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Did you vote for a Lizard?

Their ideas aren't "strange" about the political left. Those are the ideas that the left espouse on a regular basis. Pick your favorite search engine, and you'll find that those aren't minority opinions among the left. They're majority opinions, and it's also the reason why the left is losing their foothold in nearly every western country. You're living in a political bubble, go read a years back opinions on a site like samizdat and get back to everyone.

May the wrong lizard not win.

Great lizard reference!

all Republicans hate Republican leadership....wonder how the hell Boehner and McConnell get reelected

1. Everyone hates them.
2. They keep getting re-elected.

So either #1 is false, #2 is false, or Republicans elect people they hate. Maybe they are lizards.

Parkinson's other law

http://www.samizdata.net/2006/...

Spend a few days reading nothing but technology news. Then spend a few days reading nothing but political news. For the first few days you’ll see an exciting world of innovation and creativity where everything is getting better all the time. In the second period you’ll see a miserable world of cynicism and treachery where everything is falling apart. Please explain the difference.

There's no constitutional mandate to maintain a standing army or navy. That will save you $680B right there, and just about balance the budget in one swoop.

There is authority for it. The wisdom of it was soon shown.

Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute
Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates

The government is paying the banks not to lend out the money to prevent inflation.

http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/06/money_supply_th.html

Strings indeed.

As soon as I posted, I was expecting two kinds of answer.

One pointing out that it was safer than a green light.

Alternatively, working out the physics.

You, however, appear to have done neither. Expressing an acceleration in velocity units, by golly. Also, when you divide quantities you must also divide the units; mph over mph gives a dimensionless number, not a time.

But by the dumbest of luck your answer isn't actually far off.

How curious; you say to ignore the advice in the video, and then repeat it word for word.

If you actually want to add something, how about citing Nightjack's Survival Guide for Decent Folk which adds some counter-strategies?

... Epic Fail picture in there too.

naming an act the "Public Order Act."

The next thing London will do is put up posters saying that you are secure beneath the watchful eyes.

Perhaps they thought Orwell was writing an instruction manual?

... I don't trust Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel to use his gun properly ...

You have just changed one improbability for another. Cletus may improperly hurt himself (likely), a family member (still likely), a friend (also, very much in the realm of probability), a total stranger (not as likely), a group of total strangers (even more improbable), and so on. Unless you are friends with Cletus and want the law to disarm because you are too lazy or too stupid to make a new friend, then you do not have a solid argument. You are replacing one extreme improbability with another. The link I offer next strays into what might be viewed as - and often is - racist rhethoric: http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/004236.html

Simply, compare lax-gun-law, white America to gunphobic Europe, and things are looking OK here. Plenty of problems to solve. Gun control is not one of them.

no, what we really need is airliners with frickin' lasers!

Don't you want to be Secure Beneath the Watchful Eyes in the UK? What is the problem?

The Donna's are on eMusic. Just in case you care about paying musicians for their music instead of the Russian Mafia. Sucker.

Funny postscript: I accidently pasted "In case you care about paying musicians instead of the Russian Mafia," into the address bar ("I-feel-lucky-ing" it to the first google page) and this site came up.

That's not exactly what happened... In that case, the individual concerned acknowledged that he tried things that could be construed as an attempt to compromise the system. The judge acknowledged that his intent wasn't to cause loss, but could not find him innocent and as a result gave him the most lenient sentence he could. In relation to this new law, I think the intent aspect could do with clarification.

Did you even read the cartoons? I see worse attacks on Bush every day in the paper.

"At least triple Congressional salaries and beef up the pension"? They already get ridiculously cushy pensions as it is -- FOR LIFE -- and get more than enough from their lobbyists etc. Who the hell needs two homes anyway? I do just fine with my single one at 1000 sq. ft. We really need to go back to true citizen-legislators.

Tom Clancy's "Executive Orders" is an interesting read because it's largely about one idea of what reconstructing the government (and improving and simplfying it) would be like assuming the "high command" were taken out all at once, so normal succession procedures couldn't be carried out. In the book, the President decides to replace most of Congress (read the book for what happened to them - I won't spoil it all!) by having ordinary people, like farmers and regular working people, serve in Congress. He does this because he felt that the Founding Fathers intended legislators to be selected this way (and I agree). The system has gotten as messy as it is because it wasn't ever meant to be handled by career fat-cat politicians.

As for the space program -- actually, yes, NASA does need more money -- the current bug-riddled Shuttle we have now would have been much safer and capable had the budget not been slashed in the first place, and so many great programs get killed because some idiot somewhere thinks they have a better plan for the money, and so much more gets spent to fix the stupidity. For example, the X-38 Crew Return Vehicle that would have allowed a full seven-person crew to return safely in the event of an emergency was killed -- after flight testing was going very, very well -- and now the seven-person ISS is stuck with two-person crews because the Soyuz -- a second-hand technology (though very well made; I'm not slighting it in that way) we have to ram special funding bills through to use, which is totally unacceptable! -- can't handle more right now! (though yes, Soyuz TMA is designed to carry three).

