January 2005 Archives

Well, just like last month when we decided to stop looking for bin Laden (not sure I linked that, but I should have), apparently we ended the search for WMDs in Iraq three weeks ago. Give those ideas a couple moments to sink in. One of the reasons we invaded Afghanistan can't be found, and THE reason we invaded Iraq has been proven absolutely, unequivocally invalid.

And half this country voted for the moron who can neither orchestrate a plan to find one man nor one that involves using solid intelligence instead of fairy dust to consider whether or not to invade a sovreign nation. Idiots.

On to Social Security. While Bush and the GOP establish fearmongering, it is discovered that the program, if left alone, won't even tap out its trust fund until at least the 2040s. And sometime in the late 2050s the system will take in more than it pays out even given mediocre projections (aka not the fake Bush ones). So, in short: THERE IS NO PROBLEM OTHER THAN BUSH GETTING AWAY WITH LYING AGAIN.

And why would he do this in the first place? Even his pack of flying monkeys insists that their "fix" won't even solve the problem they have conjured out of thin air. It's simple: the GOP wants to destroy Social Security. They've even gone as low as trying to pretend FDR would be actually for this crap. His family, of course, rejects this defamation of a American legend's character. David Hackworth asks the question: why don't we worry more about our military security (which IS in shambles) than Social Security?

By the way, my next update will be from a mental institution if Bill Frist has his way. Apparently, he's pushing a bill to make "political paranoia" a clinical mental illness that can, presumably, take your rights away and put you into a totalitarian-controlled environment where your every thought and action is closely monitored. Its like the PATRIOT Act with clean sheets, Lithium, and restraints on the bed. But hey, its all for your own good.

More on conservatives trying to take over our schools and discredit evolution. Their new tactic is called "intelligent design," which is like alchemy except for instead of making gold from mud, it is about feeding crap to our children. Look, if these guys hate public education so much, why don't they stay out of it?

Not all is bad news though. Cobb County, GA has been told to take off the anti-evolution stickers it's religious zealots put on their district's biology books. Limbaugh and other hate mongers are off the air in liberal parts of Vermont. The state also comes up prominently - and positively - in this article on how the citizens there has gotten used to, and protective of, the civil unions there.

More on racist cops, and on Fox responding to charges of Muslim stereotyping. GOP sore losers in Washington trying to invalid an election on charges of voter fraud they probably instigated, and the unethical actions of the GOP in Kentucky causes one of the state senators to quit the party in protest. Tennessee decides it doesn't want to act like France when it comes to headscarves. Good call seeing as this country was actually founded on religious freedom.

Also, Jon Stewart wins...sorta. CNN has let go that pompous nitwit Tucker Carlson and is out to cancel Crossfire, which has become more bully than bully pulpit.

An update from the tsunami zone. Scientists are concerned that the rush of salt water will make many of the affected islands uninhabitable for the near future. Plus, Leslie linked me to another place for before-and-after overhead images of devastated regions.

One more. Remember when Bush kept unfairly getting on Kerry for treating the War on Terror as a judicial problem rather than a military one? Guess who the numbskull picked for his second chance at a replacement for Tom Ridge the Wooden Man? A lawyer. Not just any lawyer, but one that can actually pass a Senate confirmation hearing. Wow, great credentials. Never mind he's never run a major operation, or a big budget, or anything similar to the details and personalities he'll have to manage. Some thoughts on that from Slate.

The Democratic party is trying to figure out where to go from the recent election debacle as it considers a new party leader. One of the arguments is whether the party should go to an attack dog strategy, something the "moral" and "character-driven" Republicans have no ethical problems doing. Its hard to know where to stand on this. Do you want to run a clean campaign and lose, or be president knowing you are there based on lies you told morons who watch Fear Factor and Jerry Springer, who think Rush Limbaugh is not an utterly decrepit hypocrite junkie? Then again, as this article states, fighting back is not a bad thing. It beats coddling torturers, like newly-elected Senator Salazar has.

Speaking of lies, Bush basically lied to the Pope about Iraq. Hope all you Catholics who voted for Bush choke on your breakfast. And then maybe fall down a flight of stairs for good measure.

Lying to the American people. The junta paid conservative pundit Armstrong Williams a quarter million dollars to push its No Child Left Behind policy. While they aren't apologetic for it, hopefully Williams feels a modicum of shame for taking public tax dollars to be a willing tool of the GOP. That, and his column has been dropped from various newspaper because, well, because he's an unethical shill. More on the White House's stealth nomination of Alberto Gonzales as they refuse to release any of the papers they have from him. Ten bucks says they're either already shredded or hiding to Bush Senior's library along with Dubya's DUI, military records, and that case where Laura killed her ex-boyfriend.

Speaking of lies, Bush gets a new speechwriter as, presumably, his old one just couldn't look at himself in the mirror anymore without bursting into inconsolable weeping. Meanwhile, his brother picked up a speechwriter once accused of plagiarism in his editorials. Nice.

Mahmoud Abbas won the Palestinian election in what was apparently a clean, fairly efficient process (though the voter rolls might be suspect, a la Florida and Ohio). Not that I expect anything from a guy who cuddles with masked bombers; but hey, a bunch of Arabs held a democratic election without violence, and we didn't have to invade them for it to happen. Think about it.

Meanwhile snivelling GOP gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi wants a new election because he didn't like how the last one turned out. Hopefully, this gets rejected as handily as fellow fascist Viktor Yanukovych's attempt to subvert democracy was in the Ukraine.

Last scary political story: Newt Gingrich wants to be president.

Military news. Here's an idea, let's put together hit squads and start taking out the brains behind the insurgent movement. Not sure why it took so long for us to consider this option. Best of luck to you guys in those units. I really hope this helps the situation.

