Most Happy with Either: McCain vs. Obama

Least Happy with Either: Huckabee vs. Clinton

Most Lopsided Democratic Victory: Paul vs. Obama

Most Lopsided Republican Victory: McCain vs. Clinton

Your picks?

We had a troop “surge.” Things got better. The number of Iraqi civilian deaths falls each month by 45%. It’s fallen 70% in Baghdad. Sunni’s are starting to turn against al-Qaeda in Iraq. — apparently cutting the heads & hands off children for smoking didn’t go over well. Car bombing & suicide attacks are down. And so on.

Things are slowly getting better.

So what do you next?

Naturally, go back to the plan that didn’t work & demand reduced troop levels.

*sigh*

With the recent fuss about the Unabombers personal effects, I heard on the radio about an online quiz testing to see if people could tell the difference between Al Gore and the Unabomber:

http://www.crm114.com/algore/quiz.html

I scored a 33%. What’d you get?

On the hand, we’re in a state of war. Americans have been suffering through higher gas prices through much of the War on Terror. Is Exxon taking advantage of the situation to shake down the American consumer for a few more bucks at the pump?

Which is it?

I realized what I wanted to know was how their profit translated into terms that affect the average consumer. How does it affect prices at the pump?

The math is obvious, but how many gallons of gas are sold in America? Quite frankly, I had no idea, so I didn’t know if 10B in profit works out to something like 1/10 cent per gallon (in which case, nice job Exxon) or is it something like $1 per gallon (in which, Rex Tillerson and the rest need to be publicly drawn and quartered for treason. It’d be just like the end of Braveheart, only instead of screaming “Freedom”, Rex would yell “Petroleuuuuuum!”).

Before going further, any guesses? How many gallons of gasoline does American consume per day?

Answer after the jump.

These three sources seem to be roughly in agreement; that we average about 400 million gallons of gas per day. There’s 90 days in a quarter, so that’s 36 billion gallons. $10.5 billion of profit across 36 billion gallons of gas.

That roughly 29 cents per gallon.

That’s the difference between paying $2.50 at the pump & $2.79.

And actually, it’s worse than that. This assume Exxon has 100% market share, which obviously isn’t the case. Assuming 50% marketshare, it would work out to 58 cents a gallon. Assuming 25% marketshare, and it’s $1.16 per gallon of gas.

(I have no idea what it actually is, as I was unable to find anything googling on Yahoo or yahooing on Google. If anyone finds something credible, please let me know)

This is ridiculous.

It’s blatant wartime profiteering on the part of ExxonMobil.

It’s UnAmerican.

True, a lot of Republican politicians indulge in environmentally unfriendly lives as well, but then again, in most cases they don’t profess to, let along make a movie exalting such activities & promoting themselves as such. As Malcom X said, “I have more respect for a man who lets me know where stands — even if he’s wrong — than one who comes up smelling like an angel and is nothing but a devil.”

google.com vs google.cn

With a wave of the hand, 100,000 protestors as if they never existed.

This does make wonder, however. Google has said they don’t hand-tune their results and rely exclusively on algorithms, hence the persistance of google-bombs like miserable failure, Jew, and waffles.

If that is the case, surely some google bombs could be arrange by the rest of world to leak things through to the people of China?

• Firms with Bush ties snag Katrina deals
  
• Firms with White House ties get Katrina contracts

So what’s not mentioned in either of those articles?

That, J. M. Bernhard, Jr., CEO of the Shaw Group is Chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party.

Bias? You be the judge.

There isn’t much new there that isn’t in his book, but having read the book sometime ago, it was a great refresher. There’s a lot of good stuff in the GTD methodology and it’s unlikely you’ll incorporate it all in your first fell swoop. (I know I didn’t.) It’s a bit like the Perl of time-management. You can learn as you go, it makes you more efficient, it’s practical and people look at you a little crazy when you tell them how much you love it.

Three big things I got out of this go round:

1. Bring GTD into the home
   
2. The difference between collect & process
   
3. The importance of just getting things out of your head
   

However, after only a few days of giving it a go, I’m convinced. I spent this weekend getting an inbox for home, organizing the various pieces of paper, receipts, books lying around my apartment. Aside from having a cleaner house, I’m also better organized, meaning more efficient, meaning I have more unstructured time.

2) There’s a big temptation & natural tendency to combine collection & processing. E.g., in a meeting, I would attempt to place next actions on my next action list as they came up, etc. Inefficient, as it requires bouncing around multiple contexts, hunting for the appropriate one, etc. These days, I just make a quick note in my spiral notebook and move on. Some simple notation (a ! before to call attention to action items, etc.), helps when reviewing notes for collection at the end of the day.

I believe Allen says you can throw your notes away at that point, but I’m a little too paranoid for that.

3) Like notes in a meeting, I’ve taken to make it a point to quickly jot down any random thought. From the trivial to the big, it’s quickly out of my head, and in written form, waiting to be collected and process latter in the day.

Walking down Lake, I passed one of the increasingly common LaRouche informational tables. They had several signs plastered, including one stating “Bush is not a Republican. He’s an idiot.”

There’s an idea… attack just the individual instead of the entire party. With that, you might, I don’t know, get Republicans to vote your way. Crazy idea, eh?

Had I not already known that LaRouche was absolutely fucking nuts, I might have stopped and talk to them.

Thank God he’s a Democrat.

Here are the candidates in alphabetical order:

Benjamin Franklin
Martin Luther King Jr.
Abraham Lincoln
Ronald Reagan
George Washington

My top pick? Nope, not Reagan. In fact here’s how I’d rank them:

Benjamin Franklin
Abraham Lincoln
George Washington
Martin Luther King Jr.
Ronald Reagan

Yep, Benjamin Franklin would be my #1. There simply wouldn’t be a United States without him.

How would you rank them?

It baffles me how the Right continues to be painted as puppets of corporations, with the implication that the Left somehow is less so. E.g., Bush’s energy task force was painted as satan for getting input from Enron, yet almost no mention of Clinton’s having done the same thing.

Add to the list this ruling.

MARSHFIELD, Mo. — A mother and her live-in boyfriend are charged with child endangerment after investigators say they kicked her two kids out of the house. The investigation began after a passerby found a 12-year-old boy and his 6-year-old sister walking along Highway CC near Niangua.

The kids were dragging suitcases, shopping bags and garbage bags full of clothing. They were about a quarter of a mile from their home, scared, crying and hungry.

“Thank the good Lord this was someone that wasn’t going to hurt children,” said Webster County Prosecuting Attorney Cynthia Black, praising the man who picked up the kids.

Police say the children said their mom, Roxanna Osborne, woke them up and told them to pack and leave immediately. The kids say their mother gave them $5 and went back to sleep.

“The children also told deputies that their mom and her boyfriend used drugs in their home. They described in shocking detail the pipes and drugs they used,” said Black. “They also referred to some spoons with burn spots on them, and spoons with burn spots typically refer to meth use.”

A detective’s probable cause statement filed with the charge also outlines accusations of abuse. The kids told officers they were burned with cigarettes, hit with belts and verbally abused. The kids also said they are afraid that, if their mother and her boyfriend get sent to jail, she will kill them.

Osborne and Timmy Young face two charges each of child endangerment. The prosecutor thinks what the mother did is unbelievable.

“We see lots of nasty things and we expect to see nasty things, but this is one of the ugliest things and one of the saddest things because a 6-year-old and a 12-year-old were so very, very upset and distraught,” said Black.

The kids are physically fine and are now in the custody of a relative but Black said they are obviously traumatized. Officers arrested Osborne and Young at their home.

This is the second time in a little more than a year that Young has been charged with child endangerment. He was arrested and pleaded guilty in May 2004 for using a chainsaw to smash the windows of a van belonging to the woman who was then his girlfriend — while her three children were inside.

