One thing McCain has based his anti-Obama ads on is his lack of experience. Obama has been a senator for almost four years. Palin has been a senator for zero. She has, however, been a governor for almost two years. Her other experience that seems to be frequently cited is as a mayor… but what usually isn’t mentioned is that the town’s population was about five or six thousand people.

Another basis for the McCain ads has been Obama’s “celebrity” status. Ignoring how McCain’s site called McCain himself a celebrity and ignoring all the TV shows McCain has been on (Entertainment Tonight, twice!?), you still can’t ignore that Sarah Palin has been a model. She won second place in the Miss Alaska pageant and she was also on the cover of Vogue magazine.

I checked out John McCain’s site, thinking that news about Palin would be right up on the top, and saw “Black Republicans Stick with McCain” at the top of the news. I noticed the use of ellipses in the article and thought, “I wonder what they cut out of the article.” Here’s an example of one of the portions that were removed from the original article in order to make it safe for the McCain site:

Lloyd Newton is a retired four-star general from the U.S. Air Force who lives in Tampa. He is a black, registered Republican who supported Crist in 2006.

But this time, Newton said he is voting for Obama.

“We’ve got much, too much, concern about party in my mind and not enough on Americans as a whole,” he said.

“Barack Obama is that individual that I find will bring about the kind of change that I personally think, and I think the nation thinks, we need in Washington D.C., Newton said.

He said Obama’s race is “way down the chain of factors … I’m looking at his leadership, what he’s done since he’s been in Washington, the kind of impact he’s had.

“When you get through all of that, now I’m ready to consider, ‘Guess what? This guy happens to be an African-American.’ “

I think that last quote really sums up how pointless that article is. If you drop race, it’s simply “republicans stick with McCain,” which shouldn’t be too surprising. They certainly wouldn’t want to vote for an celebrity politician who is inexperienced! For a great explanation of Sarah Palin’s experience, you can watch Tucker Bounds explain Sarah Palin’s experience.

In the included image, I have organized it so that all of the low saturation images are on the left. It’s pretty clear that these images are less flattering and make each of the people in them look worse than the ones that are saturated. Here’s the test for you: Try to guess which images are the originals (i.e., the ones that I simply copied and pasted from the source sites) and which are the ones I modified in GIMP (by modifying saturation by +/-67). Your only clue: The second image set (counting in pairs from the top, so the second pair is Obama, the fifth is McCain) comes from Barack Obama’s website and the rest are from Fox News (the first and last are from AP, the rest are unattributed).

First pair: The desaturated image is the original (source).

Second pair: The saturated image is the original (source).

Third pair: The desaturated image is the original (source).

Fourth pair: The saturated image is the original (source).

Fifth pair: The saturated image is the original (source).

Sixth pair: The saturated image is the original (source).

Of the three political candidate sets at the bottom, Obama’s is clearly under-saturated, Hillary’s is clearly over-saturated, and McCain’s is just right…. Curiously, McCain’s is also the only one with a background. I threw in the final shot of 50 Cent to show how much difference saturation makes on skin tones.

To think that those images seem to suggest that they favor this candidate:

You see, I received an email—widely regarded as the most reliable and accurate medium available—and it said, “Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim.” It also said, “Obama was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta. Wahabism is the RADICAL teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world.” Furthermore, the email said, “when he was sworn into office he DID NOT use the Holy Bible, but instead the Koran.” That jerk! When congressmen are sworn into office, they don’t even use a religious book and he snuck the Koran (Quran) in!

You would think it was bad enough that he is a terrorist, but he isn’t even a Christian terrorist! That had me upset but what really got me was this: “While others place their hands over their hearts [for the Pledge of Allegiance], Obama turns his back to the flag and slouches.” My (Christian) God, man, he is a disrespectful sloucher!

After recovering from these terrible facts by non-torturously waterboarding myself, I realized that they are actually good! Think about it, if we have a terrorist running our country, terrorists won’t attack us! Why would they blow up a country they fully control? After all, Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 and there were no terrorist acts of note in Iraq prior to our war there.

Side with the terrorists, and they can’t get us! I’ve already ordered my suicide bomber’s equipment. And, because I am so dedicated to terrorism, I plan on testing it out when I receive it. I wouldn’t want my suicide bomb to be a dud so that I miss an opportunity to make a difference! Join me and make your point explosive!

Eligibility:

Minority (American Indian, Asian, Black or Hispanic)
New Bachelor of Science degree
Cumulative GPA of 3.2/4.0

Healthcare for all
I am in support of universal healthcare, and I don’t even like doctors (as mentioned previously). I think we have a duty to our fellow man (which means fellow human, in case you are someone who focuses on trivialities) and that includes providing reasonable medical care. I think we also have a duty to ourselves to avoid being taken advantage of. That means we need to regulate the universal healthcare (so for those of you who are astronomers, I’m using “universal” based on the idea that the universe is finite but pretty “frickin’ huge”).

Well, almost all
I propose that the healthcare has a certain logic-limit. In other words, if you are the cause of your illness, universal healthcare does not take care of it. You can pay out of your own pocket, but we aren’t going to give you liposuction if you thought McDonalds was a good meal 21 times a week. If you decide that smoking a pack of cigarettes a day is your right, then it’s our right to deny you healthcare for the lung cancer you develop. Any medical condition that is the result of poor actions on your part or is a complication of a medical condition that was caused by poor actions on your part is not covered. That means if you have health problems because of a thyroid problem, but you eat nutritious food and exercise a reasonable amount, we will provide care. Care can also be done in percentages, such as if your actions/inaction made the problem worse but wasn’t entirely the cause.

