In 2010 we have many state legislature and some state senate seats up for grabs, as well as various congressional districts. Most incumbents in the state are fairly safe. Despite the "tea parties" and any other "populist" movements most people are not as divisive or angry as the extremes would make them seem.

So, Mike Pence is stepping down because his wife is gravely ill. I think we can all understand and respect that. You figure political leaders from the NE part of the state would seize on the opportunity. Instead, the (R) successor-apparent is Todd Rokita, the current (R) Secretary of State who is fairly loved by both sides of the aisle due to his anti-gerrymandering stance and redistricting campaign. This impacts 2012.

2010 just opened up widely for the state's national senate seat. Surprisingly, Bayh is stepping down, opening a void the Republicans are anxious to fill. However, their top contender is Dan Coats, who is starting to be despised locally because of his lobbying and public desire to retire out of state. The Dems have to get 4500 signatures to get SOMEONE on the ballot ASAP. Without an evil (D) boogieman to run against, the state Republican establishment has no-one to promote. But there is no-one from the (D) sideline who has been groomed and is ready to go to run for Senate at this point. Maybe Joe Kernan could come out of retirement?

2011 may be the last "odd year" municipal elections in Indiana. I believe this is the first year that some new anti-corruption laws take hold, meaning that people cannot hold civil jobs and also serve as an elected official. So no more policemen and firemen (and women) can run for office. This essentially guts the Indianapolis City-County council and likely many other local boards/groups. Also, the Indianapolis mayoral election occurs, which could be interesting. The current mayor isn't a bad guy, but has been described ranging from "buffoon" to "poorly spoken." However, there isn't the necessary public outcry to ouster him, not like what happened to Bart Peterson in 2007 when the public needed to take out their anger over property taxes and crime on someone.

So far Melina Kennedy is the strongest (D) contender for mayor, but she may lose based on two or three things. One, she's seen as a political insider and insider of the Peterson administration, which was combative with police and responsible for a rise in crime. That isn't the truth, but that is the perception on the street, regardless of how many plea bargains and early releases were concocted by the city prosecutor and other state agencies. Two, she's seen as a political insider, and the current incumbent, although he's quickly ascended to be a political insider, is perceived as an outsider. It's a battle cry that resonates with many of the people. The third is that the last time most of the local public saw Melina Kennedy is someone that lost the city prosecutor election, so she may be seen as a "loser" by locals.

Although Mayor Ballard may be seen as a buffoon by many, he's been exceedingly lucky. He's played the political magic to declare his budget as balanced (implying other budgets weren't balanced, but that's a fallacy of its own.) When the city's Capital Improvement Board found itself in a financial crisis he ignored the problem and let other people solve it. Although his lack of leadership is noted, the perception is that he was in office when the problem was solved, ergo he solved it (although local politicos from both side know otherwise.) The State cleaned up its property tax mess, which happened on his watch (again perception.) And the overall crime rate has gone down (although many feel that different types of crime have shifted.)

To win Indianapolis mayor, a (D) must focus on rising property crime trends, inaction of the city on abandoned homes, and the return of the city to outsourcing strategies that failed in the past, like the management/maintenance of parks by 3rd parties. Going after the "quality of life" specter could be perilous, because the city has made strides in some areas (pot hole filling) while failing in others (quality of parks.)

2012 may not be the year the world ends, but Mitch Daniel's two-term limit as governor is up. He's positioned as a VP or Presidential contender in 2012. With Todd Rokita busy in the US House, there isn't a clear (R) succession plan for the state's highest office. The current Lt. Governor, Becky Skillman may run, but I do not believe she's popular enough or wants the job.

One rumor floated is that Bayh's retirement is so that he can return and be the governor of Indiana again. Although many (D) faithful may like that idea, I see it as unlikely at best.

So once again the Chinese curse of "may you live in interesting times" comes to Indiana, wrecking havoc with the leaders of both political parties locally.

A few years ago my neighborhood worked diligently to ensure its status as a protected historic district. Major alterations to buildings and new buildings would have to pass muster before the city's historical preservation commission. A supermajority of the neighborhood (65%) stepped up to say they wanted this protection and these regulations as a method to control their surroundings and enhance property values.

The bottom line was that the preservation commission (IHPC) had the final say. However, this is not expedient for retail developers and builders, which seem to be lobbying at the statehouse.

Enter Senate Bill 177, authored by "my" state senator (who should be representing her constituents.)

As far as I know, my neighbors have asked for no changes to the historic preservation laws and rules, but she is proposing a major change; essentially putting IHPC at the mercy not city planners, but of the City Council itself. This is nothing short of a power grab.

What is saddening is that the city is so distracted by the Colts that items like this are footnotes and not even reported upon in regular media.

The actual bill and the blog post that tipped me off.

