John McCain is a war hero.  A genuine war hero.  He served his country with honor and went above and beyond the call.  He should be admired for his military service.  He was simply incredible and has more intestinal fortitude than I will ever have.


That does not mean he is right on every political issue however, and it certainly doesn’t mean he is above criticism.

John McCain reminds us (constantly) that he is “serving his country.”  He recently told Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes that he is more energetic after his recent cancer diagnosis because he has to hurry to serve his country while he still can.

Really?  Nobody else can cast the votes in the Senate?  The country really needs an 80 year old senator who has been there since the 1980’s?  We cannot manage without him?  I think his sense of self has gotten the best of him.

The reason we refer to military service as “service” is because people do it to benefit others.  It’s a sacrifice.  It means giving up certain freedoms.  It means working for peanuts and going where someone else tells you to go and doing what they tell you to do.  THAT is service.

Winning a popularity contest to gain the privilege of sitting in congress is not service.  Where is the sacrifice? You receive a six figure paycheck and perks like lifetime healthcare no matter how long your term in congress.  All that for voting? As I see it, members of congress serve themselves, not the country.

Politicians like to tell us they are “serving” the country.  What a bogus attempt to appear noble.  The only people they are serving are themselves.

One could argue that members of congress “serve” their constituents.  Hmm…I suppose you might argue that.  Why do they need to win a popularity contest to “serve?”  And why do they have to live on the public dime?  How about just getting a real job like everyone else and earning your own money and paying for your own healthcare?

Think about what John McCain did after he returned from the war.  He retired from the Navy in 1981.  He then moved to the state that he had no previous connection to.  Oh, they just happened to have an open House seat.  He ran for the House in 1982.  In 1986, he was elected to the Senate.

Three years later, Mr. McCain was implicated in the Keating Five scandal?  Remember that? Read about it here.

Since the 1980’s, John McCain has been sitting in Washington, casting votes, acting the “maverick” part, and all for the sake of “serving his country.”  Give me a break.

The bottom line is John McCain is just another career politician.  Let me say that again.  John McCain is just another career politician.

Being a career politician does not in anyway erase his military service or the fact that he was a genuine war hero.  BUT being a war hero does not in anyway erase the fact that he is just another career politician either.

The war hero thing doesn’t make him right on the issues, and it certainly doesn’t mean he cannot be criticized.

Instead of lecturing the Senate or grandstanding on TV, Mr. McCain should quietly retire from the Senate and ride off into the sunset.  Sorry, John.  It happens to everyone.  At some point, it’s out with the old and in with the new.  We don’t need “service” from career politicians anymore.  We don’t need someone to remain on the public dime for over 30 years.  We need new citizens that will step up to the plate for a few years, then LEAVE and go back to their own lives.

With that said, I wish Mr. McCain a speedy recovery and may more years to come.  Travel, enjoy retirement, do whatever you want to do.  Be happy. You’ve “served” enough.

Apple advertises "up to 7 hours battery life" for wireless web browsing on its MacBook Pro line of computers even though nobody can get 7 hours of battery life. There is a rather lengthy discussion going on in Apple's Support Forums because 7 hours is not realistic with the latest version of OS X Lion. Users who previously ran Snow Leopard were able to get over 7 hours of battery life in some cases, but since the release of Lion battery time has tanked. I am averaging about 4 hours of battery life with only a browser running, and screen brightness at 50%.
I purchased a new MacBook Pro 15 and a MacBook Air 13 about 5 weeks ago. Both machines could not get anywhere near 7 hours of battery life with their stock configurations.
Apple has failed to acknowledge the issue publicly and has basically left users like me in the dust. What can we do? Nothing. There are hundreds of thousands of views of this discussion in Apple's Forums and we still have no answer or acknowledgement of the problem by Apple.
Seriously disappointed...

Did you know that the email you send over the Internet is sent in plain text format? From the time you hit the send button until it reaches its destination, your email goes through several different servers. Anyone one of those servers could be a point at which someone could read your email.

How can you avoid someone looking at your email? Use email encryption. The most popular email encryption program is PGP but there are other options. The problem is most of us don't take privacy seriously and we think encrypting our emails would be too much of a hassle. It can be a hassle, but it doesn't have to be.

Hushmail.com gives free accounts and they encrypt all of your email on the fly. You don't even know it's happening. The catch is, with Hushmail the emails are only encrypted when you send them to people who have Hushmail.com accounts.

