I’ve never missed a month of blogging, and I refuse to start now. I’ve got nothing to say, exactly, as I’ve been busy doing stuff. The Chucksphere Blog Archives are up and almost functioning, and my May Day Mystery analysis is almost up (after 2 months!).
RNC chairman Michael Steele trots out the newest excuse to deny gays the right to marry: it would cost too much money. Yes, he’s arguing that it would cost too much to small businesses if they had one of their gay employees get married such that they had to put their new man-spouse on the company healthcare plan. Of course, this has great implications. While gays are only 5-7% percent of the population, straights make up significantly more. So, if the government can save small business owners so much money by denying gays the right to marry, why not save them more by abolishing marriage altogether? We’d save so much more in health insurance costs! Enough to get us out of this depression, maybe! BAN MARRIAGE NOW!
Also in the news were the report covers delivered to our former President on war related issues. Apparently, the Department of Defense liked to spruce them up with still images of military things and Bible quotes. This brings forth two reactions:
1. Well, looks like we got ourselves into a Holy War, boys!
2. Why the hell did the Secretary of Defense have to “spice up” reports to the president on the war that he had started? Could they not capture his interest in any other way? Did he start to float away during briefings unless the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff made pew-pew sounds when illustrating the newest offensive in Iraq? The man in charge of a country should be able to concentrate on something as vital as a national security document without it being “spruced up.” No wonder the man had “handlers.” (”What is he, a BEAR?” — Lewis Black)
Glenn Greenwald pats Keith Olbermann on the back for calling Obama out on his dangerous continuation of Bush-era policies vis-a-vis secrecy, security(-theater), and military tribunals.
Yes, I know this is a good ways after 1-May, but I felt it appropriate to write an entry about it anyway. I became engrossed in the May Day Mystery when I was in my junior year of high school. I built my senior project around it. I planned on writing a book about it (which may or may not materialize). I still read the site and analyze clues, and I’ve been working on the clues for the past Mayday for over two weeks. This is an event I wait for religiously, and now I’m unable to muster the intellectual effort it takes to slog through the clues and provide a cogent analysis. I’m feeling lethargic and I don’t know why. I hope I can get over this slump and get to work before Hance actually updates the 1-May-2009 page with clues.
I began this on the 23rd of last month. It’s a little less current, but I still want to put in my two cents.
Everyone remembers when some conservative pundits went absolutely apeshit over the release of a memo detailing the growth of “right wing extremist activity”? How they howled that this new liberal administration was going to crack down and hunt them down? And how that memo was actually commisioned by the Bush Administration? And how there was a corresponding report about liberal extremists?
To be fair, there is some room for criticism all around. While it may be useful for the FBI to compile information on potential domestic terrorist groups, how to determine which groups are simply nuicences, and which are capable of violence can be hard to see. On the one hand, as the commander of the VFW says, “A government that does not assess internal and external security threats would be negligent of a critical public responsibility”; on the other, too broad of investigations can lead to government infiltation of “ groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty, and poverty relief.” The trick is drawing the line between being able to investigate potential terrorists, and engaging in a sort of Orwellian spying on all non-government organizations. Personally, I would err on the side of protecting our rights and not wasting resources by limiting surveilence.
An another note, I object to Greenwald’s tone in this article. He almost seems to be defending the spying on right-wing groups as their just deserts after the excesses and abuses of the Bush years. It is ironic that the same people who applauded, say, domestic wiretapping threw a shitstorm when they thought they were in the crosshairs. Nonetheless, it has been used as political cannon-fodder by the right, with talking heads claiming that they are being targeted, when any moron can see that they were not the intended target. They thrive on their persecution complexes, or so it seems. Nobody deserves to be spied on by their own government, by their representitives and guardians. Wishing it on someone as a kind of poetic justice is, in fact, unjust. While it may reveal the depths of the pimping out of truth to “spin” in politics, I hope that we can, in the course of the next four years, move out of this surveilence society we seem to be inching toward.
I’m a bit behind the curve when it comes to blogging about current events. I got out of school a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been suffering a difficult transition to living in this hell-hole again. Anyway, I saved this draft article on 17-April, after the peak of the media frenzy over that Tea Party nonsense. I mean, they absolutely have the right to protest (about whateverthehell they want); but these people seem to be either willfully ignorant of the true meaning of hte Boston Tea Party, or outright manipulating through dubious association (the truth is probably somewhat of a mixture, especially if hte astroturfing allegations are true). The only things these protests have in common with the Boston Tea Party are 1) anger and 2) the involvement of tea. The difference here being that there is no “taxation without representation” (unlesss you live in D.C., in which case I totally support you). It seems to me like it’s manufactured outrage; this guy and his fine suit say it all: “A 3% tax hike for 5% of the wealthiest is 100% TYRANNY!”
