Increases in the national debt

McCain anger management systems

San Diego drivers appreciate Mexico's cheap gas

SAN DIEGO - If there's pain at the pump in the U.S., Mexico may just have a remedy. A gallon of regular unleaded gasoline in San Diego retails for an average price of $4.61 a gallon. A few miles south, in Tijuana, it's about $2.54 — even less if you pay in pesos.

More and more people appear to be taking advantage of the lower price.

"I used to buy exclusively in the U.S. before gas started really going up," said Patrick Garcia, a drama teacher at an elementary school in San Diego who lives in Tijuana. "Since then, I've been buying all my gas in Tijuana."

The lower prices mean a U.S. motorist could save almost $54 filling up a two-year-old Ford F150 pickup with a 26-gallon fuel tank in Mexico.

The differential in diesel is even greater, selling at $5.04 a gallon in San Diego County and $2.20 in Tijuana.

Paul Covarrubias, 26, who lives in Chula Vista and works in construction in San Diego, crosses the border each week just to refuel his dual-cab Ford F-250 pickup.

"I fill it up with diesel in Tijuana for $60," he said. "It would be almost twice that in San Diego."

Gas is cheaper in Mexico because of a government subsidy intended to keep inflationary forces in check.

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Ex-Clark GOP official pleads guilty in sex case

Murphy faces 2-year sentence in deviate-conduct plea bargain

By Harold J. Adams •

Glenn Murphy Jr., former head of the Clark County Republican Party, pleaded guilty yesterday to criminal deviate conduct in a plea bargain that calls for him to serve a two-year prison term and then register as a sex offender.
Murphy wore dark glasses and kept his head mostly bowed as he walked in the second-floor hallway toward Clark Superior Court to enter the plea.

During a hearing, Special Prosecutor Stanley Levco laid out the facts of the case.

Murphy, 34, of Utica, and the victim, then 22, had been guests at a party in the Jeffersonville home of the victim's sister last July 28, Levco said.

Both men spent the night at the home. When the victim woke up, "Mr. Murphy was performing oral sex on him against his will. He (the victim) was asleep at the time," Levco said.

Superior Court Judge Vicki Carmichael asked Murphy whether those were the facts to which he was admitting.

"Yes," Murphy answered.

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Impeachment

"Media Matters"; by Jamison Foser

Meet Tim Russert

"It's never the question that's the problem, Matt, it's the answer."
-- NBC's Tim Russert

"It's 'never the question that's the problem'? Really?
Spoken like the guy who gets to ask the questions."
-- CJR's Liz Cox Barrett

MSNBC recently began running commercials touting its coverage of "Decision 2008." One begins with on-screen text asking, "Why do people care about politics?" Viewers then hear Tim Russert explain: "It's about the war. Our sons and daughters. It's about the economy. Our jobs. It's about education. Our schools. It's about health care. Our families' well-being. It's about everything that matters." The ad ends with the on-screen declaration: "That's why you care. That's why we cover it."

The serious and high-minded approach to political coverage Russert brags about would be a welcome change from the political coverage for which Russert is responsible.

During this week's Democratic presidential debate, Russert didn't ask a single question about global warming, continuing his longstanding habit of all but ignoring the topic. He didn't ask a single question about the mortgage crisis. (As one Cleveland resident noted, "We've got the mortgage industry's toxic waste scattered all over this city, but Mr. Blue-Collar-Buffalo-and-Cleveland-Marshall-Guy Russert couldn't be bothered with a question about it.") He didn't ask a single question about executive power, the Constitution, torture, wiretapping, or other civil-liberties concerns. But that shouldn't come as a surprise; of all the questions he has asked while moderating presidential debates during this campaign, only one has dealt with any of those topics.

He has, however, asked Dennis Kucinich what he felt compelled to insist was a "serious question" -- whether Kucinich has seen a UFO. And he has asked about John Edwards' expensive haircut.

