This and That...

[Warph]

"Colleen Lachowicz is a Democratic candidate running for
State Senate in Maine. She's also a level 85 Orc in the
massively popular online game 'World of Warcraft.''


Strange world!!!  Tell me that politics ain't sick!  But, then again....

....I don't see why playing online games should disqualify someone from high office.  Sure she dresses her virtual self up in scary gear out of LOTR and revels in killing with impunity.  So did Julius II.  Should he not have been pope?

"Colleen Lachowicz is a Democratic candidate running for State Senate in Maine. She's also a level 85 orc in the massively popular online game "World of Warcraft." And for that, the Republican party says she is unfit for office.

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/ingame/republicans-out-democrat-world-warcraft-witch-hunt-6283586#

"Maine's GOP has accused Lachowicz of living a "bizarre double life" and set up a website meant to out her participation in the popular online game — a game that currently boasts some 10 million players around the world.

http://www.colleensworld.com/

"Not only does the website show off a picture of the orc character she plays – named Santiaga — it also displays comments that have been dug up from online forums in which Lachowicz talks about her love of the (sometimes violent) game as well as her thoughts on various political topics.

"Among the comments the website attributes to her:

"So I'm a level 68 orc rogue girl. I stab things . . . a lot. Who would have thought that a peace-lovin', social worker and democrat would enjoy that?!"

"I can kill stuff without going to jail. There are some days when this is more necessary than others."

"I'm so jealous! I wish I wasn't at work. I'd much rather be gaming with my guildies!"

"Lachowicz also appears to refer to members of the Tea Party as, well, teabaggers."[/i]


OK, granted... she sounds like a moron.  But think about it: Do you really want your elected officials focused 24/7 on how they can "help" you?  Don't you want them to have all-consuming "hobbies" that deflect their attention away from their legislative duties?  Wouldn't the world have been a better place if Hitler and Stalin had consumed their time playing Grand Theft Auto?

The only truly disturbing thing here is that the news stories describe her as a level 85 orc, while she apparently described herself as a level 68.  Is the MSM, once again, trying to inflate a Democrat's status and so enhance her chances of victory come Election Day?

Please note: I don't know from orcs and levels.  I have a real life... sorta, anyway.

Should Ms. Lachowicz be elected, let's hope she continues to enjoys a rich fantasy life.... in the privacy of her home.... for longer and longer periods of time.  Which is to say, not in the Senate.

....Warph

[Warph]

The Lowest Common Denominators of Education.

And, just as North Korean teachers taught their students to worship Kim Jong Il... Our well pensioned babysitters have filled the gullible heads of our youth with gilded lies of liberalism for decades.  Say a prayer in school? No, no, NO... but it's perfectly acceptable to sing an ode to the socialist Messiah, Mmm, Mmm, Mmm Barack Hussein Obama.

School children in New Jersey being told what to think. The scariest part to me is the apparent lack of objection to this from the kids' parents.
If you are not concerned of what is happening to your country, you truly should be.ewe
If you are aware of what is happening and you are NOT concerned, well I guess we are [screwed]!
Here is the text of this mindless chant:

Barack Hussein Obama
He said that all must lend a hand
To make this country strong again
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said we must be clear today
Equal work means equal pay
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said that we must take a stand
To make sure everyone gets a chance
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said Red, Yellow, Black or White
All are equal in his sight
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
Yes
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

We can't sing Christmas carols in school anymore but this is not a problem?  Wow...[/font][/size]

[Warph]

Did you catch this story, about how IKEA.... Swedish for "That which requireth the Allen wrench"...  shipped copies of its catalog to Saudi Arabia with images of women eviscerated so as not to disabuse Saudi men of the notion that women are vampires?

       

Representatives for Swedish furniture giant IKEA on Monday apologized for removing women from some of the photos in catalogs shipped to Saudi Arabia, and said the blame lies squarely with them, not the local franchisee.

The move to manipulate photos sparked criticism from government officials in Sweden and raised questions about how IKEA is living up to its own values.

IKEA's catalog is shipped all over the world, with the company this year expected to publish 200 million copies with 62 different versions. The bulk of the catalog is exactly the same in most markets, but the company has said in the past it tailors the images to suit fashion-related tastes of local markets.

In some cases, however, the catalog is changed to align with cultural standards.

