| Home | Recent Comments | Categories |

Cartoons

Posted on November 7th, 2007 at 19:10 by John Sinteur in category: Cartoon

billday.jpg

horsey1.jpg

kelley.gif


Write a comment

Kathleen Willey suspects Clintons murdered husband

Posted on November 7th, 2007 at 18:03 by John Sinteur in category: Indecision 2008

[Quote:]

In a new book alleging a campaign of slander and intimidation orchestrated chiefly by Hillary Clinton, Kathleen Willey points a finger of suspicion at the former first couple for the death of her husband, who was believed to have killed himself.

Willey, who claims she was groped by President Clinton in the White House, acknowledged in an interview with WND today that she stands by the speculation she poses about her husband’s demise in “Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton,” set for release this week by World Ahead Publishing, WND Books’ partner.

Asked if she suspects her husband Ed, a lawyer and son of a prominent Virginia lawmaker, was murdered, Willey replied, “Most definitely.”

“I’m having someone with a forensics background look at this, and I intend to pursue this further, now that these questions have been raised,” she told WND, pointing to alleged discrepancies in the autopsy report.

Does she believe the Clintons were involved?

“I do have suspicions,” Willey said, “yes.”

Well, that’s clear then. Election season has officially started.


Write a comment

OK, so did you get that?

Posted on November 7th, 2007 at 17:59 by John Sinteur in category: Indecision 2008

[Quote:]

So Dennis Kucinich offered a privileged resolution to impeach Dick Cheney. His motion entitled him to read his articles of impeachment into the record and on C-SPAN.

That gave the House leadership two days to figure out what to do, and when to schedule consideration of the motion. But they decided to act almost right away, by moving to table (kill) the resolution. In order to move to kill it, it had to be read by the clerk first. So the articles of impeachment got read into the record and on C-SPAN again.

Then Steny Hoyer, in his capacity as Majority Leader, moved to table the resolution. Everyone expected this to pass easily, as the Democratic leadership remains opposed to considering impeachment, and Republicans… well, they’re Republicans.

So they held the vote on tabling the resolution, and the vote was held open past the 15 minutes allotted for it, which is not that unusual. Only it stayed open longer, and longer, and longer. And then Republicans got mischievous. They started switching their votes from yes to no, figuring on embarrassing Democrats by forcing them to debate impeaching Dick Cheney, right on national TV in front of everyone.

Republicans believe everything is good for Republicans.

But for some unknown reason, the House leadership kept this vote open longer and longer and longer. Over an hour, in fact. During which time, more and more Republican votes migrated into the no column, until in the end, the motion to table was defeated by a vote of 170-242.

Having lost the motion to table, Hoyer went to the next option: a motion to refer the resolution to the Judiciary Committee, where the leadership hopes it will die of neglect. There was a little procedural hiccup there for a moment, but Hoyer first moved to order the previous question — a procedural device that ends debate. A yes vote on the previous question meant that Hoyer could then immediately move to refer the Kucinich resolution to committee.

At that point, the expected order was restored. The previous question was ordered, Hoyer moved to refer the bill to committee, and the 80 Democrats who earlier insisted they didn’t want Kucinich’s bill to die on the Speaker’s table instead voted to let it die on Chairman Conyers’ table instead.

Got it?

So the bill goes to the Judiciary Committee. Where it will sit next to Kucinich’s other resolution calling for the impeachment of Cheney, which was offered through regular channels back in April.

And they wonder why they’re at only 11% approval rate…


Write a comment

What would it take?

Posted on November 7th, 2007 at 17:33 by John Sinteur in category: Cartoon

[Quote:]

story.gif


Write a comment

The dollar’s slide: 1/3 down and falling faster

Posted on November 7th, 2007 at 17:32 by John Sinteur in category: News

439.jpg

[Quote:]

The decline is accelerating. The USD has shed -12.5% of its value in the last year, -3.5% in the last month, and -1.5% in the last week alone.


Write a comment

FBI Hoped to Follow Falafel Trail to Iranian Terrorists Here

Posted on November 7th, 2007 at 10:46 by John Sinteur in category: Security

[Quote:]

Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.

The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.

The brainchild of top FBI counterterrorism officials Phil Mudd and Willie T. Hulon, according to well-informed sources, the project didn’t last long. It was torpedoed by the head of the FBI’s criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, who argued that putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous — and possibly illegal.

Feel safer yet?


Write a comment

Thousands snared by malware warning from big-name websites

Posted on November 7th, 2007 at 10:02 by John Sinteur in category: If you're in marketing, kill yourself

[Quote:]

and installing malicious software after falling victim to a complex scam that continues to plague well-known websites, a researcher warns.

