WASHINGTON (AFP) �?? US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday.

Ordinary citizens did not fare much better, scoring just 49 percent correct on the 33 exam questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).

You can take the test yourself and see if you know more than the average elected official.

I took it: “You answered 33 out of 33 correctly �?? 100 %“

Unfortunately, lately I have been really dissapointed with Firefox 3. Firefox 2 had its problems, such as being a huge memory hog at times, but it was a very stable borwser. Firefox 3 (now 3.0.3) has one problem that is absolutely driving me nuts and forcing me to consider switching to a new browser. It crashes constantly. I have reinstalled several times, hoping I just had a bad instal. But after being updated 3 times to 3.0.3, it crashes as much as the day I installed it.

There are 2 specific types of crashes I experience. The first is the old one common to FF 2 where it closes and brings up the standard windows vista  “Firefox has stopped working” dialog. The other is new to FF 3 where it closes and brings up a new dialog box asking me to report the problem to Mozilla and giving me the option to restart.

Thankfully FF has the “Restore Previous Session” option, so I don’t lose my browsing history from my current session, but when it happens over and over, it begins to really annoy me.

I wish there was a fix for this because I don’t like any other browser as much as Firefox. I really don’t want to switch.

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.

It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.”

-President-elect Barack Obama
(Opening remarks from victory speech)

Are you kidding?

If it is that easy, why haven’t you done something about it in your last 26 years in the senate? Or is this another thing that you just happen to “know how to do” like finding Bin Laden or fixing the economic crisis? Simply saying “My friends, I know how to do it” is not proof that you do. If you know how to do it, then why the hell don’t you do it? Do we really have to elect you to the presidency before you’ll show everyone how to do all of this stuff? You’ve been a senator long enough to do all of these things you claim to “know how to do” yet you haven’t done it. What are you waiting for? I guarantee that if you did all of these things now, you’d be elected in a landslide. You wouldn’t be in a freefall in the polls. You wouldn’t have to keep pulling these weak stunts like “suspending” your campaign. If you were doing all of the things you claim to “know how to do” you would have won a long time ago. So, either you are just holding out on the American people or you really don’t know how to do anything. My guess is that you don’t really know how to fix things. If you are simply holding out until we vote for you, then you really are the stingy old geezer everyone says you are and you should have been voted out of office a long time ago.

As I was getting out of my car, this woman asked me to help her open her car door. She was pulling on it and complaining that the doors on the passenger side just got keyed and now her driver’s side door wont open. So, I walked over and helped her open the door. When I opened it, I noticed poop on the seat that trailed down to several large piles of diarrhea on the pavement. I immediately thought that the dog had crapped in the car and that some fell out when I opened the door.

She then asked me to look at the key marks on the other side. I walked over with her and looking at the door, I noticed that there was poop all over the ground on this side too. This time I also looked at her feet and saw that they were covered in crap…crap that also ran up her leg (she was wearing a dress, so I could see it!).

I realized, then, that she had been crapping herself the whole time I was talking to her and helping her! I also noticed that not only had she crapped all over herself, but she had also crapped on MY SHOE!! The lady shit on my shoes!!!!!!!!!! Why does this happen to me? Of all people, I get crapped on by the crazy old lady upstairs!

So now, I am forced to throw away my favorite pair of shoes. SUCK! Below is a graphic recreation of the results of my adventure.

Personally, I completely disagree with the entire practice of having an opening prayer in the Senate Chamber. As much as the religious right tries to convince us otherwise, the United States is not a Christian nation. Yes, we have Christians. Yes, the majority of Americans claim to be Christians. Also, yes, Christians deserve the right to congregate and speak just as everyone else, but religion, in any form, does not have any place in the US Senate; whether official, or ceremonial, or simply because it is the tradition.

Operation Save America issued a press release rife with inaccurate portrayals of the Founding Fathers and their supposed “[standing] on the Gospels of Jesus Christ!” I’ll ignore how completely wrong they are, but not without saying this: The Founding Fathers did not stand on the Gospels of Jesus Christ, or any other religious text. They stood on the Constitution. That’s it. Though many of them were Christians and much of the constitution was based on Christian principals (and any number of other universal principals), they took painstaking efforts to keep organized religion out of the Constitution and to avoid the institution of an official Church of the United States.

Now, if we are going to allow Christians from a wide spectrum of Christian sects*** to serve as Senate Chaplains and invoke the name of Jesus Christ in prayer when the Senate comes into session, then we ought to extend the same courtesy to other established and credible religions. We should do this because the Founding Fathers made a point to keep religion out of the Constitution and to keep the United States from establishing an official Church.

Until the day when the only invocation allowed on the floor of the Senate is that of the Constitution, I think it is only fair to be fair.

*** - Religious affiliations of Senate Chaplains since 1789
Episcopalian - 19
Methodist - 17
Presbyterian - 13
Baptist - 6
Unitarian - 3
Congregationalist - 1
Lutheran - 1
Roman Catholic - 1
Seventh-day Adventist (current) - 1

Total Christian - 62
Other religions - 0

Some time ago, in 2003 I think it was, I got a call from Karl Rove who told me that because of my criticism of the president I should never darken the doorstep of the White House. I have been so disappointed in the President in so many ways actually in the last several years…that as President I would have to tell George W. Bush the same thing Karl Rove told me.

So, obviously all of these factors were aggravating my liberal sensibilities, so my wife wrote “Bush Sucks Ass” on a piece of paper and held it to the window when we drove by.  I honked to get his attention.  He looked.  His face moved from glazed “I’m listening to right-wing talk radio” to “There’s a fucking liberal burning a flag in my front yard!!!!”  Then he started shaking his fist at us uncontrollably and almost ran over the curb.

Awesome.  Vote GOP!!  I mean, why wouldn’t you?  You’ve got old man McCain who confessed to an affair with a 25 year old socialite and is divorced, Giuliani who marched in a parade with his mistress and then announced his divorce during a press conference before telling his wife, not to mention his support for gay and abortion rights, and Newt Gingrich who has cheated on his multiple wives many times; once while running for congress on the slogan “Let our family represent your family” and again while spearheading the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and who divorced his first wife while she was in the hospital recovering from uterine cancer!

Ladies and gentlemen, these are YOUR family values candidates.

I really couldn’t help making W a Mexican. My appologies to all Mexicans.