Another Sad Day for America

Soldier Found Guilty

Reading the lengths these guys went to to cover up the crimes makes me sick. The Innocent have no protection from our soldiers, and as usual we are our own worst enemy.

I haven't been around to post much lately, this is always a busy time of year for me, as things start to warm up folks often find things they never notice in the winter. It's an interesting cycle, though I think tax time may also have something to do with it.

The lack of time I have for this lately has me considering just dropping this blog, it would be easier for me to pick up writing a diary on one of the larger sites, if indeed I even have time for that.

Like I said though, I'm just thinking about it, I'll mull it over for a few more days at least. Thanks to everyone that stops by. I've certainly found this cathartic if not always enjoyable.

Joe

"Support The Troops"

Just another example of everything the neo-cons say being a lie. "Support The Troops" Indeed.

Marine takes plea deal in Iraqi murder

What was that I was saying about being proud to be an American?

Somehow I don't think it was because it means guys like this get 8 years for premeditated murder. I've got a friend doing 25 years in a Florida prison for a DUI with no accident, fatality, or even property damage, how exactly is this justice? I guess we'll have to see how the rest of his deal goes, and if the others actually get some serious time.

These people have no respect for life at all, and those with no respect for life have no business acting as my representative anywhere in the world, and definately not holding a gun while doing it. I'd say the same for bush except we dont know if he's personally shot anyone, unlike Cheney who is well known for shooting even his friends.

Other defendants said they dragged Awad from his home in Hamdania, tied him up and stuffed him in a bomb crater with a stolen rifle and shovel to make it look like he was planting a roadside bomb. Hamdania is a rural town in the vast western Iraqi province of Al Anbar.

They then faked a firefight to make it look like they were being attacked and returning fire, and killed Awad, according to testimony from other defendants in the killing.

Pennington's attorney presented evidence that Pennington suffered psychological damage during the battle of Falluja, where two of his friends died.

Prosecutors argued that Awad's killing was in cold blood and that Pennington had made light of the murder by seizing the arm of the corpse and having it slap itself following the faked firefight.

just makes you proud to be an American, doesnt it?

Once Upon a Time...: Excuse Me While I Scream for a Few Minutes

Once Upon a Time...: Excuse Me While I Scream for a Few Minutes

I have been so busy lately I haven't had hardly any time to keep up with the news (partially because I've been avoiding mentions of Anna Nicole Smith) but I had some time this afternoon and some of the stuff I've been reading really has me feeling incoherent, no wonder Arthur feels like screaming, read his post, I couldn't agree more.

I've always been somewhat conservative when upgrading an operating system, moving from dos to windows took me longer than most, and the interceding upgrades between Windows 3.11 for workgroups and XP were hardly any diffferent, with the exception that I completely skipped Win Me. On the other hand I have already used more flavors of Linux than I ever have of Windows, and I've only been doing that for a few years. Vista just seems like a bad idea, I don't know what the heck Gates is thinking, Sure it would position him to make all kinds of money and I guess that's it, but the built in crippling of your personally owned hardware is pathetic. It's fine for them not to have drivers for everything, you go to your hardware vendor for that, but to build the crippling into the software in order to charge you more to use your hardware? that is absolutely insane.

Among the known issues: Songs purchased from the iTunes music store may not play; contacts and calendar entries won't sync to customers' iPods; and customers could corrupt their iPod unless they eject it from Windows using iTunes.

Daily Show

I can barely type I'm laughing so loud, Jon Stewart deserves whatever awards are applicable for tonight's show. The bit with Gebharts gay daughter woke up the dogs on the other side of the house.

The Laguna beach bit was funny and I've never even seen the show, nor do I know anything about it.

Cant wait to see how it ends. :)

Boston, Home of Incompetence

Boston officials livid over ad stunt - Yahoo! News:

"I find it kind of ridiculous that they're making these statements on TV that we must not be safe from terrorism, because they were up there for three weeks and no one noticed. It's pretty commonsensical to look at them and say this is a piece of art and installation," he told The Globe.

I try not to watch much cable news, because you rarely get any competent reporting, it's mostly sensationalism and corporate (CNN,MSNBC) or government (FOX) propaganda. I do watch some of it, at least twice a day for 15 minutes at a time while making myself a cup of tea, occasionally 3 times a day, I do enjoy my tea.

Watching this story unfold on every one of these networks was simply pathetic, and none of them got it even close to right. There were no closed boxes under bridges, these were electronic signs, amazingly simple ones at that. Anyone not a complete idiot would have recognized that, even if they didn't recognize the charachter.

Take a look at the sign:

Look closely, all the electronics (and the batteries) are clearly visible on the outside of a flush mounted circuit board, there isn't even any place to put explosives. None of the other cities these were placed in freaked out over this, What the hell is wrong with the Boston PD? Then of course there is the cable network complicity in turning this into a "scare" by not once showing the available pictures of the sign, or the video played on local News stations in Boston.

Amazing that after 3 weeks of these signs being posted it suddenly becomes a huge media scare after Bush's poll ratings drop from 35% approval to 30%.

Pathetic. If you live in Boston, fire your cops and get some competent ones. You've just been made the laughingstock of the country.