Here's Mohammed and Akhbar with the latest fashions from Old Taliban. Mo' is sporting a witty t-shirt, while 'Barry has chosen the recycled mexican serape-coat. Both have pushed the envelope with the cutting-edge sandbag-on-the-squash look, perfect for that endless summer in Gitmo! Thanks Mo' and 'Barry!

General Wayne A. Downing.

This is a great speech. It was given by Ross Perot to dedicate the "Wayne A. Downing Airport" in Peoria, IL. Evidently, that's General Downing's hometown, and this is the only airport named after a Ranger.

I was fortunate enough to be in one of General Downing's commands, back when he was a lowly Colonel (and I was an even more lowly PFC). I thought you might find the story interesting.

Let's turn it over to Ross Perot... I'm all ears.


"General Wayne Downing’s life can be defined by these words:
-Patriot
-Guardian of our Freedom
-Hero
-Fearless
-Brilliant
-Modest
-Humble
-A man of absolute integrity

A great leader who:
-Builds others up – Never puts them down
-Is kind, gentle, but tougher than steel
-Always helping others
-Always puts others first – himself last
-Treats others as equals
-Great listener
-Outstanding husband and father

General Downing is admired and respected by all who have served with him. He was born in Peoria, Illinois in 1940. His father served in World War II and was killed in action in Germany in 1945. General Downing received an appointment to the U. S. Military Academy in 1958. He graduated from West Point in 1962. His first assignment was as Platoon Leader in Company B 173rd Airborne Brigade in Okinawa. He served 3 years in Vietnam (1964 – 1967) in the 173rd Airborne Brigade and the 25th Infantry Division. In 1984, Colonel Downing was chosen to form and lead the 75th Ranger Regiment. All Ranger Regiments continue to live by the creed –
RANGERS LEAD THE WAY!

General Downing is considered the Father of the Modern Rangers. In 1989 he was appointed Commanding General of Joint Special Operations Command in Ft. Bragg. In December 1989 he commanded the Special Operations Forces that liberated Panama during Operation Just Cause. A year later, he commanded the Joint Task Force of 1,200 Special Forces soldiers who conducted highly effective attacks in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm.

In 1991 General Downing was appointed Special Operations Officer at Ft. Bragg. In 1993 General Downing was appointed to the rank of 4-Star General and served as Commander in Chief of U. S. Special Operations Command, leading 46,000 Special Operations Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen. I had the privilege of knowing General Downing during the years that he served as a General in Special Forces. Again and again, when his soldiers were in combat, he would call me around the clock with deep concern about men who had been seriously wounded, seeking the care from the most talented doctors in the private sector. I will never forget those calls. His level of concern was like these Special Forces soldiers were his own sons.

General Downing retired from active duty in 1996. After retirement, he was appointed by the President to lead a task force to investigate the 1996 terrorist attack on the U. S. base at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. In 1999 General Downing served as a member of the National Commission on Terrorism. In 2001 General Downing served the White House as National Director and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism.

General Downing served as Chairman and Founder of the Combating Terrorism Center at the U. S. Military Academy.

His honors include:
-The Defense Department Distinguished Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster
-Army Distinguished Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster
-Silver Star with Oak Leaf Cluster
-Defense Superior Service Medal
-Legion of Merit with 3 Oak Leaf Clusters
-Soldiers Medal
-Bronze Star with V Device for Valor and 5 Oak Leaf Clusters
-Purple Heart
-Air Medal with V Device for Valor and 35 Oak Leaf Clusters
-Army Commendation Medal with V Device for Valor and 3 Oak Leaf Clusters
-Combat Infantryman’s Badge
-Military Free Fall Jumpmaster Badge
-Master Parachute Badge
-Ranger Tab
-Pathfinder Badge
-Commander in the French Legion of Honor

And now I will tell you my favorite General Wayne Downing story. In the late 90’s I received a call from a person who identified himself as a retired Special Forces Sergeant named Euless Presley. My first reaction was “Has Elvis been reborn?”

He told me that 125 Vietnamese, who he had fought alongside, had been moved to an island off Hong Kong and had lived there for 25 years. As Hong Kong was being taken over by China, China made a deal with Vietnam to ship these men back to be executed. Sergeant Presley had a great sense of urgency to recover these men. I then called General Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, mentioned the sergeant’s name, and told him the story.

General Shelton’s response was, “I know exactly who Euless Presley is. He is a highly decorated Special Forces soldier. We have got to get these men out. I would not be alive without them.”

