It has come to my attention, reading Pharyngula, that the nation has a new reason to be upset about the current economic situation. Hundreds of thousands of people are going to lose their homes because of predatory lending practices by bankers out for a quick buck. President Bush's crack financial team has decided to give these unscrupulous bankers a hot cash injection to keep them in the market to lend while bailing out the people who probably don't need help, leaving the original hundreds of thousands of future former homeowners without the homes they probably shouldn't have been allowed to buy in the first place.

As a result, Barack Obama has chosen to cut his losses and get out of dodge before things start to really go south.

In the wake of an epic financial meltdown that threatens to derail the U.S. economy for years, Barack Obama announced he was ending his run for President of the United States, declaring to a stunned nation, “Man, this is bullshit.”

In addition to returning all his campaign donor's money, he will be providing discount coupons on qualifying flights to Canada.

 

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Back in 2007 when John McCain was running against other Republicans for the post of Presidential Nominee, he made some statements that now cause me to doubt his faith. Not his faith in God, of which I have no doubts, but his faith in his running mate.

I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn't a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn't a governor for a short period of time.For 20-some years, including leading the largest squadron in the United States Navy, I led. I didn't manage for profit. I led for patriotism.

This statement strongly implies that he should not trust Palin in any national security issue. And, in case you think I'm making this up, there's a video. (The Huffington Post has a slightly more in-depth article and, regardless of your opinion of their political views, it makes you think.)

I wonder what she would think about that if she were to follow this type of thing.

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I guess I've fallen behind on reading XKCD. That and I was in training most of the week the RNC was here. I wish I had read this comic earlier so that I could have had a little fun in St. Paul.

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Gizmodo has a good run-down of some possible issues the Obama campaign may have now that he's announced Biden as his running-mate. Since Gizmodo is chiefly interested in the technological impact of the next presidency, their concentration of coverage was obvious.

While Obama has looked like a very good candidate from a technology point-of-view, Biden is a Luddite. He's on-record as against BitTorrent, encryption, and net-neutrality and he's a good friend of the RIAA. Since the RIAA wants to make platform-shifting illegal under the DMCA, that raises some issues in the community.

While this isn't enough to turn my support against Obama, it definitely brings in a feeling of the lesser evil to the ticket. On the other hand, Obama has said that he wants to have multiple points-of-view in his oval office and cabinet. This could be a good way to temper any automatic pro-internet knee-jerks Obama might have. If it works, then good for him. I'd have a tendency to ignore his technology advice based on past experience.

I have a rant about net-neutrality, but that's another post.

Image from Gizmodo.com

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Last week at the Olympics additional evidence was recorded that the President is a bit pervy.

Not that there's anything wrong with a good spanking, but it helps if that's what the recipient is actually expecting rather than a short lesson on volleyball playing.

And everyone should remember what happened in Germany.

Again, there's nothing wrong with massages, but its less wrong when you're not walking to your seat at the G8 summit. On Camera.

The UK, at least, has an internet-based sense of humor about the whole thing. Click through to the Guardian for more LOL bush.

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Despite your opinion about whether George W. Bush is a good president or not, you have to admit that he's not a very good speaker. I admire the fact that he improvises a little with his speeches rather than reading everything off cards like we did in High School or like most people do with their PowerPoint presentations, but I think he should spend a little time practicing.

Despite your opinion about whether Steve Jobs is a good manager or not, you have to admit that he's a great speaker. He spends hours during the weeks before an event working on his talk. His keynotes always come across as natural, not forced, and he always gets exactly the reactions he's looking for.

I heard a quote from President Bush this morning on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me that I decided had to be my whiteboard quote of the day:

You're making the choices about whether you want to drive a little extra more or not drive extra more.

This is exactly an example of the little things that make the Liberal Elite feel that they deserve a president that is smarter than they are and that they don't have one. When I went searching on Google to find the quote, I ended up at the Whitehouse.gov press release site where, among other things, they have transcripts of speeches. I know there would be issues with revisionism if these speeches were edited, but there was the statement right in plain text. The other quote I heard was in there too. It's not as much a miss-statement as it is a duh-statement:

The feed stock for gasoline is oil. So when you hear "my gasoline prices are going up," you got to understand the main reason why is because oil prices are going up

I don't know if it makes me an elitist, but I think I deserve better.

 

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Turns out justice can be served by this administration on occasion.

Howe said she couldn't comment on the reasoning behind Pitt losing her $89,920 job, but said the information MnDOT sent "corroborated our investigation.''
- StarTribune

I'd still think you would want to check on reports that your job candidate was fired for failing to do her job and misappropriation of state funds before hiring her. But maybe that's just me.

 

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I know the current administration is bad about responding to crises, but they didn't have to show that their hiring was specifically tailored to create crisis response problems.

We know President Bush kept reading his picture book when the Trade Towers were hit. We know it took a week to get water to New Orleans. What will the TSA miss in the near future?

Pitt, 44, of Red Wing, was fired last November from her high-level job at MnDOT after she failed to return from an unauthorized, state-paid trip to Washington, D.C., during the I-35W bridge collapse crisis. The bridge collapsed Aug. 1 and Pitt didn't return to Minnesota until Aug. 11. Various state investigators later determined there was no work-related reason for her to be in Washington and that her trip there was unauthorized and at taxpayer expense.
-- StarTribune

 At least there's an investigation. That means someone thinks there's a problem.

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I just saw an article on Gizmodo pointing to a paper written by Adam Gershowitz about smartphones and reasonable search and seizure. Based on prior court decisions, all the items on your person are open to search if you are arrested for some miscellaneous crime. Now I need to figure out how to enable a PIN on my Palm.

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As some of you will remember from my earlier Katrina rants, I don't tollerate fools lightly. As I spend my second day evicted from my office because of the efforts proceeding adjacent to the 35W bridge, my irritation at some members of our government slowly increases.

A quick search on Flickr shows a great number of rusted steel bridges in the US. This is obviously not a scientific method of determining a replacement schedule; we've done that already. The BBC reports "Experts have estimated the cost of repairing all the nation's bridges at between $55bn (£27.5bn) and $188bn". (more from the BBC) I'd say that's not too bad considering the loss of life, property and moralle that could result from not repairing the nation's bridges. Heck, it's less than we've spet in Iraq by far. I'll throw $627 in to the pot happily.

I know I can't directly blame Tim Pawlenty, the Minnesota Taxpayers League, and the other republicans who pledged not to increase taxes during their terms. It's likely that the decision to replace this bridge in 2020 wasn't decided by the fact that we have no new money coming into the state budget. (In the interests of full disclosure, our state budget also pays my salary.) But I can't help notice that the bridge collapsed on their watch and that they didn't spend the money to fix up a "structurally deficient" part of our state.

On the other hand, maybe we're supposed to get a great sense of community from working together and overcoming adversity. Maybe the government wants the occasional tragedy to show that, if we work together, we can prevail.

I'll take a neighborhood bake sale, thanks.

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