Renewable energy

President Bush Attends Washington International Renewable Energy Conference 2008

"...[L]et me start first by telling you that America has got to change its habits. We've got to get off oil. And the reason why is, first, oil is -- dependency on oil presents a real challenge to our economy. As economies grow -- and we want all our economies to grow; we want people to be prosperous, we want people who are living in poverty to be able to grow out of poverty. We want there to be general prosperity, but as economies grow, until we change our habits, there is going to be more dependency on oil."

--President George W. Bush, March 5, 2008

Yeah, thanks for that, George. Really cleared things up for me.

Basically what the Bush administration has done, and it's not much, is make new rules. For example:

* The Renewable Fuels Mandate will increase the use of renewable fuels by 500 percent, requiring fuel producers to supply at least 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel in the year 2022.
* The Vehicle Fuel Economy Mandate specifies a national mandatory fuel economy standard of 35 miles per gallon by 2020, which will save billions of gallons of fuel and increase efficiency by 40 percent.

Well that's great! "YOU VILL USE DEM UND YOU VILL LIKE IT!!"

Unfortunately, since Bush took office, the Federal Government has spent about $12 billion total to research, develop, and promote alternative energy sources. $12 billion in eight years. Meanwhile they blow that much in what, a month over in Iraq? Less?

It's not enough to set goals. You have to then do what's necessary to MEET those goals. Otherwise it's just bullshit.

This is very much like the No Child Left Behind Act. Noble idea, badly underfunded, planned, and executed.

2008 Bombers

Another season is nearly upon us. This year I will be coaching a new team at St. Xavier. Same school, but we're adding a team to accommodate all the players -- we are up around 180 kids in our high school program this year!

So we're adding a team called Varsity Reserve. It is composed primarily of seniors who for one reason or another are not playing varsity. I have 34 players; 28 are seniors and the rest are juniors.

This year my assistant coach will be Joshua Wellen (left, in the photo). I'm excited to have Josh with me. Last few years he was the defensive coordinator for the varsity squad. He played his college ball at Ohio State and is a St. Xavier grad too. He's a great guy, a great friend, and a great coach.

After the first few practices it is clear we will defend. Whether we can score remains to be seen. But we're gonna rattle some cages, that's for sure. :-)

Our first game is Tuesday April 1 at home against Lakota East. Follow the Bombers all season long at bomberlacrosse.com.

Who's on first?

About this President thingy... with Ohio's primary coming up soon, I am going to be registering as a Democrat for the first time in my life.

GASP! you say, what's a nice Republican boy like you wanna do a thing like that for? I'm glad you asked. Let me just say this about that, a Republican in upstate New York and a Republican in southwest Ohio are two entirely different animals.

The other thing is, my world view has grown and matured (it sez here). Getting sober, getting married, and working in the corporate world have all changed my outlook on life.

Lastly, the GOP of my youth only vaguely resembles the party we see today. "Conservative" just doesn't mean what it used to.

And so, we come to the 2008 election. Despite my efforts editing this video about Hillary, I am not sure I can get behind her candidacy. The reason is Barack Obama. I believe Obama has a Kennedy-like charisma that can effect change in both foreign and domestic arenas.

Does he have a lot of experience? No. Let's not forget, Hillary hasn't been a senator all that long, either. In terms of experience in this context, being a first lady is better than nothing, to be sure, but not enough to be a deal breaker.

I think his lack of experience can be an advantage. He doesn't have the bad habits other candidates bring to the table, either.

Look, the President doesn't sit down with a calculator and a pot o' coffee and balance the budget (for example). He delegates such things to staff, like a good manager should. He considers the input of his staff of advisors and makes informed decisions. He then puts a face and a voice on those decisions.

And when it comes to face and voice, Obama has few peers. The man is a fuckin' rock star. People will follow this man. I believe he can heal some of the divide that has handcuffed the House and Senate for so long, and then they can get some real shit done.

