Archive - 2008

Ready to learn how to spin something the GOP way? The way that John McCain and company has handled the Sarah Palin vetting process but more importantly her qualifications was epic. I actually took notes and have registered the tactic in my brain. Perhaps I will use it one day but until that day comes, I shall feel happy to share their strategy with you.

The hypocrisy of the Republican Party does not seem to surprise me anymore. Sometimes I think that Republicans are in denial and lie to themselves to believe the non-sense that they reiterate. In fact, they seemed like zombies as they chanted, “USA or Drill, Drill, Drill” during John McCain’s speech.

Then I heard something that struck a chord with me. As Palin stood on the stage she touted how she fought the oil companies. She claimed to be a maverick and had stood up to big business. She secured $1200 per person for the state of Alaska due to her initiative. "It's a one-time, special return of the vast wealth that Alaska has right now. We're returning it to the resource owners, the people of Alaska," claims Palin. Republicans praised her and labeled her a reformer for this cause.

I do not recommend anything that I have not tried out first. So, when Michael Koppy first contacted me about his song “One Great Mornin” I was hesitant to promote it without listening to it. Half a month later I can proudly and confidently approve the song.This song is what every Southern Progressive needs to hear in order to energize the base. It is perhaps that I am reading Bob Moser’s Blue Dixie that I have become more conscious about the South. As a Southerner I have felt ashamed of being a progressive . . . it felt taboo to claim that you supported Democrats. I have learned that we closet Democrats actually outnumber conservatives.

It takes two to tango and when it comes to John McCain’s poor choice in selecting Sarah Palin, he is only 50% guilty of committing the offense. Palin deserves equal scrutinizing and is at fault just as McCain should be.

You see . . . when McCain asked her to be the Vice President, Palin had the opportunity to use good judgment and ignore her ego and decline because she was not prepared for the position, just like the Governor from Louisiana that McCain was courting until he declined the offer publicly. Palin should have declined the offer because she was not prepared but more importantly just a month ago she admitted that she did not even know what the VP did.

I finished my 10k and I am not dead! This is good news since I was concerned that I might not have been up to it physically nor mentally when it came to the daunting hills in Austin. The route was entertaining . . . the little that I could remember. Honestly, the whole time I was thinking, "Damn, when is the Sea of Red Shirts going to spread out." That never did happen. It was a cluster f*ck of people running side by side. There were over 10,000 runners I heard but who knows.

At 6:30 CDT I will be participating in the Nike+ Human Race 10k in Austin, Texas. I have been training for 6 weeks to run this 10k and although I am no where near the shape I was in April of 2007, I am ecstatic about running. Friends will come out to support me like they did on my first run.

This time though, Marco is joining me on the ride. I know how tough it will be but Marco does not realize that hills are deceiving. He has not been training as aggressively as I have but he is also in much better shape than me. He actively swims and plays tennis so that counts. I have prepared mentally for the challenge and am ready to take the hills head on.

So I woke up this morning with what seemed to be the worst hang over . . . I don't recall why I ever started drinking last night but one thing is for sure . . . I had the worst nightmare. Imagine this:

I had a nightmare about McCain selecting his Vice President. It was a she . . . and before I go on, I almost crapped my pants because I thought it was that b!tch from my home state of Texas. She goes by the name Kay Bailey Hutchinson and she is as conservative as they come. I crossed my fingers and held my breath but it wasn't KB. WTF?

Who the hell is Sarah Palin? This is when my dream transcended into nightmare.  McCain had selected an inexperienced Governor from Alaska that had less than 2 years of experience. My stomach fell ill and my head started hurting. So I began drinking because as I became more inebriated it seemed that it was not reality.

Less than 24 hours after Barack Obama gave a historic speech accepting the Democratic nomination that was viewed by over 38 million people, McCain announced to the world that his Vice President would be Sarah Palin. Who, you may ask? Palin is a social/economic conservative that is the current governor of Alaska.

If you think you feel that you have never heard of her . . . you are not alone. She is considered a political noob with less than 2 years in office as Alaska’s governor. U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX), who at one point was considered a potential VP prospect for McCain, claims, “I don't know too much about her." Even some in her party do not know much about her and who can blame them?

In what may be a paramount case and a precedent that may haunt the RIAA and MPAA for years to come, a U.S. judge concluded that transcoding is not a crime. Transcoding is the automatic process that most websites like YouTube employ to convert any user submitted video file into the flash format.

Judge Howard Lloyd of the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California dismissed a 2006 copyright infringement case against Veoh. The issue at hand was whether Veoh should be held liable for the actions of a user who submitted content from the adult entertainment company IO Group. Veoh was compliant with IO Group’s to remove the content but nonetheless ended up in court over the matter.

Hillary Clinton did what she had to do. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to be on that stage but under different circumstances. She united a party that media tried to imply was divided. There were some that speculated that the party would split and there would be a Democratic Party with Barack Obama as their nominee and a Third Party with Clinton as their nominee.

That of course did not happen. Clinton’s message was clear. As Ezra Kelin notes, “Her candidacy was about something, not someone. She is a Democrat, not a Hillaryite.” Those that supported Clinton believed in an effort to expand health care, shift our economic policy so it benefits the middle class and rectify the damage that Bush has done to our foreign image and policy.