Clinton Donations

You don't think anything fishy is going on here, do you?

The Paw's Daly City home is a one-story house in a working-class suburb of San Francisco. On a recent day, a coiled garden hose rested next to a dilapidated garden with a half-dozen dried out plants. The din of traffic from a nearby freeway was occasionally drowned out by jumbo jets departing San Francisco International Airport.

William and Alice Paw are of Chinese descent. The entire family got their Social Security cards in California in 1982, according to state records. All but one of the Paws registered to vote as "nonpartisan." A San Mateo County elections official said that members of the Paw family vote "sporadically."

No one in the Paw family had ever given a campaign contribution before the 2004 presidential election, according to campaign-finance reports. Then, in July 2004, five members of the family contributed a total of $3,600 to the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat. Five of the checks were dated July 27, 2004. About the same time, Mr. Hsu made his first donations to a political candidate, contributing the maximum amount allowed by law to Mr. Kerry in two separate checks, on July 21, 2004, and on Aug. 6.

From then on, the correlation of campaign donations between Mr. Hsu and the Paw family has continued. The first donations to Mrs. Clinton came Dec. 23, 2004, when Mr. Hsu and one Paw family member donated the then-maximum $4,000 to her Senate campaign in two $2,000 checks, campaign-finance records show. In March 2005, the individuals gave a total of $17,500 to Mrs. Clinton.

Since then, Mr. Hsu, his New York associates and the Paw family have continued to donate to Democratic candidates. This year, Alice Paw and four of the Paw children have donated the maximum $4,600 to Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign.

In total, the Paw family has donated a combined $200,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005. I guess the struggeling middle class isn't struggle so much these days, huh?!?

Note to spammers

No one's around except for the spammers, but I thought they may be interested to know that my modem is fried. I don't know when I'll be back.

Guess I'll get a lot of reading done, huh?

Useless

It's August, and I've got nothing to say, so instead I've discovered a cool new widget. See it? Right over there? Anyway, if you click "songs" it lists all the songs I've purchased from iTunes. Cool, huh?

Ok, whatever. Who asked you?

I blame Michele. She's sucked all blogging out of me with her OCD project; 300 songs by 300 different artists. I've reverted back to full-time commenter.

Anyway, Michele took suggestions for artists, but if she hates them they never appear. That's what I'm assuming happened to my recommendation of Heart. What's to dislike about Heart? Anyway, best song by Heart? Barracuda.. Followed-up with Magic Man.

Totally useless cats

Last night, I got woken up by a little girl complaining that our cat had hopped up on her bed with A BIRD IN IT'S MOUTH. Yes, middle of the night. Live bird.

What a prodigious hunter, you say?

Ok, then how do you explain the mouse staring at me from the kitchen counter this morning? I had stepped out of the kitchen for a minute, and when I returned there it was.

I swear, totally useless. I hate rodents, and kinda like birds.

The mouse is now trapped between the kitchen window and the screen. I didn't know what else to do with it.

That's IT

I've had enough. School resumed this morning. I don't yet have curriculum, but I'm not going to let that stand in the way of as much learning as I can cram-in until we can afford it.

News I missed over the weekend

AP: Hundreds of naked people pose in front of the Aletsch glacier during a massive naked photo session with U.S. photographer Spencer Tunick, near Bettmeralp, Switzerland, Saturday Aug. 18, 2007.


Hippies in action. Getting naked for global warming. Naked and, assumedly, cold for global warming.

Weather happens

After a summer of very limited precipitation, we are now on day-two of constant rain.

Speaking of which, I saw "Evan Almighty" yesterday, at the $2 show. Twelve bucks for me and five kids. Cute movie, the kids all enjoyed it.

Chills

As in, I got ...



h/t: Protein Wisdom Pub

One Kick-@ss Table

From here.

THANKS JENNY!

Michigan continues to bleed jobs:

The North American headquarters of the VW and Audi brands, based in Auburn Hills, is rife with speculation that a new CEO from Germany, Stefan Jacoby, will arrive Sept. 1 and use a promised restructuring to move some -- if not all -- of its 2,000 taxpaying jobs from Michigan to new headquarters on the East Coast, most likely to a site in suburban Washington, D.C., or North Carolina.

It appears that the stink of Michigan failure is too much for VW and Audi.

The thinking behind a move is that it ostensibly would distance Audi and VW from troubled Michigan and a beleaguered industry. Second, it would enable parent VW to burnish its brands on the coasts by attracting talent that otherwise wouldn't consider opportunities here.

That is, they don't want to be associated with "Michigan failure" AND no one wants to live here. THANKS JENNY!!



In five years, the whole Michigan economy will be blown away.

But, never worry. Jenny's got a plan. She's going to raise our taxes. That ought to fix everything.

Just In

Well, actually this is yesterday's news, but I was off driving around in celebration. In case you didn't hear, they figured out that 1998 wasn't the hottest year on record.

Ooops.

