Violent protests to stop...a passenger ferry!

The environmentalist nutjobs are at it again. Check this out, from Hawaii Reporter:

Capt. Vince Atkins, U.S. Coast Guard Captain of the Port in Honolulu, made a stunning announcement on Tuesday, Aug. 28. He acknowledged that the federal law enforcement agency charged with protecting American ports will back down from an estimated 150 protesters currently holding Kauai’s state Nawiliwili Harbor hostage.

The protesters, not all from Kauai, are camped out in the state’s main island harbor to prevent the private inter-island Hawaii Superferry from landing there. An $85 million privately funded passenger vessel built to shuttle local families and business owners with their automobiles and fresh produce between Oahu and Kauai and Oahu and Maui, launched for the first time Sunday night with a sea of happy passengers on board. But when the Hawaii Superferry arrived in Kauai three hours later on schedule, protesters used thuggish tactics to scare the passengers as they disembarked by yelling and threatening their physical safety, all with dozens of children present. About 15 protesters on kayaks, surfboards and canoes surrounded the Hawaii Superferry as it entered the harbor to keep it from moving forward.

As Superferry officials unloaded the passengers’ automobiles Sunday, dozens of protesters turned even more violent, attacking the vehicles by pounding on the windows, letting air out of tires, and denting the cars where they could before they were interrupted by county police and state law enforcement. That night, 9 people including 4 children were taken into police custody and charged with misdemeanor offenses from disorderly conduct to trespassing.

These disruptors didn’t just threaten other Hawaii families. Monday night, when the Hawaii Superferry attempted its second-ever landing on Kauai, protesters raised the stakes by using their own children as human barricades, encouraging their youngsters to paddle surfboards in front of the Superferry as it moved into the harbor. State officials say protesters reportedly threatened to toss their children from the pier into the Superferry’s path if the vessel wasn’t stopped. Coast Guard officials mounted on small boats unsuccessfully chased after 50 or so protesters who darted quickly from their reach via various watercrafts. The conflict quickly descended into lawlessness, as county, state and federal law enforcement were unable to bring calm to the chaos either on land or in the harbor waters.

Instead of ensuring the ferry’s safe passage, U.S. Coast Guard officials and the Superferry captain gave in late Monday night. Protesters let out resounding cheers of victory as the ship departed hours later without letting passengers off.

2nd anniversary of Katrina looting

Today we mark the second anniversary of the devastation wrought by poor people as they looted New Orleans. The liberal press spent the first three days telling us the looters were stealing bottled water and canned food because George Bush wouldn't give them any. After a few days, the libs couldn't ignore reality: nearly all of the images showed that the looters were after sports apparel, TVs, and firearms.

Greyhound tickets that would have taken people away from the projected hurricane impact area were selling for $14 each. Mayor Ray Nagin warned everyone to get out well before the storm struck.






My posts on Katrina: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Nicolas Sarkozy: a Frenchman with backbone?

From Ynetnews:

In his first major foreign policy speech, French president says diplomatic push by world's powers to rein in Tehran's nuclear program is only alternative to 'Iranian bomb or bombing of Iran'.

Gore criticizes Bush for ignoring Iraq's ties to terrorism

This is how all Democrat leaders felt prior to the war. Whether you look at Hillary Clinton's pre-war speeches, or that of John Kerry, or Ted Kennedy, or Bill Clinton, or the rest -- they all spoke of a dangerous tyrant in Iraq who presented "a grave threat to the United States of America" who has WMD and was actively working on getting more, and who had connections to terrorism.

Now the lefties say Bush is a bad guy because he made war on the tyrant in question. People who are against the Iraq War are A) classic cowards, B) stupid, C) possessing a memory so selective it can only be described as deviant, or D) all of the above.

Environmentalist nutjobs stop Hawaii's first ferry service

The good news is that Hawaii's first passenger ferry service is set to begin, from AP. The bad news: because the new service isn't going to plant any trees or save a small clan of endangered lice, environmentalist nutjobs are fighting to stop it. Surprised?

Environmental groups sought court intervention Monday to ground the first passenger-vehicle ferry service among the Hawaiian Islands.

The groups submitted a motion for a preliminary injunction and requested a temporary restraining order to halt the Hawaii Superferry from using Maui's Kahului harbor until an environmental assessment is conducted.

The Superferry made two sold-out trips Sunday, two days ahead of schedule, after the state Supreme Court ruled last week that the state should have required an environmental assessment before the ferry launched. State transportation officials, noting that the court didn't explicitly say the ship couldn't run, allowed the service to start.

