Through secret contacts I have obtained a "rough draft" of his "Letter to the American People".

"I consider it extremely unlikely that you, the American people, consent to the billions of dollars of annual expenditure from your treasury for this military misadventure. But I've read your tax code and clearly it is a work of satan, so maybe you aren't entirely sure what's going on there."

"Now that Iraq has a Constitution and an independent Assembly and Government, would it not be more beneficial to bring the US officers and soldiers home, and to spend the astronomical US military expenditures in Iraq for the welfare and prosperity of the American people? As you know very well, many victims of Katrina continue to suffer, and countless Americans continue to live in poverty and homelessness. Also you're costing us a bloody FORTUNE in RPG-7's and Semtex."

"I recommend that in a demonstration of respect for the American people and for humanity, the right of Palestinians to live in their own homeland should be recognized so that millions of Palestinian refugees can return to their homes and the future of all of Palestine and its form of government be determined in a referendum. This will benefit everyone. You guys know where Palestine is, right? I mean you've never invaded it before, so, maybe not so much."

"It is possible to lead the world towards the aspired perfection by adhering to unity, monotheism, morality and spirituality and drawing upon the teachings of the Divine Prophets. By the way, read the inscription on the Dome of the Rock for our thoughts on just how 'divine' your prophet is; we are currently offering competitive jaziya rates for our distinguished Dhimmis."

"I pray to the Almighty to bless the Iranian and American nations and indeed all nations of the world with dignity and success. Like the success we've had with our nuclear program. Totally gonna nuke the Zionist pigs. Kisses, Mahmoud."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html?ex=1322197200&en=0cf877b05b918674&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

The final argument is the one I really love. People ask how I can be a conservative and still want higher taxes. It makes my head spin, and I guess it shows how old I am. But I thought that conservatives were supposed to like balanced budgets. I thought it was the conservative position to not leave heavy indebtedness to our grandchildren. I thought it was the conservative view that there should be some balance between income and outflow. When did this change?

The whole thing is thought-provoking, at least.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DennisPrager/2006/11/28/america,_not_keith_ellison,_decides_what_book_a_congressman_takes_his_oath_on

Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible.

Ah, yes. It is so important that in the foundation of our goverment, the Constitution of the United States, that the founders sought to mention God, "Creator", and/or the Bible a whopping grand total of 0 times. In the entire text.

(Even the Declaration of Independence doesn't mention "God" directly, rather, one reference to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" and shortly thereafter "their Creator". There's about a 50/50 split on "the God of the Bible" versus "Jefferson was a Deist", at which point the debate degenerates into endless quoting of letters Jefferson et al wrote to support the position of Christian vs Deism. for the record, I support the Deist argument, I do not believe Jefferson meant the Christian God. But either way the Declaration of Independence is not a foundational document of our government, it's a middle-finger at England stating why we're about to start some shit, it has no "legal" power in our system of governance).

I'm so glad we've got Prager's imaginary friend protecting us from Ellison's imaginary friend.

In other news, if Prager's so AMERICA, FUCK YEAH! then does he eat the native dishes of any other country? I mean, one egg roll and you're supporting the godless commie pinko chinks, right? Oh fuck I had enchiladas for lunch, I just supported MS13. Also I farted.

Somehow it's a shocker (and not the pleasant "finger up the ass" kind) that a major news outlet has decided to start calling it a civil war.

How many fucking months has this "not-unlike-but-maybe-or-maybe-not-a-civil-war" hamsterdance been going on? My grossly imperfect recall says "at least since the ramp-up of the election season, maybe 3+ months".

So what kind of goddamn genius is at work to figure out, wow, eventually all the major news outlets will be jockeying (tastefully, of course) to be the first to label it a REAL civil war.

Independent of politics, "If it bleeds, it leads". So there's a political agenda, and there's a "we have to appease our shareholders agenda". Do a little math and there you go. NBC blinked and decided to go ahead. Either they'll get demonized, lose their White House Ass-Kissing credentials, OR they'll go down in history as the ones that "called it".

Everyone wants to be the person to predict the downfall of ... anything.

Here's how my day gets fucked up.

