kyle’s blog

In an interview with the Guardian, Al Gore lays into the current US Administration.  The Guardian is a UK based paper, so maybe he thought his words wouldn’t be as sharp.  Fortunately there’s stuff like Google News to help fix that problem. 

Al Gore has made his sharpest attack yet on the George Bush presidency, describing the current US administration as “a renegade band of rightwing extremists”.

So sure, this might bring out more support for him running for the Presidency again.  But this next quote seems to diffuse that some:

..the former vice-president calls himself a “recovering politician”..

Who knows.  It would have been nice if we saw this Al Gore during the 2000 election.  Maybe that would have been enough to put him clearly over the top.  Maybe not.  It would have been nice to see him with this energy and enthusiasm regardless.

Whoever runs, I hope they have the energy and credibility they’ll need to rally the Democratic base.

It should be simple enough.  We just need a politician who has some semblance of a vision for the environment, isn’t corrupt, and has the charisma to inspire the nation for the things that need to happen in the very near term.

What things?
I’m talking about investing in social programs like a significantly better healthcare system.  Perhaps a national program would be the most efficient.  Evidence seems to suggest such a universal system would at least raise national health, as it seems to in the UK.

I’m talking about having an open discussion on how US foreign policy has changed.  This goes from discussing the trade-off between civil liberties and national security needs, the current war in Iraq, and the current sparing between the US and Iran.

I’m talking about investing to prepare in areas of technology where we may soon fall behind.  Things like alternative energy sources, theraputic cloning, and hover boards.

Yes hover boards.  Lots of them.   Like this one

Someone please come and try to pull this off.  Sure, all the money and power that comes from selling out is great, but just try.

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¡Viva Colbert!

Taken by El Rio.

This is apparently plastered on a building in San Francisco.
I wish I lived there

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I went down to San Antonio today with a buddy and checked out the town. We figured it would be better than playing the new Hitman game all day
About 1.5hrs of driving later we arrived and walked along the Riverwalk. I wasn’t all that impressed but it was something to do. On the way we found Casa Rio, which was definitely a tasty meal. I highly recommend that restaurant to anyone doing a similar wander.

There was some arts and crafts festival going on, pretty boring. I’m convinced there’s some sort of international conspiracy thats filling up all these festivals with the same crappy wares. I’m also cynical though, so maybe that’s coloring my opinion

After that we wandered over to the Alamo. I figured the thing would be bigger, but it was only a two story building or so. Outside there were some angry evangelical types telling everyone there that they were sinners and were doomed. I guess we deserved that since we were doing something besides shitting our pants in the pews on the Sabbath.

Once underwhelmed, we pretty much bailed. San Antonio seems incredibly tourist friendly, with lots of well designed signs all over the place. Only thing is there doesn’t seem to be THAT much to do.

At least its one more site I can say “yeah, I’ve been there”.

Here’s my Flickr set from the trip to San Antonio. I love the D50

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How’s that you ask?  Some Australian researchers found that sweetened booze makes you more drunk more quickly.

..that artificial sweeteners found in such popular mixers as Diet Coke and sugar-free Red Bull lead to a high rate of alcohol absorption, resulting in a greater blood alcohol peak and concentration than from drinks made with sugar-based mixers.

Excellent.  Now I know scientifically that drinking cocktails like a Jack and coke gets you drunker, faster.

Thank you scientist(s)

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Just a random result from a query I ran against Google Trends:

Carnegie Mellon University > Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Muh ha ha

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So you may/may not have watched Bush’s speech about immigration that involves an awesome high tech fence and unmanned surveillance drones.  There was a drinking game involved in my viewing, which is the only way I can sit through a speech from W.

Regardless if you watched the speech, apparently CNN cut to the President a bit early, resulting in the broadcasting of a rehearsal of the immigration speech from the Oval Office.  Watch for comedy gold as Bush looks to his media goons.

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Apparently SNL did something interesting over the weekend.  They had Al Gore do the opening of SNL, doing a mock address to the nation.

Give it a try, its pretty funny.

If it had only been so

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So apparently Laura Bush doesn’t believe her husband’s bad approval ratings.

“I don’t really believe those polls. I travel around the country. I see people, I see their responses to my husband. I see their response to me,” she said.

I guess she didn’t really notice Cindy Sheehan outside of the Bush estate ranch over a year ago.  Or the heckling she received while in Jerusalem.  Nor the mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq during a speech in 2004.

I could go on but Google has a better list of protests in the presence of the First Lady.

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Flash mobs have been called for all sorts of things: zombie, pillow fights, furries, all sorts of weirdness.

Leave it t o China to apply the flash mob to haggling with stores.

Sounds like a good plan.  The discounts cited in the article aren’t huge, but its still good to save what you can

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So on Daily Kos they mention that Hillary just introduced a bill to tie pay raises Congress gives itself to the federal minimum wage.

This does seem like a good move, at very least it’ll force more visibility into the pay raises Congress gives itself from time to time.

This doesn’t address the issue that such a low minimum wage as proposed ($7.25/hr after phasing in) is hardly a LIVABLE wage. But at least this is a move in the right direction.

Go Hillary

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