Friday Subie Blogging

Saturday evening edition

That's me from late 2003 in Eugene. That was a good day.

Friday Subie Blogging

(almost midnight on Thursday edition)



That's me getting ready to launch out onto the Medford, Oregon track. I need to get back down there sometime, that place is always a hoot.

Rant

People that know me know it's not like me at all to go off on rants about things...



Yeah, right.

But seriously, this shit (via Steve Gilliard) really pisses me off.

Was nobody but me paying attention back in the mid '80s when Tipper Gore pulled this stunt? Remember the PMRC? Remember how well that worked, and how 20 years later now all of the poor innocent children remain pure and unspoiled until they turn 18? OK, even though that last part didn't work out that way, people should still remember the PMRC. God they sucked. Oh, yeah, but that sticker they scared the industry into putting on records made it so you can't buy certain albums at WalCheapChineseCrap-Mart, so that's good. Or something.

Every decadeweek or so some moron comes along and decries our craven media and the destruction of the children. Cries of "save the poor innocent children!" abound. Meanwhile, the same people take money from porn purveyors. (If you don't feel like clicking, that link takes you to a report showing where everybody's favorite enabler, Joe Lieberman (and others), the same Joe Lieberman who's shown working with Hillary and Santorum in the first link above, took $16,000 from various companies that profit from selling porn.) And no, I don't give a shit about the porn, it's the hypocrisy that gets me.

You know what, I think Hillary's actually worse than the PMRC was. I think Tipper and her misguided buddies actually might've thought they were doing some good. Hillary's just pulling the stunt because she's trying to position herself for a presidential run (or so "they" say). Bipartisanship is swell and all, but when Joe and Hillary consistently provide "bipartisan" cover for the nutty crap that their ultra-social-conservative counterparts come up with, they should be smacked.

Sad but sorta not

While I'm saddened that it's not just the U.S. that's got fucked up ideas about freedom post-9/1l/01, I'm somewhat heartened that at least their press is willing to talk about it. Of course, that's not really the press -- more the geeky press -- but the British press seems generally more willing do real reporting than the U.S. hacks.

The best part of the article is this amusing footnote:

We shouldn't allow yesterday's democratic low point to pass unremarked. Clarke's intention to amend the Bill became known as the Commons debate on it was beginning, and his intended amendments effectively made Commons discussion of the first section of the Bill redundant. Clarke's amendments however had not at that point been written, and he proposed to put them to the House of Lords once the Bill had moved there (which it did today). The Commons was therefore asked to vote not for the Bill they had in front of them, but for the one sketched out by Clarke that was to be presented to the Lords, but which did not yet exist. The Commons was therefore asked to vote for a promise - it did.

Sounds a lot like something that would happen in Congress, but then of course we wouldn't be reading about it...

BTW, if you don't get The Register's RSS feed you should. It's probably the best site for technology news out there, along with some gems of more mainstream reporting as well, and a refreshing snarky style.

Bull Moosetified

Since The Bull Moose doesn't allow comments, I'll have to do this here:

In a surprisingly good article for him, The Moose actually applauds a Democrat for doing something other than turning further rightward (The Moose's favorite Dem is Lieberman):

The Moose awards Senator Reid a hearty "Bully!" for breaking Beltway etiquette and offering the chief economic alien some straight talk,

"We had a $7 trillion-dollar surplus when Bush took office. Now we have a $3 or $4 trillion-dollar deficit. That's, in fact, what Greenspan should be telling people."

Then, Harry Skywalker brought Darth Vader back to earth with this choice comment,

"I think he's one of the biggest political hacks we have in Washington."

Senator Reid, live long and prosper!

Now, Starship Commander Greenspan would like to boldly go where no other Fed Chairman has gone before by endorsing a backdoor consumption tax so his wealthy cronies can further shelter their riches. It is very clear that in his dotage, Greenspan is returning to his cultish, objectivist Ayn Rand roots.

Perhaps, he is now lives on Planet Atlas Shrugged.

Beam me up, Scotty!

The mixed Star Wars/Star Trek references are just too much to let go by. He should really pick one or the other, it's like he's trying to be cool with hip cultural references (but seriously how hip are old SciFi references?). Moose, just so you know (yes, I know he's not really reading my blog, just humor me):

• Skywalker and Vader are from Star Wars the hugely successful movie from 1977 (I saw it in the theater during its initial run that year. I was 8.)
  
• "Live long and prosper" "boldy go where no" and "Beam me up, Scotty!" are from Star Trek the campy and fun TV show-turned-movie-franchise.
  

Now that we're clear on that, I'll await his next post telling all us crazy Democrats we need to move even further rightward if we ever want to succeed in politics again. Yeah, 'cause that's worked so well this far. Criminy. For the best dissection of that topic go read Steve Gilliard's post about it.

Friday Subie Blogging

Since the EESCC's annual "Icebreaker" event is this coming weekend, I thought I'd feature a photo from a past Icebreaker event. This is me at the 2002 event: