I understand why some folks use email whitelist blockers. Sometimes I wish I could get away with using one.

But if you send me an email first, add me to your whitelist if you expect a reply. I just received a very nice email to which I wrote a very nice reply — and got it bounced back to me because I hadn’t been whitelisted. There were instructions telling me how to get my message through. I haven’t followed them, and I won’t.

Nobody should have to jump through hoops to answer messages initiated by others. There just aren’t enough hours in a day.

Comments

I have to admit, when I saw this story linked on Drudge today, I completely cracked up.

A bit of explanation: What you see in the picture linked above is probably an MQM-107 target drone (or possbily one of the new MQM-167′s, I can’t quite tell). Either way, they’re regularly launched out of Tyndall AFB (east of Panama City) for air-to-air missile evaluation tests. My last job was working for the Air Force unit that runs these suckers (although I worked on the shooting-them-down side as opposed to the drone-flying end).

Anyway, I thought the news story, and the fact that a long-since-splashed drone caused a beach to be cleared was pretty funny–although I can certainly understand the reaction of somebody who’d never seen one of those things before. At any rate, the only way one of those drones could hurt anybody is if it fell on them…

Comments

Is Windows collapsing?

Comments

From The Politico:

[F]rom Obama’s remarks at a San Francisco fundraiser Sunday, and they include an attempt to explain the resentment in small-town Pennsylvania that won’t be appreciated by some of the people whose votes Obama’s seeking:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them…And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

At a fund-raiser in San Francisco, no less. You really can’t make this stuff up.

Not meaning to quote John Mellencougar, but I grew up in a small town, and I’ll tell you something else those folks don’t like, senator. They don’t like being told that they’re rubes by a city slicker, they don’t like being told that they’re racists because they think unlimited illegal immigration might not be the greatest idea, and they really don’t like being condescended to. They particularly won’t like being condescended to by a guy who hasn’t accomplished much more than graduating from law school and winning a few elections in which he effectively ran unopposed.

If there are any functioning adults among the Obamunists, they’re going to have to sit Senator and Mrs. Savior down real soon and tell them to knock this kind of elitist stuff off, or they’ll manage to whittle themselves down to the hard-core Democratic base vote and not too much else.

Comments

Hillary Clinton, I think, just lost even her small chance of winning the nomination. Why? Because Bill won’t shut up:

“You know, I got tickled the other day. A lot of the way this whole campaign has been covered has amused me. But there was a lot of fulminating because Hillary, one time late at night when she was exhausted, misstated — and immediately apologized for it — what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995 [sic]. Did y’all see all that? Oh, they blew it up.

“Let me just tell you. The president of Bosnia and General Wesley Clark – who was there making peace where we’d lost three peacekeepers, who had to ride on a dangerous mountain road because it was too dangerous to go the regular, safe way – both defended her because they pointed out that when her plane landed in Bosnia, she had to go up to the bulletproof part of the plane, in the front. Everybody else had to put their flak jackets underneath the seat in case they got shot at. And everywhere they went, they were covered by Apache helicopters. So they just abbreviated the arrival ceremony.

“Now I say that because, what really has mattered is that even then she was interested in our troops. And I think she was the first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone. And you woulda thought, you know, that she’d robbed a bank the way they carried on about this. And some of them, when they’re 60, they’ll forget something when they’re tired at 11 at night, too.”

CBS News producer Ryan Corsaro, who covers Senator Clinton, reports she made the claim in mid-morning on St. Patrick’s Day [emphasis added].

This story won’t get huge play, but it will probably resound with enough people to narrow Hill’s margin of victory in Pennsylvania, and maybe give Obama an even bigger-than-expected win in North Carolina. And it simply can’t help her fundraising, which is sadly lacking these days. All because of Bill just has to remind us that they’re both big liars, just when the last lie was fading from view.

Is there any other conclusion to reach other than Clinton is sabotaging his own wife’s campaign?

Comments

It’s cute the first couple of years. But after 14?

As always, click on the thumbnail for the full size picture.

Correction: Click on the thumbnail, wait for the new and slightly bigger thumbnail to load, then click on that slightly bigger thumbnail, to get to the full-sized picture.

WordPress sucks. Like, it puts on donkey shows in Tijuana. As in, it puts on donkey shows in Tijuana as a volunteer. And likes it.

Comments

Way back when, AOL bought Time-Warner, to form AOL/Time-Warner. Not much later, everybody figured out that AOL was pretty much worthless, Time-Warner took back over, and dropped AOL from the name.

Now there’s this:

Yahoo Inc and Time Warner Inc are “closing in” on a deal where Yahoo would merge with Time Warner’s AOL Internet unit, brushing aside Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo, a source familiar with the talks said on Wednesday.

Brush aside? No, not really. But there are two possibilities. Now that AOL is worth less than nothing, Yahoo! stock might become even cheaper for Microsoft to gobble up. Alternately, Microsoft might decide that AOL is a poison pill.

Now think way back to when AOL ruled the internet, and sued to keep Microsoft from automatically installing an MSN shortcut on your desktop.

What, you don’t remember MSN, either?

Comments

So I found this page of historical Nikon stuff. Not of interest to many, I know, but there was one little item which might just blow your mind.

Talking about the 1950s design of one of the world’s first superfast lenses, the author notes, “The designers back then used only an abacus and a sheet of logarithms to conduct ray tracing calculations.”

And that was just for a normal 50mm lens. No wonder we didn’t get really good zooms until much later.

Comments

We are socked in here on top of Monument Hill. Photos to follow — assuming I can dig my good boots out of the storage closet.

Comments

I know it’s rarely a good idea to go to John Dvorak for reliable news, but this report looks ominous:

I was certainly surprised when CNBC called me this morning, asking if I could go on the air for a few minutes with Erin Burnett to discuss the announced phase-out of public Wi-Fi (802.11x) in all its forms, including the emerging 802.11n. The congressional bills were passed this morning, apparently with little or no public debate.

This is not good news. The only possible positive here is that the ban on Wi-Fi will not begin until January 2012, but in the meantime most of the available public spectrum—including the unlicensed 2.3-GHz to 2.9-GHz spectrum—is scheduled to be auctioned off long before 2012. Anyone caught using unlicensed devices will be subject to “a fine not to exceed $100,000 and indeterminate jail time not to exceed five years.”

The so-called Telecommunications Restructuring Act of 2008 was passed almost unanimously as a joint resolution based on SB 40108 and HR 17996-1. Essentially the free unlicensed spectrum is going to be auctioned off starting with the 2.3-GHz to 2.9-GHz frequencies, followed by the spectrum around 5 GHz and elsewhere.

The authors of the Senate bill, Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), sent out a joint press announcement explaining the rationale as part of a modernization process that will no longer sanction unlicensed frequencies due to interference issues and market confusion.

Can someone explain what, if anything, is going on here?

UPDATE: Whew!

Comments

Morocco has been calling my name for decades. Someday soon, now that I am retired, I plan to visit and find out what the hell it wants. Perhaps after reading this you will want to visit, too.

I only hope Sting and Judy Collins won’t be there.

Photo by the blogging girl.

Comments

No internet here this morning, and no word from Those Bastards at Qwest on when it’ll be back up. Meanwhile, is it possible to blog on an iPhone via the EDGE network?

If you’re reading this, it is.

Comments

PunditGuy explains why Condi Rice won’t be McCain’s vice president — and I’m inclined to agree.

Comments

Robert Englund. Jenna Jameson. Zombie Strippers.

What else do you need to know?

Comments

Michael Totten is still in Fallujah. Or again in Fallujah. Or something. Anyway, read:

Every mosque in the city was anti-American during the peak of the insurgency, but every single one has flipped in the meantime. Every day the imams exhort the people of Fallujah to support the American effort. The Marines know this because they have Arabic-speakers who sit in and listen to what gets said.

“What’s the most interesting thing you’ve seen since you got here?” I asked Lieutenant Bibler.

“How the people interact with Marines,” he said. Almost everyone I spoke to in Fallujah said the friendliness of the local people amazed them. They expected unrelenting hostility, and for good reason. Fallujah used to be vicious.

Remember those words when you listen to the MSM and our political “leaders” try to spin GEN Petraeus all week long.

Now go put ten or 20 or 50 bucks in Mike’s tip jar, OK?

Comments

Christopher Buckley writes, “I’m not a great man.” But I can tell you after reading his “My Old Man and the Sea,” that he’s a damn good one.

Comments

Send in your best shot of a desecrated bottle of Absolut.

I’m going to get right on this, as soon as the baby goes down for his nap.

Comments

COL Austin Bay explains Basra to the slow kids in the MSM — and elsewhere.

Comments

So, how many of you attended Saturday’s live Met HD broadcast of La Bohème? Raise your hands, raise your hands, so I can count. Keep ‘em up, keep ‘em up.

