Small Flashes

Conservatism ...

2009-04-15T18:32:00.002-04:00

Comforting the comfortable, afflicting the afflicted, and speaking power to truth.

All You Need to Know About Sarah Palin

2008-08-31T23:07:00.002-04:00

Her kids: Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, Trig Real traditional conservative, there.

Definitions

2008-08-28T17:44:00.003-04:00

We need new definitions for "Liberal" and "Conservative". The traditional definitions don't seem to mean much; we have "liberals" working for balanced budgets and "conservatives" pushing overseas military interventions. The best current definition I've heard is Liberals move wealth *down* the wealth pyramid.Conservatives move wealth *up* the wealth pyramid. Interestingly enough, the "wealth

"The Original Maverick"

2008-08-24T22:43:00.007-04:00

So McCain is billing himself as "the original maverick". Uhh ... no. A "maverick" is supposed to be independent. When has McCain ever voted against Georgie? On anything? I don't remember any. He has mildly criticized a couple of things that Georgie did, but when the time to vote came, he was right there. When he was there at all -- McCain has the worst attendance record in the Senate.

You Know Your Campaign Is In Trouble ...

2008-08-06T15:44:00.005-04:00

... When you lose a battle of wits to Paris Hilton: Video from Funny or Die See you at the debates, bitches! — Paris Hilton

Witness

2008-05-07T19:56:00.007-04:00

liz_marcs went digging for some references to "the stuff everybody knows" and got a surprise. No, "everybody" doesn't know it. Not even professional historians. Things drop into the cracks; folks don't like to admit, even (or especially!) to themselves, things they've done in bad situations. In this case, it's a holocaust story. There was a brothel at Auschwitz, with women taken from the camps.

Speaking of Suckers ...

2008-03-26T19:35:00.003-04:00

I've mentioned this film before; unfortunately, the link I used is dead. Fortunately, it's back. The title is Don't Be a Sucker. It was made by the War Department in 1947, and it's about as subtle as a jackboot in the face. It starts out like one of those embarrassingly awful "avoid card sharks and attractive women in bars" films, and morphs ... It's still the best film on what we now call

Self Promoter

2008-03-26T16:44:00.011-04:00

Wired magazine has a poll to find "The Greatest Self-Promoter of All Time". Most nominations went to familiar media figures like Donald Trump and Paris Hilton. I nominated Ahmed Chalabi, as the guy who talked the Bush administration into invading Iraq. Self-promoter? Con man? Whatever. "Put me in charge of Iraq" he said "The Iraqi people will acclaim me as their leader, and I will turn Iraq

Page 3

2007-06-29T14:28:00.000-04:00

Quote of the day: "When the Journal gets its Page 3 girls, we'll make sure they have M.B.A.s." — Rupert Murdoch, on his attempt to purchase the Wall Street Journal

Household Explosives, Redux

2007-06-28T16:04:00.001-04:00

It's always fun to check out the Site Meter stats (icon at the bottom of the page). Since I've been inactive for the last couple of years, most of the visits I've had are people looking for something else. I wrote about this in Referral, where somebody was looking for "pocket sized witch detectors". I still have no idea what they were after. Far and away the most common search that's finding

The World's Dirtiest Joke

2007-06-28T15:28:00.000-04:00

A new act comes in to a vaudeville booker. It's a man, a woman, a little girl, and a little dog. They're all well dressed and clean-cut and wholesome looking. "So what's your act?" the agent asks. "It's kind of hard to describe", the man replies. "We'll show you." So they start into a sweet little song-and-dance number. However, it starts to change. Soon is is the most ghastly, obscene

New Template!!

2007-06-28T13:47:00.000-04:00

Woohoo! The old one was nice for its time, but it was seriously long in the tooth. It used lots of tables for layout, and was quite cluttered. Blogger doesn't seem to have the little graphics that did these table outlines any more. Sic transit Web. I've tried to keep the CSS down to a set that any modern browser can handle. If not, it'll work just fine without it. The only Javascript is for

Alternate Universe

2007-06-20T20:16:00.000-04:00

Another traditional SF theme is the Alternate Universe. What would things be like if some historical event happened just a little bit differently? It's a fun area of speculation; two of my favorites are Too Many Magicians, by Randall Garrett (Richard III didn't die at the siege of Chaluz) and 1632, by Eric Flint (small town in West Virginia gets dropped into the middle of the Thirty Years War.

"Pro-Life"? Bunk.

2007-04-19T21:33:00.000-04:00

So the Supremes uphold the ban on the medical procedure "intact dilation and extraction" (IDX), misnamed "partial- birth abortion". What other specific medical procedures have been banned by name? I can't think of any. Misnamed? IDX is almost never used on a viable fetus. I say "almost" as a safety measure; I've never heard of it being used on a viable fetus, but I'm no expert. IDX is a

There's a Word ...

