Fun Stuff: Wreckless Eric

This will either ruin my reputation forever or just show me up as being hopelessly nostalgic. So the cookie crumbles...

Wreckless Eric is one of those guys you never heard of when he started because Q 95 never played his stuff. If you heard of him, you also probably had one of those black and white pins that read: "If it Ain't Stiff, it Ain't Worth A F**k". Wreckless remains with us and has his own web page. Somehow, I find that reassuring.

Thinking of McCain

I got thinking of McCain thanks to a run of Washington Post columnists:

Ruth Marcus' High Court Caricature pointed out McCain's straight talk express hit some problems when talking about the United States Supreme Court and the federal judges generally:

"'I disagree with Senators Clinton and Obama that federal judges should be able to legislate from the bench,' says a petition on McCain's Web site -- as if his Democratic opponents have made that outlandish claim to judicial power.

The world he sketches of liberal Judges Gone Wild is largely imaginary. The freewheeling jurisprudence of the 1960s has tempered, if not vanished. That's not surprising: Seven of the nine Supreme Court justices are Republican appointees, as are about 100 of the 166 appeals court judges.

Indeed, the supposed distinction between activist liberals and color-inside-the-constitutional-lines conservatives is not only phony but often backward. In its first 200 years, the Supreme Court struck down fewer than 130 acts of Congress; in the past 13 years, it has overturned more than 30, including a piece of McCain's signature campaign-finance law. This behavior is hardly the 'humility' McCain argues should be restored to federal courts."

I will admit I always thought the battle cry over activist judges was overdone and hypocritical. The Rehnquist and Roberts court gladly, actively, invalidate federal laws without being called activists - but then they are on the side of the name-callers. Which is what I think is the point: activists judges are the excuse for losers with a bad case.

Harold Meyerson's McCain's America points out that McCain is not adverse to his own nastiness when campaigning:

"What remains for the GOP is a campaign premised more on issues of national identity, aimed largely at that portion of our population for which 'American' is synonymous with 'white' and 'Christian,' than any national campaign has been since the American Party (also known as the Know Nothings) based its 1856 campaign chiefly on Protestant bigotry against Irish and German Catholic immigrants. In Appalachian America (the heart of which went to the polls yesterday in West Virginia), as Mark Schmitt notes in the forthcoming issue of the American Prospect (which I edit), a disproportionate number of people write 'American' when answering the census question on ethnic origin. For some, 'American' is a race -- white -- no less than a nationality, and it's on this equation that Republican prospects depend."

Richard Cohen extends that point with his McCain in the Mud:

"The most admirable of McCain's qualities -- his life story, his integrity -- make him particularly well suited to accomplish the next president's primary task, restoring the American people's trust in their government. But ideas matter, and on the Middle East, McCain not only has little to say that is interesting but, in his swipe at Obama, a distinctly ugly way of saying it."

Even as it becomes a bit tiresome, our slogan that McCain would be serving Bush's third term has truth. Not all war heroes deserve to be president.

Gas Edging on $4.00 at Gallon

Yesterday's Palladium-Item has an article showing gas in Centerville at over $4.00, Yuck, gas tops 4 bucks.

It is on its way here.

Obama, Bush and Foreign Policy

I am a little late on commenting about the idiotic speech that Bush gave in Israel. That speech was so wrong in so many ways and so many others have done a good job of explaining Bush's errors. Obama showed that he is ready to take on the foreign policy debate.

James Rubin nailed McCain with Hypocrisy on Hamas McCain Was for Talking Before He Was Against It from The Washington Post:

The Obama campaign was right to criticize the president for his remarks and for engaging in partisan politics while overseas. Many presidents have said things abroad that could be construed as violating this unwritten rule of American politics. But it is hard to remember any president abusing the prestige of his office in as crude a way as Bush did yesterday. Charging your opponents with appeasement and likening them to Neville Chamberlain in the Knesset is a brutal blow. It is bad enough that Republicans use the politics of personal destruction here at home, but to deploy that kind of political weapon at an occasion as solemn as an American president addressing the parliament of a friendly government marks a new low.