I then sent a team to the State Department to see if we could make arrangements for them to be brought to the United States. The State Department’s response was, “We have heard all about this, but nobody can prove that they are who they claim to be. If you can bring us proof, we will allow them to come to the United States.”

I then called retired General Wayne Downing, and told him the story. His exact words were, “Ross, I wouldn’t be alive without these men. I can validate them. I will be on the next plane.”

I asked Wayne, “Where do I send your ticket?”

General Downing responded, “I wouldn’t be alive without these men. Nobody buys this ticket but me.”

I then said, “Can I help you with anything?”

General Downing said, “I need an Interpreter.”

I called Nguyen Quoc Dat (called Max Dat), a South Vietnamese fighter pilot who had been held in prison with our men. Max later moved to the United States and is living in California. The only problem is that Max would be dead if they ever got him, because he would be a much better trophy to trade to Vietnam than the Vietnamese. Max agreed to go.

The team arrived in Hong Kong on Monday. They called me on Tuesday, and General Downing said, “Perot, the Chinese won’t let us on the island, but don’t worry, we will get it done and will call you when we are on the way back to the United States.”

General Downing called on Saturday and said, “All taken care of. The men and their families are on their way to the United States.”

I asked, “How did you get on the island?”

I will never forget General Downing’s response. He said, “Don’t ask, Perot” laughed, and hung up.

I still don’t know how General Downing rescued them, and don’t need to know.
I would like to know if they swam or parasailed in, swam out? In all honesty, I was not surprised that General Downing had accomplished another MISSION IMPOSSIBLE!

The Vietnamese and their families all live near Ft. Bragg, have good jobs and are good citizens, and continue to be under the wing of the Special Forces members there – Thanks to General Downing. General Downing’s actions can be summarized by these words:

THE BEST TEST OF A MAN’S CHARACTER IS WHAT HE DOES FOR PEOPLE WHO CAN DO NOTHING FOR HIM.

Throughout his life, General Downing lived these words from Isaiah: WHO WILL GO? SEND ME!

General Downing’s life and principles can be summarized by Winston Churchill’s shortest speech:

NEVER GIVE IN. NEVER GIVE IN. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER!

He has also lived these words: WHEN PRINCIPLE IS INVOLVED, BE DEAF TO EXPEDIENCY.

Abraham Lincoln said: ANY NATION THAT DOES NOT HONOR ITS HEROES WILL NOT LONG ENDURE.

Today we are gathered to honor General Wayne Downing – a true American Hero! In closing, please remember the last phrase of the “Star Spangled Banner” is a question – O’ SAY DOES THAT STAR SPANGLED BANNER YET WAVE O’ER THE LAND OF THE FREE AND THE HOME OF THE BRAVE? As long as we have great Patriots like General Wayne Downing, the answer will be a resounding YES!

In the End Times, There Will be Great Signs.

We're comin' down the line. We're bringing you the Power!

When we were kids we watched a show on PBS called "The Electric Company." It was a pretty good show that went over the ins and outs of kummyunicatin' in English. We watched it all of the time... Not because we liked educational programming, because it was on during "Joker's Wild" which was a dumb show anyway.

Looking back on it, the Electric Company had lots of big-name players. Like Rita Moreno (of West Side Story fame...I think) and Bill Cosby.

Anyway, there was a recurring set of skits on this show starring Bill Cosby as a forgetful, confused not-so-super hero called "Super Guy" who would somehow teach a lesson in spelling or grammar during his skits. I remember one particular scene in which a guy dressed up like a roaring '20's Chicago mobster is flipping a coin saying with a bad (really awful) New York accent "Super Guy is a meatball." It came out more like "Shoopa-guy ish a meat-bowl."

Kurt and I thought this was the funniest thing we'd ever heard. We hunted up two flippin'-coins and started doing our best mobster impressions. First one of us would mimic the mobster, then the other, punctuated by minute-long uncontrollable spasms of manic laughter and searches under the couch for our coins. It's hard to catch a coin when you're laughing like an idiot.

We were busting each other up so bad that we could barely breathe. We would catch our breath just long enough to let go with another "Shoopa guy ish a meat bowl" and the cycle would start all over again. Our ribs and stomachs were cramping up from the violent laughter. That was funny too.

Of course, MY impressions were WAY better than Kurt's. But he still made me laugh until I thought I'd die.

