Sarah Palin For Vice President? I Think Not!


I just can’t believe anyone is taking Sarah Palin seriously any more.

In picking Palin for his running mate, it looks like John McCain was trying to appeal to women voters and “just plain folks.” And initially, his strategy appeared to work. It gave him a good boost in the polls.

A young, vibrant woman – a former beauty contestant and now governor of Alaska at the tender age of 44, she’s certainly a rising star – “Sarah Barracuda” – what a great nickname. And topping it off, she’s very, very conservative. Basically, she was a dream candidate for the republicans. The perfect foil to attract the disgruntled Hillaryites.

However, if you take a close look at Palin, things start to fall apart.

First, there was the interview with Katie Couric, where Palin stumbled badly. Question: How does being governor of Alaska prepare you for foreign affairs? Answer: because Alaska sits right next to Russia. Here’s the clip, and then another clip here. The whole interview was pretty much a disaster.

Continue reading “Sarah Palin For Vice President? I Think Not!”

George W. Bush – Our Worst President Ever


It’s hard to imagine one man creating so much havoc, but George W. Bush really takes the cake.
In just a little under eight years, he’s managed to:

  • Ruin our economy, plunging the United States into the worst recession since the Great Depression;
  • Take us to war against Iraq for no good reason at all (other than to steal their oil – or maybe it was because Saddam tried to kill his dad);
  • Take us to war against Afghanistan looking for bin Laden, only to withdraw most of the troops before their job was done, insuring bin Laden could safely escape;
  • Taken away many of our civil rights in the name of combating “terrorism”;
  • Condon the use of torture against what in many cases were innocent civilians, again in the name of combating terrorism;
  • Promote the raping of our wilderness and public lands to find gas and oil, as well as generally raping the environment;
  • Allow oil companies to post record profits at the expense of consumers and the economy in general (in 2000, the average cost of gas was $1.48 a gallon; contrast that to the $4.00 a gallon we recently had to pay). That’s a 170% increase in the eight years Bush was President!

And those are just the high points. The bottom line: His rich buddies got richer; the rest of us paid their way. Bush and his cronies raped the world.

Without the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Bush would have been a one-term wonder. Pre-9/11, he was a rudderless, bumbling non-entity. His presidency distinguished itself by creating no distinguishments. He was mediocrity incarnate. No plan to do anything. A caretaker president. His approval ratings were abysmal. Bush was going nowhere, fast.

Continue reading “George W. Bush – Our Worst President Ever”

Corporate Welfare? No Way! Wall Street Bailout Wrong!

George Bush Sucks!
I would like to protest the Bush administration’s proposed $700 billion bailout of the financial industry.

What Secretary Paulson is asking for is a blank check – no controls, no real plan no nothing. And that, coming from the Bush administration is laughable.
Perhaps they can contract out the reconstruction of our financial industry to Halliburton? And if you’re willing to buy that, I have a nice bridge you may be interested in…

The single over-riding reason the country’s economy is where it’s at right now is because of the Bush administration, and the feeding frenzy they’ve allowed to exist for the last eight years. Capitalism in its finest hour. Bush’s whole economic plan for the last eight years has been recycled Ronald Reagan era trickle-down economics coupled with lax regulations and no meaningful oversight.

So what happened?

What happened is they’ve raped the economy, they’ve raped the American taxpayers, they’ve raped Iraq and Afghanistan, and basically, they’ve raped the whole world.

Greed run rampant, without controls; without reason or care.

Continue reading “Corporate Welfare? No Way! Wall Street Bailout Wrong!”

Safeco Insurance Sucks

Safeco Insurance Screws People
What’s the difference between a bookie and an insurance company? The bookie won’t welsh on paying if you try to collect.

We just got done with a long, troubling fight with Safeco Insurance.

Early last April, my oldest kid’s car – a 1986 Porsche 944 Turbo – was sitting in front of his house one night at 2 AM. A drunk lady leaving a nearby bar plowed into it and split without stopping. Luckily, my son heard tires squealing and ran outside in time to get her license number as she sped off.

He gave the information to the police, who told him they thought it was likely a college student going home from a bar just down the street.

When the lady hit, the main point of contact was her car’s right front wheel – it hit on my son’s left rear wheel, smashing his car about a foot into the curb, and then forcing it maybe another foot forward along the curb.

Damaged in the crash were his two passenger side wheels, plus the wheel that took the initial impact, as well as some minor body damage at the point of impact. The crash also stripped the splines on his steering shaft and bent his left rear control arm.

