The Obama Email

Yesterday, I received the following email from a colleague.

I think this is something we all should read!!!

Look this up on Snopes if you doubt it.

Who is Barack Obama? Very interesting and something that should be considered in your choice.

If you do not ever forward anything else, please forward this to all your contacts...this is very scary to think of what lies ahead of us here in our own United States...better heed this and pray about it and share it.

We checked this out on "snopes.com". It is factual. Check for yourself. probable U. S. presidential candidate, Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a black MUSLIM from Nyangoma-Kogel, Kenya and Ann Dunham, a white ATHEIST from Wichita, Kansas. Obama's parents met at the University of Hawaii.

When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced. His father returned to Kenya. His mother then married Lolo Soetoro, a RADICAL Muslim from Indonesia. When Obama was 6 years old, the family relocate to Indonesia. Obama attended a MUSLIM school in Jakarta. He also spent two years in a Catholic school.

Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim. He is quick to point out that, "He was once a Muslim, but that he also attended Catholic school."

Obama's political handlers are attempting to make it appear that he is not a radical.

Obama's introduction to Islam came via his father, and that this influence was temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya soon after the divorce, and never again had any direct influence over his son's education.

Lolo Soetoro, the second husband of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, introduced his stepson to Islam. Obama was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta.

Wahabism is the RADICAL teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world. Since it is politically expedient to be a CHRISTIAN when seeking major public office in the United States, Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background. ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into office he DID NOT use the Holy Bible, but instead the Koran.

Barack Hussein Obama will NOT recite the Pledge of Allegiance nor will he show any reverence for our flag. While others place their hands over their hearts, Obama turns his back to the flag and slouches.

Let us all remain alert concerning Obama's expected presidential candidacy.

The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the US from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level - through the President of the United States, one of their own!!!!

While this makes interesting reading. I can't endorse such a tactic to sway my vote. First of all, the statements about Obama disrespecting the flag are suspect. Yes, I've seen the photos out there but I am not so quick to jump to a conclusion.

What I really object to, though, is the dangerous notion that one can make determinations about someone because of the beliefs or actions of a family member. In other words, if a certain individual is a terrible person, therefore his son or daughter must be a terrible person as well. It is wrong to judge Obama by the actions of his parents just as it would be wrong to judge anybody by anything other than an individual's own actions and words.

I am not going to vote for Obama but that is because I don't agree with his politics, not because I disapprove of his parents.

Blu-Ray Wins

Toshiba quits HD-DVD business

Like many, I have yet to invest a single penny into anything regarding high definition television. The biggest reason of course is due to financial limitations. Another reason, though, was that no distributable media format had established itself. That obstacle appears to have been hurdled.

I posted an article, The DVD Situation over two years ago mentioning the format battle primarily between Toshiba and Sony with their respective HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DVD formats. HD-DVD had the initial support but over the past year, it seems that Blu-Ray was taken over. That now appears confirmed. Too bad for those who invested in HD-DVD players and disks. You should have known you were taking a risk (just like those who invested in BetaMax 25 years ago.) Of course, your equipment still works and I'm sure HD-DVD disks will still be produced for a while. It does appear that Blu-Ray has the brighter and longer future, though. This will dismay some as there are those of you out there who don't like certain business practices of Sony. One of these business practices was incorporating rootkits - a form of spyware into its media.

With all this said, we have to also realize that things will never be as stable as they once were. Our standard-definition TV's are based on a standard developed in the 1940's. Yet, high definition television standards that were set less than 10 years ago are already being set up to be replaced. In the past, people often held on to their TV's for many years, decades even. Not any more. The industry apparently wants everybody to buy a new TV every 8 years or so. Think about it. To stay reasonably up to date, we need to purchase new computers every 3 years so this is nothing new.

What's more is that people (myself included) still have piles of VHS tapes that we never bothered to convert to or replace with DVD. Now the original (1996) DVD standard is dying, our tapes are going to be two generations of formats behind.

Just like in Men in Black where Tommy Lee Jones laments that a new music format will force him to buy the White Album again, I wonder how many times I am going to feel the need to re-buy 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Blade Runner, etc.

The Fate of the Union

(Yeah, I've been coasting a bit. I'll have some articles of my own soon now that football season is over and I'm no longer sick.)

I found this little goodie and thought I'd share it. It's author is unknown.

If Bush resigned today, this is what his speech would be.....

