Despite numerous claims to the contrary, that pungent smelling liquid you feel tinkling about your head and shoulders is not rain.
So Barry has passed financial "reform" which will prevent another meltdown and the whole thing is fixed so Congress can now move on to watering down climate change legislation and declaring another problem "solved".
But not so fast. While Congress was busy claiming they were fixing the financial mess (and NOT granting unemployment extensions for a month and a half for those who were in dire need), the bailouts for the financial industry have continued unabated in the past year -
"Indeed, the current outstanding balance of overall Federal support for the nation's financial system...has actually increased more than 23% over the past year, from approximately $3.0 trillion to $3.7 trillion -- the equivalent of a fully deployed TARP program -- largely without congressional action, even as the banking crisis has, by most measures, abated from its most acute phases," the TARP inspector general, Neil Barofsky, wrote in the report.
The Homecoming of Aziza:Today, I will be posting something different; I'll be going back to Aziza, but here is the longer essay on her that I promised to write about.
This is a photograph of Aziza, where she looks like she's doing a dance. She's in one of her favorite poses, on her favorite outside-her-cage height and place:
Here's yet another photo of Aziza,
playing in her cage, looking curiously down at something while she's on her bong rope swing, which is a favorite inside-her-cage perch of hers.
Here's another more exuberant photo of Aziza.
She certainly reveals her beauty, exuberance and gracefulness when she's in that position. It's great!
This is a photo of Aziza perched on my forearm/hand. You now have a close-up view of her, and you can see her beauty on a somewhat larger scale.
Here's yet another photo of Aziza, in one of her most pensive modes:
This photo, too, reveals how beautiful she really is! One of my favorite photos of Aziza.Now that I have presented afew (albeit familiar) pictures of Aziza, many of them taken when she was even younger than she is right now, I will proceed with the essay itself.
Really interesting article about the social and legal ramifications of personal data storage on the Internet, and how technology - and society - might evolve to soften the privacy impacts of bad personal decision-making.
A rocket attack on Thursday on the Green Zone, the heavily barricaded section of this city that contains the main government buildings and the United States Embassy, killed three foreign contractors who work for the embassy, and wounded 15, including two American citizens.
At least 15 Iraqis were killed Wednesday in a Diyala province car bombing, the third fatal bombing attack this week in the volatile region northeast of Baghdad.
A car bomb parked in the main marketplace in the small town of Qara Teppa, Khanaqeen district, 100 km to the east of Baquba, detonated Tuesday morning, targeting civilians, killing two including a little girl, and injuring 17, some of who were women and children. Toll may rise, said security authorities, because some of the injuries were serious.
A car bomb parked in the car park in front of a roadside diner in Jdaidat al Shat area, 20 km to the southwest of Baquba, exploded targeting Iranian pilgrims on their way to the sacred shrines, killing four pilgrims and injuring another four.
A car bomb parked near a car dealership and a much frequented cafe in New Baquba, central Baquba, detonated, at 9.30 p.m. Monday, killing at least nine civilians and injuring 27 more. Toll may rise, said security authorities, for the severity of some of the injuries.
Two people were killed and three injured in a car bomb blast in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Saturday, police said. The bomb was attached to the car of a Kurdish family, according to a police source told the German Press Agency dpa.
A car bomb parked near an ice-cream parlour in Arbaeen Street, downtown Tikrit, detonated, Thursday, killing six people including three police officers and injuring 11 others, many of whom where women and children.
A roadside bomb targeted civilians in Adil neighbourhood, west Baghdad, at noon, Wednesday, killing two civilians and injuring two others. A roadside bomb targeted the car of Judge Hasen Aziz Abdurahman, of the Investigations' Court, in Yarmouk neighbourhood, Tuesday, killing the judge.
Gunmen stormed the house of a Sufi Muslim cleric killing four people and wounding at least six others, in a town near Falluja, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad, police said.
