Megan McArdle agrees?

So..., whaddya know? Megan McArdle agrees with me.

So, Nancy Pelosi wanted the rescue bill defeated?

This is a new twist for me: Nancy Pelosi set up the vote yesterday for the economic rescue bill to be defeated.

Political Suicide

My take is that the Republicans in the House of Representatives committed political suicide yesterday and threw the election to Obama and the Democrats. They also probably threw the world economy into another Great Depression. I hope that I am overreacting, but one night gone, it still looks bleak.

Doubling down

The Republicans in the House just doubled down their bets. Now, not only have the bet the family car and the old homestead, but they also threw in their life's savings and their children's college funds. They better hope that they are right, because they can easily be called irresponsible idealogues. The come across as being more interested in politics than the good of the country.

Freedom of Speech

If you like oppressive regimes that crush dissent, you'll love Obama.

Obama's Sturm Abteilung

If this is what it would be like with Obama in power, what do you think of it? He seems to have his version of the Sturm Abteilung to use to throw his weight around.

Washington Mutual just took a bullet

Washington Mutual was declared insolvent

Guess what...

Our benevolent overlords instituted robots.txt files in July 2007 and not everyone had gotten the word. After the Blogger robots.txt file was put in place, the traffic on my best blog went from 2000 to 3000 a day to under 100 on bad days. I would be sitting at zero, except that several lower traffic search engines ignore the Blogger robots.txt file. Along with the robots.txt file, they have made it next to impossible to contact them to ask about it or to complain. I understand that they run a free service and can make the rules. That is why I have started with TypePad, although only in a small way.

Weird things on the Gulf Coast

As you may be aware, we are not getting good information about what is happening on the Gulf Coast. The worst case is Galveston Island. Is the entire west end of the island gone? That is the impression that you might get from the media. My thought is that Galveston's mayor is "in over her head". I also have the impression that restoring services is halted on Galveston for some undisclosed reason. Does the Federal Government want to block Galveston recovery? Is it the State of Texas?

"Modfied Cars": the 2006 Nissan Sentra

I have this concept for having a series of modified car pictures to show how some subtle changes could improve some real cars. This is my first attempt at a modified 2006 Nissan Sentra. I think that I can do better, but this is a start.

SiteMeter

SiteMeter tried to migrate to a new site this weekend, but it has not been well-received. They are doing are have done a rollback. My main problem is I don't understand how to use the new site, as it seemed non-intuitive (I am sure that was not what was intended).

The Dallas school superintendent should have been gone before this

The current superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District is in his post due to identity politics. He has a long record of screw ups. The latest should be his last, if logic and reason were an issue in Dallas. Also at work is progressive politics, as Dallas in the midst of a transition into being the Minneapolis of the mid-South. It is not a good thing, but it is what is happening.

"Portable Apps" (U3-style)

I am increasingly excited about having portable apps around that I can run from my 4GB Sandisk Cruzer USB drive. I had not realized that there was a portable version of the GIMP (the Gnu Image Manipulation Program) that could be run without being installed on a PC. I see now that there is also a "portable" version of Blender, the open-source 3D modeling tool. I am working in an environment which seems to be increasingly typical, where you can't install just any software on your work PC. We also cannot bring in our personal laptops, like I could at my last job. So... the answer is "portable apps".

How did we end up here?

Here we are, seven years since September 11, 2001. We now have a Democratic House and Senate and the possibility, although it seems less likely, of a Democratic president. We went into Iraq and seem to have won that war. We seem to be losing "the big one" in Afghanistan, because we are afraid of Pakistan and Pakistan is behind much of what is going wrong. None of that will change, probably, under the next administration. How did we forget about what happened on that fall morning, seven years ago? I still remember listening to Bob Edwards talking about a twin-engined plane having hit one tower of the World Trade Center on Minnesota Public Radio. I was stopped in traffic on eastbound I-694, heading for work in Brooklyn Center. After I got to work, one of our co-workers had his radio turned on and we listened to the events unfold in Washington and in Pennsylvania. We quickly learned that this was a terrorist attack, when the second plane hit the other tower. The rest is history, as you might say. I can only think that the American people wanted this all to go away, and that they thought that by going to the Democrats, they could make that happen. Sorry about that, but that won't work.

Henry Payne, over-the-top

Today's Henry Payne cartoon in the Editorial Cartoons section of Comics.com shows Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden lynching Clarence Thomas. I thought that Henry went too far on this one, showing Clarence Thomas hanging from a tree with Joe Biden holding the rope. It is irrelevant that it is true (a verbal lynching in the confirmation hearing).