Announcing My Newest Niece



Charlotte Amelia Christensen, born healthy and weiging in 6lbs 14oz, 19in. long. Mom and baby (and dad and big sister) are all doing well. I can't wait to meet her!

Ph3@r H!m

I said it when he took over, and I'll say it again - meet the most dangerous man in the world.

4 Years Too Late
If only he had this sort of fire in 2004 we might have been spared a lot of pain...Surprisingly impressive work, John.



Juicy quotes:

I have known and been friends with John McCain for almost 22 years. But every day now I learn something new about candidate McCain. To those who still believe in the myth of a maverick instead of the reality of a politician, I say, let’s compare Senator McCain to candidate McCain.

Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once denounced as immoral. Candidate McCain criticizes Senator McCain’s own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote. Are you kidding? Talk about being for it before you’re against it.

Let me tell you, before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself.

and

So who can we trust to keep America safe? The McCain-Bush Republicans have been wrong again and again and again. And they know they will lose on the issues. So, the candidate who once promised a “contest of ideas,” now has nothing left but personal attacks. How insulting to suggest that those who question the mission, question the troops. How pathetic to suggest that those who question a failed policy doubt America itself. How desperate to tell the son of a single mother who chose community service over money and privilege that he doesn’t put America first.

and especially

Years ago when we protested a war, people would weigh in against us saying, “My country right or wrong.” Our answer? Absolutely, my country right or wrong. When right, keep it right. When wrong, make it right. Sometimes loving your country demands you must tell the truth to power.

Who's Having the Unity Problem, Again?

Funny to watch the Republican "commentator" scramble at the DNC convention this week in Denver. The strategies of the home stretch are becoming clear: "Obama's not ready to lead - even his opponents for the big seat said so in political advantageous settings!" - but of course, it could be said that conservatives say very nice things about Obama, too.

McCain's campaign lacks a clear definition of why the party support their candidate, other than the fact he's on the ticket. As a friend of mine noted, 'being the angry candidate makes you the losing candidate.' So what has he got, other than disdain for the excitement Obama has generated with the people (and to a degree, for young voters in general)? Experience? You could argue what we're missing in this nation is not experience, but good judgement. After all, the longer Bush is in office, the worse his judgement seems to get...Discretion? Aside from gaffes about political geography (Russia is NOT the Soviet Union, Pakistan does NOT border Iraq, etc.), there's the whole Keating scandal that has not been addressed yet - and you KNOW that will come up if the GOP insists on bareknuckling everything. Obama's from Chicago politics, remember.

The desperation is palpable. McCain is desperately scrambling for the limelight up against Obama's rally with "an exciting new ad" and threats of an annoucnement of his VP candidate on Thursday against Obama's acceptance speech. Apparently, Karl Rove has called Lieberman to ask him to remove himself from a McCain ticket! And Romney, who clearly wants second chair, is out there getting more support than McCain is in Nevada. Going negative, making Obama the issue of the campaign, seems the only way to rally the troops - "Better me than him."

While the convention has had some issues, IMO - such a strong central message and the continual reluctance of the Clintons to relax their grip - it's working out. It'd be interesting to see Obama stage a counter rally against the RNC next week - my guess is the turnout would exceed that of the convention itself.

It Must Be Blogged

I work in a cube farm in the beigish hell of a college building; in such an environment, you get to know too much about your coworkers. I have one co-worker who is particularly emotive, to the point where I have scripted a daily audio log for him:

8:30 a.m.: Arrive at work
9-9:30 a.m.: Bitch about the registrar's office
10 a.m.: Coffee
11 a.m. - noon: Heavy sighing
Noon - 1 p.m.: Lunch!
1-1:15 p.m.: Uncomfortable and frustrated phone conversation with home
2-4 p.m.: Yawning every 2 minutes
4:15: Another awkward phone conversation with home
4:30: Go home

EVERY DAY. I'm not kidding.

