The New Road

God Voting With The Weather

Dobson's pundidiots made a big deal about praying for rain during Obama's convention speech. Of course, no rain to be had. But there will be rain, and wind, a lot of it, in New Orleans, exactly when Bush was supposed to speak at the Republican convention. I think if God has a vote, and he casts it with the weather, it's pretty sure which way that vote went.

Republican Brand - Dead

The cover story on this mornings paper read 'Republican Brand at Risk' over a picture of God-king Reagan. At risk? How about the Republican brand is dead. I heard on the radio yesterday one of Reagan's speeches where he talked about how awful government was, and how it was doing things that it should and was incapable of.

Take FEMA. A conservative once told me that FEMAs job was to provide business loans for companies in the effected area. Say what? FEMAs job is to save our ass when our own rescue resources are completely overwhelmed by a catastrophe. It's not a damn insurance company.

What Reagan, Bush I and Bush II did was take your tax money, that was supposed to go to FEMA, and give it to their cronies instead. They were too chicken shit to tell anyone, of course. So we all just assumed that FEMA could still do it's job... until Katrina.

Katrina was where conservative domestic policy was in full bloom. It was an amazing success, if you think about it from the conservative perspective. Those who had resources were able to get themselves to safety. Everyone else died. Mission accomplished.

I would love to see Reagan's audio played over images from Katrina.

I still fail to understand how social conservatives support these policies. They believe in Christ. They supposedly believe in the "I am my brother's keeper" credo. They believe this is a Christian nation. And yet somehow, they, and pundits like Rush, Sean, Bill Krystol and the rest of their ilk, give the Katrina response a big thumbs up.

Yeah, the Republican brand is dead.

Putin Says Georgia Is All Politics

Something that was lost in all of the Obama news from yesterday was Putin coming out on the record saying that the Bush administrated started the war in Georgia to create a crisis that would benefit McCain. This is backed up by the fact that Rove went out to Georgia just a few months ago to meet with the leaders. As well as Randy Schuneman, a paid lobbyist for Georgia, is in McCain's inner campaign circle.

Speaking of McCain; Sarah Palin for VP? She is under investigation for corruption! That's pretty amazing even for a Republican.

Sick of Conservative Shit

I'm so sick of this conservative shit. All they have been doing is complaining about this, that and the other thing about the DNC convention for three days. Now they are up in arms about the stupid columns at Mile High. As if that shit even matters to anyone.

I have two words for conservatives, republicans, libertarians, and newly minted independents; FUCK YOU.

I've had to put up with six years of your calling me an un-American traitor because I held the right stance on the Iraq war. A stance that you are now falling over yourselves to get to. The least you can do is put up with a few columns for one evening.

I repeat... FUCK YOU.

The Pencil Trick

2008 isn't over yet, but I have to say the #1 movie moment so far is the pencil trick from Dark Knight. So quick. So unexpected. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Both times I have seen it the audience jumps.

Obama Assassination Foiled

A couple of yokels went to Denver with high powered rifles to assassinate Obama. Obviously; plan foiled. Choice quote: "[Obama] don’t belong in political office – or blacks don’t belong in political office. He gotta be shot."

So many thoughts about this. First off, as a reporter I would have had two questions for these idiots; First, who do you listen to on the radio? Second, what news network do you watch? I'd give anyone four to one money on Rush Limbaugh (or Sean Hannity) and Fox News.

Should this really be a surprise to anyone? You take losers who want someone else to blame for their misery. Add in hate radio and TV. Mix it up with an amazingly lax second amendment. Then give it a big stir and, voila! Assassination.

Of course, conservatives will call the meanness, hate, anger and bigotry that pours out of the radio and TV comedy. Surely Coulter was just kidding when she said; "The only question is whether to assassinate or impeach." But do you really think someone so brain damaged as to say this, "He gotta be shot", understands Coulter's comedy? Yeah, not so much.

Lemme see, two dead in Ohio, one dead in Minnesota, vandalism of the Denver campaign headquarters, and now an assassination attempt. Yeah, I'm sure this is all just a set of coincidences and has absolutely nothing to do with hate radio and TV.

Eastin PTC site

As part nice thing to do and part experience builder with Joomla I've built a web site for the Eastin Parent Teacher Council. The result, while simple, is kinda nice. Sure, it doesn't have all of the content of the school site I think the look is cleaner. And it certainly doesn't have text encoded in images like the school site home page does. Text in an image? Seriously? That's like spitting in Google's face.

Not to rag on that site too much, but they also have the current date displayed on the site. That went out like six years ago. If there is a date on the page it should be when the page was last updated. I don't have to go to the Eastin site to know what day it is. I can look on my own computer, or my phone, or my watch.

I really like the Obamas

I really like the Obamas as people. Check out this little snippet from the convention last night. Michelle is great, the kids are awesome, Barack is cool and nice, and they just look happy.

I'm sure the nasty folks on the right will talk about how the Obamas are abusing their kids, or how Barack mistook which city he was in (which is easy to do when you are in a different one every day). They spin every possible thing that Obama does as negative as they can. Looking at the video you just kind of have to shake your head and laugh about how dumb the nay-sayers on the right sound when they slam on people who are so obviously happy and trying to do what's best for their country.

Pam Babcock

As the year wraps up (!) talk is going to come around to the 'best story of the year'. I think the first place has to go to Pam Babcock, the woman who wouldn't leave the bathroom in her boyfriends trailer for two years. Whose butt was stuck to the toilet seat at the time she went to the hospital. How can that not be crazy story of the year? Crazy story of the decade?

There are so many questions:

• This is in a single-wide trailer. A living space not known for it's spaciousness. The bathrooms are tiny!
• Was she reading anything? Doing anything?
• Was she meditating? Is she the Buddha?
• What did the boyfriend do for a bathroom?
• What happened on holidays? Did she do Christmas in the bathroom?
• What were her parents doing during all of this?
• Did the boyfriend have guests over? How did he explain the, er, situation?

I'm just scratching the surface here. Seriously. Two years in a trailer home bathroom. The mind reels.

More Christo-insanity

Two fun pieces of Christo-insanity: proof that the Sun rotates around the Earth and why we should exterminate people who believe in evolution (PDF). The second one is great because at some point he decides that one of his points goes too far because "I have no such data and am not making that claim", when he has no data anywhere in the article to support any of his absurd claims. Nice.

We should get these two groups talking. That way the 'Astronomy safari' offered by the evolutionist exterminators could explain how the Earth is the center of the universe.

McCain's Houses

McCain is so squirrelly that it's hard to pin him down on anything. Who is the real McCain? Is he pro-choice? Or anti-abortion? He's been both. Does he believe televangelists are 'agents of intolerance', or 'spiritual advisors', he's said both.

One thing is for certain. The real McCain is super-wealthy. Or at least, his wife is. Which explains why he doesn't know the price of gas. Or why he says that $50/hr is cheap for picking fruit. Or why he thinks that anything less than $5M in the bank means that your middle class.

Of course, he didn't earn that money. He married into it. After he divorced his first wife because she got 'sick'.

Check this out. It's McCain's kid talking about having the press 'out to the ranch':

It's like something out of The Simple Life. She should get a bumper sticker made up "Celebutards For McCain".

Obama should keep hitting on this stuff. It's a winner.

McCain can't escape who he is. He's rich. And he has no idea what it's like to be middle class in this country.

Update: The Heritage Foundation funded shill on Powerline gets paid enough by his corporate masters to say that counting houses is just like counting ties from him.

For the record...

I own one house:

McCain the populist. Pigs ass.

What's in a name?

First I find out that Clifford Herrington (no relation) was head of the neo-Nazi party in the U.S. (and also a Satanist). Now I find out that if you spell my last name with an 'A' you get painter Jack Harrington's site as opposed to my site. It's enough to make me offer to redo Mr. Harrington's site just so that I can add a "if you are looking for an engineer named Jack Herrington go here" link at the top.

Good morning

Even the dogs like this:

Big Oil Map

This is an excellent map that shows exactly how much of the U.S. has already been leased for drilling. The amount of land is incredible. I love it when an illustration like this says so much without any annotation. Though I would have changed the blue around Alaska to green to indicate that it's area available for future development and not water. Blue usually means water.

Tire Inflation

The right wing getting all tweaked about Obama recommending that we all inflate our tires is easily some of the most ridiculous crap getting produced this season. Check this out:

Braniac Newt says that inflating our tires is somehow giving money to big oil. Newt, it's $0.25 to fill up your tires. It helps your gas mileage. It keeps the car running right. It's just a good idea.

I'm really not sure what all the stink is about with the tire inflation thing. It's like Hannity is playing the 'big burly man' who should be able to run around with flat tires if he wants to. And nobody cares if he does or not.

Ahhh, what a joke... This is what our politics have come to. Thank you Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich.

Corsi is back

The Swiftboat Vets For Truth are back. This time Corsi is smearing Obama. It's all lies, of course. Just as it was with Kerry.

Is this book a New York Times best-seller? Yep. But that's because the conservatives know how to game the system by buying large blocks of books at specific locations to rig the count. Americans are smart enough not to buy these crap books. Conservatives can only get their books up in the ratings by cheating.

It's time we push back, and push back hard. This is not the way we should be choosing the President of this country. Scumbags like Corsi, Hannity, Limbaugh and the rest of these goons should get their vote but that's all.

iPig docking stations

At first I thought these were cute.

But then the speakers as eyes kinda thing sets in and they look creepy to me.

Another shooting

This time it's a shooting at the Demoncratic headquarters in Little Rock. The article has yet to be updated, but both the man who was shot and the shooter have died.

Mukasey Sums Up Conservative Legal Ideals

This recent quote from Michael Mukasey, the current serving Attorney General:

"Not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime."

Yeah, that pretty much sums up the conservative legal stance.

Actually, he could have been a bit more honest:

"No wrong or violation of the law, if it's committed by a conservative, is a crime."

It's kind of like Nixon saying that anything that the President does is inherently legal.

Fiscal conservatism

I went to wine country with Marsha, John and a friend of his. Turns out the friend is a Republican who has decided to vote for Obama this time around. I asked him why he's a Republican and he said it's because he is a fiscal conservative. Republicans are not fiscally conservative. This graph:

Is both funny and absolutely true. Every time the Republicans get in the debt goes up. Every time Democrats get in the debt goes down. Why people believe this myth of 'fiscal conservatism' is beyond me.

Or, maybe it isn't. I think it's just a euphemism to cover racism. White people vote Republican. I'm white, so I can say that sort of thing. When you look at it, every claim the Republicans make is an outright lie and everyone knows it. They aren't the party of fiscal conservatism, or of the working man, or of the military, of the adult party of good government. They are the white persons party. Plain and simple. Look at McCain at his speeches. Notice anything about the crowds? Yeah. White peoples party.

Actually the kid went on to say that he was more a libertarian. I gave him my standard line that libertarian is the party of "Fuck you, I got mine." I'm actually not sure which makes me angrier, Republicans, who are just clueless, or Libertarians who are selfish, greedy and completely out of touch.