by Josh Kirkendall ~ June 26, 2008
Contrary to what many would have you believe, it appears that President Bush isn’t the six-shooting, multi-colored sombrero war hawk he’s made out to be. From the beginning, Bush encouraged multi-national discussions with regional leaders hoping to disband North Korea’s nuclear ambitions; against the wishes from many in the administration of tougher sanctions and/or actions. While President, Clinton paid off North Korea to terminate their nuclear program — which was started up in the hopes, from North Korean leaders, to barter more. In a move that actually shows diplomacy works (not bribing), North Korea handed over a "key document detailing its rogue nuclear program to China Thursday.
The handover of the declaration has been delayed since the end of last year. Since 2003, China has been hosting rounds of negotiations among six nations aimed at getting North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program. China has been North Korea’s closest ally in the talks, while the U.S. and Japan have been its greatest antagonists.
America insists that verification is still needed, but America will remove North Korea from the "list of state terrorism sponsors". Some sanctions will eventually be lifted (primarily the "Trading with the Enemy Act"). How would have John McCain approached it?
by Josh Kirkendall ~ June 26, 2008
Gallup has McCain and Obama tied at 45% (June 25) while Heidi Przybyla writes that Obama opens with a 15-point lead as “voters reject Republicans”. Just, wow. How biased is that wording? Tonight (June 26) Obama and Hillary Clinton will unite in Washington as Obama tries to “soothe the bruised feelings of several dozen” of Clinton’s top campaign donors — add that to increasingly apparent tension between the two rivals because Obama is “less than enthusiastic in courting Clinton’s money team”. That’s not all.
Some Clinton supporters are grousing that Mr. Obama has yet to make the symbolic gesture of writing a check for $2,300, the maximum allowable campaign donation, to help retire her debt of over $12 million.” In addition, the Financial Times says while Clinton has “urged supporters to transfer their loyalties” to Obama, “a highly vocal minority of Mrs Clinton’s supporters have chosen to ignore her plea altogether. Under the umbrella group, Just Say No Deal, diehard Clintonites have set up more than 100 anti-Obama websites in the last 20 days, most of them boiling with indignation.”
That’s just something to keep an eye on as Democrats try to unite. And as long as there’s hardcore left-wing bats running the Democratic party while moderate Democrats (ones that I can actually find myself supporting) sit on their hands fearing isolation, then the Democrats will never truly unite.
Moving on.
On Wednesday, Republican nominee, John McCain said “we will break the power of OPEC over the United States. And never again will we leave our vital interests at the mercy of any foreign power.” He countered the argument that “breaking” our independence on foreign oil is unattainable within a “relatively short span of years” comparing it to “nation conceived and carried out a plan to take three Americans to the Moon and bring them safely home.” In one case, you’re asking millions upon millions of people to accept an alternative that simply does not exist, is not affordable or uses an energy that has limited “refueling” stations for. Going to the moon had nothing to do with general Americans other than pride and total awesomeness that we touched the moon — otherwise, it didn’t force Americans to change anything. And when you ask for change, they’ll fight you bitterly. He tried to compare the same thing to World War II “the gathered energies of my father’s generation built the industrial might that overcame Nazi Germany and imperial Japan”. Different scenario because that was out of necessity; war, fighting for the survival of western civilization. We’re simply bitching about $4 gas prices. Sure, it super-sucks (which is sucks more than non-super-suck), but we’re talking about making sure we have more money in our pockets — which millions of people would beg for that $4 you pay for fuel. It should be noted that I believe we need to CHANGE, not delay an inevitable. We have time on our side still.
I’m not slamming his idea (haven’t approach that yet), just stupid comparisons. One of his primary ideas is off-shore drilling, revisiting ANWR and the Atlantic — drilling at either is illegal (thanks to Democrats who scratch their heads pretending to think of “ideas” while coming dangerously close of going against their constituent’s demands). Let me make this clear, we DO need to find independence for energy. Renewable, sure, if that makes the Greenies happy. I’m still amazed however, over 100 years, that nearly every technology in the world has been replaced with something better, yet, we still use vehicles with the same technology created since the late 19th century. Here’s the kicker in that argument though. Unless government regulates both the fuel that we use and the car it’s used in, we’ll have too many VHS/Beta, DVDHD/Blue-Ray scenarios for anyone to take seriously. Thus, an unqualified conclusion. As much as we need to strive for it, there’s too much change within people’s lives that many people won’t afford it; therefore rejecting acceptance. And without that set standard of what the future is, then there’s no way people will risk a dangerous investment.
