Stop Frame

Arnie! Californians! As a proud member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy , I can report that the coup d'etat went off perfectly last night. As Alternet warned, a coup was in the works and, voila, here we are. Over the next 30-40 days there will be a sudden and decisive change in the state government. The Constitutionally-allowed vote was of course completely illegal, despite all those legally approved signatures, that the entire procedure is outlined in the State Constitution, etc. And by the sheer force of the vote, this coup has succeeded. Ha! Must suck being them . 60+% voter turn out, largest since 1982. 60+% of the vote going to the Republicans. Arnie doesn't win by a squeak; current count gives him 48% of the vote. His plurality is larger than what Davis got for his election or re-election. That percentage is liable to go up as the absentee ballots get counted, since those ballots tend to be convervative. A huge percentage of Democrats abandoned the party ticket and vot...

Vote! And speaking of direct democracy in action, if you live in California I have a single question: HAVE YOU VOTED YET?!?

Rantings of a Loon? One has to wonder.... AlterNet: Defeating the California Republic(an) Coup : This isn't funny. This is a power play that could wrest control of California away from the man we elected, and hand our state to an egomaniac with no political experience. And it is happening during a time of real crisis. This isn't a circus: It's a coup d'etat. Well, by this time the decision is pretty must made, but still, this is just a funny, funny "article". Great humor. "It's a coup d'etat." Oh, my aching sides, because I see that the definition of coup d'etat is "a sudden and decisive change of government illegally or by force." Today's recall isn't illegal; it's specifically authorized by the California State Constitution. Millions of California citizens signed the petition to put the question to a vote. Many more millions are now voting. Where's the illegality? Oh, I laugh. It is an endless source of amusem...

Vote! Californians! This is the day. This is the day you decide to stop an out of control state government. Californians! This is the day. This is the day to send a decisive message to the thieves who have esconced themselves in state government. Californians! This is the day. This is the day to end the Time of Gray. Our state once stood proudly at the forefront of damn near everything. You name it, California led it. The one statistic that is always most staggering is the size of our economy: 5th or 6th (depending on who is doing the counting) largest in the world. Most nations envy us our prosperity. But we are dying. This state is shriveling. Florida, in 2000, tried desperately to take our title of Looniest Looney Bin in the US of A, but we are staunchly hanging onto that title. If after all this effort we allow The Big D to remain in the Statehouse, we will have nailed that looney crown permanently to our collective head. Californians! When you journey outside our fair state you se...

Kill Bill I sooooo want to see this film.... 'Kill Bill' hatched from 'little egg' / Tarantino's two-part saga pays homage to Hong Kong actioners "As usual, Quentin was trying in vain to educate me about cinema and going on about the great roles that existed in genre filmmaking for women," [Uma] Thurman says. "I told him I had this idea about a character -- she's an assassin -- and we went back and forth, and Quentin goes, 'Yes! and the guy at the head of it all, his name is Bill! He's a pimp for assassins! He is the ultimate agent, the Mike Ovitz of assassins! He's the bad guy and the movie's called 'Kill Bill!' "And right between us, in that conversation, this little egg was formed." I don't think I've seen a single film this year that I had on my "must see" list. And I had some dogs on that list, too. I even managed to miss The Matrix Reloaded , which is strangely appropriate because the first...

Old News This is becoming old news, but since they're smearing Arnie up one wall and down the other.... Now that Democrat Cruz Bustamante is California's gubernatorial recall front-runner, we can look forward to in-depth media investigations of the Latino candidate's long-held ties to the racial separatist group MEChA, right? Ha. Ha is right. This has never made the LA Times, has it? Thank goodness they're an unbiased representative of the ("Oh, we're not liberal") news media. But wait, this article seems to say that, hmm, perhaps the LA Times is a little, er, slanted. Some politicos dub the Thursday before a big election 'Dirty Tricks Thursday.' That's the best day for an opponent to unload his bag of filth against another candidate, getting maximum headlines, while giving his stunned opponent no time to credibly investigate or respond to the charges. It creates a Black Friday, where the candidate spends a precious business day right before ...

