John McCain running mate Sarah Palin misled Republican supporters – Telegraph

I wonder if we’ll see a press release that she needs to “spend more time with her grandson son” soon…

John McCain running mate Sarah Palin misled Republican supporters – Telegraph

The Governor of Alaska gave a misleading version of events over a controversial bridge project in her home state when she made her maiden speech as the presumptive nominee.

Mrs Palin told a cheering audience in Ohio that she had turned down an offer from the US Congress to build the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere”, which would have connected Gravina Island with Ketchikan International, an airport in Alaska’s southeast serving just 200,000 passengers a year. Mr McCain routinely cites the £100 million project as a symbol of wasteful central government spending.

As she introduced herself to Republicans and the American public on Friday, the virtually unknown Mrs Palin said: “I championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress … ‘thanks, but no thanks’ on that bridge to nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, I said we’d build it ourselves.”

However it emerged that in a 2006 interview with the Anchorage Daily News during her gubernatorial campaign, Mrs Palin had a different view of the bridge.

Asked “would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?” she replied: “Yes. I would like to see Alaska’s infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now – while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.”

When Congressional funding was withdrawn because of an uproar in Washington about the expense of the project, she cancelled it, but in a regretful tone.

“Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it’s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island.”

Yow! Who is in charge of the Republican presidential campaign?

Choosing Sarah Palin seemed like a serious hail mary play when it was first announced. An attempt to out-history-make the democrats. Choosing the Alaskan govenor gains John McCain nothing in the regionally-balancing-the-ticket game. She is so incredibly right-wing that she makes him seem like a socialist. Maybe the idea is that she could bring the evangelicals and super conservatives back to the table. Especially since the chances aren’t small that she would end up finishing his first term if she won. However, she is so radically right that there is a big chance that she’ll scare away any of the moderates that might have voted for McCain. At least any of the moderates that bothered to read a newspaper.

Now it seems like this was a real hail mary play since it looks like no one bothered to vett their VP choice. She fundamentally disagrees with most of McCain’s positions on the environment, abortion and Iraq. She is in the midst of an ethics scandal, troopergate. It looks like she may have lied about her fifth child, that it was actually her daughters’. Even if she didn’t lie, she showed some serious lack of judgment in how she handled the birth. Then there is Dairygate.

All this is just in the first few days after the announcement. Sarah Palin has spent a tiny amount of time in government, but it looks like she is out-scandaling the pros already.

I’d love to gloat over this and laugh about how the republican’s are prepping for an electoral loss that will make Dukakis look like George Washington, but we all know that the democrats can snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory like nobody’s business. Lets just hope that the American people see through the right wing propaganda this time.

Although if they still think off-shore drilling is going to lower the price of gas anytime soon, I doubt it.

NBC stop lying to me

Dear NBC,

I just watched the final on the CBC, don’t show me video of the team getting off the bus and say that they just arrived and competition should get started in about an hour.

Morons.

Yer pal,

Kevin

[update 11:21PM PST]
NBC is now claiming to be broadcasting something “live” that the New York Times has already reported the outcome of and the CBC actually did broadcast live a few hours ago. I can understand tape delay for the west coast, but three hours ago was prime time on the west coast. You could have shown it then. And don’t freaking call it live when it isn’t.

Bob Costas interviews President Bush (updated)

A sports journalist asks all the hard questions, leaving a smirking Bush probably wondering what he got himself into. I love it! He sits down thinking he’s going to talk about basketball or some bs like that and Bob Costas gets into Darfur and the Russia/Georgia situation and GWB looks like an idiot yet again! Can we maybe move the change of administrations to November 5th to get this idiot out of power?

[Update 8/11/08 2:12pm]
Youtube removed the original video embedded here, but Huffpost has the video also. See comments below for a link to the transcript.

Another iPhone App that I don’t feel like writing…

I’m pretty sure that this app exists for other smart phones and I know that a similar thing exists for normal PCs.

An App that scans the barcode using the built-in camera and then allows you to look it up on your choice of site: froogle, Amazon, whatever… To see if you want to buy it on-line instead.

I’d write this one myself, but it isn’t anything I’d be that jazzed about writing and supporting for a long time… It should be something that Amazon would jump right on if they weren’t worried about getting sued…

freebie iPhone app idea for the real estate websites

yes, this one is for you redfin, windermere, et al. Normally, I’d sit on idea like this, but lets be real. I’m not going to write this one. So, as a customer, I’m asking you guys to do it for me.

I want an iPhone app version of your websites.

Obvious:

  • Get me details on the houses presented for the iPhone screen size
  • Show me houses for sale near my current location

Less Obvious

  • Let me pick a bunch of houses to view on the website: give me a tour, in-order, with turn-by-turn directions
  • Show me how far and the way to get to the nearest: school, park, etc.

Go for it, I’ll use it, and if you want to toss me a commission or make me VP of product development, I’m cool with that.

Go big or go multiple?

Everyone on my team is pushing to get 30″ screens are part of their equipment upgrades. I can certainly understand this. We all get top of the line machines automatically and so what is the cool expensive thing to get your employer to buy you? 30 inches of 30-bit color of course! Now having screen real estate is critical for developers, I can totally dig that. I was just reading Ryan Block’s blog post, 30-inches: too much screen?, and I realized that I actually prefer my dual 19-inchers over a larger screen. While having that break in the middle is a distraction for some, for me it is a boon. Having visual studio stretching over my entire visual field is just going to cause eye and neck strain. With two monitors, I choose my organization so I can focus on one at a time, but have the other handy for reference. When I’m debugging, I have the app on one monitor and Visual Studio on the other. When I’m developing, I’ll have Visual Studio on one monitor and Firefox or Acrobat on the other with documentation. When I’m not coding, I have Outlook on one monitor and Firefox on the other. For me, I’m never really focused on a single application, I always have a primary and secondary application and so dual-monitors works for me.