Energy Issues

Now that the conventions are over, I can't wait to actually get to the debates. The most important issue for me this election is energy policy, which is intimately linked with the economy and our issues in the middle east. In their speeches, here is what each candidate had to say on energy:

Obama:

• Set a goal that "in 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East."

• "Tap natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology and find ways to safely harness nuclear power."

• "Help our auto companies retool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America."

• Make it easier for Americans to afford U.S.-built, fuel-efficient cars.

• Have the federal government "invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy -- wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels." Doing so, he said, would "lead to new industries and 5 million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced."

McCain:

• Produce more energy at home.

• Drill new wells offshore.

• Build more nuclear power plants.

• Develop clean coal technology.

• Increase the use of wind, tide, solar and natural gas.

• Encourage the development and use of flex fuel, hybrid and electric automobiles.

Note the big difference, Obama gave us some specifics and set a solid goal, while McCain just spouted some nice sentences. Further, in McCain's speech he said Obama was against nuclear power, which he isn't, he just wants it to be safe. A pure lie from McCain in his acceptance speech (one of a few).

You can find more about what each said here (Obama) and here (McCain).

Can't wait until the debates, someone is going to get served:

Moving To Denmark

I like their style, and I think I've got some relatives there.

A good quote

I like this quote from Gary Vaynerchuck,

"Don’t quit your job to become the queen of cheese. But if you’re doing something that blows and you hate it, go work at 7-Eleven to pay your bills and spend every other hour building your personal plan. If you work 9 AM to 6 PM and get home at 7, whatever you put in between 7 and 3 AM is what you’re gonna get in return. You want to watch Lost? Knock yourself out. I don’t watch shit. I don’t read shit. I’m all about my community and putting out content. I don’t consume. I put out."

Way To Go Florida

Wow I didn't know states did things like this, check out this article.

Suburban Douchebag

So after I went on a run this morning, I was sitting around, drinking coffee, and listening to Morning Edition on NPR. They were running a story about gas prices, and interviewed this guy who is spending over $200/week on gas. Why is he spending that much? First, he lives a 1/2 hour from his work and so does his wife. He has five kids. He says he requires TWO Ford Expeditions to get everyone around. Are you kidding me? Buy a minivan douche bag. Move close to where you live and find a school near by for your kids. Insanity!

$4.04 a gallon?

I got to say I'm glad I am car free nowadays with the insane price of gas. I don't think I'd be using the S10 that much if I still had it. Also makes me glad that Pete and I got The Randonnee Shop going, I have a feeling a lot more people will start biking to get around town, and they're going to want comfortable seats while doing it and panniers to hold their junk.

I can't wait until June 25th. Why? Its Boulder Bike & Walk to Work Day, which means free breakfast for all! I wish it was every day.

Exciting Week For The Internet

This has been an exciting week for the internet. First, The Randonnee Shop launched, which will undoubtedly change the way people buy Brooks saddles and Ortlieb panniers in this country. Second, an hour or so ago Apple announced the new iPhone, which looks insanely awesome. I will be getting one July 26th, the day my Verizon contract expires. Not only is the internet twice as fast on it as the old phone, it comes with GPS built in, its thinner, the battery lasts longer, and is either $199 or $299 for 8GB or 16GB.

Not exactly sure how good the GPS is, but it apparently gives directions to you which means its got to be pretty accurate. Looks like Apple might have put out of business Garmin and all the other GPS makers...

Website Launch

Check out Pete and my new website for selling panniers and saddles for bike touring!

The Randonnee Shop

Play with it, and if you find bugs or typos let me know. Tell your friends!

Coping With Gas Prices

Looks like people are finally starting to change their ways a bit. Hope this trend spurs more bike riding/development of public transportation/new green energy technology. There's no reason with America's resources we can't become the global leader of these things...

Fort Collins

Pete and I rode our bikes up to Fort Collins this weekend, it was a good time. Saturday was a windy beast with headwinds of ~20 mph plaguing us the entire ride up. We headed up towards Horsetooth Reservoir hoping for better conditions in the foothills, but the trade off was having to do some climbing.

We eventually made it into town, and stopped at a coffee shop called Cups that had excellent chai. We made our way downtown for some fish and chips at The Crown Pub, which was a little overpriced, and then went to the Steakout Saloon (or something like that) for some after dinner refreshment. Once we'd satisfied our thirst, it was off to find a campsite. We ended up sleeping in some sort of park/field next to New Belgium. We both just got new bivy sacks, and they worked great. No one knew we were there and we avoiding paying ridiculous camping fees.

In the morning we woke up to the sound of people setting up the finish line for the Fort Collins 1/2 marathon, so we packed up and headed to another coffee shop, this time called Mugs, for breakfast. It was a great place to go with lots of early morning cyclists getting ready to ride.

There was no wind at all Sunday, and we made good time on our way back to Boulder. We stopped in Hygiene for some coffee and biscotti and arrived back in Boulder shortly thereafter. All in all, a great bike tour to kick off the season. I unfortunately am extremely sunburned, and I'm sure my face will peel off pretty soon. Can't wait for the snow to melt on the mountain passes and I can get some real bike touring in.

Harris Gulch

For the past four days, I've been in Utah, hiking down and up Harris Gulch. It was a great trip, you can find pictures here. James wrote a trip report here.

Backpacking is always a good time. My number one complaint was my sleeping pad, which sprung a slow leak. This wouldn't have been too big of a deal if I could have found the leak, but no such luck. My pad kept deflating and I'd wake up cold from the ground. Its too bad really, because that pad (a Big Agnes) is incredibly comfortable when full. The hunt for the leak continues tonight in my bathtub.

It was good to meet up with some old friends from college. When you haven't seen someone for many months, you really appreciate their company. Conversations of the male variety were aplenty, and I came back with filled with new dirty jokes. Can't wait to get back outside!

Neglected

Well this blog has become like many of the things in my life, passe. This is partly because I have become saturated on the primaries, pretty much the candidates have run out of things to say. I'm sure it'll rev up again as we near April 22nd. Why is this still going on? Hilary, there is no way you're going to get the majority of the caucus voters, especially now that it looks like Florida and Michigan aren't going to be sat at the convention.

My theory is that she secretly wants Obama to lose the general election, so she can run again in four years. I think the longer she draws this thing out, the more it hurts Obama in the general election. This is a pretty decent strategy, I think the economy might tank during the next president's term, and whoever is at the helm is probably going to get the blame.

I used to be a big fan of McCain, he has always been in the middle. That is until recently, when he sided with the tax cuts and his somewhat insane war philosophy. However, I think some of this was him playing to the right to get the nomination, I'm sure he'll pull more towards the center as we get closer to the general election.

This brings me to tax cuts. How can making tax cuts permanent be a good idea when the US is trillions of dollars in debt and there is a looming economic disaster slowly approaching? Not the debt down and reverse the decline of the dollar before a world wide depression hits!

What I find more amazing is the loans that banks were making to cause a large portion of all this (this from a guy who has thousands of dollars in student loans). The stories of people's debt problems nowadays is mind blowing. What happens when these people retire? Clearly, they haven't been saving for that. Are they expecting social security to pick up the tab? Doubtful, since it would bankrupt the country. Maybe there will be some way of taking care of the seniors al a The Giver, yikes!

Anyways, I am off to Utah soon for a short backpacking adventure on the Escalante. Will be back Tuesday night with ridiculous pictures of the trip.

Also, I have locked down my housing situation starting in August. I'm moving to 1825 Marine ST into a 1br condo with a loft. I should have lots of space, so I encourage friends to visit me, although I have no furniture. It'll be nice to be within walking distance of both my office and downtown Boulder!

Hilary is the new Giuliani

"Her high command's insistence the race turns around decisively in Ohio and Texas on March 4 sounds eerily like Rudy Giuliani's disastrous wait-till-Florida turnaround strategy."

Read the whole article here.

