skippymaru

At the risk of sounding a bit un-politically correct, can anyone tell me why we, as a nation, should ever consider supporting a candidate so overwhelmingly backed by the ignorant, under-educated and misinformed voters of this country? Excuse me, but isn't there a lesson we all should have learned after living through the last 7 years? It's amusing (and a bit disturbing) that the press is all giddy about the fact that Obama, no matter how hard he tried, just could not get the racist vote in West Virginia. Thanks, Jon Stewart, for the wrap up. As Gomer Pyle would have said, "Surprise, surprise."

It seems two of Clinton's strongest base of supporters these days are the rednecks and neo-cons, who of course have a well-known symbiotic relationship which involves the neo-cons duping the rednecks into giving them more power in exchange for lip service and false promises. But let's face it, these two groups of people have been instrumental in steering our country into the messy hell-hole it's in now by belligerently imposing their unrealistic fantasies on the country without thinking too hard, which brings us back to the WV primaries. These constituents have been hoot'n and holler'n for over 20 years about BS issues like promiscuous interns, or fear of the nationality of under-paid gardeners and corporate servants of wealthy executives, or even their vacuous ideals of "family values" (which I think has something to do with meth-addled, closeted religious men in airport bathroom stalls, or something like that). And let's not forget the delusions of empire building and promises of cheap oil to feed your monster trucks. At this point in our history, all I can say is how can anyone, ANYONE, take these people seriously anymore.

It may be true that Clinton dominated in the West Virginia primary, but that's just an obvious signal to the rest of the country that electing Obama is the right thing to do.

Note: I don't intend to pick on West Virginians, for ignorant and mis-informed voters exist in all states.

NPR's Fresh Air had a good explanation of the fiasco that's raging through the financial sector right now.

My friends all call it "the pirate shop". It doesn't seem to have a real name, but it's a cool place to browse for weird stuff. To me it was just another great oddity shop in the mission and because it's right next door to one of my other favorite oddity shops, Paxton's Gate, I'll check out both when I'm in the area. I never asked any of the employees about the place because, well, there's all sorts of odd places in the mission, and I sort of appreciate the mystery anyway. Sometimes, I'll just pop in to watch the fish tank theater for a minute (I like fish), think "WTF", and head off to my next destination. I knew they offered writing classes in addition to selling essential pirate gear, but how they made money? Who knew.

Anyway, I have to say, I was pretty surprised to find the proprietor of "the pirate shop" giving a TED talk on one of their recent podcasts. When I saw this, I just thought "WTF". It turns out there is, of course, more to this place than meets the eye.

There was a big fire out in The Mission today that I captured on video on my way home from work. Sorry for the shaky, poor quality. It was really windy at the time.

Update: Except for a few pets, no one was hurt from this fire.

The official news can be found here.

So, the Berkeley City Council has done some silly things before and will likely continue to do silly things for the foreseeable future, the latest of which was to oppose the establishment of a Marine recruitment center within their jurisdiction. If you know anything about Berkeley, this would be no surprise to you whatsoever, and in fact, so obvious is this fact that one could suggest that perhaps the Marines were intentionally trying to provoke a reaction, and it would not be outside the realm of ostensibility. Regardless, not to be out done by the stupidity of the whole situation surrounding this silliness, even after rescinding their decision, some dork Senator from South Carolina named Jim DeMint felt the need to pick up the turd and anoint himself with it.

"This particular case became the business of the American people when the city of Berkeley insulted our troops and their constitutional mission to defend our country, while still coming to the federal government asking for special taxpayer-funded handouts," DeMint said.

Let's think about this for a bit. The first part of his statement is the kind of asinine, knee-jerk statement any impulsive ideologue might make..., you know, like the Berkeley City Council except from a jingoist POV. The second part is the meaty bit: "asking for special taxpayer-funded handouts." Now, it's true that all communities need to "ask" DC for money to fund local projects, but that's only because we have to send them the money in the first place. If Mr. DeMint doesn't like giving Berkeley their own money to fund projects, then perhaps Berkeley shouldn't be sending money to DC. The only reason any of us have to do this is so Senators like DeMint can siphon a bit of our money to fund his own pet projects before giving it back to us. Perhaps Berkeley should withhold the amount of federal taxes that DeMint would withhold from Berkeley. Everyone would be much happier: Berkeley can fund the projects they need without the grubby hands of Washington pocketing their cut, and DeMint doesn't have to pay them. Heck, it's not like places like Berkeley are getting their money's worth from the feds anyway.