Aspirations towards mediocrity: Mitt's 12M new jobs.

Jared Bernstein covers this issue.  Yesterday, Mitt said he would create 12M new jobs, and the GOP convention crowd apparently roared.

But 12M is exactly what Moody's had predicted would occur, regardless.  And there you go: Team Mitt is striving for mediocrity.

Was that Allen Bradford?

Geez, I couldn't believe it when his name was mentioned in the middle of the Seattle - Oakland preseason game.  As he ran off the field following a tackle he just made, I googled the roster, and found out that he was playing for Seattle as a linebacker.  Apparently he switched last year after re-signing to a free-agent contract with Seattle to play on the practice squad.

There are so many USC players on both rosters that this game seems like a Trojan festival; no other school comes even close to matching the number of players in this game.

Seattle: Mike Morgan, Malcolm Smith, Allen Bradford, Anthony McCoy, Kris O'Dowd.

Oakland: David Ausberry, Brandon Carswell, Nick Howell, Alex Parsons, Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart.

Clint Eastwood at the GOP convention: An enormous mistake.

I like Clint's movies, as actor and director.  I collect every Western he's ever done.  But having him talk on stage at the convention, was a mistake.

This was not the old Clint who'd talk carefully with measured words.

Of course he wouldn't do a script; it was all ad-lib.  But it was impossible to follow along with his disjointed stuttering, filled with an "uh" in every five words, in a very weird, imagined dialog with President Obama.

I feel embarrassed for Clint, that he agreed to speak, only to come so unprepared.  The crowd was searching for something - anything - to cheer about, and towards the end, they did get some very solid cheers in there, albeit over trite rhetoric that both sides routinely use...government works for us...fire the clowns...yada yada.

I think the TV journalists were too stunned to find quite the right words to praise his speech.

Say it ain't so...conservative journalists critical of Team Mitt?

Team Mitt is getting slammed by, of all people, their own!

First up: Slate's William Saletan.

"If you won’t stand by your principles when it counts, Paul...then you’re useless to this country."

Followed by WaPo's Kathleen Parker.

"How can independents be coaxed to vote for a guy who runs away from his own record?"

Pair that with the previous lukewarm reception by Pat Robertson followed with George Will's comments from last month, and you get a steady stream of criticism that shows conservatives just aren't all that into Team Mitt.

Hurricane Isaac encapsulated in a single image.

No need for words.

@wwltv BRAITHWAITE PARK twitter.com/CABOewm/status…
— DØÛ6£@§ (@CABOewm) August 29, 2012

(via The Weather Channel)

Hurricane Isaac, described in 12 hours of tweets.

Hurricane Isaac in a timeline of The Weather Channel tweets over the last 12 hours.

Landfall:

BREAKING: Hurricane #Isaac made landfall at 6:45pm CDT in Plaquemines Parish, LA, just SW of the mouth of the Mississippi River.
— Hurricane Central (@twc_hurricane) August 29, 2012

Then it backtracks:

It appears to us that the center of #Isaac has since wobbled to the west back over water, so that is unlikely to be the final landfall.
— Hurricane Central (@twc_hurricane) August 29, 2012

Stalls for about 8 hours just off Louisiana:

Even though the "official" motion is WNW, #Isaac has been stuck at 29.0 North latitude since the 7pm advisory.
— Hurricane Central (@twc_hurricane) August 29, 2012

Starts moving again, making second landfall:

Hurricane Isaac makes second landfall at 0215 CDT West of Port Fourchon, LA #Isaac
— Mike Bettes (@TWCMikeBettes) August 29, 2012

Levee overtopped in Plaquemines Parish:

Clarification...levee **overtopping** will result in deep water flooding in srn Plaquemines Parish.Alert:wxch.nl/NwoBtt #Isaac
— Hurricane Central (@twc_hurricane) August 29, 2012

Power outages growing rapidly:

Entergy: 377,813 people without power in LA...up another 20K from last hour #Isaac
— Maria LaRosa ☼ (@twcMariaLaRosa) August 29, 2012

Flooding in homes, over 12 feet:

MT @twc_shawn: Plaquemines Parish Pres. Bill Nungesser: "Report of 12' of water in people's homes. Something I've never seen before." #Isaac
— Hurricane Central (@twc_hurricane) August 29, 2012

Which is spreading up and down the Mississippi River Delta:

NWS: Jefferson Parish law enforcement reporting 5 feet of water in the Woodlawn Fire Dept. #LAwx #Isaac

— Shawn Reynolds (@TWC_Shawn) August 29, 2012

With 18 miles of levees overtopped, and water trapping people:

Guy Laigist, Plaquemines Parish EMA:"We have 18 miles...of levee that we know is overtopped...inundated 4-9' on that side." #Isaac

— Hurricane Central (@twc_hurricane) August 29, 2012

And it's only getting worse.

The Real Romney -- a biography by David Brooks.

I don't say this often, so pay attention: Read David Brooks' attempt at humor, because it is intensely funny but it undoubtedly does not connect with his normal, targeted audience.

"Romney was a precocious and gifted child. He uttered his first words (“I like to fire people”) at age 14 months, made his first gaffe at 15 months and purchased his first nursery school at 24 months. The school, highly leveraged, went under, but Romney made 24 million Jujubes on the deal." 

"Some people say he retreated into himself during these years. He had a pet rock, which ran away from home because it was starved of affection. He bought a mood ring, but it remained permanently transparent."  

"Romney also went on a mission to France. He spent two years knocking on doors, failing to win a single convert. This was a feat he would replicate during his 2008 presidential bid."

I know that Brooks is trying to satirize the critique of Mitt Romney, while at the same time showing that Mitt's as insecure as the rest of us.  But unfortunately, conservatives long ago lost their funny bone; they will view this as an attack on Mitt.

Of course, those of us who live on the left side of the tracks, know that such humor cannot succeed without some hint of truth.  Therein we can contrast the brilliance of Stephen Colbert -- someone who has mastered the craft of satirizing politics -- to Brooks.  Brooks has succeeded in proving that the only way you can make fun of conservatives, is to make them look serious, not funny.