We even turned the TV off because it was more fun to say "Shoopa guy ish a meat bowl" and laugh like imbeciles than it was to watch the boob tube. So you KNOW it was fun.

After about fifteen minutes of this, The house exploded into ominous footfalls. Mom had been sewing upstairs in a room just over the TV room where we were flippin' coins and insulting Shoopa-Guy, but now she was coming downstairs. And coming fast. One last "Shoopa guy is a meat bowl" and another blizzard of giggling.

She blew into the room like a tornado, I'd never seen her like this. She was slapping me with both hands until I put up my hands to defend myself, then she rapidly transitioned to slapping Kurt. As soon as Kurt stopped giggling and realized the gravity of the situation he put up his hands too... Of course I couldn't see Kurt get slapped unless I dropped my hands, so I did. That made me the next target of opportunity for Mom.

She went back and forth between us slapping and yelling WHATHAVEITOLDYOUABOUTTHATWHATDOYOUTHINKYOUAREDOINGDIDN'TITELLYOUNEVERTOTALKLIKETHATDIDYOUTHINKYOU'DGETAWAYWITHITDON'TYOUTHINKICANHEAR?!"

At this point both Kurt and I are two confused hombres. A minute ago we were practicing our best "New Yawk" accents on a line from a PBS show, and now we're getting slapped and yelled at in a foreign language (and all in capital letters). So both Kurt and I began yelling things like "WHAT? WHAT! WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT WE DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WE WERE JUST WATCHING TV!"

Mom halted her Sugar-Ray Leonard-like flurries but was still bellerin' things like "YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WERE DOING!"

Actually we didn't. Or at least we didn't realize that it was wrong. So we told her so. We put on our best "please-believe-me-and-don't-slap-me-anymore" faces. Since this was a first for us we evidently weren't very good at it. Nope. She wasn't buying it." DIDN'T I TELL YOU TO NEVER TALK THAT WAY?!"

"What?" Talk what way?"

The two of you were yelling "SUPER GUY IS A NEGRO” and then laughing like idiots."

We cleared it up pretty quickly after that with endless denial. Watergate was on TV around that time, so denial was at the forefront of the public psyche. I don't think Mom ever believed us though, because lying was at the forefront of the public psyche too. She was pretty sure of what she heard. If you quiz her today, she'll still swear we were calling Bill Cosby a negro.

C'mon, think about it. We all KNEW Super Guy was a Negro. That's not funny at all. But a MEATBALL...Yes siree, whoo-boy, that's comedy.

I wonder if Bill Cosby ever thought his "Super Guy" skits would get anyone slapped?

If I ever meet him I'm gonna yell "SHOOPA GUY ISH A MEAT BOWL!" and slap him silly until he says "uncle-b" in his best Mushmouth voice.

I can always plead insanity, and point to my tormented childhood.

The Mother Earth Gnus

This blog was supposed to be about stories. So far I've talked about politics, waxed philosophical, and just generally messed around.

For those of you who know me, this sort of conversational meandering comes as no surprise I'm sure.

So gather round, I've got a story to tell. It's a lovely friggin' tale about gardening, and the best use for certain vegetables.

Before I start, let me talk about comedy. My position on comedy is this: Someone has to take the pie in the face, or it ain't funny. Today the pie flies toward my Father. You'll all get your turn.

-----------------------------------


My Dad, in addition to being a hyper competitor, was a child of agriculture. Whenever we visited with Dad's parents the subjects of conversation were maddenngly predictable. Even the order in which these subjects were discussed seemed to follow an unwritten format. Weather, then probable crop yield, then wheat prices, followed finally by which parcels of land were in the process of changing hands.

You can learn a lot about a community by listening to the small talk. Obviously, the folks that Dad grew up with had a set of priorities. Those priorities centered around two things: Plants and the soil necessary to grow those plants.

Simply saying that my father had a green thumb doesn't really do him justice. He was green clean up to the elbow. Some years his biceps took on a green tinge.

I don't know that Dad ever would have made a successful farmer, although I can't imagine him failing at anything he really wanted to accomplish. He describes his high-school motivations as "...anything that would get me off of that goddamned farm."

He spent the rest of his life trying to bring that "goddamned farm" to wherever he was.

He was always the kind of guy who would have a window-box garden in a New York apartment. Full of wheat.

The whole time I was growing up Dad was either planning, preparing, planting, or husbanding a garden.

