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Monday, July 09, 2007

Knee Bone Connected To The Arm Bone

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So Scooter Libby, convicted by a jury of his peers, has been unconvicted by El Presidente. The ability of the President to pardon is enshrined in the constitution, and is generally constrained only by the ethics of the grantee of the power. Bush, determined to break down the agreements and conventions that have kept the country running for hundreds of years, has begun to pardon his inner circle. Under the Bush theory of the Presidency, any subordinate can commit a crime and be “pardoned”, or have his or her sentence commuted in advance. This leaves us with the uncomfortable situation of having a rather unconstrained executive branch, to say the least. Near as I can tell there is only ONE remedy for a President that abuses his authority in this fashion: Impeachment.

The President can pardon like mad unless Congress decides to remove him from office; I wonder what it would take to begin the process. I’ve been curious about how the GOP intends to shield its minions from a pissed-off inbound executive. Pardons can only happen if a prosecution has taken place, so unless they get those prosecutions cracking now, they’re going to be unshielded later on.

This is one of the highest profile cases on record that quantifies exactly how the dual system of justice in this country works.

Colleague Patton wrote not too long ago on this very topic, so I guess you could say that we disagree. The question remains: Where is the check and balance on the Executive when it comes to pardoning his own inner circle?

And just so we’re clear, I believe that the GOP has, in this round of administration, done nothing less than break down the barriers between church, state AND party. When members of the executive are emailing each other on their GOP party accounts discussing the introduction of the church into policy, you’ve got quite a trifecta underway.


Posted by Ross on 07/09/07 at 04:04 PM
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Sunday, June 03, 2007

The purity of essence of our precious category tags

No CategoryCrazy ForeignersDarwin Award ContenderFakeBloggingEntertainmentFilthy LucreHoly Shit!It'll Be a Cold Day in HellJust So You KnowLead Pipe CrueltyNaNoWriMoMusic WonkeryPartisan PoliticsPerfidyPerfidy AttacksPerfidy RespondsThat Buck Rogers StuffThe Miracle of ScienceUnmitigated GallWar

Patton has accused me of being overly concerned about wasting a scarce natural resource.  The category tag.  In this, of course, he is completely wrong.  Naturally, I could have argued that over-categorizing a post dilutes the utility of tags.  And I would have been right.  But that wasn’t the point.  I was attacking him on aesthetic grounds, and just to stick a stick in his eye. 

Just to prove that I am not some sort of homo-tree-hugging-enviro-commie, this post, which really is about everything, is tagged with every category we have.  And, when I have a free moment, I’ll add some new categories, and add them to this post.

So there.


Posted by Buckethead on 06/03/07 at 09:34 PM
No Category • Crazy Foreigners • Darwin Award Contender • FakeBlogging • Entertainment • Filthy Lucre • Holy Shit! • It'll Be a Cold Day in Hell • Just So You Know • Lead Pipe Cruelty • NaNoWriMo • Music Wonkery • Partisan Politics • Perfidy • Perfidy Attacks • Perfidy Responds • That Buck Rogers Stuff • The Miracle of Science • Unmitigated Gall • War • Permalink

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

For Dad

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I recently gave a eulogy for my father.  This is a small part of it I’d like to share.


Posted by Ross on 02/21/07 at 03:44 PM
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In Which I Am Incredibly Prescient

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Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.


Posted by Ross on 02/21/07 at 03:41 PM
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Friday, February 09, 2007

The Ministry of Minor Avians, Part 2

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Next up, a fellow bested only by the roadrunner in bearing no resemblance to his cartoon version:

image

This is a male downy woodpecker.  You can tell he's a male by the red patch on the back of his head and by the huge boner he gets when he starts ripping into the suet. 

We get a male and female, presumably a mated pair, daily.  They don't seem to like feeding at the same time, a preservation instinct I both understand and can totally dig.  It would be easy to mistake this fellow for a hairy woodpecker (seriously, Picoides villosus) just by the plumage, but the hairies I understand are both larger and don’t range quite as far north as I and my suet.  Also concerning plumage, this photo understates how striking the black and white ladder pattern down the back is. 


Posted by GeekLethal on 02/09/07 at 04:32 PM
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Wednesday, May 17, 2006

On animals

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Apropos of nothing in particular, I thought I’d let everyone know that there is a turkey hen (or whatever lady turkeys are called) living in my area.  She used to have some gal-pals; lately I’ve only seen a single one.  Like yesterday, when she was slowly walking past my truck in the cold morning drizzle, slurping up worms or ticks or CHUDS or whateverfuck bubbles to the surface in heavy rain. 

