Darned Mexicans
Mayor Ray Nagin, who fiddled while New Orleans burned and caught zero crap for it has opened his mouth real wide in order to get his shoe into it… As Mexicans flood into the city to do the work that its own residents won’t do, Nagin wonders how he can keep the city from being overrun by immigrant workers. Good question.

Of course, Mike over at No Nanny State has a solution:

I’d answer his racist question quite easily. I’d tell him that if he stopped the Nanny State payments to the blacks in his city, they’d get off of their collective asses, go to work, and there would be no need for outside labor. Since he continues to dole out money and make excuses for failure, the blacks in his city have no incentive to work. Work needs to be done, so the Mexican workers are simply filling a worker vacuum.

Run for office, Mike. You’d have my vote.

Ginsburg a Moderate?!?
Label bias epitomized.

When President Clinton announced his pick of Ruth Bader Ginsburg for the Supreme Court, labels defining her ideology were notably absent from the coverage. Newsbusters.org has an interesting contrast:

Tuesday’s lead New York Times story on Bush’s Supreme Court pick (by Elisabeth Bumiller and Carl Hulse) plays up Alito’s ideology from the start, nothing the federal appeals court judge has a “conservative record on abortion.” Later they note he is “solidly conservative” and has “bona fide conservative credentials” and the paper’s front-page subhead emphasizes that he’s “Hailed By Right.”

By contrast, when President Bill Clinton nominated Ginsburg to the Supreme Court, Richard Berke’s lead story in the June 15, 1993 edition didn’t describe Ginsburg, a feminist and former ACLU lawyer, as liberal. Berke even let Clinton get away with saying (without rebuttal from Republicans or anyone else): “Ruth Bader Ginsburg cannot be called a liberal or conservative. She has proved herself too thoughtful for such labels.”

They sure do like to beat on Alito being a massive conservative evil right wing baby eater. Kinda makes you wonder, though, if they got their talking points from the DNC who thinks everyone to the right of Stalin is Hitler, or if they looked at his record. To prove it isn’t the latter, check out this piece from the Christian Science Monitor. We’ve heard plenty about Alito’s anti-abortion beliefs, but has anyone actually looked at his record? Probably not because here are the four actual cases he looked at on the appeals court:

• A 1991 challenge to a Pennsylvania law requiring married women to notify their husbands before seeking an abortion. The court struck down the restriction. Alito dissented.

• A 1995 challenge to a Pennsylvania law that required women seeking to use Medicaid funds to abort a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest to report the incident to law enforcement officials and identify the offender. Alito provided the decisive vote striking down the abortion restriction.

• A 1997 challenge to a New Jersey law that prevents parents from suing for damages on behalf of the wrongful death of a fetus. Alito ruled that the Constitution does not afford protection to the unborn.

• A 2000 challenge to New Jersey’s ban on so-called partial-birth abortions. Alito struck down the law based on a recent Supreme Court decision.

So in other words, he votes on the issues based on how they’re presented before him and the merits of the case. No wonder the left is terrified by him; he’s a judge who actually is going to judge cases, not write legislation.

Family Media Guide.com
A new site launched, and its premise is very interesting:

“We listened to the market. Parents were saying ‘don’t tell me what’s appropriate for my seven year old, tell me what’s in it and I’ll make that decision for myself,’” says David G. Kinney, Founder and CEO of parent company Media Data Corporation. “And that’s exactly what we’ve done. We created a system that puts parents and all consumers in control by providing them with the objective facts about what’s in every program, movie or game.”

So instead of saying, “Your 10 year old shouldn’t play this,” they lay out the content and let parents decide. Hard to believe such a novel approach hasn’t been taken already, but as someone who consumes more than his fair share of media, I can’t say I’ve ever seen it before. Well done on their part.

Hollywood out to destroy fair use… Again…
DRM-crazy Hollywood is out to stop your use of the media you purchase. What a shock, right? Well, this time, the implications are downright terrifying. Wait until you read this one:

Hollywood has fielded a shockingly ambitious piece of “Analog Hole” legislation while everyone was out partying in costume. Under a new proposed Analog Hole bill, it will be illegal to make anything capable of digitizing video unless it either has all its outputs approved by the Hollywood studios, or is closed-source, proprietary and tamper-resistant. The idea is to make it impossible to create an MPEG from a video signal unless Hollywood approves it.

You gotta wonder why people aren’t more outraged by being treated like criminals by Hollywood. The only thing I can assume is that they just don’t realize what’s capable with their media and don’t really care about DRM because it doesn’t apply to them. By the time people catch up technically, they’re gonna be pretty surprised to find that fair use has pretty much vanished.

Revver… Flickr for video?
Many sites are trying to be the first “Flickr for Video,” and some have come really close. Revver has an interesting model:

Unlike most video sites that take videos and give nothing back to creators, we created Revver from the beginning to support videomakers. When you upload a video, we’ll attach a RevTag — a single frame ad at the end of the video. Every time someone clicks on the ad, you’ll earn money.

Let’s see how long it lasts. For now, I’ll stick with Vimeo as far as video sharing goes. In reality, Vimeo is a LOT closer to Flickr and it isn’t as commercialized (which means you won’t have people posting stuff there just to make a buck). If you have video and want to share it, there are tons of services out there that let you do it. Check out this roundup for more ideas.

More Indie Media… Yawn…
Let’s face facts… Most independent music and video is really trash, but is absorbed by the collective masses because it’s trendy and cool and “outside the mainstream, man”

Spare me.

Anyway, a new service has launched and has opened up a call for indie musicians to help fill up its service. I understand the concept that being an indie artist means you’re outside the industry and you’re not going to load your music and video up with DRM; lovely. But honestly, half the stuff out there, I wouldn’t even want to watch or listen to anyway! I mean, it’s nice that there are people who don’t want to be a part of the DRM silliness going on, but I’m more interested in the content than the means that are used to protect it.

He likes me… He really likes me!
Well, not exactly. I’d say we could file this in the heaping pile of sarcasm bin.

Yesterday, I got an e-mail from Steve Safran over at Lost Remote. Surely you remember my quote about him from a few days ago:

Steve Safran, of Lost Remote, is one of my least favorite people in the blogosphere. A mostly self-important jerk, he consistently toes whatever left-wing line the media spits out and does so while constantly claiming his impartiality.

Apparently he found my little home on the net, and sent me a nice email:

But I like you.
Best,
Steve

Er, thanks Steve.

ON two personal notes:

1. Spencer and Heather had their baby! Well, actually Heather had the baby… Spencer just probably stood there telling Heather to breathe. Congratulations, guys! Poor Spencer… The only guy in the house with 3 girls… Oy…

2. My National Novel Writing Month project is hurtling along quite nicely! I have 3,066 words in the book. At this pace, I’ll either have it finished in the middle of the month, or have 90,000 words of novel ready at the end of the month.

That’s it for today. See ya in the ’sphere!

I had to bring work home yesterday, so I didn’t even get started on my novel for Nanowrimo. Wonderful. I figure that in order to do 50,000 words by November 30th, I have to write 1,666 words consistently each day. I’m already a day behind and it’s the 2nd of November.

Anyways…

Sony Releases “Should be Free” Tool
Sony announced yesterday the release of its PSP Media Manager software. For the low low low price of $19.99, you get a program that copies your feeds, music, video, etc., and places it into the proper format for your PSP. Why Sony is charging people who already got screwed out of $249 for the console with no interesting games, and $100 for a Memory Stick Pro Duo, is beyond me, but it is Sony, and they aren’t the “cost conscious” type. It’s always boutique prices for them; just ask anyone who’s been eyeballin’ the VAIO notebook line. If you’re just doing video, you can do a perfectly respectable job with PSP Video 9, which, incidentally, is free.

Virginity or Death
I don’t know… An article on Dvorak’s blog was tagged with some stupid remark about conservatives, and reading the article, the people opposing the vaccine are quite ridiculous. However, one of the comments set me off. It started with this idiocy:

The radical religious Right is against stem cell research, in part, because it’s speculative.

No, they’re not. The “radical religious Right” is against embryonic stem cell research because it destroys a life. The government will not fund embryonic stem cell research, but that doesn’t mean private industry isn’t more than welcome to go out and do it on their own. As of right now it’s 100% legal, and the feds are not funding the creation of more lines of stem cells than already exist. Work on other types of stem cells is progressing, however, and in many cases is yielding results that have been pleasantly surprising without the destruction of a life.

Why is it so hard for people to understand the difference? Well, because understanding the difference would interrupt a great rant with something inconvenient like the truth.

The results are in…
Well actually, they were in last week but I was just hoping I might hear someone in the media report it. Check this out, off the Reuters wire:

Election results showing Iraqis have ratified a new U.S.-backed constitution by a large margin are accurate and should be trusted, a senior U.N. official said on Tuesday.

Speaking after Iraq’s Electoral Commission released final results showing 79 percent approval for the constitution in the October 15 referendum, Carina Perelli said the balloting process adhered to the highest standard.

“Yes, it has been audited, controlled. It has been done really in a very professional way,” Perelli, head of the U.N. team providing technical assistance to the Iraqi government, told reporters.

“The result is accurate. It has been checked according to the processes that we all follow when we have elections.”

There were no shortages of stories telling us how divided the country was and how divisive the vote was. I guess the UN was suckered in by the US propaganda, since they were nothing more than a willing accomplice in the whole thing, right? I waited a week in hopes of finding a bigger more detailed story elsewhere. Alas, nary a mention. Guess if it doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t lead.

Wal-Mart Tired of Shelling Out Cash for Health Care

I read a post from a friend’s blog and had to chuckle…

I understand the need to contain major medical costs, I mean that is a large part of what I do for a living, help small businesses shop around for better, cheaper coverage. But this is going a little too far, and shows a clear contempt for their employees. Hiring only healthy employees, only younger employees, only part time employees; and worrying about dependant children going onto Medicaid purely because of the negative publicity it would generate? It’s one thing to try and contain costs, it’s another to methodically plan to screw over your own employees in an attempt to pad the bottom line.

I’m no Communist, and I still believe that big box stores aren’t inherently evil, but I don’t have to live in Pottersville either. I’m voting with the only thing that Wal-Mart apparently gives a damn about, my dollars.

Goodbye Wal-Mart, I’ll never spend my hard earned money with you again.

First of all, I’m sure the loss of one customer won’t even register with them, although if you live in New York City, it’s unlikely that you shopped there much anyway seeing there isn’t one single Wal-Mart in the entire City.

Second of all, so what if they hire only healthy employees and younger ones? I’ve been criticized numerous times for criticizing the company that fired people for smoking because it raised their health care costs.

Third of all, methodically plan to screw over their employees? Give it up already! It’s a stupid retail job, not a career with Charles Schwab! No one puts a gun to your head and forces you to work at or shop at Wal-Mart. If you do decide to work there, it’s probably because you didn’t have a whole lot of prospects elsewhere. That’s not to be offensive; but let’s face the reality of what a retail job really is. It’s a job.

The mentality that companies should provide health care for their employees is insane. Sure they can, and it’s nice that they mostly do. But what’s wrong with providing your own health care? Why is it automatically assumed that if a company doesn’t provide it for you, you’ll never have it?

Hell, New York State offers practically FREE health insurance to families, as do many other states.

If people saved half the money they spend on FUBU and Sean John and put it into some kind of health savings account, things would be better. And if you tell me that people can’t support a family and work as a cashier in Wal-Mart, than you’re making my other point for me… You’re not meant to work a low-wage entry-level retail job and be able to support a family. That’s why you educate yourself and keep looking elsewhere.

I’ve always said you don’t have a right to support your family doing what you want to do. If that were the case, I’d be able to support mine being a paperboy, but you won’t see me putting a basket on my bike anytime soon.

Man hits, kills pedestrian, and doesn’t realize it

ST. PETERSBURG - A 93-year-old motorist struck and killed a pedestrian Wednesday evening, then drove about 3 miles with the body lodged in the windshield until he was stopped at a Sunshine Skyway tollbooth.

The driver told officers he thought the body had fallen from the sky, said St. Petersburg police Officer Mike Jockers.

“He had no idea he had been involved in an accident,” Jockers said. “He doesn’t totally understand what happened.”

Think they’ll take away his license? I sure as hell don’t. One thing’s for sure; they can’t charge him with a hit and run. I mean, technically, if you take the victim with you, did you run?

What do you wanna do?
Well, if you want to do it online, there’s probably a site listed here to help you. Very cool list, and many sites on it are free. Enjoy! (I think I found this on Lifehacker, but I’m not sure).

Accidental Greenpeace Environmental Destruction

TUBBATAHA REEFS, Philippines (AFP) - Greenpeace is to be fined after its flagship Rainbow Warrior II damaged a coral reef in the central Philippines during a climate change awareness campaign, marine park rangers said.

The ship and its crew were assessed a 640,000-peso (11,600-dollar) fine after the 55-meter (180-foot) motor-assisted schooner ran aground at the Tubbataha Reef Marine Park on Monday, park manager Angelique Songco told AFP.

The ship’s bow sliced through a reef formation measuring 160 square meters (1,722 square feet), she added.

I wonder how hard Greenpeace will lobby against itself. I mean, it’s not possible that something that destroyed the environment is a mere accident. What happens if an oil tanker has an accident? Or a nuclear facility? Greenpeace surely would be all over that.

Can’t find footage? Make some up!
Fernando Ferrer, perennial mayor hopeful and unbelievably weak candidate, has decided that in order to win the election, he has to make up stuff. No, really… He is…

In the ad, a caricature of Bloomberg flashes a wad of cash at President Bush riding through an oil field on a horse as a country singer twangs in the background: “And if you’re ever hurtin’, I’ll run right to your side.”

Jonathan Prince, creator of Democratic candidate Fernando Ferrer’s ad, said they used animation because it is difficult to visually link Bloomberg with Bush in any other way.

“There’s not tons of footage of Bush and Bloomberg together, so how else would you dramatize their relationship?” he said.

So… There’s not a lot of actual proof of their relationship / friendship, so we have to “dramatize” it. I guess if you define dramatize as “make stuff up truth be damned,” you’re good. Bloomberg did donate $7,000,000 to the RNC during the convention in NYC. So what? Pardon me if I don’t see the big deal. Bloomberg’s rich.

And that’s the other thing that’s driving me nuts about this campaign. Loser mayoral wannabe Ferrer is all over Bloomberg, accusing him of over-spending and saying the election isn’t fair. Is he for real? Every penny he’s spent is of his own money, and if you’re telling me Ferrer wouldn’t have spent the money if he got it, I’d laugh my butt off. The only reason Ferrer doesn’t have it is because the New York City Democratic Party knows he’s a perpetual loser and he isn’t worth shelling the money out on.

Abortion Funding Dolls Not Welcome at One School

MILWAUKEE - A Roman Catholic school is canceling a fashion show by the manufacturer of American Girl dolls and books amid conservative groups’ criticism of a girls organization that receives support from the company.

St. Luke School in Brookfield notified its parents of the decision through bulletins at Masses over the weekend.

Two national groups — the Pro-Life Action League in Chicago and the American Family Association in Tupelo, Miss. — have raised questions about the American Girl brand and its parent company, Mattel Inc., because of the company’s fund-raising for Girls Inc., formerly known as Girls Clubs of America.

The American Family Association has called Girls Inc. “a pro-abortion, pro-lesbian advocacy group.” Girls Inc., which has more than 1,500 centers across the country, says it provides a variety of programs to educate and encourage girls and does accept lesbian sexual orientation. Alexander Kopelman, director of communications, said it does not include abortion in its programming, though it does not control what leaders say if girls ask about it.

Money raised through ticket and raffle sales at the planned fashion show was to go toward a new playground and a refurbished library at St. Luke School.

“It’s a bargain we’ll just have to pass up,” wrote Frank Malloy, St. Luke pastor. “The cost is too high. Our integrity isn’t for sale.”

Well done for the school! Integrity should never be for sale, particularly at a private religious school. Now, as for Kopelman’s quote about including abortion in its programming… Is there any doubt what this paragraph from a piece on their site pertains to?

Girls Inc. firmly believes that girls have the right to personal safety, equal opportunity in sports, reproductive healthcare, preparation for economic independence, and an education that is free of discrimination. It is vital that the nation have an independent, fair-minded Supreme Court committed to equality and safeguarding the rights and freedoms of all Americans.

Is there anyone out there who thinks reproductive health care means an occasional amnio?

I think that’s really it for today. I have to get started on my novel today no matter what. I can space out the work from yesterday over the remainder of the month, but it’s gonna be rough. I can do it, but man! What a job!

