Sunday, September 28, 2008

Father Of The Year

The Father Of The Year award has found a recipient.

Police responding to a call from the city's northwest side about 3:20 a.m. found 64-year-old Robert McNally on the hallway floor with his arm around the neck of 52-year-old David T. Meyers, who was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police said Meyers was naked except for a mask and latex gloves and had entered the home through a window near the girl's bedroom with rope, condoms and a knife. He was familiar with the home's layout because it belonged to a relative, police said.

The girl awoke and screamed when she saw the man in her room, police said. The father responded and struggled with the intruder while the girl's mother phoned 911.

In short, the FOTY choked the ever lovin' life outta this dude. That's farkin' hardcore.


Police did not anticipate any charges against McNally.


You know, if it DID go to trial, it would be a very short trial.

Judge: "What happened?"

FOTY: "Well, I heard my daughter scream and there was some buck-naked sack of human debris with rubbers, a knife, and a mask trying to get into her room. He seems to have been a convicted rapist."

Judge: "What did you do?"

FOTY: "I shut his ass off."

Judge: "Works for me. We're adjourned."

One sad thing is, no future husband/boyfriend is EVER going to be able to compare to Daddy in this girl's eyes.

Makes me think, this is why the Good Lord created the Remington 870.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

A Few Things YOU Can Do With $700 Billion

Outright buy 4,000,000 homes, assuming their average price is $250,000
Cut every single person on this planet a check for $104.09
Get half of the Democratic Party into a fundraiser for Barack Obama at the $28,500 admission price
Give $3,278 to every man, woman, and child in the US
140,000,000,000 subscriptions to TotalFark
Buy 438 pounds of rice for every single person in Africa
58,577,405,857 subscriptions to Vibe (hooray, Office Space!)
Buy the world a Coke: One 2-liter bottle per week for a year
Buy everyone in America 2200 McDonalds apple pies

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Dave Ramsey Weighs In

As many of you know, MissSpeech and I are YOOOGE Dave Ramsey fans (in fact, we've taught his Financial Peace courses a few times), and I was really curious what he had to say about all this bailout mess. Well, he didn't dissapoint. He has a LOT to say, and it pays to read (or hear) it all.

Start here.

The main article.

Download the whole rant here.

Some excerpts:

Economist Wesberry is saying that if we change that one rule and don't force them to market down to market and just let them hold on to all the stuff, and say just on sub-primes for this period of time you can change that rule -- a temporary change -- that'll free the market up. It's seized right now; it's frozen. This will thaw it out and get it going again. He says that'll solve 60% of the problem ... and I think he's right.

That one accounting rule is what made Merrill Lynch sell out. That one accounting rule is what's driving other ones into the dirt. Would you rather let them change their accounting rule or loan them $700 billion for us to buyout their bad paper?

I'd rather them work their own crap out than change the accounting rule.

...Call your Congressman. Call your Senator. Tell them to change the mark-to-market accounting law and to extend insurance but extend no loans. If they extend loans - if they borrow the money on the national debt in order for us to all go into the mortgage business a trillion dollars - you're going to fire their butts and send them home.

I've talked with several people today, and it's on the tables in Washington, but it's not something you're going to see on TV. If you'll let your Congressmen know you know about this and that you'll vote against them if they don't vote to change the mark-to-market law and you'll contribute your money to make sure they never serve in office again. That's what you need to tell them early and often.

If you're pissed, this is the time to step up and do something about it, America! You can stop this! It's be railroaded down your throat, but you can stop them if you call them in mass starting now. READY ... SET ... GO!


That, my friends, is an epic rant.

BOOYAH!

The FBI is now investigating AIG, Lehman Bros, Freddie and Fannie for fraud.

WASHINGTON — The FBI is investigating four major U.S. financial institutions whose collapse helped trigger a $700 billion bailout plan by the Bush administration, The Associated Press has learned.

Two law enforcement officials said Tuesday the FBI is looking at potential fraud by mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and insurer American International Group Inc. Additionally, a senior law enforcement official said Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. also is under investigation.

The inquiries will focus on the financial institutions and the individuals that ran them, the senior law enforcement official said.


It's about time. Somebody needs to burn for this.

Farker In Congress



This was posted on Drudge today, and I LOL'd. It's a congressperson at the bailout hearings today.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Sarah Palin's Email HAX0R3D!!1!

