I hadn’t realized that the labor market was so weak in Ohio.
Tata, the Mumbai based conglomerate, has opened a call center for Expedia in Reno, Ohio.
I’m not sure whether to be heartened, or appalled.
Year: 2007
Christian Fundies Think That Jesus is a soft-on-crime Pinko
Well it looks like the wacko fundamentalists have decided that all that stuff about casting the first stone is some sort of communist secular humanist plot.
They are now sending “court watchers” out to make sure that judges are sufficiently punitive. Teaching a man to fish is just too pinko.
…. Yet, she added that she doesn’t feel pressured by the presence of Court Watch participants.
Let me guess…elected judges…nope…no pressure there. The independent judiciary, yet another bastion of modern thought opposed by the Talibaptists.
Neither does Circuit Judge R. Cletus Maricle, who said, “Some judges probably feel they are there to intimidate him. If the judge is intimidated, that’s his fault.”
I just had to note….Circuit Judge R. Cletus Maricle????? There is not one “hillbilly” joke that could be funnier that that reality.
House Minority Leader Boehner and Fox News Conspire to Leak Classified Information for Political Gain
Well, it looks like John Boehner and the employess of Fox News are filthy traitors who whould be locked away foir the rest of their life. I expect the administration to pursue this investigation with all diligewnce that it did the leaking of the name of CIA covert operative Valerie Plame.
A federal intelligence court judge earlier this year secretly declared a key element of the Bush administration’s wiretapping efforts illegal, according to a lawmaker and government sources, providing a previously unstated rationale for fevered efforts by congressional lawmakers this week to expand the president’s spying powers.
House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) disclosed elements of the court’s decision in remarks Tuesday to Fox News as he was promoting the administration-backed wiretapping legislation. Boehner has denied revealing classified information, but two government officials privy to the details confirmed that his remarks concerned classified information.
I keep forgetting, it’s OK if you are a Republican.
It’s be a bit less serious if those pig felchers called the “blue dog coalition” didn’t fold like a bunch of overcooked broccoli this weekend to give Bush and his evil minions™ everything that they wanted.
We can now all be spied on at Abu Gonzalez’s say so.
Bush Admin Wants Official Secrets Act
Bush and his evil minions™ at the department of justice are using the threat of prosecution under the espionage act to attempt to create a US version of the Official Secrets Act.
The espionage statutes concerning classified information could be employed against journalists who publish such information without authorization, a Justice Department official told Congress recently, elaborating on remarks made last year by Attorney General Gonzales.
These people have American freedoms, and they are doing their level best to destroy them.
Impeach Dick Cheney Today. Impeach George W. Bush Tomorrow.
Normally, I’m Against the Death Penalty, But In His Case, I’ll Make an Exception
Notorious spammer Christopher “Rizler” Smith was sentenced to 30 years in prison. There is a part of me, the lizard brain, which was hopint for the death penalty.
Between dealing Hydrocodone and Viagra, and threatening the children of a witness, he’s going to be in jail for a very long time.
Ironically, because of his efforts, his cell mates will have easy access to Viagra and Cialis.
OOPS!!!
Love at First Fry
Or actually grilling…
It’s Chefmate® Reversible Griddle.
It fits perfectly over two burners, and this Sunday did grilled cheese for Charlie and me, and scrambled eggs for Natalie and Sharon*.
Damn, they turned out good. I loves cast iron.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED, my wife.
Google: Kill all the patent trolls | The Register
It appears that Google has gotten religion on patent abuse.
This is something that has been true for over 20 years.
When the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was established, software, business plans, and species were specifically not patentable, and the law is fairly clear that they should not be.
The wiggle room was that while free standing software is “tangible” because it required a computer to run on…Where they got business plans…I’m not sure.
Unfortunately, this court resembles a man with just a nail, and so has increasingly seen everything as a nail, which is why this court was recently slapped down by the Supreme Court.
Congress Gives Bush a Win
Thankfully, it’s only for 6 months.
These folks do not need any additional police power. It’s clear that at every level, the political wing dominates the agenda of Bush and his evil minions™, and giving him anything is a bad idea.
At the very least, a 6 month extension of SCHIP should have been attached.
Neocons are to Journalism as Ebola is to French Kissing
This is a very interesting article describing why everyone at the Jerusalem Post views Conrad Black’s conviction on fraud with the same glee as HPers did over Fiorina’s departure.
Larry Derfner puts it nicely:
THERE’S ONE other misconception about him that ought to be cleared up – that he was a friend of Israel. Maybe in his words he was, but in his deeds? In his deeds he went as far as he could to gut an Israeli newspaper that’s been around for 75 years, one that’s very important to this country and the Diaspora.
