Because dissent is the highest form of patriotism.Davey Davis, 38, a friend of the family, said: “It was the most harrowing thing I have ever witnessed. Michelle was at the bedroom window yelling, ‘Please save my kids’ and we wanted to help but the police were pushing us back and not allowing us near. We were willing to risk our lives to save those kiddies but the police wouldn’t let us.The police department denies that anything is wrong:
A South Yorkshire Police spokeswoman said: “The senior officer in charge is confident we handled this incident as professionally as possible. In a situation like that you could end up with more deceased bodies than you had in the first place.”From the department of Doesn't Get It. In the place that Great Britain used to be. Past tense:
Not in the NuLabor Britain. Follow the rules. Know your place. Your intellectual superiors have everything well in hand, and don't you forget it.“I thought the police were there to protect lives. At one time they would have have gone inside themselves to try and rescue them.
“When a family is burning to death in front of your eyes, rules should go out of the window – especially with kids. Everybody wanted to try and help.”
This is what things were like when I was a kid. Really.#2 Son: $15! Can I get one? I'll use my own money!Right quick on the uptake, that lad.
Me: Sorry, the Gun Control laws don't allow kids to own guns.
#2 Son: But kids get them anyway.
Me: So what does that tell you about Gun Control laws?
#2 Son: They don't work?
Me: Well, you don't have an AK-47, do you? Pretty effective at controlling that. So who do you think that Gun Control laws are aimed at?
#2 Son: (realization dawning) @#$%!
Won't damage your trees! Sixteen shillings. Time machine not included ...
Plus, the video makes me grin. And the shotgun is nice, although the filming did involve a violation of the Four Rules.Dang the sun; dang this day
An' I'm just tryin' to stay outta your danged ol' way
To heck with this; to heck with us
An' shoot if I'll ever look back on where I've been
Shoot if I'll ever give away my heart again
Love you, love this town;
Love this mother-lovin' truck that keeps breakin' lovin' down
There's only one four-letter word that'll do:
Love you
Love your cat; love this house
Well, I can't believe myself that I'm lovin' gettin' out
Love talkin'; love fightin';
Thought of never seein' your lovin' face
There's some words that some words just have to replace
Love you; love this town;
Yeah, I'm sick an' lovin' tired of all your lovin' around
There's only one four-letter word that'll do:
Love you
Love you; love this town;
Yeah, I'm sick an' lovin' tired of all your lovin' around
There's only one four-letter word that'll do:
Love you
Love you; love this town;
Love this mother-lovin' truck that keeps breakin' lovin' down
There's only one four-letter word that'll do:
Love you
Love you
Love you
Love you, honey
After stories spread that vampires were strolling the campus of Boston Latin School, the headmaster of the prestigious college-prep school put a stake in the rumors. Lynne Mooney Teta sent a notice out Thursday to faculty, students, and parents denying the presence of bloodsuckers. She declined, however, to offer details about the rumors.And by "no", we mean that the problem is relatively under control ...
Caleb, co-host to Breda on the fastest hour on teh int3rwebz, and captain of a burgeoning gun-centric media empire has mentioned on a few occasions that there is a chance that a representative from AHSA might come on his show to answer some questions.He then goes on to offer some questions for our heros to ask in the event that AHSA has the stones to call in. But it's not fair to ask Greg to do all the heavy lifting by himself. All of us listeners (and that includes you - if you don't, you should) need to offer a couple questions, to help in "Battlefield Preparation."
I personally doubt it will happen, seeing as how they are actually an astro-turf organization whose sole purpose is to get Democrats elected... and they only have about 6 members, including Bob Ricker's mom. However, there is still a chance one of those 6 members will actually make an appearance on the show.
Since I know Caleb is busy practicing for the Bianchi Cup, chasing squirrels, and trying to find a therapeutic dosage of Ritalin, and Breda is busy being an awesome, gun-toting librarian, I thought I'd offer my assistance in formulating some questions:
Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?Corsages, tuxedos, limos and breathalyzers are coming to high school proms and dances this year, at least in some schools in the country. In yet another effort to curb underage drinking and driving, various high schools are requiring students to take breath tests before allowing them to attend and participate in prom night festivities.While we're on the topic of school proms, how about telling the parents of a dead student that you're suspending her?
