Something's Spreading Like Wildfire Across the Middle East...

...and it ain't democracy!

Imagine a war between Saudi Arabia and Syria on one side, Iran on the other and Iraq in the middle, with Turkey moving in on the Kurds for dessert.

Imagine the Saudis making drastic manipulations of the world oil market for what would be essentially a tactical advantage in Iraq:

Nawaf Obaid, writing in The Washington Post, said the Saudi leadership was preparing to revise its Iraq policy to deal with the aftermath of a possible U.S. pullout, and is considering options including flooding the oil market to crash prices and thus limit Iran's ability to finance Shi'ite militias in Iraq.

Orson Scott Card: WTF?

What the fuck happened to Orson Scott Card? I accept that he may have always been a right-wing dickhead, and I always thought he was a little wacky (but not because he's a Mormon, nope, not at all. 'Cause Mormons aren't the least bit weird, nope, not in the least, nope), but I thought he could write well, at least. This is like a comic book Glen Reynolds wrote in sixth grade. It's like the screenpaly for Red Dawn II: The Calls Are Coming From Inside The House!

An evil Liberal Army takes over New York City?!? Please! Obviously, Card's never been to Manhattan. New Yorkers would kick their fucking asses, then grab a slice and hit the subway for home.

Update: Nitpicker identifies September 11th as OSC's life-and-writing-skills-altering trauma.

I think it will go something like this...

Bush asks Maliki for his Iraq plans:

Bush: Yo, Leaky, ya' got that plan for me?

Maliki: Plan? What plan? I thought you had the plan.

Bush: Me? Why would I have the plan. You were supposed to have the plan!

Maliki: Do I look like some one who should have a plan? I have no plan. I'm not into planning so much right now.

Bush: Dude, I'm seriously disappointed in you. I was counting on you for a plan. Somebody has to come with a plan.

Maliki: Don't look at me. I got nothing.

Bush: Well...

Maliki: Well...

White House Leaks Own Maliki Memo

This is transparently part of the prominent Republican/Neocon/Right-wing effort to shift all the blame for the Iraq disaster onto the Iraqis themselves. Whatever blame which they can't manage to shift (along with the help of the Serious Centrist Wise Men of the MSM) onto the Democrats/Liberals/Dirty Fucking Hippies.

Prickly Prick

Man needed surgery after sex with hedgehog
An order of magnitude more dangerous than Muskrat Love.

No Class

It's the duty of every patriotic American to undermine and eliminate class distinctions. It's an endless process because class distinctions arise naturally, but it must be done. Remember, that's "patriotic duty", not "class warfare."

The World's Worst Actor Joins The World's Crappiest Newspaper

Chuck Norris starts writing(?!?) a column for World Net Daily!!!!

This is amazingly banal stuff. For starters, Chuck has jumped aboard Bill O'Lielly's 'War on Christmas' Bandwagon of Delusion:

In the pursuit of being politically correct, I believe we have sold out to a neutered nativity — taking no sides to the slow elimination of ''Christmas'' in retail and culture.

and

I enjoy giving and receiving Christmas gifts as much as anyone else, though I prefer those presents that build up mind, body and spirit, like the educational gifts found at Shop.WND.com or the fitness and other items found at our online store (the proceeds of which go to benefit our Kick Start program).

Growing up in Oklahoma, Kansas and then California, our family was pretty poor by American standards.

We had so little money that I didn't have real toys to play with, so I used clothespins and an active imagination.

The clothespins served as toy soldiers or cowboys. I made the big clothespins the bad guys and the little ones the good guys. Of course the larger they were, the harder they fell! (Imagery that would later serve my Martial Arts career.)

Despite our economic and domestic adversities, mom did the best she could with us three boys. [ed.: *sniff*,*sob*]

via Sadly, No!

Disclaimer: I'm a huge fan of bad action movies, including Chuck's!

Research Assistant

http://acephalous.typepad.com/acephalous/2006/11/measuring_the_s.html

Link propagation test

Victoria

The Kinks - BBC - 1973 - really, really fast

She Went Count Of Monte Cristo On His Ass

Here's my theory. Judith Regan set OJ up. She arranged the book & TV deal then had it cancelled at the last second just to build him up then slap him down. All according to her cunning plan.

If it's true, she's now my hero. All that Bernard Kerik stuff is forgiven. But if I were her, I'd watch my back.