Two Iraqi soldiers were killed and four others were wounded when attackers blew up a house used as a headquarters for the army in Abu Ghraib on the western outskirts of Baghdad, police said.
Gunmen using weapons equipped with silencers shot dead a university professor, Adnan Makki, at his home in al-Qadissiya district of southwestern Baghdad, police said.
Insurgents wearing military uniforms stormed Iraq's central bank Sunday during an apparent robbery attempt, battling security forces in a three-hour standoff after bombs exploded nearby in a coordinated daylight attack that left as many as 26 people dead.
Surely there will be a cascade of well-wishes, prayers, and sympathies for Glenn Beck. Beck, of course, has revealed to his slovenly, poorly-dressed, mall-frequenting Tea Bag audience that he may well go blind. Alas, this is the time when even Beck's ideological opponents, nay, enemies even, should take the high rode and wish the pundit a speedy recovery.
Fuck the high rode.
Beck is an iconic mouthpiece perfect for the slobbering public embracing him. George Carlin once suggested those politicians we all hate so much may not be the reason America is so trashy these days. The source of a collective shittiness, our lack of compassion, intellect, or even a half-honest elected leader, Carlin asserted, was the public. While there are chunks of our citizenry who certainly aren't so horrid - Lib Porn readers, for instance - we have to agree with George: A public who willfully allows itself to be led into intellectual blindness (aw snap, a pun) by an obvious fraud and money-grubbing minstrel through tapping into said public's prejudices and bigotry isn't worth a pile of steaming recently-fisted-fag turds.
One might ask, "Why harbor such contempt for Beck simply because you disagree with him?" Well, sane and humble folks like us consider Beck to be a worthless excuse for a human because he preys on the fears and weaknesses of regular people, only to march them lockstep in support of criminal wealthy elites who have utterly no interest in helping those very same regular Joes and Janes (many of whom, by the way, are unemployed, drowning in debt, or on shoestring budgets). To be clear, we at Lib Porn - and any other responsible, open-minded individual - don't hate conservatives. I personally think men like David Frum and John McCain 1.0 (the pre-2006 McCain, the one who supported free wireless internet for the ghetto and amigo amnesty, and totally wasn't a gutless weasel) were respectable men who weren't half as corrupt as the so-called 'liberals' for which we usually settle.
There are conservatives who honestly think their worldview is beneficial to most. Beck and the leading Baggers (along with Boehner, McConnel, Sugar Tits Palin, etc.) are different. They target middle and working-class white folks who are terrified of BET, not to mention black people in positions of power. Their goal is to make money off of divisions amongst people who should be sticking together to look out for their own interests. And Beck is the worst. Not just because he commands a multi-million strong viewership who'd gargle his dingleberries with jubilant enthusiasm, but since he's just a pundit, he's in no way held accountable for his actions. Even when he manipulates halfway-dead Baby Boomers hooked up to oxygen tanks into handing over their retirement money for overpriced gold nuggets. As we speak, the elderly woman across the street from me is convinced of the pending socialist-black-homosexual revolution in America and, in preparation, has all of her Goldline nuggets packed into the seat of her Hoveround, right next to her shotgun.
So no, we at Lib Porn don't wish Beck well. Fuck him. If his eyeballs plop out of their sockets during his show tonight, I'll giggle so hard I'm likely to choke on my popcorn. If I see a blind Glenn Beck on the street, I won't hesitate to kick his walking cane out of his hand and lure his seeing-eye dog into heavy traffic. He can go to hell.
And society as a whole needs to stop glorifying and pitying poisonous charlatans like Beck (or, on that note, Jerry Falwell) who fall ill or just plain croak. A fraudulent criminal liar who's stricken with blindness or another crippling ailment is, doubtlessly, still a fraudulent criminal liar. Fuck them, fuck Beck. I'm sure he has plenty of Goldline dollars coming in to afford a fucking Braille dictionary. I suggest the first word he learns is "karma".
