Back from a long vacation and finally got around to fixing the site....There'll be more stuff all weekend

John Kerry has finaly given the speech he (or somebody) should have given back in 2004....(Bolding by me)

Thank you so much. Four years ago, you gave me the honor of fighting our fight. I was proud to stand with you then, and I am proud to stand with you now, to help elect Barack Obama as President of the United States.
In 2004, we came so close to victory. We are even closer now, and let me tell you, this time we're going to win. Today, the call for change is more powerful than ever, and with more seats in Congress, with more people with more passion engaged in our politics, and with a President Obama, we stand on the brink of the greatest opportunity of our generation to move this country forward.

The stakes could not be higher, because we do know what a McCain administration would look like: just like the past, just like George Bush. And this country can't afford a third Bush term. Just think: John McCain voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time. Ninety percent of George Bush is just more than we can take.

Never in modern history has an administration squandered American power so recklessly. Never has strategy been so replaced by ideology. Never has extremism so crowded out common sense and fundamental American values. Never has short-term partisan politics so depleted the strength of America's bipartisan foreign policy.

George Bush, with John McCain at his side, promised to spread freedom but delivered the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. They misread the threat and misled the country. Instead of freedom, it's Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban and dictators everywhere that are on the march. North Korea has more bombs, and Iran is defiantly chasing one.

Our mission is to restore America's influence and position in the world. We must use all the weapons in our arsenal, above all, our values. President Obama and Vice President Biden will shut down Guantanamo, respect the Constitution, and make clear once and for all, the United States of America does not torture, not now, not ever.

We must listen and lead by example because even a nation as powerful as the United States needs some friends in this world. We need a leader who understands all our security challenges, not just bombs and guns, but global warming, global terror and global AIDS. And Barack Obama understands there is no way for America to be secure until we create clean energy here at home, not with a little more oil in five, 10 or 20 years, but with an energy revolution starting right now.

I have known and been friends with John McCain for almost 22 years. But every day now I learn something new about candidate McCain. To those who still believe in the myth of a maverick instead of the reality of a politician, I say, let's compare Senator McCain to candidate McCain.

Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once denounced as immoral. Candidate McCain criticizes Senator McCain's own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote. Are you kidding? Talk about being for it before you're against it.

Let me tell you, before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself. And what's more, Senator McCain, who once railed against the smears of Karl Rove when he was the target, has morphed into candidate McCain who is using the same "Rove" tactics and the same "Rove" staff to repeat the same old politics of fear and smear. Well, not this year, not this time. The Rove-McCain tactics are old and outworn, and America will reject them in 2008.

So remember, when we choose a commander-in-chief this November, we are electing judgment and character, not years in the Senate or years on this earth. Time and again, Barack Obama has seen farther, thought harder, and listened better. And time and again, Barack Obama has been proven right.

When John McCain stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier just three months after 9/11 and proclaimed, "Next up, Baghdad!", Barack Obama saw, even then, "an occupation of "undetermined length, undetermined cost, undetermined consequences" that would "only fan the flames of the Middle East." Well, guess what? Mission accomplished.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When Barack Obama promised to honor the best traditions of both parties and talk to our enemies, John McCain scoffed. George Bush called it "the soft comfort of appeasement." But today, Bush's diplomats are doing exactly what Obama said: talking with Iran.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When democracy rolled out of Russia, and the tanks rolled into Georgia, we saw John McCain respond immediately with the outdated thinking of the Cold War. Barack Obama responded like a statesman of the 21st century.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When we called for a timetable to make Iraqis stand up for Iraq and bring our heroes home, John McCain called it "cut and run." But today, even President Bush has seen the light. He and Prime Minister Maliki agree on - guess what? - a timetable.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? The McCain-Bush Republicans have been wrong again and again and again. And they know they will lose on the issues. So, the candidate who once promised a "contest of ideas," now has nothing left but personal attacks. How insulting to suggest that those who question the mission, question the troops. How pathetic to suggest that those who question a failed policy doubt America itself. How desperate to tell the son of a single mother who chose community service over money and privilege that he doesn't put America first.

No one can question Barack Obama's patriotism. Like all of us, he was taught what it means to be an American by his family: his grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line in World War II, his grandfather who marched in Patton's army, and his great uncle who enlisted in the army right out of high school at the height of the war. And on a spring day in 1945, he helped liberate one of the concentration camps at Buchenwald.

Ladies and gentlemen, Barack Obama's uncle is here with us tonight. Please join me in saluting this American hero, Charlie Payne. Charlie, your nephew, Barack Obama, will end this politics of distortion and division. He will be a president who seeks not to perfect the lies of Swift boating, but to end them once and for all.

This election is a chance for America to tell the merchants of fear and division: you don't decide who loves this country; you don't decide who is a patriot; you don't decide whose service counts and whose doesn't.

