May 11th, 2008
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Visit 57 states? Now let’s see another candidate do that. If John McCain had said something silly like that, people would start making cracks about his age.
llen R. Malcolm writes over on the Washington Post:
Why on earth should one candidate quit before the contest is finished? Democrats need not be so fainthearted. Both of the party’s remaining candidates have raised tens of millions of dollars. Both have the respect of Democrats nationwide. Each has a progressive agenda that stands in stark contrast to Sen. John McCain and his adherence to Bush administration policies.
Yeah, what she said.
I get irritated listening to the rhetoric coming from Obama supports and/or the mainstream news media calling for Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race. I’m not a big fan of quitters. I never have been. What’s the harm in Hillary staying in the race while there are still a few remaining primaries left?
I realize Barack Obama has a lot more money. I realize Barack Obama has a lot more support in the mainstream news media. I realize Barack Obama has the support of the entrenched, inside the beltway Democratic power base, men like Kennedy and Kerry. I also realize Barack Obama has a slight advantage in the number of pledged delegates — 1,592 to Hillary’s 1,424 — along with a slight lead in the popular vote.
Pledged delegates are not going to decide this race. It’s mathematically impossible for either candidate — Obama or Hillary — to pick up enough pledged delegates in the remaining primaries to reach the magic number of 2,025. Even if Hillary quits and lets Obama run unapposed in the remaining contests, he still can’t reach 2,025.
So why the pressure on Hillary to quit?
I think it’s because Obama supporters and/or the mainstream news media don’t want her to take back her lead in the popular vote. That’s something she has a very good chance of doing after West Virgina and Kentucky hold their primaries. Recent polls in West Virgina show Hillary with over a 40 point advantage.
Eight years ago when the Presidential election was finally over and Gore won the popular vote, but lost the electoral college vote to Bush, many of my fellow Democrats were quite perturbed at the situation and rightfully so. Though technically it was correct and legal to pick the president by counting the electoral college votes, many felt it went against the spirit of a true democracy to choose a president in a way other then by a popular vote. The idea was that the President should be chosen by whoever gets the most votes.
I think many Obama supports and/or the mainstream news media fear a Democratic Convention in August where Obama has a slight lead in the pledged delegate count while Hillary has a slight lead in the popular vote. It would put the superdelegates in the uncomfortable situation of following the will of party leadership and selecting Barack Obama as the 2008 Democratic nominee while shunning the candidate with the most overall votes.
If that mean lady would just quit and let that man run unopposed, it would make their job a lot easier.
May 10th, 2008
This is a photo of Michelle Duggar and her family. She’s 41-year old and she is currently pregnant with her 18th child.
That’s right. She has given birth to 17 children and that is not enough. She must have at least one more. I read the whole article over on Yahoo, but I didn’t really need to. As soon as I heard there was a woman pregnant with her 18th child, I already assumed certain facts to be true. These facts include:
To put this into context, I know people who haven’t even had sex 18 times.
I can’t imagine the pain someone must feel that desperately wants to have a child, but for whatever reason, cannot become pregnant. It must be very similar to what someone who is starving to death feels when they have to watch someone at an all-you-can-eat Chinese food buffet go up and get 18 plates of snow crab legs.
And of course they have a reality TV show. I don’t watch reality TV shows that revolve around a single family unless that family includes midgets.
Little People, Big World rocks!
May 10th, 2008
Dateline NBC ran their 2-hour episode last night on the Michael George murder trial. Michael George along with his current wife Renee own Comics World, a comic book shop in Windber, Pennsylvania. They also own and operate the annual Pittsburgh Comicon.
Michael George used to own a second Comics World store in nearby Scotland, Pennsylvania. The store still exists, but is now owned by a new owner and is in no way connected to Michael George. It’s located in the Chambersburg Mall nearby where I work and It’s where I buy my funny books every week.
I knew Michael George from when he owned the Comics World in Scotland. Not that we were friends or anything. I just knew who he was. I wasn’t buying my comics at Comics World back then, but I would stop in at the shop every time we visited the mall.
