Rocket Man

The Jetsons are here in the 21st century at last. Or maybe it's a super hero. The music that was put on it is absolutely perfect.

When the new century broke my complaint was "Where are the flying cars? They promised me flying cars!" Apparently I wasn't the only one because someone did a commercial that said just that with the commander of Deep Space 9. But in thinking about it there are inherent problems with flying, whether in a car or a jet pack. What if the power gives out? Of course you will plummet to your death, but imagine that there are as many flying cars as there are cars right now? We would have a dozen cars falling every day, causing all kinds of damage when they hit.

So there will be no flying cars or jet packs in everyday usage until they solve that little problem.

Special Comment

Keith Olbermann has another Special Comment tonight where he really slams Bush. I've never seen Keith so angry and I've seen him pretty angry. But I agree with 100%, Bush just pisses me off so badly it's hard to even talk about him but his comment about sacrificing golf for the troops was just unbelievable, even for him.

What is really cool this time is that MSNBC had the video of it right away with the code for embedding. I used to have to wait a day until someone put it on YouTube then embed what was usually a very bad image. They announced on Countdown to go to tv.msnbc.com with instructions for how to embed it. On one of his earlier comments MSNBC had a video of it but no way to embed it so I still had to wait a day. I shot an email off to Keith telling him they needed to do this very thing, have a way for us bloggers to embed the good quality video and get it out in the blogosphere right away. They must have paid attention.

The Ed Schultz Show!

This is progressive radio that isn't Air America. It's nice to know there are others out there, after all, Air America has almost gone out of business a couple of times.

Big Eddie's show comes on at noon out here on the west coast, although I have to tune in to a Seattle radio station online to hear him because the LA station doesn't have him until 7 PM.

I didn't like Ed too much at first, he makes one really bad first impression because he sounds so much like Rush Limbaugh. I've talked to others who say they can't listen to him for that reason alone and I have to admit it was disconcerting for a long time. Also, he didn't seem like much of a liberal to me. He says; "I’m just a fat, red-headed, white guy from the mid-west." Also an ex-football player and even an ex-Republican. It took his wife, Wendy, to get him on the liberal track, so I doubted his commitment to being a liberal, or progressive if you prefer.

But there was nothing else at noon except Randi Rhodes, and I really can't stand her. Over time he won me over. He proved he's a real progressive by the way he's talked about the issues, even didn't like Hillary all that much because she isn't liberal enough. He never said that directly but I picked that up after listening long enough. I have to say he and I are in exact agreement on all things political, and I'm a REAL left-wing liberal. Only thing he's gotten wrong is in his support for biofuels and his refusal to see the problem with them, especially with corn. But hey, nobody is perfect.

But he's funny and boisterous and does his show with a lot of energy, humor and conviction. He is also making the rounds on the TV news talk shows, though usually not the same ones as Rachel Maddow. He is on Larry King a lot and sometimes even on Fox. Like I said, no one is perfect. But he and Rachel were on a show together recently which was fun. Can't remember which one it was, though, either Dan Abrams or Dick Greogory.

But he is worth tuning into, he's my third favorite radio guy after Rachel and Thom Hartmann in the number 2 position. He will sound less like Rush Limbaugh the more you listen to him, I promise. You can find him online at wegoted.com

Obama Has a Plan to Win in November

Found this very interesting web site that shows Obama's plans for winning against McCain. Ambitious enough and good enough that best case projections have him winning over 80% of the Electoral votes. This has me pretty excited:

Obama Over The Top: How New Voters Could Redraw The Electoral Map
So Poblano devised several possible scenarios. The first, titled the “40/20 Plan,” increases the youth vote by 40 percent and the African-American vote by 20 percent, while keeping the Latino vote at the 2004 level. The “40/30/20 Plan” projects a 40 percent increase among 18-24 year-olds, a 30 percent increase among Latinos, and a 20 percent in increase in the black vote. Finally comes the “Best Case Scenario,” which assumes a 40 percent increase among African-Americans and a 50 percent increase in both the youth and Latino vote nationally.

The “40/20 Plan” alone increases Obama’s chances of winning from 49.5 percent to 68.3 percent. The “40/30/20 Plan,” meanwhile, lifts this probability over 70 percent:

These projections illustrate the extraordinary level of flexibility enjoyed by the Obama campaign as they head towards the general election. Rather than focusing on simply winning Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, they have a big enough war chest and a broad enough base of support to create all sorts of contingencies in case one of those typical battleground states goes for McCain.

Hillary on SNL

They opened with Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton. This speech is incredibly funny because it's incredibly true. These are the things everyone is thinking but won't say, three reason why she should be the candidate instead of Obama:

I'm a sore loser

My supporters are racist

Unlike Obama I have no ethical standards.

PS: The first video disappeared so I had to find a replacement.

Bearings

Lieberman personally checked McCain's "bearings" and they are in great shape. I think these two are a LOT closer than anyone knew they were. Nothing worse than two conservatives getting together - disgusting!

Super Delegates

Now Obama has taken the lead in Super Delegates, having gained 12 since the Tuesday elections while Hillary has only gotten 2, but she also lost 2 who jumped ship to Obama.

Sen. Obama, D-Ill., picked up two superdelegates this morning giving him a new metric to tout in addition to his current commanding leads in pledged delegates, popular votes, states won, and money raised.

