Don't Stop Campaigning

A Washington Post editorial - Don't Stop Campaigning. Either ignorant or conservative, I don't know which. And now for my own version of Don't Stop Campaigning:

Mrs. Clinton, please don't stop campaigning. You are a well-qualified, politically savvy asshole. Yes, indeed, you are more qualified than your opponent. And your desire to remove democracy from a democracy for your own benefit in state races that have already occurred is, well, enlightening. You dazzle us with your fantastic ability to piss off your entire party, the one who used to look up to you, love you. Hug you. Kiss you... oh, wait, that was only Nancy Pelosi. But hug you, they did. And you were their leader. You were respected. So who better to run this country than you? But you really didn't think a political campaign could tire you, hurt you, age you. Thanks to Botox, the latter was true. No, the campaign only cost you the respect of your party, but who needs them anyway? Do you really need Howard Dean, or Ted Kennedy, or Chris Dodd, or John Kerry, or Russ Feingold, or Tom Daschle, or Bob Gee, or Ted Sorensen? No, you don't. You are doing a fine job slaughtering your reputation on your own, thank you very much.

You are such a wonderful person. Even if you didn't run through Bosnia under sniper fire, at least you had the nuts to make up a pretty cool camp fire story, right? And your wonderful ability to paste together words to make a ridiculously impossible story parallels that of the lovely Michael Moore.
I guess what it comes down to, Hillary, is that we over here really love you. We enjoy your biological warfare against your own that will, hopefully, make the whole country red. We love the infighting that would stop if you simply muttered the two terrible words, "I quit." We love when you make our objectively mediocre candidate look like God himself.

So Hillary Clinton, please don't stop campaigning.

Turn Out the Lights,

Another Meaningless Empty Symbolic Gesture.

SYDNEY (AFP) - Twenty-six major cities around the world are expected to turn off the lights on major landmarks, plunging millions of people into darkness to raise awareness about global warming, organisers said. Cities officially involved in 'Earth Hour' include Aalborg, Aarhus, Adelaide, Atlanta, Bangkok, Brisbane, Canberra, Chicago, Christchurch, Copenhagen, Darwin, Dublin, Hobart, Manila, Melbourne, Montreal, Odense, Ottawa, Perth, Phoenix, San Francisco, Suva, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto and Vancouver. (link)

Comment: Liberals love the meaningless empty symbolic gesture. Turn off your lights and show how much you “care.” Show your solidarity with others who “care.” This feel-good measure can make you feel like you are “doing something." The only possible reason for something like this is to raise awareness. Mr Friends, awareness has been raised! It is time to get behind policy changes that will actually do something. Showing how environmentally pious you are is useless. I will be keeping the lights on.

TJ's Anti-Contrarian Blog: It's TRUE!!!!

This is just way too funny! Gotta give a h/t to MegaBrad over at TJ's Anti-Contrarian Blog: It's TRUE!!!! . Type in the following URL into your web browser then hit the green arrow and just let it take you there!

""www.IAMSORETARDED.com""

This is just too funny!

Juicy Campus

I was watching the local news on channel 12 like every well educated person should, and I saw CT Attorney General Richard Blumenthal going on about how terrible an effect this new website (here - Juicy Campus), can have on people. It's simply a no registration anonymous posting site, where people can literally post anything they want about anyone they want, and the site claims complete anonymity. Curiosity got the best of me, so I logged on to this site to see how crazy it really is. Basically, it's a hotspot for coward idiots who want to rip on people. An example...



Now, I have no idea who David Knoeckel is. I don't know if these are David Knoeckel's two best friend messing with him, or maybe it's actually David Knoeckel himself. But maybe it really is some jerks who despise David Knoeckel enough to permanently tag his name on the internet as "quite possibly the horniest guy at UNC."

I decided to throw my own little bash out there and see how easy this thing really is. I went to the website, and clicked "New Post." I came to this screen:



So I typed in my bash, even daring to throw in a little crazy Virginia Tech stuff.



I doubt you can actually read that. It says, "I hate jerks. They suck. You know what, Joe Shmoe is a jerk. In fact, I plan on murdering Joe Shmoe. Tomorrow, in his bed, with a pitchfork. Police, that's where I'll be."

So I had my sample down, and I hit 'submit' and went back to the main page. Behold...



That whole process took me all of two minutes. For a first time user, that's not bad.

Now that we've figured out how to work the thing, what are the legal ramifications here? Well, it's freedom will be it's downfall, whether in the public or private sector. I wouldn't want my name plastered all over the site like poor David Knoeckel, but I tend to doubt he'll be hurt in the least in the long run. A google search on his name returns no obvious relevant results, and somehow, I don't think an employer is going to take such a simple online toy seriously enough to block his application.

Students can use Facebook and Myspace as freely as they use Juicy Campus. I know from experience; I have used both sites. The difference is you have at least some control over who actually sees the content, especially on Facebook, as accounts can be blocked off from the public eye. Also, statements on both social networking sites are retractable and names go along with them. Statements on Juicy Campus are completely anonymous and non-retractable.

Certainly, the site is in no way illegal, it is simply a "because I can" use of the First Amendment. No person will take the site seriously. At some level, I tend to think a solid portion of the names tagged up there were done as practical jokes. I suspect the real world knows this, too, and a site such as this is not and will not be taken seriously. So, why not let the thing live, and kill itself on its own?

