Barack Obama on slavery and the Constitution, in September of 2001 (never || forget)

Elect this man.

Barack Obama's syllabus

"One final note: you'll see that much of the material has been marked up. I apologize for not giving you cleaner copies--it's a consequence of not having a teaching assistant. (On the other hand, my wife tells me she wouldn't have minded getting the professor's notations on her reading material when she was in law school.)"


Better than calling her a

"Every once in a while here at the Women for John McCain offices, we like to take a moment to pass around the Waterford candy dish of Percocet and Vicodin, kick off the old Christian Louboutins, and reflect on how lucky we are to support such a politically savvy candidate in John McCain. We’ve never seen such focus, precision, discipline, and clarity of message from a presidential campaign since at least Dole ‘96.

Speaking of which, in an expert demonstration of political stagecraft, the strategic minds of the McCain campaign’s advance team must have been working overtime last week, as John McCain shopped with one of Women for John McCain’s “plants” dispatched by the local Republican Party campaign office Wednesday, before showing the local common folk (bless their hearts!) he’s a “man of the people” by reading the price of milk from a cue card in a cheese-aisle press conference, with wrinkly plastic sacks of white cheese to his left, and cartons of reconstituted fruit juice to his right subliminally reminding viewers of the other oldest presidential nominee in American history, “Dole Dole Dole Dole Dole Dole.”

And Monday, the contrast couldn’t have been more stark, as Obama wore a dorky, Urkel-like headset and nerdy pair of glasses while he discussed the Iraq situation with with General Petraeus. Meanwhile, our next president of the United States, John Sidney McCain III, won the ‘looking presidential’ contest on the Election Scorecard by spending the day at the Bush family estates in Kennebunkport, Maine, riding in a golf cart and managing to look even older than our 41st president, George H.W. Bush. This race is property of number 44: John McCain. “Hands off” indeed, Obama!"

Women for John McCain

Also, newly found: www.mccainisreallyold.com

I swear the new york times just has a standard home and family to photograph for lifestyle stories. Seriously did they really need to got to Greenwich Connecticut to find out that kids use computers? Wouldn't a better photo be kids fighting over a mid 90s desk top in a small room with a broken piano and wall paper from the Burger Court?

Break out the Macbooks, kids! The Times is doing a story on reading!

Also, their last name is Sims. As in The Sims. The New York Times is profiling robots!

Here is a photo of a husky and a polar bear playing. The end.

My submission to the Republican Party Platform of 2008:

Find more! Use less!
The democrat party is blocking our efforts to perpetuate an over-subsidized industry bent on exploiting our dependence on a vile, destructive source of energy in return for profits larger than many gross domestic products. Gas prices are at an all-time high, and for the first time Americans are using less of it. We need to symbolically combat this issue--now!
Environment be damned! Americans (the real ones) are tired of paying far less than the real cost of oil! They want to pay far less than that!
The democrat party says we should invest in an infrastructure based on ecologically-friendly sources of energy which will also cost less in the long run! I say, damn forethought. Real Americans (the oil lobby) want superficial results, and they want it presently! By opening up our own land to more drilling, we will be able, in several years, to supplement our domestic reserves to the equivalent of about three months' worth; and in doing so, save what will be, after taking externalities and tax-breaks and loopholes into consideration, a trivial amount of money at the pumps.
I have heard some democrat partyists (the same who believe that we descended from prokaryotes and dinosaurs and Caligula) say that there are even ways of gradually reducing our use of fossil fuels, through technologies such as biofuels and hybrids, but Real Americans know that this is partisan pandering to the monolithic alternative energy lobby and electric-limousine Maoists like Iraq Hussein Osama.
I believe that John McClane, the hero from the "Die Hard" movies, will make an excellent president, even if he did age a lot since "Live Free or Die Hard;" whatever he can still remember his name and where he keeps his semi.
Keep giving us gas until we run out, because, fuck it! Washington is broken! John "Curtis LeMay" McClane for president or we're fucked!

The most needlessly long mix on the planet. Derp, I know. Fuck it. 4 Sections:

[The first]
The Chill Air - Brian Eno
Hanging on a Star- Nick Drake
Fear No Pain- WIlly Mason
Waiting for the Kid to Come Out- Spoon
Mama, Won't You Keep Them Castles in the Air and Burning?- Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Pocket Knife- PJ Harvey
B+A- The Beta Band
I Only Said- My Bloody Valentine
Mobile Parts 1 and 2- Glenn Kotche
Mobile Part 3- Glenn Kotche
There's Hell in Hello, But More in Goodbye- Jim O'Rourke
They Never Got You- Spoon
Gospel- The National
Here- Pavement
One Life Away- M. Ward

[S&G curveball side two]
El Condor Pasa (If I Could)- Simon & G
Fools- The Dodos
Gravity Rides Everything- Modest Mouse
Get Behind the Mule- Tom Waits
Debaser- Pixies
Friction- Television
Quincy Punk Episode- Spoon
Wash Off (first sketch)- Deerhunter
Ripped Knees- No Age
Parallel or Together?- Ted Leo
Dog's Got a Bone- The Beta Band

[Sensitive feelings part 3]
Merchants of Soul- Spoon
Polar Opposites- Modest Mouse
Boy, What a Night- Lee Morgan
In a Sentimental Mood- Duke Ellington and John Coltrane
Rain- Nick Drake
The Purple Bottle- Animal Collective
The Season- The Dodos
Undeclared- The Dodos
God- The Dodos
Frankie's Gun!- The Felice Brothers
Song to Woody- Bob Dylan
Will Is My Friend- Devendra Banhart

[the last one]
I Could Be Underground- Spoon
Long Snake Moan- PJ H
Heatherwood- Deerhunter
Rain on Tin- Sonic Youth
Shore Leave- Tom Waits
Morning Bell/Amnesiac- Radiohead
Octet- Deerhunter
It's All Blooming Now Mt. Heart Attack- Liars
Wash the Day- TV on the Radio
Poor Places- Wilco
Reservations- Wilco
Carrot Rope- Pavement

Is it just me, or have a lot of people been getting tagged with this war crimes shit lately?

Also:

SAWYER: Do you agree the situation in Afghanistan is "precarious and urgent"?
McCAIN: Well, I think it's very serious. I think --
SAWYER: Not "precarious and urgent"?
McCAIN: -- it's a serious situation. Oh, I don't know exactly whether -- run through the vocabulary, but it's a very -- it's a serious situation. And -- but there's a lot of things we need to do. We have a lot of work to do, and I'm afraid that it's a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border. And I would not announce that I'm going to attack Pakistan, as Senator Obama did when he was during his campaign. But most importantly, he railed against, voted against, and said the surge wouldn't work. He said it wouldn't work and couldn't work, and has failed to acknowledge it did work and we have succeeded. Thank God.
SAWYER: I can't let you leave, Senator McCain, this morning without making one more valiant attempt at the vice presidential question. Can you tell us anything new about your timetable and how many people are on your list right now?
----

McCain says Iraq and Pakistan share a border, and Diane Sawyer goes veepstakes veepstakes veepstakes!!

I think we know which Diane is Queen of the interview.

Re "Obama would sell us out," (Monitor letter, July 12):

John McCain is a white politician. If he wins, I hope it not will be due solely to the fact that he is white and has a military background, a purported qualification that sits well with those too unaware to consider that there may be other prerequisites for the presidency.

I believe the author was a little too swift in passing judgment on our presidential candidates: "[John McCain] loves his country more than political power." In fact, when McCain joined the Senate, passing at a likely chance to be a Navy admiral, Barack Obama worked with a community organization - a church-based one to boot - where he helped less-fortunate Americans get job training, prepare for college, and fought for tenants' rights. While McCain was running for reelection shortly after coming under fire for receiving $100,000 from Charles Keating (a savings and loan crook), Obama led a voter-registration effort that added over 100,000 African Americans to the rolls in Illinois.

Don't let Obama's skin color and speaking ability be your only reasons for voting for him. Don't vote for McCain just because he served our country bravely in war, either. Think carefully about why you support whomever you may support and debate your lunatic friends and coworkers on it. Don't let this year's election be remembered as a series of televised verbal slip-ups followed by feigned outrage and swift retractions. Elevate the discourse.