Funny, Russert doesn't mention UFOs or haircuts in that MSNBC promo.

Russert's performance as a moderator of this week's debate has drawn widespread criticism. Most appalling was his bizarre fixation on Louis Farrakhan.

Russert asked Barack Obama about Louis Farrakhan's praise for the Illinois senator. Obama, who had previously denounced Farrakhan, did so again. Then Russert asked about Farrakhan again. So Obama reiterated his denunciation. Then Russert, (who, I can only assume, was not bothering to listen to Obama's responses) asked about Farrakhan again. So Obama again reiterated his denunciation. Russert, plowing ahead, asked yet another question about Farrakhan, prompting Obama to answer yet again.

Josh Marshall summed up Russert's behavior nicely: "It was a nationwide, televised, MSM version of one of those noxious Obama smear emails."

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quote of the day

"George W Bush has been a great president. The Iraq war has been a stunning success. McCain should be so lucky as to be running for Bush's third term. Then he might have a chance."

- Ann Coulter -

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Senile agitation

Russert had a gusto for politics leavened with affability

By Tim Rutten

Watching the cable news networks in the hours after his death, one was struck by the outpouring of admiration and affection from across the political spectrum and from journalistic colleagues of every sort. It was impossible not to be struck -- once again -- by just how incestuous and claustrophobic the Washington-based nexus of politics and journalism has become.

Thus, in all that gush across four networks in dozens and dozens of voices, hardly a word was spoken concerning Russert's role in the recent trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. That's odd because Libby's conviction on perjury and obstruction of justice charges was, in some large part, based on Russert's testimony. Like former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Russert was one of the high-level Washington journalists who came out of the Libby trial looking worse than shabby.

Libby testified before the grand jury investigating the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity that he first learned she worked for the intelligence agency from Russert during a phone call on another matter. Russert took the stand to contradict Libby only because he'd been subpoenaed -- a summons he and NBC had strenuously resisted on grounds of journalistic privilege.

As it emerged under examination, however, Russert already had sung like a choirboy to the FBI concerning his conversation with Libby -- and had so voluntarily from the first moment the Feds contacted him. All the litigation was for the sake of image and because the journalistic conventions required it.

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Will the spending never end?

School pretends students have been killed to teach dangers of drink-driving

By Megan Levy

A school has been forced to defend its actions after pretending that students had been killed in a car crash to scare their classmates off drink-driving.

A police officer in uniform walked into 20 classrooms at El Camino High School in California and announced that several students had been killed in car wrecks over the weekend.

The hoax was intended to teach the dangers of drink-driving.

But the scare tactic backfired when some students, who were not told that it was a stunt for two hours, became hysterical and wept uncontrollably.

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They possess tomatoes

The Web Time Forgot

By ALEX WRIGHT

MONS, Belgium — On a fog-drizzled Monday afternoon, this fading medieval city feels like a forgotten place. Apart from the obligatory Gothic cathedral, there is not much to see here except for a tiny storefront museum called the Mundaneum, tucked down a narrow street in the northeast corner of town. It feels like a fittingly secluded home for the legacy of one of technology’s lost pioneers: Paul Otlet.

PAPER TRAIL The telegraph room at the original Mundaneum in Brussels.

In 1934, Otlet sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or “electric telescopes,” as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. He described how people would use the devices to send messages to one another, share files and even congregate in online social networks. He called the whole thing a “réseau,” which might be translated as “network” — or arguably, “web.”

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"God."

outside.in Radar Now Live and in Beta

June 16, 2008 at 12:19 pm · Filed under features, news· by john

I’m happy to announce that outside.in’s Radar is now live on the site and open for all to play with. Radar is our new feature that places you at the center of things and shows you the news going on around you as it happens. Like a Facebook feed for local news, it delivers stories near you in simple, one-line snippets, letting you see everything going on nearby easily, and letting you then click off to the individual stories that interest you.

