Warning! Puritans on the loose!

Look out, the Puritans are coming!! Check out this story at cbsnews.com, about a city in Mexico banning indoor nudity. I know, it sounds too hard to believe, but its true.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/22/world/main662584.shtml

I guess you could also consider them the moral thought police. Of course, we laugh now but some ultra right winger will probably push for a similar law here in a few years. With drugs, poverty, corruption and crime running rampant, one would thing they would have other priorities to worry about there.

Maybe they could form a special squad of enforcement officers called the "Bare Ass Brigade" to enforce it, maybe even get a sitcom out of it.

Just when you thought you had seen it all.....

This is hard to believe, but apparently Mark Geragos, the lawyer for that wonderful human being Scott Peterson, is pursuing donations to help find the real killers of Laci and Conner Peterson. I am not going to put the link here. If you really want to contribute, I would consider some alternatives, such as investing in Enron or Arthur Andersen.

Hey Mark, I hear OJ is available, maybe he can work this into his schedule since he is already on the hunt...................

On a related note, I don't think they should execute him. Just put him in general population, I am sure someone will find Scotty very cute! And think of the money it would save!

URL's not working

Sorry, I goofed, except for my recent post, the links in each post where not clickable. Now that I halfway know what I am doing, I was able to fix that.

Can you say dumbass?

Check the link for a story about an 80 car pileup in Pennsylvania that happened over the weekend. The best part of the story is a cop describing how, in white out conditions, a semi goes cruising through at 55 miles an hour. You can probably guess what happens after that. Probably not unlike a scene from Chips, just with snow added in.

www.cnn.com/2004/US/12/20/highway.pileup.ap/index.html

Your favorite radio show

Just curious who you think has the best radio talk show out there right now. And if you are thinking Dr. Laura, do me a favor and don't admit that. But if you have a preference, go ahead and let me know who and why. My personal favorite, at least in the political arena is O'Reilly. His topics are usually good, and he is not another party robot all the time. My number two is probably the Drudge report, I also occasionally catch Hannity or Colmes on their radio shows. If you really want a treat, listen to Michael Savage sometime if you can catch him where you live. Like most of the hosts he is conservative, but still totally different from the rest. He is way out there, but his show is interesting. His website is interesting too if you want to check it out: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-prs/index.html

Come to think of it I also used to listen to Micheal Reagan too but have not heard his show in awhile.

A blast from the past

I stumbled across a website that has a picture of Donald Rumsfeld (yes our very own Donny!) shaking hands with Saddam Hussein at a meeting that took place in Baghdad in December of 1983. Here is a link to the picture, along with an article that talks about the meeting:

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0802-01.htm

Now before any of your conservatives get in a lather, I am not saying it was bad on Rumsfeld's part. It just shows that how someone how we consider an ally we later are fighting, and looking back, picking him as an ally just because he was at war with Iran was pretty short sighted. Not the first time its happened. You don't hear that much talk about it, but we actually supplied Bin Laden with weapons and aid when he was part of the Mujhadeen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Small world huh? Again, no one could have forseen that I don't think, but still kind of eery don't you think?

A surprise for democrats

I was just reading that some democrats are now apparently rethinking their strategy of trying to obstruct President Bush's judicial nominations as they have in the past. Apparently the defeat of Tom Daschle in the past election has some of them concerned that using similiar tactics during this term could backfire on them during the next election.

They are just considering it for now, I will believe it when I see it, although I think that might be a good idea. Not to mention, we need less gridlock in government instead of more. But whether or not some of the old guard dems will go for it is anyone's guess. When you are in the minority I suppose your options are limited. I guess I will believe it when I see it. If Bush nominates an ultra right-winger then all bets might be off.

Since Bush is not ultra conservative I personally think he might put forth more moderate candidates (assuming Rehnquist does step down), but some in his party are feeling pretty cocky about their election mandate and may push for more conservative nominations. Its a good bet that the religious right will push for very conservative nominees. It should be interesting to watch this unfold.

OJ is on the way

This just in from the newsroom.................

To assist in the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the government has secured the services of that famous super sleuth, you guessed it, OJ!

Now this will mean he will, at least temporarily have to suspend his search for the real killers of Nicole and Ron, but as soon as this crisis is over he will return full time to the search.

Stay tuned for further developments.

Social Security Reform

Its always interesting when the topic of social security reform comes up in congress. I think everyone knows it needs to be changed in some way, but its a political landmine dealing with it so nothing seems to happen. The idea of private accounts does have some good points, but also some bad points. In particular, assuming they will allow the money to be invested in the stock market, is that many of those without the experience or knowledge in the market could get burned, risking some or all of their retirement savings. I personally like the idea myself, but what about the person that puts it all in the market and loses it all and then has no savings when they retire? I can see the commercials from the AARP already, some 70 year old guy homeless because of that.

I thought it was a mistake for President Bush to say this early in the debate that there should be no increase in payroll FICA taxes. Hey, I don't want to pay more either, but we either have to pay out less, put more in, or make sure the money in the fund earns more. Private accounts would help in that regard, but its not a slam dunk that would be enough. I don't think anyone would want the FICA tax rate to go up, but raising the cap more would probably be easier to sell politically.

