Blog
Posterity is the new justification for FISA
You can picture it now. Just when they’ve whittled away the last possible explanation for warrantless wiretapping, History offers a new opening.
FBI wiretaps have “given us the most powerful and persuasive source of all for seeing how utterly selfless Martin Luther King was,” as a civil rights leader, according to a leading civil rights scholar.
Think about it. If we wiretap everyone, chances are something will be interesting. Then we can use the tapes for good, not evil. Do you hate history?
State of the Union Overloads Twitter
First Macworld, now the State of the Union. Several times during tonight’s SOTU address Twitter’s servers were overloaded, preventing users of the popular micro-blogging service from sending or receiving tweets for several minutes at a time.
A scan of Twitter’s public timeline during the speech showed a number of tweets about Bush’s (hopefully) last address to Congress. Personally, I got a flurry of tweets commenting on the speech from the people I follow on Twitter.
Midway through, Twitter’s website failed to process new messages and friend requests for several minutes at a time. Overall, the service held up, but the outage spikes were certainly annoying.
Earlier this month at Apple’s annual Macworld event, Twitter’s servers failed during Steve Job’s keynote. TechCrunch wrote about the failure at the time:
Twitter will probably just shrug their shoulders as they usually do during outages, and ultimately we’ll all keep using it, but if there’s one messge I’d like to get through to Twitter: keep messing with Twitter users and eventually users might flock elsewhere…
In my book, this is strike two for Twitter. (Okay, maybe one and a half.) Potential competitors like Pownce should try to seize this opportunity to make a home for Twitter users who want a stable service for micro-blogging.
Jan 28, 09:31 PM / Comment [1]
Measuring a Despotic State
Colin Delany at e.politics points to an interesting post-WWII mini-doc on measuring for if a community or state is despotic or democratic. Colin’s commentary is interesting, and he outlines the main points of the video well.
It's finally happened: Canada invades United States
I’ve been home in Buffalo since Monday, and there is a disturbingly larger number of cars with Ontario or otherwise Canadian license plate. For the first time in a long while, the Canadian dollar is worth more than the US dollar. As of Saturday Nov 24, $1 US is worth only 98 cents in Canada, and so our northern neighbors continue to come in droves to our malls.
The Buffalo News investigated the invasion in its Black Friday coverage:
Sue Hazelwood of Brighton, Ont., led a posse of shoppers, which included two daughters, a daughter-in-law, and two granddaughters, through the Galleria. The seasoned, crossborder shopping gang drove 3z hours to Niagara Falls, N.Y., on Thursday. They got hotel rooms, rested briefly, then headed to the outlet mall just after midnight.By 6:30 a.m. they had begun their assault on the Galleria, armed with detailed lists and walkie-talkies to keep track of each other. [...]
Already a fan of stores like J.C. Penney and Disney, which don’t have outlets in Canada, she said the strong Canadian dollar — worth $1.01 U.S. on Friday — will keep her and her family members on this side of the border through Saturday.
Forget everything else about George W. Bush in his quest to become the Worst President Ever. Canada has invaded the United States to take advantage of the weakest dollar in 30 years, and they’re not leaving any time soon. Thanks, George.
Bush: Thanksgiving "a season of dread"
I missed this at the end of last week, but Bush really knows how to put everyone in the holiday spirits.
Saying that Thanksgiving was becoming “a season of dread for too many Americans,” Bush said his administration would take immediate steps to boost airport capacity and alleviate East Coast congestion, which administration officials described as a “choke point” that affects air travel all the way tothe West Coast.
Is anything for this guy not dreadful or fearful or a sign of impending doom? Jeebus.
This has been a known bad idea since 1505.
Amidst scrutiny on Blackwater USA’s lawless operations in Iraq, I keep coming back to one point. Blackwater’s website claims that the number of private contractors in Iraq is the same as the number of US military personnel.
But let’s get things straight. Anyone who carries a gun for hire is a mercenary. And the first and only thing anyone should read when you are dealing with mercenaries is Chapters XII of Machiavelli’s The Prince. Appropriately, Blackwater’s CEO’s name is Eric Prince.
I want to organize people to send copies of The Prince to every member of Congress with Chapter XII bookmarked. Bush should get one too. And one to Eric Prince for good luck. We cannot use mercenaries to be successful anywhere in any war. It was true in 1505, and it’s true in 2007.
Some relevant excerpts:
Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy. The fact is, they have no other attraction or reason for keeping the field than a trifle of stipend, which is not sufficient to make them willing to die for you. They are ready enough to be your soldiers whilst you do not make war, but if war comes they take themselves off or run from the foe…And as they were the sins of princes, it is the princes who have also suffered the penalty.I wish to demonstrate further the infelicity of these arms.
Ohhh, so Bush is just listening to Jim Carrey
In case you were wondering why President Bush squandered yet another diplomatic opportunity at the United Nations by focusing on the democratic failures in Burma, I’ve figured it out.
The only thing that makes sense is Bush was surfing YouTube and found this Jim Carrey video, and said, hey, why the fuck not?
Also, Jim Carrey…what happened, buddy?
Check out I Do Tears.com. It’s a quick little site based on my No Iraq Draft template, but it’s pretty fun. I use JS-Kit’s super-easy super-cool comment script to do the comments at the end.
Bush landed in Australia today for some sort of summit. Accompanying Bush was a 700-person entourage of assistants, officials, and security personnel (along with a chef and four cooks), but notably absent was wife Laura, who stayed at home with a ‘pinched nerve.’ I only bring this up because at a dinner in his honor, Bush reached out his left hand to touch the arm of Condoleeza Rice, saying “she can be my date.”
I am now the proud owner of IDoTears.com. I’m going to put up something simple tonight, but would appreciate any hilarious suggestions for how to use this newly valuable domain name.
"I do tears"
President Bush told the author of a new book on his presidency that “I try not to wear my worries on my sleeve” or show anything less than steadfastness in public, especially in a time of war.“I fully understand that the enemy watches me, the Iraqis are watching me, the troops watch me, and the people watch me,” he said. Yet, he said, “I do tears.”
“I’ve got God’s shoulder to cry on. And I cry a lot. I do a lot of crying in this job. I’ll bet I’ve shed more tears than you can count, as president. I’ll shed some tomorrow.”
I do tears. Jesus fucking Christ is it January 2009 yet?
Some sad news out of the Utah mine this morning. Three rescue workers were killed and six others were injured after another mine collapse, which the mine owner again blames on “seismic activity.”
Keither Olbermann had a great segment last night on the Bush Administration’s culpability in mine safety failures with the president’s recess appointment of the director of the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
Whatever the outcome of Jose Padilla’s trial, the White House made a conscious decision this afternoon when it announced that First Daughter Jenna Bush is engaged to Henry Hager, also the son of a successful politician. That’s cute that they knew the verdict would be announced around 2 and decided the grab the second headline. “Padilla found guilty of conspiracy,” “Jenna Bush is getting married!!!1.” (Yes, I started writing this entry before the verdict was announced. I’m slow. But he is guilty, I didn’t project that.)
Bird Poops on Bush During Press Conference
Get blog updates via RSS
