Category: misc

Huckabee gains union support

In what might be an odd twist, Mike Huckabee gained the support of a national trade union this week, along with Hillary Clinton and John Edwards.
Both Huckabee and Clinton received endorsements from The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and Edwards picked up a nod from the carpenter’s union.

The Machinists union has 700,000 members and estimates a third of the membership votes Republican. It is the first time the union has done a dual endorsement. It chose to do so this year to encourage all members to participate in the election…
“Mike Huckabee was the only Republican candidate with the guts to meet with our members and the only one willing to figure out where and how we might work together,” said Buffenbarger. “He is entitled to serious consideration from our members voting in the upcoming Republican primaries.”

Read the full story from the AP and Houston Chronicle

In other news, it appears the candidate list for the Texas GOP Straw Poll in Fort Worth will be mighty slim this weekend.
Huckabee just announced he would not be attending the event, which will leave “only two” GOP candidates making an appearance.

While the GOP hoped for a star-studded event featuring all the candidates, just two will appear, diminishing the poll’s importance in the early stages of the presidential race. But party officials predict thousands of delegates will still attend, making for a big political show in Cowtown.

Now I am confused by the article in the DMN. It says (as written above) that only two candidates will appear – but then later in the story it lists five candidates who are appearing:

Ron Paul: The Lake Jackson congressman, the only anti-war Republican running, is making the biggest push, providing buses from Houston, Austin and San Antonio. A former Libertarian nominee for president, he’s emphasizing gun rights, opposition to abortion and a call to dismantle the IRS.

Duncan Hunter: The California congressman emphasizes his role in building border fences, and he chaired the powerful Armed Services committee until this year but has had trouble gaining traction.

Hugh Cort: A homeland security expert and self-described Christian conservative, he warns that Osama bin Laden is smuggling weapons across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Raymond McKinney: The Savannah, Ga., Republican emphasizes a shift toward nuclear power to cut pollution and reduce dependence on foreign oil.

John Cox: An Illinois businessman and former county GOP official.

Did I miss some special/fuzzy math somewhere? Either way, being his home state, this is Ron Paul’s chance to show he’s worthy of a nomination. If he can’t win in his home state (especially with the top dogs not attending) his campaign could be in trouble for sure. If you were lucky enough to get an invite and want to pay the $50 for a ballot ($75 at the door), I hope you enjoy your time and vote Huckabee. For the rest of us we’ll just stand around and watch the results from home.

Finally, Huckabee has a scheduled blogger’s conference call this afternoon. I’d love to be a part but my regular job kinda keeps that from happening. We’ll try and get a link to the audio of the call as soon as it’s available. Maybe they’ll hold a call on Saturday or Sunday one of these days.

This day in history

1888:
Mary Ann Nichols’ body was found on the ground in front of a gated stable entrance in Buck’s Row, London, allegedly the first victim of the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.

1997:
Princess Diana, her companion Dodi Fayed, and their driver Henri Paul were killed in a high speed car accident in the Pont de l’Alma road tunnel in Paris.

I think we can be pretty certain no one was around for the first, but what do you remember about Princess Di’s death? I remember hearing about it late on a Saturday night while at my friend Brandon’s house in Kaufman, TX. I was shocked but I’m not sure why. It wasn’t like she had a huge impact on my life somehow. Maybe it was just the shock of a celebrity death. I also remember getting up at 2 or 3 a.m. to watch her funeral live. Somehow I just thought it was a big deal. What about you? What do you remember?

Billy Graham released from hospital

After nearly a two week stay, Billy Graham is going home.

The Charlotte-born evangelist was admitted to the hospital, 20 minutes from his home, in the wee hours of Aug. 18 because of intestinal bleeding. He had two more episodes while at the hospital, but none since doctors cauterized the bleeding in Graham’s colon Aug. 22.
“We have been pleased that he has been able to come back from this incident as well as he has,” Dr. Lucian Rice, Graham’s personal physician, said today. “He will continue to have therapy at home, and I feel that he can have a very good recovery.”

Vote for Thaxton

Yes, this is for another radio station other than OrangeNoiseRadio, but I’ll always give love to friends and family…

Thaxton has an opportunity to be named the 102.1 Edge Feature Band of the Week.
From the band:

Please vote for our band, it’s easy…NO Regietering just select THAXTON and submit vote, don’t forget to listen to our song. WE NEED YOUR HELP! Below is what the station sent us, please go to these links!!!

Each week one band is chosen as the Edge Feature Band of the Week. The featured band will be highlighted on the home page and local music pages of the Edge website. Their song will also be played over the air on the Local Show with Chris Ryan!

The featured band will be chosen based on 2 factors:

1) The number of times your song is listened to

2) The number of votes your band receives on the local music voting page

The votes and downloads will be tallied every Wednesday at 4:00 and the new featured band will be updated on Thursday morning each week.

LISTEN TO THAXTON’S SONG

VOTE FOR THAXTON

You did it to make a profit?!

I’m having a laugh about all the hub-bub over D Magazine’s latest cover story.
328-199745-161960.jpg
People are getting seriously mad about it – and probably the majority of them haven’t read the article.
The Star-Telegram says the magazine is causing an uproar – but then they only interviewed three people. Shame.
Pegasus News says Sprout stores (which banned the magazine) just doesn’t get it.

Local media censorship efforts are running rampant lately. First, we get blocked by the Lancaster ISD — now Sprouts in Flower Mound has taken D Magazine off the shelves over complaints regarding the cover story “Why You Should Hate Southlake.”
Guess they failed to read the subhead: “Because the kids are smarter, stronger, and better-looking than yours. And they prove it every Friday night.”
And those smart kids apparently won’t grow up to manage Sprouts stores. They probably understand the concept of juxtaposition.

I think the D Magazine staff are just having fun with it all – and they should.

I do get offended when they say we wrote that headline “just to sell magazines.” I mean, we also wrote it to please Wick (D Magazine publisher). It’s what we live for.

And here’s another comment…

It’s a rare day when you can simultaneously prove Stevie Wonder and H.L. Mencken right.

The best part of it is those people who are complaining that D Magazine put that cover on it’s magazines simply to sell magazines.
Hmm. Sounds like it was a good plan then. I think they are in the business of making money. The more magazines they sell the more advertising they can get and the more money they can get to pay their employees and put out a better product (or simply hoard it all to themselves if they so chose ;-))
Either way, you’d think some of the folks in Southlake would have something better to complain about.
I’ve seen a lot worse.

So you want to merge all those waypoints/geocaches?

If you’re like me – you hate typing in all those coordinates for geocaches into your handheld GPS unit. It’s such a bother, which is why we decided to purchase the Magellan Explorist 500. Simply hook up your unit to your computer with the USB cable, run the conversion software and presto, all your geocaches are stored to your unit.
But the next problem I came across was the fact that Geocaching.com only gives you 20 caches per page on their website.
So if you search for caches within 25 miles of zip code 75165, there are 320 caches, but only 20 per page. And unless you’re a premium member, that means you’re going to have to download page of 20 caches individually and then upload the files to your GPS unit one by one.
You can download Easy GPS Companion, which does a fair job of combining the files into one .loc file. But occasionally it makes an error and your files get corrupted. Continue reading So you want to merge all those waypoints/geocaches?