Dagmar wrote:

lonew0lf wrote:
Some of the people they raided had a bunch of weird things like large stockpiles of human fecal matter and some weapons(don't know what kind specifically). It was my understanding that there were tips for the past few weeks indicating an attack from protesters which is somewhat correlated with the findings of the raids.

I've seen nothing about anyone in the Twin Cities having anything like that and I think you're getting confused by spin. Would you care to cite some URLs substantiating these claims?

News reports talk of black bloc style anarchist groups. These are not legitimate protestors. They are violent groups who are there to fuck shit up and start conflicts with the police. Of course, it is not always clear whether or not the violence is being instigated by the police. These things become extremely chatoic - lies on all sides - crimes on all sides.

However, the bottom line is that smashing a window at the RNC isn't protected speech and its not going to make a difference in the political process except to convince some Republicans that "liberals are crazy." I don't have a lot of sympathy. You and I have been involved in peaceful protests before. If you work with the police they work with you. This sort of conflict happens because protesters come looking for trouble. The police do not give a fuck about your politics and they are not on a side.

Wearing black clothes, bandanas and gas masks, some individuals smashed windows of cars and stores. They tipped over newspaper boxes, pulled a big trash bin into the street, bent the rearview mirrors on a bus and flipped heavy stone garbage bins on the sidewalks.

The group chanted: "Whose streets? Our streets!"

At one point, people pushed a trash bin filled with trash and threw garbage in the streets and at cars. They also took down orange detour road signs. One of them used a screwdriver to puncture the back tire of a limousine waiting at an intersection and threw a wooden board at the vehicle, denting its side. Another hurled a glass bottle at a charter bus that had stopped at an intersection. The bottle smashed into pieces but didn't appear to damage the bus.

Terry Butts, a former Alabama Supreme Court justice who is a convention delegate, was on a bus taking delegates to the arena when a brick through the window sprayed glass on him and two others. Butts said he wasn't hurt.

"It just left us a little shaken," he said. "It was sort of a frightening moment because it could have been a bomb or a Molotov cocktail."

RE: More reasons to say f**k McCain and f**k the Repulicans

lonew0lf wrote:
While Palin may not be the most qualified candidate, I think a lot of people could argue that she is more qualified than Obama.

No, really you couldn't. Its not even close. But the fact that they can get you to believe that it is... the fact that they can get you to argue that it is... Well, thats just exactly how they control you.

If it was in the political interest of one of the major parties to believe that the sky was bright green you'd have a significant percentage of the blogosphere asking what blue really is, anyway.

RE: The election is basically over.

D.J. Bernstein proposes an almost zero-effort DNSSEC alternative (Presentation)

Generally speaking, digitally signing DNS *packets* would be helpful even if there was no public key infrastructure, and the idea of encoding the keys in the server names is creative.

Hacker News | D.J. Bernstein proposes an almost zero-effort DNSSEC alternative (Presentation)

Tsudohnimh wrote:
And Obama's experience is?

The backgrounds of both candidates are documented on Wikipedia.

I realize that "Obama's not experienced enough" is a Republican talking point, and there may even be some validity to that argument. Regardless, it seems the Republican party has drunk too much of their own koolaid. They have turned "Obama's not experienced enough" into "Obama has absolutely no qualifications" into "We should also nominate someone who has absolutely no qualifications, there is no difference, wheeeeeeee..."

Call this getting trapped by your own rhetoric. People who are not Republican koolaid drinkers may be sympathetic to the idea that Obama doesn't have enough experience but they aren't going to make the other two leaps of logic with you. You cannot hold up anybody you please regardless of their qualifications and claim there is no difference between nominating them and nominating Obama. This logic won't fly outside of partisan circles.

Partisan Republicans are going to vote for McCain regardless of what happens. The rest of us have to make a choice. Unfortunately, because Palin is not prepared to be President, McCain is no longer a serious option. That leaves Obama, or a protest vote with Bar.

RE: The election is basically over.

City Councilman and mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (pop. 5,000), before serving less than two years as governor of Alaska. You gotta be kidding me!

McCain's decision to select a woman for VP is a transparent attempt to court some of Hillary's supporters, many of whom are not liberal, and being sore about their candidate's loss, are attracted to McCain as a perceived moderate. However, the VP may become the President, and Palin, having absolutely no foreign policy experience, is totally unqualified to be the President of the United States. This will be quickly apparent to everybody and it will blow up in McCain's face. It will destroy his candidacy, and unfortunately it will be a serious pock mark on Palin's here-to-fore admirable political career.

Obama and Biden are your new President and VP.

This election is over.

The election is basically over.

"Out of almost 2,100 diversified retail U.S. stock mutual funds that are open to new investors, just 17 have positive returns for both the past 12 months and year-to-date, according to investment researcher Morningstar Inc."

The Big Picture | Incredible Statistic: Mutual Fund Performance

We've now had so many instances of what charitably may be called artful reporting that it's beginning to undermine my faith in government statistics. Unreliable government statistics are a Banana Republic Indicator..... the integrity of that data is becoming compromised on enough fronts so as to render them suspect. And inaccurate data leads to bad business and bad policy decisions. Bad policy decisions are particularly likely since the information is massaged so as to minimize unpleasant news.

naked capitalism: GDP Release Signals Further Decline into Banana Republic Status

Stephanie writes:

From Muppet Wikki:

Sesamestreet.org is an official Sesame Street website, featuring video clips, games, playlists, and more. Although the site was scheduled for debut on August 11, 2008, it was on the web as early as August 5, 2008. Clips can be found by grouping by character, theme, educational topic, classic clips, or songs.

This is great! This new site has just about every muppet sketch I can remember from childhood. Most of the muppets are listed, but for whatever reason, they chose not to list Lefty (a.k.a. The Salesman) in the character search list, but he's pretty easy to find. Sure, you can find most of these on YouTube, but the quality is hit-and-miss.

"The Air Salesman" (click image) featuring Ernie and Lefty was always one of my favorites. Ernie finally gets the better of Lefty in "The Ice Cream Salesman," though.

Also, Johnny Cash sings "Nasty Dan" for Oscar and "Five Feet High And Rising" for Biff. Classic stuff!

Sesame Street Videos

Microsoft adds privacy tools to IE8
So-called porn mode tools to debut in IE8 Beta 2 this month
By Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
August 25, 2008

Microsoft Corp. today spelled out new privacy tools in Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) that some have dubbed "porn mode" in a nod to the most obvious use of a browser privacy mode.

A privacy advocate applauded the move, calling it a "great step forward," while rival browser builder Mozilla Corp. said it is working to add similar features to a future Firefox.

Slated to appear in IE8 Beta 2, which Microsoft former chairman Bill Gates promised will release this month, the three new tools share the "InPrivate" name, which Microsoft filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office several weeks ago.

The most intriguing tool, and the one that has prompted the porn mode label, was called InPrivate Browsing by Microsoft. When enabled, IE8 will not save browsing and searching history, cookies, form data and passwords; it also will automatically clear the browser cache at the end of the session.

Other new tools will include InPrivate Blocking and InPrivate Subscription, which notifies users of third-party content that can track browsing history and subscribe to lists of sites to block, respectively. Microsoft will also tweak its existing "Delete Browsing History" by adding an option to preserve bookmarked sites' cookies even when all others are erased.

Microsoft adds privacy tools to IE8

werd

Dj Vadim - The Terrorist