Mag-Lev Fantasy

From a discussion on Engadget about the pros and cons of taxing cars for miles driven via GPS device, someone said this:

Perhaps you should have worked harder during school? A gas tax/road tax w/e you call it is a great idea. It will help fund Mass Transit and push hydrogen technology development. Hybrids and Electrics are just stop gaps, we need hydrogen! Also the money can be used to fund Mag-Lev trains and bullet trains which the rest of the world has! And america was supposed to be no. 1 right?

First, you've got to love how 'Mass Transit' is apparently now a proper noun. But anyway, to the crux of the argument. Environmentalists love to dream about the promise of hydrogen cars and mag-lev trains. Such methods of transit are clean and utopian and will not hurt Mother Gaia, plus they're unstable technologies so if one or both of them should happen to explode in a hydrogen-magnetic kablooey and take a few thousand planet-killing carbon-emitters with it, well that's not a bug, it's a feature.

I'm always amused at people who jump on the Mag-Lev train bandwagon. Mag Lev trains, by the way, are futuristic trains that levitate by opposing magnetic force, so they can go very fast as they have no friction. Anyway, my point is a train is a train whether it's propelled by gas, electricity, magnets, or Mr. Fusion. And no one rides trains. Raise your hand if you ride a train anywhere more than about once a year. Unless you replaced every car on earth with a train that would arrive to your location within about 20 seconds and could take you anywhere you wanted to go, including to your friend "Digby"'s house out in Tooele, trains are never going to replace cars. Ever. Ever ever ever.

Ever.

Come What Mays

Sweet. A Republican-who knew? As that link states, "As far as I'm concerned, this means our 2009 prospects are stronger than Mighty Putty and brighter than an Oxi-Cleaned laundry load."

Attempt #2

One of these days I'll get this right. Today is still not that day...

Had it with politics

Went w/ the Mrs to the temple tonight-there's really nothing better for making you come back to the day-to-day and gain some much-needed perspective. Provided you can still have a fighting chance of feeding your family, the world's just going to do its own thing as it marches steadily closer to oblivion, and you need to do your own thing.

That's what I say about the MSM. So many blogs I read complain constantly about the extreme liberal bias and corruption of the media. Tracking all the bias is a full time job for some places. I think it's ridiculous to complain. It's not as if any of them are going to change, and anyone with 1/10th of a brain can instantly see through all of it. Granted, the things that are very troublesome are the items the MSM refuses to report-you can't look through something for something that isn't there.

But here's where I say just vote with your eyeballs and read something else. The savvy among us know where to get actual unbiased, factual reporting, and it's not from the MSM. Seek out those media outlets and read them instead of the products from the AP & Reuters. You'll be far better informed and you'll be contributing to the demise of a lousy product.

And remember what James Taranto said in 2004-the MSM's liberal cocoon likely caused John Kerry's downfall. He thought the media would bury the Swift Boat Veterans and their message, but the Swifties got around the MSM and took their message directly to the voters so that, by the time Kerry got around to addressing anything, he looked like he had something to hide and the damage was already done.

Back to my point-not much in the world of politics can truly matter once you contemplate eternity and heaven and all the things that are so much bigger than us. It's easy (and sometimes fun) to get caught up in all the details but the only 'change' that's worth a dang is the kind you can do with your own life to make it about anyone other than yourself. So stop wasting your time waiting for a false messiah to 'change' everyone else so you get more 'free' money. Just change, period, and leave the world's problems to everyone else who fails to see things as they really are.

Yes, we have an obligation and duty to make the world a better place. So start with yourself-it's the only person you ever really have total control over. If even Neal A. Maxwell can compare the world of politics to rearranging deck furniture on the Titanic, I think it's OK to pretty much disengage from the entire scene.

And now, another picture of a unicorn.

Journey to the Really Obvious Special Effects

The next movie up from the weekend-the first that was not a musical-is the new Brendan Fraser remake of Journey to the Center of the Earth.

