Foundation

Scariest patent title I’ve ever seen is on US Patent #5352605: “Chimeric genes for transforming plant cells using viral promoters.”

I just think of Full Metal Alchemist when I see that. Ugh.

Haruhi didn’t turn out to be at all what I expected the show to be like, but it was quite nice.

Light an easy to watch, the episodes in broadcast order not being the chronological order kept it interesting from start to finish. Recommended.

Update: Haruhi picture added to push Batman and Robin down a bit.

The Caped Invader Aiders Sens. McCain and Graham have got to go!

Out of the blue I ran into the fact that there was a Yamamoto Youko television series made. It’s different from the OVA in a few small ways (notably in the order that the pilots were recruited, and of course in the role of Sylvie/Sara Dredd), but it’s otherwise remarkably true. Of course it helps when you have the same character designs, same voice talents (all but Momiji I believe), and even the same opening theme artist.

Of course I had to download it immediately and watch the thing. I didn’t do it in one sitting; I spread it out over a few weeks, and just now finished it. It was so light for most of it, but at the very end the tension rose, and rose, and rose, and rose, such that after breaking it all up I had to watch the last few episodes all at once.

I don’t know which is more like the original story, but they’re both nice. They’re both great. Whew. I’m not quite as drained as when I watched Stellvia, but it’s still one of my favorites ever.

Now I need to watch a little show I’ve heard about called Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu. I get the vague impression that Suzumiya Haruhi is another of those characters I’m going to like, much like Yamamoto Youko or Jinnai Nanami. We’ll see, though.

Today I take a marked departure from my normal political writing. Being a strident conservative with emotional tendencies toward libertarianism, the day-to-day machinery of politics suits me poorly, so I write better when look to our beloved Constitution, or the ideals it represents.

However political machinery is precisely what I intend to address here: the structure of the Republican party, and the means with which activists could steer it in a new direction. I will not address policy ideas.

Let us begin probing the party structure at the top. Once we peel past the official leadership: President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and General Chairman Martinez, we get to the people in charge of the nuts and bolts of the party: Chairman Mike Duncan and Co-Chairman Jo Ann Davidson (take that Marxist-Feminists; she’s referred to that way on the site).

Here is an excerpt from Duncan’s official biography on the GOP website:

Duncan has worked for and advised Republican candidates and parties at the local, state and national level his entire adult life. He has held a wide variety of positions at the RNC, most recently as General Counsel and before that, Treasurer. During his career, he has served on the campaigns of five Presidents, including Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. He has been a delegate to six Republican National Conventions and is one of the few persons ever to serve on four standing convention committees.

….Chairman Duncan’s service has extended to the federal government. In 1989-90, during a sabbatical from his banking career, he worked in the George H. W. Bush White House as assistant Director of Public Liaison. President George W. Bush appointed him to the President’s Commission on White House Fellows in 2001 and nominated him to the Tennessee Valley Authority Board, a position to which he was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate in March 2006.

And an excerpt from Davidson’s offical biography:

As Bush-Cheney ’04 Ohio Valley Regional Campaign Chair, Davidson helped direct a historic grassroots effort that enabled President Bush to win Ohio by a decisive margin. The Ohio Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign recruited over 87,000 Bush volunteers, held at least 3,946 parties for the President and made more than 4.5 million volunteer door-to-door knocks and phone calls to supporters and undecided voters in Ohio (with 2,373,167 volunteer door-to-door knocks and phone calls made in the final 72-Hours).

Davidson was a member of the Ohio House of Representatives for 20 years and served as Speaker of the House from 1995-2000. She served as Chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party Central Committee for 25 years and Chairman of the successful Taft for Governor campaigns in 1998 and 2002. As Chairman of the Ohio House Republican Campaign Committee from 1986-2000, she spearheaded the successful effort to return the Republicans to the majority in the Ohio House of Representatives in 1994, for the first time in 22 years.

What do these people have in common? They worked for campaigns and they worked at the state and local level to further the party’s interests. As a result, they rose in power, and got a voice in shaping the future of the party.

The trend continues down the line, too. When we look at members of the national committee, we see track records of state and local service. The same holds with state chairmen. Tina Benkiser, Texas state GOP chairman, lists in her previous party experience time as a Precinct Chairman.

Timothy Morgan, National Committeeman for California, was a Captain in the Army JAG Corps until 1979, and by 1980 he was Reagan-Bush County Chairman in Santa Cruz, a position he held in 1984, and then reprised for Bush-Quayle in 1988 and 1992. He now sits as Treasurer of the RNC, a position previously held by Chairman Duncan.

Yes, some top party members get their foot in the door of the organization by taking office at the local level, but a look at the leadership shows working for campaigns and for the party is a ticket in. There is a lesson to be learned here: those who work for the party shape it.

So, fellow Republicans, if you feel your faction of the party is underrepresented by the party leadership, or that the ‘party elites’ are ignored by the base, then you as a part of the base must get your faction involved from the bottom up. Only then will you see your views represented in the system.

Work for a campaign. Work for a city or county party. Take that first step. If enough people who agree with you do it, then it is inevitable that people who agree with you will eventually rise to the top of the party.

Pork has costs beyond the money. It has also built a nest of federal rules and bureaucracy designed to disperse that pork, and is leading to some absurd results in Cleveland: The feds want to tear down LeBron James on the eve of the NBA Finals.

Says the AP:

The massive banner — an ad for shoemaker Nike Inc. — hangs on the side of a building near Quicken Loans Arena, and violates federal highway beautification standards, said Lindsay Komlanc, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Transportation.

….Komlanc said the banner is too big — federal rules require it to be under 1,200-square feet. The state agency must enforce the guidelines or risk losing 10 percent of federal highway funding, which is about $130 million a year for Ohio, she said.

….The state has sent letters to the banner’s owner, Gigantic Media, asking the company to reduce the banner’s size or take it down, Komlanc said. Legal action is a possibility, she said.

Governor Strickland is intervening to oppose any further state action against the ad, but think about it: the Feds are claiming a say in the size of an ad on a building in Cleveland. That’s the best argument against pork I’ve yet to see.

I’ve been buying some Google ads for my Mac Solitaire game, but they just aren’t cost effective so far.

I make $10 per sale. So far I’ve paid $4.75 for 18 clicks, and gotten no sales based on the clicks. If I hit around $6 or $7 spent and no sales, I’m going to have to pull the plug.

Google is just junk, heh.

I actually made my first sale of PatienceX yesterday! The person seems to have found it on a generic Google search for Mac Solitaire, but I was only on the page starting with #30.

Ahem.

The Washington Times reports of a poll conducted by Pew Research, that asked Muslims living in America a variety of questions about their religion as it relates to the rest of the country. If the poll can be believed, the results are horrific:

All quotes are from the Times:

Telephone interviews were conducted with 1,050 Muslim adults from January through April, including some in Arabic, Urdu and Farsi. Subjects were chosen at random from a separate list of households, including some with Muslim-sounding names, and from Muslim households that had participated in previous surveys.

One thousand out of an estimated two million, especially when the thousand were chosen with such guesswork, keeps this from being the most credible poll around, so I, for one, am not about to run around screaming about Muslims. I would not entirely discount this poll, though.

The Times‘s headline was based on this snippet:

Though nearly 80 percent of U.S. Muslims said suicide bombings of civilians to defend Islam cannot be justified, 13 percent said they can be, at least rarely.

That sentiment was strongest among those younger than 30. Two percent of them said it often can be justified, 13 percent said sometimes and 11 percent said rarely.

But I think some of the other results are at least as disturbing:

• Just 5 percent of U.S. Muslims expressed favorable views of the terrorist group al Qaeda, although about a fourth did not express an opinion.
• Six in 10 said they are concerned about a rise in Islamic extremism in the U.S., while three in four expressed similar worries about extremism around the world.
• Only one in four consider the U.S. war on terrorism a sincere attempt to curtail international terror. Just 40 percent said they believe Arab men carried out the attacks of September 11.
• By six to one, they said the U.S. was wrong to invade Iraq; a third said the same about Afghanistan — far deeper than the opposition expressed by the general U.S. public.
• Just more than half said it has been harder being a U.S. Muslim since the September 11 attacks, especially the better educated, higher income, more religious and young. Nearly a third of those who flew in the past year said they underwent extra screening because they are Muslim.

If it’s true that one of twenty Muslims in this country support al Qaeda, we’re in trouble. If it’s true that sixty percent of Muslims in this country are buying into 9/11-Bush conspiracy theories, we’re in trouble.

Can this poll be believed? This is an important question.

Sports Illustrated just predicted the Dodgers over the Mets in the NLCS this year, as well as the Angels over the Yankees.

That could be a fun World Series.