Laugh of the Day I work for the state of California. I am emphatically not a member of the California State Employees Association (CSEA). Why should I join such a ludicrously biased organization? Besides, they're affiliated with the AFL/CIO, which is more ridiculously biased. Ugh. They are also the cause of a good laugh, however. Gov. Gray "Not My Real Name" Davis gave state employees a 5% raise and now wants to take it back. The deal is we give up that 5% and, in exchange, PERS (the retirement system) waives collecting our retirement contribution, which is roughly 5%. So it's a wash. More, we also get a PLD, Personal Leave Day. One a month. We can take it off, or let it sit in an account and acrue. That's another 5%. So there's a potential net gain despite the pay cut. Neat, huh? He stole that trick from Pete Wilson, who used it in 1992. Wilson saved a billion or so dollars in the state budget. The state is still paying that back. Figures have it that the $1...

I voted for Clinton... ...in 1992. But now I think this guy has it right as to why I loathe Clinton: Maybe this is true, although the Lewinsky business never bothered me; there's something endearing about Bill's taste for zaftig women. But perjury is no less a crime than burglary, and there's no question Mr. Clinton perjured himself in his deposition to Paula Jones's lawyers. If you think Nixon deserved to go down, then so too did Mr. Clinton. But that's hardly why Clinton-haters hate Mr. Clinton. The Clinton-lovers are right; l'affaire Lewinsky was just something we could nail him with. With a different president, a different man, we might have been tempted to join the camp of apologists in saying: It's just sex, and everyone lies about sex. But Mr. Clinton was not a different man. To his supporters, he was the shaper of the new American center, the brightest Democratic light since John F. Kennedy, the toast of European elites. To people like me, he was a ...

Thank goodness he's not playing around sacbee.com -- Politics -- No staff cuts till after the election? : Gov. Gray Davis' administration says it is unlikely to approve plans for substantial reductions to the state payroll until the middle of next month. That makes it likely that the impact of the cuts -- in thousands of layoffs and in reduced state services -- won't become public until after the Oct. 7 recall election. Isn't that lovely. This is exactly what he did during his re-election, holding back bad news he knew was coming (knew because he was the cause, that is). Better is this bit: One goal, [Davis' finance director Steve] Peace said, is to minimize layoffs. He said he also wants to avoid giving workers layoff notices and disrupting their lives, only to reverse course later. "It's not efficient. It's not good business. ... It's a morale-breaker of huge proportions," he said. The state has already given about 12,000 workers 120-day noti...

Where were you... I was just waking up. My girlfriend was in the washroom, drying her hair, and she said, "The World Trade Center is on fire." I believe my exact response was, "Get the f*ck out of here." I was thinking about the fire, not the cause. I sat up in bed. The local (Sacramento, California) news station had nothing, so I clicked over to FoxNews. Voila, burning tower. The fire was waaaaay up there. That was going to be a bitch to handle, if it could be handled at all. Firefighters loathe and fear high-rise fires for the simple reason that their equipment can't get to it. A firefighter must strap on all their gear and walk up to a point where they can assault the fire, and not very effectively because they are relying on the building's fire-fighting capabilities (water stand pipes and the like). In effect, the building has to be able to handle the fire. And you could see that Tower One wasn't handling it at all. I can't remember who the news ...

So Tiring FOXNews.com - Politics - ACLU: Accuracy of California Recall in Danger : The ACLU has argued that delaying the election until March will ensure the state avoids the 'hanging,' 'dimpled' and 'pregnant' chads that dominated the Florida recount and left the presidency up in the air for 35 days. No, what left the presidency up in the air for 35 days was Gore denying reality (i.e., he lost the first count, the second count, the recount, and then the recount of the recount; in fact, he lost every count) and continually taking the matter to court. That is, he kept trying to steal the election. Oh, things get better: "This is not merely about a recall election," Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU-SC, said in a statement. "This is about having every vote counted. Voting machines are the infrastructure of our democracy. Right now, the integrity of our state’s democracy is riding on the performance of these outdated, obsolete and decertifie...