1. Jackass 13-year-old goes through Firefox and works out that by disabling some random set of settings, he thinks it's now faster. Since it was all TLAs in the advanced settings, and he doesn't have a credit card anyway, it won't affect him.
2. He posts it to his blog
3. GREAT LIST DUGG!!!!!!!one
4. Jackass user visits list and follows its advice. User has no idea what anything means but it was dugg, like, 521 times and those kids are smart.
5. Unchecks things.
6. "firefox can't connect securely to www.blah.com because the site uses a security protocol which isn't enabled"
7. User reads that as, "The site has not enabled something"

PLEASE TURN THE SENSIBLE DEFAULTS BACK ON, STUPID, AND STOP USING THE AUTOFELLATING DICKWEEDS AT DIGG AS YOUR IT DEPARTMENT.

I haven't gotten a subscription yet, but i thought of a new tag today in honor of the "Firefox 2" article on the front page:
nothingisanygoodifotherpeoplelikeit

The pro pics are posted at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/neurobashing/sets/72157594379536005/
for those that care about such things.

I got nothing, I just saw the word in my message list a lot and wondered if it was some sorta of meme or something.

http://www.kasperhauser.com/skymaul_site/FlipBook.html

so wish it was real. (Page 4)

So Webb "won". How ... interesting. OH NOES TEH DIEBOLD HAx04z br0ke! etc etc blah blah blah

Anyway right now, in between paroxysms of orgasmic glee, the america-hating liberal blogs are reporting that on CSPAN, a bunch of conservatives are talking about abandoning the Republican party. Ostensibly they're going to form a neocon/evangelical (dominionist?) party? I dunno. But between the greens and these guys, American politics could get truly interesting again.

Ah, voting. Such a lovely little pastime.

I love elections. I lived and breathed elections for quite some time; I was involved in the first-principles design, construction, development, and deployment of the first Votronic, one of the first (if not the first?) touch-screen digital voting machine. (Our model is, as far as I know, no longer in use in any precinct).

And every election, I get stuck in this infinite loop of yes/no on "have they been tampered with???". (By "they" I mean, "machines in general, esp. in critical races where tampering is alleged").

The biggest 2 cons to "are the machines tampered" are, in my humble but correct opinion:
1. Why has no one caught them/how are they (the tamperers) keeping it secret? and
2. Has tampering succeeded every time? And if not, see #1.

That's really what it comes down to. Forget about EVERYTHING ELSE anyone has ever said about hotel mini-bar keys and paper trails and all that.

Let's get real, here. People are bad at keeping secrets. You're telling me, just because Diebold has so far hidden the source code, that it's a grand sweeping conspiracy? No one ever got drunk and tried to impress a chick? And the hacked code NEVER FAILED ONCE?

I think, really, that's what it comes down to. Having covered the ground over and over, I keep wondering, "How can they KEEP pulling this off without getting busted?". And I keep coming up bupkis.

To work, it has to be the most flawless plan, ever, OR, everyone who thinks - doggedly and deeply - that the vote IS being hacked is just busy writing missives on web sites and not really doing the hard work of finding out the info.

So that's really it. There you go, a freebie. Stop worrying about hotel minibar keys, and start trying to someone with loose lips.

Explaining to customers "no you CANNOT have a fully ADA-accessible site, that's entirely spinny-flash things", or explaining to blind people "sorry but they specifically want the site to LOOK a certain way and, well, you know".

We've been through this TWICE already. It's painful.

And of course, for both sites, there was absolutely no evidence anyone with a screenreader had ever hit the site ONCE, but they're gov't, so, gotta do it.

(SMM == "Spend My Money")

Ok so I'm still stuck on which console to buy... but in the mean time, tell me what kind of hand-held system I want to buy to play dopey video games. PSP? DS?

Parameters: Recommendation must include at least 1 game. Do not say, "XYZ cuz it gots better gamez yo". Gimme some hits.

Boss: BLAH BLAH BLAH why aren't you done yet what are you doing all day, arguing with people on slashdot BLAH BLAH BLAH
Me: Scarlett Johanssen sex tape rumor on wwtdd.com
Boss: I'll be in my office (door closes)

Seriously. I think we ought to see about making this happen. I can't seem to find anyone else worth voting for in '08. So, fuck it, let's reanimate Goldwater.