VaxCave

Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards visited CMU on Tuesday. I went to get in line to watch the simulcast about an hour early and ended up being the 5th person in line. Bridget showed up around a half hour later and then a few people from the campaign came out and started asking people if they wanted to come into the actual meeting hall. Score!

We walked in and it was standing room only. Quickly the organizers indicated that we should fill in the random empty seats that were scattered around. We ended up sitting on the bleachers with the Union Workers right behind many of our local elected officials. Dan Onorato spoke for awhile and introduced Mr. Edwards.

His delivery was good and he seemed to actually talk to people rather that at them like most politicians seem to do. He came across as a warm guy with a real passion for changing the way things are done. I’ll admit that politicians are where they are because of their charisma, so I’m not sure if it is all an act. Politicians are hard to trust.

The focus of the talk was health care. He spoke for about 35 minutes on health care and then fielded questions from the audience. I’ve selected a few sound clips that I thought were interesting or amusing. These are by no means official, I wrote them down as fast as I could, but there are sure to be small deviations in the exact language that was used.

• “Why in the world a woman would vote for George Bush is a mystery to me.” -Edwards
• “It is morally wrong that we live in a country where women get paid 75c on the dollar to what a man makes.” -Edwards
• “This is the 1st administration in 75 years to not create any [net] jobs.” -Edwards
• “I want to be able to tell folks that if you give us 2 years of public service, we’ll give you 4 years of college.” -Edwards

After the event Bridget and I got to shake his hand and he was very gracious with all the people that were trying to get a piece of his time. I’m glad we got to go to the event. I really enjoyed seeing something like this firsthand. Hopefully I’ll get to go to more of these in the future. It would even be interesting to go to an event where Cheney or, even better, Bush spoke. Word has it that he is pretty incredible in person and puts out a reality distortion field similar to the one that Steve Jobs creates. Although, that’s where the similarities stops.

Who’re those strangers in the background? Could it be…?

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Filed by AxsDeny at 9:35 pm under General, Politics
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They chanted ‘Four more years’ to drown her out? Now that’s compassionate conservatism! Maybe they think that if they chant loud enough they won’t be able to hear the lies that the administration is telling them.

Wearing a T-shirt with the message “President Bush You Killed My Son,” Sue Niederer of nearby Hopewell screamed questions at the first lady as the audience tried to drown her out by chanting, “Four more years! Four more years!”

She pressed on, refused to leave and eventually police removed her from the firehouse rally.

— Via CNN

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Filed by AxsDeny at 2:47 pm under General, Politics
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Some researchers at U. of Illinois have found some frightening information

The nation’s information technology industry lost 403,300 jobs between March 2001, when the recession began, and April of this year…

…Perhaps more surprising, just over half of those jobs - 206,300 - were lost after experts declared the recession over in November 2001…

…In all, the researchers said, the job market for high-tech workers shrank by 18.8 percent, to 1,743,500, between March 2001 and April 2004…

…attributes some of the job losses to corporations farming high-tech jobs out to overseas companies that promise to do such highly skilled work for lower wages…

…The employment picture has become a hot-button issue in the U.S. presidential race. Even though the overall U.S. economy added 144,000 jobs in August, it still has lost 913,000 positions since President Bush took office…

— Via Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Filed by AxsDeny at 8:37 am under General, Politics
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Interesting…

As John Quincy Adams said when he was secretary of State—in 1821—the United States should stand for freedom and independence wherever her flag is unfurled, but “she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” By launching foreign wars of interest and intrigue, Adams predicted, the fundamental underpinnings of American policy would change “from liberty to force.” America “might become the dictatress of the world: she would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.” Foreign adventures and foreign threats are, as often as not, pretexts for curtailing the freedoms Americans believe they should be fighting for.

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p>– Via MSNBC

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Filed by AxsDeny at 9:45 am under General
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With the opening of the new Apple Store in Shadyside we knew we had to be amongst the first to enter. We left our place around 7:30am to get in line for the 10:00am opening of the store. As we pulled onto Walnut Street we saw the line was about 75 people deep. "Not too bad," I thought to myself. I then saw my brother sitting on the curb, already in line, near the start of the line. Score.

I parked the car in the parking garage and headed back to the store. Between driving past and parking, some friends had showed up and taken their place in line with Dan. We were about 30 people from the start of the line. We stood and talked and drank coffee while waiting for the store to open. Many people walked by and asked why we were waiting in line. We made it clear that it was opening day, but they still didn’t understand. There was a rather humorous conversation between a jogger and Steve at one point. The jogger insisted he didn’t see the allure of waiting in line to go into an Apple Store (of all things). Steve came back with "If this was a jogging store you know you’d be first in line." The delivery was perfect. We laughed long and hard about that one.

The Apple workers kept coming out of the store and walking down the line trying to get everyone cheering and whatnot, which worked to a degree. The biggest problem was that many of the people had been standing there for upward of two hours. People were certainly getting tired and the sun was getting hotter.

At 10:00am, after a small welcome speech from the head manager, the doors opened and they let in about 75 people. We went straight to the iPods and picked a 20gb model for Bridget (4th generation!) and a warranty card for it. We filled out all the sweepstakes cards and checked on the cases for the iPods. I spent a good amount of time at the Genius Bar getting a replacement for my iPod headphones which had separated at the split. Things were a little rocky since I was the first customer for the guy that helped me, but all in all I was just happy to get new headphones for free. Thank goodness for the one year hardware warranty.

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p>We made a morning of it by going to Crepes Parisienne after our Apple Store visit. Nothing beats that place for tasty breakfast. We all sat with our merchandise and our free t-shirts and decided that we would probably be back to the Apple Store within the next week. I can’t wait until they get they new 4th generation accessories in stock. Bridget wants a pink case for hers. I just want to go and drool over the equipment. Check out all the pictures here.

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Filed by AxsDeny at 2:03 pm under General
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