Shady's Back

Due to the rigors of my job, we’ve been a little behind here on the Walrus File, but I don’t want that to continue. So… some thoughts.

-Early Obama cabinet appointments/rumors have been extremely interesting. Eric Holder would be the first African-American Attorney General. Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State? Or maybe John Kerry? Will Gates stay on at Defense (which I think would be a bad idea, but I was never a big fan of the “bipartisanship” craze.)? Tom Daschle, the former Senate Minority Leader from South Dakota, appears to be in line for Secretary of Health and Human Services. And today comes word that the top choice for Secretary of Homeland Security is the current Governor of Arizona, Janet Napolitano. Many have criticized this group as too full of “Clintonistas” and not symbolic enough of the whole “Change” meme. There’s still plenty of time left for that, but I tend to agree at least from a trend-watching point of view.

-Pirates are the new terrorists, which is pretty funny from a certain point of view. First an arms shipment from the Ukraine, and now a Saudi oil tanker with a cargo worth at least a hundred million dollars, have been making front page headlines after pirate hijackings off the lawless coast of Somalia. Pirates are on the verge of becoming the New Missing White Women in our news media. And really, can you blame CNN for spending so much time on the pirate story when everything else is just sort of dank. The Columbus Dispatch’s front page headline today was about “A Cornucopia of Gloom.” I think the copy editors were getting bored. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda is releasing bizarre videos where they talk about how Obama and Colin Powell are “house negroes”. I guess it’s still the 1920s in the mountains of Pakistan. Also, we learn al-Qaeda are big fans of Malcolm X. Who knew?

-Forget gay marriage, bailouts appear to be the real slippery slope. Give one to AIG, now everybody and his brother wants one. Some may need them… others I’m not so sure about. How to choose?

-On the plus side, Thanksgiving is coming up. Our local Giant Eagle is well stocked with giant forty dollar turkeys. Is anyone out there headed home for the holiday? And if so, where are you going, and how are you getting there?

-It’s Ohio State/Michigan week! The greatest rivalry on the gorram planet, if we do say so ourselves. The Buckeyes are the massive favorites, but they always say that you can throw out the records when these teams play. I had the opportunity this week to meet Art Schlichter, the last OSU QB to start the big game as a freshman. He’s an interesting guy. This Saturday Terrelle Pryor will be the next. The game will be here in Columbus, and will result in widespread insanity no matter the outcome.

-COTA (the Central Ohio Transit Authority, aka the local bus system I ride everywhere) is moving its offices downtown. According to the “Dispatch”, there will be no easy available parking for employees, which is on purpose. The director says that he now wants all employees, including himself, to ride the bus to work. I’m sure that’s going over well.

Bits: Everything Sucks Edition

-The bailout approved by Congress last week appears to have done little in the short term to stop the current worldwide financial spiral, though expecting it to have done so may have been unreasonable. Stock markets around the world went sharply downhill Monday. In the US, the Dow Jones dropped below 10000 for the first time in years. In Iceland, the currency was down 7% and the economy appears to be on the verge of collapse. The Frankfurt markets hit the skids after the German government had to perform its own bailout of real estate firms. Russian stock indexes lost over 15% of their value. And so on.

-Here you can find an easy step-by-step process to construct your own "Egg of Time." "Look into its time vortex, and see all that was, and all that will be." Yes.

-Time has a list of words the dictionary is trying to get rid of to make room for 2,000 new words. I am a word geek, and had not heard of any of these.

-New polls from various sources have shown Sen. Barack Obama up in pretty much every swing state, including Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, and New Mexico. However, it's still a month until the election, and we have discussed the accuracy of polls on here before.

-Meanwhile, Cracked.com has come up with a list of 5 presidential elections that were dumber than this one (somehow). It's actually a really good read. I particularly like the caption under the pic of John Quincy Adams: "I'll kill your wife. I don't even care."

-In response to what it says is widespread piracy, Warner Bros. is trying a new tack in Korea... it's going to start releasing its movies online before they hit DVD. How that will help, I'm not totally sure, but it makes sense in other ways.

-The Tampa Bay Rays are in baseball's final four. Hell has told us that it will take more than this for it to freeze over. Hell is just stubborn that way. In other sports news, the Ferocious Walruses fantasy football team remains undefeated. Because I know you've been hanging on every play.

John McCain Throws a Hail Mary

So, we find out John McCain is desperate. I didn't make this blog to be a political polemic, that wasn't really the point. But really, this is pretty much unheard of. Today he announced that he is suspending his campaign for President until the economic crisis is resolved. He wants to cancel the Presidential debate on Friday unless the proposed "bailout plan" (which I was originally planning on posting about) is passed, an eventuality that's looking increasingly unlikely (despite the White House's claims that it would be "unthinkable") since Congress has developed an inconvenient ability the past few days to think for itself. Obama's response?: "I think that one of the president's jobs will be to focus on more than one thing at once."

I don't really have a sense of what public reaction to this is going to be. The Debate Commission (theoretically unbiased, though notorious for excluding even vaguely-viable third-party candidates) says Friday's debate in Oxford, Mississippi (and why there, exactly?) will go on as scheduled. The McCain camp says it will not show up. President Bush went on TV a few minutes ago to say our "entire economy is at risk" because of this Wall Street business (the causes of that, as I mentioned, are probably another post). The proposed bailout (which both campaigns said tonight in a joint statement is "flawed") involves the Treasury Department and the only quasi-governmental Federal Reserve 700 Billion taxpayer dollars to such companies as AIG, Goldman Sachs, etc. in order to keep them remotely solvent. Some members of Congress (seemingly on both sides of the aisle) have balked at this for a variety of reasons, ranging from free-marketers who say government intervention in the economy is how we got into this mess (who are sort of right... if you look at it in a skewed way) to populists who believe that this would only "reward bad behavior" for overpaid CEOs, who would suffer no punishment for their gross mismanagement. And most prominently, $700 Billion is quite simply money we don't have when we're already grossly in debt.

I will try and post further updates on this situation as it develops. I personally believe this is McCain trying to manufacture what's known as an "October surprise" out of thin air, or thick air, anyway. The latest polls, for what they are, show Obama with a big lead in some key states and surprisingly pretty much tied in a few others that Republicans win most of the time, not to mention a lead nationally that is nearing double digit percentage points. In a third millenium election, that's a massive blowout. And the polls don't even take into account much of one of Obama's most solid voting blocks, voters under 26, because they only poll those with landlines. (i.e. if you only have a cell phone, presidential polls act like you don't exist).

McCain knows this. He's trying to change the game. I don't know if it'll work or not. It's probably worth a shot on his part, at any rate. Bush & Co. are trying the same fear-mongering tactics they used in the run-up to Iraq. Again, I'm not sure if it'll work... and the only reason I can even see for them to want to is because they're in deep with the Wall Street CEOs... but surely they're not that corrupt, are they? Oh, wait...

p.s. Not all our readers are (hopefully) American, so I thought I should explain the title... a Hail Mary's a play in American Football (the most complex strategy-based sport in the world, for my money, which is why I love it). More on THAT here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail_Mary_pass