::::: : the wood : davidrobins.net

My name is David Robins: Christian, lead developer (resume), writer, photographer, runner, libertarian (voluntaryist), and student.

This is also my son David Geoffrey Robins' site.

Masters candidate, new mentee, Nikon D300

News, Work, School ·Thursday July 31, 2008 @ 20:24 EDT (link)

Good things happening all around!.

20080729: My mentee arrived (cool initials: ZX). He's a new full-time developer unlike Luiz (LM), who was an intern; I'll be mentoring him to help him get up to speed working in the Word development group: helping him understand the Word code base, coding conventions, bug tracking, etc.

I was gone when he arrived; I was meeting a guy to purchase a slightly used Nikon D300 camera. I met him at a Bank of America, and, as the camera was in good condition as promised, and we both had accounts there, the purchase was handled via direct funds transfer. The guy seemed to have taken good care of the camera; he was moving up to the new FX (full frame) D700. New photos from here on are taken with the D300. I've also enlarged all photos sizes (thumbnails, mid-size, and I increased the size the camera is storing).

20080730: Mentee has a working Word build, some familiarity with the core Word data structures, and 5 bugs (of mine, in the area that he'll be working on, which is the object model); we took a look at the first one then I left him to keep going and let me know when he hit a roadblock. Co-authoring: separate partition for locks work is progressing well.

20080731: I learned that I have been accepted into the Professional Master's Program in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington; the PMP advisor said my GRE scores were among the highest he'd seen in 10 years of administering the program. It starts at the end of September; one (evening) course per quarter plus a colloquium.

Modified the books read page to allow Honey to keep track of her read books separately. I also added a page yesterday to show a list of our DVDs in 4:3 "full screen" ratio (excepting TV and others that are only available in that format); we may try to sell some of those and buy the widescreen versions, especially for favorites like the Indiana Jones trilogy (maybe they'll have all four in a box then) and Star Wars.

Called my parents, told them about getting into the PMP and our open house; they're taking a trip to Maine, to stay at the Sea View Motel and hang out at the beach. Talked to Dad, Mom, and Julia, who was playing Scrabble™ with her boyfriend Josh(ua Sabourin).

OCDO at Chang's Mongolian Grill

News, Technical, Guns ·Monday July 28, 2008 @ 19:55 EDT (link)

20080720: Somehow, our (miserable) ISP, Broadstripe, has partially broken our network access: just Yahoo! and connected sites (e.g. yimg.com, which means Honey can't see pictures on the Drudge Report, and sites that use their store, such as OpticsPlanet, which appears to also be hosted by Yahoo!, are partially broken: the main site still comes up, but my cart is inaccessible). Called Broadstripe about it, they filed a ticket, but it came back around midnight; since the only outage was Yahoo!, it does look like it was their problem, except for the fact that I could still reach it from work (via VPN) and DownForEveryoneOrJustMe said it was up.

20080725: E.R. season 9, Bourne Supremacy, and my Olympus ME-15 tie-pin condenser microphone arrived from Amazon today. We also had The Maids here, which will be reimbursed by our realtor at closing; I left early to meet with him so Honey and I could do paperwork. We tidied up some of the friendly clutter in the rec. room, and I cut short the tree that was trying to overhang the front patio: we use the garage door, so it's not a problem for us, but it makes the patio look smaller and obscures the front of the house a little (I was seeing how far it would grow sideways, but alas, apparently the answer is "no further"). Logged into work later to make up for leaving early.

20080726: (Early morning.) Zune is still a piece of (crap). It likes to maintain a "collection" where it requires you to have files on your hard drive if they're on the Zune, and, here's the kicker: if you delete anything off of your disk, it deletes it from the device too. Now we're in a state where we can see (viewing the POS as a drive in Explorer) that files are there, but the Music section is empty. W T bloody F?

