Going through my mail tonight, I receive a flyer from the group Broadband for America. On the cover of the flyer is a picture of Harold Ford, Jr. (the former Representative from Tennessee). Their mission is “to make broadband access to the Internet available to every household in the nation; to provide data transfer speeds to make that broadband experience valuable to users; and to provide the bandwidth necessary for content providers to continue to make the Internet a cultural, societal, and economic engine for growth.” That is a fairly decent goal, and one-day it will happen. But how?

I recall waiting for the cable providers in my area to provide broadband service to my development. Friends and coworkers in neighboring develops were receiving broadband coverage for years before it ever reached me, and the delay was simply a confusion over which hub served our area. (You would think that the hub that provided our cable television was also the hub supplying the internet service.) Since those frustrating times, I have enjoyed 10 years of relatively reliable broadband coverage.

However, there are still some areas in the U.S. that doesn’t have coverage. Many of these locations are in rural areas where it would be just too expensive to lay cable to supply just a handful of potential users. One alternative that the Broadband for America group should consider is broadband delivered via satellite. Satellite internet service providerssuch as Wild Blue, HughesNet, and DirectTV can transmit their service to remote locations with ease the same way as cell phones such as the iPhone can connect to the net through their wireless signal.

I feel that this is the way our internet access will evolve in the near future. Ford should understand this, as Tennessee has many rural towns, which might be why he is an honorary board member. Is it cheaper to transmit signals via satellite than to lay cable all over the United States? I would have to think so, as well as being more environmentally friendly.

For those of you who do not know, a massive 8.8 mag earthquake struck right off the coast of Chile during the early hours of the morning today. This earthquake has created a tsunami which has just now reached Tahiti, bringing 6 foot waves to the island. Hawaii is expecting the tsunami around 11am local time (around 4…pm EST). Please keep everyone in Chile and in the path of the tsunami in your thoughts and prayers today.

As we know with the recent Haiti earthquake, these massive quakes are usually followed by large aftershocks.  One look at the map below shows the swarm of quakes of 5.0 or more in both Chile and Argentina.

If you are interested in watching the live news coverage of the tsunami, KITV in Hawaii is streaming live news coverage from their site.  Simply click on this link to watch the reporting in a new window.  In the mean time, regardless of your religious (or non-religious) affiliation, please keep all of those impacted by these quakes and tsunami in your thoughts and prayers.

I know that Washington, DC is not Senator Dick Durbin’s constituency, but he needs to keep in mind those who are listening to his comments when he decides to open his mouth. In what might be considered his latest gaffe, Dick took a swipe at the DC Metro population by commenting on their reaction to the recent snow storms. He said:

I am convinced that infants born in Washington, D.C., are taken from the arms of their loving mothers right when they are born into a room where someone shows a film of a snowstorm with shrieking and screaming so that those children come to believe snow is a mortal enemy, like a nuclear attack, because I have seen, for over 40 years here, people in this town go into a full-scale panic at the thought of a snowfall.

So, according to Dick, the residents of the DC Metro area are cry babies when it comes to snow. Maybe Dick would like to know that the population of the DC Metro area is made up of individuals from all over the world. Some of these people come from areas like Chicago, where snow is a way of life. Others come from Hawaii, where snow is something you see on television (unless you travel to the Big Island). And still others come from as far away as Africa, India, and Singapore. This unique population may have never lived in a region that snowed, let alone driven in it.

Maybe Dick should engage his mind next time before he openly insults millions of people in a gross overgeneralization.

I have a question for you. Where do you draw the line between common sense environmental protection and over-the-top environmentalism? With a lot of debate and hype over global warming, the serious discussion about cleaning up our environment seems to be blurred with the religion of folks like Al Gore. So I bring to you for discussion the role of the Green Police.

The Green Police is the unofficial nickname of members of New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation. This force is tasked with enforcing the Environmental Conservation Law, which can range from air pollution to the sale of protected fish species. Protecting the planet and her species are important, and should be encouraged. However, consider the following.

