Monday, August 28, 2006
A Free Ticket Home
John Mark Karr recently admitted to killing JonBenet Ramsey some ten years ago. He was in far off Thailand at the time, so the prosecutor in Boulder, Colorado sent all the extradition papers to the Thai police who promptly arrested Mr. Karr and put him on an airplane to the States – on Boulder’s nickel, mind you. He flew business class and soaked up the bubbly and had a taste or two of the complimentary gourmet meals. One media dolly gloated that it would be his last decent meal for a while; the jail in Boulder has never been listed on the Duncan Hines’ roster of good places to have a meal, you see.
The JonBenet case had ample twists and turns and became a media circus. The Ramseys are well off and JonBenet at the tender age of six was a budding beauty queen.
Boulder got itself a huge PR black eye from the case which has never come close to being solved. A well meaning cop destroyed the evidence where her body was found, and for years the Boulder prosecutor tried to pin the killing on the 6 year old girl’s parents.
At the first opportunity, the Ramseys moved to Georgia to get away from the media, the cops, the DA, and all the Lookie-Lous who drove by their plush mansion and tooted the horn.
At long last it looked like there was a break in the case, but alas, it was not to be. All it would have taken to prove Karr a fraud was a simple DNA typing which could have been done by the Legal Attaché at the embassy right there in Bangkok. Instead, the citizens of Boulder purchased a pricey ticket getting nothing in return, the media frenzy has been fired up again, and the Boulder prosecutor is looking dumber than ever.
As far as John Mark Karr having had his last good meal for a while, I have long money that says rights to his story will go in the high five figures.
The moral of this story is buy one way tickets to the fleshpots of the world and use the rest of the dough to have a good time. When the party wears thin, hold a press conference and admit to killing someone whose demise remains a mystery. Want to go to Detroit? Tell ‘em you know where Jimmy is buried. Like Chicago? Admitting you know something about Sam Giancano’s killing will get you a ride to there or DC, depending on who wants to talk about what. What the hell, ski season begins in a month or so, and the Boulder heat has proved as dumb as ever; they would probably go for another JonBenet confession.
John Mark Karr recently admitted to killing JonBenet Ramsey some ten years ago. He was in far off Thailand at the time, so the prosecutor in Boulder, Colorado sent all the extradition papers to the Thai police who promptly arrested Mr. Karr and put him on an airplane to the States – on Boulder’s nickel, mind you. He flew business class and soaked up the bubbly and had a taste or two of the complimentary gourmet meals. One media dolly gloated that it would be his last decent meal for a while; the jail in Boulder has never been listed on the Duncan Hines’ roster of good places to have a meal, you see.
The JonBenet case had ample twists and turns and became a media circus. The Ramseys are well off and JonBenet at the tender age of six was a budding beauty queen.
Boulder got itself a huge PR black eye from the case which has never come close to being solved. A well meaning cop destroyed the evidence where her body was found, and for years the Boulder prosecutor tried to pin the killing on the 6 year old girl’s parents.
At the first opportunity, the Ramseys moved to Georgia to get away from the media, the cops, the DA, and all the Lookie-Lous who drove by their plush mansion and tooted the horn.
At long last it looked like there was a break in the case, but alas, it was not to be. All it would have taken to prove Karr a fraud was a simple DNA typing which could have been done by the Legal Attaché at the embassy right there in Bangkok. Instead, the citizens of Boulder purchased a pricey ticket getting nothing in return, the media frenzy has been fired up again, and the Boulder prosecutor is looking dumber than ever.
As far as John Mark Karr having had his last good meal for a while, I have long money that says rights to his story will go in the high five figures.
The moral of this story is buy one way tickets to the fleshpots of the world and use the rest of the dough to have a good time. When the party wears thin, hold a press conference and admit to killing someone whose demise remains a mystery. Want to go to Detroit? Tell ‘em you know where Jimmy is buried. Like Chicago? Admitting you know something about Sam Giancano’s killing will get you a ride to there or DC, depending on who wants to talk about what. What the hell, ski season begins in a month or so, and the Boulder heat has proved as dumb as ever; they would probably go for another JonBenet confession.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Keeping The Bad Guys O-U-T
A couple of weeks or so ago, my free copy of AVG detected but failed to remove some bad news viruses that snuck in from a Russian website via one of the Java plug-ins. I disabled and uninstalled Java forthwith.
