RCOTN: Solution, or Mess?

Hello everyone!

I'm back with another episode of Rob Comments on the News. For those of you who are out of the loop, I set up a separate blog strictly for commenting on the news about a year or so ago with the intention of updating it fairly regularly. In fact, my initial plan was to do a few per week, but that didn't quite work out. After a whopping three postings in as many months, my short attention span got the better of me and, hey, look at the pretty birds...

But after reading this article, I thought I'd pull the concept out of the old moth balls. Since nobody reads the other blog, I'll just post it here on Rob Dow's World. Oh, and a word of warning, this one contains expletives. So if you're easily offended, go fuck yourself:

June 30, 2008

Solution, or Mess? A Milk Jug for a Green Earth

By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM

NORTH CANTON, Ohio — A simple change to the design of the gallon milk jug, adopted by Wal-Mart and Costco, seems made for the times. The jugs are cheaper to ship and better for the environment, the milk is fresher when it arrives in stores, and it costs less.

What’s not to like? Plenty, as it turns out.

The jugs have no real spout, and their unorthodox shape makes consumers feel like novices at the simple task of pouring a glass of milk.

Translation: "The milk jug makes me feel stupid! Boo-hoo!"

“I hate it,” said Lisa DeHoff, a cafe owner shopping in a Sam’s Club here.

"Waah, waah, it's too hard!" Dullards like Lisa, who apparently has nothing better to do than focus her pent up rage at a milk container, make me ashamed to be an American.

“It spills everywhere,” said Amy Wise, a homemaker.

Yes, this is what it has come to. People are literally crying over spilled milk.

And a homemaker? I didn't know they still existed. Apparently she's a horrible one, too, if she can't even figure out how to pour milk. And if homemaker is a career, she should be fired. Oops, I mean "downsized." She can then train her replacement from India how to clean her house and raise her kids. I bet the Indian lady can figure out how to pour milk!

Here's a clue, Amy: milk doesn't just "spill everywhere." Milk, though liquid, is an inanimate object. Therefore, it can't just "spill everywhere" on its own volition. However, you, being (in theory) a functioning human being are more than capable of causing the milk to spill due to your own incompetency. That is what most likely happens, Amy. You're just too stupid to realize it.

Amy Wise? More like Amy Dumbshit!

“It’s very hard for kids to pour,” said Lee Morris, who was shopping for her grandchildren.

Then don't buy it, you whiny, old, sack of crap! Seriously, Lee, do you think the whole world should conform to your spoiled grandbrats? On second thought, don't answer that question--I know what your answer is. Quit being so self-absorbed vicariously through your grandkids (is that possible?) And no, they're not special! They're typical spoiled monsters who might need a little help pouring milk on their Froot Loops.

But retailers are undeterred by the prospect of upended bowls of Cheerios. The new jugs have many advantages from their point of view, and Sam’s Club intends to roll them out broadly, making them more prevalent.

"You will buy the milk! You will buy the milk! Why? Because I'm the corpse of Sam Walton, and I order you to buy the milk, that's why! Don't talk back! Buy your milk, spill it, drink it, and then go to your room!"

Maybe David Cross was right: we are a nation of six-year-olds.

The redesign of the gallon milk jug, experts say, is an example of the changes likely to play out in the American economy over the next two decades. In an era of soaring global demand and higher costs for energy and materials, virtually every aspect of the economy needs to be re-examined, they say, and many products must be redesigned for greater efficiency.

“This is a key strategy as a path forward,” said Anne Johnson, the director of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, a project of the nonprofit group GreenBlue. “Re-examining, ‘What are the materials we are using? How are we using them? And where do they go ultimately?’ ”

Wal-Mart Stores is already moving down this path. But if the milk jug is any indication, some of the changes will take getting used to on the part of consumers. Many spill milk when first using the new jugs.

Ordinarily, if Wal-Mart is for something, I'm usually against it. But in this case, I do get a perverse joy in knowing so many people are being angered at something Wal-Mart did. Unfortunately, it's not justified indignity about things like sweatshops, low wages and no insurance for its employees, and toys with lead-based paint that's pissing them off so much. Instead, they're pissed because they're too fucking stupid to operate a milk jug.

