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Wednesday, August 31, 2005

RFK Jr. Loses His Mind

Today while cruising blogs I found Arriana Huffington's "The Huffington
Post" and Robert Kennedy Jr.'s post blaming Hurricane Katrina on
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour and his opposition to the Kyoto Protocol.

RFK, you are kidding, right?

Even if Kyoto had been approved by the US in 1997, it would still be
SEVEN YEARS from being fully in force (2012 is the target date).

It would require only "developed countries" to reduce their emissions by
5.2%, but exempts Brazil, India and China, the three biggest growing
economies, with their lax at best environmental standards.

Japan and Canada, two of the biggest cheerleaders for the pact have both
said that they know they can't reduce their levels to 6% below 1990
levels as required by the 2012 target date. Canada doesn't even have a
plan, and has INCREASED emmissions by 20% since 1990!

My true problem is it seems RFK jr. isnt' kidding, he actually believes
that this pact would have made the difference, writing "In 1998,
Republican icon Pat Robertson warned that hurricanes were likely to hit
communities that offended God. Perhaps it was Barbour’s memo that caused
Katrina, at the last moment, to spare New Orleans and save its worst
flailings for the Mississippi coast."

Bobby, you sound like you could use some help. Hopefully after some
thought you'll apologize to Mr. Barbour. BTW, how much have you given
the Red Cross to help with disaster relief? Or is that too passe for
your tastes, since the folks of Mississippi voted in Mr. Barbour, maybe
you think they deserve what they got?

Read The Full Post!

Help Hurrican Victims

If you wish to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, which appears to be
shaping up as the worst disaster in the US since the 1906 San Francisco
quake, contact the Red Cross, 1-800-Help Now. I highly recommend it if
you can afford it, even if it's only a small amount.

Read The Full Post!

Monday, August 29, 2005

Not Walking on Sunshine

Katrina showed up, with the waves today in New Orleans, but no one on
the Gulf Coast from the Big Easy to Mobile Bay is walking on sunshine.

I hope those who had to weather the storm are safe, and that life
returns to normal soon. I'm also glad I no longer live in Pascagoula, Ms.

Read The Full Post!

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Pat, You Don't Speak for Me!

Pat Robertson of the 700 Club and Christian Coalition made the statement yesterday that the US should assassinate Hugo Chavez, leader of Venezuela. Pat, YOU ARE NUTS! While I think Chavez is only slightly more intelligent than an eggplant, and much more corrupt than the Chicago Daley family, going around assassinating leaders we don't like isn't exactly the answer.

President Bush is correct to not only distance himself from PR's remarks, but he should scold him publicly.
Read The Full Post!

Monday, August 22, 2005

Camp Casey, Gold Star Families, and Utah TV

I knew it had to come at some time, the anti-war folks are screaming the
First Amendment is under attack. A Utah TV station is refusing to air an
anti-war commercial featuring Cindy Sheehan. The decision is of course
being decried as an abridgment of the Gold Star Mothers First Amendment
Rights to free speech. The VP of Sales of another TV station that will
air the ad made that statement. Now, as a VP I'd think he probably has a college degree, and possibly had to take a US history course in his studies. Maybe he needs to go back, and reread the 1st Amendment..
In fact, I'm in such a good mood, I'll post it here:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

In other words, a TV station not carrying an ad has nothing to do with
the US Constitution, it is in fact, and exercise of their own free
speech, they freely said no. Now, had Congress passed a law saying that
no station shall air an ad that denounces the war, that would be an issue.

So, Celeste Zappala and Cindy Sheehan (founders of the Gold Star
Families for Peace), like Tim Robbins before them need to find a new
argument when an independent business decides to tell them "no".
Read The Full Post!

Sorry Anon, No Page 10....

Mr. Anon-comment@blogger.com returned today, still screaming for page 10
of Jeanine Pirro's speech notes, which she didn't have when she
announced her candidacy. Evidently Anon is convinced I'm her speech
writer. I only wish I was some well connected pol's writer, it probably
pays better than my current gig.

As for the folks who e-mailed asking about why I have allowed the
anonymous comments, it's easy. I want folks to read them. The more the
better in fact. I want people to see the type of vitrol the supposedly
loving, caring left spews. In fact, I'm thinking of putting a link to
Ted Rall on my page, maybe if enough African-American's see a guy
calling Condi Rice a 'House Nigga' as Mr. Rall has in
the past, they will get the hint that the Democratic Party and left in
general are the 21st century plantation they aren't supposed to stray
from.(http://mhking.mu.nu/archives/034714.php , not the greatest source,
but an actual copy of his cartoon).

No, guys like Mr. Rall, Mr. Anon-commenter, and their like remind me of
why I quit voting for the Democratic Party exclusively quite a while
back; and now rarely vote for any of them.
Read The Full Post!

