Tuesday, 16 April 2013
Boston Marathon bombings
I hope the people who did this are caught, publicly identified, incarcerated and given a lifetime of being made to wish they had never been born.
Wednesday, 3 April 2013
Feminism vs. Women's Lib, Suffragettes, Bluestockings, etc.
Whenever I hear the word "feminst" or any of its relations, my blood boils just a little. Not because I don't believe in women's equality (I probably lean towards thinking they're the superior sex in many ways) or their right to equal pay or any career or a comprehensive education or owning property or even control over their own fertility, etc. etc. etc.
No, the feminism I take objection to is something very different.
It is that school of thought which trots out "the Patriarchy" as the reason that horrid things sometimes happen to specific women. Worse, it is that school of thought which, when representatives of "the Patriarchy" advocate harsh punishments (up to and including the death penalty) for rapists, child molesters and wife beaters, claim that this is because "the Patriarchy" is upset at having its property spoiled. No, you fuckwits - it's because there's nothing we despise more than people who do bad things to women and children.
It is that school of thought which decries teaching young girls to be able to defend themselves physically in favour of "educating" boys to treat girls decently. We used to do this once upon a time, but if "nice girls don't and nice boys don't ask" was a shade too far the other way, it at least allowed us to define a standard of behaviour which responsible and enterprising adolescents could choose to set aside in private once they had discussed the matter between themselves, and which irresponsible boys could be punished harshly for breaching. The baby clearly went out with the bath-water here. The other problem I have with the "feminist" line here is that it puts control of a girl's safety in the hands of the boy. If he's not the sort to accept her advice (and let's face it, there are boys who simply aren't), she's in big trouble if she doesn't have both the means and the mental attitude to fight him off.
It is that school of thought which holds that catalogues featuring young adult women in very revealing bikinis (and the clothing they advertise) are exploitative of women and worthy of making a big hue and cry about. Ditto jelly wrestling and other spectator sports in which scantily clad women are the participants and men are overwhelmingly the intended audience. Um, no. Nobody is forcing these women to be there. When you liberate women in the sphere of their sexuality and careers, you have to accept that some of those women are going to take both in directions you don't approve of.
There are more pressing problems. The original push for women's rights in the Western World was for more basic and essential things - the right to own property (including themselves, basically); the right to vote (and by extension, to be voted for); the right to work; the right to an education. All of those battles HAVE BEEN WON in the Western World, and were won long before the current crop of twentysomething campaigners for "women's rights" were even born - to which the lives of both Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher will attest.
These days we are the bemused observers of essays in which these "feminists" angst over the eating of meat as a symbol of approval of male violence over women. In the meantime, there are millions of women around the world who do NOT have the basic rights outlined in bold above. I think "feminism" as a whole should get a grip on itself, shut the fucking hell up about its ideological concerns and concentrate on rectifying these deficiencies in the rest of the world.
Then, and only then, should it come back and lecture us about the sexual politics of being a carnivore, telling adult women what brands of bikini they're allowed to wear when they choose to participate in mud-wrestling, and insisting that it's not as important to teach adolescent girls how to repel a pushy or aggressive boyfriend who won't take no for an answer as it is to try to indoctrinate boys who won't listen.
No, the feminism I take objection to is something very different.
It is that school of thought which trots out "the Patriarchy" as the reason that horrid things sometimes happen to specific women. Worse, it is that school of thought which, when representatives of "the Patriarchy" advocate harsh punishments (up to and including the death penalty) for rapists, child molesters and wife beaters, claim that this is because "the Patriarchy" is upset at having its property spoiled. No, you fuckwits - it's because there's nothing we despise more than people who do bad things to women and children.
