Hah!

Health insurance companies are the ones really suffering here.

Over $100,000 a day just isn't enough for some Americans.

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Obama-isms found on the great 'stream

Just thought I'd post these for folks to play with.

Obama: the badass

Obama's reaction when asked how to get republicans to pass his economic stimulus package, here.

And in case you didn't know.

The "call me" motion

Thank you, Star-Bulletin:

Writing a live inauguration blog for the New York Times yesterday, reporter Katharine Q. Seelye had an interesting interpretation of Obama's shaka to the Punahou School Marching Band as it passed the reviewing stand.

Her 5:02 p.m. entry reads: "Next up, the band from the Punahou High School in Hawaii - Mr. Obama's alma mater. Mr. Obama is making a signal to someone as if to call him on his cell phone. He's flashing a thumbs up, laughing and grinning broadly."

Seelye clarified Obama's "signal" with her 5:15 p.m. entry: "President Obama's hand signal to his old high school band, which looked like a 'call me' motion, was a shaka sign - a pinky and thumb salute - symbolic of aloha and local culture in Hawaii."

Btw, the same article mentions a Punahou graduate from the Class of '91!

Inauguration Day (in UK)

I did draw him from the tv

Pics of the Inaugural Preparation

Tomorrow is gonna be a crazy day, folks. Not to mention momentous and world-changing, and possibly just a little bit surreal as well. Good thing we're keeping things in proportion and with realistic expectations, though.

Via Boston.com

Thug Life ’09

My tribute to Odori..

The anti-torture CIA chief

Obama's pick to head the CIA is unambiguously against torture. What a powerful message his appointment will send.

I hope he and Obama are somehow able to hold Bush people accountable for systematically abusing and killing detainees. (Jane Mayer's "The Dark Side" documents at least one case of a detainee who died during CIA interrogation. I think she wrote there were probably more, but I can't remember everything in the book.)

Stories about Spam fill a slow news day

Barack Obama Snacks on Hawaiian Spam Sushi

President-elect Barack Obama is spending the Christmas holiday Hawaii – relaxing in the sun, playing golf and eating Spam.

On Sunday afternoon, while playing golf with friends at Oahu's Olomana Golf Links, Obama, 47, who grew up on the island, stopped at a snack bar and bought two hot dogs, soft drinks and two orders of a local luncheon specialty called spam musubi – Spam and a fried egg on a bed of rice, held together with a strip of dried seaweed, according to reporters covering his trip.


The snack bar clerk later told the New York Times' Jeff Zeleny the president-elect's tab came to $17.75. Asked how his game was going, Obama answered with a smile, "I'm not that good." He also invited reporters to order a beer and put it on his tab, but none took him up on the offer.

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I agree that the sad state of journalism reflected by this article is an issue of concern, especially since it appears even the New York Times is interviewing the snack bar clerk. But even more importantly... can anyone here confirm that the Olomana Golf Course snack bar actually incorporates a fried egg into their spam musubi? Cuz that sounds ridiculous-- or maybe ridiculously good.

Steven Chu to be energy secretary. Just kidding: Bush to be president for 4 more years!

It's completely unreal. We're witnessing changes so monumentally different than the status quo and so exponentially closer to the direction we should be going that it's like we're living in some kind of Aaron Sorkin film. Either that, or it's all fake...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President-elect Barack Obama intends to round out his environmental and natural resources team with a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and three former Environmental Protection Agency officials from the Clinton administration.

The Nobel Laureate is Steven Chu, who received the Nobel Prize in 1997 for atomic physics, is the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (which, under Chu, has been working to develop alternative energy sources), and is a professor of Physics and Molecular and Cellular Biology. This feels unprecedented. We're going to have people up there who like science. 

WoW and the office of the President

President-elect Barack Obama appointed Kevin Werbach and Susan Crawford as his FCC transition co-chairs. Aside from being a professor of legal studies and business ethics, he also happens to be one of the Horde:

What does this tell us about him, as a person, as a gamer, as a government official? I will attempt to translate all the dorkese.
1. - CULTURAL RELATIVISM

Every player in WoW belongs to one of two warring factions, Alliance or Horde. Werbach is Horde. Children often choose to be Alliance because they perceive them as "the good guys", but students of history (both ours and Azeroth's) recognize that Alliance culture is based on medieval European culture and Horde culture is based on the indigenous cultures that were supplanted by the West.

Werbach is a Tauren (a minotaur), which basically makes him a Native Kalimdorian. The Tauren revere nature, living in wigwams near giant totem poles. As a Shaman (see below), he could also have chosen a troll (blue-skinned Jamaican-like monster) or an orc (green-skinned Klingon-like monster), so there must be something about the cow-man that appeals to his liberal guilt.

From the Boingboing.

Super Obama World

Hey kids! Now you too can fight the evil forces of Sara Palin—lipstick pigs, Saks employees and more... Help the president-elect run and jump across the frozen wastelands of Alaska on his road to victory. Read about it here, or just play it here.

Huzzah!

It still seems too good to be true that so many normally apathetic citizens got off their collective asses and said "Let's go win this fucking thing!" with old-fashioned hard work and effort.


After being on the losing side of many political campaigns, I've become a cynical, apathetic bastard with respect to electoral politics. Of course I always vote when election day rolls around, but as far as phone-banking, door-to-door canvassing, fundraising, etc. goes, well I thought those days were behind me.






Then Obama comes along and for two years pulls off the unbelievable-- not just a resounding victory in the polls-- but energizing young people, old people, the most cynically jaded and lazy among us to do something extra. The man is amazing. So the least I could do was volunteer for the week before the election.




Because CA was considered in the bag, the Obama folks sent all of us L.A.-based volunteers out to Nevada, the closest battleground state. It felt great to be active again, trying to make a difference in a place where not everyone already agreed with you. Sometimes you get complacent living in a liberal enclave like San Francisco or L.A.

The scary thing is that the future is still pretty bleak and uncertain. Obama is going to have a hard time trying to deal with the steaming pile of shit that Bush is leaving behind. Success is going to be that much harder to achieve.

J. Tribama

Mr. Pony said...

Yes, we have a bit of a history of this sort of thing.

November 5, 2008 9:55 PM

Greetings to Hawaii

Nice one, hawaiguys! 72% for Obama/Biden, woo-hoo!

Obama on Religion

I promised this to Fugu--This is an excerpt of a speech Obama gave on Religion, early this year. More of a talk than a speech, really--and while I don't agree with everything he's saying, he certainly has given very serious thought to the issues, and more importantly, he has the willingness and ability to speak about them in a way that fosters real discussion, rather than just nutshelling for soundbites (which he's also pretty good at). I recommend listening to the whole speech the next time you're cleaning your desk (warning to Galspanic: it's forty minutes long).

He got me to listen, about a topic (Church and State) I generally think is closed, and stupid. WTF, I thought.

Team Obama

Has there ever been a presidential candidate that has inspired more mass-marketed stuff than my man Barack Obama? That's what I was thinking when I was checking out the $16 Obama action figures and $20 bobbleheads at this store in Pasadena last night. Anyway, I was reminded of this admirably entrepreneurial effort I saw the other day, apparently run by non-Punahou people in NYC. Cooler than the OBEY "Progress" or "Hope" T-shirts?

Last thought-- what will they rename at Punahou after Barack Obama if he is elected President? I mean, you gotta start with something bigger than, say, McNeil Hall, right? Who the hell was McNeil anyway?