As I am quite bored of it.

I should run a greatest hits show. It will be grand, indeed! We will have awards and popular culture speakers to present them, and they will give endless speeches to the tearful delight of a prim and proper crowd of America's best and brightest!

Also, if you let bottled water sit overnight, it gets a very unpleasant, biting, slick taste to it. I think someone maybe has poisoned me.

Anyway, my apologies to anyone I've offended over the last three years or so, and I hope you didn't take it all too personally. It was good for a chuckle, if nothing else, though some of you seem to be a little bit touchy. Perhaps you should seek therapy rather than pretending to be me as an AC (important tip, sir: I sign my posts from skratchpad, Battery Powered, and AC as TxMxP, not xTxMxPx).

As to what I shall do with this account now, I do not know. I could continue to write standard, boring political claptrap, or I could use it solely to troll. Alas, I could only post once a day in that case, so I don't know how well that would work out.

I could turn it over to someone else and just forgoe slashdot altogether, but I don't know if I want to do that.

I'm considering going about slapping down every pro-Linux post that crops up on the front page that I can find, but that would probably end in the same way pure trolling would.

Now what?

I feel pretty Oh so pretty I feel pretty and witty and gay
And I pity Any girl who isn't me today I feel charming Oh so
charming It's alarming how charming I feel And so pretty That I
hardly can believe I'm real See the pretty girl in that mirror
there? Who can that attractive girl be? Such a pretty face Such
a pretty dress Such a pretty smile Such a pretty me! I feel
stunning And entrancing Feel like running And dancing for joy
For I'm loved By a pretty wonderful boy GIRLS Have you met my
good friend Maria The craziest girl on the block? You'll know
her the minute you see her She's the one who is in an advanced
state of shock She thinks she's in love She thinks she's in
Spain She isn't in love She's merely insane It must be the heat
Or some rare disease Or too much to eat Or maybe it's fleas Keep
away from her Send for Chino This is not the Maria we know
Modest and pure Polite and refined Well-bred and mature And out
of her mind! Miss America, Miss America, speech! Miss America,
bravo, speech! MARIA I feel pretty Oh so pretty That the city
should give me its key A committee Should be organized to honour
me I feel dizzy I feel sunny I feel fizzy and funny and fine And
so pretty Miss America can just resign See the pretty girl in
that mirror there (What mirror, where?) Who can that attractive
girl be? (Which, what, where, whom?) Such a pretty face Such a
pretty dress Such a pretty smile Such a pretty me! MARIA & GIRLS
I feel stunning And entrancing Feel like running and dancing for
joy For I'm loved By a pretty wonderful boy

I think maybe America's problems might run a little bit deeper than wardrobe malfunctions and unintelligent design....

This is a quote by Thomas Sowell which I recently pulled from eglamkowski's journal. I did not read the rest of the journal.

Each day, as I take various pills, I realize that without those pills I might not be alive -- and, if I were, life would not be worth living. Yet those who produce these medications are under constant attack from people who produce nothing.

There are numerous things that annoy me about slashdot, the political climate in this country, and the world in general. This is an excellent illustration of several of them all at once.

Sowell, here, is dismissing charges of profiteering and outrageous pricing practices by sweepingly dismissing those who make the charges as if they're nothing more than unproductive whiners. His statement is quite simple - "I can afford these pills that make my life better, so I don't care about you or what you have to say about it because I'm comfortable and alive whether you are or not".

First annoyance: I hate it when conservatives whine that they're unfairly portrayed as "cold hearted" or "cruel".

Newsflash for you guys. You are. You're black-hearted bastards who, generally, wouldn't give a rat's ass about any other human on Earth outside your own little social shell if it weren't for the faux concern you have when you think it's going to score you points on your punchcard to get into heaven. The fact of the matter is quite simple: most conservative economic views can be boiled down to "if you don't have the money to make things happen, your life isn't worth living, so you should just commence with the dying and decrease the surplus population". This is a perfect illustration of that particularly diseased mindset. I wonder just what Mr. Sowell would think if he were lying in agonizing pain on his death bed because he couldn't afford to be alive and to have a "life worth living"? Would he still defend the drug companies that simply refuse to help him because his life isn't worth anything to their bottom line?