Say for example you are driving down the street in a vintage 1957 Chevy. You have done a decent job of maintaining the car over the years, but it idles hard while you are at a stoplight. While you are waiting for the light to turn green, you notice behind you flashing lights and someone walking up to your window. The reason for the stop? Your cars’ emissions have set off a sensor inside of the vehicle behind you. The Green Police have the authority to ticket you for air pollution.

You have to pass an emissions test in most states when registering your car, so being cited for air pollution isn’t an overreach by the government. It is required of you to ensure your vehicle meets certain standards if you wish to take it on the road. But can this power fine you pass from the acceptable to the abusive? I think so, if we allow the unrealistic views of extreme environmentalism influence common sense environmental protection.

In some ways, the Republicans had both the easier and harder task in their response to President Obama’s State of the Union address. Easier in the sense that they didn’t have to go into specific on the various issues, but harder because they had only a limited amount of time to respond and that they were following the President himself. Taking a look at Virginia’s Governor Bob McDonnell’s speech, I come away with the following thoughts.

McDonnell opens his response by addressing the history of Virginia and his political lineage to Thomas Jefferson (the second Governor of Virginia). Speaking from the Congressional Hall designed by Jefferson, McDonnell quotes Jefferson from his first Inaugural address, saying “a wise and frugal Government … shall leave [men] free to regulate their own pursuits of industry … and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” The purpose of these constant references to Jefferson, other than to highlight the position Jefferson had about a limited Federal government as well as his history to Virginia, is because Jefferson remains one of the Democratic Party’s icons. By linking himself to Jefferson and to small government, he is creating an image of how the Democrats have drifted away from their historical positions.

The first main topic McDonnell discusses is the current unemployment rate in the country. Chastising the currently Democratic-led Congress and the President over their economic proposals, he stresses that the best way for the economy to recover and for jobs to be created is by easing the burden on US companies. With proposals such as the $1 Trillion Health Care Reform proposals in Congress and the economic stimulus packages that will increase our national debt, McDonnell stresses how the economic burden will become too great for the nation. He highlights the Republican proposals on Health Care Reform that achieves similar goals as the Democrats without the large cost or complex legislation.

Switching the topic to energy, McDonnell references Obama’s comment on domestic energy production and Obama’s obstruction for nuclear power and oil exploration expansions. This expansion will lead to more jobs, meaning the need for a new educated workforce. He segways into discussing the need for student choice in schools and the need to award teachers for their “excellent performance.”

He concludes by addressing national security last. There were concerns about the President being too soft on national security when he entered office. McDonnell applauds Obama’s decision to provide additional support to the troops in Afghanistan as well as the successes of our troops in Iraq. Some recent events however, such as the Detroit plane bomber and the decision to try terrorists in the shadow of the World Trade Center, have justified some of their doubts about his ability to protect the nation.

It was a brief speech, but I think it was the best State of the Union response we’ve seen in quite some time. Bobby Jindal’s comedic response last year, as well as Tim Kaine’s head-scratching “there is a better way” mystery from four years ago have taken the credibility of the response away until the other night. The decision to hold the response in front of a live audience (even though they were all McDonnell supporters) was a good choice, especially since it gave the impression of a similar forum that the President enjoyed. However, as with all responses, the speech was light on details and over-generalized.

One of the best aspects of covering these speeches is to hear the give-and-take between the various parties. While debating political issues with people of all stripes, we can identify when someone is trying to spin an issue and when someone is being serious trying to resolve the issue. Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of spinning, as Obama did with discussing the debt and McDonnell with national security. However, both are also serious about seeing the nation improve. While political ideologies are hard to work with, there is enough common ground on issues where I think the politicians can work together to leave our nation in a better condition than they found it. Small, targetted reforms will achieve this goal, but only if the politicians are willing.