side of fries

The husband’s younger brother keeps sending him articles by Glenn Beck.   If you’d like to feel stupider (or more stupid for you grammar Nazis), check this out.   An interesting fellow, the younger brother, and much too smart to read Beck.

WEATHER UPDATE: a gust of desperation wafting in from Camp McCain.  Really?  This is the path to the presidency?  Comparing an accomplished lawyer, law professor and legislator to a semi-talented and wealthy pop star who kissed Madonna and shaved her head is … oh I don’t know … what rhymes with pathetic?

UPDATE: I love that the Obama response references a Britney song.  Would have been better if they could have worked in “Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman.”

I keep hearing the word “presumptuous” as it relates to Obama’s recent trip to the Middle East and Europe.  The Huffington Post has a nice round up here.  So now it’s a bad thing for a candidate to go abroad, act like an adult, appear intelligent and competent and maintain bladder control.  What an asshole.

sad, burnt, Obamaless yard

So I look out my window at my front lawn–currently in a persistent non-vegetative state–and notice that my Obama lawn sign is gone.  To be precise, half of it is gone–the half with the actual sign and its internal metal support–and all I have left are two metal stakes in the heart of my al dente urban carpet.   Game on thieves.  Game on.

At least those pesky ’sconies spelled everything right.  It doesn’t always happen with vandals or protesters.

I remember working at various crummy jobs that required me to wait as some nice lady dug through her purse muttering, “I know I have a dime and three pennies in here somewhere.”  I grew to loathe exact change.  From the start, I think Barack Obama has been pretty clear on what he means by change: no more red and blue thinking caps.  Some may think Senator Obama created shades of gray.  He didn’t.  But he has reminded people that life, and by extension, policy, rarely plays out at the extremes.  Senator Obama has already made some frenemies on the left with his decision about FISA.  Editorial boards are bummed out because the Senator actually wants to win and is forgoing public financing.   (It’s too bad that in the midst of their melancholy they can’t find the time to report on McCain’s financing shenanigans.)  Most recently Obama’s announcement of structuring a relationship between government and faith-based groups has some liberals feeling squeamish.  The problem with being the “change” guy is that everyone wants you to give them exact change–as if providing each potential voter with the exact combination of policy initiatives and ideological synchronicity they desire is as easy as getting a ten, two fives and five ones.  I know that there is a certain satisfaction in exact change–a kind of triumph of perseverance and a pride in a nice variety of coinage.  This is not without merit but it is no more noble than rounding up.  So what do we do with a politician that has fifteen cents instead of thirteen cents?  We take thirteen cents of change and trust them with the two we give back.