4D Realms

Bullshots

28 January 2015
(Originally posted 27 June 2008)
by Jack D. Farnsworth

[Webmaster's note: The following article was originally written back in 2008 and posted on The Gloryroad Soapbox. I have reposted it here as an homage to my father, the author, and because when I found it sitting on my harddrive I got such a kick out of reading it again and seeing what came to be and how much is still relevant today.]

Further rants, random ravings and assorted sketches in left-over barbeque charcoal

JUMPING TO NOVEMBER

     With Republican popularity hovering just above thirty percent, one-in-ten houses built since 2000 sitting empty due to foreclosure and gas pushing towards five dollars a gallon by year's end, the Dems are expecting a blowout. Based on my own observation that the average American voter is about as smart as a sack of hammers, I'm predicting a squeaker, with Obama getting just five more electoral votes than the 270 of 538 needed to clinch. He only needs the following nineteen states and the District of Columbia to do it, but, even then, his victories in California, Colorado, New Jersey, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Virginia will be razor-thin. A loss in any one of them will mean four more years of sky-rocketing deficits, erosion of privacy and overextension of our military. On the happier side, we should get some respite from Bush's war on science, either way. McCain won't risk his base on intelligent design, but he is facing in the right direction on global warming and stem cell research.

BREAKING IT DOWN BY ELECTORAL VOTE

     *McCain's performance in the upcoming debates could make Maine and New Hampshire competitive. Even supposing he keeps his shias and sunnis straight, "gas-tax- holidays," extended Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and phony appeals to "patriotism" won't be enough to hold these flinty "Old Line" Republicans who refer to themselves as Independents. He'll have to come up with something more substantial than placing a temporary moratorium on earmarks and flipping Social Security to the Dark Side. These guys know that the "Bridge to Nowhere" John keeps mentioning was proposed by a member of his own party and voted down by Democrats.

     **New Mexico could go Dem if Obama picks Bill Richardson as his running mate. Ditto North Carolina if he goes with John Edwards. Governor Kathleen Sebelius, my own personal pick, and even his own family connections won't help him in Kansas. At best, she might convince a few of Hillary Clinton's bra-burners not to break ranks.

     ***Polls show Obama with a lead over McCain in Ohio, but they don't account for the "Diebold Factor," ie, that the chairman of the Diebold Corporation is a major GOP contributor who "guaranteed" (his own word) Bush Ohio in writing, that his voting machines can still be programmed to record negative votes (as they did for Kerry in four separate districts in 2004) and that the Ohio Elections Commission voted against paper trails as "too costly," even after the DNC offered to pay for them and being shown that the "tabulation software" embedded on Diebold's tally disks is a simple mini-spreadsheet that can be altered by anyone with a laptop. If McCain loses here, it can only mean that the RNC has decided not to hit the same bank twice. Look for similar voting 'anomolies' in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Related Factoids

     New Mexico used paper ballots in 2004, but several districts elected to use Diebold scanners to tally the results. In those that did, Bush came out on top regardless of the exit polls. It wasn't investigated because Kerry carried the state anyway.

     In addition to the Diebold factor, thousands of voters in heavily Democratic districts in Ohio and elsewhere were called the monday before the election and "informed" that they either had to vote in another district or that voting had been postponed because of "problems with the voting equipment." Others were left standing in the freezing rain for hours due to a "shortage" of voting machines. Not one of the "shorted" districts was Republican.

STATES THAT COULD SURPRISE FOR OBAMA

     Montana and North Dakota if gas hits four-ninety a gallon before the election. Idaho and Wyoming if gas hits four-ninety and video emerges of McCain having sex with Larry Craig in a parked car. Nevada if there's a giraffe involved. Utah if the giraffe is a smoker.

STATES IN THE EASTERN TIME ZONE TO WATCH CLOSELY ON ELECTION NIGHT

     If New Jersey flips for McCain or Georgia for Obama, look for echoes across the board. If they BOTH flip, grab your guns and head for Canada, it's about to start raining frogs.

ADVICE FOR OBAMA

     Rest up for Rush Limbaugh's upcoming references to your little girls' hair and stop trying to convince voters who lost their virginity to livestock that you're not a muslim. If they haven't noticed that the name of Reverend Wright's church is Trinity United Church of Christ by now, they probably never will. These are people who are struggling to buy milk for their kids but consider the forty bucks they spend to watch WWE Smackdown on Pay-Per-View a necessity. They still think Pat Boone is a spokesman for the young.

