Happy Birthday, Mr. President

Happy Birthday, President Obama!

Please don't turn into the Anti-Christ and kill us all.

(Happy thoughts, everybody, happy thoughts!!!)

Thank you.

Official Obama Inauguration Song

This is what we're gonna do. We're gonna stop fuckin' around. We're gonna tear this place down and build it back up again the way it should be for us and our children and our heirs for all time.

Watch all the Appliances-SFB vids!

Storm the Reality Studios!

We are at War.

Not in Iraq. Though we are. Not in Afghanistan. Though we are. Hopefully not in Iran or Syria or Pakistan in the final few days before this fateful election. Though we might be.

We are at War for Reality.

On one side (or one of the sides?) we have the last eight years of misrule as represented by the Bush Administration.

On another side we have a continuation of and possibly even an expansion of this misrule as represented by John McCain.

On the third side we have a new (or is it an old?) revisioning of American politics as represented by Barack Obama.

Why do I say this is a Reality War? Why isn't it just another Presidential election cycle? Because we're talking about our Commonly Perceived Reality or CPR. (Pretty nifty how suitable that acronym is given the deflated state of the economy and our political spirit, eh?) Because the three sides of this imaginary coin each represent a different version of reality that we can either accept or reject, that we can submit to or battle against.

When you vote next Tuesday, if you haven't already, you are casting a vote as a shaman may cast a spell. Your intent is to change reality.

Our current CPR is a bleak, fearful, distrustful and discouraging one. Do not believe that this is an accident of time and space, that it is the sole result of accident at all. The engineers of our current CPR spent years planning and maneuvering to achieve the type of control over our perceptions that they now have. The public records and history of Cheney and Rove and friends make this very clear, though pundits and historians will only talk of this as politics and policy. It is neither.

It is piracy. Their stated goal was a "permanent Republican majority." Translate this as "permanent reality control" and you now understand. Like others before them who imagined permanent control, who dreamed of Thousand Year Reich’s, the Republicans hoped to have perpetual control of our reality via the Presidency, the Congress, the Courts and certain parts of the media. Bush had planned war and using the side effects of war to cement power and change our CPR before he entered office. The events of September 11, 2001 were, without meaning to trivialize them, only a fortunate catalyst for his plans. The terrorists gave Bush a powerful wedge on that day with which he could shift reality. And Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield and Rove took full advantage of it.

The result is the America we live in today. It is not the America of ten years ago, not that the CPR of the Clinton years was a perfect one, regardless of the nostalgia so many Democrats feel for it. There probably is no perfect CPR. We are too diverse a nation to create perfection.

But we can strive for perfection. This has always been part of the American CPR, the idea that we can be better than we are. Our nation would not exist without this central tenet. In retrospect, we may endowed our past efforts with this idea, but we could never have risen up against and overthrown a king without this belief. We are the children of the Enlightenment. Progress and perfection are inherent in our founding, in our idea of reality.

This has been lost to us in the current CPR. We have been blinded to the idea that we can work for the betterment of all. Fear and ignorance - willful and imposed - have worked to rob us of this basic American ideal. The enrichment of a few at the expense of the many, using manufactured fears and political weapons of control, has been a dominant theme of this CPR.

It's time for that to end. It's time for the people to go to war with reality. With a flip of the coin, we can reveal a new face for the future. Our votes are power and with them we will perform a tremendous feat of magic on November 4, 2008. We will change reality.

What we do with it after that is up to us.

Vote Obama!

----------------
Now playing: Steve Hillage - Saucer Surfing
via FoxyTunes

A "Baa" In the Night

It's very simple really. It all came clear to me this morning as I drank my Obam-Aid (TM) Orange Style Simulated Breakfast Drink with Extra HOPE! Also, I was online looking at pictures of the hundreds of thousands of smiling, hopeful people that have been turning out to hear Obama in just the last few days, in Coloradaoand Missouri and everywhere else he goes in the country.