The scam is the latest to piggyback on banner ads that are fed to high-traffic destinations. Malicious code hardwired into the ads prompts a pop-up that warns of a bogus security threat on the visitor’s machine. It offers to fix the problem in exchange for a fee and for credit card information. The ad then attempts to install a back door on the victim’s machine.

“These are pretty well-respected, high-traffic websites,” said Don Jackson, a researcher with security provider SecureWorks. “The point is to compromise [the user's machine] and basically have it on demand.”

From the reports it seems businessweek.com was one of the sites compromised by this ad network. I recommend adblock.

Oh, and remember: If someone tells you about a problem you have never heard of then in the next breath will fix it for a price then its a scam.

Come to think of it, that accurately describes most advertising as well…


Write a comment

Ban The Beer Bottle!!

Posted on November 7th, 2007 at 9:57 by John Sinteur in category: Funny!

[Quote:]

If you think hand guns are a problem, you’ll soon see that these tinted glass casks of fermented brew are quickly catching up to them as a tool for violent crime, murder and mayhem.

Consider the recent events:

Richard Hanson, 21, admits killing 18-year-old girl with broken beer bottle.

Jason Bowman William McMinn fatally beat James Earl Mason, of Morristown, Tenn., with beer bottles in his hotel room and robbed him.

A 27-year-old woman who held a woman down and then slashed her face with a beer bottle earlier this year was sentenced Monday in Washington County Superior Court to 11 years in prison.

A 19-year-old man died after a fight in which he sustained cuts to his face and throat from a broken beer bottle.

A Police officer while responding to a gang fight was hit in the head with a beer bottle and momentarily knocked unconscious.

Here’s another beer bottle attack, and another and a beer bottle bank robbery and an assault and more beer bottle crime here and here and here and here.

The danger is not limited to crime. Here’s a case of a beer bottle exploding in a mans face while he was taking a stock count.

The list of victims is growing everyday. Indeed, it’s long past due for our lawmakers to take action. Until we get these recyclable deadly weapons under control, we are all in grave danger.

I am going to contact my local lawmakers about a piece of legislation I’ve been working on. I’ve named it “The Brewsky Bill” and in it I’ve proposed to implement a five day waiting period with background checks for the purchase of bottled beer.

Also purposed will be the limiting of a 6 pack purchase per person per week. Bottles are not to exceed 12 ounces and as an added precaution, the contents may contain no more than 3.2% alcohol. Finally, to keep our children safe, all refrigerators containing beer bottles will be required have safety locks.

The time to act is now! Remember, people don’t kill people, beer bottles do!


Write a comment

Comments:

  1. There’s always this option!

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: It’s not a phone, it’s an alliance

Posted on November 7th, 2007 at 9:52 by John Sinteur in category: News

[Quote:]

We’re not scared about this Google phone platform. First of all, it’s aimed at Windows Mobile. Second of all, alliances never work.

[..]

The Journal kind of nails the problem with this story. Money quote: Tech consortia for decades have been notorious for failing to live up to their promise. Google Director of Mobile Platforms Andy Rubin acknowledged the troubled history of previous consortia, but said that Android was different because “we’re actually releasing in one week this software.”

But the issue isn’t about when the software ships. Consortia don’t work because nobody can ever agree on anything and everyone always wants to push the group in ways that advantage themselves and disadvantage everyone else. Reason #2 — the only companies that join consortia are the ones who are too stupid or shitty to make a great product on their own. It’s like, Hey, we’ve got forty spazzo companies that can’t fuck their way out of a paper bag; let’s put them all together and maybe they’ll magically become some kind of big bad powerhouse. More likely it’ll just be some scary ass Frankenstein monster, walking around drooling and tripping over its own tongue.

Think of what a customer wants. When you’re redoing your kitchen, and you’re choosing appliances, do you go out looking for some consortium devoted to food temperature management and environmental control technology? No. You go looking for a refrigerator.

[..]

Finally, has anyone else noticed the way Google is kind of desperately grasping at straws lately? They spend years trying to do something other than search and nothing works. Then, despite their big brains and IQ tests, they get totally blindsided by Facebook and have to gin up this ridiculous OpenSocial thing. Just like with this phone thing, they round up all the losers in that social networking space to form some dumbass alliance. You know how it looks? It looks weak. Companies don’t form alliances and consortia when they’re winning. Also, whenever you see companies start talking about being “open,” it means they’re getting their ass kicked. You think Google will be forming an OpenSearch alliance any time soon, to help also-rans in search get a share of the spoils? Me neither.

