This is what Sean Penn had to say about Barack Obama’s voting record:

”I don’t have a candidate I’m supporting and I’m certainly interested and excited by the hope that Barack Obama is inspiring,” he said, but went on to accuse him of a “phenomenally inhuman and unconstitutional” voting record.

 If Sean Penn really does have an idea of what Barack Obama’s voting record is I think he should share it with the rest of us. He should enlighten us because Barack Obama doesn’t have much of a voting record at all, and I am not just talking about his very short tenure in public life, I am talking about the fact that Barack Obama has made it his policy to either not vote, or just vote present on any tough issue that he faced in the Illinois senate so that he wouldn’t be on the record. Nobody knows where Barack Obama stands, and that is the way he wants it. He is an empty canvas and voters may paint any picture of Obama they wish, we will find out the hard way what Obama’s picture of America is.

 But let’s look at what else Sean Penn had to say, it may help us understand why he disapproves of Barack Obama’s voting record.

”I hope that he will understand, if he is the nominee, the degree of disillusionment that will happen if he doesn’t become a greater man than he will ever be,”

Nope, no answers there. If he doesn’t become a greater man than he will ever be? What the hell does that mean. I think he he trying to say that Obama can’t live up to the hype. Barack Obama is considered one of the most liberal members of the senate and perhaps the most liberal viable candidate to run for president, yet apparently he is still not liberal enough for Sean Penn. What kind of person would Sean Penn approve of? Oh yeah:

I honestly don’t know why anyone would take these self righteous Hollywood elitists seriously anyway.

Read more here.

I thought I would take a time out from politics for a little while, it can be draining sometimes. Anyone who has read me Why Mr Pink Eyes? page knows that I am a huge fan of The Cure and took my alias from a Cure b-side. Well last Monday The Cure were in Boston at the Agganis arena, so it was time for Lauri and I to head into Boston with the boys to see the show. Sorry AA, there was no way I would have been able to have that beer in the time between leaving work and making it to Boston, but I have not forgotten.

 This was my fifth time seeing The Cure, having only missed them in 1996. This is the first time I have seen them in a setting as intimate as the Agganis Arena, which only holds about 7200 people.  This would also be the first time seeing them keyboard-less and I was curious to see how they sounded without the keyboards. I have always loved all the different styles that The Cure play, but how would some of the keyboard heavy music sound, if they even played it at all? That question was answered very early as they opened with Plainsong, the keyboard ladened opening track from Disintegration. It sounded great, the show was off to an impressive start. Porl is the best guitar player that the band has ever had, and it was good to see him back in the band again.

 The setlist was about as good as you could ask for although I still have not seen them play Faith live. They played several Disintegration tracks as well as some early songs that I hadn’t seen them play before.

 The only downsides that I can think of is the fact that Porl had some technical issues with his guitar, it cut out a fer times during the show. andI would have liked to have heard more from the Pornography album other than 100 Years. Not to mention the fact that Robert changed “Killing An Arab” to “Killing Another”, to be politically correct. Real Cure fans understand where the song came from and it’s true meaning, it is not as controversial as it sounds. But is was still good to see that it was back on the playlist after being left off in 2004. “Killing An Arab” to me is one of those songs that sounds much, much better live.

 Between the intimate setting, and the return to the more original sound of the guitar heavy early days I have to say this was one of the best Cure shows I have seen, if not the best.

 Here is the setlist with a few comments by me included, there are a few pictures and videos from the show at the bottom:

 Plainsong

Prayers For Rain (sounded great, Robert can’t quite hold that note as long as he used to)

alt.end

A Night Like This

End of the World

Lovesong

Sleep When I’m Dead ( The first of four new songs, and in my opinion it was the best)

Pictures of You

Lullaby

The Perfect Boy (the second new song)

From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea

Hot Hot Hot

The Only One (the third new song)

The Blood ( I loved hearing this one, one of my favorites, it was a total surprise they payed it!)

Wrong Number

The Walk (surprisingly good considering there were no guitars on the original version, I thought they pulled this one off, Lauri didn’t think so)

Signal To Noise

Push

 Inbetween Days

Just Like Heaven (always a crowd favorite)

Primary (first time I’ve seen  them play this live, brilliant!)

Us or Them ( I thought this one didn’t come off too well, Robert seemed dispassionate during the chorus, perhaps he just can’t belt it out anymore as originally recorded)

Never Enough

One Hundred Years

Freakshow ( the last new song of the night)

Close To Me

Play For Today (another of my favorites)

A Forest

3rd encore:

Boys Don’t Cry

Jumping Someone Else’s Train (this was a surprise, I hadn’t seen this one live either)

Grinding Halt (another surprise, another first for me)

10:15 Saturday Night

 It’s an election year and nobody wants to raise taxes in an election year. Unless you are New Hampshire Governor John Lynch, then you are so sure of your re-election prospects that you have no problem raising taxes. Unfortunately, for Governor Lynch, not all legislators in New Hampshire are as sure of their re-election as he is, so they have put a halt on the governor’s proposed new taxes. At least for now.

