Wind Farmer's Almanac

"Kennedy elaborates on this - he goes on to describe Nantucket Sound as 'among the most densely traveled boating corridors in the Atlantic.' As such, Cape Wind's turbines would come 'perilously close to the main navigation channels for cargo ships, ferries and fishing boats.'

The project would also come 'perilously close' to the Kennedy compound, although no mention of this is made in the column. "

The Road to Hell...

Someone on Slashdot claimed that the Democrats were the more financially responsible party. After I cleaned the coffee off my screen I had to set them straight.

(1) I don't consider just raising taxes to cover every spending spree you go on to be "financial responsibility". Republicans regularly vote for smaller spending increases than Dems. And I can't think of the last time a departments budget was actually cut. ("cut" means CUT, not just reduce the increase).

(2) The reduction in the size of government that Clinton likes to take credit for consists almost entirely of military base closings that were voted into place during the previous Bush administration. How about we do the same thing for domestic departments that have long since outlived their function? I don't hear any of these responsible Democrats calling for such things. If they did, I'd vote for them.

(3) Most Republican voters as well as Democrats are "good" people. What confuses you is that you have been told that all Republicans are evil when in reality most Republicans have a distrust, that is well founded in history of governments that get too big and try to live people's lives for them. There is no instance of government "giving" money to individuals that does not come with strings attached. As "kind hearted" as many of those programs sound, they will, and have largely already, produce a population unable to think for themselves and such a society cannot sustain itself. Never has, never will.

If there were a "Leave Me the Hell Alone" party that had electable candidates I would vote for them. Until then, I will continue to vote for the party that comes closest to that philosophy, even if there is only a hairs breadth of difference between the two existing parties.

Here is a quote from Jimmy Carter's new book "Our Endangered Values":

"Soon after arriving in Washington, I was surprised and disappointed when no Democratic member of Congress would sponsor my first series of legislative proposals -- to reorganize parts of the federal bureaucracy -- and I had to get Republicans to take the initiative. Thereafter, my shifting coalitions of support comprised the available members of both parties who agreed with me on specific issues, with my most intense and mounting opposition coming from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. (One reason for this was the ambition of Senator Ted Kennedy to replace me as president.)"

(NPR Link)

When Carter took office, even though I hadn't voted for him, I thought he was a nice guy, and his statements on reforming government gave me hope that he would do the right thing. His presidency was one disaster after another, some probably beyond his control (the gas crisis), but his own party sabotaging him is not a reason for me to consider voting for another Democrat until the Democrat party does more to distance itself from people who for all practical purposes are extreme socialists. Again, the problem with the socialist philosophy isn't that the intentions are bad, it is that the system does not work.

As they say, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." Maybe that should be the motto for the Democrat party.

Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation: Honor the Victims of Communism and Those Who Love Liberty

"'The fall of the Communist empire,' said Czech President Vaclav Havel, 'was an event on the same scale of importance as the fall of the Roman Empire.'

And yet in Washington, D.C.--the city of memorials--there has been no monument marking this epic event or memorial to the many millions who died under communist tyranny. Until now."

Europe must face ugly truths of communist past

"What is needed to accomplish this is a Europe-wide Truth and Reconciliation Commission, composed of scholars and elder statesmen of undoubted democratic loyalty, who would hold hearings and report not just on the crimes of communism — remember, they included mass murder and widespread torture — in eastern and central Europe but also on those in the Soviet Union itself and even on the culpable failures of Western statesmen to halt or restrain those committing them."

BREITBART.COM - Hecklers Cause Coulter to Cut UConn Speech

"During the question-and-answer session, someone asked Coulter if she really was against a woman's right to vote.

'Not having women vote is a joke,' she said, reversing comments she has previously made.

Eric Knudsen, a 19-year-old sophomore journalism and social welfare major at UConn, didn't attend the speech.

'We encourage diverse opinion at UConn, but this is blatant hate speech,' said Knudsen, head of Students Against Hate."

Clueless in Connecticut.

It’s anybody’s guess | The Register

"However, unlike with my train journey, it is very unusual for software developers to be asked to estimate from a position of certainty. To gain a competitive advantage, organisations need to be delivering new and, hopefully, unique functionality. 'New and unique' is, by definition, something we have not done before and have no experience of. It is, therefore, unknown."

Good coverage of why things go wrong, but there is more.

Of course it doesn't cover government contracting. There are additional factors here. For example, your government "management" was supposed to tell you to start working on a new feature in January, but they either forgot, or failed to attend the internal meeting where this information was passed down. So, when you actually begin work on the "planning" phase of the project in July, you post date all the items on your project plan to make it look like you actually started work in January. While you're still trying to figure your ass from a hole in the ground the schedule says you are midway into the coding phase. You still have to go to status meetings with your government "manager's" peers and engage in fantasy-land talk so as not to embarrass the bozo/bimbo, and it is you, not the bozo/bimbo who must take that lashes for things being "not quite finished yet". Of course, reporting the facts of the matter is out of the question, as your "manager" and the people you would report him/her to are all in this lifetime employment scam together and are probably at least as incompetent as yours is.

Every now and then the cumulative disparity between your fantasy-land project and reality actually has an impact on something that the public might become aware of. But the good news, is that by then, there is so much blame to go around that it is indistinguishable from nobody being to blame. Steady as she goes, slower, slower slower: The game goes on.

New Scientist Breaking News - Liars’ brains make fibbing come naturally

Clinton(s) Explained: “Some people have an edge up on others in their ability to tell lies,” says Adrian Raine, a psychologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “They are better wired for the complex computations involved in sophisticated lies.”

The History Lesson of Joseph Ellis

"But by the time you read this it may even be official that Ellis' career as a writer and professor is over. After all, his classwork is part of his scholarship, and thus his scholarship — the basis of both his teaching and writing — will now forever be doubted. How can you trust a historian who makes up history?"

But today CBS gave him air. Surely they weren't running short of Bush bashers?

Social Security Online - The Technocrats

"The Technocrats believed that the solution to all problems of economic security were the same, the rigorous application of engineering principles in a system freed from the Price System. They conceived of retirement as being made possible at age 45 for everyone due to the vast prosperity the new age of Technocracy would usher in. Rejecting all forms of traditional political science, the Technocrats refused to even use standard geographical maps because their boundaries were political, so they would refer to states only by their geographical coordinates. Names, too, were suspect for some reason so members of the movement in California were designated only by numbers. A speaker at one California rally was introduced only as 1x1809x56!"

Sweetness & Light: Tim Russert, Democrat Shill

"In fact in his original answer Powell insisted the administration honestly believed the information the CIA had made available to them and had acted in good faith. But Russert edited Powell’s response to make it sound exactly the opposite.

Doing so, Tim Russert has once again exposed himself to the world as the Democrat hack that he is. Of course this is not news to anyone who has ever watched him."

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World - Only U.N. Official Fired in Oil-for-Food Scandal Cleared, Reinstated

"The decision was made Monday and Joseph Stephanides, fired May 31, received the letter Tuesday maintaining that he violated staff rules by showing preference to one bidder for an Oil-for-Food contract but essentially acknowledging the punishment was too harsh.

Stephanides, a 60-year-old Cypriot national, had been scheduled to retire in September and the move gives him his pay up to that point. Deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe confirmed that Stephanides' firing had been overturned and said Undersecretary-General for Management Christopher Burnham signed the letter on behalf of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who is at a conference in Tunisia.

The letter, dated Monday, said 'the sanction that was imposed on you has been reconsidered in light of all the circumstances in the case and the principle of proportionality.'"

mediabistro/FishBowlDC: A Leaky Post Newsroom

How fun to watch the media talk about themselves "off the record".

"Not discussed directly in this forum, but effectively used by others to bludgeon us this morning, was the question of a reporter "exempting" himself from the Plame story and then appearing on TV as a pundit -- and washington post representative -- trashing the fitzgerald probe as much ado about gossip."

They should all be forced to watch (until it sunk in) the "Yes Minister" episode on anonymous leaks to the press.

They start with the premise that there are situations where relying on anonymous sources is the right thing to do, and then argue with each other 'till the cows come home about exactly what those circumstances are.

I have a suggestion to them: Just don't do it!

For journalists willing to do the work there are plenty of sensational stories with sources in the public domain (although hidden by more red tape than the average individual can wade through).

Take a look at the Wall Street Journal's legal efforts to get the facts on this case made public for a good example of the right way to go about this.

A press that engages in rumor mongering makes itself as much a tool for tyranny as against it.

More Evidence in Favor of Term Limits

Plame's husband wants Post to probe Woodward

"Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press have asked Judge Reggie Walton to deny Fitzgerald's blanket protective order, which would bar public access to grand jury transcripts, witness statements and a wide range of other evidence in the case. Any leaks could result in civil and criminal fines, the order warns."

Wilson continue to prove that he can't keep his own mouth shut.

Believe It or Not - Are you sure you want to keep saying we were fooled by Ahmad Chalabi and the INC? By Christopher Hitchens

"Let us suppose, then, that we can find a senator who voted for the 1998 act to remove Saddam Hussein yet did not anticipate that it might entail the use of force, and who later voted for the 2002 resolution and did not appreciate that the authorization of force would entail the removal of Saddam Hussein! Would this senator kindly stand up and take a bow? He or she embodies all the moral and intellectual force of the anti-war movement. And don't be bashful, ladies and gentlemen of the 'shocked, shocked' faction, we already know who you are."

Brown's Alito letter lifted from blogger

"Brown's letter merely changed the last clause so the sentence read, 'What is striking about Alito is that he is so hostile even to the basic rights of workers to have a day in court, not to mention interpreting the law against them.'"

Joe Biden, where are you?

HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE :: Paris Burning: How Empires End by Patrick J. Buchanan

"This is the larger meaning of the ritual murder of Theo Van Gogh in Holland, the subway bombings in London, the train bombings in Madrid, the Paris riots spreading across France. The perpetrators of these crimes in the capitals of Europe are the children of immigrants who were once the colonial subjects of the European empires.

At this writing, the riots are entering their 12th night and have spread to Rouen, Lille, Marseille, Toulouse, Dijon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Cannes, Nice. Thousands of cars and buses have been torched and several nursery schools fire-bombed. One fleeing and terrified woman was doused with gasoline and set ablaze. "

GAO confirms some e-voting problems

"Although the issues are not universal, GAO found that some e-voting systems do not encrypt ballots cast or audit logs, and either one could be altered without detection. In addition, some machines are insecure enough that someone could alter a ballot's appearance so that votes cast for one candidate would be recorded for an opponent."

Democrats defeat election-law aid for bloggers | CNET News.com

"Democrats on Wednesday managed to defeat a bill aimed at amending U.S. election laws to immunize bloggers from hundreds of pages of federal regulations."

Nice going, commies!

Just The News

"Cooper, 38, has been gathering momentum all year that peaked with his on-the-scene coverage of Hurricane Katrina, Klein said.

'He's got a refreshing way of being the anti-anchor,' he said. 'He's not quote-unquote reporting at you. He's just being himself. He's asking the questions you would like answered. He's getting involved the way you might. You feel that he's a regular person that you can trust talking to you. He brings such a passion to the storytelling that's infectious.'"

What total idiots. But then, I haven't watched network TV for a long time. I'd probably have trouble going back to it. Die mainstream media, die!

WARD OF THE COURT - Democrats-Temper Tantrums or Honesty - By Steven Ward

"So to claim that Tenet and other CIA officials would have lied to Jay Rockefeller and others in private closed door meetings to help the neocons make the case for war defies credulity. Yet, that is what the room temperature IQ crowd of Cindy Sheehan and others want us to believe. "

*Chuckle*

Watered Down Volker Report Finally Sputters Forth

Even so, the "sensitive" types at the UN are shocked...

"The 19-month investigation has caused havoc at the United Nations, whose officials say the world body was unequipped to handle a program of that size."

But from here:

http://www.un.org/geninfo/ir/ch6/ch6_txt.htm...

Who works at the United Nations and what do they do there?
Economists, translators, statisticians, secretaries, TV producers, computer experts, physicians, carpenters – these are just a few of the wide variety of people with many skills and backgrounds who work as UN staff members.

