The Politics of Crowds

"The political genius of the man [Barack Obama] is that he is a blank slate. The devotees can project onto him what they wish."

"Ambiguity has been a powerful weapon of this gifted candidate: He has been different things to different people, and he was under no obligation to tell this coalition of a thousand discontents, and a thousand visions, the details of his political programs: redistribution for the poor, postracial absolution and "modernity" for the upper end of the scale."

It gets even scarier:

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late Democratic senator from New York, once set the difference between American capitalism and the older European version by observing that America was the party of liberty, whereas Europe was the party of equality. Just in the nick of time for the Obama candidacy, the American faith in liberty began to crack. The preachers of America's decline in the global pecking order had added to the panic. Our best days were behind us, the declinists prophesied. The sun was setting on our imperium, and rising in other lands.

The rest is here: Link.

Nice story

Here.

For those who haven't seen...

...this is great. Yes, I think the grace of God is much more generous than the admissions standards of PHC. Pretty funny stuff.

Farm trip fun

Two weekends ago we took a trip to a farm for pumpkin picking, animal petting, and all out harvest fun. We had quite a blast.

The pictures at the end are from the property across the street, which is up on a hill (about 1000 feet above sea level, not sure how much higher than the farm). The view is spectacular.

Symphony

Our local symphony orchestra is performing Dvorak's cello concerto and
Brahms' symphony no. 4.

Hot dog, I'm excited!!

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Attention

So A-Rod can buy an $80 million penthouse and no one says a thing, but
Palin spends some money on her image and wardrobe and all of a sudden
the world collapses. Where is the real excess here???

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Question of the Day

Which is harder to get out of on a cold morning: the warm covers with
two pillows, or the hot shower with water streaming over your head??

I vote for the bed. Although as Angela so wisely said at 6:55 (while
nursing the baby in a half-stupor) - it's not going to be any easier
to get out of bed at 7:15 than it is at 7:00. So practical at such an
early hour.

Oh, and we finally turned the heat on - we made it til Oct 19, but it
was getting down to 28 degrees last night.

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Family Pics

Amazing pictures of our beautiful little family. Credit to our next door neighbor for his photography skills (shout out - if you need a good photographer in the NoVA area, let me know and I'll give you his info).

And now.....

Miss Independent

Amelia decided to talk for 2 hours in bed before finally taking her nap. As of 5pm, she was still asleep. Well, a lot happened between the time I left work and the time I got home.

Apparently, in those first 2 hours, Amelia took ALL of the clothes out of her top two drawers, decided to take off her pants and pull-ups, and put on a pair of big-girl panties (she only wears pull-ups for nap/bed, for reasons which you'll understand in a moment).

When I walked in the door, I realized there was quite a commotion upstairs. The wash was running, Mia was a little upset, and Ang was trying to reassure her. I saw the huge mess on the floor, thinking that was the extent of the problem. But then I noticed the sheets stripped off the bed, and Ang revealed what our little non-napper had decided to do. Well, it came back to haunt her when she ended up wetting the bed.

Thinking I had an opportunity to teach Mia that she can learn not to wet the bed, I said, "Do you want to be able to wear big girl panties in bed?" Once the question left my mouth, I realized there was no way it would be answered favorably. Having just been traumatized, she gave a shaky, "Noooo." I tried to smooth it over by saying that will come as she gets older. Nice timing, Dad.

Anyway, if nothing else, this experience may at least curtail the latest trend of playing/taking out clothes when she's supposed to be napping.

How the mighty have fallen

Bad news: The 'Skins lose a dumb game to the weak and incompetent Rams. Ugh.

Good news: The Cowboys (the pundit-ordained Super Bowl victors) lost to Cleveland Arizona. Lost Tony Romo for 4 weeks. Lost Felix Jones for 2-4 weeks. And, oh yeah, lost Pacman for an "indefinite" 4 weeks+.

There is still hope for a playoff spot.

BREAKING NEWS!!!

In the spirit of FoxNews, where everything is an "Alert" or "Breaking News" ....

COLUMBUS FOUND AMERICA!!

(Enjoy the day off, fellow gov't workers)

For my left-brained sister

Looks like you'll have to stand on your head....

Proof

See posting below.

Dirt

It's funny that Amelia will fuss over the tiniest piece of dirt being
on the slide, and then once she slides down she proceeds to grab
handfuls of dirt and throw them on the slide.

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I missed September

I just realized my desk calendar has been on August for the last two
months. I somehow missed September. Where did it go??

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To be fair...

...despite my previous post (which I'm quite proud of), I'm none too impressed with Apple's web service. Their servers just seem slower than molasses, and the Webmail program still needs help.

And I just tried to watch their TV commercials on Apple's website - wouldn't load for me. Hmmmm....

I'm a PC...

...and I:

1) Crash all the time;
2) Have the hardest time waking up from sleep;
3) Take 8 minutes to start up and open two apps;
4) Won't let my user open an Access database from his own company's Intranet;
5) Require a Spyware/Adware program, and have to check for viruses every week;
6) Make my users feel like idiots; and

[*drum roll*]

7) Am NOT a Mac.

Thoughtful

The liberal left has tried to bash Palin for not knowing what the "Bush Doctrine" is. Do you know? Check it out. I doubt you do.

Two other notes: It's funny how the "news" on Thursday is that Obama was "planning" to bring more attack ads against McCain. Kinda like he's "planning" to save the world, part the seas, and reduce taxes while spending $150 BILLION on health care. Yeah, like that's happening. Just so turns out that his "planning" of big attack ads are more ad hom attacks - dealing with McCain's age instead of his policies. Poor, poor. And desperate.

Second - you've heard a lot about McCain and Palin campaigning together. I have this hunch that if they campaigned separately, Palin would pull tens of thousands to her rallies, and McCain might be lucky to get a few thousand. That wouldn't look so great, now, would it? Wonder how long they can keep this up??

BLOATED

Dude, I ate too many baked beans for lunch....Oh, wait, wrong topic.

I've been stymied over the last week by my Access database growing
from 1.7MB in size to over 34MB. Miraculously, I actually saw it
happen today in the blink of an eye. Since I knew what I had just
changed, I realized the issue was with a picture embedded in the
database.

You would think that a 560kb picture would only take up - yes - 560kb.
No, apparently it takes microsoft 32,000kb to fit that 560 into. Once
I linked the image instead of embedding it and then compacted the
database, it shrunk down to its pre-bloated state.

Maybe this is the same thinking that led Microsoft to spend $300
million on a pointless, dumb ad with Seinfeld and Bill Gates. And to
think, all they needed was a pizza box. [Links to come when I'm not on
my iPhone.]

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85

Chad Johnson is no more. He is now Chad Ocho Cinco. Seriously.

Link to the story