The parents of a girl who died suddenly two months ago have been sent a letter from her school demanding she improves her attendance. Signed by the deputy headmaster, the letter threatened to ban Megan Gillan from the end of year prom.Nonsense, grumble the easily led. This is an aberration, a one-off, the exception that proves the rule. OK, how about strip-searching teenage girls because you think they may have an ibuprofin at school?
But don't worry - the search, as the school's attorney said was “not excessively intrusive in light of Redding’s age and sex and the nature of her suspected infraction.”An assistant principal, enforcing the school’s antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.
The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating, Ms. Redding said. After she had stripped to her underwear, “they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side,” she said. “They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear.”
Ms. Redding, an honors student, had no pills. But she had a furious mother and a lawyer, and now her case has reached the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on April 21.
Americans are losing their homes, cars, cash and other valuables - to the police. Civil forfeiture - an ancient legal doctrine expanded to prosecute the war on drugs - allows the police to arrest property, charge it with a crime and hold it indefinitely, though the owner may never be charged with a crime.A.I.G. executives? Pariahs. Local school administrators? Untouchable. Probably the only exposure that most kids have to repression is their day-to-day existence at school. What's surprising is that people are surprised by this sort of petty officialdom: there's quite an extensive body of literature describing it.
No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.UPDATE 26 March 2009 19:40: Minor edits and rearranging. If you read this before, this version is more polished.- Edward Abbey
Lucky.Jones explained: "It [the satnav] kept insisting the path was a road, even as it was getting narrower and steeper. I just trusted it. You don't expect to be taken nearly off a cliff.
"I rely on my satnav. I couldn't do without it for my job, and this is the first time anything like this has ever happened. I guess I'm just lucky the car didn't slip all the way over the edge but it's been a bit of a nightmare."
A police spokesman concluded: "Nobody was hurt, but when someone nearly drives off a cliff it shows a lack of care which needs to be investigated."Lack of care? Boy, howdy.
Who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedies among the scholars of war ...Those with strong stomachs can get even more stinkitude by clicking through. You've been warned ...
Robot rover "Opportunity" amidst martian sand dunes, viewed from orbit.
Attn: Email Bearer,Out of a million email addresses, I win the prize! I see that the Obama Administration's Want Inflation Now (WIN) program has added a couple zeros to the end of the number, though ...
This is to formally inform and congratulate you on the result of the
online cyber lotto which was conducted from an exclusive list of
1,000.000 email addresses of individual and corporate bodies selected
by an advanced automated random computer ballot system from the
internet.
Your e-mail address emerged as a winner in the category "A" with the
following information enclosed.
You are therefore to receive a cash prize of $2,500,000.00. (Two
Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars).
To file in for the processing of your prize winnings, you are advised
to contact our Certified and Accredited claims agent for category "A"
winners with the information below:
*************************************
Name: Mr.Henk Wolter
Email: agntoffice07@aim.com
Phone: 0031 633 690 563
Fax: : 0031 847 553 129
Amsterdam . The Netherlands
*************************************
You are adviced to provide him with the following necessary
information for vetting process which is a standard practice
just to ensure that we are dealing with the right individual.
Names:
Telephone/Fax number:
Nationality:
Age:
Occupation:
Winning Email:
Is it really so smart to forge ahead with the high technology, digitally based electricity distribution and transmission system known as the "Smart Grid"? Tests have shown that a hacker can break into the system, and cybersecurity experts said a massive blackout could result.Other than that, it's an awesome system. And people are in a hurry:
The Smart Grid will use automated meters, two-way communications and advanced sensors to improve electricity efficiency and reliability. The nation's utilities have embraced the concept and are installing millions of automated meters on homes across the country, the first phase in Smart Grid's deployment. President Obama has championed Smart Grid, and the recent stimulus bill allocated $4.5 billion for the high-tech program.Once the Bad Guys are done shutting off your power, you'll get an idea what Change can look like. But your problems will be minor compared to the Power company's:
Experts said that once in the system, a hacker could gain control of thousands, even millions, of meters and shut them off simultaneously. A hacker also might be able to dramatically increase or decrease the demand for power, disrupting the load balance on the local power grid and causing a blackout. These experts said such a localized power outage would cascade to other parts of the grid, expanding the blackout. No one knows how big it could get.Let's see: millions of angry customers, a damaged electrical power grid that would take weeks to repair, the country paralyzed by (possibly foreign) adversaries.
The problem that could arise from a large number of Smart Grid computers being pwned is if a worm triggered them off at exactly the same time, this is called a "load rejection" event. It would cause oscillations in the power flow which could end in a blackout but, generally, load rejection is not as bad as generation rejection, which happens when a power plant is cut off.One way to deal with this vulnerability is to make the power companies and device manufacturers liable for damage in the event of unauthorized use. Actually, that would just keep the technology from being deployed, since you can never guarantee that. However, that might be an improvement over what we'll very likely get. And this really gets to the heart of the stupidity around things:
Like you can keep something like this secret from the people who are most dangerous.Let me get this straight. Pennell wants the bug to kept undisclosed because it will be too expensive for the utilities to fix. Yet, someone whose clever, maybe those folks who hacked into the grids in other countries, may do it to the utilities here in the US; which will be vulnerable because the bug is "too expensive" to fix. Meaning, that the grid is vulnerable and subject to the damage that everyone is afraid might happen since the bugs exist. I guess if the bugs are kept secret, no one else is capable of discovering them because nobody is as smart as the researchers?
OooooooKaaaaay. Riiiiiiight.
It looks like this was a distributor, not a manufacturer. Probably from the 1950s. In Chicago.
Click to embiggen. I love the firefighters with the chainsaws.
Includes a 500 S&W revolver, in case you run into any Lego lions.
Model 500 Magnum. I don't expect that shooting this would be pleasant, but neither would getting eaten by a lion.
One of the things that keeps me listening to Country music is that in many ways it is "music for grownups." There's nothing wrong with youthful rebellion - I did my share of that, to be sure - but there is more to life than that. As Trace Adkins puts it in "Songs About Me", they're songs about lovin' and livin' and good-hearted women, about family and God.On a bus to St. Cloud, MinnesotaBootnote: Trisha Yearwood is also know as Mrs. Garth Brooks. At one of her concerts, he came out on stage, knelt down, and proposed. In front of 20,000 people. That's one confident man.
I thought I saw you there
With the snow falling down around you
Like a silent prayer
And once on a street in New York City
With the jazz and the sin in the air
And once on a cold L.A. freeway
Going nowhere
And it's strange, but it's true
I was sure it was you
Just a face in the crowd
On a bus to St. Cloud
In a church in downtown New Orleans
I got down on my knees and prayed
And I wept in the arms of Jesus
For the choice you made
We were just gettin' to the good part
Just gettin' past the mystery
Oh, and it's just like you, it's just like you
To disagree
And it's strange but it's true
You just slipped out of view
Like a face in the crowd
On a bus to St. Cloud
And you chase me like a shadow
And you haunt me like a ghost
And I hate you some, and I love you some
But I miss you most...
On a bus to St. Cloud, Minnesota
I thought I saw you there
With the snow falling down around you
Like a silent prayer
Bomb disposal teams were called in and [Islington] buildings evacuated after workmen mistook a Monty Python film prop for a hand grenade.The carnage was brutal:
Local businesses criticised the police for taking so long to realise there was no threat.
Alberto Romanelli, owner of the Windmill put that was evacuated, said: "I lost a good hour's worth of business."
