Gimme a free frosty ... bitch.

(Hat tip to Lovely Wife)

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I got some more information on GreenZap, the soon to launch alternative to eBay PayPal. They won't be using a percentage fee system like PayPal. It will be just a flat $1 fee to transfer funds. That means that any transfer or purchase over $28 will net more cash if you use GreenZap over PayPal.

And if you sign up before the launch using that nifty link in the first paragraph your account will start with $25 in it and I'll get a $5 finder's bonus. What's not to like about that?

Posted by: Jim at 01:27 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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In February an editor from the Dallas Morning News contacted me requesting an editorial. I happily wrote one for them but they've never used it so I posted it at Zero Intelligence.

Go. Read. Enjoy.

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[profanity alert]

I heard about this on NPR the other day and it pissed me off to no end.

The ivory-billed woodpecker, a magnificent bird long given up for extinct, has been sighted in the cypress and tupelo swamp of the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas, scientists announced yesterday.

That's not the part that pissed me off. I actually thought that was pretty cool.

Dr. John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, who led the effort to confirm the sightings, said at a news conference in Washington, "This is really the most spectacular creature we could imagine rediscovering."

That didn't piss me off either. I'm happy for the birders. This is like finding the holy grail for them and it really is an impressive looking bird.

The Nature Conservancy and other conservation groups have bought land in the region of the refuge to help preserve a larger area.

Nope, that didn't piss me off either. Private groups spending their money to preserve nature is okay in my book. People can do what they want with their money.

[Fitzpatrick] was joined by Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who announced that the agency, along with the Department of Agriculture, had proposed to spend $10 million of federal money for research, habitat protection and law enforcement efforts to protect the bird.

That's the one! What the fuck!? The government wants to spend $10fuckingmilliondollars to protect one damned bird? That's right - ONE bird was found. It took them an entire year to verify that ONE ivory-billed woodpecker was alive and they want to spend TEN MILLION DOLLARS on it!

What in the ever living fuck are these worthless shits thinking of? If people care enough about this bird then they'll pony up the cash to protect it. And guess what? They do care and they did pony up. The bird's habitat is already purchased and protected! By private organizations! The way it should be!

Damn, am I pissed!

(This rant spurred because I was reminded of this travesty by a post at I Hate My Cubicle)

Posted by: Jim at 09:37 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Sounds dirty, doesn't it? Well it is!

I found the Draw a Pig Personality Test over at AAAVelociman's joint.

Meet SnoozePig!

You are a realist. You believe in tradition, are friendly, and remember dates (birthdays, etc.)

You are emotional and naive, care little for details and are a risk-taker.

You are secure, stubborn, and stick to your ideals.

The size of the ears indicates how good a listener you are. The bigger the better. You drew large ears, you are a great listener!

The length of the tail indicates the quality of your sex life. And again more is better! You drew large tail, WOW!

It's frightening just how accurate these things are.

Posted by: Jim at 02:52 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Two instructors at Abraar Islamic school in Ottawa were suspended while the school investigates their part in inciting hatred and violence against Jews.

One teacher was apparently involved in the artistic production of the eight-page story of killing and martyrdom. Handwritten in Arabic and titled The Long Road, the cover page was illustrated by a drawing of a burning Star of David beside a machine-gun and Palestinian flag atop the Dome of the Rock, an ancient Muslim shrine in Jerusalem.

The other teacher had written comments on the student's paper, praising the boy's story of revenge for the assassination by Israeli forces a year ago of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, a co-founder of Hamas, in retaliation for suicide bombings against Israeli civilians.

"God bless you, your efforts are good," the teacher wrote on the title page. "The story of the hero Ahmed and the hero Salah is still alive. The end will be soon when God unites us all in Jerusalem to pray there."

Holy jihadi, Batman! An actual Islamic institute doing internal investigation into terrorist incitement! I might have to turn off the Internet here so I don't ruin the moment.

UPDATE

Dammit, I knew I should have quit while I was ahead.