The governor had proposed raising New Hampshire’s tax for a third time in his four years in office. (Give him credit for consistency.) But instead, Rep. Dan Eaton, D-Stoddard, a former store owner, put forth a particularly clever compromise that could well stave off the tax hike. His plan, about to pass the House, suspends the tax hike if sales in the first quarter of the fiscal year show the expected growth from the cross-border sales boom.

 It looks as though this will effectively stop the tax hikes, and so I give credit where credit is due. However, we can not just rest assured that these taxes will not be revisited once Democrats have held on to power after November. All of these politicians have showed a soft spot in their hearts for raising taxes, but other than Governor John Lynch, none of them are stupid enough to raise taxes during an election year.

 Do not be fooled New Hampshire voters. If this same liberal tax and spend legislature is returned to power you can count on the taxes coming back. Just look at Governor Lynch’s tax record since he was given a Democrat majority. It stands on it’s own.

 New Hampshire can’t afford another Governor Lynch term, especially if he still has a Democrat majority.

 This is something that I have written about in the past, Al Gore stands to make millions, let me correct that, many more millions than he already has off of this whole global warming farce. Why anybody would fall for this scam after they realize how profitable it is to the god of environmentalism I will never understand. At a speech in front of potential investors Al Gore gave them some advice on where to invest their “green” money. He also admitted he stands to make a fortune if they follow his advice.

Here are just a few of the investments I personally think make sense,” he said during the March 1 presentation. “I have a stake in these so I’ll have a disclaimer there.”

 Finally he shows us the truth, and the truth is Al Gore is in it for the money. Just think about the arrogance this man has that he no longer even feels he has to hide this information any more. There is a problem with his company however, he need government help to keep it all afloat:

without government action on climate change, some business analysts say green companies backed by KPCB ( Al Gore’s company) are either unlikely to be profitable or that their growth will be slow.

 So it is no wonder that Al Gore is constantly saying that the United States government must get involved in the climate change hoax, it is all starting to come together now. It is time to put an end to this before it is too late and we are paying more “green” taxes, are forced to buy carbon credits, and are regulated to death.

 Al Gore will make millions off of the backs of the American people, but he is not the only one. We are going to pay dearly if we do not rise up and fight this insanity. It is up to us, are we going to follow blindly or are we going to realize what is going on here and stop the insanity.

 We are in deep trouble here because all three remaining presidential candidates are on board with the climate change agenda. We must not let this happen to us.

 By coming right out and admitting he stands to make money off of our environmental guilt he has proven one thing. That he has brass balls. If we fall for this scam he will be able to afford gold ones.

  Cross posted on Grizzly Groundswell

Jeb Bradley is running for New Hampshire’s first district congressional seat. If he wins the Republican nomination he will be taking on incumbent moonbat Carol Shea-Porter in a rematch of the 2006 election. In this television ad he goes after said moonbat. Current New Hampshire polls have Jeb Bradley beating Carol Shea-Porter by about six points, while his primary opponent, John Stephen, loses to Shea-Porter.

 With the three remaining candidates for president being so weak, inspiring, and just plain nauseating, it is time to start looking somewhere else, anywhere else. My search has led me here, for starters.

 Bob Barr, a former Republican, has announced he is running to become the Libertarian party nominee for president.

“My name is Bob Barr and I’m a candidate for the presidency of the United States of America,” said the former Republican lawmaker, who played a key role in the congressional impeachment of former president Bill Clinton.

Barr said he was running because there was not “currently or anywhere on the horizon” any candidate who understood the principles of fiscal conservatism and basic principles on which he said America was founded.

 AMEN! Our whole system of government has been corrupted and it truly is sad to watch.

 This could pull votes away from John McCain, but so what? At best he will pull as many votes away from McCain as Ralph Nader will from Obama or Clinton. And if by any chance a vote for Barr is the same as a vote for the Democrat candidate, and it leads to a Democrat president, so be it. I don’t care. To me there isn’t a hell of a lot of difference between McCain, Obama, or Clinton. They are all on the wrong side of illegal immigration, taxes, and global warming for starters.

 Do I agree with everything that Bob Barr stands for? No. But I probably agree with more of his stances than with John McCain’s.

 I will be voting for a third party candidate, and I will do so with a clear conscience. I will not vote for John McCain just because he is a Republican, and I sure as hell won’t vote for Obama or Clinton, so I have no other choice than to vote third party. If by voting for a third party candidate Obama or Clinton becomes president, don’t blame me or the other Republicans who decided to vote third party. Blame John McCain, and blame the voters who nominated McCain.

 You led us to this point.

  John McCain gave a speech today on global warming that sent shivers up and down my spine, and not good shivers either. John McCain has jumped aboard the global warming alarmist bandwagon, and has hitched his horse to the came carriage as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. This is just another issue where he is no better than either of the other two candidates.

 I am not going to use this post to debate the whole global warming fiasco, rather I want to look at another part of John McCain’s speech.

 Just when you begin to forget how bad John McCain is as the Republican nominee because of all the attention that has been given to the Democrat race, He opens up his mouth and pisses all of us conservatives off again. He seems to enjoy it.

 On top of all of the other statements that he made about global warming today (the usual drivel about cap and trade), he made the comment about how he has angered Republicans in the past and he probably will again on the issue of global warming. The part that pissed me off the most about that comment was how he laughed that little evil laugh, you know the one I mean, after he said he angered Republicans in the past.

  You are so right about this Senator McCain, you can’t even begin to understand how much I despise you as the Republican nominee, and guess what? You just angered me again with that holier than though, elitist, I know better than you, arrogant, sly little comment. Go ahead and keep playing to the moderates, independents, and undeclared, while alienating the conservatives. When you wake up on the morning of November 5th, hungover, and you are STILL NOT THE PRESIDENT, and you are wondering why, look no further than me, and people like me, for your demise. It won’t seem so funny to you that you angered Republicans in the past because we are going to take the presidency from you.

 I look forward to November so that I can either vote for Bob Barr or Ron Paul or anyone else for that matter. My vote will not be cast for a winning candidate, but it will be cast against you. Just one last middle finger directed at you for all of the ones you have directed at me.

 What is the difference between a maverick and a turncoat?

  That is the question I would like to pose to everybody today. I forget who first used the term or how long ago it was first used to describe John McCain, but I do know one thing, the media has loved referring to John McCain as a maverick. He is a maverick when he opposes the president, and he is a maverick when he votes against his own party. He is a maverick when he sides with Ted Kennedy to sell our country out to illegal aliens. He is a maverick when he sides with Russ Feingold to restrict free speech before an election, we wouldn’t want the truth about a candidate getting out just before an election, would we?

 While he did all of this, the media glowingly called him a maverick. He was a straight talker who told us how it is. To me he sounds like a turncoat. To me he sounds bitter (sorry Barack) about losing the 2000 election. To me he sounds like a man who was trying to sell his party out. Hell, he even almost left the Republican party and became a Democrat. And of course, the maverick label was thought of so highly that John Kerry asked him to be his vice presidential running mate before settling for John Edwards.

 Yet he was the media darling. The maverick senator. The straight talker. 

 Then there is the story of another senator who turned on his party. He was never branded a maverick, he was never heralded as a man who rises above party affiliations. He was never called a straight talker. This man was Joe Lieberman. He did not receive the same media accolades when he opposed his party and declared we must not pull out of Iraq. He was not called a straight talker for telling America that we must fight until we win in Iraq. Quite the contrary, the media jumped on him, they did not glowingly refer to him as anything. How did the party voters respond? He lost his seat in the primary to an ultra liberal moonbat, that’s how. Luckily for Lieberman more sane voters showed up in the general election and voted him in as an independent. Now he is a man without a party, a turncoat. But is what he did really any different than what McCain did? I don’t think so. So it is pretty interesting to see how two candidates can be treated and labeled so differently by the media.

 We know the reason for this, it is a no-brainer. One opposed President Bush, and the other joined President Bush. Maverickization is in the eyes of the beholder. And we know how the media beholds President Bush, don’t we?

 Remember Zell Miller? He was a Democrat, who was also a hawk, but he spoke at the Republican convention in 2004 claiming that the Democrat party left him behind. His speech was aimed pointedly at John Kerry as he said the following:

The B-1 bomber, that Senator Kerry opposed, dropped 40 percent of the bombs in the first six months of Enduring Freedom. The B-2 bomber, that Senator Kerry opposed, delivered air strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Hussein’s command post in Iraq. The F-14A Tomcats, that Senator Kerry opposed, shot down Khadafi’s Libyan MIGs over the Gulf of Sidra. The modernized F-14D, that Senator Kerry opposed, delivered missile strikes against Tora Bora. The Apache helicopter, that Senator Kerry opposed, took out those Republican Guard tanks in Kuwait in the Gulf War. The F-15 Eagles, that Senator Kerry opposed, flew cover over our Nation’s Capital and this very city after 9/11. I could go on and on and on: against the Patriot Missile that shot down Saddam Hussein’s scud missiles over Israel; against the Aegis air-defense cruiser; against the Strategic Defense Initiative; against the Trident missile; against, against, against. This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces? U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?”

