Build your own 3D printed Android.

Via Endadget, Cubify allows you to build a customized Android with different accessories, in three sizes (~2.5" / ~3.0" / ~3.5").  Mind you, it's quite a bit more expensive than buying the standard Android bots that you can get from the Dead Zebra shop, but it's always more expensive to make one-offs than to use mass production techniques.

An eulogistic homage to Google News Badges.

Google, in its typical fashion of trying new things then killing off things that didn't work out as expected, is killing Google News Badges.

Here's my roll of badges, as a lasting memory of what was.  Okay, to be honest, I didn't actually pay attention to them after the first few months.

Good bye, Google News Badges.

Don't do this.

It is NEVER okay to mount a sign by bolting through the text / logo.

Ate my first Dogwood fruit today.

I've seen the fruit before, but I had never made the connection between the flowering Dogwood (Kousa) trees with the brightly orange-red fruit.  Then last week I recalled that the tree around the corner from me, which had orange-red fruit hanging, was a Dogwood.

A light bulb went off above my head.

So of course, I searched online, and learned that it was edible.

Today, I tried my first Dogwood fruit, and here's my take:

The inside tastes great (something similar to Persimmons (Kaki)), but the outer skin is bitter like bitter squash -- suck the fruit out and trash the rest, including the cherry-sided pit.

About that Apple bounce-back patent.

Did anyone else notice that the updated NYT app has a bounce-back with a blue glow?  I wonder if Apple will now sue the New York Times...or did the NYT developers do this on purpose to make a statement?

Notice the blue glow, when pulled down.

You're in trouble when: Your campaign starts announcing your phone call schedule.

This morning, the media tells us that Mitt Romney will be placing a phone call today to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his several decades-old friend.

Also on the phone call agenda for Friday:

• 11:59 am - Jimmy Johns;
• 12:40 pm - RNC Reince Priebus;
• 12:42 pm - Daddy Warbucks aka Sheldon Adelson;
• 1:00 pm - Ann;
• 1:30 pm - Daddy Warbuckies aka Koch Brothers;
• 2:15 pm - Nutty Newt;
• 2:16 pm - Rick Shoot-em-up Perry;
• 2:17 pm - Mr. 9-9-9;
• 2:18 pm - Ron Ayn Paul;
• 2:19 pm - Fox News;
• 2:30 pm - Washington Times;
• 2:45 pm - Breitbart;
• 3:00 pm - Ann;
• 3:15 pm - Baskin-Robbins;
• 4:15 pm - Fox News;
• 4:30 pm - Washington Times;
• 4:45 pm - Breitbart;
• 5:00 pm - Ann;
• 5:30 pm - Olive Garden;
• 7:00 pm - Ann;
• 9:00 pm - Baskin-Robbins;
• 11:00 pm - Ann.

---

PS. I hope people understood that the phone call agenda list was satire.

PAC-12 Week 5 predictions.

At least I got the upset of the week correct -- Oregon State beat UCLA in Pasadena.  Of course with a week off and lots of game film, I don't think it was that much of a stretch that the Beavers could handle the Bruins.

Last week: 4 - 1

Overall: 22 - 16

I think this is the week that each team's identity is established.  Was Colorado's win at WSU a blip?  Is Cal stronger than it has shown so far?  Can Oregon and Stanford win on the road against PAC-12 opponents?

The upset of the week: I suspect Washington saw how poorly Josh Nunes performed for three quarters against USC, and will know how to dial up the run defense and force Nunes to win the game.  I also think that Stanford can't defend Price, a mobile quarterback, while it does well against immobile quarterbacks who stand in the pocket.

Week 5
Visitor		Home
Oregon	38	WSU	17
ASU	21	Cal	31
Oregon St.	21	Arizona	24
UCLA	24	Colorado	21
Stanford	21	Washington	28

You're in trouble when: Fox News won't report that you're down in their poll.

This is rather amusing.  Fox News' front page includes three articles covering the results of their latest poll, but only one of them talks about the presidential poll.  Can you guess which one of the three actually bothers to mention the poll numbers of the presidential race?

Maybe it's because they don't want you to know that for three straight weeks, Obama has held a 5 percentage point lead over Mitt Romney?

Better yet, the front page also highlights an opinion piece, "The Truth About 2012 Polls", which asserts that Mitt Romney is actually ahead, even as you hide your own poll showing that Barack Obama is ahead!

Are you laughing out loud like I am?

The illegal war to disenfranchise voters.

I want to tell you about a subtle, anti-American trend to violate the US Constitution's 15th Amendment and the 1965 Voting Rights Act (that was renewed for another 25 years, in 2006 by the US Senate on a 98 - 0 vote.)

First of all, keep in mind that at the end of last month (August 2012), Florida had 11,583,367 registered voters.

1.6% -- In May of this year, Florida officials announced that they suspected as many as 182,000 registered voters were not US citizens; in other words, Hispanics.

0.022% -- In June of this year, Florida officials moved to purge 2,600 people from the list of registered voters, who were thought to be non-citizens; the US Department of Justice stepped in to block their actions.

0.002% -- This month, the DOJ agreed to open up their list of legal citizens to the State of Florida, so that they could find the discrepancies.  The other week, Florida announced that it found 207 illegal registrations.

0.0003% -- That 207 was reduced to 198, and upon checking against the Florida voter database, only 38 people who had registered illegally, had actually ever voted, and of those 38, only 16 had voted twice.

Now think about this.  Had no one stepped in, Florida would have purged 181,802 registered American citizens from their voter rolls, disenfranchising their rights, as guaranteed by the US Constitution, and in direct violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

There is a term, fail-safe, that distinguishes failure that causes no harm, as opposed to failure that results in damages.  If Florida had kept all of those illegally registered voters on the rolls, the elections would have resulted in a fail-safe condition.  If Florida had been allowed to purge that initial 182,000, the elections would have resulted in a complete disaster.

Which side are you on...the fail-safe or the complete disaster?

So I finally figured out my wiggy Nexus7 screen issue.

A while back, my Nexus7 screen was going wiggy, with the bottom showing up at the top and colors and lines screwed up.

It disappeared less than an hour, and after I had factory-reset it (which did not actually help). Then last week, it happened again. And that's when I figured out what it was that was causing the screen to go wiggy on me: high humidity.

