Blake Carper's Blog

Denied coverage after spouse abuse

2009-10-07T12:11:00.000-07:00

We need health care reform. Lost in the debate over public option and mandates is the fact that our insurance companies are breaking moral laws to turn a buck on our illness. If you get sick, they are now denying future coverage. Now it turns out that one of the "pre-existing conditions" they deny coverage on is being the victom of spouse abuse.

Four years earlier, Neal-Post says, she had been assaulted by her ex-husband in her home in Albuquerque, N.M. According to police records, both she and her ex-spouse were charged in the incident. The charges were later dropped.

She wasn't prepared for the blow from the insurer. "I was just flabbergasted," says Neal-Post, a 52-year-old attorney. During the altercation with her ex-husband, "I was beaten and choked in my living room," she says. "I'm trying to keep my family together and get medical care. And then you make it through, with everyone back on track, and years later, when it's no longer part of your daily life to remember that and you're feeling good, it's back again."

Advocates say it's not uncommon for people who have been abused to be denied insurance on the individual market. While the majority of states have barred insurance companies from using abuse as grounds for denying coverage, eight states and the District of Columbia don't prohibit denying coverage for that reason. And even when states do have a law, it doesn't necessarily prevent carriers from initially rejecting applicants who are victims of violence.

Article

What states haven't passed the law protecting domestic abuse victims from being stripped of their healthcare? Idaho, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Wyoming. If you map the Senators that are against healthcare reform, many of these states would show up in the No column.

Robotic Demonstration

2009-08-31T09:03:00.001-07:00

Allied Interstate - beware

2009-06-09T15:15:00.000-07:00

I started getting collection calls a little over a week ago. Well, not me, I don't have any debt out there besides my home payment. Someone named Peter started getting them on my home phone number.

At first I didn't think any thing of it. Wrong numbers happen. And we've only had our number for about 6 years. So, if anyone was trying to collect on a 7 year old debt from the previous owner of the phone number before it falls thru the loop hole that prevents collection, well, we are right in that window of time.

After a couple times of clarifying that "Peter" doesn't live here and they should stop calling, and the calls not stopping, I decided this needed more attention from me.

So, next time they called, I got their business information first before launching into my spiel about how we don't know Peter and they should stop calling.

Alliance Interstate

I look them up on BBB...F business rating. What does F mean?

We strongly question the company’s reliability for reasons such as that they have failed to respond to complaints, their advertising is grossly misleading, they are not in compliance with the law’s licensing or registration requirements, their complaints contain especially serious allegations, or the company’s industry is known for its fraudulent business practices.

Wonderful.

Then I did a quick Google search on them. I turn up a history of fraud, intimidation, misrepresentation, extortion and several court cases that have successfully prosecuted them. Turns out their M.O. is to keep calling a number, even if the debt holder isn't at that number, until the person pays out of annoyance.

Wonderful.

Well, that convinced me to step up the belligerence when they called. I started recording the calls and refusing to answer any questions until they gave me their business information (address, phone number) and their employee ID number. After that I informed them that I was taping the call for legal purposes.

As soon as they ask for "Peter", I would inform them that Peter doesn't live here and that I told them this X number of days ago. At that time remind them that it is against the law for them to keep calling once they have ascertained that it is a wrong number and I have ask them to stop calling. Then I ask for a manager and repeated the above message.

After which I called their 1800 number and repeated the message.

Then I filed a complaint against them with the state of Ohio (where they are) and the state of Washington.

It's been 48 hours since the last call. Since they were calling every 4 hours before then, I'm hoping this means they got the message and backed off.

This is the web, so I thought I could add my experience and if anyone is getting harassed by these bullies, you can take heart. You didn't do anything wrong, they are just slime artists.

Here is their contact information if you need it to send them a cease and desist letter or such.

Allied Interstate Inc.
3000 Corporate Exchange Drive
Columbus, OH 43231

888-748-4956

Advice:

1) Don't give them your name. All you have to do is confirm or dis confirm the name they are looking for. If you give them more then that, they will start calling you for the same debt, assuming that you are related or involved some how.

2) Take down their information. Even if you can't record the call, write down where, when, with who you talked. Keep records so you have the info if you need to escalate the problem to a lawyer.

3) Don't feel bad about asserting your rights. It's illegal for them to keep calling you if you are not the person. If you don't tell them they are committing a crime, they will assume you don't know it's illegal and keep contacting you.

There is lots of good advice out on the web about dealing with obnoxious creditors and such. Spend some time and get armed with information. Look up the THE FAIR DEBT COLLECTION PRACTICES ACT. It prescribes your rights and the rights of the debt collection agency.

Mark this as getting what you deserve

2009-05-22T15:19:00.000-07:00

Conservatives on the radio have been running around making fun of waterboarding and saying it was not torture. It's not so bad...why shouldn't we do it? Heck, if you don't waterboard your kids, you're unAmerican. Besides, we need it to be safe (see it doesn't work...but we need it to survive).

Anyway. Some conservative radio shock jock decided to prove the "not torture" thesis by being waterboarded himself. Let's just say, it didn't go well for him. He was only able to withstand 6 seconds and about 3 quarts of water before he popped off the board declaring it torture and declaring he wouldn't have done it if he had known how bad it was.

Fortunatly in this age of You Tube, we have the video.

How stupid can you get. Waterboarding has a minty humble pie aftertaste.

Sounders Opening Night

2009-03-20T09:47:00.000-07:00

Johanna bought me a season ticket to the expansion soccer team, the Sounders. I've been a big soccer supporter and follower for years and when we got a team...yippie.

Everyone rallied at Pioner square an hour before the game and we marched over to the stadium, with our marching band. The parade stretched about 5 city blocks. Good times.

The team sent out scarfs as a gift to all season ticket holders and then attached the first game ticket to the scarf. So, the whole stadium was wearing their scarfs and holding them up through out the game.

Once the game started the crowd was amazing. No one sat down the entire match. It was non-stop cheering from the opening kick thru the post game celebration. It didn't hurt that the Sounder scored early. After each goal, confetti cannons fired and scarfs were brandished like we had won the MLS cup, but its our first game, forgive us.

Here is a shot from my seat during a corner kick in the second half.

After the game, the team came down and celebrated with the fans in the south end. The supporters group was in the south end and they went crazy the entire match. They had giant 15 ft flags waving and 100 ft, section covering, signs. Our section was close enough that we got to join in with their cheers, so that was fun.

Here is the video put out by the team. It shows some of the fan celebrations. It was by far the most active crowd I've been in before and I've been in some pretty active crowds. Hopefully this is a trend and not just an opening night party.

Sounders Recap

Thanks for the ticket Johanna!

The new computer

2009-03-13T10:23:00.000-07:00

After a month of being on and off the disabled list, we decided to replace the old computer. I'll try to keep up on some more blogging now that I've rejoined the wired world.

Don't ditch on Frank Sinatra and other things I learned in Hawaii

2009-02-12T21:28:00.001-08:00

You learn things when you travel. Sometimes you learn about distant cultures, sometimes you learn about the things you love at home. But sometimes you learn not to ditch on the cabies choice of music. Because he controls the Air Conditioning and is likely to turn it off if you start making jokes about his favorite artist. Who knew? I wasn't even bagging on Sinatra all that much, I mearly commented that it was strange that he was coming out with a new album, considering he was dead...

Mistakes were made. Lessons learned.

We stayed at the Moana Surfrider hotel. Suposedly it's the oldest hotel on the beach. It was a beautiful colonial design. You can see it from the beach in the photo below (its the one with the Banyon tree, right next to the yellow sailboat).

It had these wonderful verandas that wrapped around the banyon tree in the court yard. We spent many hours lounging under that tree and having tea on the veranda. Good times.

Of course we went to the Arizona Memorial and Misouri.

We took a dinner cruise that turned out to be less spectacular then advertised. We got seated at the same table as a pack of howling 5 year olds and one over stressed mother. On top of that the dinner lounge act was trying to make up for lack of talent with high volume. The whole experience had more of a school cafateria vibe then a romantic sunset dinner cruise vibe. Fortunatly they had nice viewing decks, which we escaped to at first chance. This is a picture of Diamond head from the observation deck.

After the cruise we went to a comedy club. It's a vacation tradition I've been happy to see added. We always like stand up comedy, so while we are on the road, we try to catch an act at the local stand up club. What was funny, was the next night our "headliner" turned into our "waiter" for dinner. Of course we had been sitting up front in the club, so he recognized us instantly. We all had a good laugh, but I could tell he was kind of embarrased getting caught at his regular job.

We did one of those tourist subs. That was pretty cool. They've planted a bunch of artificial reefs that the sub can dive along. We saw a couple sharks, lots of tropical fish and a half dozen sea turtles. Since the reefs are artificial, the sub can get up pretty close without risking breaking coral or other enviromental harm. Here is a picture of one of the turtles.

On the last day we did a "small circle" tour of the island. Stopped at a bunch of the bays and lookouts. It was really beautiful and the guide was very knowledgeable and affable.

One of the places we stopped was an ancient Hawain temple. You can see the temple ruins in the back ground. In the fore ground is a recreation of a traditional farm. You can see the taro patties and a couple bannanna and mango trees. Off to the left was sugar cane. All of these were fed from an under ground spring, that then flowed down the hill into what was once a fish farm.

When we went to England, we would always ask the locals, cab drivers, tour guides and any royalty, "Where should we eat"? To the man, they would direct you to the nearest fish and chips shop. Which was great like the first 3 days. But then we were, you know, sick of fish and chips. But, I think they figured, hey, these guys are tourists, so send them to fish and chips. Since then, we kind of refer to the inescapable local tourist things as the "fish and chips". And I think we can safely call the hula the fish and chips of Hawaii. Every where we went some grass skirt wearing tart was waving those hands to ukalali back up.

All in all it was a really relaxing vacation. We mostly just kicked back and sat on the beach watching the waves and sipping fruity drinks. Good times.

We're back

2009-02-07T19:45:00.000-08:00

We're back from vacation and everything went swimmingly. I'll post pics or something later.

Off to Hawaii

2009-01-31T16:01:00.001-08:00

We're off to Hawaii. If anyone should need us, we'll be at the Moana Surfrider hotel. We'll be back by Saturday.

Oscar Nods

2009-01-22T15:39:00.000-08:00

The Oscar nomination came out today. It's a good crop of movies this year and I thought most of the nominations were correct.

Best picture
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

A good list here. I could have been happy with Gran Torino making this list or even a nod to the Dark Knight, but all in all a good list. I think Slumdog wins this.

Best actor
Richard Jenkins - The Visitor
Frank Langella - Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn - Milk
Brad Pitt - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke - The Wrestler

I'm super excited that Richard Jenkins got a nod for The Visitor. I would have liked to see Clint Eastwood make this list, probably in place of Pitt in Benjamin Button, but oh well. Mickey is going to win this. I don't even think it's much of a toss up.

Best actress
Anne Hathaway - Rachel Getting Married
Angelina Jolie - Changeling
Melissa Leo - Frozen River
Meryl Streep - Doubt
Kate Winslet - The Reader

I need to see Frozen River. I was shocked that Kira Knightly didn't get a nod for the Dutchess. I would have given Meryl Streeps spot to her, since I didn't think Streeps performance in Doubt was all that. But, so be it. I think Anne Hathaway wins this. Of all the performance on this list, I think her performance there was most Oscar worthy.

Best supporting actress
Amy Adams - Doubt
Penelope Cruz - Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Viola Davis - Doubt
Taraji P Henson - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Marisa Tomei - The Wrestler

If there is any justice in the world, Marisa Tomei will win this, but to be honest I can't see the academy giving it to her for the stripper with a heart of gold, or actually in this case, a heart of iron. After all, Elizebeth Shue didn't win for Leaving Las Vegas... Any way. I think it's an open category. If you put a gun to my head, I suppose Amy Adams will get the nod from Doubt. We'll see.

Best supporting actor
Josh Brolin - Milk
Robert Downey Jr - Tropic Thunder
Philip Seymour Hoffman - Doubt
Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight
Michael Shannon - Revolutionary Road

Hard to argue anyone but Ledger here. He got ripped for what I thought was the acting performance of the decade in Brokeback Mountain and his Joker made the entire movie in Batman. He get's this one.

Best adapted screenplay
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Doubt
Frost/Nixon
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

Best original screenplay
Happy-Go-Lucky
Milk
Wall-E
In Bruges
Frozen River

I'm happy to see In Bruges get a nod here. That was a quirky little film about assissins on the run in the best preserved medevil town in Europe was both funny and witty. Slumdog probably wins for adaption and I'll say Milk for original.

New President

2009-01-21T10:56:00.000-08:00

Like many of you, I watched yesterday with a sense of hope for our country's future. I don't naively believe that we will enter a post partisan era, where we put aside party differences and try to govern, but I do hope that we can stop the gotcha politics that have ruled this country since the 80's. What I hope for is that we can achieve a national debate where men and women of good conscience can disagree on our path, but still work toward the greater good of the country, together. I'm sure that's a bit naive as well.

At the end of the day we are all Americans and the problems we face are shared by everyone. We know our economy isn't as strong as it once was. We know that our manufacturing base is not what it should be. We know that we can't keep sending 700 billion a year to the middle east in oil money and continue to live securely inside our own borders. Now we need to know that we are stronger together then we are divided. We need to remember that it isn't how fast we row toward our goal, but realizing that we are all in the same boat.

Since the Vietnam and Civil rights riots of the 60's, we've been fighting an ideological civil cold war. Both side counting their victories, while as a nation we were defeated. Suddenly the government of the people, by the people and for the people was the source of all problems. We convinced ourselves that we would be better off on our own then working as a collective. The same society that put a man on the moon and bridged a continent with the railroad, now can't agree to keep our bridges from falling into the rivers.

Since Katrina some of this has changed and I see a greater desire to come together as a country. Sure, you can still find people that are very bitter and want a fight (see the ugliness that emerged at the end of the campaign). But in the end I feel like the realization that we need each other sunk in during the last few years of Bush. Our leaders are always a reflection of who we want to be as a people and I hope the election of Obama and the hope for the future he so often points toward are a reflection of where we want to go as a people.

At least that is what I hope and today I'm filled with hope.

The Wrestler

2009-01-19T18:02:00.000-08:00

The Wrestler from Darron Arnofsky has been getting a lot of good press, so when it opened here, we hustled down the cinema to catch it. First warning, this movie is by Darron Arnofsky, the guy that did Requiem for a Dream and Pi. He doesn't make happy movies. This movie was no exception.