 Was Zell Miller branded a maverick? No. Was he called a straight talker? No. He was a turncoat. There was no room for him in the Democrat party and the media didn’t paint him as a maverick or a straight talker. He was labeled as a crackpot.

 What was the difference between him and John McCain? The same as the difference between McCain and Lieberman. One opposed President Bush and one joined President Bush.

 So the difference between a maverick and a turncoat depends on what party you vote for, and in the media’s case they have made it perfectly clear on which side they stand.

 I would call Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller mavericks, while I would brand John McCain as a turncoat. Democrats and the media, just the opposite.

 Your maverick is my turncoat, and visa-versa I suppose.

This has just been kind of interesting to watch. Massachusetts has approved another $1.00 a pack tax on cigarettes, a tax burden that unfairly affects the poor and disadvantaged at a disproportionate level by the way. A tax that preys on a person’s weakness seems like an extremely vile tax to me in the first place.

 Anyway, once New Hampshire’s liberal, tax and spend, irresponsible governor, John Lynch, heard that Massachusetts was going to raise it’s cigarette tax what do you think that he decided to do? That’s right, raise New Hampshire’s cigarette tax, just not as much as Massachusetts so that Massachusetts residents would still come to New Hampshire for their cigarettes. This will be New Hampshire’s third cigarette tax increase since Governor Lynch took office, and Governor Lynch actually DID justify it during his announcement with the third grade mentality of “I know you are but what am I” politics. He basically said, I know this is another tax increase, but hey, at least it isn’t as much as Massachusetts, as if any state policy should be compared to or based on another state’s policy. In his excitement, Governor Lynch didn’t even wait for Massachusetts new cigarette tax to be voted on or implemented before he announced his new tax. He just couldn’t wait.

 But Massachusetts had a secret little plan in store for New Hampshire to try to slow the tide of residents pouring over the border to feed John Lynch’s (not so) little coffers. A repeal of the state price regulations law that has been in effect since 1945. This little known law made it a fine able offence for stores to sell cigarettes below a state imposed minimum. That’s right, the state actually guaranteed a higher profit for tobacco companies by refusing to allow lower prices on cigarettes. This law was promoted as helping to sway younger people from smoking. Needless to say, the anti-smoking nazis are up in arms about the repeal of this law, but you know what? If it means more people putting tax dollars into the hands of Deval Patrick, than he says to hell with stopping young people from smoking. Deval Patrick and Massachusetts needs more revenue because the casino bill fell through while Deval was in New York signing a million dollar book deal.

 The repeal of the price regulations law in Massachusetts is designed to hopefully lower cigarette prices and keep Massachusetts residents in Massachusetts to buy their cigarettes. In reality cigarette prices will probably remained unchanged, only more money will be headed to the government instead of the tobacco companies.

It will give those who buy cigarettes a break because the price will probably drop enough to mitigate the tax increase,” said the amendment’s sponsor, Sen. Richard Tisei (R-Wakefield). “So consumers might not get whacked with a huge increase.”

 I guess I just have a fundamental difference with this type of thinking. I don’t find it any more reassuring that smokers won’t get wacked, as Senator Tisei puts it, because more and more money is still going to the government that should be left in the people’s pockets. Spending should be cut before taxes are increased but both Massachusetts and New Hampshire don’t seem to understand that simple little point.

 Now that Massachusetts has pulled this little fast one on New Hampshire Governor Lynch, who jumped the gun on his tax increase, has been urged to hold off increasing the cigarette tax to study the effects of the combined  Massachusetts tax hike and price control deregulation. Governor Lynch, in an effort to suck Massachusetts residents dry, played his hand way too early, he exposed his aces in the hole and Massachusetts has caught him.

 Governor Lunch is being told that New Hampshire may gain more revenue by keeping a larger gap in the price of cigarettes between New Hampshire and Massachusetts than if New Hampshire was to increase taxes which would persuade more to just stay in Massachusetts. However Governor Lynch is addicted to new taxes and he wont be able to keep his greedy little hands out of the pot. Cigarette taxes will go up in New Hampshire, Governor Lynch can’t help himself.

 Governor Lynch got played in this whole deal. In his uncontrollable urge for more taxes he played his hand too early and Massachusetts pulled one over on him. Don’t be so overanxious the next time, it is really unbecoming. Especially when you consider the groups you are about to screw over the most.

 Recently Barack Obama claimed that Republican turncoat, John McCain was losing his bearings. It was an obvious prejudice towards John McCain’s age.

 But if you watch this video you will see Barack Obama “lose his bearings” while trying to say how many states he has visited. It is pretty obvious that he meant to say 47 states, not 57, but then he says “with one to go”, he realizes he is still two states short even if he meant 47, and then tries to talk his way out of it.

 It’s just kind of funny.