Found! A connection between Obama and the Devil!!!

A Fox News blogger, James Pinkerton, has uncovered a startling connection between Satan and Barack.

No, we aren't joking. Neither is he.

OK, you might be asking, where is this Lucifer stuff coming from? It comes from a man named Saul Alinsky, who devoted his life to left-wing agitation in Chicago. He also wrote two seminal books, "Reveille for Radicals" and "Rules for Radicals," still regarded as key how-to manuals for left-wing activists.

But Alinsky was more than just a leftist; he was a genuine out-there crazy, someone who loved to shock and stun, just for the helluvit. And so in the first edition of "Rules for Radicals," published in 1971, he offered this astounding dedication: "Lest we forget at least an over the shoulder acknowledgement of the very first radical, from all our legends, mythology, and history … the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom--Lucifer."

And how are Satan and Alinsky and Obama related, you ask? Did they frequent the same bakery? No... they are connected because they are all libruls! Evil, evil, libruls.

There's a new Buffet!

Fiction from Chris Tannhauser, author of Sadhus in Trouble, See-Through and Zoroaster's Conundrum, comes "Prologue: God's Dogs," the first installment of his (serialized here!) novel of a conquered Earth: Tears of the Wounded Sky.

I will kill everything that eats children.
Animals, people, ideas.
Things from the stars.
I ask but one thing of you, cosmos: let me be their suffering.
The nocturnal hours passed, counted in breaths. He thought long, slow memories of Amy, her dark hair spread on a pillow. Amy in sunlight, her smile squeezing his heart. He thought of Amy: did she burn, or decompress? For the thousandth time he decided it didn't matter. It just didn't matter. He squeezed the grip of his baseball bat until his knuckles were bone white and his tendons creaked. The wood wouldn't give. Neither would he.

Also in Armageddon Buffet: Our editorial tracks John McCain's quest to become the next Cowboy in Chief in "The Right's Last Hurrah."

Viewed more broadly, this ploy of the McCain campaign seems yet another in a long line of Hail Mary passes that have characterized its post-primary run for the presidency. McCain has made much over the years of his maverick status, but his maneuvers in the past several weeks have made him seem erratic, even whimsical. Most prominent among these was his choice of Sarah Palin as running mate. As a brazen attempt to snatch both the women's vote and the redneck vote in one swoop, the selection initially seemed incredibly clever, too clever, jumping-the-shark clever.

For a time during and after the GOP convention, the crowd that embraced Obama was dismayed, even depressed, to the sneers and jeers of the right. McCain alone had not been able to appeal to the really stupid voters who form the core of the Republican base. Sarah Palin would draw those voters out of their holes in the woodwork. The 29 percent who still believe W. has done a splendid job would swallow their doubts about McCain and come out for the gun-totin' pro-pregnancy cheerleader from Wasilla, and the U.S. would continue its smug decline.

Visit Armageddon Buffet, and Eat While You Can!

Was Gordon Gecko wrong??!?

Could we have possibly misunderstood the point of Wall Street? Greed was good, right? Especially if it's greed in service of - greedy individuals!

And then the word "theoretically" becomes very important. I have attended many conferences on quantitative finance, at which professors and practitioners describe their latest models for derivative instruments and the like. All the time I'm sitting in the audience thinking that these models are far too simplistic and based on countless unrealistic assumptions. I tell people that these instruments are dangerous, that no one understands the risks. But no one cares.

As long as people are compensated hugely for taking risks with other people's money, and do not suffer equally on the downside, then those risks will inevitably become outrageous. Whether markets are efficient or not I don't know for sure, but I do know that if there's a way for someone to make money at another's expense, he will. In spades. I want out.