I just don't see Hillary having that kind of pull. She is too much of a lightning rod -- people either love her or they hate her, there's very little in between. With Obama, even the folks who don't agree with his policies grudgingly admit he's difficult to dislike. Hillary could probably still get some things done by main force, but isn't that more of the same sort of politics we've sadly gotten used to? It's just the other side of the aisle.

I would have voted for John Edwards, but...

As regards John McCain: He has his positives. First of all, I admire his grit in withstanding being a POW. Anybody who survives that deserves honor. And I like the way he's not afraid to take a stand on issues that are unpopular with the party line.

But he has too many negatives. He's too damn old, for starters. That's not ageism, that's realism. I want a President who can go the distance. Unfortunately, he's gone the distance (ahem) with a few too many women for my liking, it would seem. That's fine for Joe Blow down the block, but not for the POTUS. A person who doesn't handle his personal relationships well isn't likely to handle international and domestic relationships very well, either.

I don't see McCain as a uniter, either.

My vote goes to Obama. Maybe in 2000, a guy like him wouldn't have done so well, but I think he's got what we need in 2008.

Fire Marvin?

Marvin Lewis is obviously a good coach. His track record speaks for itself, both before he came to Cincinnati and what he did when he got here.

What's wrong with the Bengals is not "first and foremost" Marvin Lewis, by NO MEANS.

Is he a perfect coach? No. Who is? He makes mistakes. So do I. So do you. I coach high school lacrosse, been a head coach for several years. I make mistakes all the time. I learn from them. I am a much better coach today than I was four years ago. But I still make mistakes all the time. I am very glad I don't have the media scrutiny Lewis does, heh heh.

The problem with the Bengals, "first and foremost," remains Mike Brown.

As good a playa as Lewis may be, he can only play the cards he's dealt. And Mike Brown is still the dealer.

Brown is a very likeable fellow. I've met him, very pleasant to talk to. Good public speaker. Dry humor, actually a fairly funny guy in person. EXCELLENT businessman. From a purely business standpoint, the Bengals are a model franchise. He meant everything he said in that interview the other day.

But as a football general manager, he's just awful. Like Lewis, Brown's record speaks for itself. His father was a great football man, who's in the Hall of Fame for very good reason. One of the great ones ever.

The apple, it would seem, sometimes DOES fall far from the tree.


It is possible his daughter Katie, who will take over when he dies/retires, will do a better job of it. (Hell, be tough to do any worse, wouldn't it?)

Perhaps she will simply hire a competent general manager and let him handle the football side of things.

That would be good.

But the bottom line here is, as long as Mike Brown is running that team, he will not (apparently) hire a GM.

And very little will change football-wise.

You might get the occasional anamoly like 2005, if you have a good coach.

But overall, it's gonna continue to suck.

Enjoy.

What an insanely boring blog

I suck.

Lax season underway

Now that we've played our first game, it should be noted that the hectic schedule yours truly keeps during these Spring months is well worth the effort. I just love it.

 

Freshman attack Mike Frank (pictured) had a hat trick against Elder and between him and fellow frosh Robert Leonard, we have a couple likely prospects for the upper levels of St. X lacrosse for several years to come.

 

There are a couple good defense prospects too. All in all, I would say this is the most prospect-heavy team I've coached. Some of these guys are pretty good athletes.

Buckeye Bitterness

As the BCS Championship game approaches, the Cincinnati Enquirer has sent a reporter to Glendale, AZ to cover the spectacle. Now, the Enquirer has not typically offered much coverage of Ohio State sports, tOSU being 110 miles away or so. But they make an exception for national championships.

The funny thing has been the blog. The reporter is doing a blog from Arizona and the Buckeye faithful, bless 'em, are all over the comments bitching about how the Enquirer never covers tOSU. Bitter, bitter, bitter.

Wretched excess

I finally broke down and bought an XBox 360. No, there's nothing wrong with my old XBox. I just wanted the cooler 360 with its triple core (each running at 3.2 gigs) and 512m video memory.

Does this make me a bad person? I'm sure somebody's starving somewhere and could have eaten dried condensed milk for three years on that money. What's left of Sally Struthers is prolly shitting a brick right now.

I don't care. These graphics ROCK.

New car time

The lease is up on the mighty '04 Aztek, so we need to get a new car. I'd like a Nissan Murano but I don't know if we can stretch that far.

It looks like it'll come down to a Chrysler Pacifica or Chevrolet Equinox.

Your thoughts.

What I hate about soccer

With the World Cup starting today, let me just first say this: I love soccer. Great game. Played it my whole life. In school, I started at goalie. I could have started at fullback, but we needed a goalie.

As an adult, I played both positions in many indoor leagues over the years.

Here's what I hate about field soccer, as played in the World Cup and elsewhere: OFFSIDES.

Offsides sucks.

The problem with offsides is, it gives the defense an unnatural advantage. This is unlike any other sport. You don't see it in basketball or lacrosse. Hockey has the blue line (which also kinda sucks) but at least that's a permanent line, always in the same place. And it doesn't matter where the defenders are in relation to it.

Only in soccer do you have this stupid rule to prevent the offense from beating the defense downfield. Here's an idea: If you're getting beat, PLAY BETTER DEFENSE!

The indoor game has a few differences, like a smaller field, and the ball can be played off the boards. But the biggest difference is, there's NO OFFSIDES. The game is much more fast-paced, there's more scoring, it's more fun to play or watch. And the lack of an offsides rule doesn't seem to bother anybody. The game plays just fine.

The outside game would, too. Getting rid of the offsides rule would make the game better for everyone (except maybe goalies like Kasey Keller, pictured). So I say, just dump the rule altogether. It adds absolutely nothing to the game. No value whatsoever.

Get rid of it.

Photos from Florida

Here are some photos from the Florida Lacrosse Classic. Some feature my brother Rich, and some are just general shots of the tournament.

High Peaks went 1-3. We won our last game against Ohio Wesleyan, so we don't have to play Team Toyota in the first round next year, praise Allah.

Nobody I guarded scored on me, and I only took one penalty. Yay! And, I didn't have a heart attack or anything.

Florida Lacrosse Classic

I'm really looking forward to the Florida Lacrosse Classic. It's in the middle of January in Fort Lauderdale, FL. I'll be playing defense for the High Peaks grandmasters team. Grand Masters is for folks 45+. It's pretty competitive stuff, don't let the age fool ya.

I ordered me a new helmet from Cascade, a CLH2. White shell, royal blue visor, orange chin. That's a preview there to the right.

We gone kick some butte. ALL HAIL HIGH PEAKS!!

Now I'm all pissed off

Talking about George Dubya hath made me pissy. That means it's time to take Sammy down to his park for his morning constitutional.

Aaaaaaaahhhh...

More Bush arrogance

How many SC justices had never served as a judge before serving on the SC?

I don't understand how it's even possible. This is the Supreme
Freakin' Court here. Surely there are some qualified candidates with
many years of federal judicial experience available to consider,
without having to nominate someone who has no experience whatsoever.

If you argue "Well, then you'd have to fill a federal bench seat"
I'd say fine, that's the way it should work. The SCOTUS is at the top
of the food chain here. It's not a fuckin' entry-level cookie-
pushin' gig you hand out to old cronies.

What really pisses me off here is Bush's arrogance. He's in the middle of a shitstorm behind the FEMA thing, so what does he do? "Trust me," he says. Trust YOU? I trusted that bastard in 2000 when I voted for him. I trusted him to be a conservative President and control spending. Instead he's blown up spending more than any President since FDR. I trusted him about Iraq. More bullshit. It never stops with this guy. And now he has the gall to say "Trust me."

He's basically thumbing his nose at his base. Dude? Memo: When you're in a shitstorm, that's not a good time to turn against your base, that's when you rally the base. Here's a hint George, when Ann Coulter is pissed at you and says so in public, you're not scoring many Brownie points with your base. She nails it with this closer:

However nice, helpful, prompt and tidy she is, Harriet Miers isn't qualified to play a Supreme Court justice on "The West Wing," let alone to be a real one. Both Republicans and Democrats should be alarmed that Bush seems to believe his power to appoint judges is absolute. This is what "advice and consent" means.

