What do you think Gary Trudeau use to represent John Kerry in Doonesbury (XML)? I’ve been trying to figure that one out. Obviously, he can’t use a waffle, and a medal or ribbon or something would be too controversial (not that Trudeau avoids controversy, but it’s just something that couldn’t be used for four years). And it probably wouldn’t be a ketchup bottle/packet either, because that’s just silly.

It seems Trudeau chooses simple icons to represent the Prez in office. I am wondering if he won’t use a “rock”, perhaps an allusion to Kerry being sorta “stone faced” and to his roots in New England. Yes, I know Kerry is from Massachusetts, not Connecticut, but maybe the metaphor still stands.

This probably is the explanation for the rumours I’ve heard, on and off over the years, about a hidden little town somewhere in fairfax where “little people” live.

Article is kind of sad though, actually, on several levels.

Article saved below.
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Daily Kos has this interesting thread, in which former TX Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes talks about his role in helping GWB (and to be fair, “a lot of other rich people”) duck out of Vietnam, and get into the National Guard.

“I got a young man named George W. Bush in the National Guard when I was Lieutenant Governor of Texas, and I’m not necessarily proud of that.”

It will be interesting to see how this is spun. If the swift boat veterans‘ propaganda can stick like shit to a shoe, we’ll see how much of a stink this one will cause.

So, forever ago (as it seems) I bought a Sharp Zaurus PDA from some guy on ebay. It came with a WCF11 802.11b card. I was having fun with the thing, but the main reason I bought it was because I wanted to learn about warchalking, and figured this would be the ideal tool to do it.

Well, I was never able to get Kismet or any of these other tools to work with it, so I started mucking around with wlanctl-ng, digging deep into the murky depths of the CF card. Still couldn’t get it to work. Mucked with more stuff along the way, never quite remembering what I changed.

Next thing I knew, I was no longer to ever grab an IP address from a wireless connection. I could eth0 up and eth0 down, etc; I could locate wireless connections, i.e., the card would go from blinking (“not connected”) to a solid light whenever I had SSIDs matched up. But I could never grab an IP address!

For months this went on, and I pretty much assumed I fried the card somehow. Every once in a while, I picked the thing up, fiddled with it, never could get it to work. I still used the PDA functions on occasion, but for the most part, I gave up on the device, because, again, the main reason I bought it was to mess around w/ WLAN.

Well, cleaning tonight, I picked it up again. The thing has been plugged in for about 3 months now (this, after having drained all battery — and thus SD card content, twice), but unused. I halfheartedly google for some information.

Oh, wait, what’s that? Network | Settings….

What? I see all these modules for PPP and TCP..what… no, can’t be….

… I enabled TCP over Ethernet, and was browsing websites in 5 seconds.

Unbelieveable.

A bunch of crooks…

…or a bunch of crooks?

Hmm…

The QuadCity Times has an op-ed piece titled “What have they done with John McCain?“. Though not the strongest piece I have ever read, they are the first that I have seen, to ask the same question I have been wondering: Why is McCain beginning — or indeed, it seems, why has he begun — to stump for Bush?

It makes us heartsick to see Sen. McCain stand alongside the man whose supporters launched a racist smear campaign against him during the 2000 primaries. Bush supporters used push polling in South Carolina to insinuate McCain’s legally adopted African daughter was the illegitimate product of an affair.

I have always had a modicum of respect, if not more, for John McCain, whose statements regarding cleaning up the government paint at least a moderate veneer of statesmanship of which many of our public servants should at least pay lip service.

Instead…

* For reaching across the table, McCain is likened a “maverick”; he is, by some, considered something of a liability to the GOP.
* In 2000, as he is doing quite well, marked as a somewhat moderate and certainly more populist Republican candidate, he is smeared by Rove & Co. with the “illegitimate black child” poll.

McCain has been treated like pond scum by the neocons for some time now, for his attempts to at least try and maintain some sort of dignity for his party. He has continually been dragged through the mud and is, indeed, a poster boy for what happens when one bites the hands that feeds him.

This said, I am absolutely stymied at the reports coming out that the CRKB (Campaign to Re-elect King Bush) is ready to offer McCain a major role in Bush’s reelection efforts and of course, I would be galled to see McCain accept it.

No, I am not “mad” or “upset” at McCain refusing to “cross the picket line”, as it were, like Jeffords. The fact that he didn’t accept Kerry’s veep offer doesn’t surprise me, esp. when one considers that his vacated post would likely be filled by a Democrat. In this light, I can understand McCain not wanting to punch his party in the gut twice. Furthermore, I don’t know that I’d ever have expected him to accept it anyway, precisely because McCain is a politician who stands by what his party believes — or at least, used to believe — in.

It is for that last reason, however, that it would be terrible, terrible thing to see him stumping in a hardcore way for the Chimp.