Second annoyance: Thomas Sowell is a successful syndicated columnist, and all he's doing here is applying an arbitrary negative label to a whole group of people who are trying to help suffering and dying people. He's demonizing people who value human life and dignity over corporate profits just because HE can afford his drugs while other people can't.

He will make money off of this selling ads, selling the column. People like kowski will quote him and venerate him for being so bluntly "wise" in the face of those whiny poor people.

Yet, the instant I paint any group of people - say freeps - with a single brush, the same people that are now quoting Sowell will jump down my throat and slash at me for spewing "ad hominems" and "strawman" arguments.

Third annoyance: the insistence of modern society to simply dismiss claims based on the speakers rather than the merits of the claim. What really annoys me here is not so much that Sowell is looking at some willingly unemployed communist who's plainly looking for society to take care of him in the absence of his own will to do so, he's just assuming that all the people who ever complained about drug costs are unproductive losers and then dismissing the arguments based on his own conclusion.

Never mind, of course, that many of the people who complain about drug costs are columnists just like Sowell. Never mind that many of the people who complain about drug costs are doctors and lawyers, two professions in which the average workload is probably twice what that "hard-working" mangod Sowell ever dreamed of. Never mind that many of the people who complain were gainfully employed until their disease - unlike Mr. Sowell's disease, apparently - debilitated them to the point where they couldn't work.

I guess, in the end, I should take solace in the knowledge that I'm ten times better a person than Thomas Sowell could ever hope to be. I don't put much stock in economists, since they're basically failed scientists as far as I'm concerned, but it still irritates the hell out of me when they try to talk about social issues because they invariably end up saying something painfully idiotic.

Whatever the cause for Sowell's apparent belief that money is the sole determining factor of the external value of another human being, I would just like to point out to everyone that this is yet another hard example of where I come away thinking that conservatives are cruel, stupid, and debased creatures of comfort with no objective but to prey on the weak for their own personal gain rather than to try and strengthen them for the good of the pack.

Keep this in mind the next time you think about whining because I portray these people negatively. There are solid reasons I do so, and this is one of them. If you don't want people to think you're an asshole, don't be one. It's that simple.

Thank you to the gentle sir/madam who provided the upmods. You can rest better at night knowing that you just made some poor slob waste an entire batch of precious, precious points.

------

Since alot of Bushies like to point to sudden cold snaps in the U.S. and say "HAHA GLOBAL WARMING IS TEH LIBRUL LIE!" (mainly because they don't understand the concept of global warming or its effects, but never mind that), I give you the year's average temperatures for some zip codes generated randomly from a perl script. It's not any more scientific, but at least I didn't have to falsify and selectively edit any documents in the process of making my point. Note that I did, however, skip over a couple of zip codes it generated because it started out with a nasty inclination to keep giving me mid-western zip codes, so the graphs were almost all the same because the zones were all in the same general area (of course, this means I altered the experiment to work AGAINST my hypothesis and it still worked out... funny that).

http://www.weather.com/activities/other/other/weather/climo-monthly-graph.html?locid=58483&from=36hr_bottomnav_undeclared

http://www.weather.com/activities/other/other/weather/climo-monthly-graph.html?locid=54107&from=36hr_bottomnav_undeclared

http://www.weather.com/activities/other/other/weather/climo-monthly-graph.html?locid=87105&from=36hr_bottomnav_undeclared

http://www.weather.com/activities/other/other/weather/climo-monthly-graph.html?locid=63847&from=36hr_bottomnav_undeclared

http://www.weather.com/activities/other/other/weather/climo-monthly-graph.html?locid=25701&from=36hr_bottomnav_undeclared

