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For those keeping track of the media (or my FriendFeed stream), this week seems to be a turning point where the McCain campaign has gone all in with the Rovian tactics.

No, it's not a surprise. For most people, that route I think was presumed as fait accompli, no matter what was pledged otherwise. Even when you know the punch is coming, I guess, doesn't mean it stings less. The media of course, has responded predictably (the Republicans, have without a doubt mastered that), and I think a fair number of people are wondering the exact same thing as Bookhouse:

This morning, reading this story and a few other things online, I was filled with a deep sense of dread.

This shit is going to work, isn't it?

Even if it doesn't, will these distractions ("politics as a game" as Obama deftly puts it) overshadow and obscure the real decision the American people will be making this November?

And that's where my Call To Action comes in - because things are different this time. And not just as in Obama's campaign parlance, that "the stakes are too high" (which I happen to agree with: when you look at the issues that are set upon us, in terms of civil liberties, geopolitics, the economy, energy independence, and climate change, we are facing incredible challenges that won't wait another four years). But that this election, more than any other is no longer dominated by broadcast media, but by individuals and the Internet. From the record number of individual/online donors (some recent numbers), the people number of people that have taken the time to actually watch/listen (or to read [just launched]) about the issues, those who are activity interacting and coordinating with the MyBo tools, or the "largest field operation in the history of American politics," -- Obama's campaign is dependent on individuals to get involved.

MyBo provides many tools in its Action Center, from phone-banking, physical events, and new tools like the just-launched Neighbor-to-Neighbor tool, which I definitely encourage you to check out... But this weekend, I've been thinking a fair bit about Bookhouse's sentiments.

And the idea that popped into my head was that while most people are understandably busy with their lives, that everyone probably has at least a few friends or family members that weren't planning to vote, or have been misled by the smears - and while it might be a bit awkward, I bet you have a better than average chance of being able to convince them otherwise, or at least in getting them to take a look at a YouTube video of a speech, or to look at things a bit differently. In the spirit of Neighbor-to-Neighbor (Friend-to-Friend?), why not strike up a conversation? It'll probably have both of you thinking a little more about what this upcoming election means, and heck, will probably make you feel a lot better too -- because (and that's at the core of Obama's message, isn't it?) you're not helpless. Just the opposite in fact - the only way that the Obama campaign has gotten as far as it has is by the support and dedication of individuals.

So what are you waiting for? Your country needs you. Do your part.

This is excluding capital gains income.

Via Brad Setser's Blog: Inequality in America

One of the unresolved issues from my write-up on Firefox 3, Developing and Browsing was that in order to get it work, you'd need to set the Profile Manager to come up on every launch. This of course starts to get old quite quickly (especially since I had already made a separate instance of Firefox.app so that I could have different icons for the apps).

Unfortunately, while there is a simple command switch (-P [profile]) to pick the profile, I couldn't figure out how to add a command switch to an alias, so I set off on a quest to find the best way to launch these apps...

• First I tried using a shell script as a '.command' file. This launches commands in Terminal.app, but unfortunately, both launches a new Terminal window and leaves it open once it's done. Less than ideal.
• My next series of tests involved using Automator's "Run Shell Script" functionality, which worked well, except that regardless of what combination of called shell scripts or &s that I added, the Automator App would always wait for the process (Firefox) to finish. That kind of crowding in my applist was something I didn't need while alt-tabbing.
• I thought I had some success with 'Run Applescript' in Automator (with 'do shell') that led me try out some combinations in Automator and the Script Editor (Script Editor Apps are smaller, but slower than Automator Apps. Script Editor Apps also lock up and are one of the few apps that have the old B&W spinner instead of a beach ball).
• Finally, I asked around to see if anyone else had tried this before and rcrowley gave the winning answer, which was to give up and write something that would exec a child process. He suggested pcntl_fork in PHP, but I went w/ Python (just because :).

So the end result are two Automator Apps that each contain a single "Run Shell Script" command:

python -c "import popen2; popen2.popen4('/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -P default')"

python -c "import popen2; popen2.popen4('/Applications/FirefoxDev.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -P developer')"

They're named 'FF.app' and 'FFDEV.app' respectively for easy Quicksilver access, and icons were copy and pasted (through Get Info selection). That took way too long, but it does work as exepected (they launch, and then get out of the way), so hopefully this writeup helps other people that might be looking to do something similar with Automator.

Also, please leave a comment if there's a dead simple way to do this that I couldn't figure out.