Winning the 108-year-old vote

McCain apparently wasn't old or experienced enough for this Gaithersburg woman: "Woman, 108, votes in her 22nd presidential election."

From the article:

Though she predicted victory for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), in part because of his ability to mobilize young voters, she just couldn't get herself to buy into either Obama or Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). So the 20-year Asbury resident — who moved to Annapolis in the 1920s and worked as a teacher — broke from the Republican ranks for the first time to vote for Ralph Nader.

Because there's a guy with gravitas.

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Pre-election linkfest

Here's a short linkfest to keep you political junkies from having to hit the refresh button at your favorite news sites and blogs in the hope that you'll get some useful information.

1. Here's an argument against early voting. (via Instapundit) For what it's worth, I'm voting NO on the early-vote ballot issue in Maryland. What could possibly go wrong with early voting?

2. Contrary to some expectations, it seems younger Jews are more likely to vote for McCain than older ones. (via Volokh)

3. If you vote, you might be eligible for, er, sex toys. (via HotAir) If you vote early, you need to work on your technique.

4. Speaking of which, the feds may be moving closer to running a strip joint. Insert your own joke here. (hat tip: fee simple)

5. Headline of the day: "Nudist group wants clothing-optional polling site."

6. Obama salutes McCain.

7. Taxman. (via HotAir)

UPDATE: 8. The six most insane people to run for President. (hat tip: Right Hand Son)

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"Is He 'The One'?"

That's the headline, and no, I'm sorry to report that Cosmopolitan is NOT posing John McCain's mocking question about Obama.

Read this article and weep, because Cosmo is giving women the usual, patented, high-quality advice you can expect from that source about whether your guy is marriage material. OK, I threw in that stuff about "marriage material," because Cosmo can't quite get itself to use that dubious terminology. The article speaks, instead, of being "life partners." Oh, well, let's take what we can get.

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Wednesday linkfest

After I do a long photo comic, like the one I posted on Monday (Bill Clinton agrees to campaign for Obama), it's hard to get back to normal posts. Unlike most of the garbage I post here, photo comics take a long time, and the hardest part is working out the text, not doing the voice bubbles, which can be done in an hour or two.

So I'm going to coast a little longer by giving you some links I've been accumulating for the past several weeks.

1. This is actually not a link, but I'm including it, anyway. The son of our friends, a good friend of my son, is in Taiwan, where he applied for a scooter license. Among the questions on the exam were these:

1. When a motorcyclist is not happy, usually he/she: (1) is emotionless (2) is not compassionate (3) is angry.

2. Time for honking, each time is: (1) within 2 seconds (2) within 1 second (3) within half a second.

3. Motorcyclist's clothing: (1) is free (2) slippers are ok (3) must be clean.

Then, there were a bunch of signs with Chinese on them, and he had to guess what they meant.

2. No linkfest would be complete without a link to a post about an incinerating toilet. Be sure to watch the video at the company's website. No butt hair was singed in the preparation of the video. Bonus: Also at InventorSpot: Russian scientist solves problem of smelly feet.

3. We all hate grammar ignoramuses, and some of us are annoyed by typos, but few of us engage in vandalism over them. (via How Appealing)

4. A reader at Instapundit creates a political ad about the meltdown at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

5. We'll have to take Obama's criticism of a McCain ad on comprehensive sex education for kindergarteners with a grain of salt.

6. Is Obama too tight with his teleprompter? (hat tip: fee simple)

7. A follow-up by Steven Plaut related to Soccer Dad's post below on Michelle Obama's "rabbi" relative.

8. A columnist at Haaretz is scared to death of Sarah Palin. But the Republican Jewish Coalition flips Congressman Robert Wexler's idiotic linking of Palin with Pat Buchanan and shows that Buchanan's views on Israel are like Obama's.

9. "Tryst turns into $50K robbery for RNC delegate." Plus, quotation of the day: "'As a single man, I was flattered by the attention of a beautiful woman who introduced herself to me. I used poor judgment. If there is any good that can come from this humiliation, it is to caution others that date rape happens to men, too,' he said."

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The barbecue

Is it just me, or does Mr. Obama seem to be past his "sell by" date?

I'm just wondering, because it seems to me that if you're running as the Second Coming of Jesus, you sort of have to keep throwing out for us a new miracle every couple of weeks. Right about now, Jesus -- I mean, Obama -- looks more like he's struggling to keep that fake hair and beard attached to his head.

Maybe I'm wrong.

I'm sure I could be. But I'd like you to read about the barbecue described by Kat-Mo at Ace's, featuring these characters: "Uncle John" McCain; Psuedo-Professor, Professional Community Organizer Obama, MA, BS; "Uncle Joe" Biden; and "Cousin Sarah" Palin. It sounds a little odd in my description, but if you read it, it makes a heck of a lot of sense.

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More anagrams

Last week, I gave you anagrams for Obama-Biden. Now, I'm compelled to give you anagrams for McCain-Palin.

Right off the top, we have:

CALM IN PANIC

For John McCain / Sarah Palin, we get:

MACHO CHAPLAIN JARS INN

If you cheat a little and use McCain's first name, you can get these:

JOHN'S A RACIAL MAN, PINCH
IS JOHN ANARCHIC NAPALM?
CARNAL MANIAC? JOHN'S HIP
JOHN'S ANIMAL CRAP CHAIN

As before, if you come up with better ones, leave them in the comments.

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The top ten ways that McCain has cheated

MS. ANDREA MITCHELL: * * * The Obama people must feel that he didn't do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context, because that -- what they're putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama. * * * He seemed so well prepared.

When we heard that McCain was well prepared, we knew he must have cheated, so we sent the crack Pillage Idiot research team scurrying (yours truly sitting on the Metro with a note pad) to find out whether McCain had also cheated in the past.

The answer: He had, and we are not surprised at how frequent this behavior has been.

1. McCAIN CHEATED by tricking the North Vietnamese into imprisoning and torturing him for five years by falsely claiming he knew the recipe for egg salad that was so good you could plotz.

2. McCAIN CHEATED by duping his Hanoi Hilton guard into making a cross on the floor by telling the guard he'd play tic-tac-toe with him.

3. McCAIN CHEATED by pretending to cheat on his first wife in order to have a good response when some religious leader asked him to disclose his greatest moral failure.

4. McCAIN CHEATED by posting photos of Dick Cheney's crotch at the online dating site where he met Cindy.

5. McCAIN CHEATED, when calling for a surge in Iraq, by sneaking a glance into the future to see what the result was going to be.

6. McCAIN CHEATED by persuading Hillary to run for President by convincing her that no one could possibly support an inexperienced first-term black senator with a history of radicalism.

7. McCAIN CHEATED by advising Rudy Giuliani to campaign only in Florida, telling him that the election would be decided with a recount in that state.

8. McCAIN CHEATED by suggesting to John Edwards that he really needed to have a documentary made of his campaign.

9. McCAIN CHEATED by bribing Putin to invade Georgia while Obama was body surfing in Hawaii, so that McCain could look like a serious candidate.

10. McCAIN CHEATED by lying about his age, claiming to be 71, when in fact he's 171. His mother is actually 196.

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Phallacious reasoning

I thought the whole McCain campaign was supposed to be infused with coded racial messages, but it turns out it's infused with coded sexual messages.

This column by Paul Waldman probably takes the stupidity prize in a campaign already buried in stupid writing. Don't read it if you can't bear to see the word "penis" twice in the fourth paragraph. Don't read it if your tolerance for stupidity is low. Otherwise, read it and weep.

(via HotAir)

Click here to read more . . .

The "inside baseball" on the candidates' VP picks

We know almost nothing about the presidential candidates' vice presidential picks, with the possible exception of the fact that Obama says he's going to announce his pick by text messaging.

So I've come up with the top three "inside baseball" choices for each of the candidates.

John McCain:

1. Home Run: Henry Aaron.

Pros:

* Greatest non-steroidal home run hitter ever

* Tremendous dignity

* Neutralizes race issue

Cons:

* Alabama already solid for McCain

* Republican affiliation doubtful (but see Lieberman, Joe)


2. Triple: Joe Torre

Pros:

* Highly popular in large blue states (New York, California)

* Four World Championship titles as manager

* Calm in a storm (see Steinbrenner, George and Hank)

Cons:

* Almost as old as McCain

* Five-o'clock shadow shames Richard Nixon


3. Texas-League Double: Gary Carter

Pros:

* Solid throwing arm

* Could be popular with evangelicals

* If asked, he'd be there tomorrow (see Randolph, Willie)

Cons:

* Too exciteable (see Quayle, Dan)


Barack Obama:

1. Home Run: Steve Carlton

Pros:

* One of greatest southpaws ever

* Mean slider

* Nickname "Lefty" will wow Kos Kids

Cons:

* Won't talk to press


2. Triple: Manny Ramirez

Pros:

* Hits everywhere with power

* Appeals to Hispanics

* Will be available early if Dodgers don't make post-season

Cons:

* Not natural-born citizen

* Manny is Manny


3. Texas-League Double: Phil Rizzuto

Pros:

* Decades of experience

* Popular among the "cling to guns and religion" crowd

Cons:

* Repetitive catch-phrases ("Holy cow!")

* Deceased


Bob Barr:

Foul ball off his foot: Mark "The Bird" Fidrych

Pros:

* Good mesh with Barr (totally nuts)

Cons:

* Totally nuts

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Best of Pillage Idiot - III

Mrs. Attila and I are off celebrating our upcoming 25th anniversary. Here are some blasts from the past. I hope you'll enjoy them a second time.

I haven't found much to laugh about with John McCain, but I did get a chuckle when he tried to make nice to conservatives at the CPAC convention after having won the nomination without any significant conservative support. Here's my photo comic, which I think describes his thinking pretty accurately.

John McCain reaches out to conservatives

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General Wesley Clark attends a symphony concert

Gen. Clark: I respect Beethoven's music -- he's a hero to me and millions of others -- but being deaf doesn't make you a great composer. It doesn't compensate for old melodic lines, weak harmony, or tortured rhythms. You can't ride your horse to greatness by being deaf.

Gen. Clark: And honestly, the use of a tinkly little triangle in the last movement of the Ninth Symphony . . . well, I'm not questioning his manhood or anything. [ * ]

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John McCain and Barack Obama play "The Price Is Right"

Drew Carey: Now, Senators, in our final round, each contestant will tell us how much of the government handouts that the voters want he will give them in his four-year term, and then how much it will cost. OK, you understand that?

Obama: Yeah.

McCain: Yes, I do.

Drew Carey: All right, then. Senator Obama?

Obama: I'll give the voters EVERY government handout they want, which will cost $4.0 trillion over four years.

Drew Carey: Thank you, Senator Obama. Senator McCain?

McCain: I'll give the voters ALMOST every government handout they want, and it'll be cheaper. It'll cost $3.8 trillion over four years.

Drew Carey: Wow, that's an interesting strategy. I've never seen that one before, at least not from a candidate who wanted to win the election. Heh, well, let's see now. All right. The answer is: Giving the voters every government handout they want, PLUS back massages on demand, at a cost of $4.1 trillion! Senator Obama, you WIN! Would you come up here, please?


Video here.

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On the floor near the McCain campaign's shredder

Click to enlarge.




Previous: John McCain reaches out to conservatives.

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Obama and the condo wars

Right after the 2004 presidential election, I wrote a piece that discussed the fact that a surprising number of Jews seemed to have voted for Bush but were keeping quiet about it. It was called "The hidden Jewish vote."

An article in the New York Times today (hat tip: Son of the Right Hand) makes me wonder whether things are getting even more complicated this year. Quoting a number of older Jewish voters in Florida, the article talks about the problems Obama may have with these people, especially because of fears about his views on Israel.

Ace is really peeved about it, by the way. He makes the valid point that the article minimizes the Jewish voters' concerns about Obama's foreign policy and blames the negative views toward Obama on racism and false rumors about him. I would not deny, of course, that there are some older Jews who hold unfair negative opinions of blacks. But in fairness to them, it's based on fear and the generalization of particular experiences, rather than on conventional hatred. The man in the article whose mother was "mugged and beaten by a black assailant" is a good example. (I'm not trying to explain it away, just to explain it.)

But I look at the article through a different lens.

If you read the piece I wrote on the hidden Jewish vote, you'll see a discussion of what Judith Weiss called "the condo wars." In 2004, this same group of older Jewish voters was fighting with each other, and the hostility directed at Bush voters was boiling over. Some of these Bush voters decided to shut up about it to avoid the hostility.

What interested me about today's article is that these older Jewish Floridians were more willing to discuss in public the possibility that they would commit heresy by voting for the Republican. And one line, directed by one woman at her daughter, an Obama supporter is even more interesting:

“Aunt Claudie will kill you!” hissed her mother, Linda Poznak, 47, who said she would vote for Mr. McCain.

So now we have family pressure to vote for a Republican? Wow! It's all the more surprising, because the Democrat is (or likely will be) a black man. Bradley Effect, anyone?

I suspect, though, when all is said and done in November, most of these folks will vote for Obama. It's just too difficult for them to change.

The Times article concludes by mentioning their congressman Robert Wexler's vow to "convert voters one mah-jongg table at a time." Wexler is an Obama supporter. But the article finishes on a note that's too optimistic for me: "Still, Mr. Wexler admits, he has not yet been able to persuade his in-laws to vote for Mr. Obama."

It doesn't say they're supporting McCain, just that they're not supporting Obama.

UPDATE: Soccer Dad shares Ace's annoyance.

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When rich, elitist, out-of-touch New Yorkers vote

When rich, elitist, out-of-touch New Yorkers have a summer home, it's as often in the Hamptons as not. So it will not surprise you that a local boutique in East Hampton, which sells plastic cups embossed with presidential candidates' names on them, is keeping a vote tally based on cup sales.

Since the photo at the left was taken, the tally has been revised to Obama 637, Clinton 329, and McCain 89. Yes, you have that right. It is the Hamptons, after all.

McCain is actually doing even worse than it appears among the REOOTNY set:

Jane Maynard, a supporter of Senator McCain, did not like the look of the numbers last weekend, so she bought 26 McCain 2008 cups.

“I thought McCain needed a boost,” she said. “There are a lot of limousine liberals out there.”

This is a point on which everyone seems to agree. As the article explains:

On Saturday afternoon, Jean Vanderbilt, the third wife of the late Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, dropped in to invite Valerie Smith, an owner of the shop and Ms. Hoagland’s daughter, to a Kentucky Derby party. Ms. Vanderbilt said she had sent some Obama cups to her friends Benjamin M. Rosen, a founder of Compaq computer, and his wife, Donna Rosen. “This is strong Obama country,” Ms. Vanderbilt said.

It is. No doubt, it is.

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Visitor of the day -- 5/9

Yes, it happens to the best of us when we get older, and to some of us sooner than others, if you catch my, er, drift.

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Sunday evening linkfest

Passover has (finally) ended, and now, once again, it's time for a linkfest of links that have been forming plaque on the walls of my intertubes for the past two weeks or so. Some of them are seriously OLD, but I want you to have them, anyway. Please stay with me till the end, because way at the bottom of this post, I have a couple of future classics from the Sunday New York Times that are almost worth the price of the paper.

1. In the past couple of weeks, the biggest issue in politics, in case you're a Japanese World War II fighter who's been holed up in the Pacific until yesterday, has been whether Obama flipped the bird at Hillary while speaking to his supporters following the final debate in Pennsylvania. The Hillarosphere demands to know. And Baseball Crank has another photo that may provide circumstantial evidence.

2. The Democrats' Nightmare Scenario (via Instapundit)

3. More popcorn, please!

4. McCain goes to NOLA, and an African-American participant at a town-hall meeting says this: "I want to inform you that everybody in the camp here is not a Republican." Does he mean (a) literally no one is a Republican, or (b) colloquially, not everyone is a Republican? Who cares, anyway, besides anal-retentive grammar wackos like me?

5. As Warner Wolf might have said, if you studied math in school since about 1961 . . . YOU LOST! On a related topic, Hillary Clinton does some math trolling for delegates and votes from Michigan.

6. Gov. O'Malley calls a special session of the legislature to pass a law declaring the official state dessert of Maryland. (Only kidding about the special session. Beats the hell out of raising our taxes, though.)

7. The man-cave: "Like most stories that end up with a man mowing his friend's lawn in a dress, it started out innocently enough." (via Fark, of course)

8. Sometimes it pays to test your personal machinery before reporting its theft by voodoo to police. As the police chief himself put it: "'I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke,' Oleko said.
'But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, "How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it",' he said."

9. Public Service Announcement: Be careful when eating in Canadian restaurants.

10. "Le Petit Singly is a farm that specializes in making cheese from women's breast milk." (via Ace)

11. This one's so old, it's already been overtaken by events. You remember the McLean school that banned tag in the schoolyard? Well, tag's back, but not before a week of "reorientation lessons on playground safety." I swear I'm not making that term up.