“When we brought in the new milk, we were asking for feedback,” said Heather Mayo, vice president for merchandising at Sam’s Club, a division of Wal-Mart. “And they’re saying, ‘Why’s it in a square jug? Why’s it different? I want the same milk. What happened to my old milk?’ ”

Jesus H. Fucking Christ!!!! "What happened to my old milk!?!?" You have got to be kidding me!

Six-year-olds.

Mary Tilton tried to educate the public a few days ago as she stood at a Sam’s Club in North Canton, about 50 miles south of Cleveland, luring shoppers with chocolate chip cookies and milk as she showed them how to pour from the new jugs.

Un-be-fucking-lievable!!! Educate the public!?!?!? On how to pour milk properly?!?!?!? Fuck you people! If you can't pour milk without spilling it all over the place, you don't deserve milk! If you assholes get thirsty, you can go outside and drink water from the garden hose! And if you can't figure out how to turn on the water, go to your neighbor's backyard and check Fido's water bowl, you stupid piece of shit waste of space!!

The sad thing is these people are all having kids. I'm sorry, but Nostradamus is not a prophet. Mike Judge is.

“Just tilt it slowly and pour slowly,” Ms. Tilton said to passing customers as she talked about the jugs’ environmental benefits and cost savings. Instead of picking up the jug, as most people tend to do, she kept it on a table and gently tipped it toward a cup.

Six-year-olds.

Mike Compston, who owns a dairy in Yerington, Nev., described the pouring technique in a telephone interview as a “rock-and-pour instead of a lift-and-tip.”

Not only did this asshole give a phone interview about "pouring technique," he also came up with a name for it, ostensibly to make it easier to remember.

Six-year-olds.

Demonstrations are but one of several ways Sam’s Club is advocating the containers. Signs in the aisle laud their cost savings and “better fridge fit.”

And some customers have become converts.

“With the new refrigerators with the shelf in the door, these fit nice,” said April Buchanan, who was shopping at the Sam’s Club here. Others, even those who rue the day their tried-and-true jugs were replaced, praised the lower cost, from $2.18 to $2.58 a gallon. Sam’s Club said that was a savings of 10 to 20 cents a gallon compared with old jugs.

And that's why, despite all the pissing and moaning, people will still buy it: "Because I'm an imbecile, I spilled about half the jug all over the table in the breakfast nook. But hey, I saved 14 cents on the goddamn thing, so I really can't complain."

The new jug marks a sharp break with the way dairies and grocers have traditionally produced and stocked milk.

Early one recent morning, the creators and producers of the new tall rectangular jugs donned goggles and white coats to walk the noisy, chilly production lines at Superior Dairy in Canton, Ohio. It was founded in 1922 by a man who was forced to abandon the brandy business during Prohibition. Five generations of the founder’s family, the Soehnlens, have worked there.

Today, they bottle and ship two different ways. The old way is inefficient and labor-intensive, according to members of the family. The other day, a worker named Dennis Sickafoose was using a long hook to drag plastic crates loaded with jugs of milk onto a conveyor belt.

The only thing that is keeping me from thrusting my fist through my monitor screen is Dennis Sickafoose's awesome name.

The crates are necessary because the shape of old-fashioned milk jugs prohibits stacking them atop one another. The crates take up a lot of room, they are unwieldy to move, and extra space must be left in delivery trucks to take empty ones back from stores to the dairy.

They also can be filthy. “Birds roost on them,” said Dan Soehnlen, president of Superior Dairy, which spun off a unit called Creative Edge to design and license new packaging of many kinds. He spoke while standing in pools of the soapy run-off from milk crates that had just been washed. About 100,000 gallons of water a day are used at his dairy clean the crates, Mr. Soehnlen said.

Sweet. Nothing makes milk more appealing than a bunch of bird shit all over the container.

But with the new jugs, the milk crates are gone. Instead, a machine stacks the jugs, with cardboard sheets between layers. Then the entire pallet, four layers high, is shrink-wrapped and moved with a forklift.

The company estimates this kind of shipping has cut labor by half and water use by 60 to 70 percent. More gallons fit on a truck and in Sam’s Club coolers, and no empty crates need to be picked up, reducing trips to each Sam’s Club store to two a week, from five — a big fuel savings. Also, Sam’s Club can now store 224 gallons of milk in its coolers, in the same space that used to hold 80.