It might be tough to always determine how much a person was to blame for his/her own medical condition(s), but we could err on the side of caution. Ultimately, not providing medical attention for self-inflicted problems will either cause those people to die from their own stupidity/laziness/etc. or cause them to change their actions. Social pressures could also produce a change in behavior.

“Man, what’s up with that paper clip and rubber band splint on your finger? Are you trying to be like McGuyver?”
“No, I was mad so I punched a concrete wall.”
“Oh, you’re an idiot. Glad I’m not paying for it.”

Now maybe I’m just using this as an excuse to give myself healthcare, because I just spent nearly $800 out of pocket on an eye exam, glasses, and a year’s supply of contacts (no health insurance is awesome!), but consider the current situation. We might very well have millions of people driving around with bad vision, because it costs too much to buy glasses. Isn’t it worth knowing that the driver who cut you off can at least see you flipping him/her off?

He talked about how the news is always showing how many have died and that isn’t the measure of whether we are winning. Instead, he proposed that we should show how many we have killed “complete with fanfare.” I’m not even going to go into why celebrating death (even of enemies) is wrong. Instead, let me ask a question. Did Germany win WWII? Unless you’re an idiot or sarcastic, your answer should be “no.” That’s strange, because Germany killed 20-30 million people. In fact, they killed more Soviet troops than the total number of Germans killed by all forces put together. Clearly, body count does not determine victory.

Victory?
What determines victory? Well, why don’t we use some of Bob’s wisdom. “…kill enough of the enemy there…” he tells us. Enough? How many is enough? He doesn’t say, but his criticism of democrats is “How can Democrats say we’re losing without telling us what the score is?” How can your argument be based on something that can be used against you in the same way? How can Republicans tell us we are winning without telling us what the score is or what the goal is? Interestingly enough, much of the Republican rhetoric has gone from telling us we are winning and need to “stay the course” to a less positive outlook.

Victory is determined by what you are trying to accomplish. What are we trying to accomplish? We can forget about the WMD, because they either didn’t exist or were moved. If they never existed, we have not accomplished anything on that front. If they were moved, we have failed in that regard. If we are there for Iraqi independence, then our leaders don’t understand what independent means. It is impossible to force anyone or anything to be independent. Imagine trying to make an 18 year old college freshman independent. Using the OIF method, we would jump to his aid, doing all of his homework, supplying him with room/board/food, and promise to not leave until he is independent. Why does that sound like such an obviously terrible plan?

It is a war of ideology (like most wars). The terrorists hate us. We hate the terrorists. We kill a bunch of them; they kill some of us; thousands of non-combatants die. The cycle continues and we only succeed in spreading hate and death. Our success depends on our affecting their concept of what is American. If we want them to not hate us (rather than trying to kill every single person in the world who does), we have to be commendable. Some of our actions in the Middle East are such as building/repairing schools, but look at how little of that we have accomplished. There are less doctors in Iraq now than there were before the war. There are less teachers.

A Different Solution
Rather than attacking Iraq, I would have proposed a full solution to the problems in Afghanistan. We already had a legitimate reason (as in the vast majority of the world agreed) to be there. Why not defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda and properly rebuild the country? We could work with the citizens to make hospitals and schools. A small portion of the billions that are going into Iraq could have gone into Afghanistan to rebuild the country. Many of the citizens would have gained a good impression of the United States. The world community would have actually approved our actions. Other countries in the Middle East would have been less hostile. A small percentage of the terrorists might have even decided that suicide bombing us is not a free ticket into Heaven. A slightly larger percentage would have decided it wasn’t worth the extra effort to go out and find US troops/citizens to attack.

Imagine that, lowering the number of enemy combatants without killing all of them! If you think that would never have a chance, consider that we have spent over $400 billion on OIF and Afghanistan’s GDI is around $32 billion. That’s 12.5 times the GDI. Since these numbers are ridiculous, let’s throw some more out there. If some “big brother” country were going to dump 12.5 times the USA GDI into our country, that would be over 150 trillion dollars. Also worth knowing is that Iraq’s GDI is around 3 times Afghanistan’s. That means we are spending more than their entire country is making. Funny that Rumsfeld originally claimed the war should cost under $50 billion.

He should have just said it will take however much it costs to “kill enough of the enemy.”

I have to wonder if Bush (or any of the rest of “the gang”) catches onto how much everyone makes fun of the administration? Or do they think, “Oh those guys, they make fun of all politicians!” Do they catch onto the fact that people make fun of their policies and their personalities/personal lives? For some reason, I don’t remember Saturday Night Live making fun of the results of too many of Clinton’s political policies/results. Maybe I missed the one where Chris Farley comes into the Oval Office and says, “Oh my FREAKIN’ GAAWWWRRRDDD! Why… do we have… a BUDGET SURPLUS!?!?!?” At that point he probably faints onto a table and breaks it.

“I’m not trying to intrude on that,” Kruger said. “But what’s happening is when they’re tuning into their iPod or Blackberry or cell phone or video game, they’re walking into speeding buses and moving automobiles. It’s becoming a nationwide problem.”

I think his idea is to protect the idiots by making everyone else suffer. I think he would probably also propose a ban on meat, because some people don’t cook it long enough. If you’re older than two, you know to “look both ways before crossing the street/road.” If you are so stupid that you think changing songs is more important than not dying, well, you probably have nothing to contribute to society anyway. I would propose that the businesses that produce these electronic devices pay the person whose car was damaged.

Another point I thought I should make is that the city probably shouldn’t have “speeding buses.” Of course, if this is just a reference to a bus in motion, then it points even more strongly to the stupid people who are hit. If you don’t see a bus coming, there isn’t much hope for you.

Banning iPods would just make us more like North Korea and that country is “evil,” so we shouldn’t want that, right? In order to help people out, I’ve created a valuable illustration of the proper and improper way to cross a street.