Osborne and Young are jailed in lieu of $200,000 bond each. They are scheduled to be in court next Wednesday.

Black said she likely will file more charges against both in Webster County. In addition, evidence in Young’s case has been handed over to the U.S. attorney’s office for possible federal charges.

My favorite quote:

This is one reason why I did not like it when President Bush said his favorite political philosopher was Jesus Christ. I don’t mind at all a president who has a personal relationship with Jesus. It’s just that I don’t think Jesus is going to have useful advice about how to fix Social Security.

There seems to be an upward tick in coverage of Scalia, probably not too surprising considering Rehnquist’s failing health & talk of him being a possible replacement as Chief Justice. (If Bush nominates Thomas instead, so help me, I’ll be that much closer to not voting for him again.)

Reading the aritcle, I was surprised to find out that he’s close friends with Ginsburg. That in of itself is a microcosm of why I like him so much. Far from a partisian hack, Scalia sticks to his views and is unwilling to bend them to get the result he personally would like. He feels strongly that the Court should not assume powers of the Legislative branch by creating new interpretations of existing laws. How often do you find a member of our government seeking to limit their powers?

http://www.livejournal.com/users/yesthattom/263480.html

Not surprisingly, I don’t agree with a lot of general politics there, but several excellent points. Most notably:

”How could people be so stupid as to vote for Bush?”

* I can’t tell you how much I hate that meme. People aren’t stupid for voting for Bush. celticdragonfly said it best here. I’ve heard many people say, “It only turns people off to say such things” but she is the the first person I’ve seen put it clearly into words that explain the why. The type of personality that would propagate that meme is the same personality that won’t change their behavior unless they know the “why”. Thanks to Laura for writing that article.

And that’s from a guy who did helluva a lot more to help the Democrats win than you did.

Very well said Laura. Thanks for writing it as well.

This may all be moot since I think Kerry will win, but I’m a little surprised. Though a registered Republican and avowed conservative I’m surprised because when it comes down to it, I don’t really want to.

I don’t really want to vote for him because while I don’t believe that Bush lied about the WMDs, I do believe he should held accountable for their absence. I don’t really want to because while I don’t consider Iraq a miserable failure, I do think it could be going better. I don’t really want to because while I do admire some of his characteristics, he’s not the type of leader I want to follow.

Democrats, why didn’t you give me someone I could vote for?

This probably will have been the easiest election ever for you to have gotten my vote. My impression is that there are a lot of other conservatives in a similar position. It wouldn’t have taken much. There was no delusion that the Left would throw out the whole of their platform, but hell, a moderate Democrat, articulate & direct, a clear vision with a solid plan for Iraq would have been all I needed.

But who did you give me? Kerry.

Not that I mind the DNC powers that be sabotaging Dean’s campaign & his lead. From a Republican viewpoint, that guy was almost as good as Nader.

Not that I have a problem with Kerry because of the Swift Boats. I live in California. Not a lot of point in running their ads here. (I actually question how much impact ads like Swift Boat or MoveOn ads have at all, but I digress.)

Not that I think Kerry is a “flip-flopper.” Okay, well, he is. But so is just about every politician, including Bush. It’s part of being a politician: when you’re not kissing babies you’re taking their lollipops.

At the same time, Kerry has done a miserable job communicating his vision on Iraq. Vague general hand-waving has been done, but nothing to make me go “ah-ha!” Yes, Kerry says there where mistakes made. With that, you have my attention. But you have to keep going after that. You can’t tell me there where mistakes and stop. Tell me what you think the mistakes where. What you would have done differently. How you will do things differently. As a testament to how confusing he has been on Iraq, I’ve yet to have two Kerry supporters give me the same answers when asked about Kerry’s views on the war.

In his defense, I can understand why he may intentionally ambiguous about it, and quite possibly, it may be very well what ends up winning him the election. But it’s not going to get my vote.

Nor is Kerry particularly compelling as leader. The most positive thing most of his supporters I know have been able to muster is “Well, he’s better than Bush.” Which, to them, pretty much anyone had out of the gate. In setting the bar so low — “Anyone but Bush!” — that’s exactly who they got.

And just anyone isn’t good enough for me to flip-flop.

Number 2
“[George W.] Bush and his administration were aware of what was going on. And we never knew that the commander-in-chief of the American armed forces would leave 50,000 of his people in the two towers to face those events by themselves when they were in the most urgent need of their leader.

He was more interested in listening to the child’s story about the goat rather than worry about what was happening to the towers.”

Tonight should have been Bush’s home-court advantage, the focus being
Iraq, Terrorism, and so on. He seems to have squandered it. Some of
it isn’t too surprising. Despite what Gore
may think, Bush’s strength isn’t oration. Kerry did an excellent job,
especially going after Bush on Iraq without appearing overly negative.
Bush failed to capitialize on any of Kerry’s missteps or bring out any
strong cases for himself in the general area.

Personally, I was disappointed at the lack of substance. Not
surprised, but still disappointed. Kerry said multiple times he had a
plan, but I failed to understand what it was. Even after reading his
website,
I’m not sure how it differs from anything we’re doing right now. Part of what feeds into why my vote will probably stay with Bush.

The coming days should reveal the impact of the debate. Interesting
days on http://www.electoral-vote.com/
for sure. Up until the Republican Convention I was pretty sure Bush
was going to lose, but he came out of it with a fair bit of momentum.
Wonder if Kerry will be able to swing it his way after tonight.

As mentioned in the news, it looks like Bush has gotten a bump off the RNC, which also seems to be reflected on the very cool www.electoral-vote.com.

Visit with Mom & one of my brother Chris is going well. On Friday, spent the day mostly in Pasadea area, visiting the Huntington Gardens & driving the Angels Crest Highway towards Mt. Wilson.

The Huntington was cool for me as well, for despite having been a member for two years, I never actually visited the library until yesterday. Even knowing they had a Guttenburg, it was still awesome to get see it, along with editions of the Bible pre-dating the printing press and hand-copied by monks. While behind a glass case, the manuscripts where held open allowing one to see a couple of pages. It’s one thing to have read about the ornamentation enscribed on each page, quite another to actually see them.

I would have been sufficently impressed with the Bible collection alone would have been amazing, but a few rows over first editions of the Leviathan, works by Locke, Common Sense, and so on… This place is a U of C’ers wet dream come true. I tried reading what I could through the glass, but next time I’m showing up with my dog-eared Penguin Classics versions to see how closely the line-up.

Oh yeah, the family trip.

Today was West LA, driving through Mulholland drive (as recommended by Sang), stopping for lunch at the Saddle Ranch on Sunset, then onto Venice Beach and Santa Monica’s 3rd Street Promenade. Tomorrow is a small BBQ & a chance for my mom to get to meet some of LA friends. Chris leaves Monday out of LAX, so following dropping him off, I’ll probably take my mom to see more of the nice houses in Beverly Hills & maybe stop off at the Grove. Tuesday’s still TBD, possibly a tour of Warner Brothers.

Should we stay in iraq?

• Bush voters: 71 yes/23 no
  
• Kerry voters: 37 yes/54 no

Is the war in Iraq an integral piece of the War on Terror or a Distraction?

• Bush voters: 79 integral/14 distraction
  
• Kerry voters: 36 integral/50 distraction

Are we winning the War on Terror?

• Bush voters: 77 yes/10 no
  
• Kerry voters: 33 yes/42 no

So, as the debates progress, and we find out more about Kerry’s views, it’ll be interesting to see what happens. If he goes right and strengths his position favoring the war on Iraq, will he lose lose some of his base to Nader? If he goes left, will he lose some to Bush?

Another reason this election year is going to be an interesting one.