People are in an uproar about the "I put my jet on ebay" comment. Granted, she didn't sell it on ebay, but she did try to which I guess is meant to point out how tech-savvy she is. It irritates me, however, how they have to take the one true statement and then exaggerate it into the land of falsehoods.

For example: McCain was talking about her jet and he threw in  about how she sold it "and made a profit on it too!" Falsehood. It was purchased for 2.7 million and sold for 2.1 million. Little detail, but it's there.

Another interesting fact? When Palin became mayor, one of the first things she did was go to the head librarian and ask how she could go about the process of getting books banned. Why? Because some novels had inappropriate language in them. I mean, really? Seriously? Why don't you cover up potholes and get roads extended instead of crusading to ban literature. Another point- she keeps toting around about how she won mayor of her town.

The reason she did is because she brought big politics to a small town campaign. Instead of campaigning for roadwork and public safety issues, her hot topic was abortion.

I just can't wrap my head around this.

As I'm at work, I'll cut it here. But before I do, I'll leave you with a link to an article of McCain calling his wife a trollop and a cunt in front of news journalists! Oh Wannabe President, how I do love your temper. Quite fit to lead a country, indeed.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/McCain_temper_boiled_over_in_92_0407.html

I'll have to head down to the applestore later in the morning. Looks like the planned trip to Otaru have to be postponed.

Oh well.

So, John McCain in his speech today lauded Sarah yet again for selling the ex-Governor's luxury jet on e-bay, AND FOR A PROFIT!

EXCEPT, apparently she didn't sell the thing on e-bay (she did try), she ended up selling it for a substantial loss by using a broker.

Now, I guess her version is mostly true, but they really are implying she sold it on e-bay in every appearance, and McCain saying she sold it at a profit is really an outright lie since it sold at a loss of almost 1.5 million.

Jet Sold at a Substantial Loss (Click Here for Article)

According to a fact checker site called Politifact, she stretched the truth a bit. The jet was posted on ebay but did not sell. It was actually sold by a brokering company offline and bought by a businessman for $2.1 million. The purchase price was a netloss for the state which had purchased the jet for $2.7 million in 2005.

And the idea to sell on ebay in the first place wasn't exactly her personal innovation.  According to the site, Alaska has sold another smaller plane that way before.

Because of a technicality (she never said it SOLD on the site) she can keep saying this, but she needs to be knocked down a peg or two.

“Everything is f---ing spin.”

On Wednesday night former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee claimed that Sarah Palin received more votes for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden did in the presidential primaries. In fact, Biden got 79,754 votes in his short campaign, while Palin received 909 votes in her 1999 mayor race and 651 in 1996 from the approximately 8,000 residents of Wasilla. Read the full analysis.

  Sarah Palin told America that of one of her best qualifications to serve as Vice President is that she put a jet on eBay. "I came to office promising major ethics reform to end the culture of self-dealing, and today that ethics reform is the law. While I was at it, I got rid of a few things in the Governor's Office that I didn't believe our citizens should have to pay for. That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay (3 times)," she said.

Of course, Palin never mentioned that though she did list the jet on eBay, she didn't sell it on eBay. After going unsold for months, the jet was put into the hands of Turbo North Aviation, an Anchorage aircraft broker. The asking price was $2.45 million for the jet which was valued at $2.7 million, for a loss of $250,000. The jet was quickly sold to Alaska businessman Larry Reynolds for $2.1 million ($31,000 of which went to Turbo Aviation for their commission). Today the Westwind II jet spends its days ushering wealthy hunters around Alaska and Russia.

 In 2006 Palin said: "People across the nation struggle with the idea of building a bridge because they’ve been under these misperceptions about the bridge and the purpose.” Palin explained that the bridge was a link for the town of Ketchikan and its surrounding area for potential expansion and growth. Palin said Alaska’s congressional delegation worked hard to obtain funding for the bridge as part of a package deal and that she “would not stand in the way of the progress toward that bridge.”

Palin also answered "yes" to an Anchorage Daily News poll question about whether she would continue to support state funding for the Gravina Island Bridge if elected governor. "The window is now…while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist," she wrote.  

 It was only after she won the governorship that Palin shifted her position. And even then, it’s inaccurate to say that she “told the Congress ‘thanks, but no thanks.’” Palin in fact accepted non-earmarked money from Congress that could have been used for the bridge if she so desired. She took the money and then decided to use it for other state transportation purposes.  That doesn’t qualify as standing up to Congress.

FactCheck said her claim to be a crusader against earmarks doesn’t hold water especially since she argued for funds for local projects that her running mate, John McCain, had explicitly condemned.