Normally, I start these things out by saying "My Fellow Americans." Not doing it this time. If the polls are any indication, I don't know who more than half of you are anymore. I do know something terrible has happened, and that you're really not fellow Americans any longer. I'll cut right to the chase here: I quit. Now before anyone gets all in a lather about me quitting to avoid impeachment, or to avoid prosecution or something, let me assure you: There's been no breaking of laws or impeachable offenses in this office.

The reason I'm quitting is simple. I'm fed up with you people. I'm fed up because you have no understanding of what's really going on in the world. Or of what's going on in this once-great nation of ours. And the majority of you are too damned lazy to do your homework and figure it out. Let's start local. You've been sold a bill of goods by politicians and the news media. Polls show that the majority of you think the economy is in the tank. And that's despite record numbers of homeowners, including record numbers of MINORITY homeowners. And while we're mentioning minorities, I'll point out that minority business ownership is at an all-time high. Our unemployment rate is as low as it ever was during the Clinton administration. I've mentioned all those things before, but it doesn't seem to have sunk in.

Despite the shock to our economy of 9/11, the stock market has rebounded to record levels and more Americans than ever are participating in these markets. Meanwhile, all you can do is whine about gas prices, and most of you are too damn stupid to realize that gas prices are high because there's increased demand in other parts of the world, and because a small handful of noisy idiots are more worried about polar bears and beach front property than your economic security. We face real threats in the world. Don't give me this "blood for oil" thing. If I were trading blood for oil I would've already seized Iraq 's oil fields and let the rest of the country go to hell? And don't give me this 'Bush Lied; People Died' crap either. If I were the liar you morons take me for, I could've easily had chemical weapons planted in Iraq so they could be 'discovered.' Instead, I owned up to the fact that the intelligence was faulty.

Let me remind you that the rest of the world thought Saddam had the goods, same as me. Let me also remind you that regime change in Iraq was official US policy before I came into office. Some guy named ' Clinton ' established that policy. Bet you didn't know that, did you? You idiots need to understand that we face a unique enemy. Back during the cold war, there were two major competing political and economic models squaring off. We won that war, but we did so because fundamentally, the Communists wanted to survive, just as we do. We were simply able to out spend and out-tech them.

That's not the case this time. The soldiers of our new enemy don't care if they survive. In fact, they want to die. That'd be fine, as long as they weren't also committed to taking as many of you with them as they can. But they are. They want to kill you, and the bastards are all over the globe. You should be grateful that they haven't gotten any more of us here in the United States since September 11. But you're not. That's because you've got no idea how hard a small number of intelligence, military, law enforcement, and homeland security people have worked to make sure of that. When this whole mess started, I warned you that this would be a long and difficult fight. I'm disappointed how many of you people think a long and difficult fight amounts to a single season of 'Survivor.'

Instead, you've grown impatient. You're incapable of seeing things through the long lens of history, the way our enemies do. You think that wars should last a few months, a few years, tops. Making matters worse, you actively support those who help the enemy. Every time you buy the New York Times, every time you send a donation to a cut-and-run Democrat's political campaign, well, dang it, you might just as well FedEx a grenade launcher to a Jihadist. It amounts to the same thing.

In this day and age, it's easy enough to find the truth. It's all over the Internet. It just isn't on the pages of the New York Times or on NBC News. But even if it were, I doubt you'd be any smarter. Most of you would rather watch American Idol. I could say more about your expectations that the government will always be there to bail you out, even if you're too stupid to leave a city that's below sea level and has a hurricane approaching.

I could say more about your insane belief that government, not your own wallet, is where the money comes from. But I've come to the conclusion that were I to do so, it would sail right over your heads. So I quit. I'm going back to Crawford. I've got an energy-efficient house down there (Al Gore could only dream) and the capability to be fully self-sufficient. No one ever heard of Crawford before I got elected, and as soon as I'm done here pretty much no one will ever hear of it again. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to die of old age before the last pillars of America fall.
Oh, and by the way, Cheney's quitting too. That means Pelosi is your new President. You asked for it. Watch what she does carefully, because I still have a glimmer of hope that there are just enough of you remaining who are smart enough to turn this thing around in 2008. So that's it. God bless what's left of America .Some of you know what I mean.The rest of you, kiss off.

Patriots 49 Giants 17

That's my pick and I'm sticking to it. Every Supebowl, it's the same thing. The sports media tries hard the entire week to convince us that the underdog has a chance.

They are usually wrong.

Of course, I've been mostly wrong this whole season. I would love to be wrong again.