I was gonna write a brief 'good news' summer diary today (hey hey, 'California city approves marijuana farming'), but then had to click on Lenin's Tomb and that was out. I didn't know that Israeli law considers it rape if an Arab Israeli man has consensual sex with a Jewish Israeli female (if he does not say that he is Arab). File this under "it's not your grandparents' Israel anymore." Here's lenin's take (links in original):
Racist patriarchy in Israel posted by lenin
This is an example of racist patriarchy. A man, Sabbar Kashur, has been imprisoned for doing nothing more than having consensual sex with a woman, whose name has not been disclosed. Both parties were of age, and no one alleges that the transaction took place without consent. . . . as the woman's testimony in the course of the trial made clear, the only crime that Kashur, now convicted of rape, committed was to have allowed the woman to believe that he was Jewish, when in fact he was an Arab. He did not even actively perpetrate a deceit, merely chatted the woman up and didn't say "by the way, I am an Arab". And that has earned him 18 months in prison, on the basis of a plea bargain. Judge Tzvi Segal explained:
"The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price - the sanctity of their bodies and souls."
Are you getting it yet? Sex with an Arab constitutes a violation of the sanctity of body and soul - an "unbearable price". This is not a freakish opinion in Israeli society. For example, half of Israeli Jews believe intermarriage between Arabs and Jews is equivalent to national treason . . . Gangs of men in a Jerusalem neighbourhood roam around, behaving as a de facto vice and virtue squad, to 'protect' young Jewish girls from Arabs. One local authority has set up a squad of counsellors and psychiatrists to 'rescue' Jewish girls who are dating Arabs. . . .
"If this country has been misled, if this committee, this Congress, has been misled by pretext into a war in which thousands of young men have died, and many more thousands have been crippled for life, and out of which their country has lost prestige, moral position in the world, the consequences are very great," Senator Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee, the father of the future vice president, said in March 1968 in a closed session of the Foreign Relations Committee.
And yes indeed, the country had been misled, but there were no consequences for any of the liars who lied us into Vietnam.
At another point, the committee's chairman, Senator William Fulbright, Democrat of Arkansas, raised concerns that if the senators did not take a stand on the war, "We are just a useless appendix on the governmental structure."
And thirty years later, in 2001 and 2003, that same "useless appendix," the United States Senate, was once again stampeded into endorsing useless wars based on nothing but lies.
Even at the time, there was widespread skepticism about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which the North Vietnamese were said to have attacked American destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964, two days after an earlier clash.
In the end, however, the senators did not further pursue their doubts. As Mr. Church said in one session that was focused on the staff report into the episode, if the committee came up with proof that an attack never occurred, "we have a case that will discredit the military in the United States, and discredit and quite possibly destroy the president."
"We have a case that will discredit the military of the United States," said Frank Church,but this was a ridiculous exaggeration.
Would their case have discredited private soldiers on the field of battle, bravely advancing against the enemy?
No!
Would their case have discredited junior officers or even brigade or division commanders?
No!
But their case would have totally discredited the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the CIA, and the President of the United States, and was saving those goddamned liars more important than the 58,000 American soldiers who were killed in Vietnam?
And the answer was yes, for the Washington elite, and even for liberal Democrats like Frank Church and William Fulbright.
But would the American public have been so eager to sacrifice so many lives for nothing, if they had known the truth?
"In a democracy you cannot expect the people, whose sons are being killed and who will be killed, to exercise their judgment if the truth is concealed from them," said Senator Frank Church.
"You cannot expect the people to exercise their judgment if the truth is concealed from them."
And how was the truth concealed?
When Lyndon Johnson claimed that North Vietnam had fired upon US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, why didn't everybody get to see the "evidence?"
For the same silly "reason" that when George W. Bush claimed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, nobody except the Washington elite saw the "evidence."
But what we have seen, all of us, over and over, is the catastrophic downside of so much secrecy.
And what was the "reason" for concealing a bunch of confused radio-transmissions among our ships in the Gulf Of Tonkin?
