For those who don’t know, there is a proposition on the ballot in California that seeks to amend the state constitution to make gay marriage illegal. I don’t even want to get into this right now because I get too worked up. The proponents of Prop 8 are spinning it as being about education, and trying to convince people this is the only way to keep their kids from being brainwashed in school that it’s good to be gay. They are dumping millions of dollars into airing their misleading ads, and Prop 8 is in danger of passing. I’ve donated to the No On Prop 8 campaign. They still need money, so please give them some ASAP. Even a small amount can help.
A conservative Chicago Tribune columnist wrote that she believed Sarah Palin was unqualified, and should step down. The result was an inbox full of hate mail, and even threats. Sad, very sad.
Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a Dumpster, but since she didn’t, I should “off” myself. Those are just a few nuggets randomly selected from thousands of e-mails written in response to my column suggesting that Sarah Palin is out of her league and should step down.
Have no fear, John McCain is going to fix the economy, everyone! We are in good hands.
John McCain is going to put aside his campaign (and he wants to postpone tomorrow’s debate) to roll up his sleeves and work on the economy. John McCain who:
Said “The issue of economics is something that I’ve really never understood as well as I should.” (Boston Globe, 12/18/07)
Had as his chief economic guru Phil Gramm, who played a crucial role in causing the current mortgage crisis.
John McCain wants to put aside politics and get back to work.
Back to work is right. McCain hasn’t voted* in Congress since April 8th, 2008. As of May 12th he had already missed 99 votes this year. I’m too lazy to count how many since, but the total should be in the neighborhood of 180. McCain hasn’t sponsored a bill since April 17th, 2008. He has co-sponsored a number of them, but didn’t show up to vote for them! So that’s what Sarah Palin meant when she said our “Do-Nothing Senate“!
I’m sure the American people will sleep better at night knowing that you’re on the case, Johnny boy!
I haven’t been blogging much about politics, or at all really. I have just really lost all my enthusiasm for this election. I was a firm Obama supporter, but I am not any more. I will most likely vote for him in November, but being in Illinois it doesn’t really matter. I still think he’s better than McCain, but . . . well, I was really hoping to not have to choose the candidate that I thought was less bad for the first time since I started voting. Now, that’s how I’m feeling again. Obama has demonstrated himself to be a standard politician in reformer’s clothing, and not even a particularly shrewd one.
At some point Obama started drifting (or some say veering) to the right. That made me nervous. Then he did something that really turned me off. After saying he would vote against it, he turned around and voted for the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. I don’t want to go off on a tangent on FISA 2008, but suffice it to say there were a number of bad things in there, not just retro-active telecom immunity. That’s for another post.
Anyway, Obama has been called pragmatic (most recently by Joe Biden, I believe), and some would argue that his vote was politically necessary. I argue that as Americans, our civil liberties are not pawns to be sacrificed on the political chess board. They are the foundation of this country. Voting for the amendments upset a lot of people. There is a group on my.barackobama.com with more than 23,000 voters, created to urge Senator Obama to vote against telecom immunity in FISA.
And now we know his Veep candidate. Joe Biden. Biden has been called a blowhard, a wind bag and a number of other things. While he’s probably not a bad guy, he his enamored with the sound of his own voice and is–as such people often are–inclined to say some pretty stupid things, and get recorded doing it. Biden is known as Credit Card Joe and Senator MBNA because of his support for that wretched bankruptcy law written by the credit card industry, and more. And last but not least, he’s been in the Senate for 35 years. Hardly the symbol of CHANGE that Obama is trying to promote. In many ways, Joe Biden epitomizes the D.C. establishment that so many of us believe is FAILING this country so miserably.
After all that build up, the Biden announcement was a total disappointment. When the press leaked it late Friday, I hoped beyond hope that it was a fake out, and someone better would be announced soon. But I woke up Saturday morning and saw a text message from the Obama campaign that Biden was indeed his running mate. Blah.
So you see, I’m just finding it hard to care. I don’t want to just write bitchy blog posts, but I’m hard pressed for any other material.
John McCain’s last Senate vote: April 8, 2008
Before that: March 13, 2008
Missed votes since April 8: 42
Barack Obama’s last Senate vote: May 13, 2008
Before that: April 23, 2008
Missed votes since May 13: 9
Hillary Clinton’s last Senate vote: May 13, 2008
Before that: April 24, 2008
Missed votes since May 13: 9
Interesting numbers, but they only start to tell the story.
Since the January 3rd Iowa caucus, there have been 135 recorded Senate votes (excludes possible “voice votes”) as of May 15th*. Of those 135, this is the number of “Abstains” from each candidate. (If there is a record of whether or not the Senator was present and Abstained or just didn’t bother to show up, I haven’t seen it.)
I wonder if these Senators, particularly Mr. McCain, realize they are still getting paid to be Senators and serve the constituents that got them where they are today.