Thousands of people have been evacuated from a town in southern Italy after a massive unexploded British bomb was unearthed at a construction site.Presonally, I blame
I'm not sure what history class Phil skipped, but we have always been a warrior nation. Our country was born out of the lifeblood spilled during the American War for Independence. It was preserved by the blood spilled on the battlefields by our soldiers. It was expanded by conquest from sea to shining sea. It's only recently that people take the view that if you use force you've somehow failed.Yup.
Offered as Exhibit A in The People v. Stupid Security.According to Maryland state records, Vivek Kundra, the White House chief information officer who took leave last Thursday -- one week after being named to the position, pleaded guilty to a petty theft charge 12 years ago.Good grief.
Note that ATMs manufactured by Wincor Nixdorf have software designed to thwart this sort of malware. It is possible that a knowledgeable attacker could disable this software, but you'd need more than your typical ATM repairman.Security researchers from Sophos have discovered sophisticated malware that siphons payment card information out of automatic teller machines made by Diebold and possibly other manufacturers.
Sophos researcher Vanja Svajcer found three samples after combing through VirusTotal and a similar online database earlier this month. If installed, all three trojans contained functions that allowed them to log information recorded by an ATM's magnetic card reader.
....
Both Svajcer and Zacheroff stressed the trojan could only be installed by someone who had physical access to an ATM, since the devices, obviously, don't have floppy drives and typically run only on private isolated networks. That means the malware could most likely be installed only with help of an insider or in the event passwords weren't managed properly.
Also unanswered is why it took 3 months for someone to notice that the PM wasn't getting any email. I guess he must be more of a Facebook sort of guy.The office of the Indian Prime Minister has reportedly ditched Microsoft's Outlook for open-source email following a computer virus that caused a massive breakdown in communications.
The PMO has dumped Outlook Express for SquirrelMail, it has emerged, following an outage that saw emails go missing and unanswered during a three-month period last year.
Bad or delinquent loans? Zero. Foreclosures? None. Money set aside in 2008 for anticipated loan losses? Nothing. ... The bank even squeaked out a profit of $87,000. And its Tier 1 risk-based capital ratio was 31.6 percent, or more than three times higher than many community banks in Massachusetts. “We’re paranoid about credit quality,” Petrucelli said. The 62-year-old chief executive has run the bank since 1992.Well, no. Has it asked for bailout funds? No. You'd think they'd get a medal.
Yet the FDIC has turned up the heat on Petrucelli's bank, giving it an apparently rare "needs to improve rating," for not making more risky loans under the Community Reinvestment Act. Here is how the FDIC puts it: “There are no apparent financial or legal impediments that would limit the bank’s ability to help meet the credit needs of its assessment area. The FDIC examiners also faulted East Bridgewater "for not advertising and marketing its loan products enough. The bank, which does not have a Web site, offers fixed-rate mortgages."The Fed.Gov nails them for not lending to people who can't repay the loans, and not going out of business while doing it.
Section 1. No person shall be elected to the House of Representatives more than thrice, and no person who has held the office of Representative, or acted as Representative, for more than one year of a term to which some other person was elected Representative shall be elected to House of Representatives more than twice. But this article shall not apply to any person holding the office of Representative when this article becomes operative, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of Representative, or acting as Representative, during the term within which this article becomes operative from holding the office of Representative or acting as Representative during the remainder of such term.No extra charge, folks, it's all part of the service.
Section 2. No person shall be elected to the Senate more than once, and no person who has held the office of Senator, or acted as Senator, for more than three years of a term to which some other person was elected Senator shall be elected to Senate. But this article shall not apply to any person holding the office of Senator when this article becomes operative, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of Senator, or acting as Senator, during the term within which this article becomes operative from holding the office of Senator or acting as Senator during the remainder of such term.
Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.
Heh.The Bustard's a fortunate fowl
with almost no reason to growl.
Saved from what would be
illegitimacy
by the grace of a fortunate vowel.
BBC Click has admitted paying cybercrooks thousands of dollars to buy access to a botnet as part of a controversial cybercrime investigation, broadcast over the weekend.A hearty shout out to all you folks living in old Blighty - your TV
...
