May 2006 Archives

Wow. It's hot in Philly. Muggy. Humid. Really warm. Hey, I'm from SF and I'm just simply not used to this kind of weather. I got off the plane last night and wanted to simply collapse from the heat as it slammed into me as I left the air conditioned comfort of the plane. Oh well.

Still, had an excellent meal in the White Dog Cafe. My partner for dinner tells me as we're leaving that this place is where Madame Blavatsky - seminal figure in western occult circles - once lived. Kind of cool to be stomping around where she wove her magikal spells.

The dinner was, of course, delicious. Afterwards, we strolled around the college campus - he's getting his MBA and is spending this week in MBA boot camp. Good visuals on that, eh? Anyways, very nice campus. Lot's of very nice looking college babes strewn about the place. All in all a most satisfactory experience.

Still, hot. Muggy.

Could never live here.

Oh, and that cute little girl up there in the corner? That's the famed Jocelyn Quinn Hellblazer. Thought I'd pull out of photo of "she who is to rule". Us proud father's are required to do that from time to time.

It's the law.

Like the spurned wankers warbloggers of the Fighting 101st Keyboarders. Over at the Insta bunker, Glenn pours over the latest reports from his tireless gnomes buried in the farthest reaches of the vast world wide web. Knocking back another two fingers of the finest Kentucky bourbon that Pajamas Media money can buy, he surveys his overflowing inbox and darkly barks out his latest observations on the ever expanding war against Google.

It's not a huge deal, but judging from my email it seems to be the last straw for a lot of people, coming after the China censorship deal, etc. As I warned earlier, Google seems to be engaged in a Dell-like squandering of its goodwill, which strikes me as very unwise given that goodwill is its biggest asset, really.

Google's crime? Well, let's turn the RSS feed over to Colonel Jonah "Pantload" Goldberg who's stationed at the aptly named Corner

It's kind of sad. They change their homepage logo for all sorts of holidays and occasions. Just last week they paid tribute to Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday. But Memorial Day doesn't seem to rate anything at all.

So I think this is the final seal - the final trumpet being blown (so to speak) by the seventh angel of the Right Wing Apocalypse^tm. Can't wait to see what Reynold's Army of Davids come up with next - boy that wait wasn't long. There's a real time update from another whore reader hanging around the Corner

It's worse than you think.  Google doesn't always do logos for the same days every year, but they've never changed their logo for Memorial Day.

My god. It's like watching a three year old try to pick up a hot chick at a bar - or like watching Jeff Goldstein trying to look smart.

One thing is for sure. The last five years have been a particularly harsh object lesson that the Politically Correct Police^sm aren't the sole arm of the Mommy Party. Nope, the Daddy Party has their own fifth column ready to spring into action and shout "Traitor" or "Darwinist" at the mere hint of opposition. They have entire blogging divisions dedicated to tracking down even the most insignificant transgression and making sure it is exposed to the harsh ultra violet rays of the Fighting 101.

Given the choice between the two, I take the Mommy Party's version of the PC police.

Somehow worrying about offending someone is more palatable to me than worrying about whether I'm going to be called a traitor and blamed for destroying the morale of the 3rd ID.

Wank, wank, wank, wank.

One would have thought their arms would have fallen off by now.

<h/t James Joyner>

For Memorial Day: Editorials Still Oppose Iraq Withdrawals

Six months from now
We'll be still asking Bush
To finally get serious about Iraq
Six months from then

Iraqi athletes killed for wearing shorts

An Iraqi tennis coach and two of his players were shot to death this week in Baghdad because they were wearing shorts, authorities said Saturday, reporting the latest in a series of recent attacks attributed to Islamic extremists.

. . .

Extremists had distributed leaflets warning people in the mostly Sunni neighborhoods of Saidiyah and Ghazaliyah warning people not to wear shorts, police said.

"Wearing shorts by youth are prohibited because it violates the principals of Islamic religion when showing forbidden parts of the body. Also women should wear the veil," the leaflets said.

Meanwhile, in other news, Bush's main regret about the last 3 years in Iraq is merely grammatical - he really should have said "Bring them on".

Ah, the internet. Well, here's the current stats for how people come to read the fine print at this fine establishment:

33.3% Not referred from a search engine

Search terms:

13.3% pwned
3.5% dharma institute
2.4% longest dick
1.5% mavericks
1.2% hammas
1.1% google porn
1.1% ugly
1.1% h
1.0% pornolizer

The Gilmore Girls.

I

simply

had

no

idea.

The horror. The horror.

Today we have a guest lecture so we'll turn the podium over to The Editors at The Poor Man.

Take a walk on the genocide.

I particularly like the comments cut from that den of pure reason known only to outsiders as the Desk of Jane Gault. There truly is no vein of comedy gold that is richer to mine than the scat of a libertarian commenter left after a pompously uninformed post by Jane.

We're doing our job

If you think rubberstamping for this administratin is hard work, just imagine how difficult it is to keep stonewalling on intelligence oversight hearings and preventing any serious investigations into allegations of spying on Americans.

Who Isn't A 'Values Voter'?

Everyone who votes is voting because they have values.

I got to say that when I saw this yesterday (reading Froomkin) I just about fell out of my chair. It really is a complete shock to read something from Will which makes sense. Even more of a shock to read something from Will about this whole conservative nonsense of owning the values vote which makes sense. My heart just about stopped when - even in the course of making sense - he didn't use this as an opportunity to bash liberals.

Okay. This is hillarious: Girlfriend 6.0 vs. Wife 1.0, Comparative Trial.

H/T - the millions of other blogs I've seen pointing to this.

Max Boot: Forget privacy, we need to spy more

1. The check is in the mail. 2. I won’t come in your mouth. 3. We’re from the Government. We’re here to help you.

Finally, an Amazon "store" truly made for me...

Industrial & Scientific ("beta")

Okay, it's not as great as some of the specialty stores out there that truly cater to the mechanical geek in me. But it's a damn good start and I'm very glad to see them enter this space.

There's only so much fluff I can take and only so many books I can read.

So, get this.

There's a person, who works for the phone company.

Named Kafka.

And this person, who works for the phone company.

Is a spokesperson for the whole "let's rape the Internet and ruin it for the rest of humanity because we're greedier than Midas".

And this person, who works for the phone company.

Is one of their chief architects.

Pure.

Comedy.

Gold.

Really. I don't think James Taronto could have come up with better.

Man, oh Man. Let's turn the mike over to JPod.

The Inability to Stomach Disagreement

We are moving into very dangerous territory here — territory in which it has been declared that there is to be no debate, no discussion, and no heterodoxy any longer. This is how political-intellectual movements become diseased and sclerotic. This is how they die.

And there's even a juicer bit of comedy gold from earlier up in the post, but hey - I don't want to spoil the surprise.

I just got to say that the United States will turn out to probably be the most luckiest country in the history of this planet. Pretty much any other state that has existed since the time when we first walked upright would have - at this point - already started shipping Jews Muslims Liberals Mexicans off into ovens.

Given the incredibly piercing eliminationist rhetoric we've endured over the last 20 years - think Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Jeff Goldstein - and given the meteoric rise of the theological Taliban wanna-bes, capped off with the massive militarization of our society in the past 6 years... well, I'm surprised we're not all goose stepping to work in the morning and/or starting our mornings singing corporate songs praising our glorious leader and the gentle, father like way he tends us, his sheep.

Instead, what we have is an American public which - despite the heroic efforts of corporate media backed by the creme de la creme of the Fighting 101st keyboarders - has turned against these jokers in historic percentages. This despite the fact that the only opposition party - that would be the Democrats, in case you forgot their name - have been terror stricken and literally unable to move like a deer caught in the headlights since 9/11.

Stunning, really.