Well. The final live HD broadcast for the 2007-2008 Met season will be on Saturday, April 26 when they will present the rarely performed Donizetti opera La Fille du Régiment. Here’s a BBC Channel 4 news report on last year’s Royal Opera House staging of the same production and cast that the Met will stage later this month.

The Met began these live HD broadcasts last year, presenting 6 broadcasts. This year they presented 8 broadcasts. Next year, the 2008-2009 season will include 10 broadcasts beginning this fall sometime. Ten! Woo hoo!!

Comments

Jacksonians for Clinton? At least in the primaries, that’s what Michael Barone argues.

Comments

Here’s more of the America for which Michelle Obama feels no pride:

“[I]n this ever-shifting, moving bar, Barack Obama will always be the underdog. No matter how much money he raises, no matter how many wins he pulls together, no matter how many delegates he accumulates; he is still the underdog. It’s the way it works.”

Honey, your husband is damn near a lock for the nomination for President of a very major political party. Get over yourself already.

Comments

Remember how the Terror War would just “create more terrorists?” Well, more Arabs are secretly fighting in Afghanistan again — this time on our side.

Comments

Ralph Peters gets a first hand report from Iraq:

My old comrade went on to lay out the beating that al Qaeda’s getting up in Mosul – the last major city where the terrorists have much influence. “There has been a significant chipping away at the leadership and operators of al Qaeda . . . at their safe havens and caches. In the past week, special-operations forces detained one of the top al Qaeda leaders in the city, along with a number of his subordinates and fighters.

“The Coalition and Iraqi forces are also putting considerable pressure on the networks that support the foreign-fighter flow . . . Helping in all this are tens of thousands of so-called ‘Sons of Iraq,’ who secure their local areas to keep al Qaeda out. The progress against al Qaeda is a key reason for the significant reduction in civilian deaths.”
But what about the recent fighting in Basra, portrayed as a disaster by the media? “The Iraqi Security Forces conducted a number of targeted operations, took over the ports [key prizes that had been funding the militias] and are in the process of reestablishing checkpoints and security positions in the city.

“The Iraqi operation did reflect a willingness to take tough decisions about tough problems. It also displayed the Iraqi capability to deploy two brigades’ worth of conventional and special-operations forces on less than 48-hours’ notice, with another brigade following. That would not have been possible a year ago.”

The Barack Obama campaign released a statement in response saying, “Lalalalalalalalala I can’t hear you lalalalalalalalala”

Comments

Arianna Huffington says, “Petraeus’ Call for a Pause is Really Just “Stay the Course 2.0” And that’s just the headline. From there, she gets worse:

Have you heard the news? “The Surge” is about to end. The next phase of our 100 Year War is “The Pause.” Surge, Pause… Surge, Pause… We can’t pull out! It’s all starting to sound a bit sexual, isn’t it? But the American people are the ones getting screwed.

“Stay the course,” of course, was just three years of President Bush dicking around, accomplishing nothing at a great cost in treasure and too many live. What we’ve seen the last few months is actual progress. But no matter to Arianna, for whom surrender is always the first, last and only option.

Worse, Huffington repeats the “100 years of war” slander against John McCain, who, at last count, wasn’t Petraeus to begin with.

But if anything here sounds at all vaguely sexual, it’s the continuous noise of Huffington being fucked in the head.

(more…)

Comments

The Terror Tet continues in Sadr City:

The heightened violence came on the eve of Congressional testimony in Washington by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior American commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador here, to defend their strategy for political reconciliation and improved security in the country.

The Green Zone attacks were, symbolically at least, a sign that forces hostile to the United States are still able to strike at the American nerve center and seat of government power in the capital of Iraq.

Remember, the real Tet was nothing better than a symbol for North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. In reality, it was a crushing defeat for the Cong (they never recovered) and the end of major offensive operations for the North until after the American withdrawal.
And we all know how that turned out.

If I may paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, this is no time to go Cronkitey, George.

Comments

Here’s a question John McCain needs to ponder:

As the clatter of construction work shows, it is easier to talk about closing Guantánamo than to do it. Even shuttering it would not settle the most fundamental question raised by this notorious prison: what to do with its inmates.

Gitmo is at best an unfortunate solution to a nasty problem. But the alternatives all seem worse. Why can’t the candidates address this — especially McCain, who’s running as the national security guy?

Comments

Andrew Sullivan: “Just as excitable offline.”

UPDATE: If you must watch, here’s the video of Andy vs Hitch.

Comments