You can't share an inside joke with people who don't have the capacity to understand inside jokes.

The Tranny of Vebus.

Geez, I love Damn You Auto Correct!

The GOP convention hosts a debt clock.

The GOP unveiled, via Mitt Romney's Google+ page, a debt clock at the GOP convention.

So naturally, I wondered...

When President Obama starts sending hundreds of millions in federal aid (as requested by Republican governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana), will that debt be added to the clock, and will Mitt Romney and Republicans concurrently rap the cost of the debt?

I thought Republicans were supposed to be self-reliant folks, faithfully following the dogma espoused by their hero, Ayn Rand?  Yes?

An aside: Of course, the definition of self-reliance is highly dependent upon one's ability to overcome cognitive dissonance.  Watching this past week's Rock Center with Brian Williams' Mormons in America, I was taken aback somewhat, when a woman interviewed, receiving direct assistance from the LDS Church's food distribution center, praised the church's message of self-reliance.  To this woman, food stamps and job retraining as a means of charitable assistance, is necessarily bad, because it originates from centralized government.  But all it is, is displacing one institution (government) for another (religion).  Charity is charity is reliance on someone or some people is reliance on someone or some people.  In other words, Community is not a bad word.

The media's struggling to fight back against lies.

I don't know if this is a sign that big media is tired of serving as a echo chamber for politicians, but in the past few weeks, some of them have finally decided to confront some of the biggest liars in politics, and chase down the falsehoods.






 Via HuffPo here and here.


With regards to the Soledad O'Brien confrontation, The Atlantic's Derek Sullivan suggests that Sununu is generally correct.  Sullivan is wrong, because Sununu says -- three times no less -- that "Obamacare reduces services"; it does not.

The ACA reduces the reimbursement rates to hospitals -- something that the hospitals negotiated for, to sign onto the ACA, to the tune of $260B over the decade.  It also cuts Medicare Advantage inducements / overpayments -- by $156B over the next decade; in other words the government feels that privately-operated Medicare Advantage should not be costing more per beneficiary (especially in administrative costs) than government-run Medicare.

Furthermore, Sullivan goes trolling for AARP support, by proposing that a Republican-proposed cap on one entitlement program (SS) is equivalent to Democrat- (and at least one Paul Ryan) proposed cap to another entitlement program (Medicare).  They are not equivalent.  One directly cuts money from seniors while the other is cutting the profit out of Medicare Advantage and cuts hospital reimbursements (funded by increased insurance participation).

And it's amusing that Sununu keeps citing different numbers -- he's so discombobulated that his memory is fuzzy -- of how much reduced spending there would be over the next decade.

Spectacular high-resolution Mars landscapes.

NASA's published a few really cool, high resolution images of Mount Sharp, captured from the Mars Curiosity Rover.  This is way better than science fiction.

Below, small slices of much larger landscape images -- the only way I could demonstrate how large these images are.  Hook your computer up to your large screen TV and view them!

College football season!

Okay, so I figure why the heck not.  Starting this season, I'm going to predict and track the scores of the PAC-12, just for fun.

Week 1:

• Utah 35 Northern Colorado 10
• ASU 42 NAU 17
• UCLA 17 Rice 12 
• WSU 28 BYU 27
• Stanford 28 San Jose State 10
• Nevada 32 California 28
• Oregon State 28 Nicholls St. 6
• Colorado 21 Colorado State 20
• USC 49 Hawai'i 17
• UW 32 SDSU 24
• Oregon 49 Arkansas St. 30
• Toledo 28 Arizona 10

Even Republicans think Obama will win...shh TV media's mum!

This is truly humoring me...in the latest Gallup poll, even people who would pick Mitt over Barack, seem to believe that Barack Obama will win.

Some news are reporting that Obama and Romney are suddenly now in a statistical dead heat; I guess these people don't look at too many polls.  Statistically speaking, most of the past four months the race has been spent in a statistical dead heat, but as an aggregate of all national polls, Obama has never relinquished the lead.

I've also heard on TV that Obama's got a ceiling on his numbers, having never broken 50%.  That was also true in 2008, up until the debates in October, yet Obama won in November by over 5 percentage points.

And he's outperforming Bush in 2004.  Of course, most of the media doesn't want to let you know about this, otherwise it might end up becoming a dull election season.

But I think my favorite, new etch-a-sketch tactic of the campaign, is for Team Mittens to insist that people shouldn't be turned off by Mitt's personality.  Kay Bailey Hutchinson now tells us that we don't have to like Mitt to vote for him, while Mitt himself has trotted out the Popeye Defense saying, "I y'am what's I y'am, and that's all what's I y'am."

There was no bounce for adding Ryan; hurricane Isaac will negate any bounce from the GOP convention; Obama will win somewhere between 5~10 percentage points, bottom line.  One more etch-a-sketch moment from the GOP convention (and I suspect another will occur during the debates), won't change how people see Mitt and his threat to turn America into a plutocracy.

Mitt Romney: Minor destruction from Isaac is acceptable?

This is a head-scratcher.  Mitt said today, "Our thoughts are with the people that are in the storm's path and hope that they're spared any major destruction."

But what about minor destruction?

Maybe he should have said, "We pray for the safety of our fellow Americans whose homes and workplaces are in the path of hurricane Isaac."

Someone, please tell Jim Mora to shut up, already.

Can the man not figure this whole thing out without bad mouthing USC?  This excerpt from an LA Daily News interview:

"I would like us to be competing - I don't know what the structure will be - to play in the national championship every year," Mora said. "I want us to be a legit contender in five years." 

Asked if it helped having crosstown rival USC in his backyard already doing that, Mora asked: 

"When was the last time they won the national championship?"

What a jerk!  UCLA hasn't won a Rose Bowl since 1986, while USC has played in three national championship games (two wins -- 2004 Rose Bowl, 2005 Orange Bowl -- one vacated -- 2005 Orange Bowl) and won six Rose Bowls in that same period.  But he has the temerity to ask when was the last time they won a national championship?

If Lane Kiffin decides to break the scoring record (76 - 0, first meeting ever, 1929) against the Bruins, I have no issue with that.  Frankly, the Trojans should shame him so bad, that Bruins alumni push Mora out the next day.