The "wrestler" is Randy "the Ram" an aging pro-wrestler, 20 years past his prime. Think Hulk Hogan, but without the money. Randy is still wrestling on the smaller local circuits, trying to pay his rent and maintain his tan and muscles with the best chemicals money can buy.

Though, still loved by his peers and the fans, his life outside the ring is a mess. His only friend is an aging stripper played by Marisa Tomei. Both are at the end of the line in terms of their ability to continue wrestling/stripping, but it's all they know and neither can escape it. While they share a bond forged around their common businesses, they are both scared by their lives and can't truly come together.

Forced into retiring by a heart attack, Randy takes a job at the meat counter. In true cinema symbolism, he tries to find happiness while giving a pound of flesh to each customer. In the end, he can't escape his desire to be back in the ring for one last time and accepts a rematch with his long time foe/partner from the pay per view days of the 80's.

The acting and cinematography are both first rate. The wrestling is truly impressive, both for the way it exposes how it is faked, and showing the brutality of the falls and blows the wrestlers do take performing the stunts. If you like art movies, then I recommend it heartily. If you don't I do warn that this movie chalked full of all the violence, sex and arty symbolism you can stomach. Enjoy.

Flooding

2009-01-08T17:25:00.000-08:00

Snoqualmie Falls normally.

Snoqualmie Falls today.

I don't think the picture does justice to how much water that is going over the falls. You can see in the bottom photo that the entire basin where we were standing to take the other pictures is wiped out. So, that can kind of give you a sense of the flooding.

Wow.

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T09:10:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year all. Hope your 2009 is good to you and yours.

Holiday Movies

2008-12-29T10:10:00.000-08:00

Johanna and I have been heading out to see a bunch of the year end Oscar contenders this week.

Gran Torino
"You know how sometimes you come across someone you just shouldn't have messed with...that's me." - Walt Kolawski

Pearl Jam once wrote the lyric "I changed by not changing at all". That's Clint's portrayal of Walt Kolawski, retired autoworker and Korean war vet that recently lost his wife. He lives in a suburb that has been slowly rolled over into a Hmong immigrant ghetto. Clint meets his neighbors shouting "Get off my lawn" and pointing his Korean war rifle at them.

His neighbors are trapped on the edge of a street gang that wants to recruit the son into their gang. The gang forces Tou into trying to steal Walt's 1972 Gran Torino. When Tou's family find out about the attempt they put him in service to Walt for two weeks. Bonding, neighborhood improvement and acceptance follow.

Walt eventually takes Tou under his wing teaches him how to fix things, teaches him how to stopping being a wimp and in a hysterical scene, teaches him how to "talk like a man".

It's really a great movie. The only caveat I'd put on it is that the language can be a bit over the top. Walt's a bigot and he doesn't miss a chance to spout off with a racial slur or five. Every racial slur for Asians I've ever heard was used by Walt at some point in the movie. If that type of stuff super offends you, you might want to wait for it to come out on network TV...it might replace Pulp Fiction as the most bleeped movie of all time on TV.

Go see it, its really good.

Slumdog Millionaire
What happens if a boy from the Indian slums won "Who wants to be a millionaire"? We both really loved Slumdog Millionaire. We've all see Millionaire. As each question is asked, the movie flashes back to a point in Jamal Malik's life where he learned the answer to the question. Unfortunately, Jamal's life has been a rather sad one up to this point. A Muslim in India, he's orphaned early in life and spends most of his life bouncing around in the world of poverty and crime at the underbelly of India. For example, one of the questions is "Who is on the American $100 bill. We flash back to a time when Jamal is leading fake tours of the Taj Mahal and scamming them for hundreds of dollars.

It's a very sweet movie with a very good soul. We both enjoyed it immensely.

Doubt
I liked Doubt, but I don't have much to add that you can't see in the trailer. If you've seen the ads, you've seen the movie. It's not going to surprise you, it's probably not going to shock you. Merril Streep is good as is Philip Seymour Hoffman. But beyond just seeing good acting, I don't think there is much there...there. We live in a post Catholic scandal era and I don't think suspicion about the priest and the alter boy is anything that will rock your world.

It's good, but you can probably catch it on video and be just as happy.

Frost/Nixon
I actually remember the Frost Nixon interviews. I was to young to attach the significance that they had, but I barely remember them. If you like politics, this is probably a must see, if you could careless, then this is skipsville. Frank Langella, the guy playing Nixon, does an amazing job. He doesn't look like Nixon, but every thing from the shoulder slump, to the body language, to the deliberate speaking pattern are nailed perfectly.

The movie itself is well crafted. Instead of focusing on the Watergate crime, it focuses on the events surrounding the interview. Giving a sort of backstage perspective on the motives, actions and inner demons of the two men involved.

BP Exec jumps ship for Algae Oil company

2008-12-28T14:33:00.000-08:00

Serious people that are used to making money continue to jump ship for micro-organism based bio-fuel companies. This time a top BP exec has landed at Sapphire Energy.

Sapphire Energy continues to grow its top-flight professional team with the appointment of Cynthia J (CJ) Warner, a top BP executive, and an expert in refining, transportation and operations, as President, starting February 1. Warner leaves her post as Group Vice President of Global Refining for BP, and will join an already impressive team of experts in transportation fuels, cell biology, plant genomics and algal production to create a commercial-scale crude oil operation using only sunlight, carbon dioxide and non-potable water.

Investors in Sapphire include Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and the Rockefeller's Venture capital arm, Venrock.

The hiring of Warner is interesting because she is a specialist in downstream distribution. The kind of person you hire if you actually expect to come to market and need someone with the know how to get your product into our gas tanks.

Who is Sapphire and what do they do?

Sapphire Energy was founded by a unique interdisciplinary team of scientists, entrepreneurs and investors to address the overwhelming inadequacies of current biofuel approaches — and the profound costs of American dependence on foreign oil.

Sapphire’s goal is to be the world’s leading producer of renewable petrochemical products. The team has built a scientifically superior platform that uses photosynthetic microorganisms to convert sunlight, and CO2 into carbon-neutral alternatives to conventional fossil fuels.

First up: renewable gasoline.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-25T10:03:00.001-08:00

We are under way with Christmas celebrations here around the house. We've already had our traditional cinnamon roll breakfast and opened the presents. Johanna is in getting ready for us to head out to the movies and I'm in here posting the Merry Christmas blog message (as if this post wasn't evidence of that).

Anyway, I was thinking about how all cultures have a winter festival. It's just that time of year. When we were in Cancun we visited the Incan ruins and we learned about their calender. They would take the time off between the solstice and the new year as a festival. In fact their calendar runs up until the solstice and then resumes after the new year, with the time in between marked as a strange time that needs to be festival.

Before it was Christmas, the 25th was marked by the pagans. As winter approaches, the sun rose lower and lower on the horizon. Always moving a bit south every day, until the winter solstice on Dec. 22nd. It would rise at that lowest point on the horizon for 3 days and then magically on the 25th, it would start it's move northward again. With that move, the slow march back toward spring had begun. A worthy thing for festival indeed.

Here in our little corner of the world, I'm here at home with a weeks vacation spending time celebrating the end of this year and the renewal of the new year.

My Christmas wish is that we all continue to reach out the rest of the year with the camaraderie that we feel during this season. That we find ways to see the similarities between all men and not obsess on the petty differences. That we seek to find ways to elevate ourselves to the angels we aspire to be and reject the impulses that seek to tear us apart.

Johanna and I wish all the best to you and yours this holiday season.

Merry Christmas.

Digging out in Seattle

2008-12-21T16:33:00.000-08:00

We've got a little over 10 inches here at the house right now, with the promise of 4 more inches over night. I know, not real snow next to some, but for Seattle, this is quite the snow storm.

Majel Barrett-Roddenberry Dies

2008-12-19T13:57:00.001-08:00

Majel Barrett-Roddenberry (23 February 1932 – 18 December 2008; age 76) was a recurring actress in the Star Trek franchise and was the wife of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry from 1969 until his passing in 1991. This association with Roddenberry and his most famous creation has earned Barrett the title "The First Lady of Star Trek."

Barrett was the only performer to have had a role on all of the Star Trek series – usually not as a character but as the voice of the USS Enterprise's computer. She also supplied the voice of the Enterprise computer in four of the Star Trek films.

Her most frequent portrayal in Star Trek, besides the computer, was that of Nurse (later Doctor) Christine Chapel on Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Animated Series, and in two of the films. She also voiced M'Ress and several other characters on The Animated Series and later played Betazoid Ambassador Lwaxana Troi on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

For Excitment you'll need to kick in an extra million

2008-12-19T13:28:00.001-08:00

Drew: My contract only includes announcing the results, you'd need to kick in a little money for me to get excited.

Top Chef: A Twist too Far

2008-12-17T23:24:00.000-08:00

Last week we blogged that this years crop doesn't seem to be as good as the previous 4 seasons. This week, the cheftestants seemed to go out of their way to prove it. After the roundly disappointing food and the general malaise that seems to be hanging over the chefs, the axe was spared and everyone lives to cook another day.

Quick thoughts:
Ariane is the poster child of this season. She is Nikki from last season. But unlike last season where the weekly drumbeat ask how she could even stay on the show... this season she is winning immunity.

As for the challenge, I think those that got the "hard" days of Christmas were actually blessed to get them. Give me six geese a laying and I'm probably doing deviled eggs as well. But lords a leaping or drummers drumming, you're off the leash of the literal translation of the day and you can make up any lame story to link your food to the item on the plate.

Is Fabio the Italian Brian Malarkey from Season 3. If the show was based on BS talking, he would win this week and it would all be a race for second plate. Book your ticket to the finals in the "interesting" spot Fabio. Just remember how to cook between now and then.

Jamie continues the bridesmaid routine and to be honest, she was probably the reason they sent no one home. Her plate was the weakest link, but because she has been so strong, you couldn't in good faith send her home so early.

I think the real loser was the people that came up with the challenge. Making an hoer derve for 300 people is a challenge. Limit the amount of time they have to think about it and then give them the 12 days of Christmas theme and you've obviously pushed it too far. On paper it probably didn't seem that bad, but in practice, it was pretty clear during the shopping phase that unispired food as going to be the rule not the exception. The last three eliminations challenges have all been really hard and I think it crushed the chefs. They aren't fighting to make great food, they are fighting to get food on a plate. The challenges need to dial it back a bit and give the cheftestants a chance to show their skills a little more.

Doesn't it seem like this years grocery store is not as good as previous years. Their sea food all seems weak/frozen and their meats often look frozen as well. I'm surprised, being in NY, they don't have them going down to the fish market or shopping at one of the high end meat markets or farmers markets that the real NY restaurants shop at. They sent the season 3 chefs to a farmers market in NY when they had to do their challenges. Garbage ingrediants in, garbage out.

This years chefs seem to actually like each other. Their vibe is much better and they seem to be helping eachother out to plate and taste and plan etc more then last season. It was an angry kitchen last year. This year they seem to be down right chummy. I thought the scene where all the chefs pitched in and helped the two destroyed chefs in the fridge disaster was nice and I'm glad no one was hurt because they pitched in to help the two chefs that ended up on top.

In the spirit of such comrodary, no rankings this week. They are all winners.

Oil Execs Predict End of Big Oil

2008-12-17T19:36:00.000-08:00

Oil just isn't going to sustain us for another 30 years and who knows that better then the guys sitting on top of the most accurate geology reports on remaining oil reserves. Last month we set a record for the deepest oil well ever...yay team. But you have to ask, if we have to set the record for deepest oil well, how much cheap oil can there be left?

Who better to know the real story of the future sustainability and cost of oil than the leaders of oil companies? In a recent study sponsored by the consulting firm Deloitte only 17% of 50 senior oil and gas company executives believe that fossil fuels will be the most sustainable fuel source in 25 years’ time; 23% think it will be the cheapest. In 25 years most oilmen place their bets on renewable energy as the cheapest and most sustainable fuel.

oil-and-gas-industry-leaders-place-their-bets-on-renewable-energy

This could explain why oil companies were dumping the profits from the $4 per gallon gas into renewable fuels all year long. Oil sands and shale barely make much economic sense at $140 and make absolutely no envirmental sense at any price. I guess we've decided that the places we've set aside as reserves were more like rainy day funds for oil drilling, but even those can't sustain us at our current levels.

First Solar Claims Grid Parity

2008-12-16T18:26:00.000-08:00

The holy grail of the solar industry has been reducing the cost of creating and installing solar cells to the point that they can compete head to head with coal power plants. Grid Parity. Until now lots of people have claimed that they will compete and put up lots of fancy graphs and charts to say they will compete, but alas, nobody actually has...er had.

A 12.6-megawatt system installed by First Solar for Sempra Generation showed that the system can produce electricity at below the price of conventional power in the United States, said Mark Bachman, an equity analyst at Pacific Crest, in a research note Tuesday.

The solar power plant, located in the Nevada desert, costs $0.075 per kilowatt hour to install without any subsidies, Bachman wrote. Conventional power fed into the grid costs $0.09 per kilowatt hour.

"In our view, the industry leaders will be those companies that can deliver electricity at or below grid parity pricing without the aid of subsidies while also delivering superior return to shareholders," Bachman said. "Currently, only First Solar can claim these achievements, in our view."

Going head to head without subsidies is a big deal. Most arguements against going green boil down to some sort of whine about how solar will never compete with real energy and how coal is so much cheaper. Note, fossil fuels get subsidies too, but why let the truth get in the way of a good whine.

This is the future thin film solar has been crowing about for the last 3 years and now it looks like it's starting to come true.

I'm not one to go around hugging trees, I'm just not. But the fossil fuel model is going to die in my life time. Not because it's peace love and happiness, but because it won't be profitable in 20 years. Fossil fuels will be like steam powered trains, a quaint part of our history that we wonder how we ever got along with the smell and pollution from.

You Wouldn't Buy

2008-12-12T12:25:00.000-08:00

Top Chef: Bye Bye Danny

2008-12-11T21:08:00.000-08:00

Another week of Top Chef goes by and another cheftestant goes home. Danny seems like a nice guy, but was there any doubt that he was going to talk his way into going home as soon as he got into the bottom. As the judging table started, Johanna called Eugene as this week's packer of knives, but I said and I quote, "I agree, but you watch, Danny will open his mouth and talk his way off the show."

4,12,34,48,82 and your powerball is 15.

On to the episode.

I thought all the cheftestants did a really lack luster job at name that ingrediant. If they let you list salt and oil as ingrediants, you should probably stick your neck out just a bit more then 3 ingrediants. I think this group has some serious wattage issues in comparison to seasons 3 and 4, they are just not as bright.

