Man, liberals will go to just about any length to justify their social programs.

So, not only have I been consumed lately by the export/sales trouble at work, I'm in the middle of moving to a new house. Posting will be sporadic through early next week. Come to think of it, I don't have an ISP set up for the new house. I better get on that...

Given their current failure rate, maybe Florida elections officials should just cut to the chase and borrow an elections trick from countries with low literacy rates. Florida should start putting pictures and party symbols on the electronic ballots, right next to each candidates name.

Latest graphic:

[Special thanks to this guy for the concept.]

I particularly like the "watermelon" theme - Green on the outside, Red on the inside.

[I'm working on an update to my earlier mention of the export/sale problems my employer might face in attempting to sell our little unit, which manufactures and designs export controlled (for nuclear non-proliferation, national security and anti-terrorist reasons) equipment. ]

This post simply gathers some sources and marks my current dismay at the dismal state of actual security created by current law. Get a lot of publicity on your side and you can block a transaction. Get a number of members of congress together and you can block a transaction. Any other fear or risk can be papered over with mere promises by purchasers to not do anything naughty.It seems that the DOJ is more interested in making sure foreign owners of telecom companies agree to help law enforcement tap phone lines than it is interested in controlling the spread of military technology.

Further digging suggests to me that, pre 9/11, the federales had little interest in actually controlling the sale of businesses. Out of over 1,200 reviewed transactions, only one (1) sale of a sensitive business was ever denied approval by the President. Of course, the statistics I could find on CFIUS reviews do not disclose how many deals were deterred because the parties to the transaction fearing rejection, never underwent CFIUS review. Further, I could not find information (yet) on how many applications were voluntarily withdrawn after a CFIUS committee members expressed a preliminary negative opinion.

[The Cato Institute published a good piece a few years ago predicting that CFIUS was a "Harbinger of Economic Nationalism." I now could not agree more, though nationalism may overstate the case. Simply get the congresscritters whose constituents employers might be sold to foreign interests involved in the process and you can protect interests quite a bit smaller than national interest.]

Mmmmm, London fashion week. As usual, the Hindustan Times offers the best "cover"-age.

The Council of the City of Berkeley hereby declares that the space 60 kilometers and above the City of Berkeley is a space-based weapons free zone;

Hey Berkeley, you don't want weapons in space, don't put any of them there. Keep your laws off of my galaxy!

cujus est solum, ejus est usque ad coelum [Translation]

Lucky for me, my space-based weapons sytem flies at just 58.2 kilometers above Berkeley, so I guess my gear isn't banned.

Not only is this meaningless tripe completely unenforcable feel-good do-nothingism, it contains a lie on its face. Like most of clap-trap nanny-statism, this resolution contains the language "FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS: NONE," which I think is a lie. First, the stupid city council had to spend time debating and voting on this piece of shit (NOT the first time that shit has voted for shit. In Berkeley, anyway.) Since the members of the council draw a salary, I find that their is a finanical implication of their being total whack-job asswipes.

Second, by continuing my ban of all travel to the PRC due to the river of shit like this flowing out of that place has got to have some effect. And if my boycott of Berkeley doesn't add up to a hill of organically grown coffee beans, well than fuck 'em.

Yet another reason why W is a good man.

After his address to the UN General Assembly, his Excellency George W. Bush, President of the United States of America, leader of the free world, took the time to reach out and shake the hand of one of the security guards who had escorted him to the podium. The President stuck his hand out to the guard. The guard (perhaps a uniformed USSS member) needed to sidestep a bit to make way for the President to pass on by. Bush took the time, just a second, really, to shake his hand. I don't know how to get a screen shot out of RM, so you'll have to skip to just before the end of the video to see this.

[Link is to video of speech courtesy C-Span.]

Message to my readers who are not otherwise blogaholics (Ted & Rob take note). Read this. You know how sometimes you get an email forwarded from an unlikely source, you dread clicking on the link, but once opened you are pleasantly surprised that someone actually sent you writing of quality.