But this whole thing seems to have blown over, so I’ll just leave you with a list of links I found while researching this story a month ago*:
10 Most Offensive Tea Party Signs (Huffington Post): I am particularly stuck by the children with signs.
Fox News Teabagging Bias Montage (Democratic Underground)
Freedom Works’ Long History of Teabagging (Talking Points Memo): The source of the astroturfing allegations.
Death and Taxes: A guide to where your tax dollars go
Nationwide Chicago Tea Party (Wikipedia)
Tea Party Protests (Wikipedia)
*Why does a month seem like a million years when you’re dealing with politics? A buzzword enters the lexicon and everyone raves about how this will be the next big thing or this is the current defining reality, and then a month later it’s dead. After the 2004 elections, the Democratic Party was “dead;” then they won the next midterm election and won the White House. Now the Republicans are “dead.” No one in the media seems to take much of a look at history, everything will always be defined by today’s talking points or hype.
I installed PmWiki this morning, and migrated The Small Island Nation Wiki over to it. You can find it here.
There isn’t much to it, but it may be expanded later.
[EDIT: This success is somewhat mitigated. While attempting to update the redirect page to the new wiki I inadvertently broke all of them.]
[EDIT2: I sort of fixed the problem.]
While this is a gross oversimplification, glosses over perfectly reasonable debate that can be had, and uses some prejudiced language, it is also a very powerful summary of the Bush years:
“Let’s say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link.
There’s a word for this: it’s evil.”
–Paul Krugman
Well, having two Word Press blogs operating under the same domain is causing some weird things to happen vis-a-vis accessing the content for the older one. So, I’m copying all of the old Chuckese and making a static archive of it. It won’t be searchable, but neither is the one now. Formatting will take time, but it may be done by the time I’m out of school for the summer.
I took today to do my whenever-I-feel-like-it Neurocam search.
The Neurocam website is generally in the same format as the last time I mentioned.Still known as Neurocam X04, still has the ghost “protocol X04 initiated 10/07/08″ message in the bottom corner. The logo in the top left has changed, and has apparently gone through 6 revisions and is on its 7th version.
Most of the revisions to the X04vx.jpg file is resizing, so they were omitted.
The archives are password protected, which sucks because I wasn’t able to copy/analyze them yet. Also, they wil cease to take applications after 8pm on 22-April. I’d totally apply, but they have an overabundance of 18-22 year old men. No love for the college kids, eh?
The Yellow-1 website has changed radically. Rather thant the flash construct, there is merely an embedded background image.
When the source is viewed, this hidden message is revealed in the HTML:
<p><!-- Samuel: Did they at least follow up? Agent9: You can say they've been dealing with some issues. Agent9: It was a huge amount of data. Samuel: So what does that mean anyway? Agent9: You just want me to tell you what you're thinking. Samuel: Well if it's true.. Agent9: It's just change, Sam, get used to it. Agent9: Anyway, Mr. Holding expects your report no later than Tuesday. Agent9: Maybe you'll find your place here after all. -->
This is shaping up more and more like an Alternate Reality Game. I mean, this stuff is obviously meant to be found. “Samuel” and “Agent9″ could very well be “Dr Samuel and Agent Mandula” from the audio file on Neuroboards (see below).
Nautonier is password protected. The image is unavailable, but here’s the salvaged version of it from the Internet Archive.
Fiat Nox is the same as it has been in a long time.
But, according to the archive, it was different in 2006:
The Fiat Nox website as it appeared in 2006
The text is an email link to a chap named Iocus Severus. That particular image, which is identical to the Nautonier symbol is labeled as the FN glyph. The current symbol is called the FN Lamen. A Lamen is a mystical symbol or pendant worn to show the source of supernatural authority.
I had the misfortune of coming accross this turd of an ad against same-sex marriage by the National Organization for Marriage. They try to defend their interference with other people’s lives by claiming those other people are going to interfere with them! In what fucked up world does that make sense? It’s not like Obama’s Gay Liberal Stormtroopers aren’t going to pull straight men away from their families and make them bugger each other. It’s giving our fellow citizens equal rights, which horrifies these NOM creeps to no end.