Since no one plants wheat in a garden, Dad chose many of the staples: corn, potatoes, carrots, green beans, tomatoes, strawberries, and onions. But he also planted things that even Burpee Seeds had too much pride to offer: Kohl rabi, turnips, snow peas, and the dreaded zucchini.

Neither I, nor anyone I knew had heard of zucchini squash before the Carter administration.

Zucchini is like the Special Olympics of gardening. No matter how poorly you perform, you're guaranteed an award at the end.

Here's a recipe for a successful zucchini-raising project: dirt, water, seeds. Pretty complicated, huh?

Zucchini plants are beautiful. They have leaves that are a foot across, growing out of stems the size of baseball bats. They are the deepest shade of green. The blossoms are a gorgeous yellowish-orange, and the size of baseball gloves. Everything about the plant itself is beautiful and rewarding.

Oh... Did I mention that you get one zucchini squash per day? You do. Each squash is about a foot-and-a-half long and as thick as a kid's leg. They weigh about 3 pounds apiece.

One year Dad planted a single zucchini plant. It made him feel so "in touch with nature" that the next spring he planted 5 plants.

Of course, 5 plants yield about 5 zucchinis per day. Do the math: 5 zucchinis times 90 growing days in the season is about 450 zucchinis in a single summer.

Now, let me ask you a simple question: What in the Sam Hill are you going to do with that much squash?

If he had planted 4 more plants, he could have given every man, woman, and child in Enterprise, Oregon a zucchini as a gift.

I hated Zucchini. But that wasn"t important in the general scheme of things. Dad felt productive given the size of his zucchini yield, someone had to eat those nasty slimy things, and I was elected.

Well, to be more succinct, our whole family, everyone we knew, everyone who THEY knew, and unsuspecting tourists who left their cars unlocked while using the public restroom at the Texaco station were elected.

Hell, they had to go SOMEWHERE. Waste not, want not, right?

For some perverse reason, picking and storing these monstrosities fell to me. Hmmm... irony. The guy who hates these nasty squashes has to pick and preserve them for future use. I was tasked with picking, hauling, stacking, and storing all the zucchinis raised in Dad's ever-so-fruitful zucchini patch.

I hauled them into the back porch and stacked 'em like wood. By the end of baseball season we had a stack eight feet long and ten zucchinis high.

Mom was hard pressed to figure out how to use all these squashes.... Never mind the output of the rest of the garden, which was given away in recycled Safeway grocery sacks to anyone we knew, and on at least one occasion, a tourist who mistakenly found himself in our driveway after getting lost.

We had fried zucchini, baked zucchini, zucchini bread, zucchini cake, zucchini stew, zucchini pancakes, zucchini stir-fry, zucchini sandwiches, zucchini and SPAM hash, zucchini flavored ice cream floats, zucchini cocktails, zucchini teriyaki, zucchini wine, zucchini pie, zucchini on-a-stick, zucchini relish trays, zucchini every-friggin'-thing.

I'm starting to sound like Bubba in "Forest Gump" aren't I? I'm just thinkful that no one ever tried a "zucchini Pronto Pup".

I was sick to death of zucchini. So, being a devious little bastard, I worked to rid the world of zucchini. I had the best interests of mankind at heart....don't you see?

There was a big bottle of medicated tar on the back porch. It had been there for years. Dad had originally bought it to put on the wounds caused by dehorning a calf, but we discovered cauterization before we had much of a chance to use the tar.

There was also a huge 60cc syringe (which is a big'un) and a nice selection of extra needles.

One glorious day, when no one was home, I filled that syringe with that nasty-smelling tar concoction, and injected about 10cc's of tar into every zucchini stored on the back porch.

That evening, while preparing "zucchini Alfredo Tetrazzini surprise" Mother cut into a zucchini and found a huge nasty black spot.

"KARL..... Grab me another zucchini off of the back porch."

It was all part of my diabolical plan.

The next squash, and the next were found to have some evil-smelling rotten portions.

"I think these zucchinis are going bad.... Harley! I think the zucchinis on the back porch are rotting." Mom yelled at Dad from the kitchen.

"There's plenty more where those came from. Have Karl take them out and put them in the compost pile."

I don"t think I was forced to eat another bite of zucchini.... ever again.

Guns & politics. Politics & guns.

I suppose that someone not related to me might stumble upon this page someday. For that person's benefit I should probably clarify my stand on the second amendment. Here goes:

It's the only amendment that counts. All of the other "civil rights" are really "civil privileges" unless someone is armed. Go ahead and fool yourself that the reason your "civil rights" are not routinely infringed is because the folks in power respect you. Without an armed populace we'd hear a lot about something called "civil rights" in school, but we'd never actually experience them.

If you choose to be unarmed, then you enjoy your civil rights only because I and 180 million other gun-owners scare the ruling elite into moderately acceptable behavior.

You're welcome.

One of the highest profile gun-related incidents to capture recent national attention was the Virginia Tech shooting. This particular episode has been a catalyst for all kinds of ideas about how we as a society can halt or at least mitigate school shootings. The ideas fall generally into to polar opposite positions.

One position states that people who already legally carry weapons for protection at the mall, or in church, or on a city street ought to be "allowed" to carry at any school. If they are responsible everywhere else, its a pretty good bet that they'll be responsible at a school too. I like this position.

The opposite position states that private citizens should not be "allowed" to arm themselves for defensive purposes, but should instead rely upon police for protection. Usually this position is not limited to just schools, but to everywhere. Guns are bad... everywhere. I vehemently oppose this opinion.

The flaws in this logic it are legion. First, we're Americans dammit... That means that we're "allowed" to keep and bear arms (along with our freedom of speech and other civil rights) simply because we exist. Self-defense, and by extension the keeping and bearing of the tools necessary for effective self-defense are a natural right.

Second, this position requires us to disarm because we "might" use guns for an anti-social purpose. This is called "the doctrine of prior restraint" and limits, restricts or cancels a civil right because someone somewhere might use that right in a way that we wouldn't like. Americans don't like prior restraint. We only punish the people who break the rules, not the people who might break them.

Third, the opposition tries to make the argument that private citizens are incapable of using firearms effectively for protection. They think that a private citizen should sagely recognize his or her limitations, resign themselves to being the victim of some equally untrained but more aggressive attacker, and hope that the police aren't busy. Even a very pro-police guy like myself has to snicker at the anyone who agrees with this plan.

Exactly who are we depending on to come to the rescue of people without guns? Cops, that's who... i.e.: people with guns. Isn't that exactly what these knuckleheads are against? Aren't people with guns the problem? Won't a lot of poorly trained* people with guns be a problem no matter how snappy they look in uniform, or how cool they sound on radio?

I digress. Anti-gunners, fools, Chicagoans, Bostonians, New Yorkers, residents of Washington DC, San Franciscans, the NEA, most liberals, the ACLU (inexplicably), most of Hollyweird, and criminals all agree: guns in the hands of the average citizen is a threat to their way of life. Any other rhetorical position is simply an excuse.

I'll leave you with this thought: If the presence of guns is dangerous, and it's such an effective safety-measure to require people on school campuses to be unarmed, why are we always hearing about "school shootings"?

If the presence of guns really DOES promote shootings, why don't we hear about soldiers and policemen and recreational shooters hosing each other into big bleeding piles? Hell, the guns are right there, all over the place-- It's a massacre waiting to happen. Surely shootings will naturally follow. What anti-gunners don't take into account is that cops and soldiers and recreational shooters are NOT DANGEROUS CRIMINAL SCUMBAGS. In fact, they are generally the farthest thing from it. Anti-gunners somehow miss this reality, and it is the fatal flaw in their reasoning. To them, gun possession = criminal. So, gun possession must surely lead to crime. Could anything be further from the truth?

Yesterday 180 million gun owners DID NOT rob a bank, kill a kid, shoot at a driver who flipped them off, accidentally shoot somebody, wave a gun around to intimidate people, or . Clearly, guns are only tools, not causal factors in any of those acts.

Since the polarizing effect of politics tends to muddy the issue, let's boil it down to it's most basic form: If you were a homicidal scumbag bent upon racking up a body-count so you could get your face on TV (which is clearly the case in many school shootings), where do you think you'd score the most points-- a school or a police station?

The answer is clear and simple. The legal doctrine for such obvious logic is "Res ipsa loquitur" which figuratively translates as "the thing speaks for itself".

* Like I said earlier, I'm very pro-cop, both on a public policy level, and (especially) at the personal level. I have a lot of respect for the professionalism of the American Law Enforcement professional. Having said that-- Cops can't shoot. Okay, that's like saying white men can't jump-- a major generalization, I know. Some cops can shoot pretty well, but they're rare. Most cops probably have spent their time training on more useful occupational skill-sets than shooting. But, having shot with LOTS of cops, I can tell you that the only salvation for the rank-and-file policeman in a gunfight is that the average scumbag's skill with firearms sucks.

