The Vermont state senate passed a non-binding demand that the President be impeached for completely unspecified reasons. They did so by waiting until they could sneak it in , though. Big, old set there. You're so sure of your cause that you have to sneak it in when the adults aren't around. Yep, you sent a big message. About your IQ.
"I think it's going to have a tremendous political effect, a tremendous political effect on public discourse about what to do about this president," said James Leas, a vocal advocate of withdrawing troops from Iraq and impeaching Bush and Cheney.
Vermont lawmakers earlier voted to demand an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq in another non-binding resolution.
Democratic House Speaker Gaye Symington has kept a similar resolution from reaching the floor in her chamber. She argued that an impeachment resolution would be partisan and divisive and that it would distract Washington from efforts to get the United States out of Iraq, which she says is more important.
In the Senate, Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie had opposed the resolution, but he was absent Friday. That left Democratic Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin in charge, and he immediately took up the measure.
Go right ahead, try to force an impeachment. Then you get president Cheney. He is, I believe, an even bigger bogeyman than Bush. It would also be useful to have a real, actual reason for calling for an impeachment. But then, why bother when you can grab headlines from a pandering press. We here in the Crabitat have just passed a binding resolution mandating that Vermont pay tribute to us.
Our resolution will have the same tremendous effect - tremendous political effect - as the nonsensical, meaningless gesture the huge majority of 16 state senators in a not-exactly major state just passed - by sneaking it in when the grown-ups were out of town. (Please note that the leader of the Vermont house has a lot more sense than her counterpart in the senate. Good for her.)
(Cadillac Tight also noted the way the Vermont senators had to sneak the resolution in when actual grown-ups had to be out of town.)
We just recently posted about a rumble held in a convent in which nuns and priests were battling, along with laypersons, over control of the convent. It was quite a spirited religious exchange by all accounts, with two people treated for stab wounds and two others arrested. Lest anyone think we are singling out any particular religious group over their odd habits, we'd like to bring attention to this item from the Daily Mail. Two groups of Cambodian (Buddhist) monks, duking it out in a full-fledged riot in the streets. With photos.
Two opposing groups of Buddhist monks clashed in the streets of the Cambodian capital during a protest to demand religious freedom for their colleagues living across the border in southern Vietnam.
Some 50 monks marched through Phnom Penh to voice their grievances over the alleged mistreatment by Vietnamese authorities against Cambodian Buddhist monks in the country.
(One thing to keep in mind in both of these cases is that the trigger points had nothing whatsoever to do with religion. Politics of various kinds were the flash points.)
I mentioned earlier today that Ubuntu Linux has their newest release available for download. Version 7.04, codenamed Feisty Fawn is apparently a very, very popular item. The download servers are groaning under the load of people trying to get a copy. One of those people happens to be Michael Dell.
Ubuntu Linux vendor Canonical on Thursday released the latest version of its Linux product to the accolades of both Sun Microsystems and Michael Dell, albeit for different reasons.
Version 7.04 — a.ka. Feisty Fawn — comes in two flavors: desktop and server. Both include a Microsoft Windows migration assistant, wireless networking support, and improved multimedia support. Canonical executives called the release the "most user-friendly version to date and ideally suited to anyone who wants to make the switch to Linux."
Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth said the company was overwhelmed by the public's response to the Feisty Fawn release. Excessive server downloads caused a backup on the Canonical Web site and its 160 mirrored sites, he said. Approximately 65% of the download requests came from North America, while 25% came from Europe and 10% from other areas around the globe. "Very typical," Shuttleworth commented.
"This will be our sixth release, marking the third anniversary of the project's inception, and will be a return to our standard six-month release schedule following the shortened catch-up cycle used for 6.10," Shuttleworth said on his blog this week.
In addition to its own improvements, Canonical said Feisty Fawn has the added benefit of including a free-of-charge Java stack. The stack is comprised of the open source Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 implementation known as GlassFish; the Java Platform, Standard Edition (JDK 6); the Java database version 10.2 product (built from Apache Derby) and Sun's preferred software development tool NetBeans version 5.5.
Up until now, I have been playing with version 6.10 "Edgy Eft" and have had great results. There was a bit of a learning curve (learning how to use the "wrapper" utility for wireless cards as an example) but this release sounds even more useful and user friendly. And with Michael Dell admitting he is running Ubuntu on one of his personal laptops, one wonders if a new operating system will suddenly be available for Dell Computers.
The gunman who entered building 44 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston has killed one hostage and taken his own life. The man was apparently an employee of a contracting company that worked at the facility. There are rumors that the man was supposed to be fired today. That is still unconfirmed at this hour.
A gunman who took two hostages inside building 44 at JSC killed one of them, then took his own life Friday afternoon.
A second hostage, a woman, escaped after being bound to a chair with duct tape, Ready said.
She was taken to an area hospital by ambulance but was walking on her own when she came out of the building.
HPD hostage negotiators were trying to establish communication just after 5 p.m. when they heard the gunshot. They found the gunman dead of a gunshot to the head inside a room on the second floor.
