Now it can be told: The shocking truth behind our nation’s zombie-fighting efforts:

Vampires arrived in the United States with the first European settlers and followed the general population shifts of Americans in the early days of the Republic. During this time, fighting vampires was a task left to individual bounty hunters and local militias known as the Vampire National Guard.

As the country grew and became increasingly urbanized, a more ambitious vampire abatement program became necessary. The Copper Creek Seige of 1855, in which vampires took over an entire California mining town, underscored the country’s need for an organized, well-trained force to combat the growing plague. The Civil War delayed implementation until 1868, when President Ulysses S. Grant officially formed the Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency.

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Pumpkin Jam 2008 [Flickr]

InventorSpot [via PromNight]

We only read Politico when we’re desperate for story ideas — i.e., when Google News doesn’t put out — so it was by chance that we stumbled across this astute analysis from Jeanne Cummings:

Best Decisions

1. Obama’s gamble to stay out of the presidential financing system.

Well, sure, that’s easy to see now, the day Barry was blowing millions on network vanity programming. But what about then, Jeanne, back in September when the insight would have been valuable?

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Our Obamaseltzer Open Thread begins, as is customary, with an invocation from the Most Rev. Howard Beale:

I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be!

We all know things are bad — worse than bad — they’re crazy.

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Our Open Thread/Dance-Off for the Obamamercial kicks its heels at 7:45 p.m. Eastern. NBC, CBS and Fox are carrying it, as is MSNBC — which we think means West Coast cable potatoes will be able to catch the early feed. Or you can watch John McCain’s counterprogramming on ABC: “Pushing Daisies”.

Obama starring in infomercial, broader TV blitz [AP]

We’re violating our self-imposed prohibition on headline cursing because we couldn’t forgive ourselves if we let the opportunity slip by. And for our transgression you may blame our Oz correspondent CheapBoy, who inadvertently led us to the Story of the Century.

It begins with a visit by the Whyte family of Sydney to the posh Coogee Bay Hotel, “where every day’s a great day at the bay.” The Whytes were there to watch Grand Final Day, the culminating event of Australian Rules Football, which Wikipedia informs us involves “a ball in the shape of a prolate spheroid” — an apt description of what was to befall them.

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