There's not much to say about this movie other than that it was 'pretty good.' A good family show with nothing particularly funny or interesting going on, but some unusual scenery and a decent amount of enjoyable adventure. We didn't see it with the 3-D glasses, which was a shame since almost the entire movie was designed to be watched with 3-D glasses. Lots of big and scary things fly at the screen...

In other news, I'm at least 2% improved on the mouse pen. And yes, it is MUCH harder to draw with one when you're used to drawing with a mouse for the last 5 years. To wit, here is my drawing of Brendan Fraser. Other than his face and basic body shape, doesn't this look exactly like him?

Congrats to the 'cuda

Congratulations to Sarah Palin on her first grandchild. It's unfortunate it wasn't under better circumstances, but Bristol deserves all the credit in the universe for keeping the kid and choosing to marry his father. Good on ya.

I promise I will try to get better as soon as possible at using the mouse pen so my pictures don't look like rejected characters from the back of Kix cereal boxes.

What's wrong with Bill Kristol?

He's normally such a sharp guy, but why on earth is he looking forward to an Obama presidency with 'hope and good cheer'? The man is about to run the county in the exact opposite manner of the political philosophy Kristol has based his entire career on. What's there to be cheerful about?

Really, Bill-tell me. Either you're right or you're totally wrong on this. Everything we know about the economy and basic rules of physics and reality tells us that creating government jobs reduces private sector jobs and that government jobs are about 7x as expensive to create and administer a year as public sector jobs. Because of this, all expanded government spending can do is prolong depressions by artificially inflating wages and thus postponing recovery. It would truly be better for government to actually do nothing at all than to try to help.

(By the way, feel free to click through to those links-I pride myself on not shooting my mouth off without extensively sourcing my opinions.)

With the government in such horrible debt, there's nothing to spend that you don't create out of thin air. And when you pump more money into the banking system, you devalue your currency. And when you devalue your currency, giving your currency away only makes the problem progressively worse. Is this why liberals are sometimes called 'progressives'? There's a word for printing so much money that you eventually make your the paper it's printed on more valuable than the money itself: hyperinflation. It didn't work out well for Germany in 1923 and it won't work for us.

Giving money to wind power and ethanol is as good as burning more money. They only account for 3% of the US' power supply. There seriously isn't a single thing I've seen so far that leads me to believe that Obama will do a single correct thing. I'm sure he'll get lucky once or twice, but policy-wise, the only problem that can be solved by throwing more money at it is if you're on a game show that involves knocking milk bottles over with wads of money. Wow, what a good analogy.

I need some sleep!

Just like that river twistin through a dusty land

Seriously, what is the deal with Cafe Rio? Why does the entire city line up there? The entire day, the line never drops below 20 people. Tonight when I attempted to get Jan a burrito there was literally a 60-person line. It's not even half as good as Barbacoa and yet there's never anyone lined up in there. Or even Chipotle! Someone explain!

Have to believe

The next movie up from the weekend of really super musicals was Xanadu.

I'd never watched Xanadu from start to finish before, so the entire experience was thrilling and painful, kind of like going down a water slide in some sandpaper underpants.

The story begins when some guy whose name I can't remember-maybe it was Roger-gets kissed by Olivia Newton-John, who is portrayed by Australian actress Olivia Newton-John. She rollerskates by and kisses Roger, probably because she's either legally blind or just really attracted to very bad hockey hair.

Roger sets out to find her, but she finds him first, and with the help of an extremely cheerful Gene Kelly, who dances really really well and who is subjected to wearing all manner of 80s atrocities in a 'fun' clothing montage where Roger and ONJ attempt to 'cool' him up, they set out to build a really awesome new roller disco named Xanadu.

Not to spoil the ending or anything, but they build Xanadu and everyone rollerskates at it for about the last half hour of the movie or so while ONJ performs a number of diversely styled musical numbers, including a really poorly conceived country/western number.

