] What if there were private armies totalling 275,000 men,
] armed with machine guns, assault rifles (legal again!),
] rocket-propelled grenades, and mortar launchers, hiding
] out in dangerous urban areas of cities all over the
] country? What if they completely controlled Seattle,
] Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas,
] Denver and Omaha, such that local police and Federal
] troops could not go into those cities?
]
] What if the Air Force routinely (I mean daily or weekly)
] bombed Billings, Montana, Flint, Michigan, Watts in Los
] Angeles, Philadelphia, Anacostia in Washington, DC, and
] other urban areas, attempting to target "safe houses" of
] "criminal gangs", but inevitably killing a lot of
] children and little old ladies?
]
] What if there were virtually no commercial air traffic in
] the country? What if many roads were highly dangerous,
] especially Interstate 95 from Richmond to Washington, DC,
] and I-95 and I-91 up to Boston? If you got on I-95
] anywhere along that over 500-mile stretch, you would risk
] being carjacked, kidnapped, or having your car sprayed
] with machine gun fire.

What if America was Iraq?

] Even as John Kerry struggles to establish
] national-security credentials nationally, an exclusive WW
] straw poll shows his campaign dominating one skeptical,
] warlike demographic: Klingons.
]
] "A good war is based on honor, not deception," says K'tok
] (Earth name: Clyde Lewis), a 40-year-old Klingon from
] Lair Hill. "The first warrior, President Bush, deceived
] us all with this war."
]
] "On the home world, if there had been a contested
] election between Gore and Bush, the honorable thing would
] be for Gore to kill Bush," explained Khraanik (Earth
] name: Jason Lewis), a 38-year-old from Southeast
] Portland. "Or the other way around. And then ascend to
] the head of the High Council."

[ Heh. -k]

Kerry Dominates Crucial Klingon Demographic

] Congressional negotiators beat back efforts yesterday to
] expand and preserve tax refunds for poor families, even
] as they added $13 billion in corporate tax breaks to a
] package of middle-class tax cuts that could come to a
] vote in the Senate today.

Bid to Save Tax Refunds for the Poor Is Blocked (washingtonpost.com)

] "Two million people who fought in World War II and lived
] through the Great Depression die every year. That
] generation has been an exception in US history, because
] it has defended anti-American policies. They voted for
] the creation of the welfare state and for obligatory
] military service. They are the Democratic base, and they
] are dying."

[ He denies having said it of course, but it's not like he's known for his nuance. What a lunatic. -k]

Grover Norquist en Espanol - Did he really say good riddance to World War II veterans?

[ "So check out a BRADLEY, the FAMILY assault vehicle." Hehe. -k]

Doonesbury@Slate - Daily Dose

This is no longer an interesting coincidence. It is an unmistakable message from God. I hope everyone is listening.

[ Heh. Funny. -k]

message-from-God.gif (GIF Image, 744x900 pixels)

] One of this year's candidates for president, to hear his
] opposition tell it, has a long history of policy
] reversals and rhetorical about-faces -- a zigzag trail
] that proves his willingness to massage positions and even
] switch sides when politically convenient.
]
] The flip-flopper, Democrats say, is President Bush.
] Over the past four years, he abandoned
] positions on issues such as how to regulate air pollution
] or whether states should be allowed to sanction same-sex
] marriage. He changed his mind about the merits of
] creating the Homeland Security Department, and made a
] major exception to his stance on free trade by agreeing
] to tariffs on steel. After resisting, the president
] yielded to pressure in supporting an independent
] commission to study policy failures preceding the Sept.
] 11, 2001, attacks. Bush did the same with questions about
] whether he would allow his national security adviser to
] testify, or whether he would answer commissioners'
] questions for only an hour, or for as long they needed.

Yahoo! News - Despite Bush Flip-Flops, Kerry Gets Label

] What is Check 21 and what is its basic purpose?
]
] Check 21 is a federal law that is designed to enable
] banks to handle more checks electronically, which should
] make check processing faster and more efficient. Today,
] banks often must physically move original paper checks
] from the bank where the checks are deposited to the bank
] that pays them. This transportation can be inefficient
] and costly. Check 21 becomes effective on October 28,
] 2004.

[ FYI everyone who still writes checks. I got a heads up email from someone at my company about this, so I thought I'd share. The primary result i see is that you won't be able to "float" checks, if you were of a type that did so. There won't be a day or two of "processing" your check anymore. Not a big deal for most of us.

The upshot is that, while there's no mandate for banks to pass on savings, the reduction in processing costs may well result in cheaper banking for everyone. -k]

FRB: Frequently Asked Questions about Check 21

] And when the devices, which can cost less than a music
] CD, are not being used to store or retrieve data, they
] often dangle from key chains and backpacks - or even from
] the necks of users - as if pendants signifying a cult of
] convenient computing.

I'm having a hard time with this. I want one. I'm not sure why. Basically, its a techno toy. I don't know what I would do with it, but its cheap, so who cares? Put it on my key ring... maybe it comes in handy some day.

Trouble is that everytime I think I might have a use for one, scp comes to the rescue. I can move whatever I want to the Memestreams webserver and grab it later. So what's the point? Why can't everyone use one of those web file storage services?

But a fashion statement? What does it say? I'm enough of a computer geek to want to wear a computer peripheral around my neck, but I'm not enough of a computer geek to have figured out how to use the internet for this instead?

[ I have one. I use it as sort of a backup and persistent copy of things i might want handy without futzing with the computer. My resume, current project notes, desktop backgrounds, encrypted copy of my passwords, etc. It's also helpful for programs or utilities that you can't deal without but other people might not have. Putty, for example, and WinSCP. And yes, when the office IT staff is so draconian that you can't get shit across the network, or when they won't allow non-company equipment on the network, so there's no other way, the usb key is the answer.

I can't speak for it's chic appeal. I don't use the lanyard, and unless i was using the damn thing constantly, wouldn't ever. But I understand the technology fetishism enough not to be bothered by it. The next step is the Hello Kitty USB flash drive, or the GI Joe one, in camo. Anyway, my "keychain" is an aluminum ring that used to separate hard disk platters, so, who'm i to talk anyway. -k]

The New York Times - From Storage, a New Fashion

] The journalistic juggling at CBS provides an ironic
] counterpoint to the furor over apparently bogus documents
] involving Bush's National Guard service. One
] unexpected consequence of the network's decision was
] to wipe out a chance -- at least for the
] moment -- for greater public scrutiny of a more
] consequential forgery that played a role in building the
] Bush administration's case to invade Iraq.

[ And after the fiasco, CBS may as well not bother. They're the boy who cried wolf now, and pretty much everything they say is gonna be ignored. They may as well sit out the next couple of months. Too bad. Maybe it'll end up smacking some reporters into shape though, if there's any good to come of this, that's it. -k]

MSNBC - The Story That Didn't Run