I blog, therefore I am.

It's a good thing that the classic philosophers got their reputations before Hip-Hop or text messaging got poular. Otherwise we'd be quoting things like "I think, so I B" or "Yo, yo, yo dawg...Check it-- All dat bad shit jus' make my ass stronger, 'cause my back ain't broke. And shit."

I've decided that America's love affair with multi-culturalism comes from the same part of the American psyche that brought us the Special Olympics. Evidently some cultures are "differently enabled" than mainstream America's culture. I guess that we've given up trying to help folks overcome the limitations of their parents' cultures (which they were desperately trying to escape when they immigrated to America, but which they refuse to let go), so we've decided to celebrate the differences and look the other way while new generations perpetuate actions and images that we once called "stereotypes".

Oh well. It's easier than holding people to high standards of behavior, and no one calls you "intolerant."

I guess I'm different. Maybe I'm stupid. Maybe not.

I figure that you should lead by example-- and leadership is one of the few things that will make you try to be better than the next guy... Unless you are one of the narcissists who believes they were destined for leadership, so they deserve all of the double-standards they can get (I'm thinking about the Clintons, Mugabe, Idi Amin Dada, any communist leader in history, any Muslim head-of-state, televangelists caught with their [hand] in the [cookie jar], attorneys, etc. If you're one of those rare narcissists then you won't take my next piece of advice anyway.

Be the good example. Be the leader in your circle. Don't stage a coup, just quietly be the example. You'll only be seen by those who know you, but your efforts will be reflected in the actions of those around you. Maybe not today, but someday. We Christians, know someone is watching, so it's easier for us because we've practiced being watched (at least a little). You atheists and agnostics-- well, just pretend. You'd be surprised how many times you don't know that someone is paying attention.

Maybe THAT's the philosophy that's been missing in multi-cultural America.

So for you text-messagers out there, here is the translation: "B good"

Translated into Hip-Hop-- Oh, what's the point? Pearls before swine.

Hmm. Having not thought this completely through...

... Aw, what the hell. You're reading. I'm writing. This is a complete Sesame Street moment. Brought to you by the letter "Q" and the number "700 billion."

Today is October 22, 2008. A day which will live in infamy. The news is full of the banking crisis. The DJIA fell nearly 600 points today to around 8500. The bailout money is most likely to be used NOT to bail out banks, but to acquire them-- Which will create even bigger (more important, more likely to be bailed out, impossible to let fail) banks.

I'm thinking that this banking crisis will lead to the several things: a managed world economy, a North American currency, and eventually the mark of the beast. Perhaps the Anti-Christ is a banker. There's a thought. We've been wrong about him for so many guesses (Nero, Lincoln, Hitler, Stalin, Clinton, Richard Simmons, Jerry Seinfeld) that a banker isn't so farfetched. Of course, he'd have to be a Jewish, Israeli, homosexual, banker. Maybe it's too soon to take Seinfeld off the list...

McCain and Obama are still at it. The latest polls are Obama 49%, and McCain 40%. That means 11% of those polled are wishy-washies. Of course, the popular media wants a young black guy rather than an old white guy (except when the young black guy is a republican), so they aren't above "massaging" a story or two...thousand. Recall that W was trailing Gore by something like 9% the day before the election, and Kerry by several points too. So the +/-3% margin of error is actually closer to 10%. I think this is a horse-race, and we're screwed either way.

I am heartened by the thought of Obama pondering his options: "Well, I've spent the better part of a billion dollars of other people's money to get this job... But with this latest banking crisis I'm not sure I want it. Maybe I should blow the election, and in 4 years I can say "told ya so" and run against McCain again."

McCain's thinking "maybe I should retire and do Viagra commercials like Bob Dole, make a few bucks, and spend the last years of my life NOT being the guy the media blames for everything."

Folks, this may be the first time in history that two presidenial candidates race each other to "take a fall" and throw the election.

That's good news for Ron Paul, the Liberatrian write-in candidate, in a strong third-position with around one-quarter of one-percent of the vote (there's a +/-3% margin, so Ron Paul may not actually exist).

But enough about the election. I want to keep this blog positive, so today's self-affirmation is:

At least you're not one of these two people (and if you are... Just pretend you're not).