I was reading this article at the New York Times and was amazed at the introduction and how something it was…

When the International Criminal Court issued its arrest warrant for Sudan’s president on Wednesday, an 8-year-old boy named Bakit Musa would have clapped — if only he still had hands.

You can read the rest here. Just thought it was a very weird and cliche introduction. Something made me laugh though as if it was from SNL even though it is a terrible terrible situation.

So you’ve seen all the rumors floating around the interwebs that baby Trig might not really be Sarah Palin’s, but her daughter’s. Admittedly, they are mostly rumors, but they do make sense. For a concise rundown of “the facts” check out this blog post.

Now I don’t know for sure that Palin’s daughter missed school for 4-5 months leading up to Trig’s birth. I don’t know if when her water broke, Palin flew all the way to Alaska to give birth to her premature, down-syndrome child. No reputable news source is reporting those rumors. Yet, nobody seems to be denying them either.

I don’t know if these rumors are true, but they are certainly plausible. So here are my questions:
1. How likely do you think it is that Trig is really Bristol’s baby (I can’t wait for this made for TV movie)?
2. Why aren’t we hearing about this in the mainstream media?

Many have decried the proposed government bailout currently being rammed down our collective throat as “socialism”. I want argue the opposite, however: that the proposed government bailout is really fascism. Let’s agree that socialism is roughly defined as the government command and control of private business, and fascism the command and control of government by private business.

In tax circles, the “Wall Street Rule” refers to the de facto rule that, given any transaction or investment for which the tax treatment is unclear because of the absence of IRS guidance, after enough investors have developed expectations of a given tax treatment, the IRS will not upset those expectations even though it is under no legal obligation to do so.

Thus, the Wall Street Rule is a rule under which private business effectively usurps the IRS regulating function by dictating the tax treatment of a certain investment or transaction and “forcing” the IRS to concede to such treatment.

The behavior of the stock market over the past few days seems to be another instance of the Wall Street Rule in a slightly different context. After two days of grievous losses, stocks rebounded spectacularly on last Friday, just on the rumor of a possible bailout. And today, after news that both Democrats and Republicans, for populists and libertarian principles respectively, sought to stymie or modify the proposed bailout, stocks again dived.

Thus, the stock market have painted our Congress into an untenable corner. The market has developed an expectation that Congress will approve an unfettered bailout, and quickly. If Congress fails to deliver, stocks will plunge, and Congress will be left holding the political bag. Congress, understanding this, is therefore forced to pass the bailout Wall Street has come to expect. And so you have fascism: private business usurping the legislative function of Congress to get the bailout it wants.

One good thing I can say about McCain is that he’d probably be a better President than me, or at least for the next year or two. I can’t say this about Palin. This video demonstrates just how average and uninformed she really is - she doesn’t know what the Bush Doctrine is and she resorts to painfully poor political mumbo jumbo.

I just saw this frightening post over at Downloadsquad

Basically, the bill allows the DOJ to sue copyright infringers on behalf of the content owners (i.e. movie studios and record companies). JttM Legal Experts, is there any precedent for this? Seems crazy/scary to me.

More on bill S.3325 here

If you haven’t visited www.ted.com, now is the time. The site offers tons of “inspired talks by the world’s greatest thinkers and doers.”

Here’s their quick self-summary:

“TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. More than 200 talks from our archive are now available, with more added each week.”

This one, is far from the most interesting, but there’s an incredibly amazing octopus at the end that I think everyone needs to see.

least skip to the end where an octopus will blow you away.

What did Fox News expect when it decided to report live on location in the middle of a “leftist protest” in Denver? How about a mob spontaneously chanting “F#$% Fox News” on air!

H/t Crooks and Liars.

Bonus link.

Lizzie pointed out to me today that the one true Museum is in Kentucky and focused on explaining Creationism to kids. This only confirms what I already thought, money can buy kids souls and I need more money to build my own museum on how I created the earth in late November 2003.

At one point, the Creationist history lesson takes a divisive turn, interrupted with a detour into, literally, “Sin City.”

Broken windows look into broken secular homes, where screens display all-too-common scenarios of Godless teenagers getting pregnant, drinking, smoking marijuana. Sounds like a hell of a party to me, but apparently it’s the work of Satan, and it’s all because of the poison of evolutionary science, which is unsubtly illustrated in a laughably melodramatic scene where the giant wrecking ball of “millions of years” is shown smashing into the side of a church:

Anyway way I highly recommend you read and watch the videos on Demon Baby Blog, he went to the museum and took loads of pictures and movies. Pretty scary trip.

These people are fiercely indoctrinating their children, spawning new generations of fanatics who believe themselves engaged in a culture war with the world at large, and want to discredit science and change our laws to get their way. Being in a culture war with drug use and teen pregnancy is one thing, but when you set your cross hairs on science - that which is the foundation of every aspect of our modern lives, and the key to advancing our civilization and preserving our planet - suddenly religious tolerance has reached its limit.

Just thought I would give a personal update in the spirit of things! I bought a house! No just kidding… still homeless. We will be leaving Cairo July 22nd and heading to New York. Me an Lizzie are going to stay with her sister a week and poke around New York. Going to see the Lion King, Monty Python Sir Spamalot, the MET (which I plan to spend 2 days in), and maybe some crappy modern art museum that will make me puke (in a modern way I swear). Then heading back to Fayetteville around July 1st. I plan on being in Fayetteville through November and not sure after that.

I’m planning on seeing Daniel in July when me and Joel drive that direction for Grub. And I’m planning on visiting Seattle at some point to visit M and Zmurder. Especially Zmurder considering I haven’t seen him in a hella long time and owe him some fooseball games (even if I have to go to the cheese state?). Me and Joel will be in C town around July 28th to 30th for a computer conference if anyone wants to fly in and hang out! Small possibility I’ll be in San Jose and Vegas during the next six months for conferences too.

After November I’m not sure what I will be doing, I’ve been looking at the visas for southeast Asian countries like Hong Kong and Singapore but I will figure that out once I get back to the States. I made a small blog post on Egypt which you can read here and some pictures here. It is a nice play to visit for a few weeks but a hard place to live in when you are so outside normal society. Anyway, hope to see you guys soon!

ps, anyone been watching the TV show jericho?

What’s not to love about this story:

1) That a group of white men in Indiana feel compelled to dress up in Nazi regalia to celebrate the birthday of Hilter? (Note the festive Happy Birthday sign on the front of the podium.)

2) That a Republican candidate for Congress spoke at the event (pictured)?

3) That he justified his appearance by likening Nazis to black people? (”I’ll speak before any group that invites me. I’ve spoken on an African-American radio station in Atlanta.”)

This article is it’s own punchline. Just sit back and enjoy.

H/t Slog.

Boo asked me to post this, its an awesome video talking about how the last West Wing election is very similar to the Obama McCain match up and why that is. Very interesting on how they basically predicted the type of candidates we would see. Or maybe that those are the only types of candidates we see and its a cycle.

Boo:

As a HUGE fan of the West Wing (at least when Aaron Sorkin was writing it) I find this utterly amazing…

Slate has a pretty interesting article that uses the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to analyze the personalities of the three remaining viable candidates (sorry Mike, you get no love…). The article says a lot about each candidate, but not a lot you probably didn’t already know. What makes it interesting is that most of what it says is not based on observations of the candidates. It comes from directly from stock descriptions of each candidates personality type.

In general, I’m no big fan of psychology as a discipline. A lot of it feels like pseudo-science to me, and I’m hesitant to put much stock in its assertions. Nevertheless I’m sort of fascinated by Myers-Briggs tests; once you’ve ascertained someone’s type, the descriptions of their type are often uncanny in their accuracy. The author points out, for instance, that some of what Bush’s type indicates could have forewarned us about some of his problems.

So here are my questions:

• To what extent do you feel these tests/type-indicators are a reliable way to understand a person (or in this case, candidate)?
• What’s your Myers-Briggs personality type, and do you feel like your type description(s) are accurate?

here are a couple links:

• a shortish Myers-Briggs test
• the wikipedia page for MBTI

and here are my answers:

• Although I don’t like to admit it, I feel a lot more justified in my assessments of each candidates personality after reading this article. In general I suppose that, along with finding out where candidates agree and disagree with you on policy issues, using this stuff to analyze a candidates personality is probably pretty reliable.
• I’m an INTP (strongly T, fairly strongly I, and closer to the middle on N and P). The descriptions I’ve read seem very accurate.

I just got back my local Democratic caucus. And in many ways, it felt like I was in a third-world country. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, OK, maybe not number 9.

The McCain Way: Attack Republicans (A Top Ten List…) — posted on Mitt Romney’s official site. My favorite:

‘Are you calling me stupid?’ Sen. Chuck Grassley once inquired during a debate with McCain over the fate of the Vietnam MIAs, according to a source who was present. ‘No,’ replied McCain, ‘I’m calling you a f—ing jerk!’

And from the Why the Hell Would Romney Post this on his Website Department:

8. Sen. McCain Attacked Vice President Cheney. MCCAIN: “The president listened too much to the Vice President … Of course, the president bears the ultimate responsibility, but he was very badly served by both the Vice President and, most of all, the Secretary of Defense.” (Roger Simon, “McCain Bashes Cheney Over Iraq Policy,” The Politico, 1/24/07)

As a gimmick, the Democratic debate last night was sung entirely in improvisational doo-wop. If you missed it, then you missed quite a show. This NYT photo captures Clinton during her brilliant solo regarding health care reform.

If you’re having a hard time coming up with a gift idea for the Republican feminist in your life or if you just want a good laugh consider, the 2008 Great American Conservative Women Calendar. (Thank you DrudgeReport, and your hilarious cast of advertisers!)

I joke not.

Rather than swimsuit pinups, this calendar features conservative women modeling “the latest professional styles”, like sweater-clad Michelle Malkin busy, blogging away on her laptop. The calendar is a suggested $25 or FREE if you have an active university email account. Send your orders to kmccann@cblpi.org. And god bless America.

concerning xiu xiu’s “Support Our Troops Oh!“

Rarely can one quote a whole song’s lyrics in a blog entry. But Xiu Xiu’s “Support Our Troops Oh!” is so vacuous that its “message” about the Iraq war can be seen in full below:

Did you know you were going to shoot
off the top of a four year old girl’s head
And look across her car-seat down into her skull
And see into her throat and did you know
that her dad would say to you,
Please sir, can I take her body home?
Oh wait, you totally did know… that that would happen
Cause you’re a jock who was too stupid and too greedy
And too unmotivated to do anything else but still be
The biggest and still do what other people tell you to do
You did it to still be a winner

You shot your grenade launcher into peoples’ windows and
Into the doors of peoples’ houses
But you wanted to shoot it into someone just to watch them blow up
Why should I care if you get killed?

Is this sickening to you? I hope so. And I like Xiu Xiu. Obviously they have a right to oversimplify complex geopolitical situations and psychological motives as much as they’d like, but does it have to be this bad? Don’t get me wrong — I like the track. Much like I like the work of Leni Riefenstahl, but reject everything it stands for or suggests. Indeed, as someone who does appreciate the art of Xiu Xiu, I feel I have to repudiate the glaring stupidity of “Support Our Troops Oh”.

I hope these lyrics are obviously stupid. One particular line stands out, though: “cause you’re a jock who was too stupid and too greedy…” Was Jamie Stewart serious here? Did he really believe that it was greedy jocks who were enlisting in our military? Isn’t the standard line quite the opposite?– that it is the underprivileged, largely minorities, who are forced or compelled into service?

One could — but shouldn’t — make a broader point here, about leftist actors and musicians simplifying issues and helping lead to a stultified public debate. I say shouldn’t because this is just one song. One really stupid song.

Listen here to Xiu Xiu (w/ Devendra Banhart) seeming to make a parody of their own song.

Alas, if only President Bush took his advice. President Bush, during his press conference today, serving up a fat hypocritic sandwich:

On Turkey invading Iraq: We are making it very clear to Turkey that we don’t think it is in their interests to send troops into Iraq….

On Turkey surging its forces in Iraq: Actually, they have troops already stationed in Iraq, and they’ve had troops stationed there for quite a while. We don’t think it’s in their interests to send more troops in.

On Turkey’s intent to fight terrorism emanating from Iraq with military force rather than diplomacy: Iraq shares [Turkish] concerns about terrorist activities [emanating from Iraq], but that there’s a better way to deal with the issue than having the Turks send massive troops into the country — massive additional troops into the country…. There’s a lot of dialogue going on, and that’s positive. We are actively involved with the Turks and the Iraqis through a tripartite arrangement, and we’ll continue to — dialoguing with the Turks.

I’ve complained a lot about obvious patents, especially the Amazon “One Click” patent. It turns out someone else did more than just complain

While we just scratched our head and laughed, blogger Peter Calveley went and did something about it. He filed a re-examination request last year. And now that the patent office has taken another look at the one-click patent they’ve rejected a large number of claims made by Amazon. In other words, while Amazon has a chance to respond, there’s a good chance this patent will be revoked.

While this is good news, I can’t help but feel like for every one of these that gets rejected there are many more new, lower profile patent applications approved for “inventions” that are obvious and/or vague. Maybe not though. Maybe this is one of those times where good policies will eventually evolve through trial and error and public feedback without the need for new legislation or court intervention. After all, if the patent office can’t keep up with the pace of technology, it’s probably too much to expect our elected officials to make sense of it.

I’ve never met Debra Cagan, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Coalition Affairs to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. In fact, I didn’t even know her office existed. But evidently, she has a problem with me.

To quote Ms. Cagan, “I hate all Iranians.”

All? Really, Ms. Cagan, all Iranians? Well, I hate all Deputy Assistant Secretaries for Coalition Affairs. Yes, all of them.