When Yahoo! hit the IPO jackpot, they invested a lot of the extra cashflow into other standalone, web startups and as a result, they took a big hit when the bubble burst. The Google IPO has created a lot more liquidity for the younger search company, but they seem to be putting an inordinate amount of their money and effort into questionable in-house ventures which appear to only enhance the brand and which do not provide obvious income opportunities.

Over the past week, two such endeavors have come to light;

• Yesterday, Google announced that the subjects of a news story may now submit a written response and after the author's authenticity is verified, the response will be posted alongside the original story using AJAX, so a new pageview would not be required and no additional advertising would be displayed.
  
  An example of this setup can be found in relation to a story about McDonalds.



• On Monday, Google announced that they'll be recruiting "Business Referral Representatives", who will be independent contractors that will be paid per verified listing for going to local businesses to collect data like phone number and hours of operation, plus take a photo of the business so that this information could be added to Google Maps.
  
  While in contact with these businesses, the contractors, who could be anyone and anywhere are encouraged to talk-up the functionality of Google Maps and Adwords. Though, none of their pay is tied to the contracting for these services. The only way Google would make a return for this effort is if the business were to purchase Adwords and in my opinion, they may get some sales in markets larger than a hundred thousand, but in the smaller cities of this country, Adwords doesn't seem to make a lot of sense for the average brick and mortar business.
  
  For example, if you punch the name of my town, the postal abbreviation for the state and the word "hardware" into Google, the first three listings are from Google: Local. All three of these businesses belong to a national buying cooperative and their phone number and map position are already displayed.
  
  There's the "Ace", the "True Value" and a "Do It Best"; Two of the three do have freestanding websites which lists the kind of data that Google will be collecting, but they're already linked from the initial listing and an additional link to such a limited site would just be redundant. For shopping, specials or price comparisons, all of the businesses redirect to the national chains where the catalog is more extensive and the database is easier to maintain.
  
  If I were the owner of any of these businesses, I don't see how I could justify buying an Adword. My listing already appears at the top of the Google results and though a geographically-targeted Adword would put another link on the page, I don't see how it would benefit me. There's three hardware stores in this town, much like there's three auto parts stores and two laundries. This situation and these numbers are fairly typical for the smaller markets, so why should Google pay somebody up to ten dollars to collect their phone numbers, which are already in Google anyway because of their lookup service?

As a user, I may get some benefit from these efforts, but the hosted responses to news articles raises legal, ethical and competitive questions. I pretty much know what my local hardware stores look like and where they're located, so since the phone numbers are already listed and their hours are a click away, I can't see any value in the second effort for anyone in a small to mid-sized market.

If I were an investor in Google, it may be time to start questioning the reasoning for these and other ventures because I see only limited return, beyond a simple and non-revenue-producing enhancement of the brand.

Though, if I were unemployed and in need of an income, I'd totally bank some of Google's misguided funds.

(Valleywag and Lost Remote contributed links to this post)

On Friday evening, Bill O'Reilly did his editorial comment on Iraq and though I won't characterize what he was trying to say because I'm not absolutely sure myself, it did contain the phrase "there comes a time when enough's enough" and he seems to be endorsing some kind of withdrawal from combat operations in the war-torn country. (transcript, video)

Immediately following Mr O'Reilly's "Talking Points Memo", he led into an interview with White House Spokesman Tony Snow by asking; "All right, Snow, where am I going wrong, man?"

What I found remarkable is that it took only about twenty-five seconds for Mr. Snow to give as an example of our recent successes in Iraq; "the Iraqi forces, security forces are taking three to four times the casualties and fatalities that the Americans are" and when asked about recent Republican defections, he repeated the administration's familiar mantra; "People see scenes of dead American soldiers, they see scenes of carnage." (transcript, video)

Bill O'Reilly and I rarely see eye-to-eye and without more information about his new position, we probably don't on the entirety of this situation, either. But, I do have to agree with him on the gist of this particular editorial and add my voice to his "enough's enough".

(Note: You can watch both clips back-to-back via The Raw Story)

John Edwards announced his candidacy for President on Thursday and after doing so in New Orleans, he went to Iowa for a town meeting and a session with reporters, plus he met with a handful of bloggers for a few minutes. During the blogger portion of the program, he was asked for his perspective from being on the "Council of Foreign Relations" and co-authoring a report about Russia with Jack Kemp, whether he thought the Russians would be helpful in our negotiations with Iran.

The following is a transcript of his response;

That's a hard question. I don't... so far, they've not been very helpful. I think actually what's happened with Russia is that they've moved away in their relationship with America and the West, largely because they've moved away from democracy.

Putin has sort of taken over, has centralized the government, got a iron hand on the country now and the result is that it's harder for us to get them to do things, they need to do. They don't pay a lot of attention to us; They pay a little more attention to us and the Europeans and the Japanese, when we act together, but Russia plays a critical role, particularly with trying to deal Iran and the UN Security Council.

Now, there's not a lot new in his quote. The media has given some tacit coverage to the deteriorating relationship with Russia and I've even noted a couple of circumstances on the pages of my journal.

Instead, what struck me as I was watching the video with the bloggers; When Condoleezza Rice was first named National Security Adviser, she was heralded from the mountaintops as an academic with past government service, who was an expert on Russia and the former Soviet Union. Obviously, expert or not, she has apparently fallen down on that job because though we generally leave each other alone, I don't think anyone would describe the US and Russia as having particularly good relations.

Her failures in the Mideast have also been pretty well documented, both as National Security Adviser and as Secretary of State.

There's been nothing to contradict that she was warned before September 11th; She purposefully marginalized Richard Clarke and there really wasn't any risk of a mushroom cloud originating in Iraq. More recently, she's done nothing to try and bring the Palestinians and the Israelis together; She allowed Israel to bomb the hell out of Lebanon, including many civilian targets and any discussion of foreign policy must come back to the quagmire in Iraq. Plus, of course, there's also the situation with North Korea.

Which leads me to the inevitable question;
Ms Rice may be brilliant on paper, but can anyone, anywhere, point to a single achievement?

(x-posted)

A writer for the Orlando Sentinel used Michael Richards' famous breakdown as a jumping-off point for a story about race relations.

During the course of the article, Joe Feagin, a Texas A&M University sociology professor claims that nearly all white Americans have a "white racial frame" and that we tamp it down as a result of political correctness. To clip a paragraph from the piece; "Feagin said Americans have learned it's unacceptable to make racist comments in public -- in what he calls a 'frontstage' arena. Yet, 'backstage,' in small groups of friends or family members, white people regularly use racist language and tell racist jokes."

This particular concept, while I consider it utterly ridiculous, it did put me in mind of an old filmed piece Eddie Murphy did for Saturday Night Live and while only the first part of the sketch is available, if you watch it, you'd still get the idea.

Later on in Ms Shrieves' article, she details an online test developed by two social psychologists and hosted by Harvard University. According to the authors, Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji of the one million people who have taken the racial component of their test, 80% show a preference for whites over blacks.

I took the racial part of their test sometime last week and once the whole thing was over, I was presented with the following graph;



If anyone has the ten minutes or so to take the "Race IAT", I implore you to explain to me how this test is in any way valid and how its structure is not the cause of the results. All in all and I may be prejudiced because of my perspective, but I'd say that pretty much everything in Linda Shrieves' article and all of the learned opinions, she cites are complete rubbish.

(x-posted)

I don't know if it's a modern thing or a function of the West, but I'm amazed at the number of people who work the Walmart parking lot looking for gas money, or who stand by its exit with a "Need Gas" sign. Today, the fellow even had a big red gas can with the yellow nozzle fully extended, if for some reason, you couldn't read his sign and didn't get the idea.

I realize that none of them are probably going to read this post, but I just want to say that under no circumstances would I ever give a stranger money for gas, unless they had been robbed. I don't know if their stories are true, but it looks too much like they drive until they're about out of fuel and then they set up within sight of the interstate, trying to raise enough money to get a little further down the road.

It just screams of irresponsibility and unreasonable expectations.

As I've said before, when I was younger, I did more than my share of hitchhiking. I remember, once I hitchhiked from Charlotte to Pittsburgh (447 miles) and on another occasion, I hitchhiked from Charlotte to Lauderdale (709 miles). Most of my usual trips were from Raleigh to Myrtle Beach, Raleigh down around Savannah or Charleston, out to a random beach or up to the mountains and of course, none of these excursions include my functional trips, where I simply needed to get from Point A to Point B.

Heck, there was a period of a couple of years, when I'd sometimes just go out to the roadside, throw up my thumb and take the first ride as far as possible, then I'd decide where to go from there. It was a method of entertainment. I'd aimlessly hitchhike around the mid-Atlantic and after a couple of days, I'd point myself toward home. True, a lot of these trips seemed to include a beach or the mountains and for some reason, I'd often halfway point myself toward the top of Table Rock because it was a good place to think.

If your grandmother died or something, I consider hitchhiking a legitimate way to get to her funeral, if you couldn't afford gas. But, by wandering around the Walmart parking lot or standing by the road holding a jug, you're telling me that you expect the world to give you a handout and I can't rationalize supporting such immaturity or irresponsibility.

So, where you and everyone else will know for future reference; If your sign says "Need Crack", "Poor and Unemployed" or "Willing to Work for Food", I might consider throwing you a couple of dollars, but under no circumstances would I willingly pay for your gas because you had poor planning or are cursed with an unreasonable sense that you're owed something by the world.

My Daddy taught me better.

As virtually everyone has heard, last week the New York Times and two other newspapers broke a fairly benign story that revealed federal investigators are following the money trail, when it comes to terrorists. I didn't comment on this earlier because for the life of me, I can't see anything too far out of line in the original story. Why wouldn't they monitor the flow of funds? Hasn't this been a part of our arsenal in the Drug War, organized crime and other money laundering investigations for years, if not decades?

In the days following 9/11, we were told that there had been an unusual amount of shorting and put action against the airlines and the insurance companies which were affected by the attacks. Though I didn't really follow the story afterward, a quick search brings up this article from the Chicago Tribune dated September 19th, 2001 which draws attention to the issue and which marks the creation of a task force to aid in the financial investigation.

We've seen testimony on Capital Hill that the post office can't afford to inspect every domestic package shipped, but things originating from outside our borders are given different consideration. When I go to Kroger's and use my frequent shopper card to buy a "participating item", I accumulate points toward an iTune download. This card also keeps up with my purchases of baby and pet items, plus film development and it gives me points toward discounts on a future purchase. Why would anyone expect anything less from an international conglomerate that facilitates global money exchanges?

As Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post and others have pointed out over the past few days, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) has a website, as does the investigative body. They sponsor the largest financial trade show in the world and publish a magazine. SWIFT, a cooperative owned by more than 2,200 organizations and which services over 7,800 financial institutions worldwide makes no secret of their role in interbank communications and their willingness to cooperate with official investigations. Perhaps the most impressive thing that I learned from the piece in the Times, the Belgium group had actually taken steps to pro-actively reduce the scope of the US inquiries.

If all this is known and not a secret, one has to wonder why the administration and their mouthpieces have been batting around words like "treason" and so loudly calling Times to task. I'll admit that though I remember the stuff post-9/11 and I've only assumed that they have remained on the ball, I didn't have a name or direct knowledge of the government's investigative methods. But, I don't have an interest in money-laundering and other than an old company which I considered launching with an English partner and English investors, plus participation in a couple of global money market accounts; I can't say that international money transfers has occupied many of my wakened thoughts. It's just not my business, but I were an international terrorist, I'm sure my priorities would be different and I would've had full knowledge of this non-secret organization and how their structure might effect my efforts.

It's a newspaper's job to investigate and reveal anything that may be of importance which crosses their desk. The only acceptable exception would be if there is real possibility, it could directly put someone's life in danger. Sometimes these stories bear fruit, like the previously revealed NSA wiretapping story or the database of everyone's calling patterns and sometimes they don't amount to much of anything new. To take a step back from the inflammatory idea of national security with another example; Yesterday's Albuquerque Journal had a story below the fold disclosing that Burlington, Northern and Santa Fe Railroad contributed $50,000 to the Democratic Governor's Association, which Bill Richardson is the current chairman. The paper couldn't find any evidence concerning a quid quo pro with the Governor's "train to nowhere" or the "train to the future", however you'd like to look at it and they found that the company had donated similar amounts to both the Democratic and Republican organizations for years and under every chair. This investigation, much like the most recent one undertaken by the New York Times didn't really reveal anything that a random person with an interest couldn't have surmised, but by publishing this information; Freedom was served.

As the report circulated about a loud bang in the parking garage for a US House office building, the stock market took a breather by showing a sharp dip until things were better defined and as the news coverage got underway. All of the District's schools went into lockdown for two and a half hours, security tightened throughout the city, the Rayburn Building was closed for more than four hours and the US Capital initially closed, reopened, closed and then re-reopened.

At 10:45 AM, the Capital Police broadcast the following email;

This is a message from the U.S. Capitol Police

1. If you are in the Rayburn HOB then Shelter in Place. Quickly move into the nearest interior office space or interior hallway and away from windows. The Capitol Police are investigating reports of gunfire in the Rayburn HOB.


2. If nearby, grab Go-Kits and personal belongings.


3. Close doors behind you, but do not lock.


4. Remain calm.


5. Await further instructions. Do not leave the building.

CNN talked to three guys who had been working on an elevator around 11:40 and they said that it was most likely them that had made the noise. There was no mention of this scenario at the two police press conferences, I watched before leaving the house because it was obvious what had happened and that the whole thing was an incredible overreaction.

At 1:57 PM, an email circulated that read;

The Capitol Police are continuing the floor-by-floor search of the Rayburn HOB.

1. During the search, the police officers will knock 3 times on each office door, announce "United States Capitol Police", knock 3 additional times, and then voice the code word


2. Unlock and open your office doors for the police and cooperate with all police instructions.


3. All occupants of the Rayburn HOB should remain in their offices until the Capitol Police announce that it is safe to exit. 4. If there are special concerns about the identity of the person knocking on your door and you need to verify their identity, call -- .


4. The Cannon and Longworth HOB's and the Capitol remain open for persons to access and exit. Access to the Capitol is limited to official business only.

As the room to room search was being conducted, a House Intelligence Committee, open-door hearing continued with minimal interruption. Two Washington Post reporters were in attendance and through their account of what took place after adjournment, we learn that a Capital Police officer entered around 1:30 and announced that soon a tactical team would sweep the room. They will be heavily armed and very loud, so please follow instructions was his suggestion.

Forty minutes later, the officer returned and asked the three Congresspeople who hadn't ignored instructions and left the area, if any of them were carrying weapons. Around 2:30 PM, the doors were unlocked and a tactical team entered, ordering everyone to put their hands on their heads. Then, they asked if anyone did not belong in this room, before they marched the citizens down the hall, hands on their heads and through a metal detector. It was after this point, the hearing witnesses and participants were released from custody and ordered out of the building.

It wasn't until 3:18 that the all-clear was sounded and things could get back to normal. The official explanation was that the elevator crew had been using a pneumatic hammer and it had most likely made the noise.

What did we learn?

A single phone call, which in this case came from a Congressperson's office, but the Police Spokesperson claimed ignorance all day, so they may have acted the same if it was a regular person or an anonymous call from a disposable cell; But, a single phone call reporting a suspicious sound had repercussions throughout our system and because of the idiotic idea of a lockdown, which we've allowed law enforcement to sell since Columbine, the situation was prolonged, intrusive and needlessly put people in danger.

It all started with three posters that were created by a New Delhi advertising agency, built around the tagline of "Dowry. It's the dirtiest word." I'll submit the posters under the cut, but that's only where this post began.

In an effort to learn about the group that sponsored the signs, which I understand haven't really been installed in a lot of locations because of their language; I did a Yahoo! search and though I didn't find a website for them, I did see a link to an editorial in the student newspaper at Washington State. The piece was written by a woman named Brielle Schaeffer and it begins by making reference to something one of her "liberated males friends" said, "Just a few degrees warmer and the clothes start coming off".

It was from this jumping-off point, her friend simply saying that he liked it when girls wear less clothing, she launches into the objectification of women and by the third paragraph, she makes the leap to female genital mutilation and the dowry system. I didn't have a lot of luck with their internal search, but I was interested in what she has to say, so I consulted both Yahoo! and Google to find some other editorials she has written on similar subjects; "Study Today - Marry Tomorrow", "Defining Feminism in the 21st Century", "Women Lack Voice in Government" and "The Social Downfall of Female Empowerment".

After reading through many of her opinions and agreeing with some, but wanting to take issue with her jump from enjoying the sight of female skin to genital mutilation and on to sexual harrassment, I thought about making a post. I'm sure that I've said something similar to her friend and I may have even said it in this forum. After all, yesterday I posted a couple of pics and linked to a plethora of sexually-suggestive sites and photos of scantily-clad women. I also know that as I've said before, I marched for the ERA and have done many other things, including building my career around that of my wife's, so I also consider myself liberated and enlightened.

In the past, I've mirrored a few of my posts into an appropriate community on a delayed basis. I really don't do it often, because it usually results in people agreeing or a bunch of trolls making uninformed judgments about my beliefs. I've long belonged to the feminist community, it is lumped under my "Politics" filter and I have posted to that community in the past with good results.

But, last time I visited feminist, it was "closed for remodeling". So, I went back to see if it had reopened and what changes had been made. The userinfo has certainly been revamped, but what struck me as I clicked through the recent entries was a sameness of opinion. A good example would be the response to a post about the Burger King commercial, which parodies the old Helen Reddy song; "I am Woman". I've personally found the ad amusing and I like it, but it appears that not only do many of those in feminist find it offensive, but when others disagreed, they were shot down and issued "Mod Notes" or "Mod Warnings".

The first person who disagreed in the 113 comment thread was hooper_x. As I told him in a note yesterday, I've seen him around and we have mutual lj-friends, so I wanted to offer my support. As those who know him might expect, part of his response was direct and to the point; "Honestly, if I'm gonna get banned from some LJ comm I've been posting in for a good three years, a fucking hamburger commercial is probably the most ironically beautiful and appropriate vehicle by which to achieve banishment."

Unfortunately, I've never before seen the other person who said they liked the ad, but really that's all she said before she was attacked and forced to defend herself. Her very first comment was answered by a link to hooper_x's "Mod Note".

Needless to say, I'm probably not going to mirror this post in that community and I may even be risking my membership by posting this to my own journal. The whole thing is a bit discombobulating, but I'm not going to quote Limbaugh because I don't believe him. Though, if the next generation of feminism isn't capable of loosening-up, I predict others agreeing with his disparagement.

I'm an enlightened male, who remembers that the sexual revolution coincided with the civil rights and feminist movements. I like looking at pretty people and as Ms Schaeffer wrote; "Women have always been viewed as the 'fairer' sex, more beautiful than their male counterparts". I also find the Burger King and anti-dowry ads amusing, so I must be disgusting.

I know it's a slow weekend and this was a bit disjointed, but if anyone would like to jump in on any of these points, please feel free.

( The Posters which Started it All (Language Warning) )

I've written about this a couple of times in comments, but now it's time to bring it up top and put it in one of my occasional Sunday editorials. I realize that politically, not everyone who reads this post is going to agree with its conclusion and though I describe myself as liberal Democrat, it may not always be obvious from my stance.

Recently, I made fun of something I thought somewhat arrogant and entirely stupid that came out of Jane Fonda's mouth; "When I was an active anorexic/bulimic, if I had read my book, it would've had a big effect on me". The cockiness of that statement is obvious. The stupidity is rooted in the idea that's she's saying, if I knew everything that I know now, I would've made different choices.

She made this statement on an episode of Charlie Rose and I only caught the tail end, as I was surfing around. The next afternoon because I wanted to get the phrasing right and because I've always liked Lady Jane, I watched the entire interview.

During the part where she was discussing the current administration and its propensity toward war, Guest Host Barbara Walters asked her about the Democrats and though I'm not going to pay $9.95 for the transcript or even $1.99 for the Google Video; Basically, she said that it's time to stop waiting for the Democrats and we should form a new party, a national group dedicated to a new way of thinking and use that to counteract the neocons and Bush.

In the past, I've made reference to the way that Tina Fey, Jay Leno and people of that sort have been belittling the Democrats and diffusing the little power that our former candidates might possess. And in a comment to another journal, I've clipped the following quote from Timothy Crouse's 1973 book, The Boys on the Bus;

It is an unwritten law of current political journalism that conservative Republican Presidential candidates usually receive gentler treatment from the press than do liberal Democrats. Since most reporters are moderate or liberal Democrats themselves, they try to offset their natural biases by going out of their way to be fair to conservatives. No candidate ever had a more considerate press corps than Barry Goldwater in 1964, and four years later the campaign press gave every possible break to Richard Nixon. Reporters sense a social barrier between themselves and most conservative candidates; their relations are formal and meticulously polite. But reporters tend to loosen up around liberal candidates and campaign staffs; since they share the same ideology, they can joke with the staffers, even needle them, without being branded the 'enemy'. If a reporter has been trained in the traditional, 'objective' school of journalism, this ideological and social closeness to the candidate and the staff makes him feel guilty; he begins to compensate; the more he likes and agrees with the candidate personally, the harder he judges him professionally. Like a coach sizing up his own son in spring tryouts, the reporter becomes doubly severe.

Because they are out of power and with the proliferation of television channels, along with a perceived overcompensation by journalists, not to mention the fact that CNN goes out of their way not to appear "liberal"; The Democratic message has failed to gain traction. This will most likely remain true until they have an identifiable leader and with all apologies to my friends in Nevada and California, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are not what the doctor ordered.

In all actuality, if you oppose the current administration, their missteps and grabs for power, you don't have time to form a new party. Instead, many people need to temporarily let go of their allegiance to the Greens and the uninformed, web-based Libertarian movement. Both of these parties have existed for a long time and they've fielded candidates up and down the line, but no one expects them to take a majority in either house of Congress next November.

Alternatively, if you oppose the current administration, you're going to have to let go of the long-run, futuristic dreams and blindly support your Democratic candidate for Congress. For, if the Democrats can secure the majority in the House, they will get subpoena power and by bogging the administration down in investigations, they'll be able to throw a monkey wrench into many of their plans. A new party, third party, or either of the alternatives mentioned may be a laudatory goal, but you have to work with what you've got. If you oppose the administration, their goals or methods and if your local Democratic candidate for Congress isn't a complete idiot, a child molester or arrogant legacy; You really have no other choice.

In a recent interview with Bob Schieffer, when asked about 2008, President Bush said "for a political observer like yourself and a political participant like me, this is an unusual year because this is the first time there hasn't been a kind of natural successor in the party. Two wide open primaries with no sitting vice president running in either primary, so this is--I can't remember a time when it's been this open." Irrespective of what you might think of the man, I feel that he's called that one right.

Last week, the New Hampshire Union Leader published a poll and of the presumed or possible candidates that made it onto the radar, Hillary Clinton came in at 32% among registered Democrats and John McCain garnered 41% of his party. Everyone else mentioned received a number in the single digits, with John Edwards and Mitt Romney both coming in second at 9%.

I'm of the opinion that this particular match-up may not be the best for my country. Hillary is going to want to talk policy and though there are some areas where I agree with Mr McCain, a lot of his appeal is based on the intangibles of integrity and personality. If I had my druthers and I've said this before, I'd personally prefer a race between Senator Clinton and the poll's Republican third place candidate, Newt Gingrich. Both of these people are smart and they can attract the best advisors. If such a race were to occur and because neither would win the title of Mr or Mrs Congeniality, the entire campaign of both major candidates would have to be based on ideas. It is through the discussion of these ideas that I feel our country would be best served.

As you look further down the list of those who finished in the poll, or whom the Union Leader has named as possible candidates, things get a little murky and especially for the Democrats. We have two very qualified candidates that the nation's comedians are trying to withhold from the race. To get an easy laugh, both Tina Fey and Jay Leno have tried to pigeonhole John Kerry and Al Gore as disgruntled jokes. Though he never made it through the primaries, it is sort of interesting how the mainstream media's and Jon Stewart's love affair with John McCain has given him some sort of protection from being similarly labeled.

If you discount the formidable Condoleezza Rice, who has said that she's not in the running; McCain and Gingrich are the only Republicans on the radar, who could legitimately challenge Hillary. Mitt Romney has a winning personality, but he's plagued by a lack of national name recognition, he's a political newbie, who's a Mormon from Massachusetts, none of which serves him well. George Pataki, Bill Frist and Rudy Giuliani, all have baggage of their own that can't be easily dismissed.

Among the Democrats, Hillary is the eight hundred pound gorilla. If she wants the nomination, it'll be hers. I supported Joe Biden the first time he ran, but he doesn't have Ms Clinton's natural constituency. John Edwards is smart, telegenic and personable; Bill Richardson has surprised me with his skill as a Governor, but neither of them can beat Hillary. Perhaps, the only potential candidates that could give her a good run would be the former Governor of Virginia, Mark Warner and General Wesley Clark, who most likely wouldn't run if she throws her hat into the ring. So, unless something changes or a new scandal were to rear it's head; I'm steadfast in my opinion that at this moment in time, the Democratic nomination is Senator Clinton's for the asking.

Now, if we could just convince Newt...

In an interview with the Associated Press, President Bush defended Exxon Mobil's record-breaking profit of $10.71 billion for the fourth quarter and $36.13 billion for the year by blaming it on the market. Back in 2000, when he was first running for office, in response to Democratic calls for an investigation into the skyrocketing cost and shortages of electricity in California and along the West Coast, he used similar language to that, which he employed on Wednesday.

We now know that in the California case, Enron and others were requesting abnormal amounts of electricity through deeply hidden subsidiaries and then, their parent company or another subsidiary would bid to satisfy the demand. In some instances, the faked demand for electricity was more than the system could transport and because there never was a reason to actually pump that power, it was all an illusion to create phantom shortages. Due to flaws in the California market, these "shortages" would result in the energy firms getting "emergency" prices at an inflated rate, which resulted in higher consumer costs and increased profits.

Mr Bush and his campaign blamed the situation on the marketplace and the lack of new generating plants in the state. Now, he's using similar terminology to defend Exxon and the other oil companies. When asked, the oil companies mutter some nonsense about their wholesale rates increasing and try to toss some blame onto the shortage of refineries in this country.

A simple, cursory glance at the quarterly and annual reports of Exxon Mobil shows that their revenues and profits are broken down into a couple of sectors. First, there is what they call "downstream" and that includes the sale of gasoline at local outlets. The other is referred to as being "upstream" and this includes the wholesale delivery of oil and the monies from their refineries. According to the recent press release; Upstream earnings were $7,038 million in the fourth quarter, an increase of $2,151 million over 2004.

By all appearances, the marketplace that the President is once again defending is similar to the one he supported during the 2000 election cycle. The huge oil conglomerates are selling fuel to themselves and to others at an inflated price. And, while it is true that in the case of Exxon Mobil, downstream earnings increased by only $46 million over the fourth quarter of 2004; The bulk of their profits have migrated upstream and in the course of this magic act, they've created straw men for their PR departments to blame.

It may be a question of semantics, but words are among our more powerful weapons. After watching the President's speech and his morning press conference, I'm struck by how often he has invoked the words "war", "enemy" and their derivatives. Perhaps that's the difference between him and the majority of the world and it's the danger of putting more weight in the advice from the Pentagon, over that from all others. In my opinion, any semblance of "war" was completed when the organized "enemy" had been captured or disbanded. What has been taking place for the past few years appears much closer to a "police action". The difference between these labels may be minute, but the mindsets they project could speak volumes and might possibly lead to peace.

Every night during the late, local news, the deep-voiced announcer says over a bumper; "If you see news happening call KOB-TV". On the station's website is form for news tips and an address to send digital photos. During Hurricane Ophelia, WRAL-TV collected photos of the destruction and put them in a slideshow which they have archived for perpetual viewing. In both instances, the local station serves as a filter. They preview the material and decide whether it should air, but in the post Rathergate era, people are continually calling for more "citizen journalists" and an unfiltered way to broadcast to larger and larger, unearned audiences.

Personally, I'm of the position that such technology already exists. If you have news or video, you can put it on your personal website or upload it to any number of outlets. You can host your own news or maintain your own blog, submit things to a site or offer a link in one of the many "tip" boxes, up and down the web. The opportunities for citizen journalists grows with each and every day. It's for this reason, I'm confused by all these calls for established media outlets to risk their reputations by allowing more interactivity. If I want to watch a stranger's home movies, I'll look for them on Google Video. If I want to hear their thoughts, I'd visit a public forum and nothing is more disingenuous than an essayist calling on another website to allow public comments, while he's not willing to do the same.