Oh goody, another debate

Mr. McCain looks like crap in hi-def.

Expectations

I think both candidates probably met or exceeded their party's expectations.

Prediction: tomorrow, folks will be talking about McCain leaving immediately after the debate, and Barack and Michelle hanging out and taking pictures and signing autographs for 20+ minutes.

Just my prediction though. Does kind of show the class of the two candidates -- who's willing to hang out with the "normal" folks and who isn't...

One hour in

Kind of pleasantly surprised that the "debate" hasn't devolved into a shout fest yet, my friends.

But we just started on foreign policy, so McCain might get a bit testy now...

Responsibility

Wow, did you know that health care is your "responsibility"? My friends, you're responsible for your health care. If you fell off your porch, you're "responsible" because you're a gawdam klutz. Mmmkay, my friends? Keep that in mind next time you pay $400 to get a check up.

Retracted

OK, I retract my surprise.

Brokaw says "everybody agrees" that social security and medicare require radical changes to "save" them -- that's just plain wrong.

Although those programs are both expensive, they really aren't in trouble. Any possible "trouble" comes 50+ years in the future, if you use the most conservative estimates.

So my friends (pause to drink) Brokaw does indeed suck balls.

Surprised

So far, I'm pleasantly surprised by the format. I think Brokaw is doing a smidge better than the last two at trying to reign in the candidates. Nobody is more surprised than me.

McCain looks stiff as hell, my friends. And he's rambling a ton, my friends. My friends, McCain likes nuclear energy. Some of my best friends are "my friends."

This guy drives me bonkers.

Update: Not hospitalized yet, though one large martini down, beer commencing forthwith my friends.

The debate "town hall" style

Reminder: This isn't actually going to be a "town hall" -- the questions are either pre-screened by Tom Brokaw, or are just his own questions. This is the same Brokaw who's hacky enough to be the "liason" between the McCain campaign and NBC -- 'cause the campaign of course need help with that darn librul media.

There also is supposedly an agreement that there won't be any followup questions. So, much like last week, the candidates can just choose to ignore the question, ramble on about whatever the hell they want, and the "moderator" isn't supposed to follow up with them.

I am cautiously hopeful that this will exceed my expectations, but if the last two were any indication, those hopes will be dashed.

Update: Brokaw just said that there will be 2 minutes for answers, with 1 minute followup. Not sure, but maybe there's hope.

Wink, wink, winky

I hope McCain winks at me tonight. He's so dreamy.

My drinking phrase is "my friends" so I fully expect to need to be hospitalized by about 10 minutes in.

Maybe McCain should adopt a fake, homey, accent like his running mate, to fool all the gullible rubes.

Oh, and while I don't think it's quite as eloquent (kidding) as my "There's no such thing as "the free market"" post below, Naomi Klein spoke against the creation of an economic research center at the University of Chicago named after the University’s most famous economist, Milton Friedman. Worth the read. She makes a good case that Friedman's free market theories have now been well tested, and should be relegated to the dustbin of history.

Wink, wink

If anybody ever winks at me again, I'm going to poke them in the eye with a pointy stick.

In Fuh Stucture

Seriously. In Fuh Stucture.

If you can't even enunciate simple language, are you actually qualified to lead the country?

In.

Fuh.

Stucture.

Yeah, teh infustucture of merka is vury portant. Golly darn gosh. Durngully. Shux. Reagan sure was great, eh, golly, back in the day when Repub li cans were men and men were woman and Rudy hadn't yet worn a dress. Or something.

Yeah, skip past the Shrub years and hark back to Reagan, that'll work.

Dear god we're doomed, aren't we?

Another martini, squire!

A team of mavericks

Oh for fuck's sake. She just called her and McPain "a team of mavericks" -- if you call yourself a maverick, you're not a maverick. Mmkay?

Why is this race even as close as it is? These people are complete, unadulterated, drooling, morons.

Criminy, now she's "shouting out" to third graders. And doing the whole fake "golly goshdarn shucky gee" crap. This woman is a complete, fucking, idiot.

I never would've thought we could be worse off than we are now, but seriously, the McPain administration would be inconceivably horrendous.

If you're undecided, you're an idiot.

Eye full

For the record: Gwen Ifill is annoying as hell.

Oh, and Bible Action Barbie: it's "new clee ar" although channeling Dubya's "new kew lar" does kind of indicate where you are on the intelligence scale.

Why am I watching this?

Debates

I think we can all agree that the last debate can be summed up as some crazy old dude yelling "Damn kids, get off my lawn!." Which we probably should have predicted.

So, some predictions for tonight's epic adventure between Bible Action Barbie (with new moose fur outfit and convertible Hummer!) and Joe "I like trains" Biden:

• A combination of Barbie's terrible recent "interviews" and obvious complete and utter inability to form a complete thought un-prompted by cue-cards, has caused the expectations of her performance to be lowered to such a level that if she manages to actually get onto the stage, fully dressed, without drooling too much, she'll "win" the debate.
  
  
• Joe Biden must take off his coat, find a puddle to cover with it, bow courteously, offer her a handkerchief, light her cigarette, hold the door for her, buy her dinner (and not expect anything out of it), present her a "Ms. VP 2008" sash and commemorative bouquet of (white) roses, and then back quietly off the stage without answering a single question. If he does anything else, he's a big meany meanypants, liberal elitist who hates women, puppies, and especially hates Joe Sixpack, who he obviously isn't even though his name is Joe.
  

Could we come up with a dumber way to pick our politicians? I don't think we're trying hard enough, the current system is obviously far too dignified.

Comical

This is.

The music industry doesn't suck quite enough, so to up the suckage quotient just that little bit extra, they start accepting bribes"incentives" to feature brands in song lyrics.

[Note to self, write hit song about a fictional character named Cokie Ferrari]

There's no such thing as "the free market"

Fuckers.

The "Invisible hand of the free market" is great to talk about when you're complaining about possibly perhaps maybe some sort of minor adjustment to our abysmal health care system, or social security, or outsourcing, or whatever an actual working person might care about. But the government wants to throw a trillion (yes, that's a "t") at a bunch of rich people? That's just grand and great and swell.

Fuckers.

Of course we get various "free market" folks going on TV to complain, that they, the real libertarian free marketers don't like this one bit, and that if only we had a real free market person in government, we'd show them, and let these Wall Street types sink. But of course they wouldn't -- it's all a shell game. Pretend that they care about the sacred "free market" so they can kill off or prevent any and all regulation, act surprised when, again the whole thing falls out from under them, and then complain because, well of course, we shouldn't bail them out, but well, we reluctantly will, just this time, you know, for the good of the country and all, you understand, not for themselves... But next time, gosh darn it, we're going to let that market really work!

Have I mentioned that these people are fucking fuckers?

Beyond the Palin

You've got questions about Sarah Palin? Of course you do! And they're important questions. Mavericky questions. About a maverick.

• Is she the bestest most maverickiest ever, or only just mavericky enough?
  
• Is she standing up to the fat-cat lobbyists and big-money men in a noble, principled, small-government-conservative kind of way, or is she standing up to the fat-cat lobbyists and big-money men in a noble, principled, small-government-conservative mavericky kind of way?
  

These are the questions of our time. Sadly.

Thankfully, Fafblog is on the case, and will answer these most important questions about this double-extra-mavericky-maverick of a candidate.

Look ma, a blog!

I realize that my posting schedule of once-a-year is a bit ambitious, but us A-list blogger types have to give our reading public what they clamor for. In my case, fewer posts.

Or something.

I'll be back soon with wise words about stuff and things, and such. Really.

Misc.

Couple quick items:

First, this past weekend we had a Corvallis subaru meet. Fun drive: pictures here

I've been getting into old Japanese motorcycles. Just purchased a couple old Honda CB160s to restore/mod into a cafe/gp race replica. Pictures of them and my 1972 Honda CB500 can be found here and here

Good riddance, 2005

I am so ready for this year to be over. 2005 will go down in history as the worst year ever. The story actually starts back in November of 2004 (no, not with the election, I'll stipulate to how bad that was). Here are the lowlights:

November, 2004: Our 2-year old Border Collie "Lucky" (the most unfortunate name ever) dies while recovering after surgery to remove a large tumor from her intestine.

December, 2004: My wife's dad falls and is hospitalized after a brain tumor starts expanding (it had previously been unsuccessfully treated). The prognosis is not good.