Anyway (and this was the first paragraph of this post) Thursday, McCain spoke to between 150-200 people (depending on what publication you read) at Xavier University’s Schmidt Hall; one of several cross-country town hall meetings. Off topic: McCain’s two biggest contributors are Merrill Lynch ($235,110) and Citigroup ($231,451).
by Josh Kirkendall ~ June 26, 2008
There’s an interesting debate in Mason right now. Obviously this summer will be one of the slowest tourist seasons due to high gas prices, stalling wage increases and raising benefits. Mason, a city in Ohio that forcefully regulates specific residents within their community by making cost of living rather high, highly depends on tourism. After a 1-3% admission tax being considered for recommendation by the Mason Fiance Committee, Kings Island’s general manager wrote a letter to Mason’s Mayor, Tom Grossman threatening to “de-annex” from Mason.
I’ve always been a staunch supporter of free business. I don’t believe government should be involved with business — making up taxes to cover for reckless spending or laws that, over time, actually close a business (aka, smoke ban crushing smaller bars’ businesses). Furthermore, government is one of the biggest contributors to wasteful spending, illicit partnerships that hurt more people because the government has no one to answer to… businesses answer to their customers and react to market competition, thus keeping their prices manageable (though that argument might not fly for oil companies). And do you really believe that government controlling and managing business is actually a good idea?
Anyway, this is typical Mason intrusion. They will increase, increase, increase assuring that lower income families are forcefully removed from their homes all for putting up stupid little fountains downtown that actually forced two roads to be reconstructed costing, I would bet, millions. Yes, for a stupid little statue with ten blades of grass. Mason likes to acquire more money, spend that money on the most frivolous, unimportant and useless crap.
by Josh Kirkendall ~ June 26, 2008
Al Gore won an Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth” around 2007. It was reported that Al Gore spent 221,000 kWh of electricity at his home in 2006. Consider that the average home uses 10,656 kWh becoming the equivalent of 20 times the use over the national average. After his movie was released, his electricity usage increased from 16,200 kWh per month (2005) to 18,400 kWz per month (2006). That, and the following, was a published in a press release by the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.
Gore’s mansion, located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).
The same group updated Gore’s usage and noted that in the past year, “Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month.”
Most of this came out a year ago (and a year ago, this wonderful internet gateway to common sense didn’t exist). And the reason I started this was because I heard this morning that Al Gore’s water usage is the equivalent of 57 homes. I didn’t find it (thus unable to confirm).
Al Gore’s Home Uses 20 Times the Energy of Average American’s [Newsbuster]
Inconvenient Truth: Bush greener than Gore [The Anchoress Online]
Snopes Confirmed
by Josh Kirkendall ~ June 20, 2008
I have long paid attention to the troubling idiocracy that the world community has against Iran. It’s not that they don’t know what to with Iran (oh, they know); it’s those that wish to keep Iran a strong financial ally that rivals the world’s biggest powers. And the truest threat against America is the possibility that Iran could sell (or set up) nuclear arms to be shipped and detonated in America. Which, in all reality, is a none-existent threat on our homeland — though our troops in Iraq and Iraq itself could feel the largest threat. The concern is the region; specifically, Israel.
“Regime change” in Iran is a costly proposition. Israel’s war games are a powerful show of strength to tell Iran (and the world) that they mean to attack… and soon. And if change were to happen, most likely it will come within from the underground Youth of Iran — note: 70% of Iran’s population are young Iranians, most of whom wish a western-like country. And supposedly America funnels millions to the organization.
If Israel takes out Iran’s nuclear facilities, it’s almost unnamious from the international community that at attack would only delay their production; not destroy it. Likely, Russia’s advice to avoid force would be the picture-perfect “bluff called”. China is too fixated on recovering from domestic natural disasters and the Olympics that they need to improve their image.
In other words, if Israel does attack, other than cowardly terrorist attacks in Israel’s markets — most likely from Iranian supported terrorist organizations — I don’t see a wide-spread retaliation.
by Josh Kirkendall ~ June 19, 2008
Jan. 28: Severe snowstorms kill 24 people in China and affecting 78 million people while economic cost of the storm projected over $3.2 billion.
Feb. 3: Major earthquakes kill over 45 people (one registered 6.0, another 5.0)
Feb 5-6: Major tornados rip through America heartland killing over 55 people.
March 17-19: Major flooding that stretched from Texas to Pennsylvania (through Arkansas, Ill., Kentucky, Mizz and Ohio) kill 13 people.
Since January: Over 80 people have died (80,000 infected) after a dengue fever outbreak which still infects today.
May 3: Cyclone Nargis wipes out over 78,000 lives — most of which died during a 12-foot tidal wave .
May 11: More than 20 people died after a serious of tornados through Oklahoma, Mizz and Georgia.
May 12: After a 7.9 Earthquake (and massive aftershocks), nearly 70,000 people died in western Provinces in China.
June 9 until today: Severe flooding along the Mississippi river has killed 10 people, but wiping out towns that many suspect will be lost forever.
June 11: Tornado rips through Iowa killing four Boy Scouts and hurting 50 others — killing an additional two in Kansas.
June 17: Over 60 people have died after a major flood in Southern China wipes out 5.4 million acres of crops causing some of the worst landslides.
June 18: Over eight inches of hail fall in Holt County Nebraska.
by Josh Kirkendall ~ June 17, 2008
Generally speaking, websites these days (compared to 10 years ago) are larger in scale, more active in animation using custom-based that are primarily database driven. And contrary to popular belief, the bigger the website, the more your computer has to work to render. The days of text-based sites are obviously long gone; this is the age of super-sexy pretty websites, no matter how pointless they are.
When I first joined the WWW, it was late in the 90s. With an old Compaq Presario (386), I was able to fulfill my love for baseball stats printing gobs of pages on my dot-matrix printer. Most sites were text-based and a gif was, at the time, freaking genius.
Now sites are infiltrated with intense graphics, several flash animations, database calls to an internet server internal from the site’s external designation (which means firewalls must examine each package). With more, requires more.
Anyway, Mozilla’s newest version of FireFox should be released sometime today. We’ll get our hands on it soon and test it out.
by Josh Kirkendall ~ June 14, 2008
About two weeks ago, I uploaded my first version of “Invasion“; an alternative universe where one event during WWII never happens (if you can name that event, you get five points). I’ve learned over the past few years that writing projects are never truly finished. For instance I’m drafting the idea of introducing Gloria with Rose rather than a sobbing wife in a water puddle. I wanted to give Rose companionship outside of Bernard to give her a more integral story-line emotion. Her appearance is really brief and we don’t examine her emotional state other than sobbing for her younger brother, Johnny. It’s hard to connect with her.
I have a companion piece with Invasion that takes place around the time we’re introduced to Bernard early in 1940. Later in the original story, we’re introduced to “Tin Man” — former SAS — that integrates with the Freedom Fighters. I wanted to follow Tin Man from young kid until his introduction with the group. The two won’t likely meet until the very end.
Finally, I’m prepping a storyline that follows Invasion that will be from the perspective of Bernard’s son, Jonathan that sees the end of the occupation but prepares his own son for another threat that’s briefly referenced. This could be a bigger piece than the typical short story. I’m playing with the idea of introducing Josen as Johnathan’s son leading up to a bigger project. If you don’t know, Josen Kir is my primary character that I’ve developed stories through the course of his entire life called the Chronicles of Josen Kir. You saw a glimpse into him in “In the Beginning…” (originally called Choice… and “The Choice of Destiny”. “In the Beginning” refers to the first of many important events in Josen’s life.
Again, I’m not sure if I’m going to introduce Josen in the Invasion series. The thing that holds me back is the idea of Josen’s existence within a parallel universe… though the Invasion series would tie into the Chronicles series rather nicely.
I hope you enjoy reading them as I did writing them. The plan is two-fold; (1) to practice and develop my own writing skills (grammatical and story telling) and (2) to create a universe that’s only mine.
by Josh Kirkendall ~ June 11, 2008
When I walked to my front door Thursday night (June 5), I noticed a big white box. I get geeked up when I see something waiting for me, exploding with excitement knowing the surprise could be endless. The weightlessness was a bit surprising; only a sheet of paper, two styrofoam pieces and a piece of tape. I knew, it was for my Xbox 360.
So I packaged it up, found a UPS store Friday (when I had the strength after an ambush migraine attack overnight), and shipped. So, on June 6, 2008, my Xbox 360 was on its way to get repaired (either for free, or the $100 flat rate, I’m still not sure).