Gaza needs a Wal-Mart

The latest aggression by Israel toward Gaza is simply deplorable. The more I read about Israel and write about it, the more I dislike the countries policies. It makes me further question the need to support them, because clearly they are pretty good at keeping people down without our vast knowledge on the topic.

As long as people in Gaza are desperate they will look to people (like Hamas) for swift action. Any road map to peace needs to give Palestinians a reason to have hope. Simply put: they need a Wal-Mart, and no I’m not joking.

One of the best ways to improve the situation is to give the people steady regular access to supplies, as recent events prove. Further an injection of jobs certainly wouldn’t hurt either. This can’t happen at the local level because at one point or another Israel will close the boarders preventing supplies coming though killing any business upstarts. But, if a western company (like Wal-Mart) came in with its corporate lobbying power I’m sure some deal could be worked out.

If people had jobs, necessary supplies, and some consumer goods confidence would go up which would hurt support for extremists. Bottom line: if you cage people like dogs without food and other supplies, they will act just like a hungry cornered dog. You get more with a bag of groceries, then you do a tighter cage.

GOP Delegate Count Tools

I started this post many moons ago to track the delegate count for the GOP. Obviously as time went on the chart got bigger and more unmanageable. So rather then posting the actual detailed delegate count here I am giving you my fair readers the tools to get the most up to date and accurate information possible.

For a good basic overview of the state of the delegates and who they are going to I recommend RealClearPolitics.com, for the GOP scroll down the page past the DNC results. It shows total numbers and State by State results, it even gives a very basic view of un-pledged delegates.

Due to the fact that the notion of un-pledged delegates has been largely ignored when it come to the GOP I am also offering a more detailed source for you hard hitters out there. If you want a very detailed delegate source for both the pledged and un-pledged I recommend thegreenpapers.com, they have some great coverage over there!

As always if you have any question just leave a comment and I’ll gladly help if I can.

Democratic Delegate Count Tools for Voters

I started this post many moons ago to track the delegate count for the DNC. Obviously as time went on the chart got bigger and more unmanageable. So rather then posting the actual detailed delegate count here I am giving you my fair readers the tools to get the most up to date and accurate information possible.

For a good basic overview of the state of the delegates and who they are going to I recommend RealClearPolitics.com, The Democratic results are at the top of the page. It shows total numbers and State by State results, it even gives good coverage of Super Delegates.

If you would like to know more about what Super Delegates are check out this great, well written article from MSNBC.

There is also a good all encompassing article on Wikipedia that I have found useful.

Lastly if you want to know WHO the Super Delegates are, there is a complete list provided by the Washington Post. It’s organized by State and if your thinking about writing a letter to affect the convention these are the people you want to contact. Note that most of these people are public servants and should care what their constituents are saying.

As always if you need any help or insight just drop me a comment and I will respond.

I’m Proud!…of Kucinich?! A Message To All Long Shots.

Being a Libertarian i know what its like to support a long shot. Non-mainstream candidates often have a very hard up hill battle. Just getting on the ballot is a hard task and can often suck up the majority of the campaigns meager funds. Then there is the advertising, as well as building a good support network of campaign offices. Really its not easy if you choose to stand for a higher moral fiber by not selling your soul to PAC’s, special interests, and lobbyists. All that work and you’ll be lucky if you pull the 5% needed to get some extra funds from the government next time around. Really the only one to do it in modern times was Ross Perot, and heck he is a very, very rich man.

Due to these insurmountable odds I can never fathom why the networks and major campaigns always play bully. They exclude candidates even during the primary debates, do everything to make it hard to get on the ballot, and then poke fun at any even remotely quirky ideas the long shot guy has had like some kind of child. As if some of their ideas aren’t totally off the wall too, they can just afford the air time to spin it so people will believe their stupidity is really intelligence.

Now I know what everyone is thinking: Nader. Nader split the vote in 2000 which caused a long shot candidate to ruin the election for Al Gore. In that one instance David beat Goliath and we all got screwed….right?…WRONG. In 2000 Nader failed to even pull a FRACTION of a percentage point, for a whopping total of popular votes less then 3 million FOR THE ENTIRE COUNTRY, and NO electoral votes. Now seriously people if your running for office in an election that covers the entire U.S. and you winning hinges on less than three million popular votes…pretty much you’ve failed to deliver a message worth a damn. In 2000 (and 2004 for that matter) we were forced to pick between dumb and dumber and many choice option C, and thats their right.

I do have a big complaint about long shot campaigns though, they actually think they can behave like a front runner and expect everything to be handed to them. Whats worse they don’t turn lemons to lemon aid and stand up for them selves. They get excluded and they whine about it instead.

If your a little guy and your backed up against a wall you have two choices: 1) Stand by and get eaten by the wolves wasting your time and the time of your supporter, or 2) Draw a line in the sand and fight like a bastard. Well the Vegan from Ohio has chosen the later and im hoping that others are taking notes!

After being invited to a debate in Nevada that was then rescinded the same week, Dennis Kucinich threw down the gauntlet and sued….and WON. Just like in NH where he demanded a recount he has continued to fight back in the name of the little guy.

In many ways everyone that has ever supported a long shot should give Dennis a big thank you because hes showing us how it should be, and has to be done to get noticed in a land where money talks and ideals are worthless.

Whats more in the notion of “turning lemons in to lemon aid” I propose that all the long shots running Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, Duncan Hunter, and Mike Gravel do a bit of excluding themselves and have a series of debates to highlight why America should give a damn about their campaigns. I think it will make the front runners crap themselves, and that alone is worth it.

Can You Here Me Now?…No?…Crap!

So have you been seeing these commercials about “TV’s Switch to digital”…ya me too, but this is much, much bigger. Just ask the thousands of Onstar Clients, and Cell Phone Users in rural areas come February.

For years there has been a huge push to go all digital, and vicariously to get rid of the analog band. Heck even Am/Fm are getting into it as they try to regain some of the ground lost to satellite radio. But with cell phones the conversion date is much sooner, much more abrupt, much less deliberately planned out, and in the end will hurt service for hundreds of thousands.

The date is February 18th of this year,….yes next month…. On that date providers can begin shutting down their analog networks at any pace they see fit. It could be gradual to insure enough digital service can fill the gap, or FLICK! Your screwed.

Cell Phone wise this affects rural customers the most. I think of a friend of mine that lives in the Berkshires of Western Mass who intentionally sets his phone to roam on analog because its the only way he can get a signal good enough to make a call. He is screwed, no two ways about it. Now there is the argument that without the heavy analog singles in the air digital service will improve because it is less constrained, again this doesn’t apply if your in an area that has no towers. Lastly those heavy analog singles come in handy during storms too.

Its not just cell phones that this is affecting but also any service that rents usage on the same networks. Services like OnStar, and GPS devices.

But thats not even the worst one, the worst one affects some of the most vulnerable people in our society: The Elderly. All of those push button first response systems unless hard wired run on analog signals.

So please for your convenience, your safety, and the safety of those you love check out the websites of all wireless devices you use and even call the companies if you have to. This change over WILL happen but you shouldn’t be caught by surprise and without a plan.

***A correction was made to the post to exclude the Lojack Car Security system as it has come to my attention and i have since confirmed that it operates on a totally different band.

John Granville

So I have been sitting on this for a bit hoping to see some more coverage that will give me more sources and more information, clearly that is not going to happen. The death of John Granville a U.S. Diplomat in Sudan and his driver Abdelrahman Abbas Rahama saddened me as it shows how unstable Sudan really is.

The Sudanese foreign Ministry said that the attack was an isolated incident and was not political in nature. Clearly if your read even the limited amount of press that has been released you can see that it was a coordinated attack, that had to have been planned.

The sad part is that this is getting almost no play in the major news outlets because of the primaries. This happened on the 1st of this month and i have only found three articles in this time that werent just repeats of the same wire report.

On the 4th th AP announced plans for a 4 man FBI probe into the incident was going to start that day. The article also says that the Sudanese government will fully cooperate with the probe.

There have also been unauthenticated reports that a group called Partisans of Monotheism (English translation,AKA Ansar Al-Tawhid) is taking responsibility for the attack. Apparently this is a group no one has herd of. I was only able to find one article on this groups possible involvement and its over at CNN.

What i find bad is that i can find no updates since the announcement of the probe and most of the major networks are not covering it. Whats worse is that when and if they do they simply read the wire report. To that end I would like to applaud the AP, Al Jazeera, and the L.A. Times for being the only news outlets to really look into this.

Comments

Every now and then i receive a comment that is totally not worth posting, but at the same time i feel the need to write a post about it. Now i receive several comments daily but because this is my blog not all of them make it up here. When deciding if a comment makes the muster i ask myself three questions:

1. Does the comment directly engage the post.

2. Is the comment something that will add to the blog or is it just a statement that can’t be engaged.

3. Is it totally out there b/s?

Now because its election season there are certain candidates i only write about when absolutely necessary because I know they have a legion of crazy people for supporters that have some pretty nutty ideas. One such person is Mike Gravel and since he is really the only one left that has supporters that leave ridiculous comments this is an open letter to them:

Dear Mike Gravel Supports,

I understand that your guy is having a rough go of it and is being excluded, I think that just bites. I also understand that he never really had a strong campaign to begin with and that most of the media including bloggers are totally ignoring him.

Here at the WingWidget I try to cover things from all angles so i feel that any candidate that is running a nation wide campaign deserves press time including Gravel. There for i say to you his supporters as long as he is on the ballot i will cover him, he may not be a huge part of the article but he will be in it. I do have a request though.

Please stop the comments about “9/11 truth” and if your going to post links please explain them and your motivations for posting them in the first place. The whole 9/11 conspiracy thing is a fringe belief that i do not subscribe to and will not support. Also if you are supporting a fringe candidate like Gravel having mindless links that most people wont click on does not help your guys chances. Instead i invite you to write comments that are empowered, on point, and really highlight WHY anyone should give Mike Gravel the time of day this late in the game.

Thank You,

Your Red Eyed Insomniac

The Format war Appears Over

So it looks like Blu-Ray is going to be the next generation of entertainment as more and more studios are defecting from  HD-DVD.  This is good for Sony because  they have been getting their ass kicked (can you say “Wii”), they really needed a win.

This is a fire I have been staying away from. I mean going to slap down money for a peice of technology that has only a 50% survival rate for the near future just seemed like bad odds to me. Further Ive never really understood why people dump so much money into their home theater, as if missing a few pixels is really that earth shattering.

What really concerns me is now that this appears to be settled what happens to regular DVD’s? Are they going to go the way of VHS in a matter of a couple years? Does that mean us people that just want to watch a movie and don’t care about extra features or if i can make out Eve Mendes’s cute little mole will have to go buy all new equipment?

Its no wonder digital piracy of movies is so popular, the average Joe can’t afford to keep up.

Another Good Movie: The Machinist

So i’ve really been on a psychological thriller kick and this one really fit the bill!

This one staring Christian Bale is about a guy who hasn’t slept in a year and looks like he hasn’t eaten for about as long. You spend the whole movie trying to figure out the different twists and turns all the while the movie is dropping bread crumbs to the truth. At the same time he see the main characters reality warp out of control.

I thought i had this ending pinned twice and was completely wrong both times. A great movie, heck i even watch it again to fully grasp all the stuff i was just speculating at the first time. order it on your Netflix pronto!

And This is a Good thing?………..

So today former presidential candidate John Kerry formally threw his support behind Barack Obama. Now I ask is this really a good thing for Obama?

Sure Kerry still has some of his former campaign network intact that can be at Obama disposal but is it worth it to be associated with Kerry? Kerry did lose the presidential race, and has since damaged his image both within and outside the party. Indeed he’s often seen breaking with the party and having unproductive spats over nothing with fellow Democrats on the hill.

Kerry is after all not Al Gore, there is no question that Kerry lost his bid and that he ran a terrible campaign. When Al Gore threw his support behind Howard Dean in 2004 he still held considerable clout being a former nominee (and incumbent VP) that many Dem’s felt got gilted in 2000. Indeed Gore could affect even this campaign for those reasons. It was no mistake that even after his campaign imploded in 2004 that Dean was able to secure a high level position in the party, he had made all the right friends.

For Obama after his tight loss I think that Kerry may do more harm than good.