Now THAT's ...

... the definition of "irony".


http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/

The President demands the past history of another countries president.

And I wonder why his newly empowered intelligence agencies hadn't already aprised him of this particular man's background. Especially given the situation in Iran regarding nuclear development and the two presidential candidates.

Hmm ...
yea, more bureaucracy is great!

That's the ticket

Just what we need to make our intelligence gathering better (re: more accurate? more timely?), more bureaucrats. More political appointees is sure to fix things up right!

I heard some pieces this morning on NPR about this. New divisions within the FBI and the Justice Department focusing on terrorism. That sure helped the CIA and creating the new "Homeland Security" agency has helped enormously. (of course the best help has been that terrorist haven't planned anything here again)

Reading an article on it I see that they've combined foreign spying and domestic. What do you suppose they'll call their new secret police?

They don't like me

Well I went back and my question didn't make the list that got answered yesterday. I did go and read the questions she (Meghan O'Sullivan) answered and there was the expected amount (which is to say most of it) of redundancy and spouting the administration line with enough "facts" tossed in to make it sound good.

It's great that 8 million Iraqis voted in the election. However without the total population of voting age to reference that number against, it's ultimate a pointless number (just as they intend). 8 million out of 12 or 15 million voters is a significant percentage. 8 million out of 100 million voters is crap. ... A quick google search indicates that 8 million is approximately 57% of the Iraqi voters. A heck of a lot better than we usually (the last election not withstanding) do.

Opps I did it again

I saw a report in the Washington Post today about the President's speech tonight. Scott McClellan apparently said that he will improve our understanding about what we're working to achieve.

For my part I can understand what we hope to achieve (sell more tanks, trucks, guns, etc. to the Army, okay well that may be his goal but I'd like to see less violence and a bit more improvement in their infrastructure) but I've not heard a lot about how we're going to go about that or when we might see anything results oriented more cheerful than long lists of dead Americans and Iraqis.

So I went back to the White House site looking for an email address or a form where I could say this to Mr. McClellan. I didn't find one, but then I didn't really expect to. I did find some sort of forum where you could post your questions so I put it there.

We'll see what happens (hopefully it won't involve a visit from the FBI or Secret Service).

WTF?

No idea how I got here but it seems to me to prove that you've got to have your brain removed in order to be a neo-con or a republican (apologies to any real republicans reading this). I was going to post a comment telling him to stfu (shut the fuck up) unless he'd served in the military but it's not like trying to communicate with these types will actually accomplish anything. My guess is that you'll find this guy's picture in the dictionary under the definition of "asshat" (he certainly likes to use the term).

"Your brain gets smart but your head gets dumb"

That's a line from a Smashmouth song called "All Star". But what does it mean?

Does it imply that we're the most educated country that doesn't think?

Is it an implicit contradiction, intended to be humorous because it's impossible to be smart and still be dumb?

Is it more contextual and we can't know the meaning without examining the rest of the song. Or at least the lines above and below it?

Or did it just rhyme good?

And they're off ...

Well I just dropped Matt off for the first day of his camp (a day camp which seems like a fun summerschool). He didn't seem to enthusiastic but then a) he's 14 so he doesn't want to seem enthusiastic about anything since it wouldn't be cool and b) he had to get up at 7 instead of 10 as the last two weeks. So I suspect it wasn't that he wasn't looking forward to it, rather that he wasn't awake yet.

And I finally tracked down the urine smell in the house and I had to wash a lot of sheets.

Eww

Banana!

I hit a spot in lunch that tasted vaguely of banana from the Infamous Banana Nut Taco Pizza (IBNTP).

Yech!

Well it's gone

Today for lunch I ate the last of the tater tot casserole I made when Dad was here (the one Matt hacked me off by turning up his nose at) as well as the last of what was salvageable from the infamous "Banana Nut Taco Pizza" thingee. (I scraped the taco stuff off the top and put it into the container with the casserole)

Lots of interesting things in the news. It seems that Congressional Republicans are backing away from the President. Calls to answer the contents of the now infamous "Downing Street Memo" from most of the Democrats as well as plans introduced by Republicans to outline an exit strategy from Iraq (from my knowledge of military affairs they should have had that before they deployed troops).

Home is going okay I guess. Matt starts his camp next Monday and tomorrow after work we have an open house there. The cat is still hissing at him but I'm not sure that will ever change. For some reason he just can't seem to grok that you have to let cats be cats and nothing you do will change them. She hides in my bedroom all the time now and I moved her water and food into my bathroom. I take her out and put her in the laundry room where her litterbox is every morning before I go to work but she still has pooped in the bathtub. Yesterday I noticed an intermittent smell of urine and this morning I hope I localized it when I examined the soap that had fallen into the bottom of the tub. I threw it out and I hope that fixes that problem, at least for awhile.

I paid the last of this months bills today and examined my finances more closely. I seem to be spending more so far this year paying credit card bills than I have on my car! I need to examine the feasiblity of getting a home equity loan to close all those out and reduce the monthly payment.

So far so good

Well we're settling down into a routine. It's all going to change next week when his summer camp starts but Matt is amusing himself at home and doing the chores I list for him daily.

The Xbox, the computer and TV have been the carrots so far and they've worked pretty well. He gets his work done and when I tell him that his time is up there aren't any historonics. And the other day I got an even bigger carrot to use. I let him create a character on my World of Warcraft account. And he's become as enamoured as the rest of us have been. Yesterday he did things that weren't on his list but needed to be done. After he unloaded the dishwasher (which is on his chores list) he loaded it up again and ran it since there were pans sitting in the sink that needed to be done. He didn't unload it again afterwards but once I reminded him after dinner he made quick work of it. Now to make sure he doesn't skimp on the quality of his work just to get done sooner ... ;-P

Star Trek

I've been tweaking my site design for this game.

http://www.missouri.edu/~heivilinj/ST-RPG/index.html

I'm particularily proud of the watermarks I managed to get onto some of the documents. An LCARS (Library Computer Archive Retrieval System) one and one with the UFP (United Federation of Planets) symbol. A Starfleet one will take a bit more tweaking. The one I got was a bit too bright/strong.

Banana Nut Taco Pizza

Okay, we started character creation for the Star Trek campaign on Tuesday. I'd wanted to make something for dinner again since Matt was here now. So I thought

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/cooking/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_28736,00.html

Would be good. I knew the rest of them liked it and so if he didn't then it would still get eaten.

So I go dig out the recipe from the FoodTV website and then look to see what I need. Don't have any Jiffy corn muffin mix in the cupboard so I have to get that, the fresh veggies and (of course) more cheese. I pick up everything from the store Monday evening and then I'm all set, right?

Well come Tuesday evening and I start getting things out. After pouring the muffin mix into the bowl I wonder what those brown chunks are. So I look at the box and see (now) in yellow letters the words "banana nut".

D'oh!

I look at my watch and think about the traffic I just fought my way through, deciding that trying to hit the store before they get here wasn't feasible. So I put some garlic powder in the mix hoping to disguise the banana taste. It seems to take a bit longer to set in the oven but otherwise the preparation goes as planned.

Everyone arrives and I warn them about dinner. "Something won't be the way it was last time" Jack makes a joke about my putting strawberries in it and then when I tell him what I did he responds "I was KIDDING you fucker!".

Sharon couldn't eat it but John and Jack claimed it was an interesting conflict of tastes. However half the pan remained afterwards so I know what they really thought!

D'oh!

Scratch your WHAT?

One of the things (that I'd meant to post on) was the Air Force's deal to lease tankers from Boeing. Apparently it was pushed through by some nefarious people who are now serving prison sentences (GOOD!!!). However names of certain people, White House staffers and members of Congress, have been blacked out in the documents provided to the Pentagon's Inspector General's office.

That certainly sounds like business as usual! (but they're being caught, tried, convicted and sentanced so maybe there's hope)

Judge wacko

Okay I did some more research on Janice Rogers Brown and the issue is a lot more complex than it appears at first glance and I didn't find anything on her rulings. I want to talk to Andy on this one since he could know more.

Pot Luck

I had a bunch of things I wanted to post on but most have (as usual) slipped out of my mind.

I did hear this morning on NPR about a guy, a fundamental christian, who was prospecting for oil north of Tel Aviv based on a passage in the bible. Amazing, absolutely amazing. He had raised seven million in investments from other fundamental christians to do this. ... Okay I went back and read the piece and they are evangelical christians, not fundamentalist. And the bible verse says that God promised Joseph the "blessings of the deep that lie beneath."

And the senate is apparently going to vote today on the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown to the Washington district court of appeals. I had thought Patricia Owen in Texas was a loon but this one seems to take the cake, perhaps even to bake the damn cake. She ruled that employers could use racial slurs on their Latino employees, she wanted to let a proven rapist go and sell cigarettes to minors. She feels that Roosevelt's "New Deal" was a socialist revolution. Whoa! Her story may be inspirational and everything (daughter of a poor sharecropper from Alabama) but still, I would think that common sense would be critical to an appellate judge.

What a load of crap

Completing the Watergate picture

Nixon was the victim? Calling our abandonment of our allies in South Vietnam "ending the war with honor"? I wonder what any number of South Vietnamese think of that? The liberal establishment got us into that war? Perhaps but the republican military industrial complex made millions. And then it goes onto talk about "the establishment" but I'm not sure which one he means. And more blather about abandoning everything 58,000 Americans died for in Southeast Asia. Try a bit hard and you can contradict yourself a fourth or fifth time.

Pure crap and not even very well written crap.

Oh

Found this article about the Administrations response to Amnesty International's report.

Hyperbole and Human Rights

Perhaps "gulag" wasn't the right word to use but holding people indefinately without charging them seems very anti American to me. The whole "jury of your peers" and "innocent until proven guilty" thing that our justice system is founded on. And if we exclude them from the system how are we much (if any) better than the terrorist?

Arggghhhbleh!

Been a bit since I posted. Things with Matt are going okay, good days and bad days. No more spats like the 2nd day when we talked about the rules. He mumbles his opinions about me and some of my decisions but that's to be expected. And every now and then I can hear what he says so it throws him off. But mostly he does his chores and what he's asked to.

Found a program that sounded good for him but it doesn't start until the 20th so I still need something until then. Two weeks after Dad leaves. But then Jon called yesterday and their plans may have changed. They may be heading home before they planned and stopping here on the way through. We'll have to see what goes down.

Got the log audit started finally. First pass is done now I need to verify that a systems primary service is being logged and such. Then a perl/oracle project again, one script isn't working quite right and I need to tweak it some more.

Had brunch last weekend and Liam had something which I caught. Seem to have a sinus infection now. Was getting a bit better yesterday but today it's not. Not sure if it's getting worse but definately more "productive" (more mucus, yech!).