Stephan and Hosea continue to look strong, but I'm worried about Fabio. I think he has settled on being better then most of the contestants and kicked it into safe mode on his cooking.

Ariane continues to be a mystery. She may make the top 8, but she hasn't really "chef'd" anything yet. Oh she can cook, but can she also provide the insite needed to be a creative chef? Look at her resurgence dishes. She cooked a turkey...good for her, but it's just properly prepared meat. She cut up a fruit salad for last week, one she has done many times before. Not really ground breaking material. And this week she cooked rack of lamb. Now, I've screwed up rack of lamb, so I'm not going to throw spit at it, but she didn't make the sauce or marinade, so basically, she just roasted some lamb.

I think she would make a great Sous Chef, but I can't see her getting to the finals in a chef competition.

I think they are over playing the Stephan is a jerk story line. They always need a villain and he is as close to that as this group has. So, bring on the borish behavior cut scenes.

Rankings.

Stephan (one little kiss, come on)
Jeff (sorbet king)
Leah (sneaky Leah, just drifting toward the finals)
Hosea (The last horseman in the anti Stephan group)
Fabio (Better start cooking soon)
Jamie (No wins at this point = bad sign for finals glory)
Radhika (threatening to take the Leah quiet crown)
Ariane (Maybe she can roast a pork roast next week)

This still leaves blog favorite Carla out of the final eight. After a couple decent showings, she has slipped the last two weeks. I'm worried.

Falling this week is mean Gene. He could come back up, but it's really a race between him and Ariane for that last spot in the top eight.

Melissa seems like the logical one to go next week. We'll see. Looks like Tom makes a surprise visit to the stew room to deliver some head judge smack down to the chefs.

Krampus

2008-12-06T17:17:00.000-08:00

In Bavaria, you get an interesting spin on Santa's naughty and nice list. Sure, if your nice, you still get the usuall presents on Christmas morning. But in Bavaria, Santa packs the heat to deal with the naughty. Enter the Krampus parade. It's some what akin to our Halloween. Styrs roam the town and "take care of" the naughty for Santa.

There's no doubt that today the frightening figure is an integral part of Christmas celebrations in some parts of Austria and Hungary (where the local version is spelled Krampusz). Krampus brings punishment back to the Christmas holiday, threatening naughty children with more than a lump of coal in their stocking.

The modern tradition goes something like this: On Dec. 5, the day before St. Nicholas arrives with his sack of gifts, local men dress up in goat and sheep skins, wearing elaborate hand-carved masks. They make the rounds of village houses with children. When the kids open the door, they're frightened by Krampus-clad men waving switches at them and ringing loud cowbells. In some towns, kids are made to run a Krampus-gauntlet, dodging swats from tree branches.

Article

Don't screw around in Germany durning the holiday season.

Photos

Photos

Festivus pole goes up at the capitol

2008-12-06T14:26:00.000-08:00

You might have heard, we are having a bit of a spat up here in the northwest about what is and isn't allowed up at the holiday display in the capitol. Not to be left out are the Festivus activists.

The state Capitol hosts a Nativity scene and a 25-foot "holiday tree." The nearby atheists' sign that sparked a nationwide furor was back in place Friday after being stolen and then dropped off at a country-music radio station.

And joining those displays soon could be a 5-foot aluminum pole in celebration of "Festivus for the Rest of Us." Not to mention a protest, a balloon display and even more signs, this time supporting religion.

LOL!

Top Chef: Alex, Have you not watched the show?

2008-12-04T06:49:00.000-08:00

"I'm going to do dessert because I think it will give me an edge. Dessert is kind of like a free pass" - Alex

Yeah, ok. Did you watch last week Alex when dessert got your room-mate kicked? See every other attempt at dessert for similar examples.

I'll post more later when I'm less tired.

A Bad Year on the Stock Market

2008-12-02T17:52:00.000-08:00

It's been a tough year. Historically tough. Look at the following chart. Each block represents the value change of the stock market that year.

Ouch Ouch Ouch.

The Pac 16

2008-12-01T20:06:00.001-08:00

Once again the Pac 10 looks like they will get shut out of the championship game so that we can watch the SEC whip up on the over rated Big 12. Yawn...

The problem is that the Pac 10 doesn't have a championship game that would move the winner into the top 2. Either the Pac 10 needs to withdraw from the BCS or they need to get themselves a conference championship game. And that involves taking in a few teams.

To this end I'm proposing that we create the Pac 16. Invite in Boise State, BYU, Utah, New Mexico St., UNLV, and Wyoming into the Pac 10. Create a north and south division for football

North
Washington
Washington St.
Boise St.
Oregon
Oregon St.
Wyoming
Utah
BYU

South
Cal
Stanford
UCLA
USC
Arizona
Arizona St.
New Mexico St.
UNLV

The winner of that conference would be in the top 3 every year and we would almost always get a contender in the national championship game.

Yeah right.

Top Chef: Bye Bye Richard

2008-11-27T10:44:00.000-08:00

Quick Fire:

I thought the quick fire was a fun challenge. Rather then giving them a blank slate, the idea of tricking them into certain ingrediants and then making them make soup was genious. Most of the soups looked good. Leah looks to be the sneaky good candidate this year. She could just coast through to the finals under everyones radar.

Elimination:
Once again dessert is the fatal flaw of a cheftestant. But really it was all about not changing the plan when faced with the curveball of the rag tag out door kitchen. Don't forget, they went shopping after they saw the set up and Richard still wanted to do something bannanna desserty. Yeah, ok then...

Jeff could have easily gone home, but after two strong weeks prior to this, he wasn't going to go home. They say they only judge the food presented this week, but it seems that early on the "potential" of the cheftestant gets factored in to keep the good chefs on until the mid season knock out shows. Jeff has shown that he can cook, so Richard goes home. I'm guessing Jeff goes home during Restaurant Wars. The captain always goes down with the ship during Restaurant wars and I can't see Jeff avoiding taking charge.

The great Ariana revival will only last one week. I think she might be a great cook...just not a chef. If you gave her a book and a recipe she can hit it out of the park, but so much of the show is about the genius of off the cuff creations. I just can't see her staying much longer.

Top Eight:

Stefan (Needs to show something next week to stay up here)
Fabio (Maybe team rainbow has a member playing for team Europe... just saying)
Leah (The manchurian chef)
Hosea (Steady week, nothing interesting)
Radhika (She'll stay around, but won't make finals)
Jamie (I suspect we may be a Jamie drama moment soon)
Jeff (How pissed off was he to be at judges table. I thought he was going to punch someone)
Gene (Tricky Gene)

I thought the move of the episode was Gene's home made roasting pit. That's the difference between training and experience. Gene just grabbed what was available and made something that worked out great and almost won his team the match. Way to think outside the box Gene!

On the opposite end is blog favorite Carla. Carla going with the "Andrew Memorial tapioca caviar for the third time" award for doing the same thing over and over again. Cook something besides pie next week or time to go home.

Rick Roll'd at the Macy's Day Parade

2008-11-27T10:42:00.003-08:00

HAHAHAHA!

That's too funny. That they got Rick Astley to do it is even better.

Bowl Game Picking challenge

2008-11-21T20:56:00.000-08:00

I've set up a Yahoo group for picking the college football bowl games. If you are interested use the link below to join the group. If it helps encourage those standing on the sidelines, let me assure you that none of us are very good at picking.

the password = go ducks
(include the space)

If you know anyone vaguely family related or just friendly, everyone is welcome.

Group

Top Chef: Bye Bye Jill

2008-11-19T23:01:00.000-08:00

Well, two weeks down. At least they slowed the carnage to just one chef this week. We were hoping that the twist would be that one of the rejected chefs would join the cast in place of one of the current cheftestants. That would have been a riot.

I thought the quick fire challenge was going to be the first challenge last week. They ride a ferry to Coney Island, hop off, and dress a hot dog. But, at least my Top Chef skills were only off by one week.

I think Radhika gets class move of the week. You have immunity and can choose which course to serve...you fall on the sword and go desert. Nice move Radhika.

Overall, I was really curious to see the line at Craft. You know that the Craft appearance was at least half the reason they picked New York this time.

Producer: Hey Tom, you know every restaurant we feature on Top Chef just goes through the roof.

Tom: Really?

Producer: Oh yeah, foodies are flocking to our stops like its a dead tour.

Tom: We are so going to be in NY next season.

You know it happened. :) Not that I begrudge him. We ate at Craft in Vegas... and it is just beyond. The steak I got was twice as good as any steak I've ever had before. It was just fantastic.

On to the predictions.

I think Team Europe will be around longer then Team Rainbow.

Ariane is the new Nikki.

Top Eight:

Stefan (The Cook-inator)
Fabio (The doesn't know he won-inator)
Jeff (Pretty boy)
Hosea (The new icarus candidate)
Jamie (Rainbow warrior)
Radhika (The Brian Marlarky: I just cook one type of food award)
Gene (Mean Gene)
Leah (The slip by unnoticed candidate)

Personally I'm rooting for Carla, between the crazy fro and the even crazier attitude, she brings good energy to the show. She could slip into the top 8 on personality alone.

On Jill getting the boot. How bad does the answer have to be to beat out "spit the food back out" in the race to pack knives? And all she had to say was "I thought a special ingredient would make my dish stand out. Now I know you have to feature the special qualities of that ingredient for that to work... and it won't happen again." End of discussion and Ms. spit it back out goes home.

Oh well, I think it just changed the order by a couple of weeks. We will soon be saying good bye to Ariana as well. Looks like she is at judges table next week too.

Man tries to pay bill with spider drawing

2008-11-18T20:06:00.001-08:00

Below is the complete email conversation that Adelaide man David Thorne claims he had with a utility company chasing payment of an overdue bill.

From: Jane Gilles
Date: Wednesday 8 Oct 2008 12.19pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Overdue account

Dear David,
Our records indicate that your account is overdue by the amount of $233.95. If you have already made this payment please contact us within the next 7 days to confirm payment has been applied to your account and is no longer outstanding.

Yours sincerely, Jane Gilles

From: David Thorne
Date: Wednesday 8 Oct 2008 12.37pm
To: Jane Gilles
Subject: Re: Overdue account

Dear Jane,
I do not have any money so am sending you this drawing I did of a spider instead. I value the drawing at $233.95 so trust that this settles the matter.

Regards, David.

See the rest of the exchange here.

Man tries to pay bill with spider drawing.

And it's happy ending.
Spider minus a leg sells for thousands

I'm sure this is a hoax, but it's fun.

Or you could just walk

2008-11-17T13:18:00.000-08:00

Top Chef Returns

2008-11-10T17:28:00.000-08:00

Top Chef returns this week. Hopefully, I'll be starting up my weekly recap and rankings again this time. I guess they ran out of exciting food cities, so they are back in New York.

They have the cast links up. 9 guys, 8 ladies, none look like Andrew from last year. A shocking lack of faux hawks and attitude after last years epic all attitude group.

It's hard to pick the first week loser, I almost wish they would give everyone two weeks and send no one home after the first episode.

That said, my eyeball only guess is Melissa or Danny gets the first week boot.

Early villian nods go to Alex, Jill, and Patrick.

The Gerard Buttler look a like award goes to Richard. The Chef Tom look alike award goes to Stefan.

Let the silliness begin!

Evergreen Space Museum

2008-11-09T11:52:00.000-08:00

If you are ever in Portland, and you like space/flight museums, it is worth the trip to head down highway 18 and go to the Evergreen Museum. We visited the flight half last year, where we saw the Spruce Goose and lots of fighters. This year they opened the space museum part. So, on our way back from the coast, we stopped by and checked it out.

Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum

Replica of Sputnik

This is the Luma. It's an American recreation of the V-1 German rocket, created with captured parts from Germany. Originally, they thought they could deliver the bomb on Japan with on of these. Of course that has lots of problems, like these were fairly easy to shoot down and had rather small payloads.

Replica V-2

Nose cones from early rockets

This the cockpit of the Mercury missions. This one never flew, but it is an authentic module from the program.

Inside the cockpit shot of the Mercury module.

Replica of the Gemini module

Replica of the Apollo module

Replica of the Apollo lunar lander

They had a real six story titan missile (the ones that deliver the bomb), erected upright in the building and they had a ton of rocket engines, including a real Saturn 5 rocket engine.

The museum is really nice and informational. It does a nice job telling the whole space exploration story. It starts with the Germans and then lays out the entire space race between us and the Russians. You walk down a long hallway, on one side is all of our stuff and on the other is the Russians. Eventually the two combine into the joint efforts we see today. It was pretty cool. Lots of space suits, small artifacts (like a Russian space navigation atlas of earth) and some simulators for kids to play around with the controls of the different modules.

Good times.

Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum

Ron White

2008-11-09T11:00:00.000-08:00

Ron White, the comedian, was in town Friday. It was pretty funny. They taped it for TV, so I think it will end up on Showtime or Comedy Central fairly soon.

In case you are having trouble placing Ron White, he is the fourth guy on the blue collar comedy tour, the one that didn't join the show of similar name on comedy central. As usual he came out smoking his cigar and drank quite a bit of scotch during the show.

By the end of the show, I think he had crossed the line between lubricated and drunk. He did come out and give a comedy encore, which I didn't know they did. During that part, his dogs actually wandered out on stage and sat down next to him.

We got back from our trip to the Oregon coast just in time for the show. I'll post some pics of our trip (mainly pics from the new space museum) later.

USA! USA!

2008-11-08T17:45:00.000-08:00

Looks like the tax cuts for green projects are starting to have the desired effect of making it attractive to build in the USA.

Delivering quite a blow to both Gordon Brown and Britain, BP has dumped its plans to build out wind farms and other renewable projects in Britain for projects in the United States. The US government incentives for clean energy projects provide convenient tax shelter for oil and gas revenues - something BP is looking for with an estimated $8 billion earmarked for the initiative.

Link

Go us!

/wave the flag

Election Results Thread

2008-11-04T12:10:00.001-08:00

It's just about over, so I thought I would grab the widget and start a results thread. Good luck to everyone. Hope your voting lines are not too long.

538 has a nice graphic for this prediction tonight.

Cellphones vs Land Line only Polls

2008-11-02T23:32:00.000-08:00

This is an interesting chart. The yellow polls are the ones that include cellphones in the calls. The grey ones only use land lines when doing polling calls. See if you can spot the trend.

The New Tree

2008-11-02T14:55:00.000-08:00

After much debate, we decided to purchase a fake Christmas tree. We had resisted because all the places around here only had clear lights. But, we found a place that sold the model we like with multi color lights.

I think we are ok talking Christmas the day after Halloween now.