A call to Microsoft and a $35 hit on my credit card had me running Housecall from Trend Micro. That was after a roundy-go-round of futilely trying F2 and F8 restarts.
Housecall, which is a non-resident virus scanner gave me a clean bill of health on the Java crap, but pointed out a serious vulnerability in some MS software that I never use. The right update from MS resolved that issue. I also found that SUN is offering a new and improved version of Java for free download.
I had spent several hours to get to the point where I felt that I had safely removed some malicious software without suffering great loss.
Yesterday, I updated my Ad-Aware and ran a full system scan, only to find that Qhost had installed a dialer in the registry despite the fact that I had locked the registry with Tea Timer. That called for checking the Spybot site to see if there was an updated version. Sure enough there was. Spybot Search and Destroy 1.4 is now available.
Down loading and installing it took a couple of tries. My iron is a Piece of Crap emachines of 2001 vintage and hiccups are frequent. After that, downloading all the latest updates took another hour or so and another system scan took another while. I have Scrabble installed on my Palm so I really didn’t have to twiddle my thumbs at all.
If you are like me, a not too technically savvy user who finds great joy in surfing the net and using your home computer, the best advice I can offer is make sure you update your system components frequently and run malware scans often.
A couple of weeks or so ago, my free copy of AVG detected but failed to remove some bad news viruses that snuck in from a Russian website via one of the Java plug-ins. I disabled and uninstalled Java forthwith.
A call to Microsoft and a $35 hit on my credit card had me running Housecall from Trend Micro. That was after a roundy-go-round of futilely trying F2 and F8 restarts.
Housecall, which is a non-resident virus scanner gave me a clean bill of health on the Java crap, but pointed out a serious vulnerability in some MS software that I never use. The right update from MS resolved that issue. I also found that SUN is offering a new and improved version of Java for free download.
I had spent several hours to get to the point where I felt that I had safely removed some malicious software without suffering great loss.
Yesterday, I updated my Ad-Aware and ran a full system scan, only to find that Qhost had installed a dialer in the registry despite the fact that I had locked the registry with Tea Timer. That called for checking the Spybot site to see if there was an updated version. Sure enough there was. Spybot Search and Destroy 1.4 is now available.
Down loading and installing it took a couple of tries. My iron is a Piece of Crap emachines of 2001 vintage and hiccups are frequent. After that, downloading all the latest updates took another hour or so and another system scan took another while. I have Scrabble installed on my Palm so I really didn’t have to twiddle my thumbs at all.
If you are like me, a not too technically savvy user who finds great joy in surfing the net and using your home computer, the best advice I can offer is make sure you update your system components frequently and run malware scans often.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Linkage
I’m not sure how it happened, but I was channel surfing the other afternoon which is something I seldom do. I wound up catching a little of what passes for fair and balanced reportage on one of the Fox News broadcasts.
The boys had their knives out for anyone who opposes OPERATION Iraqi Freedom. It seems like they see anyone who doesn’t support our insanity in that God forsaken place as being soft on terrorism.
Iraq is a sink hole that is diverting resources from the hunt for Al Qaeda who are our sworn enemy. Iraq is Dubya’s blunder costing over a quarter of a trillion dollars and sending 2,600 Americans home in metal boxes. No link to any terrorist organization has yet to be found in the rubble that was formerly Iraq and there have been no WMD uncovered.
Linking Our Idiot In Washington’s folly to terrorism is BS, pure and simple.
I’m not sure how it happened, but I was channel surfing the other afternoon which is something I seldom do. I wound up catching a little of what passes for fair and balanced reportage on one of the Fox News broadcasts.
The boys had their knives out for anyone who opposes OPERATION Iraqi Freedom. It seems like they see anyone who doesn’t support our insanity in that God forsaken place as being soft on terrorism.