We just want a future. And Obama is the first candidate since JFK and FDR before him that says we can have a future. Not just a continuation of past policies, a reinforcing of the status quo, but an honest-to-Jeebus future for ourselves and our children. He's not promising that it will be easy, either. He's not talking down to us. He's said repeatedly that it will be a struggle and that we will have to work together for this future. I don't mind. I'm ready to work. I think I've been waiting all my life for this chance, for this kind of job.

And I like that. I like being asked to take responsibility and do some work. I don't want another old man talking down to me and telling me that if I give him my sacred vote he'll take care of me, just trust him, don't worry about the details, everything will be okay, close your eyes, go back to sleep, sleep, sleep my little sheep..........

Don't be a sleepy sheep. Wake up and "Baa!"

Vote O-Baaaaa!!!-ma!

----------------
Now playing: DAVE KUSWORTH - The Story So Far
via FoxyTunes

Get Out of the Bathroom

Obama's gonna visit his sick Grandma for a day or two. He's a good kid. While he's gone, watch this clip from his speech in Virginia yesterday.

If you are an "undecided voter," if you still don't know who you're voting for, if you are in some way still waffling after watching this, the exit is to your left. Or right. Depending on your political perspective.

Vote Obama!

----------------
Now playing: Oil Tasters - Get Out Of The Bathroom
via FoxyTunes

Funny Pictures = Serious Message

I really like this. The animation is easy on the eye, with a multi-decade retro style going on, and the filmmaker presents the information in a graphically memorable way. That's not easy.

Vote Obama!

----------------
Now playing: Mumps - Dance Tunes for the Underdogs
via FoxyTunes

Weird Reasons to Vote for Obama #9

Women you do not know will smile at you.

Do you want pretty women to smile at you? Are you an even vaguely heterosexual guy between the ages of 25-to-Death, losing your hair, seriously worried about what you still affectionately call your "love handles" for some stupid reason, and think it's totally awesome if strange when a woman you don't know smiles at you for some unknown reason?

Then fret no longer, my friends, because I have the answer to the last of your pathetic problems if not the previous ones:

Get an "Obama" button.

Seriously. Women you do not know and will never see again will smile at you in public, regardless of how balding or fat or ugly or stupid you look. I'm pretty much all of these things and "It" has happened to me. More than once in the last week.

Why, I've been wondering, are women smiling at me in public? That's unnatural, that's weird, that just don't happen to the 'monkey. It honestly scares the 'monkey. The 'monkey prefers not to be noticed by man, woman, child, dog, cat (maybe not cat) and insect when in public. He don't like it. It bothers him.

Today, I realized why. When a woman at the chain-store-box-hardware-place-thing smiled at me, making me very uncomfortable and causing me to wonder where I knew her from though I obviously didn't know her and thus freakin' me out even more - AND DOING IT AFTER LOOKING AT THE MIDDLE OF MY CHEST WHERE MY MANBOOBS ARE!!! - I got it. It's the damn "Obama" button!

It ain't me they're smilin' at - it's that goddamn Obama! Christ on a stick, but that's an ego-deflater if ever there was. Just his name in writing on a small circular piece of pressed metal stuck to a windbreaker is more exciting and interesting and cool than I am in the flesh. Damn, but this confirms every suspicion about my place in the Universe that I've ever had.

Sometimes fat, bearded, bespectacled, balding, stupid, liberal white men just can't get a break. No wonder Powell endorsed Obama - he did it for the chicks! Screw you, Pat Buchanan/George Wills/Rush Limbaugh - race ain't got nothin' to do with it.

I hope My Smart Wife gets that this is a joke.

----------------
Now playing: Gunslingers - Gigolo Albinos
via FoxyTunes

Weird Reasons to Vote for Obama #8

Because after you watch this video, you'll wish you were Jewish. I know I do.



And what other campaign in American political history has ever engendered such inspirational humor in its support? This is freakin' brilliant - the idea and the execution by Sarah "Coolest Chick in Comedy Who Swears a Lot" Silverman.