The movie would be a complete classic if not for its many really unfortunate moments, including an animated segment and a few too many really dumb songs about Roger and how sad it is to be apart from him. Like The Jazz Singer before it, it is a masterpiece, but a really bad one.

Bonus trivia: the part of Roger was originally supposed to go to Andy Gibb. The fact that it didn't is probably why this movie is not in the top 10 greatest films ever made.


This doesn't really look like ONJ but I'm still getting the hang of the new mouse pen.

Just one left to go, I think

Normally I'm not a big Ann Coulter fan but I really enjoyed her piece on the Sarahcuda today:

True, Palin made some embarrassing gaffes.

She complained that we didn’t have enough “Arabic translators” in Afghanistan -- not realizing the natives don’t speak Arabic in Afghanistan, but rather a variety of regional dialects, the most common of which is Pashtun.

Speaking to military veterans one time, Palin said, “Our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today.”

She bragged about passing a law regulating the nuclear industry that it turned out never became a law at all.

Some days Palin said Venezuela's dictator Hugo Chavez should suffer "regional isolation" -- but then on others she’d say she supported the president’s meeting with Chavez.

She told one audience about recent tornados in Kansas that had killed 10,000 people. In fact, a dozen people were killed in the tornados.

She referred to the “57 states” that make up the U.S.

Speaking of her eldest daughter’s pregnancy, she said Bristol was being “punished” with a baby.

As you probably know -- or guessed by now -- none of these gaffes were uttered by Palin. They are all Obama gaffes. Luckily, he made them to a star-struck press that managed not to ask him a difficult question for two years.

Yay for Fil-A

Wow. If I didn't hate Chick-fil-A's food, I would totally almost exclusively eat there after reading that.

Fish Girl

The first movie in our weekend movie-thon yesterday was the highly recommended "Mamma Mia!," the movie based entirely on ABBA songs.

The plot is fairly straightforward. An unfortunate fish girl, who has eyes on the sides of her head, wants to know who her dad is. She invites the 3 potential dads to her wedding to a metro guy. They arrive. Her friends are extremely shrill and obnoxious, as is her mother and her mother's friends. Every female in the movie is extremely shrill and obnoxious and acts as if they are at an all-night girl sleepover party complete with doing each others' hair, jumping on the bed, and singing showtunes into a hairbrush.

In the end, the fish girl calls off her wedding and decides to live it up with her metro boyfriend and 'see the world' even though she lives in the most gorgeous place on the world and there's nowhere to go but down. Pierce Brosnan can't sing but nonetheless sings for the better half of the movie. And the British guy turns out to be gay. And they didn't use "The Name of the Game"-arguably the best ABBA song ever written. On the up-side of things, the scenery was beautiful, so we had lots of nice locales to look at as most of the film whizzed by on fast-forward.

Christmas

For Christmas my true love gave to me a Bamboo mouse pen and some beef jerky (amongst many other things). The picture below was 50% composed from the Bamboo pen (Bamboo is the brand, not the material). It's a much different experience than drawing with the mouse but I am looking forward to becoming a Bamboo mouse pen master and will only be drawing my pix with the pen from now on. The next few pictures should be interesting, especially since I've got my reviews of Journey to the Center of the Earth, Mamma Mia!, The Jazz Singer, and Xanadu to post.

So watch for that.

Boop

I received the most creative present of the season from my Mother in Law for Christmas this year. A limited edition Bettie Boop candy lip gloss dispenser! The liquid tastes...interesting. My lips are glossy. And blue.


In other news, she & my Father in Law also gave me $100 in an envelope and the new Harry Potter book, yet I would trade both for the lip gloss. Probably.

Meanwhile, my Dad gave me a giant bumpaddle-like Sugar Daddy because I'm going to be a daddy in 4 months. A Sugar Daddy, apparently. And I got the Joseph Smith book I really wanted as well. Lip gloss and bumpaddle-sized confections: truly an exceptional haul.

