I wasn’t going to post twice today, but then I ran across this on the Something Awful forums…
SA has a forum titled Laissez Fair, which is mostly about political satire and silly political debates. One of the discussions, Bruce Tinsley drunk Mallard Fillmore Megaguglugluglug, is about republican oriented political cartoons. A recently uploaded image is shown below.
This is a work by Steve Breen of the San Diego Union-Tribune. Simple cartoon, anti-gay marriage, yada yada yada…
Forum member TotalHell decided to take the math to its logical conclusion.
if (woman) + (man) = marriage
and (woman) + (woman) = marriage
then (woman) + (man) = (woman) + (woman)
and
(woman) = (man)
oh i see the repubs problem with this
I got a giggle out of it, so now I pass it on to you.
It was uttered by Rashid Khalidi, a professor Middle Eastern Studies at Columbia University, and the focus of another smear campaign by McCain and Palin.
When asked about his ties to the PLO (there are likely none) and Obama, he responded:
Khalidi said Wednesday, “I am not speaking to the media at this time, and certainly not until this idiot wind passes.”
Akin to the Ayers attack, McCain and Palin are trying their best, and failing, to bring Obama down based on past, often brief, associations he had in the past.
Khalidi is an outspoken critic of the preferential treatment the United States shows for Israel, and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. For some, including Palin, this is enough to label him an enemy. To quote Palin:
It seems that there is yet another radical professor from the neighborhood who spent a lot of time with Barack Obama going back several years … This is important because his associate, Rashid Khalidi … in addition to being a political ally of Barack Obama, he’s a former spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization
That’s pretty interesting, considering he wasn’t a spokesperson for the PLO. Khalidi worked for Wafa in the 80’s. Wafa is the news agency for the Palestinian National Authority. By no means does that make him a PLO spokesperson.
It strikes me, now, that the McCain campaign is grasping at any little straw, in the hopes of pulling something off at the last minute. One hopes that after the election, the idiot wind will, indeed, pass.
I’m just gonna be lazy here and quote the News-Miner.
Below are the charges. The verdict form is broken down by year and jurors did not have to indicate which gifts, if any, they believe Stevens concealed.
COUNT ONE: False Statements, Scheme
ACCUSATION: Stevens engaged in a scheme to conceal from his Senate financial disclosure documents home renovations and other gifts he received from Allen and VECO from 2000-2006. Stevens contends he never asked for any freebies and believed he paid for everything he received.
VERDICT: Guilty
COUNT TWO: False Statements
ACCUSATION: Stevens knowingly made false, fictitious or fraudulent statements on his 2001 Senate financial disclosure form regarding gifts from Allen and others. That year, VECO employees renovated Stevens’ mountain cabin, building a new first floor and installing a new electrical system. Allen also filled Stevens’ house with furniture, left a tool box in his garage and installed a grill on the porch. Stevens also received from another friend an expensive massage chair, which Stevens said was a loan, and a custom work of stained glass, which Stevens said his wife arranged and he knew nothing about.
VERDICT: Guilty
COUNT THREE: False Statements
ACCUSATION: Stevens knowingly made false, fictitious or fraudulent statements on his 2002 Senate financial disclosure form regarding gifts from Allen and others. That year, VECO employees installed a new roof, wraparound deck and rope lighting system on Stevens’ home. An expensive fish statue, donated to his foundation by an Alaska nonprofit group, was also charged as a gift because it ended up on Stevens’ front porch.
VERDICT: Guilty
COUNT FOUR: False Statements
ACCUSATION: Stevens knowingly made false, fictitious or fraudulent statements on his 2003 Senate financial disclosure form regarding gifts from Allen and others. That year, Stevens received an Alaskan sled dog puppy from a friend who paid $1,000 for it at a charity auction. Stevens reported the gift’s value as $250 and wrote that it was from a charity in honor of his public service.
VERDICT: Guilty
COUNT FIVE: False Statements
ACCUSATION: Stevens knowingly made false, fictitious or fraudulent statements on his 2004 Senate financial disclosure form regarding gifts from Allen and others. That year, VECO employees installed or repaired kitchen appliances and performed maintenance on a rooftop snow-melt system at Stevens’ house.
VERDICT: Guilty
COUNT SIX: False Statements
ACCUSATION: Stevens knowingly made false, fictitious or fraudulent statements on his 2005 Senate financial disclosure form regarding gifts from Allen and others. That year, VECO employees performed roof and gutter repairs and electrical wiring.