It is that school of thought which decries teaching young girls to be able to defend themselves physically in favour of "educating" boys to treat girls decently. We used to do this once upon a time, but if "nice girls don't and nice boys don't ask" was a shade too far the other way, it at least allowed us to define a standard of behaviour which responsible and enterprising adolescents could choose to set aside in private once they had discussed the matter between themselves, and which irresponsible boys could be punished harshly for breaching. The baby clearly went out with the bath-water here. The other problem I have with the "feminist" line here is that it puts control of a girl's safety in the hands of the boy. If he's not the sort to accept her advice (and let's face it, there are boys who simply aren't), she's in big trouble if she doesn't have both the means and the mental attitude to fight him off.
It is that school of thought which holds that catalogues featuring young adult women in very revealing bikinis (and the clothing they advertise) are exploitative of women and worthy of making a big hue and cry about. Ditto jelly wrestling and other spectator sports in which scantily clad women are the participants and men are overwhelmingly the intended audience. Um, no. Nobody is forcing these women to be there. When you liberate women in the sphere of their sexuality and careers, you have to accept that some of those women are going to take both in directions you don't approve of.
There are more pressing problems. The original push for women's rights in the Western World was for more basic and essential things - the right to own property (including themselves, basically); the right to vote (and by extension, to be voted for); the right to work; the right to an education. All of those battles HAVE BEEN WON in the Western World, and were won long before the current crop of twentysomething campaigners for "women's rights" were even born - to which the lives of both Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher will attest.
These days we are the bemused observers of essays in which these "feminists" angst over the eating of meat as a symbol of approval of male violence over women. In the meantime, there are millions of women around the world who do NOT have the basic rights outlined in bold above. I think "feminism" as a whole should get a grip on itself, shut the fucking hell up about its ideological concerns and concentrate on rectifying these deficiencies in the rest of the world.
Then, and only then, should it come back and lecture us about the sexual politics of being a carnivore, telling adult women what brands of bikini they're allowed to wear when they choose to participate in mud-wrestling, and insisting that it's not as important to teach adolescent girls how to repel a pushy or aggressive boyfriend who won't take no for an answer as it is to try to indoctrinate boys who won't listen.
Monday, 1 April 2013
Why I believe in the right of the general public to own military-pattern firearms.
Because no Nazi wants to be the one to deliver the midnight knock on the door of an armed Jew.
Yes, that is a metaphor. It is a metaphor for any minority group.
Consider that it is the Republicans who are the most aggressive defenders of the American public's right to keep and bear arms. Consider that it is they who, in the backward world of Leftist "gay death camp" paranoia, would be delivering that knock on the door. Do you really think they would do that, having (in their own perfect world) enabled that target population to arm itself to the teeth?
The ability of a vulnerable minority group to arm itself and give its aggressors a thorough beating is as old as history - the Book of Esther (for those who bother to read the Bible any more) offers the perfect example. Which leads to my second bolded point, widely attributed and almost certainly as widely paraphrased:
Yes, that is a metaphor. It is a metaphor for any minority group.
Consider that it is the Republicans who are the most aggressive defenders of the American public's right to keep and bear arms. Consider that it is they who, in the backward world of Leftist "gay death camp" paranoia, would be delivering that knock on the door. Do you really think they would do that, having (in their own perfect world) enabled that target population to arm itself to the teeth?
The ability of a vulnerable minority group to arm itself and give its aggressors a thorough beating is as old as history - the Book of Esther (for those who bother to read the Bible any more) offers the perfect example. Which leads to my second bolded point, widely attributed and almost certainly as widely paraphrased:
Only a tyrant fears an armed population.
I have to ask of the gun-control advocates in the United States: "What do you fear? And why?" I do not think they can point to Sandy Hook and other such atrocities with any conviction - murder with firearms is a daily occurrence in many places in the United States, but it seems to me that far too dim and limited a spotlight is cast (if at all) on who is shooting whom, and with what (e.g. illegally-obtained firearms). It's very easy to wave your arms when twenty little middle-class kids are killed all at once in the same place, but not so easy to drum up outrage when the killings are occurring on a regular basis, far from you, among people with whom you would never dream of associating (inner-city youths who are part of gangs). Where are THEY getting their guns?