GOP Convention -- the makings of a historical blunder?

The GOP have decided to put off a day and compressing it into two days, their convention.  That's terrible decision making.  They should have either postponed it two weeks or pushed it up for this past Friday-Saturday.  Here's why.

Moving it down a day to Tuesday, it will compete directly with coverage of a potential category 2 hurricane hitting what is probably the heart of GOP support: Lousiana - Mississippi - Alabama.  On Wednesday, the final day of the convention, it will definitely play second fiddle to the hurricane's landfall.  For the rest of the week, the news will be talking about all of the destruction in the wake of hurricane Isaac, not the nomination of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

And it will make a lot of people uneasy that, on the one hand there is a celebration going on nationally over Mitt Romney's nomination, while millions of people are suffering from the aftermath of a direct hit from a category 2 hurricane.

All it takes is people taking to YouTube and popping up split screen videos of the GOP convention celebrations at the same time that people are trying to pick up the pieces of a natural disaster.  It's a Bush nightmare of detachment, all over again.

And President Obama will be down on the ground in the aftermath, drawing attention away from the GOP convention and towards the resulting tragedy of a natural disaster, directly removing any advantage that the GOP convention would have brought.

Politically speaking, this seems like the makings of a historical blunder.

---

Update: Well there you go. Hurricane Isaac is now directly projected to hit New Orleans on Wednesday. The revelers at the GOP convention shall find themselves uncomfortably juxtaposed to Isaac, which may hit New Orleans exactly seven years to the day that Katrina hit -- August 29.

On the results of the Apple vs. Samsung ruling.

I originally sough to simply point people to Engadget's excellent roundup of their editors' opinions, but I have to expand beyond what they've laid out. The Apple win against Samsung is a validation of the utter failure of the patent system.

That "bounce back" patent of Apple's iPhone, is a simple translation of some basic mathematical formulas from the days of using Flash for UI interaction on the web -- stuff that you'd pick up from reading any Flash-based animation book.

The layout of icons in a tile fashion, as anyone who uses Android knows, is not the primary means of interacting with the phone; using your widgets and quick-launch icons on your home screens, is.  But the layout of icons, when wasn't that a design that was obvious?  The old PalmOS phones had rows of icons; almost every feature (read: non smartphone) phone has rows of icons.  And when Apple argued that a phone icon from anyone else should not look like a phone, I had to shake my head in disgust.  What next, a design patent for a light bulb representing a light bulb or an idea?

The shrillness of Apple fanbois is absolutely vile, because of the stupidity of their ignorance.  You would have thought that Apple invented the idea of a row of icons, if you listened to those Apple fanbois -- I think most of them are probably too young to know anything about the Palm Pilot.

Compare Android screens from mycolorscreen.

Android is much more flexible and customizable than iOS, period.

Apple is just a screen of icons, and one that has been uglified by its users.

I think this is what bothers me the most. Apple was not revolutionary; it was beautiful at the time that it was introduced, with minimalist design.  But Android allows you so much flexibility that you can create your own minimalist phone from the lock screen to the home screen, including your icons.

You can't get to a Neon Genesis phone from the iOS or Windows Phone platforms.

NTT DoCoMo phone, via Gadget City

Apple took advantage of the idiocy of the patent system and beat Samsung.  With the first-to-file rule recently implemented under the guise of patent reform, the trolling will only get worse.

Mars, colorized

Remember way back in the 70s when those first images were sent back from Viking 1?  Before then, there was a lot of guessing on the part of artists who were attempting to imagine what Mars looked like.

With these new Mars images being sent back from Curiosity, I thought they could use some false color...all in fun.  Abstraction, yes?

Original Curiosity image.

Uh, Trojans....NO.

NO NO NO NO NO NO.

And NO.

And NO.

Mitt Romney sells out, is now a Birther (and racist).

"No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place where we were born and raised."

Mitt later called it humor, but the sarcastic remark showed exactly what was inside of Mitt's heart: by virtue of the color of his skin, no one has to question whether he was born here.

Yiddish curses to throw at Republican Jews.

It's all humor.

"May you make a fortune, and lose it all in one of Sheldon Adelson’s casinos."

"May you live to a ripe old age, and may the only people who come visit you be Mormon missionaries."

"May your insurance company decide constipation is a pre-existing condition."

"May you live to a hundred and twenty without Social Security or Medicare."

I have just two words: OY VEY!!!

An Android-based camera, from Nikon: Coolpix S800c

This is an interesting hybrid: A Coolpix (S800c) camera that is an Android device with access to the Google Play Store.

A 16 megapixel, 10x optical zoom lens, especially one with a 1/2.3" sensor, will always outperform any digital zoom lens with a tiny sensor to fit within a smart phone, including Nokia's 808 Pureview with its 41 megapixels and 4x digital zoom.  At $350, it's still in the ballpark of Nikon's regular, compact cameras.

With a built-in WiFi, you could have your photos uploaded and sync'd through various platforms, including Dropbox and Google's Picasa Web.  Aside from the quality of photos you'll get, this is the second biggest benefit, in my opinion -- no more fumbling and looking for cords, and attaching to your computer.

I don't think this is a device that I would buy, though, because I've already invested in Nikon's SLR ecosystem with a lot of lenses, and I've already got the other end covered with my GS-II phone.

Grimm's Treeview makes an appearance!

I didn't realize they shot scenes at both day and night -- I only saw the nighttime set up.  But they did after all have the Albers Mill set up as Treeview all weekend through a Monday evening, a few months ago.

Best scene tonight: Nick's mom getting hugged by Rosalee.  So with actress Bree Turner (who plays Rosalee) pregnant and expecting next month, I wonder what the writers have decided to do?

Geez, between Leverage and Grimm and the upcoming MTV Real World, there's a lot of filming going on in Portland these days.

Several weeks ago, they were filming on 13th between Hoyt and Irving, and just last week they were using a small school bus as a set, on 12th and Hoyt.  Can't wait to see these episodes in a month or so.