Here are the hottest, in order:
1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931,1999, 1953, 1990, 1938, 1939

Kick @ss, I'm buying an SUV! The meat of the story? Here.

So how is this possible? How can the global warming numbers used in critical policy decisions and scientific models be so wrong with so basic of an error? And how can this error have gone undetected for the better part of a decade? The answer to the latter question is because the global warming and climate community resist scrutiny. This weeks Newsweek article and statements by Al Gore are basically aimed at suppressing any scientific criticism or challenge to global warming research. That is why NASA can keep its temperature algorithms secret, with no outside complaint, something that would cause howls of protest in any other area of scientific inquiry.

So, I'm gonna hold-off on buying those carbon credits.

If I were doing a list, which I'm not

Michele invited people to throw out their favorite tunes, but I didn't really think I could do it justice in comments. Also, I'm not a fraction as good as Michele at explaining why I like what I like, and hoped to avoid a direct comparison to her writing.


First up is "Nautical Disaster" by The Tragically Hip



The first time I ever heard this song, it sent chills down my spin. I didn't know what the heck it was about, but it didn't sound good:

One afternoon, four thousand men died in the water here
Five hundred more were thrashing madly as parasites might in you blood
Now I was in lifeboat designed for ten and ten and only,
Anything that systematic would get you hated.
It's not a deal nor a test nor a love of something fated.
The selection was quick, the crew was picked and
those left in the water got kicked off our pant leg and we headed for home.

People have argued about which nautical disaster Gord is talking about (the Bismark and Dieppe are tossed around), but he's not telling. Best assumptions that it's a composite or an allegory or an allusion- you know, one of those fancy-shmancy writer tricks. I read once that it was about a failed relationship. Who knows, who cares. I love it.

Next up, I'm gonna take Michele to task for her nomination of "Mosquito Song" as favorite QOTSA tune. I know, doesn't really seem fair, does it? Taking someone to task for their opinion. Well, it's hot, and nearing my monthly, so let me be a bitch for just a little bit.

Now Mosquito Song is moody and mysterious and all that. It's also a tad repetitive. I cry, CRY, that Michele listens to this repetitive song, REPEATEDLY. You know what I think it is? Michele has this ability to put some sort of movie-horror scape into her mind while this song plays, making it more interesting. For her. Anyway, my favorite QOTSA song (this week) is (F-bomb 3 minuets in):



No explanation, because the song speaks for itself, right? Ok, one little bit - I love the harmonies in this song. It's like Josh is singing sweet-sweet nothing right to me. If I were twenty (ok twenty-five) years younger, I'd have poster of him on my wall, and I'd stare at it as I listen to this song over and over and over again.

Instead, when I was 16, I had a picture of Morrissey up there. What was I thinking?

If you missed it

On Hot Air, Newt on "Green Conservativism":



Says Allahpundit:

He’s making a point I’ve made before myself, that what conservatives really object to about environmentalism isn’t so much the policy as the collateral leftist causes — and loathsome celebrity spokesmen — that come bundled with it.

But, oh, Newt says that and so much more. It's really good.

One Question

Michele is taking band suggestions for her next OCD project; the top 300 songs from 300 DIFFERENT artists.

So, you name, it, and she'll do her darndest to come up with at least ONE good song from their catalogue.

The question remains; which QOTSA song will she include?

You know I'm partial to this one:

Taking it up a notch

And by that, I mean I want this. Jeff, over at Protein Wisdom, is doing it, and he wrote a nice long, positive review of it for me.

Anyway, it's expensive and HARD. So, since it's going to take a bit of time before I can trick convince Pat to subsidize the purchase, I've decided I needed to train in anticipation of ordering it. No more quitting after my cardio workout (a common ploy of mine), and I need to mix-up what I do a bit more. More yoga. Move out of my comfort zone. Anyway, I did pretty well today. Let's see if I can keep it up all week.

But, on day One, I was a good girl.

Dancing Dog

If it's old, blame my sister.

What am I?

You Sound SO Gay

Hey, I'm not homophobic, I've got science behind me.

Perhaps this is what makes gaydar work?

Hypothetical

If you had a yappy (unleashed) one of these:


chasing you down the street and then attacking ... oh, say one of these:



which do you think would win?

There was an injury, and exposed muscle tissue was involved. It was not on my beautiful puppy. The owners of the yap-yap have known for a looong time about this issue, and it isn't the first time their "killer" has gone after us while we were walking. I've been chased into the street, and once before there was a minor biting incident. I've always known that if that dog really tried to rumble with Greta, death was very possible.

Yesterday, I saw the dogs running out from their garage, and had my husband continue walking, while I attempted to stop the dogs in their tracks. They blew right by me.

I felt horrible, even though it wasn't my fault, but when I tried to apologize, the dog owner instead insisted that I accept his apology.

The kicker, is that we had another unleashed dog attack us in the next block. This time Greta was more evenly matched, size-wise, but she still won.

I'm thinking of contacting Michael Vick.