I just haven't had Internet at my house for a little while now (reasons for which I will not bother to explain) and it's made it rather difficult to post recently. I'm actually posting right now from Bongo Java. Since I don't have my usual resources available, and since I'm short on time right now I'm not going to get into anything too heavy or in depth today, but do expect to see at least a new Chart Watch and some more Lost and Found updates as soon as the Internet returns to my home.
I'm not saying I won't still be dropping a few political posts here and there in the last few weeks before the election. It's just I'd been planning on doing some more regular posts before all this Internet stuff happened and now I'm backlogged so to speak. Anyway, I leave you with this:
Because I'm both biased and lazy, here's what FactCheck has to say about last night's Vice Presidential debate. I know I've been lax on the posting lately and I promise to have a real post up in the next few days. I also promise to get down off my political soapbox and get back to writing about music, at least for a moment. Until then, please enjoy what hard-working, educated, unbiased and nonpartisan people have to say about what Joe Biden and Sarah Palin want you to believe.
But seriously, Sarah Palin is completely unqualified to be John McCain's running mate for Vice President of the United States. Apparently, She thinks that simply being Governor of the closest state in the union to Russia and sharing a boarder with Canada gives her experience in foreign policy. Here she explaining that very thing to Katie Couric.
I don't want to go out on a limb here, but I'd be more than willing to bet that if the Republicans are trying to suspend the first Presidential debate of the year, they'll probably try to eliminate the VP debate all together. I'm just saying...
Just to put things into some kind of perspective, here's Katie Couric's Complete Joe Biden Interview.
That's the difference between children and adults.
Yep, apparently Sarah Palin thinks she's running for President. Check it out.
That video comes from a Republican campaign rally held yesterday in Youngstown, Ohio. She's also been claiming that Alaska supplies 20% of the country's energy. Guess what? That's a lie!
Hey, wanna read her email? I mean, this is old news by now, but Sarah Palin's email was hacked and posted on Wikileaks.org. Turns out the Alaskan Governor had started using private email accounts to circumvent her state's freedom of information laws. Basically she was doing it in case official emails were ever subpoenaed. People only do things like that when they have something to hide. Here's a full article from Time on the subject. Why might her email's be subpoenaed? Probably for the court case for which her husband refuses to testify.
Now I know I promised some music related posts, and I will get back to them eventually, but I have some thing I want to get off my chest. As election day draws near I've come to the conclusion that I have no choice but to get serious and get involved. I've made a point about trying to keep this blog non-political and non-partisan, but I can no longer hold my tongue. It is my absolute opinion that if the republicans are given control of the executive branch of the American government once again, we are all of us, as a people on this planet, royally fucked.
Now, let me first make it absolutley clear that this has nothing at all to do with my friends getting maced and arrested (especially considering these things happened at both the RNC and the DNC), although, clearly that pissed me off quite a bit since I dedicated three posts to it. No, this has everything to do with the fact that I absolutely believe that as much as the McCain/Palin campaign tries to distance themselves from the Bush administration, they are absolutely the same people and they will continue to do the same things that have driven our country into it's current economic recession. Things will only get worse.
It's not so much John McCain that scares me, although the claims in his early ads that he stood up to "big oil" did totally baffle me considering he spent the past four years bending over backwards for the American Oil Companies. Never mind that choosing a woman who sued the government to have the Polar Bear taken off the endangered species list because it severely limited oil drilling in Alaska as his running mate doesn't help either, but It's a woman who's willing to do that that absolutely frightens me. I absolutely believe that Sarah Palin will be more detrimental to this country (and the world) than George W. Bush could ever dream. And I'd like to take some time and set some things about Governor Palin straight.
First of all, on that whole Bridge to Nowhere thing about which she claims she told the government "no thanks," it turns out she was initially behind it and even accepted money for it, which she never gave back. Click that link if you don't believe me.
Secondly, about that Jet she put on Ebay... turns out it's standard policy in Alaska to put things the Government isn't using on Ebay because they're so far removed from the rest of the country, it's the only way they can sell just about anything. Also, the Jet didn't sell on Ebay! As a matter of fact, she took it off Ebay, and sold it for far less than it was worth, meaning that not only was it not her idea to put it on Ebay in the first place, but she also didn't make a profit on the sale like she claimed.
But never mind her ability to stretch the truth, Sarah Palin can't even seem to explain the doctrine of the Bush administration, of which she plans to "reform." Take a look at two videos from her interview with Charles Gibson that I swiped from an article at the Huffington Post.
How can you claim that you'll do things differently from or better than the Bush administration if you don't know what exactly the Bush administration did. Making things even more interesting, she also seems to be a little fuzzy on her running mate's foreign policies.
I also absolutely believe that Sarah Palin will be more detrimental to this country (and the world) than George W. Bush could ever dream
But that's ok, because McCain clearly doesn't know his running mate all that well either...
Check out this video which I opted not to embed purely because I couldn't prevent it from automatically playing.
Assuming you've just watched that, I'd love to point out that McCain never explains why Governor Palin is right and Barack Obama is wrong, nor does he at any time prove that Palin has more experience than Obama. Also, let me just say that claiming that Obama never once took on his own party seems to be a really weak accusation given that the Democrats were not the party in office the past eight years that got us into all of this shit in the first place. By the way, here's the article where i snagged that video as well.
Listen, I'm not trying to say that Barack Obama is the answer to our nation's problems. I absolutely don't believe that. What I do believe is that he represents hope in the face of almost certain damnation, and when given those two options, I'll take hope every time. If you want to know the truth about what both parties are saying, read FactCheck.org daily, and don't just believe what the Campaign ads say. make your own informed decision.
Here's one more article on the whole thing, which just so happens to feature a decent picture of Nathan Weber's face, sans black eye. And here are some photos of the actual event, courtesy of Jonathan D. Woods. Please visit his website. He's a damn fine photographer who was very generous to let me use these pictures for my blog.
Here we see Nathan in handcuffs as Batman goes through Nathan's backpack.
And here he is being taken into custody.
And here we see Jim Winn being taken in as well. Jim has a photo blog with some more pictures from the RNC. Check it out here.
And last, but not least, a nice shot of police officers in riot gear.
I know I promised not to get political again, but (in the words of The Big Lebowski) some new shit has come to light. Yeah. So it turns out that a few days prior to the events in my last post, another friend of mine was maced in the face while taking pictures of protesters outside the Democratic National Convention. Now, I know Christian, and in all fairness, of all the people I know, he's probably the person most likely to be mistaken for an anarchist, but not when he has a camera in his hands and a big bright and shiny press pass displayed for all to see. Looks like the Democrats are just as threatened by the truth as the Republicans are. Hmm.
For more information on the incident mentioned in my last blog, here's an article in which Nathan Weber explains how he was beaten by the police. Let's have a closer look at Nathan's face, shall we?
Could be worse, right? I mean Nathan just kind of looks like that normally, but he's clearly been beaten in the face with a blunt object as well. Also this picture is out of focus. Sorry, I didn't take it.
One more thing and then I'll go. Just so you know, a lot of what Governor Palin said last night wasn't exactly the truth. Here's Fact Check's take on what she had to say. Remember, she hates the polar bear, an animal that looks more cuddly than Nathan Weber, but is, in fact, far more dangerous.
For real, once my friends stop getting the shit beaten out of them for doing their jobs and exercising their Constitutional rights, I'll get off my soap box. Until then, God bless America.
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