Barack Obama...

...is not on my enemies list.

We give you a lot of hell, Mr. President. But to be honest, it's a hard job and I don't envy you. Hell, I doubt I'd be a better president unless I were sober. The truth is, you've actually had a pretty successful presidency so far. According to the latest Rasmussen, some 47% of your voters "at least somewhat approve" of the job you're doing! In other words, almost half of voters don't think you're completely ruining the country. Also, you've won a Nobel Peace Prize! Accolades a-plenty! Hey, maybe you and Al Gore and Yasser Arafat can get together and take a huge dump on Jews and all of humanity's technological progress. Sounds like fun!

And I know I've personally (and accurately) painted you as a narcissistic, condescending, arrogant, and indecisive elitist, but who wouldn't be in your shoes? Every day you have to work with a few hundred racist, knuckle-dragging, clinically insane, clueless, dwarflike bureaucrats. After all, you went to Harvard Law - A school so prestigious that it doesn't even bother grading its students.

But what really moved you off my list was when you completely bitched John McCain last week, reminding him that the election was over. Granted, I said the exact same thing about you after the State of the Union, but you're right for calling out the good senator on continuing with the disingenuous neocon conversion he suddenly and inexplicably underwent in '08. Respek knuckles/terrorist fist jab for you, sir. Congratulations.


Oh wait, yes he is.

Everybody's experienced this: You have two friends - everyone hates the first one and likes the second one. You're all at a party and the first one tells a joke that falls flat on its face and gets zero laughs. The second friend hears the joke, waits a little while, and repeats it to the same people, without changing the joke's contents, timing, or delivery, and everyone is in stitches.

Barack Obama is the second friend. Remember the aforementioned Nobel? In his acceptance speech he mentioned that while war was regrettable, it was sometimes necessary. Well, I guess that makes George W. some kind of fucking visionary. I also heard Joe Biden on CNN saying that a successful democracy in Iraq would be one of the crown jewels of the Obama administration. So I guess nation-building is a good thing now. And the escalation in Afghanistan - where have I seen that before? So far, Mr. President, your only successes have been achieved through owning up to other peoples' ideas. Much like that time I invented the printing press.

As for the Nobel, I'm sure you won that on the merits. There's absolutely no chance that the prize was awarded as a gesture of racial reconciliation from the most racist place of all time, Europe. (It also probably didn't hurt that you were waging a war against Europe's worst nightmare: Muslims.) You're back on the list, sir.


Also, sorry for the delayed update everyone. A short explanation: it's called moot court and it will crush your soul.

Race Relations, I Guess

No serious developments this week, so I thought I'll go ahead and continue my Enemies List. First up...

Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, et al.
Wow. Thanks for making it easy and super hip to be a white Christian Republican, guys.
Which sort of brings me to the next one...

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
In addition to being my political enemy, Umar holds the distinguished position of being my actual enemy as well, since, you know, he tried to murder me. "But" you say, "you could have chosen any of the world's hilariously failed terrorists for this list!" True, but Umar is responsible for building so many bridges between Muslims/non-Muslims and black people/everyone else. Like the above gentlemen, Mr. Abdulmutallab has deliberately dedicated himself to making life unbearable for people of his same background. At any given moment, there's a Muslim American thinking to himself "It sure is great that when people hear my last name they think my first and only instinct is to just run at the nearest airplane and blow it up. That's marketable. That will land me a high-power job and a supermodel wife." Thanks to Umar and his compatriots, there's only one Muslim in the media that the West is comfortable with seeing, and that's probably only because he's played by an Indian.

Also, you've no doubt heard that Mr. Abdulmutallab is from Nigeria, a nation known for its urgent business propositions and general success, as evidenced by the fact that it spends most of its time blowing up 80% of its own GDP. So the fact that his pantsbomb failed actually furthers another stereotype - that of ineptitude. Don't believe such a stereotype exists? Let's try a little experiment. Which of the following headlines would be more shocking to you:

NIGERIAN DESTROYS OWN GENITALS IN BOMB BLUNDER
NIGERIAN MARTYR MASTERMINDS TERROR ATTACK

That's what I thought. Racist. Speaking of which, I don't care much for Chris Rock either.

An Easy Start

As of now, the Obama Challenge is officially live again. Some of you may have anticipated that this rebirth would explode the innernetz with bold proclamations and excitement for the coming spring (or, as it's called here in New England, winter), but that's just not how I roll. I'm going to ease back into things here, as opposed to abruptly introducing some confusing, unforeseeable new conflict before resolving it a month later. (Catch the Lost season premiere tomorrow night at 9/8 central on ABC!)

But I've been away for a while, and as with any martial arts superstar returning to a throne he once abdicated, my first order of business is clear: I need to compile a list of my enemies.


The State of California
We've all somehow suffered through a transcendentally obnoxious wave of Calocentrism for a couple of decades (Catch the next episode of Weeds on Showtime!), and it's really time to say "enough." Yes, I've been to the Golden State. Yes, to the good parts, too. And it is, admittedly, unique and thoroughly enjoyable, but only in that you-go-out-to-the-new-bar/club-with-your-friends-and-buy-a-few-rounds-of-shots-without-knowing-they're-$11-each-and-then-you're-pissed-and-tired-and-pretty-sure-the-urinal-in-the-restroom-wasn't-properly-installed-because-that-looks-like-fine-urine-mist-on-your-shoes-and-pants-and-you-have-no-shot-at-getting-laid-because-lets-face-it-no-one-in-this-bar-is-datable-and-you-want-to-leave-but-everyone-wants-to-hit-up-the-after-hours-joint-so-you-go-back-home-alone-and-take-a-cab-and-the-driver-is-Hatian-and-of-course-gyps-you-and-takes-you-the-long-way-even-after-you-protest-so-three-hours-of-drinking-and-talking-costs-easily-into-the-triple-digits way. Or to put it simply, California's assets are VASTLY outweighed by its liabilities.

The place is riddled with homeless. And not the kind that justify pity. These are the snooty, ungrateful homeless that are, as far as I can tell, unique to the region. What follows is a play in one act recounting (verbatim) an encounter between my father and a homeless woman about a block away from the Biltmore Grand in downtown LA:

[Enter FATHER and HOBO, walking severally.]
Hobo: Sir, can you give me some money?
Father: Sorry, no I can't.
Hobo: Come on, man!
Father: I can't spare anything, I'm sorry.
Hobo: Give me about five dollars.
Father [stopping in his tracks]: I'm not doing that!
Hobo: Come on, mister!
Father: Get away from me. I don't want anything to do with you.
[Exeunt omnes.]

Only in California would you find such an outright breach of hobo etiquette. No manners - not so much as a "please" (or preferably a "beggin' your pardon, milord"*) followed by an outright demand for a government bailout, by panhandling standards. I don't even give my friends that kind of cash free and clear, mainly because naked demands for money don't occur in real life. I mean, when I spot my friends cash, at the very least I get the promise "I'll buy you a beer later!", however illusory that is. But no - nothing here. There's no consideration at all - the hobo played no instrument, danced no number, and displayed no hilarious sharpie-scrawled hobo joke on a cardboard scrap.

Item #2: Money. California, mid-century mecca of prosperity and the nation's most populous state, has none of it. The state government, having imposed a tax burden that's what, the fourth highest in the country, is completely broke. It suspended state income tax returns, which I didn't know was constitutional. It tried to pay off obligations in I.O.U.'s. It's so far in the red that it is now cheaper to insure bonds issued by the government of Kazakhstan than it is municipal bonds issued by California. You know what happens if I try to pull any of this in the real world? Neither do I, because I'm not high enough off my ass from secondary weed smoke and self-satisfaction to try it. But if I did, I'm fairly positive that the consequences would start with eviction and somehow lead to my incarceration in a 19th-century debtor's prison.

Item #3: Tyranny. Remember 2008? When there weren't jobs because we all thought it was a stellar idea to invest scads of cash in the notion that people with no assets and prospects could pay down colossal mortgages that were never designed to be paid down anyway? Well not only were a lot of those homes built in California (another scrap of proof of the state's complicity in the conspiracy to destroy me), but while everyone was downsizing and doing more with less, California's government...wasn't. There's nothing quite like boosting the taxpayer-funded payroll by 3600 jobs to crush the hopes and dreams of your out-of-work proletariat. The state knows where this money comes from, right? Typically, I stop hiring people when I'm broke. I mean, imagine that you're out of work. Wait...it's 2010. Ok, so you're out of work. And now you just hired a gardener and a maid. Have fun in small claims court!

Item #4: Fire. God Almighty, just turn it off for a second. Yeah, yeah, yeah, at any given moment 50% of the state is on fire. We're all REALLY impressed. This is a phenomenon I've never understood. Once or twice a year, a blaze mysteriously appears somewhere in that kindle-heap of a state and destroys a few peoples' McMansions**, and this somehow gets plastered on CNN and passes for national news. I don't get it. I mean, when the snow melts every March (or June in New England), you don't flip over to Fox News to hear an urgent, breaking story about how these solid flecks of ice are turning into water. (Not that you should flip over to Fox News under any circumstances.) My response for California's cry-for-attention-masked-as-national-emergency? Buy insurance and get over it. In case you haven't heard, you invented this thing called "global warming", and it really doesn't help that you're pumping tons of black, unbreathable smoke into the atmosphere and destroying millions of acres of pristine habitat while doing so. Thanks.

I'm calling you out, Golden State. More additions to the list shortly...

* - To the homeless who are not reading this because it isn't a price tag on Hurricane malt liquor: saying the above in a British accent when asking for a handout will guarantee you foldin' money from yours truly.
** - The upside for this year? There's absolutely no chance that anyone will be killed and injured in this year's wildfires, since these homes have now been abandoned through the life-saving power of foreclosure.

Fearless Moral Inventory

February approaches and I'm beginning to formulate a more coherent outline for the Challenge moving forward. This post is more or less a checklist of my planned revisions, wants, and goals for the coming spring.

Changes:

1.) New layout. This unoffensive blueness has to go. It sends a message of complacency and mediocrity that I can't tolerate for much longer. See that border up there? I was hoping to replace it with some sort of epic mural - preferably of jets bombing an already burned-out city populated solely by renegade militia and the zombified corpses of members of the Green Party. If you have suggestions, get back at me.

2.) Coherence. I got some flak over the summer for not staying on-mission with my posts, and indeed, I often did vigorously depart from the promised political/pugilistic format of this blog. I'm sorry for entertaining you. I'll be sure to stay on task. I also heard a lot of you complaining that you didn't get all of my references. It's called an internet. There are literally billions of them. Install one on your computer and use it for informations.

New Content:

1.) Mail Call. I feel like this thing might get old without feedback. So, I'm un-hiding my e-mail. I encourage, nay, beg you to send me your feedback, along with any ideas, questions, etc. I'm hoping to have a recurring (hopefully periodic) Q&A post, where I field questions or suggestions from you groundlings (I'm looking at you, Bob). In the interest of security and lulz, I reserve the right to censor your letters or even replace them with better ones.

2.) Presidential Kombat. This project fell on its face (and was subsequently deleted) for two reasons: First, it was unbearably onerous to administer. Second, no one was pushing Reagan up with me, while Woodrow Wilson actually got a vote. I'll hopefully bring it back in March, but I'm planning on implementing a simple bracket system, as opposed to a ladder. To seed the bracket, I will employ a select panel of judges (me) to deliberate behind closed doors some time next month. This will run concurrently with March Madness.

Also, here's a portrait of Jean-Luc Picard:

It's from an article on Breitbart contrasting the leadership of our president and Captain Picard which I somehow didn't write. I just want to point out now that I began the coming trend of nerd-culture political journalism.

I'll be back in February. In the meantime, I have to go to war with Breitbart with bottles and chains. The line must be drawn HERE!

Resurrection

Dear Readers,

This past August, I allowed the Obama Challenge to pass into dereliction without as much as a "thanks for reading" from yours truly. For this, I apologize. I'd always intended to end the project at the Summer/Fall transition as I prepared to return to class. So thank you all for the support, and for the lulz. As a whole, the project was a resounding success, putting me into the best physical shape in my life and conditioning my mind to the point that I am now a borderline telepath.