12. Patch (for women) aims to make you (not you, you) feel sexy. (via Ace)

13. Rick Monday saves the flag. In 1976. But now, there's a video.

14. American expat in Paris whines about the falling dollar. My heart bleeds.

15. False advertising from Moron Pundit: a very non-moronic defense of the tax deduction for child dependents.

16. Doubleplusundead on more misery with McCain. For me, if you want to know why McCain hasn't sealed the deal with conservatives -- I'm going to vote for him, anyway -- read George Will's column this morning. Two words: campaign finance.

17. The Children of Israel were enslaved in Egypt by a Pharaoh who took great pleasure in persecuting gays, who were brutally forced to arrange flowers for the Egyptians. Hence, the orange on the seder plate. Funny, I had always heard that it was supposed to represent Pharaoh's fear of the vagina.

18. And finally, the moment you've been waiting for -- the two classics from today's New York Times: (a) In the travel section: "In 2007, nude recreation represented a $440 million industry — up from $400 million in 2001 and $200 million in 1992." (b) In Sunday Styles: A family adjusts to the father's sex change -- "Through Sickness, Health and Sex Change."

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Visitors of the day -- 3/31

Name a person who talks and is a shoo-in and a person who talks in a shoe.



Well, some people say he stinks as a candidate...

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John McCain reaches out to conservatives

For more photo comics, start with the Pillage Idiot Cheat Sheet and go from there.

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Super Tuesday linkfest

It's Super Tuesday today. So if you've come here to get informed political commentary, you'd better find another site right away.

But if you want a few interesting political links, try these:

1. Sean Hannity gets Frank Luntz to ask his focus group of Obama fans to name one specific accomplishment of Barack Obama. As the Fark line goes, hilarity ensues. Watch the video here. I swear one guy says Obama's a "great oratator."

2. In all the numerous bills of particulars that conservatives are posting against John McCain, the one I haven't seen yet is that, in the days when Cindy Sheehan was a big deal in the media, McCain met with her as if she were a respectable person. I did a photo comic at the time, which I think caught the essence of the encounter: "Cindy and John: He said, she said."

3. A Weekly Standard review (subscribers only) of a couple of books about the United States from Spain is illustrated with a photo of protesters in Madrid in 2001 when Bush visited the city. Sadly, it's not in the web version of the review. Take a look at the photo. Notice what the signs at the lower left and in the middle say? I'm famous. Sort of.



4. This amusing story of voting in the Republican primary in Brooklyn has the ring of truth to it.

**********************************

OK, that concludes the political part of the linkfest. On to other topics. First, sports.

5. You may have heard that the Super Bowl was played on Sunday. But have you heard of the Puppy Bowl? (hat tip: Mrs. Attila)

6. I know that more people read this site than Instapundit, Ace of Spades HQ, and Best of the Web Today combined, so I doubt you'll have seen this one before. First they came for dodgeball and I said nothing. Then they came for Intentional Flatulence, which by all rights should be an Olympic sport. This is nuts: If you force them to hold it in, they'll explode. (hat tip: Soccer Dad, but don't mention that to his kids) [UPDATE 2/6: Story is an exaggeration, apparently taken from a gag sheet prepared by eighth-grade girls. The true school newsletter says: "I just want to make sure parents know this actually is not an official ban or new school rule. Some eighth grade teachers did tell eighth graders that if they continue to disrupt class by intentionally farting, they will get a detention. There is truth to that. Intentional flatulence can be a disruption to class, and we already have rules addressing disruptive behavior." Is that clear?]

And now, other bodily functions.

7. Remote control to undo vasectomy? Surely, you jest:

A man would then use the handset, or fob, to open it around the time of having sex if he and his partner wanted to conceive.

Once the handset is pressed, it sends a coded radio signal through the skin to the implant, which contains a tiny antenna. The antenna picks up the signal and converts it into sound waves that "ripple" through the valve.

Since the valve itself is soft and flexible, the sound waves make it flap open - allowing sperm to pass through. As with cars, each device would have its own unique code so it could not be opened by anyone else.

"It's based on a radio signal, like the device on your key ring, which is coded so that you cannot open someone else's car," Professor Abbott says.

This was a "Dude" headline at HotAir. With good reason.

8. Today's headline of the day (via Fark): "Booze bra gives women a wine rack."

9. Leave it to the Brits: "THE minefield of lingerie shopping for lovers can be avoided this Valentine's Day with a new website which lets you visit a virtual dressing room and ask models to try on underwear." Nearly as good as the Tower of Boobel I wrote about two years ago.

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