Something Awful has a beautiful gallery of modernized art.

Sample:

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Iraq has ordered $100 million worth of light military equipment from China for its police force, contending that the United States was unable to provide the materiel and is too slow to deliver arms shipments, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said yesterday.

Why not outsource the entire reconstruction to Iraq? I mean, there’d still be lead poisoning, but it would be of a different kind…

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They’re watching you right now.

They counted every beer you drank during last night’s Red Sox [team stats] game.

They see you sneaking out to the garage for a smoke.

They know if you’ve got a gun, and where you keep it.

They’re your kids, and they’re the National Security Agency of the Nanny State.

I found this out after my 13-year-old daughter’s annual checkup. Her pediatrician grilled her about alcohol and drug abuse.

Not my daughter’s boozing. Mine.

“The doctor wanted to know how much you and mom drink, and if I think it’s too much,” my daughter told us afterward, rolling her eyes in that exasperated 13-year-old way. “She asked if you two did drugs, or if there are drugs in the house.”

“What!” I yelped. “Who told her about my stasher, I mean, ‘It’s an outrage!’ ”

I turned to my wife. “You took her to the doctor. Why didn’t you say something?”

She couldn’t, she told me, because she knew nothing about it. All these questions were asked in private, without my wife’s knowledge or consent.

“The doctor wanted to know how we get along,” my daughter continued. Then she paused. “And if, well, Daddy, if you made me feel uncomfortable.”

Great. I send my daughter to the pediatrician to find out if she’s fit to play lacrosse, and the doctor spends her time trying to find out if her mom and I are drunk, drug-addicted sex criminals.

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“We don’t do open source because my lawyer says there’s no one to sue,” says Phil Maier, vice president of information security at Inovant, Visa’s technology deployment division. “The lawyers had the final say.”

This guy needs to ask his lawyer to point to just one successful lawsuit against microsoft on security. And when he discovers they can’t, he needs to fire them.

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In the aftermath of the recent demonoid turmoil, “A former music buyer” posted an open letter to the CRIA – an impressive summary of what’s wrong with the music industry and how they alienate their customers. The RIAA and the CRIA have to rethink their business models, closing down p2p sites does not solve the problem.

The entire open letter is a good read, with many good points.

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On may 8, 2002, Clayton Lamar (Lanny) Young Jr., a lobbyist and landfill developer described by acquaintances as a hard-drinking “good ole boy,” was in an expansive mood. In the downtown offices of the U.S. Attorney in Montgomery, Ala., Young settled into his chair, personal lawyer at his side, and proceeded to tell a group of seasoned prosecutors and investigators that he had paid tens of thousands of dollars in apparently illegal campaign contributions to some of the biggest names in Alabama Republican politics. According to Young, among the recipients of his largesse were the state’s former attorney general Jeff Sessions, now a U.S. Senator, and William Pryor Jr., Sessions’ successor as attorney general and now a federal judge. Young, whose detailed statements are described in documents obtained by TIME, became a key witness in a major case in Alabama that brought down a high-profile politician and landed him in federal prison with an 88-month sentence. As it happened, however, that official was the top Democrat named by Young in a series of interviews, and none of the Republicans whose campaigns he fingered were investigated in the case, let alone prosecuted.

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And yes, this is real, not an extremely clever photoshop job, and truly encapsulates what the Republican Party is all about.

Wide stance? Check.

In Minneapolis? Check.

Prison stripe-wearing? Check.

Starry eyed? Check.

As for the elephant humping the “2008″…

Are they going for a “Still screwing the country in 2008″ theme, or is it a reference to hypocritical adulterers like David Vitter and just about the entire Republican presidential field?

All of the above? Check!

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On Wednesday, President Bush vetoed legislation that would have expanded S-chip, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, providing health insurance to an estimated 3.8 million children who would otherwise lack coverage.

In anticipation of the veto, William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, had this to say: “First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it’s a good idea. I’m happy that the president’s willing to do something bad for the kids.” Heh-heh-heh.

Most conservatives are more careful than Mr. Kristol. They try to preserve the appearance that they really do care about those less fortunate than themselves. But the truth is that they aren’t bothered by the fact that almost nine million children in America lack health insurance. They don’t think it’s a problem.

“I mean, people have access to health care in America,” said Mr. Bush in July. “After all, you just go to an emergency room.”

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What’s happening, presumably, is that modern movement conservatism attracts a certain personality type. If you identify with the downtrodden, even a little, you don’t belong. If you think ridicule is an appropriate response to other peoples’ woes, you fit right in.

And Republican disillusionment with Mr. Bush does not appear to signal any change in that regard. On the contrary, the leading candidates for the Republican nomination have gone out of their way to condemn “socialism,” which is G.O.P.-speak for any attempt to help the less fortunate.

So once again, if you’re poor or you’re sick or you don’t have health insurance, remember this: these people think your problems are funny.

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St. Bernard Parish Councilman Joey DiFatta, who on Thursday withdrew from the 1st Senate District campaign, has been stopped twice since 1996 for suspicion of engaging in lewd behavior in public restrooms in Jefferson Parish, records obtained by The Times-Picayune show.

DiFatta, 53, acknowledged that reports he had been stopped are true, but he denied any wrongdoing in both cases. He said he was not prosecuted in either case and has no arrest record.

“If I had done something wrong, I would have been arrested,” DiFatta said Thursday afternoon. “I was not. I will deny that I was involved in any activity of that nature.”

You can guess the rest, I think?

Married, two sons, three grandchildren

Member, Republican State Central Committee (1996-2004)

The DiFatta plan: “Defend our conservative values from attacks by extreme liberal groups“

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It is 9.15 p.m. on Tuesday evening in Yangon, the time of day when the stranglehold of fear settles across the city. The first heavily armed soldiers take position outside the few restaurants that still serve foreigners. Curfew starts at 10 p.m. After that, anyone who is still out on the streets is risking their lives.

“Take a bicycle to the street to grab a taxi,” the manager of L’Opera, an Italian restaurant, yells into the kitchen. The foreigners, waiting in the courtyard, can’t find any more rental cars. Someone dashes out to look for some kind of transport.

It is completely quiet for a moment in the car park. Then a young man emerges from the darkness. He was obviously waiting for a chance to be alone with foreigners. He is poorly clothed, but speaks English that is somewhat understandable. “Please don’t believe what the junta says,” he whispers. “The repression is continuing every night. When there are no more witnesses, they drive through the suburbs at night and kill the people.”

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It was around midnight when the long convoy of military vehicles drove into the district. They contained police officers from the anti-insurgency unit and the so-called “Lome-Ten,” a unit of gangsters and ex-convicts, who do the regime’s dirty work.

They surrounded a monastery on Weiza Yandar Street. All the roughly 200 monks living there were forced to stand in a row and the security forces beat their heads against a brick wall. When they were all covered in blood and lay moaning on the ground, they were thrown into a truck and taken away. “We are crying for our monks,” said the man, and then he was gone.

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Editor’s Note: For security reasons we are not naming our correspondents in Burma.

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Frustrated by press leaks about its most sensitive electronic surveillance work, the secretive National Security Agency convened an unprecedented series of off-the-record “seminars” in recent years to teach reporters about the damage caused by such leaks and to discourage reporting that could interfere with the agency’s mission to spy on America’s enemies.

The half-day classes featured high-ranking NSA officials highlighting objectionable passages in published stories and offering “an innocuous rewrite” that officials said maintained the “overall thrust” of the articles but omitted details that could disclose the agency’s techniques, according to course outlines obtained by The New York Sun.