This is like that. Only better.

[Link courtesy The Hub.]

MACFU Update: The Houston Chronicle has confirmed that city funds were used to purchase the No Trespassing signs placed in the KMart & JCI parking lots. I'm a few days late linking to this item from September 13th, though I did report this originally on August 23rd.

Advantage: News2Houston.

Mr. Dabney was kind enough to provide the etymology for "Flaming bag of shit," and he was kind enough to use it in a sentence.

I just coined a term to go with the below post -- "Whistle Blogging."

I struck my own little blow in the war on the spread of weapons technology today.

The little tiny part of the big company that I work for was in the process of being divested.

Our products have many civilian applications, however, they also have military, nuclear and missile technology applications. They are among what is commonly called dual-use technology. However, the big company's executives neglected to take the export status of our product line into account when they accepted a bid to sell our company to some folks from India.

I drafted, as Wesley Dabney would put it, "A flaming bag of shit" that my boss sent to corporate counsel putting them on notice that it might not be a good idea to transfer export controlled technology to foreign nationals hailing from a country which is actively pursuing the development of bigger nukes and longer range missiles.

My boss struck an even bigger blow when he rolled the dice on his own career by putting federales, from all applicable alphabet soup agencies, on notice of this impending transaction.

Sorry for the lack of details, but mostly I just want this placeholder post to serve as a marker of what happened, should anyone in the future doubt my involvement in this mess. Also, I want to blog about the excellent response from the federales, to what could have been a technological disaster.

Want more info, check out some units of the U.S. government that work to protect us against wrongful technology transfer.

• The Exon-Florio Provision and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFISU)
• Bureau of Industy and Security's Export Enforcement [Also see their "redflags for suspicious transactions".)

[My worrying over, and working upon this mattter for the past few days explains my recent limited, and very late posting.]

Mmmmmm, fashion week again, this time in Madrid. [<--- Second link slower, but better. Trust me.]

Frank J. Murray hits a sentimentality homerun. Read this.

In a beautiful catch, Spoons notes that Ted Kennedy has a dog named Splash.

MACFU update

Charges to be dropped in Kmart raid case

Acting Houston Police Chief Timothy Oettmeier [Acting because the regular chief is under indictment for perjury] recommended Mayor Lee Brown dismiss trespass charges against 273 people arrested in two controversial parking lot raids because of a lack of legal sufficiency to prove charges.

Oettmeier also recommended the dismissal of curfew charges filed in the August raids, at a westside James Coney Island and Kmart, in the interest of justice.

Oettmeier said the department is continuing to investigate the raid by talking with those involved and said the police department has taken statements from 89 officers and 203 citizens. He said 18 investigators worked 13 to 14 hour days to help him reach his recommendation.

"This is a massive investigation, the largest of its kind in the history of the department," Oettmeier said, explaining his recommendation to Brown was necessary to retain the public's trust and confidence.

The City Attorney's Office said prosecutors will move to dismiss the charges and will contact those who have already pleaded guilty and move to dismiss those charges at the time of a new trial.

So, justice is done, eventually. The real question remains: Why didn't any, not a single one, of the HPD officers stand up to their superiors when given illegal orders?

Well, at least somebody is willing go go on the record with their belief that Iraq is close to having functional nukes.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies reports that

"War, sanctions and inspections have reversed and retarded, but not eliminated, Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and long-range missile capacity, nor removed Baghdad's enduring interest in developing these capabilities," said the institute's director John Chipman.

Left unhindered, it "seems likely that the current Iraqi regime will eventually achieve its objectives," the report said.

The report, compiled by a range of experts, focused particular concern on Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons. It expressed concern that a nuclear weapon, if developed, could fall into the hands of terrorists.

Although Baghdad appears several years away, at least, from making its own nuclear or fissile material for a bomb, it could get the material from a foreign source and construct a weapon quickly, the report said.

