The Captains Spyglass

You can do anything you set your mind to when ...

2012-01-25T00:40:00.000-07:00

Sanity - Minds are Like Parachutes

2012-01-13T23:02:00.000-07:00

Bravery, Every Man Dies, But Not Every Man Truly Lives

2012-01-08T18:03:00.000-07:00

Apathy - If we don't take care of the customer, maybe they'll stop bugging us

2012-01-05T16:34:00.000-07:00

ACQUISITION

2011-12-17T00:10:00.000-07:00

Because The Rest Of Us Think Your're An Idiot

2011-12-10T14:33:00.002-07:00

Politicians are like diapers, they need to be changed often and for the same reason

2011-12-09T20:34:00.003-07:00

London Financial Times re Mormons

2010-09-20T20:30:00.000-06:00

The rise of a new generation of Mormons

By James Crabtree

Published: July 9 2010 17:10 | Last updated: July 9 2010 17:10

Ben McAdams is neat, he’s helpful, he’s unfailingly polite. The 35-year-old is a family man, one of six siblings and a father of three. People warm quickly to him, and talk of his modesty and strong work ethic. He neither drinks nor smokes. And when we meet for breakfast in a sparsely decorated canteen in Salt Lake City, he is wearing a dark suit and a tie.

In other words, McAdams is what the world expects of Mormons.

In other ways, however, he is less typical. Until recently, he was a fast-rising star at Davis Polk, a prestigious New York law firm – a job he won straight from Columbia University’s law school. He then worked for both Bill and Hillary Clinton , before becoming, at 35, Utah’s youngest state senator. His is the most conservative state in the US, and yet he’s a moderate Democrat who won his district – and his reputation – by helping to broker a deal over gay rights. This, mind you, from a man whose church was pilloried for bank-rolling California’s successful 2009 “Proposition 8” referendum against gay marriage. Whose faith was a headache to Mitt Romney throughout Romney’s 2008 presidential run. And whose religion has been unable to shake a reputation for “plural marriage”, officially abandoned in 1890.

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (second row left) and his wife Ann Romney speak with Senate majority leader Harry Reid

Put simply, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or LDS for short, has an image problem; and yet, tellingly, McAdams doesn’t. And he’s part of a much bigger crowd: for the first time in its nearly two-century history – one that began, according to the founding myth, with an illiterate farmhand, Joseph Smith, being visited by an angel in western New York state – Mormons are moving from the periphery of modern American life to the very centre. From Romney’s failed tilt at the presidency to the tales of everyday polygamous families in HBO’s popular drama Big Love, Mormonism has become increasingly visible over the last generation. Where its most famous acolytes were once the Osmonds, leading lights now include politicians such as US Senate majority leader Harry Reid (a Democrat) and Romney (a Republican); Stephenie Meyer, author of the Twilight vampire saga; Glenn Beck, the popular conservative talk-show host; and self-help guru Stephen R. Covey, the author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Those are the household names. As important are the Mormons who play central roles at the companies and institutions that make America tick: Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University (one of the biggest in the US); David Neeleman, founder of JetBlue Airlines; J.W. (“Bill”) Marriott, head of Marriott International; and Jon Huntsman Jr, ambassador to China – to name a few. And while firm data are hard to come by, off-the-record interviews conducted for this article suggest that a generation of Mormons in their thirties and forties is accelerating the trend. For every Hill Cumorah Pageant – an annual set of performances starting this weekend in which a cast of 650 enact scenes from the Bible and Book of Mormon before massive audiences near Joseph Smith’s birthplace – there are much more mundane scenes being played out across the US: an investment banker in New York said, “I was at my final day of interviews at JPMorgan during my senior year in college. They took students from Princeton, Yale, Harvard, U-Penn and Brigham Young University [a Mormon university in Utah]. I was like, ‘what the hell? BYU?’ Then I slowly realised how many Mormons there are on Wall Street.”

‘Twilight’ author Stephenie Meyer

The CIA has its eye out for Mormons, who, people say jokingly, ace the mandatory drugs and lie-detector tests. Blue-chip corporations are recruiting, too. And at Harvard Business School, female students note ruefully that attractive male classmates are invariably associated with one of the “three Ms”: the military, the management consultancy McKinsey or Mormonism.

In that complaint lies the conundrum: much of the US still sees Mormons as weirdly strait-laced at best, cultish at worst. Yet elite institutions are embracing them. What does that fact say about the world’s youngest major religion – and about success in modern America?

. . .

Despite its public reputation, the Mormon church is the outstanding religious success story of the past hundred years. Approximately 1.7 per cent of the US population are LDS members, just slightly fewer than describe themselves as Jewish. Global membership rose from 250,000 in 1900 to one million in 1948, to 13 million today. The church is probably the world’s richest per capita religious institution, too, with assets estimated at between $25bn and $30bn. (That’s £16bn-£20bn; the Church of England’s portfolio in 2009 was £4.4bn.)

Religious sociologist Rodney Stark, at Baylor University in Texas, has predicted that the LDS will in the latter half of this century become the first new world religion since Islam – just one reason that Smith, who founded the church in the 1830s, is sometimes described as the “American Mohammed”. There is something special about Mormons, but what is it? The most fashionable theory regarding religious success at the moment comes from economics, drawing on approaches developed by the University of Chicago’s Gary Becker. Becker, a sociologist and economist, argues that American church pews are kept full – while those in Europe empty out – because the US is unencumbered by religious monopolies (such as the Church of England or the Catholic Church), leaving plenty of room for competition and choice. And indeed, one-quarter of US Mormons are first-generation converts. The US’s National Council of Churches data from 2008 rank the LDS fourth among church membership in the US, with 5.8 million members – a rise of 1.56 per cent from the previous year.

Yet growth alone doesn’t explain why some religions break into the boardroom and why some don’t. American Jews and Hindus stand out in socio-demographic surveys for their exceptional incomes and professional accomplishment, but this flows not from growing membership, rather from heavy investment in education and, in the case of Hindus, successive waves of immigration by highly trained elites such as doctors and engineers. Mormon success is different: unlike Hindu immigrants, the newest LDS members in America – converts – tend to be poorer and less educated than those with longer heritage in the church. And older generations aren’t exactly funding ever-greater achievement by younger ones: the PEW Forum on Religion in Public Life describes Mormonism as lying “roughly in the middle of other religious traditions on the socioeconomic spectrum”.

. . .

Actor Jon Heder, who starred in ‘Napoleon Dynamite’

Perhaps the most telling sign that Mormon success springs from different roots is this fact: the church’s most successful members, in terms of education and wealth, are also its most fervent. In most religions, piety and professional success mix badly. Devout Jews earn less, and tend to be less educated, than their less-orthodox brethren. American Christian evangelicals save and earn less than those from more moderate traditions.

Back at the canteen in Salt Lake City, McAdams reflects on why growing up Mormon seems to help with professional achievement in modern America. “I grew up here in Utah in a working-class family,” he tells me. “My dad had any number of jobs over the course of my childhood. Never one for too long, and with gaps in-between. He wasn’t the greatest Mormon either, drinking and smoking. So we pretty much lived pay cheque to pay cheque.” His was a childhood of limited horizons. It wasn’t the case that money and success begot more money and success. Rather, says McAdams, the thing that started to make a difference was being a missionary.

At age 19, all Mormon men are expected to spend two years on a mission. (Women serve too, but for 18 months, and at age 21.) It’s tough. They pay their own way, often saving from childhood. There is no discussion over destinations: McAdams served in São Paolo, despite learning French for four years at school. And the pre-mission training is gruelling: held at one of two dozen training centres around the world (one is in Preston, Lancashire), “you get up early and work 12 hours a day”.

At the MTC’s headquarters, in Provo, Utah, visitors are not allowed: my request for a tour gives pause to the church’s otherwise well-oiled public affairs department. It takes weeks for the OK to arrive. When I visit the campus in late February, I find a dozen redbrick buildings with views of snow-capped mountains. Inside one building, I walk down a long, empty corridor with pictures of Joseph Smith on the walls alongside framed snaps of missionaries. A young man in white robes stands, mid-baptism, waist deep in the sea; the photo is labelled “Suava, Fiji, 1999”. In another shot, two teenagers in blue overalls stand next to a bale of hay: “Seridal, Japan, ‘85”.

Here and at the other training centres, new arrivals are assigned a “companion”; they will study, eat, exercise and sleep side by side through the length of their stay. Life inside is regimented, and leaving the grounds is not allowed. Ralph Smith, the MTC’s president, says: “These young people are like most 19-year-olds, going to school and playing video games. And here they are plunked down into a situation here which is very structured, with significant demands on them to study, work hard and set goals for themselves.” He swivels round his monitor to show me a typical timetable, for a female missionary heading to Ukraine. Her day begins at 6.30am, with lights out at 10.30pm, sharp. She spends most of her time studying Ukrainian, with shorter periods for eating, exercising and religious study.

McAdams says the MTC opened his eyes, not so much to discipline as opportunity. “I found myself there alongside peers whose fathers were bishops in the church, or from wealthier families. It was an environment which wasn’t predetermined by who my parents were.”

. . .

Rodney Stark’s work shows that successful religions normally find ways to “socialise the young”, and he argues that “nothing builds more intense commitment than the act of being a missionary”. If missionary training is tough for young Mormons, the sink-or-swim experience that follows is often worse. I met with McAdams after our talk in the canteen, for a conversation outside Utah’s gold-embossed senate chamber. I wanted to discuss his time as a missionary in Brazil. “Everybody says going on a mission is the best two years of your life,” he says. “But that quote is not given by anyone in their first six months.” McAdams remembers that, despite his language training, “I still couldn’t really speak to anyone, and no one understood me. I remember dreaming in English and then waking and remembering I was in Brazil, where there was no one I could communicate with. It was incredibly frustrating.” During a missionary posting, all contact with family is banned, except for phone calls at Christmas and on Mother’s day. And reading anything other than Mormon scripture is frowned on. A senior investment banker and Mormon based in London, who was also a missionary in Brazil, recalls how alienating this could be: “I remember one of the very first lunches. All I wanted was a drink of water, and I was ashamed because I didn’t know how to say it. I literally started to break down.”

Armaund Mauss, professor emeritus of sociology and religious studies at Washington State University who specialises in the study of Mormons, has noted a “seeming paradox” in religion, in which some faiths inspire loyalty precisely because “people become committed to that for which they suffer or sacrifice”. And yet the suffering built more than loyalty; it helped McAdams and his peers develop skills eminently useful in modern-day business and government. As his fluency improved and he learnt to overcome the rejection that followed unsuccessful attempts to convince converts, McAdams embraced the experience.

Mormon and management guru Stephen Covey, who served his mission in the 1970s in London, says the time abroad changed his life. While he is careful to stress that the ideas in his books are not based on his Mormon faith but upon what he calls universal, timeless principles, he does remember particularly enjoying the chance to preach in public. “I would hold public meetings at the front of movie lines, on the top of buses, at Speakers’ Corner, or outside the Tower of London. Anywhere I could get an audience.” He returned to America to tell his father he no longer wanted to enter the family business. Instead he wanted to be a teacher, ultimately signing up to become a student at Harvard Business School, and then an academic. His mission, he says, “taught me to take responsibility early in life. It gave me my voice.”

. . .

At the time, Covey’s decision to go to Harvard Business School was unusual. But a former senior figure at the school told me that, over the past 20 years, there has been a significant rise in Mormon applicants. A more worn path for those missionaries with ambitions leads to Utah’s Brigham Young University, the Mormon equivalent of Harvard. The church subsidises entry, so LDS students pay only about $5,000 a year, one-tenth of what full-paying students at Ivy League colleges do. In some ways, BYU looks every inch an elite American institution. In others it is starkly different: the day I visit, the campus is at a standstill for a sermon from a church elder. I have come to meet Kim Smith and Jim Engebretsen, two former executives at Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers and now both professors at BYU’s Marriott School of Business. Smith says Mormons were rare on Wall Street when he first got a job in the early 1980s. But, as he puts it, “banks like nothing more than finding an undervalued stock. And Mormon graduates were just that: a stock which was cheaper to buy, and which over-performed.”

Engebretsen uses a different analogy: Michael Lewis’s baseball book, Moneyball. “Remember how Lewis talks about how the Oakland A’s would find a second-rounder, and bring him in the first round instead? He’d perform way better. The same is true for someone at BYU. If they think this is their chance to play in the big leagues, they are going to work really, really hard.”

They are also going to get more support, from family and community. I’d seen piles of free wedding magazines near the dining hall, and no wonder: about half of BYU students are married when they graduate. A professor who asked not to be named says: “Being married, perhaps already having a family, makes you more serious about life. It’s OK to tell your parents your grades aren’t good, but try explaining it to your spouse.”

Smith argues that church membership smooths out other hassles, too. During his time at Goldman Sachs, he was asked to move to Tokyo, “a completely alien culture”. But, he says, “I was made to feel part of the LDS community within days. Because I felt comfortable, and my family felt comfortable, and I was more effective at work.” McAdams tells a similar story, of first arriving in New York for graduate school: “My wife and I packed up a van and drove our stuff across country. When we showed up at our place, there were 15 people there to help us unload. We’d never met any of them before, but they moved us in and invited us over for dinner. We had an instant social network.” He found that this same church network also provided helpful connections, both within his own law firm and to other people in the same industry.

The networking advantage is particularly important in understanding Mormonism because the church has no professional clergy. Mormon boys enter the priesthood at age 12, taking the title of deacon. At 14 they become a “teacher”, then a full priest at 16. Each title, and each progression, comes with new responsibilities, and at each stage a smaller number become leaders among their own age-group. The system isn’t perfect. Not everyone is comfortable with the responsibility the church demands. And most senior leaders are men; the church seems to implicitly rely on a traditional, single-earner family structure to help its male leaders balance jobs, church responsibilities and families. But the result remains that most of the church’s senior leadership positions are filled by professionally successful Mormons taking time off from their careers. Perhaps the most celebrated example is Kim Clarke, who quit as dean of Harvard Business School in 2005 to become head of BYU’s campus in Idaho. His colleagues were baffled: “For them, it was like going into the wilderness,” he tells me. Later he hit upon a phrase to explain his choice: “Try to imagine you got a phone call from Moses.”

. . .

Ben McAdams believes that going on a two-year Mormon mission, at age 19, helped prepare him for professional life

In the meantime, the calls are coming from headhunters. Scott Nycum, a managing director at JPMorgan, confirmed that BYU is now seen as a top source of graduate talent: “These students are bright, mature, well-educated, share our emphasis on adhering to highest standards of integrity, have impressive work ethic and are very team-oriented,” he says. “They fit extremely well with our firm’s corporate culture.”

Focus group research conducted with corporate recruiters by BYU’s Marriott School of Business found that its MBA students, while not noted as flashy leaders, were known in particular for their “outstanding values, principles, and work ethic”. A Goldman Sachs executive, meanwhile, says the bank is hiring LDS graduates in increasing numbers, also impressed by their work ethic. The same was true, I heard anecdotally, at top-tier law firms in the US. And the CIA is reported to snap up LDS graduates for, if nothing else, their language skills.

Will any of this change perceptions of the Mormons? As the late writer and journalist Molly Ivins wrote, anti-Mormon bigotry is an “old dog that still hunts”. But more up-to-the minute cultural analysis suggests otherwise: an episode of South Park cheers the way a newly arrived LDS family wins over the local community with pleasantries and acts of kindness.

Ben McAdams thinks that while outright discrimination is rare, many successful Mormons keep their heads down at work. Still, he says, “I didn’t stand out like a sore thumb in my New York law firm until someone offered me a drink and I said ‘no thanks’.”

The majority of LDS members are now abroad. Building a professional elite in foreign cultures may prove harder than winning success in all-American environments like Wall Street. But, interestingly, LDS is especially fast-growing in countries with dynamic economies, particularly Brazil.

In a corridor of the LDS Missionary Training Centre there’s a plaque listing the dozens of languages taught to missionaries who study there – including Cebuano, Hmong and Tagalog. Next to it is a world map showing the countries in which the church operates, highlighted in bright colours. Only China and a handful of Middle-Eastern states remain grey. The last century saw a Mormon conquest in America. During our lifetimes, we may see the rest of the world follow, too.

James Crabtree is the FT’s comment editor

Northrop Grumman X-47B

2009-11-21T20:32:00.000-07:00

USU ARL Student Receives National Honor

2009-10-29T22:23:00.001-06:00

Utah State Today - Utah State University

Mum's the Word for NASA's Secret Space Plane X-37B

2009-10-22T19:33:00.003-06:00

You would think that an unpiloted space plane built to rocket spaceward from Florida atop an Atlas booster, circle the planet for an extended time, then land on autopilot on a California runway would be big news. But for the U.S. Air Force X-37B project — seemingly, mum's the word.

There is an air of vagueness regarding next year's Atlas Evolved Expendable launch of the unpiloted, reusable military space plane.

