Register to Vote Now … Or Face Horrible Moose-Bone Juju Forever

Tonight, the most spectacularly unprepared vice presidential candidate ever to foul a ballot — and yes, we’re including Dan Quayle — will get her comeuppance on national teevee. Barring some brutal and unforeseen brain hiccup on the part of Joe Biden (AKA “the candidate not running alongside an Evil Albino Scum-Hobbit”),  tonight’s debate will once and for all unmask Sarah Palin as a corrupt and witless hairdo — even for that great and quivering mass of Americans who understand little beyond sugary soft drinks, Rush Limbaugh’s Oxycodone-scented bellowing, and processed cheese.

Naturally, the Arthur D.C. Bureau is feeling a wee bit festive this evening, and so we’ll likely be having a cocktail or two with friends in front of a big-screen somewhere.

What will we be drinking?

White Russians. Sitting across the room from us. Close enough to see, but not close enough to know what they actually taste like.*

Whoops … Sorry for that. What we meant to say is this: Do yrself and the planet a big fat favor and register to vote. Find the board of elections wherever you live, whether city or backwater, and hustle on down there with yr ID, maybe even two. The cutoff date is drawing perilously near; the deadline for many states for the Nov. 4 election is Monday.

Look, the system’s broken blah blah blah. We know. But remember: Not voting this time around is just like handing that rotten old coot a copy of the Bill of Rights and pointing him toward the toilet. It’s different this time, for many more reasons than we have time to go into here.

Some of you aren’t swayed by appeals to yr civic duty, or even to reason, but we understand that, frequently having acted unreasonably ourselves. So we’ll ply you with alcohol: Any Magpie readers who provide proof of voter registration, in person, to the Arthur D.C. Bureau, between the time of this posting and Election Day are entitled to one (1) free drink.**  We’re not really sure whether this runs afoul of any election laws, but we haven’t talked to any lawyers today and we’d like to keep it that way.

All the best,

*  We will also be eating Freddie Mac-n’-Cheese, Baked Alaska and all sorts of Vietnamese food.

** Offer expires yesterday. Unless you actually are able to hunt the Bureau Chief down, in which case you deserve a drink.

SECESSION by Thomas H. Naylor

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SECESSION
How Vermont and All the Other States Can Save Themselves from the Empire
By Thomas H. Naylor; Introduction by Kirkpatrick Sale
5.5 x 8.25 • 240 pages
$12
Feral House

America has lost its moral authority to huge corporate interests, say Secession movement leaders. This remarkable book shows how a seemingly wild political idea continues to grow and create debate on our unsustainable, ungovernable and unfixable empire.

From Kirkpatrick Sale’s introduction: “Secession may seem like an outlandish idea at first, but when considered forthrightly and un-prejudicially it becomes a powerful alternative to other kinds of political action. Thomas Naylor has here charted a brave and inspiring course for any American interested in practical, useful, thoroughgoing social and political change in America.” Kirkpatrick Sale is the author of Rebels Against the Future.

Thomas H. Naylor, professor emeritus of Duke University and co-author of Affluenza and The Search for Meaning, is founder and chair of the Second Vermont Republic, the foremost secessionist organization in the country.

Kirkpatrick Sale is the author of Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution.

PDF includes blurbs, table of contents, and Author Thomas Naylor’s newly revised chapters 5 and 6.

Arthur presents "BAPTISM IN MAVERICK JUICE!" by Paul Krassner

Baptism in Maverick Juice!
A special sneak preview of this fall’s Palin-McCain reality sitcom
by Paul Krassner

Referring to the Ronald Reagan presidency, Neal Gabler has written about “the triumph of entertainment over political ideology of any sort.” And Kurt Andersen labeled Bill Clinton the “Entertainer-in-Chief.” The voters are the audience, conditioned to fear and superficiality in commercials for erectile dysfunction and political campaigns alike, both having scary side
effects. And now the injection of Sarah Palin and her family into the McCain campaign makes one wonder whether the winner of this race will ultimately depend on which candidate presents the better sitcom. It already isa reality show. Do you know what the difference is between a sitcom and a reality show? The laugh track. Otherwise, how would the masses be able to tell whether something is funny or not? Hmmmmm… In any case, we’re pleased to present several scenes from the pilot episode of…

BRIDGES TO NOWHERE

[The theme song by Britney Spears, “Oops! I Did It Again,” is accompanied by a montage of Sarah in different contexts, as the opening credits are superimposed on those images: In a helicopter, using a machine-gun to shoot a wolf running away in the snow. As a contestant in the Miss Alaska competition. A wedding photo. Burning a pile of books. Jumping high to block a shot in a basketball game. Seated at her desk in the governor’s office. At a barbecue with her children. Giving a speech to a large crowd. At the bank, exchanging a wolf’s left foreleg for a $150 bounty.]

* * *

[Sarah and Todd Palin are slumped down on the living-room sofa.]

SARAH: I’m exhausted and exhilarated at the same time. I was at the Learning Annex all day, taking that course in “How to Be a Vice President.”

TODD: And I was interviewing potential nannies all day. No one fits the bill yet. But I just keep calling the agency. Maybe I’ll try Craigslist.

[The telephone rings. Todd picks it up.]

TODD: Hello…thanks, I will. [Hangs up the phone and clicks on the TV That was McCain. [Looks at TV Guide for the channel number and clicks the TV on.]Keith Olbermann is doing a Special Comment about you on MSNBC.

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NO MONEY DOWN: Rushkoff on the rigged credit system (Arthur, 2008)

NO MONEY DOWN
by Douglas Rushkoff

Illustration by Arik Roper

from Arthur Magazine No. 31, Oct 2008

I poked my head up from writing my book a couple of months ago to engage with Arthur readers about the subject I was working on: the credit crunch and what to do about it [see “Riding Out the Credit Crisis” in Arthur No. 29/May 2008]. I got more email about that piece than anything I have written since a column threatening to defect from the Mac community back in the Quadra days.

Many readers thought I was hinting at something under the surface—a conspiracy, of sorts, to take money from the poor and give it to the rich. It sounded to many like I was describing an economic system actually designed—planned—to redistribute income in the worst possible ways.

I guess I’d have to agree with that premise. Only it’s not a secret conspiracy. It’s an overt one, and playing out in full view of anyone who has time (time is money, after all) to observe it.

The mortgage and credit crisis wasn’t merely predictable; it was predicted. And not by a market bear or conspiracy theorist, but by the people and institutions responsible. The record number of foreclosures, credit defaults, and, now, institutional collapses is not the result of the churn of random market forces, but rather a series of highly lobbied changes to law, highly promoted ideologies of wealth and home ownership, and monetary policies highly biased toward corporate greed.

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It all started to make sense to me when I attended Learning Annex’s Wealth Expo earlier this year—a seminar where teachers of The Secret, the hosts of Flip This House, George Foreman, Tony Robbins and former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan [pictured above in banner from Learning Annex website] purportedly taught the thousands in attendance how to take advantage of the current foreclosure boom.

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