The New Road

Bam, bam, bam

The Democrats come out with a five point strategy to secure the nation. Here is one of the parts I find very compelling:

To Defeat Terrorists and Stop the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction, we will:

Eliminate Osama Bin Laden, destroy terrorist networks like al Qaeda, finish the job in Afghanistan, and end the threat posed by the Taliban.

Bam, bam, bam. Love it.

Let's ditch the losers who after six years haven't done shit to secure this country, and who instead have gotten us into another Vietnam that has only served to weaken our security and our standing in the world.

The Server Side

Geek post alert! For those not interested in geek speak try this fun site. 

It ocurred to me tonight that "The Server Side", which is a premiere site for J2EE stuff, and trying to do the .NET thing, is now really poorly named. It used to be that "the server side" was the ticket to the big bucks. Not so much now.

Cobra II

I finished Cobra II last night. If you haven't heard Cobra II is a book that covers the entire history of Operation Iraqi Freedom from it's operational mandate, two days after 9/11 to several months after the "end of major combat operations". I found the book very even handed. The vast majority of the book tracks the movement and actions of particular units and has more of a History Channel feel.

Of specific interest to me were the sections that covered the planning, and the final few chapters and the Epilogue, which covered the Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer, and some lessons learned from the mistakes made.

I found certain thematic elements in the book very interesting. First the distrust of the generals associated with the Clinton era and the techniques used in the successful Bosnia campaign. Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney have a strong ideological belief that Bosnia was handled poorly and that we should have useda much smaller force for a much briefer period. That's something that they pushed and pushed onto Franks and his staff in preparation for Iraq and Afghanistan and the results are clear. It's something that continues until today. This notion that they 'listen to the generals on the ground' couldn't be further from the truth. From the outset they pushed back against every request for new troops.

Another interesting thing that I learned was that we have been fighting the insurgency from the first day of the ground campaign. At one point during the push to Baghdad our ground commanders went back to the generals and said that we aren't fighting army regulars but a trained guerilla force with a different set of tactic. The response was to avoid the problem and push to Baghdad, which merely delayed the inevitable. Saddam had set up this Fedyeen force because he didn't trust the loyalty of his regular army and Republican Guard troops.

When it came to the aftermath of the war the concensus is that we had an opportuniy for three weeks after the fall of Baghdad to really hold the country together but that we squandered it. In particular Bremer's de-baathification drive and his dissolution of the army (along with associated payments for doing nothing) that created the unrest and eventually added the bulk of the force that we now see as the insurgency.

This is a great read. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though I found some of the battle scenes a little hard to follow.  

FOX News on the sex tip, yo

FOX New's milkshake brings all the boys to the yard! Damn Right! It's better than CNN's. Yo.

This Daily Show sendup of FOX New's coverage of a serial killer in South Florida shows the incredible juxtaposition of terrifying news and extensive scenes of semi-naked college age beach babes. It's jaw dropping to watch, and not just for the attractions in the center of the screen.

What I find so amusing about right wingers, and right wing outlets, like FOX, is how hypocritical they are about sex. We are supposed to believe that the solid South is this center of Christian decency and proper behavior, when the reality is much more colorful. Who invented the Daisy Duke? The wet t-shirt contest? Hooters? And while not being the predominant region for adult video sales, the south does consume quite a bit of porn. 

Debra Maggart wins "bigot of the day"

Debra Maggart, state representative from Tennessee, wins my coveted "bigot of the day" award by asserting that homosexual couples adopt kids so that they can molest them.

"We also have seen evidence that homosexual couples prey on young males and have, in some instances, adopted them in order to have unfretted access to subject them to a life of molestation and sexual abuse," she said.

Her research cites "Focus on the Family". 

Illegals

I didn't think much abou the use of the term illegals until recently. It's become clear that 2004 was the year of gay-bashing for the Republican party and 2006 will be the year of illegal immigrant bashing. What worries me about the term, illegals, is that it's deliberately designed to de-humanize. To remove the human element from the equation. As if these wonderful people, who clean our clothes, wash our restaurant dishes, cook our meals, clean our houses, cut our lawns, pick our food, etc. etc. are not just trying to make a living to support their families.

What seems lost to people who use the term illegals is that these people have any positive impact on society. You can see the fiscal conservatives are really worried about this bashing because illegal immigrants make up a crucial component of our workforce. Without these people local produce would be prohibitively expensive, and a lunch out would be a luxury, not to mention a dinner out.

But that's just the economic side of it. My real worry is that this could turn violent. As hatred toward gays became more mainstream, so did violence against gays. As hatred and de-humanization turns towards illegal immigrants, so will violence towards them. What's worse is that the person to take all of the impact of an attack would be immigrant, not only would they be assualted, they would also be deported.

I've read some postings about illegals. What strikes me is how the hatred is so petty. It's about how everyone should talk English cause that's the official language (it isn't.) Or that illegals have these weird customs and holidays. As if citizenship requires relinquishing of cultural identity. Why is it so easy for people to fall into a fear and a hatred of the unknown? Why can't we take as a base that everyone is just trying to live, love and get along, instead of letting paranoia drive use to false belief in the worst in people.

Jack Johnson

I gotta say, Jack Johnson is getting a lot of airplay with the Curious George soundtrack and it's really grating on my nerves. The songs are like crushed flavorless pablum. They couldn't be more generic and inoffensive. I wouldn't mind it so much if it were just on the light rock stations, but it's on all of the rock stations. Ugh.

