bluree | com

Honestly… he just released this ad and it’s insanely juvenile (especially for this senior citizen).  Paris Hilton & Brittany Spears?  He and his campaign disgust me.

This however… I absolutely love…

I’m pretty much a sucker for any good charitable idea/concept.  I just bought some girls in Uganda some chickens apparently.

Let me explain the concept… it’s called “The Girl Effect”.   Here’s the thought process…  There are 600 million adolescent girls living in poverty in the developing world. The non-profit has found that girls only receive half of one cent of every dollar spent on economic growth in these countries and, according to the group, women reinvest 90 percent of their resources back into the community (men reinvest 30-40 percent).  Also, children of educated women are more likely to be healthier and in school themselves, thus continuing the positive cycle.  By giving one of these girls a chance, you start the girl effect.  When girls have safe places to meet, education, legal protection, health care, and access to training and job skills, they can thrive.   If they thrive, everyone around them thrives, too.

Here’s the video that made me buy some chickens for some girls.

So on the globalgiving site, you can select one of several different types of donations to provide and subscribe to updates from the field to see how your money is changing their lives.  Like I said… I’m a sucker for new/creative charitable concepts.  I love Kiva and DonorsChoose.  Here’s another one I was suckered into a while ago… MyBabyTree.  Buy a tree and watch it grow through Google Earth… reforestation in Indonesia or something.

Evan Vucci/Associated Press via The New York Times

A group of musicians formed in 2000, they’ve released 4 full-length albums so far.  They come from New York City.  I know it’s a little emo/whiny, sue me.

Bayside | Winter

It’s clear McCain and Obama have entirely different styles of approach when addressing their potential voters, but just for sake of comparison on a common medium they use, below is each of their latest “this message was approved by yada yada” ads.  Barack posts hundreds of videos while McCain very few (McCain was born pre-Tubes, so all these internets are a little foreign to him).  Anyhow, the one below is the most current one I could find (one month old) on Baracks official YouTube channel that was campaign specific, and McCain’s was just posted a few days ago.

Compare and contrast their approach…

One is using the approach of addressing likely voters by appealing to the positive, the other is addressing their likely voters by telling you the reasons you should NOT like the other candidate.  This is not creative editing either… Just go browse through their respective channels on YouTube and you can’t come to any other conclusion.

This press release was issued from his campaign today…  (I KNOW McCain was down for a nap when one of his little young Republican staffers got this through… (at least I hope))

While Barack Obama took a premature victory lap in the heart of Berlin, proclaiming himself a citizen of the world, John McCain continued to make his case to the American citizens who will decide this election. Barack Obama offered eloquent praise for this country, but the contrast is clear. John McCain has dedicated his life to serving and protecting America, Barack Obama spent an afternoon talking about.

You know what else?  MY Dad can beat up YOUR Dad!  So immature.  Remove one word from the BOLD sentence above and you have his epitaph.  You aren’t dead… YET, so quit rambling on about how “I’m better than you, so there” crap.

Search on Google for “i want to know more about politics”. Check the third item of 24,000,000+ returned results.  Luckily, the post it links to refers people to a third-party site and is not one of my (likely) ill-informed opinion rants.

CNN.com also did a link back to an earlier post I did today… got a bit of traffic from that. 

Does he approve each of these or is he always taking a nap and missing out on what his campaign is spitting out?

This latest ad that is running is the adult equivalent of throwing sand in someone’s eyes at the playground because they have all the nice toys to build sand castles and you don’t.  No one wants to play with your old toys.  They are old.  They don’t work.  They are so outdated that no one even pays attention.  No matter how much you tell us your toys are relevant, they aren’t.  Get some new toys or get the hell out of the sandbox.  Quit kicking and screaming.

It’s not really a contest when only one person is playing the part and the other is whining that they just don’t have what it takes (popularity-wise that is).

There are a couple of interesting articles published on CNN today.  One concerning the fact that McCain’s appeal to young Republicans has all but vanished.

At a town hall meeting in Ohio this month, a student told McCain that Republicans were a dying breed on his campus.

“I understand the challenge I have, and I understand that this election is really all about the people of your generation,” McCain said.

A brilliant (sarcasm intended) young Republican (in the same article) went on to say;

“Sen. McCain should demand that these same colleges and universities host him or else their tax-exempt status could be in jeopardy,” said Jason Mattera, spokesman for Young America’s Foundation, a conservative outreach group.

There’s no real audience for McCain at college campuses.  Simple supply and demand principles would tell you that if there’s no demand, why supply?  McCain should kick and scream and threaten them though (according to Mr. Mattera) as that should yield the desired end result. <sigh>

Another article I scanned through was written by Glenn Beck who also has nothing relevant to say.  My favorite part was the last paragraph;

As candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain are ironically a lot like the way the media treats them: Obama is the glitzy magazine cover that screams for people to buy the issue, and McCain is the fact-filled article buried inside that makes you glad you did.

Under what delusion is McCain most aptly defined as “fact filled”?  He can’t repeat the same “fact” twice it seems nor does he get any of them right anyhow.  (Iraq/Pakistan border?)  I’d love to read genuine criticisms of Obama and not whining about trivial things like his workout routine, or over-saturation of media coverage, or a Rolling Stone cover or yada yada yada.  That’s the ONLY theme that’s common and getting press among the McCain sympathizers.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m am NOT an adamant Obama supporter but I am becoming an adamant McCain opposer. (I know that’s not a word).

Today marks one year of posting nonsense on this site.  327 unique posts, more than 3,000 unique visitors and several thousand more than that in actual hits.  68 was the record high number of hits in a single day.  The images I post are crawled quite well by Google Images as that is the highest referring site/source.  My older sister’s blog being the third highest referring source.

The site has registered hits from 87 unique countries/territories around the world.  The top posts were about one of the bands I featured once (The Secret Handshake), and article I wrote on a web-based torrent downloader (BitLet.org), some art by Alex Pardee, Scientology audit questions, my “About” page and a few others.

One day, likely soon… I’m just going to delete the whole site.  I almost did it last week actually.  As I’ve always maintained, I do it as a means to organize my thoughts and while not entirely organized anyhow the novelty is wearing off.  Who knows though… till then I’ll keep boring the literally… TENS of readers.