Rude Passengers

Angry because he missed his stop?

Cleanliness

Not bad for a Monday

53 dead in Iraq and 1 death sentence here in the USA.

Scavenger hunt

If anyone can find this picture on the internets or the google let me know

Check please

If you haven't already heard (or guessed), GW is projected to leave the White House with the biggest budget deficit ever; and that's not counting the spending on the wars he started. As it turns out, the privileged son who couldn't handle the finances of his failed business ventures also cannot handle the finances of the USA.

Milwaukee and LED's

A somewhat rare occurance, Milwaukee was featured in the NYT in an article about green technology, namely LED's. It received two seperate mentions in the article. As a bonus, there is a mention of Rensselaer.

Kum-ba-ya Alert (Bring Backe the Commies)

The most recent appearance of the Kum-ba-ya argument, which I put at marginally better than the Hitler argument, was from David Brooks in the NYT today. His thoughts were that-
gee, Obama had a good speech, but he didn't talk enough about missiles. You see all the great Berlin speeches of the past, even though they did emphasize coming together, had the critical missile element. Without the Communists to point missiles at, it's just not the same. All the let's get together stuff is ok, but really just fluff. I wanna hear more about blowin shit up. Tell me who to hate or else I get all confused. Sure Obama mentioned fighting in Afghanistan, but let's face it- it's not the same as starin down the commies and not blinking. What's this co-operation stuff-what are we, in Kindergaten? Lot's of scary shit is going on and there's wars to be a-fightin! No more namby-pamby tearing down of metaphorical walls. If it's not a tangible commie wall with booby traps then I don't wanna hear about it.

Word of the day: Transition

John McCain is "taunting" Obama for beginning to plan for a White House transition. The quote they give:

“Before they’ve even crossed the 50-yard line, the Obama campaign is already dancing in the end zone with a new White House transition team,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said in a statement. “The American people are more concerned with Barack Obama’s poor judgment and readiness to lead than his inaugural ball.”

Another sports analogy? They are getting kind of old. And this preparation is bad because....something about an inauguration ball? Is this the old Democrats are sissies line again? Notice the not one but two references to dancing.

I guess now it is bad manners to plan ahead to run the largest economy and military in the world. Maybe it's a good idea for both of them to give it some forethought. just maybe. If McCain thinks you should not prepare, how will he be 'ready to lead' if he takes over? I would think not preparing is what shows "poor judgment" and ensure zero 'readiness to lead'. Coincidentally, the same paper that turned down an article written by McCain had published a different one recently that talked about being ready to transition.

Bigger than David Hasselhoff

Some people are complaining that the media has a bias for Obama, after 3 network anchors followed him on his foreign tour.



And some more bad news for McCain, as it seems that Germans also have a bias for Obama. 200,000 of them came out to see him give a speech there.



Then to add insult to injury, it turns out that Americans have the same bias.

Deserters

It's starting to get down to the final few believers. People are jumping off the Iraq war bus left and right. Iraq's Prime Minister now publicly wants us to leave. He expressed general agreement to Obama's 16 month exit schedule more than once. In an interview, and then after a meeting between the two. It's about as close as he can come to endorsing BO and dissing Bush as you can get while their country is occupied by us and Bush is president. Now even Blackwater wants to leave, or at least not fight there anymore. Sounds like Iraq is such a moneysink that even with the billion or more dollars they were paid, they still don't like the payback. Proving a strong adherent to the doctrine of preemption, Bush had announced that he would be OK with a 'time horizon' which is entirely something different than an artificial timetable-which would embolden the terrorists to wait us out.

Listen to your father

His father told him not to sound like an idiot. It doesn't seem like he's listening.

Don't Drink and Punditize

You might forget whether or not there were any oil spills during recent hurricanes. Trent Lott became the latest in a long line of ignorant or lying, you guessed it, republican politicians, to claim there were no oil spills in the gulf during hurricanes Rita and Katrina. Here, here, and here. If you follow the links in the posts, the evidence seems quite overwhelming that they are wrong.

Who's fault is it anyway

It wasn't that long ago that there was an effort to pin the blame for the rush to war in Iraq on Congress and absolve the executive from any responsibility. After all, we all know GW is a man of peace, who is not anxious for wars. Now a new line of buck passing is getting airplay, namely that 9/11 was Clinton's fault. I hope that guy knows that the TV movie 'Path to 9/11' was a dramatization, as they say in the commercials. It's ironic that on the same day someone else had a different story to tell. I'll let you be the judge of which argument seems better thought out.

Monday Reading

Caught on tape, an offer of meetings with key bush admin people in exchange for cash for the Bush Library. It will be interesting to see if we get a peek at the logbooks.


Relief is in sight! Unveiling a bold plan to deal with high gas prices, George Bush has removed the ban on offshore drilling, and urged more drilling in Alaska, ANWR. Since the offshore ban by executive order #42 put in place is gone now, the only thing standing between the consumer and the offshore oil is Democrats not removing the congressional ban. Bush blames the problem on democrats in congress, for not having already removed the ban, one that has been in place for decades. Bush says it must be done now because of high gas prices. Don't believe the people who tell you there is no short term fix. Seeing as it would take close to a decade to get significant output, the time to have overturned it if there was one was close to a decade ago, or sometime during that 12 years republicans had congress. I think Bush was in the White House for a few of those years, maybe. As Bush said, there's a chance there could be as much as 10 years of oil production offshore. Add that up with the shale and the Alaskan oil he mentions and we can go another 30 or 40 years till we get back to where we are today importing oil, at which time the Middle Eastern reserves will have a bit less after a few decades of the rest of the world's consumption especially growing India and China. Nothing says presidential leadership like punting the ball a few decades down.


Obama writes intelligently for the NYT about Iraq. McCain is showing signs of Alzheimer's, I gave them some funny names.
#1-Czech yourself
#2-It's all muslim to me
#3-Green Bay Packers
#4-Disgraceful ignorance
#5-Phil McCracken
#6-Not a geography major(Or an Econ major)
#7-Cease paying attention
#8-General Confuse Us?

The ICC has for the first time charged a sitting leader with war crimes, Sudan's President. Will Bush get a turn in the future? One retired General thinks so.

Ten years

It looks like the pentagon is attempting a punt on cluster bombs, in reaction to a recent treaty banning them that we didn't join. It wants to use '99% effective' bombs by 10 years from now. As it states further down in the article, this type of thing has already been proposed with negligible effect. If we stop using them our soldiers lives will be at risk, so the logic says. Anything less than indiscriminate bombing will require actual warfighting, and we just don't have the stomach to do that, especially in two wars at the same time. Anything we can do to keep the deaths we keep track of (our own) to a minimum. Fast cheap easy war for fast cheap easy energy for fast cheap easy folks brought to you by a slow spendy obnoxious frat boy.

Videos

Happy 4th

McHomo

The best boycott to come along since the Dixie Chicks is a McDonald's boycott for promoting the homosexual agenda. This comes from the same folks who brought you this funny tidbit.

Its a shame

You may have heard about the wildfires burning across California this week. Even though these things are a normal occurrence for the area, and fire is the only way some species of trees spread seeds, it is still kind of a shame about some of the areas that are burning. Big Sur in particular since it is such a scenic area.

Ocean Chemistry

30 years of ocean chemistry data and some analysis of it's carbon absorption and releasing.