The UN Secretariat employs some 7,500 staff members under the regular budget and a nearly equal number under special funding. Coming from some 170 countries, they administer the UN's policies and programmes in New York and at duty stations around the world. The UN system as a whole – the UN and its related programmes and specialized agencies, including the World Bank and the IMF – employs some 61,000 people worldwide.

Funny, thts more people than Microsoft has:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39233636,00.htm

NEWSMEAT - Hall of Fame - Political Donations of the Rich, Famous, & Powerful

Now I know who to boycott (most of 'em).

'Bill and Me'�

Mr. Freeh also heaps scorn on Mr. Clinton for his 177 last-minute pardons and commutations without consulting either the FBI or the Justice Department, contrary to established procedures. One beneficiary, Marc Rich, fled to Switzerland to avoid 50-plus indictments for fraud. Why drop the charges? Mr. Rich's socialite wife, Denise, donated more than $1 million to Democrats during the Clinton-Gore years. As Mr. Freeh writes, "the stench... should have been enough to dissuade the president. It didn't, of course. That was Bill Clinton."

Agency Probes Possible Terror Threat Leak - Yahoo! News

"'It's ironic that on the one hand the department is saying this is not a credible threat and then, if these e-mails are true, people within the department with access to classified information felt it was worth contacting their own families,' said Rep. Peter King (news, bio, voting record), R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

The e-mails began circulating Oct. 3 — three days before Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced they were putting thousands of extra police officers on patrol in the subways in response to the possible plot to bomb the subway using briefcases or baby strollers packed with explosives.

The Daily News quoted one e-mail — purportedly penned by the unnamed son of a high-ranking Homeland Security official — in which he warns recipients: 'The only information I can pass on to you is that everyone should at all costs not ride the subway for the next two weeks in major areas of NYC.'"

Nothing like this to restore my faith, along with the founding fathers that government should only be trusted as far as you can throw it. That mistrust, not shared by nearly enough US citizens these days, is exactly what made our country great. Keep disappointing us Big Government. We need the reminders.

Miers is the wrong pick - George Will

"The wisdom of presumptive opposition to Miers' confirmation flows from the fact that constitutional reasoning is a talent -- a skill acquired, as intellectual skills are, by years of practice sustained by intense interest. It is not usually acquired in the normal course of even a fine lawyer's career. The burden is on Miers to demonstrate such talents, and on senators to compel such a demonstration or reject the nomination."

E.U. Opens Historic Talks On Membership for Turkey

"PARIS, Oct. 4 -- The European Union formally opened membership talks with Turkey early Tuesday morning, but only after bitter opposition by Austria had exposed deep apprehensions about the future of the 25-country group and the prospects of admitting a large, poor, Muslim country to its ranks."

I wonder what their problem is? In another 25 years or so all of Europe will be a large poor Muslim country. Turkey will fit right in.

Katrina Takes a Toll on Truth, News Accuracy - Los Angeles Times

"Rumors supplanted accurate information and media magnified the problem. Rapes, violence and estimates of the dead were wrong."

If Ex-WMAL Host Is Sorry, It's Not For Bashing Islam

"Graham hopes to have the last laugh. ABC is seeking bids for its radio stations, including WMAL, and the overwhelming response Graham has had from other radio companies makes him optimistic that a new owner might put him back on the air here."

WMAL, another train-wreck (err, make that ship-wreck in keeping with the post below) about to happen has in recent memory been a conservative talk show station, although I've continued to think it has been such only reluctantly. WMAL's local talk has been all over the map with an emphasis on early morning wake-up humor and traffic reports. I always got them confused with WTOP and WRC, one a news-only station and the other the original home of Larry Kings radio program before he hit the jackpot of... whatever you call what he does now.

With few exceptions, media companies have two separate agendas, one, "The Agenda" whatever that happens to be, and two, the bottom line. In the past they have been able to keep these two things blissfully unaware of one another. Is the New York Times the powerhouse it is because it is a liberal paper in a liberal city? Probably not. After all, the Wall Street Journal comes out of New York too, and there are lots of more liberal papers in New York.

WMAL's success has been well correlated though with the fact that they were the primary carrier of Rush Limbaugh for as long as I can remember, and they gradually added more conservative talk, as well as shifted their own local talk to a conservative slant, presumably to keep people from tuning away as soon as Limbaugh's 12-3 slot ended.

Thinking that the ABC-Disney combine was more centrally located on the political spectrum than the others I once signed up for a slew of "services" from the company (that my spam filters are still trying to cope with) and among other things checked in at a forum where you could leave comments about their on-air activities.

That is, in fact, what I did: leave a comment about the newly restructured program "This Week" which David Brinkly had turned over to Sam Donaldson and Cokey Roberts (with short appearances each week by token conservative Pulitzer Prize winner George Will). My comment was on the sudden departure of Donalson/Roberts and their replacement with the quite liberal commentator George Stephanopolis, who's main claim to fame was a kiss-and-tell book written after he left the Clinton administration. Nothing has changed my opinion that this fellow has no particular business (i.e. credentials) to host such a national show. And nothing has changed the opinion of ABC News, who promptly deleted my comment. Fair and open, as long as you say nice things about us I suppose.

Well, nothing pleases me more than to see these outfits have trouble. Their reign as arbiters of what we all are supposed to be thinking is long overdue for an end. If WMAL goes under, or gets sold and changes to an all Hari-Crishna format, or whatever, someone else will no doubt pick up the popular programs, even if, in the shuffle, a few good things are lost. In the long run, and in the big picture, the fat-cats of the fourth estate deserve to be taken down a peg, or several. All in all, a good start.

NY Times cuts 500 jobs; Philly papers cut 100 - Boston.com

"NEW YORK --The New York Times Co. and two Philadelphia newspapers announced major job cuts Tuesday as the industry grapples with severe financial problems including weak advertising and circulation declines. The Times said it would cut about 500 jobs, while the Philadelphia papers will eliminate a total of 100 jobs."

Reminding me of my favorite lawyer joke, the punchline of which is: "A good start."

More:

Mercury News plans to shrink newsroom by 52 jobs
"16% reduction ends week of newspaper industry buyouts and layoffs;
Cuts are 'painful,' says editor, but the paper will survive"

The Conservative Brotherhood

" The Conservative Brotherhood is a group of African American writers whose politics are on the right hand side of the political spectrum. Expanding the dialog beyond traditional boundaries, they seek to contribute to a greater understanding of African Americans and America itself through advocacy and commentary."

German Debate Results

In reporting about debate results for the top job in Germany it would seem that the German and international press are as confused as is the US press over who wins our debates:

"BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder beat his conservative rival Angela Merkel in a feisty U.S.-style TV debate on Sunday but may not have delivered the knock-out blow needed to catch her in the polls, surveys showed."

While other reporting claimed that she was a clear winner. Only the polls will tell.

Martin Sheen, Sharpton Visit Anti-War Camp - Yahoo! News

I'm always confused when "bereaved" people wear such big smiles.

Internal CIA report faults ex director, others for pre 9/11 faults

Yahoo! News: "Tenet, who resigned in July 2004 after seven years at the top, was censured for failing to develop and carry out a strategic plan to take on Al-Qaeda in the years before the attacks, two people familiar with the report told The New York Times."

Why hydrogen is no route to renewables

The Ergosphere:

"Why hydrogen is no route to renewables

All the attention in the nation appears to be on hydrogen as the ideal medium for energy in a renewable economy. It has a lot going for it, in particular the fact that it can be produced from nothing more than water and energy. But this comes at a high (and hidden) price, especially for production from renewable energy; it is far from obvious that the use of hydrogen is worth the additional costs. The consequence is that we should downgrade hydrogen research, and cease deployment efforts immediately.

Hydrogen is certainly a wonderful molecule. It's the lightest element and has a very high energy/mass ratio. It's also the foundation of many chemical synthesis processes, both artificial and natural; when plants make sugar, they begin by splitting a water molecule to make hydrogen. There are even some ways to persuade plants to yield hydrogen directly. And when hydrogen is required, nothing else will do. You need hydrogen to make ammonia (for nitrogen fertilizer) or synthesize hydrocarbons.