Obama Doing Well

Super Tuesday stressed me out quite a bit, but Obama came through it pretty well and I think he is lined up to take the lead from Hilary with the next four primaries most likely going his way.

I find it strange that he doesn't do as well as Clinton with latino voters, I figured they'd be more supportive of a minority.

Clinton racks up the votes with old people, which I contribute to them not being with it enough to stay up on current politics, and hence voting with name recognition, and probably some mild racism.

I'm confused why the large majority of the "superdelegates" seem to side with Clinton, seems like some political buddies are doing Hilary a favor. Get rid of the superdelegates and let the candidate who the population chooses get the nomination. If it comes down to who was the most superdelegates, I can see bad repercussions for the Democratic Party.

Finally, what is most interesting to me is that Obama far outraised Clinton in the month of January, so much so that Clinton had to "loan" her campaign $5 million. I think this is a sign of two things. First, Obama supports are really excited about Obama to the point that more of them are willing to give money. Second, the Clinton campaign is worried they're going to lose their current popularity as this thing drags on, and they need to try to keep their resources even with Obama.

Obama's response to the Clinton's giving their campaign this money was to ask for his supporters to match it, which seems like a good idea to me. If you've got some spare cash lying around, go to Obama's website and give it to the campaign!

I am hooked

On playing Conquer Club!

Obama

I went and saw Obama speak today in Denver, it was pretty awesome. He is an excellent speaker plus I think he has a much better chance of defeating McCain than Clinton. Six days until we know more, make sure you vote in the primary if your state allows you to!

January 13th will be a bad day for Fox

Why will it be a bad day for them? Because the geniuses at Fox decided it would be a good idea to make a show called Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. This is some sort of spin off of the movies, but I can guarantee it will suck balls. Big time.

On the other hand, NBC started up the American Gladiators franchise again, which could have been the smartest idea in the entire world, except they decided to fill it will all kinds of commentary from the contestants, made the challenges less extreme than the original (The Eliminator is pathetic), and its about 50% commercials. They must really be hurting from the writer's strike, although hiring Hulk Hogan to host the show must have cost some serious cash. I'm glad that five years from now, kids that are home from school sick will have something to watch on USA. Now they just need to remake McGuyver to complete the sick-from-school tv watching trifecta, because I still think The People's Court is on the air.

Thought I would brighten everyone's day...

And the most overrated conference is...

The Big 10! No surprise here really, but what is more surprising is their bowl record since 2001:

YEAR RECORD
2001 2-4
2002 5-2
2003 3-5
2004 3-3
2005 3-4
2006 2-5
2007 3-4
Total 24-31

Thats a .44 winning percentage, the worst of any of the major conferences. The pac-10?

2001 2-3
2002 2-5
2003 4-2
2004 3-2
2005 3-2
2006 3-3
2007 4-2
Total 25-21

.54 winning percentage, just like the Blazers of the 90s. The SEC? A scary .63 winning percentage. Ohio State isn't going to win a championship until they play a team in the national title game that isn't from the SEC (or USC).

The Debates

I watched both the Republican and the Democratic debates tonight (ahh the internet, where we all can become political pundits), and the primary thing I learned is that there needs to be less people in these debates. I didn't get much out of the Republican one because six guys were constantly interrupting each other and listening to Bill Richardson drag on about how he was the energy secretary under Bill Clinton was like getting shot in the face over and over again.

Republican candidate round up:

McCain gets too flustered when people question him, he needs to take an anger management class. I like a lot of his positions (minus the war) but its pretty easy to make him look like his head is going to catch on fire.

Romney comes across as a sleazy scumbag and I think he's got a 0% chance of winning the nomination. His bickering with everyone makes me think he would stab his mother to win the election.

Thompson is clearly an idiot and is trying to play it up like W to work the "drink a beer with me" crowd.

Giuliani has no chance, he's obviously corrupt and I question his hygiene.

Ron Paul is not the world's best speaker, and the points he tries to argue, although valid, are too out of reach to appeal widely. Plus getting rid of the federal income tax is probably a pretty bad idea and no intervention no matter what probably wouldn't work out too well, for example WWII.

