Jack's Blog

The link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCNs7Zpqo98

So, I've been saying, since he won, that it's hilarious that Al Franken is in the Senate.  It's hilarious that the Democrats managed to gain a super-majority by electing a comedian.

What I didn't realize, is that I was right on so many levels.

Watch this video.  Now, I don't necessarily agree with much of Franken's politics, and when he used to be on Air America he was lame, bitter and unfunny.  But watch the video.  We know from his sad performance on Air America, that this guy is far from perfect.  He's also a professional comedian.  He's also the most junior senator in DC (for now).  He's also a liberal douchebag.  And yet, he manages to speak to a group of people more coherantly than any politician I've seen in the past 10 years.

Is this seriously where we find ourselves as a nation?  Are we at a place where ANYBODY you choose, even a relatively mediocre comedian, is more competent and thoughtful than anybody we have in office?  Seriously?

The link:  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32614326

So, long story short, this nutfuck loon kidnapped a young girl, kept her in his backyard, raped her, she had kids, etc. etc.  As insane as it is, you hear shit like this from time to time.  And what invariably accompanies it, is that the perp in question has past offenses on his record that make you wonder how the fuck he ever got out of jail, and why, if he did, that there wasn't a cop watching him full time.

The quote:  “Garrido was 25 when he was convicted of a federal kidnapping charge and a state forcible rape charge after snatching a 25-year-old woman from a South Lake Tahoe, California, parking lot, handcuffing her, tying her down and holding her in a storage unit in Reno in November 1976.”

Now, if you know me, you know exactly what I'm going to say right now, but I'm going to say it anyway, because nobody reads this blog, and really it's just a catharsis, but what the FUCK is wrong with our society that this dude ever got out of jail?

Look...  If you kidnap somebody, forcibly rape them and hold them in a storage unit, then you should die immediately.  There's no excuse for that.  There's no reason for that.

Now, Garrido says he did some drugs, and that's why he had to rape and kidnap somebody.  Don't care.  I don't care if you rape and kidnap people because of your naturally crazy brain, or if you do it after you intentionally take some drugs.  You're still unneeded by society.  A .45 bullet is, at most, 10 cents.  Seriously, government, I'll pay for them.

When I type “i am” into my Google search bar, it auto suggests:

“i am extremely terrified of chinese people”

Exactly what I was going to type, Google, thanks.  Now that I know everyone else is just as terrified, well... I'm even more terrified.

The link:  http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8b0_1249853108

Just for the record, in case this gem is eventually lost from Liveleak.  Peter Schiff is a Republican from Westport, CT, who wrote a book totally accurately predicting the current recession.  He wants to run against Chris Dodd.

Ed Schultz is hosting a show in MSNBC, and, apparently, is a total fucking retard.  He talks over Schiff for the entire interview, keeps trying to trap him into soundbytes, and generally runs one of the worst interviews I've ever seen.

Realization:  I watched that entire interview, and didn't realize who Ed Schultz was.  He was just somebody I didn't recognize, doing one of the worst, most infantile interviews I've ever seen.  Then I realized, he was one of the Air America, AM760 dipshits who I used to listen to from time to time, when I felt like seeing how they couldn't be Rush Limbaugh.

He's literally a cut-rate liberal Rush Limbaugh, and MSNBC felt he needed a show.

Can we please stop pretending Fox news is the “biased” news channel?  MSNBC has Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, all doing regular shows.  Are you fucking kidding me?  Was Hugo Chavez not available, guys?  Did the budget run out on the Mao Zedong ressurection machine?

Dr. James "Angel Eyes" Hughes

The link:  http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/csr20090808/ What to say on this? First off, it's totally sweet how much stupid there is.  The interwebs are truly a sea of it.  Hussain sends me a random link, and even though I know there are a million more just like it, I get to spend a few quality minutes with it, enjoying it on its own lunatic merits.  As I was telling my folks the other night, they're like snowflakes.  It might seem, from a distance, that they're all the same.  But when you look closely, you'll see that each internet lunatic, each expulsion of stupid, is a unique treasure all its own.  The stupid crystallized in a subtly different matrix, the “tea bagger” falls just a beat after the “astro-turf” and it's an entirely new experience.

So, yeah, “Changesurfer Radio.”  Good work on that name, nobody thought the word “change” had worn out its welcome in, say, mid-September 2008?  But anyway, Dr. James Hughes feels that there is a disturbing trend towards fascism in the modern American right.  Or he's just quoting a lot of what some chick had to say on it.  Honestly, I didn't really pay that much attention, I mostly skimmed his podcast and established two key facts:

1)  He's a fucking loon.
2)  I felt like writing a response to him.

Since his stupid blog moderates posts, and he's a far-leftists, I know he won't post what I wrote on his site.  So, I'll post it here.

Of all the madness in this podcast, the part I most enjoy is invocation of fascism.  It's utterly ridiculous on many levels, but I'll cover the two most critical:

1)  The GOP is currently the proud owner of a super-minority in the Senate, a minority in the House and has lost control of the White House.  It's especially fitting that they managed to officially attain super-minority status by losing a seat to a comedian.  This is the political party that you're worried is going to march you off to a death camp?  Never mind the fact that your characterization of them is cartoonish hyperbole.  Even if you were right and they wanted to kill you, they lack anywhere near the political capital required to do so.

But hey, maybe you're onto something...  It was crushing inflation and poverty that Hitler rode into power.  Maybe you've realized that Obama's policies will fertilize our political landscape for just such a situation.  And here I thought you had confidence in Obama...

2)  Even if we assume that your jackbooted carricature of the American right is correct, they're still not fascists.  Now, I know...  You're a simpleton-who-wishes-he-wasn't, and like all of your ilk, you've replaced the word "bad" with the word "fascist" and the words "bad politician" with "Hitler" because you think this makes you look like your prattling is founded in real historical understanding and research.

It's so ridiculous, there's a wiki page for it:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum

So, no, the Republicans are not fascists, they're not hinting at being fascists.  The word you're looking for is "theocrats."

This is not a good word.  In fact Iran is a theocracy, and I've been told that they're a very, very scary bunch of evil folks.  So it's not a good word.  But then, it lacks the punch that "fascist" has with the buzzword-centric crowd you appear to run with.

Anyway, in closing, and speaking of buzzwords, watching you and Rush Limbaugh bandy "astro-turf" around, in a pitiful "realness competition," is one of the most humiliating things I've had to endure in American political discussion.  Are we seriously going to argue over whose grassroots are more capable of genuine photosynthesis?  Really?

You're an idiot cheerleader.  While that in no way discredits the political views you espouse, it does discredit you personally, along with your crazy, crazy eyes.

Seriously, you look (and act) like some sort of malfunctioning Keith Olbermann cloning program.  You guys should have a love child, and then in 2044, he could run for President as the candiate of the Ultra-Communist++ Party.  Just be sure to get a good quality photocopy of his birth certificate.

The link:  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32314240/ns/politics-cq_politics

Do the conservative outbursts help or hurt the Democratic process?

What can even be said about this?  For eight years liberals ran around shrieking at any Republican or ideological conservative they could get within shrieking range of.  The mainstream media had nothing bad to say about it.

Now, less than one year into Obama's first term, and already we're wondering if people REALLY need to have the right to free speech.  These conservatives are just disruptive.  They're false, manufactured grass roots movements.  Only liberals can have grassroots movements.  Only liberals can dissent.

Another link:  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32329508/ns/politics-white_house/?gt1=43001

Conservatives are disrupting town hall meetings.  Why, golly, it's so bad, the police are forced to remove some of them.  Fuck you.  During Bush's eight years, if a liberal gets pulled out of a public event for verbally attacking the speaker, it's fascism, Bush silencing free speech.  When a conservative gets the same treatment, it's the natural response to somebody yelling at a respected politician.

Hussain points out that when Kathleen Sebelius was confronted by angry conservatives, she gave a big shout out to free speech, and said the protestors had every right to state their mind.  So he respects her for taking the high road.  Fuck Hussain.  This is the same trick the liberals have been using since the first hints of an Obamaboner formed in their pants.  The Democrat figurehead gets to trot out, take the high ground, refuse to attack Sarah Palin's kids, refuse to silence the opposition, refuse to do the dirty work, knowing that without even having to ask them, the MSM will rush in and handle it.  They'll rake a teenager over the coals, wonder if conservatives shouldn't be silenced, etc. etc. etc.

It's just a fucking embarassment.

Says some Democrat hack douchebag:  “What’s legitimate dissent is something that provides for constructive dialogue in advancing the discussion on health insurance reform.”

Nice.  It's now up to this fuck to legitimize dissent.  I shouldn't be surprised.  This is nothing new.  Liberals have always believed that dissent was something they did.  What conservatives do is “bullying” or “attacking.”  They used to pretend that this was justified because they're the “minority” so only they can dissent.  Now that they run all of Washington, and their cronies in the MSM bully anybody that excuse is gone.  But don't worry about that.  They'll just tell you what's legitimate dissent.

Thanks guys.

The link:  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32209525/

I wasn't going to post anything on this, but it's just gone too fucking far.

Let me start off by saying that Henry Louis “Skip” Gates jr. is a race baiting douchebag, who has risen to considerable success and power based solely on the fact that he's an erudite black racist.  He's the James Lipton of Negroes.  He fawns over the work of actual talent, gets his smeg all over the words of real black authors and poets, and because he's a poncey voice of modern liberal guilt poltics, he gets a nice house.

And, yes, as we know, sometimes the front door of his house gets stuck, and then his driver tries to shoulder it open, and somebody thinks it's a break in, and the cops come, and Gates freaks out on them, spends four hours in jail, charges are dropped, all the race baiters freak the fuck out, Obama sticks his foot in his mouth, etc. etc. etc.  We know this.

And we also know that the accused racist cop isn't a racist, and actually teaches racial sensitivity classes for his department, and Gates was so far out of line that even the rabidly liberal Daily Show had to mock him and Obama for being a pair of indefensible race-baiting twats.

So, that happened.  But did the race-baiting twats take their lumps, and crawl back to their fancy Cambridge manse and shut the fuck up for a couple weeks?

Of course not.

Instead, they said “look, this cop may have been innocent, but we're bigger than the 'facts.'  Go find me the last cop in Massachusetts to say the word 'nigger' and get him.”  And, hey, that's Justin Barrett, a National Guardsman who was probably just expressing confusion over why his racial sensitivity training would tell him that all black people are awesome and wonderful, when Henry Louis Gates jr. is clearly an arrogant, entitled, racist twat who should die.

So, that's how it works.  When the race-baiters are shown up, they just go find somebody else to rake over the coals.  It's not about right and wrong, it's about them keeping their agenda front and center.

"An individual preaching hate has no place in our society," [Boston Mayor] Menino told the local television station.

Seriously dude?  You're going to banish this guy from society because he said a single WORD?  That doesn't make you racially sensitive makes you an authoritarian lunatic.  It makes you draconian, reactionary and stupid.  It's a WORD.  ONE WORD.  Can you not see that?

The race-baiting bullshit needs to stop.  It's just a ploy to keep black people marginalized and scared, so they never truly join society, and thus never deny the race-baiters the source of their power.

Let's get ourselves straight here...  People are going to use racist words.  Let's not freak out about it.  As long as everyone can get a job, raise their kids, and live their life, we're doing pretty good.  And let me point out that blackness hasn't stopped Henry Louis Gates jr. from getting a job, it's actually the only reason he even has one.  The fact is, people like to use accurate words when they're mad at other people.  If they're mad at a fat person, he's a “tubby fuck.”  If they're mad at a skinny person, he's a “fuckin beanpole.”  And if they're mad at an arrogant, poncey, race-baiting twat, they call him a “loudmouth nigger.”  It doesn't mean they want to lynch black people.  It just means that a black person you don't like is a “nigger.”  Just like a black person you do like might be “Ray.”

We don't need to keep ripping open old wounds over this shit.  Let's call people crackers, or niggers, or whatever, and not have a goddamn hissy over it, and move on.  Yes, we've got some history to work through.  And yes, some people are still full on racists (mostly black people).  But if we're going to disengage from this shit, we're going to need to let some shit go.

It's like you just got into a brawl with somebody.  If you can't just let him get in a “faggot motherfucker” as you go your own ways, you're going to be punching each other forever.  Just give him a “punkass bitch” back, and move on.

It's infuriating and disappointing.  The race-baiters know that Obama's election is a nail in their coffin.  It's official now, a black man can accomplish ANYTHING in this country if he puts his mind to it (and has the fawning adulation of the entire mainstream media at his back).  It's encouraging that even Jon Stewart knows a race-baiting douchebag when he sees one, but we've still got a long way to go in burying these goddamn people.  They can still ruin people at their whim, and blather their lie all over the media.

Here’s a story for you.

A couple weeks back I bought a Lenovo S-10 netbook.  It’s sweet, and worth every penny of the $250 they cost on the refurb site.  However, getting it set up has been a NIGHTMARE.

I wanted to put Windows XP Pro on it, because I have no tolerance at all for stupid XP Home and its half assed authentication system.  But the S-10 has no DVD drive built in.  So, when I got it, I tried to set up a USB stick to be bootable and contain an XP installer.  I spent a night on this, failed miserably to get it to work.

Next day I was telling a guy at work about it, and he said “you can borrow my USB DVD burner.”  Perfect.  I didn’t think anybody actually owned those, but great.

I take that home.  Next problem is to get a copy of XP Pro for free.  Another guy at work claims to have a copy that he got from CSU which has an unlimited volume license.  Wonderful, unlimited free XP Pro!  I can set up a million VMs at that rate...  So I install it, and all looks well.  Get on all the drivers, start setting up the preferences the way I like.

Giddy with joy.

Then I tell it to update itself on WindowsUpdate.com, and it immediately does a “Genuine Advantage“ check.  This is how MS prevents piracy, and they like to tell you it's to your “advantage“ not to steal their software.  As somebody who has spent a lifetime finding ways to get their software for free, I disagree with that suggestion.  Regardless, the Genuine Advantage check tells me that my XP Pro install is not valid for the region I'm in.  Can't figure out a way to fool it into stopping with that.  It somehow is willing to keep installing updates, but it now complains at me constantly that I “may be a victim of piracy.“  It graciously offers to let me pay $150 for XP Pro, which, I should point out, in very short order (with the release of W7) is going to be two generations out of date as an OS.

So, no, none of that.

I should also point that I've already joined the computer to my domain, and named it LilEek, i.e. “Little Eek.“  This is a name that my son came up with for a friendly mouse, so now I'm fucked, because I'm sentimentally attached to the OS I've installed, and I'm not willing to wipe it and try again, because now it's LilEek, and deleting that would be mean.

So I try all the XP Pro keys I have, but none are acceptable.

I'm forced to fall back to option 2:  Use the old Action Pack XP Pro licenses I have, and then when they don't activate, call up MS and whine at them until they activate it for me.  So, I reinstall, this time with the media from my Action Pack.  I try to activate it, and for reasons totally unknown to me, it activates!

Giddy with joy.

So, I try out the new S-10 with XP Pro.  I try out the webcam, I parade around my house using it on wireless, I Remote Desktop into my servers and tell one to install updates while standing in the kitchen.  Super.

Since I'm on such a roll, I decide to move the Drobo from my main “general use” PC, to a “server” machine I’ve set up in the library.  The Drobo refused to go into Standby, so I felt it best to shut the host machine down before I unhooked the Drobo.

I shut down the host, unhook the Drobo, then I reboot, and it comes back up to the Dell system diagnostic tools.  I reboot, same thing.  Can’t get past them.  Can’t figure out how to turn them off.  Start to get angry.  This is the machine I use ALL the time.  Has all my shit on it.

Can't figure it out.  Try to reboot several more times.  Starting to do the “try repeatedly, hoping it's a joke“ thing computers cause one todo.  Try unhooking everything, in case there's some boot shit on a USB device, or a stuck key on a keyboard sending it into the diagnostics.  Nothing works.

Starting to freak out.

Scrabble around, searching for the Vista install disc.  Can’t find.  Get frustrated and smack the frame of my closet.  Paint cracks off a joint for about a foot long.

Try to calm down.

Find the Vista install disc.  Take it to the machine.  Put it in, boot from the disk, tell it to repair.  It says “oh, sure, there’s a problem, I’ll fix it.”  Optimism...  Reboots.  Up comes the Dell system diagnostics screen.

Blood LITERALLY starts coming out of my nose.  Jam some tissue up my nose, back to war.

I should also mention that every time the diagnostics screen comes up, there’s a burst of writing on the screen for about .00001 milliseconds that I REALLY want to read, but can’t.  I consider filming it with the camcorder, to see if I can freeze it and read the text.  It's infuriating.  I even try a couple reboots of staring at the screen and trying to make my nervous system run faster when the text flashes past, but I fail.

I try the install disc repair tools again, tell it to restore to an earlier point.  Restart.  No effect.  Getting into the more bitter, resigned stage of my rage.  Starting to think about ways to get shit off the drive, places I can buy a new drive tomorrow morning.

Try the install disc repair tools again.  Looking at the restore points, I note that they've got my OS partition listed as the E: drive.  What the fuck?  Then what's C:?  I use the DOS prompt the tools provide, and I see that the C: drive appears to have the Dell System Diagnostics tools on it.  Makes sense, that's what it's booting to every fucking time I turn it on, but why is it doing that?

Then it hits me...  When I was trying to make a bootable USB stick about three nights ago, I was running the filepart tool to set it up for boot.  I must have inadvertently changed the active partition on my host, and not on the stick, and it only showed up when I rebooted.  So, I run filepart from the DOS prompt, set the (currently) E: drive as active and reboot.

And back up comes the OS.  Joy!

So, think on that for a second.  Three nights ago, while I was failing to get a bootable USB stick going, I must have accidentally told filepart to modify my main hard disk.  Not only did this cause my main machine to eat shit three days later, but it also must mean I didn't set up the USB stick correctly, explaining why it wasn't working for me at that time.  I managed to fuck up using filepart, even though at the time I was thinking “man, double check yourself every step of the way, you REALLY don't want to fuck up your main drive.“

Furthermore, when the repair tool told me it was going to fix the boot sector, it must have been looking at the Dell Diagnostics partition, normally hidden, which I had accidentally set active.  Probably saw it was invisible, considered that a “problem“ worth fixing.

So, all is well at last (I hope).  And believe me when I tell you, that's the edited, shortened version of all the individual battles it took to get from here to there.

The link:  http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=352443

The Backstory:  Glenn Beck tells a story about meeting Whoopi Goldberg and Barbara Walters on a train.  Beck then appears on The View and gets torn up by them, and accused of being a “lying sack of dog mess.”

Let me get this out of the way immediately...  I realize that this story doesn't matter, that Glenn Beck isn't a saint, and this whole thing is completely ridiculous.  I'm not really concerned with Glenn Beck getting treated fairly.  What I am concerned with, is two things:

1)  I can't fucking STAND disorganized thought.  I can't stand it.  Watching that segment of The View is just the most frustrating thing in the world.  I don't care what the topic is, I don't care what argument is being made, I cannot stand it when people can't communicate properly, and instead just make assertions at each other in increasing volume.

The View idiots keep telling Beck he's a liar.  Ok, what did he lie about?  It's never clear.  He lied about who approached who?  If seats were reserved on a train?  Whether or not Barack Obama is a physical manifestation of the divine?  It's ridiculous.  Don't just blurt out “you're a liar” in different ways, and with differing levels of theatre.  Say “you said x, which you know is not true, you are a liar.”  They don't do that.  They just say he lied.  Over and over.  Loudly, and especially when Beck tries to talk.

Then, add in Glenn Beck.  He's sitting there like an asshole, stammering, letting them attack him, and not forcing them to have any clarity.  If somebody says “you're a liar” you should respond by saying “oh?  What exactly did I lie about?”  You don't just sorta act affable and mildly retarded, and then answer all their questions in the way that most supports their point, and try to apologize for things you didn't say.

2)  Logic, consistency, structure and honesty are the keys to a just and fair society.  Not “correct“ political views.  It infuriates me, especially as we go through a nomination to the SCOTUS, that this country has completely lost track of the value of objectivity.  Or even the concept of objectivity.

These View women are (with one carefully selected and token exception) liberals.  They're the champions of the “rule of law,” not like Dick Cheney, the waterboarding criminal, for example.  But look at how they operate...  They accuse Glenn Beck of lying.  It's totally unclear what they think he lied about, but they say it repeatedly, and vehemently.  It's like some bizzare Kafka-esque court hearing.  We don't really know what the charges are, what the evidence is, just that Glenn Beck is guilty.

Now, as it turns out, Beck is not guilty of any of the vague accusations made against him.  To be fair to them, I don't necessarily think that The View women did this on purpose.  I think they're used to wandering around, having things prepared for them in advance, and never really noticing how many little people are working to make them comfortable.  I'm sure they fully believe they didn't ask for special treatment on the Amtrak train.  But even so, even if Beck really had lied, notice how little interest they have in making the issue clear.  They don't bother to make it clear how Beck lied, what the proof of it is, or structure anything to show the truth of their accusations.  They just loudly accuse, and rely on the fact that they're good liberals, and he's an evil conservative, to make the point.  They're little better than screaming chimps.

This is a celebration of ignorance.  This is what tyranny is made of.  We will never agree on politics, that's understood.  But during the course of our disagreements the one common ground we do have is logic, and structured reasoning.  If we must disagree, let's do it in a clear, consistent, intellectually honest fashion.  Let's not just shout louder, and then if that fails, bring more friends to shout louder.

I remember, when I took Philosophy 101 in college, they explained how a series of postulates lead to a conclusion, and the only way to disprove the conclusion was to disprove a postulate, or demonstrate that one postulate didn't lead to another, etc. etc.  I can remember wondering how this was not completely obvious, and what sort of moron you had to be to need it explained to you.  Apparently, though, these are the sorts of morons that constantly invade our television screen, and lumber around Washington DC like a pack of overdressed mongoloids.

As I said in number 1, I can't even stand to watch illogical, unstructured, ineffective arguments happen.  No matter the topic, watching to people communicate ineffectually is frustrating.  It ups the ante that The View women are also ideologically disgusting to me, but that aside, it's still offensive to me how little interest they have in making reasoned, supported arguments.  This is just another example of the petty tyrant that lives in the heart of the American liberal.  Logic and structure are tools that help us assure that the truth is being told.  People who love the truth and want to see it served will also love logic and structured thought.  They will find it uncomfortable to allow anything of import to be said without a logical foundation, and solid, objective justification.  They will not be comfortable with making loud, repeated, baseless accusations.

We, as a nation, spend so much time demonizing those who hold different political views than us.  This is (of course) encouraged by the same media assholes who spray The View across our screens.  As much as I disagree ideologically with the American left, I am far more scared of stupidity, mob mentality, and general ideological zealotry.  Tyranny doesn't arise from any specific political system.  It arises from people who have a contempt for logic, truth, honesty and fairness.  This is exactly the sort of person that Whoopi Goldberg and Barbara Walters are.  The fact that we tolerate, and even celebrate them, is an embarassment to us as a people.  By teaching us that truth lies in repetition and volume, rather than in reason and objectivity, they do their small part to deliver us into tyranny.

It's a small thing, but it's a sign of the times.  They are the enemy.

The link:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124035774411441127.html
Bonus link:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090422/ap_on_go_su_co/us_scotus_firefighters_lawsuit

So, first the summary:  New Haven had an advancement test for their firefighters to officer positions.  When the test results came back, the top scorers, those who qualified for advancement, were all white, except for a single latino.  Predictably enough, New Haven threw out the results of that test, concluded it was biased, and made no promotions.  This case is now before the SCOTUS.

Now, for the cherry:  Frank Ricci, the lead plaintiff, had trusted a test of merit. He had been a firefighter for 11 years and was determined to become a lieutenant. All applicants were given three months to prepare for the exam and provided with a detailed reading list. Mr. Ricci is dyslexic, so he paid an acquaintance more than $1,000 to read textbooks onto audiotapes, made flashcards, took practice tests, worked with a study group and participated in mock interviews. He gave up a second job in order to study long hours. His work paid off: He came in sixth among the 77 candidates who took the exam.

So, what are we saying?  We're saying that when taking a written test, being black is more of a disadvantage than not being able to read.

Now, folks, I live in America.  I'm well aware that it's not racism if it's against white people, and it is racism if it's against black people.  I've fully internalized that, and I love it like fat kid loves cake.  But here's the thing:  these people are saying that black people are worse at reading than dyslexics.  Is that not racist against black people?  I'd say that's a grave failure to ERACISM!!!

Let's enjoy the verbal gymnastics in the second article:  Kennedy often frowns on racial classifications, yet he is not as opposed to drawing distinctions on the basis of race as his more conservative colleagues.

I'm sorry, “drawing distinctions?”  Is that the word(s) you were looking for?  Or are those the two words you had to use, because the one accurate word isn't allowed?  The word you're looking for is “discriminate.”  As in “discrimination.”  As in “racial discrimination.”  As in “throwing out the results of the test because the people who scored highest aren't black is total fucking racial discrimination, you filthy racist fuck.”

Now, to be fair, I ran the odds on this, and based on a cursory guesstimation, assuming equal chances for all test takers, the odds of the top 15 scores out of 77 all being white, is about .2% (based on another article that says 30% of New Haven firefighters are black).  So, it's unlikely.  But, I see that and raise you this:

http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/statistics/departments/index.shtm

The relevant line is the one where it says that there are 30,185 fire departments in the United States.  If every single one of those departments administered a test that had a .2% chance of “going wrong,” and conversely a 99.8% chance of “going right,” the odds of NONE of them “going wrong” is about 5.69e-27, or about .0000000000000000000000000569%.  Which is effectively zero.

Or, put differently, if 30,185 fire departments administered tests with a .2% chance of them “going wrong” you'd expect to see about 91 of them do so.  And hey, let's assume that they only test every 10 years.  And lets further assume that half of them don't even bother to test, because I'm making a point about how easy this is.  You'd still see 5 fire departments getting test results like this EVERY FUCKING YEAR.

But hey, we all know math is racist.

Now, I would be remiss if I didn't offer a suggestion as to why this is happening, besides the simple statistical inevitability of it.  Allow me to post yet another quote:  Dennis Thompson, lawyer for the International Association of Black Professional Fire Fighters, said the court should side with New Haven. "Diversity is essential to the performance of the fire services," Thompson said after the argument.

That's right, folks.  Diversity is essential to the performance of fire services.  You can't put out a fire unless your hip hop dance crew has a sassy white kid, a gritty black kid, an edgy asian kid, and a mui caliente latino kid.  Or...  Maybe you can't set the roof on fire without that.  I'm not sure...  It's definitely someting about diversity and fire.

Let me be forthright with you here:  I don't really think diversity is important to putting out a fire.  I just don't.  The fire doesn't need somebody that understands what it's like to not fit in.  The fire doesn't speak spanish.  The fire can't connect with you over a shared love for the song stylings of Luther Vandross.  Fire is really just the rapid oxydization of material, it's not socially conscious.  Contrary to what you may have seen in the movie Backdraft, it's not any kind of conscious.