Obama/McCain polling from World of Warcraft

2008-10-31T08:08:00.000-07:00

Who is winning the vote in the World of Warcraft?

Watching Palin

2008-10-30T11:33:00.003-07:00

While Palin is watching Russia, they are watching her right back.

He he

Obama is the DEVIL!@!@!!

2008-10-30T11:01:00.000-07:00

From Fox...

Could Lucifer play a role in this presidential election? It may sound crazy, but one of the candidates in this race has publicly praised, even emulated, a writer-activist who himself paid tribute to Lucifer. That’s right, Lucifer, also known as the Devil, Satan, Beelzebub—you get the idea.

Do you think that admiring a Lucifer-admirer would make a difference to some voters?

After the "godless" smear against sunday school teacher Kay Hagen yesterday (so much for anyone's freedom of religion), you could kind of see this coming.

After the terrorist, anti-american, elitist, communist, socialist, not joe the plumberist, tokyo rose-ist... we were running out of "ists" to call the Democrats. Wait, we got one more, we can call him the devil!!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Now where do they go? After you've gone full on inquisition on someone, how do you ratchet it up from there?

As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.
Voltaire

Update:

Aparently this smear is getting followed up by an email campaign of the following.

PLEASE READ AND PRAY THAT GOD'S WILL BE DONE (NOT OURS).
This will make you re-think: A Trivia question in Sunday School: How long is the beast allowed to have authority in Revelations?

Revelations Chapter 13 tells us it is 42 months, and you know what that is. Almost a four-year term of a Presidency.

All I can say is 'Lord, Have mercy on us!'

According to The Book of Revelations the anti-Christ is: The anti-Christ will be a man, in his 40's, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with Persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal....the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, And when he is in power, will destroy everything..

Do we recognize this description??

I STRONGLY URGE each one of you to post this as many times as You can! Each opportunity that you have to send it to a friend or media outlet..do it! I refuse to take a chance on this unknown candidate who came out of nowhere.

Death to Israel?

2008-10-28T16:41:00.000-07:00

The crackpots are out. Seriously, this guy is the heart of the last week of McCain's campaign. And he is agreeing with the dangerously stupid assertion that Barack Obama = death to Israel.

As McCain likes to point out, you can tell a lot about someone by the company they keep. When given the chance, the campaign didn't exactly walk away from this crazy assertion.

While he’s clearly his own man, so far Joe has offered some penetrating and clear analysis that cuts to the core of many of the concerns that people have with Barack Obama’s statements and policies.

It's not cute, it isn't folksy, and it isn't patriotic. People say they hate attack politics, but I think they just hate.

If McCain wins, you can bank on only negative fear based attacks from now on. We will have proven that we lost our bravery long ago and all we have left is fear, fear, and more fear.

If they can say anything scary and you just gulp it down without thinking about how stupid it is, you deserve the country these lying bastards will continue to serve you.

The Closing Argument from Obama.

2008-10-27T12:19:00.000-07:00

Every one says they hate partisan attack politics. So, ask yourself, listen to the speeches. Who is appealing to our better angles and who is dragging us into the muck? You get the country you vote for. If you like the personal attacks, then vote for the party that just can't get enough of them.

If you want one country united, vote for the people that are trying to achieve that.

From Obama's closing argument stump speech.

In one week, you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election; that tries to pit region against region, city against town, Republican against Democrat; that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope

In one week, we can choose hope over fear, unity over division, the promise of change over the power of the status quo.

In one week, we can come together as one nation, and one people, and once more choose our better history.

that’s what hope is – that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better is waiting around the bend; that insists there are better days ahead. If we’re willing to work for it. If we’re willing to shed our fears and our doubts. If we’re willing to reach deepdown inside ourselves when we’re tired and come back fighting harder.

Hope! That’s what kept some of our parents and grandparents going when times were tough. What led them to say, “Maybe I can’t go to college, but if I save a little bit each week my child can; maybe I can’t have my own business but if I work really hard my child can open one of her own.” It’s what led immigrants from distant lands to come to these shores against great odds and carve a new life for their families in America; what led those who couldn’t vote to march and organize and stand for freedom; that led them to cry out,

“It may look dark tonight, but if I hold on to hope, tomorrow will be brighter.”
That’s what this election is about. That is the choice we face right now.

McCain says something different

That is what change means for Barack the Redistributor: It means taking your money and giving it to someone else.

Senator Obama may say he's trying to soak the rich, but it's the middle class who are going to get put through the wringer, because even the tax increase he admits to misses the target.

"That's what's going to happen if the Democrats have total control of Washington," McCain said, speaking of higher taxes and a bloated federal bureaucracy. "We can't let that happen."

A weak President will, indeed, be tested. Obama and Democrats’ politics endanger American lives. They are not qualified to lead our military and our country. When you vote, vote for the team that puts leadership, character and country first. John McCain

new robo calls from McCain

Hello, I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC, because Democrats are dangerously weak on crime. Barack Obama has voted against tougher penalties for street gangs, drug-related crimes, and protecting children from danger. Barack Obama and his liberal allies have a disturbing history of coddling criminals. so we can't trust their judgment to keep our families safe. This call was paid for by the Republican National Committee and McCain-Palin 2008 at 866 558-5591. Thank you, bye

The Boogie Man is Twitter.

2008-10-26T17:05:00.000-07:00

We live in a world that is dangerous. No doubt. But this war on communication is stupid. If terrorists wanted to communicate, they wouldn't use an open tool like Twitter. It's almost silly easy to write a microblog program that would do exactly the same thing, but be encrypted and unknown. Heck, most of them probably don't even speak English as their primary language and would be using some sort of middle eastern version of Twitter.

A draft US Army intelligence report has identified the popular micro-blogging service Twitter, Global Positioning System maps and voice-changing software as potential terrorist tools.

The report by the 304th Military Intelligence Battalion, posted on the website of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), examines a number of mobile and web technologies and their potential uses by militants.

The posting of the report on the FAS site was reported Friday by Wired magazine contributing editor Noah Shachtman on his national security blog "Danger Room" at wired.com.

The report is not based on clandestine reporting but drawn from open source intelligence known as OSINT.

A chapter on "Potential for Terrorist Use of Twitter" notes that Twitter members sent out messages, known as "Tweets," reporting the July Los Angeles earthquake faster than news outlets and activists at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis used it to provide information on police movements.

"Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences," the report said.

I love the part where they list the groups that use Twitter now... I hope they track down those evil vegetarians...I know those are the people I'm worried about. There is something a little creepy about not wanting to eat meat.

And what is left out of the groups "religious" and "atheists"? Isn't that everyone? Is there some silent majority of people that are not religious nor atheist? Maybe we should put all of them on some sort of watch list.

Suspect everyone!

If all we had was fire, then they would say that we should be worried about terrorists using smoke signals. Maybe instead of having a catalog of each and every form of communication, we should just say that any way that two people can communicate could be used for nefarious purposes.

We can't make ourselves safe by trying to find the needle in a million hay stacks. We can't monitor everything that is said to everyone all the time. But that isn't what this is about. It's about letting us know they are watching. Listen up human rights folks, we are watching, so don't try any of the crazy human rights stuff.

And socialists better be on the look out, because we are tracking your broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and the creation of an egalitarian society. So, keep your nose clean.

Maybe they should just mail us a tin foil hat with our next stimulus check.

Skate America

2008-10-26T10:03:00.001-07:00

The Skate America competition was hosted in Everett this week. That's just over the hill from us, so we bought a couple tickets and headed down last night. Our session was the women's short program and the men's free skate. Good times.

The women

Skater Country Notes
Mirai Nagasu U.S. Reigning U.S. champion and World Junior bronze medalist.
Rachael Flatt U.S. Reigning World Junior champion.

Kimmie Meissner U.S. 2006 World Champion. Winner of the gold medal at last year's Skate America.
Miki Ando Japan 2007 World champion; winner of the gold and silver medals at Skate America in 2006 and 2007, repectively.
Yu-Na Kim Korea Two-time World bronze medalist. Winner of the gold medal at the ISU Grand Prix final each of the last two years.
Mira Leung Canada 2008 Canadian silver medalist; Fifth-place finisher at 2008 Four Continents Championships.

Yan Liu China Three-time Chinese champion (2005, 2007-08).

Susanna Poykio Finland Five-time Finnish champion (2000, 2002, 2005-07); first Finnish lady to medal at an ISU championship (bronze medal at the 2001 World Junior Championships) and at the European Championships (silver in 2005).

Annette Dytrt Germany Owns unique distinction of winning national senior ladies championships in three countries: Czech Republic (1999), France (2003) and Germany (2003-06).

Valentina Marchei Italy 2008 Italian champion; Sixth-place finisher at 2008 European Championships.

Yukari Nakano Japan Fourth-place finisher at 2008 World Championships; 2008 Japanese bronze medalist; 2006 Four Continents silver medalist.

Tugba Karademir Turkey 2008 AEGON Challenge Cup silver medalist; 2006 Olympian.

The men

Evan Lysacek U.S. Two-time reigning U.S. champion.
Johnny Weir U.S. Reigning World bronze medalist.
Adam Rippon U.S. 2008 World Junior champion, 2008 Junior Grand Prix Final champion and 2008 U.S. junior champion.

Kevin Van Der Perren Belgium Six-time Belgian champion (2000-2004, 2007); Sixth-place finisher at 2008 World Championships.

Sean Sawyer Canada Three-time Canadian bronze medalist.
Kevin Reynolds Canada 2007 Junior Grand Prix Final bronze medalist; 2005 Canadian junior silver medalist.

Ian Martinez Canada Tenth-place finish at 2008 Canadian National championships. Fifth-place finish at 2007 Junior Grand Prix Talinn Cup.
Takahiko Kozuka Japan 2008 Japanese silver medalist; 2006 World Junior champion; 2006 Junior Grand Prix Final champion.

Alexander Uspenski Russia Fifth-place finish at the 2008 Russian National championships.
Adrian Schultheiss Sweden 2006 Swedish champion; Sixth-place finisher at 2008 European Championships.

Igor Macypura Slovakia Reigning Slovakian National champion. Second-place finish at 2008 Triglav Trophy.

Overall I think the US has a ways to go to be competitive on the womens side. The Japanesse were spectacular and the Korean girl was great. I think we have a pretty good shot on the men's side, but then I don't know if the best competitors showed up for the men's program.

Everett is where most of the Korean's congregate in Seattle. It would be unfair to call it little Korea. But, if you had a hankering for PHO, let's just say, you have options. About a third of the crowd were Korean and they were rabid in support of the Korean skater. In fact they stood and sang and waved flags pretty much the entire performance and then gave her a 5 minute standing ovation.... Then they got up and left.

I'll try to post my spec skaters from the photos later.

On the way home we remembered that the tickets for Vancouver 2010 are now available. So, we hopped on the internet tubes and looked up how much it would cost. Yeah, ouch. I think we will be staying home. Look for yourself at the prices.

One session of the skating was over $500 dollars per person. Hey I like skating as much as the next guy, but I can't justify spending $1,000 per session to watch skating. Even the seats in the nose bleed section where over $200 each.

So, I think we will be at home like everyone else. Of course at the last minute, I'll probably check the scalper prices and see if they have tickets they are looking to unload at a loss, just to get rid of them.

Tokyo Rose? Are you kidding me?

2008-10-24T22:27:00.000-07:00

The GOP has continued is "throw every single name in the book at the Democrats and see if anything sticks" campaign. Seems like the are determined to walk back thru history to every single smear they can find. First it was terrorists, then hippies, then socialists, comunists and anti-americans...now it's WWII and Tokyo Rose... OK THEN.

What's next? I expect soon the will be called Whigs or perhaps Royalists...Maybe they will go back further and call them papists or visigoths. This is stupid. Show some class GOP.

From Senator Tom Harkin
During a joint appearance on Iowa Public Television yesterday, my Republican challenger Chris Reed became the latest in an unfortunately growing wave of Republicans to make vile and hateful accusations against their Democratic opponents. Yesterday, I sent the following email to my supporters calling for an end to these smears and telling them how to rid the country of such bitter tactics.

Earlier today, Iowa Public Television hosted a candidate forum with Republican challenger Chris Reed and me.

During the debate, Mr. Reed accused me of being the "Tokyo Rose" of al Qaeda. He later clarified the term by accusing me of "providing aid and comfort to the enemy" and "of giving our enemies the playbook."

As someone who has proudly worn the uniform of our country and who has served the people of Iowa in the United States Senate, this is a disgraceful attack. It has to end. It has to end today.

We have real crises in this country -- two major wars, an economic crisis and a housing crisis. We must address these critical issues without the Rovian smears that have ignited a divisive environment in Washington and on the campaign trail.

Too often in recent weeks, Republicans have made outlandish and hateful accusations.

I know you've been outraged by their comments. Just a few days ago, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann accused Barack Obama of being un-American on national television. And Sarah Palin continues to accuse Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists." These attacks should never be part of our political discourse.

If you are sick and tired of the division and attacks, then please do something about it.

Please go vote. Go vote today if you can - there are polling places open all across the state. Call three friends and go vote today.

The best way to overcome negativity and to reject the politics of hate and division is to repudiate the Party and the people who make these charges.

You have the power to repudiate these attacks --- please go vote.

Gamers

2008-10-24T11:38:00.001-07:00

A new survey of gamers has come out. I thought some of the info was pretty interesting.

Here are some of noteworthy findings of the study:

55 percent of gamers polled were married, 48 percent have kids, and new gamers – those who have started playing videogames in the past two years—are 32 years old on average
More than 75 percent of videogamers play games with other people either online or in person
More than 47 percent of people living in gaming households saying that videogames were a fun way to interact with other family members
37 percent of gamers said friends and family relied upon them to stay up-to-date about movies, TV shows and the latest entertainment news, compared to only 22 percent for nongamers
39 percent of gamers said that friends and family rely upon them to stay up-to-date about the latest technology
In terms of hard dollars, the average gaming household income ($79,000) is notably higher than that of nongaming households ($54,000), but the value of the gamer as a marketing target can be seen in a variety of ways
Gamers are 13 percent more likely to go out to a movie, 11 percent more likely to play sports, and 9 percent more likely to go out with friends than nongamers
Gamers are twice as likely as nongamers to buy a product featuring new technology even if they are aware that there are still bugs
Gamers are also twice as likely as nongamers to pay a premium for the newest technology on the market
Gamers also consume media in different ways than nongamers, with hardcore gamers spending five more hours on the Internet, two more hours watching television and two more hours listening to music than nongamers per week
And the counterintuitive kicker:

Gamers are twice as likely to go out on dates as nongamers in a given month

Survey of gamers and non-gamers

Oppie for Obama

2008-10-23T10:20:00.000-07:00

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

Election Prediction

2008-10-23T08:58:00.000-07:00

Well, with a little less then two weeks to go, this is my prediction of the election.

Obama: 347
McCain: 191

The states that could flip are

to McCain: ND, MO, NC and FL.
to Obama: IN, OH, MT, and GA.

Pick your election tool

If you look at Pollster.com and resolve all toss up states in the camp of the guy currently leading the results end up closer to:

Obama: 364
McCain: 174

I think that is a little too pro Obama, as I expect the tide to pull him back in a bit.

The problem for McCain is that even in his best case senario, I can't see him doing better then this map, which still has him losing 277 - 261.

And as long as we are making wild surge predictions, here is the Obama dream map. This is the map if the last week surge happens for Obama.

GA could be a real upset as african american and early voting appears to be much higher then expected and obviously, that's good news for Obama.

I did the wave chart because it looks like this is going to be a big turn out election. When that happens, some states flip based on new voter turn out and such. Big turnout almost always favors the Democrats, which is why they works so hard to register people and the Republicans work so hard to disqualify people. Every projection I've seen compares this to 1960 in terms of turn out, not the dismal showings as of late. Seems like hard times drive people to vote, and this year is no exception.

The other interesting aspect of a wave would be to see if the GOP would lose either Alaska or Arizona. You can see from my projection that most of the states around Arizona are trending blue this year. AZ is no exception and would have been a big time battleground state if not for the native son aspect of the McCain run. However, McCain hasn't put his home state away. Much like Gore losing TN in 2000 marked the end of the "southern strategy" for the Democrats, losing AZ would mark the begining of the end in the southwest for the Republicans.

Fear of the brown people combined with a lot more brown people could move NM, CO, AZ, and CA out of the GOP column for a long long time. It could even threaten the GOP hold on parts of Texas.

Rudy gears up for 2012

2008-10-22T15:58:00.000-07:00

On the Republican side the challengers are already picking over the bones of McCain. Palin seems intent on making the last two weeks all about her ascendancy in 2012. Jindal in LA is scheduling time in Iowa just two weeks after the election. Jindal

All that is fine and good positioning, but Rudy seems to have crossed a line with this obvious shot across the bow that he is running.
http://joinrudy2012.com/

Changes in American Politics

2008-10-22T09:18:00.000-07:00

We stand on the verge of the end of the Democratic Parties long exile in the wilderness. After 40 years of decline, for the first time in my life time, the Dems are on the verge of making massive gains in both houses of Congress and have a better then good shot at picking up the White House, which will probably end the conservative slide of the Supreme Court for a generation as well.

It would be easy to say that the country has turned from center right to center left. That this election is a rejection of conservative politics and an embracing of a new liberal mindset. You can't throw a stone around liberal circles these days without hitting a half dozen people that will crow about exactly those points.

However, I think all that would be over reaching. Just like it was over reaching for the GOP to proudly declare in 2004 that they had achieved their permanent majority status. In the end I don't think we are a nation of conservatives or liberals. We are a nation of people that don't care about ideology and just want solutions.

Oh sure you can find conservatives and you can find liberals. About 30% of people identify with each side of the argument(depending on how you ask the question). But that leaves the middle 40% out there as the majority. This middle 40% seem to change direction not based on ideas, but based on events that cause them to switch direction. Let's take a journey through our history looking through this lens I've laid out here.

First off some ground rules. I'm going broadly layout era's of politics. The first era is liberal era from 1929 - 1968. The second era is the conservative era from 1968 - 2005. I do think we've switched polls again since 2005 and are headed toward a new era, but I'll leave that up to you to agree or disagree with.

Obviously within these era's you will see times when the other party won individual elections. IE, Clinton in 92 and Ike in 52. However, I think in each case, the over all trend didn't change. As each of those Presidents was really a rear guard action for their respective parties.

Clinton is reviled among many Democratic circles because he was seen as a triangulation candidate. Running just far enough to the right to get to 270 in the electoral college. A strategy that didn't work out so well for Gore or Kerry. In addition Perot clearly helped split the Republican vote, allowing Clinton to win in 92.

Ike was a war hero and benefitted from being the guy that won WWII in the face of an unpopular war in Korea. Like Clinton, Ike clearly sat closer to the middle of the country then at the heart of his own party. Neither can be seen as effectively changing the course of the era in which they ruled. In fact, the high point of the conservative charge happened during Clinton's first term with the election of 1994.

My Theory
The theory I've struck upon is that people change direction of how they vote based on disaster events. That when these events happen, they select the other competing theory.

The classic example of this is the crash of 1929. Almost everyone recognizes this as an inflection point for politics in the last century. After years of good times and stock market bubble, the country hiccupped and sunk into the great depression. Suddenly the era of big government was ushered into office. In America this took on the form of FDR and the New Deal. FDR's America was far different then it's previous form. Suddenly the government was the answer to all our problems. Social Security, jobs, and after Pearl Harbor and WWII a foreign policy that sought to interject America into the affairs of other countries all over the world.

Heck by the time we get to Kennedy and LBJ, we decided we need Americans on the Moon. There was no place in the universe that couldn't be made better with a healthy does of good ol American ideals. We were John Wayne. We walked tall and we wore the white hat. We destroyed the Nazis and by god we were coming for the Commies.

And with that swagger we walked smack dab into Vietnam war. Even that probably wouldn't have ended the era if not for the Tet Offensive and all that unfolded in 1968. I pick Tet as the inflection point because I think the whole year unfolded from that point. No Tet, no LBJ resignation from the race. No LBJ resignation, no RFK run for the White House. No RFK run, no RFK assassination. All of which culminated with the 1968 convention, which solidified in people's minds that the Democrats had lost control of their party and that a change was needed.

To this day, you can't escape 1968. Don't believe me? Ayers and his attacks are 1968. The fundamental splits between the parties today are based in the battles that emerged in 1968. After the massive changes that had marked the years since 1929, the country decided to take a breather. The 40% in the middle that had voted in overwhelming numbers for LBJ and the destruction of the old Republican in 1964, turned on the Dems in 1968 and elected Nixon, a man they had rejected just 8 years earlier.

Civil rights had been the hallmark of the 60's, but in the 70's stopping equal rights became a rallying cry on the right. The John Wayne attitudes gave way to cold war fears and the dread of nuclear winter. This led us to fear using force and laid the seeds for our current crisis in the poorly handled Iran Hostage crisis.

Even tough talking Reagan could only muster up firing a few missiles at Libya and taking out the super power Grenada as his displays of might. We became timid. We suffered from the Vietnam syndrome. Even the Gulf war was heralded for being over in 100 hours and very light loss of life.

In many ways, I view this era as when we lost our nerve as a country. In the 60's we had several high profile losses at NASA, but nothing stopped the momentum of the march toward the Moon. After Apollo 13, the nation quickly decided that space was too dangerous and cancelled further Apollo missions. And after Challenger, we took years off from space to figure out what went wrong.

We created the EPA and passed massive environmental laws. We passed safety laws to protect workers. We passed seatbelt laws to protect passengers. We pass Amber alerts to make sure every child was safe. We were obsessed with safety, with trying minimize any threat to ourselves.

We lost our ability to come together to make big projects happen. Our tallest buildings are close to 40 years old or older. Our infrastructure is crumbling because we stopped building new bridges and new roads and new tracks and new anything. Heck, we stopped building factories in our country. We decided that America was not the answer to anything.

We didn't need American leadership, in fact we need isolation. Don't get involved in anything risky. Don't do anything dangerous. Don't rock the boat. And by the way, I want my money back from the government, because I don't trust them to spend it wisely. (I've always viewed tax bitching as a referendum on trust in the government. More bitching = less trust)

And that worked right up to Katrina.

Some people will say 9/11 was the transition moment, but I don't think so. 9/11 only re-enforced the meme that we live in a dangerous world. If anything it changed our stance on foreign policy. Finally out from under the shadow of the cold war, we decided we could practice some old school American invasion.

That said, I think the real kicker for change was Katrina. For some reason that episode became the moment where we all looked at the out come of lack of investment in our country. At some gut level, we saw the failure of those levies as our own failure to invest in our own country. We realized that no matter how much we ignored the problem, those walls and pumps were getting weaker on their own, just like our position internationally and our economic strength here at home.

You saw changes in acceptance of Global Warming and a big reduction in bitching about the war on terror. UH? Both are positions of accepting our need to be world leaders on these issues and reversals of previous head in the sand positions.

The 40% in the middle have switched again. Barring future disaster, they will probably be in that camp for another generation. You can see the acceptance of this in the fact that both parties are running on change.

So, just to tie it up in a bow. I see the country as a long history of decisions not on left or right, but on engagement or isolation. Mostly the left wins during times of engagement and mostly the right wins during times of isolation.

Just as it was a mistake for the GOP to think they were dominate forever, it would be a mistake for my colleagues on the left to think the country suddenly became a bastion of leftist ideals.

This is the difference

2008-10-21T16:12:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend Joe Biden said something that pissed off McCain/Palin. He said that with in the first six months of an Obama presidency, Obama would be tested by someone in an internaltional crisis. McCain/Palin have jumped all over this, saying that he invited attacks and that it shows how weak Obama is...blah blah blah.

I think this shows the true fault line between the two parties. It is the core of the anti/pro America crap that gets spread around. It's the core of why Democrats are so mad about the war and the economy.

To put it bluntly, one party believes that stating observations is not wrong and one party believes that we should ignore all bad things and just focus on the good. Anything negative is just whining or traitorous.

Take Biden's remark. All he said was, as a student of history, we know that Presidents are usually challenged in their first six months. It points out the obvious, it points out the huristic we feel about how the world reacts to a new President. Saying it doesn't change whether or not it is done. But by saying it, you acknowledge the need for action and you get ready to face the upcoming challenge.

But the party on the right insists on trying to create a history by controlling narrative. I call it the Tinkerbell effect. Everything will work out, if we just clap hard enough and if it isn't working out, then you need to clap harder.

We saw this in the war. Anyone that said, hey, I don't think this is going well or even, I don't think you are planning very well was called a traitor.

We saw this on Wall Street. There is no crisis and if you say there is one, then you are a doom weaver.

Of course the problem is that there are facts and they are stuborn things. We can't clap our way out of the current economic crisis. We can't ignore our enemies strengthening in Afganistan, just because mentioning it would betray the "mission accomplished" banner. Global warming won't go away if we just pretend it doesn't exist. Believing that outsourcing creates more jobs in America only works until you lose your job.

It's more comfortable to believe that nothing is wrong. I get it. I want to live in easy times, wealthy care free times. But for too long we have rested on the greatness of the nation that our fore fathers gave to us and refused to fix our problems.

If we don't stop the Ostrich culture, we could let it all slip away. But, I believe that we can restore our nation. We can be great again. We have the strength, the knowledge and the work ethic to be great. Acknowledging that we have problems doesn't weaken us, it allows us to focus our considerable might upon them. And that is the way to creating a country that doesn't just rival our current foes, but challenges the empires of old for greatness.

Confronted

2008-10-20T12:15:00.000-07:00

Good for these people. Hate shouldn't encouraged on any side. Good for these people for standing up to them.

McCain Fundraising with the Russians

2008-10-20T11:00:00.000-07:00

For a campaign that wants to point the anti-American finger at everyone else and at the same time insinuate that his opponent is taking money from foriegners, this is strange.

But then, for a bit I've believed that you can always determine what the GOP is up to by looking at what they are acusing their opponents of. It's like they go...hey this would be pretty bad if we got caught doing this...I wonder if we could acuse the Democrats of this...That would be awsome!

What a joke.

Russia's permanent mission to the UN has received a letter from U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain asking for financial support of his election campaign, the mission said in a statement on Monday.

"We have received a letter from Senator John McCain with a request for a financial donation to his presidential election campaign. In this respect we have to reiterate that neither Russia's permanent mission to the UN nor the Russian government or its officials finance political activities in foreign countries," the statement said.

According to Ruslan Bakhtin, press secretary of the Russian mission, the letter dated September 29 and signed by McCain, was addressed to Vitaly Churkin, Russia's envoy to the UN, and arrived on October 16.

The ambassador's title was not included in the letter, and was not clear why the letter had taken over two weeks to arrive.

Enclosed was a request for a donation of up to $5,000 to McCain's election campaign to be returned with a check or permission to withdraw the money from the donor's credit card until October 24.

More acts against supporters

2008-10-20T10:11:00.000-07:00

How sad a person do you have to be to slash people's tires because they support someone in an election. Dare I say, that doesn't sound like the America I want to see.

Someone slashed the tires of at least 30 vehicles parked outside the Crown Coliseum on Sunday during a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, authorities said.

Sheriff’s deputies are investigating. The tires were cut while people were inside the Crown Coliseum listening to speeches, said Maj. E. Wright of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office.

Many of the damaged vehicles were parked on Wilkes Road. Representatives from Obama and Sen. John McCain’s campaigns said they were unaware of the acts.

Susan Lagana, the North Carolina communications director for Obama, said it was extremely disappointing and unfortunate that “people would have to experience something like that.”

Mario Diaz, communications director for McCain, did not respond to a call late Sunday.

The insulting words lead to minor deeds, which in turn lead to real violence. The dehumanizing that has gone on here is very dangerous. We are starting to see it's effects. We should all condem these types of things.

The words matter. When you call people terrorist or say they are anti-American, you do more then push your agenda, you unleash the hate in people's souls. We need to stop this today.

This is awful

2008-10-19T14:58:00.000-07:00

I have no love for W, but this is wrong. I hope they pull this from the online campaign for the movie "W" soon.

Would it hurt to show respect?

Obama has his own flag!!!!!

2008-10-19T12:43:00.000-07:00

On the October 15 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Bob Grant said: "[W]hat is that flag that Obama's been standing in front of that looks like an American flag, but instead of having the field of 50 stars representing the 50 states, there's a circle?" He then said: "Is the circle the 'O' for Obama? Is that what it is?" Grant later said: "[D]id you notice Obama is not content with just having several American flags, plain old American flags with the 50 states represented by 50 stars? He has the 'O' flag. And that's what that 'O' is. That's what that 'O' is. Just like he did with the plane he was using. He had the flag painted over, and the 'O' for Obama. Now, these are symptom -- these things are symptomatic of a person who would like to be a potentate -- a dictator." '

Oh boy this sounds bad. I hope people take it in stride and don't make to much of it.

