I am tired and have lots to get done, so you are on your own. Sure would be nice if I had a co-blogger.
Not Good For Paul
For all of you Paul fans out there, this is not good news:
If Texas congressman Ron Paul is elected president in 2008, he may be the first leader of the free world put into power with the help of a global network of hacked PCs spewing spam, according to computer-security researchers who’ve analyzed a recent flurry of e-mail supporting the long-shot Republican candidate.
“This is clearly a criminal act in support of a campaign, which has been committed with or without their knowledge,” says Gary Warner, the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s director of research in computer forensics. “The question is, will we see more and more of this, or will this bring shame to the campaigns and will they make clear that this is not a form of acceptable behavior by their supporters?” Warner pointed to provisions of the federal Can-Spam Act.
Ron Paul spokesman Jesse Benton says the campaign has no knowledge of the scam. Warner himself says that he has no reason to believe that the Paul campaign had anything to do with these messages.
Meta
Rumors that an editor was rumored to have heard rumors about a candidate appear to be just that- rumors.
Weird Spam
Speaking of spam, is anyone else getting really weird trackbacks to what looks to be websites, but are actually aggregators? It makes clearing the spam filter a lot more difficult.
Screw It. Let’s Defend Kucinich, Too
He said he saw an unidentified flying object. That means there was something flying up in the air he could not identify. It does not mean he thinks he saw an alien.
Jeebus. The way you all are talking, you act like he is saying something really crazy, like the world was created six thousand years ago and it was created by some all-knowing, all-seeing, omnipotent diety that no one can prove exists but we are all supposed to worship or else.
And someone tell Tim that the real fun part of the Weblog Awards will be the inevitable freak-out and the chaos we can create during the voting. I really don’t care who is “conservative” or who isn’t. They can have the title. I am just hoping we can distract them with these weblog awards long enough to finish the brainwashing scheme we have going with Nickelodeon.
Consider this an open thread.
*** Update ***
I am not sure what Jules Crittenden thinks he is proving here. I’m still not a lefty. I’m just not a Republican anymore. Deal with it.
And since he will publish it anyway, I e-mailed him:
Feel free to keep your post about me up, it just makes you look silly that you can not understand the difference between not being a lefty and not being a republican. In fact, I encourage you to keep saying and posting dumb things.
But please take down my email address. That is not the one featured on my website, I don’t want it out there for spam bots to pick it up. Really- try to have some common sense and display some etiquette.
Thanks,
John
I eagerly await his response. And notice, it took him one day to start publishing my work information, something I have only once discussed and regretted (the original place it appeared no longer exists). I would appreciate it if he took that down, but he probably won’t, even though my politics and my work never intersect. Search and destroy. Welcome to the GOP of 2007.
*** Update ***
Jules has removed the relevant information, and I appreciate that. Thank you, Jules.
*** Update #3 ***
The Instapundit:
So let me repeat what I said before: “But note that no longer being a member of the Libertarian Party is hardly the same thing as not being a libertarian. If it were, there would be precious few libertarians left.” Anyone who can’t understand the difference between libertarian ideas and the Libertarian Party probably isn’t smart enough to be blogging, and certainly shouldn’t have his page topped with the words “Of no party or clique.”
I only point this out because twelve hours earlier, the Instapundit was linking to the Crittenden post discussed above in which Jules pretended to not understand the difference between not being a lefty and joining the Democratic party.
Weblog Awards Update Update
Looks like it’s me who has a godawful sense of timing. Assuming that we don’t get summarily DQ’d, which I suppose could happen at any minute, we can count on the complaining from the rest of the rightwing blogosphere to start any minute now. As far as I’m concerned that’s a good thing for any number of reasons beyond bending Michelle Malkin even more out of shape than usual. It also sets the terms for a discussion about conservatism that strikes me as long overdue. As far as I’m concerned John wholeheartedly deserves to make that list, but then by any traditional definition of conservatism the list of blogs that deserve the title just isn’t that long. Sullivan, the Volokh community, Daniel Larison, The Commissar and Greg Djerejian stood up against expanding unsupervised government power even when it served their own party. Most of the rest kept their cars hitched to the Bush Movement long after it unambiguously jumped tracks from conservatism to naked authoritarianism.
This post won’t resolve that debate, if that’s even possible*, but the value of having it strikes me as justification enough. Although John and I both have a pragmatist’s short patience for ideological navelgazing few things strike me as more important than highlighting the profound unreality of political discourse today. See for example concise little gem by Jim Henley. It seems clear that the conservatives of 2000 would be shocked and appalled by the perfectly quotidian, mainstream positions of “conservatives” today. What changed? Some people didn’t. John stayed the same, Sullivan didn’t go anywhere, and I think that a fair case can be made that the holdouts deserve the title more than the larger number who ran off to a darker place and took the term with them.
(*) Note added in update – there is no reason to think we will succeed where Sullivan and his book have failed.
Somewhere, Paris Hilton Is Kicking Herself
And saying “Why the hell didn’t I think of that”:
An IDF soldier fled an interrogation room by exposing her breasts to a stunned officer.
The soldier was interrogated at the Biranit army base on the northern border after she refused to undergo a drugs test. A short while after her questioning began the soldier was seen walking out of the interrogation room and heading toward the main gate.
An officer at the base told her she was under arrest and demanded that she return to the interrogation room, at which point the soldier took her shirt off and told the officer: “Let’s see if you can arrest me.”
The soldier took advantage of the officer’s momentary lack of concentration and quickly left the base. She was caught a short while later.
Consider this your nightly open (and wide) thread.
*** Update ***
I can not stop watching this video. I bet I have watched it 40 times and laughed just as hard each time. Does anyone know how I can make it my screen saver?
Somewhere, Paris Hilton Is Kicking HerselfPost + Comments (64)