PastaJoe

The name that comes up the most among the political talking heads is Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota. He's a Republican governor in a traditionally Democrat state, and he has connections with the evangelicals.

They have now leased 41 million acres of offshore leases. They're only pumping in 10.2 million of those acres. Seventy-nine percent of all the offshore oil available off the coast of Florida, into the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Coast, the Pacific Coast, lies within those acres that they now have. There's estimated to be a total of 54 billion barrels of oil at their disposal right now. The offshore leases they have are in deeper water, and while they have the technology to drill there and have done it, it costs more than if they were to drill closer to shore where the new areas being discussed are. It's all about them trying to maximize their profits, it has nothing to do with available sites with oil to drill. Instead of spending billions of dollars of their profits in stock buybacks, they could be using the profits to cover the cost of drilling in the currently leased deep water sites. Let them commit to fully develop those currently leased sites, and then we can discuss whether they need additional leases.

I DVR all the shows I watch, so I can skip past the commercials. And the Soprano episodes they show on weekend nights has some of the swearing left in.

The intelligence community said it was possible he was working on WMD, but their evidence was not conclusive. The Bush administration took the possible and sold it to the public as a certainty, especially the inferrence that he would have nuclear capabilities soon. That's why they got paranoid whenever their assersions were challenged by people like Joe Wilson.

Now the politicians are getting into the act: BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A member of an Iraqi city council shot at U.S. forces Monday outside Baghdad, killing at least three soldiers, two Iraqi Interior Ministry officials said. But the U.S. military said one coalition soldier and an "enemy" were killed and five others were wounded. The military said it is investigating. The Iraqi official fired an AK-47 at U.S. troops after they entered the City Council building in al-Madaen, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad, according to one Interior Ministry official. The councilman killed at least three people and wounded four, a ministry official said. U.S. forces returned fire, killing the councilman, according to two Interior Ministry officials. The shooting happened after U.S. soldiers and local officials had attended a ceremony to open a park in al-Madaen, also known as Salman Pak, an Interior Ministry official said. In other violence, a mortar attack killed at least 10 people Sunday evening in northern Iraq, according to a military operations command in Diyala province.

The show is repeated on A&E weekdays at 10am. I never get why people will pay for DVDs of shows that are on tv anyways. It's like buying the Seinfeld DVDs; there's about 4 episodes on various stations every day.

The war was over years ago, Saddam was defeated. This is now an occupation of a country with internal political factions that don't like each other.

It's reverse psychology, they want a continuation of Bush's policies that have allowed them to maintain and increase their influence on the world stage. They figure Obama will reestablish American prestige and partnerships and be more effective against them. In their view, why change what works for them.

The first time I saw him was on the Tonight Show when he was doing Al Sleet, the hippy dippy weatherman. It's tough seeing all the comics I loved as a kid dieing off. Dick Martin from Laugh In, Rodney Dangerfield, now Carlin. I suppose Don Rickles and Jerry Lewis will be going soon too.

The rule is it has to be a little bigger than the one her last friend to get engaged got. It's all about flashing the bling to her friends, and if her's has a smaller diamond than a friend who got engaged before her, it shows that you don't love her as much.

Given that the candidates had similar views on most policy issues, if Obama had been getting something like 40% of the woman vote at the start of the primaries, and then woman thought she had a real chance and switched to giving Hillary 90%+ of the woman vote, then it would be sexism. Hillary supporters could vote for McCain for a number of reasons; military and foreign policy experience, they don't believe Obama has enough overall experience, they may be moderates who are concerned that Obama may be too liberal, and given that they don't know alot about him they may be concerned about what influence the people who he's associated with at his church have had on him.

I said during the primaries that the Obama supporters were falsely accusing the Clinton campaign of racism, and that Obama was getting 90%+ of black support because he was black, which in itself was a form of racism against the white candidate, but in the end all it got me was being falsely accused of being racist myself for pointing out those facts, so good luck with your argument.

Cindy McCain is starting to act like a Stepford Wife, just parroting the same lines over and over. And this was after Laura Bush came to Michelle Obama's defense and said she understands that Obama was talking about being proud of the political system. You would think that Cindy would be more sensitive given how her family was attacked by Bush operatives in 2000.

In case you're interested, round 1 of the NHL draft is tonight at 7pm on Versus. The Sabres have the 13th and 26th picks in the first round. Rumor is the Sabres would like to move up into the top of the draft to get a premium defenseman, and are looking to trade Afiniganov as part of a deal.

How's your Ostrich Inc. buggywhip business doing? Are you getting alot of customer calls on the partyline on your dial phone? Keeping track of your sales on your abacus?

So in your view nobody can repent for their past mistakes and make amends by making positive contributions to society. Ever heard the story of the apostle Paul and the road to Damascus? Look it up.

But in ten years the technology to do it through solar and wind power may progress to the point where it is a practical mass production solution. Honda has a pretty good track record of making the right business decisions, and their president is confident that the infrastructure to support the cars will grow as consumer demand does. People used to laugh at the Japanese and their funny little cars back in the 70s too.

It will just prolong the dependence on old technology and delay the investment in new.

People had to assume we could fly to the moon too until they tried it.

Let's not forget that the steam engine started out with an efficiency of only 3%, and internal combustion engines were similar. The reason why these technologies became so efficient was because of the ongoing production and research fueled by increased consumer demand. In the case of internal combustion, current cars have had a century to mature. I don't doubt hydrogen will be the same way, it has to start somewhere, which is why I applaud Honda's future thinking move to produce a hydrogen powered car. They say it will take about 10 years to become mass produced, about the same amount of time it would take to yield results from new offshore and Alaskan oil drilling. As hydrogen cars begin to take hold of a larger segment of the market, over time this will push the development of new technologies and materials. I think it's inevitable that the efficiencies of both the production and use of hydrogen will approach those of the current internal combustion engine, and costs will obviously also go down, even if this is the far off future. We can either keep doing things the same old way or start the transition to new now.

You may have known this all along, but now it has been demonstrated scientifically: bikinis make men stupid. This month’s issue of the Journal of Consumer Research features a paper titled “Bikinis Instigate Generalized Impatience in Intertemporal Choice,” which is a way of saying that men don’t make good decisions while checking out pretty girls in bikinis. So a man who is aroused literally narrows his view of the world. When we’re thinking about sex, pretty much all we can think about is sex. So a man might do things he would not otherwise do (spending an hour surfing a Jennifer Love Hewitt fan site), or may behave in a seemingly irresponsible manner (skipping the condom). In fact, studies have shown that sexy ads don’t really make men remember the product. We’re so lasered in on the sexy stuff, we don’t care what brand of beer it is, or how long it takes the car to go from zero to 60. For the whole story... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25197962/

Here's a listing of teaching jobs in the Syracuse - Central New York area. http://jobs.syracuse.com/careers/jobsearch...ates;view=Brief

So you'd like to go back to the pre-union 19th century practices of no labor or environmental laws, and to hell with the worker's health and safety. I've heard firsthand accounts from engineers who have had to go to China to support manufacturing that was moved from the U.S. seeing workers with no protective equipment dumping barrels of toxic chemicals down the water drains as a routine practice. Instead of lowering our standards, our government should be pushing for higher standards in other countries, and the companies that have moved their factories from here to there but still enjoy the legal protections of the U.S. should be held accountable.

Here we go again with the name calling. If they own a small business they will get a tax break. You asked and I gave you an answer. I can lead a horse to water...

I'm not talking about small businesses, which will get tax breaks from either party. I'm talking about large corporations, like UTC-Carrier in particular as an example. They complained about the taxes, so the state offered them tax breaks and utility cost breaks. Then they complained about the union costs. So the union offered them concessions that would allow the already profitable Syracuse manufacturing operations to be even more profitable. The company came back and said no thanks, we're moving the manufacturing operations to China and Singapore because they can make even more money there. I could see if they were losing money, but it was a profitable operation and the Carlyle Compressor division I worked with was the most productive of all Carrier's plants worldwide. So over 500 people lost their jobs, and of course there was a ripple effect on all the suppliers and local businesses. How do I know this? Because I was working there as a salaried employee when it happened. And the salaried employees had already made a 10% salary giveback as well as no raise for a couple of years. But UTC continues to want American tax breaks. Give ME a break.