With his recent victory in North Carolina and draw in Indiana, Barack Obama has all but sewn up the Democratic Presidential nomination, despite the fact that we seem to have agreed, as a country, to ignore that fact for the next couple of months so the mass media news networks can continue to run high-drama 24-hour coverage of the remaining primary elections and, quite possibly, the convention itself.

At any rate, Obama gave a victory speech in North Carolina the other day that many are hailing as his first speech as the presumptive nominee, rather than a Democratic primary candidate.

I found pieces of it fascinating, and wanted to deconstruct them here.
By way of disclaimer: while I'm often branded a "conservative" (sometimes correctly, sometimes not), I have not decided who I'm voting for yet. If I was forced at gunpoint to choose right now, though, I'd probably choose Obama over McCain. But that's purely on the "inspiring leadership" metric, which is all I've really heard so far, and not typically near the top of my list when I actually cast my vote in November. I hope that colors the following as more of an independent analysis than a right-wing slash & burn piece. I suspect that some people will never be convinced, though. Ah well, don't say I didn't warn you.

On to Obama:

This fall, we intend to march forward as one Democratic Party, united by a common vision for this country, because we all agree that at this defining moment in our history, a moment when we are facing two wars, an economy in turmoil, a planet in peril, a dream that feels like it's slipping away for too many Americans, we can't afford to give John McCain the chance to serve out George Bush's third term.

I've heard this theme from many prominent Democrats over the last couple of weeks (most recently, from Howard Dean, Chairman of the DNC, on The Daily Show with John Stewart). John McCain was on The Daily Show the next night, and said very matter-of-factly that there are many issues on which he disagrees with the President (torture, the way in which the Iraqi war was waged, immigration, campaign finance reform) and others on which he agrees with the President. It strikes me as a very simple task for John McCain to define himself as different enough from George W. Bush to negate this line of attack, once we get to the general election campaign this fall. If the Democrats are counting on it, as they seem to be right now, I believe they're in some serious trouble.

Somewhere along the line, between all the bickering and the influence-peddling and the game-playing of the last few decades, Washington and Wall Street have lost touch with these core values, these American values.

And while I honor John McCain's service to his country . . . his plan to win in November appears to come from the very same playbook that his side has used time after time in election after election.

Yes, we know what's coming. I'm not naive. We've already seen it, the same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn't agree with all their ideas, the same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives, by pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy, in the hopes that the media will play along.

The attempts to play on our fears and exploit our differences, to turn us against each other for political gain, to slice and dice this country into red states and blue states, blue collar and white collar, white, black, brown, young, old, rich, poor...

... this is the race we expect, no matter whether it's myself or Senator Clinton who is the nominee. The question then is not what kind of campaign they will run; it's what kind of campaign we will run.

This is the passage that made me fall off my chair. Just 19 days ago, I, too, complained against this kind of dirty politics. In my complaint, though, I said this:

I document this today, the day of the hard-fought Pennsylvania primary, because I know people have short memories, and once the media changes the national conversation, others will call me crazy for suggesting what is common knowledge right now. And that is this:

On April 22, 2008, Barack Obama has already been called unpatriotic, racist, unqualified, unprepared, inexperienced, beholden to lobbyists, elitist and Muslim. Hillary Clinton has been called a liar, a hypocrite, a war hawk, over-emotional, contrived, out of touch and willing to rig elections with changes to primary rules and reliance on super delegates. His health care plan has been criticized for leaving millions uninsured. Her position on NAFTA has been criticized as being inconsistent with her previous votes on the subject. He's been accused of a willingness to mollycoddle world leaders. She's been accused of fear mongering.

And all of it, every single bit of it, is coming from within the Democratic party. There's no conceivable way to blame any of this on John McCain, Karl Rove, or the RNC. They have wisely stayed on the sidelines and watched the Democrats feast on each other, well on their way to throwing away an easy victory in November for the third time in a row.

