Obama's New Logo

It was leaked to the press this afternoon that the Obama Administration had recently commissioned several friendly artists to develop a new or modified Obama "O" Logo. 

They kept the selection process under wraps until a winner was selected, making certain this new logo didn't give the wrong message. 

Remember: the logo used for the 2012 Democratic Convention didn't go over very well because it looked like it represented Obama ushering delegates into the white-hot maw of a blast-furnace:

Not much to say today, but I’ll take my time not saying it…

A man who arms himself, and dies an old man having never needed to fire a shot in anger or defense, will not on his deathbed consider those purchases a waste.  A woman will feel the same way, although she’ll likely second-guess her choice of color scheme.

The Meaning of Freedom - A Real-World Example

It was "Missions Day" today at church, and the sermon focused heavily upon a recent news story about which I'd not heard anything.  Not trusting my own memory to recall the details accurately, I decided to Google the key points to see if I could locate the whole story.

Oh yes.

Please understand that I'd never heard of the International Justice Mission (IJM) before today. I have no idea what their overall politics are, or even if they take political stances on issues.

They free slaves.

The Birther's Birther Gets Her Day

Whenever I see a news article mentioning the name "Orly Taitz" in the first paragraph, I usually roll my eyes and grab a link to elsewhere.  Please don't ask me which side I'm on in the "Birther" conflict - I'm not on any side. Long ago I decided that even if true, it was a "lost cause" issue and that once again (if true) the Constitution was in for a trampling.  I feel there are countless higher-priority aggrievances that need to be dealt with, including Constitutional ones, and this is super-especially the case if the Birthers' charges are false.

I see it as an "I'm not that worried about you stomping on my toes - it's the stabbings I want you to stop" kind of thing.

Taekwondo

I'm watching my older daughter at her Taekwondo class. 

She's not a black belt yet, but she works out with them, and not for the first time it occurrs to me that many of the kids are SO SHARP their training would greatly benefit from substituting Congressmen for their blocking dummies, punching bags, and padded shields. I love it when the kids yell out their moves as they make them, and I’m betting this would motivate the normally silent parents to get more involved as well.

I had a lot of help...

“Help is on the way! Hang on, stay with me!

You’ve been through the hardest part already… Just lie still!

Help is on the way!”

---

I looked up to see the pickup truck climbing towards the sky, nose to the ground, buoyed upon a billowing dust cloud, spinning madly. She flew out ejected at the top of its arc and impacted the steep winding country road directly in my path.

Standing on the brakes I skidded off the pavement, her truck cartwheeling past and blasting through the woods before slamming to a halt in a graveyard upside-down.

The Accomplishment Reevaluation Letdown Therapeutic Centre

Have you ever done something that made you really feel good about yourself, only to later take a close look and realize it wasn’t really such a great accomplishment after all? Maybe even to the degree where you kinda felt like an idiot?

We at the Accomplishment Reevaluation Letdown Therapeutic Centre can help!

Everyone deals with failure in their lifetime – even Charlie Sheen! – and failure plays an important part in the learning process.

Definitely Not Lollipop Chainsaw

Not even a blind psychotic would mistake me for Juliet Starling. In fact, I'm only aware of the character because I know who Jessica Nigri is.  Said psychotic would have to be both blind and deaf in order to confuse us - or, perhaps, a federal bureaucrat.

Now I don't personally know Ms. Nigri - we've never met - but I'm going to make a broad guess and assume that since she's uber-popular on the Comicon-and-related scene, and landed the "Lollipop Chainsaw" representation gig, it is very likely that (broadly defined), pay-grade-wise we're both considered "middle-class Americans". We share the same language, we're both Caucasians, and long ago (in my youth), I too was a natural blonde. The resemblance ends there.  I'm a middle-aged somewhat overweight male, and father of two. I've never been a media star, nor at this stage in my life would I want to be.

Do the bureaucrats care?  Of course not! 

Snow Meister

Hold on tight - I can already tell this one's going to ramble...

I did a Google search to make certain I was spelling "Meister" correctly, only to find out that my entire life I've had this character's name wrong.  Apparently it is "Snow Miser". I swear they pronounced his and his brother Heat's last names with a "t" (to make it nearly rhyme with "Mister" in the lyrics, although I think the actual effect they were going for was "consonance"), and according to Google I'm apparently not alone.  Plenty of other people also call them the "Meisters" as well, those errant monstrous children of that name-I-can't-use-because-of-Keln's-family-friendly-rules "Mother Nature".