Caught the cold

I finally caught the cold that has been going around. Megan was very concerned this morning. She gave me a pretend bandaid to put on my nose to kill the bugs that cause my cold. And she balled up some toilet paper and patted it on my nose, arms and face to kill more bugs. Now she is at school where she told Lori that she is going to make something that will make me feel better. That is just super cool. She is such a great kid.

Cute pictures from the weekend

Another signing statement

Bush decided that the new provisions in the Patriot Act that provided oversight on the Executive branch don't apply to him:

After the bill-signing ceremony, the White House discreetly issued a ''signing statement," an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law. In the statement, Bush said he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act's powers were being used and that, despite the law's requirements, he could withhold the information if he decided that disclosure would ''impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties."

 Nice. So much for the Republicans doing anything to hold themselves in check.

Speaking of Republicans going wild. Turns out that Katherine Harris, who said that she would spend her $10M inheritance as a widow's mite on her Congressional run, is actually not going to spend the inheritance, or spend "everyting I have" on the race. So much for the whole martyr thing.

Interesting Iraq numbers

130,000 troops sounds like such a big number. It's tough to fathom numbers that big. So let me put some perspective on it. Pro Player Stadium in Miami holds 75,000 people. So all of our troops would fit into less than two Pro Player Stadiums. Supposedly that is the number of troops to secure Iraq. But does that make any sense? Iraq is about twice the size of Texas, and it has about 4 million more people than Texas.

Now one has to assume that when they say troops that includes maintenance people, logisitics folks (e.g. Jessica Lynch), and others whose primary purpose is not to hold a gun and shoot it at people. So let's be optomistic and say that half of the troops there are gun-toting soldiers. That's about 65,000.

Another interesting Texas number is 76,000. That's the number of full-time peace officers employed by Texas state and local law enforcement. As far as I know there is no war raging in Texas. So how can we need less gun-toting soldiers in Iraq than we have police in Texas? Especially given that Iraq is twice the size and has more population?

The answer is that you can't. 130,000 soldiers can't possibly secure Iraq. You need a lot more. Take Afghanistan, we supposedly hold secured that country with 18,000 soldiers. But only one in every six people in that country were in an urban setting. It took over 300,000 to secure Bosnia where fully one half lived in urban settings. What do you think the number should be in Iraq where three in four live in an urban setting?

Yeah, clearly 130,000 is far fewer than we need. And it's that type of poor planning and mis-judgement that has hurt us all along. What Bush needs to do is take an honest look at Iraq and either send in the 600,000 troops required to settle and secure the country, or get all of our troops out of there. As it is now we are just playing a war of attrition  while watching the fuse burn on a civil war that we will be right in the middle of. 

Montana Meth Ads

The Montana Meth Project is doing some fantastic work fighting the meth epidemic. The ads in particular are very effective. They are meant to scare, disturb and turn kids away from using meth. And from I can see the certainly would do the trick for me.

Drawing Restraint 9

I have absolutely no clue what Drawing Restraint 9 is about. Though I think Mel would like it. If you attempt to watch the trailer I recommend keeping a hand on the volume control. The music if you want to call it that is Bjork, and that can only mean sound that more closely resembles line noise from a modem than music.

Bush against the media

The new idea coming out of the Bush administration appears to be this; we have no plan for the war, but we are sick of taking heat for our own incompetence, so we are going to start slamming the media. And it's coming out of every Republican orifice. The Fox News channel, instead of actually going to Iraq to get this supposed good news, is spending it's time slamming on the other news networks for showing the bombings and killings. Even though Fox News itself shows images of death and destruction in Iraq.

The whole notion that the administration can't get the word out about the good things is insane. They have Scott McClellan and his whole media system which gives him lots of time in front of cameras. And they have the White House web site. You would think that they would at least post some positive news articles there so that the President during his stumping could point them to his site. But no, there are only talking points and vague strategy positions. And they have the whole Republican email and web sytem to get the message out. And they have Fox News, which is even more than usual lately, a clear extension of the Republican media machine.

Back to Occam's Razor one more time. The simple answer to all this is that there is very little good news to go around. This war has been a mess from the get-go and it's only gotten worse over time. Our troops are staying inside their bases. The reconstruction money has all been pulled. There is a sectarian civil war in progress and a political solution from the Iraqis appears to be far off.

This attacking the media thing didn't work for Nixon. I'm not sure why Bush thinks it will work for him. In fact, this whole attacking the media thing worries me because it means that this is what Bush has. He doesn't have a clue about how to fix it, so now it's just trying to get people to shut up and take it. And we can't win that way.

BTW, I'm reading Cobra II at the moment. That's the book that talks about what really happened in the prelude to the war and during the invasion. Some amazing stuff in that book. This war was a complete clusterf**k and Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, Gingrich (yep) and Franks are all seriously at fault. Rumsfeld and Franks in particular were completely incompetent. 

Vegas - Smoke City

One thing that I won't miss about Vegas. Actually, there isn't anything I'll miss about Vegas. But one things I really won't miss is the smoke. These people smoke like, well, not like fish, because fish don't smoke, but something that smoke a lot, a real fucking lot. I've had no end of problems with my breathing and my allergies since the moment I got off the plane. And my allergies have been great lately.

