The so called "experts".
 

The accountant offers the advice. Its some sort of marketing ploy. Its packaged to address my wife's profession. Usually, its just some claptrap about business tax breaks - who's pushing for more and who's likely to cut some out.

I think if we had decent candidates, she'd consider larger issues, but the last two elections ain't been good pickins.

The so called "experts".
 

Jesus man, I'm having a goddamned kid. Speed is off the menu.* For now.

* Except the stuff you get unintentionally when you think you're buying x.

The so called "experts".
 

2.

Death Penalty system that bad?
 

RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) -- New DNA tests confirmed the guilt of a man who went to his death in Virginia's electric chair in 1992 proclaiming his innocence, the governor said Thursday.

The case had been closely watched by both sides in the death penalty debatebecause no executed convict in the United States has ever been exonerated by scientific testing.

If the death penalty system in this country is so screwed up why is this the case?

Death Penalty system that bad?
 

You've missed some extensive discusion on this issue. Here is my response:

(a) Because there is no DNA evidence available in many/most capital cases.

(b) Because in most cases the evidence is destroyed after the appellate process is exhausted (no chance to retest with more advanced technology after prisoner is killed).

(c) Because it is only in the past 15-20 years that DNA testing has advanced to the point where it is realistically possible, accurate, etc.

(d) The truth of the statement you quote is no indicator that we don't execute and haven't sometimes executed innocents.

Consider:

(i) the incidents in Illinois, where about a dozen (?) men on death row were proven actually innocent by DNA testing over a period of several years before the state suspended the death penalty.

(ii) While no executed prisoners have been proven innocent by DNA testing, two prisoners who died of natural causes on death row have been exonerated by DNA testing after their deaths. (Florida)

(iii) In VA -- the same state -- authorities recently learned that a large number of case files from the 1970s still contained specimens (hair, blood, etc.) which could be tested using DNA technology because a retired lab tech. had a habit of stapling the sample/bags to the files.

To start with, the state conducted tests on a random sampling of 10% of the files. Several men were exonerated by that testing (my memory says 4 men of 32 tested files), including some still in jail and some who served 20+ years for rape. The state has ordered that all of those samples be tested.

My memory may be off on a few of the details, but does that answer your question?

S_A_M

Sebastian Kennedy's Take on The End of Oil, or Fuck Environmentalists
 

One thing I really can’t get my arms around is the Left’s siren call about how we need to conserve oil while developing alternative fuel sources. Those directives seem to work at cross purposes. I can only assume ignorance and fundamentalist-left wing thought underpins that illogic.

Isn’t the specter of running out of oil the greatest catalyst for production of alternative fuel sources? Doesn’t conserving it necessarily delay the market forces which would naturally cause the production of alternative sources? It seems to me that stretching smaller reserves for longer periods of time via conservation would simply raise oil prices for a longer periods, hurting consumers by creating an unnaturally extended period of insanely high oil prices. Wouldn’t it be better to advise people to keep consuming oil at their customary rate while at the same time developing alternative fuel sources? If we keep using oil at our customary rate, we won’t deplete reserves to a dangerously low level globally until the mid to end of the next century. Certainly, by then, we will have an alternative source developed. At a minimum, the electric car will be a standard item.

I think the “conserve” plank of the environmentalist message is knee-jerk reactionary nonsense. Its shrill fear that we’ll somehow all die or devolve into cannibalistic savages in some oil-hoarding post-Apocalyptic Mad Max world if we run out the world’s oil supply. But that’s not going to happen. As oil prices rise, entrepreneurs will develop smart new fuel sources and we’ll move on to another source of energy which we’ll deplete over a few centuries. But that's not going to happen if we keeping consserving oil. The market will respond short term by making more oil efficient vehicles, putting off what ultimately needs to be done - developing vehicles which use an energy source other than oil.

Next time a college sophomore starts telling you how we’re dooming ourselves with our oil dependence, ask him “What will happen when the oil actually begins to run out?” Ask him what the doomsday scenario will look like. And most importantly, ask him why he’s so sure nothing will come along and take oil’s place in the meantime. And ask him how conserving the resource he claims we need to stop using helps to force us to use other energy sources.

I’m fairly certain he’ll swicth gears at that point and you’ll be discussing The Strokes’ new record in no time (which is very good, BTW).

Sebastian Kennedy's Take on The End of Oil, or Fuck Environmentalists
 

I still think that Brazil's model isn't something that should be discounted, no matter how much you love your SUV.

