Regulating the actions of consenting adults is an area where the Federal govt should not meddle. The headliner on WaPo today was not about the Mumbai attacks but rather a string of cheating on internet gambling sites. Nevermind the billions in tax revenue the US is losing, by not allowing internet gambling sites to properly operate in the US, alternative sites in foreign countries with little or no accountability for privacy and truthfulness are the natural outcome. In the cases against AbsolutePoker.com and UltimateBet.com, they refunded $1.6M and over $20M respectively only after receiving pressure from small groups of players. If these online entities operated in the US instead of Costa Rica they could have been properly investigated, sued and fined for fraud, negligence, etc. Bottomline, instead of protecting Americans from the moral hazards of gambling the SAFE Port Act of 2006 has made our citizens even more vulnerable to identity theft and fraud.

I’m not much of a gambler but I bet the govt response to this will be increased regulation and restrictions.

So many issues to think about in the wake of the Mumbai massacre. Here is one of them: the flow of information in a fast-moving crisis when everyone has a cell phone. In the recent California fires, Twitter seemed to be a good thing, because no matter who you are as a Twitter-er, a forest fire bearing down on you is the enemy, and you need all the info about it you can get, and so do your fellow Twitter users anywhere near the crisis.

But Mumbai was a military style attack, and those carrying out the attack were surely monitoring Twitter, for their own uses. Some citizens in Mumbai were acting as reporters on Twitter, honestly reporting things they saw in front of them. Rumors also arose and were repeated (re-tweeted). What should TV networks do with that information? What should police/military do? What should civilian Twitter readers believe? If you witnessed such a crisis happening, i.e. if you were an eyewitness, what would you report? Not that anyone could really answer this ahead of time. But it’s worth thinking about.

The Times of India - Mumbai attackers trained by special forces: Russian expert - ties to US anti-Soviet programs

With all the recent commentary and discussions here (and elsewhere) on how the GOP gain regain its seemingly diminished stature, I thought some here might be interested in a recent op-ed from South Carolina Gov Mark Sanford in Politico. Sanford, if you recall, received some buzz early on as a potential 2008 presidential candidate, and again as a running mate for McCain. From what I have seen, I believe Gov Sanford’s views would receive a warm reception from many here.

Yet again, Republicans let the people decide who runs for office as Republicans, as shown yesterday in the election that Barry Knight won over Paul Lanteigne and Tom Keeley. What are the Democrats doing?

Hand-picking in a smoke-filled room perhaps?

Virginia Beach Democratic Committee chairman Ollie Bates said the party will decide by midweek whether to field a candidate in the Jan. 6 general election. “We are talking to someone,” Bates said Saturday.(Virginian-Pilot 11-30-08)

I see this over and over in Virginia Beach politics. Never any competition for Democrat nominations. The “party” will decide whether anybody is going to run in the 81st. Republicans hold campaigns and contests where voters choose the winners.

That says more about Virginia Beach politics than anything.

Iraqi Oil Minister Shahristani said on Friday that “A reasonable price for oil is 80 dollars a barrel” and they would go along with OPEC to cut production to ensure oil was consumed instead of stored. Without large petroleum reserves in the US, this essentially guarantees OPEC will dictate the price of oil.

On one hand, I am quite annoyed with Iraq who have large cash reserves with their oil exports subsidized by American muscle. But on the other hand, I’m also worried with cheaper gas ($1.79/gallon in MD) we will fall back to our old ways of buying low efficient cars and perpetuate our dependence on foreign oil.

OPEC will walk a fine line of maximizing profits while not incentivizing automakers from aggressively pursuing alternative fuels. The worst thing we can do now is bailout the American auto-makers who are stuck in their current engineering designs and modus operandi. Freeing American ingenuity from the burden of bad business practices will allow us as a nation to kick our addiction.

So is $200/barrel “reasonable” or will we get our act together?

First reports show Barry Knight turning out a commanding lead in the race for the GOP nod in the 81st district, well ahead of Sheriff Paul Lanteigne and Tom Keeley. Looks like the nominee will be Barry Knight.

Patrick Muldoon, a candidate vying to be the GOP nominee for LG in Virginia, is making “Hail Mary” robocalls in NoVA, trying to pin HB3202 on Lt. Gov. Bolling and gather enough signatures by Dec. 1 to get on the ballot.

