BVDH The Blog

Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show in Tibet

The recent violent protests in Tibet could not have come at a worse time for President Hu Jintao and his Communist Chinese government. This was supposed to be a great year for China, a year when the world would watch a new China during the Beijing Olympic Games, the new China that has risen from the days of Mao and the Cultural Revolution to become one of the world’s largest economic, political and military powers. Extensive efforts have been made to improve China’s image leading up to these games.

This is very similar to what West Germany wanted to do with the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. West Germany wanted to show the world how much it had changed since the days of the Third Reich, while at the same time drawing a clear contrast between itself and its Communist neighbors. But despite extensive preparations, the Munich Olympics were permanently scarred when Palestinian terrorists took hostage and killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches.

While different in some key ways, the Chinese crackdown on the protests in Tibet has the possibility to the do the same thing to the Beijing Olympics as the Munich Massacre did to the 1972 Olympics. This possibility is a great thing for the United States. The Tibet protests and the resulting Chinese crackdown are making China look terrible in the international spotlight leading up to the Olympics. It is strongly in the American interest for China to look as bad as possible this year.

Sean Hannity May Be Sleeping With His Sister

Catch your attention?  I thought it would.  I don't even know if Sean Hannity even has a sister.   This post is to make a point about the nonsense he is gabbing about Obama.

Hannity keeps saying "How do we know Obama does not have the same feelings as Reverend Wright?"  Because he has never said the things Rev. Wright has and has strongly rebuked him.  At some point when there is no evidence to the contrary, you have to take people at face value.

Or we could use his logic.  Using Sean Hannity's logic, how do we know Sean Hannity isn't a pedophile?  We don't.   

Hannity cheapens the discourse on an important issue like race through his bombastic and ridiculous comments.  Way to go you television blowhard.  How do we know he doesn't kick puppies after his show?

Why Hillary Clinton Should Drop Out

To put it simply, because she cannot win.   And by staying in the race, she is only hurting the chances of Democrats winning in November.   Politico analyzed the math and wrote a story on Friday titled "Story behind the story: The Clinton Myth."

Here are the highlights (emphasis mine):

One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.

People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.

As it happens, many people inside Clinton’s campaign live right here on Earth. One important Clinton adviser estimated to Politico privately that she has no more than a 10 percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama, an appraisal that was echoed by other operatives.

In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe. 

Daily Show on Jim Cramer

Watch Jon Stewart rip Jim Cramer on telling people last week not to sell their now nearly worthless shares of Bear Sterns (jump to 4:15 for the clip)

Why Blockbuster will die

The other night for the first time in years, I rented a DVD from Blockbuster.  It cost $4.79.  That's absurd.  And it's the reason that Blockbuster will die.  The company is doing poorly and they are closing stores.  Their costs are high (staff, DVDs, store rent, electricity, etc), so they have to charge a lot per movie.  Unfortunately for them, we now have other options.

It's called Netflix.  For $4.99 you can get up to 2 DVDs (1 at a time) from them.  For $8.99 you can get an unlimited number of DVDs (1 at a time).  I'm not a Netflix member.  I don't have time to watch movies.  But I just can't see how Blockbuster, even though they have launched an online service similar to Netflix, can survive. Enough people will start using online services that cost less or download movies online that not enough people will go to Blockbuster to allow it to survive.  Especially at $4.79 for a movie.

Quote of the Day

"Never talk when you can nod, and never nod when you can wink, and never write an e-mail because it's death. You're giving prosecutors all the evidence we need."

--Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York.  He might not be in all this trouble if he would have followed his own advice.  He did not.  See item below.

How stupid and arrogant can a man be? Very. See Spitzer, Eliot

I enjoy seeing hypocrites getting nailed.  Therefore, I have really enjoyed watching Eliot Spitzer's spectacular fall from power and grace this week.  I simply feel terrible for his three daughters and wife, but I feel a sense of glee at Spitzer getting busted for using prostitutes.

Spitzer was holier-than-thou.  He was the crusading Attorney General of New York, going after Wall Street.  Then he was elected Governor of New York by a huge margin.  People thought he could be President.  In short, the world was good to Eliot Spitzer.   

Spitzer was not good to the world.  As AG, he would spread terrible rumors about the people he was going after like having aides leak to the media that someone he was investigating was "banging" his secretary, even though it was not true.   He made lots of enemies on Wall Street.  Then when he was elected governor, he decided that he was a "steamroller" (his term, not mine) and decided only his ideas were good.  He pushed drivers license for illegal aliens, something that he refused to give up on even though 70% of the state was against the idea.  He finally gave up.  Going into last week, his approval ratings were in the thirties, not great for a governor who was elected by a forty point margin a year earlier.

Little did we know, things were much worse...            

Vista is a nightmare...even for Microsoft

So I still use Windows XP, and I have no plans at all to switch to Vista any time in the near future.  In fact, there's a better chance I switch to Mac than Vista.  I recently ran across this article in the New York Times that detailed the problems some special Vista users were having.  Check it out. 

Here’s one story of a Vista upgrade early last year that did not go well. Jon, let’s call him, (bear with me — I’ll reveal his full identity later) upgrades two XP machines to Vista. Then he discovers that his printer, regular scanner and film scanner lack Vista drivers. He has to stick with XP on one machine just so he can continue to use the peripherals.

Did Jon simply have bad luck? Apparently not. When another person, Steven, hears about Jon’s woes, he says drivers are missing in every category — “this is the same across the whole ecosystem.”

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.

Independent Kosovo: The way it should be

Kosovo has been independent for just about a month now and things have seemed to calm down a bit.   Once independence was declared on Feb. 17, the was an immediate fission in the international community in terms of recognizing Kosovo's independence.   The United States, Britain, and France were the first countries to recognize Kosovo.  Not surprisingly, Russia opposed Kosovo's independence because they are afraid of parts of Russia (re: Chechnya) could breakaway like Kosovo did from Serbia.   It was not only rouge countries like Russia (yea, Russia under Putin is a rouge country) not recognizing Kosovo.   Many first-world nations like Spain, Israel, and Canada have not recognized Kosovo because they are afraid that it would stir separatist movements in their own countries.   

Only 28 countries have recognized Kosovo and made the right decision.

I'm back!

My apologies for not posting over the last few weeks.   Life has been crazy and I have been really bad at updating.  But I have some stories lined up and I shall starting updating right away.  I promise I'll be better on keeping the blog constantly updated (it's harder than you think!).

-BVDH