Knowledge is Power

not a fundraiser fundraiser

July 24, 2014 –

…Democratic donors who were invited to the San Francisco event, at the Four Seasons Hotel on Market Street, said they had initially been asked to donate as much as $25,000 to sit down with Obama. One who balked at the price said organizers had offered a cut-rate deal of as little as $5,000…

…Organizers at the House Majority PAC said the event wasn’t really a fundraiser.

“There were no tickets or cost of admission,” the group said. “The president is appearing at the event only as a featured speaker and special guest, and is not asking for funds or donations.”…

Finish your assignment! »

By SondraK, bossy nagger
Say it don't spray it (11)

state-worship cult leader whines about heretics

July 24, 2014 –

Blaspheeemers!

Mr. Obama added that “the Republican Party has been taken over by people who just don’t believe in government.” [more]

What’s next? Convert, pay the jizya, or die?
Cripes! These guys are worse than the ISIS/ISIL, since we’re already payin’ the friggin’ tax!

(What? Well, yeah, okay, at least the mandatory female genital mutilation will be covered by Obamacare.)

By DougM (paleface™)
Say it don't spray it (5)

“It’s for Teh Chiiiildren”

July 24, 2014 –

Robots “Heeeelping” Kidz!!

This oughta turn out just swell.

The government has spent $2.15 million so far for the five-year project, which is being led by Yale University. The project, “Robots Helping Kids,” will ultimately “deploy” robots into homes and schools to teach English as a second language, and encourage kids to exercise. … “learn to read, appreciate physical fitness, overcome cognitive disabilities, and perform physical exercises,”

The robots wil suppoooort Teh Chiiiildren.

“Just like a good personal trainer, we want the robots to be able to guide the child toward a behavior that we desire,”

They’re showing little rubber chick and dinosaur looking “robots” — not human-shaped things. Like an advanced Teddy Ruxpin. Cute… Non-threatening… Not objectionable…

“The need for this technology is driven by critical societal problems that require sustained, personalized support that supplements the efforts of educators, parents, and clinicians,” the [National Science Foundation] grant said.

And what are these critical societal problems? They declined to state.

…we want them to learn new social or cognitive skills through their interactions with these robots…

For Teh Chiiiildren — cuz ~~parents~~ other humans *spit* are too stuupid/lazy/redneck/un-PC to do the job prooooperly.

…robots that could be personal companions to children for up to a year. Scassellati said he wants to “build a healthy relationship of trust and respect between the child and the robot.”

Then, when relationships with actual, yanno, meat-people turn out to be too confusing and difficult — cuz, after all, people are weird, notional and inconsistent — they will be an open market for other “robots” to fullfil their social needs… and other things.

What could possibly go worng?
why do I increasingly feel like I’m in a Dr Who episode?

Yanno who really needs some “robots”?

These guyz:

Jihadists in Iraq have ordered that all women between the ages of 11 and 46 undergo female genital mutilation…

“Just like a good personal trainer, we want the robots to be able to guide the child toward a behavior that we desire,”

And by “robots,” I mean drones.

By Claire: rebellious pink pig with car keys - and a *cause*
Say it don't spray it (12)

IRS: not up to scratch

July 24, 2014 –

Stuff that makes one’s head crash:

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen on Wednesday downplayed the idea that Lois Lerner’s hard drive may have been purposefully scratched in order to hide information from congressional investigators, and said he’s not concerned that this may have happened.
…
[R]ep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) pressed the issue Wednesday by implying that Lerner’s hard drive may have been purposefully scratched in order to help ensure House investigators could not find her emails. “Let me tell you why it concerns me,” Meadows said as he held up a laptop computer. “This is an HP laptop. To get to the hard drive, it is no easy task. You’ve got multiple screws that have to be taken to get to it. Then once you get to that, you actually have a hard drive inside that has seven more screws that have to be taken off to get to the hard drive in order for it to be scratched.

“Would that concern you if it were indeed scratched, that there may be some other motive?” Meadows asked.
…
“It concerns me, and I’m going to ask my staff to go and see how long it would actually take to get to that hard drive,” Meadows said.
“I assume there’s a lot of ways hard drives could scratch,” Koskinen offered.
“I assume that too,” Meadows deadpanned.

Y’mean like a head crash when you “drop” or “bump” a drive while the read/write head is skating a mere 0.01-gnat’s-ass above the disk’s surface?

[Note: modern laptops have a g-sensor to prevent this sort of thing, but I don't know the details here.]