At 0:16, a woman says she’s “a California doctor who must choose between [her] faith and [her] job.” Now, I can see that being anywhere near valid in a debate about abortion or birth control or something like that. But what does this have to do with gay marriage? Does she want the right to refuse treatment to gays? That’s what it sounds like.
New Jersey church guy at 0:22 is being “punished” by the government because they don’t want to perform gay marriages. “Punish” in N.J. Fundie speak meaning “voluntarily complying with New Jersey’s anti-discrimination statute in order to retain tax exempt status for their catering-hall.”
Massachusetts Parent is afraid of her child being exposed to *gasp* differing views!
The parade of people at the end are saying that “those advocates want to change the way I live” and “I will have no choice.” Yet they offer no evidence, and are in fact advocating that we interfere with how other people are living their lives. This is nothing but a bald-faced attempt to prey on people’s bigotry and claim that they are being oppressed because they can’t discriminate against gays anymore. These people are fear mongering, distorting the truth to make it look like some sort of shadowy cabal is out to get the God-Fearing Christian Minority (fear-mongering of this type tends to be a characteristic of the right-wing in this country; I wonder if it’s something about the fearful mindset that drives them in that direction, or if they’re all reading out of the same playbook).
(The Rainbow Coalition part in the title comes from that part at 0:47 where the guy tries to not make his group look like a buch of bigots.)
So tax day is coming up, or past, or something (I did mine months ago), so here’s a little tax-themed post for you. The Arkansas state government apparently want to show you that they feel your pain in the tax-paying process, and so added smiley and frowney faces to the Refund (ln 53) and Tax Due (ln 54) lines, respectively.
What the fuck is wrong with you, Arkansas? This isn’t the kind of thing that conveys a “Responsible Government” message. More like a “Our Comptroller brought his kid into work a few weeks ago” message.
(Link) (WARNING: PDF)
My first thoughts regarding Monday’s episode of House: what the fuck? Those bastards just killed off my favorite (pretty much be default) character among House’s medical minions. I mean, I understand they had to segue Kal Penn off the show becuse he’s going to work for the Obama Administration, and they got to use the opportunity to film a Very Special Episode, but I would have tried to give the happy(-ish) character a happy ending.
When Forman and 13 found him lying on the floor, you couldn’t see the blood, and I just assumed he was going to be the patient of the week; this struck me as king of shlocky, but I’d have far preferred them to have killed him off medically than suicide. I know this wouldn’t give House any character development, but I don’t think sacraficing the only relatable character in the core cast for some probably-transient character development (which I guess only serves the purpose of getting House and Cuddy to bone) is such a smart move; this is why I am not a script-writer.
I also found the online memorial a bit…tacky.
I was reading Pharyngula today when I came accross a link to these letters. The astounding amount of craziness oozing out of these missives really took me off balance. I’m 19 years old, and have essentially never lived without the internet, so I’m used to all of the crackpot wing-nuttery I’ve seen on it, and more-or-less associated the crazies with the internet. After all, the internet allows them to contact each other and feed each others’ wackiness. The 911 Truth movement and the right-wing screamers who claim that Obama is a secret Kenyan Crypto-Muslim all seemingly grew out of the internet and couldn’t survive in the world goverened by the laws of reason.
But it’s easy to forget that the internet isn’t just the collected thoughts of some Anonymous being. These are people’s thoughts, and there has always been a certain part of the human population that’s been out of touch with reality in some way or another. The JFK assassination, alien abductions, etc have had their conspiracy theorists for decades. Strange cults and even major religions all started with someone who wasn’t fully grounded in reality. And there’s always someone out to get you. These were ubiquitous in culture even before the advent of the internet, it’s just that the web has made it cheaper for those voices to speak: what was once limited to the scribblings of a schizophrenic are now available on the web as the typings of the schizophrenic.
In my lifelong quest to provide the maximum media with the minimum message, I’ve moved my blog onto the front page, which wasn’t really doing anything other than being blue. Now, it’s host to a rarely-updated blog.
I suppose this makes my far-flung website more “unified” and all, but don’t expect anything more than what you’re allready getting.
Also, it looks like shit. I heavily modified the “Sandbox” theme, and a bunch of the layout I had planned for this site rather went down the drain. Until I’m proficient enough to untagle this mess, it’ll be a mess. Why didn’t I hold off on this until I figured this shit out? Because I’m sick goddammit, and I can’t be arsed to do actual work when I’m sick, so I devoted my day to this instead.
In short: stop going to Chuckese for your semi-monthly drivel, come here.