"Also on the same floor there was one other hostage that was shot. We believe that may have occurred during the early minutes of this ordeal," said HPD Capt. Dwayne Ready.
The male victim had been shot in the chest.
The gunman and his victim's name have not been released.
Jacobs Engineering, a NASA contractor that has a $1.5 billion contract for technical support, confirmed that the gunman is one of its employees.
I'll update when more is known.
The Johnson Space Center in Houston has been locked down after reports of a gunman loose inside building 44 at the complex. That is just about all that is known at this time.The building has been evacuated and police and a SWAT team are at the building.
HOUSTON - A Johnson Space Center building was evacuated Friday after reports of a gunman inside, Houston police said. Police were called about 1:40 p.m. for Building 44, which houses communications and tracking development laboratory, news reports said.
NASA employees and contract workers were kept informed of the situation by email, including the first one which began, "We have a report of a weapon in Building 44."
Johnson Space Center security officers and Houston police, including a SWAT team, were dispatched to the scene.
NASA spokesman Bill Jeffs said he could not confirm whether there was a gunman or whether any shots were fired.
But a SWAT team and an armored police vehicle approached the building shortly after 4 p.m. CDT.
Will update as more becomes available.
UPDATE: Police are reporting that a man with a gun is barricaded inside building 44. At least two shots have been fired, but there are no reports of injuries. The gunman is described as being between 50 and 60 years old but no other details yet.
The city council of Liverpool is making a dreadful mistake. The city center has been plagued recently by a growing legion of pigeons. We understand the need to do something about this before a real life Alfred Hitchcock scenario develops. But the council has foolishly settled on the idea of mounting robotic falcons on top of buildings to scare the offending winged rats away.
LONDON - Liverpool's pigeon population has it easy. Feasting on fast food and leaving droppings wherever they please, the fat birds are an embarrassment to a city chosen to be next year's European Capital of Culture.
Fear not. Enter the Robop.
Short for robotic bird of prey, the Robop is the name for a mechanical falcon that squawks and flaps its wings, something the city's council hopes will scare the pesky pigeons away.
"The key is that we move (the Robops) around, so the pigeons don't get used to them," council spokeswoman Sarah Langworthy said. "It keeps (the pigeons) on their toes."
The 10 Robops — only two of which have so far been installed — cost about 2,000 pounds ($4,000) each, and are part of a campaign to expel the pigeons from the city center.
You realize what this means, don't you? As soon as the pigeons figure this out, they'll have all the materials they need right at hand. Er, talon. Just wait until the Robops disappear one day and the new menace emerges.
Pigeon cyborgs.
Well, there's stupid, then there's really stupid. Driving drunk: stupid. Driving drunk and running your car into the local police station: really stupid. Especially since the police. didn't have a drive through - until now.
PHILADELPHIA - A drunken driver veered onto a sidewalk and crashed into a police station, knocking bricks loose from the building, police said…….
……Investigators said the 22-year-old driver had been arguing with a woman in another car before the crash early Thursday.
Just remember, when using antioxidants, one should not drive.
M. Zuhdi Jasser has a piece up over at Real Clear Politics today that excoriates the mainstream media for their facilitation of the islamist agenda. Dr. Jasser has been the subject of previous posts here in the Crabitat. He is a very vocal critic of the six flying imams and their islamist enablers. The media is falling into that category. Dr. Jasser raises his voice from the wilderness the MSM has banished moderate Muslims to.
Dennis Wagner of the Arizona Republic broke the story on April 10, 2007 about PBS's censorship of the documentary, Islam vs. Islamists from its America at a Crossroads series which debuted this week. The film's producers, Frank Gaffney, Alex Alexiev and the veteran filmmaker, Martyn Burke of ABG Films, Inc. have since presented in shocking detail their painful protracted experiences trying to navigate the censors at PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which funded the film with $675,000 of the taxpayers' monies but now has chosen to shelve it. In just the last week of public debate, there has been a firestorm of outcry from the public who are demanding that oppressive methods of editorial content control by power brokers at PBS be investigated and the real story behind the shelving of Islam vs. Islamists be exposed. PBS's exploitation of the public dime and the public airwaves for the narrow point of view of the Islamist sympathizers with the exclusion of the anti-Islamist Muslims is just now beginning to be understood.
………..
It is time for the MSM to stop protecting Muslims from one another and to stop stifling the debate many anti-Islamist Muslims would like to wage against leading Islamists. If Muslims are going to form a public expression of Islam which is reconciled with western democracies which separate religion and government, this debate against Islamism needs yet to begin, let alone blossom into cultural change for Muslims.
Islamists fear nothing more than credible and genuine debate against the core political ideology of Islamism from pious anti-Islamist Muslims. With an ideological counter from anti-Islamist Muslims- the Islamist emperor "has no clothes". At every level, they are using America's naïveté about Islam in order to continue their theft of Islam for the political agenda of Islamism. The Islamists know that anti-Islamist Muslims rob them of their minority trump card of Islamophobia and force them to come to terms with the anti-freedom, and anti-liberty and anti-pluralistic ideology of Islamism. Anti-Islamist, pro-Islamic Muslims expose the real motives of Islamists–which is the exploitation of the spiritual path of Islam for political and governmental power and coercion.
The MSM would prefer to facilitate the current Islamist organizations and Islamist imams. Why? It could be a fear of litigation, minority victim politics, or simple ignorance regarding the goals of Islamism. As in the case with PBS, it could also be the internal influence and infiltration of Islamists within the media and government who will go to great lengths to suffocate the opinions of anti-Islamists, especially anti-Islamist Muslims.
Please read the whole thing. Dr. Jasser is a lone voice right now because the media is bowing to the islamists and allowing them to drive the narrative. Hence we get six flying imams and intolerant, hateful cab drivers in Minnesota. Very few in the media say a single negative word against their intolerance and instead give sympathetic coverage. It's past time to start listening to people like Dr. Jasser instead of the bellowing islamists.
Welcome to (T)Hugo Chavez's brave new dictatorship. Smile, you're being watched from the sky. The budding Chavez police state is launching camera equipped blimps to "fight crime" (not "zeppelins" as the Reuters story calls them). Since Chavez gets to decide what constitutes a crime, it won't be long until the first political arrests.
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela launched a Zeppelin on Thursday to patrol Caracas, seeking to fight crime in one of Latin America's most dangerous cities but also raising fears that President Hugo Chavez could be turning into Big Brother.
Around the hot-dog stalls of the run-down suburb where the airship took its first flight, most people felt the unmanned eye-in-the-sky could help counter routine hold-ups, shootings and carjackings.
"It is a necessity," said street vendor Pedro Marin when asked about the 15-meter helium-filled blimp that had been looming silently over his stall beside a busy highway.
The $465,000 Zeppelin, built by South Korean firm HanGIS, is the first of three such craft that will beam images into a command center. Police will be able to control the blimps remotely, steering them over the city of about 5 million.
In the refined cafes of east Caracas, there was more cynicism, condemning the blimps as a waste of money that would not work in bad weather or at night, when Caracas is at its most risky, resembling a shuttered-up ghost town.
"It reminds me of 1984, of George Orwell. This is Big Brother. It is not going to solve crime," said Jose Luis, a lawyer who declined to give his family name.
Can't say as I blame him for not wanting his name published given the way Venezuela is going these days.
(Zeppelins have rigid internal frameworks, blimps have no such structure.These are the blimps offered by HanGIS for surveillance - that is what they are designed for.)
UPDATE: Per BubbaB's request in the comments, here's a link to a post I did about the US Navy's airship program and NAS Lakehurst.
More and more photographic evidence of the Animal Uprising™ is accumulating. Today, the Daily Mail runs a series of pictures that clearly show the cat and mouse strategy of the animal overlords.
A busy day of hunt-and-chase seemed to be the last thing on this moggy's mind as he allowed a little mouse to walk all over him. (First the Royal Navy goes soft on us, now this.)
The mouse, on the other hand, is far from being a scaredy-cat. He sees a tempting ball of string and away he goes, oblivious to the danger of receiving a smack in the face - or worse - from a feline paw.
Yes, the cat and the mouse are clearly plotting evil. And some people still doubt us.
Finally, some real good coming out of medical research today. No, it isn't a cure for formerly incurable diseases. It is even more important than that. Adding ethanol to fresh fruit boosts the antioxidant properties of the fruit! So that fruity cocktail is good for you! This is real progress.
Adding ethanol — the type of alcohol found in rum, vodka, tequila and other spirits — boosted the antioxidant nutrients in strawberries and blackberries, the researchers found.
Any colored fruit might be made even more healthful with the addition of a splash of alcohol, they report in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.
Dr. Korakot Chanjirakul and colleagues at Kasetsart University in Thailand and scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture stumbled upon their finding unexpectedly.
They were exploring ways to help keep strawberries fresh during storage. Treating the berries with alcohol increased in antioxidant capacity and free radical scavenging activity, they found.
Who says modern medical research is no fun?
Dell Computer is bringing back the Windows XP operating system in response to consumer demand. They are also shipping Linux operating systems. Windows Vista is not faring all that well, it would seem.
Dell, like many computer makers, stopped offering XP on most home desktops and laptops soon after Vista launched at the end of January. By late March, the company said only two models aimed at home users could be configured with XP (the option still existed on many models for business users).
But on Dell's IdeaStorm Web site, where visitors can post suggestions for the company and vote on the ones they think are important, a plea titled "Don't eliminate XP just yet" racked up more than 10,700 votes.
"We heard you loud and clear on bringing the Windows XP option back to our Dell consumer PC offerings," Dell responded in a Web posting Thursday.
The company said it will immediately offer XP again an option for four models of its Inspiron notebooks and two models of its Dimension desktop PCs.
I wasn't able to find which Linux system they are shipping in a brief look at the Dell site, but it might be Red Hat, judging by product offerings. So far, I've found Ubuntu fairly easy to work with and absolutely rock-solid stable. I haven't tried Red Hat. (The new release of Ubuntu, 7.04 is available now, incidentally.)
News | Gaius Friday, 20 April , 2007 | 
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