GOP presidential candidate John McCain says America is better off with a Christian President. "I admire the Islam. There's a lot of good principles in it," he said. "But I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles, personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith." I understand what he means, and I get his intent, but that just reaffirms my belief that McCain is a nut living an antiquated view. Sure the country was founded on Christian beliefs, if by that you mean most of the founding fathers were Christian. But that does not mean the country was built on those beliefs. It was built by a group of misfits for the most part, who supported freedom, all freedoms, and did support the notion of church and state being two separate and even mutually exclusive ideals. Many religionuts will argue that the country was built on religion by quoting statements made by a few of the founders, as will many of the separationists quote statements enforcing their view. But the fact is that this nation was founded on the idea of freedom. Freedom from persecution, freedom from oppression, freedom from injustice. We are failing in those. McCain is turning out to be the worst kind of politician. He is a religious pusher, trying to encourage people to think with their soul instead of their brain. Do you know what would be best for this country right now? A muslim president. Ironically, how would a terrorist nation actually argue that we are the devil when we are led by a muslim? I'm sure they would rationalize, but frankly it would cause at least some thinking by the individuals. By no stretch am I saying to vote for a muslim. I'm also not saying to vote for a Christian, or a Jew, or a Buddhist, etc. I am saying to vote for a President. Vote for a person who will take the country in the direction you want. Religion should never figure into it. You religion is yours, and yours alone. You may share it with others, but your actual beliefs are only yours, and are only portrayed loosely by the religious title to which you subscribe. I know that this falls mostly upon deaf ears, since so many people in this country believe that religion is what makes you who you are, which is sad to me. Instead, make decisions based on only their political answers. Evolution is not a political subject, since it is a choice as to whether you want to believe or not. Education equality as a nation is a political subject, since you cannot avoid the horrible public school systems, if you are not wealthy. By McCain, underhandedly telling Christians to not vote for a Muslim, must mean that Obama must be doing well. It also means he is a religionut. If i had been asked that question, I would have answered, "Sure why not? But frankly I would vote for anyone who I thought could be good for this country. Their religious beliefs are irrelevant to that decision." Unfortunately, the long list of retards we currently have up for candidacy is appalling. I am beginning to think Lewis Black has the right idea. Have a blind person through a dart at the map of the USA, air drop a monkey at that spot in secret, the first person who's hand the monkey grabs becomes president. source: McCain

Pedro Zapeta, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, worked for 11 years washing dishes and living frugally to bring money back to his home country. He managed to save $59,000, and apparently 2 years ago Zapeta was ready to return to Guatemala, so he carried a duffel bag filled with $59,000 which was all the cash he had scrimped and saved over the years to the airport. But when Zapeta tried to go through airport security, an officer spotted the money in the bag and called U.S. customs officials. Customs of course asked how much he had, and when he said 59k, the of course seized it because the limit on how much you can take out of the US is $10,000 (plus 9k in donations). Two lawyers are now working pro-bono to get him his money. This of course sounds like a horrible story of the government screwing someone, but its not totally the case. The fact is he was here illegally and I would assume from the article that he did not pay taxes on his income. I say just take out the taxes, with no penalties, and give him whats left. The fact that he was illegal is irrelevant in my opinion. I agree that ignorance of the law is no excuse, but, I would be willing to bet most readers break laws all the time without realizing it, and many times even while knowing full well what they are doing. Unfortunately this could have all been avoided with a little extra intelligence about it. If the money had been in a bank account, he could have wired it, through the appropriate exchange converting it to Quetzals, and probably had no issues, except maybe to raise a flag with DHS, which would have paid him a visit months after he had already gone back home. But nope, instead now he has to fight the unbending will of a government that is so fearful of its own shadow, that they gotta take joy in squashing the little guy. Come on, just work it, figure out a solution that works and is remotely fair. Now mind you, if he is unwilling to deal, and pay his due taxes, even without penalties, and he thinks he is truly entitled to ALL of the money, then fuck him, buy him a ticket home and kick his ass out. Realistically, I am going to guess that the 19k the government finally agreed to let him leave with, since that would have not triggered the Customs Department to care, is probably more than he could have if he paid taxes. But then again, i don't know since $5.50/hour seems impossible to me for anyone to live on in America. via CNN.com