ONLY IN CALIFORNIA! (Self Explanatory!)

Farmers Feeding at the Federal Trough

Amber Waves of Green

March 13, 2008; Page A18 Wall Street Journal (link)

When it comes to picking taxpayer pockets, no one -- not the trial lawyers or even AARP -- has it over the farm lobby. How's this for clout? Though last year was one of the best ever for farm incomes -- up 44% to $87.5 billion -- farmers are about to score the most lavish subsidies in American history.

The House and Senate are now ironing out differences between their bills, and it's all but certain that farmers will get about $26 billion over the next five years in subsidies. Soybean and wheat farmers are slated to receive higher price supports, though bean prices hit a 34-year high last year and wheat prices have soared to a new record.

Corn producers will get subsidies of $10.5 billion over five years, which is on top of the deal of a lifetime these farmers were handed when Congress expanded ethanol subsidies. The handouts make growing corn so profitable that last year some 15.3 million acres were converted to new corn production, according to the USDA. That has a cascading effect on other prices, as farmers convert bean acreage to more lucrative corn fields and feed prices for meat producers climb.

Commentary: Farmers Feeding at the Federal Trough

I don’t get it. Farm prices are up, but so are government price supports for farm products. A married couple farming full time can have an income of up to $2 million a year before they lose their eligibility for a taxpayer subsidy. We enrich the corporate factory farmers. Our farm policy keeps some people farming who don’t need to farm. We pay other farmers not to farm. We keep the poor of the world poor and undermine our advocacy of free trade.

We subsidize the production of corn syrup to the point that it is so cheap that it is added to things that don’t need corn syrup such as peanut butter and the crackers you put the peanut butter on. And all that corn syrup makes Americans very fat. Speaking of fat, fat cats like Ted Turner, David Letterman and David Rockefeller get farm subsidies. All the while, we are increasing the price of groceries to the American consumer. This is nuts! Speaking of nuts, they are subsidized too, especially peanuts. The farm bill needs to be vetoed. We need to stop this welfare for farmers and we need to get government out of the business of setting farm prices.

Double Life of Barack Obama

Wright is wrong for America. (link)
By Thomas Sowell

There is something both poignant and galling about the candidacy of Barack Obama.

Any American, regardless of party or race, has to find it heartening that the country has reached the point where a black candidate for president of the United States sweeps so many primaries in states where the overwhelming majority of the population is white. We have all seen the crowds enthralled by Barack Obama’s rhetoric and theatrical style. Many of his supporters put their money where their mouths were, so that this recently arrived senator received more millions of dollars in donations than candidates who have been far more visible on the national stage for far more years.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that Barack Obama has been leading as much of a double life as Eliot Spitzer.

While talking about bringing us together and deploring “divisive” actions, Senator Obama has for 20 years been a member of a church whose minister, Jeremiah Wright, has said that “God Bless America” should be replaced by “God damn America” — among many other wild and even obscene denunciations of American society, including blanket racist attacks on whites.

Comment: I at first ignored the criticism of Obama as it related to his church affiliation. I had seen the lies that branded Obama a closet Muslim extremist and assumed the reports that he belonged to a racist Black nationalist church to be more of the same. Once I saw the evidence against his pastor, I still cut Senator Obama some slack. After all, some Republicans I admire go to Bob Jones University to campaign and BJU has a past that some might categorize as racist. Many Republicans courted the late Jerry Falwell, and they court the 700 Club's Pat Robinson. Both of these men have said some outrageous things, especially Mr. Robinson. I thought I ought to extend to Senator Obama the same leeway as I do those Republicans who associate with BJU and Pat Robinson.

However, I think that Senator Obama must be judged by his associations with the Reverend Wright. Mr. Obama has more than just a casual association. He has been a member of that church for over twenty years, and his children were baptized in that church. Mr. Obama has made large financial contributions to the church and calls Reverend Wright his mentor.

Mr. Wright has not just occasionally uttered an absurdity taken out of context but apparently has consistently preached a message of racism and hatred of America. Copies of his sermons and excepts of his preaching are available. Reverend Wright went with Louis Farrakhan to Libya and Farrakhan received an award from the church.

Mr. Obama has tried to position himself as above the racial divide. It saddens me to have to face the truth about Obama. I doubt that I could have ever voted for him, despite my discontent with the Republican Party. Obama has an ADA rating of a perfect 100% and is one of the most liberal member of the U. S. Congress. His promise to immediately begin a military pull out of Iraq without regard to the consequences scares me. I am concerned about his inexperience and apparent naivete. Nevertheless, I thought Mr. Obama was a decent person, and brought more dignity to the office than his Democratic rival. I thought his success showed that America was over it's prejudice past and that skin color did not matter. Dispite not agreeing with his politics, I thought he was a breath of fresh air.

If a leading white candidate for President had set in a church for 2o years that preached racial prejudice, the church had given an award to David Duke, and yet the candidate contributed to that church and called the church pastor his mentor, we would weigh that in considering the candidates fitness for office. We should likewise consider Senator Obama's association with the Reverend Wright, in the same light.