I watched the Dateline NBC episode last night. I didn’t really learn anything new. I’d been following the case very closely since word got out that Michael George was arrested for his first wife’s murder. I remember stopping in at the Comics World that afternoon. Everyone was in shock. I don’t think I’ve ever known someone who was arrested for murder and I don’t think anybody else in the store that day had either.
A lot of the people in the store that day had either worked for Michael and Renee George in the shop or at the yearly comic book convention in Pittsburgh.
Over on the Dateline NBC website, there is quite a lot of information to be had. They have posted an “express” episode that you can watch on your computer. They have posted an entire transcript for the whole 2-hour show. They have posted many of the actual crime scene photos taken where Barbara George was murdered.
One of the interesting things brought out in the show was being able to put a face on the various people that testified during the trial. I had been reading about the trial every day online. I was already familiar with the testimony.
And finally, the thing that I will take away from watching this program the most was what a wonderful and special person Barbara George was. If anyone didn’t deserve to be shot in the head, it was Barbara. That’s something that doesn’t come out as much when you are only reading about the case. There is just something more powerful about seeing photos of her smiling and laughing and being happy. I think the fact that her husband could be screwing around behind her back and then shack up with his mistress so quickly after her death speaks volumes about him. If someone — as Michael George had claimed — had murdered my wife and the mother of my two kids, I would hunt them down and make them wish they were never born. Michael George didn’t do that. No, he used her life insurance money to start a new life with his mistress.
It was very plain to see that Barbara George was good people. She deserved better. Much better.
May 10th, 2008
I read over on Comics Worth Reading that Newsarama is planning on doing a major reboot later this month. The popular comic book website was acquired last year by digital media company Imaginova. Evidently they will be meshing more with the other websites owned by Imaginova.
From Newsarama administrator Matt Brady:
We’ll save discussion and previews about what the main page will look like for a little bit (it looks really, really good), and focus on what is happening with the message board system. We’ll be moving on from vBulletin. It served its purpose admirably for many years, but as Newsarama has grown so have our technical needs and vBulletin just doesn’t support the full experience we want to give you. In the coming weeks we will be moving over to a Pluck-based message board system. It’s the system used by our sister sites LiveScience, Space.com and Aviation.com. Now, I see those wheels spinning. Don’t worry, all your brilliant posts aren’t disappearing into some bottomless abyss. We’ll be archiving the current boards as read-only. You’ll be able to view them at: LOCKED forums at forums.newsarama.com. To be totally clear the existing topics and posts will not be moving to the new boards.
Something not mentioned in Matt Brady’s post is that if your particular user ID is already being used over on LiveScience, Space.com or Aviation.com, you’re out of luck.
I went over to Space.com and created an account to use on the Space.com message board. I then went over to Aviation.com and tried to do the same thing using the same user ID. No dice. It said that user ID was already taken. What this means is that someone, anyone, can go over to any one of these “sister sites” and create a user ID using an already existing Newsarama user ID and there is nothing the person over on Newsarama that originally had the user ID can do about it.
Another problem people will have is that over on the other Pluck-based message board system, user ID’s using two words is not possible. That means instead of using for instance “John Smith”, a person will be forced to use “John_Smith”.
Both of these wrinkles will make it difficult to find and read past messages posted on the original archived Newsarama website.
I posted a question about this problem over in the thread announcing the switch. This is the response from Newsarama administrator doublehelix:
Please note that we have a contingency plan for this. I don’t mean to be secretive about it, because this is NOT my intention. I just can’t discuss the details.
Please know that we have thought about this and have planned a solution. If, for some reason, the particular solution is problematic in your eyes, I am here to work it out. That’s part of my job as the Community Manager.
So they have a plan in place on how to deal with this problem. They just can’t talk about it. It’s a secret.
This reminds me of Nixon’s “secret plan” to get out of Vietnam bragged about during the 1968 Presidential election. There was a plan. He just couldn’t tell people what it was. It was a secret.
I think this is a mistake on the part of Imaginova. A website such as Newsarama is only as good as it’s foundation. One of the strengths of the site is that it has a forum that contains posts going back years. Forcing members to start over on a different site that is tied to other websites dedicated to other interests seems like a really bad idea. If people have to start over, they very well may jump on over to another website that is focused solely on comic books.
Maybe everyone will.
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