Sunday, August 21, 2005

New Diet Method

I've decided of late that I need to drop a few pounds. So, I had
replaced most of my beer intake with fruit juices. But doing some
research tonight, I found that a 12 oz can of Miller High Life has 22
LESS calories than 12 oz of Apple Juice, and about 1/3 the carbs!

So, in keeping with my desire to lose weight, I am now replacing ALL of
my fruit juice intake with Miller High Life. Not sure that the boss will
buy that when I break out a beer at my desk while I eat my veggie wrap
for lunch, but I guess I can try and explain it to him.

Read The Full Post!

What's Wrong with the Left?

For those who don't read though the comments on each post, here's a
sample of what the left sends out when they don't like somone, or their
thoughts. Now, the first paragraph may make some sense, and the first
part of it could be true, though a Grand Jury didn't indict Ms. Pirro,
only her husband.

As for the mob cash, show me the indictment. If NY needs a good prosecutor to get her, I'm sure the Mayor of Chicago would like the one there to leave.

As for the second paragraph of the rant, it's exactly the type of name
calling and trash that has caused the left to consistently lose
elections. Contrary to PETA and NARAL's belief's, calling folks names
doesn't get them to vote your way, it just makes you look pathetic.

Quote Post Follows:
For Al Pirro into the campaign just means simply pointing out that
Jeanine SIGNED AND APPROVED THE JOINT TAX RETURNS HERSELF, and that as
D.A. Jeanine took payoffs from the mob.The Pirros are lying, theiving scum. And so are you for supporting them.
I hope one day, you are put in a jail cell, and forced to suck on
Jeanine's yeast-filled panties until loaves come out of your mouth.
Read The Full Post!

It's Official!

It is official, Hillary Clinton has now been completely transformed to a
"moderate Democrat". Last week two newspapers, one in New York, and the
Washington Post, writing of the 2006 Senate race in New York were
postulating on how Hillary would do against "Moderate Republican"
Jeanine Pirro. Both papers ranted about the match up of two fairly
similar moderates of different parties.

While the mainstream media may continue to try and put new make up on
Ms. Clinton, the fact is she has so many soundbites out there, that it
is going to be fun to watch how the GOP in New York uses them to twist
her back into her true, ultra-liberal self.

Some pundits are claiming the "husband factor" may be big in this race,
but I don't think that will be the case. While Pirro's husband does have
a tax evasion conviction, for Hillary to drag him into the race requires
that Bill and all of his baggage come in too; probably not a comforting
thought. While some claim that she could ride Bill's coat tails, those
are the folks that conveniently ignore the fact that he was elected to
office twice with a plurality of the vote, and probably owes Ross Perot
as much for getting him into office as anyone at the DNC.

My personal thought is that Ms. Pirro needs to sound a constant, loud
backbeat about the 2008 Presidential election and try and get Hillary to
commit to six more years in the Senate if she wins. It will have to be
Pirro asking her, because anyone who thinks that reporters from the Post
are going ask her to make that kind of promise lives in an alternate
universe.

Read The Full Post!

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Cindy Sheehan's Alternate Reality

It's been interesting watching professional distraught mother Cindy Sheehan over the last few weeks picketing outside the President's ranch in Texas. It's been even more interesting watching the media.

If you were to read the paper or watch CNN or MSNBC for the first week, you'd think the woman had never been near the President before, but then some of the talking heads starting showing that she had already met him, and is demanding a second meeting.

Of course if you read her blog, and listen to the reporters who fawn over her, you'd be led to believe that she is there representing her whole family. Evidently her soon to be ex husband has claimed to a few radio hosts that it isn't the case, and that most of the family doesn't support what she's doing.

And you'd think that her son was a naive young man, who knew no better and joined the Army, only to be sent to Iraq. Actually, he'd already done one tour there, and then re-enlisted after it, knowing he'd be sent back.

Now that I know the truth about her son, that he was not only a good soldier, but one who went back, fully knowing the dangers, I wonder what he'd think about the spectacle his mother has become.

As a footnote, Ms. Sheehan left Crawford today because her mother had a stroke. I wish her mother well and hope she makes a full recovery.
Read The Full Post!

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Playing with Linux

For the last couple of weeks I've been playing with SimplyMepis, a Debian based Linux distribution.

I decided to start messing around with it because I missed my (very old) days of using Unix. So I downloaded a couple of different "live CD" distributions. These allow you to boot Linux from a CD.

I built boot CD's for SimplyMepis (3.3.1-1) and Unbuntu Linux. The first thing I noticed was that both had a decent GUI interface, much better than the Xwindows I remembered from HP-UX. But the interfaces were very different. Unbuntu used the GNOME interface, which looks pretty close to a Mac type interface. Mepis uses KDE which is an offshoot of the CDE Unix interface.

Gnome looks better, but I found that KDE,with some tweaking, became more user friendly, though not as pretty.

