From Pine View Farm

Delaware chooses wind:

Gov. Ruth Ann Minner signed legislation today that will enable the completion of the Bluewater Wind/Delmarva Power agreement, announced earlier this week. The signing comes after both chambers of the state Legislature unanimously approved the legislation.

Tommywonk has more.

Eric Alterman & George Zornick in The Nation (emphasis added):

On issue after issue, and from every side of the journalistic political spectrum, a campaign of deception and distortion has helped to ensure that McCain’s extreme positions and politically inspired flip-flops remain far from the consciousness of the average voter. Just as the media-promoted notion that George W. Bush was the kind of guy with whom one might enjoy a few beers managed to obscure the predictable catastrophes that lay in store for this nation once he became President, so too can the deep-seated media denial of McCain’s extremist policies and addiction to political expediency mask the fact that his victory in November would result in a continuation–and even, in some instances, an expansion–of the very policies that have brought the nation to the brink of irreversible disaster.

According to an extensive Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll taken in early May, only 27 percent of voters have positive views of the Republican Party, the lowest level for either party in the survey’s nearly two-decade history. A clear majority of voters in the same survey said they wished for a Democratic President. And yet, in what the Journal reporters termed a “remarkable” finding, McCain remained in a dead heat with Obama and Clinton in head-to-head match-ups. The authors’ explanation: “McCain’s image is trumping negatives such as the war and the economy.” More recent polls continue to show McCain running well ahead of any generic “Republican” candidate. It’s true that before the Rev. Jeremiah Wright became the most famous man in America, coverage of Obama had been extremely favorable. And McCain’s easy ride has seen some speed bumps in recent weeks, regarding both his army of conflicted lobbyists/advisers and a poorly received speech on the night Obama clinched the Democratic nomination. But decades of devotion to McCain’s causes and character are not likely to be erased overnight, even in the event of an unlikely U-turn on the part of most of the MSM.

Will Bunch hears the rhythm.

If it’s old news, shouldn’t it be referred to as “olds” (it’s an AP story; all you get is a summary):

Bushies prefer political loyalty over competence.

And this surprises us how?

Meanwhile, the Demon Princess points out that, in the Bush World, the wages of virtue is demotion:

Daniel Levin once worked for Alberto Gonzales’s Department of Justice ~ until he wrote a memo disagreeing with Bushco’s torture policies, whereupon he was asked to step down. “Too independent,” it was said, after he had himself subjected to waterboarding while researching the Bushco predetermined party line that waterboarding isn’t torture.

From ASZ:

I’m not sure there is any other way to look at it. Gordon Smith has served the citizens of Oregon since 1992, and has served in the Senate for nearly 12 years. He’s up for election in trying times for the Republican Party. Smith, it appears, has decided to deny that he’s a member of the GOP. At the very least, just check out the Gordon Smith for Senate web site. Do you see the word “Republican?” Nope, not on the first page. Take a close look and the word “Democrats” is there, though. But there’s more in the last couple days to show that Gordon Smith is running from the Republican Brand as fast as he can. Like a new advertisement where he tries to link himself with Barack Obama.

Follow the link for the links to the evidence. Or something like that.

I was fresh out of Publishers Clearing House brochures, but I figured the RNC could use some flyers from Haband.

Over at ASZ, Steve muses about what the phrase “overtly white” means, as the antonym to the phrase “overtly nonwhite,” as used below:

OK, maybe it is the English teacher in me, but that “overtly” is bugging me. I found it in this usage in the Washington Post this morning, in a quotation from a White Supremacist. The Post article is about the explosion of activity by racist groups on the internet in the last year or two, and how that explosion is being spurred by the candidacy of Barack Obama. Here’s the quote from the WaPo:

Neo-Nazi, skinhead and segregationist groups have reported gains in numbers of visitors to their Web sites and in membership since the senator from Illinois secured the Democratic nomination June 3. His success has aroused a community of racists, experts said, concerned by the possibility of the country’s first black president.

“I haven’t seen this much anger in a long, long time,” said Billy Roper, a 36-year-old who runs a group called White Revolution in Russellville, Ark. “Nothing has awakened normally complacent white Americans more than the prospect of America having an overtly nonwhite president.”

What the heck does that mean? If I’m having a hard time figuring out what “overty white” means, I’m having the devil of a time figuring out what “overtly nonwhite” means, especially as concerns Barack Obama. Let’s not parse this too much, but Obama is just as much white as he is black. Is that What Roper refers to, afraid that people will come back at him with the line I just used? “Overtly nonwhite,” then, means to him the mere color of his skin? Well, duh! That’s exactly what Roper means as he mangles the language, something the Harvard educated Obama is not likely to have done.