Far and wide we tell the Father's story

From Secularright.com:

Do modern Christians still believe with the same fervor as in the past all those unyielding doctrines of eternal damnation for the unbaptised and unconverted? They sure don’t act as if they do. If they really were convinced that their friends, co-workers, neighbors, and in-laws were going to hell because they possessed the wrong or no religious belief, I would think that the knowledge would be unbearable. Christians surely see that most of their wrong-believing personal acquaintances are just as moral and deserving as themselves. How, then, do they live with the knowledge that their friends and loved ones face an eternity of torment? I would expect a frenzy of proselytizing, by word or by sword.

In previous centuries, when religion had the upper hand, religious differences meant more. But ours is a world dominated by the secular values of tolerance and equality. Either believers live with an extraordinary degree of cognitive dissonance between the inclusive values of their society and the dictates of their religion, or they unconsciously mitigate those bloody-minded dictates as atavistic vestiges from a more primitive time.

So basically, the true Christians would attend a church that has an incredibly motivated missionary program. Hm.

Sanford and Son

From today's Political Diary (compiled by John Fund)

Not every state and local politician in America is sprinting to the federal trough for free money out of Washington. One of the few stimulus skeptics is South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who is saying "no thanks" to federal bailout money for states. Mr. Sanford is one Republican who hasn't forgotten his fiscal conservative principles as so many other pols in the GOP have. "Out-of-control spending in Washington is the problem with the economy. So why spend more?" he said in an interview, sounding a lot like Ronald Reagan.

Mr. Sanford has a stimulus idea that could not be more diametrically opposed to Mr. Obama's. Last week he called for a complete phase-out of South Carolina's 5% corporate income tax, while chopping the individual income tax in half. These ideas are needed "now more than ever," he says. Though his plan would be partially paid for by increasing the cigarette tax from 7 cents to 37 cents, on balance he would be instituting a giant tax cut at a time when most other governors want handouts to fatten government spending programs and avoid tough budget choices.

Mr. Sanford is widely touted as a conservative rising star among state leaders -- much in the mold of a Fife Symington of Arizona, John Engler of Michigan or William Weld of Massachusetts in the 1990s. "Mark is unquestionably one of our top-tier guys," says Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour. The Cato Institute rates Mr. Sanford as the second most fiscally conservative governor in the nation. And the National Taxpayers Union says that during his six years in Congress, he racked up one of the best anti-spending records of any of his House colleagues.

No wonder last week a new Web site was launched: "DraftSanford2012.com."

This dude is definitely on to something-fiscal responsibility is a winning message amongst conservatives. Plus, Marshall is a cool first name and he looks almost exactly like Bob from Sesame Street. I'd vote for him!

Carmine said one boy, here are two!*

*If you get that reference, you are officially cool.

And we're back

After 4-5 days in the hospital waiting for Jan's kidney stone to pass, it's good to be finally back and headed into a regular sleeping pattern. There is much to report.

First, Jan's doing much better now-the whole ordeal was done last night and we were able to return home again. Today she is feeling 'munchy' inside.

Second, the Neil Diamond concert was everything we hoped it would be and more. The best part was the 80 year-old woman by us who was dancing up a storm. It was pretty pure.

Blah

From today's Political Diary from the Wall Street journal comes the exact thing I've been complaining about for weeks: the fact that out of control government spending will cause huge inflation:

Mr. Obama sees that the Fed is out of (interest rate cuts) and has seized upon this as an opening for his $1 trillion spending plan. "It is critical that the other branches of government step up," he said at his Chicago press conference, reiterating his support for new roads, green energy projects, school construction, bike paths, museums and bridges to nowhere.

