I think it speaks for itself.

So, I am watching the Republican National Convention tonight, and I saw the Homage to 9/11. How disgraceful of the RNC to reach back to 9/11 with a purely cynical, self-serving stage show, abusing the memory of those who died on September 11, 2001. I can't even begin to explain how shocked I was that this was going on. I thought for sure they wouldn't go there. So, the party leadership reveals who they are to the American people: Shameless opportunists who will use any device to get ahead. I have boycotted all of the Hollywood recreations of September 11, 2001, including the numerous movies about United flight 93, out of a sense of respect and dignity for those who died. This is a sad commentary on the real values held by the Republican Party today, and a far cry from the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Goldwater, and, yes, even Ronald Reagan.

I hope that all of you readers can find the time to write to your Republican, Democratic, and Independent representatives and candidates to voice your outrage at what a terrible offense has been committed to the memories of those dead in the Sept. 11 attacks, and the brave soldiers and unfortunate civilians that have died in the fighting since.

Any political party with a history has legendary heroes. For the Republican party, one of these is President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was the 34th President of the United States of America. Last week, his daughter Susan Eisenhower wrote an article for The National Interest online, on why she is voting for Barack Obama, and declaring her intent to leave the Republican party for good (and register as an Independent).

The story is here: http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=19618

Dear Civilized World,

I want to express my great apology with the comments of our ”elected” leader yesterday during the G8 summit. I would like to inform you that we here in the United States do take pollution very seriously and, at the local and state levels, we are very committed to reducing the amount of pollution that we generate. We were quite offended and surprised by George's remarks at the meeting on Thursday, and we can assure you that he will be dissuaded from such outbursts in the future. The problem is that while George was growing up in the pristine bubble of the Bush dynasty, he never really got to see or experience pollution first-hand, and is currently still confused about what pollution really is. We in the USA apologize again for his insulting jest, and want to express that we find absolutely no humor in being the world's second-biggest polluter (yes, George's account of things are a bit dated, we'll make sure that we assign someone to read such reports for him in the future).

Sincerely,

Coleman Kane (on behalf of the population of the United States of America)

I received my XO from the OLPC Foundation last month. It is a pretty neat little device, and I'm still learning all the little pieces that the bundled applications have to offer. I joined up with their developers network to see about contributing. Recently I actually managed to get the Sugar interface building under FreeBSD. I still need to do some work to get it running, it seems, as the python sugar shell doesn't seem to want to run (it silently exits, with no error code).