Nobody died when... My car lied?

There is an interesting article I just read that there may be driverless cars on the market within 10 years (hat tip to Drudge). It's a good article so read the whole thing. But there is one paragraph that struck me as funny:

The Defense Department contest, which initially involved 35 teams, showed the technology isn't ready for prime time. One team was eliminated after its vehicle nearly charged into a building, while another vehicle mysteriously pulled into a house's carport and parked itself.

I'll bet that someone told the car to 'go home', but the database told the car to pull into the person's old address because the database wasn't quite up to date so the car reacted to the most current information it had available to it. In the loony world of Liberals, this is considered a lie. Thankfully nobody died when the car lied.

So-called "NPR"

NPR is running a series of reports over the next few days analyzing President Bush's speech delivered almost a year ago by Tom Bowman.

One year ago this week, President Bush outlined a new strategy for Iraq.

In a nationally-televised speech from the White House, Bush unveiled the so-called "surge" in U.S. troops — and more American economic aid. Bush said the government of Prime Minister Nuri al Malaki pledged to do more to heal his country's divisions.

Since then, some of what Bush envisioned has been accomplished, and some remains to be done.

Let me begin this fisking of NPR's fisk and point out that they still call this a 'so-called surge'. In fact, NPR still calls it the 'so-called War on Terror'. Perhaps I should start calling them 'so-called NPR'.

What Bush did in his speech was to lay out his strategic vision and goals for this operation. I'm sure Bush has also communicated these goals and strategic vision to those who will be implementing the tactics to support them, namely, General Patraeus, Ryan Crocker and Condaleeza Rice. Bowman then goes on to compare the results of these tactics to the strategy. This comparison is almost useless.

So, the president sent in 30,000 more American troops, most of them to Baghdad. And he said the Iraqis would boost their own troop levels.

But a year later, the number of Iraqi brigades has dropped in Baghdad from 18 to 15. Some of the units have been sent by the Iraqi government to other hotspots. Many National Police units are still linked with Shiite death squads.

What Bowman doesn't report on is the actual need for Iraqi brigades in Baghdad. If Baghdad doesn't need all 18 brigades, what does he think we should do with those un-needed troops, leave them there so 'President Bowman' can make a case that he was correct in a speech 1 year ago? Unknowingly, Bowman makes another unintended point: Violence in Baghdad has been reduced significantly while there is also a reduction in Police Brigades. This is true progress.

Here is another example of why leading by committee will never work, although I'm sure Bowman had a different point to make:

"They have a lot of very, very serious issues within the National Police," former Washington D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey said on NBC's "Meet the Press." He was on a high level panel looking at the Iraqi security forces. In September, the panel recommended disbanding the National Police.

"They need to be refocused because currently they are not performing at an effective level, and if what you want is a police force rooted in democratic principles, the National Police missed the mark," he said then.

American commanders in Baghdad refused to disband the National Police. They instead chose to retrain them and to replace corrupt commanders.

So, the Washington panel made a recommendation, but the commanders in Iraq chose to follow other recommendations. There is no mention of these other panels. You see, in so-called NPR's world, any DC panel's recommendation must be followed or else. Forget about the fact that these same Iraqi police are stepping up to reduce violence and becoming much more effective. Don't let results get in the way of the story line.

Bowman goes on to show how on the political side, progress is much slower. We already know this, after all, democracy is not a fast process. By definition, it is a slow process because in a democracy, there must be debate, influencing an argument to get support because there is not one person making grand decisions. Go ask Nancy and Harry who can't get any of their legislative priorities passed, and their priorities aren't as grand as oil sharing, or constitutional issues associated with a start-up country. The only thing Bush can be accused of here is perhaps setting the time frame too aggressive.

Here is my analogy: We are the home team and it is the bottom of the fourth with the score 7-0 in our favor. The 3rd inning took 1 hour due to all of the scoring we did and the pitching changes the other team had to do. So, according to so-called NPR and the democratic party, we should walk off of the field and forfeit the game.

Random Ramblings

• It's a new year and time to get back into the exercise mode. I hate to jog, but enjoy eating and drinking so I can either cut down on my calorie intake or exercise more. I'm running out of excuses, it finally warmed up around here, the ice is mostly off the sidewalks, and my pulled hamstring finally healed. And, there is only so long I can write this blog. I'll still have to dodge the snowbanks and fine Massachusetts drivers but I'll soon be plodding 1.5 miles around the neighborhood.
• Too many ups and downs during the Steeler game last night. Now I'll be stuck listening to "Bandwagon" NE Patsy fans at work tomorrow.
• I think Bill Belicheck is a great coach but he still acts like a jerk. All the more reason to hope they lose.
• The bad thing about living close to New Hampshire is being subjected to all of the political ads. Radio had been crazy for a few months but it now hit the Boston TV stations. During the post game show after the Redskins/Seahawks game, I was treated to Hillery, Edwards and Romney, back to back to back.
• Too bad Newt Gingrich got in trouble. We could use another Contract with America

Scrubbed the Stove

I scrubbed the stove today. This task wasn't even on my radar screen to do today, nor this week, or even this month. In fact, there was absolutely no reason to do this except one.