McCain, meanwhile, is guilty of hypocrisy. I am a supporter of Hillary Clinton and believe that she was right to say, about McCain's statement on Hamas, "I don't think that anybody should take that seriously." Unfortunately, the Republicans know that some people will. That's why they say such things.

Presidential Candidate McCain opposes Senator McCain on Hamas. Political expediency from the straight talk express.

Usually, I think Chris Matthews is more talk than substance but he proved himself full of substance when discussing appeasement with some right wing talk show nut. If you do not know what I meant take a look at A QUESTION OF APPEASEMENT? and watch the video. I am torn between worrying over the state of America's educational system and a worry that this was not a display of ignorance but a cowardly lie.

Like a lot of political "debate" these past six years, we have the Bushies tossing out a phrase which apparently they nothing about but that it is such an insult that it ends debates. Democracy is more than elections. Democracy means we get to debate and set the political discourse and not just accept what our "leaders" tell us. The Soviet Union allowed for elections but no dissent, and we did not call them a democracy.

Obama proposes talking to Iran. He has not said that he was agreeing to anything other than talking to them. I say that beats Bush's foreign policy that has allowed Iran an unprecedented influence in Iraq that exceeds our own.

What to read Obama's own comments on Iran and Hamas? Jeffery Goldberg's blog on Atlantic.com has Obama on Zionism and Hamas. Goldberg interviews Obama.

JG: Why do you think Ahmed Yousef of Hamas said what he said about you?

BO: My position on Hamas is indistinguishable from the position of Hillary Clinton or John McCain. I said they are a terrorist organization and I’ve repeatedly condemned them. I’ve repeatedly said, and I mean what I say: since they are a terrorist organization, we should not be dealing with them until they recognize Israel, renounce terrorism, and abide by previous agreements.

JG: Were you flummoxed by it?

BO: I wasn’t flummoxed. I think what is going on there is the same reason why there are some suspicions of me in the Jewish community. Look, we don’t do nuance well in politics and especially don’t do it well on Middle East policy. We look at things as black and white, and not gray. It’s conceivable that there are those in the Arab world who say to themselves, “This is a guy who spent some time in the Muslim world, has a middle name of Hussein, and appears more worldly and has called for talks with people, and so he’s not going to be engaging in the same sort of cowboy diplomacy as George Bush,” and that’s something they’re hopeful about. I think that’s a perfectly legitimate perception as long as they’re not confused about my unyielding support for Israel’s security.

When I visited Ramallah, among a group of Palestinian students, one of the things that I said to those students was: “Look, I am sympathetic to you and the need for you guys to have a country that can function, but understand this: if you’re waiting for America to distance itself from Israel, you are delusional. Because my commitment, our commitment, to Israel’s security is non-negotiable.” I’ve said this in front of audiences where, if there were any doubts about my position, that’d be a place where you’d hear it.

When Israel invaded Lebanon two summers ago, I was in South Africa, a place where, obviously, when you get outside the United States, you can hear much more critical commentary about Israel’s actions, and I was asked about this in a press conference, and that time, and for the entire summer, I was very adamant about Israel’s right to defend itself. I said that there’s not a nation-state on Earth that would tolerate having two of its soldiers kidnapped and just let it go. So I welcome the Muslim world’s accurate perception that I am interested in opening up dialogue and interested in moving away from the unilateral policies of George Bush, but nobody should mistake that for a softer stance when it comes to terrorism or when it comes to protecting Israel’s security or making sure that the alliance is strong and firm. You will not see, under my presidency, any slackening in commitment to Israel’s security.

