MaxRedline

They Called It The Great Berlin Bump

But then it came down with a thump.

Gains for McCain

Said the paper today

And Barack's back at home

In a funk

It's Hard To Argue With The Facts

Crime shot up by 22% in one county, yet dropped by almost 20% in the county right next door.  Which county do you think made the decision to start cracking down on illegal aliens? 

Guy-liner and Manscara

This week Superdrug will start stocking two men-only cosmetics - an eye-liner it calls 'Guy-liner' and mascara dubbed 'Manscara'.

The company launching these products claims to believe that there's a real market for such cosmetics - which seems rather a silly thing to have to say, as there'd be no reason to develop and market such items if they didn't believe demand would be strong.

Although the jury remains out on the subject in the U.K., where the products are currently being marketed, they likely would appeal to a certain set of folks in America.  Many on Portland City Council, Metro Council, and others would likely jump right on them.

Of course, there's at least one politician out there who'd likely take a pass:

Is It Your Density, Or Is It All In Their Heads?

Surprise!  Now that Interstate light rail has been built (over the objection of voters), "planners" have okayed putting in 125-foot-tall buildings along the line.  This, of course, is being done to accommodate Portland's burgeoning population explosion.  Apparently it has never dawned on any of these Certifiably Smart Folks that there just might be a correlation involving their "planning" and the fact that Portland Public Schools are bleeding students; driving up per-student education costs even as they shut down schools.

Families are leaving the city, and other families are not moving in.  That's why the CoPo population increases projected at a whopping 155,000 or so between now and 2040 aren't likely to occur.  All of these "infill" and tower projects have to happen in order to accommodate Portland's projected 4.4% population increase by the year 2040 - yet there's no indication that Portland's increase is likely to exceed 1%, as in-migration trends of singles and retireds are countered by outmigration of young families.

Yeah, the Projects worked so well in Chicago....

Olympics Threats

BEIJING - A group calling itself the Turkestan Islamic Party has released a video asserting responsibility for deadly bus bombings last week in China's western Yunnan province and other recent incidents, and threatening attacks during the Olympic Games.

So, what exactly are these particular nutballs' problems?  Did China invade Iraq or something?  Certainly, there are any number of reasons to get ticked off at China (for one thing, they invented fireworks, which we all know by now cause Global Warming.  But what doesn't?) - yet these Islamonuts don't seem to ascribe any particular reason to their call for terrorism.

Personally, I don't think religion or much of anything else motivates these dorks.  They're just sociopathic floaters in the greater gene pool.

Sam Adams Hates WalMart

But it's hard to see why, seeing as it's gone "clothing-optional", and Little Lord Sammy loves bicycles.

BikeForums member ReachHigher stripped down to her sports bra and spandex after Walmart refused to let her enter the store with her $600 bike. A manager explained that since Walmart sold bikes, bringing in an outside bike would obviously be too confusing to handle. ReachHigher asked if they also sold shirts. "She said yes so I took off my jersey and said well then I'd better not bring this in either..."

You'd think Sam would be on the WalMart semi-nude cheerleading squad!

Let The Whining Begin

The News Tribune website today unveiled some enhancements to their website - among them being a searchable database listing the salaries of Washington state public employees (including school staff), Pierce County staff, and City of Tacoma staff.  Curious about how your tax dollars support public employees through salaries? Search these publicly available databases to find out where the money is going.

Granted, much of the information has been available for those willing to jump through all the hoops necessary to obtain it.

“But we’ve gone beyond just posting the material and taken pains to make the data as useful as possible by putting it in searchable and sortable databases,” said John Henrikson, one of our local news editors and a member of our database team.

“We’ve added functionality to the data,” he said. “Our school employees database combined elements of several different databases kept by the state, so users can look up not only pay, but also college degree, years of experience and whether teachers or administrators have been the subject of disciplinary actions.”

While the News Tribune recognizes that some public employees may consider it a controversial move, and one that perhaps invades their privacy, the paper's position correctly states that the information belongs to the people, because taxpayers pay these salaries, and citizens elect the folks who run the agencies involved.

Transparency is often yakked about, yet rarely is it truly implemented.

Congratulations to the News Tribune.

Well, He's Back...

Having stamped his little feet and threatened to leave to a rousing Republican chorus of "don't let the door hit you in the fanny on the way out", good ol' Joel Haugen has decided to stick it out as a "Republican", after all.  See, if he'd made the switch, it would have left the Republicans without a candidate to oppose Democratic incumbent David Wu in November.  So you can see how this is really a selfless move on his part.

Others don't view it quite the same way; it looks to some as though we've just got two Democrats running for the same seat.  Haugen, after all, is adamant in his support of Barack Obambi for the Presidency.  While he may rationalize it as "reaching across party lines", most of us recognize that as just an overused line in and of itself.

Sorry, Joel:  better Wu than you.

Holy Sufferin' Catfish!

I decided to spluge, since my daughter's been griping incessantly about the lousy signal the litlle Netgear 802.11b router put out.  It's true, the unit was years old and wireless signal strength in the next room was about 15%.  So today I sallied forth and picked up a band-spankin' new LinkSys WRT150N - backward compatible with 802.11 b,g, and the so-called "super-g".  It came with a spiffy cdrom that promised to make installation a breeze.  They lie.

Went through it three times, and the dang thing would never recognize my cable modem.  I called tech support over in India which is a complete waste of time.  Therefore, recognizing that there comes a time when one must seize the bull by the horns, I ripped into the main system.  First recovering important little bits of data such as Mac addresses and Ip addresses and DNS server data, and ultimately taking apart the modem itself.

Now, I'm not a neophyte by any means; I've been messing around with computers for over 30 years, but this was a little over the top (by the way, if you run that included cdrom, you'll need to reset the router by depressing a little inset button on the back for 30 seconds - that'll clear out all of the eronneous configuration data that the program writes into the router so that you can overwrite the memory with the correct data).

After five hours, though, I've got everything reassembled, and two systems back online.  We'll see about the others a bit later.

This is not a unit for the faint of heart - at one point, my Bride walked in, took a look at the cables and guts strewn around amid the scraps of paper with bits of data scribbled on them, and immediately announced that she was going for a walk.  Good move.  I've always said that she she could have done a lot better, and I could've done a lot worse.

There Will Be Blood

And sooner than you may think.  It's something that no amount of increases in governmental taxes and fees can prevent.  Look at Vallejo and San Diego: both cities are now in bankruptcy proceedings.  These aren't aberrations; it's about to become the norm.

An Independent Budget Analysis for San Diego notes some interesting anomalies: 

Facing a billion dollar and growing pension deficit, City officials have traded away road repair, water security, and fire prevention to pay employees more to retire than to work.

Year after year, the City has opted to cut services. It has not raised revenues nor has it cut employee benefits. Pension officials, with the blessing of high level City officials, have continued to issue rosy predictions. The IBA Report has brought a much needed dose of reality to the situation.

In the report the IBA notes that since 2003 the City has had to annually implement budget reductions (cut departmental budgets) which translate into reductions in city services.

If you live in the Portland area, this may sound eerily familiar.  Underfunded pension liabilities.  Hundreds of millions in "deferred maintenance".  Yet the City Council cheerily goes its merry way, somehow "finding" money to pay for day-labor sites, trams, streetcars, bicycle "education", walking "education" and a host of other goodies and "linch-pins".

Don't look now, Sam - but isn't that San Diego up ahead?