In Gods Hands

Prayers for Cuba and that Gustav will be less then they think it will be.

More on Gov. Palin

What better balance for the 71-year-old nominee who could be facing a 46-year-old man-child?

A former athlete and beauty queen, Palin's approval ratings hover in 90 percent zone. Palin became a public hero taking on special interests, who practically own the Alaska political establishment.

Forced to resign from the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission after complaining to Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski about corruption,she was banished to the political wilderness before coming back to defeat Murkowski in the GOP primary.

Palin forced the Alaska legislature into special session to increase oil taxes -- yes, that's oil taxes -- in Alaska, a Republican welfare state. And she vetoes public works projects.

She is a good one. http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12800

Sarah Palin VP

What an inspiring choice! Finally a strong conservative to match McCains 'libralism'.

And the chance to be the first Female President of the US in eight years to boot!

It's a good day for America.

Collage Fiscals.

Collages make pretty good money. They get grants, donations, tuitions and season ticket purchasers.

They produce pieces of paper that they had to an educated person. Who arguably has some kind of potential value to someone somewhere.

When Collages get an influx of money, it never seems to cause a drop in tuition. Rather its a name plaque on a building.

Why is it that people who speak about against Corporation Greed, turn a blind eye to Upper Education Greed? Instead I hear that the state and fed should send more money to these institutions.

puzzling...

FICA

Wall Street Journal artical

Obama is suppose to propose a middle class tax cut. Pretty much what Clinton promised (then didnt deliver first term). He's going to end the ceiling on FICA taxes

The thought was he was going to bring income tax rate back up to what Clinton has, 39.6%."

So if Obama gets his way, you could see a combined federal tax rate of 55%.

Add in your federal income tax and Social Security and Medicare, your paying 55 to 60%

So, if you think that certain people should pay more in taxes you would be very happy.

Political discussions in MMORPG's

In World of Warcraft there is a chat channel called 'trade'. The idea behind it was to post up things you have that others may want. Or to request things you want that others may have.

In reality it is an anonymous soapbox for various topics that is arguably misused.

Recently while we all were sitting around misusing the channel when someone pointed out that China has a great economy and is proof that communism works. My response was that slave labor can do wonders for an economy.

Michelle where art thou?

I was very interested to hear Michelle Obama from the Convention. I still am...

Here was a shining chance to answer the critics and make the case for Barak and instead, it was just something that looked prepackaged to appease someone.

Since Delta Joe jumped onto the Barak Bandwagon, I figured there was some compelling reason. I am not crazy about McCain, however the more I hear and see about Mr. Obama the less I want to see him in the oval office.

Actually if he had been a VP pick with Hillary as nominee I think it would have been quite a dynamic ticket. The convention still has a week to go. Its looking to me like this is McCains election to win or loose.

Pelosi = stupid

Nancy Pelosi says as an “ardent practicing Catholic,” that when life begins “shouldn’t have an impact on a woman’s right to choose (read having an abortion)”
Further: “over the history of the church, this is an issue of controversy.”

Like the Catholic Church has not weighed in on the issue... What amazing denial or pathological.

Lets put the no-compromise argument of abortion aside. To state that the Church is in debate about these issues is amazingly ignorant.

bad decisions by Rich businesses.

Bad choice by big business

In the mid-1970s, executives at the W.T. Grant variety store chain, one of the nation’s largest retailers, decided that the best way to increase sales was to increase the number of customers … by offering credit. It put tremendous "negative incentive" pressure on store managers to issue credit. Employees who didn’t meet their credit quotas risked complete humiliation. They had pies thrown in their faces, were forced to push peanuts across the floor with their noses, and were sent through hotel lobbies wearing only diapers. Eager to avoid such total embarrassment, store managers gave credit "to anyone who breathed," including untold thousands of customers who were bad risks. W.T. Grant racked up $800 million worth of bad debts before it finally collapsed in 1977.

Good list.

High Dynamic Images

With the advent of digital cameras which can gather more information then our eyes can process High Dynamic images are becomming popular and you can see why.

Very Dramatic.

Biden on the ticket

Speaking as a Registered Republican I couldnt be happier with Obama's choice of Joe Biden.

• Biden on Meet the Press 2002, subject: Saddam Hussein: “He’s a long term threat and a short term threat to our national security… “We have no choice but to eliminate the threat. This is a guy who is an extreme danger to the world.”

• Biden to the Brookings Institution in 2005: “We can call it quits and withdraw from Iraq. I think that would be a gigantic mistake. Or we can set a deadline for pulling out, which I fear will only encourage our enemies to wait us out — equally a mistake.”

• Biden in an interview with the Huffington Post, assessing Obama and Hillary Clinton: “The more people learn about them (Obama and Hillary) and how they handle the pressure, the more their support will evaporate.”

Hmmm, maybe McCain shoulda picked him up:

Biden August 2, 2005: “John McCain is a personal friend, a great friend, and I would be honored to run with or against John McCain, because I think the country would be better off,"

Michael Phelps? Meh..

Trivia question: Who holds the MOST olympic medals?
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During the three Olympics held between 1956 and 1964, this olympian garnered nine golds, five silvers and four bronzes. Total of 18
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Russian gymnast Larissa Latynina holds the record for the most number of medals.

Contradiction

If you believe the world is overpopulated.

You would be happy when events occur that limited the populations growth.

Plagues, famine, natural disasters and war would be a good for 'saving' the planet from over population. Cause for celebration?

woot?

Vacation-reunion spot.

Here is Connor on the doc on lake Cuyamaca (The name is a Spanish corruption of the Kumeyaay phrase "'Ekwiiyemak", which approximately means "the place where it rains"). It actually reminded me of a dry spell in Oregon without as many trees.



If you look up inbetween the trees you will see the condo\cabin that we got to stay in. Shoo's family stayed on the other side. This was very nice in the late evening as Tina and I got to sit with Pam and Shoo, be treated to Pam's collection of savory tea's and just unwind and chat.



The next night Byron, Paula and Vince joined us as well with adult beverages and some pretty good stories. Really a nice way to end a really fun day.



Flying Van (Steve) really pulled together a wonderful time.



One of the activities was puttering around the lake in a large pontoon boat. We got dropped off at the lakeside resturant for lunch and Carl and Cole picked us up afterwards. Our Celeste made Yellow shirts really made locating each other simple.



Getting off the boat onto the doc was less then graceful for us due to the difference in height.



Great set of memories to relive in my mind though.



I do have to say Steves much better half, Annamarie has to be the sweetist, nicest , most generous, person ever to grace the planet.



Guess you and I both married above what we deserved, eh Steve *wink*



Oh, yeah, 20 years ago Tina and I tied the knot.

Connor moments

With a kid like Connor you are never quite sure what he is going to do or react situationally.

There were just too many people for him to learn all the names. Although after a subtle hint from Shoo (pointing to his shoes), Connor quickly caught his name was Shoes, and refered to him as such.

The condo was referred to as the 'sleep house' and after a good 10 hours on a trampolene in the sun he really wanted to go there.

"lets go to Steves" was his most requested thing, and he associated Steve with Steves. Steve further endeared himself by placing connor between various pillows and making a Connor sandwich. To which Connor giggled and squeeled 'STEVE! what are you doing?'

Then there was his dutifully repeating the Leo line from Titanic while at the front of the pontoon boat, "I'm KING OF THE WORLD" immediatly followed by turnning and requesting applause.

Everyone was very accepting and kept an eye out for him, even the kids. Connor was all smiles throught the bulk of the trip. One or two smallish incidents that were cringe worthy.

My favorite Connor moment was near the end of the weekend while at Steves hand made cabin saying goodbye. Connor, dutifully giving hugs of goodbye all around, came to Byron looked up at him and with a big grin hugged him and said "good bye Scat-Man"

Which caught all of us off guard and still brings a grin to us.

..more reunion stuff to follow.

Long @$$ drive

Here it is 11:00 AM Tuesday August 19Th. I woke up around 6:00am unpacked the van, opened windows, got the rotten apple out of the kitchen and crashed around 8:0am and woke up again a bit ago.

Why so tired? Well...

Monday morning we packed up the lake overlooking condo, did a Geo-Cache (Steve & Rob are bastages) and hit the road around 9:30am. We gassed up near Escondido, at lunch in Upland, at dinner in Santa Nella topped off someplace south of Redding and arrived at home 2:40am.

I'm thinking next time we go by rail.

To any and all we are safe home and unloaded memorys and flash cards for upcomming posts.

hope the rest of you safely made it home.

Georgia conflict .vs. nominee's

Russian troops in country of Georgia. How do our political leaders respond? This was a recent discussion I had. So I looked up the various responses.

MCCAIN: This pattern of attack appears aimed not at restoring any status quo ante in South Ossetia, but rather toppling the democratically elected governor of the republic of Georgia. This would be unacceptable to all the democratic countries of the world and should draw us together in universal condemnation of Russian aggression.

Pretty straight forward response I thought, measured and explained.

OBAMA: We should continue to push for a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate end to the violence It's a clear violation of the sovereignty and internationally recognized borders of Georgia. The UN must stand up for the sovereignty of its members and for peace in the world.

This is bizzare, Russia is on the UN security council and has veto rights on any action. Also, Obama stops short of condeming the actions of Russia

THE PRESIDENT: There's evidence that Russian forces may soon begin bombing the civilian airport in the capital city. These reports are accurate. These Russian actions would represent a dramatic and brutal escalation of the conflict in Georgia. These actions would be inconsistent with assurances we have received from Russia that its objectives were limited to restoring the status quo in South Ossetia that existed before fighting began on August the 6th. These actions have substantially damaged Russia's standing in the world. And these actions jeopardize Russia's relations with the United States and Europe. It's time for Russia to be true to its word and to act to end this crisis.

Concise, explained with condemnation and not passing anything to the impotent UN. Also, invoking the diplomatic understandings between the US and Russia.

Alternative Energy! (cuz increasing oil supply is bad)

Cold Fusion: Dunking palladium electrodes into heavy water - oxygen combined with hydrogen isotope deuterium - releases HUGE amounts of energy. Placing a voltage across the electrodes moves the deuterium nuclei to into palladium's molecular lattice, fusing them together, releasing a blast of energy.

On little snag is that fusion at room temperature is deemed impossible by every accepted scientific theory. It works fine in stars. If controllable cold fusion proved possible, many of the world's energy problems would melt away

The US Department of Energy is interested. In December 2005, after a lengthy review of the evidence, it said it was open to receiving proposals for new cold fusion experiments.

This is the same DoE that concluded in a report back in 1990 the original cold fusion results, produced by Fleischmann and Pons of the University of Utah, were impossible to reproduce, and thus probably false.

A theory 'bout peeples.

1. People, in general, like telling other people what they should do.

2. People, in general, despise being told what they should do.

If you tell someone what to do their reaction will be based upon your position of authority.

If you are in distress being told what to do can be a relief (although, you may still despise being told)

The bestest way to tell someone what they should do is via a sales pitch. This can fool the person into thinking they came up with what they should do on their own (this is the method used by politicians)

Must listen till the end.

Now try to get this song out of your head.

What worth a beloved pet?

News story about Dog Cloning service

Ms. McKinney loved her dog. The dog died. She sold her home to pay the $50,000 fee to get five cloned puppies from her dead dog. This was discounted from the $150,000 the company planned to charge for the service, believing her case will be a boon for business.

I have a hard time understanding why anyone would do this. Mostly because selling your house to buy five dogs seems over the top to me. Add to that none of these clones is her beloved Booger. (yes, she named her original K9 Booger) I guess they are in some part Booger, not unlike if Booger had puppies.

Then you have that elephant in the room (not cloned, metaphorical) about a loved one. Be it Mom or Dad, Sister or Brother, Son or Daughter, best friend, Significant other or fourth cousin on your fathers brothers side three times removed. We know that Clones will not be the same person. In my imagination looking at the clone a child I lost, would be a constant reminder of the loss. This made all the more painful, due to the mockery of who that person once was, standing before me.

Maybe that is too dramatic. Countless authors have gone over the ethical and moral arguments about cloning. And now, here it is, real flesh and blood.

the mind boggles.

True Presidential "debate"

In that old Monty Python sketch the statment "An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition" is far removed from what we normally engage.

In the 'everyone has a soap box' day we are free to post opinion as fact, contridition as soul proof and ridicule for not accepting a premise, flawed or not. Yes, I too am one of those opinion spouters.

So a buddy of mine recently deconstructed an opinion as fact editorial blog in such a sublime manner I was made to think more on what a debate is .vs. what it seems to become.