Didn’t pay me any mind, which was good, because the only weapon close at hand to defend against a turkoconic onslaught was my bright yellow metal thermos and the hot Earl Grey therein.

Last evening I was inside but saw motion off the back deck, out of the corner of my eye.  It was the weird light of slacking rain and dusk; for a second I thought it was the turkey.  But nope-it was venison steaks and a buckskin jacket waiting to happen; a young buck in the yard.  I had heard from a neighbor that we get them fairly regularly, but I hadn’t seen any myself til last night.

Well, in my backyard anyway.  I see alot of deer in my travels, and enough turkeys where I’m not surprised if I spy any in the woodline.  And of course all the basic town varmints: possums, raccoons.  Bats.  Which freak out the wife, and my calling them “just flying mice” doesn’t help.  I hear an owl every so often.  Billions and billions of geese.

Oh, and perhaps a chupacabra.  Something got into my trash the other night.  The can was full, mebbe 50 lbs, and the heavy bag was on the very bottom.  Well, something was strong enough, clever enough, or lucky enough to have pulled the can over, popped the locking lid, and had a buffet with a bunch of gross shit I was trying to throw away.  And the something had pointy teefers, judging by the torn bags.

My first thought was racoon, but that was a pretty heavy can.  Prolly could’ve gotten the lid off, but pulled it over...?  I kinda doubt it; ditto an ambitious stray cat.  Then I thought big dog, but we don’t have any strays in the area and I was confident the locking lid technology would thwart the cleverest canine (not particularly challenging I know, just saying).  Black bear is not entirely implausible, but would be an extreme stretch.

Which pretty much leaves me with chupacabra.


Posted by GeekLethal on 05/17/06 at 06:09 PM
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Monday, February 13, 2006

Carnival of the Recipes

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The new Carnival of the Recipes is up at Physics Geek.

Next week, the Carnival will be hosted by yours truly, the Ministry of Minor Perfidy. Come and see what foods we will enjoy when the apocalypse befalls us.


Posted by Johno on 02/13/06 at 11:16 AM
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Sunday, October 09, 2005

Dude, Have You Seen My Bag?

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Dude, have you seen my bag?


Posted by Johno on 10/09/05 at 01:31 PM
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Saturday, September 03, 2005

Short Buses and Calculators

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(I’m reposting this from a comment on Patton’s post)

Please.

oil : 70 / 60 = 1.16
local gas price: $3.75 / $2.19 = 1.7

Did the wholesale price of gasoline just rise?  We don’t have figures there.  If the wholesale price rose by 70%, then the oil companies ARE gouging, because their piplines are full of $60 oil.  If the wholesale price has stayed the same, then the stations are gouging the public, by 50% or more.  Oh wait—almost all stations are owned by the oil companies.  So that’s them again.

Don’t pull out your “short bus” metaphor unless you pull out a calculator at the same time.

Yes, big oil is looting the nation.  Per barrel shifts in oil prices have lengthy, delayed effects, not instantaneous market reactions down to the _pump_ level.  Psychologically, the oil companies saw the opportunity and took it.  They know they’ll have no reaction from this administration, and an innumerate citizenry will...do nothing.

I’ll agree with you on one point—price controls are not the answer here.  Nationalizing some of this certainly is.  I don’t have a problem with states (or the federal governmen) owning refining capacity and stations.  Leave the private sector pirates in place; if they’re truly as “efficient” as claimed, then they’ll be just fine, and no government-run entity could possibly compete with them.  They’ll earn their business the old-fashioned way, with lower prices and better service.

Yeah, right.

Hey, fuck it.  Doesn’t affect me—it’s just those poor people who are going to have trouble paying the gas bills, getting to their increasingly shitty jobs, as the GOP chops the budget for public transportation into non-existence.  50% of the national guard’s equipment is over in Iraq, and unavailable for disaster relief.

Think about this: This is a much bigger disaster than 9/11.  We have potentially (and quite probably at this point) thousands of people dead.  We have a major city _destroyed_, mostly by inaction and incompetence at every level.  The hurricane left the city generally intact!

And if you think this country has done a great job preparing for “terrorist attack”, exactly what would have happened differently if Al Qaeda had detonated explosives at the levees, instead of the hurricane?

Michael Brown, “director” of FEMA, said two days ago (on Thursday) that he was “unaware” that there were people in the Superdome.  The fucking director of FEMA didn’t know that there were thousands of people there.

