Website of the week, June week 2

What the hell, I might as well be ahead for once with this. Here is another good site, some of you may have heard of them, the Pew Research Center. They do all sorts of research and surverys that are quoted on a daily basis in the mainstream media.

The link is below, you should check it out. They usually have several polls and surveys up from the past couple of weeks with some older ones archived as well.

Check it out"
http://people-press.org/

Website of the week, June week 1

Even though we are virtually inundated with toolbars for web browsers, there is another one that I think you should try. Its from netcraft, and the purpose of the toolbar is anti-phising. The toolbar displays the owner of the site, how long they have owned it, and in some cases the popularity of the site. Its all displayed in the toolbar. They make it for both IE and Firefox.
I use it and really like it so far.

Here is a link to it if you want to check it out:

http://toolbar.netcraft.com/

Dems have me scratching my head here

Right after a compromise was reached in the Senate between Democrats and some key Republicans (lead by Sen. John McCain) to avoid the nuclear option ( where the Dems basically say they will only fillibuster on court nominees that are, I forget what the actual phrase was, extreme right wingers), the Democrats then use the fillibuster to prevent a vote on the nomination of John Bolton as US ambassador to the UN. Bolton does sound like a jerk on a power trip (quite like a former boss of mine) but I think Democrats look totally partisan using the fillibuster right after they reach a compromise limiting its use. If you were a democrat, and I for the record am not, wouldn't it be better to just let the nomination go through and criticize his likely mistakes once he makes them? I think that would be a better option than using the fillibuster.

As far as the UN goes, I do agree with Bolton and some Republicans that the UN is basically overrated. I have even said that we would almost be better off pulling out, making them move their HQ to Paris and reclaiming the prime real estate for something useful. I am not saying the UN does no good, but I am less than impressed with that body as of late.

You haven't seen politics until they talk base closings

The military base closing program is kind of interesting, and one thing is certain. Even though most people probably would agree the commission is fair, at least for the most part, once the recommendations come out every senator and rep for the area containing the closed base is on the warpath trying to keep it open. They all act like that one base, even if its an airbase in South Dakota, is absolutely vital to national security. From what I have read so far, most of the recommendations make sense. Seeing Groton, Connecticut on there surprised me a little bit, being that it was literally once a vital base, housing the us atlantic sub fleet (a good chunk of it plus lots of support stuff).

I like the way the commission works. They come out with a list, they agree that no more than 20% of what is on the list can be changed, and once the changes are made to the list the entire list is voted on with one vote (they don't vote for each affected base).

One scary part so far though is the miliary tends to grossly underestimate the cost to cleanup comtamination on many of these bases (the military didn't always practice being environmentally safe) so some that closed the last time are still waiting to be cleaned up (some as part of the superfund program) because they are not appropriating that much money to clean them up.

So stay tuned for some good ol fashioned politics.