What's the best McCain can do? Limbaugh? I wish he had the guts to have this Sarah on his show rather than that helicopter-huntress VP-pick of McCain's. She'd rip his head off and shit down his throat. That was what my other friend named Larry used to say to hecklers during his short-lived career as a standup back in '84 or maybe it was '85. He did it better than me.

(This other Larry is now a state trooper in a state I won't name. He did have the distinction of having one of his best jokes ripped off by another comedian and used on David Letterman way back then. It was some long-forgotten loser that Larry opened for; the loser stole his joke and had 10 seconds of fame with it. So, I guess Larry did too. Good job, Larry, good job!)

----------------
Now playing: The Laughing Clowns - Clown Town
via FoxyTunes

A Very Special Senior Moment

I'm sitting at the computer in the living room this evening, searching the Intertubals, looking for some Blue Aeroplanes (anybody got any?) and there's a knock at the door.

What? Police? Men in black? Girl Scouts? Cookies!!!

No, it's an older white man in very nice golfing clothes. Total AARP ad. Not the norm at my door.

I go out on the porch to see what he wants. I expect he's a candidate for some county office, assuming Republican, knocking on doors. Maybe he didn't see the Obama sign in the yard...

But that's exactly what he did see - the Obama sign in the yard. And he asks me where I got it and how can he get one!

Seems he's been looking for the local Dem HQ but hasn't been able to find it. I sympathize with him; it's not easy. If you blink when you drive by, you've missed it. So I almost literally draw him a map, using pots on the porch as landmarks, to tell him how to find it. And that it's gonna cost him 5 bucks.

"Five dollars? I have to pay for a sign?" I tell him that, yes, he does. Illinois isn't considered a battleground state for Barack and they don't supply them for free to local party groups here.

He laughs; it's okay. And he says it doesn't matter because he really wants one and this is the first time he's ever voted for a Democrat for President in his life. He seems to want to talk about it, I think. It's obviously pretty important to him if he's willing to knock on a weirdo's door to get a yard sign.

Wow is what I was thinking. Wow. This is like one of those special moments in the Daily Kos blogs I read all the time where the election and Obama are bringing very different people together for unique interchanges of ideas and hope. Like a million ABC After School Specials! And it's happening to me!

So I ask him the obvious question: "Have you always been a Republican or do you consider yourself independent?"

"Oh, independent, really. But I've always voted Republican for President. Never thought I'd be voting Democrat, but I've got too."

"Yeah," I answered him. "Me, too. I mean, I've always been independent but voted Democrat for President. I did vote for Nader in 2000 because I think we need a viable third party in this country."

"You and my daughter" he says, laughing. "She's always said the same thing."

We agreed this was a pretty amazing time and then, for reasons I'm not going to blog about, we discussed black walnuts and one of my neighbors and in a few minutes he went his way and I went mine. If I hadn't had to leave to take The Boy to his martial arts class, I'd have asked him in for a beer. I really would have liked that. But we both had to go - he wanted to get to Dem HQ before they closed at 6 o'clock. We said our goodbyes and goodlucks and parted on the porch.

I feel pretty damn good tonight. I hope he does too.

----------------
Now playing: Biff Bang Pow! - It Happens All The Times
via FoxyTunes

Conflicting Emotions

I feel bad for John McCain this morning. I saw a very uncomfortable man last night, one who was out of the depths of his normal partisan environment and unable to connect with the audience in what was supposed to be his preferred debating style, due as much to the rules of the situation as the lameness of his jokes.

As a viewer, it wasn't comfortable either, especially watching McCain talk down to the young African-American man, trying to explain to him what Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are as though he was just off the bus, first day in the big city. I expected him to pat the man on the head and tell him to be a "good boy" and that he should "just run along now."

It was clear that the direction of the evening and Obama's unwillingness to cave or give even an inch, plus Obama's hard jabs - especially on McCain's steadiness as a leader, referencing "Bomb, bomb Iran!" and "Next stop, Baghdad!" - got to McCain. He was clearly fuming* in the background as Obama hit him with that one.

