Donald Trump: ‘McCain will force OPEC to lower oil prices’
I was listening to CNN this morning and Donald Trump was on the phone saying that he supports John McCain for President. Not that I’m surprised. I’m sure that most mega-millionaires are supporting John McCain for President. After all, he wants to lower their taxes while Barack Obama wants to raise their taxes.
It turns out that not the reason The Donald is supporting McCain. Supposedly, it’s because he thinks McCain will go to OPEC and “make” them lower oil prices. He then offered up an analogy. He said that if he and somebody else owned similar stores and they got together and decided collectively how much to charge for certain items, they would end up in jail. The problem with that logic is that OPEC does not set the price of oil. They collectively decide how much oil they will produce.
Why doesn’t Donald Trump know this?
OPEC doesn’t set the price for oil. The world oil market does that. That’s one of the reasons allowing oil companies to drill off-shore wont effect the price of oil. OPEC would almost certainly decrease their oil production to match any increase in oil production here in the United States. The amount of available oil on the world market would remain the same. The oil companies would certainly make even more money then they make now, but the price we as consumers pay wont change.
The Robert Kirkman/Brian Michael Bendis debate
I almost went to the recent Baltimore Comic Convention for no other reason then to witness the debate between Robert Kirkman (left) and Brian Michael Bendis (right). For those that don’t know, both men are comic book writers. Kirkman writes independent books The Walking Dead and Invincible, while Bendis writes just about every book currently published by Marvel Comics.
I am exaggerating, but not by much.
Kirkman recently came under fire from comic book nerds for things he said on a video manifesto released on the Internet. He encouraged other comic book creators to stop creating books for Marvel and DC and to instead concentrate their comic book creating powers on their own works. He himself was working for Marvel up until a short time ago, but decided to concentrate on his own books.
Brian Michael Bendis evidently took exception to some of the things said by Kirkman not only on the before mentioned video, but on a podcast talking about the same issues. Kirkman had used Bendis as an example with many of the points he was trying to make. Specifically, that comic book writers shouldn’t expect to fallow in Bendis’ footsteps in that there is only one Brian Michael Bendis.
Brian Michael Bendis then appeared on the same podcast that Kirkman appeared on and disputed many of the claims that were made by Robert Kirkman.
Organizers of the Baltimore Comic Con decided to capitalize on the “feud” by having the two men debate their respective point’s of view. I was thinking of going to the con to watch the debate until I realized I didn’t really care. At least not enough to drive down to the Inner Harbor area of Baltimore, pay $30 to park, pay another $15 to get into the con, and then sit next to someone that probably hasn’t showered in two days while the two comic book writers debated.
I’ve heard what both Kirkman and Bendis have to say and I mostly agree with Kirkman. I think it’s silly for someone who wants to write comic books for a living to simply aspire to write stories about the same old characters that have been around for eons.
It would be like someone wanting to write sci-fi novels and only aspiring to write Star Trek novels. Ironically, that is exactly what one certain comic book writer has done. He has written quite a few Star Trek novels.
I’ve really cut down on my comic book reading lately. I just haven’t felt like I’m getting my money’s worth. At $3 or $4 each, most comic books just aren’t worth it. Then again, if it took more then six minutes to read a comic, I might feel differently. I can spent $8 on a paperback novel and get hours and hours of enjoyable reading out of it. I can spend $30 at the funny book shop and maybe get an hour out of it. It just doesn’t make much economic sense these days to read comics.
My new video card
I broke down yesterday and bought a fancy pants high-end video card. At least it’s high-end for me. It’s by far the best video card I’ve ever owned. The last video card I purchased was a plain old PCI bus video card. This is a PCI Express x16 card.
I have a 22-inch widescreen monitor and my crappy video card just couldn’t keep up. Minimizing and maximizing windows was really bogging down my system.
The difference in performance is ridiculous. Not only is the video much more responsive, the CPU use on both processors has decreased dramaticly. I guess the old crap card was dragging down the PCI bus a lot more then I thought it was.
BFG – NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT OC 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express Graphics Card
- Powered by the GeForce 9800 GT OC graphics processing unit (GPU)
- 512MB GDDR3 memory
- PCI Express x16 interface
- Core clock speed 625MHz; dual 400MHz RAMDACs
- 2560 x 1600 at 60Hz maximum digital resolution at 32-bit color for ultrarealistic gaming experiences
- Compatible with HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats
- NVIDIA SLI technology allows you to connect more than one graphics card to your system for improved performance (additional graphics cards not included)
- DirectX 10 and OpenGL 2.1-compatible GPU and powerful unified architecture for enhanced gameplay
- NVIDIA Forceware provides enhanced performance and speed, stunning visual quality and unified driver architecture (UDA) to ensure forward and backward compatibility with hardware and software
- Shader Model 4.0 support ensures compatibility with current and future gaming titles
- 2 dual-link DVI-I connectors; TV and HDTV outputs
- HDCP-enabled; HDMI capable with adapter kit (not included)
- Includes DVI-to-VGA adapter, HDTV breakout cable, dual 4-pin Molex-to-single 6-pin PCI power adapter and software CD-ROM
Buccaneers play kicker who’s 3-month son died this week
I started to watch the Green Bay Packers – Tampa Bay Buccaneers game and I heard the commentators say something about Buc’s kicker Matt Bryant and the fact that he decided to play even with what happened to his family this week. I didn’t know what they were talking about so I turned to Google.
Matt Bryant and his wife Melissa experienced probably the worst loss that two people can experience in that they awoke Wednesday morning to find their three month old infant son Tryson dead.
I can’t imagine the pain the Bryant family is experiencing. I also can’t imagine choosing to play a football game only a few days after something like this. Some things in life are important. Football is not one of them.
Supposedly the Bucs only have one place kicker on the team, and because of this fact, Matt Bryant probably felt pressure to play. Whoever is in charge of player personal for the Buccaneers should have had a list of available place kickers available on the free agent market. What would they do if Bryant sprained his ankle? Instead of signing a kicker, they were planning on using safety Sabby Piscitelli as their place kicker.
There’s a reason people take bereavement time when they experience such a personal loss in their lives. Grief is a very real thing that must be dealt with. If you don’t deal with it, it will deal with you.
If the Buccaneers organization had any class, they wouldn’t have put Matt Bryant in the position to decide to play or not.
I always knew John Elway was kind of a dick
The four-letter sports network is reporting the Hall of Fame Denver Broncos quarterback John Elway is engaged to a 41-year year old former Raiders cheerleader. According to the The Denver Post, Elway met Paige Green three years ago at a Los Angeles celebrity golf tournament.
What’s a former Raiders cheerleader even doing at a “celebrity” golf tournament? That makes me wonder just how celebrity the tournament was.
I find this news somewhat shocking in that the last I heard, Elway was happily married to the mother of his four children. In fact, I remember something about his wife being a colon cancer survivor. For all I know, they divorced a long time ago and Raiderette Paige Green had nothing to do with the break up. I would go look it up on Wikipedia, but I would hate to find out that Elway didn’t dump his cancer surviving wife for this woman.
This is just wrong. Raiders, even former Raiders cheerleaders, don’t have sex with Broncos. It’s unnatural and perverted. It’s an abomination. If she is going to do John Elway, it makes we question just how committed to the Silver and Black she ever was. Paige Green is bringing great shame to the once proud football franchise.
I hate John Elway. [ESPN]
Making sense of the current financial crisis
It’s hard to put a finger on what exactly the problem is concerning the current financial crisis. The financial crisis that supposedly is going to require a $700 billion government bailout. Like most people, I hear a lot of talk about subprime mortgages being the problem. Loans made to people that don’t have the greatest credit and that don’t make a lot of money. These people got loans that they could not afford and they are now allowing their homes to fall into foreclosure. Read the full article »
McCain is declaring himself the winner of tonight’s debate
First John McCain tried to pull a punk move and pull out of tonight’s debate with Barack Obama. Now he is announcing to the world that he is the winner of tonight’s debate.
Fire of the Delorean Marty, McCain is going BACK TO THE FUTURE!