Ry Amidon
Concord
link

Consider:

Barack Obama
Barack Osama
Iraq Obama*
Iraq Osama

McCain is lucky because really the only potential name mix-up is with the hero from the Die Hard films.
Yipee kai-yay motherfucker.



*I heard this one on the radio today.

The very fact that people are so pissed off about this proves it right. If there weren't so many people taking these ludicrous rumors so seriously, there would be nothing to denounce. No source of outrage. It also further suggests the absurdity of this electoral season.

A summation of the 2008 presidential campaign:

Public slip-up by candidate or surrogate,
Feigned outrage at slip-up by media/opposing candidate (and logically, the general public, vicariously),
Slip-uper apologizes to Meredith Viera, Charles Gibson, Anderson Cooper,
Campaign disowns slip-uper, slip-up; slip-uper does not speak for candidate, slip-up is not what this campaign is about; jobs, energy independence (& slip-ups) are what the American people care about
Repeat 3,000 times.
Barack Obama is black.
McCain wins, bombs Iran.

Oh, the locals:

Obama would sell us out, letter to the editor

Barack Obama is a slick, eloquent, elitist black politician. If he wins, it will because he is black and projects a messianic personality to those who are too ignorant to see the truth. It would be a shame on the Negro race if the first black elected president sold out America wholesale. This is what I believe Obama would do.

President Bush has gotten a bum wrap from the media and the public. The man has kept us free and safe and returned us to the position as the leader of the free world. He has also led us incrementally, as much as a president probably can, as a nation under God.

I am not a racist, though I believe in talking plainly. I could vote for a man like Clarence Thomas or perhaps Bill Cosby, if I knew more of his political views. I could vote for Condi Rice. But just to vote for someone because he's black and has an eloquent charisma and promises change (what kind of change do you think he's going to bring?) - this is just wrong.

Many will vote just for these reasons. Don't let it be you.

I could find a lot to complain about in John McCain, yet this I see: He loves his country more than political power, and he stands for what he believes even when it is not popular.

He looks pretty presidential to me. No façade.

JOHN DEMAKOWSKI

Franklin

[Concord Monitor]

I have submitted a response we'll see if it gets printed.

"FOR Keith and Tracy Tobias, the parents of three teenagers in La Quinta, Calif., turning an old workshop behind their house into a movie theater for their children was an obvious move. “We’re very social and our kids have grown up with that,” Ms. Tobias said. “We’re a party family.” In fact, the couple’s reasons had to do with more than their love of fun. The Tobiases were looking for a way to keep their children at home."

"For parents determined to stay on top of their children’s social lives, a rec room, fitted out with a movie theater, a Ping-Pong table and a video game area, seemed an ideal solution."


AHHHHHHHH!!!!
I am not even going to begin.

Iraq

Iran

[ny review of books]

"The report of my death is an exaggeration."

Mark Twain

And the man ABC News now describes as a "conservative icon" (8/22/01) in 1993 sang "Dixie" in an elevator to Carol Moseley-Braun, the first African-American woman elected to the Senate, bragging, "I'm going to make her cry. I'm going to sing Dixie until she cries." (Chicago Sun-Times, 8/5/93) [Fair]

Fuck you Jesse Helms.

Happy 4th of July

Happy 232nd birthday, Independent American State.

Text of the Declaration

See what Congress is up to.

The homepage of the United States government

Greg's List

Noam Chomsky's Website

And How to Clean your Coffee Maker

Most of all:

The sky is figuratively falling potentially someday.
1 in 10 chance of big asteroid hitting us this century
NASA has a tough time dealing with that, but it is tricky business.
here is their website on that
Asteroid 2004 FH, a 30- meter wide object, was discovered only 3 days before it came within 26000 miles of Earth, closer than the farthest satellites
And here is how to figure out, mathematically, how scared you should be.

Proposed maxims:
the complete destruction of the planet by an asteroid would not, in and of itself, be a negative thing.
deep impact was way better than armageddon