Editorial on the news of the Day and Review of the Gridlock around the world.

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Internal Versus External Threats

The British are facing an old foe, internal terroristic threats.  After years of trying to thwart the IRA, the United Kingdom now finds itself under attack from disenfranchised and extremely aggravated muslims.  Unlike the 9/11 attacks on the United States, the attacks against the United Kingdom over the last couple years seem to have been carried out largely by people coming from the inside of their country as opposed to foreigners temporarily infiltrating their borders.

The United Kingdom has a significant amount of police experience in investigating these attacks, but the sheer volume of the plots involved seems to be taxing MI5.  The attacks are inspired essentially by copy cat extremists, but over time they will be inspired by their own success and they will become more sophisticated. 

The United Kingdom is faced with the challenge of trying to stop the threats before they happen, treating the symptoms.  But they also need to find a way to treat the cause of the problem.  They have millions of people that are unemployed or underemployed that do not believe in Democracy and want to instate Islamic law in the United Kingdom.

The United Kingdom is being slowly attacked by a surge of Muslim fundamentalists looking to remove the government.  This is a marked shift.  In many ways this is a half step beyond terrorism.  They are not just trying to make a statement or strike fear or strike back against opression real or perceived.  They are looking to take power.

The US and the UK have launched a War in the Middle East pitting Democracy against Fascism.  That war has been hijacked by sleeping fundamentalists who have defended the territory with Muslim fundamentalism.  Now Muslim fundamentalists around the world are witnessing the power that a religious assault can have on a democracy.

Democracies and Theocracies can not coexist.  There is no room for a democracy when a god of any stripe rules that democracy.  This is why the founders of the United States sought to separate church and state.  They had seen that a king, annointed by a god, took freedom away from mankind.  They established freedom and a bill of rights.  They also new that the democracy would perish if handed or ceded over to a god puppet.

Muslim fanatics are attacking democracies at their weekest point, their susceptibility to be hijacked by religion.  President Bush has fought back pitting his religion against the Muslim religion.  This has fueled more converts to the fundamentalist  cause and has destablized many more regions.  They would have likely destabilized anyway after the Iraq war.

The problem with Bush's approach is that even if he succeeds and fights off the Muslim religion with the Christian relgion, democracy will still fail as it will have been seized by religion anyway.  It is extremely difficult for any country or army to fight off against a religion.  It can only lead ultimately to genocide if the religion is to be stopped.

When religions fight against religions, genocide is sometimes avoided, because new converts can sometimes be won within the ranks of the opposing forces. 

Ultimately its a nasty paradox.  Genocide on one hand as an ultimate result or Genocide on the other hand on the other and Theocratic rule on either side too.

Its bad news all the way around, unless more moderate people can be mobilized to actively participate.  Currently the majority of the world is not involved in this war.  They are merely sitting on the sidelines not choosing sides.  They are going about their jobs as teachers, and doctors and students and business people and real estate brokers and construction workers. 

They are letting other people fight the war and choose its direction.  This is almost certain to result in a final solution that all of these people will not like.

Internet to Local Store Shopping Options

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Our sponsors Krillion.com have recently provided a press release citing the usefulness of their online shopping search tools. Their website enables internet shoppers to comparison shop, fact check, and research the best prices of products that are immediately available in their local area.

Their release cites an example with Whirlpool Dryers and the ability to search for a product by a specific brand and then refine the search according to other filters like model or price.

A large number of people that surf the internet use the internet as a research tool. They search online stores for information about products and then go to a different store in their local community and buy the same product. Krillion enables people to do the same thing they are already doing, but gives them the ability to target their internet searches to match their real world shopping opportunities. That's good for consumers and good for retailers both as it brings buyers and sellers together more efficiently and more realistically as consumers do not go to a retailer looking for a price that was offered on an unheard of web store at a teaser rate, solely intended to lure a customer into the site in the first place.

What Might the Purpose of the New Attacks on Great Britain be?

There are many things that are happening and may have happened that terrorists may be using as an excuse or opportunity to attack:

  • Salman Rushdie was recently Knighted
  • The new Prime Minister took office yesterday
  • The new Prime Minister is Scottish ( but not traveling through Glasgow this weekend)
  • Its close to the 7/7 attack anniversary
  • All three attacks have so far been attempted at areas that had high concentrations of people
  • Tony Blair Became a Middle East Envoy
  • The US and UK signed a Defense Trade Cooperation Treaty on June 26th
  • Wimbledon is almost half way through the tournament
  • School Holidays had just started today and the airport was unusually busy

None of these things justifies an attack for any reason, but terrorists may use the opportunity for symbolistic reasons, for leveraging past terror attacks to raise the level of fear. They may even use it to motivate the members or people participating in the attack.

