NO MORE F**KING TAX CREDITS!

I've heard one of the speakers during the convention dredge up the Obama promise for college tax credits.

How long will it take before those credits go into the pockets of schools - 2 years? 3 years?

Then what? More tax credits?

What the hell is the point in pumping more money into college coffers?

How about doing this instead? Convene a finance inquiry into every college in the nation. I want to know where all this money is going. How much are they spending for education, sports, recruitment, research, etc. Somebody should tell me why a text book costs $125. Somebody should tell me why one school costs $75,000 per year and another one can teach the same content for $8,000 per year.

We need honesty about what's going on. Maybe there's something that can be done to lift a burden from these institutions that would help stop the absurd increase in education costs. Maybe we have an opportunity to provide for a collegiate program that would be more cost effective than so many institutions are today.

Most likely, we'll find mountains of abuse and borderline money-laundering operations where tons of profit is poured into investments that benefit fund managers and no one else.

So let's force them all to open the books. Let's see where these mountains of money which hang around people's necks in the form of student loans are going - before we start sending them more.

McCain Gains Nationally, Leads In Florida; Indiana Even

OK, in response to latest synopsis of polling data written about here, I have to formally put a stake in the sand. Time on the clock is 2:00 pm, EDT, August 20, 2008.......

Obama has recently decided to pick up his BB-Gun and take a few shots at mccain over the last week during stump stops. I've seen some ads that tie mccain to bush's economic failures. The mild zingers in those ads are cute, but don't leave much of a mark. Ads that focus on how out of touch mccain is, who his lobbyist network includes, how much money he stands to make in saved taxes under his own plan, etc. would have a MUCH stronger impact.

My prognostication - for what it's worth:

• If Obama doesn't use the convention to allow prominent Dems to rip mccain to shreds;
• if Obama doesn't come out forcefully in his repudiation of mccain's plans;
• if Obama doesn't pick a VP candidate who credibly represents "change" and who isn't afraid 'to mix it up;'
• and if he doesn't start using live, hi-caliber ammunition in his broadcast ads immediately after the convention -

then his funding will quickly dry up and he will lose the general election.

Just like Kerry, it's his race to lose. Kerry's campaign found a way to lose - that was to "remain dignified in the face of undignified accusations." And in Kerry's case, it translated directly to, "let the slimeballs do and say anything they want about me without any response from me and the voters will then decide that since I won't stick up for myself, I am a pansy who shouldn't be trusted with a leadership position."

Great plan.

So far, Obama's campaign this Summer has been walking in Kerry's footsteps while timidly including some shots at mccain.

So fine, "rope-a-dope" till the convention... but then let's get busy. Leaving mosquito-bite-sized welts on your opponent isn't going to finish him off. Turn him into swiss cheese.

Obama, Turn Other Cheek at your Peril

OK, another reaction to talk of how Obama should handle mccain slurs. Marty Kaplan's post at HuffingtonPost, Will Someone Please Make Obama Watch the McCain Version of the Katrina DVD? is, as usual, an excellent bit of well-reasoned writing.

Too many people posting comments don't understand that, although people don't process information in exactly the same way, many still have an instinctive analysis that occurs when "judging" people. That judging is done when considering mates, schools, sports, heroes, and, of course, political candidates. We do this at all ages, throughout our lives.

Obviously, the latter - political candidates - is the pertinent item in this discussion. Marty may already know this, but he doesn't note the matter overtly and I think it needs to be highlighted more specifically.

The thing that people who don't know how to win elections fail to realize is that there is another issue beyond gas prices, oil independence, inflation, job loss, health care, education, mortgage market corruption, etc.

The issue is, 'how does a candidate handle abuse.'

It's not a strategy - it's a bona fide ISSUE. People want to know what a candidate will do when bullied, slandered, kicked in the crotch, and sucker-punched. It's evaluated in real time. It's also evaluated over a period of time and there is a cumulative effect to it. The metaphor of a boxing match has been often used when on this topic.... it's a damn good metaphor, too.

It's a subconscious analog to the garden-variety voter for how you will respond to foreign aggressors once elected. Ignoring an aggressor is tantamount to admitting that you'll let them rough up the country. Standing up to aggressive predators like oil companies and lending groups is easy now because it's all posturing. But standing up for yourself, your integrity, and the integrity of your supporters isn't posturing. It's real and in real-time.

Responding crisply, with venom at a level that is congruent with the attack that precipitated the response, is a vital issue. It's one of the few true "on-the-trail" demonstrations of presidential mettle that you can get. Debates are a microcosm of it, but debates are only part of the bigger issue picture.... they are "one round of the boxing match," to use the metaphor.

People may not like it, but that's the way it is. If you won't stand up for yourself, why should anyone expect you to stand up for your country?

Microsoft Does it Again

I just got Office 2007 shoved down my throat at work. Maybe my bias against the swine at Mocrosquid is partially to blame, but this "tool" is literally giving me migraines. I almost never get headaches - seriously. But this thing is such a ridiculously over-engineered, wrapped around obscenely unnecessary interface changes, extraordinarily frustrating, and most of all, completely counter-productive.

Thanks Redmond!

The fact is that Office 95 still covers 95% of all the user's feature needs. Only a handful of people"require" the advanced features that have been introduced since Office 95 was released. In addition, OpenOffice features cover about the same 95% range of features and users, while maintaining a user interface that is easy for Mac and Windows users to instantly adopt.

