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Okay, so I finally watched “The Debate”. It was a trial, but I forced myself to sit through a full re-run. Actually, in places it wasn’t too bad. Well, the Joe Biden places, that is. What a cure for insomnia that guy is. He should be bottled and marketed by Pfizer. Sadly, my somnolence was disturbed every ninety seconds or so by a shriek reminiscent of an Alaskan albatross as it’s ripped apart by a hungry Grizzly Bear up on the Etivluk River.

(If you don’t know where the Etivluk River is, ask Sarah Palin. In true Romulus and Remus style, she was probably raised up on the Etivluk River, by the same Grizzly Bear as just dissected the albatross).

Obviously, Sarah Palin first learned to talk from hearing the screams of ravaged seabirds. Nothing else would account for that high-pitched, tremulous quaver, with the capacity to shatter glass at twenty moose paces. It truly wasn’t that Joe Biden was boring, it just took ninety seconds or so to recover from the ear-drum numbing squeals Ms Palin extruded, reducing Joe to an almost indiscernible whisper, until another ninety seconds of recovery time left one unprepared for a further onslaught of albatross throttling.

It’s rumored there are men who find this woman attractive? Only in the Northern Anchorage Christian Fundamentalist Welfare Home for the Congenitally Deaf. And then, only those without ear-trumpets.

Having spent ninety minutes of consecutive slumber, interspersed by intermittent nerve-shattering wakefulness, I reached the conclusion that Sarah Palin had one vital qualification that made her the only possible candidate for the post of Vice President. While there were obvious drawbacks: the inexperience; her insistence on calling certain Middle Eastern nations Eye-ran, and Eye-rak, and pronouncing “nucular” in true George W Bush tradition, nevertheless she did posses one quality essential to the future security of the United States and its allies.

For years, the Pentagon has struggled, spent billions of dollars, to perfect an anti-missile missile capability. It has failed. The answer to their problem lies with Sarah Palin. Never mind that she’s rubbish at foreign policy. Forget the simplistic Christian fundamentalist ideals. Sarah Palin is, without doubt, the finest missile defense system this nation could ever procure.

Ms Palin’s voice, amplified a thousand times, concentrated into a narrow beam of sound, and projected into the path of incoming missiles, would reduce them to harmless atomic particles within microseconds.

The nation must decide. But, frankly, there seems no way we can do without her.

Filed under: Nucular deterrent

George Bush’s lot apparently got it wrong again.

It’s no wonder Congress ditched his “bail-out” bill, say advertising execs, he named it inappropriately. It should have been called a “rescue” package, not a “bail-out”, which carries implications of failure; the antithesis of the American Dream.

Alternatively, it called have been sold as an “act of selfless heroism”, reminiscent of the New York firefighters and police officers on 9/11, or, as the BBC report states:

“Alternatively branding people could have re-pitched the crisis in terms of a David versus Goliath battle. Here, outrage is expressed against the giant “wicked warlocks of Wall Street” in need of a sharp lesson meted out by the simple community of god-fearing Americans (the “Davids”) inspired by their leader George – the dragon slayer. (A subtle homage to the special UK/US relationship.)”^[1]

(Sorry, after writing that I just had to go to the bathroom.)

But, no, it was branded a “bail-out”, thus damning it to failure in Congress and raising the ire of the gullible US public, who would undoubtedly have rallied to the flag if the advertising execs of America had first been summoned to package the deal correctly.

The saddest fact of all is that they’re probably right.

^{[1] “If only the bail-out had been called a rescue” BBC, October 3rd 2008}

Filed under: Shoot the spin doctors

It’s eight o’clock on Thursday evening. Throughout America, millions are completing their final preparations before sitting down to watch the sports event of the year, billed as the fight of the decade. In the red corner will be Sarah “Pit Bull” Palin, a relative newcomer from Alaska; in the blue corner, Joe “Jabber” Biden, veteran of many a good scrap and the title holder in tonight’s bout.

Can Palin the Pit Bull out-punch the belligerent Biden? On form it seems unlikely. She hasn’t performed well in recent practice bouts, and while her staying power is not in doubt, she’s found herself on the ropes repeatedly over the last weeks.

Biden’s experience and vigor should make this an easy contest for him to win, and many are predicting a knockout in the second or third.

Of course, it’s a waste of time. There are no judges ringside. They’re all out in the country glued to their television sets, cheering on their favorite. Whatever the outcome of tonight’s bout, virtually all America has made up its mind who their particular winner is going to be, even before the first punch is thrown.

America needs to stop, and take a long, deep breath, before deciding to vote for McCain/Palin in November. While there are many in this country who don’t give a tinker’s cuss how it will effect the rest of the planet, nevertheless, nations outside the US wait expectantly for a result on November 4th that will either begin to restore American credibility, or confine it to the trash can for years to come.

The world has not forgotten how George W Bush came to power in 2000, or how he was reinstalled in 2004. The damage of those eight years lies heavy with many Europeans, and others throughout the globe.

World bankers outside the US may not be lily-white in their innocence of the sins committed by Wall Street, in the last great fling orchestrated by Bush’s de-regulative administration before it finally slithers away into its deep, dark hole, but the people of the world are well aware of the avaricious virus that evolved in America, before spreading like a plague into financial institutions globally.

It won’t matter how well Sarah Palin competes against her adversary tonight. Just as the citizens of America have already made up their minds, so the citizens of the world are united in castigating Palin as the far-right, warmongering, Christian fundamentalist that she truly is.

It was the US that invented the “three strikes and you’re out” rule.

Voting McCain/Palin into office on November 4th will assuredly result in the rest of the world consigning America to the “sin-bin” for decades to come.

Filed under: The end of multilateralism