[T]he committee has heard testimony from another IRS official who said that several other computers have suffered problems among officials being probed by the House. The official didn’t give a specific number, but said “less than 20” computers may have had problems. … [T]hat means that close to 25 percent of the 82 IRS officials that Congress is trying to investigate may have had computer problems. [T]hat failure rate is much higher than the 2 to 5 percent failure rate that industry experts would expect.

The probability of this being a random failure rate is left to the student.
[Hint: it's really low … I mean, really, really low.]

Regardless of how Lerner’s hard drive was damaged, the Ways & Means Committee said Tuesday that they were told Lerner’s emails may have been recoverable. [IT] workers at the IRS originally recommended that an effort be made to recover those emails. That goes against a statement the IRS made last week in court, which said the data was unrecoverable.

“It is unbelievable that we cannot get a simple, straight answer from the IRS about this hard drive …. The committee was told no data was recoverable and the physical drive was recycled and potentially shredded. To now learn that the hard drive was only scratched, yet the IRS refused to utilize outside experts to recover the data, raises more questions about potential criminal wrong doing at the IRS.”
…
The committee said a complicating factor is that there is evidence that Lerner’s hard drive was at one point considered “recovered.” [story]

A squirrel, you say? (BTF): »

Even squirrels can tell that this one stinks

By DougM (paleface™)
Say it don't spray it (16)

We must not allowww a particle-accelerator gap*

July 24, 2014 –

Gee, I wish we had one’a them massive particle accelerator machines.*

Scientists at the Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing, working with international collaborators, announced a plan to build a massive particle accelerator by 2028 — a 52-kilometer underground ring that would smash electrons and positrons together.

The Chinese project could offer new means of probing questions that are unavailable to the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research — known as CERN — an oval-shaped 26km underground tunnel where the famous Higgs boson was confirmed. By colliding these fundamental particles with the larger ring, it would allow the Higgs boson particle to be studied with greater precision than at Geneva’s much smaller CERN collider.
…
[T]he US planned a building something like this in 1993 – the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) or Desertron, as it was nicknamed, in Texas. Its planned ring circumference was 87.1 kilometres (54.1 mi) with an energy of 20 TeV per proton or 40 TeV collision energy. This would have made it eight times more powerful than the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, but Congress eventually canceled the project after it contested its utility and $2 billion had already been spent. [more, with a cool video of how CERN works, so you can build one at home]

Hmm, I wonder where the Chicoms got the plans?

(What? Nah, not really. I wish ‘em luck. I mean, it’s not like there would be any risk of technological drift for nefarious purposes or exploitation/entrapment/infiltration of scientists or high-tech companies. Heck, they might actually be forced to build it and spend gazillions in order to maintain the cover story.)
_______
* Cultural ref

By DougM (paleface™)
Say it don't spray it (5)

die duh

July 23, 2014 –

…The longer individuals were exposed to socialism, the more likely they were to cheat…

…the political regime of socialism has a lasting impact on citizens’ basic morality….

…In another aspect of the study, the researchers note that “we did not observe an overall difference between East and West Germans in pro-social behavior,” such as donating to hospitals, the capitalist-influenced demographic does, in fact, donate marginally more…

By SondraK, bossy nagger
Say it don't spray it (3)

That was no jihadi …

July 23, 2014 –

… that was my wife.

BEIRUT: Known for kidnapping, public stonings, lashings and executions, the Iraq and Al Sham (ISIS) is now expanding into tourism, taking jihadists on honeymoon and civilians to visit other parts of its “caliphate”. Running twice-weekly tours from Syria’s Raqa to Iraq’s Anbar, ISIS’s buses fly the group’s black flag and play jihadist songs throughout the journey.

One of the first clients was Chechen jihadist Abu Abdel Rahman al-Shishani, aged 26, who took his new Syrian wife on honeymoon, according to activist Hadi Salameh. “Just after they got married, he took her to Anbar. These jihadists are very romantic,” Salameh joked.

Wait for it …

But the two weren’t able to sit together, because “women sit in the back, and men at the front.

*pppppp*snick*
No, no, it gets better.

“The price varies, depending on how far you go on the bus,” Salameh said.

*bwahahahahahahahaha!*
Oh, maaan [wipes tear] that Salameh, he’s a new Henny Youngman, I tell ya.

(What? Nah, nuthin’ to do with Claire’s bus post, below.)
________
Cultural ref

By DougM (paleface™)
Say it don't spray it (6)

there’s a word for this

July 23, 2014 –

Mr. Obama told supporters [at a Democratic fundraiser] that he doesn’t watch the news because, “Whatever they’re reporting about, usually I know.”…

Finish your assignment! »

By SondraK, bossy nagger
Say it don't spray it (12)

I’ll be out front, waitin’ for The Bus

July 23, 2014 –

join me?

