philly

Guess who has reservations for two at Morimoto for his birthday this Friday!

Thanks sis and my new bro for the early birthday present allowing me/us to afford a trip there!

A few things that makes me feel like a fan-cay chef person:

1. Cracking eggs open with one hand
2. Smashing garlic cloves with my large chef's knife to separate it from the skin
3. Scoring onions so that they dice easier
4. Flipping things in a pan
5. Of course, my fan-cay knife set with wood block

He's not well-known. His name sounds like Pinocchio. He's a teacher. He doesn't have money… All of those things have been said about my candidate for US Senate Chuck Pennacchio. Well, fuck that shit.

OpEdNews.com commissioned Zogby [the biggest pollster there is] to poll Pennsylvanians about the issues at stake. The Senate race, Alito, paper ballots, W, the War… The results are in and the analysis has begun.

The Santorum Casey race: When people find out about candidate positions on key issues Casey plummets from a twelve point lead to a dead heat, with a non-significant two point lead.

Santorum loses when matched with any of the democratic candidates. Both of the self identified progressive democratic candidates draw higher percentages than Casey, with Pennacchio having the largest percentage of votes against Santorum, at a not quite significant 4.4 points higher than Casey. Casey, at non-significant levels, actually gets MORE votes from Republicans once they find out more about him and Santorum.

[emphasis added]

There's goes that whole name recognition thing. And this more than reinforces Chuck's "viability" and "electability" two words I loathe, but some people like to use. People will vote for Chuck Pennacchio.

The poll found that an overwhelming number of respondents want some sort of paper record of their votes whether it be in the form of paper receipts or sticking with lever machines.

And on the national issue of Presidential wiretapping, respondents said that if W is found guilty of violating the law by wiretapping American citizens, 53.7% said they agree that he should be impeached.

This is only a preliminary analysis, there's a shitload of data go to through and more findings will be released by OpEdNews.com in the next few days.

If your excuse in not backing Chuck was that he had no name recognition, you no longer have an excuse. If your excuse in not backing Chuck was that he has no money, open up your wallets and give it to him, he's WINNING IN A HEAD TO HEAD POLL AGAINST RICK SANTORUM. If your excuse in not backign Chuck is that he's a teacher, well, he's a damn professor of US History, we need more people with that kind of background serving us in government. If your excuse in not backing Chuck was that his name sounds too much like Pinocchio, well, a friend of mine told me that it means "lucky" and penacho, the root of Pennacchio's name means "pen feather / quill" so don't sweat it.

This is great news for the Pennacchio campaign. Spread the word. Learn more about Pennacchio on his website. You can find his stances on the issues here.

Crossposted:

• MyDD
• dKos
• Booman

Google has become a company more ingrained in my everyday life than I ever thought an efficient search engine company ever would. I use GMail religiously [anyone still need an invite?] all day. That little popup in the bottom corner of my FFX 1.5 keeps me updated. I use their search engine religiously. In my FFX 1.5, I have a quick search setup so that in the address bar, all I have to do is type in "g" then a search string [eg. g mozart] and then enter and it pulls up the results sending me straight to the google page.

And now, the US Government wants Google to turn over their secret sauce to figure out the habits of people while searching for porn. Google said no and they'll be going to court.

However, Google did let the Chinese government deliver filtered/censored results to their portal.

The results to a simple search can be shocking.

What does one think about when one thinks of China? General Tso's chicken. The Great Wall. Opium? How about Tiananmen Square [which is actually a 880m x 500m rectangle]. And the 1989 protest; remember that lone protester standing in front of that line of Communist tanks? The results to a Google image search in the US and in China. Quite a sanitized difference, eh — What protest?

If Google loses this lawsuit and hands over their secret search sauce to the Fed, they could be pressured to start filtering results or have their secret search sauce published through nefarious means – yes I'm that wary of my government.

American Communism coming soon?

And thank you Danie for passing along the info.

Every 15 seconds somebody dies of TB, avoidably, preventably

said UK Chancellor Gordon Brown yesterday at a conference. And Bill Gates is helping to stop that, perhaps more so [monetarily] than any other person in the world. He's kicking in $600M [in addition {IN ADDITION} to the $300M he's already committed] to the program to Stop TB.

Say what you want about this guy [and I sure as hell will], but he's more than put his money where is nerdy mouth is.

I got passed some info about some pending legislation. An amendment to the PA Constitution to prohibit gay marriage. This amendment must pass two consecutive legislative sessions before going to the ballot in a state wide referendum. If it were to pass and go on the ballot, I think it would be a bigger deal with more national attention. This asinine piece of legislation can still be shot down in the PA Congress.

We can all contact our House Reps via zip code punched into this site. It'll give you your state rep and his/her contact info. Call them and tell them 1) you are a registered voter in their district and 2) you want them to oppose the marriage amendment. If your Rep. is Babbette Josephs, [mine is] then call her and tell her to make sure no Democrats on the Government Affairs Committee vote for this bill.

There's a coalition of groups organizing meetings between people and their reps. Groups including the ACLU and the Center for Lesbian and Gay Rights. The official name of this group is the Value All Families Coalition. If anyone wants some more info on the group, their mission or for help contacting your rep, contact Charles Fischer here.

Say no to this condemnment.

I think this is my favorite shot I've taken with my wide angle so far. It's of a school building [I think it's a school building] on my walk from the 46th St train stop to my office. I'm standing about ten to fifteen feet from the bottom of the sidewalk where the stairs start. The sky is a rich blue, the sun is bright. Bigger on the photoblog.

From AP:

The budget deficit will rise to at least $337 billion this year and may well approach or exceed $400 billion because of tax cuts and new spending for hurricane relief and the war in Iraq, congressional budget analysts said Thursday.

And with that, W said:

We can cut our deficit in half by 2009 and make sure the American people still get their tax relief.

And by "the American people" he obviously means "my rich friends who pump me full of money" duh.

This fucker wants to cut taxes. Taxes need to be raised for the richest. Loopholes for the top bracket have to be closed. There is no other way to pay for everything, especially when at war. Not even the Chinese will continue to bail us out. They can't.

THIS EMAIL AND ITS ATTACHMENTS MAY CONTAIN CONFIDENTIAL AND/OR PRIVILEGED
MATERIAL. UNINTENDED RECIPIENTS MAY NOT REVIEW, COPY OR DISTRIBUTE THIS
EMAIL OR ITS ATTACHMENTS. IF YOU RECEIVED THIS EMAIL OR ITS ATTACHMENTS IN
ERROR, PLEASE DELETE THEM AND CONTACT THE SENDER.

Do things like this have any legal bearing? If I got a leaked memo from turdblossom@whitehouse.gov saying that… well… where do I begin. Saying that they lead us to war on lies and that they want to resign all their leadership posts. I don't think I'd be contacting Turdy and telling him he accidentally sent it to me and now his party is fucked.

If John mass emails his addressbook about his escapades with Joe's sister/girlfriend/mom and forgets to delete Joe's email address, is Joe supposed to forget he got the email and then inform John of the mistake? Fuck no. Joe goes over to John's house and delivers a right cross to the nose. If Jane mass emails her addressbook about her best friend Julie's unibrow and Julie's still in that bcc: field, is Julie supposed to not be angry? Heh.

Email's a bitch. Everyone's been burned by adding one too many names to the to:/cc:/bcc: field. It sucks. But to say that the recipient of "person x's" email is not allowed to review, cop or re-distribute the email sent to their personal email? Do these stupid disclaimers have any legal bearing? Why even bother? Just adds needless kilobites to the already flooded bandwidth of this superhighway.

By reading this post, via RSS reader, email forward, internet browser or any other method, you agree that you are now in debt to the original poster, one "dragonballyee" and he may call upon you for a favor in the future, someday, and that day may never come, but it could.

So with all this talk about candidate Casey, I decided to watch the first extended clip of him on live TV. I had seen teensy clips of him and heard him on the "conference call" last week, but never saw him on live TV. I watched this clip of then Treasurer-elect Casey on PA Newsmakers hosted by pollster Terry Madonna. It was the 11.28.04 show, a few weeks after the election. It's about a three or four part interview with Casey with a runtime of about fourteen minutes [the whole clip is twenty-three minutes, but Casey isn't on the last nine minutes of the show].

One of the very first things Casey spoke about were the six debates he had. Yes, this was during the general election, but he lauded the fact that they had so many, he [or Madonna] said that he thinks it was a record. Why not set another record and flush out all the details in this all too important primary we have now? Chuck Pennacchio and Alan Sandals would love to debate him. I think Pennacchio would trounce all of them in a big debate. But Bob Casey is scared to open his mouth in fear that his ever shrinking lead over Sen. $antorum will shink some more with each word spouted from his lips. So he stays at home. And as far as I can tell, he never leaves home; he doesn't have a calendar/events page up on his site to show for.

Madonna asked Casey for his thoughts on the growing culture gap in the Democratic party, the gap between the elites and everyone else. He said that they needed to change the [paraphrased] "same old thing" way of going about things. If that "same old thing" way of going things is being pro-choice, pro-privacy, pro-balanced budget, pro-environment, pro-healthcare for all, I'd be all for it. But Casey doesn't stand for all of those things. Chuck Pennacchio is a pro-choice candidate who believes in the rights of the private citizen. He stands firmly against the Alito nomination whereas Casey has backed the nomination [I got my eye on you too Hoagiemaster Rendell].

Casey then went onto suggesting that we need a bigger tent in the Democratic party; I'm assuming so that he'll feel more comfortable since he's almost out the door anyways. He said that if the Dems had a candidate who had all of the same stances on the issues as Kerry has, including being pro-choice, but got up to the podium and said that s/he agreed with the anti-choicers that "we should ban partial birth abortion, that alone would be progress" [he used that phrase which is a fallacy, it's a late term abortion]. Casey wants to ban third trimester abortions without regard for the life of the mother, as inferred from that comment. That is not progress, that is regression. He wants to overturn Roe v. Wade. As stated in this Inky article:

It would seem obvious: Democratic Senate candidate Robert P. Casey Jr., who opposes abortion, believes Roe v. Wade should be overturned.

"You can't say you have the position I have and not believe that," Casey said in a recent interview about the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made legal abortions available nationwide.

And that's that. With his backing of Chief Justice Roberts the last time around and his backing of Judge Alito this time, I see that it is crystal clear that it is on his agenda.

It's actually quite hard to concentrate on him while he speaks. Monotonous. Phlegmatic. Snoozefest. But I got through it, I felt I needed to. If you're trying to fall asleep late at night, I suggest clicking on the video of this interview.

Supporting Chuck Pennacchio, the Progressive chioce for a Progressive Pennsylvania, is what I've been doing for months now. The rest of the blogosphere turned their heads after the word got out on his backing Alito. I hope that the pressure is kept on. We don't want another Joe "Alf's Dad" Lieberman on our hands. Well, even Alf's Dad may vote against Alito. Only Sen. Ben Nelson (D-ND) as of right now would vote to confirm. Casey would further weaken the Democrat's efforts to can this nomination.

So, in the end, I'd have to agree with Chris' assessment of Casey's presence:

a sandwich bag filled with lukewarm Vaseline and crushed Valium

And how.