My co-worker, Gracy, is highly proficient in what the French call "le tirade." She rants at you, artfully and at length. A frequent target of her ire is president Obama; she calls him Barack O'Vomit and pretends he's of Irish parentage, which never fails to enrage me. How quickly some people forget what the alternative was, what a vote for Obama was a vote against...the prospective post-apocalyptic wasteland of a Sarah Palin vice-presidency. It still gives me the willies, just thinking about it...whatever the president's shortcomings, he's not vice-president Palin, and that still means a lot to me.