Best Joke I Heard All Day And the Sacramento Bee reports.... sacbee.com -- Recall -- Clinton to start campaign swing for Davis Sunday : "Democratic leaders all over this country oppose this recall because they know it is not a solution to California's problems," he [Peter Ragone, director of communications for the Davis campaign] said. "(Clinton's) voice is one of the most respected in the country when it comes to civic life and public affairs and the people of California recognize that." Oh, my aching sides! "Most respected...." Bwahahahahahaha!

Bored With the Rings All right, I am a heretic. I am about to commit blasphemy. I shall engage in an act which will have many questioning my sanity, or at least my taste. So be it. "LOTR: The Two Towers" sucks. All right, I understand that middle films in any trilogy have a hard road to hew. Fine. If that's the nature of the product, then the producers of that product know that going in and should act accordingly. In other words, they should make a product that is superior to the first, and maybe even the third. In contrast to that lofty ideal, "The Two Towers" is lacking. It is just more of the same from "The Fellowship of the Ring," no less and absolutely no more. No more plot, no more development, no more interesting. Ugh. It is a big, huge, string of "zzzzzzzz." This has really bugged me because people whose opinions I respect have raved about this film. They love it. I hate it. Where does this disconnect come from? When I saw it on The B...

Nauseating California Governor Gray "Not My Real Name" Davis spoke to the faithful yesterday, taking the offensive against his recall. sacbee.com -- Politics -- Davis stands by his record Gov. Gray Davis, opening a new phase in his campaign to hold on to his job, took his case directly to the voters Tuesday -- accepting criticism for acting too slowly on the energy crisis but not offering any apologies. He accepts criticism but doesn't take responsibility, or even admit he might have just goofed, even if just a little. Oh, wait, that's not how The Faithful see it: Dan Terry, president of the California Professional Firefighters Association, disagreed, saying Davis had taken responsibility for the energy crisis and "laid responsibility where it belonged." "I am proud of my governor," he said. "He did a good job." Yes, yes, a great job of doing a $50 billion shift in California's fortune, from plus $12 billion to minus $38 billion all b...

A Constitutional Lesson Reuters "reports" " that Fox News is suing Al Franken. At issue is Franken's use of the phrase "fair and balanced" on the book's cover. Fox News uses that as a tag phrase for their news broadcasts. Says Lisa Johnson, spokeswoman for Franken's publisher: In trying to suppress Al Franken's book the News Corp is undermining First Amendment principles that protect all media by guaranteeing a free, open and vigorous debate of public issues. First Amendment...? The First Amendment begins "Congress shall make no law...." Doesn't say a thing about a private business suing another for copyright infringement. Thus, Ms Johnson's statement is the usual rhetoric, an effort to wrap oneself in the safety and protection of the Constitution when it doesn't even apply. Unless they want it to, in which case it would seem to me it could undermine the very notion of copyright protection. Is Fox's claim legit? I don...

Enterprise In case no one has mentioned it, twenty-six years ago the Enterprise flew for the first time. While it would never fly in space, this space shuttle would prove that the bricks could indeed "glide" to a safe landing. It also verified that the shuttle could be, er, shuttled to and fro on the back of a modified 747. I believe the Enterprise , OV-101, now is on display at the Smithsonian.

Democrat Love Gads, love these people : "Schwarzenegger is going to find out, that unlike a Hollywood movie set, the bullets coming at him in this campaign are going to be real bullets and he is going to have to respond to them," warned Mulholland in an interview with a camera crew from ABC NEWS. No further comment needed.

Hot, so hot! They are melting in Europe , with temperatures like.... A weather station in southern Paris reported Monday it had recorded 25.5 degrees Celsius (77.9 Fahrenheit) overnight, the highest nighttime low since France started keeping records in 1873. The previous record was 24C (75.2F), recorded on the night of July 4, 1976. Less than 80 degrees (American) overnight, and they're complaining? Sheesh. Poor people. Actually, I should be more sympathetic. As a San Franciscan born and raised, I'm used to a temperature that could be called moderate. I mean, you got up in the morning and the temperature was between 50-55. By evening, it was 50-55. Sometime during the night it dropped to 50-55. That's winter. Summer rises to 55-60. Oh, yes, there are variations; this weekend it was more in the 70's. Nonetheless, over the course of a year the temperature sits in a ten degree range. Now I live in the Sacramento valley, and temperature can swing 30+ degrees over the course...

An Insult The Guv says .... Davis said he has "gotten the message. I understand a lot of people signed a recall." But he also called it "an insult to the 8 million people who went to the polls last November and decided I should be governor." No, what's insulting was his concealing the true and coming size of the state deficit in the days leading up to that election. What's insulting is how he claims he isn't giving state employees a raise, while at the same time negotiating raises. How do you do that? Last year, rather than give state employees a 5% raise, he agree that the state would pay 100% of the contribution to an individual's retirement account, essentially 5% raise. This year, that was going to end; employees would resume paying into their retirement account. As compensation, they would get a 5% raise. Naturally, he doesn't want to do that now, given the deficit he managed to run up. So here's the deal: Employees waive that 5% raise. ...

Happy Birthday, Katie! No, no, not Couric. This Katie is my daughter. Today is her 18th birthday. I can't wish her happy birthday in person because she's in US Air Force basic training. She's more than a few miles away, very much out of communication with me. With luck, I'll get a letter. So there's my daughter in military service. And there's my old chief's oldest son in the Navy, currently somewhere in California. And there's his younger son, somewhere near the DMZ in Korea. And on and on. I seem to know an amazing number of people who have volunteered to put themselves in harm's way for their country. Amen. Love and kisses, Katie!

Somebody save us... ...from Gray Davis! The recall is a go. The California Supreme Court has rejected all challenges, including silly ones from The Guv himself, and October 7 remains D-Day for the Davis administration. One of Davis's objections was that he wasn't allowed to be on the list of candidates. As you may know, the recall ballot will have two questions. #1) Should Davis be recalled? #2) If so, who do you want to replace him? The list for #2 is unoffically huge (300+?). I say unofficially because that's the number of applications that have been requested and/or distributed. The final tally of those who have actually filed won't be known until after 5pm Saturday. And while many see this as evidence of California insanity, Daniel Henninger says it well : So how is it that Californians are ridiculed as zany for trying to recall a politician-governor who has wasted not only the public trust conferred by election but $38.2 billion of their money, the state's curr...

The Morality of Liberty Part of what PM Tony Blair told Congress yesterday: This is a battle that can't be fought or won only by armies. We are so much more powerful in all conventional ways than the terrorists. Yet even in all our might, we are taught humility. In the end, it is not our power alone that will defeat this evil. Our ultimate weapon is not our guns, but our beliefs. There is a myth that though we love freedom, others don't; that our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture; that freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law are American values or Western values; that Afghan women were content under the lash of the Taliban; that Saddam was somehow beloved by his people; that Milosevic was Serbia's savior. Members of Congress, ours are not Western values. They are the universal values of the human spirit, and anywhere--anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dict...

California and the woe of budget My state is in a world of hurt, and it is everyone's fault except the Governor's. Just ask him, he'll tell you. He isn't responsible for a damn thing. Which sounds like a good reason to recall him, if you ask me. You see, I'm a big fan of personal responsiblity. If I screwed up, then I screwed up; no need to try and blame someone else. Which is why the phrase "society is to blame" has always made my skin crawl. No, you stupid bastard, you are the one who robbed the damn bank, not society; now stand there and take it like a man. (Oh, sorry, you already did! That's why you're here....) Anyway, here's the governor of the largest state in the Union. We have fiscal wealth that rivals that of other countries (what, seventh largest economy in the world, or something like that). And we are in a world of fiscal hurt and it is not the fault of the state's chief executive. That doesn't make sense. If a corporate ...

Anti-American Pollsters Opinion Journal has this editorial from Fouad Ajami, which reads in part: In the days that followed the attacks of Sept. 11, a young Palestinian gave expression to the image America holds out in places where its shadow falls: the boy passing out sweets in celebration of America's grief wondered aloud as to the impact of the bombings on his ability to get a U.S. visa. He felt no great contradiction. He had no feeling of affection or loyalty for the land he yearned to migrate to. He grew up to the familiar drums of anti-Americanism. He had implicated America in his life's circumstances. You can't reason with his worldview. You can only wish for him deliverance from his incoherence--or go there, questionnaire in hand, and return with dispatches of people at odds with American policies. You can make foreigners say the sort of things about America you wanted to say yourself. Very good point. Something to think about when the next Pew survey comes out.

Let's have a laugh Oh, she's upset : Is the ghost of Sen. Joe McCarthy alive and well in Hollywood? That is certainly on the minds of many outspoken liberals in Tinsel-town these days. The latest conspiracy theory focuses on the just-announced axing by ABC of very vocal anti-Iraq war activist Janeane Garofalo's new sitcom, ''Slice o' Life.'' Though the alphabet network had given Garo-falo and Universal Tele-vision a thumbs up on the show for next season, network execs changed their minds, telling Daily Variety and other industry outlets it was ''the direction of the series story line'' that led to the dumping of ''Slice''--just days before the show's pilot was scheduled to be taped in Vancouver, British Columbia. A source close to Garofalo tells this column the actress and comedian was furious by the last-minute change and believes it's yet another example ''of a network bowing to the perceived power of the...

Midway Sixty-one years ago, World War II was raging and the pivotal battle in the Pacific began, namely the Battle of Midway. I like to remember this battle because it is arguably the point around which the entire war, in the Pacific and in Europe, turned. US defeat here would have meant a dramatically different war against the Japanese. Oh, we probably still would have won, but when? How much longer would it have taken? If the Japanese plan had succeeded, and their forces had come out more or less intact, how would that have effected battles that were yet to come? And if we had to devote more resources to the Pacific, how would that have effected our European campaign? I submit the obvious, that things would have been very, very different, up to and including a less-than happy outcome to the entire war. Midway also illustrates the entire notion of the "fog of war." The US won by a combination of skill, courage, determination, pluck, and sheer luck. In turn, the Japanese lost...

Depressing Does anyone else find this depressing? Air France's Concorde made its next-to-the-last commercial flight Friday, an emotional trans-Atlantic journey completed in 3 1/2 hours as the supersonic jetliner nears the end of a pioneering chapter in aviation. Much like our retreating from space since landing on the Moon, we are now retreating from the sky. Early airliners were noisy, dangerous, etc., but we kept going until we finally created the DC-3. They complained about the Boeing 747, but it created the present age of inexpensive air travel. The Concorde was never meant to be the be-all end-all of supersonic flight, but no one ever followed up on the idea. Instead, we regulated it out of existence in the US...for suspect (at best) reasons.

Cover up So there's this woman in Florida who insists that Florida DMV is violating her right to religious freedom because they insist she remove her veil for her driver's license picture. How this is so, I do not know, especially given that driving is not a right. If you can't comply with the applicable laws for obtaining a driver's license, and Florida requires a full-face photo, then you don't get a DL. Seems simple. But no, assorted and sundry lobby and "civil rights" groups feel otherwise. What makes this all the more interesting is the sidebar attached to this CNN article . See, the woman is asserting that revealing her face would violate Islamic religious law, a higher authority as it were. But, the sidebar has this to say about photo ID's in established, Muslim countries: Driver's identification rules in Muslim nations: Saudi Arabia: Women aren't allowed to drive Iran: Women wear a traditional chador, which does not cover the face. Egy...

Linux on a Laptop I've dabbled with Linux before, but this time I think it may be serious. Why? Because I have this little old Gateway 600 laptop and it occured ot me that it is the near-equal of my main desktop computer. So why shouldn't it be able to run Linux? I downloaded Red Hat v9, burned the CD's, put the first one in the laptop's CD drive and...voila, it runs. Not a single install or operational issue so far. The only feature I haven't tried yet is the wireless NIC. The onboard wire NIC is eth0, and the wireless shows as eth1, so the system recognizes it, even correctly ID's the hardware, so sometime this week I'll give it a shot. I had a brief issue creating a FAT16 partition that would allow me to move files from the Windows XP side to the RH Linux side. Seems that users under Linux couldn't mount the partition, while the root (superuser) account could. Only root didn't have permission to modify the permissions. Weird. A one minute search ...