Iraq is a sink hole that is diverting resources from the hunt for Al Qaeda who are our sworn enemy. Iraq is Dubya’s blunder costing over a quarter of a trillion dollars and sending 2,600 Americans home in metal boxes. No link to any terrorist organization has yet to be found in the rubble that was formerly Iraq and there have been no WMD uncovered.
Linking Our Idiot In Washington’s folly to terrorism is BS, pure and simple.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Women’s Dress Trends
I, for one, mostly appreciate the new “skin is in" philosophy allowing us girl watchers to view more of God’s handiwork. It’s mostly good, but there are drawbacks.
The other day I grabbed a blender drink from the Orange Julius® at a nearby mall and set myself down to watch the people. There was a fat teenager sitting a table or two away. A person who would be called “muffin top” in the new slang. That kid had no more right to bare her midriff in public than a horse has to go to church.
I also wonder how those tattoos on lower abdomens are going to look when modified by stretch marks in a few years. Time will tell there, I guess.
And then there is cleavage. Holy Sweet Whatshisname is there cleavage out there! A lot of it! It’s almost like every female under 80 who is B-cup or better is wearing clothing proclaiming, “I have BOOBS!”
And then there are those who go even farther to proclaim pulchritude by showing even more of God’s Handiwork.
I, for one, mostly appreciate the new “skin is in" philosophy allowing us girl watchers to view more of God’s handiwork. It’s mostly good, but there are drawbacks.
The other day I grabbed a blender drink from the Orange Julius® at a nearby mall and set myself down to watch the people. There was a fat teenager sitting a table or two away. A person who would be called “muffin top” in the new slang. That kid had no more right to bare her midriff in public than a horse has to go to church.
I also wonder how those tattoos on lower abdomens are going to look when modified by stretch marks in a few years. Time will tell there, I guess.
And then there is cleavage. Holy Sweet Whatshisname is there cleavage out there! A lot of it! It’s almost like every female under 80 who is B-cup or better is wearing clothing proclaiming, “I have BOOBS!”
And then there are those who go even farther to proclaim pulchritude by showing even more of God’s Handiwork.
“I REALLY HAVE BOOBS AND YOU HAD BETTER LOOK!!!”
I really feel sorry for the poor slob who not only couldn't tear his eyes away from a co-worker's assets, but actually drooled. For which he drew a complaint of sexual harassment.
Women. Who knows what they will do next?
Friday, August 11, 2006
How’re You Going To Keep Them Down On The Farm After They Learn To Read?
The bombing plot foiled by the British was actually a reprise of a 1995 attempt to blow US-bound airliners from the sky with liquid explosives similar to the ones impounded in Blighty. The Filipinos uncovered the earlier plot and stymied it while it was in the planning stages. Lucky us.
Similarly, the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Towers and Pentagon were taken from pages of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan thriller, Debt Of Honor.
How long will it be before some Jihadi stumbles across the accounts of cocaine being muled into the US by air passengers who had swallowed over a dozen 1 ounce balls of the drug encased in condoms?
Replace the drug with go-bang and what have you? Disaster is what you got. Eight or more ounces of Semtek or C4 properly placed would catastrophically rupture the fuselage of an airliner tooling along 6 miles up.
Better yet, when do you suppose obviously pregnant, burqa-clad “females” will get past security checkpoints? Imagine all the bad stuff you could get inside a fetus-sized belly pack. That, by the way, was one of the first ploys used against American troops by an Iraqi suicide bomber back in 2003. The grunts who didn’t shoot the “lady with the baby” got sent home in a box.
As a side note: The real tragedy was the slaughter of a van full of women who couldn’t stop at another checkpoint on account of brake failure a day or so later.
Airport security goons are in a frenzy to keep batteries off flights since yesterday. What the knee jerk jerks responsible for our security are overlooking is chemical bomb ignition has been around a long time and is highly perfected – no batteries required. Packaged in modern plastics nothing would ever show up on metal detectors, and I for one would be exceedingly reluctant to x-ray an expectant woman, or a “woman” I thought was pregnant.
We got lucky this time. An arrest in Pakistan unraveled this plot, but there is no way we can stay lucky as long as we are confronted with fanatics who are indifferent to their own survival and consider it an exercise in faith to murder women and children.
Guys. It is time to quite screwing around in Iraq and get after Al Qaeda like your hair is on fire.
The bombing plot foiled by the British was actually a reprise of a 1995 attempt to blow US-bound airliners from the sky with liquid explosives similar to the ones impounded in Blighty. The Filipinos uncovered the earlier plot and stymied it while it was in the planning stages. Lucky us.
Similarly, the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Towers and Pentagon were taken from pages of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan thriller, Debt Of Honor.
How long will it be before some Jihadi stumbles across the accounts of cocaine being muled into the US by air passengers who had swallowed over a dozen 1 ounce balls of the drug encased in condoms?
Replace the drug with go-bang and what have you? Disaster is what you got. Eight or more ounces of Semtek or C4 properly placed would catastrophically rupture the fuselage of an airliner tooling along 6 miles up.
Better yet, when do you suppose obviously pregnant, burqa-clad “females” will get past security checkpoints? Imagine all the bad stuff you could get inside a fetus-sized belly pack. That, by the way, was one of the first ploys used against American troops by an Iraqi suicide bomber back in 2003. The grunts who didn’t shoot the “lady with the baby” got sent home in a box.
As a side note: The real tragedy was the slaughter of a van full of women who couldn’t stop at another checkpoint on account of brake failure a day or so later.
Airport security goons are in a frenzy to keep batteries off flights since yesterday. What the knee jerk jerks responsible for our security are overlooking is chemical bomb ignition has been around a long time and is highly perfected – no batteries required. Packaged in modern plastics nothing would ever show up on metal detectors, and I for one would be exceedingly reluctant to x-ray an expectant woman, or a “woman” I thought was pregnant.
We got lucky this time. An arrest in Pakistan unraveled this plot, but there is no way we can stay lucky as long as we are confronted with fanatics who are indifferent to their own survival and consider it an exercise in faith to murder women and children.
Guys. It is time to quite screwing around in Iraq and get after Al Qaeda like your hair is on fire.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
God Bless Britain
The London Bobbies have thwarted a massive attempt to bring down US-bound airliners. It was to have been another large scale coordinated attack using smuggled liquid explosive disguised in soft drink/water bottles.
Planes from Europe to the US should be crowded this time of year with returning vacationers. Maximum seating capacity on a Boeing 777 is well in excess of 300. A half dozen or so of them or their Airbus competitors falling out of the sky at once would be quite a coup for the Jihadis.
Thousands of European Islamists flocked to Iraq to do battle with the Great Satan only to find themselves on the wrong end of a high kill ratio. Attempting to fight organized armies of the Coalition did indeed provide for a quick trip to paradise, but left the faithful a tad short on slaves for the afterlife. It was much easier for them to be trained up and returned to their adopted homelands to wreak their havoc.
Once upon a time the Jihadis were obliged to trek to remote Afghanistan to be trained. No more. Thanks to the Dubya/Rummy insanity, an air ticket to Damascus or Amman and a short car ride puts them into the induction centers for training.
Thanks to the British, several thousand Americans will live despite the efforts of those who would murder women and children in the name of God. I wonder how long it will be before we quit screwing around in Iraq and go after the infra structure that supports this insanity.
The London Bobbies have thwarted a massive attempt to bring down US-bound airliners. It was to have been another large scale coordinated attack using smuggled liquid explosive disguised in soft drink/water bottles.
Planes from Europe to the US should be crowded this time of year with returning vacationers. Maximum seating capacity on a Boeing 777 is well in excess of 300. A half dozen or so of them or their Airbus competitors falling out of the sky at once would be quite a coup for the Jihadis.
Thousands of European Islamists flocked to Iraq to do battle with the Great Satan only to find themselves on the wrong end of a high kill ratio. Attempting to fight organized armies of the Coalition did indeed provide for a quick trip to paradise, but left the faithful a tad short on slaves for the afterlife. It was much easier for them to be trained up and returned to their adopted homelands to wreak their havoc.
