www.donaldmarino.com

Hard to believe but this is year three of this silly blog. So, I bring you my third-annual pick for my favorite the record of the preceeding year.

It would be an injustice to award this to anything other than Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky. I would strongly consider Elliott Smith’s New Moon, but since none of the amazing music on that record is actually new per se, I’ll stick with Wilco.

I also managed to see Wilco live at the Fillmore in Denver in support of Sky Blue Sky and it was really one of the better shows I’ve seen in the last few years. So, if you haven’t heard this record, you should get it, it’s amazing. Don’t be suprised if you recognize many of the songs from the Volkswagen commercials of last year, nearly all of the songs on this record were featured in those ads.

On to 2008. I imagine there will be some great stuff out this year!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Mike Huckabee.

“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.” - Mike Huckabee

Um, we are really screwed. This jackass is widely considered the frontrunner for the Republican Presidential nomination. If he either gets elected or steals the election, I’m taking to the streets with torches and pitchforks. It’s a true tragedy that people take this POS seriously. I am now committed to seeing him defeated.

Here’s the latest comment I received on this blog. This is typical of the level of intellect we’re dealing with in the evangelical right wingers. Apparently God did not grant this fool any grammar or spelling skills…

“your a douche if you actually pulled your head out of the dirt and look the bible has actually answered and been more proven the that sciene shit scientist just hate to be wrong and there only true threat is my religion do you see them atacking any other religions no you don’t they always go after christianity cause it gives more correct answers then they can put out themselves they have never been able to prove it wrong and lots of scientist have turned into christians….and Darwin himself said “even i can’t prove my theory and doubt its correct if we can’t find the missing link then it should be disband!” we haven’t found a missing link and its been so many freaking years since he was dead so yeah in this world christians are the most attacked and as the bible says one day it will become hard to be a christian cause some of ous will be slaughtered for it its already happening in islam were next and dude wouldn’t rather die a christian just incase im right which i believe i am and many of my atheist freinds believe me now if you were to die would you rather go to heaven or hell its in you hands don’t screw it up!” - Wayne Brown

I just want to say that using Diebold (or anyone’s) electronic voting machines is wrong.

This is a system that is BEGGING to be abused and manipulated. As a professional software engineer, I have to say the chance that these machines are secure enough to use in an election is miniscule to non-existent. They are not secure.
Some folks like to point out that the machines print you a nice little reciept, showing you that your vote was what you cast. Please don’t be fooled. It’s not as if the machine can’t print out whatever someone wants it to, regardless of how it chose to cast your vote beforehand. I do not think it’s unlikely that there is an intentional back-door into these election machines, but at the very least that have been proven repeatedly in lab tests to be easy to break into. Like less than one minute easy to hack. We need reliable paper ballots that can physically be re-counted in a public and transparent way. Diebold likes to say the machines are secure. They have been proven to not be secure. Already there are allegations of misconduct. Apparently, in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary, the paper ballots and the electronic ballots, when counted separately, revealed a far different result. In paper balloting, Barack Obama actually won the primary by a couple of points. In the electronic balloting, Hillary killed him. This is statistically impossible.

So, since we can actually look at and re-count the paper ones, one might reasonably reach the conclusion that the e-vote was either manipulated, or the machines simply can’t count.

In my voting district, you actually have a choice whether to use paper or e-vote. Always insist on a paper ballot.

DON’T E_VOTE!