The RipZAW |
|
|
Guaranteed Fair and Balanced, or your money back. Send a letter to the Editor... err, Writer. Blogger. Something.    Links to StuffNewsSalon.com Google News CNN International The Onion The Motley Fool Slate Fun Stuff Mark Fiore's Cartoons Homestar Runner.com Daryl Cagle's Pro Cartoonist Index Internet Bumper Stickers Belief System Selector Odd Todd As the Apple Turns Where's George? Oddlots Irregulars Citizen's Survival Tools Project Vote Smart Congress.org Government Information Awareness Clicks for Charity The Hunger Site Ecology Fund Things I'm a Member of American Civil Liberties Union League of Conservation Voters MoveOn.org Our Campaigns Other Blogs The Homeless Guy Spinsanity The Moderate Republican Where is Raed? Granny D Atrios Daily Kos Talking Points Memo Political Animal IMPORTANT Cartoons We Drink Ritalin The End of the World Super Mario Brothers: [1] [2] [3] All Your Base 
Visitors:
Archives
|
Thursday, April 10, 2003
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., purveyors of such fine programming as FOX News and Star TV (a favorite on mainland China), has just consummated its deal to buy out Hughes Electronics (owners of DirecTV), thus completing one more step along its path to world domination. | Apparently, the NYPD has been collecting dossiers on the political affiliations of anti-war protesters arrested in New York and keeping the information in a large database. When the ACLU found out, the NYPD claimed they had destroyed the database and would stop interrogating protesters. Everyone in the NYPD's top ranks denied knowing anything about the project, of course. | British Airways and Air France are finally retiring the Concorde. So long. Hope you stick around in museums, with nice big displays and crowds of people all trying to get a look. | This is one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen. American Computer LLC they call themselves, supposedly based out of Cranford, NJ. On their site, they advertise laptops, mainframes, desktops, PDAs, all of their own brands, although they claim to carry pretty much every other product in existence as well. Then you go onto their about us page, and it's just great. Apparently, they have IBM and Microsoft quaking in their boots. "It's founder was the innovator responsible for desktop window pcs and inter-networked workstations and servers with windows, a seasoned veteran with in depth product design and market knowledge that transcends the world's computer industry." They invented "Million Gigahertz Transistor technology". We know this is true because it was confirmed by "Lawrence Berkley and Harvard". Their servers "are as capable in an Avionics and Flight Control bay on board an F-16 Falcon, as they are in a File Server Room in the back office at a Major Bank!" My best guess, based on the copious misspellings present, the fact that everything is supposed to be available in English or Chinese, that they claim to have a manufacturing plant in Taiwan (along with New York, New Jersey, Ohio, California, and pretty much everywhere else), and that occasionally there are Chinese characters littered between the lines of english text, is that whatever this is, it's based out of China or Taiwan. I tried doing a whois search on their domain and all the affiliated domains (they claim to also run a major web portal - "its Comp America Online based ventures attract the largest audience of any on the internet, covering a diversity of subject matter in "real world" community appeal havens."), and they all are registered to someone at the address the provided in New Jersey. So, I have absolutely no idea what the heck this is. Researching it was a good way to wast an hour and a half, though. | Wednesday, April 09, 2003
Is it really over? That's what the news sources are suggesting. But whatever the state of Saddam's government and army, "it" has only begun. What do we do with the country now? Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile-cum-Syrian felon wants the government, but that's why he's supported the war all along. Meanwhile, the Pentagon wants a military government, Defense wants its people in change, State and the UK want the UN to move in, and Bush just wants to make sure that no one interferes with whatever it is he decides to do. And, of course, the reports are coming in of rampant looting and rioting, not just the newly liberated citizens of Baghdad raiding Baath party offices, but the militias that have taken over after the US Army leaves raiding the "liberated" civilians. Are we going to build a post-Imperial Japan or a post-Taliban Afghanistan? We have very little room for error here. | Tuesday, April 08, 2003
Philip Robertson has sent in a heartening report from Kurdistan - another town evacuated by Iraq and reclaimed by the Kurds with US Special Forces help, and this one is everything we had hoped for - crowds of people weeping for joy, tearing down the Saddam statues, begging to tell their stories to the Westerners, and shouting "Bar-zan-i!" (the Kurdish leader) and "Am-ri-ka!" in the streets. It's just so good to hear that kind of thing. It's a bit of justice in an unjust world. I only hope and pray that it lasts, and we don't sell them out again. | The College Republicans are coming out in force for a recruiting drive at Haverford. Their new leader has the rather ironic nickname "Greed", from his first initial and last name. They've been putting up posters everywhere, a good number of which extol the virtue of Republicans in not having affaris in the White House (I really thought we'd moved on to more important things by now.) The only one with significant text regarding an issue is a reprint of a news article on how global warming doesn't exist. Now seriously. Of all the things to hitch your wagon to, you pick that global warming doesn't exist. That's not very smart. Greed has always talked about how much more moderate the Republicans are than the Democrats, so why go out and ruin the image by saying something like that? | Here's an interesting story: the WNBA is in danger of not having a season. Apparently the players union is having a contract dispute with the league. Unlike in men's professional sports, this isn't utterly ludicrous: WNBA players make an average of $46k or $60k, depending on who you ask. While it makes sense that they make so much less, given that the WNBA is hemmorhaging cash and no one watches it (and the Orlando team got bought out by the Mohegan Indians and now play at their casino in Connecticut), at least the players aren't whining about only getting $7 million a year instead of $8 million. I said when the WNBA was founded it wouldn't last. I completely agreed with the argument that women should be allowed to compete the same as men, and I noted there was no clause in the NBA's rules barring women from playing. I compared the WNBA to the Negro Leagues. It's segregation for no good reason. If the women are as good as the men, then they should be playing in the same league as the men. If they're not as good as the men, then why do they think anybody wants to watch them play. Unfortunately, as anyone who's seen a WNBA game can attest, the women turned out not to be as good at basketball as the men, and consequently, lo and behold, no one wanted to watch the WNBA. Sorry. | Monday, April 07, 2003
Now here's a logical question asked most often by war supporters and Bush supporters: "Why are you so worried about the PATRIOT Act and all the other anti-terrorism measures the US government has taken? Look at the enemy! Why aren't you trying to get Iraq to be more democratic instead of bothering us here?" Fortunately, there's a very easy answer to that: because I live here, and I don't live in Iraq. I have all the concern in the world for... well, the world; but my number one concern is what's going on right here, and I'm not going to let this place go to hell just because somewhere else is already there. That good enough? | "Did you see what he just did there? We're in the middle of a war and he's starting another war. We're already fighting Iraq and he's like, 'By the way, Syria? You want a piece?' ... There's nothing like a cantankerous old man who takes a 'Hey, you kids, get off my lawn!' approach to foreign policy." -Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, referring to Donald Rumsfeld's rather hostile warning to Syria about doing anything that remotely could be considered pro-Iraq. | According to a CNN article, the post-war government of Iraq has been decided, will be headed by a retired US general, and has moved into Kuwait before taking over power. I have to beleive there's more to the story - the post war fate of Iraq merits more than a paragraph's mention. I'm waiting for a follow up story. | The situation in Korea is heating up some more. The North and the South just cancelled high level talks that were scheduled in the near future. This is after North Korea announced that the UN had become irrelevant and it would ignore any resolutions against it, and somewhere around the time it declared diplomacy was useless and it needed to start yet another massive military buildup to protect itself. They're taking every page out of the George W. Bush playbook, aren't they? Kim Jong Il and his cronies are insane, not stupid. | Sunday, April 06, 2003
|
