Origin of the Species - Peeps

Back in the days when I ate sugar, I always preferred Cadbury Creme Eggs to Peeps as my Easter indulgence. But those little yellow chicks have meanwhile taken over the world. I always wondered where they got started.

This one's for Bowhunter

Invasion of the Lady Bugs?

Video of the Inaugural Speech

Again, in case you missed it. A well-crafted speech, I thought.

At Least Anderson Cooper Tried

After watching the debate last night I flipped over to CNN to watch some commentary. Anderson Cooper was having a special edition of his program. He wanted to begin his program with CNNs journalists who were not affiliated with a political party or campaign in an attempt to get some fair analysis. Dispite his best effort this is how it began. This is not word for word, but very close to what was said.

Anderson Cooper "We'll get to our partisan panel in a minute, but let's start with our non-partisan panel. Suzanne, what did you think of the debate?"

Suzanne Malvo "Well Anderson, I was just e-mailing with an Obama spokesman and they said they were very happy with the way it went and said that Obama showed why he should be President."

I don't think Suzanne Malvo understood what Anderson Cooper was trying to accomplish. Instead of seeming "Fair and Balanced" (as Fox News would say) the first thing they said during their analysis was the official reaction of the Obama campaign.

Car bomb at U.S. Embassy in Yemen

Here we go again. CNN is reporting "multiple casualties" which hopefully means wounded and not dead. This is in the middle of the Islamic holiday of Ramadan, which some years has seemed to radicalize the Muslim world.

Tony Snow jumps to CNN

CRChair and I were discussing this weekend he increasing irrelevance of FoxNews, and traced back its fall from the departure of Tony Snow from the news team. Prior to that - at leas in my own view - they were usually fairly balanced in their coverage and were taken about as seriously as CNN or ABCNews or the other major players. Since then, they have embraced their critics charged and become largely a hit-squad for the Right and a purveyor or celebrity scandal. Not something I am eager to watch or visit on the web.

Now, apparently, Tony Snow is back... but at CNN! Perhaps he has the same view I do of his former news network home? Too bad. We could have used the old FoxNews in this cycle.

Liberals Coming to Hillary Realization

At a time when the Hilary Clinton Campaign was gaining some momentum after the flap over Barak Obama's pastor, she went and squandered her opportunity with her recent statements about her Bosnia trip in the 1990s. Even reporters who are not considered conservative realize what a Hillary Clinton presidency will mean. Anderson Cooper of CNN made the following comment:

"The Bosnian episode is a watershed event, because it indelibly brings to mind so many examples of this tendency– from the White House years and, worse, from Hillary Clinton’s take-no-prisoners presidential campaign. Her record as a public person is replete with “misstatements” and elisions and retracted and redacted and revoked assertions… "

How can Hillary survive when even the liberals don't want to see her and what she represents back in the White House.

Republican Debate

I did not get to see the CNN/YouTube debate, but I did read the transcript and watched some of the question videos. If nothing else, you should check out the GOP Debate Song for a chuckle. All-in-all it was a pretty good debate. There was some avoidance of questions, but it was nice to hear some straightforward and direct answers as well. I'm not sure who I'll vote for, but it reaffirmed good feelings about Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson. The biggest surprise was that I found myself being OK with John McCain getting the nomination based on his responses tonight.

YouTube Debates

In case you missed it (I did), you can view the videos from the YouTube debate here and a transcript of the debate here.

Lightning Strikes during Rudy's Abortion Defense

Too funny. But he comes back to explain himself well.

I still can't vote for the man.

How balanced was CNN's moderator?

I found this very interesting. The Chris Dodd campaign put out a graph showing how much talk time each candidate at the debate on Sunday. The most was Barack Obama with 16 minutes, and the least was Mike Gravel with a little over 5 minutes. Hmmm... Not so balanced.

My Impressions of the Democratic Debate

I came into the broadcast a bit late, but did manage to catch the Democratic debate last night. My impressions? We can now start to see the real contest begin to gel as competitors vie for an air of credibility in front of the country. John Edwards was the big "winner" of the night in terms of attempting to change his image. He was aggressive and seemed unafraid up there. His tone of self-righteousness became a bit much by the end, but he seemed much less like an also-ran this time around. Obama and Clinton were unchanged by last night. Both came across as tired of debating with such a large crowd, but able to hold their own in every exchange. Bill Richardson came across as a somewhat smarm politician desperate to remind the electorate that he existed. And both Gravel and Kucinich seemed mostly peeved at being left at the fringes of the discussion in a both a literal and figurative sense. Every throwaway question was given to them, and the CNN cameras seemed to make every effort to accentuate their isolation from the mainstream of the debate. Dodd was the only man who looked MORE presidential and credible walking out of the debate, often looking like the only adult amongst a group of squabbling teenagers.

Overall, I do not think the debate did much for anyone. Edwards may come out of this a stronger candidate, and Dodd may come out of it more credible. But overall, CNN seemed more interested in cementing existing impressions than giving us anything new to talk about.

France Chooses Conservative for New President

French voters chose a conservative to be their president by a 53% to 47% margin Saturday. Nicolas Sarkozy is the new president. He had friendly words for America in his victory speech. He called Americans his "Friends" and said that France will stand with America when we need them. He did add the caveat that friends can disagree. It will be interesting to see if a new conservative leader in Europe can change attitudes and do some good.

Sidekick, Good Old Sidekick

As someone who has owned all three generations of the T-Mobile Sidekick, it is one of my favorite electronics that I own. CNN had up an interesting article on the Sidekick that explores why it is so hot amongst the 18-34 year old market. The most interesting stat from the article to me is "the average T-Mobile Sidekick customer sends or receives more than 3,000 instant messages per month". While I don't use my Sidekick much for IMing, it is easy to use and I do send a certain amount of text messages every month.