Well, no duh! Why is 'Idol' beats Oscars in viewers surprising? That show had a veneer pretense of not being manipulated toward a conclusion, whereas the Oscars had a lying bastard win an award for best documentary when the tripe he produced clearly was not . But, hey, as he says, "How can there be inaccuracy in comedy? You know." (Scroll down a bit to read the relevant transcript). So we shan't take any of his sputters too seriously; in fact, not seriously at all.

Day of Defeat I play this game waaaaay too much. After most of a week of reading torts, contracts, and crim law (oh my!), few things were more relaxing than charging into Thunder, trusty Thompson in hand, blasting away. If you like first person shooters, own a copy of Half-Life, and are willing to play on-line, then you owe it to yourself to go here and download the Day of Defeat mod. Do it for the liberation of humanity...well, if you play on the Allies side, at least. Remember: Back the attack!

Man in Space See, I agree with this guy when he says: The bottom line is that the shuttle is too old. ... It would be very difficult to make sure it is in good shape. We ought to just stop going into space until we get a good vehicle. If we aren’t willing to spend the money to do that, then we should be ashamed of ourselves. How do you honestly dispute the opinion of the guy who designed the shuttle (and darn near everything that came before it)? This stuff looks far more interesting than just cranking out another Columbia-like shuttle.

Don't shoot me, I only type here All right, I've shamelessly neglected this site, these pages, and the scant attention I ever attracted. Sorry. Is that sufficient? Apologies always seem to make up for things...don't they? C'mon, it's intentions that are important, not results! Haven't you been listening? Sorry. Again. First year of law school...done! Study mates are taking a full course load during the summer. They want to graduate a year early, bless their little advocate hearts. I just want to survive, thank you very much. Besides, this is the last summer with my daughter; she wings to the USAF come August, just about the time I start Law School Year Two. So, I think I'll leave myself more or less Free this summer, thank you very much. Again. Quoting Tommy Lee Jones in "The Fugitive": My my my my my my my. So much has happened in recent weeks. We clobbered Iraq. Oh, sure, that was expected, but this fast? With no significant resistance? We paus...

Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who! What Monty Python Character are you? brought to you by Quizilla

You're Insanly Smart What type of Insanity are YOU? Test by Snow Katt#101

Fools abound Is it me, but do the people in this story exceptionally dim: Despite a recent "shoot-to-kill" warning from the military, anti-war protesters are planning to infiltrate the coastal property of Vandenberg Air Force Base near Santa Barbara soon. [...] "The only time a law-enforcement official should shoot is when his life is in danger," [Elden "Bud"] Boothe said. "We are in the peace movement. We are not going to endanger anyone. . . . I suppose they could shoot you, but they would be doing it illegally. But that doesn't help you if you're dead." Vandenberg security officials recently warned protesters about its policy of using "deadly force" to take out trespassers who may endanger equipment or personnel. The base, which does not have a fence around it, covers 99,000 acres along the California coast near Santa Barbara. Lt. Kelly Gabel, a spokeswoman for the base, said the deadly force policy is standard for all U.S. ...

How special! Now this is colorful: In a unique form of opposition, some protesters at the Federal Building staged a "vomit in,'' by heaving on the sidewalks and plaza areas in the back and front of the building to show that the war in Iraq made them sick, according to a spokesman. Obviously some children attempting to be creative. Fun.

"We are not dealing with peaceful men." And so it comes to this . Well really, what did you expect? Oh, you in the corner, the carping little ninnie who occasionally does an infomercial, STFU. For the rest.... Once upon a time, I was a cop. Among other things, I was a crisis (hostage) negotiator. Not that I really had to sit and perform The Real Deal, but lots of training, lots of practise, lots of scenarios. One of the training sessions was with the FBI, an agency that has learned a thing or two from failed negotiations (see Waco and/or Ruby Ridge). One of the things they learned was to resist the action imperative. That is, don't do something just because you feel that you must do something. For many, that would appear to be the case with Iraq. We don't have to do anything, the reasoning goes, so why are we? Well, the FBI was also careful to point out that sometimes matters require more than mere talk. You can't always talk that bank robber into giving up peace...

