Dvorak News Blog

Dems Won’t Be Taking Responsibility For Losing Seats — It’s The Other Guys’ Fault

By Uncle Dave Monday October 25, 2010

If the Republicans regain control, I wonder if they’ll take the blame for not being able to fix a non-fixable set of problems (or don’t really want to fix since it will hurt their friends) in two years. Yeah, right…

With Election Day still a week away, Democrats are previewing what promises to be a main line of argument if Republicans make strong gains in Congress: Conservatives bought their way to power with a flood of spending by outside groups.

These post-mortems, made before the patient is actually dead, have slipped into public statements from top Democrats in recent days. And the argument is being made even more strongly in not-for-attribution comments to reporters from party operatives: A tough-but-manageable political climate turned much more lethal with the infusion of tens of millions of dollars from anonymous donors funding ads for right-leaning independent groups.

The denunciations of outside money by President Barack Obama and others began as a tool to rally the Democratic base before the Nov. 2 election. But in recent days it has morphed gradually into something else: A main talking point to explain—and fend off the recriminations over—what many Washington Democrats assume will be a brutal election night.

Cheerleader Won’t Cheer For Her Rapist? She’s Off The Squad!

By Uncle Dave Monday October 25, 2010

31 Comments

Rah, rah, sis boom bah: Silsbee High School in Texas wants their cheerleaders smiling, energetic, and willing to cheer for their rapists by name. Go team!

H.S., a Silsbee student, reported being raped in 2008 by Rakheem Bolton, a fellow student and athletic star, with the help of two of his friends. In the end, Bolton recently ended up getting off without serving any jail time by pleading guilty to a lesser assault charge.
[…]
Bolton was set to be on the school’s varsity basketball team, and they couldn’t risk losing by barring him from playing for a silly thing like a rape charge. That could impact their chances at winning. Who cares about the traumatic impact it would have an a cheerleader who needed to vocally support a team including her rapist?

But H.S. fulfilled her role as a cheerleader, participating in all the cheers for the team as a group. She simply refused to shout the first name of the man who assaulted her when he stood up alone to make free throws.
[…]
Not only that, Caroline Heldman reports on Ms. Magazine’s blog that school officials pushed H.S. “to keep a low profile, such as avoiding the school cafeteria and not taking part in homecoming activities.” As though she should somehow be ashamed for having been raped and brought charges against her attacker.

And if that isn’t bizarre enough:

H.S. sued her school district for removing her from the cheerleading squad. In an absurd court ruling, the 5th U.S. Circuit of Appeals decided to uphold the school’s decision, claiming that a cheerleader was but a “mouthpiece” for a school to use to “disseminate speech — namely, support for its athletic teams.” […] And the idea that just being silent during Bolton’s free throws, a barely noticeable act, was “substantial interference with the work of the school” — um, we’re talking extracurricular sports, not classroom disruption — makes little sense.

No Agenda Show
Code for Biodiversity!

By John C Dvorak Sunday October 24, 2010

6 Comments

This Episode’s Executive Producers: Ron Lange, Nolan Waugh, David Wright

Art By: Nick the Rat

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And The Winner of the Siesta Championship Is…

By Uncle Dave Sunday October 24, 2010

6 Comments

Now here’s a sport I could excel at! I wonder if the winner will compete in the Couch Potato Olympics?

A 62-year-old Ecuadorean has snored long enough to win Spain’s first siesta championship.

Unemployed security worker Pedro Soria Lopez took the top prize of 1000 euros ($1430) after sleeping for 17 minutes amid the uproar of a teeming Madrid shopping centre.

Organisers said he not only slept soundly but his snoring registered 70 decibels – roughly the equivalent of the noise of someone talking – and earned him extra points.

The somewhat tongue-in-cheek, nine-day contest ended overnight. It was aimed at promoting a revival of this timeless custom so identified with Spain but which organisers say is in danger of fading away because of the pressures of modern times.

Here’s more details on the championship.

NASA’s Evidence of Climate Change

By Uncle Dave Sunday October 24, 2010

84 Comments

Click pic to embiggen

The Earth’s climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 7,000 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era — and of human civilization. Most of these changes are attributed to very small changes in the Earth’s orbit changing the amount of solar energy the Earth receives.

The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is very likely human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years.

Earth-orbiting satellites and other technological advances have enabled scientists to see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate on a global scale. Studying these climate data collected over many years reveal the signals of a changing climate.

Certain facts about Earths climate are not in dispute:

* The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases was demonstrated in the mid-19th century. Their ability to affect the transfer of infrared energy through the atmosphere is the scientific basis of many JPL-designed instruments, such as AIRS. Increased levels of greenhouse gases must cause the Earth to warm in response.

* Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that the Earth’s climate responds to changes in solar output, in the Earth’s orbit, and in greenhouse gas levels. They also show that in the past, large changes in climate have happened very quickly, geologically-speaking: in tens of years, not in millions or even thousands.

Wikileaks Press Conference Regarding New Revelations on Iraqi War

By John C Dvorak Saturday October 23, 2010

56 Comments

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

A lot of interesting memes and accusations within this press conference. Daniel Ellsberg shows up in part one with some chilling information about Obama.

Bullcrap about Low Salt Turns Out to be Bullcrap

By John C Dvorak Saturday October 23, 2010

15 Comments

The research, led by the eminent Harvard researcher Walter Willett, re-analysed all studies between 1957 and 2003 that measured sodium levels in urine – a more accurate method than asking people what foods they ate.

Professor Willett said the finding that salt intake had not changed, while the prevalence of high blood pressure had risen, suggested the ”epidemic of obesity may be a more plausible determinant” of high blood pressure rates than salt.

His study, published yesterday in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, joins an international survey released last year with similar findings.

The problem here is this lessens the chance of being able to carp when you spot someone dumping a ton of salt on everything they eat.

Autograph special – Obama signing an iPad

By Eideard Saturday October 23, 2010

28 Comments

What Are You Carving A Pumpkin Into This Year?

By Uncle Dave Saturday October 23, 2010

13 Comments

Click pics to read how these were made

General: President Clinton “Lost” Nuclear Codes for Months

By McCullough Friday October 22, 2010

47 Comments

“Hmmm, I Wonder if I left those codes at Mickey D’s”

TOWARDS the end of the Clinton administration the US would have been unable to launch an instant nuclear strike because the President had lost the secret codes.

The extraordinary lapse is described in a book by General Hugh Shelton, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirming an earlier account that was dismissed at the time as too outlandish to be credible. Without the codes it would have been impossible to begin the launch sequence for a retaliatory or pre-emptive nuclear strike, an officer formerly in charge of the President’s “nuclear football” told The Times yesterday. “The codes were actually missing for months. This is a big deal – a gargantuan deal,” General Shelton writes in Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior.

In what the general describes as a comedy of errors, a Pentagon aide assigned to visit the White House to check on the code card every month was twice rebuffed with the explanation that the President was not to be disturbed. When the time came to replace one set of codes with another, “we learnt that the aide had no idea where the old ones were because they had been missing for months”, the general writes.

According to General Shelton’s account, the episode took place during 2000. However, Robert “Buzz” Patterson, a retired air force colonel who was assigned to carry the “nuclear football” for Mr Clinton until late 1998 and who first reported the loss of the codes, said that he discovered they were missing on January 21, 1998. “When I asked President Clinton at the time when he recalled last seeing the codes, he said he didn’t know,” Colonel Patterson said.

“I said, ‘Days?’ He said, ‘I don’t know’. Weeks? ‘Possibly’. Months? ‘Possibly’.”

Mr Clinton normally kept the codes, printed on a laminated piece of card, “rubber-banded to his credit cards” in a trouser pocket, Colonel Patterson said.

Bush Says NOT Privatizing Social Security was his Biggest Failure

By Marc Perkel Friday October 22, 2010

71 Comments

I think the above video more closely represents his biggest failure. Here’s the link to the article.

