Posts from — December 2013

So it’s time to get everything in line so that there will be smooth sailing tomorrow.

Obviously you need the text of A Visit from St. Nicholas [AKA Twas the night before Christmas] or one of the variations.

But now that you’ve finished putting up enough lights to match the total electrical consumption of a third world nation, you can sit back and watch the North American Air Defense Command’s annual attempt to take out that red-suited commie’s attack on the capitalist system by giving stuff away. [Don’t worry kids, they are using the anti-missile defense system, so there’s no danger to anyone but taxpayers.]

This year Google has a tracker, if you don’t believe the government is up to the job.

Update: Norad has a slow loading site, but it uses actual satellite pictures of the terrain and gives a 3D appearance. Certainly flashier than Google, in many senses of the word – with and without caps.

I think I established my total disconnection from ‘Reality TV’, which may be on TV but has almost nothing to do with reality.

Frankly, when I saw references to Duck Dynasty I assumed it was a on the Cartoon Network. Now it is the basis for another Fundie Christianist meltdown.

Badtux covered the kerfuffle as someone born and raised in Louisiana, and that has to be part of it, but the whole thing smells.

I saw pictures of the guy, and my response was – this is a put on. Looking like you were in the mountains with Fidel and Che is not the sort of fashion statement that normally attracts GQ, so the interview seems just wrong.

The most obvious mistake is the beard. I’ve had a full beard for decades and know about living with a beard. I hack it back at least once, and normally twice, a year so that it doesn’t get in the way.

That beard is too long to put up with in real life. You can’t move through the brush without it snagging on something. You have to know where it is when going to bathroom. You have to be very careful around fires. It will catch in zippers, doors, chairs, actually just about anything. If a tie is a problem around power tools, that beard is even worse.

This smells like jockeying for position over a contract renewal, or maybe a ratings event. My understanding is that the show was on hiatus, so he wasn’t really working when things blew up, but A&E is certainly not interested in this kind of controversy. If the ratings have been dropping in the key ‘young adult’ demographic, A&E may have already planned to drop it.

The real point that people should take away from all of this is that religion is a choice. People make a decision for themselves as to what they’ll believe and can change their minds at any time. Skin color and sexual orientation are there at birth, and can’t be changed. If people choose a religion that discriminates against anyone for the way they were born, those people have chosen to discriminate, and there is no way around it.

Yes, today is the celebration of the very untraditional Festivus.

If you celebrate I hope all of your grievances were aired and the airing did not involve the Festivus pole being used in an inappropriate fashion.

The Israelis are outraged at reports that the US spies on them.

OTOH:

Israel has said it would never spy on the U.S. in the wake of the conviction of a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst who was caught spying for Israel in 1985.

Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life in 1987 after he was convicted of one count of espionage, and since then many Israeli leaders have appealed to U.S. presidents for his release.

Yeah, right, and the US is supposed to believe them.

Israel is not an official ally of the US. There are no binding treaties between the US and Israel, and Israel has the most powerful military in the region. When you throw in the nuclear capability, there is no way that the US doesn’t target them. They lie to us all the time, so there are no other options.

A person or persons unknown torched the Gävlebocken early this morning local time.

At 11:11 AM CST the winter solstice occurs marking the longest night of the year. If everyone has been good, the days start getting longer tomorrow. Locally, the sun will rise at 6:38AM and set at 4:49PM for a total of 10 hours and 10 minutes of daylight, but tomorrow will be a whole 2 seconds longer.

This also marks HogsWatch, so don’t forget to put out the turnips.

A couple of courts have been busy on the love and marriage front.

First, up in Canada Supreme Court strikes down Canada’s prostitution laws. It was a unanimous decision by the court that gives the government a year to come up with something that is not so close to the laws of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, or just forget the whole thing.

Meanwhile a US Federal judge has given florists and wedding planners a holiday present by declaring the state ban on same-sex marriage unConstitutional. The state said it would appeal, but it didn’t ask for a stay, so same-sex couples are getting married. ‘Traditional marriage’ has a somewhat different meaning in Utah, so things get a bit confused.

The Return Of Tip

Oh, hi! When’s dinner?

[Editor: Tip was waiting on my doorstep today. I haven’t seen her in months.]

Friday Ark

If you used your debit card in a Target store in 2013, change your PIN number.

Target got hacked, and while you can dispute credit card charges, you take the loss on debit card fraud, so there’s no point in taking a chance.

It’s too bad we don’t have someone tasked with strengthening our system security to stop these kinds of attacks from happening. Maybe people should complain about it, since the government has stopped issuing checks and is forcing everyone to use debit cards.

The BBC report, Saab wins $4.5bn Brazil fighter jet contract, is another part of the cost of NSA’s hoovering.

The Brazilian Air Force recommended the SAAB JAS 39 Gripen, based on the total cost of ownership, as well as their mission requirements. The President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, decided that the government should buy the Boeing F/A-18 to improve ties with the US.

Well, after she found out about the NSA spying on Brazil, President Rousseff decided the military was right in their assessment, and bought the SAAB aircraft.

Digby covers the NSA report by Zero’s ‘blue ribbon panel’, and is a bit surprised, as am I that it wasn’t a total whitewash of the problems.

The report notes that the bulk collection program has not been successful in stopping anything. What the spooks have cited as ‘wins’ could all have been accomplished with regular warrants targeting specific individuals or groups, instead of creating huge databases with information on almost everyone in the US.

The report is all swell and wonderful, but the proof will come if any effective changes are made to these programs, and that seems highly unlikely.

You may find tender parts missing in the morning.

This was in the Local Puppy Trainer, but they have gone New York Times with a paywall, so no link.

The local Congresscritter, Jefferson Beauregard Miller, has been besieged with complaints from the retired military community in the area who have figured out that the budget deal just passed in the Republican-controlled House is going to reduce their retirement pay.

These are the same people who donated money and votes in 2008 to make Sarah Palin Vice President, and, unkindest cut of all, in 2012 they supported Ayn Rand Paul Ryan for the job. They actually believed that loyalty like that would protect them from harm.

An old sergeant of mine made the point that ‘Republicans like the toys, it’s the Democrats that support the boys’.

Some people never learn that if you want love and loyalty, get a dog at the shelter, don’t expect it from Republicans.

In more than six decades wandering all over the world the only ‘white people’ I’ve ever seen were traditional Japanese entertainers, mimes, and clowns.

We are all shades of red from palest pink to dark mahogany because blood is red, and it is everywhere, just under the skin. The particular shade of anyone was determined long ago by the latitude their ancestors were at early in the evolutionary span of homo sapiens which determined the amount of sun blocking required for survival. It has no other meaning.

“Boldly going

where no man has gone before.”

The Wright Brothers make the first powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

People are talking about a possible offer of amnesty to Edward Snowden.

It is not going to happen because there is no way Snowden would believe it. Who in the US government has the credibility to make the offer and have Snowden accept it as real?

This is no doubt a result of NSA realizing that they have no way of knowing what Snowden has because they had no security on their internal system. Under Alexander the Geek, there was no serious effort at hardening systems to protect them from attack, he was all offense.

By now everyone should realize that when the leaders of the intel community speak they are lying. They lie about important things and trivial things – they just lie.

There is no one that Snowden would trust, so this is going nowhere.

Think about – is there anyone you would trust in the current government?