August 2006 Archives

"Believe me, you could check, there are four or five different strains of veneral diseases more popular than Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld."
- Paul Begala, in a recent statement on CNN

I have a lot of tabs open here at work and wanted to dump some disjointed links at you. I'll probably do the same at home soon.

Found this great story on ArsTechnica I've been meaning to link. It's about consumer technology and it's use by our troops in Iraq.

More Iraq news related to the drop in Guard and Reserve fatalities, the looting of a British base that was supposed to be turned over to Iraqi soldiers, and Bush authorizing the recall of Marines due to his crony Rumsfeld's bungling of military planning.

For his part, Rumsfeld is accusing anyone who questions his and Shrub's Iraq policies as "appeasers" of terrorists, pissed off Iraqis, and anyone not actively supporting us. Keith Olbermann puts on his Edward R. Murrow hat and fires right back.

Speaking of appeasement, more on the Bush family and Nazis.

Scumbag Tucker Carlson defends polygamists who want to sleep with pre-teens.

Even scummier (is that a word?) Bill Frist lies on his medical license renewal.

Conrad Burns reinserts his foot in his mouth, accusing cab drivers of being terrorists.

George Allen has a history of consorting with racists. Big surprise.

HEY! Guess who gave Iran their first nuclear reactor? We did!

WAY overpaid oil company CEOs. But you already knew that.

A very interesting article by Christopher Dickey, commenting on the state (and future) of "airport security."

And....just for fun, check out Hey! It's "That Guy"!

“It’s amazing, isn’t?”
- George Bush basking in his own self-importance in Biloxi

"Mr. Bush delivered his remarks at an intersection in a working-class Biloxi neighborhood against a carefully orchestrated backdrop of neatly reconstructed homes. Just a few feet out of camera range stood gutted houses with wires dangling from interior ceilings. A tattered piece of crime scene tape hung from a tree in the field where Mr. Bush spoke. A toilet seat lay on its side in the grass."
- From the same NYT article

"There's a sense that the government doesn't care about poor people -- war, buying bombs and rebuilding another country is their priority."
- John Penny, criminology professor at Southern University, New Orleans

One more Katrina article on the state of race and racism since the hurricane. A startling piece of the article is that New Orleans is currently a white majority city. I think the last time that happened two French guys were splitting their last plug of tobacco while pitching a tent.

Meanwhile, more on racist Republicans, plus a sad and pathetic attempt by George Allen to make up for his racist comments.

Meanwhile, John McCain continues to Speaking to a Iraq War widow, who basically wanted to know why her husband had to die, he responded with the ever-so-sensitive "I'm not going to have a philosphical debate over politics." Oh yeah, nice guy.

Now we find that Bush likes to rip farts in order to see the response on his intern's faces. I'd like those of you who thought voting for this bland, ignorant imitation version of Bluto Blutarsky was a good idea to kindly injure yourself in the groin.

Hey, I almost have good Bush news. He's finally managed to stop adding people to the poverty rolls. We have managed to stabilize those earning less than enough to survive on at 12.6%. Hey, I did say "almost" good news, didn't I? That said, those without health insurance now comprise 15.9% of Americans. Those and other not-so-encouraging economic stats can be found here.

SAT scores are down; more proof that the more Republican-leaning we get, the dumber Americans are.

Work related news. There are, apparently, certain employers who encourage their employees to take a nap. Not all of us are so lucky. Meanwhile, if you aren't so lucky (hey, I'm not either), you can use the following info to good use. According to some recently published research, screaming can reduce stress by as much as twenty-five percent. So go ahead, yell at the top of your lungs; it's good for you.

Bush is travelling to Mississippi and Louisiana this week to capitalize on all he's supposedly doing to help the victims of Katrina. It wasn't, isn't, and probably never will be enough. Basically, according to the New York Times, he's more worried about his image than anything else. Which, to be honest, I can't disagree with, as much as I wish it wasn't true. Can't this guy - for one damned day at least - try to be president of *all* Americans, instead of just the rich, white, racist ones?

Yahoo! has a decent catch-all page for stories on the anniversary, as does NPR. Shouldn't we come up with another word for such things as commemorating a disaster? I like to think of anniversaries as a good thing. Anyway.

ThinkProgress has a timeline of events pertaining to Katrina and the thing the government calls it's response since the hurricane. ABC is carrying a story regarding the effectiveness of charities in the aftermath of the storm, whereas National Geographic covers the role of pets and the awful response to their needs (plus another story courtesy of Yahoo News.

In the end though, it comes back to people. People who went through hell and are still waiting for help. NPR tracks where the refugees went and how many still remain away from New Orleans. Weekend America has an audio interview with some Katrina victims they have been following over the past year.

Kuro5hin is carrying a post by a Gulf Coast resident that is pretty telling about how much was lost in the region.

You'd think after being caught lying, cheating, stealing and all-around being corrupt, the GOP and their stalwarts would be laying low for awhile. You'd be wrong. These imbeciles have no sense of decency.

In Colorado, a seventh grade teacher is currently suspended for the "crime" of displaying flags from other countries. Did I mention he's a geography teacher.

In a similar vein, apparently you can't get a federal grant if you plan to study evolutionary biology. I mean, you could before, but not now. They say it's a mistake but a highly coincidental one. I'd be checking anything involving stem cell research as well.

Katherine Harris, the Bitch who gave us Bush, believes that there is no such thing as separation of Church and State. Bonus, she feeds the line that we also can only trust Christian politicans.

In Louisiana, they are apparently putting black students at the back of the bus again. Seriously, didn't a bunch of GOP idjuts just a few months ago say the Voting Rights Act didn't need renewed because the South isn't racist anymore.

HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!

Sorry.

In any case, obviously there still are problems. And someone should stop giving lip service to their racists and actually address those problems.

Jack Cafferty gives a round-up of Republican racist remarks.

Forbes magazine recently published a sexist article called "Don't Marry a Career Woman". FOXNews followed along, cheerleading all the way.

Big surprise: Bush is against school integration plans. He may not have started out a racist, but he's been making great strides recently.

“I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center…that they would try to use ..a hijacked airplane as a missile.”
- Condoleeza Rice, despite reams of reports to the contrary

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"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
- Bush, lying through his teeth, of course, as the revelation of reports that stated just that surfaced later.

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""I don't know anyone who wasn't caught off guard"
- Condoleeza Rice - again - after the Palestinian elections, despite that all polls showed Hamas would win. Never mind that they, you know, were on the damn ballots in the first place. So they already had at least a shot of winning.

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SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: General Pace, you said there’s a possibility of the situation in Iraq evolving into civil war. Is that correct?

GEN. PACE: I did say that, yes, sir.

SEN. MCCAIN: Did you anticipate this situation a year ago?

GEN. PACE: No, sir.

- General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testifying before Congress earlier this month concerning the situation in Iraq.

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No, seriously, these guys have the resources of the entire United States at their disposal and they can't anticipate a damn thing happening, in spite of all evidence that would say otherwise. This is horrific job performance. Perhaps they should collectively be fired?

I learned a new term recently: the War on Terra. Basically, Bush is at the center of it all: siding with oil companies, rejecting the Kyoto treaty, dismissing science in general, particularly environmental science. Hell, throw on his utter and complete (and continuing) ineffectiveness in the face of Hurricane Katrina while you're at it.

The list is long, Americans want more action and less excuses, and local and state governments are running his staffers in hundred plus degree Texas heat without proper training or supplies. Of course, he was "supervising" by riding a bike. I'm not sure who's the bigger moron: him for, well, being him, or those fools who keep following his orders.

So what ARE conservatives worried about these days? Well, some are trying to frame polygamy in the mold of a civil rights abuse. Others are firing Sunday school teachers for the "crime" of being - gasp! - female. Yet others are mutilating the Statue of Liberty in the hopes of pushing their perverse, bigoted view of religion on others.

Nice people those fascists.

Meanwhile, we're firing Arab linguists because they are gay, atheists are under the gun in our military, you can still apparently leak a CIA agent's name and NOBODY even gets a security clearance yanked, and - oh yeah! - we launched a war in the Middle East while our supposed leader who completely ignorant of the fact that there are two major sects of Islam, and multiple groups competing in Iraq.

But that's okay, according to Cheney, only a 1% chance of anything happening is enough to move on it, so says a recent book.

