George Bush Resume

Someone emailed me this.. I don't know the original source. If someone does, please let me know:

RESUME
GEORGE W. BUSH
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC 20520

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

LAW ENFORCEMENT

I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol. I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my driver's license suspended for 30 days. My Texas driving record has been "lost" and is not available.

MILITARY

I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL. I refused to take a drug test or answer any questions about my drug use. By joining the Texas Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam.

COLLEGE

I graduated from Yale University with a low C average. I was a
cheerleader.

PAST WORK EXPERIENCE

I ran for U.S. Congress and lost. I began my career in the oil business
in Midland, Texas, in 1975. I bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas. The company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.

I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using taxpayer money. With the help of my father and our friends in the oil industry, including Enron CEO Ken Lay, I was elected governor of Texas.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS

I changed Texas pollution laws to favor power and oil companies, making Texas the most polluted state in the Union. During my tenure, Houston replaced Los Angeles as the most smog-ridden city in America.

I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the tune of billions in borrowed money.

I set the record for the most executions by any gov ernor in American history.

With the help of my brother, the governor of Florida, and my father's appointments to the Supreme Court, I became President after losing by over 500,000 votes.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT

I am the first President in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal record.

I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost of over one billion dollars per week.

I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted the U.S. Treasury.

I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S. history.

I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12-month period.

I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month period.

I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the U.S. stock market.

In my first year in office, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs and that trend continues every month.

I'm proud that the members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in U.S. history. My "poorest millionaire," Condoleeza Rice, had a Chevron oil tanker named after her.

I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by a U.S. President. I am the all-time U.S. and world record-holder for receiving the most corporate campaign donations.

My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one of my best friends, Kenneth Lay (now deceased), presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in U.S. History, Enron.

My political party used Enron private jets and corporate attorneys to assure my success with the U.S. Supreme Court during my election decision.

I have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburton against investigation or prosecution.

More time and money was spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair than has been spent investigating one of the biggest corporate rip-offs in history.

I presided over the biggest energy crisis in U.S. history and refused to intervene when corruption involving the oil industry was revealed.

I presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history.

I changed the U.S. policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.

I appointed more convicted criminals to administration than any President in U.S. history.

I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, the largest bureaucracy in the history of the United States government.

I've broken more international treaties than any President in U.S. history.

I am the first President in U.S. history to have the United Nations remove the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission.

I withdrew the U.S. from the World Court of Law. I refused to allow inspector's access to U.S. "prisoners of war" detainees and thereby have refused to abide by the Geneva Convention.

I am the first President in history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 U.S. election).

I set the record for fewest numbers of press conferences of any President since the advent of television.

I set the all-time record for most days on vacation in any one-year period. After taking off the entire month of August, I presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history.

I garnered the most sympathy for the U.S. after the World Trade Center attacks and less than a year later made the U.S. the most hated country in the world, the largest failure of diplomacy in world history.

I have set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously protest me in public venues (15 million people), shattering the record for protests against any person in the history of mankind.

I am the first President in U.S. history to order an unprovoked, preemptive attack and the military occupation of a sovereign nation. I did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority of U.S.
citizens, and the world community.

I have cut health care benefits for war veterans and support a cut in duty benefits for active duty troops and their families-in-wartime.

In my State of the Union Address, I lied about our reasons for attacking Iraq and then blamed the lies on our British friends.

I am the first President in history to have a majority of Europeans (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and security.

I am supporting development of a nuclear "Tactical Bunker Buster" a WMD.

I have so far failed to fulfill my pledge to bring Osama Bin Laden [sic] to justice.

RECORDS AND REFERENCES

All records of my tenure as governor of Texas are now in my father's library, sealed and unavailable for public view.

All records of SEC investigations into my insider trading and my bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my Vice-President, attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review.

I am a member of the Republican Party.

Jan Ullrich

I love Jan Ullrich, lets get that out of the way right off. And let me also say that a private organization should have the right to fire anyone for any reason. With that said, I still think its shameful that T-Mobile has dropped Jan from their team even though his name has only been linked to the Puerta doping investigation. They are essentially forcing him to prove his innocence which is just fucked up in my book. Even if he is proven guilty in the future, that doesn't change the fact that right now he still should be treated with respect by his team and the public. Well, that's the last time I buy T-Mobile cell service...

Tigers Swing

So Nike did something cool, and they did an ok job of it, but not as good as I'd have liked. They put Tiger Woods in front of a set of super slo motion cameras and recorded his golf swing. After that, they created this cool web site where you can click on one of 5 angles to see the swing from that perspective. The cameras and the angles (and even the preview buttons) are in sync. That's all the cool part. The crappy part (and I'm amazed by this clearly stylistic decision) is that they made everything so dark that you can hardly tell what the hell is going on. Am I missing something?

Here is the site.

Also, my girlfriend (who alerted me to this in the first place) notes that there is a slighty brigher version (but poorly compressed) on google video here.

Floyd! and the Incredible Tour de France

I haven't written about the Tour lately but rest assured I've been watching it. Every stage, every day now since July 1. I have to say in some ways it has been better than last years Tour, in some ways worse, but in all ways it has been entertaining.

We started off in the flats watching the incredible (but outspoken) Robby McEwen sprint like a maniac and solidfy his Green Jersey. We took a turn into the Pyrenees where we saw a few of the Yellow contenders strut their stuff, back to the flats for a few and now into the Alps where the race is beginning to make clear who the real contenders are. It's been a pretty crazy race with the Yellow Jersey changing hands 7 times so far. This is a big difference than the Lance days where once he got it, the race was essentially over.

Anyway, if you look back at my top ten list prediction you will see that of the riders who started, I had essentially picked George Hincapie first and Loyd Landis second. George has been a bust particulary (I feel) becasue his team wasn't behind him from the start and possibly becasue of his crash earlier this year. But Floyd has been another story. He's been pretty amazing to watch.

Floyd doesn't have much of a team to support him. I know this because I can't name any of them except one. Usually by now you are so used to seeing riders at the front that you can name even the most obscure ones. I haven't seen many Phonak riders this tour. And where they have been most needed (in the mountains and fighting the breaks in the flats) they haven't been able to step up. But that hasn't stopped Floyd Landis from holding the Yellow jersey after the Pyrenees and then again taking back in the first Alps stage.

But 2 days ago Floyd just appeared to die on the course. Some say he bonked, some say he simply had a bad day, I say he was dehydrated (which is just inexcusable coaching). But nonetheless, the guy lost almost 9 minutes to the 2nd place rider and lost the Yellow jersey.

Let me tell you what that means. With only one mountain stage, one flat stage and a time trial left in the race, anything more than a 6 minute gap from the yellow means that you have no chance of winning. In the non time trial stages you are generally marked by the other riders and if you start to try to get away from them, they will chase you down. Everyone is always watching and marking the progress of their closest opponants. On a flat stage making up any time at all is close to impossible. On a time trial you are riding alone and of the top contenders, there really isn't more than maybe 2 minutes seperating them all. On a mountain stage the only way to do it is to find more energy than the others AND pull off an attack that they can't counter.

Yesterday, Floyd somehow did the impossible.


Before most of the mountains, he took off from the main group and attacked. At first it looked like they were just amazed that he had the energy. Then it seemed like they thought "well, maybe he'll gain a minute or two if he rides this inspired over the final mountains". Then he was out of their sight. He went on to pass all of the 15 or so riders ahead of the main pack. Passing each amazed one he just kept going. He was drinking a ton of water. Every time you saw him he was either pouring it over himself or drinking something. That, to me, was the clue to his dehydration issue from the day before.

Floyd won the stage. Read the full story here. It was simply incredible. Here was a guy who was by all accounts, finished. Here was a guy who said "you know what? fuck it, I'm not giving up". And he sure didn't. He is now 30 seconds off the leader of the race. Today I think he'll still be 30 down. In the time trial (his specialty) he will take the jersey and call it his own. You should all watch the TT on Saturday and see. It will be simply awesome!

Those nasty Stem Cells

My friend Albert beat me to this, but I wanted to post it too. This cartoon (by Daily News Cartoonist Signe) just sums up the BWH perfectly.. and keeps my anger nice and fresh... Fuckers!



(love the kid on the right with the hole)

While on the subject of stem cells, see here for some more about how fucking stupid taht veto was.

Lebowski

I'm not the only one who feels this way, but the Big Lebowski is definitely one of my favorite films of all time. I mean I fucking love that film man! Ok.. so a friend sent me this link which is a bit annoying to watch, but also quite interesting too.. that's not why I'm posting now. You Tube when you watch a video tries to show you other related stuff.. and that's where I found this clip. If you are a fan of the film you will laugh outloud because the acting in the scene is hysterical (especially near the end).. the fact that it was dubbed over the Ninga Turtles makes it even funnier.. There are others there too..

FBI plans new Net-tapping push

I want to write a big post about this but I don't know what my opinion is right now. First off I think I want others in the blog world to be more aware of this issue. Secondly I hope to form an opinion on this. On the one hand, what makes building tapping ablility into network gear any different than what is mandated for phone switches? To have the ability to tap isn't the same as tapping everything.. but on the other hand, why let the govt have more potential to abuse its power and infringe on our rights? Also it's all kind of moot to me becasue if I wanted secure communication I think I could achieve it (or come close to it) with just a little effort and if I want secret communication over the net I could do that too with a little more work.. Easy Encryption for everyone is my big belief and this article should at least give us more cause to fight for that.