If you are one of the dumb who bought Windows Vista Ultimate for the extras, you now have reason to live. Sort of. The big cool awesomeness that is Vista, is now officially Ultimate, and all because of DreamScene. If your Pig of an OS is not slow enough, you now can run an animated desktops!!! HOLY SHIT you say? I know I know. You almost peed your pants when you read that. Now I got Vista because I am a professional who assesses software and makes recommendations to clients, So i needed the biggest and baddest. However, I also was kinda looking forward to the cool little extras you are supposed to get. So being an early adopter and for professional reasons I got it. I have had many issues with it, due to the lack of drivers and such as well. But now!! I can keep Vista because of DreamScene... Though, I had this months ago??? I DID!!! It was released by StarDock and is called DeskScapes. Hmm, now I feel kinda deflated. But wait, let me think a little more. Oh yea, I have always been able to do this since Active Desktop was introduced and Flash. All you had to do was make an HTML page with a flash movie in it, and viola, animated desktop. Wow, I must have been a freaking trailblazer or something. Via Windowsultimate

Stupid says as stupid does. A followup to the thread of dumb earlier has appeared. Elizabeth Hasselbeck defended her retarded co-host when she said:

I don’t think you have to learn to be perfect either… you’re just yourself. I thought you handled that so well yesterday. You said ‘You know I actually, my mind is full of what’s my son doing right now, what am I going to feed him for dinner, I’m a mom.’ Like I think that’s completely fine to say ‘You know what, today I don’t care if the earth is round or flat. I may not care tomorrow, I just wanna know that…’

Yea, cause like, thinking is hard, and stuff. Really? You actually need to think about the answer to the question, "is the world flat or round?" If thoughts of your kids occupy so many of your brain cycles, that you can't even grasp the simplicity of the question posed, you might need to send your kids to military school. It wasn't a hard question. Sure, great, power to you that you are so focused on your kids, and want to raise them right. I'm glad for you that your kids are so important, but wow. If you can't give a knee-jerk correct response to the question, "is the Earth flat or round?", because of this preoccupation with thoughts of your kids, then how in the hell do you get dressed in the morning? How have you not died yet by forgetting to look both ways when you cross the street? How have you not forgotten you were driving and crashed into a pole? How have you ever even been able to leave your house, ever? The defense of 'you can't always be perfect' is a bullshit excuse stupid people use to cover for their ignorance. Smart people know that you can't be perfect, so it never needs to be said that someone doesn't have to be. The only real valid excuse would have been to say that you got confused by the question, because it was such an obvious answer, that you wondered if maybe you had misunderstood it. BUT, the stupid chick didn't say that. Saying you don't care, is a cop-out and just highlights the ignorance which you have embraced. BTW, my ranting is not really targeted at the dipshits on The View, but at the media in general. You don't need to be perfect, but try to not be so imperfect. No one would ever get in a uproar if you couldn't explain the theory of relativity, or know the speed of light, but the question wasn't of that caliber. It was like asking you what your address is, and you responding, "I dunno, I like, never really thought about it". Maybe I'm being a bit high-and-mighty about it, but come on. People becoming dumber is one thing, but people defending it is just wrong. It's not OK to be dumb because of not caring or trying, but it is worse to think it is OK, and to even defend it. Cletus is winning... via The Daily Background

err LOL. True today, even in medieval terms. My parents need to see this so they can feel my pain... via The Red Ferret Journal

