MacBook and Coffee - Two Friends Talk About The Mac

Bill Maher Goes Off On 9-11 Conspiracy Theorist Hecklers

Part of me thinks Bill's jumping into the audience was to use YouTube to boost his show's ratings by generating buzz. He's got the buzz; let's see how the ratings do in the future.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bill Maher can add "security guard" to his job description alongside comedian and political commentator.
Maher helped security give the boot to a rowdy protester from the studio of his weekly HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday night, and it was all captured on live television.

Maher was talking science during one of his weekly panel discussions when a protester in his audience stood, held up a smuggled-in sign reading "9/11 is a cover up fraud" and shouted comments to the same effect.

The host tried to shout down the audience member, who only became more agitated.

"Do we have some (expletive) security in this building," Maher yelled, "or do I have to come down there and kick his (expletive)?"

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When security reached the man's aisle and he resisted leaving, Maher ran into the seats and helped them push him out the door, shouting "Out! Out! Out!"

Several other protesters, sprinkled throughout the audience, then stood up and shouted.

"This isn't the Iowa Caucus, OK, we're not here to debate," Maher shouted with most of his audience cheering him on. "This is the problem with live television."

The incident was shown live on the East Coast, and the network appeared to show the entire affair unedited for the taped-delayed West Coast version.

After the instigators were ejected, Maher told his panelists — MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Los Angeles Times columnist Joel Stein and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson — that they often linger outside his studio to share 9/11 conspiracy theories with him and try to get into the show.

"It's the only time I defend Bush," he said.

"I'm thinking about firing my audience department," he added.

Regular audience members found the ruckus thrilling.

"We picked a very exciting night to be here," Eliot Stein, a 54-year-old high school teacher, said via cellphone. "There's few live TV shows anymore, and here you got to see, it was like a movie. it was great."

Stein's friend John Lovell said "It was positively surreal."

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and wife Elizabeth had been in the studio for an interview before the panel discussion and dustup.

Elizabeth Edwards was shown in the audience after her husband's interview, but it was not clear whether she remained in the seats during the incident.

Phone and e-mail messages left with HBO officials late Friday were not immediately returned.

Second Life Focus Of CSI: NY Episode Wednesday

According to TechCrunch , CSI: NY will go to Second Life:

Second Life is bracing itself for an influx of new members this coming week with the long awaited episode of CSI:NY does Second Life to be shown in the United States on Wednesday.
The episode will see Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) entering Second Life to pursue a killer who has killed a Second Life user in a case of virtual stalking gone too far.

CSI:NY fans will be encouraged to join Second Life and investigate the case by following a link on the CBS website. CSI:NY will have three options for CSI-related inworld activities. The first option will allow viewers to walk around virtual New York buildings and visit a CSI lab and play forensic games.

The second option consists of a game called “Murder by Zuiker,” a unique murder plot which can be solved by users finding clues. The 100 people who come closest to solving the murder will win virtual gifts.

Here's the CBS preview on YouTube:

Top Clinton Aids Have Lobbied and Worked For Iowa Ememy Monsanto

Currently, Hillary Clinton's being hammered for holding her "Rural Americans For Hillary" party at a lobbying firm's office in Washington DC, and for Monsanto, which has a terrible record with Iowans and even that state's Attorney General's investigating their business practices.

But I learned that Clinton herself has ties to Monsanto. In 1998 top aides to her husband President Bill Clinton lobbied for Monsanto in Europe -- including President Clinton and Al Gore. According to Commondreams.org...

Top Clinton aides--including U.S. Trade Rep. Charlene Barshevsky, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman and Secretary of Commerce William Daley--also have lobbied their European counterparts on Monsanto's behalf.

Even Bill Clinton and Al Gore got in on the act, engaging in some last minute arm-twisting of Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahren and French President Lionel Jospin. Both the French and the Irish caved in to the pressure.

Indeed, Monsanto's well-known for hiring former aids to Bill Clinton. The most famous example is Mickey Kantor, who after representing President Clinton as trade representative, became a Monsanto Board member .

Senator Clinton's got herself in a real pickle this time. This is so bad, she should issue a formal appology to Iowa voters for her conduct in associating with Monsanto.