One witness to the Glasgow attack indicated that one of the people that got out of the car was a large South Asian man, on fire and speaking gibberish. Both people were trying to throw petroleum around and get into the back of their green landrover. Many people think they might have been trying to get at more petroleum or some other device. This definitely does not appear to have been an accident and then men were not doing something mundane like trying to get at incontinence supplies. The burning man remained on fire while he attempted to get into the vehicle a second time. Authorities extinguished the fire with a fire extinguisher and then arrested the man.

The US has indicated they do not have any information about potential attacks here in the US, but aiports around the US will increase their security presence as a precaution.

DNA test Identification for Dogs First

Earlier today I wrote an article half in jest suggesting that some day soon we might all have to show up to the polls to vote and provide a sample of our DNA.

We are not there yet, but DNA tests have been in the news today.  First, and least important, Eddie Murphy was confirmed as the father of one of the spice girls through a DNA test.

I guess she told him what she 'really really' wanted.

Then I was reading this article about a town in Australia that is looking at identifying all dogs by DNA.  They are hoping to be able to confirm a suspect dog is the right pooch after it attacks someone through DNA (dna from saliva on the wound, or from other clues left at the scene).  This will help authorities insure that they put the right dog down and will help them be sure that they are taking action against the right dog owners.

It strikes me that in this age of rampant identity thievery, we are probably only about 5-10 years away from everyone submitting their DNA to a mass database where our identity can be confirmed.  The next time you want to withdraw cash from the ATM or vote, you might have to suffer a pin prick or maybe a throat swabbing for that DNA match.  It starts with some bad doggies down under, you might be next!

Link to DNA test to collar dangerous dogs | | The Australian

Chinese Officials Going to Jail for not Dumping their Mistresses

In an attempt by the Chinese government to crack down on the epidemic of bribery and corruption throughout the country and government, stiffer rules are being forced on Communist rulers by themselves.  Apparently after years of not being able to police their own morals, they are now going to police their own morals.

No longer will ministers be able to keep a second wife, a mistress or extra girlfriend.  Government officials and businessmen alike often keep a mistress or second wife as some sort of status symbol.

But those extra mistresses also increase the ministers financial needs making them more susceptible to bribery and corruption (not like they aren't extremely susceptible anyway).  So they are looking to dispossess a number of second wives of their husbands and mistresses of their sugar daddies.

The Communist government is taking this very seriously as they are concerned that this may threaten the party's grip on power.   

Link to Crackdown on officials with mistresses - Yahoo! News

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Build out of Online Educational Services

Today I've been trying to get a theme that the United States needs to reeducate its entire workforce.  I've mentioned several times that like to repeat that it is technically feasible to do this.  We have the educational and for structure in the United States to educate people by the millions.

It would take some growth by universities and colleges in order to handle the volume of educating millions of people at a time each year in addition to the people are already in the system.

A recent release indicates that there are over a 1,300 institutions that provide online degrees through online programs.  Those same colleges and universities provide over 9,000 different degrees.

Educating people online is definitely one of the ways that we can as a country pull together and reeducate our entire work force en masse and prepare our country to advance into this new century and new millennia that we've already begun.

Paris Hilton Out of Jail - Did the US learn its Lesson

 Okay so Pearsall is finally out of jail, big deal.  It makes me wonder not whether or not Paris is learned her lesson, but whether or not the United States has learned its lesson.  There's absolutely nothing important about Paris Hilton going to jail.  There's nothing important about her getting favors and getting out of jail.  The media that is sidetracked the nation's attention away from more important matters to focus on Paris Hilton's comings and goings is a very serious problem.

As a nation we've allowed our attention to be moved away from important issues by the sleight-of-hand of the fourth estate.  It's absolutely ridiculous and just as we need a change of leadership in the White House, we need a change of leadership in the fourth estate.  The media are not elected representatives however that means that a change is going to be much more difficult.

Link to Paris Hilton leaves jail for Bel-Air mansion - US

Superbug Cometh; Superbug Taketh Away

 For anyone that's ever read a Michael Creighton suspense novel, you probably have a pretty good idea of what a superbug could do to the United States or even to the world.  The situation is however all too real as recent estimates indicate that the level or preponderance of superbugs attacking patients in the United States is much higher than originally estimated.

The estimate is about 10 times the rate that some health officials had previously estimated.

Source: Superbug may strike 5 percent of hospital, nursing home patients - CNN.com

 

Basically the superbug is growing and it's growing faster than what we originally predicted.  Fortunately, the superbug has not had a devastating impact on the population at large yet.  That doesn't mean that we shouldn't be more prepared or take action now.  It's not a reaction of fear, but he reaction of preparation.  The United States and the world needs to more to prepare for this and I would suggest that one of the first steps is in reeducating the American labor force.  We need more highly educated people capable of dealing with problems like these on a massive scale.

