Okay - I know I said I’d write out the speech I want McCain to give by now.  Unfortunately, I’ve reached a bit of a quandary; I was going to write out a little speech explaining his choice of Gov. Palin, but the SNL thing went reasonably well and she’s starting to actually enjoy being around the press.  So, a good chunk of it has changed, and thankfully for the better because it means that, for the first time in a while, I finally get to use some good football analogies.

For the sake of those of you that are finding this place via Google, I’ll state right here and now that I’m a bit of a college football fan.  I go to every Nevada home game, or at least I have been this year.  I originally got hooked during my Pep Band phase and, though familial and work concerns have interfered from time to time, I’ve made it a point to catch as many games as I can.  Since I root for Nevada, it’s pretty safe to say that we’re the underdog more often than not; we’re what sports analysts call a “mid-major program”, which is a polite way of saying that we don’t have the budget, the facilities, the tradition, or the coaching to consistently hang with big boys.  Over the years, I’ve seen some impressive wins, far more impressive near-misses, and far too many horrendous meltdowns.

When this election season started, I thought for sure that it didn’t matter what Republican candidate was thrown on the ticket - we were in for one horrendous meltdown.  I’m talking USC-Washington State territory here.  The economy didn’t look good, the housing bubble was starting to burst, gas prices were through the roof, Bush was less appreciated than Paris Hilton, Iraq was improving but still rather spotty - by all rights, all the Democrats had to do was field a halfway capable candidate, get their house in order, and then steamroll the poor sap the Republicans were going to throw on the ticket.

The trouble with predictions is they’re frequently wrong - if they weren’t, we wouldn’t even bother having elections or playing football games.  We’d just throw together a couple of fantasy lineups, run the numbers, and pick a winner.  What I didn’t know at the time was that the Democrats were going to blow their load in the primaries.  I also didn’t realize, at least at first, that the Democrats were serious about choosing either a woman that half of the country already decided they hated ten years ago or choosing someone younger than my mother.  I definitely wasn’t expecting the young guy to put up any sort of a fight, nor was I expecting him to have all kinds of fun and exciting connections to racist preachers and erstwhile terrorists.

To put this into football terms, this would be somewhat similar to Nevada going to, say, Texas.  Nobody in their right mind would ever expect Nevada to hold up against Texas.  Nobody with half a clue would expect Texas to throw a red shirt freshman quarterback against Nevada that was as likely to throw the ball to the opposition as to his own team when there’s a perfectly serviceable senior quarterback available that just wasn’t quite as flashy during practice.  I mean, the freshman can play next year - let him learn behind the senior and get some experience as a backup, right?  Certainly nobody would expect the first quarter to go by and find Nevada down by 3…

Then came the convention.  It was to become Obama’s shining moment - the moment when he would rally the base, drive into the end zone, and put this game away once and for all.  It was shaping up to be something special, too, with all kinds of flash and a packed stadium full of fans.  Obama saw the receiver… he threw long…

INTERCEPTION!

Nevada is now up by 4!  The crowd is silent, stunned… mortified by what they’re seeing unfold in front of them.  I thought we already won this thing, they mutter to themselves.  Instead, they’re watching their prize freshman, highly touted by all of the scouts, make unforced turnovers and struggle to move the ball against that was supposed to be a highly mediocre defense.

Then came halftime.  Texas made adjustments.  Nevada was ecstatic.

The third quarter started, and things immediately started to look bad.  Nevada threw in a freshman QB of their own and tried to open up the offense, hoping to catch Texas off guard.  It worked at first, but once Texas realized that the new QB couldn’t read a basic defense, they shut the offense down in nothing flat.  Then, the weather began to sour.  The field was becoming a sloppy, slippery mess.  All Texas had to do was just run the ball, using its superior line against Nevada’s suspect defense.  Sure, it wouldn’t be pretty, but it would be effective; plus, it would keep their freshman QB from being in a position to make any serious mistakes.

The fourth quarter is now.  The weather is clearing a little.  Nevada is still close, but they’re down by about a touchdown.  Their offense is starting to move again.  Obama is fumbling the ball.  Texas’ coaching staff is too busy focusing on the fans and not enough time on the field.  No, Nevada’s chances aren’t good, but they’re a heck of a lot better than anybody expected they would be by this point.

As far as “Texas” fans are concerned, this game shouldn’t be anywhere near this close.  They’re probably right, but it doesn’t matter - it is close, and, as long as they keep playing like it’s not, they’re going to be in for one hell of a surprise when this game ends.

Go ahead, “Texas”.  Keep playing not to lose.  This Nevada fan won’t mind one bit.

I know I haven’t posted much - various personal and work-related concerns have pretty well knocked me out as of late.  That said, I have been keeping up on things and, like many others out there, I’ve been getting well nigh burned out on the petty politics that I’ve been seeing.  McCain wants to focus on Obama’s association with Ayers.  Obama wants to paint Palin as a moose-toting, gun-killing idiot savant that is only a heartbeat away from dragging our country into the Middle Ages, where plague was “God’s will”, ‘intelligent’ design was too radical and knowledgy, and contraception meant becoming a castrato.  Personally, I just want this to stop so we can all focus on how Joe the Plumber isn’t really Joe at all - he’s actually a pod-borne replicant from the planet Sn’rl-x who is sabotaging our elections in order to better facilitate the success of the impending and inevitable invasion.

First up, some candid thoughts from Obama about Bill Ayers, former Weather Underground terrorist:

My fellow Americans,

Throughout my campaign, my opponents have tried time and again to paint me as something I’m not.  Time after time, they focus on my friends in Chicago politics - outstanding citizens like Tony Rezko and Bill Ayers - and then attempt to divine conclusions regarding my political leanings and affiliations based on these associations.  They look at Tony Rezko and say that I’m a corruptible opportunist.  They look at Bill Ayers and say that I’m spooning with terrorists during late night trysts while Michelle is commiserating with Oprah and Tyra Banks about all of the ways that men suck.  Only one of these conclusions is correct.  Like all politicians, I am, in fact, eminently corruptible and highly opportunistic.  If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have made it this far.

This brings me to my association with Mr. Ayers.  The time has come for me to finally explain it, once and for all, definitively and clearly.

In politics, there are two kinds of people - those who wish to become politicians because they enjoy the fame, and those who get into politics because they enjoy the game.  I belong to the former category.  For people like me, politics is great.  It gives me a chance to fill stadiums in Germany and be treated like a rock star throughout the world without having to exhibit the slightest discernment of talent.  I don’t have to know how to sing.  I don’t have to know how to play sports.  I don’t even have to look good, though it helps to at least not look like an aging troll like my opponents always do.  Seriously, Edwards’ hair scared the living crap out of me.  The best part is, unlike so many rock stars of time past, I don’t have to slip into anonymity like Ed Espinosa - just by virtue of being here, my name is going to go down in the history books, with other greats like Adlai Stevenson, Walter Mondale, and Bill the Cat.  In the sports world, I would be the quarterback.

There are others, however, who enjoy politics for an entirely different reason.  They prefer to linger behind the scenes, pulling strings here and there, brokering power deals in shadowy back offices.  These are the kinds of people that are most successful when they’re never noticed - people like Karl Rove, Tony Rezko… and Bill Ayers.  These are people who, if you plan on getting anywhere in politics, you absolutely have to go through.  In the sports world, they would be coordinators or scouts, people that don’t get much attention, but if you get on their bad side you’re done.  The reason is simple.  Most people have neither the time or patience for politics.  The few that do, the few that really enjoy politics for its own sake, not as a vehicle for fame and stardom but instead because they find the art and science of politics positively fascinating, are rare.  Rare things have the uncanny knack of becoming valuable, even when they have no discernable benefit to anyone.  Just ask those with radium watches or AMC Pacers.