The whole operation is so much more efficient that milk coming out of a cow in the morning winds up at a Sam’s Club store by that afternoon, compared with several hours later or the next morning by the old method. “That’s our idea of fresh milk,” Greg Soehnlen, a vice president at Creative Edge, said.

That may be your idea of fresh, but it's my idea of creepy and disgusting. There are few things more disturbing than pouring a tall glass of milk and thinking, "This liquid that I'm drinking came out of a cow's teat less than 12 hours ago."

Sam’s Club started using the boxy jugs in November, and they are now in 189 stores scattered around the country. They will appear soon in more Sam’s Club stores and perhaps in Wal-Marts.

The question now is whether customers will go along.

Really? Of course they will. If Wal-Mart is selling it, people will buy it. I remember during my inventory days, there were no shortage of people who would go to Wal-Mart for something to do. Not to buy something specific--just to go and walk around (or ride around in a Mart Cart). Inevitably, they would buy some cheap plastic thing they didn't intend on buying, didn't need, and didn't really even want, but thought it was too great of a deal to pass up. And that is why we now have a $351 billion trade deficit.

As Ms. Tilton gave her in-store demonstration the other day at the Sam’s Club here, customers stood around her, munching cookies and sipping milk. “Would you like to take some home today?” she asked.

A shopper named Jodi Kauffman gave the alien jugs a sidelong glance.

“Maybe,” she said.

Jodi then added, "I'm confused because I'm a fucking idiot. I only know how to do what my TV tells me to do. My TV didn't say anything about weird, terrorist, communist, elitist milk jugs. It did tell me to buy things from Sam's Club, though. What to do? What to do?"

It's times like this that I have to fight the urge to just walk up to people, grab them by the shoulders, and ask them what the fuck is wrong with them! Seriously, There are well over 4,000 dead and well over 30,000 injured Americans for no good reason, anywhere from just under a hundred thousand to a million or more dead Iraqi civilians for no good reason, and report after report that the Iraq invasion and occupation was launched for no good reason. To these people, it's no big deal, but change a milk carton and all of a sudden they're screaming bloody murder!

Global warming? Climate change? "Well, they're still debating that." Actually, just in the past month, there have been all sorts of crazy tornadoes and floods, and there are 1,400 individual fires burning in California as I write this. "Yeah, but there have been tornadoes, floods, and fires for in those places since way before people started driving cars." Fine. The Northwest Passage opened up for the first time ever last summer, and the North Pole is on track to have no ice cover later on this summer--for the first time in human history. "Maybe, but who cares about the North Pole? My milk container is different! And I can't figure out how to pour it! Oh my God--it's the motherfucking Apocalypse!!!!!!"

I fucking give up.

Rob

The Boogeyman Is Gonna Getcha!

Hello everyone!

Chris Bowers at Open Left has put up a great posting:

It must be really scary to be a conservative. To be one, you must live in constant fear of terrorists nuking the United States, of gay people on the verge of convincing you that you really enjoy sodomy, of Spanish becoming the official language of the United States next week, of every African-American voting seven or eight times in the next election, of radical Islam suddenly becoming the latest hip thing among kids across the country, of perpetual lesbian orgies in girls bathrooms in high schools across America, of liberals forcing everyone to become a vegan, of Christians being rounded up into concentration camps, and of Democrats outlawing private property if they were to ever take power again.

The rest of it can be found here, it's it's worth a read or two.

In the meantime, I plan on posting a bit more often in the near future, so stay tuned...

Rob

George Carlin 1937-2008

Hello everyone.

Well, it's a sad day at Rob Dow's World. George Carlin--comedian, actor, activist, philosopher, movie guitarist, 9/11 conspiracy buff (sorta), and all around great guy--is dead. And that sucks.

I didn't know the guy. I've seen several of his HBO specials, have listened to and/or own a few of his albums, have read and/or own some of his books, and once saw him live in Spokane, WA. But I can't honestly say that I was close to him as a person.

Still, I can't help but feel a bit of a loss. To me his act represented one of my first forays into a sort of thought process that wasn't approved by the powers that be. Before seeing a Carlin video, my outlook on the world was based on television, school, and my friends. And those three categories were virtually the same. But then I watched a Carlin special, and what he was saying was completely different than any perspective I had been exposed to--but it made total sense to me. I was hooked.

