Politics
There are 1,058 posts filed in Politics (this is page 97 of 106).
I saw that Barack Obama will be speaking at the Kerr Scott Building at 12:30 today. Tickets are required but the campaign headquarters is a short walk away from my office so I took a stroll to pick them up.
I was presented with a sign on the door saying tickets were sold out. I looked at my watch: it was five after ten. Tickets went on sale at 9:30 and sold out 25 minutes later.
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Kelly and I finished up our taxes last night. I thought it was pretty sneaky that our tax software asked if we had a refund from last year. Seems the IRS taxes refunds now. I’m all for paying my fair share, but getting taxing on money that I don’t owe? Well, that’s a bit much.
And some people wonder why others don’t trust their government
N&O columnist Ruth “I Love Jessie Taliaferro” Sheehan gets snippy with councilman Rodger Koopman in today’s column. The man must be doing something right. Perhaps she pines for the days of unresponsive, condescending council representation deep in the pocket of Big Real Estate.
I sure don’t. While I think the goals of the disposal ban were laudable, the people have spoken. Rodger is brave enough to admit he was wrong, and he listens to his constituents. Glory!
WRAL Weathercenter’s Nate Johnson posted about daylight savings time, which goes into effect this Sunday. Ah, daylight savings time: one of my favorite whipping boys. If there’s one thing that raises my government-as-nanny hackles, daylight savings time is it.
Benjamin Franklin is credited with conceiving daylight savings time (DST) as a way to save on candles. While candles may have been all the rage in Poor Richard’s day, it may be safe to say that we use energy quite differently nowadays. The energy required to shift one’s biological clock to match clock time is quite expensive, too, but not so easily measured.
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I figured I’d get the jump on the real estate crowd by putting some for sale signs out on Durant Road in Friday morning rain. I got home that evening and they were gone: probably stolen by the City of Raleigh’s Sign Nazis.
We got another pair from the agent who put our house on MLS. I promptly put them out Friday night. By 8:30 this morning they were also gone.
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A sophisticated U.S. spy satellite is deorbiting out of control. The Bush administration announced its plans to shoot down the satellite with a ship-fired missile, ostensibly because of fears its rocket fuel would poison anyone coming in contact with it.
Riiiiiight. It would be the first time ever the Bush administration paid a whit to the environment. The satellite is likely to have a fiery reentry, so it would follow that any remaining rocket fuel would burn with it. The real reason for the shootdown is to keep the terrists from discovering the bird’s secret capabilities.
Plus, it will make a really cool bang.
Kelly and I kicked in a few bucks to Barack Obama’s campaign this weekend. I know it seems we’re piling onto the bandwagon but I said way back in September that he’d likely get my vote.
I used to respect John McCain after reading about how he conducted himself as a POW and how he’s defied death a half-dozen times. Too bad he sold out in the 2004 election. And anyone who considers Joe Lieberman a friend is suspect right from the get-go.
Hillary Clinton …. well, we just won’t go there.
Have I mentioned how I love listening to Weekly Radio Address each week? That’s the home of the “official parody” of George W. Bush’s real radio address. It’s also scathingly funny.
Check out this week’s address on signing statements. You know its exactly what the real Bush is thinking.
The City of Raleigh now makes the meetings of the city council and other boards available as streaming media hosted by the company called Granicus. These streams are helpful for getting citizens (particularly geek citizens locked in a cubicle) a look at government happenings but they are offered in a proprietary Windows Media 9 format and not an open format like Xvid, MPEG4 and the like. Linux media players like Totem and Mplayer can play the existing streams but the streams’ lack of an index makes it impossible to skip through the sessions.
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I just found out about Maryland’s recently-enacted Computer Services tax, as my employer is based in Maryland. Maryland’s new law, which takes effect July 1st, will tax computer services at 6%. Connecticut, the only state to successfully tax computer services, does so at 1%.
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