Police found four guns, including two rifles and two handguns, in a rented pickup.

Police found a rifle in the man’s pickup and methamphetamine. The man allegedly made comments about Sen. Obama, but sources wouldn’t say what they were.

It was enough, however, to make police believe the man might have been plotting to somehow harm Obama. A second man was arrested at a Glendale hotel.

Now, this may be a bunch of hooey and they’re just meth heads with guns… but we all know Obama’s got a Montana-sized target on him. If he makes it through the election and his first term safely, then I’ll start to have hope for our “post-racial” nation.

Thousands of supporters were expected at a Saturday rally in Springfield, Illinois, to see the debut of Sen. Barack Obama and Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as a presidential ticket.

The one thing that I like about Biden is that he’s not afraid to be orally aggressive. Unlike the last three Dem VP candidates, he’ll be a snarky, biting, aggressive little fucker. Which is what you want from your VP.

On the other hand, he’s neither Clark nor Sibellius and Biden’s a loose cannon, so I’m not very excited about this. Way better than anti-choice Kaine or pro-Iraq Bayh, though.

Update: this is why I like him:

a noun, a verb, POW!

The number of houses McCain owns is unknown, really. Numbers range from 7 in the ad above to 11 or 13. I think people are forgetting that McCain is not like you and me; he needs at least 4 houses - one for him, and one each for the letters P, O, and W.

I think the real way to drive McCain more insane in a way obvious to the average chowderhead person is by mocking him. The little Charlie McCarthy lookalike’s got a paper thin skin and a hair temper trigger. Also, his mama dresses him funny.

Heckuva job, Caligula.

Alice Rocchio is an office manager at the New York headquarters of the Hess Corp., drives a 1993 Chevy Cavalier and lives in an apartment in Queens, N.Y., with her husband, Pasquale, an Amtrak foreman.

Despite what appears to be a middle-class lifestyle, the couple has written $61,600 in checks to John McCain’s presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee, most of it within days of McCain’s decision to endorse offshore oil drilling.

At a June fundraiser, the Rocchios joined top executives at Hess Corp. — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Hess, his wife, Susan, his mother, Norma Hess, and six other officials in giving a total of $313,500 to a joint McCain-RNC fundraising committee, Federal Election Commission records show.

Vote McCain! It’s like doubling down on Bush. You get 10% more narcissism, bloodlust, and sock puppetry for big oil and/or the evangelicals all for the same low price!

The bundle of $2,300 and $4,600 checks that poured into Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign on March 12 came from an unlikely group of California donors: a mechanic from D&D Auto Repair in Whittier, the manager of Rite Aid Pharmacy No. 5727, the 30-something owners of the Twilight Hookah Lounge in Fullerton.

But the man who gathered checks from them is no stranger to McCain — he shuttled the Republican on his private plane and held a fundraising event for the candidate at his house in Delray Beach, Fla.

In case you weren’t aware, “maverick” McCain is dirty, dirty, dirty. And he knows it.

Ten senior Hess Corporation executives and/or members of the Hess family each gave $28,500 to the joint RNC-McCain fundraising committee, just days after McCain reversed himself to favor offshore drilling, according to Federal Election Commission reports.

Nine of these contributions, seven from Hess executives and two from members of the Hess family, came on the same day, June 24th, the records show. The total collected in the wake of McCain’s reversal for the fund, called McCain Victory 2008, from Hess execs and family is $285,000.

Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop’s contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Your data will never, ever be disappeared. This is essentially the newest ultimate expression of the fascist panopticon. Welcome to your GOP overlords.

Suggestions: If you must travel across borders with your laptop, use a high-security system (Linux, or in a pinch, a Mac) and if stopped, refuse to hand over your password or log in. You’ll almost certainly lose your laptop (for a bit), but your data will still be yours and what passes for privacy these days still secured… until quantum computers come out, that is.

Alternatively, pack a blank hard drive and hide your second. So long as your second (real) hard drive is still encrypted and not in obvious plain sight where it will be seized, you’ll be fully up and running as soon as you get out of Der Homeland’s sites… and they’ll be stuck with useless, false information.

I’m sensing a new business opportunity in database-destroying false information hard drives to savvy consumers. a) profit; b) privacy; c) civil liberties; and d) if we poison the database with bad information, it will lose all value. Any interested angel investors out there, give me a call.

I should point out that the policy is not all that new, just the publishing of it. Schneier has some other suggestions on how you can hide your data (encryption within encryption, among others)

Sebelius would be the #2. If it’s anti-choice Kaine, that’s just pukerrific.