I was laid up yesterday and got too much of panel discussions about Bush and McCain and Obama and our foreign policy. There was some interesting stuff but a couple things I did not hear:

1. The moral culpability of Republicans and other isolationists for World War 2 or its predecessor, the Spanish Civil War. Just as Bush glided over which Democrat he referred to in his Knesset speech, he avoided mentioning that the source for his quote about Hilter was a Republican Senator. That Senator was Senator Borah of Idaho. He would have done better to apologize for the Republican non-interventionism, our isolationism, that ended only with Japanese bombs on Pearl Harbor.
2. Not even Pat Buchanan mentioned Theodore Roosevelt's Big Stick policy. I recall seeing that there was more than "Speak softly and carry a big stick." I think one was "Talk loudly and carry a big stick" which was equated with a bully. We all know the weaknesses of bullies. George W. Bush has being talking loudly and carrying a big stick (which he has no capacity for knowing how to use well). I think everyone agrees that TR was our most bellicose talking president between Jackson and George W., but he never failed in talking first to our opponents. Of course, George W. plunged us into our first preemptive war differs from both Jackson and Roosevelt from a complete lack of experience of war.
   

Bottom line: Bush has made a hash of our foreign policy and our national reputation and stripped the gears of the American military; McCain now endorses this policy; and the Democrats oppose our Bush created diminishment.

Bush and Golf and Keith Olbermann

Watching Countdown last night, I was overwhelmed by Olbermann's Special Comment about the President's Politico.com interview. I assume Olbermann writes these comments himself. His outrage is too palpable but who knows? Even if he did not write this stuff, he was spot on. God help us till next year while this embarrassing example of presidential excrement remains in the White House.

You can watch the video here. If you have not seen it, you should.

Hospitals, Health Care, and Indiana's Economy

Interesting bit of reporting in the Indianapolis Business Journal's Small Towns, Big Business, although I am not sure how Kokomo became a rural community:

The hospital is planning to expand to meet rising demand, which means it will add to its 170-person staff. That’s good news for Williamsport as the nation settles into another economic downturn.

But it’s a mixed blessing for businesses in the area. They expect to see higher hospital prices, which would hike the costs of their employee health benefits. That makes it harder for employers to keep and add jobs.

***

“People get jobs. But in the long term, who pays for this?” said Les Zwirn, a former executive at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis who now is helping to organize a reform group called Hoosiers for Better Healthcare. “Well, we know who pays for this. Families pay for it through increased premiums and loss of coverage. And employers pay for it in terms of depressing wages and trying to slim down and scale down coverage.”

Even hospital leaders agree with those claims—to a point.

“We’re a source of costs for the businesses,” acknowledged Doug Leonard, president of the Indiana Hospital Association. “But on the other side of the coin, we provide a lot of benefits for the community.”

Hillary Wins West Virginia - so what?

Listening to a bit of the pundits last night and this morning, I have to say that the pundits sound a bit confused. I think the most important thing is the tone is a bit different - still a bit loony but without "let's be as nasty towards Obama as possible" tone that we have had for the past two month. Now, if the remainder of the primary season can be the same...

E.J. Dionne wrote a thoughtful piece yesterday, he concludes with this:

But the best antidote to this melancholy is for her supporters to see that the Hillary Clinton who has emerged from these primaries is a stronger and more independent figure than the candidate who once hoped she could parlay the past into the White House. Her future depends on discovering a new role, even if it is not the one she had originally hoped to play.

Information overload solutions?

First, take a look at Managing Information Flow: How Prioritization Will Improve Your Work and Learning Efficiency. I thought I had things in hand until I came down with the flu. Two months later, I have things almsot back to where they should have been in mid-March. (Let us see if the desk gets uncovered today - oh, so close!). I am trying to use some of the ideas in this article.

Then, too, you might want to read Persai, a new filtering program that aims to cure the Web's information overload by Paul Boutin of Slate Magazine:

"I've got two main beefs with RSS. The first is information overload. If I don't check in every few hours, my RSS reader fills with unread blog posts. Rather than feel relieved that I can catch up on my missed surfing, that long list of bold headlines gives me the sensation that I'm hopelessly behind and won't ever catch up. I've got enough to do at home and at work that I don't need Web surfing to seem like a chore."

***

I'm down on RSS at the moment, but I'm not ready to abandon it just yet. That's why I'm excited about Persai, a new service that promises to solve my two big problems. The application, which is now in private beta test, bills itself as a smart filter, a way both to tame and to improve your RSS content.

Persai (pronounced per-SIGH) is a system for reading RSS-fed content, but it doesn't focus on individual feeds. Instead, it throws everything it can find into one big hopper, then asks about what you like so it can dole out suitable articles. You start by creating one or more "interests" based on keywords of your choice—say, "American Idol" or "astrophysics discovery." Once you've punched in your interests, Persai turns each one into a custom page. These pages look a lot like Google News search results—a collection of news articles and blog posts from the past day that match your interest. The matches aren't based on exact keywords, but rather on a more complex word-math algorithm that can figure out that a post about Carly Smithson matches my American Idol interest.

Information overload affects all of us. Is too much worse than too little? I am thinking only if the too little is not the best information we can get.

New Blog Out of Fort Wayne

I just discovered Landfile Pointe. A collector of interesting reports from the wider world. Keep it up.

News from Muncie: New Circuit 5 Judge

Until November, Chris Teagle will be judge in Circuit 5. Judge Lennington resigned and Governor Daniels appointed Teagle to serve. This is from The Muncie Star-Press:

Teagle also is the Republican nominee for the Circuit Court 5 bench and will face veteran lawyer Tom Cannon Jr., who won the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, in the Nov. 4 general election.

Teagle acknowledged the huge Democratic turnout in Tuesday's primary, but attributed those figures in part to crossover voters attracted by the contested Democratic presidential primary. He said he believed Republicans would be competitive in the fall with Daniels and Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. at the top of the ticket.

New I missed: Obama Now Leading in Superdelegates

I missed the news. Check out Daily Kos' Obama Takes Lead in Superdelegate Count for the count.

Digesting Hillary

The Sunday Herald published Poor Hillary: right gender, wrong woman and maybe it takes a foreigner to give some sense to the ongoing Hillary machine:

A Hillary Clinton presidency could have been historic: I get it. Nevertheless, you are reminded of the difference between necessary and sufficient when you hear her issuing threats of military action against Iran, assaulting her rival for failures of faux-patriotism, or pandering to any possible demographic demanding a little light, discreet, pandering.

Her campaign has been dogged, but unpleasant. Senator Obama has been dull - but Senator Clinton has been dirty. The usual version says that this is merely "the Clintons" doing what they do. They fight hard; they never give up; their sheer persistence is part of their charm and their legend. But that bald statement of cussed implacability lays Hillary (so to speak) bare (so to speak).

***

You knew she wanted it obsessively. But even with the history of gender-oppression hanging over every statement, something was very wrong.

There was the hint, first, of entitlement. She seemed to say that in some sense she had earned the presidency. Dynasty, for her, was always more than soft soap. Equally, it appeared that claiming the White House "in her own right" had more to do with the psycho-dynamics of a marriage than with the needs of a nation. You could call that worrying.

Back over here, Bob Herbert at The New York Times scores two bullseyes (if a bit less outlandishly did Ian Bell in The Sunday Herald):

I don’t know if Senator Obama can win the White House. No one knows. But to deliberately convey the idea that most white people — or most working-class white people — are unwilling to give an African-American candidate a fair hearing in a presidential election is a slur against whites.
***
But it’s one thing to lack class and a sense of grace, quite another to deliberately try and wreck the presidential prospects of your party’s likely nominee — and to do it in a way that has the potential to undermine the substantial racial progress that has been made in this country over many years.

I say let Hillary run out the game but I only if she can do so with more grace than she has shown since before Pennsylvania. It is not about whether she should run or not, but if she should campaign in the way she has or not.