This is the kind of email I get…

To help save the economy, the Government will announce next month that the Immigration Department will start deporting seniors (instead of illegals) in order to lower Social Security and Medicare costs. Older people are easier to catch and will not remember how to get back home. I started to cry when I thought of you. Then it dawned on me…oh, shoot…I’ll see you on the bus.

Finish your assignment! »

By Claire: rebellious pink pig with car keys - and a *cause*
Say it don't spray it (10)

ohhh, myyy

July 23, 2014 –

What a delicious threefer.

As President Obama arrives in Los Angeles for his $32,000 per plate fundraiser at the home of Shonda Rhimes this week, a local street artist is pointing out the irony of the producer of the hit TV show Scandal, a show about a Washington public relations firm that specializes in managing political scandals, hosting the producer of such actual scandals as the cover-up surrounding the Benghazi attack, the lost hard-drives of IRS officials targeting conservatives, and the Fast and Furious gun running scheme.

Posters went up Monday night all over Hollywood around Rhimes’s Hancock Park home and the Sunset Gower Studios where Scandal is filmed. The posters feature a modified version of the [1] Scandal logo, which now reads “Scandals” and a quote from Rhimes’s infamous commencement speech at Dartmouth where she urged graduates, [2] “Don’t be an asshole.” The artist added a hashtag to the epithet in a seeming nod to another part of Rhimes’s speech in which the producer called out online social movements like Michelle Obama’s [3] #SaveOurGirls as being faux-activism. “A hashtag is not a movement,” Rhimes declared. [more]

*heh*
______
Cultural ref

By DougM (paleface™)
Say it don't spray it (5)

un cadeau

July 23, 2014 –

Colin Furze—maker of the coolest Wolverine claws—wants to build a giant butt and fart at France from Dover. That’s why he has built the biggest valveless pulse jet machine ever—these engines powered the Nazi V-1 bombs that terrified London during WW2 making an infernal noise that sounds like a furious fart from hell.

Now that the engine is done he’s actually going to build a gigantic butt, install the machine in its anus, put the whole thingamajig on the cliffs of Dover, point it at France, and fart on July 24…

By SondraK, bossy nagger
Say it don't spray it (8)

sorry this is late …

July 23, 2014 –

… but I was haningin’ out in the ol’ iHammock, yesterday, and dozed off.

~ KisP ref ~

July 22 [was] National Hammock Day. In terms of silly holidays that were likely made up by retailers, this is one I really can get behind. There is nothing like swaying on a hammock on a lazy day. [more critical hammock info]

Now, if you’ll excuse me,
I feel the need, the need for … *zzzz*

~ actual iHammock ~More

Missy

By DougM (paleface™)
Say it don't spray it (16)

tonight’s Lympians are f*cking dealing with it big time

July 22, 2014 –

At least 6,000 people who bought health insurance through Washington’s new exchange are having trouble using that coverage because of computer glitches with the new program.

Officials at the exchange are hoping to have all the problems fixed by Aug. 1.

Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler told The Associated Press this week that’s about all the time he’s going to give the exchange to fix the problem. Then he’ll starts advising people to buy their health insurance outside the exchange…

previously…

State insurance officials say fewer than 9 percent of Washington residents still don’t have health insurance.

That’s a significant improvement from numbers before the Affordable Care Act went into effect.

The state Office of the Insurance Commissioner counted 970,000 uninsured Washington residents last year. That number is now 600,000 or about 8.65 percent of the state population [ ARE BREAKING THE LAW DEAL WITH IT! ].

…

Finish your assignment! »

By SondraK, bossy nagger
Say it don't spray it (5)

Whatinhell is that word….

July 22, 2014 –

bleg

You know the one: wherein if someone tells you about green VW bugs, which you never see, but suddenly you notice them everywhere.

Yes. There’s a word for it. Whatinhell is it?!?

By Claire: rebellious pink pig with car keys - and a *cause*
Say it don't spray it (26)

the new Holocaust

July 22, 2014 –

Back to the barbaric future
Coming soon to a continent near you …

For the first time in 1,600 years, Mass is not being said in Mosul: an ancient culture has been wiped out in a matter of weeks. It’s a war crime that, strangely, no one seems to want to talk about.

