Do-overs are for kids

The whole Florida and Michigan primary debacles should be allowed to stand, just to teach them a lesson. But then we'd have the 2000 elections all over again, with lawsuits headed for the Supreme Court.

Rico says hopefully someone will come up with the money, they'll all get to vote again, Obama will win handily, and we can just get the fuck on with it...

Politics makes strange bedfellows, indeed

Seems the hooker who brought down Eliot Spitzer was the same woman in the Charlie Sheen debacle. At least, unlike the Hugh Grant disaster, she's good-looking enough to make it all remotely worthwhile...
Plus she'll come out of it fine: "Penthouse publisher Diane Silberstein said they have considered offered Ashley Alexander Dupre a cover shot, while Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt said they also wanted to feature her."

Taking the hard line

The Chinese governor of Tibet is promising harshness for protesters who don't turn themselves in by today. "This was organized, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai clique and it was created under the collusion of Tibet independence separatist forces both inside and outside China," Champa Phuntsok said, without giving any details. Phuntsok described a scene of chaos throughout Lhasa on Friday with "people engaged in reckless beating, smashing, looting and burning." Shops, schools, hospitals and banks were targeted and bystanders were beaten and set on fire, he said. Among the 16 dead, he said, three people jumped out of building to avoid arrest while 13 were "innocent civilians."

Rico laughs silently, as would Buddha... "Jumped out of building to avoid arrest"? Let us remember the derivation of defenestration, the most famous of which is still Masaryk: "On 10 March 1948 the Czechoslovakian minister of foreign affairs Jan Masaryk was found dead, dressed in his pajamas, in the courtyard of the Foreign Ministry below his bathroom window. The initial 'investigation' stated that he committed suicide by jumping out of the window, although it is now commonly believed that he was murdered by the ascendant Communists."

No prenup? See what happens...

Paul McCartney low-balled it (as if he didn't have the money; the fuck's only worth four hundred million pounds) and Heather Mills asked for a lot (a hundred and a quarter million pounds), so the judge came down in the middle, as usual. She'll get sixteen and a half million pounds and their daughter gets thirty five thousand a year. Not bad for four years of marriage...
Incredibly, given the publicity, "the judge refused to permit either party to raise as an issue the alleged conduct of the other on the broad ground that it was irrelevant".

Rico says hurrah for British jurisprudence...

2001, if only seven years late

Now that the space shuttle astronauts have hooked up the Dexter robot (Rico refuses to use the Canadian bilingual spelling) to the space station, it's starting to look like what NASA had in mind all along.

St. Patrick's Day

They do it up right in Dublin, but we're just having a dozen folks over for corned beef and Irish beer.
The smaller cat's having his balls off today, so he'll never celebrate it anyway, but we will...

Beehive revisited

The XM1028 120mm Canister Tank Cartridge; it contains over a thousand 10mm tungsten balls; fired from the smoothbore main gun of the M1 tank, they leave the container and spread out as soon as they exit the muzzle. The round is designed to be effective against "soft" targets (read: people, unarmored vehicles, etc.) at 500 to 700 meters. It's intended to take out enemies hiding behind inadequate cover, clear opponents climbing on friendly armored vehicles (sweeping them off like a broom - the balls won't penetrate the armor, so the crew inside will be safe), or bring down light structures through massive damage to the walls and roof.

Rico says twelve gauge? See ya and raise ya...

A beautiful thing

Go here for a series of posts on the classic Spitfire aircraft of WW2 fame.

Rico says it's still the benchmark for beautiful airplanes...

St. Patrick's Day homage

Rico says there's the perfect pint (above) and how to get it (below)...

You say racist, Rico says so what

A lot of people in the blogosphere are busting on quotes from Senator Obama's pastor, who's made a fiery sermon or two on the subject of racism.
There's a surprise: a pastor in a black fundamentalist church who rags on racism.
Let us remember, however, that Martin Luther King, Jr. had a thing or two to say on the subject back in 1963:
"We have come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children."
"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal'."

Rico says we have a huge debt to pay to blacks in this country, and the interest is piling up...

A sad thing to report

Rico's oldest friend has chosen, for reasons still not totally clear to Rico, to remove himself from our friendship. This is a sad thing. It may or may not get fixed, but Rico hopes it does, and soon.
Until it does, there's a hole exactly his size and shape in Rico's world, and Rico is very unhappy about that...

Real windows, not Windows

Second sainthood for this guy

Seems Robert Levy has been fighting the good fight for the Second Amendment. "I believe in the written Constitution and that the text ought to be interpreted the way it was meant to be," Levy said. Of his lawsuit against the District of Columbia, now before the Supreme Court: "Only one plaintiff remains: Dick Heller, a security guard who applied for a handgun license and was rejected under the district's handgun ban. The lower federal courts, while striking down the law, concluded only Heller was harmed by the city's law."
Kentucky, early on, held that "the right of citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State must be preserved entire".
"The Second Amendment protects a right of individuals to own and possess firearms, much as the First Amendment protects a right of individuals to engage in free speech." "In 2001, the Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a memorandum opinion stating that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms."

On November 20, 2007, the United States Supreme Court announced that it will hear the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, case no. 07-290. The question the Supreme Court justices posed is whether the provisions of the D.C. statute “violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes.”

Rico says we should all remember that the Second was written to protect the First: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." He feels that we should drop the initial 'ablative absolute' phrase, and just leave the operative part: "the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed". That would preclude the stupidities over the definitions of 'well regulated' and 'militia', and would better reflect the original text from the First Congress: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country; but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person."

"Great restraint"? Highly unlikely

From al-Reuters: "China said on Monday it had shown great restraint in the face of violent protests by Tibetans, which it said were orchestrated by followers of the Dalai Lama seeking to wreck the Beijing Olympics in August."

Rico says he doubts that; the Dalai Lama isn't into violence. ("Speaking from his home in India's Himalayan foothills on Sunday, the Dalai Lama called for an investigation into what he called cultural genocide in Tibet. Xinhua news agency quoted Tibetan officials as saying the charge was 'downright nonsense'." Rico says any time a government agency, even in translation, uses the phrase 'downright nonsense', whatever they said is bullshit.)
But the Uighurs, they could be a problem; seems they're unhappy, too, and are 'plotting' to disrupt the Olympics out in Xinjiang. Looks like the Olympics could be more exciting than the Chinese intended this time...

Another mystery solved

Seems HMAS Sydney and her 645 sailors have been missing since a battle with the German merchant raider Kormoran in November of 1941 (back before the Japanese got into WW2) off the west coast of Australia. They've now located the wrecks of both ships, some 800 miles north of Perth, in 2500 meters of water. The Kormoran was "a prime example of the relatively successful 'disguised freighter' technique used in commerce raiding by the Kriegsmarine in World War Two. The largest of the German raiders, Kormoran operated in the South Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and the South Pacific. In common with other auxiliary cruisers, she had substantial (hidden) armament: six 150 mm (5.9 in) guns, torpedo tubes and seaplanes, but lacked the armour protection, fire control systems and speed of a proper warship. Successful raiding depended on surprise and disguise." "At the time, the German raider was posing as a Dutch freighter, the Straat Malakka. Captain Detmers hoped to pass by undetected, but Sydney closed to investigate."

Rico says disguised freighters certainly worked, but it was cheating...

Quote of the day

"A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of." Jane Austen

Rico concurs.

Movie reviews for the week

Saw a bunch of videos while I was in Florida. Here are capsule reviews:
War. You would think, with Jet Li and Jason Statham in the starring roles, that this would be a good movie. You'd be wrong. It was so bad that I turned it off, which I haven't done with a movie in years. Convoluted, over-complicated, this one was painful to watch. Too bad, too; it had lots of good actors in it, including John Lone and Luis Guzman.
Michael Clayton. Starring George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton, and Michael O'Keefe in a sweet little film about a 'fixer' for a big law firm. Good imagery, a slow but suspenseful plot, and great characters.
Ten Questions for the Dalai Lama. An incredibly nice documentary about a great man. Whether you like the Chinese takeover of Tibet or not (let's put it this way; Rico had a Free Tibet bumpersticker long before Richard Gere ever did), the Dalai Lama is a remarkable person, and high on Rico's 'would love to meet in this life' list.
3:10 to Yuma. Elmore Leonard novel. Western. Russell Crowe. Peter Fonda. Rico says check it out.
Shooter. This is what I watched when I couldn't stand War any more. Yes, it stars Mark Wahlberg. But the boy's grown up, and does great work in this film, along with Danny Glover, Ned Beatty, and Kate Mara. It's reminiscent of other set-up-to-take-the-fall movies, but is nicely done.
A good week for movie rentals.

Overseas Democrats weigh in

Seems there's now a mechanism in the Democratic Party to get voters who reside overseas (some six million overall) involved in the primaries. Per the New York Times, Democrats Abroad has set up caucuses, and even the ability to vote on-line, and it's politics as usual. Early voting has been running about 66% for Obama, and will deliver some three delegates at the convention, with more to come from future meetings in Brussels and Vancouver.
There were some 330,000 absentee ballots in the 2006 election, with more expected this year.

Missing the point, yet again

Seems there's a guy in custody in Champaign, Illinois, charged with "unlawful re-entry of a removed alien". That, in fed-speak, means we threw him back (not once, but twice) before, and he snuck back in again.
This time he could serve ten years in a federal prison before we deport him again.

Rico says his 'first mile, no law' proposal would solve this....

Maybe Rico was wrong after all

Seems the UN's Environment Program says "the world's glaciers are shrinking at record rates and many could disappear within decades, in a troubling sign of global climate change".

Rico says he wishes they'd get it straight: is the damn planet cooling or warming?

Well, hello, Dalai...

Having just watched Ten Questions to Ask the Dalai Lama, how appropriate that I should come home and discover that the Chinese have been dealing with riots in Lhasa. "China's official Xinhua news agency is portraying Friday's riot as the work of 'violent saboteurs'. Xinhua blames rioters for engaging in pre-meditated violence and killing at least ten innocent people."

Well, I'm back, he said...

...that being a Sam Gamgee quote from the end of Lord of the Rings, in case you didn't recognize it.
For those who've missed their dose of the Rant for the last week, I've been in Florida with my father and out of range of a computer. I'll try not to let it happen again. For those who cared, thanks. For those who didn't, fuck yourselves...
I am glad to be back on-line. After Christine and the cats, I did miss my internet.
More to come.

Another one not settled with a handshake

Seems the Basque separatists are still killing Spanish politicians. (Hey, can we get them some work over here? Just kidding...) "In the last election, turnout reached almost 78 percent, about 8 percentage points more than the previous election. Socialist party officials have said that participation above 75 percent would help them widen their majority in parliament, while anything below 70 percent could lead to a PP victory. Others said that the killing may not benefit either of the two main parties. "This isn't going to favor the government", said Jose Antonio Yanez, a sociology professor at Madrid's Carlos III University. "Zapatero's central effort was to negotiate with ETA and that's come back in his face. The attack may tip voters toward Rosa Diez", a former Socialist lawmaker standing as an independent after breaking with the Socialists over the ETA talks.

Tag, you're it

Seems Florida and Michigan are still struggling with the whole primary 'redo' problem. Now the governor of Florida is offering a taxpayer-funded mail-in election. "The DNC steadfastly refuses to seat delegates based on the results of the January primaries. Holding new statewide primaries appears prohibitively expensive - as much as $25-million for Florida. Regional caucuses are off the table in Florida because voter participation is low. The most plausible option is a vote-by-mail election, which could cost as little as $4-million... But the state Democratic Party doesn't have the money, and neither does the national party. Crist said he would consider a "blend" of private dollars and taxpayer dollars, but Bubriski said the state party opposes public money for the election when education and health care face funding cuts... Even though Dean has said the DNC won't pay for a revote, Crist said Democratic Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm made the point to him that there might be some wealthy individual out there who may have an interest in doing so."

Rico says this is a great opportunity for Bill Gates to spend some of his ill-gotten billions; they could even name the election after him...

Crossed the line

Seems some Google driver thought taking a sweep of Street View images of Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio would be a good idea. The Army didn't think so. "Google removed the pictures at the request of the military."

Rico says this is another case of technology running ahead of social structures...

iPhone gobbles another one

Apple is poised to eat the games market now. "Game developers seem likely to hop on the Apple cart, since the iPhone and its cousin the iPod Touch are both tremendously popular and fairly powerful mobile computers... If enough outside developers flock to the iPhone and iPod Touch as game platforms and start releasing cool, exclusive titles for the devices, gamers will follow. When the CEO of Electronic Arts gets onstage with Steve Jobs and trumpets the fact that his company is working on an iPhone version of Spore, one of the most anticipated games of all time, well, it's hard not to wonder if the handheld game industry is about to get a lot more interesting."

Rico says he has seen this before; Apple ate word processors (remember Wang?), page layout systems (remember those quarter-million dollar boxes?), and any number of other hardware and software niches. Why not games?

Wish they were all this easy

Seems that Ecuador, Venezula, and Colombia ended their incipient war with a handshake on Friday, according to al-Reuters. "And with this ... this incident that has caused so much damage (is) resolved," leftist Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said before standing up and shaking hands with his U.S.-backed conservative Colombian counterpart, Alvaro Uribe. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who had blamed the United States for the crisis as he sent tanks to the border with Colombia, joined in shaking Uribe's hand and applauded loudly and smiled. The resolution was a diplomatic victory for Latin America, whose governments from Mexico to Brazil managed the crisis by emphasizing negotiations and took advantage of their previously scheduled summit to force the sides to talk. The summit host, Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernandez, engineered the handshakes, broadcast live on television across Latin America, by appealing to the leaders to make the public gesture. The resolution also resurrected hopes for the release of FARC hostages, including a French-Colombian woman and three Americans. Chavez, who had negotiated the freeing of six captives in the weeks before the crisis, announced at the summit he had new proof more captives were alive. With the dispute resolved, Venezuela and Nicaragua immediately restored ties with Colombia.

Rico says he doesn't think it's going to work like this in Iraq...

Not here

You don't get a lot of livestock transported in private vehicles in Philly. It's one of the quaint rural practices the cops don't cotton to around these parts...

Ouch

Rico didn't want you to have to sit through the whole video, so he picked out the moment of most drama; it's a Chinese kid that didn't notice the idiot running the red light. Unfortunately, the kid was on the motorcycle, and paid the price...

The war part's right

Newsmax has an on-line article headlined Obama, Hillary in Civil War. Rico makes an effort to display the same level of disrespect to people he posts about, so he'd have said Obama, Clinton in Uncivil War instead...

Former Bush strategist Karl Rove notes Thursday in The Wall Street Journal: "In three recent polls, (Fox, LA Times/Bloomberg, and Gallup), almost twice as many Democrats support Mr. McCain as Republicans support Mr. Obama. Three times as many Democrats support Mr. McCain as Republicans back Mrs. Clinton."

Rico says it's going to be hellish fun between now and November...

FARC you, buddy

Seems a Russian accused of trying to sell millions of dollars worth of weapons to the FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, was picked up in, of all places, Thailand. The US wants him on weapons-smuggling charges, but the Thais want a piece of him first. "Someone will undoubtedly write a book about this case some day, and I can tell you that it will read like the very best work of Tom Clancy, only in this case it won't be fiction," Michael Braun, assistant administrator and chief of operations for the DEA, said at a Thursday news conference in New York.

Rico says he's not going to write it (unless someone offers him a lot of money, of course)...

Still haven't gotten him

Seems CNN is reporting that OJ is still struggling to get out of the armed robbery charges against him in Las Vegas.

Rico says he can't believe this fuck is going to skate again...

Oh, please...

...can't someone tell this woman to shut the fuck up?
According to a CNN on-line article, Hillary's claims to have been involved in foreign policy are, charitably, shaky. Her opponent was kind: "Was she negotiating treaties or agreements, or was she handling crises during this period of time? My sense is the answer is no," Obama said Wednesday.

Rico says he'd call 'em bogus, but that's his style...

Your tax dollars at work

Seems neither Florida nor Michigan want to pay to rerun the Democratic primaries, nor does the Democratic Party. Given that it's $10 million for Michigan and $25 million for Florida, that's not surprising. Now they're saying that the Clinton and Obama campaigns should split the money. Right, like that's gonna happen... "Both Clinton and Obama have said they'll abide by whatever solution the DNC comes up with."

Rico says hide and watch...

A bicycle as get-away vehicle

Rico says he has to give the guy credit; it's hard to run a plate on a bike; of course, since it is felony stupid we're dealing with here, the guy did dump the bike in a trash bin a few blocks away. At this rate, they'll get him, sooner rather than later...

Hill-dabeast

A face (and one not aging well) to go with the voice; Rico wants to see and hear neither for the next four years...

One that Rico missed

Seems that the fifth was the anniversary of the Boston Massacre. Seems that the colonists were trying to pick a fight (no surprise there) and that the British reluctantly obliged after Private Hugh Montgomery slipped and fell in the snow, "leading him to discharge his rifle into the jeering crowd". After a general barrage by the soldiers, five men lay dead: Patrick Carr, Samuel Gray, Smauel Maverick, James Caldwell, and Crispus Attucks. Attucks, a "sailor of African and Indian ancestry", was the first black man to die for America.
The soldiers, defended by none other than John Adams, were tried and two were found guilty of manslaughter and branded on the thumb.

Quote of the day

From the Support Your Local Gunfighter blog: "the Hill-dabeast and the Obama-ton"

A Clancy with a brain

Seems this Clancy doesn't want anyone singing Oh, Danny Boy in his New York pub over the holiday. (What holiday? What planet are you from? St. Paddy's Day, of course.) Good on him.

Civil War for the day

The men of the Third Pennsylvania Cavalry (dismounted) at a reenactment; that's Rico in the upper left corner in the back row.

What it really looks like

Jihad came to a yeshiva in Jerusalem this week. A Palestinian gunman sprayed the place with over five hundred rounds. This is the aftermath, with eight dead.

Rico says but, wait, it's the religion of peace, right? Besides, yeshiva, like religious schools in this country, are gun-free zones, so he wasn't taking much of a risk; anywhere else in Israel, they'd have riddled him like a sieve...

Rico says this guy won't win any popularity contests in raghead countries, but he's right on...

The white guy

We sometimes forget, given all the hoohah between Barack and Hillary, that John McCain is in this game, too:
"The son and grandson of four-star Navy admirals, McCain was just 5 years old when his father left to command submarines during World War II. His grandfather also served in that war, witnessing Japan's official surrender aboard the USS Missouri -- just five days later he died from a heart attack. That McCain would follow his father and grandfather to the Naval Academy was never in doubt, but the record he left -- graduating fifth from the bottom of his class after years of carousing and rule breaking -- wasn't one of distinction." But he went on to be awarded the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, two Bronze Stars, the Purple Heart, and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Rico says anyone running for President whose political hero is Teddy Roosevelt and whoe favorite author is Ernest Hemingway gets his vote...

Whining after the fact

Now the Democrats, having shot themselves in the foot with the Florida and Michigan primary debacles, are hoping the states will pony up millions for a 'redo' of the primaries. Given that Obama wasn't even on the Michigan ballot and didn't campaign in either state, the results might not go Hillary's way anyway.

Rico says it'll be interesting, no matter how it works out...

Okay, then, I will

Seems an Obama advisor went a little over the line and called Hillary Clinton a 'monster' who would 'stoop to anything' to win the nomination.
She later apologized, but the Obama campaign had to issue a formal denial of the statement.

Rico says he'll take up the challenge; Hillary is a monster who will stoop to anything to get elected...

Tat for tit, surely

A new television show (that Rico has not watched, nor is likely to) called Medium uses a story a little close to reality: "the 'psychic crime drama' set in Phoenix featured a plot involving a senior Arizona state senator and former prisoner of war who turns out to be a murderous cannibal."

Let's see, a senior Arizona politician who's a former prisoner of war... Who could that be?

Rico says he likes Michelle Malkin's alternative: "a show with a plot involving a blond, hyper-ambitious female New York senator who murders one of her close political confidants to prevent him from spilling the beans on her shady business dealings - and enlists her staff to hide his body parts in their freezers to evade an FBI probe."

For those who don't remember Vince Foster, Rico doesn't know whose freezer he ended up in, but probably the coroner's...

(There's also been speculation that Chelsea is Vince and Hillary's love child, but without DNA, who knows?)

Asking for trouble

A state appellate court in California has ruled that "parents who lack teaching credentials cannot educate their children at home, according to ruling that is sending waves of fear through California’s home schooling families... Unlike at least 30 other states, home schooling is not specifically addressed in California law. Under the state education code, students must be enrolled in a public or private school, or can be taught at home by a credentialed tutor." “Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,” wrote Justice H. Walter Croskey in a Feb. 28 opinion signed by the two other members of the district court. “Parents who fail to [comply with school enrollment laws] may be subject to a criminal complaint against them, found guilty of an infraction, and subject to imposition of fines or an order to complete a parent education and counseling program.”

Rico says home schooling is its own punishment, though he has met (to his surprise) homeschooled kids who were both smart and well-informed (yes, and extremely cute and, fortunately for Rico, interested in the Civil War):

Remembering the heroes

Sometimes its the obscure ones who don't get remembered. This is Diana Dean, an obscure Border Patrolperson working a Canadian border post at Port Angeles, Washington. When a 'sweaty guy', Ahmed Ressam, didn't look right, she insisted on opening his trunk. Therein were the parts for a bomb scheduled to be delivered at LAX in the 'Millenium Plot'.

"Remember, remember, the Fifth of November..."

Shooting themselves in the feet

Seems, according to CNN, that the Democrats are trying to undo their earlier refusal to count the primaries held in Florida and Michigan, whose dates were moved in spite of party rules against it. "The national Democratic Party stripped Florida of its 210 national convention delegates as punishment for the state's decision to move its party primaries to January 29. Michigan received the same treatment after moving its primary date to January as well, losing its 156 convention delegates." The states are refusing, rightly, to refund the millions necessary to put on the elections again, and the DNC doesn't want to pay, either. "Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said the states can either come up with a new plan to choose a slate of delegates or appeal to the party's credentials committee when the convention opens in August."

Sounds to Rico like a likely candidate for a taxpayer lawsuit...

Really? A Microsoft product? What a surprise

The headline says it all: "Internet Explorer 8: Crash, Restart, Crash"
The eFlux Media article goes into detail, but that's all you really need to know.
"Although it had not presented any kind of symptoms or any signs whatsoever that it was disrupted by Google Toolbar, Internet Explorer simply went berserk." "Overall, IE 8.0 promises to be one of Microsoft’s best browsers, but if this is all it has to show, then the competition over at Firefox has nothing to worry about."

Rico says he will stick with Apple products, thank you...

Nasty, the drug business

Seems that GSK didn't report adverse effects early enough on Seroxat, an anti-depressive. "The drug, among the group of antidepressants that account for 16 million prescriptions a year, was subsequently banned for use in under-18s." "Like many drugs, Seroxat was never licensed in the under-18s, but doctors could still prescribe it “off-label” where they thought it might benefit children or adolescents with depression." "An investigation last year suggested that secret e-mails showed that the drug company distorted trial results, covering up a link with suicide in teenagers."

Rico remembers this hoo-hah; GSK said they did nothing wrong because the docs who were prescribing it were doing it 'off-label', which GSK never approved. (Wink, wink...)

Still at it a decade later

Seems, according to al-Reuters, that they're still rehashing Diana's death back in 1997, and now "Princess Diana's butler has refused to be questioned about whether he lied to the inquest into her death."

Takes Rico back to his youth

Seems that students at the University of North Carolina (and when did that become a hotbed of anti-war activism?) are burning draft cards to protest the war. Well, actually, they're burning fake draft cards, because there's no draft, and thus no draft cards, any more...

Not all Canadians, as it turns out

Seems some wacko Canucks spend their time (and public money; nice trick) suing other Canadians for 'defamation'.
Richard Warman, a former investigator for the Canadian Human Rights Commission, is the arch-victim, filing about half of all complaints with the commission under their 'idea crimes' provision, section 13.

Rico says Section Thirteen? Sounds a lot like Catch-22 to him...

Awwww...

(,,,insincere sympathy noises here)

Seems that "a coalition of British aid groups says the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is the worst since Israel first occupied the territory more than forty years ago... According to the report, about 80 percent of Gaza's residents are dependent on food aid, as opposed to 63 percent in 2006. It also said the overall unemployment rate is nearly 40 percent. The agencies urged Palestinian armed groups to stop 'indiscriminate rocket attacks' on southern Israel and the Israelis to end 'disproportionate attacks' in Gaza."

Rico says the Israelis should definitely stop 'disproportionate attacks'. They should line up bulldozers tread to tread and push the whole mess into the Mediterranean. After letting the Gazans leave by the big hole they blew in the Egyptian fence, of course. (Rico's not heartless; mean, maybe, but not heartless.)

The next level

Seems someone threw a pipe bomb against the multi-service recruiters' office in Times Square early this morning. ABC News has an on-line article and video. Big bang, broken window, no casualties. They are, however, investigating similarities between this attack and ones on New York consulates (British and Mexican) in the last two years.

Isn't this a capital offense?

Seems that the former Paul R. Hall, an ex-sailor previously a signalman aboard the USS Benfold, changed his name to Hassan abu Jihaad and then proceeded to leak details about ship movements of various US Navy ships through the Strait of Hormuz to 'suspected terrorism supporters'. He's been convicted and will be sentenced on 23 May.

A hole in the fence, as usual

"U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) today introduced the Complete the Fence Act that will require the completion of 700 miles of reinforced pedestrian fencing along the nation’s southern border by December 31, 2010."

In the meantime, the Federal government is going to remove National Guard troops currently serving on the border six months early.

Rico says note the date for the fence; that's almost two full years from now which, at the current rate of illegal immigration, could mean (according to Border Patrol statistics) another million illegals.
All of this, of course, would be obviated by Rico's first-mile-open-season experiment...

Phrase for the day

From Michelle Malkin's blog: gyno-candidate Hillary Clinton

Rico says that sums it right fucking up, don't it?

Them Canucks

Seems the Canadians turn out every time a plane lands carrying the Canadian dead from Iraq, and line fifty bridges between the airfield and the coroner's office in Toronto...

Rico says that's how you honor your dead...

Crossing borders in search of terrorists...

...where has Rico heard that before?
This time, of course, it's Colombia sending troops across the Ecuadorian border to strike FARC rebels hiding in Ecuador. Venezula is in on the deal as well, as it purportedly supports FARC itself.
Fortunately the OAS is on the job, so it shouldn't happen more than two or three more times...

Forgot to duck

Chinese police have shot and killed a bus hijacker in northwest China after he took a group of Australian tourists hostage.
Media reports from Australia and China say the man was armed with explosives and took ten Australian tourists and their translator hostage. Nine were later released and China's official Xinhua news agency says police shot and killed the hostage-taker after negotiations failed, securing the release of a 48-year old Australian woman.
Xinhua says the standoff lasted about two hours and took place in the center of Xian city in China's Shanxi province.

Keep hope alive

Seems the Texas and Ohio debacle wasn't as bad, as far as delegates go, as we'd feared. According to CNN, Obama is leading, if barely, 1451 to 1365.
There's a long way to go, unfortunately, before the convention, and it turns out that Rico, having registered as an independent, can't affect either party's candidate in the upcoming Pennsylvania primary.
Interestingly, if you roll over the states in that map on the CNN site (great on-line tool, by the way), the only state where voters got out of the 50% range for Hillary was, no surprise, Arkansas. The rest are all in the less-than-a-stinging-victory 49% to 58% range, with some down in the thirties (just more than Obama, which is all it takes). But when Idaho, which is about as white-bread as it gets, goes 79% for Obama, you know something's up.

Rico says her voice still "sounds like a shovel hitting a rock", and he doesn't want to hear it for the next four years...

Barack Obama? Who'da thunk it?

Politics makes for very strange bedfellows. Thus Obama's queasiness about the trial of Antoin 'Tony' Rezko, his friend of two decades and his campaign fund-raiser, getting under way in federal court in Chicago. "Mr. Rezko, a master fixer in Illinois politics, is charged with money laundering, attempted extortion, fraud and aiding bribery in an alleged multimillion dollar scheme shaking down companies seeking state contracts."

Rico says never let anyone using the nickname 'Tony', particularly one rumored to be under federal investigation (even if he is Syrian, not Italian, he's still from Chicago), run your campaign finances...

Dennis Kucinich? Who'da thunk it?

According to the Los Angeles Times, this is a photo of Dennis Kucinich's wife.

Given what Dennis looks like, he's a luckier man than Rico thought...

Ron Paul? Who'da thunk it?

Seems his supporters put together a semi-clothed pinup calendar, Hotties for Ron Paul; you had to make a contribution to his campaign to get a copy. Now that he's out, it's becoming a collector's item. Rico doesn't want one, but it's interesting...

Another one gone

Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas (and where have we heard that one before?) finally dropped out of the campaign when John McCain got enough delegates to sew up the nomination. "Huckabee's high point was in Iowa on January 3 when he won the first of the state-by-state presidential nominating contests, beating a well-oiled and heavily funded machine run by the wealthy former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney."

Rico says we didn't need an evangelical-driven president. Worse yet, he was actually born in Hope, just like Bill...

If they want to be as stupid as the rest of us, let 'em

Seems gays are back in court, demanding to be allowed to be married just like straight couples. "The state ban on same-sex marriage is based on a law enacted by the Legislature in 1977 and a statewide initiative approved by the voters in 2000 that defined marriage as being only between a man and a woman. The question before the court is whether those laws violate provisions of the state Constitution protecting equality and fundamental rights." "The Supreme Court here was the first state high court to strike down a law barring interracial marriage, in a 1948 decision called Perez v. Sharp. The United States Supreme Court did not follow suit until 1967." "“The essence of the right to marry is freedom to join in marriage with the person of one’s choice,” Chief Justice George said at one point, quoting a passage from the Perez decision." “State law recognizes that families take many forms,” he said, “and the state does not give preference to one form over another.”

Rico says if they want the same right to be miserable while together and impoverished when they get divorced, what the hell...

The last gasp of the Borg

Seems that Microsoft is trying to fight Google's on-line-apps campaign by putting Office on the internet. Sort of.
In the typical 'we'll do it as long as we can control it and make money at it' Microsoft style, "Office Live Workspace lets users store and access Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Office applications on the Web through any computer with an Internet connection -- even if the PC isn't running Office on its hard drive." "The advantage of Google's approach is that, unlike Office Live, users don't need to purchase any pricey boxed software for the service to work. The downside is that users for the most part can't get to the applications without an Internet connection."

Rico says this one's gonna be fun to watch. He's already trying Google Apps and hasn't used a Microsoft product in years...

Imagine if they'd had a gun

Because they live in New York City, of course they didn't. But the two women attacked by the little Hispanic creep last Sunday both fought him off, one by kicking him in the balls: "I was not going down. I screamed and fought."
When police canvassed the neighborhood for witnesses they learned people heard screams and did nothing. "I'm shocked because this is a good neighborhood," said Irina Volsson, 23, who works in the area. "I can't believe people heard her screams and didn't call the police."

Rico says good on them, but a couple of rounds of 9mm would have solved the problem permanently...

It's not just Rico, fortunately

Seems an expert on mathematical forecasting at the Wharton School has made Al Gore a put-up-or-shut-up bet over what global temperatures will do over the next ten years. Gore declined, based on the fact that he's "too busy".

Rico says this is going to be an interesting decade, no matter who wins the bet...

No, it's real

Rico will soon be publishing his memoir Since I Was Dead, about the aftermath of his cavernous angioma, and wants to reassure everyone in advance that this will not be the outcome. Everything in the book happened just the way it's written, with no embellishments.

Rico says he'd be happy if it was fiction, but it's not...

More politics for the day

On the Republican side, of course, Huckabee's out and McCain is the candidate. Willard's threat to hang on to his 300 delegates at the convention is now hollow, of course...

Politics for the day

Rico did not stay up until after midnight, when the final votes were in. But what the hell happened to the Texans? When he went to bed, Obama was ahead by nearly a dozen points. Now he's up, and Clinton has won it. The stuff of nightmares...

Civil War for the day

A Burnside carbine, looking as if it were made yesterday.

Civil War for the day

The grave of one of my ancestors on my mother's side in North Carolina, Henry Gurganus. We don't think, alas, that Henry was a Confederate soldier; the only man of the right age on that side of the family was said to have 'lit out for the woods in Sixty One and didn't come back until Sixty Five'...

OYAT

Not exactly to the day, but close enough:
Mark continues to show impressive progress. His major complaints are his vision, which seems to get better all the time and the fogginess in his head. I think a lot of the fogginess is due to his anti-seizure medications which I hope they will begin to cut back soon. Mark thinks getting a quiet full nights sleep in his own bed will be even better!
The schedule hasn't been finalized but Mark will be attending the day program at Rehab for the next 3-6 months, three half days per week.
I will post our address and directions soon after we get home. I'd like to limit visitors to his two weekdays off and the weekends. We'll keep a calendar so we can all plan ahead.
Mark hasn't wanted access to a computer yet but I'm sure he'll be back to email and blogging when he gets home.

Rico says access to a computer is now crucial... (But the flood of visitors seem to have faded away now that he's all better.)

Yeah, like that's gonna happen

Rico has decided that he's going to win Wednesday's lottery. (You may all laugh now.) The likelihood is low, he knows, but there are signs... (That eleven eleven thing.) The annuity is up to 173 million (notice the eleven if you add 'em up), which should do nicely. And if he doesn't? Well, that's happened before, too. So he'll be out another five bucks...
(And if he should happen to win? Lunch on Rico. In Paris. He'll let you know when and where. You'll have to get yourself there and back, but you can at least eat one good meal while you're there...)

Little country, big people

This is one of those classic blogs, where the message is distinctly larger than the medium. Rico says check it out... (And the clip from Mythbusters of Carrie firing a minigun is worth looking for, assuming that she's a lust object for you the way she is for me. It's the smile...)

A place to tell the truth, sort of

Seems the Wikileaks website is back up, following a judge's ruling that its URL should be restored:
Wikileaks is an uncensorable version of Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. It combines the protection and anonymity of cutting-edge cryptographic technologies with the transparency and simplicity of a wiki interface.
Wikileaks looks like Wikipedia. Anybody can post comments to it. No technical knowledge is required. Whistleblowers can post documents anonymously and untraceably. Users can publicly discuss documents and analyze their credibility and veracity. Users can discuss the latest material, read and write explanatory articles on leaks along with background material and context. The political relevance of documents and their veracity can be revealed by a cast of thousands.
Wikileaks incorporates advanced cryptographic technologies to ensure anonymity and untraceability. Those who provide leaked information may face severe risks, whether of political repercussions, legal sanctions or physical violence. Accordingly, sophisticated cryptographic and postal techniques are used to minimize the risks that anonymous sources face.
For the technically minded, Wikileaks integrates technologies including modified versions of MediaWiki, OpenSSL, FreeNet, Tor, PGP and software of our own design.
Wikileaks information is distributed across many jurisdictions, organizations and individuals. Once a document is leaked it is essentially impossible to censor.

