I just had to renew another domain I hold on WordPress and realized quite how neglected this piece of virtual real estate has become.

Though I would like to say that I will have the time to not leave it so abandoned, I can’t guarantee it.  However, I am feeling the urge to blog more now, having taken quite a break from it.  It was not that I was burnt out, so much as I have been very busy with work, leaving me little time to write.

My twitter feed is now up here, which is where I have been taking to posting much shorter form comments.  It’s not as if I have falled off of the face of the online earth.

The Clinton campaign has been trying to advance an argument that Barack Obama will be a weak general election candidate because he is not winning the states that “matter”. This has been relentlessly mocked by the bloggers and the media like the bloggers has dug into the numbers and found them wanting. So it begs the question, who exactly is responsible for this illogical strategy, the only way Clinton can argue she is “winning”. The answer is unsurprising. It is Mark Penn:

Here is what Penn said. . . .”Obama “really can’t win the general election.” As you’ll hear, he also says that “if Barack Obama can’t win” in Pennsylvania, “how could he win the general election?”

Later, a reporter asks what he meant. Clinton campaign communications chief Howard Wolfson jumps in to say that “Mark did not say that.” Then Penn says that if Obama doesn’t win the Pennsylvania primary, it “raises serious questions” about whether he can win the general election.

Penn was the one advancing this logic on the call, taking it one step past incorrect line of reasoning to batshit crazy. Wolfson made an attempt at damage control, but then Penn came right back around to it.

The results of the primaries have never lined up with the general election results. To determine potential performance we should look to general election polling. Consistently Obama expands the map. Clinton would go for the 50+1 strategy, which has worked out oooh so well the past two elections. He would be competitive in more states than Clinton period. Her only path to the nomination relies on the superdelegates overturning the results of the primaries and the caucuses. That and counting MI/FL as is, which is not fair or permissible under the rules of the DNC. The Democratic party needs it’s nominee determined in June. They need more than 2 months to put together a general election campaign. The party needs time to unify after a divisive nomination battle. That requires Clinton conceding unless she is ahead in pledged delegates after all of the primaries and caucuses have concluded. The fate of MI/FL will be determined by that point.

But I digress…

Mark Penn continues to drag Clinton down. How much you want to bet that he looked at his microtargeting data and figured out that there may be some benefit to letting Clinton’s supporters advance racist arguments?

Former President Bill Clinton decided it would be a good idea to talk as if he was his wife Senator Clinton, while at a campaign stop. It was if he had slipped back into running himself, especially if you happened to miss the first three words. Jake Tapper has the quote and a link to the video:

So Hillary says, in 2005, the United States Congress adopted the Bush-Cheney energy bill, which gave $27 billion in subsidies to nuclear, oil, and gas and coal. The only thing that was justified was clean coal, because countries are going to be using that. We have to figure out how to take the carbon dioxide out of it. The rest of it is waste. If you elect me, I’ll repeal those subsidies. And put them into a strategic energy fund that will create American jobs for America’s future with clean energy.”

The video is even creepier.

Hopefully the Obama campaign will find a smart way to use this to their advantage. It worked the last time when Bill went off the deep end and made a big issue out of his stumping. It very much through the Clinton campaign off track. Hillary needs to stand on her own merit and does not benefit when Bill pictures himself as the president again.

Stupid is as stupid does:

Investigators were trying Monday to determine if a suspected drunken driver involved in a solo crash into a tree Sunday night failed to buckle his own seat belt even though the 12-pack he was carrying on the passenger seat was safely belted in.

Witnesses told Citrus Heights police that they saw the man driving north on Van Maren Lane in excess of 60 mph before he lost control of his car and slammed into a tree near Garden Gate Drive.

Dude is still alive evidently. Perhaps he will wake up and be able to tell the investigators.

It better have been good beer. If it was a 12 pack of Schlitz, then this guy is dumber than I even thought possible.

This month I have been on three round-trip flights, and a fourth to come tomorrow.  All were on Southwest.  I have two questions, both of them deadly serious.

1) Why on every single flight do the flight attendants get on the intercom and ask for change?  One would think that the need for change would be fairly predictable given the $4 cost for alcoholic beverages.

2) Why do the bag of peanuts say, “produced at a facility that processes nuts”?  While I get the need to note on other food products that the plant also has nuts around, thus protecting people who have allergic reactions, it does seem a little silly to place the warning on a bag of peanuts.

(/end rant)

I really cannot do this story justice, so click here for the full story. Long story short a womens shelter on the Standing Rock Reservation was burned to the ground by an arsonist. The Daily Kos community earlier this year raised over $27,000 for the shelter when it was facing closure due to lack of funds. They were saved once, but now are on the brink of shuttering for good again. Women’s lives are on the line. They need to raise $70,000 to buy a new home and make sure it has basic safety features like cameras and security doors.

Go read the diary and join me in contributing here.

The second annual Credo (Act for Change) phone cards for Veterans project is underway. I just donated and encourage folks to join me. Here is a detailed explanation of the project.

Thanks to Bush Administration cuts to the Veterans Administration (VA) budget in recent years, veterans recuperating at VA hospitals aren’t even allowed long-distance time to call home to their families over the holidays. Will you chip in and help our nation’s veterans be able to call their loved ones this holiday season?

CREDO Action (from Working Assets) and Veterans for Peace have teamed up again this year to repeat last year’s successful delivery of phone cards to 148 VA hospitals around the country. Reports back from the VA hospitals were fantastic; to quote one volunteer who helped deliver the cards…

“The Vets were astounded. Two hours of phone time is like gold to them. Many a tear was shed. Thanks to you, the holidays will be happier for lonely veterans around the country.”

We’ve used our relationship with Sprint to get a great long-distance rate on these cards — 2.9 cents per minute. This means that your tax-deductible contribution of $10.50 will get two-hour phone cards into the hands of three deserving veterans this December. A contribution of $52.50 will get phone cards into the hands of fifteen veterans.

To every and all Veteran. Thank you for your service. America owes you an enormous debt of gratitude at the very least and a whole lot of support. This country would not exist without your service.

It could be coming soon to a pump near you. Merc:

“If crude prices stay where they are now through next summer,” warned Chris Knittel, an associate professor of economics at the University of California-Davis, “we can certainly see $4 a gallon.”

In fact, energy watchers across the state and the country can’t recall this big of a jump at the pump at a time when lower demand usually leads to lower prices.

Unlike previous spikes, driven by local supply woes or refinery disruptions, this one is due to long-simmering matters largely beyond California’s control: political unrest in oil-producing regions and the falling value of the dollar. Add the fact that California in the past decade has increasingly come to depend on oil imported from out of state, and we could be facing staggering prices for quite some time.

This will not effect me much, since I can actually go up to a month between fillups (yes, it is one of the perks of working from home). However, this will disproportionately hit the working class, given the percentage of their income that goes to basic needs like gas for their cars.

My uncle Pete, a screenwriter is headed out to the picket line today. They have asked him and other guild members to commit to 20 hours a week throughout the strike. Unfortunately the negotiations do not appear to be going well. It does not seem like it will not be over quickly. Here is a great video just released by the Writers Guild explaining what this strike is all about. Check out their blog here.

In solidarity.

Time for a mini rant about the difference between a blog and a blog post. Yes, I realize my level of annoyance over this is a little silly, but if one is going to blog then they should know the proper terminology.

Ruck Pad is a blog. When I write something on it, that is a blog post. I do not write a blog. I blog at my blog, but the product I produce are blog posts. got that?

One should not say, check out this blog and then link to a post. One should not write “in this blog” and then write something. Piece works, post works. Blog is incorrect.

I now return you to your regularly scheduling programming.