I wish more states put in smoking bans like California. In California you can go to bars and restaurants and not come out smelling like a tobacco factory.

Anywho, I was just interviewed by some Japanese magazine. Cool. 

Life in Las Vegas

I was not going to mention that I was out of town until I was back, but Lori let the cat out of the bag. I'm at the MIX06 conference in Vegas. It's a big Microsoft shindig where they are presenting all of their new technologies (which are very impressive). The conference is billed as a conversation, a la Foo Camp, but it's more of a traditional show and tell, and I'm sure that's fine with most of the attendees. There is a bunch of open source types here and my guess is that the strategy here is to play open source friendly to try and get the hacker types on board. The 500lb gorilla in the room is that Microsoft's new technologies are really out to replace HTML, and their technologies aren't open standards, so I think geeks will walk away being impressed and potentially scared, but probably not motivated to port their stuff to the Microsoft technologies tomorrow.

Vegas is impressive as usual. It's huge and it makes me feel very small. I always find myself wondering when to tip and how much. We did manage to get off strip for dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant last night and that was good. It wasn't the best I've had, but it was a refreshing change from the mass market food we had been eating.

Attacking the straw man

CBS news has an article that finally shines some light on Bush's use of the straw man in his rhetoric. An example would be something like this; "There are some who say we shouldn't be wire tapping Al Qaeda, I strongly disagree." Really? Some say that? Really? Who? Nobody is saying that we shouldn't tap Al Qaeda. People are saying that tapping Al Qaeda is great. Just get a warrant. In fact, FISA makes it very easy to get a legal warrant. People are saying that warrantless wire tapping of anyone the government chooses to call a terrorist, without any tracking or oversight, is bad. But hey, Bush is never forced to say who 'some people' is. And it's not just Bush. Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, they all do it. They even do it in the news stories on Fox News.

Keep your knees loose

Every night Keith Olbermann ends his Countdown show with the signoff; "Keep your knees loose." Now, I'm sure thre are lots of conotations for this, but in the literal it's excellent advice. A couple of days ago I threw out my left knee doing some Tae Bo. Compounding that I have been doing a lot more walking than usual recently. I've been noticing that I only experience pain on it when my knees are locked. So I unlock them and immediately the ache goes away. Of course, Advil helps too. But, hey, keep your knees loose.

Bulldog Brit

Brit Hume has now given up all pretense of impartiality when it comes to anything Bush. In this clip he comes off as a slobbering attack dog firing out lies to defend his God/King in machine gun style. Proving onces again that while Republicans talk about the unhinged left it's themselves who go in for the nasty barking insanity. If they can't convince you they will yell at you, and if that doesn't work, well... there is a reason that they are the second amendment party. Ann Coulter is not a comedian and her book about attacking Democrats with baseball bats is not a joke.

What's going on in Iraq Pt. I - Samarra

I'm more worried about Iraq than usual. Things are trending very badly. The most recent case in point was our Samarra attack, if you can even call it that, on a supposed insurgent stronghold in central Iraq. The military called this Operation Swarm and hyped it as the biggest offensive since the mission accomplished speech. But you know what happened? We threw an attack and nobody showed up. No insurgents. No nothing. The most interesting thing that happened was a local woman had great bread that the soldiers snacked on. Seriously. We threw a war and nobody showed up!

At least, that's what I think happened. Nobody in the media seems to really know for sure. Jim Lehrer reported one casualty, while CNN now reports no casualties and mimics some previous reports about almost nothing happening. It's also unclear how long this operation took or is taking. It's possible that it's done. It's possible that it's ongoing but largely over. And it's possible that it's still going strong. Let's assume it's largely over and that CNN's story this morning is a reasonable picture of what took place.

Now you may be thinking to yourself. Hey, that's great. No blood. No killing. Not a shot in anger. Well, if you are the pacifist type you may think that. But let me tell you, sending out a major force to a place where we were thinking we would find an insurgent stronghold is a serious military intelligence blunder. Particularly when we are supposed to own that land, and have bases there. You know, entrenched with the locals. Hearts and minds and all that.

Well, turns out the hearts and minds stuff not much. In fact, from what I have seen (and I actually watch the Iraq conflict as close as I can) it looks like our strategy of late has been driven by a politically based want to reduce casualties. How do you reduce casualties in an occupation? You don't leave your base. Casualties happen on patrols, casualties happen on supply runs. If you don't leave the megabases, like camp Anoconda, a base so huge it's actually a reasonably sized American town, you don't get casualties. It's exactly like Vietnam all over again.

The problem with staying in your bases is that you don't get access to the locals who want to help you. So your intelligence goes to hell. And thus you end up flying lots of troops into a battle where no enemy is to be found. Oops.

And I'm not even sure if Bush knows that this is happening. My guess is that he first ordered a reduction is casualties. Now the casualty rate is down, but he probably doesn't understand why. Because recently he has asked that we own 75% of Iraq by the end of the year. Yes friends, we actually don't control most of Iraq. It's pretty clear to me that anyone who brings Bush bad news has his ass handed to him. So now the yes-men generals who holed the troops up in bases are in a pinch. They need to attack, but they can't do that while keeping the casualty count low. And since it's unlikely that Bush's management style will change, it's likely that there will be more turnover and distancing in the general staff, more bunker mentality, and more of a war of attrition against 130,000 of our troops in a country of 27 million.

There is one bright spot though; General Pace. God I love that guy. He really sticks it to Rumsfeld and Bush. Bush talks about how Iran is behind the IEDs. The press asks Pace about it and Pace gives a sideways glance over at Rumsfeld, and says there is no proof of that. Sweet. Go Pace! The only honest man in this whole fucking fiasco.

Awesome VW ad

I absolutely love this VW ad. It's perfect in every... single... way.

Wait! Shit! It's gets better. Here is another one that is just as good.

Not just your phone

The government is now claiming that it has the power to direct physical searchs without a warrant under the same legal justification that they use for warrantless wiretaps. This according to US News & World Report. This is, of course, an assualt on the very plainly stated principles of the fourth amendment.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This is crazy as hell, and should be drop kicking Bush out the door of the White House. But Fox news will spin and spin, and the pundits will fill the airwaves with drivel. And the sheep will fall into line and tell us about how much safer they feel when federal investigators rummage through their houses.

On a related note, there has been a lot of discussion about what exactly the word terrorist means to this administration. It appears to include all anti-war protestors, any quakers, or anyone who holds an opinion contrary to the administration. Because, as you know, this administration is all about protecting our security, so if you aren't with them on their methods, then you are harming our national security through your traitorous ways and you become the enemy. 

Fort Funston

I took Megan and Oso to Fort Funston this morning. It was the first time that Megan was old enough to enjoy this dog park on the ocean just south of San Francisco.

 

 

Oso had almost too good of a time. He was jumping around like a madman and at one point ripped my shirt. A really nice polo that I shouldn't have worn. Megan told me later not to worry because she would fix it with sticky tape.

 

 

 

Megan had a ball as well. Though once the water got into her boots she got very cranky. I picked her up, took her back to the car and changed her outfit and almost immediately her mood improved. She got a big smile on her face, gave me a big hug and told me she loved me. Those are the moments that make it all worth it.

Katherine Harris - Liar

Sure she is batshit crazy, but somehow Katherine Harris' vow to spend all of her $10M inheritance in her futile
race to bring her unique insanity to the floor of the Senate was very compelling. I mean, come on, her Dad dies, leaves her with a bundle, and she is willing to blow it all on a horse race. You gotta give her some tickies for balls. Sure, she doesn't have any, but hey.

Oh, but, wait a second. Turns out that she is saying that she will use it at the end of the race if necessary. Well, that's still impressive, if not as compelling as it once was.

But wait again! Turns out she actually had somewhere between $8M-$38M to her name before her Dad gave her the money. So the whole, sad, stuttering display about her spending all of her money was... a... bald... faced... lie.

Do these people have no shame? None at all? I've heard a lot of bullshit sob stories in my life but this one takes the cake. What is it Pat Robertson said? These people would sodomize their own mothers. Oh, wait, he was talking about Hollywood actors. Boy, these people color all the shades of batshit crazy.

Good luck SSHB! Hope you get what's coming to you.

Parenting Christian style

Clearly this type of parenting behavior is not indicative of all Christians. But these people use the bible to justify their actions, and have the church as the underpinnings of their adoption agency. (Which makes me wonder if they now get government money, my fucking money, to spew their recipes for child abuse.)

The Pearls' advice from their Web site: A swift whack with the plastic tubing would sting but not bruise. Give 10 licks at a time, more if the child resists. Be careful about using it in front of others -- even at church; nosy neighbors might call social workers. Save hands for nurturing, not disciplining. Heed the warning, taken from Proverbs in the Old Testament, that sparing the rod will spoil the child.

...

The Pearls offer shopping advice on their Web site, www.nogreaterjoy.org: "You can buy them for under $1.00 at Home Depot or any hardware store. They come cheaper by the dozen and can be widely distributed in every room and vehicle. Just the high profile of their accessibility will keep the kids in line."

But come on, half inch PVC? As one reader wrote in, that's not spanking, that's straight up abuse. I've worked with 1/2 and 3/4 PVC. The half inch is whippy and would leave nasty welts in if you used schedule 40.

This story is just too sad. Having two loving mommies or daddies would be worse than this? Worse than death? I don't think so.

Web programming inverted

If you haven't noticed there is a new Internet boom that is just starting to show it's first effects. People in the industry are calling it Web 2.0 and banner sites include YouTube, Flikr, Google Maps, gmail, digg, and a bunch of others. It's a two pronged thing, first there is a revolution going on in social software. Poeple are using the web as a way to collaborate on a very informal way.

The other prong is technical, the newer browsers, like Firefox, are designed to be dynamic. Browsers can now request more data from the server without having to navigate the user to another page. So you can explore your web material, like emails, without having to deal with lots of flicker and page loads. This technology has been dubbed Ajax, and it's a combination of HTML, CSS and Javascript.

I've been through both of the booms. During the first boom the 'back-end guys' who wrote the database code, and the business logic, were the kings of the road. In fact, the last thing someone wanted to be labeled was a 'front-end guy' because it meant a cut in salary and having to deal with that silly browser stuff. Of course, I love the 'front-end' stuff and I have since I got into the game.

Now with the second boom the browser is in the forefront. And the engineers who spent a lot of time learning how to code Javascript, DHTML and CSS well are the kings of the road. In fact what's worse for the back-end guys is that the nature of programming for the browser, dynamic evaluation, prototypes, slots based languages, style selectors, are all a foreign mumbo-jumbo. It bears little resemblence to the Java that they learned in college, regardless of the unforunate naming 'Javascript'.

