Streisand, and What People Will Pay For!

I'll always be the first to say Barbara Streisand is a sorely misguided citizen of leftist Hollywood La-la-land. That's why she'll never see a penny from my pocketbook. Nevertheless, I completely support anyone idiotic enough to pay money to see her sing. Even if the tickets cost over $1,000. Like they do in Italy:

Italian consumer groups want authorities to cancel Barbra Streisand's concert in Rome next month because of excessive ticket prices.

The ticket prices, which range from just under $200 to more than $1,200, are "absurd and shameful," the groups said in a statement Monday.

We're not talking about people going hungry here. It's Barbara Streisand. What business does any consumer group have complaining about the price of concert tickets? And what government that supports a free economy has any authority to dictate otherwise?

If the rest of Europe is anything like Italy, no thanks, you can keep it.

Gore a Mac Fan

As if I needed another reason to dislike Al Gore, here we see him in front of his Macintosh computer. He's not just a hip, caring, carbon-conscious environmentalist. He's also a hip, trendy, do-my-thinking-for-me Mac fan.

At least now we know what platforms go hand-in-hand.

Be Very Afraid.

Well, we've suffered a blow to winning the War on Terrorism. In 2007, Nancy Pelosi and her clown posse will seize control of the House and turn national attention away from the most critical issue of our era. Republicans blew it, thanks to moderates and sellouts who abandoned their ideals and betrayed the people who put them into office. My only hope is that in the next two years, the party will slough off the chaff and come back stronger than before, ready to redeem itself. Meanwhile, President Bush needs all the help he can get to keep his prosecution of the war on track.

Next stop, Mitt Romney in '08!

Apple Zealots Are Borderline Psychotic

Florence.
Originally uploaded by *nathan.

A word of advice: never post a comment critical of any Apple product on a forum full of Mac zealots. If you're not careful, they chop you up into little bits and make a delicious you-flavored casserole.

It's obvious I'm no Apple fan. Never have been. And I speak from years and years of personal experience with Macs. In fact, my industry uses them almost exclusively.

But that's beside my point, which is that Mac zealots are lunatics. Who else devotes entire websites to "unboxing" photos of new Mac merchandise? Who else puts little computer logo stickers on their car? Who else HAS to upgrade to the latest little brushed aluminum piece of poop that Apple says you need to maintain your mojo?

Don't believe me? Just check out this single flickr group devoted to sharing pictures of Apple products. Reading the comments, you'd think you were reading about the cure for cancer or an Adriana Lima bikini photoshoot. And there are countless forums like this.

So when I post a less-than-complimentary comment about the iPod on a flickr page, the responses were immediate and personal. I kept my rhetoric in check, so I didn't get totally flamed out, but these Mac zealots take their iPod very personally. An attack on the iPod is an attack on them, plain and simple.

Anyway, I'm rambling. FYI, I'm typing this on a Mac. Woe is me.

Help, John Kerry!

This is the funniest picture I've seen in a long time. Hooroar!
(Taken from Drudge.)

Al Gore On Earth's "Full-scale Planetary Emergency"

All style, no substance. If rhetoric was cats, Al Gore would put crazy old cat women to shame. Seriously.

I don't have time left today to give this Space.com article a scathing enough review, but there's enough hot air in Gore's speech to the Wirefly X Prize Cup Executive Summit 2006 to induce global warming on a scale beyond his wildest happy fantasies (which are wild enough already).

He treats us to some wonderful gems. On the possibility of mankind emigrating from Planet Earth:

"We didn't do a really good job of evacuating the city of New Orleans [due to the onslaught of hurricane]."

On our planet's "rising fever,"

"If the crib catches fire you don't say: ‘Hmmm, how fast is that crib going to burn? Has it ever burned before? Is my baby flame retardant?"

On Earth studies,

"It's still shocking to me that we have more detailed information in some fields about Mars and Venus than we have about Earth."

His speech appears to be littered with so much hyperbole, without the backing of reputable scientific theory, that it's more an exercise in gratuitous blather than a reasonable call to caution.

Read it for yourself. You'll see. Thank goodness he didn't win in 2000.

Harry Reid – What A Hero

I just love this headline from U.S. Newswire: "Reid Goes Beyond Ethics Requirements, Disarms GOP Smear Campaign."

The article is pretty much a press release from the Harry camp, outlining the extra-mile efforts Reid has undertaken to head off a Republican smear campaign. In other words, he has frantically tried to rewrite history to avoid losing whatever moral high ground he supposes he has. And it will probably work. It looks like he received enough pressure from his fellows that rather than defend his actions, he has capitulated and tried to make his actions seem like an innocent mistake.

I wish I had the opportunity to make an "innocent mistake" to the tune of nearly a million dollars.

What a handsome picture of Nevada's dear Senator. And what a nice lapel pin.

What kind of pin is that?

Oh yeah, right. Go Harry!