Saturday, November 18, 2006

Roundup of News

Saturday open thread

posted at 2:12 pm on November 18, 2006 by Ian

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Oh my God! Tom and Katie are getting married in Italy today! Who cares?


Meanwhile, people are being robbed, shot, pushed around, and jumped just for a Playstation 3. Browsing eBay, I found a Playstation 3 sold for $44,100.

Bond is back.

Mark Foley: “It’s just been a real hard time.”

Keith Olbermann makes an intentional mistake, wouldn’t be the first time.
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Roanoke TV station fires meteorologist over MySpace photo

From Staff, Wire Reports
Nov 18, 2006


ROANOKE -- A WSLS-TV meteorologist was fired because his nude photo was posted on the Internet.

The NBC affiliate dismissed Jamey Singleton on Thursday after the photo appeared on MySpace.com.

The station's interim general manager, Shane Moreland, said in a
statement that Singleton broke the morals clause of his contract, which
stipulates that he must not be involved in anything deemed "offensive
or out of line with community standards."
Read it all.
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Ethiopians Protest Conviction of Mutilator


Under the heading of, “What the hell is wrong with these people?” (Hat tip: Killgore.)

This picture, released by protest
organizers, show hundreds of Ethiopians taking to the streets of the
capital to protest the landmark conviction by a US court of an
Ethiopian man for sexually mutilating his two-year-old daughter with
scissors. (AFP/HO)

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November 18, 2006

FANS OF ALCEE HASTINGS are spreading rumors about Jane Harman that don't seem to be true. Tom Maguire is on the case,
remarking: "let me offer a steaming mug of reality to the reality based
community, from the NY Times, with helpful emphasis added."

I'll just note that, true or not, the Democrats don't seem to have
waited long before descending into circular-firing-squad mode.



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Terrific News

Newfangled European passports meant to deter terrorism and crime may be easily clonable by savvy criminals. Yaay!

But is this really credible? Would criminals or terrorists really go to such lengths? Ross Anderson, professor of
security engineering at the University of Cambridge computer
laboratory, believes they would. "The point is that once you have
extracted the data from the chip you can have a forged passport that
contains not just forged physical stuff," he says. "You also have the
digital bit-stream so the digital signature of the passport checks out.
That makes it possible to travel through borders with it.

"What concerns me is that this demonstrates bad design on the part of the Home Office, and we know that government IT projects have a habit of going terribly wrong. There is a lack of security in what we can see - so what about the 90% of the iceberg in the system that we can't see?

Emphasis mine.
These investigators should be praised for their curiosity, and for
identifying these weaknesses. Hopefully in advance of the bad guys (but
I wouldn't count on it).

Kind of difficult to keep an eye on suspected terrorists (or their helpers) if they can slip the system altogether.

Hey, Home Office: IT isn't supposed to stand for Identity Theft, m'kay?

Thanks to tipster Man Of Substance, whose wife devours the souls of baby animals. Not to survive on.

Hobby.
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Al Jazeera Jitters

Posted by:
Hugh Hewitt at
2:40 PM
Al Jazeera notes the big Navy presence in the Gulf.:

[O]n October 31, two nuclear-powered carriers, the USS Eisenhower
and USS Enterprise, arrived in Bahrain, accompanied by their carrier
strike groups. And on November 9th, the USS Iwo Jima, and the USS Boxer
also arrived.


Is President Bush up to something? Asked Rense.com


On October 11, American officials announced that the U.S., Bahrain
and other states will hold their first naval exercise in the Gulf to
practice interdicting ships carrying weapons of mass destruction and
missiles.


The exercises, organized under the U.S.-led 66-member Proliferation
Security Initiative and the first to be based in the Gulf near Bahrain,
across from Iran, came as Washington and the European Union member
states are pushing for imposing sanctions including possible
interdiction of ships on North Korea, following its announcement of
carrying out nuclear test, and on Iran, which the U.S., backed by
Israel and the EU, claims is preparing to produce nuclear weapons.


Iran considers Washington- sponsored war games in the Persian Gulf,
off the Iranian coastline as a provocation aimed at creating a
situation of direct confrontation between the U.S. and Iranian naval
forces in the Persian Gulf, although a senior U.S. official insisted
that the exercise is not aimed specifically at Iran.


About the exercises, which experts say reinforces a U.S. strategy
aimed at strengthening America’s ties with the Gulf states, which
Tehran and Washington are engaged in a fierce competition to win
influence over, the official, speaking on condition of anonymity
claimed:


"It’s an effort to bring a lot of Gulf states together to
demonstrate resolve and readiness to act against proliferation."


I don't know if a four carrier deployment is significant,
but perhaps some old salt (or not-so-old salt) can compare this
deployment with past exercises in the region.

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by Oak Leaf on 11-18-06 @ 2:54 pm Filed under News




The Washington Post writes “Republicans Lost Ground With Latinos In Midterms” and that is a TRUE statement.


The problem is that Republicans lost ground with all voters. The New York Times has a fascinating web/chart site that lets you compare vote percentages for 20 plus years.


