DIGG IT!

I should preface this by saying that I do respect McCain's military service and his being held as a POW. Too bad he doesn't appear to respect it anymore.

So, first we discover that being held as a Prisoner of War automatically qualifies you to be President of the United States.

Then, we're told that being held as a Prisoner of War makes  you incapable of cheating on your wife.

Now, we discover that being held as a Prisoner of War makes you incapable of lying or cheating in ANY way, shape or form about ANYTHING:

Unfortunately, I was unable to catch the faith forum this evening. However, thanks to the wonder that is YouTube, there are already some key clips available.

Here's a good place to start:

http://www.youtube.com/...

(below the fold, I've embedded several of the clips uploaded so far)

She's Back! Rosemary Watson, the dead-on Hillary Clinton impersonator was kicking ass during the primaries:

OK, I don't have any evidence that John Mayer is, in fact, John McCain's secret love child. I also don't have any evidence that McCain is the voice on the other end of the phone conversation taped below.

Then again, in true Fox News fashion, I don't have any evidence that he isn't, either.

Below the fold, I present what may very well be John McCain's very first computer tech support phone conversation with his secret love child, guitarist John Mayer:

Fortunately, this doesn't include DailyKos (which does use SiteMeter, but which, fortunately, appears to be on one of the servers that isn't down), but literally thousands of websites have been failing to load using Internet Explorer for the past day and a half!

As a Mac user (Safari/Camino), I was tipped off about this by Crooks & Liars and Atrios. I quickly checked my own SiteMeter-enabled websites using IE on Windows and sure enough, 6 out of 7 of them crapped out--they either don't load at all or only load the header banner, etc. Either way, an "Internet Explorer cannot load this website" error message pops up, leading to a "page cannot be displayed" error.

I realize this may be violating the "diary vs. comment" rule, but it seemed to be a special case. I'll beef the diary up with my own initial thoughts a little later (I have something to take care of for an hour or so), but wanted to at least get this out there.

I can't decide whether to be completely geeked, utterly mortified, or both yet.

Video below the fold.

At $4+ a gallon, and with advances in technology, electric cars are finally about to hit the mainstream in the U.S. Just about all of the articles I've read about them so far have focused on the big issues with the cars themselves--how far they can go on a single charge, how much they'll cost, what sort of performance they'll have, etc. Today's Chicago Tribune has an interesting story which goes into the other questions as well, primarily the infrastructure necessary to support electric cars on a wide scale:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/...

OK, I couldn't make it to NN this year, and wanted to cheer myself up, so I dug up an old email that I sent out to family & friends several years ago, consisting of a collection of review snippets for the horrible remake of "Rollerball" made in 2002.

Below the fold is the list of quotes, courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes.

Suffice it to say that it was, by most accounts, a pretty bad movie.

In the comments, feel free to post your own stories about the Worst Movie you've ever seen. The rules: First, no outright porn. Second, since there are so many utter-crap straight-to-video "sequels", it has to have had at least a brief theatrical run before going to video.

Before I start: Anyone who questions my progressive/Democratic credentials, feel free to check out my history here at dKos.

No, I don't plan on supporting him in the general election, and no, I'm not trying to "game the system" by propping up the "weaker" GOP candidate, etc. So why did I just donate $25 to a self-declared conservative Republican running against an incumbent Democratic county commissioner?

Well, first of all, because he's my cousin (and a generally nice guy on non-political issues) and I've been feeling extremely guilty about the situation. For $25, I've essentially bought myself freedom from awkward family conversations through the election.

(This is actually a repost from some months ago, but I put so much time into hunting down the appropriate photos, I decided to repost it; besides, I'm depressed about not being able to make it to NN this year, so I wanted to post something light to cheer myself--and perhaps others--up a bit)

Several months back, Canadian Noise posted an Oscar-themed diary which speculated on the casting for a filmed version of the 2008 Presidential race.

Unfortunately, the diary didn’t get much notice, but I thought it was such a fun idea that I ran with it, and came up with the following. The only rule I made for myself is to take it seriously—no cartoon characters, no dead actors; all of the choices have to be current, professional film or TV actors. Feel free to toss your own ideas into the ring; I know that I’m way off on at least some of my choices, but what the hell...

UPDATE: I see that Geekesque has already diaried on this, so I'm changing the topic of this diary to a simple question on the subject: Where, exactly, is the "joke" part?

