My Zen Arcade

Alpaca!!

FINALLY!!

This reminds me of Ken Lay’s wife (or was it Jeffery Skilling’s?) who said something to the effect of “This whole thing is hurting us too! We had to sell one of our summer houses!”
I love it when rich people get offended by people pointing out that they are rich.
Maybe, deep down inside, they are ashamed they have so much while others have nothing.
Maybe thats why guys like McCain and Bush try to act like they are ‘average joes’.
Because late at night, they cry.
But, I doubt it. I more suspect they laugh.
Two types of republicans…

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Cindy McCain: ‘Offended’ by Obama’s comments on wealth « - Blogs from CNN.com

“I’m offended by Barack Obama saying that about my husband,” she told ABC News in an interview set to air Sunday. Asked if she thought Obama had gone too far in his criticism, she said “I do. I do. I really do.”

Daily Kos: Sarah Palin Is NOT The Mother [Photos+Video]

Short Version: Palin claimed to be pregnant. At seven months, she made the announcement. No one had noticed a thing.
Pictures even after that time show no signs of pregnancy.
After much shenanigans, she ‘give birth’.
But hey, look back over pictures of her 16 year old daughter. Now SHE looks pregnant.
And was out of school FAR longer than mono calls for.

I can’t imagine this woman was ever vetted. And I can’t imagine how McCain isn’t going to have to shamefully cut her out eventually.
Because this, as John Edwards can tell you, is EXACTLY what the media love.
Oh, they still can’t criticize St. McCain, but Palin? Thats just fresh meat.

How evil is John McCain?  You can tell a lot by his choice of Sarah Palin as VP.

1. Lets be honest here.  McCain is old.  McCain is not as healthy as he might be.  Given that, there’s a reasonable chance that he might be, at some point during his presidency, incapacitated.  That would leave Ms. Palin, a woman with a resume only slightly more extensive than my own, in charge of the country.  I don’t think there’s ANYONE out there who thinks THAT would be a good idea.  So, to get votes, John McCain has decided to risk the safety and lives of everyone in the U.S.  Where I come from, we call that EVIL

2. Palin is there to pick up votes.  Specifically, she’s there to pick up the votes of women.  More specifically, the votes of disgruntled Clinton women.  How evil is John McCain?  He appears to believe women (to paraphrase Samantha Bee) don’t vote with their head, they vote with the hood.  It doesn’t matter that she’s the exact opposite of Clinton in every way.  She’s got boobs and John thinks that women will vote for her just because of that.  EVIL.

And today we’ll tackle the question “What does ‘uninspired’ mean?”

“Universe” introduces a team of explorers who find an ancient unmanned ship called the Destiny. Unable to return to Earth, the crew must fend for themselves aboard the ship, which has a preprogramd mission taking them to the far reaches of the universe.”

Daily Kos: PALIN-tology - 45+ Problems for McCain’s VP in just 35 hours

This is a great list. I can only assume that McCain didn’t know all this or he wouldn’t have picked her.
Of course, that means that she really is just a political toy. Or, alternately, that McCain’s team are idiots.
Did they vet her? Or did they not care because she has boobs?

The whiny Democratic atheist brigade - Crunchy Con

In the Democratic Party, every day is secularist day! Cut Obama and the DNC some slack — they’re right to do this kind of outreach.

Now, Mr. Dreber does have a point. Historically, the Dems are more secular. However, there’s a couple other, more subtle things at play here on both sides.

1. Atheists (like myself) always say they aren’t a religion. And thats coming back to bite us in the ass. The party wants to reach out to the religious, and atheists aren’t really a part of that continuum.
2. The party isn’t actually reaching out to the religious. They are reaching out to Christians.
3. Atheists are a small minority. Christians carry votes.
4. Atheists are, by and large, not given a public voice. Remember, most Americans still won’t vote for atheists.
5. It would be rather difficult to reach out to atheists since they only thing that ties the individuals together is that they don’t believe in god. Reaching out to atheists, in this context, would be like reaching out to programmers. There’s not much of a target.
6. Further, what would reaching out look like? What could you say other than “I promise to keep church and state apart.”? And Obama has pretty much said thats part of his vision anyhow (with a couple deviations here and there that I can live with).

But the core bit is that atheists aren’t a part of this outreach because atheism has little relationship to religion. People of the same religion tend to have similar views, similar morals (I’m making some assumptions here, but I don’t see how you can have different views and morality and still be part of the same religion). So you can reach out and say that “yes, I share your values”. Atheists don’t have that. We aren’t a group, per se. We aren’t a religion anymore than people who don’t have cancer are a group.

It makes me sad that we are seen as ‘the other’, that we aren’t openly spoken to, that we are seen as amoral by many.
But this is changing. Young people are realizing that they don’t have to believe in these stories anymore.
Give it time. We are winning. The truth has a tendency to do so.

A brilliant anti-McCain ad
AmericaBlog is right. The experts don’t know what they are doing. Listening to them instead of the electorate could cost Obama the election, IMHO. I can only assume its the experts guiding him to the center. I can only assume its the experts telling him to leave McCain alone and just take the whopping. It wouldn’t do to fight back with, y’know, facts.

Looks like Dean Heckler followed through on his response to my initial posting about the very cool OneLessDesk.  The new version is steel (with a limited edition stainless steel) and only $649.00.

Is it worthwhile?  If my iMac was my work machine, then I would say ‘yes’.

Alas…

Anyhow, big kudos to Dean for listening!