Category: Stupid

Stupid

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So, the crew of the HMS Scimitar decided to do target practice on a buoy, which should be no big deal, only before opening fire, they adorned their target the Spanish Flag, and the ambassador to Spain has been forced to apologize:

The Royal Navy was accused yesterday of using a Spanish flag as a machine-gun target.

Giles Paxman, the UK’s new ambassador in Madrid, was forced to apologise after sailors fired at a red-and-yellow flag affixed to a buoy while patrolling off Gibraltar.

He was summoned to the Spanish Foreign Ministry for a dressing down and officials said he had conceded there had been an ‘error of judgement’.

I’m not entirely sure why the crew did this, it was not for any historical purposes, as the anniversary of the battle of the Spanish Armada was August 8.

My guess is that this has something to do with the 300 year long dispute over Gibraltar, but even so, I think that one ship captain is facing early retirement in Her Majesty’s Navy.

The Crazy Will Not End

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A 52% Of Republicans believe that ACORN stole the election for Barack Obama in 2008.

This is not going to end well. These people are even stronger than the folks who claimed that Ross Perot stole the election for Clinton in 1992.

One needs to understand the difference between the opposition and the enemy, and understand that you cannot negotiate with the former.

Unfortunately, you can count the former in without running out of fingers.

This is What You Get When You Go For Bipartisanship

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Not only were there bogus tax cuts in the unemployment extension, in order to pick up a few Republican votes, it now appears that the extended benefits will expire at year’s end, because they were paying attention to the end of the year when they passed this bill just 2 weeks ago.

If the Republicans want to stop a bill like this, one that has a huge majority supporting it, they should be made to express their opposition on the floor. Spending a few months cajoling them is counter productive.

Is Pop Musician Bryan Adams Being Investigated For His Involvement in a Child Prostitution Ring?

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Of course not. The only crime of Bryan Adams is that he makes crappy music. From a quick look at the Wiki, it appears that he does charity, though I think that his support of PETA is misguided, and so I have no hostility to him, though if one of his song’s comes on, I will change the station.

In perusing his Wiki page, I also discovered that he also does photography, and appears to be pretty good at this, having won some awards.

So, why do I post this? Because Lindsay Beyerstein, aka Majikthise, had a post on the Runners’ World photos of Sarah Palin that ended up in Newsweek, and in her initial post, she named listed the prographer of record as Bryan Adams, when the photographer was actually Brian Adams.

It’s not surprising that she got a complaint from Mr. Adams’ representatives, after all that’s their job, but their threats were over the top:

Maybe Palin didn’t realize that the photographer, Brian Adams, was depicting her this way. If so, he totally fucked her over. But I think she was on board with the concept. If Palin had assailed Runner’s World for making fun of her, I might now take her complaint about Newsweek seriously. She liked the Runner’s World spread, though. She thought it was appropriate. [NB: In an earlier version of this post, I misspelled Brian Adams’ name “Bryan Adams.” Today, I got an email from a firm called Web Sheriff telling me that they’d take legal action if I didn’t apologize to the rock star Bryan Adams and ACI for any injury I might have caused to his reputation. So, I sincerely apologize to Bryan Adams. I wouldn’t want my name associated with these ridiculous pictures either.]

(emphasis original)

Take legal action? What the f$#@ is wrong with these folks?

Needless to say, when folks like this (Web Sheriff, not Mr. Adams) engage in dick swinging like this, they deserve all the satire that they receive.

As to Mr. Adams, I would suggest that you retain someone with a clue to protect your reputation on line, though the best way to improve your reputation would be to stop making record albums.

BTW, it appears that Web Sheriff is a British firm, and Britain’s nutzo libel laws might very well be behind WS’s attitude.

They Can’t Even Get Arrested in This Town

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I am referring, of course to the group of Christo-Fascist bigot whack-doodles who call themselves that Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, who protested the expansion to the hate crimes law outside Department of Justice headquarters.

It turns out that the law requires, that one explicitly plan, or actively incite violence against a protected group, so they could not get themselves arrested, though they did attract counter protesters, who quickly owned them:

No hands were cuffed. In fact, the few cops in attendance were paying no attention to the speakers, instead talking among themselves and checking their BlackBerrys.

The evangelical activists had been hoping to provoke arrest, because, as organizer Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission put it, “we’d have standing to challenge the law.” But their prayers were not answered. Nobody was arrested, which wasn’t surprising: To run afoul of the new law, you need to “plan or prepare for an act of physical violence” or “incite an imminent act of physical violence.”

Instead of getting arrested, the ministers got something else: A couple of dozen gay activists, surrounding them with rainbow flags and signs announcing “Gaga for Gay Rights” and “I Am a Love Warrior.” By the end, the gay rights activists had taken over the lectern and the sound system and were holding their own news conference denouncing the ministers.

The kicker to all this:

Cass turned angrily to the AV guy. “We’re not on the clock, are we?” He turned with equal anger to Valk. “You guys gonna help us pay for the microphones?”

The gay activist smiled. “God,” he said, “works in mysterious ways.”

In this case, God took the form of Chuck Fazio, from DC Podiums. Fazio was hired by the religious conservatives to provide the sound system for the event, but upon learning of their cause, he decided to donate his proceeds to the gay rights activists and to give them a chance at the microphone before shutting down the amplifiers. “I don’t want bad karma,” he explained, noting with some pride that the lectern they were using was the same one used by Borat on a recent Washington visit.

(emphasis mine)

Heh.

Texas May Have Outlawed Straight Marriage

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Barbara Ann Radnofsky, Democratic candidate for Texas Attorney General, gave a speech in which she said that the 2005 amendment to the Texas State Constitution bans all forms of marriage:

The amendment, approved by the Legislature and overwhelmingly ratified by voters, declares that “marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.” But the troublemaking phrase, as Radnofsky sees it, is Subsection B, which declares:

“This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.”

Architects of the amendment included the clause to ban same-sex civil unions and domestic partnerships. But Radnofsky, who was a member of the powerhouse Vinson & Elkins law firm in Houston for 27 years until retiring in 2006, says the wording of Subsection B effectively “eliminates marriage in Texas,” including common-law marriages.

A strict reading of the law does seem to indicate that this is true, since marriage is a, “Legal status identical or similar to marriage,” it appears that marriage is illegal in Texas.

Oopsie.

The late, and much missed, Molly Ivins used to say that Texas was, “Mississippi with good roads,” but not it appears that it appears that Texas is “Mississippi with good roads, and no brains.”

Well, at least they are safe from zombie hordes.

When They Ask You Money for a Stadium

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Remember the Silverdome, in Pontiac Michigan, which cost $55.7 million to build, and was just sold for $583,000.00, not much more than a nice house.

Not a bad deal, when you realize that it also includes a sizable lot as well:

As a result, Leeb said, Pontiac could ill afford to continue paying $1.5 million in annual upkeep for the stadium. With a private owner, the property “will go back on the tax rolls,” he explained.

The 80,000-seat Silverdome was the biggest stadium in the National Football League when it was built in 1975 for $55.7 million [about $220 million in 2009 dollars]. The stadium, which sits on a 127-acre plot, is also the former home of the National Basketball Association’s Detroit Pistons.

Something should be done about the legalized extortion that pro sports franchises engage in, but I don’t expect to see this in my lifetime.

Just When I Thought That Bush and His Evil Minions™; Could Not Be Any Worse….

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I find out that the Bush appointees in the Veteran’s Administration went all out in an attempt to deny care to soldiers suffering from PTSD.

The reason that they gave was because they believed that it was an indicator of insufficient patriotism and faith in God, but there is also a more sinister, and self-serving calculus here (at bottom), one that would have Richard Dawkins maintaining that these folks would be damned for all eternity:

During the Iraq war, however, the great difficulty veterans experienced in getting psychiatric care—greater than before—was not a product of cost-cutting, but of conviction: many Bush administration officials believed that soldiers who supported the war would not face psychological problems, and if they did, they would find comfort in faith. In a resigned tone, one prominent researcher who worked for the VA, and asked that he not be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press, explained that high-ranking officials believed that “Jesus fixes everything.” Benimoff and the others who returned with devastating psychological injuries found a faith-based bureau within the VA. At veterans’ hospitals, chaplains were conducting spirituality assessments of patients.

Sullivan was working as an analyst at the Veterans Benefits Administration in Washington in early 2005 when he was called to a meeting with a top political appointee at the VA, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Michael McLendon. McLendon, an intensely focused man in a neatly pressed suit, kept a Bible on his desk at the office. Sullivan explained to McLendon and the other attendees that the rise in benefits claims the VA was noticing was caused partly by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who were suffering from PTSD. “That’s too many,” McLendon said, then hit his hand on the table. “They are too young” to be filing claims, and they are doing it “too soon.” He hit the table again. The claims, he said, are “costing us too much money,” and if the veterans “believed in God and country . . . they would not come home with PTSD.” At that point, he slammed his palm against the table a final time, making a loud smack. Everyone in the room fell silent.

“I was a little bit surprised,” Sullivan said, recalling the incident. “In that one comment, he appeared to be a religious fundamentalist.” [Appeared to be? Is a religious nutcase] For Sullivan, McLendon’s remarks reflected the views of many political appointees in the VA and revealed what was behind their efforts to reduce costs by restricting claims. The backlog of claims was immense, and veterans, often suffering extreme psychological stress, had to wait an average of five months for decisions on their requests.

….

When a 2006 Government Accountability Office report raised questions about whether soldiers were getting the psychiatric help they needed, an assistant secretary of defense disputed the report’s findings, pointing to the fact that soldiers were being referred to chaplains. During this time contracts for veterans’ services were increasingly parceled out to leaders of faith-based organizations rather than to secular ones, even though veterans’ advocates opposed any bias toward faith-based treatment and argued that replacing empirically proven, nonsectarian programs with faith-based ones was a mistake.

(emphasis mine)

We have to realize that there was more to this though, than just penny pinching, or a wish to rely on the the great “Sky God”, this is also all about patronage.

The Bush administration used its “faith based initiative” as a patronage and pork-barrel program, and every dollar that they diverted to their Evangelical Christo-Fascist allies was a dollar that could be used by these folks to politically support the Republican Party.

Bad News for the Cyberterrorism Protection Racket

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A while back This Sunday, 60 Minutes did a piece on how hackers created a massive blackout in Brazil.

Only it wasn’t any sort of computer problem, it was poorly maintained power lines, where soot (carbon is conductive) created short circuits which took down the line:

Brazil’s independent systems operator group later confirmed that the failure of a 345-kilovolt line “was provoked by pollution in the chain of insulators due to deposits of soot” (.pdf). And the National Agency for Electric Energy, Brazil’s energy regulatory agency, concluded its own investigation in January 2009 and fined Furnas $3.27 million (.pdf) for failing to maintain the high-voltage insulators on its transmission towers.

Also look at their additional links:

So, as it stands right now, the only people claiming this have no proof, but are likely to get contracts, if they are private, or additional government money, if they are public.

The issue here is the vulnerability of the grid, see the 2003 blackout, and the problem is that since privatizing electric utilities, they have skimped on infrastructure, leaving no margin for error.

Journamalism

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Greg Sandoval at CNET writes about Rupert Murdoch’s latest whining about how “the Google” is stealing from his media empire, and decides, once Google issues a response, to edit the article to add two paragraphs at the end, quoting Google:

Publishers put their content on the Web because they want it to be found. Very few choose not to include their material in Google News and Web search. But if they tell us not to include it, we don’t.

In leaving this a he said/she said argument, Mr. Sandoval is being dishonest.

Unlike Murdoch, whose statements (earlier post) might be an artifact of his being an ignorant old fart who might not understand the following:

All they have to do is go to the Web site’s robots.txt file and type this:

User-agent: Googlebot

Disallow: /

Mr. Sandoval works for a news organization dedicated to covering the tech beat.

At a minimum, he has an obligation to report that Murdoch does not know what he is talking about, though it should be noted that these comments are coming from all levels at Newscorp, and so a real journalist would show that it is clear that Murdoch is looking for is a legislative framework to both force Google (and search engines generally) to both carry his content, and pay to fulfill this requirement.