Good for you Ann, you finally said something that didn't make my ass itch.

Zebras screw the Orange

1:08 left, tie game, Virginia is 4th and inches inside the
Syracuse 10, SU has just used their last timeout. UVa is being
pretty brave here, most coaches would just kick the field goal for
the lead.

As they break the huddle, UVa has TWELVE PLAYERS IN THE HUDDLE.
Eleven line up while the twelth SPRINTS OFF THE FIELD, RIGHT PAST
THE FUCKING REFEREE. Fullback into the line, he gets the first
down, game over.

Before they snapped the fourth down play, the Syracuse coaches
were all doing backflips on their sideline, throwing papers in the
air, screaming at the refs, trying to draw their attention to the
illegal substitution.

There's no guarantee the Orange could have driven the length of
the field in one minute to tie or take the lead, of course, but
they should have at least gotten the chance. The zebras fucked
'em, pure and simple. I had it on TiVo, I replayed it, you can
clearly see the 12th guy sprinting off after they broke the
huddle, right past the ref. I don't know what the ref is doing
here. That is his call, his responsibility, it happened right in
front of his fucking face. The replay leaves no room for
interpretation - it was a clear violation of the rules, cut and
dried, a textbook case. You could show the video in ref's school
for "this is what a 12th man violation looks like."

Boy am I pissed. This is incredibly annoying. This isn't one of
those things where you can debate back and forth the relative
merits of a ref's judgement call, this was clearly and obviously a
horrendous fuckup. I just don't see how he screws that call up, I
really don't.

Kids 'n' puppies

So this family down the street, their dog had puppies. Cute puppies
too. But these puppies dug their way under the fence and got loose.
Well Bethie found 'em, and put 'em in our backyard until the owner got
home.

Meanwhile, we was babysittin' the kid from next door. Cute kid, too.
Seems he got a three-day suspension from school for telling his
teacher she is a "fucking moron." Now in my day my dad woulda beet the
ever-lovin' shit outta me for such a transgression, but nowadays you
have to be careful not to hurt their feelings. Or something.

So Bethie busts out the honey-do list and puts the kid to work. Yay!
But here's these puppies.

So anyway I tell you all that boring crap to give you context for
these photos here.

Marv rips Pollack a new one

From midday Enquirer report:

Rookie middle linebacker Odell Thurman continues to receive special attention and intense coaching from [Marvin] Lewis. Lewis said he would like to take the same approach with [David] Pollack.

"I didn’t think [Pollack] would hold out this long," Lewis said. "I think we have fought very hard to eliminate some of these kinds of actions, and it is a shame that it has occurred.

"We have guys who have chosen to be here, which has eliminated selfishness that occurs. If a dollar here, a dollar there is what it comes down to, these players are on the wrong football team.

"And this football team will never be guided by one player. We will not be compromised by one player. We have fought very hard over the last three years to establish that, and the players believe in it. It is what wins in this league."

Lewis said the club has given a great deal of ground to Pollack and his agents.

"At some point, a player must make a decision - enough is enough - and it’s time to play football."

Phew. Don't hold back, Marv, tell us how ya feel! Yike!

Bush fumbles the ball

I was pretty amused to hear Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate majority whip, say Sunday, "If the president recess-appoints John Bolton, I can understand why, because he's been waiting a long time to get the person that he believes is best to represent his administration at the U.N."

Freudian slip there. It's not Bolton's job to represent Bush's administration, it's his job to represent you, me, all of the United States of America. Since Mitch McConnell is a fucking moron of the highest order and probably one of the dirtiest-but-not-quite-yet-caught politicians in Washington (for the time being) who basically doesn't know his ass from his elbow unless somebody points the way and shows him how to cheat at it, it's not surprising this lil' slippy-poo should come from him.

And frankly, it's just too fucking bad Bush has to wait. Boo-hoo-hoo, pick somebody who isn't a complete tool and maybe they'll get through, you asshat. It's worked just fine that way since 1948. But nooo, Bolton is part of Bush's good-ol-boy network, maybe you noticed him behind Bush at the lectern giving him the reach-around today.