Huckabee is an excellent charmer, he comes across to me as genuinely wanting to change things for what he thinks is better. Too bad that probably involves teaching creationism in every school.

My preference is for McCain or Huckabee, or at least I'd like to see them debate with each other more instead of hearing Giuliani's cackle after every question or Romney's constant interruptions.

Democratic candidate round up:

Richardson has no chance of winning and if somehow he got elected he'd do a horrible job. He should also watch what he eats, that chin is not of this world.

Hilary is pretty good at answering questions but gets into trouble when people start questioning her. Also, she should stop trying to ride the bandwagon on the change thing, that's Obama's pony. I think she's in trouble.

Obama did a nice job responding to criticism, its probably his to lose now.

Edwards has a lot of ideals, but I don't think he could even come close to getting done what he talks about if he got elected, its too huggy feely. Maybe he's trying to go for VP again the way he defended Obama early on.

The Issues:

In general, it was easier to see the differences in the Republican candidates. The Democrats are all preaching similar things (I'm not so sure about Richardson on this but who cares).

Iraq: All the Republicans want to finish the job except Ron Paul who has no chance. I'd probably trust McCain on this one the most. I find it confusing that many of the candidates preached increasing the size of the military, and naturally cutting everything else. I'd be more supportive if they cut everything, seems more fiscally conservative if you want to reduce the presence of government. The Democrats all want to get the troops back home. It was interesting to note that the troop surge does seem to have had its intended effect of reducing violence, but they all brought up a good point that if we ever intend to get out, the Iraqi government needs to get it together which hasn't happened.

Immigration: I don't remember this being asked in the Democratic debate, but it was a big issue for the Republicans. Obviously, you got to get the border locked down if one of your main arguments against illegal immigration is the "terrorists" coming in across the border. Seems like they all want to build a massive high tech wall to shut the Mexicans out. Say this is done. From this point on, any of the candidates who want to make ALL the illegal immigrants go home first (everyone but McCain and Giuliani) are idiots. The whole point is we need the illegal immigrants to keep parts of the economy functioning. You don't offer them anyway to keep working here with the temporary work visas and whatnot then who know what'll happen. However, I don't see how fining them is going to help much, as they probably have no money as it is. The logical solution? Lock the border down so those you do send back can't return, send the criminals (guilty of things other than illegal immigration) back home, and offer the others a path to citizenship while allowing them to make an income (and collect the tax revenue!).

Health Care: This is such a complicated issue, especially when you think about all the baby boomers who are going to retire soon. My opinion is Obama has the right idea, make sure all children are covered and make it affordable enough so that those adults that want it can purchase it easily and those that remain uninsured have no excuse. You're never going to get everyone insured unless you go the path of socialized medicine, some people just won't sign up even if it is outrageously cheap. How do you handle those that won't sign up? I don't see hospitals turning away car crash victims, etc. I am confused about people having their own personal health savings plans, how do young people save up for such an account? Does the federal government cover students until a certain age or something? Seems flawed to me. Also, individual insurance for everyone is probably not a good idea, you need the bargaining power of the masses. This is exactly why unions work, you get enough people together searching for a better deal and you end up without new television shows.

Energy Independence/Global Warming: These are pretty intimately linked. Any candidate (Giuliani, Romney, Thompson) looking for primarily a market-based solution is an incredible idiot. This is something the government needs to get going after by dumping tons of money into R&D, giving lucrative incentives, and setting strict goals to meet. Cut down the military and use that money to make the US energy independent. The large majority of our current foreign policy disasters would just go away, plus we wouldn't DESTROY the planet. On top of all that the number of jobs it would create in the US would be gigantic.

My prediction is that we'll see a Obama vs Huckabee battle, although McCain could pop up but this is doubtful as I think Giuliani is going to steal a lot of McCain's votes, and Huckabee has the lock down on the religious vote which might just give him enough support to grab the nomination. Hilary is sliding, she needs a Howard Dean moment from Obama, yaaaaaaaaa!