So he leads in just about every category, I can't think of any others to add in there, except of course among hard working uneducated white people (I'm going to fume over that for a looong time). Eugene Robinson, my favorite commentator on Countdown after Rachel Madow, also said he was incensed when he heard what Hillary said.

As a statement of fact, that's debatable at best. As a rationale for why Democratic Party superdelegates should pick her over Obama, it's a slap in the face to the party's most loyal constituency -- African Americans -- and a repudiation of principles the party claims to stand for. Here's what she's really saying to party leaders: There's no way that white people are going to vote for the black guy. Come November, you'll be sorry.

How silly of me. I thought the Democratic Party believed in a colorblind America.

You tell 'em, my black brother! This 54 year old hard working white guy is with you 100%. Hillary sounds more like a republican every day. She really ought to just quit before she damages herself even further.

McCain said Obama was the favorite candidate of Hamas. Do we need any more evidence that he is a stupid old man? Doesn't matter, Obama had no chance with the stupid, white, old man vote. Most of them would have trouble getting those hoods off in time to vote anyway. Obama came back and said McCain has lost his bearings. Now isn't that just a fine put-down? It's hard to even be insulted by that, the guy just has class and style. The McCain people said it was a barb about McCain's very advanced age. I guess you would have to be a stupid, old white guy to have made that connection, and an even stupider, old white guy to think bringing up McCains' VERY advanced age was a good idea.

Did I mention that if he is elected he will be the OLDEST guy ever elected to the office?

Life In America

Every once in a while there are lots of things I want to write a little comment on instead of a whole post, in the past I've called it Tidbits.
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Apparently, Lindsey Lohan stole a coat from a night club and then returned it. The owner is suing her for $10,000 for unauthorized rental.

I know I talk about politics, atheism and Mac, and I often am incensed at the amount of coverage this kind of crap gets - - - but this one is just TOO funny.

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Bill and Hillary from many, many years ago. I wonder if they were starry eyed idealists back then, hippies looking for love and peace? I wonder if they had any inkling of where their lives would be today back then? Probably not. Life is pretty bizarre, isn't it?

Too bad she won't ever be president, I think she'd most likely make a good one, although I'm a bit afraid of her right wing leanings. I hope her and Obama can work something out and she becomes his VP. He can set her on one task - reforming medical care.
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Most likely this is our next president, get used to it. I just hope he lives up to the possibility I see in him of being the next FDR. I'm pretty relieved to see an end to the Bush/Clinton Oligarchy.

As VP I'd like to see Jim Webb (if he can't get Hillary). Webb would be good as the southern white guy who has a strong military background. Bill Richardson as Secretary of State, Al Gore as Secretary of Energy with a mandate to get us off oil as much as possible. John Edwards as Attorney General, set him off to clean up the Justice Dept like a bulldog going in for the kill.
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In Florida a teacher was fired for doing a magic trick in class. What was it? He made a toothpick disappear - this got him fired with the charge of - wait for it - - - WIZARDRY!! No, that is not a typo, he was fired for wizardry, and by people who run a school! What century is this anyway? Stay out of Florida or you might get burned at the stake.
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Hillary said today that it was the hard working white Americans who voted for her. Does that mean it's only the lazy-assed blacks who voted for Obama? Imagine if Obama had even mentioned getting the black vote, the press would be all over him, but that's OK, Hillary is white so she can get away with it.

This whole campaign is showing just how bigoted America really is and just how low Hillary can sink. Forget her as VP, let's have Richardson as VP. A black man and a Hispanic on one ticket, gotta love it and why not? The bigots aren't going to vote for him anyway but this way he will get the Hispanic vote, imagine turning all those Cubans in Miami into democrats?

Useful Idiots

I came across this amazing web site about the Evangelical Manifesto. They are PDF files to download and probably too long for most people to read it all, but I did find some good stuff:

First, we repudiate two equal and opposite errors into which many Christians have fallen. One error is to privatize faith, applying it to the personal and spiritual realm only. Such dualism falsely divorces the spiritual from the secular and causes faith to lose its integrity. The other error, made by both the religious left and the religious right, is to politicize faith, using faith to express essentially political points that have lost touch with biblical truth. That way faith loses its independence, Christians become the “useful idiots” for one political party oranother, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology. Christian beliefs become the weapons of political factions.

Useful Idiots is such a great term, it's one I will definitely use in the future. I'm amazed that some Evangelicals were actually able to see this, they tend to be blinded by their ideology. The Republicans have lured them in with social issues such as abortion and gay rights and they vote on those thing while destroying themselves financially.

Second, we repudiate the two extremes that define the present culture wars in the
United States. On one side, we repudiate the partisans of a sacred public square, those who would continue to give one religion a preferred place in public life.
In a diverse society, it will always be unjust and unworkable to privilege one
religion. We are committed to religious liberty for people of all faiths. We are firmly opposed to theocracy. And we have no desire to coerce anyone or to impose beliefs and behavior on anyone. We believe in persuasion.

Now this is truly astonishing for an Evangelical. Their MO over the years has been to attack other religions, like that one group in Oregon that tried to keep out a Buddhist Temple from their town because it was devil worship. Or Bob Barr being outraged when he heard that Wiccans were able to hold ceremonies on a military base. So I'm very happy to see this development, it shows real rationality and a sense of fairness, although that word "persuasion" gives me pause. The Inquisition could be called "persuasion."