Don't End up on CNN as the Tragedy du jour - Be Prepared when you Travel

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We definitely live in a turbulent time. For a few short years there seemed to be peace mostly around the world, however we didn't realize that we were living on borrowed peaceful time in violence and mayhem is erupted almost around the world over the last several years.

We as Americans need to continue to engage with other countries and peoples around the world as we are part of the global society. That said we have to be extra careful and more prepared when we travel abroad. In years past, many people took international travel for granted.

We now know that need to be extra careful because just about anything can happen will work traveling. That doesn't mean we should let fear rule our lives and stop traveling, it just means we need to take extra precautions to ensure that we are prepared for whatever comes up.

Our sponsors a TravelSafe Insurance provide travel insurance. Travel Insurance can be utilized in a number of ways from protecting your luggage from being lost to protecting you with health coverage if you happen to fall sick or ill in a foreign country and the medical care. As you consider traveling abroad in the months and years to come please consider being extra prepared in looking at the travel insurance. You do not want to read the next phase on CNN recounting some tragedy if that tragedy could have been avoided by being extra prepared.

Fixing Gridlock - Infrastructure, Education, Rejuvenation

 I've been considering what it would take to fix this country, and I've come up with a couple items that would definitely need to be part of the plan.  The first thing that needs to be fixed and it can be done in conjunction with the second, is to begin repairing our aging infrastructure.  A recent estimate indicates that it would cost approximately $700 billion to improve our infrastructure in order to bring it up to a passing grade. 

Some of these deficiencies have very real costs to economic growth. The poor condition of roads, the engineers estimated, costs $120 billion a year in repairs, operating costs and time wasted in traffic - that's equivalent to a full percentage point of the economy.

"There's a tremendous need," said Larry Roth, a professional engineer who is deputy executive director of the engineers' group. "Not only are we not keeping pace with growth, but we're not keeping pace with the maintenance that's required. As a result, our infrastructure is simply crumbling."

To eliminate its weaknesses, the United States would have to spend about $160 billion a year over five years, Roth added. That total of $800 billion is not so different from the $700 billion in estimated direct spending on the war in Iraq.

Source: Is aging infrastructure slowing the U.S.? - International Herald Tribune

We also need to entirely re-train the US workforce.  If were going to compete in a global economy we need lots and lots of the smartest people working on the toughest issues of the day.  We need millions of super educated citizens.

These two goals do not have to be mutually exclusive.  Many citizens as they go back to school to receive their first or second bachelors degree, could work part time in a nationwide project to improve our infrastructure.  In essence we could kill two birds with one stone, funding the education of American workers and literally repaving our roads and rebuilding our infrastructure nationwide.

At the end of the project we would have a brand-new infrastructure, and we would have a re trained highly skilled and highly organized workforce capable of rebuilding a country.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Testing the Forex Market For Gridlock

This week and I was working on my finances a bit .  Over the last couple of months I've been primarily focused on my home and my dad and I haven't been focused as much on my other investments.  I've just been consumed with a refinance and a potential move this summer.

It is however very important to keep itself balanced especially when your finances are involved.  So I was looking to get back in the saddle and start focusing on my other finances when I stumble across a relatively new website called Fxground.com at http://www.fxground.com/.

This is a website that is a bit of a mix between a foreign exchange forum and a foreign exchange social networking platform.  The website allows traders on the Forex exchange to provide information to other traders or two investors seeking more information about Forex trading.

The social networking twist is that all of the other traders on the website, or the members as I do not believe the members have to be traders, can then rates the traders themselves or the advice that they provide as a kind of forex reviewers club.

I would compare it a little bit too the website digg.com, which has people submit news stories from all around the Internet which are then raided by the members of digg.com.  This model basically allows the community to self police or self edit content.

In addition to editing the contents, a merit rating of the content and the content provider are also provided by the community as a group.  This can significantly help other members and traders identify popular trends, methodologies, techniques and just plain good advice.

The website is relatively new and it seems to be off to a good start.  I think the website will improve with time as they tweak their themes and templates to provide larger fonts and darker colors with more contrast.  However, the functionality of the site seems to you relatively strong for a brand-new site and I think they've got a good foundation to build on.

Here are a few of the sections that stood out to me as I stop by the site:

Ranking of members on Fxground.com

Member Reviews of Recent Markets

Quick View of the Fxground.com Forum

Does the Mormon Card Play Either Way?

Romney came out criticizing other Republican candidates and people in general for the criticism of that Romney directed at him not because of his personal accomplishments, but instead due to his religion.  That Romney is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints sometimes referred to as Mormons.

The Christian right in the Republican Party is having a difficult time with Matt Romney, the current front runner for the Republican primary.  The Christian right is shown its fundamentalist roots for many years now in those routes include intolerance for many other faiths.