My neighbor came over with his kid so the kids can play. He's a real nice guy who talks too much and doesn't listen at all. After about 20 minutes of saying 'uh huh', I had to do something, so I got up and cleaned the stove. I figured he'd get board of watching this. It didn't work, so I continued cleaning other things. He finally left, but my kitchen is clean.

My Primary predictions

Im going to go way out on a limb and make my predictions of the Republican and Democrat Presidential nominees.

The democrats will select a tax and spend liberal, and the republicans will select a 'no new taxes' and spend conservative wannabe.

any further out and I'll break the limb.

Moving Outer Screams to Inner Screams

I now sit in front of my computer taking deep breaths and waiting for my blood pressure to lower to triple digits. My son, who is now locked in is room and acting like an inmate who is banging his coffee cup across the bars has gotten me thinking. Why is it that punishment goes from corporal punishment to capital punishment? Somewhere in between there should be a lieutenant colonel punishment, or at the very least, a sergeant major punishment. Perhaps further discussions with my son on this subject will help clarify my position.

My inner geek

I have supressed my inner geek for way too long. I work with technology on a daily basis in my work life, but not in my personal life. Well that ended a few days ago.

I'm sitting in a diner reading my favorite blogs via Google reader and posting to my blog via gmail. If I get lost or need directions, Google maps can really help. I've been Googled.

With the right device, I probably can probably post video and pictures.

Anyway, technology is getting to a point where it is becoming useful no matter where you are.

In case your curious, I'm having eggs Benedict and my little one is having spaghetti and meatballs with a chocolate shake.

--
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Fountain of Useless Information

To paraphrase Sportswriter Peter King of SI; "Things that may not interest anyone but me":

• Actress Melinda Dillon, who played the Ralphie's mother in the movie "A Christmas Story" also was in the classic hockey movie "Slapshot". She did a topless scene while in bed with Paul Newman.

Something to think about when TBS shows the movie for 24 hours on Christmas next year.

The Sky is Falling!

There was a rise of three tenths of one percent increase in the unemployment rate which now stands at 5%. According to Bloomberg,

"Since 1949 the unemployment rate has never risen by this magnitude without the economy being in recession,'' John Ryding, chief U.S. economist at Bear Stearns Cos. in New York, said in a note to clients. "We now put ourselves on recession watch.''

Until recently and as a result of Reagan's tax policies, (Bush I, Clinton and Bush II didn't change this policy much) this rate has never been below 5%. Prior to Reagan, a 5% unemployment rate was considered full employment. I gotta believe the old rules don't apply anymore, but watch out, the sky is falling!

For real context, read Jayson Javitz at Wizbang.

Don't See - No Country for Old Men

From a top 10 list of 2007 movies

LISA'S BESTS

2. No Country for Old Men
Cormac McCarthy's throat-gripping bestselling novel, about empty men who chase one another across a parched 1980 Texas landscape of drug trafficking and dead-eyed murder, provides a clear blueprint for any filmmaker up for the challenge of adapting distinctive literature. Something in McCarthy's tersely powerful prose has certainly reinvigorated brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, who temper their own taste for genre with a new maturity and allow the mute landscape to speak for itself. And what we hear is the hush of sorrow. Trusted to make the most of that silence, Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, and Javier Bardem devise memorable variations on a theme of masculine emptiness — the two-bit corner cutter, the disillusioned lawman, and the twisted killer.

Sorry, but I was really disappointed. Terrible ending. The 'silence' was good, but you need a little more dialog to tell the story. Brolin and Jones were very good as 'men of few words" characters but that left no one to tell the story. Not quite sure if I liked Bardem but his character was different.

It's a good thing we have smart movie reviewers to tell us what is good. I guess I'm just a simple minded person without enough intelligence to understand a great movie. I think I'll skip the book

Endless minutes of entertainment

http://www.armorgames.com/games/lineflyer_popup.html

My 9 year old nephew showed this to my kids over New Years. It's addicting.

