The New Road

Happy New Year!

Happy new year everybody!

This was a great year, and a terrible year all in one. This last week has shown us just how precious life is. Hopefully we can take these thoughts into the next year to inform of lives and and decision making.

Torture is bad

Bush's illegal administration finally got just a bit of a conscience. They decided to expand the definition of torture. That's a good thing since it means that we should now be able to prosecute all the way up the chain of command on the torture that occurred at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. Does anyone still buy that Lindey England was solely responsible for all of the torture?

Double hit

Not only was my review of Revolution in the Valley picked up by Slashdot. But Bound Cast was picked up by Adam Curry's Daily Source Code, which is great. It was really odd hearing myself on there.

Audio Blog #1

This is really just a test, but it's fun anyway.

Bush pledges $15M

Bush pledged $15M to help tsunami victims. To put that in perspective, the inauguration ceremony is estimated to cost between $30M and $40M.

Christmas Pics

Unbelievable

Going to the movies has gotten really bad for me. Tonight I went with Mel to see Flight of the Pheonix. The movie was bad all on it's own. It didn't need any help. But it sure got some from the audience. The people directly in back of us editorialized through the whole movie. The people on my left couldn't understand parts of the movie, so they discussed each scene to make sure they got each element of the critical plot figured out.

Amazingly enough, this was not the worst of it. Before the movie a couple walked past me on the way up a couple of rows. They had a two year old with them, who, to my surprise, didn't want to be in a dark quiet room cramped in with a lot of strangers, and signaled his or her discontent consistently and loudly starting about twenty minutes into the movie.

To make matters worse to the right of Mel a man sat down, alone save a one year old child, complete with bottle of milk in his jacket pocket. That kid seemed to like the movie even less and only slept in the last ten minutes or so. He/she spent most of the time either simpering or crying and being shushed by Dad.

As a finale some folks started laser pointer tag on the screen as the credits rolled. Nice.

Seriously, this is crazy. I spent $10 seeing this movie. It's bad enough that the movie was a train wreck. When did it become ok to take toddlers to late night mature themes movie? Answer. Never. It never became ok. When I want to go out to see a movie, Lori watches the kid. When Lori wants to go, I watch the kid. If we both want to go then we hire a sitter.

Kids don't want to go to mature theme movies late at night. They are loud, boring, scary (or both), cramped, crowded, and just plain not fun for them. And it's not fun for the parents who spend more time watching the kid then they do watching the movie. And it's certainly uncool for the other patrons who have to listen to the kid as they rightly complain about how silly their parents are being.

Kids at Spongebob... ok. Kids at special showings meant for toddlers... ok. Kids on planes... ok, because it's a necessity. Kids at a reasonable restaurant... ok, because that's a necessity, too. But come on, have a little decency. Leave the kids at home when you go out to see the latest guns and boobs flick. Seriously.

I can understand if the guy wanted to get the kid out of the house. That's ok. But take the kid to a Starbucks. They are open late, it's less noisy, not as scary, and people expect kids to be there.

Sounds of Megan

I love it when Megan sits by the computer and asks me to Google bird and turtle

Megan's Kitchen

Here are some pictures of Megan's finished kitchen:

The burners are cut out pieces that you can flip over by hand. One side is red, indicating hot, the other side is black, indicating off. The over door folds down. The refrigerator has three shelves and two doors. Lori got the hardware for the doors, which are all food items like grapes, an apple, a carrot. It's all labeled 'Amoma' instead of 'Amana'.

Pictures of her using it will come around tomorrow or Sunday. I'll probably just collapse tomorrow night though. ;-)

Maui wireless

I should have just wardriven when I was in Maui last time. Looks like there was enough wireless there to give me access whenever I wanted it. Sure didn't seem that way when we were touring around though.

Talk about stupid pet tricks

This one is just incredible. That dog has real talent.

NASA podcast

NASA is now podcasting. Cool!

Happy birthday mommy

We love you.

Megan's kitchen set

I'm making a kitchen set for Megan for Christmas. It's pretty late. I hope I can get it done in time. So far I have the cabinet for the refrigerator done. The doors are done but need painting, then I need to add the hardware and the wheels. After that it's on to the oven. I have this idea of going to Tap plastics to get red discs for the burners. The problem is really time. Between now and Christmas there are only nights and not many of those.