Here’s another great rant on the same thing:

[Quote:]

A 34-company committee couldn’t create a successful ham sandwich, much less a mobile application suite. It’s going to be some half-baked turd undoubtedly based on GPE since that’s, you know, better than starting from scratch, right? (Wrong.)

For heaven’s sake: Find someone, ONE person, with a unique vision. Lock them in a room with some programmers and a graphic designer. Twenty people, tops. Change the world. Quit re-hashing the same old bullshit and telling me it’s new, exciting, or in any way innovative. Be ready to fail, many times, but for love of all that is holy take a stand on something.

You have NO CLUE why the iPhone is successful and highly sought after, do you? You think it’s all some sort of weird fluke. A market anomaly. That these millions of iPhone owners are going to wake up one morning and say OH SHIT this doesn’t have MMS, what was I thinking! How can such a technological abortion be popular? Come ON, Google, you know better.

People don’t want FEATURES. They’ll tell you they do until they’re blue in the face. But what they actually want is ease-of-use, and solutions to real-world problems — looking at a map, finding nearby restaurants, sending a photo to a friend without going through 6 submenus, not to mention making phone calls. You’re Google, you’re actually not too bad at this. Ditch those other 33 companies, put 20 of your smartest people on it, and you stand a fighting chance. Otherwise just let it go — this PR non-announcement isn’t worth the time it takes to read.


Write a comment

Facebook to Turn Users Into Endorsers

Posted on November 7th, 2007 at 9:26 by John Sinteur in category: If you're in marketing, kill yourself

[Quote:]

Facebook wants to turn every member into a spokesman for its advertisers. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of the superhot social network, today announced what the company calls “social ads.”

The ads expand what has been one of the most powerful features of Facebook, the news feed, where members see a list of what their friends are doing — photos from their parties, new friends, favorite bands and so on.

Facebook now will give advertisers the ability to create their own profile pages on its system that will let users identify themselves as fans of a product. Each user’s news feed will contain items like “Bobby Smith is now a fan of Toyota Prius.”

News feeds can be linked to outside Web sites as well, so users can tell friends about what they rented at Blockbuster or are auctioning on eBay.

sponsored message: $user is now no longer a fan of Facebook


Write a comment

Business Ethics - two stories

Posted on November 7th, 2007 at 0:23 by John Sinteur in category: News

[Dubious Fees Hit Borrowers in Foreclosures]

As record numbers of homeowners default on their mortgages, questionable practices among lenders are coming to light in bankruptcy courts, leading some legal specialists to contend that companies instigating foreclosures may be taking advantage of imperiled borrowers.

Because there is little oversight of foreclosure practices and the fees that are charged, bankruptcy specialists fear that some consumers may be losing their homes unnecessarily or that mortgage servicers, who collect loan payments, are profiting from foreclosures.

Bankruptcy specialists say lenders and loan servicers often do not comply with even the most basic legal requirements, like correctly computing the amount a borrower owes on a foreclosed loan or providing proof of holding the mortgage note in question.

“Regulators need to look beyond their current, myopic focus on loan origination and consider how servicers’ calculation and collection practices leave families vulnerable to foreclosure,” said Katherine M. Porter, associate professor of law at the University of Iowa.

In an analysis of foreclosures in Chapter 13 bankruptcy, the program intended to help troubled borrowers save their homes, Ms. Porter found that questionable fees had been added to almost half of the loans she examined, and many of the charges were identified only vaguely. Most of the fees were less than $200 each, but collectively they could raise millions of dollars for loan servicers at a time when the other side of the business, mortgage origination, has faltered.

[High-Fee, Low-Credit Predatory Credit Cards Prey Upon the Poor ]

The report, “Fee-Harvesters: Low-Credit, High-Cost Cards Bleed Consumers,” opens a window on a shadowy submarket where savvy card companies extract hundreds of millions of dollars in fees and other revenue from the pockets of consumers in the so-called subprime market. One of the fee-harvester cards featured in the NCLC report comes with a credit limit of $250. However, the consumer who signs up for this card will automatically incur a $95 program fee, a $29 account set-up fee, a $6 monthly participation fee, and a $48 annual fee - an instant debt of $178 and buying power of only $72.

Fee-harvesting is extremely lucrative for the industry. In 2006, Atlanta-based CompuCredit - one company featured in the NCLC report - collected $400 million in fees from a portfolio of fee-harvester cards that by mid-2007 had saddled cardholders with nearly $1 billion in debt.


Write a comment