BBC Click used the botnet of 22,000 machine to send spam to webmail addresses it established and launch a denial of service attack against a test website by security firm PrevX which advised on the investigation. It then changed the wallpaper on compromised machines with a message of its own, advising affected users to clean up.
A felony for uploading nine tracks? Felony?A Los Angeles man who pleaded guilty in December to illegally uploading nine Guns N’ Roses songs onto his music site could be thrown in the slammer for six months if federal prosecutors in the case get their way.
Kevin Cogill was arrested last summer after posting tracks on 18 June from GNR’s album Chinese Democracy to his Antiquiet website. He saw the copyright violation charge against him reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor after he admitted to streaming the pre-release tunes.
A new variant of the Waledac worm uses an email message claiming a "dirty bomb" explosion in order to tempt the gullible into visiting a maliciously-constructed website posing as the homepage of news agency Reuters. This website uses a GEO-IP lookup to customise the story so as to appear that the explosion appeared in a city or location near the surfer viewing it.Of course, the link in the email points you to a web site that tells you that you need to download something to "view the video". The download is the malware package.
Someone should tell little Tommy that this sort of thing gets you talked about. In the Police Blotter.
The moon has always cast a spell on Man. Because we live in a scientific age, we look for scientific explanations for this - the moon effects the tides, the menstrual cycle seems linked to the moon. These miss the point.
New EeePC just arrived, and it's now set up as dual-boot XP and eeBuntu. #1 Son and I have been doing it together, as it's a good skill set for him to have, and I just like spending the time with him.
The French badly damaged the leading ships and slipped away. When his flag captain pointed out to Byng that by standing out of his line, he could bring the centre of the enemy to closer action, he declined on the ground that Thomas Mathews had been dismissed for so doing. The French, who were equal in number to the British, got away undamaged.Now it seems that not only had Admiral Mattews been dismissed for being insufficiently aggressive, but Lt. Baker Philips was shot by firing squad for being overly aggressive.
The severity of the penalty, aided by a not unjust suspicion that the Admiralty sought to cover themselves by throwing all the blame on the admiral led to a reaction in favour of Byng both in the Navy and in the country which had previously demanded retribution.This small-minded, legalistic atrocity was immortalized by Voltaire in his novel Candide. The hero (Candide) is in Britain, and witnesses the execution of an officer. He is told "in this country, it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others." Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres.
William Pitt the Elder, then Leader of the House of Commons, told the king: "the House of Commons, Sir, is inclined to mercy", to which George II responded: "You have taught me to look for the sense of my people elsewhere than in the House of Commons."
The royal prerogative was not exercised and John Byng was shot on 14 March 1757 in the Solent on the forecastle of HMS Monarch by a platoon of musqueteers.
To the perpetual Disgrace
of PUBLICK JUSTICE
The Honble. JOHN BYNG Esqr
Admiral of the Blue
Fell a MARTYR to
POLITICAL PERSECUTION
March 14th in the year 1757 when
BRAVERY and LOYALTY
were Insufficient Securities
For the
Life and Honour
of a
NAVAL OFFICER
It's actually kind of hard to keep up with the Who's Who of dropouts:Here's what we know so far:That's from six weeks ago, and doesn't count March 6, when three nominees withdrew.
1) Richardson - Nominee for Sec of Commerce - Federal Corruption Investigation - Withdrew
2) Geithner - Nominee for Sec of Treasury - Serial Tax Cheat - Confirmed because he's the only person smart enough to save the economy
3) Daschle - Nominee for Sec of Health/Human Services - Yet another tax cheat - Trying to get him pushed through because he's on board for socializing our medical system but likely to withdraw [Yep, he withdrew]
4) Nancy Killefer - Nominee for Chief Performance Officer(aka Performance Czar) - Oops another tax cheat - Withdraws
5) Eric Holder - Nominee for Attorney General - Controversial pardons of Marc Rich, FALN terrorists and generally pathetically weak on terrorism - Confirmed. (Try to remember when America was safe)
Running total: 2 Nominees withdraw, 3 nominees with tax issues.
