GOP Senator Gordon Smith Jumps On The Obama Bandwagon

This Gordon Smith political ad is pretty amazing. It features Obama's image and states: "Who says Gordon Smith helped lead the fight for better gas mileage and a cleaner environment? Barack Obama."

Do you think Gordon might be a bit worried about his reelection chances this Fall?

A Comedy About The Apocalypse and Other Entertainment News

This should be interesting. The folks who brought you Superbad are working on a comedy about the end of the world:

The end days are near for Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel. The pair will star in the action comedy "Jay and Seth vs. the Apocalypse" for Mandate Pictures.

The film is based on a comedy short from "Superbad" scribes Rogen and Evan Goldberg, which in turn was based on a story by Goldberg and Jason Stone. Rogen and Goldberg will write and produce the feature.

Several production companies vied for the rights to the comedy, which revolves, as the title implies, around two guys dealing with the apocalypse. Last summer, the project caused a stir in the blogosphere when a trailer for the short appeared on YouTube.

And speaking of shows about the end of the world, I've got some good news and some bad news about "Battlestar Galactica." The bad news is that there will be no more new episodes until 2009. Here is the good news:

According to well-informed sources, it’s almost certain that at least one “Battlestar Galactica” TV movie will be made this year.

Here’s even better news: The last-ever episode of “Battlestar” will run three hours, which means that final part of Season 4 will be 11 hours long.

You heard that right: The last leg of the show’s final season will expand to 11 hours, instead of the originally planned 10 hours.

As he discussed here, the show’s executive producer, Ronald D. Moore, wrote "Battlestar's" final episode, which, as written, is three hours long (a wild guess here: Sci Fi probably wouldn’t air the whole thing in one night). Mary McDonnell described her reaction to the script this way: It filled her with "an incredible feeling of adrenaline,” she told Ain't It Cool News. “It made me understand the entire saga, and made me excited for all of you.”

A Sci Fi spokesman said Friday, "As written by Ron, the phenomenal finale script extends beyond the time alotted for the episode. We're exploring how to shoot the extra footage as Ron has envisioned and written it."

And here you go, Dan: The classic 60s British television series The Prisoner is getting an update. Ain't It Cool News is reporting that the new Prisoner miniseries is set to begin shooting this August in Africa and will star Ian McKellen (Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings trilogy) as Number Two and Jim Caviezel (Christ in Jesus Chainsaw Massacre) as Number Six.

The reason I mentioned Dan is because, a couple of years ago, I convinced him to watch the first few episodes of the old series, but he didn't really like it. He said it was "too dated" but he did appreciate how it explained an episode of The Simpsons. Maybe the updated version will be more to his liking.

Why Impeach Now?

This is from an Indiana newspaper editorial titled Never Too Late To Impeach:

In the face of the most lawless administration in U.S. history, what are we to make of a House that refuses its duty to impeach? Just a decade ago, fire-breathing Republicans impeached Bill Clinton for lying under oath about an affair. Now, manipulating intelligence to go to war and illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens rate not even the lift of an eyebrow in the House. Maybe that’s because the House is complicit in those crimes. * * *

Well, I used to want the Democrats to impeach Bush -- and maybe it isn't too late to impeach -- but I think it is the last thing the Democrats should do at this point.

George W. Bush is the most unpopular president in a generation, and is probably the worst president we've ever had. Why screw around with that now? All an impeachment would do at this point is (1) perhaps make people feel sorry for Bush, and (2) distract from the fact the John McCain wants to serve out a third Bush term.

I say let's just let Bush be Bush for the next five months or so. If Pelosi and company want to impeach that sonofabitch after November 4th, then I'm OK with that. But one of the best things the Democrats have going for them during the run-up to the General Election is the fact that George W. Bush is currently the President of the United States.

McMurdo Base, Antarctica: The Place To Be This Summer

From Reuters:

One of the last shipments to a U.S. research base in Antarctica before the onset of winter darkness was a year's supply of condoms, a New Zealand newspaper reported on Monday.

