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This bailout deal stinks, and Congress should be ashamed of themselves. Both sides. Every stinking one of them.

Do you realize that both Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh actually AGREE WITH EACH OTHER that this thing is a swindle? Sure their reasoning is different, and they blame different people, but they both think this thing is a scam. And seriously, the Pope and the Ayatollah are more likely to agree than these two.

Yes, this is bad. Old Testament. Real wrath of God type shit.

We should vote all of those bums out of office. We just got taken for a ride.

CBS will make you sit through a commercial, but you need to watch this video. Doesn’t it remind you of the second video here?

Watch CBS Videos Online

Now, I don’t mean to pick on her, but this is the second time she’s had to answer this question. And after the last disaster, she’s had more than enough time to come up with (or be coached to say) something smart. I’ve voted for McCain TWICE before. But I’m be afraid to vote for him with Palin as his running mate. The idea of her as president just scares the bajeezus out of me now.

Yesterday was Earth Day.

The internets were full of all sorts of handy tips of everyday things you can do to save resources and save the planet — things like turning the water off while you brush your teeth or keeping your tires properly inflated.

For the most part, I’m fairly environmentally conscious. I reuse and recycle just about everything I can. I don’t buy bottled water. I avoid plastic bags whenever I’m shopping. (Seriously, dude at 7-11, don’t put my single pack of gum in a bag!) I leave my thermostat set a couple of degrees higher than most people in the summer and lower in the winter.

With all that said, I’m going to use this post to make three confessions. I have a a few habits that many would consider environmentally unsound, but I do them anyway. And I have no plans of changing.

1 - I take really long showers.
We’re talking “until the hot water runs out” long. The shower is a sacred retreat. There are few places more comforting to me than the “think tank.” I love the steam. I love the white noise. I love the lack of distractions. I can’t hear the phone. I can’t hear the doorbell. I can’t hear the cars pass by on Park Springs Boulevard. I love the shower. You can take my steamy, hot shower away when you pry the loofah from my cold, dead, pruney hands.

2 - I drive a bigass pickup truck.
Well, there might be a little remorse here. It’s not so much that I wouldn’t rather be driving a smaller truck, but that I couldn’t cost justify it. And sadly, the “smaller” trucks these days (a) really aren’t that much smaller and (b) don’t get significantly better gas mileage. Put a new Dodge Dakota next to the old Chevy LUV pickup I drove in high school and you’ll see what I mean. When you combined the higher resale value, better utility, and the ability to actually FIND them here in Texas, the bigger truck just made a lot more sense. (Seriously, most dealers don’t even bother stocking the small trucks around here. Go figure.) All in all, I’d love it if they brought back the LUV. That was a great, economical little truck. But when I can get 20mpg in my Sierra, the “mid-size” options just don’t make much sense. I should also point out that I don’t commute. I work at home, so the truck hardly gets many miles put on it anyway. So far I’m on pace to keep the odometer in the four digit range all year long.

3 - I eat cows. Lots of them.
Cows are tasty. Supposedly they consume a disproportionate amount of natural resources, and I think for cows that spend their entire lives on feed lots eating imported grain there may be some truth to that. But seriously people, have you eaten grass-fed beef? Have you had a thick steak grilled over an open fire until it was a nice juicy red medium rare in the middle? If you’ve only been eating “well done” beef, you may as well have been eating charcoal, anyway. You go ahead and switch to a vegetarian diet. I’ll eat your cows for you.

The Candidate You Can Trust …

… to not bother shaving

I just got in from Chicago. I took some pictures while I was there. (See them here.) Worked. Hung out with Sophie and Chris. Met a person with Alton Brown’s phone number in their cell phone. All in all a great trip. I’m freaking exhausted.

I rode the L a bunch while in Chicago and it made me think about how sad it is that I live in the largest city in the United States without any form of public transit. How can Arlington have a major league baseball stadium and soon be home to the most popular franchise in the NFL, yet still not have a convenient way for people to get to the games?

While in San Francisco last weekend I rode the Muni to the Giants game. It was ridiculously convenient, and if I lived in that city I’d go to games all the time. I used to have season tickets to the Rangers, but not only has the product on the field not really been worth watching lately, but when you also factor in that you have no choice but to drive to the game and pay ten bucks to park on top of the ticket, it hardly seems worth it. (Especially in the summer heat.)

If I could ride a bus from the “park and ride” down the street from my house for a couple of bucks, that would make the ball game a much more enticing night out.

And that’s just a selfish and frivolous reason it would be nice to have public transit. I won’t even get into the economic and environmental reasons why it’s such an important thing to do.

It’s pretty rare that I’m embarrassed for this city. But this is one of those times.

I’m not one of those guys who thinks that someone could get away with maliciously swinging an election by monkeying with electronic voting results. This isn’t because I believe it can’t happen. It’s because I believe that it would be really hard for someone to keep it a secret.

Nope. I’m not worried about the conspiracy theory kind of crap. I’m worried about something far, far simpler.

Here’s why I believe we need paper trails on our voting machines:

People screw up.

Check out THIS STORY (from CNN) about a computer technician in Alaska who accidentally deleted nine months worth of data concerning the Alaska Permanent Fund. The APF is a fund that distributes oil revenues to the citizens of the state. For the rest of us, this would be like the IRS accidentally deleting all of the records for every person’s tax refund in your state.

Nine months worth of information concerning the yearly payout from the Alaska Permanent Fund was gone: some 800,000 electronic images that had been painstakingly scanned into the system months earlier, the 2006 paper applications that people had either mailed in or filed over the counter, and supporting documentation such as birth certificates and proof of residence.

And the only backup was the paperwork itself — stored in more than 300 cardboard boxes.

According to this article, it cost over $220,000 in overtime and contractor fees to recreate the data from the paper record. Imagine what the cost would have been if the paper didn’t exist at all. What would your options even be?

Think … What would it cost to have a “do over” election?

This is the start of an ad that was in an email I got today from the North Texas Tollway Authority.

I’m not sure what’s crappier, the mere concept of a TollTag as a stocking stuffer, or the suggestion that it’s okay to be a cheap bastard and just “get someone started on the road to savings with a new account.”

I dunno, but to me that feels just one step short of saying, “Merry Christmas! I filled out one of those credit card applications you got in the mail for you!”

Note to family and friends: This is not what I want for Christmas.

Note to federal, state and local governments: Cut this crap out. We’re not your consumers or customers, we’re your citizens. Also, a toll road is a (sometimes) necessary civil project, not a luxury good.

…

[ONE HOUR LATER]

Okay, the more I thought about it, the above post seemed really crabby, and while I don’t take back a word I said (yet) I do think it’s only right to provide a little positive balance. I’ve been watching a lot of My Name is Earl lately, and I think Karma would appreciate it. So, below is a link to what I think is an example of honest-to-God GOOD marketing of an actual luxury good. (And note to the family: This makes an excellent stocking stuffer idea!)

• Mike Stopforth on the subject of customer evangelism

This picture was from my first “sleepover” birthday party. I believe this was in the second grade. As you can tell, we were some crazy mofos.

So what does this have to do with election day? Not much, except you should keep in mind that these crazy mofos have been old enough to vote for over a decade now. Think your vote’s not important? For every one of you, there are four nutjobs like these with a ballot and intent.

Or, alternatively, you could look at it this way … your vote is needed to counteract the poor judgment of the parents who got these obviously deranged kids hopped up on ice cream and caffiene resulting in THIS picture:

Actually, I think he’d prefer you vote for him for governor. You’ve gotta respect a candidate who knows where he’ll get the most bang for his campaign dollar in this state. (He also sponsored a Silverado in the truck race, too.)

More pictures from Friday:

• Qualifying for Saturday’s Busch race
• The Silverado 350K Craftsman Truck Race

I’ve always been a bit skeptical of the feasiblity of ethanol as a gasoline replacement. Two things always struck me as major problems with the idea:

1. We’d still be using petroleum based fertilizers to grow the the plants used to create the ethanol. Would the required dramatic increase of fertilizer use (and the energy used to create that fertilizer) be fully offset by the reduction of petroleum used in our tanks?
2. It would take a heck of a lot of land do produce these crops. Do we really have the land to spare, and can enough farmland be converted to energy production without negatively impacting our food supply?

Besides that, I’ve doubted whether the economic incentive was there to switch. As energy sources go, it’s always been a pretty safe assumption that oil was the cheapest option. And Detroit’s recent enthusiasm for ethanol seems to be rooted more in damage control and a desire to preserve the status quo for the internal combustion engine than out of real concern for the environment or the political ramifications of importing oil from the Middle East.

I take it back.

This presentation makes a really convincing case for ethanol, and addresses all of my previous criticisms. My only real remaining concern for the viability of a switch to ethanol is the enormous financial and political clout held by the petroleum economy.

The really cool thing about the idea is that it can all be done with existing technology, and only modest changes in infrastructure. And it would require virtually no changes in consumer behavior. In fact, we already have a model for the switch: Brazil has already done it.

Seriously, this presentation is really intriguing. It’s an hour long, but it’s worth it even if you only watch the first 10 minutes. This really could be a win-win for just about everyone except the oil companies (that recently made the biggest profits in the history of profits) and a few despotic nations in the Middle East and Africa.

Click here to see what I’m talking about.

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PS - Enterprising “do-it-yourselfers” in the Appalachians have been making ethanol for over a century. It’s called moonshine.