Hillary Clinton Uses Lobbiyst Troutman Sanders To Meet Iowa Alledged Violator Monsanto

Troutman Sanders is hosting a party for Hillary Clinton and "Rural America"

First, who's Troutman Sanders? Well, their website reports a huge client list of large corporations . which is listed below in this blog post.

What Hillary Clinton's doing is using their office space to meet Monsanto, one of Troutman Sanders' major clients. The title of the event is "Rural Americans for Hillary." Monsanto is under investigation by office of Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller regarding its business practices in Iowa and how they impact Iowa farmers. Monsanto's also the focus of a patent dispute with Iowa State University.

What's weird is that the event is not only entitled "Rural Americans for Hillary" but is being held in Washington DC and that Monsanto is judged as the most unethical investment in the World by one website.

Hillary's getting bashed by Iowans over this story, and it could be the nail in the coffin of her chances to win in Iowa. Meanwhile, let's look at the lobbying firm Troutman Sanders. It's no surprise that Hillary Clinton's not taking questions from Iowa voters at press conferences.

They are listed and seen as lobbyists. As stated, Monsanto's one of Troutman Sanders' top clients, but in addition, former aids to President Bill Clinton have lobbied for Monstanto in the recent past.

TSPAG representative client list:

Aetna
AFLAC
American Insurance Association
American Lawyer Media, Inc.
Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc.
Assurant Health
BellSouth Corporation
Branded Pharmaceutical Association
Camp, Dresser & McKee, Inc
CarMax
Cerner
CIGNA Healthcare
Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.
City of Atlanta
City of Forsyth, Georgia
City of Sacramento City Manager's Office
City of Sacramento Department of Utilities
City of Watsonville
Coastal Heritage Society
The Coca-Cola Company
Columbus Community Services
County Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County
Digimarc ID Systems
Entertainment Software Association
First United Ethanol, LLC
General Electric Company
General Motors Corporation
Georgia Crown Distributing Company
Georgia Southern University
Gilbane Building Company
Gulf Coast Waste Disposal Authority
Home Builders Association of Georgia
Lewis & Clark Rural Water System, Inc.
Long Fence
L. R. Wechsler, Ltd.
Medco Health Solutions, Inc.
Merck & Company
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
Microsoft Corporation
Mid-Dakota Rural Water System, Inc.
Monterey County Administrative Office
Monterey County Water Resources Agency
Monsanto
Novartis Pharmaceuticals
Outfitters Association
Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency
Paulding County Airport Authority
Pharmaceutical Research Manufacturers of America
Press Ganey Associates
Property Casualty Insurers Association of America
Prudential Financial, Inc.
Recording Industry Association of America
Schwan's Global Supply Chain, Inc.
Southern Company
Synovus Financial Corp.
USA Rice Federation
University of Arkansas, School of Agriculture
Verizon Wireless
Virginia Bar Association
Virginia Economic Developers Association
Vitech
Walter Industries

Teachers Having Sex With Students: 2,500 Cases Since 2001 - AP Report

We all knew there was a problem, but this study shows just how large it really has been.

AP: Sexual Misconduct Plagues US Schools

By MARTHA IRVINE and ROBERT TANNER
AP National Writers

The young teacher hung his head, avoiding eye contact. Yes, he had touched a fifth-grader's breast during recess. "I guess it was just lust of the flesh," he told his boss.

That got Gary C. Lindsey fired from his first teaching job in Oelwein, Iowa. But it didn't end his career. He taught for decades in Illinois and Iowa, fending off at least a half-dozen more abuse accusations.

When he finally surrendered his teaching license in 2004 - 40 years after that first little girl came forward - it wasn't a principal or a state agency that ended his career. It was one persistent victim and her parents.

Lindsey's case is just a small example of a widespread problem in American schools: sexual misconduct by the very teachers who are supposed to be nurturing the nation's children.

Students in America's schools are groped. They're raped. They're pursued, seduced and think they're in love.

An Associated Press investigation found more than 2,500 cases over five years in which educators were punished for actions from bizarre to sadistic.

There are 3 million public school teachers nationwide, most devoted to their work. Yet the number of abusive educators - nearly three for every school day - speaks to a much larger problem in a system that is stacked against victims.