Stayed up most of the night tidying up. Went to Wal-Mart to get passport photos done since my Canadian passport had expired in April; that'd end our Alaska trip very quickly (or strand us in Alaska, I suppose) if we were turned back at the Canadian border.

Went to Chang's Mongolian Grill in Everett to meet with various Open Carry folk (OCDO = Open Carry Dot Org); had a good time. Before I left, I posted my Zune on Craigslist for $110 (seems to be about $175 new at Wal-Mart, plus tax, and I just want to get rid of it and use the money towards getting Honey an iPod… I'd like an Archos, but they seem to only have overpriced video machines now, no plain music players).

For the longest time the Zune wasn't letting me put any files on it—if I'm going to sell it (Yes, we have a buyer!) it needs at least one sample file to play; that's only reasonable. I finally formatted it with the secret handshake (it's tricky; time between the two key combinations is important), and managed to get some Handel onto it. Now I shall never burden my computer with connecting to it ever again.

20080727: Nothing further from the potential Zune buyer… maybe her ISP dropped my reply. Jill, can you hear me now? (Turns out her ISP was silently dropping my mail; Comcast, bastards. So that fell through.)

20080728: Went to the range after work; shot some better groups, due to a tighter grip on the gun and lining up the front sight better; good article by Massad Ayoob. Looked over my old French Bible and some other Christian books with Honey.

Books finished: Asterix in Switzerland, Asterix the Gladiator, The Pawn.

DVDs finished: Lonesome Dove, The Bourne Ultimatum.

Death of a DVD player

News, Guns ·Saturday July 19, 2008 @ 23:02 EDT (link)

20080713: We went to SVRC early afternoon; shot a few targets, then the EMP jammed while Honey was shooting it. Could have been a bad reload, possibly a bad grip causing the recoil to jam it, but I don't think so. It was jammed shut but I eventually managed to tap and rack it open; a casing was stuck in the feed end of the barrel (definitely only a casing—it had fired—or I wouldn't have been messing with it). I couldn't pry it out even with my Leatherman. We shot a few targets with the Glock, then left. When I got home I field stripped the EMP (had to clean it anyway) and a combination of needle-nosed pliers to pull it and pushing from the other end with my bore rod got it out. There did not appear to be any damage to the barrel. I also cleaned the Glock.

20080715: JMJ Northwest (painters) came by this morning to power wash, and did something to short out the exterior power outlets; I plugged in my lawnmower when I got home, nothing; worked fine in an outlet in the garage. I called them, they told me to try the breakers (already had, none were tripped) or to try to find a GFCI switch (didn't see one outside, and the inside ones hadn't tripped). Still waiting: hopefully it'll fix itself tomorrow, or I can find a reset, or I may have to take advantage of my company's legal plan.

20080716: Called JMJ again (0850); I walked around outside, there are only the two front/back outlets, none have any GFCI buttons. They may come by.

20080717: One of the JMJ people came in the morning and found the GFCI reset in the garage. Mowed the lawn and killed some bamboo in the evening.

20080718: Bought an Olympus DS-30 voice recorder (from Radio Shack, since OCDO mentioned a sale and they were cheaper than Amazon and a few other places I checked). The only one they had had no package, since it had been misplaced after opening it for a customer, so I got a 12% discount, extra batteries, and they doubled the return time. Went shooting, just the Glock.

(Midnight towards Saturday morning) Onkyo DVD player acting odd, died, opened it up, still dead, but at least I got my DVDs back. I'd like to shoot it, but SVRC frowns on shooting at metal because bullets might ricochet. It's just the DVD player; the amp. and speakers are fine, fortunately; I've never had any trouble with them; the DVD player has had problems in the past: new 1 2.

20080719: Gun show in the morning, picked up a soft case for the EMP (same as the one I got for my Glock; unfortunately the told me the company that makes them went out of business, they're made in USA according to their label; probably got driven out of business by traitors buying from third-world sweatshops).

Came home, cleaned the Glock and headed to Best Buy and picked up a new DVD player (Sony 5-disk with upconvert, DVPNC800H/B); their web site said it was on sale for $116.99, store tried to charge the non-sale price of $129.99, but they fixed it when I told them I knew their game. Ordered items from Amazon, including ME-15. People's Court introduces me to the phrase "tooling up"… when I buy my Nikon D300, that's just tooling up.

Books finished: Sorceress of Darshiva, The Seeress of Kell.

DVDs finished: The Village.

First open carry: SeaTac airport

News, Guns ·Friday July 11, 2008 @ 22:45 EDT (link)

20080706: Cooked chicken breasts in the crock-pot (slow cooker) again; I left them in about 8 hours (on low) this time, they were super-tender when they came out (fell apart when I was taking them out with the tongs). Still had some sausage left over from Friday, too. Just added some water and salsa to cook them (no tomatoes this time).

20080707: If someone can tell me why Adobe Reader requires so much bloody time to install, I'd be very happy. Ye Gods, they're either morons or very, very evil.

20080708: Went into work fairly early (up 0730 arrived 0830; usually works out to 30 minutes to shower/shave, 30 minutes to drive, give or take, so about an hour from when I get up to when I sit down at my desk), and left commensurately early to go to SVRC and shoot. My new handgun, the Springfield Armory 1911 EMP, arrived today; Cash Company (you can't get handguns sent directly to you, they need to be received by a dealer with a Federal Firearms License, or FFL) called me, and I picked it up, after filling out the necessary paperwork. New gun is great; holster that it comes with was a bit hard to get onto my belt since the belt is so thick (it's the carry belt I bought at the last Puyallup gun show), but it loosened up a bit and went on fine. I can see how a paddle holster would be better for easy removal, though.

JMJ painters called me back in the morning, said they'd email me a contract today after we discussed what I wanted them to do; no email from them yet (it's now midnight), however. Chapter for the day was Jude 1—final verse was missing; checked my scripts, it's actually missing in the source file; when I parsed the text out of the (freeware) HTML, it looks like the parser missed it; other (final) chapters don't seem to have been affected.

Just disassembled/reassembled (field stripped) my EMP (I'll clean it tomorrow; I cleaned the Glock today). Wow, is it ever stiff! Nowhere near as easy as field stripping the Glock for cleaning; but at least there's a video to help out the somewhat terse instructions in the manual. No doubt the stiffness will disappear with use.

20080709: Honey called, had a long talk (just over an hour).

20080711: Left about 2245 for the airport, made good time, got there around 2340, parked. Decided to open carry my Springfield 1911 EMP (for a variety of reasons: self and common defense and assertion of my right to do so being primary: a right not exercised can be lost). I was wearing it in the car (in the holster it came with; I'll probably get an IWB holster for CC too). I was aware that there were no prohibitions against OCing in the non-secured areas of an airport, and had seen this post on Ocing in Sea-Tac, which helped my confidence. It was a positive experience. All told I was there for about 40 minutes; I did what I normally did: checked the big board to see which carousel my wife's flight's bags would arrive at (ignored the time, I'd known the flight was late; they rarely bother to update the board with the actual arrival time), then sat on an out of the way bench and read a book I'd brought.

A few minutes later a lady came over (either an airline or airport official, but not security; she had a uniform and a name tag on, but I didn't see who she was with), asked if I had a firearm, I said I did, and that Washington was an open carry state. She said she didn't know if it was legal in an airport, and I informed her that it was legal outside the secured areas. She explained (very nicely) that a few people had made comments to her about it—I think she wanted to be seen as doing something—and I said I understood; she then left. I got the hairy eyeball a few times when I was walking around, but no other comments. I felt a bit self-conscious, but I was more worried about making sure I knew who was around me, especially behind me, more so than normal, since I now had the responsibility to make sure nobody grabbed my gun; for example, I'd usually stand right by the carousel, but this time I hung back a little (probably a good idea in general; standing against the edge doesn't make the bags come any faster…) and only grabbed my wife's bag when she saw it come out.