Which leads us to the most uncomfortable moment of the evening for John McCain and America:

"That one."

I think this may be remembered years from now as the two words that ended McCain's presidential aspirations. His temper only barely under check, McCain came as closing to calling Obama "that n*****" as a 21st century politician can. In public. (Though Governor Palin may come a lot closer in days to come...)

Vote Obama!

* It was a classic cartoon steam-outta-the-ears moment. Expect to see it animated as such on YouTube soon.

----------------
Now playing: Bobb Trimble - Armour of the Shroud
via FoxyTunes

Sunny With a Chance of Doom

There was a fascinating moment of slippage this evening on Hard Ball. A gentleman named Mike Paul was stumping for McCain, talking about Obama and William Ayers, backing up Palin's remarks about Obama's relationship with the former radical.

During the exchange, Matthews threw Paul a question, but in typical "Gawd I love to hear my own voice go on and on and on forever" Matthews fashion, he had to bookmark the question by saying "of course Ayers was a Weatherman in the late 60s."*

To which, a stunned or just befuddled looking Paul said something to the effect of "Oh, sure. Yeah. Of course," before launching into his own remarks.

You had to see it to get it, especially that look on Paul's face, but the thing here is that Paul - while speaking out against Obama on Ayers for McCain - didn't know what Matthews was talking about. He thought Matthews meant that Ayers was a meteorologist in the 1960s; he was clueless as to the historical significance of Matthews' comments.

This is the intellectual rigor of the McCain campaign on display. Send out a half-prepared surrogate to spout the talking points, irregardless of whether or not they understand them.

This is the poor planning, bad campaigning and sheer desperation of the McCain campaign on display. And it speaks volumes about the type of governing style McCain would bring to the White House.

This is just one example of many I could have chosen to represent the McCain campaign but they all have a common thread: John McCain has chosen self over country and will do anything to obtain his goal.

One of the primary reasons I am voting for Barack Obama is that I'm tired of being treated like a short bus child by my President. I am tired of my President and his advisers thinking that they can throw crap at me and the American people in hopes that if they throw enough of it, some will stick. I am tired of being lied to and tired of being manipulated, tired of being used by men and women I wouldn't invite into my house for fear of never getting out the moral stank of them.

I want a President who doesn't speak down to me or my wife or my son, who will treat us as intellectual, ethical, moral and political equals. I think this is Barack Obama.

I want a President who will face up to the problems of the nation, like our avalanching economy, and not run away and say that he'd rather not deal with it because it will make him unpopular. I think this is Barack Obama.

Finally, I want a President that I can be proud of when he is representing us to the world, to foreign leaders and foreign peoples, a President that will show the world the almost lost face of American diplomacy and the inherent power of that diplomacy when practiced by intelligent men and women who have a firm grip on the ideals and history of this nation. Contrary to what our current President has told us for years, much of the world loves and idealizes this country and what it stands for. We have to show them that we also love and idealize this country and that, as Americans, we understand the special role and the unique responsibilities we've carved out for ourselves in the affairs of the world, that we take that role and those responsibilities seriously.

I think this is Barack Obama.

Vote Obama!

* I'm paraphrasing - I cannot find a clip of this exchange and left my steno pad in my asbestos long johns. Don't ask.

----------------
Now playing: Wipers - Good Thing
via FoxyTunes

Dishing Obama (Or, "Here's .... Barack!")

Another reason I'm voting for Obama - he has his own TV channel!

Yeah, the Obama campaign has done an audacious thing, something new that I'm sure every other campaign will copy in the future (if they can afford it). They've paid for an entire channel on the satellite television service DISH Network. I found it by accident Wednesday night when my finger slipped on the remote. Or was it an accident...

Damn. I don't know if this will work for them, but the idea is great. I can imagine the bull-session it grew out of. Some folks probably laughed, but then, maybe slowly, they stopped laughing and started looking at each other. Could we really? Should we? It's never been done? So what! Maybe we should - Hell, yeah - let's do it!

