Cue Angelic Choir

Northrup Grumman has released this image of their new airship they call a Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle, being built for the U.S. Army. It's a football field in size and will be built and deployed within 18 months. Northrup has a contract to build "up to 3" of these for $517 million. It will fly at 20,000 feet and enable troops on the ground to pretty much see everything. A very wordy press release full of business speak/military jargon is here.

Given that they went with such a ridiculous artist's rendering, conveying glory, dominion, power and majesty, both now and forever, Amen, I've helped them turn this into an ad.(Click image for the huge.)

Eleven Eleven

We Will be United by Grilled Chicken

I voted early. And while I like the fact that a vote is a private matter, I'll let you in on what I did.

I guess you can say I am a Communist, Socialist, Terrorist-loving America-hater now. (UPDATE: Who wants to kill babies. Thanks, Jim.)

I called my parents tonight as I was grilling. My mom already voted also. She is now a Fascist, Racist War-mongerer. Dad hasn't voted yet. He's on the fence. Both Mom and I tried to dissuade him from going over to the Dark Side, whichever side that may be.

My parents taught me to love America and to take our gifts here seriously, as my grandparents taught them. We can have fun, irreverent and jabbing debates, reiterating the talking points of our favorite partisan news networks. And we're still going to be family on November 5th. And we will all respect the President, whomever he may be. At least that's how it works in theory.

You get the point. The vitriol, hyperbole and rhetoric is temporary. In the end, win or lose, we're still in a representative democracy where everyone has a voice. We're not turning Fascist, and we're not turning Socialist. Lighten the fuck up, everybody.

And my Dad was intrigued by what I was grilling. (He taught me to love a grill.) It was an experiment, but it turned out OK.

• Start with three boneless, skinless breast of chicken
• Soak chicken in one bottle teriyaki marinade and one can of crushed pineapple for about an hour
• Throw on the grill
• Flip after a while
  
• Throw some more of that marinade on them
• If it gets dark, cut them open and see if they're done
• Flip if not, close the grill, pour another glass of wine
• Take off grill

Serve with horseradish rice* and salad.


* That was another experiment.

Warm Your Cold Heart for a Minute

I ride around the neighborhood and count the woefully outnumbered Obama signs to McCain signs. (34 to 5 on a seven mile ride) I open the paper to economic doom and gloom. I turn on my TV to shouting, blood-thirsty fascists at rallies. And then, standing behind a man at 7-11 who is buying a McCain coffee cup, I find myself secretly despising him and questioning HIS patriotism.

When it's all over, we will still have much in common. Our football teams will unite us, our hobbies, our music, our jobs and the daily tasks within those jobs.

And of course, our pets.

This is a member of the US Air Force returning from Iraq after 14 months and being welcomed home by his two Australian shepherds. Watch this and try not to smile.



Seen at the Atlantic.

Colored Spectacles

I broke my Randolph Engineering sunglasses this morning, and that’s not a good thing. They were pretty nice, issued to the military since the early 80s. Solid, timelessly stylish and one of those icons known only to a relative few. Unless you've been around the military, you've likely not heard of them. Randolph doesn't advertise. They don't need to. They have a government contract that keeps them pretty happy. They’re like Ray Bans for people who don’t want to be seen sporting the Ray Ban logo. (Even if it is a timeless and fairly cool logo.)

I’ve never owned a pair of Ray Bans on principle, but I went to their barely functioning website (at least it hates Firefox) and was amused by this take on the whole “mirror image” thing every web designer has been over-employing for the last four years. Generally, the designer will flip the duplicated image vertically, draw back the opacity and then fade the reflection away at the bottom. At Ray Ban, they instead flip it horizontally and place it right under the original. Odd.

ANYWAY…Didn’t mean to diss you, Ray Ban. Send me a crate of every style and color of sunglasses you offer and I will wear a different pair every day and blog about them. I will surrender my blog to Ray Ban for as long as it takes me to wear all of your glasses, reviewing each pair and finally selecting the ones that I like. The leftover pairs will be given to homeless men on the streets of Orlando, along with Never Hide^® t-shirts. I’ll take their pictures and we can do some sort of crazy viral thing that makes Ray Ban look concerned for homeless people who need sunglasses.

Playing the POW Card - From the Bottom of the Deck

As the “How Many Houses Do The McCains Own” battle was heating up yesterday, McCain spokes-Doberman Brian Rogers had this to say, "The reality is they have some investment properties and stuff. It's not as if he lives in ten houses. That's just not the case," Rogers said. "The reality is they have four that actually could be considered houses they could use."

He also added: "This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years -- in prison," referring to the prisoner of war camp that McCain was in during the Vietnam War.

I’m pretty sick of the POW excuse that magically absolves McCain of everything. It’s one thing to be a POW, it’s quite another to remind people of it every day, in the most disconnected, disingenuous and dishonest ways. So let’s look ahead and prepare McCain’s answers for him on a host of issues.

• Milk prices are too high

“This is a guy who didn’t have the luxury of milk for five and a half years -- in prison.”

• We’re not doing enough to find alternative sources of energy

“This is a guy who lived in the dark for five and a half years -- in prison, with no light bulbs.”

• Healthcare is too expensive

“John McCain had little to no healthcare for five and a half years.”

• The inner cities are suffering

“John McCain knows a thing or two about suffering.”

• We aren’t well prepared for natural disasters

“Let me tell you a thing or two about disaster, my friends.”

• War on terror

“I’ve been in a war. I know how to win wars.”

• War on drugs

“I’ve been in a war. I know how to win wars.”

• Prisons are overcrowded

“My friends, let me give you some straight talk about prisons. I know what it is to be in prison.”

• Economy is in a recession

“If there’s one thing I learned as a prisoner of war, it’s that there is always hope. We can’t give up hope.”

Name the issue, and McCain will bring up his POW experience. I find it distasteful and unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman. My Dad served in Vietnam twice as an officer. He is also a graduate of West Point (Beat Navy!) — and he got there on his own, without help from well-connected relatives. And he doesn't talk much, if at all, about his medals, his injuries or the things he witnessed. Very few of the soldiers I've known would, unless you really press them, and even then they'll do it reluctantly. There's an unwritten code among soldiers who've seen war and death that says, "You weren't there and you can't know. To share it with you would be to invite you into my nightmares and I'm not going to do that to you." But McCain has no problem bringing it up every day. He gambles that you will see him as some sort of John Wayne/Rambo/Clint Eastwood type. Or that you will pity him his time in prison and regard him highly for his ability to endure. The sad fact is that John McCain was the favored scion of a high-ranking military family who should not have been admitted to Annapolis, much less Navy flight school. The fact that he got shot down and captured is tragic, but it in no way qualifies him for the Oval Office.

And sadly, this isn't the doing of Karl Rove or some other Republican spin-meister. McCain has been trading on this story for decades. That alone says more about the man than the story he keeps telling.

Turn Off Your TV for 30 Seconds at 3PM Eastern Time

(The traditional time to take a moment of remembrance on this day.)

Facing the English Channel atop a bluff in northern France is this cemetery, (captured here on Google Maps) final resting place for 9,387 American servicemen who lost their lives in the D-Day landings and ensuing operations. To the right in the semicircular garden are the Walls of the Missing, on which are inscribed another 1,557 names.