Anyone who has ever watched a movie knows that an otherwise conspicuous lack of decent dialogue can be concealed with tense scenes in dark rooms and plenty of plot twists. I'm afraid your thesis is all wrong.

People in the north tend to forget that the whole nation is a bunch of idiots. There is significant media attention afforded to Obama being muslim, Obama attending a secular muslim school, Obama doing a terrorist fist bump with his wife, Obama's Baptist pastor, and Obama not wearing a pin. This is the only country in the world where Sean Hannity can get a $100 million deal and Rush Limbaugh can quadruple that.

Hope is for thinking people. Obama's campaign has been a disturbing window into America's dipshit blue-collar faction, and the media has been poking it with a sharp stick cause it's funny to watch it yell in furious confusion.

What is my point, you ask?

The most damaging revolutions throughout Obama's campaign have all been shameless fabrications. Why? It's because American's want to believe them, because they're scared of Obama. McCain knows this, and he's doing everything he can.

He has terrible policies that are a tribute to the worst president ever, he literally has endorsements from the same president (worst ever), hard-core conservatives hate him because he has a history of talking to liberals, he's admitted that he's terrified of any technology with more buttons than a toaster, he's old, ... Are you getting the picture?

McCain is already endorsing Obama. He's giving dumb Americans only one option. Do you know how hard it is to lose to a terrorist? This is the twist at the end of the movie that will make everyone forget about these silly campaigns: McCain is running the only conservative campaign possible that would make republicans consider Obama.

That new Batman movie was awesome.

Friendly Fire: United for McCain for Obama: part 2

This much is clear: John McCain knows that only one man can put this country on the right track, and that man is Barack Obama. The odds that McCain will endorse Obama before the election are extremely good. One question remains- when will he announce?

Yes, JD, the October surprise is a fun political tradition, and an October endorsement would fit the McCain campaign’s reputation for improvisation. But if McCain wants his endorsement to make a grand, unifying impact, he needs to roll out the endorsement formally and with care.

That’s why McCain should endorse Obama on his largest stage- the Republican National Convention in September.

The party Convention is a venerated political tradition. Many Conventions have siezed the nation’s attention and entered the history books; for instance, the turbulent 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, or the 2004 Convention speech that put Obama on the map.

At this year’s DNC, Obama will deliver his acceptance speech on the 45-year anniversary of King’s I Have a Dream speech.

Now, we know that McCain is a proud man, and although he clearly wants to endorse Obama, he still has a sense of humor and a competitive streak to him. So of course McCain should make his Obama endorsement in his convention speech, because it’s the only way he can upstage Obama’s speech while still paying proper respect to our next President.

Imagine: Thousands of Republicans at the convention, clapping their hands, cheering, the buzz in the air growing as they eagerly anticipate a speech by their favorite candidate. Instead, John McCain takes the stage. At first there is a disappointed hum in the room, until McCain announces:

I know that, in addition to my demeanor and mannerisms, my policies have distressed many American families. Well, I hope to change the change that you believe in:

And as Obama emerges from behind the curtain and greets McCain with a hearty handshake, the crowd cheers uproariously.

Such a move will spare McCain millions in campaign expenses over the fall, and ensures that the remaining debates between himself and Obama will be fun and breezy, rather than ugly and facty. Plus, by making his endorsement as smoothly and early as possible, McCain puts himself in prime consideration for a cabinet position or perhaps an ambassadorship.

Vote McCain voting Obama at the Republican National Convention.

Friendly Fire: United for McCain for Obama

Editor's Note: This is the first post in what we hope will become a beloved and, more importantly, venerated Kool Kat Sez tradition. The ground rules are simple: One editor posts an opinion on a topic, and all of the other editors are encouraged to respond with their own opinions in separate posts (Note: Editor=Everyone who writes for this blog). When no one feels like arguing anymore, we'll have a concluding post.

The question of the week is: When should McCain endorse Obama?

Background:
The United for McCain for Obama movement started back in June '08 with a Facebook group that quickly shattered recruitment expectations as students all over America joined the movement. Their message was simple: McCain must stand up for what is right: his opponent. As McCain himself has admitted, he supports "Reform. Prosperity. Peace." By now even he knows that he is ill-suited in terms of temperament, personal belief and intellect to accomplish any of those goals. But now he has a once-in-a-lifetime chance to show true leadership by following the candidate who has actually pledged to bring America any of those three things.

Actual Argument:
At this point, the only question facing McCain is, "When?" Some say as soon as possible, to unite this country and maybe heal it a little. Others say during the convention. Well as far as I am concerned, there is only one choice here: McCain should endorse Obama in October.

The October Surprise is a cherished tradition in U.S. politics. For instance, in 1972 Republican Dick Nixon announced in October that he would end the Vietnam War. The he surprised several guards at the Watergate hotel by committing various crimes that helped him clinch the win. In 1980, during October, Republican Dick Ronald Regan made a deal with Iranians to hang onto their surprised hostages until after he was elected. In 2004 Osama bin Laden helped Republican Dick Cheney become Vice President again when he released a surprising video on October 29.

As heir to this legacy, McCain should take advantage of the October Surprise to help Republicans win again, except this time what they will win is the opportunity to avoid living in a failed state. Picture this: It's October 18th or something. America is divided between the majority, who support Obama, and the minority, angry mountain people selling individual cans of beans and Manwich back and forth to each other, pausing only to hate black people. Analysts warn that Obama's lead is actually a deficit for some reason. Suddenly, an American Hero rises from the mist. It is John McCain, and he says,

I know that, in addition to my demeanor and mannerisms, my policies have distressed many American families. Well, I hope to change the change that you believe in:"

At that point Obama walks out on stage. Billions of Americans instantly switch their votes to Obama, who, after all, now has the endorsement of the best military hero in America. Meanwhile, the Republicans will have no time to elect another candidate, so too many of them will run. I project these results for the popular vote:

Obama: 89%
McCain: 1% (write-ins)
Barr: 2%
Nader: Did not get on ballot
Romney: 1%
Huckabee: 2%
Giuliani: .5%
Paul: .25%
Keyes: .2%
Fred Thompson: .05%
Other: 3%

McCain has been through Hell for America. This is easy compared to that. And it will help the country a lot more. Vote McCain voting Obama in October.

The Wednesday Image

Unrelated Laffs

Not pointing y'all good folks toward Penny Arcade would be a cryin' shame. It tends to provide me surreptitiously enjoyed laffs while I am at work, and I only stop reading its archives to occasionally Alt+ Tab to a decoy Excel spreadsheet.

Some starters to cut your teeth on:

Summer Road Epic, Part One.

The Manifold Faces of Vista.

It's usually about upcoming video games and assorted nerdiness, but still tends to be funny even when I don't know what the hell they are talking about.

Obama Laffs

Acknowledging recent complaints that he's just too hard to satirize, Barack Obama has offered up a list of jokes about Barack Obama.

At first I thought, wow, making a list of self-deprecating jokes, that's actually a pretty hip, likable ploy.

But upon actually looking at them, the sad realization immediately hits: these aren't really jokes, just campaign talking points shoehorned in the most awkward way possible.

But on the other hand, while these fail as straightforward late-night jokes, they turn out to be hilariously dark, surreal nuggets of anticomedy. For instance:

A traveling salesman knocks on the door of a farmhouse, and much to his surprise, Barack Obama answers the door. The salesman says, "I was expecting the farmer's daughter." Barack Obama replies, "She's not here. The farm was foreclosed on because of subprime loans that are making a mockery of the American Dream."

It's as if he's ridiculing the very point of cheesy late night comedy. In a way, Obama's jokes end up as a higher, more perfect form of the same type of jokes JD and I have made in the past:

What happens when you dip the gingerbread man in milk?
I don’t know- why don’t you ask wrongfully accused prisoners of Guantanamo?

It feels weirdly in-sync with the rest of the Obama myth that, even in joke form, what he's offering simultaneously looks sweetly lame and smartly rebellious.

You Heard it Here First!

Hot scoops you'll hear here first:

The real name of Magpie, the minor Batman villain who only steals jewels named after birds (and then replaces the jewels with booby-trapped replicas) is Margaret Pye.

The South Knows Terrorism

We all know that the south will vote for McCain, and that, among other things, fear of terrorism will convince them to do this. But why is the South so worried about terrorism? It's not like it has a long and fascinating history of terrorism, right? Wrong! Here it is:

1859
John Brown, a Northerner, kills a bunch of people at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. In later years, that state would go on to lose the Civil War.
1865-1874
About 500,000 Southerners join the KKK. They kill thousands (EXAMPLE!: 2,000 killed or wounded in Louisiana alone in a few weeks leading up to the 1868 election), burn a lot of things down, and are called a terrorist organization by a federal jury in 1869.
1915-1944
The KKK makes a comeback thanks to summer blockbuster Birth of a Nation. Membership peaks at 6,000,000 in 1924. They do some of the worst stuff in American history, among other things.
1950s and 60s
This time the KKK killed civil rights workers and blew up churches.
1995
Timothy McVeigh, born in the North but raised mostly in Florida and a resident of such towns as Waco, TX, blows up a building in Oklahoma City.
2000
The South meets its first non-white terrorists when some Floridians train the 9/11 hijackers to fly planes. They leave the South to use their training in a city that has an economy.

Obviously this rich historical tapestry goes a long way toward explaining Southern voting patterns. For instance, many here in New York ask, "Why are people in Flomaton, AL so afraid of terrorists, even though there is nothing in their town worth the cost of a bomb, which can be made from fertilizer?" Well, as Southerners, Flomatonians know that anyone can be a terrorist, even their own great grandparents, who probably were terrorists, in the KKK. Also, Islamofascists probably view places such as Flomaton as a source of great knowledge, what with its half-assed flight schools and long history of killing people who looked suspiscious.
So if the South feels that McCain is better equipped to handle terrorism, what with his 40-year-old military expertise in personal survival, we should probably listen. After all, these guys have practically run terrorism in this country since 1865.

Unfunniness

It's true. You can't really make fun of Obama with much success. He's black, eloquent and perhaps most importantly, quite slender. “The thing is, he's not buffoonish in any way.” Also, his well proportioned facial features make him fairly impervious to successful editorial cartoon caricaturizations.

Apparently, this cover goes unexplained inside the magazine, which is sort of hilariously audacious. Note: black fist bump.

Obama's Chances

As Will notes below, Obama's numbers are coming back down to Earth a little after weeks of it looking like McCain was going to have his ass handed to him. But I think it's important to remember that Obama still has a pretty commanding lead.

Here's a probably worthless but interesting way to look at it. If you go to FiveThirtyEight, and scroll down a bit, you'll notice that they have odds as to who will win each state. They're not perfect, but the 538 guys have a good track record, so they're usable enough.

So if you take the states where Obama has a 90% or better chance of winning, he has 175 electoral votes. These states aren't necessarily a lock (538 has MN as a swing state, e.g.), but seriously, he's pretty much guaranteed those votes. At 80% plus, he's got 242. These aren't so guaranteed, but he's still highly likely to win them. At 70% plus, Obama's at 262. These are pretty close to toss-up states, but still, he's projected to win, and he has a decent cushion. Throw in Ohio, where he's favored with a 68% chance of winning, and he's got 284 votes- making him the winner. He has a solid lead without even counting every state where he's ahead.

It's much more fun to look at McCain. His solid base, the 90% plus guys, are worth 113 votes. At 80%, he's all the way up to 154, still shy of Obama's guaranteed votes. At 70% he gets up to 202, a far cry from Obama's 262 at that percentage, and where adding Ohio is a little chancy for Obama, McCain has to pick up much less likely states just to catch up. His 60% plus states take him to 229. The 50% plus states are just Virginia, which is right at 50-50, and 538 actually projects it going for Obama. So with that, a pure toss-up, McCain gets to 242, still not even close really. Add in the 40% plus states, which are nothing, and he's still at 242. Finally, if you add in the 30% plus states, which, remember, he is very likely to lose, he just crosses the bar with 271 electoral votes.

Put succinctly, in order to win the election, Obama must win states that he is currently likely to win, minus one or two of them. McCain needs to win two states that he is highly likely to lose, one toss-up, and three where he stands a worse chance than Obama in Ohio. If you're an Obama guy, you might like things to be a little more secure- your hopes rest on a 68% shot. If you're a McCain guy, your hopes rest on a 32% shot, and you've given up long ago.

T-minus Sixteen weeks

This was a good week for McCain, the national polls are starting to tighten. I blame that scandalous New Yorker cover.

Ooh Willie Mays

I have long felt that we should replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 dollar bill, on account of he was a horrible man who expanded Presidential power through assholery alone and also tried to commit a few genocides. "He was a man of his time," people argue, but the Supreme Court, among many others, told him that the Trail of Tears was not so OK, to which he famously replied, "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him go fuck himself."

Today I found a website that agrees with me: GETJACKSONOFFTHE20.NET. In addition to an essay about Jackson that I didn't read, they also have a YouTube video wherein a band plays a song featuring the lines "Desecration of a burial site / Did you go shopping at the mall tonight?" and the chorus:

If Hitler was on the 20 dollar bill,
How would the Jews feel?
Trail of tears….

Indeed. So the question is, who do we put on the 20 after we kick Jackson off? The obvious answer is: Willie Mays. In addition to being a great American, he's got to be the least provocative choice ever. Baseball is one of America's greatest cultural inventions and exports, and although some don't particularly like it, no one hates it. Mays is arguably the greatest player ever, plus he's black, and it's about damn time we had a black guy on some money. Also, I can't think of anything bad he's done off the top of my head.

More importantly, Mays aces the Genocides/Golden Gloves test (Take the ratio of "Genocides Perpetrated" to "Golden Gloves Won". If the resultant number is anything but zero, then you have too many genocides to be on money).

With Jackson gone, we will quickly realize how flawed the rest of our currency is. But we can't just change it all at once. We need a way to ease Americans into it. To that end, here is a schedule for fixing U.S. currency:

Year One

The Jackson for Mays swap. People will obviously cheer it, setting the stage for more sweeping reforms.

Year Two, January

One candidate for appearing on currency who has very vocal supporters is Ronald Reagan. Just to keep them from complaining, we'll put him on the penny, since Lincoln already has the five anyway.

Year Two, February

We discontinue the penny, one of the most worthless currencies in the world.

Year Three

Grant gets booted from the 50. He was a badass, but his presence sends too martial a message. We'll replace him with Gertrude Stein, one of the most important literary stylists of all time and three oppressed groups in one (woman, Jew, lesbian). To appease fans of drunken white guys, we'll put Faulkner, probably the greatest American novelist, on the back, along with the text of his Nobel Prize speech.

Year Four

Revise the dollar coin. Dollar coins are a pretty good idea, but they never work because idiots collect them and keep them out of circulation. The mint exacerbates this by doing series, like the current "weird misshapen pictures of Presidents" series. To fix this problem, we'll put a Georgia O'Keefe painting on one side and a Jackson Pollock on the other. Nearly impossible to counterfeit, this coin will also repulse your average coin collector with its combination of vaginal imagery and art that their kids could have done.

Year Five

This year we replace slave-rapist Thomas Jefferson on the nickel. A known asshole whose racial views were illiberal for the 1780s, Jefferson also believed in something called "yeoman farmers". We'll replace him with John Coltrane, perhaps the greatest American musician and a powerful spiritual teacher, and also a black guy, which Jefferson would hate. We'll leave Monticello on the back, just to drive home the fact that this is an insult to Jefferson.

Year Six

Now we replace Jefferson on the two-dollar bill, a real thing that you can ask for at the bank. Since this bill is a decent piece of currency that has virtually no impact on anything, we'll put Eisenhower on it. The back will show the moon landing, because that's one of the coolest things America ever did, and we should have astronauts somewhere.

Year Seven

Ben Franklin is a beloved doddering old idiot, but Mark Twain was better. Compare these quotes:

"A good conscience is a continual Christmas."- Franklin
"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on
society."-Twain

There you have it. On the back we'd show a cowboy punching a bear. Not only would this depict rugged American can-do spirit, it would also show our historical attitude to nature and things/nations of people that live in it.

Year Eight

The most complicated year. We need to replace Washington on the quarter, because he's already got the $1 bill. The obvious solution: Put Walt Whitman on the quarter. On the back you can put a picture of him winking at Herman Melville on the Brooklyn ferry. But the quarter is too small to show that, so here's what you do: Put Lincoln on the quarter, and Whitman (and Melville) on the five. Then, on the back of the quarter, you can show Whitman hugging Lincoln.

There you have it. In less than a decade, our currency would go from terrible to good. Here's the final result:

$1- Still Washington, who was good

$2- Eisenhower/Astronauts

$5- Whitman/Whitman winking at Melville

$10- Still Hamilton, who invented the American monetary system and was cool

$20- Willie Mays. On the back, a game between the SF Giants and the LA Dodgers, Koufax pitching. We'll leave it unclear as to whether this is 1962 or 1963 so you don't know if it's a Mays home run or a Koufax perfect game.

$50-Stein/Faulkner

$100-Twain/Cowboy punching bear

Penny- Reagan (discontinued)

Nickel- Coltrane/Monticello

Dime- Still FDR

Quarter- Lincoln/Lincoln hugging Whitman

Dollar- Pollock/O'Keefe

KoolKat Profiles: an American Badasshole

Introducing KoolKat Profiles, an occasional feature in which we write about somebody who's kindof interesting and might be fun to learn about.


First up, one of America's biggest living Badassholes. What is a Badasshole? Urbandictionary defines it as "somebody who is, on the one hand, an incredible badass- but on the other hand, a terrible terrible asshole."

Nobody captures the spirit of the American Badasshole quite like Bud Day, age 83.

BADASS

Colonel Bud Day is the most highly decorated military veteran since General Douglas MacArthur (another legendary badasshole). Day holds nearly 70 military decorations, including the Medal of Honor, the Air Force Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, two Bronze Stars for valor and four Purple Hearts.

Bud joined the Marine Corps at age 17 and fought in the Pacific theatre of World War 2. He fought in Korea and Vietnam as an Air Force pilot. By 1967 he was one of the most experienced Fighter Pilots serving the United States.

In 1955, he survived an ejection from his burning jet fighter- without a parachute. The first person to Ever survive a no-chute bailout.

In August 1967, his plane was shot down over Vietnam. He was captured by the Viet Cong, only to escape five days later, and- with no boots, without his flight suit, with a broken arm- he trekked 20 miles through the jungle, across the DMZ, to South Vietnam. The only U.S. prisoner to escape from North Vietnam.

Although he successfully crossed the border, he couldn't find the closest U.S. army base, and after about two weeks on the lam, Colonel Day was recaptured by the Viet Cong. For almost six years, until March 1973, Day was a prisoner of war, and regularly suffered starvation, beatings and torture at the hands of his captors. He even shared a cell for some time with John McCain.

ASSHOLE

So, after his retirement from the United States Military, what has Bud Day been up to? Well, his most famous recent work was as a Swift Boat Veteran for Truth.



And in addition to using his stature to impugn the good name of a fellow veteran, Bud is a top surrogate to attack those who question McCain's record of service - which just seems a little suspect considering the, oh ya know, massive hypocrisy of it all.

don't say nuke-yoo-lar

George Bush is such a stinker. Too bad his rustic, borderline-retarded country charm hasn't ingratiated him enough with figure-head Russian president Medvedev to trick him into letting us point missiles at his face, which may or may not actually be Putin's face. Bush even called him a "smart guy", which always gotten him into peoples' pants before.

Maybe Medvedev is a smart guy, though. The U.S. tells him we wanna put up a missile shield in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic to defend against missiles from North Korea and Iran, to which the Rooskees slyly respond, "Bullshit." Sure enough, it turns out 25% of Iranian fire-power is make-believe, and the rest doesn't have enough range to threaten Europe, so that excuse is getting harder and harder to say with a straight face at G8 meetings.

The context might be funny if it didn't seem symptomatic of an impending nuclear apocalypse. Here we have Condi sauntering through the former East Bloc like a door-to-door salesman, getting her foot in the door but unable to close the deal, mostly because Poland would like a lot of weapons in addition to the shield missiles, since they want to protect themselves against Russia after such an obvious act of aggression. The Czechs were more eager to get the radar. Well, the Czech government was. The actual citizens are more, like, overwhelmingly opposed to the idea of arrantly pissing off the Russians.

