This idea is so brilliant I’m surprised it took this long for someone to develop it. Google has a Gmail add on called Mail Goggles that acts as a deterrent system against drunk emailing. You can specify what times you want the Goggles turned on. If you try to access the mailbox during the set times, the system forces you to answer a series of math questions in 60 seconds. If you answer incorrectly, a message pops up stating “Water and bed for you. Or try again.”
You can set the level of difficulty of the math questions. You’ll obviously want a level you can answer when sober. If your math abilities don’t fade with inebriation, you’ll still be able to send those embarrassing emails. A reading comprehension entry test would probably be more universally stupefying for the drink saturated.
There needs to be a version of this for cell phones. The failure display message could be “You’re not actually making words, you know”.
I do love me some Pollster.com! And I’ve gotta tell you, wading through the numbers they’re putting up has me in a state of surprise if not outright shock.
Current presidential poll averages show Obama pulling ahead in states like Colorado, Nevada, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania and widening his leads in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Indeed, some PA polls have Obama out front by double digits.
But wait, there’s more: Rasmussen has McCain’s lead in Texas and Mississippi down to single digits, and the latest polls out of Georgia show that race tightening up even more (not that they’ll turn blue, but still…). And Indiana, which is as reliably red as red gets, is currently within the margin of error — a genuine tossup. That’s a lot of defense for the McPalin team to be playing this late.
Wade through the Senate races and you’ll see that the Republicans have 9 incumbents in some form of electoral trouble, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, while the Democrats have precisely none (not even Mary Landrieu, who was seen as vulnerable). That’s not counting the open seats in Colorado and New Mexico, which are both trending D. 60 seats is not out of the question for the Democrats, while the House races show potential Democratic gains of 20-25 seats.
A month is indeed a long time — a lot can and will happen between now and election day — but these kinds of numbers four weeks out are nothing but disastrous for the Republicans.
I’ve spent the better part of today trying to start a post about the audience behavior at some Sarah Palin rallies in Florida but my brain keeps shutting down at the vile information I’m forcing it to process. The McPalin ticket dusted off the Bill Ayers story (which was already debunked when it came up during the primaries) to market the “Obama is a terrorist/Muslim/different than you” meme that carries well among uninformed voters who get their news from the National Enquirer.
They are purposefully stoking the flames of fires fueled by racial hatred. Sarah Palin seems almost gleeful as she watches that fire burn. Utterly unqualified to talk about political policy even if the campaign hadn’t abandoned that method weeks ago, Palin repeated the “terrorist” allegations while speaking in Florida. The audience was a few hoods short of a Klan meeting:
Worse, Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric’s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”
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The reception had been better in Clearwater, where Palin, speaking to a sea of “Palin Power” and “Sarahcuda” T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. “One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers,” she said. (”Boooo!” said the crowd.) “And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, ‘launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,’ ” she continued. (”Boooo!” the crowd repeated.)
“Kill him!” proposed one man in the audience.
And those were just the comments that the press could hear from their sequestered spot at the rally. The McPalin camp made sure they weren’t able to mingle with the crowd either to protect the reporters from supporters inspired to violence by Palin’s remarks about the media or to prevent the media from reporting on even more of the hate speech being spewed. Either motivation is a sign that the McPalin campaign knows that the message they are selling can lead to violence and a backlash if enough evidence makes it into the press.
After the first debate, a lot of people noticed that John McCain seemed a little, well, out of sorts. He wouldn’t look at Barack Obama, or even directly address him. His voice had an irritated edge to it. He seemed to be kinda angry throughout the whole thing. There was the meeting with the Des Moines editorial board. McCain seethed through the whole interview, prompting one editor to ask, “Is McCain too thin-skinned for the presidency?” While some might suggest that this is just because Sen. McCain is pissed to be losing, and has always had a problem with his temper (The Washington Post ran a story in 1999 headlined, “McCain’s Temper May Become an Issue“), Mike Allen at Politico suggests it’s something else. McCain is just on edge because he’s so upsetabout how negative his campaign has been forced to go.
A close McCain friend said the reason is clear: McCain is miserable about having to run a campaign that’s antithetical to his persona.
“He is basically having to be somebody that he isn’t,” said the friend, who remains strongly supportive. “He is just not a guy that goes on the attack in public. For him to be on the attack constantly, attacking Obama’s character … McCain is uncomfortable with that, and it’s made him grumpy.”
Aw, how sad! John McCain has had to go on the attack, and he just hates it. Listen, Sen. Obama, and Obama supporters, do you see how stressed you’ve made this honorable and noble politician? He didn’t want to have to go negative, but you made him. And it hurts McCain more than it hurts you. It’s just really a shame he’s been forced into this position; if McCain were able to be in charge of his own campaign things could have been so different.
John McCain was not always a Mavericky Maverick on a crusade to change his party. When he first got in to Congress, he seemed to like it there. People kept wanting to give him things, and he didn’t see anything wrong with that. And when one of those people explained that there were a few pesky regulators making things difficult for him, McCain, along with a few other Senators, was happy to help him out. Thus were born the Keating Five.
After getting off with some harsh criticism, Sen. McCain said that he realized the error of his ways and became a reformer. The media have seemed content with that, but a lot of people have been wondering why Obama and the Democrats have been willing to overlook his relationship with Charles Keating and the Savings and Loan crisis. It seemed like something that people would want to know. Especially considering that the whole Savings and Loan scandal involved these institutions getting out of normal home loans and into junk bonds and risky credit markets, eventually leading to their going under, tens of thousands of people seeing their retirement funds wiped out, and requiring a massive government bail out.
Well, it turns out Obama was just waiting to let out their own October surprise. They’ve put together a short web documentary and website about the Keating Five scandal. They’re hoping it spreads from person to person, so if you have a blog, link to it. If not, you can send it to your friends through this easy site.
Acallidryas and I are from (and I still live in) Fort Myers, Florida. Our county (Lee) has been deemed an important one this election cycle. Michelle Obama was here a couple of months ago for a fundraiser breakfast that I attended. Joe Biden is appearing at an event tomorrow. And Sarah Palin appeared at an event yesterday, which gave our county an opportunity to appear in the national news for the only reason it ever makes national news- someone being a bigoted idiot:
Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott took the stage moments ago as one of the introductory speakers at a rally here for Sarah Palin. After delivering brief remarks in support of Palin, Sheriff Scott flipped the switch and used Barack Obama’s middle name in order to incite the crowd of thousands of people who have already gathered here.
“On Nov. 4, let’s leave Barack Hussein Obama wondering what happened,” the law enforcement officer said.
Yes, Hussein is Obama’s middle name and there theoretically shouldn’t be a problem with someone mentioning it. But in this area of the country in a room full of Republicans there’s only one reason that it would be mentioned- and that isn’t to remind people of what’s monogrammed in Obama’s suits.
In the “hilarious if it weren’t true” column, the following quote from the Sheriff appears on his office’s official site:
“People could say running for sheriff took either courage, ignorance, or a combination of both,” says Scott.
He’s now achieved his goal of being courageously ignorant.
I featured a pair of 19 Moons‘ steampunk beetle earrings in yesterday’s Mix Bag but I wanted to take a closer look at this retailer that revitalizes vintage and recycled materials. The collection includes more beetles, other steampunk, odes to typewriters and softer, more romantic vintage pieces.
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