I blame this on the "Meisterburger Burgermeister" character in the prequel.

(OK, upon reviewing this post I've decided it is indeed a hodge-podge mess, but for now I'm not rewriting it, so you're advised to proceeded with extreme caution.)

Suspended!

I was just minding my own business, rebuking the leftists who were waxing insane over the NRA's presser today, and got myself suspended on Twitter, albeit I'm not entirely certain how. Isn't the point of that service to converse and communicate and mock the lunatic liberals relentlessly?  I'm pretty certain that was how it was explained to me. Anyways, they made me agree to not do a couple of things, so much, anymore, and then I had to answer a Captcha, and suddenly the doors were unlocked and the lights turned back on.

I think I'm going to have landlord issues in the future here, because I don't know how many replies are "too many", especially since I think the most I sent to any one person (on the same subject) was two or three within a day. If their issue was that I replied to too many people in too short a timeframe, then I seriously do not get their business model.

Oh well. Casually saunter onward...

My Humor

I was explaining to my 3rd-grade daughter that one of my higher-up bosses had distributed an article on “Candor, Criticism, Teamwork” from the Harvard Business Review that, among other things, recommended that big meetings be broken up into smaller ones, and in the small meetings that one or two people should volunteer to be the “official advocates of candor”.  The author referred to this as “Designating a ‘Yoda’”, after the “Star Wars” Jedi Master.  The article was distributed to the project managers like myself with the directive that WE should be the Yoda for the efforts we’re involved in. 

Now I drink way too many carbonated beverages, and carry around a super-sized mug almost at all times, so I suggested in return that it would be more appropriate to consider me Yoda’s 2nd-cousin, “Soda”. 

I didn’t think that was the best joke I’ve ever told, or even all that funny, but apparently I’ve mastered 3rd-grade humor because my girl says it is the funniest thing she’s ever heard.

Into the Light

I’ve been thinking about just how bad Obamacare is going to be, as well as what a travesty of justice its empowering Supreme Court decision was, and although I’m planning on venting in detail and at great length about the true meaning of the Commerce Clause, fear not kind reader, this is not the time nor the place. Well, actually, it IS the place, but it certainly ain’t the time. 

I’m tempted to rant about how Obama and Congress have betrayed our Constitution, but I don’t want to start sounding like a Ron Paul supporter, so let’s turn instead towards proposing solutions.  You see, whenever I think of Obamacare, it reminds me of those Tubifex worms found in that North Carolina Sewer.  You know, the ones that look like an alien life-form, or more appropriately, like a hideous self-animated malignant tumor clinging to the walls of someone’s large intestine, only much, much larger.  I’m sure you feel the same way.  The resemblance just screams for recognition.  I see something like that and my first thought is to wish for a laser while reaching for a flamethrower, and I found I feel much the same way about those hideous worm clusters.

So I asked myself: How can we shine the light of the Bill of Rights onto Congress? And I mean that literally. Well, I have an idea, and since I’m thinking that since in general the Left is willing to get behind gigantic government-funded construction projects, especially ones where there will be no discernible negative environmental impact at all, I bet that we can sell this idea to both sides of the aisle.  I’m also willing to predict that Liberals will have much the same reaction to sunlight filtered through the Bill of Rights as vampires do to unfiltered sunlight so, you know, “win-win”.

We need to build a monument to the Bill of Rights.

Here’s my proposal:

The God of One Dimension

Yesterday (Thursday, 11/15/2012) I had started to write about our fading freedoms, but then saw the news about the train hitting the Wounded Warrior "Hunt for Heroes" parade float, killing 4 veterans and injuring many more, and it kind of took the wind out of my sails.  This accident was simply horrible and tragic, and nothing I can write has any comparable importance.

I wanted to write about the unions destroying Hostess Brands – a situation that got even worse this morning with the announcement that they really are closing down – but even though the unions are killing Twinkies and Wonderbread, and about 18,000 jobs (a third of which were their own), and I shouldn’t characterize that as “nothing”, it really is nothing compared to the Wounded Warrior parade accident.

I usually value having a good perspective on things. Other times, not so much.

T’was the night before Ransom

T'was the night before ransom, and all through his mind,
A panic was tromping, no rest would he find.
Though the vans of ward heelers were all prepped to drive,
The Kleptarch, in darkness, fought to survive.

I'm raising a pirate...

Last week I stopped my two-and-a-half year old daughter from shoplifting a book at an estate sale.  She had stuffed it into her shirt.

This past Saturday, when it was time for her nap, I told her to run to her room to fetch her bottle.

"Aye, aye, Captain!" she yelled, catching me completely by surprise, then scampered from the room.

The way things are going in this world, this might be a survival trait.  She's definitely a hard-charging Alpha.

Hmmmm.....

You've been warned...

DDoS = Headache

Sorry I've been absent a bit, lads.  Been dealing with the collateral damage from a whonkin' huge Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack that's been going on since September-something, aimed against our banking institutions.

I don't work for a bank, but have been impacted nonetheless.

Oh, and: http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/comment/us-bank-ddos-attacks-security-94654

Not funny, and sorry about that, but I love Walkingdead's "Sometimes life gets in the way..." deep thought so much, and knew I couldn't top it, I thought it best to just mention one aspect of life recently getting in the way.

Casually saunter onward...

I suddenly feel young! Young, I tell you! Young!

I guess "hope for the future can be found in the past" or some such sentiment.

Regardless:  I find this cool and refreshing:

"102-Year-Old Woman Still Drives Her 82-Year-Old Car - She's held her driver's license for 90 years"

Thanks, babe, I needed that.  Motor on!

(PS: "Occasionally, she still changes her own oil."  Be still my heart!)

I finally had an apolitical weekend...

Looks like I missed the gravy boat this weekend. Wait... Gravy train, sorry. The gravy boat was that thing I spilled all over- never mind. Reboot.

Looks like I missed the "apolitical weekend" at NP, and oddly enough, by missing it I apparently contributed to it.  It was that sort of weekend.  Here's a wrap-up, and needless to say - it was all Obama's fault.

Should have been obvious...

I realized something this weekend.  THIS (grasps belly with both hands, shakes) isn't "fat". By which I mean of course it is, but there's a larger issue... This isn't fat, per se; but rather I think it's how my body stores anger. I don't mean to sound like I'm abandoning the whole "personal responsibility" angle, but a Romney win would really help me drop the weight. On the other hand, the whole "complete economic collapse" guaranteed by a second Obama term might as well, but I'm not into starvation diets.
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The Left hasn't given up on lying (and they never will), but have you noticed they're also starting to tell the truth on occasion?  Like the YardSaleForObama thing (hat tip: Harvey); It's good to see them opening up about the whole "fence stolen goods for Obama" angle.  Nothing says "OK, we admit it" like an official campaign advertisement.
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Speaking of leftists telling the truth, I'm worried about Joe Biden.

I've thought for a long time that the "gaffes" we enjoy mocking him for aren't really gaffes at all. I suspect he isn't misspeaking, but rather he's relaying the truth as he understands it.  In other words, it isn't Biden's mouth that's broken, its his Reality.

And though I abhor almost everything he stands for, I can't throw stones at the guy for having his mind shattered by what he's been through. He'll never have my vote, but he has my sympathy because in my opinion what broke both his mind and his faith would likely have destroyed me entirely. Please understand - I'm not defending Biden - that's not possible while sane - I'm just saying that after all these years we're still seeing the results of him having his young family destroyed in a car wreck, and I can't say I would have done any better. 

While nobody should ever be elected on a sympathy vote (and sadly that happens from time to time), and while I consider Biden completely unfit to serve, I don't hate the guy and in fact feel rather sorry for him. For his sake, and for ours, we need him off the national stage. So if you like Biden at all, or even feel just a little bit of pity, do the right thing - vote for Romney!
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“Telemachus blinked and looked around the dark room, looking for the goddess, but she had disappeared, leaving for lofty Olympus after delivering her warning to the young man.  Telemachus turned and nudged Nestor’s son from his sweet sleep, saying ‘Up sleepyhead! Get up, Peisistratus. Yoke the swift-footed horses to our chariot and let’s be on our way.’”
Homer – The Odyssey