Most of the abuse never gets reported. Those cases reported often end with no action. Cases investigated sometimes can't be proven, and many abusers have several victims.

And no one - not the schools, not the courts, not the state or federal governments - has found a surefire way to keep molesting teachers out of classrooms.

Those are the findings of an AP investigation in which reporters sought disciplinary records in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The result is an unprecedented national look at the scope of sex offenses by educators - the very definition of breach of trust.

The seven-month investigation found 2,570 educators whose teaching credentials were revoked, denied, surrendered or sanctioned from 2001 through 2005 following allegations of sexual misconduct.

Young people were the victims in at least 1,801 of the cases, and more than 80 percent of those were students. At least half the educators who were punished by their states also were convicted of crimes related to their misconduct.

The findings draw obvious comparisons to sex abuse scandals in other institutions, among them the Roman Catholic Church. A review by America's Catholic bishops found that about 4,400 of 110,000 priests were accused of molesting minors from 1950 through 2002.

Clergy abuse is part of the national consciousness after a string of highly publicized cases. But until now, there's been little sense of the extent of educator abuse.

Beyond the horror of individual crimes, the larger shame is that the institutions that govern education have only sporadically addressed a problem that's been apparent for years.

"From my own experience - this could get me in trouble - I think every single school district in the nation has at least one perpetrator. At least one," says Mary Jo McGrath, a California lawyer who has spent 30 years investigating abuse and misconduct in schools. "It doesn't matter if it's urban or rural or suburban."

One report mandated by Congress estimated that as many as 4.5 million students, out of roughly 50 million in American schools, are subject to sexual misconduct by an employee of a school sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade. That figure includes verbal harassment that's sexual in nature.

Jennah Bramow, one of Lindsey's accusers in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, wonders why there isn't more outrage.

"You're supposed to be able to send your kids to school knowing that they're going to be safe," says Bramow, now 20. While other victims accepted settlement deals and signed confidentiality agreements, she sued her city's schools for failing to protect her and others from Lindsey - and won. Only then was Lindsey's teaching license finally revoked.

As an 8-year-old elementary-school student, Bramow told how Lindsey forced her hand on what she called his "pee-pee."

"How did you know it was his pee-pee?" an interviewer at St. Luke's Child Protection Center in Cedar Rapids asked Jennah in a videotape, taken in 1995.

"'Cause I felt something?" said Jennah, then a fidgety girl with long, dark hair.

"How did it feel?" the investigator asked.

"Bumpy," Jennah replied. She drew a picture that showed how Lindsey made her touch him on the zipper area of his pants.

Lindsey, now 68, refused multiple requests for an interview. "It never occurs to you people that some people don't want their past opened back up," he said when an AP reporter approached him at his home outside Cedar Rapids and asked questions.

That past, according to evidence presented in the Bramow's civil case, included accusations from students and parents along with reprimands from principals that were filed away, explained away and ultimately ignored until 1995, when accusations from Bramow and two other girls forced his early retirement. Even then, he kept his teaching license until the Bramows took the case public and filed a complaint with the state.

Like Lindsey, the perpetrators that the AP found are everyday educators - teachers, school psychologists, principals and superintendents among them. They're often popular and recognized for excellence and, in nearly nine out of 10 cases, they're male. While some abused students in school, others were cited for sexual misconduct after hours that didn't necessarily involve a kid from their classes, such as viewing or distributing child pornography.

They include:

- Joseph E. Hayes, a former principal in East St. Louis, Ill. DNA evidence in a civil case determined that he impregnated a 14-year-old student. Never charged criminally, his license was suspended in 2003. He has ignored an order to surrender it permanently.

- Donald M. Landrum, a high school teacher in Polk County, N.C. His bosses warned him not to meet with female students behind closed doors. They put a glass window in his office door, but Landrum papered over it. Police later found pornography and condoms in his office and alleged that he was about to have sex with a female student. His license was revoked in 2005.

- Rebecca A. Boicelli, a former teacher in Redwood City, Calif. She conceived a child with a 16-year-old former student then went on maternity leave in 2004 while police investigated. She was hired to teach in a nearby school district; board members said police hadn't told them about the investigation.