"If, somehow, Iraq were able to acquire sufficient nuclear material from foreign sources, it could probably produce nuclear weapons on short order, probably in a matter of months," the report said.

Though "Let's Roll" has been horribly overused since Todd Beamer uttered his famous words last September, I still enjoyed this AP picture.

BFD. DU isn't a threat to anyone. ABC needs to buy a clue.

Bill Simon's campaign has outdone itself with egray, laws for sale to the highest bidder. Certainly this is a better effort than the earlier "Blinky" piece.

What is the deal with DayPop? I haven't seen it work right in days.

My other U.S. Senator, Christopher Dodd (D-Finance) wants to raise the age of majority to obtain a credit card to 21. Though the linked article is old, hearings were held yesterday seeking to advance this assault on economic freedom. The local radio played a sound bite of Dodd talking about his legislation, and I think his speaking manner gave up what this is all really about. He pretty much verbatim rehashed his position paper, the important part being:

Dodd's legislation requires that when issuing credit cards to persons under the age of 21, a credit card issuer must take one of the three following steps:

• obtain the signature of a parent, guardian, or other qualified individual who will take financial responsibility for any credit card debt;
• determine that the youth has a job or other independent means of repaying such a debt;
• or establish that the youth has completed a certified credit counseling course.

This legislation isn't about protecting students from predatory credit grantors. This legislation is about securing the financial interests of the credit card companies. By making it look like it helps kids, this legislation will back up the spending habits of young adults with the financial backing of their established parents.

Also, look for the fees of these "credit counseling courses" to be winding up with some special interest group that likely contributed to Dodd.

The most amusing part of this all is that a smaller percentage of people under 21 get in trouble with their credit cards than do people over 21. I guess they are just marginal enough to be exploited and controlled, whereas the rest of us don't complain when politicians look to shackle young adults with more restrictions on their freedom.

I listened to an interview with Howard Zinn on WFCR [Audio might be at this link in a few days.] this morning, discussing the impace of 9-11 on America, the war on terrorism, the Bush administration, the USA Patriot Act, and all doom-saying the microphone could capture. Though he sounds calm, composed, and well-spoken, IMHO Zinn is out where the buses don't run.

Sort of a Chomsky-lite.

It was a bit disturbing to listen to someone so profoundly detached from reality spew forth, uninterrupted, for several minutes at a time.

He dragged out all the typical peacenik/communist garbage about the war on terror. He spent alot of time discussing how we hurt Afghanistan while blindly lashing out, unfocussed against any real enemies. Strangely, he forgot to mention how much better off the people of Afghanistan are today.

The Houston Press has a good MACFU round up today.

This fun AP story about a basketball playing judge schooling a much younger defendant in and on the court reminded me of this other AP story about the Supreme Court's basketball court that Howard Bashman linked to the other day.

Wow, I guess I've finally seen an issue that Connecticut AG Dick Blumenthal won't get in front of a camera to discuss.

In a statement issued by his office Wednesday, Blumenthal dismissed Dean's criticism. "Regrettably, the truth about the 1998 settlement has been distorted and misrepresented by critics who ignore the tens of thousands of lives saved, billions of dollars produced for taxpayers and, hopefully, many children stopped from beginning to smoke," he said.

Let me see if I follow Dick's argument correctly:

I may have wrongfully steered sixty five million dollars to my buddies, but since I kept the details of the payoff sealed and secret, you can't describe my misdeeds correctly. And, oh yeah, I did it for the children.

Sounds like a smoke-screen to me.

In Greece, use a Game Boy, go to jail

Sadly, the headline is original...

Every now and then FR runs a "Caption This" thread. I'm so proud of my entry last night I want to save it in the blog.

Ex-President Clinton looks away as
Andrew Cuomo realizes that he is, in fact,
standing on his own dick.

