Day: September 13, 2008

Palin: A Candidate To Nowhere

John McCain’s running mate has been called a lot of things, but the one that seems to be sticking, at least for now is the one of “Reformer”.  Ok, she is a woman, a working Mom, but that is about where all the positive stuff stops.  But yet, the media is trying to saddle her with a title, but no one is sure what that titla will be, at least for now.

Like the “infamous” bridge she leads nowhere.

She like McCain hates earmarks but……

Palin, in fact, requested $198 million in federal earmarks in February, including such expenses as $487,000 to fight obesity in Alaska and $4 million to develop recreational trails.

The bridge, which was to be largely paid for with a $220 million federal allocation to connect a tiny island in her state to the mainland, has been Exhibit No. 1 in claims by Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign that Ms. Palin is a maverick reformer, ready to change Washington.

Although numerous news media organizations found that she supported the bridge until she turned against it.

And then there is her “marvelous” tenure as governor of Alaska.  But……….

• • Palin’s practice of billing the state for expenses incurred while staying in her own home.

• • Revelations that as mayor of Wasilla, she hired a Washington lobbyist to help her bring $27 million in earmarks to the small town.

• • And according to a profile of Palin that appeared in the Sept. 13 issue of Newsweek, Palin has given her friends jobs and appointed lobbyists to oversee industries they used to represent.

“Her record shows her to be, in many ways, a typical politician who rewards her friends and punishes her enemies,” the article said.

She, Palin, has the media all a flutter and women chomping at the bit, but so far nothing has been showed to make her a perfect candidate other than she is a woman.  She a candidate in name only, nothing has been given that show that she is the real thing.  Just a lot of clap trap from surrogates and pundits.

She is proving to be a typical Repub candidate…all flash, no substance.  A few cute slogans, but thin on issues.  She makes an excellent attack dog because anyone that refutes what she says will be labeled a sexist. In this case, gender is an asset and one that McCain needed badly.  Why?  He does not have to talk on the issues, he can keep driving home the patriotic, hero kissing,  tax cutting,  oil loving,  bovine fecal matter that IS the Republican Party .

All Seriousness Aside

What is going on here? The candidates are swimming in the shallow end of the political crapper. They are throwing these shallow little innuendo’s at each other and the country and the economy is beginning to crash and burn. Someone, anyone, please step up and grasp the reality of the situation that Americans are facing.

It is all so damn silly that these men are hurling insults and lies at each and their running mates. The American people deserve better than that, especially in this election. Ma and Pa are losing their store, Joe and Jane are losing their home, Pete and Paula have lost their jobs and the media and candidates are focusing in on some damn stupid add that says one candidate wants to teach sex in kindergarten. To begin with the bill in question did nor pass and no where did it call for teaching comprehensive sex to kindergarten. These idiots keep talking about intangible things like patriotism, hero-worship, change, please talk the voter how their life will truly improve if they are elected. Patriotism does not feed hungry children, hero worship will not save the house and lies will not stop the jobless rate from rising.

Time to put aside childish little games, stop being shallow little brats and move to the serious side of reality.

Does Size Matter?

An age old question with many tired answers.

To the average man, his penis is, consciously or unconsciously, one of the most important things in the whole world. At an early age he discovers it and immediately becomes fascinated by it.

But then a note of uncertainty enters his mind: ‘Isn’t mine rather small?’ Look at Dad’s, look at big brother’s, look at those in the men’s changing room – and he asks himself if he will be as big as that.

And so he goes on through life, always a tiny bit sensitive about the size of his organ, always convinced that it would be nicer if it were just that little bit longer.

No matter how often it’s written that penile size doesn’t matter, and that women aren’t attracted to a man because of the length of his organ, the average male continues to think the same way.

The average female cannot understand this obsession with penile measurement. So if you’re a woman, never belittle a man’s penis in bed, even as a joke, or say anything to indicate that you think it’s small. The guy may take you seriously, and if he does, he’ll be deeply hurt.

Speculators Under Every Rock

And now the rest of the story.

Institutional investors drove oil prices to all-time highs this summer, and the same players are also responsible for much of the $44-per-barrel loss since then, according to a Sept. 10 report that is being used to bolster calls for greater trading regulation.

The report from a hedge fund investor who has grown prominent in the oil speculation debate, Michael Masters, comes as crude oil has staged a 28% retreat in the past two months. But Masters and backers of his report—including many congressional Democrats—say prices could return to previous highs if reform legislation isn’t passed. “Americans won’t stand for being held up at the pump by these Wall Street scoundrels every time they fill up their gas tank,” Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said on Sept. 10 at the report’s release. She was joined by Masters, Adam K. White of White Knight Research & Trading, Senator Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), and Representative Bart Stupak (D-Mich.).

