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No wonder the Democrats lost in 2000.  There was a 3rd party running.  At least according to the UK Telegraph.

Well, I was completely wrong.  Apparently everyone saw through Senator McCain’s stunt and he’s been forced to un-suspend his campaign.  It shows my complete inability to understand politics.

Instead of forcing Senator Obama back to Washington and potentially canceling the debate, Senator McCain has gone back on the campaign trail and will be at the debates (assuming no other crisis happens).  Basically it came down to this.  McCain tried to look like he was a take charge candidate, but then failed to do so.  And when Obama didn’t come back to Washington (yes, he did come back at the President’s request, which was clearly scripted to coincide with McCains request) or cancel the debate.  McCain was now forced to either attend the debate or give Obama the entire time in a Town Hall type of environment on national TV.

Just proves why I shouldn’t be in politics.

Oh, and the “significant progress” in the bailout plan mentioned above must mean a complete collapse as thr Rebublicans revolted against the plan.

David Letterman has a good point when he says the following in tonight’s show:

He can’t run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second string quarterback, Sara Palin. Where is she?

Why not put Governor Palin in charge of the campaign while he’s resolving this crisis?

Wow. This is going to be a brilliant political move, a complete blunder, or genuine concern for the economy. Any way you look at it, it seems that McCain has suspended his political campaign until the economy crisis is addressed. Let me talk about why it’s one of the above three in reverse.

First, the suspension could be out of genuine concern for the economy. Senator McCain could feel that the economy takes precedence over everything else and wants to help the America through the crisis. The cynic in me says this is not the case. I don’t think if Obama did this he’d be doing it altruistically either.

Second, this could be a complete blunder. McCain could be giving Obama more time to position himself and it takes a while to ramp up a campaign. I don’t think this is the case either. While McCain may be back in Washington, his campaigners will still be out and about. So really it’s not a suspension of a campaign, more a reduction.

Third, this could be a brilliant political move. First off, Obama has to do the same thing. He can’t let McCain take the spotlight on the issue of the economy. He can’t allow McCain to be perceived “savior” in this crisis. McCain has gone on the offensive and said “look, when there’s a crisis, I’m there to address it, even if it means sacrificing my personal goal of the presidency”. To Joe Blow, you hear that he’s willing to do this it strikes a cord of “this isn’t your usual politician”. This is the case with the suspension.

I’d be willing to bet that McCain get a boost in the polls as a result of this announcement. How big, I don’t know. Obama will have to counter because this is going to be all over the news till the crisis is resolved. Apparently Obama called McCain this morning to discuss a joint announcement, but if that’s all that he relies on, this is a check for McCain. Whether it’s checkmate we’ll have to see.

Around 1985 my mom went to the airport to pick up my pops.  I decided it would be a good joke to put a mini-metal gun replica in her purse.  Ha, ha, funny, right?

After she finished beating me, she told me how the gun had been found by the scanner and how security surrounded her and then shuffled off to a private room where they proceeded to question her for an hour or so.  Dad apparently got a good laugh out of it.

Ah, good times.

The moral of the story:  In today’s heightened security, bringing replica grenades into the airport is a bad thing.

I never really liked CoverFlow (in iTunes or Finder).  Like the Dock, I think it makes a good demo, but not terribly useful.  For the most part I leave it off, preferring the iTunes album view or the Finder icon view.

So I’m excited by the release of iTunes 8 and it’s new Grid view.  Now I can see a large number of my albums in a single view.  With the traditional album view, I was limited to 3, maybe 4 albums on my MBP.  With the Grid view I can see 15 to 20 albums in a single pane.  This allows me to quickly spot the album I want and play it.

The Genius featue of iTunes 8 also peeked my interest.  I have an eclectic taste of music.  I have to wonder how it will handle groups like Candypants and other indie artists.  My assumption is that it works like Pandora in that it collects information about my playlists and sends it to an aggregator in the cloud.  Time will tell if this proves to be a useful feature.

Lastly, Apple has finally added the ability to treat MP3s as audiobooks without having to convert them to AAC first.  Instead you flip a switch (or, in this case, change a category) and the MP3 is moved out of the Music library and into the Audiobook library.  It’s still not perfect, but it’s a good step.  The only problem I’ve seen so far is that you can’t create a smart list based on media kind (music, audiobook), which means filters are still limited.

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are absolutely hilarious.

Ah, the brilliance of the TSA Watch Lists.  Apparently, to cure your problems is to not mail the TSA or your Congress Member, but instead you can just change your name.  Seriously, do the lists do anything other then bother innocent travellers?