Supposedly, this is Howard Dean’s house, seen via satellite (actually I think the pushpin is on his garage). I think you’ll agree that from what little we can ascertain, it looks better than Kerry’s or Bush’s.
(Caveat: I have never seen/used this site before, just discovered it today on a completely unrelated [Seinfeld] blog. So who knows what we might be looking at.)
I love the fact that I can cruise up to my podunk Iowa bank and withdraw money from my bank in Australia, and the transaction takes seconds, costs me nothing, and includes a helpful receipt in US dollars.
I have less love for the reality that this is brought to me on the network operated by the same banks that claim it takes 3 days to post an electronic payment to my credit card. Give me a break.
After yesterday’s despair, today’s reality check — with a dose of humor.
It’s encouraging to see that Congress does not seem interested in taking up the amendment any time soon, and some zealots are even predicting failure. Example: John Feehery, House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s spokesperson (whom I last heard on NPR mouthing platitudes about why the 9/11 investigation should not be given more time) said “sometimes you win for losing.”
I also respect the restraint of those Republicans who, whatever their feelings on the issue, think that amending the Constitution is not appropriate — and should always be a last resort. It’s more common than I expected, coming even from former Georgia congressman Bob Barr, the thrice-married author of the Defense of Marriage Act. (Barr says: “The Constitution is no place for forcing social policy on states, especially in this case.”)
But the best lines probably come from ol’ Bill Maher, whose take on the issue concludes as follows:
Well, you know what: Sometimes “most Americans” are wrong. Where’s the Democrat who will stand up and go beyond the half measures of “civil union” and “hate the sin, love the sinner,” and say loud and clear: ‘There IS no sin, and homosexuality is NOT an abomination’ — although that Boy George musical Rosie O’Donnell put on comes close. The only thing abominable about being gay is the amount of time you have to put in at the gym.
But that aside, the law in this country should reflect that some people are just born 100 percent outrageously, fabulously, undeniably Fire Island gay, and that they don’t need re-programming. They need a man with a slow hand.
It was really tough for me today. I awoke and learned our President had called for an amendment to the Constitution to prevent people like me from getting married.
Logically, I’m unshaken in my belief that future generations will look back on this with the same kind of uncomprehending wonder that we now have for those who railed against “mixed” marriages, or women voters. But that doesn’t help me emotionally, when I feel physically ill-at-ease, roiled up at the notion of what this man is doing — and what’s more, of all the people who helped. Silly as it sounds, I found it difficult to believe that someone worked to tape and (badly) encode the speech for the webcast, someone (else?) prepared the Web site to announce it, the Press Secretary defended it… all in support of this hateful message.
I’m not so out of touch as to believe that there aren’t people who fear and loathe gay people, even to the point of violence. The thing that shocks me is they would be willing to do violence to the Constitution itself, a document so vibrant and precious that I believe it serves not only as the foundation upon which this great nation was built, but indeed as a manifestation of the best parts of human nature and our common desire to live free.
By acting as he did, the President signalled he thinks differently. I’m saddened to hear it.
I’ve never really been able to get my head around why anyone would ever want to be a conservative. Even if you forget the pessimism and retrenchment inherent with a philosophy that pines always for the past, there’s still no getting around the simple concept that this is a way of thinking that says “we wouldn’t dream of telling you where to put your money, but we will lecture you on where to put your dick.” (Or other organ(s), as the case may be.)
Case in point: beginning last month, Team Bush began making noise about a $1.5 billion plan to promote marriage. The Bushies consider the timing fortuitous because at the same time they’re “defending” marriage from people who love each other, they’re also reviving the tired “compassionate conservative” tripe as they teach those who (it seems) don’t know about marriage. Like, apparently, black people:
This year, administration officials said, Mr. Bush will probably visit programs trying to raise marriage rates in poor neighborhoods.
“The president loves to do that sort of thing in the inner city with black churches, and he’s very good at it,” a White House aide said.
I’m sure the impoverished among the nation’s African-Americans will be quite keen on having the President suddenly recognize they exist — so he can lecture them on how to live their lives.