Now I can go to sleep every night with Obama's soothing tones in my ears. It's not as good as Carson, but it'll do.

Vote Obama!

For my less-aged readers: "Carson" is a reference to Johnny Carson's highly popular late-night talk show The Tonight Show which ran on NBC for, oh, decades, from 10:30pm to midnight (Central Time, the only time that matters - that's why they call it Central!). Personally, it was my bedtime safety blanket as a kid. If I was still awake at 10:30 and I heard Carson doing his monologue from the TV in my parent's room, it put me right out. I knew the house was shut up, Mom and Dad were in bed and that all was right with the world. Haven't felt like that for years.

----------------
Now playing: Willie Nile - They'll Build A Statue Of You
via FoxyTunes

Gracias, GOP!

I was gonna write about the programs Obama plans to fund and the initiatives he intends to kick-start today. I'm feeling the need to be positive after going so negative lately. In fact, I pulled a post a few days ago that went up in a fit of rancorous spleen I've never achieved on this blog before. I was ashamed of myself. I'll try and go a different direction for a while. But if I stray it's gonna be that old man's fault, I tells ya! If he yells at me to get off of his lawn one more time...

Anyway, back to my original idea. I was gonna do this...but the GOP did it for me. Check out the Obama Spend-O-Meter! From their perspective, this is a damning list intended to paint Obama as a tax-and-spend liberal of the worst kind.

From my perspective, this is a dream list. A good start on the America I want to live in. A blueprint for a better America, a better world, a better future.

So, a tip of the hat to the Grand Ol' Party today. Heckuva job, white men, heckuva job!

Vote Obama!

Note to Self: In reading the above, I can see I've still got a long way to go before I get all nicey-nice. Given the state of our infrastructure these days, I probably can't even hope that it's paved.

----------------
Now playing: The Jesus & Mary Chain - Here It Comes Again
via FoxyTunes

44: Why I'm Voting for Barack Obama

Obama supports our veterans.

Obama has rarely wavered in pushing for greater financial, medical and educational benefits for members of our armed forces. This is contrary to veteran John McCain's stance. He has repeatedly voted against bills designed to give increased support and aid to our veterans.

Now I've never been in any branch of the service - I don't think either of us would survive the encounter, honestly - but I've never not supported the troops.
Growing up outside radical Madison, Wisconsin in the 70s, I was highly influenced by the anti-war movement and its raggedy remnants, while at the same time spending several years of grade-school wearing surplus Army jackets to school. (I think my Mom bought them because they were cheap, but we thought we looked pretty cool in them). But I never bought into the kind of blame-game that hurt the troops. That seemed plain stupid, just illogical to me. I may wholeheartedly disagree with their commanders - especially that one who calls himself "In-Chief" - but the troops are the guys who do the work. Sometimes they screw up because of a lack of moral or ethical leadership, but they never asked to be put in situations so outside the norm of human behavior that things like that could happen. They deserve everything we can do for them while in the service and afterwards.

So I was thrilled by Obama's support of the 21st Century GI Bill, which both McCain and Bush opposed for being too generous to our troops, as it echoes my own thoughts so closely. We need legislation like this, our soldiers need legislation like this. The previous GI Bill was one of the smartest things our government ever did. It took a generation to college and kick-started decades of national prosperity and advancement. We need to think about the future again when we are planning legislation. I won't even call this "progressive" because it's not. It's "regressive" if anything, turning back the clock on decades of general neglect. But Obama's whole-hearted support for this bill tells me that he thinks about what this country will need five, ten, fifteen and twenty years from now. Not just what it needs in the next five minutes.

So, for the troops and for the future, vote Obama!

You can compare each candidate's voting record on dozens of issues at Project Vote Smart.

Here's Obama's and here's McCain's. Scroll down or search for "Veterans" to see where each one stands on this issue.

UPDATE: Read about Gen. Wesley Clark's excursion for Obama in Florida. He has some specific things to say about Obama and our veterans.