Winter 2005: A months-long course of full-brain radiation is performed on him. Side effects are brutal, and I'm not sure which was worse, the tumor or the treatments. Once we figure out that he's not going to recover, Hospice home care is called in -- they provide amazing services and care, but the bulk of the day-to-day home care is provided by family and friends.

Spring 2005: A potential bright spot, we rescue an adorable white border collie from "border collie rescue" and name him "Rogue" -- he's 4 months old.

But, when we bring him home, he's got kennel cough and a nasty parasite. We treat that. When he's neutered in early May, the vet does a "precautionary" check for genetic problems, and they find hip displaysia. We start planning treatment options, and visit a specialist in Portland. Major surgery is planned to fix him, for early July. Shortly after this, Rogue begins the first of several stomach incidents whereupon he pukes constantly, is hospitalized, and then recovers after a couple of days. Initial diagnosis is "pancreatitis" but that turns out wrong (you'll see why later).

My wife's dad continues to slide down hill. He is confined to bed, and the tumors have devasted his ability to communicate. He can barely move, can't read or write any longer, and has major problems speaking. That is the cruelest of tortures to an old farmer that loved nothing more than to BS about anything and everything at length. Nearly all of our free time is spent visting and helping around their house.

July 2005, all hell breaks loose: The month begins well, with a trip for my wife and I to Vegas for my Dad's wedding, over the 4th of July holiday -- that was quite fun. Upon our return, we immediately (as in, the day our flight arrived back in Oregon) have to take Rogue to the specialist in Portland for a "Triple Pelvic Osteotomy" to fix his hips. Several days (and thousands of dollars) later we take home a half-shaved dog and prepare for 16 weeks of confined recovery for him. The recovery period is pretty brutal, and involves constant care, total confinement, walking him only briefly to go outside while holding him up with a sling. He didn't enjoy any of this, and we end up needing to keep him sedated quite a bit so he doesn't hurt himself.

Later in July, my wife has major surgery (planned, but no fun). Mid-way through her week-long hospital stay, her father passes away. In a touch of pure irony, it happens on my birthday. She's devestated that she wasn't there for the end, but we think he's finally let go knowing that she made it through her surgery OK -- he had been quite worried about her.

Emotions, and the recovering wife and dog aside, the rest of the summer isn't too bad.

Fall 2005: Rogue eventually gets a clean bill of health for his hips in October, but continues to have the mysterious stomach troubles about every 6 weeks. My wife goes back to work (she's a 4th grade public school teacher) and life starts to get back to "normal."

December 2005: As I type this, my wife is packing to travel back east with her mom to visit her sister. I can't go as I planned, because one of us needs to stay home and take care of Rogue, who's just had major surgery to remove 12cm of his small intestine and is in the ICU of the OSU vet-school teaching hospital. Turns out that the "pancreatitis" we thought he had, and the cause of seven month's worth of "stomach" problems was the plastic "squeaker" out of a toy he chewed up back in May (a common puppy thing to do). He had evidently eaten it, and it had initially blocked his intestines. Since it was plastic (these squeakers are little plastic "bladders" about the size of a half-dollar coin) it didn't show up on any of the dozens of radiographs we've had done. Because it would only partially block his intestine, he would be fine, until it shifted and blocked it fully again, at which point the puking cycle began again. A specialist at OSU's new small animal clinic at the vet school figured this out, and they performed surgery this past Friday. His prognosis is good, but he's not out of the woods yet.

At least we finally got his problem figured out, and we "squeaked" it under the 2005 wire, hopefully confining the badness to the already horrible 2005.

Hopefully 2006 will be a bit better than this...

TSA

I don't fly all that much (a couple times a year at most) but I think most of us would agree that the TSA folks have made the airport experience a bit annoying since 9/11.

Now, Bruce Schneier of the excellent "Schneier on Security" blog points out just how out of whack their priorities are with regard to their "Secure Flight" program. You should read his post about it, and the report he links to, but basically it's yet another big government database of all of our personal information that the TSA will use in some way or another (that they don't specify) to make us all "safe."

Combine that with the public's mostly-negative view of the airport experience, and we get to my point: if I were an up-and-coming Democrat House Member I'd make harping on the TSA's failures, lack of transparency, threat to our freedom, etc., my pet project as the 2006 elections approach. Just think of this as my free tip to any of those Democrats...