On the other side, we repudiate the partisans of a naked public square, those who would make all religious expression inviolably private and keep the public square inviolably secular. This position is even less just and workable because it excludes the overwhelming majority of citizens, who are still profoundly religious. Nothing is more illiberal than to invite people into the public square but insist that they be stripped of the faith that makes them who they are. We are committed to a civil public square – a vision of public life in which citizens of all faiths are free to enter and engage the public square on the basis of their faith, but within a framework of what is agreed to be just and free for other faiths as well. Every right we assert for ourselves as Christians is a right we defend for all others.

Now here they have it wrong but I think it's just ignorance on their part, but then I think most atheists get it wrong, too. The Separation of Church and State is most important to the religious because it protects them from religious persecution, or of being in that "Useful Idiots" role as they say above. Religion tied to government is no longer free. But the real bottom line of it all is that the government should not be in the religion business, period. It sounds nice to give everyone their say but the government has to stay away from religion in any way. Besides, adding religion into the public square is no way to promote civility, it's a way to destroy it.

Third, we are concerned that a generation of culture warring, reinforced by understandable reactions to religious extremism around the world, has created a powerful backlash against all religion in public life among many educated people. If this hardens into something like the European animosity toward religion in public life, the result would be disastrous for the American republic and would severely constrict liberty for people of all faiths. The striking intolerance shown by the new atheists is a warning sign. We call on all citizens of goodwill and believers of all faiths and none to join us in working for a civil public square and the restoration of a tough-minded civility that is in the interests of all.

Now this one cracks me up. Probably comes from that Barna survey a few months ago that said people had a more negative perception of Evangelicals than just about anybody else. What they call intolerance by atheists is just a question of us calling it like we see it. Most religion is evil and causes evil things to happen. Like the T-shirt that said "Imagine No Religion" and had a picture of the New York skyline with the Twin Towers still there.

I read something a while back that showed that certain Evangelicals, Hispanics and blacks primarily, do not understand other Evangelicals obsession with such issues as abortion and gays while completely ignoring Jesus' message to help the poor and needy. Wow! And here I thought Jesus said to make a lot of money and let the poor fend for themselves, I mean, that's what right wingnuts are all about. Did Jesus actually say to help the less fortunate and that it's not good to be rich? You'd hardly know that from the behavior of most Evangelicals.

Indiana and North Carolina

Yesterday I said I thought Hillary's Gas Tax Holiday stupidity would win the day over Obama telling the truth.

I was wrong! Obama won by 14% in North Dakota and only lost by 2% in Indiana, that's a damn good showing. It's nice to know that Hillary's blatant vote pandering with something she knew she could never get done and wouldn't help anyone if she could, didn't work. This shows that Obama can win by treating Americans as adults, really quite amazing and unexpected.

And, it appears, the Rev Wright didn't have much affect either, or perhaps it went the other way, people voted for him because he was being picked on by the media over something he had no control over.

People, especially the Super Delegates, were beginning to get nervous about Obama, he seemed to be reeling from some heavy punches and all were doubting if he really was the guy. But this decisive victory today shows he is still the man.

I still feel sorry for Hillary, she is a great campaigner and would most likely have blown away anybody but Obama. She just ran at the wrong time but had no way to know it would be the wrong time. Who could have guessed Obama would have this kind of impact so quickly? Notr me and not anybody. I'm thinking again that an Obama/Hillary ticket could be a good thing. Both have brought in new voters and got people excited enough to vote in record numbers. With Hillary on the ticket Obama could pull in all of her supporters, 40% of whom say they will not vote for Obama if he gets the nomination. It would pull the two sides together and also guarantee Hillary using her formidable campaigning skills for Obama in the general election at full strength.

The Gas Tax

Hillary is going to town on this gas tax holiday thing, stealing the idea directly from McCain. She likes it so much she has even run a TV ad making it look like Obama is not interested in helping people out.

The truth is she is never going to make this happen this summer as she says, and she damn well knows it. Even if it got through congress - and not even democrats want to vote for it - Bush will veto it. And Obama has said it's pure political pandering, he even had good reasons for thinking that because they did this very thing in Illinois. They dropped the state gas tax while Obama was in the state legislation and he voted for it. When they looked at it a year later they discovered that the gas at the pump never got lowered, the oil companies just pocketed the extra money. It was a free givaway to them, and Hillary is smart enough to know this.

So the truth of it is Hillary intends to give nothing at all to the people, she is just trying to make it look like she is and whore for votes. But as we all know, perceptions are far more important than facts in politics. Obama spoke to the voters like they were adults and could understand the concepts involved, Hillary treated them like little kids who will get all excited and never bother to look behind the curtain for the real Oz. Of course, Hillary's is the better campaign strategy. It also shows that Obama really does have hope that the American public isn't stupid.

And then there is all the Republicans sneaking over to the Democratic primaries to vote for Hillary because Rush told them to. If it wasn't for Rush pushing this I think Hillary would have lost this whole thing back during the Texas/Ohio primaries. And all the Democrats voting for Hillary are helping the Republicans.

Books to Read

One of my favorite atheist writers is Massimo Pigliucci, his blog is Rationally Speaking. He doesn't write often but when he does it's always worth a read. What he has on today's blog is a list of must read books.

This is his list of Top Ten books on Evolution.

And this is his Top Ten for Philosophy.

This is on Amazon with a note from Massimo on each book. I have to admit I haven't read even one of these, but I've heard about most of them, read parts of them and read people talking about them. It seems odd that a defender of evolution such as myself, with a better than average knowledge of the subject has never read Origin of Species by Darwin. When it comes to scientific stuff I prefer magazine articles, entire books can be very daunting, plus I know that many things have changed in evolutionary science since Darwin's day so I tend to think it's better to read more modern things.