Quidam

It was about 10 years ago that I saw my first Cirque du Soleil show. I was on a business trip to Las Vegas and on an expense account and bored so I asked my concierge what I should see. She arranged for me a ticket to see the show in the hotel I was staying at. That show was "Mystere". I of course had no idea what to expect. I was thinking "a circus?, that sounds lame...". So it came as a complete surprise to me how simply amazing the experience was. Mystere was simply one of the best theatre experiences I'd ever had.

The next time I was back I ended up seeing Mystere again with some family and friends. It was just as wonderful the second time. Then they opened a new show "O". I had high expectations for the show and I was far from dissapointed. I was simply blown away at how much better it was than Mystere. Now since then I've seen each one a few more times and of all the people I've been with, the concensus is that half of them love Mystere more and the other half loved O more. In all cases, they were amazed.

So a few years ago, I ended up going to see Circe in New York. They had a travelling tent show and I went to check it out. I was impressed, but not really blown away. I guess what was amazing to me was more than just the show. Perhaps the stage made a differnce (it sure did in O).

Then they came to philly and I've seen the previous 2 shows here. Again, I was impressed but not too much.

Yesterday I went to see the third appearance in Philly of Circe. "Quidam" was the show. Of the 4 tent shows I've seen, this one was the best one. It wasn't up to the LV standards, but it sure came close. This time for the first time we sprung for the Tapis Rouge tickets. These are obcenely priced tickets that include a coctail party with overflowing champainge glasses, a decadant intermission spread, and (the reason I bought these ticets) center seats for the show. The tent shows are in the round and unless you are aligned in the center, you are not getting the full effect since they really align along the center line. If you can afford it, buy these tickets.

So my review is that if you've never seen Cire, Quidam is a great intro. If you have seen other tent shows, this one is better. If you've seen O or Mystere (there are others now in LV.. none as good), this will be a nice refresher.

Oh.. and it's amazing how much they make this travelling show appear to be in a fixed location. The seats are comphy, there is air conditioning, full bathrooms, a serious amount of technical stuff as well.. I'm always impressed that they put all this into a truck at the end of the show..

TV from the Moon

Being that I have a strong TV background I found this article quite interesting. It outlines in detail how the video of Armstrong walking on the moon was received and processed before it got back to the USA (at the time, the moon was only in view clearly by a station in Australia). Apparently the images from the moon were quite sharp, but they were improperly converted on the Earth so what was seen by the US TV audience was very degraded and compressed. I was about 10 months old at the time, so I didn't see anything...

Oh.. For all you conspiracy people here's an interesting tidbit : according to this presentation, the original tapes (the high quality Slow Scan tapes which are apparently super sharp) were placed in the National Archives. These tapes are now missing and the only machines available to play them back are about to be decommissioned:

In 1970, the tapes were placed in the US National Archives in Accession #69A4099. By 1984, all but two of the over 700 boxes of Apollo era magnetic tapes placed in the Accession, were removed and returned to the GSFC for permanent retention. These tapes are now missing.

The Eraser

The new Thom Yorke album is pretty fucking good.. Go get it!

The Sharpest Object Ever Made

This is pretty cool (to me at least):

Forget the phrase, "sharp as a tack." Now, thanks to new University of Alberta research the popular expression might become, "sharp as a single atom tip formed by chemically assisted spatially controlled field evaporation." Maybe it doesn't roll off the tongue as easily, but considering the researchers have created the sharpest object ever made, it would be accurate.

The stem-cell debate (and why pro-lifers are morons)

I should have a weekly post "What I read in The Week this week" which would give you the highlights of what I read in a magazine that in itself attempts to fit all the news from that week into tiny readable nuggets. It seems like I always get inspired to post stuff from there. Well, anyway, today I want to make you aware of a great article on slate.com about stem-cell research. Actually it makes the argument that the anti-abortion idiots are against stem cells for other than moral reasons or they are simply idiots. Here is a taste :

...If you believe that embryos a few days after conception have the same human rights as you or me, killing innocent embryos is obviously intolerable. But do opponents of stem-cell research really believe that? Stem cells test that belief, and sharpen the basic right-to-life question, in a way abortion never has.

Here's why: Stem cells used in medical research generally come from fertility clinics, which produce more embryos than they can use. This isn't an accident—it is essential to their mission of helping people to have babies. Often these are "test tube babies": the product of an egg fertilized in the lab and then implanted in a womb to develop until birth...In any particular case, fertility clinics try to produce more embryos than they intend to implant. Then—like the Yale admissions office (only more accurately)—they pick and choose among the candidates, looking for qualities that make for a better human being. If you don't get into Yale, you have to attend a different college. If the fertility clinic rejects you, you get flushed away—or maybe frozen until the day you can be discarded without controversy...In short, if embryos are human beings with full human rights, fertility clinics are death camps—with a side order of cold-blooded eugenics. No one who truly believes in the humanity of embryos could possibly think otherwise.

Madonna and the Moron

Last night I went to the Madonna concert. A friend had wanted to go so I got us some tickets. I was lucky enough to score seats in a box (I’m not a fan of concert crowds and standing during the whole show and being forced to dance and wave my hands, etc.). Madonna is not my favorite artist, but hers is a concert that I’d always wanted to see for the pure spectacle of it (Michael Jackson and Prince would be two others on my list for the same reasons).

I wasn’t disappointed. In fact I was pretty surprised. The show was really good and highly recommended. The stage was huge with a huge catwalk extending all the way up to the ½ way point of the Wachovia Center. Also there were two side catwalks extending diagonally out into the first 15 or so rows of the side audience sections. On these catwalks were the other performers in the show doing all kinds of stuff.. dancing, running, jumping, skating, singing, etc. The band was made up of 4 guys on the stage, each on their own moving platform. They didn’t do much except play in perfect synchronicity with the 3 huge video screens playing cool video clips (including one that made huge fun of GWB). The band also had a costume change which was pretty impressive since the rest of the show seemed to change clothes for every song. The lights were cool and there were all kinds of surprises. She did mostly new songs so I didn’t know them at all. But they were all pretty good.

Madonna herself was quite good for a 48 year old. First off, she looked amazing and was in incredible shape. She was pretty skilled at pacing herself so she looked like she was doing a lot of running around but she really wasn’t. Even though she wasn’t going crazy the whole time, she entertained quite well. It was if she was thinking “hey, I’ve done this too many times now, I know how to pace myself perfectly.. no need to act like a speed freak”.

So, now for the moron. Most stupid things people say and do these days seem to really disappoint me but I’m hardly ever surprised. Last night I was genuinely shocked at what happened. One of the people in Madonna’s show was this Indian looking guy who played this cool Middle Eastern horn and did some singing as well. The reason I said he was Indian looking was his complexion and his turban. After a few songs Madonna sat down on a stool with a guitar to sing and this guy sat next to her. Madonna joked “This is my friend James [I think that was his name], he walked all the way here from Yemen”. So I was off a little bit. The guy was probably a Yemeni Hindu.

Next thing I hear is a genuine exclamation of terror from a woman in the next box: “What the fuck is a terrorist doing on stage?”. This was impressive since it was quite loud there at the concert and it’s hard to hear anything other than the show. But I heard this lady. Throughout the entire song all she would do is complain to whoever (I couldn’t turn around much to see since it would be too obvious) she was in the box with that they should leave immediately because (and I’m sure I heard this right) “We shouldn’t give her our money since she supports terrorists!”. They must have told her she was an idiot because then she started arguing with someone and said “He’s got a bomb under his fucking yarmulke! This is bullshit! Yemen is where the terrorists come from!”.. and on and on.

Do I even have to explain how shocked I was at this? I mean, seriously. I can understand some ignorance and stupidity, but this lady was past that and in a fury over something that clearly was a delusion. More than that, her delusion was obviously a symptom of the fear mongering by the BWH combined with the general group conditioning to not use ones brain that has been being going on with the GOP followers.

I don’t like the two party system, but I still can envision one that encourages debate and I can respect the Republican party, but this woman is an example (here in a Blue state, in a cosmopolitan city) of how bad it is becoming with our citizens. People are past intelligent debate and are turning into deaf and blind followers of the new Nazi party. People like this woman (that I had heretofore considered only existing in the southern Red states) instill me with all kinds of fear and dread.  Wow.. we are worse off than I thought!

Should plants be illegal?

Isn't it about time that we start a national discussion on why it is illegal to grow certain types of plants in our backyards? Two of them that I know of are listed as Schedule 1 drugs by the DEA and posession of them will lead to serious jailtime. Mushrooms of a certain breed and a certain weed are two completely natural substances (no different than dirt as far as nature is concerned). Why is it that it is illegal to have them growing on your own property?

And don't tell me that its for our own good. Pot has been proven safe and useful in any number of studies and it seems that mushrooms are on the same path. Imagine that. Imagine that a natural substance could be harmless to us. For those of you God people out there, think of it this way: If god gave us the earth, why would he have created these plants? I bet after you thought about it for a while, all you could come up with to counter me is to say something like "God the Lord put them on this earth to tempt us and we should fight the temptation. They are a test that we should all strive to pass. Praise Jesus!". I say that if we allow the government to keep us from them then they are blocking the will of god since they are effectively making us skip gods test.

But enough of this religious crap. This is just plain stupid and we as a people need to start realizing that.

Conformity

In the early 50's a man named Solomon Asch did an experiment that essentially proved that people in groups on average believe what the majority of the group believes, no matter how illogical. This was more than peer pressure, this was actual belief.

The experiment went like this. A person was ushered into a room along with a group of other test subjects. The other test subjects were all plants so this person was the only person actually being tested though she/he wasn't aware of this. The people in the room were shown a drawing with one line on one side and a number of lines on the other side of varying lengths. Each 'subject' in the room was asked to announce which of the lines matched the first line on the drawing. The fake subjects (all going before the real subject) announced an obvious incorrect answer. When it came to the test subject, a number of the times they announced the same answer. In some cases it was found that the subjects had done more than just go along with the crowd, they had actually believed the lines were the same length!

On the web I've seen a number of reports on the experiment like this one, this one and this one, all have varying statistics so I don't know which to trust.. however the gyst is always the same, people follow the group and sometimes for non-obvious reasons. It's interesting to see that this phenominon exists and has been proven. Now think about it on a larger scale. Think about how it influences our society and our beliefs and our values. Think for a moment how someone manuipulating the group thoughts can gain a huge amount of power. Think about the BWH fear mantras. Think about the Right Wing talking points..

Most of all, try, and try hard to think for yourself. Challenge what the group thinks once and a while, you may find that the group is wrong.

Should it be Illegal to not disclose STDs?

There is a man in Pennsylvania who is going to be charged with a criminal act for having someone perform oral sex on them while he knowingly was HIV positive (story here). While I find it reprehensible that someone would do such a thing I still wonder if this case will set a dangerous precedent.

Fist off, this case could easily be extended to include other STDs since they are potentially life threatening as well. Secondly, will all sex acts now be classified depending on their risk to others? What about kissing? Is that the same as oral sex? Is it different if its man to woman? woman to man? woman to woman? man to man?

I have a hard time understanding the law and that's part of the reason I never became a lawyer. In my world everything follows some logic and can be objectively tied to everything else. I am fully aware that even the most objective things can be subjectively broken down : what defines an Apple? What is gender? How do we define a color? But at least in my world things are relatively objectively defined.

In the law, that's far from the case. Everything is subject to some interpretation and it's up to you as a lawyer to argue that your definition is more correct than your opponent. I suppose because I can see these distinctions I would actually be a wonderful lawyer but I really couldn't morally accept the fact that I was manipulating things and in a sense cheating.

I don't know if this guy should go to jail for what he did. To me on the surface what he did was wrong but I'm not sure that it was criminal. I don't know what the odds are that you could transmit an STD to someone orally. I don't know (and nobody could know) that the victim here wasn't HIV positive already and should have disclosed that as well. I don't know that the underlying law was meant to be interpreted this way. I don't know what this precedent will do in the future. What do you all think?

You can't wear that T-shirt Man!!

Just in case Howard and I have blog readers that differ, I offer you this story that I saw linked to on his blog. Apparently a vet was arrested in a VA hospital for an "offensive T-shirt".. Really, what is going on and when will it stop?

I mean seriously. This is America. This is supposed to be the land of the free. How is it that we have so many seemingly subjective things that we are not allowed to do? I've talked about being arrested for having brass knuckles on your possesion or a glass pipe or for selling a plastic tube in store.. it all makes no sense. This is America people, we should be not only allowed but encouraged to do what we want to. By wearing the T-shirt, this guy was being the most patriotic fellow there....

Idiots

Before the Internet, this wouldn't ever have happened

I've complained about the net off and on but there is one thing that it does really well and that's allowing people to connect on virutally anything. What I mean is that no matter what your hobby, idea, fetish is, there is always someone else who you can chat with. Before the internet existed, making contact with those people was incredibly difficult. Now, it's not easy, but it's certainly not as hard anymore.

So, with that said I direct you to the story of the guy who traded a paperclip for a house. Sure he may have been able to do it w/o the net, but I bet it would have been majorly hard to do...

PayPal now charging fees

I've used Paypal literally since it began. I've always been quite happy with the servive over the years, simple, fast, efficianet, popular. So you could imagine that it came as a huge surprise that when I looked at my last ebay sale payment, I was charged a fee for the transaction. The fee is a huge 3%. Now, I've never complained when they held my balances for 20 or so days with no interest and I've never charged them for the free advertising they get when on my eBay auctions I state "will accept paypal only". But they decided to charge me to use their service out of the blue.

I'm sure they sent me an email on the subject at some point, but I never read any paypal emails since 80% of them are phishing attempts (something else I never complained to them about.. and never charged them for my services in helping them track down phishers)..

So, they can go fuck themselves. I'm not using their service again until they drop these fees. I'm sure my business is nothing to them, but if I can spread the word, perhpas I can affect them in some way. Besides, what they are doing is just plain wrong. Bummer.. dumb asses...

Korea

Some anonymous reader asked me my opinion on N. Korea and I sort of formed one for him/her in the comments section of this post. While on the subject, I saw this post on the Mighty Middle by Michael Reynolds that seemed to sum up the situation pretty well.

It seems to me that our country has a myopic and shortsighted view towards foreign policy. It seems to me that we try to solve foreign problems as they come. It seems to me that these problems pop up because of poor foreign policy decisions we've made in the past. I'm no diplomat and I'm no genius, but I think we should think about the global repercussions of our actions.

A Sad Truth

I’m quite embarrassed to say that my mom and her husband are hardcore Bush/GOP supporters. But even so, I was shocked to learn that they haven’t seen “An Inconvenient Truth” yet. My mom was instantly opposed to it because apparently they used a penguin in the marketing of the film and she thought that was pandering to the “March of the Penguins” crowd. My stepfather said they just hadn’t had time to see it and he was interested to learn more about this issue of climate change. With them being clueless Red State Sheep I understood this reason quite clearly.

Of course you all know I’ve seen the film and found it really amazing (as did most others as well). Also, I knew that it was partially a Gore campaign ad and I knew that would be a hard thing for my mom and stepfather to deal with so I told them that it was in there, but easy to separate. I was confident that the rock solid facts and science in it would trump any party crap. I told them that no matter what party we were in, or nationality, it was really important to see this film.

So, I convinced them to go see it. At one point to bring it all home I said “Listen, compared to the Energy industry, what possible financial motivation could Gore (and others) have to push for the climate change cause?”. I did this in hopes to tell them that Al made the film to educate America, and not so he could get rich. They didn’t get my point.

Anyway, they watched the film and hated it. In a 5 page email, they told me that the EPA has all this info on their website and that the Bush Administration is well aware of this issue and is on top of it. Further they went on to tell me that Kyoto was bad for American jobs and that Bush was right to not sign it. Then they finished up their argument with this statement “Al did not discover this problem any more than he discovered the internet.”. My lord!

Now their response was surprising but now that I think about it, I would imagine not very extraordinary. They are a typical Red State family and just refuse to see logic even though they are both quite intelligent. Sadly their kind is representative of most of America (D and R) who simply buys what is fed to them on TV because it paints a rosy healthy happy picture all the time.

I thought “Truth” would appeal to everyone and really be a catalyst for rapid change and acceptance of this issue, I was wrong. Al Gore, by using his celebrity to sell this issue has in some ways planted it firmly to the Left in our sad, pathetic political culture war and that’s really too bad.

Rush Gets Off

I don't get it at all. Rush Limbaugh is not going to be charged for his recient embarressment with the bottle of Viagra that wasn't his. What I don't understand is how this isn't the same thing as what he was arrested for in the first place and why he is on probation.

Charges in the Viagra case could have nullified a deal Limbaugh reached with prosecutors last month in which a single “doctor shopping” charge was deferred for 18 months, so long as Limbaugh does not get arrested for any reason.

Authorities had accused Limbaugh of illegally deceiving multiple doctors to get overlapping painkiller prescriptions. Limbaugh denied the charges but admitted he was addicted to painkillers.

I wonder if the average joe would have gotten the same treatment.

We have to get the troops out of Iraq

So, a girl was raped by our troops and then killed along with her family. I can totally believe it. Look I am a huge fan our our troops. But lets be realistic here. These guys are doing a job they were not trained for (occupying a country), most have been there way too long (multiple manditory tours), and I would imagine that they have no idea why they are still there.

These are men who are trained to see other humans as targets and not as people. We want them to be this way, that makes them good at what they are supposed to be doing, but if you sit them in a town under immense stress and over long periods of time, can you even fault them for not behaving as normal humans in society?

But we don't care do we? The BWH will do it's best to kill this story and I would imagine that the troops involved will be court marshaled and that will be the end of it. No discussion on the real reason why it occured. No discussion on the effects of this occupation on our troops and the Iraqis. We have to get them out of there. Admit we made a huge mistake and pull them out. It is time.