He can't hire well, by his own admission:[Lots of stuff deleted - go RTWT]
So, for those keeping track at home, that's ten instances of Obama publicly blaming his staff for various screw-ups.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10!
(You of course could also add Austan Goolsbee, Samantha Power, Gordon Fischer, and retired Gen. Tony McPeak.)
That would be 14. We will continue to keep track.
President Obama acknowledged yesterday that he had "made a mistake" in trying to exempt some candidates for positions in his administration from strict ethics standards and accepted the withdrawal of two top nominees, including former Senate majority leader Thomas A. Daschle, in the first major setback of his young presidency.I'm sure that he would phrase it differently than I did, but we're seeing serial failures of a sort that we simply haven't seen maybe ever. That suggests that the problem isn't in the trenches, it's in the CP. It's him.
The problem of unqualified employees rising through the ranks is well chronicled in Laurence Peter's 1969 book, "The Peter Principle," which argues that people in business organizations rise to their level of incompetence. But are these climbers, who are surrounded by the cult of ambition that pervades most corporations, really at fault for striving for what an organization rewards? What about the one person in close proximity to whom the manager's incompetence isn't tortuously obvious: the fool who promoted him?51% of the voters put him in this job. If President Obama doesn't stop screwing up regularly (the reset button, snubbing our allies, flip-flopping from panic-city to don't-worry-be-happy on the economy), then the voters will need to act like the Board of Directors, and ask the CEO to stop down. Given Obama's history, that's looking like where the smart money will bet.
...
High-tech executive Paul Kedrosky also believes "the people who wrong-headedly promote these ragingly incompetent people and don't do anything about it" are the problem. He once had a sales manager who called weekly meetings, asked all the wrong questions, told his subordinates they were idiots and spent the rest of the week frantically making sales himself to cover for his "incompetent" staff. "We spent a great deal of time golfing," Kedrosky says. "To my knowledge, (the man) was still in the job 10 years later, as bad as ever."
I've never ask you where you're goin'
I've never ask you where you've been
I've never called and checked your story
You stayed out with all your friends
I've never tried to catch you lyin'
I didn't want to know the truth
I'd rather go on lovin' blind girl
Than go on lovin' without you
I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then
I wish I could start this whole thing over again
I'm not sayin' it's you could never be true
I just don't wanna know how it ends
You'd still have my heart in the palm of your hands
I'd still look like a fool in front of your friends
Yeah I wish somehow I didn't know now what I didn't know then
I've always said what I don't know
Couldn't hurt as bad as leavin' you
Turns out I knew what I was thinkin'
It ain't an easy thing to do
Well I guess I should be goin'
I sure found out too much to stay
Please don't say your sorry
I might wait another day
I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then
I wish I could start this whole thing over again
I'm not sayin' it's you could never be true
I just don't wanna know how it ends
You'd still have my heart in the palm of your hands
I'd still look like a fool in front of your friends
Yeah I wish somehow I didn't know now what I didn't know then
You'd still have my heart in the palm of your hand
I'd still look like a fool in front of your friends
Yeah I wish somehow I didn't know now what I didn't know then
Yeah I wish somehow I didn't know now what I didn't know then
A SHEPSHED school has apologised for sending a letter about truancy to the mother of a boy suffering from leukaemia after she asked to take him out of classes to meet the Pope.But I'm sure that your public
...Ms Yates said she thought her son deserved some discretion given his illness.
She told the BBC: “You’re not talking about a kid playing truant here, it’s a terminal illness.
On the evening of March 11, 1970, Company G, 2d Battalion, 5th Marines engaged the enemy in Quang Nam province. As they tried to evacuate a badly wounded Marine, the enemy counter attacked. One enemy soldier broke through the lines, throwing a grenade into the middle of the group evacuating their comrade.At the time of the action which earned him the Medal of Honor, Sergeant Major Kellogg was married to the former Carol Diane Haviland of Queens City, New York, and had one daughter, two step-daughters, a brother, and three sisters.That's not why I'm posting this, although it's a lot. The comrade he saved is a friend of mine.