Anyway, a positive first experience. I might try to pick up some of those brochures people on this board have made, too. OCDO writeup and recent trouble.

We watched Lonesome Dove, as it says below; really liked it; it's one of my Dad's favorite films, so perhaps that's not so surprising.

Books finished: Asterix and the Banquet, Demon Lord of Karanda, Asterix and the Black Gold.

What's wrong with McCain?

Political ·Wednesday July 9, 2008 @ 01:27 EDT (link)

I was recently challenged in a email that spun off of a comment I made in Microsoft's Conservatives and Libertarians discussion list to be more specific about what I don't like about Republican Presidential candidate John McCain. So here's the list I came up with:

Three primary objections: Plus a few more random ones; I'm getting these from his issues page: Good points: Nobody's saying he's not (far) better than Obama and Obamunism ("central planning we can believe in"; bumper sticker), but that's a pretty low bar. Given that Washington state will definitely go to Obama, I'm probably going to write in Ron Paul (conservative-learning libertarian).

What Barack and his Democrats want you to pay for

Political ·Monday July 7, 2008 @ 23:33 EDT (link)

I think this cuts to the root of the The Socialism of Barack Hussein Obama (1 2 3 4 5) series. Some of these things apply to RINOs too; I present a (partial) list of what Barak and his Democrats (cf. "the devil and his angels") want you to pay for, under threat of government force:
Above-market pay for teachers and military; free education at all levels for everybody; more free money for people with kids; pay people to grow trees; "green" technology research; aid to foreign governments; health insurance for everyone; healthcare, welfare, and education for illegals; amnesty for illegals; cheap/free housing; nurse care; transportation; more farming subsidies; force companies to employ minorities and seniors (affirmative action); drugs for seniors; urban "community development"; workforce training; free money for minority businesses (more affirmative action); bail out dumb homeowners; increased minimum wage; lifetime subsidies for veterans; Internet for everyone; more FMLA.
In my reality, you find a job, work hard, trading your skills for money, and use that money to buy the things you want. Liberals have a hard time with that for some reason. I think they also hate the idea of people not being dependent on the government: if government wasn't giving out free stuff, likely it would fall to neighborhood organizations, including churches, which would build stronger communities, possibly bring more people to Christ, and that'd annoy the Democrats to no end: they want the state to be your god, with congress as its prophet.

Books finished: Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield, King of the Murgos, Asterix and the Class Act.

DVDs finished: Star Trek: Voyager - Season Seven, The Wicker Man, Desperado.

First Independence Day as a US Citizen

News, Political ·Saturday July 5, 2008 @ 14:35 EDT (link)

20080630: Sprayed weeds when I got home, using my backpack sprayer and RoundUp™. I think last time I sprayed I diluted it too much: it's supposed to be 2.5 fl. oz. per gallon, but I might have used that amount for four gallons (still killed the grass one place I spilled some, though). This time I upped it to 3 fl. oz. for (approximately) a gallon; let's see those weeds squirm, shrivel, and die! Unsubscribed from a bunch of mailing lists whose messages that I'd gotten into the habit of deleting anyway: Bostom.pm (heh, never even attended a meeting when I was there—parking in Boston was too wretched), perl6-language, libwww-perl, and tried to drop the ACM's Technews but their unsubscribe address (from the mail header, same place I got the others) didn't work.

20080701: (Early morning) Joined OpenCarry.org ("OCDO"), actually the forums.

Went shooting at SVRC after work (my membership starts today; I paid for half-yearly since I joined in June); the factory reloads I brought were fine; met a guy named Ed who gave me some tips on grip and shooting stance; he'd brought a chronograph to test some handloads, very friendly chap. Shot some targets and some cans—that was fun. I was the only person there for probably an hour and a half (I was there about 1800-2030 then after I got home I cleaned my gun 2100-2130), so I got to open the gate.

