Also, McCain is still an idiot.

Not that I'm enjoying Obama spending my sons's future paychecks, but dude, have you been too busy with Iraq for the past 8 years to notics Afghanistan?:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former GOP presidential nominee John McCain warned Wednesday that the United States is losing the war in Afghanistan.

...McCain said on Wednesday, "When you aren't winning in this kind of war, you are losing. And, in Afghanistan today, we are not winning." He delivered his remarks at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

Um, which direction have you been looking in for the past 8 years?  Thanks for waiting 2 months after your golden boy is out of office to start your bitching.   Classy.

Few and far between...

Amazing what being a father does to your time-management skills.  :)   Some new photos on the left from the holidays, and I'll leave you with this ridiculousness:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A federal anti-terror law that requires longshoremen, truckers and others to submit to criminal background checks has ensnared another class of transportation worker -- mule drivers.

Yes, so-called mule skinners -- in this case, seasonal workers who dress in colonial garb at a historical park in Easton, Pa. -- must apply for biometric Transportation Worker Identification Credentials (TWIC), according to the Transportation Security Administration, which says it is bound by federal law.

The requirement has officials of the Hugh Moore Historical Park perplexed. "We have one boat. It's pulled by two mules. On a good day they might go 2 miles per hour," said Sarah B. Hays, the park's director of operations.

The park's two-mile canal does not pass any military bases, nuclear power plants or other sensitive facilities. And, park officials say, the mules could be considered weapons of mass destruction only if they were aimed at something resembling food.

If work is a hologram...do I have to come in tomorrow? :)  Read the full article for more brain-bending stuff, such as "we can tell by measuring the blurriness of the universe".  It almost makes sense...Stephen Hawking, eat your heart out.

According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan.

If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."

South America....NOT on my vacation list anymore

Glad my family got to go there as a port-of-call on a cruise as a kid.  Caracas, Venezuela is definitely OFF my vacation list forever.  From CNN:

"Foreign Policy magazine said in September that Caracas tops the list of five murder capitals of the world, with an official tally of 130 homicides per 100,000 residents. The city, which is Venezuela’s capital, has about 4 million inhabitants."

Of the top five, only one U.S. city made the list: New Orleans.  :)

Last minute shopping...

..and it's COLD! 26 degrees, and someone looks warm.

While mom's away...

The men of the house will...sleep?

"I think this bed's too big for me now, Dad."

Tom Cruise, eat your heart out...

Don't look nervous at the airport, or anything....

Several Israeli-based technology companies are developing detection systems that pick up signs of emotional strain -- a psychological red flag that a passenger may intend to commit an act of terror. Speedier and less intrusive than metal detectors, these systems may eventually restore some efficiency to the airplane boarding process.

...developers say the combination of these technologies can detect a person's reaction to certain stimuli by reading body temperature, heart rate and respiration -- signals a terrorist unwittingly emits before he plans to commit an attack.

...so i can't help thinking, reality-meets-fiction-yet-again.  Didn't "Minority Report" just come out only a few years ago, and "pre-crime" was a "futuristic" idea?  I guess I need to stay out of airports soon.    "Hey, I didn't DO anything yet."  "Well, you THOUGHT about blowing up the White House".  "Asshat...I'm a libertarian...I think that every damn day."   :)

Babys Don't Price Scan...Apparently

Also, self portrait with camera phone and baby-in-hand is kinda hard. :)

If the bills weren't so damn LONG...

I repeat myself, but again, why you can have too much government: (does anyone still really think we need "just one more program"?  Comment if you do, PLEASE.)

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson rejected using the government’s financial-rescue program as a “panacea” for economic difficulties, clashing with lawmakers who want the funds to help beleaguered homeowners.

Barney Frank, who heads the House panel, cut off Paulson...saying “the bill couldn’t have been clearer” in also being aimed at reducing foreclosures.  “We don’t have a lot of time and I don’t usually do this,” Frank said in interrupting Paulson during an exchange on how to deploy TARP cash. “I read sections of the bill that says -- write it down -- give them assistance."

Well, we wouldn't be having this argument if you (Congress) hadn't inflated the original proposal from 3 to 451 FUCKING PAGES (PDF download, if you have no life and want to read it). Read the top 10 sweeteners...wooden arrow makers, rum in Puerto Rico, wool-makers...)  There's probably the kitchen sink AND the Second Coming of Christ in that bill if you read enough of it.  Vote smaller, dammit!

The "right" of marriage? Not in at least 3 states.

Irony:  As of 1961, there were 16 states with anti-interracial laws still on the books.  Two people who wouldn't have been allowed to marry back then (in those states) are the parents of the man now elected to run the country.  So now, the gay community sees it all over again.  California, Florida, and Arizona voters decide to tell people how they can love each other.  Watch as Keith Olbermann gives an emotional defense.

While I believe marriage is not a "right" from a libertarian perspective, the government should be out of marriages completely, and only recognizing all as "civil unions" for tax/property purposes if necessary.  The question is not "should gays be allowed to marry?", but "why should ANYONE ask permission of the government to marry?".  That's the only way I see this resolved.  I didn't want to apply for a marriage license....it's a contract between two consenting adults; the government is merely an intruding third party.