Friggin' figures. The day I decide to take a breather from politics, somebody hacks Sarah Palin's email account. This is a big deal.

If you want an easier to understand version, try Gawker.

Here's the story so far (fairly nitty-gritty):

THE INCIDENT

WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR:

- Very recently an anonymous poster on /b/ claimed to have hacked Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail account.

- Sarah Palin used the e-mail address gov.sarah@yahoo.com for public communication. Several media outlets have confirmed this fact prior to this "incident".

SOURCE: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/10/palin-email-privilege/
SOURCE: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/09/15-7

- The e-mail address that the poster hacked was gov.palin@yahoo.com. This second e-mail address, previously unknown publicly, was used for private communcations.

- Yahoo e-mail addresses, unlike .gov e-mail addresses, are not subject to archiving and oversight. This fact has led to controversy from several sources, including fellow Republicans, asking her to release e-mails from her Yahoo account.

- The anonymous poster apparently panicked, and released the password onto /b/.

- Several other posters on /b/ took screenshots of the Inbox and various e-mails.

- Some of the screenshots reference several people in Alaska state government. One of these people is Sean Parnell, Lieutenant Governor of Alaska. Parnell mentions KFQD Radio's Dan Fagan, to whom he gave an interview about Palin's ACES initiative. Lt. Gov. Parnell's e-mail address is verified via an Alaska Republican Central Committee contact listing.

SOURCE: http://gov.state.ak.us/aces/
SOURCE: http://www.alaskarepublicans.com/centralcommittee.aspx

- One of the screenshots references the Yahoo account fek9wnr, Todd Palin, Sarah's husband who is at the heart of the controversy over her use of Yahoo e-mail for public dealings. The fek9wnr account was verified as being Todd Palin via a public posting to an automotive enthusiast BBS from August 2006.

SOURCE: http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/centurionconversions/message/2309

- Several photographs of her family were allegedly downloaded from the e-mail account.

- A scan of profiles.yahoo.com put gov.palin@yahoo.com's profile update date at 04/05/2008, long before any VP nod was apparent. If this were a fake, the perpetrator would've had to travel into the past and create an account or be very good at guessing who the VP candidate would be 5+ months later, not to mention faking an overwhelming amount of e-mails, photographs, verified private cellphone numbers, and other information.

- A good samaritan in the /b/ thread reset the password account with the intention of handing it over to Palin, a process known on /b/ as "white knighting". This locked everyone else out of the account. The "white knight" posted a screenshot to /b/ of his pending message to one of Palin's contacts about how to recover the account, but made the critical mistake of not blanking out the new password he set.

- Several other people in the /b/ thread then apparently logged in using this new password, and they all attempted to reset the password at once, causing a security trap at Yahoo to automatically put a 24-hour lockout on the account.


THE AFTERMATH:

- Sarah Palin was likely notified of the breach by morning, as she had then deleted both the gov.sarah@yahoo.com address (the one subject to the disclosure controversy in the media) as well as the gov.palin@yahoo.com address (the one that was hacked).

- The outright deletion of the accounts can be verified by attempting to pull up the public profile on both addresses, which both existed during the incident.

SOURCE: http://profiles.yahoo.com/gov.palin
SOURCE: http://profiles.yahoo.com/gov.sarah

- Both accounts were deleted simultaneously, thus linking the publicly-known e-mail address "gov.sarah" and the private e-mail address "gov.palin".

- This outright deletion may have the potential to be viewed as destruction of evidence, considering that the e-mails in the now-deleted accounts are the subject of several legal controversies.

SOURCE: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/03/AR2008090303210_pf.html

- Several ZIP, RAR, and 7Z compilations of the downloaded screenshots, contacts, and photos were made available by anonymous individuals.

- 4chan is actively (some say over-actively) banning and deleting any posts of the screenshots of Palin's account, contacts, or family photos.

- An anonymous poster to 420chan, using information from the e-mail account's contact list, attempted to call Bristol Palin's cellphone number using the AT&T phone relay service. Several others allegedly called the cellphone number itself and got Bristol's voicemail. These posts were quickly deleted by 420chan moderators.

- A poster on /b/ did a lookup on the cellphone number which returned this information:

Type: Cell Phone
Provider: Dobson Cellular Systems
Location: Palmer, AK

- An anonymous individual has uploaded some of the screenshots to a photobucket account.