Michael Brown was Joe Allbaugh’s college roommate.  GOP-activist Michael Brown’s prior experience was running the “Arabian Horse Alliance” or some silly bullshit like that.  Some reports indicate Brown was “invited to resign” from that job amidst accusations of incompetence.

Brown’s FEMA placed Pat Robertson’s (yes, the same crazy-ass Robertson we know and love) “Operation Blessing” at the number two position on the cash giving list, before the Salvation Army, before just about everything else you’d recognize.  Brown’s speeches have him complaining about the fact that he can’t be “spiritual” in public.

I know exactly what kind of “Republican” Michael Brown is, and there’s exactly _nothing_ conservative about this man.  He is either a smart man who is a nasty fucker, or he is sufficiently stupid and egocentric so as not to have an understanding of his own deeply _lethal_ incompetence.

Patton, he is not like you.  At the heart of it, I _respect_ the conservatism you represent.  It’s a conservatism derived from realism, that wants restraint, that wants a government to do less, and give its citizens more freedom.  That is a genuine and respectable goal, and when the country votes for it that’s fine with me.

This cabal of entitlement frat-buddies has hijacked the GOP, and this country desperately needs its real conservatives back.  Please, please, find some...beg them to come back.  There’s little elsewhere to turn. 


Posted by Ross on 09/03/05 at 03:49 PM
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Monday, May 16, 2005

Query

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Is there a difference-- any difference-- between “writer’s block” and “not having anything to say?”


Posted by Johno on 05/16/05 at 03:59 PM
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Friday, April 08, 2005

That’s funny, most of these things are on my to-do-list

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Dave at Garfield Ridge links to an internet classic that I had somehow missed: the Evil Overlord To-Do-List.

My personal favorites:

4.  Shooting is not too good for my enemies.
12.  One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.
29.  I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw my enemies into confusion.
53.  If the beautiful princess that I capture says “I’ll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!”, I will say “Oh well” and kill her.

As a technical writer by trade, I cannot help but appreciate this one:

57.  Before employing any captured artifacts or machinery, I will carefully read the owner’s manual.

While we’re on the subject of internet classics, one of the best is the 213 things Skippy is no longer allowed to do in the US Army.  There are also some other submissions by skippy’s fans here.  A sample of Skippy’s list:

7.  Not allowed to add “In accordance with the prophesy” to the end of answers I give to a question an officer asks me.
35. Not allowed to sing “High Speed Dirt” by Megadeth during airborne operations. (“See the earth below/Soon to make a crater/Blue sky, black death, I’m off to meet my maker”)
54. “Napalm sticks to kids” is *not* a motivational phrase.
58. The following words and phrases may not be used in a cadence- Budding sexuality, necrophilia, I hate everyone in this formation and wish they were dead, sexual lubrication, black earth mother, all Marines are latent homosexuals, Tantric yoga, Gotterdammerung, Korean hooker, Eskimo Nell, we’ve all got jackboots now, slut puppy, or any references to squid.
60. “The Giant Space Ants” are not at the top of my chain of command.
66. There is no “Anti-Mime” campaign in Bosnia.
83. Must not start any SITREP (Situation Report) with “I recently had an experience I just had to write you about....”
84. Must not use military vehicles to “Squish” things.
137. Should not show up at the front gate wearing part of a Russian uniform, messily drunk.
138. Even if my commander did it.
167. Not allowed to operate a business out of the barracks.
168. Especially not a pornographic movie studio.
169. Not even if they *are* “especially patriotic films”
177. I am not to refer to a formation as “the boxy rectangle thingie”.
181. Pokémon® trainer is not an MOS.
191. Our Humvees cannot be assembled into a giant battle-robot.
202. Despite the confusing similarity in the names, the “Safety Dance” and the “Safety Briefing” are never to be combined.


Posted by Buckethead on 04/08/05 at 12:43 PM
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Monday, March 14, 2005

800,000 Protestors in Beirut

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This is a picture of Martyr’s Square in downtown Beirut.  The caption says that there are 800,000 people there demanding freedom and the immediate departure of the Syrians.

image

Reading that caption, it made me wonder how many people are actually in Lebanon.  According to the CIA Factbook for Lebanon, the total population is only 3,777,218 (July 2004 est.) That means that 21%, or more than one out of five Lebanese are in that square demanding their freedom.  And that, friends, is really goddamn amazing.

[wik]More news, and more pictures.


Posted by Buckethead on 03/14/05 at 06:07 PM
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