But, in case it's news, “diversity” is the “get out of having an actual argument free card” of non-white America.  Anybody, but especially non-whites, can say “diversity” and then you have to do what they say.  Take Dennis Thompson, for example.  I'm going to go out on a limb and assume he's black.  His last name is Thompson, and he's a lawyer for the International Associate of Black Professional Fire Fighters.  I feel good about my odds.  So, let's assume he's black.  He's a black lawyer.  His job is to go into court, and make convincing, legally based arguments in favor of his clients.  What he came up with, is a shout out to diversity.

That's what happens when you take a bunch of people, and convince them that their best shot at success is preferential treatment and claiming victim status.  They go into a test, one where white guys are studying 13 hours a day, and they figure the city will make sure that at least some of them will get the job, cause, hey “diversity.”

That's what it comes down to folks.  It's not just that affirmative action is racist, and wrong on that basis alone.  It's that it's a concept that tells us that black people are so stupid, they're not even as good at written test as dyslexic whites.  It teaches them to depend on favoritism, and not on their own ability to excel.

Black people are taught, from day one, that the whole system is against them, and that their only chance is that the government will make the racists treat them right.  Who's going to put in 13 hours of study a day with that sort of pessimism programmed in?  Nobody.

But, hey, whatever American left.  As long as they keep voting for you, who cares if they succeed?  Heck, it's a lot easier to pick them up on voting day, when they all live in one nice, neat project, right?  You fucking racists.

So, this morning my mother (who is in town visiting) informed me that she saw an article which suggested that guns were a better investment than stocks.  When I arrived at work, and my browser came up with MSNBC, I saw the link pictured at right.

Curious, I clicked the link and was taken to this url:

http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/topstocks/?fpn=guns%20a%20better%20buy%20than%20stocks

Note that it actually has the text on guns in the url.  Now, the mutability of web content both makes this story interesting, and also makes it somewhat untraceable and shitty, but believe me when I say, following that link went to the MSN MoneyBlog page, and that page didn't have a single mention of the word “gun” in it.

That's odd, right?  They've got a link on the homepage to an article about guns being better investments than stocks, but then following that link has no mention of guns...

When I google “guns a better buy than stocks” I find the actual article:

http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/topstocks/archive/2009/04/16/guns-a-better-buy-than-stocks.aspx

Already archived...  With an April 16th posted date.  If I go look at the MoneyBlog, I see that the front page has posts from April 15th through today (the 17th).  So this article didn't just fall off the front page due to its age.  It's not on the page for some deliberate reason.

The link:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/24/carville-begala-temporar_n_83174.html

So, from the Huffington Post, quoted in its entirity for hilariousness:

Okay, this is interesting. I've just learned that CNN has told top Dem strategists James Carville, Paul Begala, and Robert Zimmerman -- who are CNN mainstays but are all Hillary supporters -- that they will not be doing any more political analysis on the network until the Democratic primary has reached a conclusion.

I'm also told that this move came after the Obama campaign repeatedly complained to high level officials at CNN about the presence of Carville and Begala on the network.

Incredible.  One little event that gives countless insights into the utter corruption of the MSM.

Obviously, when it's the Democrat's primary, CNN is concerned about unduly influencing the results with partisan commentators.  The rest of the time, no problem.

The first question I have to ask:  If Hillary happens to win the Democratic nomination, will Carville, Begala and Zimmerman be banned form commenting through the end of the Presidential election?  I think we all know that's not going to be the case.

So that gives a little insight into CNN's outlook, and the outlook of the MSM in general.  It's proof that they're aware that their commentators have a bias, that this bias can influence the outcomes of elections, and that they think it's acceptable to silence voices in order to remove bias.

So what does this mean?

They know their commentators have a bias:  The MSM loves to keep up a facade of impartiality and objectivity, but everyone outside the far left fringe knows they're just the propaganda wing of the Democratic party.  The only question is whether you find this bias disgusting (as I do) or you just think they're telling the truth (as my parents do).  Regardless, this move by CNN is a tacit admission that they know they're not impartial or objective.  Instead, they employ partisan hacks to do their commentary.  And these aren't just left leaning people.  They aren't just former Democrat staffers.  These guys (Carville and Begala) were primary figures in Bill Clinton's run for President.  That's how far from impartiality and objectivism CNN is.  They employ people who are probably the two biggest Clinton cheerleaders in the entire world.  It's literally as close as they could get to letting the Clintons themselves comment on the Clintons.

They think it's acceptable to silence voices in order to remove bias:  The left's double standard on free speech is incomprehensibly stupid.  When an arm of their own party is silencing a viewpoint that's “interesting.”  When anybody else fails to trumpet their views from the rooftops, that's “Orwellian censorship and shredding the Bill of Rights.”  Or whatever hyperbolic stupidity they come up with at the time.  Imagine the outrage if this move was made during a national Presidential election.  In the end, just one more example of the utopia the left has planned for us.  One where your freedom of speech will be protected by silencing anybody who doesn't promote free speech.  The left doesn't value free speech, it's just a rhetorical tool to them.  Your rights exist so long as they can use them they're useful to lib speechwriters.

In any case, the precedent has been set at CNN.  Let's all chuckle as they discard it in time for the Presidential election.

I got a new video card, an 8800GT based XFX card overclocked to 670mhz.  It's a pretty great card, especially for the money, and it runs COD4 like crazy.  Even with pretty high detail, it seems to be able to sustain 60+ FPS easily, usually more like 90.

That's also really what makes COD4 impressive in my eyes.  I've been playing Crysis as well, and my machine struggles with it.  COD4 is not the graphical masterpiece Crysis is, nor is it nearly as open ended, but it's still very nice graphically, and it plays FAST.  The COD4 engine might be a step or two behind Crysis in terms of features, but it seems a step or two ahead in terms of efficiency.

The single player game in COD4 is solid.  The story is surprisingly depressing and casualty laden, but there are some pretty good moments.  Flying as a gunner in a Specter gunship looked just like all the YouTube videos of gun camera footage, I was totally blown away how well the engine rendered it, and made it feel like the real thing looks.  The missions in Chernobyl were impressively atmospheric, and show how S.T.A.L.K.E.R should have looked, but didn't.

In general the missions are challenging, but not too hard, a bit cartoonish on the volume of killing going on, but effective overall.  There're enough different features worked in, from wounded enemies limping, or falling and pulling their pistol, that there will definitely be moments that seem very cinematic, which I think has been a goal of the COD series all along.

Given the briefness of the single player campaign, and the obvious efforts put into the multiplayer, I tend to think this was their ultimate focus for the game.  And multiplayer is tough for me to rate.

On one hand, there's a very rich set of options there.  As you play you gain rank and experience and unlock new weapons, weapon upgrades, and personal upgrades called “perks.”  Tons of different weapon models and skins are on display, all nicely done.  There are a bunch of different mission types, the usual team deathmatch, plant and defuse bombs, hold map positions, etc. etc.  There are different realism levels from “hardcore” where you have only iron sights to aim with, and single shots usually kill you, to a more cartoonish version where leaping around spraying with SMGs works far, far too well.

On the other hand, I find it to be totally frustrating to play, and in the end, very unrewarding.  At some point I may have to accept that I'm getting too old and slow, or something along those lines, but I tended to just get beat up in this game.  I just don't find any of the modes particularly fun.  They're either too hectic and pointless, or too drawn out and slow.  I guess I've never really been a twitch player, I've always gotten by on maneuvering and situational awareness, not on being fast with the mouse.  I was able to use that skillset to dominate the Battlefield games, but in COD4, I'm a perpetual victim.

In the hectic game modes, COD4 seems to have some sort of rolling spawn system so that you're generally spawning surrounded by friendlies.  This is nice, in that you rarely get spawn camped, but ultimately I don't think it works, since it means that the enemy can be coming from anywhere, and you can never really flank them.  I've never been shot in the back so many times as I was in this game, and it's really not a case of making mistakes, the enemy simply is appearing behind you.  I applaud the developers for trying to find a way to get rid of spawn camping, but if the cost is a game with no tactical logic to it, no meaning to maneuvering, it's a cost not worth paying.

All in all, I found the multiplayer to just be totally wrong in some way I have to ultimately blame on myself.  I'm not arrogant or liberal enough to pretend the whole world is wrong except for me, but this game sure did feel that way.  I certainly missed my fair share of shots, and cursed my clumsy aim, but a LOT more often than that, I found myself wonder what in holy hell I could do better to get myself the kill.

Ultimately the multiplayer component of this game is like Counterstrike++.  It's got even more potential for greatness, and yet it's even EVEN more infuriatingly inexplicable.  It's an endless parade of getting the jump on a guy, laying into him, and having him somehow turn around and kill you.  It's a constant festival of grenades being thrown blind and smoking you.  The game includes a killcam to show you what the other guy saw as he took you out, and I was endlessly amazed by how little they were doing, how poor their aim was, how often they were just guessing with their grenades, and yet beating me out pretty consistently.

On a few servers I also got the strong impression that people were cheating.  Their killcam footage showed ultra-precise aiming, even while hopping, and never making any use of the weapon's sights, which the game generally requires for accurate aim.  COD4 uses Punkbuster for cheat prevention, which appears to be an industry standard, but given that I had to jump through hoops to get it installed, and I've had trouble with it in the past, I tend to think it's a piece of crap that doesn't work.

The multiplayer maps are a mixed bag.  Some are pretty good, some are utterly terrible.  All are a bit too small, and artificially boxed in.  By and large, I'd consider the map design in multiplayer to be a definite weak spot.

All in all, COD4 is a very nice engine with a lot of nice content.  The multiplayer experience so totally soured me to the game that I find it hard to be as positive as I should for this review, because the game is very good at its core.

The link:  http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/1203072senate1.html

So, just to be sure it's clear, anybody associated with a Republican who gets caught for soliciting gay sex, big news.  Lots of stories about Bob Allen, a McCain supporter, who solicited gay sex from an adult.  Not nearly so much coverage of a staffer for Democrat Senator Maria Cantwell.  Not even when he describes having anal sex with a 13 year old boy as “hot.”

Now, granted, this is merely a staff member, while Bob Allen is/was a state rep, but he wasn't trying to have anal sex with a 13 year old boy.

Republican gay sex scandals:  huge news.

Democrat gay sex scandals:  not news.

In fact, how dare you pry into their private lives?

The link:  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22054151/

The Democrats love to talk about how they're going to take things in a new direction.  What they're less likely to mention, is that their awesome new direction involves more government and more bureaucracy.  What they're yet more and yet still more unlikely to mention is that they've had control of the House and Senate since the last election, and they're doing almost nothing at all.

Now look at how these fuckwits are handling their own primary.  “Democratic leaders voted Saturday to strip Michigan of all its delegates to the national convention next year as punishment for scheduling an early presidential primary in violation of party rules.”

That's right.  These idiots, who think that government is the answer to all ills, can't even run their own primary process withing infighting, confusion, and disenfranchisement of their constituents.

I can't say it enough:  The only people I hate more than Republicans are Democrats.

Look at these miserable douchebags.  They can't even run a primary correctly.  They're literally looking for ways to lose elections that only they participate in.

The link:  http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/7499442

I really admire Jason Whitlock.  In this day and age, for a black man to even begin to ask the questions he asks, it takes real courage.  In the old days, speaking out against racism could get you blacklisted and ruined.  These days, failing to worship at the alter of political correctness, failing to blame white racism for all problems confronting American blacks, that is what can get you blacklisted and ruined.

Whitlock came out before any arrests were made, and said with confidence that Sean Taylor's killers would be black.  We see now that 3 of the 4 accused are  indeed black (one appears to be Latino).

I really admire Whitlock for putting his neck out there like that, and for being right when he did.  I admire a guy who can remind his own race of their hatred for the KKK, even as they now terrorize and murder themselves worse than the KKK ever did.

“But we don't want to deal with ourselves. We take great joy in prescribing medicine to cure the hate in other people's hearts. Meanwhile, our self-hatred, on full display for the world to see, remains untreated, undiagnosed and unrepentant.”

Whitlock is 100% correct here.  But I wish he would go further.  I wish he'd see the big picture with more clarity.  He blames rap music for the problems black people face.  I think this is merely a symptom.  I believe the real problem facing black Americans is that they're the ultimate realization of the poisonous effects of American socialism.  Until black people fully realize the horrible damage that has been inflicted upon them by the Democrats, they will never be able to improve their lives.

No other block of people votes more consistently Democrat than black people.  And no other block of people votes more consistently Republican than Mormons.  Which group of people is happier, more successful, has stronger family structure?  It's not like Mormons are well liked or treated in this country.  People feel very free to mock their beliefs and call them crazy at every opportunity.  But in the end, they're the ultimate realization of Republican ideals.  They value faith, family, hard work and self-reliance.  Mormons may seem a little goofy or gullible, but they're happy, they're stable and they're successful.

Socialism is poison.  At the core of Democrat ideology is the idea that everyone is a victim, nobody can care for themself, and everyone needs the government to intervene on their behalf.  Black people are told, endlessly, by the Democrats that they are hated, that they have no opportunity to succeed, that they need government programs to get by.  They are the perfect realization of the Democrat ideology.  Create helpless, self-loathing dependants, and convince them that they need you to survive.  You're guaranteed votes forever.

Or, at least until people like Jason Whitlock start to realize what you're doing to his people.  You're getting there, Jason.  You're starting to see the big picture.  You're clearly a smart guy to see through the bullshit that's been forced on you since birth.  You're clearly a brave guy to go against the Uncle Tom Machine that demonizes and destroys anybody who doesn't toe the liberal line on race in America.

But rap isn't the problem.  Rap is just a symptom.

Socialism is the problem.  A self-perpetuating nanny-state is the problem.  The Democrats are the problem.  Democrat pawns like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are the problem.

I struggled with this game initially, because I couldn't accept that I had to play it on the lowest difficulty setting.  After getting over that mental block, I had a lot of fun with it.

Gears of War is a third person shooter that ends up playing a lot like a first person shooter, but with the benefits of getting to see your character run around the world in all his beefy glory.  With so many shooters on the market, so many attempts at new gameplay ideas, it's hard to come up with much new that's worth having.  Gears of War manages to streamline and make good on a mechanic that other games have tried to varying degrees, and add a few wrinkles of its own.

At the core of GoW is the cover mechanic.  Your character will lean against doorframes, crouch behind low walls, and lean in and out of these cover elements in a relatively seamless and intuitive fashion.  There are certainly moments where this can go wrong, and you find yourself sticking to something you didn't intend to, or failing to take cover when you'd want to, but for the most part it works well.  It creates a sense of tactical movement, and indeed forces the player to use cover, to move tactically, to suppress the enemy, and not to just run around blasting at things.  When this mechanic works, it really works, and all the fun, memorable sections of this game revolve around it.

Another nice touch is the rapid reload mechanic.  A little timing bar appears under your weapon on your HUD as you reload, and if you hit your reload button at the right time, you can reload faster, or even gain a damage bonus.  Hit it at the wrong time, and your character will fumble the reload, taking even longer, and cursing his failure.  It's not hard to get used to, but it adds another element to gunfights, creates another point of rythym, so that when a player is on top of things and in control, they feel the reloads, and when they're out of sorts and hurried, they lose it.

Graphics are also very good, both technically and artistically.  The big beefy character models are great, and the cartoony facial animations are effective and interesting.  The world is very detailed and immersive.  My system felt a bit overtaxed at times, but I made no effort to tune the settings to get better performance.  It was a bit choppy, but not unplayable.  The game really looks great, and feels solid and gritty.  I was particularly impressed by the bouncing, chaotic feel produced as your character races forward with his head down, avoiding fire.  It's a cleverly realistic simulation of the tunnel vision one experiences in such a situation.

The weapons are good, although perhaps a bit feeble, as it often requires extended assault rifle bursts to down even basic enemies, although blind firing around cover, or letting loose from the hip can be bloody and fun.  The Torque Bow is also particularly fun to use.

All the good news aside, GoW does have a few issues which keep it from being perfect.

One is that it leans too heavily on the “babysit the AI” mechanic that squad based games suffer from.  Your squadmates are fairly useless, and fairly brainless, often running into situations that get them killed quickly.  This is less of an issue on lower difficulty settings, where they're also less vital to your success, but it's still an annoyance.  They never actually die, but they will lay there and moan at you until you come over to help them.  In a game that's generally top notch, they're awfully brainless.

Another issue is the occasional gimmick fights that are frustrating to deal with, and generally add nothing to the gameplay.  The fights with the blind Berserker enemies are a particularly good example.  Periodically the run and gun gameplay will be interrupted by a scene in which a Berseker shows up, a monster you can't kill with your normal weapons, and you have to somehow fool it into a special tricky way of getting killed.  The trick is obvious immediately, but getting it pulled off is incredibly tiresome, especially with your squadmate randomly letting the Berseker kill him (this is one way your squadmate can actually die).

The biggest issue is the difficulty settings.  There are only three levels, Casual, Hardcore and Insane.  Initially Hardcore is very doable, but rapidly becomes pointlessly difficult.  Casual is generally too easy, but at times challenging, particularly later in the game.  A big part of this game is to play in co-op mode with another player.  This explains why the Hardcore and Insane levels are there.  With another human, instead of the extremely lackluster AI, Hardcore would be very doable, and (I presume) Insane as well.  But, considering that the difficulty settings seem to mainly effect damage taken and damage dealt, there's really no reason for not having a finer level of tuning, certainly something between Casual and Hardcore.

All in all GoW is a great game, one that sets new trends and creates new ideas in the genre.  Its issues are comparatively minor, but so unnecessary and easily avoided that they really stuck out for me.

Hussain loves the Dune series, by Frank Herbert.  A lot.  The more I read it, the more I realize that it's a formative influence on his whole entire shit.  I was prepared to share in his enthusiasm after reading the first book, but then I had the misfortune of reading the next two (Dune Messiah and Children of Dune).  Hussain seems to agree that these books try the patience, which is strange since he loves them, but he's an English Major, so maybe he enjoys books that feel like pulling teeth.  Maybe thats a challenge or something.  If that's the case, then he should read more Gene Wolfe, cause that dude is about as insane as Frank Herbert, but somehow a lot less intolerable.