Well, this looks to me like what “overtly white” means in the context of Mr. Billy Roper’s statements and beliefs:

Racial epithets were spray-painted on the lawns of two houses and a playground in the Colton Meadow community near St. Georges on Friday night and Saturday morning.

Racial slurs in bold, yellow print were found on the lawns of homes of black and Hispanic families sometime Friday night, said county police spokesman Cpl. Trinidad Navarro.

The nearby children’s playground was marred with the words KKK, Jews and racial epithets as well as toilet paper.

Link to the full Washington Post story here.

Bonddad looks at the long(er) term:

This (S&P/Case-Shiller home-price-ed.) index has been dropping for a year and a half. That’s called a trend. And it’s not a good trend.

In addition, this isn’t going to end anytime soon. Inventory is still sky high and consumer demand is still hampered by massive debt and low confidence.

(snip a discussion of consumer confidence)

Short version: this is bad news all the way around. Period.

Link to the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index here.

Ray, who’s off working on his post on how hedge funds work, thinks the Republicans are trying to stave off the crash the fruits of their economic failures until January 21, 2009, so they can then pretend that their policies of the last umpty-ump years had nothing–nothing!–to do with the results thereof.

The Booman asks a good question.

Her bra was an attention-getter:

A Colorado woman stranded on a rocky ledge in the Bavarian Alps for nearly three days was rescued after she used her sports bra to signal for help.

Berchtesgaden, Germany police officer Lorenz Rasp said that he helped lift Jessica Bruinsma, 24, of Colorado Springs to safety by helicopter on Thursday after she caught the attention of lumberjacks by attaching her sports bra to a cable used to haul timber down the mountain.

H/T Karen for the link.

The Associated Press reports that persons who depend on tips for a substantial part of their income are hurting, because their customers are hurting.

Remember that the minimum wage for the folks in food service is, well, minimal.

Bushonomics: Making the rich richer and the poor poorer in myriad ways.

Todd recorded his podcast in a live feed today.

I listened and joined the chat room.

When the time came, he asked us listeners to put our phone numbers into the chat room. Then he pumped the numbers into a randomizer.

And my phone rang.

Oh, yeah, and there was a monetary prize, just for answering the phone.

Now, if Opie others had been paying attention, they could have joined the fun.

I think I’ll go to Delaware Park tomorrow. I once hit an Exacta there for $237.00. Maybe my number’s about to come up again.

Addendum, Later the Next Day:

You can listen to the show here. If you really want my high-pitched whine of a voice (which Opie endured for must of a week), Todd called me about 58 minutes into the show.

My podcatcher hasn’t brought down the show yet.

(I was going to link to an article about Candidate McCain, but the website appears to be down. Never fear, I’ll certainly be linking to it later).

I will be drinking liberally tomorrow at Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard Philadelphia, Pa., starting at 6 p. m.

The Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has ruled that the Current Federal Administration can’t jail someone just because he wants to, however he trumps up the evidence:

A federal appeals court in Washington has invalidated the Bush Administration’s finding that a detainee held for more than six years in the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is “an enemy combatant,” and ordered the government to release him, transfer him, or offer him a new hearing.

In a ruling decided Friday but released today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that Huzaifa Parhat, an ethnic Chinese Uighur captured during the early stages of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, was inappropriately designated an enemy combatant at a hearing known as a “combatant status review tribunal.” The court said the United States can no longer hold him.

It is time for Mr. Bush to recognize that this country has a president.

Not a king.

But he won’t.

The Geek News Central podcast is relentlessly non-political. Nevertheless, in Friday’s show, Todd asked his listeners to let him know what they think about opening up ANWR and the continental shelf for oil exploration.

So I did:

You asked for comments about opening up ANWR and the continental shelf for oil exploration.

No.

According to the discussion on this episode of the Diane Rehm Show, opening these areas would have little or no effect on current or future oil prices or on U. S. oil reserves.

The discussion indicated that one of the reasons for pressure to open these areas from the oil companies, who already have oil leases for areas that they have not yet started to explore or use, is the oil companies’ stock prices. One of the factors that affects their stock prices is how many reserves they have. In short, their interest may not be primarily oil supplies, so much as Wall Street supplies.

Opening up these areas would do little or nothing to help the everyday person and lots to help the rich get richer with paper profits.

The policy that got us into this mess is ably dissected in this article from The Nation.

GNC Shownotes.

Five steps to resurrect that old laptop.

Via GNC.

Michael D. at Balloon Juice.

Follow the link to see the evidence. Bonddad:

The bottom line is we’re nowhere near the end of the problems in the financial sector. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lyning through their teeth.

I wonder how many MBA’s it took to figure this out. From Market Watch (I highly recommend reading the comments):

U.S. stocks on Monday will attempt to recover from some hefty losses, but any comeback will likely be contingent on three factors: the price of crude oil, any hints of inflation, and developments in the troubled financial sector.

“Obviously this market is in lockstep with three things, the most important of which is the price of a barrel of oil,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Jefferies & Co.

On Friday, stocks sank as crude-oil futures gained, a trend that played throughout the week, as the weaker U.S. dollar added to the allure of oil and other commodities as a currency hedge. And, more trouble in the financial sector compounded market anxiety.

License Plate: Blk Diva.

Rear Window Decal: Blk Diva.

Third Brake Light: Blk Diva. (I kid you not–it was in the lens.)

The owner of this vehicle clearly is not suffering an identity crisis.

For curiosity’s sake, I wanted to catch up with the vehicle so as to glom the driver, but Second Son’s 1992 Ford Ranger’s–(I was on my way to 84 Lumber and it has a bigger bed than my Little Yellow Truck)–Second Son’s 1992 Ford Ranger’s get up and go long ago got up and went (that’s why a 1992 Ford Ranger is a perfect vehicle for Second Son. It’s got “not up and are you kidding me?”)

The fireflies are out tonight.

My little three-bedroom one and half bath split clocks in at 1425 square feet. It’s plenty. In fact, as the kids have grown up and moved away, it’s gotten bigger.

And there’s no rule that says that every kid has to have his or her own room. Bunk beds work just fine.

When Martin Focazio and his wife were house-hunting in 2000, they fired some real estate agents unwilling to help them find exactly what they wanted: a small place.

“They couldn’t get out of their heads that, according to their calculations, I should have been able to buy this monstrous estate,” says Focazio, a consultant with Magnani Caruso Dutton, a digital-media agency. (He and his wife, who teaches part time, moved to this area after renting in New York City.)

“They were pushing us into these six-bedroom, five-bath, four-Jacuzzi monstrosities. It was fairly obscene stuff,” Focazio says.

Instead, the couple, since expanded to a family of five, settled into a 1,200-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bath house on several acres in Upper Black Eddy, Bucks County.

H/T Karen for this link (It’s an AP story, so all you get is a summary):

In Lincoln, Nebraska, a gentleman decided that a thong was an appropriate substitute for gym shorts. Story here.

And here in the Greater Philadelphia Co-Prosperity Sphere:

Four people accused of stealing $2,200 worth of bras in Media may have been key players in an interstate ring estimated to have cost Victoria’s Secret stores as much as $1 million, according to Pennsylvania State Police.

“If what Victoria’s Secret is saying proves to be true, this is a pretty significant arrest,” said Trooper Jonathan Sunderlin, community services officer in Media.

More than a week ago, state police began looking for a gray Dodge Magnum with Rhode Island plates after employees reported a theft from the Victoria’s Secret at the Granite Run Mall.

So, on Sunday afternoon, when employees reported another theft, troopers were able to quickly spot the vehicle leaving the mall and arrest the three men inside, Sunderlin said.

Police searched the car and found the bras, as well as fake receipts, cut-up security tags, money, and gift cards, he said.

The question that occurs to me is this: Just how or where do you sell a stolen brassiere?

I am extremely disappointed in Senator Obama’s position on Stinky Hoyer’s F. I. S. A. bill.

I won’t bother to go into the reasons. For my two or three regular readers, they will be obvious. For others, check here and here and here; their arguments are not necessarily my arguments, but close enough.

I sent the following email to Senator Obama:

I am extremely disapppointed with the Senator’s position on Mr. Hoyer’s FISA bill.

It is time to stop selling out our civil liberties and civil rights to the Bush Administration. They have demonstrated that they act in bad faith. Democrats should no longer be complicit in their misbehavior.

Not having any training gigs lately, I’ve been doing some work around the house.

The past two days, I’ve been rebuilding the shed. It was guaranteed for five years when I got it 15 years ago, so I can’t complain.

It’s been falling down for the past three years. For the past two, I haven’t been able to close the doors, because they were supporting the building.

So, yesterday, I ran down to 84 and got some lumber. Then I thought a while and, on the way back from the dentist, stopped at Home Depot and got some more lumber. (I generally try to avoid Home Depot, but it was right there on the way home; if it’s something I can’t find at the local hardware store, 84 is my first choice, Lowe’s, my second choice.)

I jacked up the lowest side with my trusty hydraulic bottle jack and placed supports under the roof, then boarded over the side with a 4′ X 8′ sheet of plywood. I then jacked up the other side and supported it.

Using my pipe clamp, I squared the front, which was easily five inches out of square, and nailed everything down.

Today I built and installed two new doors.

Tomorrow I am going to skirt in the bottom with plywood to cover the rot, then paint.

For an outlay of about $150, I’ll get at least five more years out of this puppy.

Of course, I would rather have a new shed, but I’m not ready to drop three grand on the vinyl 10′ X 8′ number I want, at least not until I get a new gig.

Addendum, 6/22/08:

Finished.

Every time I think the Republic Party can’t sink any lower, it proves me wrong. Apparently, the Honorable Mark Steven Kirk (R.-Ill.) thinks assassination is a joking matter.

Mr. Kirk looks young. He no doubt has no memories of waking up to his clock radio in 1968 and hearing news when there should have been music. And knowing, at that point, that something must be very wrong. And learning in a few minutes that Robert Kennedy had been killed.

Follow the link if you think you have the stomach to listen to the audio (emphasis added).

Surely the Don Wade show should be taken off the air. And maybe Congressman Kirk ought to be called out by the MSM for a “mistake” the GOP seems to make a bit too often.

Transcript:

DON WADE: In fact, yesterday in a conference call, Barack Obama’s advisers were asked, “If Osama bin Laden were caught, should he get to challenge his detention in U.S. courts?” And the advisers said that — should that right to challenge detention that they get at Gitmo based on the Supreme Court ruling, should that be applied to bin Laden? — and Obama’s advisers said, “Yes.”

KIRK: Yeah, and I would much rather have a policy where if we see Obama there’s a shoot-on-sight order.

DON WADE: Well, okay. I’m with you, but I don’t know whether that’s going to make 67 — well it might –

Scum.

Someone made a comment to this post to the effect that there was validity to conclusion that “we have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here” because persons can have differing opinions.

Here is my response (slightly edited):

The way news is treated today has convinced a lot of people that opposite opinions are somehow equal opinions.

The facts make it clear that Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda before the American invasion, despite the statements of the Current Federal Administration. They also make it clear that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction prior to the American invasion (that’s why the inspectors kept finding nothing–and why Bush kept advancing the deadline; Bush knew they were finding nothing and wanted to cut them off before the findings were conclusive.)

Bush lied us into this war. And a certain number of fools drank the Kool-Aid with him.

It is one thing to have differing opinions.

But, if one of those opinions is based on falsehoods, there is only one word for it: Lie.

If someone chooses to base his opinions on lies, I reserve the right to call him or her out for being a fool.

The largest mall in Delaware has banned kids who are not accompanied by adults on Friday and Saturday evenings:

Teenagers in the habit of whiling away weekend nights in Delaware’s Christiana Mall are about to get a new crowd to run with: their mall-walking parents.

As of July 11, unaccompanied minors will be barred from Delaware’s largest shopping center after 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday nights.

Christiana is the first mall in the Philadelphia region to move to a teenager curfew, which has spread into dozens of malls nationwide since its inception in the mid-1990s. No mall in Pennsylvania or New Jersey is considering a similar policy.

(Full disclosure: I don’t like Christiana Mall and avoid it whenever possible. When I have to go to a mall, I go to Concord Mall, the Small Mall That Has It All.)

(Aside: You know what a mall is. It’s a place with one or two department stores, 50 clones of the Gap, and one men’s store. Except Christiana Mall is a large mall. It has 100 clones of the Gap and a Williams-Sonoma–where you can pay far too much money for cooking equipment you will never need for dishes you will never cook–and one men’s store.)

Over at DelawareLiberal, liberalgeek seems to have decided that this is some kind of discrimination, even equating it with discrimination against black persons.

I’ve reared my share of teenagers.

Actually, more teenagers than I ever expected to rear.

And I think liberalgeek is missing the point.

The point is this: Parents shouldn’t use malls as dumping grounds for their kids, on weekends or any other times. Even if it gives said parents a chance to relive why they decided to become parents in the first place.

Furthermore, kids should not be left roaming around unsupervised for hours at a time, singly or in groups. It is not the job of a store or a group of stores or a mall to supervise other persons’ kids.

And if the parents are not using the mall as a dumping ground, but rather the kids are dumping themselves there, a whole nother list of questions arises, like, for example, say, “Where the hell are the parents?”

My kids were not allowed to go to the mall to hang out–at least, not until they got their drivers’ licenses and could go there on their own legally. And by then, of course, they had almost attained the age of majority. And they still had to have permission to use the family vehicle or they had to find their own damned ride.

By then they had learned to amuse themselves in ways that did not require hanging around at the mall.

(And, no, I don’t want to know what those ways were.)

What Brendan said.

I remember Steny Hoyer when he was a crusading young politician.

That was before he sold out.

. . . is a training charlatan’s dream.

Diversity, Inc., on the other hand, is a pretty good magazine.

I submit this column for your consideration, especially if you are one of those folks who just don’t get what the fuss over race is all about.