Another Incompetent Bushie

MR. MORRELL: Listen, you're talking -- this -- I majored in English and -- I majored in government and English. I'm not familiar with how we take down satellites.

*snarls*


Nevermind that it happens to be directly related to your job. There are plenty of people that get majors in one degree and then work in a completely different area. Yet Another Dumb@$$ Bushie.

More Local Stupidity Goes National...and may effect me

Berkeley, the famously liberal college town in California, has taken aim at Marine recruiters, saying they are "not welcome in our city."

Republican lawmakers in Washington fired back this week, threatening to take back more than $2 million of federal funding to the city as well as money designated for the University of California-Berkeley, the campus that became a haven of protests during the Vietnam War.

The battle erupted after the Berkeley City Council approved a measure last week urging the Marine recruiters to leave their downtown office.

"If recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders," the item says.

It goes on to say the council applauds residents and organizations that "volunteer to impede, passively or actively, by nonviolent means, the work of any military recruiting office located in the City of Berkeley."

Outside the Shattuck Avenue recruiting station earlier this week, a handful of protesters with the anti-war group Code Pink camped out, strumming a guitar as they sang anti-war songs and held signs against the Iraq war.

"Time to end the war, time to end the war, time to end the war right now," they sang to the beat of "I've Been Working on the Railroad." Video Watch protesters sing "I Ain't Afraid" »

One giant sign said, "No Military Predators in Our Town." Another message on a pink placard read, "Join the Marines. Travel to Exotic Lands. Meet Exciting and Unusual People -- And Kill Them."

Zanne Joi peered out from under her straw hat. "This Marine recruiting station is trying to recruit our youth to go to Iraq to kill and be killed. And we are against that," said Joi, a member of Code Pink Women for Peace.

"This is part of a multi-pronged effort to end this war."

Protester Sharon Adams added: "This recruiting station recruits people to go fight and then once they fight and they serve their country, our country doesn't take care of them. That's a shame."

But not everyone here supports the protesters.

[...]

Gunnery Sgt. Pauline Franklin, a spokeswoman for the Marine Corps Recruiting Command, told CNN there is "no plan for that office to move."

She said recruiters are there to "provide information to qualified men and women who are looking for opportunities that they may benefit from by serving in the military."

"The Marine Corps is here to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, which does guarantee the freedom of speech," Franklin said. "In terms of the situation in Berkeley, the City Council and the protesters are exercising their right to do so."

In Washington, a group of Republican lawmakers have introduced the Semper Fi Act of 2008 -- named after the Marine motto -- to rescind more than $2 million of funds for Berkeley and transfer it to the Marine Corps.

"Like most Americans, I really get disturbed when taxpayer money goes to institutions which proceed to take votes, make policy or make statements that really denigrate the military," said Sen. David Vitter, R-Louisiana, a co-sponsor of the bill.

He told CNN he believes the bill will pass. "I think it's going to have significant support."

The bill's co-sponsor, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina, said in a written statement, "Berkeley needs to learn that their actions have consequences."

First up, I think that Code Pink is a bunch of nitwits (they have a right to protest though, I do agree, even if what's coming out of their mouths seriously pisses me off). One of the things they have been espousing is that the recruiters are trying to go to the HS to get the young, dumb, and impressionable. This station is actually aimed at the university to get graduates to join.

Secondly, the Repugnants sponsoring that bill are right up there with them.

Thirdly, I happen to work for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and I am an University of California employee. If they really strip money from going into Berkeley, it might be an issue for, y'know my job.

gah. Idiocy is contagious.

The Dangers of Stupidity

(Tsien Hsue-shen with Mao Zedong in 1956, not long after Tsien had been deported from the United States. (credit: Chinese propaganda photo via Dwayne Day's article)

One of the nasty twists of irony is that the United States is that we gave the Chinese the tres big boost to get their ballistic missile and space program going. The PRC didn't have any scientists or engineers trained for rocketry whatsoever until the FBI began harassing Tsien during the McCarthy era. Tsien was very apolitical at the time. He did file a request to go visit his parents in China after he had already done so with government approval. Then he was harassed and even put under house arrest for five years. After that Tsien was deported. The rest is history.

I recommend that you read the Aviation Week article and Dwayne Day's article on the subject.

I am not so sure we have learned from our mistakes. We seem to repeat them. Perhaps we ought to learn from our mistakes?

The Reiser Trial: Can't Help Myself

I have to admit, I have been following the Hans Reiser trial. As a sysadmin/programmer involved with file systems, albeit multisystem FSes, with a xSoviet wife it struck me as spooky as all get out. I have been following the trial through SF Gate's live blogging of the event. I won't call it a pleasure, but there's a little bit of guilt for my morbid curiosity, truthfully.

Reiser, if anyone knew about him before this post, was a very, very, very undersocialized as a kid, overly bright guy. Most of the actions that they've brought up, so far, in the trial as circumstantial evidence of his guilt can easily be interpreted as his too damned smart and under empathetic nerd self to the extreme (had roommates like this guy, but milder). It's also entirely consistent with his personality from before: note, I am NOT saying his innocent, but rather the prosecutor's case sucks. However, I'm interpreting this based on my own delving into the computer nerd/geek world[1], so I have my own biases[2]. I think it really matters more what the jury thinks than what I do.

My guess about what's going to happen is that Reiser is going to be found guilty unless the defense makes a very good case. Reiser's just plain unappealing to the extreme and his actions in court can't help but influence the jury as well. He needs to sit down, shut up and let his lawyer do his job. If he keeps sabotaging his lawyer as he has been, he's screwed.

1. I am a card carrying puter geek, truthfully, if a bit more empathetic than some. And clean. And have successfully reproduced once.

2. I think the whole damned thing is frakked up beyond extreme. I am not so sure that I buy what's being presented by either side. Reiser's an ass. His behavior is terrible and inexcusable: this is the mother of his kids and his actions wrt his kids is nuts. However, I am not so sure Nina was the saint that she's being painted as either. Reiser, while really out there makes the claim she ran off with gobs of dinero. That ought to be easy to check based on bank records, spending behavior and accounting. My wife has doubts about both of them! Sturgeon ought to be examined very, very carefully too. This really needs a finer toothed comb than what I've seen so far. oy.

And You Thought the 9/11 Whack-jobs Were Bad

This seems to be their inbred wannabe cousin.

I live less than a mile crow distance from the collapsed section. I have worked out in places where bombs and missiles go off on a regular basis. I would have frakkin heard that and not slept through it, damnit.