The problem is that there are two things going on here. 

  1. George Bush has done more to hurt the political goals of the Christian right than any other president as he's attempted to pursue those goals.  His inability to get things done without botching the job has hurt the people that elected him to get the job done.
  2. The Republicans desperately want to win the presidential seat in 2008, and Romney is in the lead to win the primaries if it were to be held today.  Unfortunately, the Christian right seems to be somewhat split over the concepts of whether or not a Mormon is really a Christian.

The Christian right is essentially put themselves into a paradox of their own making.  They elected a man who claimed to be a good Christian, but it was extremely ineffectual.  Now they need a person I can get things done but that person doesn't fall into the perfect cookie-cutter mold of what the majority of the Christian right view as a good Christian.

Ultimately if they can figure out what it is they truly want and whether or not they can tolerate it, the Democrats will blindside them and odds are they will not get a good Christian and the White House.

As a firm believer in the wide separation of church and state, I find the situation rather amusing from the perspective that the Christian right has painted themselves into a corner.  Their unchristian like behavior and intolerance looks like it might just be their undoing politically, with the help of coarse of George Bush.

So now as Mitt Romney plays the Mormon card and accuses his own base of religious intolerance, and as that base price fell about a Mormon attempting to lead them, it would seem playing the Mormon card has voided out both of their positions.

That might just mean that the tiebreaker will go to the Democrats or even an independent candidate.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Canvas on Demand - King George Contest

I'm excited to try out a new service online.  A website called CanvasOnDeman.com allows people to upload a photo and have the photo painted onto a canvas.

I am going to try out their photo enlargement process and have a photo converted into a 16 x 20 inch canvas. I'm still debating on the picture to use, but I am thinking about either using one of my children for my home, or possibly having a painting of George Bush made wearing a crown and robe (King George). Then I will hold some form of contest for my subscribers and the winner of the contest will win the painting, which I will ship anywhere in the US.

If you have any ideas or suggestions for a better picture, please let me know! I'm going to sign up soon and get things started.

White House Orders Cheney Not to Answer to White House Orders

Sure its absurd, the number 2 man to the President doesn't have to answer to the Presidents orders as ordered by the President.  That couldn't be more absurd if it was written by the Monty Python troop.  It is in fact absolutely ludicrous.

The White House and the Bush Administration are lampooning the American People, the press and thumbing their nose at the lot of us with insane machinations of logic loops that only serve to create gridlock and distrust in government.  Cheney and Bush should be impeached on principle for trying to institute a strange loop as policy.

Conservatives need to pay attention because they sure won't like it if VP Obama gets to do what ever he wants to do under a Clinton Presidency.  A Vice President not bound by the legislative branch and not bound by the Executive branch and not bound by the Judicial branch is definitely not a concept that is good for the United States.  Our founding fathers are definitely flipping in their graves right now. 

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Cheney is not obligated to submit to oversight by an office that safeguards classified information, as other members and parts of the executive branch are. Cheney's office has contended that it does not have to comply because the vice president serves as president of the Senate, which means that his office is not an "entity within the executive branch."

Source: White House Defends Cheney's Refusal of Oversight - washingtonpost.com

People that take a tour of the White House in the future will need to stop and pay attention to a newly installed house marker at the front gate, that will state, "Reality stopped here in 2001 when George W Bush and Dick Cheney were sworn into the offices formerly known as President and Vice President respectively and now known as the offices of Dictator 1 and Dictator 2."

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Intollerable Situation: Gonzales is Last Man Standing

 The fifth senior Justice Department official to resign was accused of calling the attornies that were to be fired and offering on behalf of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales not to tarnish their reputations.  Michael Elston is also accused of drawing up some of the lists of attornies to be fired.  Later some of those attornies reported receiving a phone call from Elston, who suggested that if they kept silent about their firings, then the Attorney General would not say anything bad about them to Congress.

"Alberto Gonzales appears to be the last man standing, but he should have been the first to go," Schumer said. "Almost every official involved in the U.S. attorney firings is gone, but that doesn't change the simple fact that the buck stops with the attorney general."

Source: Justice Dept. Official To Quit - washingtonpost.com

Its intollerable that Attorney General Gonzales still has his job, while every person underneath him takes the fall.  If he stacked his administration with so many rotten eggs, then he is guilty of hiring bad eggs, guilty of having poor hiring judgement, and guilty of taking advice from bad eggs.

He has not suffered any repurcussions.  He's still at liberty to go about his business after everything he has done.  He's probably at the local golf pro shop buying some new Golf Equipment, while everyone around him suffers. 

