Posts from — August 2006

Just out, a Federal judge tells the Shrubbery to cut the crap with his illegal wiretaps: NSA eavesdropping program ruled unconstitutional

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency’s program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy.

The ruling [warning PDF] tells Gonzalez that he has to put up or shut up on the legality of the program.

Atrios noticed that since the last Microsoft patch Firefox hasn’t been seeing updates on BlogSpot sites, you have to hit the reload button. It seems to have gotten better today, but if you are using Firefox you might want to hit reload when visiting Blogger sites.

The marsupial master of minuscule is a bit annoyed about his lack of mention regarding the l’affaire chuck roberts. skippy spent the time to accumulate the sponsors for the Robert’s segment of Headline News, but when the resolution came and kudos were handed out, the “big guys” forgot their “little buddy”.

Be afraid, be very afraid, and vote for the party of fear.

Well, Karl should be thrilled as his plan to use fear to win an election is moving right along: Flight diverted to Boston over passenger disturbance

The federal security official for Logan said there was no indication of terrorism and denied reports that the woman had a screw driver, matches and a note referring to al-Qaeda.

The passenger aboard United Flight 923 said she was claustrophobic and became very upset and got into some kind of confrontation with the flight crew, said George Naccara, security director for the Transportation Security Administration for Massachusetts’ airport.

Rumors are reported as facts. Money is wasted on false alarms.

This is a “terror” campaign orchestrated from the White House. The whole network of al Qaeda Inc. knows it doesn’t have to do anything: Karl Rove will generate all of the “terror” necessary until after the election, so there’s no need to do anything except issue a few “press releases.”

I’m sure everyone has noticed that the Crayons come out at election time. We can’t be at yellow alert if there are important primaries.

Update: See August’s latest cartoon.

From Time: In Israel, the Political Casualties Start to Mount

The Lebanon cease-fire is holding for a second day, but the casualties in Israeli politics are just starting to mount. Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, an ex-fighter pilot who was the chief strategist of Israel’s less-than-satisfactory war against Hizballah, is still catching flak for Israel’s failure to deliver a killing blow to Hizballah during the four-week campaign. But Haltuz is now in deep trouble on the home front as well, where he stands accused of an unusual case of insider trading that some might argue borders on war profiteering.

On Tuesday the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv claimed that three hours after Hizballah fighters ambushed an Israeli patrol, killing eight soldiers and kidnapping two others – the event that triggered the war – Haltuz called his stock broker and asked him to sell off nearly $30,000 of his shares. Haltuz got his money out just in time; the Tel Aviv stock market fell by over 8% in the first two days of the war.

I’ve been in shooting wars and so was my Dad. We have both owned stock. I know that I didn’t, and don’t remember my Dad ever calling a broker because we had been alerted to go to a war footing.

I admit that I always get cash out if I think a hurricane is heading my way, but I don’t call a broker.

They are at it again: Feds Question Pakistani Men’s Purchase Of Prepaid Phones, but this time the Feds “nipped it in the bud” before a local prosecutor got involved.

In the dim, dank days of Reagan I occasionally watched television while living in California. There was a guy who had a comedy routine that centered around altering the lyrics to familiar tunes that he played on a guitar.

One of my favorites was Buying a 7-11, to the tune of Stairway to Heaven:

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No one directly involved wins a war.

The best you can hope for is not to lose too much.

You cannot return to status quo ante after the killing starts unless you can raise the dead.

If you were a good little Windows users and still use Internet Explorer, the latest !CRITICAL! patches may cause your computer to crash if you visit certain sites.

If you pay for Microsoft support, don’t visit their special site: it’s one of the “problem sites.”

Even the GWOT™ generates collateral damage: from the BBC – 10,000 bags misplaced at airports.

So you put everything into checked baggage, and then you have to guess where it is.

This is a Mullet.

This is a Macaca.

When George Felix Allen used a term to characterize a young American and native-born Virginian whose parents immigrated from India, which term do you think he used?

I seem to remember Howard Cosell being demoted for a similar reference to an football player.

Most are not familiar with the battle of Agincourt, and the vast majority of those who recognize the name link it to Shakespeare’s play, Henry V and the Saint Crispin’s Day speech:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

Great piece of psy-ops, that speech, and it has been perverted by a host of people since it was written. Every time you need people to do something incredibly stupid that will probably end in their death, haul out Saint Crispin’s Day.

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I’ve mentioned before that from time to time over the last four decades I’ve had various Muslims making attempts to kill me. It gets really tiresome; I would really like it end.

In addition to the various and sundry “terrorists” generated by the situation in Palestine who attempted to plant bombs where I slept, the Shrubbery’s newest, best friend ever, Muammar al-Gaddafi, use to send his aircraft out to shoot me down as flew by in an unarmed, marked US aircraft.

This gets to be a real drag, okay? You want to see it end at some point.

It is not going to end when people deny reality.

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EDB at Anecdotes from a Banana Republic is waiting for the cease fire to take effect: Countdown

They drop lots of pamphlets and flyers from the sky, but never customer satisfaction forms. “On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate the value/futility/sleep deprivation/cunningness/brutality of our latest bombing raid? What is your opinion of the price to quality ratio, in human and financial terms? When dining on shrapnel and cluster bombs, how can we improve the experience for you? Thanks for your time. Please leave us your name and address so we can memorize the coordinates and serve you better in the future. We are an equal opportunity bomber. Signed: The State of Israel”. The signing off as “The State of Israel” is very telling— it’s the you-don’t-recognize-us fixation, as if non-recognition entails not believing rather than not accepting. Here’s the empiric proof that we exist, motherfuckers. Bang, bang, boom.

Earlier she noted:

The war cost Israel an estimated $5.5 billion. The Lebanese government estimates infrastructure damage at $2.5 billion. Smart weapons indeed; those are some overpriced bombs that don’t even inflict their money’s worth in damage. And most of that damage was to civilian housing.

Snark is a way of coping.

Kevin lays out the Anatomy of a Terror Attack Bust over at The American Street and highlights the multiple failures of the The Shrubby Inc. to deal with their self-declared Global War On Terror™.

Ashcroft slashed the FBI’s counter-terrorism budget on 09/10/2001. Bush sought to cut $6M in screening technology from the Homeland Security research & development budget, which had already lost $200M in unspent funds from previous years.

Karen has a picture of what traveling by aircraft may look like in the near future, and PZ Myers learns the real reason behind the hospital gowns.

Swopa notes that the Israeli bombing and shelling has done such a great job on the infrastructure of Lebanon that supply trucks can’t get through, so the IDF tried to use llamas.

I don’t make this stuff up; I just report it. The llamas obviously understand that invading Lebanon is not a sane concept.