Hillary to replace Biden?

I'd be more worried about the more-likely Hillary to replace OBAMA.  I received a paranoid / conspiracy-theory email about Hillary replacing Biden soon, and I'll post it in a minute.  First, the things that don't make sense:

1.) "There has been talk all weekend.." Amongst who?  The illuminati?

2.) This assumes having Hillary as a VP would be GOOD for Obama - they keep calling it an "Obama" strategy!  The best thing Obama wants from Hillary is for her to get hit by a bus.

3.) Funny that it references a "serious gaffe" by Biden....as if saying Hillary would be a better candidate, insulting Indian Americans, or making fun of disabled people wasn't gaffe enough:

4.) It says we have this "from the DNC".  I don't remember anyone else seeing it at the DNC.  Maybe "the plan" was posted in one of the side tents, and not in the main one where news people spent most of their time.

Anyway, here's the email:

On or about October 5th, Biden will either make a serious gaffe and/or excuse himself from the ticket, citing health problems, and he will be replaced by Hillary. This is timed to occur after the VP debate on 10/2. 

 

There have been talks all weekend about how to proceed with this info. Generally, the feeling is that we should all go ahead and get it out there  to as many blog sites and personal email lists as is possible. I have already seen a few short blurbs about this - the 'health problem' cited in those articles was aneurysm. Probably many of you have heard the same rumblings. 

However, at this point, with this inside info from the DNC, it looks  like this Obama strategy will be a go. Therefore, it seems that the best strategy is to get out in front of this Obama maneuver, spell it out in detail, and thereby expose it for the grand manipulation that it is. 

 

So, let's start mixing this one up and cut the Obamites off at the pass - send this info out to as many people as you can - post about it on websites and blogs - etc.

And they say McCain is like Bush...

....let's talk a little bit about Biden, who says more offensively stupid things than anyone in Politics since, well, President Bush:

This is a great collection:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/11/america/biden.php

"Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America," Biden said Wednesday in Nashua, New Hampshire. "Quite frankly it might have been a better pick than me."

***

Earlier in the week, in Columbia, Missouri, Biden urged a paraplegic state official to stand up to be recognized.

"Chuck, stand up, let the people see you," Biden shouted to State Senator Chuck Graham, before realizing, to his horror, that Graham uses a wheelchair. "Oh, God love ya," Biden said. "What am I talking about?"

***

The guy who, reading his vice-presidential acceptance speech from a TelePrompter, bungled McCain's name, calling him "George" ("Freudian slip, folks, Freudian slip," he explained).

The guy who, on the day Obama announced him as his running mate, referred to his party's presidential nominee as "Barack America" and noted that his own wife, Jill, a college professor, was "drop-dead gorgeous" but who, problematically, possessed a doctorate.

The guy who has said he is running for president (not vice president) and who confused army brigades with battalions. Who referred to his Republican vice-presidential opponent as the lieutenant governor of Alaska.

***

Awesome.

Who you are according to wordle

I analyzed the blogs of my friends an I using Wordle and got some interesting results.  Wordle uses your blogs RSS feed to load all the words, tallies the number of times each is used, and displays the result in some sort of interesting layout.  Here's how it turned out:

Redhurtmachine:

Unsurprisingly, the word "know" appears on my chart bigger than anything else.  I just wrote a long post about how we know what we do and how we can be sure, so that's not too surprising.  I also like Mountains and the Broncos, I guess. :)

Anglican + Calvinist:

Unsurprisingly, Adam's blog is focused on being "intelligibile".  He also concerns himself with knowledge, God, Christianity, and apparently the can-can.  It's ironic to me that Adam is no longer an Anglican OR a Calvinist.

Brumma-whatever-hammer:

No surprises here.

Blue Stockings:

Looks like Mair tends to post about whatever she's up to at the time.  "Lotion" also ranks pretty high.

Pragmaticism:

Nick's and Josh's are tied for my favorite.  It sums up their blogs just about perfectly.  "BILLION TAX INCOME!!"  "GOOD SOCIAL CULTURE!!"  Ha!

Poetry and Scotch (old):

Poetry and Scotch (new):

I like that "Ebola" makes an appearance in Justin's new blog's chart.  We clearly need some more content. :)

Filosofia y  Flores:

Clearly EAP is the most balanced.  She uses lots of different words, which is probably why her blog was ranked at a college level back in the day (mine was 2nd grade or something.)

For fun I also ran our family blog, which is written 99% by Marty:

As expected, Quinn comes in a big number 1.

Here's Phil's blog.  I think it's currently called "Child of Dust", but it might be "Ask not for whom the solemn bell tolls."  Anyway, here it is:

And last but not least, here's Scott's:

Pretty cool stuff, that wordle.

Obama = Taxes; or, my Cafepress store

I opened a store on Cafepress.com using a picture I photoshopped all by myself:

You can now get it on all sorts of t-shirts and whatnot.  Buy some here and help educate your friends and family on Obama's message of Hope through high taxes for everyone - especially poor people.

the weird things Christians do

This is one of them:

Jesus is my friend by "Sonseed" from Peleg Top on Vimeo.

You know you're from Colorado when....

A friend of mine sent me this today.  Pretty funny, and so true.

A winter statistic:    

98% OF AMERICANS SCREAM BEFORE GOING IN THE DITCH ON A SLIPPERY ROAD. THE OTHER 2% ARE FROM COLORADO AND THEY SAY, 'HOLD MY SODA AND WATCH THIS.

NOW:

You're from Colorado if You'll eat ice cream in the winter.

When the weather report says it's going to be 65 degrees, you shave your legs and wear a skirt.

It snows 5 inches and you don't expect school to be canceled.

You'll wear flip flops every day of the year, regardless of temperature.

You have no accent at all, but can hear other people's. And then you make fun of them.

'Humid' is over 25%.

Your sense of direction is: Toward the mountains and Away from the mountains.

You say 'the interstate' and everybody knows which one.

You think that May is a totally normal month for a blizzard.

You buy your flowers to set out on Mother's day, but try and hold off planting them until just before Father's day.

You grew up planning your Halloween costumes around your coat.

You know what the Continental Divide is.

You don't think Coors beer is that big a deal.

You went to Casa Bonita as a kid, and as an adult.

You've gone off-roading in a vehicle that was never intended for such activities.

You always know the elevation of where you are.

You wake up to a beautiful, 80 degree day and you wonder if it's going to snow tomorrow.

**You don't care that some company renamed it, the Broncos still play at Mile High**

Every movie theater has military and student discounts.

Everybody wears jeans to church.

You actually know that ** South Park ** is a real place not just a show on TV.

You know what a 'trust fund hippy' is, and you know its natural habitat is Boulder

You know you're talking to a fellow Coloradoan when they call it Elitches, not Six Flags.

A bear on your front porch doesn't bother you.

Your two favorite teams are the Broncos and whoever is beating the crap out of the Raiders.

When people out East tell you they have mountains in their state too, you just laugh.

You go anywhere else on the planet and the air feels 'sticky' and you notice the sky is no longer blue.

cool lightning picture

We don't get thunderstorms worth mentioning very often in Denver.  Something about the mountains and the lack of humidity in our air combines for some weak storms.  Last night was a good one, however, and a co-worker of mine managed to snap this picture:

I did a little photoshopping, and then this happened:

For the comic-impaired, that's Thor, god of lightning.

Could you be wrong?

First post in a really long time!  Here's some updates:

1.) We have a family blog where we've been posting pictures of the new baby Quinn.  If you want to know what it is, email me.

2.) I've started blogging on the side for work.  I get paid to blog on InsideRIA.com about RIA related news and development tips.

3.) I'm also keeping a work blog at rjria.blogspot.com.

All this amounts to me not feeling so inspired to blog about my own life anymore, but I will try to keep it up on occasion for those of you who might still be interested.

Onward!

The other day I was talking to a friend of a different faith about our different perspectives on religion.  It's been a really good exchange and helped me understand a lot about her tradition that I hadn't before, but it's brought up some interesting questions for me.

For one, I've been trying to figure out what it is that lets so many of us consider our religions to be "right" while everyone else is "wrong."  Most religions claim that everyone has some truth, but they also claim that they're the only religion with ALL of the truth.  In the case of my friend and I, her faith claims that mine is only partially correct and mine claims that hers is only partially correct.  How can you tell?

I spend a lot of time wondering about this question.  When looking at a particular religious tradition you don't agree with, I think it's important to question whether or not the things you find faulty with the other religion are also faulty in your own.  It's important to consider that maybe you're the one who was brought up incorrectly, however well intentioned or even positive your faith experience might have been so far.  Maybe you're just wrong.

So this has lead me to a question I think it's imperative that any thinking religious person answer about themselves: what would it take to convince you that you're faith is wrong?

If the answer is nothing, then it seems to me that your faith isn't really based in anything, and that's probably not good.  It's faith in faith, or faith for the sake of faith, and that's not really faith in anything at all.  For me that's a faith untestable and a faith that's untenable - I just can't believe without a reason for believing, and reasons can always be disproved.

There are a number of things that would convince me my faith is wrong, but the most salient one would be if someone found Jesus' body and could prove it was him.  How this could be proved doesn't really matter at this point - the important thing is that there is a criteria by which I would agree that my faith was misguided.

Ultimately I believe any religion worth following should be "true" in the purest form of the word.  If it's true, it should be testable, and if it's testable, there's a set of criteria by which it could be proved false.

Thinking about this lead me to come up with a few tools I use to evaluate religious statements.  I came up with three ways I test religious things I'm told that fall under three major disciplines of thought:

1.) History: Does the religious statement make sense in light of the rest of history?  

2.) Sociology: Does the statement correctly asses the way people think and act, and does it encourage them to be better?

3.) Logic: Do the things the statement says make sense?

Do you use some set of criteria to judge your own faith?  Is it anything like this?  Are there more categories I'm missing?

Welcome to Denver

That's about right.