Hillary, Obama, and White Voters

I wanted to let this post go unwritten. I suppose others will write on this better than I will. Eugene Robinson did so in today's Washington Post. This is about Hillary Clinton holding forth on the AP article. Robinson writes:

Let's examine those premises. These are white Democrats we're talking about, voters who generally share the party's philosophy. So why would these Democrats refuse to vote for a nominee running on Democratic principles against a self-described conservative Republican? The answer, which Clinton implies but doesn't quite come out and say, is that Obama is black -- and that white people who are not wealthy are irredeemably racist.

I had thought that Clinton's further pursuit of the presidency was a bit loony with the arrogance that Mr. Robinsion writes about but that this was why we had all these primaries. Now I worry that Mrs. Clinton prefers to bring the roof down on all of us if she cannot be President. Or to use the metaphor I have in mind for her campaign now: she will wreck The Pequod and sink all its crew in pursuit of the white whale. Mr. Robinson correctly states one premise contained in Mrs. Clinton's statement. It is a bit scary to think of the mindset, the willingness to manipulate for the sake of success, contained in Senator Clinton's statement.

I am white, far from wealthy, and I voted for Obama. I could care less about his race. I do care about his ideas. As a Democrat, I think Obama has a better chance of being a benefit to the races further down the ticket (we need more of a majority in the House and Senate). After all these years of Republican rule and electioneering, I like his style of not treating we of the electorate as drooling idiots ripe for humbuggery and manipulation. For the first time since 1996, I have a chance to vote for a Democratic presidential candidate without holding my nose. Not that I believe he can walk on water or he has attained some sort of temporal perfection, he is flawed but he is quite willing to admit his flaws. How unlike the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

If you are a Democrat but unwilling to vote for an African-American because of his race, why stick with the party?

If it is not more important to have a Democratic President, why vote for McCain over Obama?

I hope that Mrs. Clinton "clarifies" her statement to where the uglier implications are explained away. I hope that this clarification means she realizes she stands on the verge of ruin - hers, the Democratic Party's, and our own.

Like Fly Fishing? Or Just a Really Good Fishing Magazine?

Then check out The Drake Magazine. Looks good, reads good.

Madison County School Boards: Congrats to Irma Hampton Stewart

I forgot to mention that there was a shake up in some of our Madison County school boards. See School boards feel major shifts from The Anderson Herald Bulletin.

Indiana ID Law Kept Some From Voting

From The Muncie Star Press:

When combat veterans and elderly nuns are denied the right to vote in Indiana, there's something wrong.

Indiana's voter ID law, which was passed in 2005, is flawed, despite the fact it was upheld last week by the U.S. Supreme Court. The largest and most contested election since it went into effect for the 2006 primary election brought the problems to the surface.

It looks now like we have something besides a facial challenge to the law (see my earlier post on this statute here and here.) Of course, getting stronger Democratic majority in the House and in more Democrats in the Senate and kicking out Mitch Daniels might be a quicker remedy for this law.

Prudish Indiana - Lixensing Fee for Sexually Explicit Materials

Indiana's General Assembly stuck their collective foot in it - such is my opinion.

From The Indianapolis Star's ACLU, booksellers sue over registration:

The Indianapolis Museum of Art, which sells art books containing images of nudes painted by the Old Masters, joined a civil rights group today in suing over a law that would require business selling pornography to register with the state.

Maxwell L. Anderson, director and chief executive of the IMA, said he is concerned about the law’s effect on the museum and the broader message it sends.

“Our role in this community is to foster tolerance for creativity, and this law is completely in opposition to that mission,” Anderson said.

He added that the law “is not a signal of a progressive place.”

Here is a description of the statute and the suit:

The suit’s target is House Enrolled Act 1042, approved this year by the General Assembly. It requires businesses that sell such material to pay a $250 fee and register with the secretary of state. The suit says the law also appears to require employees of the businesses to register and pay the fee.

Ken Falk, legal director for the ACLU of Indiana, said the law is vague, overly broad and violates the First Amendment.

The Indiana Daily Lawyer's Suit challenges new sexually explicit retailer law has a very interesting detail:

The suit claims the statue contains no guidance as to what types of materials must be registered with the Secretary of State and will lead to self-censorship in order to avoid the state's registration requirements.