I went on to predict that come September/October, the Democrats would be criticizing the Republicans for using these same tactics, despite using them so vociferously themselves in March/April. Apparently, I was wrong. It didn't take until September/October. It's happening right now. Barack Obama seems to believe he can convince me that all of the nasty, bogus, dirty-politics attacks he's endured over the last couple of months have come from the John McCain's "side."

My friends, I'm still not sure how calling people bitter is considered elitist. But talking to me like I can't remember more than a few weeks of history? That suggests a perceived intellectual superiority that, quite frankly, boggles the mind.

More:

The other side can label and name-call all they want, but I trust the American people to recognize that it is not surrender to end the war in Iraq so that we can rebuild our military and go after Al Qaida's leaders.

I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did.

...and Carter did, and Clinton did. Odd how he left out the two most recent Democrats, huh? Particularly when those two engineered perhaps the two most famous handshakes in the history of the White House Lawn? Maybe it's because Carter's award-winning handshake led directly to the assassination of one leader, and did nothing to create peace for Israel in the subsequent 30 years? Or maybe it's because Clinton's ventures in personal diplomacy with hostile leaders also led to an assassination, this time of our ally's leader, not to mention that little deal with the North Koreans, which we recently learned they began violating before the ink was dry? Or, quite possibly, because Carter is back to demonstrate additional "wisdom" by meeting with the leaders of Hamas, despite requests from the State Department to stay the hell out of the way?

Also interesting that he didn't say "like Reagan did," given that his well-documented personal meetings with Gorbachev led directly to the end of the cold war and the dismantling of the Soviet Union.

I sure hope this bit was about political spin because, otherwise, Obama's in serious need of a history lesson.

Allow me to repeat the summary point of my April 22nd post:

In 2000, the Democrats were running a sitting Vice President to an extremely popular President with a few big character flaws. All Al Gore had to do was be "Bill Clinton without the oral sex," and he would have walked into the White House practically uncontested. Instead, it was insanely close, and Gore walked into a series of White Castle's, rather than a single, White House.

In 2004, the Democrats were running a war hero and sitting senator against a highly unpopular president who was strongly advocating for a highly unpopular war. Again, they blew it, and John Kerry took a swift boat back to Boston.

Now, we're in 2008. 70% of Americans think the country's on the wrong track. For the third time in a row, the Democrats are in a position to walk away with this. It'll be interesting to see if they find a way to screw it up again...

XMBaseball.com, some kind of weird joint venture between Major League Baseball and XM Satellite Radio is currently running two web promotions. The first is a robo-call where you can have Derek Jeter or David Ortiz call your house at a particular time and basically recite a MadLib with your chosen name(s), hobbies, favorite sports teams, etc.. My son Avery would probably get a kick out of it, but when I typed in all the info, I was told that Derek can't say the word "Avery," and asked if he could call without mentioning a name. No thanks, robo-Derek, the effect would most certainly be lost. And of course, if he can't say Avery, he can't very well say Brandon, lest he upset Avery. Catch-22...

Anyway, the other web promotion is a feature that let's you Bobble head anyone you want. That one's easier. Ladies & gentlemen, Bobble-Brian:

 

My Uncle Walter, now retired in Florida, sends me about 50 Internet jokes a month (kinda makes you remember 1997, no?) Anyway, this one was the first in a very long time to actually make me smile. Not so much a joke, just a little perspective:

Item	Current Cost per Gallon
Gasoline	$4.00
Lipton Iced Tea	$9.52
Ocean Spray	$10.00
Gatorade	$10.17
Diet Snapple	$10.32
Water	$21.19
Whiteout	$25.42
Brake Fluid	$33.60
Scope Mouthwash	$84.48
Pepto Bismol	$123.20
NyQuil	$178.13
Printer Ink	$5,200

Let's hope the first alternative fuel car doesn't run on printer ink, huh?

I've just been informed that Mel (Melanie to all you Google fans out there) Foreman wishes to be mentioned on my blog.

Since this is the first time anyone has made such a request, I figured the least I could do is comply.

