As if hiring Palin wasn’t bad enough, now John McCain is threatening to give Joe the Plumber a job in Washington.

Mac: Plumber’s in My DC Pipeline (NYP)

PS Apologies for the continuing comments/rss glitches. Still trying to find time for that upgrade…

At a time when many people appear to be struggling more than usual this video seems particularly apt. Randy Pausch, a lecturer in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, gives an inspirational talk to colleagues and students after finding out that he is terminally ill. “How to Achieve Your Childhood Dreams,” was delivered last September. Dr Pausch, a father of three, died the following July.

A Beloved Professor Delivers The Lecture of a Lifetime (WSJ)

PS It looks like I am going to have to upgrade the site to see if I can fix the current technical glitch. Feeds, posts and pages should be back up…just as soon as I can locate macboy.

Still experiencing some technical difficulties with posts. Hope to have it sorted soon.

During his election trek across America, the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington discovers the belief among some people that Obama is, in fact, the Antichrist.

Meanwhile, Clive Davis notes that a member of the right-wing bloggerati believes Colin Powell, who endorsed Obama last week, has a “stealth jihad” agenda. Who’d have thunk it?

Another inspired piece of propaganda from the pro-Obama lobby. (Via Gawker.)

The right-wing blogosphere. You’ve got to love them. After all, these guys suffer for you. They bear the terrible burden of knowledge, of watching from the sidelines as dhimmi Europeans bow to the inexorable coming of the next Caliphate and now, as a radical, Muslim, socialist, backed by liberal media elites, seeks to steal the White House (no doubt, so that he can turn America into a crypto-Marxist, Islamic state). What must it be like to live in a world where only you (and your fellow bloggers and army of readers) are prescient enough to see the West’s gradual fall to Communism and Islam? (Could you attend the same self help groups as 9/11 Truthers? Would they even let you in?)

Over the past four years I have tried to follow the illogic of these blogging masterminds. But all too often the mental power necessary to make two and two equal five fails me. Either that, or I suddenly realize that the exercise is worse than a waste of time, more pointless than a broken pencil.

Thankfully, Jon Swift has not given up. Oh no, he has been eagerly following the right-wingnutosphere’s presidential election coverage (so you don’t have to!) and rounded up the major stories that the mainstream media has been too conniving, lazy or cowardly to cover. My personal favorite is the revelation that Barack Obama had an underage, gay “affair” with a pedophile. But I would not fault you if you were more impressed with the scoop that Obama had cocaine-fueled gay sex in the back of a limousine with a not-very-attractive disabled man with a criminal background. You be the judge.

Great Moments in Election-Year Blogging via Alex Massie

Spotted on 7th Avenue and 14th Street, Manhattan.

St Johns Place and Underhill Avenue, Brooklyn, August 2007.

St Johns Place and Underhill Avenue, Brooklyn, October 2008.