The students who have aired complaints claim that some professors in the department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Culture [at Columbian University] suppress opinion sympathetic of Israel and inappropriately substitute political activism for teaching.

An assistant professor of modern Arab politics, Joseph Massad, is accused of threatening to expel a student from his classroom because she defended Israel's military actions. Mr. Massad denies the charge. Mr. Massad is undergoing his fifth-year review. According to a source, a committee within the Middle East studies department evaluating Mr. Massad has recommended that he continue teaching in the department.

Mr. Cole on Tuesday night cast Mr. Massad as an exemplary teacher who is under no obligation to give equal weight to student opinions expressed during class. Just as a Jewish history professor doesn't have to take seriously a student who denies the Holocaust, Mr. Massad is not required to give equal time to an argument denying the 1982 Shatila refugee camp massacre in Lebanon, he said.

Posted by: Jim at 09:18 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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No, I'm not getting into this one. Not the meat and potatoes part, anyway. I did want to address two things that happened recently that are getting a fair share of hoopla and generating lots of righteous indignation.

Congress passed a law for one person.

Yes, they did. They do it all of the time. This is part of the normal course of business for our lawmakers. Although I find the practice reprehensible it is neither unusual nor (as clarified by the Supremes) unconstitutional. It is normally done to grant boons or give away money. It has been used to allow immigrant families to stay in the USA. It is used regularly to bail out industries. Need to give a couple billion in tax dollars to the airline industry? Just write a law. Easy pleasy mac and cheesy.

What these personalized laws cannot be used for is to target and harm individuals. I think that this particular law will fail the test because no matter who is right in the Shiavo case this law is specifically targeting and interfering with them. I don't think this law will pass constitutional muster.

As Ilyka pointed out so very well, stop barking at Congress for doing their job.

I've just got to get this off my chest right now: One bit of idiocy that needs to die is the ranting and raving about what an abuse of government power it is that Congress got involved**. Let's at least be clear about why Congress got involved: It's because people have been bothering the living daylights out of them. It's called representative government.

Links and fancy formatting over at Ilyka's. Go read, I'll wait for you.

The federal judge in Tampa did not follow the law - he didn't order Shiavo's feeding tube replaced.

Apples and oranges. The law isn't about Terry's feeding tube, it's about the overall case being heard in federal court.

The judge would have been breaking the law if he had ordered the tube replaced, based on the information provided to him in court. At the least he would have been trampling all over proper jurisprudence. In order to find immediately for Shiavo's parents (the requirement to replace the tube) their lawyers had to show they had an expectation of winning the federal court case. They couldn't show that they even had a minuscule case according to law. No precedents, no arguments, nothing. They have been working on this for years, there are 30,000 pages of court documents already filed, they have ostensibly been preparing for this exact case and they still didn't have squat ready for this court. Their argument boiled down to "We didn't prepare anything but you need to decide in our favor because we're right".

Don't blame the judge for following the precepts of law, blame the Shindler family's crappy lawyers.

That's it for today. Maybe tomorrow I'll do the meat and potatoes post. Then again, maybe not - I enjoy having readers.

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It started innocuously enough. On an ostensibly cooperative "humanitarian" mission to the tsunami ravaged Far East, the senior George Bush connived to get ex-President Bill Clinton, a post-operative heart surgery patient, to sleep on the cold, hard floor.

The next morning, Bush said he peeked in and saw Clinton sound asleep on the plane's floor. [The article does not mention how Bill then slept through Bush's cackling, maniacal laughter. - ed]

Now we learn that Clinton must undergo another round of surgery to attempt to repair damage to his lungs.

Former President Clinton will undergo a medical procedure this week to remove an unusual buildup of fluid and scar tissue from his chest, six months after he underwent quadruple bypass surgery [And just a few weeks after being forced to sleep on the cold, hard floor. - ed], his office said Tuesday.

You don't have to take your tin foil hat off to connect the dots here, people. You can almost taste the taint of Karl Rove on this plot. This is obviously an attempt by the Bush Monarchy to head off the Hillary Clinton presidential run in 2008. If they succeed in killing off Mr.Clinton they will send poor Hillary into a trough of despair from which her broken heart will never recover. Even if they have a near miss and only turn Bill into a bed-ridden differently-abled individual they know that Hillary will immediately resign her Senate seat and forgo all political ambitions to nurse him and be constantly by his side.

Now the truth is revealed. Who has the guts to brave the stormtroopers of Halliburton to do something about it? The first step is obvious. Everybody needs to link to this post and spread news of the plot. Eventually, if we all do our part, somebody at Reuters who isn't compromised by the jackbooted government thugs will pick it up and spread the truth to the world.

Only the truth, shouted loud and proud, can save Hillary and Bill from this diabolical threat. And as we all know, only Hillary can end the neocon threat, restore us to a life of liberty, and deliver the holy grail of free medical. more...

Posted by: Jim at 08:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Here's your big chance to share the love. Phillip Coons needs your help to make Delusional Duck the successful multi-poster newsblog it wants to be.

Participation is incredibly easy. Just create an account and you've got posting power. The article entry form is clear and well laid out - just put the link, source, news blurb and your comments in the correct boxes and they come out the other side all Ducky. That is to say, formatted nicely in the Delusional Duck format.

Like Phil says, "If the article you post interests you, chances are it will interest our other readers as well."

Go for it!

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So, Hunter S.Thomson is dead. Who, you may ask, was Hunter S.Thomson? No, of course you won't ask that as you and every other person in the free world, with the notable exception of yours truly, knows who the hell he was. Not only that but everybody also seems to either despise or adore him unconditionally.

Here's what I've been able to pick up from reading tribute posts:

• He was a poet
  
• He had some very meaningful works a long time ago


• He coined the term "gonzo journalism"


• He used a lot of drugs


• He had a hobby of introducing drugs to others


• He was a bitter and depressed man


• He killed himself


• He wrote a Johnny Depp movie*

My thoughts run something along these lines:

Hunter? Dude? Suicide? How freaking stereotypical!

Come on now! This isn't news. A depressed poet past his prime offs himself and people are acting shocked and amazed. Suicide and murder are the only ways that depressed poets past their prime leave this mortal coil. It's stipulated in their job contracts so the publishing companies can get residual sales.

That's not news. It's what lets obituary writers work ahead a bit.

You want news? Show me a poet that lives happily to a ripe old age and dies peacefully in bed. Now that's news.

* This item may be out of proper order.

Posted by: Jim at 03:16 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Eminent domain is the power of the government to seize private property to put it to public use. They might do this to put in a railroad line or an interstate, perhaps a parking lot for the court building or to demolish slums. It's also been used by various nefarious officials to blatantly steal people's property.

The Supreme Court is hearing an eminent domain case now. They will rule whether or not the government of New London can kick landowners out of their homes so a new Cosco can be built. Okay, that's a bit of a paraphrase but it's essentially the way it is. New London wants to seize 15 homes and then give the peninsula of Fort Trumbull to private developers.

The government argues that they need to redistribute this land in order to build up the tax base, create jobs and improve the very sad economy of New London. They say that developers are not interested in building up Fort Trumbull unless all of Fort Trumbull is given to them. The land owners refuse to give up their family homes and legal property so Pfizer can build another parking lot on free land.

The repercussions of this case will be widespread. If the Court determines that "public use" includes gifting one person's private property to another private interest every single land owner is in danger. There is no private home (possibly excepting Graceland) that would not be a better income generator if it was replaced with a WalMart.

My position is pretty obvious: The profit of the many does not outway the rights of the few.

Posted by: Jim at 08:51 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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The bastards!

