This one is like clockwork.  It’s the oldest trick in the book, and it comes out every election cycle.  From a phony flyer in Virginia:

Due to the larger than expected voter turnout in this years [sic] electoral process, An [sic] emergency session of the General Assembly has adopted the following emergency regulations to ease the load on local electorial [sic] precincts and ensure a fair electorial [sic] process.

All Democratic party supporters and independent voters supporting Democratic candidates shall vote on November 5th as adopted by emergency regulation of the Virginia General Assembly.

All Republican party supporters and independent voters supporting Republican candidates shall vote on November 4th as precribed [sic] by law.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause but felt this was the only way to ensure fairness to the complete electorial [sic] process.

These kind of tactics are exactly the reason candidates started listing the election date in their ads (in fact, if I remember right, Obama was somewhat of a pioneer in this regard).

The zen-like calm…

He could have done a little better defending the actual “issue,” but still a very good performance.

He is a closet-socialist.  He said redistribution of wealth, right here!

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy and the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples…but the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, as least as it’s been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted and I think one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was that the civil rights movement became so court focused. I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and organizing activities on the ground that are able to bring about the coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change and in some ways we still suffer from that. [...]

You know, maybe i am showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor, but you know I am not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn’t structured that way. Just look at the very rare examples where during the desegregation era, the court was willing to, for example, order changes that cost money to a local school district and the court was very uncomfortable with it. It was hard to manage. It was hard to figure out. You start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues, you know, in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that is essentially administrative and take a lot of time. The court is not very good at it and politically it is hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard. So I think that although you can craft theoretical justifications for it legally, you know, I think any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts. I think that as a practical matter, our institutions are just poorly equipped to do it.

See!  He’s a socialist!  He said redistribution like 5 times!  And he was talking about crazy redistributive things like funding schools in poor districts with some of other people’s money!  Let those poor folks pay for their own schools, dammit!  I want my school in my rich neighborhood to have a turf football field and chandeliers, while those lazy poor kids learn math without math books!  But worst of all, he’s arguing…against(?)…judicial activism.  And he wants us to enact these socialist policies through…um…democratic institutions…like the legislature…which we kind of already did…a little…whatever.  He’s still a socialist!

Btw, on a more serious note, this interview displays the more serious side of Obama-as-constitutional-law-scholar, which is a whole side of him that you rarely see on the campaign trail (it’s elitist to know a lot about constitutional law).  As a law junkie, I love it.  I mean, can you imagine Bush or McCain speaking substantively about the role of the Warren Court in the segregation era?  Yeah.  Thought so.

Let’s get to work.

Ridiculous.

ACORN? Check. “Spread the wealth around”? Check. Marxist? Check. Socialist? Check.

Sign her up.

I was at a bakery today doing some cake testing for my wedding, and they had these cookies with Obama / McCain on them. The baker went on to tell me that they are participating in an unscientific poll for the 2008 presidential election by selling cookies with the candidates on them. For every cookie purchased, they are counting that as 1 vote for that candidate.

While we were in there some lady walked in and purchased 4 McCain cookies. It was officially on at that point.

I’ll try and post the final results in the next couple of weeks.

So when I first heard Scott McClellan had endorsed Barack Obama, my first reaction was “figures.” I zipped right by it and didn’t think about it again all day. And then I came home, turned on CNN, and watched a few minutes (that’s all I could stand) of Larry King. McClellan was on as an Obama “supporter,” and I was fairly impressed. So then I began to rethink this endorsement a little.

Scott McClellan is, being a former Bush Press Secretary, the kind of guy who knows how to handle the media. He knows how to frame. He knows how to duck and pivot. But most of all, he knows how conservatives think and how they attack. This is a guy who could potentially become a very effective talking-head for Obama. I mean, he was cutting the shit right out of everything that was thrown at him. So this could actually end up being something of real value to Obama.

This is a really awesome Why? song about dying. It’s called Light Leaves. Sorry I couldn’t find a better version.

Read along with the lyrics, if you will:

WOOOO! (not actually part of song)
Each of these old light leaves is dirt
Barely held together by tiny bone hands that used to be alive,
Holding hands, loose gripped
at the deja vu dream scene end
of a lifelong relationship.
These light leaves is my hair on the bathroom floor.
My smaller selves down the sewer somewhere
under Berkeley, Cincinnati, or on tour
(Airplane rear and hotel lobby ladies’ rooms beware)
Is these leave leaves bagged up in plastic,
never to decompose or fertilize.
When my balls are finally big enough to do it
I don’t want no casket
no saddle
no see-through plastic mask.
And when I finally do it,
I want to do the dirt like the dead leaves do.
And if you do leave the Earth
when the Earth leaves you
cold and hard as a marble table top
with nothing on top
there’s no hip hip hop hurray
heaping heaven golden bone gateway,
no bright confetti high-step march tickertape parade.
There’s no mound of clouds to lounge on.

Hey guys,

I completed my first big assignment at SCAD this week, thought I would share the results with you all.  I modeled and textured a Spitfire Mark II B, a british war plane from WWII.  Hope you like it, I busted my ass on this one.

-Kyle

In addition to hosting a kick-ass service, Mint.com also has a really well maintained blog with very interesting/informational blog posts.

This is a post made today that visualizes the debt the US has to some countries through the usage of some funny nationalized credit cards.

http://blog.mint.com/blog/finance-core/visualizing-uncle-sams-debt/#more-549

Nice production value here.