At an Ohio campaign stop last week Obama gave a speech with a background of American flags which is quite common. However, if you look closely some of the flags are not American flags. The blue field has been changed to show an Obama seal. Yes, there are also stars but have no pattern and they do not add up to 50.

With Obama making his own seal and now this it looks like maybe he is putting some credence to the recent article by Stanley Kurtz in the National Review. Is he planning on creating an African county within the US.

I think the presence of these flags should be viewed with alarm. And I don't want to hear any looney left comments that they are only decoration. They ARE a modification of the American Flag.

The secret is out, this flag is the new African flag of the United States of America. The only thing standing in Obama's way is getting a release from the state of Ohio... Since the flag is the Ohio state flag.

The nerve of Obama to use it during a stop in Ohio... What a bastard. I'm just glad the right wing is here to expose the lies.

Powell endorses Obama

2008-10-19T08:27:00.000-07:00

Obviously I think this is great. I don't think I'm revealing anything when I say that I also support Obama.

What struck me about this is not the content of the endorsement, but the tone. There is a reason that Powell has always been popular across party lines. He has always been a person that shows respect and thus gets respect.

His indictment of the party politics of division is both amazing and needed right now.

Violence on the campaign trail

2008-10-19T08:13:00.000-07:00

You call people names. You say there are anti and pro parts of America. You say that your opponent is just like our mortal enemies... in short you dehumanize him. It isn't long before this starts to happen.

CALEDONIA, Wis. -- Police in Caledonia are investigating the assault of a campaign volunteer as she was canvassing for Senator Barack Obama Saturday afternoon.

In an exclusive interview with 12 News, 58 year-old Nancy Takehara of Chicago says she was going door-to-door when she came across a disgruntled homeowner.

“The next thing I know he’s telling us we’re not his people, we’re probably with ACORN, and he started screaming and raving,” Takehara said. “He grabbed me by the back of the neck. I thought he was going to rip my hair out of my head. He was pounding on my head and screaming. The man terrified me.”

This isn't an isolated incidence. Reports are starting to come in from all over this week of speratic violence against Obama supporters and reporters (liberal elitist media).

The name calling matters. You don't try to beat up the fuller brush guy when he comes to the door, because you haven't dehumanized him. But, once you've equated your opponent with the worst of the worst, people think its ok to commit violence.

The delusion that millions of people in America are anti-American has to end or we will end up in civil war before this is over.

Update: Are we really up to the point where spitting in women's faces is acceptable political dialog?

And I also have a lovely blue Joe Biden sticker on my window, courtesy of the event I went to last week. In fact, the lady gave me a roll of them to distribute to friends and family. Both my kids have them on their backpacks, although sadly I think I'll be taking them off.

So, I went to the drug store this morning to buy..well..stuff you buy at drug stores when some lady noticed the magnet and sticker and complimented me on it. I told her I had more stickers and when she asked if she could have one, I gave her ten to give out to friends. (I have, like, 100.) Then two skateboarders rolled by and they asked for a few.

It was a good start to a good day. I went into the drugstore, bought what I needed, went back to my car and a guy approaches my car and without saying one word spits in my face.

Obama hung in effigy

2008-10-17T22:11:00.000-07:00

Every side has it's share of idiots, but this is definitly starting to become a pattern that isn't pretty. Hey, I take my shots at the unions and the PETA punks, but I'd stand next to them any day of the week over the KKK.

Surprise, shock and some fear in a local neighborhood, after an anti-Obama display is hung from a tree. The display is at a home at Symmes and Hicks Road in Fairfield.

And the person who put it there says the message isn't political, it's racist. Shawn Ley spoke with the man who isn't shy about his views.

There it is, right above the "McCain-Palin" sign: a make-shift ghost, hanging from a noose. A Barack Obama sign attached upside down. Obama's middle name: "Hussein" spray painted and misspelled above.

Mike Lunsford hung the ghost in his yard. He spoke to us off-camera, saying his views could hurt his employers business ... but he says make no mistake: He doesn't want an African American running the country.

Lunsford says he believes Barack Obama is not a "full blooded American." And he says the United States is a white, Christian nation - and only with white Christians should be in power. With Lunsford not willing to share his views on-camera:

"It's like whoa. He's definitely anti-black."

Link

GOP county website encourages "Waterboarding Obama"

2008-10-16T06:24:00.000-07:00

Are you kidding me? This isn't "kill him" screamed out in the passion of a speech. This is deliberately calling for the torture of the oposing party's candidate.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sacramento County Republican leaders Tuesday took down offensive material on their official party Web site that sought to link Sen. Barack Obama to Osama bin Laden and encouraged people to "Waterboard Barack Obama" — material that even offended state GOP leaders.

Conservatives like to point out all the dumb ass groups that stand next to liberals. But really, does it get any more dumb ass then the KKK? Clearly people don't want to be called racists...but when their goals line up with the KKK, it's pretty hard not make the connection.

The vandalism to the Obama display appeared to have been done overnight Monday. A racial epithet, profanity, "KKK" and the words "white power" were clearly visible from the roadway. Six of the nine fence panels were defaced.

"What you are describing to me is not free speech, it's vandalism. We don't condone it," MacGlashan said.

But he defended his Web site. "I'm aware of the content,"he said. "Some people find it offensive, others do not. I cannot comment on how people interpret things."

MacGlashan said he would "consider people's complaints" before taking any action.

By Tuesday night, much of the questionable material — which ranged from depicting Obama in a turban to attacking Michelle Obama — had been removed, replaced with political cartoons attacking Obama.

I love the part where he condems the "vandalism" but says nothing about the content of the vandalism or takes the moment to condem white power, hate speech, or the KKK. Sometimes what they don't say is as telling as what they do say.

Article Link

Seriously going to far

2008-10-14T20:32:00.000-07:00

Time to stop with the retoric. There aren't many more steps between this and real violence in the streets.

PHILADELPHIA -- There was a scare Tuesday at the South Philadelphia campaign headquarters of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.

Images: HazMat Team Checks Letter

The office at 15th and Christian streets was filled with volunteers around 5 p.m. when one of them brought in the mail and opened a letter that had a note and a powdery substance on it that immediately set off alarms.

She notified a supervisor. Then, they placed the letter outside, evacuated the building and called police.

Fortunately, the substance found in the letter was harmless and nobody was hurt. But the incident is still under investigation as a threat, Fox 29's Sharon Crowley reported.

Philadelphia police, fire officials, hazardous materials teams, the Secret Service, FBI and the U.S. Postal Service responded to the presidential nominee's campaign office.

SkyFox was over the scene as a hazardous materials unit member carefully removed the suspicious letter.

"The letter was somewhat threatening in nature, and it contained a substance that we believed to be a hazmat," Philadelphia police Capt. Mike Gillespie said.

Examining the letter, investigators determined the substance was just harmless brown sugar. The all-clear was given by 5:50 p.m.

But federal agencies will be trying to track down from where the letter addressed to Obama headquarters was sent and, of course, who sent it.

"We want to look over the letter through the plastic bag that we have it in to see what's actually being stated in the letter, to the best of our knowledge, and then determine who's going to be investigating that situation," Gillespie said.

Another Conservative Thrown Under the Straight Talk Express.

2008-10-14T17:10:00.000-07:00

If the Buckley's are to far to the left, then we have a problem in right wing land.

So, I have been effectively fatwahed (is that how you spell it?) by the conservative movement, and the magazine that my father founded must now distance itself from me. But then, conservatives have always had a bit of trouble with the concept of diversity. The GOP likes to say it’s a big-tent. Looks more like a yurt to me.

While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case.

So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.

Senate Update: Updated

2008-10-14T07:18:00.000-07:00

The Senate race continues to tilt away from the Republicans. This is really where the blow back from the attacks last week will occur. For one whole week the national ticket only offered up the idea that Bill Ayers was a bad guy and that Obama knew him. Not exactly the "Contract for America" in terms of helping people decide to keep voting for Libby Dole in North Carolina.

With the absense of ideas or even in some cases, ideas that helped push people away from being Republicans, the Senate numbers are in free fall for the GOP. Pollster.com has Georgia as a toss up state and that doesn't take into account the fact that african americans have gone from 24% of the voting population to over 30% of the voting population in Georgia this cycle over 2004.

None of the Democratic seats are in trouble and at least 10 seats from the GOP are in danger of falling. I expect Lieberman will switch caucus after the election, so getting to the magic 60 that would be filibuster proof will require running the table. I have a hard time seeing that happening, even in a wave year such as this.

The one that will be interesting down the stretch is the McConnell v Lunsford race in KY. McConnell is still in "safe" ground at 48% - 42%. But, being under 50% as an incumbent at this point is a warning sign. Things could go south for Mitch pretty quickly. Obama problably hurts Lunsford, but a heavy dose of both Clintons into Kentucky might boost Lunsford into the dreaded statistical tie. Donations on the left have been flowing to Lunsford, as Dems see this as their defeat Speaker Foley moment in this election. I don't think it will happen, but that it is even a race shows how bad a year this is for the GOP.

Update:

Looks like the RNC is looking at the same alarming polls I pointed to above.

The Republican National Committee, growing nervous over the prospect of Democrats’ winning a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, is considering tapping into a $5 million line of credit this week to aid an increasing number of vulnerable incumbents, top Republicans say.

With party strategists fearing a bloodbath at the polls, GOP officials are shifting to triage mode, determining who can be saved and where to best spend their money.

And with the House and Senate Republican campaign committees being drastically outspent by their Democratic counterparts, and outside groups such as Freedom’s Watch offering far less help than was once anticipated, Republicans are turning to the national party committee as a lender of last resort.

What an awful world for McCain

2008-10-13T16:01:00.000-07:00

If you ever dare speak the truth about McCain, you will be thrown under the bus and probably receive death threats. Witness...

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol said John McCain’s campaign has really become “a pathetic campaign.” In his New York Times op-ed this morning, Kristol went further, suggesting that McCain should “fire his campaign” and “start over.” Asked to respond to Kristol’s criticisms, McCain campaign spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer said on Fox News:

Well, you know Bill is entitled to his perspective. And I used to work for Bill. And I can tell you personally sometimes he’s brilliant and sometimes he’s not. And this is one where it’s the latter category. You know, I think unfortunately he has bought into the Obama campaign’s party line.

If Bill Kristol is in the tank for Obama, then it's time to pack in the campaign and head home. You don't get any further to the right then Bill Kristol. You don't get anymore into the tank of the Republicans then Bill Kristol. In case you don't know who he is, how about a short history lesson from Wiki.

Kristol was "perhaps the most outspoken supporter of the Iraq War".[6] On September 18, 2002, he declared that a war in Iraq "could have terrifically good effects throughout the Middle East." A day later, he said Saddam Hussein was "past the finish line" in developing nuclear weapons. On February 20, 2003, he said of Saddam: "He's got weapons of mass destruction ... Look, if we free the people of Iraq we will be respected in the Arab world." On March 1, 2003 — 18 days before the invasion of Iraq — Kristol dismissed the possibility of sectarian conflict afterward. He also said, "Very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by this president." He maintained that the war would cost $100 billion to $200 billion, but this was inaccurate, as the cost is now about half a trillion dollars. On March 5, 2003, Kristol said, "We'll be vindicated when we discover the weapons of mass destruction."

Yeah, that guy is now a liberal screamer in the tank'r for Obama. I'm reminded of the old Bill Cosby on Prejudice skit where he played a bigot and one by one he talked about "getting rid" of group X or Y. At the end he said, "There are just two people I trust, me and one other guy...and I don't much trust him."

Getting to be a very small circle around McCain. Look at this list of in the tank conservatives that have begun jumping ship on McCain.

Peggy Noonan
Mike Murphy
George Will
Kathleen Parker
Ed Rollins
Christopher Buckley
Tommy Thompson
Mitt Romney
Charlie Crist
Michelle Malkin
David Frum

The Frum quote is the best.

David "axis of evil" Frum gets his "I told you so" ready at the National Review and rebukes his critics who complain that he isn't cheerleading for McCain enough. He concludes: "Perhaps it is our job at NRO is tell our readers only what they want to hear, without much regard to whether it is true. Perhaps it is our duty just to keep smiling and to insist that everything is dandy - that John McCain's economic policies make sense, that his selection of Sarah Palin was an act of statesmanship, that she herself is the second coming of Anna Schwartz, and that nobody but an over-educated snob would ever suggest otherwise."

LOL

Obama compared to Osama

2008-10-13T14:35:00.001-07:00

You could see this BS coming a mile away. It's dismaying that a large portion of the Republican right has come to the conclusion that Democrats are terrorists/hippies/commies/niggers/insert your favorite pejorative here.

According to a report in this week's Time magazine, the Virginia party chairman, Del. Jeffrey M. Frederick (R-Prince William), told Virginia volunteers working for GOP nominee John McCain that Obama and bin Laden "both have friends that bombed the Pentagon."

It's just ridiculous. Of course the link between Ayers and Obama has always been weak. Even the prosecutor in the Weathermen case thinks it is a crock of bunk.

Letter
Prosecuting Weathermen

Published: October 9, 2008

To the Editor:

As the lead federal prosecutor of the Weathermen in the 1970s (I was then chief of the criminal division in the Eastern District of Michigan and took over the Weathermen prosecution in 1972), I am amazed and outraged that Senator Barack Obama is being linked to William Ayers’s terrorist activities 40 years ago when Mr. Obama was, as he has noted, just a child.

Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen.

Because Senator Obama recently served on a board of a charitable organization with Mr. Ayers cannot possibly link the senator to acts perpetrated by Mr. Ayers so many years ago.

...

William C. Ibershof

This will not end well. It reminds me of Max Cleland, a man that gave both his legs and an arm in service to his country. After that, decided that the calling to serve was so strong that he came back and ran for Senate.... He was compared to Osama bin Laden, because he voted against going to war with Iraq.

At some point the right needs to give up the whole "we love our country more then you" line. If you love your country help fix it instead of treating it like an outhouse. If you love the troops, start being outraged that we sent them into a meat grinder based on lies. If you love the flag, start trying to restore our country's sterling reputation around the world instead of being proud that our allies hate us.

You don't call the fire department an arsonist when they show up to put out the fire at your house. Stop blaming the people that see the problems and want them fixed. At some point being part of the jerks that refused to address our problems, makes you part of the problem.

Ignoring our problems is not noble, it isn't patriotic, it isn't cute and it doesn't give anyone the right to call someone else Osama bin Laden.

McCain to offer tax breaks on your stock market gains...

2008-10-12T20:10:00.000-07:00

The McCain plan...