Bill Henriksen, the manager of the McMurdo base station, said nearly 16,500 condoms were delivered last month and would be made available, free of charge, to staff throughout the year to avoid the potential embarrassment of having to buy them.

The base only has a skeleton staff through the long winter.

"Since everybody knows everyone, it becomes a little bit uncomfortable," Henriksen told the Southland Times newspaper.

About 125 scientists and staff are stationed at McMurdo base, the largest community in Antarctica, during the winter months when there is constant darkness. * * *

Fish Photo

Danimal and I drove over to a southeastern Oregon lake last Saturday for some trout fishing and had a good day. We limited out on 14-18 inch rainbow, with the biggest fish weighing in at about 2 1/4 pounds.




At left is a picture of two of the biggest ones we landed (click photo to enlarge). We caught all of our fish off the bank.

Well, At Least One Country Had A Successful Iraq Policy

From McClatchy:

Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service ... to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government," a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.

A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the Pentagon officials' activities after only a month, and the Defense Department's top brass never followed up on the investigators' recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said.

The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator.

Iran, which was a mortal enemy of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and fought a bloody eight-year war with Iraq during his reign, has been the primary beneficiary of U.S. policy in Iraq, where Iranian-backed groups now run much of the government and the security forces. * * *

So it turns out that Dick Cheney and the rest of the Bush Regime were Iranian pawns. I hope the Obama Camp is paying attention to this story.

Enough Already

God I hate these racist assholes:

"I came here for the vote of every American, and our Democratic Party threw us down the tubes," New Yorker Harriet Christian said after yesterday's meeting of the Democratic Party's Rules and Bylaws Committee.

Senator Clinton is the "best nominee possible" for President, said Ms. Christian, "and the Democrats are throwing the election away. For what? An inadequate black male who would not have been running had it not been a white woman that was running for President! And I'm not going to shut my mouth anymore!" * * *

"I'm tired of it," Floridian Sharon Clark said yesterday. "I want to go and vote and know my vote is going to count."

"The right thing to do is to seat all the delegates," added delegate Beverly Battelle Weeks. "Anything less is not democratic."

"I can be called white, but you can't be called black," Christian charged. "That's not my America. It's equality for all of us; it's about time we all stood up for it.

"I'm no second-class citizen. And God damn the Democrats!"

"And they think we won't turn and vote for McCain," Christian added. She closed: "Well, I've got news for all of you: McCain will be the next President of the United States!"

Where to begin: First of all, as Martin points out so well in this excellent post, "there is no right to vote for a party nominee" and "your vote [in a primary] counts for nothing more than a suggestion." The primary process is simply the method that the political parties decided upon to choose their candidates, and Florida and Michigan violated the rules laid out by the Democratic Party. Deal with it.

And what's all this crap about Hillary Clinton being the best nominee? Are you fucking kidding me? There is a reason Rush Limbaugh and the Extreme Right wanted Hillary to get the nomination, and that is because she is the most polarizing political figure in America right now. The neo-fascists know that their only hope to win in November would be if she secured the Democratic nomination because Republicans would come out in droves just to vote against her.

Does anyone out there really believe that John McCain is going to excite Republicans enough to get them to the polls? The only people who seem excited to vote for McCain right now are the aforementioned Harriet Christian, Sharon Clark, and all the other Hillary supporters who simply cannot accept that Ms. Clinton ran a shitty campaign and deserved to lose a nomination that everyone thought she had sewn up last year. Do folks like Ms. Clark and Ms. Christian really want such an incompetent campaigner to carry the Democrats' standard into the Fall campaign?

Obama, on the other hand, ran an excellent campaign and deserves the nomination. Indeed, Obama secured the nomination by basically running a clean, straight-forward campaign. Hillary ran a dirty, race-baiting, gimmicky campaign and got her backside handed to her down the stretch.

Hillary continues to claim that she is better able to confront McCain in the Fall. Well, maybe her point would have been better taken had she not voted for the Iraq Debacle in 2002, but she did, and she has yet to apologize for such a monumental act of political cowardice.

I know that a lot of people are claiming that Iraq won't be much of an issue in the Fall given how crappy the Bush/McCain economy is right now, but I think such a view is misguided because John McCain himself is apparently planning to make a big issue out of Iraq during the run-up to the General Election, and Obama -- who opposed the war from the start -- is simply going to have a field day against McCain on this issue, given that the decision to invade Iraq is probably the biggest foreign policy blunder in American history.

Hillary can be critical all she wants with regard to Iraq now, but the bottom line is that she voted to authorize the invasion. Last year, when it looked like Hillary was going to easily secure the nomination, I couldn't believe that the Democrats were actually going to nominate a candidate who voted for Bush's Folly in Iraq. Well, it looks like that isn't going to happen.

God Damn the Democrats you say? Well, I say God Bless the Democrats because it looks like they've actually managed to pull their heads out of their asses this time around.

This Is How Obama Should Respond To McCain's Demand That Obama Go To Iraq

From the Seattle Times:

Sen. Barack Obama is considering a visit to Iraq this summer, his first since becoming a presidential candidate.

Republican rival John McCain has criticized him for failing to visit Iraq since 2006. Obama also declined McCain's invitation for a joint trip, saying he didn't want "to be involved in a political stunt," according to a report Wednesday on The New York Times Web site.

Obama's response to McCain's criticism practically writes itself. Obama should simply say that he is planning to go to Iraq this summer, but not to engage in some fact-finding politcal stunt, because everybody knows that Iraq is a clusterfuck and that George Bush and John McCain's decision to invade Iraq was the biggest foreign policy blunder in American history.

Obama should then say that he is going to Iraq to meet with the troops and assure them that, if he is elected president, then he would get them the hell out of there and would then do everything in his power to ensure that nothing like the Iraq Debacle ever happens again.

Oh, and by the way, although Obama got away with running a pretty clean primary campaign, I really think he needs to start viciously attacking McCain immediately.

Oops

McCain said this in 2000:

"Well, in 2004, I expect to be campaigning for the reelection of President George W. Bush, and by 2008, I think I might be ready to go down to the old soldiers home and await the cavalry charge there."

Hagee's Hitler Hilarity

I laughed out loud when I read this:

The controversy surrounding John Hagee's endorsement has finally gotten to John McCain. In the wake of new quotes being circulated by the Huffington Post in which Hagee called Hitler an instrument of God's will, McCain has now rejected Hagee's support.

"Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them," McCain told CNN in a statement. "I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee's endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well."

That matter aside, McCain was sure to bring this back to Barack Obama, insisting that his active effort to get Hagee's support originally was not nearly as bad as Obama's associations with Jeremiah Wright.

"I have said I do not believe Senator Obama shares Reverend Wright's extreme views. But let me also be clear, Reverend Hagee was not and is not my pastor or spiritual advisor, and I did not attend his church for twenty years. I have denounced statements he made immediately upon learning of them, as I do again today."

This is going to be one ugly General Election, but it looks like it'll be good for a few laughs as well.

This Hagee guy kills me. It's as if he just sits around all the time trying to figure out what would be the absolute worst fucking thing for him to say, and when he figures it out, he then goes forth and says it.

Big Victory For Democrats Last Night

And no, I'm not referring to Hillary's totally expected (and totally meaningless) win in West Virginia -- I'm referring to this:

Democrat Travis Childers wins a U.S. House seat in Mississippi's deeply Republican 1st Congressional District.

Childers defeated Republican Greg Davis in a special election to fill the final few months of a two-year term in Congress. The seat was vacated when Roger Wicker was appointed to the U.S. Senate after Trent Lott resigned.

The win allows Democrats to add to their 235-199 majority in Congress — if only for a few months until November's general elections.

Childers, Davis and two other candidates face off again in November's general election.

