Happy bday Casper!

I don't think it's true that he gets a free pass (lots of play of the houses thing). But I do think idiocy in our leaders has become acceptable or at least expected. I wish that you could run an intelligence vs. experience commercial (VO:"All the experience in the world doesn't mean anything if you never learn anything from it....") But maybe I feel that way because I'm an elitist.

Happy Birthday, Casper! (Wow, five is such a fun age.)

None of the serious candidates doubts that we should have a military budget as big or bigger than the entire rest of the world.

Yeah, that bothers me too. I think economic and technological strength will be more important to our future security than being able to project power unilaterally.

I'm also bothered about the idea that we need to build up our military to combat terrorism. I guess it sounds good on the stump, but I think building up intelligence capabilities, working with other countries, and non-proliferation efforts are far more important.

Happy Birthday Casper!

I am pessimistic. I don't want to be optimistic. 2004 almost killed me.

Me, too. So I don't know where my optimism is coming from.

Supposedly a lot of former Clinton supporters who now support McCain are not aware that McCain is anti-abortion.

A lot of them *are*, though, and even though they themselves are pro-choice, they truly believe that even under Obama, abortion rights won't be any better than they were under Bush.

And -- I hate to say this -- there's a demographic of Hillary supporters who claim to be voting for McCain who are past their reproductive years and therefore don't give 2 shits about the young women behind them who are going to get screwed HARD under a McCain administration.

After being in Ohio for a few days and catching commercials where McCain is making a huge play for Clinton supporters, I have to say, it might work.

I've worried and worried about Obama's chances here, but a couple of weekends ago I was at a festival down in the tiny town where my dad grew up. Understand, this town was -- and generally still is -- whiter than white, and horrifyingly racist. We knew who was in the Klan, and, well, you didn't fuck with them.

So at this festival, not only was there an Obama campaign booth, it was swamped with people wanting Obama swag, and driving through what I remember as a closed-minded little backwater, I saw Obama signs in people's front yards.

Is it enough? I don't know. But seeing support for Obama in a little hillbilly town that would have run him out on a rail 25 years ago was astonishing. I couldn't explain it well enough to The Boy, since he didn't grow up there, but when I told my brother, he had the same reaction I did -- his jaw dropped, and he was actually speechless for a moment (which is significant for him).

It's things like that which give me hope. I'm not saying the town has become a hotbed of liberalism, but maybe, just maybe, people are realizing that things have gotten so bad under Bush and McCain isn't going to make things better.

That's what I'm hanging on to.

but I think building up intelligence capabilities, working with other countries, and non-proliferation efforts are far more important

Commie

It's weird - the election is just a little more than two months away. Two months, and either I'll be incredibly happy or incredibly depressed.

If Obama is elected and the Cubs win the World Series, I swear my head will explode, as I won't be able to handle that much happiness....

Meanwhile, on NPR, they had a little piece on Cindy "I'm an only child" McCain's half-sister who not only is the first child from her father's first marriage, got a $10K bequest from his will (and Cindy got the millions). Classy family there.

The convention talk reminded me to program my DVR to record it. Good thing, my wife would not be happy if I forgot to set it tonight. How did I ever get along without a web enabled DVR?