First of all, The Daily Show rules. If you haven’t watched it, especially leading up to this election, you have missed out! It’s unfortunate that two of the hardest hitting political news shows (the other being the Colbert Report, obviously) are on Comedy Central!

Here’s McCain’s problem — Obama is very likable. If Hillary had been the nominee I think it would have been a much easier road for McCain, but Obama just comes across with a calm, effective demeanor that people are attracted to. And by people, I mean ‘voters’. And like it or not, that is what many will base their votes on.

Watch this clip from the Daily Show and you’ll see what I mean. Imagine McCain on the same program? He couldn’t pull it off.

Of course, I still disagree with many of Obama’s policies and viewpoints (here’s a good article that my dad sent me explaining the pitfalls of raising taxes on the ‘rich’), but I’d have a beer with him.

Filed under: Political
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Enjoy the following montage of video from all three debates - shows how all both parties do is hammer home their talking points.

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In what might be one of the stupidest rulings I have ever heard of as it pertains to internet law, a Kentucky judge ruled that 141 domain names be transferred from internet gambling sites to Kentucky officials.

This is completely worthless on so many levels — the US does not own or regulate the internet, let alone Kentucky! Can you imagine if other countries started regulating what was available on the internet and seizing domain names? The idea that a state in the US can regulate a site that has an international audience is beyond absurd.

Also, this will not stop or hinder internet gambling in the least. Gambling sites use programs that you download in order to access their services. These programs do not rely on the domain names that are being seized, but are pointed to IP addresses of specific servers. Seizing the domain names isn’t going to stop anyone from continuing to gambling using software they have already downloaded. At most it will prevent new people from downloading the software for a very short amount of time — until the company puts everything on a new domain name. OK — you seized gambling.com, I’ll put everything on gambling.net, or gambling.cc, or gambling-stuff-here-download-it-now.com.

Judge Wingate demonstrated his complete ignorance of technology when he said that he would be willing to exempt any gambling site that would use “geographically filtering” to block Kentucky residents. It is trivial to use a proxy server in your browser to circumvent any attempt to geographically filter users — Google “proxy servers” and you’ll see how many are out there to use — many for free.

Politicians and lawmakers need to realize that you cannot apply old-school laws and practices to new technology. The internet is a global phenomenon and we can’t regulate how Japan, China, or other international countries utilize it. I think it’s funny how much money and effort China pours into “censoring” the internet. I’m sure that they do a pretty good job of wiping the majority of what they don’t want seen on major sites, but if you think that there aren’t some Chinese computer geeks that know enough about encryption and internet protocols to get to whatever they want to see, you’re kidding yourself.

Information and knowledge was always meant to be free … the internet is making that a reality and will eventually overcome all obstacles that those in power want to put in the way of citizens that just want to live free!

Filed under: Personal, Political
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I wasn’t surprised to see Drudge’s headline this morning: Landslide Like Reagan

I’ve told two people recently that I thought that Obama was going to win — and that it wasn’t even going to be close. McCain (and the Republicans) just really haven’t done anything to appeal to voters - he really is more of the same. Now, I don’t think that Obama is all about change either - I’d say they are both for bigger government, which is exactly what this country doesn’t need. But McCain’s loss is going to firmly rest on the Republican elite for pushing the same boring candidates through year after year.

I think that the real shock from the article is that the race is tied among NASCAR fans! Maybe since both Obama and McCain sat down at the same bailout table a few weeks back they are having trouble knowing who to thank for including NASCAR in the bailout bill.

I’ll leave you with the Palin rap…

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Haven’t done one of these in a while and I know that Brendan doesn’t know what to buy unless I tell him, so here’s this month’s Mad Skillz!!!

I got some free music courtesy of Avis and it wasn’t on iTunes (boooo!) — however, since it was on eMusic I got to browse around for some artists that I really didn’t know. In the process I found Bo Hagon — never heard of him before and he’s not being played a lot right now, but has a great sound… Bet he will be topping the charts soon!

If you don’t like rap you’ll just have to stick to country for now, but if you do, enjoy…

1) Do It 4 The Hood - Bo Hagon

2) Out Here Grindin’ - DJ Khaled

3) Money Cars B*tches - Bo Hagon

4) I’m So Hood - DJ Khaled

5) Been Gettin Money - Bo Hagon

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