Obama To Clinton: Not Hardly

Barack Obama has no intention of surrendering to Hillary Clinton. In fact, he spurned her offer to give up his frontrunner status and become a fifth wheel on the Clinton ticket rather publicly - and in rather harsh terms.

The Illinois senator used his first public appearance of the week to knock down the notion that he might accept the party's vice presidential nomination. He noted that he has won more states, votes and delegates than Clinton so far.

"I don't know how somebody who is in second place is offering the vice presidency to the person who is first place," Obama said, drawing cheers and a long standing ovation from about 1,700 people.

Saying he wanted to be "absolutely clear," he added: "I don't want anybody here thinking that somehow, 'Well, you know, maybe I can get both.' Don't think that way. You have to make a choice in this election."

"I am not running for vice president," Obama said. "I am running for president of the United States of America."

Later, The Associated Press asked Obama if he would "absolutely close out any possibility" of taking the ticket's second spot. He replied: "I am not running for vice president, and don't intend to be the vice president."

I'd say the answer is no to the cynical - and utterly false - offer by Clinton. She has no intention of letting the upstart anywhere near her return to the White House. Obama is smart enough to see that - and ambitious enough to reject that particular trap outright. If he even hinted that he might be amenable to that idea, Clinton would use it like a club to point out that even Obama thought he was second rate material.

I suspect this latest ploy by Clinton has, yet again, backfired on her.

A lot of people say that the Clintons are good politicians. I really am beginning to wonder. This latest ploy by the "Say whatever it takes" gang reeks of desperation. Despite her recent wins, Clinton is still losing to a novice.

But at least the media has backed off on their fawning cult worship of Obama since she took a few contests.  

“George Fox” To Resign

The fall has been sudden and from an unexpected cause. Eliot Spitzer, aka George Fox, appears to have destroyed his career by habituating a prostitution ring.

According to a law enforcement source close to the investigation, the Democratic governor used the alias "George Fox" when meeting with a prostitute. His alleged conversations with the prostitution ring are detailed in court papers in which Spitzer is identified as "Client 9," according to a source.

On Monday afternoon, the Democratic governor delivered an apology standing next to his wife, Silda, who looked down at the ground as he spoke.

"I have acted in a way that violates my obligations to my family and violates my, or any, sense of right and wrong," Spitzer said. "I apologize first and most importantly to my family. I apologize to the public, whom I promised better."

"I do not believe that politics in the long run is about individuals; it is about ideas, the public good and doing what is best for the state of New York," Spitzer said.

The governor may have been linked to the ring through cell phone records, sources told NewsChannel 4.

Spitzer's involvement in the ring was caught on a federal wiretap as part of an investigation opened in recent months, according to a law enforcement official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing inquiry.

I had no idea that Eliot Spitzer was this foolish. Several reports are saying that his resignation is expected any time now.  

Back To The Stone Age

The Washington Post reports on some new studies that call for a reduction of carbon emissions by industrialized countries to zero. Avoid the rush, stop breathing now.

The task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures may be far more difficult than previous research suggested, say scientists who have just published studies indicating that it would require the world to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades.

Their findings, published in separate journals over the past few weeks, suggest that both industrialized and developing nations must wean themselves off fossil fuels by as early as mid-century in order to prevent warming that could change precipitation patterns and dry up sources of water worldwide.

Using advanced computer models to factor in deep-sea warming and other aspects of the carbon cycle that naturally creates and removes carbon dioxide (CO2), the scientists, from countries including the United States, Canada and Germany, are delivering a simple message: The world must bring carbon emissions down to near zero to keep temperatures from rising further.

"The question is, what if we don't want the Earth to warm anymore?" asked Carnegie Institution senior scientist Ken Caldeira, co-author of a paper published last week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "The answer implies a much more radical change to our energy system than people are thinking about." 

Meanwhile, in the real world, the northern hemisphere ice cover is running slightly below the 1979-2000 mean while the southern polar ice is running above that mean by a greater amount. The snow cover for the northern hemisphere is well above average. Erie, Pennsylvania received about 21 inches of snow over the weekend, almost as much as the 23 inches they had already received in March before the latest storm. Britain is currently being lashed by the strongest winter storm of the year with another one tracking in right behind. 

Bad System, Bad Decisions

The New York Times has an article written by Randall Stross looking at the latest class-action lawsuit filed against Microsoft. Stross looks at the internal memos written by Microsoft executives and analyzes what has gone wrong with Vista. Put simply, people are not buying Vista in droves - and Microsoft did this to themselves.

Then there’s Mike, who buys a laptop that has a reassuring “Windows Vista Capable” logo affixed. He thinks that he will be able to run Vista in all of its glory, as well as favorite Microsoft programs like Movie Maker. His report: “I personally got burned.” His new laptop — logo or no logo — lacks the necessary graphics chip and can run neither his favorite video-editing software nor anything but a hobbled version of Vista. “I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine,” he says.

It turns out that Mike is clearly not a naïf. He’s Mike Nash, a Microsoft vice president who oversees Windows product management. And Jon, who is dismayed to learn that the drivers he needs don’t exist? That’s Jon A. Shirley, a Microsoft board member and former president and chief operating officer. And Steven, who reports that missing drivers are anything but exceptional, is in a good position to know: he’s Steven Sinofsky, the company’s senior vice president responsible for Windows.

Their remarks come from a stream of internal communications at Microsoft in February 2007, after Vista had been released as a supposedly finished product and customers were paying full retail price. Between the nonexistent drivers and PCs mislabeled as being ready for Vista when they really were not, Vista instantly acquired a reputation at birth: Does Not Play Well With Others.

My daughter needed a new laptop and it came preloaded with Vista. It is a super-whamadyne dual core machine with only(!) a gigabyte of RAM - and it "runs" at a crawl. Literally slower than an old P-III laptop with a half gig of memory that I have. Her machine is fully capable of running Vista - and it is still slow as all heck. Despite cutting the price of Vista, Microsoft is not likely to see this operating system become a huge success.