SOURCE: http://s405.photobucket.com/albums/pp134/anoncrack/

- A poster in /r9k/ e-mailed the compilations to ABC News producer Eamon McNiff who he/she claims is a personal contact of his/hers.

- Someone submitted a summary to Digg. As of this writing it has only 12 diggs.

SOURCE: http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/The_Incident_Did_4Chan_Anon_Hack_Palin_s_Yahoo_Email

- As of right now the media related to the incident sits mostly confined to 4chan and rapidshare, and thus either deleted, censored or under the radar.


For all the Obamatons saying she broke the law by using a personal email account to send gov't emails, here's a pro-tip: It isn't illegal under Alaska law. There's no law that was broken, no evidence of a cover up, nothing other than personal emails and draft documents that would be perfectly discoverable on the receiving end.

The idiots who did this are the ones who committed a crime - they violated federal law - the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030. That means that the Secret Service has jurisdiction here. That means prison time on conviction. That means that these morons are going to be in a world of hurt. Messing with Scientology is one thing. Invasion of privacy and CFAA charges are another.

Apparently, Bristol Palin keeps getting phone calls, too. Will watch with much interest.

UPDATE: Looks like WikiLeaks has a ton of corroborating evidence (if you can get it to load).

UPDATE II: Drudge, Foxnews, and CNN have it on thier sites.

McCain Camp responds:

"This is a shocking invasion of the Governor's privacy and a violation of law," campaign manager Rick Davis said in a statement. "The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these emails will destroy them. We will have no further comment."

The 5 Most Badass Presidents

This post is a freakin' hoot. It details what Cracked.com takes to be the 5 greatest examples of badassery in US Presidential history. Interestingly, there's no one mentioned more recently than the 1960's. Says something, don't you think? Anyway, content warning for language, sexual innuendo, and all around testosterone dripping manliness. I think Andrew Jackson gets my vote for "Most Badass". Not just for his name, which in fact means "manly", but for this:

Andrew Jackson was the first president on whom an assassination attempt was made. A man named Richard Lawrence approached Jackson with two pistols both of which, for some reason, misfired. With the possibility of an assassination taken off the table, Jackson proceeded to beat Lawrence near death with his cane until Jackson's aides pulled him off the assassin.

No Politics Today (This One's For Dad)

I gotta say, I'm already getting a little weary of "election stuff". I'm sure I'll get interested again soon, but for the time being, I taking a quick break from politics (for a couple of days).

So, I'll be posting a few things that have caught my fancy recently.

Last weekend, my dad (who is recovering from knee-replacement surgery) and I watched Katsushiro Otomo's masterpeice Steamboy. It's one of the best anime movies made, and rightfully deserves it's place as an animated masterpeice. It's simply beautiful to behold, has an entertaining and involved story, and characters that are simply a hoot (Scarlett's got to be my favorite). Anyway, in honor of my dad's first experience with anime, and the good time we had, I decided to post my favorite AMV of Steamboy, which sadly, I did not create. It's set to My Chemical Romance's Welcome To The Black Parade, which is just a fantastic song all around.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Ferguson Farking NAILS It

Craig Ferguson has replaced The Moustache (John Stossel) as my man-crush. You see, Craig recently became a US citizen, and he loves this country. On his show last night, he laid out what is wrong with our media, our politics, and our public. This is solid, deep fried, sugar coated, GOLD:



"If [Walter Kronkite] were dead, he'd BE FURIOUS!"

And the money shot:

"Here is what I am saying to you: If you don't vote, you're a moron. "Not voting is a vote" - no it isn't!! Not voting is just being stupid. Voting is not sexy. Voting is not hip. It is not fashionable. It is not a movie. It is not a videogame. Frankly, voting is a pain in the ass. But here is a word, look it up, it's your duty to vote!"


And part 2:



YOU WILL WATCH EVERY SECOND OF THE VIDEO. You won't be sorry.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Homerun!

Mrs. Palin's speech last night was spectacular. I won't repost the whole thing, but I think she scored some major points, adn really got some waning republicans fired up. My faovite part of the speech? This total pwnage:

"I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town. I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education better. When I ran for city council, I didn't need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and knew their families, too. Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."




Did I just get SCHOOLED on national TV?