If the Chair of the Committee to Elect McCain in Buchanan County, VA posted at the forvm rather than in a local newspaper, he'd be banned after writing the following:

So the Fed announced 2 very interventionist moves today, after the craziness of the last week. It's going to ban short selling of financial stocks for two weeks, and on top of that it's taking steps to guarantee money market accounts against loss. Is this too much?

Expectations were stratospherically high and he exceeded them, IMO.

I'm guessing Romney but only because I share the same low opinion of him and the bushies who are running the McCain campaign.

I have a final interview in San Fran on Monday and I figured, why not make it a weekend since they're flying me out there? So I'll be spending the weekend in San Francisco, a city I've never been to before and where I'm about 80% likely to live as of midsummer. A few questions for the community:

-What should I make a point of seeing this weekend?

-What neighborhoods should I look at, if anyone has any suggestions? I'm thinking Berkeley or West Oakland now for reasonable rent with BART access.

The Great Forvm War continues apace.. from a glance at the map and the most recent moves, it seems the destruction of the Ottoman empire is proceeding on roughly the historical timeline while the Franco-Italian alliance is slowing but not stopping the Royal Expeditionary Forces' advance onto the Continent. The collapse of the Soviet Union has been accelerated by about 80 years due to a dislodged German Wehrmacht taking control of the heart of the country to maintain it's logistics and supplies while the deposed Czar's loyalists hang on to St Petersburg and Sevastopol. Surprisingly, there have been no eliminations yet, not even of the vacant player.

Iraq the Model says that the United Islamic Alliance, the coalition of shi'ite parties (with 48% of the 275-member parliament), might be splitting between SCIRI and Sadr. SCIRI moderate shi'a and sunni parties and the kurds. The goal is to isolate Sadr's 32-member bloc by picking up all of the pragmatists. The biggest question is what the Dawa party, founded by some al-Sadr 3 generations ago, would do. They stand to lose significant power and don't have a militia that can compete with SCIRI or the current Sadr. Since both options (join the new coalition or stay out) stink for them if a split happens, they appealed to Sistani to rule on the matter and Sistani took the side of shi'ite unity over a moderate government.

Directions here under Bill White's post

Any difficulties signing up, feel free to troubleshoot here and we'll try to help figure it out..

Barring that I could get an RL friend to sign up to round out the game but I think it'd be a better game if none of us knew each other outside it.

Sorry for the fly-by, just too funny of a quote:

Incoming Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announces plan to institute 5 day workweek, starting at 6:30pm monday and going until 2pm friday.

"Keeping us up here eats away at families," said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who typically flies home on Thursdays and returns to Washington on Tuesdays. "Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families -- that's what this says."

Come on, he's only in Georgia. DC-ATL is a short hop. Roy Blunt apparently is more of an optimist: