Friday - March 21, 2008

AMATEUR HOUR FOR THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN

by Toby Harnden on 21 Mar 2008 at 10:10

Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, US Elections, Reverend Jeremiah Wright
Full coverage of the US Elections 2008

So some genius on Barack Obama’s staff thought it would be clever to slip the “New York Times” a copy of a 1998 picture of Bill Clinton meeting the Reverend Jeremiah Wright at the White House. Doh! Kinda undermines Obama’s high-minded speech and appeal to everyone’s better natures on racial issues dontcha think? The picture, of course, proves nothing and to even suggest that a quick handshake and thank you note from Bill can be equated with the two-decade-long relationship Obama had with his minister is just plain stupid.

Obama himself made a slip on the Wright issue too. Check out the audio here from a Philadelphia radio station in which the Illinois senator describes his grandmother as a “typical white person”. Inevitably – and fairly - people are asking what would be happening if Hillary Clinton had described someone as a “typical black person”.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/foreign/tobyharnden/

There’s more so check out the link and more as well in video etc.
I know the speech is days old but the subject is far from dead.  This is a report by Brit writer for the Telegraph, covering American politics.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/21/2008 at 08:35 AM   
Filed Under: • Politics • Racism and race relations •  
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   Thursday - March 20, 2008

LOST - the half season finale

So, are you utterly blown away and confused? Got lots of your questions answered, only to have many more questions asked? Me too. We got to see “Kevin Johnson“‘s backstory, in between leaving the island and nearly coming back on the freighter. I still hate him, and hope Libby haunts him forever. And is Locke totally nuts, a traitor for now supporting Ben, or has the island just taken over his mind? And I knew Tom was gay!! He was just having waaay too much fun playing football with Jack back at the Other’s compound last season. And the twist at the end, where it looks like Sayeed is giving Michael his wish ... “Why are you here?” “I’m here to die.” Fantastic move Sayeed. Talk about leveraging your assets!

Now you’ve got 5 weeks to watch all your Tivo’d episodes, and try and figure out the timelines ... one in the real world, one on the island. Because I think the show resumes on Christmas morning, island time. And decide if Charles Widmore is hugely evil, or merely rich and diabolical ... putting together the world’s biggest con in less than 10 weeks. So where does that leave Penny?

PS - knowing the LOST curse, does anyone know if the actress who plays Rousseau was caught DWI?
PPS - did Walt look small again to you? Last time we saw him, when Locke was dying in the Dharma body pit, he looked 6 feet tall and 20 years old.
PPPS - Michael’s ride is a 1976 Plymouth Volare, restored to mint condition. Which is an oxymoronic undertaking akin to chrome plating a turd, but fits perfectly with his woebegone, do-everything-wrong personality.

You can always get a great recap over at Mac’s place. Until April 24, namaste!

Posted by Drew458     on 03/20/2008 at 10:51 PM   
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Happy 154th Brithday!

At the time (of its birth), the Democrats in control of Congress were moving toward passage of their Kansas-Nebraska Act, allowing slavery to expand into the western territories.  The Democrat President said he would sign the bill into law.

Amid the intense reaction, a grassroots movement arose to oppose the pro-slavery policies of the Democratic Party.  In just a few months, these town meetings and demonstrations coalesced into the Republican Party.

Several sites share the credit as its birthplace, but the GOP was named in Ripon, Wisconsin.  At a March 20, 1854 meeting convened by anti-slavery activist Alvan Bovay, fifty-five men and three women called for all opponents of slavery to unite in a new organization, to be called “the Republican Party.”

Just two months later, Members of Congress who opposed slavery declared themselves to be Republicans.  In July, the Republican Party held its first state convention, in Jackson, Michigan.

Within two years, the GOP became a major national party, controlling the U.S. House of Representatives, and in 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected the first Republican President of the United States.

That’s right folks, the GOP was brought into existence for one reason: emancipation. The Democrats were in favor of keeping slavery going, and even of expanding it. Wiki up “Bleeding Kansas” and “Missouri Compromise” if you aren’t familiar with the early history of the abolition movement. 110 years later, Republicans supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act at a rate nearly 2 1/2 times greater than did the Democrats. 

Posted by Drew458     on 03/20/2008 at 06:02 PM   
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The ultimate energy resource solution?

Oil. It’s what runs the modern world. Everything from gasoline to kerosene to plastics to synthetic rubber. We’d still be living in the early 19th century if not for good ole crude oil. But it seems to be in short supply. So we look for it, drill for it, and wind up paying for it, big time. But where does it come from? Oh you’ve heard the theories ... leftover dinosaurs and bits of primordial ooze building up over millions of years, getting squished and heated underground, blah blah blah. But somehow that doesn’t seem like the whole story. After all, we have the ability to apply heat and pressure to things in unbelievable amounts. Today we can make diamonds of better quality than the ones in the ground, and do it in just a couple days. But no oil. Well, it may turn out that the missing piece of this natural puzzle is nature herself. We’ve known for a very long time that oil is the end result of some kind of natural process, but we’ve assumed it was one that took millions of year to enact. Now it turns out that might have been a bad assumption, and that oil is the end product - the “poop” if you will - of a simple, fast acting bacterial agent. And a guy from Georgia may have found that agent.

A Tifton agricultural researcher says he has found the solution to the world’s energy crisis through genetic modification and cloning of bacterial organisms that can convert bio-mass into hydrocarbons on a grand scale. The local researcher believes his groundbreaking discovery could result in the production of 500 to 1,000 barrels of hydrocarbon fuel per day from the initial production facility. The hydrocarbon fuel — commonly known as oil or fossil fuel when drilled — will require no modification to automobiles, oil pipelines or refineries as they exist today and could forever end the United States’ dependence on foreign oil, he said.

J.C. Bell, who brought the world powdered peanut butter, has spent the last four years, identifying the bacteria that produces hydrocarbon and then finding a way to genetically alter it so that it could produce hydrocarbon in greater volume.

Bell cited a USDA study that projected it was possible to produce two billion tons of bio-mass that could be converted to hydrocarbon with some modification to agriculture and forestry practices.

Now that his discoveries have been patented, his corporation formed — Bell Bio-Energy, Inc. — and his government communications established, Bell announced his discoveries to the local press on Friday morning.

“I have received a tremendous amount of support from the state and federal government,” Bell said. “I could not have gotten this far without the help of (U.S. Sen.) Saxby Chambliss, (U.S. Sen.) Johnny Isakson, (Rep.) Jim Marshall, (Rep.) Jack Kingston and Floyd Gabler, the deputy undersecretary of the USDA.” He said, “They have opened doors for me at the Department of Defense and the EPA and EPD.”

Sources for bio-mass to be converted to hydrocarbon fuel are the forestry industry, pulp plants, agriculture and waste derived from the construction and demolition industry.

“This is the ultimate recycling,” Bell said. “Environmentalists should rejoice. We are only using waste products.” Bell said his company would take all of the waste of the plants: The tree limbs and tree tops, husks and cob of the corn, wheat stubble and corn stover.

Bell said that with ethanol, “The United Stated would have to totally rebuild our infrastructure.” He said, “We wanted to make hydrocarbon that could immediately be pumped.”

Bell said the original idea came from observing cows expel gas. “That is natural gas,” Bell said. “Cows release methane gas.” He said the gas is created by bacteria in the cow’s rumen or stomach. “These bacterial organisms are responsible for biological conversion of bio-mass into hydrocarbons,” he said.

With his research complete, Bell is in the process of building his pilot plants and production facilities. At the pilot plants, the bio-mass will be tested to select bacterial strains, bacterial genetic modification will be tested, revision of production protocols will be established, and a determination will be made of the best method of bio-mass conversion.