What Mr. Obama and Fed Chief Ben Bernanke seem to have in mind is a replay not so much of the 1930s New Deal as the policy configuration of the 1970s: lax monetary policy, weak dollar, high tax rates and explosive spending. The Fed repeatedly cut interest rates in the 1970s to jump start an economy hampered by over-regulation and 70% marginal tax rates. Each Fed move inched the inflation rate from 7% in 1978 to 11% in 1979 to 14% in 1980. One of Jimmy Carter's chief economic advisors, Lawrence Klein, reflected the wrong-headed economic thinking of that lost decade when he said: "We need faster monetary growth," even as inflation hit double digits.

As for fiscal policy, federal spending almost tripled in the 1970s, from $195 billion to $590 billion, but the unemployment rate steadily climbed.

We don't have inflation now to be sure, but a 40% increase in the money supply in the last six months in combination with zero interest rates almost guarantees that any incipient recovery will be accompanied by a surge in inflation. Economist Arthur Laffer predicts that "inflation will come when the economy picks up." Mr. Obama's policy prescriptions are likened to FDR's New Deal, but the more apt comparison may be Jimmy Carter's malaise.

As was commented on Ace of Spades' website the other day (I paraphrase): "if all you needed to do to create wealth was to print money, why isn't Zimbabwe the richest country in the world?"

That's the point exactly-you can have the treasury print off all the money you want, but all you do is devalue the currency. And a weak dollar is part (a smaller part but a part nonetheless) of what got us into this mess.

If you're broke and out of a job, do you go out and spend all the money you have left? No, and neither should the government.

PS sorry I'm not positive yet-Neil has not yet occurred.

Hoorah

Yay, I am done with school for the semester. Finally! And being that it's very late and I have a very big day ahead of me tomorrow in which my life will come true in the presence of Neil Diamond, I feel I should turn in.

To my wife: feel better and rest up. Neil will heal all.



PS to everyone who used to read my blog but stopped because it was too depressing, I promise things will be different after tomorrow. My faith in humanity is about to be restored.

Liberator

It's been an odd ride having a President I actually respect and admire. I'm not sure how long it will be till I have that feeling again. But the 'shoe throwing' incident this week made it abundantly clear to my why I admire President Bush so much, despite some of the mistakes he's made. He's one of the only people I know outside the church who is basically a near-perfect example of a Christian.

Here you've got a person who liberated 50 million Muslims, but who is derided as a tyrant by some of the people who he liberated from tyrrany. He's despised, abused, and has been treated more disgustingly by supposedly enlightened people than anyone else in recent memory. And he takes it all in with a smile on his face and nothing but forgiveness and understanding.

Has he ever had a harsh word for a political enemy? Has he ever come unglued on anyone in the public eye and has traded their self esteem for political points? Instead, he stays above the fray and acts the way a true Christian is supposed to act-as an example. As good an example as he can possibly be.

So I'm grateful for that and I'm grateful to have been led by a good and decent man. I would like to think and hope that President Obama is a good man, but I don't think he is. I don't think anyone who supports born alive abortion can be, or anyone who would subject his young daugthers to years of anti-American bile at the pulpit of Jeremiah Wright. He likes to talk a lot about change-hopefully there's enough left over for him after he's done feeding it to the unicorns.



"Some worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite to speak the language of right and wrong. I disagree. Different circumstances require different methods, but not different moralities. Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, and in every place. Targeting innocent civilians for murder is always and everywhere wrong. Brutality against women is always and everywhere wrong. There can be no neutrality between justice and cruelty, between the innocent and the guilty. We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name. By confronting evil and lawless regimes, we do not create a problem, we reveal a problem. And we will lead the world in opposing it."
-President Bush

Hey, BHO

“Why is it that, for many persons, changing others is so exciting and so relevant, while changing oneself is so boring and irrelevant?”
-Elder Neal A. Maxwell

Article of the day

I often come across articles in my web meandering that I wish everyone in America would read. Because most people get their news from openly biased mainstream media outlets, only a small portion of Americans get the whole story of any issue.

This article in today's Wall Street Journal might be the key to the entire financial crisis and the emerging bailout culture. Though it's specifically about the auto industry, the same principles could be applied to any failing business.