We can learn a lot from plants (biomimicry has yielded a lot of good concepts), but there are limits to how far this can go and still be useful. It's one thing to borrow inventions and techniques from nature when they are well-suited to the task at hand, and quite another thing to cut the engineering problem to fit the Procrustean bed of a biological prototype. I intend to show that the 'hydrogen economy', and particularly the hydrogen fuel-cell car, is a poor way to accomplish this."...

Follow link for analysis.

Hold Your Tears ... Mark Steyn

Hold Your Tears ... Mark Steyn: "Whenever I’m on a radio show these days, someone calls in and demands to know whether my children are in Iraq. Well, not right now. They range in age from five to nine, and though that’s plenty old enough to sign up for the jihad and toddle into an Israeli pizza parlour wearing a suicide-bomb, in most advanced societies’ armed forces they prefer to use grown-ups.

That seems to be difficult for the Left to grasp. Ever since America’s all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterise them as ‘children’. If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that’s her decision and her parents shouldn’t get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the Oval Office shagpile and chow down on Bill Clinton, she’s a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year old is serving his country overseas, he’s a wee ‘child’ who isn’t really old enough to know what he’s doing."

Illegal Immigrants Win Arizona Ranch in Court - New York Times

Illegal Immigrants Win Arizona Ranch in Court - New York Times

Pathetic.

State Dept. Says It Warned About bin Laden in 1996

State Dept. Says It Warned About bin Laden in 1996 - New York Times: "WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - State Department analysts warned the Clinton administration in July 1996 that Osama bin Laden's move to Afghanistan would give him an even more dangerous haven as he sought to expand radical Islam 'well beyond the Middle East,' but the government chose not to deter the move, newly declassified documents show."

Intelligence Briefs: Iraq (April 2001)

Intelligence Briefs: Iraq (April 2001): "Iraqi Spies Reportedly Arrested in Germany
16 March 2001

Al-Watan al-Arabi (Paris) reports that two Iraqis were arrested in Germany, charged with spying for Baghdad. The arrests came in the wake of reports that Iraq was reorganizing the external branches of its intelligence service and that it had drawn up a plan to strike at US interests around the world through a network of alliances with extremist fundamentalist parties.

The most serious report contained information that Iraq and Osama bin Ladin were working together. German authorities were surprised by the arrest of the two Iraqi agents and the discovery of Iraqi intelligence activities in several German cities. German authorities, acting on CIA recommendations, had been focused on monitoring the activities of Islamic groups linked to bin Ladin. They discovered the two Iraqi agents by chance and uncovered what they considered to be serious indications of cooperation between Iraq and bin Ladin. The matter was considered so important that a special team of CIA and FBI agents was sent to Germany to interrogate the two Iraqi spies."

Interesting, no?

Dean works to energize state's Democratic Party - Fosters

Dean works to energize state's Democratic Party - Fosters: "'New England Republicans are different than most. They are more reasonable and thoughtful,' Dean said. 'You don't get as many right-wing wackos.'"

But of course, you do get quite a few left-wing wackos. Some of which go right to the head of the class.

NARAL Loses Nerve

My Way News: "After protests by conservatives, NARAL Pro-Choice America said Thursday night it would pull the ad that began running this week.

'We regret that many people have misconstrued our recent advertisement about Mr. Roberts' record,' NARAL President Nancy Keenan said.

'Unfortunately, the debate over that advertisement has become a distraction from the serious discussion we hoped to have with the American public,' she said in a letter Thursday to Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who earlier in the day had urged the group to withdraw the ad."

I call BS.

WSJ.com - Oil for Fraud

WSJ.com - Oil for Fraud: "What is clear is that the Secretary General intends to spin the Volcker report not as an indictment of his tenure in office, but -- and this is amazing -- as another reason to endorse his reform agenda and, therefore, his continuance in office. 'As part of its investigation of Mr. Yakovlev,' a U.N. press release states, the U.N. 'will separately make recommendations for further reforms, particularly regarding strengthened supervision and controls over individual procurement officers.' "

Oil-for-food probe expected to accuse UN director

In a story pretty much fully explored by the Wall Street Journal back in the run-up to the latest Presidential election...Wired News, via Reuters reports: "An investigation into the oil-for-food program will accuse for the first time on Monday the director of the defunct $67 billion U.N. operation of getting cash from oil deals."

LA Times Overly Concerned

The (over)exercise of power: "Am I the only person who finds this disturbing? I don't mean the fact that Bush would vet his selection for the highest court in the land in part on something utterly trivial. That's expected. What I mean is the fact that Bush has an obsession with exercise that borders on the creepy."

Well, no you are probably not the ONLY one, but more people find it disturbing that the money losing LA press doesn't have better things to be disturbed about. Were you disturbed by all those jogging pictures during the Clinton years? Were you curious that after all that supposed excercise he got fatter and fatter. Were you disturbed by the comparisons between Kerry falling off his 10-speed on a Washington street and Bush falling off a mountain bike riding up a hill composed of soft sand?

I'd be checking into the reasons behind all of your concern. We don't buy it any more.

independentsources.com also thinks it odd that Bush is critisized for something worthy of praise.

I guess I'm not the only one who is disturbed at their being disturbed. Do we have the makings of a Monty Python sketch here?

Last Farmland in DC Sold

Article here, thanks to Technocrat.com

Why do people move to big cities? Jobs.

What happens when a medium sized city gets to be a megalopolis? Ordinary people can no longer afford to live in the center. Roads in the center can't cope with individual travelers and mass transit copes poorly, forcing middle class people to move to the edge and commute AROUND, which is what the beltway was originally intended for (the overcrowded core of DC has long since passed beyond the beltway though).

If you change jobs a lot you are better off renting. If you insist on owning a home you had better get a real estate license on the side (at which point you realize you can probably make more money selling real estate than whatever else you were doing). That describes DC, LA, NYC and a number of other "hubs" right now.

All of this was pretty much inevitable for the non-farm worker in the past. But today we have no excuse for continuing this endless cycle other than "well, thats the way we've always done things".

Why do millions of stock brokers, computer programmers, customer support specialists, lawyers, sales reps, and a host of other white collar workers have to leave their home at all and clog up one means of transport or another with their sweaty bodies for 3 and 4 hours a day? And for most of these people, what do they do at work? Sit in front of a computer display and talk on the telephone. I'll skip the argument about whether 80 percent of the government workers need to be employed at all, but from my observation of them (over the course of 15 years or so, since computer networks became commonplace) there is almost nothing they need to be physically present to accomplish.

Only recently in the DC area did I work with sales reps who no longer had a permanent office. Not surprisingly it was mostly from foreign based companies that didn't see ownership of a building in the US with a logo on its side as an asset. These sales reps of course did pay me frequent visits, another waste. They could have e-mailed me the powerpoint presentation from Idaho or anywhere else and it would have been just as useful as a personal visit. "Ahhh" some will say, "that personal touch makes the sale!". But I don't think there is a lot of evidence to support that.

Hopefully in another generation or so we will finally be weaned off of notions that a TV ad reaches "millions" while an Internet ad only reach those who "click-through". My mailbox is full every day with print media desperate to count me as an eyeball to their advertisers when in fact I almost never open their publications.

In a civilization that takes the power of the Internet seriously I think big cities are going to die one last (and hopefully slow, painless) death. A well known tech pundit recently asked if Silicon Valley would ever make a full recovery from the dot-com crash. The answer is NO, and why should we want it to? That USED to be productive farmland and there is no reason it can't revive that tradition (at least it isn't QUITE as paved over as New York yet). It could be a nice place for a lot of technologists to live, but there is no need or advantage for ALL of them being there. Many of them would be surprised how many places between the east and west coasts are not only pleasant places to live, but still affordable. And just maybe having some of our technology brain power in less expensive parts of the country is a better alternative to using the brain power in other parts of the world.

The End of the Rainbow - New York Times

The End of the Rainbow - New York Times: "'We went on a borrowing, spending and taxing spree, and that nearly drove us under,' said Deputy Prime Minister Mary Harney. 'It was because we nearly went under that we got the courage to change.'"

Maybe we here in the US need to start electing Democrats again so we can nearly go under and get the courage to change.
Except I thought we tried that already. Apparently Democrats have forgotten. Or they just like being in power.