----------------
Now playing: The In Crowd - Blow Up
via FoxyTunes

Nero Fiddles...

Elitist wealthy pig John McCain and sniveling co-hort Joe Lieberman dined sumptuously with their respective spouses while hardworking (if blind and ignorant) Congressional colleagues tried to bail out Wall Street's fat, bloated corpse.

Vote Obama!

Screw John McCain.

----------------
Now playing: The Long Ryders - Looking For Lewis And Clark
via FoxyTunes

Twirling, Twirling, Always Twirling!

We watched the debate last night, like some of ya'all probably did. We had cold Wisconsin beers and delicious hot snacks with cheeses melted on and in them for our eating enjoyment pleasure, but we also had our wits about us.

It didn't take very long to notice that McCain couldn't or wouldn't look at Obama. His body language was painful to watch. He was so full of contempt for Obama it leaked through his suit. (John, as Obama might say being the gentleman that he is, if you wear an adult diaper, sorry for that one). One Republican pundit said this was "classic McCain" in an attempt to dismiss it, because if McCain doesn't like someone, he won't even look at them.

Really? Then McCain must love Bush. He can't wait to throw his stiff arms around the guy and rub his expensive shoes on those thin little calves (I assume). Seriously, is this how he will act towards foreign leaders he doesn't care for or who represent countries that don't like us? I mean, that's every damn country in the world right now, including Spain - and thanks for that one, John! Where are we gonna get our tapas from now, huh!

Which leads me to the first of the two most disturbing aspects of McCain's performance last night:

John McCain sees enemies everywhere.

He's a true-blue never-die Cold Warrior. I kept waiting for him to say something about "the Commies" for chrissakes! (He did talk about the KGB...which hasn't officially existed since 1995, having been disbanded by Yeltsin). Threats everywhere. I think that if the United States isn't engaged in a huge idealogical war with all the keen and nifty political/economic/military repercussions of such, he ain't happy. His constant reiteration of the idea that America must win, win with honor, have victory, victory with honor (you see where this is going, right?) was like an echo from the past.

Which leads me to the second of the two most disturbing aspects of McCain's performance last night.

John McCain is stuck in the past.

He's still fighting Vietnam. That war never ended for him or for many of his generation. This is one of the reasons I couldn't have ever supported Hillary Clinton - I have no intention of refighting their generational conflict over Vietnam. If this were Clinton v. McCain right now, the culture war would be raging again. Not that they aren't trying, but it's so much harder to make muck when your leading culturista totem-girl is a bumbling Alaskan mayor.

And this leads me to the final aspect of last night's debate I want to touch on. The difference in style between McCain and Obama. I think this is generational, too, on one level. And it's something most of the pundits can't understand or wrap their heads around, especially those above a certain age, like Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan and Wolf Blitzer and, oh, most of those morons. With a few exceptions, the pundits were all over Obama for not hitting McCain harder, for being gentlemanly and deferential, for treating McCain like an honorable opponent rather than a punching bag.

Dang. This is again the never-changing "Damned if he does, damned if he don't" meme, in that if Obama hadn't been the true statesman that he was onstage and had rather been the angry, in your face streetfighter the pundits wanted, he'd have been condemned as an - wait for it, you know it's coming, it's almost here! - "Angry Black Man"! The few pundits that either didn't expect Obama to be "All in that old white man's face!" or could read the situation without blinders on where those like Eugene Robinson, Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow who either aren't old enough to be trapped in this generational conflict or still retain the mental flexibility required to see the world differently than it has been, to envision it as it might be.

And it's that ability to envision the future, to see what might be, to freakin' dare think and act like the world can be different that has me voting for the Senator from Illinois.

Vote Obama!

Screw John McCain.

----------------
Now playing: The Stones - Fad World
via FoxyTunes

What If?

It finally happened last night. For the first time in the history of the United States of America, a black man has become the official nominee for President of a major political party.

Damn. Wow. Damn.