If you have an interest in such things, I recommend reading this. It's about why bankruptcy is not the end of the world and explains why the UAW and the auto company's management is howling so much about bankruptcy not being an option. It's very by-the-book because it's taking on the issue explicitly from a legal sense, explaining the differences between economically failed businesses and financially failed businesses. After all, demand for cars themselves is not dropping, but demand for crappy cars is. One could argue on behalf of bankruptcy for the Detroit big 3 simply from an angle of "would anyone's lives not be immediately improved if Crysler stopped making the Sebring?" but that's probably not as strong an argument as the WSJ's article delivers.

News roundup

I really wish I could disengage from the world of politics and current events for a while, but I am a hopeless political junkie. But this week's been a bit overwhelming with finals, final presentations, and preparation for final super deluxe double whammy finals next week. I am very much looking forward to about 8:00 pm on the 18th when I will be done with this lame-o semester and can welcome in the 2nd best thing that will ever happen to me (Neil Diamond concert) on the 19th and celebrating the 1st anniversary of 1st best thing on the 20th.

Today my Mrs has to work so it's cramming for my finals next week and wrapping some Christmas presents and watching grainy old films from Netflix. I wish they'd made a sequel to Shop Around the Corner. It would hit the spot on this snowy day.

As promised to Hillary, here is your commemorative 30th birthday artwork! It's your own personal birthday greeting from the President-Elect, live from the 57th state!

Happy 30th Birthday Hillary!

I'll do a cartoon after school tonight in celebration.

3rd option

Pace my assertion the other day that:

Either Barack Obama is spectacuarly stupid and naieve, or he's a blatant liar. And since we all know it is racist to call Barack Obama stupid, we'll just have to conclude that he's a blatant liar.

I've now realized there is a third option-that Obama is just an extremely bad judge of character. So to sum, he is either:

1. Fully aware of the kind of person the gov is and is lying about it.
2. Was too busy campaigning to be president to really give the whole business much thought, but believes he's power enough to swat it away as a distraction
3. Believed the gov to be a good and honest man and is shocked-SHOCKED!-to the core to discover that he is wrong (i.e. the "this is not the Jeremiah Wright I knew" option)

So if it comes down to the 3rd option-judgment of character-we can conclude that Obama is a very poor judge of character. And we've now just put that person in charge of America, where he will have to judge the character of not just corrupt internal politicians but international enemies who are heck-bent on destroying America.

Good job, America.

Clap. Clap. Clap...

Remember when reporters did their jobs?

There were signs the continuing investigation could still involve him.

His statement that he didn't have contact with Blagojevich about the Senate seat seems to conflict with that of top adviser David Axelrod, who told Fox News Chicago on Nov. 23: "I know he's talked to the governor, and there are a whole range of names, many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them."

Obama transition officials say Axelrod misspoke.

Well that settles that. If Obama transition officials said Axelrod misspoke, then that's that. No need to check entry logs, security records, phone logs, or video recordings of the governor's mansion or capital building to establish if Obama actually did speak to Blagojevich.

I mean, it's been a month and a half since the election-you really think Obama hasn't during this entire time said a single word to Axelrod? The funny thing is, the last 6 weeks shouldn't even be any more relevant than the last 4 years-6 years. The press should be scouring the entire record for details of their association.

After all, it's not exactly unlikely for Obama to have less than honest/moral/non-murdering associates.

Evening....Commissioner

This is just a friendly reminder to anyone who purchased The Dark Knight today to download and retrieve your digital copy right away. It's free and will hasten the demise of DVD. You don't need physical media anymore-transferring to downloadable electronic files should have happened about 5 years ago. We are way behind the times. So log on and download that copy!

That is all.


"I don't get political points for being an idealist, I have to do the best I can with what I have."

The Ox and Lamb Kept Time

By request, this is a repost from November 2004 from the Liberty's Kids blog archive:

Those of you who know me know that I hate things that never happened or were never said. Ask me sometime about that Footprints poem that everyone loves, or the quote attributed to Christ that says "I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it."

Recently, I've been cranking the Christmas tunes and have noticed the song I've taken for granted all my life, "Little Drummer Boy," is a work of pure fantasy. Nowhere in the book of Luke does it state, amongst the newborn Christ Child and the visitation of the magi, a lame little drummer boy who favored our Lord and Savior with a jazzy drum solo.

What's more, the song states "The Ox and Lamb kept time, pa-rum-pa-pah-pum." First of all, that's ridiculous. The ox and lamb didn't join in the song, which didn't happen in the first place. Second of all, the little drummer boy himself would keep time, being, you know, the DRUMMER and everything. He has no need of anyone to 'keep time' for him, because it's HIS job to keep time!

So now we have a fictional boy playing a drum solo, and livestock kicking in to this mixed-species band that has the most complete rhythm section of anyone in the world. Who are they-Primus? Are the camels gonna bust out the bass guitar next?

Finally, you're Mary, you've just given birth in a manger. Your baby is tired, it's late, it's been a big night. Some little boy shows up and wants to PLAY THE DRUMS? There's no way. Joseph would have hurled the drum over the fence with his little shepherd crook thing.

I hate things that never happened!

These aren't the droids you're looking for

President-elect Obama said Tuesday afternoon that he had not been in contact with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) and “was not aware of what was happening.”

In other news, President-elect Obama said he was also unaware that Easter Eggs do not come from the Easter Bunny, and that human beings aspirate oxygen in order to stay alive. According to the President-elect, he was under the impression that humans were kept alive by a magical race of rainbow-colored gnomes that are invisible and who live in our stomaches.

OK, any intellectually honest Democrats out there-what do you think? You're a prominent senator who works closely with one of the most spectacularly corrupt governors in the history of the nation. You really think he was honestly 'not aware of what was happening?' One of the earmarks he worked with Rog Blagojevich to obtain was $1 million in funds for the hospital Michelle Obama worked at. You think that was on the level too?

Either Barack Obama is spectacuarly stupid and naieve, or he's a blatant liar. And since we all know it is racist to call Barack Obama stupid, we'll just have to conclude that he's a blatant liar.

Shop Around the Corner

We watched The Shop Around the Corner late last night, courtesy of Netflix. This is the 1940 original version of 'You've got Mail,' and in my opinion it's a total and complete classic that should have never been remade. It's a totally pure film with a terrific screenplay and an extremely subtle and genuine performance by a very young Jimmy Stewart.

Why remake movies like that? You can't possibly improve on them. All you can do is use the idea and pack theatres with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan fans. But at the end of the day have you actually accomplished anything or furthered your craft? It's funny how uncreative our supposedly creative class is.

Wirthlin

I was extremely surprised and saddened to be the last person on the planet to learn that Elder Joseph Wirthlin had died this week. No one had told me and I hadn't seen it on the news and they didn't announce anything in church.

He was such a great little guy, with a very fiery spirit who spoke with such a gentle nature but with the authority of his calling. He was and is a reminder that there are the people out there who are celebrated because of how they act or sing or speak and then there are those out there who are less celebrated because of how they live and what they stand for. Some people can speechify till they're blue in the face and they'll receive popularity and adulation and commemorative plates, even though they haven't actually personally accomplished anything. The Joseph Wirthlins, however, will receive little popular acclaim as they write and speak their own words that are backed up by a lifetime of service and example. That's my kind of hero.

"I remember when one of our daughters went on a blind date. She was all dressed up and waiting for her date to arrive when the doorbell rang. In walked a man who seemed a little old, but she tried to be polite. She introduced him to me and my wife and the other children; then she put on her coat and went out the door. We watched as she got into the car, but the car didn’t move. Eventually our daughter got out of the car and, red faced, ran back into the house. The man that she thought was her blind date had actually come to pick up another of our daughters who had agreed to be a babysitter for him and his wife.