Flag Burning

Dammit. I'm such a slacker. I've been ready and willing to write something about this issue for a few weeks now but I just couldn't seem to get started on it. Now my friend Howard at Smedly Log beat me to it perfectly. He doesn't really get into a personal viewpoint, but he has a great quote up there by Scott Adams (the Dilbert guy) that when you read the full text sums up what I feel almost perfectly.

First off, let me say that it should be obvious that the GOP is setting up an issue for the next presidential election and possibly the mid-terms as well. They failed on the gay marriage amendment and now they are on their second candidate. It is so sad that our government is wasting time on this issue. Even though the american people feel that this issue is at the bottom of their list of important things to deal with (see question 12 on page 5 of this FOX news poll) the GOP knows that if it makes it to a ballot somewhere it can swing an election.

Lets just stop and consider this amendment for a second. How would it be written? If it will be illegal to burn a flag, how will 'flag' be defined? Would it be just a cloth flag of certain dimensions? Or would it be any representations? Say a paper one, or a photo of one? How about the flag jacket that out Philadelphia mayor Street wore after 9/11? Does that count? I don't want to get too technical here but what I'm trying to say is that a flag in the traditional sense is not unlike other symbols of America (like bunting and those goofy pins everyone wears).

Lastly, like it said in the Smeadly post, if the flag is a direct representation of our country and our country is the land of the free then would the burning of this symbol be an expression of that very freedom and by it's nature be one of the most purely patriotic events that could occur? I think that it clearly is. So on this fourth of July where it is illegal in most states to light of fireworks (god knows why), I say that we burn american flags as a sign of our independence...

PS. as a public service, here is an amazing site dedicated to the issue.

Le Tour de France

Last year I had the most amazing time watching the Tour (see here, here and here for some old posts). It was the first time I'd actually sat down and actually watched it. Previously I'd seen highlights and kept up with it in the paper, but boy I'm glad I got to see it. I'm so glad I got to see Lance Armstrong, the most amazing athlete I've ever seen in my life (and I've seen a few).

So, Lance is retired and now the Tour is looking for a new champion. Who will it be? What will happen this year? You can totally find out by watching OLN starting Saturday. The race is 3 weeks of hell to ride but just amazing to watch. I know.. I know it seems like watching a bike race would be like watching paint dry but it really isn't. It's a team sport with tactics and athleticism. It's a thinking mans sport. It's amazing.

I urge you all to give it a shot. But I need to give you an idea of what you are going to see. Each day is a stage (there will be 20 this year) and each stage is different. Everyone has a time for finishing the stages and when added together, they have what is called the General Classification. The person with the lowest GC at the end is the winner. At the end of each stage the person with the lowest GC also gets awarded the Yellow jersey.

Anyway, there are essentially 4 stage types. The first is a time trial. This is an individual race against the clock where riders try to finish a course as fast as they can. They are on the course alone while they ride. (There is also a team time trial, but not in the Tour this year). The other stages are all done as a group (well, they start that way). The second type is a flat stage where they ride a course that averages about 200 km (or 125 miles). It is the type of stage where riders will generally stay in the main pack (called the peleton) and finish all within a few seconds of each other. Sometimes a group of riders will break away from the peleton and try to make up some GC time. Depending on how high up they are in the GC, the peleton may or may not decide to chase them down. The flat stages are peaceful and beautiful to watch. The third stage type is similar to the flat stage but has a few relatively small mountains or hills in it. This is called a rolling stage and it begins to test the riders. The last stage type is the mountain stage and I can't even begin to describe what happens here. It is in the mountains (which begin on July 12) that the real race is generally fought.

So, on Saturday you'll see a time trial and then in the following days a number of flat and rolling stages. You should try to check out one or two days to get a feel for the riders and who is looking like they have the legs to ride the whole thing to the end. If you watch nothing else, watch a mountain stage in its entirety, you will not be disappointed.

Ok.. so that's my little blurb on the Tour. Of course I need to give you my predictions for the finish. Here is my top 10 in the GC followed by the Green and the Poka Dot jersey winners:

1. Jan Ullrich
2. Ivan Basso
3. Alexander Vinokourov (could win if he has a strong team effort)
4. George Hincapie (will have an incredible team with him but had a bad crash earlier this year)
5. Floyd Landis
6. Alejandro Valverde
7. Levi Leipheimer
8. Yaroslav Popovych
9. Cadel Evans
10. Christophe Moreau

green jersey : Thor Hushovd (with Tom Boonan a very close second)
poka dot : rassmussen

Vive Le Tour!

Our Floods and Climate Change

Hmn... I wonder if all of our floods lately are related to climate change? You know, there was an interesting statistic in the Gore movie (which you should go see if you haven't) that talks about the fact that in a sample of 1000 peer reviewed papers, 0 of them denied that climate change is real and that we have caused it. It then says that of a sample of news reports over the past few years, 55% of them gave rise to doubt that climate change is real. Disenfranchise folks.

So, I don't have the tools or the time to do a survey today, but from what I saw on our local news yesterday and what I've seen in the papers today, there was not one mention of the possible reason for the increased rains we've been having. In the Inky article I linked to above there is this quote : "Meteorologists described the spell of rain that began last Thursday as a remarkable one.".

Obviously in my mind there should be at least an attempt to get some scientist to tell us why the rains are occurring and what the possible connecting causes could be. But of course there was none. Perhaps we could feel like weather patterns are more science like if we started calling weather forecasters by some other title instead of "meteorologist". Think about that name for a minute.. does it really make you think of a trained professional? Or does it make you think of a fortune teller? The name is from the middle ages and it's just embarrassing that we still use it.

Point is, climate change is real and it's behind all of this and we are taking way to long to make the connection in our minds. We have to wake up and smell the coffee before we're all living in it.

I don't know

No.. that's not true.. I know why I've not been very inspired to write lately.. I've got topics in my head (Genos, Flag Burning, The Tour, Green Stocks, the new Windows Media Player beta) but I just can't seem to sit down and write. I think the reason is that I feel like writing here really makes no difference. When I changed focus from personal crap to topical stuff I had envisioned that I would get comments and emails and references... I thought what I would write would actually make a change in the world. I'm not so idealistic anymore. My 2 Questions post was a big one. I had it in my head for a while and I really thought it would generate interest. But like most of my ideas, they are only great in my own head.

For those of you who read regularly, I thank you but I don't know.. lately I just can't keep up my pace.. I'm just not inspired enough. But I imagine that I won't stop since this is my primary outlet (I don't get out much).

Who knows..

Unity 08 : Declaration of Independence

I'm #1462.. how about you?

The 2 Questions

I want to ask you to go along with me here for a moment. I want you think big, I want you to forget about borders and races and religions and just think about one thing. Think about the human race. Be inclusive. Count everyone since we all really are the same. We all have the same inner sprit and life and we all can learn and question things. In fact we all have a drive, a need to learn and question things. We may suppress that need, but it’s there in everyone and you and I both know it.

I would argue that the human race is the single most important entity that we all can conceive of in the universe. Ultimately, everything we do and everything we are about serves us as a species. The most important thing in all the universe to us is to simply protect our race. To live. If we were all dead, nothing is relevant.

So, in my world, everything should measure up against one yardstick. How does it serve our species? Our ultimate goal is to survive as a race. But why do we need to survive? Why are we here in the first place? What would happen if all humans were extinct? And, no matter what religion or science tells us, we all know the answer. Deep down we all know that the answer is simple: “We have no idea”.

Sure we have our theories and sure we have faith that there is a reason for life. I mean, if we didn’t, we’d really have no will to live would we? Most of us simply say to ourselves “Well, I don’t know why I’m here, but I’m sure there is a reason so I’ll just stick it out.”

Which leads me to what I believe. I believe that we may never totally know why we are here, but over time, we will continually get closer to knowing. Look at how much we’ve learned since the dawn of human existence. Look how far we have come. I believe that we as a race exist for one main reason: To know ourselves. With each passing generation, our knowledge grows. So, to me, our ultimate goal should be to keep humanity going.

Ok, so you can see where I’m going now. In my mind there are two things going on with one serving the other. Our reason for living is to figure out why we are here and understand who we are. We all agree that that reason can’t be realized in one lifetime. We need to continue on over time so we can get closer and closer to that realization. So we must make it our ultimate goal to survive as a species.

From all that I will argue that we can rate any person, any organized religion, any popular movement, any corporation, anything at all by simply asking two questions of them/it:

1. How has this thing contributed to our knowledge of ourselves?
2. How has this thing contributed to the propagation and continuance of our species?

Use these questions on yourself. Use these questions for your religion. Use these questions for your leaders. You will find, if you are really honest, that most people and institutions today really don’t stack up and that our direction as a species is horribly lost.

My Friday Night - Movie and a Dinner

My girlfriend and I went out last night with 2 of our friends. We went to see a movie and then to dinner afterwards. Here are my short reviews.

The film was "Thank you for Smoking". Right off the bat, I highly reccomend this movie. It's a comedy type film with a message. The polot is simple: we spend some time with the head lobbiest for the tobacco industry. Even though the film is clearly anti-smoking, we can't help but love the guy and respect how amazing a spokesman he is. The film is at times seriously hillarious and the main character is just perfectly played by Aaron Eckhart. If you are planning on going to the movies this weekend, go see "An Inconvenient Truth". If you've seen that and want to laugh, go see "Thank You for Smoking". Now if only I could convince all the sheep who are going to see the new Sandler film (which I can only assume will suck).