Dubbed “SIGINT 101,” using the NSA’s shorthand for signals intelligence, the seminar was presented “a handful of times” between approximately 2002 and 2004, an agency spokeswoman, Marci Green, confirmed yesterday. Officials were pleased with the program, she said.

Never trust single-source newspaper stories, look for independent publications. Always remember that for the corporate media, money is one hell of a drug.

And remember, ex post facto criticism was one of the more efficient means of censorship that nazi Germany used. There was a daily press meeting at the RMVP (ministry for education of the people and propaganda) where unfavorable reports were torn to pieces. Reichsminister Goebbels himself enlightened journalists on their duty to keep classified information secret from the enemy and the value of true patriotism. Attendance was quasi-mandatory for Berlin correspondents, and repeated offense (critical articles) could lead to extra-judical punishment (though that was more useful as a means of spreading fear rather than eliminating people).

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Analysts for investment bank Piper Jaffray recently spent more time tracking unit sales at Apple Inc.’s retail stores and reported Thursday that their observations indicate that as many as 10 percent of the iPhones sold by the stores during the month of September were being purchased with the intention to be resold unlocked.

September we spent 12 hours counting iPhone, iPod and Mac sales in Apple stores across the country,” analyst Gene Munster wrote in a research note to clients. “During our store checks we noticed many people buying iPhones in the maximum 5 per customer allotments, which we believe were being purchased to be unlocked and operated on carriers other than AT&T.”

The analyst said this trend was especially noticeable in the New York City stores, where one Apple employee acknowledged that customers were buying five iPhones per store visit in order to turn around and resell them unlocked.

It’ll be interesting to see if, and how much, sales dip during periods when there’s a new version without an unlock available… I’m pretty sure Cupertino is tracking that carefully. Or rather, I hope they are tracking it. Apple tends to interpret “people are not buying it” as an invitation to stop producing the product instead of adding the one or two things that would make the product an success. Witness the Apple TV: remove the limitation to Apple’s own H.264 codec, add DivX, add 1080i, and it’ll sell like hotcakes. Instead, I predict they’ll remove the product from the lineup sometime in the next few months.

I hope there’ll be a product manager with a KeyNote slide telling Steve “here, look what happened to actual sales when we relocked the iPhone”.

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The Recording Industry of America today won its first jury trial against an individual accused of illegally downloading music.

A federal jury fined Jammie Thomas, 30, of Minnesota $220,000 in damages to the six record labels suing her for copyright violation. Thomas will pay $9,250 for each of the 24 songs the prosecution focused on for the case. The RIAA alleges she shared over 1,702 songs in all over the Kazaa peer-to-peer network. Read more about the case here.

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Attorney for the record companies, Richard Gabriel, spoke with reporters outside of the courthouse after the verdict. He said the RIAA will continue to aggressively pursue those it suspects of copyright violations.

“This is what can happen if you don’t settle,” Gabriel said.

The gloating has started. You pay us your bribe on time and we will not beat you some more.

So now it is clear, well, pending appeal, of course. “Making available” is now piracy. So I have to keep all my CDs locked in a safe to which I only have access? And fuck me should my mp3 player with legal non-DRM files on be left around where someone could perhaps, should they wish, copy them. There’s only one answer: don’t download any music, and don’t buy any more CD’s until these parasitic middlemen are gone. Music will survive.

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What makes me angry is that none of the “musicians who hate the RIAA” are handing over checks to these poor people. Whats 200k to Bono or Radiohead or NIN or Led Zeppelin or McCartney/Ringo? Or all these new money rap/hiphop acts?

These fuckers who got rich of the fat of the land should be paying all these families for the recklessness of their labels until everyone settles down. At the end of the day the labels would be fall apart if all the big acts left it. They wont. They like the money and the easy living.

The first rich musician to write out the checks for these fines to these families will be remembered as a hero forever. Considering they usually settle for 5k and they only do a dozen or so a month, its not a lot of money.

Funny how the idealism in the music never ever translates into idealism in, you know, real life.