The old and new rail system

The old joke is that trains give you all the discomfort of airline travel, but in six times the time. The rail plan calls for trains to travel 100 miles per hour, so the joke should be revised to four times.

The fact is, trains are a great idea in a country the size of Japan, France or Britain, that you can backpack across in a day. They suck, just a little bit, for travel across a country 3000 miles wide. Why take a high-speed train that gets you from LA to NY in two days when you can fly and be there in 5 hours?

High-speed trains would be a better idea for high traffic commuter corridors. As an example, look closely at the map and you’ll notice you still can’t travel North. There is no connector between Oklahoma and Kansas City, or anywhere in Georgia up through Kentucky, Tennessee and into Indiana.

You can’t get from Albuquerque to Denver, Denver to Phoenix, Phoenix or Albuquerque to Salt Lake City, or any of those cities to anywhere in Texas.

If you are a salesman in the southwest, you can get to Chicago faster than you could run there, that’s true. Chances are most of your travel will still be by air, and flying short distances within your region, though.

It looks to me like someone went to Amtrak and said, “If you could go to all the same places using the same shitty routes, but do it marginally faster, what would that look like?”

Congrats, guys. You batted their answer out of the park.

Enjoy!

I had this idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it.

The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.

I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it.

After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up — 3 of them. One stepped out from the end of the feeder, and I threw my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me. I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold. The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it…it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope and then received an education.

The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope.

That deer EXPLODED.

The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope and with some dignity.

A deer? No chance.

That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined.

The only up side is that they do not have as much stamina as many other animals. A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head. At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope.

I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual.

Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer’s momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to
recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in, so I didn’t want the deer to have to suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder – a little trap I had set before hand…kind of like a squeeze chute.

I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my rope back.

Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when…

I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head –almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts.

The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective. It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds.

I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now), tricked it.

While I kept it busy tearing the tendons out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose. That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day.

Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp. I learned a long time ago that, when an animal –like a horse –strikes at you with their hooves and you can’t get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape.

This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy.

I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run.

The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.

Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering your head. I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away.

So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a rifle with a scope to sort of even the odds.

All these events are true so help me God…

If you have ever read The Perfect Storm, there is a great explanation of the three weather phenomenon that came together to create the system that is the focus of the book. The movie glosses over the explanation, so read the book instead.

What we are witnessing this week is the same interaction of three deadly factors. Any one of the three would be destructive. In total, however, they have just cost you and I a trillion dollars. And don’t for a moment think the total will end there. Mark my words, this bailout has only begun to cost us.

The Three Factors

Under a Republican congress and Democratic President, Washington expanded a Carter era relic called the Community Reinvestment Act.

The Community Reinvestment Act is intended to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with safe and sound banking operations.

In other words, banks will make loans for houses to people who are ill-equipped to pay them back. The “encouragement” came in the form of penalties for not doing so.

Add to that another bill passed by a GOP controlled Congress with a Democratic President. That bill, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act sought to:

Enhance competition in the financial services industry by providing a prudential framework for the affiliation of banks, securities firms, insurance companies, and other financial service providers, and for other purposes.

In other words, prior to the law, Insurance companies could sell insurance, banks could do loans, securities firms sold stock, and never the three should meet. After the law, it was a free for all. Banks created securities out of the shitty loans they issued under the CRA, Insurance companies under wrote those while creating their own shitty securities, etc, etc.

Now into the mix you have to throw the American people. They look at the news and see home values going through the roof. The react the same way they did during the Beanie Baby craze. They rush out to get a piece of that action. They can buy a $5 stuffed animal and sell it for $300 on eBay, so they buy the hell out of Beanie Babies.

Unfortunately, economic laws will only support that for so long. The company will make more (thereby reducing demand for the things), people will lose interest, or some other force will enter the market and suddenly your left with crates full of stuffed animals rotting in closets. Beanie Babies were an artificial market.

In the same way, people saw home ownership as a great way to make money. Home flipping became the rage, people took out second mortgages to buy second homes, and suddenly everyone had to buy a house.

The Perfect Storm

The trouble is when you have people who can’t afford to buy houses meeting up with people who have to sell houses to keep from running afoul of laws designed to promote home ownership among the poor, you wind up with a) a guy who will lie about his income or b) a guy who will lie about the value of the house or the terms of the loan.

So suddenly a lot of people are invested in houses they can barely afford anyway, and the real terms of those notes go into effect. People can’t pay, so the value of that note becomes worthless.

Since you have built shitty securities on the value of that house, the value of those securities go into the toilet. When that happens, the debt that the mortgage company is carrying becomes unsustainable and the house of cards comes tumbling down.

This is exactly what we’re witnessing. We’re seeing exactly what happens when an artificial market comes tumbling down. There never was a market for housing for people who can’t afford it. The government created one, took their eyes of the guys who were managing it, and is now asking us to throw another deck on the house of cards so people who can’t afford to borrow can keep doing so.

DC is Fundamentally Broken

I have said that Washington DC is so fundamentally broken it is going to drag the rest of the country down with it. I am more convinced of that than ever today.

With this bailout, we’re solving nothing. We’re simply allowing people who shouldn’t have credit to keep on borrowing. We’re enabling addictive behavior. The Congressmen who voted for the bailout should be tried as traitors.

Despite all of that, I was forced to watch to politicians on TV last night both of whom blamed “the greed and corruption of Wall Street” for the mess while giving a pass to the incompetence and stupidity of Washington. Make no mistake. This dismal situation was the result of horrible policy that started with, and was supposed to be overseen by, Congress. They passed the laws that allowed this to happen and ARE TAKING ABSOLUTELY NO RESPONSIBILITY for the mess they created.

What’s worse, is both candidates for President, and both candidates for Vice President, appear to have learned absolutely nothing from watching this happen and are pursuing the same ridculous policies that have crippled our nation.

I believe you can absolutely count on two things.

First, when the next Administration is about 6 months or a year into its term, they will have to deal with an economic disaster of Biblical proportions. This is a band-aid fix for a missing leg. It’s stupid and will do nothing but punt the problem into an off-year when the sheep aren’t watching.

Second, if you think we dodged a bullet with this bill today, you haven’t seen anything yet.

I had previously posted on Matt Stoller’s late spring run in with the business end of a fist, and didn’t have the story quite right. My earlier post was based on a report that Matt had an argument with someone that turned violent. While I still stand by the person who gave me the story, it seems there was a little more to it than meets the eye.

Matt has always claimed that the guy sucker punched him. When he made that claim here, I pointed out that I have been in a lot of fights, have never been hit or thrown a punch without knowing exactly why that happened, and was pretty sure Matt knew why he got hit.

Well it turns out that Matt did get hit out of the blue, but the story of why was still untold – but I was right, Matt knows why.

The story was the ex-boyfriend of Matt’s then girlfriend saw the two of them together, and punched Matt in the face. That appears to be true.

Sources, however, tell me there was a bit more going on. It seems Matt was banging the assailant’s girlfriend while she and he were engaged to be married. Mr. Fisticuffs was apparently a little upset that trust fund baby was nailing his fiance. When given the opportunity to exact a little payback on Stoller, he took it.

As I said at the time of the original post, “I suspect there is at least a fair probability that it was provoked.” Turns out I was right.

On a related note, conversation also turned to a psychoanalysis of the type of girl that would date Matt to begin with. There was heated debate over whether she must have serious daddy issues or simply massively low self-esteem.

Consensus was reached on one point, however. In trying to describe the awkward thought of Matt and his paramour being in union, everyone agreed it probably went something like this:

(As young lass is trying to pleasure Matt, she hears) No. Nobody does it that way. Anyone who does it like that must be stupid and not worth my time… It feels awkward… Like knowing that John McCain will die of cancer in office… By the way, did I mention that Republicans are all racist? They are…

One note of caution, Matt. Watch out for those teeth when your girl wakes up to your bullshit.

Take a good long look at the picture to the left. This is a saguaro cactus. It is native to Arizona, parts of Mexico and a small piece of California. It DOES NOT GROW in New Mexico.

Despite this fact, every four years you morons insist on putting it on the slide for New Mexico that appears on the giant screen behind the stage at the Republican convention.

In 2004, I was in Madison Square Garden during the run through and stopped you idiots from doing this. I saw the slide, called some folks at the convention, and got it taken out just before it went on air.

Unfortunately, I can’t be there every four years, so you’re going to have to write this shit down and put it in a file for next time. I cannot be clearer. THE SAGUARO CACTUS DOES NOT GROW IN NEW MEXICO! Including it is an insult to New Mexicans – all of whom know that this cactus doesn’t grow there.

The fact that you do it every four years says, “F**k You!” to a state that you need to win.

It would be easy enough to let someone from the delegation see the slide before you use it. So please, for the love of God, stop doing this.

Sincerely,

An Angry New Mexican

Jon Henke at the next right also took issue with Stoller’s claim that POWs suffer more illness than others. What did he find?

Stoller provided no citation for his claim – and I cannot imagine what the link could be between being a former POW and getting cancer (he does not offer suggestions) – so I checked. According to a Institute of Medicine study of WWII and Korean War POW’s, he’s wrong.

In summary, excepting psychiatric illness, this report shows little evidence of wide spread ill health among former prisoners of war compared with their non-POW veteran counterparts.

While there are some medical conditions associated with POW’s, they are largely things like joint pain and issues related to the physical duress. These are quality-of-life, and not mortality, issues. Otherwise, there is “little evidence of wide spread ill health among former” POW’s.

The Institute of Medicine study did except psychiatric illnesses – which, I assume consists of PTSD, readjustment to civilian life and the like – which would seem in one degree or another to most veterans of war. I checked on that, as well. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, which did research specifically on the subject of “the relative cognitive status of US Navy Vietnam-era POWs”…

The few statistically significant differences between repatriated POWs and controls showed better intellectual functioning in the POWs.

Yup. As I suspected, Matt Stoller just made that up – as he does with most of his “facts”. There is little to support the idea that POWs suffer anymore health problems than others, and in fact, POWs seemed to be more mentally acute, rather than less.

It is very likely that McCain has cancer or some other serious illness. There’s no reason McCain wouldn’t let reporters look at his records otherwise. McCain is 72 years old and he was a POW, a member of a group with high rates of illness due to ill-treatment on the part of their captors.

Stoller makes the claim that McCain is hiding something despite the fact that earlier in the same post he points out that reporters were invited to look at his records – albeit with conditions. It’s simply not true that McCain won’t let the media look at them (as Matt states before contradicting himself). What McCain refused to do is let our ridiculous stable of yellow journalists give him a drive by colonoscopy, so to speak. He chose not to let them pour over every minute detail looking for something they could exploit to make news.

Stoller, compared to real journalists, doesn’t actually need facts. He just makes stuff up, or quotes what sounds like they might actually be facts without ever backing them up. For instance:

[McCain] was a POW, a member of a group with high rates of illness due to ill-treatment on the part of their captors.

Is that true? Sounds like it could be, but who knows. Did he actually do any research to verify that claim? He certainly didn’t cite a source. Did he make it up? It would be his style.

Further, Matt jumps clearly afield with this little bit of stupidity

Cancer is relevant to the Presidency. Misleading the press about one’s health is relevant to the Presidency. This is not just a dude looking for a job, he’s going to have his hand on the nuclear trigger. Imminent death from a terminal disease kind of skews your perspective on this, you know what I’m saying?

Actually, Matt, I have no idea what your saying. Most people that I have been close to who died after a long fight with terminal illness (three grandparents among them), had developed an incredible respect for life. They had come to intimately understand the fragile nature of it and felt it was precious – not something to throw away.

Stoller, on the other hand, seems to imply that someone close to death from a terminal disease would be more than happy to take those around him down with them. That’s simply not a logical argument to make if you account for the number of deathbed confessions, last minute searches for God, and people trying to reconcile themselves with the great beyond.

Yesterday I was challenged by a pair of lefty Twitter users for not denouncing Jerome Corsi, an extremist fruit cake unfortunately aligned with the GOP. Now, anybody who has asked me about Corsi’s book has heard me decry his brand of venom. I had not, however, posted on the topic, so somehow I was abetting Corsi.

If that’s the measure we are to use, where are the Democrats who will step up and denounce Stoller for his repeated and over-the-top, Anne Coulter-esque diatribes? Why is the left, which was quick to challenge me, so unwilling to call out Matt Stoller and his absurd rants?

To nobody’s surprise, Digital Convergence eventually failed and most thought the CueCat was lost to the annals of goofy technology history.

Apparently, however, there are still people who think this is a pretty neat idea – not the least of them is Microsoft.

Microsoft’s new multicolor bar code will enable the inclusion of more data in the code itself, as well as the ability for consumers to interact with it by scanning the code with webcams and, eventually, cell phones with color cameras.

Of course, Microsoft’s new bar code was developed to aid in anti-piracy efforts, not advertisers. That hasn’t stopped still other companies from trying to fill the CueCat void.

Enter MyClick

MyClick allows consumers to instantly access exciting promotional opportunities and discounts, and provide ROI feedback, simply by taking aim and shooting at special images on ads and products with their mobile device cameras.

That’s from an e-mail I received from MyClick earlier today. The message touts MyClick’s ultra-cool new offering. From their website, here’s how it works.

Visitors simply log onto www.myclick.hk with their mobile phones and download the MyClick software. Upon taking a photo of the MyClick framed Carnival logo at the MyClick game booth next to the Giant Wheel in the Carnival, attractive prizes including PS3, xBox, Vista gifts and Go Cart race cash coupons are just one click away.

Now I can hear you saying two things to yourself. First, “why would I want to go through that process just to get some goofy prize or a coupon?” Most of MyClick’s clients are advertisers like Lipton, Pepsi and Pizza Hut, and most of their efforts so far have been coupon delivery. They somehow have convinced themselves that I will install an application on my phone specifically to get MORE useless coupons delivered to me.

That brings me to your second question – “Isn’t this even worse than the CueCat example given that it’s just as difficult to install/use, but less useful ultimately because I could currently achieve the same thing with short codes and standard text messages?”

Well, yes, that’s right. First you have to download their app, then you have to take a picture of the add, then you have to wait for the image to be processed and get the response back. The MyClick folks should be commended for the fact that they took a really unappealing process (read magazine, grab goofy cat looking scanner, aim at magazine, wait for browser) and made it even more complicated.

Pizza Hut could just as easily have put a tag on their posters that said, “Send ‘High Five!’ to 55555 to get a coupon or win a prize.” It requires no download and very little time to complete.

All of this just goes to show that a really bad idea is still a really bad idea when applied to different platforms.

Q: Can I purchase Girl Scout Cookies online?

A: Girl Scouts of the USA does not allow online sales but its cookie site, GirlScoutCookies.org can help you locate cookie sales in your community. Simply visit GirlScoutCookies.org.

Q: How do you ensure the safety of Girl Scouts who sell cookies?

A: The safety and security of our members is always our chief concern. We have strict guidelines for safety. Girl Scouts, depending on their age, must be accompanied by an adult when selling Girl Scout cookies and always use the buddy system. Our youngest members, Daisy Girl Scouts, who are five and six—are not allowed to sell Girl Scout cookies under any circumstances.

Q: Why can’t Girl Scout Cookies be sold on the Internet?

A: Our existing National Girl Scout policy prohibits the sale of Girl Scout cookies or any other Girl Scout approved product on the Internet. The safety of our girls is always our chief concern. Even in supervised settings it is not possible to guarantee that the person purchasing Girl Scout Cookies harbors no harmful intent. Girl Scout Cookie Activities are designed to be face-to-face learning experiences for girls. In an online setting, there is no guarantee that the seller is indeed a girl member of Girl Scouts. We have many ways for girls to explore and experience the benefits of science and technology and the Internet, including our Girls Go Tech initiative.

Here is where the Girl Scout policy and my background in Internet technology crash into one another in an amazing explosion of outrage.

I find it absolutely amazing that the Girl Scouts are so adept at the Internet that they actually have www.GirlScoutCookies.org, yet they’re so clueless about the Internet that they would post something retarded like this.

Sales online is actually much, much safer than the process they have created. If I can take an order, accept payment, and ship said order without my daughter coming into contact with strangers, that’s the safest possible sales channel.

On the other hand, the Girl Scouts allow my daughter to go door-to-door. Well here’s my problem with that:

This is a map of the 142 convicted sexual predators in my zip code. That’s right! There are 142 people convicted of rape, crimes against children, sexual battery and other miscellaneous sex crimes in my neighborhood. The closest live within a couple of blocks.

Now, I recognize the Girl Scout policies say that kids always have to have a parent with them, and operate on the buddy system. However, as of 2000, the FBI’s National Crime Information Center reported 2,100 kids going missing every day. The number that actually stay missing is much, much smaller. However, the most likely candidate for abduction is an 11-year old with a stable family structure. So who sells Girl Scout cookies?

Q: Who can sell Girl Scout Cookies?

A: Only Brownie and Junior Girl Scouts and Girl Scouts 11-17 (emphasis mine) may sell Girl Scout Cookies. Participation in this Girl Scout program activity is voluntary.

Given that these girls are part of a sorority type organization that fosters a sense of community and civic involvement, I’m guessing they’re likely coming from homes with a stable family situation as well.

So that’s perfect. The Girl Scouts, in order to protect my 11-17 year old daughter will not allow her to sell cookies through the anonymity of the Internet, but will allow her to go door-to-door selling those same cookies to the 142 sexual predators who live near me.

Really solid thinking.

That’s unfortunately the kind of misguided thinking that most people who don’t spend much time online apply to the Internet. I’m seriously amazed at how stupid that is.

When Imus made his now infamous “nappy headed hos” comment last April, the outcry for his removal was incredible. Unable to withstand the pressure, CBS bailed on the host. Without a show, he also lost his simulcast deal on MSNBC.

If Citadel Broadcasting hires the disgraced jock, I’ll be amazed. If this story doesn’t spark more racial tension, I could wake up tomorrow sewn to the floor and not be more surprised.

It seems unlikely, to say that least, that our “forgive and forget” society will let the guy back on the air after only a couple of months gone. It just seems that 6 months isn’t quite enough time to renounce racism and misogyny.