In a lot of ways this attorney shares some very common characteristics with two other famous attornies, Bill and Hillary Clinton, the teflon couple.  Their friends and allies suffered cruel fates politically, personally, legally, financially and some paid for it with their lives, but the Clintons always came out on top.  Its extremely unfortunate that another attorney seems to have the same stuff the Clintons are made of.

Cremations Happen in Groups

Many People do not realize that when they are cremated, they are often cremated together with many people all at the same time.  We all often have images of body and a wooden coffin going into something that looks like a furnace, and then someone handing a loved one can earn full of ashes.

 The truth is that a single person even in a single coffin doesn't generate that many ashes.  Typically cremation centers cremate a group of people altogether.  It's more efficient and at the end of the cremation you don't really know who's ashes you have intermingled with your loved ones because a person's body just doesn't generate much in the form of ash.

I was  just reading about a widow in England  whose husband was cremated without her authority.  Actually the funeral home came to her the day after they cremated her husband asking her to sign a release.

The funeral home was supposed to clean them properly care for the body before they cremated it.  After all, there's nothing more important than having your body clean before it is burnt to ashes.  In addition to not getting approval for the cremation before it took place, the funeral home either stole a very expensive prosthetic leg or they incinerated the leg as well.

Link to SR.com: Widow sues funeral home over husband's cremation

The Widow is of course litigating the matter and also claiming that the funeral home did not give her the ashes of her husband, even though she does not state the reason in her lawsuit.  She is probably correct about the ashes, those ashes are probably from a group of people.

In Georgia in the early 90's there was a scandal when a company that incinerated corpses was found to have negligently stopped burning people up.  Their incinerator had broken down and they had a backlog of bodies to burn, so they just kind of gave up.  They dumped the bodies out back in the woods and in a pond and really any where they could fit a body, kind of like they do in the catacombs under Rome or Alexandria.

In a way its ironic that many times we know more about the processing of the ancient dead than we know about the recent dead.  Many people don't want to know the details and are sometimes shocked by the reality.  The ancient Egyptian pharohs are studied and studied for millenia.  We dig up their mummies and analyze the wealth that they were buried with from their slaves to their pillows and even their charriots and river barges.

We don't think to ourselves that there is any benefit in a burial with our laptop, or our Golf Equipment although we do sometimes take a sentimental pet or ring to the grave with us.  Truthfully, at the end of the day we now believe that you can't take it with you, so in many regards the widow in England has every right to be concerned over the loss of a $7,000 prosthetic leg.  Maybe she needs the money, or maybe she wants to donate the leg to someone, but the waste of the prosthetic is a tragedy.  The mixup over the disposition of the body was negligent, but society probably pays a little more attention to these things than we need to do.

Friday, June 15, 2007

When Hot Stalkers Strike Candidates on YouTube

What happens in 2007 when a stalker makes a video about a Presidential Candidate?

  1. Do they go to jail?
  2. Get tracked by the Secret Service?
  3. Do something awaful?
  4. Produce a music video?

If you chose number four you might be closer to reality.  A supposed adoring Barak Obama fan named Obama Girl put together a music video on YouTube called "I Got a Crush . . . on Obama."

Now calling her a stalker might be a little much, but 20 years ago and that's probably what it would have been.

These days I think theremight be something more sinister going on here.  I smell a setup.

Just like the Obama (almost backed) Apple Commercial Remake featuring Hillary Clinton, I think that Obama Girl is really an Obama girl.  I'm not talking about an Obama groupy, but a con artist pretending to be a fan.

What do you think?

I think the fix is in myself. I could be wrong, but something about this video just doesn't seem to be entirely natural. Don't get me wrong, its entirely plausible in a YouTube world where people can produce video in minutes and forego the movie theatres for a big flat screen or projector system at home complete with home theater seating in the living room.

I just think this is fishy on intuition alone. This is a blog and doesn't require proof of an absolute variety. Its just my opinion.

Marines poisoned at Camp Lejeune?

 This story will make you sick, not as sick as it's making many Marines and their families.  The water supply a Camp Lejeune has been contaminated on an ongoing basis since 1957.  At least as many as a million people were exposed contaminated drinking water at Camp Lejeune and so far 850 former residents of this Marine base have taken part in a $4 billion administrative claim. 

What's worse, it appears that several civilian contractors and possibly some Navy employees have possibly obstructed justice as EPA investigators have attempted to get to the bottom of the situation and determine criminal wrongdoing.

Military bases have a long history of contaminating the land it sits on.  There are many reasons for this, and some of the primary reasons relate to an old-fashioned sense of taking care of the environment in an ecosystem design to run equipment and perform missions and training events to tear apart the environment.  This situation is different, as the contamination to that result from munitions blowing things up, but instead from contractors dumping carcinogens in ways that those carcinogens would rapidly find their way into the water supply.  Al Qaeda couldn't have done a better job if they tried.

From 1957 until 1987 water supplies at Camp Lejeune was contaminated by TCE, a degreasing solvent, and PCE, a dry-cleaning agent, both carcinogens. During the affected years studies found levels of PCE as high as 200 parts per billion, compared to 5 parts per billion that federal regulators set in 1992 as the maximum allowable level.

At least 850 former residents of the Marine base have filed administrative claims, seeking nearly $4 billion, for exposure to the industrial solvents.

Source: AHN | Marine Families Exposed To Toxic Drinking Water | June 15, 2007

Executive Placement

After spending many years in the corporate game , and hiring, interviewing and evaluating hundreds of candidates for jobs, I have developed mixed perspectives on executive placement.  There are some firms that will hound you to death with follow-up phone calls and e-mails.

There are other firms that are worth their weight in gold and can definitely help you solve problems and find the right people fast.  Our sponsor, AE Feldman offers an Executive Placement Firm Blog, their services also fit into the category of the latter as opposed to the former and my description.

According to their latest release they are seen high demand for filling roles in both alternative energy as well as and mortgage will it finance specifically as it covers the practice of issuing asset-based securities, financial tools used to secure mortgages and credit cards and many other financial loans.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Let the Pardons Fly - Libby Must Go Directly to Jail

Scooter Libby Is Going to Jail, almost directly to Jail even while his appeals proceeds through the courts.  A judge ruled that he must go to jail, but the judge did not set a date yet, leaving his reporting date likely to occur within the next few weeks.

 That spells problems for President Bush and VP Cheney.  Bush will now have to potentially provide Libby a pardon before he has to actually report to prison.  This comes at a terrible time politically for the Republicans.  It may be a crossroads for President Bush.  His approval rating is at 29% and arguably he can't do to many things to make it worse.  He may free Libby and damn the consequences.  If he does, that would signal his acquiessence to his new lame duck status.

The judge made the following comments regarding Libby,

``The evidence of guilt was overwhelming'' and arguments by Libby's lawyers today for release were ``not close,'' Walton said during the two-hour hearing. ``Unless the Court of Appeals overturns my ruling, he will have to report'' to prison, the judge said in issuing his decision from the bench.

Source: Bloomberg.com: Worldwide

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Stop Your Addiction in 28 Days

Many people suspect that Paris Hilton may have some form of addiction issue to deal with.  She has been living a wild and carefree life for some time.  We're not passing judgment on her lifestyle, however she does have an addiction problem than she needs help.  Getting arrested for DUI is definitely a sign that she may have at least an alcohol addiction issue.

As the nation is focused on her issues so much, it's a good time to remind people that were all human and subject to addiction issues.  With that in mind we wanted to help promote a new program in Michigan that works to stop addictions in 28 days.

This program focuses on stopping drug addiction, and can be very important for people suffering from an addiction to get help early. Legal troubles such as those being faced by Paris Hilton world one example. So far Paris has been very lucky that she is not hurt anyone nor been hurt herself due to her own issues. It's an unfortunate fact resulting from the law of averages, that someone suffering from an addiction is sooner or later going to hurt themselves or hurt another person possibly on purpose or possibly on accident. That makes it all that much more important to get help now.

Friday, June 08, 2007

Paris Sent Back to Jail Screams her way out of Court Room

Some things just can't be blogged fast enough.

First she's going to jail, then she's in jail, then she's getting out of jail and going home.

Then she's going to court, then she's not, then she's phone conferencing with the judge(who does that anyway?), then she's going to court in hand cuffs.

Then she's ordered back to jail, starts screaming and literally drives by a three ring circus on her way back to prison, where she will be all weekend until at least Monday, the earliest that anything can be filed.

Of course that all assumes that she stays healthy enough to remain in prison and not be sent to the hospital this weekend.  Based on commentary on Fox News some people are suspecting that she may be suffering from some type of withdrawal driving her to hysterics and uncontrollable, jittery shaking.

Avoid Hotel Gridlock-Vacation in a Beach Rental

The last thing you want to deal with when you go on vacation is hotel gridlock. When I think of a hotel I think of a business trip. When I think of a vacation I think of a big beach house. I'm sure that doesn't work the same for everybody, we all make our own associations, but I don't like gridlock and that's how my brain works.

If you fly all the way to the South Pacific for a Hawaii vacation, do you really want to stay in a super 8 Motel? I doubt it.

And you go to Hawaii, a beach rental, maybe a nice little villa by the beach is probably going to be much more relaxing and if you do your homework it's probably going to be cheaper too! That holds especially true if you go on a family vacation. why reserve three or four rooms for a big family vacation at a hotel, when you pick it a lot more space through a Hawaii beach rental. Plus with a beach rental you're going to be closer to the ocean.

Now I know there are a number of high-rise hotels that are right on the beach these days. But you can't walk out of your balcony window and jump into the ocean. 30 or 50 floors up is a long way to fall into the ocean. If you lease a beach condo for a week or two, you can walk right out the door and over a dune and you're at the water.

Putting up your family and a beach condo can be a lot cheaper than a hotel for lots of reasons. For one thing, if you pay $200 a night per realm and you have four rooms, that's $800 a night. That would cost $5,600 for a week. You can rent a beach condo for half that price typically can get just as many bedrooms, plus a living room and kitchen and maybe a few bicycles boogie boards or surf boards thrown in.

You get the convenience of a large refrigerator in a normal stove and you can save money by shopping at local grocery stores, or picking up some great fresh seafood. Now if you really want to be in a hotel sure you can spend 10 times the amount of money on food, that's your choice, but it's not for me.

Now I've done this before, I'm not just talking about it. Next time I go to lie I've got my eye on staying in the Hawaii travel packages on Maui. As you can see from their images, this sea turtle isn't experiencing too much Gridlock!

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Do the Crime; Serve the Time; Unless you are a Cry Baby - Paris Loses Opportunity to learn Life Lesson

Pearsall is released or jail early this week. She only serve three days of a 45 day sentence. She had been locked in solitary confinement for her own protection and in some regards that's probably something akin to excessive punishment.

Regardless it's doubtful that Paris is truly reformed in just three days. It's also much less likely that she will reform from being contained by an eight gold bracelet at home for another 40 days.

LA County basically didn't do justice to Paris by failing to reform her. This probably means that we will see Paris in the headlines again for future crimes that shall commit. Her life will probably continue to degenerate and spiral out of control and someday she'll probably go the way that many young troubled celebrities go and overdose or have some tragic accident or something worse.

If LA County had really taught her a lesson by keeping her in jail for the full term of her sentence, she may have learned that there are consequences to our actions.

Instead she learned that she cries, she can get out of jail free.

Link to Paris Hilton released from jail | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited

Unique Wedding Favors

Sponsored Article

it's been several years now, but in 2001 and brother-in-law got married in Hawaii.  The wedding occurred on a naval base on a peninsula that jutted in the Pearl Harbor.  It's a nice wedding not terribly large but I'd say just write.

One of the things that helps us remember the wedding were a couple unique wedding favors that many of the guests received.  They were those grass woven mats that you can sit on the beach and Oriental paper printed parasols.  The wedding party sat on the grass mats on the ground instead of sitting in a pew or bet your chair.  We still have a parasols hanging in our living room and it was helps to remind us of the wedding and the great and we had in Hawaii.

Our sponsor recently provided a press release about their unique wedding favors and if you're hoping to create a lasting memory like this of your special day, you might want to spend a little time and find a unique gift yourself to create that long lasting memory.

Thank Bush for More F-Words on Your Television

The FCC lost in court this week.  An appeals court said that an FCC decision against broadcasters for use of expletive deletive words, the F-word and others,  was enforced in an arbitrary fashion. 

The FCC didn't have clear-cut rules on how to enforce their own rules and when they did enforce them, they did not enforce those rules fairly. 

The FCC was incompetent in their enforcement.

Worse yet the FCC wasted taxpayer's money by fighting this in court.  The money spent to fight this in the first level court case, then the money spent to fight this later in an appeals court trial, plus the money spent on all the back-and-forth legal wrangling between the broadcast industry and the FCC was a massive waste of taxpayer's money.

The FCC could have put that money to better use by implementing better rules and enforcing them fairly.  Instead, they opted to play conservative politics led by people that were incompetent in the management and leadership of the FCC.  That is par for the course where the Bush administration is involved. 

Bush Incompetence Strategy 101

  1. Hire or Appoint a Political buddy a job that they do not know how to do
  2. Ignore any history of failure in other unrelated endeavors
  3. Encourage these appointees to move forward chasing political goals
  4. Ignore the law and the constitution.
  5. Support their resulting Failure by supporting the person.
  6. Ignore the actual failure, cry politics to your base and tell them at least we tried and acted on principle.
  7. Ignore the fact that nothing is executed competently.
  8. Ignore the fact that everything has to be reworked.
  9. Ignore the fact that budgets are being blown.
  10. Continue to ignore the real problems that should have been dealt with and were ignored or deprioritized originally.
  11. Ignore the suffering taxpayers that have funded this political shenanigan, by giving them a meaningless tax break, while the value of the dollar continues to decline and inflation continues to rise.

