Is Bobby Jindal some other dude that you don't like and hope will be molded by those around him into the magical fairy president that you want?

I like Bobby Jindal. He does not need to be molded into a candidate with core conservative values because he already has them. There will never be a president who 100% espouses what I want because a political candidate must forge an alliance among diverse individuals into a common cause to get elected. Politics is taking many different people with different viewpoints and throw them enough bones so that they vote for you. Romney threw me more bones (albeit very few) than Obama so I voted for Romney. My preferred party, The Constitution Party, is too small to affect an election just as the Green Party. So, you vote for the one who can at least in some way implement your vision for America.

I will auto-vote for Jindal for the following:

Jindal signed a law that permits teachers at public schools to supplement standard evolutionary curricula with analysis and critiques that may include intelligent design

"The Theory of Evlolution" otherwise known as "An Opinion on Human Origins as pronounced by 'scientificly minded' chest beaters and hand wavers" is ridiculous and should not be taught as fact. I am all for a candidate who will trounce this.

Jindal opposes the legalization of same-sex marriage.

The redefinition of marriage is anathema and must be discouraged and squashed at every opportunity. Just as I do not uphold prostitutes, schizophrenics, and drug addicts as people to be admired and emluated, so I do not uphold homosexuals as anyone to be proud of. They are sick people who need help and counseling, not encouragement in their wrong ways. Homosexuality is a mental illness. Activist sociologists and psychiatrists declaring it otherwise is abhorrent and untruthful.

Jindal has stated his support of the Second Amendment's right to bear arms. He has opposed efforts to restrict gun rights and has received an endorsement from the National Rifle Association

Boo-RAAA. He gets my vote.

Voting for someone that you don't like in the hopes that he will change after starting the job is asinine.

My first choice for the Republican nomination was Herman Cain but he did not make it so I was stuck with the choice of not voting, voting Constitution Party, or not voting at all. I certainly would not ever, under any circumstance, have voted for Obama so I was forced to vote as best I could.

I agree with you. Although I voted for Romney it was without any enthusiasm. Voting for Romney was as exciting as voting for a spreadsheet.

Truth is, Obama has more charisma than Romney and a more engaging personality, at least it appears that way. When I would watch Romney his smile seemed forced much of the time and he had an exasperated look in his eyes which caused me to think he might not be able to handle the pressures of being president.

I voted for him anyway, mainly in the hopes his blank-slate personality could be written on by the Tea Party conservatives who could mold him into a more conservative entity, guided by Ryan. I had the same mindset when I voted for McCain, hoping Palin's conservatism would steer the doddering McCain into a more conservative approach. Anyway, it is over. I am not bitter my candidate lost. Romney lost because he was a lame politician who never articulated any clear position only babbling platitudes. His voice sounded like some hack stubbing out cigarettes telling me whatever it is I wanted to hear. Romney did not seem all that genuine to me, just a moderate, wishy-washy Democrat wannabe. As someone who passed health care legislation in Massachoositz, few if any conservatives believed him when he said he would retract/modify Obamacare.

So many of my Republican brethren stayed home and let Obama, like a vile case of diarrhea, run its course.

My pick for pres. in 2016: Bobby Jindal. I think he can do it.

I'll be pressing the de-elect button hard this November.

It is called an HOA, or Homeowner's Association

And the LORD spake unto the king of Microsoft saying, Because thou hast followed after the ways of Gomorrah, yeah, thou dost wallow in the her abominations, thy sin riseth unto heaven and stinketh before me and choketh mine angels who gaggeth and moan. Because of thy sin I shall surely smite thee: thy kingdom shall be despoiled by the kings of Linux, and thy shareholders shall writhe in anguish cursing thee for thine iniquity. Thine Office products and Windows shall be remembered no more. Thus sayeth the Lord.

Today is an ordinary day. It is worse than yesterday but better than tomorrow [will be].

Best pizza I've had: Manhattan, NYC

Worst pizza: Warsaw, Poland. They made a pizza baked with just cheese and some meat, then gave me a bottle of ketchup to squirt on it for "sauce". The waitress did not understand my look of "You've got to be kidding. Ketchup? Do you even know what pizza is?" It made me think there might just be some truth to all those Polish jokes.

Doesn't anyone realize that spacejunk is our only hope of deflecting the killer asteroid when it comes? Think of the children!

