Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Fight to the Death. Almost.

"Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are essentially tied for the Democratic presidential nomination, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, the first time that the New York senator hasn't clearly led the field.

The Illinois senator bests Clinton by a single percentage point, 30%-29%, if the contest includes former vice president Al Gore.

Clinton bests Obama by a single point, 37%-36%, if it doesn't include Gore.

The survey of 310 Democrats and 160 independents who "lean" Democratic, taken Friday through Sunday, has a margin of error of +/-5 percentage points."

Seems like a good race so far. I don't know how acccurate the polls are, but if they are true, then it would be difficult to predict who actually will represent the Democratic party.

Monday, June 4, 2007

Google Gone Too Far. Continued.


One of the plotters behind the alleged scheme to explode gas pipelines at John F. Kennedy airport directed his co-conspirators to use Google Earth to obtain detailed aerial photos of the targeted facility. In a federal criminal complaint, an excerpt from which you'll find below, one of the accused, Abdul Kadir, reportedly told cohorts to use the popular satellite software after he determined that surveillance video shot by the men was "not sufficiently detailed for operational purposes." Kadir, a Guyanese citizen and former member of that country's parliament, made the Google suggestion during a February meeting with an alleged co-conspirator and a government informant (Kadir and three other men have been charged with planning the terror attack). According to the complaint, the snitch followed through and obtained the Google aerial images of JFK, which the men code named the "chicken farm." At a May 11 meeting in Guyana, Kadir was shown the surveillance video and the Google Earth maps of JFK by the informant and Russell Defreitas, one of those charged in the airport attack plan. Defreitas, the complaint notes, "identified, among other things, the fuel tank locations and air traffic control tower." For his part, Kadir "asked many questions about the maps, including the distance between the street and the fuel tanks." (6 pages)

Google has this amazing feature, but what is it really used for? Most people still resort to Mapquest and Google Maps to find their directions around but to have this much detail doesn't really provide much help for the usual consumer. But in the case of terrorist, they get to see where things are from an aerial view. Even the new Google invention where you can zoom so far in where you can actually see how the streets would look if you stood there is going a bit far. You can vividly see license plates and people walking around. What's the main purpose of it? For vacationing purposes where you would know exactly how the streets look like? That's a bit excessive. Plus,
how does this affect our national security?

Sunday, June 3, 2007

America's not that safe.

"More murders and robberies in 2006 sent U.S. violent crimes higher for the second straight year, the FBI said on Monday, with the increase blamed on gangs, youth violence, gun crimes and fewer police on beats.

The FBI reported that the number of violent crimes nationwide went up by 1.3 percent last year, following a 2.3 percent increase in 2005. That had been the first rise in four years and the biggest percentage gain in 15 years.

The report showed that murders in big cities jumped last year by 6.7 percent. Robberies, an important indicator of crime trends, increased 6 percent nationwide.

Drudge Report: 16,185 MURDERS; 92,837 RAPES A YEAR IN USA...

Cities with big increases in the number of murders included Orlando and Miami in Florida; Oakland and San Diego in California; Phoenix, Arizona; Corpus Christi, Texas; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Reno, Nevada and Little Rock, Arkansas."

That's a staggering amount of murders and rapes a year in the USA. I have no idea how accurate it is, but if it is true, then why aren't we trying to fix it? There are examples of many ways to help this, such as increasing police activities and to get law enforcements deep into the scheme of things. I'm surprised by these stats. Are you?