PixelMarx.com

Lately I’ve been biting my tongue.

McCain is such a dull candidate he can’t even get the progressives excited about taking him on. Instead, some lefty bloggers are having a hay day challenging Obama’s “surprise” move to the center.

Instead of focusing on real news, policy issues and solutions, like the escalation of bombings in Iraq, or the fact that Afghanistan is still a war claiming lives, or that it now costs over $40 to fill my Honda Civic (which I’m sure concerns most of you out there)… no instead of focusing on the stuff that really matters, the liberal bloggers like the Kos of KOS (sorry - don’t buy the line about getting out the checkbook and penning $2300) who claim the mantel of progressive have had fun bashing Obama.

I’m fine with critiquing policy positions based on fact, but when discussion becomes skewed by idealism, it starts get old, and I start to get less “slightly left leaning.”

But of course no one’s listening.

On the night McCain delivered his most watched speech, taking advantage of the historical importance of those other two historical candidates, you’d think McCain would’ve done everything he could to deliver a knock out punch. Instead, aside from the gaffe on how to rehydrate babies with hot water, and the Hamas-green backdrop, he also appears to have gaffed the wardrobe by not wearing a flag pin demonstrative of his patriotism.

Now personally, I could care less, as I’m sure is the case with most other progressives. I even cringe a tad seeing one on Obama, knowing that he’s wearing this flag piece to convince the less educated that he’s not Muslim. (No, actually he might be wearing it out of respect to the veteran who gave it to him.)

But my cynicism causes me to digress. What I was trying to say was, for a Republican to take the stage and not be wearing one - well that’s just a bit too maverick for me.

And wait, listen. Where are all the conservative commentators, the media, and the stupification army in their plastic outrage. Fox News - don’t let us down now. Washington Times, please make this an issue. Rushie, this is so vitally important to this nation.

Throughout this campaign this blog has not been the kindest to Hillary Clinton. I place blame for that squarely on reaction to what I felt was a devisive message from her campaign. And this feeling was only reinforced on Tuesday evening when a concession speech sounded more self congratulating.

With that sentiment, I watched her concession speech this morning and I have to say, it was probably the best speech she’s delivered.

Thank you Hillary. I for one feel that in this one speech you took ten giant strides to unifying this party for the November election, and the defeat of John McCain. And in the end, if Barack Obama does not win the nomination, it will not be because of your lack of effort, but the fact that John McCain was the better candidate…oh doesn’t the RNC and the Republican ditto heads only wish.

Best. And go Democrats in 2008.

(UPDATE: The illustration for this post was of course inspired by Shepherd Fairey, who was inspired others, who were inspired by even more others…). If you want to see more of his work, check out obeygiant.com.)

It’s the rare time when I’m inspired to post twice in one day. My apologizes. I will keep this short.

On Tuesday when I watched McCain’s speech, I remember thinking this line odd, but I didn’t pay it too much attention. I was too transfixed by the Hamas-green background and the strange white flake that kept popping up at the bottom of my screen. However, after I summed up my previous post, I came across the following video on YouTube…and I’m curious, Does anyone know what he’s talking about? I don’t have children (a likely reason I have time to write two blog posts), so I’m not familiar if this is a common practice for dealing with dehydration.

I did a quick Google search and found that

“…a baby who is being breast-fed should be given clear liquids for two consecutive feedings before breastfeeding is resumed. A bottle-fed baby should be given formula diluted to half its strength for the first 24 hours after developing symptoms of dehydration.” (Source: Follow Link).

Since I’ve never prepared formula, I had to do a search for that as well. From a quick read of the instructions, it seems that boiling hot water is a step in the formula preparation process, but the actual formula delivered to the infant is cooled. So it appears that just getting water of any kind with a method for heating the water to a boil is what’s critical, not bottled hot water…to be delivered directly to the sick child. In fact hot water in plastic bottles is known to release poisons that are passed onto the child.

