Thank you Instapundit for linking to this. More hilarious and more true than usual from James Lileks and that my friends is saying a lot. America is a great nation. Let's pray we can keep the great parts great, while we fix the parts that are not. A good politician should be able to say, "I love my country," without irony and a litany of caveats.

I wanted to spend a little time looking at the techno gadgets I use regularly.

Home computer -- Apple MacBook 13"
I needed a machine I could take with me on the road and do videoconferencing with my family. I got the entry level MacBook because it is fairly light and has all the processor power I need, with a fantastic 802.11n adapter and iSight webcam built in. It is wonderful. Never paying for Windows for home computing again. I thought I would find the screen small and limiting but the quality is fantastic. For kicks I bought Leopard and it installed like a charm. Goes in and out of sleep so quickly and reliably I'm still amazed by it. Set up Bootcamp pretty easily and now I dual boot Windows XP Pro -- Apple provides all the Windows drivers in one installer, which was so simple and smooth. Love Magsafe. The only real compromise is the Intel graphics which limits gaming options.

2nd home computer -- homebuilt AMD 2.2GHz Athlon XP w/ ATI Radeon 850 Pro graphics
Plays Civ IV and KotOR extremely well. That's all I use it for now. Runs Windows XP and I will never upgrade it to Vista.

work computer -- Dell 2.0GHz Core2Duo Optiplex w/dual 19" LCDs
For a Windows machine this is about as good as it gets. Never crashes. More than enough CPU and RAM to run my 5-8 simultaneous apps. Stays out of my way and I appreciate it.

Mobile phone -- Sprint Motorola Q
Interfaces very nicely with MS Exchange so I can keep up with work email easily. Runs Windows Mobile 5 which is serviceable. Battery life stinks, after 24 hours it is dead. I put a 2GB miniSD card in it but other than pictures I take infrequently, I don't store a lot on it. Mobile IE works OK, screen size is limiting after seeing the iPhone. I have never gotten MP3 playback to work well enough to use it. Can't sync with my Mac without buying $30 add-on software but so far I don't care. I would like to upgrade to the next iteration of the iPhone someday. For some odd reason I have had great service experiences with Sprint network coverage over the past 8 years or so I've used them and the Internet access I get on the Q is usually pretty zippy.

Car -- 98 Honda Accord LX V6
Paid for. Runs perfectly after 140K miles. Acceleration and economy are reasonable, gets me to work and back no problem. Has 4-wheel ABS and disc brakes. I could wreck it and not care too much. I would like to replace it at some point with a used Acura or Lexus sedan but I'm in no hurry.

TV -- Toshiba 46" rear-projection HDTV
It's OK. Had a $500 repair last year which really stank. We don't watch enough HD shows to really make it worth the capital expense. DVDs look great on it though as do Wii games in 480p. When/if the internals die again I will replace it with whatever the cheapest 50" TV is at that time.

game console -- Nintendo Wii
Have loved it since I brought it home. Love the controls. Some of the games are brilliant and fun. My favorite so far has been Zelda Twilight Princess. I love the GameCube compatibility. Since I don't play more than a couple of hours a week it fits the bill just fine.

music player -- Apple iPod Video 80GB
I was doing fine with a 512MB iPod Shuffle when my family got this for me for Father's Day. I enjoy watching an occasional episode of The Office on it but I hate spending money on video content for this. I have expanded my iTunes library and having the whole thing on one device is pretty luxurious. It kills me that the new iTunes movie rentals will not support this device. The nefarious trap of Steve Jobs has now hooked me and is asking me to upgrade something that doesn't need upgrading.

Kind of amazed I've been an on-and-off blogger since 2002. I need to write more.

First off I am perplexed and profoundly disappointed in the behavior of our high and mighty conservative talkmeisters. Rush, Laura, Hannity, Hugh Hewitt, and James Dobson are out of their minds. You are telling me that a senator who for over 20 years of voting has never received anything other than a Zero rating from NARAL, supported the war in Iraq when no one else would, is not in SOME fundamental level a conservative? Give me a break. You are all losers. Brit Hume and Bill Kristol are correct in saying the talk show Jedi Council refused to actually throw their full support behind anyone up to last week, and only now speaking well of Romney. They missed their chance to be relevant. People are voting for McCain in droves. If Steve Forbes and Phil Gramm support McCain then there must be some inkling of conservative economic principles in the feeble Reaganesque center of McCain's brain.

The 2000 Republican primary really ticked me off as well. All the conservative chattering class threw McCain, a war hero with a conservative voting record, under the bus in South Carolina in favor of Bush. And guess what. We didn't get a conservative in the White House back then, in any sense other than nominating some good judges. And McCain supported and voted for those conservative judges.

If the Rush-Laura-Sean-Dobson Axis of Excess were serious about conservative principles they would have backed Ron Paul long ago. All of you, please, pick up your toys and go home.