An attorney representing three environmental groups, Isaac Hall, said state law clearly says that a project cannot be launched and state land cannot be used until an environmental assessment is being prepared.

"I'm hoping the judge will agree with us," Hall said. "I don't think operating for one day or two days in absolute bad faith should give anybody a leg up at all."

Any fish that might be swimming near the surface of the ocean along the new ferry's path would have to swim out of the way. We wouldn't want any herring to be inconvenienced now, would we? The horror!

Nouri Maliki unhappy with U.S.

Iraq's PM is not pleased with US comments about his government. BBC:

Iraq's PM Nouri Maliki has rejected US criticism of his administration, saying "no-one has the right to place timetables" on its performance.

Mr Maliki blamed the US presidential election campaign for many of the "discourteous" comments.

He's more or less right. Who has the right to place timetables on another sovereign government? Still, the man is deluding himself if he believes his government is anything other than a miserable failure.

History Channel and 9/11 conspiracies

I just finished watching The History Channel's documentary, The 9/11 Conspiracies: Fact or Fiction. It's basically a video version of the Popular Mechanics article that first debunked the idiotic Truther movement. I highly recommend it.

One woman interviewed had "directed" a 9/11 conspiracy film. She had the same deer-in-the-headlights stare in her eyes, along with the not-quite-sane voice, as Cindy Sheehan. The people behind Loose Change are just kids, albeit kids who choose not to think. Case in point: jet fuel burns at a lower temperature than the melting point of steel, so therefore a fire of jet fuel could not have caused the towers to collapse. One doesn't need Popular Mechanics or The History Channel to explain what happened there. Steel doesn't need to melt in order to fail. Another amusing one is the fact that the government didn't release any pictures of the plane hitting the Pentagon for a long time. Truthers say this is evidence of a gubment coverup. Are they pretending not to know who Zacarias Moussaoui is?

Nearly all of the Truther arguments can be dismissed out of hand with less than five minutes of Google searching. For instance, the Loose Change kids and other weirdos claim that the cell phone calls made from the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, including the famous one from Todd Beamer (let's roll), were faked. Their reasoning is that the plane went as high as 40k feet, when cell phone coverage in 2001 didn't reach that high. Truth: cell phone coverage reached to 50k feet in 2001, and besides, out of more than 30 cell calls placed from the doomed plane, only two were from personal cell phones. The rest were from the AT&T in-flight cell system.

It's absurd that anyone thinks our own government murdered thousands of innocent civilians on 9/11. I take offense at the concept. Now, consider how many thousands of people would have to be in on the conspiracy, and you begin to realize how dumb these Truthers are.

Global Warming Swindle: the underlying goal

Karl Marx would have loved the UN and "climate change"

Global warming Climate change is just the latest attempt by socialists to thwart capitalism and industrialization. A BBC story about the UN and climate change hints at this agenda:

Rich nations should be absolved from the need to cut emissions if they pay developing countries to do it on their behalf, a senior UN official has said.

Instead of extorting money from rich countries and giving it directly to poor countries -- a goal of socialism -- a complex carbon scheme is being devised.

Researching 'transgender' issues invites scorn -- if not in line with socialist agenda

Universities are liberal havens (or covens, if you prefer) that claim to be open places of learning and speech. But deviate from the current socialist line, and you're portrayed as a devil, shouted down, and, in some cases, fired. NY Times:

The central figure, J. Michael Bailey, a psychologist at Northwestern University, has promoted a theory that his critics think is inaccurate, insulting and potentially damaging to transgender women. In the past few years, several prominent academics who are transgender have made a series of accusations against the psychologist, including that he committed ethics violations. A transgender woman he wrote about has accused him of a sexual impropriety, and Dr. Bailey has become a reviled figure for some in the gay and transgender communities.

To many of Dr. Bailey’s peers, his story is a morality play about the corrosive effects of political correctness on academic freedom. Some scientists say that it has become increasingly treacherous to discuss politically sensitive issues. They point to several recent cases, like that of Helmuth Nyborg, a Danish researcher who was fired in 2006 after he caused a furor in the press by reporting a slight difference in average I.Q. test scores between the sexes.

The cause of the furor? Transgender freaks, of course:

In his book, he argued that some people born male who want to cross genders are driven primarily by an erotic fascination with themselves as women. This idea runs counter to the belief, held by many men who decide to live as women, that they are the victims of a biological mistake — in essence, women trapped in men’s bodies. Dr. Bailey described the alternate theory, which is based on Canadian studies done in the 1980s and 1990s, in part by telling the stories of several transgender women he met through a mutual acquaintance. In the book, he gave them pseudonyms, like “Alma” and “Juanita.”

After numerous allegations and charges from the "transgender" community, here is the clearing of the researcher/author's name:

“What happened to Bailey is important, because the harassment was so extraordinarily bad and because it could happen to any researcher in the field,” said Alice Dreger, an ethics scholar and patients’ rights advocate at Northwestern who, after conducting a lengthy investigation of Dr. Bailey’s actions, has concluded that he is essentially blameless. “If we’re going to have research at all, then we’re going to have people saying unpopular things, and if this is what happens to them, then we’ve got problems not only for science but free expression itself.”

This stuff is almost identical to global waming climate change:

One collaborator broke with Dr. Bailey over the controversy, Dr. Bailey said. Others who remained loyal said doing so had a cost: two researchers said they were advised by a government grant officer that they should distance themselves from Dr. Bailey to improve their chances of receiving financing.

Michael Vick, dogs, and wives

Everywhere I turn I'm hearing about Michael Vick's pending guilty plea to dog fighting and related charges. And everywhere the story pops up, people are talking about how strange it is that so much attention is being given to somebody who allegedly fights and kills dogs, when much less attention is given to battered wives. CNN's legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin, called this reporting phenomenon a "sad thing."

There's nothing strange or "sad" about it, because a wife can do the following things, but a dog cannot:

1. Leave. (Anyone pity a woman beaten twice by the same man?)

2. Hire a lawyer.

3. Buy mace or a gun and take down the tormentor.

4. Call a brother or uncle to knock the man around.

5. Invoke rights enshrined in the constitution.

6. Call the police.

The Orlando Sentinel's editors showed they don't understand the difference between dogs and women when they published this:

Now that Michael Vick has agreed to plead guilty to federal charges relating to charges involving a dogfighting ring, a little perspective is in order.

Most everyone, it seems, bleeds sympathy for poochies and puppies. But what about battered wives and girlfriends? The NFL and other pro sports have a notorious history of hand-slapping athletes who have delivered blows to loved ones with excessive force. Why isn’t there greater outrage for battered women?

Criminal alien learns about justice

The criminal who was hiding in a Chicago church ventured to California, where she was arrested. LA Times:

Elvira Arellano, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who became a symbol in the nation's immigration wars after she took sanctuary in a Chicago church last year, was arrested Sunday by federal immigration agents outside Our Lady Queen of Angels Church in Los Angeles.

Arellano, 32, a single mother, moved into a Chicago church a year ago to prevent being separated from her 8-year-old U.S.-born son.

She was arrested Sunday afternoon as she was leaving the downtown Los Angeles church also known as La Placita with her son and a supporter.

Supporters said the car in which Arellano was riding was surrounded by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who took her into custody.

The agency did not say where she was being held but did confirm that Arellano would be deported to Mexico.

It takes a lot of gall to break laws and then demand that those laws be changed so you can go free. Good riddance to this woman.

Putin resumes Russian bomber flights

ABC Australia:

Russia will immediately resume long-range strategic bomber flights on a "permanent" basis, ending its 15-year suspension of such missions, President Vladimir Putin said.

"We have decided to renew flights of Russian strategic aviation on a permanent basis," Mr Putin said after he and Chinese President Hu Jintao attended large-scale joint military exercises near this town in the Urals region.

The flights would resume from Saturday, Mr Putin said.

The announcement came days after Moscow said its strategic bombers had begun exercises over the North Pole, and just a week after Russian planes flew within a few hundred kilometres of a US military base on the island of Guam.

"Russia unilaterally stopped flights of its strategic aviation in distant areas of military action. Unfortunately, not everyone followed our example," he said, in an apparent reference to the United States.

I know how he can pay for the flights...

Iranian 'cleric' threatens US

Poor, weak Iran. Always getting upset about something. Last year it was the movie 300. This time a "cleric" has warned the US about calling its precious Revolutionary Guard terrorists. Reuters:

A senior Iranian cleric said on Friday that plans by the United States to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist group invited a fight with the Iranian nation which America could not win.

"Americans should know that in this field, as with nuclear energy, they are dealing with the whole nation. And the great nation of Iran will never abandon its revolutionary people," Ahmad Khatami told worshippers at Friday prayers in Tehran.

"Americans should know that if they act madly in this regard, they would be entering a swamp they won't be able to get out of," the conservative cleric said in a speech that was broadcast live on the radio.

Actually, we've learned how to fight Middle East countries: bomb the hell out of them and leave. They're not interested in democracy, and they can't beat us in battle. The next war will be an exercise in JDAM technology and stealth aircraft, and little else.

The death of Wikipedia

LGF learned of a Reddit page set up to track some of the WikiScanner findings. Goodbye to a failed experiment. I could have predicted all of this long ago. Wait! I did! And so did millions of other people who saw Wikipedia for what it is.

Highlights from the Reddit page:

Scientology is removing lots of criticism

A UN computer was used to call Oriana Falacci a "racist whore" (which she is)

An Al Jazeera computer was used to say that the founding of Israel was as bad as the holocaust

Lots of tasteless stuff from Apple employees

Scores of stuff from NY Times, all attacking Bush and Republicans

The Guardian slams The Times (I hate The Guardian for its support of terrorism)

A BBC computer was used to change George Walker Bush to George Wanker Bush

A Reuters computer was used to call Bush a mass murderer

Fox News criticized Al Franken

Monsanto IP adds to Michael Moore criticism

CBS IP wanted everyone to know that a well known CNN newsman "cast aside his birth name of Irving Federman and adopted the on-air personna of Wolf Blitzer"

BBC IP changes "terrorist" to "freedom fighter"

Prima donna has-been scores a goal

Beckham, who earns $15,000 per minute to run around, has finally scored a goal for the LA Galaxy. ESPN story here.

Staggering jaw-dropper from Barack Hussein Obama

Hussein has said that not all of America's problems are Bush's fault. What????? This has been the bread and butter of all socialists since Bush was first elected. The hardleft will not like Hussein much after this. AP:

Not all the nation's ills can be blamed on President Bush, Democratic candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday as he called on Americans to change the nature of politics and institute more openness in government.

"Part of the problem here is not just George Bush and the White House," Obama told a crowd of hundreds gathered at a park in Cedar Falls. "We can't just change political parties and continue to do the same kind of things we've been doing. We can't just go about business as usual and think it's going to turn out differently."

Hussein doesn't even believe this. This is the party and ideology that blamed Bush for a goddamned hurricane -- not just the FEMA response, they actually blamed him for the storm. The Democratic base is going to break with Hussein.

New chapter in the Great Climate Swindle

NASA re-checked the math and, whaddya know?, the sky isn't falling. Listen up, socialists. From The Toronto Star:

In the United States, the calendar year 1998 ranked as the hottest of them all – until someone checked the math.

After a Toronto skeptic tipped NASA this month to one flaw in its climate calculations, the U.S. agency ordered a full data review.

Days later, it put out a revised list of all-time hottest years. The Dust Bowl year of 1934 now ranks as hottest ever in the U.S. – not 1998.

More significantly, the agency reduced the mean U.S. "temperature anomalies" for the years 2000 to 2006 by 0.15 degrees Celsius.

Kia Vaughn is a worthless b****

Don Imus is being sued by Kia Vaughn, a Rutgers University basketball player who was apparently named for a Korean car manufacturer. The team -- collectively -- accepted Imus's apology! ABC:

"This is a lawsuit in order to restore the good name and reputation of my client, Kia Vaughn," said her attorney, Richard Ancowitz, in an exclusive interview with the ABC News Law & Justice Unit.

The suit names Imus individually, but it is also waged against MSNBC, NBC Universal, CBS Radio, CBS Corp., Viacom Inc., Westwood One Radio and Imus producer Bernard McGuirk.

Today's suit refers to terms used by Imus April 4 -- including referring to women on the team as "nappy headed" -- as "debasing, demeaning, humiliating, and denigrating" to Vaughn and her fellow players. "There's no way these bigoted remarks should have seen the light of day," Ancowitz told ABC News.

"Kia" is a wench looking to make a buck off a rich man. What scum. Imus should offshore his assets immediately, and then tell the bitch to go to hell. I wish somebody would call me a nappy-headed ho so I could cash in.

Socialists hijacking Wikipedia

A few years ago everyone was excited about what people call "social" sites. These are for-the-people, by-the-people sites like Wikipedia, Digg, and others. Because the Great Unwashed control the content of social sites, they're almost entirely garbage. Digg and Reddit were hijacked by socialists suffering acute BDS, while sites like Wikipedia are vandalized routinely with false information.

Recently, LGF and a number of other blogs have been using an IP tool called WikiScanner in conjunction with Wikipedia. This allows a user to input the name of an organization and find Wikipedia edits from those organizations.

1. A New York Times IP edited the Bush entry with "jerk jerk jerk jerk jerk". (more info)

2. Another New York Times IP edited the Tom DeLay entry, calling him "a Grand Dragon of the Republican Party." (more info)

3. Still another New York Times IP has changed the WSJ entry. (more info)

4. A Democratic Party IP messed with the Rush Limbaugh entry. (more info)

Getting information from the internet is no different than getting it from a book or magazine: if the info isn't presented by credible sources, then peer reviewed, it cannot be trusted. Some day this may actually dawn on the Great Unwashed.

Links
Wired magazine article about man who created WikiScanner

The myth of espresso

File this under: why won't this go away? People think espresso and automatically think about loads of caffeine. Case in point is a new article at Britain's Daily Mail newspaper:

A teenage waitress overdosed on caffeine after drinking 14 shots of espresso.

Jasmine Willis, 17, could hardly breathe and was taken to hospital with a high temperature and heart palpitations.

She had drunk almost three times the recommended daily amount of caffeine in just four hours.

The article doesn't specifically mention espresso as being stronger than coffee, but the underlying tone is there. I'm glad the article said she OD'd on coffee instead of espresso.

The girl had 14 shots of espresso, which sounds like a lot, but it's really only about 7 cups of brewed coffee, in four hours. One shot of espresso has about half the caffeine of ordinary, brewed coffee. I do this routinely, with no ill affects. The girl's physiology is responsible, not the big, bad espresso.

I constantly hear people say they got a great pick-me-up after drinking a shot of espresso. Nobody gets a pickup after a half cup of 7/11 coffee, and that's about the same amount of stimulant. When I need a pickup, I order four shots of espresso and drink them within two minutes. That wakens me up a little, but it's not a screamer. People who claim one shot does them either weigh 70 lbs. or they're lying (or maybe it's a placebo effect).

Sources:
December 2005 issue of National Geographic (not available online; I'm a subscriber)
NPR
Faqs.org (see section 1.1)

City of San Francisco battles Michael Savage

The basics: A group of illegal aliens conducted a hunger strike as a stunt to draw attention to their desire for amnesty. When Savage heard about it, he suggested we let them starve to death. To the City of San Francisco, the country's most liberal haven, that constitutes hatred.

SF has now officially condemned Savage (PDF document). From the resolution: "...the Board of Supervisors condemns Michael Savage's comments against the immigrant community..."

Note their wording, "immigrant community". I listen to Savage often enough to know that he's not against the immigrant community. He's against illegal aliens. San Francisco, along with most liberals, choose not to make this distinction.

Links:
WND
CanadaFreepress
SF resolution
Michael Savage

Python eats alligator, explodes

BBC story here.

Claiming the North Pole

First the Russians, then the Canadians, and now the Danes are planning to plant a flag under the North Pole. Morons.

Keep the UN out of Iraq

The UN Security Council has voted for an expanded UN role in Iraq. Mistake. Mistake. Mistake. The UN has messed up everything it has been involved in. From Oil-for-Palaces to multiple instances of UN "peacekeepers" committing rape on a helpless, local population, expanding the UN role in Iraq would be a huge mistake. BBC:

The UN Security Council has unanimously approved a US-British resolution calling for a greater UN role in Iraq.

The UN withdrew most of its staff in 2003 after a bomb attack on its Baghdad headquarters killed its top envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and 21 others.

'Climate change': Shhh! Don't tell liberals

A fascinating story from LiveScience details the discovery of an 8000-year-old human settlement under the English Channel. The area was dry before and during the last Ice Age.

As the climate began to warm up near the end of the Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, people were moving into Northern Europe and settling down in the many river valleys left behind by melting glaciers, Momber explained. Many of the valleys, such as the ones now beneath the English Channel, were eventually inundated completely when temperatures returned to normal.

"A good chunk of the material left behind from this cultural period is eventually going to be found underwater," Momber said.

Uh, oh. Will liberals acknowledge that the Earth warms and cools, massively, without human involvement? Probably not.

Liberal media failing in their quest

The overwhelming majority of mainstream media reporters are Democrats. Many surveys have proved this over the years. Here's how America feels about that, according to a new Pew Research poll, from AFP:

More than two-thirds of the Internet users said they felt that news organizations don't care about the people they report on; 59 percent said their reporting was inaccurate; and 64 percent said they were politically biased.

More than half -- 53 percent -- of Internet users also faulted the news organizations for "failing to stand up for America".

This reminds me of the CNN program News Night with Aaron Brown. From the moment we invaded Iraq to remove a genocidal tyrant, good ole Aaron was telling us how awful and sad the war was. Same with Paula Zahn. I'm glad both of these anti-war activists were eventually sacked.

Giving atheists a bad name

Idiot couple in Texas sue a school and the governor over a moment of silence in schools. Fox News:

A Texas family is suing Gov. Rick Perry and a school district over a state-mandated moment of silence in schools, according to The Dallas Morning News.

David Wallace Croft and his wife, Shannon, of Carrollton, Texas, have three children at Rosemeade Elementary and argue that the moment of silence is unconstitutional and amounts to state-sanctioned school prayer.

The couple has a history of complaints against religious affiliated words and images in schools, having previously complained about Boy Scout rallies held during school, fliers sent home about Good News Bible Club meetings and the inclusion of "Silent Night" and a Hanukkah song in holiday concerts, according to report.

Bong Alert&trade: Kiwi weirdos at it again

Remember the weird New Zealand couple who were denied the right to name their child "4real"? They are now going to name the baby "Superman". BBC:

A couple in New Zealand is planning to call their newborn son Superman after officials rejected their original choice of 4Real.

Pat and Sheena Wheaton have been frustrated by rules in New Zealand banning names that begin with a number.

Mum and Dad decided to call their son 4Real after seeing an ultrasound image of him. It was then they realised that their baby was "for real".

I have an idea. Name the kid "idiots4parents".

Undeveloped driving

Tehran:



Tehran:



The next few videos show how it should be:



Iraq:



Jakarta, link only

Mexico City



Mexico City:



Angola:



The Congo:



Cairo:



Cairo:



Tijuana:

Leadership

Scientific American has a story about how psychology studies are changing what we thought we knew about leadership:

In the past, leadership scholars considered charisma, intelligence and other personality traits to be the key to effective leadership. Accordingly, these academics thought that good leaders use their inborn talents to dominate followers and tell them what to do, with the goal either of injecting them with enthusiasm and willpower that they would otherwise lack or of enforcing compliance. Such theories suggest that leaders with sufficient character and will can triumph over whatever reality they confront.

In recent years, however, a new picture of leadership has emerged, one that better accounts for leadership performance. In this alternative view, effective leaders must work to understand the values and opinions of their followers—rather than assuming absolute authority—to enable a productive dialogue with followers about what the group embodies and stands for and thus how it should act. By leadership, we mean the ability to shape what followers actually want to do, not the act of enforcing compliance using rewards and punishments.

Angry mine company CEO blasts media sources

The New Republic: Stephen Glass, Part Deux

The far-left New Republic is at it again: making up stories to make America and non-socialists look bad. Fox News:

The Weekly Standard has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp -- author of the much-disputed "Shock Troops" article in the New Republic's July 23 issue as well as two previous "Baghdad Diarist" columns -- signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods -- fabrications containing only "a smidgen of truth," in the words of our source.

Separately, we received this statement from Major Steven F. Lamb, the deputy Public Affairs Officer for Multi National Division-Baghdad:

"An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims."

Hey, if you can't find anything horrible to say about U.S. troops, just make it up. Right, TNR?

Revenge of the nerds

Twice this week members of Big Media were discovered to be hypocrites and lying bastards.

Case 1: MSNBC reporter tried to entrap hackers at annual conference

MSNBC's Michelle Madigan tried to entrap Defcon attendees. Defcon, for non-nerds, is a hacker conference that was recently held in Las Vegas. Madigan attended the conference without press credentials, carrying a hidden camera in a shoulder bag. She had been trying to get hackers to admit to breaking the law.

Story at CBS's PublicEye. Video of Madigan being outed and tossed from the event:



Case 2: Forbes editor busted for faking a Steve Jobs blog

The author of the fake Steve Jobs blog has been outed. He's Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes magazine. The kicker: he derided blogging in a popular article from 2005. InformationWeek

As Lyons notes on his personal blog, he was "the author, last fall, of the much-maligned Forbes cover article, "Attack of the Blogs." It was maligned because it described Web logs as "the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective."

Anil Dash, VP of professional products for blogging software company Six Apart and a longtime blogger, was interviewed for that Forbes November 2005 article. He is among several online commentators who see irony in Lyons' success.

"My initial temptation was to mark Lyons as a hypocrite," said Dash in a blog post. "Upon reflection, it seems there's a more profound lesson: The benefits of blogging for one's career or business are so profound that they were even able to persuade a dedicated detractor."

That's a lesson Lyons' employer appears to have learned well: Forbes said it would begin hosting Lyons' satire of Jobs on Monday.

David Beckham still hasn't played in MLS

Make him play!

For $250 million, Beckham can play injured (ABC story here). The LA Galaxy got tricked.

Barry Bonds ties Hank Aaron at 755 home runs

Matt Drudge, 900 lb. web gorilla

The LA Times has an interesting story about Matt Drudge and his website, The Drudge Report. He began in a $600/mo apartment in Hollywood, and now lives and works at his condo in The Four Seasons resort in Miami. People who used to call him names are now eager to get noticed by him.

"An idiot with a modem," huffed MSNBC personality Keith Olbermann. "The country's reigning mischief-maker," said the New York Times. "A menace to honest, responsible journalism," intoned Newsweek investigative reporter Michael Isikoff.

Sometimes Drudge was indeed wrong, like the time he falsely accused Clinton administration official Sidney Blumenthal of spousal abuse.

But usually he was right, most memorably when he disclosed in 1998 that Newsweek magazine had spiked a story on Bill Clinton's White House trysts. It was the first public revelation of the president's relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky, and it came from a 32-year-old guy operating out of a $600-a-month apartment in Hollywood.

Although Drudge was promptly denounced as a right-wing lackey with no journalistic standards or standing, his pursuit of the scandal forced the traditional media to jump on the story, too. With a few flicks of his fingers, Drudge had demonstrated the power the Web can bestow upon a lone voice determined to be heard.

Since then, the Internet has emerged as the medium of choice for hard-core news consumers, who increasingly rely on bloggers and aggregators like Drudge to supply links that guide them through the thicket. By getting into the game early and becoming arguably the most recognizable personality online, Drudge was positioned perfectly to capitalize on the behavior of today's audience.

"Obviously, for some journalists, there's a lot of irony that Matt Drudge was a black-hat villain, and now a lot of those same journalists realize that getting a link on his website is crucial to their stories getting wider attention," says Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com. "That's the way the Web works. We're all trying to make sure our journalism is discovered."

Bad websites

Why do some websites automatically reload? I'm sure they think it's some kind of favor, like we'll miss something important. Idiots. When I'm reading headlines on a news site, I don't want it to reload on me.

And what's with the stupid little pop-up boxes? Bloggers are using Snap, and it pisses me off. When I stop moving the mouse to read what's on the page, a dumbass box will invariably pop up directly between my eyes and the content I'm reading. It's annoying as all hell. Yahoo News has this moronic feature, too.

Stop the cutesy bullshit, people, and let us read your stuff.

No longer 'two Americas', there are three

The fantastically rich John Edwards likes to tell us there are "two Americas". Now that he has called on fellow Demotards to shun News Corporation donations after taking $800,000 for a book deal with one of Murdoch's companies, I'm convinced there are three Americas: rich, poor, and the one Johnny inhabits -- an America of liberal hypocrisy. FoxNews:

John Edwards, who yesterday demanded Democratic candidates return any campaign donations from Rupert Murdoch and News Corp., himself earned at least $800,000 for a book published by one of the media mogul's companies.

The Edwards campaign said the multimillionaire trial lawyer would not return the hefty payout from Murdoch for the book titled "Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives."

The campaign didn't respond to a question from The Post about whether it was hypocritical for Edwards to take money from News Corp. while calling for other candidates not to.

Idiot laureate

The U.S. has a new poet laureate as reported in WaPo. The burning question: why??? Why, precisely, does America need an official poet? Some poetry is good, mind you. I'm not a complete pleb. I like red wine and golf like every other elitist snob. They're just inferior to beer and football. So what is the freaking deal with having a poet laureate?

Questing for this answer, I decided to read some of the poetry of Charles Simic, our new stanza mascot.

"Green Buddhas / On the Fruitstand / We eat the smile / And spit out the teeth"

Too bad there's no good way to express simultaneous total contempt and mild amusement in writing. Perhaps there is, but I lack the talent. Simic could do it if he wasn't too busy writing about eating smiles.

His other poems might be better. Here's a piece of Hotel Insomnia:

At 5 A.M. the sound of bare feet upstairs.
The "Gypsy" fortuneteller,
Whose storefront is on the corner,
Going to pee after a night of love.
Once, too, the sound of a child sobbing.
So near it was, I thought
For a moment, I was sobbing myself.

From The School of Metaphysics:

Executioner happy to explain
How his wristwatch works
As he shadows me on the street.
I call him that because he is grim and officious
And wears black.

From Errata:

Where it says table read horse
Where it says horse read my migrant's bundle
Apples are to remain apples
Each time a hat appears
think of Isaac Newton

Oh, well. Football season is only a month away.

More liberal nonsense in public schools

Idiot liberals are damaging school children again. Their big hearts are failing to prepare students for the real world. NY Times:

Several weeks into his first year of teaching math at the High School of Arts and Technology in Manhattan, Austin Lampros received a copy of the school’s grading policy. He took particular note of the stipulation that a student who attended class even once during a semester, who did absolutely nothing else, was to be given 45 points on the 100-point scale, just 20 short of a passing mark.

Mr. Lampros’s introduction to the high school’s academic standards proved a fitting preamble to a disastrous year. It reached its low point in late June, when Arts and Technology’s principal, Anne Geiger, overruled Mr. Lampros and passed a senior whom he had failed in a required math course.

That student, Indira Fernandez, had missed dozens of class sessions and failed to turn in numerous homework assignments, according to Mr. Lampros’s meticulous records, which he provided to The New York Times. She had not even shown up to take the final exam. She did, however, attend the senior prom.

Through the intercession of Ms. Geiger, Miss Fernandez was permitted to retake the final after receiving two days of personal tutoring from another math teacher. Even though her score of 66 still left her with a failing grade for the course as a whole by Mr. Lampros’s calculations, Ms. Geiger gave the student a passing mark, which allowed her to graduate.

Q: Why are failing students allowed to graduate? A: Liberalism.

Other examples of liberalism in our public schools:

Teachers in the New York public school system cannot be fired.

Liberals fought their own man, Bubba Clinton (the nation's first black, female president), when he tried to end the liberal practice of social promotion, where a failing student is passed and sent on to the next grade because it's easier on the children. Bubba tried to pay schools to end the practice. Article here.

Using the color red to mark wrong answers on exams was to be changed to purple because it's less "offensive" than red. Also, the word "fail" was to be changed to "deferred success" because telling a child they failed is too harsh. Idiots. Article here.

This is liberalism, folks.

Minnesota bridge collapse caused by 'climate change'

UPDATE 8/7/2007: It was inevitable that some liberal would pin the tragedy on "global warming". David Drake has the story.

The sun, swelled by man-made global warming,
crashes into a freeway bridge in Minneapolis, Minn.

I'm waiting for the liberals to blame this tragedy on "climate change" or George Bush.

Bourne Ultimatum: why critics can't be trusted

Why does anyone read movie critics? Their opinions are completely their own, having no reflection on what our tastes might be.

Here's William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

But, to my mind, Greengrass' effort to make his film the last word in tightly framed, nervous-camera action scenes is fairly disastrous. Most of the sequences are such a mess that we simply can't tell what's happening in them. The cumulative effect is boredom.

[...]

But it's not at all suited to an epic action blockbuster. The $100 million spent on "Bourne 3" seems a waste because most of the movie is just a blur on the screen. It cries out for a few long shots to orient us as to what the heck is going on.

And here's Claudia Puig of USA Today:

Let's just say it now: Paul Greengrass should direct every action thriller. The world of movies would be better for it.

His masterful direction of The Bourne Ultimatum (* * * * out of four) makes this third installment unequivocally the summer's best "threequel." It also is easily the best action thriller of the year.

[...]

Its palpable sense of urgency and rapid-fire pace is bolstered by an intricately plotted story and a strong ensemble cast. Matt Damon plays Jason Bourne, a former CIA operative trained as a killing machine, whose erased memories have come crashing down on him.

[...]

Forget those impressive chases you saw in Matrix 3 or Casino Royale— Greengrass' dazzling, adrenaline-surging pursuits rise above the rest. He has made two of the best recent films, his last being the captivating United 93. Wherever he takes his handheld camera next, audiences would be wise to follow.

One critic's disorienting "blur on the screen" is another's "palpable sense of urgency". If I was a betting man, I'd bet that Arnold is much older than Puig. Arnold's description of the hand-held camera work reminds me of all the morons who vomited while watching Blair Witch Project.

Bottom line: If it's not dwarf fetish porn, how good could it be?