Why don't companies like Google and Yahoo build PGP right into their webmail offerings? It would be so easy to do, but they don't.

Even if you aren't doing anything illegal you should be using encryption. It is important that we all guard our privacy and keep prying eyes out of our email. I know that some people think they have nothing to hide, but they do. Keep your private business to yourself and don't leave yourself open to someone snooping. You never know how they will string little pieces of data together to use against you in some way. I'm hoping for the day when email encryption becomes standard and everyone takes privacy as seriously as I do.

Someone recently turned me on to the AeroPress coffee maker. The AeroPress makes fantastic tasting coffee that supposedly has about 20% of the acid of regular brewed coffee. You can pick one of these gadgets up for about $25 or less, and it's worth every penny. Just trust me on this, the coffee it makes is fantastic.

Head over to the AeroPress website, then go to Amazon.com and pick one up for yourself. You won't be disappointed.

I just watched an interview with former Secretary of State James Baker. This guy is so on top of it, I hope he is still being consulted by the current administration. He is above the political frey and has a lot of very practical ideas. He's not into cheap shots, is very pragmatic, and should always be taken seriously.

Are you as sick of the Brett Favre stories as I am? He's at the end of a long career, can no longer do what he used to do, fades towards the end of the season, and yet he's still a story. The constant retiring and un-retiring is covered in the press as indecisiveness, but it appears to me that he simply doesn't want to have to go to training camp. Maybe he thinks he's above it or something. Either way, although he's free to do what he wants, I'm tired of hearing about it.

Next...

Are you a CNN person or a FoxNews person? Either way, you're not really getting real unbiased news. Instead of experienced journalists giving us news, we get biased "infotainment" these days. Different networks target different audiences and bring the biased news they feel their audience wants to hear. In the old days real reporters went out and investigated stories, then came back and told us what they found. These days, a pretty face reads stories they think we want to hear off a teleprompter, and the broadcast includes lots of music, flashy graphics, and so-called news alerts. CNN and MSNBC are definitely left of center, while FoxNews is definitely right of center.

It used to be that conservatives felt that mainstream media was biased to the left. They were probably right as most journalists are left of center, but they were just slightly left of center. Since the arrival of FoxNews, other networks have drifted further left to distinguish themselves from Fox, and Fox has drifted to the right. Now, nobody is in the middle.

I find that FoxNews is less biased than other networks for the simple fact that they present both sides even though most of the hosts are right of center. On other networks, the hosts are left of center and they don't provide any opposing view.

What I find troubling about Fox is the way they package the news with music. Since when do we need music for news? I'm so sick of FoxNews Alerts too because they keep running them over and over as if some major piece of news is breaking. Instead it's usually something silly like a car chase, or the arrest of a murder suspect, or something else supposedly tantalizing.

So where do we turn? How can we get nothing but the facts? The simple truth is we can't. Until things change dramatically we'll have to take everything we see on Television with a grain of salt. Someone needs to give us the straight up news and stop giving us what they think we want to hear. That cannot happen because the sad truth is the job of media is not to give us news. Their job is to sell advertising and in order to do that they need to be as popular as they can be.

Jack Kemp was such a great guy that it's hard to find anyone who didn't like him. You can find people who argued with him, but everyone liked Jack Kemp. He was just a nice guy.

I didn't know Mr. Kemp, but I did share an elevator with him once in Orlando. He was speaking with several young people in front of the elevator while my brother and I waited for the same elevator. He was exactly the same in person and the guy you see on TV. He was electric and animated and it seemed like there was a spotlight on him. Perhaps it was just the white hair and his pressed white shirt and bright blue tie. Whatever it was, he was unique.

I had no idea he was sick and his death came as such a shock. I'll simply say, we need more people in the world like Jack Kemp.

Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic Party is troubling because he is only looking out for himself. Doesn't anyone care that our politicians only care about themselves, and not the people they represent?

Mr. Specter is 79 years old and has been in the senate a very long time. Why not just retire? I was on a flight with Mr. Specter from Philadelphia to Chicago last year and I was shocked at how old he looked. On TV he looks good, but in the airport he walked very slowly and was hunched over like an old man. Why can't he just let go and retire? Ego, lust for power, and greed come to mind. In any other profession people would expect him to retire but in politics, we accept just about anything.