Granite Park teacher honored by National Science Teachers

2009-10-17T09:19:00.001-06:00

By Faroe Robinson

Deseret News

Published: Friday, Oct. 16, 2009 6:04 p.m. MDT

A Salt Lake City middle school teacher has been chosen by the National Science Teachers Association to participate in a yearlong professional development program.

Mark Towner is only in his second year teaching biology at Granite Park Middle School in Salt Lake City. He was a research biologist but then decided to go into teaching to give back to the community.

Towner, along with 184 other teachers nationwide, will learn how to promote quality science teaching, improve teacher content knowledge, enhance teacher confidence and promote classroom excellence. He will also work with a veteran teacher, participate in Web seminars and attend the NSTA National Conference in Philadelphia.

Towner feels he was selected because of the life experiences he can incorporate into teaching.

"This award is very important to Granite Park Junior High, the Granite School District and the state of Utah because it shows that professionals who have developed decades of life experience can pass that on to a younger generation," Towner said. "Instead of talking about science from a textbook, I have lived the science in the freezing cold of Alaska," he added.

Towner hopes to plug into a network of "crazy scientists" and be involved in a clearinghouse of ideas and experiments to improve his teaching.

The 2009 fellows were selected on the basis of several criteria including science background and interest in improving as a science educator.

Towner hopes the program will help him improve the lives of his students. "I am teaching eighth-grade science to Hispanic, African and Iraqi kids that will likely never have the opportunities that I have already lived," Towner said.

He added, "I have come to love these kids, and I just want to expose them to as many experiences as possible before the realities of their lives will likely take over."

e-mail: frobinson@desnews.com

Mark E. Towner Named New Varsity Head Coach for Kearns High School, Lady Cougers Fastpitch Softball

2009-10-16T17:27:00.001-06:00

Go Lady Cougers

Middle school teacher receives award

2009-09-27T20:28:00.000-06:00

Middle school teacher receives award

by JM Martin

3 days ago | 11 views | 0 | 0 | |

Granite Park Junior High School’s Mark Towner was one of 185 science teachers across the country to be named Science Teacher Fellow the National Science Teacher Association.

A science teacher working in a Title I school in South Salt Lake City has been chosen to receive a national award.

Mark E. Towner, a biology teacher at Granite Park Junior High School, was one of 185 science teachers selected nationwide to be a Science Teacher Fellow by the National Science Teacher Association for the 2009-2010 school year. This year will be Towner’s second teaching at the school.

“I love working with kids [and] I love science,” Towner said.

Before becoming a teacher, Towner was a research biologist. He was also founder and CEO of his own company before retiring from the private sector in 2003.

Towner said he decided to pursue teaching because he “wanted to give back to the community.” He also wanted to help fill the ongoing shortage of math and science teachers in the public schools.

Currently, Towner is working as a biology teacher while pursuing a master’s degree in education. Towner is pursuing higher education while working as part of the Alternative Route to Teacher Licensure Program through the state of Utah, a program designed to attract qualified individuals to teach in their field of expertise while completing licensure requirements.

Towner said he learned about the opportunity for the NSTA Science Fellow award through Todd Campbell, Ph.D., an assistant science professor teaching one of the classes Towner’s taking at Utah State University.

According to the website, the NSTA was “founded in 1944 and headquartered in Arlington, Va. [It] is the largest organization in the world committed to promoting excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all. NSTA's current membership of 60,000 includes science teachers, science supervisors, administrators, scientists, business and industry representatives and others involved in and committed to science education.”

Benefits of the award include the opportunity to participate in professional development, mentoring programs, an invitation to the NSTA national conference and access to online pedagogy programs to help develop classroom skills and science lesson plans.

Towner said he hopes that his time as an NSTA Science Teacher fellow will provide him the opportunity to better serve the students of Granite Park Jr., many of whom are economically disadvantaged.

Utah Science Teacher Mark E. Towner Selected For Fellowship Program in Prestigious NSTA New Science Teacher Academy

2009-09-24T00:47:00.003-06:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contacts:
Kate Meyer, NSTA
(703) 312-9211
kmeyer@nsta.org

SALT LAKE CITY — September 21, 2009 — The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the largest professional organization in the world promoting excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning, in partnership with the Amgen Foundation; Agilent Technologies Foundation; Astellas Pharma US, Inc. (“Astellas”); and Bayer Corporation, today announced that Mark Towner, a science teacher at Granite Park Middle School in Salt Lake City, Utah, was chosen from hundreds of applications nationwide to participate as an Amgen-NSTA Fellow in the 2009 NSTA New Science Teacher Academy. The only teacher selected from Utah, Towner will participate with 184 other science teachers from across the country in a year-long professional development program designed to help promote quality science teaching, enhance teacher confidence and classroom excellence and improve teacher content knowledge.

“At NSTA, we believe it is important to help educators develop their skills as teachers so that they can not only bolster student achievement, but better inspire passion for science in their students,” said Dr. Francis Eberle, executive director, NSTA. “We congratulate this year’s group of Fellows and are grateful for their commitment to science education and to their students.”

The 2009 Fellows were selected on the basis of several criteria, including showing evidence of a solid science background and displaying a strong interest in growing as a professional science educator. Each Fellow will receive a comprehensive NSTA membership package, online mentoring with trained mentors who teach in the same discipline, and the opportunity to participate in a variety of web-based professional development activities, including web seminars. In addition, each Fellow will receive financial support to attend and participate in NSTA’s 2010 National Conference on Science Education in Philadelphia.

Agilent Technologies Foundation and Bayer Corporation will each fund the participation of 10 science teachers as Agilent Foundation-NSTA Fellows and Bayer-NSTA Fellows, respectively. Astellas will support 15 science teachers from the Chicago area as Astellas-NSTA Fellows. The remaining 150 science teachers will be supported by the Amgen Foundation and named Amgen-NSTA Fellows.

Launched during the spring of 2007, the NSTA New Science Teacher Academy, co-founded by the Amgen Foundation, was established to help reduce the high attrition rate in the science teaching profession by providing professional development and mentoring support to early-career science teachers.

For a list of the 2009 Fellows or to learn more about the NSTA New Science Teacher Academy, please visit www.nsta.org/academy.

If they made a Movie, Nobody would believe it

2009-08-29T11:04:00.001-06:00

Andrea, My Oldest Daughter is speaking....

The miracles of adoption never ceases to amaze me. When we first got Jiji's file we asked the orphanage for updated photos of Jiji. They sent us the photo below with Jiji standing next to this darling little girl.

We had made friends with a couple from Holland who had a baby that looked similar and I wrote them and told them that I think our daughters might have been cribmates. They were unsure as they just had a photo of their baby and had not picked her up yet, but there was a possibility. While we were in China I got an email from a mom that said she just about fell out of her chair when reading our blog and saw a photo of their daughter.

I visited her blog and sure enough the mystery baby in the photo was now named Tess and home with her family in ......ready for this......Rock Hill South Carolina only 45 minutes away from us!!!

From all the places in the world these two could have been sent to be sent to the same area is no less than a complete miracle. Ready for the next amazing part ..... Tess's name is Tess Hyde!! So we have Lizzie Heid and Tess Hyde, cribmates in Xiushan China, now living 45 minutes away from each other.

We had Tess's family over for dinner tonight and had a wonderful time. They brought photos of Tess and Jiji taken on the same day as the photo that I have in the same outfits. Precious. They are a great family and we quickly became good friends. Tess's mom visits her dad every other week who lives about 10 minutes from us, so we will have lots of play dates to keep these girls close as they grow up. As they grow older it will become such an important friendship. Very much like sisters.

Here is a photo of them in the crib at the orphanage...

and here is one of them playing tonight....

Next I need to find a mom who's daughter was called Tintin at the orphanage. Anyone? She was there when we picked up Jiji and was going to be picked up by her parents soon. The nanny told us that Tintin and Jiji played together a lot.

I was going to close this blog soon as our China story is over but I changed my mind. I'm going to continue to add to it every now and then with updates on Jiji and talk about special needs children in China that are looking for their families.

I'm still trying to figure out how to post the video I made so hopefully that will come soon.

Sarah Barracuda to resign as Alaska Governor, Watch for a National TV Deal on Fox

2009-07-03T16:52:00.001-06:00

Palin resigning as Alaska governor (AP)

AP - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin surprised supporters Friday and announced she is resigning from office at the end of the month without explaining why she plans to step down — throwing into question whether she would seek a run for the White House in 2012.

White Firefighters could Backdraft Sotomayor Appointment

2009-06-29T11:09:00.001-06:00

By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer Mark Sherman, Associated Press Writer – 8 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

The ruling could alter employment practices nationwide and make it harder to prove discrimination when there is no evidence it was intentional.

New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.

The ruling could give Sotomayor's critics fresh ammunition two weeks before her Senate confirmation hearing. Conservatives say it shows she is a judicial activist who lets her own feelings color her decisions. On the other hand, liberal allies say her stance in the case demonstrates her restraint and unwillingness to go beyond established precedents.

Better Hope Mitt runs because if he doesn’t, an ominous scenario presents itself:

2009-06-25T08:55:00.003-06:00

John Kerry on Sanford: Too bad Palin didn’t go missing too

posted at 6:38 pm on June 24, 2009 by Allahpundit
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Don’t be too hard on Waffles. His humor’s always been laced with nastiness, which is why he periodically finds himself in clusterfarks over “botched jokes.” It’s not that he hates Palin. He’s just a jerk.

The Bay State senator was telling a group of business and civic leaders in town at his invitation about the “bizarre’’ tale of how South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford had “disappeared for four days’’ and claimed to be hiking along the Appalachian Trail, but no one was really certain of his whereabouts.

“Too bad,’’ Kerry said, “if a governor had to go missing it couldn’t have been the governor of Alaska. You know, Sarah Palin.’’

The Democratic-centric crowd laughed.

He said this before Sanford’s presser so it’s not an adultery dig at her, just an “I wish you were lost and left for dead somewhere” dig. Which, believe it or not, isn’t the nastiest Palin attack circulating in the ’sphere today.

Pew’s got a new poll out today showing Romney’s net favorable rating at +12, compared to just +1 for Sarahcuda. With Sanford and Huntsman now out of the game, Jindal almost certainly biding his time until 2016, and Palin possibly too polarizing to win against The One, we’d all better hope Mitt runs. Because if he doesn’t, an ominous scenario presents itself:

Yo Ho Yo Ho - Oh Crap!

2009-05-05T23:12:00.000-06:00

FNC

U.S. Navy unveils new high-tech ship it says can chase down pirates off the coast of Somalia faster and more aggressively than previous vessels. | PHOTOS | VIDEO
• Pentagon to Create Force for Digital Warfare

The Obama Taxman Cometh

2009-03-18T01:16:00.001-06:00

Let me tell you how it will be;
There's one for you, nineteen for me.
'Cause I�m the taxman,
Yeah, I�m the taxman.

Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don't take it all.
'Cause I�m the taxman,
Yeah, I�m the taxman.

(if you drive a car, car;) - I�ll tax the street;
(if you try to sit, sit;) - I�ll tax your seat;
(if you get too cold, cold;) - I�ll tax the heat;
(if you take a walk, walk;) - I'll tax your feet.

Taxman!

'Cause I�m the taxman,
Yeah, I�m the taxman.

Don't ask me what I want it for, (ah-ah, mister Wilson)
If you don't want to pay some more. (ah-ah, mister heath)
'Cause I�m the taxman,
Yeah, I�m the taxman.

Now my advice for those who die, (taxman)
Declare the pennies on your eyes. (taxman)
'Cause I�m the taxman,
Yeah, I�m the taxman.

And you're working for no one but me.

Taxman!

Mormon TV: Harvard video goes viral

2009-03-09T13:40:00.000-06:00

Mormonism

Email|Link|Comments (48) Posted by Michael Paulson March 6, 2009 02:34 PM

Day of Faith: Personal Quests for a Purpose - 3. Rachel Esplin from Harvard Hillel on Vimeo

A 20-year-old Harvard junior from Idaho has captured the attention of Mormondom with the slow viral spread of a six-month-old video (above) in which she explains her faith to journalist Sally Quinn.

The bloggernacle, as Mormon wags call the extensive network of Mormon bloggers, is abuzz over Rachel Esplin's poised handling of a series of questions about whether she wears sacred undergarments, how she responds to allegations that Mormonism is a cult, how she views the role of women in her church, and what her relationship is with Jesus. "For more than 20 minutes, Rachel's delivery was as unstoppable as the incoming tide,'' gushed MormonTimes. "What is fascinating about this video is the aplomb with which Rachel answers the questions,'' writes Krista at Glass Half Full. "I feel very inadequate now!" blogged Chels of the McGees. And Mark Towner, who blogs as The Captains Spyglass, called the video, "Something every Latter Day Saint Member needs to watch and contemplate."

The video is not exactly a clip from the Colbert Report or the Daily Show -- it's 21 minutes long, without a joke in sight. But the video appears to have captured the attention of Mormons, who tend to be highly attentive to and concerned about how they are perceived in the broader culture. The fascination seems to be in part because of Esplin's youth, and in part because she is at Harvard, which, of course, remains a symbol of the mainstream elite.

Esplin, from Blackfoot, Idaho, is the president of the Harvard Latter-day Saint Student Association. She is also an East Asian Studies major who is planning to get married this summer and expects to graduate in December; she hopes eventually to go to law school. Earlier today I called her to ask her about the video, which is posted on the web site of Harvard Hillel, where the panel on which Esplin appeared took place. Here's a partial transcript of our conversation:

Q: What has happened since the video was posted in September?
A: It's been pretty crazy. I didn't even send it to my family members, but my mom found it by Googling my name, and it just started getting e-mailed around. Some BYU professors started showing it and forwarding it, and then a lot of people told me they watched it in seminary or at family home evening.

Q: Why do you think people are so interested in this particular video?
A: I think people latched onto the fact that I'm 20, and haven't been on mission, and haven't been to the temple yet. And I think Harvard is part of it -- there's a significant LDS presence here, with 50 undergrads, and 50 or 60 at the law school, and some at the business school -- and Mormons have a history at Harvard back to the late 1800s, and a couple of our apostles went to Harvard, so in addition to Harvard being Harvard in the world at large, in the LDS community it has a particular significance.

Q: How has this impacted you?
A: It has been a really strange feeling. I know interfaith discussions like this are happening all over, so it's strange that mine has become so popular, and it's something it didn't necessarily merit. But it's helped me realize that doing things like this, and finding ways to encourage others to do so, is significant. Last spring I organized a "Meet the Mormons" panel at Harvard, and it was a good event, and now I'm working with the LDS Association president at MIT to help other schools do similar events.

Q: What's the goal?
A: There are a few different goals. We believe it's just a good way to show our religion, to show we love everyone, and that we're interested in learning about other people and hope others will learn about us. And this was born out of a time when our religion was in the news a lot, with Mitt Romney and other factors -- a lot is written about us in the media, and it's not all true, so there's a desire to clarify misconceptions. And then, I guess I believe in the idea that one of the best ways to help build our church is to establish friends who are not in the church.

A day of Faith

2009-03-01T14:25:00.001-07:00

Something every Latter Day Saint Member needs to watch and contemplate.

Day of Faith: Personal Quests for a Purpose - 3. Rachel Esplin from Harvard Hillel on Vimeo.

Report demonstrates new investments in education and science timely

2009-02-25T22:44:00.001-07:00

Written by Craig A. on February 25th, 2009

The answers to our problems don’t lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth.

President Barack Obama, February 25, 2009

The New York Times has a story on a new report showing the United States has slipped over the past decade when it comes to innovation. The report, by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, concludes the United States ranks sixth among 40 nations based on factors such as venture capital investment, scientific researchers, spending on research and educational achievement.

While the United States remains sixth overall, it ranked dead last in terms of improvement in its score from 1999 - the present. It is troubling indicators like this President Obama was drawing our attention to in last night’s speech when he stated "Right now, three-quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school diploma. An yet, just over half of our citizens have that level of education."

In light of today’s Information and Technology and Innovation Foundation report, the President’s call for a new commitment to education, research and development, and a new energy efficient economy couldn’t have been more timely. It is indeed "time for America to lead again" and I am confident we will.

Can this be the answer? WOW

2009-02-17T19:09:00.003-07:00

If this really works, This could end our dependence on Oil to fuel our cars.

The Captain Having Fun

2009-02-17T18:39:00.006-07:00

Stirba today announced that the Supreme Court's unanimous decision today in Pearson v. Callahan

2009-02-09T21:48:00.002-07:00

1/21/09 - Stirba today announced that the Supreme Court's unanimous decision today in Pearson v. Callahan, argued to the Supreme Court by Peter Stirba, is likely to have sweeping implications in favor of government officials in the area of qualified immunity in defense of federal civil rights actions.