Another exciting trend is the comeback of dynamic languages on the server side, particularly the growing excitement around Ruby on Rails. These dynamic frameworks leave dinosaurs like J2EE in the dust. Actually, J2EE was always in the dust. The only change is that more engineers are starting to look for alternative frameworks in order to be productive.

Hey, wait a second, I should be blogging this over on the O'Reilly blog... Anyway, I find all this inversion fun because my core skill set is back on top again. Woo hoo!

V for Vendetta

I saw V for Vendetta last night. It was fantastic. The acting, particularly on the part of Portman, was excellent. And the violence wasn't over the top and integrated well into the story. I can see how some people had trouble with the pacing, but I think it's fine for a thought film like this one. I was a little worried in the initial Hugo Weaving scene because the mask really limits my ability to connect with his character. And that first scene has a tone of dialogue for V, that comes off a little stiff.

The political bent is there in spades. It's the whole point of the movie! It doesn't take a rocket scientist to connect everything on screen to the Bush administration. And the critique is right on target. I read a review by conservative Republican on the film and he said that he enjoyed it but couldn't see any connections. That's because you can't understand facism with bumper sticker sized slogans. "Bush detained 40,000 muslims without charge or access to legal representation after 9/11. Many are still there. But you don't care because you aren't muslim. Your acceptance means that you could be next." doesn't fit on a bumper sticker.

DIY Abortion

Molly Saves the Day has posted an entry on how to perform an abortion. This is in direct response to the South Dakota law banning all abortions. Myself, I skipped the actual posted and went straight to the comments. In the beginning these were generally positive. Then there was a slide to the negative, countered by a positive backlash and at the end there is a mix.

The positive responses run generally this way; It's a bad thing to do, but it's going to be done. This information isn't very good. It's really sad that we need this.

The negatives. generally posted anonymously, run like this; Girls shouldn't be sluts. Women who are raped weren't being abstinent. This is why women shouldn't be taught to write. etc.

What I find most interesting about this is how different the response is today to the abortion ban then it would have been 50 years ago. If Roe were passed, then immediately overturned, you would never be able to get information like this. And I think it's that evolution of information that will upset so many pro-lifers.

Why? Because at the heart of all of this is the want to turn back the clock. It was Bill Napoli who set all this off. And while most people point to his statements on exceptions to his ban, I think the statements that followed those were far more enlightening:

As Napoli further explains, the ideal is getting back to the "Wild West" shot-gun weddings of his childhood, where no couple engaged in premarital sex without "the whole darn neighborhood" forcing them into wedlock. "You just didn't allow that sort of thing" -- that would be extra-marital sex going unpunished by the community -- "to happen...And I happen to believe that can happen again. I don't think we're so far beyond that that we can't go back to that." We're a little closer already this week.

This isn't about the pain of the fetus. This isn't about the trimesters. This is about undoing fifty years of progress in feminism that has occured since Roe v. Wade. These conservatives have two points in time that they look to and say; This is where America went wrong. The first is the "New Deal". Fiscal conservatives believe this is where we became a communist welfare state where everyone lives on handouts. The second sheer point was 'Roe v. Wade'. For social conservatives that's the wellspring from which all our ills rise; divorce, gay marriage, promiscuous sex, women with jobs, drug use, rock and roll, etc. etc.

As Napoli states matter of factly, they want to roll back the clock. In their fantasy land, the day that abortions are overturned, men will be empowered and women will go back to being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.

It's hokum, there is no going back. There never was a fantasy land in the 50s. And forcing women into back alley abortions isn't going to create a Disney-esque fantasy land. Kids aren't going to stop having sex. Men aren't going to stop raping women.

Getting back to the original point of this post, the DIY abortion article, this is how today's world responds to people like Napoli trying to restrict it. The world flows around him like water around a rock.

Conservatives need to take off the goggles that make the world look like Leave It To Beaver and come back to the reality based community. Government cannot mandate social norms. And having a government dominated by bozos who live in this fantasy land and make incompetent decisions because of it is killing this country.

Oh, yeah, I forgot one last thing. A number of negative posters mentioned that people should have used birth control. But if the conservatives get their way on abortion they will ban birth control as well. Actually they are trying to do both things at the same time. Again. It's all about the control. If you ban birth control and you ban abortions, I guess we won't have sex... Right... Right???

Katherine Harris update

Katherine Harris is staying in her Senate race where she is light years behind. Now she is sinking her own personal fortune into it. Awesome! This is like finding out that the slow motion train reck I've been watching for months just got a couple more miles of track. Choo choo!!

Tuna and powdered milk

To heck with the whole finding a vaccine thing, we should just horde tuna and powdered milk according to the Gub'ment.

There has been some talk that an issue where the Democrats can get some traction is simply 'competency'. With all of the disasters, the war in Iraq, the Miers nomation, the CIA outing, the petty thefts, the wire tapping, and the rest of the scads of incompetent nincompoopery, methinks there is lots of headway to be made by just saying this bunch of idiots is not competent to lead the country. And with stuff like this coming out almost daily, well, the argument makes itself.