I cannot and will not defend progressive restrictions on the ownership of firearms by law-abiding persons as being either an honest or a moral response to the actions of singular maniacs, however horrific those actions may be.
It is the punishment of the innocent for the crimes of the guilty. It is unjust and hypocritical.
It is the punishment of the innocent for the crimes of the guilty. It is unjust and hypocritical.
Justice is the punishment of the guilty for their own crimes.
ALLOW ME TO MAKE ONE THING VERY, VERY CLEAR. DESPITE THE DATE ON THIS POST, IT IS NOT - AND WAS NEVER INTENDED TO BE - AN APRIL FOOL'S JOKE. I DO NOT MAKE JOKES ABOUT THINGS LIKE THIS, AND I NEVER WILL.
Tuesday, 26 March 2013
On Bronies.
If you've been hiding away from the dodgier corners of the internet, you can probably be excused for not knowing that a Brony is an adult male fan of the cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (MLP henceforth), a work specifically pitched at little girls but, as the creator admits, also engineered to ensure that fathers, brothers, uncles, male cousins etc. obliged by circumstances of who-owns-the-remote-right-now to watch, can stand to do so without gritting their teeth and wishing for death.
And that's fine - I've been exposed to more than one episode myself, and I have to admit that for a cartoon whose underlying purpose (let's be honest) is to sell plastic ponies to the starry-eyed pony-loving preschool-to-pretween girl market, it's actually pretty watchable. So I can understand a father getting sucked into following along if daddy's little girl obliges him to watch it with her on a daily basis; and if there were fan conventions, I would be happy to ignore the fact that a significant proportion of the attendees were adult men in their mid twenties to early forties (say), depending on the age of their daughters (or nieces, or stepdaughters or whatever).
What I can't ignore is that there is a quite significant proportion of adult male fans who do NOT have daughters, nieces, girlfriends' daughters, granddaughters, or indeed ANY significant relationship with ANY prepubertal female fan of the show. And this perplexes me more than a little. I can accept that a few of them are going to be men who are broadly interested in all forms of animation, who stumbled across this one, and who thought it was cute and nice to chill out on when they got tired of watching other things. And that's fine too; anime in particular can be quite bloody and/or moody, and a steady diet of that is not to many people's liking. I can accept that a few of them were the (now grown up) brothers of girls who played with the original generation of MLP toys and who watched out of surprised interest and curiosity, thinking "What the hell is MLP still doing existing after all this time?" and, like the parents, got sucked in.
But not all. And then it gets really disturbing.
To cut a long story short, there is a man who pronounces himself "engaged" to Twilight Sparkle, one of the characters from the show. He gets angry when other Bronies draw erotic pictures of these ponies at play.
Yes. You did read that correctly. There are adult male fans of a pony cartoon pitched at little girls, who get a kick out of drawing these ponies fucking each other. And there is a man defending Twilight Sparkle's honour on the grounds that she is his fiancée.
I have also seen, but will not link to, a picture of a man with two plush ponies clasped between his naked thighs (he's naked to the waist and no details are spared, but he has at least been discreet enough not to show his face), and an online story (author's gender unknown) in which one of these ponies is drugged and systematically vivisected while her best friend keeps up a cheerful running commentary that would make Hannibal Lecter wince. All of which makes me think that adult investment in a children's show has been somewhat overdone to say the least; and while "Your kink is not my kink and that's OK", it might be germane to tighten our tolerance spectrum a little and to ask these people to apply their kink to characters and fandoms pitched somewhat more towards their own age group.
NOTE: I have read and re-read the quoted parts of the enraged letter from "Twilight Sparkle's fiancé" (see link) and the more I do so, the more I think he's a very clever troll or other agent provocateur and not serious about it at all. I could be wrong but I pray I'm not, because when an adult man can seriously, publicly state that he is in love with and actually engaged to a cartoon character intended for preadolescent girls, I think it points to him having serious issues with his grasp on reality and his defenders having serious issues with their priorities in life.
I would go further and state that it probably points to issues with Western society as a whole. Have we really no more problems to solve that we can afford to engage in such frivolities? With the national debts of the wealthiest and most productive nations on Earth spiralling upwards and more and more people either employed or sustained by the governments responsible (and unwilling to vote them out despite whatever disasters they may be stumbling from and to), I am firmly convinced that the answer to that question is no. If civilisation (which furnishes their social life support system) collapses - and I pray it can hang on at least until my children are adult enough to fend for themselves and make an informed decision whether or not to reproduce - there will be a lot of people who will be getting a short, sharp shock, and then they will almost certainly find themselves either dependent upon or at the mercy of... but that's for another post, another day.
And that's fine - I've been exposed to more than one episode myself, and I have to admit that for a cartoon whose underlying purpose (let's be honest) is to sell plastic ponies to the starry-eyed pony-loving preschool-to-pretween girl market, it's actually pretty watchable. So I can understand a father getting sucked into following along if daddy's little girl obliges him to watch it with her on a daily basis; and if there were fan conventions, I would be happy to ignore the fact that a significant proportion of the attendees were adult men in their mid twenties to early forties (say), depending on the age of their daughters (or nieces, or stepdaughters or whatever).
What I can't ignore is that there is a quite significant proportion of adult male fans who do NOT have daughters, nieces, girlfriends' daughters, granddaughters, or indeed ANY significant relationship with ANY prepubertal female fan of the show. And this perplexes me more than a little. I can accept that a few of them are going to be men who are broadly interested in all forms of animation, who stumbled across this one, and who thought it was cute and nice to chill out on when they got tired of watching other things. And that's fine too; anime in particular can be quite bloody and/or moody, and a steady diet of that is not to many people's liking. I can accept that a few of them were the (now grown up) brothers of girls who played with the original generation of MLP toys and who watched out of surprised interest and curiosity, thinking "What the hell is MLP still doing existing after all this time?" and, like the parents, got sucked in.
But not all. And then it gets really disturbing.
To cut a long story short, there is a man who pronounces himself "engaged" to Twilight Sparkle, one of the characters from the show. He gets angry when other Bronies draw erotic pictures of these ponies at play.
Yes. You did read that correctly. There are adult male fans of a pony cartoon pitched at little girls, who get a kick out of drawing these ponies fucking each other. And there is a man defending Twilight Sparkle's honour on the grounds that she is his fiancée.
I have also seen, but will not link to, a picture of a man with two plush ponies clasped between his naked thighs (he's naked to the waist and no details are spared, but he has at least been discreet enough not to show his face), and an online story (author's gender unknown) in which one of these ponies is drugged and systematically vivisected while her best friend keeps up a cheerful running commentary that would make Hannibal Lecter wince. All of which makes me think that adult investment in a children's show has been somewhat overdone to say the least; and while "Your kink is not my kink and that's OK", it might be germane to tighten our tolerance spectrum a little and to ask these people to apply their kink to characters and fandoms pitched somewhat more towards their own age group.
NOTE: I have read and re-read the quoted parts of the enraged letter from "Twilight Sparkle's fiancé" (see link) and the more I do so, the more I think he's a very clever troll or other agent provocateur and not serious about it at all. I could be wrong but I pray I'm not, because when an adult man can seriously, publicly state that he is in love with and actually engaged to a cartoon character intended for preadolescent girls, I think it points to him having serious issues with his grasp on reality and his defenders having serious issues with their priorities in life.