2006-07-22T23:05:00.000-04:00

So Georgie made a fool of himself at the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. I've not seen any speculation as to why Georgie acted this way, other than the usual and unhelpful he's a jerk. Nobody else seems to have said this, so I will. Looks to me like he was drunk.

Time to Drop Anchor

2006-07-22T15:40:00.000-04:00

So the DLC is saying that Democrats should move to the right; tringulate, to use their term. Wrong. Voters are polarized, to the point that any more movement to the right will lose significant numbers of votes on the left. They may vote for Ralph Nader or just stay home; either way, they're lost. And, because of the degree of polarization, you're not going to pick up any appreciable numbers

The Center

2006-07-10T23:56:00.000-04:00

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world ... — William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming, 1919 The Common Wisdom in politics is run to the center. Supposedly, Bill Clinton was the master of triangulation; moving enough to the Center to get what you want by giving the other side some of what they want. This used to be called compromise, but that word

"Them" and "Us"

2006-07-04T12:23:00.001-04:00

One of my first blog posts was about Them. The point of the post was that everybody has a Them, and everybody's Them is different. This post is about Us, as opposed to Them. In normal social/business activities, it's pretty easy to tell the difference between Them and Us. After all, They are Them because they're Not Like Us. Now, as the groups get bigger, it gets harder to draw the line.

The War is Over

2006-06-30T02:06:00.000-04:00

You can do anything with a bayonet except sit on it. — Talleyrand The War is Over. We won. Which war? The one in Iraq, of course. Remember "Mission Accomplished"? That's as good a point as any to declare the war "won". The Iraqi army had been completely smashed, Saddam Hussein was in hiding, and the US military controlled the entire country. But aren't we still fighting? Well, yes,

So What Is a Liberal, Anyway?

2005-07-16T11:21:00.000-04:00

For years now, since Reagan got elected, we've been hearing rants from the Right on the evilness of Liberals. Listen to Limbaugh or his ilk, and you'll get the idea that Liberals are all a mixture of Jimmy Hoffa, Jessie Jackson, Noam Chomsky, and Hubert Humphrey. You'll note that these are completely incompatible. To the Right, "Liberal" is just a "hate word" — its only real meaning is "I

Clinical Insanity

2005-06-12T17:31:00.000-04:00

There's a common theme in SF, where the human race evolves into Something Better; some type of Group Mind, where everyone's talents contribute to the Common Good. Naturally, the something tends to be some variation of the author's prejudices as to social and religious philosophy. I've had a theory for some time that this has already happened -- our larger institutions (corporate and

"Call Us Nutty"

2005-04-25T20:19:00.000-04:00

It seems that BushCo doesn't want people representing it who might have donated money to Kerry. Now, I have done a fair amount of work with international standards organizations (mostly the IEEE and ISO, with a few excursions to ANSI and a few other minor groups), so I have some insight into what's going on here. I just had a look at the "standards committee" in question, the Inter- American

I Feel a Draft

2005-03-08T18:54:00.000-05:00

I've been saying for a long time now that, if Georgie Bush was re- elected, we'd have a draft by May 2005. My assumptions that led to this were: The war in Iraq would continue to be a quagmire The Neocons running our foreign policy really, really want to invade more countries. Our “allies” wouldn't supply us with cannon foddertroops. Military recruitment and retention would not keep up with

Reductio ad Absurdum

2005-03-07T14:55:00.000-05:00

One way of doing a mathematical proof is to assume the opposite of what you're trying to prove. If you can show that it leads to a logical contradiction, then you've proven the original statement. If you can't show a contradiction, then the statement is false. It's called reductio ad absurdum; reduce to an absurdity. This isn't done much in political argument. Usually, you try to show that

Question for Alan Keyes

2005-03-05T14:00:00.001-05:00

And any other folks of the Neocon/Religious Right persuasion who have gay kids: What did you do to your kids when they were growing up to make them choose a gay lifestyle? This ties in with the whole “framing the debate” meme that's been going around. The Neocon/RR types have been framing the arguments so that they will control the debate; questions like this make them drink their own

Gannon/Guckert

2005-02-18T15:55:00.001-05:00

I can't really say anything about the Gannon/Guckert proto- scandal that hasn't been said elsewhere. Americablog is the leader in digging out information; go there. They've got the pictures. If you want a summary and links to other sources, twistedchick has been all over it. There are a couple of items, though: The Websites that Americablog dug up quote Gannon's rate as an escort at $200

Bankrupt!

2005-01-08T13:46:00.001-05:00

The Administration push for Social Security “privatization” is obviously a scam — since when is the Administration interested in something that will only be a problem long after Georgie is out of office? Global warming? Nope. Energy independence? Nope. Global competitiveness? Nope. Water shortages? Nope. Health care? Nope. Long- term structural deficits? Nope. But what kind of a scam?

The Literal Meaning of Genesis

2005-01-02T22:57:00.000-05:00

I wandered into a discussion of “creationism” on Steve Gilliard's blog a while back. Now, as I can vouch for experience, it's impossible to argue with a Creationist. Their attitude is “I am right and you are wrong. My devastatingly clever responses demolish your feeble arguments”. They'll just keep repeating their nonsensical arguments and ignore anything you say. It seems that this isn't a new

Satanism is Alive and Well

2005-01-01T16:13:00.000-05:00

No, not Satan. The big guy with the batwings and hairy legs is a figment of the Fundie imagination. Fundies who talk about Satan tend not to get this monotheism business — one god. One. Not a good- guy god and a bad- guy god. Not one for Us and one for Them. Not one Big Guy and a Little Guy who got too big for his halo. One. A note: I am using the term “Fundie” here to refer to a

Odd Spam

2004-10-31T15:46:00.000-05:00

Turn the handle the way it's supposed to go, only further. — Eric Frank Russell, Still Life I got a rather odd spam message the other day: A week ago, we sent you an email asking for help debunking anti-Bush documents. After receiving hundreds of responses, it become clear that all the documents were actually real: the Bush/Cheney DUIs, the Ken Lay letters, and even the bin Laden memo.

"So What's So Bad ..."

2004-10-30T20:57:00.001-04:00

" ... about a second Bush term? We survived the first one." The question is "how bad can it get", and the answer I come up with is "pretty damn bad": Since Bush thinks the economy is just fine, it will continue to tank. More big corporations will move offshore, along with more white- collar work. Ya want fries with that? We'll have a military draft by May. Since BushCo is as butt-

Woof!

2004-10-25T01:28:00.001-04:00

The latest Bush ad shows a bunch of wolves being spooky. Sheesh! What are these guys thinking? Wolves are not a scary image to Americans. There is no record (including Native American legends) of a North American wolf ever attacking a human. Nature programs have rammed the picture of warm fuzzy lovable wolves down our throats for years. It's only been in the last couple of years that you'd

As We Dodge Another Bullet ...

2004-10-22T01:02:00.001-04:00

Cards top Astros, to face BoSox in World Series If the Astros had won, the national media would probably have collapsed with a case of terminal Metaphor Overload. I don't think they could stand having both the Presidency and the World Series be Massachusetts vs. Texas.

Quote of the Day

2004-10-19T13:00:00.001-04:00

From the Head Girly Man: I don't know why I watched the presidential debates. If I want to watch a smart liberal Democrat and a Republican leader argue, all we have to do is go out to dinner. They were lucky. They only had to do it three times. — Arnold Schwarzenegger Seems Ahnold got to sleep on the sofa for a couple of weeks after his RNC speech ...

The Congressional Evaluation Project

2004-09-22T21:04:00.001-04:00

Over there on the right, you'll notice that one of the “You should read this” blogs is Kit's Concatenation. There's a good reason for this. Kit is a journalist and public policy analyst, and she's put together a doozy. “The Congressional Evaluation Project” is a massive compilation of information on the voting records of all Congresscritters and all Senators who are up for re- election. Want

“Winning” the Debates

2004-09-22T13:07:00.001-04:00

Well, the next big Campaign Events are the “debates”. “Debates” is in quotes because they don't resemble any real debate format I'm familiar with. They're rigged for Georgie, both in format and, especially, in terms of expectations. The format is ideal for his “off- the- cuff” speaking style, which is to blather incoherently until he hits on a (possibly) relevant memorized talking point.

Paranoid Airline Conspiricy

2004-09-18T13:21:00.001-04:00

Well, the airlines and their stupid security programs seem to be back into the blogosphere. Ted Kennedy getting stuck on the “watch list” seems to have a great deal to do with it. It took him, with all his connections (Homeland Security Secretary Ridge returns his calls) three weeks to get things unscrambled — and the name that was causing the problem was “T Kennedy”. I'd have expected it to

Typewriters

2004-09-10T13:34:00.002-04:00

Well, it seems that the Blogosphere is all atwitter over the possiblity that the documents that CBS News got from Georgie Bush's commanding officer might be forged. Now, CBS News claims that they checked the docs out thoroughly with forgery experts and that they're authentic. Lambert, over at Corrente, has a good rundown on the hoohah, with links. The most notable thing about these memos is how

Nothin' to See Here, Move Along

2004-09-08T20:52:00.001-04:00

OK, I watched the “Sixty Minutes” segment where former Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes talked about pulling strings to get George W. Bush his slot in the “champagne Unit” of the Texas Air National Guard. Whoop de do. Anybody who was anywhere near draft age in the late 1960s could have told you that. Nobody got into the Air National Guard without having some strings pulled somewhere. Look

I Feel a Draft

2004-09-07T21:36:00.001-04:00

Well, come on all of you, big strong men, Uncle Sam needs your help again. Yeah, he's got himself in a terrible jam Way down yonder in Vietnam So put down your books and pick up a gun, Gonna have a whole lotta fun. — Joe McDonald I've said before that if Bush is reelected, we'll have a military draft by May of 2005. Now, every time this gets brought up, the arguments come rolling in.

Good Speech, But ...

2004-09-03T01:52:00.001-04:00

I just watched Kerry's "response" to the Republican convention. Not bad; I think he got a kick out of chewing out Cheney. One problem. No mention of terrorism. Could be a really big problem. Terrorism is the big Republican talking point — keep 'em as scared as possible. How many times did speakers at the RNC praise Bush's "heroism" in going to Ground Zero only three days after the attacks?

Last One Down

2004-09-02T16:09:00.001-04:00

Well, the last reason for voting for Bush (unless you're a corporate CEO or a hardcore Peronist) just evaporated. Economy in the toilet, unemployment up, deficit way up, army in Iraq, National Guard on the ropes, Afghanistan back to the warlords and the Taliban, scandals everywhere. "But we need Bush" went the line, "to keep this country secure. Bush will protect us from terrorism." Oops.

Omens

2004-09-01T19:32:00.001-04:00

So NYC's ex- mayor and demigod Rudy Giuliani says, on Monday The only two things I'm thinking of in the future right now are the Yankees getting themselves into the World Series and President Bush being re-elected. Tempting the gods is a bad idea. Poking them with a sharp stick is an even worse idea. Would these guys recognize an omen if it bit them on the arse?

"Girly Men"

2004-09-01T19:19:00.001-04:00

California's honorable governor's favorite phrase for people he doesn't like is "girly men". Odd phrase. Austrian? Nope. Bodybuilder. Check out the side effects for massive steriod use. Now, who do we know who has used massive doses of steriods? Who's the real "girly man" here?

Keep the Republicans Out of the Tunnels!

2004-09-01T19:02:00.001-04:00

Security is tight at Madison Square Garden. (At least, for anybody important) Access to the train stations under the Garden (both subway and Amtrak) is quite limited. How carefully are they checking the tunnels around the Garden? After all, isn't the whole point of having the convention in NYC to let the Republicans lay their eggs under the Garden? This is especially worrisome in that Al

Why Now?

2004-08-24T13:18:00.001-04:00

One thing puzzles me about the Swift Boat ads. Why now? By questioning Kerry's military service, the ads invite discussion of Bush's military service. And Bush's service is far less, um, impressive than Kerry's. Bush, near as anybody can tell, served honorably for four years as a fighter jock in the Texas Air National Guard. Unfortunately, he had enlisted for six years. Now, there are many

The Persistance of Vision

2004-08-11T23:52:00.001-04:00

According to Josh Marshall, the "Swift Boat" ads actually seem to be getting some traction with independent voters (assuming that there are any left.) The Kerry campaign doesn't seem to be doing a very good job of countering them. This is a bit surprising, seeing that this same group has trotted out the same charges against Kerry every time he's been up for re election. Now, it's important to

Lock Up the Silverware!

2004-08-05T11:26:00.001-04:00

When I lived in Arizona, both parties had a "stable" of big donors who would run in any race that was a sure loss. It was considered a perk -- run around the state, make speeches, get on TV, and so forth. Worked fine until one of the won. Well, Illinois has that problem now. Barack Obama looks like a shoo- in for Senator, and the Republicans can't find anybody to run against him. Jack Ryan

"We have turned a corner, and we are not turning back!"

2004-07-31T01:17:00.001-04:00

Georgie's new slogan. Sounds like a music cue to me: Prosperity is Just Around Which Corner? from 1932 [This song involves two people, the first is a loud-mouthed politician, the the other is supposed to be a man on the street.] Everywhere you go, everyone you meet, All they talk about is this depression. They blame it on the war, they blame it on Wall Street, On politics and this

Rattlesnakes

2004-07-27T15:23:00.001-04:00

Continuing with the RedState fluff piece, the "folksiness" secion (as opposed to the "character" section, which is actually most of the post) goes off into fearmongering: Out here we have rattlers, big ones, that if you approach will sink their venomous teeth into your leg without hesitation. Rattlesnakes are generally pretty harmless. Leave them alone and they'll leave you alone. Normally,

Top Down

2004-07-27T13:46:00.000-04:00

(To the tune of Streets of Laredo:) I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy, You see by my outfit I am a cowboy too. We see by our outfits that we are both cowboys. Get yourself a cowboy suit and be a cowboy too! — The Smothers Brothers TBogg dredges up this rather remarkable bit of fluff at Redstate.com. The thrust of this piece is character. Georgie Bush has it;

Request for Info

2004-07-24T12:29:00.000-04:00

Once Upon A Time, there was a columnist named Jack Anderson, who wrote a column called The Washington Merry-go- Round. He was a muckraker in the finest sense of the word -- while he dredged up a lot of stuff that the Powers that Be wanded to keep hidden at the bottom of the swamp, he was very careful in checking his facts. Now, sometime in the early 1970s, (or maybe very late 1960s) he wrote

White Socks

2004-07-22T18:42:00.000-04:00

Way back when, when I was just out of college and fighting with the local draft board, I lived in a sort of "off-campus dorm" arrangement. One fine day (actually, since this was Phoenix at the height of summer, "fine" probably isn't the right word), the elevator door opened and out came two guys. One was wearing an immaculate gray suit, and the other was a cartoon "hippie" -- ratty fatigues,

I'm Not Worried (too much) ...