All that raw "intelligence" was junk! Nothing would have been compromised by splashing it all over every front page on every newspaper in the world...
Nothing would have been lost or compromised except the power of the power-elite to lie us into two goddamned wars, and the next and the next and the next.
"You cannot expect the people to exercise their judgment if the truth is concealed from them."
The doctrine of state secrecy would be dangerous enough for our democracy even if the so-called "intelligence community" wasn't staffed with idiots from top to bottom, and since the media is always full of ludicrous propaganda about super-spies like Jason Bourne and James Bond, it's worth paying careful attention to how the real "intelligence community" actually performs, on those rare occasions when we get a good look at it. For example...
The suicide bomber who killed seven C.I.A. officers and a Jordanian spy last week was a double agent who was taken onto the base in Afghanistan because the Americans hoped he might be able to deliver top members of Al Qaeda's network, according to Western government officials.
The attack at the C.I.A. base dealt a devastating blow to the spy agency's operations against militants in the remote mountains of Afghanistan, eliminating an elite team using an informant with strong jihadi credentials.
This was the "elite team" which could supposedly recognize al Qaeda and Taliban operatives in the mountains of Pakistan!
But they couldn't even recognize an al Qaeda agent in the same room.
And that isn't even the stupidest part of this story! The stupidest part of this story is what happened next!
Because after the "elite team" in charge of recognizing al Qaeda and Taliban agents had been wiped out, how did the CIA immediately respond?
The enemy just destroyed our forward observation base, and wiped out our "elite team" of targeters, and essentially poked out both our eyes...
So let's just bomb anything and everything, and teach those wogs a lesson!
And that's the inside story of US "intelligence" in Afghanistan, and likewise with the rest of our contemptible apparatus of secrecy, which has destroyed so many millions of lives in the last 40 years, and provided so much cover for so many lies.
"Intellectuals" are, apparently, very un-American. Even "intellectuals" American conservatives have taken a shine to are magically gutted of their "intellect", historically revisionized and whited-out by the Great American Cock which covers all those fruity, un-freedom-loving parts with the white gooey goodness of liberty. So a guy like Adam Smith, who humbly recommended a strong government amid all those free markets, becomes a flag-waving, gun-wielding, red-blooded American patriot, despite Smith's negligible status as a Scotsman.
And thus in demonizing "intellectuals" Adams continues the uniquely American tradition, at least of the last few decades, of taking a dump on folks we believe are smarter than us. Hell, who doesn't have an inner desire to cover a smug smarty pants with copious amounts defecation, metaphorical or otherwise?
Except Adams' charges against "intellectuals" and progressivism lack a basis in reality, as usual for such arguments. Adams contends the Great Society of LBJ is a direct cause for a spike in violent crime in the 1960s and 70s, a statement that all but screams 'logical fallacy' because, darn it, if the welfare state was such a poisonous monstrosity unleashed on a God-fearing population of libertarian bootstrappers, why didn't crime spike after FDR enacted the New Deal? Of course, conservatives like Adams would respond: "Fuck you Chip, you just hate mainstream Americans." And such a charge against my feelings toward flag-wavers just might be correct, although it has no bearing on the mud-butt turd bowl of bullshit conservative arguments against progressivism.
Now, don't get me wrong, we don't dig cut-and-dry support for any particular train of thought. We at Lib Porn feel nothing but contempt for fuzzy liberal jackasses of the artsy fartsy variety, those knuckleheaded quasi-do gooders with a belief that black poverty can be alleviated if we just paint enough Afro-centric murals around the ghetto. As far as staunch anti-porn feminists (of both genders) searching endlessly for pro-rape content in Playboy and sexist language in English class texts, well, we wish nothing less than Bird Flu upon them. Strict communists and anarchists who believe any sort of monetary transaction in our hemisphere negatively impacts a Tutsi in Rwanda needs to, for lack of a better phrase, calm the hell down. From fashionably liberal suburbanites to Back-to-Africa primitivists to art school dickholes who believe charcoal paintings will save the world, we have more than enough maddeningly wild hatred for the various retardations, brain-farts, and dangling dingleberries of the left. For realsies.