Debate, in political arena, is not a debate at all rather a posing and soundbite compitition with aftermath of spinning it as a victory reguardless of what actually occured. So style over substance and perception over reality.

Public debate are two teams of two. Each team is given their topic with the side at the beginning. The teams are given 15 minutes to create an outline before they begin. The topic of the debate is unknown until the start of the debate, it requires little planning and a wide knowledge of topics.

I would love to see a couple of Prez .vs. Prez nominee teams engage in this kind of debate.

MMORPG's appeal

Women are playing computer games, no shock there really. Yes, the XY set have the lions share. Slowly this section of the public is doing more then that solo card game.

Personal experience: My wife first had a character in Asherons Call back in 2000. While it was an interesting change from watching TV and later a way of getting her exercise in the appeal shot way up with two things.

The addition of dresses and hats.

While we have long since dropped AC for WoW (World of Warcraft), the guild we played in still honors her memory by allowing people to wear 'Fez's' in game meetings.

yeah, weird to me too. Still....

So WoW has non-combat, non-functional pets in game, various clothing items and fun events widely incorporated, that obviously panders to the XX set. Which is a good thing.

House of Teens

Cousin Dan is camping in the back yard (brought a tent and a hard hat, the kids prepared). Leonie is sharing Diana's room and Trevor is in the bottom bunk of the boys room. Connor is not a teen yet.

So we have seven people here. It's fun actually. Busy, the fair is in town.

Rodney Atkins plays tonite.
The Doobie Brothers play Wednesday.
Bad Company and The Edgar Winter Band Thursday.
Kellie Pickler rounds it out on Friday.

With the standard rides, games and booths.

Unlike the OC fair I grew up with, our fair is something I can go to every year. Not sure why.

Fixing Schools?

If you spend much time observing the school system behind the scenes you start to see some really odd things.

Year long weekly committee meetings to resolve issues like 'communication', the first six of these meetings outline the problems. Contract negotiations with budget busting agreements that both sides 'agree' on. Retirement packages that pay 100% of original salary. etc.

My personal feeling has long been the lack of a 'bottom line'. That is to say, in business, if you do not make x-amount of money to cover expenses you either cut back or go under. Voucher programs kinda can do that, however you run into really bad situations with special needs kids.

I ran across this interesting article Swedish School system. So I looked deeper.

in 1992 they moved to private run schools using public monies. The students are learning, the teachers, while concerned about job security, are enjoying being able to teach subjects, not to tests. Even the Swedish Teachers' Union now doesn't "have an opinion about which owner (i.e., the state or private enterprise) is better."

I have been unable to see how they handle special needs. But, I am still digging.

Indian Food

Garlic flake pict.

I found I enjoy the Cuisine of India. There is one resturant in Kelowna BC that I am particularly fond. So I periodically look for something I can cook here at home.

I recently added a gadget to my igoogle page to search out veggie Indian recepies.

I came across this gem called Onion Chutney. Seeing as how I am a fan of Maui onions I looked at the ingrediants:

onions - 6 to 8 (No problem, I can just get 6 big maui's)


tomatos - 3 (Get three nice ripe ones)


red chillies - 8 to 10 (indian Chili's are thin, red and usually dried. Flakes can work)


garlic - 5 to 5 flakes minced (um... Garlic flakes... quick google search finds them:


corainder - 1/2 bunch (easy)

comin seeds - 1 tsb (cumin??)

gingly oil - 1/4 cup (wtf? oh Sesame oil. whew)

Now instructions: Fry the cumin seeds and onions until onions become transparent.Then fry the tomatos until it is well cooked.Now switch of the gas and allow it to cool little bit.Now add the red chillies, garlic, coriander leaves, salt and little bit of water.
This chutney should not be loosy. If it is too spicy add little bit of oil.

If I can just make sure the Chutney is not loosy I'm good to go.




http://www.ivu.org/recipes/indian-chutney/vidhya-p.html

Oil .vs. Government

So there is high gas prices and depending upon editorial policy, it is either the Oil companies at fault or OPEC. 18.4 cents per gallon go to the Federal government plus 8 cents to 28 cents depending upon your state. My state the total taxes are 42 cents per gallon. According to the EIA the average profit of Gas is 28 cents per gallon. (That shows me who is really gouging...)