The Last Ephor

John Edwards' campaign is going nowhere. He's not going to be the nominee and won't even get a VP nod this time around. However, his campaign just put one in the X ring with this spot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qggO5yY7RAo That parsing is what Americans are sick of. We've been through it for years and I personally, cannot stomach it any longer. Combine this constant non-answering triangulation with her fundraising questions and she may be headed for a flameout. I don't know if Obama is ready for prime time but he's the anti-Hillary. He's aware of his own shortcomings, he's thinking about questions asked not just accessing the soundbites his handlers have pounded into him and he seems genuine. Either he's a straight shooter or the best actor I've ever seen. I'm putting my money on the former. At this point, if it has to be someone winning the nod from the Dems, I hope it's him.

If you could go back in time and tell yourself exactly four words (no stock tips or lottery numbers) and you knew your previous self would take that advice, what would you say?

Off to Mexico for a spell, chasing a story for Garage Magazine. I must remain tight-lipped, but can tell you my assignment involves Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, Pancho Villa, nuclear radiation, lost treasure, Mexican carnival sideshows, Tom Wolfe, alien autopsies, satanists, tequila, John Wesley Hardin, chupacabras, Aztec blood sacrifice, Mexican outlaw biker gangs, my dad, Pershing missiles, porn shops, peyote, Billy the Kid, eating brains, and a cursed hot rod. I am not making any of this up. Pray for me.

The lukewarm response of the crowd was dismaying however.

What if the Founding Fathers were the Fantastic Four? Presidential Bingo

The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Gerry Fulcher declares: A BLOG IS EQUIVALENT TO A WRITER’S FART and then goes on to prove the point. I don't know anything about this guy other than he apparently used to be on WDEL. (I do not listen to terrestrial radio so I didn't know that). Based on his first post and his comments at DWA , I can see he's study in contradictions. Brays about being a "real writer" and pounds and pounds on the fact that he's been published in such vaunted publications as TV Guide. Yes TV Guide, the bastion of crusading truth and breaking news. This is a big deal because according to Mr. Fulcher it was the most popular magazine in the world. Rest assured they were subscribing for the cutting edge investigative journalism not for, you know, TV listings. Almost immediately after talking about it's popularity, he says he "doesn't give a rat's ass about popularity". An odd thing for a "real" writer....

jason330 says: A little respect please. His work has been published in Employee Assistance Magazine.

Republicans have prided themselves of late of being the "big tent" party. That is, room for many ideas that may not be in line with current orthodoxy. They've watched the Nutroots crowd take (or at least appear to take) control over the Democrat party. The fight with the DLC has been significant and for Republicans it's like watching a revolution eat it's own children. After all their crowing, they're now turning their own newly sharpened knives on members of their own party. Ron Paul has been singled out. He is gone down the memory hole on Red State . This combined with an effort to kick him out of the party . Purportedly it's because of his anti-war stance. That alone makes him persona non grata. Rather than saying he's wrong about that one thing and right about everything else, they'd rather shut him out or shut him up. Why? I think the answer is obvious.

A few posts ago I was whining about losing my yen to blog. I think it has to do with fatigue from hitting the same notes on the same topics without any sort of meaningful insight or solution. In an effort to turn in a new direction, here’s a post about F1. That’s Formula One. The single best form of auto racing. Forget NASCAR. That’s a bunch of hillbillies driving in a circle for 3 hours. The only thing worse than watching NASCAR on TV would be having to attend in person with the great unwashed masses. Where NASCAR is for lumpenproles, F1 is for eloi. (I’m mixing aliterations here but bear with me.) Formula One cars are the most highly specialized, technically advanced (and therefore expensive) machines in the world. They are capable of performance beyond the dreams of mortal men. They have so much downforce keeping them on the road they could drive upside down in a tunnel. Here’s a brief primer on the capabilities of an F1 car. With that out of the way we have to recap the...

Parking in your apartment . It was inevitable. Would have been more useful when Dinkins was Mayor. Personally, I think this is brilliant and hope it catches on. One of the few funny things Paul Riser ever said was "I never meant to move to L.A., I was just circling Manhattan looking for a place to park". Bush had reportedly warned Hillary et al. not to get too far out on a limb vis a vis Iraq but Michael Barone believes they have. FBI agent elicits false confession (and therefore suborns perjury) by threatening to have a man's family tortured. Lefties will inevitably blame Bush but this is not a new problem and doesn't start (or end) with Bush being president. It has to do with the eternal over-reach of government that is ever expanding is scope. Liberal Media Bias in it's embryonic larval stage. Watch Paul Krugman get mocked and reviewed simultaneously. There is no man made global warming. That has to be true. If not, why would Ted Kennedy kill wind p...

Completely. I mean if it were a cartoon it would have it's tongue hanging out the side of it's mouth and X's over the eyes. The DBA's called in UNIX and Oracle support guys almost immediately. Each blamed the other. Either way, my users had no data which tends to make them grumpy. After much ado, everyone agreed to blame the hardware since they were outnumbered. It took two days to move everything over to another box on another frame while the original frame hardware was swapped out. My job of late has been to reassure people that yes, we know about the problem and yes, someone is working on it. I've referred a great many users to my boss since that's what he gets paid for. One key event: A callout email/page went out around 3:30 AM on Wednesday morning. Oddly, my phone didn't ring so I didn't find out about the complete failure of our critical system until 7:00 when I logged on. I asked my boss why I wasn't called (not angry mind you, ju...

I swear I'm not making this up.

Things are going very badly in Iraq The economy continues to tank People get rich by inheritance and exploitation of the poor and middle class. Or not. There a number of myths on either side of the aisle that appear to be ossified into the party platforms. Offhand I can think of the following: Democrat: Republicans are of two types. Evil or stupid. Rich people are evil unless they're Democrat politicians or George Soros Hollywood Actors are excellent environmental stewards Hollywood Actors are very intelligent and knowligable enough to opine on public affairs and policies despite very few of them having any formal eduction Big Business is run by evil rich men who spend their days trying to screw their employees, customers and poor people generally Big Oil is run by evil rich men who spend their days trying to screw everyone and destroy the earth in the process. We could be oil independent if everyone drove a Prius. Democrat politicians are upstanding fellows who act out of the ...

Here's the thing. I was whining about not feeling the blogging thing. It's true and it's been building. It's a number of things really. One is time. I enjoy blogging but I hate that I don't have the time I want to devote to it. As such my posts are dashed off tripe which really bugs me. There's a lot more to it than that. On all fronts I'm dealing with problems. Some larger, some smaller but it's forming a cresting wave of aggrivation. Here's the rundown; Work is OK but I have a new Admin who has a nasty habit of making changes to production environments without telling me and during the middle of the US workday. He's in Moscow so his workday ending as mine is beginning. He tends to make said changes right before leaving. Also, this contract may/may not be coming to an end here and if so, I have to know soon so I can get my next contract lined up. Being a contractor sucks because you're looking for a job all the friggin time. I...

no posts likely until I do.

I've always attempted to debate with those who disagree with me. That is, to disagree without being disagreeable. I always try to assume the best motivations and intentions of others. I've avoided anything approaching a flame war on my blog or others. (Largely absent here as one needs readers and/or comments to have such a thing) Jason at DelawareLiberal had two of the most risible, unhinged, despicable posts in two days. First he libels General Petraeus . A man with an impeccable record and impugns the honor of a man who has spent 30+ years defending this country. Simply disgusting. He also libels the President but that's a daily event there so nothing new. He also demonstrates bottomless ignorance on even the most basic rules of the military regarding legal and illegal orders. Second, he puts our nation on par with mass murderers. That's right. You and I are no different than 19 evil murders who set out to kill as many people as possible. No distinction f...

Reprint from last year Today's the day. Five Six years gone and the rest of our lives to go. This blog honors Sean Thomas Lugano I knew Sean casually. We went to college together and were on the rugby team together. He was much better than I was. He was very fast and much stronger than he looked. Sean was one of those guys who was reserved but very funny. He wasn't one of those guys who garnered attention by being outrageous or demonstrative. He was just there, always with a smile and quick with a laugh or a joke. He took a lot of flack in college because of his modeling career. He used to model to make money for college and the idea of a rugby player being a model seemed absurd. The only commercial I ever saw him in was for The Gap and ironically, he was playing rugby in the commercial. That seemed to redeem him somewhat in the eyes of his teammates and we didn't rib him much after that. I didn't know Sean well enough to keep in touch with him after college. Occasiona...

More on the previous post on the bin Laden/Leftist rhetoric locus: David Broder of the NYT agrees with me.