Both came with Open-Office installed. This is a MS Office replacement, or close to it. All of it's applications will read and write MS files, and save as them, plus in their own XML based styles. It works very well, though it does take some time to get used to a few changed interfaces.

After reading both distro's web sites and forums I decided to install Mepis, as the other one had a lot of folks complaining they lost their Windows install, which I wasn't willing to do.

The Mepis install was quite easy, and it automatically installed the GRUB boot loader which allows me to chose Linux or Windows at startup.

The only major problem I've had so far is that I can't use some of my work websites using either Mozilla Firefox or Opera web browsers, they require IE. That alone will keep me from switching completely, as I need to do my time card :)

Firefox is the default browser, and I've experienced some problems with it both under Windows and Linux. For one, the games at
www.pogo.com seem to crash it. Opera, which is free if you don't mind ad banners does work on that site. For $39.99 you can make the banners go away, and I may pay it for the Windows version, as it is a much nicer browsing environment.

Anyway, I'm enjoying Linux, but I've found that I can't do anything easier, quicker, or more intuitively than with Windows, so it really doesn't make sense to switch to it completely. However, I'm thinking of building another computer, and the free OS sure sounds better than $99.00 for a copy of XP.
Read The Full Post!

Friday, August 12, 2005

Smearing for Gain

NARAL, the "pro-choice" group, pulled an ad that it had begun running earlier this week smearing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts.

According to NARAL, they pulled the ad because people were "misconstruing it's meaning". Evidently the voice over claiming he defended abortion clinic bombers. The facts were actually that he'd written they shouldn't be excused; but that was a different case. The one they referred to he didn't defend bombers, he said that state laws banning protests in front of clinics were out of the Fed's jurisdiction.

But hey, if they can get a couple of folks thinking he likes bombers, they've made their point.

Now, if I ran an ad saying NARAL supports the murder of innocent lives, they'd have fits and talk about my intolerance, probably sue for libel, and generally make a huge stick. Of course my rant would probably be more based in fact than theres, but when you are just trying to gain fear points, who cares.
Read The Full Post!

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Zero Risk Space Flight

I've been thinking lately, with the space shuttle up in space, and everyone freaking out about every little thing that someone finds wrong. What I've been thinking about is "Zero Risk Space Flight".

Of course, it doesn't exist, not even in Hollywood. Even if, as the conspiracy folks think, we never actually went to the moon, the filming in a Hollywood basement wouldn't have been risk free.

Why do we want no risk? Well, because over the last forty years we've gone from being a country of adventurers to a nanny state, where we are protected from everything. We have warning labels telling us not to stop the chainsaw with our hands, instead of letting a few folks who are too stupid to figure it out set an example.

If today's nanny's were around in 1492 most of the America's would never have been discovered by Europeans. The Queen would have told Christopher "Sorry, the there is no way to get to India that way, take the long way around".

Yeah, Zero risk space flight would be nice, but it's not going to happen. In the spirit of Columbus, who Columbia was named for, I say keep taking risks, put a 100 tons of liquid hydrogen under some brave volunteer's ass, and light it like a candle to launch him or her into space.
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Wednesday, August 03, 2005

I'm Back Because of Recess (appointments)

At work today a coworker of mine was lamenting the recess appointment of John Bolton the UN. He couldn't understand how the President could possibly be right in circumventing the Senate in that way.

My comment to him was it's too bad he had to wait for a recess, and that he didn't use the tactic more often to get his judicial nominations on the bench. Now, if he were to have used that appointment for John Roberts to the Supreme Court, I'd be angry. Let me explain why the difference.

In the case of Bolton, he's been sitting around waiting for a hearing that may never come, only because Senate Democrats have stalled his nomination, not for any real disqualification, but because they don't like him, he's abbrasive. The stall tactic hasn't been a cloture vote as it was with judicial nominees, instead it hs been constant requests for more documentation on his past government work.

Mr. Bolton has sat for months, waiting, and constantly being jerked around by the whining of Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid, mostly because they know he won't be a puppet of the current folks in charge of the UN.

In the case of Judicial Appointments, I believe the President should appoint every person he's nominated who hasn't had a vote.

Regardless of the "group of 14" who colluded to stop a Senate rules change to eliminate the judicial filibuster, the President's nominees have a right to a hearing before the Senate. If the Senate won't give it to them, he should just put them on the bench during recesses.

Now, why would I be angry about Roberts? Easy, he was only just nominated, and the course of the Senate hasn't been decided. The Senate should have sufficient time, say 3 months, to get their work done. Then if the obstructionists decide they need to block the nomination some how, then the President should work unilaterally to appoint his nominee.
Read The Full Post!

I'm Back!

Hey folks,

Crazy Politico disappeared for a number of months due to work and family circumstance.

But now for everyone's enjoyment, I'm back!
Read The Full Post!