The overwhelming majority of cases the AP examined involved teachers in public schools. Private school teachers rarely turn up because many are not required to have a teaching license and, even when they have one, disciplinary actions are typically handled within the school.

Two of the nation's major teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, each denounced sex abuse while emphasizing that educators' rights also must be taken into account.

"Students must be protected from sexual predators and abuse, and teachers must be protected from false accusations," said NEA President Reg Weaver, who refused to be interviewed and instead released a two-paragraph statement.

Kathy Buzad of the AFT said that "if there's one incident of sexual misconduct between a teacher and a student that's one too many."

The United States has grown more sympathetic to victims of sex abuse over recent decades, particularly when it comes to young people. Laws that protect children from abusers bear the names of young victims. Police have made pursuing Internet predators a priority. People convicted of abuse typically face tough sentences and registry as sex offenders.

Even so, sexually abusive teachers continue to take advantage, and there are several reasons why.

For one, many Americans deny the problem, and even treat the abuse with misplaced fascination. Popular media reports trumpet relationships between attractive female teachers and male students.

"It's dealt with in a salacious manner with late-night comedians saying 'What 14-year-old boy wouldn't want to have sex with his teacher?' It trivializes the whole issue," says Robert Shoop, a professor of educational administration at Kansas State University who has written a book aimed at helping school districts identify and deal with sexual misconduct.

"In other cases, it's reported as if this is some deviant who crawled into the school district - 'and now that they're gone, everything's OK.' But it's much more prevalent than people would think."

The AP investigation found efforts to stop individual offenders but, overall, a deeply entrenched resistance toward recognizing and fighting abuse. It starts in school hallways, where fellow teachers look away or feel powerless to help. School administrators make behind-the-scenes deals to avoid lawsuits and other trouble. And in state capitals and Congress, lawmakers shy from tough state punishments or any cohesive national policy for fear of disparaging a vital profession.

That only enables rogue teachers, and puts kids who aren't likely to be believed in a tough spot.

In case after case the AP examined, accusations of inappropriate behavior were dismissed. One girl in Mansfield, Ohio, complained about a sexual assault by teacher Donald Coots and got expelled. It was only when a second girl, years later, brought a similar complaint against the same teacher that he was punished.

And that second girl also was ostracized by the school community and ultimately left town.

Unless there's a videotape of a teacher involved with a child, everyone wants to believe the authority figure, says Wayne Promisel, a retired Virginia detective who has investigated many sex abuse cases.

He and others who track the problem reiterated one point repeatedly during the AP investigation: Very few abusers get caught.

They point to several academic studies estimating that only about one in 10 victimized children report sexual abuse of any kind to someone who can do something about it.

Teachers, administrators and even parents frequently don't, or won't, recognize the signs that a crime is taking place.

"They can't see what's in front of their face. Not unlike a kid in an alcoholic family, who'll say 'My family is great,'" says McGrath, the California lawyer and investigator who now trains entire school systems how to recognize what she calls the unmistakable "red flags" of misconduct.

In Hamburg, Pa., in 2002, those "red flags" should have been clear. A student skipped classes every day to spend time with one teacher. He gave her gifts and rides in his car. She sat on his lap. The bond ran so deep that the student got chastised repeatedly - even suspended once for being late and absent so often. But there were no questions for the teacher.

Heather Kline was 12, a girl with a broad smile and blond hair pulled back tight. Teacher Troy Mansfield had cultivated her since she was in his third-grade class.

"Kids, like, idolized me because they thought I was, like, cool because he paid more attention to me," says Kline, now 18, sitting at her mother's kitchen table, sorting through a file of old poems and cards from Mansfield. "I was just like really comfortable. I could tell him anything."

He never pushed her, just raised the stakes, bit by bit - a comment about how good she looked, a gift, a hug.

She was sure she was in love.

By winter of seventh grade, he was sneaking her off in his car for an hour of sex, dropping in on her weekly baby-sitting duties, e-mailing about what clothes she should wear, about his sexual fantasies, about marriage and children.

Mansfield finally got caught by the girl's mother, and his own words convicted him. At his criminal trial in 2004, Heather read his e-mails and instant messages aloud, from declarations of true love to explicit references to past sex. He's serving up to 31 years in state prison.

The growing use of e-mails and text messages is leaving a trail that investigators and prosecutors can use to prove an intimate relationship when other evidence is hard to find.

Even then, many in the community find it difficult to accept that a predator is in their midst. When these cases break, defendants often portray the students as seducers or false accusers. However, every investigator questioned said that is largely a misconception.

"I've been involved in several hundred investigations," says Martin Bates, an assistant superintendent in a Salt Lake City school district. "I think I've seen that just a couple of times ... where a teacher is being pursued by a student."

Too often, problem teachers are allowed to leave quietly. That can mean future abuse for another student and another school district.

"They might deal with it internally, suspending the person or having the person move on. So their license is never investigated," says Charol Shakeshaft, a leading expert in teacher sex abuse who heads the educational leadership department at Virginia Commonwealth University.

It's a dynamic so common it has its own nicknames - "passing the trash" or the "mobile molester."

Laws in several states require that even an allegation of sexual misconduct be reported to the state departments that oversee teacher licenses. But there's no consistent enforcement, so such laws are easy to ignore.

School officials fear public embarrassment as much as the perpetrators do, Shakeshaft says. They want to avoid the fallout from going up against a popular teacher. They also don't want to get sued by teachers or victims, and they don't want to face a challenge from a strong union.

In the Iowa case, Lindsey agreed to leave without fighting when his bosses kept the reason for his departure confidential. The decades' worth of allegations against him would have stayed secret, if not for Bramow.

Across the country, such deals and lack of information-sharing allow abusive teachers to jump state lines, even when one school does put a stop to the abuse.

While some schools and states have been aggressive about investigating problem teachers and publicizing it when they're found, others were hesitant to share details of cases with the AP - Alabama and Mississippi among the more resistant. Maine, the only state that gave the AP no disciplinary information, has a law that keeps offending teachers' cases secret.

Meanwhile, the reasons given for punishing hundreds of educators, including many in California, were so vague there was no way to tell why they'd been punished, until further investigation by AP reporters revealed it was sexual misconduct.

And in Hawaii, no educators were disciplined by the state in the five years the AP examined, even though some teachers there were serving sentences for various sex crimes during that time. They technically remained teachers, even behind bars.

Elsewhere, there have been fitful steps toward catching errant teachers that may be having some effect. The AP found the number of state actions against sexually abusive teachers rose steadily, to a high of 649 in 2005.

More states now require background checks on teachers, fingerprinting and mandatory reporting of abuse, though there are still loopholes and a lack of coordination among districts and states.

U.S. Supreme Court rulings in the last 20 years on civil rights and sex discrimination have opened schools up to potentially huge financial punishments for abuses, which has driven some schools to act.

And the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification keeps a list of educators who've been punished for any reason, but only shares the names among state agencies.

The uncoordinated system that's developed means some teachers still fall through the cracks. Aaron M. Brevik is a case in point.

Brevik was a teacher at an elementary school in Warren, Mich., until he was accused of using a camera hidden in a gym bag to secretly film boys in locker rooms and showers. He also faced charges that he recorded himself molesting a boy while the child slept.

Found guilty of criminal sexual conduct, Brevik is now serving a five- to 20-year prison sentence and lost his Michigan license in 2005.

What Michigan officials apparently didn't know when they hired him was that Brevik's teaching license in Minnesota had been permanently suspended in 2001 after he allegedly invited two male minors to stay with him in a hotel room. He was principal of an elementary school in southeastern Minnesota at the time.

"I tell you what, they never go away. They just blend a little better," says Steve Janosko, a prosecutor in Ocean County, N.J., who handled the case of a former high school teacher and football coach, Nicholas J. Arminio.

Arminio surrendered his New Jersey teaching license in 1994 after two female students separately accused him of inappropriate touching. The state of Maryland didn't know that when he applied for teaching credentials and took a job at a high school in Baltimore County. He eventually resigned and lost that license, too.

Even so, until this month, he was coaching football at another Baltimore County high school in a job that does not require a teaching license. After the AP started asking questions, he was fired.

Victims also face consequences when teachers are punished.

