shelbinator.com

Party on, people! Sorry for the late notice, but chances are a lot of you are near the computer in preparation for the SotU. If you happen to have company, and one o’ them newfangled picture-phones, send pictures and video clips of your get together to sotu07@cellblock.com to share your thoughts/group photos/obscene gestures at the TV. To grab the code for the slideshow, go to http://cellblock.com/watch.htm?id=1403.

Your friendly local Web2.0 shill. :-)

First Dick Cheney rejects massive concession package from Iran, then then Pentagon sells them fighter jet parts.

Iran offered the US a package of concessions in 2003, but it was rejected, a senior former US official has told the BBC’s Newsnight programme.
Tehran proposed ending support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups and helping to stabilise Iraq following the US-led invasion.

Offers, including making its nuclear programme more transparent, were conditional on the US ending hostility.

But Vice-President Dick Cheney’s office rejected the plan, the official said.

The offers came in a letter, seen by Newsnight, which was unsigned but which the US state department apparently believed to have been approved by the highest authorities.

In return for its concessions, Tehran asked Washington to end its hostility, to end sanctions, and to disband the Iranian rebel group the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq and repatriate its members.

Sen. John Kerry on Thursday called for an investigation into security weaknesses in the Defense Department’s surplus sales that have let buyers for Iran and China acquire aircraft parts and other valuable military gear.

The Massachusetts Democrat sought an inquiry by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after The Associated Press reported that in several instances middlemen for the countries had exploited security flaws to acquire sensitive surplus.

The surplus sales include parts for F-14 “Tomcat” fighter jets, a plane retired last year by the United States and now flown only by Iran. Iran bought the jets in the 1970s before the U.S. government banned most exports, including defense-related sales, to the Mideast country.

And ripping off the taxpayer by not working is a true family value, according to Jack Kingston (R-GA).

“Keeping us up here eats away at families,” said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who typically flies home on Thursdays and returns to Washington on Tuesdays. “Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families — that’s what this says.”

Uh huh. Do-nothing jackass.

For lawmakers, it is awful, compared with what they have come to expect. For much of this election year, the legislative week started late Tuesday and ended by Thursday afternoon — and that was during the relatively few weeks the House wasn’t in recess.

Next year, members of the House will be expected in the Capitol for votes each week by 6:30 p.m. Monday and will finish their business about 2 p.m. Friday, Hoyer said.

Hoyer and other Democratic leaders say they are trying to repair the image of Congress, which was so anemic this year it could not meet a basic duty: to approve spending bills that fund government. By the time the gavel comes down on the 109th Congress on Friday, members will have worked a total of 103 days. That’s seven days fewer than the infamous “Do-Nothing Congress” of 1948.

Hoyer said members can bid farewell to extended holidays, the kind that awarded them six weekdays to relax around Memorial Day, when most Americans get a single day off. He didn’t mention the month-long August recess, the two-week April recess or the weeks off in February, March and July.

He said members need to spend more time in the Capitol to pass laws and oversee federal agencies. “We are going to meet sufficient times, so the committees can do their jobs on behalf of the American people,” he said.

Conservatives say that America is largely a conservative country and that conservatives are the majority of Americans. If they’re right, moments like this make it seem like their success is based on the fact that their movement is, at its core, a movement of hate, and it’s a lot easier to hate than to try to make things better; I should know, I love to hate, I hate things up and down all day every day. I hate people while driving my car and while sitting on my duff on the couch with a beer. I hate noises and weird foods and bureaucratic nightmares. I’m like a hate Olympian. Odds are even that I probably hate something about you. But I’m not going to build the rest of my life on it like a mantra.

America, Not Keith Ellison, decides what book a congressman takes his oath on
… Forgive me, but America should not give a hoot what Keith Ellison’s favorite book is. Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don’t serve in Congress. In your personal life, we will fight for your right to prefer any other book. We will even fight for your right to publish cartoons mocking our Bible. But, Mr. Ellison, America, not you, decides on what book its public servants take their oath.

Naturally, the vast majority of commenters on the article are foaming-mouth conservative pseudo-Christian wackjobs who seem just as hungry for bloodshed as the extremist Muslims they fear.

“This man should not even be considered for government office of any kind. The Liberals posting here constantly remind me why I hate them!”

“Congratualtions Minnesota. You sent a filthy animal to congress, and now look whats going on. Did he state during his campaign that, if elected, he would take his oath on the murdering handbook insyead of the bible? If so, the people who voted this America hating dog in to office, are themselves America hating dogs! If liberals don’t like this post…TOUGH! Believe me, thanks to your consistant stupidity, I, and all America Loving Conservatives, will have the chance to say I TOLD YOU SO!”