VERDICT: Guilty
COUNT SEVEN: False Statements
ACCUSATION: Stevens knowingly made false, fictitious or fraudulent statements on his 2006 Senate financial disclosure form regarding gifts from Allen and others. That year, a VECO employee and an outside contractor performed work on the boiler at Stevens’ house. VECO’s costs were never paid and Allen paid the outside contractor’s labor. Stevens says he asked to be billed and didn’t consider it a gift.
VERDICT: Guilty
No doubt he’s going to appeal the ruling, but hopefully this fully knocks his campaign off track. If Alaska reelects this now-convicted felon, then I will have lost all faith in the people of this state.
So, I bought a new car. And I did it almost a month ago. You’d think I’d have written about it by now. But, no, I figured I’d wait until I’d driven it for a bit first. With nearly 800 miles on it, I guess now is a good time.
My trusty Toyota Corolla had over 100,000 miles on it when it died. I suppose its death could have been more dramatic. I was passing an 18-wheeler just north of Nenana, probably doing about 65-70 mph, when the oil light came on. At nearly the same moment, it made a sound you never want to hear coming from your car, or anything else for that matter. Never made it passed the big rig. Slowly pull to the shoulder, oil pouring out of my car.
Car shopping should be fun. I knew I wanted something with 4-wheel or all-wheel drive. Narrowed my choices down to a Subaru Forester or the Honda Element. Test drove the Element and fell in love with it. I’d been looking at them for a while. After talking with a friend who owned one and hearing him talk of how much stuff he’d managed to cram into it, I decided I’d go that route.
Every car I’ve ever owned has been red. Red Corolla, Red Nissan, another Red Corolla. Time for a change. Enter the Silver Element.
I’m loving it so far. The two rear seats fold up and to the side, providing plenty of space for my camera gear from my camera bag, to my large format camera and tripod. Come the summer, I’ll be shoving camping gear in there. Gas mileage isn’t quite what it should be, but that’s probably my lead foot at work.
The all-wheel drive is on-demand, and you can feel it kick in when the tires slide. Something they seem to do often on our now ice covered roads. I’m thinking next season (or later this winter if it becomes annoying enough), I’ll invest in some good winter tires.
All good blog entries have Beastie Boys lyrics as titles…
See that spiffy set of graphs over there on the left? Those are today’s numbers from FiveThirtyEight.com. FiveThirtyEight is one of several poll aggregators out there. However, it seems to be one of the most open with their methodology.
I’ve been keeping a fairly close eye on the polls lately. FiveThirtyEight provides you with an in-depth list of statewide polls, who’s conducting them and their results, weighted by the accuracy of the poll in the past. It even gives you the poll’s sample size.
The numbers leave me optimistic, but who knows what’s going to happen in the final weeks of campaigning. If you go to the FiveThrityEight site, you’ll see that Obama’s numbers dipped this weekend. Not sure if that’s reflecting McCain’s new “Obama is a freakin’ socialist!” rhetoric or what, but let’s hope the numbers stay high.
Everyone is falling all over themselves, including the media. Below is the best “oops” I’ve seen in a while. A couple of MSNBC commentators not realizing their microphones are still on, while talking about the VP choice of Sarah Palin.
And giggle. Sit in front of your computer, eyes glued to your screen. Below is a list of web comics I read religiously. Consider this a blog “filler” post. And maybe you haven’t run across some of these, and you’ll get a chuckle out of them. The links don’t necessarily take you to the most recent comic, so explore!
The Perry Bible Fellowship: Not updated much anymore. A mix of simple and crazily detailed art and a cynical outlook on life. How can you go wrong?
Thorn: A comic from SA Forum member Naussica that follows the life of Rose, a little girl with dreams of world domination. The occasional tributes to Charles Schulz kick ass, and she draws facial expressions better than any other comic artist I’ve seen.
Basic Instructions: This comic breaks the rules and still manages to be funny. Walls of text, image reuse, square layout… who cares? The advice given in this comic is golden!
We The Robots: Simple art and funny story lines. The lives of robots were never more revealing.
Cyanide and Happiness: Another comic by an SA member - Explosm. Simple art. It’s hit or miss, in my opinion. When it’s good, it’s really really good. When it’s offensive, it’s really really offensive. But hey, I keep going back. What’s that say about me?
I do! About a month ago, I put together a large-format camera kit that I’d found on B&H Photo’s website. It’s the Bulldog 5×4 kit camera. It was a fun little kit to put together. All told, it only took a couple hours of work.
I’ve been having a lot of fun running around with it, taking pictures of whatever strikes my fancy. You get a lot of odd looks when you’re out with one of these cameras. With a dark cloth over your head, you look like something out of the 1800’s. On one of the forums I post to, someone told me I should be out shooting civil war reenactments. Sounds like fun!
See that spiffy set of graphs over there on the left? Those are today’s numbers from 