When I was a younger politician trying to make a name for myself, I had a choice.  I could either become a Republican or I could become a Democrat.  Considering my upbringing and my personal history, the choice was clear - I was definitely not raised in a conservative environment, not by any stretch of the imagination.  So, I became a Democrat, which left the next choice - where do I make a name for myself?  If you’re going to become a famous, powerful Democrat, Chicago is a pretty good choice.  Sure, San Francisco is an obvious liberal stronghold, but just being linked with the Bay Area makes you politically radioactive east of the Sierras.  Chicago, on the other hand, has some natural advantages for someone like me.  It’s urban enough where liberals in Manhattan and San Francisco can feel comfortable associating with me.  It’s blue collar enough to at least not be a hindrance in places like Kansas, South Dakota, or Minnesota.  Best of all, there’s a nearly invincible Democratic machine, continuously groomed and immaculately maintained for nearly a century.  It’s the perfect starting point for a young, ambitious politician like myself.  All I needed to do was ingratiate myself to the powers that be.

Bill Ayers established himself as a political player in Chicago long before I showed up, which meant that, if I planned on becoming a political player myself, I needed to get on his good side and get there fast.  So, I did.  I got involved in education reform, a field that a professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago would be understandably interested and active in.  Keep in mind that I didn’t make him a professor - even though he blew up some buildings when I was a pre-teen, somebody still decided it was a good idea to put him in charge of educating people on how to… well… educate people.  Many people far older and, at the time, far more established than me made that decision.  It was my decision to decide whether I was going to play along or if I was going to condemn myself to obscurity by trying to fight him.  Keep in mind that, at the beginning, I was just a lowly college graduate working in non-profit community groups.  Objecting to Ayers’ involvement with projects I was working on would’ve received no publicity and no press.  Who would’ve cared what I thought back then?  It would have been the equivalent of a Walmart greeter expressing disgust with the behavior of Sam Walton - nobody would have cared and it wouldn’t have made a difference.  So, like so many working Americans, I was faced with a choice - I either learn to work with the crazy guy in the office and make the most of things, or I try to be “principled” and either become unemployed or find a different line of work.  Like many working American plumbers, electricians, and drywall installers, I chose to work with the crazy guy.

Now my opponents wish to hold that against me, as if I had a choice whether or not to work with the crazy guy.  Sure, I kind of did - I could either work with Ayers or give up on politics, on fame, on superstardom.  For me, that wasn’t really a choice.  If given the same opportunity, I doubt most Americans would choose differently.

My fellow Americans, I’m sorry I had to work with people that you might find objectionable.  I’m also sorry that you might work with people I might find objectionable, like unlicensed plumbers, independent media, Blue Dog Democrats, or Republicans.  Rest assured, though, that if you give me the opportunity to help you avoid working with undesirable people by tanking the economy and making it damn near impossible for anybody to work at all, I will do everything within my power to avoid working with someone that you might find objectionable.  In fact, with any luck, I won’t have to work with anyone at all.

Against, on the other hand…

So now I shall pass it.

First, after watching the Red Sox/Rays game, I have the following question:

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Personally, I’m not sure which way to vote on this one.  I’m pulling for a Red Sox vs. Manny World Series, if only because watching Manny try to take on Red Sox Nation singlehandedly would be highly entertaining.  Past that, it’s a little difficult to get excited about the Phillies, and as for the Rays… yeah, okay, Tampa Bay has never made it to the playoffs before.  Great!  Glad to see they could make it.  Even so, it’s a little hard to get excited about a team that had to remove “Devil” from their name because… why, again?  If there’s anything funnier than a team with the name “Devil” in it and teal being part of the official uniform (NOTE:  What is it about Florida teams and teal?!), I can’t think of it.

Nothing says evil like teal.  Nothing.

Speaking of evil, how about this?

General Motors has held discussions about acquiring Chrysler, The New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported late Friday.

The talks between GM and Cerberus Capital Management, which owns Chrysler, began more than a month ago, the Times reported on its Web site.

I’m not even sure who this is a worst idea for, and I’m not the only one.  On the one hand, GM has an opportunity to buy a competitor with minimal foreign marketshare, a reckless overabundance of trucks and SUVs that nobody wants in its inventory and its product pipeline, and absolutely no marketspace that anybody believes it has any sort of leadership, save for possibly a fading minivan segment if you’re feeling generous.  Concurrently, Chrysler has an opportunity to get bought out by a company that may be filing for bankruptcy within the year.  It’s a win-win!

(Wait… wait, no… no it’s not.)

One final note…

What is it about women and bathrooms?  Thankfully, the ESO isn’t like this, but there seems to be an overabundance of women with wacky hangups involving the bathroom.  I remember working with one woman who absolutely refused to do anything in a public bathroom, especially if there was anybody else in said bathroom.  I’ve run into women that get offended when people dare to poop in their bathroom - even when the other person happens to live there!  The list goes on and on and on… and I have to wonder here - what kind of wacky, puritanical madness led to this state of affairs?  Why on earth is it more ‘ladylike’ to pretend that you’re just hanging out in the bathroom, doing absolutely nothing at all, instead of treating the bathroom as a place of purpose where you dispose of bodily waste?  Are you seriously telling me that it’s more ‘ladylike’ to pretend that you’re just “hanging out” in what is essentially a publically available entry point for either a sewer system or a septic tank?  Would you pretend to hang out over a manhole?  How about a dumpster?  Why does hanging out in front of a dumpster pretending you don’t have trash make any less sense than “hanging out” in a bathroom pretending that you don’t pee or poop?

Here’s a hint:  Women that don’t poop aren’t women - they’re robots. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like robots - I think they kick ass, and if we can find a way to pull off a convincing lovebot, I’d be all over that like white on ranch.  Of course, if we had lovebots, we’d have to be careful to ensure that our reproductive equipment doesn’t get rootkitted somehow; last I checked, human beings have numerous security vulnerabilities that are trivially easy to exploit…

Perhaps it’s best if we just move on.

Finally, this wouldn’t be a blog at all if I didn’t mention that our stock market is apparently destined for great and terrible things at the moment.  It’s at times like these that I’m thankful that, up until very recently, I’ve historically been too poor to think about a savings, much less a retirement plan.  The good news, at least on a personal level, is that, assuming I start a retirement plan sometime in the near future, I’m going to be buying rather low.  So, with that in mind, I mean no offense to those whose lives are wantonly devastated by the current financial climate, but I’m an incredible cheapskate - the lower the market goes, the happier I’ll be at this particular moment.  Perhaps I could buy some stock that’s worth less than my truck!  Sure, it would take some effort, but with a little time and patience, I think it’s possible.

As a further aside, I’ve decided it’s official:  My truck shall henceforth be known as Serenity.  Don’t worry, it’s running fine - it’s just starting to make some interesting noises around the transfer case region again.  Good times.

Let’s see here…

1. New job that forbids posting on blogs or message forums while at work, per corporate policy?  Check.
2. Infant at home?  Check.
3. Hour long commute in each direction to work?  Check.
4. Moving soon?  Check.

And people wonder why I don’t post more…

Here are some thoughts that I’d love to spend a little more time developing, but want to throw out there so that way there’s something halfway fresh and interesting:

• Openfire rocks my world.  As far as open-sourced projects go, it’s in pretty solid shape, even if it has the traditional “What the heck is that?!” name going.  Openfire is an open-sourced instant messenger server based on Jabber (the same protocol used by GTalk and later versions of iChat, among others) that can also be used as a gateway for other, more common protocols, like ICQ, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and so forth.  What’s nice about Openfire isn’t just that it’s fairly lightweight (uses only 64 MB of RAM by default, unless you configure it to use more), or that it integrates fairly cleanly with Active Directory (yes, you have to look up a few LDAP structures in ADSIEdit, but you only have to do it once).  Openfire can also archive all messages that pass through it into a database of your choosing, including Microsoft SQL Server, which means that you can keep tabs on what employees are chatting about, maintain archives of internal chats, and control who gets access to what on the outside.  Very, very handy, and since it’s legitimately free, even the smallest businesses can implement this without much pain.  The one drawback is that it works best with the corresponding Spark IM client; I say it’s a drawback because, though Spark is fairly functional, it misses a lot of nice yet common features, like the ability to change fonts and font colors.  Normally I wouldn’t sweat that much, but having my default color turn out to be pink with no way to change it is a little obnoxious.  It does do the job, though, so I’m not going to sweat it much, and it does integrate with Openfire’s various features and plug-ins quite nicely.
• I don’t really care what Obama’s or McCain’s health care plans are - if either of them involve spending government money to “fix” health care, we’re going to be in trouble.  Here’s the deal:  Right now, the federal government isn’t just operating at a deficit - it’s hemorrhaging cash in the worst possible way imaginable.  According to the US Treasury, our current debt is, as of October 7th, $10,224,252,192,942.42.  On January 1st, 2008, the debt was $9,229,172,659,218.31.  That means that, in the course of 10 months, we borrowed nearly one trillion dollars.  We increased our debt by over 10% in less than a year, and we still haven’t started paying a dime for the infamous $700 billion bailout of the financial sector.  Since the economy is slipping, tax revenues are only going to go down, which means the debt is only going to get worse unless something is done to either curtail spending (i.e. slashing programs - big ones) or raise revenue (i.e. raise taxes by a lot more than either McCain or Obama can dare suggest).  As McCain was kind enough to point out in last night’s debate, the last president to raise taxes during a recession was Hoover; it would be an understatement to say that didn’t end well.
• Speaking of programs, take a look at this graph from the US Government Accountability Office:
  
