Image Disclaimer: I have no doubt and have not set out intending to insult Mr. Obama’s intelligence. I am not insinuating that he has caught The Stupid or anything like that. Read on to see the signifigance of the image.

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Now that Hillary is out of the race, the hot topic is to find out why her campaign failed. Which is a pretty god damn stupid thing to ask, so leave it up to CNN to yammer on about it. Clinton’s failure can be summed up in a sentence: She failed because she ran her campaign the way she would run it. What I mean is the management style was that of a crotchety old money-grubbing businesswoman, which is exactly how Clinton would have run the country. Remember, the key word in corporate democrat is corporate. Which is exactly what our new presumptive nominee is.

However, Clinton’s exit speech was nothing short of moving, and with that in mind I cannot completely despise her. I think the idea of a female president is wonderful and would be good for the country, not only for us, but to show the world that we are something more than a bunch of backwards, cheeseburger swilling, overweight, stupid, arrogant, overly-righteous, racist, chauvinist, immature shits. Perhaps she was humbled by failure, or maybe there is a genuinely sincere side to her. Who knows? (Read more…)

I’m not going to spend much time on what is my second-favorite gaff this week (favorite involving space toilets), a whole few days old so it now remains a forgotten remnant of info-tainment news shows. I am, of course, talking about Hillary Clinton reminding us that someone could just shoot Obama and she would win the nomination by default. Imagine you are the captain of a 6th grade soccer team, and your friend Jimmy is the opposing teams captain. Before the match starts, you say, “Good luck out there,” and Jimmy, the smug little bastard, responds, “I hope you die when your house burns down, jerkass.” Besides signaling that little Jimmy has a massive ego and is a possible case of some behavior disorder, saying that is downright unsportsmanlike. Assassination is a rather dark chapter of American history, and given that Obama stands to be the first black man to run for president (others have run in primaries, but were never nominated, so it doesn’t count) in a country that largely hates, and if not hates casually ignores, black people (and the plights thereof), assassination is a very real possibility. All it takes is one pissed off redneck douchebag with little to no inhibition about being executed for treason and murder. (Read more…)

I am going to get shit on for this…

A few weeks ago, an article I wrote about the New Jersey Green Party Convention was quoted on Game Politics:http://gamepolitics.com/2008/04/14/report-green-party-presidential-candidate-blames-school-shootings-on-video-games/

I already posted a response to their less than kind words toward the Green Party, but since it was a whole week old and apparently that is the lifespan of interesting conversation on the internet (what do you expect when your average person has the attention span of a gnat?) I figure I’ll expand on it a little. So, YOU!, Game Politics Dot Com, your ass is on my plate today.

First off, there is enough punctuation in your “quote” to fill War and Peace if, for some reason, the periods and commas became animate and decided to get the hell out of Dodge. As a fellow writer, you should know that quoting (and misquoting) is a subtle art, and simply chucking in the ellipsis for the sake of grammatical correctness does not help your case. It gives away the fact that you are only pulling specific information out of an article that is otherwise unrelated to what you are talking about. That being said… (Read more…)

With the PA primary looming and only two Democratic actively sucking up media attention like sponges in ugly suits, all eyes and crosshairs are on Clinton and Obama. So, of course, I am not going to say a damn thing about them.

John McCain, however, having been crowed winner of the Republican primary by Fox News, has not been getting the kind of coverage the Democrats have. And why would he, after all? There is no bitter competition or debates moderated by that god-awful Anderson Cooper where old-hat Republicans can have a “My hard-on for Reagen is bigger than yours!” contest in front of Air Force One, the Reagen widow and Arnold Fucking Schwartzennneeeggeeaafaahahhafffrggggg. I’m sorry, I seem to have momentarily gone into some sort of seizure there. (Read more…)

So much for weekly writing… Anyway.

Saturday, March 29th was the date of the annual Green Party of New Jersey (GPNJ) Convention. I was there. Chances are you weren’t.