He looks so young and energetic in this photo. No wonder he was able to jump to the future and beat Obama at that debating thing. I used to have a lot of respect for John McCain. I didn’t agree with most of his politics, but I always had loads of respect for the guy.
Now I just think he’s a joke. [Washington Post]
John Zogby thinks McCain is going to win because he smells like an old shoe
My old hack of a community college teacher political pollster John Zogby says that his buddy John McCain is going to win and win big. The reason? Because he smells like an old shoe.
Maybe it’s because he looks like an old shoe. A very, very, old shoe.
Who even likes old shoes? The only people that like old shoes are people with weird and perverted foot fetishes. I’m sure most of them are Republicans, but I doubt there are enough of them to deliver McCain the election. [Boston Herald]
Washington Mutual is no more
The gigantic bank formally known as Washington Mutual is no more:
Washington Mutual Inc was closed by the U.S. government in by far the largest failure of a U.S. bank, and its banking assets were sold to JPMorgan Chase & Co for $1.9 billion.
Thursday’s seizure and sale is the latest historic step in U.S. government attempts to clean up a banking industry littered with toxic mortgage debt. Negotiations over a $700 billion bailout of the entire financial system stalled in Washington on Thursday.
I’m starting to see the phrase “toxic mortgage debt” quite a bit lately. How long until it’s simply referred to as TMD or something else just as goofy? It almost sounds as though the banking industry is a blameless victim in all this mess. They are “littered with toxic mortgage debt”. If you didn’t know any better, you might forget that they are the ones that went out and acquired all that toxic mortgage debt because they thought they could make a killing. Whoops! [Yahoo!]
Where are all the ecconomists?
We are supposedly facing severe economic problems because of sub-prime mortgages and people buying homes they cannot afford. It’s as if everyone suddenly decided that home mortgages labeled “sub-prime” weren’t such great investments. Imagine that. Would you buy meat at the grocery store that was labeled “sub-prime”?
Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress are supposedly working together to come up with a plan to bailout the financial industry. Not that I am convinced the financial industry needs or even deserves to be bailed out. Read the full article »
David Letterman rips into John McCain
Evidently John McCain was scheduled to appear on the Late Show last night, but canceled at the last minute so he could suspend his campaign and fly to Washington and solve all of the problems facing Wall Street. At least that is what he personally told Late Show host David Letterman.
As it turns out, McCain instead went and sat down for an interview with CBS New’s Katie Couric.
McCain is suspending his campaign?
John McCain had decided to suspend his campaign. He has pulled all TV ad spots and will not participate in the first scheduled debate with Barack Obama this Friday in Mississippi. Why is he doing this? He says it’s so he can go to Washington and concentrate on the “problems” currently facing Wall Street, The Great Depression 2.0.
Barack Obama responded by announcing that he is not suspending his campaign. He also said that as far as he is concerned, the debate is still on. He correctly pointed out that Americans expect their President to be able to deal with more than one thing at once.
Does McCain even need to be at the debate? It’s not like the candidates spend a lot of time engaging one another in actual debate. In fact, usually they have rules in place that prohibit them from even speaking to each other. They could proceed with the debate and just allow McCain’s podium to remain empty.
Michael George denied bond
Macomb Circuit Judge James Biernat decided that comic book retailer and Pittsburgh Comic-Con organizer Michael George has to remain in Jail until his new trial. He said he thinks Michael George would be a flight risk if he were allowed to post bond. Judge Biernat recently overturned George’s conviction for the 1990 murder of his wife Barbara. A new trial has been ordered to start on December 2, 2008.
The prosecution is attempting to have the court of appeals to uphold the original conviction.
Michael George used to own the comic book shop in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. It’s the shop I buy my funny books from. When I buy funny books. [WXYZ-TV Detroit]
Clay Aiken is a Gay-American
Former American Idol season two runner-up Clay Aiken wants the world to know that he is gay. Not that anyone didn’t already know this bit of information. What’s next, will American Idol season two winner Rubin Studdard announce that he is fat and black?
I don’t think so.
Aiken is to appear on the cover of People magazine with his newborn son along with the caption “YES I AM A GAY-AMERICAN SO DEAL WITH IT YOU ASSHOLES” or something like that.
I say good for him. I think people hiding who they are is just silly. Not that I don’t understand why they feel the need to do it. Hating on people because their gay is one of the very last refuges for small minded people that are predisposed to ugly prejudices.
This doesn’t change anything. I’m sure that anyone who considered themselves a Clay Aiken fan before this announcement will go on being a Clay Aiken fan.
Racist Dennis the Menace cartoon circa 1970
Wow. It’s hard to believe this particular Dennis the Menace strip ran after the Civil Rights movement, but it did. It makes me wonder what else Hank Ketcham had going on in his head. [The Vault of Buncheness]
The NRA wants you to know that Obama has probably never hunted a day in his life
If this wont make you want to vote for McCain, nothing will. Men that wear camouflage and shake their heads in disgust while they pump gasoline into their American made pickup trucks want you to know that your freedom depends on defeating Barack Obama.
Every four years around this time, the National Rifle Association tries to get their members into a tizzy by scaring them into thinking that whoever is running on the Democratic ticket wants to take their guns away. I don’t know why they continue to fall for it. Nobody wants to take their guns away.
Avoiding the financial apocalypse
I’ll be perfectly honest and admit that there is a lot about the federal financial bailout plan that I just don’t understand. The way I understand it is that unless Congress does everything President Bush and U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson tells them to do, the financial apocalypse (OMG!) will happen and we will end up living in a world that looks and smells very much like the one featured in the Mad Max movies.
Plus, it will be really hard for businesses to get cheap loans.
Secretary Paulson wants the congress to move quickly and to not ask questions. We all know that the congress does a bang-up job when they are told to hurry and not question what is being asked of them. They passed the Patriot Act without bothering to read it and they voted to authorize military force in Iraq without asking a whole lot of questions.
Some of the details emerging about Secretary Paulson’s bailout include the fact that not only will American financial institutions be bailed out, but foreign ones will too. Also, the CEO’s in charge of these failed financial institutions will not be prohibited from receiving lucrative bonuses or payouts for all their hard work running their companies into the ground.
After all, most if not all of them are undoubtedly Republicans.
SNL mocks John McCain ads
On one hand this Saturday Night Live skit is really funny, but considering the level of absurdity coming from the John McCain campaign in the way of commercials, I wouldn’t put it past the McCain campaign to actually try some of these ads.
Internet woes
My connection to the world wide Internets has been extremely slow since yesterday. At first I thought perhaps it was my router. I’ve had trouble with it lately in that my Internet connection completely dies and to get it back up in running, not only do I need to reboot it, but I have to return all the settings to factory default. I then have to go in and change everything back to where it was before it died, things such as wireless security and the wireless network name.
It’s a pain in the ass, but when it works, it works. I can go months before I have to do a major hardcore reboot to the router.
This problem is different. Some sites are extremely slow while others load up perfectly normal. I can quickly go to my blog, but the Feedburner widget and the Sitemeter image do not load. Other websites load, but some of the sidebar ads coming from other sites wont load and display.
Just to rule out the router, I disconnected it and plugged my modem directly into my desktop PC. It was just as slow and unresponsive.
I finally was able to go to my Internet provider’s website, MYACTV.net. The browser window would timeout the other times I tried to go there. They show that they are experiencing partial outages:
We are currently experiencing an issue which is causing slow internet speeds. We are aware of the issue and are working to correct it. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Hopefully they will be able to fix it soon.
Sarah Palin’s lies might be catching up with her
It appears Sarah Palin’s lies just might be catching up with her. ABC News seems to be spending a lot of time doing what the McCain campaign refused to do. They are investigating the facts involving Troopergate:
An internal government document obtained by ABC News appears to contradict Sarah Palin’s most recent explanation for why she fired her public safety chief, the move which prompted the now-contested state probe into “Troopergate.”
ABC News has been investigating Troopergate. Fighting back against allegations she may have fired her then-Public Safety Commissioner, Walt Monegan, for refusing to go along with a personal vendetta, Palin on Monday argued in a legal filing that she fired Monegan because he had a “rogue mentality” and was bucking her administration’s directives.
“The last straw,” her lawyer argued, came when he planned a trip to Washington, D.C., to seek federal funds for an aggressive anti-sexual-violence program. The project, expected to cost from $10 million to $20 million a year for five years, would have been the first of its kind in Alaska, which leads the nation in reported forcible rape.
The McCain-Palin campaign echoed the charge in a press release it distributed Monday, concurrent with Palin’s legal filing. “Mr. Monegan persisted in planning to make the unauthorized lobbying trip to D.C.,” the release stated.
But the governor’s staff authorized the trip, according to an internal travel document from the Department of Public Safety, released Friday in response to an open records request.
That’s something I never quite understood. If Monegan’s trip to D.C. was unauthorized, how did he get there? Did he travel on his own dime? That’s what you would think if he was indeed a rouge government official who did things without the approval of the governor’s office. Having an authorized travel document from the governor’s chief-of-staff that states he was going to Washington D.C. to meet with Senator Murkowski would prove that Palin is lying.
And what does Sarah Palin have against combating rape? When she was mayor of Wasilla, rape victims were required to pay for their own rape kit when they were brought to the hospital. She has also made it clear that she is against a woman receiving an abortion, even when they are the victim of a rape. She fired her top cop supposedly because he tried to secure federal funding to help deal with Alaska’s high number of forcible rapes.
What’s up with that?
Living vicariously through the con attending of others
Fellow Maryland blogger, master photographer, and all around cool guy Bart Hoffstein recently attended the hugely popular science fiction & fantasy convention Dragon*Con down in Atlanta, Georgia. I’ve wanted to attend that con myself. Hopefully Sheri and I can go next year. Until then, I can enjoy Dragon*Con by reading Bart’s blog entries chronicling his Dragon*Con experiences and looking at the many photos he has taken while he has been down there.
Did I mention that he is a superb photographer?
It seems even more people are now aware of his photo skills. One of his photos taken down in Dragon*Con, Mr. and Mrs. Vader, has gone viral. Bart writes on his blog Randomonium:
The next day, that same shot was not only Dugg, but also showed up on Gizmodo, which took the view count from 15,542 up to 267,101 views. That just blew me away. In addition to its appearance on Digg and Gizmodo, the shot was also blogged about over 50 times, including a post at Club Jade. I was even contacted by a more official blog about their desire to write about the photo. I don’t want to jinx anything so that is all I will say at this point, but I’m excited about it.
Good for him! It’s good when someone is recognized like this. I’m sure that many of the people who came across his photo of Mr. and Mrs. Vader and his blog because of this photo will be bookmarking his blog and making many return visits. I’ve had Bart’s blog listed in my blogroll for over two years now and I make it a daily must read.
Alaska’s First Dude refuses to testify
From my new favorite newspaper, the Anchorage Daily News:
Gov. Sarah Palin’s husband has refused to testify in the investigation of his wife’s alleged abuse of power, and a key lawmaker said today that uncooperative witnesses are effectively sidetracking the probe until after Election Day.
Maybe Todd Palin is just too busy to testify. He is the grandfather father of a baby with Down syndrome and his wife Sarah is kind of busy these days joining John McCain on the campaign trail making him look even older then he is. That’s something I didn’t even know was possible.
International Talk Like a Pirate Day?
Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Every September 19 people are encouraged to “talk like a pirate”. I’m not sure how anyone knows exactly how a pirate talked. It’s not like they were recording their conversations on audio tape or mp3.
For all we know, pirates sounded a lot like John Waters or Truman Capote. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
They should change the name to International Talk Like a Movie Pirate Day because that is the only type of pirate (a movie pirate) that people have ever heard.
She is right, there is nothing comical about murder
Among those protesting against the decision to throw out the murder conviction against comic book retailer Michael George and give him a new trial are members of the jury that convicted him this past March in the 1990 murder of his wife Barbara George.
Personally, I don’t blame them for being pissed off. They did everything asked of them. If Macomb County Circuit Court Judge James Biernat honestly thought the case was too flimsy for a reasonable jury to find George guilty, he should have thrown the case out before he asked a jury to consider the case. The defense team asked on two separate occasions for Judge Biernat to throw the case out because they argued the prosecutor failed to prove his case . He refused to do so both times. Now he says the case was too flimsy?
This makes me wonder just how many times he watched the 2-hour NBC Dateline story on this case.
This new evidence does nothing to clear Michael George. The fact that Marshall Prog showed up in town flat broke a few days before the murder and then left town a few days after the murder flush with cash proves nothing. The prosecutor already proved that it was not a botched robbery. Not only was no money taken from the two registers, Barbara had all of her jewelry when they found her. We are supposed to believe a junkie is going to kill a woman and then leave money in the registers and jewelry on the victim, but take high valued golden age comics that nobody remembers ever seeing? How would Marshall Prog even know which comics were valuable and which ones weren’t? Where would he go to quickly sell them?
At most, it could be argued that Marshall Prog was involved in a murder-for-hire scheme. That someone paid him to murder Barbara George. I don’t see how that would clear Michael George. [Detroit Free Press]
The absurdity of Sarah Palin
The story that Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s used two freebie Yahoo email accounts for official Alaska state business demonstrates just how nutty McCain picking this woman to be his vice president truly is.
Did she honestly think that a free Yahoo email account was even remotely secure? For a woman who can see Russia from her house, she sure doesn’t understand security.
As the Governor of Alaska, she had secure email accounts that she could use to conduct official state business. Instead, she chose to use two free Yahoo accounts for all her official state business. The reason she would turn to Yahoo instead of using the official Alaska state email servers is that she didn’t want to deal with any of Alaska’s so called sunshine laws. That’s where people — citizens if you will — can request to see any correspondence (including emailed messages) sent or received by a government official as a matter of public record. Palin believed that by not using the official Alaska government email accounts, she was outside the jurisdiction of the sunshine laws.
I’m not so sure that she was. In fact, I don’t understand how she could think that any of her Yahoo emails were outside the scope of the sunshine laws. She used these freebie email accounts — gov.sarah@yahoo.com and gov.sarah@yahoo.com — for all of her official email correspondence. By placing the “gov” in front of each address, she makes them seem official.
And what exactly does she think she has to hide? Will we know before election day?
Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account hacked
The freebie Yahoo email account Alaska governor Sarah Palin uses to avoid Alaskan freedom of information law has been hacked by members of the group known as Anonymous. They gained fame by taking on the forces of Scientology by posting creepy YouTube videos.
When I say the word “hacked”, I am using the term very loosely. Most likely the members of Anonymous just guessed what her Yahoo password was and typed it in and gained instant access to her account.
My guess is that her password was “Hot4Todd”.
I don’t know why an anti-Scientology group would set their sights on Sarah Palin. She’s not a Scientologist. She’s a Pentecostal of the Assembly of God variety. [Huffington Post]
Man faces fines unless he moes his grassland habitat
Sharpsburg resident Dean Joyce has been notified by the Washington County Commissioners that he has to mow his natural meadow habitat down to 18 inches or he will face huge fines. Joyce decided to return his 3-acre field into a natural grassland habitat shortly after moving into his home in 2000. He is originally from Australia and he wanted to learn more about the flora and fauna of the United States.
I have to hand it to the Washington County Commissioners. When they decided to illegally give $10,000 to a Hagerstown all-star Little League team to supposedly cover travel expenses that were already being covered by Little League, I thought they couldn’t do anything as stupid ever again. Clearly I was wrong.
Joyce’s field is the way a field is supposed to look. It’s natural. It’s the way God intended a field to look. [The Herald Mail]
Putting the American into AIG
Good thing John McCain keeps on saying that the United States economy is fundamentally strong. If I had to only go by what I see in the news, I would think it was in trouble. The Federal Reserve has now done something it said it wouldn’t do and it bailed out insurgence giant AIG at the tune of $85 billion.
For those keeping track at home, the federal government now owns mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as a result of a bailout deal.
Speaking as a renter, it warms the cockles of my heart to see my tax dollars spent on bailing out these financial institutions that lost money because of irresponsible home loans.
Anti-theft lunch bags?
I stumbled upon this new product over at Lifehacker and to be perfectly honest, I’m more then a little disgusted by it. Not because it makes a person’s sandwich appear moldy and as such, unattractive to any would-be lunch bandit. No, what I find to be disgusting is that someone would be such a pussy that they would rather make your food look moldy then to confront some asshole they work with who steals other people’s lunches.
Frankly, I find it embarrassing to live in a country where a product like this is sold.
I would think that if someone really went to the bother of putting their food in one of these bags, the people they work with would simply throw it out as soon as they see it. Who wants a penicillin farm growing in the lunchroom fridge?
Los Angeles train engineer was texting right before crash
The worst commuter train crash in Los Angeles Metrolink history may have been caused by the engineer not paying attention because he was sending a text message. Robert Sanchez, the engineer that was driving the train when it ran a red light and hit an oncoming freight train, had sent a two line text message to Nick Williams, a teenage train enthusiast.
Evidently Sanchez befriended a group of teenage train enthusiasts and would teach them about trains. [Los Angeles Channel 2 News]
USC, Ohio State game much closer then I thought it would be
USC played the Ohio State last night in the Los Angeles Memorial Colusium and squeaked by with a 35-3 win. Personally, I was surprised that USC only won by 32 points. I didn’t think it would be that close.
On the same day that USC beat The Ohio State, The UCLA Bruins lost to Mitt Romney University, 59 to nothing. Ouch. Why is it that Mormons make such superb football players? [Los Angeles Times]
Maryland is getting tough on chicken poop
Maryland regulators have announced new regulations that will severely control how Maryland chicken farmers on the Eastern Shore store and handle chicken poop. Evidently many of them store the stuff out in the open and the rain washes the poop into the Chesapeake Bay.
They also spray the stuff on their corn fields. When the rain comes, it washes it from the corn fields into the Chesapeake Bay.
As you probably already know, chicken poop is rich in nitrogen. That’s probably why it smells so good. The nitrogen causes the amount of oxygen to decrease in the Chesapeake Bay which leads to bacteria outbreaks.
If your crab cakes have been tasting kind of funny lately, you might have been tasting the chicken poop. [Washington Post]
Tina Fey as Sarah Palin
Former Saturday Night Live writer Tina Fey made a return visit to her old show last night to help with the opening monologue. Those that said Tina Fey looked an awful lot like Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin were exactly right. Tina Fey did a dead-on impersonation of woman Republicans want to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency.
Proud Floridian compares Obama to a certain type of fabric
Andy Lacasse, a Korean war veteran living in Barefoot Bay, Florida has erected a sign in this front yard in an attempt to better educate his neighbors about Democratic Presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama.
Not only does Lacasse want people to know about Obama’s parental lineage, he wants them to know he is made of muslin, a certain type of type of finely-woven cotton fabric.
How can a man be made of fabric? [Channel 13 Central Florida News]
Upgrade to WordPress 2.6.2 or your blog might die!
Well, maybe it wont die, but it might get hacked. This upgrade fixes a security flaw in WordPress that allows blogs with open registration to have anyone’s password reset to a new random password. That means you wont be able to log on to your own blog because you wont know what the new password is.
The individual that reset your password wont know what it is ether, so this security flaw is mostly just simply annoying. The problem is that there is also a problem with the randomness of the randown password generator used by WordPress. It turns out that it’s not so random afterall. [WordPress Blog]
Texas almost had a particle collider too
Like a lot of people, I’ve been reading this week about the European super particle collider. I was reminded that the United States almost had a super particle collider too. Back in 1993 one was being built in Waxahachie, Texas. After $2 billion had been spent on the project, Congress killed funding and the program was canceled.
The 15-mile underground tunnel complex now sits in ruin. Now it’s overgrown with weeds.
Go science! [The Dallas Morning News]
Comic book retailer Michael George to get a new trial
Macomb County Circuit Judge James Biernat has ordered that comic book retailer Michael George is to get a new trial. He has cited prosecutorial misconduct as one of the reasons for overturning the jury’s conviction. A month after George was sentenced to life in prison for the first-degree murder of his then wife Barbara George, a file was found between two other folders.
The case was the subject of a recent episode of NBC Dateline.
This newly found folder contains information about a call the police received back in 1990 from a man named Pat Flannery who claimed that his girlfriend’s ex-husband, a drug addict named Marshall Prog, bragged about getting away with a murder. Prog returned to Michigan from Florida only a couple of days before Barbara George was killed looking for money. A few days after the murder, Prog returned to Florida reportedly with a large sum of money.
The police never followed up on this phone call. Marshall Progg is now dead, but his ex-wife isn’t. She could have been called to testify by Michael George’s defense team if they had been made aware of this information before the trial. [Detroit Free Press]
Wasilla rape victims were billed when Sarah Palin was mayor
What exactly does Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate have against women who are rapped? Not only does she think that a rape victim should be forced to have a rapist’s child even if her rapist is a blood relative, Wasilla rape victims were sent a bill to cover the cost of their own rape kit. A rape kit is used by law enforcement to collect physical evidence from a rape. They cost anywhere from $300 to $1,200.
The Wasilla police department would first try to bill the victim’s insurance company and if they refused to pay for the cost of the rape kit, the victim herself was sent the bill. I’m not really sure why an insurance company would pay for the rape kit. They are intended to gather physical evidence, not to treat injuries.
The state of Alaska had to step in and create a special law that forbid the practice from happening. [Anchorage Daily News]
When in doubt, blame Abraham Lincoln
I watched some of the Sarah Palin interview shown last night on ABC News with Charles Gibson. Now we know why the McCain campaign wont allow the press to talk to Palin. I can’t say I really blame them either.
One of my favorite parts was when she blamed Abraham Lincoln when asked about her comment to her former church that the Iraq war was a “task from God”.
GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.” Are we fighting a holy war?
PALIN: You know, I don’t know if that was my exact quote.
GIBSON: Exact words.
PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln’s words when he said — first, he suggested never presume to know what God’s will is, and I would never presume to know God’s will or to speak God’s words. But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that’s a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God’s side. That’s what that comment was all about, Charlie.
No, that’s not what that comment was all about Charlie. Her statement to the Wasilla Assembly of God church was nothing at like anything Abraham Lincoln said. In fact, it sounded a lot more like the Blues Brothers’ “We’re on a mission from God” then anything Lincoln ever said.
Didn’t something happen on this day in history?
I almost forgot all about the terrorist attacks 9-11, but then I got stuck driving behind a rusty pick-up truck with a bumper sticker on the back that told me to never forget what happened on September 11, 2001. So I wont.
Of course I am being facetious. You would have to be a complete retard to ever forget about the attacks on 9-11. Like most Americans living on the east coast, I remember that day only too well. I was working second shift back then. I’d get home from work around 1:00 a.m. and would normally sleep in till 9:00 a.m. I remember waking up that morning and checking my email to find three frantic messages from my mother back in California. She wrote about trying to call me and not getting through and how she just saw on the news that Washington D.C. was being attacked too.
Huh?
I immediately woke up Sheri. She too was working second shift. I didn’t know yet what exactly was going on, but I wanted both of us to find out together.
If you had told me then that we would quickly ascertain who was responsible for the attacks and instead of capturing or killing the individual responsible, we would focus all of our resources on invading a country that had nothing to do with the attacks, I would have told you that you were smoking crack.
It’s been seven years and Osama bin Laden is still at large. Who would have thought that?
Sarah Palin’s costly sports complex
That liberal rag The Wall Street Journal did some fancy reporting on the complete boondoggle the Wasilla sports complex turned out to be under Sarah Palin’s watch. Not only does she claim not to know what a community organizer is — would it have killed her to look it up on Wikipedia before her speech? — I don’t think she knows an awful lot about being a mayor either.
Sarah Palin sure ain’t no Mayor McCheese. [Wall Street Journal]
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