One thing I would love to do is use some magnetic paint. I could order it now but it would come well after Christmas. That's ok though. I could just do another coat on top of everything one night and then she could use her magnetic toys on it.

The fridge came out pretty well. Though I have to say that anything substantial built with MDF is going to be very heavy. The fridge is about 40 inches high, 17 inches wide and deep, with two shelves. In MDF that weighs about fifty pounds. It's not something you think about when you are spec'ing out a project, but it sure makes a difference when you are building it. My arms were killing me last night.

Lori likes to tell this story about the kitchen set her dad made. Apparently one of her brothers used the fridge as a boat almost immediately after it was done. Clearly that would not happen with this thing. It's way too heavy and the shelves are dado'ed into the structure and aren't going to be moving anywhere. ;-)

This weeks

Best thing ever.

Are Republicans on crack?

What's up with the whole Christmas bug-bear story. What the hell is this?

When one adds these recent findings to what is clearly a coordinated attack on Christmas almost immediately after Senator Kerry conceded, one must conclude that the Democrats have identified a religion gap in the society that represents an opportunity for them in 2006 and, most important, 2008.

Sorry, but Democrats are a disorganized lot. We don't have a giant media, marketing, news, think tank machine that drives the party and it's minions in one coordinate horrific machinating wave.

Actually, quite the opposite. I've seen this crap on Fox as well. So my guess is that this is just another attempt to do the perennial Christmas liberal bashing. But since the Republicans now feel like they own the universe they have just ratcheted it up about ten notches.

Of course, I have no problem with the term Happy Holidays, since it is, at least, culturally sensitive. For the Republicans out there:

Let me talk to the social conservative side of the brain: I understand that Republicans want this to be an all-white all-Christian state, but it isn't that at the moment. Show a little Christian tolerance and don't shove Christmas down everyones throats. Not everyone observes it. But everyone does like the holiday spirit. So let's celebrate that.

Let me talk to the fiscal conservative side of the brain: It's really all about making money. Don't alienate the teaming masses by dissing their religions. Give people their Happy Holidays and they will be happy to give you their money.

Buh bye, Ahnold

Ahnold declares himself a Republican in name only (RINO). Buh bye presidency.

Dying on the warranty

Yesterday when I was watching Megan I wanted a little time to fix lunch. So I figured I would set her up with a movie. I went to the DVD player in the living room and tried DVD after DVD but it rejected them all. Clearly the machine was broken. Since DVD players are so cheap I decided to just get a new one instead of fixing this one. I looked at the Sony site, found what I wanted, called the Good Guys and they had it in stock so Megan and I drove over to get it.

When I got there parking was a disaster with all of the Holiday shopping. We finally got in and I immediately told the sales guy exactly what I wanted. As he rang us up he found that we had bought the previous DVD player there exactly two years and one day before. So the malfunctioning player had died the day after it's manufacturers warranty had expired.

Turns out we have extended coverage on that one. So I'll take it back, get it fixed and sell it on Craig's List.

The new DVD player is slightly better. It has a five disc changer so that we can put a bunch of Megan DVDs in there and just have them on call. I think the picture quality is a little better as well.

Speaking of DVDs, if you have a Mac and a DVD, CD or book collection you should have a look at Delicious Library. It's an well designed DVD catalog program that has one very compelling feature. If you have an iSight reader you can use it as a barcode scanner to read in the disc UPC codes. With the UPC code in hand it will get all of the data about the disc from Amazon, including the picture, and put it up on your virtual shelf. You can then specify that the book is loaned out, and even when the person you loaned it to should return it. I was able to do all of our DVDs in about three hours. It only failed lookup on about a dozen. Given the size of our collection that is very good. Manually punching in the dozen proved to me that doing it without the barcode scanner would have taken days.

Podcast is GREAT

I'm really enjoying the Podcast broadcasts. Andy Curry, of ex-MTV VJ fame has a great show. There are excellent music shows including Coverville and the Geek Rock & Roll show. The Slashdot review is helpful summary of the day's geek events. And shows like Dawn and Drew go between dull and amazingly funny.

I'm really enjoying this. I'm taking the train now just so that I can keep up to date with it.

What good news?

I keep hearing this rant about how the mainstream media never covers the good news coming out of Iraq. So I thought to myself, "Where would I find the good news?" How about the White House web page on Iraq. Turns out that they don't have any good news either. Most of the sections end their coverage in the June of 2004 when the insurgency was just starting to hit on a daily basis. After that it's only been press briefings which just spin the bad news. The sections that quote Iraqi's about how good the occupation (oh, wait, liberation) has been for them are all from 2003.