Once upon a time the Jihadis were obliged to trek to remote Afghanistan to be trained. No more. Thanks to the Dubya/Rummy insanity, an air ticket to Damascus or Amman and a short car ride puts them into the induction centers for training.
Thanks to the British, several thousand Americans will live despite the efforts of those who would murder women and children in the name of God. I wonder how long it will be before we quit screwing around in Iraq and go after the infra structure that supports this insanity.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
I Told You So Doesn’t Begin To Cover It
Let’s see . . . a predictable outcome turns out as predicted. No surprise there, right?
According to Reuters over 2,000 corpses were taken to Baghdad’s morgue last month. The sad fact of the matter is there is no end in sight for the daily bombings and shootings taking place across Iraq. We could put a million man force in the place and not be able to cut the violence to an “acceptable” level. Say what you want about Saddam Hussein, it never got that bad while his government was in place.
The LA Times tells us that mainstream Shiite movers and shakers are now talking partition and autonomy ala Iraqi Kurdistan to stem the violence. That will never play with the Sunnis as the oil wealth of the country underlies ground populated by the other two groups. They are not about to relinquish claim to the nation’s resources. The civil war has already started. You know the one I mean, the one the party line says will never happen.
All of this was predicted by this Pajamahedeen back when we failed to secure the countryside of Iraq during the ’03 invasion. The following is what I foresee in the future.
The Shi’ias will have no recourse but to call upon their Iranian co-religionists for help. Unfortunately they will be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Sure enough, the big neighbor to the east will come help whip up on the Sunnis, but the Iraqi Shi’ias will be doing all the bleeding and dieing in knocking the Sunnis back. That will leave the war-exhausted Shiite Iraqis too weak to see to their own needs, opening the way to annexation by Iran at very little cost to the Ayatollahs.
While the Sunnis and Shi’ias are having at each other, Kurdistan will not be obliged to expend much in the way of resources to secure her flanks against incursions from the south. The Kurds have two competing parties, and for sure, one or the other will assay the chance of annexing territory currently claimed by Turkey and populated by Kurds. The Turks have already voiced their concern of allowing the Kurds to have control of the petroleum wealth of the Mosul region for fear the Kurds would use the revenue to buy arms.
No arms embargo will work. If the cocaine barons can buy weapons, you can bet oil revenues will work in the international arms market.
Turkey is a member of NATO.
Attacks on her bind all of her allies to come to her aid.
NATO was founded to counter the Red Menace of the USSR and its client states and may have outlived its usefulness. As stated, the treaty calls for all members to come to the aid of any member falling victim to external attack.
As a side note, the World Trade Towers/Pentagon bombings were the first such attack coming nearly ten years after the demise of the Soviet Union, and Canada was the first nation declaring its intention to fight on our behalf.
If indeed, Turkey finds itself in a hassle with Kurdistan, NATO will probably be the first victim. The Greeks will pass on the opportunity to aid her centuries-old rival and may even go as far as taking back all of Cyprus while the Turks are busy in the east.
I don’t think I’m the first one to see the violence in Iraq spilling over into the rest of the region. The Saudis, who are long on state craft, and very good at getting other “stronger” nations to do their fighting have made overtures to a very receptive Turkey. The Saudi king’s first day of a state visit saw 6 strategic agreements go into effect.
This is an unusual move for the Kingdom where the political tune is called by the Wahabi sect of Sunni Islam. The adamantly secular government of Turkey and the ultra-conservative Islamic al Saud would seem to have little common ground, but while the Turks welcome the surplus capital generated by enhanced oil revenues, you would have to wonder just what the Saudis expect to get out of the deal.
The Turks have a modern army based on the NATO model and have a fearsome reputation as fighters. If you happen across a Korean War vet who served in a unit close to them, you might buy a latte or a beer and get him to talking. The stories are spell binding.
The question is this: if the disintegration of Iraq is apparent to a reasonably apolitical Left Coast Retiree, how come the government can’t get a handle on it?
We’ve frittered away hundreds of billions of dollars had thousands of our own troops sent home in caskets. The poor Iraqis are living barely above subsistence level, sweltering in the summer heat because the power plants have been bombed out, and incited to civil war by “holy” men. NATO stands in peril of dissolution, and Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia are properly apprehensive. The only clear winner here is Iran.