So what is a company to do with a seriously over-featured cash cow that can't go anywhere else?

Cut support for existing apps, replace the user interface with an absurdly inefficient one, and force all the idiot lemmings who brainlessly upgrade whenever they're told, to send more money to Microsquid in exchange for a product that will force a needlessly exorbitant learning curve penalty on them.

F*cking genius. It will make them billions.

What's the genius? Well, gutting the interface will, over time, condition the moron Office users to invest more time, energy, and money into learning this garbage. In the past, that fear of having to learn something new has prevented moron Windoze users from migrating to the Mac or Linux. For purely illogical reasons that only seem to prove again the old P. T. Barnum quote, "a sucker is born every minute," this "reason" doesn't apply when Microsquid forces them to learn a Microsquid tool from scratch.

Optional change and learning is bad, but forced, expensive change and learning is apparently palatable.

It just doesn't get any more patently stupid and disgusting than that. We live in a land of drunks and Microdick owns the brewery.

Are you going to be one of the 95% user base that can use OpenOffice, but will bow at the altar of Microsquid and pay your tax offering anyway? If so, you are pathetic. And you better get yourself the economy bottle of aspirin.

Hillary Wants [at Least] a First Ballot Vote at the Convention

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

This article made me wretch. I had no idea there were still these groups of HRC drum majors out there.

With supporters and advisers like those described in the "meeting," who needs enemies?

Angry, shrill, angry, illogical, and angry don't make for a very earnest voter appeal.

Obama is "ruthless," huh? I'm still waiting for (or begging) the man to work his way up to "testy" in dealing with mccain. What has he ever done that was "ruthless?" Please!

And just because you have the opportunity to make a spectacle of yourself in front of millions of people doesn't mean you have to! Just because you're pissed off doesn't mean that you get to do or say whatever you want to!

There's a fire alarm near my office, if I pull it, I will demonstrate my incredible personal power to screw things up for a lot of people. But what else does it prove - other than the fact that I'm an ass?

Media Impact

The media would LOVE to see a convention floor vote battle. They'll be questioning Obama's legitimacy from then all the way up to the election. That's what PUMAs are trying to achieve?

This would be no dowd-like "gossip story" from idiot neocon henchmen picking little context-less nuggets from here and there and gluing them together - this would fuel "legitimate" stories that are based on the moment.

A protest-filled, "mutiny" at the convention where the person who's vowed to unite the country can't get more than 65% (the number won't matter for purposes of the story-line) of the Democratic party united will be the biggest story of the entire campaign so far. Every paper and news outlet in the entire country will have headlines dedicated to it.

This is beyond love-children, fist-bumps, and all the rest of the stupid tripe that comes every day from the serious corporate media baloney pump.

No campaign-killer, of course, but a big, bloody-nose and probably a damper on the bounce.

Good Parenting

A little girl was at the beach the other day sitting on a blanket near me. She wanted water ice - now! She started chanting, "I want water ice now." Over and over. Dad finally purposefully picked her up and took her 'home' to get a nap.

That's the problem with grown ups who behave like selfish, irrational little children - there are no adults big enough to take them to nap time.

Obama Adviser: 'Celeb' Ads Hurt Him In Polls

Micro-trending polls are stupid - and people who live/die by them are only setting themselves up for needless turmoil.

That said, the quotes were interesting to me....

1. "One of the great strengths of the Obama campaign has been to not listen to the D.C. chattering class."
2. "Tad Devine, a top strategist for Kerry who thinks Obama must stay on the high road."

OK, so if the "chattering class" is saying one thing - and a proven, stone loser like Tad Devine is in sync with your "master plan"..... then you would do well to change your friggin' master plan - and fast.

Obama's responses have been too soft (and rare). I've posted this numerous times: if you're getting beat up in public all the time and don't fight back, voters will think you've got no backbone to be president. That's just the way it is. You don't have to be gutter, vicious, or inaccurate to fight back. But you have to do something.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

The McCain Game Plan Becomes Clear

Very good article from Robert Elisberg at HuffPo, explaining the Rovian underpinnings to the seemingly bizarre campaign ads thrown out by Mr. mccain.

As usual, well done. But the last bit of "blind faith" gnaws at me. Essentially, he says that Obama weathered similar types of tactics in the Primary and overcame.

I'm not so sure it's that easy, though. Hillary ran out of money. She couldn't keep up the beatings and that helped Obama overcome. In fact, she did some major damage to him with only a sparse budget available. He didn't strike me as much of a butt-kicker - he outlasted her on money.

I think this is exactly why mccain is starting these ads NOW. He knows he can't spring them at the last minute and get enough traction.

But if he can get them going, dent Obama's popularity and poll numbers, he hopes to get the repug voting lemmings more excited and donating money to fuel more ads. Also, since the "serious media" wants to see a neck-and-neck race, they're going to help suppress the stupid stuff mccain continuously does. This will help keep things close.

Mark my bitter, cynical, angry words - if Obama continues to run his campaign like Gore and Kerry did, he will lose.

He showed that he can bite on occasion, but he needs to roll out a big barrel of whoop-ass starting at least right after the convention and through the mccain coronation, up to the election.

He doesn't realize it, but he can knock this idiot out of the race fast. He just has to start playing for keeps. No more unanswered allegations and no more pot shots without some sort of very public counter-punch.

And I say punch for a specific reason - if you don't hit back when others attack you unfairly, people get the subconscious understanding that you are spineless. People want strong leaders, not [more] spineless ones.