You may have read that the Bush administration had pledged $35 million towards helping victims of last week's tsunami. The actual donation amount was to be $15 million and our magnanimous president has offered extending a $20 million LINE OF CREDIT. So essentially, this nation's contribution was to be 5 cents from every citizen, while victim nations have the option of borrowing another 7 cents (if we round the figure up) from each of us (if they need it). Keep in mind that the week of inaugural festivities is likely to cost upwards of $40 million

Within the past few hours the administration has upped the pledge to $350 miilion. Mostly because of the international ridicule they were facing. Now we're up to $1.18, per resident, so it's like every person in American is contributing 1 pack of gum. Maybe we could send lottery tickets instead.

$350 million is roughly the equivalent of about 2 1/2 days' worth of war in Iraq. Or this amount is about $100 million less than the combined net worth of Bush and his cabinet (16 people in total but more than 450 million portraits of George Washington). Then again, $350 million is less than half of John and Teresa Kerry's nest egg.

The hardest hit country was Indonesia. the largest Islamic nation on the planet. Many of the other countries affected by the tsunami, including Somalia Tanzania Malaysia Tanzania, India, have significant Muslim populations. Prior to the tsunami, a lot of people in these countries neither hated nor loved the US. I think Bush's hamfistedness might have ensured a good recruiting year UBL.

Give Until It Hurts.

curses

Yesterday, I alluded to my inability to include the sound track in the streaming edition of the Quicktime movie that I'd made Lori for Christmas. Thus I posted a non-streamable version in which the the music was included. However when I tried to view the video from Lori's machine, I was challenged with a notice that informed me that I did not have permission to listen to the sound track. It wasn't really included in that edition after all.

Since the music was downloaded from Apple's iTunes site and the movie was created in Quicktime-another Apple product-the music rights restrictions were carried over. As the movie was built, there was no way to make the movie such that the sound track could be included in a Quicktime video. There's a bunch of ways to work around that, but in the meantime, a silent, but streaming version of the video is available. If you'd like to hear the 99-cent sound track, give me a call and I'll sing it for you.

you paid HOW MUCH???!!!??

Lori's Christmas present set me back 99 cents for the song I had to buy from the iTunes store.

I'm not sure why the sound track gets stripped when I convert the dang thing to streaming video, or why or why the sound and audio are a little out of synch in the Quicktime file, but the big non-optimized version can be found here . I'd recommend a fast Internet connection.

Lori, I've a confession to make

Yesterday, Lori was sick, so I stayed home to care for our son. A cold day and no work--it had all the makings of a good hooky day. On Monday, I started a book that I really like and I could spend the whole day just....oh I gotta watch Devin.

I read some when Devin took his morning nap. Then in the afternoon I returned to the book when Devin fell asleep on the floor in the afternoon. I soon nodded off myself and awoke twenty minutes later. In anticipation that Devin would sleep for a while longer, I un-doggeared my page and curled up on the couch. Then the damn phone rang, it was a guy from WORK with a question about WORK. It was a small issue, but that didn't matter, Devin woke I didn't get to finish my chapter. No fair!

Twice, I told Lori I had to go to the bathroom, when I did not really have to. I just wanted to sneak in another chapter or two each time. So I spent an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom reading. I feel bad for having my infirm wife watch Devin, while I read under the pretense of going number 2. This was a deceitful thing to have done; a true dereliction of doody.

round in the middle and high on both ends.

I wonder the percentage of Americans who know that there is a recount of votes in Ohio vs. those who know that 1/2 of Julia Roberts twins are named Phineas.

Heh-heh-heh. I said "high."

mmmm yellowcake

It went something like this. People in the current administration got pissed off at a former ambassador who wrote a column basically calling the President's claim that Iraq was buying enriched Uranium from Niger...well...a lie . You may remember those infernal 16 words.

"...The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa..."

A few weeks later a noted newspaperman writes a column in which he claims that Joe Wilson was not qualified to have performed the investigation in Niger that led to Wilson's conclusion about the fallacious Uranium purchase. And that Wilson was just given that investigatory assignment, because he was married to Valerie Plame, a CIA official.

Turned out that Plame was an undercover operative and the Novak, exposed her identity to the whole blamed world. Which meant that whomever shared this information with Novak had committed a federal crime. You might recall President Bush had promised a swift and thorough investigation of the leak's source and that justice would be served.

Well, here's my problem. We're coming up on two years since the incident and as far as I know, nobody has 'fessed up to the crime. What's more, a half-hearted investigation in which the judge has ruled two journalists in contempt of court for not revealing their sources. Yet, neither one of these journalists is the one who outed Valerie Plame. Robert Novak did that.

Call me crazy, but I think that Robert Novak would be able to tell us who in the administration revealed Valerie Plame's 'employment history.' It seems that we should have one of three possible outcomes at this writing. One is that Mr. Novak willingly reveals his source and the source of the leak is fired and subsequently jailed. Or Mr. Novak's wrinkly ass should be incarcerated until he feels he's ready to chime.

Or the President could man up and reveal who the leak was.

And a Diet Coke with that

I saw a link on the Drudge Report about a new sandwich from Hardee's. The link below brought that me to this story .

So, Santa walks into a restaurant...

... on Christmas Eve and orders eggs Benedict and the waiter brings the eggs out on a big hubcap and Santa says, "A hubcap?" And the waiter sings, "O, there's no plate like chrome for the hollandaise!"