Top 5 Internet Defamation Law Blogs

2009-02-03T00:24:00.002-07:00

Posted on December 2, 2008 by Adrianos Facchetti

Even though things have been going really well here at the California Defamation Law Blog, I even realize that there are plenty of other good blogs about internet defamation out there, and, only a limited number of people interested in learning about defamation. This has been a worry of mine for some time now.

But no more. Today I made a decision to recommend my favorite blogs about online defamation even if I lose a few readers. Bear in mind that some of the following blogs discuss other topics in addition to internet defamation.

Here we go, in no particular order.

1. Technology & Marketing Law Blog - This blog is written by Eric Goldman, an associate professor at Santa Clara University School of Law. This is the first place I go if I want to know the latest on defamation cases related to RipoffReport.com. I also like Eric's coverage of section 230 cases.

2. Citizen Media Law Project - Jointly affiliated with Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Center for Citizen Media, CMLP's mission is to educate others about online speech. CMLP has a great database called "Legal Threats," which has detailed descriptions of current defamation cases, often including the complaint. This is definitely a good site for the pro-defendant point of view.

3. Dozier Internet Law On Defamation - John Dozier is an experienced Internet lawyer and a definite authority regarding defamation law.

4. Internet Defamation Law Blog - The name says it all. I read this blog to stay current on section 230 decisions.

5. Internet Cases - Written by Evan Brown, an Internet lawyer in Chicago, this blog clearly covers much more than defamation. But what's great about it is that Evan writes detailed posts with insightful commentary. His commentary on the Roommates decision was particularly good.

If you liked this post, please bookmark it in del.icio.us. Thanks!

Tags: Blog Protection 101

Internet Defamation Gets Noticed

2009-02-02T18:18:00.004-07:00

Posted on January 13, 2009 by Adrianos Facchetti

Too many bloggers are unaware of the dangers they face when they write a new post or comment on another blog. For reasons I've discussed before, bloggers mistakenly believe that all speech is protected by the First Amendment, when in fact several forms of speech are not, including defamation as an example.

This is why I'm glad that Seth Godin posted "Don't Get Sued," which sheds light on this important problem. Godin writes: "Before you write something negative about another person, you need to realize that the casual nature of your post doesn't protect you from a lawsuit." Well-said. I would add that you should especially be careful when making negative remarks about a business because businesses are more likely to sue you (or least threaten legal action) to protect their reputation.

Tags: Blog Protection 101

Defamation and False Light here in Utah

2009-01-31T14:29:00.001-07:00

In law, defamation (also called calumny, libel, slander, and vilification) is the communication of a statement that makes a false claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government or nation a negative image. Slander refers to a malicious, false and defamatory spoken statement or report, while libel refers to any other form of communication such as written words or images. Most jurisdictions allow legal actions, civil and/or criminal, to deter various kinds of defamation and retaliate against groundless criticism. Related to defamation is public disclosure of private facts, which arises where one person reveals information that is not of public concern, and the release of which would offend a reasonable person. Or an untruthful oath.^[1] "Unlike [with] libel, truth is not a defense for invasion of privacy."^[2]

False light laws are "intended primarily to protect the plaintiff's mental or emotional well-being."^[3] If a publication of information is false, then a tort of defamation might have occurred. If that communication is not technically false but is still misleading, then a tort of false light might have occurred.^[3]

AP IMPACT: Lobbyists skirt Obama's earmark ban

2009-01-25T17:17:00.001-07:00

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, Associated Press Writer Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 9 mins ago

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's ban on earmarks in the $825 billion economic stimulus bill doesn't mean interest groups, lobbyists and lawmakers won't be able to funnel money to pet projects.

They're just working around it — and perhaps inadvertently making the process more secretive.

The projects run the gamut: a Metrolink station that needs building in Placentia, Calif.; a stretch of beach in Sandy Hook, N.J., that could really use some more sand; a water park in Miami.

There are thousands of projects like those that once would have been gotten money upfront but now are left to scramble for dollars at the back end of the process as "ready to go" jobs eligible for the stimulus plan.

The result, as The Associated Press learned in interviews with more than a dozen lawmakers, lobbyists and state and local officials, is a shadowy lobbying effort that may make it difficult to discern how hundreds of billions in federal money will be parceled out.

"'No earmarks' isn't a game-ender," said Peter Buffa, former mayor of Costa Mesa, Calif. "It just means there's a different way of going about making sure the funding is there."

It won't be in legislative language that overtly sets aside money for them. That's the infamous practice known as earmarking, which Obama and Democratic congressional leaders have agreed to nix for the massive stimulus package, expected to come up for a House vote this week.

Instead, the money will be doled out according to arcane formulas spelled out in the bill and in some cases based on the decisions of Obama administration officials, governors and state and local agencies that will choose the projects.

"Somebody's going to earmark it somewhere," said Howard Marlowe, a consultant for a coalition working to preserve beaches.

Lobbyists are hard at work figuring out ways to grab a share of the money for their clients, but the new rules mean they're doing so indirectly — and sometimes in ways that are impossible to track.

Congressional earmarks have had a bad name since the 2004 scandal that sent superlobbyist Jack Abramoff to prison and earned the congressional spending committees a new nickname: "The Favor Factory."

Obama, who campaigned promising a more transparent and accountable government, is advocating a system that will eventually let the public track exactly where stimulus money goes through an Internet-powered search engine. In addition, Democratic lawmakers have devised an elaborate oversight system, including a new board to review how the money is spent.

But none of that will happen until after the bill becomes law. Even critics of the earmarks system acknowledge that specifying projects upfront offers some measure of transparency.

"We hate earmarks, but at least it's a way of tracking where influence is had," said Keith Ashdown of the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. "There is a challenge now that projects will be added behind closed doors without a paper trail."

Indeed, some lawmakers hearing from local groups say they're doing their own lobbying of governors and state and local officials who could have say-so over the funds.

"I've talked to my governor and suggested some things I think are important in our area," said Republican Rep. C.W. Bill Young, who represents St. Petersburg, Fla. "He knows what the needs are."

Democratic Rep. Ed Pastor of Arizona suggested it's not entirely accurate to say there will be no earmarks in the measure. "There are and there aren't," Pastor said. "A lot of it depends on what the formula looks like."

For instance, the House measure, which includes $358 billion for road, water and energy programs among others, gives priority to transportation projects in high-unemployment areas that could be begun and completed quickly and that state and metropolitan transportation authorities have included in their long-term plans.

In California, Buffa, now board chairman of the Orange County Transportation Authority, said he's changed his strategy from asking for specific projects to pleading for more favorable general guidelines, including more money for infrastructure projects overall and a formula that lets cities — not states — decide how to spend it.

His organization has enlisted Potomac Partners, a large firm that specializes in lobbying for project spending, to help.

In most cases, lawmakers know exactly which projects in their districts can benefit from the money, even though the legislation won't spell them out. State and local officials have released lists of projects that could start quickly and be completed within a few years.

In Orange County, they include freeway improvements and the Placentia Metrolink station. The American Shore and Beach Preservation Association, which is pushing for more water projects to be funded, wants repair and restoration of beaches from Sandy Hook, N.J., to Newport Beach, Calif.

Members of Congress are privately outlining their priorities, too.

"Everybody's making their list and checking it twice," said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the minority leader. "You are inevitably going to have a lot of projects that are not going to pass the smell test."

Some groups are careful not to get too specific, fearing that public scrutiny could draw unwelcome attention to projects easily caricatured as special-interest goodies, such as a 2007 earmark for spinach growers that found its way into an Iraq war spending bill or the now-infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska.

The United States Conference of Mayors released a 300-plus-page list of some $150 billion in "ready-to-go" projects that quickly became fodder for criticism. It included money for the Miami water park, which McConnell has ridiculed publicly, and a skate park in Portland, Maine.

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials was more guarded about its list of 5,000 projects totaling $64 billion. No specific projects were mentioned — just the number in each state and an overall dollar amount — making it impossible for lawmakers, advocacy groups or members of the public to criticize any one item.

Peter J. "Jack" Basso, an association executive, said it's up to states to decide what goes on their "ready-to-go" wish lists, but that the projects must meet rigorous tests including clearing environmental reviews.

"We really rely on them to pick things that, frankly, are not bridges to nowhere," Basso said.

2009-01-11T13:48:00.001-07:00

The Minnesota Recount Folly: We've Been Down That Road

2008-12-31T13:41:00.001-07:00

How the Democrats 'won' the Washington governor's mansion in 2004.

By TRENT ENGLAND

Olympia, Wash.

Sorry Minnesota, but the sequel is never as good as the original.

For those who watched the Washington State governor's race recounts in 2004, the ongoing recount drama in Minnesota is just another rehash of the same script -- albeit for a U.S. Senate seat that might put Democrats one vote away from a filibuster-proof majority.

Four years ago in Washington, Democratic Party candidate Christine Gregoire lost the first count, lost the recount, and then won a second, highly dubious recount by 133 votes. In Minnesota, where Sen. Norm Coleman is defending his seat against comedian-turned-candidate Al Franken, the first count showed Mr. Coleman up 725 votes. Today, thanks to another dubious recount, Mr. Franken is apparently in the lead.

Razor-thin margins like these put election systems to the test. As the old proverb goes, they are a crisis and an opportunity. Yet the crises keep coming and the opportunities continue to be squandered. It's time to learn the lessons of the recount wars and address the systemic flaws in our election processes. Indeed, the price of a continued decline in voter confidence is too troubling for most Americans to comprehend.

In Washington's 2004 gubernatorial election, at least 1,392 felons illegally voted, 252 provisional ballots were wrongly counted, and 19 votes were cast from beyond the grave, according to Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges's opinion in a case brought by Dino Rossi, Ms. Gregoire's Republican opponent.
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Election workers in King County (where Seattle is located) "enhanced" 55,177 ballots to make it easier for tabulating machines to read them -- even though the county had failed to establish written procedures as required by state law. In some cases, individual election workers modified voted ballots using black felt markers and white-out tape while observers were kept at a distance that prevented meaningful observation. Nine separate times, King County "discovered" and counted unsecured ballots.

Nevertheless, Ms. Gregoire lost to Mr. Rossi by 261 votes.

An automatic recount reduced Mr. Rossi's lead to just 42 votes. The Gregoire campaign demanded a state-wide hand recount, a time-consuming and expensive process that state law says the challenger must pay for (if the result changes, the challenger is reimbursed). Big labor unions joined with far-left groups like MoveOn.org to put up the money for Ms. Gregoire's third-time's-the-charm ballot shuffle.

During the recount process, five counties found new, uncounted, unsecured ballots and added them into their totals. King County officials admitted publicly that ballot reconciliation reports were falsified in an attempt to conceal variations between the number of votes counted and the number of voters who voted (two elections workers were disciplined as a result).

By the end, 3,539 votes more than the number of voters who voted were tabulated. Four other swing counties provided an additional 4,880 mystery ballots. Ms. Gregoire was the victor by a margin of 133 votes.

That margin -- 133 votes -- happens to be the same number of ballots that Minneapolis election officials are currently missing. The initial vote tally in one Democrat-leaning precinct counted 133 more ballots than officials have been able to find for the Senate recounts. The Minnesota canvassing board decided on Dec. 12 to allow Minneapolis simply to ignore the recount and go with the original number. This provided a 46-vote boost for Mr. Franken, about the same as his current projected lead. The board also "requested" that counties reconsider rejected absentee ballots, a new and novel part of the recount procedure that is also expected to favor Mr. Franken.

Something is wrong when a victorious candidate owes more thanks to vote counters than to voters. Such was the case in Washington in 2004, and Minnesota is poised to follow in its footsteps in 2008.

It need not be this way. After 2004, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation produced a 42-page report offering a dozen solutions. While a few were implemented, most were simply ignored by officials content to cross their fingers and hope the next close election is in someone else's jurisdiction.

Some reforms are simply educational and cultural; others are fundamental and essential. Election officials need to understand current federal and state laws and regulations governing the entire election process, including recounts. Those responsible for elections must also inculcate a culture of compliance among election staff, including temporary staff hired at election time.

From the moment they are printed, ballots should be isolated and guarded and their chain of custody recorded. Officials with rule-making authority are responsible for establishing processes that clarify how ballots are to be handled, stored, counted, and, if necessary, recounted.

Most important to maintaining and increasing public faith in elections is improving openness, especially leveraging Internet technology to make anyone a potential election observer. The Minneapolis Star Tribune's project to put all 6,700 contested ballots in the Senate race on the Web, so people can compare their own judgments to those of the canvassing board, is but one example. Election officials who have nothing to hide should be putting as much as possible online as quickly as possible.

Citizens and the media might also take a closer look at some of the individuals and organizations involved in monkeying with and even overturning elections. Both Mr. Franken and Ms. Gregoire were endorsed by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now -- Acorn -- a group under investigation in several states for suspected voter registration chicanery.

The man overseeing the Senate recount, Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, was also endorsed by Acorn, and his election campaign in 2006 was funded in part by something called "The Secretary of State Project." This latter group, founded by MoveOn.org's former grass-roots director, exists solely to install far-left candidates as secretaries of state in swing states.

Close elections will always stir controversy. They will often require recounts to validate the results. Yet the Washington and Minnesota recounts offer cautionary tales. The democratic process is too important to be disregarded until a virtual tie forces us to pay attention. Regardless of which candidates win our elections, the voters -- not the vote counters -- should win every time.

Mr. England is director of the Citizenship and Governance Center at the Evergreen Freedom Foundation.

The Fix is In, Utah legislators keep getting elected, here is why

2008-12-18T22:08:00.005-07:00

The problem here in Utah nobody, especially elected officials want to admit is the fix is in here in Utah. This goes both ways for the Democrats and the Republicans so this is not directed at either party.

There is turnover in the legislature to be sure, but it is controlled by the very elected officials that are leaving office.

Having been on the “inside” of the Republican Party all my life, I have never seen a more “the fix is in” system anywhere else in the country other than maybe Illinois.

An elected state Representative here in Utah (from either party) needs only a handful (about 50) friends and neighbors to keep happy and re-elected as delegates each two years to stay in office. The State Senators only need about 100 delegates every four years, and the Federal guys need 700-1500 delegates. The caucus system here in Utah can and will continue to be gamed by skilled operatives.

The other concerning issue here in Utah is their really is no true turnover in the legislature. When an elected official decides to leave the legislature, they essentially hand pick their replacement and just before their term is up they “retire”. The local county party holds a special caucus meeting of the delegates in that district. Usually this is only attended by “diehard” party people and those “friends” of the retiring legislator. The retiring legislator then in the caucus meeting introduces their handpicked replacement to all the delegates, and then “nominates” them when the meeting is called for a vote. I would say a nearly 100% success for this strategy is used by those elected officials. These caucus meetings may have only a handful of people, sometimes less than 10 delegates. So the fix is in.

Then these hand picked replacements are sworn into office and become the incumbent for the next election cycle allowing then to receive the mothers milk of elections, lobbyist money. It is almost impossible to replace an incumbent elected official in this state. Both sides know this and take advantage of this to maintain their seats in the Legislature.

The only way this will change is for the citizens of Utah to create an easier access to the ballot.

Having lived in Washington State and Alaska the election process seems to be a more open choice for the people to decide, not the hard line left or right.

Look at how moderate Republicans are treated here in Utah, even elected ones. You are a RINO if you do not agree 100% with the power brokers within the party, especially on the issue of vouchers.

As long as our current system decides the election on caucus night, nothing will change. Our elected officials don’t want it changed for obvious reasons, so what to do?

What chance does any candidate that is fiscally conservative but socially moderate have in ever receiving the nomination from either major party here in Utah, especially in Salt Lake City? How about zero, nada, zilch.

The third parties here in Utah all have some kind of issue that drives them. The Green party is the environment. The constitution party is even more right wing than the GOP.

So what to do? You can’t get a constitutional amendment before the voters without it passing the Legislature, so we again have no say in how we elect our officials.

This is why the need for a Unaffiliated Party of Utah. If candidates were allowed to run unaffiliated without having to obtain thousands of signatures, they could run against each other for a place on the general election ballot to be decided on the primary election. Both of the other major parties would be unaffected, and voters would actually have several choices other than the two major parties to choose from.

What a novel idea, actually letting the voters of Utah select the best candidate regardless of party affiliation.

Regulators Spring Into Action Against Naked Short Sellers. Or not. December 7th, 2008 by Patrick Byrne

2008-12-09T17:57:00.001-07:00

As is explained in numerous pieces in DeepCapture, there are many cracks in the settlement system, one of them being the DTCC’s Continuous Net Settlement system, or CNS. I am highly confident that the federales (at least, the SEC) are not permitted to explore the other cracks, that the failures to deliver that they see within the CNS are thus but a small fraction of all that exist, and that, therefore, trying to gauge the depth of the naked short selling problem from the level of FTD’s in the CNS is like trying to guess the condition of an automobile from the level of water in its radiator.