Amazon completed the return of my defective S&W pistol rug, giving me my refund. I sent off the return (they paid shipping) on June 3, so it's been about a month from requesting the RMA and sending it in and getting the credit.

20080703: Went to the range again; did much better. Was there from around 1730 to perhaps 1930. Although it had rained earlier in the day, when I got home the grass was mostly dry so I mowed the lawn, and then sat with the garage open and listened to fireworks and cleaned my gun.

20080704: Watched fireworks from my top deck from around 2030 to 2200, out on a camp chair with a book. I could see two sets of fireworks quite well; several others were partially blocked by trees.

With all the fireworks been set of tonight, I am sure there are some being set by those that have no right to celebrate this country. Illegal aliens. Liberals who would destroy the moral fiber of this great nation. Socialists who would destroy the wealth and individual freedoms of these United States. A pox upon them for daring to pretend to celebrate even as they destroy.

Books finished: Enchanters' End Game, Guardians of the West.

Springfield Armory 1911 EMP 9mm

News, Work, Guns ·Sunday June 29, 2008 @ 22:12 EDT (link)

20080626: Honey called (around 2100 local time). Talked for a bit, then stayed up until the wee hours (0230) writing a perl program that uses WWW::Mechanize to dig into GunBroker.com feedback. A user's feedback page shows ratings ("A+", "A", "F", etc.) and comments, and has a link to the item bought, but doesn't show the price, so in theory, a seller could sell a bunch of low-priced items, get good feedback, and then rip someone off selling a high-priced item. My program fetches the item title and sell price and shows it with the rating, then shows average and maximum sell prices across all feedback with A or above (the main page is good about showing if and when a seller had negative feedback).

Bought honey a T-shirt ("Don't be a pinhead" shirt she wanted from the Bill O'Reilly store, in lime green).

20080627: This has been a Word-chart OM week, with some "Now"-level bug work for an upcoming co-authoring demo. Turns out Workspaces (a partner for some of the file transfer code) introduced a bug where there always appeared to be a new version of the document of the server, causing Word to constantly open a file and scan it for new locks. (And it has to do a full open right now, since the optimizations to just load the lock data and then scan the XML for content change markers aren't scheduled to be finished for a while yet.)

I submitted my PMP application (and $50 filing fee). Hopefully they weren't expecting a longer personal statement. Now to wait and pray.

I won a GunBroker.com auction for the gun I was looking for, Springfield Armory's 1911 EMP (9mm) (flash, sadly; see also The High Road's thread). Best price I could find locally (and only briefly) was $1089.99 at West Coast Armory; that with (9%) tax would be $1188.09; I saved over $150… provided the transaction goes well; the seller has hundreds of past deals of similar magnitude with positive feedback, so I'm not worried on that account.

Jim Cameron's guy sent us a quote for the painting, but (1) included things we'd decided not to do, and (2) wasn't itemized as requested. I wrote back asking it to be itemized; if they don't get back to me by, say, Tuesday, I'll go with the guys Chip recommended, JMJ Painters.

20080628: Up early to go to the gun show; bought a leather carry belt and a "Glock: 21st Century Technology" T-shirt. Pulled bamboo when I got home.

20080629: Called Honey at around 1830 local; all's fine there.

Making irresponsibility pay

Political, Guns ·Sunday June 29, 2008 @ 21:11 EDT (link)

From: HD
To: Conservatives and Libertarians at MS
Subject: Why are we bailing these people out?

$300 Billion Foreclosure Rescue Plan Passes Senate Test Vote

So why do the rest of us have to bail out people who were dumb enough to buy a home they could never afford on some 5 year ARM or interest only loan? The way I see it is they get to sit in a home for 3 to 5 years with low rent and then walk away with a foreclosure. Bank gets the home back and they go rent an apartment which they should be renting in the first place.

From: VS

To buy votes.

