There have been many storied tactical defenses in history, to which a new member will be added this week.  Let us review them.

The Nuremburg Defense. Best summarized by the now-cliched “I was only following orders.”  Level of success: Not so good.  After this was first used, stock in Amalgamated Rope & Trap Door Co. (NYSE: CYA) hit a two-year high.

The Twinkie Defense. Did you know that eating junk food renders you helpless against the urge to engage in multiple political assassinations?  It’s true!  Level of success: Suprisingly high.

The Idiot Defense. The crown jewel of commercial magnates whose companies go toes-up — “I have no clue” as a managerial style.  Level of success: low.  One guy in the last few years — Richard Scrushy of HealthSouth, apparently got off.  Everybody else didn’t.

The Nadjorf-Sicilian Defense.  Popularlized and mastered by Bobby Fischer.  Level of success: High, in Fischer’s hands.  But, of course, Fischer went spectacularly mad.  So: use with caution, and do not combine with anti-Semitism.

The Best Defense.  In short: a good offense.  Level of success: Unreliable.  Presumes an actual defense that is worth a damn.

The Chewbacca Defense. Look at the monkey!  Level of success: despite counterintuitive underpinnings, the best strategy EVER.

So: where does the Blagojevich Defense — “they don’t have anything on me, they just want to RAISE YOUR TAXES” – rank among these giants of theory?

Another day, another outrage.  Today I’m having trouble picking just one, so let’s make a list:

1. Billy Joel – I have long held that he is deeply, bathetically awful.  Nice to see someone other than Joe Queenan agrees with me.  Just a snippet:

This must be prevented! No career re-evaluations please! No false contrarian rehabilitations! He was terrible, he is terrible, he always will be terrible. Anodyne, sappy, superficial, derivative, fraudulently rebellious. Joel’s famous song “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me”? Please. It never was rock ‘n’ roll. Billy Joel’s music elevates self-aggrandizing self-pity and contempt for others into its own new and awful genre: “Mock-Rock.”

The other five are after the jump.

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Rod Blagojevich adopts the Otter Defense, as envisioned by String Bikini Theory.

Title: The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Crash Following the Greatest Boom in History

Author: Harry S. Dent

Rank: 20

Blurb: “Your life is about to change for reasons outside of your control.”

Review: “If you followed his investment advice over the last five years, you would be flat broke by now.”

Customers Also Bought: “The Next Great Bubble Boom: How to Profit from the Greatest Boom in History: 2006-2010,” by Harry S. Dent

Footnote: In the 2006 Bubble Boom, Dent predicts “the Great Boom resurging into its final and strongest stage in 2007, and even more fully in 2008, lasting until late 2009 to early 2010,” when the Dow hits 40,000.

The Great Depression Ahead [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]

Once again, banking’s Best and Brightest piss away your tax dollars!

You could hardly blame Kenneth D. Lewis, the embattled leader of the Bank of America Corporation, for feeling a bit of buyer’s remorse.

His audacious acquisition of Merrill Lynch, the giant brokerage, looks so disastrous that many on Wall Street wonder if he can keep his job.

Four months ago, as turmoil swept Wall Street, Mr. Lewis’s bank bought the foundering brokerage for $50 billion in stock. Today, the two companies are worth $40 billion combined.

Of course, no one could have predicted this would happen:

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My friend and I in happier times (aka the beginning of our wait).

One of the stories of inauguration day that seems to be quickly gaining steam is the plight of the purple ticket holders, including SanFranLefty and your very own Homofascist.  Truth be told people from the blue and silver areas had trouble getting in as well, but the Purple People as we have been dubbed seem to be the most covered and seemingly the most vocal.  Of course we also seem to be the group of whom only about 50 out of thousands got onto the Mall.  We got some play from Maddow and stories have been popping up all over the place, including this pretty definitive account (at least from my perspective where I was stuck) from The Huffington Post.  There is also a Facebook group called Survivors of the Purple Tunnel of Doom.  They are pissed and seeking reparations.  You can even take a Washington Post poll to put in your 2 cents about what we should get for our hassles.  And as is the sign of the times we have a Wiki page (I was not in the tunnel) and our own merchandise!

I wanted to give you a first hand account of my experience and give you my thoughts about all of the hubbub.  Warning:  it is long.  But includes a picture of Homofascist with a celebrity, so read on!

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Anyone worrying that Talibunny will be taking the next mangled oath of office can rest easy: The world will come to an end a month before she has the chance.

The latest Endtimes Save-the-Date comes courtesy of the Mayan calendar, which rolls over on December 21, 2012.

Or, if you prefer: Completely stops.

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