Furthermore, he fired hundreds of Israelis, he destabilized hundreds of Israeli families, for nothing but his own greed. He had more money than even his wife could spend, yet for 14 years he fired as many Jerusalem Post employees as he could manage.
No, Lord Black of Crossharbour isn’t a friend of Israel; he’s as contemptuous of Israelis as he is of anybody else.
He’s due to be sentenced on November 30. He could get up to 35 years in prison for fraud and obstruction of justice. I wish the Post would throw a party that day and invite all the hundreds of people Black pushed out of here to come to the newsroom and wait for news of the verdict. I guess it’s just a fantasy.
But reality ought to be festive enough. There will be dozens of current Post employees, many of them Hollinger survivors, in the newsroom on the day of Black’s sentencing. All will be newspapermen and newspaperwomen, all of them pro-Israel – right-wingers, left-wingers and centrists, religious and secular, all sharing the same hope or prayer.
And on that day, God willing, when a roar of exultation is suddenly heard from the old Jerusalem Post building on Yermiyahu Street, it will mean that there is still some justice in the world.
A Very Interesting Analysis of The Lebanon War.
Defense and Technology Tnternational has a very interesting analysis of the Israel-Lebanon war of last summer.
Their conclusion is that the Israeli military has become too dependent on hight tech precision strike at the expense of their traditional strength, maneuver warfare.
The money quote is, “In asymmetric warfare as in classic combat operations, fire is meant to support battlefield maneuvers – a battlefield cannot be secured by fire alone.”
It should be noted that the military that buys into this concept, standoff firepower operations (SF0) to the greatest degree, is the US military, and may be contributing to real problems in Afghanistan, where our allies clearly see us as bomb happy, and Iraq.
Republican Are For Rules for Everyone Else
The New Yorker has an interesting comment on a little piece of Republithug rule gaming.
Two weeks ago, one of the most important Republican lawyers in Sacramento quietly filed a ballot initiative that would end the practice of granting all fifty-five of California’s electoral votes to the statewide winner. Instead, it would award two of them to the statewide winner and the rest, one by one, to the winner in each congressional district. Nineteen of the fifty-three districts are represented by Republicans, but Bush carried twenty-two districts in 2004. The bottom line is that the initiative, if passed, would spot the Republican ticket something in the neighborhood of twenty electoral votes—votes that it wouldn’t get under the rules prevailing in every other sizable state in the Union.
These were the same people who were screaming that a lost (stolen) election in 2000 had to be played under the rules that were there.
Hendrik Herzberg’s final words on this are definitive:
It’s the lotusland equivalent of Tom DeLay’s 2003 midterm redistricting in Texas, except with a sweeter smell, a better disguise, and larger stakes. And the only way Californians will reject it is if they have a chance to think about it first.
Breaking the Military
As a consequence of Bush’s policies, the military is increasingly broken. To use just one metric, the number of incoming soldiers with prior felony arrests or convictions has more than tripled in the past five years.
A number of these are gang bangers who be bringing back their training to the streets when they get out.
Voting map without those ugly state boundaries
I came across a very interesting red/blue voting map.
Each pixel is 2500 votes for Bush, Kerry, or Nader.
Suddenly, those state by state maps that the wingers use don’t seem to make as much sense, do they?
Faith Based Missile Defense
You don’t have to be delusional to work for bush, but it helps….A LOT!!!!!
This craziness starts at the top here, where Bush and his evil minions™ see missile defense as an unadulterated good, even if it is incapable of stopping a single missile.
The technology for creating penetration aids can be purchased at your average party supply store (mylar balloons with a shiny aluminum coating), it seems that testing should be done before deployment.
Finally, A Use for RFID Technology
It appears that there has been a spate of fraudulently labeled whiskey in Korea. The solution is to place RFID on premium bottles of booze that can be quizzed by mobile phone handsets.
Neat trick, but considering the fact that RFID chips cost about $0.15, with prices dropping, it should not be too tough for the bootleggers to copy them too.
Why We Need an Agressive and Competent Labor Bureaucracy.
It appears that Universal Media Group has been cheating its employees out of overtime pay.
Luckily for them, this has occurred in California, because, “the employees will receive 25 per cent of fines rewarded”.
The department permits these exemptions for computer systems analysts, computer programmers, software engineers, and other similarly-skilled workers in the computer field. Under California regulations, an exempt IT employee must primarily perform work that is “intellectual or creative and requires the exercise of discretion and independent judgment.” In addition, the employee must earn over $41 per hour.
The UMG workers, who are employed as “IT Support Engineers,” claim the company has illegally classified them as exempt to skip out of paying overtime. The employees are seeking back wages and civil penalties under California’s Private Attorney Act. Under the Private Attorney Act, employees can sue an employer for fines based on labor law on behalf of the state of California. If successful, the employees will receive 25 per cent of fines rewarded, while California will receive the rest.
