April 17, 2008 archive

What are YOU doing today?

I’m going to start my day by e-mailing this piece to everyone I know (some will be getting it twice).  It’s about John McCain.  It’s called “Bigotry, Apology, Repeat As Necessary”.  An excerpt:

We’ve come so far so fast from what they call the past

Laying down foundations and we know they’re gonna last

Present and the future we will never fall

Realise united we stand and divided we fall

Thursday’s Headlines: Moratorium on Lethal Injection Is Over, but Hardly the Challenges: Obama Pressed in Pa. Debate: Torch reaches locked-down Delhi: US offers Pakistan government $7bn in non-military aid to fight terrorism: Reuters cameraman ‘killed by Israeli tank’: Report reveals Iran seized British sailors in disputed waters: Mugabe has stolen poll win, Brown tells UN: Odinga sworn in as Kenyan premier: Boycott call as Gibraltar decides to cull monkeys: Seven police hurt in Spanish bomb: Colombia trade pact dispute spills into Californians’ laps

A Drought in Australia, a Global Shortage of Rice

DENILIQUIN, Australia – Lindsay Renwick, the mayor of this dusty southern Australian town, remembers the constant whir of the rice mill. “It was our little heartbeat out there, tickety-tick-tickety,” he said, imitating the giant fans that dried the rice, “and now it has stopped.”

The Deniliquin mill, the largest rice mill in the Southern Hemisphere, once processed enough grain to meet the needs of 20 million people around the world. But six long years of drought have taken a toll, reducing Australia’s rice crop by 98 percent and leading to the mothballing of the mill last December.

Welcome to the United States of Gattaca. The Washington Post is reporting that the Bush administration is expanding DNA collection of people arrested for crimes.

The U.S. government will soon begin collecting DNA samples from all citizens arrested in connection with any federal crime and from many immigrants detained by federal authorities, adding genetic identifiers from more than 1 million individuals a year to the swiftly growing federal law enforcement DNA database.

The policy will substantially expand the current practice of routinely collecting DNA samples from only those convicted of federal crimes…

Anyone now arrested of a federal crime will have their DNA collected. With the past examples of abuse of the justice system by the Bush administration, it isn’t difficult to imagine how this change in policy could be abused. When the policy is implemented, roughly 1.2 million people a year will have their DNA collected.

As Youffratia said in the tip jar of I’m mad as hell

” Oh, hell, it’s been a rough week…”

And so it has. Pfiore and others seem to be echoing the sentiment after watching the Doug Feith Video, so let’s make it official.

The cosmic weather report this week has been for sun spots around Uranus….iow, this week has burned my ass. You know what else burns my ass?

Flames about three feet high.

IOW. No. I am NOT going to list all of the things that have burned my ass this week, that would just incinerate my gluteas maximi all over again. Suffice it to say that they have been sufficient to burn my buns. I have felt like at least two of the Seven Dwarves, Cranky and Grumpy. What’s that you say? Cranky wasn’t one of the Seven Dwarves?

Hmmm.

Fuck You.

I honor of the fact that a couple of days from now will be the anniversary of the first Docudharma Official Policy Statement….. What’s that you say? It hasn’t been a year? See above.

Or as I said in Ask A Kossak on Sunday, but wish to readdress from just the media to every mother’s son or daughter above the rank of sergeant in charge of this sorry ass pisshole masquerading as reality, to wit: …………..the godammed mothraforking shitehead icehole media, what WILL we do with these seemingly genetically engineered dufilicious morans??? I needed to vent, maybe you do too? If so have at it in the comments. Go ahead and scream, curse, throw things, and of course YELL LOUDER

I’ve been on the net for such a long time that I feel like the next generation is passing me by.  Other than blogging, I haven’t adapted to the Web 2.0 social networking paradigm – it seems designed for the younger crowd. I don’t go to MySpace or have any Friendsters.  And I’ve noticed but never used the Social bookmarking sites like Digg, reddit and StumbleUpon.  Occasionally, one of our pages gets into these systems and I see a few clicks from reddit and other sites in our logs.  A few weeks ago one of pinche tejano’s essays President Bush Relegated to Sippy Cup brought a flood of StumbleUpon’ers – more visitors on one day than we have ever seen.   That really made me take notice, so I signed up for an account at StumbleUpon.   In just a day or two I was completely hooked on it.        It’s fun to take a break for 5 minutes and spin through a few dozen sites.