Tonight's highlights of political candidates will be exciting as we comment on (for the Socialist Party) Joe Biden and (for the Repugnantcans) Chris Dodd. First and foremost I want to say....

Hold on... I just was informed they have both dropped out of the race. Nevermind.

Just to be patriotic we begin a new feature here at Spork where we highlight (low light?) the political candidates going into (and after) the Iowa caucus. (Interesting word there, since it pretty much tells what the politicians have done to us for years.) Tonight we will cover wthe weiners, err I mean winners.

Socialist Party: Barack Obama - To be honest, from everything I know and/or have heard about him, all I know is he wants "change". Change is good -- though you can change both for the better and for the worse. This is probably more my issue for just not paying enough attention. All I can say is this dude feels likeable and believable, which is uncommon for a politician.

Rupugnantcans: Mike Huckabee - I think this guy's past pretty much tells us everything about him and everything about what we should expect. This guy's history is that he was a sleazy used car salesman. He sold crap to people that they didnt want or need. The crap was junk. He appealed to the insecurities and emotions of his customers in order to manipulate them into buying his unbuyable junk. [EDIT] I have just been informed that he actually wasnt a used car salesman. He was a Baptist preacher. So I should correct that here. Everything else pretty much stands as is. [Further Edit a couple days later] It really bothers me that folks want to consider someone who's main draw is his religion. What I mean here is that pretty much every person ever elected in our lifetime was a christian, but were not elected on the basis of that fact. A president's duty is to the constitution, not to a "higher power" and our current fearless leader has made it absolutely clear that the higher power comes first. All you have to do to realize just how wrong this is is to look at other countries that have made this choice and put religion into their government: Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan. (This list could be long.) It doesnt matter that it is a different religion... the fact that religion is ruling is enough. Politics will corrupt the religion... and religion will corrupt the politics. There is a damn good reason why they have been historically separate and should stay that way.

Just a random thought here: As if Gia were not enough to convince us, I think I should point out that Angelina Jolie is officially Hollywood's sexiest woman. (There are a couple of scenes in Gia where she wears clothes, but you can skip past those.) The reason for this new nomination? She has been signed to play my fantasy girl from fiction: Dagny Taggart.

Holy lutefisk batman, we have broadband

Suck it FIOS face. Yeah I know you have 6Mb, but I bet I am happier with my lousy 800k than you are with your 6Mb. Because I suffered for it. Oddly enough, out of all the possibilities, it was verizon that came through. Who would have thought? I was so unbelieving that I made a buddy get on a plane and fly sit his ass in a car for 27 hours and drive here from New Jersey to prove it. Then when I went to order it, mistakenly ordered Sprint instead -- out of my disbelief that Verizon could do it... but apparently they can. The world is now normal. Peace has returned to the earth. God bless Tiny Tim. God bless us everyone.

I suck as a blogger. Sure, the pay is great, but the motivation to actually poke data out there is slim. I guess stuff has to actually happen to you that is of general interest. I will let you know if that happens. Meanwhile I will continue with things that are of a narrow interest to almost no one.

The first item of narrow interest is that my old friends from the mother country (for those of us of European lineage anyway) just popped by for a visit. It isnt every day one gets a representative of the Queen visiting your little metal shack in the woods. In tow were 2 of the cutest little British kids you have ever seen. I resisted the urge to make them quote lines from Oliver Twist or give them a tophat and make them do the Dick Van Dance.

And I just cant help commenting on the newest plan of the local Sheriff Department. (For those of you not keeping score, our sheriff was the one that just happened to have 2 tanks handy for loan when the Feds burned up the Wackos in Waco.) Yes, this should probably be filed as a rant, but the local sheriff is using county tax money to give away a bit of "security software." I use quotes, not becuase it isnt security software but because I dont think folks are getting what they think they are getting.

This thing is a keylogger. There are plenty of keyloggers out there for free... and they are generally thought of as hacker tools.

The idea is that you set traps for your kids and catch them being naughty. While that has its good and bad points, what I forsee is this:

1. The kids know more than their point and click parents, resulting in the parents not monitoring what they think they are monitoring.
2. A keylogger? are you kidding me? I forsee the parents installing this crap (that I am paying for with my taxes) on a shared family computer, then being shocked, SHOCKED that their own userids, passwords, bank account numbers, PINs, and various other bits of personal information are being stored. Businesses that allow VPN logins from the internet will find that if they are not using one-time passwords, they are getting hacked. This will all be a nasty bloody mess in about 18 months, funded by the taxpayers. Thanks a whole bloody lot.
3. And if you want to get truly paranoid, go stand on a grassy knoll and think about this: " Police Chiefs, Sheriffs, District Attorneys and Prosecutors,buy your own customized version of our ComputerCOP Parental Internet Software for distribution to the parents and guardians in your community." Now they may not be doing anything here, but the idea of the cops getting a customized keylogger installed on my desktop smells a little big brotherish. I dont know why they dont just park out front of the houses and sniff the WLAN like everyone else does.