Archive for October 21st, 2005


Syria and the coming indictments

Bob Morris @ Oct 21st 2005 16:49 - Category: Unfiled ;


Bush and Rice urge action on Syria’s ties to Lebanon killing

Noting that the
report “strongly suggests that the politically motivated assassination
could not have taken place without Syrian involvement,” Mr. Bush said
the world must “respond accordingly.”

Why not let Syria and Lebanon take care of their own problems and
squabbles? What is it with the insane desire of the US to intervene
everywhere on issues of little concern to them? Well, it’s about oil,
power, and geopolitical dominance, AKA imperialism, clothed in
high-sounding moral language about freedom and democracy.

Given the coming indictments, BushCo wants to focus attention
elsewhere, and fast. Syria, which has long been their target anyway,
would make a swell diversion.

Hmmm. The evidence “strongly suggests.” UN action called for. A mideast country unfriendly to the US. A drumbeat for action.

We’ve been here before. And it’s been disastrous for BushCo in Afghanistan and Iraq, hasn’t it?

“Insanity is when you do the same thing over and over expecting different results.”

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This tragic news just in

Bob Morris @ Oct 21st 2005 16:26 - Category: Unfiled ;

Mr. Floatie,
a community activist who dresses up in a feces costume to decry the
pumping of raw sewage into the waters off British Columbia’s capital,
has withdrawn his name as a candidate for mayor.

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Wilma is apparently ignoring the predictions

Bob Morris @ Oct 21st 2005 12:41 - Category: Unfiled ;


Steve Gregory, WeatherUnderground

Cat 4 Hurricane Wilma is now heading due north!

while latest computer models are more empathic than ever

that Wilma will move inland over the Yucatan

If Wilma goes ashore over the Yucutan and stays for awhile, then
Florida gets a much less ferocious storm. If not, then Florida gets a
much more powerful storm.

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Changing platforms

Bob Morris @ Oct 21st 2005 09:11 - Category: Unfiled ;

In the next week or two, I’m going to migrate this blog from Radio
UserLand to WordPress. While Radio has many great features, its
user base is shrinking while WordPress is growing. Moreover WordPress
is open source with dozens of add-ons.

The primary reason though is that Radio, unlike other blog platforms,
lives on a PC and publishes from there to the web. Thus, the only way I
can update the blog is from that computer. In contrast, WordPress (and
Movable Type and Blogger) are server-based and the blog can be updated
from any computer with net access.

So, expect a new look and feel here, with a few bumps along the
way as I get everything worked out. All the content on the site now
will be on the new site too!

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Gergen: ‘This is a presidency that has almost collapsed.’

Bob Morris @ Oct 21st 2005 08:45 - Category: Unfiled ;

David Gergen compares Plamegate to Watergate

David
Gergen was questioned this morning during a CBS segment concerning the
possibility of indictments to White House chief aide Karl Rove and Dick
Cheney chief of staff Scooter Libby. The “Early Show’s” Bill
Plante mentioned that the White House is behaving like it’s business as
usual. Gergen responded: “Bill, I was in the Nixon White House during
Watergate, and we pretended that we were all about business as usual.
And we had a president who was talking to the portraits. It was not
business as usual, but you have to say it.”



Gergen later in the interview said: “This is a presidency that has almost collapsed.”



Dubya pretends

When asked by
reporters Thursday how he’s dealing with the investigation, Mr. Bush
said, “There’s some background noise here, a lot of chatter, a lot of
speculation and opining. But the American people expect me to do my
job, and I’m going to.”

I listened to the audio of Bush saying this. The arrogance and
cockiness is gone. This is a worried man who is tired, preoccupied and
knows much worse is coming.

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‘Splogs’ roil web, and some blame Google

Bob Morris @ Oct 21st 2005 08:27 - Category: Unfiled ;

Spam, long the scourge of email users, rapidly has become the bane of bloggers too.

Spammers have created millions of Web logs to promote everything from
gambling Web sites to pornography. The spam blogs — known as “splogs”
– often contain gibberish, and are full of links to other Web sites
spammers are trying to promote. Because search engines like those of
Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. base their rankings of Web
sites, in part, on how many other Web sites link to them, the splogs
can help artificially inflate a site’s popularity. Some of the phony
blogs also carry advertisements, which generate a few cents for the
splog’s owner each time they are clicked on.

Just this past weekend, Google’s popular blog-creation tool, Blogger,
was targeted in an apparently coordinated effort to create more than
13,000 splogs, the search giant said. The splogs were laced with
popular keywords so that they would appear prominently in blog
searches, and several bloggers complained online that that the splogs
were gumming up searches for legitimate sites.

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