Could it be the oil? Guess again because we'd have cut some deals long, long ago. Could it be bloodlust for good ole Saddam Hussein? Guess again because he's now in H-E-L-L. Could it be that we're there for humanitarian purposes? Do me a favor if you think otherwise, go HERE and watch the YouTube of the late US Army Corporal Chris Mason if you would please.
And if there's one thing the folks at Portland City Council and at the Metropolitan Service District (METRO) have truly mastered, it's density. These folks and their legions of "planners" qualify as some of the densest inDUHviduals on the planet. Fixed-rail is their religion, and they'll do whatever it takes to make you square pegs fit into their billion-dollar round holes. As voters have consistently rejected the politicians' fixed-rail mantra, they've decided that you don't know enough to have a voice in the process anymore. So you don't get to vote; they'll plunk down billions of your tax dollars and build stuff anyway.
Meanwhile, if you insist upon driving - or transporting goods and services by truck - suck it. Avoid potholes if you can, and resign yourself to increased congestion and heightened air pollution as a result of your silly choices. More pollution is great, because that allows "planners" and other bureaucrats to impose, at some point, mandatory driving restrictions. They'll have no choice, due to air quality concerns.
These "anything for a buck" travel agents thought they were untouchable. Clearly, they'll have some time to re-think. This is a great start, but it's clear that we need much more enforcement - on both sides of the border. What to do with Americans who facilitate human smuggling? Perhaps they should be stripped of citizenship in the USA and shipped to Juarez. After all, turnabout is fair play. Why not send the criminals to the country that they really support?
PHOENIX — Fourteen travel agency owners or employees were indicted on human smuggling and other charges, accused of selling airline tickets they thought would be used by illegal immigrants, officials said.
Authorities said a records analysis showed six travel agencies sold tickets to an estimated 6,800 illegal immigrants in the United States since mid-2005. But Thursday's charges were connected only to the sale of tickets to undercover officers.
In an apparently under-reported decision, the Oregon Supreme Court has not only redefined self-defense, but has essentially overturned a twenty-five year-old ruling by a former Oregon Supreme Court. In ruling that the law does not require a person to attempt to avoid a confrontation before employing deadly force, the court reversed a Josephine County murder conviction and chastised the 1982 Supreme Court for rewriting the law - noting that no escape or retreat language was ever included in Oregon law. While this is a significant development, it doesn't seem to have been picked out on much of the local media. The folks at JibJab won't be looking for work anytime soon.
Seriously, it is a real tear jerker. You have been warned.
Previous post that Orbusmax featured.
Apparently, your Washington State Senate Democrats want you to believe they have a "Security for Washington’s future today" budget. Nothing could be further from the truth. The State Senate budget (SB 5140) overspends greatly… but invests "a maximum of $100,000" for a special education ombudsman. Only because State Senator Janéa Holmquist has staked her personal reputation on getting this funding - and her press release was written three weeks ago in most respects according to a source within Olympia.
Of course, being a conservative in the mold of U.S. Representative Mike Pence, U.S. Senator Tom Coburn and the Evergreen Freedom Foundation… here are some offsets (okay, cuts) the State Senate could make in its budget (these are biennium numbers):
$158,000 for a "Manufactured Home Installation Training Account" in Sec. 127 - Community, Trade and Economic Development
(A subsidy to private business, pure & simple.)
Expect more dire warnings in the months to come regarding air pollution, and expect to hear more exhortations not to drive. Unlike global warming, this is actually a man-made event in the offing in the Portland metropolitan area, as the next stages of the light rail construction that voters twice declined gets underway. The "planners" know better than the voters, and so they came up with some nifty work-arounds that allow them to build more stuff that we don't want.
Construction has begun along the I-205 freeway, which unfortunately means that traffic lanes are being reduced. Ditto for downtown Portland. The result, of course, will be increased traffic congestion along these routes, which means that more vehicles will be subjected to low speed or stop-and-go scenarios. Just what the "planners" want to see. After all, vehicles that travel at normal speeds emit far less pollutants into the air, and so by creating these bottlenecks, the "planners" can "encourage" you to drive less because driving is going to be causing increased pollution. They won't bother to mention that its not your fault - it's theirs.
Fed up with the Republican party? Why not just vote Mrs. Bill Clinton in? Well, maybe because most folks realize that she just doesn't have any of the attributes that they want to see in a leader. Granted, Bush has been a huge disappointment on many levels, but that doesn't mean we can't do worse - and a recent Time poll indicates that Mrs. Clinton may already have hit her zenith. As noted previously in a discussion of Ron Saxton's run for the Oregon governorship: name recognition isn't always a good thing. Sure enough, Saxton was torpedoed by his own name recognition: people knew the name; they just didn't much like what they had come to associate with that name. Mrs. Bill Clinton suffers much the same fallout from her widespread name recognition: we know the name; we just don't much care for the baggage. People have already made up their minds about her - they either love her or they really don't like her all that much. Given that, it's unlikely that she'll be able to gain much traction in the coming months.
originally posted at Perri Nelson’s Website
A lot of people like to claim that Microsoft doesn’t innovate. I think this Reuters article in the Washington Post proves them wrong. To get there though, you have to remember a little bit of history.
Do you all remember Janet Reno’s big anti-trust suit against Microsoft? I do. It affected the work I did directly. It wasn’t really about a monopoly at all, although that’s the way it appeared to have played out. What it was about was Netscape’s claim that by bundling the Internet Explorer browser with Windows 95 and Windows 98 Microsoft was taking over the browser market and shoving Netscape aside.
Never mind that both browsers were free. Never mind that Netscape’s browser was losing market share rapidly before Internet Explorer was bundled into the OS, because Internet Explorer 3.0 was actually a superior product to Netscape 3.0. Never mind that more and more web sites were “optimized for Internet Explorer”. Never mind that IBM had integrated a browser into OS2 Warp, or that Netscape was commonly bundled onto Windows computers by OEMs.
When we read blogger, novelist and screenwriter Roger L. Simon's blog today– he's spitting mad over Iran's be-scarving of Faye Turney, one of the Brits taken hostage by Iran in the Iraqi part of Shatt-al-arab– we got to thinking…Rosie O'Donnell and many, many vocal people in the media on the left don't seem to understand: if you're a woman, and the islamo-fascists win, you had better hope you look good in a headscarf. (News Flash for Rosie and other women of the non-heterosexual persuasion: Iran doesn't stock head scarves in size "Gay"). Read Some People Still Don't Get It: If They Win Your Future is Head Scarves, Prisons or Worse, here .
