Posts from — August 2006

Find the Kitten

How about a closer look under the reflector?

Nice weather for a turtle – to eat the cat food.

Phinky reminds us of the very old wisdom nosce hostem: know your enemy.

The Wikipedia entry on Hassan Nasrallah is brief and probably balanced, but it leaves out controversy.

It is wise to see what his enemies say, and the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin can reasonably be considered an enemy. A review of the masthead –

Editor: Gary C. Gambill
Publishers: Ziad K. Abdelnour & Daniel Pipes
Editorial Board: Thomas Patrick Carroll, Michael Rubin & Youssef Haddad

leaves little doubt as to the circumambient atmosphere of the journal.

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For all of you political consultants who want to build a campaign web site I offer this reason for using my host, NearlyFreeSpeech.Net: Frequently Asked Questions:

What happens if I get slashdotted?

A “major slashdotting” of a site hosted on our service will cost you (on average) about $10, one time. The best part about that is that as soon as it’s over, your costs go back to normal. There’s no higher-tier pricing to get permanently pushed into, and we won’t cancel you for having something to say that people actually want to hear.

This happens to one of our members about once a week, so you can bet we know how to handle it. Or rather, our systems do. Our load-adaptive clustering technology is at its best when handling demand surges, and our pricing is at its best when you’d prefer not to be billed like that the rest of the time.

And if you’re quick, you can make this experience even cheaper than our standard $1 / 1GB rate: We also offer the option of purchasing a discounted quantity of bandwidth, called a “Bandwidth Bucket,” which could be useful if you find out about the traffic surge in time. This option can be exercised for as little as $5 and last as little as a day or as long as a year, and can save you anywhere from 10 to 75% of the cost of bandwidth for the selected time period.

On lefty blogs being “slashdotted” means getting a link from Atrios or another major A-list blog.

Most hosts put limits on your bandwidth usage, and if you exceed it, they shut you down, which is not a good thing just before election day.

Update: Sorry, this is the problem I’m referencing.

So, I decided to renew my memories on something I last studies about forty years ago and put U-238 into Google. This appeared on the right:

Sponsored Links
U 238
Whatever you’re looking for
you can get it on eBay.
www.eBay.com

Adam Felber reads From the Book of Lieberman

Chapter xxi

1. And it came to pass that Joe walked among the people of Conn, as was his custom in the eighth month of the sixth year. 2. And the people there made ready for the Time of the Voting, and they held mighty feasts for their Chosen, and Joe saw the feasts and was glad….

Go, read, enjoy [if your name isn’t Lieberman].

Just posted on CBS: 38,000 Vets’ Data Missing

VA Secretary Jim Nicholson said that Unisys Corp., a subcontractor hired to assist in insurance collections for VA medical centers in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, reported the missing computer last Thursday. The computer was being used in Unisys offices in Reston, Va.

It is not yet known what happened to the computer, Nicholson said, adding that local and federal authorities are investigating.

The computer is believed to contain names, addresses, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, insurance carriers and claims data including medical information for veterans who received care at the hospitals in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh during the past four years.

Why are they still putting records on laptops in an unencrypted format? What does it take to convince these people to introduce some security for the records of the people they are supposed to be serving?

This is another example of the total lack of awareness by Republicans for the need to actually provide security. This is why outsourcing and privatizing government functions is not always a good idea.

If you have been to the facilities in Pennsylvania in the last four years, you have something more to worry about, because the Republicans obviously don’t care.

From the Wikipedia page on the conflict:

Israel
Civilians: 38 killed
Military: 58 killed

Lebanon
Civilians: 497-828 killed
Lebanese army: 34 killed
Hezbollah militia: 83 killed
Amal militia: 8 killed
PFLP militia: 1 killed

[Israel claims 400+ Hezbollah militia killed and 16 captured]

Israel claims that they are targeting Hezbollah and Hezbollah is targeting Israeli civilians. Both have an accuracy problem as 60% of those killed in Israel are military, while, using the lowest number of civilian deaths for Lebanon and the Israel claim for Hezbollah deaths, 55% of those killed in Lebanon are civilians.

More coverage from Pierre, Retaliation’s Mutual Injustice, and Juan Cole, One Ring To Rule Them Wholesale.

My comments are at the end, below the fold.

From CNN:

Former President Carter, who helped broker the historic Camp David peace accord, said President Bush has pursued an “erroneous policy” that has fostered violence in the Middle East.

Carter said the United States should work for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah and the world community should concentrate on a long-term solution, but he is uncertain whether Bush can accomplish a cease-fire.

“It depends on whether world opinion is strong enough to get the administration to change its erroneous policy, which has been to encourage the continuation of attacks on both sides,” Carter, a Democrat, told The Grand Rapids Press in an interview Friday.

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Via Keith at Invisible Library I was led to the column of Terry Jones [ex Monty Python], Nice one, George, thanking the Shrubbery for advancing the time table of Armageddon.

You should read the column in its entirety, but the comments are well worth a look and I have “nicked” most of the comment of MrPikeBishop for below the fold:

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Both Sam’s photographer and Steve were born on this day.

Stop by and extend greetings.

From the Anchorage Daily News we learn that Butcher loses cancer fight:

Far from her Alaska home and the dogs she loved so much, four-time Iditarod champion Susan Butcher died Saturday in a Seattle hospital.

She was 51 years old and the mother of two young daughters. She had been waging a battle against leukemia for a year and a half, but sometimes not even the toughest warriors can win.

On 17 of her 51 years, a third of her life, Susan Butcher was on the Iditarod Trail challenging the Alaskan wilderness and weather on the 1,100+ mile length. She also drove a dog team to the top of Mount McKinley.

She was more than a candle in the darkness – she was a torch. You don’t ride in a dog sled; you spend most of your time running. All you need to win is to be a world-class dog breeder and trainer, a marathon runner, an arctic survival specialist, and handy enough to fix a busted sled in the middle of a wilderness.

Florida License Plates

A weekend feature of Why Now.

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The problem for the powers that be when looking at the political bloggers is that bloggers still have ideals. It has been so long since the pundit class sold their souls that they have forgotten what it was like to care.

Liberal bloggers aren’t truly angry, they are indignant. They know how things are supposed to be done, and are outraged when people, including the pundits, ignore the rules. It’s not that the Republicans break the rules, laws, and norms of a civil society; it’s that they do it with impunity.

It is especially galling when the media creates “new history” and claims that the atrocity of the moment is the way “things have always been done.” When it gets so blatant that they are forced to acknowledge a problem, they act like it just popped up, and hasn’t been part of a deliberate campaign that has been ongoing for decades.

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The BBC reports that Israeli border strike ‘kills 28’, eliminating the threat to Israel posed by Syrian Kurdish warehouse workers putting vegetables fruit on trucks.

Within the report we learn:

In his televised speech Sheikh Nasrallah also said Hezbollah would end its rocket attacks if Israel stopped attacking what he called civilian areas in Lebanon.

Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman said that suggestion was “a sign of weakness” and that Hezbollah might be “looking for a way out”.

Dan, you are still an idiot and hanging around with Bolton doesn’t help. Hezbollah isn’t going anywhere; they’re home. Israel is the one who needs an exit strategy.

When Israel reduced its air raids, Hezbollah reduced its rocket attacks. When Israel went back to attacking Lebanon, Hezbollah redoubled its attacks. Hezbollah is the one that does what it says it will do: they have credibility.

A general note to Israeli spokeweasels: intelligent people have figured out that Hezbollah is spinning like crazy, but you have been outright lying. Back off and return to the highly distorted version of truth that is acceptable. Calling 14-year-olds “senior Hezbollah officials” isn’t going to cut it and you are on the verge of having killed more Hezbollah fighters than could exist.