Batshit crazy "god warrior" back

The batshit crazy woman from Trading Spouses is back with her own web site. Remember the whole "I'm a God warrior", "Get out of my house in Jesus name I pray." lady. Yeah, that's her. She clearly doesn't take herself very seriously and that's a good thing for her. Not for me though. It would have been funnier if the site was about her more batshit crazy side. If she is normal, well, as normal as she can be, and was just having a bad day, then she isn't very interesting.

Be warned, clicking on the link will bring up a page that brings up audio immediately. 

Republicans on Feingold

The Republicans are all over this Feingold thing. Their retort is that censuring Bush, which is just a formal slap on the wrist, is jeapordizing national security. Of course they can't deny the charges because anyone with eyes to see understands that Bush broke FISA repeatedly and is guilty as all hell.

So they take the 'look over here' route, and in an ironic twist, do exactly what the Democrats accused them of with Clinton. The Republicans were impeaching Clinton over a blow job and Clinton kept on with his job doing what he could to attack Al Qaeda. Remember the Monica Missiles? Those were aimed at Bin Laden. Calling these the Monica Missiles makes conservatives giddy with glee. But to thinking people it's clear that Clinton was trying everything he could to take care of Bin Laden before he could attack again. But the Republicans thought it was more important to impeach him over a blow job. Talk about threatening national security.

The real irony here is that the greatest threat to national security is Bush himself. He is completely unhinged and out of control. Feingold is doing what he can to reign him in. And I say more power to Russ. You have to do what's right. You have to follow the law. And that's exactly what Russ is doing and what the Republicans have lost sight of.

Does C++ make sense?

Every once in a while I get a message that contains some nugget of news on C++, a talk, or a new book or something like that. Frankly, I wonder if C++ has any legs left in it. There will always be a case for C, which is just portable assembler. But C++? A non-reflective, machine specific, non-garbage collected, super strongly typed object oriented language. Now that C# and Java are fast enough does C++ make any sense? I can see that Perl, Ruby, Python and the dynamic languages, may be too far for some folks. But clearly an object oriented language should at least handle memory allocations, strings, reflection and basics like that.

Bush hitting magic low number

Strategists on both the left and the right seem agree that the base of each party is somewhere in the 34-37% range. So if the poll numbers have you at 34% then you have exactly your base and no more. The latest CBS poll has GW at... 34%. A new low. And, even more important, he is now literally, the President, if you even believe that, of just the Fox viewing moronic sheep that rubber stamp the new fascist agenda.

Speaking of not believing in the Bush Presidency, Katherine Harris looks to bow out of her ridiculous Senate campaign. You will remember her. She was Bush's campaign manager in Florida who also happened to be the secretary in charge of elections. And we all know how, fastidious she was in that position. Well, anyway, sad to see her go. I loved her little side shots of her fake breasts. And her ramblings about how she would be the first woman in the Senate, just as there was a first woman piloting the shuttle. Right...

So back to Bush, I wonder how much lower he can go? Any lower than 34% and you are actually eroding the support of the true faithful, and that's not so good. But hey, who knows, he could trump up some fresh new bullshit to rally the morons just the same way he did after Katrina and Miers.

I like how is going around trying to shore up support for the Iraq war. Yeah, that's going to go a long way to help. Is he even giving us a new plan the way he did last year? Oh, good lord no. Plans are for people without faith. The good lord will make us win in Iraq or some such crap. Ugh.

Can't somebody give this man a blow job so that we can finally impeach him!

Elizabethtown

I watched Elizabethtown last night and I really enjoyed it. Original critical reviews, which were based on an uncut version, were bad. But reviews based on the released movies were far better and I agree with those. Yeah, the movie does drag now and again, but it's a good character study (and not a boring thriller re-cast as a character study ;-) ). The writing is excellent and the acting is solid. Though Kirsten Dunst does a lot of the heavy lifting for Orlando Bloom who plays it down almost to the point of not playing it at all.

I'm predisposed to like this movie. I love the Cameron Crowe movies. Almost Famous is on my top ten of all time. So I like the combination of mood, music, and elements of both stark realism and over the top silliness. For example, some of the early setup scenes are brutally insightful on a very realistic level. While other later scenes, like Susan Sarandon's show at the funeral, were the standard movie fair that seems oddly out of place in this context.

Anyway... In the end a fun movie that was unfairly dissed because of a bad preview showing that only reviewers got to see. 

Great political theatre

Of all of the political theatre over the last four weeks perhaps none touched me as much as the question that Brit Hume asked Cheney in his exclusive Fox interview after Cheney shot his friend in the face. Brit asked him this; "Did you get the bird?" Cheney's reaction, stunned silence, then "I don't know."

This whole episode speaks volumes to me. About how completely disconnected from reality a man like Brit Hume is. We stigmatize societal behaviors that we don't like; drunkeness, sexual harrasment. We should spend more time stigmatizing gun crazy psychosis like this. Did you get the bird? Are you freaking nuts?

And then there is the fact that this interview was on Fox. We might as well admit now that Fox is just a wing of the Republican party. Never before has one party had an entire news outlet all to itself. But now the Republicans do and they swing and swing with it. They called the 2000 election for God's sakes. No wonder the vice-president went their for a friendly interview. And how friendly it was. Did you get the bird? And no wonder Bush is not fearing his 37% poll numbers. With a whole news channel dedicated to spinning the news his way.