So lessee...John McCain:

...has repeatedly voting against women having control over their own bodies;

...has voted against insurance companies covering birth control but for Viagra;

..has held a fundraiser at the home of Clayton "If rape is inevitable, women should just lie back and enjoy it" Williams (h/t to AggieDemocrat in the comments);

..made a tasteless joke about Chelsea Clinton being ugly (while she was a teenage girl) and Jane Reno being a guy, in public;

...has also, according to various sources...

...called his wife a c*nt, to her face, in front of reporters.

OK, I'm actually including about 2 weeks' worth of events, but my point here is to give my personal take on the various post-Unity incidents that have left Obama's campaign in a bit of a funk compared to the heady "long primary" days.

I'm sure there were other events that I've forgotten; feel free to remind me in the comments (I'm basically looking at how he's handled various "he's moving to the middle!"-inducing incidents in the past few weeks).

So, according to the official House and Senate websites, here's how the final FISA votes turned out:

House: 128 Dems voted against it + 3 didn't vote at all (I'm giving the 3 non-voting members the benefit of the doubt, assuming they were sick, attending a funeral, whatever) = 131 (plus a single Republican, a Timothy Johnson of Illinois, bravo for him)

Senate: 41 Dems voted for the Bingaman Amendment + Ted Kennedy couldn't make the vote for obvious reasons = 42 (plus Arlen Specter, of course)

(Reposted in the hopes of more response; I originally posted this on the 4th of July, which, in retrospect, was probably a terrible time to post a diary without massive general appeal)

Full Disclosure: I was paid to develop Mark Richardson’s campaign website. However, I’m also a volunteer for his campaign; I’m not being paid for any campaign work/promotion not directly related to developing or updating his website.

Michigan’s primary (the real one which determines our Local, State and U.S. Congressional candidates, not the absurd Presidential “primary” that caused so much of a mess back in January) is coming up in a month, on August 5th.

As a long-time and active member of the dKos community (UID: 3620, for whatever that's worth), I’ve cheered on and donated money to many candidates that others have pushed for at every level. However, I’ve only led the way (in the blogosphere) one time for a particular political cause—the Berkley Nativity Brouhaha last fall.

I'm a regular follower of Electoral-Vote.com. While their actual polling analysis methodology isn't as good as FiveThirtyEight's, I rather enjoy the accompanying semi-off-topic analysis. One in particular is worth checking out in full:

http://www.electoral-vote.com/...

Suppose you had to choose between two Presidential candidates, one of whom had spent 20 years in Congress plus had considerable other relevant experience and the other of whom had about half a dozen years in the Illinois state legislature and 2 years in Congress. Which one do you think would make a better President? If you chose #1, congratulations, you picked James Buchanan over Abraham Lincoln. Your pick disagrees with that of most historians, who see Lincoln as the greatest President ever and Buchanan as the second worst ever, better only than Warren "Teapot Dome" Harding. Both served in what was probably the most difficult period in American history, where slavery and secession tore the nation asunder.

(Cross-posted at Michigan Liberal and Blogging for Michigan)

Full Disclosure: I was paid to develop Mark Richardson’s campaign website. However, I’m also a volunteer for his campaign; I’m not being paid for any campaign work/promotion not directly related to developing or updating his website.

Happy Independence Day, everyone!

Michigan’s primary (the real one which determines our Local, State and U.S. Congressional candidates, not the absurd Presidential “primary” that caused so much of a mess back in January) is coming up in a month, on August 5th.

As a long-time and active member of the dKos community (UID: 3620, for whatever that's worth), I’ve cheered on and donated money to many candidates that others have pushed for at every level. However, I’ve only led the way (in the blogosphere) one time for a particular political cause—the Berkley Nativity Brouhaha last fall.

Yesterday, wiscmass posted an excellent tutorial on how to read polls and the true meaning of Margins of Error.

I'm no polling expert, but I read the diary with great interest, and then out of curiosity decided to check out just how they figure out what the Margin of Error figure actually is. Some people commented that you just need to increase the sample size in order to reduce the MoE, which is true, but it's NOT a simple matter of "double the sample = half the MoE" by any means.

It turns out to be a more complex formula than that. Here's Wikipedia's entry on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/...

...and you're a stupid person for asking it."

Every once in awhile, I have a dream. A wonderful, joyous dream in which a major political candidate--one running for, say, President of the United States, for instance--is asked an unbelievably stupid question by either a reporter, a talk show host, or even just one of us "jes' folks", and gives this response.