WTF?:

The company lobbying for a Pentagon contract to insert radio frequency identification chips under the skin of U.S. military personnel has already had its technology cloned by two experts.

VeriChip Corp. is “in discussions” with the Air Force, Navy and the Department of Veterans Affairs to sell its radio frequency identification chips, said Scott Silverman, CEO of VeriChip’s parent company.

VeriChip says that the devices are secure, but Annalee Newitz, a contributing editor at Wired magazine, and software engineer Jonathan Westhues, say that’s not true.

Newitz wears a VeriChip under her arm, and last month at a computer hackers’ conference in New York, she and Westhues made a copy of her VeriChip — and her private medical data — using a homemade device.

Ok, two questions:

1) When the hell do we get to publicly debate the ethics of micro-chipping our soldiers?; and

2) Where is all the righteous indignation from the Christian Taliban over the so-called mark of the beast?

From Reuters: 

A majority of Americans no longer see a link between the war in Iraq and Washington's broader anti-terrorism efforts despite President George W. Bush's insistence the two are intertwined, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll released on Tuesday. 

Well that only took about 6 years.  Welcome back to reality ADD-land.  Of course, this article could be re-written to emphasize that nearly half of the country still believes in a fairy tell devoid of evidence spun by the notoriously dissembling Team Chimpy.  Sigh. 

Speaking of only taking about six years: 

Bush OKs involuntary Marine recall:

President Bush has authorized the U.S. Marine Corps to recall 2,500 troops to active duty because there are not enough volunteers returning for duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, Marine commanders announced Tuesday. …   Tours for recalled Marines could last 12 to 18 months, according to Marine officials.  …  Though the initial recall is for 2,500 troops, there is no cap on how many could be called up in the future. 

Garsh.  May-hap sum ree-der kin re-learn me on my mill-tary ign'rance - but this sounds awfully close to a draft.  To have been involuntarily recalled implies that they were under no obligation to return before our glorious decider made them return.  So much for the all-volunteer army.  Oh, and so much for those much ballyhooed troop reductions:

"The most significant dimension of this to me is that it says there are no longer any rosy assessments about how things are going in Iraq and Afghanistan," says retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner. "The call-up suggests the Pentagon envisions current troop levels in Iraq through the summer of 2008, with these guys going in the summer of 2007 for one year."

Troop strength in Iraq today is back up to 138,000, notes military analyst John Pike of globalsecurity.com, a research and consulting firm specializing in security issues. "All that happy talk earlier this year about getting below 100,000 by the end of this year now seems premature."

OMG, happy talk in Iraq premature?  Wait a sec … my head is going to explode!

Though I've tried to refrain from using such ad hominem attacks on this site, the title of this post merely parrots the title of the attached clip. Basically, I thought I would ease my re-entry from crushing jet-lag with Scarborough posing this age-old question. Other questions to follow are “Are puppies cute?” and “Is the sky blue?”

BTW, anyone else think Scarborough is looking a bit like Matt Perry’s ‘Chandler’ from the later-season Friends?

 
This is me - tomorrow.  Right now I can barely lift my upper lip to snarl properly.  See y'all morning-ish.

... as I am in the home stretch of my marathon tour of America: The Theme Park.  Just so you all know I haven't died, I am tossing you this lil' bone of audio-candy prank-callage.

WARNING: Go to the bathroom BEFORE you listen to this!

Whelp, travelling abounds once again today, this time I'm on my way to Austin, Texas - easily the bestest lil' ol' city resting anywhere on the crust of this planet (although I do hear that the magma-mud dwellers of the outer-core city of holycrapitshotica are quite lovely peeps). If anyone wants to hang, chances are I'll be at one of the following places: Trudy's (West), Magnolia's (Congress), Mothers, or the Spider House. I'll try to be morfe specific about times if I'm able (not sure where my internets are a-coming from).

Anyhoo, obviously no time to post anything of import today as I will be tackling (in a very Zen state) the security at Amarillo National Airport (where, despite calls of BS to the contrary, I HAVE been asked to remove my pants). BUT, as promised, I present you the following dose of smiles which I find strangely emblematic of DNC strategy over the last 5 years.

What a nightmare. Obviously I’m grateful that they were caught before anyone got hurt. I’m grateful that it was the Pakistani intelligence who were on the ball with this one and not some photo-op obsessed Western agency looking to hype a bunch of boobs trying to score Al-Qa’eda swag. And I’m grateful that those idiots will be denied whatever sense of martyrdom they hoped to achieve and can be locked away where they won’t cause any more suffering.

But mostly I’m just pissed off. I’m pissed off that Team Chimpy will claim this as a victory in the War on Terror when it is really just evidence of their continued and protracted failure. I’m pissed off that the Right will try to paint this as the act of crazy extremists who “hate freedom” rather than the predictable backlash of those downwardly mobile victimized by unregulated Western neo-liberal economic imperialism.

But to be honest, I’m really just pissed off because I have to fly twice in the next week. And now, in addition to having to take off my shoes, I’ve got to make sure that I don’t have any toothpaste or hand lotion in my backpack lest I face a strip-search from the over-zealot nut jobs running TSA at the Amarillo airport (not the first time I’ve been strip-searched there, in case you were wondering). And I now have to live with an additional level of sanctimonious bullsh*t from the people who are supporting the very policies that foster this level of backlash and make the world a more dangerous place – all in the name of fighting the so-called War on Terror.

Anyway, apologies all around for the attitude – I’m sure even Gandhi sunk into melancholy once in a while. Promise my next post will be something jolly.

Yes, I'm somewhat of a latecomer to the MySpace community.  I signed up for an account about a year ago, but have been hassled non-stop for never actually using it.  My wife recently went to the NOW conference in Albany, and had the pleasure of rubbing elbows with Pandagon who mentioned that MySpace would be a good place to promote my blog.  So ... if you feel like you desperately need to know more about me, visit my profile!

U.S. Senate

Connecticut U. S. Senate Democrat
Candidate	Votes	Percent	Winner
Ned LamontÂÂ	146,587	52%
Joe LiebermanÂÂ	136,468	48%
Precincts Reporting - 748 out of 748 - 100%

 

I'll be out for most of the day enjoying a marathon spurt of consumerism in "America: The Theme Park - Episode 7, West Texas."  I'll try to weigh in on my jubilation and cautious optimism if I get home early enough.