 Regarding Senator Obama, Palin said: “But listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or even a reform, not even in the state Senate.”

Of course, we don’t know what is “major” to Sarah Palin.  But since Palin’s own ethics reforms in Alaska were important enough to highlight in her convention address, then it’s only fair to credit Obama’s efforts on that topic.

In 1998 in the Illinois Senate, Obama cosponsored an ethics overhaul that bars elected officials from using their campaign funds for personal use and it was called the first major overhaul of Illinois campaign and ethics laws in 25 years. It also bans fundraisers in the state Capitol during legislative sessions. Obama’s Republican cosponsor Kirk Dillard even appeared in an Obama ad last summer describing Obama’s skills working with members of both parties to get legislation passed.

In Washington, Obama was instrumental in helping to craft the 2007 ethics reform law that ended gifts and meals from lobbyists, cut off subsidized jet travel for members of Congress, required lobbyists to disclose contributions they “bundle” to candidates, and put the brakes on other, similar common practices.

FactCheck  noted in a recent article that Obama also crossed party lines and worked with Republican senators to help detect and secure weapons of mass destruction and to destroy conventional weapons stockpiles around the world, and to create a publicly searchable database on federal spending.

 Palin also got Obama’s legislative record wrong.  She forgot to mention that Obama proposes cutting taxes for most working families.

Palin said: “And let me be specific: The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, and raise payroll taxes, and raise investment income taxes, and raise the death tax, and raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars. ...How are you – how are you going to be better off if our opponent adds a massive tax burden to the American economy?”

Her tax remarks lacked context. Senator Obama proposes to cut taxes for most individuals (81.3 percent of all households would get a tax cut), while raising them only for a relative few at the top, which she of course did not mention.

She avoided the false claims that McCain continues to make, most recently in a TV ad that wrongly accuses Obama of planning "painful tax increases on working American families."

In attacking Obama, Palin reeled off a few statements that sounded exciting but were light on facts.

 Palin said: “America needs more energy; our opponent is against producing it. Victory in Iraq is finally in sight, and he wants to forfeit. Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay; he wants to meet them without preconditions. Al Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America and he's worried that someone won't read them their rights.”

Below are factual problems with three of these statements.

Obama's not against producing more energy. In fact, he's not even against drilling for oil within limits. He has a $150 billion clean energy program and says that he wants to develop clean coal technology, advance the next generation of biofuels, prioritize construction of the Alaska gas pipeline (surely something Palin agrees with) and take a host of other steps to both conserve energy and produce it, in various forms.

If Obama's comments about meeting with "terrorist states" are worthy of ridicule, then perhaps so are those of the Bush administration and other Republicans. Obama made his first statement on this in an answer to a video question at a Democratic debate last year, when he said "I would" when asked whether he'd meet "separately, without precondition" in his first year with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. Reagan, JFK and other presidents had spoken to the Soviet Union regularly, he noted.

In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in June, Obama elaborated, saying that he would take an aggressive diplomatic approach – carefully preparing for such meetings, setting a clear agenda, coordinating with  U.S. allies, and not conducting the meetings at all unless they were clearly in the U.S. interest. He also stressed he would "do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon."

 In recent months, the Bush Administration has been more open to beginning a dialogue with the same nations that it once referred to as the “axis of evil.” In July, Bush sent a high-level official to Geneva to sit in on nuclear talks with Iran and authorized Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to speak with North Korean diplomats about ending that country’s nuclear weapons program. Reports in the Washington Post and the New York Times noted the stark contrast between the administration’s current position about meeting with “foes” and its attitude several years ago.

Further, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in May that we should "sit down and talk" with Iran. So did former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in March. As did Senator Dick Lugar, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as far back as 2006.

 Obama isn't worried, as Palin said, "that someone won't read them their rights" when it comes to suspected terrorists who are detained by the U.S. He does, however, support the right of detainees to challenge their imprisonment in federal court. That's the same position the Supreme Court took in June in a case called Boumediene v. Bush.

Palin talked about standing up to oil companies and oil lobbyists, citing her work on getting a gas pipeline built in Alaska:

 Palin said: “I fought to bring about the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North American history. And when that deal was struck, we began a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.”

Actually, construction hasn’t begun on the pipeline and the project isn't quite a done deal. Palin signed legislation just last week that authorizes the state to give a license in 90 days to TransCanada to start developing the project. The state also can provide $500 million as seed money. She gets credit for moving the pipeline closer to realization after many years of talks. Palin pushed for legislation that would allow a private company to build the 1,715-mile natural gas pipeline, instead of oil companies, which she said were moving too slowly on the issue.In an Aug. 27 press release, Palin indicated that there was still work to be done before the project would become a reality:

Palin, press release, Aug. 27: “After dreaming of a natural gas pipeline for more than 30 years, Alaskans have now created the framework for the project to advance. This legislation brings us closer than we’ve ever been to building a gas pipeline and finally accessing our gas that has been languishing for so many decades on the North Slope.”