It's hard to believe, but it's almost like our celebrated national sport of Olympic free form couch potato has created a protective blanket of apathy which even the strongest, most bitter, racist, civil liberty destroying, immigrant bashing, flag waving, dead baby holding, religious bigot can penetrate.

As I said, stunning.

So to hear JPod whine and wail about a party which is eating itself alive because of - wait for it - the inability to tolerate dissent. Well, that's just icing on the cake, ain't it? It's almost like the last six years have been the lead up to one of the stupidest jokes in history and us Americans are the punchline.

Wait. Not "almost". Scratch that. This is actually a true statement of fact. There is absolutely no way to explain the last six years and the rise of the angry children of the right wing without resorting to the explanation that it's all just some really sick joke played out by an alien super race which has become extremely bored over the last millennium or two and found this helpless race of advanced (barely) monkeys with whom they could really fuck with and get their jollies off on a galactic scale. I can just see them now in some galactic size pub down over at their local cluster, drinking moon beams and downing super novas as they watch their equivalent of "Intergalactic Survivor" being played out on our planet.

Yea. A galactic reality TV show. That's the ticket.

How else do you explain the insanity?

Probably ten of the sweetest words strung together that I've heard yet.

Karl Rove Indicted on Charges of Perjury, Lying to Investigators

I think the whingeing from the right just crossed the super sonic threshold.

So, I've finally given up on the Microsoft tyrany. Sure, I'm just giving up one form of loserhood for another form of loserhood (for example, I can't get House Harkonnen to provide me a Cisco VPN that runs on this box), but - as a wise man's father once said - "a change is as good as a rest".

Still, I must say that my brand spanking new Mac book pro is damn cool. I'm getting used to the funky interface and things are much, much faster now that I'm not running a zillion security programs and - well, let's face it - WINDOWS. Geez. I suppose a core duo that's at least 50% faster than my old laptop helps, too.

I'm also busy installing and setting up the Parallels virtualization stuff - also way cool. After all, I can't be expected to completely wean myself off of XP that quickly...

Digital Lynch Mob

Sticks and stones won't break my bones but calling me names will always terrify me.

And you have to love Richard's narrative here. By his own admission, he hasn't read the vast, vast bulk of his emails. By his own admission, he has only clicked on a few random emails. And from this highly scientific sampling, he determines that the vast bulk of them are filled with hate.

I guess that lack of even a hint of any scientific background really comes in handy when he's demagoguing an issue. It's the complete lack of any evidence - the simple throwing out of allegations without proof - that I really love about Richard.

Kind of frames his whole career perfectly.

You got 3,000+ bile filled emails Richard? I say put your cards on the table. I'm getting sick of this. Put the god damned emails up on some web site - I assume even you have the expertise or interns available to accomplish such a simple task.

What's a matter? You chicken?

Pretty funny to see the big bad conservatives republicans start running around like third graders who have suddenly realized that their brilliant plan for creating gold from the chemicals they found locked up in the cabinet in the garage has just killed the cat and is burning a hole through the floor. Some of them are gathering in the corner, trying to cook up some excuse so as to pawn off the whole mess on their sister. Most of the rest are simply trying to find the door so they can high tail it down the street, bawling like the big babies that that they all seem to be.

Jonah Goldberg, one of the idiots huddling at the corner, is literally proclaiming that George Bush is a liberal. On the pages of the Wall Street Journal, we have the bold argument that the reason we're not winning in Iraq is because we're simply a bunch of leftist humanitarian pussies and not man enough to really let go with our manly military and show these islamofascists what it's like to have Jeff Goldstein's dick slapped about your face.

Is this really what the manly side of American politics has to offer us? What on earth happened to the chest puffing and threatening? Why, wasn't it only yesterday that the 101st Keyboard Kommandos had taken Cheeseburger hill? Hadn't they successfully fought back the emasculating hoards of the unkempt left wing through their courageous sacrifice and clever use of adverbs and adjectives?

Are we now supposed to believe that the only reason that their grand schemes haven't worked is that they just haven't gone far enough on everything? Not enough tax cuts. Not enough ruthless bombing campaigns?