In fairness, Loup doesn't look poor, and it's so rich in warmth, community spirit and old-fashioned friendliness that it's just about impossible for a stranger to pay for a meal here. The tiny school, the only one in the county, has student lockers with no locks; and outside, students' cars are not only unlocked, but the keys are left in the ignition.

Let me get this straight: The NY Times is describing as poor a place where high school students have their own cars? Hell, I didn't have a car in high school, so I guess I was destitute.

[Link from The Master]

Google persuasion, can it work? [Link from IRoB]

The following paragraph is completely untrue, and was constructed in a blatant attempt to manipulate hits to this pitiful blog. Let's see if it works. Here goes with the untruth, don't believe it, lying eyes falsehoods that will warp the best search engine in the world.

So, I heard that Jamie Lee Curtis, Catherin Zeta Jones and Rachel Roberts are all going to be the new judges on the next round of American Idol. In other news, the Princeton Review is reporting that Brian Hiedek, recent winner of the California Lottery, will not be appearing on Opie and Anthony. Aaliyah has traveled to the real Madrid, where she plans on meeting with Janice Dickinson to discuss their new project.

Reuter's Bad Headline Watch

[In keeping with my stated policy of not reading
any Reuter's content beyond a headline, the following link
has not been tested.
The headline is presented as found on Yahoo! news.]

McDonald's to Cook with Healthier Oil

Do you think they meant to say "More Healthful Oil"?

How's that old saying go, something like "Winner's never quit and quitters are losers"?

I'm picking nits on this one, but I feel the need to point out that the AWACS that came over to help us after 9/11 were not German aircraft. The planes, which carry Luxembourg civilian registrations, belong to NATO as a whole, and are staffed by crews made up of people from 11 NATO countries (Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Turkey and the United States). The Brits own and operate their own AWACS.

So, anyway, the Germans didn't lend us a hand, NATO did.

Aside: Here's a great picture of a NATO AWACS over Niagra Falls.

The fact that someone might spend money on such a product, for any reason other than color preference, could tell you a lot about that someone.
As we engineers say, wire is wire.
I suppose such a thing would go well with an AOL account...

MACFU accusations flying again. The Chief was already under investigation for perjury based upon his earlier disciplining of Aguirre. Aguirre thinks that the Chief can't be impartial, and Aguirre wants an independent investigation. There are now 9 lawsuits against the city over the MACFU, and some of the 13 suspended officers might sue over their suspensions. My favorite line in the article, "City council must now come up with a plan to settle the suits with money it doesn't have. "

Chastity belts are back, and being marketed in sKorea as a means of avoiding sexual assaults. However, based upon the linked picture, I assume that the lock on the displayed pair is rarely locked...

Continental airlines is looking to charge extra for portly fliers. Not fatties, though, in this case they are going after oversized luggage.

The airlines must be convinced that there are simply too many people left who have not yet given up on flying.

I guess Australia doesn't have an analog to our first amendment. Pranksters convinced over 70,000 people, about 0.37% of all Australians, to list "Jedi" as their religion during Australia's last census.

Despite the efforts of many, Jedi will not become an officially recognized religion in Australia.

What is scarier; A bunch of nerds claiming "Jedi" as their religion, or a government that assumes the power to declare which religions are "officially recognized in Australia"?

"If, for example, people of a particular religious affiliation do not provide the correct information, certain facilities might not be built that otherwise would be." [said the Australian Bureau of Statistics.]

I hope, for the Aussies' sakes, that they don't mean that the state will or will not build certain facililties based upon religious information from the census. I hope against hope that they mean that some churches might mis-estimate their populations based upon faulty data. I hope.

Bloomberg censors Singapore mud-sling.

William Safire, writing about how Bloomberg pulled an article that might have offended the Lee family, starts with a good jibe, and ends with a clever jab.

Let me see if I can write today's column without getting sued. It has to do with my old pal Lee Kuan Yew, who prefers to be called "senior minister" rather than dictator of Singapore, and whose family members have been doing exceedingly well lately.
...
I tried to reach the C.E.O. of Bloomberg, Lex Fenwick, but he dove under his desk. The founder, one Michael Bloomberg, is no longer with the firm and left no forwarding address.

Oh, and the stuff in between is pretty good, too.

Sanity and reason are finally sneaking into Houston's attempts to put right the damage done at the MACFU.

[Bradford] admitted that the parking lot raid arrests may be illegal, if people were never told they were trespassing and given a chance to leave.

Bradford said that if that's true, then he wonders why his officers followed an illegal order to arrest everyone.
...
The city attorney told the council that if an internal affairs investigation reveals that the arrests were illegal, the city will dismiss all of the charges against all of the people and even overturn the convictions for those who pleaded guilty to get out of jail.

HPD Chief passing the MACFU buck in the most unimaginative way possible. Nope, the dog didn't eat his report, he was "out of town" at the time of the arrests.

Oh, well then, that makes it OK.

Click image for story.

Remember those airport screeners that started working after just 15 minutes of training when they were supposed to get 40 hours of training. Turns out the story is false. They actually trained for a whole 90 minutes.

Mineta's minions missed another hand cannon.

Watch for the interesting side story in this case of the high capacity ammunition feeding devices (manufactured after the '94 ban). Each one is worth a few years in federal pen, unless you are a government sanctioned armed-bureaucrat.

This is probably a good thing. Otherwise, HPD would likely arrest the massive crowds of folks hanging out.

Asset forfeiture makes the varsity squad.

In an article concerning how high level FBI and DOJ officials look out for, and protect, one another, the following assertion of good character falls flat.

"Actions such as this impugn not only my integrity but also the judgment of FBI and DOJ [Department of Justice] officials in the decision-making progress," Harp wrote. "My actions have been scrutinized at the highest levels of the FBI and DOJ, and no wrongdoing was found. . . . I firmly stand on my record."

"Airport Hassle" is now an official part of travel lexicon. When even the mainstream media picks up on the fact that flying sucks BECAUSE of security, not because of the risks, it is time to Impeach Norman Mineta.

HPD suspends 12 supervisors over MACFU.

Yates said Monday that the arrests were made to prevent innocent people from being killed by dangerous drag racers.

Again with the "arrest the children to save the children" nanny-state nonsense. Yates, like his client, is an idiot.

I completed a new animation. It's sort of big (166 Kb), so I didn't put it inline with the blog. If interested, check out "Comedian Extra:" to see my latest work.

It animates the process inherent in the post below about Gray Davis.

A judge today denied a request from Houston Police Capt. Mark A. Aguirre to force the City of Houston to remove an investigation of the officer from the control of Police Chief C.O. Bradford.

Aguirre believes that the Chief cannot be impartial, since he is in the chain of command. I hope, for Houston's sake, that the IAD of the HPD has the structure, and capability, to investigate any and all members of the force, right up to the top.

I have reached the limits of my capacity for outrage over the MACFU. I report now merely as a linker, mechanically reproducing URL's to feed those of you might still feel, for now anyway, that there remains a the possibility of a meaningful resolution to the mass corruption and lawlessness of the HPD.

• Aguirre, head thug of the MACFU, relieved of duty, disgraced, unrepentent and without shame, has stepped up to defend his actions at the MACFU.
• A pre-raid memo has been released that detailed the need to arrest racers and their fans in order to crack down. Pity, when they showed up no one was racing.

Life imitating art.

How perfect is it that the world's largest private collection of pornography was in Clinton.

Gray Davis thinks that this ^ ^
should be enough to get a
driver's license in California.

Combine this with the wonders of Motor Voter, and voila -- Instantly minted new Democrat voters!

After admonishing Christine Phillips about the cigarettes in her purse during an aiport "security" search, one of big brother's minions apparently lifted her credit cards and cash. Her attempts to report the theft lead her on a wild goose chase, showing that perhaps the only person possible worse than Mineta was in charge -- No One.