In Pennsylvania, after news of teacher Troy Mansfield's arrest hit, girls called Kline, his 12-year-old victim, a "slut" to her face. A teacher called her a "vixen." Friends stopped talking to her. Kids no longer sat with her at lunch.

Her abuser, meanwhile, had been a popular teacher and football coach.

So, between rumors that she was pregnant or doing drugs and her own panic attacks and depression, Kline bounced between schools. At 16, she ran away to Nashville.

"I didn't have my childhood," says Kline, who's back home now, working at a grocery cash register and hoping to get her GED so she can go to nursing school. "He had me so matured at so young.

"I remember going from little baby dolls to just being an adult."

The courts dealt her a final insult. A federal judge dismissed her civil suit against the school, saying administrators had no obligation to protect her from a predatory teacher since officials were unaware of the abuse, despite what the court called widespread "unsubstantiated rumors" in the school. The family is appealing.

In Iowa, the state Supreme Court made the opposite ruling in the Bramow case, deciding she and her parents could sue the Cedar Rapids schools for failing to stop Lindsey.

Bramow, now a young mother who waits tables for a living, won a $20,000 judgment. But Lindsey was never criminally charged due to what the former county prosecutor deemed insufficient evidence.

Arthur Sensor, the former superintendent in Oelwein, Iowa, who vividly recalls pressuring Lindsey to quit on Feb. 18, 1964, regrets that he didn't do more to stop him back then.

Now, he says, he'd call the police.

"He promised me he wouldn't do it again - that he had learned. And he was a young man, a beginning teacher, had a young wife, a young child," Sensor, now 86 years old, said during testimony at the Bramows' civil trial.

"I wanted to believe him, and I did."

---

John Parsons, special projects manager for the AP's News Research Center, contributed to this story.

© 2007 The Associated Press.

BARACK OBAMA CATCHES HILLARY CLINTON - $2.1 MILLION RAISED!

Senator Barack Obama has quickly caught Senator Hillary Clinton in the presidential election fundraising race, adding $2.1 million via an email campaign in just four days. This closes a gap said to be created by Washinton lobbyist's money going to Clinton.

Presidential Polls - "Eligible Voter" v. "Most Likely Voter" Important

How many times this year have you seen a presidential poll that says it surveyed "most likely voters"? Chances are you've seen or heard this a lot -- almost every day. But think. How many times have you listened to someone use the term "eligible voter"?

Chances are, not a lot.

This difference reflects poll manipulation in action. Eligible Voters are those people old enough to voter. Period. But the designation "Most Likely Voter" blocks young people from consideration in polls because only older people are considered. It's a very important difference because...

" In A Journalist’s Guide to Public Opinion Polls, another 1992 situation is described in which additional changes in eligibility procedures dramatically altered the polls. In this example, the authors document how CNN’s change from "eligible voter" to "most likely voter" in the latter days of the ‘92 campaign, impacted the Bush-Clinton numbers by a full six percentage points... overnight!

It's also interesting that CNN's matched with Clinton in the example above. CNN uses the term "most likely voter" today, in what seems to me like an attempt to skew the polls toward people who are more conservative and thus more likely to vote for Senator Clinton over Senator Obama.

Then CNN reports on the results of such out-of-wack reports nationwide, making people think that she's got it in the bag.

Nope.

This is because the "Most Likely Voter" approach consistently avoids surveying new voters, according to Ruy Teixeira, at the Joint Fellow at the Center For American Progress, and who claimed that the Gallup Poll's design benefited more older, more conservative voters who were more likely to vote for Bush in 2004 and Hillary Clinton in this election.

The polls also don't pick up cell phone users. Again, according to Teixeira,...

"Cell phones are yet another thing that pollsters are scrambling to try to figure out how to deal with. The thing that mitigates the cell phone problem is that most people who have cell phones also have landlines. The number of pure cell phone users is relatively small, though it is growing fast. However, even if you confine your intention to that group, there is some evidence that by excluding the cell phone-only users, it is a group with a fairly distinct demographic profile which leads to a certain kind of politics. They tend to be poor, they tend to be renters. There is some evidence that excluding them from polls does skew the polls slightly."

In addtion, there's every indication to believe that cell-phone-only homes are near 25 percent of the voting population now.

