Posts Tagged ‘ McCain

Daily del.icio.us Bookmarks for 04/02/08 02 April 2008 at 5:00 pm by Jason 504 views

These are my daily “Good to Know” links for 04/02/08 … please enjoy:

Fla. Teens Believe Drinking Bleach Will Prevent HIV | Orlando News Story

A recent survey that found some Florida teens believe drinking a cap of bleach will prevent HIV and a shot of Mountain Dew will stop pregnancy has prompted lawmakers to push for an overhaul of sex education in the state. State lawmakers said the myths ar

McCain to Kid: "You Little Jerk; You're Drafted!" | YouTube

I might not agree with his politics, but that's all class.

If You Text in Class, This Prof Will Leave | Inside Higher Ed

Some professors threaten to confiscate students? cell phones if they go off during class. Laurence Thomas has his own approach to classroom distractions. If the philosopher at Syracuse University catches a student sending text messages or reading a news

Don Hewitt: "60 Minutes" legend | SeattlePi

Through questioning by moderator Steve Raible of KIRO/7 Eyewitness News, we found out that he told Dan Rather to "sock him [Abraham Zapruder] in the mouth," "grab his film" recording the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, make a copy, apologize t

Tooth Regeneration May Replace Drill-and-Fill | Wired

The next time your children get cavities, they might get tooth regeneration instead of fillings. That's because materials scientists are beginning to find just the right solutions of chemicals to rebuild decayed teeth, rather than merely patching their h

Memo: Laws Didn't Apply to Interrogators | washingtonpost.com

The Justice Department sent a legal memorandum to the Pentagon in 2003 asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president's ultimate auth

Come back for more links tomorrow!!



+ Fairness when questioning the children of candidates By Jason 02 April 2008 at 4:15 am 571 views 1 Comment

I came across this article at the Pensito Review talking about Chelsea Clinton getting asked once again about her father’s infidelities. The author brings up a couple great points:

Why should any philanderer’s daughter be asked to answer for her old man’s inability to keep his zipper shut? If there ever was a question that deserved to be ducked, it’s “What do you think about your dad’s extramarital affair?”

If we’re going to adopt this new level of accountability, it ought to be applied fairly. So it has to be fair game to ask John McCain’s daughter, Meghan, who also campaigns for her father, about his long-ago adulteries and more recent relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman; her mother Cindy McCain’s drug problem, which drove her to steal opoids from the medical charity she established; and the involvement of both her parents in the Keating Five Scandal back in 1989.

This is something that has been bugging me for awhile now. Let’s say that Chelsea did have an answer for her Dad’s behavior. What does this change? What does this have to do about her mother’s campaign? In my mind, absolutely nothing. I believe it’s just another attempt to remind everyone about the Lewinsky scandal however they can. Let’s be honest, if my father committed adultery (which, to my knowledge, he hasn’t), I’d be absolutely outraged if someone came up to me or one of my siblings and asked us to answer for him. It’s amazing what people can get away with during a political campaign… I mean, when else is it acceptable for things like this? And if it is now acceptable, like it was stated above, why aren’t we questioning Meghan McCain?

My big question is, if Obama wins the nomination, will we see more attacks against McCain, as Hillary won’t be around? Or will the attacks just increase against Obama? It’s disheartening to read things like:

The Rasmussen poll says only 56 percent of Clinton supporters say they would vote for Obama over McCain if Obama wins the nomination compared with 40 percent who said they would not likely vote for him. If Clinton won, 69 percent of Obama supporters would vote for her compared with 29 percent who would not.

I continue to fear that no matter what happens, Clinton or Obama, we may be faced with McCain in the White House. The only thing I can see stopping this is if there is an alternate ballot at the DNC with someone everyone can agree on (Al Gore is the name bandied around). We’ll have to wait and see, but it worries me.



+ Daily del.icio.us Bookmarks for 03/28/08 By Jason 28 March 2008 at 2:05 pm 1,146 views 4 Comments

These are my daily “Good to Know” links for 03/28/08 … please enjoy:

Legs manual wins odd title prize | BBC NEWS

A self-help guide called If You Want Closure In Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs has been voted the oddest book title of the year. Joel Rickett, deputy editor of The Bookseller, said of the winner: “So effective is the title that you don’t even ne

The Accurate Watch Reminds You Of Unavoidable Death | OhGizmo!

The only things that appear on the face of this watch are a simple second hand along with hour and minute hands that read ?remember you will die.? Seriously, how morbid is that? I don?t think anyone is really going to forget the fact that they will

John McCain’s First Presidential Ad | YouTube

With such a head start (and such a good ad), I have a feeling Democrats will have a very hard uphill battle this year.

