I’ve been noodling my disappointment with Obama for several weeks now.  I think I’m ready to pull the trigger and dump my endorsement of him from this blog (assuming Dawn agrees).  Our family has donated close to $300 to his campaign over the past year and I feel like it’s people like us who allowed him to win the primary.  And now with the primary won, he’s a different candidate - definitely not the one I supported.

Between his support of faith based initiatives and the FISA legislation, he’s showing a pattern of supporting and catering to Bush doctrines.  I didn’t think Obama was capable of doing such a thing, yet he’s running towards the middle just as Kerry did in 2004.  I find this highly disappointing and upsetting for two reasons.

First, who in the hell is leading the Democratic party?  Where is the confidence in the right position (which for some reason is to the “left”)?  Who are the knuckleheads advising Obama to leave his base and reach out for people that believe in illegal wire tapping and the integration of church and state?  Obama you don’t need McCain’s base.  You’ve got this election - just be the same person that won the primary.  WTF is going on here?

Second, I feel had by Obama.  I feel like he lied to me.  I feel like he stole from me.  This is not good.  If the past couple months are an indication of the type of President he’s going to be - I don’t want him as President.  I want my money back.  This country is done for if we cannot manage to elect a real leader.

I think back to the Iowa Caucus.  There I was standing with two other people under the sign that said Chris Dodd.  Dodd is not supporting FISA.

This system sucks.

I went to the Doctor’s office yesterday because my face was swollen with bugs bites.  The bugs are at plague levels all over town and so my family decided to do the logical thing and leave the comfort of our air conditioned home and go camping.  After two nights in the woods I woke up Sunday morning with two swollen eyes, two swollen ears, lumps all over my neck and some lymph nodes as hard as walnuts.

At one point while I was out trying to play catch with my daughter, a cloud of gnats drifted into my head and I suddenly had them in my ears, in my eyes, up my nose and  a couple stuck on my tongue.  I went a little berserk and ran around spitting and waving my hands closely around my ears and face.  If someone by chance was filming me on 16mm I’m sure the result would not have been far off from one of those odd tribal dances seen by many a sociology students.

I wasn’t the only one at the doctor’s office.  There was a women who had a bite on her lip that had swollen to the size of a nickel.  I don’t know what is going on around here but it’s completely nuts (or gnats I guess).  If you stop in any one place for more than a few seconds outside you get swarmed.  I’ve been riding my bike in circles at stop signs just to keep moving and avoid getting attacked.

Ok so this is not my normal face, it’s swollen in several places:

And this is what it looks like if you stop in one place for a bit:

So it’s 7pm, and I’m with my family standing with the window open so we can watch and listen in awe to the crack and rumble of an intense lighting storm.  And then we hear a siren.  I run to the Internet (not the basement) and check the National Weather Service.  Yep, there’s a tornado watch in effect for Jefferson county until 2am.

So do I go to the basement now?  What does the siren mean?  I don’t see people fleeing for their basements.  Two weeks ago the siren went off and I went down to the basement, but then it went off for like 3 hours and no tornado.

Actually, yes, I’ll say it.  McCain is worse than Bush.  Oh my the Republican party is in some hard times.

How would your life change if you grocery bill increased 300%?

I realize now, and will admit publicly, that the bio fuels movement is a disaster. I regret any contribution we may have had to the use of bio fuels through our own evangelism of bio diesel.

I’m motivated to replace my entire front and back yard with a food garden and then giving most of it away to local food banks. I don’t know if that would work logistically. But I’d like to figure out a way to help.

There are many things Dawn and I are thankful for, and one of them is the extremely low probability that we will be sued by Walmart.

Let me day dream here for a moment:  Obama becomes President of United States and uses the red phone to order air strikes on the homes of Walmart executives.

Not going to be shopping there ever again.

There’s no question that FOX’s war on journalism is spreading to other “news” networks. And CNN has been slowly stamping out good journalism on their network for the past decade.

Here’s a recent example.

I have two reactions to this video.

First, it’s bad journalism. I wrote better papers in the 9th grade.

Notice how Wolf starts by talking about Obama supporters and then saying things like, “some are saying”, “some are suggesting”, “we hear”, “they say”, “critics say”. Without citing anyone. And during the segment the banner at the bottom of the screen reads:

Obama-Mania Backlash

Passion “cult-like” to some

Then the female anchor comes on and says, “you’ve heard the criticism of Obama . . . and now some critics are saying the Obama campaign is coming dangerously close to being a cult of personality”. Towards the end of the segment they throw out some citations, but none of them link directly back to all the claims they made at the beginning of the program. It’s like Hillary is behind the curtain operating Wolf and his co-worker like puppets.

Secondly, the reason Obama is winning the vote is tied directly to the fact that our media and government is controlled by people who want you to think that being passionate about your elected representatives is “creepy”, an attitude that disgusts me.

Recall Howard Dean.

A passionate democratic who lost the nomination to someone who stands by while a student activist is tasered.

In the absence of great (and canceled) historical dramas like HBO’s Rome and Deadwood, I find myself grasping for a replacement. Something to fill the void until HBO delivers a new period show. Showtime’s The Tudors is my current attempt at filling that vast emptiness, and I’ve so far invested nearly 9 hours watching Jonathan Rhys Meyers play King Henry VIII.

Here’s my review:

Yawwwwwwn.

Henry had like 6 wives and transformed religious power in Europe. Yet after NINE episodes his first wife is . . . still his first wife. It’s like watching history in real time. The other night while watching The Tudors I found myself reading page after page on Wikipedia related to Henry’s reign, and enjoying it far more than the show. I mean behead someone already!

If HBO was producing this I can assure the heads would be rolling every episode.  There should be at least one rack, dagger, poisoned goblet or torch in every other episode. I wish HBO would produce something like The Inquisition, or Elizabeth. Of course Showtime might very well have ruined all the fun to be had in medieval times with their protracted story telling. In that case I beg of HBO to go into the future and produce Asimov’s Foundation series.

But I digress.

My advice - avoid The Tudors like the plague.

I’m pretty fed up with this whole super delegates thing. I heard this interview the other night on NPR where the entire panel was agreeing that we need super delegates to act as the expert opinion. But who chooses these experts? Like who the hell is my super delegate? You know, this person who apparently is better at choosing the next Democratic president than I am.

Then I saw this twit on MSNBC.com. He’s never even voted in a Presidential election. He has lunch with Hillary’s daughter. He gets calls from Obama and Bill. Yet he’s just “like anyone else”.

And shouldn’t we all. When I was in college I used to get livid over Rush Limbaugh’s radio show and the people who listened (and believed) that garbage. I never imagined there would someday be complete televised network of garbage, running 24/7, with a whole cast and crew that make Rush Limbaugh look like an amateur of the game of defamation and innuendo.