A comparison of the Saudi catalog to a standard version of the catalog showed that several women photographed in the standard version are missing from pages of the Saudi version. Otherwise, the photos throughout the catalog appear to be virtually identical.

"You cannot remove or retouch women out of reality," Swedish trade minister Ewa Bjorling said in an email. "If women aren't allowed to be seen or work then Saudi Arabia is losing half of its intellectual capital." Ms. Bjorling said the images are another sad example that show there is a long way to go in terms of equality between women and men in Saudi Arabia.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444592404578030274200387136.html

Okay... if Saudi Arabia were practicing, say, a form of Apartheid, would the company be clamoring for its business?  If not, why is the company shipping catalogs over there to begin with?  So foreign nationals can decorate their flats and offices with cheap pine furniture?

           

[Warph]

Don't Let A Liar Lead You!

Obama's statements regarding the attack in Benghazi are a web of lies.

Obama says he has Israel's back. That's a lie.

Obama said Obamacare was not a tax. That was a lie.

Obama said Obamacare wouldn't raise anyone's taxes a single dime. That was a lie. It contains 21 brand new taxes.

Obama swore to uphold and defend the Constitution. That was a lie.

Obama said he had no knowledge of Fast and Furious. That was a lie. He exerted Executive Privilege over it.

Obama said he couldn't enact the "Dream Act" on his own. That was a lie.

Obama claimed to be the 4th best President in history. That's a lie.

Obama claimed that he would walk the picket lines with unions. That was a lie.

Obama says we're better off than we were 4 years ago. That's a lie.

Obama said his "green energy" investments were good investments. That was a lie.

Obama said he'd cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. That was a lie. He's added 6 Trillion dollars TO it.

Obama said that when he became president, Muslim violence against America would end. That was a lie.

Obama wrote his memoirs and asserted they were fact. That was a lie. His story is full of composite characters and events that never existed.

Obama said he never really knew Bill Ayers or Reverend Wright. Those are lies.

Obama says the national security leaks did not come from the white house. That's a lie.

Obama said small business owners did not build their own businesses. That's a lie.

Obama told us that the fence between the U.S. and Mexico was nearly complete. That was a lie.

Obama says the rich are not paying their fair share of taxes. That's a lie. The rich pay nearly 70% of all taxes.

Obama said, "Under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place." That was a lie.

Obama said, "We have run out of places in the US to drill for oil." That's a lie.

Obama said he was not somebody who promotes same sex marriage. That was a lie.

Obama said unemployment would not rise above 8% if he were granted a $787 Billion Dollar stimulus. That was a lie.

Obama said he would have the most transparent administration in history. That was a lie.

Obama said he would close GITMO. That was a lie.

Obama said, "When a bill lands on my Desk, The American people will have 5 days to review it before I sign it." That was a lie.

Obama says he's an American citizen but, he told Columbia he was a foreign student. One of those two claims has to be a lie.

Obama claimed that his mother and father were married and he has said he was born to a single mother. One of those two claims has to be a lie.

[Warph]

Saturday Night Live last night mocked the post debate reaction at MSNBC.

Opening with a parody Rachel Maddow hosting the show, the actor playing Al Sharpton came up with excuses for the president's bad performance including altitude and jet lag.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/snl-mocks-post-debate-chris-matthews-and-msnbc/article/2510051

[Diane Amberg]

The women were eviscerated? EEEEEK...piles of guts on the floor? At least they cleaned 'em up.

[Warph]

Snippy Obama, Whose Heart's Not in It

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/snippy-obama-whose-hearts-not-in-it/263229/

Oct 4 2012, 10:36 AM ET

Once again, the man who once captured the imaginations
of millions delivered an emotionless appeal.

     


It was the most tweeted about political event of the year, and for once the insider tweets matched the television insta-polls: Mitt Romney was the decisive victor in the first presidential debate of this most contested and close of elections.

It was not so much that Romney was great, though he was smooth and personable, but that Obama was not. The president appeared snippy, his eyes flashing angrily during those infrequent moments when he looked at his opponent, his lips pursed and upturned when he looked down -- which was often -- as if he were trying to smile despite sucking on a particularly unpleasant hard candy. Republicans on Thursday morning were calling it a smirk, but it was more than that. There was, in the expression, a mixture of annoyance, impatience, and dislike. Either Obama couldn't stand looking at Romney, or he decided it was a better debating tactic to not even deign to consider him and to address hapless moderator Jim Lehrer and the audience instead of his challenger. The dynamic was set early on: Romney looked at Obama, and Obama looked down or at the moderator. His words appeared equally downbeat.

All of which made me wonder anew about Obama's convention performance, and to what an extent it was not anomalous but intentional and characteristic. I wrote then:

Barack Obama will never be that man again. Whoever he was in 2008, and 2004, Barack Obama will never have his easy swagger and rambunctiously playful enthusiasm ....

That is the truth at the core of his oddly flat convention speech, and at the center of his technically skilled but strangely bloodless reelection campaign. Whoever Obama was when he was elected president has been seared away by two active wars, the more free-ranging fight against al-Qaeda, the worst economic crash since the Great Depression, and the endless grinding fights with Washington Republicans -- and even, I am sure, activists in his own party.

It seemed even truer last night. Would Obama have gotten so significant a convention bounce if it were just about his own speech? His demeanor in Denver made me wonder if his was not in some important sense a borrowed bounce, bequeathed to him by Bill Clinton.

Many are writing this morning that Obama seemed unprepared, but that's hardly credible. He did not stumble over answers or forget his talking points. Rather, he appeared badly prepared by his handlers to pursue a strategy of non-engagement with Romney while aiming to deliver a passable, above-the-fray presentation. It was a classic frontrunner strategy -- first, do no harm -- but it flopped because Romney was so eager to engage, and chose the occasion of the first debate to showcase a classic Romney policy pivot.

If you reread the pre-debate expectations-setting coverage, it appears Obama did exactly what he was gunning to do:

Obama is not particularly fluid in sound bites, so his team is aiming for a workmanlike performance like his speech at the Democratic convention.

That New York Times piece mentioned something else important to consider:

As the candidates prepare, the first trick for Mr. Obama is finding time. His rehearsals have started late and ended early because of events like the tumult in the Middle East. He showed up at one practice just after speaking at a ceremony for the four Americans killed in Libya, and aides found that his mind was elsewhere.

I said it after the convention speech and I'll say it again: If there's something that seems shut down in our once ebulliently optimistic president, it most likely has to do with the wars. Obama is a naturally empathic individual, whose diverse, mobile, international background made him unusually able when it came to assessing new social situations and reading more than people say. Some observers have speculated that Obama needs a crowd, energy he can draw from. But he had that aplenty in Charlotte, and it barely helped.

I suspect a more prosaic explanation: A person of his temperament cannot maintain the same open demeanor when he's dealing with war and death all the time. As, we must recall, Obama has been for years now. If Obama seems shut down, perhaps it is because he has to be to be who he is and do the job he needs to do day in and day out. If his heart didn't seem in it last night, I wonder if it's not in part because the last thing he needs to consider in his work on a day-to-day basis is his heart. It's a long way from being a community organizer, civil-rights lawyer and anti-war state senator to running a drone war that kills innocent civilians, ordering the death of militants, overseeing a policy that's led to an increase in American casualties in Afghanistan, and delivering funereal remarks at a ceremony honoring the returning remains of a slain American diplomat.

It's the only explanation I can come up with for why there is so much self-abnegation in Obama's campaigning. Does it do anything for any sort of voter to hear this, from Obama's closing remarks last night?

You know, four years ago I said that I'm not a perfect man and I wouldn't be a perfect president. And that's probably a promise that Governor Romney thinks I've kept. But I also promised that I'd fight every single day on behalf of the American people and the middle class and all those who are striving to get in the middle class. I've kept that promise and if you'll vote for me, then I promise I'll fight just as hard in a second term.

The emphasis on imperfection, the almost apologetic tone -- it's something that's come and gone in Obama's messaging since before the Republican take-over in 2010.

Romney has had the luxury of being able to campaign undistracted by a day job. More importantly, he's been able to campaign undistracted by dealing with anything substantive or difficult in recent years. Campaigns are physically taxing. But the toll of being president is something different again.

His supporters keep wanting Obama to be who he was in 2008. But that's not who he is anymore.

[Warph]

Obuma Debate Notes:

[Warph]

Big Bird Tries to commit suicide!

Story at: http://thedailycricket.com/2012/10/06/big-bird-hopitalized-after-suicide-attempt/


Peter Bloomquist, the actor who played Big Bird for nearly thirty years, was rushed to a Philadelphia hospital after attempting to take his own life late last night. Police said that Bloomquist, 52, was at the home of a friend when he suddenly donned his Big Bird outfit, covered himself with Herbs de Province and climbed into a gas oven.

Bloomquist, who is homeless and out of work, made headline news in 2006 when the Sesame Street star was found naked and tied to a bed in a seedy New Jersey motel. He was fired from the popular children's show in early 2007, after he was captured shortly after he held up a drugstore. The large feet on the costume slowed the suspects escape and he became the pun of every late-night television show.

Paul 'Snuffy' Brittles, a former co-worker at Sesame Street, said Bloomquist has some personal problems and he's not surprised by the suicide attempt.

" Pete's never been the same since he got canned. Pete was a drinker. He always had a bottle inside the Big Bird costume and between you and me, he never wore clothes under there," said Bittles. "The third time Pete got busted for drunk driving, the Sesame Street writers changed the script and made the letters of the day 'O,U,I'. Pete was so mad that he pulled his head off, attacked an intern with it, and stormed off the set."

Brittles says that he thinks that recent news about Sesame Street and Public Broadcasting System, may have triggered the suicide attempt. During last Wednesdays presidential debate, GOP nominee Mitt 'I'm trying to fit' Romney suggested that the monies allocated to the Public Broadcasting System be put on the federal budget chopping block.

Sesame Street fans, none of whom have ever sent a donation to the Public Broadcast System, contend that the money saved by cutting funding to the program would  be minimal at best.

In 2011, PBS received 445 Million Dollars in federal aid but advocates say that every penny was well spent. Since 1973, PBS produced some of he the most stimulating television programs ever made, such as Another Boring News Show, Remodeling Your Home With Dollars and No Sense, and The Bearded Gardener starring ex-hippie Beatrice Rothchild.

"It's not the responsibility of  the public to keep the Public Broadcasting System going, " said Robert Jackson of the Kill The Rich Foundation. "People need Sesame Street. In fact, it's how most illegal immigrants start to learn English."

Twenty year old Chicago resident Shaniqua Jansante, said she's going to have to quit her job if the Sesame Street show gets cancelled.

"Sesame Street be my baby sitter when I'm at work. I can't afford to have nobody come in and watch 'em, can I? Where I'm gonna get the money. Who gonna pay that? Not that Devil-worshiper Romney, that's for sure," shouted the irate mother of four. "You tell me. What kinda m.....f..... gonna put Big Bird outta work?"


From his hospital bed, a physically restrained  Bloomquist told the The Daily Cricket that he has nothing to live for now.

"When I heard they were cutting Sesame Street, it ripped my gizzards out. I'm pretty much clean and sober now and was thinking about asking for my job back," wept a teary-eyed Bloomquist. "Now I have no job to go back to. I have nothing to live for. I want the world to know that Mitt Romney is a dream buster. I want them to know that Mitt Romney choked my chicken."

[Warph]

           "Don't fire until you see the stack of DVDs"

Well whoop-de-do.... the Supreme Court to decide whether you really own your stuff.  It's all about copyright, even of your grandmother's furniture, and your right to a garage sale.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/your-right-to-resell-your-own-stuff-is-in-peril-2012-10-04

"At issue in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons is the first-sale doctrine in copyright law, which allows you to buy and then sell things like electronics, books, artwork and furniture, as well as CDs and DVDs, without getting permission from the copyright holder of those products.

"Under the doctrine, which the Supreme Court has recognized since 1908, you can resell your stuff without worry because the copyright holder only had control over the first sale.

"That's being challenged now for products that are made abroad, and if the Supreme Court upholds an appellate court ruling, it would mean that the copyright holders of anything you own that has been made in China, Japan or Europe, for example, would have to give you permission to sell it.

"'It means that it's harder for consumers to buy used products and harder for them to sell them,' said Jonathan Band, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Association for Research Libraries. 'This has huge consumer impact on all consumer groups.'

"Another likely result is that it would hit you financially because the copyright holder would now want a piece of that sale."

What is going on in this country?  Religious freedom, freedom of speech, and now the freedom to sell your junk... all being challenged in the courts?  Do we have to fight a frickin' War of Independence every generation?  I guess so, because the Redcoats just won't stay dead.

....Warph