I do find it interesting, however, that today Bush has apparently called for the attack ads to stop. My hunch isn’t going to go so far as others as to suspect that Bush will pull a last-minute switcheroo, but I can’t help but wonder if, in order to court McCain’s assistance, Bush will make some concessions.

…Not that this will help in the long run, be it him during his loss — or us, following his win.

If there was any doubt that things are still in disarray down in Florida, here’s a pretty good indication…

An interesting side note to this — the guy who sent me the above package emailed me the tracking number, and from all indications, I thought it was USPS. Entering the digits there returned a message that no tracking had been purchased for that item. Entering the number on Google, however, gave me a link directly to FedEx’s tracking site, and plugged it right in. Pretty smart, those Google guys and gals.

Ahh, nothing says Northern Virginia lovin’ like a 1.5 hour commute home from work.

Oh, did I mention the stretch from work to my house is about 4 miles, give or take half a mile?

I want to know who the crack smoking genius in charge of the Route 28 construction is, the one who decided to close both Commercial Drive and the road next to the Ferrari dealership, during rush hour, leaving only the already-congested Waxpool Road as the only exit onto 28. Really. I’d like to meet the guy.

Preferably, with the grill of my car.

I say things that I don’t mean to say, or sometimes don’t even believe. I don’t know why I say them, and yet I do so, trying not to be offensive or to provoke hurt, but I do, of course, anyway.

It is like I am trying to start an argument, only I don’t conciously go to do it — and I say things that hurt people, even though I try to shape my words as to avoid that.

(ok, you can bust on me for quoting Unneccessary Roughness)

Kellen Winslow II, welcome to the NFL.

(Originally from here.)

I think that this nonpartisan debate weblog would be a most enjoyable read, if it weren’t for the colour scheme and the difficulty in tracking the results of any given debate. Then again, I have only looked at the site for like five minutes, and haven’t read the PDFs yet.

Ok Venezuela, I know you’re in the middle of a heated recall polling, but the least you could do is let the weathermen go about their business…

if not for the government of Venezuela this probably would have been the last advisory on Earl...at least for now. The reconnaissance aircraft scheduled to investigate Earl this evening was denied access to venezuelan airspace. Had they been able to get to the storm...I doubt they would have found a closed circulation...as the Quikscat ambiguities at 22z look more like an open wave. However...there is enough doubt to keep advisories going until the next aircraft arrives tomorrow morning...and indications are that that mission will be allowed to proceed.

Just for good measure, though, and because I know all of you would be taken aback if I didn’t make any given posting blatantly political, here’s a juicy bit of conjecture concerning foul play in Venezuela’s vote…

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American people. –Theodore Roosevelt

In other news, NBC, and its non-live, delayed Olympic coverage can suck it.

No, I am not any more creative this time.

Now, I know I’m not the only one to think of this, but why, oh why, did they decide earlier this year that the third tropical storm should be named “Charley”, not “Clyde”? It would have been downright hilarious to see headlines like, “Bonnie and Clyde Bearing Down on the Gulf Coast”.

Then again, it would probably be funny the first two or three times you saw it. Then it would be just like hearing “we’re gonna party like it’s 1999” just before Y2K.

Regardless, I can only imagine the hurricane parties that are gonna go on down there. That’s a lot of drinking.

I just installed Sage on my Firefox install, making it my first attempt at ever using any sort of RSS Aggregator. Well, I guess I kinda use(d) Livejournal in an ad hoc way of doing so, but seeing as I probably won’t renew my premium account this time around, I needed to find a new way to pull in those remote weblogs. Also, it will make it easier to track some of those I have listed in the sidebar, since I don’t use a blogroller or anything, and thus don’t know when they get updated.

Sage is nice, although I have to get used to the sidebar, which is always the first thing I tend to disable in any browser.

We’ll see how things go with it, but for now, anyway, it seems to be pretty cool. There is, apparently, an RSS agg for Thunderbird too, but I haven’t checked it out yet.

So remember last month’s “high value” terrorist bust of “computer whiz” Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan? Yeah, what about that… turns out that he was a double agent, one of which Britain’s MI5 and Pakistan’s ISI were well-aware. His “outing” by the DHS was blasted as premature by these agencies, which are now worried that the early narc has left remnants of the terror cell on the run.

Whether the sense of outrage exhibited by these agencies at the DHS’s actions is justfied, only time will tell. I must admit, though, it seems like “deja vu all over again”.

Further reading:
“How the Pakistani double agent was ‘burned’ by the US” (Daily Times, Pakistan)

DailyKos has an interesting bit today about one of the most vocal of the heavily bankrolled, anti-Kerry Vietnam swiftboat veterans getting (big surprise) tangled in his own web of words.

Funny quote per the President, in today’s defense bill signing

Third, this bill meets our commitment to America’s Armed Forces by preparing them to meet the threats of tomorrow. Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we…

Original text from the website saved below, should they decide to edit it.
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