Library Etiquette:

Just a quick note:  Don't come to the "Quiet Study" section of the library to have your lunch of potato chips.  I swear this guy in the carrol behind me was chomping through the loudest bag of chips in history.  That's all he was doing.  He was just sitting there eating as loudly as he could.  Then he left.  

Don't do that.  Don't be a jerk.  

The McCain Campaign gets nasty.

Palin has been called the "attack dog" of the McCain campaign, and now she's kicking it into overdrive. Unfortunately, it's not as easy to sling mud now as it was in the old days. Now we have the internet and sources are easy to check. Easy as pie.

She claimed at a speech that Obama is pals with terrorists. She based this on an article which says that Obama and Bill Ayres (founder of the Weather Underground) are from the same neighborhood in Chicago and have met a few times at the University of Chicago where they served on the same board.

Like some of the students we all get every year, Palin apparently didn't read all the way to the bottom of the article that she cites. Unfortunately for her the end of that article says that there is no evidnece that the men were close or friends or that Obama has ever expressed anything but distain for the man's past actions.

This is one of those attacks which people who are looking for a reason to vilinize Obama will latch onto without checking their facts. I hope that they read CNN and kill this slander.

Justice!

Finally! Video game fans, rejoice! Video game and entertainment foe Jack Thompson has been disbarred. It's about time!

(Edit: I just noticed that he looks a little like Jack Hanna. NOT the same guy. Jack Hanna is a good person.)

VP Debates!

Call me a nerd, but I watched the VP debates and I took notes. Here are a few of the things that I noticed.

Palin said at one point that McCain is such a "maverick" because he doesn't vote on his party line. He goes against the grain. The odd thing about saying this is that there are only two ways to vote in the Senate. If he doesn't vote on his party line, then he votes with the other party. As Biden pointed out at several occasions, that means that McCain and Obama voted the same way on lots of issues. Often these were issues that Palin brought up as "times Obama was wrong." She didn't mention (maybe it wasn't in her Cliff's Notes) that this also makes McCain "wrong" on those same issues.

Perhaps it's only me, but "Vote for McCain because he votes with the Democrats!" sounds like a weird sort of thing to say when you're a Republican.

Neither candidate was in favor of gay marriage. Biden believes that homosexuals should have the same rights of hospital visitation and cohabitation and inheritance as heterosexuals, but he doesn't think that marriage laws should be changed. Palin is just a bigot. She doesn't think they should have rights like these because it is too close to allowing marriage. She almost said "slippery slope," and I almost typed "a bridge too far." Puns are delicious.

So is irony. Perhaps that's particularly odd from a home-wrecking adulterer.* Clearly she is concerned with "protecting" marriage, and clearly those homosexuals who want to get married are a greater threat to the institution of marriage than adultery. Clearly.

Just a few more things:
1) Palin doesn't like to focus on the past when she's getting called out on it. Biden is right when he says "Past is prologue." That's a great comment, folks. Past is prologue.

2) Biden totally dodged the question regarding promises that their compaign wouldn't be able to keep in the current financial climate. He did it really well, though. He talked about the other campaign's promises, and which ones the Obama/Biden ticket wouldn't keep. It was so slick that it almost got past me. Palin, on the other hand, said that they would literally keep every promise that they have made. Right. As if that has ever happened. I don't remember the last time that a mute was elected to the White House.

3) "Drill-baby-drill" is a chant that makes my skin crawl. What the hell are people thinking when they chant that shit? Have they not heard of pollution? Ugh. Just ugh.

4) Palin actually said that nuclear weapons used as a deterant created a "nice, stable situation." Someone needs to read some Walzer and/or look up this thing called "the cold war" when they get home...

5) Palin is governor of a "huge state." Come on. Your entire state has 670 thousand people. Dallas, TX has over 1.2 million people. Houston has double that. You have land area, but you don't have people. Land doesn't need government. People do. No one is fooled.

I'll leave you with a question: Do you think paying taxes is patriotic? I waffle on this question, but Biden seems to think that it is and Palin made fun of him for it. I want your reactions. Do you think I've been unfair here? Are taxes patriotic?



* That link is to the National Enquirer. They mostly run trash news, but following a lawsuit a while back they are rumored to have the most stringent standards for truth in reporting around. Judge for yourself.