“We are exploring several locations for our pilot plants and production facilities,” Bell said. “We have the opportunity to put our plants in several locations.”

He estimated the budget for the research facility to be at $60 million annually and the production facilities at $250 to $300 million a year. He anticipates being in full scale production by October 1, 2009.

“What we’re doing is taking the trash like corn stalks, corn husks, corn cobs – even grass from the yard that goes to the dump – that’s what we can turn into oil,” Bell told WND. “I’m not going to make asphalt, we’re only going to make the things we need. We’re going to make gasoline for driving, diesel for our big trucks.”

Sources for bio-mass are the forestry industry, pulp plants, agriculture and waste derived from the construction and demolition industry. “We are only using waste products.” In fact, a USDA study projected it was possible to produce two billions tons of bio-mass that could be converted to hydrocarbon. How much oil does that mean? “…you’re looking at 5 billion barrels of oil per year. That would be about two-thirds of what we use now.”

Bell says his groundbreaking discovery will require no modification to automobiles, oil pipelines or refineries as they exist today and could forever end the United States’ dependence on foreign oil.

When asked why he thought no one else has patented this process, Bell answered, “It literally is because it’s too simple. Everyone was looking for a real complicated mechanism. We looked at how it occurs naturally. But it’s now going to develop in a hurry.”

AWESOME !!! And if this turns out to be the real thing, and not one of the bigger cons ever pulled, I fully expect Bell and his patent to be immediately infringed. Give him and his company a flat $25 billion and release the bacteria to the world. Every town would collect wood chips, leftover food, sawdust, grass clippings and farm waste. Anything organic will do. Including poo and roadkill? That would be very nice indeed, but I gather plantlife is the preferred source.

Can you imagine it ..."Honey, the gas tank is almost empty. Go mow the lawn.”

And all because a good ol’ boy was watching cows fart.




I ran the numbers. 2 billion tons in, 5 billion barrels out. An oil barrel holds 42 gallons, and a gallon of oil weighs 7 pounds. So what we have here is a natural process that outputs with 38.5% efficiency. That’s pretty decent. Of course, there will be lots of waste heat too, guaranteed. And I don’t know what to do with the leftover bio-slop. Maybe we can make building blocks out of the stuff. Or pump it into empty oil wells.

HUGE Update below the fold:

Posted by Drew458     on 03/20/2008 at 09:06 AM   
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Osama vows revenge for cartoons

Here we go again, yet again. The Turbaned Turd has crawled out of his cave, put down his three stones, and issued yet another threat over a bunch of drawings in a newspaper thousands of miles away.  Give me a fookin break already.

CAIRO, Egypt — Usama bin Laden slammed the publication of drawings insulting to the Prophet Muhammad in a new audio message posted late Wednesday and warned Europeans of a strong reaction to come.

The message, which appeared on a militant Web site that has carried Al Qaeda statements in the past and bore the logo of the extremist group’s media wing al-Sahab, showed a still image of bin Laden aiming with an AK-47.

A voice believed to be bin Laden’s described the cartoons as taking place in the framework of a “new Crusade” against Islam and warned Europeans that a reaction would come.

“The response will be what you see and not what you hear and let our mothers bereave us if we do not make victorious our messenger of God,” he said, without specifying what action would be taken.

The tape was posted less than a week after the Danish intelligence service said the reprinting of a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad had brought “negative attention” to Denmark and may have increased the risk to Danes at home and abroad.

Danish newspapers republished a cartoon showing Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban on Feb. 13 to show their commitment to freedom of speech after police said they had uncovered a plot to kill the artist.

So I guess it’s time to flood the world with those images again. They just don’t get it. The reason these pics get republished is to point out the utter intolerance of pisslam for any criticism, and to point out the general insanity and infantile emotional maturity of so many members of their “faith”. If they could just grow up a little and not react, or preach peace against the haters, or do or say anything that shows they’re adults in any way, then this would stop. But no. Hell no. We’re going to have another round of protests and riots in some asshole corner of the world where no one can even read. And no, the right response is NOT stopping trying to irritate them. They’re forever irritated to the edge of madness anyway, and the smallest decent gesture on our side is trumpeted as some major victory over us infidels. So Osama, go suck my dead dog’s hairy ass.

(original graphics from Macker’s World and aarons CC)

Posted by Drew458     on 03/20/2008 at 07:26 AM   
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   Wednesday - March 19, 2008

Understanding Modern High Finance

This is so messed up it’s probably completely true.

Go watch the whole slide show.

via C&S who has way too much time on his hands, for which I’m grateful. 

Posted by Drew458     on 03/19/2008 at 07:33 PM   
Filed Under: • Corruption and Greed • Humor • Stoopid-People •  
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SCOTUS humor by Frank J

Go. Read. Laff. It’s your patriotic duty after all.

Somehow I was expecting “I keeel you” but, come to think of it, Scalia doesn’t look a thing like old Achmed

Posted by Drew458     on 03/19/2008 at 06:35 PM   
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Courageous Obama?

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/19/commentary.ashong/index.html

CNN Editor’s Note: Derrick Ashong is a musician, activist and entrepreneur. He recently became a You Tube “phenom” after posting a passionate defense of Barack Obama. Ashong identifies himself as an independent.

Like many Americans I watched Sen. Barack Obama deliver his speech titled “A More Perfect Union.”

I watched in a state of minor shock, not so much at the deftness with which he defused the sophomoric conflation of his call for national unity with the inflammatory rhetoric of the retired head pastor of his church—a conflation that would imply that we must each swallow whole the entirety of views expressed by our friends and associates.

It was not his repudiation of small thinking that struck me. It was the fact that here we had an American politician speaking with both candor and compassion about the proverbial elephant in our national living room.

Race is an issue that continues to confound this country. It is an undercurrent that paints our description, understanding and valuation of people in American society whether spoken or not. It is the subtext that places NBA star LeBron James and Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen on the cover of Vogue, in uncomfortable caricature of brute and ingénue.

It is in the minds of some the very reason a person of color would even be considered a serious candidate for the presidency of the nation—never mind that three centuries into the American experiment there has been to date, only one such person.

I watched Obama’s speech with a measure of disbelief that he had the gumption to come out and say what we all know—that the problem of race remains one that we as a nation have yet to conquer. To be sure we have made strides towards reconciliation. But the hard conversations continue to be harder than most are willing to deal with.

Black America has yet to come to grips with its responsibility to tackle head on the problems that plague our communities. White America has yet to acknowledge the fact that here in the “home of the free,” true liberty has evaded many for far too long.

Too often these conversations are ended before they’ve truly begun, due to the ignorance, intransigence or simple unwillingness of people to acknowledge the validity of what the other side has to say.

Who can honestly argue that black America is not today contributing mightily to its own social, cultural and economic decline?

Who can honestly argue that white America has not been willfully blind and too often complicit in the injustices that continue to be visited upon people born with darker hue or stranger accent?

Who will have both the courage and the commitment to the promise of universal justice and equity that undergirds our country, to call upon the nation to move beyond the divisive rhetoric of racial “one-upmanship” and to embrace the challenge of fulfilling that promise?

Apparently a junior senator from Illinois by the name of Barack Obama.

For days pundits have pondered whether Sen. Obama could weather the controversy over Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s racially polarizing comments. The question at this juncture is not whether the candidate will rise to the occasion, but rather, whether America will.

Is this for real? Is this guy really calling out, saying that the time is now for the Big Talk? Because it’s going to be a Big Fight at first. And it might be ugly for a while. And if the bottom line isn’t the resolution to get past skin color in all circumstances, and a nearly immediate dissolution of the nationwide system of advantages based on race, then we’ll be worse off than before we recognized the elephant and gave her a name. I’m not familiar with this guy, but if this is his goal then I’m all for it. There are only two possible outcomes: a) Peace, Love, and Granola with Civic and National Pride, and a forfeiture of White Guilt and Black Victomhood Status or b) An insurmountable divide that could lead to another Civil War. That’s a big risk. Since death is on the line and most of us aren’t Sicilians, let’s up the ante and do Left vs. Right at the same time. There will be much yelling and rending of garments, but if we can all give enough to find a middle ground AND THEN STICK TO IT we can make huge progress. I’m beyond sick of the PC and the divisiveness, but I honestly feel my side has been giving and giving and giving for years. To find the happy center things need to tip quite a bit.

And nobody gets to sit this one out. Nobody. If it’s time to redefine the nation then you will take part in the process.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/19/2008 at 01:52 PM   
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The Obama speech

Oh God, I actually listened to that thing yesterday. Funny how flat his delivery was for once. And of course the talking heads were on it all night long. And did you notice all the American flags, and hear him profess his love of country? This morning Kim links over to an essay at GOPUSA that turns the situation around. Just imagine how people and the MSM would be reacting if this was 1999 and it was George Bush all these little issues were attached to. Meanwhile the WSJ gives him mostly a pass, but points out he’s still a major socialist.

I’m developing a different theory. I’m beginning to think that little Barry O belonged to that church on purpose: to learn how to act and think like a black man. Face it, how else would he know? He was born in Kansas, and spent the first few years of his life in Indonesia with his white mother. Then it was off to prep school in Hawaii, one of the most diverse places on earth, and life with his white grandparents. Then it was off to college at Ivy League universities. Not much cultural immersion at any of those places.

When I was an undergraduate my university had a self-segregated housing unit called the African American Experience. I thought this was a terrible thing, but it was darkly funny to watch the rich kid slightly black girls from the Upper East Side and from the tony towns of central Long Island NY enroll there. Sure, they picked up some at-i-tude and some victimhood unity I guess, but it was a hoot because every single one of them hated it by the end of the semester. They couldn’t wait to move out. I think the Obamas are in the same boat, which has now sprung a leak. And he can’t jump ship until after November. Bail, Barry, bail!!!

Posted by Drew458     on 03/19/2008 at 10:12 AM   
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small raid in afghanistan yields hundreds of anti-american AP photos

KABUL, Afghanistan - U.S. forces searching for bomb makers raided Afghan homes near the border with Pakistan early Wednesday, exchanging gunfire with militants. Six people were killed, including two children and a woman, Afghan officials said. 

The U.S.-led coalition said its forces were searching compounds in Khost province for a militant named Bismullah who organized roadside bomb attacks and smuggled weapons. Militants shot at the troops, who returned fire and killed “several militants,” including Bismullah and Rahim Jan, another man suspected of making bombs, the coalition said.

A woman and two children were among six people killed, said Khibar Pashtun, a spokesman for the Khost governor.

The coalition statement said a woman and a child who were in one of the buildings from which militants were shooting were killed.

So in four paragraphs and a headline, AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer, tells us at least three times that a few civilians got caught in the crossfire.

It is regrettable that militants continue to place innocent lives at risk simply to further their own agendas,” Maj. Chris Belcher, a spokesman for the coalition, said in a statement.

Yes it is regrettable. Moral of the story: don’t let the bombers set up housekeeping in your living room. Heck, kick them out of your village entirely.

The raid began just after midnight and lasted about an hour, said Mirza Gul, a villager from Hom in Khost province. Angry villagers had gathered at daybreak, chanting anti-U.S. slogans, he said.

He said one of the men killed used to work as a border policeman patrolling the region in between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Yep, those angry villagers again. Angry that a few local heroes martyrs insurgents terrorist boyos got their 72 raisins a little early, even though they were bravely hiding behind granny and a couple of toddlers. And, gee, duh, the local copper was playing both sides. I’m just shocked, shocked at that one.

The governor of Khost province, Arsallah Jamal, has previously called on U.S. forces to seek Afghan assistance before launching nighttime raids, saying Afghans would be in a position to ”reduce mistakes.”

Going back as far as 2002, President Hamid Karzai has publicly and repeatedly accused the U.S. of heavy-handedness in its counterterrorism operations. The U.S. has said over the years that it has modified tactics to cut down on civilian deaths.

Yeah right. “Reduce mistakes”. By not taking any action at all. Because they’re all innocent victims you know. Especially the bomb makers.

Gul said villagers were contemplating carrying the bodies of the dead from the village to Khost, the provincial capital, to protest to the governor and U.S. forces stationed there.

For their sake, I hope it’s a 5 day walk to Khost. And that they have nice warm sunny weather the whole trip.

If you follow the link you’ll get the story, along with a link to 365 recent pictures from Afghanistan. At least 5 of them do not mention that 3 civilians were killed in this raid. Many show some local dude showing off “bullet holes” in the front of his mud and thatch hut. The rest show either the casket of a fallen Canadian soldier being loaded on a plane, or tell us how almost all the heroin in the world comes from Afghanistan and that’s what nearly all the farmers grow. Bias? What bias?

Posted by Drew458     on 03/19/2008 at 09:25 AM   
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Voonderfall, joost voonderfall

I’m starting to think that Amsterdam is one of the places in Europe that actually deserves to be taken over by the islamonazis. This place is so depraved it even embarasses the Fwench.

Dutch council officials will permit gay sex in public areas but fine dog owners who let their pets off the leash in Amsterdam’s Vondelpark.

Paul van Grieken, an Alderman in the Oud-Zuid district of the city, has startled many Amsterdammers, despite their famously liberal attitudes, with plans to allow public sex as part of this summer’s new rules of conduct for the country’s best-known park.

“Why should we try to impose something that is actually impossible to impose, which also causes little bother for others and for a certain group actually means much pleasure?”, he said.  Amsterdam’s beautiful Vondelpark in the centre of city draws hordes of summer visitors, families, skaters and joggers.

But the park’s rose garden has become famous as a trysting spot for gay men looking for uncomplicated sexual encounters.

Mr van Grieken stresses that tolerance to “cruising” gays, aimed at protecting homosexuals from violence, will have “strict rules attached”.  Thus, condoms must always be cleared away, it must never take place in the neighbourhood of children’s playgrounds and the sex must be restricted to the evening and night-time,” he said.

The new park rules have the blessing of the Dutch police, who have urged all Dutch parks to follow Amsterdam’s lead.

But Amsterdam’s dog owners are less impressed. The new park code of conduct will set out stiff fines for dogs that are allowed to run around the Vondelpark off the leash.

“Research showed that many people find this disturbing,” said Mr van Grieken.

One dog owner protested: “As long as the park has existed, we’ve been allowed to let our dogs run freely. It’s outrageous that we will be punished from now on but public sex won’t. If they can drop their trousers, why can’t I let my dog loose?”

hat tip to Peiper, who is in hospital over in Old Blighty, possibly with a heart condition. Get well soonest buddy. 

Posted by Drew458     on 03/19/2008 at 08:37 AM   
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Today in History

I don’t know why it took that long to take his picture, but photographers finally got Pluto to sit still for a portrait, March 19, 1915. I’ve heard that the photographer was Obidiah Olan himself, working out of his defunct flour mill which he had converted to a portrat studio. The famous picture of Pluto, along with the then-recent growth of telephone service, allowed Olan Mills to become a commercial success and annoy people with telemarketing calls for nearly a century.

What? Huh? Waddya mean Pluto the planet? Oh. Well, fine. That’s what happens when I blog before coffee.




Apparently Pluto The Planet was snapped by a young Arizona farmer named Clyde Tombaugh, who was working at the Lowell observatory to earn a couple extra bucks.  Pluto didn’t actually become a planet until 1930, when it was given a name ... you know what a bunch of kiss-ups those astronomers are ... they got the PL part of the name from the initials of big-shot sky searcher Percival Lowell, then got all academic and went searching for the name of some Roman god that would fit, and came up with Pluto.

The discovery of Pluto and the calculation of it’s orbit mostly solved the hair-tearing issue of ”Why is Uranus so wobbly?”, a problem literally of astronomic proportions, which until then had only really been bothering a certain type of fashionable folk who lived in the East Village in New York City and vacationed in Amsterdam. Given a name and an orbit, Pluto was promptly forgotten about, becoming nothing more than another classic mnemonic school kids had to learn - “My Very Evil Monkey Just Stole Nine Potatoes”.

Left to rot for nearly 50 years, Pluto once again entered the news in 1979 when it was found he had actually hooked up with a trashy little planetoid named Charon (pronounced “Karen” - can you have a more affected 80s spelling than that?!?). With this negative publicity things soon got rough for Pluto, and in fact for the entire solar system. Pluto hit rock bottom two summers ago and was stripped of planetary status. After a long stint in rehab there is some hope for the old rock; Pluto is now considered a dwarf double planet, forever sharing even this minor glory with Charon, who has gained weight and constantly nags about everything.

Children today are taught that the solar system actually has 11 planets - Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Eris - and are given the task of remembering the boringly PC “My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants.” I dunno, sounds vaguely pro-islamist to me. Pinko hippy school teachers. Why not Pluto/Charon or “PluRon”? What, you’ve never even heard of Ceres or Eris? You old fart. Actually, neither had I until I wrote this. No wonder there’s a generation gap.

Interviews with Pluto can be found here and here. The old boy is a bit bitter these days, not surprising.




Oh good, the coffee is ready. See ya later.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/19/2008 at 07:24 AM   
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   Tuesday - March 18, 2008

Sci Fi Sadness

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who co-wrote “2001: A Space Odyssey” and won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday, an aide said. He was 90.

Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s, died at 1:30 a.m. in his adopted home of Sri Lanka after suffering breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva said.

Co-author with Stanley Kubrick of Kubrick’s film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Clarke was regarded as far more than a science fiction writer.

He was credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits.

He joined American broadcaster Walter Cronkite as commentator on the U.S. Apollo moonshots in the late 1960s.

Clarke’s non-fiction volumes on space travel and his explorations of the Great Barrier Reef and Indian Ocean earned him respect in the world of science, and in 1976 he became an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

But it was his writing that shot him to his greatest fame and that gave him the greatest fulfillment.

“Sometimes I am asked how I would like to be remembered,” Clarke said recently. “I have had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer and space promoter. Of all these I would like to be remembered as a writer.”

At a 90th birthday party thrown for Clarke in December, the author said he had three wishes: for Sri Lanka’s raging civil war to end, for the world to embrace cleaner sources of energy and for evidence of extraterrestrial beings to be discovered.

Arthur C. Clarke, 1917-2008
Rest In Peace
May you great God by his 9 billion and one-th name

Posted by Drew458     on 03/18/2008 at 10:37 PM   
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We’re all going to Heller in a Handbasket

The Supreme Court is hearing DC v. Heller today. Keep your fingers crossed. There is at least one website live blogging it, so you can go to SCOTUSblog for the latest updates. Also C-Span will be providing a delayed audio feed.

From what I’m reading of the opening discussion, I’m not exactly thrilled.

Based just on the questioning, which can prove inaccurate, the Court is divided along ideological lines in Heller, with Justice Kennedy taking a strong view that the “operative clause” of the Second Amendment protects an individual right unconnected with militia service that guarantees the right to hunt and engage in self-defense.  If the oral argument line up were to hold when the Court votes, the Court will recognize an individual right to bear arms that will not be seriously constrained by military service of any kind. There was a seemingly broad consensus that the right would not extend to machine guns, plastic guns that could evade metal detectors, and the like. There was relatively little disccusion of the trigger lock provision. Justice Breyer seemingly sought to pick up a fifth vote for a narrower reading of the Second Amendment by attempting to tie the question of the reasonableness of the regulation to whether the challenged statute left individuals with the ability to possess weapons that could be used in milita service.  But at argument, at least, none of the Court’s more conservative members expressed much interest in that approach, and Justice Kennedy’s view that the operative clause is not directed at militia service would seem not to point in that direction.

WTF?? I guess the opeing round includes everything, in a kind of kitchen sink approach. Rights not connected to militia service - good. Right doesn’t extend to plastic guns? Where the FUCK did that come from? Trigger locks? What the hell? This sounds crazy ...

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy emerged as a strong defender of the right of domestic self-defense.  At one key point, he suggested that the one Supreme Court precedent that at least hints that gun rights are tied to military not private needs — the 1939 decision in U.S. v. Miller — “may be deficient” in that respect. With Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and Antonin Scalia leaving little doubt that they favor an individual rights interpretation of the Amendment

Well, that sounds reassurring. Miller isn’t just deficient, it’s friggin crack.  OVERTURN IT. But this is just the first day, so things could go back and forth. Don’t get too worked up that strange things are said and wierd arguments are made at this point. Let’s air them all out, throw them all out, and see what’ left when the dust settles.

Plastic guns and trigger locks. Extraordinary. You’ve got to have a “penumbra” wider than the orbit of Jupiter to read that one into “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”.

Fresh reactions can be read here, and here.

(graphics snagged from the NRA-ILA) who has posted an amazingly understated paragraph or two on this case.

update - 2pm Arguments are done. Barely and hour and a half. Outside the court, Cathy Lanier, DC Chief of Police, is on TV slinging the BS - “high capacity”, “easily concealed”, “shooting in schools and churches”, ”DC ban isn’t complete - because the police are allowed to have handguns”, “public safety”, “a city can impose reasonable regulation on any constitutional right”. DC AG Peter Nickles is slinging the same crap. Walter Dellinger, Former Acting Solicitor General - “I think this is a reasonable law”, handguns are bad, they’re all used in crime, the facilitate suicide, cops are all concerned ... more BS about machine guns and armor piercing bullets which are a threat to law enforcement .... yadda yadda ya, same shit, different day. DC City Council Chairman Vincent Gray echoes the same sentiments, claims homicides have gone down since the enactment of the no-handguns law (which is a crock of poop) ... “more guns is going to lead to more crime” says the mayor. Obviously, there is nobody from the other side at this interview ... mayor implies he’s going to try for an end run if the decision goes against him?

Next at the mic is some wiener from Brady, Dennis Henigan ... “we don’t want an interpretation that can be used as an assault weapon against the gun laws in this country.”(wonder how long it took him to think that choice line up?) “we want the courts to have a very limited role in assessing what the rights are when the more important thing is public safety (or something to that effect. I can only type and listen so well). Commie.

Alan Gura is on - he’s Heller’s attorney. Looks about 17. “The Constitution does not end at the borders of Washington DC”.
Bob Levy, another of Heller’s attorney, is OK with reasonable regulation, feels it’s OK to ban certain types of handguns (ie plastic ie Glocks). Oh this is getting weak. Weak!!!

Ha, Heller makes the “well armed citizens make for a polite society” line.

So, this is it? That’s all the oral arguments we’re going to have? I guess so. The rest is in the paperwork. Mr. Heller puts in a small positive statement too, as does Tom Palmer from the Cato Institute.

Now we’ll have to wait until JUNE for an answer. What, C-Span is doing a call-in poll to see if you think Yea or Nay? Let’s go to the callers and hear what they say! Bah, I’m turning off the TV.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/18/2008 at 12:11 PM   
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun Control •  
• Comments (8) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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