In relegating this to the final two paragraphs under “Google responds”, he somehow implies that there is a real issue here, as opposed to the truth, that Murdoch and Newscorp are basically Astroturfing for must carry/must pay legislation.

Someone Needs a Serious Chill Pill

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That explains, why my sandals go from 0-60 in 5.2 Seconds

Porsche makes a $50,000+ sports car it calls the Cayman.

Crocs, the makers of the ugly sandals, makes a pair of ugly sandals called the Cayman.

For what it’s worth, Porsche has sued Crocs the name, claiming violation of trademark.

Honestly, I think that Crocs have a better claim to the name, given that the Caymans (the reptile is a caiman) are an island where one walks on the beach, but that’s irrelevant.

The real question is whether there is any possibility of confusion between a 2,954 lb sports car, and a 5 oz shoe.

The purpose of a trademark is not to give a company exclusive use of a name, but to avoid consumer confusion, and as best as I can tell the shoes predate the car anyway (see comments here), which would strongly imply that Crocs has the advantage such as it is.

In any case, Porsche got an injunction against the shoes in Germany, but Germany has weird IP law.*

*This is what got us that Mercedes ad where they say that they have a patent on crumple zones, but “Never enforced the Patent”. They never enforced the patent, because it is not recognized anywhere else in the world.†

†I believe Germany changed their patent laws at some point in the 1970s.‡

‡I offer the caveat that these comments in the footnotes regarding the Mercedes patent are recollections of a conversation over a decade ago vague 20+ year old memories though, so YMMV, though a Google search does have people who recall the ad.

How Utterly Appropriate

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Remember Carrie Prejean?

She is a former Miss California, who whined that she was “discriminated against for her religious beliefs, because she didn’t become Miss America after declaring her opposition to same sex marriage.

Well, after that, she became a right wing cause célèbre, and started hitting the right wing talk show circuit, and ignoring her duties, and appointments, as Miss California….I think it involves waving and smiling….So, despite an intervention by Donald Trump,* she was fired for…you know….Not showing up to work.

So, she sued, and then a few bikini modeling pics of her showed up, and then she dropped the suit, because, “the lawyer for the Pageant showed Carrie an XXX home video of her handiwork.”

I have been unable to find any details, but the wags at TMZ, who have apparrently seen this bit of cinéma vérité, but decided that it was inappropriate for them to release, have seen the film:

The video the lawyer showed Carrie is extremely graphic and has never been released publicly. We know that, because TMZ obtained the video months ago but decided not to post it because it was so racy. Let’s just say, Carrie has a promising solo career.

Seriously, what is it with conservatives?

They make Gene Simmons look like Mother Theresa.

*When Donald Trump has to do an intervention, you are in a really strange place.

Stay classy, Rush

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Yeah, Rush Limbaugh is now saying that former Republican candidate in New York’s 23rd district has, committed bestiality by endorsing the Democrat in the race.

Seriously, when one inventories the number of times that Limbaugh uses a sexual metaphor to describe someone that he does not like is striking.

I’m thinking that Mr. Limbaugh has issues, but then, that has been a likely ever since he returned from the Dominican Republican with a bunch of Viagra®.

Those Stupid Bastards Took the “Teabagger” Sexual Innuendo, and Set the Dial to 11

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Ooh, baby, you are so talented! And they are so dumb!

Yep, a group of wing-nuts* have created a website dedicated to fighting Acorn and the Working Families Party up in New York State.

So he/they got a domain, and chose a name for the movement:

Great googly moogly, this is stupid.

H/t Some Guy With a Website

*Or maybe just 1, there isn’t a whole bunch of traffic or posts there, it just consists of reposts of New York Post articles.

These have Epic Fail Written All Over Them

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In order to deal with budget issues, Mayor Daley of Chicago is considering selling its water system to private operators, and allowing them to charge whatever they want.

So he gets the money, and succeeding generations get the revenue loss and more expensive water.

Also, the state that has so many bad ideas that it gave us both Barry Goldwater and John McCain is looking to turn over operation of their prisons to a private firm.

This one is a little different though, because private prisons have already been tried, and failed, with some of the institutions going so far as to bribe judges to send children to them for minor crimes.

This will not end well.