However, if there are any readers out there that have actually used bottled hot water to treat their child’s dehydration, please enlighten me.

Today I ventured onto the McCain website to establish my insurgent profile. (You can see my own McCain profile - pixelmarx.johnmccain.com - but it’s very likely not going to get pass some approval stage.)

Anyway, someone had mentioned how McCain had hacked the Obama logo, along with his campaign slogan. There was also mentioned that he’d given his site a face lift, replacing the military recruiting brand (blacks and gold) with a patriotic blue theme.

So I went through the motions of setting up a profile, signing up for email so I could be kept current on all things McCain. I received an email to set up my password. I followed the link and typed in a password I use only for sites that I’m think will likely try to steal something of my identity.

And on the success of my venture, I landed on “Page Not Found”. (UPDATE: When I visited the site again, of course it recognized me.) By the way, does anyone want to participate in fund raising for McCain - a penny campaign, where everyone sends 100 pennies to his campaign? It might be kind fun (idea stolen from middle school kids).

And again, I need to get back to my original point. This experience made me think, how does the candidate’s website influence their success in the election? Of the three candidates Obama had the best site for social media and grassroots organizing. Hillary’s wasn’t bad, but my experience there that it bordered on tight control, without the ability to create my own dashboard, track my posts, my donations, points and events happening near me. And McCains’..well I never tried to interact with the McCain 2.0 web site. It was too much like the Army “Be All You Can Be” and I’m not all that. Perhaps McCain felt black and gold colors signified belief in America…old fascist America. The new site offered a little bit of Hope. At least he knew a good site to copy when he saw one.

But it failed me at the moment when it should have thanked me. Instead I got the dreaded 404 error, “Page Not Found”. And I’m left wondering if a McCain in office would be a “President Not Found” a 4.04 Trillion dollar error as we sat in a quagmire of Iraq, draining $10/gallon gas through our unabated CO2.

Dear Nate,

I wanted you to be one of the first to know: on Saturday, I will hold an event in Washington D.C. to thank everyone who has supported my campaign. Over the course of the last 16 months, I have been privileged and touched to witness the incredible dedication and sacrifice of so many people working for our campaign. Every minute you put into helping us win, every dollar you gave to keep up the fight meant more to me than I can ever possibly tell you.

On Saturday, I will extend my congratulations to Senator Obama and my support for his candidacy. This has been a long and hard-fought campaign, but as I have always said, my differences with Senator Obama are small compared to the differences we have with Senator McCain and the Republicans.

I have said throughout the campaign that I would strongly support Senator Obama if he were the Democratic Party’s nominee, and I intend to deliver on that promise.

When I decided to run for president, I knew exactly why I was getting into this race: to work hard every day for the millions of Americans who need a voice in the White House.

I made you — and everyone who supported me — a promise: to stand up for our shared values and to never back down. I’m going to keep that promise today, tomorrow, and for the rest of my life.

I will be speaking on Saturday about how together we can rally the party behind Senator Obama. The stakes are too high and the task before us too important to do otherwise.

I know as I continue my lifelong work for a stronger America and a better world, I will turn to you for the support, the strength, and the commitment that you have shown me in the past 16 months. And I will always keep faith with the issues and causes that are important to you.

In the past few days, you have shown that support once again with hundreds of thousands of messages to the campaign, and again, I am touched by your thoughtfulness and kindness.

I can never possibly express my gratitude, so let me say simply, thank you.

Sincerely,

Hillary Rodham Clinton

———

Although this is not news (pretty much everyone knew this yesterday) I guess my $10 donation bought me some access. And I can now turn focus on McCain. I have so many ideas for cartoons focused on McCain that I’m having a hard time figuring out where to start…but start I will.

Also, just curious if anyone out there watched the Katie Couric Evening News interview with Barack Obama. I wish I’d recorded it. She was pushing the point of whether Obama liked Clinton or not, and he wouldn’t give in. Look at 5:30 of this video.