Random Thoughts for the Week of February 4

After a long break, it's the return of my sometimes regular feature, Random Thoughts.

I'm sure probably have seen the video of the American Idol judges being very cruel to some of the less talented contestants, going far as mocking their physical appearance. Naturally, Rosie O'Donnell put her two cents in on the issue and for once I 100 percent agree with her. This should be duly noted, because I never agree with The View co-host. While I think the American Idol judges should ease up on the contestants, Anna David from FoxNews.com says the parents are to blame too.

Even after all those class-action lawsuits, their customers dying every year, and the use of their product being banned in restaurants and bars, tobacco companies are still liked by investors, the New York Times reports.

Ever get tired of the big search engines, Yahoo and Google? If you feel like sticking it to the man, then check out the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines from Read/WriteWeb.com.

While I was cruising MySpace last night, I stumbled upon a link to a site called Eventful on the Dandy Warhols MySpace page. Eventful is a site that will let users to "demand" performers to come to their city or town. A cool concept for everyone involved. A band can see where to stop on their tour, while fans from a given city can request that particular band to come to their area.

My initial gut feeling on the 2008 presidential candidates

While I was in my self-induced hibernation, a number of politicians have provided telling signs they will enter the 2008 presidential race. Some have officially declared, others are still mulling it over. I'm of course talking about John McCain, Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards. Some of you might say, "Well, what about other candidates like Dennis Kucinich and Sam Brownback?" The reason why I'm not going to comment on them is because they have a snowball's chance in hell of winning. Kucinich is approaching Nader-level crazy, while Brownback wants to turn the clock back to the 1950s, but with more Bible study groups.

Even though McCain is getting up there in years, the Republican nomination will most likely go to him. McCain has the strongest name recognition, with exception of Guiliani. More importantly, he arguably has the best field and fundraising operation out of the likely Republican contenders. I think he's the best candidate that would attract the support of key Republican constituencies, social conservatives and neoconservatives/defense hawks.

On the Democratic side, my gut feeling is Obama will be the nominee. I think the netroots, such as MoveOn.org and DailyKos will go for Obama over Hilary, largely because of Clinton's stance on the Iraq War. The netroots have lost patience with Democrats like Clinton and Kerry, who they feel are not progressive enough on their key issues. I say look for a Obama - Edwards presidential/vice-presidential ticket. The two things that would prevent this from happening is Obama might be afraid of picking Edwards because the ticket could be labeled too inexperienced and Edwards might not want to play second fiddle a second time.

Taking a break, fooling around with Photoshop...

My small, but dedicated set of readers have probably wondered what I have been doing the last few months. I've become tired with politics and public policy. I decided I needed to take a break, to get refreshed and prevent burnout. It was time for other pursuits.

I turned to my hobby, photography. I've been slowly learning Photoshop off and on the past six months. What I love about Photoshop is the ability it gives you to create digital art. The program is so powerful, you are really only limited by your imagination.

Here's what I've done so far: