jeremikarnell.com

Howie and The Ball

Great footage that Cindy took of our English Bulldog getting to meet her exercise ball for the first time.

President-Elect Barack Obama in Chicago

Can't sleep...so I decided to post one of the most inspiring speeches made by a President (elect) of the United States in my lifetime. 

VOTE OBAMA!

Dear Red States....

We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren't aware, that includes Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, New York, and all of the Northeastern states. After this election, we'll be adding Colorado and New Mexico. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, especially to the people of our new country – Nuevo California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states; we get stem cell research, the best beaches, and the best ski resorts. We get the Statue of Liberty; you get Dollywood. We get Intel and Microsoft; you get WorldCom. We get Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Cal Tech, MIT and Columbia; you get Ole' Miss. We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs; you get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue; you get to make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than that of the Christian Coalition, we get a bunch of happy families and you get a bunch of under-educated single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we'll need all of our citizens back from Iraq at once.

If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They apparently have kids they're willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't mind if you don't televise their kid's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq and hope that those Weapons of Mass Destruction turn up for you, but we're not willing to spend any more of our money in Bush's Quagmire.

With the Blue States, we will control 80 percent of the country's fresh water,90 percent of pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 97percent of America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at your state dinners), 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, and all the Ivy League and Seven Sister schools. We also get New England, the Great Lakes and Yosemite, thank you very much.

In the Red States, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans and their projected health care costs, 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, 100 percent of tornadoes, 94 percent of hurricanes, 99 percent of Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, and Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bob Jones University, and Clemson.

Additionally, in the Red States, 38 percent actually believe Jonah was swallowed by a whale; 62 percent believe life is sacred unless it involves the death penalty or gun ownership; 44 percent claim that evolution is only a theory; 53 percent insist that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11; and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you have higher moral standards than those of us on the left.

By the way, we're taking all the good pot, too. You get that dirt weed from Mexico and Kansas ditches.

Peace out,
The Blue States

-------------------
I have to give a shout out to my boy James for forwarding the above letter to me via e-mail.  I can't stop laughing!!!!!  Well played sir!

Flirting Her Way To Victory?

Below is an article originally published in the UK's Gaurdian by Michelle Goldberg.  I think it's a brilliant critique of everything wrong with Palin's behavior in the Vice-Presidential Debate.  Enjoy!

At least three times last night, Sarah Palin, the adorable, preposterous vice-presidential candidate, winked at the audience. Had a male candidate with a similar reputation for attractive vapidity made such a brazen attempt to flirt his way into the good graces of the voting public, it would have universally noted, discussed and mocked. Palin, however, has single-handedly so lowered the standards both for female candidates and American political discourse that, with her newfound ability to speak in more-or-less full sentences, she is now deemed to have performed acceptably last night.

By any normal standard, including the ones applied to male presidential candidates of either party, she did not. Early on, she made the astonishing announcement that she had no intentions of actually answering the queries put to her. "I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also," she said.

And so she preceded, with an almost surreal disregard for the subjects she was supposed to be discussing, to unleash fusillades of scripted attack lines, platitudes, lies, gibberish and grating references to her own pseudo-folksy authenticity.

It was an appalling display. The only reason it was not widely described as such is that too many American pundits don't even try to judge the truth, wisdom or reasonableness of the political rhetoric they are paid to pronounce upon. Instead, they imagine themselves as interpreters of a mythical mass of "average Americans" who they both venerate and despise.

In pronouncing upon a debate, they don't try and determine whether a candidate's responses correspond to existing reality, or whether he or she is capable of talking about subjects such as the deregulation of the financial markets or the devolution of the war in Afghanistan. The criteria are far more vaporous. In this case, it was whether Palin could avoid utterly humiliating herself for 90 minutes, and whether urbane commentators would believe that she had connected to a public that they see as ignorant and sentimental. For the Alaska governor, mission accomplished.

There is indeed something mesmerising about Palin, with her manic beaming and fulsome confidence in her own charm. The force of her personality managed to slightly obscure the insulting emptiness of her answers last night. It's worth reading the transcript of the encounter, where it becomes clearer how bizarre much of what she said was. Here, for example, is how she responded to Biden's comments about how the middle class has been short-changed during the Bush administration, and how McCain will continue Bush's policies:

Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced [sic] your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? ... My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate.

Evidently, Palin's pre-debate handlers judged her incapable of speaking on a fairly wide range of subjects, and so instructed to her to simply disregard questions that did not invite memorised talking points or cutesy filibustering. They probably told her to play up her spunky average-ness, which she did to the point of shtick - and dishonesty. Asked what her achilles heel is - a question she either didn't understand or chose to ignore - she started in on how McCain chose her because of her "connection to the heartland of America. Being a mom, one very concerned about a son in the war, about a special needs child, about kids heading off to college, how are we going to pay those tuition bills?"

None of Palin's children, it should be noted, is heading off to college. Her son is on the way to Iraq, and her pregnant 17-year-old daughter is engaged to be married to a high-school dropout and self-described "fuckin' redneck". Palin is a woman who can't even tell the truth about the most quotidian and public details of her own life, never mind about matters of major public import. In her only vice-presidential debate, she was shallow, mendacious and phoney. What kind of maverick, after all, keeps harping on what a maverick she is? That her performance was considered anything but a farce doesn't show how high Palin has risen, but how low we all have sunk.

Ladybug Mecca - Dogg Star

Ok....enough with the Palin bashing.  She bores me.  Time for a cool jam I discovered while listening to the Om: Dubai compilation.  Although the above video is a bit different then what is on the Om LP, which features the Fiasco's Conduction Mashup of the song, it is still a fun track!

SNL: Gov. Palin and Katie Couric get Real and Adorable

OMG!  This is such a nice piece of comedic relife after that shit show of an interview between Palin and Couric.  The sad thing is that Fey did not have to do much beyond simply re-state Palin's own words.   CNN does a good job pointing this out below:

Jack Cafferty Tells Us How He Really Feels About Sarah Palin

Shout out to Blackwell for bringing this footage to my attention via Facebook.  Finally, I have found someone as amazed, insulted, and disapointed after that Palin interview with Couric.

Couric Presses Palin: PALIN MAKES BUSH LOOK LIKE EINSTEIN

And here I thought, after Quayle and Bush JR., the Republicans might want to consider the IQ of their candidates.  SILLY ME!  Palin, you are turning out to be the best thing for Obama.  Keep it up! 

Adoption of Grendon

This past Thursday I was lucky to catch a program titled "The Orangutan Diary" on Animal Plant.  This 2 hour documentary details the efforts of  The Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) Foundation, the largest primate rescue project in the world, with nearly 1000 orangutans in its care. BOS is the only organization actively rescuing wild orangutans from oil-palm plantations, as well as rehabilitating orphaned orangutans, displaced as a result of the relentless devastation of their habitat to clear land for palm oil production.
With their forest home disappearing at a terrifying rate, it's estimated that these magnificent animals will be extinct within 10 years.

The BOS site allows you to support the organization via adoptions, donations, membership, and education.  Cindy and I adopted Grendon (pictured above).   He was featured in "The Orangutan Diary" where he captured our hearts while he was shown slowly progressing through his classes to rehibilitate him to the wild.  There are a total of 4 Orangatan's that are offered for adoption.  I urge all of my friends and family to visit the site, learn about thier plight and consider support of BOS (adoption is only $113/year or $10/month).