The next day, my son went driving with a friend around the nearby university and in short order, he found the car. We turned that information over to the cops.

Continue reading “Safeco Insurance Sucks”

Bush and McCain Cell Phone Conversation Revealed

Jim McDermott Does It Again

Bush and McCain, talking on the Phone
Seattle (AP) – Riding the success of his revelations of a cell phone conversation featuring former Speaker of The House, Newt Gingrich, Congressman Jim McDermott (D – Seattle) today made public the transcript of a new cell phone conversation – this one between President George W. Bush and presumed Republican presidential candidate, Senator John McCain (R – Arizona).

Mr. John W. Dean, a ham radio operator in the Washington DC area, recorded the conversation on June 4th by accident. After sitting on the tape for several weeks, debating what to do, Mr. Dean finally decided to approach Mr. McDermott with the tape on July 12th.

In a press conference today, Congressman McDermott stated, “After conferring with my attorney and my friends and my family, I’ve decided to come forward and make a transcript of the call between Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain available to the public.” Mr. McDermott continued, “Privacy concerns aside, I think it’s important that government be as transparent as possible and the public has a right and a duty to know the full story about its leaders.”

According to Mr. McDermott, independent experts have verified the authenticity of the tape.

Initial reaction from the Whitehouse was to deny the existence of the tape, then later, characterizing it as a bad practical joke. But yet later this afternoon, when confronted with certain facts guaranteeing the tape’s authenticity, Whitehouse Spokesperson Dana Perino issued a curt, “No comment,” then moments later stated Mr. Bush would have a formal reply about the tape later tonight.

Despite repeated attempts to contact the McCain campaign, Presidential candidate McCain’s spokesperson was unavailable for comment.

Continue reading “Bush and McCain Cell Phone Conversation Revealed”

Dino "Italian Stallion" Rossi For Governator of Washington

Dino 'Italian Stallion' Rossi for Governator!!!
Spokane (AP) – At a press conference today, perennial candidate for Washington state Governor, Dino “Italian Stallion” Rossi (pictured at right with his head up his ass, as usual), unveiled his new campaign poster for the 2008 race.

The theme of the campaign is that nasty Seattlites stole the last election, by demanding ballot recounts. The actual text of the new sign, is, “Dino Rossi for Governor – Don’t let Seattle Steal This Election.” Billboards featuring the ads have popped up all over the state – except around the Seattle area, of couse.

When asked about the negative connotations of the new billboards, Rossi said, “I’m just tellin’ it like it is. That bitch stole the last race. I shoulda been Gov, not her.” When asked to amplify what he meant, Rossi continued, “It’s all them Seattle assholes that got her elected and that’s really fucking unfair to the farmers and the good righteous conservatives that make up this great right-wing, Christian state.” He went on to add, “All those gay, Seattle assholes oughta move to Commie-fornia or something and leave us God-fearing Christians alone. I’m gonna smoke that bitch’s ass. Fuck me blue!”

In a prepared statement, Governor Gregoire responded suggesting the public might better be better served by a candidate that didn’t have his head up his ass. She asked that this coming election should focus on today’s important issues like the home mortgage crisis and the price of gas, and that the lame rhetoric from the last campaign be buried and forgotten – which is where it belongs.

In a late breaking development at press time, it’s reported that a large group of several thousand people gathered tonight at Seattle Center and burned a likeness of Dino Rossi in effigy. Reportedly, vendors there were also doing a lansdlide business selling Dino “Italian Stallion” Rossi voodoo dolls as well.

Said Rossi about the voodoo dolls, “Well fuck me blue!”

Bye Bye Sonics – Good Riddance!

Loathe BushSo the Seattle Supersonics are off to Oklahoma – what a deal. As far as I’m concerned, it’s for the best.

Maybe we can get them to take the Mariners and the Seahawks off our hands as well.

Pro sports teams are just not a big turn on for me. The way I see it, they’re a bunch of whiny millionaires feeding at the public trough.

In the case of the Sonics, we went through all the whining and the threats of leaving only a little over ten years ago. It went on incessantly for months. All the, Nobody loves us! Refurbish our home or we’re taking our team and leaving! Wah! Nobody loves us!

The whining paid off. At that time, Key Arena was fully renovated at a cost to the public of over $74 million. The NBA execs hailed Key Area as one of the great basketball venues in the country.

Now 10 years later, it’s all of a sudden too old, too small and just plain unfit for an NBA franchise. Yeah, right.

Well fuck them. Let them go – they can become the Oklahoma Okies or whatever. Bunch of losers, anyway.

The way it stands right now, Mr. and Mrs. Average Citizen have their budgets stretched to the max. Every month, they wonder if they’re going to be able to make that new, higher mortgage payment. They can just barely afford gas for their cars and to put food on their table, much less buy expensive tickets to a pro basketball game.

Continue reading “Bye Bye Sonics – Good Riddance!”

Metered Bandwidth Will Kill Movie Downloads and Stifle Other New Technology

All your bases are belong to us!!!
I was looking at file sizes of Blu-Ray movies today. The average size of 320 current titles was 27 GB – for just the movie alone. You add in all the extras and what not that usually come with a DVD (deleted scenes, extra content, etc) and the size jumps up to an average of 35 GB per movie.

Looking at Comcast’s proposed threshold of 250 GB before they bill you extra, that translates into viewing just nine Blu-Ray movies before you hit your limit – not to say any other internet activities. Just watch nine movies and you’ve blown your cap for the month.

Present Day

Right now, people might watch 2-3 movies a week – mostly rented and viewed on a TV, not a computer – along with maybe some HD sports and other HD content as well (concerts, news, TV shows or whatever). You can stream video content to your PC (from Amazon or iTunes for example) but it’s all small format and not portable to your HDTV.

I don’t know about you, but I hate watching movies on my computer – I have a small 42” HDTV and a good 7.1 surround system. If I want to watch a movie, that’s what I use. Screw the PC.

Other current uses of bandwidth might also include streaming a few hours of music, or buying some songs at iTunes or Amazon.

Continue reading “Metered Bandwidth Will Kill Movie Downloads and Stifle Other New Technology”

Bend Over America…

George Bush shows us how to do it...No Crisco!
We’ve all heard the excuses on TV. Oil company executives sitting in front of congress, answering questions about why gas prices are so high, and explaining away their record profits.

“Well we’re really only making pennies on the dollar. The profits aren’t really that high.”  “We don’t have any control over gasoline prices. The prices are all set by market forces”
“We need more refining capacity and we need to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.”

I find it totally amazing that anyone at all would believe the current gasoline prices are not 100% wholly contrived by the oil companies.
The facts are that 2006 and 2007 were the very best years ever for Exxon Mobile: in 2007, Exxon surpassed the 2006 windfall of $39.5 Billion with a record smashing profit of $40.6 Billion.
The number two US oil company, Chevron’s 2007 earnings were up 9% over 2006, with record profits of $18.7 Billion. Put that in with similar profits from Shell and ConocoPhillips, and you have over $100 Billion in profits from the oil industry in the United States in just one year. Click here for the news story from US News and World Reports.
Of course, that $100 Billion in profits really isn’t such a big deal – pennies on the dollar.
What a load of tripe! These guys must use the same accountants as the movie studios – like where you can have a blockbuster movie that does $100 million in the first weekend, but by creative bookkeeping, it doesn’t show a profit. Complete and utter bullshit.
Nope. What we really have here is a Texas oilman for president, and he’s simply paying his buddies back.
The oil companies are jacking up the prices, deliberately, simply because they can – and no one can do a god damned thing about it. They’ve got protection.

Continue reading “Bend Over America…”

Comcast Metered Billing Plan:

All your base are belong to us!A Sneaky Assault on the Future of the Internet.

Comcast recently announced it was considering extra charges for users who consume more than 250 GB of bandwidth per month. After 250 GB, users could purchase additional bandwidth in 10 GB amounts for $15 each.
On its face, this plan sounds very reasonable. I’ve monitored my bandwidth usage before, and I’m what many would consider a fairly heavy user. In a good month, I generally wouldn’t exceed 30 GB of bandwidth. That’s a little peer to peer file sharing, a lot of music streaming, occasional software downloads. Maybe a Linux image here and there.
But if you look closer, this is nothing more than an insidious attempt to hijack the future of the internet.
Jim Lynch over at ExtremeTech called it:

“I suspect that Comcast is making a preemptive attack to hurt Apple and other downloadable content companies. In effect, Comcast is trying to kill the downloadable content market in its infancy. It sees the future and in that future Comcast may be nothing more than the owner of some dumb pipes that carry everybody else’s valuable content.”

ExtremeTech Story

Downloadable movies and other similar sorts of content delivery systems are just right over the horizon. The only thing that’s holding off deployment of downloadable movies is bandwidth.

Continue reading “Comcast Metered Billing Plan:”