I would go further and state that it probably points to issues with Western society as a whole. Have we really no more problems to solve that we can afford to engage in such frivolities? With the national debts of the wealthiest and most productive nations on Earth spiralling upwards and more and more people either employed or sustained by the governments responsible (and unwilling to vote them out despite whatever disasters they may be stumbling from and to), I am firmly convinced that the answer to that question is no. If civilisation (which furnishes their social life support system) collapses - and I pray it can hang on at least until my children are adult enough to fend for themselves and make an informed decision whether or not to reproduce - there will be a lot of people who will be getting a short, sharp shock, and then they will almost certainly find themselves either dependent upon or at the mercy of... but that's for another post, another day.
Sunday, 3 March 2013
Back after a long absence...
...mostly to do with real-life being busy and also a large literary project that got in the way and demanded priority.
I read in the Catallaxy Files blog today that the Mayor of New York thinks there is no problem with infinite indebtedness.
It seems fair to argue (as does the original poster) that this is the thinking which drives the entire fiscal policy of the Obama administration. I don't think there's a year he's been in office in which he hasn't posted a trillion dollar deficit; I don't think there will ever be a year he's in power in which he doesn't post one. And for all that, there is nothing to show for it in concrete terms.
A similar problem is seen in Australia, in which former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd ranted (while still Opposition Leader) that "this [his Conservative predecessor's] reckless spending must stop", despite the fact that his predecessors had posted budget surplus after budget surplus, year after year. Mr Rudd and his successor, Ms Gillard, then went on to do the complete opposite - they have never posted a surplus, and I do not think they ever intended to. Now their support is falling to new lows, and people who formerly fought for the privilege of kissing their arses are now biting them. And as defeat looms and the cliff-face of irrelevance beckons, the journalistic Left is beginning to have brain detonations.
I read in the Catallaxy Files blog today that the Mayor of New York thinks there is no problem with infinite indebtedness.
It seems fair to argue (as does the original poster) that this is the thinking which drives the entire fiscal policy of the Obama administration. I don't think there's a year he's been in office in which he hasn't posted a trillion dollar deficit; I don't think there will ever be a year he's in power in which he doesn't post one. And for all that, there is nothing to show for it in concrete terms.
A similar problem is seen in Australia, in which former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd ranted (while still Opposition Leader) that "this [his Conservative predecessor's] reckless spending must stop", despite the fact that his predecessors had posted budget surplus after budget surplus, year after year. Mr Rudd and his successor, Ms Gillard, then went on to do the complete opposite - they have never posted a surplus, and I do not think they ever intended to. Now their support is falling to new lows, and people who formerly fought for the privilege of kissing their arses are now biting them. And as defeat looms and the cliff-face of irrelevance beckons, the journalistic Left is beginning to have brain detonations.
Friday, 14 December 2012
In response to the latest piece of savagery in the US...
...at an elementary school, of all things, all I have to say is this:
1) It has been said time and again, and I shall repeat - guns do not kill people; people do. If this madman had not obtained his firearm(s) legally, he would have done so on the Black Market (which is where all too many murder weapons are bought, and against which all the laws of all the nations are impotent).
ETA CORRECTION: I read after the fact that his opening act was to murder his own mother and use her guns.
2) I do not support a knee-jerk change to firearms laws, or a watering down of the right of US citizens to keep and bear arms, every time some fucking nutcase with a firearm goes off the deep end. More people are probably killed every week on US roads.
3) Every restraint that is imposed on legitimate, law-abiding firearm owners every time some fucking unhinged nutcase does something like this is nothing more or less than the punishment of the innocent for the crimes of the guilty. For that reason I cannot and will not defend it.
My sympathies are with the families and friends of the dead, but I WILL NOT BE PARTY TO THE PUNISHMENT OF THE INNOCENT FOR THE CRIMES OF THE GUILTY. For this reason, I WILL NOT HEAR TALK OF 'GUN CONTROL' IN RESPONSE TO CRIMES SUCH AS THIS.
That is all.
1) It has been said time and again, and I shall repeat - guns do not kill people; people do. If this madman had not obtained his firearm(s) legally, he would have done so on the Black Market (which is where all too many murder weapons are bought, and against which all the laws of all the nations are impotent).
