I told myself I wouldn’t consider McCain unless he selected Sarah Palin as his VP pick. Well, it looks like he did just that. Now my voting decision got immeasurably harder. Palin is exactly the type of reform Republican that the party needs leading it, and in 4 or 8 years, she’ll be teed up to be the next presidential nominee. I didn’t expect McCain to do something this smart.

The New York Times posts a lengthy piece on Obama’s economics. I found it to be enlightening:

I have spent much of this year trying to get a handle on what is sometimes called Obamanomics and have come away thinking that Obama does have an economic ideology. It’s just not a completely familiar one. Depending on how you look at it, he is both more left-wing and more right-wing than many people realize.

Read more here.

Peggy Noonan: The race has begun.
Dick Morris: No it hasn’t.

I may have to ratchet my care-o-meter down a notch.

So apparently, John McCain took a swipe at people who play Dungeons & Dragons:

“It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman’s memory of war from the comfort of mom’s basement,” said McCain aide Michael Goldfarb, in a posting to the campaign website. “But most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others.”

Ok, so it was a McCain aide who made the comment, but that’s only becauseJohn McCain doesn’t know how to use a computer John McCain cannot type on a computer due to wartime injuries. The fact is that John McCain likes to think of himself as the wise ass kid who disdained school. He and his campaign seem to be reliving jocks vs nerds bullshit from their high-school days. Well, I’ve got news for the McCain campaign. Most of us adults leave that crap behind when we graduate at age 18 or so. Mostly, that’s because as an adult, you recognize other people for their strengths, and cease seeing differences as all negative. In this instance, one might think that an adult McCain might recognize that those geeky kids playing Dungeons & Dragons in their parent’s basement would grow up to be the engineers who would develop the weapons and computer systems that would enable soldiers to win wars, instead of, you know, pilot a plane into a telephone pole where you get captured by enemy forces, are tortured for years and are forced to give false confessions.

So I’ve got a message for John McCain: GROW UP ALREADY! At 70+ years old and with two months left to your campaign, you don’t have much time, but maybe, if you work hard at it, you could try to approach the maturity level of your opponent in this race.

UPDATE: Now there’s a Facebook group for like-minded pro Obama D&D players.

MoDo has the scoop.

The Onion: Obama’s Hillbilly Half-Brother Threatening To Derail Campaign

Real life: Barack Obama’s ‘lost’ brother found living in a shack

Any questions?

So Walt Disney Animation Studios redid their website. It’s beautiful, and a welcome departure from the old flash-crack that Disney used to embrace (thank you John Lasseter). If you love Disney stuff, you’ll find the site intriguing.

Of course the thing I found most intriguing is that there’s a Rapunzel movie in the works. The sole image they have up for it sends shivers down my spine. Looks to be a great movie in the classic Disney tradition. I can hardly wait.

(via daring fireball)

And what a contrast to what Lucas is up to these days…

Stinky the Hutt, or some facsimile thereof, wrote a scathing review of the new Star Wars Movie:

Then they introduced Baby Jabba aka Rotta the Huttlet aka Stinky. At the point of this character’s introduction – it officially became, the worst character in the history of STAR WARS. If you hate George Lucas cutsiepoo bull**** – oooooooh boy. You’re gonna have a field day of venting and hatred directed at this unbelievably ****ing awful little ****.

Oh – but wait… Little Stinky the Hutt isn’t the worst character in the history of STAR WARS… because Stinky got introduced earlier in the film. As much as I hated lil Stinky… I was weathering Stinky. I seriously was. But later there was a character of such immense **** – offensively bad. The character was so bad, so incredibly awful – that it was a slap to the face. It woke me out of my ****-accepting stupor and made me angry. SUDDENLY my “inner fanboy rage” was awoken.

OMG. I hope to never accidentally see that movie even.

Read the Clone Wars Review.

I scored 13 out of 20, but to be fair, a lot of the pictures were fairly close up, and the ones I screwed up were the super-cheapo varieties.

Take the quiz here.

(via slashfood)

Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee write a detailed piece in today’s Wall Street Journal detailing Obama’s tax plan. Looks like it means higher taxes, somewhat more progressive than what we now have, but with a lot of tax simplification. Of course, the President doesn’t unilaterally write tax plans. Congress does that, and the President can go along or stick with the status quo. But it’s good to see his thoughts in any event. Tax simplification would be an enormous plus, but I doubt that the current self-dealing congress could stomach giving up all their tax give-aways, breaks and goodies.

Read the Obama Tax Plan.