Your Superpower Should Be Mind Reading

You are brilliant, insightful, and intuitive. You understand people better than they would like to be understood. Highly sensitive, you are good at putting together seemingly irrelevant details. You figure out what’s going on before anyone knows that anything is going on! Why you would be a good superhero: You don’t care what people think, and you’d do whatever needed to be done Your biggest problem as a superhero: Feeling even more isolated than you do now

(via Jay and Deb)

Perhaps you’ve seen the ads by a group whose logo is a blended elephant and donkey, featuring children of various ages exhorting Washington politicians to get along, and address the issues that matter most. The gist of the ads is that children can’t vote, but if they could, they would vote for people who promise to do things like “protect Social Security”…

The organization putting these ads out is DividedWeFail.org, which is a branch of the AARP. You can see the ads in question here. The Social Security comment isn’t just one of many issues they’re concerned about, it’s the one issue. When the ads first started running, they didn’t state who was really behind them. Currently they end with a mention that it’s the AARP.

Now I can’t possibly be the only one who finds it completely perverse to find these ads are paid for by an organization run by and for the explicit benefit of old people to the detriment of younger generations, an organization that has been the primary impediment to any real attempt at real Social Security reform for decades. It’s absolutely twisted to see children exhorting voting age adults to “protect Social Security” when it’s those very children who will be bankrupted by it (once Generation X is bankrupted first).

Seriously, do these people have no shame?

More importantly, where is the organization of young working Americans? And why are they not making ads exhorting congress to end Social Security? Surely, in the Age of YouTube, such ads could be made cheaply and distributed for free on the Internet. What if each of us went out and found one senior citizen collecting Social Security who was willing to speak out against it, and just filmed them asking congress to stop the insanity. Would that have an effect?

Maybe it would and maybe it wouldn’t. But at least you could be sure the effort wasn’t staged, and the feelings in the ads would be genuine.

Wired Magazine details it’s favorite conspiracy theories. My favorite:

Lizard-People Run the World
If a science fiction-based religion isn’t exotic enough, followers of onetime BBC reporter David Icke believe that certain powerful people — like George W. Bush and the British royals — actually belong to an alien race of shape-shifting lizard-people. Icke claims Princess Diana confirmed this to one of her close friends; other lizard theories (there are several) point to reptilian themes in ancient mythology. And let’s not forget the ’80s TV show V.

I actually own that guy’s book.

Read more here.

First the War on Christmas, then the War on Food, now comes the War on Halloween:

Say a prayer, a spell, or a demonic incantation for Halloween. This October, as in past Octobers, many schools are refusing to celebrate the holiday. Others have recast it as “Fall-o-Ween” or “Orange and Black Day” or, in words carefully calibrated to be as generic as possible, the “Fall Festival.” In Anne Arundel County, Maryland, one councilman—nominally a Republican, but spiritually a member of the Everything Not Prohibited Is Compulsory Party—has reacted with a resolution to require his county’s schools to hold Halloween parties.

I don’t approve of his solution, but I understand his aggravation. The War on Halloween, as The Denver Post’s David Harsanyi has dubbed it, unites some of the most obnoxious elements of the left, the right, and the center—a Halloween coalition of Halloween-haters. Lined up like that, they demonstrate the most essential fact about the culture war. It doesn’t really pit the left against the right. It pits the culture warriors against everyone else.

Blame, the usual suspects: religious busybodies and politically correct nannies. They should join forces and get a political candidate of their own. Oh wait…

In any event, read the rest here. And while you’re at it, read this tract from Jack Chick.

Kate and I have been taking dance lessons. Here’s a preview of what to expect:

If the Republicans manage to retain the White House in 2008, you can thank Charlie Rangel.

You heard it here first.

UPDATE: More here.

Is you haven’t been reading Amber Tozer’s blog, you’re really missing out. She’s started a weekly column, Ask Amber, in which readers can ask her opinions and advice. I strongly suggest you take advantage of the opportunity.

Maybe it’s the Rockies fans who are crazier:

Republican presidential hopeful Tom Tancredo wants to put something important on the line — his candidacy. His campaign called ABC News to issue this challenge: The Colorado congressman will drop out of the race if the Rockies lose the World Series — if rival Mitt Romney agrees to pack it in if the Red Sox lose.

Nah, it’s just him.

Read more here.

Asteroid sent me this, I couldn’t resist:

According to a study set to be released today by the Center for Sports Research, a whopping 96-percent of Boston sports fans have no idea how unbelievably annoying they are to those who are not supporters of the Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics and Bruins.

“It’s amazing. The vast majority of these people actually think that they behave just as any other fans do, and that people who have a problem with them are simply jealous,� said the study’s director, Dr. Michael Kreager, a Princeton sociologist. “When in fact, almost all Boston fans have become obnoxious Massholes of the highest order.�

Due to an overwhelming inferiority complex stemming from decades of playing second fiddle to New York, the study found that Boston fans are woefully lacking in knowledge of how to respectfully conduct themselves when one of their teams actually wins. But worse, they revel in their boorish behavior and seem to find more enjoyment in flaunting their good fortune in the faces of others than they do in sincerely celebrating and relishing their teams’ achievements.

“The media has only contributed to this problem,� said Dr. Kreager. “By harping on the years and years the Red Sox went without a championship as though it was some sort of national tragedy, Boston fans actually started to believe they were more important than fans from other cities and therefore deserved to win more. When in fact, all they were was fans of a crappy franchise.�

And when the Red Sox finally won last year – on the heels of two Patriots championships that were then followed by another in February – it created a vicious cocktail that made even the most subdued and casual Boston sports fan into an obnoxious, drunken meathead, unbearably annoying to anyone with different rooting interests.

I would remove the ending qualifier.

When I was last in Las Vegas, I came across a kid dressed head to toe in Red Sox gear, including what must have been an expensive player’s jersey. He looked like an idiot. He was too oblivious to know. I said nothing.

Read more here.

Leopard comes out tomorrow.

Walt Mossberg reviews it today.

Read Walt Mossberg.