Well, well, well. Look at the snarling beast that’s threatening to rear its head this summer in Denver:

Not to mention that there’s going to be a significant Iraq veteran contingent at the convention, ready to rock ‘n’ roll. We’ve already had planning meetings about it — we’re going about it the same way that we would plan any decent military operation.

Put it this way: if [Clinton] goes for the gold in Denver, she’ll have to claim the medal somewhere other than the Pepsi Center.
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I can’t emphasize enough how potentially scary things could get — we’ve got folks working on the inside of the convention, and it’s all done on a cell basis, so that folks only know what they need to know. Full story »

I’m looking at Sen. Hillary Clinton’s comments in the wake of her primary victories yesterday in Texas and Ohio, and I’m wondering if I now have even more reason to be worried than I did before. From CNN:

Clinton attributed her wins to the belief of voters that she would be the best candidate to protect the nation.

“For me, this election has always been about who can be the best president, and, you know, that includes who can be the best commander in chief,” she told CNN Wednesday. Full story »

It’s an old saw that most newspaper people complain about long hours, low pay, lack of love from the public and overbearing editors who think they know what the story ought to be more than the reporters.

A brief description of job conditions from a lawsuit against the China Daily News might make those complainers think twice:

Reporters testified in the case that they were forced to work six days a week at 12-hour shifts that could extend to 17 hours at times with no breaks for meals. Supervisors altered time cards to make it appear that no overtime was worked. Reporters were also given quotas of stories to come up with, according to the lawsuit.

More than 200 reporters, ad salespeople, delivery drivers, secretaries, and production workers ultimately joined the class-action lawsuit that was first filed in 2004. The group contended they were owed overtime pay dating back to 2000.

Full story »

Last night, I had a small disagreement with my wife.  See, I want to take this potential client and his spouse out for dinner, and I’d like to have her along because she could charm a buzzard off a bucket of chitlins and I couldn’t sell stain remover to Sweeney Todd.  Understandably, I suppose, she’s tired of being the only person on our side of the table with a personality and thinks she can find something more amusing to do.  In desperation, I persisted until, batting her Bambi-with-a-switchblade eyes, she dropped this bombshell:”Why don’t you get Lana to go with you?”

Now, to understand the implications of this, you have to know a bit about me and a bit about Lana.  I’ll start with me. Full story »

The UN Security Council just passed a third set of sanctions against Iran ostensibly because it refuses to cease and desist enriching uranium. In truth it was informed by another issue both more immediate and intimidating.

On February 22 the International Atomic Energy Agency issued what seemed like a passing grade to Iran’s nuclear program. But shortly before that, its chief of weapons inspection, Olli Heinonen, exhibited approximately 1,000 documents and videos to an array of ambassadors and experts in Vienna.

They’d been downloaded from a laptop described by the Washington Post in 2005 as “allegedly stolen from an Iranian whom German intelligence tried, unsuccessfully, to recruit as an informant [and] whisked out of the country by another Iranian.” Among them were apparent designs for nuclear warheads –- light years more menacing than just the enriched uranium that infuses them. Full story »

According to an article in New Scientist, scientists from the University of Colorado – Boulder have calculated that a) there isn’t much volcanic dust in the Earth’s atmosphere and b) that may be contributing to global heating.

Generally speaking, volcanoes emit lots of stuff, including carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and lots and lots of ash. However, it’s been shown scientifically that the dominant climate factor in nearly all volcanic eruptions is the sulfur dioxide, a gas that combined with water vapor in the atmosphere to create sulfuric acid droplets. Those droplets are very reflective, and when combined with high-altitude ash and dust, they create very white clouds that cool the Earth down far more than any carbon dioxide emissions would heat it up. Full story »