Russia is, of course, promising military-technical response to this proposal, which might end up with a shameful embargo between the U.S. and the North Pole, where Russian defenses could be stationed in response. Did you catch my reference? I was subtley making a comparison to the U.S.'s placement of missiles in Turkey which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. At least it was subtle until I explicitly stated the analogy. I guess it's a silly analogy, though, since that whole thing was about a communist scare whereas this initiative is about . . . uh . . . terror 9/11 godbless supporttroops dubba-emm-dees

John McCain supports the missile defense plan, but that should be obvious considering his well-known desire to have a missile stationed in every square foot of the world. When asked why he thought they were still necessary after the laughable Iranian missile tests, he responded, "Cuz it's newfangled, like that internets, you CUNT."

Obama doesn't have much to offer on this one. He did say that he was opposed to haphazardly wasting billions on random missile placement, and that he only supports missile defense that will actually work. This sort of cheap, obvious commentary has engendered doubt among hard-hitting, no-bullshit, guys-I'm-so-sincurrrre conservatives, who think that anyone can say that they only like things that actually work. I would agree with them on this one, except that I don't think the GOP cares at all if they actually work. I mean, have you seen them thangs when they blowed up? Thass what I'm talking 'bout.

UPDATE: In the Wrong Hands

Not too long ago reports surfaced about Iranian Photoshop capabilities. Unfortunately, the situation appears to be even worse than previously imagined. Whereas Photoshop is very expensive, placing it out of reach for the government of Iran, another almost-as-insidious program, MS Paint, comes bundled on every Microsoft system for free. This didn't used to worry people, because Paint is terrible. Here is an attempt to add a missile to a photo using Paint:

Even a cursory glance quickly reveals that this photo has been manipulated. Unfortunately, Paint does have hidden stamp-making capabilities. Although far short of the standard set by Will's mom, it does have chilling possibilities. For example, consider this menacing photo of Ahmadinejad from the BBC:

With minimal Paint effort, it can be spelled out to demonstrate a pro-American propaganda message that clearly undermines the untiring Bush/McCain efforts to create pointless animosity between our nations:

Even worse, Ahmadinejad could exploit Paint as a means of demonstrating his omnipresence and totalitarian might:

I think it may be time for us to Get Serious about our foreign policy with Iran. We must fight them over there so we don't have to keep inventing ways over here in which they are fighting us over here from over there.

Stoatally Relevant

thanks cuteoverload.

THE 2008 NBA PRESIDENTIAL DRAFT. part four: undrafted Presidents

The final part in our series, the 2008 NBA Draft, if the entrants were America's presidents, evaluated by their character in office and their athletic abilities throughout life.

The thirty picks of the Draft are available here.

These are the Presidents who, unfortunately, just can't make it onto an NBA roster:

READY FOR THE D-LEAGUE

Benjamin Harrison- Ben's got a short, muscular frame, like top-ten pick U.S. Grant. The big difference though is that Harrison is a psychologically fragile, cold-shouldered guy who doesn't give his all on the court or in the oval office.

Herbert Hoover- he's got a strong work ethic but he's not the best teammate, plus it's gonna be hard for him to get up and down the court with his badly burned foot.

Andrew Johnson- decent height but questionable character.

John Tyler- He's thin, kindof slow, and often ill. His absurd number of children is Tyler's most NBA-calibre stat.

BETTER OFF COACHING

James Madison- one of our finest founding fathers is also pitifully, unfathomably tiny (by NBA standards). At 5'4" and 100 pounds, Madison is more likely to get dunked- not dunked on, but literally dunked through a basketball hoop- than make any helpful on-court contribution. But as a coach, Mad could be a hall-of-famer, as he's a brilliant guy and a real players coach- a man who understands the value of checks and balances in the locker room.

Woodrow Wilson- he’s smart but weak, unathletic, cold, and he’s definitely not gonna play well with any black teammates. He could be a decent coach for a small, ethnically homogenous college program. Maybe Princeton?

Richard Nixon- He’s smart and determined, but he’s also small, awfully unathletic and, of course, a legendarily bad teammate.

I can picture him coaching a young, disorderly team that needs a strict disciplinarian. Nixon could whip a team into shape for a year or two, but he better not stay too long, because he’s sure to bring drama, paranoia, and intense backlash wherever he goes.

NO FUCKING WAY

James Buchanan- He’s constantly sick, a bit of a sissy, and hopelessly indecisive. You don’t want the ball in Buchanan’s hands with the game on the line, and neither does he.

Franklin Pierce- Pierce might be the emotionally saddest President in history. He has intense emotional baggage and he's a big-time alcoholic. Not enough athletic talent for any GM to justify such a severe character gamble.

Warren G. Harding- Just like his Presidency, Harding's got height but nothing else to offer. He's got character issues, low confidence, and he's almost certain to gamble away any money he earns. It's a little too easy to picture him saying, "I am not fit for this league and never should have been here."

Grover Cleveland- Possibly the last person you'd want on a basketball court. He's fat, slow and easily angered.

William Howard Taft- fat.

Phil Gramm: genius? Yes.

I think Phil Gramm is on to something. I mean, gas prices could be a little high. Foreclosures could be a problem for some people. Blah blah blah. Why hasn't anyone considered that we could just SHUT THE HELL UP about the economy? I mean, why don't you poverty guys just QUIT YOUR BITCHING? Frankly it's getting a little old for some vice chairmen of giant Swiss banks to hear you PISS AND MOAN about how "your job got outsourced and you'd look for a new one but you can't afford to drive your car and you can't get online because you lost your house and your neighbor's wireless is passcode protected so you can't piggyback and you're hungry because the G8 leaders ate all the food in the world"

John McCain, in a calculated political maneuver, distanced himself from the comments to prove that he wasn't out of touch with what liberals call "reality." Great idea, John. Side with the whiney, pony-boy PUSSIES who think that the economy is in a recession. If jobs are so endangered, how come people can just throw them away in order to avoid honoring the expiration a horrible, horrible old bastard? Sounds like Americans are too pampered to me.

In the Wrong Hands

Sure, it's fun in high school to clone stamp a few extra ears onto your date's prom picture, but the Photoshop Clone Stamp tool is not all fun and games and multicolored foxes,* like a certain blogger's mother makes it out to be. In fact, it can have serious, non-zany consequences for international media outlets when you clone extra smoke plumes into your photos all willy nilly just because you felt like it. Yeah, I guess 4 missiles is scarier than 3...but, like, not a lot scarier.

This is pretty scary.

This is way scary.

thanks, photoshopdisasters!

*will's mother seems to have actually made that foxparade with a photoshop custom brush tool. if iran develops this level of sophistication in their graphic design, i think we can safely expect a lot more creepy hook fingers tessellated into those extra smoke plumes.

T-minus Seventeen weeks

Ok, for real this time:

McCain Jokes

While writing a not-that-good post that I later deleted, it occurred to me that this is a really crazy headline to see about a major Presidential contender:

McCain jokes about killing Iranians with cigarettes

This is his second joke-like utterance about destroying Iranians, the first being "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran". Matt Yglesias points out that if Ahmadinejad made a comparable joke, like, I don't know, "We will send hamburgers on the wings of glorious angels to kill the Great Satanists where they Eat", it would probably be viewed as evidence that Iran is run by insane people whom you Cannot Meet Unconditionally and Should Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb. Of course, Iran probably has already drawn that conclusion about a McCain administration, and if so they are correct.
But maybe McCain was just trying to create more Conditions. Now if he "meets" the enemy, they will know that they better give him whatever he wants or he will lunge across the table and feebly gnaw at their faces or something. This could (i.e., would certainly) backfire. The Iranians c(w)ould say, "The hell with this, let's just kill any Americans we see before they cigarette our babies to death".
But if it did work, imagine the possibilities: A military industrial complex of weird half-assed jokes about death to enemy civilians. I see Jay Leno as the potential czar of this empire:

Jay: Hey Kev, you hear that the U.S. is putting used land mines in teddy bear exports?
Kevin Eubanks of The Tonight Show Band (stoned): What?
Jay: Probably to kill the North Koreans!
Kev:
Jay: We're killin' some North Koreans (to the tune of "Good
Vibrations")
Kev: What the fuck.

Hell, I'd start watching.

T-minus Seventeen weeks

We're skipping the obama-mccain map this week because fivethirtyeight hasn't updated their map in a few days, there isn't much new polling. Instead, here's a bonus wednesday image, made by my mom.

Hey- Look Over here!

Astounding Transformations

Miranda July (De)Mystifies Button Making


If you haven't been exposed to Miranda July's trademark brand of creepster whimsy, you should get on it. I just started her collection of short stories and it makes me actually chuckle aloud on public transportation in a particularly satisfying and unsettling way that makes me feel like a sex offender. Maybe I just feel like a sex offender because my favorite story so far is about a middle-aged woman's lurid anilingus fantasies about Prince William.

I think searching Merriam-Webster.com just now for the spelling of anilingus was a professional mistake. Realization, 3:57 P.M.: Why are both my posts so far about assholes? This is an unexpected and alarming pattern.

The Wednesday Image

Change We Can Believe In

Watch me undergo a sexy but tasteful transformation. Thank you to my pal Will (Mo's video director) for getting me this spot.



I'm feelin ready to marry a very old man and kickstart his political career via wealth and connections!

economies of scale

Even if you're one of those people who thinks that doing something that is demonstrably ineffective will one day be effective, McCain is probably starting to sound a little irrational during the periods of his monotonous dronings when he says "economy" alot.

I can't help but directly quote a CNN article here, because there's just some things that are too aggravating to parody.

Sen. John McCain on Tuesday brushed off skepticism from economists and insisted he could balance the budget by 2013 by keeping taxes low and curbing spending.

"We're going to restrain spending, we're going to have the economy grow again and increase revenues. The problem is that spending got completely out of control," McCain said on CNN's "American Morning."

He should be careful here. A lot of liberals agree that spending is out of control, and that will piss off a lot of blue collar whites. For example: $535,000,000,000 (or $340,000,000 per day) is a lot of money to be spending for no reason.

McCain is in favor of extending the Bush tax cuts, which are set to expire in 2010.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has projected that by extending the cuts, which McCain originally opposed, and including the additional cuts McCain has proposed, the deficit for 2013 would be somewhere around $439 billion to $445 billion.

$440 billion . . . and that's just from extending tax cuts. If he extends the war til 2013 at current spending rates, that will have cost well over $1 trillion, which is, like, a few thousand car batteries. And if he extends it another hundred years, as he suggested, federal money not collected from the tax cuts will have to somehow foot at $10.7 trillion bill.

McCain disputes those figures because "they're static numbers -- not saying that revenues will increase with a strong economy and with low taxes. That's the difference, and I respectfully disagree."

Okay, McCain disagrees with economists. That's happened before with the gas tax, when he stood strong and defied everyone with an education on the matter. But wait . . .

"There's a whole lot of economists, including Nobel laureates, that agree with my plan," McCain said.

Talk about flip-flopping! Do we trust these communist (probably) intellectual assholes or don't we?

Another thing I've noticed about McCain "respectfully disagreeing" with people is that he typically decides to do that after they've refuted every one of his arguments. At least that's how it happened when Ellen Degeneres used her lesbo mind tricks to back him into a corner about civil rights on her show.

The article goes on to outline the fact that he plans on balancing the budget by doing things that would in no way accomplish that task, but I can't go on any longer or I'll start crying.

Dying in Threes

With what may have been the single act of kindness in a life of spewing disease-ridden piss from his every pore, former Senator Jesse Helms graciously confirmed that celebrities always die in threes when he keeled over on July 3. We had predicted Clarence Thomas, but Helms is good enough, and not that different if you consider their civil rights work. Helms, a strong contender for Worst Living American, has received touching eulogies from Hendrik Hertzberg and Ken Layne of Wonkette. Now he has to compete for Worst American of All Time, where he is just another anonymous terrible person, somewhere between your average KKK Grand Wizard and John Wilkes Booth.

All in all, this was a pretty boring Celebrity Death Threesome, consisting only of soon-to-be-forgotten telejournalist Tim Russert, mediocre comedian George Carlin, and Helms. So I got to thinking, what is the best Celebrity Death Threesome of all time?

Two strong contenders deserve special mention, but are disqualified for involving too many celebrities:
Between Spetmeber 3 and October 4 of 1970, we lost Vince Lombardi, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Marie Remarque, John Dos Passos, and Janis Joplin.
Three years later, also in September, there went John Ford, J.R.R. Tolkien, Gram Parsons, Pablo Neruda, and W.H. Auden.

So those were bad months for humanity. Anyway, here are five strong contenders for Best Celebrity Death Threesome:

1826: Carl Maria von Weber (composer), John Adams, Thomas Jefferson

1827: Alessandro Volta (guy "volts" are named after), Beethoven, William Blake

1955: Charlie Parker, Albert Einstein, Alexander Fleming (guy who discovered penicillin)

1961: Carl Jung, Ernest Hemingway, Ty Cobb

April 1994: Kurt Cobain, Ralph Ellison, Richard Nixon

Those are all pretty strong, and it's tempting to give it to the Parker/Einstein/Fleming trio, but consider this:

In 1963, Aldous Huxley, C.S. Lewis, and John F. Kennedy all died on the same day.

That's definitely worth bonus points. Also, on February 3, 1959, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper all died at the exact same instant, but they lose points because who the hell is the Big Bopper?

Even with that tremendous 1963 effort, however, mankind still has not managed to match that April 23 in 1616, when Shakespeare, Cervantes, and renowned Inca historian (the best Inca historian? We say yes) Garcilaso de la Vega all collapsed and died.

Do we even have celebrities good enough to equal that today? Probably not. Maybe if Gabriel García Márquez, Bob Dylan, and Barack Obama all died in the same minute. Anyway, 1616 takes the gold.

John McCain vs. Bugs Bunny

To continue with a previous post, here is a timeline comparing McCain's life with that of another great American hero:

August 29, 1936
Bugs Bunny does not exist yet.
John McCain is born.

April 30, 1938
Bugs Bunny prototype first appears in cartoon Porky's Hare Hunt.
John McCain is learning to walk.

July 27, 1940
First official appearance of Bugs Bunny in Tex Avery's A Wild Hare.
John McCain is learning to read.

World War II
Bugs Bunny appears in such classics as Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips and is appointed an honorary Master Sergeant by the Marine Corps.
John McCain is older than the U.N.

1950-1954
Bugs appears in Chuck Jones's Rabbit of Seville, widely considered the best Mozart-themed cartoon, and Duck Amuck, possibly the greatest cartoon short ever made.
McCain enrolls at Episcopal High School, a private preparatory school. While there he rats out a fellow student, which would later become an example of courage or something.

1957
Bugs appears in What's Opera, Doc?, an awesome cartoon based on Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen.
McCain is a legacy student.

1958
Bugs wins an Oscar for Chuck Jones with Knighty Knight Bugs.
McCain graduates Annapolis 884/889.

1960
Debut of The Bugs Bunny Show, which would run for 40 years.
McCain graduates flight school despite crashing into Corpus Christi.

1967
A bad year for Bugs Bunny and John McCain. Looney Tunes are basically over, and Bugs doesn't appear in anything this year.
McCain is shot down over Hanoi and imprisoned by the Viet Cong.

1973
Bugs still basically inactive.
McCain released

1979-80
Bugs shows up in a few mediocre TV specials.
McCain begins to see Cindy Lou Hensley, a beer heiress, then divorces his wife, a cripple, then marries Cindy.

1982-83
Bugs shows up in a few mediocre movies.
McCain uses his wife's money and her dad's connections to win a Senate seat. Once a senator, he opposes the creation of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Late 1980's
Bugs appears in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, triggering renewed interest in his earlier work. Only a year later, Mel Blanc dies.
McCain is involved with the Savings and Loan scandal through the "Keating Five", which cost taxpayers about $2.6 billion, although not in earmarks. He later admits, "The appearance of it was wrong."

1996
Bugs appears with Michael Jordan in Space Jam, voiced by Billy West.
McCain is now considered a maverick.

2000-Present
Chuck Jones dies. Looney Tunes: Back in Action released to decent reviews.
McCain runs for President, fails, supports the Iraq War, and runs for President again.

Phun Phact: As a popular write-in candidate, Bugs Bunny has had a small showing in almost every major U.S. election of the last half-century. Could it be that Bugs Bunny has received more votes for public office than John McCain? Yes.

FYI

These occur in nature.

...what is this blog about again?

Younger than McCain

Someone else is already keeping track of things younger than McCain on an alright blog, so we won't be making that a recurring feature here. But I have been independently researching this topic at work, and some of the answers are astounding. Bebop, for instance, was born and petered out more or less between McCain's third and 24th birthdays. The Chaplin movie Modern Times came out after his birth. He was nine days younger than Wilt Chamberlain, who retired in the seventies and died in 1999. Every Disney animated feature, from Snow White on, is younger than McCain.
With this in mind, McCain's admitted ignorance of computers actually makes sense- any viable candidate would be younger than the computer as we know it today. But McCain is older than the bombe, the first modern computer, used to crack enigma machine messages from the Nazis, and he's about the same age as the Turing machine, the whole theory that led to the creation of computers. Granted, you'd expect someone born in 1895 to have figured out the car by 1966, but maybe not if he always had a chauffeur to do it for him.
In our next post, we'll compare the lives of McCain and another, younger famous American from his era.

The Wednesday Image

a very special wednesday image: one look at the eponymous 'Kool Kat.'

THE 2008 NBA PRESIDENTIAL DRAFT. part three: picks 21-30

This is part three in our series, the 2008 NBA draft, if the entrants were America's presidents, evaluated by their character in office and their athletic peaks.

(Catch up on picks 1-20 here.)


21
New Jersey Nets- Harry Truman

With their second pick in the draft, the Nets keep adding to a core for the future. Truman has poor eyesight and he’s not too athletic, a sixth man at best, but he’s tenacious and he oozes leadership. He’ll be a great voice in the locker room.

22
Orlando Magic- Bill Clinton

This is where the quality of the draft really starts to drop. Clinton is not very fit at all, but he’s tall and smart, and likable. He’ll wave a good towel on the bench in Orlando, which already has a pretty good nucleus.

23
Utah Jazz- Millard Filmore

There’s not much to say about Millard Filmore and there’s not much to say about the Utah Jazz.

24
Seattle SuperSonics- Calvin Coolidge

With their first pick, the Sonics went with the draft’s most stubborn star. Coolidge isn’t expected to garner many minutes, but he’s a nice ideological ally for W, and should help keep the young guy in line and safe from criticism.

25
Houston Rockets- William McKinley

McKinley is short but he’s a likable, rather selfless guy with an excellent memory. He figures as a decent point guard prospect to work with T-Mac and Yao.

26
San Antonio Spurs- William Henry Harrison

Harrison is tough, stern and battle tested. He’ll fit into the culture of the Spurs locker room pretty well.

27
Portland Trailblazers- Thomas Jefferson

Frankly, Jeff can’t play at the NBA level, even on his best day. He’s got bad eyes, a bad wrist and a history of injuries. But on a deep team, all he needs to do is set a good example and stay out of the way, which he should be able to do.

28
Memphis Grizzlies- Martin Van Buren

MVB’s not too athletic at all; he’s a small, slim dude. But just as Seattle picks Coolidge for Bush, this pick is more about the psychology of the team’s star. MVB’s already proven that he can work with the mercurial Jackson.

29
Detroit Pistons- Rutherford B. Hayes

Detroit is approaching a ‘changing of the guard’ moment, with their long-tenured starting five nearing the end and an athletic youth movement in the wings. Hayes is a dull, stable influence who could provide a few minutes off the bench.

30
Boston Celtics- John Adams

This one is kindof a shocker- after all, Adams is small, pudgy and argumentative. But he is a Boston guy, and maybe he reminds the team of good ole’ Red Auerbach. On a championship team with few needs to fill, Adams makes for a serviceable mascot.