Patriotism

From the Chicago Tribune comes this story by Lawrence Korb and Ian Moss:

In 1961, a young African-American man, after hearing President John F. Kennedy's challenge to, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," gave up his student deferment, left college in Virginia and voluntarily joined the Marines.

In 1963, this man, having completed his two years of service in the Marines, volunteered again to become a Navy corpsman. (They provide medical assistance to the Marines as well as to Navy personnel.)

The man did so well in corpsman school that he was the valedictorian and became a cardiopulmonary technician. Not surprisingly, he was assigned to the Navy's premier medical facility, Bethesda Naval Hospital, as a member of the commander in chief's medical team, and helped care for President Lyndon B. Johnson after his 1966 surgery. For his service on the team, which he left in 1967, the White House awarded him three letters of commendation.

What is even more remarkable is that this man entered the Marines and Navy not many years after the two branches began to become integrated.

While this young man was serving six years on active duty, Vice President Dick Cheney, who was born the same year as the Marine/sailor, received five deferments, four for being an undergraduate and graduate student and one for being a prospective father. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both five years younger than the African-American youth, used their student deferments to stay in college until 1968. Both then avoided going on active duty through family connections.

Who is the real patriot? The young man who interrupted his studies to serve his country for six years or our three political leaders who beat the system? Are the patriots the people who actually sacrifice something or those who merely talk about their love of the country?

After leaving the service of his country, the young African-American finished his final year of college, entered the seminary, was ordained as a minister, and eventually became pastor of a large church in one of America's biggest cities.

This man is Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the retiring pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, who has been in the news for comments he made over the last three decades.

Compare him to the right wing hate mongers like Rush Limbaugh who are attacking him.  Limbaugh never served this country one day in his life.  Not that I agree with what Wright said, I don't even like the guy, but I think a little perspective is needed.

And what Wright said has nothing to do with Barack Obama.  Why hasn't the media held McCain's feet to the fire for Pastor Hagee, the guy who called the Catholic church the great Whore, and that was one of the nicer things he said.  Hagee makes Wright look like a saint yet McCain actively sought out his endorsement and when challenged has not denounced him.  Nor have the media made a circus out of Hagee. 

If we were voting for president based on who his reverend is (an asinine way to make that choice) Obama would definitely get my vote over McCain.

Browser Wars

A while back I downloaded a browser called Flock.  I had looked at it before but thought it needed some work, with version 1.1 it got pretty good and was very fun to use.  Then, just days later Safari came out with a new update that was incredibly fast, and days after that Firefox came out with version 3 im beta, also very fast.

And then there is AOL Desktop for Mac which seems to be Firefox with a special interface for using AOL to make navigation better.  Then there are other problems like the fact that Gmail does not work in Mac Mail so I tried Thunderbird where it did work pretty well.  Flock is supposed to have support for Gmail and works OK.

All of these are very cool in some ways but after a few weeks of use it comes down to the fact that Safari is by far the fastest and most stable of them all.  AOL, Gmail and everything else still works faster in Safari than the special programs build just for them.  But it has one drawback, I can't do blogging on Blogger with it so I need Flock for that.

It sure would be nice to have one browser for everything, I don't like having 4 or 5 applications open to handle the internet.  For now I'll make Safari my main browser with Mail for all email except Gmail, then just open Flock to do blog entries.  Maybe when Firefox 3 comes out of beta and Flock does an upgrade based on it that will do the job.

Science Kills People

Ben Stein, a truly evil little man. Thanks to Pharyngula for bringing this video to my attention.

Edward Current

Just found out about this guy thanks to PZ Myers at Pharyngula who placed one of his videos on his site. At first I wasn't sure if it was comedic sarcasm or a real Christian video, I've heard Christians say thing even more outrageous than what Edward puts in his videos. But the one above entitled "Jesus Protects Us From Being Poisoned" shows his videos are clearly sarcasm. Wait until the very end because his comments and disclaimers are pretty funny.

Hillary Clinton: Fork Her, She's Done

It was quite a while ago I said to stick a fork in Hillary, she's done. She hasn't followed my advice, sad to say. Now she is REALLY done. She would have to win 67% of the 9 remaining primaries to take the lead in popular vote or delegates. If she won 50% of the next 2 primaries, Indiana and North Carolina, she'd need 85% of the vote of all remaining primaries. And it would be a minor miracle if she pulled off 50% in those two states since Obama is in the lead in both, into double digits in North Carolina.

She is doing a "win at any cost" strategy and flinging out negative ads like crazy, all in the hope that Obama will make some kind of major blunder - something far worse than anything that's happened so far - or that she can convince the Super Delegates that she stands a better chance in November against John McCain. I figure the odds are better for me winning the Lotto.

This has become very sad. When all this started I was excited to see Hillary campaigning for president. John Edwards was my guy but I would have been happy to vote for any of the top three, in fact, ANY of the Democratic candidates, except maybe Mike Gravel. Now I don't like her and don't want to vote for her at all. I think she has gone so far into the negative that she has hurt herself more than Obama and has damaged her standing in the party. If she quits now she might have a chance at top party leadership in the future, like Senate Majority Leader, but the longer this goes on the less chance she will even have a political career.