One dynamic is clear in the 2008 Presidential Election to this point. While the youth vote is driving campaigns, especially Senator Obama's effort with its reliance on social networking online tools commonly used by young people, and Ron Paul's almost totally internet-based campaign surge, the polls and the mainstream media are all but ignoring the youth vote, thus creating the climate for what will be the most suprising election in history.

Barack Obama Hits Over $2 Million On Way To $2.1 Million Goal

Angered by the knoweldge that a difference of just $2.1 million between his third quarter fundraising tallies and those of his challenger Senator Hillary Clinton was made up of lobbyist's money, Senator Barack Obama embarked on a fund-raising campaign that consisted of a series of emails to supporters. That started on Monday evening.

Now, on Friday, as of this writing, the campaign has raised $2,044,009 and is well on its way toward meeting that $2.1 million objective.

Bills express interest in playing at least one home game in Toronto

Associated Press

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- The Buffalo Bills intend to play a few games in Canada, eh?

That's the plan after the Bills announced on Thursday they are seeking approval to play a preseason and at least one regular-season game in Toronto. It's part of the franchise's attempt to expand its market base beyond western New York.

"The team hopes to capitalize on the increasing interest of fans in the Canadian market by playing a regular-season game in Toronto," the Bills announced in a release.

The Bills hope to play a preseason game at Toronto next summer, with plans to play a regular-season game as early as 2009. The games would be played at Rogers Center, a downtown stadium with a retractable roof that serves as home to baseball's Blue Jays and the Canadian Football League Argonauts.
The Bills require both county and state approval to play "home games" outside of Ralph Wilson Stadium as a condition of their lease, which runs through 2012. The lease requires the team to play half its preseason and all regular-season home games at the Orchard Park facility.

The team began the process by sending a letter of request to Erie County on Wednesday.

The Bills would also need approval from the NFL, considered a formality with the league already scheduling games in international markets. In two weeks, Miami and the New York Giants will play at London's Wembley Stadium in the first NFL game outside North America. In 2005, Arizona and San Francisco played in Mexico City in the first regular-season game outside the United States.

Toronto is the next logical choice as part of the Bills' expansion plans. Canada's largest metropolitan center is a 90-mile drive from Buffalo, boasts a large corporate base that can translate into additional marketing revenue, and the team also draws an average of 15,000 Canadian fans to its home games.

The Bills also consider this an opportunity to lure Toronto companies to purchase corporate suites at Ralph Wilson Stadium. The Bills currently have three suites unsold and, next season, will unveil new prime suites as part of a plan to relocate the existing press box.

The Bills stressed the games at Toronto are part of their regionalization plans and should not be considered a first step for the franchise's relocation. The Bills noted the success they've enjoyed since moving their training camp in 2000 to Rochester, where they've taken advantage of the city's corporate base.

Bills owner Ralph Wilson, who turned 89 on Wednesday, has maintained he has no intention of selling or relocating the franchise. The team's future remains unclear because Wilson has no plans to keep the franchise in his family once he dies, leaving the door open for a new owner to move the team.

Toronto newspapers have published stories speculating whether the city can be a viable NFL market, and most often mention the Bills as a prime candidate.

Bank of America earnings drop 32%

By Ross Kerber, Globe Staff | October 19, 2007

Bank of America Corp., the nation's largest retail bank, reported yesterday that third-quarter earnings plummeted 32 percent because of problems in mortgage and credit markets. But analysts said the bank's woes are unlikely to have an effect on consumers or businesses in Massachusetts, a market the bank dominates.

The dichotomy reflects the vast reach of the Charlotte institution, from global financial services to neighborhood bank branches.

Bank of America stumbled in the first area, suffering growing credit losses and poor results at its investment banking unit. But at the same time the bank's lending to consumers and businesses remained on track. So did results of its big Global Wealth and Investment Management unit, the Boston operation that includes its Columbia mutual funds brand.

Morningstar analyst Jaime Peters said there is no reason the local units would be held back by Bank of America's other issues, or that New England operations would suffer as a result. "They're using the power of their balance sheet to continue to lend," she said. "There's no reason to expect a pullback is going to happen."

Shares of Bank of America fell 2.4 percent to $48.85 in trading yesterday after the company's morning earnings release. For the three months ended Sept. 30 the bank had net income of $3.7 billion, down from $5.4 billion a year earlier.

