Kansas City News Blog

By CHRIS PACKHAM

McCain could still pull this out: Well, here it's Friday, and Missouri hasn't awarded any electoral college points to any Presidential candidates. Is there anybody discussing this, anywhere? The final, still unofficial results have Sen. John McCain narrowly leading gigantic loser Barack Obama who has nonetheless presumptuously embarked on his "transition planning" with or without Missouri's coveted electoral votes. Yael T. Abouhalkah at The Kansas City Star points out how badly Sen. Claire McCaskill should be embarrassed about her failure to pull Obama across the finish line on her magnificent coat tails.

Still, as a resident of the only state that hasn't officially taken a position on the 2008 Presidential election, I think we should just hold on to our electoral votes and let them "roll over," like Powerball $$$, to the next national election in the futuristic-sounding year 2012. I think I will pronounce that "twenty-twelve," as opposed to "two thousand and twelve." I wonder if the economy will have recovered enough by then for me to get a job as a Bladerunner, because I'm telling you, if you start letting the replicants take away our jobs and marry our women, the next thing you know, there will be a replicant President. ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE IN AMERICA! A pig with a telemarketing job? An enchanted hat that dispenses beer? A website for adult babies? In America, if you want that, you can just reach up and pluck it. NSFW, y'all. Gross paraphilic infantilism notwithstanding, America is pretty great, you guys, I hope you appreciate it while it lasts. After the jump, a thing that comes off more rant-y than I actually intended. Sorry, it sort of got away from me, there, I'll dial that shit back next week. Click here or here:

Thomas L. Friedman, Prize-witzer Pyool-winner: Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times columnist and the largest living embarrassment to the Pulitzer committee, was a gigantic shill for the Iraq war back in the year "twenty-oh-two," as the Bladerunners and the Timecops know it, and he's also very, very famous for other things, including conveniently unverifiable, thesis-buttressing quotes from "cab drivers," and his repeated declaration over the last five years that "the next six months" would be "pivotal" in Iraq. Against all probabililty, his column about the election of Barack Obama is even more embarrassingly pompous than usual, actually opening with the line, "And so it came to pass that on Nov. 4, 2008, shortly after 11 p.m. Eastern time, the American Civil War ended, as a black man — Barack Hussein Obama — won enough electoral votes to become president of the United States."

Tip for budding cultural firebrands: One of the best techniques for sounding like a portentous douchebag is to lift pretty much anything from the fancy monocle-wearing King James version of the Bible, which, if you've never read it, begins just about every single sentence with, "And so it came to pass." But more importantly, the column demonstrates a rhetorical technique whereby Friedman invents an unproven and unverifiable concept out of whole, stinky cloth, and then in the next sentence, treats it as if it's conventional wisdom. In this case, he uncleverly invents the unclever "Buffett effect," in which white conservatives were supposedly telling pollsters they'd vote for McCain, but then voting for Obama in the secrecy of the voting booth. And then, without offering up any evidence whatsoever to back up this retarded claim, he immediately pretends that it's axiomatic, saying, "Some did it because they sensed how inspired and hopeful their kids were about an Obama presidency, and they not only didn’t want to dash those hopes, they secretly wanted to share them." If it seems like Friedman can read minds, it's helpful to remember that these white conservatives only exist inside of Friedman's brain, where they share apartments with a bunch of quotable Iraqi cab drivers.

Look. I have a lot to be proud of. I'm proud of the fact that, thanks to Daily Briefs, the top Google Image Search result for "Yael T. Abouhalkah" is a photo of Humpty Hump from the Digital Underground. I'm proud of my ripped abdominals. But the thing I'm probably the proudest of is the creation of an ostensible "News Roundup" in which I regularly post fiction, sometimes involving monkeys. But face it: nobody is ever going to give me the Pulitzer Prize, you guys. In conclusion, Thomas Friedman is Satan, makes shit up and I hate him. He should go marry smelly old Maureen Dowd and make little mustache babies, the end. Sorry this wasn't funnier!