Well, another 450 points shaved off of the Dow.

So, who wanted to privatize Social Security? John McCain.

Who was a lead in the charge for deregulation? John McCain.

Disastrous leadership, John McCain.

The fundamentals of this economy are not strong, Senator McCain. The real estate market is collapsing, the mortgage industry (the same one you decided should be deregulated) has broken, and the stock market is taking a beating to the tune of almost 900 points in a few days.

The international markets are also teetering. The interwoven world economy is reeling from collapses and failures due to speculative investments in high risk paper, and derivatives far outstretched from any notion of prudence. Deregulation, Senator McCain, was, and is, a foolish notion built in the petty minds of greedy laissez-faire industrialists who envision only their own profits, and care not for the common American family’s needs.

It was John McCain who sharpened his lance head, and charged head long into the notion of regulating industries to maintain a bastion of economic health in a volatile economic world. He let greed shine his armor, and shed his supposed ethics to better let the world view him in a spectacular light. It was Senator John McCain, and his ilk, that have lead us to this bitter battle, and it is them who will continue to protect themselves from their own financial demise by sacrificing headlong charges of the common American family into the sharp and unrepentant weapons of economic ruin.

If you think, even for one minute, that John McCain would be better for the economy, spare yourself the next four years to prove yourself wrong and give all that you still have to charity, so that at least some good can come from your stupidity.

Shame on you Senator McCain.

Solzhenitsyn.

It’s a joy looking at the face of a man you know to be simple and forthright–bittersweet when he no longer can be so. The world has a lot to thank Alexander Solzhenitsyn for, beyond the strings of words he so eloquently constructed. A man with such a love for his country that he could not let the evil lurk in the shadows, no more than he could stay away once the evils had perished in the light of day amongst the crumbling concrete walls that, for too long, entrapped free men who thought themselves slaves.

So, I was zoning out in the mirror…

and got to pressing my ears in, then letting them pop back out. I don’t have ears that stick out, no more than they should, but when you look in the mirror for too long, funny things happen.

It got me to thinking, or rather, remembering.

I hung out with this girl (woman, I should say, but it was more than a decade ago) who had had her ears done. Yeah, you heard me through your non-done ears correctly–she had her ears done. I saw pictures of her as a child, and they weren’t bad. Actually, they were fine. At the tender age of…well, I don’t know, but it was before she was 20, and the scars were damn near invisible by then (trust me, I looked…I looked everywhere).

She wanted to be a model–or more probably, her mother wanted her to be a model. It happened, she went on to do what she had wanted, and probably ended up doing okay at it as well. But the ears thing. Seriously, what price glory? What if it had been screwed up in some odd way? Imagine an otherwise unbelievably beautiful woman with deranged ears? Yikes.

I won’t kid you, I’m a big fan of immaculately manicured and semi manufactured looking women. There’s something about the industrial sterility of them that makes them both unbelievably attractive and utterly forgettable afterwards. It’s a great total package if you’re into that kind of thing. But, at the same time, I really enjoy the lingering, nuanced attractiveness of natural, ‘normal’ woman more. The jeans and blouse girl with the two year old hairstyle, and the slightly ravaged look. It’s like they dig a little deeper into your soul than the medically perfected, symmetry guaranteed style mavens ever could.

Maybe I’ll get calf implants just to see what the whole hubbub is about.