Cheap Blogging Crutch 10.22

Held By The Taliban
If you're interested in reading a great story, the New York Times has a a massive 5 part account of journalist David Rohde's 7 month long imprisonment by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Beyond the simple interest in the personal story of Rohde it also gives great insight into the way Afghans view our war on terror and what fuels the anti-Americanism and extremism.

AT&T hits Internet vote
In case you were wondering where the next frontier of the government's never ending battle to stand with corporations over the interests of the American people, look to the intarwubs. AT&T is engaging a full court press on net neutrality and gaining a lot of support for its attempts to be allowed to place restrictions on access to content an services. On the side of freedom: the President, the Google, Skype, and Facebook. But I can see why they're having trouble opposing AT&T. I mean who isn't for restricting information on the internet?

Rage Against Torture: Top Musicians Demand Records On How Bush Admin Used Their Songs Against Detainees
Trent Reznor, R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Jackson Browne, Rage Against the Machine, Rosanne Cash, Billy Bragg and the Roots have all joined together in a group called Zero db to protest the use of music during torture in the future and the use of music in torture during the Bush Administration. That's all well and good, but I think that Rage and Trent, maybe Pearl Jam, are the only ones who have to worry about their music being used in torture. I doubt Dick Cheney authorized the use of "Running on Empty" and "So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)" on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before telling them to put on Mermaid Avenue Volumes I and II and "just let it play all the way through."

Pay Czar to Slash Compensation at Seven Firms
Hey, turns out that after months and months and months of doing nothing of pay for firms that got bailed out (read: all of them), it seems that the pay czar, whose only job is doing things related to CEO salaries of bailed out companies, decided that he might as well put in a half day of work and push forward with a proposal that is popular with the American people. Of course the business community is outraged. I guess the people that set fire to the world's money will have to make due with half a million in salary with bonus compensation not to exceed $10 million. I hope they'll still be able to afford food with cuts that drastic.

Google's Android Allows Soldiers to Put Drones on Buddy List
Who here wanted a cell phone that could not only compete with the iPhone in terms of price, innovation, and technology, but could also sync up with a Predator drone on a bombing run in the mountains of Afghanistan and get streaming video of the attack. I know I have and those fuckers in the Apple apps store have not heeded my demands. Thankfully Raytheon is on the case and using Google's Android operating system to do so. So is this going to be in the Droid phone or am I going to have to join the military to get the app?

Cheap Blogging Crutch 12.5

The recount is (almost) complete; Franken camp claims four-vote lead
As the Minnesota recount crawls mercifully to a close and primes for the circus sideshow that is the challenge process, Al Franken is claiming a 4 vote lead. No one else is though, soooo yeah. The key metric Franken is using is that he is counting all the challenged ballots by their ruling recounters made before the ballot was challenged and is assuming that those will be upheld by the canvassing board. Norm Coleman on the other hand, picked a random number out of a hat a claimed he lead by that number. Good news for Nate Silver, it doesn't look like Franken will win by 27 and I won't have to burn him as a witch. Matt Taibbi has a nice little article on the recount as well.

Analyst: Use Lasers on Pirates (and Everyone Else)
James Jay Carafano, PhD and homeland security analyst has a solution for the pirate problem: shoot the shit out of them with lasers. If shooting lasers at pirates (which was probably the childhood fantasy of 75% of boys) doesn't put the juice in your shorts he also wants to shoot lasers at Russia and Hezbollah. And sharks and bigfoots and sharkfoots. Shoot lasers at everything. Laser based defense. We need to listen to this man, we need to develop the necessary technology, and then we need to use it to shoot pirates.

Obama: "I Can't Grow Facial Hair"
Any hopes you had of P-E Obama growing some sort of Castro-esque beard, or perhaps going for a sartorial scholar look like Cornell West, or perhaps the hipster-indie follicles of Kyp Malone are going to see those hopes dashed on the rocks of despair. See, Obama says he can't grow a beard, not even a saucy mustache. Unless he changes this policy, Benjamin Harrison in 1888 will have been the last US President with a ballin' chin warmer. No bearded man has run since 1916, no mustacioed man since 1948.

Robbers in drag steal $100M in jewel heist
Four robbers, fully armed with weapons yet also disguised as women, jacked Harry Winston for €80 million (U.S. $101 million) in under 15 minutes. You had the fully automatic weapons and you still went with cross dressing for a 15 minute heist? Doesn't really sound like the cross dressing was too integral to the heist. There were no barons to be charmed, critical information need to be gleaned from a randy guard, and no sexytime shenanigans, it was a simple smash and grab. Someone just wanted to dress like a pretty lady.

Mexico Under Siege: The drug war at our doorstep.
Probably the biggest story you haven't heard about. If you want to read up on the massive Mexican drug war, the LA Times has a phenomenal series covering it. Essentially the President declared war on the cartels, the cartels declared war back, and it's like the heist scene from Heat 24/7. Bodies dumped at schools, gun battles, kidnapping, brutal killing and torture, gun fights in hospitals, pretty much open street warfare between rival gangs and battles with the cops and Feds. Nearly 7,000 drug-war related deaths since last year, and it's all taking place in Baja California and Chihuahua, sometimes spilling over the border. Both completely horrifying and worth your time.

Al Gore's on line one John. Abort! Abort!

You know how long it took McCain to build this? 5 1/2 years.

Oh boy, in an attempt to prove that John McCain is 'hip' and 'with it' as the kids say, Johnny and his subordinates went off on a boastful little jaunt. They really feel the need to knock down this 'technical illiterate' thing that.......they started when McCain expressed his lack of knowledge about 'the computers', 'the Google', 'the internets' and this 'confounded steam locomotion, consarnit.'

“He did this,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters this morning, holding up his BlackBerry. “Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce committee so you’re looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that’s what he did.”

That's right, John McCain invented the blackberry! Mr. Gore, you still get pilloried for the 'invented the internet' thing and some tech illiterate wants to go off on an 'invented the Blackberry' jaunt. Will no one ever learn anything from you Al?

Immediately the McCain camp started screeching the brakes and firing up the coal powered backpedaling machine.

"He would not claim to be the inventor or anything, much less the BlackBerry," McDonald said. "This was obviously a boneheaded joke by a staffer," McDonald said.

Except it was from one of McCain's top economic advisers and it was presented in a "You wanna hear something that'll blow your rube ass minds" way in an attempt to impress the press gaggle that was typing excitedly into their Blackberry's as he spoke. "Foolish press, cover not John's lies, do you not see he bestowed upon you your phone addiction, the Crackberry. Bow before him and don't ask questions!"

Yesterday McCain was trying to take credit for wireless policy due to his seat on the Commerce Committee, meanwhile we've slipped to 15th in broadband penetration and pay more for less bandwidth than other countries. But don't note that, John McCain spent the last decade digging trenches and laying fiber optic cable during the day and inventing cellphones in the night. Please vote for him or he will not bestow technological wonders unto the masses. Though I must say a day spent on "I invented the Blackberry" is better than a day spent on "Fuck yeah this economy is rockin'."