Mel Foreman - this post's for you!

For anyone who has $2,800 to spend on a DVD player:

http://www.nikkoamerica.com/nhe/dvd_projector_video.html

(I'm looking at you, Bennion...)

For those who wondered where I went again, Blogger took another 5-day hiatus on me. Once again, no explanation and no response from any help groups, e-mails to support, etc. It seems to be up & running now (maybe it's because it's almost 2AM?), but I've officially lost faith in this previously reliable service.

My next tool of choice is WordPress, which I've heard good things about, and also comes with instructions on how to install on a Yahoo server. Step 1 is to create a MySQL database in Yahoo, which I (believe) I've successfully done. Step two is to login to that database. Right now, Yahoo is giving me a "server is not responding" message when I try to login. I called Yahoo tech support and got an actual human, who theorized the potential problem for me, reset the database and allowed me to try again. The problem persisted, but I haven't had time to call them back during normal (Pacific time) business hours. Still - that's more responsive than Blogger has been for me.

So here's my plan (I know - who asked me? Leave me alone - it's my blog & I've been silenced for 10 of the last 12 days. I can ramble if I want to...): I'm going to chase down the problem over at Yahoo. If I fix the problem there and Blogger starts working consistently again, I'm willing to retroactively forgive Blogger and declare the problem to be on the Yahoo side. One more Blogger outage without a Yahoo problem, though, and I'm done.

My educated guess tells me that this isn't Yahoo's problem, though, because Blogger is only trying to FTP to the site - it's not using any database functionality. And I'm able to FTP to the site using Yahoo's tools, as well as my local copy of Microsoft FrontPage. So the likely answer here is that I'm dealing with two problems, and only one of the companies is helping me solve one. Not quite a high bar for customer service, but beggars can't be choosers...

More to come (hopefully...)

OK, seriously? I saw a passing headline on the train this morning about Miley Cyrus posing nude in a magazine, and I couldn't believe it when I saw the actual photo. This is considered a nude photo? This is even considered risque? Or even remotely inappropriate? I realize different people fall at different places on the prude-o-meter, and I mean no disrespect, but seriously - don't we see more of Miley (and just about anyone else) when they're wearing a swimsuit? On a public beach?

What we have here is another manufactured story, churned out by the Gaffe Machine, so reporters can fill their column inches or air time with another celebrity "Gotcha!" Everyone wants Miley to do something scandalous, so they can news catalog her with Brittney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.

Don't believe me? Every news article I read about this so-called scandal contained at least one paragraph that mentioned Brittney and Lindsay. Let's think about this seriously for a minute, shall we? Between the two of them, Brittney and Lindsay have been drunk drivers, on drugs, married and divorced several times, in rehab, involved in legal and sometimes violent altercations with both family members and members of the press, and more. Miley Cyrus posed for a picture by a world-famous, well-respected photographer that exposed her bare back. On what planet is this considered even remotely similar?

The ultimate irony, though, was the quote from Disney Channel spokesperson, Patti McTeague:

Unfortunately, as the article suggests, a situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines

<smacks forehead> Wow. The Disney Channel is criticizing someone for exploiting Miley Cyrus in order to make money. Wow. Just....Wow.

Hat tip to Kushol Gupta for this link: President Bush conducting the U.S. Marine Band as they play Stars and Stripes Forever. Apologies for the outside link - CNN doesn't provide embedding technology (at least none that I could find).

Anyway, is it just me, or does Bush look more comfortable conducting (badly) than he ever has speaking?

As some of my loyal readers know, I'm about to move out of my house for 4-6 months to undergo a major home renovation. As exciting as it is, it means this weekend is dedicated almost entirely to packing up every single thing we own, so we can move it into a storage container on our driveway while the wrecking ball has it's way with our beloved home.

It's amazing the things you find when you have to physically handle every single one of your possessions. This one's for Jeff Porten:

(Click image to enlarge)

That, my friends, is the manual for the Fat Mac (now with 512K of memory; hard drive not yet invented). The actual machine itself is in the guest room closet, right next to the ImageWriter printer. That closet is on tomorrow's list - maybe I'll post some updated pics here when I get to it.

