Woo Hoo!

Wyatt's not going to care about this, he might even be happy about it, but Joe Gibbs Racing is going to Toyota!

I come from a family that has had very dependable Toyota's for almost my whole life, and I was absolutely beside myself when I heard that Toyota would be racing the Camry in the Nextel Cup.

Toyota is already dominating the Craftsman Truck Series, and in the Busch Series, David Reutiman is second in points behind Carl Edwards, and Jason Lefler gave Toyota their first Camry Victory, and is 4th in points behind 3rd place Kevin Harvick.

With Joe Gibbs running in the Japanese car, look for Toyota to not only rack up wins, but possibly a championship in only their second season of racing in the Cup Series.

Ahem....HELLO!!!!

Has no one else caught what's wrong with these snippets?

From WSJ;
Many "HillRaisers" -- people who rustle up at least $100,000 for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign -- are dwarfed beside Mr. Hsu (pronounced "Shu"). Several people involved in Democratic presidential fund-raising say Mr. Hsu, an apparel executive, has raised well over $1 million for the New York senator's presidential campaign, making him one of the top 20 Democratic fund-raisers in the country. The Clinton campaign doesn't disclose such details and declined to comment for this story.

From NYT;
Beyond the hundreds of thousands of dollars he raised from others for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Mr. Hsu personally contributed more than $600,000 to federal, state and municipal candidates in the last three years, a review of campaign finance records shows. It was a startling amount of money for someone whose sources of income remained far from obvious yesterday, as visits to addresses he has provided for his businesses found no trace of Mr. Hsu.
...The Clinton campaign has said it will give to charity $23,000 that Mr. Hsu contributed, and yesterday representatives of Mr. Spitzer and Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, who received $50,000 from Mr. Hsu, said they would do the same. A spokesman for Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat who is a rival of Mrs. Clinton for the party’s presidential nomination, said Mr. Obama intended to give away $7,000 that Mr. Hsu contributed to his committees.

So a criminal raises MILLIONS for Senator Clinton, but she only donates $23,000 of it back to charity, and no one is raising a red flag for this?

How Can You Trust The Media On Iraq Coverage...

When they can't even decide which story to tell?

AP - Little Progress Seen on Iraq Goals

The Iraqi government has failed to meet the vast majority of political and military goals laid out by lawmakers to assess President Bush's Iraq war strategy, congressional auditors have determined.

Reuters - Iraq says making progress ahead of key reports

Iraq has made good strides improving security while political progress is picking up ahead of key reports to be delivered to the U.S. Congress in the next two weeks, Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Thursday.

Umm....

Fall Semester

So here's my class load for this semester;

Numerical Heat & Mass Transfer - MWF, 10-11
Engineering Economics - Tues. Thurs (TR), 8-9:20
Dynamic Modeling & Controls - TR, 9:30-10:50 (Lab Thurs 3-4:50)
Aerodynamics - TR, 1:30 - 2:50
Mechanical Engineering Seminar - Tues, 3:30 - 520

Oh, and my one joke class...Golf - Monday 2:30 - 4:30

14 hours of credit, 18 hours of class time. Crap.

And my Tuesdays and Thursdays suck HORRIBLY!!!

A Proverbial Bitch Slap

The Dissident Frogman slaps the hell out of the AFP for their recent attempt at a war photography scandal, and shows unknowing photogs the difference between making obviously fake news/captions, and at least attempting to make them look credible.

If nothing else, the movie is funny as hell.

You Just Can't Win With Environmentalists

We've been searching for solutions to the country's energy crisis for decades, but when one solution comes along, an environmentalist comes and knocks it down.

Coal Power - Dirt cheap, and highly regulated with scrubbers, but it still pollutes. No Sir!

Hydro Power - Zero pollution, and a moderate power output, but it requires flooding lands, possibly disrupting animal habitats. We can't have that!

Solar Power - Another zero pollution form of energy, but it requires large areas of land and can disrupt animal habitats. NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Wind Power - Zero Pollution in an ever increasing amount of power output. But birds may fly into them! (And they don't like how they look) HEAVEN FORBID!!!!

But Behold! We have BIO-DIESEL! Corn! That will solve our problems! But wait, high concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus from increases in fertilizer use to meet the demand have leeched into the water.

And people wonder why we are constantly in an energy crisis?

USA Today Gives Doom and Gloom Outlook On Stocks

The headline for USA Today's paper on Thursday read "STOCKS GIVE BACK 2007 GAINS - DOW BELOW 13,000" and the print article showed a graphic of the S&P 500's line graph for the 2007 year.

It all sounds so terrible doesn't it? I guess we need to bail out of the stock market! Pull your money out now before it's all gone!

Not so fast.

Let's look deeper into the topic of this knee jerk reaction from USA Today. Let's look at the 52 Week range of all 3 major indices. Dow Jones Industrial Average, NASDAQ, and S&P 500.

Dow Jones:
August 16th Open - 12,861.47
August 16th Close - 12,845.78
52 Week Low - 11,218.70
Difference - +1,6227.08 (+14%)

NASDAQ:
August 16th Open - 2,458.83
August 16th Close - 2,451.07
52 Week Low - 2,122.65
Difference - +328.42 (+15.5%)

S&P 500:
August 16th Open - 1,406.70
August 16th Close - 1,411.27
52 Week Low - 1,289.82
Difference - +121.45 (+9.3%)

Each major index has still beaten the inflation rate even after this bit of a drop. And now since the Fed has dropped the discount rate, the markets have reacted with a massive buying spree. Currently all 3 indices are up over 1% for the day.

If you care to look at the increase over the past 5 years, the graphs are DJI, NASDAQ, and S&P 500.

And 10 years ago, Dow Jones just broke 8,000, NASDAQ was at 1550, and was beginning the "dot-com boom," and the S&P was at a mere 900.

But you're right USA Today...we have it so much worse than 10 years ago, 5 years ago, or even last year. Don't let the media play you for a fool just because the market hits a bump in the road. If you can tell by the charts, it's nothing but bumps.

One More Team

HWC Football was full, but BDH decided that an auto-pick draft was not his style, and left. That means there's still one more slot in the league.

The draft will be soon after we get our last team, so come quick, before the league has to draft!!

League ID: 11805
Password: hillary

To Be Honest...

Why am I not surprised?

Around 8,000 of nearly 16,500 murder victims in 2005, or 49 percent, were black Americans, according to the report released by the statistics bureau of the Department of Justice.

...Most murder victims -- 93 percent of blacks and 85 percent of whites -- were killed by someone of their own race.

What's sad is only 5% of those homicides where the victim was black were gang related. That means that 95% of them were just cold-blooded murders.

This type of violence destroys the black communities, and peoples hopes of success; and the worst part is that it is from within. That is something to be upset about. That is something for the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons to preach about. That is something for the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons to march about.

California Liberal Gets Burned Trying To Undermine Fred Thompson

The website Imwithfred2008.com was a site that appeared to be set up by presumably Southern white supremacists, but something smelled a little off. Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters investigated. The first step was to do a DNS search of the site. It brought up a California man by the name of Henry Reynolds, of Santa Monica, CA. Weird. So then Ed looked up the name to see if there were any donation records. There were three; $500 to Moveon.org, $500 to DNC Services, and $250 to John Kerry.

A KKK member donating to far left liberals? Sounds fishy. Now look at this. (This was the no brainer for me) The genius that is Henry Reynolds put this phone number as his contact for the domain name he registered; (310) 393-7052. The phone number for the liberal attorney who donated to liberals? (310) 393-7052. The man was soooo smart and cunning that he put his OFFICE PHONE NUMBER as his contact number when he created the false website. I also would not be surprised if he registered the website with the address of his law office.

However if you look now, the site in question is gone, but as you can tell from the previous clicks on links, Ed cached the site for all to see. The site now links directly to JohnEdwards.com, and shows Reynolds true colors. But something that Ed doesn't catch. This little bit at the bottom left of the page:
"Paid for by John Edwards for President"

Could something slightly more sinister be at play here? I'm going to e-mail Ed about it.

H/T: Captain's Quarters via Hot Air

Number Of US Troops >>>> Number Of Crimes By US Troops

In the engineering world, a symbol like, T >> 0 means "for Temperature much greater than 0" and applies to equations for a specific range of values. For the military, it means that teh Number of troops is much greater than the number of crimes commited by military personel.

The ratio of crime to troops over a 19 month period, is one criminal per 2,373 troops. That's all crimes, varying from petty theft all the way up to the horrible crimes of rape and murder. Of violent crimes, there were 21 violent crimess over the course of 19 months in a population of 140,000. That's one criminal for every 7,368 troops, IF each crime was a solo act (which I highly doubt all were)

Comparing that to one of the top 10 places to live, Ann Arbor, MI, they had 1,476 crimes that in the military would be tried as higher crimes, with a population 20,000 less than the troops in Iraq. One of the top 10 places to live in the United States, has nearly 100 times the violent crime rate of our United States Military. On top of that there were another 2,282 non-violent crimes. But liberals hate the troops, and would love you to think that all military personel are murderous thugs, and are the scum of society.

How ironic is it, that the truth is quite the opposite.

Let's look at the liberal capital of Santa Cruz, CA. A city with a population of only 55,000 but a crime rate over the past 19 months of 503 violent crimes, and 3,162 non-violent offences. Now extrapolate that to a population of 140,000 and there are 1280 violent crimes, and another 8,048 non-violent offenses. A criminal rate of a whopping 1 out of every 17 people. And a violent criminal rate of 1 for every 109 citizens.

Now after seeing those statitics, who would you rather have for a neighbor?

H/T: Ralph Peters

I Just Saw This At Red State

I about fell out of the seat laughing. Classic!

A View Of The Liberal Pshyche

For half a dozen years, the motto of state government and particularly that of Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been No New Taxes. It's been popular with a lot of voters and it has mostly prevailed. So much so that Pawlenty vetoed a 5-cent gas tax increase - the first in 20 years - last spring and millions were lost that might have gone to road repair. And yes, it would have fallen even if the gas tax had gone through, because we are years behind a dangerous curve when it comes to the replacement of infrastructure that everyone but wingnuts in coonskin caps agree is one of the basic duties of government.

I'm not just pointing fingers at Pawlenty. The outrage here is not partisan. It is general. - Nick Coleman, Star Tribune

A typical liberal thought. "More taxes need to be levied on the people! A new tax will solve any problem!" Well, what Coleman fails to mention is the fact that the state of Minnesota had a $2.1 BILLION SURPLUS for the 2006 fiscal year.

Coleman also misquotes the story of the bridge scoring a 50/120, claiming it was a "50% bridge". The number is misconstrued, as I just heard on the radio where a score of just over 70/120 is considered "very good."

"What that rating of 50 means is that the bridge should be repaired, should perhaps be considered for replacement at some point in the future," Peters said. "It was by no means determined that this bridge was not safe. Had that been the case ... Gov. Pawlenty would have shut this bridge down immediately."

Silky Pony - Conspiracy Hound

"I’m amazed you’re still able to talk on the radio." - John Edwards, July 31, 2007

Edwards was talking about Ed Schultz, who is averaging 1/7th the ratings of Rush Limbaugh. In the top 25 markets, Rush has approximately 1.18 Million listeners, compared to 170,000 for Schultz. That's less than 10,000 listeners per market. Which, not surprisingly follows the ratings I found earlier for Air America.

But it's the nasty conservatives and Republicans conspiring to shut down Schultz. John, I think I know where you can find some apparel for your target demographic.

H/T: Hot Air/Radio Equalizer

Higher Employment Costs A Bad Thing?

The AP is spinning so fast with this little nugget that it's getting me nauseous.

Employers' cost to hire and retain workers picked up slightly in the second quarter but not enough to fan inflation fears.

The Labor Department reported Tuesday that compensation costs — including wage, salaries and benefits — rose by 0.9 percent in the April-to-June quarter. That was up a bit from the first quarter's 0.8 percent rise.

The second quarter's increase matched economists' expectations. Economists look closely at labor costs for any signs that they might be generating inflation. A solid employment climate has made it easier for some workers to command higher wages and benefits.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the central bank's biggest concern is if inflation doesn't recede as policymakers anticipate. The Fed looks closely at the price of goods and services as well as various labor cost barometers as it tries to gauge inflation pressures.

So people are making more, which apparently that's a bad thing?

GOP and College Caption Contest 16

It's time to announce the winners of the 16th GOP and College Caption Contest!

Honorable Mentions
Many in the room were hoping the cuddly one would cozy up to Hillary. - jimmyb

Death Cat sayz “Death iz coming for joo!” – GOP and College

"You'd be surprised how quickly I can chew through an IV." – ChrisA

And the top 5!

#5 - Oscar didn't know why he held sway over life and death, he only knew that he liked it. – pudge

#4 - Who you callin Pussy? – Peakah

#3 - Excellent.. – jimmyb

#2 - So tell me. Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya? – RT

And the winning entry:
You want Grandma to live to see Christmas? It'll cost ya five cans of Starkist Tuna, packed in water -- none of that oily sh*t -- and a dime bag of catnip. Too steep? Grandma's lap sure looks comfy! – Cowboy Blob

Source: Reuters via Yahoo!

Other contests:
OTB
Willisms
SYLG
Gone Rick Motel
Cowboy Blob
Bagel Blogger
Right Pundits has a similar idea
Public Pondering (RT)