What these moron announcers left out is that over time the NFL has grown and that seasons have gotten longer with more games. Ergo, these more recent dynasties of game-winning are in-part possible because more games are played and the seasons are longer. So while these stats of n-hundred games-per-decade is a pretty nifty stat, it is useless in a comparative format, because the number of games played by different teams across different seasons is varied!

Sorry for the pedantic rant, but the idiocy bothers me.

From a logical perspective, this boggles the mind.

Aircraft, especially used, single-engine aircraft, are assets that doesn't depreciate nearly as quickly as a car. Compared to the accident rates among cars, airplanes are a far more sound investment. Insurance and ownership costs are comparable. The only major difference is the quantity. The number of cars requiring poor or mediocre credit loans is orders of magnitudes greater than that of aircraft. Regardless, there is an opportunity for some bankers to make money, but generally speaking, if you want an airplane loan, even for as little as $20,000 you need to have a credit score (FICO) greater than 720.

Also of note is the quantity of "skin in the game." Most car lots can provide financing with "0 down" where as many airplane loans require 20% to 50% equity before the bank will talk to you.

This is nothing new; these terms and conditions were in place before the terms "credit crunch" were on anyone's radar. And even now, the dichotomy still exists.

But when one-in-six people in your congressional district do not have health insurance (and therefore health care) available to them, I'd consider that a crisis. The National Review put together statistics of where the uninsured live and compared that to who is representing them in congress. So today I'm going to pick on Representative Mark Souder, from the far north-east corner of Indiana. What isn't rural in that area is related to heavy manufacturing, with a notable exception to some financial services and a large GTE Verizon data center.

17% of his district has no health insurance, per the 2008 US Census. That's the highest percentage of uninsured in Indiana. As a textbook Republican (one who stood-by President Bush and Governor Daniels through thick and thin) Souder is vehemently opposed to the health care reforms currently proposed in congress. If we were to say he was a true conservative ideologue and afraid of government spending when it comes to health care we could fault him for his deficit spending during the Iraq war, but I don't think he is claiming that. He's simply another party-line Republican, and in this case ignoring the plight of 17% of the people in his district in order to retain the appearance of being a conservative.

The health care bill that came out of the senate finance committee could have been written by the health-care lobby itself. It stipulated that all citizens must purchase private insurance (much like what goes on in Germany's health care system.) It nixed the tenuous previous-conditions exemptions and I think it fixed cross-state-line policy sales. In various forums this is what the Republicans have said they wanted (along with a few other things, but this is most of what they are asking for.) Yet they still voted against it, not for the benefit of the people they represent, but for the benefit of a unified Republican party.

What is so troubling about the party lines in Washington is that if Souder were to come forth and say "I need this for my district; I don't agree with this ideology, but I want half of the reforms in column A" he would be crucified by straying from his party.

Now the latest "weapon" in the war on health care is the current barrage of proposals will actually reduce the deficit over a 10 year period. I love the math in this kind of stuff, especially coming from my role as a pre-sales computer hardware guy. Spend $2Million now on a computer, which includes 3 years of service, and you'll save most of the money you'd pay for service on your existing gear over the next four. This has the same kind of ring to it; by fixing wasteful spending from the Medicare drug program, putting caps on reimbursement rates, and changing some regulations the government can afford to have its own insurance program (one where people still pay premiums into the system) and provide service that the private sector does not (covering pre-existing conditions.) This isn't an ideological issue, it is mapped as a simple financial one by the Congressional Budget Office.

So programs that pay for themselves (and potentially reduce the deficit) are against conservative beliefs? How so? Someone on the other side of the aisle came up with them.

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You can see a line that extends the alley from behind my house, through my old garage and our driveway to Washington street. Sorry guys, that's not an alley. It's a private drive, my driveway. Private land that I pay property tax on. In fact, I'm in the process of fencing it off.

The Indianapolis GIS map shows this pretty clearly.

Google lets you submit problems as you find them, so I submitted this to them.

Hopefully we don't have people trying to drive through our driveway in the interim.

I first ran into issues with Websense back when I was working at a former employer who used it. I wanted to view @alecmuffett's blog and couldn't get through. Alec was kind enough to chronicle his conversations with Websense over how he was classified as "hacking" (evil) vs. "security research" (legit.) In fact, they misclassified him both in March and December of 2004.

So today I went to read @Av8rDan's latest blog entry. For some reason Websense has him classified as "sex."

I know that aviation-talk can be a valid substitute for sex for many of us pilot and pilot wannabes out there, but I don't think that is Websense's intention with this incorrect classification.

So I went back to websense.com to try and make sense of this and to see how we can get Dan's site fixed. He runs an advertising firm dedicated to serving the aviation community, and potentially this could hinder clients from reaching him and his blog. Incorrect categorization is common, and Websense even has a publicly-accessible knowledge-base article on the subject.

The problem is with Websense's process for submission of a recategorization. Back when Alec had to deal with it, a web-form led to an e-mail exchange (I think.) Now, 5 years later, you must register for a support account with Websense to search for the URL and then suggest that it is incorrectly categorized. That in and of itself doesn't seem to be a big deal. The problem comes from the fact that in order to register for Websense support you need a valid product key. That means you have to be a paying customer (or perform an additional registration for an evaluation kit) to sign up to flag a URL as being improperly categorized. Plus, once you submit to the support portal with a valid product key, having your support account added is a manual process that takes up to 24 hours. So you must wait an additional day before being able to submit a miscategorized URL.

Editors note: As we later found out via twitter there is an e-mail address to submit to for reclassification. However, at least when I looked at it, this e-mail address is not published anywhere. I wound up getting the info via twitter from someone who (I think) works for Marketing/PR at Websense. suggest{spam.trap}@websense.com .... of course, take out the {spam.trap} (I'm trying to be nice so spiders won't pick it up.)

Typically a battle will play out between two diametrically opposed sides, with fringe members of either group courting each other to ensure the smooth passage of a bill by throwing in earmarks or concessions or a combination thereof.

What bothers me is that here in Indiana, the sides that are opposed are always obstructionist. They never hear the other side out, evaluate the plan, and offer enhancements or changes. they're just against it either due to misguided political ideology and/or ego. Most major bills that make it through the Indiana legislature are voted upon by party lines. Think budgets, school funding, gambling, environmental regulations, etc. OK, that's seemingly obvious, but I can't understand why the underdog side doesn't push the majority side to do more, especially on the environmentalist side.

Our local government and statehouse are no friends of the environment. They sat on the sidelines hoping for 50 jobs while BP was ready to pollute Lake Michigan, ignoring that two other states use that lake. My theory does not relate to that tidbit, but that fact provides some interesting background.

The I-69 extension project has been contentious here in Indiana, with environmentalists opposed, most Democrats thinking that the existing infrastructure, like US-41 through Terre Haute and Evansville should be fixed, and the rest of the Republican and Democrats in the hand of the business and/or union construction lobby, pushing for the new highway. Those opposed, instead of working creatively, simply sat opposed.

There were far more creative ways of being opposed; things like stipulating 100 trees were planted for each mile of highway paved, stipulating that 15-35% of the cost of the highway be put in a fund for public transit, something sorely lacking regionally. Something like putting parts of the project in place to help fix US41 and other smaller regional highways and not just building a new I-69.

Instead, those opposed were opposed, with no real sense of compromise or willingness to set alternate goals to ease the pain of a plan that would be passed by a simple majority. This is all too typical in Indianapolis by either political party. Neither is willing to hear the other out. Neither is willing to compromise, they all want to do things in their own best interest.

We need a new ethos in office. We need to be Constructionists. We need to build on successes and view opportunities and not just hold onto buddies clothed by an elephant or donkey.

When the news about Michael Vick broke we were all stunned and horrified upon the initial findings, a kid who had it all, a star quarterback, invested in something so violent and back-woods to most of us. Football fans were enraged, animal lovers were enraged, racists even had new fodder they could construe.

Michael Vick's world unraveled from that point forward. He just about lost it all. He was prohibited from his career for 2 years. He was in jail for 18 months. He lost his homes.

So that's the history.

One of the traits that makes us human is compassion. The same compassion that allows my wife and I to take in flea-ridden rug-staining fuzzballs is the same compassion that fuels the ability for us to give second chances to people. We give our children second chances. We give our friends second chances. We give our family second chances. We give our co-workers and our bosses second chances a lot of the time, too. We give many prisoners second chances, whether rapists or murderers or thieves. And regardless who the person is we all stand awestruck and are happily impressed when that individual exceeds expectations. We're all happy that a former thief is able to hold a job and fit into society, we're happy our boss stood up for us in front of corporate management even though he was oddly silent on the other conference call we had, and we're all smiles when a co-worker remembers to provide the documents we need to finish the job without constant haranguing.

So when it comes to Michael Vick I'm troubled by the hypocrisy of many individuals and groups who proclaim compassion or have compassion as a part of their ethos, and fail to give him, a human, the same second chances that they profess to believe in. I firmly believe if he screws up again he should get the book thrown at him, but the facts are is that he served time, likely more time than the average person serves for similar crimes, if they're even caught and convicted at all. He's suffered public humiliation, the loss of his possessions, and was sidelined (literally) from what should be the prime of his career.

For many, this doesn't make up for his despicable actions, and honestly, even for me, nothing ever will. But denying someone the chance to be a productive member of society, after they have served their debt to society as dictated by our laws, goes against the whole structure of our society. Part of the premise of why our society is so great is that we, as humans, can grow and change for the better.

We don't have to root for the Eagles (why would anyone root for the Eagles?) but as humans I think we all should root for Michael Vick to use his stature to show that people can grow and change.

You don't have to like giving people second chances, but that is what we, as humans, do.