Of course, Bush needs to realize that with his sinking poll numbers, the Fox networks numbers are dropping as well. That's the reason why news networks are supposed to be balanced! Hello!

Anyway, I love that. Did you get the bird. Love it. 

Sex toy bans

Turns out the sex toy ban thing isn't just in Tennessee. They have actually banned sex toys in Texas. Which sort of leaves my "How the hell do you implement that?" question in the dust. Or does it?

Ok, clearly dildos, cock rings, nipple clamps, etc. are single purpose sex toys. But what about multipurpose items? Jacuzzis? Are they banned? How about pulsating shower massagers? How about back massagers as a general category? And lube? Is that banned?

And what about food products? Are bananas, cucumbers and carrots behind the counter? Do I need to show proof of tea to get honey? Strawberries and hot fudge sauce? Or cool whip?

The mind boggles. Well, actually my mind started boggling at the get go with the "as long as they are consenting adults who the hell cares". And perhaps even with the thought; "Where in the bible does it say you can't posses vibrators?" Hell, they didn't have vibrators in 1 A.D. Though I suppose a ban on selling sheep... 

Faith Hill bringing the smackdown on Bush

Wow. You know things are going bad for a Republican President when the Country singers start turning on you. So this is what a low 30s approval rating smells like.

History of Violence

I don't undertand how History of Violence could have an 87% score on Rottentomatoes. It was boring as hell. The only thing about it that was unpredictable was how there were absolutely no twists in it. It's a fracking thriller! There are supposed to be twists!

Ugh. What a waste of time that movie was. Even the soundtrack was boring. It sounded like leftovers from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. Why? Because the same guy did both scores. 

Sad. Boring. Uninspired. Avoid. 

No sex toys in Tennessee

Two lawmakers are trying to outlaw sex toys in Tennesse.

Yeah, clearly this is the most pressing issue on the state docket. I can't remember, which is the party of small government again? And how does that jibe with creating new laws that require new government agencies to now track illegal sex toys?

That brings up an interesting map that I saw that superimposed hash marks over all of the states that took more from the federal government than what they put in (debter states). Turns out, all of the red states, save Texas are debter states. So why are my tax dollars going to fund sex toy patrols?

Battlestar moving to NBC

Battlestar Galactica is moving to NBC. Ugh. Goodbye quirk. Hello corporate megalopoly. I guess the Sci-Fi channel is like a feeder team in the major leagues. When you have made your numbers you get called up to the big game in primetime.

Four Things

I was pinged by Lori for my four things lists. So here it is.

Four jobs you have had in your life:

1. Counselor in training at two day camps in Philidelphia.
2. Food service guy at a Grateful Dead concert.
3. Pet adoption helper for the Ohlone Humane Society
4. Night school computer training assistant in Miami

Four movies you would watch over and over:

1. Conan the Barbarian
2. Star Trek II
3. The Fog of War
4. Amadeus

Four places you have lived:

1. Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
2. Evanston, Illinois
3. Melbourne, Australia
4. Union City, California

Four TV shows you love to watch:

1. Battlestar Galactica
2. The West Wing
3. Countdown
4. Sportscenter

Four places you have been on vacation:

1. Sailing in the Bahamas
2. Germany
3. Tokyo
4. Northern Territory, Australia

Four websites I visit daily:

1. Crooks and Liars
2. Digg
3. Engadget
4. Huffington Post

Four of my favorite foods

1. Cold Pizza
2. Pasta with a bread crumb sauce
3. Key Lime Pie
4. Chocolate Fondue

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. Playing the best game of my life on Pebble Beach with someone else picking up the tab.
2. Cuddling in bed with Lori, Megan, Oso and Sadie
3. In Australia
4. Spending Christmas morning with my family, Jenny and Tom and their family and my mom.

Four friends who I have tagged that I think will respond, I'm tagging bloggers so they can blog there answers

1. Rebecca
2. Dave Thomas
3. James Polanco
4. Joe Block

Just to be super geeky. This is my 1701st post, which is the magic Star Trek number since the Enterprise was NCC1701{a|b|c|d|e|...}

No Ultraviolet for me

Yeah, I'm not going to go to Ultraviolet. Much as I might like the whole crappy sci-fi thing. This isn't Australia where I'm starved for sci-fi. So not all sci-fi is good sci-fi. And that means that I can be picky enough to stay away from movies with the prestigious 0% Rotten Tomatoes score. Seriously now, you have to be at least in the single digits for me to go. One must have one's standards, you know!

Sex Injuries Report

This report is fantastic fun.

“We present the radiological findings of a healthy young woman who presented with acute onset of abdominal pain and was found to have extensive pneumoperitoneum.” That means she had air in her abdomen. And where did the air come from? It was “Jacuzzi-jet induced.”

Classic! 

Go Fug Yourself

I'm not sure why I like Go Fug Yourself, since I'm clearly no fashion diva. But I do like it. And their coverage of the Oscars red carpet has been great and will likely be going on all day at this rate.

Fox News ratings way down

People are finally catching on to the fact that Fox News is just crap. Their ratings are dropping like a rock where the other news channels are all up. Check out the PDF of the ratings.

Oscar Results

And here are the results.

Actor	Philip Seymour Hoffman
Supporting Actor	George Clooney
Actress	Felicity Huffman
Supporting Actress	Frances McDormand
Animated Feature	Wallace and Gromit
Directing	Ang Lee
Documentary	March of the Penguins
Best Picture	Brokeback Mountain
Visual Effects	King Kong
Writing	Match Point
Foreign Film	Paradise Now

I guess that's not too bad. Just over 50%. I was surprised by two items. I thought Reese was too young to win. And I thought the Academy would make a bit of a protest by picking Brokeback Mountain. But I had heard that a lot of members weren't even previewing the movie. So I guess I'm not so shocked.

1st Amendment Die! Die! Die!

Even as neo-con high priests are calling their ideology failed as a result of, well... the reality of the world being very different from the bubble of a think tank. The ground troops march on in their quest to turn our country into God's Kingdom on Earth in preparation for the return of Christ. This time they want to make Christianity the official religion of Missouri. What does that old rag the Constitution say about this in the very first amendment?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It would be too easy to blame the idiocy of the people who wrote this on a failed educational system. Or perhaps they don't get PBS in the trailer parks where they live. Or perhaps, they are just the most stupid people ever.

Limbaugh gets pummeled

Here is a video that shows Rush trying to do a television show in 1990. He gets pummeled by the audience and eventually has to empty it out in order to be able bloviate his usual oxycontin induced insanity. In his usual way he says nasty stuff, people react negatively and get angry with him, then he goes on about how they are angry instead of dealing with their objections to what he said.

Anyway, all the more evidence to me of why conservative pundits and politicians always need to be in front of canned agreeable audiences.

Oh, yeah, and speaking of conservative pundits, Pat Robertson got booted from the conserative broadcasters council. Apparently his threats of death, disease, and pestilence and helping the cause any longer. 

As Rush would say, "The pendulum, my friends, is turning... Wilma! Where is my oxy!!!"

BTW, I'm still in the mode where I will say a nice thing about Republicans or the red state if I talk about them in general terms. Here I'm just slamming Limbaugh, Robertson and conservative pundits. Not the movement as a whole. That being said, I'll say something nice anyway. I love Key Lime pie. And I love that it was named the official pie of Florida. Of course I'm baffled as to how pecan pie (bleh!) could have even been in the running. But that's another story. Anyway, Key Lime pie rocks!!! 

Oscar Picks

Here are my Oscar picks.

Actor	Philip Seymour Hoffman
Supporting Actor	George Clooney
Actress	Felicity Huffman
Supporting Actress	Frances McDormand
Animated Feature	Wallace and Gromit
Directing	Ang Lee
Documentary	March of the Penguins
Best Picture	Brokeback Mountain
Visual Effects	King Kong
Writing	Match Point
Foreign Film	Paradise Now

Not that I really care. Clearly the snobs in the Academy snubbed the really good movies like Resident Evil, Aeon Flux and Running Scared.

Plumbing the depths

In my never ending quest to plumb the depths of bad moviedom I'll be seeing Ultraviolet this weekend. Clearly this is not good news; "Ultraviolet to be kept in the dark from Critics." That reminds me of Aeon Flux. Ugh.

Countdown to the next scandal

Given that there sems to be a scandal from the White House every two weeks. And the Katrina revelation came out yesterday. I have created a handy timer to count down to the next scandal.

See you in a couple of weeks!

Battlestar Podcast

I listen to the Battlestar Galactica podcast on and on and off basis. Sometimes the backstory is really helpful, but often he gets into production decisions about the costs of this shot or that shot and it bores me to death. On this most recent podcast, which covers the 'Downloaded' episode, he says that the setup in this episode around the Sharon/Six alliance will play a pivotal role in the two part season finale. Sweet! I can't wait. If you are a Battlestar freak you will love this podcast.

Speaking of TV podcasts, the TV Guide Podcast, which Lori likes is pretty good. I like the banter between the hosts. 

Diet Spam

I just got some spam that said that their diet plan was Oprah approved. Holy moley! Gotta get me some of that!

Pet Peeve

Here is a pet peeve that I have; timed offers in radio commercials. Like "call in the next 50 minutes and we will give you a free waffle iron, free!" Here is a tip, they will give you the waffle iron, whenever you call. They certainly don't track the replay of commercials, and then start time zone specific timers.

I know it sounds petty, but it's just another form of lying. Accepted. Indocronated. Lying. And I find it really offensive when it's tacked onto a commercial where they use their honest policies and practices as a selling point. We have one window and door vendor on my local radio station where they tell a story about how they went into business after being shafted by another vendor. So their pitch is the whole honesty and integrity thing. But then at the end they tack on one of the these timed offer things! Grrr....

Hey, I know the idea. It's easier to sell something under the pressure of time. The limited edition DVD. The day after Christmas sale. The big weekend sale at the car lot. I get it. But at least those things are basically true. The prices will generally go up after the sale, though they were artificially high in the first place. Where the whole 'timed offer' thing is just a straight out lie. 

Anywho... Enough from the soap box. Back into my hole.  

Bad Movie Choice

Barbara was right, it's dumping season, and my choice of Running Scared was, well, let's just say, not a good one. That's not to say it wasn't chock full of fun. Hell, it was chock full of everything. There was the usually scenes of bloody death. Massive explosions. Furious car chases. Stupid pimps. There was even a scene of child pornography production, along with, thankfully, the quick death of the producers.

By the end, however, I was bored by the excess. So much so I was even thinking about leaving early. Which is an honor I save only for the very best of the worst, like Constantine.