ETA CORRECTION: I read after the fact that his opening act was to murder his own mother and use her guns.
2) I do not support a knee-jerk change to firearms laws, or a watering down of the right of US citizens to keep and bear arms, every time some fucking nutcase with a firearm goes off the deep end. More people are probably killed every week on US roads.
3) Every restraint that is imposed on legitimate, law-abiding firearm owners every time some fucking unhinged nutcase does something like this is nothing more or less than the punishment of the innocent for the crimes of the guilty. For that reason I cannot and will not defend it.
My sympathies are with the families and friends of the dead, but I WILL NOT BE PARTY TO THE PUNISHMENT OF THE INNOCENT FOR THE CRIMES OF THE GUILTY. For this reason, I WILL NOT HEAR TALK OF 'GUN CONTROL' IN RESPONSE TO CRIMES SUCH AS THIS.
That is all.
Monday, 5 November 2012
Further little snapshots:
From the guys at Gay Patriot: Out-of-touch Obama. An article focussing mostly on economic realities and perceptions. You're going to have a hard time labelling this lot as typical Republican homophobes, and an even harder time doing it to their faces. Some will no doubt call them as suffering from "internalised homophobia", which seems to be code for "Gays who don't agree with my viewpoints or do what I think they ought to be doing".
"We Leave Nobody Behind." Pundit and Pundette bring Obama's words on Hurricane Sandy back to haunt him with regards to Benghazi, where repeated security drawdowns prior to the event (against advice) and multiple calls for help unanswered on the night led to four men getting left behind, two of whom went out of their way to fight (and in the end die) valiantly trying to fulfil that promise for the other two.
Speaking of words that come back to haunt, taken from Lucianne.com's Monday November 5th wrapup, this editorial cartoon (copied and posted here in case the link drops), encapsulates (and mocks) perfectly the sort of verbal sophistry and populism by which Obama was elevated to the Presidency.
How's that healing going now, Mr President?
From the guys (mostly, it seems) at Ace of Spades HQ:
It translates to a sentence. "Obama to get ass-reaming, without lube"
Metaphorically speaking, yes. On a less brutal note:
If we do this tomorrow, we cement his legacy as a darker Carter with bigger ears.
This comparison (Obama and Carter) has been out there for some time. Meanwhile, others perceive more at stake than the survival of ridiculously profitable cartoon birds, cheap oral contraceptives and same-sex marriages (on which the President conveniently backflipped once he had his gay donors' money, according to the GayPatriot guys):
OK, I've taken some action. I've sent an email to the people in my neighborhood urging them to vote, and offering transportation to anyone that may need it. (I live in a neighborhood with more than a few elderly, so that's a distinct possibility.) Sure, I'll miss work, if I have to. My seven year-old daughter is already $70,000 in debt, so this election is kind of important to me.
Says it all really.
Back to those polls again, which might be so unreliable as to be useless or worse. How unreliable?
I actually got a call yesterday. We're registered democrats and all the caller asked me was if we were going to vote this year. That was it, I said yes and they said okay, bye. They didn't ask me who we were voting for because I wanted them to so bad so that I could say Romney. I didn't get the chance. We're a family of 9 votes for Romney but before we were democrats, we are military....
Is Obama's campaign being planned and managed by a bunch of people who think that all registered Democrats are automatically going to vote that way? One would hope they'd be more professional than that. Here are nine votes which are definitely not going to go that way. If this is happening in even a small proportion of nominally Democrat households, there's a big shock coming tomorrow night. Of course we have no information on who was running that poll and what was being done with the information.
I could go on giving vignettes on why this is potentially going to be a Republican victory. There is a small possibility that if it is one, it will be a victory of such staggering proportions that some Democrats will probably have a psychological breakdown.