Alien Sociology | Space.com

According to Hollywood, Earth is surely one of the galaxy’s “top places to visit before you die.” Cinema aliens come here often enough that the State Department should probably set up passport control. Of course, that’s fiction. But in the last hundred y

Medical transcriptionist melts keyboard with fingertips | Boing Boing

“We have a medical transcriptionist on staff who has been using the same keyboard for the last 8.5 years. My co-worker replaced it yesterday, and when he first showed it to me I thought someone had taken a blowtorch to it! The most frequently used keys ha

Prepare for the Worst, Because Solar Storms Are About to Get Ugly | Wired

Every 11 years or so, the sun gets a little pissy. It breaks out in a rash of planet-sized sunspots that spew superhot gas, hurling clouds of electrons, protons, and heavier ions toward Earth at nearly the speed of light. These solar windstorms have been

Make Ur Lolcat Famous Contest | I Can Has Cheezburger?

From the site: “Jones Soda wanted to put a lolcat on their clever soda bottles across the country. So we asked if we can run a contest to find that special lol. (It?s like American Idol, but we don?t has to listen to ur singing voice.)”

Made You Look | Adobe Photoshop Express

Adobe’s new Photoshop Express… 2 GB of storage space, a gallery, and an online version of Photoshop. Oh, and it’s free. Could you ask for more?

MacBook Air gets seized in 2 minutes flat | Engadget

At PWN 2 OWN, famed iPhone hacker Charlie Miller showed the MacBook Air who its daddy really was. Miller visited a site which contained his exploit code which then allowed him to seize control of the computer.

What worms, virus and spam attacks look like in 3D | Vallywag

On April 7, the Varnish Fine Art gallery and bar in San Francisco will host an exhibit called Infected Art. The works represent what worms, virus and spam attacks such as Storm, MyDoom and Netsky look like when put through a “computational art” algorithm.

Come back for more links tomorrow!!



+ Electoral Votes! By Jason 24 March 2008 at 9:10 am 339 views No Comments

With so much time being spent on polls and such on the 2008 Primary, Electoral-Votes.com decided to start a running Electoral Vote map. The first map is a Barack Obama vs. John McCain, and the other is Hillary Clinton vs. John McCain. He will be updating the maps daily, and here’s what he has to say about them:

Starting today and until we have a Democratic nominee, two maps will be available for the general election, one for Obama-McCain and one for Clinton-McCain. Links to them will be given below the main map. Please keep in mind that in politics, a week is a long time and 7 months is forever. If you doubt this, check out the electoral college graph for 2004. Notice that Kerry was ahead by 125-150 electoral votes all summer, until the Swift Boat ad started, which precipitated a huge decline from which he never recovered. This graph will be run again this year, but we need a pair of nominees first.

Nevertheless, from a quick inspection of the Obama-McCain and Clinton-McCain maps you can see graphically what you probably already knew. Hillary Clinton is a traditional Democrat and does well in places Democrats usually do well in. She also does well in Florida due to the large number of New York snowbirds who live there in the winter. If she is the nominee, you are going to see a monumental traffic jam Nov. 1 all up and down the East Coast as hundreds of thousands of snowbirds drive down to Florida in time to vote there Nov. 4. Of course, McCain can neutralize her by picking popular Florida governor Charlie Crist as his running mate.

Clinton also does well in the rust belt, but if the economy is in deep doo doo come November, any Democrat can win those states by just talking jobs jobs jobs instead of tax cuts. Obama’s strength is in the red states. He might be able to win Colorado (which has been trending blue anyway) and Nevada. No matter what the map shows, he’s not going to win North Dakota unless buffalos get the vote real quick. But he could easily force McCain to spend real money in states that ought to be no-brainers, like Texas (SurveyUSA’s poll shows McCain ahead of Obama there only 47% to 46%). In short, Clinton’s slogan will be “Kerry + Florida whereas Obama will be playing Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy.

So, with all that… what do the current numbers show? Let’s take a look. First up, Obama/McCain:

Obama/McCain Map

Electoral Votes: Obama 231 — McCain 292 — Ties 15

Ouch. Hello President McCain as of today’s numbers. Now it’s on to Clinton/McCain:

Clinton/McCain Map

Electoral Votes: Clinton 268 — McCain 246 — Ties 24

Would you look at that? Hello Mrs. President as of today’s numbers. Interesting! It’ll be neat to see how these maps change over the course of the next few months!