Oh, and just so everyone doesn't think I've gone over to the dark side, this was on the same shelf:

(Click image to enlarge)

Ah yes, Windows for Workgroups and MS-DOS 6.2. Man, those were the days... ;-)

If you've got kids, and they're anything like my kids, then Webkinz world is a familiar place. Both of my sons login regularly to feed and play with their virtual pet, and to complete the hourly, daily, and specially highlighted tasks that can earn them KinzCash, with which they can buy their pal anything from food to furniture to medical attention.

So imagine the disappointment when, suddenly and without warning, a visit to the Webkinz URL, http://www.webkinz.com/, started returning an HTML error and wouldn't let them on the page? I mean, it's like the kids' equivalent of Blogger doing down for twelve days!

Anyway, Webkinz technical support here with a solution. Use the following URL:

http://www.webkinz.com/us_en/

Voila! Problem solved.

For the geeky, tech folks out there, here's what's going on: the main URL, www.webkinz.com, is receiving a parameter that tells it what location you're in, for the purposes (I believe) of displaying the site in your native language. But the programming logic that interprets this parameter is not working, causing the "Error on Page" message. By deep linking directly to the United States/English page (www.webkinz.com/us_en/), you bypass this faulty logic and proceed directly to the site itself.

It's been about a week now, and no one at Webkinz seems to have noticed, even though the number of kids logging in has to have dropped dramatically (has everyone figured this out on their own?). As I said earlier, it's like someone decided that customer service and technical support were just going to shutdown around the world, and no one told me...

Anyway, enjoy your Webkinz. I'll accept my fee in KinzCash...

OK, so I've been away a while, and the list of things I've wanted to blog about has grown steadily. So away we go:

1) If you don't watch The Daily Show with John Stewart, you really should. It's funny every single night. But this past week or two, Stewart has been on fire! Here he is after Barack Obama was called an elitist:

The whole thing is funny, but the best part is around 7:25 or so. Here's the money quote:

Doesn't elite mean good? Is that not something we're looking for in a president anymore? You know what candidates, come with me (to a different camera:) I know elite is a bad word in politics; you want to go bowling and throw back a few beers, but the job you're applying for, if you get it and it goes well, they might carve your head into a mountain! If you don't actually think you're better than us, then what the &%*#&@ are you doing?

2) If someone from 1984, having just read Orwell's book, time travelled to 2008 and took a New York commuter train one morning, they'd see more than half of the people with their eyes closed, in various degrees of consciousness, wearing the same white ear phones in their ears, and probably assume we were all being fed the same government-issued doublespeak. What's funny is how wrong they'd be. Sitting on a train with 100 iPods, I wonder what the odds are that any two of them are playing the same song? I'm guessing it's close to zero.

3) A colleague of mine pointed out to me the other day that MIT disproved time travel in 2005 by holding a time traveller's convention, to which no one from the future showed up. Pretty convincing evidence on the face of it. If time travel is to ever be invented, you'd think someone would pop in to say hello, no? Famed scientist Tina Fey, formerly of Saturday Night Live had the perfect rebuttal:

A student at MIT is hosting a Time Traveler Party this week with the hope that people from the future will show up...too bad people from the future already know the party sucked!"

The only thing I know for sure after reading about this is that if anyone does invent time travel in my lifetime, something will almost instantly occur that will give me a killer headache.

4) SamuriFrog, the excellent blogger over at Electronic Cerebrectomy (WARNING: Link is typically not safe for work), recently posted two pictures that sum up the sad state of intelligence in our country today:

Man...there oughta be a test you need to pass before you can write protest signs...

5) Pope Benedict XVI's visit to New York City was capped off by a mass held at Yankee Stadium. First, a quick conversation between my wife and I:

My wife:	Wow, the stadium looks beautiful. I bet the Pope is impressed.
Me:	Honey, he practically lives in St. Peter's Basillica!
My wife:	Good point

Then, of course, there are the New York Post and the New York Daily News, who could not resist the ironic headline:

The Post:	"Communion Vendors Bring the Host to the Most."
Daily News:	"The Sermon on the Mound."

Gotta love New York...

6) And finally, Britain's Office of Government Commerce, or OGC, recently unveiled it's new logo:

Seems harmless enough, right? But then they started putting it on mousepads, pens, and the like, and people got a chance to see it rotated 90 degrees:

Wow...that's quite the, er...um...well...what's the word I'm looking for? Well, I guess you'd have to say it's quite a boner, now wouldn't you???

After another 5-day outage, Blogger appears to be back & publishing again. Forgive me for being cynical, but we'll see how long it lasts this time.

And for what it's worth, still no response to my Blogger support e-mail request, nor any mention of it on Blogger Buzz or any of the message boards I've been able to find.

Oh, and lest you think I'm only bashing Blogger here, I went to Yahoo's support page (my site is hosted at Yahoo), filled out the form, and got a Failure to Deliver e-mail back, telling me that the e-mail address the form used doesn't exist in the Yahoo domain.

What gives? Did the world agree to abandon all tech support while I was asleep one night?

(NOTE: Blogger went down again, right after I made my previous post. It's been down one two three four five more days at this point. The following post was written on 4/22)

I document this today, the day of the hard-fought Pennsylvania primary, because I know people have short memories, and once the media changes the national conversation, others will call me crazy for suggesting what is common knowledge right now. And that is this:

On April 22, 2008, Barack Obama has already been called unpatriotic, racist, unqualified, unprepared, inexperienced, beholden to lobbyists, elitist and Muslim. Hillary Clinton has been called a liar, a hypocrite, a war hawk, over-emotional, contrived, out of touch and willing to rig elections with changes to primary rules and reliance on super delegates. His healthcare plan has been criticized for leaving millions uninsured. Her position on NAFTA has been criticized as being inconsistent with her previous votes on the subject. He's been accused of a willingness to mollycoddle world leaders. She's been accused of fear mongering.

And all of it, every single bit of it, is coming from within the Democratic party. There's no conceivable way to blame any of this on John McCain, Karl Rove, or the RNC. They have wisely stayed on the sidelines and watched the Democrats feast on each other, well on their way to throwing away an easy victory in November for the third time in a row.

Come September/October, though, when the same questions are still being asked, many of the people who are responsible for the above will be in front of cameras, condemning the Republican Attack MachineTM for it's deplorable treatment of the Democratic candidate and it's willingness to distract Americans from the "real issues." And what's worse, those of us (and yes, regardless of who I vote for, I will be among them) who point out that the candidate did the very same thing to his/her opponent in the primaries will be accused of irrationally endorsing the failed policies of George W. Bush. No, I don't know why. But mark my words, it will happen.

For the record, I think Hillary has been more guilty of this than Obama. If you read the above lists carefully, you'll notice that his attacks on Hillary have been at least tangentially (and sometimes directly) tied to politics and policy, whereas her attacks on Obama seem to suggest that this man, who has a long history of public service, has secretly harbored racist, elitist, anti-American tendencies that are just now coming out as he's running for President against Hillary.

It was the most recent exchange, reserved for today, the day of the Pennsylvania primary, that made me finally blog about the topic (hat tip: Power Line). Here's the campaign ad currently running for Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania:



Note the imagery of FDR, JFK, the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl harbor, Soviet aggression, gas shortages, Osama bin Laden, Hurricane Katrina and home foreclosure. In 30 seconds. From a woman who has consistently accused the Bush administration of governing by fear.

Obama's response shows video of Bill Clinton speaking at a 2004 campaign rally:

Now, one of Clinton's Laws of Politics is this: If one candidate's trying to scare you and the other one's trying to get you to think, if one candidate's appealing to your fears and the other one's appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope.

Now tell me John McCain isn't on the sidelines taking notes...