The chief reason was a $1.3 billion fall in earnings from the bank's Global Corporate and Investment Banking division, largely based in New York. The costs of provisions for bad loans rose $865 million, which the bank partly blamed on a weaker US housing market that required it to add reserves for home equity and home builder loans whose borrowers were falling behind on payments.

Those problems were only partly offset by brighter spots such as its Global Wealth and Investment Management division, whose assets under management rose to $710 billion from $517 billion a year earlier, including the acquisition in July of US Trust, the big private banking company. Net income for the division rose to $599 million for the quarter, from $513 million a year earlier.

Michael Mullaney, a portfolio manager at Fiduciary Trust Co. in Boston that owns 1.2 million Bank of America shares, said he was troubled by the results and that the company likely will review whether to sell the stock.

Before yesterday, Mullaney said, he had considered Bank of America a better bet than the country's two other giant banks, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. But now it seems the two New York banks have been able to weather the summer's credit problems more smoothly than Bank of America, he said.

"Clearly they've been able to operate through this a lot better," he said.

Bank of America's results also showed how a bank that held relatively few securities backed by subprime mortgage investments could still suffer financially as equities markets grew volatile this summer over concerns about the insecurity of the instruments held by other banks. The volatility ruined many of the bank's trading strategies and wiped out nearly all the Global Corporate unit's profits of $1.4 billion in the year-ago quarter, even though Bank of America had mostly stopped originating subprime mortgages three years ago, NAB Research analyst Nancy Bush said.

"The problem for them isn't subprime holdings, the problem is what happened in the markets because of subprime," Bush said.

On a conference call yesterday, Bank of America executives struck an apologetic tone with analysts who had expected better results, but indicated overall lending will continue. "Although we are very disappointed at the magnitude of the hit we took, the strength in our other businesses allowed us to maintain our strategic direction," said chief executive Kenneth D. Lewis.

Later Lewis and the bank's chief financial officer, Joe Price, defended the quality of its loan portfolio and dismissed a concern that problems could spread as in previous economic slowdowns. "These are really good-quality numbers" in the lending portfolios, Lewis said. "To say that we're concerned about overall credit quality would be going way too far."

Because of its size, Bank of America's lending terms matter more than most banks in Massachusetts. In a recent survey of business executives here, about 20 percent said they felt access to loans has grown more expensive, according to the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, a trade group representing manufacturers. Its spokesman, Brian Gilmore, said the lending market seems competitive with rivals such as Citizens Bank and Eastern still making loans. "It's a mixed picture," he said.

Bank of America had 198,000 employees worldwide as of Sept. 30, down from 200,220 employees a year earlier. In August, the bank said it had 9,000 Massachusetts employees, a figure a spokesman did not update yesterday.

Web 2.0 Summit - Flickr's New Geotagging Design Seen At Web 2.0 Summit Lunch

As I write this, I'm having lunch at Maxfield's, a nice restaurant in the Sheraton Palace, a place where, according to Attorney General Jerry Brown, a president got shot in. I don't know which one, off the top of my head.

At any rate, it's pretty crowded with people, and all of a sudden. And by their the tags around their necks, they're here for Tim O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Summit. Having just presented my friend Monte Poole with an award from the San Francisco Black Journalists Association, I was hungry and decided to not just stop by but gain some information.

One of the interesting online devices I've seen is what appears to be a new Flickr application. It seems to mate photos with geographic location so that if you press on a part of a map, it matches all of the photos you have for that part of the map into one area called, "San Francisco" for example.

As the people demonstrating this were at a table nearby, I managed to get this video of what they were seeing.




According to Paul Miller over at Nodalities, Flickr was at the Summit to report ...

a replacement for existing geotagging service...

115,000 geotagged photos per day, one every 1.3 seconds.

Merge tagging and locations to deliver a new ui that scales better to handle growth in usage.

“But there's more...”

Current 'interestingness' algorithm for photos can also be applied to the geolocation, creating pages of 'iconic' images at a given location.

That was what I saw, and what you're seeing here. I wish I'd turned the camera over their sooner as there were more interesting screen shots I could have taken.