RMS and I attended the Tim Kaine rally this Sunday. Havoc attended too, but the unwashed masses prevented our meet up. He did however snap this great shot of the group on stage:

Let’s get this straight. Barack Obama is a celebrity. People — including me — love that guy. He just doesn’t feel like a politician when he speaks: nothing he says sounds contrived or forced. He was the crowd favorite on Sunday and received more applause than even Tim Kaine.

It was apparent to me after watching Obama speak and then watching Tim Kaine speak immediately after,
that Obama is a level 9 wizard of politics while Kaine is something like a level 2 n00b. Obama posses a certain something — I’m going to say “a personality” — that Kaine just doesn’t have. Whatever that certain something is, it is what gets Obama mentioned as a presidential candidate while Kaine is left to slug it out against Jerry Kilgore.

Obama mostly told stories from his own campaign for US Senator and then said things like “Democrats are good, and so is Tim Kaine!” I could take or leave some of the things he said. The Democrats are sometimes just directly opposed to small government / states rights, and yall know that’s how I roll. In my heart of hearts I want Barack Obama to become the John McCain of the Democrats and do things because they are the right thing to do, not because the Party says so. But hey, it is his freshman year, it takes time to become a maverick.

Tim Kaine’s speech was less than enthralling. He spent a good fifteen minutes talking about how bad Jerry Kilgore was for not promising to run a positive campaign. It felt internally inconsistent to me. But hey, what do I know?

I do know this, actually: some people are crazy about their political party affiliation. The only thing I can relate it to is college football. People there were intense about anything anyone said. It kind of blows my mind.

My mind is blown. George Takei is gay.

Also, and I sort of already knew this, he was in a Japanese internment camp in the US during WW2. That’s when we rounded up all the Japanese-Americans we could find and rolled them into concentration camps after Pearl Harbour. You know, just in case.

Sulu is one of the cooler characters in TOS. In The Undiscovered Country he gets his own ship (the Excelsior) which he uses to help out his old crewmates when they get into trouble with that dirty old Klingon guy who is basically Khan from the second movie with an eyepatch and some bumps on his head. Sulu and the Excelsior show up just in time (after speaking the titular line of this post) to take a few hits (”Let’s give them something else to shoot at”) while Kirk and the boys… well, I won’t ruin it for you.

I always thought that he made an excellent captain. Anyways, good for you, man!

Harriet Miers PWN’d.

Watch here for more news.

Other things happen in this article — like Wilder pwn’ing City Council again. But the real interesting part comes at the bottom of the article:

In other action, the council: Voted to stop issuing vehicle registration decals.

Yes! No longer will Richmonders bash their knuckles against their windshields as they scrape and scrape the remains of shoddily made registration stickers with flimsy razor blades. Now we can just pay the tax and be done with it.

Good news people, good news.

Dudes. From VCU Young Democrats:

Join rising star Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), Congressman Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-3rd) and Virginia’s next governor Tim Kaine for a rally hosted by the VCU Young Democrats in the Commons Plaza. Show your support for Virginia’s Democratic ticket to keep our commonwealth moving forward. All eyes are on Virginia in this nationwide event!

2:30 - 4:30 p.m.
VCU Student Commons Plaza

OMG OMG. Even if Tim Kaine is kind of sleazy and Democrats are dirty hippies — BARACK O-effing-BAMA.

Be there or be a big fatty fat fat.2:30 - 4:30 p.m.
VCU Student Commons Plaza

[The date is this Sunday the 30th. -- Ed.]

Have you guys ever heard of Prussian Blue? You know the hit pop group made up of the cute blond and blue eyed Lamb and Lynx Gaede? You may know them as the twin thirteen year old girls from California that hate black people?

It seems the new front man for the white nationalist movement is actually two thirteen year old girls — but they still hate black people, don’t worry. I’d have to agree with the National Vanguard when they say:

IS THERE ANYTHING CUTER than two identical twin twelve-year-old[sic.] girls who have a band together?

To them I’d say, no. That is unless these girls also happen to harbor a deep racism instilled by their racist parents. It certainly doesn’t get any cuter than that! Another important question you may be dying to ask: “What do they think is the most important social issue facing the white race right now?” Well:

Not having enough white babies born to replace ourselves and generally not having good-quality white people being born. It seems like smart white girls who have good eugenics are more interested in making money in a career or partying than getting married and having a family.

Now, you have to admit, white women these days really aren’t putting a lot of time into the quality of their offspring. Next time one of you gets pregnant, be sure and consider the details; it is the little things that count. Please, for America! And don’t you worry guys, Lynx and Lamb “are working on some new songs about this issue.”

As with anyone public figure, it is always interesting to see what’s on their iPod:

We really like Avril Lavigne, Evanescence, Three Days Grace, Green Day, AC/DC, and Alison Krauss.

Also, filed under “Hate Music:”

Final War, CutThroat, Saga, Max Resist, Youngland, Brutal Attack, and of course Skrewdriver.

And who could forget:

But our all-time favorite is Barney the purple dinosaur!

Take a second to juxtapose those in your mind. Barney. CutThroat. Awesome.

His name is He-man and he baked these delicious apple pies!

More politics! Yay!

Yesterday the Coburn Amendment suffered a 82-15 vote against. Sad. For those of you not in the know, the Coburn amendment would have defunded (122M$) a bridge in Alaska that would connect a community of 8,000 to an island with a population of 50. The funds would then be applied to the repair and reconstruction of the Twin Spans bridge destroyed by Katrina.

I’m not really sure what the possible reason for voting against this amendment would be, maybe someone can explain it to me. Below is a list of the Senators who did vote for the amendment; take note of our own George Allen.

Tom Coburn (R-OK)
Russ Feingold (D-WI)
Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
Jim DeMint (R-SC)
David Vitter (R-LA)
Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
John Sununu (R-NH)
Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
Richard Burr (R-NC)
Wayne Allard (R-CO)
Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
Evan Bayh (D-IN)
Mike DeWine (R-OH)
Kent Conrad (D-ND)
George Allen (R-VA)

FactCheck.org has an article up on their home page clarifying the whole Tim Kaine loves/hates Hitler thing. Basically Kilgore stretched and manipulated quotes from Tim Kaine to make it seem like Kaine thought Hitler didn’t deserve the death penalty. Turns out he didn’t say that at all — *gasp* a politician running a verifiably
false attack ad!

More interesting to me, FactCheck.org considers Kaine’s rebuttal ad to be completely factual and in context.

PS. Spell checker suggests “Borg” for “.org” — RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.

Halloween is coming, and so I have decided that Haduken should have a pumpkin carve-off. So carve or paint you pumpkins take a pic and send it to Max (I’m making him the judge). The only rule is that you can’t use the stencils that are sold in stores. Some of you may know from my Pinky-the-gay-bear-face-pumpkin that I take this seriously, consider that me throwing down the gauntlet. Winner’s pic to be posted on or near the 31st.

The Mayor recently gave a little talky-talk over at Martin’s Grant. My parents are building a house over in the back of Martin’s Grant and received an invitation to the speech but couldn’t un-mire themselves from Delaware. A terrible fate I assure you.

While Martin’s Grant technically resides in Richmond City, Chesterfield County is literally a five minute walk away. But like the mayor says:

“It’s good to see this encouraging sign of development for people proposing their confidence in Richmond to what it could and should be,” Wilder said. “We’re only starting to do that.”

I agree Mr. Mayor, and so do my parents.

[Some more Wilder tidbits from Style. --Ed.]

Tim Kaine has started running these semi-attack ads attacking the previous Jerry Kilgore (R) attack ads. Attack Attack Attack.

No mention of Hitler though.

Enjoyable article in this month’s Front Porch Fredericksburg, the free monthly newspaper for the Fredericksburg area. I know everyone out there already reads this cover to cover, so stop me if you’ve heard this one, but for those of you who couldn’t find one this month (they tend to be rather elusive), here is the article.

In the paper version (which I have cut out and placed on my desk), there is a picture of the Virginia Flag.

It’s about how Virginia is great (meatspeak for “pwn”), which is something everyone can agree with. We’ll all have to please forgive the typos.

Sic Semper Tyrannis!

A while back the Republican Party of Virginia changed some of their by laws so that anyone who had voted for a democrat in the last five years could not vote in a Republican primary. This would have moved Virginia from an open primary system (yay!) to a closed primary system (boo!). Luckily the courts disagreed with the RPV.

But the case is still open for appeal, and a large part of the argument centered around timing issues with when the law would take affect vs. when the next election would occur. Basically, they put off deciding anything definite. But good news for the short term.

Here’s the decision if you want to read it.

I am a super fan of open primaries as they, ideally, let the voters choose the best two candidates for the upcoming election. Virginia does a good job in only allowing voters to vote in *one* primary a day. So you can’t — usually depending on the timing — vote in both the Republican and Democrat primaries. This thwarts people who want to vote for *bad* candidates from their enemy party. This year I voted in the Republican governor’s primary because I heart George Fitch. But we saw how that went.