babbling blue

Basically, it seems that President Obama is kicking ass in the pirate department.

(click image for full size)

Ripped off from here, possibly ripped off from here before that.

Yarrr!

In part 2 of my 1461 part series, I will address… nothing. There isn’t really a series. That was a joke, carried over from yesterday.

Speaking of jokes, here is a set of fake patch notes for the US Democracy Server, a play on World of Warcraft patch notes. Being the WoW geek that I am, I found this rather amusing.

The whole thing is worth a read, but here are a couple favorites:

President

• Leadership: Will now scale properly to national crises. Intelligence was not being properly applied.
• A bug has been fixed that allowed the President to ignore the effects of debuffs applied by the Legislative classes.

Vice President

• The Vice President has been correctly reclassified as a pet.
• The Vice President will no longer aggro on friendly targets. This bug was identified with Ranged Attacks and the Head Shot ability.
• A rendering bug was affecting the Vice President’s visibility, making him virtually invisible to the rest of the server. This has been addressed.

Homeland Security

• Homeland Security Advisory System: We have identified a bug in this system that prevents the threat level from dropping below Elevated (Yellow). The code for Guarded (Blue) and Low (Green) has been commented out. We are testing the fix and hope to have it in by the next patch.
• Item: Large Bottle of Water is incorrectly generating threat with TSA Agents when held in inventory. We are looking into the issue.

Welcome to my part 1 in my 1461 part series* on Barack Obama’s first term!

Some would argue that yesterday was Day 1 of the Obama presidency. That position has some merit, but a) it was only a half day and b) it’s kind of like the first day of school. . . you don’t really do anything of substance. So I’m calling today Day 1.

Has he fixed everything yet? It couldn’t be that hard, right? Let’s check in…

• The Dow regained most of what it lost yesterday. Well, that wasn’t really his doing…
• Hillary Clinton got confirmed as SecState by a vote of 94-2 (the nays were cast by Jim DeMint, R-SC and David Vitter, R-LA).
• Obama ordered a pay freeze for his senior staff
• and tightened rules on lobbyists
• “establish[ed] what he said was a new standard of greater government openness”
• ordered a halt to pending war crimes trials at Gitmo while he reviews the handling of terror suspects (he actually did that last night. . . not bad!)

Sounds like a decent start, I guess. If “fixing our problems” (I’m going to be deliberately vague on this) is a cross-country drive, then President Obama is packing his bags. Hey, that’s important. You need clean clothes and toothpaste for a trip like that. It’s hard to respect a President with dirty, rumpled clothes and bad breath and spinach in his teeth. Tomorrow he’ll probably check the tire pressure and the anti-freeze and blinker fluid. It’ll take awhile before he can actually get on the road, and who knows how bad traffic is going to be? He might even get lost, or go antiquing, or spend too much time at a Waffle House or. . . oh I’m on a tangent.

I like to think that I’m a realistic optimist, or an optimistic realist. My brain is not firing on all cylinders right now (bonus points to me for continuing the automotive metaphor!) for some reason, so I can’t think what the difference might be. But anyway, I have Hope that things are going to Change. I think they will, but it’s going to be a long, slow process (he doesn’t drive a very fast car) and there are going to be problems (it’s not that reliable either). I know that Obama is only human, and there are limits to what he can do. He’s not perfect; he’s going to do some things I disagree with. However, I feel things are going to get better. Really…how can they not?

*Just kidding.

To quote a bumper sticker I’ve seen a few times:

1/20/2009: The end of an error

Obama’s swearing in begins at 11:30am Eastern. It’s about time!

What the hell does “Auld Lang Syne” mean anyway? Apparently it’s Scottish, translating literally to “old long since”, or less literally “long long ago”. It’s from some poem written long, long ago, in 1788. If you want to more, check out the Wikipedia entry on it, cause I’m bored with this topic.

Anyway, Happy New Year to all. Let’s hope it’s better than 2008. While I can’t say that last year was terrible for me personally, I can’t say it was all that great either. And it was certainly a very eye-opening year for most of the world. I haven’t been able to bring myself to look at my 401k in months. I think it would be far too depressing.

So now New Years is done, and we enter the long, barren stretch between New Years and Memorial Day. Unless you’re one of the lucky few to get President’s Day or King Day off (I am not) you have a lot of 5-day weeks to look forward to before you get a break. *sigh* I wish someone had had the foresight to distribute holidays a little more equally about the calendar.

Mini-update on my holidays: Christmas was OK. Lots of driving and stuff. Got to see most of my family, which was nice. Nearly everything I got was in some way related to eating or drinking. Hmm… New Years was fun. Enjoyed the party a lot (thanks Jeff and Gregg) and wasn’t too hung over the next day. Saw “Doubt” on New Years Day. It was pretty good. Meryl Streep is an amazing actress. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Fifteen more days to Obama’s inauguration. Fifteen more days of Bush in the White House. The nightmare is almost over!

That’s all for now. I’ll try to post more often in the future.

The Top 5 Reasons To Vote In Illinois*
Or: Why It Still Means A Thing Even If It Ain’t Got That Swing
*Or any non swing-state

1. Big margin = big mandate. The popular vote doesn’t put anyone in the White House, but it effects what presidents can do when they get there. Want Obama to be able to actually do the stuff he’s been talking about? Pass universal health care? End the war? Then we need a landslide.
2. The other things on the ballot matter! For example: Congress. Without more support in the House and Senate, Obama will have a hard time getting progressive laws passed. Plus, there are other important local races and ballot questions in some places.
3. If you don’t vote, everyone can find out. Voting records are public. (Not who you voted for, just whether you voted.) Pretty soon, finding out whether you voted could be as easy as Googling you.
4. Help make history. You could cast one of the votes that elect the first African-American president. If we win, we’ll tell our grandchildren about this election, and they’ll tell their grandchildren. Do you really want to have to explain to your great-great-grandchildren that you were just too busy to vote in the most important election in your lifetime?
5. People died so you’d have the right to vote. Self-government—voting to choose our own leaders—is the original American dream. We are heir to a centuries-long struggle for freedom: the American revolution, and the battles to extend the franchise to those without property, to women, to people of color, and to young people. This year, many will still be denied their right to vote. For those of us who have that right, it’s precious. If we waste it, we dishonor those who fought for it and those who fight still.

For information on how, where and when to vote: www.voteforchange.com

(Blatantly ripped off from MoveOn.org.)

If you didn’t vote early (and I did not), get your butt out there tomorrow and cast your ballot! Or else I’ll kick it.

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.

This just in. . . a leaked copy of Barack Obama’s V.P. short list, scooped by blogger Lee Camp.

Check it out

Somebody’s asleep on the job…

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.)

Barack Obama: 75 votes “missed” = 55.6%
Hillary Clinton: 80 votes “missed” = 59.3%
John McCain: 99 votes “missed” = 73.3%

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:

Arlen Specter (R-PA): 2 votes “missed” = 1.5%
Ben Nelson (D-NE): 4 votes “missed” = 3%
Russ Feingold (D-WI): 0 votes “missed” = 0%

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.

If you are in Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa (they can vote?), Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee or Utah then tomorrow is Primary (or caucus) day for you. Please be sure to vote. This is one of the most important (and, in my humble opinion, interesting) elections of our time.

I’d prefer if you voted for Obama, but even if you vote for someone else the important thing is voting. I think it’s a responsibility as well as a right.