On the off chance that you might be enjoying your Monday, and you really want to wreck your day, go read this NY Times article about AIDS in rural China.

At the time, blood from several farmers was pooled and centrifuged to skim off the plasma, which the blood stations sold to companies to make medicines. The remaining red cells were pooled and transfused back into the sellers, providing a gruesomely efficient method for transmitting blood-borne diseases, including hepatitis and AIDS.

MACFU Captain's attorney claims that Aguirre is being made a scapegoat for all the illegal arrests. I think he needs to hit his dictionary again to find the word he is looking for. The Cap'n can only be a scapegoat if he is to blame for others wrong doings.

Yates said the raid in the parking lot of the 24-hour Kmart Super Center in the 8400 block of Westheimer was part of an ongoing effort. He said seven fatalities in recent months have been attributed to drag racing and related hooliganism.

So, I infer, their reasoning was something like "We must arrest the children to save the children."

Two more Chronicle articles about the MACFU. Most of the words offer nothing new, but here's a tidbit out of the first article:

Aguirre is a member of the HPOU, so the union has a duty to obtain representation for him. But the union chose to hire an attorney not on staff to represent him because a number of other union members were involved in his sting last weekend, Marticiuc said.

That decision also was made to avoid a conflict of interest: "There's a darn good possibility that other officers' perspectives may be different from his -- that's another reason he was farmed out," Marticiuc said.

Wow, even his own union sees that he put the officers in his command in a bad spot. A bad spot that none of them complained about in situ, but a bad spot nonetheless.

The second article mostly just rehashes old stuff, but offers this "new" take on the raids:

What got Aguirre into trouble, the officers say, is that he used his harsh tactics last weekend on young people with affluent families instead of the poor, homeless, disenfranchised and largely voiceless people targeted on his home turf.

Kevin Whited links to a KHOU article on what higher ups at HPD knew about the MACFU, and when they knew it.

[...] 11 news has learned the chief, himself, was apparently in on the planning for Operation E-racer.

Houston Police Chief Clarence Bradford made it clear this week that the raid on Westheimer would be thoroughly investigated.
...
Monday night Chief Bradford called for an investigation of the controversial crackdown. He wanted to know who was in charge? What instructions were given to officers? And why were arrests made instead of issuing citations?

Who was in charge? It turned out to be HPD Captain Mark Aguirre. He told 11 news that he was surprised the chief had so many questions about the raid. "It was my understanding that Chief Bradford was in the loop," said Aguirre. "I assume that. Nothing of this magnitude would escape his attention."

Friday night 11 News obtained an interoffice correspondence, which appears to back Captain Aguirre's beliefs. The memo is the plan for last weekend's raid. It was sent to Chief Bradford on May 13, months ago.

In the correspondence Captain Aguirre explains to the chief the proposed solution for the problems in that area and why issuing tickets would not work.

Operation E-Racer?

Dude, that is so last week. "E" names went out when the dot-com bubble burst. What next, mullet-sporting officers in bell-bottoms and platform shoes busting communists selling illegal comic books?

[Link found at Off the Kuff]

MACFU field-commander Mark Aguirre -- Suspended, with pay.

Aguirre is not allowed to comment since he has been ordered by HPD not to talk about the matter, but his attorney said Saturday's disciplinary action was unexpected.

"We're very surprised about that," Yates said. "To our knowledge, he's the only person (connected to the raid) who's been relieved."

Surprised?

No surprise here. That is, no surprise that Aguirre has a dumbass attorney.

Unexpected?

If by that he means that they didn't get the courtesy phone call before the Captain got picked up, I guess I believe him. If the mouthpiece actually means that a suspension pending the results of the investigation was unexpected, then I suppose Aguirre's attorney is a double dumbass.

"No comment." Learn it, love it, live it.