Okay, Falk has to file in the federal court to bring the case under 42 U.S.C 1983 which allows for attorney fees if they win. To bring it under the federal statute, there had to be a violation of federal rights. That our state legislators might not know that a statute violates Hoosier's federal rights is bad but I think ignoring our state constitutional rights may be even worse.

"Our state constitutional rights"? Yes, we have 37 of them. Some that do not appear in the United States Constitution and some that do but are different from our federal rights. For instance, Article I, Section 9 reads differently from the federal First Amendment speech rights and is also a bit broader:

No law shall be passed, restraining the free interchange of thought and opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write, or print,

The ICLU may not have included this in their lawsuit but this does not mean we cannot question our legislators' protection of our constitutional rights and how they view their obligations to uphold both the state and federal constitutions.

Instead, we have businesses paying money to fight the statute rather than employing Hoosiers and our taxpayers doubly wasted - first for paying legislators to write and pass the statute and then for defending the lawsuit.

Urban Farming, Again

Once more The New York Times writes about urban farming: Urban Farmers’ Crops Go From Vacant Lot to Market. See my earlier post on urban farming here. I still do not know why this would not work in Indiana generally or specifically Anderson.

Do we not have vacant lots in Anderson? Or lots that should be vacant? Muncie and Anderson both are working on clearing up properties that have been abandoned.

Do we lack the interest or is it that we do not have the infrastructure supporting the interest?

This urban agriculture movement has grown even more vigorously elsewhere. Hundreds of farmers are at work in Detroit, Milwaukee, Oakland and other areas that, like East New York, have low-income residents, high rates of obesity and diabetes, limited sources of fresh produce and available, undeveloped land.

Local officials and nonprofit groups have been providing land, training and financial encouragement. But the impetus, in almost every case, has come from the farmers, who often till when their day jobs are done, overcoming peculiarly urban obstacles.

***

There were also benefits to farming in the city. The Wilkses took advantage of city composting programs, trucking home decomposed leaves from the Starrett City development in Brooklyn and ZooDoo from the Bronx Zoo’s manure composting program. They got free seedlings from GreenThumb and took courses on growing and selling food from the City Farms project at the local nonprofit Just Food.

“The city really has been good to us,” Mrs. Wilks said. “All of the property we work on, it’s city property.”

***

John Ameroso, a Cornell Cooperative Extension agent who has worked with local farmers and gardeners for 32 years, said that when he first suggested urban farm stands in the early 1990s, city environmental officials dismissed the idea. “ ‘Oh, you could never grow enough stuff with the urban markets,’ ” he said he was told. ‘ “That can’t be done. You have to have farmers.’ ”

But local officials have come around.

Holly Leicht, an associate assistant commissioner at the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, helped provide two half-acre parcels of city land last year. One became Hands and Hearts and the other is in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, Brooklyn.

Could we not also work something out with the school?

The Red Hook farm began in 2003 when the Parks Department gave the youth group Added Value permission to use an abandoned three-acre asphalt ball field. The group started with two raised beds, built a hoop house where it could start seeds, then laid down an acre of compost two feet deep on top of the asphalt. Last year the young farmers sold more than $25,000 in goods.

***

City Slicker Farms in West Oakland, Calif., started in 2001 with a quarter-acre garden and a farm stand selling neighborhood favorites like collards and mustard greens. It has since persuaded local elementary students to volunteer and gotten owners of five additional vacant lots to let it grow food on their land.

Do we not think there is enough of a market? Or are our Hoosier politicians worried about offending Kroger or Wal-Mart? Maybe they do not see the higher costs of food.

One key to financial success is having customers with the wherewithal to buy your goods. In New York, Bob Lewis, the head of the city office for the state Department of Agriculture and Markets, helped make this happen by getting 21 farmers at 16 sites approved to accept checks from the Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, a supplement to the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and senior nutrition programs.

