Green Violet

That was the old way, welcome to the new way.

Maddow talks to head of VoteVets.org on McCain’s ratings with DAV and other vet’s groups.

…is pretty easy to do. I’ve been thinking along those lines and this Krugman editorial (05Sept08, NYTimes) does parallel that idea.

There’s a direct line from that student election to Spiro Agnew’s attacks on the “nattering nabobs of negativism” as “an effete corps of impudent snobs,” and from there to the peculiar cult of personality that not long ago surrounded George W. Bush — a cult that celebrated his anti-intellectualism and made much of the supposed fact that the “misunderestimated” C-average student had proved himself smarter than all the fancy-pants experts.

And when Mr. Bush turned out not to be that smart after all, and his presidency crashed and burned, the angry right — the raging rajas of resentment? — became, if anything, even angrier. Humiliation will do that.

I guess it’s the Republican reptile brain strategy and it does work grotesquely well. It always takes a lot more effort to think charitably (to be “godly”, not to put to fine a point on it) than to be self-appeasingly snotty and hatefully tribal.

I will guess that my experience in watching Obama’s acceptance speech — at one point thinking, “please, give me a call to volunteer, to help my fellow citizens; do what I wanted Bush to do after 9-11″ — is in stark contrast to the self-congratulatory contempt for others that the Palin and McCain speeches inspired.

But like I said, it’s always the easier path.

…and has a vagina.

Ask Your Lawmaker

Has been added to my “news” regular reads. You ask questions, vote on what should be followed up on, and they’ll go bug the Capitol Hill lawmaker.

I’m voting Republican

Who owns what on television?

All those hundreds of TV channels may lead you that there’s a true diversity and variety in today’s television … but you’d be wrong. A handful of large companies control what you see, hear, and read every day.

Running for Office: It’s Like A Flamewar with a Forum Troll, but with an Eventual Winner

Sean Tevis of Kansas is running for state representative. In a different way. With cartoons.

The real McCain

McCain’s not so nice. But we knew that. (The Guardian)

A slight (cough) difference between McCain and Obama tax proposals

I’m sure you’re one of the poor millionaire class that needs the helping hand.

Maureen Dowd on Obama’s tour of Middle East.

That old skill that Obama honed at the Harvard Law Review of listening until everyone at the table felt they had been heard (and agreed with) is coming in handy on his presidential dress rehearsal. [...] The Angry One can try to paint The One as having bad judgment. But who is being advised by Kissinger, the man who helped keep us in Vietnam and get us into Iraq?

My family car is an SUB and I love it

On my new “sport utility bicycle” I can cart groceries, take my kids shopping, haul a barbecue grill and make a margarita. [...] “To test whether I could abandon my four-wheel behemoth, I spent a week trying to do my errands using my new SUB. I aimed high right out of the gate: the family grocery trip to Trader Joe’s.” (Article has movie, too, and link to Xtracycle.)

What’s next for product placement?

In the US, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox network has struck a deal with McDonald’s, which has bought the right to have two cups of their branded frappuccino appear on the desk in front of the anchors on Fox 5 News.

In Italy, non capiscono “recycling”

For years, it’s been a national embarrassment. Over the past year, it’s spiraled into a crisis damaging Italy’s image all over the world: the heaps of garbage lining the streets of Naples.

The stench alone has kept many visitors away. It began more than 14 years ago, but flared up last year when official dumps were declared full. Residents with no options simply dumped their trash along streets and sidewalks.

[Berlusconi]: “Just think: 60 percent of the total garbage collected in this area is made up of packaging, which is recyclable. So for this we have an education program which will start in the schools and will reach the whole population.”

From the Salon interview with Christian Lander, I find blogs: Stuff White People Like and Stuff Asian People Like. My amusement bubble for the day.

I also love this dress, but I’m not a skinny Asian girl with a spare 3/4 C-note.

Yes, you sly dog. (erm, not a nice thing to say to my very occasional reader. sorry!)

Ahem. In any case, yes, you correctly surmise that I am going back to WP. My brief flirtation with EE never got past the “glances across the room” stage. Certainly not even to sweaty hand-holding.

I think I’ll save myself for Joomla experimentation. I am a bit put out that there’s no simple export for EE posts so I’ll throw a few things out from the “EE since January” database in spare moments. (I can now document my flirtations with other blogs through four sets of tables: WP, Txp, EE, and now back to WP. And that doesn’t include the whatever weird thing I was using before 2003…yeah–can’t remember. It was a flat-file thing I think. On the Mac host.)

Okay. See you on Twitter.

As has been well-reported, Netflix is dropping the Profiles feature for any number of reasons. It has received almost universally bad press from the user community. (I did see one [1] person who, in their best schadenfreude manner, suggested everyone get over it.)

So the tentative plan is to drop the Netflix “4 out” down to either 1 or 2 out and start utilizing the neighborhood Hollywood Video. I wrote to HV-corp contact and they were very nice and are sending me two coupons for free rentals.

Here collecting other options:

Hollywood Video

Greencine

Blockbuster

Cafe DVD

Intelliflix

DVD Avenue

No judgements or evaluations yet made on above. Just link collecting.

Follow-up:

The Fool weighs in