From: HD

I heard this description of progressive liberals once which I think is pretty good:

Imagine 5 college kids go on a road trip, 4 poor ones and one rich kid. They all decide to pool their money and all decide to vote on what they will do. So the 4 poor kids put in a nickel, a quarter, a dollar and a quarter all saying they aren't being greedy, and emptying their pockets. The rich kid puts in $100 after emptying his pockets.
  1. How much you want to bet they all do what the poor kids want to do?
  2. How much you want to bet the rich kid pays the lion's share for it?

The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.
—Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story of the John Marshall Court

Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her pantyhose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound.
—L. Neil Smith

To disarm the people… was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.
—George Mason, speech of June 14, 1788

When only cops have guns, it's called a "police state".
—Claire Wolfe, "101 Things To Do Until The Revolution"

Well, at least we won Heller; but actually the victory is an empty one. It went 5-4, when it should have been 9-0; along "party lines" (ideological lines), if you like, not according to the plain wording of the Constitution. This is not the granting (ha!) or even recognition of a new right; it is the long-awaited clarification of an existing right, and a clarification that never should have been needed if not for the Democrats' desire to subjugate the population.

On the same subject: an open letter to those who wonder why citizens would want to carry guns in public.

Lately, our pal Barack has been mangling the scriptures, and then attempting to malign Dr. James Dobson (founder of Focus on the Family). Shame, shame! He really shouldn't claim to be a Christian if he can't tell the difference between the Old and New Testaments, but then, I don't suppose his insane pastor had much time for boring stuff like that.

Books finished: Asterix and the Great Crossing, Queen of Sorcery, Magician's Gambit, Castle of Wizardry, Asterix and the Magic Carpet.

DVDs finished: The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.

The socialism of Barack Hussein Obama IV

Political ·Thursday June 26, 2008 @ 23:01 EDT (link)

You can probably see a pattern in the previous three "socialism of Barack Obama" entries, and to confess, the monotony is getting a bit boring. I'll cut to the chase with the rest and just post a list of things that BHO wants you, as a working citizen taxpayer, to pay for, for the benefit of indolent liberals.

Education: Barak wants money for teachers (rather than letting the market sort it out; the government has no business in education), and for kids (what, the tax deductions aren't enough? I favor a "pay for your own damn spawn", and feel free to replace "spawn" with "everything": it's the libertarian way). He also wants to hand out more "free" money for college students (work and get loans; I did).

Energy & Environment: He's already ecstatic that the price of oil is so high. As if subsidized farming wasn't enough, now he wants to subsidize growing trees. He wants to give my money to research into ideas that clearly aren't viable on the open market, or companies would be investing in them already; he's doing it purely for the Religion of Green (there's a Religion of Peas joke in here somewhere, I'm sure). Then he wants to create pie-in-the-sky standards for fuel efficiency: Hussein, you idiot, automakers are already investing in making vehicles as efficient as they can; because it's profitable.

Ethics: Surprisingly enough, he doesn't appear to be spending too much of your money here. I can get behind exposing lobbying and contracts to public search. If, God forbid, he does get elected, expect promises to be broken here, however (especially about his staff not working on contracts). Credit where due, however.

Faith: Hahahahahaha... ha. He may not be a Muslim (Mohammedan), but he's not like any Christian I've ever seen nor heard of, either: his pastor's a certified nutcase, and he's easily confused by simple Biblical concepts like the Old and New Testaments and Israel and the Church. Fittingly, this page isn't very long, since he knows it doesn't take him long to put his foot in his mouth here.

Family: Pretty much a duplicate of Economy.

Fiscal: Making the government "pay as [it] goes" and cutting wasteful spending sounds good: but the weasel is in what he considers waste. If he cuts the "Bush tax breaks for the rich" that he talks about, he may find that those "rich" will stop stimulating the economy by creating businesses, jobs, and trade goods.