The wife decided that we needed a garden and we have one started. I suspect that many around town have their vegetable gardens. Probably more this year than before. But nothing of the scale described in the article. Nor is this limited to New York. The article mentions Milwaukee among other cities. It just seems a sensible use of condemned land or other city properties.

Spammed

Sorry but some outfit from the Philippines spammed me this morning. I am thinking very seriously of going back to requiring verification for comments.

Madison County Elections: Congrats Bibbs and Hardin

Having known Jeff Hardin for a very long time, I think Madison County has done itself a favor. Hardin, Lyon to vie for Commissioner.

Considering that Ty Bibbs won his county race, I am a bit disappointed by Ollie Dixon's quote in the article above. It does him no favors:

“I had a mountain to climb,” he said. “I tried to break a barrier over the history of Madison County, which has never been broken in terms of it is very, very difficult for an African-American or a black person win countywide.”

Speaking of Ty Bibbs, I am convinced that we need to keep an eye on him (in a very good way):Bibbs to vie for council.

Muncie/Delaware County Election News

None of the Delaware County deputy prosecutors won their primary. Congratulations, Judge Wolf on her win.

As a sign of what I call Delaware County Democratic politics, Don Dunnuck beat John Brooke.


The Delaware County returns are here.

So Ends the Indiana Primary

Up way too late last night waiting on Lake County. Up too early for working. Both mean this will be a short post.

Indiana had its big night and I think we did well. Better than some newscasters: Stuff it, Cooper, there's nothing wrong with Indiana.

So Hillary wins by 2%, loses North Carolina big and keeps on going. She leaves me conflicted - I can agree with her wanting to take this to the end but I am thinking her pursuit of the presidency is becoming an obsession. Obama still leads in delegates. I worry that she will not care for her ship when it comes in.

For me, the big upset was the Governor's race. I thought Schellinger was favored to win and then Jill Long Thompson pulls it out at the end. Schellinger conceded this evening.

Time to remember that the enemy is the Republicans and not fellow Democrats.

Indiana's Primary - Turn Out Good at Anderson's Precinct 31

That was what I was told when the wife and I went to vote about 3:00. As one of the precinct workers said: it makes a difference when people have something to vote for.

Gas Prices - Getting the Best Price

A friend sent this link to where the best price for gas. I have not had time to try it. Let me know how well it works.

Will the Gimmicks Win Today?

I asked myself reading Richard Cohen's in today's Washington Post. Especially when I got to this paragraph:

An allergy to cant can be an admirable quality in a politician, although not necessarily a politically smart one. Obama, for example, is right to label Hillary Clinton's proposal to have the government lift the gas tax this summer as "a classic Washington gimmick." Still, gimmicks like this win votes.

If we truly want candor or clear-thinking or just common-sense from our President, then I say the gimmicks will lose. Now, we have about five hours to find out if I know anything about Indiana.

Washington Post Does Muncie

Unlike Fox News, I say The Washington Post's Middletown, Teetering On the Dividegives a fair and balanced view of Muncie:

"I don't know what to tell you about Muncie, but it's a dying town," says Ron Cantrell, working the cash register of a dusty liquor store on the south side of town, where things are bleakest. "It's almost dead. It's like a cockroach lying there with its legs in the air."

Muncie looks okay from certain angles, kind of like America. North of the White River, which bisects Muncie, things are pretty good. There's Ball State University and Ball Memorial Hospital, both large employers. There's Muncie Mall and the big-box stores, aMiddletown, Teetering On the Dividend -- why would anyone shop in Muncie's historic downtown anymore? How could those little shops possibly compare with Wal-Mart?

South of the river is the industrial part of town, and this is where you see the frayed seams of the Rust Belt. Here are the slumped houses, the abandoned fast-food joint, the wreckage of a leveled auto parts plant. Manufacturing jobs, long the backbone of the city's economy, have been leaving. Muncie has lost more than 10,000 people since 1980, and the population is now 66,000.