“swearing on the Bible is an act of Submission to our Constitution.” [I love that logical power-move.]

“Terrorists and liberals hate what America stands for. So, while our Armed forces have the terrorists engaged in their part of the world, they have sought, and received, the help of liberals here to carry out what they can not.”

A few people have pointed out an inconvenient fact pulled straight from the Constitution:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any officeor public trust under the United States.

But the Radical Right doesn’t seem to care. Jesus built this country, and you can go to hell if you think otherwise. (I’m sure Jesus would be a big fan of our ever-polarizing wealth distribution.)

Republicans say the Democrats are not worth electing because they don’t have a coherent vision. But if this rabid pseudo-religious Right is going to be the army that carries the vision to which the GOP is hitching its wagon, I’d rather have no vision at all. There are good Republicans in this country, and there are good, devout Christians, too, but the company they’re keeping is more poisonous to what I thought this country was than any tax-hiking booty-sexing cross-dressing peace-loving pot-smoking weirdo I ever did saw.

Turns out, surprise surprise, GOP only pays lip service to troops, says Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America.

To calculate the Ratings, IAVA reviewed all legislation voted on in the Congress since September 11, 2001. For each piece of legislation that affected troops, veterans or military families, IAVA took a position either in support of, or in opposition to its passage. The letter grades were derived from the percentage of times that each legislator’s vote matched the official IAVA stance.

And as Bob Geiger points out,

IAVA shows that by a ludicrous margin, it is Senate Democrats, not Republicans, who truly support active troops, Veterans and military families. … Cutting to the chase — and, perhaps more than anything I’ve seen in recent years, truly defining the difference between the two parties — is that the worst grade received by a Senate Democrat was higher than the best grade granted a Republican. GOP-lite Ben Nelson (D-NE) received the lowest grade of any Democrat with a B- while Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) managed a C grade from IAVA.

Small wonder I want to crack skulls with a 9-iron everytime some right-wing pundit says I hate America.

Once again acting like they don’t realize just how hostile their actions seem to the rest of the world, the Bush Administration
releases a new space policy:

Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank that follows the space-weaponry issue, said the policy changes will reinforce international suspicions that the United States may seek to develop, test and deploy space weapons. The concerns are amplified, he said, by the administration’s refusal to enter negotiations or even less formal discussions on the subject.

Theresa Hitchens, director of the nonpartisan Center for Defense Information in Washington, said that the new policy “kicks the door a little more open to a space-war fighting strategy” and has a “very unilateral tone to it.”

Digital rectal massage cures intractable hiccups.

I said “tract.”

House Intel Committee confirms what everyone but Bush admin already knew: they’re putting us in greater danger, not protecting us.

The al-Qaeda terrorist network has replaced leaders killed or captured, and Iraq has served as a breeding ground and a training opportunity for new terrorists, says the report issued yesterday by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Vacancies in al-Qaeda’s top leadership have been filled, the report says. “Most of those new leaders have obscure backgrounds, and the intelligence community lacks knowledge about their particular methods of operating,” the report says.

Also, “[Extremist] fighters who leave Iraq will have acquired first-hand experience in urban warfare,” the report says. “Upon returning home, they have the potential to use their knowledge, credibility and popularity to recruit and train younger generations to fight against the United States (Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 21).

It’s like the retards don’t understand the word “irony.” Maybe it just don’t translate into Arabic.

“We will smash the cross,” it added, promising Muslims they would “conquer Rome… as they conquered Constantinople.”

Another armed group linked to Al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Sunna (Partisans of the Precepts of the Prophet), threatened in a website statement to attack the West — Italy in particular.

Calling the pope “Satan’s hellhound in the Vatican,” the statement addressed to “Crusaders” said: “The day is coming when the armies of Islam will destroy the ramparts of Rome.”

In Tehran, Iran’s supreme leader Khamenei linked the pope’s remarks to caricatures published in a Danish newspaper last year deemed insulting to the Prophet Mohammed. The cartoons set off deadly protests in the Muslim world.
…
Ironically, offensive cartoons of Jews and Christians are routinely placed in Arab press, but the response from either major religion or its followers is one of indifference to the Arab provocations.

Why shouldn’t we trust the guy who promised to “deliver Ohio” to George W. Bush?
Hotel minibar keys open voting machines

The access panel door on a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine — the door that protects the memory card that stores the votes, and is the main barrier to the injection of a virus — can be opened with a standard key that is widely available on the Internet.
…
Experts will recognize the same problem in Diebold’s use of encryption — they can say they use encryption, but they use it in a way that neutralizes its security benefits.