Oriana Fallaci This is great. A brief clip: [C]ontrary to the pacifists who never yell against Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden and only yell against George W. Bush and Tony Blair...I know war very well. I know what it means to live in terror, to run under air strikes and cannonades, to see people killed and houses destroyed, to starve and dream of a piece of bread, to miss even a glass of drinking water. And (which is worse) to be or to feel responsible for someone else's death. I know it because I belong to the Second World War generation and because, as a member of the Resistance, I was myself a soldier. .... As a consequence, I hate [war] as the pacifists in bad or good faith never will. I loathe it. Every book I have written overflows with that loathing, and I cannot bear the sight of guns. At the same time, however, I don't accept the principle, or should I say the slogan, that "All wars are unjust, illegitimate." The war against Hitler and Mussolini and Hiroh...

A great opportunity to "shut up"? Ah, from the seat of democracy.... Branding joint letters signed by Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic with EU members Britain, Spain, Italy, Denmark and Portugal, and by the so-called Vilnius 10 group of EU and NATO candidates "infantile" and "dangerous," [French President Jacques] Chirac said: "They missed a great opportunity to shut up." Why is it that the most liberal, most left-leaning, most proudly "open-minded" strive the hardest to tell their opposition to just shut up and go away? I mean, these are the very people who promote diversity and call for us all to embrace other ideas, yet they get truly testy when they meet opposition. Witness, er, Chirac. Yes, yes, a weasel. A beeeeeg one.

ROFL! Instapundit reports, I get a great laugh. Quoting a piece from Opinion.Telegraph: For the first time in the build-up to action against Iraq, the newspapers of the Anglosphere are united in a blizzard of abuse against the French. In Paris, Le Monde has finally been obliged to translate Bart Simpson's phrase that is now on everyone's lips. The French, say the mass-circulation papers in Britain and America, are nothing but "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" (les primates capitulards toujours en quete de fromage), and, you know what, I couldn't agree more. Les primates capitulards toujours en quete de fromage.... Damn, I like that!

Simply Amazing Let me see if I understand this correctly.... Last month the Belgian senate amended the 1993 "universal jurisdiction" law to let prosecutors to investigate suspected war criminals even if they do not live in Belgium, removing the restriction which has so far prevented them investigating cases abroad. So, Belgium has just decided that They have exclusive authority, jurisdiction, etc., over the entire world? Their senate passes a law and, poof voila, they can -- literally -- hold court over the rest of the planet. Interesting. Sounds awful damn unilateral (or, as Instapundit put it, imperialistic) to me, little self-righteous ninnies. Oh, I forgot. They belong to the Axis of Weasels , even if it is only in Mini-Me minion mode. Hey, I don't think I understand the implications of this! We can just get the House and Senate to pass a bill, one that Bush is sure to sign. We'll give the US exclusive right to prosecute anyone anywhere for anything. Then we t...

Can you say it better? And Judge William Young said to Richard Reid: This is the sentence that is provided for by our statutes. It is a fair and a just sentence. It is a righteous sentence. Let me explain this to you. We are not afraid of any of your terrorist co-conspirators, Mr. Reid. We are Americans. We have been through the fire before. There is all too much war talk here. And I say that to everyone with the utmost respect. Here in this court where we deal with individuals as individuals, and care for individuals as individuals, as human beings we reach out for justice. You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier gives you far too much stature. Whether it is the officers of government who do it or your attorney who does it, or that happens to be your view, you are a terrorist. And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not treat with terrorists. We do not sign docu...

I live Shocking, I say. Proof that strange things happen to anyone, because I have survived the holidays. Yippee! Actually, this entry is more of a test. Seems I have successfully downloaded ISO images, burned the requisite CD's, and installed from said CD's Red Hat Linux 8.0. Easiest Linux install I've ever run. Recognized everything in my system without a hiccup. Easily trumped past attemps with Mandrake (8.1), Corel Linux (1.0), and one other the name of which flees my sagging brain even as I type. Ah well. And will wonders never cease, Blogger doesn't seem to mind the rendition of Mozilla that RH installed. Mozilla under Win2k Pro doesn't get along with Blogger. Here, no problem. Go figure. Am I converting full time? Dunno. Doubt it. Need Win2k on the laptop for school. For home, though, as I kick one or more of The Brood off the computer, I'll be rebooting into RH for more of a look-see. I'll probably even run Partition Magic on the second box and insta...