But let me make one think very, very clear: If she does manage to get the Democratic nomination I WILL vote for her in November. Nothing can be worse than McCain being president, that cannot be allowed to happen. And we know the pubs are going to cheat and try and steal the election like they have in the past, the only way to stop them is show up and vote for the Democratic candidate in overwhelming numbers. So all of us MUST vote for whoever that candidate is, no matter what. And when it comes down to it I actually do think Hillary would make a good president, I just wish she knew when to quit.

My Vote's for Obama (if I could vote) ...by Michael Moore

On Michael Moore's website he has a letter about why he is supporting Obama over Clinton. It's a damn good letter and I agree with him 100%.

There are those who say Obama isn't ready, or he's voted wrong on this or that. But that's looking at the trees and not the forest. What we are witnessing is not just a candidate but a profound, massive public movement for change. My endorsement is more for Obama The Movement than it is for Obama the candidate.

That is not to take anything away from this exceptional man. But what's going on is bigger than him at this point, and that's a good thing for the country. Because, when he wins in November, that Obama Movement is going to have to stay alert and active. Corporate America is not going to give up their hold on our government just because we say so. President Obama is going to need a nation of millions to stand behind him.

It's an interesting notion that he is voting for Obama The Movement. I wouldn't say I really thought it out that clearly myself but some of that has been in the back of my mind that influenced my support for Obama. But this next segment is even more telling:

Finally, I want to say a word about the basic decency I have seen in Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton continues to throw the Rev. Wright up in his face as part of her mission to keep stoking the fears of White America. Every time she does this I shout at the TV, "Say it, Obama! Say that when she and her husband were having marital difficulties regarding Monica Lewinsky, who did she and Bill bring to the White House for 'spiritual counseling?' THE REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT!"

This is something I have been pissed off about for some time. How dare Hillary attack Obama over Rev. Wright when Bill called him in as a spiritual advisor back in the 90's. Read the whole letter, it will be worth your while.

Expelled

There is a new film out called Expelled, a terrible propaganda piece that is complete lies from beginning to end. It's a film by Ben Stein, a very intelligent and well educated person who believes the absurdity that evolution is not true and is willing to blatantly lie in a movie to make his point.

PZ Myers implores everyone to put a link on their site to another site called Expelled Exposed.

Vjack on Atheist Revolution also asks all atheists to oppose this film. At first he thought we should all ignore it and not give it any publicity:

With Expelled, creationists are deliberately trying to mislead the public by making the foundation of modern biology seem controversial when it is not. By dressing creationism up in scientific clothing, they seek to present it as a valid hypothesis which mainstream science is neglecting. Rather than openly complaining that science is destroying their religiously-derived worldview, they find it necessary to pretend that mainstream science is somehow biased against their "scientific" alternative.

Make no mistake, ID (Intelligent Design) is not a scientific theory, it is not science at all and has no place in a science classroom in any way and never did. It is purely creationist propaganda that they hope to sneak in by fooling people into thinking that presenting both sides is only fair. It is only fair to present both sides in a science classroom - if it's science! If it is religion it does not belong in a science class. Vjack goes on to explain an even more alarming reason to oppose this movie:

I am also worried that Expelled both reflects and may help fuel bigotry toward atheists. By attempting to link Darwin, atheism, fascism, and even the Holocaust, we end up with an anti-atheist hate film as well as a pro-creationist propaganda film. This is truly a Christian extremist's wet dream!

So that is the worst of it, Stein equates Social Darwinism such as what the Nazis believed, with actual evolutionary science and equates Darwinism with atheism. I find this incredibly ironic in that the only people today who still believe in Social Darwinism are the rich, right wingers like Stein, who feel the poor deserve to die from illness if they can't afford health insurance. In other words, the rich are rich because they earned it, and the poor are poor because they deserve to be. Social survival of the fittest.

Obama vs Hillary

I'm a Political Junkie. It just dawned on me today as I was watching Keith Olbermann talk about today's debate. I didn't watch it, wasn't sure what channel it was on and I will have all kinds of chances to watch it on the web later. Keith said it had been 50 days since the last debate and did a list of what had happened since then; Rev Wright, Obama's race speech, Bitter-gate, etc. And all I could think of was "What fun all that was!!" That's when it dawned on me.

It's all the fault of the internet which makes so much of this easily available and lets me post on my blog as if I'm talking to the whole world. It's also the fault of Air America and other progressive talk networks, and Keith Olbermann, all of whom have made it easy and entertaining to be immersed in this stuff all day long.

Then there is the fact that I think this is the most important election in American history. Bush has destroyed us, not all by himself, we've been building up to this since Reagan was elected, and Cheney and Rumsfeld helped a lot too. I see Obama as the next FDR, who came in and saved us after Hoover destroyed us with conservative politics. And I am not being facetious, we are no longer the America that I thought we were as a kid, we aren't even the America I thought we should have been when I was a teenager. The ideal is dead, the rich run everything and let people die by the thousands (and I mean the holocaust of no health insurance as well as Iraq) so they can make more money, we torture people and have a new King George who is not subject to the rule of law. Our constitution is shredded and it is what made us America, something which far too many are ignorant of.

There have been dire moments in our past where we were destroyed and we have managed to come through them, but things are different today. The Civil War was an obvious and clear danger, but what we have now is hidden in enough political-speak that most people aren't even aware we've been destroyed. But 81% think the country is going in the wrong direction and a clear majority also think George Bush has destroyed our economy, so some of what has happened has gotten through.

This election might be our only chance to come out of it and so many things can go wrong in the near future. After all, we wouldn't be here right now if Jack, Bobby and Martin hadn't been brought down by the guns of assassins. We are poised on the brink of history and it has been and should continue to be interesting. Which reminds of the old Chinese curse; "May you live in interesting times."

Battling Browsers

About a month ago I did a post on Flock and how much I liked it and that I was going to try it as my main browser. Just days after doing this Apple came out with a new Safari update that made it incredibly fast and suddenly I'm torn. Then days later Firefox comes out with version 3 in beta so I give that a try and boy, is it fast too.

So now I'm really confused as to which one I want to use. Safari is still fastest and is closely integrated with Leopard but I still can't make posts to Blogger in it so I have to use Firefox or Flock.

I've made Safari my main browser with Flock as secondary mainly for Blogger posts, but I find I keep coming back to Flock more and more, it's just so much more fun to use and some sites just don't work with Safari. Firefox 3 was very fast but a bit unstable, Safari is faster and more stable and Flock is more fun and more stable.

In a recent MacWorld they did a review on browsers and both Safari and Flock got the best ratings at 4.5 mice but they didn't say too much about Flock and gave no real reason why they gave it so many stars. They also said Safari was good in Blogger but that's absurd, Safari has never been good for creating posts in Blogger, all kinds of weird things happen if I try and use it and it's never been one of Blogger's supported browsers, and it's never been able to work with any of Google apps except Gmail. Odd. So I still have Safari as my main browser so when I click on a link in Mail or elsewhere I get Safari's speed, but most of the time I spend web surfing I use Flock, as well as for Gmail and Blogger.

The Flock people say when Firefox 3 gets out of beta they will upgrade Flock to it which should add some speed and then I will be able to settle on a single browser. I hope.

PayPal Warning

Recently, a client of mine sent me a payment via PayPal. It was quick and easy and I thought it was a great idea. Then another client of mine wanted to send me a payment via PayPal as well. Since he's been hard to collect from I jumped at the chance, he was even nice enough to pay for PayPal's charges for me.

Great, I thought, maybe I can get all my clients on PayPal, this is easy and convenient. Then I transfered the money to my bank account which, unfortunately, takes 3-5 days, the one drawback.

Suddenly, I get an email from them today, Saturday, that the transfer has been put on hold. It is under "investigation" but they can't tell me why or when my money will be released. Or even if. Now I have to contact my client and find out if he knows what is going on and can he send me a check instead. I was planning on that money being in my bank account on Monday now I don't know if I will ever get it at all.

So all I can say is NEVER transfer money via PayPal if you have any other method. They can put a hold on it at any time for any arbitrary reason they want and will not inform you of what that reason is. Nor will they say when, or if, the hold might be lifted. I said how can I avoid a problem in the future if I don't even know why the money was put on hold. She just repeated the same robotic phrase which is common these days and would not deviate from script.

So, I've written 2 emails this morning and called tonight when nothing happened in 12 hours have not heard a thing about any of it. So DO NOT USE PAYPAL FOR ANYTHING AT ANY TIME EVER!!! Your money can be grabbed by them for any reason whatsoever and might never get to you, it's a total crap shoot. And odds are not good, this is only the fourth transfer on PayPal I've ever had so it isn't something like a one in a hundred occurrence. Probably better off sending the money by carrier pigeon. They certainly won't be used by me any more.

The Horror of it All

Area Man Makes It Through Day

Experts estimate that, by 10 p.m. Tuesday night, Blume had survived exposure to approximately 1,700 advertising images of epic banality, at least 35 emotionless interactions with complete strangers without making any real human contact, and more than 25,000 moments of soul-crushing inner emptiness throughout the almost day-long struggle. In addition, he also surmounted the onslaught of more than 150 separate anxiety-producing forces, including credit card debt, weight gain, hair loss, sexual inferiority, loneliness, a dead-end job, geographical isolation from extended family, virus-laden spam, the need to keep his cell phone charged, in-store Muzak, mortality, mounting laundry and dishes, his cable bill, indefinable longing, fear of terrorism, online gossip, the unavoidable certainty of his own unimportance, nostalgia for a past that never was, severe lower-back pain, and general ennui.

Read the full article for a complete list of what this man was forced to survive in a single day - it's HORRIBLE!

Got Hoyle?

Sometimes the simple pleasures are the best. I've long ago developed the knack of enjoying the little things enormously, even when the big things are really, really bad (and they have been for a long time now). One of those things is my new Hoyle Card Games. It used to be one of our favorite games, we had a very old CD of it and it ran in Mac Classic on my OSX machine. The one I loved most was Pinochle, and do you know that no one makes a decent Pinochle game other than Hoyle? Hearts was the other one I would play a lot.

But . . . when I bought my new Intel iMac it was no longer able to to run Mac Classic, so all my old apps became unusable. Most of them I didn't much care about - except for Hoyle Card Games - and it seems they never made an OSX version of it, which I simply didn't understand. But nothing to be done, Pinochle was gone forever.

Then, just yesterday I followed a few web links and discovered that Hoyle just came out with Hoyle Card Games 2008 just a few days ago. I downloaded it and played a few games and sure enough, it's my old pal and buddy come back to life, the same interface and everything! It is not only OSX but fully Universal for Intel Macs.