We need to fully, and properly, fund what we're doing. None of this compromise crap. It just comes back to bite us in the ass.

The latest casualty of this stupidity: the methanol-fueled engines the CEV was intended to use. Too expensive.

So why not rename it CV?

Candid Cop Camera (6/28)
  John Bell took a photograph of a Hudson, Ohio, police cruiser being towed out of mud. David Devore, the police officer whose u-turn put the car into the mud, apparently didn't appreciate the move. And Devore's cruiser camera captured the exchange. "Camera and film now. I'm not going to ask you again. I'll give you the count of three or I can make your life a living hell. You made the decision, I'll give you that choice," he told Bell. Then he took the memory card from Bell's digital camera and erased the image. Devore was suspended for one day for his action. But Bell says that isn't enough. He has sued Devore and the city claiming he was stopped without probable cause, wrongfully detained, verbally abused and deprived of his property.

if the government's going to stick cameras all over the public sphere, then if there's a civilian-cop altercation of any kind, if the film is not available for whatever reason then the civilian will be automatically presumed innocent and blameless. Otherwise, it's FAR too easy for the government to conveniently "lose" any film that makes it out to be the guilty party.
Comment by: Jennifer at July 29, 2005 11:53 AM

The Aurora police department, which shot seven people last year and killed five, is taking steps to examine the use of deadly force....On Dec. 3, 2003, Jammal Bonner, 20, found himself outside the Top Star motel selling crack cocaine to an undercover police officer posing as a hooker. Police were trying to arrest prostitution patrons. A police surveillance camera was rolling and a "street arrest team" was in place, ready to take down suspects. Bonner wasn't interested in sex, though, and the undercover police officer said she lured him up to a motel room. But what exactly happened in that room at the Top Star motel? As four SWAT officers pour into the room, the surveillance tape was turned off....
Comment by: Nobody Important at July 29, 2005 01:56 PM

I just had to go search for more info on RFID implants because sooner or later bills will be proposed by somebody that they be introduced, initially on a voluntary basis....

Back in July silicon.com reported the following: "Tommy Thompson, the Health and Human Services Secretary in President Bush's first term and a former Governor of Wisconsin, is going to get tagged. Thompson has joined the board of Applied Digital, which owns VeriChip, the company that specialises in subcutaneous RFID tags for humans and pets. To help promote the concepts behind the technology, Thompson himself will get an RFID tag implanted under his skin." http://networks.silicon.com/lans/0,39024663,391505 25,00.htm/

December 2003 - Subdermal RFID chip provokes furore http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/12/04/subdermal_ rfid_chip_provokes_furore/

October 2004 - FDA approves computer chip for humans - nice pic of an implant next to George Washington... http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6237364/

This article was followed up in November 2004 http://slate.msn.com/id/2109477/
Verisign thoughtfully provide a method to save you getting your child swapped in the hospital. "The number of total switching incidents is as high as 20,000 per year in the U.S." But don't worry. In this case the tag is not implanted... http://www.verichipcorp.com/

...unlike the VeriKid service provided by the Mexican distributors of verisign technology: http://www.solusat.com.mx/index1.html http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,60771, 00.html

Although RFID implants have their detractors...

http://www.spychips.com/
http://www.notags.co.uk/page26.html
http://www.rfidconcerns.com/
http://www.shire.net/big.brother/digitalangel.htm
http://whiterose.samizdata.net/archives/cat_identi ty_cards.html
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/impl anting_chip.html

...they seem to be popular with body piercing fans: Amal Graafstra Gets an RFID Implant http://www.bmezine.com/news/presenttense/20050330. html
And the odd geek or two: http://www.x11.net/wiki/index.php/My_RFID_Implant He has mp4 video footage of the implanting procedure. It doesn't sound like he will want to remove this implant anytime soon - OUCH!

The Mexican Government - "Mexico's Attorney General required the Mark of the Beast in a 160 people. Thousands more are now planned..." http://www.tldm.org/News4/MarkoftheBeast.htm

And the European Parliament! "Brussels: 'Implants to track people are OK'". http://management.silicon.com/government/0,3902467 7,39128836,00.htm/

"Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely" Lord Acton (1834-1902)

If you were a blogger, you probably would've said you invented a "meme", and would've somehow included the "blogosphere", too. There's plenty more verbal diarrhea involved in most blogs, but those are the only two that I can remember at the moment. Unfortunately, I found a link with plenty more. :-(

Monte Carlo approach.

as I posted here:

A good deal of the administration's actions are related to compromise to push through essential strategies for the war.