This is the third time this year that a Democrat has defeated a Republican in a special election for a House seat that should have gone to the GOP candidate. Back in 2004, Bush claimed 63% in Mississippi's 1st Congressional District. The Republicans spent a fortune trying to keep this seat, and ran attack ads featuring Rev. Wright and his connection with Obama. Those ads did not work.

This is very good for the Democrats, as was the fact that Obama was actually able to argue against the gas tax holiday and not be hurt by taking such a position.

Interesting Battlestar Galactica Interview

Edward James Olmos ("Admiral Adama") had some intriguing things to say in a recent interview about the final season of Battlestar Galactica (minor spoilers ahead):

Q. I'm not sure there's ever been a show on TV that's so relentlessly dark. Is it bleak on the set?

A. It is. I mean, we really do take it to heart. It is bleak. And it is getting darker. This last season has gotten to the point where we end up crying a lot. Emotional breakdowns. It's human drama. And when you perform in it, you're inside of it. A lot of people are dead. I'm not going to say who, because why ruin it for people, but a lot of us die.

Q. This season?

A. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. [Laughs.] Not very many of us are going make it to wherever it is that they're taking us. So we just mope along. We open the script just like the viewer. We're all taking the journey. Not only is it difficult because you lose the person inside the story, but you also realize that person is no longer going to be on the set. It's over. Unless they're a Cylon.

Q. That leads me to Starbuck's apparent death . . .

A. Oh, it was so sad. Because they didn't tell us that she was coming back. I was angry.

Q. You were snookered like everybody else?

A. Of course, I was snookered. All we know is just what we're being fed. She died, and then she was gone for awhile, and then she came back. And that was so scary because we have no idea why and how she came back.

Q. So you as an actor don't know?

A. Well, we've filmed something that started to explain it. And it's not an uplifting understanding. [Laughs.] I will say that. It's as dark as everything else. You sit there and you go, "Oh my God, you guys are sick!" They're pushing the envelope. And the network is allowing it.

Q. Has there been anything you know of that the network has not allowed?

A. In the first or second season, the whole idea of suicides was really tough for them to take. I put it in one of my programs that I directed. The idea that people aboard ships were committing suicide. Why wouldn't they? Are you kidding me? Suicide rates would have gone right through the roof.

Q. Right, because what are they living for? And the living conditions aren't pleasant.

A. Terrible. Terrible. We're eating green algae. We've been eating green algae now for almost two years.

Q. And now, it seems that anyone could be a Cylon.

A. We're back to that.

Q. If you know who the final Cylon model is, I'm sure you can't tell me . . .

A. I don't know, either. And no one knew when [the other four were revealed.] You should have seen what happened. There was anger. Real anger. The main one was Michael Hogan [who plays Colonel Tigh.] He just couldn't get past it. He said, "I didn't sign up for this kind of stuff." He was so hurt he was a Cylon.

Q. It does pull the rug out -

A. Right from under him. It changes everything. You see the way [the actors] dealt with it. The confusion, the anger that Colonel Tigh handles it with is true.

Q. Back to "Star Trek" and probably before, science fiction has had diverse, expansive casting. Is that because of the nature of the genre, or the kind of creative people who go into it?

A. I think both. One, the window is open and they allow it. And two, it's the imagination of the people that are developing it. They don't get tied down thinking about who would sell this the best. They say, "This is a reality that I'd like to explore."

One of the great things about the show is how the producers aren't afraid to take it in unexpected directions (like the Cylon occupation of New Caprica), and it certainly sounds like we're in for a wild ride for this final season.

Oops

From the New York Times:

[Arianna] Huffington, the liberal blogger, said she had heard Mr. McCain say at a Los Angeles dinner party shortly after the 2000 election that he had not voted for the president he has now publicly embraced in his own quest for the White House. The McCain campaign swiftly quashed the account and said Ms. Huffington had a book to promote and would make anything up.

“She’s a flake and a poser and an attention-seeking diva,” Mark Salter, one of Mr. McCain’s closest aides, told The Washington Post.

Now two other guests at the same dinner, given by the actress Candice Bergen, at her home in Beverly Hills, say they heard much the same thing as Ms. Huffington. * * *

It doesn't surprise me that McCain would say this back in 2000, given all the crap BushCo pulled against McCain during the primaries that year. But this could spell trouble for McCain in this year's election, particularly if more people from that dinner party corroborate Huffington and the other two witnesses. Bush, after all, still maintains a 28% approval rating.

Hillary Won Indiana Last Night Thanks To Rush Limbaugh (With Update)

From Sam Stein at The Huffington Post:

Did Rush Limbaugh actually impact the Democratic primary?

The loud-mouthed radio talk show host has been encouraging Republicans to vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton to continue the "chaos" in the Democratic race. And a sampling of some key exit poll information suggests he may, to a certain extent, be having an effect.

Thirty-six percent of primary voters said that Clinton does not share their values. And yet, among that total, one out of every five (20 percent) nevertheless voted for her in the Indiana election. Moreover, of the 10 percent of Hoosiers who said "neither candidate" shared their values, 75 percent cast their ballots for Clinton.

These are not small numbers. By comparison, of the 33 percent of voters who said Sen. Barack Obama does not share their values, only seven percent cast their ballots in his favor. Basically, more people who don't relate to Clinton are, for one reason or another, still voting for her. These are not likely to be loyal supporters. * * *

I've been complaining about this for a while -- not because I think what Mr. Oxycontin is doing is evil (getting mad at Rush Limbaugh for being evil is like getting mad at a shark for biting your arm off) -- but because of all the factors regarding electability that the uncommitted superdelegates should be looking at, this is a big one in my book.

Given all that has gone down in the last several weeks -- the Rev. Wright controversy, Obama's bitter remark, etc. -- Hillary was still only able to win Indiana by two points, and she won it because the Idiot Limbaugh told his dittoheads to cross party lines and vote for her.

For the first time in this campaign, I heard the talking heads on television last night extensively discussing this "Limbaugh Effect." Even Sen. John Kerry mentioned it on MSNBC during an interview (and check this out). Hopefully all this will sink into the uncommitted superdelgates' heads over the next few days.

In the meantime, I think Obama should shift gears and start going after McCain, not necessarily with attack ads, but with ads that point out the differences between him and McCain. Obama will eventually have to go on the attack, though, because if you thought the Democratic primary fight was brutal, you ain't seen nothing yet.

UPDATE: The Extreme Right is finally starting to realize where the bear goes though the buckwheat on all this. Right-wing blowhard and Oxycontin-aficionado Rush Limbaugh said this on his radio program earlier today:

I am tempted to tell the superdelegates to pick Obama because I now believe that he would be the weakest of the Democrat nominees.

Nice flip-flop there, Rush. What are you going to do next, hang a "Mission Accomplished" banner in your studio? Why don't you instead move on to your next project, which is to convince all your listeners that you really wanted John McCain to be the Republican nominee all along.

Cartoonist Jim Morin

More Political Cowardice From Hillary Clinton

I've long believed that Hillary Clinton's vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq was an act of political cowardice. Well, her political yellow streak is once again on display:

Hillary Clinton is calling for a holiday on the 18.4-cent gasoline tax, and she says she'd make up the funding from that (which funds transportation infrastructure) by taxing oil company's "windfall" profits.

Forget the fact that, as the above-linked article points out, Hillary actually "OPPOSED efforts to cut or repeal gas taxes during her 2000 Senate contest against Rick Lazio." Senator Clinton doesn't care about stuff like that. Forget the fact that this gas tax holiday will only save the average American family about $28 over the course of the summer driving season. That pesky fact doesn't matter to her.

What matters is that this gas tax issue is something she can use against Obama. She's even running an anti-Obama ad which criticizes Obama for not supporting this proposal. Thankfully, many pundits are calling bullshit on this whole scheme:

[A]mong pundits, her proposal (and McCain's similar plan) is getting laughed out of the room. The normally sympathetic Paul Krugman calls Clinton's plan "pointless" and McCain's "evil," while his colleague Thomas Friedman denounces the plan as "money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks." Still, it's the kind of pander that could work, no matter how transparent or absurd. If voters associate Clinton with cheap gas, mission accomplished.

I think that what is driving Hillary to do this is the same thing that drove her to vote for Bush's Iraq Debacle, namely, it was the politically expedient thing to do. But I think it is the cowardly thing to do.

Thanks, Senator Clinton, for once again living up to all my expectations.

Five Year Ago Today

If you have the stomach for it, here is a video of Bush landing on the carrier deck and prancing around in his flight suit.


This would be hilarious stuff if it wasn't for the fact that 4064 American troops have died so far as a result of the Bush Regime's colossal fuck-up in Iraq.

Here's what White House Press Secretary Dana Perino had to say yesterday about all this:

"[W]e have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner."

God help us.

And, by the way, check this out:

A new poll suggests that George W. Bush is the most unpopular president in modern American history.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Thursday indicates that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush his handling his job as president.

"No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating in any CNN or Gallup poll; in fact, this is the first time that any president's disapproval rating has cracked the 70 percent mark," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

"Bush's approval rating, which stands at 28 percent in our new poll, remains better than the all-time lows set by Harry Truman and Richard Nixon (22 percent and 24 percent, respectively) but even those two presidents never got a disapproval rating in the 70s," Holland added. "The previous all-time record in CNN or Gallup polling was set by Truman, 66 percent disapproval in January 1952."

What I find most amazing isn't the record-low disapproval rating, but the fact that 28% of Americans actually approve of the job Bush is doing. That's nearly one-third of the country.

Bad News For McCain and Hillary

Via Think Progress:

A new USA Today/Gallup poll found that 63 percent of Americans say “the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq, a new high mark by one percentage point.” Gallup notes that “majority opposition to the Iraq war is basically cemented.”

McCain's going to have an uphill fight convincing Americans that the Iraq Invasion and occupation was/is a good thing. Good luck with that, Senator.

And this is interesting:

Talk show host Rush Limbaugh is sparking controversy again after he made comments calling for riots in Denver during the Democratic National Convention this summer.

He said the riots would ensure a Democrat is not elected as president, and his listeners have a responsibility to make sure it happens.

"Riots in Denver, the Democrat Convention would see to it that we don't elect Democrats," Limbaugh said during Wednesday's radio broadcast. He then went on to say that's the best thing that could happen to the country.

My advice to Limbaugh is that he should reduce his daily drug intake down to just a single shoe box full of Oxycontin, because I'm pretty sure that inciting a riot is still a crime in this country.

Vegas Trip 2008: Oh The Humanity

"Vegas is getting more difficult for me every year. When I first visited that town about 15 years ago, I had no problem staying up most of the night and operating on four hours of sleep a day. Not anymore."

Harold's Blog, Vegas Trip 2006, November 22, 2006.

I guess that I had forgotten how difficult it is for me to party in Las Vegas like I used to, but the trip I just got back from was the hardest one for me yet.

Don't get me wrong -- the trip was an absolute blast, and the stretch from Thursday night to Friday evening was one of the most enjoyable 24-hour periods I've spent in that town.

Dan and I arrived in Las Vegas at about 9:00 pm on Thursday evening (Dan rented a town car for the trip from the airport, something I highly recommend because it enabled us to stop at a grocery store and load up for the weekend). We met Ray at the suite at about 10:00, and then proceeded to drink and gamble until about 6:00 am on Friday morning, then got three hours of sleep, and then started partying again at about 9:00 am.

After breakfast, we hung out in the pool for a couple hours drinking beer into the early afternoon (the temperature hit the mid-80s each day we were there), then went to the cigar bar at Caesar's for a good smoke and a few mojitos, then followed that with delicious deli sandwiches at Stage Deli, and then went to Fat Tuesdays and each drank one of their really strong drinks -- you know, the ones they serve to men who want to get drunk fast.

After resting up back at the hotel for a bit, we had a great craps run over at Casino Royale -- the shooter held the dice for about a half hour before sevening out -- and then closed out Friday evening by going back to the cigar bar to celebrate our craps victory with another cigar and a few more mojitos.

It was a killer day, but it completely wasted me and Dan for Saturday. Ray somehow managed to rally on Saturday morning -- he hung out at the Flamingo's adult pool for several hours, but Dan and I really didn't get going until later that afternoon/evening, when Dan had a winning poker session, I had a winning craps session (I actually managed to put together a decent roll, hitting eight numbers or so before I rolled a seven), and then the three of us went to the dinner buffet at Bellagio, which was gluttonous and great.

We had huge plans to gamble on Saturday evening, but I ended up going to bed early as did Ray. Dan stayed up a little later and watched poker on television, which I thought was hysterical because we were in Las Vegas and there was probably 1000 active poker tables within a 1/2 mile of us, but at least he was doing something. I was asleep.

Ray had to catch a flight on Sunday morning, but Dan and I had a later flight so we hit the craps tables at Casino Royale and got crushed. We then limped over to the poker room at the Flamingo and I managed to win some money -- and Dan broke even -- before we had to go to the airport.

It was a super fun trip, and none of us lost a lot of money overall at the tables and I even won about $300 or so for the trip. But I am so tired today that I can barely stand. I've said this before and I'll say it again: I'm convinced that the best way to do Vegas would be to do four nights and three full days, with the middle full day simply being a day of rest (i.e., no drinking, lots of hot-tubbing, eating well, relaxing by the pool, very little gambling, that kind of a day).

Anyway, that's my plan for next year. Of course, another way to approach Vegas would be to simply get a good night's sleep on the first night, but I've never been able to do that. I've always stayed up all night on that first evening, and I don't think that will ever change.

Debate Aftermath

I did not watch the Hillary/Obama debate last night, and from what I'm reading on the internets, I picked a good debate to miss.

But I did watch some excerpts from it, and then read some analysis, and this piece by Michael Grunwald of TIME Magazine is particularly good because Grunwald presents his debate analysis in the context of Obama's risky campaign approach, namely, his gamble that Americans are tired of manufactured issues (e.g., Dukakis in a tank, Kerry eating swiss cheese, George HW Bush looking at his watch during a debate etc.) being the driving force in our politics when the problems we are currently facing as a country are so horrendous:

Last night at the National Constitution Center, at a Democratic debate that was hyped by ABC as a discussion of serious constitutional issues, America got to see exactly what Obama was complaining about. At a time of foreign wars, economic collapse and environmental peril, the cringe-worthy first half of the debate focused on such crucial matters as Senator Obama's comments about rural bitterness, his former pastor, an obscure sixties radical with whom he was allegedly "friendly," and the burning constitutional question of why he doesn't wear an American flag pin on his lapel — with a single detour into Senator Hillary Clinton's yarn about sniper fire in Tuzla. Apparently, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos ran out of time before they could ask Obama why he's such a lousy bowler.

Grunwald also mentions the hysterical story about Obama's aide trying to stop Barack from asking for dijon mustard at TJI Fridays (I wonder if Obama ordered Freedom Fries with that burger?).

The moderators of last night's debate (who, by the way, were reportedly booed by the audience) are still living in the era where it matters what type of condiment politicians use on their hamburgers, and so are Bill and Hillary Clinton. Obama's trying to rise above that. I guess time will tell if his strategy will succeed, but I do think things are so bad right now that people will respond to this message. Indeed, the fact that Obama hasn't really been hurt by the Rev. Wright "scandal" or the "bitter" scandal seems to indicate that his campaign strategy might actually be working.

Well, enough of this political talk -- I'm off to Vegas for three days of craps, poker, and laying around by the pool.