The radio station I listen to now plays spots by Robert Kiyosaki

They do not change them often enough, but the radio station that I listen to in the morning, during my drive to work, now plays spots by Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad, Poor Dad). In the current spot, he explains how to know if an investment property is over-valued. The key is the rent that can be gotten. Robert takes the monthly rent and multiplies that by 100. If the amount is less than the selling price of the property, then the property is over-valued.

At least the Harper's Bazaar Britney Spears pics make her dyed black hair look better

I imagine that Britney Spears' natural hair color is something like "mouse brown", if not somewhat darker than that. Dying her hair so that it is a "flat" black is not a winning move. I suppose that by clever lighting, Harper's Bazaar makes her hair looks fairly attractive. The Guilty Obsession blog has more pics than I have previously seen. She obviously is an exhibitionist, although that should not be surprise. Her career is all about getting fame and fortune. She has been much more successful, however, than the problemmatic Heather Mills. Britney, after all, has some sliver of talent, unlike Heather. Heather's main talent seems to be having sex. Her secondary talents are her self-promotion and ability to speak, apparently, coherently on television.

Weight Watchers is not a hot business name, but it works

I have to make the caviet that you have to follow the program, but I have, and it works. As of last Saturday morning, I was down 26.8 lbs, and it took 18 weeks to get there. Weight Watchers is not the hot name that there is a lot of buzz about, but it has stuck around, because it works if you work the program. I still have about that much more to go, so I am staying with it.

Jack Kelly on the "Second Hand Smoke" business

Jack Kelly writes about "second hand smoke" and the recent "study":

The debate over second-hand smoke is over only

for people who are uninterested in evidence, says Michael Fumento:

A New England Journal of Medicine study found that even back in 1975 – when having smoke obnoxiously puffed into your face was ubiquitous in restaurants, cocktail lounges, and transportation lounges – the concentration was equal to merely 0.004 cigarettes an hour. That's not quite the same as smoking two packs a day, is it?

But none of this has the least impact on the various federal, state, and city agencies and organizations like the American Lung Association for a very good reason. They already know they're scientifically wrong. The purpose of the passive smoking campaign has never been to protect non-smokers, but rather to cow smokers into giving up the habit.

tabloid rabies has a good collection of Heather Mills pics

I had not noticed"tabloid rabies" before. This is a blog that has a post with a nice selection of Heather Mills pictures that show about as much as has made it to the Internet.

The pregnant Brittany Spears is on the cover of Harper's Bazaar

The Palm Beach Post has a (probably widely circulated) story about Brittany Spears' nude picture on the cover of Harper's Bazaar. The caption asks the question: "Nothing to wear?". The Harper's Bazaar website has the picture.

The Palm Beach Post on Rush Limbaugh

The Palm Beach Post, several days ago, had the real story about Rush Limbaugh's latest flap. It turns out that the prescription for Viagra was written in his doctor's name, for privacy reasons. Obviously, it did not work out well, but they had "given it a shot".

Does the Rush Limbaugh Viagra story have any basis, or is it another "Carl Rove sealed indictment"?

I will be curious to see whether there is anything to the story about Rush Limbaugh. The left side and the MSM have their hopes up, again. Rush already is using it for fun: "I'm trying to figure out how Bob Dole's luggage got on my airplane." Many people who are not familiar with Rush don't realize that he is primarily an entertainer and humorist. That is the major difference between Rush and the Air America crowd. If you do a search at Technorati for "Rush Limbaugh", you will see a large numbers of Lefties fantasizing, sort of along the lines of the mythical "Carl Rove sealed indictment".

Jay Rosen talking to Hugh Hewitt at Radio Blogger

Duane Patterson, at Radio Blogger, has the transcript of Jan Rosen, of PressThink, talking with Hugh Hewitt about the NY Times' and LA Times' disclosure of a classified project:

PressThink's Jay Rosen on the Times' decision to weaken our national security.

06-26rosen.mp3

HH: Joined now by Jay Rosen, professor at NYU, where he teaches journalism. He runs the wonderful blog, Pressthink.org. He's a man of the left, but I always enjoy chatting with him. Jay, welcome back. Good to have you.

JR: Thanks, Hugh.

HH: What's your reaction to the New York Times and Los Angeles Times story of Friday?

JR: Well, I was a little surprised by the whole thing, and I certainly felt that the explanations that both papers have given for the judgment call that they made haven't been all that good. I think people like Michael Barone go way too far when they ask why does the Times hate America, and I do think it's too far to talk about prosecuting the paper. But there are some things about what they did that also trouble me.