Since we were going to be at the Ritz 5 for the film, we wanted to eat somewhere nearby. There are so many cool places in Old City and we considered our favorite (Buddakan) but instead made reservations at Amada since we wanted to give it a shot and had heard such great things about it from Craig LeBan and others.

My gf and I had gone there once for appetizers to check it out and while she liked it quite a bit, I was totally unimpressed. This time we were doing it right. We had a 10pm reservation and were set up right in front of the stage where they do a set of Flamenco dancing.

We sat down just as the music was starting and boy was it loud. We couldn't hear anything but the music. Not each other, not the waitor, nothing. We considered leaving but we figued it wouldn't last all night. We were right. The set lasted about 20 minutes and then they just up and left. Not that I was complaining, but it was kind of odd that the would set up and play just one simple 20 minute set. I mean, there was a stage and it was a draw of the place.. but anyway.. ce la vi..

I'm not going to go into the food in detail. It's a tapas place and we ordered all kinds of stuff. Some stuff was pretty good, some was boring, and some was bland. Between the 4 of us, we weren't very impressed with me impressed the least. My rating was based on the fact that our per person check (with tip) ended up being over $75 per person. That's cool, but for that kind of money I want great food and great drinks. I had neither. So, after 2 visits to Amada, I give it a rating of C+.

Gay Marriage in PA.. The saga continues

Well at least some senators have some sense. The bill passed the senate, but not without some key changes that protected domestic partnerships and essentially killed the amendment for quite a while. Overall I still say anyone voting yes on this bill should be voted out of office and anyone voting no should be applauded and allowed to stay. Like I said in a previous post, this bill is a perfect indicator of legislative integrity and it trancends the traditional party affiliations. The Inquirer piece listed the philly area senators voting yes and no. They are :

YES VOTES (mostly along party lines except for one):

Joe Conti (R., Bucks)
Edwin Erickson (R., Delaware)
Stewart Greenleaf (R., Montgomery)
Dominic Pileggi (R., Delaware)
John Rafferty Jr. (R., Chester)
Michael Stack (D., Phila.)
Robert Tomlinson (R., Bucks)
Robert Wonderling (R., Montgomery)

NO VOTES (Not one R was brave enough to stand up for what is right)
Andrew E. Dinniman (D., Chester)
Vincent J. Fumo (D., Phila.)
Vincent Hughes (D., Phila.)
Shirley Kitchen (D., Phila.)
Christine Tartaglione (D., Phila.)
LeAnna Washington (D., Phila.)
Constance Williams (D., Montgomery)
Anthony Williams (D., Phila.)

The CapTech Classic

So what is the CapTech Classic? It's a bike race that happens in Richmond, Va. Like the bike race here in Philly, it has a lot of professional presence. Unlike the Philly Bike race, it is really boring and the course is just sad. But you know what? Unlike the Philly bike race this year, the coverage on OLN was so good that I watched every last second of the race and thoroughly enjoyed it.

There were cameras all over the course, motorcycles with cameras, professional commentary, the works. There even was a 2 minute infomercial in the middle of it for Richmond. Richmond. Are you getting this? Not that Richmond is a pathetic city, but compared to Philly it really shouldn't be getting event coverage that is light years better.

The city should be ashamed at how poor our coverage was. I was ok with this at first, thinking, well, we don't deserve good coverage since America doesn't care much about cycling, but that until I saw this damn race on OLN on Saturday! What the hell man?

Saddam and 9/11 Are Related

The way I see it our failure in 1991 to close the net and bag Hussein actually led to many of the events of the 90’s and finally 9/11. Because we didn’t finish off Hussein and had to resort to an armed enforcement of no-fly zones and Kurdish enclaves we were forced to keep troops in the mid east, particularly Saudi Arabia. This set off the far right Wahhabis (the actual 9/11 terrorists) and gave them the cause celebre they needed to raise us to the top of their Satan list. Bin Laden, fresh from being one of our best buddies in Afghanistan, taps the hatred of the Wahhabis and radical Muslims elsewhere and targets us as the focus of his jihad quest. What followed were the WTC I attack, the embassy bombings, the Khobar Towers bombing and various attacks on infidels and the USS Cole attack. All of these were fueled by our presence in the Muslim Holy Land and might very well have not happened were it not for our military presence in Saudi Arabia.

Many Muslims already hated us for our support of Israel. The current day conflict has its roots post-WWII with deadly outbursts in the 70s and 80s to be sure. But the proximate cause of 9/11 in my mind was the consuming hatred that the radicals had for us due to our “occupation” of their holy wasteland since the early 90s. And this was due to our failure to get rid of Hussein while we had the world on our side to defeat this menace even having Arabs in the field with us who could have helped to sort out the good from the bad in Iraq. A legitimate and heavy handed response in Iraq then would have been better received than at any other time. But inadequate follow through negated the success of the military campaign. Sadly, Bush 41 taught his short game to 43 who has now seemingly done the same thing in his dealing with bin Laden, al Zawahari and Omar. Vanquishing the army and missing the targets. Not to be outdone, the current Bush has transcended the father in terms of serial failures on his watch one of which led to a misguided war that most people now agree was wrong. It didn’t just get wrong. It’s been wrong all along.

This administration has done its best (which has been pretty damned good) to cow the press into submission and make people believe that following the current course will prevail in Iraq and somehow contribute toward winning the war on terror. But what would make anyone think that after so many miscues on the little things that somehow this administration got the big things right? Of course, no one wants to see another Vietnam and cut and run is not an option. And our troops deserve our full support because they are certainly doing their jobs despite their civilian leadership. But not acknowledging that the king has no clothes on at this point isn’t the way to go. We are so far down the wrong path in Iraq (which path started with the unguarded munitions dumps and the firing of the army) that I don’t really think that a free and democratic Iraq will emerge as a result of our efforts. Do you? However, I do believe that an acceptable and honorable outcome is still possible but first we need some new leadership that can acknowledge mistakes, make fundamental changes and move on. But change needs to start at the top. Bush should resign. Not just for Iraq but for myriad reasons (for some reasons see here http://trace2000.blogspot.com/2006/01/guest-post.html).

There are many different reasons for wanting to see Bush out of office but my personal favorites are the incommunicado detention of citizens without counsel or even the right of Habeas Corpus and, of course, unwarranted surveillance. These are rights and protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. To deny them is UN-AMERICAN. If these rights can be taken away this easily, there will surely be a next time when the loss of even more liberties occurs. No right is safe when a president can decide that his power transcends that of the law and the courts. We are on the proverbial slippery slope. Either issue if left to stand by the courts will, IMHO, lead ultimately to the end of our form of government. In my mind these reasons alone disqualify Bush for office.

We apparently haven’t gotten to the tipping point yet in Iraq. It took years to get to that point with Vietnam and we even had an unpopular draft then and many more of our guys were dying every week. But times were different then. People were scared of the “Red Menace” and creeping world Communism. Now we’re scared of Terrorists who might fly airplanes into our buildings. I guess things haven’t really changed that much. Complacency and fear still rule.

Wind is the Way today

If you live in Pennsylvania and use Peco energy you can help kick start the alternative energy market without spending much money.. like.. at all.

Here's the deal. There is this big wind farm that just went online in the Poconos. There are others, but this one is tied into a deal with Peco where they will sell us electricity at only about 2.6 cents per Kilowatt hour more than Peco charges for its usual (fossil generated) electricity. By signing up with peco, you can buy your electricity from the farm.

Now. Understand that you pay about 6.6 cents per KWH now so another 2.6 cents is like a 40% increase in your cost. That is a lot of money when you are averaging 500-1000 KWH per month. That's why Peco is allowing you to buy blocks of 100 KWH per month. So for instance you can buy one block for $2.65 a month extra on your bill.

Why would you do this? Simple. The ultimate goal is to increase demand for alternative energy nationwide so more wind farms and solar farms will be built. The more demand, the more supply will come online and of course you know that that will ultimately lead to a drop in the cost. The key is get the initial ball rolling downhill and that is where you can help with your simple 10 cents a day.

This is something that almost everyone can do and it is incredibly easy to set up. Simply go to the enrollment page, type in your account number and select your block size and you're good to go. You single handedly will be combating global warming in a real way! So get moving!!

Comcast

Tomorrow I have a job interview at Comcast in a R&D department. You know, I'm not sure I can take the job since I really don't like the company, particularly their internet service. Over the past 2 weeks my service has been really bad. Every hour or so the service refuses to establish a connection and all packets are dropped. Sure this lasts only about 30 seconds or so, but it happens all the time and it's really disruptive to my life. In addition to that, establishing connections in general are taking a really long time. For example, if I type in http://news.google.com and hit enter, I have to wait about 5-7 seconds before the connection is established and the page loads. Interestingly enough when I do http://www.google.com the page loads instantly. This is telling me that comcast is caching pages and that is a deceptive to make me (and you) feel like we have a fast connection. For the average user, they won't have any issues since in general they stay within a pretty common boundary of sites, but me, I'm all over the place when I browse and I use lots of non web internet services as well. Loosing connections and taking time to establish them in the first place is really lame.

Oh.. I've called them. First off, my account info is somehow corrupted so the tech services folks have no idea who I am. Secondly they have sent people to fix the issue. So far in the past 3 months I've had to wait home 4 times. Comcast offers to reimburse me but only like $1 a day for the lost service that day.. that's useful. Oh.. and the problem after the technicians are here has yet to be fixed correctly.

So, to sum up, I've had time wasted, days wasted, tech calls that have done nothing and still my net is still fucked up beyond belief. Fios isn't available yet, but when it is, I'm going to be the first on my block. Until then I'm going to investigate DSL (yet again! Don't even get me started on Verizon and Covad DSL)..

What the fuck man?

Burn baby Burn

Well. Some may find this story just the most appaling thing ever, but I really find it somehow hysterical. Why? Well, jsut today I was reading an article in USA Today about how the VFW is a staunch supporter of the anti flag burning constitutional amendment. So it is somehow fitting that a VFW had their flag burned.

How shocking someone burned a flag!! How evil, how unpatriotic!! How fucking stupid! A flag is a piece of cloth. Sure it's a symbol that represents this country, but only to those who need to worship a symbol. For those of us with a brain, we know that America is more than a stupid flag.

One of the most important things that make America special is that it is country of freedom, even with the crazy republicans chipping away at our rights. One of those tenants of freedom is our freedom of expression. That means that we are perfectly allowed to speak out on issues and perfectly free to burn a flag if we so choose. To try and make flag burning illegal is to support a view of America where we are less free and that is just plain stupid.

So, I say, on flag day we should excercise our rights and burn our flag. It would be a wake up call to all the crazy red staters and 'patriots' that Freedom is all about Freedom. It would be a statement where we in essence would say "Fuck yea we're American and we're patriots and to proove it we're going to show the world that in America, we have freedom from oprression. Furthermore we're going to show the world that a symbol is a symbol and the intent of the action is what counts (pay attention you crazy mahmoud cartoon fanatics). In America we are free and we are proud of it!"

Teacher faces 20 years for having sex with an 18 year old

Yea.. I know it's the law and all, but seriuously. What kind of state passes a law where it is a felony to have sex with an 18 year old boy? Where probably 90% of his classmates are having sex. Where he is old enough to drive and get killed at war. Oh yea.. it's Texas.

If you read the piece, apparently the bills sponser never intended it to apply to 18 year olds. Well, I say, why not try to stop the amendments? Or perhaps pull your name off the bill? Instead the rep just went along with it.. Nice way to stand up for your beliefs.

I wonder what the 18 year old boy thinks about this....

Guantanamo : Don't let the deaths be in vain!

Elmer Smith on Guantanamo.. this needs to be read, the man is making perfect sense. God Dammit this shit pisses me off!

Let's assume that third is dangerous enough to justify holding them for four years without a trial. What about the other two thirds? And what is it about the Bill of Rights that we find so constricting in times like these? How can we keep billing ourselves as the defenders of basic freedoms around the world while withholding them at Guantanamo?

These people died to get this message out to us. Now don't let those BWH fuckers continue holding these people!

Zarquawi may become the BWH reason for getting out of Iraq

Please read this post. While I agree with most of the post, I don't agree I agree with the reason the writer comes up with for why Zarquawi deal has happened. I think that the BWH is going to use this as a "mission accomplished" reason to finally leave Iraq. I think that they are going to say "we got rid of saddam, we got rid of his kids, we got rid of Zarquawi and the insurgency and we have a new leader of Iraq, our work is now done". It's total bullshit, but whatever gets us our is fine with me.

Nice Work Colleen!!

In an article on the Guantanamo suicides:

Colleen Graffy, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy, told the BBC World Service the suicides were a "good PR move to draw attention."

"It does sound that this is part of a strategy in that they don't value their own life and they certainly don't value ours and they use suicide bombings as a tactic to further their Jihadi cause," she said.

Graffy coordinates efforts with Karen Hughes, a former top aide to
President George W. Bush who is now a special envoy charged with trying to improve the U.S. image abroad, especially in Islamic countries.

Yea.. glad to see that Karen Hughes really knows what she is doing and has the message all worked out for her subs.. good one.. I'm sure the rest of the world likes us so much better now!

Your Monday giggle

from the Week this week (6/12/06).

Bad Week for:
Testing the Almighty, after a Ukrainian man shouted "God will save me--if he exists!" before lowerin hinself into the lion enclosure at Kiev Zoo. A lioness promptly severed his carotid artery and killed him.

Uh? What ring?

I love this piece. Apparently, teens are using a new ring tone on their cell phones that is too high pitched for adults to hear. What makes this story even cooler is that the tone was apparently created as a 'teen repellant'.. I'm still giggling.

Channel 6 shouldn't cover any more bike races

I don't really feel like writing today, but I have to mention that the coverage of the bike race today on Channel 6 was poor at best. The announcers were terrible. It was obvious that they had some knowlede, but not much and they were simply miserable as announcers. One of them used the same expression over 5 times. Both of them seemed really intent on building some story out of a race that had no major breakaways during their coverage. It was obvious that it was going to end up a sprint finish but yet they seemed so amazed that the winner wasn't one of the 5 at the lead of the peleton in the previous lap. Not that they called it a peleton more than one time. Was pretty sad and it really wasn't any better when they began their broadcast. It took me 30 minutes to even figure out what happened during the (untelevised) beginning 3/4's od the race. I'm still not really clear.. way to get me caught up people. It was pretty sad.

The Roll Call for the Gay Marriage amendment

As promised two posts ago, here is a list of some of the votes from the bill. The entire list can be found here. I had fun cross tabbing the list against the list of reps on hallwatch.

Philadelphia Republican NO votes (give these guys a pass when they run) :

McIlhinney, Charles T. - NO (clearly a good man)
O'Neill, Bernard T. - NO (nice.. 4 year rookie.. obivously deserves a chance)
Ross, Chris - NO
Rubley, Carole A. - NO
Steil, David J. - NO
Watson, Katharine M. - NO - (another rookie.. go Katharine!)

Other Republican NO votes :

Diven, Michael - NO (Pittsburgh delagation, but still a good man)
Good, Matthew - NO (Altoona)
Nickol, Steven R. - NO - (Harrisburg)
Smith, Bruce I. - NO - (Go Harrisburg!)

Philadelphia Democrat YES votes (vote these bums out!!):

Caltagirone, Thomas R. - YES (30 year vet in the house.. time to retire bud)
Corrigan, Thomas C. - YES (20 year vet, 68 years old.. see ya!)
Melio, Anthony J. - YES (20 years, 74 years old.. see a pattern forming?)
Donatucci, Robert C. - Did not Vote (could have voted NO for us, did he duck?)

Other Democratic YES votes I'll leave as an excercise.. I really have to get back to work.

Lets fix the election system

Here is how the voting process should be. Well, at least in my mind, here is how I would like it to be:

1) about a week or two before the election I sit down and go online and print out the ballot for my division
2) For each race, I go the candidates website to read up on their history, philosophy, voting records, platform, etc. From here, I make a choice of which candidate I feel would be the best choice
3) I mark up my sample ballot
4) In the time before the election, I watch maybe a debate on tv or go to a public engagement for a candidate that I'm not totally sure of.
5) On election day, I take my ballot into the polling place and I make my choices

This is a perfect world and it works in so many ways. First off, I made no mention of TV ads or any ads for that matter. This is a good thing. For a given election voters are overwhelmed with ads for candidates that usually aren't even for races they can vote for. Of the ones that are relevant, 90% of them are negative. This turns off most voters right there. I can say (and I believe in exercising my right to vote) that I've considered skipping some elections as a protest against all the ads and noise I was hearing during the lead up. In my world, TV ads would not exist for candidates, it would be illegal. Same goes for radio and direct mail and phone calls.

Second, if all candidates had clear websites about their positions or there was a 3rd party site set up that would outline useful apples to apples comparison on candidates, people would immediately be able to form opinions on who they should vote for. I don't believe that most voters use the party affiliation as their only determining factor when voting. At most I believe they may use it as a guide. This is a good thing. Party animosity in this day and age really serves to alienate the voters from the process.

Third, once the voter is engaged in the process and knows all the relevant candidates they will feel compelled to learn more about the candidates they aren't sure of. That alone will be the catalyst for candidates to do meet and greets and for the media to sponsor debates. These connections to the people should be the result of voter demand, not staged to create voter interest.

So, were are the roadblocks to this perfect world of mine? Well, first off, there is no current way for me to know what my ballot is going to look like before I get to the voting machine. Sure there are attempts at this. I don't read the newspapers anymore but I remember that one day before the elections, they used to print a city wide ballot, that is at least close to what I'm asking for here. I don't know if this is the case anymore. Also, here in Philly there are 3rd party groups that strive to inform the voter. But all we need is for the election committees to post the ballots online once they have them worked out. Let the damn voters know who their choices are going to be. Sure this is easy in the big ticket races, but what about the committee people and delegates and other elected offices that receive little notice?

Second, we need to strive to eliminate (or cut down) advertising. Do you see doctors advertising on TV? Do you see cigarette ads in magazines? It is not unprecedented for the FCC or govt. to limit advertising and so it should be here. There should be a limited amount of equal free airtime given to major candidates for major races, but they should have to speak live to the camera with no voiceovers, etc. Let the candidate speak for themselves.