See ya in the ’sphere!

Here’s today’s round up of stuff you should be interested in….

Open Office is Bloated
Yep. The open-source MS Office alternative is a resource pig, as tested by ZiffDavis. In fact, it’s so bloated, that judging from its overwhelming memory usage and processor utilization, I’d almost say that it’s unusable for any serious work.

Bag on Office’s bloat all you want, but don’t explain how you’re getting away from it by moving to some open source piece of trash, k?

How professional of him…
CBS’ future man at the anchor desk, John Roberts, is quite the class act, referring to Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito as “sloppy seconds.” Here’s how Roberts put the question to White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan:

“So, Scott, you said that — or the President said, repeatedly, that Harriet Miers was the best person for the job. So does that mean that Alito is sloppy seconds, or what?”

Nice Job, Johnny.

For the six of you who have never heard the phrase, sloppy seconds refers to the condition of the female anatomy after another man has “been there.”

Yeah. He went there.

Sony DRM Includes Rootkit Lovin’
Apparently, not content with merely crippling your ability to copy your music, Sony has added rootkit technology to one of its latest. From Slashdot:

An anonymous read writes “SysInternals.com guru Mark Russinovich has a detailed investigation of a rootkit from Sony Music. It’s installed with a DRM-encumbered music CD, Van Zant’s “Get Right with the Man”. (Mmmm, delicious irony!) The rootkit introduces several security holes into the system that could be exploited by others, such as hiding any executable file that starts with ‘$sys$’. Russinovich also identifies several programming bugs in the method it uses to hook system calls, and chronicles the painful steps he had to take to ‘exorcise the daemon’ from his system.” This house is clear.

For those unaware of what a rootkit actually is, suffice it to say, it’s not good. A rootkit actually hooks into your system and changes the way information is presented to you by your operating system. Rootkits are almost undetectable because they run at a lower level than the applications running on your OS, so in this case, if the rootkit blocks $sys$ files, no application will be able to see it because the rootkit has the OS ignoring it, and applications rely on the OS for file listing.

Surely you see the problem now. For more information on Rootkits, check out Sysinternals.com. If you already have Microsoft’s excellent Anti-Spyware tool installed, you’re mostly protected as it does detect some of the more popular types of rootkits.

Few Searches, No Results
Since July 22, 2005, the NYC MTA has been ignoring people’s privacy in an effort to stamp out terrorism on the Subway. They’re searching people, randomly, at random stations on random days, in an effort to keep terrorists off-balance. Apparently, however, it ain’t doin’ anything. The NYCLU, not one of my favorite organizations, hits the nail on the head with a recent press release:

In addition to violating the constitutional rights of millions of subway riders, the NYPD policy appears to be ineffective as a security measure. The NYPD is not conducting searches at most subway entrances at any given time, is giving advance notice about searches at those entrances where searches are being conducted, is allowing people selected for a search to walk away, and is not basing the searches on any suspicious activity of individuals. As common sense would suggest, the NYPD’s program is virtually certain neither to catch any person trying to carry explosives into the subway system nor to deter such an effort. Indeed, given the way the Department has implemented its search program, the only people being searched are innocent users of the subway system.

Not enough searches, at not enough stations, on not enough days, with not enough cops. I feel safer already. All I can say is one of these police officers better never try to search me, or he’ll get some serious resistance. I’m not some submissive sheep.

Unlock your Cingular Sony Vaio T350
Engadget has the goods on how to get your Cingular Sony Vaio laptop rockin’ on T-Mobile’s EDGE network. Oh sure this won’t matter for most of you, but hell… It’s pretty nifty anyway.

UFO Mapping using Gmaps
Google Maps really is the coolest mapping technology ever. Aside from it’s awesome interface and neato features like Satellite imagery, it also has a wide-open API and people have done some amazingly neat things with it, like this site which shows you some UFO sighting info. I did notice that, consistent with popular stereotypes, the midwest really is a hotbed of martian activity. Guess they don’t have corn on Mars…

National Novel-Writing Month Underway
Oh yeah, baby. Better get going if you’re gonna hit that 50,000 word minimum by November 30th. Tonight I’m getting started. Have the plot, the characters, and everything else ready to go. I’ll keep you updated on the progress.

Online Organizer
Want an online organizer available from everywhere instead of just your desktop? Try Planzo. A slick UI and nice sharing features make it a must-check-out for those of you who are not quite as organized (or centralized) as you’d like to be. Planzo also has an open API, so the potential is enormous.

Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann are Not Liberal
I’m sure that comes as a major surprise to you, as it does to me. FAIR recently indulged Keith Olbermann in his complaint to liberal-loudmouth Al Franken that MSNBC was upset that he had too many liberal guests on his show. FAIR pointed out that MSNBC had two well-known conservative hosts (Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson) but failed to mention that Matthews and Olbermann are both quite liberal:

But has MSNBC truly “steered out of that time,” as Olbermann suggests? If MSNBC management were genuinely worried about ideological balance, then the fact that the channel currently has two one-hour programs hosted by well-known conservatives (Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough) and none hosted by liberals would be of considerable concern.

Wow. No liberals. I’m sure Keith and Chris would be devastated if they saw this.

Freshmen No More

Amherst Regional High School will stop using the term ‘freshman’ to refer to ninth-grade students because the term is not inclusive enough for some members of the faculty there, according to the Concord Monitor.

Students in ninth grade will now be referred to as … wait for it … “ninth-graders” in all official documents and morning announcements.

ARHS Assistant Principal Marta Guevara, who pushed for the change, said the decision to move away from ‘freshman’ came about after a production of the The Vagina Monologues two years ago.

Guevara said the school wants to make students “aware of the possible misogynistic, oppressive or non-inclusive language.”

via TongueTied

Read the EULA
Holy crap, there are some pretty insane things inside those End User License Agreements that most of us click past when installing software… Check this one out:

[you] may not without Microsoft’s prior written approval disclose to any third party the results of any benchmark test.

That’s in the EULA for SQL Server. Imagine that; you can’t benchmark and report the results of one of the most widely used corporate database systems. Read more, if you dare.

That’s it for today folks. To those of you participating in Nanowrimo, good luck, and I’ll see ya in the ’sphere!

Okay, so I haven’t been around the blogosphere much. I had various neck and back ailments that made it relatively uncomfortable to sit at a computer and do any serious blogging.

Anyway, I’m back now, and man did I miss a lot!

Harriet Miers:
Wasn’t qualified anyway. It’s nice that Bush wanted to appoint a friend, but I’d much rather have a judge with a judicial track record than someone who was so timid she wouldn’t even go through the hearings. Let’s be honest… They would’ve been a cakewalk. The Democrats loved her (yet another reason for any right-thinking conservative to hate her). And ultimately, all she had to do, if she didn’t want to break White House privilege, was to just sit in the Senate and tell the Senators to F off and that constitutionally, they have no right to ask certain questions. A class in constitutionality would’ve made her detractors look like fools and she would have come out smelling like roses. Instead, she cowers and withdraws. If you ask me, that proves she just doesn’t have the chops for the job, plain and simple.

Scooter Libby:
The man who admitted to leaking the name of super-top-secret-vanity-fair-centerfold Valerie Plame was indicted for doing so. Not that this really matters… If it ain’t Rove or Cheney, the libs are never going to be happy. They don’t want the man who did it convicted, they want the man they convicted already to have done it.

2,000th Death in Iraq
Big shock that one came, huh? Leading up to that 2,000th death, we were informed again and again how any of the planned protests around the event would be respectful and somber. What they were, in fact, was a cocktail party for the radical left with very little actual respect shown for any of the soldiers who died. No shock there, and zombietime was there for one of these mixers. Look at all the forlorn and contemplative faces. Saddened, aren’t they? Moveon.org jumped right on the media saying it didn’t cover the 2,000th death sufficiently. It ran as the top story in every single New York paper and the lead story on every newscast that night. What the hell are these idiots even talking about?

George Galloway Knocked
As the left circle-jerked around Galloway’s testimony in front of the Senate, he probably had his fingers crossed behind him the whole time. Michnews has a neat little summary of the dimpled-darling of the anti-war zealots:

Leftist “anti-war” activists make their way into the report in the person of George Galloway, the British MP who was booted out of the Labor Party for a number of reasons, one of which is that Labor found that he incited Arabs to fight against British troops. What are the allegations against this vitriolic grandstander who prefers the USSR, Iraq, and Syria to “rogue states” such as the U.S and Great Britain?

They are these: (1) Some of the proceeds from allocations of 18 million barrels of oil given “either directly in the name of George Galloway . . . or in the name of one of his associates, Fawaz Zureikat” were deposited into the account of the Mariam Appeal, an organization dedicated to providing health care for Iraqis and to work “against sanctions in Iraq” and with which Mr. Galloway was associated as an officer. (2) Deposits of illicit oil money were made to “the bank account of Amineh Naji Daoud Zayyad, Mr. Galloway’s wife” and “officer for the Mariam Appeal.”

It should be noted also that this hero of the American Left may face perjury charges as a result of his testimony regarding his involvement in the Oil-for-Food scandal before the U.S. Senate.

Nice guy. I can’t help but recall the breathless orgasmic description of Galloway’s “testimony” in front of the US Senate from the likes of Stageleft:

I saw a bit of George Galloway and the US Senate committee while on the gym treadmill yesterday evening and I gotta tell ya, the urge to clap and cheer was heavy upon me…. if I hadn’t been quite so winded from the workout itself I might have, for verily I say unto you, from what I saw he did well and truly kick their asses.

Oh yeah… I guess when you’re lyin’, it’s easy to kick ass because you don’t have little barricades like the truth to impede you. Stageleft chose to title his piece, “It Was Grand.” I tend to think the look on Galloway’s face as the report was delivered by Volker was probably a hell of a lot more grand.

Of course, that’s if he found it on the news at all…

Another interesting angle of the report is that France and Russia were the biggest violators of the Oil For Food program, which I’m sure is a complete coincidence and has nothing to do with their anti-war lobbying in the UN.

World Series a Ratings Flop
Who outside of Houston and Chicago cared about either team, anyway?

Printer Snitchin’
The EFF has found that a large number of newer color laser printers contain identifying information that can be traced back to their respective printers. Isn’t that nice? Big Brother is checking out your printouts whether you know it or not. Isn’t it great how readily the printer companies cooperated with law enforcement despite an actual law? Doesn’t it just warm your wee heart?

DUI’s want Source Code for Breathalyzer
Guess getting caught driving drunk isn’t as slam dunk as it used to be. I love the assumption that if a machine determines your guilt you have a right to know its intricate inner workings. Of course, Boing Boing thinks that everyone should have access to all information (note the framing of the machine versus your constitutional rights). Sure. Let’s open the floodgates and turn every DUI into a technical dispute.

Safran Apologizes in Advance
Steve Safran, of Lost Remote, is one of my least favorite people in the blogosphere. A mostly self-important jerk, he consistently toes whatever left-wing line the media spits out and does so while constantly claiming his impartiality. Well, this time, in an article about an FCC / Radio Station debacle, he apologizes in advance for doing what he does every time he writes something; editorializing. Not that there’s a problem with that, but his tripe is rarely presented as an editorial. Anyway, some of his more eagle-eyed readers lay into him for his lack of impartiality and he defends himself, albeit not very well. Lots of kicking, screaming, and crying for mommy ensue. Makes ya wonder… If the station involved wasn’t a religious one, would the great one even care about it?

Boing Boing finds belief God created man scary
Boing Boing, anti-religious zealots in many ways, found this to be utterly terrifying:

Fifty-one percent of Americans say God created humans in their present form, and another three in 10 say that while humans evolved, God guided the process. Just 15 percent say humans evolved, and that God was not involved.

These views are similar to what they were in November 2004 shortly after the presidential election…

Americans most likely to believe in only evolution are liberals (36 percent), those who rarely or never attend religious services (25 percent), and those with a college degree or higher (24 percent).

White evangelicals (77 percent), weekly churchgoers (74 percent) and conservatives (64 percent), are mostly likely to say God created humans in their present form.

The bastards! They believe God did all this! That’s terrifying! Of course, the 51% is wrong. Not the other 49%. I find it more scary that millions of people believe that man started as a drop in a puddle of primordial ooze and so many unbelievable coincidences happened to cause man to be born.

But that’s me.

And that’s what caught my eye while I wasn’t blogging. I have some more stuff, but I’d rather write about it in depth a bit later. See ya in the ’sphere!