I'm actually very emotional about this. We sat and watched the nominating process, and listened to all of the excruciating boosterism from each state, waiting for Illinois. We wanted to see if we could spot a friend of ours in the delegation. Maybe, just maybe, for a second we saw the top of her head. But then Illinois passed on their vote and finally didn't even give it so that Hillary could wind it up.

One thing we did see was a young black man on the convention floor with tears streaming down his face after the nomination was confirmed. His friends were hugging him and he looked torn between a million emotions. There was joy and so much more expressed on his face. Hundreds of years of history. I was hoping that image would be on the front page of every newspaper in the nation today. Probably isn't, but at least I got to see it.

The irony of last night was that it wasn't the Republicans nominating the first black man for President but the Dems. The party of Lincoln should be the party doing this by all rights. This is their true legacy and heritage. It's very sad to me that they are not. And we can all try to say that none of this, this election season, this hunting season, is about race, though I haven't always been saying that, but it really is. And the nastiness about it has just begun.

Today though, I'm personally focusing on the positive. (In my own way). It's the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream speech" and this summer on our Big Trip we went to the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Here's the outside of the motel:



I wrote a bit about visiting this before, but I'd like to revisit that memory for a second.

Walking up to the motel, now the Civil Rights Museum, I was almost scared. I'd seen that hotel a thousand times before in pictures, my whole life. And I'd especially seen that balcony with its weird squared design and that innocuous white motel room door. I think of King and I always think of him standing there. I think of the potential America and the world lost there. I can't help myself, but I always cry. Not for the first time on this blog, I'm doing that again. So much energy was wasted in a split second, so much taken away. This is burned in my heart, the loss of that one moment.

I've always felt that a vast sea change in American politics and life was subverted on that day and that we've been floundering in the foam and muck and detritus of it ever since. It's probably asinine, at best, to play this kind of game with history, but I can't help it. The historian and the science fictioneer in me are at war a lot of the time, but one question they both ask is "What if?"

I'm asking myself that today. "What if...?" There's a lot of questions that can be hung on the end of those two words. I'll leave that for you.

Have a good day, people, a very good day.

----------------
Now playing: The Long Ryders - I Don't Care What's Right, I Don't Care What's Wrong
via FoxyTunes

Weird Reasons to Vote for Obama #7

He's got one heckuva smartypants campaign team.

Maybe you're one of the presumed millions waiting for that text message from Obama about his VP choice. I'm not - I only got a cell phone a few months ago and have to ask The Boy to reply to any text messages I get. Me thumb too big and dumb.

But there is an incredibly smart, freakin' wickedly smart campaign move at the bottom of this text message silliness. Money. With hundreds of thousands to potentially millions of cell phone users giving the Obama campaign their otherwise unlisted numbers, the Obama camp now has a massive database of brand new potential donors to tap. These people have not been getting called before now, folks, they are fresh meat. And Obama's gettin' the grill hot for them!

I can only applaud this. It's audacious. It's smart as hell. It makes the McCain people cry themselves to sleep at night. I can hear the weeping now, so sweet, so sad. Go Team Obama!

----------------
Now playing: Died Pretty - Life To Go (Landsakes)
via FoxyTunes

Serious Reasons Not to Vote for John McCain #5 (or is it #6?)

Because we don't want to see this kind of reaction happen to a traveling American President ever again. And it will, with McCain.

Vote Obama!

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Personally, I think the Electoral College is an unnecessary holdover from the early days of the Republic. Possibly useful at the time, but today it's the vestigial tail of American politics. It has no real purpose and when it swings itself around the true spirit of American democracy gets hit by a face full of crap. It's gotta go.

But the interesting story this morning is that the media is slinging crap in our faces about John McCain and how he is crapping out in a number of independent evaluations and polls of electoral votes, by an average of 104 votes. And this when the traditional media reports nothing but a dead heat. If we get nothing else from this, it's that we cannot rely upon old-school media to tell us the truth. Unless it's about how much cleaner and whiter our teeth can be and how much more sexy we'll be if we wax our mustaches. Do they still run mustache wax ads?

Vote Obama!