Sebastian Kennedy's Take on The End of Oil, or Fuck Environmentalists
 

Ethanol policy is a pure hand-out to corn states. It takes more energy to make a gallon of ethanol than the produced gallon of ethanol contains. The only reason it's cheap is because it's subsidized or produced with crops that are subsidized (and probably over-produced as a result). I guess brazil has cheap sugarcane, but I'll bet that when you tally up the costs, the program subsidizes sugar cane producers, and probably contributes to deforestation.

Sebastian Kennedy's Take on The End of Oil, or Fuck Environmentalists
 

The thing I can't get my arms around is the call to develope alternative fuel sources yet obstinately refusing to allow the development of nuclear power. The cost-benefit by these folks is wacko. First off, nuclear power creates no pollution other than the nuclear waste (which is a significant problem). Of course, we have a solution for that waste, Yucca Mountain, but the enviros are trying to block that. Do they think it's better to leave the waste sitting at dozens of nuclear plants around the nation, where a) leaks would be much more likely to harm people because of proximity to population centers and b) terrorists could much more easily infiltrate to obtain some spent fuel? Outrageous.

Of course, not nearly as outrageous as the efforts to block windfarms in such places as the Cape Cod bay on the ground that a few birds might be killed by the rotors. How many birds are killed by the pollution created by the coal or gas-fired plant needed to supply the electricity instead?

The prius-drivers can suck it. BTW, you're not getting the gas mileage toyota advertises, so suck it again.

Death Penalty system that bad?
 

I actually look at this news as saving the death penalty. Had he turned out to have been innocent, I think there is a decent chance that several states would have removed the death penalty, and several more would have had every case in their system tied up for years to the point where the voters would get sick of the expense.

My question is why do people think that commuting a death sentence to life imprisonment is a satisfactory alternative? If the guy is innocent (or was convicted without due process), why should be be locked up at all, let alone for life? I'm surprised that a more cynical AG hasn't figured out that he should just recommend commutation in close cases because as soon as the sentence is commuted, no one cares any more and the guy rots away in a cell, regardless of his innocence.

Sebastian Kennedy's Take on The End of Oil, or Fuck Environmentalists
 

I've never understood why we couldn't couple a nuclear waste disposal program with the space program. Bury that shit somewhere on Mars or the moon or jettison it to the sun or something and justify some of the space exploration costs.

Sebastian Kennedy's Take on The End of Oil, or Fuck Environmentalists
 

I think that Brazil looked at in terms of the dependence on places like Venezuela and the Middle East for its energy. The self-sufficiency is worth the extra costs.

And frankly, I'd find it worth it to be able to tell Saudi Arabia to fuck off instead of constantly kissing its ass because we need its oil so badly.

Sebastian Kennedy's Take on The End of Oil, or Fuck Environmentalists
 

If enviros are worried that a secured train travelling over cleared tracks in a casing that's been tested to withstand explosions, drops, and submersion in water, do you think it's possible they'd accede to launching a rocket filled with the stuff into the atmosphere? Even I'm a bit worried about the possibility a rocket would explode, spreading atomized spent fuel througout the upper atmosphere.

That said, if you could get it into space easily, sending it into the sun is a solution to our worries.

Ann Coulter left the reservation....
 

• Speaking with Pravda this week, [Russian politician Vladimir] Zhirinovsky chastised Rice for calling on Russia to "act responsibly" in supplying natural gas to Ukraine.
  
  The fascistic pol attributed that "coarse anti-Russian statement" to Rice being "a single woman who has no children."
  
  "If she has no man by her side at her age, he will never appear," Zhirinovsky ranted on. "Condoleezza Rice needs a company of soldiers. She needs to be taken to barracks where she would be satisfied.
  
  "Condoleezza Rice is a very cruel, offended woman who lacks men's attention," he added. "Such women are very rough. … They can be happy only when they are talked and written about everywhere: 'Oh, Condoleezza, what a remarkable woman, what a charming Afro-American lady! How well she can play the piano and speak Russian!'
  
  "Complex-prone women are especially dangerous. They are like malicious mothers-in-law, women that evoke hatred and irritation with everyone. Everybody tries to part with such women as soon as possible. A mother-in-law is better than a single and childless political persona, though."

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/sto...p-324713c.html

Do you think Condi is a virgin?

Sebastian Kennedy's Take on The End of Oil, or Fuck Environmentalists
 

So you support drilling in ANWR?