Politics over Competence is Bad for the Economy and Bad for Business

This frivolous pursuit of politics instead of competence hurts business and in this case it even hurts the political base that the Republicans were attempting to please.  Anyone that is upset about the use of expletives during TV broadcasts of any type or nature have now been handed a severe setback due to the Bush administration's incompetence.  If they hope to fight this battle again in the future, they'll have to work twice as hard and spend twice as much money to reclaim the ground that the Bush administration lost them by acting like fools and paying lip service to their right wing base.

Primary Example of Why Bush Is Bad for Religion

This is a great example of why the Bush administration has been terrible for the Christian right.  He's ineffective and he up is put in the power people that are even more incompetent than himself.  At the end of the day when he loses a battle like this in a high-profile case, it makes Bush look bad but it also makes the Christian right and religion look bad.  It sets precedence in the legal system that will be very hard to overcome.  In this case, Bush is ended up becoming the biggest proponents for filth on TV to his own incompetence.  He has essentially helped establish the case law that will allow more filth on TV. 

So if you like to hear the "F-word" on TV you can thank President Bush.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Tips for Reducing Gridlock on Road Trips

After completing a 1,500 mile round-trip from North Carolina to Illinois and back again last week, I once again have a new appreciation for gridlock. During our trip we were able to avoid a significant amount of gridlock as we traveled entirely at night.

Benefits of Travelling at Night

  1. We avoided and did not contribute to rush-hour traffic in any city along our path.
  2. We do not have to run the air conditioner as it was cool enough at night for us to remain comfortable, and thus we saved on gasoline.
  3. We were able to use the cruise control for most of the journey which also saved on gasoline.
  4. Avoiding the gridlock of lots of traffic and rush-hour significantly reduce the amount of time we spent speeding up and slowing down by breaking for cars and that saved us on gas mileage.
  5. We traveled the weekend after Memorial Day weekend and does benefited from a slight to climb in the average price of gasoline.
  6. We drove all night and thus didn't have to pay for a hotel room because we were on the road and moving, as opposed to driving during the day and sleep in a hotel for a few hours at night and drive more the next day.
  7. The roads were not very hot and us the wear and tear on our tires was reduced.
  8. The kids slept almost the entire trip and thus we didn't have to make as many stops at rest areas nor did we had to stop for meals often. This saves us money on gasoline and on food.

There are ways that you can travel these days with the car that minimize your impact on gridlock. You can put more people in to the same vehicle and commutes. You can drive slower and use less gasoline. You can use smaller vehicles or vehicles are just the right size for your purpose. Instead of pulling a trailer you can pack items on a van rack or with luggage carriers that insert themselves into a hitch. We don't have to succumb to the status quo, we don't have to change or lifestyles much to see benefits.

Don't get me wrong we definitely need some major changes, but there are many people out there that are not even making minor changes and that's definitely going to cause us all a lot more pain later.

The Psychology of Online Pschology Degrees

A word for our sponsors at Capella University . . .

Our sponsors at Capella University have recently had much to celebrate.  One of their faculty, a professor of psychology has published an interesting book on motivating people by keying in to their ideals and inspiring them to do things for idealistic reasons.

This motivational method can be used in the workplace, the classroom or even in politics.  It might be argued even that its a latent practice exercised already by many great leaders including John Kennedy, who used it to inspire people to go to the moon and create the peace corp.

Capella provides an online psychology degree program through their university and there are many interesting reasons why obtaining a degree online can help to propel people in their future careers.  Learning how to learn online prepares people for a job market that is more and more looking for problem solvers capable of finding their own solutions.  In a world where the mundane tasks are automated, it is more and more important for employers to find people that can handle the extra complex problems left over that can't yet be automated.

 

This (or “the following”) blog post was (or “is”) based on information provided by Blogitive. For more information, please visit Blogitive.com.

Obama's Panick over getting Elected Inspires Panick over black 'quiet riot'

 Barack Obama took a sharp left turn this week, almost a u-turn and strayed away from his here-t0-for successful formula of talking about the positive and avoiding the issues of African Americans.

He offered up a portrait of 'hopelessness' and the 'potential (of the inner-city) to erupt into uncontrolled violence' according to a recent article in the Chicago tribune. Link to Obama warns of black 'quiet riot' | Chicago Tribune

This glass more than half empty speech might be viewed by some as a speech where Obama finally starts to get real.  It might also be viewed as desperation.

Obama has been doing fairly well so far, holding his own against Hillary Clinton and easily fending off John Edwards.  So why change a winning formula now half way through the course?

Typically, politicians do not fix something that isn't broken, so it must be that Obama has seen some polls or numbers or received feedback that something is broken.  He's now turning away from main stream Americans and middle class African American voters and hoping to reach out to disenfranchised African American voters living in the slums all around the country.

I applaud him for tackling reality finally, but now that he's let the cat out of the bag will he still be able to maintain his winning formula?

Unfortunately, history has not been kind to previous African American candidates in this regard.  Time will tell this time.