To put this into perspective, here are a few Senators that weren’t campaigning for something:
Whenever someone brings this stuff up (I’m by no means the first), their spokemonkeys will usually give the canned response that being a Senator is more than just voting. While that’s true, voting and being a legislator in general is very big part of it. Sure they have their staff keeping up with the other duties generally performed by the office of the Senator. But where is their leader? Where is the champion that the people of New York, Illinois and especially Arizona elected to represent their interests in Congress?
*According to Obama’s Senate website, he voted on 5/22. This information was not available at my primary source yet. I did not check the other candidates’ sites.
This poor person ended up paying $106 for three $13 tickets to Three Doors Down.
The charges aren’t all from Ticketmaster though. The “facility charge” is apparently levied by the concert organizers to recoup their cost of using the venue. That sure sounds like it should be something that is included in the face value of the ticket price. All of these fees are tacked on afterward to make the tickets sound cheap until you’re ready to check out. Bait & switch? It’s borderline fraud and Ticketmaster is the worst offender, though they’re hardly the only one. The whole live performance (concerts, theater, sports) ticketing is a real racket. Everyone has their hands in the pot and in the end the consumer gets screwed over every which way you can imagine.
First there’s the weather. Winter is still trying to hang on and Spring is trying to take over, resulting in alternating warm and cold weather and lots of dampness. It fucks with your mind (and sinuses). Just get on with the full-blown Spring weather already (which is not really very desirable either, but it’s better than Winter).
Then there’s fucking March Madness. It’s well named, because it’s insane. Suddenly everyone gives a shit about all these college basketball teams and everyone is filling out their fucking brackets and bragging about being in the lead or correctly predicting some upset. Who the fuck cares? It’s basketball, one of the most boring sports to watch on God’s green earth. Dribble dribble pass dribble dribble shoot miss rebound pass shoot SCORE rebound dribble dribble pass dribble dribble dribble oops foul! free throw SCORE rebound dribble dribble. . . .at this point saliva is dribbling down my chin, since I’m comatose with boredom.
At least it’s almost over. But unfortunately something even worse is taking its place. Today is the Cubs home opener (assuming it’s not rained out). Fuck the Cubs! I used to live a couple blocks from Wrigley, and I learned my lesson. I will not do that again. But even now, though I live more than 2 miles away, the Cubs negatively impact my quality of life. For one thing, whenever there’s a home game it affects traffic on most of the north side. Backups occur on city streets miles from the ballpark. This means it inevitably takes me longer to get where I want to go (often just home from work). Not only that, but I have to deal with the idiots going to night games on the train when I’m trying to get home from work. They’re loud, they travel in large packs and they’re not versed in train etiquette. And don’t even get me started on Cubs/White Sox games.
This took me several minutes to figure out this morning, and it was frustrating me to no end. I figure as a technology person, this should have been easy, but it was not.
So you want to send an SMS text to a recipient not in your address book on your Blackberry Pearl 8100. Maybe you’re texting in a vote for some reality show or you see some SMS number on a billboard or whatever. What do you do? Here it is! (Note BB Pearl software versions may vary. This works for me today on my T-Mobile 8100.)
From Messages, click the Blackberry softkey and select Compose SMS Text.
You will be taken to an instance of your Address Book. (Depending on what is in focus in your Address Book, this step may or may not seem obvious.) Scroll all the way to the top, and select the “[Use Once]” entry.
Type in a phone number on the One Time SMS Text screen.
Click the trackball.
Enter your text message and send as usual.
The problem is in step 2, it’s not obvious what to do. I had some entry halfway down the Address Book in focus at the time. Trying to type in a number results in doing an Address Book search. Only if you’re already at the top of the A.B. does the “[Use Once]” jump out at you. I did a google search on this and didn’t come up with any clear instructions, though a couple people asked the question. So I’m providing this in hopes that it helps someone else figure this out. I wish Blackberry would have made this a bit more intuitive.
What the fuck is with this winter? I am cannot remember one that has been more miserable. It seems like we’ve had more snow, more rain and more bitterly cold days than any winter in a long time. I wouldn’t expect to get all three of those in the same winter, but somehow we have. It was 5 degrees during my commute home last night, and about 3 on my way to work this morning. I recall one day last week when I went to lunch and thought “Wow, it got warm!” When I got back to my desk I checked the temperature. It was 17. How fucking sad is that? It had been so damn cold that 17 felt warm to me.
So just go the fuck away already, winter. I’m so over you. I can’t wait to move on to spring.
P.S. Fuck you, CTA, for your delayed train this morning and your over-crowded, piece of shit* buses every damn day.
*I was on a relatively new bus yesterday, and the driver had to get off the bus several times to go push the back doors closed. This is only one example of many.
Back to work is right. McCain 
First there’s the weather. Winter is still trying to hang on and Spring is trying to take over, resulting in alternating warm and cold weather and lots of dampness. It fucks with your mind (and sinuses). Just get on with the full-blown Spring weather already (which is not really very desirable either, but it’s better than Winter).