HH: I just completed an interview this hour with Doyle McManus, Jay Rosen, the Washington bureau chief of the L.A. Times...

JR: Yes.

HH: ...in which he admitted a couple of things. One, that the story could possibly have assisted terrorists in eluding capture and damaged our counter-terrorism. And that two, the press enjoys no exemption from the national security laws. Do you disagree with either of those concessions by Mr. McManus?

JR: Well, is there some chance that the story could have aided terrorists? I suppose I would say that there probably is some chance of that, yeah. And the Times is not exempt from the laws of the country, no.

The Super Hero Test

I took the Super Hero test and found out that I am The Hulk (thanks to David Adesnik at Oxblog): Your results: You are Hulk

Hulk 90% Spider-Man 85% Green Lantern 65% Iron Man 60% Supergirl 50% Robin 45% Superman 45% The Flash 35% Catwoman 30% Batman 25% Wonder Woman 20%

You are a wanderer with amazing strength.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

The last person we wanted to hear from was Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono decided to "pipe up" about Heather Mills. She magnanimously tells the press that they should cover her, and leave Heather Mills and Paul McCartney along. I guess that Yoko saw an opening to get some face time and decided to talk to the press. I had thought that she had faded into a well-deserved obscurity, never to be heard from again (if we were lucky). Yoko has been deep into leftist politics and Dadism, and got John Lennon headed in some bad personal directions (although he probably didn't need much help).

Heather Mills is not on her death bed, but is out complaining

Far from being at death's doorstep, Heather Mills is out grabbing facetime and whining about the media attention she has been receiving. The Daily Mail has an article about here latest outburst, where she is complaining to whoever would listen. She also has a video camera and is filming photographers and others "as evidence" (of what?). Apparently, Paul McCartney has offered her a £ 25,000,000 settlement if she would let their daughter live when him. She has refused the offer and is thought to have a chance to receive as much as £ 200,000,000 from the divorce proceedings.

Paul Graham's latest essay is about "The Power of the Marginal"

Paul Graham, who has one of the real success stories out of the Dot Com days, has a new essay about how new things and ideas come from marginal people. He talks about the real story of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, among other things. He also talks about why those on the marginal can contribute the way that they have (like David Packard and Bill Hewlett in 1938). Paul concludes:

But the best thing of all is when people call what you're doing inappropriate. I've been hearing this word all my life and I only recently realized that it is, in fact, the sound of the homing beacon. "Inappropriate" is the null criticism. It's merely the adjective form of "I don't like it."

So that, I think, should be the highest goal for the marginal. Be inappropriate. When you hear people saying that, you're golden. And they, incidentally, are busted.

Razib, at Gene Expression, writes about British Muslims

Razib, who I believe is an apostate Muslim, writes about British Muslims. He links to an article that suggests that Continental Muslims are more rational than British Muslims. I presume that he is speaking about the presence of extremism and jihadism. The "7/7" attacks were a wakeup call in Britain that they had a problem.

Will someone post a screen capture from the X-rated show about Heather Mills?

The Heather Mills story has about run its course. The only thing that might revive it would be new revelations or someone posting screen captures from the X-rated television show. Release of a reprint of her book also would help. That was rumoured to be in the works, but it remains to be seen if it actually happens, or if it will be suppressed. I would judge from the buzz level that if it were released, you would see it sell.

If you don't mind fake photos, there is a Britney Spears site

A lot of people are looking for pictures of Britney Spears naked, apparently. The bad news is that probably everything there is, is a fake. If you don't mind fakes, there is a good fake Britney Spears site, appropriately named: britney-nude-pic.com. Also, UltimateTopSites has a Britney Spears Top 50 page with links.

StrangeCosmos

StrangeCosmos is great. They have interesting photos and some really good fakes, such as a fake photo of Nancy Pelosi, Hillery Clinton and Cynthia McKinney. They also have good, real photos, such as a photo of Nicole Richey, in a yellow bikini, that shows her tatoo. I didn't want to steal bandwidth or photos, so you have to click links (sadly).

