Barack Obama: LIAR!!!

Listening to KMOX while I folded laundry, I caught a couple minutes of Charlie Brennan’s talk with Barack Obama, candidate for senator in Illinois, and I have discovered he is a LIAR!!!

He offhandedly asserted the following:

  • That health care costs for average Ill-annoyans is rising every month.
  • That anyone in southern Ill-annoy can understand long term employment trends.

If you factor in that health care costs for a number of Ill-annoy voters are not increasing (because they’re dead), and that insurance premiums for many employers’ plans only increase annually, it’s clear that he’s a fearmonger. Also, if you find one person in southern Ill-annoy that doesn’t interpret statistics, you’ve refuted his second point.

In the proud tradition of Al Franken, whose tome I am currently reading, this makes Barack Obama a LYING LIAR who tells LIES!!!

I think I am getting this professional partisan flack thing down. Hey, coaches from the bigs, contact me at stlbrianj@hotmail.com and I will deploy the the shrill written equivalent of the blink tag for you.

Also, anyone can tell Barack Obama is not a politician from Wisconsin; he doesn’t even have a first name for a first name.

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Admission

I don’t mind telling you, I will be glad tomorrow night after 7 pm when the polls close. Every time I have answered the phone today, a recording from some former political hack has greeted me, undoubtedly encouraging me to vote one way or the other.

Unfortunately, I hang up once I recognize the call for what it is.

These recorded calls insult me more than a volunteer calling me live to talk to me about their candidate or issue. I know, they occur mostly during the day when people aren’t home with the specific purpose of having a recorded message engage a recording device (the answering machine). Come on, though….. I work at home, and every time your goofball devices call, I oughter bill you for an hour of my expensive consultant time.

Unfortunately, I never make it long enough into the recorded message to know whom to blame.

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Brian Digs Up The Dirt on Michael Moore

So there I was at the happy hour, enjoying a refreshing Sierra Mist with some former coworkers because the bloody establishment stopped carrying Guinness on draught. I had purchased a copy of Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man as part of an intervention program for El Guapo, who apparently saw some value in something in Farenheit 9/11 besides the previews beforehand. So the book was lying on the table, which is quite unlike any of Michael Moore’s books, which lie anywhere they are, when a former x2 coworker (with whom I had worked at two different companies–hey, it’s a not what you know but who you know) joined us. She sat at the table, spotted the picture of the Macy’s parade-sized director, and made the noise and shudder with which we conservatives are familiar.

“I hate him,” she said.

The group at the table made agreeing noises, except for El Guapo, whose intervention is still in early stages.

No, she insisted, she hated him. Although we knew she was from Michigan, we did not know she was from Davison, Michigan, and that she graduated in 1973 from Davison High School–a year after Michael Moore was lifted by his parents’ bootstraps into graduation in that suburban school.

He had anger management problems even then, she informed us. She mentioned he played clarinet, although was third or fourth chair, and that he didn’t have a girlfriend in high school. There you have it: the MfBJN exclusive revelation. Michael Moore is an outcast band geek with no girlfriend gone bad.

I know, you’re thinking the same thing we all are: If only my former x2 coworker had made the ultimate sacrifice in 1971 and had gone out with that creepy Mikey guy, and maybe even, you know, kissed him, perhaps the world would have been spared his slothful wrath.

But friends, some sacrifices are too horrible to contemplate, much less ask.

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Tis the Season for Polling

I just spent fifteen minutes answering my first political telephone poll of the season. I explained that I didn’t have any bad things to say about Jay Nixon, the Missouri Attorney General, but I would probably vote for the other guy anyway.

When asked the best thing I could say about him, I said He’s not Eliot Spitzer. Second nicest thing would have been He’s not Peggy Lotsalager of Wisconsin.

What, with that ringing endorsementand the realization that B. Holden is no Rod Bladjavovich or Jim Doyle, I’ve got a new slogan for the state of Missouri: Our elected officials don’t suck as bad as yours.

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Shotgun!

I’m calling it officially! In November, my vote will cancel out Bruce Springsteen’s in the presidential election! I called it! You’ll have to find your own celebrity to thwart.

Oh, I know how it works. I can’t cancel it out because he’ll vote in New Jersey and I’ll vote in Missouri, and we’ll vote for different electoral college members. But still, symbolically, he’s all mine.

