it's spreading...

The alleged voting machine hassles in Florida, where people were selecting Democratic candidates, seeing it properly lit up there, then when submitting to the confirmation screen seeing their votes switched to the Republican candidates?

My officemate got an email from a family member that says it's happening in Texas as well.

Oh, but that's NOT getting the government's attention.

So what is?

The fact that one maker of the damned machines has been bought by a company with ties to Venezuela's "Anti-American" Hugo Chavez!

I'm with Ed on this one:
Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Government Suddenly Concerned About Voting Machines:

Now I agree with them, there should be no foreign ownership at all of a company that provides voting machines, particularly ones with any ties to a nut like Chavez. But isn't it ridiculous that this gets the attention of the Federal government when 3 years worth of reports of problems with these machines wasn't enough to wake anyone up? Absurd.

But on the other hand, if there is tampering going on and these machines aren't part of it but get replaced by machines that are...

Or is just because Chavez is a "leftie" that he'll tamper with the machines to make them auto-elect the "liberals"?

pics of yesterday's Today Show Halloween

( spoiler warning )

we need a president with an INTELLIGENT sense of humor

That's really why Kerry lost but none of the alternatives the dems offered were any better.  Kerry can't tell a joke to save his ass.  [Neither can Gore.]

Problem being that Bush's jokes aren't funny, they're merely insulting.  He thinks they're funny but really they come from inbred stereotypes that the leader of the free world (or others aspiring to be so, Mr. Allen) shouldn't be thinking anymore.

Self-deprecating humor is the best type for celebrities and politicians (are they one in the same yet?), and BushCo refuses to insult themselves because that's akin to admitting a mistake which is something they'll never do, even years and decades from now...

Hillary can tell a joke, but only if the punch line is about her husband.

Update: I've been told by those who've seen him more than I that Gore does have a good sense of humor; it's just so mis-represented by the so-called "liberal" media (much less the right-wing punditry) as to be distorted beyond recognition.

not that we should be encouraging labels...

dammit i did it again and posted what should have gone to classical_music into my main blog...crapity crap crap crap( cut anyways for archival purposes )

brain freeze...

Yahoo! News:

Courtney Love, who has been sober for 15 months, says Mel Gibson helped her on the road to recovery.

Is it just me, or are these two names absolutely NOT supposed to ever EVER be in the same sentence?

sheesh...

(Celtic) New Year's Resolution

I am now hereby no longer to complain when my wife tells me (whether in a concerned way or nagging) that she thinks I'm driving too close to the car in front of me no matter how far away I think I am...

...'cause tonite, keeping my distance kept me out of one hell of an accident in Reston on my way home.

Nobody hurt.

The kid in front of me just kept right on going right into a backup to the stoplight of Reston Parkway and Baron Cameron.  Everybody was stopped, the light could be seen and was still red, the kid just wasn't paying attention and...WHAM...

Depth perception's a bitch, isn't it?

I was the car immediately behind the kid (about 3 car lengths and breaking 'cause *I* saw the redlight and the back-up...) so I stuck around to be a witness when the cop arrived.

I'm guessing the kid doesn't know the neighborhood 'cause he was telling his mom that he was there because he was shopping in Tysons (yes, 10 miles away through a significant rush-hour backup as it was just to get to Reston Parkway), yet he said his mom was in Maryland and he didn't know how to tell her to get to where he was.  I didn't bother to see if the kid's plates were MD or not.  I did tell the kid she was (merely by being in MD) at least an hour away at this time of night.

go fig.

two more gaps in the fossil record discovered

This time, in elephants.  An ancestor, only 4.2 feet tall (yes, *tiny*) about 27 million years old, discovered in Africa.