|
|
|
October 17, 2006  An apology to my faithful readers for the brief hiatus, there has been a death in the family and a few other things that have kept me from making my usually-roughly-weekly posts. However, there is some good news... --First, the national GOP has abandoned Rick Santorum. Everyone knows he is history. --Next, there are a lot of veteran GOP representatives in Pennsylvania who are dangerously close to losing their seats, thanks to some (finally) intelligent decision-making by the Democratic Party. --For instance, Curt Weldon is on the ropes. Weldon is the filthbag Representative from suburban Delaware County, outside Philly. When I went to college at Swarthmore, this man theoretically represented me. He is one of the all-time worst, a member of the Armed Services Committee who, among other things, attended the crowning ceremony for Rev. Moon that my friend John Gorenfeld has reported on and is now under FBI investigation for awarding lucrative defense consulting contracts to his daughter, who was 28 and had no consulting experience. His challenger, Admiral Sestak of the Vulcan High Command, is leading in the polls, is a great guy and will be a great Congressman. --Other great races in PA include the 10th District, in which Democratic challenger Chris Carney has used dirt about veteran GOP Congressman Don Sherwood allegedly choking his mistress to get himself up in the polls. Oh and don't forget GOP Congressman Michael Fitzpatrick, who is being challenged by Patrick Murphy in another tight suburban Philly race. The Democrats are spending tons of money in Pennsylvania because they wisely see these pickup opportunities as a way to shore the whole thing up for future presidential contests. --In some non-political news, I saw the Pet Shop Boys when they played at Radio City last Saturday night. An interesting show, but, sadly, more of a greatest hits sort of experience than their exciting "Nightlife" tour from 1999. Oh, and speaking of Nightlife, they didn't play any songs from it. And yes, they opened the show with "Psychological," which was only effective in setting a low bar for the next song to exceed. I was a little bit irritated that they played what sounded like canned album versions of most of their old songs, with just a few overdubs to thump the bass along. This was a stark contrast to the other times I've seen them and the other live recordings I've seen, where they do interesting new versions of the old tunes. One of the great show-stoppers was always "It's a Sin/I Will Survive," which now is just "It's a Sin." The only non-greatest hit/non-current album song they played was "Dreaming of the Queen," from Very, which also happened to be one of the show's only real moments of effectiveness. October 01, 2006  Caught on camera at Circuit City ... In what has to be one of the greatest rackets in history, Microsoft is actually trying to sell its OneCare system, on a subscription basis, for $49.99 per year. So the steps are: 1) create an OS with a couple security problems, 2) make sure there aren't any tools available to consistently make this flawed OS work, 3) let 85% of home users' PCs become unusable from spyware, 4) sell OneCare to fix it. The last time I checked, you can still use the scanner at http://safety.live.com for the same purpose. |