(Hat tip to Delusional Duck)

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Google weighs options after legal decision

Internet search engine Google said on Monday that it was weighing a possible appeal after a Paris court ordered it to pay $260 000 (about R1,6-million) plus costs to luxury goods maker Louis Vuitton for breach of trademark.

The high court in central Paris awarded the damages in a decision late on Friday and ordered Google to stop displaying advertisements for Vuitton's rivals whenever Internet users typed Vuitton's name or other trademarks into the search engine.

The case centered on Google's AdWords program. This allows advertisers to bid for high responses in the "Sponsored Links" areas of Google search returns. Google does not restrict the words that advertisers can bid on. Ford, for example, could target an advertisement to appear when people searched for Chevy. The French courts have determined that this is trademark infringement on Google's part.

Um...what? more...

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A Jordanian couple fell into anonymous love over the internet and met to consummate their relationship. Their tryst ended quickly and vociferously as soon as they saw and recognized each other. The two were a married couple, separated for months.

Budding Jordan cyber love ends in divorce

Upon seeing Sanaa-alias-Jamila, Bakr-alias-Adnan turned white and screamed at the top of his lungs: "You are divorced, divorced, divorced" -- the traditional manner of officially ending a marriage in Islam.

"You are a liar," Sanaa retorted before fainting, the agency said.

Bakr then went home and beat off to porn.

(Hat tip to Lovely Wife)

Posted by: Jim at 10:38 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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This is pretty neat: Private, home school students added to Perdue's virtual school bill.

Home schoolers and private school students would be allowed to take online public school courses under changes a Senate committee made Monday to a bill backed by Gov. Sonny Perdue.

The Senate Education committee approved a plan to create the Georgia Virtual School - giving students in small school systems computer access to advanced placement classes and other courses that may not be available to them locally.

Students not enrolled in public schools would be allowed to take up to 6 courses. I don't like the limit there but this is better than the original proposal that was limited to enrolled students only. Of course not everybody is happy with providing educational opportunities outside of the classroom.

The amendment was opposed by Democrats on the Republican-controlled committee and by representatives of teacher's groups, who said the change would effectively take money away from school systems.

"This is one more step in weakening public schools," said Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, a committee member who voted against the amendment. "Public school students should not have to wait in line."

In the words of the great Arlo Guthrie, "Have a nice steaming cup of shut the fuck up". Teachers, teachers' unions and the people who depend on those unions for their kickbacks payola bribe money support will always be against anything that takes away their money. In this case they are working not only against homeschoolers but also against progress. The web is a fantastic tool and the more it is developed for scholastic opportunity the less we will need schools and teachers. You can't fault somebody for working in their own self interests but you surely can call them fucknuts when that puts them directly at odds with our kids.

Posted by: Jim at 08:14 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Defeating Nazi Germany

Do: Invade Germany.

Don't bother: Turning off Hitler's speech with a very forceful twist of the radio's knob.

Ending segregated busing

Do: Sit in the front of the bus.

Don't bother: Sending a 'strongly worded letter' to the CEO of the bus company.

Getting your own holiday

Do: Dedicate your life to a worthy goal, motivate and move your people toward it, live as an example of it, die in the pursuit of it.

Don't bother: Bitching at the TV set.

Send a man to the moon

Do: Put a guy in a big ass rocket and launch it.

Don't bother: Blasting loud music at the neighborhood Luddite.

Change the world for the better

Do: Put on your Birkenstocks and your best hemp shirt, get out of your house and actually fucking do something constructive that works toward the goals you profess to have.

Don't bother: Protesting against a welcome back party.

Bitching and whining will never change a thing. Jesse Jackson will never make the world a better place because he doesn't actually DO. Bill Gates made the world a better place because he does things in the real physical world to support and promote his ideals.

These protesters are the worst sort of hypocrite. They want only to scream their disillusionment in the hopes that somebody else will do something about their problems.

(Tip credit to DCeit)

Posted by: Jim at 10:30 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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...before the Islamic terrorists start killing relief workers in Indonesia?