Yet despite the American conservative's disdain for those irrelevant little things only homosexuals and socialists love, otherwise known as 'facts', we have evidence of "intellectual" ideas like certain social democratic policies having a positive impact on the none-to-impressive regular folks like us. Of course, Europe isn't perfect, but the social democracy/capitalist mixture sure seems to work well. And darn it, America's own social democratic experiments were working rather well until our owners saw fit to allow our manufacturing sector to move to Mumbai, gut the unions, and replace welfare cheese with Ronald Reagan's wrinkled ball sack.
As for the spike in crime Adams mentioned? Well, he's full of shit. Despite the unrest of the 60s and 70s, crime really spiked in the 80s and 90s, coinciding with a hefty rightward shift in America wherein Reagan, Bush the First, and liberal darling Bill Clinton told the working-class to go fuck itself.
And, oh yeah, crack.
Nobody likes to feel stupid. So yes, guys like Adams - who, being a professor and all, must have one fuck of an inferiority complex, that or he really hates the Humanities professor in the classroom nextdoor - will thrash about to debunk the "intellectuals" and their totally un-American ideas. Except we call them "intellectuals" for a reason. The reason? They're fucking smarter than the rest of us. America's hatred of "intellectuals" will, we hope, eventually come back to bite the flag-wavers in the ass. Because hell, how can you hate smart people then tell bucktoothed Red State progeny to do well in school?
"Study hard, son. But not too hard. Because then you'll be a liberal faggot."
If we run with the current "high" estimate of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico at about 60,000 barrels per day, and making a generous allowance for BP's partial containment at about 10,000 barrels per day...
Then a reasonable estimate of the total spill would be about 50,000 barrels per day, about 2,000,000 gallons, and in 87 days that adds up to about 174,000,000 gallons of oil.
Google's handy calculator of volumes reveals that 174,000,000 gallons is just about 660,000 cubic meters, and since 1 cubic meter of oil will cover 10,000 square meters to a depth of 0.1 millimeter...
We can now calculate that 660,000 cubic meters of oil can produce an oil slick which extends over 6,600,000,000 square meters.
The entire coastline of the United States is about 12,000 miles long, and since 6,600,000,000 square meters is about 2,500 square miles...
We can now calculate that 174,000,000 gallons of oil could cover the entire coastline of the United States for about 1000 feet inland from the tide-line.
The way that most people are ending up behind bar is ignoring a court summons. Collection agencies are feeling the pinch of the economy as well as most business across America, so in turn they are playing hard ball. If they are unsuccessful reaching you by telephone to attempt to settle the matter, they have the option to file suit against you. Once the suit is filed the court will request your appearance, but if you neglect to attend, a warrant may be issued for your arrest. In many cases people have remained behind bars until bail was made, which is often the amount they owed the collection company.
"The US government has ordered BP to report on a "detected seep" and other "anomalies" near the Gulf of Mexico oil well as experts monitor the seabed for cracks after the months-long gusher was capped.
"Given the current observations from the test, including the detected seep a distance from the well and undetermined anomalies at the well head, monitoring of the seabed is of paramount importance during the test period," Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said in a letter to BP chief managing director Bob Dudley."
In other words the cap they put on not only didn't work it forced the oil out of the damaged pipe line and now it has created new venues from which to flow below the sea bed and up to the surface and there is no way in hell they are ever going to stop it now.
But it won't be reported like that. Maybe in two years. Not for a long time. You will be hearing only about the next gimmick to stop the oil.
Murder is a method of using Bittorrent to distribute files to a large amount of servers within a production environment. This allows for scaleable and fast deploys in environments of hundreds to tens of thousands of servers where centralized distribution systems wouldn't otherwise function. A "Murder" is normally used to refer to a flock of crows, which in this case applies to a bunch of servers doing something.
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