May 8, 2008 archive

The construct is not mine; you can thank Charles Dodgson for that.

Not that Hillary’s campaign bothered to thank him – my guess is they adopted the Mock Turtle’s curriculum strategy all by their brilliant selves. I mean, it does seem like it was tailor-made for the campaign they ran, doesn’t it?

`I couldn’t afford to learn it.’ said the Mock Turtle with a sigh. `I only took the regular course.’

`What was that?’ inquired Alice.

`Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,’ the Mock Turtle replied; `and then the different branches of Arithmetic — Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.’

`I never heard of “Uglification,” Alice ventured to say. `What is it?’

The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise. `What! Never heard of uglifying!’ it exclaimed. `You know what to beautify is, I suppose?’

`Yes,’ said Alice doubtfully: `it means – to – make – anything – prettier.’

`Well, then,’ the Gryphon went on, `if you don’t know what to uglify is, you ARE a simpleton.’

1. Sometimes standing up to bullies works. The Washington Post reports the FBI backs off from secret order for data after lawsuit. First, the good news:

   The FBI has withdrawn a secret administrative order seeking the name, address and online activity of a patron of the Internet Archive after the San Francisco-based digital library filed suit to block the action.

   Yay Internet Archive! Now, the bad news:

   It is one of only three known instances in which the FBI has backed off from such a data demand, known as a “national security letter,” or NSL, which is not subject to judicial approval and whose recipient is barred from disclosing the order’s existence.

   Only 3 times since September 11, 2001? Gah! Part of the problem is the fascists who wrote and voted for the law included a “gag order provision” that prohibit public disclosure. “FBI officials now issue about 50,000 such orders a year.” So the backdown rate is roughly 1 for every 100,000. Here is how it went down:

   The order against the Internet Archive was served Nov. 26, and the nonprofit challenged it based on a provision of the reauthorized USA Patriot Act, which protects libraries from such requests. The privacy advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation represented the archive in the suit, which was joined by the American Civil Liberties Union.

   The archive also alleged that the gag order that accompanied the data demand violated the Constitution.

   As part of their settlement, the FBI agreed to drop the gag order and the archive agreed to withdraw the complaint. The case was unsealed Monday. Yesterday, redacted versions of key documents were filed, allowing the parties to discuss the case.

   The Justice Department knows the gag order violates the Constitution and did not want a Supreme Court decision saying so. The Telcos that are served 50,000 NSLs a year are not refusing this unconstitutional measure. And, according to WaPo, “A bipartisan bill in the House would restore the requirement that NSLs could be used only to collect information that pertains to ‘a foreign or agent of a foreign power’ and would limit the gag order to 30 days, unless a court authorized an extension.” Let’s make Congress do the right thing. Contact your representative and senators.

Four at Four continues with U.S.-Russia tit-for-tat, Crandall Canyon Mine, and flirty flowers.

So, Cindy McCain says she’ll NEVER release her tax returns.  Poor Miss Too Rich and Impossibly Blond Cindy McCain, heir to a booze fortune and wantin’ to be First Lady, but, by damn, nobody’s gonna know about MY finances.

The arrogance.  The hubris.  The Republicanism.

See The Video of Cindy sweetly sneering at even the notion that, as a public figure, and as wannabe First Lady, she has any obligation to come clean on her riches.

Wonderful.  What a likable person.

Mu . . .

The death toll and suffering in Burma continues to rise in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis (Urdu for daffodil). The situation is dire.

Aid has barely trickled into one of the world’s most isolated and impoverished countries, although experts feared it would be too little to cope with the aftermath of Nargis, which left up to 100,000 feared dead and one million homeless.

Witnesses saw little evidence of a relief effort under way in the hard-hit Irrawaddy delta region.

“We’ll starve to death, if nothing is sent to us,” said Zaw Win, a 32-year-old fisherman who waded through floating corpses to find a boat for the two-hour journey to Bogalay, a town where the government said 10,000 people were killed.

“We need food, water, clothes and shelter,” he told a Reuters reporter.

Source

Hat tip to plasticseapolluter

http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/mi…

So I’ve been going through the Pentagon Document dump. I have to give it to the Defense Department, they know how to bury stuff. Of course none of this is indexable, being jpgs contained in PDF. Luckily there are orc sorters and what I have found is that a certain obscure PDF has a lot of chunky goodness in it.

Well, not goodness, maybe that last chunk of evil from Time Bandits.

Anywho, I found some interesting items I would like to share.

Below the fold…..

patent leather rain pelts morse code

on amber waves of multi-grain  

and christmas geese guard easter goslings from black hawks

there’s a madman at the lake

throwing fishing line into emeralds,

singing to the willow weeping there

he’s looking for the 9am express to Never Never Land

but where’s the door, Alice? no. silly.

Alice doesn’t live there anymore. ask for Tink.

he’s the fool at the lake

mouthing god’s words…

and alarmed at cat calls in infant growls

everything is something else, he says

nothing needs to be what it is

he knows it.

the world is this… mixed nuts

From the “You did what……why???? department…..

According to this Yahoo!News story, Clint Straatman, a PE teacher at Minico High School in Rupert, ID, took a Mexican flag from a student…

because “white kids” might have hurt the 16-year-old.

¡Malo!

But wait…..it gets better…..

He said he put it in a garbage can because he had no place else to keep it.

¡Muy, muy malo!

Camelo had brought the flag to school, as did other students, in celebration of Cinco de Mayo….