First,
I would say that it is not fair to compare a 2006 mid term with 2004
Presidential results. If you compare 2006 with 2002, you will find that
Hispanic GOP support declined by 8%.


Here is the
dirty little secret. The GOP also saw support by Whites drop 8%. Hmm,
do you think we will see articles that the GOP should pander to the
biggest voting bloc and regain the “White Voting Bloc?”


--------------------

North Korea’s Message for Syria




November 17th, 2006



It’s pretty much your standard DPRK propaganda but still interesting:


Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the DPRK
Supreme People’s Assembly, sent a message of greetings to Bashar
Al-Assad, president of Syria, Wednesday on the occasion of the 36th
anniversary of the corrective movement in Syria. The message said that
the Korean people are pleased with the fact that the friendly Syrian
government and people have successfully carried forward the cause of
Hafez Al-Assad, the leader of advance. It sincerely wished the
president and people of Syria greater success in their efforts to smash
the outside pressure and challenge and protect the sovereignty and
security of the country and regional peace and achieve fresh progress
and prosperity.



More Blogs of War:

North Korea Stands with Syria
Statement By The President On North Korea
Syria to Fully Back Hezbollah
North Korean Missile Test - All Options on the Table
Iran Declares Support for Syria - Will Respond with Force if Attacked

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November 18, 2006



The Fallacy Of 'The Center'

Peggy Noonan has an article at Opinion Journal in which she asks Who'll Claim the Center?



While Peggy did not make any claims about the structure of politics,
I'd like to adresss a common fallacy which underlies her article. In my
opinion, the concept of a political "center" which lies along a
gradient from Left to Right is intellectually vacant, and moreover,
wrong.



The idea that the current state of politics, or the valuation of a
politician's status can be depicted along a line from Left to Right is
stupid. It's as if we've taken a diverse landscape, a multidimensional
space of ideas, and run it through a hydraulic press that smashes it
into a flat piece of scrap metal which we can understand.



I'd like to propose a new way of thinking about political landscape.



Politics is a multidimensional conflict. At the center of this conflict are the people who are most...

Read the rest at Good Richard's.
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Saturday, November 18, 2006



Losing the Election Disfunction Syndrome

Well,
the election of 2006 is over, the results are known, and whether we are
satisfied or not with the results, as my friend Buffalo says, “it
is what it is.”

Trying to look objectively at the political landscape is much easier after the election than before it, because we don’t have to wade through the accusations, allegations, false charges, bloviating and all the rest of what makes up an American political campaign. Now that the people have spoken all the crap that went on before is for the most part irrelevant.

Read the rest at Observations.
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Saturday, November 18, 2006

Borrowed From Lili


You scored as Friedrich Nietzsche.
Well you're an egotistical maniac, and you are so very iconoclastic
that you probably are currently lost in a post-modern Jupiter, I mean
jungle of self-definition.
Don't let it get you down though,
someday, through a willful onslaught of reinterpretation of dated forms
and ideas, you will strike on something that passes as remotely new,
and people WILL be into it on the basis of how hip it is alone. Also,
the average espresso drinker looks up to you.

Friedrich Nietzsche


67%

Miyamoto Musashi


50%

C.G. Jung


42%

Dante Alighieri


33%

Adolf Hitler


33%

Hugh Hefner


33%

Mother Teresa


8%

O.J. Simpson


0%

Jesus Christ


0%

Elvis Presley


0%

Charles Manson


0%

Sigmund Freud


0%

Stephen Hawking


0%

Steven Morrissey


0%

What Pseudo Historical Figure Best Suits You?
created with QuizFarm.com

--------------------

November 18, 2006






Reuters reports that the closing storm season in the Atlantic missed expectations
of increasingly violent weather -- by a wide margin. Read the story
carefully to find out what Reuters failed to include in its story:



Before this year's Atlantic hurricane season started, Gray
and his protege, Philip Klotzbach, predicted that it would be well
above average. Instead, it has been slightly below average as the Nov.
30 end of the season draws near -- and a mere whimper compared with the
destruction caused by monster hurricanes such as Katrina, Rita and
Wilma in 2005. ...

The Colorado State team was not alone in predicting that 2006 would
be more active than an average year, in which the Atlantic can be
expected to spawn 10 tropical storms, of which six will strengthen into
hurricanes.

Finish the story at Captain's Quarters Blog.
--------------------

Photo

Nintendo Wii joins bid for video game console crown Sat Nov 18, 2006

The
final salvo in the new video game console war comes first thing on
Sunday, as Nintendo's unconventional underdog, the Wii, takes on
Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3.  Full Article

--------------------

NewsTrack - Top News


Israeli envoy walks out of U.N. session

UNITED
NATIONS, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- Israel's ambassador walked out on the United
Nations session that resulted in a strong call to Israel to end its
military operations in the Gaza Strip.


The 192-member General Assembly voted Friday night 156-7, with six
abstentions, in favor of the non-binding resolution in an emergency
special session.

Read the whole story.  Another bad day for Israel at the UN (heh)
__________
Reason amongst the dhimmikrauts



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