It's not like we are without representation in New York. Acting Ambassador Anne Patterson is leading the U.N. mission. And an argument could be made that she has/had more credibility there than this bum-rush Bush boy does. They won't give him the fucking time of day, nor should they. He is not supported by the American people. He is only supported by the American president, who has his own credibility issues on the international front. The U.N. knows all this. The rest of the world knows all this. Bush has made a serious tactical blunder today with his muscle-flexing machismo.

Maybe if Sen. George Voinovich hadn't turned on the GOP, they'd have gotten Bolton squeezed through. Maybe Sen. George Voinovich is getting tired of the sleazery that's becoming more and more apparent on a daily basis from the GOP leadership in Ohio. I mean, you don't get too much more Republican than Voinovich. If he's flipped, you got problems, bwana.

Some TV notes

Since I am under medical orders to remain horizontal in bed "90% of the time if you can," I have been watching a lot of TV. I've been trying out a few shows, and I would like to discuss some TV chatte at this time.

IRON CHEF/IRON CHEF AMERICA
Some of y'all are probably recoiling in horror right now, but I had never seen this show before yesterday. I'd seen some mention of it on RSFC, but just hadn't gotten 'round to watching it.

So I watched Iron Chef. The English subtitles were amusing in their own right. The Chairman or whatever, if you ask me they should call him Head Poofter, not that there's anything rong with that, he's a trip too. But I loved the format of this show. What fun!

However, these two Oriental chefs were creating dishes I wouldn't go within ten feet of on a bet. That they are talented, creative chefs, I will not argue. Obviously they are. I enjoyed watching them work. They are virtuosos. But wouldn't it be more fun if they were cooking real food instead of that... stuff?

Yes, it would. Enter Iron Chef America. I watched that today. This was more like it! The secret ingredient was chicken. Now I'm not a big chicken guy, I'll cook with it sometimes because my wife really likes it. And I mean, I don't *dislike* it. But I was learnin' some things from these fellows.

The great thing about real cooking is not just following a recipe rote, but creating something new that is maybe similar to a recipe, but with your own style or touch to it. And watching this show, it's not that you can steal recipes, it's that you can steal techniques. And it's presented in a much more entertaining way than most of the cooking shows you see (which tend to be more recipe-based).

TRIPPING THE RIFT
Second season started Wednesday night with a double-episode evening of fun over on the Sci-Fi channel. I guess what they'll do starting next week is rerun last week's show at 10, then run a new episode at 10:30.

Well, I never saw Season One, but I wish I had. I have seen the video that made the rounds on the Web a few years back, so I'm familiar with the main characters. Judging by the two episodes I saw Wednesday night, this will quickly leap into my Top 5 favorite weekly shows status. Funny stuff.

NFL LIVE
30 minutes, as opposed to the full hour of Total Access. They should call it Access Lite. I very much prefer Rich Eisen on Total Access.

TOM GOES TO THE MAYOR
I'd never seen it, so I took a look to see what folks are talking about.

Two words: Yuck.

Hall Of Fame candidate

AP:

Rove's conversations with Novak and Cooper took place just days after Wilson suggested in a New York Times opinion piece that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat. Democrats continued this week to sharpen their attacks, accusing Rove of compromising a CIA operative's identity just to discredit the political criticism of her husband.

This is so patently Rove-like a manuever, he is guilty whether he did
it or not. It's the "crying wolf" phenomenon.

If there was a Political Dirty Tricks Hall Of Fame, Karl Rove would
be a first-ballot lock. He's Michael Fuckin' Jordan. He personifies
everything that is wrong about politics in America, I don't care
whether you're Republican, Democrat, or Silly Party.

For his body of work over a long and storied career, they should put
him in said Hall and then throw away the key. For anyone to sit here
and defend this piece of shit in casual conversation is to expose
oneself as a blindly partisan hack. I would have thought such foolish
devotion to an ideology had died with the Berlin Wall, but it would
appear that is not the case. How sad for us.