Sen. Inhofe from Oklahoma that UN Peacekeepers run around the world "going around teaching girls to be prostitutes." That and other idiocy from the linked article.

Randall Terry - you know, the guy behind abortion clinic bombers - is projecting a family values campaign in his run for Senate in Florida. Yeah, he's an evil snake, but you'd at least listen to a guy who is proud of his family, right? Too bad he's a snivelling piece of crap about that too. Apparently Terrorist Terry is hiding a son who's gay and a daughter who's had an abortion.

Now that's love.

I don't why this crap still surprises me, but here we go.

Republican Congressman Peter King is endorsing racial profiling as a solution to dealing with domestic terrorist incidents. FOX News wants to install Muslim-only security lines. What the hell is wrong with these people?

And we're not the only ones. A bunch of British tourists refused to board a plane until two "suspicious" looking Asian guys were escorted off. The delay was either 3 hours or a retreat to 500 years ago, depending on who you ask.

Sen. George Allen has sunk to his own brand of oblique racism, naming an opponent's staffer who follows him around "Macaca" in front of an all-white audience and welcoming him to America.

Who elects these rednecks? Never mind, I already know. Slack-jawed inbreeders.

Just a news snippet but apparently a majority of us don't believe in evolution. By us I refer to the afformentioned yokels. Refer to the chart to realize how crappy we rank against those actual civilized countries. Here's a hint: we're below Cyprus.

Normally I like NorthWest Airlines, but this goes way too far. Dealing with layoffs, strikes, and the price of fuel, NWA had taken it on the chin recently, despite every government handout to the contrary. In a booklet provided to workers recently sacked, the company essentially recommends dumpster-diving as a cost-saving measure. Now THAT'S compassionate conservatism kids.

Food news. Coffee may be the thing that causes your first heart attack. And hot dogs aren't exactly health food but a cause of genetic mutations? Sounds like a lame X-Men character bio.

A woman in Israel was saved by her breast impants during the recent conflict. I'm not saying another damn thing on that. I've got enough email.

Some commentary on the government's zealot-ridden pursuit of shutting down internet gambling. It's a link to an audio story in case you want to check it out.

The IBM PC turned 25 years old over the weekend. If you didn't know that, don't feel too concerned. It's just geeks like me that follow that kind of thing. I mean, just look at what we used to have to work with:

What I've found amusing in all this is the gaggle of reporting on where we came from to where we are today. I include a list of 25 top PCs (topped by an Apple of all things) and a quick gallery of GUIs from the past couple decades.

While not directly related, more new from the internet, starting with a(nother) list of the top 15 influential websites. Plus a story from Slate on how to group those who search the internet. The data is mined from AOL users so, you know, keep that in mind.

From the evil side of the internet, the RIAA has decided to sue the family of a man they accuse of downloading music illegally. Of course, they are going to give them "time to grieve" as he is dead. What's next? Debtor's prisons?

In Iran, President Ahmadinejad has started up a blog. The link is a story about the blog; I really have no interests in sending you a link to an anti-Semite - thus the lack of Mel Gibson news from me lately. My only comment on this is why the hell is the leader of a nation notorious for censoring free speech and shutting down bloggers starting one up himself? Irony isn't enough; hypocrisy comes to mind though.

More news about Net Neutrality. There is a group called It's Our Net you can go to to get more info. Educate yourself lest our surfing becomes absorbed by corporate goons much like the rest of our popular culture.

When I left Vegas last Monday they were filming Oceans 13 a couple gates down from me. I even got to see Brad Pitt walking around a bit. Unusual, but that's Vegas sometimes.

Coming back home I, of course, was in the middle of the next phase of the War on Terror/Global War on Terrorism/Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism/Long War. By which I mean we enter the phase I'll call the War on Hygeine.

Not content to merely cavity searching us and marking every single passenger as a terrorist in some form, Homeland Security has decided that toothpaste and hair gel are tools of Islamofascism.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm sure there is a very logical explanation to this and I'm sure things will calm down a bit once they get a proper screening process in place. That said, you'd think that they could dial down the paranoia a bit. Or at least be rational. The threat was on places leaving Heathrow airport to the United States. It did not involve puddle jumpers jaunting between central Wyoming to Denver and then Vegas. I mean, Wyomingans treated me like a visitor from Mars. I don't want to think what an English Muslim would have to go through to even get near an airport.