Android still growing in Japan: comScore

According to comScore, Android is still growing in Japan.  Android hasn't yet hit the ceiling, even as Microsoft has continued to shrink, now down to 3.2%.  And the iPhone continues to lose market share, too.

Just about the only thing that could prevent Android from growing, is Google.

Lines are continuous through data gaps.

Excited about the updated Rivals rankings!

The Rivals 100 rankings were updated.

Out of USC's 18 verbal recruits, there are now 5 guys with 5 stars (Ty Isaacs and Jalen Ramsey moved up), pushing up USC's current average rating to 4.28.  No one else benefited more than USC, as USC's point total increased to 3148, and its lead over #2 Michigan expanded to 541 points.  (Sorry, but no one is going to overtake USC unless players change their commitment.)

A few more of those guys moving up, and USC may yet tie (or break) the previous record USC set under Pete Carroll's 2004 recruiting season with 8 5-star recruits.

Just a reminder: Lane sure can pick em!   That 2011 class included Aundrey Walker, Marqise Lee, Lamar Dawson and Marcus Martin.  In 2010, Lane was responsible for getting Hayes Pullard, Nickell Robey, Christian Thomas and Soma Vainuku, all guys who weren't previously committed to USC prior to Pete Carroll leaving.

You'd have to go back to before scholarship limits were created in 1973, to see such a distinct disparity in quality of a prospective class.  And that's despite the scholarship limits placed on USC.  SEC jealousy to rear its ugly head in 3, 2, 1...

Wet dog food.

I spent quite a bit of time shopping the wet dog food section, Saturday night at Fred Meyer.  Turns out, they all utilize meat-byproducts.  Note though, there was no natural / organic wet dog food or anything similar, at FM.

What is meat-byproduct?  Via Wikipedia's citation of the AAFCO:  "It includes, but is not limited to, lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, livers, blood, bone, partially defatted low temperature fatty tissue, and stomachs and intestines freed of their contents."

Gross.

Do I really want my dog to be eating brains?  Well okay, so dogs aren't going to catch a form of BSE, but cats have FSE, and the whole idea of eating brains is too zombie-ish for me.

Mechanically separated meat is almost as bad -- one reason why the only hot dogs I eat are from Hebrew National.  Of course, I do love Spam, which has mechanically separated chicken, but chickens are presumed to be immune to spongiform encephalitis.

I feel unsettled now.

---

Update: Just came back from Safeway and both Newman's Own and Dogswell are in the clean, without any meat-byproducts.  I've bought Dogswell before, and they have these little slices of what I think is ground duck.  Looked good, but smells...well smells like something a dog would love.

Lately I've been cooking my own dog food with brown rice, eggs, beef / chicken, various beans, peas, corn, corn meal, carrots, onions, celery and broccoli.  The dog likes this a lot more than dry dog food, for sure.

Facebook: on the precipice of an ignominious threshold.

Facebook's IPO, priced at $38 almost exactly three months ago, is now about to drop to half that, closing today at $19.05 after dropping $0.82.  And yes, it will drop a lot more.

Yesterday a group of restricted stock (271M shares) whose limits expired, hit the market, and volume hit 157M shares -- the largest since the second day (168M shares) following Facebook's IPO.  There are several more expiration dates coming up, as Seeking Alpha has noted -- see the abridged chart, originally from SA.

Public Date	# Shares of Common Stock
August 16, 2012	271,123,815
October 15 - November 13, 2012	133 million + 55 million + 55 million shares
November 14, 2012	1.2 billion + 20 million shares
December 14, 2012	149,432,006
May 18, 2013	47,315,862

As noted by SA, "We believe Facebook (FB) stock is facing pressure similar to what occurs when a company issues a "death spiral" convertible security."  Shorts are growing.

So uh...anyone else amused that Reed Hastings (CEO of Netflix) as a board director of Facebook, bought nearly 48,000 shares of FB at $21.03, on August 7th?  FB opened that day at $22.20, but closed at $20.72.  He lost money the moment he bought his stock.  In just over one week, he's already lost 9.4%.

View of Mars' Mount Sharp via Curiosity.

Looking through NASA JPL's newest images from the Mars Curiosity, this one caught my eye: a view of Mount Sharp, the future destination of the Mars Curiosity rover, drawn with a 2km scale.

Mount Sharp, via NASA's JPL

The problem though, is a matter of fractals.  Nature close up, looks a lot like Nature zoomed out.  It still looks like a small hillside, doesn't it?

So I added the Burj Khalifa to the image to illustrate just how enormous this single mountain really is.

Burj Khalifa superimposed onto Mount Sharp

So hot in Portland, even the french fries jumped back into the fryer.

Come on...105 are you kidding?

Thank goodness it's not going to stick around for too long.

If I bought a Prius C...this is what I'd do to it.

I'd add black vinyl on the front bumper section between the air intake sections, then add black side mirror covers.

What I'd want my Prius C to look like, thanks to Photoshop.

Anybody else with Nexus7 wiggy screen?

I think it has to do with a pull-down / pop-up screen.  It's happened twice now, and the first time I was able to correct it by restarting the tablet.  This last time, a restart didn't work; a reboot in safe mode didn't correct it; even a factory reset didn't work.

Somehow, after doing a factory reset however, a pull-down / pop-up screen came up, and after dismissing it, the screen bug cleared up.  Too bad I lost some of that local data and installs, though.

Top half and the bottom portion of the screen was messed up.

After a factory reset

Why Paul Ryan is a Democrat's BFF.

And this was from last year.

Current reading list.

I tossed Cass Sunstein's Worst Case Scenarios; it was just too dull after a while.

Right now I'm halfway through Thomas Mann's and Norman Ornstein's It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism.

It's a quick read with no repetition of ideas.  If you've paid attention to politics, this book serves as a quick refresher of the last two decades.  When you have the luxury of hindsight, you can piece together the clues of a movement, but in the moment, it is extremely difficult to discern from the hubbub of daily or short-term tactics.  Here's a hint: the politics of obstruction has been disastrous, but it's still growing.

On future tap: Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty.

--stretch--

Oh, and one eBook: Accessible ePub3 (it's free!)

More on why Democrats are cheering Mitt's pick.

On the topic of why Democrats are thrilled by Mitt's pick of Paul Ryan, I think it is best to point simply to John Heilemann's piece in New York Magazine.  While I don't agree with all of it, it most certainly elaborates on the failure of Mitt's overall strategy, which I do agree was the impetus for Mitt's pick.

The full take: John Heilemann's NYM article.

Or if you're too lazy to read that, I'll sum it up in three quotes:

"That the right is thrilled comes as no surprise, of course, given the despondency sinking in among hard-core conservatives (and, really, most Republicans) over the state of the Romney campaign during this long hot summer." -- As I've said repeatedly, no matter what they tell you in the broader media, this election has consistently looked like a non-competitive race.

"It raises the stakes and starkly clarifies the choice that voters will face in November — in one fell and dramatic swoop transforming a campaign that was teetering on the edge of being about nothing (of substance, that is) into a contest about Very Big Things indeed."  -- This is what gets Democrats excited the most.  Democrats get to tie the GOP proposal to maintain the top marginal tax rate cuts and reduced capital gains taxes, as offsetting any savings from privatization of Medicare and the cuts proposed in Medicare / Medicaid, with no effect on federal debt.

"President Obama’s lead against Romney more than doubles when the election is framed as a choice between the two candidates’ positions on the Ryan budget — particularly its impact on the most vulnerable." -- Heilemann is quoting from a summary from Democracy Corps, who perform frequent election polls.

And for the extremely lazy, here's the executive summary:

Mitt's campaign was non-competitive, period.

Of late, it was starting to sag as everyone was focused on the lack of transparency on Mitt's supposed strengths.  So he went bold and picked Paul Ryan.

But the shift in focus is now onto a Democratic strength and a Republican weakness: social and health benefits for the poor and elderly.

---

How Obama could get to a 10+ point win margin.

Encourage Joe Biden, who probably wouldn't run for President four years from now when he's 74, to retire.  Then ask Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom to sign on.

If you've ever heard Newsome debate the issues on TV, he's got as much fire and knowledge as any pundit you'll see, and isn't prone to the Biden gaffes.  He and his (current) wife would absolutely blow America away.

Flor coming to the Pearl.

This is going to be exciting, if you're into awesome carpet tiles, that is.  Flor will soon have a retail store in the Pearl, with its grand opening for August 30th, 6-8pm.

Not sure why they made the grand opening for the last Thursday, when the Pearl is all about First Thursday.  Oh well.

They'd just installed the sign this week, and it's now turned on.  Might need to go see who at R&H is working on it.

Mitt picks Paul Ryan; Democrats heard celebrating wildly.

Wow...Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan to be his VP.  Hail Mary just before the start of the football season, two straight presidential elections in a row.

Talk about the Democratic Party's biggest dreams come true.

As Ezra Klein notes, "It wasn’t a Republican strategy to put him forward. As Ryan Lizza recounts in his New Yorker profile of Ryan, it was a Democratic strategy to put Ryan forward."

And two days ago, Chris Cillizza wrote that, "Democrats are salivating — not literally but damn close — over the prospect of Romney putting Ryan on the ticket."

Here's what the five basic tenets of the attack on Mitt/Ryan will be:

• Paul Ryan wants to privatize social security and gut Medicare by capping its growth, such that senior citizens will have to spend more out of pocket each subsequent year they're alive.  And that's just a decade after he voted to expand Medicare!  Paul Ryan flip-flops nearly as often as Mitt Romney does.
• Paul Ryan's been using fuzzy math from the Heritage Foundation to suggest that he could get unemployment lower than it has ever been in the history of the US, if only he gets to gut federal spending -- defense spending, of course, notwithstanding.
• That same fuzzy math enables Paul Ryan to pretend that he'll be able to cut spending by cutting taxes for the rich (aka Republican job creators), followed by a trickle down of money from the rich to the middle-class and poor, who already send a larger percentage of their income to the IRS than the rich.
• By virtue of promising to repeal Obamacare, Mitt wants to bring back the lifetime benefits cap that Obamacare banned, and wants to give health insurers the right to not insure those middle class folks who have preexisting conditions.  Remember, Mitt's got ZERO alternatives on paper, to bring those items back!
• Paul and Mitt want to create Medicaid block grants so that states and the poor will be stuck with the bill for Medicaid, and as a result, we will see the lifespan of Americans shorten.

My jaw just dropped.  Mitt found a way to divert attention away from his taxes......... to the Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security cuts that Paul and Mitt have proposed.

---

Update: Watching the whole show going on with the introduction of Paul Ryan, I've noticed three things:

• Paul Ryan, in criticizing both parties for failure to keep debt and deficits down, obviously excluded himself and his votes for two unfunded wars, two unfunded Bush tax cuts, and a vote for the largest expansion of Medicare in its history.
• Surprisingly, Republicans continue to try to push the message of being strong on defense, by placing the whole event right in front of the USS Wisconsin, at home in Virginia.  Apparently the fiasco of Bush's show on the USS Abraham Lincoln has long been forgotten.
• And the news media has picked up the message: moderate Republicans aren't exactly thrilled, but conservative Republicans and Democrats of all stripes, are very excited.

Walking Dead S2 in my Netflix queue.

Netflix says the discs will be made available August 28.  If I'm lucky, I'll be able to do a back-to-back-to-back marathon and get the whole season completed before Sept. 1.

I mean geez, I've gotta be close to #1 in the queue, considering I added it last year.  Oh, and I've already added Season 3.  :D

Make no mistake though, football takes precedence over zombies.

A quirk in the PAC-12 football championship.

Most people presume that Oregon and USC are the top two teams in the PAC-12, and that they would likely play for the PAC-12 football championship.  After reading Jon Wilner express doubt that USC could beat Oregon twice, it occurred to me that there was a quirk in play with the PAC-12 championship.

Assuming two, closely matched and talented teams, but neither having a perfect record that would ensure that the winner would advance into the BCS NC game, the winner of the regular season game could actually be at a disadvantage of sorts, cutting that team ( this year it would be USC) out of the BCS bowls entirely.  Again, as Wilner noted, he does not think USC could win two games against Oregon (even though he has USC ranked higher than Oregon by one spot).  The two teams being nearly equal in ability to win games, the winner of the regular season match-up is almost inconsequential, because both schools have proven they have the capability to win at the other's house.

In this scenario, USC wins the regular season match-up, but going into the PAC-12 championship game rematch, both teams have one loss.  If USC loses in the championship game, USC would then have two losses on the season, and likely misses out on an at-large bid to a BCS bowl.

Were it not for the bowl ban last year, we may have seen this scenario played out, had USC and Oregon met in the inaugural PAC-12 championship, and had Oregon won that game.  Stanford, at 11-1 with its only loss to Oregon (and a win against USC), would have trumped a 10-3 USC team.

The scenario plays out in both directions, too.  If Oregon wins the first match-up but loses the second one, they will likely be shut out of the BCS bowls.

So the quirk is, that even if you win the first game, you still have to win the second.  But if you lose the first one, you get a second chance to win it all -- that's one heck of a consolation prize for the loser of the regular season match-up, huh?

And so long as USC and Oregon remain solidly talented teams, this scenario could be played out year after year.

Google Doodle Soccer Gold.

Google's latest Olympic Doodle: Soccer.  I got the gold, baby!

Hypocrisy: The AFCA and USA Today violate their own rules.

The other day, USC Trojans football head coach Lane Kiffin responded to a question about how he voted in the USA Today Coaches Poll, by saying, "I would not vote USC No. 1, I can tell you that."

I would suggest that he was being coy as a means of motivating the team while strategically giving opponents the false impression of USC's strength - a strategic subterfuge if you will - but not purposely trying to undermine the poll itself.  After all, he wasn't criticizing the poll, nor was he lying to people to influence voters, as we've seen from coaches trying to influence the final polls to get their teams into the BCS NC game.  Too bad USA Today and the AFCA took the message the wrong way, while going on to violate their own rules.

It seems to me, what we have here, is a bit of self-righteousness, that USA Today and AFCA's Grant Teaff could prosecute the veracity of Kiffin's comments in the media, without having to follow due process.

Per AFCA's Code of Ethics (links to pdf):

"The Committee on Ethics is empowered to investigate any and all alleged violations of the Code. When an alleged violation is brought to the attention of the Committee on Ethics from any source, the method of proceeding with investigative action and requesting an appearance before the Committee shall be determined by a subcommittee consisting of the chairman, one at large-committee member and the committee district representative." 

"There is to be no acceptance of prima-facie evidence of a violation in any case."

Grant Teaff, executive director of the AFCA, violated the AFCA's own rules by allowing what amounts to a prima-facie case of a violation of the AFCA's rules, and short-circuited the AFCA's own process by speaking directly to USA Today, allowing them to publicly identify Lane Kiffin's vote.  How about that!

And per USA Today:

"Each coach's vote normally is kept confidential until the final vote of the regular season under an agreement between USA TODAY Sports and the American Football Coaches Association. However, when a voter volunteers false or misleading information about his vote in public, then USA TODAY Sports, in its oversight role as administrator of the poll, will set the record straight to protect the poll's integrity."

In other words, USA Today is the sole arbiter of a coach's intent (and violation), without due process -- what we would normally call a display of self-righteousness.  In fact, they could have been diplomatic about it: rather than accuse Lane Kiffin of lying, they could have asked Lane Kiffin to clarify what he meant by his comments.

Ironic isn't it, that USA Today may have done permanent damage to USC's chances to play in a BCS NC game, for what amounts to a self-interested and self-righteous claim of harm to its poll's integrity.

Nexus 7: How I'm using it.

So it's been a few weeks now and it turns out, I am using my Nexus 7 tablet exactly how I thought I'd use it, and then some.  This is verbatim what I had written down in my priority list's reasoning column, three months ago: "Reading digital magazines and building codes.  Useful for design presentations or demonstrations, for clients."

Three examples of how I've used it professionally:

• So the other weekend, my brother-in-law and sister were up here, to go over graphics that they wanted me to do for their company.  Having done several prototypes, I was able to use the tablet to let them browse through each version.  When they selected one and as we talked about it, it became evident that they needed to see how it would look with color combination changes, and some other permutations.  I popped out my laptop and worked on revisions in Illustrator, then saved back the new images to Dropbox.  Almost instantly, those images would show up on my tablet, and they could explore the variants.  It shortened the decision process and proved useful, without having to show them printed documents.
• A few days before that, during an on-site visit, I pulled up an AutoCAD drawing of a floor plan to discuss prospective tenant areas, and the accuracy of the CAD drawings themselves.  Using Autodesk's AutoCAD WS on my tablet with offline capabilities enabled, I download drawing files from Dropbox, then open it up with AutoCAD WS, which -- this is where it gets a tad convoluted -- uploads it to Autodesk's cloud, then downloads it to the tablet into a folder that Autodesk's software uses, to access files offline.
• Today, while helping a friend think about how to create an infill display object inside of a narrow interstitial space between storefront windows and a wall, I used my phone's camera to photograph her scribbled floor plan sketch.  I then opened up Autodesk's Sketchbook Express (the tablet version), imported the image file that was automatically uploaded to my Google Picasa album, then drew on the image while explaining my thoughts on how to design the infill object -- no need for rolls of trace paper.

Some side notes:

• Adobe's PDF reader is just plain horrid; it struggles at times to render text and images.  I scream, "Everything else but Adobe's PDF, please!"
• It's a lot easier to draw everything on Draw Something on a tablet.  It's a lot easier to draw everything, period.
• Editing Google Docs Spreadsheets is the same on a tablet as it is on a phone, which is to say, you have to select the line you want to edit, then edit it...a chore.  Word documents are a little easier to handle, though not nearly as fast as typing on a regular keyboard with a larger screen.  Somehow I think I'll have to carry my netbook with my tablet, on trips.
• I tried (Microsoft) SkyDrive's Word and Excel, and let's just say it's not a fun experience on a 7" screen with a screen keyboard.
• Not having a rear camera does convolute the process of taking a photo that you can then draw on, especially if you have to do it when you're not in range of WiFi.  The no-WiFi workaround is using Bluetooth, by linking up your phone to your tablet.  Takes a good minute the first time around.
• After updating my GS-II phone via Samsung's KIES to ICS 4.0.3, I can affirm that all that bloatware from T-Mobile has made my phone a lot more unstable than my tablet -- and believe me, they added MORE bloat than before, to make it especially unstable.  As a result, I've been using my tablet far more frequently to do things I'd previously done with my phone.  A giant BOOOOOOO for T-Mobile.  Which also means that it all likelihood, from now on I'm buying Nexus phones without crap on them.  Nexus 4 ever.

USA and the Olympics.

The numbers so far with a few days left, below.  It's good to see that the US does well in both individual and team sports, and will likely grab another 7 team medals (women's volleyball; men's and women's 4x100, 4x400 relays; men's and women's basketball).  Guaranteed the US will go over the century mark of medals, and guaranteed the US will exceed its medal count going back to the 1988 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles, boycotted by the Soviet Union.

Total:

USA - 90 (39 gold)

China - 80 (37 gold)

Russia - 56 (12 gold)

Great Britain - 52 (25 gold)

Germany - 37 (10 gold)

Team medals:

USA - 23 (11 gold)

China - 17 (11 gold)

Russia - 7 (1 gold)

Great Britain - 19 (10 gold)

Germany - 15 (8 gold)

US Summer Olympics medal history:

2012 - 90 (39 gold) - SO FAR

2008 - 110 (36 gold)

2004 - 102 (36 gold)

2000 - 94 (37 gold)

1996 - 101 (44 gold) - held in Atlanta

1992 - 108 (37 gold)

1988 - 94 (36 gold)

1984 - 174 (83 gold) - held in Los Angeles, boycotted by USSR

1980 - 0 (0 gold) - held in Moscow, boycotted by the US

1974 - 94 (34 gold)

1972 - 94 (33 gold)

1968 - 107 (45 gold)

1964 - 90 (36 gold)

1960 - 71 (34 gold)

1956 - 74 (32 gold)

1952 - 76 (40 gold)

Romney aide gaffe (honesty): No health insurance? Should have lived in MA.

This is driving some conservatives crazy in the political world, and it's got liberals laughing.

A pro-Obama ad has been released, that talks about an employee of a steel mill company who was laid off, lost his health benefits, and subsequently lost his wife to cancer after they could no longer afford healthcare coverage.  That company who laid off workers, was owned by Bain.

Andrea Saul, Mitt's press secretary (apparently one of many), responded to the ad, while speaking to Fox News, by saying, " if people had been in Massachusetts, under Governor Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care."

As anyone would note: If America had adopted Romneycare, this man's wife would have had a better chance of surviving.

In other words, if Obamacare is repealed (as Republicans and Mitt have touted would be their first order of business), then what happened to this man will keep on happening in America, every day, even as Americans keep spending more on healthcare.  People suffering and dying needlessly -- that's basically what Andrea Saul was warning America about, except not directly.

And that's why conservatives are mad at Andrea Saul.

The Iranian blunderbus.

Last weekend, the Free Syrian Army seized a bus of Iranians they accused of being Iranian military, in Syria to support the Assad regime.

Iran responded by saying that they were religious pilgrims.

Then the Free Syrian Army said that they found IDs that showed that some of the people were Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and that everyone on the bus seized, was male.

Iran replied that some of the 'pilgrims' were retired ex-military Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal cited an employee of the travel agency - exclusively used for military personnel and their families - who said that, "Everyone on this trip was either a Guard or a Basij militia. This wasn't a regular tour group."

Not a blunderbuss, but an Iranian blunderbus.

Papa John's Pizza: A 0.1% cost increase is too much for better healthcare.

Maybe it's the Summer heat or maybe it's the politics that get in the way, but Papa John's Pizza owner John Schnatter is incensed over Obama's healthcare law.  Schnatter says that the new healthcare law will force him to pay an extra $0.10 to $0.14 cents a pizza, which he will pass on to consumers.  Based on an average of $10 a pizza (which is slightly less than their medium pepperoni pizza), we're talking an average of 0.1 ~ 0.14% increase in the price of a Papa John's Pizza.

Talk about bitterly blinded by politics, not to see that his own employees will benefit hugely from the healthcare law, for such a minimal cost increase.

Does Schnatter really want to revoke the no-lifetime cap on benefits; free mammograms, colonoscopies, and dozens of other preventative screening tests; and the raising of eligibility age -- to 26 -- of children who may be covered by their parents' insurance?

Schnatter comes off as a petty man for wanting to complain about a minimal cost increase for the benefit of his own employees, just for the sake of politics.

Move-in day for USC football players.

I love this video of the USC Trojans players moving into their dorms.  There's so much enthusiasm and excitement for all the things that come with a new year, a new season, and extremely high expectations.

And how about that new guy, Silas Redd?  That's a million dollar smile -- his smile is edge to edge and you can hear his excitement about being at USC.  He seems like a great addition.

Holy crap...Apple fell for a simple social engineering hack.

This is eye-opening -- I'm so thankful I don't have an Apple account.

Apparently Apple's security policies are so lame, all you need to hack into someone's Apple .ME account is their email address, billing address and the last four digits of that person's credit card on file.  In other words, all you have to do is dumpster dive and you'll probably get the info you need to get Apple to help you hack anyone's account!

Of course this makes one wonder just how long people have been surreptitiously performing this simple social engineering hack.  There could be a lot of people with hacked accounts, but who have no clue, because...well...they're Apple fans who don't like complexity.

There are many permutations of schemes you could run, once you gain access to someone's account.  You could install malware, copy all their personal information stored on their devices, use their devices to send out spam, or collect illegal porn and then frame them for it, etc.

Scary.

The coolest image of Mars Curiosity is not from Curiosity.

Via NASA's website, an image captured by the Mars Orbiter...err, in orbit around Mars...captured this photo of the Mars Curiosity Rover's descent with its parachute opened.

That's a much better view, don't you think?  We've never had this sort of imagery of a landing from space.

Well okay, this one is cool too -- from Curiosity, while descending, ejects its heat shield.

High frequency trades -- wall street profits on autopilot.

I can't help but get the thought of a ghost in the shell incident that will bring down our globalized finance industry, and the welfare of nations, following.  Wall Street profits are now on autopilot, and so are disasters to come.

Via Felix Salmon, a GIF showing the growth of high-frequency trades between 2007 and 2012, excluding Knight Capital's latest fiasco.  It's an animated GIF, so wait for it to load.

Mars landing so popular, NASA servers crash.

They have posted raw images, but their servers have crashed and are not available...4.2M people tuned in at some point, to their UStream live feed.

Who knew the world was this interested in NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover's landing?

Romney admits wealthy will do fine regardless.

Mitt Romney was trying to explain that his focus was on the middle-class, by saying that he knows that, "the very wealthy are going to do just fine whoever is elected."

Which of course begs the question: If Republicans insist that rich people are job creators, why should we give them more tax breaks if they'd do just fine whoever is elected?


In the end, he has revealed the awkward paradox of the Republican economic dogma: rich people are still getting rich, but as purported job creators, haven't done anything except to boost their profit margins.


A gaffe a day helps keep the plutocrats away.

NBC: Live games, weekend only.

I don't know if it's a case of NBC giving a little, but this weekend - right now in fact, women's marathon is on - they're showing live events.  Got to watch Rupp and Farah win medals in the men's 10,000km, live, yesterday.  Also watched Gibb and Rosenthal win their match in beach volleyball yesterday, live.

I like it.  I like it a lot.  But the schedule for the weekdays is not live on broadcast TV.

Want to explore the Mars Curiosity Rover's landing?

NASA's got a Java-based explorer, called Eyes on the Solar System, that allows you to see, in a simulation, where the Mars Curiosity Rover is currently at, or explore its landing by speeding it up or going backwards in time.  You can also rotate your view and zoom in and out.

You'll notice that there's a countdown timer to the bottom right, showing the time left to the next event / stage of the landing -- something quite useful if you're watching live and paying attention to NASA's UStream event.

While it is currently focused on the Curiosity Rover, as its namesake indicates, you can use it to explore the entire solar system, and specifically satellites.

Mitt to Feds: Don't make borrowing cheaper.

This is outrageous, dangerous and nonsensical.

Mitt Romney, apparently with economist John Taylor's advisement, is urging the Feds to not lower the cost of borrowing.  Instead, he'd rather give businesses direct incentives -- or as I've repeatedly mocked conservatives, they think they can encourage businesses to increase the supply of employed labor by minimally adding incentives (as a percentage of total labor cost) without an increased demand for goods and services.  Never mind that corporate profit margins hit an all-time high, throw more money at businesses and they'll automatically start hiring!  Or maybe -- really I'm going out on an extremely long limb -- they'll just keep that money for themselves, eh?

What's going on with John Taylor?

No one would credibly believe a person espousing the theory that, in response to a recession, the Feds should increase the Fed rate.  Likewise, constricting the money supply at a time when banks are consolidating their lending due to shrinking collateral, only makes the recession worse.  By doing nothing, the Feds would essentially mirror the current actions of the European Central Bank, and we know how well that's going, over in the EU!

And I understand the importance of price stability, but unless Taylor were to come out and tell us that his inflation target was 5%, then I don't know how he expects America to grow, considering we've been sitting at the conventional inflation target rate of 2% for years, now.

But really, I'm confused about Mitt's message.

Is he trying to say that consumers and homeowners shouldn't directly benefit from the same lowered borrowing costs from Fed intervention, and that businesses should be the only recipient of incentives to boost spending?  On Friday he said that the unemployment rate increase was a "hammer blow to the middle class", but rather than give the middle-class additional tax cuts -- remember his 5-point plan doesn't include tax cuts for the middle-class -- or simply throw money at the middle class, Mitt's solution is purely trickle-down economics, by giving rich people and businesses tax cuts.  So if Mitt is to be trusted, if you hand money to middle-income people, they'll save it, but if you give it to those who have saved up so much money that, in order to reduce risk they've offshored and spread it about in various asset classes, naturally these people will....spend it?

Worse, Mitt is attempting to influence the independence of the Feds, by injecting his politics.

Let me put it this way: If the Feds can wield interest rates or other actions at the whim of a political actor, then we could have a situation where the Feds choose their President and Congress by means of manipulating the value of the dollar, at the expense of the economy and employment.  A totalitarian plutocracy, is not something to strive for, but maybe it is something that Mitt Romney and other conservatives do.

Now I don't for one second believe anyone in the Federal Reserve will bother to pay attention to Mitt's pleas, but I am concerned that it will embolden conservative politicians and pundits to push for a rewrite of the law that would end the Feds' independence.

Argentina, here we come!

A hammer blow???

Mitt was convinced that Friday's jobs report was critically important, that he issued a dire warning that, "today's increase in the unemployment rate is a hammer blow to struggling middle-class families."

It was a hammer blow, people!  It wasn't a gut-check, but a hammer blow!

So of course, the Dow Jones Industrials Index posted its 4th highest points increase this year.

Date	Open	Close	Gain
6/6/2012	12125	12414.79	289.79
6/29/2012	12604.6	12880.09	275.49
3/13/2012	12953.2	13177.68	224.48
8/3/2012	12884.82	13096.17	211.35

And then the Intrade Prediction Market pushed Obama up 0.4 points on Friday.

Either the markets are thrilled that the middle-class just got a hammer blow, or they think Romney's talking BS.

Observation of the Women's 10,000m final.

About  halfway through the race, and most of the runners had their mouths open sucking up air as fast as they can.  You know who wasn't gasping for air? The Kenyans and Ethiopians -- they actually looked bored.  They were already 30 seconds off the world record pace, so that might account for their boredom.

The Japanese women who were in front early, were visibly grimacing, probably thinking to themselves..."OMG, I'm freaking exhausted!"  No wonder they were effortlessly overtaken by the Etiopians and Kenyans.

Ethiopia's Dibaba looked like she was just taking a leisure jog in the park.