Burrowowl

But I will send a fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem. Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes; That pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, and turn aside the way of the meek: and a man and his father will go in unto the same maid, to profane my holy name: And they lay themselves down upon clothes laid to pledge by every altar, and they drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their god. — Amos 2:5-8

I’ve said before that I have no horse in the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination process, but I’m certainly disappointed in Barack Obama today. Yesterday I watched his long-time pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, speak before the national press club regarding the brouhaha that has been made of a sermon he gave shortly after September 11, 2001. The press has been bending itself backwards trying to keep Rev. Wright’s comments firmly out of their original context and put them in the frame that best serves their interest in selling newspapers and drawing the eyes of television audiences. Yesterday Rev. Wright fielded questions regarding his religious views, the prophetic liberation theology of the so-called black church, and the political fallout that has been dogging his former parishioner, Senator Barack Obama.

I watched the Bill Moyers interview with Rev. Wright, with the expanded-but-still-incomplete clip of the now-famous “God damn America” sermon. I watched the reverend speak to the national press club. As I watched, I grew firmer in my belief that the more of this man people actually heard the less radical he would sound to them. Naturally, people like Dan Abrams and Tucker Carlson on MSNBC couldn’t stand such a thought, and simplified the reverend’s comments into a fabricated pissing match between the pastor and the senator. This was unfair to the reverend, unfair to the senator, and unfair to the voting public.

It was also totally expected. The press reaction to Rev. Wright was, I thought, the primary reason that Sen. Obama had gently distanced himself from the reverend’s misrepresented comments. Today that changed. Senator Obama in a press conference today has now cut his own pastor (former pastor, whatever) loose having seen the reverend’s full remarks. Regardless of what the political pundits had been saying, Wright had not done anything deserving such. The proper reaction for Senator Obama to have given, upon having seen the video, heard the audio, or read the transcripts, would be something along the lines of “I feel that Reverend Jeremiah Wright has been badly misrepresented by my opponents and by the press in this matter, and while I understand that many in the public — who have not been exposed to these remarks in their original context — are offended, he is a good man, he has nothing to be ashamed of, and I am proud to have been a part of his congregation for all those years.”

TL;DR – Barack Obama showed reprehensible political cowardice today. He may yet make an excellent president, but rolling over on a good man like this is just not right.

• Book of Amos (from a little-read religious document called the “Old Testament”)
• Rev. Jeremiah Wright full sermon (September 16, 2001 audio)
• Rev. Jeremiah Wright at the National Press Club (April 28, 2008 parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
• Sen. Barack Obama regarding Rev. Wright (April 29, 2008)

A few years back, my gracious employer bought an Ultracade machine with a couple dozen games on it ranging from Frogger to Street Fighter, with several classics and many games that I simply had never heard of before. At the generous rate of four credits per quarter, I’ve dug through and found several outdated games that are really quite good. My habit has been to play a game several times, generally until I’ve filled up the high-score board. On some games (e.g. Donkey Kong), I’ve had a competitor or two exchanging places on the top-score list back and forth until we lost interest. On others (e.g. Robotron or Joust), others in the building surpass my skill so greatly that a high-score run is simply unthinkable. On several, there simply hasn’t been any competition. Nobody else plays these games. Truxton II is one of these. Penguin-kun Wars is another.

After months of having no back-and-forth competition for the high score on any of the games, a challenger as finally appeared. One of my coworkers started playing Truxton II recently. Apparently he used to play it when it was new (1992, I gather). He quickly knocked the rust off his game and got all the way to the second boss fight. I’ve never seen anything past the second boss, having never defeated the thing. In doing so he beat my high score by six thousand points, somewhere in the neighborhood of 355,000 total to my 349,000. That’s a pretty close margin, so it’s time to roll up my sleeves and have another go at it.

Anybody with tips on how to make the best use of the blue, red, and green power-ups at various stages of the game, please let me know. I’ve found that the blue auto-aim guns work great on the 1st level, and the red rolling-thunder guns work very well in the mid-to-late 2nd level, but have never found a compelling use for the green scatter-gun.

Today was Earth Day. In hindsight, I did a pretty poor job with it. Today I

• watered my lawn, which I had watered just yesterday.
• consumed two mylar containers needlessly (Capri Sun for the road).
• disposed of five diapers.
• consumed two paper cups, both for coffee.
• drove an SUV for four hours uphill.
• left a lightbulb on in a house I won’t be in again till tomorrow afternoon.

Here’s to hoping we can collectively hold out for another year.

While chatting with an old friend, it just occurred to me that a fair number of the blogs I regularly participate in (and two of the three podcasts I listen to) are produced by people living in a part of the country for which I generally hold a fairly derisive, dismissive opinion: The flyover. Prairie Flounder is from the flat, geographically uninteresting part of Colorado, KC Meesha and Logtar are both from Kansas City, Missouri. Fear the Boot is produced in St. Louis. Fell Calls is produced in Colorado, too. Some of these I ran into in rather round-about ways (PF is a relative of Doctor X, Logtar is somebody that comments frequently on my friend Daniel’s blog, KC Meesha comments frequently on Logtar’s blog…)

I really wasn’t going anywhere with this other than to solicit some kind of information about why somebody would actually want to live in such notoriously-uninteresting areas. I know there are some pretty nice cities scattered around there, mostly built up through some kind of reflexive need to huddle together against the oppressive blandness of the surrounding landscape.

Most of my knowledge of the area comes from the massive influx of immigrants (refugees?) California gets from places with strange names like Nebraska or Kansas, where apparently they have this thing they call “real weather” and try to lord it over us native Californians. Real weather, of course, is pony-sized hail, tornadoes, black ice, and plagues of locusts. It’s also where a lot of subsidies go so our kids can get diabetes from high-fructose corn syrup.

I keep hearing people on the radio imply that Senator Barack Obama has no experience or accomplishments to recommend him for the job of President of the United States of America. Generally this comes up in the form of a pointed question thrown at a random Obama supporter: “Can you name one legislative accomplishment of Barack Obama?”

So if you’re an Obama supporter, here are two pat answers for you to keep handy:

• Nuclear Weapons Threat Reduction Act of 2007
• Coburn-Obama Transparency Act

Maybe you don’t want to read the actual bills, that’s OK. Just remember that he’s done more for anti-proliferation than his opponents have, and has done more for ensuring that the government is answerable for the money it spends than his opponents have.

A couple more things he’s done that you may want to be prepared to fling out when challenged:

• Sponsored 280 Illinois bills that passed into law over eight years, six of which he was in the minority party.
• Ethics & campaign finance reform, welfare reform in Illinois.
• Expanded children’s health care in Illinois.
• Federal ethics reform bill currently pending reconciliation with the House of Representatives.

More importantly, the true answer to a question of “What has Barack Hussein Obama accomplished in his life that recommends him to the role of Commander in Chief,” particularly in contrast to the presumptive Republican nominee John McCain:

• He learned that Sunnis and Shias aren’t the same.

Being able to hold notions like that in your head may come in handy in the near future. Oh, and screw you, Roger Hedgecock.