Foreign Policy: Wow, where to start. He's an appeaser in so many ways. The U.S. is not Europe; we have weapons and will use them if necessary. Granted, Iraq was an imbroglio; we should have been more decisive and acted in our interests, not theirs, or at least charged the Iraqis for everything we did. Doubling foreign assistance is straight theft from Americans: charity should be voluntary, and should start in this country. "Obama will secure all loose nuclear material in the world in four years." Really. How does he plan to accomplish that? More pie-in-the-sky promises that he has no ability or intention to deliver on. "Expand the military"? It's already big enough to defend the country, and we have bases everywhere; I think I'd prefer not to subsidize even more cradle-to-grave entitled jobs.

Healthcare: Naked cash grab from educated working people. I support putting people buying health insurance individually on the same level as companies buying it, adjusting for age and conditions, but why should I subsidize anyone else's health, especially any non-essential treatment.

Homeland Security: Nothing too objectionable here, mainly because there's not really any content. Next!

Immigration: He has some good points, he really does—everyone wants secure borders, for example (although he's probably delayed and voted against actual work here), but they're really just sugar for his main wish, eerily titled "Bring People Out of the Shadows". The word you are looking for, Barack you traitor, is amnesty. They're not in "shadows" any more than a bank robber is in the "shadows" after he's left the bank with the loot; they're fugitives from the law, and should be launched over our border with a trebuchet after being chipped to ensure they never return. The fourteenth amendment should be clarified so its intent is clear: children of illegals and foreign nationals should not get U.S. citizenship; employee verification should be mandatory everywhere; and illegals should not get any social benefits whatsoever. That's comprehensive immigration reform: enforce the law.

Iraq: See above: get our troops out, or, ideally, charge for the war: we'll take payment in oil.

Poverty: Mainly a re-hash of the Economy topics, except with a few more freebies paid by us the working: free nurse care, free housing, free transportation. Move closer to your job and shut up; maybe you should have studied harder in school.

Rural: More farming subsidies; more payments not to farm.

Service: Making high school kids do community service sounds good, except I thought slavery was outlawed (you'd think he'd understand this; he would if he were "down for the struggle"); it's even more objectionable at the college level. These other service groups and corps are just more waste of my money. If you want work done, Hussein, pay a private organization to do it, like anyone else.

Seniors & Social Security: More tax breaks, cheap drugs, and more forced employment. Social security is a dying pyramid scheme and needs to be privatized: it's bankrupt and a huge target for frequent abuse. Fund your 401k/Roth IRA, and take some responsibility for your life.

Woohoo, we're nearly done… last page on the table of contents, three things to go… do we Hope for any Change? No, not really….

Technology: I think he's for it (as long as someone else pays), and he wants to break up Big Media.

Urban Policy: Let people arm themselves, you blockhead (and don't pretend that you were actually happy with Heller… you're not fooling anyone). Just a rehash of various pandering vote-buying that we've already seen under Economy, Poverty, etc.

Veterans: More money for veterans' health. Um. You knew what you were getting into when you joined the military; why should I subsidize you for the rest of your life because of your career choice? The only way that would make sense if it was for military acting in the U.S.' direct interest (i.e. local national defense, or actual wars for oil—honestly, if anyone things the Iraq war was for oil, take a look, because we're clearly doing it wrong), and we couldn't get enough volunteers without such promises. And I don't think that's the case.

And speaking of cases, there's the case against Barak Hussein Obama. His whole issues list is a big vote-buying grab, which he plans to pay for by, in the usual Democrat way, raising taxes, which will affect those that work more than those that don't, and those that actually bothered to get an education or skills more than those that didn't. He's so socialist he makes me sick: as a libertarian, for small government (government should only protect personal and property rights and national defense) and allowing people to make their own choices in everything by choosing what to support with their dollars. After all, if the Democrats are so compassionate, clearly every last one of them will "opt-in" to (now privatized) welfare in this new à la carte world, so things for them will continue as usual, right? No? No. They're thugs and control freaks, and Obama's just the latest charismatic incarnation. Parts 1 2 3 4 5.

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