Radar, as the name would suggest, organizes the news in dynamic, concentric circles around you. First it looks for news immediately around you, within 1000 feet. Then it searches for stories in your neighborhood. Then, in your city. And if you’re out in the middle of the desert somewhere, where there are no neighborhoods or cities, it will just keep on going until it finds something, then will ping it back to you. Just like the real thing.

What I like about Radar is that it drastically reduces the work involved in finding out what’s going on around you. No more sifting through various pages to find things near you that are interesting, no more scrolling down hundreds of lines of ledes to find the one story that catches your eye. The whole landscape of local online content is laid out before you in one simple cascade of headlines, along with their corresponding topics and places. It’s the easiest way around to get the goods on your local scene.

You can even take this whole ‘what’s interesting around me’ idea one step further, by specifying which places and topics are of particular interest to you. The feature will make note of that and call special attention to stories about those topics and places as they come on to your page.

Then, once you’ve set your Radar for your specific location and the topics/places that interest you, you can create an alert, to receive instant notification of things going on around you.

Add to this the neighbor alerts feature, which allows everyone to write directly and immediately to the pages of people in their area, and Radar becomes a total readable/writeable local content solution.

And that’s it in a nutshell: Radar! Give it a try now!

Adventure

Fox Reporter Gets A Dollar Bill Stuffed In Her Bra

Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God'

By Graeme Paton

People with higher IQs are less likely to believe in God, according to a new study.

Professor Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University, said many more members of the "intellectual elite" considered themselves atheists than the national average.

A decline in religious observance over the last century was directly linked to a rise in average intelligence, he claimed.

Professor Lynn, who has provoked controversy in the past with research linking intelligence to race and sex, said university academics were less likely to believe in God than almost anyone else.

A survey of Royal Society fellows found that only 3.3 per cent believed in God - at a time when 68.5 per cent of the general UK population described themselves as believers.

A separate poll in the 90s found only seven per cent of members of the American National Academy of Sciences believed in God.

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The Real Reason Hillary Should Not Be Veep

By pamelagerloff

With all the talk of Hillary Clinton becoming Barack Obama's running mate, let's pause for a moment to push out the brain fog. Although I find Senator Clinton worthy of respect and admiration for her finer qualities of character and for what she has been able to accomplish in her political life, the sane truth is: she should not be vice president. Here's why:

     First, of course, are all the usual arguments against it, e.g., her Iraq war vote; her assassination comment; her old-style politics in a year when the presidential nominee will be running as the candidate of change; her divisive, politics-of-destruction campaign strategy in the primary; her "most hated politician" ranking in the polls; the past Clinton scandals waiting to be dragged out of the closet, her husband's loose cannon-unpredictability, etc. Despite the advantages touted by Clinton supporters (If you don't pick her, we're going to make you lose the November election!), Hillary's baggage would end up being a distraction to the Obama campaign. In the end, Hillary in the VP slot on the ticket would do Obama and the Democratic Party more harm than good.

     But all that aside, the real reason not to put Hillary in the VP position is because Obama has steadily and repeatedly shown that he is a dignitarian—defined as someone who values and chooses to live by principles of dignity for all—and he aims to run his campaign and his administration on such principles. Clinton, in contrast, has shown the opposite; what, in the parlance of dignity, would be termed rankist. Rankism is abuse of the power that comes with rank. It includes a wide range of behavior, such as: common snobbery, bullying, sexual harassment, verbal abuse, using political status for personal gain, segregation, torture, or pressuring smaller nations to serve the best interests of a larger nation. It is also the "ism" that encompasses all other "isms"—including racism, sexism, classism, and ageism, all of which have been present in this year's primary campaigns. Rankism is currently so pervasive in our culture—and so unrecognized as a concept—that it goes largely unnoticed. The way to unify the party and the country is to target rankism, thereby simultaneously addressing the other "isms" currently at play on the political scene.

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Windfall tax