Monday, June 11, 2007

Interpreting The Sopranos Last and Final Episode

 
Joe Johnston of Chicago, commenting on the Times Online website, offers one of the best interpretations I've seen:

The final moment wasn't ambiguous at all. You just have to think about how it ends and, if you account for a number of overlooked details--i.e., the elongated moment with the blank screen before credits roll, and especially the sudden cessation of the music mid-song--you'll see that there's nothing ambiguous about the ending.

Tony is whacked. It happens at the very end -- but we see it from Tony's point of view, which is the sudden nullity of instant death from a gunshot wound to the head.

Another commenter adds that it recalls the episode where Bobby and Tony are sitting in his fishing boat, talking about hits. Tony remarks that you would never see it coming, the world would just go black.

I'm down with that analysis.

Palestinian Civil War Imitates Scarface

 
The civil war in the Palestinian territory continues to metastasize. Gaius alerts us to a "new and creative way of whacking one another" that the state-deserving Palestinian leadership has invented. And because there are no Super Wal-Marts in metro Gaza City, said approach saves on ammunition costs and reduces lengthy reload times:

In an especially grisly incident, Hamas militants kidnapped an officer in a Fatah-linked security force, took him to the roof of a 15-story apartment building and threw him off... That set off skirmishes through the city, including gun battles and shelling.

Alejandro Sosa is said to be pleased with the new tactic.

Captain Jamil Hussein, however, was unavailable for comment. And there's no word from Reuters on collateral damage that may have been sustained in Qana (or anywhere else in the territories, for that matter).

Hat tip: Larwyn

Sunday, June 10, 2007

My job application for New York Times headline writer

 
If the New York Times needs a headline writer, I'm game. This particular headline captures the, er, je ne sais quoi, the essential agenda of the Times. Best of all, the Times can use it every day of the week.

Hitchens' History Lesson for Progressives

 
Hitchens delivers a fascinating history lesson for the anti-war "progressives."



(Hat tips: Jawa and Larwyn)

Saturday, June 09, 2007

Nancy Pelosi and a Culture of Corruption

 
Amid promises to clean up the beltway, Democrats swung into power in 2006, albeit by the slimmest of margins. With their commitments to "drain the swamp" and eradicate a "culture of corruption", Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Harry Reid drove a metaphorical stake into the ground. It now appears that the stake is rotten at its core, termite-infested and destined for the woodpile.

While Reid has been linked to lobbyist-slash-convicted felon Jack Abramoff and received a highly irregular $1.1 million "windfall" on a Las Vegas land sale, Pelosi has thus far escaped major scrutiny. That is, until now.

Newsmax reports that Nancy Pelosi's son -- Paul Jr. -- was hired by controversial list-broker InfoUSA. His job: a $180,000 "Vice President for Strategic Planning." Interestingly, Paul kept his other full-time job as a mortgage loan officer for Countrywide Loans (California) and does not report to work at InfoUSA's headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska.

Dick Morris notes that Pelosi's son was offered the job only after his mother became Speaker of the House. And that such a payment is highly unorthodox given Pelosi has "no experience at all in the basic business of InfoUSA". Morris goes on to describe a possible rationale for InfoUSA's bizarre hiring practices:

InfoUSA is the same company that has been cited by the New York Times for creating marketing lists that were used by con artists to fleece vulnerable elderly people. The lists had provocative names and offered the names of elderly people with cancer, elderly people with Alzheimer's and gamblers over 55 years of age who think their luck will change. After purchasing the lists, the con artists would call and convince the elderly person that they had actually ordered an expensive item. Once they received the victim's financial information, they often emptied their bank accounts, leaving many people penniless. Some of InfoUSA's internal e-mails suggest that company employees were aware that several of the companies they sold the lists to were under investigation.

...it is likely that Congress will eventually address privacy issues involved with the selling of data that InfoUSA sells. Pelosi would be directly involved in that legislation, and her son should not be involved with the company in any way... [InfoUSA's payments] to Pelosi's son can only be viewed as an investment and should be stopped.

The Pelosi family's conflicts of interest smell like Fisherman's Wharf on a hot day.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Hillary Clinton's Anti-Innovation Debacle

 
Did you know that Hillary Clinton has introduced her "Innovation Agenda"? In truth, she should call it her Tubby, Bloated Government Bureaucracy Agenda, because that's truly what it is. I encourage you to read her position paper because I'm not making this stuff up.

* Establish a $50 billion "strategic energy fund" to devise ways to make the United States energy independent and reduce the threat of global warming.

Well, you know, there really aren't enough free-market incentives for better and cheaper energy sources. So Hillary intends to create a governmental bureaucracy that will invent our way to energy indpendence since the free-market isn't suitably efficient. I'd call it a boondoggle and a scam, but that understates its potential for abuse. And don't even get me going on global warming. I'd just encourage you to read about the UN, the IPCC and the blatant conflicts-of-interest associated with "anthropogenic climate change".

* Increase the basic research budgets 50 percent over 10 years at the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy's Office of Science, and the Defense Department, with more focus on the physical sciences and engineering, high-risk research, and E-science initiatives that link Internet-based tools, global collaboration, supercomputers, high-speed networks, and software for simulation and visualization.

That sounds inexpensive. And we're not just talking science, we're talking e-Science™! All we need to do is increase budgets by 50% (don't ask how that figure was arrived at) and we'll get Internet-based global collaboration supercomputers talking with each other over high-speed networks to simulate and visualize e-Science! Damn it, why didn't I think of that? And it might even be less than the $50 billion energy fund!

* Direct the federal agencies to award prizes in order to accomplish specific innovation goals.

Can I win a prize for my super-hybrid, fuel-efficient corn-mobile? It gets five miles to the cob, so I think I deserve a prize! I haven't found a company that's keen on the idea, but a federal agency would be a great choice to fund my innovative corn-car!

* Triple the number of NSF fellowships to 3,000 a year and increase the size of each award by 33 percent to $40,000 a year.

This sounds like a cheap option: it's only $20,000,000 of your money. Just don't ask how Hillary arrived at these numbers; suffice it to say that it's a lot less expensive than her first choice.

* Provide tax incentives to encourage broadband deployment in underserved areas.

Tax incentives for the phone companies? Now that sounds like a good idea! Of course, some sources assert that the telcos already gamed taxpayers and never built the high-speed networks they had promised in underserved areas. Of Bruce Kushnick's book, "The $200 Billion Broadband Scandal," attorney Harold Feld wrote:

...[it] meticulously documents how the incumbent telcos have used the promise of broadband to win subsidies and regulatory goodies. The pattern Bruce describes is a fairly straightforward one. Bell companies go to [name state] legislature and promise to provide fiber networks (which will bring high-speed internet access, video services, jobs, education etc. to [name state]. All the telco asks in exchange is deregulation of prices, deregulation of competitive obligations (such as opening the network to rivals), and subsidies or tax incentives to reach the areas where it is not profitable to deploy. Then take the goodies, make some high profile efforts to deploy, then quietly forget about it while enjoying deregulated monopoly and tax subsidies. Don't worry, state legislators and the public will forget about it as well, and will accept the current state of the universe as the best possible world that can be achieved.

While apparently lifted from today's headlines, Kushnick traces this kind of behavior back to the early 1990s. His book asserts that this behavior has cost the U.S. tax payers over $200 Billion, at a minimum over the last ten years. Lest one ask “how could the Bells ever get away with such a thing?!?!” I will observe that what Kushnick documents are no secrets. Rather, like the purlioned letter, each broken promise, terminated project, absorbed tax incentive, and regulatory bonus happened in plain sight...

Kushnick estimates that the Bell companies overcharged north of $200 billion from 1992-2004 for these networks, including various financial perks. On average, Kushnick believes that each American household has already paid $2000 apiece for various network buildouts.

Thanks, telco lobbyists!

* * * * * * * * *

And what will pay for all of these government programs? Taxes. You and I will, once again, feed the mouths of thousands more bureaucrats and lobbyists.

Hillary's solution is taxes and government. Big government with a capital B. More bureaucracies. More grift. More waste.

And are you one of those poor souls who believes Hillary can duplicate Bill's go-go economy? Unless Tim Berners-Lee invents another world-wide web and Mr. Peabody dials us back to Y2K on the time machine, you'd be wise to think again.

I have two words for Hillary's anti-innovation, mega-taxation agenda: Economic. Disaster.

Best o' 2007... so far

 
The following posts are among the most-read articles from February through May.