There is already talk that the private accounts are going to be a big win for the financial servies companies but no one else. It could be a benefit for them, but too early to say for sure. The issue of any fees you would have to pay will likely be pretty heated. One executive at such a company dismissed that claim, but that is not really a surprise.

By the way, if you are curious about what you would retire with (projected from today and assuming the system is still solvent) you can go here:

http://www.ssa.gov/planners/calculators.htm

So what are your thoughts, should they?
1.) Just raise the payroll taxes
2.) Cut benefits
3.) Go with private accounts
4.) all of the above.

The Donny countdown!

This just in from Vegas the line on Donny (aka Donald Rumsfeld) making it through the year keeping his job is now 4 to 1 against. I wonder if perhaps, after that comment, he should enlist Dan Quayle to help him speak in public? Oh,I miss the days of good ol Dan and his always entertaining comments. But back to Donny. He actually does have some good ideas about transforming the military, but you hear more and more about how he listens to the white shirts (civilians) rather than the actual military guys. You can see my other post about the Humvee fiasco for more details on that.

So what do you think, should Rummy stay or be gone?

Way to go Kobe

When the Lakers decided to go with Kobe as their guy and get rid of Shaq, I wonder if they realized that they were condemning themselves to mediocrity. Kobe has proven, beyond any doubt, that he is concerned about himself first and the team second. Yeah, he is racking up some serious point totals, but he still takes a ton of shots when he is not open instead of passing the ball to someone that is open. I heard an interview with him from the past couple of days were he refers to his teammates as his guys, and that they are giving him their best effort. Not for the team or the fans, but for him, the great Kobe. You have to admit the guy is on a roll, first the rape charge (and the admitted affair), then he accuses Malone of hitting on his wife (damn, someone who was accused of rape and had an affair saying someone else is hitting on his wife, good thinking Kobe!), he rips on Shaq, and frankly his team ain't that damn good.

Don't get me wrong, he is a very talented player, one of the best for sure, but he is not a team player, and there aren't too many of them that have won a title.

The Humvee fiasco

Its all over the news now, but there are some interesting things about this issue that you may not have heard. First of all, if you recall, a number of weeks or months ago, a group of soldiers refused to run an unarmored convoy to the northern part of Iraq. The reason they gave was bad equipment, contanimated fuel and the fact that their convoy was not protected since their trucks and Humvee's had no armor. If you also recall, the Army's response was that they would look into the issue and make any needed changes. Here is a link to a 60 minutes story about that deal:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/31/60minutes/main652491.shtml

But as the question about armor and equipment shows, it does not appear that much has been done about it yet. After this uproar started the Pentagon tried to blame everyone but themselves. What is especially troubling is that the main contractor for upgrading Humvee's told the Army that they could prodcue more if they needed to do so, but that the army never asked and the contractor also said they would do whatever they needed to do to accomodate the army. But it takes Rumsfeld looking look an idiot on TV for something to happen apparently. I think the amazing thing is that after the question was asked to Rumsfeld, and he gave probably the worst answer he could, all of a sudden the Pentagon scrambled to play that good ol' Washington game of CYOA and scramble to save face. But this problem was known as far back as last year. Its just another example of the gov't not having a plan for this war. WIth the new Army focus on light infantry units, its hard to believe that such an upgrade kit didn't exist prior to the Iraq war and also that more Humvee's were not built with armor to begin with. Don't get me wrong,I support the war but the way its been run has not been good and to make it worse, our troops over there are paying the price for these mistakes. You see story after story about troops telling their parents or spouses that they need more ammo, body armor and armor for vehicles. In some cases, they were even buying body armor and sending it to them.

Here is a good link about the Humvee armor thing:

http://www.marinij.com/Stories/0,1413,234%257E24410%257E2593213,00.html

I could undertand rushing to war if there really was an urgent danger, like if they had proof that Saddam had nukes or biological weapons or was close to having them, but as the evidence has shown, that was not the case. We knew he once had them, before the first Iraq War, but no real evidence that he had them since then. So one would think that we would wait until to we had enought troops, ammo, vehicles, etc. before going to war, but again, we did not and lives have been lost as a result. Can you believe, we actually rushed to war knowing many of the ground troops did not have the newer and much more effective body armor?

In a sign that its really getting serious, even Trent Lott is saying he does not have confidence in Rumsfeld. I also find it amusing that one of the few senior Republicans with actual combat experience, Sen. McCain, has been extremetly critical of Rumsfeld. Before anyone starts using this an excuse that we have to spend more on the military, consider that the Pentagon never asked for additional funds to uparmor more humvee's, apparently it was not a priority for them. Yikes!!

If you have thoughts on this let me know, but this is a shame that the very people that should care most about the troops seem to care the least.

Website of the week

Okay, this isn't really a reach for me here, but if you have not tried Firefox yet, you really should. It loads quicker, its more secure, the tabbed browser windows are pretty cool.

Go here to get it: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

Stay tuned for the next week's selection.