Check this out:

In 1968, Richard Nixon won the White House. He did it in a shameful way–by dividing Americans against one another, stirring up racial prejudices, and bringing out the worst in people.
They called it the “Southern Strategy,” and the Republicans have been using it ever since. Nixon pioneered it, and Ronald Reagan perfected it, using phrases like “racial quotas” and “welfare queens” to convince white Americans that minorities were to blame for all of America’s problems.
The Republican Party would never win elections if they came out and said their core agenda was about selling America piece by piece to their campaign contributors and making sure that wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of a few. To distract people from their real agenda, they run elections based on race, dividing us, instead of uniting us….
In America, there is nothing black or white about having to live from one paycheck to the next. It’s time we had a new politics in America–a politics that refuses to pander to our lowest prejudices. Because when white people and black people and brown people vote together, that’s when we make true progress in this country.

My pal Keith is running in the AIDS Marathon, and we’re doing two special J. Keith vanStraaten shows to help raise money for him and his girlfriend.
The first show is coming up on Wednesday, January 7th. All the details are here.
The JKvS Show is always great fun. If you’ve seen me on TechTV, it’s like that but without the constraints of television. Also, Keith and I have been friends for years, and when we’re on stage together, we share a bit of a common brain, and that creates fantastic comedy.
If you’re a kind-hearted person who wants to help out, but you can’t make it to the show, go here and show your love in a donation sort of way.

Well, the sickness took me down, and took me down good. After three days with fever, I went to the doctor on Xmas Eve, and he said I was somewhere between severe bronchitis and pneumonia. He put me on an antibiotic called Levaquin, gave me some mucus-thinning medication, and told me to take it easy.
Well, easy is just about the only way I could take it. I have enjoyed all of the “less common” side-effects of the antibiotic, most notably extreme irritability, inability to sleep, and my personal favorite, dizziness. Oh, the joy of the dizziness. I am reminded why taking any mind-altering drugs has never held any appeal for me.
I also haven’t been able to focus for more than one or two pages at a time, so I haven’t even been able to really dig into Wolves of the Calla, or any of the other bitchin’ books I got for Xmas.
I have watched all the appendicies on the LOTR DVDs, and I’m about to go watch some Fellowship commentary. It’s been nice to live in Middle Earth for a few days.

I’ve stayed away from editorializing in the last few months, but I suspect a lot of “off the table” topics are going to come up in the new year — there’s just too much going on in the world that’s pissing me off.
Let’s start today with this jackass story pile of crap in the New York Post:

IN this season of ecumenical brotherhood, here’s a suggestion for how to advance the cause of peace: Sell your stock in Take-Two Interactive Inc.
In case you can’t quite place the name, New York-based Take-Two Interactive is a Nasdaq-traded company in the video game business.
[…]
[L]et’s first pause for some thoughts on the core question of what this company actually does – which is to produce and market video games of such luxuriously violent and disgusting content as to leave one simply speechless.
The latest installment in the company’s best-selling “Grand Theft Auto” series – “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” – has been on the market for a little over a year now and has already sold more than 5 million copies.
[…]
In fact, “whatever you want” is what the game is all about. Thanks to its artful and complex programming and its incredibly realistic graphics, the game creates the impression of being inside a totally unscripted, live-action drama in which you can manufacture your mayhem as you go along.
People, this is insane. This is 10,000 times worse than the worst thing anybody thinks Michael Jackson ever did to a little boy – or than any lie the feds think Martha Stewart ever told them, or any line in any song that Bruce Springsteen ever sang that rankled a cop in the Meadowlands.

Yeah, you read that correctly. Michael Jackson’s accused of seven counts of commiting lewd acts on a minor — that’s legal speak for a whole bunch of inappropriate touching and who knows what else — and this genius suggests that the content of a video game is WORSE than that.

I can’t believe that it’s already December the 24th. I guess the past few days have all blurred together, and now it’s suddenly Christmas Eve.
I wanted to give out a cool WWdN Christmas gift, but the stupid flu put a halt to that plan, so I’ll just have to leave you all with my Christmas wish:
I wish for peace on Earth, and lots of Guinness for me.
Merry Christmas, everybody. Thanks for reading WWdN, and making this an amazing year!