So Ronery

Drawing my inner Kim Jong Il there for a second....it's been nearly 2 weeks since Beckers left for Omaha and it's starting to settle in a bit. While I don't feel that different, Evan says my mood is noticably different. It's amazing how easy it is to take for granted the presence of someone, even if you never were to see them. Nothing changes at the house now - I leave and everything stops. It's a weird thing to notice but it's funny how devoid of life a space feels when there's no bit of chaos to it.

Still, there's writing to be done, contracts to be drafted, jobs to be gotten, and lawns to be cut. No time for self-pity, just more work. Yay me.

Oh You've Got to Be Kidding Me

Apparently, I've never met a rich person in my life (please ignore general quality issues and focus on the point...):

McCain Hates Gamers

Sure, he hates the Vietnamese. He hates liberals. He hates the national media. But gamers? Surely not...until I read this. When confronted with a McCain P.O.W. story that sounds suspiciously like a story from The Gulag Archipelego (even though this is currently being debated) campaign aid Michael Goldfarb said

“It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others,” he wrote.

Apparently, those literate enough to read Solzhenitsin must also be thumb-sucking mamma's boys, whose use of their own judgement instead of the line of BS streaming from campaign HQ only proves they are pasty-faced, dice-rolling gamers who know nothing of real life lies, plagarism and misrepresentation.

I'm with the gamers on this one.

EDIT: Not surprisingly, RPG.net is 26 pages of pissed about this comment (big surprise there). The cupie doll for best response goes to Bahama'at:

My official response: Fuck you and fuck your chickenhawk war snuffporn ass. Your party morphed a war hero into Saddam fucking Hussein to win an election you shit-eating cretin. You mocked another veteran's service with fucking band-aids and lies!! You've denounced, denied, demonized and dismissed every man and woman currently wearing or who ever wore a uniform that dared point out to your brain-damaged soul that your magical fantasy land doesn't jive with reality. Now you have the fucking GALL to pull this "respect the vet" shit now?

D'oh!

Replace the phrase "Homer Simpson" with "Chuckles" and you have one great goddamn article.

Error: Computers(Programming) check - 4 Action Dice.

Oh, you KNOW someone's been caned for this.

It Gets No Better

Sequel to the Star Wars Nerds...

Swift Boat from Hell

Well, we have to hand it to McCain's campaign - they finally found their angle of underhanded attack on Obama combined with a way to scare evangelicals to voting for McCain. All it took was painting Obama as the Antichrist.

Watch then read on:



Read a good analysis at Time.com. The amazingly insidious power of this ad is both that it's tapping an established vein of evangelical Christian pop culture which most of us who would vote Democratic never even heard of. That way, we don't raise objection to the underpinnings of an attack dressed up as another goofy, out-of-step McCain campaign attack ad, and it subliminally connects with that evangelical base who is already nervous about Obama's liberalness, Muslim-ness, or whatever-ness that's being gratitiously sprayed all over the Interwebz.

I would call politics like this the lowest of blows - and serves to galvanize my opposition to the McCain candidacy whereas I was sort of neutral before. He's obviously inherited some of the best GOP handlers out there, and is being bent the same folks who bent Bush (though it took far less with W) to their will over the last 8 years. You want to talk about the Illuminati? Look to the neo-con block of our government. Look to the $25/barrel oil of 2000 vs $150/barrel oil of 2008 and look who owns the stock. Look at the opinions of consumers, squeezed by a rampantly corrupted lending structure and high energy prices, throw their support to a government that will prop up those same corrupt lenders and use their desperation to erode rather than preserve our planet as it teeters at the edge of possible climactic shift. There's are lots of them, they live among us, and they have a plan.

This is why fundamentalism - no matter the faith or cause or excuse - is always wrong.

ALWAYS.

Fill Your Tires

So I see McCain ragging on Obama for suggesting that inflating your tires increases gas mileage. Those of us who actually drive know inflating your tires works well. Now we can see who exactly has had their gas pumped and paid for them over the last few years. I'm not crazy about the Dems' sometimes vicious "out of touch" message they pounded McCain with, but this IMO is proof his campaign genuinely can't even check facts before trying to get everyone to point and laugh. Too bad the "maverick" has sold his soul to GOP and evangelical hardliners (which has largely been failing) in order to get votes instead of running a campaign honest to himself.