ADVICE FOR McCAIN

     Stay in the shade as much as possible to emphasize your biggest advantage over your opponent. Also, don't go bananas with the 3AM phone call bullshit. Your six years in a tiger cage notwithstanding, you've taken the guided tour of Iraq eight times and drank the Kool-Aid every time. When was the last time you heard of a commander in the field telling an incoming dignitary that he was losing ground? The last C-in-C in Viet Nam was predicting ultimate victory as he clung to the skids of the last helicopter out of Disneyland.

BIGGEST MISTAKES SO FAR?

     For Obama, reneging on his earlier pledge to rely on public financing for the final run. True, his campaign doesn't accept money from lobbyists and, true, public financing was made available, post-Watergate, as a means of reducing the impact of special interests on elections, but foregoing it in favor of his own internet cash cow smacks of political opportunism. A promise is a promise. McCain has every right to hold his feet to the fire on this one.

     For McCain, dismissing his opponent as a political pipsqueak who just needs to be put in his place. It's the same mistake the Clintons made. Hillary's last words in her last interview of the campaign were, "I don't understand it. I just don't understand it." Prophetically, they were the same words she uttered in January, in that now-famous cafe in New Hampshire the night before the primary, to describe her third place finish in Iowa.

WHAT DOES HILLARY WANT?

     She still wants to be president and she's still dangerous. Nothing will assure her of another shot as much as four more years of Bush-Cheney mis-statesmanship and Enron economics. Things may no longer be at the "Alert, Will Robinson! Alert!" stage, but Obama would be better served if he restricts her and Bill's campaigning to Oklahoma and Arkansas and leaves the heavy lifting to Tom Daschle and Al Gore. No one at the DNC expects the Clintons to campaign seriously, anyway; they'll go through the motions to hold onto their seats near the orchestra.

WHAT ABOUT A "DREAM TICKET?"

     A potential nightmare for both of them. Putting an opponent on the ticket who had links to the Reverend Wright videos on her website would be a sure sign of weakness on Barack's part and would put Hillary no closer to her ultimate goal. She can only reach it if Obama gets his ass kicked and sets her up for another run in 2012. 2016 will be too late for her. Statistically, a quarter of her strongest supporters (ie, women over sixty) will be dead by then and their gen-Y replacements will be looking for inspiration, not warmed-over boomer causes. Cry all she wants to about it, it wasn't Hillary's plumbing that caused younger voters and, ultimately, Democratic superdelegates to break for Obama. What cost her the race was her sixties feminist sense of entitlement, her need to be the first at any cost.

THE "BUBBA FACTOR"

     America is still the most powerful country on earth. If we intend to stay that way, we need a stronger test for our potential commanders-in-chief than, "Would I want to spend the day in a duck-blind with this guy?" Having brains enough not to borrow money from China would be a good place to start. Especially if we're using it to finance a war that should have ended once we'd completed our 'hostile takeover' of Saddam & Sons. All the Iraqis wanted was regional autonomy and an equitable share of the oil revenues. Up until the sunnis boycotted the election and started blowing up mosques it would have been well within the purvey of the U.N. to broker such a transition. That said, having missed the boat on our part is no reason we should continue to go down with it. The Iraqis need to finish it themselves.

BETTER THAN EXPECTED CONSEQUENCES

     Teachers in California have been reporting a marked improvement in the behavior of black male students since Obama became the frontrunner. Slice it any way you want, sucking a little mud from under Al Sharpton's lizard skins can't be a bad thing.

CUTTING OFF THEIR AIR SUPPLY

     For all the billions we're throwing at surveilling our borders, it's raids on employers that are showing the greatest impact. The sheriff of Maricopa County Arizona has been going after them for several months now and the local Mexican consulate is being swamped with requests for dual-citizenship visas, so those returning home can take their babies with them. Imagine how fast they'd leave if employers weren't just fined but slapped with jail time. Fifteen days for every illegal caught on the premises would be a good place to start. Double it and pull their business licenses if they reoffend.

SNAKE OIL SALESMEN

     I've been following the congressional debate on the energy crisis, and all I can say is, "Wow! The Republicans are actually using their dying breath to defend Big Oil!" They've already given them exploration and drilling rights to 68,000,000 acres of public lands and now they want to hand them half of Alaska's largest remaining wildlife preserve and the right to drill off both coasts. For the layman, 68,000,000 acres is larger than the states of Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, West Virginia and South Carolina combined. Forget that the entire West Coast lies in a seismic subduction zone. Ignore that the East Coast is subject to hurricanes of such frequency and ferocity that the nation's top insurance providers now refuse to provide coverage. Pay no attention that the oil consortium pays no royalties on what it finds or that tapping these proposed new resources will take longer than it took us to put a man on the moon. Big Bucks has gotta have it!

M'S BLEMS

     Sacking Bill Bavasi on June 16th was the only good news I've heard from the M's all season. Giving John McLaren just three days to turn it around afterwards was as chickenshit as it comes. Interim GM Lee Pelekoudas has got to go, too. And, Geez Louise, if top management isn't already throwing Joey Cora's name around as a possible McLaren replacement for 2009!

     In the meantime, losing former Cubs and Padres manager, Jim Riggleman, will be calling the shots on the field with a cadre of 'allstars' who would be struggling at Double-A. Eric Bedard is a bust on the mound, our DH, Jose Vidro, is hitting .219, Jojima forgot how to translate his signals into English and even Ichi can't break out of the .290's. Sexson and Beltre? Forget it! J.J.? Definitely a Putz. Slap 'KEEPER' signs on Felix Hernandez, Jeremy Reed, Jose Lopez and Yuniesky Betancourt and send the rest of them back to Arizona for rehab. They aren't worth the interest on the salaries the M's are paying them.

     If those J.J.s in the Stratoloungers want to waltz us down memory lane, they should be thinking about Lou Pinella and bringing Junior back as a DH. He may be hobbling around like Tiger Woods in the outfield, but he's still got the sweetest follow-through in the game.

SHE WORKS HARD FOR THE MONEY

     According to commercials, the typical American family consists of kids ranging in age from pre-school to junior high, moms and dads in their thirties, and grandparents in their late seventies and early eighties who can barely sew or fish for their arthritis. By my calculations, they're either skipping a generation or they want us to believe that 'grandma' was still having kids in her fifties.

Related Observations

     They're more likely to get the ages right if it's a straight mother-daughter talk about oven cleaners and/or feminine hygene.

     Regardless of what's being pitched, dad is the only one in the house who can't figure out how the lawn works or outwit the baby.

Unrelated Observation

     You can tell someone is a Lawrence Welk fan if they add "years young" to their age. There's nothing like a polka to bring out the teenager in all of us.

HYPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

     The bad news is, ninety-two percent of us still believe in an all-knowing heavenly Choir Director. The good new is, seventy percent of that ninety-two percent now say that there is more than one path to salvation. Thank Santa for small miracles. It's harder to stuff our socks with horseshit if the majority is vague on the details.

Related Factoid

     Per this week's issue of The New Yorker, as many as a quarter of evangelicals voting in the primaries voted Democratic. To be sure, many of them were hostile crossovers, voting for Hillary like their pastors asked them to. And, just as sure, no more than a few would have voted for a "muslim." But maybe, just maybe, a handful might have been thinking that there should be more to Christianity than repealing the Capital Gains Tax and threatening kids with eternal damnation for trick-or-treating. At least I like to think so. Call me a hopeless romantic if you like.

GETTING IT RIGHT

     The Supreme Court ruled five-to-four to overturn the District of Columbia's ban on handguns. That means we finally have a legal precedent that disassociates membership in "a well regulated militia" from the right to defend yourself. North of the Mason-Dixon Line and west of the Rockies, the cities with the most restrictive gun laws are also the ones with the highest crime rates. You'd have thought someone would have noticed before now.

The Candidates' Responses?

     Obama was cool with it. He just said the ruling didn't override common sense, it just said that you have the right to own a handgun to protect yourself.

     McCain used the "Liberal Loop," invented by Newt Gingrich and perfected by Karl Rove and others, to accuse Obama of a "flip-flop." Obama is a Liberal = Liberals are for gun control = Obama is for gun control. It's a crock of shit, but it plays well with a constituency that considers gun ownership not just constitutional but a God-given right. To them, government attempts to regulate flame throwers and surface-to-air missles constitutes infringement.

WORTH QUOTING

     "The nicest thing about having a house on the ocean is you only have assholes on three sides."

                                   — George Carlin, ninth grade dropout, RIP

BEST THING ABOUT BEING RETIRED SO FAR

     Not having to pretend the boss is smarter than a fifth grader.

WORST THING ABOUT BEING RETIRED SO FAR

     It's taken most of the magic out of the word "weekend."