Former President George W. Bush signaled on Thursday that he sees not privatizing Social Security as his greatest failure from the eight years he served in the White House, the Chicago Tribune reports.

The unpopular Republican leader made the suggestion while speaking at a trade conference in the Windy City, where he discussed his legacy and also offered a glimpse into what readers can expect from his forthcoming memoir, Decision Points.

“I would like to be remembered as a guy who had a set of priorities, and was willing to live by those priorities,” explained Bush. “In terms of accomplishments, my biggest accomplishment is that I kept the country safe amidst a real danger.”

Bush poked fun at himself in addressing how his thoughts will be delivered in his memoir.

Medical Marijuana Ingredient in Potent Pop

By McCullough Friday October 22, 2010

19 Comments

Introduce your patients to an elevated MMJ experience
Formulated from a carefully cultivated blend of the finest Sativa-dominant buds,
Dixie Elixirs delivers the potency that patients want in a soothing, sparkling beverage.

* Colorado-grown to complement the Rocky Mountain lifestyle
* Easy to enjoy with discretion
* Consistently delicious, reliably potent
* Relieves a wide range of symptoms
* Use alone or to increase and enhance other MMJ medication
* Carbonation delivers relief faster
* 12-ounce recyclable bottles in seven refreshing flavors: lemonade, sweet tea, pink lemonade, strawberry, orange, grape and root beer
* Also available in extra-strength 1-ounce watermelon and spearmint “dew drop” bottles

And you thought California was progressive. I’ll have the Root Beer please.

Croc Escapes on Flight, Panic Ensues, 19 Die, Croc Survives!

By McCullough Friday October 22, 2010

14 Comments

A STOWAWAY crocodile on a flight escaped from its carrier bag and sparked an onboard stampede that caused the flight to crash, killing 19 passengers and crew. The croc had been hidden in a passenger’s sports bag – allegedly with plans to sell it – but it tore loose and ran amok, sparking panic.

A stampede of terrified passengers caused the small aircraft to lose balance and tip over in mid-air during an internal flight in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The unbalanced load caused the aircraft, on a routine flight from the capital, Kinshasa, to the regional airport at Bandundu, to go into a spin and crash into a house. A lone survivor from the Let 410 plane told the astonishing tale to investigators.

Ironically the crocodile also survived the crash but was later killed with a machete by rescuers sifting through the wreckage. British pilot Chris Wilson, 39, from Shurdington, near Cheltenham, Glocs was acting as the plane’s first officer alongside Belgian pilot Danny Philemotte, 62, who was owner of the plane’s operator Filair.

The plane smashed into an empty house just a few hundred metres from its destination.

“According to the inquiry report and the testimony of the only survivor, the crash happened because of a panic sparked by the escape of a crocodile hidden in a sports bag,” news organisation Jeune Afrique reported. “The terrified air hostess hurried towards the cockpit, followed by the passengers.”

The plane was then sent off-balance “despite the desperate efforts of the pilot”, said the report.

“The crocodile survived the crash before being cut up with a machete.”

I dunno, this sounds more like a crock…….wait awhile.

Be a Narc in Your Own Home! Cool!

By John C Dvorak Thursday October 21, 2010

13 Comments

BALTIMORE — Forget urine tests, parents in Maryland can hire dogs to sniff out whether their kids are using drugs.

The nonprofit group Dogs Finding Drugs uses canines that can detect even trace amounts of narcotics within seconds.

Owner Anne Willis says parents are clamoring for the service. The rate is about $200 an hour. Dogs Finding Drugs also offers its services to companies and schools.

It also seems like a way to find lost dope in the house. Or perhaps dope in someone’s else’s place. The sky is the limit.

No Agenda World Podcast
Bow to the Aqua Buddha!

By John C Dvorak Thursday October 21, 2010

10 Comments

This Episode’s Executive Producers: Borislav Marinov, Fredric Guimont, Adam Burkepile, Eric Hertha, Thomas Nussbaum
Associate Executive Producer: Marco Scari
Art By: Nick the Rat

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