Superbowl Predictions

Here are my Superbowl predictions:
Wildcard Weekend
Steelers over Jaguars
Chargers over Titans
Giants over Bucs (Ronde who?)
Redskins over Seattle

Divisional Playoffs
Patriots over Steelers
Colts over San Diego
Giants over Cowboys (3rd time's a charm)
Packers over Redskins

Conference Championships
Colts over Patriots (Can't win 'em all)
Green Bay over Giants (too cold for Eli)

Superbowl
Green Bay over Colts (What a great way for Favre to retire)

Doctor in Training

Our shipping clerk should have been a doctor because no one can read his handwriting.

--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com

Sarah Connor

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Voting in Iowa

I came across this description of how the Iowa caucus process works:

Participants indicate their support for a particular candidate by standing in a designated area of the caucus site (forming a "preference group"). An area may also be designated for undecided participants. Then, for roughly 30 minutes, participants try to convince their neighbors to support their candidates. Each preference group might informally deputize a few members to recruit supporters from the other groups and, in particular, from among those undecided. Undecided participants might visit each preference group to ask its members about their candidate.

After 30 minutes, the electioneering is temporarily halted and the supporters for each candidate are counted. At this point, the caucus officials determine which candidates are "viable". Depending on the number of county delegates to be elected, the "viability threshold" can be anywhere from 15% to 25% of attendees. For a candidate to receive any delegates from a particular precinct, he or she must have the support of at least the percentage of participants required by the viability threshold. Once viability is determined, participants have roughly another 30 minutes to "realign": the supporters of inviable candidates may find a viable candidate to support, join together with supporters of another inviable candidate to secure a delegate for one of the two, or choose to abstain. This "realignment" is a crucial distinction of caucuses in that (unlike a primary) being a voter's "second candidate of choice" can help a candidate.

When the voting is closed, a final head count is conducted, and each precinct apportions delegates to the county convention.

When it comes to voting, you can do it in one of two ways: secret balloting, or non-secret balloting. I’ll admit that I’d never experienced firsthand the “pleasure” of non-secret balloting. I’ve done it the old fashioned way - by walking into a curtained voting booth and reading the list of names. Then there’s some buttons to press, switches to flip and levers to pull. Done. I’ve voted and no one has a clue who I voted for. Secret balloting.

Non-secret balloting in its simplest form would have you walk to the polling place, show your I.D., and then tell the old lady who you’re voting for. She then writes it all down for you and sticks it in a box.

Iowa has decided that non-secret balloting wasn’t bad enough, so they added the requirement that you not only tell a room full of people who you are voting for, but you then have to spend an hour or so justifying to them why you are voting that way. Next, the rules actually encourage everyone to torture each other about their intentions until everyone is firmly set in their ways, pissed off, and wishing they'd brought pepper spray or baseball bats to help them vote.

In all fairness, I have to admit that voting in Iowa sounds much more exciting than the way I've been doing it. I now have to question whether my love for secret balloting is outweighed by my love for arguing with people.

Between Barack and a Hard Place

As the primary season kicks off, our thoughts turn to the presidential candidates, and how they would lead the United States through the horrors of a dangerous world. We only need to look at the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan to reaffirm that the terrorist threat is still very much with us. So let’s take another look at one candidate in particular - one who seems to have foresight that I had not previously credited.

Much was written about Barack Obama’s suggestion several months ago that we should invade Pakistan in search of Al Qaeda. On the surface, the thought of 15,000 members of the 82nd Airborne darkening the skies over one of our allies seemed naïve at first, or even breathtakingly insane. But upon further reflection, including a look at some recent worldwide poll numbers, I have now come to believe that we may have in Mr. Obama, an intellect of the first magnitude, and perhaps our best hope in making the United States the unchallenged leader in public opinion polls.

As an expert in history, Mr. Obama has taken the results of a poll showing which countries around the world are best liked, and crafted a truly inspired strategy to improve our standing by using tried and true methods. In this poll, those with a positive opinion of the United States varied, ranging from numbers in the teens to some in the 70 percent neighborhood. However, one must look into the regional numbers to get a glimpse into Mr. Obama’s brilliance.

He first realizes that it is safe to discount the high end, where countries like Uruguay or Ghana, while nice that they like us, just don’t have that certain something we should get all excited about. Like Massachusetts, Europe runs around 50/50, and was Canada even listed? Anyway, the real linchpin of the strategy centers around the Middle East, where our approval ratings run around 20% among those who were able to take some time away from their busy day of jihading and answer a few questions. This in and of itself is only half of the story. Russia simply blew us away in these polls. They just love the Russians!

Now you may ask yourself why the Russians are so loved, and if you do have to ask, you are clearly not a strategic thinker in the class of Barak Obama. For years, while in control of the Soviet Union, Russia regularly invaded their allies. In fact they did it every ten or fifteen years or so – Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Afghanistan in 1979…..I mean, there’s an actual list. Whenever one of their allies was thought to be slacking off a bit, the Russians would roll the tanks. After all, nothing says love like a fully mobilized armored division crossing your border.

However, the one point that I must disagree with Mr. Obama about his choice of implementing this strategy in Pakistan. For one thing, when it comes to invading allies, we must be honest with ourselves and admit that without any prior practice, trial and error in Pakistan would be a costly affair. The terrain is mountainous, the infrastructure is almost nonexistent, we only have a few thousand troops nearby, and most importantly, we’ve never been there before. Why Pakistan? To make this strategy work, we don’t really need Pakistan. Any ally will do when it comes to sending this kind of message. Therefore, I am going on record and making the case that we invade France.

I know, I know, you say that France is not really an ally. But I think that with the right p.r., we can probably make a case that there’s still some lingering goodwill left over from all of that World War II business. Now let’s look at the facts: first of all, we’ve definitely been there before. I’m sure even Mr. Obama has watched Patton on A&E. Also, we know that we can beat the French. Heck, the Germans did it, and look what we did to the Germans. And speaking of the Germans, we’ve still got armored divisions in bases all over Germany. Armored Divisions! Remember the Russians?

The more I think about it the better this gets. Half of Congress wants to redeploy our troops in the Global War on Terror. Why practice this in Iraq where people are shooting at us? We can redeploy from Germany into France in perfect safety. You know they won’t shoot back. And think what this will do for our poll numbers!

Movie Commercials

The most annoying radio and tv commercials come about this time of year. You know these commercials when they put on the big music and talk in a big voice extolling the greatness of the movie, but they never tell you what the movie is about only that it is great and how many awards it might win. Jeez, who are they advertising to, those that may want to see the movie or those who will award it?

The Pursuit of Happiness

While listening to NPR during my morning commute there was an article regarding today's Iowa caucus. During the article, Hillary Clinton had a sound bite the went like this:

"I wake up each day thinking about how Government can help people better their lives."

Most modern-day liberals believe this and pursue this ideal with a passion. This sounds great, but let's dig a bit deeper into this. It is this attitude that brings health care to everyone, childcare for everyone, social security and essentially cradle to grave coverage of anything a human can need or want provided for by the government. It is the ideal that protects us from ourselves such as gun control and environmentalism. It is this ideal that brings us tax regulations that acts to control our behavior such as tax breaks if are this type of person, marry and have x number of kids, etc.

In a nutshell, it is this ideal that acts to guarantee our happiness. Of course, 'happiness' is not defined by us individuals but what these politicians think will make us happy.

It is this public policy that brought us Communism, Marxism, Socialism, and yes, the Third Reich. It is this public policy that brings the world each and every tin-pot dictator because each one believes he knows best what the people will need to make them happy. It was this same exact attitude of politicians that led this great country to our American Revolution and caused the phrase

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

to be written into the Declaration of Independence.

This phrase tells us that while there is no guarantee of happiness, you have the unalienable right to pursue it in any way that doesn't impede others from doing the same. Each person derives happiness in his/her own way that cannot be government defined. This is the American ideal that has made this country great and is the cornerstone of America's democracy.

This is why modern-day Liberals are so wrong, because they believe government can provide a guarantee of happiness, when in fact, they actually impede our individual rights to pursue it. John F. Kennedy had it exactly right when he said:

"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country"

What happened to the democratic party that now has them essentially saying:

"Ask not what you can do for your country; ask what can your country do for you"

Chris Dodd for President in 2056.

Did you know the Chris Dodd, democrat candidate for President, has moved his family to Iowa in the last year? They moved there to give him a 'home base' for this season's campaign. In an interview with his wife on NPR the other day, she was asked why. Her answer:

"When you're living in a place, versus coming in and spending time in hotels, you actually get to know a little bit more about it," she tells Michele Norris. "There are some candidates who fly in and fly out again."

oooookay.

So the way I figure it, Now that he has lived in Connecticut and Iowa, he has another 48 more years to go before he is truly qualified to be President. I look forward to voting for Mr. Dodd in the 2056 election.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone!

Just a few random thoughts from watching the tv for only 15 minutes (10 minutes before and 5 minutes after)

• Why is there a british actress hosting the most American event (New Years Eve at Times Square in the heart of NYC)? They couldn't find an American hot babe for this?
• Where was Dick Clark?
• I didn't recognize any of the bands. Jeez, Am I getting too old?
• What was Mariah Carey wearing, and who thought she'd look good in it? Someone who put on that kind of weight shouldnt be dressed in scanty clothes on New Year's Eve.
• Why was Alex Rodriquez on the stage at the stroke of midnight? He should have been interviewed, and then shown the exit to make room for some infobabe.