Displease Me And I Will Crush You With My Mighty Thighs Of Wrath…

God, what a gold mine.

Here’s Pandagon’s Amanda Marcotte posting Blogger Grrrl’s Rules:

How To Get Banned:

Bore me.

And for the brand new crop of tedious bores who blame feminism for
all your problems, though you have no real idea what
“feminism” is, except you know that it has something to do
with women, who you don’t like much, I will say this. Don’t
whine when you yammer on in a boring style until you are banned. The
internet is not all that different from real life. You know what
getting tossed out of public places for assholery and groping women is
like. You can take it here.

Here are some random thoughts on that post:

You think John Edwards is gonna be President? You think he’s
surrounded himself with competent professionals? If so, just remember
that his campaign was going to pay cash money for this sort of writerly
talent:

And for the brand new crop of tedious bores who blame
feminism for all your problems, though you have no real idea what
“feminism” is, except you know that it has something to do
with women, who you don’t like much, I will say this.

OK, she said “this”. You have your explanation.

Everybody, say “this”. You are now at one with the explanation.

There, don’t you feel better? I know I do.

And while I may not have any real idea what “feminism” is, I do
happen to have a real idea about what constitutes a sentence. Now I
understand that when you’re literary guidepost is Markos Moulitsas, you
may be a bit fuzzy on the basics of syntax, structure and grammar.
Still, it would seem to me that if you’re going to hold yourself out as
a professional writer, you should be able to write a proper sentence.

But that’s just me… And as I’m both conservative and male, what the fuck do I know.

Then there is Amanda’s idea of what constitutes “real life”:

The internet is not all that different from real life. You
know what getting tossed out of public places for assholery and groping
women is like. You can take it here.

This will no doubt come as a shock to Blogger Grrrl, but real life is, in fact, quite different from the internet.

In real life, if you really are serious about having a career, there
are situations that call for certain levels of restraint and decorum.
And it doesn’t really matter if you think said restraints and decorum
are patriarchal and oppressive: If you cannot reach those levels of
restraint and decorum, you are penalized.

For example, if, in real life, you go into a job interview and mock
Jesus, insult Catholics and the Catholic Church, all while using the
word “fuck” at least twice in every sentence, you don’t get the job to
begin with. Ever.

That’s a real big difference right there.

And, in real life, even if you hate people of other races, religions
(or any religion, for that matter), cultures and/or genders, you
usually have to come into the possession of some sort of self-control
about that hatred when dealing with others to navigate life
successfully.

For example, when in the presence of, say, males, it is best not to
verbalize the assumption that each and every one of them routinely
gropes, beats and/or rapes women simply on the basis that as they are male,
these are the sorts of things they do for funzies. This is especially
true if you’re always bitching about how bigoted everyone else is and
how open-minded you are.

That’s another fairly big difference.

However, I’d venture to say, in Amanda’s case at least, that the
biggest difference between real life and the internet is that in real
life, Amanda would be able to see just how many people scurry away from
the lunch room, break room and/or water cooler whenever she
approaches…

You don’t get that sort of visual clue when you’re blogging.

Which is too bad for her.

February 16, 2007 in Liberals Being Stupid | Permalink

John Tully Responds:

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP!

Below is a running total of the U.S. taxpayer cost of the Iraq War. The number is based on Congressional appropriations.
The War in Iraq Costs $367,957,882,540

inc_totals_at_rate(1000);

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: Computer Scientist Takes E-Voting Apart

Computer Scientist Takes E-Voting ApartA Princeton computer scientist said Uncle Sam taught him how easy it can be to hack on the cheap.

Professor and electronic-voting critic Andrew Appel spent only $82 to buy five $5,000 Sequoia electronic voting machines from a government auction Web site last month according to Wired News. It didn’t take long, he said, for he and his students to find security holes in the AVC Advantage machines — one student picked the lock in only 7 seconds, gaining access to the machine’s motherboard and memory chip.

A Sequoia spokeswoman said Mr. Appel exaggerated the machines’ vulnerability and that they were designed to alert headquarters if manipulated. But Mr. Appel suggested that would-be manipulators were capable of anticipating and disabling alarms. —Sierra Millman

COULD THIS MOUNTAIN LOCATOR BEACON HAVE SAVED THE THREE OREGON CLIMBERS?
Would
the missing climbers have benefitted from carrying a personal locator
beacon, like this $700 Terrafix unit, as some have suggested?
Tracing a Climbers Footprints in Cyberspace – The Lede

W pushes envelope on U.S. spying BY JAMES GORDON MEEK DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAUWASHINGTON – President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant, the Daily News has learned. The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a “signing statement” that declared his right to open people’s mail under emergency conditions. That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it. Bush’s move came during the winter congressional recess and a year after his secret domestic electronic eavesdropping program was first revealed. It caught Capitol Hill by surprise. “Despite the President’s statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people’s mail without a warrant,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, who co-sponsored the bill. Experts said the new powers could be easily abused and used to vacuum up large amounts of mail. “The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington. “The danger is they’re reading Americans’ mail,” she said. “You have to be concerned,” agreed a career senior U.S. official who reviewed the legal underpinnings of Bush’s claim. “It takes Executive Branch authority beyond anything we’ve ever known.” A top Senate Intelligence Committee aide promised, “It’s something we’re going to look into.” Most of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act deals with mundane reform measures. But it also explicitly reinforced protections of first-class mail from searches without a court’s approval. Yet in his statement Bush said he will “construe” an exception, “which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection in a manner consistent … with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances.” Bush cited as examples the need to “protect human life and safety against hazardous materials and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection.” White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore denied Bush was claiming any new authority. “In certain circumstances – such as with the proverbial ‘ticking bomb’ – the Constitution does not require warrants for reasonable searches,” she said. Bush, however, cited “exigent circumstances” which could refer to an imminent danger or a longstanding state of emergency. Critics point out the administration could quickly get a warrant from a criminal court or a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge to search targeted mail, and the Postal Service could block delivery in the meantime. But the Bush White House appears to be taking no chances on a judge saying no while a terror attack is looming, national security experts agreed. Martin said that Bush is “using the same legal reasoning to justify warrantless opening of domestic mail” as he did with warrantless eavesdropping.

NY DAILY NEWS

Crooks and Liars

“The NY times is carrying an article about how the RIAA is hiring hip
hop artists to make mix tapes, and then helping the police raid their
studios. In the case of DJ Drama and DJ Don Cannon, they were raided by
SWAT teams with their guns drawn. The local police chief said later
that they were ‘prepared for the worst.’ Men in RIAA jackets helped
cart away ‘evidence’. Just the same, ‘Record labels regularly hire
mixtape D.J.’s to produce CDs featuring a specific artist. In many
cases, these arrangements are conducted with a wink and a nod rather
than with a contract; the label doesn’t officially grant the D.J. the
right to distribute the artist’s songs or formally allow the artist to
record work outside of his contract.’ “

Slashdot:

Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army’s Top Medical Facility

By Dana Priest and Anne Hull
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 18, 2007; A01

Behind
the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan’s room, part of the wall is torn
and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded
combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the
bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building,
constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out.
Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches,
stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building
18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was
evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq
last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead
from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the
hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed
hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.