"I think it goes along the lines of now's the time to lower tax rates for investors, capital gains tax, dividend tax rates, to make sure that we can get the economy jump-started," Graham said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "It will be a very comprehensive approach to jump-start the economy by allowing capital to be formed easier in America by lowering taxes."

So, to fix our economy, we get a tax break on all the profits we've made on the stock market... You know, the thing that is off by 40% over the last year. The place where the value of your 401K was cut in half...

Yeah, all the profits you've made are now going to have a lower tax rate. Thanks, that ought to fix everything.

Let me see. I made zero dollars, so the tax... carry the one... oh yeah, I'm tax free now. Whether the rate is 0% or 200%, the tax I'll be paying is exactly the same.

I hear next week, McCain will fix the water crisis by squeezing a stone to get the water out of it. Should be cool.

Bomb Obama

2008-10-11T09:41:00.000-07:00

Seriously folks, this is going to far.

Thursday's debate took place in front of a highly partisan crowd in the GOP stronghold of Middle Georgia.
Chambliss supporters waved "Saxby" signs and offered up a sustained "boos" when Martin mentioned Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

"Bomb Obama," one woman hollered.

How is this not sacreligious?

At a McCain event, Pastor Conrad of the Evangelical Free Church read an invocation that included the following "I would also pray, Lord, that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god—whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah—that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their God is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and election day."

Like some how God needs to be worried about his reputation... yeah ok. From a religous prespective, I'm not sure if this more offenive because it implies that lots of gods exist and their god is vying for dominence (which sounds like polythiesm to me) or that it is offensive because some how god hates 50% of Americans and all of the rest of the world and would rig an election to save face. Maybe these jerks should just focus on praying for stupid things, like pipelines.

And what will happen if Obama wins? Will God be disgraced? Seriously, people like this should be condemed by everyone that hears them.

In the end it's just a shallow attempt to play the "muslim" card against someone because they have a name that isn't common and because they are black. And that makes it hate speech. Fortunatly, his god was listening while the jerk tried to pimp god out in service of his narrow minded hate filled purpose.

PS. I think this is footage of the event.

"imperative that the candidates try to calm people down"

2008-10-10T15:07:00.000-07:00

David Gergen goes back a long ways serving Presidents, most of them conservative. He isn't a flame thrower or someone that goes out of his way to be inflamitory. So, when you see stuff like this, it makes you pause.

CNN contributor David Gergen said that the negative tone of these rallies are "incendiary" and could lead to violence.

"There is this free floating sort of whipping around anger that could really lead to some violence. I think we're not far from that," he told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Thursday. "I really worry when we get people -- when you get the kind of rhetoric that you're getting at these rallies now. I think it's really imperative that the candidates try to calm people down."

It's getting out of hand out there.

Why did we spend all the tax dollars on the investigation?

2008-10-09T20:20:00.000-07:00

Why did we waste tax dollars investigating Troopergate when all we had to do was have Sarah issue a report that clears herself of doing anything wrong. What an efficient justice system when you can just say your innocent and it is so.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Trying to head off a potentially embarrassing state ethics report on GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, campaign officials released their own report Thursday that clears her of any wrongdoing.

And why wait to see the results before you jump on them as false and political. She must have borrowed the same time machine that McCain used when he predeclared himself winner of the first debate.

Campaign officials have yet to see that report — the result of an investigation that began before she was tapped as McCain's running mate — but said the investigation has falsely portrayed a legitimate policy dispute between a governor and her commissioner as something inappropriate.

LOL

This is scary

2008-10-08T09:44:00.001-07:00

Kathleen Parker isn't a left wing anything. She writes for the National Review and has for the most part been pro everything right wing for years. So, it was a shock when a couple weeks ago she penned an article saying the obvious, Sarah Palin isn't ready for prime time.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a dumpster, but since she didn’t, I should “off” myself.

Those are just a few nuggets randomly selected from thousands of e-mails written in response to my column suggesting that Sarah Palin is out of her league and should step down.

Who says public discourse hasn’t deteriorated?

How can someone be a traitor for expressing their opinion on an election? And for a base that is so pro-life, to suggest abortion or suicide as the out come for speaking your mind... chilling.

Everyone’s to blame, by the way.

Such extreme partisanship has a crippling effect on government, which may be desirable at times, but not now. More important in the long term is the less tangible effect of stifling free speech. My mail paints an ugly picture and a bleak future if we do not soon correct ourselves.

The picture is this: Anyone who dares express an opinion that runs counter to the party line will be silenced. That doesn’t sound American to me, but Stalin would approve.

Readers have every right to reject my opinion. But when we decide that a person is a traitor and should die for having an opinion different than one’s own, then we cross into territory that puts all freedoms at risk. (I hear you, Dixie Chicks.)

This rampant destruction and rejection of their own, that have the gaul to speak their mind, has gone out of control on the right. We are headed for violence unless we pull back.

As I heard recently, the health of democracy isn't how well we get along, it's about how well we disagree.

We can't tolerate this crap and should reject it when we see it.

Unbelievable

2008-10-07T11:31:00.001-07:00

This is truely unbelievable. They are basically admitting that no one wants to hear about where they will take the country and their only hope is to tear down Obama. What a joke.

You get the country you vote for. Are people that are willing to do this what we need?

"It's a dangerous road, but we have no choice," a top McCain strategist told the Daily News of their new strategy to attack Obama's character. "If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose."

None of the stuff they are trying is new, it's all recycled crap that has been widely dismissed. They freely admit they are only using it because they are out of other things that could work. The last lies of a desperate candidate.

Today Palin said that Couric had used filters on her to destory Palin in the interview. There were no cuts between the Couric's question and the full answer that Palin gave... what exactly was filtered?

Of course a voter walking up to her on the street and asking about Pakistan is considered the "media" playing gotcha journalism. Because anyone that cares about how we handle Pakistan, the nuclear nation that is falling into the hands of our mortal enemies... you know, is some sort of commie pinko.

And, asking what news papers you read isn't a gotcha question. It just isn't. If you can't answer, it's not their fault, its yours.

I read the Seattle PI and the Seattle Times...didn't even look it up. Just imagine that person leading the country during the Cuban Missle Crisis.... Seriously, no wonder their polls have gone south faster then geese in the fall.

But, I guess it's all some commie, ni##er, terrorist, muslim plot to steal an election. All the Republicans have is fear. Fear the Commies, fear the brown people, fear that they will take away your guns, fear of the muslims. That is all they are offering, just fear. And they will play to those fear until you tell them to stop.

We live in a dangerous world that requires serious leadership, but this isn't leadership, its yelling fire in a crowded theater.

Did you see?

2008-10-06T19:41:00.000-07:00

We have a report of an elderly gentleman with Arizona license plates last seen throwing this at the Democratic nominee.

The desperation is on at camp McCain. Today alone they charged that Barrak took money from terrorists, palled around with terrorists, his supporters are communists... one supporter shouted out at a rally that he should be killed....

It's getting out of hand in right wing land as the election table tilts away from McCain. I think we are in for 4 weeks of this weak ass crap. Put on your rain coats, its about to get thick.

Top 10 Messages Left on Palin's Answering Machine

2008-10-04T08:04:00.001-07:00

too funny

Senate Race Update

2008-10-02T09:38:00.000-07:00

Senate races showing the same trends we are seeing in the national numbers for Obama V McCain. Outside of the south, the Republicans are having trouble hanging onto seats. Colorado, Oregon, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Virginia have all been trending blue for a couple of cycles. It's not a surprise that incumbents either A) retired or B) are on the run in those states.

More troubling for the GOP is the North Carolina trend. I keep seeing this state pop up on the battleground state list and I just couldn't believe it. But then the Hagen V Dole numbers started to come back in a favorable light for Hagen. I'm not sure Hagen or Obama will win the state this time, but look for that state to follow it's sister to the north, Virginia, and turn blue in the next couple cycles.

The states listed in Red are seats held by Republicans, blue by the Democrats. Some states are listed twice. The ones with the ' after them are the races to replace retiring Senators.

Link

Biden V Palin: what to expect

2008-10-02T07:34:00.000-07:00

Palin: First off, she just won't do as badly as people expect she will do tonight. She just won't. She is ok the first time you ask her a question. She has her 10 word talking points down. It's when you ask her to clarify that the lack of depth is exposed. I don't expect a lot of drilling down in the debate tonight, so she should do fine.

Plus the debate is really about attack dog politics. The Presidential debates are all about passing the bar of "being Presidential". But the VP debate is all about attacking your opponent's idealogy. Palin is pretty good at that and will probably have some pointed comments that she delivers fairly well.

Biden: He just needs to give answers and not lectures and I think he will do fine as well. While Palin enjoys the low expectations advantage, Biden has the advantage of not needing to do much in this debate. All he needs to do is get through the debate without a major game changing exchange and its a win for team Obama. Like a boxer that is ahead on points, he just needs to avoid the knock out punch for team Obama to win.

Unlike some pundits, I don't think Biden will suffer a big anti-women flash back if he goes after Palin during the debate. She is more pit bull then shrinking violet and people won't feel bad if Biden fights back in his own defense. But that is the key, he can hit back at her, if she throws the first punch. Everything I've seen about her tells me she will come out throwing hay makers and trying to connect with something.

So, what is going to happen?

For the most part I think they will talk past each other, focusing the guns on the top of the respective ticket. Biden trying to cement the "bull in the china shop" syndrome that is McCain. Palin trying to paint Obama as a wishy washy version of Che. If they are asked about the other VP pick, they will try to steer the answer back to the top of the ticket. Like dueling press conferences on the same stage, but not aimed at each other.

If I was in charge of Biden's prep, I'd tell him to avoid exchanges at all costs. If she hits Biden, I'd tell him to hit McCain. Example

Sarah: You've been in Washington since I was in second grade...

Joe: And I've known my good friend John McCain, my elder, all those years.

If I was Sarah's prep coach, I'd tell her that she needs to have an answer for every single question and if she doesn't, she needs to answer a different question. She can't have one single fumbling around like in the Couric interviews or the dull witted cement around her feet will dry. In this case it's better to answer the wrong question then to fumble on the right one.

Like most VP debates, this one won't change much.

Cheating at Online Cards

2008-09-30T13:28:00.000-07:00

I'm shocked. Ok not really.

Detective work by an Australian online poker player has uncovered a $US10 million cheating scandal at two major poker websites and triggered a $US75 million legal claim.

In two separate cases, Michael Josem, from Chatswood, analysed detailed hand history data from Absolute Poker and UltimateBet and uncovered that certain player accounts won money at a rate too fast to be legitimate.

His findings led to an internal investigation by the parent company that owns both sites. It found rogue employees had defrauded players over three years via a security hole that allowed the cheats to see other player's secret (or hole) cards.

Link

If you are gambling in a situation where A) US laws forbid it, thus denying you any legal protection of the legitimacy of the game B) You can't see the integrity of the deck to make sure the person isn't double dealing. C) Not all the players are present so you can see their faces and know they are not in colusion... well, you get no sympathy from me when you lose your money.

Electronic games are fun. I'm a supporter, but I know there are limits to technology. If you remove the physical oversight of people, they will attempt to cheat. From rigging their mouse to produce the correct input to running additional programs that allow them to see more information then their opponents, people cheat.

For years one of our best mocking jokes has been that X idea is so dumb that it makes online gambling look smart. LOL, I guess the joke is on them.

Can BYU run to the title game?

2008-09-28T13:04:00.000-07:00

BYU, undefeated and sitting at #8 this week in the AP (#7 in coaches poll) seems primed to run the table this year and get into a BCS game. But, what would it take for them to run the table to the national championship game. First lets look at the remaining schedule.

Utah State
New Mexico
TCU
UNLV
Colorado State
San Diego State
Air Force
Utah

Only Utah is ranked, and as it stands now, will be the only game BYU will play against a ranked team all year. This will put BYU in a tough spot in the BCS rankings, as strength of schedule is weighted into the rankings. BYU would almost need to end the year ranked #1 to get the invite, as any SEC team that ends up ranked in the top 3 will get an invite over BYU.

I don't think that is out of the question though. Of the teams above them, several are in the big 12. Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas, and Texas Tech will all have to play each other at some point during the year to emerge from the Big 12. Missouri has the easiest road, only having to win at Nebraska, at Texas on Oct 18th, and the Big 12 Championship game. It's pretty easy to imagine senarios where all 4 could lose before the end of the year. You're hoping for the rock papers scissors of Oklahoma over Texas, Texas over Missouri and Missouri over Oklahoma in the championship game. The worst outcome is that Oklahoma just runs the table and stomps everyone.

The SEC will probably put either LSU, Alabama, or Georgia into the Championship game. Yes, Georgia. The team that emerges from the SEC Championship game will be in, unless you get a mega upset. LSU has to run the gauntlet of Florida, Georgia and Alabama this year. Can't see them running that this year. They just are not that good. Alabama just has LSU and gets Auburn at home. They should be in a position to go to the title game against either Florida or Georgia. Again, a lot of potential for the favorites to get a couple losses before the volitle title game.

The Con is that all those close games will run up the score in the BCS. The SEC will get a team into the game.

That leaves just a Penn State loss in the way of BYU rising to the top.

So, what are you rooting for. Crazy Big 12, the more upsets the better, Penn State slipping up against Ohio or Mich, and one team dominating out of the SEC.

As a last thought, look out for USC. If USC dominates down the stretch, they could "re-jump" BYU in the polls.

It's not impossible, but it's going to take a little luck.

PETA loses last shread of dignity

2008-09-26T10:01:00.000-07:00

There are few organization that are as universally scorned as stupid more then PETA. Who could forget such hits as when they released wolverines that were being used for fur into a wildlife haven, endangering the threatened bird species that lived there.

But I think their latest entry into the history books takes the cake for stupid.

WATERBURY, Vt. - Mooove over, Holsteins. PETA wants world-famous Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream to tap nursing moms, rather than cows, for the milk used in its ice cream.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is asking the ice cream maker to begin using breast milk in its products instead of cow's milk, saying it would reduce the suffering of cows and calves and give ice cream lovers a healthier product.

I don't think there is a company in America that is more left leaning then Ben & Jerrys. They score big on fair trade, wages, enviromental stewardship. Good guys and they do make a tasty pint of ice cream to boot. Was there really no one else in the world more worthy of a stupid attack?

I'll leave alone the complete stupidty of abandoning livestock in our society except to say that before we domesticated the cows of the world, max human density on the planet was about one person per square mile and we lived in hunter gather villages. Domestication of animals allowed us to have people do other things besides just gather food and in the end allowed the creation of such dumb groups as PETA.