Note that Denise Hewitt's boy friends checked out her background

Compare Paul McCartney and Denise Hewitt's former boy friends. Denise Hewitt's boy friends checked out her background and found out about her past activities. They dropped the relationship immediately. How about Paul McCartney? Here, he is almost a billionaire and he apparently did not check out Heather Mills. If he had an investigation done, they would have found her out before the relationship led to marriage. Since Paul McCartney did not have the investigation done, he has been subjected to immense embarrassment. Apparently, Heather Mills has been very naive, and thought no one would ever find out that she appeared in the pornographic books, one or more videos, and had been involved with the "escort service". Since Paul McCartney did not do his "due diligence", both he and Heather were burned.

Denise Hewitt and Heather Mills

Denise Hewitt met Heather Mills when they were modeling. What was news to me was that from that relationship, Denise met Ros Ashley, who was handling the rich Arab services business. She apparently did that for two years, and then wanted to leave, to carry on a normal life. The problem was that Denise had was that men she would meet would discover her past activities and cut off any relationship. The Political Gateway has the story, which I may have seen elsewhere, as well.

Heather Mills in X-Rated television show

Hollywood Rag has a story about an X-Rated British television show that is going to show a strip-tease video of Heather Mills, when she was young, and the X-Rated photos from the book that the papers could not print. She is toasted, overdone. Her reputation, if she had one, is totally blown away, irretrievably.

This latest revelation will make suing The Sun not an option for Heather Mills

I am not a lawyer, but to the detached observer, The Daily Mail's latest article about Denise Hewitt, a former co-worker to Heather Mills, corroborates the story in The Sun about her work as an expensive sex worker, providing services to wealthy Arabs. In any case, the suit would have been more to try and salvage her reputation. As her reputation is beyond salvage, Heather just needs to let the divorce process play out and take her millions.

A former co-worker of Heather Mills

The Daily Mail has an article about a woman who was a co-worker of Heather Mills in the "escort" business (where they provided intimate services to wealthy Arabs). The woman in the article is also a professional golddigger, like Heather Mills, but more successful. The name of the article is "The past I share with Heather has ruined my life". The article says that Heather perferred the term "Flower Girl". Denise Hewitt, the 42-year old former "escort" has had her budding relationship with a new guy ruined by the revelations about her past. That past seems to have been a factor in the crash surrounding the 38-year old Heather Mills, although she should emerge with wealth, taken from Paul McCartney.

The CNN story about Paul McCartney and Heather Mills

The CNN story about Paul McCartney and Heather Mills is positively fawning. One interesting item from the story is that Heather Mills could come away with 25% of Paul McCartney's some £825 "fortune". If they had been married longer, the percentage could have been higher.

A potential reprint of Heather Mills' German book

I understand that there is someone who is doing what I had suggested: reprint the Heather Mills book, while she is still a hot commodity. It the reprint is done correctly, the person involved could make some quick money, supposing that they have access to outlets. I believe that the book being reprinted is the German book Die Freuden Der Liebe, which has the hottest pics (x-rated).

There are at least three publications with the Heather Mills photos

The FemaleFirst posting points out that there are believed to be three publications with the Heather Mills photos. One is the German book from 1989 called Die Freuden Der Liebe from 1989. Then there is this American book called Sexual Secrets that was published by an erotic book club. The third is thought to be an unnamed French magazine, presumably dating from the same period. The German book is said to have photographs of actual sex acts, while the Sexual Secrets book just has simulated sex. It is unclear as to the actual details of what was published in the French magazine, although they were explicit photos, apparently.

About an hour ago, the bid on Ebay for a Heather Mills book was about $84

I am apparently not going to get the Heather Mills book, after all. I saw a blog that has crazy Ebay auctions, and one was for the Heather Mills German picture book. There was apparently an American book, "Sexual Secrets" in 1988 that shows her in simulated sex, unlike the other book, which apparently is the real thing. FemaleFirst has a post that gives more details.

Paul McCartney is getting "increasingly bitter towards her"

The Daily Mail continues to be on top of the Heather Mills story. They have an article with more information than I had previously seen. I know more than I really want to know about her. For example, we know how much she was allegedly paid to take part in sex with the famous Saudi arms dealer (£ 6400). The article says that as more comes out, Paul McCartney is "increasingly bitter towards her" (Heather). He has to deal with her about their two-year old daughter Beatrice, but I am sure he is not thrilled about it.

Maybe Heather Mills is not in such bad shape, after all

The Daily Mail has an article that says, among other things:

Heather Mills dropped off a bottle of wine for Paul's birthday

She apparently wanted to make some gesture for his birthday, adn because of father's day.

Paul's daughters did not want Heather there for the party, so Heather settled for this peace gesture.

Perhaps, if she can deliver a bottle of wine, she is not on death's doorstep, after all?