Yeah, I recognize the Muncie I know. Meanwhile, here are the Muncie Star-Press' headlines for Local News,

The WTO and Biofuels

Trade Rules and Biofuels

International trade and investment rules will influence the future of the emerging biofuel sector, finds a new paper by IATP's Sophia Murphy.

• The Multilateral Trade and Investment Context for Biofuels Report | Apr 14 | PDF
• Global Rules to Shape Biofuel Market Press release | Apr 14 | PDF

Indiana a Puzzle for The New York Times

Usually, I get annoyed with The New York Times when it writes about Indiana. Not so much with yesterday's Indiana Poses a Puzzle in the Primary Race. I would say the following captures Indiana very well:

Politically, culturally, economically, linguistically, there are at least three Indianas, and maybe four or five or more. Even the state’s veteran political minds do not always agree on where the many regions — and demands — begin and end.

Although, I suspect that my grandmother from Ripley County would have bristled at the idea Kentucky has anything to do with Indiana:

...Salem is one of the agricultural towns stretching south of Bloomington, a traditional base for conservative and moderate Democrats (like the late Gov. Frank O’Bannon) where the accents and the music feel tied to Kentucky and where Mrs. Clinton is expected to do well.

Wind Power Fueling Hydrogen Plant- Controversary in Scotland

I kick out these reports on alternative energy for one reason: alternate energy is the future. If I do not comment much, it is because I lack the science to know how truly viable the project is and hope some commentor will add something useful to the conversation.

Hydrogen plant proposals fail to blow away concerns over wind farm project from today's Sunday Herald outlines the problem in Scotland in these paragraphs:

Of the Wind Hydrogen application Maund said: "There is no physical link between the hydrogen plant and the wind farm. When all the turbines are running, all the electricity goes into the national grid, so the hydrogen plant could be anywhere."

Charlie Woodward, manager of Clyde Muirshiel park, called the link between the two projects "fallacious" and said he the park had "grave concerns". He added that the wind farm project suffered from being on the edge of an EU special protection area, which has been noted in an objection raised by Scottish National Heritage.

There has also been an objection from National Air Traffic Control, which is concerned about the effect on aircraft radar.

A spokesman for Wind Hydrogen said: "This project will contain the UK's first grid-connected commercially sized prototype hydrogen balancing facility. The wind farm will generate the required amount of electrical power required to power the hydrogen balancing facility. Excess electricity from the wind farm is being utilised through transfer via the grid to the hydrogen plant. "

Some interesting comments on The Sunday Herald site which are worth reading.

Forbidden Kingdom

I think The Forbidden Kingdom is a darned good movie. I took the stepsons - 6 and 12 - to see it and they had a great time. It also passed my basic test for a movie: I forgot how much I paid to see it.

Not that I am a great fan of the Chinese mythology movies. I got into Hong Kong movies with John Woo's The Killer and still prefer the gangster movies to the outright martial arts movies. I doubt I fit into any of the demographics for The Forbidden Kingdom.

Yet, I a big fan of Jet Li and a bigger fan of Jackie Chan. Neither have done as well in American films as they did in Hong Kong. Chan has probably fared the worst. For someone who seems to have translated Buster Crabbe into Chinese martial arts, American directors never seemed to know what to do with him. The best scene in Rush Hour is the scene when Chan and Chris Tucker bond during War. I am not sure if the Shanghai movies work better than The Rush Hour movies because they are better or just because Chris Tucker is absent.

I think some reviews made a big deal about the convoluted plot involving Chinese mythology. The marketing made a big deal about the pairing of Li and Chan. Neither seemed a big deal during the movie. Yes, the big fight scene was cool but it did not stop the movie. I cannot remember where I read that these fight scenes are like the dance scenes in an Astaire-Rogers movie but this one shows the idea's soundness.

Here is what the movie is about: stranger in a strange land gets handed a task for which he is supposed to accomplish but is inadequate to accomplish but learns from his friends the skills needed for the struggle and the character to win. Think King Arthur, think Star Wars, think The Three Musketeers, and all ki