In any case, I thought I would blog a Herbert simulation, which is basically exactly what the entire second half of Children of Dune sounds like:

Leto pressed his consciousness against the wall of voices that rose and fell like the fluttering froth of a roiled sea, and felt them give way to a new perception, a pleux d'gleubloix of half-truths, truths, and something beyond truth, which flitted at the edge of vision, like moths around a sietch glowglobe.  For a moment, Leto drifted above this awareness, lost in the time-place, when he found himself plunging into a vision of a girl, making spice coffee, sitting on a spice mat, surrounded by spice cushions and old spice receipts from past spicy spice purchases.  The melange seemed to be everywhere, part of everything, past-present, present-past, now-past, now-now, and now-past-present now.  Beyond her the emerald waving of pampas grass was dappled with a silver dusting of sunlight, as she gazed out over the open bled, which I always italicize for reasons that only the spice trance can possibly fucking explain.  She sang to herself, another one of those tuneless, totally impossible to imagine songs that are sprinkled throughout this series.

I come to you my love
Dying as we did live
Beside the pampas grass

And you did grind the beans
Like so many lives reclaimed
Beside the pampas grass

And this adds nothing to the story
Nor explains any of the trippy bullshit I've been inflicting on you for going on five hundred pages
Beside the pampas grass

Once again the inner memories washed over Leto's consciousness and spun him around, bubbles seething across his eyes, and leaving him deposited back on the open bled.  His mouth felt dry, and the flinty smell of sand, mixed with the cinnamon scent of melange greeted him.  His eyes tracked along the rock formation that the Fremen called Quirz al-Ashemmi in the old tongue, which meant “more Arabic sounding bullshit,” but when said with a Choksoba lilt, and the twist of eyebrow which implied that one was speaking to a nephew or first cousin in a situation involving three legged seating accomodations, such as a stool, or low backed chair, it would mean “the same rock formation I've mentioned several times previously, but you don't know why.”

Abruptly, the presence of the lumpen Gurney Halleck conjoined itself with Leto's awareness, and the inkvine scar on his jaw writhed like Shai-hulud as he spoke.  “It's page 475, child.  Don't you think it's time you proved to me that there's at least some semblance of a plot to this book, or some point to the parched expanse of hallucinations and meaninglessness you've made me sit through?”  His hand crept to his crysknife in a way that would imply tension, if you had any idea what in holy hell was going on.

In that moment, with Gurney impatiently checking his chronothopter, it all became clear to Leto.  Time wasn't a dimension at all, but a perception of all things equivocal and impermanent, as those things interpose themselves on a backdrop of the self, the spice, the now.  The now, as a representation of the self, which for Leto was a many-self, a composite of past selves, numerous to innumerability, but captured in one friendly liege, known only as Huflungpoo.  And so it was then that Leto knew he was ready to proceed the plot, at long last, so we can stop wasting our time in this ridiculous peyote fueled vision quest.  He turned a smiling, sun blushed face up to Gurney.

“You think me a child?  I am so much more.  I am the memories of the past, the vision of the future, the incredible disinterest of the now.  Gurney!  Gurney!  Can you see the gift I will give to you?  The possibilities I remove and the probabilities I create?  Now, quickly, my old friend, old self, let's have a strange non-conversation, in which you use your knife as a visual aid to convey the fine line I'm walking with my words, and the tension of this scene which can only be appreciated by the drug addled mind which authored it!”

Halleck's hand tensed on his crysknife, and he withdrew it enough that Leto could see the sun glinting from a hair's breadth of worm tooth.  “Watch what you say,” Gurney growled, “my loyalty is with the Lady Jessica, and I'm going to respond aggressively to the nonsense you just barfed up.”

Leto smoothed the sand at his side, felt its flinty taste at the back of his pallete, caught up a handfull and let if fall between his fingers.  “Time, Gurney.  Like sand.  Like water.  Like spice.  J'ete plus de les stylo sur la table!  Plus de les stylos!  That was French Gurney.  And in italics.  I know now how to advance the plot, Gurney.  Indicate a reduction in tension, again via your kife.”

Gurney seemed satisfied, and the glint of wormtooth disappeared.  “Aye, lad, I'm a warrior and a lutemaster.  But I play the lute a ton, and never ever fight.  Now speak the words I need to hear in order to advance the plot.”

Leto dusted his hands on his thighs, and let understanding come to him.  PSYCHE!  He didn't understand it at all!  Back to acid trip!  If you skip ahead, you might miss something that explains why Hussain likes this crap!  And then you'd also have wasted your time, because you missed the point!  So, next paragraph, sucker!  You lose, acid wins!

Leto felt his conscious slip parallel to the timeflow, but outside it, watching a million Gurney Hallecks, a million possible outcomes, so many resulting in a crysknife, point first buried under his chin, so many terrible purposes, like the spice threads on a sietch loom, clattering and scraping against one another, terrifying Leto with their persistance, their certainty, their impossibility.  Leto felt the father-presence rise up to him, dark and warm, comforting him.  Use caution, my son.  The paths are many, and singular.  Never forget that inner voices use italics, and not quotes, as it was decreed by Ibn Harq.

Gurney Halleck watched the child's eyes roll back in his head, and blew out a disgusted snort.  “I'm going to go play Gears of War, this is fucking bullshit.”

The link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgi5ESpueX8&feature=related

Thanks to Hussain for finding a video that so nicely captures this event.

Here's a link that covers the story in more detail.

This whole thing is a serious hoot, starting off with the fact that these idiots are blocking equipment that's returning from Iraq.  They want to stop the war in Iraq, so they're blocking equipment from returning to base in the US.  Should the military just dump it overboard at sea?  No, then you'd be out in an inflatable dinghy protesting the environmental impact.

First off, the video.  Some real highlights for me:

“The people united will never be defeated.”  Their initial chant, is very inspiring for them, I'm sure.  I guess in dipshit-speak “the people” means “roughly a hundred children all under the age of 25.”

The cops start pepper spraying the wall of protestors.  One of them starts yelling:  “That's an illegal use of force.  You are under arrest, sir.”  To a cop, he says this.  Apparently he's a legal scholar.  And apparently pepper spray is “force.”  And apparently yelling makes you correct.

“Whose streets?  Our streets!  Whose ports?  Our ports!”  Really?  Yours?  Cause you're an American?  Are the cops not Americans?  Is it not also the cops ports and streets?  Or even moreso?  Cause, see, the cops, being that they're cops, have a job.  Which means they pay taxes.  Which means it's most definitely “their streets” and “their ports.”  But you, protestor guy?  You're about 22, and you probably don't have a job.  How exactly does any of this stuff belong to you?

“Medic!  Medic!”  Hussain pointed this one out for me.  I wouldn't have noticed it, but it's cute.  When they get pepper sprayed, a pre-planned cry of “medic” arises from the protestors.  Traditionally this is something a soldier might say when he's been severely injured.  Say, a bullet has shattered his femur.  Or and explosion has shredded off his arm.  But, hey, I bet getting pepper sprayed is almost as bad, right?  Sure.  You guys are soldiers too, only on the side of justice!

“Shame on you!”  This is a big one.  They really think it means something.  They really think it's something one says from the moral highground.  It hasn't occurred to them that it's the cops job to move them, and they're doing it in the most efficient, nonviolent manner possible.

Around 3:42, the awkward tall guy tries to make a break back to the road they've been blocking.  He gets stopped dead, then immediately pepper sprayed.  It's serious highlight reel riot-copping, I've got to say.

Then, for me, the high point of the video.  As the crowd chants “shame on you,” yet more, one protestor begins screaming “kill the fucking cops.”  Apparently one of the things you do on the moral highground, is demand the death of people who are just doing their job.  People who are, in fact, doing their job with a level of professionalism I can't even fathom.  It's a wonder to me that more cops don't just lose it on these crowds of priviledged little infants, and start laying into them with their batons.  As you can see in this video, they stick to pepper spray and dragging them out of the way.  I didn't see a single baton strike administered in the whole thing.

On to the article:

“Olympia police spokesman Dick Machlan said 43 people were arrested and then released while prosecutors decide whether to charge them.”  That's the level of thuggery going on under the evil Bush administration.  People arrested for interfering with the operation of our military, something which could reasonably considered treason, probably won't even be charged with a crime.  It's really hard for the accusations of oppression to carry weight when you're just let go.

“Anna-Marie Murano, a member of the coordination group, said she has had leg and neck pain since police hit her in the chest last week.”  They want, so badly, to be victims.  This chick thinks a stiff neck is her badge of courage in the righteous struggle.  Seriously?  You think this is the real deal?  Sweetheart, in the real world, people get shot, killed, they get their familes shot and killed.  They get tortured, they watch their families tortured.  That's the real deal.  Tzarist Russia, the USSR, Mao's China, Cambodia, south America, North Korea, etc. etc. etc.  That's where real opporession lives, and where real victims are made.  You're so far from a victim, you can't even see what it'd be like.  You're playing pretend, and we're humoring you.  Please figure that out.

Hell, look at the bearded dipshit getting limp body carried by the cops in the picture in the article.  He's looking all peppy and self-righteous as the cops carry him off.  Dude, are you aware that in real protests, with real thug cops, people are getting dragged like that because they're fucking unconscious from water cannons and baton blows to the head?  You're not part of anything important, you're a childish embarassment.  Go ask a black person who really protested back in the 50s how that shit went.  No pepper spray.  Just big fucking German shepherds gnawing on you, repeated blows from billy clubs, and a water cannon to smash your face into a curb.  That's courage.  You're a fucking child.

We're not doing our species any favors by keeping these clowns in the gene pool.  I think we'd do everyone involved a huge favor by directing machinegun fire on these protests whenever and wherever they happen.

For the protestors, the benefits are obvious.  They want to be victims, and they want to be brave.  How can they be brave victims when nobody will victimize them?  But with machinegun fire, they start dying, and then anybody who still shows up is genuinely brave, and also being genuinely oppressed.  Can we really be so cruel as to NOT fulfill their dreams in this way?

For the rest of us, there are also clear benefits.  Humans are social creatures.  We survive based upon our ability to socialize, to understand the structure of society, and to fill a useful role in that society.  Bears, as another example, survive by hunting and foraging.  If a given bear spent his entire day dry humping a pine tree, that bear is a retard, he clearly doesn't have anything useful to contribute to the future of beardom, and he should (and will) be left to die without propagating his sad, worthless seed.  The same goes for these protetors.  They are trying, desperately, to fail at life.  They're trying to show us that they are so completely unable to find a useful role in our society that they would like for nature to take its course and kill them off.  When we refuse to do this, we're not only hurting the gene pool, but we're really defying nature itself.  It's literally unnatural NOT to fire a belt or two of machinegun fire into the crowd.

So, folks, come on.  Think of the protestors.  Think of society.  Think of the law of nature itself.  All demand that we send hot, copper jacketed lead hurtling into these people at supersonic speeds.  Let's not disappoint them any more.

The link: http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/13/clinton.planted/?iref=hpmostpop

In an exclusive on-camera interview with CNN, Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, a 19-year-old sophomore at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, said giving anyone specific questions to ask is "dishonest," and the whole incident has given her a negative outlook on politics.

Holy crap, if I could have only been at Grinnell when this happened, I would probably know this chick, and could totally be part of an awesome and important national scandal in some tangential sort of way.  It's a small school, so I definitely would have known her, if only by name.

I've always thought of Grinnell as an institution primarily concerned with liberal brainwashing, but it would appear that this girl's experience matches my own:  it's a place when liberal brainwashing is attempted, but ends up being douchebaggery is so on display, causing you form a permanent aversion and distrust for it.

Whatever, though, she's got a hyphenated last name, she's probably just so far left that even Hillary is too conservative for her.

Portal is a puzzle game built on the Source engine, and sharing a lot of the look and feel of the Half-Life 2 games.  It's a bit short of play time and content to be a true standalone game, but what it has is so perfect it outshines many full featured games.

Basically what Portal boils down to is a puzzle game with a backstory and sense of humor.  It's probably best not to give too much away, as the humor and fun of the game depend on experiencing it with a mostly open mind.

All of that translates to a pretty brief, pretty useless review, but if you weren't planning on play Portal, then this will be the most useful review you've read in a while:  Play it.  Seriously.  It's a quick game to get through, but not nearly as quick as it initially seems.  It's funny, it's fun, it's got great puzzles that make you think and then make you feel good about the answer when you solve them.

The link:  http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d8c_1194307197

In case this liveleak goes away in the distant future, it's video of a public demonstration of waterboarding by dipshits who think they're proving that it's torture and evil.  After they demonstrate it (complete with fictional interrogation lead in), the “victim” cries about how horrible it is for a while.

Let me help you fucking clowns out with something:  if you're willingly going out in public and getting “tortured” then it's not fucking torture.  If you can undergo torture, then give an impassioned monologue that sounds like it's from a high school play you wrote and directed, it's not torture.  You're a coddled dipshit hippy.  If you can deal with the discomfort of waterboarding for the purposes of making your faggy little web video, then it's NOT FUCKING TORTURE.

Here is a list of actual tortures:  http://www.medievality.com/torture.html

I would like for the makers of the liveleak video above to pick just ONE torture off that list and do it in a similarly public setting in order to compare and contrast.  For example, why not try out the knee splitter?  Or perhaps the saw.  Give those a shot.  If you feel that water boarding is as bad, then I'll believe you.

Quake Wars is a Battlefield style FPS based on the Quake series of games.  It pits the human GDF faction against the alient Strogg, and features the same objective based gameplay, assault, medic, engineer and sniper classes most games of this genre include.

Where it begins to differ is in the nature of the missions and in the scoring system.  Battlefield games have a very straightforward mission system (capture objectives), and very straightforward scoring system (killing people is the quickest way to get points).  QW:ET places less emphasis on killing enemies, and more on completing objectives.  At any given time, each class will have a mission it can accomplish, one of which is central to advancing the progression of the current map.  There's an attacker and defender, and generally three steps to completing the mission.

The mission system seems interesting at first, but it's difficult to figure out in the heat of battle, which leads to a slower learning curve than the Battlefield games.  It's also probably not worth all the complication, as the missions tend to blur together, and ultimately boil down to the same basic concept:  control a piece of ground for long enough and you win.

Personal weapons are good but nothing exceptional.  They seem well balanced, have a decently solid feel, and fulfil a range of roles.  There are also various bigger weapons that are part of the map, such as constructable anti-infatry and anti-tank turrets, and huge artillery rocket attacks with corresponding defenses that can be built to stop them.  It's interesting, but again, tough to figure out for a first time player.

The graphics engine is excellent, rendering extremely long view distances with smooth frame rates, and is by far the most impressive part of the game.

Playing this game gave me a newfound respect for the Battlefield series.  As solid and technically competent as QW:ET is, there's just something fake and tinny about the gameplay.  The weapons almost seem too accurate, while players are able to run and leap around too quickly.  It's too frantic and twitchy up close, and too easy to hit from afar.  I realize now how well tuned the Battlefield games are, where movement rates don't feel too slow, yet enemies don't seem to be flying around at exaggerated speeds.

Ultimately I was impressed with aspects of this game.  It seems more tactically deep than the Battlefield games, and the graphics engine is definitely superior.  However, the complexity of the game seems unncessary and is more of an impediment to involving new players.  Above all, there's something about the game that just feels wrong, too much like the arcade style of Quake III, and less like the tactical FPS games it's following.

The link:  http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1673265,00.html

Michael Kinsley is one of my new favorite figures in “journalism.”  As his wikipedia entry informs us, he hosted Crossfire opposite Path Buchanan.  This is already pretty hilarious, because many people on the left consider Pat Buchanan to be slightly more conservative and authoritarian than Hitler, so casting somebody as a balance to him would suggest that person is about as liberal as you can possibly be.  And that's Michael Kinsley.  But what makes it particularly hilarious is that he's given editorials in Time magazine, given Slate to direct, etc. etc. etc.

Can you imagine a major publication giving Pat Buchanan that sort of power?

No, his stuff gets printed in The American Conservative.  I AM an American conservative and I've never heard of it.  Oh, and Yahoo! news.  So that gives you an idea of how shit works.  If you're a liberal, expect to get an editorial page in Time magazine, which we're all told is a wonderful, important publication.  If you're a conservative, well, go get a blog.

But enough backstory on Kinsley.  Today what he's doing is working as a Democrat operative in the media.  He's forming public opinion in a way he thinks is most favorable to the Democrats.  Now, as Hussain points out, he's not a knee-jerk apologist, but as I point out to Hussain, that doesn't matter.  He's still a Democrat.  He still writes everything from the perspective of “here's one thing we're doing wrong, fellow Democrats, let's fix that and we'll take over!”

So I enjoy reading his articles, because they fit nicely into the new genre of editorials I'm following lately, which is sorta the “DNC Combat Engineering Corps” of the MSM.  They head in before the battle to prepare the field for their comrades, making things as favorable and defensible as possible.  They drive their bulldozers back and forth over the minds of Americans, and put some nice gun positions, tank berms, etc. etc.

They camoflauge their earth movers by pretending they're just informing and commenting on a recent trend, but what they're really doing is making sure that before anybody gets too far ahead and starts understanding new concepts on their own terms, they're instead given the correct, left leaning view of the phenomenon.

It's not suprising, in these days of bipartisan government incomepetence and contemptibility, that focus groups and polling agencies are noting a rise in the significance of libertarianism.  See, libertarianism is the value system that most Americans (I've heard 60%) actually subscribe to, but they rarely get to vote for, since Republicans will mostly only pay lip service to it, and Democrats are the polar opposite of it.

But it's a popular idea with Americans, so Mr. Kinsley needs to get out there and go to work on it.  As he does in all his articles, he intersperses some nicely slanted commentary to remind the readers who is really likeable, and who isn't.

“Democrats treasure civil liberties, whereas Republicans are more tolerant of government censorship to protect children from pornography, or of wiretapping to catch a criminal, or of torture in the war against terrorism.”

Democrats are unflinchingly committed to your personal freedoms, whereas Republicans aren't so much.  Maybe for good reason, but probably not, right?  Right.

Wrong.  Democrats love to control what people say and do when it comes to their sacred cows.  They work to ban “hatespeech,” and their agents and operatives ceaselessly attack those who aren't sensitive enough to gays, minorities, etc. etc.  They long for the return of the “fairness doctrine,” a far more transparent and deliberate attack on free speech than anything contemplated by modern Republicans.  They're happy to impose laws that control our right to keep and bear arms, they've steadily whittled it away over time.  And that's the 2nd Amendment.  Not the 29th.  Not some diddly state law.  It's the Bill of Rights.

These guys treasure my civil liberties Mike?  Fuck you they do.

Why is Mike saying this?  He's trying to lay the groundwork for the idea that libertarians will find a nicer home in the Democrat party than the Republican party.  Libertarians typically associate with Republicans, thanks to the Republican fancy for smaller government.  Mike knows this.  It's the open exposed flank of the Democrats.  He's building berms for his party to hide behind, when their contempt for personal freedom is exposed.

The simple answer is that “Democrats are for Big Government; Republicans are against it.”  But the more “nuanced” answer is that you should vote Democrat.

“Republicans also consider themselves more concerned about the moral tone of the country, and they are more disposed toward using the government in trying to improve it.”

Hey, even Republicans admit they're more of the moral police, right?  Right?  Again, you're full of shit Mike.  Some people think homosexuality is immoral.  Some people think hating homsexuality is immoral.  Then they argue.  Both sides are trying to impose their own morality.  It's just that Republicans tend to refer to it as “morality” and the left uses its own version of the same, something like “compassion” or “conscience” or just “the truth.”

See, I actually AM a libertarian.  I lean more “Republican conservative” than some libertarians, but that's where I'm at fundamentally.  And when you're a libertarian, you're not about gay people.  You're about leaving people alone.  So if two people want to be gay with each other, who gives a shit?  And if some guy wants to yell about how awful fags are, again, who gives a shit?  Libertarianism isn't about supporting freedoms that liberals like.  It's about leaving people the fuck alone.

But Mike is a liberal, and the only freedoms he's even aware of are the ones he cares about.

Liberals can't see any viewpoint by their own.  They think Republicans are attacking their freedoms.  Last time I checked, you could still get a legal abortion in this country.  Last time I checked, there's been no federal ban on gay marriage, and instead a slow march towards it.  It's typical liberal perspective at work here.  Liberals are never forced to hear conservative views.  They're never forced to live in a conservative media bubble.  They're never forced to take stock of all the issues they got their way, or imagine living for decades under policy that is not as they desire.  To them, nothing short of total compliance with their desires is “fair.”  The very idea that gay marriage might be banned is an assault on them, as far as they're concerned.

The Christian right has watched abortion go on legally since 1973.  That's 34 years.  And, in their eyes, it's millions of innocent lives lost.

The American left has watched the war in Iraq go on for four years, and they're out of their fucking minds with it.

“Many people feel that neither party offers a coherent set of principles that they can agree with. For them, the choice is whether you believe in Big Government or you don't. And if you don't, you call yourself a libertarian.”

Mike says:  Hey, libertarian, I'm talking to you.  I know you're frustrated with your government.  I feel you.  Now, read on, and see my objective examination of your options.

“And what is the opposite of libertarianism? Libertarians would say fascism. But in the American political context, it is something infinitely milder that calls itself communitarianism.”

Mike is a true battlefield engineer.  He sees how the fight will evolve, he knows the weaknesses of his allies, and he's building defenses.  See, the word that Mike is looking for, and pretending not to see, is “socialism.”  The opposite of libertarianism in American politics is socialism.  It's not “communitariansm.”  It doesn't call itself that.  It calls itself “progressive” or “open-minded” or some other positive term that doesn't admit that it's actually socialism, which, even with a head full of bulldozers, Americans know is a bad thing.

The word “socialism“ doesn't appear ONCE in the entire article.  You'd think the political system espoused by half of our political leaders would at least get a mention, wouldn't you?  Of course not.  Mike knows that word is poison for his Democrats.

It's a two pronged assault.  He's coming in from one side, and if the target evades that attack, he'll pin them in with the the other.  "If you consider yourself a libertarian, you're a Democrat!  And also, if you don't buy that, and see that Democrats are the exact opposite of you, well, that's a harmless thing called socialism!  No!  I mean socialtasticness!  Yeah!  Vote Hillary!"

“And yet Republicans have a clearer vision of what constitutes a good society and a well-run planet and are quicker to try to impose this vision on the rest of us.”

First prong.  A lie, but still an effective attack, since the DNC/MSM knows nobody will ever be given a voice to challenge it.

“Very few Democrats self-identify as libertarians, but they are in fact much more likely to have a live-and-let-live attitude toward the lesbian couple next door or the Islamofascist dictator halfway around the world.”

Yeah?  And how live-and-let-live do they feel about the Christian fundamentalist next door?  How live-and-let-live do they feel about the guy driving the gas guzzling Hummer?  How live-and-let-live do they feel about people who talk bad about gays, minorities or socialist dictators in South America?  Oh, wait, I mean socialistastic...

He's hammering the point.  Democrats don't want to control you, libertarian!  Never mind that they want to shut down the radio stations you listen to.  Never mind that they want to take your guns away.  Never mind that they want near total control over every aspect of your life.  They're ok with the big important freedoms like guys fucking in the ass, and the Taliban.  That's right up your alley, right?  Right?

No, Mike.  Not at all.  Good luck with those berms, buddy.  You may know how to plan a battle, but with the people you've got behind you, I don't think there's anything you can do.

This is a mediocre movie with an unrealistic perception of how sharpshooting works, some good action scenes, and a very generous helping of Hollywood partisanship.  The theme of a lot of my recent posts has been the total impregnation of American media with liberal messages.  I literally can't watch a movie anymore without obvious, heavy handed attacks on the Bush administration.  So, this is a decent action movie with strangely mumbled and inaudible diologue.  I enjoyed watching it, but not a ton.

On to the ridiculous partisanship.

First off, there's this:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-de-zengotita/must-see-movie-shoot_b_45406.html

“Ok, I saw this movie yesterday, on impulse, just plugging into my retrograde and boyish American male love of bang-bang action movies--and lo and behold what did I find? A really smart bit of left wing (I'm for it!) propaganda aimed at the Bush administration, the Iraq War and, especially, Dick Cheney.“

Smart?  Dude?  It was hamhanded and obvious, and not at all insightful.  It had all the usual “they fight wars for oil, but nobody will challenge them on it“ crap that makes my skin crawl.  Nobody challenges them on it?  Please go kill yourself.

But anyway, the arch badguy is a Senator named Charles Meachum, and he's meant to be Dick Cheney, only much more obese, poncey and ridiculous.  He's a Senator from Montana...  Which borders Wyoming...  And we cut to a scene of him shooting clay pigeons, and making gay eyes at a waiter tending to his opulent outdoor spread.  And later we cut to a scene of Danny Glover's character joking with him, saying “So I said, nice shot Senator!  In the face!''  AHAHAH!  Cause Dick Cheney shot a guy in the face, remember that?

It's just laden with anti-Bush messages, to the point it starts to get a bit sad and embarassing.  And I have to sit through this.

How many movies have you seen where there's a Hillary Clinton character, who is comically evil, pandering and power hungry?  How many movies have you seen where there's a John Kerry character who fakes his military service and is really a coward and an idiot?  None.

So, sure, you're probably saying “Hollywood is liberal, duh, tell us something we don't know.”  To that I would respond that it certainly is obvious, and given how obvious it is, it's a mystery to me why we can't be equally objective about the fact that the left has near total control over all other media (not just movies) consumed by our populace, and that they use it constantly to push their message?

Ultimately this movie's argument is a paradox.  It proffers up the argument that greedy men like Dick Cheney go to war for oil, and we, as a nation, are too scared to face that fact.  But this is a major motion picture, a popcorn flick, and it's making the very argument it claims is off limits.  If we're not allowed to to talk about how evil Republicans fight wars for oil, then how come we do it so much that it's become a mandatory inclusion in every political thriller in the past three years?

We're not allowed to talk about it?  You sure?  I think we're more than allowed to talk about it.  I think we're required to talk about it, to the point it's become a meme in our society.

But, whatever, you fuckwits over at Huffington Post can keep telling yourself it's “subtle.”  Then it'll be ok for me to shoot you in the face, because that'd just be “argumentative.”

P.S:  The character played by Elias Koteas is ridiculous, and I forbid Hollywood to include this forumla in any more films.  He's that bizzare, gropey, sexual badguy who always seems to get his hands on the female love interest, and start slurping words into her ear, and acting all manic and deranged when the hero is in peril.  It speaks to the “subtlety” of this film that they felt the badguys weren't suitably evil when they murdered a bunch of Etheopian villagers, murdered an Etheopian Cardinal, framed an American hero, and generally acted like jerks.  The need to be rapist perverts, too.