Here is a good Iraqi comment from the White House site:

"The tension is reducing every day. We are seeing a change. People are starting to realize that the soldiers are not here to occupy Fallujah forever-they're here to help us rebuild." -- Taha Bedawi, mayor of Fallujah, The Washington Post, July 29, 2003.

Stark contrast to the reality in 2004 after we dropped napalm and white phosphor on the city.

So where is the good news? The President keeps talking about the good news, but why does his own website not talk about it?

Let Pakistan decide

Zell told us that "Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending." That was a load of BS, of course. But in Bush's world Pakistan now decides how we pursue the man that killed 3,000 innocent Americans on 9/11. With the election over Pakistan is now getting back to it's real role of supporting Bin Ladin by putting restrictions on searching tribal areas. According to the New York Times, "As a result of the restrictions, American military and intelligence personnel in Afghanistan are no longer really hunting for Mr. bin Laden, an intelligence official said."

What a joke. Bush never cared about 9/11. He never cared about the 3,000 people that died. He was never serious about hunting bin Ladin. Kerry had it nailed in the debates. Bush gave up on bin Ladin right away after 9/11. He is a liar and his minions, blind by the faith, refuse to see his ignorance, arrogance and incompetence for what it is.

He used 9/11 as a pretense to invade Iraq, erode our civil liberties, and attempt to turn the economy into a average person crushing neo-con dreamland.

Holiday Cookies

You've probably seen this before. But if you haven't, it's a good one.

Holiday Cookie Ingredients:

1 cup of water
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup of brown sugar
lemon juice
4 large eggs
1 cup nuts
2 cups of dried fruit
1 bottle Jose Cuervo Tequilla

Sample the Cuervo to check quality. Take a large bowl, check the Cuervo again, to be sure it is of the highest quality, pour one level cup and drink.

Turn on the electric mixer...Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl.

Add one teaspoon of sugar...Beat again. At this point it's best to make sure the Cuervo is still OK, try another cup .. just in case.
Turn off the mixerer thingy. Break 2 leggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit, Pick the frigging fruit off floor... Mix on the turner. If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaterers just pry it loose with a drewscriver. Sample the Cuervo to check for tonsisticity.

Next, sift two cups of salt, or something. Who giveshz a sheet. Check the Jose Cuervo. Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts. Add one table. Add a spoon of sugar, or somefink. Whatever you can find. Greash the oven.

Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fall over. Don't forget to beat off the turner. Finally, throw the bowl through the window, finish the Cose Juervo and make sure to put the stove in the dishwasher.

HIPPY HELIDAYS!

I Made That

I'll be building a little kitchen set for Megan in the next week or so. So I'm looking around for plans and stuff. And in the process I found I Made That. They say these are projects that kids can make for themselves. A little advanced for Megan, but hey, other kids would probably love it.

I'm a luddite

Sometimes I feel like a luddite. The Slashdot Review show I mentioned in my previous post lists a bunch of ways for contacting them. He listed three methods, only one of which I recognized, email, which he termed the old fashioned way. Fits with an article I read a while back about how Korean kids consider e-mail an old school tool for old folks.

I figure I could try podcasting my book reviews.

Podcasting

I've been getting into podcasting. It's basically audio-blogging. Every day people post their blogs in an audio form and my client picks them up. If I want it can import them into iTunes and upload them to an iPod (that I don't have.) All of Air America's shows are podcasting. NPR currently isn't podcasting, but I hope they will soon.

The best I have found so far is the Slashdot Review. The content is good, the production is good, and the music is really good. I'm very impressed. They should put this guy on KQED. He is at least as interesting as their Astronomy segment.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Weta, the company behind the Lord of the Rings, is doing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It will be out in December 2005 and it looks great.

Starr's second thoughts

Turns out Kenneth Starr has a concience after all.

In case you missed it

There is a huge election row going on in Ohio. There are several potential sources of vote fraud and shenanigans. Some large enough to overturn Bush's shrinking lead in the state (and overall).

Kenneth Blackwell, the head of the Bush/Cheney campaign in the state, and also the head vote counter (?) stalled the count long enough to give recount supporters just a week before Ohio had it's electors vote. Four weeks he stalled, even though he decided not to count the provisionals. How does it take four weeks to count the votes?

