The AP reports of a Chinese government official lecturing the US:
China insisted Friday the U.S. and other wealthy nations should bear the burden of curbing global warming, saying the problem was created by their lavish way of life. It rejected mandatory emission cuts for its own developing industries.
In other news, Boston Red Sox GM Theo Epstein is reported to support the New York Yankees taking positive steps to reduce the escalation of payrolls in baseball, while rejecting calls for his own team not to bid on stars like Johan Santana.
Sony is also rumored to favor Nintendo to take the first steps in combating childhood obesity, by reducing the level of fun in games for its popular Wii and DS systems, while opposing making the Playstation 3 less fun.
Chun Li to appear in We Love Golf, the coming golf game for the Wii. Just might have to add that to the list of games I’m going to need.
Over at Red State Sports I made the statistical case for Alex Rodriguez being far and away the better catch than Andruw Jones, even for far less money. But now the report is the Dodgers got Jones after missing on Rodriguez.
Here’s hoping he’s healthy, heh.
The worst part is the Democrats are attacking free wireless Internet access probably without even knowing that’s what they’re doing.
Apparenly the bill will require full identity information and usage tracking for everyone who uses wireless Internet access points. Well, AT&T, Verizon, and others who want to sell wireless Internet access will be happy. A lot of young, urban lefties I imagine will not.
As far as I know I’m not done with the kidney stones, but they’re not doing anything right now. Part of what was keeping me miserable for a while there, though, I eventually realized was not caused by the stones at all.
Instead, one problem I was having, that in fact was turning into outright incontinence, was caused by my Doxazosin. So I stopped taking that, at least until I get to the point where I’m going to need it again.
So for now I feel mostly back to normal. I’m pretty sure the stones are still in me, and so I’m going to have another round of something miserable, but for now I don’t have to worry about it.
Finally got around to doing some width tweaks to the stylesheet. I wanted to for a while but couldn’t come up with just how I wanted to do it. But this seems to work.
Just did some browsing around at the Wal-Mart webpage, seeing what games are out *now* that look good to me. The list was longer than I thought. Super Paper Mario, Metroid Prime 3, and Geometry Wars Galaxies all look nice on the Wii even now, before Super Smash Brothers Brawl comes out (as well as another F-Zero, I’m hoping…). Yes, I’m taking a pass on Super Mario Galaxy, the word ‘linear’ keeps coming up with respect to it, and to me that sounds awful, since the browsing around to me was one of the things that kept me going as long as I did in Mario 64.
I also looked at DS games, since I’m going to need to pick one up when Dragon Quest IX comes out, heh. Nanostray, Luminous Arc, Picross (huzzah!), and Pokemon Diamond are all sounding nice.
Yes, that would be the third Pocket Monster game I played through. I hesitate actually, because all the elements that require trading and special events and whatnot can be disappointing not to do, but ultimately I do enjoy the fundamentals of training and fighting, so it’s worth it.
I’d basically stopped doing my weekly view of the Rasmussen tracking poll both because my health has been spotty lately, and because the poll had just gotten boring. After all, during the Thanksgiving break in the poll, we had a three way tie for second, Giuliani sitting on his average, and McCain slightly behind the other three.
Today though, I am compelled to post. Anyone would be. Look at this:
Huckabee surges while Giuliani collapses. For the first time during this race, no Republican is above 20% in this poll. Giuliani and Hucakbee tie at 18%, McCain follows at 14%, Thompson checks in at 13%, and Romney is in fifth at 12%. Of course, the exact ordering, and the tie(!) are of more psychological than actual importance, given how close these candidates are and the nature of statistical polling, but no matter what this is the biggest shakeup in the poll since Fred Thompson formally entered the race.
Time will tell if this is temporary, caused by a bad sample one day (as this poll is a moving average of daily measurements), but that’s some large movement for an outlier, so I doubt that can entirely explain this change.
Update: let me elaborate on just how critical this is that everyone is in this little range. For first to fifth as a ranking to mean anything, that is, for us to know that Giuliani and Huckabee are actually above Romney, the margin of error would have to be under three percent. National polls never have a margin of error that low. So essentially this poll is now a five way tie. That is just shocking to me.
Update 2: At Red State Adam C points out that the MoE is actually 4%. So there we have it. We’re all tied with about a month to go before the first delegates are allocated.
Radio Netherlands reports (link via The Corner) some pretty good news in Afghanistan, complete with hidden bonuses of related news elsewhere in the War on Terror:
The International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan says the Taliban is in control of no more than five of the country’s 59 districts. The statement comes during the surprise visit of US Defence Secretary Robert Gates to Afghanistan.
ISAF spokesman Carlos Branco says the Taliban has failed as a resistance movement. However, the Portuguese general admits that an increasing number of fighters from the terrorist network al-Qaeda are entering the country from Iraq where they are suffering defeats.
The many-fold implications of this report are just delicious for those of us who have been banging our heads against the brick walls of the Democratic left’s arguments against the War on Terror.
First off, we have yet more evidence that our enemy in Iraq is our enemy in Afghanistan. It wasn’t one we created by taking down Saddam Hussein, and it’s not one that will go away the moment we leave. This is an international terrorist network that will fight us wherever they think they can win.
Secondly, the fact that they’re flowing from Iraq to Afghanistan shows that they’re starting to have doubts about their ability to win in Iraq. The surge is working, or rather, the new strategy that General Petraeus has put into place, which has been aided by the surge, is pacifying the country.
Third, if enemy troops are moving from Iraq to Afghanistan, what country are they moving through? Let’s look at a map for some possibilities:
Well what do you know, there’s really only one country that Al Qaeda forces could travel through in order to get from Iraq to Afghanistan. Unless they go a long way around first through Turkey (a NATO ally) and numerous former Soviet countries, the only way to get from here to there is through Iran. Which means Iran is allowing this to happen. Which means Iran is our enemy, too, and not just a misunderstood friend of socialist democracy like former President Clinton and many others have portrayed that country’s regime to be.
Fourth, we’re also still winning in Afghanistan. The Taleban only has a small part of the country. The allies have the vast majority of it. This seems to run counter to Democratic charges that our fight in Iraq has distracted us from our fight in Afghanistan.
No, we’re winning all around. President Bush and his policies are taking us down the path we need to be on for an eventual victory in this War on Terror worldwide, if only we have the determination to carry it out.
The Veterans Committee at Cooperstown failed to vote in Marvin Miller, the union agitator and leader to blame for much of the labor strife Major League Baseball has suffered from over the years. So of course, he’s ranting about it, according to the AP:
“I think it was rigged, but not to keep me out. It was rigged to bring some of these (people) in. It’s not a pretty picture,” Miller said by telephone after being informed of the results by The Associated Press. “It’s demeaning, the whole thing, and I don’t mean just to me. It’s demeaning to the Hall and demeaning to the people in it.”
I think it’s fine if he never gets in. The Hall of Fame needs to induct only those people who left a lasting, positive contribution to the sport. Being one of the root causes of many sport-debilitating strikes is not something that should be honored by the sport, not in my view.
Of course, part of what makes this rejection so sweet is that one of Miller’s nemeses, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, did get in this year. Ha ha.