Four years ago I said, and I say it again tonight, that the flag doesn't belong to any ideology. It doesn't belong to any political party. It is an enduring symbol of our nation, and it belongs to all the American people. After all, patriotism is not love of power or some cheap trick to win votes; patriotism is love of country.

Years ago when we protested a war, people would weigh in against us saying, "My country right or wrong." Our answer? Absolutely, my country right or wrong. When right, keep it right. When wrong, make it right. Sometimes loving your country demands you must tell the truth to power.

This is one of those times, and Barack Obama is telling those truths.

In closing, let me say, I will always remember how we stood together in 2004, not just in a campaign, but for a cause. Now again we stand together in the ranks, ready to fight. The choice is clear; our cause is just; and now is our time to make Barack Obama the next President of the United States.

Thank you.

Someone put a stupid caption on this picture, that wasn't needed as the picture pretty much speaks for itself....That said it's the kind of thing that gives me an irresistable compulsion to spread around...

So a fella by the name of Attila the Pun over at the Fark forums posted this in response to another "controversial" moment of Obama's...It made me laugh, maybe it will you too...The setup is that of Obama visiting one of the people who are keeping track of his gaffes and letting us all know via email....

I can just imagine Obama paying a visit to one of these mouth breathing losers.

Obama: "Hey, the campaign trail is kinda dusty, mind if I get a drink?"

Right Wing Nut Bar: OMG, what do you think this is, the Wild West? You think you're actually on a trial? You're so stupid!

Obama: I just mean that I've been so busy, I let myself get a little thirsty.

RWNB: You're so naive! You actually are so empty headed that you let yourself get dehydrated! And you want to be Commander in Chief?

Obama: Look, mind if I just grab a coke?

RWNB: I don't have coke. Those are Pepsis. What, you can't read? The messiah is illiterate?

Obama: Look, I've obviously caught you at a bad time

RWNB: Oh, so now I'm crazy! My god, you're so arrogant!

Obama: I never said you're crazy:

RWNB: There you go again! Flip-flopping on the topic of my craziness. Why don't you get your friend Rezco get you a soda? Huh? Why do you have to take MY soda, Mr. Elitist.

Obama: I'll gladly pay you for the drink

RWNB: OMG, you think you can buy me off? You think I need a hand out? Huh? Mr. Nanny state is going to give me a handout?? Why don't you go back to whatever country you were born in and leave us hard working Americans alone?

Obama: This was a bad idea.

RWNB: Oh, so you have bad ideas? And you want to be President? You are SOOOOOOO incompetent! Get out of my trailer.

So one last Viet Nam story...I mentioned earlier about posting things I liked about Viet Nam...Well, I can do that in two words really, Food and Massage...Viet food is great, and 1n hour and a half massage for 4 or 5 dollars is a nice way to kill an afternoon...but that's not what this story is about...this story is about, probably, the last time I will spend any time around a Viet majority crowd....

So to get from Hanoi to Kyiv, the cheapest way is to transfer via Moscow...Well this put us flying on my favorite airline, Aeroflot...I am scared of flying but I traditionally do much better on longer flights as opposed to shorter...seems counter-intuitive, but it is what it is.... Well, come to find out we will be flying on an Illyushin 96...the biggest Russian made airliner out there...My previous experience with Russian made aircraft is limited to an absolutely horrifying flight from Moscow to Athens on an old Tupelov, listening to the sound of air hissing through the "seal" on the emergency exit door...It was everything one imagines an old Russian airplane to be....

So, I was getting pretty nervous as the day approached to fly, but Hanoi has one of those airports that lets you buy $1 USD cold beers in the departure terminal, and carry on your own duty free, and Aeroflot is one of those airlines that lets you crack your duty free booze and drink it right on the plane...So all should be fine, once I get settled in with half a bottle of Jameson in my belly...

Now these Illyushins are Russia's latest and most modern planes and except for the Russian eye for aesthetic detail, the whole flight is going well...The plane has a weird side to side sway..not a roll from side to side, but it's as if you're in a car that is fishtailing ever so slightly on ice and snow, with the occasional small bump up and down, as if going over an icy old road...It's as if the Russians simulated riding in a Lada down a Moscow street in early February...Still John Jameson has got my back and it's no worries....And there, at about the 2 hour mark (in a 10.5 hour flight), right as we're finishing up another spectacularly strange Aeroflot meal is where the horrors of this flight begin...

Now, I've been told by fellas who married Viet girls and took them back to the states, that they don't have a strong stomach for long car rides....Why should they, they are a nation of scooter riders, with most never having even been in a car, let alone a car traveling above 40 miles an hour or so...Well, as I mentioned, this felt like a speeding Lada on a bumpy, icy road...and about 90% of the passengers on this flight were Viet....

Let the vomitization begin...

It started with a girl across the aisle leaning over and filling her meal tray to the point she started spitting up bile...Nice!..The other Viet sitting next to her, looked at her disgusted as if she were some country bumpkin not fit for glamorous air travel...Well it might have taken an hour or so more for them, but they got theirs...

The flight got mildly bumpier, but I was no longer nervous about air travel, I was having a good laugh at the expense of the Viet, they'd had plenty at mine for the past year and a half, and nobody was gonna die, just puke and feel shitty for a few hours...but don't worry, I was going to get mine too....

So at about the 6 hour mark the flight crew was now going up and down the aisle passing out barf bags as if they were peanuts....and the stench was increasing..fast...

The 8 hour mark and it's meal time again...just what the crowd needs...I imagine roughly 50-60% of them have thrown up from motion sickness at this point, and I don't see where the motion, topped of by the stench, topped off by another Aeroflot meal is going to do anybody any good...and it turns out I'm right...So after the flight crew cleans up more meal trays, sloshing at the brim with tummy goo, it's another round of barf bags...and now there's no stopping it...I think of that book that was written, about the Doors I think, called "nobody gets out of here alive" and it makes me laugh, perhaps I will have to whiskey myself unconscious if I'm gonna get through this...

Then the wife hits on a good idea...We take the little scented wet naps that came with the meal, and hold them over our noses, sucking what little life is left in them...With an hour left in the flight, I have firmly concluded that not one single Viet, has been spared the puking, and the smell is positively burning my eyes....That's what I get for laughing I guess...

Well one last round of barf bags, for the notoriously windy-banky, left to right, weird ass landing approach into Moscow and we're on the tarmac, clawing desperately for fresh air....I never imagined the nasty polluted air of Moscow would taste like the freshest mountain morning, but it sure as hell did...And I still had half my bottle of whiskey for the drive into town...

Here are my first pics of the new joint....All these are taken off of our fantastic rear balcony, which overlooks an orchard belonging to an Orthodox monastary...The pics run the view from left to right, and then one from the left again with my hippe ass in it, so maybe you can get a scale issue of just how close it is....Well, on with the pics, and don't forget to click more, to see them all...

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Well nothing left but one day and a wake up...Leaving for the next gig Tuesday morning, in Kyiv Ukraine...Gonna spend a couple days in Moscow on the way...something about spring training in the vodka drinking league...been awhile and I know my games not where it needs to be if I'm gonna survive the next gig...

Word of the Day: Horilka...The Ukrainian word for Vodka....It's cool they don't use the Russian word, because then I can tell myself I'm taking a break from Vodka...

Oh and that whole DNC meeting to figure out the florida/michigan thing was high comedy...find the highlights on the youtube

See ya on the otherside

After Pennsylvania the Clinton campaign got me to do something I have never done before-donate to a political campaign....unfortunately, it wasn't the one she was trying to get me to donate to....

or since they say a picture is worth a thousand words....

U.S. alleges baby-selling rackets in Vietnam

Wow shock of shocks, people nature or god saw fit to make infertile are desperate and will come to a poor country to buy babies...and even more shocking unscrupulous people will find ways to sell babies....That said, the Viet do make very adorable children, so at least they're buying a good looking model of kid...

This is a fucked up situation no matter how you look at it...

In Moscow I had the misfortune to draw a work order that had me spending a couple days in a waiting area where adoptive parents and their newly purchased russian babies waited for the deeds..er..visas, for these Russian babies... It was really great how some of these children at 3, 4 or 5 years old couldn't speak a word of English and their new owners couldn't speak a word of Russian, so when the child started crying or asking for something the parents had no way of knowing what the children were asking for...God forbid you learn the Russian words for say "water, juice, bread, food, I'm hungry, I'm cold"...naw we're Americans were saving these babies, there's no need for us to extend the effort to learn 5 or 6 words..Why should we? We have credit cards and money, and if that doesn't make us superior then what kind of mad, mad world are we living in?

The worst thing I saw was this one stupid looking yuppie couple trying to comfort their new 4 yearish old little girl....The little girl was bawling her head offf and screaming "Natasha!" over and over...Well the stupid American cow looks at her and says "What is it you want, McKenzie? I can't understand"...No shit?!..First of all she's hollering "Natasha", yes it's through sobs, and with an accent but I'm gonna go out on a limb and figure she was crying for SOMEONE NAMED NATASHA!!! Perhaps a friend or sister from the dealership..er..orphanage...Then there's "McKenzie", now I came really far from meeting every Russian, but I never met one or even heard of one named "McKenzie"...So this poor girl, has been ripped away from the only home she's ever known, shitty as it probably was, and before she can even start to adjust or bond, they go ahead and just start addressing her by a word she has no reason to know is even a proper name, she's never heard this word!...It aint a puppy, fuckwit...

And the saddest thing about the whole situtaion is that the overwhelming majority of these purchased babies, are actually going to have a much better life because they were purchased..I mean adopted...even McKenzie, who I guess can be thankful that her parents are adoptive and she won't be limited geneticaly to mom's intelligence level and so may be able to rise above it nurture-wise...