Gonna be not so near a computer for a couple of days...should be back to ranting, raving and generally annoying the wingnuts in another day or two. Back soon...

Pax.

In 100 years, long after my grandkids (if there are any) laugh at my feeble attempts at humour and political commentary here, people are still going to shake their heads and wonder what in the hell were Americans thinking when they went to the polls in 2000, 2002 and 2004. Here's Dr. Political Malpractice:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) took to the Senate floor to insist that his colleagues were in no way trying to shift administration policy or rebuke the White House, calling such an assessment "absurd" and "ridiculous."

"It's not a change in policy," he said. "It's a continuation of the oversight we've been conducting for years in United States Senate."

Oh, but this republican senate love-fest for the voters sake i.e. a massive disinformation campaign about how "in-tune" these multi-milloinaire republican senators are just gets better:

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), a staunch Bush ally, insisted the Senate vote did not indicate a change in war strategy, while also saying that Congress was becoming more assertive.

The lying never ends with the 1600 Crew and their minions does it? It's starting to look like maybe leaving Sandra Day O'Connor on the bench until 2008 as punishment for her part in the stolen election of 2000 might constitute some actual justice at the Supreme Court. Skank-Lito is a liar, a boldfaced, in-your-face, liar and he's going to get away with it unless the filibuster card is played...with the mood of the country right now, I'd like to see Dr. Tele-Malpractice go for the nuclear option...go for it Bill, your fading presidential hopes and the Republican Senate would be but a wistful summer memory...

So here's Skank-Lito talking to DiFi:

Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito distanced himself Tuesday from his 1985 comments that there was no constitutional right to abortion, telling a senator in private that he had merely been "an advocate seeking a job."

Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito said Thursday he was "unduly restrictive" in promising in 1990 to avoid appeals cases involving two investment firms and said he has not made any rulings in which he had a "legal or ethical obligation" to step aside.

In a letter to Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Alito said a 1990 questionnaire he filled out for the panel covered his plans for "initial service" as a judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"I respectfully submit that it was not inconsistent with my questionnaire response for me to participate in two isolated cases seven and 13 years later, respectively," he wrote.
...
When he listed the companies in the 1990 questionnaire, "my intention was to state that I would never knowingly hear a case where a conflict of interest existed. ... As my service continued, I realized that I had been unduly restrictive," Alito said.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., criticized Alito's response in a statement. "I'm troubled to learn that Judge Alito does not stand by his 1990 promise to recuse himself from any cases involving the Vanguard companies," Kennedy said. "His letter raises serious factual questions as well as questions of law and judgment."

In the 2002 case, Shantee Maharaj, who had lost a suit against Vanguard, sought a rehearing after learning Alito held investments with the mutual fund company. She sought to have the ruling erased and Alito disqualified from further proceedings.

Letting the Frech-fry obsessed Roberts on the court could be really bad thing for the next 30 or so years, the jury is going to be out for a while, as it were (my view: bad mojo), but Skank-Lito, he's a frothing Christo-Fascists dream. Just think how happy they'll be with a camera in every bedroom and a bible in every public school desk, why just go ahead and bring out the stocks and dunking stools.

All your bodies will belong to the State anyhow, to be strip-searched, tattooed and sorted into "good" and "bad"...gee, is any of this sounding familiar? The only reasons they won't be using trains for the next go-round is that the republicans have killed Amtrack.

I guess if some Americans don't expect the Preznit to be truthful, then why expect a Supreme Court Judge to be honest as well? The lying just never stops with these asshats, does it?

No, I'm not offering any tech support for the atrocious rootkit that Sony/BMG have perpetrated on Wintel users who purchased a some music CD's which have an eminently hackable rootkit and the End User License Agreement from Hell on them...I'm offering an observation about how to make someone's life miserable...and who is that someone? Why your congresscriminal, whether or not they voted to support the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), the piece of legislation that the Big Record Companies wanted to protect their dying hold over recorded music. Am I in favor of piracy? No. I own/legally license all the software I have on my various computers, I buy music off iTunes or purchase CD's (less and less frequently as the iTunes catalog increases).

But I digress. The entertainment industry and the software bidness spent tons of money buying votes in congress to pass the DMCA, which is one of the things that I am sure emboldened Sony to go for the "gold" so to speak. Their rootkit is so obnoxious that even Microsoft is considering it Malware and releasing a tool to rid your system of it...when Microsoft acts that fast, you know they don't want to be blamed for someone elses boo-boo, if that's what it is.

Apparently Sony is not being real forthcoming with the CD's that are affected, and they are not being real helpful with mitigating issues that their software has caused.

So, here's a suggestion: if you have a problem, or suspect you have a problem related to the rootkit, don't call Microsoft, don't call your Anti-virus vendor, don't call your PC manufacturer...call your member of congress and ask for tech support. In fact, insist on tech support because without the DMCA, there would be no rootkit or any other crap like that. Don't take no for an answer, insist that they help you. And don't forget your senators, they need to help you too...there are less of them to go around, but they too are responsible for enabling companies that want to screw up your Personal computers.

Here's the link for the House switchboard and members offices in DC. I don't have a list of all the local offices, but here's a link from the House website where you can put in your zip code (you need zip+4 to do a lookup, here's the link to find your zip+4) and find your representative, and their DC and local phone numbers.

Remember, it's your computer and some huge company should not be denying you your right to its full use. They also should not be putting software on it that enables hackers to take over your machine for various ill purposes. If the rootkit has stopped your computer from working, or has allowed attacks on your computer because of the exploitable vulnerabilities it presents, call your Congressperson and Senator for tech support to regain the full functionality you expected when you turned on your computer and discovered the rootkit has hosed you.

Whether your elected representative is a Democrat a republican, was in the 105th Congress that passed the DMCA or not, they need to help you out...this is their fault and they can fix it. Yesterday if they want to by getting rid of the whole DMCA, part and parcel. So call'em and don't take no for an answer, it's your PC and they're your representatives. Your PC should just work and it's their responsibility to fix it.

Now call. And when they tell you they don't do Tech Support (which they will) don't be shy about asking how to fix it and offering a solution: Dump DMCA or in 2006 you'll remember that they appreciated the big campaign contributors and lobbyists who bought DMCA better than you and your vote.

update: this is really interesting. It seems that there are over 500,000 networks worldwide that have PC's which are Sony rootkit infected. Wow.

Call...call...call.

Yeah, I'm talking about you Bill Bennett. For a right-wing whack-job moralist who loves to tell everyone else how to be virtuous on his way to the casino, methinks your hypocrisy is showing.

"Judy Miller went to jail," said author and radio host Bill Bennett, a fierce critic of the Post story. "This woman might have to go to jail too. . . . The hypocrisy here is for the media establishment to say some great wrong was done to Valerie Plame, but where is the outrage about Dana Priest?"

Sadly, the new wingnut talking point is forming as another skewed and manufactured outrage over something that we should be honestly outraged about for reasons completely unrelated to the bullshit claims of "national security"...those prisons. Not because their existance was revealed, but because they exist at all as American creations. That's an outrage.

Somehow the Clenis™' Justice Department managed to convict all kinds of terrorists from the first WTC bombers to Timothy McVeigh in open court and in the light of day. Why is that so much harder for this gang of crooks? Could it be that they are less comptetant than the Clenis™? Sure seems so...on many levels....

You have to wonder, how Mr. and Mrs. Six-Pack would feel if following our example of these "secret prisons" another superpower like say China were to start locking up abducted American businesspeople who they did not like on charges of "economic terrorism"...after all, in China a crime is what the government says it is. How do we object to the Chinese government, that such a thing is both immoral and illegal? Today, we don't. My guess, the Six-Pack's wouldn't care unless their son/daughter/relative went missing during or after a visit to Asia.

1. Light Posting
   
2. It would be funny...but
   
3. Skank-Lito
   
4. RootKit Tech Support
   
5. Creepy Fuckers