December 18, 2003


Throwaway email addies with RSS-syndicated…

Throwaway email addies with RSS-syndicated mailboxes.



Dodgeit allows you to create throw-away email addresses (for crappy registration sites), and then delivers the email that comes into the resulting mailbox as an RSS feed that you and everyone else who can guess at your throwaway email addy can read. That’s pretty sweet.


Pick a throwaway address, say: deeznuts@dodgeit.com Give that address out whenever you need to. Check deeznuts from homepage of dodgeit.com. Subscribe to RSS feed to keep an eye on the mailbox. Get it?

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9/11 chair: attack was preventable

9/11 chair: attack was preventable


A REPUBLICAN ex-governor is saying Dubya & Co. could have prevented 9/11. Most amazing.



The chairman of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is saying publicly that 9/11 could have and should have been prevented,


This is a very, very important part of history and we’ve got to tell it right,” said Thomas Kean.


“As you read the report, you’re going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn’t done and what should have been done,” he said. “This was not something that had to happen.”


Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame.

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Iraqis doubt real Hussein behind…

Iraqis doubt real Hussein behind bars



Baghdad — Jassim Abu Ahmed almost spits his disgust at the television set showing yet another image of the dazed and bedraggled Saddam Hussein.


It’s not him,” Mr. Ahmed says, waving his hand and looking away from the screen. “Everybody knows it’s not him. Why do they keep showing this?”


Well, Saddam did have numerous doubles, some of whom have surgery to look like him. How do we know this is indeed the real Saddam. Oh, that’s right, because our government told us. And of course they never lie to us, right?

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“My father’s name was James…

“My father’s name was James Strom Thurmond”.


Hugely detailed and comprehensive post on the daughter Strom Thrurmond had by a 15 year old black maid, from the amazing blog, Doublethink


 

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Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day



“I don’t get along very well with right-wingers because I feel as if they have a tendency to come into our homes and tell us how we’re supposed to live our lives.”


Howard Dean, in an interview yesterday with the Los Angeles Times

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Even paper ballots are better…

Even paper ballots are better then Diebold, methinks


Every time I think Diebold can’t sink to lower levels of incompetence, they go ahead and do it anyway. Unreliable voting machines, insecure systems, unverified software - not to mention the price-gouging memo, you name it, and this maker of touchscreen voting machines has done it. And, like the Bush Administration, they never apologize or accept blame for anything, generally trying to sue anyone who criticizes them rather than fixing the gaping, obvious security holes in their systems.


Now this:  


Uncertified software used in California elections statewide



Digital voting giant Diebold Election Systems took a staggering blow Wed-nesday as California officials reported that Diebold ran uncertified — and in some cases untested — software in all 17 counties where it counted votes in the state’s last two elections.


What began as a scandal in Alameda County swept statewide as every county served by Diebold realized its software was not state certified, and three counties, including Los Angeles, found that some of their software never had been tested by a federally designated lab.


Meanwhile, Diebold hires only the best!



Voter advocate Bev Harris alleged Tuesday that managers of a subsidiary of Diebold, one of the country’s largest voting equipment vendors, included a cocaine trafficker, a man who conducted fraudulent stock transactions and a programmer jailed for falsifying computer records.


“You can’t tell me these people passed background tests,” Harris, author of Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century, said in a phone interview.


“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity”

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Arnold and the car tax…

Arnold and the car tax repeal!



City Controller Laura Chick warned Tuesday that Los Angeles officials must cut spending now or she will be forced to cancel checks to vendors and employees by the end of the fiscal year because of the loss of $150 million in state funding due to repeal of the tripled car tax.


Several counties and cities are suing the state of California for the lost revenues, “seeking to force it to compensate local governments for money lost from the car tax that was cut as his first act by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger”


Arnold plans an end run around the legislature, however -



“It’s of doubtful legality,” said Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco). “He’s skating on very thin ice.”


The governor, Burton said, “made promises to the locals, so I guess he’s trying to keep them. But when we go to appropriate $3 billion in a deficiency, I don’t know where he’s going to get it.”


I will say that at least Arnold is doing something, however misguided, unlike the previous governor who sat like a slug in the background except when he was fund-raising. However the financial crisis in California is huge, and there are way more bills than income, and no easy solutions.

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