The Terrible Equality Approaches

Final Death toll, September 11th Attacks: 2,973
US Iraq Deaths as of Nov. 20th, 2006: 2,865

"My only regret is that I didn’t hit him harder"

The Sun: Army boxer, 67, beats thieves

Critical Online Economics Poll

Take it now.

"Super-Secure" British Passport RFID Cracked

The Guardian: Cracked it!

Today, some three million such passports have been issued, and they don't look so secure. I am sitting with my scary computer man and we have just sucked out all the supposedly secure data and biometric information from three new passports and displayed it all on a laptop computer.

The UK Identity and Passport Service website says the new documents are protected by "an advanced digital encryption technique". So how come we have the information? What could criminals or terrorists do with it? And what could it mean for the passports and the ID cards that are meant to follow?

h/t to AmericaBlog

Will It Blend?

Fun with blenders.

A Metallurgy Moment

Damascus steel may have relied on carbon nanotubes for its high quality. Cool.

Their blades bear a banded pattern thought to have been created as the sword was annealed and forged. But the secret of the swords' manufacture was lost in the eighteenth century.

Materials researcher Peter Paufler and his colleagues at Dresden University, Germany, have taken electron-microscope pictures of the swords and found that wootz has a microstructure of nano-metre-sized tubes, just like carbon nanotubes used in modern technologies for their lightweight strength.

My Letter To the UCLA Chancellor

I felt I had to write to express my absolute horror and disgust at the unforgivable behavior of your university police in the recent Tasering incident, the video of which has been widely distributed on the Internet.

Are these officers animals or were they just trained to act like animals? The evidence strongly suggests that one of these possibilities must be true. The safety and comfort of your security forces cannot trump the safety of your student population, nor can it be used to deprive them of the rights an American citizen would normally expect. This is brutality disguised as maintenance of the public order, and it is depressingly common lately.

The policies that ultimately led to this brutality could only have been the product of cowardice, moral sloth and pure bureaucratic laziness and ass-covering. Maintaining order and liberty together is a very difficult task and cannot be accomplished by treating it as a product roll-out or other such stillborn boardroom monstrosity.

I urge you to ensure that these officers are never again entrusted to protect the public, and that your remaining security staff be trained to respect individual rights and not use violence as their primary tool. Additionally, I believe that any University official who had anything to do with the security and training policies should resign immediately in shame.

Yours very truly,
Michael Nilsen

Let me add that the first University official to use the "There are Terrorists out there!" rationale should be fucking tasered.

Aravosis here.

Video here.

The Underpants Gnomes Run Our Government

Step 1: Send more troops to Iraq.

Step 2: Do some other stuff

Step 3: Leave behind a strong and independent Iraqi government and security force

h/t to Atrios

Some Random Thoughts

I blame Bush. Iraq war supporters deride the American public for 'losing their will' and being defeatist, for not having the tenacity to struggle onward to victory. That's bullshit. To a great extent, the American people are the tool of the President. He used us hard and treated us like morons. He broke his tool. Polls indicated a lukewarm support for the Iraq war just before it started. I remember the polls indicating that the public would tolerate about 500 US deaths before considering it unaccceptable. Once we were involved, support for the war, or at least the troops, was maintained by our sense of national pride. But Bush abused that pride, and pushed us past the breaking point, then led us into a situation with absolutely no good resolution. If it's true that only a crazy person would want to be President, it's doubly true that only a crazy person would want to follow Bush as President. Vote Democrat: Leave the fire; return to the frying pan.

Also, why are Republicans and The Conservative Media so concerned about what 'The Terrorists' think? Why, I sometimes go through a whole day without considering my actions in light of what A Terrorist would make of it. Indeed, I made my choices on election day without the slightest consideration of what Osama or Hamas thought of my vote. Here's a hint: there are many types and flavors of 'Terrorist' and they all want something different and they don't think alike.

Getting the shit beat out of you is easy...

...Comedy is hard.

Borat is attacked by an unwilling straight man in NY and is rescued by Hugh Laurie. You know you're in trouble when you need to be rescued by Hugh Laurie:

Look at that mother, will ya!

The perfect soufflé

I'm Waiting for the Skin Flute Shirt

Scientists develop Air Guitar shirt!

It's called the WIS - the Wearable Instrument Shirt - and it is tipped to make the air guitar as obsolete as the horse and cart.

Scientists at the CSIRO's Textile and Fibre Technology division in Geelong have woven electronic sensors into a T-shirt so that it can be played liked a real guitar.

Movements by the wearer's arms are mapped and beamed by radio to a computer which interprets them and turns them into musical notes.

