“In Alabama, 45% of Republican voters in Alabama think Obama is a Muslim, while 41% are not sure. In Mississippi, 52% of Republicans think Obama is Muslim, while 36% are unsure.” [Political Wire]

It’s March Mental Illness time again, which can only mean one thing: Cackling joy at your inability to pick the winners of amateur sporting events.

That’s right: It’s the trash-talking extravanganza of the Stinque Braquet!

Braquet Queen Mellbell has deviously plotted your destruction by creating a Yahoo Mutual Torture Society. Click the Join Group button and seal your fate:

Group ID: 114465
Password: neworleans

It’s all in good fun, right? Well, up until the moment we start shaming the losers in public.

President Obama, responding to Sunday’s massacre of sixteen Iraqi civilians by an American soldier:

“We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”

Oops, we’re sorry. Wrong statement:

“I fully support Secretary Panetta’s and General Allen’s commitment to get the facts as quickly as possible and to hold accountable anyone responsible.”

We understand. Once you hit six figures, responsibility is rendered quaint.

Statement by the President on Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan [White House]

Obama Reluctant to Look Into Bush Programs [NYT, 1/11/2009]

Title: “Becoming China’s Bitch: And Nine More Catastrophes We Must Avoid Right Now”

Author: Peter D. Kiernan

Rank: 35

Blurb: “Presented from a fresh yet informative Centrist perspective, these ten impending catastrophes include our semiconscious dependency on China, our lack of a centrally coordinated intelligence effort, our downward-spiraling health-care system, and the continually expanding problem of illegal immigration.”

Review: “Meryl Streep said it all in her back of the book-jacket endorsement (the ONLY endorsement)…”

Customers Also Bought: “Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think” by Peter H. Diamandis

Footnote: “Peter D. Kiernan, former partner at Goldman Sachs, is chairman of his own venture firm.”

Becoming China’s Bitch [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon Kickback Link]

We have one. We bought it in 1980. We wrote a story about it for the college paper. We’ve never solved it. Fuck robots.

Being of a Certain AARP-Qualified Age, we remember Pong. We remember the night it showed up at Charlie’s Pool Hall on Willamette, everybody gathered around it like the crowd watching the Close Encounters Mothership land: Oooooooooh. We also remember, not that many years later, being stoned beyond belief and killing at Centipede, after which we gave up on videogames forever, because really, once you’ve achieved satori, there’s no going back.

So yeah, we remember the Golden Age of video arcades. And what we remember doesn’t sound like this:

The idea here, according to the OAK-U-TRON’s designers, is to capture the feel of the arcade era, when gaming was an inherently social venture.

If by “social” you mean that we all hung out at Charlie’s on weekend evenings, sure. But if you’re trying to suggest that it was a cooperative atmosphere, you never bore the brunt of Karl’s glee when he whipped yer ass at Breakout. Videogames were just a new way to fail before your peers.

Read more »

[Big Government]