According to Masters’ report, an influx of “long-only” investors—large investors like pension funds and endowments that bet prices would rise—poured into the oil market in recent years. Their investments reached a peak on July 11, when oil prices hit an all-time high above $147 per barrel.

But many oil market experts and analysts disagree. While acknowledging that demand may be slowing, they argue that oil’s dramatic price decline is evidence that a speculative investment bubble is beginning to burst

Former CFTC regulator Michael Greenberger says that tougher policies and more oversight by the CFTC, initiated in May (BusinessWeek.com, 6/9/08), have caused investors to flee commodities markets. “The only constant variable in the oil market since the spring has been tougher CFTC measures and more oversight,” says Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland and former head of the CFTC’s Trading & Markets Div. “If actual supply and demand were at work, [oil] prices would have spiked with Russia’s invasion of Georgia and the onset of hurricane season.”

Turning Crap Into Energy

San Antonio unveiled a deal on Tuesday that will make it the first U.S. city to harvest methane gas from human waste on a commercial scale and turn it into clean-burning fuel.

San Antonio residents produce about 140,000 tons a year of a substance gently referred to as “biosolids,” which can be reprocessed into natural gas, said Steve Clouse, chief operating officer of the city’s water system.

“You may call it something else,” Clouse said, but for area utilities, the main byproduct of human waste – methane gas – will soon be converted into natural gas to burn in their power plants.

The city approved a deal where Massachusetts-based Ameresco Inc will convert the city’s biosolids into natural gas, which could generate about 1.5 million cubic feet per day, he said.

Methane gas, which is a byproduct of human and organic waste, is a principal component of the natural gas used to fuel furnaces, power plants, and other combustion-based generators.

“The private vendor will come onto the facility, construct some gas cleaning systems, remove the moisture, remove the carbon dioxide content, and then sell that gas on the open market,” Clouse said.

Some communities are using methane gas harvested from solid waste to power smaller facilities like sewage treatment plants, but San Antonio is the first to see large-scale conversion of methane gas from sewage into fuel for power generation, he said.

Oh God, The Interview!

I was gonna be the mature one and not even try to analyze the host or the guest. Well that did not work out so good. So I shall, against my better judgement analyze the Palin interview with Charlie Gibson.

Think back to when Charlie was the host of one of the past debates. He was hit and hit hard by critics because they said he was way too soft on the candidates and then along came Palin and his critics were at it again. This time he was too hard on the VP candidate. asking her such questions as, are you ready to be president if necessary? There were others but that is the one that comes top mind most readily.

Now to Palin, she was well rehearsed and programmed and gave the most pat answers. She was almost an robot. Her answer, with the exception of the war thing with Russia, were good but lacked substance, but that was to be expected. To me, she reacted like she had the basic questions in advance. My advice to the McCain people is keep Palin away from one on one interviews, the chances of a major gaff is there. Just continue along the Mac and Sarah Show, it seems to be more effective.

Now that brings us to ABC, what price did the have to pay for the privilege of the first one on one interview with Palin? Knowing nothing in politics happens at the flip of a coin or the luck of the draw, I would like to hear the price of this ratings boost. We will probably never know the answer to that question, but I would bet that it was a substantial one.

The Other 9/11

Torture. Murder. Kidnappings. Secret Prisons. Concentration Camps. War. Impunity.

This is the legacy of human rights abuses September 11th sadly leaves us–a legacy first executed by former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and, more recently renewed by an equally culpable President George W. Bush.

The 35th anniversary of the September 11th, 1973 Washington-backed coup which saw Pinochet overthrow the democratically elected administration of Salvador Allende, and the General’s subsequent “War on Terrorism” targeting so-called communists (which included anyone who opposed his bloody regime), offers a standard to measure President Bush’s “War on Terrorism,” the U.S. Commander-in-Chief’s legacy of human rights abuses, as well as how he might one day face justice.


The parallels between the two regime’s crimes are frighteningly similar, though it shouldn’t be lost that Pinochet carried out many of his crimes with financial, intellectual and political support from Washington. The Washington Post wrote in 2004 that, “The news that serving U.S. officials have officially endorsed principles once advanced by Augusto Pinochet brings shame on American democracy.” Two years later Amnesty International echoed The Post’s observation when it accused President Bush of taking pages out of Pinochet’s playbook in his “acceptance of torture and disregard of legal restraints.”