The wearer only has to act out playing the instrument to make sounds.

Jack Palance Dead at 87

Or 85.

Just Call Me Nostradumbass

NYT: Rumsfeld Resigns as Defense Secretary After Big Election Gains for Democrats

Why, I just predicted that this would not happen. Oops.

Perhaps I'll be partially vindicated when Rumsfeld releases the ultimate Bush Admin insider tell-all book next month. As told to Ron Suskind!

TV Show Kills Perverted Prosecutor

NYT: Prosecutor Kills Himself in Texas Raid Over Child Sex

A prosecutor in this North Texas town killed himself Sunday as the police tried to arrest him on charges of soliciting sex over the Internet from a person he thought was a 13-year-old boy.

The prosecutor, Louis Conradt Jr., 56, had been caught in a sting operation set up by Dateline NBC, the television news magazine, and an Internet watchdog group called Perverted Justice. An NBC camera crew was outside the house to film the scene when the fatal shot was fired.

It's Election Day

Go vote!

Suing Illegal Robocallers for Fun and Profit

A case study

Don't Forget Mediocre, Conventional Wisdom Centrist Asswipes

Right-Wing Nut Jobs vs. Pinko Commies - Take 2 (Times Select)

Doh!

Perhaps rigging Saddam's sentencing date wasn't such a good idea after all.

Hey, Barbara Cubin!

Fuck your mother!

story here.

Martin Scorsese's Sesame Streets

Haggard Featured in Dawkins Documentary

See the news coverage of disgraced religious leader Ted Haggard, I realized that this was the Christian subject of part 1 of Richard Dawkins' documentary, "The Root of All Evil." In it, Dawkins examines religious leaders of the three major religions, and he chose Haggard as the Christian example. I remember from the show that Haggard came across as one scary, arrogant motherfucker and I, for one, will be glad to see the pathetic hypocrite crash and burn.

Surf's Up!

I feel that real Internet surfing declined during the 1995-2004 period (roughly). Real surfing is semi-randomly jumping from link to link without a particular destination in mind. In the age of Amazon and interactive Web sites, I think people worked more from their bookmark lists and spent larger chunks of time within a site. But blogging has restored some of the old school surfing experience as you jump from post to post. See how far you can get in a single surfing session. Try measuring distance as change in ideology or topical focus between starting and ending blogs. Of course, this could all be a load of codswallop.

Surf's up. The Intenet does have tubes!

Buh-bye, Now

The mercs are pulling out.

via TPM

Nice Presidency You Have There...

...It'd be a shame if anything happened to it.

AP (via Forbes): Bush: Rumsfeld, Cheney Must Stay Til End

President Bush said Wednesday he wants Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney to remain in his administration until the end of his presidency, extending a job guarantee to two of the most criticized members of his team.

What does Rummy have on Bush? Plenty, I'm sure. He's a seasoned bureaucratic infighter, maybe the biggest such scumbag in Washington. He didn't get where he is by failing to insure himself against purges and the like, or failing to have the nuts to leverage that insurance. Rummy knows way too much to be forced into a graceful exit.

Spin in Action

A vocal critic of Va. Senate candidate was assaulted by Allen campaign workers after shouting embarrassing questions at Allen.

That's my lede for the Mike Stark story. Video here.

Now here's the liberal*cough* media's parade of headlines:

Heckler Subdued at Sen. Allen Event (AP sourced)
Blogger thrown out of Allen event
Chaos continues in final days of Senate race
Campaign rally ends in scuffle
Reaction to Allen Heckler

Damn

Mark Halperin, ABC News Political Director, in an interview with Hugh Jass:

"But what my views are, are not important, and just like I said on not voting, I think having views and expressing them is a dangerous thing. I have opinions and thoughts, but I think talking about them is only bad for America."

That's one of the dumbest, most cowardly, weasely, fucked up things I've ever heard escape from the mouth of a public figure. He's not referring to journalistic objectivity here. This is a personal interview on his views, and Hewitt just asked him about his views on abortion rights. He knows full well that the interview is about his own views; he whined and whinged like a bitch after the interview when Hewitt insisted that he was 'very liberal'. Ha ha. What did you expect, asswipe? Hewitt's a big cog in the GOP slime machine. Everybody in the mainstream media must be a liberal, right? Any other conclusion would upset the Republicans' house-of-cards-in-a-hurricane world view.

He may be right; evidently any of his thoughts or words, being that stupid, have to be bad for America, or anywhere else. His major mistake is thinking that the same is true for everyone.

via The News Blog