I didn’t even know this, but it’s perfectly legal to be naked in Washington:

Under state law, public nudity is not illegal unless it is an affront to someone else or causes alarm, Potter said.

Six (six!) people complained about a protest of naked bicyclists riding from Gas Works Park to Seattle Center so a proposal to ban public nudity was put before the Seattle Parks and Recreation. It was rejected.

Even though public nudity has been legal forever without problems, this could have been yet another case of a few people scared of something harmless using the government to force their personal beliefs on everyone else. But Seattle refused to be bullied by these extremists. Good for Seattle.

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Today is Havana’s half-birthday. She’s 1.5 years old.

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The NY Times shows in pictures how much better Democrats are for the stock market than Republicans. If you invested $10,000 in the S&P 500 index during only Republican Presidents, your money would have grown to $11,733. If you ignore Herbert Hoover’s Presidency during the Great Depression, you’d have $51,211. If you had invested $10,000 during Democratic Presidents only, you’d have $300,671!

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Palin said that Alaska’s proximity to Russia gives her foreign policy experience and she was laughed at because, well, it’s an idiotic statement. Now Katie Couric asked her about it and she seemed to dismiss it as just a flippant comment that she’s being made fun of over. Ok, that’d be smart, claim she was taken out of context and move on. But then goes on to defend it!:

(She’s so eloquent and coherent, isn’t she?)

Is she implying that Russia invades Alaska often? Or is she implying that they are about to? Does she realize that Russia is our ally? At least she doesn’t seem to think she’s protecting us from Canada.

I wish Couric had asked her if the governors of Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas are all foreign policy experts too since they actually touch other countries. Certainly in her teeny tiny brain they are.

Hell, I can see Puget Sound from my house. That makes me a marine biologist. I’ve seen lots and lots of numbers in my life, that makes me a mathematician… or an economist… or, why not, both! I’ve dropped things, that makes me a physicist. I used soap today, that makes me a chemist. I’m listening to music right now, I’m a musician.

When Sarah Palin’s parents told her she can be anything she wants to be, she took them literally. She is dumb. No wonder Republicans think women are inferior, this is what they consider their best and brightest.

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On the worst day in the stock market since 9/11, McCain announces his idea for solving our economic problems. He explains the cause:

the old-boy network and the corruption in Washington is directly involved and one of the causes of this financial crisis that we’re in today.

I wonder if McCain has forgotten that he was part of that “old-boy network and corruption in Washington” for the last 26 years. I know he hopes we all forgot.

So his solution is to create a a high-level commission to investigate similar to the 9/11 commission. We’ll ignore the fact that the Bush administration ignored all the recommendations of the 9/11 commission report, but McCain thinks bureaucrats will solve the problems that, he believes, bureaucrats created.

He is correct that bureaucrats created the problem. Republicans and McCain hate regulation and the housing and banking crisis we’re experiencing was caused by the de-regulation that the Republicans have wanted for years and got in the mid-1990s. McCain supported the de-regulation that caused it! In fact, 38 of the 39 Democrats in Congress voted against it and all 44 Republicans voted for it. This was a problem clearly created by Republicans, as McCain correctly pointed out.

Now, McCain’s own economic advisor has a solution:

a McCain economics and policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said any plan should include regulation of all sorts of financial institutions, consumer protections, improved corporate governance and “systems stability” programs.

In other words, we just need to undo McCain’s mistake. Yet McCain thinks we need a commission to spend several years thinking about it. Republicans have no understanding of economics beyond cutting taxes.

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Every Presidential election season, some candidate tries to appeal to the lower- and middle-class voters by suggesting a simpler tax system. This time it’s Huckabee and his “FairTax proposal” where the IRS is abolished and only sales taxes are paid. But it doesn’t make sense. Continue Reading »

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Teddy Roosevelt on people who actually do things versus those who criticize them (from WorkHappy):

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

- Theodore Roosevelt
“Citizenship in a Republic” Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

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David Cohen of RoadCycling.com says that Armstrong won’t win the Tour this year because the other riders are younger and more motivated to win. I don’t buy it, they were younger last year and why weren’t they motivated to prevent him from winning his 5th or the record-breaking 6th?

Outdoor Life Network did their final “Road to the Tour” yesterday and Phil Liggett was sure favoring Armstrong and proclaiming that this year’s Discovery Team is the strongest team Lance has had in the Tour. He even said disagreed with Lance saying that Andreas Klöden, a strong contender, is “riding like a sack of potatoes”.

T-Mobile has the second strongest team, in my opinion, but whether they’re all motivated to help Jan Ullrich win is the question. Vinokourov could be better than Ullrich. And Ivan Basso is another threat.

Regardless, it should be a good Tour this year!

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This is a shot on the ferry leaving Vashon and going to Seattle, where we attended the wedding of Gay’s cousin Saturday night.

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This is the best photo I took while in Vancouver. It’s a shot of downtown driving north on the South Granville Bridge. I forgot to bring the camera with us everywhere we went except for this day when we spent the day with our friend, Frank, who now lives in Vancouver full-time.

In addition to C, we ate at Vij’s, of course, for great indian food. This was my favorite meal of the trip. We also ate at Chambar, a new (~8 months) Belgian restaurant. I’m not a big fan of Belgian beers, but I did have a Leffe (or two) on draught which was very good.

The weather was beautiful the entire time, no rain at all. And we came home to great weather the rest of the week in Seattle.

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