Turns out Bush's 2% mandate has been slowly dropping. Now it's just a hair over 1%.

My Monty Python King Arthur moment

In Monty Python and the Holy Grail there is a scene where King Arthur approaches a French castle. From the ground way below he talks with the French in the castle who unceasingly heckle him. I had an similar experience this weekend.

I drove the truck to the dump and found myself in a line of about ten cars waiting on a train that was at a dead stop right in front of the entrance to the dump. I waited for about twenty minutes before driving down to the side of the train, hopping out and walking the 3/4's of a mile to the engine.

As I was walking there was a dude down the way who was crawling over the cars, and ended up walking towards me on the other side of the track. I caught up with him and ducked under the cars. "Hey!" No response. "Hey! Can't you move the train." I finally got his attention. Turns out he was another guy like me who had asked them to move. He said that they told him to "f*** off". Nice.

I finally got up to the engine. Now this thing was huge. In fact, there were three engines, and they were all huge. So here I am this little spec beneath this huge engine where there is an engineer with his back turned to me in the window. "Hey! Would you mind... moving the train... please?" Amazingly he hears me and turns around to respond. "Can't. Red light." So, I ask, "Maybe it's broken. It's been a while." He replies, "There is a train coming." "How do you know?", I ask. "Red light."

"You can call Union Pacific!", he says.

"What's the number?"

"It's written on the box at the junction."

"That's almost a mile back there." My shins were killing me. Hell if I was going to walk back and get the damn number and then walk all the way back and tell this guy to move. So I start on my cell phone dialing information and getting the runaround.

Finally another head pops out of the engine. "Mister!", she says. "Yeah!" "Trains coming!" Eventually this tiny commuter train appears in the distance and zips by. At which point, in a wrenching symphony of klanking the train starts up and pulls away. Leaving me with the long walk back to the car and last position in the long line to get into the dump.

Oh well, it was still fun to yell up at this enormous engine, "Hey! Would you mind... moving the train... please?"

In my own defense, the notion that there was incompetence or extreme stupidity involved was only the third item down on the list. The first notion I had was that the engineer was just having a smoke break and didn't know he was blocking the intersection. The second was about technical difficulties with the train that perhaps needed some help. I also figured that I could offer some unique out of the box thinking, like, perhaps backing the train up. You figure a train engineer would likely think about going forward and might not have considered going in the opposite direction.

I probably wouldn't have staid if I had remained in the car. It was over thirty minutes between when I started walking to the train and when they finally left and the way was clear. Nobody I saw in the original line was still in line when I got back.

Google Suggest

Try this out. It's a great new way to refine your searches on the web.

Armor scandal : Do something about it.

The public is seemingly surprised once again that the situation in Iraq for our troops is abysmal. Here is a portion story from Fox:

In a rare public airing of grievances, disgruntled soldiers in Kuwait preparing to go into Iraq complained to Rumsfeld on Wednesday about long deployments and a lack of armored vehicles and other equipment.

"You go to war with the Army you have," Rumsfeld replied, "not the Army you might want or wish to have."

The guardsman who questioned Rumsfeld on the vehicle armor, Spc. Thomas Wilson, had consulted earlier with a Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter who is embedded with the 278th Regimental Combat Team.

The reporter, Edward Lee Pitts, said he had worked with guardsmen after being told reporters would not be allowed to ask Rumsfeld any questions, Pitts wrote in an e-mail to co-workers sent Wednesday.

Military officials said Thursday they were working hard to upgrade the armor on Army vehicles in Iraq, with nearly three-fourths of the Humvees in the theater now completed.

The implication is that we should care more about the fact that he was prompted by some liberal hippie reporter type guy, than the fact that he is being asked to do his job without the proper resources.

This all gets me pretty pissed off. It takes a lot of courage to stand up and say what's right. We all cheer at movies when a character does this because we know they will pay the price. And making people pay a price for telling the truth is what this adminstration does best. Believe me, Thomas Wilson is going to pay a price for his insolence. He knows that. I know that. The administration knows that. Any thinking person knows that. He had the courage to bring it up anyway. Why? Because it's important. Because he and many other brave soldies could die needlessly because of the arrogance and incompetence of this administration's handling of the Iraq war.

