The New Road

Country Above Self

This Country Above Self site is an absolute beauty. All of the right wingers are labeled 'Patriots', and anyone else is labelled a 'Traitor'. You can vote, but you can only vote to confirm the the judgements already made. You can nominate someone as a patriot or a traitor, but only right wingers can be patriots, and if you don't nominate that way you'll be banned. Awesome. So much for democracy. His own little personal comments about the individuals on the lists are classic as well.

Once again, righties are slinging around this traitor like it's meaningless. It's a real legal term. People have been hung as traitors.

Dunkin Donuts pulling ads

Some extreme right wingers lead by psycho Michele Malkin convinced Dunkin Donuts to pull ads featuring Rachel Ray in which she wore a vaguely middle eastern looking scarf. First thing it makes me want to do is to get one of those scarves, which I'm sure would be easy to do around here. The second thing it does is have me just shaking my head at the stupidity and intolerance of it all.

Give it a rest, right wingers, you have done enough to make us all look bad. It's time for us adults to come back in and return some sanity to our polity and foreign policy.

Pathetic

As I was driving home tonight I passed a single 50-year old man in an SUV who had these homemade signs. First:

I want amnesty from "Illegal's"

What the hell does that mean? And is it grammatically correct? Doesn't the apostrophe connote possession? Does an 'illegal' own their own illegality?

Then this little gem:

90% of wars involve muslims. Are they so peaceful?

Ok... What percentage involves Christians? And where do you get that data?

Ah, the ignorance. Impressive.

"Better to remain silent and appear stupid than to open your mouth and prove it."

Reminds me of this crap with Ron Parsley; the United States was founded to attack Islam? Huh? That's completely disconnected from the facts. The Treaty of Tripoli not only says that there is a solid separation between church and state, but that we have no inherent quarrel with "muslims".

Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religionno character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

Parsley, get your facts straight. Please.

What amazes me is how quickly the right can gin up hate in it's supporters. Hate again 'illegals'. Hate against 'mulsims'. Hate against 'gays'. I don't remember any hate against muslims before 9/11. And just like that, the hours of hate kicked in any the right followed along.

"We have always been at war with east asia." -Orwell

Good debunking video for Obama

Here is a good video that debunks the anti-Obama crap that's been swirling around in email threads and on Hannity's four hours of hate:

What your $4/gal is buying

Here is what your $4/gal gas is buying; The Burj Dubai. Soon to be the world's tallest building.

Megan's Valicha Dance

Here is the Valicha (24MB M4V) dance that Megan and Daniel have been working so hard on. This is actually the morning version. Last night they performed again and I got a camera angle that was much closer, but the audio wasn't as good.

Adios to the SUV

Not a day too soon, we are finally ditching the SUV. Honestly, I'm all for someone who has a family of eight buying an SUV. That is an appropriate lifestyle choice. But back in the buck a gallon days too many people were driving around in these mini-tanks with only one person inside. It's just a waste. I'm glad to see that we are finally starting to buy things that are appropriate to our lifestyle.

"I used to be a car snob, and I used to be too vain to drive anything that doesn't shine," said Marci Solomon, an electrician who has a 100-mile commute to and from work. "But now it's about, do I want to eat, or do I want to make it to work? I want to do both."

Yes, the reality sets in, at long last. You can't drive the car of the rich unless you really are rich.

Maybe next we can vote based on the fact that we are a working middle class, as opposed to voting on the dream that we may be rich some day.

HD Camcorder

Megan has a talent show coming up today, and our old video camera is very very old. So I went out and bought a Canon HF-10 camcorder. It's a 15oz beauty that records full 1920x1080 to a built-in hard drive. To test it out I recorded Megan reading a book (12MB M4V). That movie is obviously not full quality. But we could export to a Blu-Ray disc to maintain the full HD quality.

Cover Art - First animal

For the first time ever I got an animal on the cover of an O'Reilly book.

Of course, I have no idea what the animal is. But who cares! I finally have an O'Reilly animal book!

$4.05/gal Regular

Well, this is a record high around me:

A sign of things to come I think.

Hillary And The Popular Vote

I hate Hillary's popular vote argument. The math only works when you discount all of the caucus states and add in Michigan and Florida. And this notion that more people have voted for her than have voted for any Democrat ever, that's true. The same with Obama though. It's a record turnout period for Democrats.

Question for the pundits; Do the caucus states count?

Bye, Bye, And Good Riddance

My step father is a fan of David Brooks, the conservative commentator who is on The McNeil Lehrer Hour every Friday. David is one of the least offensive of the conservative pundits. Though he does read off the talking points. However, this last week he talked about how the Republicans are in decline and specifically that conservatives looking to bring back Reagan have lost it. I completely agree.

There is nothing about the Republican party that works now. They are simply the party of hate and racism at this point. They stand for nothing. They attack everything and everyone. And that's not going to cut it when even the most dimwitted Americans think the country is going in the wrong direction.

Long story short, the next time the conservatives are on the rise it will look like an entirely different party. My guess is that it will start fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Basically Ron Paul is the ideal candidate for the Republicans in eight years. They just don't know it yet.

Lori Lays Down The Law

About a month ago I bought a copy of Touchmaster for my own DS. I didn't actually start playing it until two days ago. But Lori has been on it since I got it. I had to get a second copy for two reasons; first, I could never get access to my copy, and second because it takes two copies to get them to play together. And it was cheap. Which is always a plus.

Last night I got into "Triple Elevens", which is one of the card games that is included in Touchmaster. Lori and Mel have been playing it for a while, so I wanted to get in on the fun. I thought I was doing pretty well last night when I put down the DS after having scored 340,000. Only I wake up to find that Lori has put a signpost right above that score on my high score list. Now I have to play just to get her off of it! ;-)

Eye In The Sky

I didn't know the Bay Area was even competing for tallest building in the world. But it appears that we will be with the Eye In The Sky in Oakland. Construction is slated to begin in 2010. Really? They have the permits and such ready to go? I find that kinda hard to believe. What does the insurance scenario look like for such a thing?

Odds this will actually happen: 1 in 100. My guess. I mean, honestly, how do you even construct such a thing?

Mmm... $4 Gas

Thank you, G W Bush:

For making the road to the White House so much smoother.

Let's hear it for $4 gas and for our love of the SUV.

Chris Matthews Eats Kevin James

Apparently Chris Matthews was hungry because he ate conservative windbag Kevin James for breakfast. This isn't unique to this one. These conservative pundidiots are all the same. They all know exactly fuck all. It's just most of them don't get caught out like this. Normally they control the mic like Hannity, Limbaugh, etc. O'Reilly goes so far as to pre-tape so he never gets caught out and edits to his hearts content. The amazing thing is he still looks like a jackass on his show.

Tax Free Yachts

I think this cuts to the heart of the Republican/Conservative movement:

I've always been amazed at poor people who vote Republican. It's an addiction to the American Dream. The idea that it's ok to weight the economic scale entirely to the benefit of the rich because someday they will be rich too. When in all likelihood they will leave the world in the same economic bracket they were in when they came into the world (sadly.)

We like to think that you can become whatever you want in America, and you can, but most people don't. It's less an issue of drive than it is one of comfort. Going up or down completely in social class means a whole new social group with an entirely different lifestyle. Sure, you can go from lower middle class to upper middle class, or vice versa, with relative ease. But the lifestyle shift between working middle class and genuinely independently wealthy is extreme. There are those who do it, but they are the exception case.