Washington Post energy correspondent Steven Mufson wrote that the major oil companies have opposed the pipeline project, saying it wasn’t economically feasible. Yet, ConocoPhillips and BP have proposed their own gas pipeline that would compete with the state-backed project. TransCanada estimates it will take 10 years to finish the pipeline, according to its application to the state, and it will cost about $26.5 billion – not $40 billion as Palin said.

 As for Palin having “stood up to ... the Big Oil companies,” as she said in her speech, she has on this issue, not on others. After all Palin wouldn’t want to ‘bite’ the hands that ‘feed’ her -- oil is incredibly important to Alaska’s economy. About 80 percent of the state budget comes from oil and gas taxes and royalties. Palin is in favor of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and offshore areas, a position she shares with oil companies.

So all in all, Palin gave a well delivered speech at the RNC pep rally whose mantra was "drill, drill, drill".  Her speech did exactly what it was suppose to do – fire up the republican base, nothing else.  But Palin's speech lacked facts – it was all spin, no substance.

There is the story in the New York Times.

The first time I ever cook was back in junior college. I tried to cook kuay teow but using spaghetti noodles.

Hahahaha it was weird!

My first time cooking!

Take a look :D

I bought lots of spices, fish vegetables for the week.

Need to cut down on eating out cos my stash of yen is running out, no thanks to chicken pox hospital bill and 9 days hotel stay.

so on Sunday, 2 days after I arrived in Sapporo I started cooking. I guess I have to thank my mom because I’ve seen her cook and I actually asked why she did whatever she does in the kitchen. I also had a hand in helping out but htat was when I was very very young. She showed me how to cook fried rice. That lesson came in really handy now!

lots of ingredients and spices not photographed. But you get the idea.

The following photos are in chronological order.

My first dish!

17 August

For dinner. Not too bad actually. I could eat it. The carrot are a bit tough. I’ll learn from this.

18 August: Fried rice for breakfast. A bit band though. Next time will be better.

19 August: Dinner. i like this dinner. Fried egg, prawns and crab stick, anchovies, carrots and potato and green leafy  vegetables. I like it.

21 August: Breakfast

Chocolate and blueberry jam spread on 2 thick slices of bread respectively. Loaf of bread here are cut in thick slices. Unlike those from Singapore.

22 August: Breakfast. 

Egg and salad sandwich for breakfast. Its good.

23 August: lunch

Rice with unagi (eel), slices of salmon, prawns, anchovies, spring onions an seaweed crumbs. nice even though the unagi is a bit burnt at the top. Will take note of that the next time I cook unagi. There's also strips of salmon meat. Nice.

23 August: Dinner.

Dinner. Unagi slice. The unagi looks better now! Fried breaded prawns, Egg sunny side up, slice of salmon. I like the salmon. Sprinkles of fried anchovies, tomatoes, onions and negi (spring onions). My verdict. Best dinner so far.

24 August: Lunch.

I wanted to cook something else besides rice with dishes. I remembered how the cook did the okonomiyaki in front of me at a restaurant. So I decided to try. So here is the process!

Okonomiyaki and rice with salmon sprinkles wrapped in seaweed. The rice (gohan) was ok. I need to improve my skill on making sushi or onigiri.

I actually failed this day. So the rice cake ended up looking like that in the picture. But the okonomiyaki is good! Even though I didn’t put the okonomiyaki sauce. I didn’t buy it because I couldn’t remember if there was any to be put on.

24 August: Dinner

Tofu dish with tomato and egg white scrambled in it. Nice. Not complete without rice below.

My complete dinner. With potato wedges. I like this dinner.

25 August. Lunch and dinner.

Okay. Right about this day, 1 week after I started cooking, I felt that time would be better spent if I were to cook a larger portion so that I don’t have to cook twice in a day.

So, I decided to cook half a pot of vegetable soup with tofu. Big Mistake. I just remembered back in high school that I can’t really gauge how nice things would taste if it is to be cooked for a serving for 2 or more people. So this soup you see in this photo above tasted too peppery and garlicky. It lacks something that would make soup taste nice. Maybe chicken stock or anchovies. But I did put some anchovies inside. Maybe its not that same with anchovie stock powder.