That he is going to pay the price angers me, of course. But what angers me more is the response from the public and the media. Which is really more of a dismissal than a response. You have people who say up and down that they 'support the troops', and yet don't listen when the troops tell them directly that the situation is really bad there. They don't take action. They don't call their congressman. They take the Fox angle and say that this is just some liberal bellyaching or something like that. And that makes me angry.

How can you dare to say you support the troops and not listen to them? If you have any sense at all you should get on the phone to your congressman today and give them a piece of your mind. If we are going to fight this war then the troops need the best equipment and training money can buy. It's not enough just to put a yellow ribbon on your car, you actually have to do something to support the troops. Your government is failing you. If you really care then act. Otherwise take the ribbon down because you could care less.

I mailed my congressman, have you? If you don't do something real today to drive home the message that Wilson sent us then you don't support our troops. Period.

I'll make it easy on you. Here is a link to the Senate. Here is a link to the House. And here is an email link for the President.

Google as kids toy

I've been googling with Megan recently. We start up the Google image search then type in her favorite terms and see what comes up. So far her terms have been fish, elmo, turtle, big bird, amongst others. Today I started using her finger to do the typing to associate the alphabet with the word an the result. It's great to see her getting excited about 'google turtle' and 'google fish'.

Sadie almost blind

The seizures and the diabetes have taken their toll. Sadie is completely blind in one eye and mostly blind in the other. A thick cloud of cataract covers both eyes which are always widely dilated. She works mainly by feel, smell and memory now. And she cuddles a lot closer so that she is comfortable. It's really sad to see. She has been through so much.

Picture from Mendocino

Mendocino at sunrise:

A very cool looking mushroom:

Crashing waves on the shoreline:

Looking south on the ocean road towards Pt. Reyes:

Tora Bora Tourist

The Afghans are going to turn Tora Bora into a tourist destination.

We need receipts

The fact that we have voting machines that provide no receipts is insane. This interview is with a programmer who was hired by a Florida Republican politician to build vote rigging software. It's so easy to change votes it's not even funny. Watch the movie from Votergate for more information on that.

Mendocino

Mendocino was great. I took about 600 pictures, most of which were panoramas. In the end there were about 55 panoramas, half of which worked out. I'll put up the pictures later.

I started out on Friday night walking around, taking a few pictures, getting some dinner at the Mendo Cafe and crashing. On Saturday I woke up before sunrise and took some panos of the town as it was illuminated by the rising sun.

I went back to the B&B and had breakfast, which was excellent. She recommended that I go to the Fern Gully hike and visit the Esterlina vineyards. The hike was amazing. The vineyard was tough to find but worth the effort. I was the only visitor at the time and I had a long chat with the winemaker. He sent me on to Lazy Creek Vineyards. I didn't like their wines as much.

After that I drove up to Fort Bragg looking for the sunset, but it was covered by clouds. After the sunset I went back to Mendocino and had dinner at the Mendocino Hotel. After that I thought it was too early to crash so I went to Dick's Pub and had a few brews.

On Sunday morning I woke up very early and headed down route one towards Pt. Reyes to meet up with Joe. That drive was amazing. Around every corner was a postcard. I figured the drive would take about three hours but it took about five because of the twisty roads and the way I stopped every twenty minutes to take some pictures.

Pt. Reyes Station is so small that I was able to meet up with Joe easily. He drove us to the Pt. Reyes lighthouse. It was a little bit of a hike to get down town the lighthouse itself, but it was breathtaking. After that we hit the beach and then went back to the town with a pitstop to get some pizza.

As I got back in the car I called Lori and she said she was coming back that day, so I headed off towards home to get there ahead of her. I was pleased at how close Pt. Reyes was to Marin and Stinson Beach area. It's so beautiful and so close. I'll definitely take Megan and Lori out there to do some more exploring.

Cool shades

If these babies came with Bluetooth it would be a done deal.

Family back together

Lori, Megan and Sadie are all back from Walla Walla. And I'm back from Mendocino. So the family is together again and hopefully we will stay that way for a while. After Megan calmed down last night she was so loving and amazing. I don't know how I could ever live without her.

Cool and spooky

all at the same time.

Dollar taking a pounding

The dollar is taking a pounding against the Euro. A direct result of the fiscal policies of the president which amount to spending without end and racking up enormous debt. He has said he would halve the deficit in 5 years he also said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. And while, supposedly, half of American actually trusts this man, the rest of the world has the good sense not to. And from what it looks like they have put their money where their mouthes are and are devaluing our currency because we are unlikely to balance our budget or repay this astronomical debt any time soon.

My guess is that the next move will be from the Chinese who will un-pin the their currency from the dollar. They have no incentive to track with the dollar and take the hit for our lack of fiscal conservatism.

Abstinence only education

Bush wants to spend $170 million on abstinence only education programs in our schools. According to widespread reports:

Some federally funded abstinence programs are spreading misinformation to teenage participants, a new congressional report has found.

Among the misleading information taught to youngsters over the past three years: Abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, half of gay male teens in the United States have the AIDS virus, and touching a person's genitals can lead to pregnancy, according to an account of the report by the Washington Post.

The report, prepared by the staff of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), reviews 13 of the most commonly used curricula among the federally funded abstinence programs. The study found that two of the curricula were accurate, but 11 others contained subjective conclusions or "outright falsehoods," the newspaper reported.

Among other misleading statements cited by the study: A 43-day-old fetus is a thinking person, the AIDS virus can be spread by sweat and tears, and condoms fail to prevent the spread of the AIDS virus as often as 31 percent of the time during heterosexual sex.

President Bush's budget next year includes $170 million for abstinence-only programs, the Post said.

Lovely.

God is still speaking

Every major network has turned down this ad. It's about how the United Church of Christ will not turn people away, and hints that some of the people other churches may turn away would be gay. Apparently CBS turned it down sighting the executive branch's stance on gay marriage.

This is completely ridiculous. If you think you live in a country with religious freedoms you are wrong.

Insurgency back broken : Mission accomplished

Or not. Turns out you can't even get to the airport in Baghdad anymore. I could link to all of the stories about bombings, mortar fire, beheadings, and creepy killings, but it would take too long. Suffice to say, the general's assessment that the insurgencies back was broken after we leveled Fallujah was in error. Reporters citing sources within the insurgency said that because they were given months of advanced warning of attacks the bulk of the insurgents were gone, leaving just suicide troops.

I'm sure the elections will go ahead. They will be sparse and riddled with fraud. We will put in a new puppet government, then pull out. That government will collapse and the state will turn into something akin to Afghanistan during the Taliban. We will have succeeded in turning the only secular Arab nation into a sharia state.

That would in turn create an instability in the world oil market which Bush could then use to justify opening up the ANWAR. Which was the reason that the oil companies bought him into the presidency in the first place.

Getting out of Iraq

Deep thinkers on the conservative side have finally clued into the fact that we are our own problem in Iraq. "Our large, direct presence has fueled the Iraqi insurgency as much as it has suppressed it". No kidding. Really.

Bullies

To me, what's going on now in politics just feels like bullying. It's akin to the 1950's Committee on Unamerican Activities. The House and Senate majority leaders are saying that they now will only use Republicans to back bills and will simply ignore Democrats. In particular they are threatening to change the rules of the Congress to deny the Minority party any voice at all.

Bush personally is upping his level of personal attacks on our freedoms. I thought gay marriage was just a campaign tactic. Nope. Turns out Bush really hates gay people and he is going to try to write his prejudices into our Constitution. And he is lying at an unprecedented level because he knows that nobody is watching. He owns the Congress, he will soon own the Judiciary, and he owns the press.

Sadly, I don't think there will be any backlash. In the 50's we could ask if they had any decency. Now, instead of being outraged, the average American seems to love the fact that we used napalm and white phosphor in Fallujah. Seems to be 100% behind treating gays like criminals.

To me this all seems to extend from the attitudes of the players involved. You have Cheney using harshly excessive language on the floor of the Senate and getting away with it. You have the Republican keynote which is as vile vicious and angry as it gets. You have Fox news running around calling people sissies and traitors. Then there are websites like NewsMax and FreeRepublic which take all of that to an entirely new low. And the people love it. They love being intolerant. They love being ignorant. They love being insensitive. And paradoxically, they think that they are protecting civilization and civilized behavior.

Unfortunately this is how it's always been. The ones who get on the white hoods and go lynching are in the pews on Sunday, believing that they are defending the faith and the purity of their race and their country by resorting to extreme measures. When has the route to salvation ever gone through bigotry, intolerance, ignorance, bullying and extremism? What little I know of Jesus' teachings leads me to believe that these traits were antithetical to his philosophy.

Tired

Man I'm tired. Nowadays 7PM feels like midnight. I think it's the way that it gets dark at 5:30 now.