Free kibbles

Russian President Medvedev meets with Chinese President Jintao about Georgia. Two tyrants in a pod. China hopes for "dialog and consultation". Right. Sounds like they're playing good cop - bad cop, saying all the placating words that the weaklings in charge in the west love to hear. In Ukraine, UK foreign secretary urges hard-line response to Russia. Good for him. But will Europe listen? Russia worried about buildup of NATO ships in Black Sea. Excellent. US coast guard ship docks in Georgia to deliver 34 tons of aid. Putin threatens oil supply to Europe if west retaliates for Georgian invasion. Russia's new foreign policy is energy blackmail. G7 condemns "act of fellow G8 member". That's useless rhetoric.

What the G8 should do is put Russia on probation. I know that sounds childish, but in a lot of ways, nations, which have no higher authority, behave like children. Russia should be excluded from the G8 as long as it occupies any part of Georgia. If the elected Georgian government falls during the occupation, Russia should be permanently removed from the G8. If Russia pulls back to its original peacekeeping status while the current the government is still in power, Russia should be readmitted to the G8. It's not hard to come up with a carrot and a stick to put pressure on Russia to right this wrong. I think everybody in the G8 and maybe all of Europe would support a proposal like this.

Immigration officials detain 600 suspected illegal immigrants at manufacturing plant in Mississippi. That's the largest ever raid. Gate crashers are afraid.

Massachusetts SAT scores rise a couple points. That's a good thing, but other studies have shown that the improvement only comes from wealthier (white) children and that stricter testing requirements had no effect on the schools that were already failing their (black) students.

Newegg stops collecting New York sales tax. The New York law is already being challenged. This is a perfect example of how taxes drive businesses out of states. Both Amazon and Overstock.com closed their New York affiliates, costing New York jobs, instead of collecting the sales tax. New York should have cut spending instead of increasing taxes.

Obama is so scared of Americans finding out about his long-running personal and professional relationship with unrepentant Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers that he is trying to intimidate broadcast stations, their advertisers, and use the Justice Department to silence the ad. Obama is scared of winning an election of informed voters, so he's trying to use legal means and bullying tactics to keep the electorate uninformed. That's after having those records of his work with Ayers purged before allowing public access.

Now that he's won the nomination, Obama is going to change his message. Maybe that's the change Obama has been talking about.

Joe Biden is not the change Obama has been talking about.

Obama promises a practical speech with a purpose, meaning policy details (including spending numbers?), instead his usual vapid rhetoric. Maybe that's the change Obama keeps talking about.

Bill Clinton hints that Obama can't deliver on anything. There's no change there.

Dick Morris thinks Michelle Obama's speech changed her from political liability to political plus. Maybe Michelle's makeover, pretending to be something she's not, is the change Obama keeps talking about.

I'm looking forward to seeing this Greek temple facsimile at Obama's acceptance speech. I expect this is much ado about nothing, but with Obama, you never know. Drudge has a picture up. It looks a lot like the Parthenon. That's audacity.

After watching some of the Democrat convention and seeing all the hoops and machinations Democrats are going through in an attempt to mollify women voters, I think the possibly that McCain picks Kay Bailey Hutchinson for VP is high, and she would be a great choice for him. She's from Texas. She's more conservative than he is. Democrats would reflexively condemn the choice, because that's what Democrats do (think Condoleezza Rice), further alienating women voters.

Nancy Pelosi calls supporters of drilling names, asks if she can drill their brains.

ISS notebook computers have virus.

Programmers expose huge security hole in internet.

The Daily Show has dropped its pretense of being fair by placing a funny billboard that insults Republicans in Minneapolis in preparation for the Republican Convention. They had no such billboard for Democrats in Denver.

Wind turbines make bat lungs explode. I bet bats evolve pretty quickly to avoid wind turbines.

A scam artist is passing off articles as if they were written by Thomas Sowell.

Dick Armey nicely summarizes the specter of large Democrat majorities in Congress regardless of who wins the presidency as the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse: higher taxes, energy regulation, union protection legislation, and socialized medicine. We get so caught up in the presidential politics, we forget that Congress has far more power over our lives than the president, and powerful Democrat Congress will be disasterous for America.

HIV rate in NYCity is 3 times the national rate. I guess New Yorkers didn't get the memo - no unprotected sex and no dirty needles.

Not only is Medicare, the precursor to America's socialized medicine fraudulent, it forced auditors to perform fraudulent audits to cover up it's fraud. Study shows 31.5% of Medicare payments were fraudulent, but Medicare's fraudulent audit only uncovered 7.5% fraud. And Democrats want the government to take over the health care business. Socialized medicne would be 100% fraudulent.

Power transmission and power spikes are major obstacles for wind farms.

Jon Stewart has a point about the 24 hours cable networks creating phony urgency, and the newspapers seem to be trying to copy that to compete, and therefore they're losing. He's also right that the print media should offer a counterpoint to that - well thought out and researched news. He doesn't mentioned that it should be unbiased, and that's a mistake. By its very nature, political bias feeds into phony alarmism and phony urgency, so getting rid of the bias is necessary to make a great print news product.

This is the kind of bizarre stuff that happens when a nation's population stops reproducing, as is the case with Russia with a fertility rate of 1.3. Russian judge throws out sexual harassment case because sexual harassment is necessary for the continuation of the species.