At first when i saw this story I was hoping that it was just a 'context' issue. Ummm.... It's not apparently. The estro-queens are having a gab about assorted topics like evolution. Whoopi Goldberg is yammering about how her belief is both evolution and god, and although she doesn't really do a good job explaining her position, I will help out and say that her belief is the God-Spark belief, in which God built the framework for the universe and made all the rules, sparked life but then let it run from there. Well Whoopi then asked Sherri Shepherd if the world was flat... This is now the evidence of why America is becoming dumber. It is actually acceptable to say on a well watched, national television show, that you "never thought about it" and that it is unimportant. What is important apparently, and all consuming, is "how i'm going to feed my child". The 'read between the lines' part of it that is funny to me, was that Whoopi is apparently trying to make a case for science having a place, even in the most religious of minds, because sometimes science is completely right, such is the case of the Earth being round... But she did not expect someone to actually not know the answer... LOL I hope this woman's kids are sterile and can't procreate, because frankly, if you are a parent and have no idea if the Earth is round or flat, your kids are going to grow up to be complete fucking morons with you at the helm of their education. Children in the middle of nowhere, in the bush in Africa know that the Earth is round. How is this level of ignorance acceptable in the public image? Why do we, as a population, embrace 'dumb' so willingly. Although I have not looked, I am sure there are thousands of people defending her and probably saying things equally as ignorant as "you can't be smart in everything..." Please, show me one thing she is actually smart in. After that display, I won't believe you. Via Boing Boing

So last week I needed to do a reinstall and decided to go for vista, again... (the last time is here) this is the second time, and AGAIN i got bit in the ass. Apparently Quicktime movies have a problem on Vista with certain combinations of software and apparently hardware. And guess what... I seem to have the lucky combo. I was converting a quicktime movie for a client to flash FLV, and the movie would get stuck about 6 seconds into it. I of course wasted half a day because I assumed the video was corrupted, until i played it in VLC, which had no problem. VLC has its own codecs apparently. Well, the problem is with the actual quicktime codec from apple, under vista. UGH. verified it on my laptop where everything worked as it should. There is apparently a hotfix, which i am going to try. its KB932094. so, FUCK VISTA until SP2 at this point. It's not just because of the quicktime issues, but there have been a whole host of issues I have run into. WinTV runs like shit. Visual Studio bitches about need admin rights. (LOL its their dev package and it complains, though its not really important for most things). FireFox crashes constantly SLOW for some reason, though i didnt have this problem the first time G-data virus software has issues with the Web monitoring, screwing up the proxying so I type in google.com and get my damn Cdrive instead. So thats been turned off... and here is the big wammy.... IT WON'T WORK WITH MY XBOX360??!?!>!?!?! WTF!!! It connects up just fine, media center loads up great, everything is perfect, until i try to play a movie. I get a stupid network connection lost error after 10 seconds of hitting the movie folder, every time. Happens in the music folder as well. Wasn't the whole point in Vista Ultimate that it would work flawlessly with the xbox360? This is a 100mbit-cat5-wired-connection, not wifi. There is nothing complicated in the network, wifi router and a wired router, thats it. I don't know why i keep trying to upgrade, other than I PAID FOR IT and feel i should be using it...

Beta Gel is a soft silicone gel developed by Tokyo-based Geltec Corporation. Its a new and improved version of Alpha Gel. It can stop a speeding egg. Why is my dashboard not made of this? When will it be in my shoes? Seems like you could make very thin head protection out of this, though only against impacts. Crash mats in gyms? Pretty cool though, almost looks like a magic trick more than anything, but its not apparently. via Japan Probe

UK scientists have invented a polymer that acts like gum, but disolves with water. The idea is that if gum is made from this polymer then there will be no more issue with people spitting gum on the sidewalks and the expensive gum removal equipment that is needed. Instead now, rain even can wash away the gum. Great invention, although there are a few issues. First, is that not all gum would be made with this polymer. If I was a gum company, why would I make my gum with this stuff? Most likely it will be more expensive, at least to begin with, and probably will have a license fee to use. Also, why is it that people can't spit their gum in the trash? I seriously like the idea of whipping people who are caught spitting gum out on the street. 10 lashes for being a littering, defacing, dick seems appropriate to me. via BBC NEWS

So we accidentally washed a diaper in with the washrags, and the hydro-trapping-gel that is in the diaper got all over the place and has messed up the washrags. They are kinda gross, with a gel coating on them. So I just put them in the washer, an LG TROMM Front Load SteamWasher which is basically a top of the line uber-machine. I started turning on everything. Sanitary, extra rinse, heavy soil, prewash, stain cycle, and water plus... The result, for about 1 pound of washrags is almost 3 hours!!! hahahahaha. I wonder how long a full load would have been, since the thing has load sensing tech that adjusts the times and water amounts... Normally a very efficient washer, using as little water as possible, but I just thought this was funny.