McCain goes all Chinese on us

2008-09-26T09:54:00.000-07:00

As I mocked yesterday the Chinese released a positive new story about their space launch prior to it happening. Now John McCain has joined this dubious practice by predeclaring himself the winner of the debate.

Although the fate of tonight's presidential debate in Mississippi remains very much up in the air, John McCain has apparently already won it -- if you believe an Internet ad an astute reader spotted next to this piece in the online edition of the Wall Street Journal this morning.

"McCain Wins Debate!" declares the ad which features a headshot of a smiling McCain with an American flag background. Another ad spotted by our eagle-eyed observer featured a quote from McCain campaign manager Rick Davis declaring: "McCain won the debate-- hands down."

Screenshot

Must be nice to live in a world were the facts don't matter in comparison with your own self grandizing opinion of yourself.

It's on

2008-09-26T08:31:00.000-07:00

Not since Brett left the Packers for the Jets have we seen such preening. As they say on the streets...It's On.

Contador said he will quit Astana if his position is not secure, adding he's received offers to join other ProTour teams.

"The team has given me guarantees that I will be the leader but I want the fullest guarantees possible," the 2007 Tour de France winner said in Friday editions of sports daily Marca. "[Astana] told me that they want to back me, but I have to see how all this develops. If I'm not happy, I will leave."

"Everyone knows that Lance has a big personality and he dominates everything," Contador said. "Under no circumstances do I want my sporting aims to be halted by his arrival. I have to see what aims Armstrong has, what his attitude will be and if Bruyneel is counting on him for the Tour."

Now hopefully Lance will "dance back"

Go Beavers

2008-09-25T21:36:00.000-07:00

Looks like the Beavers have awoken from their 3 game season starting slump once again. This time they shock USC and destroy what was left of Pac 10 pride.

Seriously, The Beavers should just schedule a 3 game preseason. That way they could go 11-0 in the regular season and win every championship. Instead they always go out and schedule some serious team and go out and lay an egg to destroy any program credibility. But, once they get into the Pac 10 they are killers and have won 4 straight bowl games.

Good game Beavs.

China space launch a success before it happens

2008-09-25T17:22:00.000-07:00

This is too funny. China posted an article lauding it's latest launch as a smashing success...before the launch happened. He he, nice "technical error". Sometimes I get that where an error code produced by a page ends up being an article that is about something that hasn't happened yet... seems like an innocent mistake.

BEIJING - A news story describing a successful launch of China's long-awaited space mission and including detailed dialogue between astronauts launched on the Internet Thursday, hours before the rocket had even left the ground.

The country's official news agency Xinhua posted the article on its Web site Thursday, and remained there for much of the day before it was taken down.

A staffer from the Xinhuanet.com Web site who answered the phone Thursday said the posting of the article was a "technical error" by a technician. The staffer refused to give his name as is common among Chinese officials.

Article

Too funny.

They just wanted a lot of money

2008-09-24T16:24:00.000-07:00

This is unbelievable.

The more Congress examines the Bush administration's bailout plan, the hazier its outcome gets. At a Senate Banking Committee hearing Tuesday, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle complained of being rushed to pass legislation or else risk financial meltdown.

"The secretary and the administration need to know that what they have sent to us is not acceptable," says Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn. The committee's top Republican, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, says he's concerned about its cost and whether it will even work.

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

Boo

2008-09-24T14:28:00.001-07:00

Not cool, not even a little bit.

NEWBERG, Ore. — Officials of a Christian university say a life-size effigy of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was hung from a tree on the campus.

George Fox University President Robin Baker says a custodian discovered the effigy of Obama early Tuesday and removed it.

Baker says the cardboard cutout of Obama was accompanied by a message targeting participants of a minority student scholarship program called Act Six.

It read, "Act Six reject."

Baker says students in the program receive full scholarships.

He says he met with the students in the Act Six program late Tuesday and planned to address the school's student body today.

Tour de France 90210

2008-09-24T11:44:00.001-07:00

Lance has joined the team of his former coach Johan Bruneel. Makes sense, those two combined to win 7 tours and obviously are very good friends. The problem is that Johan already has another Tour winner in the fold.

Alberto Contador won the tour last year and this year went out and won the Tour of Italy and the Tour of Spain, to complete the grand tours career slam. That is something that Lance never did. All indication are that Contador would have won the Tour de France this year if his team had been invited.

Add to the mix Levi Liephemer, the man that finished second to Contador in all three races and is also on the Bruneel coached team. You have a whole lot of chiefs and not enough Indians to make a successful team.

Cycling is all about using your team up to get you to the last couple miles of the race, where the star bursts forth from the protective cocoon his team weaves around him and storms to the line.

So.... who gets to be protected? Will Lance drag Contador up the hills? Will Contador be called on to wait for Armstrong if he fades on a hill like Lemond was told to wait for Hinault instead of riding to victory for himself in 1985?

Contador has already fired the first premadona shots by complaining that Liephemer didn't help him enough in the Tour of Spain last week. And he is rumored to be shopping for a new team that will leave him as the unquestioned leader.

Leads to an interesting debate. If you have to chose, do you stick with Contador, the obvious star of the next decade, or do you risk it all on going with Lance, the ascendant star of the sport from the last decade.

It's the cycling equivalent of when the 49'rs kicked Joe Montana to the curb in favor of Steve Young. Or perhaps more like the Lakers taking back the 40 year old Jordan in favor of Kobe.

It's not like Contador is all potential and no proven. He won the tour already... he is dominant amongst the dwarfs that remain in cycling.

Should be interesting.

Senate Passes Renewable Tax Credit Package

2008-09-23T20:31:00.000-07:00

All year the extention of the tax credit has hung like the Sword of Damocles over the solar industry. The predictions were dire about the extent solar investment would dwindle if the tax credit expired. Today the Senate passed the extension. The House has to pass it as well, but since it is really a re-passing of a similar bill they did earlier this year, it looks good that this will pass in the House.

The U.S. Senate on Tuesday approved about $18 billion of renewable-energy tax credits after repeated failed attempts to do so this year.

The 93-2 vote cleared a major hurdle for extending a set of tax credits for businesses and residents investing in renewable energy, from building and operating power plants to installing small wind turbines on residential properties.

Tax Credits pass Senate

With the advancements in thin film solar panels and the end of the silicon shortage that has kept traditional solar prices high, I don't think the future of solar hung in the balance of this vote, the way some industry people predicted. But, to be honest, I'm glad not to find out.

Pre Crime Comes to Our Airports

2008-09-23T09:20:00.000-07:00

Don't have a bad day at the airport or you could be a terrorist.

I don't think anyone that has gone thru a real airport check point in the last 6 years hasn't been "hostile" or "mad" at some point. It's an intrusive and degrading experience these days. Heaven forbid you make a mistake and bring a bottle of water with you.

Now we find out that they are creating a precrime detector to scope out which of us will get "questioned" at the airport. I'm sure a disproportionate number of those pulled aside will have the wrong skin color or perhaps their hair will be too long or something. But hey, now it's the machine telling the agents that you should be pulled out, never mind the hostile reaction the attendant had toward you that triggered the defensive anger reaction.

In the end it will just be manufactured probable cause. If they want to question someone, they can rig the machine to create a result that justifies their desires.

Last year, New Scientist revealed that the US Department of Homeland Security is developing a system designed to detect "hostile thoughts" in people walking through border posts, airports and public places. The DHS says recent tests prove it works.

Project Hostile Intent as it was called aimed to help security staff choose who to pull over for a gently probing interview - or more.

Commentators slated the idea that sensors could spot people up to no good from their pulse rate, breathing, skin temperature, or fleeting facial expressions. One likened it to the "pre-crime" units that predict criminal behaviour in the movie Minority Report.

Pre Crime Detection

0% think the economy is getting better...

2008-09-22T18:33:00.000-07:00

If you took a poll if Elvis was going to show up tomorrow and release a new album of rap tunes, you could probably get 2% of Americans to say it was going to happen.

And yet ARG just released a poll on the economy where 0% of people believe things are getting better. In the history of that poll, that has never happened, not once, ever...like never.

Wow, just plain wow.

What a Joke

2008-09-22T09:29:00.000-07:00

You can't make this stuff up. The WH is worried that CEO's won't let us save their companies from disaster if we don't let them keep their bonus packages.

Here is the White House statement:

"We certainly understand and are sympathetic to the sentiment regarding the pay of CEOs and senior management of these firms, but we have to focus on the problem, and the problem is that we need these firms to participate in the program and sell us this debt. Having punitive measures would provide a disincentive for firms to participate, and that would make the program much less likely to succeed.

CEO compensation and corporate governance in public companies are very important issues – especially when receiving taxpayer support – but we need to be focused on fixing this problem in our markets right now. We can and should return to those issues once we get this legislation passed."

How about instead we jail any bastard CEO that is ruining our economy.

No help for you and me

2008-09-21T08:39:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. President

What exactly is wrong with helping out the tax payers hurt by this crisis? Why must the solution only be for the rich?

Democrats said they understood the need for urgency but insisted that the measure needed to provide help for homeowners threatened with losing their homes, perhaps by changes in bankruptcy laws to allow for mortgages to be modified, and by capping pay and benefit packages for executives at the huge Wall Street firms that will be selling their bad debt to the government.

"I don't want the American taxpayer to get this bad debt and then the guy (whose company once held the bad loans) gets millions of dollars on his way out the door," said House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass.

Paulson resisted suggestions being made by Democrats that the program be changed to include further relief for homeowners facing mortgage foreclosures and to include an additional $50 billion stimulus effort. Some Democrats have also suggested capping compensation of executives at firms who get the bailout help.

Paulson said he was concerned that debate over adding all of those proposals would slow passage of the bill, delaying the rescue effort that is so urgently needed to get financial markets moving again.

What great logic... we can fast track this, but because he doesn't want to do it, he is worried his fight against it will slow down the bill... yeah nice logic.

Fat cats get trillions and the Republicans won't even cap the golden parchutes of those that caused this crisis. What a bunch of crooks.

Big year in Algae funding

2008-09-20T18:18:00.000-07:00

Algae oil investment has gone big time. Bill Gates dropped 50 million into it last week bringing the year to date investment to just shy of 180 million. That's close to 6 times the investment last year.

Algae-based biofuel companies have been raking in the venture capital this year, raising a record-breaking $179.5 million to date, according to numbers from the Cleantech Group.

That compares with what appears to be about $32 million raised last year, based on a Cleantech Group chart of quarterly totals that doesn't list the actual numbers.

The rise in funding has happened because algae doesn't face the same set of challenges that traditional biofuels face. After crunching the numbers, investors realized that corn just wasn't going to be the answer to our fuel needs. Same things I've talked about here before...competes with our desire to eat corn and shocking low yield of oil per acre. Cellulose ethanol has a brighter future then corn based ethanol, but it will still involve higher costs then a straight algae oil company because you have to ship the cellulose material to the manufacturing center. I see it's future as a secondary income stream for farmers. IE, you harvest everything, lock stock and barrel and send the fruit to market and the stocks to the "refinery".

I think I'll go see if there is an ETF or fund I can put a little speculator money into for algae oil.

I'd like my $10K back

2008-09-19T16:58:00.000-07:00

1 Trillion dollars...that's a lot of money. That is the bill that has come home for the last week of financial gymnastics on Wall Street. Almost $5k for every man woman and child in America.

$10K would be enough to put solar cells on my house. It would be enough to get the granite counter tops we want in the kitchen. It would be enough to go on that 2 week cruise we've had our eye on for a bit.

Heck, I'd settle for donating the money to fix the bridge that I drive across that is not "earthquake safe" or providing adaquete body armor for the troops that guard my freedom.

But instead, I'll be donating that amount to a financial credit system that has acted with wreckless abandon. I'll be donating it to firms that pushed bad loans, loans that any idiot could see weren't viable. I'll be donating that money to companies that believe most of us should have available credit cards that can be charged up to more then we make in a year.

When I was a child I was told the story of the ant and the grass hopper. In the story the ant worked all summer while the grass hopper did nothing. When winter came, the ant was ready, but the grass hopper was left out in the cold. Of course, since it's a childrens story, the ant shares his stores with the grass hopper.

But of course that's just a story. In our life the ant suffers because the grass hoppers just take what they want from the ants, like a thief in the night. While us ants lose our houses and our jobs and agree to having a lean Christmas while worrying about how to keep food on the table, the grass hopper has been eating caviar and building themselves golden parachutes.

No one will be coming to bail out us ants, there just won't be any money left to do so after the grass hoppers get done with our stores.

Now we get to chose between the 70's and the 30's as the model for the next decade. Either we live with stagflation or soup kitchens. With so much money tied up in paying off this fiasco, there won't be any credit available. The rates will be driven up to levels we haven't seen in 40 years, maybe even over 10% for loan rates. The talking heads are chatting on TV about how banks are now asking for 30% down on new houses... um, how many people are going to be able to afford 30% down the first time they go to buy a home? Not very many.

Savings are at an all time low and wages have been below inflation for 20 - 30 years now. When J and I were looking, the real estate agents were shocked that we had 10% to put down. Apparently the vast majority of new buyers were at 5% or less.

I just can't see the home market turning around for at least 4 years.

That leads to the witching brew of bad for business numbers. High unemployement combined with rising prices, flat wages for people that are already eating into their meager savings, and lowered spending at businesses that are already on the ropes.... how exactly are we going to pull out of this gracefully?

Blech!

Yarrrggg, it be International Talk Like a Pirate Day

2008-09-18T07:49:00.000-07:00

This is one of the those extremely silly ideas that actually seems to have picked up steam over the years. I'm not sure we are up to the point of talk like a pirate parties or something like that, but most people in the small geek culture I run in seem to mark this day every year.

Ahoy and happy Talk Like a Pirate Day to you!

International Talk Like a Pirate Day

WaMu goes down, a crisis of ?????

2008-09-17T16:00:00.000-07:00

I see by the local news that WaMu has become the latest victim of the crisis rocking our nation. The story quotes that the problem was a poorly timed third quarter outlook that claimed WaMu had dropped from 148B in deposits to 143B, or about 5 billion less.

They then go on to post some story about how the consumers have had a crisis of confidence and are starting to withdraw their money from WaMu. If that is the case, I imagine we are in for a long run of well...bank runs.

I wonder how they distinguished "panicked, lost confidence" withdrawing from "need money for food" withdrawing. It seems to me that every day we hear about higher unemployment and more foreclosures and it only makes sense that people would be digging into their savings to keep themselves a float in times like that.

It all seems very gloomy right now, I hope this crisis will pass before it trickles down to main street.