But the dinner is not all that bad. I had salmon and crab meat. So those saved the dish.

26 August: Dinner

Rice, unagi (very nice) fried breaded prawn (nice) and fried mish mash of vegetables, egg, prawn, crab meat and anchovies

27 August: Dinner

okonomiyaki 3rd edition! I found out that okonomiyaki sauce contains sake (rice wine) So I don't use. It taste nice without it so its all good.

30 August: Dinner

Tofu dish with vegetables, egg, prawn, and anchovies and chopped chicken franks (hot dog).

31 August: Dinner.

The fried chicken tastes so good. I can't remember how I marinated it. Bought the chicken meat at a halal store/restaurant run by a javanese family. The store is 4 blocks awaay from the Hokkaido University and 1 block away from the newy inaugurated mosque in sapporo.

1 September: Dinner.

Fried egg, crab stick and vegetables. By this time I don't know what else to cook so I cook to eat for survival hahaha

3 September: Dinner

Chopped chicken franks and anchovies, wrapped in omelette, tuna (really good with the seasoning) and vegetables.

Yeah. I can cook. ;)

Sure, if you're selling off his baseball cards, or used VHS tapes e-bay is the place to start.  However, a luxury jet just doesn't quite seem to fit in with all the Strawberry Shortcake dolls and G.I. Joe figures that line the walls of e-bay.

I can't wait to see all the amazing bargains if she ends up in the White House.  I would imagine we'll all be able to rent the Secret Service for children's birthday parties on Amazon.com, or lease the Presidential Mortorcade for weddings on Buy.com!!

I wonder what she got for the luxury jet via Paypal.

Interior of the apartment will be posted soon!

I took the 340pm flight. Reached Sapporo 1.5hours later.

I was received by my supervisor. He ferried me straight to my apartment in his big spacewagon.

Its an hour drive from Chitose airport to Higashi Sapporo.

So I reached my apartment at 630pm.

I was sooo hungry!!!

Luckily there's 3 other new JETs living in the other blocks. They rang my doorbell at 8pm asking me to join them for sushi nearby.

Thank goodness. I was too tired, and too hungry and it was drizzling a bit. So a good thing I was led to an eating place. Otherwise I think I would have just slept till the next morning to venture out for food!

That you can cut back on a lot of things that the other airlines are doing...
(in order to rescue a dying airline... which in my opinion should be taken out back and shot anyway)
You can cut back on water and other drinks, you can stop giving out food and other customer service things.
You can even charge people to check in even ONE bag.

But one thing you can't cut back on is PILOTS

Apparently my plane couldn't make it to SLC because they didn't have pilots for the plane.
WOOPS!

Well they flew in a couple of guys from california and a couple hours later we were on our way.

But i did get a pleasant suprise... I got a free cup of soda.

I suppose this will placate me...

Too bad JetBlue refunded much of my trip when they were delayed because their pilots had manditory rest time, because they were flying too much.

I think I'd take 33% of what i paid back instead of a cup of soda any day.

Seriously if they can't solve their financial problems and come out richer than an Oil sheek....
If they fail now I think we should all be happy and spit on their grave when they're gone.

If they stick around of their own accord then that's fine... I don't mind. I just think I'd rather fly a nicer plane, who cares much more about customer service and admits when they messed up, who gives me drinks and snacks and best of all let's me watch TV right at my seat. (Specially when it's college gameday and I need to be flying)

JetBlue - Great Job!

US Airways - Fail! (Your terrible service will make you fail and I sure hope our government lets you) 

Seriously if you can't provide the same level of customer service as other airlines at the better prices they offer, why should we want you around? Let the companies that can do business well do it!

My New ID in DA << still working on it .. =D

Balsa in Full coloring version ,, XD

you can see it in my page >> HERE

This is for the last chapter of my FanFiction (( We are not Children anymore ))

En el vídeo, "el lumbreras" critica que, debido al desorbitado precio del queroseno, el pobre tiene que resignarse viajando en aviones comerciales y dejar en tierra su flamante Jet Privado.

"Sabéis que tengo mi propio Jet", explica el rapero, "pero ir y volver a Los Angeles [desde Nueva York] me cuesta 200.000 dólares".

Debido a esto ha tenido que tomar un vuelo de American Airlines y, según mi humilde opinión, le ha parecido poco menos que un insulto. Si es que viajar con la plebe...

Me voy a reservar mis comentarios personales.

Jerk It Out - Caesars

Are You Gonna Be My Girl - Jet

Paradise City - Guns n' Roses

Wherever You Will Go - The Calling

Axl Rose of Guns n Roses

Alex Band of The Calling