After that, he became a sort of grandfather of free thinking in my world, and I seriously expected his angry, crotchety old ass to be out there touring for at least another 20 years or so. He just seemed like one of those guys who was too stubborn to go away.

I could go on and on about my history with Carlin, but really, this shouldn't be about me. Let's see what the man of the hour has to say. First, let's start with a topic that isn't terribly controversial--abortion:



Now let's see what he has to say about voting:



Here he talks about the American Dream:



Here he is on Olbermann trying to restrain himself from making fun of Olbermann (hint: he doesn't last five seconds before making fun of Olbermann):



"This country is finished."

Amen.

Rob

The Things You Overhear

Hello everyone!

Walking around the University of Oregon campus can be interesting because sometimes you overhear a snippet of a conversation that someone walking in the opposite direction is having, and without the proper context it makes no sense. Here's something I overheard today:

"If things keep going the way they've been going, my mom will probably end up just buying me a lot of beer."

What a cool mom (unless it's crappy beer).

Rob

A Sports Parable

Hello everyone!

This is probably the funniest thing I have ever seen. And I don't even follow sports.

A Sports Parable

A statement from Detroit Pistons general manager Joe Dumars:

I wanted to say a few words about the Michigan Solution. No, not that travesty of justice. I'm talking about a fair, common-sense resolution of the Eastern Conference Finals.

Some in the media are declaring the series over because the Boston Celtics have won four of the six games played so far. But I don’t understand why, with a series this close and hotly contested, anyone would want to shut it down before we play a seventh game and have all the results in. As anybody who follows the NBA knows, a seven-game series would be good for the league, and the added competition would make the eventual victor, whomever it might be, a stronger opponent against the Los Angeles Lakers in the Finals.

It’s no great surprise that some are trying to push us out of this series. From the beginning, it’s been clear that the media and league elites have been looking for an exciting new face, instead of a team, like ours, that has proven its mettle by making it to the Conference Finals six years in a row. We saw it in the Western Conference as well, where officials and news outlets made clear they were sick to death of the reigning champion San Antonio Spurs and behaved like cheerleaders for the media-darling Lakers. Heck, they almost managed to persuade fans that a hokey, small-town act like the New Orleans Hornets was a legitimate contender. It is safe to say that this has been the most rigged coverage in modern sports history.

But back to the series in question. Yes, Boston has won four games and Detroit only two. But it's hard to imagine a more arbitrary and undemocratic way to determine this series’s outcome than "games won." It is, after all, a bedrock value of the game of basketball that all points must be counted. But how can that be the case when every point beyond the winning point is ignored? There are literally dozens of layups, jumpers, free throws, and (yes, even) dunks that our opponents want to say don't count for anything at all. We call on the NBA to do the right thing and fully count all of the baskets that were made throughout the course of this series.

Once you abandon the artificial four-games-to-two framework that the media has tried to impose on the series, a very different picture emerges, with the Celtics leading by a mere 549 points to 539. Yes that’s right, the margin between the two teams is less than one percent—a tie, for all intents and purposes. This is probably the closest Conference Finals in NBA history, though I will thank you not to check on that.

How do we determine a winner in a series so historically close? First off, let's look at these so-called "free" throws, which are anything but. Who decides when these are to be awarded? Hard-working working-people like you and me? No, it's the officials, the league bosses, the elites. So no counting the free throws--unless and until (and I sincerely hope you guys are listening) the refs start breaking our way again. (By the way, you guys do know that Celts star Paul Pierce was involved in a stabbing a few years back, right? I only mention it because Phil Jackson is obviously going to bring it up in the Finals.)

If you take out free throws, Boston's ten-point margin in the series is whittled down to a single-digit, all-but-meaningless nine points. But this is still misleading. Let's be honest: We all know that some baskets count for more than others. (Yes, I know I was arguing for equal representation two seconds ago. What are you, Encyclopedia Brown? Chill out and try to stay current.) Take layups, for example: If you wander naively into the Finals thinking you’re going to win with layups, well don’t come crying to me when Kobe Bryant swats that lameass shit right back in your face. I know. I've been there.

So let's get right down to it: Big shots matter. It makes no difference when they happen, or who's leading at the time, or whether you're likely to make them against the Lakers, or any of that complicated nonsense. And we all know that the only real big shot is a three-pointer. So sure, Boston won more games than us, and scored more points, and made more baskets, and hit more free throws, and never tried to rewrite the rules after the fact. But we dominated them in three-point shooting, hitting 29 long ones to their 26 over the course of the series. Take this into account and it becomes apparent that we are by far the strongest competitor the Eastern Conference can field against the Lakers.

We again ask the league to consider all these facts and come to a fair solution. I’ll be holding a press conference at the Palace tonight, to which I’m inviting all Pistons season-ticket holders. I may announce our intention to drop out of the Eastern Conference Finals. Or I may not. But know one thing: If the media and league elites put the Celtics up against LA, they will lose, and we’ll be the first to say I told you so.

See you next season,

Joe Dumars (as told to Christopher Orr)

Oh well, I guess it's all a moot point anyway. I'm just glad we're finally done with this crap. Onward to stage 2: kicking some Maverick ass!

Rob

Ten Stupid Reasons to not Vote for Barack Obama

Hello everyone!

These days, it's really easy to compile a list of reasons to vote for someone. It's also easy to compile a list of reasons to not vote for someone. But I've discovered it's a bit challenging to compile a list of stupid reasons to not vote for someone! Yet that's what I did. So without any further ado, here is my list of 10 stupid reasons to not vote for Barack Obama:

Reason #1: He's a Muslim!

No he's not. But the bigger question is "So what if he was?" The assumption here is that Muslim=evil or Islam=terrorist.

I won't even get into whether or not Islam is evil because it's a stupid argument. If you think the whole religion is any more evil than any other religion, or that its followers are inherently evil, then you're blinded by your beliefs and are incapable of rational thought, and you might as well stop reading this. I'm sorry, but this whole "My God is better than yours argument" is idiotic, and it only leads to lots of dead people. You can believe all you want, but you don't know, and so it's stupid to argue about it. Even stupider is to make blanket statements about all the followers of a particular religion, especially when your religion has no shortage of skeletons in its closet. This is why I'm fanatically agnostic.

As far as equating Islam to terrorism, that's a fair comparison, but only if you ignore all the non-Muslim terrorists in recent history, such as the IRA, abortion clinic bombers, Timothy McVeigh, so-called eco-terrorists, Ted Kaczynski, the CIA, the Chinese government, the Soviets, etc.

But then there's the whole illogic of equating the actions of a few to an entire religion.

I know some people would say that there are more than a few. Well, think about this for a moment. There are about 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, give or take a few hundred million. That's 1,500,000,000 people. Compare that with the population of Phoenix, AZ, which is about 1.5 million, or 1,500,000 people. If there were 1.5 million Muslim terrorists worldwide (there is no way to come up with a number, but still, this is an insanely huge number, and I really doubt it's anywhere near this high under most definitions), that would still only be 1 of every 1,000 Muslims, or less than 0.1%. Put it this way: it's about 1,000 miles from Chicago to Denver. Only one mile would be the "terrorist mile". So it's hardly fair to assume every follower of Islam is a terrorist, unless you're an ignorant, reactionary idiot.

Now, that's not to say that 1.5 million terrorists couldn't cause a whole lot of damage (and they aren't, which is why I think this number is way too high). But if you had to fight them, wouldn't you rather have the other 1,498,500,000 on your side?

Moreover, the definition of terrorist is so vague that anyone can be called a terrorist. I'm sure I could be called one simply for writing this blog. But don't worry, you're reading it, so that makes you a terrorist, too.

Regardless, none of this has anything to do with Barack Obama, so let's move on.

Reason #2: He was raised in a Muslim terrorist madrassa!

Wrong again. I've already talked about the Muslim-terrorist claim. As for the bogus madrassa claim, my guess is that a vast majority of people who keep repeating this have no idea what a madrassa is. I didn't until I first heard this.

I suppose "madrassa" is a scary foreign-sounding word to some. But really, madrassa (madrasah) is simply the Arabic word for school. But I could see how people who are afraid of foreign-sounding words that they don't understand would also be afraid of school, or at least education.

But I guess if you're a complete moron, you can buy the line of reasoning that forty years ago, some grade school teachers somewhere in Indonesia concocted this great plan to select one of their students to be a sort of Manchurian Candidate who would one day become President of the United States so that he could singlehandedly destroy the whole country and convert us, as well as the whole Western World, into a bunch of freedom-hating Muslims. You'd also have to believe that they then thought, "You know, this plan is too easy. Instead of having a white guy with a name like John Smith, let's choose a black man named Barack Hussein Obama! They'll never suspect him!"

Of course, this also supposes that our country is so fragile that one guy can tear it all apart without any trouble. I guess if you have a low enough opinion of this country, you might think that. But that would mean you hate America.

Now I know some people might ask, "Hey, isn't one guy singlehandedly destroying this country right now?" No, he isn't. He has had lots of help.

Anyway, let's move on to reason #3.

Reason #3a: But he's Muslim! Look at his middle name: Hussein! What does that tell you?

...and...

Reason #3b: But he's Muslim! Look at his last name: Obama! You know, it sounds like Osama! What does that tell you?

Nothing. Neither tells me anything. And it shouldn't tell anyone else anything, either. Shall we play, "What's in a name?"

• Joseph Lieberman and Joseph Biden would be horrible choices for president because their name is Joseph, and we all know Joseph Stalin was one of the most brutal dictators in history. Therefore, Lieberman and Biden would become dictators if elected president.
  

• John McCain, John F. Kennedy, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, John Tyler, John Edwards, John Kerry, John Negroponte, Andrew Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, John Lennon, Johnny Carson, Johnny Cash, Johnny Rotten, Johnny Walker, John Deere, Elton John, Johnson & Johnson, Trapper John, MD, Johns Hopkins, and Olivia Newton-John are all unqualified to be president because they all have "John" as part of their name. Who can forget another "John", John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Abraham Lincoln. You wouldn't want to vote for someone with connections to a notorious assassin, would you?

• Hillary Clinton is out of the question, too. Look at her initials: H.C. You know who else had H.C. in his initials? H.C.M., aka Ho Chi Minh, that's who. And Rodham? That's like Rodman, as in Dennis Rodman, the cross-dressing basketball player. And if that weren't enough, "Hillary" starts with an "H", and so does "Hitler". That would make her a cross-dressing, VietCong, Nazi secret agent! Well, your secret is out, Hitlery Nguyen Rodman Clinton!

Reason #4: Obama associates with people who hate America! That means he hates America!

Oh, brother. I have friends who used to do a lot of meth. Does that mean I used to do a lot of meth? I have friends who are gay. Does that mean I'm gay? I have friends who have been in jail. Does that make me a criminal? I associate with many women. Does that make me a woman?

Note: I'm not equating being gay and/or being a woman to doing a lot of meth and/or being a criminal. They're just all things I can't say about myself.

Then there's the whole exaggeration or complete misrepresentation of what was said in the first place. Here's a good comparison of the sound bites and the context of what Jeremiah Wright said. I mean really, he never said anything that was untrue. But I guess a loud, angry black man is too scary to some people. We can also get into whether or not the guy truly hates America, but then we'd have to look at his military service history in Vietnam and how he attended to Lyndon B. Johnson after the president had surgery, and that wouldn't make for a good sound clip.

At the same time as all of this, John McCain was endorsed by John Hagee, a guy who essentially said that New Orleans got what it deserved in Hurricane Katrina because of gays. I guess "God damn New Orleans" is OK, but "God damn America" is not. Either way, hardly anyone is saying McCain is unfit to be president because he sought out Hagee's endorsement, though that could be because there are plenty of other reasons McCain is unfit to be president.

Or there's Pat Robertson, a guy who agreed with another nutcase, Jerry Falwell, when two days after 9/11 he said, "I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America...I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen." Robertson also called for Hugo Chavez's assassination. He endorsed Rudy Giuliani, but nobody blamed Giuliani for it.

These televangelist types are doing a great job at arguing for a separation of church and state, though I doubt that's what they have in mind.

Reason #5: But Rev. Wright is his "spiritual adviser"!

In order to believe this means anything, one must first have to be so ignorant to not know what the word "adviser" means. The word adviser means, "One who advises, or one who gives advice." It does not mean, "One who brainwashes." I can understand why there would be a mix up since it does involve religion, an institution whose leaders have been known from time to time to try to brainwash its followers.

Nevertheless, the idea that Obama naturally agrees with everything Jeremiah Wright says is bunk, especially given that Obama has clearly on a number of occasions come out and said he disagreed with many of the things Wright said.