Rico applauds their work; sounds like William Gibson turns out to be prescient (about offshore secure data storage), yet again...

IP is me

Google is trying to argue that one's IP address isn't personal data, thus they can store it against the day they can use it for something to make money.
The Europeans, always ahead of the US on privacy issues, says nope, it's personal information.

Rico says if they want to know my IP address, more power to 'em. Pulling the wire out of the wall takes care of that bullshit...

Scary use of technology

Seems that Bill Gates has switched from Facebook to LinkedIn, and you can actually view his page. Unfortunately, you can't add comments, otherwise Rico would post the story about the day, back in about 1986, that he and Bill sat in the anteroom of Steve Jobs' office at Apple, and Bill walked out alive.
Rico apologizes to the computer world for everything that's happened since...

Trying to make a shit sandwich tasty

Seems, according to this New York Times on-line article , that Microsoft still thinks the merger with Yahoo is going to happen. While Rico can only wish them the classic Shakespearean 'plague on both their houses', it will be interesting, whatever does or doesn't happen... (As long as Apple doesn't end up playing the Mercutio role, and get stabbed because of their argument.)

Don't count Apple out, ever

Seems there's an inclination for Apple to create a competitor to the Kindle machine, based on their iPhone touch technology. It would take a bit of a larger device to be effective, of course, but that's not hard these days.

Rico says he'd buy one in a heartbeat...

Bad choices

Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas in Gaza, said that like Hezbollah, Hamas had “gone from the stone to the rocket. What we learned from Hezbollah,” he said, “is that resistance is a choice that can work.”

Rico says the Israelis need to do the hard thing, and make Gaza go away. As for the Gazans, bummer, but they brought it on themselves...

Losing their faith

Seems the Islamic resurgence, in Iraq at least, has burst the bubble for at least some 'youth'. According to this New York Times on-line article, "After almost five years of war, many young people in Iraq, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach."
“I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us,” said Sara, a high school student in Basra. “Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.”
Atheer, a 19-year-old from a poor, heavily Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad, said: “The religion men are liars. Young people don’t believe them. Guys my age are not interested in religion any more.”
While religious extremists are admired by a number of young people in other parts of the Arab world, Iraq offers a test case of what could happen when extremist theories are applied. Fingers caught in the act of smoking were broken. Long hair was cut and force-fed to its wearer. In that laboratory, disillusionment with Islamic leaders took hold.
Professors reported difficulty in recruiting graduate students for religion classes. Attendance at weekly prayers appears to be down, even in areas where the violence has largely subsided, according to worshipers and imams in Baghdad and Falluja. In two visits to the weekly prayer session in Baghdad of the followers of the militant Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr this fall, vastly smaller crowds attended than had in 2004 or 2005.
A professor at Baghdad University’s School of Law, who identified herself only as Bushra, said of her students: “They have changed their views about religion. They started to hate religious men. They make jokes about them because they feel disgusted by them.”
Zane Mohammed, a gangly 19-year-old with an earnest face, watched with curiosity as the first Islamists in his Baghdad neighborhood came to barbershops, tea parlors and carpentry stores before taking over the mosques. They were neither uneducated nor poor, he said, though they focused on those who were. Then, one morning while waiting for a bus to school, he watched a man walk up to a neighbor, a college professor whose sect Mr. Mohammed did not know, shoot the neighbor at point blank range three times, and walk back to his car as calmly “as if he was leaving a grocery store.”
During an interview with a dozen Sunni teenage boys in a Baghdad detention facility on several sticky days in September, several of them expressed relief at being in jail, so they could wear shorts, a form of dress they would have been punished for in their neighborhoods.
Violent struggle against the United States was easy to romanticize at a distance. “I used to love Osama bin Laden,” proclaimed a 24-year-old Iraqi college student. She was referring to how she felt before the war took hold in her native Baghdad. The Sept. 11, 2001, strike at American supremacy was satisfying, and the deaths abstract. Now, the student recites the familiar complaints: Her college has segregated the security checks; guards told her to stop wearing a revealing skirt; she covers her head for safety. “Now I hate Islam,” she said, sitting in her family’s unadorned living room in central Baghdad. “Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army are spreading hatred. People are being killed for nothing.”

Rico says finally, they wake up...

About those box cutters

Rico was thinking, given the reference in the Strangers On My Flight song, that no one, to the best of his recollection, has ever actually shown what the infamous 'box cutters' used by the 9.11 hijackers looked like.
One of these (technically, a carpet knife)?










or one of these (a sheetrock knife)?






Either way, Rico likes to think that, like Frank, he'd have taken on the little ragheads, even with a box cutter. The old detach-the-seat-belt-and-use-it-like-a-whip thing is probably the tack Rico would have taken...

Taking it to them

Seems the Air Force has used AC-130 gunships to hit al-Qaeda targets in Somalia, according to this BBC on-line article: "The US says Somali Islamists sheltered al-Qaeda operatives linked to the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa."

Still my slogan

If this guy didn't already use it on his site, Rico would...

Democrats aren't

Seems the Democratic Party, in an attempt to regulate voting patterns based on behavior in previous elections, penalized areas where Hillary would otherwise get delegates and boosted delegates in areas where Barack is strong.
Oops...
And so much for the old 'one man, one vote' deal, huh?

You'd think he'd know by now

Seems that Barack may have no excuse for his not-putting-his-hand-on-his-heart act during the National Anthem recently. Turns out that, during his formative years, he attended the Punahou School in Honolulu, and Rico knows for damn sure they'd have insisted on it there...

Just let it go, it's not his fault

We all get stuck, one way or another, with names we don't particularly like.
I was fortunate, in that my mother insisted that there be no diminutive variant of any of my names (she grew up in the South with way too many Billy Bobs, I guess), so mine is relatively nice. (Rico being a nickname of an alias.)
Barack Obama's parents, of course, could not have known when they had a nice new baby boy that they shouldn't give him the middle name of Hussein.
But we need to remember that there were some good guys named Hussein (or Husayn) along the way, particularly the late king of Jordan, who was Hussein bin Talal (or son of Talal in the Arab construction). We'll ignore the grandson of Mo, the Sharif of Mecca in the 30s, and a bunch of others (see Wikipedia if you want a list).

Harder target this time

The USS New York was christened on 1 March. The ship, a 684-foot amphibious transport vessel, has the leading edge of its bow made from steel girders salvaged from Ground Zero. The ship's motto is Strength Forged Through Sacrifice. Never Forget.
"If it takes those who would guard the streets of heaven to follow evil into the gates of hell, they will come from ships like the New York," Marine Gen. Robert Magnus told those gathered at the ceremony.

Rico says that's a reference to the old saying that Marines don't die, they just 'receive orders to guard the streets of Heaven'. He would also suggest to those terrorists interested in visiting their 72 virgins that they can do that quicker by attacking this New York target than the old one...

Modesty is becoming in a future king

From a BBC on-line article: "Prince Harry has insisted he is not a hero and hailed the 'humbling' bravery of his fellow soldiers after flying home early from a tour of Afghanistan."

Rico says the Drudge Report should be mortified (though it won't be) that it's 'scoop' led to Harry coming home: "The Drudge Report breaking the news black-out on Prince Harry’s deployment to Afghanistan is a good example of how blogging news sites are easily and quickly slipping into the pit of greed and ambition that mainstream media has been trying to lift itself out of."

"The Australian celebrity publication New Idea that first reported the Prince Harry scoop on January 7 on its Web site and later in its magazine edition made little waves but was berated by its readers for jeopardizing the lives of Prince Harry and the soldiers who fought along side him. The Telegraph reports that readers called New Idea an embarrassment to Australia, adding the statement of apology issued by the magazine:
Suggesting it had not contacted the Ministry of Defence or Clarence House for confirmation, a spokesman for the magazine said: “New Idea was not issued with a press embargo and was unaware of the existence of one. The story was published on Monday, 7 January. Since then New Idea has received no comment from the British Ministry of Defence. We take these matters very seriously and would never knowingly break an embargo. We regret any issues the revelation of this story in America has caused.”

Small town, small town thinking

Seems the unpaid mayor of tiny (population less than 600) Arlington, Oregon has been removed from office in a recall election by a vote of 142 to 139 (hardly an overwhelming majority). Her crime? Having a three-year-old photo, taken atop a firetruck after a day at the beach with a fireman friend (with the permission of the fire chief, by the way), posted on her MySpace page. (And let that be a lesson to you; don't post old photos on your MySpace page.)

Rico says if you're hot, you're hot; it may have been foolish to think people wouldn't have a reaction, but these people should get the fuck over it... (Nice tits, by the way.)

People you got wrong

Seems that John Stossel, who Rico had pegged for a bleeding-heart liberal based on his reporting on 20/20, isn't.
He wrote a column recently that had a lot of cogent arguments for less gun control, rather than more:
"...gun advocates favor freedom, choice and self-responsibility. If someone wishes to be prepared to defend himself, he should be free to do so. No one has the right to deprive others of the means of effective self-defense, like a handgun."
"...how many shootings at schools or malls will it take before we understand that people who intend to kill are not deterred by gun laws? Last I checked, murder is against the law everywhere. No one intent on murder will be stopped by the prospect of committing a lesser crime like illegal possession of a firearm. The intellectuals and politicians who make pious declarations about controlling guns should explain how their gunless utopia is to be realized."
"The usual suspects keep calling for more gun control laws. But this idea that gun control is crime control is just a myth. The National Academy of Sciences reviewed dozens of studies and could not find a single gun regulation that clearly led to reduced violent crime or murder. When Washington, D.C., passed its tough handgun ban years ago, gun violence rose."

Rico says he apologizes for jumping to conclusions; Stossel is on the side of the good guys...

Lust object of the day

Rico is already in trouble for this one, so hung for a sheep as for a lamb, as my grandfather always said... Rico is very sorry that Alycia Lane got herself in trouble and taken off the air at the local CBS affiliate; it's not the same without her.

Like rewriting the Bible and leaving out a few important things

Seems the Turks, bless them, are going to rewrite the hadith, the sayings of Mohammed, which were supposedly written down during his life, but were probably written in the several centuries after his death. "It says that a significant number of the sayings were never uttered by Muhammad, and even some that were need now to be reinterpreted... An adviser to the project, Felix Koerner, says some of the sayings - also known individually as hadiths - can be shown to have been invented hundreds of years after the Prophet Muhammad died, to serve the purposes of contemporary society." "Expect uproar when this work is published. The last time a religious upheaval of this nature and scope took place in the Christian world it sparked the Thirty Years War. Let's hope this development doesn't do the same to the Islamic world."

Uproar? The ragheads are going to come unwrapped over this one...

Safe as houses

Seems that Prince Harry was in a dangerous corner of the war in Afghanistan, near Helmand, and stationed within sight of a 19th century British fort (the last time they were in Afghanistan); his position was "under attack several times a day from rocketpropelled grenades, mortar shells and machinegun fire".
But he was altogether safe, if in relative danger, because he was serving with B Company, 1st Battalion, The Royal Gurkha Rifles. These are lads who take their job very very seriously:
From a Times on-line article: "Dirty, unshaven, and in the middle of a battlefield, the Prince, it seems, has found a measure of internal peace."

The Crown rests easy again

Seems that the Palace decided, now that the word was out about Prince Harry being in Afghanistan, that the risk of him becoming a target outweighed the reward of him doing his job. The Times has on-line articles about his 'emergency' withdrawal after ten weeks on the front line as a forward air controller. Household Cavalry Officer Widow Six Seven is home in the UK, safe and sound.