Notice I prefixed my post with "perhaps". I did so to indicate that I cannot prove the failure was due to skimping on maintenance so money could be used elsewhere. It is quite possible this occurred, especially given what we've seen concerning New Orleans and recently, the bridge in Minnesota (or was it Wisconsin? --somehwere up there) and stating the fact (backed up by credible sources) that money was indeed diverted from transportation. This fact lends credence to my assertion which I freely admit could be false.

You are correct the Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) handles maintenance of the Bay bridges:

BATA oversees the administration of toll collection and maintenance activities for the seven state-owned bridges in the San Francisco Bay Area about BATA

However, funding for this maintenance comes in part from tolls collected, part from the state of California, and part from the federal government. These funds are overseen by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC):

MTC devotes considerable energy to advocacy efforts in both Sacramento and Washington, D.C., to ensure an adequate flow of funding for the maintenance and expansion of the Bay Area's transportation network about MTC

On page 24 of the MTC Annual Report 2008 , I see that BATA took in about $492 million dollars in toll operations revenue. BATA also received $126 million in grants from Caltran and other agencies.

However, on the same financial statement I see $807 million was given to Caltrans and another $27 million given to the MTC. This proves my point that money flows in and out of both agencies. Caltrans, MTC, and BATA are intertwined.

What I cannot prove from the financial statement is whether maintenance was neglected so money could be diverted elsewhere. It is possible that even with 100% funding for maintenance & inspections, no amount of inspection would have prevented the bridge failure. My point in posting what I did was to show that California is diverting funds from transportation which may be the cause of bridge failure.

I live on the East Coast so my West Coast knowledge does not come from personal experience. I think from my research I've learned quite all I want to know concerning Bay Area bridges.

Perhaps if the state of California hadn't diverted transportation funds and had actually used the money to maintain its infrastructure (similar to New Orleans not using its allocated money to maintain the levee system) this probably would not have happened.

Raids of Public Transportation Funds

Ruling on a case started in 2007 by the California Transit Association, the California Appeals Court found that the gimmicks used to reroute public transit funding to other programs were not consistent with voters' intent for the funds to be spent on public transportation

nearly $2.5 billion was diverted away from transportation programs

I don't have a vendetta against advertising. It is a legitimate and effective means to inform people about a product. What I detest is advertising that in any way interferes, inconveniences, or obstructs what I am trying to do. I am one of those people who browses with images disabled, with javascript and activeX disabled most of the time.

It appears I'm not "one of the only people" who have a negative reaction to in-your-face ads: (Usability tests show pop-ups are brand suicide )

The Oxford-based consultancy's in-depth usability tests amongst a range of web users found that pop-up advertising was the single biggest turn-off amongst users, with every subject expressing irritation and frustration when pop-ups appeared.

More alarmingly, 60% of those tested said that pop-ups even led to mistrust for both the brand being advertised and the host site where the pop-up appeared.

I had nothing against Geocities. I had a dial-up connection at the time and all those ads loading slowed my browser to a crawl. I was also using Yahoo as my search engine so I did see a bunch of irrelevance. (Later I switched to Google).

The main reason I did not like Geocities is that its pages took too much time to load on a dial-up connection. There were times when I snapped my fingers saying, "aw, that looked to be interesting but...it's Geocities" when a search result appeared that I liked. There was no vendetta, just someone who wanted to pop online, get some information as quick as I could, then pop offline. All those ads made that difficult.

Failing to turn any significant profit from all of those pop-ups and banner ads (in fact, there's questions about whether GeoCities was ever cash-flow positive), the purchase -- or perhaps Yahoo's inaction once GeoCities was acquired -- turned out to be one of the company's most costly mistakes.

Yahoo is encouraging the relatively few remaining users to transition their accounts to the company's $5-per-month Web hosting service.

All of those pop-ups and banner ads is the reason why I steered clear of Geocities. I made certain to exclude Geocities from all internet searches. If you pop an ad up in my face I will make a personal note never to buy, promote, or recommend the advertised item.

Hey, thanks for that information.

I've used Fedora extensively and had few problems with it. I can attest that sshfs worked flawlessly for me which was my primary purpose at the time: remote web site administration. I found Fedora to be a solid distro.

The only negative I can really say about it is that the software updater would often crash my Belkin wireless router requiring a factory reboot and reload of configuration file.

Not everyone needs extensive social contact

I was thinking of just myself. I couldn't do it.

putting together a team that can work together for 18 months

I guess that pretty much eliminates most of the incarcerated population. They aren't known for teamwork in a positive, productive direction.

It was wishful thinking on my part to accelerate human space exploration via a population with little to offer society, such as those with a life sentence or on death row.