Speedkill

Just like Florida and Michigan:

SUNRISE, FLA. — Desperate to get attention for her cause to seat Florida and Michigan delegates, Hillary Clinton compared the plight of Zimbabweans in their recent fraudulent election to the uncounted votes of Michigan and Florida voters saying it is wrong when “people go through the motions of an election only to have them discarded and disregarded.”

“We’re seeing that right now in Zimbabwe,” Clinton explained. “Tragically, an election was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people,” Clinton told the crowd of senior citizens at a retirement community in south Florida.

That’s, um, insane. It’s something you say when you have zero integrity left. She’s also lying about how she’s ahead in the popular vote. I say lying because she’s not an idiot.

She really could just continue campaigning, attacking McCain, promoting her ideas, etc. She doesn’t have to pull this shit. But she is. It makes me wonder if she had any integrity to start with.

I haven’t been paying much attention to Montana’s AG race. I probably should. I missed this, from around a week ago.

One of the Republican candidates runs SETI@home. He’s now being mocked for being an alien hunter.

Seriously? You’re mocking someone for running a program that helps analyze radio signals? This isn’t some guy running around looking for UFOs and touting abduction stories. He’s donating spare computing power to a cause that’s unlikely to succeed, but hardly something to disparage.

Not only that, he’s been doing that since 1999, when the project started. While it hasn’t succeeded in locating an ETI signals, it was a demonstration of a large distributed computing project, the first of its kind. Now we have ones like Folding@home and Einstein@home, which do uncontroversial and useful work using the same or similar architecture as what was developed for SETI@home. They pioneered those kinds of projects, in other words.

I can see thinking SETI is a waste of time, but mocking someone for running SETI@home makes you a moron.

The Edwards endorsement hopefully will help push Hillary towards withdrawing from the race. Unlikely, I know, but I can dream, right?

My attempt to research and make a post about each of Democratic primary candidates died pretty quickly, so I never got to Obama. That’s who I’ve been leaning towards since early in the race and who I’m fully supporting at this point.

There’s plenty to like about him and his policies. His stance on different technology issues is excellent: government transparency by putting more information online, a CTO for the government, increased funding for scientific research, improving broadband infrastructure, more funding for clean energy research (rather than just emissions caps), etc. It’s solid stuff all around and his campaign has demonstrated that they understand how to use technology to great effect with the fund raising machine they’ve created. On foreign policy he’s not perfect (no candidate is), but he’s pretty close. This is a good assessment of our current situation:

The President would have us believe that every bomb in Baghdad is part of al Qaeda’s war against us, not an Iraqi civil war. He elevates al Qaeda in Iraq — which didn’t exist before our invasion — and overlooks the people who hit us on 9/11, who are training new recruits in Pakistan. He lumps together groups with very different goals: al Qaeda and Iran, Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents. He confuses our mission.

And worse — he is fighting the war the terrorists want us to fight. Bin Ladin and his allies know they cannot defeat us on the field of battle or in a genuine battle of ideas. But they can provoke the reaction we’ve seen in Iraq: a misguided invasion of a Muslim country that sparks new insurgencies, ties down our military, busts our budgets, increases the pool of terrorist recruits, alienates America, gives democracy a bad name, and prompts the American people to question our engagement in the world.

By refusing to end the war in Iraq, President Bush is giving the terrorists what they really want, and what the Congress voted to give them in 2002: a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.

What Obama lists as what he’s going to do are all good steps, but I don’t think they address the real root of al Qaeda’s appeal: American troops in the Middle East. However, his approach is progress and will keep us far safer than the McCain/Bush approach of perpetual war.

That’s my quick brief on why I like him. Obviously, he’s a politician and he’s promised more than he can deliver. Some of his stances are annoying or just fluff. But he’s not just the lesser of two evils, either. I think he’s actually a good candidate.

A NY Times Op-Ed says Obama is considered an apostate under Islamic law. An author at the Huffington Post says that’s wrong.

I have to say, Eteraz’s response is strange. He delves into the technicalities of Sharia law and finds that Obama doesn’t meet the criteria. Sounds like he’s right, but I don’t know. Still, the fact that Islam has these laws and that they’re actually implemented is frightening. Apparently, you can whisper in a child’s ear and then he or she becomes Muslim. After that, he or she could be legally killed for abandoning Islam.