Al Franken to run for the Senate: Transcript
Al Gore's 2nd Annual Carbon-Offset Going-out-of-Business Sale!
Al Gore's Testimony before Congress
Anti-schizophrenia drugs wore off... again
Church and Media: a Thought Experiment
CNN's Amanpour interviews Ahmadinejad
Dems War Spending Bill: Defeat, Pork, and Discord
Dems wage Info War against U.S. forces
Democrats' Stellar Track Record of Accuracy
Department of Genocide
Do not taunt your Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL)
Harry Reid's plan for America
Harry Reid through history
Hume vs. Olbermann
Imagining a Triangulator-in-Chief
Iran & U.S.: transcript from secret negotiations
Is Al Gore's Inconvenient Fiction a $250 Billion Scam?
John Edwards proves there is no GWOT
New York Times: a Dreadful Parody
Party of Gullibility backs Euro Corps and Iran
Presidential Idol
Press the Meet: the anti-Meet the Press
The Real Story behind the Clinton Economy
Rosie O'Donnell and the mainstreaming of hateful nonsense
UN's IPCC Global-Warming Bunko Scam
US Taxpayers funding Terrorist News Network
The Washington Post and Geneive Abdo's ode to Sharia
What would Horatio Lord Nelson do?

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Uhm, how about just building a fence for starters?

 
The Democracy Project on the ill-fated immigration bill:

Voters have consistently viewed immigration reform as meaning improving border security and reducing illegal immigration. Seventy-two percent (72%) of voters believe it is Very Important for "the government to improve its enforcement of the borders and reduce illegal immigration." Adding pressure to Congress is the fact that voters see this objective as achievable --68% of Americans believe it is possible to reduce illegal immigration. Just 20% disagree. A New York Times/CBS News poll found that 82% believe the federal government could do more to reduce illegal immigration.

Hmmm. I'm no polling expert, but I think this means there would be bipartisan support for the government improving its enforcement of the borders and reducing illegal immigration.

Shhhhhh. No one tell John McCain and Teddy Kennedy.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Tomorrow's New York Times Today!

 
It's a gift. I can sometimes see the future, especially as it pertains to America's Pravda. It's a blessing and a curse.


The only thing that remains fuzzy: whether the font size for Libby's sentencing will be bigger than the headline on 9/12/01.

Monday, June 04, 2007

More Google Street Views: Beltway Edition

 
Google, in partnership with Immersive Media, has augmented its mapping service with street-level views. To achieve the effect, staffers drive vans around snapping pictures using special, 11-lens cameras. I found some interesting street scenes in Washington, DC. Check it out.

Driving by William Jefferson's house, some sort of lobbying appears to be underway.

We crossed the street and examined what may be Jack Murtha's abode.

I think he lives near John Edwards.

This street is supposed to be right around where Bill Clinton lives.

This may be the river view from Ted Kennedy's condo.

Must reads: The Anchoress, Hang Right Politics, Nuke Gingrich, Rick Moran, Wizbang

The Case of the Vanishing Consensus

 
Canada's National Post features a must-read series on climate change. Put simply, Al Gore's "consensus" on anthropogenic warming is as controversial among scientists as the big-bang theory:

"Only an insignificant fraction of scientists deny the global warming crisis. The time for debate is over. The science is settled."


So said Al Gore ... in 1992. Amazingly, he made his claims despite much evidence of their falsity. A Gallup poll at the time reported that 53% of scientists actively involved in global climate research did not believe global warming had occurred; 30% weren't sure; and only 17% believed global warming had begun. Even a Greenpeace poll showed 47% of climatologists didn't think a runaway greenhouse effect was imminent; only 36% thought it possible and a mere 13% thought it probable.

Today, Al Gore is making the same claims of a scientific consensus, as do the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and hundreds of government agencies and environmental groups around the world. But the claims of a scientific consensus remain unsubstantiated...

Financial Post: They call this a consensus?

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Google Maps introduces its Street View feature

 
Whoops! Google, in partnership with Immersive Media, has augmented its mapping service with street-level views. To achieve the effect, staffers drive vans around snapping pictures using special, "11-lens cameras". Problem is, some odd -- and possibly illegal -- activities have begun to show up in the candid snapshots.

This guy is either (a) imitating Spiderman, (b) escaping the wrath of an angry husband or father, or (c) preparing for a daylight robbery.

It's not an episode of the Sopranos, it's just a guy with a gasoline can and what appears to be a body wrapped in a tarp.

Hasn't it been illegal to take pictures in the New York tunnels since 9/11? Or perhaps Google and Immersive received a special dispensation from DHS.

It may look like an episode of Jackass, but Mom appears to be just one stumble away from a runaway stroller!

Dude. Taking out. Trash. Dude.

A classic San Francisco street scene: A man and his '66 Volkswagen bus.

Is that Jack Murtha in a hotel room with some Arab businessmen? Nah, I guess not.

Hat tips: BoingBoing, NYT blogs, Wired

Draining the Swamp

 
CNN reports on more hill-arious shenanigans courtesy of our favorite unindicted co-coinspirator:


Way to "drain the swamp", Nancy.

Hat tip: Macsmind

Friday, June 01, 2007

Chavez implements the Fairness Doctrine in Venezuela

 
You may have heard that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez pulled the plug on the country's most popular television station. "He's castrating free press in Venezuela," said Valter Pereira, a senator for the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party and member of the government's ruling coalition. "Why should we sit back, cross our arms and watch him destroy democratic institutions?"


No wonder the "progressives" love Chavez so much. His act of shutting down opposition media is precisely the strategy that so many U.S. leftists hope to employ by reinstating the so-called "fairness doctrine". Unable to compete in the marketplace of ideas, they hope to resurrect the ill-fated doctrine in order to censor conservative viewpoints.

The Democracy Project's commentary is spot on:

The ideas that rational planning can substitute for markets and that government ought to regulate speech are failed ones. Yet, progressive/liberal bigots like my Congressman, Maurice Hinchey, continue to advocate suppression of speech, through an Orwellian-named "fairness doctrine". Throw in an inability to develop a strategy to fight terrorism and add a dash of economic illiteracy. Then you really have to wonder how anyone can be fooled by the sweet bouquet of the left's bovine imagination.

A.C. Nielsen for the Democratic Presidential Nominee!

 
The would-be triangulator-in-chief, Hillary Clinton, is an inveterate poll-watcher, according to her former advisers. Bill Clinton's administration, of course, was infamous for its use of polls as a lever for public policy.


My question for the Democrats is a simple one: why not just nominate A.C. Nielsen as your candidate for President? When it comes to polls over principle, Nielsen's as good a choice as anyone.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

More like the Energizer Bunny

 
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) offers a transcript from a recent public speech by Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

With the grace of God, we have almost reached the end of the path where we can take complete advantage of all nuclear capabilities. We are very near the summit. The resistance of the enemies grows weaker every day

Now they are mustering all their power, in order to cause some commotion – some resolution, some pressure, some uproar... But let me tell you that with the help of God, they are done for. Like a battery about to run out, they muster the remainder of their power but Allah willing, nothing will happen. We've passed that. Wait one month, two months, three months... Allah willing, as soon as possible, we will pass that. Their situation is much worse than one can imagine. Their foundations are shaking. Nobody is with them.

Meanwhile, the director of the "Center for Doctrinal Strategic Studies" in Iran's Revolutionary Guards -- one Hasan Abbasi -- weighed in with a comprehensive set of analogies:

The new strategy in the standoff between Iran and the United States is the ‘chicken game.’ It is similar to the game of chicken that American youth play: two cars are heading toward each other at maximum speed, until one of them swerves. This kind of game has never persisted for more than a few months, but in this case, it began in the summer of 2005 and continues to this day, and is one of the lengthiest ones in memory – a 15 or 16 month- long period of tensions...

Right now... Mr. George W. Bush is driving the car and Mrs. Condoleeza Rice is telling him, go and crush the lemon that Ahmadinejad is driving, but Bush says, what if we hit the lemon and it is full of explosives? Thus these two cars are rapidly heading toward each other. During the period of this chicken game Iran undertook a new measure every three months: first it reopened the UCF facility in Isfahan; then it reopened the Natanz Facility and heavy water reactors in Arak; and finally it entered industrial-scale fuel production...

Not to be outdone, Al Qaeda spokesperson Adam Gadahn promised further destruction in the United States:

...Your failure to heed our demands ... means that you and your people will ... experience things which will make you forget all about the horrors of September 11th, Afghanistan and Iraq and Virginia Tech...

But, don't worry about any of this stuff. According to the "progressives", George W. Bush's encounter with birds**t is this week's real headline story.

Monday, May 28, 2007

Gore: Volcanoes must purchase Carbon Offsets

 
Volcanoes are immense polluters of the environment and should be required to adhere to the same rules that will be levied upon humans, according to climatologist Albert Gore, Jr.

"Volcanoes -- which are responsible for releasing millions of tons of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere -- can no longer expect a 'free ride' when it comes to climate change," said Albert Gore, Jr. The author, moviemaker, meteorologist, and retired politician has extended his Carbon Offset advocacy to natural -- and not just man-made -- events.

According to the United States Geological Survey, active volcanoes release more than 130 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.

Several active volcanoes did not return calls seeking comment yesterday.

Ohio's Darwin Award Nominee

 
In Ohio, we read news of the latest Darwin Award nominee:

Police killed a man who had fired at two officers after they confronted him for allegedly stealing ice cream from a convenience store, Police Chief Tom Streicher said.

Four officers fired back at the unidentified man, Streicher said. The chief described it as a "running gunbattle" along several blocks of Queen City Avenue.

The man stole some ice cream from the United Dairy Farmers store at Quebec Road and Queen City Avenue, according to police. Police went to the scene to investigate the alleged theft when the man returned.

"He walked back into the store to get a spoon," Streicher said.

And the Great Spoon Shortage of '07 claims another victim. I blame Bush.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

"If it bleeds, it leads"... except when it comes to Al Qaeda

 
During a series of raids on Al-Qaeda safe houses in Iraq, U.S. military personnel discovered an official "Al-Qaeda Torture Manual" and various tools used for the express purpose of torture. Items recovered included meat cleavers, whips, and bolt-cutters. In addition, several victims -- still alive -- were discovered. The group, which included a boy, was reportedly beaten repeatedly with chains, cables, and hoses.

The Department of Defense has declassified the manual and photos of the AQ torture chambers.


Depicted above are excerpts from these items, with most of the graphic and disturbing images obscured or redacted. If you have the stomach for it, The Smoking Gun website has reprinted the entire document. Among the chapters: how to sever limbs; squeeze a victim's head in a vise; remove eyeballs; apply a blowtorch or a clothes iron to exposed flesh; and drill through hands.

* * *

Over the last several years, The New York Times has referenced the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal approximately 730 times. In fact, on May 22nd, in a Times book review of Al Gore's The Assault on Reason, Michiko Kakutani depicted the Abu Ghraib scandal in stark terms (emphasis mine):

[Gore] argues that the gruesome acts of torture committed at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq “were a direct consequence of the culture of impunity — encouraged, authorized and instituted” by President Bush and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The Times has also referenced the military prison at Guantánamo Bay around 750 times since 9/11/2001.


Columnist Maureen Dowd mentioned 'Abu Ghraib' at least 20 times, the military prison at 'Guantánamo' 7 times, and even used the phrase "the torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo."


But there are no mentions in the Times of real torture; no mentions of Al Qaeda's predilection for blow-torching, eye-gouging and hand-drilling. There are no references to the prisoners recovered from the Al Qaeda safe houses. Nor of the truly depraved treatment they and countless others -- most of whom did not survive captivity -- encountered at the hands of Al Qaeda.

Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters patiently awaited mainstream media coverage of the manual. It was not forthcoming. Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit put the media blackout as succinctly as anyone has: "Silence is complicity, you know."

After several days of waiting, Don Surber's reaction was justifiably harsh:

Where did USA Today play the torture book story?

Not on Page One.

Where did the New York Times play it?

Not on Page One.

Where did the Washington Post play it?

Not on Page One. And yet such false stories as the "flushed Koran" got widespread play in the newspapers and on television.

...Whether intentional or not, the message is clear: The United States must be above even false reports of torture, while the enemy is allowed to promote eye removal, blowtorching skin and horrors I won't go into.

James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal also "checked the blogs of Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald, among the most hysterical accusers of America in the "torture" debate, and here is what they have had to say about the al Qaeda documents: ."


So, when it comes to Newsweek's fake Koran-flushing incident at Guantanamo; or the physical hazing incidents at Abu Ghraib, or water boarding (a technique so diabolical that it's been used on U.S. special forces in their training), the mainstream media is all for publicity then. In fact, veritable firestorms of publicity.


But when it comes to real torture and the genuine evil facing us, the mainstream media is AWOL. How many times has the media shown us the World Trade Center burning and collapsing since 9/11?

And the infamous watchword of the media -- "if it bleeds, it leads" -- only applies to certain parties.

I'm not sure what to conclude about our mainstream media. Whether it's ignorance, apathy, or complicity, one thing is certain: legacy media is dying... faster than we thought possible.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Al Gore at the Marin Civic Center

 
LGF operative Zombietime paid a surreptitious visit to San Rafael, California. The occasion: an Al Gore appearance at the Marin Civic Center. The Internet's inventor was there for a speech and to shill his new book. His talk -- to around 2,000 rapt global-warming cultists -- centered on the usual topics of climate change and the human causation thereof.

I wonder if anyone asked Al Gore's about his global warming junk bonds --er-- I mean, carbon offsets?

Or if anyone asked Gore why he isn't visiting China and Iran to complain about their emissions controls, since around a half million people die annually from pollution in those countries?

Zombie's photo essay also captured the parking lot, which featured a vast array of luxury SUVs, trucks, vans, and sedans.

Go green!

Zombie also held a contest called Al Gore's Secret Message; entrants modified the cover of Gore's book. My entry is above, but it appears that it arrived too late to make it into the final mix.

See: Al Gore at the Marin Civic Center.