Here’s his call:

 

 Patrick Muldoon - Robocall, Nov. 28, 2008 [0:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (197)

I’ve seen a Tim Kaine special session, I’ve seen how Richmond runs Republican campaigns, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as disorganized and futile as shopping on Black Friday at a Toys-R-Us. I now know why God invented online shopping.

First, why do so many parents take their small children with them Christmas shopping? Will this new generation of short attention spans actually be surprised on Christmas morning to open the toys they went shopping for a month earlier?

And besides, since their parents have the shopping cart overflowing with giant toys, most of these young Americans were walking.

In a toy store?!?! “Bobby. Bobby. C’mon Bobby. Stop looking at the toys, Bobby. Stop holding up the 27 people trying to get passed you, Bobby. Bobby, put that down.” Multiply that by about 100.

And former VDOT executives must be managing Toys R Us nowadays, since half the aisles were purposely barricaded so that people couldn’t get to the cash registers except through one entranceway. That meant going down one aisle to a dead end, turning around and then going into another aisle with its own dead end. It was just like construction on the highway, except at least on the roads traffic moves and you aren’t forced into 15 U-turns.

I’m not sure what the Fire folks would think of such a setup. It got worse when they corralled you to the cash register. Employees actually directed you to a register, and God help you if you made a wrong turn, because the lines were blocked into sections. If you were in checkout line 13, you had a barricade next to aisle 15 and aisle 12.

I did find one thing interesting. You know the section with all the educational toys? It’s great for cutting through the traffic. It was like an HOV lane. High Occupancy brain cells? You can fly though! There were so few people in the educational section, especially the parts with books, that I swear I heard crickets. Without those smart toys, I would’ve easily added an hour or two to my shopping experience.

The fun part was listening to adults do math. I actually listened to one person verbally debate herself whether $19.99 was less than $29.99 with 10% off. At that point, I was wondering how much it mattered, since her inability to do basic math negates any benefit she’d derive from saving money.

And, no, it wasn’t in the educational toy section.

I do feel bad for grandparents, though, and there were a lot of them shopping today. Of everyone, they should really wait until Monday. The sales aren’t that great, and running the gauntlet of high-speed Demolition Derby via cart isn’t exactly what they’re equipped for.

Needless to say, this recession didn’t seem to stop toy shopping today. Of course, when I was a kid, inflation was over 14% instead of today’s 4%. Unemployment was 11%, instead of today’s 6%, and a 30-year mortgage had a whopping 18% interest rate.

Maybe we whine a bit too much. What we call “a depression and the worst economy ever” would be a boom compared what our parents went through.

But I did survive my toy trek, but not before wishing I did it all online, and thinking we really should give an online shopping tax credit to seniors, and people with small children, and for that matter people with large children, and for that matter….me!

The death toll from Wednesday’s (and the ongoing) Mumbai attacks stands at 151 including two Americans from Nelson County, Virginia:

Twenty five members of the Synchronicity Community, a religious group based in Faber, were visiting Mumbai for a spiritual program at the Oberoi Hotel. That hotel is one of two that terrorists took over.

Eight members of the group visiting India live in Nelson County. Alan and Naomi Scherr, a father and his 13-year-old daughter who live at the Synchronicity compound, are unaccounted for since the attacks. Synchronicity reports on its website that eyewitnesses saw the father and daughter being shot in a restaurant and are feared dead.

Just a quick thought this Thanksgiving Day…

Every year, the Detroit Lions play football on Thanksgiving. And, every year, some NFL owners and fans scream to take the game away.

Why?

Well, perhaps it’s the fact that the Lions have been the proverbial patsy, coming into the Thanksgiving Day game year after year with a terrible team (this year being no different with an abysmal 0-11 record against the 10-1 Tennessee Titans).

But Lions fans contend that this game is tradition…and rightfully so.

The Lions started the game in 1934 as a promotion to help the fledgling NFL…far earlier than the Dallas Cowboys started their game.

The annual holiday game is huge in Detroit, with many fans saying it’s the only big game all year that Detroit has…which is also true. For the last few years Detroit hasn’t appeared once on Monday Night Football.

But ask yourself this: would the country watch the Macy’s parade if the balloons were deflated and the bands played off-key?

Just because it’s “tradition”, does it mean that the rest of the country owes Detroit?

Kinda reminds you of the automobile industry.

Just because Detroit continues to churn out automobile turkeys, and the labor unions squeeze them for every leftover penny, does that mean the rest of the nation should fork over billions of dollars to prop them up?.

Maybe, just maybe, the rest of the country should tell Detroit through the free market that their cars are bad, and so is their football team. Stop buying Detroit-made cars, don’t provide them a bailout, and stop watching this football game.

Until we do so, we’re just enabling Detroit’s inadequacy.

And this last bit should come as no surprise: the Lions are owned by a Ford.

Oh well.

Call me an enabler.

I’ll watch them anyway. And, tomorrow, I’ll pick up my Christmas tree in my Chevy Silverado.

But I’m from Detroit: what’s your excuse?

Yes, I’m pissed. I am also afraid. Not of the assholes that carried out the attacks but how India will respond. I hope the Hindu majority does not retaliate against the Muslim minority with violence. I also hope the Indian govt does not escalate the rhetoric against the Pakistan. In a post-Musharraf Pakistan, we have the good chance for sustained peace between the two countries and I hope they will work together on this one.

I’ve been given a lot of grief here because I haven’t blocked Jody Wagner’s Google ads for LG on BD.

Why would I want to?

She wants to turn Virginia RED:

The omnipotent and omnipresent Jason Kenney astounds us all with his infinite knowledge…check it out.

Waldo Jaquith’s recently posted that he would bet $100 that Chairman Jeff Frederick of the RPV would renege on his campaign promise not to seek re-election to the House of Delegates in Virginia’s 52nd District.

Interestingly, Frederick’s wife, Amy (or someone purporting to be Amy), bet in favor of her husband, stating that she’d donate her winnings from Waldo to charity when she won. Waldo would not accept the bet.

If this was Amy Frederick, then it’s a good first step towards the chairman fulfilling some of the promises he made and re-building the party.

We asked Frederick last May whether he would commit to serving as Chairman for the full term. His response was clear:

“My commitment to being Chairman is so strong that I announced I would not seek re-election to the House of Delegates if I am elected Chairman, so that I can have a dedicated focus on doing whatever it takes to turn things around at RPV.
…
“I am the only candidate in this race that can bring the long-term stability to RPV – not necessarily the stability of one long-term figurehead, but stability in vision, strategy, infrastructure, and a solid plan to start winning again.”

However, Frederick equivocated not a month later to the WaPo’s Anita Kumar:

“A lot of guys around here are trying to convince me,” Frederick said during a House recess. “I really don’t want to (run)…But if there’s this huge call and everyone in the world wants me to run for re-election, I guess there is some chance. If the whole world says we’re going to relieve you of your pledge.”

What RPV needs now more than ever is credibility. Unequivocally fulfilling a basic promise to party faithful would go a long way.

Bob McDonnell, when he was running for re-election to the House of Delegates, had a slogan, “Promises made, promises kept.”

If there is one thing about Bob McDonnell, it’s that when he says something, he’s going to do it.

In his campaign for attorney general, he promised to be tougher on gang violence and internet predators, and he has fulfilled his promise.

One of McDonnell’s best attributes is his credibility; therefore, the last thing the party needs is a chairman who is seen as less than credible, while McDonnell is running for governor.

When you add Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling to the mix, who honorably deferred his own ambitions for McDonnell, you have one of the most honorable political teams united in recent memory. The last thing we need right now is a kerkuffle at state central.

I do not advocate Chairman Frederick stepping down as party head; I was intrigued by his 100-day plan (how much of that was implemented, by the way?) and I think the RPV has had too many chairmen in the last four years.

But what I do want is a Republican Party that will do what it promises and stands strong on credibility.

Every day on this web site, some of our contributors still believe that the GOP is the party of fiscal accountability, government restraint, and personal responsibility, yet they are blasted and mocked by commenters who once believed that too and now feel betrayed by past GOP action or inaction.

The chairman must see this credibility gap and act on it.

A good first step is unequivocally stating he’s not seeking re-election. If he doesn’t, the outcome is simple: four more years of a Democrat in the mansion and continued GOP defeats in the General Assembly.