…the wise begin scanning the sky for omens. And what’s weirder than politics?
So here’s Presidential candidate John McCain, campaigning frenziedly in the remaining eight red states (irony of ironies, that staunchly Republican states are red, what, haven’t they heard of the slogan anti-Communists used in America in the 1950s, “Better dead than Red?”) and insisting he’s going to come from behind and beat his rival, Presidential candidate Barack Obama while, even in those eight red states, the tide is turning towards Mr. Obama.
How are we going to handicap this? Well, check your spam. Seems the cybercriminals have it all figured out.
According to antivirus vendor Secure Computing, 70 percent more political spam is being sent in Senator Obama’s name than in Senator McCain’s. Ouch. We said, not a million years ago, that there would be a surge in political spam, but unfortunately failed to read the omens correctly. I just knew that duck dive-bombing a BMW driven by a yuppie on the 401 the other day was significant.
On October 18, when Senator Obama pulled a crowd of 100,000 in St. Louis, Mo. and 75,000 in Kansas City, Mo., his two stops in the state, he led Senator McCain in the spam race, if you will, 99 to one, according to Secure Computing. That is, only ONE percent of the spam purported to be from Senator McCain; the rest all purported to be from Senator Obama.
There is one area in which Senator McCain comes out ahead, though: When the spam references pharmacy Web sites. Here, he beats Senator Obama five to four. Do the spammers know something we don’t?
I was tempted to hop over to see Sasha, the local psychic, for corroboration, but wisely restrained myself — every time I see a psychic, I want to ask something along the lines of “You know why I’m here, don’t you?” and hold my tongue after that until they guess correctly. And psychics usually have large aides-de-camp whose knuckles don’t just drag on the ground, they scrape it clean, and who love beating meditatively on people who annoy their employers.
Not a good idea to rile those types; I’ll just lay my bets on the spam.