Mr. Specter admits that he was about to lose a Republican primary race so he simply switched parties to save his own butt. Joe Lieberman did a similar thing last year when he switched to become an independent. Why do the American people put up with this kind of behavior? We need to stop electing people on celebrity and popularity. We need to elect leaders with skills. We've already elected a President based on celebrity and now we have an ex-Senator as President, an ex-Senator as Vice President, and an ex-First Lady who became an ex-Senator as Secretary of State. What have all these senators brought us? A big mess. We need people who have actually run something to lead our government. Instead we just settle on a popularity contest.

Oh well, Arlen Specter is just another example of a politician looking out for himself. I have an idea for all the politicians out there. Get a real job like the rest of us.

Someone sent this to me in an email. It speaks for itself.

What can I say, Obama is just like every other politician. He's full of it. After blasting President Bush and accusing him of "undermined the Constitution," President Obama now realizes that President Bush was correct in keeping the secrets around the Terrorist Surveillance program and is fighting the same lawsuit that President Bush fought. What does this prove? It proves that we cannot trust what candidates say in a campaign. Obama did not have all the facts in the campaign yet he chose to blast Bush for things he now agrees with. He took cheap shots at Bush for political gain.

Read the article for the particulars, but the bottom line is we need to stop electing people based on celebrity, and what they say in a campaign. We need to elect people who have a record of accomplishments. Most Senators don't have to run anything so they don't make good managers. We need to elect someone who has done something like run a state, or a military department, or a small or large business. Someone who knows what they are doing.

Whether you are conservative or liberal, please vote for people based on a record of accomplishments and not celebrity or campaign rhetoric.

It sure seems like it.

I don't know about you but I hate daylight savings. I wish we'd leave the time alone. If we have to have it, my vote is to have it start on May 1 and end on October 1. That's about all I can take. It screws my sleep patterns up and I just don't like it to be light out at 9pm. If I liked that, I'd move to Alaska.

In case you're wondering why we do it, check the source link below.

I have to admit to being very disappointed yesterday at McCain's VP pick. I wanted someone with the stature of Colin Powell and thought the pick of Palin was a purely political pick. However, the more I find out about her the more I like her. She does have executive experience and is apparently scrappy and tough.

Only time will tell if this is a good pick for McCain so I'll hold further judgement for awhile.

Multiple stories have come out in the last few days about the possibility of Colin Powell being McCain's VP. Unfortunately, the stories are probably bogus. I wish they were true because Powell is about the only individual that could add so much gravitas to McCain's ticket, that it would offset the celebrity of Obama. Powell could have been the president in any of the last 3 elections if he wanted it. Unfortunately, he just doesn't want to hold elective office.

Someone please convince Powell to accept a VP position with McCain. We need him.

I've been frustrated for weeks as Neil Cavuto has been off the air with no explanation. I finally found out the reason for Neil Cavuto's extended vacation. Without any notice Neil Cavuto stopped appearing on his show on FOXNews in June. I kept searching the Internet for news about when he'd be back and I finally stumbled on something.

It appears that Neil has been off the air since June 24 and is recovering from Surgery related to his MS disease. He's expected back in late July or early August. Can't wait!

Get well soon Neil!

Will it happen? Probably not, but John McCain's best VP candidate would be Colin Powell. Secretary Powell is a mainstream conservative and has the obvious experience to be President should something happen to McCain. In my mind Secretary Powell is the best person we have to be President at this time, but he's not running. The next best thing is for John McCain to put him on the ticket.

The Republican party should be ashamed of itself for putting McCain up there against Obama. He just cannot win (unless of course, he choose Colin Powell). McCain is to be admired but he's simply too old to be the President. Didn't we learn our lesson with Bob Dole? We have to stop voting for people just because we think it's their turn. We need someone fresh but competent.

Please Mr. McCain, ask Colin Powell to be your Veep. Twist his arm if you have to. He's the best man for the job.

Everyone should watch this video of Boone Picken's white board presentation. We simply cannot continue to import the amount of oil that we import. We need to drill everywhere, use every biofuel, ethynol, etc., and conserve like crazy. BUT, we HAVE TO DRILL EVERYWHERE!

This guy was simply the best in his field and will be missed! Meet the Press was my favorite show on television and it was all because of Tim Russert. Gone too soon!