None of this matters anymore, anyhow, since Obama left his church this weekend.

Reason #6: Obama doesn't put his hand on his heart during the National Anthem and refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance!

Sigh.

This is based on one photo that appeared in Time magazine. Here's video of the "offending" incident:



So instead of putting his hand on his heart, he sings along. What an America-hater! Too bad he didn't sing louder in order to drown out that awful-sounding woman with a microphone.

Was he "supposed to" put his hand over his heart? According to USflag.org (yes, there is such a site):

During rendition of the national anthem when the flag is displayed, all present except those in uniform should stand at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart. Men not in uniform should remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart.

Well, there you go. Since they didn't remove their "headdress", I say they're all guilty of hating America. Except Hillary and that other woman as the rule apparently only applies to men.

Oh, and here's some video that I copied and pasted from snopes.com of Obama leading the Pledge of Allegiance in the Senate. Notice the hand over heart:





Ah, but who cares about the truth when there are plenty of half-truths to go around?

Reason #7: Obama clearly hates America. This is why he refuses to wear a flag pin!

Good! The flag pin was most likely made in China!

Frankly, I think we've had way too much of this bogus, superficial patriotism and not enough real concern and care for this country. Anyone can wear a pin or put a magnetic ribbon on an SUV (one of the most unintentionally ironic statements a person can make), but instead of hollow gestures, maybe we should try doing something that actually helps the country, such as providing health care, working to pay off our national debt, or simply not fighting unnecessary wars.

Reason #8: Michelle Obama clearly hates America. She said she was proud of America "for the first time." I've always been proud of America!

Really? You've always been proud of America? Were you proud when we were committing genocide against native people? Were you proud when slavery was legal and blacks were considered 3/5 of a person for congressional representational purposes? Were you proud when we had segregation? How about when we passed the Chinese Exclusion Act? Or when we interned Japanese-Americans during World War II? What about when we dropped two nuclear bombs (the only country to ever do so) on Japan, or when we firebombed and leveled German cities? Were you proud of that? Or does that not count because it was a long time ago?

How about more recently? Are you proud that we started detaining prisoners Soviet-style: overseas, indefinitely, and without charging them with a crime? Are you proud when thousands of people were dying in New Orleans during Katrina while the president laughed and strummed a guitar? How about when the previous president was impeached because he lied about having receiving sex? Or how about when the two presidents before him authorized arming Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden?

Maybe you should be proud of the fact that our country has the highest incarceration rate in the world, higher even than the Soviet Union in 1979.

Mentioning any of this does not mean a person hates the America. Nor does it mean that a person is not proud. But if we ever want this country to get better, we first have to come to terms with the fact that we're not perfect. If this country were a person, it would be a John Wayne-type character, strutting around completely oblivious to its faults, which everyone else can clearly see.

No, it's not hate if you believe the country can do better and expect it to do so.

Reason #9: He has no foreign policy experience!

Well, how well do people with foreign policy experience stack up?

Dick Cheney: Assistant to the President and then White House Chief of Staff under Ford, five terms as US Representative At-Large from Wyoming, House Minority Whip, Secretary of Defense under Bush I, Chairman of the Board and CEO of Halliburton, Vice President under Bush II, shot a guy in the face.

Donald Rumsfeld: Four terms as US Representative from Illinois's 13th district, Director of the United States Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, White House Chief of Staff and then US Secretary of Defense under Ford, Special Envoy to the Middle East under Reagan, Secretary of Defense again under Bush II, Architect of the Iraq Quagmire, used a machine to sign letters of condolences to families of soldiers killed in said quagmire, resigned in disgrace in 2006.

John McCain: Two terms as US Representative from Arizona's 1st district, elected four times as US Senator from Arizona, doesn't know the difference between Sunni and Shia, thinks Iran is harboring and training al Qaeda (hint: they're not).

Hillary Clinton: Former First Lady, twice elected as US Senator from New York, imagined gunfire during visit to Bosnia. Oh wait, maybe she didn't imagine it:



Anyway, with these kinds of results from experienced people, I'll think I'll take my chances with the new guy.

Reason #10: We don't know anything about him!

Two words: Goo-gle!

Well, I hope you find this list of reasons not to vote for Obama useful in your voting decisions. Vote early and often!

Rob