Which is a real shame, because there are many other ways to invest the money that would result in real benefits for society, without dictating personal relationships. Just one example: $1.5 billion would more than double the amount Bush pledged in his 2003 State of the Union for research into alternative fuels. Yes, we’re to spend more on “suggested” marriage than on research to wean ourselves from a petroleum dependency that has broad-reaching economic, geopolitical, and enivronmental impact. Just ask the Pentagon.
Of course, trying to tell that to our failed Texas oilman is a lost cause. So I propose the scientists rename their project. Instead of saying that we’re trying to make America a leader in fuel cells, we should tell Bush we’re investigating ways to make cars run on Jesus.
Then at last we’ll see some real money.
Just returned from a quick trip down to Missouri, where we went to see one of my sister’s former teammates have one of her final games as a senior. (Nicely done, Emily.)
Because we set off at the ungodly hour of 9:30, I didn’t assist with the driving until just before we reached the Missouri border. Barely an hour into my shift, I was pulled over by a Missouri trooper for going 19 over the posted speed limit. The trooper was really quite pleasant as he wrote out the ticket — for the full amount.
Not 7 hours later, I repeated the process, this time for 17 mph over, and with an Iowa trooper. Due to separate systems, the second officer clearly had no idea that another state’s citation rested at my feet. He knocked it down to 10 over, which he helpfully explained was just below the break for a higher fine.
Needless to say, I’m not planning any trips to Illinois, Minnesota, or Nebraska any time soon.
Google News is fronting a story claiming Nader will jump into the race this weekend. I can only hope that particular outlet’s “journalism” will be proved wrong. (And that anyone crazy enough to even consider voting for him will watch this animation.)
In related news, a list of Bush’s achievements.
Guess what the following have in common:
Give up? They’re all using images hosted by jsp.org. The Israeli site uses David Beckham from Madrid About This Guy, the German page features my “bed” from About Last Night (and therefore deserves extra points as the image wasn’t embedded in the page, only a link), LiveJournal dude is partial to Aguilera’s kissing boys featured in Now I Feel Better, and the forum posters are using the Militant Agnostic bumper sticker (You Don’t Either) and the cropped Abercombie picture (linked from the last sentence of Banner Ads I Don’t Understand, Pt. 7) as a signature and icon, respectively.
These are all just from yesterday’s logs. It seems that I’ve become quite a popular image host, thanks primarily to Google Image Search. The “Beautiful” kissing boys, in particular, are a big draw: with thousands of requests, they’re high up on this site’s most-requested list.
But my favorite would have to be the bed image, on eBay.de. Yes, I captured the boys from the video, color-corrected David, cropped the A&F guy, and even snapped the photo of the bumper sticker, but these personal connections are nothing compared to the fact that these people are discussing my bed.
All the better that I have no idea what they’re saying. Best I can glean from some of the imperfect translation services is that the person who linked the photo asked “What more do you need?” and his fellow posters suggested alternately that 1) a bottle and ashtray were necessary, 2) two pillows seemed extravagant (never!) and 3) someone thought it looked like his own room, which drew rebuttals by others casting aspersions on that poster’s cleaning habits.
It’s all very amusing to me, and it’s something I would never know was happening if these people didn’t choose to link directly to my site — something I could prevent by using scripts to disallow images to be loaded on remote pages and/or by banishing the Googlebot. But hey, why bother? I’ve got plenty of bandwidth, and after all, promoting (kissing) hot guys, agnosticism, and minimalism is just fine with me.
| “The President believes very strongly that everybody should be treated with dignity and respect.” | “The Massachusetts Constitution affirms the dignity and equality of all individuals. It forbids the creation of second-class citizens.” |
| “But this is about an enduring institution in America, and in order to have a strong America, we should work to make sure that that institution continues to endure.” |
“For decades, indeed centuries, in much of this country (including Massachusetts) no lawful marriage was possible between white and black Americans.” |
| “He has made it very clear, going back most recently to his State of the Union address that activist judges are seeking to redefine marriage." | "That long history availed not when the Supreme Court of California held in 1948 that a legislative prohibition against interracial marriage violated the due process and equality guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment, … or when, nineteen years later, the United States Supreme Court also held that a statutory bar to interracial marriage violated the Fourteenth Amendment, … As both Perez and Loving make clear, the right to marry means little if it does not include the right to marry the person of one’s choice…" |
| “The President does find the recent court ruling in Massachusetts very troubling.” | “Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.” |
| — White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan 11 Feb 04 press briefing |
— Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court 18 Nov 03 ruling |
Today the Mozilla Foundation announced the new 0.8 version of Firefox (formerly Firebird), their next generation Web browser. If you haven’t looked at it, it’s time. Firefox is a free open source program for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. It allows you to:
The campaign calls for “taking back” the web because major operating system vendors, such as Microsoft and even Apple (whose own excellent Safari browser is based on the open-source Konqueror) are no longer treating the browser as separate programs available for all, but instead as just another component of the operating system. Inevitably, this could lead back to Web pages that only work for the latest (expensive) versions of those systems.
Firefox offers a better choice. It’s small, fast, multi-platform, and it’s being updated far more frequently than the ancient IE. I’ve used Firefox as my primary browser for almost as long as it’s been available, and I never want to go back to pop-up/ActiveX/security hole hell.
So try it out. You’ll like it. And if you don’t, well, hell: it’s free anyway. (Note the servers are really busy today, so you might want to download from here.)
The fun thing about this site (which I haven’t really explored at all) is that after you complete the countries visited page, it gives you a little progress report in the caption.
Mine read “visited 22 countries (9%).” But I think it should have said “9% done.”
Let’s hope:
Bush’s 47 percent approval rating is the same as his father’s at this stage in his presidency 12 years ago before he lost to Bill Clinton.
Just under four in 10, 37 percent, said they would definitely vote to re-elect Bush as president, while 43 percent said they would definitely vote for someone else, according to the poll conducted for the AP by Ipsos-Public Affairs. Another 18 percent said they would consider voting for someone else. — AP Poll Notes Decline in Support for Bush
The named plaintiff is a citizen and resident of Knoxville, Tennessee; the plaintiff class would include all American citizens who watched the outrageous conduct which occurred during the Super Bowl halftime show, as is more fully described below.
So it begins, and so it may get much, much worse if one lawyer’s analysis gains currency.
Update [Fri 02:07]: Let her eat (cup)cake.
Would you pay a penny for every e-mail you send? If so, then Yahoo! is working on something that will be right up your alley.
The system, developed by a company called Goodmail, uses a coded string in each e-mail as a sort of electronic postage stamp. Senders are charged for every message, regardless of whether it is opened. Such a charge would quickly add up for the millions of e-mails the big spammers send each day, likely driving them out of business.
Bill Gates is on board, though he didn’t specifically back the Goodmail system. No doubt he wants a different company to cash in from the costs associated with the software upgrades needed to retrofit the countless mail servers on the Internet, to say nothing of collecting the ongoing fees from running an operation to validate the codes.
Let’s hope they don’t get their chance, because Gates, Goodmail and the rest misunderstand the nature of the problem they’re trying to correct. A Yahoo manager best illustrates this clueness when he opines: “The fundamental problem with spam is there is not enough friction in sending e-mail.” “Friction” is a buzzword, and like all buzzwords should serve as a warning of a simplistic thinking.
Consider that what this manager proposes is no less than the hobbling of a quick, seamless global communication system by saddling it with technology that is untested, patented and proprietary. For example, the e-postage idea has substantial currency complications (What is a penny in yen? Can I use servers in other countries if they’re cheaper?) but even more worrying are the potential security flaws: what happens when nefarious parties try a DDoS attack against the postage server? Worse, what if the next MyDoom virus manages to take over PCs and send thousands of messages, leaving the owner on the hook for the expense?
E-postage will not solve these problems, as Yahoo! and the others will well recognize once their vision is no longer clouded by dollar signs. Smarter solutions exist, and I’ll discuss a leading one in my next post.
And I’m so going. Look for my report, coming soon.
(C’mon, you didn’t think this site was dead, didja?)