  To put that into perspective, our current GDP is roughly $14.3 trillion.  According to the Heritage Foundation, the federal government has been bringing in about $2.5 trillion in tax revenue, or about 17% of our GDP; whether that includes transfer payments like Social Security is unclear.  If that chart is even remotely accurate, by 2016 we can count on spending all of our current federal taxes on Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, assuming we only spend what we tax and we don’t increase taxes.

  Needless to say, neither is going to happen - we’re going to borrow like mad and we’re going to have to either raise taxes or start breaking promises.  By 2080, we’re probably going to be doing a lot of both.

  The trouble here is not that health care is broken, or that our bureaucrats spent program money like water, though there is some truth to both of those statements.  The simple truth is that these programs, though sold as “pay-as-you-go” programs where each person pays in and then, after a set amount of time, gets their money back as health care and a nominal retirement, are not really “pay-as-you-go” programs, and never were supposed to be.  Think about it for a minute - do you really think that the first person to receive money from Social Security put anything into it?  How about the first generation?  Do you really believe for even a second that FDR & Friends got together and created a program that nobody could cash out from for 20 years until the first people finally put in enough to get something back?  Of course not, which is why any politician that pretends otherwise is either foolish or duplicitous.  If it was that simple, why get the federal government involved at all?  Why not just say, “Okay, American citizens, you’re hereby ordered to put some of your money in a savings account” and be done with it?

  The answer is simple - that’s not what Social Security and its ilk were ever about.  Ever.

  The point of these programs was to provide a nominal retirement and some basic health care to people that couldn’t provide it for themselves.  It was supposed to be paid for by those that could provide it, which means that every dime your parents put into Social Security went to their parents, and every dime that you’re putting into Social Security right now will go to your parents.  That’s how the system was designed to work, and, as long as people aren’t living for too long and having lots of kids, the system will work just fine.  Of course, as time has passed, we’ve enjoyed longer lifespans, with not-quite-as-long productive lifespans, meaning we’re able to work longer, but not as much longer as we’re able to live.  At the same time, we’re also having fewer children, which means there are fewer taxpayers supporting our social programs.

  So, while the entire model that underpins our current programs, the one that pays for the promises politicians made to our parents 30 years ago, slowly erodes and collapses, what are our current politicians promising?  Obama wants to create a small business health tax break, pay for catastrophic health costs, and create a public national health insurance company that competes against private companies, or at least provides insurance when the private companies refuse to.  Considering how well the last set of GSEs were run, I’m not exactly inclined to support the creation of another one.  McCain, meanwhile, wants to give everybody somewhere between $2,500-$5,000 to offset health insurance costs.  Granted, that’s not quite as spendy as Obama’s plan, but we’re still talking about up to $750 billion (that’s $2,500 times 300,000,000 Americans) that’s going to have to materialize out of thin air.

  We’re spending over $1 trillion a year that we don’t have right now.  How are we going to come up with enough money to meet either of their spending promises?

  The answer:  We can’t.

• Right now, The China Probrem is on, and it’s… it’s pretty messed up.  I can’t do it anymore!