How well will Obama handle defeat? Will he go graciously, like the "decent and honourable man" John McCain defended prior to the 2008 election? Or will the worst fears of the indefensibly paranoid be confirmed, as he channels his spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright and screams from his pulpit in spittle-flecked rage and orders his people to "Get Whitey"?
The answer doubtlessly lies somewhere in between. I would prefer one towards the gentlemanly end. And yet, things such as the keying of Republicans' cars, and the mental ejaculations on Twitter threatening riot and violence if Romney should win, give me pause.
"We Leave Nobody Behind." Pundit and Pundette bring Obama's words on Hurricane Sandy back to haunt him with regards to Benghazi, where repeated security drawdowns prior to the event (against advice) and multiple calls for help unanswered on the night led to four men getting left behind, two of whom went out of their way to fight (and in the end die) valiantly trying to fulfil that promise for the other two.
Speaking of words that come back to haunt, taken from Lucianne.com's Monday November 5th wrapup, this editorial cartoon (copied and posted here in case the link drops), encapsulates (and mocks) perfectly the sort of verbal sophistry and populism by which Obama was elevated to the Presidency.
How's that healing going now, Mr President?
From the guys (mostly, it seems) at Ace of Spades HQ:
CNN: The Election Is Totally Tied If You Assume D+11, Nearly 60% Higher Democratic Advantage Than In Perfect Storm Year 2008
They're quoting CNN's "tie", but highlighting something else - the stated biases of the respondents to the polls. Polls at the moment are like statistics, worse than lies or damned lies, but this sort of gross oversampling needed to get an even result seems to speak volumes in a race where a couple of percent advantage in the popular vote allegedly equates to a definite Electoral College win. In the words of one of the replies:It translates to a sentence. "Obama to get ass-reaming, without lube"
Metaphorically speaking, yes. On a less brutal note:
If we do this tomorrow, we cement his legacy as a darker Carter with bigger ears.
This comparison (Obama and Carter) has been out there for some time. Meanwhile, others perceive more at stake than the survival of ridiculously profitable cartoon birds, cheap oral contraceptives and same-sex marriages (on which the President conveniently backflipped once he had his gay donors' money, according to the GayPatriot guys):
OK, I've taken some action. I've sent an email to the people in my neighborhood urging them to vote, and offering transportation to anyone that may need it. (I live in a neighborhood with more than a few elderly, so that's a distinct possibility.) Sure, I'll miss work, if I have to. My seven year-old daughter is already $70,000 in debt, so this election is kind of important to me.
Says it all really.
Back to those polls again, which might be so unreliable as to be useless or worse. How unreliable?
I actually got a call yesterday. We're registered democrats and all the caller asked me was if we were going to vote this year. That was it, I said yes and they said okay, bye. They didn't ask me who we were voting for because I wanted them to so bad so that I could say Romney. I didn't get the chance. We're a family of 9 votes for Romney but before we were democrats, we are military....
Is Obama's campaign being planned and managed by a bunch of people who think that all registered Democrats are automatically going to vote that way? One would hope they'd be more professional than that. Here are nine votes which are definitely not going to go that way. If this is happening in even a small proportion of nominally Democrat households, there's a big shock coming tomorrow night. Of course we have no information on who was running that poll and what was being done with the information.
I could go on giving vignettes on why this is potentially going to be a Republican victory. There is a small possibility that if it is one, it will be a victory of such staggering proportions that some Democrats will probably have a psychological breakdown.
How well will Obama handle defeat? Will he go graciously, like the "decent and honourable man" John McCain defended prior to the 2008 election? Or will the worst fears of the indefensibly paranoid be confirmed, as he channels his spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright and screams from his pulpit in spittle-flecked rage and orders his people to "Get Whitey"?
The answer doubtlessly lies somewhere in between. I would prefer one towards the gentlemanly end. And yet, things such as the keying of Republicans' cars, and the mental ejaculations on Twitter threatening riot and violence if Romney should win, give me pause.