We all had a good laugh over that. In fact, we couldn’t stop laughing. Later, when our daughter’s real blind date showed up, I couldn’t come out to meet him because I was still in the kitchen laughing. Now I realize that our daughter could have felt humiliated and embarrassed. But she laughed with us, and as a result, we still laugh about it today.

The next time you’re tempted to groan, you might try to laugh instead. It will extend your life and make the lives of all those around you more enjoyable."

-Joseph Wirthlin

At long last

I'm pretty sure my Dad would buy this.

Meet Sprinkles

From the comments:

You had more readers when you had pictures of Obama on a unicorn - I think that needs to return.

So let it be written, so let it be done.

Welcome back, everyone! Are your homes prepared for the delivery of your own personal unicorn on January 20th? Oh yeeahhh!

Contraband

From a reader who weighed in on the Kix comments:

Agreed. Although, in my house growing up my mom approved of sugar cereal. In fact, we always had the good stuff...cocoa puffs, froot loops, and the like. Now I don't like that crap. I think I'm on to somethin'...like a theory of some kind.

Interesting theory here-was sugar cereal devoured in my family simply because it was contraband? Is this like the liberterian standpoint on the drug war, i.e. put illegal drugs in every corner grocery store and no one will use them anymore because they'll no longer be taboo? Fascinating. Maybe we should buy nothing but flavored cereals so that the Kix and Cheerios and Special Ks of the world will become cool?

Discuss.

Get your Kix on Route 66

I was reminded this morning, while eating a tasty brand of cereal, of the old Kix commercials that said "Kid tested: Mother approved." I remember how much I resented that as a kid. At age 9 or so I realized flat-out that if something was 'kid tested' but 'mother approved,' that meant the kid did not approve it, and that the mother overrode the kid. I swore that when I was a grown up I would never buy Kix and force my kid to eat them.

Even today I won't support Kix for this reason, although I will whole-heartedly support Berry Berry Kix, which is rather tasty, especially with about 1/2 a cup of sugar poured on it to drown out the taste of the non-berry Kix nuggests in the bowl.

What is it with mothers and their approval of cereal that kids don't like? My own mother would only purchase regular Cheerios or Rice Krispies, particularly because she knew if she bought a box of good cereal it would be gone probably before we got home from the store. But still.

Is there really some rule out there where everything that tastes this side of cardboard is of the devil? As an impending parent, I will do my best to make sure my daughter is never forced to eat cereal that is kid tested, mother/father approved.

A word...

A break from the cartoonage to voice an opinion about politics again. Don't worry-this one will be relatively benign.

With my great love of all things political, I'm constantly fascinated by the elements that draw people to vote for others. Sometimes it's admiration, but most of the time it's popularity of some kind of ability to relate to and/or trust the person you're voting for. And sometimes it's none of the above.

Political messages require an effective communicator who can either make a convincing argument for why following their plan will be in your best interest, or who can completely obscure their beliefs to the point you don't have the slightest idea what you believe, but you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

So there has been much talk in the last month from pundits who argue that the GOP needs to find its next Reagan-someone who can make a great argument for their beliefs and convince voters accordingly. That's undoubtably true, but here's the thing: why do we require people to talk us into things?

For example, would you buy a fridge just because a really good salesman talked you into it? Shouldn't you do your homework and arrive fully informed so you can make your own independent choice regardless of the messenger/communicator? Now I can understand it's important for a candidate to be able to effectively elucidate what their beliefs are and how they would intend to apply them to solve the various problems. But as long as they've enumerated those beliefs somewhere-say, on their website, or whatever-shouldn't it not matter how cool or handsome they are?

Let's put it this way. Would you rather have a competent accountant or one who looks really cool but who may or may not know a single thing about accounting?

Can you speak any Spanish? Outstanding!

I'm part of the posse. Don't ask questions.

Making good on my cartoon commitments cont'd