Mosul is the second-largest city in Iraq and the place where many Christians believe Jonah was buried. Since the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) rode into town, their faith has been forced underground. Bells have been silenced, the hijab enforced with bullets. Tens of thousands fled after being offered an unattractive choice: convert, pay a religious tax, or be put to the sword. The levy was unaffordable. According to one local news agency, Isis troops entered the house of a poor Christian and, when they didn’t get what they wanted, the soldiers raped the mother and daughter in front of their husband and father. He committed suicide out of grief.

Having driven away the worshippers, the Isis fanatics are now trying to extinguish the physical legacy they left behind. A centuries-old church has been burned to the ground; Jonah’s tomb has been desecrated. Isis wants to create the Islamic equivalent of Year Zero, a brave new world with no evidence of Christianity, women’s rights, democracy or even that most subversive of instincts, human pity. [RTWT]

Another totalitarian death cult plague infects humanity.
It’s like the 20thC never happened.

By DougM (paleface™)
Say it don't spray it (12)

schtick

July 21, 2014 –

KisPers discuss irony.

(What? No, I don’t think … well, okay, I mayyy have posted this before, not sure. Lemme know if I did.)
______
image source
archives

By DougM (paleface™)
Say it don't spray it (13)

an analist’s analysis

July 21, 2014 –

Counter-fatwa fatwa
These guys need both analysis and therapy.*

[A]ccording to prominent Egyptian cleric Mazhar Shahin, the Muslim Brotherhood has issued a fatwa permitting “anal jihad,” a.k.a. man-on-man anal sex, between jihadis fighting far away from their wives. “They practice homosexuality with one another, thinking, wrongly, that this constitutes jihad for the sake of Allah,” Shahin said …. According to him, the practice is conceptually similar to “sex jihad,” in which women are either forcibly taken or willingly offer to have sex with jihadis. But as homosexuality is punishable by death according to sharia law, the idea of anal jihad is, in Shahin’s words, “despicable, foolish, and asinine.”

Wait, did he really just say “asinine”?**

“The [Muslim Brotherhood] is a bunch of hopeless and desperate peddlers who have reached a state of foolishness, stupidity, filth, and so on – to the highest imaginable degree. This catastrophe – this ‘anal jihad’ – is proof of this.” [story]

Sooo, lemme get this straight …
*badum*dump*

Evidently oral is still cool, though.
But then again, it’d have to be for those cossuquers.

(What? Yeah, pretty crude and juvenile, even for me; but, hey, the jihadis staaarted iiit.)
__________
* Cultural ref
** Cultural ref

By DougM (paleface™)
Say it don't spray it (13)

stock weapons

July 21, 2014 –

( * )

previously…

Some 20 rockets were found Wednesday in a school in Gaza operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the organization confirmed Thursday…

By SondraK, bossy nagger
Say it don't spray it (12)

my pet fundraiser

July 21, 2014 –

After receiving a scolding from the press two weeks ago when President Barack Obama refused to cancel a series of appearances at partisan fundraisers amid a domestic crisis, the president is sett his week to repeat that performance amid a foreign crisis.

“Sticking to His Travel Plans, at Risk of Looking Bad,” the New York Times’ headline advised – er — reported on Monday.

The Times report added that, as Israel began a ground invasion of Gaza and just hours after pro-Russian rebels killed nearly 300 civilians in the skies over Ukraine, the notion that Obama should reconsider his fundraising schedule did not even come up on Thursday.

“It’s rarely a good idea to return to the White House just for show when the situation can be handled responsibly from the road,” White House Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri said.

Wait… Wasn’t the White House insisting two weeks ago that going to the border would be “just for show?” What a nimble policy this White House has crafted.

“Abrupt changes to his schedule can have the unintended consequence of unduly alarming the American people or creating a false sense of crisis,” Palmieri continued…

By SondraK, bossy nagger
Say it don't spray it (20)

No Redskins™! Pigskins™!

July 21, 2014 –

Muslim outrage in 3.. 2.. 1..

[T]he United States Trademark and Patent Office “granted registration of the [Hog Call] sensory mark to the Board of Trustees of the University of Arkansas.” Not the words, mind you; the sound.

The sounds contained within the chant — Woooooooo, Pig! Sooie! Woooooooo, Pig! Sooie! Woooooooo, Pig! Sooie! Razorbacks! — are now a registered trademark. [story]

(What? Nah, just in it for the lame Trademark Office™ joke meme; immortalized in my signature, below.
Okay, yeah, and for the Islamo~~phobia~~schadenfreude.)
___________
Cultural ref (no vid): SNL’s Olympia Cafe skits (Belushi & Aykroyd) “No Coke! Pepsi!”