2004-07-14T21:02:00.000-04:00

... about the election being postponed due to a terrorist attack. The idea has been floated out there, everybody knows about it, and everybody thinks it's a bad idea. However, I am seriously worried about a terrorist attack. Al Qaeda favors Bush, for the obvious reason that Bush's policies have been totally ineffectual against Al Qaeda, and Kerry might actually do something effective, like

In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

2004-07-03T19:56:00.000-04:00

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind

Old Joke

2004-05-28T13:36:00.000-04:00

Originally from somewhere in Eastern Europe, as the Soviet Union was crumbling: An elderly man has been waiting for hours outside the meat store when the clerk announces that there is no meat today He loses it. "I worked hard all my life. I fought in the Great Patriotic War. And now I can't even get a piece of meat? This whole system stinks!" A large, thuggish man steps up next to him.

Why I Love the Internet, part 247

2004-05-28T13:20:00.000-04:00

Searchable database of lies, half-truths, innuendos, etc, from the Bush administration. Someone with more time and energy than me could put together a drinking game from this. "If says "Saddam" and "Osama" in the same sentence, take a drink".

Pep Rally

2004-05-27T08:08:00.000-04:00

From the right side of the aisle, we've been hearing the cant of "support the war, support our President, dissent is treason" since this little war started. Now, this is more than just your basic "shut up and sit down" that you get when The Powers That Be don't want to hear something. The Administration is perfectly capable of simply ignoring views that they don't like without calling "treason"

The Fruits of Abu Ghraib?

2004-05-22T14:00:00.000-04:00

I'm as horrified as anybody else about the "abuse" reports and photos from Abu Gharib prison. Go take another look at those photos -- that's what a lost war looks like. What few remaining friends and allies we may have had in the area are gone. But we may have seen another result. We bombed a house in the middle of the night and killed 40 people. We say they're terrorists; they say it was

Passive

2004-04-15T20:20:00.000-04:00

One thing that struck me about the Bush administration officials' testimony was their incredible passivity. In amongst the bureaucratic arse-covering was an underlying attitude of "So what? It's somebody else's problem". Condi Rice even whined that there wasn't an agency that pulls together intelligence information from the FBI, CIA, NSA, NRO, DIA and all the other agencies that gather

The Parable of the Tree

2004-03-14T19:08:00.000-05:00

I have this fantasy. I'm walking in the woods, a good half day's hike from Civilization (empty beer cans) when I hear feeble cries for help. Following them, I find another hiker with his legs pinned under a fallen tree. He begs me for help - there's no way he will ever make it out on his own, and the chance of someone else coming by is nil. Now, in what is jokingly called the Real World, I

Opening Salvo

2003-11-12T19:43:00.000-05:00

I, and a lot of other people, have been yelling for a while about our shiny new computerized, touchscreen voting machines, and how they're totally unauditable and un-recountable. The vote is what the machine says it is. Period. No problem, say the people pushing the machines. They've all been tested and certified. Uhh, by who? To what standards? What's really in there? Sorry,

Overdue

2003-10-12T22:14:00.000-04:00

All the usual excuses. New job. Outrage overload. No time. In any case, no updates. One thing that is worth noting, however, is the new kid on the block in Baghdad. Riverbend is an acquaintance of Salam Pax. Pax has gotten a lot less active in the blogosphere, with his column in the Guardian and his book. Riverbend is a lot sharper and more critical of the Americans than Salam

Bottom Line

2003-09-07T23:24:00.000-04:00

So Iraq is going to cost us $87 billion. Well, if that's what it's gonna cost, we're stuck with it. We broke it, we bought it. We've had no luck getting the "Coalition of the Willing" to help us out, and asking the UN for help is just silly. Now, how do we present this? The Government and the Press just hit us with the number, but it doesn't mean anything. The Democrats had this problem

Friendly Hints

2003-08-16T14:01:00.000-04:00

Iraqi advice for Americans suffering from power blackouts. Hey, who should know more? Maybe there are followers of Saddam Hussein who are sabotaging their power stations. That's what happens here.