But this victory has proven fleeting, as in the months that followed, it became increasingly obvious that I needed to resume my work on the Challenge. Since August, the President has maliciously and deliberately been instigating a conflict between he and I, packing a proverbial keg with also-proverbial gunpowder. I cite as examples:
1. The Caligula-esque discord he has sown in the public, as evidenced by his historically poor approval ratings.
2. His acceptance of the Stalin Award (you may know it as the "Nobel Peace Prize").
3. Proving himself to be, in all truth and honesty, a separate incarnation of George W. Bush.

Now you may say "but everyone saw this coming", and you'd be right. I expected an extreme amount of tension between he and I moving forward, but I always believed it to be manageable...until now. As many of you know, the President has recently sought to derail a long-awaited, epochal event in American history. Namely, he has threatened to schedule the State of the Union on top of the premier of the final season of Lost. Trivial? That's what many said when Archduke Ferdinand was shot by Franz Kafka. Or whoever.

This is the most reprehensible of transgressions, Mr. Obama, and perhaps your worst to date. A leader may trample our liberties from time to time, but he should never, ever stand between a man and his leisure. I'll see you in the ring, Mr. President.

The Obama Challenge resumes this February.

A joke is a very serious thing.

And now we come down to the last one, and I know what you're all thinking. "Oh, what stupid video game/cartoon/B movie character are you going to choose this time?" Well, smartass, it's a real person this time. I am appointing Winston Churchill as my Secretary of State.

Although, I will admit, Winston Churchill isn't much of a real person. I mean look at him. Did someone distill my preconceptions of 1930's England down into a living, breathing person? Apparently so - and he was even elected Prime Minister. So yeah, I'm thinking he's kind of a made-up person. I mean if world leaders were stereotypical caricatures of the countries they represent, then any asshole in the world could be the next President. But on the other hand, Churchill did completely bitch FDR, and that's good enough for me.

For real though, Churchill's fame/wisdom seems somewhat overinflated and fictitious to me. He's perhaps the single most often quoted individual in the English-speaking world, and I always wondered why, since none of his quotes ever made any sense. Examples:

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." Yeah, I guess.
"When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin. " Um...k.
"I always avoid prophesying beforehand, because it is a much better policy to prophesy after the event has already taken place." But that-
"Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it. "...gross.
"India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the Equator. " Oh snap! Take it easy, WC. You can't just say that. You know they have the internet there now, right?
"Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement." WHAT!? Where did THAT come from? Well, I do enjoy explosions.
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." Hahaha, touche, Mr. Churchill. Touche. What ever happened to aristocracy, anyway?
"Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times." Explosives AND chemical weapons!? Mr. Churchill, I think we have a LOT in common.
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." OMG! That's what I said!
"When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite." Holy damn! What a delightfully insane thing to say. You, my good man, have the job. Feel free to represent me in any matter.

And that's pretty much how I came to this decision.

Veterans' Affairs?

I'm not even sure what this department does, and I refuse to research it. But, based on the title, I've decided to appoint Connor MacLeod as the Secretary of Veterans' Affairs.

For those of you who are too pretentious or female to get the reference, it's from the Highlander. The premise is this: He is immortal, and he is compelled to wander the earth in search of other immortals so that he may decapitate them and steal their strength. Repeat until there is only one. There. I just explained The Highlander to you. If this is your first time hearing this, enjoy going to Starbuck's with your douchebag girlfriend/boyfriend.

Anyway, as a product of his epicness, Mr. MacLeod has been alive for several hundred years, and has seen him some pretty ridiculous shit. Including Sean Connery. So yeah, I'd say Mr. MacLeod knows well the ravages and aftermath of war. I can't think of anyone better situated to guide policy concerning how we should accommodate and honor the sacrifices of the bravest members of our society. ("WHAT? He DOES know what the department does! He DID do the research!" Of course I did, bitches! YOU GOT OBAMACHALLENGE'D!)

And instead of listing his qualifications, I've decided to simply include a few photos of people he's killed in single combat. (Note: That's a stupid idea. I'll just include three different pictures of The Kurgan, since that'll be three times as impressive.)







Next!