Dubya is from Texas, so I will lay a Texas high school observation on his accomplishment:
Let’s see . . . a predictable outcome turns out as predicted. No surprise there, right?
According to Reuters over 2,000 corpses were taken to Baghdad’s morgue last month. The sad fact of the matter is there is no end in sight for the daily bombings and shootings taking place across Iraq. We could put a million man force in the place and not be able to cut the violence to an “acceptable” level. Say what you want about Saddam Hussein, it never got that bad while his government was in place.
The LA Times tells us that mainstream Shiite movers and shakers are now talking partition and autonomy ala Iraqi Kurdistan to stem the violence. That will never play with the Sunnis as the oil wealth of the country underlies ground populated by the other two groups. They are not about to relinquish claim to the nation’s resources. The civil war has already started. You know the one I mean, the one the party line says will never happen.
All of this was predicted by this Pajamahedeen back when we failed to secure the countryside of Iraq during the ’03 invasion. The following is what I foresee in the future.
The Shi’ias will have no recourse but to call upon their Iranian co-religionists for help. Unfortunately they will be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Sure enough, the big neighbor to the east will come help whip up on the Sunnis, but the Iraqi Shi’ias will be doing all the bleeding and dieing in knocking the Sunnis back. That will leave the war-exhausted Shiite Iraqis too weak to see to their own needs, opening the way to annexation by Iran at very little cost to the Ayatollahs.
While the Sunnis and Shi’ias are having at each other, Kurdistan will not be obliged to expend much in the way of resources to secure her flanks against incursions from the south. The Kurds have two competing parties, and for sure, one or the other will assay the chance of annexing territory currently claimed by Turkey and populated by Kurds. The Turks have already voiced their concern of allowing the Kurds to have control of the petroleum wealth of the Mosul region for fear the Kurds would use the revenue to buy arms.
No arms embargo will work. If the cocaine barons can buy weapons, you can bet oil revenues will work in the international arms market.
Turkey is a member of NATO.
Attacks on her bind all of her allies to come to her aid.
NATO was founded to counter the Red Menace of the USSR and its client states and may have outlived its usefulness. As stated, the treaty calls for all members to come to the aid of any member falling victim to external attack.
As a side note, the World Trade Towers/Pentagon bombings were the first such attack coming nearly ten years after the demise of the Soviet Union, and Canada was the first nation declaring its intention to fight on our behalf.
If indeed, Turkey finds itself in a hassle with Kurdistan, NATO will probably be the first victim. The Greeks will pass on the opportunity to aid her centuries-old rival and may even go as far as taking back all of Cyprus while the Turks are busy in the east.
I don’t think I’m the first one to see the violence in Iraq spilling over into the rest of the region. The Saudis, who are long on state craft, and very good at getting other “stronger” nations to do their fighting have made overtures to a very receptive Turkey. The Saudi king’s first day of a state visit saw 6 strategic agreements go into effect.
This is an unusual move for the Kingdom where the political tune is called by the Wahabi sect of Sunni Islam. The adamantly secular government of Turkey and the ultra-conservative Islamic al Saud would seem to have little common ground, but while the Turks welcome the surplus capital generated by enhanced oil revenues, you would have to wonder just what the Saudis expect to get out of the deal.
The Turks have a modern army based on the NATO model and have a fearsome reputation as fighters. If you happen across a Korean War vet who served in a unit close to them, you might buy a latte or a beer and get him to talking. The stories are spell binding.
The question is this: if the disintegration of Iraq is apparent to a reasonably apolitical Left Coast Retiree, how come the government can’t get a handle on it?
We’ve frittered away hundreds of billions of dollars had thousands of our own troops sent home in caskets. The poor Iraqis are living barely above subsistence level, sweltering in the summer heat because the power plants have been bombed out, and incited to civil war by “holy” men. NATO stands in peril of dissolution, and Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia are properly apprehensive. The only clear winner here is Iran.
Dubya is from Texas, so I will lay a Texas high school observation on his accomplishment:
Smooth Move, Ex-Lax.