You see in both cases, it occurred while I was using the tablet -- reading -- after about 40 minutes in the tub, relaxing in hot water.  Ahh.  Baths are awesome.  But not with the Nexus7 after 30 minutes or so.

Since then, the tablet screen reverted back to normal with zero problems.  Issue solved!  Kinda bummed though, that I can't just sit in the tub and read. :P

You're in trouble when: You admit your charge of conflict of interest might be partisan.

Enjoy the laugh.  Today, in the same breath in which he tells NBC's Brian Williams, "I don’t mean to be terribly partisan, but I kind of am," Mitt goes on to say that a conflict of interest exists when teachers' unions donate to Democrats:

"The person sitting across the table from them should not have received the largest campaign contributions from the teachers union themselves."

I think Mitt is just plain exhausted from campaigning, to jokingly admit openly that he just might, possibly, remote as it may be, though unlikely except in some extremely tiny way, be "terribly partisan".

Mitt, Wall Street and Big Oil called; said they felt compelled to honor your request to avoid conflicts of interest, and have cut off funding from the GOP political machine.

To people who believe Tate didn't catch that ball...

Now you know how Seattle fans felt after Super Bowl XL.  Seattle fans never forgot and five years later the ref apologized.

Bumps in road: What is Mitt's point?

Obama yesterday referred to the rough and messy path towards Democracy in the Middle East, as "bumps in the road".  Today Mitt Romney shot back:

"Bumps in the road?  We had an ambassador assassinated. We had a Muslim Brotherhood member elected to the presidency of Egypt. Twenty thousand people have been killed in Syria. We have tumult in Pakistan and, of course, Iran is that much closer to having the capacity to build a nuclear weapon."

So let's examine each item separately.

"We had an ambassador assassinated."
No one could keep Mitt Romney from visiting the areas affected by Hurricane Isaac, but he couldn't bother asking to be included in the crowd that received the bodies of these Americans who died?  He couldn't be bothered to attend their funerals?  In other words, lives are political volleys for Mitt.  What's he going to do, send in the marines to take over Libya; send in Seal Team 6 to shoot everyone they suspect of being involved?  Mitt's got zero plan, thus he only offers up the opinion that he's upset.

"We had a Muslim Brotherhood member elected to the presidency of Egypt."
Mitt wants to physically intervene or issue threats against a popularly-elected (re: democracy) political body?  I am amused that Mitt Romney is concerned over a political group whose religious affiliation and desire to force its moral tenets onto everyone else, yet does not look to the Republican Party, and see the same issue facing America.  We don't have hippie gun shows, you know?

"Twenty thousand people have been killed in Syria."
Does Mitt want the US to risk life and treasure, against an enemy who has chemical weapons and has threatened to use it against any invaders?  I mean heck, Mitt's been arguing that he'll LOWER his own taxes; he's not even going to pay for the war out of his own pocket!  And are we supposed to give the rebels arms, some of which are Al Qaeda members?

"We have tumult in Pakistan."
Duh.  Pakistan has had coups every decade for the last half-century, and hasn't ever been stable in the last 2000 years.  Tell me something I didn't already know.  I don't understand Mitt's position -- is he saying that we need to wage war in Pakistan?

"Iran is that much closer to having the capacity to build a nuclear weapon."
As many in Israel have noted, Iran has been months away from building a nuclear weapon for the last 8 years.  And as Mitt has said himself, he wouldn't actually draw a red line in a spot that was different from Obama's.  If anything, this could be seen as political baiting between Bibi Netanyahu and Mitt Romney, to force another Iran hostage situation that won Reagan an election by way of his hostage negotiations in 1980.

Mitt's latest gaffe: we should have operable windows on jets.

First, a scary and serious moment: Ann Romney's plane suffered from an electrical fire that caused smoke to fill the plane.  Thank goodness it did not crash!

What followed can only be described as an odd response from Mitt:

"When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous."

Yes Mitt, I wonder why they don't put operable windows on jets?  Okay, maybe I do have to explain why we don't have operable windows on jets:

• An operable window in a jet would depressurize the plane, making it difficult to breathe;
• It tends to want to suck people (and anything else) out of the window because the air velocity outside is much higher than inside;
• You might as well forget about any smoke, because everything will by flying around, hitting you;
• Fires need oxygen, and increasing air flow will only encourage the fire to grow;
• There is oxygen -- those drop down masks, as required in pressurized aircraft.

I'm a bit shocked right now.  I think I'm starting to understand now, why Mitt has no regrets over strapping the dog onto the roof of the station wagon -- he simply doesn't know much about physics and science.

Mitt's got it wrong -- they're NOT tied.

Mitt Romney's been saying lately that the polls show that he and Obama are tied; that's untrue, or at least he's fooling himself.

His premise relies on any single poll showing him within spitting distance -- the margin of error -- of Obama, mind you, some polls show Obama's lead far exceeding their margin of error.

But the margin of error (dependent upon size of sampling compared to size of population, or in this case, the population of eligible voters / likely voters) naturally shrinks as you aggregate all of the polls.

In the aggregate, the polls show that the margin between Obama and Romney exceed the margin of error of a single poll, let alone the polls in aggregate.  If you look at the trend in polls, it clearly shows that Obama has owned September.  If you look at intrade, Romney's quickly losing support.  As most polls have switched over from registered voters to likely voters, these poll numbers seem to be firming up.  While RCP's data does not reflect the daily changes in tracking polls (only a tracking poll's current day numbers), Rasmussen is the only one that has shown Mitt with any hint of a lead in September; again, Rasmussen has a conservative lean and an unusual methodology that differs strongly from all other polls.

I'm sorry if you're a Romney supporter, but his calendar shows that he's scheduled a loss on November 6th.

For your cos play, your passive-aggressive needs, or just because it's kawaiiiii!

I think these things speak for themselves.

Japanese society, stuck in the doldrums of modesty, have come up with passive-aggressive means of showing emotion. And it doesn't hurt that they're kawaii...on women, that is. (Yikes!  On an old, skebe man, it's kowaii!)





...because it's too hard to say, "I like you!"  No seriously, have you watched any anime?  A total reflection on Japanese society.

Whew...averted self-inflicted disaster.

Yesterday I decided I should pop my account and password list onto my Dropbox...of course the file protected by a password.

And then today I realized I forgot what that master password was.   :O

In a matter of 5 minutes I went through five stages of panic.

1. Sudden realization that I might not remember the password.
2. Panic trying all sorts of passwords.
3. Resignation that I have to go back to an old password list that was out of date on a different computer.
4. Resolve to try to remember the master password.
5. Success!

That was a lot of drama for 5 minutes; thank goodness I kept a hint of why I chose this particular password. :D

Mars is a dirty place.

Can't help but notice that those dust storms apparently must have pea-gravel sized objects flying around.  Also, how awesome is it, to have your signature on Mars?

You're in trouble when: You fail to practice what you preach.

I don't think this comes as a huge surprise, but it is amusing.  According to just-released campaign records, The Romney-Ryan campaign borrowed $20M last month, and was in debt by $11M.

So much for practicing the fiscal restraint -- spending only as much as you take in -- that you've been preaching to Americans.

Just wait for it...after the election, the Romney-Ryan campaign will require the assistance of the RNC to provide debt relief; we'll have yet one more mocking point, then (bailouts for the rich).

You're in trouble when: AARP members boo you.

Skip to 0:57.

Mitt's taxes: why a partial 2000 return would matter.

This afternoon, Mitt Romney's campaign released his final 2011 tax returns, among other things.  What was conspicuously missing, was his back tax returns prior to 2010.  Instead, the campaign offered a statement from Price Waterhouse Cooper, the company that prepared Mitt's taxes.  The good news for Mitt's supporters: he paid taxes between 1990 and 2009, averaging 20.1% with the lowest at 13.66% of AGI.

But the PWC statement does not tell us HOW Mitt treated his income from Bain, during the years he said he was out of the loop.  Did he treat it as passive or active?

Obviously, it would be a huge political trap to release any of the returns during the period that he was away.

If his PWC accountants listed his income from Bain as active, it would tend to show that Mitt lied to the American voters, because the converse would otherwise show that PWC misrepresented to the IRS, Mitt's income, and therefore Mitt may have cheated the IRS out of taxes.

If I were part of the Democratic political machine (or the media), I'd push Mitt to release his 2000 tax returns; forget all other years and just focus on 2000 (no amended ones past 2002!)

Quite frankly, Mitt should release his 2000 return; if it showed that he listed Bain as passive income, he wins the rhetoric over the job cuts Bain performed during that period.  In one fell swoop he'd neuter Democratic ads attacking him over American job losses from a result of Bain's actions.

Serious iOS6 Maps problems found!

I've been reading about the iOS6 Maps problem, so I thought I should investigate.  I discovered the problem: Mario got into Apple's Maps app!

Ha, ha...I could not resist. :D

PAC-12 Week 4 predictions.

Took a body blow last week.  I'm laying off picking Colorado and Utah, for the time being.  Colorado probably won't win a single game this year.  Utah just doesn't seem impressive...transition to the PAC-12 not going so well.

Last week: 4 - 6
Overall: 18 - 15

Mild upset of the week: Oregon State over UCLA, with their extra week off to focus on the spread, I like OSU's chances in Pasadena.  I think Rich Rod, installing the spread in Tuscon means that they'll be prepared to defend against it, so it will be a lower-scoring game than most people might think, but Oregon's going to come out on top, at home.

Week 4 Visitor Home Oregon St. 17 UCLA 14 Colorado 6 WSU 40 Cal 13 USC 50 Utah 10 ASU 24 Arizona 30 Oregon 32

Chrome Experiment: Cirque du Soleil's Movi Kanti Revo

Got some time and a computer with a front-facing camera and Chrome?  Try playing around with an experiment between Google and Cirque du Soleil, utilizing HTML5 and CSS3, called Movi Kanti Revo.

First, the music is worth it; second, it's really cool.  You use body / pointing gestures with your camera turned on.  It's not that complicated (this is no Myst); more of a demonstration of what can be done.

MakerBot Replicator 2!

Few things really tempt me to spend money on, and this is one of them.  I haven't yet decided to get it, but this spanking brand new fused-deposit modeling 3D printer takes the hobbyist 3D printing up a big level closer to professional, $10,000 machines.  I don't think I can wait for a selective-laser-sintering 3D printer to get down to this price.

Gone is the CNC laser-cut wood frame, replaced with a powder-coated metal frame; it looks a lot more durable and professional.  Eye-popping WOW!

At $2199 with another $20+ for shipping depending upon your location and your shipping method, it may be more expensive than any other MakerBot printer, but also has a 100 micron (1/256") printing resolution.  That's some serious resolution!

Anyway, check out the video below, and read all about it at MakerBot's site.  I'm going to have to work extra hard to get some cash to get this baby, I think.

Finished watching Season 2 of Walking Dead

Grade: C.

Allow me to explain something about an apocalyptic future.

The world as you know it has gone to pot; the number of walking dead easily outnumbers the living by a 10 - 1 margin or more, and it's just getting worse every second, minute, hour and day.  Living is a struggle, let alone finding any sleep at night when the walkers are most active.  Priorities, people.

You don't spin your wheels asking stupid questions like, "Is this the kind of world we want our children to grow up, in?"  You don't waste your time with the dilemma, "Is it okay to fall in love?"  No one should even think to demand of others, "either you're with us or you're against us."

That is infantile nonsense.

Season 2 was excrutiatingly slow, filled with too many trite confrontations, and far too many soliloquies.  Everyone's character became more annoying in Season 2.

To show you how dull Season 2 was, here's a list of character themes that should help guide you:

• Glenn needed assurance that love is a good thing;
• Dale became the king of moral soliloquies; 
• Shane and Rick went into overdrive on whose penis was bigger (and who had the weakest moral conscience); 
• Lori showed us she has no backbone of her own without a man (seriously, the writers purposely made her out to be dependent); 
• T-Dog was mostly transparent and about as useful as a can of beans (the writers treated him as a token black man -- very disappointing);
• Andrea became self-righteous;
• Daryl suffered from an epiphany that he was all on his own, except of course, he stuck around and might just be the most useful person in the group;
• Carol magically transformed overnight into a woman with a backbone;
• Carl is all over the map: didn't shed a tear when someone died; wants to be a killing machine like the adults; chickens out; finally commits to killing; much, much later cries about someone getting killed.

It's as if there were all new writers on board for Season 2 -- and true enough, after the fact, I checked and many of the writers were replaced.  Terrible.

Still, I liked the new characters introduced (and survived to the next season): Maggie, Beth and Hershel.  I just have one question: If Georgia is full of zombies every f'ing where you turn, why are you still staying in Georgia?

I think I'm being generous in giving Season 2 a C; I've never been so disappointed in a second season of any show that I thought was absolutely fabulous in its premier season.

---

So let me tell you how things would end up in my world.

If we was stuck in the middle of the country, we'd be grabbing hybrid vehicles like the Ford C-Max, filling them up with supplies such as solar panels, acid batteries and especially swords, then hauling ass to the coast.  At the coast we'd search for the best, largest navigable ship that we could use to escape in a pinch, and use it as a home base, hopefully near one of those natural gas facilities.

We'd tie down ships two-deep so that we would limit points of contact to the land.  On the top deck, we'd seal the deck with plastic liner, fill it in with dirt, and use it as a growing field.  Those solar panels would be mounted along the mast, and would power a reverse-osmosis water filtration, among other things.

If need be, we could cut anchor on both ships and call it Splitsville and onto another port, or even drop anchor half a mile off the coast.

Once home base was established, we'd organize mass walking dead massacres using the same tactics native-Americans used to take down herds of buffalo, among others.  We'd then haul their carcasses to form a wall of stench on land about half a mile in diameter, and hand-tie some of them to a gated fence.

Pushing out sideways along the coast then inland, year by year the perimeter would slowly be expanded.

We'd survive and grow...unlike the schmucks in Season 2 who seem to suffer setback after setback, drama upon drama.

The biggest, baddest moochers in America?

The conservative Tax Foundation issued a map two years ago, of states and the number of people who paid zero taxes.

State	% Filers with no liability	Rank (Worst)
Mississippi	45%	1
Georgia	41%	2
Arkansas	41%	3
New Mexico	40%	4
Alabama	40%	5
South Carolina	40%	6
Louisiana	39%	7
Texas	39%	8
Florida	39%	9
Idaho	39%	10
Tennessee	39%	11
North Carolina	38%	12
Utah	38%	13
Arizona	37%	14
Kentucky	37%	15

Note: colors are based on 2012 polls.  (Florida is a tossup)

Are you shocked?  I am.  I'm shocked that the conservative Tax Foundation hasn't tried to hide this.

Full Mitt video posted: Things get WORSE for Mitt.

Mitt last night suggested, awkwardly, that the whole video should come out.  I think he might regret his request.

Mother Jones obliged and has posted the entire video (in two parts).  After watching both and straining to hear the questions being asked, there are certainly more questions and eyebrows now, that before:

• In the first video at 2:12 and again at 4:30, it is clear that these donors are foreign-born.  Two questions automatically come up:
• Was this a superPAC fundraiser where the names of people are hidden from the public?
• Are these two donors legal citizens of the United States, or are we witnessing a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act?
• Mitt disturbingly speaks about his desire to find a political wedge to exploit, with regards to Iran and hostage taking, a la 1980 and the botched Delta forces rescue.
• Is this why Bibi Netanyahu is trying to push Obama to draw a red line?
• Is there any question remaining about why Mitt is using the same consultants who worked for Netanyahu's political races?
• Mitt contradicts himself, by attacking Obama for pitting one American against another, then about one minute later, attacks the "47%" and says that they need to learn to be self-sufficient, adding that he's not concerned with them.
• At first Mitt thinks the equity markets will go down in October if they sense Obama is going to win.  Almost immediately after that, he demurs, saying that the opposite might occur and that he has no way of knowing how the markets will react.  The second contradiction of Mitt, by Mitt, for Mitt.
• One donor complained about a lack of transparency and the lack of oomph with regulators (suggesting laying off all SEC workers), though he doesn't mention about Republicans who blocked the DISCLOSE Act.  Mitt completely ignored the question, and instead talked about how to get people who voted for Obama to vote for him.  Fascinating.  I guess we can speculate that Mitt likes to have things hidden, including his donor lists.
• He slammed SNL, suggesting that a candidate going on SNL doesn't look "presidential".  That's okay, because all it does is encourage SNL to make you look less "presidential" than before.

Part I

Part II



Snub SNL, get mocked more, not less.

PSA: Stop using IE.

Are you able to manage your computer and settings, such that you can follow along this tiny snippet of instructions to work around IE's (v.7 - 9) current vulnerability?

Deploy the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit
Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) is a utility that helps prevent vulnerabilities in software from successfully being exploited by applying in-box mitigations such as DEP to applications configured in EMET.

At this time, EMET is provided with limited support and is only available in the English language. For more information, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 2458544.

Configure EMET for Internet Explorer from the EMET user interface

To add iexplore.exe to the list of applications using EMET, perform the following steps: 

1. Click Start, All Programs, Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit, and EMET 3.0.   

2. Click Yes on the UAC prompt, click Configure Apps, then select Add. Browse to the application to be configured in EMET. 

For 32-bit installations of Internet Explorer the location is:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe 

Note For 32-bit systems, the path is c:\program files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe 

For 64-bit installations of Internet Explorer the location is:
C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe 

3. Click OK and exit EMET.

 If that snippet looked like a foreign language, you might jut want to take security blogger Brian Krebs' advice:

"Using a non-IE browser such as Chrome, Firefox, Opera or Safari is a far safer approach, at least until Microsoft releases a proper patch for this flaw."

Every time you start up Chrome, it automatically checks for the most current versions, downloads then installs it.  Chrome may have its own list of vulnerabilities, but they are far fewer because of built-in security measures (which are included in the soon to be released IE 10 (w/ Win8) -- sandboxing).

Note that, even the German government is instructing people to stop using IE.

Mitt Romney has been swift-boated......by Mitt Romney.

Summed up in a single tweet by Joe Schwenk:

I asked Mr.P why he was in such a bad mood last night & he said,"That stupid speech Romney made just cost me a lot of money. We are screwed"
— Joe Schwenk (@HamptonsBorn) September 18, 2012

Mitt said the 47~49% who are voting for Obama, didn't pay taxes (false assertion, by the way), and he won't concern himself with them.  So who are these people who don't pay taxes?  Seniors.

As Bloomberg's Ramesh Ponnuru points out:

Yet senior citizens -- who benefit from federal programs, on average, far more than younger people -- have become more Republican over that same period. They actually voted for John McCain over Obama in 2008 by a slightly higher margin than they did for George W. Bush over John Kerry in 2004.

Thus it turns out, the largest bloc of non-taxpaying Americans, probably voted Republican in the last two elections!

By 10:00 am (west coast), Mother Jones' story was gaining steam on Google+.

And in the latest videos, Mitt openly disparages Palestinians as "not wanting to see peace anyway".  As Richard Armitage (deputy Secretary of State under GWB) told Bloomberg:

"It’s difficult to criticize the president and his Middle East policy on the one hand, and then suggest, on the other hand, that the best you can do is kick the ball down the street."

Finally, not to be outdone, Mitt explains that his foreign policy on Iran centers on preventing Iran from getting fissile material to hand out to Hezbollah, to be used as a dirty bomb in Chicago.  The only problem is, while an explosive nuclear device needs fissile material (and something to start the chain reaction), a dirty bomb does not.  A dirty bomb -- one that is simply, highly radioactive -- can be culled from industrial sources, and is used differently.  Oops for Romney!

So there you go: Mitt Romney has been swift-boated....by Mitt Romney.

---

Update:

William Kristol: "Romney seems to have contempt not just for the Democrats who oppose him, but for tens of millions who intend to vote for him."

David Brooks: "Romney knows nothing about ambition and motivation. The formula he sketches is this: People who are forced to make it on their own have drive. People who receive benefits have dependency. But, of course, no middle-class parent acts as if this is true. Middle-class parents don’t deprive their children of benefits so they can learn to struggle on their own."

Warp Drive. A future reality?

Diagram of space-time distortion.

Talk about exciting: Space.com notes that physicists now think that warp drive (traveling faster than the speed of light) can be feasibly turned into reality!

Cool, yes?  Now if only I could live 100 years to see this happen!

Video: Romney tells donors what he really thinks about half of America.

Mother Jones has received and posted (via Youtube), a series of videos taken from an event with donors, and let's just say he's probably going to regret what he said.

"My job is not to worry about those people [Obama voters]."

Well there goes the campaign; Mitt Romney exposed for his disdain for people who do not wish to vote for him; if you're not with him, he doesn't give a damn about you.

Maybe you weren't clear on Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's intentions with his recent actions.  If there was any doubt, rest assured Mitt admitted that he's using the same political race consultants that worked for Netanyahu.  (I wonder if there's an FCPA violation?)

"They do races all over the world...They work for Bibi Netanyahu in his race.  So they do these races and they see which ads work, and which processes work best."

 But here's the kick in the gut moment that shows you how boastful (and egotistical) Mitt Romney really is.

"Without actually doing anything, we'll actually get a boost in the economy [from simply winning the race]."

 Wow.  Talk about full on contempt for half of America.

Mother Jones has promised more videos later...Mitt's in deep.

Here's just one:

Liz Cheney is granted far too much cred.

I just finished watching this past This Week. Not Gwen Ifill, not General Wesley Clark, not Jonathan Karl stood, not even George Will stood with Liz Cheney's assertion that Mitt Romney's attacks re: Egypt were politically smart.  Actually, they (including George Will) more or less disagreed with Liz the entire show -- George Will is now openly and routinely questioning Mitt Romney's statements.

"He's attempted to appease our enemies, the Iranians, for example, the Russians." -- Liz Cheney

As you can see, Liz Cheney subscribes to the 2012-is-actually-1992 theory that Russians are bad.  As for Iranian appeasement, I thought it humorous that she would actually later mention Stuxnet; is she not aware of her cognitive dissonance?

"The one effective program that we may have had in place that would have been able to slow or stop that nuclear program, the Stuxnet cyber warfare activity...members of the president's national security team leaked to them. So this -- this president's record is clearly abysmal." -- Liz Cheney

Liz Cheney seems oblivious that Stuxnet was just ONE known virus that was targeted at Iran; there have been several, as noted in David Sanger's book.  And if you've kept up with technology news, a few others have been released since the book came out.  She actually conflated Stuxnet's well-known existence with her prior speculation of the source's leak, as proof of an administration with a poor foreign record; how's that for irony?!?

[An aside: If you want to track the Stuxnet story and the viruses related to it, simply google, "Stuxnet + Wired".  You can be more informed than Liz Cheney, by simply performing this single search, and reading the resulting Wired articles!]

Liz Cheney has proved herself to be just another wannabe Mitt Romney surrogate, that against all in-house criticism, latched onto a sinking ship and won't let go.

---

Update: Boom. Wired outlined today, several more viruses that are related to Stuxnet, as exposed by Symantic and Kaspersky. Just more proof that Liz Cheney should keep her mouth off subjects that she has limited understanding of.

Bingiton...where's my xBox?

You lost bad, 4-1.  Where's my xBox?

Actually, I figured out how to beat the search engine anonymization through three different ways, but I'm not telling!

To show that I've figured out how to beat the search engine anonymization, I took the test again, this time to make it 5 for 5, in favor of Google.

And again, 5 for 5 for Google.

Ha ha! Smarter than a Bing engineer! If they offered me a free Surface tablet with Windows 8 Pro AND an xBox 360 with Kinect, I'd let them in on the secret.  Maybe.  :D

Oh, and by the way, if you observe your search results closely, you might come to the same conclusion that I did: Bing engineers cheated a little.  It is within their cheating, that I could discern one means of beating their anonymization efforts.

For Republicans it's 1992, not 2012.

• Previously Mitt Romney has said that Russia is our number one geopolitical foe.
• Today Fox News' Liz Cheney said that Obama apologized for Czechoslovakia; too bad there hasn't been a Czechoslovakia since the split to the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.
• Four years ago, John McCain did the same thing, too.
• This past April, one of Mitt's foreign policy advisers, John Lehman, complained that the US hadn't done anything to stop the Soviets from moving into the Arctic.
• Another adviser, Pierre Prosper, also said that the US abandoned missile defense sites in...Czechoslovakia.

The key here, is that Republicans are still keyed into the old USSR in how they think about global threats.  To Republicans, it's 1992 not 2012.

These aren't slips per say, but people wearing blinders.

Alibaba and Aliyun...some thoughts.

For a while, I thought that maybe this dispute between Google, Acer and Alibaba was more about politics than anything else.  It seemed at the time that Google was trying to prevent another case of Amazon from occurring.  But at the same time, I also thought that there was a lot of information Google had not been saying, and that eventually we'd hear the finer details of what the dispute was about.  I was holding off on chiming in on this issue until more details had come out.

We've just reached that point where we now know a good amount of details of what this dispute is all about, thanks to ZDNet and Android Police.  Below follows a summary of those two articles and some background.

It comes down to two issues:

1. Alibaba violated Open Source license requirements.
1. Alibaba has the right to fork Android OS or its own Linux-based OS;
2. Open Source license requirements apply to both OSes;
1. Subsequent works require providing your own work to the public for free;
2. Credit must be given to the original developer, from which you borrowed from;
3. Alibaba claims that Google "doesn't know" what they're talking about, but this seems to point then, to one of two open source license violations;
1. If Google "doesn't know" what's going on inside Alibaba, then Alibaba seems to have held Aliyun as proprietary software, contrary to open source license requirements;
2. It should be clear, if Google has been able to review Aliyun OS, whether or not certain elements were taken from Google;
1. If credit was not retained even though code was borrowed from Google to make apps compatible with Android, then Alibaba violated the terms of the license;
2. If Alibaba used Google code and kept the lines of code that credited Google, then it would be a public indictment of Alibaba's public statements that they had not used Android inside of Aliyun, and would be an indictment of the next point (below).
2. Alibaba's apps store hosts pirated apps.
1. Alibaba's store has apps that were taken directly from Google Play Store;
1. Those apps were not authorized for use by Alibaba;
2. Some of those apps are paid apps, and their owners are being cheated by Alibaba;
3. Several of Google's own apps -- all of which are proprietary -- were stolen;
2. Alibaba used elements of Google's Android (referenced to above issue #1.3.2.2);
1. Days after developers had updated their apps in the Google Play Store, they would also appear in Alibaba's apps store, localized, which of course were done without the developer's knowledge;
2. The speed in which apps were pirated (requiring just localization), indicates that Alibaba had directly built in elements of Android including Android runtime (as Google's Andy Rubin indicated), showing that Alibaba lied.

The bottom line: Alibaba tried to lie in public, and got caught by people other than Google (after Google laid out hints as to Alibaba's lies).  Alibaba has been exposed for piracy...as if anyone would be surprised.  Their primary business is to connect pirated works with global buyers.  Don't believe me?  Check out these special iPads, iPhones and Macbooks.  How about Gucci? Wait a minute, I thought Wigwam socks were made in America?

USC uses cheerleaders to play offensive line against Stanford; loses.

Stanford hit and hit and hit on both sides of the ball; USC was lucky that football is only four quarters.

You will hear about how great Stepfan Taylor was, but except for one play -- for 59 yards, where the PAC-12 officials missed a block in the back tackle -- USC had actually held Stanford to under 3 yards per carry for three quarters.  Eventually, that hitting wore down the mental strength of the Trojans, as the fourth quarter they were easily fooled into playing the run on pass plays, and playing the pass on run plays.

But a game is not three quarters, and USC's offensive line was awful, dank, stink, lousy, horrible, grotesque, crappy, weak, and every derogatory adjective in the dictionary.

The tackles were okay, but the guards and center were just absolutely ugly.  The Stanford defense figured it out at halftime and practically made it their bread and butter to send someone up the middle on a variety of blitzes all second half.

Not all of the blame sits with the offensive line, though; Trojan running backs missed on blocks, too.  And Barkley under center, failed to do a single hard count to help stop the Cardinal nose tackle from hitting the redshirt freshman Cyrus Hobbi; after getting sacked the fourth time, and after seeing his center get bowled over on his back, you'd think Barkley would have mixed it up with the hard counts on consecutive plays.

Some offensive play calls you scratching your head. One perplexing call was to run  the draw-play with just over a minute left in the game, near the 50 yard line...for maybe two yards and a waste of about 15 seconds.  I liked the diversity of passes involving the tight ends and 3rd receiver Nelson Agholor, though.

Bottom line: the defense couldn't hold the game for the offense to win, but in no way could the offense win a tight game in a smash mouth battle.  You can't win a game if you're using cheerleaders as your offensive line, after all.

They should wear skirts during practice this week.

Sometimes life gets busy.

Just not the way you thought it might.

via xkcd.com

The road to perdition is easy.

It is the road to Heaven that's hard.  Try your best.

Damn, what a day.

It was a terribly long day today.

Got up in the morning to drive to a meeting; car battery was dead.  Had to catch a ride back and to.

The struggle then came, trying to pull the battery out so that I could charge it with my plug-in-the-wall charger, which of course was a bit of a problem because the battery in my flashlight was nearly dead and I grabbed the wrong wrench sizes; I went upstairs about three times.

I finally decided to call Les Schwab. Turns out they could come out and for free (because I was only about 10 blocks away!); the only problem was, I'd have to wait -- no complaints believe me, because it was free and did I mention that it was free?  Well, I missed my first chance, when I had to go upstairs and grab a tape measure to verify that the garage door had a 7' clearance.  I waited for just over an hour, but when the guy got here, it started right up with his external battery.

To be clear, I didn't think I'd have to drive it that much to get it started in charging.  I was wrong.  So I went out to have coffee with my BFF.  We got stuck at Starbucks when the car would turn but not start.  We were about 1/4 mile away from her car, so we were starting to walk back, but ran into someone who fortunately had jumper cables.

Reminder to self: BUY JUMPER CABLES AND STORE IN CAR.

Anyway, this great guy -- Jin Park (thanks again!) -- helped us out.  He hooked up his car battery, but it still wouldn't start, even though it was turning.  I started to think maybe it was more than the battery.  Tried it a few more times, and it still wasn't working.  One last time, and after 15 minutes of talking and waiting, it finally worked!

So I drove my BFF to her car, and then proceeded to drive around for over an hour.

I drove to and around Sauvie Island; drove back and over the St. John's Bridge to the Rivergate industrial area, then back to I-5 via Marine Drive; then took I-5 to 26 to the Zoo; then drove the west hills down back to home.

When I got home, I parked backside in, so that if the problem was not resolved and the battery was damaged, it wouldn't be so difficult to replace the battery.  It was already 8:15 pm.

I didn't bother turning the alarm on; I just locked the doors.  Tomorrow I'll start er up and see if it worked.

Cross my fingers.

Mitt's foreign policy on Iran: Just more vagaries.

It's just amazing at the doublespeak Team Mitt is now engaged in.  When asked what Team Mitt would do differently from President Obama on Iran, Mitt's senior foreign adviser Eliot Cohen told NYT's David Sanger that Mitt would have already told Iran that he would not permit them to develop a nuclear weapon and would draw a red line in a different spot than Obama.

Hey, never mind that Obama said in July 2008, "I will take no options off the table in dealing with this potential Iranian threat."

When pushed further, Cohen explained that the line wasn't necessarily where Benjamin Netanyahu would draw it, either.

To paraphrase Mitt's foreign policy on Iran:

Mitt would draw a line, somewhere.  He won't say where, and we don't know when he would draw that line, but we now know that he will eventually draw a line somewhere.

My week 3 PAC-12 predictions.

Last week: 6 - 6
Overall: 14 - 9

I really didn't see all those upsets coming.  :P  Well at least no one else did either, and my ESPN College Pick Em sits comfortably at 95.5%.

Week 3
Visitor		Home
WSU	17	UNLV	20
Cal	24	Ohio St.	23
Tenn Tech	10	Oregon	42
Portland St.	27	UW	35
ASU	35	Missouri	17
USC	45	Stanford	17
Colorado	24	Fresno St.	21
BYU	28	Utah	24
S Carolina St.	6	UA	45
Houston	12	UCLA	42

As you can see, I think Cal and Colorado will step up, but with the loss of Wynn, Utah will lose the Holy War.  I think Cal likes to show up only in the big games, and they will extend the PAC-12's winning streak against the B1G.

What debt problem?

There are a lot of chicken littles running around in the United States, talking about an impending debt crisis due to our exploding debt.  So where's the debt problem?

Okay, some of this data is a few years old, but more or less, the ratios remain the same.

Rank	Country	Debt / GDP ratio (%)
1	Luxembourg	3443
2	United Kingdom	360
3	Sao Tome and Principe	349
4	Netherlands	344
5	Hong Kong	334
6	Belgium	266
7	Guinea-Bissau	259
8	Monaco	240
9	Switzerland	229
10	Portugal	217
11	Burundi	202
12	Austria	200
13	Sweden	187
14	France	182
15	Denmark	180
16	Greece	174
17	Finland	155
18	Congo, Republic of the	155
19	Seychelles	147
20	Latvia	146
21	Germany	142
22	Norway	141
23	Cyprus	129
24	New Zealand	126
25	Congo, Democratic Republic of the	122
26	Hungary	115
27	Comoros	115
28	Ireland	108.2
29	Italy	108
30	United States	103

via Wikipedia

What I learned about some sports reporters: they're full of themselves.

LA Daily News' USC beat writer Scott Wolf got himself banned this morning from USC practices (for two weeks) and from the press box at the next home game.  Before the start of the season, USC requested journalists not to report on player injuries.  Whether out of privacy rules from HIPAA or from a competitive standpoint, the fact of the matter is, USC was playing with 75 scholarship players, of which a handful were walk-ons, and a student-athlete's privacy is important.

(Now mind you, this is the same pattern USC followed with Armond Armstead's injury, which was never fully disclosed, and instead deferred to the Armstead family.  The only way we learned about Armond's true injury, was from the lawsuit his family filed against USC last month -- he had had a mild heart attack.)

Scott Wolf not only ignored this request not to report on player injuries, but he dismissed a specific warning from USC's coach (and presumably the athletic director) not to publish the injury status of a particular player.

(Now, trust me when I tell you, many USC fans hate Scott Wolf to begin with.  I've never really paid attention to Scott Wolf, except when I finally signed up to Twitter (so that I could use Pinterest in the invite-only period), because of the people I was following, his tweets were showing up.  It was then that I noticed that there was a lot of hate for Scott.  Scott's own posts are filled with comments expressing deep hatred of Scott by USC fans...and a loving affection from Bruin fans.)

So of course, sports writers showed their true colors:

Not sure banning reporters from practice is a hot idea. Can end up w/ them digging for stories more troubling than injury reports.
— Bruce Feldman (@BFeldmanCBS) September 12, 2012

Holy shit! Bruce has found the secret to keeping dirt out of the front pages!  NOT!

Kiffin/Sarkisian were assistants for USC teams that had pretty successful run under Carroll, who had no draconian policy re injury reports.
— Gary Klein (@LATimesklein) September 12, 2012

Looks like someone didn't bother to read The Art of War.

Coaches don't have to tell reporters anything. That's their right. But to punish someone for reporting something that's true? Not cool.
— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) September 12, 2012

Well I suppose if you think Wikileaks was in the right to leak sensitive diplomatic cables, then you go right ahead and stand proud on your pedestal of naivete, Stewie.

If other LA media report USC kicker's injury, do they get banned too? No one in press box. USC cannot afford the bad publicity.
— Dennis Dodd (@dennisdoddcbs) September 12, 2012

It is the other way around -- 92,000 fans in the Coliseum says so.  If you and others don't want to show up, then don't; no one is holding a gun to your head forcing you to go to the Coliseum, Dennis.

I guess Lane Kiffin learned something from Al Davis: How to threaten the writers
— Art Spander (@artspander) September 12, 2012

Al Davis sued people for talking about him; a two week ban was nothing.  If Kiffin were to act like Al Davis, he would have permanently kicked Scott Wolf out and then filed a defamation lawsuit against Scot for all the crap he's written over the years.

What a bunch of whining girls, these sportswriters are!  They see themselves vital to sports, as to hold influence over its outcome and perception -- hey, who cares about the game being played, right?

Well, the ban was rescinded, although it was probably meant to be that way to begin with, in order to send a message to Scott Wolf and others like Gary Klein.  Most USC fans know that Gary Klein's article on Joe McKnight was timed to come out on the day of USC's first football game, just to sell print.

But now we know the true colors of some of these writers.

The slow plod that is the GOP abandonment of Mitt (picking up its pace).

Dana Milbank on the opening remarks from House Republicans, yesterday:

"Republican leaders had all kinds of things to talk about in their first day back on Capitol Hill from their month-long recess...But there was one thing House Republican leaders did not mention in their statements to the cameras after Tuesday morning’s caucus: Mitt Romney."

As Milbank further noted, House Republicans were also heaping high praise for a bill that would remove trade restrictions with Russia -- the nation that Mitt Romney on Monday called out as, "a geopolitical adversary."

The Hill's A.B. Stoddard:

"Laura Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh openly contemplated a Romney loss Tuesday, which would put an end — their words — to the GOP."

That's a bit of exaggeration, but what did you expect from Rush and Laura?  They're in the business of hyperbole, after all.

(Conservative media) The Weekly Standard's Peter Hansen:

"The assertion that you are more competent than President Obama strikes many people as merely that—an assertion.  It would be supported by your speaking in more detail about a range of financial issues."

(Conservative media) The National Review's Michael Tanner:

"The Romney campaign seems to continuing in the assumption that you can beat something with nothing...The only thing we know for sure about Romney’s Medicare plan is that it won’t involve actually cutting Medicare."

(Conservative media) The Daily Caller's Matt Lewis:

"The problem with Mitt Romney continues to be Mitt Romney."

Conservative Joe Scarborough on Politico:

"How can it be that this man who turned around countless businesses, saved the 2002 Olympics and ran Democratic Massachusetts like a pro be the head of such a disastrous campaign?"

Oh yeah, they're abandoning him, just not to his face.  They're making plans for 2016.  Why else would you ignore Sarah Palin and George Bush at the Republican Convention, for a string of 2016 hopefuls including Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and Bobby Jindal (who had to cancel due to Hurricane Isaac).

And today, Gallup's 7-day tracking poll showed Obama opening up a 7 point lead, while the conservative Fox News shows Obama up 5.  And of course you know what that means: Wall Street is going to hedge their bets in a big way, moving more money to Obama's campaign and Democratic-leaning super PACs.  We may have already seen the start of this transition, actually -- everyone knows names have been written down on who hasn't given money.

Yep, it's that bad.

And here comes the talking points memo to cover Mitt's gaffe.

A Republican insider has leaked a talking points memo from the Romney campaign, over the self-induced controversy concerning Mitt's criticism over the Libyan and Egyptian US Embassy protests and attacks.

Here's the portion on Q/A for Romney allies and surrogates:

Questions & Answers:

• Don’t you think it was appropriate for the embassy to condemn the controversial movie in question? Are you standing up for movies like this?
• Governor Romney rejects the reported message of the movie. There is no room for religious hatred or intolerance.
• But we will not apologize for our constitutional right to freedom of speech.
• Storming U.S. missions and committing acts of violence is never acceptable, no matter the reason. Any response that does not immediately and decisively make that clear conveys weakness.
• If pressed: Governor Romney repudiated this individual in 2010 when he attempted to mobilize a Quran-burning movement. He is firmly against any expression of religious hatred or intolerance.
• Reports indicate the embassy in Cairo released its initial statement before the invasion of the embassy commenced. Doesn’t this show they were trying to tamp down the protest and prevent what ultimately happened, not sympathize with the protesters?
• The Administration was wrong to stand by a statement sympathizing with those who had breached our embassy in Egypt instead of condemning their actions.
• Distancing themselves from the statement and saying it wasn't ‘cleared by Washington’ reflects the mixed signals they are sending to the world.
• American leadership needs to be decisive and resolute when our interests are threatened or attacked. For the last four years, this has been lacking.
• We have seen a foreign policy of weakness, indecision, and a decline in American influence and respect – and yesterday we saw the consequences.
• If pressed: The Obama campaign is now attacking Governor Romney for being critical of the same statement the Administration itself disavowed. This is hypocritical.
• Did Governor Romney “jump the gun” last night in releasing his statement?
• No. It is never too soon to stand up for American values and interests.

Shut up already; this man does not know how to gracefully apologize or show contrition for sticking his foot in his mouth!

Apple seems to be headed in the wrong direction.

Take this however you want to, but today's unveiling of the new iPod Touch, iPod Nano and iPhone5 wasn't groundbreaking, shocking or newsworthy.  Oh sure, I know the media has trumpeted the impending iPhone5 and will surely follow up with great proclamations about how fantastic the new phone is.  But look closely and you'll see that the hardware is already inside of the leading phones currently in the market place or recently announced.

Yes, I'm a fan of Google.  But I can recognize that Nokia's Lumia 920 was a good leap forward in hardware (though you can't tell from the exterior because other than size, it looks nearly like the Lumia 900); that the iPhone4 was an amazing push in manufacturing processes; and that Microsoft's Surface Tablet is pushing the boundaries of hardware, even if expensive.

And I think to the frustration of many Apple fans, the change to the new, 8-pin connector will inconvenience all-Apple households.

To me, Apple's new hardware was about evolutionary steps, not revolutionary moves.  I'm not yet ready to declare that Jobs' death was the beginning of the end of Apple, but if they keep this up, Apple will surely be just another tech company in less than a decade.  Following this up with a 7" iPad Mini is a signal of following, not leading, in my book.

A prearranged foot in mouth: Mitt's statements over Libyan and Egyptian embassy attacks.

Unbelievable.  With his series of foreign policy missteps, this latest one was a prepared speech no less!

Mitt Romney and Reince Priebus (RNC chairperson) have decided to cross that line of patriotic nationalism by putting politics first and attacking the President of the United States over the Libyan and Egyptian embassy attacks.

Obama sympathizes with attackers in Egypt.Sad and pathetic.
— Reince Priebus (@Reince) September 12, 2012

According to The Hill, Reince and Mitt were critical of the Obama Administration for a public statement that was released directly by the Egyptian embassy during demonstrations, prior to attacks.

For shame, to put politics ahead of national sorrow.  When 9/11 hit, everyone from the left and right came together and supported the Republican governor of NY (George Pataki) and Republican mayor of NYC (Rudy Giulani); there was no political attack leveled upon them.

And what was Mitt's excuse for his political attacks?  "It's their administration. Their administration spoke.  The president takes responsibility not just for the words that came from his mouth, but the words that come from his ambassadors, his administration, from his embassies, from his State Department."

May I take a moment to remind Mitt, that he has constantly distanced himself from people working on his campaign, whenever they misspoke!

Most Republicans get it.  John Weaver, consultant to John McCain and Jon Huntsman gets it.

Who is giving Romney this advice on politicizing death of ambassador? Comes across as inexperienced AND craven. #tonedeafstill
— John Weaver (@JWGOP) September 12, 2012

I am completely disgusted by Reince and Mitt.

---

Update:

Even Peggy Noonan is not happy with the way Team Mitt responded.

This is the statement that was released by the US Embassy in Egypt, prior to it being stormed:

"The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims -- as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others."

If you want a timeline of the events including what initially triggered the violence, read the Atlantic's compilation here.

And this AP photo from Charles Dharapak, showing a smirk on Mitt's face while leaving the podium this morning, is starting to make waves in the twitterverse: