Some photos from last weekend’s trip to Yosemite!

Half Dome with some really cool cloud action:

Woodpecker hittin’ the road:

I particularly like how this one came out:

Sequoias were ginormous:

View of Yosemite Falls from Glacier Point:

Yingwen and her new hat:

As an Obama supporter, I was originally kind of disappointed at yesterday’s results. At first, all the major news outlets called SuperTuesday a huge win for Hillary. But after the final counts are in, it turns out…. not so much:

• The Clintons just pumped $5 million of their own dollars into their campaign.
• The Obama campaign has reeled in $5,886,067 since the polls closed yesterday as of this writing. In one day.
• Some Clinton campaign staffers are going without pay due to the cash crunch.
• Depending on who is counting the cryptic, loathed delegates, Obama won more. (Can we just use a popular vote someday?)
• My hunch is that the remaining political map is going to favor Obama.

Found this at Rebecca MacKinnon’s site:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebgLiU_0Ys4

Very inspiring, and I agree with Rebecca, Jimmy Carter, and many others that said that Obama will have a healing and inspiring effect that no other candidate could possibly come close to.

The Obama vote is now neck and neck with Clinton. Go vote. Then go celebrate Mardi Gras. But don’t forget to vote first.

Here are my results from the 2008 President Selector at SelectSmart. My top two candidate picks rose to the top – Obama and Kucinich. I’m disappointed Kucinich didn’t even win, place, or show in Iowa, and it looks like he won’t be impacting New Hampshire as well. Interestingly, Clinton, Gore, and Edwards fared much lower on my radar – I thought they would have been right up there and especially I thought that Edwards would have been closer to my top rankings:

1. Theoretical Ideal Candidate (100 %)
2. Barack Obama (79 %)
3. Dennis Kucinich (78 %)
4. Alan Augustson (campaign suspended) (77 %)
5. Joseph Biden (withdrawn) (71 %)
6. Wesley Clark (not running, endorsed Clinton) (70 %)
7. Hillary Clinton (70 %)
8. Al Gore (not announced) (70 %)
9. Christopher Dodd (withdrawn) (70 %)
10. John Edwards (67 %)
11. Michael Bloomberg (says he will not run) (59 %)
12. Mike Gravel (58 %)
13. Bill Richardson (57 %)
14. Ron Paul (45 %)
15. Elaine Brown (42 %)
16. Kent McManigal (campaign suspended) (41 %)
17. Rudolph Giuliani (31 %)
18. Mike Huckabee (25 %)
19. John McCain (24 %)
20. Tommy Thompson (withdrawn, endorsed Giuliani) (24 %)
21. Alan Keyes (22 %)
22. Mitt Romney (21 %)
23. Chuck Hagel (not running) (19 %)
24. Fred Thompson (14 %)
25. Sam Brownback (withdrawn, endorsed McCain) (13 %)
26. Newt Gingrich (says he will not run) (12 %)
27. Jim Gilmore (withdrawn) (12 %)
28. Tom Tancredo (withdrawn, endorsed Romney) (11 %)
29. Duncan Hunter (10 %)
30. Stephen Colbert (campaign halted) (2 %)

Predictably, Giuliani, McCain, Huckabee, and the rest of the weenies were way down the list. And look they included Stephen Colbert! I would vote for Colbert in a heartbeat if he would just choose Papa Bear as his running mate!

I love reading Michael Turton’s blog, and I admire both the volume and the quality of his posts on Taiwan and the jostling of this wonderful little place between the political whims of two giants, China and the USA.

In response to the Kitty Hawk debacle, he posts something about a pattern emerging from China which I’d just like to quote here:

Anyone who has observed China’s relations with the outside world for any length of time has seen this pattern again and again. In the midst of negotiations with the Vatican, it consecrates two bishops for the state Church. In the midst of negotiations over the Torch coming to Taiwan, it denies a visa to the representative of the city of Kaohsiung to discuss games held there in 2009. Arriving in India for negotiations, its ambassador announces a whole Indian state is part of China. Some months back the Chinese government shut down an expat magazine in China that was widely considered the most sympathetic and supportive expat rag in the nation. China gets the Olympics, and crackdowns on the internet, and journalists intensify, while state security arrests double. Catch the pattern?

Is anyone in charge over there? Seriousy – why are we even bothering with these people anymore?

I just saw that Japan has now refused Chinese access to tour an an advanced combat ship.

Hu Jintao has issued a brilliant edition to what I call “Sweet & Sour” – the kind of rhetoric that comes out of the PRC that sounds sweet and flowery at first glance, but which is a sour and distasteful statement under the hood:

“We would like to make a solemn appeal,” Hu said at the opening of the ruling Communist Party’s five-yearly Congress.

“On the basis of the one-China principle, let us discuss a formal end to the state of hostility between the two sides, reach a peace agreement, construct a framework for peaceful development of cross-strait relations and thus usher in a new phase of peaceful development.”

Wow, great job at saying basically: “Bend over and surrender to your PRC masters.” Here’s another gem from Zhang Qingli, the Communist Party boss of occupied Tibet:

“Such a person who basely splits his motherland and doesn”t even love his motherland has been welcomed by some countries and has even been receiving this or that award,” Tibet”s Communist Party boss, Zhang Qingli, told reporters during the congress.

“We are furious,” Mr. Zhang said. “If the Dalai Lama can receive such an award, there must be no justice or good people in the world.”

This on the other hand is pure sour. And really, you have two types of sour: The good kind, like a lemon drop shaken and served up. And the bad kind, such as sour milk – spoiled, curdled, and nasty. This falls squarely into the sour milk category, does it not? I include it here for a bit of contrast, and also to illustrate the huge amount of pure unfiltered crap that this country is capable of spewing from the mouths of their politicians, which almost rivals our own Bush administration in its outlandishness and downright fictitious nature. Gruber provides the clarification:

Where by “no justice or good people”, Zhang means “justice and good people”.

The PRC apparently has much stronger crack than they sell here, and they’re passing it out freely at the party congress.

Update: Best law ever: Chinese authorities issued a new regulation in July 2007 that requires all reincarnations – including the Dalai Lama – to be approved by the government. Now that is funny. When people unearth this civilization tens of thousands of years from now, they will be laughing their asses off…

In regards to the story where some U.S. vet cut down the flags where the Mexican flag was flown above the American one in Reno: Did anyone simply ask the business owner to change the flag order before someone sent camera crews and everyone got all hysterical? Maybe go over the federal and state laws with him before having a fit? Just wondering…

Everyone seems so quick to judge and condemn without having a simple dialogue without talking things through these days.

Michael Turton makes an excellent point: Why is it that the United States will rebuke Taiwan for supposedly violating the status quo between them and China by asserting their sovereignty with things I would consider entirely peaceful – i.e. requesting Taiwan be admitted into the United Nations or the World Health Organization, while we rebuke them for not purchasing hordes of American-made weaponry, then at the same time delay the sale of weapons already approved to Taiwan, all the while ignoring the fact that China has dozens of nuclear-capable missiles pointed at the island solely for the purpose of threatening to take the island by force? Never mind the fact that we don’t recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation, or that our executive branch has pretty much become the hand puppet of Chinese foreign policy with regards to Taiwan…

In what parallel universe does this make sense?

It seems to me that U.S. foreign policy needs a return to principle-centered leadership. What would a principle-centered policy look like? What would be The Right Thing To Do� What would Jesus do? What would Brian Boitano do? What would you do?

I know what I’d do.