What seems to be the real reason Paul McCartney

The Daily Mail has an article which says that the real reason that Paul McCartney is divorcing Heather Mills is that she was so negative and tried to boss him. He is older and more experienced, and could not take the sort of abuse that she was giving him. She looked upon the relationship more that she was providing him with "good sex" and that he should support her in the way she wanted. She thought that the was tight with money, and would not give her what she thought that she needed. All this really supports her as being a gold digger, and courtesan.

The Daily Mail has the scoop on Paul McCartney's birthday plans

The Daily Mail article about Paul McCartney's birthday says that Beatrice, his two-year old daughter was dropped off on Friday night and will be there for the party. Heather Mills will be absent. She is said to have gone into a physical down-hill spiral, and is emaciated and in a wheelchair. Even she seems to be mortified over the revelations about her past (for good reason).

Heather Mills has been fishing for an invitation to Paul McCartney's birthday party

Apparently, the rationale for Heather Mill's request to attend Paul McCartney's birthday party is not, as I had thought, that she wanted to ensure Beatrice's place as an heir, but for a more selfish reason. She thought that by getting the invitation, Paul would be showing her support, which somehow, in her mind, would relieve some of the media pressures on her. Digital Spy has an article about this subject.

Paul McCartney and Heather Mills "really are estranged"

Paul McCartney apparently doesn't want anything further to do with Heather Mills, although he is going to have to endure the divorce and custody fight for their two-year old daughter. The Sun has the latest scoop on the situation. Paul McCartney seems to be really disgusted by Heather Mills' "past", and he seems to take the nastiest allegations seriously, as do I.

I have attempted to order the Heather Mills book from a German bookseller

Several dealers in Germany had a book titled Die Freuden Der Liebe from 1989, so I ordered from the one who offered the book for the lowest price. Apart from the prurient interest, actually having the book should allow me to write more intelligently and with more relevance about it. I won't know until I hear from the bookseller if I actually will get the book.

The Heather Mills "Lover's Guide" book

The Sun has an article with more pictures about the Heather Mills "Lover's Guide". The book's German title is Die Freuden Der Liebe, from about 1988. I have wondered if some enterprising business person might purchase the rights and reprint the book for sale, while Heather Mills is a hot topic. There is a British book called The Lover's Guide. The author thought that the German book was purely pornographic, not a "sex guide". Are there any copies of the book on EBay? If not, there should be.

RobOnt.com has more Heather Mills pics

There are even more Heather Mills pics from when she was about 20 or so. RobOnt.com has them. These are not so discrete was what we have previously seen. Since Heather Mills is 38, she was born circa 1968. At least some of the pictures we have seen date from 1988, hence she was about 20 years old. Some of her supposed exploits were in her twenties, so they would probably have been in the early 1990's.

The Heather Mills video

The Sun has a short glamour video of Heather Mills,when she was much younger. She starts in a one piece bathing suit and them drops the top.

It may well be the case that the story about Heather Mills isn't true

I can imagine that the story about Heather Mills being a highly paid professional offering services to rich Arabs might not be true. Her problem right now is that it is so plausible, given what else we know about her early adulthood. She is in the non-Royal British royalty, having been married to Sir Paul McCartney, so I am skeptical about the so-called debunking of the story in the past. After supplying the lurid details, The Daily Mail is still on the story, with an article about Paul McCartney leaving Britain, to continue his business in music. He may also be leaving the country, because he is so embarrassed by the story about Heather. At least Heather will probably come out of the marriage well-off, as a co-worker tells me that there was no prenuptial agreement. She is also getting at least her 15 minutes of fame, despite the tarnish to her reputation.

My prediction is that "everything there is" about Heather Mills will "come out"

In the last day, the floodgates have apparently burst on the Heather Mills story. There are said to be more pornographic photographs (16 of them). There is a new UPI story about her. My prediction is that everything there is to be known will eventually be found and released. You may have to pay to see "the best stuff".

Heather Mills has apparently always wanted to be rich and famous, and that has been driving the course of her adult life. At some point, she gave up on the original track she was on, and was able to attract and marry Paul McCartney. Once she had done that, she pursued publicity by becoming involved with all the trendy leftist causes. She seems to have wanted to be another "Princess Diana". In any case, that got her a lot of face time on the television.

It remains to be seen why Paul McCartney is really divorcing her. Perhaps he found out about her previous activities, recently. I have trouble imagining that he had not done a background check, but he seems to have not done so. She also has been said to be uninvolved in his music career, and had a completely separate social life from him.

Bloglines continues to be a good place to search for information about Heather Mills. Google Blog Search is another good place, although it is less used. The regular Google search is less useful, but it is less frequently indexing the most recent information.

I highly recommend Bloglines for Heather Mills searching

I have found Bloglines to be a key resource for finding more "good stuff" about Heather Mills. Here is a commonly run search. This looks like it could be interesting:

New Porn Photos Of Heather Mills McCartney Emerge

3 hours ago on Entertainment - The Post Chronicle

Sir Paul McCartney has left Britain for his New York home as 16 additional racy photos of his estranged wife Heather Mills were released....

I cannot understand why Heather Mills thought that all this would stay hidden. I also am amazed if Paul McCartney had not had a background investigation done on her, as he could have saved himself a bunch of grief.

This guy has the hot Heather Mills pictures

Looking at referrals from bloglines, I found this page that has the hot pictures of Heather Mills.

This seems to be Heather, although I was not sure at first

Here is another risque picture of Heather Mills. I had to check multiple photographs to be sure that it really is, and that Google image search is not confused.

Even more Heather Mills photos

This is a large photo that shows "a lot of leg", and is very flattering to Heather Mills. This one shows cleavage.

More Heather Mills pictures

This is a good-sized picture, rather interesting, of Heather Mills. Good pictures of her seem hard to find. Here is another, although it is too small for my liking. This one shows a lot, but is black and white. This one is "pushing the limits" for work. This shows a lot, but from the side. Heather was apparently quite young in this picture (1980's).

More global warming stuff

Tech Central Station has had a running commentary on climate change by climatologists for some time. I have been following part of the commentary. Some relevant articles:

Inconvenient Truths Indeed

Emission Impossible

Rachael Goreson (Rachael Carson)

The Media Adapt

There are many more articles on the subject of global warming at TCS.

Jack Kelly has a piece about an article about An Inconvenient Truth

Jack Kelly has a good piece about an article from the (Canadian) National Post about Al Gore's move, An Inconvenient Truth. One quote from the Canadian Post article is particularly good:

I can assure Mr. Gore that no one from the South Pacific islands has fled to New Zealand because of rising seas. In fact, if Gore consults the data, he will see it shows sea level falling in some parts of the Pacific." -- Dr. Chris de Freitas, climate scientist, associate professor, University of Auckland, N.Z.

Read the whole thing. It's long, but it's delicious.

Carolina style barbecue

I saw a guy with a T-shirt promoting "Carolina BBQ", which I took to be a restaurant. My concept of what Carolina-style barbecue is that it is generally pork with a mustard-based barbecue sauce. My only experience with Carolina-style barbecue was when I was working in Charlotte in the last third of 1995 and living in "God's Country", Rock Hill, SC. Every day, we would walk to a nearby restaurant in downtown Charlotte and have lunch. During daylight hours, downtown Charlotte was a nice place to be, with the "Overstreet Mall" and many restaurants catering to people working mostly for banks. One day, we went to a barbecue restaurant, and that was my introduction to Carolina barbecue. I am reasonably sure that I got a beef plate, so I didn't get the full experience, although the sauce was still mustard-based.

Blogger/Google finally removed the word verification from Dreadnought Cruisers

When I was struggling with cross-browser compatibility with Anglo-Dutch Wars (which has a custom template developed by Violet in Russia) and Dreadnought Cruisers, hitting Dreadnought Cruisers' template from both IE6 and Firefox triggered something which made Blogger wonder if this was a spam blog. I was forced to do word verification from images every time I posted. I appealed, and later in the day, yesterday, it was removed. What a relief!

The "good" Heather Mills movies and pictures seem to have been suppressed

I did some serious searching with Google, Yahoo, and Ask.com, and came up empty on the "good stuff" for Heather Mills. I suspect that it has been suppressed. Our lefty buddies at Google are particularly susceptable to doing this sort of thing. The Daily Mail photo is about as good as there is.

The details about Heather Mills are pretty lurid

There is a great deal "out there" about Heather Mills (McCartney) and previous escapades. Perhaps, we should say "alleged" escapades, although they seem pretty credible. The Daily Mail has a piece with the good links.

Tom Maguire has a long piece about Karl Rove

Tom Maguire has a long blog post about Karl Rove, and his attorney's announcement that no charges will be made against him. He says:

Two quick guesses as to why there was no indictment:

(a) The Libby indictment looks very much like a failed attempt to force Libby to cooperate, presumably by testifying against Dick Cheney. Evidently, the prospect of a second failed attempt held little appeal for Fitzgerald.

(b) The Armitage angle made a Rove indictment problematic except as a package deal (as I discussed on May 19). Briefly, Richard Armitage, former deputy Secretary of State, had apparently leaked about Ms, Plame's CIA affiliation to Bob Woodward in mid-June and Bob Novak in early July. However, he seems to have only testified about the Woodward leak *after* the Libby indictment was handed down in Oct 2005, despite reminders and requests from Bob Woodward during 2004. That looks a lot like obstruction and perjury, yet Special Counsel Fitzgerald has shown no interest in pursuing him. Well, fine, but how can what Rove did (which amounted to forgetting about his talk with Matt Cooper of TIME) be considered indictable if Armitage's behavior was not?

Blogger apparently continues to have problems

Another possible source of negative effects on blog traffic is Blogger. Even this early (8:38am CDT), Blogger is marginal. I say marginal in the sense that upon clicking "create" for a new post, you may end up with a connection terminated page in the browser.

There has been a disturbance in the force...

Ben Charney has a month-old piece about strange things happening at Google. I am suspicious that it happened in a big way, starting June 1st. I can see signs from as far back as April 1st. Most website traffic is driven by Google. Nothing else comes close. For me, two static sites that link to my highest traffic blog supply the next largest portion. There is a lesser amount of traffic that is from direct links or by typing in the URL. All this is visible from a combination of Site Meter, IndexTools, and Google Analytics. I run with an open Site Meter, so that I can be a part of The Truth Laid Bear's Blogosphere Ecosystem, so everything is there for all to see. I am the only one who sees the others, but they are all consistent. It is just that some tools provide analytical information that is not available from the others. I also like to be able to have a check on Site Meter. What is happening is that apparently, Google is in flux, and many sites have reportedly "dropped off the map." Something similar was happening in early 2004. Because Google is so predominant, they drive fluctuations in website traffic. Starting June 1st, there has been a dramatic change. I track many statistics, including average traffic for the last week, the last 10 days, and by the month. I also keep average traffic by the day of the week. The present rate is stable, as the last week is about the same as the last 10 days. That comparison is usually adequate to point out shifts, along with the average for the current month, and a comparison with the previous months.

Some of my favorite lines from commercials

Don't ask me why, but I was just thinking about some of my favorite lines from commercials. The first came up when I was giving my 15 year old, black and white dog his plate (he is on a baked chicken and rice diet):

1. Try it, you'll like it
2. I can't believe I ate the whole thing
3. Where's the beef?

Canadian Copywriter has a list of ten great commercials that include these and things like the "that's a spicy meatball".

Sitemeter is sometimes a force in reducing blog and website traffic

Apparently, there are performance problems with Sitemeter, tonight, that are making accessing some of my blogs a problem (the ones that use a particular Sitemeter database server). I had not realized that could be an explanation, until I tried to check traffic, tonight, and saw what was happening, after noticing some falloff on several normally high-traffic blogs.

How many people out there are deranged?

Tom Elia, at The New Editor, has a blog post about an incident where a casual remark revealed that the speaker believed in Bush conspiracy theories:

We're both watching CNN; they have a clip of the bombing of Zarqawi's house on. The guy then says to me, "Pretty suspicious timing, huh?"

I say, "What?"

He says, "Notice how this happened a day after the gay marriage amendment failed in the Senate?"

Killing the economy to stop inflation is wrong-headed

The last thing that is needed is to "kill the economy" by raising interest rates further. Even talk of inflation, with the threat of higher interest rates is wrong. Yes, there is inflation, but much is due to the spike in commodity prices, partly caused by speculators. The only way that we will finally see higher wages is to allow some inflation. Otherwise, we are stuck where we are, which is not a good place to be.

As Dallas moves into an increasing drought situation, the Mavericks are a bright spot

The Dallas area has not seen any significant rain since early May. Water restrictions and fire bans are becoming commonplace. The one bright spot is the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA finals. The Mavericks have the best pro-sports ownership in the Dallas area with Mark Cuban. He made some billions at the tail end of the Dot-Com boom, and used some of that to buy the struggling Mavericks. A new coach, the amazing Avery Johnson has the best attitude of any coach I have seen. His approach to NBA basketball has turned the Mavericks around and has made them competitive at the top of the league. He emphasizes good defense over anything else. He beat the Miami Heat in the first game of finals. The Heat are coached by Pat Riley, who is a basketball god. The Mavericks obviously have a good team, and have top players, although not guys who have the public aclaim of Kobe Bryant or Shaquille O'Neal. Last night, Jason Terry stepped up and won the game, with some support from the bench. The Maverick's center, Dirk Nowitzki can be hot or cold, and he was cold last night, as was Shaquille O'Neal for the Heat.

Our leftist buddies apparently are delusional

Dr. Pat Santy, in that hotbed of irrationality, Ann Arbor, Michigan, has a blog post about the reaction of our leftist buddies to the killing of Zarqawi. LauraW at Ace of Spades HQ also has a post about the Left's reaction. (Inconvenitently, for the last few days, especially at lunch time, Blogger has been either totally inoperable, or at least intermittent).

A Fool's Task

The Federal Reserve Open Market Committee trying to kill inflation is a fool's task. Is the remote possibility of killing inflation by hiking rates while killing the economy, when inflation is driven by other factors than our economy, a reasonable thing? Here, our leftist buddies were whining about wages not rising with the economy, part of the explanation is that "the Fed" would view that as inflationary, and would try to stop it. Give me a break. Having lived through the 1970's and early 1980's, I would rather do that than kill off the economic rebound. Oil is driving much of the inflationary pressures, along with speculation in commodity markets and real estate. Hiking interest rates won't keep down the price of gold. It will only aggravate the problem. When interest rates were at their peak, so was the price of gold.

The Democrats make their situation more difficult

The Republicans should be wiped slick in November, and would be if they were not competing with the current crop of Democrats and their leftist-activist buddies. That phenomenon is what has part of the Conservative movement thinking that a third party might be successful. The problem is that where we currently stand, such an attempt would simply make the atrocious Democrats winners, despite them being so sorry. Kos and his buddies must be living in cocoons, as they miss the fact that outside of the cocoon, ordinary people, at least in Texas (not a valid comparison, to be sure), are more conservative than even moderate Democrats in the Northeast and West Coast. Even the mainstream Black community, where a high proportion of people are religious and oppose things like Gay rights, much less Gay marriage. They also are not fond of abortion or illegal drugs. I picture our lefty buddies and sitting around, smoking dope, and plotting how to lower the age of consent so that men can do bad things with boys, which is pretty incompatible with "ordinary" people.

The Republicans we have

Many of the Republicans who have been elected from the upper Midwest and the Northeast are not liked by Conservatives. You could lump John McCain and Linsey Graham in with them. The reality is that many senators and congressmen who can get elected are not much different from moderate Democrats, for a reason. Many are also long-term politicians who are interested in constituancy service, doing things for their buddies and supporters, and who care about how they are characterized by the Press. Hardcore Conservatives like Mark Tapscott and Michelle Malkin do not like them. I do not much like them, either. Their main saving grace is that they vote to organize the House and Senate for Republicans, not Democrats. They keep us from having Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House and Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader. If you decide to not vote in November, you might as well be voting for them. If you agree with them, then there is no harm done. If you don't, you are making a mistake, and we will all live to regret it.

Iraq

Even though our enemies in Iraq are close to being defeated militarily, they sense that our will to fight is close to being broken. Because of that, they are pushing their terror offensive with what resources remain to them. If they can break our national will, then they will have a big win. They have nothing to lose, at this point, if they fail, as they were already losing the military battle. They may be right about our "National Will", I am sorry to say. That is how North Vietnam won the war that they had lost, militarily.

A late comment about "United 93"

My wife tells me that our daughter saw United 93 last night with her boyfriend, shortly after midnight. She found the movie very upsetting, and she described herself as only able to cry. United 93 was one of the opening shots in this round of fighting terrorism. I was sitting in Brooklyn Center, MN in the morning of September 11, 2001, and we followed events over the Internet, from sites such as CNN. Flight 93 had a great deal of meaning for people in Minnesota, as Tom Burnett grew up in Bloomington. I heard that they had gotten into the cockpit but the plane was too low to pull it up in time. Any normal man would have joined in to make the attempt.

Spam blogs

I had never heard of the concept of a spam blog until yesterday, when I investigated why Blogger had turned on the obnoxious word verification on one of my blogs. Wikipedia has an entry on the subject, and they essentially say that a spam blog is simply created for having links to promote other sites. In any case, Blogger did not appreciate what I was doing when I was working on cross-browser compatibility on my two blogs where there is special formatting. I was working on the template from both Firefox and from IE6 at the same time. It is unclear why word verification was enabled, simply from that work. I asked about the word verification, and that was where I found out why it would be enabled and what to do ask for it to be removed.

The Ford Fusion reminds me of the Tempo

I saw a gold Ford Fusion parked near the restaurant, this morning, and my first thought was that it looked like a Tempo of the original body style. The Fusion is nicer, obviously, and very "2006", while the Tempo is very "1984". This is what the Fusion looks like, thanks to FamilyCar.com:

while this is a Tempo, thanks to Tim Holtan:

A WBAP poll about the 25 year old teacher

WBAP has a poll on their website. Today's poll is about the 25 year old teacher, a young woman, who had an affair with an 18-year old boy. The polls results were:

What is your reaction?
This is a crime, but that is way too harsh.  23%
She should be fired, but this is not a crime.  50%  
This is perfectly appropriate.  27%

Only 23% thought it was a crime, unlike the recently passed Texas law. I voted for the "She should be fired, but this is not a crime" option.

More Governent Run Amok: Lawrence, Kansas

Drudge linked to this story about a cell phone ban while driving in Lawrence, Kansas. This is just another case of government excess, solving a non-existent problem. I suspect that "researchers" are leftist, anti-techonology loonies.

I'm tired of big government types on the left and right running amok

I flipped out when I heard about this young woman who was in serious trouble for having an affair with an 18-year old boy. She is 25, but the boy is "of age". Her sin is being a teacher at the school he attends. Remember that Newt Gingrich's first marriage was to his high school geometry teacher. Would they want to put her in jail? I suspect that this sort of relationship between what are essentially peers was not uncommon in the past, and many got married, eventually. The big government types who like to demogogue issues such as this have jimmied the system to cause this particular miscarriage of justice (in my opinion). This is NOT like some 45-year old man taking liberties with a 9-year old girl. That is clearly a problem. This case is not. Remember that if the young woman had not been a teacher, what she did was not a crime. I suspect that is a clear case of over-legislation for political grandstanding.

Another case of running amok is what Alberto Gonzales wants from ISP's and Google. There are forces afoot that want to eliminate Internet anonymity and peak at everything you do. They can use the war against Islamic terrorists and the law enforcement efforts to combat child pornography as an excuse for the sort of excesses proposed. Part of the problem is that the Government wants to use anti-terrorist measures for ordinary law enforcement. It is similar in concept to the bad things that were done in the name of the war on drugs during the Clinton administration and before, such as knocking down doors, and then finding that they had the wrong house. I don't have a dog in this hunt, but I don't have to like what I see, either. You can see, though that my libertarian/anarchist tendancies are showing.

Our lefty buddies' hands are not clean on this issue. They are perfectly willing to commit atrocities such as Ruby Ridge, Waco, and grabbing Elian Gonzales and sending him back to Communist Cuba. As long as someone on the right is involved, watch out!

Animated GIFs continue to be bad

I hate Firefox, but I use it exclusively, unless a site demands that I use IE6. I must admit that Firefox 1.5.0.3 is much better than its predecessors. One feature of Firefox is that it will remember form data, such as passwords. Passwords are a special case beyond even the normal form data, as passwords are stored and can be viewed.

I use Sitemeter for monitoring web site traffic on all eight web sites and blogs. Sitemeter has usernames and passwords to login, and I always do that, even though I am running open to the world. I do that so that my web sites and blogs can be included in The Truth Laid Bear's Blogosphere Ecosystem. That requires open sitemeter access.

A feature of the password memory is that they can accidentally be changed, if you are in the middle of doing something and the browser form data is captured. A feature of animated GIFs is that they both hog computer resources by making the browser work quite hard to render them and they also can cause altered form data to be captured by Firefox. I keep a text file with my Sitemeter IDs and passwords just so that if Firefox alters the password to not work, I can reset it back to the correct value. That can easily happen where there are animated GIFs on the Sitemeter pages.

The workaround is to cover up the animated GIFs (often top and bottom), so that the browser is not repainting them. That gets rid of the accidental form data capture problem. I scroll the page so that the top animated GIF is hidden, and then move the page down so that the lower animated GIF is off the visible page. The problem is caused by the presence of animated GIFs on the page with HTML forms while using Firefox. I am stuck using the pages with the animated GIFs and I am not going to stop using Firefox, until something better comes along, so I will have to continue playing games.