Lieberman to Endorse McCain

Lieberman to Endorse McCain Now this is huge. Not.

The road to fascism in America

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps - She left out "Disarm the Population".

Another case of foot-in-mouth disease

McCain says U.S. lives 'wasted' in Iraq

I will never understand why some people insist on putting their foot in their mouth.

There are certain things you just shouldn't say. It doesn't really matter what you're trying to say. There are an enormous number of people who want to misunderstand you. NEVER use the words "wasted" and "U.S. soldiers" in the same sentence. Just don't do it. If you are a Democrat the entire Republican party will demand your head on a platter as Obama found out. And if you are a Republican the entire Democratic party will demand your head on a platter. Jeez. You'd think McCain would've learned something from Obama's gaffe. But no.

In hindsight...

McCain: Rumsfeld was one of the worst - USATODAY.com

It occurs to me that John McCain should have probably acted like a true maverick and run against Bush in 2004.

Be careful what you ask for

Steve Martin has some thoughts on something I've been wondering about for a long time. Why would you even want 72 Virgins?

Time to get Real

$25 Million Offered In Climate Challenge

"I believe in our resourcefulness and in our capacity to invent solutions to the problems we have ourselves created," said Branson.

This proposal, I think, is important. It's seemed to me for some time now, that if you really accept the supposed consensus science that Global Warming is caused by human activity, then you have to concede that WE ARE TOO LATE to stop it by doing less of said human activity. We cannot stop Global Climate Change by reducing emissions. (Although, of course, reducing emissions is always a good thing.) Kyoto is a feel good measure at best. It would accomplish nothing. The cats out of the bag. The greenhouse gas is in the atmosphere. We were too late the day Global Warming was discovered and named. We are not "causing" it - we CAUSED it. We cannot "un-cause" it. You could park all vehicles and shutdown all the factories in the world. You could wave a magic wand and whisk the entire human race off the planet and the CLIMATE WILL CONTINUE TO CHANGE. The science is in, it's time to turn the problem over to the engineers.

Lithuanian Goth Band - Anapilis

I stumbled upon this band while surfing YouTube one night and I really like it. I went to Lithuania two years ago. My wife's parents are from there originally and we went to visit some of my wife's relatives.

a collaborative novel

Penguin books have set up a wiki-based experiment in collective novel writing.

"So is the novel immune from being swept up into the fashion for collaborative activity? Well, this is what we are going to try and discover with A Million Penguins, a collaborative, wiki-based creative writing exercise. We should go into this with the best spirit of scientific endeavour - the experiment is going live, the lab is under construction, the subjects are out there. And the results? We’ll see in a couple of months."

Check it out at amillionpenguins.com

I learned about this from an article on Yahoo's news page. But Penguin seems to be having some technical difficulties. Seems "the collective" is interested in writing a novel and as a result their server keeps getting swamped. Hopefully they'll get a handle on their capacity issues. I plan on following this project (it's supposed to last six weeks) and may even contribute a line or two.

Ain't gonna happen

Clinton Calls on Bush to ‘Extricate’ U.S. From Iraq - New York Times:

"Mrs. Clinton also took issue with President Bush’s recent statements that he did not expect to have the troops out of Iraq by the time he leaves office.

“I think it’s the height of irresponsibility and I really resent it — this was his decision to go to war, he went with an ill-conceived plan, an incompetently executed strategy, and we should expect him to extricate our country from this before he leaves office,” the senator said this morning."

Hilary's going to inherit this war. That's just way it's going to be. She needs to knock these statements off now or people are going to start thinking maybe she's not up to the job.

Drop the "Two Americas" bit.

I wish I could afford a place like this.

I generally like John Edwards. But he needs to drop the "Two Americas" theme. Americans crave unity and the "Two Americas" theme is divisive. And it somehow rings a little hollow coming from a guy who, you know, owns a 6 million dollar home.

It must be true then.

Chavez Says Castro 'Almost Jogging'. Hell, I'll bet he could run a marathon.

SOTU

I just watched the President's SOTU speech. It was a good speech. But nothing really new. I also got to see Barack Obama, Jim Webb and Hillary Clinton's reaction to it. Nothing really new there either. I wish I had just read a book tonight like I had originally planned. I wish Harry Reid would see a fashion consultant.

Did anyone see this coming?

Well now this is a surprise. Hillary Clinton launches White House bid. I'm inclined to vote for her. The media is still pretty powerful in this country. If she wins the New York Times will declare "mission accomplished" in Iraq and "the most robust economy" in decades -- all on inauguration day. It'll be eight years of good news. That would be a welcome change.

Edgar Allan Poe

Happy Birthday Edgar Allan Poe. 'Poe toaster' visits writer's grave for 58th year - CNN.com

Star Wars

Chinese missile destroys satellite in space: this can't be good.

Ice Storms

Metro Detroit storm ices trees and downs power lines: Actually it's quite pretty out there right now.

The Salem Witch Museum - Salem, Massachusetts

So I'm surfing The Net tonight, mining Google, developing a folder of links to sites with information regarding "horror fiction markets". You know, in case I ever do get around to writing something and decide to try to sell it. And I land on a site, I forget which one, and I start to surf... and one link leads to another and I stumble on this:

The Salem Witch Museum - Salem, Massachusetts

Now, I get to Boston every other year or so. My sister-in-law lives there. Next time we visit them, I'm going.

Alligators

Just got home from a night over in Royal Oak. The have a great bar over there called Memphis Smoke. Killer PA system. It's mostly a Blues bar.

I met Curt the bass player in the band I play in. It was sort of a field trip. We'd like to play there some day. Curt and I founded a band about 3 months ago. I'll keep you posted as to our progress.

Anyway, we saw a great Detroit based blues band - The Alligators. Check them out if you ever get the chance.

Long time coming.

Too bad.

Inaugural Post

I've been a long time reader of blogs. In the six or seven years that I've been lurking I've been fascinated by the way that blogging has evolved from the simple logs of one's web travels to full blown independent media sites.

For some time I've been thinking about starting my own blog but I didn't think I had the time or anything new to say. I think I'm over the inhibition of thinking I don't have anything to say. I'm still not sure I have a lot of time for this. Mostly I want to see if I can keep it up. Also I want to learn a little by doing instead of just lurking. If it turns out that I can keep it up I may start up several blogs with more of a focus on things I'm passionate about. I'm mulling over the idea of creating a fictional blog.

"Musings after Midnight" doesn't really mean anything. Except that I'm basically a night owl. And after working all day, followed by an evening of driving to or participating in activities with the kids, and then waiting in line after my son to use the computer, it will probably be later in the evening when I post.

This blog isn't about anything in particular.

It really is starting off as a simple weblog - literally a log of places I like to surf.

And having said that, I like to go here, here, here, and here.