The war resolution, the money to support it, measures like the PATRIOT act, etc., all required compromised for other agendas.

Also, with measures like the perscription drug benefit, there was a tiny point of medical savings accounts. Go here to learn why MSA are the best choice.

With NCLB, there was supposed to be a voucher scheme introduced, which was later taken out. Now that a majority of minorities are in favor of vouchers, I don't understand why they aren't being adopted more rapidly.

That said, I am optimistic that Bush will do better in his second term, where he doesn't have much to lose. Given that Cheney won't be on the ticket in 2008, he can take measures which are normally anathema, such as social security reform, complete welfare reform (if that is even possible), and the measures removed from the health and education bills.

Given Kerry would be worse, without a doubt (even with the lies he is telling to paint himself as a centrist), I see no reason to reject this optimism.

Either way, I agree with the comment above: Bush understands the war, Kerry doesn't. Go here to hear more about that point.

[note this comment was made on a libertarian website. If you want the jackboot of a Kerry welfare/technocratic state crushing your dreams, then he might not be worse for you]

You do not need to be aware of any information sources not sanctioned by Big Media

Look at health care in Europe vs. America. Everyone in Europe can afford to have a root canal or an xray should they need one.

On the other hand, if you are convicted of a crime in the UK, then later found innocent and released, you are charged exorbitant fees for your stay in prison.

Britain is also overly concerned with Orwellian surveillance systems that destroy the privacy of law-abiding citizens.

The US certainly fucks up on a lot of things, but Europe doesn't exactly get everything right either.

Go here and tell me that actual poster of the metro police isn't the creepiest thing you've seen in a while.

Crime in London has skyrocketed in the past few years, pretty much because it's illegal to defend yourself with any conviction over there, with any weapon. The state will keep you safe, they say- except they can't.

You're six times more likely to be mugged in London than New York City.

The cameras are a joke on the populus- they live under constant survellience because of the promise it will make them safer, yet there aren't- and can never be- enough police to act on what occurs on and off camera. It's a way for the government and the police to say they're doing something about the crime, instead of actually going out and putting boot to ass- their cops aren't even armed. But the biggest problem is that the citizens are not armed.

The Government of the United Kingdom evidently thinks it's people are an untrustworthy bunch of morons, uncapable of wielding deadly force in a just manner. So they remove every lawful means of defending oneself and one's property, saying they'll protect you instead. Except they can't. They often don't even come afterwards to file the paperwork.

If criminals were made to fear for their lives when they plied their trade, you might see a big drop in crime. But crooks are the only ones with guns, and have nothing to fear from the people they rob- unlike the United States, where in several states, a crook breaking into an occupied home has a good chance of meeting a violent, immediate end, for example.

The cameras are not a panacea, they aren't even a band-aid. The people of the UK are fucked- sheep left to the slaughter of criminals. Good luck over there.

Actually, what the Guardian and Murdoch object to is that the BBC has a huge revenue fund (in the form of the license fee) that anyone who owns a TV in Britain has to fork over. (This includes people who, like myself, were foreigners living in the UK.)

Don't pay the license fee, you get a hefty fine and are likely to go to jail. They have trucks cruising around the country looking for non-registered TVs, and you are guilty until proven innocent when the Telestapo raids you for non fee-payment.

The BBC swears it won't survive without the license fee, but it said the same thing when there was a similar fee for radios, which was abolished decades ago. Supposedly, the money the BBC makes from licensing the various properties it owns (Dr. Who, Blake's 7, etc.) is used to fund the BBC's operations, thus reducing the licensing fee, but that fee never seems to go down.

Private news companies (like the Guardian, which is a leftist paper, and the Murdoch empire, which is right-wing) kind of dislike having a competitor who is backed by collecting, under the threat of imprisonment, a large fee from all television owners in the UK. They also think that a BBC shorn of the huge apparatus for collecting license fees might actually find out that it is competitive, after all. (It might also have an incentive to, say, start making programs that aren't utter crap*, or to, perhaps, think of better ways of making money off the unique things it owns. By, perhaps, getting a Dr. Who relaunch under way with a speed greater than that of a dying slug. Incentives that are lacked when you can be very certain that 116 quid will come out of the pocket of every TV owner in the land.)

The BBC has shown in whole "sexed-up dossier" brouhaha that it doesn't fact-check well, and when it gets caught out in an embarassing situation, its response is "cover-up at all costs!" In that, it is not too different from the Blair government. But you can get rid of Tony Blair if British voters get fed up enough. The BBC license fee is much loved by the British political elite (including the supposed "small-government" Tories), and you'll never get rid of it.

Another example of BBC arrogance: they held a little public vote to see which law their viewers would want put into place, and threw a fit when the plurality of voters wanted a law making it legal for them to do what Tony Martin did. (If you live in rural England, like I did, you get to understand why this might be popular, as break-ins into rural homes by junkies from the cities looking for stuff to fence back in the cities were not uncommon in the part of Huntingdonshire I was in.)

My time in the UK made me realize that I was wrong to consider the US political/media elite as being uniquely self-serving and greedy. The British ones were worse. (The Home Secretary, in particular. He has made proposals which make the oft-derided John Ashcroft look like an EFF member.) Of course, the Continental ones were even more of a kakiocracy.

The BBC is the TV channel of Britian's oligarchial elite, and don't kid yourself on that.

*We in the US only get to see a small slice of BBC programs. When you live in the UK, you get to see a larger slice, and you understand why so much of British TV nowadays consists of syndicated US programming. {Although I must note there that it's only the higher quality stuff from the US which is syndicated in the UK. British viewers are spared things like "Full House" and reruns of "Charles in Charge."}

You're absolutely free to sell as much of your 'American Cheese' in Europe as you like (bwahahahahah.) You just can't call it Camenbert.

It's utter nonsense. The terms for cheese and the like are descriptive of the kind of cheese and its flavor. Are all Parmesean, Muenster, Feta, etc. cheeses that come from Wisconsin to be labelled "American Cheese" or "Wisconsin Cheese?" How would you tell them apart? Better yet, under Europe's naming regime, should every single country that makes Parmesean cheese be forced to come up with an independent name for what is essentially the same product? How would you know what can be substituted in a recipe?

Of course, that's the real goal of the European system -- to force consumers to only associate a European town or region's goods to satisfy their needs. This why the EU doesn't even want American to be able to say "Rocheforte-like" to label their goods. It's pure protectionism and all it does is confuse customers. The protectionism is made far more blatant by the fact that Cheddar cheese isn't protected because it was widely produced outside of its original region in Europe before the law came into effect in 1992 while America's Parmesean production was not considered when Parma, Italy gained European trade protection for its own name. The stench of hypocrisy abounds here.

Naturally, though, I'm sure you don't see it that way, what with all of your claims that American goods are "inferior products." However, the basic fact is that many American-made cheeses are as good or better than the European originals unless your doing extremely finicky gourmet cooking, and the American dairy industry can match demand that regions like Parma, Italy cannot, especially now that the industry seems to be slowly withering on the vine due to a lack of interest in the youth of the area in becoming cheesemakers. Now, however, in Europe if it's not from Parma it has to have a different name. All you've managed to do is make your own goods more expensive for the sake of snobbery in the tradition of landed titles. It's madness.

What's next? Can we no longer use the word Amaretto if the cordial doesn't come from Italy? Can we no longer have Chamomile tea if it wasn't grown from Eurasian stock? Are you genuinely arguing that Basmati rice that wasn't grown on Indian soil cannot have that name?

Cheesemaking is a recipe. Is Europe honestly saying that we cannot have Hamburger Steak or Florentine Quiche because the recipes were once invented elsewhere?

I hope we all enjoy living our squeaky clean lifestyles free of petty crime or peccadilloes.

Fuck the Mouse that Whined. Nobody has the right to interfere with free trade of lawfully obtained property between consenting adults.

One blog I frequent -- Samizdata (a libertarian site) -- was recently hit with this kind of stuff. They've initiated a technology that forces people to enter a code supplied on the comments page before being allowed to post a comment.

Slashdot's moderation feature may also help with this problem. If the spammer's goal is to be seen, rather than just Googled, moderating down spam as offtopic or some other negative category may help reduce that visibility.

Anyone in London remember this creepy campaign

"The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time."

Now it really _is_ conceivable...

Of course in the UK we are already Secure Beneath the Watchful Eyes.

verb. To deconstruct an article on a point by point basis in a highly critical manner. Derived from the name of journalist Robert Fisk, a frequent target of such critical articles in the blogosphere (qv).

Usage: "Orrin Judd did a severe fisking of an idiotic article in the New York Times today..."

Three people asked what "group-Fisking" means in this post, which borrows the term from an InstaPundit post.

The term refers to Robert Fisk, a journalist who wrote some rather foolish anti-war stuff, and who in particular wrote a story in which he (1) recounted how he was beaten by some anti-American Afghan refugees, and (2) thought they were morally right for doing so. Hence many pro-war blogs -- most famously, InstaPundit -- often use the term "Fisking" figuratively to mean a thorough and forceful verbal beating of an anti-war, possibly anti-American, commentator who has richly earned this figurative beating through his words. Good Fisking tends to be (or at least aim to be) quite logical, and often quotes the other article in detail, interspersing criticisms with the original article's text.

If someone can send along a link to the earliest use of the term, I will gladly include it.