I couldn’t really tell if this was aimed at racists, christianists, or Matrix fans, but it fails on at least two of those fronts in discouraging people from voting for Obama. In a country filled with christianists eagerly awaiting the rapture, AKA the GOP base, do they really think the Obamessiah message is in any way an “attack”? In a battle of scary black man v. my gawd is teh awesome, who wins?

McCain’s got nuthin. Nuthin!

(side note: the “quote” of Barack’s in the ad is misleadingly cropped)

Welcome back, billmon.

Madam President, there is an old line about those of us who ignored the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them. Afghanistan is the classic example of what could happen in Iraq. After years and years of incredible assistance to those who were seeking freedom from the then-Soviet Union occupation of Afghanistan, the Russians were driven out. Then, incredibly, the United States of America totally disengaged from Iraq. I recommend to my colleagues the reading of a book called “Ghost Wars” by Steven Cole, which won a Pulitzer Prize. Of course, came the Taliban. The Taliban then obviously was not only a terribly oppressive, brutal, cruel regime, but it also became a hotbed of training for terror today. A failed state in Iraq would pose a clear, present, and enduring danger to the security of our country.

Furthermore, Hitler, bananas, and a three-legged pony. … San Dimas High School Football Rules!

Also: fuck you, Democrats. We expect that from the GOP, but you guys? Screwed the pooch. I want my Constitution back!

Screw those professional concern trolls and hanky-waving media McSame enablers, Clark needs to be out there.

Side note: I can’t believe this passes for “confusing” to the media or what we consider “high level discourse” today. JFC, how is it not patently obvious that each person argues for the “best solution” relative to their position X, and when someone says I understand, but my concerns are Y (some superset of X) that they are acknowledging this? Let me rephrase to the msnbc host: if you don’t understand that executives need to make decisions while balancing competing interests, you need to be paid less until you do understand.

Now I want a McCain edition. Just show the Grim Reaper, that’ll be best.

To be clear: the above is clearly satire… it’s just poorly done, unfunny, and unimaginative. You know, like the typical dreck you find in the excruciatingly unentertaining New Yorker.

Update:

I’ll give the nutters at NatRev $50 if they run a similar cover.

To actually be analytical, though, Horsey gets it wrong as well even in his satirical response. For example, Osama is the enemy of all Americans, hero to none; Cheney is the enemy of thinking Americans, but hero to many. Not to mention that the counter response to the Obama outrage always, always ignores the actual and continuing impact of race and gender and the tyranny of the dominant class upon the marginalized groups. Anyway, enough of the critical thinking, fuck the New Yorker for being a bunch of socially rigid ponces.

Update: Here’s how it’s done.

Update: Vanity Fair responds

Watch as a 61 year old librarian gets “escorted” off of public property and ticketed for carrying a sign that says “McCain = Bush.”

Anyone? … *crickets*

I’m so glad we live in a post-racial society.

Best. Election. Ever.

McCain’s calling of his second wife (the rich one, the one he dumped his faithful poor one for after she stayed true to him while he was a POW and after she got into a disfiguring car accident. Oh, also, Cindy McCain is a plagiarist passing off stolen recipes as her own)… anyway, McCain called his second and current wife a “cunt.” I shit you not.

Now, a fun exercise in the imagination: imagine if Barack had called Michelle that. Imagine how many times you would have heard that (approximately 7 million until Clinton sealed the nom, would be my guess).

Holy crap am I proud to be in this state right now.

Works for me. Then again, I was against that narcissistic idiotic septuagenarian warmongering rageaholic before any advert. Good times.

Lennonism [John J. Miller]

K Lo: I’m with you on “Imagine” — love the piano, hate the lyrics. A band called A Perfect Circle has a great cover version. The music is bleak and the vocals are subdued. It’s a much-needed deconstruction of the song. It’s like the anti-”Imagine.” I’m not sure the musicians intended it that way, but that’s the result, by my lights. Definitely worth a 99-cent download.

A few things:

1. The Perfect Circle cover is fairly horrible as a piece of music, actually. It’s like awesomeness on valium, sifted through gauze, and then drained of life force. Which is not to say the original Imagine is awesome, but the cover was filtered through that mysterious substance known as AwesomeX
2. I’m sure that Miller, should he choose to investigate, would love the much-needed deconstruction of Maynard James Keenan (whom I personally think is fantabulous; he’s the singer. Also, a vet!). See also: Dirty Harry by Gorillaz, Born in the USA by Springsteen, And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda by The Pogues, et. al. Don’t forget Gandhi!
3. Imagine by Perfect Circle was recorded in 2003 and released in 2004. Hmm… that time seems so familiar. Anyone remember what was happening around that time? Anyone. Drawing a blank here.
4. One might, uh, imagine that in this here world of the internetwebby thing, the video might be on the YT, and might, you know, display the intent of the artists: