I knew someone was going to steal my idea and they have gone and done it. I don't suppose I will be getting any royalties for this. Maybe a link swap, perhaps?

I know that this story is a bit stale at this point, but here is a tip for our foreign-policy veteran and Presidential Wannabe former First Lady:

It is "mis-speaking" when you confuse one actual event in which you were fired upon by snipers with another actual event when you were also fired upon by snipers thereby mixing or reversing details from each incident.

But when you have never in your life been fired upon by snipers...ever...and say that you have, it is lying. There is no possible way to mis-speak here when you have never been shot at by snipers. There is only lying.

Hillary is essentially applying for a job and is interviewing for it with her campaign.

In what other industry, save politics, can one mis-represent themselves so blatantly during their interview and still be a candidate for the job?

Nothing pleases me more than to have hard facts support something that I've known in my heart for years. I've written before about the sheer meanness of the left--the death wishes of Michael Moore and Dave Lindorff for people who disagree with them politically--this would be called fascism if a conservative said it; as it is, they are feted. And no one can read the Kos Kiddies without thinking that these people are meaner than a stepped-on rattlesnake. The Goracle's cries of Armageddon while he enjoys his mansion and SUV, and anything that has issued from the shrieking gob of Our Empress. All epitomes of meanness.

Now Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University, has done some fascinating research that George Will has reported on, and the results are delightful.

Briefly, liberal households earn about 6% more than conservative ones. But conservative households give 30% more to charity. Today I watched some of Fox News Channel and found a conservative and a liberal asked about this study, and the smarmy liberal Ellis Hennican gave it his best shot: liberals, he allowed, were the people who had been the ones who made the advances: fighting racism, discrimination, equal rights, and in general he as a liberal took credit for everything good that had ever happened, as though without liberals we'd still be in caves. There wasn't much else that Hennican could do other than spin like a dreidel--the numbers were culled from impartial statistics but he did give it a yeoman try. Utter rubbish of course but an interesting try. It occurred to me that reading the transcript of the closing speech to the jury of Jeffrey Daumer's lawyer would be interesting too.

So now we have proof. Liberals puff themselves up, wreathed in self-righteousness, and spend a good deal of time radiating their self-importance, patting each others' backs, and telling each other how good and fine they are, how noble their sentiments are, and therefore how worthy they are. In between bites of fair-trade tofu.

And then these liberals sneer at the conservatives who do not spend their time puffing out their chests, but spend more time working with people, giving much more money, which they have less of by the way, and even giving more blood. Binding feet and washing wounds versus the pharisaical bleatings of the liberals. Useful things. Helpful things. Things of substance in the here and now, and incidentally things that one does oneself, and doesn't force someone else to do.

Unobserved by me, of course. I'll begin to worry when "Climate Change" conferences involve firing up webcams instead of Gulfstreams.

So I can blog this while shoving Jack tacos in my....er...pie hole. Life is good.

The place is packed and the drive thru lane is backed up, as it has been every time I have driven by in the last two weeks.

I see lots of people ordering things other than the Monster Tacos.

Philistines.

UPDATE: Shanna Sissom at MyWestTexas.com notes the phenomenon.

"Stop Loss" opened in almost 1,300 theatres and managed to attract fewer audience members than the number of crew that will be listed in the credits at the end of the movie.

With "Stop Loss", Hollywood has cranked out yet another film movie that shows, again, that they Just. Can't. Stand. The. Troops.

And yet again, the American moviegoing public inexplicably fails to reward them for their genius!

And of course this was entirely predictable to anyone outside of Hollywood.

I believe it was Albert Einstein that defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Hollywood and its handling of the War on Terror is like Mel Brooks "The Producers" only done in a parallel universe where they actually achieve the outright bomb that they were hoping for. Six times now.

Is there any particular reason why these film companies seem to be immune to shareholder lawsuits? Because if Ford Motor Company had re-introduced the Edsel six times in three years that is what would they would have had to suffer through.

Further Reading: Stop Loss reviewed by Libertas.

The new design over at MyWestTexas.com looks great and at first glance seems to be a lot easier to navigate. Better still, it seems to load a lot faster than the old page did.

Bonus (for some)! The new site is taking our RSS Feed correctly again.

Woot!

Another archway superstructure....this one foolishly inverted so that "somewhat of a night life" goes tragically un-attracted.

It is something that I cannot continue to hide nor pretend didn't happen.

I, too, was raped by a Wombat.

What I still don't understand from that night is how a Wombat even gets its hands paws on Rohypnol.

Perhaps it was supplied by Bigfoot.

With a mere $2.8 million of our tax dollars, downtown's Centennial Plaza could get a makeover that would turn it from an "Event Oriented Park" (Bad) into an Urban Park (Yea!).

The details and intricacies of how, exactly, you turn an "event-oriented" park into an "urban" park is best left to those who design, but apparently archways are involved.

And not just any archways, either.

Lighted archways! Because, you see, studies have apparently found that people don't visit parks unless they have archways that they can walk under.

"The biggest feature would be a super structure," [The Proposing Consultant] said. He proposes a serious of aluminum archways that pedestrians can walk through. "It would have lighted rails. And it'd create a warm and receptive space that would attract somewhat of a nightlife."

June bugs and cicadas are night life, I suppose. And coming to the park at night to watch them drown in the water feature wouldn't be any less entertaining than minor league baseball.

To be sure, transforming an underperforming event oriented park into a thriving urban park involves other things, too. Like moving trees from one place to another. And grass.

Plans call for removing some of the trees for visibility from the streets, some of the structured seating near the amphitheater area, some of the grass area along Texas Avenue and part of the water feature. However, the grass area would be extended on the Wall Street side while other water features would be enhanced or added elsewhere in the park.

The park would also feature a small stage that could be expanded if needed.

So to encourage more use by the public we are going to have an expandable stage...but we are reducing audience seating? Well, duh! We don't want it to be an events oriented park anymore.

We are shooting for a full blown, totally genuine authentic urban park feel. Archways! Trees there, not here. Grass there, not here. Big stage. Small audience.

And to make sure that no detail is ignored in creating the most authentic urban park experience possible, the MDC is currently recruiting out-of-state hobos to come sleep in it at night.

I guess the MDC needs to look into writing a book to combat Jesse Ventura:

I turned to Terry and said, "I really don't see how people can live in this. But I imagine, like anything else, you become accustomed to it."

"They have my deepest sympathies," Terry said.

"This is about the last place on the planet I've seen that I'd want to live," I said.

Midland is once again leading the nation in unemployment. According to the Texas Workforce Commission, Midland's unemployment rate is 2.6%. Now, according to MyWestTexas.com, Midland also enjoyed the largest civilian labor force on record (72,051), however according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the labor force was 73,117 in July of 2007. Maybe the MRT meant to say "excluding seasonal employment"?

Anyway, looking at the graphs of our Civilian Labor Force and Employment from the Bureau of Labor Statistics you can see that Midland has been on a pretty good run since 2000. However, starting with mid 2006, you can see that the Labor Force and the Total Number Employed has leveled off. Granted there are a few peaks, but they tend to track with summer employment spikes as kids and college students enter the labor force in mass.

This has been a concern of mine for some time. Midland was VERY depressed in 2000, however, since the local economy started a recovery with the price of oil, culminating in a spike in early 2006, where we tacked on nearly 3,000 to the labor force in 7 months, growth in the labor force has slowed. It is easy to see that a whole bunch of people have come to our fair City in the last 7 years, but what is happening now? Are people still coming to Midland? Why the slow down?

Is it something to do with the situation potential new Midlanders are in at their current location, right now? OR is it something we as a community are lacking?

UPDATE: Odessa is exhibiting the same characteristics.

Newsroom Stew has a post on the local television ratings. Big 2 is not so big.

Which is why they quit referring to themselves as that a while back in favor of "Low Into Single Digits 2" to match up with their local ratings.

Which means low income.

Which, alas, means that they will likely begin broadcasting in HD in 2025 or after someone finally buys them out, whichever comes first.

Doing the jobs that Earthlings won't do.

I did a Google Blog Search on "Dean Baldwin Painting" and ran across an unbeatable headline. The blog is gone as is the cache, so I screen-capped the headline before it went away.

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

The speculation of suitors for the $20M dollar project grew a little bit:

Dean Baldwin Painting of New Mexico Perhaps?

h/t a regular JW reader.

On the possibility that it is MD Helicopters that the Midland Development Corporation has gone a courtin' here are some links regarding MD and it's quest for corporate welfare dollars.

MD Helicopters rejects Alliance move - AirportBusiness.com - 03/22/08

Mesa identifies tax incentives to keep MD Helicopters in city - Arizona Republic - 03/20/08

MD Helicopters: rent hikes, moving...and VLJs? - AviationBull - 03/19/08

Mesa works to keep MD Helicopters from leaving EV - East valley Tribune - 03/14/08

Revived MD Helicopters may land at Alliance - Fort Worth Star Telegram - 02/25/08

MD Helicopters could leave Mesa over rent hike - AZCentral.com - 11/29/07

Whether or not MD Helicopters is the company being sought it is apparent from a reading of these articles that 1) MD is masterfully playing several groups of Texas taxpayers against each other, 2) Although it has improved its situation somewhat, the company was near death just two years ago, and 3) Lynn Tilton is brash. Brash, I say!

UPDATE: Just how healthy is MD Helicopters?

According to the MDC's Agenda for their March 14th special meeting:

Consider a resolution approving a request for proposals for repair or alteration of the AMI Hangar and construction of two new hangars at the Midland International Airport using either the Construction Manager-Agent method (Section 271.117 of the Texas Local Government Code), the Construction Manager-At-Risk method (Section 271.118 of the Texas Local Government Code), the Design-Build method (Section 271.119 of the Texas Local Government Code), or the competitive bidding method (Section 271.115 of the Texas Local Government Code), as authorized by Chapter 271 of the Texas Local Government Code; and authorizing advertisement for said services.

As a result of this meeting, the Midland City Council on Tuesday approved this action, and as the story in the MRT today says, the project may cost about $20 Million.

Now, the MDC is gearing up at it's March 28th meeting to approve the following:

Consider a motion authorizing the Midland Development Corporation President, or his designee, to engage Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P. and First Southwest Company regarding the financing of a project, as defined by Section 4A, Article 5190.6, Texas Revised Civil Statutes; and authorizing the Midland Development Corporation President, or his designee, to execute any term sheets or other such documents required by a financial institution for the commitment of funds.

For those of you who may not know, First Southwest Company is an issuer of governmental debt, and F&J is one of the largest law firms in the State of Texas, and when you combine a bond issuing company with a law firm, you know what that means.

Now we know the MDC has a big war chest, but they don't have $20 Million to spend all at once, so it appears they are about to access debt financing to make a run at "some airport project" for "some aerospace company. Seems to me they are borrowing to make another HUGE bet at the Airport, after they struck out with "Building A."

As for the suitor, it might be MD Helicopters. According to the Dallas Business Journal, they received proposals from 160 sites in 17 states. The article goes on to say they would be looking for at least 150 Acres and they they would bring at least 150 jobs from a facility in Grand Prairie.

The article also says they have winnowed the sites down to 4, and with the MDC holding a special meeting around the time of the announcement to move quickly on a two-year old airport demolition and renovation project, and see about issuing debt, I'm seeing more than coincidence, again.

According to the MDC's Posted Agenda for March 28:

Consider a resolution authorizing the execution of economic development agreement regarding real property described as a 9.30-acre tract of land out of Section 13, Block 41, T-2-S, T&P RR Co. Survey, Midland County, Texas.

According to the Midland Central Appraisal District Records, a 9.3 Acre Tract in Section 13, Block 41, T-2-S, was purchased on 12/10/2007:

Owner Name: NGSG PROPERTIES LLC
Legal Description: Acres: 9.300, SW/4, SEC: 13, BLK: 41-T2S
Property ID: R000008595
Property Address: COUNTY RD 00125 ~ 12301 ~ W

Finally, according to Natural Gas Services Group's own Corporate News Release page:

Natural Gas Services Group, Inc. Moves Into Larger Fabrication Facility to Support Company Growth

Company Begins Operations in 51,700 Sq. Ft. Fabrication, Warehousing & Offices

MIDLAND, Texas, Feb. 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Natural Gas Services Group, Inc. (AMEX: NGS), a leading provider of gas compression equipment and services to the natural gas industry, announces that it has completed the move into its new fabrication, warehouse and office facility located in Midland, TX. The building contains approximately 48,500 square feet of fabrication and warehouse space plus 3,200 square feet of office space and is located on approximately 9.30 acres of land. The company is in the process of selling its present facility.

Stephen Taylor, Chairman, President and CEO of Natural Gas Services Group, Inc. said, "This facility will more than double our fabrication space for rental compression equipment and enables us to take advantage of further opportunities to grow our rental fleet. We employed a phased approach while transitioning into the new space and have been able to maintain our previously planned build schedule without missing a beat. With that, we anticipate being able to add a record 300-350 rental units to our fleet in 2008."

FYI, that is the only 9.3 Acre tract in that Section, and it is more than coincidence that a buyer with the name NGSG bought a property exactly that size, and then a company with the name NGSG put out a press release about a property exactly that size, and now the MDC is coming along with an ED deal for a property exactly that size.

Not to mention, the location is OUTSIDE the City Limits. So again, the MDC is providing incentives to a company, who by virtue of their location, will not directly contribute any sales taxes into the MDC's (or the sports complex) coffers.

I guess Walsingham is going to have to buy the edition of the dictionary the MDC uses for the definition of DIVERSIFICATION.

In previous posts I have commented on my lack of general enthusiasm for McCain and have tried to explain why I will be voting for him anyway. Reading an article in the New York Sun I ran across a sentence that compressed into as few words possible my rationale.

Regarding the war on terror (and I firmly believe that there is and ought to be one)

"there was nobody else ... who could be trusted not to surrender"

The words are from George Orwell who was referring to Winston Churchill (whom he did not care for at all).

From the article:

To Orwell, a passionate democrat who lived through the hour of democracy's greatest danger, Churchill possessed the indispensable qualification for the leader of a democracy in wartime: he was "able to grasp that wars are not won without fighting."

Amen.

The New Republic has crossed Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and the result is the guy in the Apple ads, only blonde.

Rule No. 1

No many how many you break or how long the battle goes on there is always one more cascarone left. It is just a matter of finding out who is hiding it.

Rule No. 2

When that cascarone is at last smashed on someone's head refer to Rule No. 1.

Silly me. If there is a bumper sticker, then there is almost certainly a website. In search of the answer to my question I clicked on the link "Why Obama?" thinking that it would provide some insight as to why a Republican, specifically, would be for Obama.

Well, as it turns out, Mr. Obama "is the one candidate who can unite the American majority that wants to move forward and improve the long-term economic well-being and independence of our nation."

It doesn't say why.

But it does list some common concerns that "a unified America can and must address".

National Debt
The federal debt matters. We cannot saddle future taxpayers with having to service the debt we create with our irresponsible fiscal policies. Cutting the deficit will additionally decrease interest rates and increase private investment.

Fair enough. But how? By raising taxes? Or by cutting spending? And cutting where, exactly? Actual answers to those questions would go along way in determining just how "unified" America is going be.

Energy Independence
As the world's energy needs grow, it is critical that the United States be able to provide for its own energy requirements. By doing so we can deflate the power of dictators who are propped up by high oil prices, more effectively insulate ourselves from the world's most volatile regions, and stimulate economic growth at home. Even without tapping into Alaska's oil reserves or drilling offshore, we can dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign oil--we have not even begun to realize the possibilities of Iowa corn, South Dakota wind or Montana coal. Even a growing number of environmentalists support increased nuclear power production.

Well, he's gotten the nuclear part right...if he actually means it. But if our true goal is to reduce our dependence on foreign oil does it really make sense to not do the thing that would have the most direct effect on that dependence, i.e. produce our own freakin' oil? It does if you envision a world where hydrocarbons are burned only in service to the greatest of goods by the greatest among us. Like getting Al Gore's fat ass to Indonesia for climate change conferences. You guys out there that need to pull horse trailers? Sorry, can't help you. Sell the horse and get a Prius.

Global Warming
Even those who still believe that global warming is a natural occurrence should agree that rising sea levels and other geological changes will be expensive to adapt to and probably impossible to undo. If we are able to reverse this dangerous trend, we must. No other nation has the economic and political power to take the lead on this issue.

It reminds me of one of a hand-wringing article I once read about what to do about all of the refugees that will be created by an ocean that may (may!) rise a couple of meters over the next hundred years. Gee. That isn't much warning is it? It may be expensive to combat (if it happens at all) but "refugees"? What, did they all stay put until the water level reached their nostrils and only then decided to head inland?

"Yep, we knew that we would eventually have to move when the water started coming under the door back in the Spring of 2175, but when it finally shorted our wall-mounted 150" flat panel ($198 at the Wal-Mart!) it was time to go."

There are two sections regarding the reformation and/or "saving" of Social Security and solving the Health Care "crisis" that boil down to one thing: Anyone that pays into the system is going to get less for their money, and anyone that isn't paying into the system is going to get the same as those who do. Americans Anyone who finds themselves in America whether because they were born here, legally immigrated here, or smuggled themselves into the country in a barrel of linseed oil will all have the same level of health care. And "the rich" (meaning any family unit with a yearly income over $70,000/year) will have the right to pay for it all.

And speaking of immigration.....

Immigration Reform
Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants enter our country each year and will continue to enter unless much more is done. Thousands of employers hire these illegal workers, often times to the detriment of American workers, and often times exploit the illegal immigrants themselves. Despite extensive talk by both Republicans and Democrats to solve this and many other problems we face, nothing has been done.

They come here because however bad they may have it here it is still way better than they have it at home. That is the sole mechanism that drives them here. Can any of you Obama fans out there tell me what he is going to do, specifically, that is going to make it relatively less attractive for them to be here? Seriously? More likely, the illegal immigration problem will "go away" because it will essentially be made legal to enter the country without permission.

Republicans for Obama? Please.

Like Kevin Phillips from years past, they may only be calling themselves Republicans to make a bigger splash.

Driving to work this morning I saw a bumper sticker on a pickup truck that said, "Republicans for Obama."

I wondered to myself how a Republican would ever be for Obama given his lefty-lefty voting record in the Senate and his general views on economics, gun ownership rights, taxes, etc.

I mean, it is making as much sense to me a bumper sticker that says, "Republicans for Kucinich", or even "Republicans for Lloyd Doggett."

Now I happen to think that Obama is probably a pretty nice guy and perhaps even as genuine as one is allowed to be in the business that he is in.....as opposed to his moonbat wife and preacher. But even given that, his politics (even they turn out to be a post-racial as everyone hopes) are still big government, tax and spend, nanny-state-ism at its most potent.

So why then Republicans for Obama?

The answer may be as simple as them not liking Obama so much as them liking Hillary and John McCain even less.

Because I have to say that the ONLY reason I will be voting for McCain in the fall is because I believe that he is the only one that will execute the war in Iraq and Afghanistan in a serious and proper fashion.

Other than that one issue you can have McCain. He lost me (except in the most extreme circumstances apparently) with McCain-Feingold. His border-opening AmnestyFest leanings are not real attractive to me either.

Save Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul, I would have taken almost any else in the Republican field over McCain.

But McCain is the nominee and since he will running against either Hillary or Obama and not, say, the late Scoop Jackson, then it looks like he gets my vote. Grudgingly.

Network Solutions has shut down a web site that was set up to promote a film deemed offensive to a certain religion.

I don't really have to tell anyone which religion it is, do I?

Like Ace says, this is just too good to check.

A former intern with Michael Moore's production company is selling on eBay the only thing he managed to get out of the experience worth something....save and except the hard-earned knowledge that working for self-important, hypocritical blow-hards is not generally a desirable situation to be in.

Ya see, back in the days when I was younger and less crushed by life, I got the great opportunity to work as an Asst. Office Manager for Mr. Moore's production company, Dog Eat Dog Films. IT WAS THE MOST OPPRESSIVE JOB I HAVE EVER HAD! Almost the entire staff was comprised of unpaid interns, who did everything from pick up his dry-cleaning, to babysit his daughter. My job largely consisted of fielding calls from former interns, all begging Mr. Moore to at least send them a letter of recommendation (he never did). I was expected to work until 9PM every night, for no extra pay! Mr. Moore was a genuine WEIRDO who would view you as Mark David Chapman if you acknowledged his existence, but be insulted if you didn't seem in awe of this large celebrity! He had a big red copy of the Collected Marx on the bookshelf, right below his Emmys - which was odd, because I had seen him give a speech at IFFM a week earlier where he went out of his way to bring up during an anecdote that he'd never read, or even owned a Marx book. (nothing against Marx, mind you, but geez... It was a weird way to start the first day of work!)

Mr. Moore's staff provided NO TRAINING AT ALL to the intricacies of his very weird office, except for one briefing document that described what food the office must always have (I'm not joking at all, people! There was a half-page about Baked Lays potato chips)! Basically, after about a week of feeling like a pre-teen in an Upton Sinclair novel, I got the hell out of there! The horror was too much to bear. Ah well. I faired better than my roommate of the time, the guy who got me the job. He INTERNED for Mr. Moore for about 18 solid months. No pay whatsoever, and he COULDN'T EVEN GET A NICE REFERENCE LETTER from this meatnormous documentarian, even after a year of trying! (And I'm not even gonna get started on the difficulties this guy has had in the years since). Can you believe that crap? He's a HYPOCRITICAL BUTT-TASTER! He may make some real funny flicks, but it was like working for a ferret with a real bad thyroid condition.

No pay and not even a letter of recommendation? After working there for 18 months? Wow. But then again since we are talking about Michael (Sicko) Moore, I am certain that everyone at least got a health plan? Right?

Uh, no.

BUT AT LEAST I did get this nice signed book for my time and efforts. The book is nice, but I think I would rather have had a fair, respectful job where I was treated with a modicum of human decency, and maybe even health insurance. Health insurance sure would have come in handy when my APPENDIX EXPLODED!!!

Now, to be fair, anyone could have gotten an autographed copy of the book and placed that auction ad having never even met or worked for Michael Moore. But I am betting on its legitimacy here becasue it fits a well establshed pattern of talking the talk and not walking the walk. You know, like Al Gore spending thousands and thousands of dollars so that his mansion only uses energy at a rate that is nineteen times the average instead of twenty. And just how many Gulfsteams get fired up each time there is a conference on global climate change?

Yes, this happens to those on the right side of the politcal spectrum also. But most of the time (not always) those on the right tend to lose their positions over the issue.

Senator Robert Packwood (R-Oregon) gets caught groping the fairer sex?

Gone. (And was there ever a more perfectly Dickensian name for a serial harraser? - Ed.)

William Jefferson Clinton (D) gets caught groping the fairer sex?

The Women's Rights Establishment in America essentially disbands until January of 2001....but is still up for...politcally speaking...throwing their panties and a motel key to the former President and/or his enabling spouse any time they need political cover. And maybe not just politically speaking now that I think about it.

A deeply religious Republican in office? Closet snake-handler whose cabinet or staff meetings are probably held with everyone speaking in tongues.

A deeply religious Democrat in office? Generally left alone because the press treats it as an act to get some votes from the God-Botherers and that (wink, wink) they know that they aren't really serious about the whole Invisible Sky-Buddy thing.

Okay, I think I have offically gotten off track at this point so I will go ahead and try to get back on topic with a simple question:

If you were to list them side by side, which set of employees do you think get better benefits? Employees at Michael Moore's production company or employees of Wal-Mart?

Okay....well....maybe it is. But it is still harder to keep up a blog than you would think.

Have look at the blogroll over at MyWestTexas.com and click through it to see how many of them haven't been updated in quite some time.

One of them seems to have begun and ended with a single post, which given that blog's owner is somewhat of a surprise.

(Okay, Nat, I got one posted for today. Can I go back to my March Madness now?)

The Dallas Morning News summed up the problem with Congress in this recent article regarding the Republican National Committee financial scandal...

Lawyers are a dime a dozen in the halls of Congress. But a good CPA? Only four, including Midland's Mike Conaway. That eye for ledgers and balance sheets came in handy when Mr. Conaway - who used to keep the books for President Bush's oil business ­unraveled an accounting scandal that has cost House Republicans nearly $1 million.

I'm surprised there were that many CPA's in Congress, the number of Professional Engineers has got to be as dismally low.

I only ever had two problems with Windows Vista. The first problem was that I had to wait a bit for drivers to come along for a couple of older peripherals. That problem only lasted about 2 months and did not affect any piece of equipment that I did not have a redundancy on.

The other problem seemed to start about two months ago. That particular problem was a lot more irritating. It was the slowness at which folders, subfolders, and files would get displayed as I was navigating in Windows (Not Internet) Explorer. Truly, I would click on "Documents" and sometimes it would take 20 seconds or so for the contents of that folder to be displayed....on a Core Duo machine w/4GB RAM and plenty of open drive space on a drive spinning at 7200RPM.

With the installation of SP1 (which went without a hitch) whatever that problem was has gone away and the overall performance seems to have been improved somewhat...perhaps because Vista now sees the fourth GB of RAM that is installed on the machine whereas before SP1 it only showed that it recognized 3 of the 4 gigs of RAM installed.

Vista has obviously not set the world on fire, but in my experience (except for the two problems listed above) it has always been a stable operating system...but it just never seemed to be a big jump for any of the features that I was using.

One of my favorite things about an Apple is the way the "Dock" of app icons works at the bottom of the screen. But a simple download called RocketDock will produce that on any Windows machine. And all of the noise about how great widgets are and how Microsoft totally stole that feature with their "Sidebar" feature? Personally, I find they just kind of crap up the desktop.

So Vista is not the end-all, be-all OS that everyone would always love to have in an upgrade, but it isn't a bad upgrade either. Well, unless you machine is just underpowered to begin with. They could have been a lot more upfront about those requirements.

I was 24 hours too late to be the one who registered the domain name typicalwhiteperson.com.

It will interesting to see what they do with it.

I was thinking T-Shirts.

Oh, well. You snooze, you lose.

I'll hand Jimmy Carter one thing--just this once and it's between us, and it is the deregulation of the telephone industry. In the sixties and seventies the biggest whipping boy in America was Ma Bell, and I put on hob-nailed boots and jumped on the carcass too, and she didn't get all that she deserved. But on the breakup of Ma Bell, and the entry of MCI and other long-distance carriers, that rage subsided.

Remember in the 70s the rage at the post office? How the mails were slower and slower and more and more expensive and things got lost? Enter UPS and FedEx and all of a sudden there's not as much glee in beating up on the post office. Why? Use someone else. Do something else. FedEx, DHL, fax, email. Something non-PO.

Have you ever quit hating getting a driver's license? Paying property taxes? Registering a car? Dealing with a water bill? No, and you won't.

The difference is that in each case when we quit hating something as much, it was because we could fire it. Anger, I learned a very hard way, comes from helplessness--if you are presented with a simple fact that is immensely irritating and there is nothing you can do about it, it takes a certain strength of character, and maturity, to bow to it without feeling a certain sense of surrender, of servitude, of the loss of being a free agent. For after all, the problem with slavery is not just being owned, or not entirely with being owned--for there were some good masters. The problem, the overmastering problem, the essential problem, with slavery and its first cousin socialism (more on that some time later), is that there is no sense of free agency, no sense that actions have consequences. You takes what you gets. It's morally evil.

It is a well known fact that machines that run under Windows are more prone to computer viruses than are their Mac counterparts. Members of the Church of Apple would have you believe that this is due to some sort of cluelessness on the part of Microsoft's programmers that Apple is not burdened with (But, of course!), the inference being that any one of the smuglodytes behind the "Genius" Bar at an Apple store could run any one of several Microsoft product divisions if only they were willing to abandon the cause or sell out...or something.

The real reason that Macs are less prone to computer viruses?

The same reason that ugly people are less prone to dates.

A come-hither look on the puss of the Hildebeest doesn't bother me. I figure that I alone am immune, unless that's the particular portion of hell to which I shall be consigned for the fairly disobliging things that I've said about Our Steatopygian Empress.

There is one thing, however, that we do know. She will continue in her campaign of divide-and-rule politics, reducing everyone into groups to save the trouble of getting to know people. And one group that has heretofore been insufficiently serviced, and I mean that in the nicest possible way, is the group who are victims of lookism.

Behold the Clinton Cabinet.

What a business opportunity for Victoria's Secret to merge with Milliken.

And no competition for Atilla the Hilla. With babes like these in the Cabinet, and as interns, this will serve as the special form of hell that Hildog will put Slick Willie in. Just think. Here he is, the eternal boy, never having grown up, incapable of commanding his desires, and here She is, the one whose discipline put him in the White House in the first place, who gave him access to the eyes of the world, who cleaned up after him, controlled the bimbos, listened to his petulant rage, his immaturity, that smarmy charm, and to think that if she gets her trotters into the Oval Office, she'll have the power in every single way.

He'll be dependent on her entirely. Utterly. Completely. She'll have his huevos in a vise, redefining nutcracker.

Interns? Behold. Attention of the world? Bill, cut the ribbon on that bridge opening in Bumfuzzle, Idaho. Bill, you're talking too much. Shut up. It's my turn.

That gives me a 1% of a 1% desire to have that mean, power-mad, lying collectivist in the White House. Since I see no evidence of an afterlife and fear the horrible boredom of one, I like to enjoy revenge when I can get it. The Italians say that revenge is a dish best eaten cold, and four, or eight years, is a long time for a dish to chill.

I don't have anything to go with this photo. I just wanted to see how high Theo's Creeped-o-Meter goes.

Well, I have updated (almost) all of the templates and everything seems to be okay except that it takes the system over 30 seconds to post a comment. At this point I am thinking a having a real, live MT41 pro/consulatant have a look-see at the templates to see what the problem may be.

Perhaps the hosting plan is not quite robust enough to handle everyone that the host provider is lumping together with me and commenting would speed up as soon as I upgraded. Perhaps.

The most aggravating this is all of the time that I have spent on the site that shows (so far) no real result. I have changed some things, but not a whole lot.

I do have some ideas now for a more complete redesign...but before I embark on that adventure I want to figure out the problem with the slow commenting features.

Mr. Cloudo, President of Heaven.

This is a huge surpise. No, I mean it.

MSNBC has cancelled Tucker Carlson's show.

But it is not a surprise because a good show was cancelled....because one wasn't in this case. It is a surprise because anyone who is the least bit familiar with MSNBC's programming schedule would naturally think that MSNBC simply doesn't cancel shows. Period.

The last paragraph from the Spectator's Coffee House blog on the American election, by James Forsyth, is

With at least six weeks to go in this campaign, one wonders how brutal this will get. Already charges of racism and lying are being thrown around like confetti. If it goes on like this, it is hard to see how the Democratic party can be put back together once there is a nominee.

I'd make a few cheap cracks that I would enjoy making but in this climate any crack I could make about the left eating its own and how they do it would of course make me the target of catcalls about racism.

And from another post Mr. Forsyth gives us

Whether the party can survive another 12 weeks of this is becoming increasingly debateable.

Mr. Forsyth is the most lucid, clairvoyant, far-seeing writer in the history of words, and if he had written 2000 years ago Holy Writ would be different now. Who said that I have no will to believe?

Caring nothing for sports, Hollywood, gossip, Nashville or what is termed, sadly and without irony, popular culture, I spend a lot of couch-potato time with documentaries: big construction projects, big events, the history of the universe, the planets and so forth.

I've been very pleased to notice recently several documentaries which state, without equivocation, that the earth's climate is variable, that we are in a temporary warm period now which accounts for civilization, and mostly that it just happens. The earth does it all by its little old self. Or all by its huge, enormous, leviathan self. The sun, even bigger than your normal 60W GE incandescent bulb, affects the earth's weather. In other words, things that existed before mankind affected the earth's weather and affected it a lot.

One of the documentaries went to far as to predict that in, oh, a billion years we will be back to one single continent called Pangea Ultima, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean both having disappeared, and it will be very very cold. And all of this has nothing to do with greenhouse gases and Toyota Priuses and all the private jets queuing up to land at Bali for a navel-gazing chin-wag about it don't mean a thing. For the planet. For the people flying there, there is a very good time to be had, I'm sure. I wonder if they left tips for the maids.

I knew that science was showing some results which that global-warming lot might not like when global warming morphed into climate change. You know, rebranding the product hoping to fool people into thinking it wasn't the same old crap because it had a new designer name. I knew that something was desperate because even people as shady as this lot is might blush, just a bit, to say, "Well, the earth is getting colder so we have to do something about it but if the earth gets warmer we have to do something about that." The two somethings, presumably, would be opposites and even a group as power-mad and self-dramatizing as these might find it a touch embarrassing to advocate running in two different directions all at once. They wouldn't mind putting you through it, of course--that's the point of the exercise--but even they, in their boundless contempt for others, might think themselves exposed to ridicule and if there's one thing that that lot can't stand, it's someone saying that the emperor's new clothes not only aren't Armani, but they're nonexistent.

Is Rick Menchaca "reverse Google-bombing" himself?

The Urban Dictionary is a wealth of slang, a great deal of it very colorful. A lot of it is cynically manipulative and eons away from Leave-It-To-Beaverland, but at times there are definitions which shine a light very brightly.

For example, I found that I am, because of my endless love of all things geek, best described as technosexual. That trumps all.

And today's nugget of gold is

terrorist voting

When a member of one political party intentionally votes in another party's primary in an attempt to nominate the candidate they feel will lose in an election, thus allowing their true party-affiliation to win.

C-Money voted for Hillary in the primary, because he thinks there's no way she can beat McCain.

I see that I am a terrorist voter. al-Theoq'ritis

I was wondering when someone was going to suggest that if one is truly looking for the best agent for Change (and Hope!) from what everyone describes as "politics as usual" that perhaps...just perhaps...that person is not likely to be borne of the nastiest and most ruthless and corrupt political machine in the country.