It just makes you want to move to Saudi Arabia and father a bunch of children with a couple slaves (wives, sorry), doesn’t it?

So now both Obama and Clinton are pandering to the anti-vaccine crowd, just like McCain.

Obama is the least worst here, though not by much. McCain says there’s strong evidence a preservative in the vaccines is causing autism. This is obviously and dangerously wrong. Clinton’s answers to the questionnaire indicate she is going to work to remove thimerosal from vaccines and fund investigations into the link between vaccines and autism. That’s advocating unnecessary, but not obviously dangerous actions. Obama simply said the science is inconclusive and more research is needed. That’s wrong, but contains fewer unnecessary actions than Clinton’s position (then again, he doesn’t say he doesn’t support removing thimerosal from vaccines).

Still, this is all very annoying. Stop pandering to obnoxious idiots, please.

Seriously? Maybe it wasn’t the brightest remark Obama’s ever made, but come on. It’s now elitist to say some people in small towns are bitter and frustrated and their politics reflect that? I think that’s just true.

Now, on a broader scale, I think he’s wrong. Gun culture and the Christian Right are hardly due to economic frustration, even though frustrated and bitter people exist. But we’re (again) not having a debate on the merits of his comment. We’re talking about how elitist and condescending it was.

Isn’t this over yet?

I will eventually start commenting on politics again. For now, this isn’t a bad perspective on the recent candidate visits to our state. I’m not a Clinton supporter, but it does appear a lot of Obama supporters were acting like idiots. Then there’s the raving lunatic in LitW’s comments, but that’s really not different than usual.

On the other hand, Clinton isn’t doing anything to impress people lately. Claiming she was under fire when she wasn’t, claiming that she was criticizing the Iraq war before Obama…it’s more than a little annoying. The pure cynicism that is her advocacy for seating MIchigan and Florida is older, but still damned annoying.

She’s behind by every measure. It’s close, but essentially impossible for her to come out on top. She’s going to have to have the superdelegates overturn the will of Democratic voters. That’s a terrible outcome for the party, so I can’t blame people for thinking she has sense of entitlement.

I’ve filled out an NCAA tournament bracket on espn.com every year since 5th grade. And yet I just can’t muster the interest this year. It’s not like I pay attention to college basketball during the season, but still.

Obama’s speech on race was very very good. That hasn’t stopped the silliness, though. Did you know you can declare Obama’s candidacy on the decline without any evidence and that a major speech has failed, just hours after it was given? Me neither. I need more of an indication than right-wing hysteria.

Atheists are utopian warmongers who think everyone is a good person? Can I not believe in Chris Hedges?

I was going to write a post about Barack Obama’s preacher’s comments (and something else, but I can’t remember what it was now), but you can just read this instead. Is Obama a closet militant who’s going to establish a white guilt day and make us celebrate Kwanzaa? Is that what we’re afraid of?

I thought he was a Muslim, anyway. He clearly doesn’t listen to the guy if he’s just going to that church to conceal his true religion. Hmm, another issue that’s built on trying to expose Obama for who he “really” is.

You know, Obama’s a Democrat. Contrary to what lazy political observers think, he does have positions on the issues. The GOP typically doesn’t have a problem attacking Democrats on issues. I mean, demonizing Democrats for maybe wanting to raise taxes is dumb, but it’s issue-based. With Obama, we seem to get attacks that insinuate he’s not who he says he is. I wonder why that is.

Is Rehberg going to have a fight on his hands? Jay says yes.

I suppose someone has to be a cheerleader for Montana Democrats, but come on. He’s going after Rehberg’s support of the Bush administration? Yeah, we tried that last time. That was about all Lindeen talked about. Sure, Bush’s approval rating has fallen sharply, but Rehberg’s hasn’t and Bush is going away. I wish Hunt the best, but he’s going to overcome Rehberg’s approval ratings and name recognition, when the last Democratic challenger wasn’t even close? Color me skeptical.

Again, I hope Hunt does put up a good fight and at least bring Rehberg down a few notches, and he’ll have to do something unbelievably stupid for me not to vote for him, but I would be surprised if Rehberg’s even remotely worried at this point.