The army is actively working to provide marriage counseling for returning troops. Yet another excellent idea.

Well, Colin Powell and Jeb Bush are in Southeast Asia and are suddenly realizing that "Hey, this is worse than a hurricane." Welcome to the real world morons. Too bad Powell thinks this is a great opportunity to combat terrorism by showing people how swell the Americans are. It is supposed to be a mission of mercy, not a proganda tour. We can't even do the right thing when we're doing the right thing anymore.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Bush has the audacity to say,"The greatest source of America's generosity is not our government; it's the good heart of the American people." While true, it does not explain away ignoring the problem for three days then sending your brother to go fix it.  All it does is make you more of a target of ridicule.  Pity you have to have your daddy and the statesman you can't replace pick up the pieces of your failed attempt at compassion. Noticeably absent? Jimmy Carter. Even a global disaster can't stop Bush from being a jerk.  I know, its hard for you to care about anyone who isn't: a) white, b) rich, and c) American.  Too bad that's part of the job description.

Congrats, our currency has fallen into such disregard even drug dealers won't carry it. Thanks George.

Even more bad news as our administration's "leadership" has led to a culture of racist fear and a desire to restrict the rights of Muslim America, with a solid 44% of our misguided fellow citizens on board with plans to be as un-American as they can be.

Feeling a flashback to the 60s? Our troops will when the see the "new" armored vehicles they are getting. Hey, at least it'll stop a bullet and that's the most important part. Even if we look like we're retaking Da Nang instead of Mosul.

Tomorrow, Alberto Gonzales, the man who thinks the Geneva Convention is "quaint" is due on Capitol Hill for confirmation hearings. The torture master is bound to be approved by the Reichstag (err, Republican Congress) though not without reservations. Since we can't deal with real issues; like, for example, why the hell an advocate of torture will be in charge of our law enforcement agencies, we can instead wonder if he's as scared of a naked statue as Ashcroft is.

Who makes those yellow ribbon magnets(and those reprehensible piggybacking ones that do everything BUT support the troops) and where does the money go? Terry Bibo at the Peoria Journal Star tackled this awhile ago (with an recent follow-up as well).

Horrid news from the tsunami area as Sri Lankans are refusing to eat fish for practical reasons. In India and Japan, this is apparently not an issue, though Hong Kong residents worry about the contaminants their fish have swallowed.

Bob Cringely considers the option of a low cost tsunami warning system for the region.

Going over the year's stats on the website, it is amazing how much traffic I get now. I mean, not like major sites or anything, but it isn't a shabby total. For example, in January '04 the site got 40.12 MB of traffic; which, for a personal site, is not bad. In December, we peaked out at 663.65 MB of pages pulled.

Annual stats are the following:

Number of visits: 6602 (1.85 visits/visitor)

Pages: 19573 (2.96 pages/visit)

Hits: 163082 (24.7 hits/visit)

Bandwidth: 3.89 GB (618.32 KB/visit)

Now, granted, that includes a lot of repeat visitors and a lot of missed searches (a picture of our cake from the wedding draws a strange amount of traffic, for example). But about 5% of visitors have added us to their favorites/bookmarks, so that's not shabby in the great scheme of things, and 95% use either a direct link or bookmark to get to the site, also a sign you actually intend to visit.

Without boring you too much more, where the visits are coming from is also interesting to me. Granted, most traffic is US or at least uses .com, .net. Earlier on in the year the stats missed where about 2 GB of traffic originated but they got better, though they also changed the way they recorded stuff too. In any case, here, just for fun are some odd stats on location, excluding that mess:

Country	Domain	Pages	Hits	Bandwidth
United States	?	4580	43641	1.25 GB
Commercial	.com	1249	12717	576.93 MB
Network	.net	555	4268	55.47 MB
US Educational	.edu	194	1182	16.20 MB
European Union	.eu	97	572	11.17 MB
Canada	.ca	67	321	8.24 MB
Great Britain	.gb	98	562	7.40 MB
Germany	.de	56	177	5.83 MB
Australia	.au	62	333	5.34 MB
Mexico	.mx	87	312	5.30 MB
France	.fr	19	108	5.14 MB
USA Military	.mil	55	225	5.13 MB
Sweden	.se	56	301	3.35 MB
Old style Arpanet	.arpa	29	563	2.55 MB

Followed closely by Singapore, Switzerland, Spain, Denmark, Japan, Italy, Saudi Arabia and so on. Really weird, especially since the worldwide traffic didn't start getting reflected until the last 5 or 6 months of the year.

Anyway, now that I've bored you with stats, some stories to pass on.

Linkin Park is coming to the aid of tsunami victims, as our government slowly gets the idea that this is a major world problem. Too bad the "compassionate conservatives" don't even recognize the problem exists; at least, according to their websites.

But hey, its not just our false Christians who are to blame. The insurgent morons trying to turn Iraq into Anarchyland haven't stopped killing civilians even as more than 100,000 of the tsunami dead are likely Muslims. And though Jerry Falwell hasn't (to my knowledge) said that those who died deserve it, this writer questions whether the hate-ridden Muslim brethren to Falwell, Dobson, Robertson, et al have anything to say about it.

Also, fake religion brings fake "faith-based" groups. Hey, at least these bozos are funding HeadStart. Rehnquist wondering how judicial criticism has gotten out of hand. Well, I can answer that. It involves a combination of sticking your nose into an election you shouldn't have touched at all and the ungrateful conservatives you put into power deciding you're next on their hate list feeding frenzy.

In Iraq dealings, torture is again illegal now that we gotten all the use out of it we could have. Violence is up, way up, which bodes ill for our troops there. And our combat medics are having to learn how to juggle combat and saving lives to deal with the realities on the ground.

And for fun, the list of banished words for 2005.