And then there is Hoyle Board Games, just a huge collection of board games to play with, my favorite was Battleship. And the CD even had Backgammon for Palm OS that I've been playing for years now. They updated that one to Universal as well. I didn't play it very much but it was Darcy's favorite. Unfortunately she's been too weak to even come down the hall and sit in front of the computer these days (one of those BIG things) but maybe this will be incentive for her to work a little harder to regain her strength.

That Dangerous Philosophy

"It’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!"

That's the part of the outburst from Rep. Monique Davis to atheist activist Rob Sherman in the Illinois State Assembly last Wednesday that really leaps out at me. The entire outburst is quite amazing but I have to puzzle over why she thinks his philosophy (atheism is not a philosophy) is so dangerous, apparently personally dangerous as well as dangerous to her kids. I say personally dangerous because such an outburst can only come from a person scared down to the marrow of their bones. As if she knows, deep down, that her philosophy isn't going to win any showdown with atheism.

The entire text of it can be read at the blog of Eric Zorn for the Chicago Tribune. Zorn himself says this:

I know from experience that many of you will side with Davis (update -- apparently I was wrong! ), but I ask you to consider what the outcry would have been if a lawmaker had launched a similar attack on the beliefs of a religious person.

The "update" has a link to his comment section where to his, and my own, surprise most of the comments are against Davis:

The vitriol spewing from this legislator is shocking, frightening, and, well, frankly makes me incensed.

Who the Hell does she think she is?

Let Monique Davis run for a new legislature - one located in Tehran.

I especially like the bit about her relocating to Tehran. I fully expected to have all the Christians run to Davis' defense against the evil atheist but that isn't what happened. I have to say it's quite a pleasant surprise and one of those things that restores my very faded hopes for humanity, at least for a moment.

She even made Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person In The World" today.

Scroll further down Zorn's blog and you will find links to the story on the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post. He even has a link as to whether or not Lincoln was an atheist. I always thought he was but didn't talk about it in order to win elections. Even back then no atheist could get elected to public office. And below that the Council for Secular Humanism chimes in.

An atheist getting yelled at and treated shabbily makes the news and outrages everyone! How ironic when you think of all the times that happens every day across the country and it never makes the news. Even the first President Bush said atheists shouldn't allowed to be citizens.

California Teacher Makes Anti-Christian Remarks

Saw this story in a number of places, first at One News Now:

Sixteen-year-old Chad Farnan is accusing Capistrano Valley High school history teacher James Corbett of making numerous anti-Christian remarks. Farnan claims that while recording class lectures for note-taking purposes, he recorded Corbett stating that "Jesus glasses" obscure the truth and that Christians are more likely to commit rape and murder.

Another one is at the Thinking Christian:

James Corbett “Taught Us How To Think”

And from Webloggin:

Almost without exception, his supporters say that it’s appropriate to crudely insult religion and to use history lessons as a rant against Christianity. Why? Because in their minds he’s speaking truth, and it’s an educator’s responsibility to bring truth to his students, especially the benighted Christian ones. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that there is a problem, not with discussing faith, but with insulting faith.

Each of these has their own perspective that they bring to this that I find interesting. In one they mention Corbett talking about the Flying Spaghetti Monster so I have to assume he's an atheist since that is an atheist's joke. It's how we point out how absurd we find people's religious views, often a comparison is made to belief in Santa Claus as equivalent to most religious belief.

My first thought on this is; how many times have Christians been up in arms when someone complained about a Christian pushing religious propaganda in a classroom? They scream like a banshee who has stepped on a nail about their freedom of speech and religious freedoms being taken away. The fact is they always want it their way with no consistent logic or fairness other than "We are right and everyone else is wrong!"

So as an atheist how do I feel about it? Corbett was out of line. I think it is perfectly OK for him to have brought up the subject of religion, especially Christianity if it's a class on European history, and even to express his own opinion on it. Where he was out of line was in trying to proselytize in a public classroom and in insulting the people who believe it. If a Christian had done that inside a classroom as a teacher I'd be screaming like a banshee who had just stepped on a nail.

Worse than just being impolite, he might have ruined what could have been a very thoughtful discussion and alienated the very people he wants to listen to him. If he was anywhere outside of the classroom and outside a position of authority then I think he has the right to say whatever he pleases.

On the other hand I think the entire story has to be taken with a grain of salt. I haven't heard Corbett's actual remarks and I know Christian's often think anything that isn't fawning praise is an insult. So maybe Corbett wasn't out of line. I certainly don't think he should be fired or suspended, but I do think he should tone it down a bit. Read the links and decide for yourself.

Worse Than 9/11

We are in the middle of a holocaust yet few seem very concerned, especially those in government who can actually do something about it. Here is a story from California Healthline:

The report estimates that 19,900 Californians between ages 25 and 64 died because of a lack of health insurance between 2000 and 2006 (Families USA release, 4/3). The report estimated that 3,100 adult Californians died in 2006 because they were uninsured and either could not pay for the necessary care or received treatment too late.

3,100 dead in California alone just in the year 2006. That's equal to the toll of 9/11 but no one seems to care. This happens every year and in every state so 3,100 barely scratches the surface. Where is the outrage? Where are the annual memorials? Where are the troops, taking revenge and making sure this can't ever happen again?

And isn't it ironic that we can't do anything about this but we CAN spend $341.4 million per day in Iraq. Why? The answer is simple, guys like George Bush don't care about the little people. Those who claim to not believe in evolution DO believe in social evolution, that the fit survive. Which means if you can't afford health insurance you deserve to die.