Not enough hookers?

And what the hell is this trying to pull Michael Hayden out of Rumsfeld's butt and place him at the head of the CIA? That's chutzpah. Still, you gotta love all the spin around this. Better, you have to love the fact that these jokers actually think this spin will make us all feel better. Hmmmm. A turf war tearing our national intelligence to pieces? Oh, what joy! I'm sure that this will strike fear into our islamofascist enemies and force them to rethink any dastardly plan they might have in the works. Yes, we'll show you running dog terrorists! Just you try to sneak in weapons of mass destruction in while our entire intelligence capability is squabbling and in the middle of being ideologically purged. You'll get your comeuppance, by gum!

Geez. It's like watching a bad B grade flick from the late sixties.

Still don't know if the democrats can manage to make anything out of this. On my darker days, I still feel like the idiot hawks will think this is a gift from the heavens and is a sign that they're to rise up and show the world how you really do an imperial shtick. Democracy for all!

Lord. This summer is going to really suck. I seem to remember something about our army disintegrating if we didn't do something serious about things by this summer. Well, it's this summer and we haven't done jack in Iraq.

Basically, I feel like that pilot that was in the first Star Wars movie. You know the guy. He was in the "canyon" of the Death Star, trying to hit the port while he was being pounded by not only the guns that lined the canyon, but also by a crack team of Death Star defenders dogging his tail. He knows that he's toast and command keeps saying "Stay on target. Stay on target".

Right before he blows up.

And that's pretty much the mental model I have regarding what's going on right now. The Republicans and their right wing lackeys are busy putting the final touches on the biggest bag of shit the world has yet seen.

And I have a sneaking suspicion as to who is going to be left holding the bag.

Democracy, Whiskey, Sexy. Who knew they were serious about that?

So, I read James Risen's book, State of War, and at the time I meant to blog about what seemed to be a bombshell, which strangely seemed to get very little attention:

James Risen also writes in State of War that "Several of the Iranian [CIA] agents were arrested and jailed, while the fates of some of the others is still unknown" after a CIA official sent in 2004 to an Iranian agent an encrypted electronic message, mistakenly including data that could potentially identify "virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran". The Iranian was a double agent and handed over the information to Iranian intelligence. This also has been denied by an intelligence official.

Basically, the upshot is that we lost all of our Iranian agents and are now running blind in Iran due to a slip made possible by sophisticated electronic communications.

Today, we learn some more about this.

MSNBC confirms: Outed CIA agent was working on Iran

"INTELLIGENCE SOURCES SAY VALERIE WILSON WAS PART OF AN OPERATION THREE YEARS AGO TRACKING THE PROLIFERATION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS MATERIAL INTO IRAN. AND THE SOURCES ALLEGE THAT WHEN MRS. WILSON'S COVER WAS BLOWN, THE ADMINISTRATION'S ABILITY TO TRACK IRAN'S NUCLEAR AMBITIONS WAS DAMAGED AS WELL."

So, we're running blind and this administration deliberately outed the CIA agent working on counter proliferation in Iran.

I can't wait to hear the spin on this from the right.

Chicken Hawk Powers Activate!

With Cap'n Crunch's bold move to retake the proud name of Chicken Hawk back from the gutter of the Rabid, Anti-war Left^tm, and given this is the third anniversary of "Mission Accomplished", I offer this speech from an unknown Shakesperian work, recently discovered behind a filing cabinet deep inside the E ring of a Pentagon, behind a copy of Shinseki's memo regarding adequate troop strength to win the occupation in Iraq.

Chicken Hawk's Day

This day is called the feast of Chicken:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Chicken.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Chicken Hawk:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his carpal tunnel.
And say 'These wounds I had on Chicken's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Insty the putz, Special Ed and Lielicks,
Beinart and Von, Charles Johnson and Goldstein,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Chicky Chicken shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sprains his hand with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in America now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Chicken Hawk's day.