In fact only about thirty people showed up, representing a little over half the counties. As it is nationwide, the Green Party suffers from a general lack of participation and funds, but in spite of that, has become a large state presence and is considered to be the largest “opposition” party. That is, not Democrat or Republican. (Read more…)

At least in my experience, it’s not a common misconception that gamers are disinterested in politics and world affairs. In my experience it’s actually pretty true. And when you want to talk about games and politics in the same breath, everyone assumes you want to prattle on about how those violent, sexual games turn kids into serial killers who want to go Doom on their high school, Grand Theft Auto on the town, and Hot Coffee on the cheerleaders. Or you get those paranoid, anti-Dungeons ‘N Dragons groups who want to ban Everquest or World of Warcraft because it will eat your children. (Personal experience alert: I had a D&D buddy in high school whose parents burned his Player’s Manual because they thought, at night, while he slept, demons jumped out of it and danced around his bed. True story!) (Read more…)

Since it seems like forever since I’ve tortured anyone with my writing, I’ll rail on about this week(ends?) hot button news item: New York governor Spitzer and his really, really, expensive hookers. There isn’t a whole lot more I can say about the case in terms of fact. Major news media and The Daily Show, which anymore is major news media, have covered just about everything. And I won’t bother posting that retarded photograph of him swallowing his own face in apology because the only way I could possibly make it more widespread is if I photocopied it, stuck it in a frame and sold it in the cheap art-deco section of Walgreen’s for $9.95.

I do, however, have three points to make. First, this is just another case in a long sting of cases that hemorrhage hypocrisy the way an infant would project vomit if you fed her tinned cat food. Spitzer has joined the ranks of Mark Foley, who crusaded against child pornography while having i-Ntercourse with underage kids on MySpace in much the same fashion as the Apple-produced sex robot of the same name would (use your imagination.) Then there is Mr. Family, Larry Craig, Son of Uther von Craig, Bane of Gays, who is found nowhere else but in a bathroom asking a MALE federal agent for a blowjob. Spitzer himself led a crackdown on prostitution, only to be outed as a top ten customer to “The Emperor’s Club.” That’s the whorehouse, not Kevin Klien’s cinematic swift kick in the testes to Dead Poet’s Society fans everywhere.
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I’ve been approached a few times now with people asking me, “Just how does this primary thing work?” In light of that, I figured I’d stave off the analysis slash angry ranting and give a quick explanation as to just how Democracy goes down.

The purpose of the primary is for each party to pick its nominee. Think of it like a quarter-final or a qualifying round. Each candidate campaigns in each state, trying to win delegates. This is where most people end up confused, and don’t feel bad; it took me a few tries to fully grasp this process.

A delegate is anyone who is selected to pledge their support for a given candidate, and there are a certain number for each state, depending on population. Hence, states like California and New York have huge numbers of delegates, and a state like New Jersey has a moderate number. In simple terms, when a given state has its primary, each candidate wins a percentage of the vote and gets a proportion of the delegates, and whoever gets the most delegates in said primary goes on to the general election.

But like everything in this whacky life, it is not that simple.

Delegates can pledge their support to a candidate. This means that they agree to support Candidate A no matter what. A given voting district can have all of their delegates support one candidate, so voting for Candidate B in that area would not matter anyway. Another way the votes get skewed is jerrymandering. This is when a concentration of one ethnic group or voters who always vote to one side is jammed into one voting district. For example, Obama can claim he won 80% of the black vote in Alabama, but that otherwise crushing lead amounts to only two or three districts, meaning he only gets a few delegates for a massive portion of the vote.

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Do my eyes deceive me? Is that John Mellencamp? If so, this post is already off to a bad start.

Who on the John Edwards’ campaign staff thought appearing at a John Mellencamp concert was a good idea? Was Bruce Springsteen busy? Was Bruce Springsteen tied up in John Mellencamp’s basement sleeping off a sedative when the campaign’s communication staff called artists? “Hey, John here, John Mellencamp.” “Hi John, I’m calling on behalf of John Ed…” “BRUCE IS BUSY I’LL DO IT.”

If Mellencamp was running for president and he appeared at his own concert, he’d lose votes. This is assuming that he’d have votes left after the “America’s Just One Big Small Town”, “Terrorists Don’t Suck Chili Dogs”, and “We Need A Cougar In The White House” campaign slogans.