But it’s a start. Given that the CNS system is the one place the SEC can look, and might be able to do something about, it is instructive to see how well they are cleaning up unsettled trades there. Towards that end, DeepCapture has analyzed the data that the SEC released last week. These graphs show their fine progress in that regard.

Full Story www.deepcapture.com/category/data/

Financial Plan that makes sense !

2008-10-06T01:30:00.000-06:00

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00.

With Enron, you would have $16.50 left of the original $1000.

With WorldCom, you would have less than $5.00 left.

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Delta Air Lines stock you would have $49.00 left.

If you had purchased United Airlines , you would have nothing left.

But, if you had purchased $1000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling refund you would have $214.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.

This is called the 401-Keg Plan.

President's market rescue plan

2008-09-24T22:17:00.000-06:00

SALT LAKE CITY, Sept. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Overstock.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: OSTK) chairman and CEO Patrick M. Byrne comments on President Bush's September 24, 2008 speech outlining the President's market rescue plan.

Dr. Byrne commented: "This bailout is necessary to save the bacchanal that is our US financial system. However, at the core of the administration's plan is the assumption that Wall Street is worth saving. It is not. For years Wall Street has bossed Washington, DC around like they're hired flunkies, while preying on Main Street businesses and investors. The federal government should use this opportunity to extract from Wall Street concessions that could never be extracted were Washington in its customary subordinate position.

"If American taxpayers are to bailout the Power Elite, they should attach conditions. Taxpayers should share in any upside, and gaping flaws in the current system should be fixed. Towards that end, I believe that any bailout legislation should include at least the following protections:

1. Taxpayers need to share in the upside if the bailout works, to compensate them for the risk that the administration is forcing them to take. This could be accomplished through warrants on shares in the firms being bailed out, such as those Mr. Buffett extracted from Goldman Sachs.

2. The government should impose a tax on those that benefit most from bailout -- Wall Street itself. Perhaps a 0.25% transaction tax on all securities trades is in order? Such a tax would be insignificant to investors, while be largely borne by those that are merely speculators - including those that churn trades in an attempt to manipulate the markets.

3. Bailout or none, the government must fix underlying problems in our capital market. The fixes includes:

a. Reforming our stock settlement system so that trades actually settle promptly, precisely as Congress stipulated in 1934. This can be accomplished by putting in place a market-wide mandatory pre-borrow requirement (like the SEC did in the 30-day July 15, 2008 emergency order that protected the 19 financial institutions);

b. Creating the obligation that if a naked short seller fails to deliver a share, the broker-dealer must force a mandatory buy-in (as is done in civilized countries, such as Canada);

c. Tracking trades cradle-to-grave (rather than net blocks of trades against each other), so that it is obvious who the naked short sellers are and the total amounts they are stealing;

d. Providing regular, timely disclosure of when and how many shares have failed to deliver;

e. Enforcing the rules, including significant monetary penalties and jail time.

"Keynes said that an ocean of productivity can support a bubble of speculation, but an ocean of speculation cannot support a bubble of productivity. Washington has been captured by speculators at the expense of producers. I have long been talking about systemic risk and potential financial crisis (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIHw7C73s3E for a three- minute video from as early as October 2005). I am proposing specific steps to fix the system. For those that agree with these fixes which protect Main Street Americans, I ask you to sign the electronic petition at http://mainstreetamericans.info."

Who Hates Sarah Palin?

2008-09-11T23:32:00.001-06:00

Wednesday, September 10, 2008
By Greg Gutfeld

According to many in the media, we truly have discovered someone worse than Hitler — and it's Sarah Palin.
Head to any left-wing blog or even CNN for that matter and you'll find the zaniest of conspiracies -- froth that even a dude with rabies would find unseemly.

So how can one person create so much bile among folks who claim to be the most tolerant in the universe? I mean, liberals are the good people: They're open-minded, caring and of course, fair.

But somehow, a Republican lady in her 40s is exempt from this treatment. Perhaps, she truly is the devil in a dress, a ghoul that eats children and pollutes the planet and possibly beats Barack Obama, the patron saint of every customer buying wheat germ in bulk at GNC.

But I know the real reason why every single elitist media type is terrified of her. They've never met her. And by "her," I don't mean Sarah Palin. I mean "her", an actual normal woman with a bunch of kids, an average husband and no desire to watch "The L Word."

She's scary to these folks the way Wal-Mart is scary to them: Both are alien to someone who blogs about their chakras. They won't go there, because they've never been there.

To them, hating Sarah Palin is a symptom of larger bigotry against the rest of us, the normal. If they saw her at a party, they would wonder how she got in. She's the anti-Obama, the anti-New York Times, the anti-everything that Tim Robbins loves, which is why I love her — and you should too.

And if you disagree with me, then you sir are worse than Hitler.

Greg Gutfeld hosts "Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld" weekdays at 3 a.m. ET. Send your comments to: redeye@foxnews.com

Sahra sends slapshot back at Obama

2008-09-11T16:46:00.002-06:00

Political Teams Battle to Define Palin in Alaska

2008-09-10T23:42:00.000-06:00

A new battleground is emerging in the presidential race, and it’s not a swing state like Ohio or Florida. The fight is in Alaska, and it’s over the ability to define Sarah Palin.

Alaska, rich with gobbets of information on Palin’s personal and political past, is the new political frontier.

According to reports, a “mini-army” of Democratic lawyers and operatives has descended on the home state of John McCain’s running mate to open the books on her past, and the Barack Obama campaign is trucking out a group of Alaskan supporters whose mission is to “set the record straight” on the governor’s career.

The McCain campaign, likewise, has sent a team — much as it did during the Democratic National Convention — to launch a counteroffensive of its own in Alaska. The campaign also has formed a “truth squad” of McCain-Palin supporters to defend Palin when it feels she is unjustly attacked.

The proxy war has led to recriminations on both sides, and it will probably last through Election Day.

In the center of it all are questions over Palin’s religious beliefs, her family, her record on pork-barrel spending and an ethics inquiry into whether she fired a former public safety commissioner because he would not dismiss a trooper who was going through a divorce from Palin’s sister.

McCain’s campaign launched an ad Wednesday invoking a Wall Street Journal article that reported that 30 Democratic lawyers and researchers were digging around in Juneau, Anchorage and Palin’s home town of Wasilla.

“The attacks on Governor Palin have been called completely false, misleading, and they’ve just begun,” the narrator says, referencing the article. “As Obama drops in the polls, he’ll try to destroy her.”

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor released a statement refuting the Journal article, saying “neither the Obama campaign nor the DNC have sent researchers to Alaska.”

But the campaign does not specifically deny that Democratic lawyers are researching Palin in Alaska, either from in-state firms or out-of-state independent groups that support Obama. They only deny having sent them.

The Democratic National Committee also denies having any researchers on the ground.

“The Democratic National Committee has zero lawyers, zero, zilch, nada in Alaska,” DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse told FOXNews.com. “I don’t know of any lawyers or researchers from the outside that have been sent into Alaska.”

But McHugh Pierre, with the Alaska Republican Party, told FOXNews.com he’s personally seen and spoken with Democratic operatives in the state looking into Palin.

“They’ve got a ton of people. They’ve got like three dozen staff here,” he said. “They’re knocking on doors. They’re everywhere.”

He said he spoke with a few who were knocking on doors in Anchorage, and who said they were working for the Obama campaign.

The Obama campaign seemed to leave a little wiggle room in its description of the situation Wednesday.

Asked about the claims, spokesman Josh Earnest took issue with the charge in the Journal and McCain ad that operatives were “airdropped” into Alaska.

“That’s just not true,” he said on a conference call, adding: “There are no Obama or DNC staffers or researchers that were airdropped into Alaska.”

But his objection centered more on the alleged importation of Democratic lawyers than on their actual presence in the state.

Former Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles and Ketchikan Mayor Bob Weinstein, two Obama supporters on the call, tried to brush off the charge.

Weinstein said he’s “not aware” of any Democratic lawyers in the state researching Palin.

But he also said: “I’m not surprised, whether it’s Democrats or media, coming to Alaska to find out who is this person, what is really her record, what are her truth beliefs?”

Knowles and Weinstein are part of the newly formed Alaska Mythbusters, which on Wednesday held the conference call to accuse Palin of supporting the very earmarks, such as the “Bridge to Nowhere,” that she claims to have defeated, and to raise questions about the trooper inquiry.

“That is a very serious ethical charge, and whether it’s for personal vendetta or personal gain, a person in public office cannot use their power to achieve those ends,” Knowles said.

The trooper investigation will no doubt be a hot topic in the race to define Palin, along with earmarks. Though the McCain-Palin ticket touts itself as the scourge of pork-barrelers, Palin has requested nearly $200 million in earmarks this year.

Obama hasn’t asked for any earmarks this year, but he sought $311 million worth last year. McCain doesn’t seek earmarks for his state and routinely pledges to make authors of such wasteful requests “famous.”

As the debate churns, the McCain campaign is also on the ground in Alaska.

Spokesman Taylor Griffin said he’s set up shop with eight other members of the McCain campaign in Anchorage to “counter the smears at Sarah Palin that are coming from the Democratic side.”

He called the trooper investigation “politically motivated,” and said he’s working hand-in-hand with McCain headquarters to refute Palin criticisms.

“It’s absolutely unprecedented, the level of attacks that have been made against Sarah Palin and her family,” he said.

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said it should come as no surprise that Democrats are doing detailed research on Palin, since she was introduced to a national audience less than two weeks ago. He said only Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Dan Quayle in 1988 generated this kind of surprise response.

“When a presidential candidate surprises the country with a relatively unknown choice, then all hell breaks loose,” Sabato said. “It did with Ferraro, it did with Quayle, it’s happening with Palin.

“The surprise guarantees that the other side hasn’t done the research,” he said.

Sabato said the key Democratic objective with Palin is probably to find controversial statements made at churches Palin has attended, to counteract criticism Obama faced over the fiery sermons of his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright Jr.

Indeed, a former pastor of Palin has been quoted telling followers in 2004 that he questioned whether people who voted for John Kerry could receive salvation. He also described the Iraq war as a battle for the survival of Christianity.

Palin, however, left that church — the Wasilla Assembly of God — in 2002.

“They’re trying to gather information to negate the Rev. Wright,” Sabato said. “Politics is just one big game of tit for tat.”

FOX News’ Judson Berger, Carl Cameron and Dan Springer and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Obama puts heat on Palin as she boosts GOP ticket

2008-09-09T02:37:00.001-06:00

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer 40 minutes ago

Listening to Barack Obama, it can seem like Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is the main person standing between him and the White House instead of John McCain.

Obama is putting as much heat on Palin as he is on the man at the top of the GOP ticket, objecting to the Republican Party's portrayal of her as a reformer who can bring change to Washington.

That is supposed to be Obama's distinction, and he's not taking kindly to Palin trying to claim it. Especially when it appears the new star on the GOP ticket is helping boost its standing: McCain has jumped to a dead heat or narrow lead over Obama in the latest national polls since choosing Palin as his running mate.

Obama said last week's Republican National Convention did a good job of highlighting Palin's biography — "Mother, governor, moose shooter. That's cool," he said. But he said Palin really is just another Republican politician, one who is stretching the truth about her record.

"When John McCain gets up there with Sarah Palin and says, `We're for change,' ... what are they talking about?" Obama said Monday, arguing that they aren't offering different ideas from President Bush and they are just trying to steal his campaign theme because it seemed to be working.

"It was just like a month ago they were all saying, `Oh, it's experience, experience, experience.' Then they chose Palin and they started talking about change, change, change," he said.

Obama's campaign seemed to be caught off guard by McCain's surprise pick of Palin on Aug. 29. Obama's spokesman initially blasted her as a former small-town mayor with zero foreign policy experience who wants to continue Bush's policies. But Obama quickly walked the statement back with more congratulatory words about Palin as a compelling addition to the ticket.

Voters, particularly women, seem to agree, according to new polls. An ABC News-Washington Post survey showed white women have moved from backing Obama by 8 points to supporting McCain by 12 points, with majorities viewing Palin favorably and saying she boosts their faith in McCain's decisions.

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said there's no doubt Palin is helping excite the GOP base, but what remains to be seen is how she plays with swing voters over the remaining two months of the campaign.

"There's no question they believe Governor Palin has given them a surge of energy in the short term," he said. "We'll see where we stand eight weeks from now."

With Palin out on the campaign trail every day blasting Obama, it became increasingly clear he had to respond and try to undermine her credibility. He was careful with his approach, declining in an interview on MSNBC's "Countdown" on Monday to respond directly to a question about whether she's too inexperienced to be next in line to the presidency.

But Obama's campaign saw an opening when the McCain-Palin campaign released a new ad Monday called "Original Mavericks" that included the claim that Palin stopped the so-called Bridge to Nowhere, a nearly $400 million proposal to build a bridge to an island in Alaska occupied by just 50 residents and an airport. Obama called the claim "shameless."

Palin voiced support for the bridge during her campaign to become Alaska's governor, although she was critical of the size, and later abandoned plans for the project. She used the federal dollars for other projects in Alaska.

"A bunch of heat started generating because people were thinking, `Why are we building a bridge to nowhere?'" Obama said to laughter from a packed gymnasium of supporters in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills. Some booed at the mention of her name.

"So a deal was cut where Alaska still got the money. They just didn't build a bridge with it, and now she's out there acting like she was fighting this thing the whole time," he said, jabbing his fist in the air like a boxer. He released his own ad in response to the GOP spot that says McCain and Palin are "politicians lying about their records."

At an earlier stop Monday in Flint, Obama said of the bridge claim: "I mean, you can't just make stuff up. You can't just re-create yourself. You can't just reinvent yourself. The American people aren't stupid. What they are looking for is someone who has consistently been calling for change."

On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that Palin has billed Alaska taxpayers for more than $43,000 in travel and lodging expenses for her children and husband during the 19 months she has been governor.

Sharon Leighow, a spokeswoman for the Alaska governor's office, told the Post that many of the invitations Palin receives also request that she bring her family. And the newspaper pointed out that Palin's travel expenses are far less than those of her predecessor, Frank Murkowski.

McCain-Palin spokesman Tucker Bounds said Obama's negative attacks show he is increasingly desperate.

"Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin have shook up the establishment and delivered real reforms," Bounds said. "Barack Obama has a speech he gave in 2002."

___

Associated Press writer Christopher Wills contributed to this report from Chicago.

You Can’t Fake Authenticity

2008-09-08T16:04:00.000-06:00

Cal Thomas
September 8th, 2008 2:44 PM Eastern

What is it about Sarah Palin that has gotten the liberal media’s knickers in a twist? Why are they criticizing, even mocking, everything from her hair to her faith?

She is exactly what the feminists claim to want and admire in women: strong, self-assured, a working mom, a political leader. But wait, she is a conservative Republican and because of that they hate her for displaying all of the aforementioned characteristics.

They are appalled that she would keep a Down Syndrome child when she could have aborted him. They are outraged when she speaks of God as if she knows Him, when their only acquaintance with the name is as a curse word, followed by “damn.” They are even disgusted that she has five children, as they think one (or two if you are Obama) is enough.

Sarah Palin is to the left what sunlight is to a vampire. Her high heels have knocked them back on the heels of their comfortable shoes.

She has galvanized and united the social and economic conservatives, when the left thought it saw an unbridgeable divide between the “oil and water” elements of the Republican Party.

The USA Today-Gallup Poll published Monday shows a ten point advantage for McCain-Palin among likely voters — the most important constituency. That is a remarkable turnaround when you consider Obama received an eight-point bounce from the Democratic Convention, which has now been wiped-out.

I think it has something to do with the fact that average people, who live in what the left thinks of as “flyover” country, identify with a woman who has an intact, yet imperfect family. They can visualize her pushing a grocery cart at the supermarket and shopping at Wal-Mart.

You can’t fake genuineness and if this trend continues, Obama and the entire Democratic Party — which thought it had this election in the bag — will be left to wonder over the next four years how they got their pockets picked by someone they arrogantly consider a yahoo from moose country.

McCain-Palin becoming Palin-McCain?

2008-09-06T19:17:00.001-06:00

McCain-Palin becoming Palin-McCain?

By SARA KUGLER, Associated Press WriterSat Sep 6, 4:26 PM ET

The banners, buttons and signs say McCain-Palin, but the crowds say something else.

"Sa-rah! Pa-lin!" came the chant at a Colorado Springs rally on Saturday moments before Republican nominee John McCain took the stage with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a woman who was virtually unknown to the nation just a week earlier. The day before, thousands screamed "Sa-rah! Sa-rah! Sa-rah!" at an amphitheater outside Detroit.

"Real change with a real woman," read one sign at a Wisconsin rally. "Hurricane Sarah leaves liberals spinning," cried another.

In the short time since McCain spirited the 44-year-old first-term governor out of Alaska and onto a national stage as his running mate, Palin has become an instant celebrity. And since her speech at the Republican National Convention, watched by more than 40 million Americans, she is emerging as the main attraction for many voters at their campaign appearances.

"She's the draw for a lot of people," said Marilyn Ryman, who came to see her at the Colorado rally inside an airport hangar. "The fact that she's someone new, not the old everything we've seen before."

McCain has sought to portray Palin as a bulldog who will help him "shake things up" on Capitol Hill.

Washington, he said Saturday, is "going to get to know her, but I can't guarantee you they'll love her."

"We do!" came a cry from the crowd.

Perhaps recognizing the excitement she is generating, the McCain campaign was planning to keep Palin with McCain for several more days, rather than dispatch her to campaign by herself, as had initially been discussed.

On Saturday, McCain and Palin rode their post-convention wave into the competitive West, where Democrats have made recent gains in traditional Republican strongholds.

After a day of talking up economic themes in the Midwest, the pair attracted thousands at a rally in Colorado Springs, a city at the foot of Pike's Peak that is home to many conservatives and military families. They were to head later to New Mexico.

It was McCain's first appearance in Colorado since the Democrats had their convention in Denver last month.

Both campaigns consider the battleground state in play with the election less than two months away.

"Colorado, it's going to be a hard-fought battle here," Palin said. As soon as she began speaking, a group of supporters interrupted her with a cheer of "Sa-rah! Sa-rah!"

Palin is even getting the star treatment from celebrity magazines, Web sites and television programs, which have played up her personal story as a mother of five children, one of whom is 17 years old, unmarried and pregnant.

The excitement with which people are turning out to see Palin could complicate a key line of attack that the McCain campaign has been building against Democrat Barack Obama for months.

Republicans have sought to cast Obama's support as nothing more than shallow adoration and hype befitting a movie star. They have mocked his appeal among Hollywood types and compared his star status to that of lightweights like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. They say there is nothing of substance to back up the candidacy of the Illinois senator.

Palin herself asked in her convention speech what happens "when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot — what exactly is our opponent's plan?"

Obama has been careful in his comments about her, saying Saturday that she has flip-flopped on spending earmarks, but also calling her a "skillful politician."

Voters interviewed at rallies said their support for McCain has been cemented with his pick of Palin, who is a social conservative and reassures many who were wary about McCain on those issues.

Patricia Hoskins said she was already backing McCain but that Palin "really lit the fire under me."

And in the brief time that McCain and Palin have been campaigning since she introduced herself to the nation, many women at their events have said they identify with her personal struggles.

"She's every mom," said Lindsey Denny, a mother of 7, including a set of quintuplets, two of whom have special needs like Palin's infant son with Down syndrome. Denny said Palin's inclusion on the ticket was "110 percent" the reason why she went to see her Saturday.

Palin Assails Critics and Electrifies Party

2008-09-04T01:36:00.002-06:00

By ELISABETH BUMILLER and MICHAEL COOPER
Published: September 4, 2008

ST. PAUL — Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska introduced herself to America before a roaring crowd at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night as “just your average hockey mom” who was as qualified as the Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama, to be president of the United States.

An hour later Senator John McCain, a scrappy, rebellious former prisoner of war in Vietnam whose campaign was resurrected from near-death a year ago, was nominated by the Republican Party to be the 44th president of the United States after asking the cheering delegates, “Do you think we made the right choice” in picking Ms. Palin as the vice-presidential nominee?

The roll-call vote made Mr. McCain, 72, the first Republican presidential candidate to share the ticket with a woman and only the second presidential candidate from a major party to do so, after Walter F. Mondale selected Geraldine A. Ferraro as his running mate for the Democratic ticket in 1984.

But the nomination was a sideshow to the evening’s main event, the speech by the little-known Ms. Palin, who was seeking to wrest back the narrative of her life and redefine herself to the American public after a rocky start that has put Mr. McCain’s closest aides on edge. Ms. Palin’s appearance electrified a convention that has been consumed by questions of whether she was up to the job, as she launched slashing attacks on Mr. Obama’s claims of experience.

“Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown,” Ms. Palin told the delegates in a speech that sought to eviscerate Mr. Obama, as delegates waved signs that said “I love hockey moms.” “And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.”

As the crowd cheered its approval, Ms. Palin went on: “I might add that in small towns we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listening.”

Ms. Palin was referring to Mr. Obama’s experience as a community organizer in Chicago before he served in the Illinois legislature and was elected to the United States Senate in 2004 as well as comments he made at a fundraiser in California about bitter rural voters who “cling” to guns and religion.

The address by Ms. Palin, 44, who stunned the political world last week as Mr. McCain’s pick for a running mate, took place before a convention transformed from an orderly coronation into a messy, days-long drama since the McCain campaign’s disclosure on Monday that Ms. Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, was pregnant. Since then there have been a host of other distractions, including Hurricane Gustav, questions about how thoroughly Mr. McCain vetted what people close to his campaign have called the last-minute pick of Ms. Palin, and charges from Mr. McCain’s top aides that the news media has launched a sexist smear campaign against his running mate.

“I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment,” Ms. Palin said in her remarks. which took aim at the news media as the crowd began lustily booing the press. “And I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But here’s a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion; I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country.”

Ms. Palin spent the first part of her speech introducing her family one by one to the crowd, including her husband, Todd. “We met in high school, and two decades and five children later he’s still my guy,” Ms. Palin said.

Ms. Palin also displayed humor in one of her biggest lines of the night when she said that “the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull” was “lipstick.”

Ms. Palin’s speech was the big draw of a convention night notable for not a single mention from the stage of the unpopular president, George W. Bush, who addressed the delegates Tuesday via satellite from the White House after the hurricane forced him to cancel his appearance.

Ms. Palin’s speech came after Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York launched a withering attack on Mr. Obama as part of a relentless assault by Republicans arguing that Ms. Palin, the former mayor of a town of less than 7,000 people who has been governor of Alaska for 20 months, had a more impressive résumé than Mr. Obama.

“She already has more executive experience than the entire Democratic ticket,” said Mr. Giuliani, one of three former rivals of Mr. McCain for the nomination, including former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, who took on Mr. Obama in speeches Wednesday evening.

“Barack Obama has never led anything, nothing, nada,” Mr. Giuliani said, then launched an attack on people who have questioned whether Ms. Palin will have enough energy to focus on the vice presidency as the mother of five. “How dare they question whether Sarah Palin has enough time to spend with her children and be vice president,” Mr. Giuliani said. “How dare they do that? When do they ever ask a man that question?”

The criticism of Mr. Obama reinforced new television commercials by the McCain campaign that similarly belittled the Democratic nominee’s experience. The campaign and its surrogates also took on what they called biased and sexist coverage of Ms. Palin.

“Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America’s energy problems, as if we all didn’t know that already,” Ms. Palin said. “But the fact that drilling won’t solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all. Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we’re going to lay more pipelines, build more nuclear plants, create jobs with clean coal and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal and other alternative sources.”

The speech was the first public emergence for Ms. Palin since arriving here Sunday, two days after Mr. McCain named her as his running mate. Ms. Palin has spent her time in a hotel suite with her husband, Todd, and their five children preparing for her speech and the questions on foreign policy, national security and family matters that she will face from the news media when the McCain campaign makes her available to reporters. Their son Track, 19, deploys overseas for the Army next month.

Democrats, who have held much of their fire this week as the Republican melodrama has played out in Minnesota, criticized the convention as failing so far to address the concerns of ordinary Americans.

“You did not hear a single world about the economy,” Mr. Obama told an audience on in New Philadelphia, Ohio, before Ms. Palin’s speech. “Not once did they mention the hardships that people are going through.”

Mr. McCain landed in Minneapolis on Wednesday afternoon and was greeted on the tarmac by Ms. Palin, her family and his family in a striking multigenerational tableau, 16 strong, with the youngest member Trig Palin, Sarah Palin’s 4-month-old, who has Down syndrome. Later, in Mr. McCain’s appearance at the convention, he praised the Palins as “a beautiful family.”

Delegates said they were enthralled by Ms. Palin. "I think she’s great; she’s giving it back to the Democrats for all the sorry things they’ve said about her and about America," said Anita Bargas, a delegate from Angleton, Tex. "She’s a conservative, and she has a great sense of humor."

With Ms. Palin facing a torrent of inquiries from reporters, Mr. McCain joined other Republicans in assailing news outlets when he told ABC News in an interview on Wednesday that “Sarah Palin has 24,000 employees in the state government” and was “responsible for 20 percent of the nation’s energy supply.” He added that he was entertained by the comparison of her experience to that of Mr. Obama and that “I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America.”

Palin electrifies conservative base

2008-09-01T08:48:00.001-06:00

Palin electrifies conservative base

Jonathan MartinSun Aug 31, 8:16 AM ET

ST. PAUL, Minn. — The selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate has electrified conservative activists, providing a boost of energy to the GOP nominee-in-waiting from a key constituency that previously had been lukewarm — at best — about him.

By tapping the anti-abortion and pro-gun Alaska governor just ahead of his convention, which is set to start here Monday, McCain hasn’t just won approval from a skeptical Republican base — he’s ignited a wave of elation and emotion that has led some grass-roots activists to weep with joy.

Serious questions remain about McCain’s pick — exactly how much he knows about her and her positions, past and present, on key issues. But for the worker bee core of the party that is essential to any Republican victory, there are no doubts.

“I woke up and my e-mail was just going crazy,” said Charmaine Yoest, head of the legislative arm of Americans United for Life and a former top official in Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign. “And then when it was announced — it was like you couldn’t breathe.”

The media elite — as well as elite members of the GOP consulting community — have all but mocked Palin as a former small-town mayor with zero Washington experience. But that view of her totally misses the cultural resonance she carries to crucial Republican power centers and could not be more at odds with the jubilation felt among true believers that one of their own is on the ticket.

Palin, say conservative activists, has instantly changed how they feel about McCain’s campaign and spurred them to go to work for the Republican ticket.

First, though, they’re expressing their newfound fondness for McCain with their checkbooks. Since tapping Palin, the campaign has raised nearly $7 million online, according to McCain aides.

Most importantly for McCain, the two constituencies who are most energized by Palin just happen to be the twin grassroots pillars of the GOP: anti-abortion activists and pro-Second Amendment enthusiasts and sportsmen. Without these two camps making phone calls, stuffing envelopes and knocking on doors, Republican presidential candidates would severely lack for volunteers. They are critical to the health of the conservative coalition that has dominated Republican politics for a generation.

Republicans say the primary source for the passion can be found in Palin’s example and authenticity.

Not only is the 44-year-old governor opposed to abortion rights — but she carried and gave birth to a child with Down syndrome earlier this year, a profound and powerful motivating force to both opponents of abortion rights and the parents and relatives of special needs children.

And not only is she a supporter of the right to bear arms — but she’s a lifetime member of the NRA and an avid hunter and fisherman whose gubernatorial office couch is adorned with a massive grizzly bear pelt.

“She’s lived it!” exulted Yoest. “It’s so satisfying as a conservative woman. When she walked out on that stage there was just this moment. It was really emotional for a lot of us.”

After hearing the news, Yoest, who was in St. Paul preparing for the convention, said she and other Republican women here “were grabbing each other and jumping up and down.”

Steve Duprey, a former New Hampshire GOP chairman and top McCain backer who hails from the moderate wing of the party, was also in the Twin Cities when the news broke.

“I was in the Rules Committee with about 150 people in the room. They had TVs set up and we took a break to watch the announcement. For a second after she came out, it was silent. Then there was a gasp and everybody stood up and started cheering and clapping. We stayed standing the whole speech.”

After Palin finished, he said, the emotion set in.

“There were 10 or 12 women, party stalwarts, in tears, using napkins and handkerchiefs.”

Part of the reason for the joy is what President Bush once called, in another context, “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Social conservatives just didn’t expect one of their own to be tapped and were actually bracing themselves for the selection of a supporter of abortion rights.

“There is an electricity going through the social conservative crowd right now; it’s unbelievable,” said James Muffett, head of Michigan’s Citizens for Traditional Values, who had met with McCain in the weeks leading up to his selection of a running mate. “Especially given all the set-ups and head fakes — it’s amazing. A lot of people were sure he was going to show his more moderate colors.”

Muffett said the effect on his conservative comrades in arms has been immediate and visceral.

“My wife and I watched an MSNBC special on her last night,” he said. “My wife knew nothing about this woman. But she was in tears listening to her articulate the views she had.”

Since the pick, Muffett said, he’s gotten “dozens of e-mails and the phones have been ringing off the hook” from other social conservatives who had assumed McCain would spurn them.

“They were taunting me, saying ‘McCain’s going to disappoint you,’” he said of the sentiment before the pick.

Since?

“’Boy, what kind of prayers have you been saying for McCain?’” he said with a chuckle about the question asked on one phone call. “He went and chose a Pentecostal for his running mate!”

The adoration goes beyond Christian conservatives.

Sportsmen are also overjoyed at the addition of one of their own, and can’t get enough of video and pictures showing Palin firing a weapon.

“She's one of us,” wrote Michael Bane, a prominent Colorado-based gun enthusiast who has a show on the Outdoor Channel, on his blog. “FINALLY, we can get 100 percent behind the Republican ticket ... change we can believe in!”

“You know I've had my problems with McCain, but he has reached out a hand to us both at the NRA Annual Meeting [earlier this year] and with the amazing selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate,” Bane added.

And then there is the contrast: “While [Barack Obama] wants to ban AR-15s, Palin shoots AR-15s, and apparently pretty well.”

“Every shooter, every hunter, every gun owner, every competitor needs to understand that it is time to, in the words of Bruce Willis, ‘cowboy the 'f...' up.’ ”

Chris Cox, the top political aide at the NRA, suggested that his job just got a whole lot easier, not just with a pro-gun Republican vice presidential nominee but a Democratic number two — Delaware Sen. Joe Biden — who is anathema to the Second Amendment community

“We’ll be able to have some fun contrasting not just McCain and Obama, but Biden and Palin,” said Cox, whose organization is giving "I'm a Bitter Gun Owner and I Vote!" signs and T-shirts to its members. “She’s great on our issues and [Biden’s] been terrible for 35 years.”

Her image as a pistol-packin’ mama could prove especially key in the hunter-filled Rust Belt, said Paul Erhardt, a longtime political strategist who specializes on gun issues.

“Palin could play strong in the sporting states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, depending on how they use her,” he said. “Most pundits will underestimate her appeal in these key areas because they don't know her and they are unfamiliar with the sporting scene. But among sportsmen, authenticity counts and Palin's got that and then some.”

Palin also reassures those concerned about McCain's judgment on judges. Said Gary Marx, head of the Judicial Confirmation Network and a former Mitt Romney aide: "I can tell you that this pick tells millions in the base of the party that they can trust McCain. More specifically that they can trust him with Supreme Court picks and other key appoitments"

The sense of rejuvenation is not just limited to party activists, though. Conservative elites, among the most disdainful of McCain, are also coming around.

James Dobson, long a McCain skeptic, said after the announcement Friday that he’d support Palin.

And he’s not alone.

“I’ve talked to two prominent social conservative leaders in the past 24 hours who told me they had previously not planned to attend the convention, but were now coming to Minneapolis after the Palin pick,” wrote Ralph Reed, a Christian conservative leader who has tangled with McCain, in an e-mail. “One scrambled to find a hotel room and is coming tomorrow; the other rearranged his schedule and is flying in Wednesday. I got a call this afternoon from an evangelical business leader who told me he was contacting the McCain campaign and offering to host a fundraiser with his friends for McCain (sans the candidate) before the Thursday deadline [when McCain shifts to the public financing system]. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a veep pick energize the grass roots like this.”

Rush Limbaugh, who exulted on the air this week, summed up the response he’s gotten from his loyal listeners: “Home f***ing run.”

“Palin=Guns, Babies, Jesus,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Contrast that to Obama's bitter clingers. Obama just lost blue-collar, white Democratic voters in Pennsylvania and other states.”

And, he said, the line that the pick was aimed at picking off Democratic women who backed Hillary Rodham Clinton doesn’t get it right.

“[The] choice is to shore up the conservative, pro-drilling base,” he said. “This is an aggressive, on-offense pick, not a defensive pick.”

The pick caps off what has been a turbulent few weeks for conservative Republicans.

Muffett, who was talking on his cell phone from a church outing at Ohio’s Cedar Point amusement park, likened McCain’s campaign to the world-record 17 roller coasters that dot the park on the banks of Lake Erie.

“Oh my gosh, holy moly,” he said. “He floated the pro-abortion running mate, then there was his performance at the Saddleback debate, and then you had the Lieberman headfake and now this.”

“Up and down, up and down.”

For now, though, at least as it relates to the long-mistrustful conservatives he’ll need energized to win, McCain is sky-high.

“Now that he has so thoroughly exceeded their expectations for his candidacy (first with his stellar performance at the Saddleback Showdown, now with his selection of his running mate), social conservatives are finally putting on their cleats and getting on to the field,” wrote Reed. “It’s really quite remarkable, and something that no one would have guessed would happen even three months ago.”

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Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington?

2008-08-31T15:21:00.001-06:00

Presidential nominee John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, greet supporters at Consol Energy Park Saturday in Washington, Pa. (Joe Raedle, Getty Images)

Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington.

When I received a text message from one of my daughters that McCain had picked Alaska Governor Sarah “Baracuda” Palin to be the GOP’s Vice Presidential choice I was thrilled. Finally a total Washington outsider who is just a “Hockey Mom”, and wants to do the right thing even if that upsets the Good-Ol-boy Republican machine. She is a 44 year old mother of 5 who can wear Prada and look like a movie star, and the next day be in hiking boots with camo’s scoping for the next trophy caribou (she really eats meat folks) or the next king Salmon on the Keni River.
What Sarah Palin does not know about foreign policy she will learn. She’s not running to be the President, McCain is. And unless he dies in the first week of his Presidency she will have a handle on things very quickly. McCain isn’t going anywhere, just look at his genetics. He spent 5 years being isolated and tortured in Vietnam, if he was weak person his life would have been over with. John McCain will live well into his 90’s and he will fulfill one and maybe even two terms. But the experience provided Sarah as VP will allow the Republican Party to nominate either a 48 or 52 year old woman with 4-8 years experience in the second highest profile job on the planet, and NOBODY will be questioning her credentials then.

Mark E. Towner

Sarah Palin, I called it in June. This changes Everything. I'm sure my wife has already written Sarah a $4000 check to the McCain Campaign

2008-08-29T16:22:00.003-06:00

Wednesday, June 04, 2008
McCain's Choice for VP, and I know this gal a real class act !!!

Having come from Alaska where you gatta be tough just to survive, and in order for McCain to be considered in my house for our vote he simply must choose a female for his running mate. Condi Rice would solve this but I think she would rather be the Commissioner of the NFL. So where does McCain go after Condi?, how about up North where the air is cold, and the women can be tough as nails, drop dead gorgeous, and Ivy league smart. Governor Sarah Palin is a gal who while 8 months pregnant honored a commitment to speak at a event in Texas, went into labor, finished her speech, jumped on a jet with a doctor, flew back to Anchorage, then was driven out to her home in Wasilla, had the State troopers drop her off at the local Hospital and punched out her 5th kid, now that takes chops. My daughter who still lives in Eagle River absolutely loves her as does the entire State of Alaska. She has kicked butt and taken names, and virtually eliminated the remotest aroma of corruption. She has seen to it that even long term GOP elected officials were investigated, tried and convicted and now sit in Alaska prisons. Like "Sarah Connor" of the terminator, she has taken on the establishment including the Federal Government trying to get oil fields open and the new Natural Gas pipeline built to help reduce US dependence on foreign oil. And finally given her age, she will be the first female president of the United States.

June 04, 2008
McCain Should Pick Sarah Palin for VP
By Jack Kelly

Who? When?

Republicans including, I imagine, Sen. McCain himself are asking these questions about his selection of a vice presidential candidate.

Ideally, a presidential candidate wants a running mate who will help him or her win the election, and (maybe) to govern afterwards. But most will settle for a veep who isn't a drag on the ticket, as Dan Quayle was for the first President Bush.

Traditionally, a presidential nominee has chosen a running mate to balance the ticket geographically, or to appease a faction of the party. The most successful example of this was when John F. Kennedy picked Lyndon Johnson, though neither liked the other, and LBJ joined the ticket only because he thought Kennedy would lose.

Bill Clinton broke with this tradition when he chose another young (purported) moderate from a neighboring southern state. By picking Al Gore, he hoped to reinforce his campaign theme of generational change.

Which way will Sen. McCain go? The potential running mates most often discussed have downsides nearly as great as their upsides. Gov. Tim Pawlenty helps only in Minnesota, and not enough, according to current polls, to make a difference there. Sen. McCain's friend Sen. Joe Lieberman would bring in some moderate Democrats, but could further antagonize conservatives already suspicious of Sen. McCain. Gov. Romney would have little appeal to working class whites unhappy with Sen. Obama, and evangelicals fret about that Mormon thing. A Huckabee nomination would irritate economic and foreign policy conservatives as much as it would please evangelicals.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is a rising star. But he's only 36, and he's been governor for less than a year.
There is one potential running mate who has virtually no down side. Those conservatives who've heard of her were delighted to learn that McCain advance man Arthur Culvahouse was in Alaska recently, because they surmised he could only be there to discuss the vice presidential nomination with Gov. Sarah Palin.

At 44, Sarah Louise Heath Palin is both the youngest and the first female governor in Alaska's relatively brief history as a state. She's also the most popular governor in America, with an approval rating that has bounced around 90 percent.

This is due partly to her personal qualities. When she was leading her underdog Wasilla high school basketball team to the state championship in 1982, her teammates called her "Sarah Barracuda" because of her fierce competitiveness.

Two years later, when she won the "Miss Wasilla" beauty pageant, she was also voted "Miss Congeniality" by the other contestants.

Sarah Barracuda. Miss Congeniality. Fire and nice. A happily married mother of five who is still drop dead gorgeous. And smart to boot.

But it's mostly because she's been a crackerjack governor, a strong fiscal conservative and a ferocious fighter of corruption, especially in her own party.

Ms. Palin touches other conservative bases, some of which Sen. McCain has been accused of rounding. Track, her eldest son, enlisted in the Army last Sept. 11. She's a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association who hunts, fishes and runs marathons. A regular churchgoer, she's staunchly pro-life.

Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal said Sen. McCain should run against a corrupt, do-nothing Congress, a la Harry Truman. If he should choose to do so, Gov. Palin would make an excellent partner "The landscape is littered with the bodies of those who have crossed Sarah," pollster Dave Dittman told the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes.

Sen. Barack Obama's support has plunged recently among white women. Many Hillary Clinton supporters accuse him -- I think unfairly -- of being sexist. Having Sarah Palin on the ticket could help Sen. McCain appeal to these disgruntled Democrats.

Running mates usually aren't named until the convention. But if Sen. McCain should name Gov. Palin earlier, it would give America more time to get to know this extraordinary woman. And because she's at least a dozen feature stories waiting to be written, she could help him dominate the news between now and the conventions.

Another reason for selecting Sarah Palin early would be to force Barack Obama to make a mistake. He'd have to rule out choosing someone like Virginia Sen. Jim Webb as his running mate, for fear of exacerbating charges of sexism. And if he chose a woman other than Hillary, the impression Democrats are wimpy would be intensified.

Posted by Mark E. Towner at 8:33 AM 3 comments Links to this post

Labels: clinton, election 2008, gender, huckabee, John McCain,

Obama's economy outright laughable

2008-08-27T00:20:00.004-06:00

By George F. Will
WASHINGTON — Barack Obama has made his economic thinking excruciatingly clear, so it also is clear that his running mate should be Rumpelstiltskin. He spun straw into gold, a skill an Obama administration will need in order to fulfill its fairy-tale promises.

Obama recently said he would "require that 10 percent of our energy comes from renewable sources by the end of my first term — more than double what we have now." Note the verb "require" and the adjective "renewable."

By 2012 he would "require" the economy's huge energy sector to — here things become comic — supply half as much energy from renewable sources as already is being supplied by just one potentially renewable source. About 20 percent of America's energy comes from nuclear energy produced using fuel rods, which, when spent, can be reprocessed into fresh fuel.

Obama is (this is part of liberalism's catechism) leery of nuclear power. He also says — and might say so even if Nevada were not a swing state — he distrusts the safety of Nevada's Yucca Mountain for storage of radioactive waste. Evidently he prefers today's situation — nuclear waste stored at 126 inherently insecure above-ground sites in 39 states, within 75 miles of where more than 161 million Americans live.

But back to requiring this or that quota of energy from renewable sources. What will that involve? For conservatives, seeing is believing; for liberals, believing is seeing. Obama seems to believe that if a particular outcome is desirable, one can see how to require it. But how does that work? Details to follow, sometime after noon, Jan. 20, 2009.

Obama has also promised that "we will get 1 million, 150-mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrids on our roads within six years." What a tranquilizing verb "get" is. This senator, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, is going to get a huge, complex industry to produce, and is going to get a million consumers to buy, these cars. How? Almost certainly by federal financial incentives for both — billions of dollars of tax subsidies for automakers, and billions more to bribe customers to buy these cars they otherwise would spurn.

Conservatives are sometimes justly accused of ascribing magic powers to money and markets: Increase the monetary demand for anything and the supply of it will expand. But it is liberals like Obama who think that any new technological marvel or other social delight can be summoned into existence by a sufficient appropriation. Once they thought "model cities" could be, too.

Where will the electricity for these million cars come from? Not nuclear power (see above). And not anywhere else, if Obama means this: "I will set a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming — an 80 percent reduction by 2050."

No he won't. Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute notes that in 2050 there will be 420 million Americans — 40 million more households. So Obama's cap would require reducing per capita carbon emissions to levels probably below even those "in colonial days when the only fuel we burned was wood."

Regarding taxes, Obama says "we don't want to return to marginal rates of 60 or 70 percent." The top federal rate was 70 percent until the Reagan cuts of 1981. It has since ranged between 50 in 1982 and today's 35. Obama promises that expiration of the Bush tax cuts will restore the 39.6 rate.

He also favors a payroll tax of up to 4 percent on earnings above $250,000 (today, only the first $102,000 is taxed), most of which also are subject to the highest state income tax rates. When the top federal rate was set at 28 under Reagan, payroll taxes were not levied on income over $42,000, so the top effective rate of combined taxes was under 35. Obama's policies would bring it to the mid-50s for many Americans, close to the 60 percent Obama considers excessive.

There never is a shortage of nonsensical political rhetoric, but really: Has there ever been solemn silliness comparable to today's politicians tarting up their agendas as things designed for, and necessary to, "saving the planet," and promising edicts to "require" entire industries to reorder themselves?

In 1996, Bob Dole, citing the Clinton campaign's scabrous fundraising, exclaimed: "Where's the outrage?" This year's campaign, soggy with environmental messianism, deranged self-importance and delusional economics, the question is: Where is the derisive laughter?

George Will's e-mail address is georgewill@washpost.com

They're Paying Attention Now

2008-08-23T11:12:00.002-06:00

DECLARATIONS
By PEGGY NOONAN

They're Paying Attention Now
August 22, 2008; Page A11
Why is it a real race now, with John McCain rising in the polls and Barack Obama falling? There are many answers, but here I think is an essential one: The American people have begun paying attention.
It's hard for our political class to remember that Mr. Obama has been famous in America only since the winter of '08. America met him barely six months ago! The political class first interviewed him, or read the interview, in 2003 or '04, when he was a rising star. They know him. Everyone else is still absorbing.
This is what they see:
An attractive, intelligent man, interesting, but—he's hard to categorize. Is he Gen. Obama? No, no military background. Brilliant Businessman Obama? No, he never worked in business. Famous Name Obama? No, it's a new name, an unusual one. Longtime Southern Governor Obama? No. He's a community organizer (what's that?), then a lawyer (boo), then a state legislator (so what, so's my cousin), then U.S. senator (less than four years!).
There is no pre-existing category for him.
Add to that the wear and tear of Jeremiah Wright, secret Muslim rumors, media darling and, this week, abortion.
It took a toll, which led to a readjustment. His uniqueness, once his great power, is now his great problem.
And over there is Mr. McCain, and—well, we know him. He's POW/senator/prickly, irritating John McCain.
* * *

The Rick Warren debate mattered. Why? It took place at exactly the moment America was starting to pay attention. This is what it looked like by the end of the night: Mr. McCain, normal. Mr. Obama, not normal. You've seen this discussed elsewhere. Mr. McCain was direct and clear, Mr. Obama both more careful and more scattered. But on abortion in particular, Mr. McCain seemed old-time conservative, which is something we all understand, whether we like such a stance or not, and Mr. Obama seemed either radical or dodgy. He is "in favor . . . of limits" on late-term abortions, though some would consider those limits "inadequate." (In the past week much legal parsing on emanations of penumbras as to the viability of Roe v. Wade followed.)
As I watched I thought: How about "Let the baby live"? Don't parse it. Just "Let the baby live."
As to the question when human life begins, the answer to which is above Mr. Obama's pay grade, oh, let's go on a little tear. You know why they call it birth control? Because it's meant to stop a birth from happening nine months later. We know when life begins. Everyone who ever bought a pack of condoms knows when life begins.
To put it another way, with conception something begins. What do you think it is? A car? A 1948 Buick?
If you want to argue whether legal abortion is morally defensible, have at it and go to it, but Mr. Obama's answers here seemed to me strange and disturbing.
Mr. Obama's upcoming convention speech will be good. All Obama speeches are good. Not as interesting as he is—he is more compelling as a person than his words tend to be in text. But the speech will be good, and just in case it isn't good, people will still come away with an impression that it must have been, because the media is going to say it was, because they expect it to be, and what they expect is what most of them will see.
Will Mr. Obama dig deep as to meaning? As to political predicates? During the primary campaigns Republicans were always saying, "This is what I'll do." Mr. Obama has a greater tendency to say, "This is how we'll feel." Republicans talk to their base with, "If we pass this bill, which the Democrats irresponsibly oppose, we'll solve this problem." Democrats are more inclined toward, "If we bring a new attitude of hopefulness and respect for the world, we'll make the seas higher and the fish more numerous." Will Mr. Obama be, in terms of programs and plans, specific? And will his specifics be grounded in something that appears to amount to a political philosophy?
I suspect everyone has the convention speeches wrong. Everyone expects Mr. Obama to rouse, but the speech I'd watch is Mr. McCain's.
He's the one with the real opportunity, because no one expects anything. He's never been especially good at making speeches. (The number of men who've made it to the top of the GOP who don't particularly like making speeches, both Bushes and Mr. McCain, is astonishing, and at odds with the presumed requirements of the media age. The first Bush saw speeches as show biz, part of the weary requirement of leadership, and the second's approach reflects a sense that words, though interesting, were not his friend.)
But Mr. McCain provided, in 2004, one of the most exciting and certainly the most charged moment of the Republican Convention, when he looked up at Michael Moore in the press stands and said, "Our choice wasn't between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war, it was between war and a greater threat. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. . . . And certainly not a disingenuous filmmaker who would have us believe that Saddam's Iraq was an oasis of peace." It blew the roof off. And the smile he gave Mr. Moore was one of pure, delighted malice. When Mr. McCain comes to play, he comes to play.
Look for a certain populist stance. He signaled it this week in Politico. He called lobbyists "birds of prey" in pursuit of "their share of the spoils." Great stuff. (Boy, will he have trouble staffing his White House.)
* * *
I still think a one-term pledge could win it for him, because it would allow America to punt. It would make the 2008 choice seem less fateful. People don't mind the chance to defer a choice when they're not at all sure about the product. It would give bitter Democrats a chance to regroup, and it would give those who like Obama but consider him a little half-baked to vote against him guiltlessly while he becomes fully baked. (Imagine the Q&A when Sen. Obama announces his second presidential run in 2011: "Well, Brian, I think, looking back, there is something to be said for the idea that I will be a better president now than frankly I would have been four years ago. Experience, if you allow it, is still the best of all teachers.") More, it would allow Mr. McCain to say he means to face the tough problems ahead with a uniquely bipartisan attitude and without having to care a fig for re-election. That itself would give him a new power, one that would make up for the lost juice of lame duckdom. It would also serve to separate him from the hyperpolitical operating styles of the Clinton-Bush years, from the constant campaign.
And Mr. McCain would still have what he always wanted, the presidency, perhaps a serious and respectable one that accrued special respect because it involved some sacrifice on his part.
A move that would help him win doubtful voters, win disaffected Democrats, allow some Republicans to not have to get drunk to vote for him, and that could possibly yield real results for his country. This seems to me such a potentially electrifying idea that he'd likely walk out of his convention as the future president.
Mr. McCain told Politico on Wednesday that he's not considering a one-term pledge.
Why would he not? Such modesty of intent is at odds with the political personality. The thing that makes them want to rule America is the thing that stops them from thinking of prudent limits. This mindset crosses all political categories.
See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on Opinion Jour

Top acquisition official: Tanker acquisition top priority

2008-07-31T17:00:00.002-06:00

by Staff Sgt. Monique Randolph
Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs

7/21/2008 - WASHINGTON (AFPN) -- Officials from the Government Accountability Office testified before Congress July 10 here about their decision to uphold Boeing's protests of the Air Force's selection of Northrop Grumman Corp. to produce 179 new tankers that would replace the aging KC-135 Stratotanker fleet.

In its report, GAO officials stated that errors had been made during the acquisition process that could have affected the outcome of the close competition between the two companies, but did not find evidence of intentional wrongdoing by Air Force officials.

"We didn't see an iota of evidence that there was intentional wrongdoing, no evidence of bias, no evidence of criminality," said Daniel I. Gordon, the deputy general counsel for the GAO during the hearing.

Following the Department of Defense's subsequent decision to reopen the bidding process, the Air Force's top acquisitions officer said she is optimistic the proposals will only get better, and both the taxpayer and warfighter will benefit from the new tanker.

"Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has made the tanker acquisition a top priority, and I applaud that," said Sue C. Payton, the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition at the Pentagon. If we can get cooperation with all the parties, we should be able to award (the contract) in December or January."

Ms. Payton credits members of the Air Force acquisitions team with helping to build such strong proposals from both companies.

"Over the past two years, I saw the most honest, dedicated, hard-working individuals I've ever worked with in more than 30 years," she said. "We shared more information and opened the door for more questions from the offerors than ever before. Acquisitions have extensive regulations, legislative considerations and rules of fair play. It's extremely complex, very competitive and high stakes."

Of more than 100 issues raised in Boeing's protest, eight were sustained by the GAO, she said.

"When the GAO finds fault, it doesn't mean your (organization) is fatally flawed," Ms. Payton said.

The tanker is one of 35 major defense acquisition efforts currently in the works for the Air Force and Ms. Payton said she looks forward to leading those efforts.

"There is still much to accomplish," she said.

Sir Isaac and the Airbus

2008-07-31T14:29:00.001-06:00

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27688

Sir Isaac and the Airbus

by Jed Babbin

Newton's laws are immutable: so is the Airbus's unsuitability for the Air Force tanker mission.

Sir Isaac and the Airbus

Human Events

Jed Babbin

25 July 2008

Newtonian physics - which a professor of fond memory tried to teach me in freshman year of college - prescribes laws that are immutable. Dr. Fred Furst used to say, "The laws of physics are the same wherever you go, and bad things happen when you try to break them." For that reason alone, I'm confident neither Sir Isaac nor Prof. Furst would choose the Airbus 330 tanker for the US Air Force.

I never promised you there would be no math, but trust me: this won't be too bad. We've got to do a little math and a little physics.

Newton's Second Law of Motion defines the relationship between mass (roughly what something weighs), acceleration (not the speed of an object, but the rate at which an object gains speed) and the force required to move a mass at a rate of acceleration: Force equals mass multiplied by acceleration. As Freddie Furst said over and over again, "F=mα." About which more in a moment.

The Air Force has a lot of guidelines, manuals and regulations. Pilots - at least those who live to ripe old age - usually go by the book. The book on air refueling operations requires that tanker aircraft be able to perform maneuvers called "breakaways" and "overruns" in just the way the Air Force specifies.

As I described on the Rush Limbaugh Show on July 17, a "breakaway" is a vital safety maneuver which is performed often in training and in flight operations. There's an imaginary envelope around the tanker "boom," the controlled crane-like device projecting from the rear of the tanker that pipes fuel into the receiving aircraft. If you go outside the envelope - say a gust of wind hits, or the fighter is going too fast, or even if it pitches or yaws, twisting away -- the "boomer" (the guy sitting in the back of the tanker who "flies" the boom), the receiving pilot or the tanker driver can call "breakaway," which is supposed to result in several near-simultaneous events.

The boomer pops the boom off the receiving aircraft which then decelerates rapidly and drops about 1000 feet of altitude. The tanker is supposed to be able to accelerate rapidly (to a specified higher speed that varies by type of receiving aircraft) and climb away from the receiver. So now we're back to F=mα.

According to the General Accountability Office decision overturning the contract award to Northrop-Grumman/EADS for the Airbus 330 tanker, "...there is no documentation in the record setting forth an analysis of whether Northrop Grumman's proposed aircraft has sufficient operational airspeed when refueling the [deleted by GAO] to initiate an emergency breakaway procedure."

What the GAO is saying, in its lawyerly language, is that the facts show that the Airbus 330 cannot reach a sufficient speed to pull away from one or more aircraft it's supposed to refuel. And if it can't, there could be a mid-air collision. That may also mean that the huge weight of the Airbus isn't compensated by comparable engine power to enable it to accelerate fast enough to get out of the way. You need an awful lot of "F" to push that much "m" fast enough to get enough "α" for a breakaway, and the Airbus apparently just doesn't have it.

Another part of the Airbus' inability to perform the mission is the "overrun" problem. No, Virginia, we're not talking about cost overruns (those will come but only after the contract is begun). We're talking about how a tanker and a receiving aircraft join up.

Tankers usually orbit above a set position - flying a racetrack-shaped oval that may be thirty miles or more in length - waiting for whatever fly guys are coming by to gas up. When one or more do - say an F-16 - the tanker swings out of its orbit to theoretically come up ahead of the F-16 on the F-16's original course. But sometimes (according to the tanker guys, it's always the fighter jock's fault: you can imagine what the fighter jocks say) the tanker comes out behind.

At that point, the fighter is supposed to drop speed and altitude and - again, that old F=mα thing - the tanker is supposed to climb and accelerate past the fighter to get in position for the boomer to plug into the fighter's nose. But the Airbus weighs too much and apparently can't even go fast enough even if its engines could push it to the required speeds.

According to the GAO decision, despite the fact that the Air Force had told Northrop Grumman that the Airbus apparently couldn't accelerate quickly enough and reach the speed set by Air Force standards to perform an overrun, the Air Force disregarded its own mandatory guideline to keep the Airbus eligible for the contract. And, as the GAO decided, they had no reasonable basis to do so: "...the record does not establish that the [Air Force] had a reasonable basis for concluding that Northrop Grumman's proposed solution would allow its aircraft to obtain the requisite overrun airspeeds to satisfy this...requirement."

So not only can't it accelerate quickly enough, the Airbus apparently has too low a top-speed. Again, this is a problem that cannot be overlooked. Or, as the GAO put it, it was unreasonable for the Air Force to say that the Airbus 330 can refuel all USAF tanker-compatible aircraft in accordance with Air Force procedures.

The Airbus cannot be eligible for the contract award if it can't fly the mission. That's what the Air Force documents said and that's one of the big reasons GAO tossed out the contract award.

And there's a third problem. This one is simple geometry.

Most airfields don't have runways as wide as Dulles International. The NATO standard runway is 147.6 feet wide. When an aircraft breaks down, or if another aircraft has to take priority landing or taking off, a tanker will have to be able to be turned around on the runway.

To do that, one of those small tractors you see at airports is attached to the nose gear, the pilot turns the nose wheel all the way over, and the tractor pulls the bird around 180 degrees. According to Boeing, their 767 tanker can turn around in about 129 feet, which can be done fine on a 147-foot wide runway.

There is no public data we could find on the Airbus' turning radius but one source says that the Airbus website used to state that the turning radius of the A-330 was 143 feet. If the runway is a few feet narrower than the NATO standard, if the Airbus isn't lined up with its right wheels on the farthest edge of the runway and if a lot of other ifs, the U-turning Airbus gets its nose off the runway and probably gets stuck.

Which means you have a runway out of operation until - minutes or hours later - the too big, too heavy aircraft gets unstuck.

It's just like good old Freddie Furst used to say: the laws of physics are the same wherever you go. If F still equals mα (and it surely does) the Airbus 330 can't perform the Air Force tanker mission.

Towner for President, the only choice that makes sense

2008-07-18T23:57:00.000-06:00

Come see the latest Jib Jab

2008-07-18T17:42:00.000-06:00

This is a riot

The Captain

Maese is convicted in Doll House case

2008-07-12T00:33:00.000-06:00

Maese is convicted in Doll House case

By Linda Thomson and Lynn Wilde II
Deseret News

Published: Saturday, July 12, 2008 12:20 a.m. MDT

Prosecutors called him a modern-day "pimp." A jury agreed late Friday, convicting Santiago Steven Maese of five felonies in connection with his former Doll House escort service.

After 4 1/2 hours of deliberation, the three-woman, five-man jury delivered unanimous verdicts on four counts of exploiting a prostitute, a third-degree felony, and one count of a pattern of unlawful activity, a second-degree felony. He was found not guilty of money laundering, a second-degree felony.

Following the verdict, 3rd District Judge Randall Skanchy ordered a pre-sentence report and set a sentencing hearing for Sept. 8. Skanchy did not order that Maese be taken into custody, citing his clean criminal record and faithful attendance at court hearings.

Maese showed no reaction as the verdict was read and said he plans to appeal. Prosecutor Chad Platt referred to the verdict as a "victory for the rule of law."

Platt said in closing arguments Friday that despite Maese's sleek businesslike exterior, he is actually a pimp at heart — controlling, demanding and vengeful.

The prosecutor said it was naive to think that Tiffany French Curtis, Maese's former girlfriend and the co-owner of the Doll House escort service, ran the whole show and Maese knew nothing about sex-for-money.

Utah Outlook: S.L. GOP member has charges dismissed

2008-07-11T00:26:00.000-06:00

Utah Outlook: S.L. GOP member has charges dismissed

Prosecutors: Maese was The Doll House 'pimp'

2008-07-10T16:57:00.001-06:00

By Stephen Hunt
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 07/10/2008 03:41:28 PM MDT

Posted: 2:59 PM- Steven Santiago Maese has grabbed headlines recently for hiring a private investigator to dig up dirt on Salt Lake County District Attorney Lohra Miller.
Veteran prosecutor Kent Morgan was fired in March by Miller for allegedly leaking confidential information to Maese about his pending criminal case.
In April, state House candidate Kelly Ann Booth broke off her engagement to Maese and dropped from the race after learning Maese had owned The Doll House escort service.
But on Thursday, a 3rd District Court jury was focused solely on the issue of whether Maese used the escort service as a cover for a prostitution ring.
Maese, 31, is charged with four counts of exploitation of prostitution, third-degree felonies punishable by up to five years in prison.
He is also charged with engaging in a pattern of unlawful activity and money laundering, second-degree felonies punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
Former Doll House escorts are expected to testify that between July 2004 and April 2006, they were encouraged by Maese to have sex with customers, and that they paid a portion of their earnings to Maese and co-defendant Tiffany French Curtis.
Curtis, who earlier this year pleaded guilty to reduced misdemeanor charges, is also slated to testify against Maese.

In a separate case, Maese is charged with third-degree felony witness tampering and stalking for allegedly following Curtis around the Salt Lake Valley in April, and on one day swerved his car in front of her vehicle three times on Interstate 15.
During opening statements, prosecutor Michael Colby called Curtis "The Doll House madam" and said Maese was the "pimp."
But defense attorney Gilbert Athay told jurors that while Doll House escorts performed "sex acts of all kinds ... they did it of their own choice."
He said The Doll House had a policy and procedures manual that prohibited sex acts and allowed the girls only to dance and do specific touching such as backrubs.
Athay also emphasized that all the women who would be testifying against Maese "worked as prostitutes."
He also said that almost all would testify about deals made by law enforcement and prosecutors to get them to testify. Most were getting their charges dismissed or had received pleas in abeyance, Athay said.

Yankees A-Rod Quote of a Lifetime

2008-07-07T18:14:00.003-06:00

A reporter asked A-Rod what he did to keep in shape. He said exercise, exercise, and more exercise. When asked about what food he eats he said he only eats healthy foods that are on a very strict list. When asked what food would he say was the worst possible thing he could eat that might affect his career, he replied straight faced and said wedding cake.

A-Rod was recently served divorce court documents alleging he was exercising with too many other woman other than his wife.

Former escort service owner claims prostitution prosecutors on 'vendetta'

2008-07-07T16:58:00.003-06:00

Seeks delay in Thursday trial

Former escort service owner claims prostitution prosecutors on 'vendetta'

By Stephen Hunt
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 07/07/2008 02:26:30 PM MDT

A former escort service owner charged with running a prostitution ring wants a judge to delay his Thursday trial.

Doll House owner Steven Santiago Maese claims the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office should be disqualified because DA Lohra Miller has a "personal and political vendetta" against him.
Third District Judge Randall Skanchy said he would review the issue, but warned Maese, and his attorney, Gilbert Athay, he would likely rule against them.
Athay argued that Miller still has hard feelings toward Maese for supporting and assisting recently fired prosecutor Kent Morgan in his failed battle against Miller for the Republican nomination for DA in April 2007. Morgan was fired in March for allegedly leaking confidential information about the Doll House to Maese and is appealing the firing to county officials.
Last week, Athay said today, Miller injected herself into the case by ordering prosecutor Chad Platt to refuse Maese any plea deal offers.

The Political Spyglass: 7/7/2008 4:36:00 PM

No Quarter Offered, No Quarter Given. Doll House owner Steven Santiago Maese is a total slime ball and tried to ruin Lohra Miller's reputation by attacking her private family life, along with a nutcase neighbor. DO NOT GIVE AN INCH on this case Lohra, go for it all and make this jerk pay for his actions and exploiting these women "escorts" prostitutes. I wish they still allowed public floggings. I hope he ends up "escorting" a few inmates down at the point of the mountain.

The Captain

There Will be Blood, Mascaro says Utah GOP leaders 'stoop low' He is blaming them for a leak about female intern

2008-07-04T00:32:00.002-06:00

Like I said in an earlier post, There will be Blood and the garbage is just beginning to fly

By Bob Bernick Jr.
Deseret News

Published: Friday, July 4, 2008 12:09 a.m. MDT

A state legislator who signed a bipartisan ethics complaint against one of his GOP House colleagues is now finding himself in the public eye — and blaming retribution by his own party leaders for it.

Rep. Steve Mascaro, R-West Jordan, says he did nothing wrong when he tried to console an upset female intern during the 2008 Legislature.

"I can't believe that the (leaders of the Republican Party) would stoop this low" as to leak the incident involving him to the news media. The Deseret News is not identifying sources who told the newspaper about the incident, but Mascaro said he believes he knows who has talked about it.

Top 10 Replies by Programmers when their programs do not work:

2008-07-03T09:35:00.000-06:00

Top 10 Replies by Programmers when their programs do not work:

10. "I can't test everything!"
9. "THIS can't be the source of THAT."
8. "It works, but it hasn't been tested."
7. "Somebody must have changed my code."
6. "Did you check for a virus on your system?"
5. "Even though it doesn't work, how does it feel?"
4. "You can't use that version on your system."
3. "Why do you want to do it that way?"
2. "Where were you when the program blew up?"
1. "I thought I fixed that."

The Cap'n!

2008-07-02T18:21:00.001-06:00

Some men and women are born great, some achieve greatness and some slit the throats of any scalawag who stands between them and unlimited power. You never met a man - or woman - you couldn't eviscerate. You are the definitive Man of Action, the CEO of the Seven Seas, Lee Iacocca in a blousy shirt and drawstring-fly pants. You're mission-oriented, and if anyone gets in the way, that's his problem, now isn't? Your buckle was swashed long ago and you have never been so sure of anything as your ability to bend everyone to your will. You will call anyone out and cut off his head if he shows any sign of taking you on or backing down. If one of your lieutenants shows an overly developed sense of ambition he may find more suitable accommodations in Davy Jones' locker. That is, of course, IF you notice him. You tend to be self absorbed - a weakness that may keep you from seeing enemies where they are and imagining them where they are not.

If you think $4.00 gas is expensive, look at Europe $10.00 per gallon

2008-06-30T22:39:00.004-06:00

I was wondering if gas in the US is hovering around $4.00 per gallon, what must be happening in the rest of the world. I checked and the price for gas now in Europe is $9-10 per gallon. So if we think things are hard here in the US, can you imagine diesel trucks at $10 per gallon. This is a global problem, and if it does not get fixed real soon, it won;t be just the US economy that will be going into the tank.

2008-06-30T08:53:00.001-06:00

How Gun Control Lost

Posted: 29 Jun 2008 01:50 AM CDT

Thomas Jefferson once wrote, pessimistically, "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." He would probably not have been surprised to see the...

Words of Wisdom

2008-06-27T06:12:00.001-06:00

Words of Wisdom

“If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.” Samuel Adams, 1780

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead

“God forbid that we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.” Thomas Jefferson

“The time is near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own…The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army…Let us therefore rely on the goodness of the cause and the aid of the Supreme Being, in whose hands victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble actions.” George Washington

“In our age there is no such thing as keeping out of politics. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.” George Orwell

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” Abraham Lincoln

“What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles.” George Hegel

“The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can.” John Gardner

“But to expend millions … is unworthy the charge, and is using posterity with the utmost cruelty; because it is leaving them the great work to do, and a debt upon their backs from which they derive no advantage. Such a thought is unworthy a man of honor, and is the true characteristic of a narrow heart and a peddling politician.” Thomas Paine

“The scope of government must be limited, and the power dispersed.” Milton Friedman

“The function of government must be to favor no small group at the expense of its duty to protect the rights of personal freedom and of private property of all its citizens.” Franklin Roosevelt

“That government is best which governs least.” Henry David Thoreau

“The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.” James Madison

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton

“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.” Thomas Paine

“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” Thomas Jefferson

“Those who came before us risked all of their property, their reputations, their freedom, and their lives to push the boundaries of democracy for us… What are you doing that is more worthy of your efforts than trying to establish the moral principles of fairness, justice, and equality for all in our America?.” Jim Hightower

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch." Benjamin Franklin

“Let us heed the voice of the people and recognize their common sense. If we do not, we not only blaspheme our political heritage, we ignore the common ties that bind all Americans..” Barbara Jordan

“All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke

“Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning.” Frederick Douglass

“It is a common defect of men in fair weather to take no thought of storms.” Machiavelli

“The people need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they choose, they could blow the Party to pieces by tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it.” George Orwell

“In the beginning of change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated, and scorned.” Mark Twain

“The electorate is the source of strength for a revolutionary idea, because the people, en masse, will support an idea that makes sense, although unconventional, while the elites will support it only when they see they have no choice.” Jude Waniski

“Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.” William Jennings Bryan

“The inside operation of Congress -- the deals, the compromises, the selling out, the co-opting, the unprincipled manipulating, the self-serving career-building -- is a story of such monumental decadence that I believe if people find out about it they will demand an end to it.” Bella Abzug

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” Thomas Paine

Cannon was the first shot heard round the World 'Get Out of Our House'

2008-06-27T05:46:00.002-06:00

'Get Out of Our House'
Mission

GOOOH stands for 'Get Out of Our House' and is pronounced like the word 'go'. It is a NON-PARTISAN plan to evict the 435 career politicians in the U.S. House of Representatives and replace them with everyday Americans just like you.

GOOOH enables you to do four things you can't do today:

1. Run for Congress without raising millions of dollars
2. Truly participate in the selection of your Congressman
3. Replace career politicians with true representatives who will be held accountable
4. Eliminate the influence of special interest groups in the election process

The GOOOH process allows Americans of every political leaning to nominate themselves or someone they know to run for Congress. Through GOOOH's Candidate Selection Sessions you and your peers will select the candidate in your district who best represents your district's views. Even if you do not wish to become your district's representative you will want to participate in the process and have a direct say in who is chosen to represent your district. GOOOH will fund a national campaign for the 435 candidates (one from each district) who will run against the party politicians. Because GOOOH is a process for selecting representatives (not an agenda-based party platform) we expect a very liberal candidate to be selected in San Francisco and a very conservative one in Colorado Springs -- but it will be up to the GOOOH members in each district to decide.

For GOOOH to succeed we will need at least 500,000 participants. We will continue to build our base of supporters until we have the participation we need, at which time we will begin our effort to have the GOOOH party added to the ballot in the 50 states and to select our 435 nominees. There are many variables involved in reaching this level of support, and we hope you appreciate it will take time to do so, but we believe it is only a matter of time.

The most controversial part of GOOOH is that the founder, Tim Cox, has proposed excluding politicians, actively prosecuting attorneys, and individuals with family assets over $11.5 million (250 times the median income) from the process. They are excluded not because they are bad people, but because they are overly represented in government today and, generally speaking, no longer seem to represent the common man. It is not proposed that they be excluded from the two parties or from running as independents, just that they not be allowed to participate in this system initially, while we try to restore more balance to our House. Mr. Cox understands his view may be incorrect, and that excluding anyone may be the wrong approach, but he felt compelled to start with what he thought was the best way to effect the needed change, not what was politically correct. With this in mind, the members of GOOOH will soon be asked to vote and decide if anyone should be excluded or if we should allow each pool of ten to determine for themselves how they want to vote. There is a great debate going on in our forums on this topic, and you are invited to weigh in.

We hope you will join GOOOH today and help us take our House back from the politicians!

Why Oil Shale and not Coal?

2008-06-26T15:14:00.000-06:00

Why Oil Shale and not Coal? I have a hard time understanding why our Utah Federal Elected Officials seem hell bent on extracting Oil from Oil Shale (rock), when we could be generating liquid fuel directly from coal right now. The United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal. We have 300-500 years of known reserves and the technology for converting coal directly to liquid fuel has been known since the Germans developed the technology 60 years ago. If the United states were to go on a war footing crash program and shift all diesel and jet fuel for truckers, transportation and airlines etc and fix the price for the next 10 years so that these folks would have a known energy price, just watch the price of OIL and gasoline drop like a rock. All it would take would be an executive order from the President and a directive to the Military and the department of Energy.

Utah Outlook: You have gatta see this Video

2008-06-25T15:50:00.000-06:00

Utah Outlook: You have gatta see this Video

2008-06-19T13:35:00.003-06:00

GAO Questions Tanker Deal

Posted: 19 Jun 2008 04:49 AM CDT

The Politico

2008-06-19T13:35:00.001-06:00

Obama Campaign Tightens Control of Access

Posted: 19 Jun 2008 04:54 AM CDT

New York Times

Obama: U.S. Should Avoid Making bin Laden a Martyr

Posted: 19 Jun 2008 04:54 AM CDT

Reuters

2008-06-19T13:34:00.004-06:00

McCain Stops in Southwest Missouri

Posted: 19 Jun 2008 04:53 AM CDT

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

2008-06-19T13:34:00.003-06:00

McCain Wants 45 New Nuclear Reactors

Posted: 19 Jun 2008 04:53 AM CDT

New York Times

2008-06-19T13:34:00.001-06:00

1,500 Gather at Russert Memorial

Posted: 19 Jun 2008 04:53 AM CDT

Washington Post

2008-06-19T13:33:00.004-06:00

Change? Obama's Foreign Policy Team is Clinton's Old Hands

Posted: 19 Jun 2008 04:52 AM CDT

McClatchy

2008-06-19T13:33:00.003-06:00

Rumsfeld Repays McCain, Doesn't Back Candidate

Posted: 19 Jun 2008 04:51 AM CDT

The Hill

2008-06-19T13:33:00.001-06:00

McCain Wins Support as Last Best Hope

Posted: 19 Jun 2008 04:51 AM CDT

Bloomberg

2008-06-19T13:32:00.002-06:00

AFL-CIO To Endorse Obama in Weeks

Posted: 19 Jun 2008 04:50 AM CDT

Associated Press

2008-06-19T13:32:00.001-06:00

Specter of 2000 Could Haunt Obama

Posted: 19 Jun 2008 04:49 AM CDT

The Politico

2008-06-17T13:56:00.001-06:00

Obama Plans Spending Boost

Posted: 17 Jun 2008 04:54 AM CDT

Wall Street Journal

Democrats Hire Radical Islamic Group to Register Voters - Fraud Ensues

2008-06-13T10:41:00.000-06:00

A group hired by the Democratic Party to register voters is in trouble for vote fraud in Louisiana: State probes voter registration drive - Baton Rouge, LA.

Secretary of State Jay Dardenne said Tuesday he will meet today with a Democrat-affiliated group responsible for a voter registration effort that is inundating East Baton Rouge and other parish registrars with bogus and incomplete applications.

Dardenne said his investigators are trying to determine if any state election laws have been violated as thousands of voter registration cards have been dumped on registrars offices through the efforts of VIP. "We have some very real concerns about the data we are getting from them," Dardenne said.

VIP is a Washington, D.C., group hired by national Democrats to register some 70,000 new voters in advance of the presidential and other federal elections this fall.

"With an effort this big there's always going to be glitches and problems along these lines," said Brian Welsh, communications director for the Democrats' Louisiana Victory 2008.

So who is "VIP?"

VIP is an operation run by the Muslim American Society, a front group for the jihad movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood. But don't take my word for it; here's a detailed report on the Muslim American Society from the Investigative Project.

Are the Democrats so desperate to get Barack Obama elected that they'll climb into bed with one of the most notorious radical Islamic groups in the world-a group that is openly dedicated to destroying Western civilization and establishing a global caliphate?

It would seem so.

Here's an LGF search with much more information about the Muslim American Society, their support for suicide bombings and jihad, and their connections to the Muslim Brotherhood.

2008-06-11T11:01:00.003-06:00

Fundraisers Predict $100 Million June for Obama

Posted: 10 Jun 2008 04:41 AM CDT

The Hill

2008-06-11T11:01:00.001-06:00

Don't Tell Obama, McCain; Confabs Taking Corporate Cash

Posted: 10 Jun 2008 04:40 AM CDT

Bloomberg

2008-06-11T11:00:00.004-06:00

Obama Sends North Carolina Message

Posted: 10 Jun 2008 04:40 AM CDT

Charlotte Observer

2008-06-11T11:00:00.003-06:00

McCain Expects to Win Virginia

Posted: 10 Jun 2008 04:39 AM CDT

Richmond Times-Dispatch

2008-06-11T11:00:00.001-06:00

The Reformers as Fundraisers

Posted: 10 Jun 2008 04:39 AM CDT

Washington Post

2008-06-11T10:59:00.006-06:00

For Clinton, Millions in Debt and Limited Options

Posted: 10 Jun 2008 04:38 AM CDT

New York Times

2008-06-11T10:59:00.005-06:00

McCain Opens Fundraiser to Media

Posted: 10 Jun 2008 04:38 AM CDT

Associated Press

2008-06-11T10:59:00.003-06:00

Record Gas Prices Could Hurt McCain

Posted: 10 Jun 2008 04:34 AM CDT

The Politico

2008-06-11T10:59:00.001-06:00

Obama Names Furman to Economic Policy Post

Posted: 10 Jun 2008 04:33 AM CDT

Bloomberg

2008-06-11T10:58:00.004-06:00

High Gas Prices are Good News for Lobbyists

Posted: 10 Jun 2008 04:33 AM CDT

The Hill

2008-06-11T10:58:00.003-06:00

Kennedy Returns Home After Brain Surgery

Posted: 10 Jun 2008 04:31 AM CDT

Boston Globe

2008-06-11T10:58:00.001-06:00

New Yorkers Strikeout in Presidential Race

Posted: 10 Jun 2008 04:29 AM CDT

Associated Press

Utah Outlook: Best Political Bumper Sticker I have ever read

2008-06-08T01:11:00.000-06:00

Utah Outlook: Best Political Bumper Sticker I have ever read

Constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College

2008-06-06T16:40:00.000-06:00

Nelson bill would abolish Electoral College

By Michael O'Brien

Posted: 06/06/08 05:18 PM [ET]

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) introduced a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College on Friday, less than a week after the Democrats settled on how to handle delegates from Florida at their national convention.

“It’s time for Congress to really give Americans the power of one-person, one-vote, instead of the political machinery selecting candidates and electing our president,” Nelson said in a release announcing the amendment.

Nelson had announced he would offer the legislation in an address to his state’s senate in March.

Nelson said his principal argument for making the change is that the Electoral College permits a candidate with fewer votes nationally to win the presidency by capturing narrow victories in big states. In 2000, then-Vice President Al Gore won the popular votes but George W. Bush won the Electoral College.

Nelson cited that election along with this year’s contentious Democratic primary in Florida as reasons for his legislation. He sued the DNC last fall for initially refusing to recognize Florida’s full delegation at the Democratic National Convention.

Democrats on Friday decided to give each of Florida’s delegates a half-vote as a penalty for moving their primary ahead on the calendar without party approval. The move created a mess for the party after Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), whom Nelson supported, won the primary. The result was disputed because candidates had avoided campaigning in the state.
In addition to the Electoral College amendment, the bill would establish rotating primaries for presidential nominations, expand voting options and methods and try to improve voter registration and verification.

Legislation to abolish the Electoral College is not entirely foreign to the 110 Congress. Reps. Gene Green (D-Texas) and Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) introduced similar amendments in the House in early 2007.

The second part of the initiative would establish rotating, interregional primaries between March and June during a presidential election year as an alternative to the current primary and caucus system. The third portion would permit early presidential voting nationwide, require voting machines to produce a verifiable paper record, and encourage voting by mail, among other things.

2008-06-05T11:00:00.003-06:00

Shields & Brooks Handicap the General Election

Posted: 05 Jun 2008 08:46 PM CDT

The NewsHour

2008-06-05T11:00:00.001-06:00

Clinton Likely to Drop Out Saturday

Posted: 05 Jun 2008 04:53 AM CDT

Washington Post

2008-06-05T10:59:00.004-06:00

McCain Proposes Joint Forums

Posted: 05 Jun 2008 04:53 AM CDT

Times-Picayune

2008-06-05T10:59:00.003-06:00

The Map For Obama & McCain

Posted: 05 Jun 2008 04:52 AM CDT

Los Angeles Times

2008-06-05T10:59:00.001-06:00

GOP Fears Obama Money Machine

Posted: 05 Jun 2008 04:51 AM CDT

The Politico

2008-06-05T10:58:00.005-06:00

Obama & McCain Work Together Behind the Scenes

Posted: 05 Jun 2008 04:50 AM CDT

The Hill

2008-06-05T10:58:00.003-06:00

Superdelegates Didn't Hold for Clinton

Posted: 05 Jun 2008 04:46 AM CDT

New York Times

The Captains Spyglass

You can do anything you set your mind to when ...

Sanity - Minds are Like Parachutes

Bravery, Every Man Dies, But Not Every Man Truly Lives

Apathy - If we don't take care of the customer, maybe they'll stop bugging us

ACQUISITION

Because The Rest Of Us Think Your're An Idiot

Politicians are like diapers, they need to be changed often and for the same reason

London Financial Times re Mormons

Northrop Grumman X-47B

USU ARL Student Receives National Honor

Mum's the Word for NASA's Secret Space Plane X-37B

Granite Park teacher honored by National Science Teachers

Mark E. Towner Named New Varsity Head Coach for Kearns High School, Lady Cougers Fastpitch Softball

Go Lady Cougers

Middle school teacher receives award

Utah Science Teacher Mark E. Towner Selected For Fellowship Program in Prestigious NSTA New Science Teacher Academy

If they made a Movie, Nobody would believe it

Sarah Barracuda to resign as Alaska Governor, Watch for a National TV Deal on Fox

Palin resigning as Alaska governor (AP)

White Firefighters could Backdraft Sotomayor Appointment

Better Hope Mitt runs because if he doesn’t, an ominous scenario presents itself:

John Kerry on Sanford: Too bad Palin didn’t go missing too

posted at 6:38 pm on June 24, 2009 by Allahpundit Send to a Friend | Share on Facebook | printer-friendly

Yo Ho Yo Ho - Oh Crap!

The Obama Taxman Cometh

Mormon TV: Harvard video goes viral

A day of Faith

Report demonstrates new investments in education and science timely

Can this be the answer? WOW

The Captain Having Fun

Stirba today announced that the Supreme Court's unanimous decision today in Pearson v. Callahan

Top 5 Internet Defamation Law Blogs

Internet Defamation Gets Noticed

Defamation and False Light here in Utah

AP IMPACT: Lobbyists skirt Obama's earmark ban

The Minnesota Recount Folly: We've Been Down That Road

The Fix is In, Utah legislators keep getting elected, here is why

Regulators Spring Into Action Against Naked Short Sellers. Or not. December 7th, 2008 by Patrick Byrne

Financial Plan that makes sense !

President's market rescue plan

Who Hates Sarah Palin?

Sahra sends slapshot back at Obama

Political Teams Battle to Define Palin in Alaska

Obama puts heat on Palin as she boosts GOP ticket

You Can’t Fake Authenticity

McCain-Palin becoming Palin-McCain?

Palin Assails Critics and Electrifies Party

Palin electrifies conservative base

Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington?

Sarah Palin, I called it in June. This changes Everything. I'm sure my wife has already written Sarah a $4000 check to the McCain Campaign

Obama's economy outright laughable

They're Paying Attention Now

Top acquisition official: Tanker acquisition top priority

Sir Isaac and the Airbus

Towner for President, the only choice that makes sense

Come see the latest Jib Jab

Maese is convicted in Doll House case

Maese is convicted in Doll House case

Utah Outlook: S.L. GOP member has charges dismissed

Prosecutors: Maese was The Doll House 'pimp'

Yankees A-Rod Quote of a Lifetime

Former escort service owner claims prostitution prosecutors on 'vendetta'

Former escort service owner claims prostitution prosecutors on 'vendetta'

There Will be Blood, Mascaro says Utah GOP leaders 'stoop low' He is blaming them for a leak about female intern

Top 10 Replies by Programmers when their programs do not work:

The Cap'n!

If you think $4.00 gas is expensive, look at Europe $10.00 per gallon

Words of Wisdom

Cannon was the first shot heard round the World 'Get Out of Our House'

Why Oil Shale and not Coal?

Utah Outlook: You have gatta see this Video

Democrats Hire Radical Islamic Group to Register Voters - Fraud Ensues

Utah Outlook: Best Political Bumper Sticker I have ever read

Constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College

posted at 6:38 pm on June 24, 2009 by Allahpundit
Send to a Friend | Share on Facebook | printer-friendly