Third, the amount of info on candidates should be increased and standardized. This info should be put on the web so voters can compare candidates fairly.

These 3 ideas are simple and in the case of the ballots, are painless to implement. We as voters should push for them. We could see the election process become more of what it should be and less of what it shouldn't.

D or R anyone who voted YES needs to go..

Let’s talk about the brilliant legislation passed by our state house Tuesday. Let’s talk about House Bill 2381, or the constitutional ban on gay marriage.

The vote was 136-61. Of that vote, 41 of the YES votes were Democrats. So if the Democrats had all voted NO, the vote could have been 102-95 against. First of all, it’s already illegal for gays to marry in Pennsylvania. Secondly, this is purely the work of the GOP in hopes to get the amendment on the ballot for the midterms, like they did in so many states in the 2004 presidential race.

So not only did our Democratic representatives waste time on this issue when there are so many other important things to deal with in the state assembly, they wasted time voting on something that would be redundant and they wasted time voting on something that is clearly a ploy of the GOP.

I say those people need to be voted out of office. And let me say that this isn’t a D and R issue. The passage of this bill is a clear roadmap for us voters...we now know who the idiots are! I say, Democrat or Republican, the people who voted YES on this bill should be voted out of their seats. I say Democrat or Republican, the people who voted NO on this bill should be allowed to keep their jobs since they obviously have integrity and intelligence. It’s amazing. I don’t even need to add in the argument that voting YES is totally morally wrong and discriminatory. The sheer stupidity and pandering here is clear enough on its own.

I had planned on listing for you all of the members of the house and what they voted on this bill but our state doesn’t seem to make that info available on the web. Though I could be wrong. So far all I can find is the actual bill itself. I've contacted a source and I should have the full list by tomorrow.. stay tuned!

Do we not sense that we are part of a group?

In California yesterday there was an election for Governor. It was a primary and the two democratic candidates collectively spent 70 million dollars on their campaigns. From what I’ve been able to gather, both candidates were in almost total agreements on the issues and their campaigns were mostly focused on trying to smear their opponents. Is it any wonder we as voters don’t want to be part of the process? I can’t imagine what it was like to be subjected to the candidates crap on TV, on the radio, in direct mail, calling all hours of the day on the phone. It would be enough to make me find some fringe candidate to vote for as a protest.

But California is not alone. The same will happen here in Pennsylvania when Casey runs against Santorum and Rendell takes on Swann. It’s going to be simply insane. Now tell me why this is a useful way to spend our resources?

What has happened is that we’ve gotten into a game of “keep up with the Joneses”. To win, one thinks, I have to get more exposure than the other guy. I need more TV and I need more face time. So, like an arms race, the well funded campaigns escalate their spending.

Is there a better way? Of course there is. Campaign Finance Reform in the form of financial limits, full public financing and limited, rationed TV commercials would be a start but nobody is going to push for this stuff on their own. Both parties at the national level need to work this out for themselves. Do you think they will? Of course not. Like our government, these parties are full of people who are making money off of the very practices they push onto candidates. So what do we do?

We demand more of our candidates. I’m planning on writing to the major candidates and telling them that they aren’t getting my vote if they run too many negative ads or if I get too many campaign calls. If all of you do the same, if all voters did the same and actually kept their pledges not to vote for people, change would happen. But the key is that we need to act as a group. And that’s where all of this falls apart.

The same goes for voting and it’s something everyone struggles with when election time comes. It’s the main knock against our electoral system (and any other for that matter). It’s really hard for people to see that acting individually aggregates into a large power.

The same goes for these pledges. If I pledge to not vote for Casey, than unless everyone else agrees with me and does the same I’m essentially voting for Santorum which I really don’t want to happen. So how can the individuals in the group know for sure that what they do will count? This is a fundamental problem that nobody seems to want to address. And I ask all of you what you think? How do we address this?

My initial idea is that if we as a community of voters actually were represented in the media then this wouldn’t be an issue. What I mean is that we need some type of pre-emptive feedback system. And this isn’t a democratic/republican issue. This is a voters/media issue. As an example, think about popular music. How do you find popular music? How does it become popular? What makes a hit? Obviously a good song should make a hit, but how does that happen? Is it all word or mouth? No. The media (MTV, reviewers, radio stations, etc.) all watch us and see what we are buying and what we are talking about and they in turn tell us what is happening. This feedback helps the popular hits to gain traction and more people buy them and there you go, a hit is born. The same can be said for any commodity. In a good market, there is good information that the consumers can use to influence their decisions. In a perfect market, with perfect information, the consumers are fully informed and can make perfect decisions. This is an ideal, but one that we can strive for. In the case of elections, we are at the opposite end of that ideal. We have no real information at either side of the election. Is it any wonder we feel disenfranchised?

What do you all think?

Big Fat Slob

Found a new blog.. It's political and fun.. It's called A Big Fat Slob. What made me want to bring it up here was that I wanted to post a photo I saw on it here and I didn't want to do it without credit. So, the photo you see here was from this post.

Vote dammit!!

Ahh.. who cares, it's only an election for a US Senate Candidate.. Listen people, if you don't vote, you can't complain.. We really need some kind of purple ink, ash on the forehead, sticker on the shirt kind of way for people to say "yes, I voted today" so they can be shamed if they didn't. We need to make voting our most cherished right.. instead we're spending our energy trying to put discrimiation into the constitution.. yea.. that makes sense.

Every day

Every day I see a story like this. This one is more interesting.. In this case, the boy is 18.. the age diff is 7 years. And it's hard to tell, but I would guess it was consentual. Why should this woman go to jail? What good will that do society? What harm was being done?

See, this is not objective

Here is what I've been complaining about in the MSM the past few years. Here is the first 2 paragraphs of an article in the Daily News today :

WHO WERE the thugs who shot a beloved father of two as he worked the graveyard shift guarding a construction site?

Who would creep up on Michael Powell, 39, as he sat in his locked SUV and pump a volley of bullets into the windows just after midnight yesterday, striking the devout churchgoer in the neck and chest?

As you read them, do you see what I'm saying when I say that the MSM has lost all objectivity?

"Who were the thugs..." : who says they are thugs? Maybe they were vigilanties and the guy shot was a drug dealer.. were they thugs then? or heroes?

"Who would creep up on..." : Why should the writer make assumptions on how the shooters approached the victim? And further, why ask "Who could do this?" or "Who would do this?".. just tell me the facts lady! I don't need your personal opinion.

I know these are minor quips, but still, when added up across all the papers in the nation and all the news agencies, these things add up in a big, negative way. The news is supposed to be objective. Why can't we as a people hold the MSM to this standard? Why do we not care anymore?

We need good ubiquitous encryption and we need it now.

As you all know, email is a disaster. We have spam to deal with, we have spoofed identity issues, we have privacy issues, etc. All of these can be solved by using encryption. But I want to take this a step further and say that we need it for phone conversations as well.

First, let me explain what I mean here. Using public key encryption we can accomplish two very important things. We can do either one or both at any time we wish. We can encrypt our communication so that only the intended recipients are able to receive it. And we can also use encryption to identify ourselves conclusively to the recipient.

You can see that by having digital ‘signatures’, we can eliminate the spoofing, phishing and spam problems in email quite easily. Once we can be sure who is communicating with us, we can then feel free to go back and prosecute the sender (in the case of spammers) or we can choose to not communicate with them (phisher). This can apply to telephone conversations as well. I just got a call from my bank asking for some information. Now. How do I know that it was them who called me? Because they knew my name and what bank I was involved with? Should I trust that? If I didn’t want to give out the info what recourse would I have?

Caller ID wasn’t used in this case. As is the case with most banks and big companies, their ID was blocked. I’m sure that a dedicated identity thief could probably hack the Caller ID system so I’m not really confident in that either. If we had encryption we wouldn’t have this issue.

Some say that encryption all the time would thwart the government attempts at countering terrorism. I’m not going to get into this since it would require me to write a whole lot and get way off topic. I will say that encrypted emails and phone calls, would be much better evidence in a trial than non encrypted emails and phone calls for 2 connected reasons: 1) tampering with the contents is virtually impossible, 2) the identity of the sender could be more positively identified. Of course the govt. has to be able to decrypt the messages which is easy to do once they know the private key of the sender and I would assume someone under investigation could be compelled in some legal way to give up their key just like they can have their homes searched, etc.

In all, we have a right to privacy and we have an obligation to others to positively identify ourselves to each other when we communicate using electronic means. Encryption is the way. If we started demanding it more, maybe the tools would be developed to make it painless to use.

The War on Drugs is a Waste and you know it is

Wow! I'm really impressed that the Daily News is for the decriminalization of marijuana. But did they have to hide it in the last sentence of one of their articles? I think they should write an editorial on the issue instead. Personally I don't smoke. I've tried a few times and have had good experiences, but I can count the number of times on one hand. That doesn't change the fact that I'm strongly for the legalization of pot and other drugs. It makes sense on so many levels.