Bandwagon

2003-08-13T22:12:00.000-04:00

What the heck. Bandwagons are fun. At least for now, I've added the "Fair and Balanced" subhead to the blog title. Seems that Leftie humorist Al Franken is coming out with a book called Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Problem is, Fox News claims a trademark on the phrase "Fair & Balanced", so they're suing Franken and his publisher. This is,

Conservative vs. Conservative

2003-08-12T14:03:00.000-04:00

John Derbyshire over at National Review mentions the case of some Mexican immigrants who were burned out of their house by some people who don't like Mexicans very much. Derbyshire's point is that the reporting of the incident never mentions whether the victims are legal or illegal immigrants. To him, this is a vital point -- sort of whether they should be considered human or not. I give

Telemarketing, Again

2003-08-01T13:58:00.000-04:00

One of the raspberries that's been directed at the Republicans is that they have outsourced some of their telephone fundraising to India. Republican spokesman Kevin Sheridan issued a carefully worded denial: Any report that the Republican National Committee has hired HCL eServe -- the firm mentioned in the original Business Standard article -- is a case of bad reporting, bad business

Telemarketing Fraud

2003-07-31T21:14:00.000-04:00

Ah, the telemarketers are fuming and sputtering over the National Do Not Call List. It's expected. After all, the only reason that people sign up for the list is that they are so weak-willed that they are afraid that they'll buy everything that they're offered. At least according to the telemarketers. Couldn't be that people just don't like being pestered; everybody loves getting phone calls,

Place Your Bets!

2003-07-29T11:48:00.000-04:00

Much hoohah about DARPA's plan to try to predict terrorist activity by a "futures market". Supposedly, asking people to "bet" on things gives much more accurate results than simply asking them for an opinion. Why? It's an interesting question, and one I've noticed myself. Joe Blowhard will pontificate for hours, saying that, if we do "X", then "Y" is absolutely sure to happen. According

WMD, Again

2003-07-23T12:06:00.000-04:00

Well, still no Weapons of Mass Destruction. Looks like we started a war, ticked off the whole world, got ourselves stuck in a no-win occupation, for something that wasn't there, and hadn't been there for years. What happened? Well, Digby has a possible answer. It seems like all of our intelligence was based on data from 1998 or before. What happened in 1998?

Half a Secret

2003-07-18T10:47:00.000-04:00

Judicial Watch is an interesting organization. It was one of the "yap dogs" financed by Richard Mellon Scaife specifically to harass the Clinton administration. Scaife is probably the most influential political actor of the late 20th century. Never heard of him? He likes it that way ... Now, one of the hazards of putting together an idealistic- looking organization to do your dirty work is

I Feel So Much Better Now!

2003-07-16T11:32:00.000-04:00

The Department of Homeland Security has gotten a lot of flak for not doing anything visible except for their color coded "Threat Advisories" that seem to rise and fall between Lemon and Mango with no particular reason. Well, that's all over. They're on the job. They have a new seal. Now, as we all know, nobody can do any kind of a job without proper graphics. Most of the US productivity

Don't Be Silly

2003-07-14T11:44:00.000-04:00

Of course Georgie knew. Or, more accurately, the White House knew. Georgie believes what they tell him. It's interesting to see the squirming as the Weapons of Mass Destruction move farther and farther from Iraq, but anybody who has been paying attention knows what's going on. How do we know? Watch what the'they've been doing, and think about what their

In, Out, and Back Again

2003-07-05T22:02:00.000-04:00

A few days ago, the Army Times published an editorial that was quite critical of the Bush administration. This was unusual; it is Standard Operating Procedure for the Times (and the military generally) to stay away from politics. It's a myth, BTW, that the military is all hard-line Republican. The troops' political views pretty much mirror the communities that they come from. From what I've

Duel of Wits

2003-07-05T17:20:00.000-04:00

MAN IN BLACK All right: where is the poison? The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we both drink, and find out who is right and who is dead. VIZZINI But it's so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of you. Are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet, or his enemy's? He studies the Man In Black now. VIZZINI

Happy Fourth!

2003-07-04T13:49:00.000-04:00

Happy fourth! Looks like it's going to be a nice day; the sun is out (I got really tired of rain, there). Herewith some random thoughts, apropos of nothing in particular. Pre-9/11, the only people who put up flags anytime but the Fourth or on Flag Day (remember that?) were the "ultra-patriot" right-wing types. Not nice people, in general. Now, it's everybody. When I was in elementary

Comments

2003-07-02T18:09:00.000-04:00

What the heck! Give 'em a try. Let's see what wanders in. I'm using HaloScan even though it's rude, crude, and nasty. In particular, I find the lack of a "preview" function to be seriously obnoxious. I tried Enetation first, but it flat-out doesn't work. It spews errors like something has crashed. Hey, the're free. Ya get what ya pay for. (Not really true. But you certainly don't get

No Such Agency, Redux

2003-06-30T19:39:00.000-04:00

Many years ago, when I first started tangling with the wonderful world of the Spooks, the story was that Government information operators would not give out the phone number of the National Security Agency (NSA). "NSA", they would (supposedly) say, "is a special code for No Such Agency. It's a code used when somebody tries to reach an agency that doesn't exist." Also, people who worked at NSA

Damage Control

2003-06-18T14:03:00.000-04:00

Finally got around to reading Monday's WaPo piece on PFC Jessica Lynch. Phrase that came to mind was "Damage Control City!" The Post has gotten a lot of mileage out of the Lynch story, starting with a really lurid story of Lynch's capture and rescue. Unfortunately, it didn't happen that way. So now the Post has to explain themselves. Basically, the story now is that the 507th had a truck

More on David Nelson

2003-06-16T22:30:00.000-04:00

In the LA Daily News. I wrote about this a while back, and it wasn't new even then. Frankly, this kind of crap is easy to fix. Just be more definite about who you're looking for, and why. Put in a simple appeals process. The only reason not to do it is either 1) nobody cares or 2) the Powers that Be are doing it deliberately to emphasize their power over us. Neither is encouraging. I

Iraqi Sitcom

2003-06-15T23:19:00.000-04:00

(I suspect that this routine actually predates sitcoms. Plautus?) You've seen it a million times. Lucy does something really, really stupid, like answering an ad to Make Big Bucks by raising alligators. She wants to keep Ricky from finding out about the three dozen baby alligators in the kitchen, so she concocts all sorts of elaborate schemes to keep him out of the kitchen. She enlists

Referral

2003-06-14T10:50:00.000-04:00

One of the joys of SiteMeter (the little icon at the bottom of the page) is that it lists "referrers" -- the page that a reader was on when he or she (or it; there are robots out there, too, you know) was on before coming here. In particular, if somebody comes to this site from a search engine, the referrer will contain the search terms that were used to find the page. Some of them can get

2003-06-13T08:31:00.000-04:00

Angry, Too Normally, I hate "me, too" posts, but Emma at Late Night Thoughts has one that I've just gotta pile on. The anger has outgrown the misdeeds of the administration, and the greed of big corporations, and the vacuousness of the media, and even the intransigence of people who would rather die than compromise. I'm angry in bigger yet more personal ways. I have a subterranean river

2003-06-08T01:50:00.000-04:00

Crocodile Tears I'm getting really sick of this. InstaPundit just put up yet another in his endless series of posts, to the effect of "It was OK for Bush to lie about Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction because we needed an excuse to invade Iraq because Saddam is Not A Nice Man". No. Right wingers don't care squat about Human Rights. Never have, don't now. All you ever hear from the

2003-06-05T19:10:00.000-04:00

Investing While Democrat Nice little tidbit on the Martha Stewart indictment here. Turns out that she's a major Democratic campaign contributor. Explains why the SEC is suddenly so hot and bothered to throw her in jail for such a small infraction ($45,000, if I remember correctly). With "biggies" like Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling (Enron) and Bernie Ebbers (WorldCom) still running around free

2003-06-05T11:11:00.000-04:00

Somebody Gets It At last. New Jersey Congressman Rush Holt introduced a bill to require that new voting machines produce an auditable, recountable paper trail. You'd think that this would be wildly noncontroversial. You'd be wrong. The folks making the "recount-proof" voting machines have very strong political connections. Republican connections. "Trust us" they say. "We have

2003-05-23T19:23:00.000-04:00

Copycat Kinky Friedman's response to the Dixie Chicks. WARNING: Do not click immediately after eating. Not suitable for children or invalids. Cover all fishbowls. May be hazardous to small animals. Do not use near open flame. Do not operate machinery after clicking. Coulda been worse. I'd head that Michael Moore was threatening to do this if the recall campaign got serious. (via

2003-05-19T16:38:00.000-04:00

"David Nelson, You Have A Call from Mr. bin Laden ..." I wrote about this a while back. We have a "no fly" list; people who aren't allowed on airplanes for any reason. We also have a much longer list of people who are allowed to fly only after an absurd amount of hassle. Supposedly, this is "for security reasons", but nobody will say who's on the list or why. There's no way to get off of

2003-05-16T10:23:00.000-04:00

Good Theater The rescue of PFC Jessica Lynch from a hospital in Nassiriya was definitely the cinematic high point of the war in Iraq. It had all the elements of a Hollywood war action movie - troops moving in under heavy fire to rescue a comrade who had gone down fighting, a brave native risking his life to gather intelligence information. Good stuff. According to the Guardian, it had

2003-05-15T12:53:00.000-04:00

So What Are They Doing? You can do anything with a bayonet except sit on it.-- Talleyrand Let's see. We didn't stop the looting of the Baghdad Archaelogical Museum or the National Library. Yeah, the damage seems to be a lot less than we thought. Excellent news, but still no excuse.. We didn't protect hospitals, banks, or Government or Ba'ath Party records. We didn't secure known

2003-05-11T14:09:00.000-04:00

Stuff I Read Note the new "Stuff I Read" block over on the right, replacing the "war info" links. The original Useless Web Pages were inspired by some guy posting a listing of his CD collection as a Web page. This seems to be the classic "Who cares?" item. My "Stuff" list is probably in this category, but what the heck, it's my blog. I read 'em, but they're not in the category of "things

2003-05-11T10:37:00.000-04:00

Looking in the Right Place Seems like we've been looking in the wrong place for Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction. Guys, this is the Twenty First Century. Internet Era. Global Economy. Get with it! Digging around through caves is absolutely nineteenth century. Billmon has the scoop. Note that Billmon's Whiskey Bar has been added to the list over on

2003-05-09T16:15:00.000-04:00

President AWOL; Some Background Orcinus has a summary of the hoohah over Georgie Bush's military record. It's good. Go read it. Basically, Georgie's photo op on the Abraham Lincoln dredged up the story of his military service, and this time the story seems to have gotten enough legs for the Republican propaganda machine to have taken a bit of notice. The Ornicus post has pointers to most

2003-05-09T10:39:00.000-04:00

Another Handy Household Item To go with your household explosives. Build your own golem. This is a project that could have some real use -- a golem sounds to be a lot more tractible, and probably less destructive, than the usual run of illegal or semi-legal "help" that you can hire normally. Unfortunately, it seems to work only for Jews of the highest level of spiritual purity and

2003-05-07T14:10:00.000-04:00

Pax is Back! Salam Pax has returned! Before the Iraq war started, he was the only one posting from Baghdad who wasn't "embedded", didn't have a "minder", wasn't connected with a news organization, didn't seem to have a political agenda, and who speaks Arabic. Welcome back! There's been speculation (mostly from Right Blogistan) that Pax is the creature of somebody's imagination. There

What's Your Household Like?

2003-05-05T00:59:00.000-04:00

I like to visit News of the Weird occasionally to remind myself that sometimes weird is merely weird. However, this item (which I'd seen before) caught my eye (so to speak): A 17-year-old boy lost sight in both eyes in a "potato gun" accident in Denton, Texas, in April. The "gun" (a length of pipe in which a household explosive is ignited, propelling a potato out the other end, although in

2003-05-01T12:22:00.000-04:00

Oceania Has Always Been At War with Eastasia One of the odder aspect of the whole Iraq mess is the France (and general Europe) bashing that the right wing is throwing around. Yeah, France, Germany, and Russia didn't give us everything we asked for in the UN. So? Ce la vie. The Administration has played this as the Big Three being Eeeeevil; this plays well in our lapdog media, but has been

2003-04-29T22:32:00.000-04:00

Santorum. Yawn. The bizarre AP interview with Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum seems to have a lot of people puzzled. Just Another Republican Bigot Eruption? Signs of insanity? Nope. Catholic doctrine. Santorum is nothing more or less than a good, conscientious, practicing Catholic. Santorum's remarks, bizarre as they may seem, are simply a statement of the doctrine referenced above,

2003-04-29T00:17:00.000-04:00

More on the Laws (ha!) of Probability Somebody looked up the domain jessicalynch.org. The interesting number is: Domain Name:JESSICALYNCH.ORG Created On:17-Mar-2003 19:57:52 UTC The date is five days before she was captured. If folks had played this right, we could have had something as good as NASA's "fake" moon landing. Unfortunately, nasty old facts

Small Flashes

Conservatism ...

All You Need to Know About Sarah Palin

Definitions

"The Original Maverick"

You Know Your Campaign Is In Trouble ...

Witness

Speaking of Suckers ...

Self Promoter

Page 3

Household Explosives, Redux

The World's Dirtiest Joke

New Template!!

Alternate Universe

"Pro-Life"? Bunk.

There's a Word ...

Time to Drop Anchor

The Center

"Them" and "Us"

The War is Over

So What *Is* a Liberal, Anyway?

Clinical Insanity

"Call Us Nutty"

I Feel a Draft

Reductio ad Absurdum

Question for Alan Keyes

Gannon/Guckert

Bankrupt!

The Literal Meaning of Genesis

Satanism is Alive and Well

Odd Spam

"So What's So Bad ..."

Woof!

As We Dodge Another Bullet ...

Quote of the Day

The Congressional Evaluation Project

“Winning” the Debates

Paranoid Airline Conspiricy

Typewriters

Nothin' to See Here, Move Along

I Feel a Draft

Good Speech, But ...

Last One Down

Omens

"Girly Men"

Keep the Republicans Out of the Tunnels!

Why Now?

The Persistance of Vision

Lock Up the Silverware!

"We have turned a corner, and we are not turning back!"

Rattlesnakes

Top Down

Request for Info

White Socks

I'm Not Worried (too much) ...

In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

Old Joke

Why I Love the Internet, part 247

Pep Rally

The Fruits of Abu Ghraib?

Passive

The Parable of the Tree

Opening Salvo

Overdue

Bottom Line

Friendly Hints

Bandwagon

Conservative vs. Conservative

Telemarketing, Again

Telemarketing Fraud

Place Your Bets!

WMD, Again

Half a Secret

I Feel So Much Better Now!

Don't Be Silly

In, Out, and Back Again

Duel of Wits

Happy Fourth!

Comments

No Such Agency, Redux

So What Is a Liberal, Anyway?