And the worst part of it all is that a large portion of America has bought this absurdity. It's better to spend all our resources killing Iraqis than taking care of our own. But mention 9/11 and these hypocrites turn into drama queens.

Rachel Maddow

Anyone who hasn't heard Rachel Maddow on Air America is really missing something. I think she is the best progressive radio personality out there, in or out of Air America (no, Air America does not have a monopoly on progressive talk radio).

She is very intelligent and gives very concise and on target analysis of just about any political situation out there. She's actually a doctor, but not that kind of doctor.

She shows up on Countdown with Keith Olbermann often (almost nightly these days) and is the most energetic and coherent of all his guests and all of them are the best in the business. And the reason for this post is to announce that she will host Countdown tomorrow, Friday the 4th. It will be her first time but I'm sure she will be the best guest host they've ever had.

Here's the biography from her web site:

Rachel has a doctorate in political science (she was a Rhodes Scholar) and a background in HIV/AIDS activism, prison reform, and other lefty rabblerousing.

She shakes a mean cocktail, drives a bright red pickup, hates Coldplay, loves arguing with conservatives, spends a lot of money on AMTRAK tickets, and dresses like a first-grader.

Rachel is a political analyst for MSNBC, and makes irregular appearances elsewhere on the TV machine -- including "The Today Show", "Good Morning America", CNN, LOGO, and other TV outlets. She's been with Air America since its inception in Spring 2004 -- before AAR she worked for WRNX in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and WRSI in Northampton, Massachusetts. There was also a stint with a jungle-themed company called Expresso Bongo [sic], but she doesn't want to talk about it.

Rachel is 34 years old and lives in New York City and rural Western Massachusetts with her partner, artist Susan Mikula.

Mukasey

Glenn Greenwald on salon.com wrote an article entitled Michael Mukasey's tearful lies. It's all about the Attorney General giving a speech last week in San Francisco where he says the government's inability to wiretap a call from a safehouse in Afghanistan before 9/11, due to inadequate FISA laws, prevented the government from stopping 9/11.

This is an amazingly outrageous statement and it's absolutely incredible the news media is not covering this, just Glenn. Rachel Maddow, of Air America Radio, had Glenn on her show yesterday, which is how I learned about it. Rachel then went on Countdown to talk about it. You can read the actual transcript here. This is a transcript of the entire Tuesday show so you will have to scroll down a bit to find it, just look for MADDOW. It's well worth the read, I'll just post an excerpt from it here:

MADDOW: The implication of Mukasey‘s story here is that these pesky, restrictive FISA laws kept us from tapping that call from Afghanistan and blocked us stopping 9/11. That‘s complete bull pucky. The laws then, the laws now, the laws since the FISA court has been in existence; the laws have said that you can tap without a warrant that kind of communication from outside the United States into the U.S., particularly if you knew it was an al Qaeda safe house and it had a link in terrorism.

What Mukasey said is either a terrible lie about the law or it‘s terrible admission about the Bush administration leaving us unprotected on 9/11.

Let me translate, she wanted to say bullshit but was on TV. She is also saying that no warrant was ever needed to listen in to that call from Afghanistan since it originated from outside the country. On top of that if they did need a warrant FISA allows them to do the tap immediately and acquire a warrant within 72 hours. So there was no legal reason the Bush administration couldn't have listened into that call and prevented 9/11, they simply failed to do so for unknown reasons (total incompetence would be my guess).

OLBERMANN: And given that Mukasey was working as a judge, if I remember the timing—was working blocks from ground zero. He also said that without telecom immunity, we face the prospect of disclosure in open court the means and methods by which we collect foreign intelligence against foreign targets. Is there even a shred of accuracy in that?

MADDOW: No, that is more bull pucky. He is a federal judge. He knows. Federal courts deal with classified information all the time. They have a whole bunch of different ways of dealing with it. They have closed court rooms. They have ex-parte communications. They hear things in judge‘s chambers.

So Mukasey also said that these law suits against the telecoms would reveal the workings of our Intelligence so Al Quida would then know how we do things. Rachel says bullshit again. Anything involving state secrets is not talked about in open court, it is done in the judge's chambers and sometimes not even the defense counsel is allowed to be present. So clearly, a blatant lie by our nation's highest law enforcement officer.

OLBERMANN: Let‘s put two things together. We heard this book that‘s coming out about the various elements in the 9/11 investigation and the quotes attributed to John Ashcroft, saying don‘t bother me with this; I don‘t want to hear about this al Qaeda again, sometime in June, I guess June of 2001. If we put all these little strands together, the possibility that maybe Mukasey has the details wrong, or—but he‘s got a shred of something. He couldn‘t have made that up out of whole cloth. Something is in there and there are all sorts of other strands. We know about the PDB that nobody paid any attention to. We know about the ambivalence towards listening to anybody left over from the Clinton administration.

So the gist of the story is that Mukasey really let something slip, he let out the information that the Bush administration COULD have stopped 9/11 if they hadn't been asleep at the switch. When are we going to throw all involved into jail?

Flying Spaghetti Monster

Proof positive that the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists! After all, how could someone picture It so vividly if it wasn't real?

This has been put up outside a Tennessee courthouse:

A sculpture of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the goofball deity cooked up to protest a Kansas legal battle over evolution, went on display outside a courthouse in Cumberland County, Tennessee, late last month.

I bet most Christians won't understand what this means and the few that do will be insulted.

Heh heh.