You’ve seen it written about here in this blog in a number of places. The “War” on drugs is just such a waste of resources and does nothing to stop the actual usage of drugs. And has anyone ever bothered to debate on weather recreational drug use is actually bad at the macro level? Any reasonable person imagining a country with legalized drugs can hardly not make the connection to our usage of alcohol and cigarettes. In both cases, the substances are dangerous, and cause a lot of deaths, but for some people, maybe for many, they provide a safe way to relax and enjoy life.

This “War” also has had an adverse affect in some ways on our youth. As an example, let’s take Ecstasy usage. Here is a very popular club drug that is used by a huge number of people. Originally designed by a chemist at Mecrk and then used by therapists the drug has had a very interesting history. There still is no official determination on weather the drug is dangerous over the long term.

But in the media, MDMA (Ecstasy) is the devil incarnate. Everyone knows that there is a concerted effort to get young people to stop using MDMA. Most of this effort is found in the mainstream media. Oprah talks about it, there are news articles telling us about speculative papers that 'prove' that MDMA causes brain damage, there are commercials 'just say no', etc.

The problem here is that the users believe that they are being fed disinformation, they simply don't trust what they hear from the media and the government. So, even if there are true facts to be distributed to the users, they will probably be treated as more of the same and ignored, at worst, they will be deliberately misinterpreted.

For example, say the message is: "2 doses of MDMA in an hour will cause brain damage in 20 years". Here is how most of the MDMA crowd will interpret it: "There are no ill effects, you can easily see that. You've taken 2 doses before, what's happened in a week? A month? A Year? You're fine aren't you? What about your friends, hey, they're fine too...all we can do is scare you a bit by saying that in 20 years you will be screwed...it's all we can do to get you to stop."

If there was no “War” and recreational drug use was treated as alcohol usage is, perhaps the level of mistrust between users and the media (our tie to the medical/science/research community) would decrease to the point of triviality. We certainly give non-drug stories with a lot more credibility. If there was an article in the newspaper, or a story on Oprah about how eating the worm in Mezcal Tequila causes cancer in 20 years, I can guarantee you that most worm eaters would stop. The same would happen with drugs. Access to real/true information is the key to a better society.

Continuing with MDMA, there have been a few deaths reported. I know of two of them. In one, the person died not from the drug, but from ingesting too much water after taking the drug. That’s something that could have been avoided with good education programs. In the other case, it was determined that the drug ingested was not pure and contained an unusually high amount of poisons in it. Again, this is something that happens when one is forced to buy drugs from unknown sources.

With recreational drugs made legal what would drug companies do? You know as well as I do that they would manufacture recreational drugs. They clearly are set up for it: they have the r/d, the capital, the machines, and the materials. But here is the important question for you. Would it be to their advantage to make the drugs unsafe? You bet it wouldn't. While there is always some unsafety with all drugs (legal and otherwise), things like unknown side effects, interactions, etc., there is an acceptable risk level. The drug companies would certainly make safer, more controllable, less addictive, more concentrated recreational drugs...just like the companies that make beer and liquor.

What else may happen if the War was over? I would argue that for one thing amount of dialog would increase, not only between parents and children, but among people in general. The medical/science/research community would have more studies both for and against drug use...the debate would grow and from that would blossom even more good information.

Then there is the obvious one. I've heard that right now, 98% of violent crime is attributable to illegal drugs. Almost every criminal deals drugs or steals so they can buy them. Why? There is a huge profit motive in selling drugs, because the sale prices and the addiction level is so high. Remove the profit motive by selling the drugs at CVS (or in government sanctioned store) and the illegal drug trade goes away. Once legal, you can even tax them and use the money for public health or information campaigns.

Gore in 2008

As nice a dream as it would be, there is no way a "regular guy" (or girl) will ever become president. The process to get elected is just way too hard to do unless you are a seasoned politician and know how to play that game. So as much as we'd like some oulier candidate to show up, I'm hoping for Al Gore. I told you in my last post how I've been seeing a lot of him lately. Sure enough I see him in the Daily News today in a great piece.

Al Gore

You know what. In the past 6 months I've totally turned around my opinion on Al Gore. If he runs and wins the primary, I am going to take a year off of my job to go work on his campain. I want him to be president in the worst way.

So it started when I saw a video about him in volume one of Wholpin. It was a video made my Spike Jones during the 2000 election. Spike had spent a day with Al and his family about 2 months before the big day and the film really showed me that Al Gore was far from that stiff looser America had percieved him as. (see here for details). He was amazing and I almost cried when I thought about how different America would be today had the presidency not been stolen from him.

A few weeks later I read this article about Al in Wired. I learned how he took off after the election to go sailing with Tipper, and how he decided not to run in 2004 and how he began to make his global warming crusade his #1 priority in life.

Then it all capped off with the movie last night. "An Inconvenient Truth" really needs to be seen by everyone here and worldwide. It needs to become a global success. The message is simple, global warming is real and we're past the point of "almost too late to fix it" and at the point of.. "we're too late, but if we jump on this issue right now and get lucky we may have a shot at mitigating most of the ill effects".

The movie is awesome. Yes, it does have the feel of a political commercial at times, but the message is really clear. We have to take global warming seriously and we really aren't. Oh.. and don't just take my word for it. Listen to Roger Ebert (yes, I know movie reviewers are really not too credible lately, but look at the words he uses and decide how he really feels):

"In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to"

And that's why I think Al will run for president this time around. His name is coming out and this film and the issue he raises just screams out that he will. I just hope he doesn't follow the campain he followed in 2000. I hope he comes out as Al Gore and not as some campaining politician. If he does that, he could win.

Listen, no matter what you think of the guy or if you are a republican or democrat, go see the film and then tell your friends to..it's not a political thing. It really is an earth thing.

Yea... I would totally have hooked up with my female teacher in high school

DAmn.. I looked through my archives but couldn't find a post on this.. though I know there is one there somewhere. Almost weekly I see pieces on the net that talk about older female teachers hooking up with younger students. I've argued with my friends about this ad nausium and my theorey is that it does no harm, and in fact may actually do some good. Now I only know of one person who is a male that has had this happen (he was 16 and she was about 26) and let me tell you, he's the most successful of my high school class.. and he's not crazy at all, probably the most centered person I know.

I also have some women friends who had similar experiences that were apparently not harmful to them at all. In fact they look back on their hookups quite positively.

Now, I'm not saying that adults having affairs with children is a good thing. And I'm not saying that damage cannot be done, but damage can be done in all relationships with children who are under the age of 24 or so. It all depends on the circumstnaces.

I'm reading an interesting article in New York Magazine called "Dirty Old Women" that talks about this issue and it's quite interesting. One thing I noticed (and this is not the focus of the article, but an interesting tidbit none the less) was this snippit:

Bruce Rind, Philip Tromovitch, and Robert Bauserman (professors at Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan, respectively) published a study that has resounded through the psychological Establishment ever since. The article, published in the American Psychological Association’s Psychological Bulletin, was what’s known as a meta-analysis, an overview of the existing science, in this case on the long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse. The authors concluded that “negative effects were neither pervasive nor typically intense” and that men who’d been abused “reacted much less negatively than women.”

It goes on to say that a number of right wing people (shrinks and pundits) totally disagree, but still at least it makes my point valid for debate. And what is my point exactly, what am I writing about here? I think that essentially, if a person is past puberty and sexually active, I don't get why it is so taboo to have an age difference. Statutory rape is probably not the best idea in my book. If the 16 year old boy and the 24 year old teacher fall in love, why not let them get married? Let's let science figure out what is best instead of lawmakers and priests.. no scratch that.. we all know how well priests do with sex...

Oh.. I should add that there is this story at the end of the article that is priceless.. It talks about this 16 year old boy who had this affair with the mother of his girlfriend. When it finally got exposed and reported to the police.. well, here's a quote :

Jason says he would not have given a statement to the Long Island police incriminating DeMartini-Scully if he hadn’t been under pressure. “They said if I didn’t they were gonna press charges on me because I was with Diane’s daughter,” who is only 14, and now Jason is 17, thus making him guilty of “sexual misconduct” himself. As of his last birthday, Jason’s relationships switched status in the eyes of the law: Sex with the then-44-year-old school psychologist who had been after him since he was 16 became okay; sex with her teenage daughter became a crime.

Yea...so.. what can I do but complain?

So I've got Comcast cable.. and I'm a huge hockey fan.. as you all should know, it's game 7 between buffalo and carolina.. it's 2-2 with 10 minutes to go in the third period.. You know how I know? I'm moitoring the score on the net. Why am I not watching it? Well, Comcast seems to have forgotten how to broadcast OLN. Other channels are working, but OLN simply says "no signal". I've called to complain, no luck.. been on hold for 15 minutes.. what can they do? give me a refund for today? Is that a fair valuation? I have Comcast so I can watch what I want when I want. I don't jsut watch whatever is on.. so 1/30th of my $150 a month really means nothing at all to me. See, like most sports fans I would probably pay $50 to watch this damn game, but I can't becasue Comcast is a company full of morons. I wonder if they will blame it on the weather.. Hmn.. isn't that supposed to be an argument against DirecTV?

This is exactly what I'm talking about

I really don't have to comment much on this at all. This is exactly what I've been saying since the 2004 election. It was stolen and this should help you to agree with me.