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Who’s Your Theologian?

I know I’m a couple hours short of that degree in Theology, but I recognize the problem in Hugh Hewitt’s assertion:

“For all of its history, ADL has been self-asked to live up to one of the oldest most fundamental principles of civilization. It is actually one of the Commandments as we know: ‘Love your neighbor.’ And all of you are yourselves showing courage, because it can be bitter, it is tough. Bigotry, hatred, fear, drive people to do things that are inexplicable, and it is hard in any community to stand up against that, but it is vital.”

John Kerry –connecting again with yet another audience. ADL is a largely Jewish organization, which is not likely to recognize John Kerry’s “commandment” as one of the big 10.

Sloppy sentence, Hugh. You know and I know that the Big 10 are found in the book of Exodus, which features the little-known story of the Hebrews fleeing from Egypt. Some of the people in the Anti-Defamation League might have heard that story sometime. So it’s not that the members of the Jewish organization won’t recognize the ten commandments.

A more nuanced reading indicates that the members of the Anti-Defamation League will not recognize Kerry’s “Love your neighbor” edict as one of the ten commandments because it’s not in the ten commandments, not because the Jews don’t recognize the ten commandments.

Take care with your words, brother, because someone out there will hop on it to paint you as anti-semitic, somehow turning your ill-written assertion into repeating the blood libel.

(Link first seen on Power Line.)

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Us and Them

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel catches John Kerry in an unfortunate pronoun:

Democrat John Kerry said Monday that the violent Shiite uprising in Iraq underscores the Bush administration’s failure to build a “genuine” international coalition there and create the conditions for lasting stability.

“I think they’re on a terrible course,” Kerry said of the administration’s performance, while speaking in Washington, D.C., to a group of reporters, most from Midwestern newspapers.

Asked if the United States should arrest Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical cleric who inspired the uprising, Kerry said, “I think they’ve got to do what they’ve got to do.”

I don’t agree with all of Bush’s policies, Senator, but I do agree that we are one country, and it’s our countrymen who are in Iraq right now, carrying out the orders of our elected leader.

So, Senator, how else can you divide this country into us and them?

Pretend like I haven’t paid attention to your campaign so far and summarize.

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A Converse to the DYKWIA Syndrome

John Kerry visited St. Louis this weekend. His campaign managed to offend the largest radio station in the area and 50,000 watts’ worth of a listening area spread across the Midwest by not granting interviews to mere radio reporters (television only, thanks) and by not even knowing who KMOX was. KMOX has been banging this drum all morning and has this on its Web site:

Kerry Aide: What’s KMOX?
March 27, 2004
Reporter barred from interview

The John Kerry campaign came to St. Louis Saturday evening. . .and seemed a bit confused. The Democratic hopeful appeared at a tightly-guarded rally in Forest Park to talk about his plan to create jobs. KMOX Reporter Molly Hyland was on the scene but found Kerry campaign aides had decided that only television reporters could interview the candidate. Kerry’s campaign aide said she had never heard of KMOX and would not allow an interview. The Kerry campaign did arrange for the senator to call KMOX by phone earlier in the day. . .but that, too, fell through. The call never came. Saturday night, the Kerry campaign phone lines were closed; its spokesmen out of reach.

Good work, Kerry. You’re really connecting with the little man in the West Mid, or whatever the quaint residents call that desolate prairie between the coasts.

KMOX also mentioned on the air that the audience jeered the aides and the Secret Service whenever they asked who KMOX was and what kind of radio station it is. It’s the biggest radio station in the market. It has been for decades. Thanks for stopping by in your layover between real work.

Undoubtedly, people will point out that this is only the ill will generation of a single campaign staffer, but I have to pose two rhetorical questions about the Kerry campaign from this tidbit:

  1. What does it say about the campaign that the event was controlled by imported help? Didn’t they have any local support to organize the thing?
  2. So, Kerry’s aides don’t research enough to know what KMOX was. These are the incompetents running his campaign. If Kerry is elected, will these be the same people strumming the delicate strings of national power?

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Problems with the Libertarian Party

As I might have indicated before, I’m not a member of the Libertarian Party for several reasons. VodkaPundit hammers on one of the themes: Libertarian foreign policy. In the Utopia projected by the Libertarians, we could disengage from the world and only respond when attacked, and only in defense. Invasions would be almost entirely out of the question. I’m far more Machiavellian than that. Sometimes decimation is too lenient.

The Libertarians also need to understand that some laws do need to be in place, and that the government can serve some purpose in its arbitrary nature to resolve disputes among citizens and to set guidelines.

I went to see Michael Badnarik speak when he came through St. Louis. He spoke to a bunch of us in the basement of a pizza parlor, and we talked for a while about some issues wherein I wanted to know pragmatically how he would handle things. Eventually, the conversation turned into a monologue, as it often does with idealogues, and he came around to privatizing or eliminating the air traffic control system.

But how will the airplanes keep from colliding, either my beautiful wife or El Guapo asked.

People stay in their own lanes on the roads for the most part, the politician said.

But the government paints the lines, I replied.

Hah! My second-best dig at a candidate for the presidency. First, of course, was in 1984 when I attended a Mondale speech in St. Charles, Missouri, when I led the charge of people tearing the Mondale signs apart and penning our own Reagan signs to wave. Much to the chagrin of the gifted program teacher who brought me during a school day. I was 12. I would say I was born conservative, but I was a premie, which doesn’t seem to be a conservative viewpoint at all.

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Missouri, Oklahoma, New Mexico, All The Same

Taranto leads to Boston Globe story about “Little John” Kerry. Little John’s been lacing up the skates to play hockey in New Hampshire and soon Michigan to show he’s one of the guys. Since Missourians are not hockey fans–the St. Louis Blues, the River Otters, the Springfield Spirit, and other teams notwithstanding–John Kerry’s willing to do what it takes to prove he’s down with us homies in the MidWest:

“I guess I’ll ride a bucking bronco or a bull or something,” Kerry joked. “I’m game. Whatever they got.”

What the johnk do we look like to this coastal freaking cosmopolitan liberal botullism-imbibing nutbar? A bucking bronco or a bull or something?

I am speechless. I have nothing snarky to say. He didn’t even invoke the Missouri mule. What we all like here is a ro-d-o! Excuse me while I go punch a cow.

Mizzou, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas, California, it’s all the same to Massachusetts-area dilettante senators.

Good thing I am not reading more of this damn Boston paper’s story, with its allusions to Jean Carnahan as a real Senator or that St. Louis could shake up 800 people when brought together by St. Louis mayor Frankie Slayer and the entire Democrat machine to greet Little John, or I might really get irritated.

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Introducing Johnk

All right, I can’t leave it alone.

However, I am introducing a new placeholder for that most unwordly of unwordlies, the dreaded f-word which appears on this blog slightly less than The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler. All three of my regular readers know I prefer schnuck as a stand-in, based upon an essay I wrote some time ago about the need for better, more creative cursing. That essay’s lost to antiquity, but the message lives on.

And so in honor of John F. Kerry, indistinguished (some politicial office holder or another) of (some tiny, self-important coastal state), I introduce johnk, a single syllable which can capture every sort of meaning the f-word can, and with less shock among women and children and definitely more mockery of the Democrat party.

Plus, let’s savor the word itself. A single syllable word with a nice, hard terminal consonant rox. Try it: Johnk!. Ooh yeah. And if you slur the first syllable, it can be haughty and French-sounding. Zzzzhonc! That’s a twofer you don’t get with an unvoiced labiodental fricative.

As an addendum, I wish to say to the driver of that red Aztek that ran a red light on Hanley to cut across three lanes of traffic to make a left turn from the right lane this afternoon, Johnk you, you johnking heinzingjohnker. I hope the Jaws of Life bite into your candy-apple vehicle and find half a worm.

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Another Actor Succumbs to the Predator Curse

Arnold Schwarzenegger is the second actor to to succomb to the Predator Curse.

The Predator curse seems to be that actors who starred in the movie Predator, some years after the filming of the movie, become governors of states. Jesse Ventura was the first. Can Carl Weathers be far behind?

This brings to mind two considerations:

  1. I would vote for Kevin Peter Hall to replace B. Holden in Missouri;
  2. I hope this curse doesn’t extend to Predator 2, because that would mean Danny Glover is likely to get it and become governor of New York, and I wouldn’t wish that on any state, even New York.

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