Relief and aid workers are a favorite target of Muslim extremists and there are shitloads of Muslim extremists in Indonesia. Right now the whole country is a target rich environment for these murderers. Chaos, unknown people everywhere, lots and lots of westerners with limited security.

In fact the Indonesian government is now setting up American forces for murder by these monsters. In an effort to remain in country to continue providing assistance our Marines will now be unarmed.

In a major compromise, the Marines agreed not to carry guns while on Indonesian soil and for the vast majority of troops to return to ships stationed off the coast after each day's operations.

I do not see good things coming out of this compromise.

(Hat tip to e-claire)

Posted by: Jim at 09:02 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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There's some controversy about perennial favorite band Nickelback. Mikey Smith noticed a disturbing similarity between their older hit How You Remind Me and a newer hit Someday. He synched the songs up to play together and found that they do indeed share a baseline. That really pissed him off.

Nickelback, you lazy, talentless bunch of wankers. What, did you think nobody would notice that you're recycling your hideous dirge and selling it all over again to your deluded fan base? You bastards, you're taking advantage of those tone deaf MTV brainwashed twats who are too thick to notice you're releasing songs that are EXACTLY THE SAME as ones you recorded earlier. And here's the proof, people. Listen to their first godawful hit, played through the left speaker. At the same time, an equally shite single (released two years later) will be played through the right speaker. Can you spot the difference?

He maintains that this is effectively theft by deception. While I agree with some of his points ("deluded fan base" and "tone deaf MTV brainwashed twats" to be precise) my overall impression of his argument is "So what?".

In order to be popular a group must produce an identifiable sound. Think of any band that has had more than a single hit and you should have no trouble finding similarities in their songs. In this particular case they are recycling a base line. In three chord rock. How do you not recycle a baseline when you've only got a handful of them to work with?

They aren't talentless wankers, they are wankers of limited talent. Successful wankers of limited talent. Rich successful wankers of limited talent. Rich successful wankers of limited talent that get a whole lot more pussy than Mikey Smith.

And they deserve it. They made a sound that people like. They're smart enough to keep making the sound that people like. Eventually people will get bored with that sound and they will either come up with a new sound that people like or they will descend into obscurity like almost every other band in the history of music to resurface only as guests on Hollywood Squares or the occasional Trivial Pursuit question.

Posted by: Jim at 08:21 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Koffi Annan:

"Our response to this unprecedented catastrophe must be equally unprecedented."

Since the tsunami deaths and displacement are more than assuredly precedented in numbers he must mean that the genocide in Sudan does not qualify as a catastrophe. Doesn't the systematic murder and forced displacement of the black populace of Sudan by the ruling Islamic power seem catastrophic to you?

There are some serious differences between these two catastrophes though. One was an unpredictable natural disaster, the other is an ongoing disaster perpetrated by man against man. One has garnered massive international aid, the other has been largely ignored. One has Koffi Annan calling for a billion dollars for assistance, the other is a UN budget item. One has the full backing of the UN, the other is a footnote to partisan byblows.

Most importantly, one has absolutely nothing to do with the UN charter while the other is precisely what the UN was formed to deal with.

The UN is dead in all but name. They function adequately as a substitute and support mechanism for international humanitarian aid but this is not their purpose. For the crises they were created to deal with they have the same success and authority as a crackpot in the woods writing letters to the editor.

Posted by: Jim at 11:55 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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When they need life-saving prescription medication they are a kid, therefore not permitted to carry prescription medication.

When they want a tan they are a kid, therefore not permitted to use a tanning bed.

When they want an abortion they are not a kid. They can leave class with the school's blessing, escorted by a non-guardian and unrelated adult, and go get an abortion.

In California (and too many other states), a kid is a kid when a special interest group has bullied or bargained their narrow focus into law.

Stop legislating morality. Let kids be kids and let their parents raise them.

(Inspired by an excellent post at Different River. Go there for links to all of those news items.)

Posted by: Jim at 12:52 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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