Note that this is a private lawsuit. Here’s why:
The Law Offices of Michael Tracy, the firm representing the employees….. said the employees had previously filed the overtime complaint with California’s Labor & Workforce Development Agency, but the organization refused to investigate. In response, the employees are suing for the labor fines.
My guess is that Arnold was the reason that they refused to investigate.
Nuclear Welfare Queens
Well, it looks like the lobbiests slipped a provision in the Senate’s energy bill allowing for the taxpayer to cover billions in loan guarantees for the Nuclear industry.
As before, the Department of Energy would be allowed to guarantee 100 percent of the loans and up to 80 percent of the total cost to build a reactor.
But the bill essentially allows the department to approve as many loan guarantees as it wants for both new reactors and plants that use other “clean” technologies.
That is a big change. Under current law, the government is only allowed to guarantee a volume of loans authorized each year by Congress. Last year, Congress limited the government to awarding just $4 billion in loan guarantees for clean energy projects during the 2007 fiscal year.
It’s a big sloppy kiss for the Nuclear Industry.
Mr. Bingaman, the bill’s primary architect, said that he was aware of the provision but believed that it would apply only to reactors with fundamentally new technology.
“I would be amazed if this generic loan program applied to most of the plants that are being proposed, either for the nuclear industry or coal industry,” Mr. Bingaman said Monday night. “The idea of this is not just to help an industry build plants. It’s to demonstrate new technology that meets the nation’s energy needs.”
But industry officials say the measure would directly affect the reactors on the drawing board
Somehow, even if the law is written in the manner that Sen. Bingaman says, I think that the Bush Admin is going to engage in an orgy of loan guarantees, to ensure that 20 or 30 (at least) of these expensive white elephants are issued, on the theory that it guarantees profits for their friends, and consulting gigs for themselves after 2009.
Australian Government Lies Through His Teeth
Well, it appears that the Australian government is using secrecy as an excuse for covering up their own incompetence:.
As an American, let me say to the Australian general public that I feel your pain. I am rather familiar with corrupt politicans screaming “terrorism” for political gain, and screaming “secrecy” to cover up their screw ups.
Secret material used to cancel the visa of an Indian doctor falsely accused of terrorism cannot be released as it may jeopardize investigations, Australia’s immigration minister said Tuesday.
Kevin Andrews said he wanted to release the “protected material” to demonstrate why he cancelled Mohamed Haneef’s working visa but the Australian Federal Police had advised him against it.
So they are claiming that they had a reason to kick him out of the country, but not enough to hold him, even though, as a result of his initial detention, he has detailed knowledge of Australian interrogation techniques.
Prime Minister John Howard this week ruled out an apology and Andrews dismissed calls for a judicial review of the case, which was the first time tough counter-terrorism laws introduced after 9/11 had been put to the test.Andrews had faced heavy criticism in Australia over his decision to exercise a little-used discretionary power to cancel Haneef’s visa then refuse to reinstate it when the terrorism case against the doctor collapsed last week.
….
Haneef was charged with recklessly supporting a terrorist organisation but returned home at the weekend after more than three weeks in custody when the case against him collapsed due to lack of evidence and bungles by prosecutors.
….
Prime Minister John Howard this week ruled out an apology and Andrews dismissed calls for a judicial review of the case, which was the first time tough counter-terrorism laws introduced after 9/11 had been put to the test.
And is desparately trying to avoid showing that they failed, and theat they are the threat to basic human rights that its critics have always said.
Is Rumored Arms Sale to Iran a Pretext for An Attack?
There is a report that Iran will be buying a significant number of Sukhoi Su-30 multi role jets in the Jerusalem Post.
The specific report says that they will be buying 250 fighters, they will be purchasing aerial refueling tankers.
I call bull s$%#.
Let’s look at the points:
- This amounts to a very significant chunk of change. At least $6 billion, and more likely $25 billion total cost. They don’t have the money for this. They have already had riots over gas rationing, because they lack sufficient money to reimport enough gasoline (they lack refining capability) for their needs.
- They have no experience with the aircraft.
- This is roughly equal to the total number of fighters that they currently deploy.
- They have a significant amount of western systems that would be difficult to integrate into the platform.
- The Russian government, and Sukhoi both deny it vehemently, which would not be the case with this huge an order.
I think that this got leaked to a friendly source (the J. Post) in the sort ot PR campaign that we swa before the invasion of Iraq.
So Lefties are Crazy
Oxford researchers have uncovered a gene for left handedness.
It appears that this gene is also associated with brain symmetry, and there is small a correlation to schizophrenia and other mental illness.
That explains why my left-handed wife married me.
You don’t have to be crazy to marry a Saroff, but it helps.