http://www.weather.com/activities/other/other/weather/climo-monthly-graph.html?locid=15311&from=36hr_bottomnav_undeclared

http://www.weather.com/activities/other/other/weather/climo-monthly-graph.html?locid=72107&from=36hr_bottomnav_undeclared

lol modbomber

It is official; Netcraft confirms: the_mad_poster account is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered mad_poster community when IDC confirmed that the_mad_poster market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all posts. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that the_mad_poster has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. the_mad_poster is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [googlewar.com] in the recent GoogleWar comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict the_mad_poster's future. The hand writing is on the wall: the_mad_poster faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for the_mad_poster because the_mad_poster is dying. Things are looking very bad for the_mad_poster. As many of us are already aware, the_mad_poster continues to lose market share. Downmods flow like a river of blood.

Trolls are the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of their core posters. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time troll posters Trollaxor and OSM only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Trolling is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Trolltalk leader Slashpanda states that there are 7000 posters of unique trolls. How many posters of *BSD is dying are there? Let's see. The number of LUNIZ RoX versus *BSD is dying posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 *BSD is dying posters. RMS anal sex posts on Slashdot are about half of the volume of *BSD is dying posts. Therefore there are about 700 posters of RMS anal sex. A recent article put *BSD is dying at about 80 percent of the trolling market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 *BSD is dying posts. This is consistent with the number of *BSD is dying posts.

Due to the troubles of M2, abysmal karmas and so on, trolling went out of business and was taken over by crapflooders who post endless pages of garbage. Now RMS anal sex is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that trolling has steadily declined in market share. Trolling is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If trolling is to survive at all it will be among noob dilettante dabblers. Trolling continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, trolling is dead.

Fact: Trolling is dying

WTF?

Well, here's the thing. I was being nice. I was being reasonably docile. I was keeping my mouth shut and leaving well enough alone. So here you go. I'm going to keep being relatively nice, calm, and docile, and I'm going to give you a calm, reasoned, non-acidic response to a JE Railgunner wrote with comments disabled.

As usual, Bush made a mistake, and Railgunner's JE is just another attempt to justify his failing long after the fact.

I'll make this short and sweet:

1. Bush said North Korea had multiple agreements with the U.S. At the time, they didn't. He was wrong. This is a fact. You can't dispute it without making things up or outright lying.

2. Bush said "We're not certain as to whether or not [North Korea is] keeping all terms of all agreements.". He said this on national TV. Again, no denying it unless you just make things up or flat out lie. It is also an untrue statement. To the contrary of what Mr. Gunner says, the government (the presumed "we" in "we're not certain") scrambled - Bush's own WHITE HOUSE, in fact - scrambled to respond to the comments indicating that they had absolutely no reason to believe that North Korea was in violation of the agreement (singular).

Mr. Gunner provides this summary of a quote from Madeline Albright. The quote was given on Meet the Press more than three years after Bush's slip up:

Ladies and Gentlemen, from September 2004, on Meet the Press, Madeliene Albright admitted that North Korea had duped the Clinton administration, and that Kim Jong Il began to acquire nuclear weapons on her watch.

As usual, Mr. Gunner fails to quote the entire thing (although at least he provided a link to the whole thing for once) and just runs off with his own literal interpretation. He also fails to understand exactly what Albright is saying, as he apparently does not understand what the agreement was.

Albright's quote has nothing to do with North Korea "acquiring nuclear weapons" and everything to do with fuel rods. Under the agreed framework, North Korea was to remove these fuel rods from the Yongbyon reactor and "can" them. This was done, as agreed. The process was completed in April 2000 under scrutiny from the IAEA.

One problem: the fuel was to be removed from the country only after nuclear components for their first light-water reactor began to arrive. This didn't occur until.... drum roll please.

April 2001

WHO was president in April 2001 again? Because I seem to think the guy's last name wasn't Clinton. Because, you know, up until this point all parties to the agreement were in full compliance with the terms of the treaty. The fuel rods didn't disappear on Clinton's watch, they disappeared on BUSH's watch (but not in April 2001, we'll get to that).

Gee. Big surprise.

So, what is Albright talking about? Well, here's the entire relevant question and response:

MR. RUSSERT: But didn't North Korea develop a nuclear bomb on Bill Clinton's watch?

MS. ALBRIGHT: No, what they were doing, as it turns out, they were cheating. And the reason that you have arms control agreements is you don't make them with your friends, you make them with your enemies. And it's the process that is required to hold countries accountable. The worst part that has happened under the agreed framework, there was these fuel rods, and the nuclear program was frozen. Those fuel rods have now been reprocessed, as far as we know, and North Korea has a capability, which at one time might have been two potential nuclear weapons, up to six to eight now, we're not really clear. But in this period of time when there has not enough action been taken, I think that the threat from North Korea has increased.

Which part of that, then, is her accepting responsibility for the failure to remove the fuel rods? Fuel rods that were to be removed at a time when BUSH was in office? Fuel rods that were accounted for until AT LEAST late 2002 when Pyongyang kicked out the inspectors? Hell, since it wasn't until mid-2003 that we started to suspect they were reprocessing them, they might have been accounted for by the CIA and similar organizations until a few months into 2003 (http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/030825.htm).

You can argue over whether or not the treaty was flawed for not demanding the earlier removal of the rods, but we'll never know whether or not that's actually true since Pyongyang, apparently inflamed by numerous outbursts from Bush (though given the fickle nature of Mr. Jong-Il, that may well of simply served as a convenient excuse), angrily put a stop to cooperation two years into the Bush presidency and began to reprocess the rods shortly after that.

And, as usual, I'll probably be the one who gets the blame for starting a cross-journal flame war despite this being the rest of his JE:

Now, I forgive you, because I know that in 1994 when this agreement was made, you know, the one that the Commies didn't even let the ink dry on before breaking, that you were probably still in grade school and were just starting to notice girls, so the current events of 1994 were not in your realm of priority, because you were probably too busy buying Nirvana CD's (or maybe even Soundgarden) because MTV told you to like them.

But that's OK, buddy, I'm here for you! And for the record - people here do like you. In fact, believe it or not, I like you. (Even if I did get a chuckle over how stupid Ellem made you look here.)

Nice.

P.S. - ellem making me look "stupid" was actually ellem pointing out that I knew not what I was speaking of, and I readily admit to that. The only part of it that might have made me look "stupid" was the typically puffy-chested way I went about starting the "conversation", but I don't feel any stupider, so maybe that's not it.

Remember, kids. In modern American culture, only "stupid" people admit their errors. It works for Bush and a number of other scumbag politicians, it can work for you too!

... a strong contendor for "Ugliest Car In the History of the Universe"

And it'll probably still get its ass beat in the 1/4 mile by guys with $200,000 tuned Supras.

DID YOU KNOW...

43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, watched United Flight 175 (the 2nd 9/11 plane to hit NYC) crash into Tower 2 of the World Trade Center on national TV before deciding to continue his engagement at a Florida elementary school?

ADDITIONAL TRIVIA

President Bush gave the following speech outside the school at 0930, a full twenty-seven minutes after witnessing the event:

Today we've had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country. I have spoken to the Vice President, to the Governor of New York, to the Director of the FBI, and have ordered that the full resources of the federal government go to help the victims and their families, and to conduct a full-scale investigation to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act.

        Terrorism against our nation will not stand. And now if you would join me in a moment of silence. May God bless the victims, their families, and America. Thank you very much.

Upon being criticized for not acting when he saw the plane crash into Tower 2, he attempted to explain it away by saying he had watched the first plane crash into Tower 1. Obviously, however, no camera crews were present for that crash, and it wasn't until much later in the day that amateur video of the Tower 1 strike emerged and began to be broadcast by the media.

SOLID LEADERSHIP IN THE FACE OF CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER: BUSHCHENEY4LIFE

Soo... aborting a creature that cannot possibly live on its own is murder.... but executing a 40 year old woman is justice.

Fascinating.

I used to be in support of the death penalty, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like it's just an excuse for state and federal officials to legally kill people where it would otherwise be murder.

What amuses me is the thoroughly stupid arguments around it though. I mean... the constitution is the supreme law of the land. The constitution contains an explicit recognition of the "unalienable" right to life. Doesn't that make any one person killing any other person a violation of that person's rights? It's not like you can forfeit a right by committing a crime, so you can't argue that.

Why is it that the more I think about things... the more liberal I become? I mean, years and years ago when I was still a kid in school, I used to think:

1) Anti-gay rights laws were fine because people can choose to be straight. I "justified" this retarded mentality by saying "It's not like black rights because black people didn't choose to be black".

2) I used to support the death penalty.

3) I used to be against abortion.

4) I used to believe that things like the Iraq war were justifiable on the grounds that the other guy was an asshole.

But then when I actually started to think about the ramifications of these positions and the logic (or lack thereof) supporting them, I gradually abandoned them until, here we are.

In other words... I haven't been a conservative since I was a kid... I'm not making this up to be insulting, it's true. The more I read and paid attention to the world, the more liberal my views gradually became. I had strong social conservative views only when I had minimal information. As I gathered more information about history, culture, and current events, I became more and more liberal.

The only question is... why?

(Don't forget to hit the parent link for context) /comments.pl?sid=161268&cid=13562459

P.S. for some of you who still don't "get" links - when you create a link on slashdot to something on slashdot, take off the http://slashdot.org part in the front so that people who are using https:// don't get kicked out of the secure site when they click your link.

What you see below is one recorded instance of a specific, serious Bush failing, completely on the record and independantly verifiable, including an example of mainstream rug-sweeping where there should have been a sharpened harpoon ready to skewer the words.

This is absolute, verifiable proof of Bush administration failure that cannot be denied, short of explicitly denying widely-recorded history, by the right wing who's major arguments rely on three things:

1. Blaming liberals for using ethereal complaints against Bush.
2. Blaming the media for using ethereal complaints against Bush.
3. Claiming that what happened just simply didn't happen.

From CNN, March 9th, 2001:

TOKYO, Japan -- The Bush administration's tough talk on North Korea's communist regime has raised concerns in Asia about regional security.

One Japanese editorial warned that "treating Pyongyang like an enemy will ensure that it becomes one."

However, some analysts said that holding the North and its million-man army accountable isn't likely to derail South Korea's efforts to reconcile with Pyongyang.

China, North Korea's main ally, was silent on the Kim-Bush summit.

However, Li Xiguang, director of international communications at Beijing's elite Qinghua University, urged Bush to continue the policies of his predecessor.

"It would be counterproductive to change the policy of engaging North Korea," Li said. "If that changes, the North could react with hostility and become more confrontational and defensive."

The general sentiment seems to be that Bush should try to capitalize on the Clinton administration's progress toward curbing the North's long-range missile threat.

Bush's summit in Washington on Wednesday with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung was closely scrutinized across East Asia, where democratic South Korea, Japan and Taiwan rely on the 87,000 U.S. troops based in South Korea and Japan for their security against communist countries such as North Korea and China.

Bush told Kim that the United States will not immediately resume Clinton-era talks with North Korea, which achieved a moratorium on its missile testing in September 1999 in exchange for the partial lifting of sanctions.

Caution may lead to hostility
Bush said* he was skeptical about North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and expressed doubt that a missile deal could be verified, given North Korea's penchant for secrecy.

On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said he may try to expand prospective missile negotiations with Pyongyang by including U.S. misgivings about its conventional force.

He also said Washington would consider modifying a 1994 agreement aimed at halting the North's suspected nuclear weapons program.

North Korea did not immediately react to the Bush-Kim Dae-jung summit. But a statement released on Wednesday by its Foreign Ministry said Pyongyang sees Bush as hostile.

His administration is "increasingly assertive for a hard-line stance toward Pyongyang," which could jeopardize reconciliation between the two countries, the statement said.

It also said the United States should not assume that the North would be willing to "totally disarm itself first" as part of any agreement.

Clinton era progress
After decades of enmity, the Clinton's administration engineered the first visit of a high-ranking North Korean military official to Washington, and negotiations in Pyongyang in October involving then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Kim Dae-jung's reconciliation policy with the North helped produce a groundbreaking summit in Pyongyang with Kim Jong Il last year, the first family reunions across the border since the 1950-53 Korean War, and efforts to reconnect an inter-Korean railway.

For years, officials in Japan, South Korea and the United States have coordinated closely on North Korea policy.

"It is imperative that Washington and Seoul understand and trust each other when dealing with North Korea," The Japan Times said in an editorial. "Treating Pyongyang like an enemy will ensure that it becomes one."

* Actually, this is what Bush really said in March 2001 during a joint press conference with South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung:

We're not certain as to whether or not [North Korea is] keeping all terms of all agreements.

Which would be okay if weren't for two niggling little facts:

1. The U.S. and North Korea only had one agreement, a Clinton administration treaty to stop producing weapons-grade nuclear fuel in exchange for aid, at the time.
2. North Korea was in full compliance with the agreement.

Given the well-established instability of Jong-Il, White House lackeys scrambled to push to the press the fact that they have no evidence to indicate that Pyongyang wasn't compliant, and quickly explained away this gaff by insisting that Bush was talking about future concerns, apparently in the present tense, because "that's how the President speaks".

In other words, the president didn't even have a simplistic understanding of our ties to North Korea, a highly unstable regime with potential access to nuclear weapons and the definite ability to deliver any such weapons by air to the lands of established allies, so instead he just arbitrarily threatened them.

This is an indisputable account of a Bush Administration failing. More to follow.

References:
March 07, 2001 White House Press Release
Original CNN Article
Time Editorial

With all the yipping and yapping about Roberts and Katrina, we almost forgot about Iraq!

Another stirring success in our fight against the terorrists!

At least that's what the administration thinks about it...

WARNING: Reading the text of press briefings given by Scott McClellan may cause catastrophic inversion of perceptions of reality, inability to discern fact from fiction, loss of consciousness, retarded cognitive mental abilities, bloody discharge and terminal brain tumors.

Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government and to the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility"

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/13/katrina.washington/index.html

Holy. Crap. He's displaying leadership qualities.

This is something that always bothered me...

Christians talk about "Free Will" (being that our ability to think is the root of all our suffering, after all), but then they also talk about god's influence. What "god wants". What "god commands". People die because it was "god's will".

Excuse me.... but which is it? I mean, I suppose with the first two you could just ignore god, but that's of a strange situation. Wouldn't disobeying the almighty lord be a bit of a sin? In that case, you only have free will in the same sense that big brother says you do. Sure, you CAN choose to disobey, but once the big feller catches up to you, you're going to pay mightily for it, meaning you really never had a choice in which the consequences were solely your responsibility.

The last one seems to completely short circuit the entire concept of human free will. If somebody dies because god wills it, they have no choice. They have no free will. When faced with a mortal situation, they are already marked and nothing they can do will change that because "god willed it".

Perhaps, beyond the repression, violence, and forced ignorance that is the heritage of almost all major religions, the thing that really bothers me the most is the apparent lack of any single, coherent message in them, this being one example of that problem.

I swear to god, I just made them and they were fine. Actually, they were pretty good, and I don't think anyone is going to die.

http://www.gh-sts.com/HOWTO/pork-chops.txt