In any case, I fly out again tomorrow. We'll see if the madness has abated.

I find I don't stop to smell the roses enough anymore. Today I took an opportunity to do so.

I'm in central Wyoming this week setting up a server for a small casino. It could be going better.

In any case, I got off work and realized I hadn't eaten. There isn't much for selection here in town so I stopped at a Smith's grocery store and got a sub sandwich some chips and a milk. As you may image, I'm in a small town so am obviously not a local to anyone around here. The checkout guy mentioned I might enjoy going to the side of the local library the next block over. Boy am I glad I took that suggestion.

There is a stand of pine trees next to the county library on a little hill overlooking a field. The weather was gorgeous; not too hot with some puffy clouds on a blue sky and a bit of a breeze.

I sat there for awhile and read I book I'd brought along on the trip. All in all, a nice way to spend the better part of an hour and I'm glad I did it.

See? I'm not always so morone and cynical.

"Freedom of speech is good until it gets out of whack."
- William McGlothlin of Marked Tree, AR; Bush supporter protesting Cindy Sheehan

As you can see above, Bush and his supporters are all for our democratic freedoms, at least until it gets in the way of their apocalyptic end times policies. And hey, while we're on the subject, if Republicans are so busy trying to end the world in the name of God, isn't all that rape, killing, torturing, lying, stealing, and general corruption to be considered the work of the devil? Seriously, you can't destroy the environment, kill 100,000 civilians, steal two elections, violate national and international law and still be considered a Christian, can you?

I wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror; that's all I'm saying.

Apparently Iran has had it with loan words from Western cultures. Chief Lunatic Ahmadinejad has declared that such insidious words like "pizza" will be renamed "plastic loaves" lest the Revolution be tainted.

Only bigoted, repressed morons would come up with such a strategy, right?

Speaking of, all House cafeterias have quietly begun calling their cut and fried potatoes French fries again. No Republican representative involved would comment on their idiotic move finally being reversed. Go figure.

That said, Mattie's Pancake House up here in Brookings, OR still has "Freedom Toast" on the menu as of this morning. Good food, but come on people.

Speaking of Republicans and the bad moves they back, the following are links related to the Republican Party endorsing Joe Lieberman. Personally, he might as well go join them because he really doesn't seem to belong anymore. Here are College Republicans moving to organize for Lieberman. Here is a (very long) video montage of Republicans talking up Smiling Joe. Seriously, it's 10 minutes long.

Speaking of hand jobs to guys who don't deserve it, this month's Esquire bursts with giving John McCain all the love he can handle. I read the article knowing I'd feel dirty afterwords...and I was right.

Where do they find these guys?

In case you forgot that the culture of fear and authoritarianism that BushCo brings to table can't affect you, a few stories.

In the UK, 12-year old children can be arrested and DNA tested for what heinous crime against society? That's right, climbing a tree and breaking a couple branches. Next they'll be lopping off hands for trying a grape at the grocery store.

Here in the States, Slashdot is carrying links to a couple incidents involving photographing police activities. Apparently, they can film us all they want, but not the other way around.

In the not-so-friendly skies, on top of dealing with TSA folks - some good, some a tad Gestapo - now we have air marshals filing false surveillance reports on random citizens. Why, you ask? Because they have a quota. Hey, I get it. If I HAVE to find one suspicious person a month, I'm gonna file the paperwork. I don't blame the marshals as much as I do their idiot bosses who make them report otherwise innocent citizens in order to keep their jobs.

Incidentally, while posting I had a thought. If Bush and Blair are some kind of political comedic duo like Martin and Lewis, does Bush get points for being a drunk like Deano or an insipid moron like Lewis?

I'll take your thoughts on the subject via comment or email.

On a more sordid note and on the subject of police states, China is trying to quell the outbreak of rabies in some of it's provinces. Which would sound good if they were insituting some kind of pet vaccination program. But being Red China, they aren't. Instead, they are running around the country clubbing up to 50,000 dogs to death. And not just strays, but yanking dogs away from their owners and killing them in front of them.

Disgusting.