Sure Glad We Didn't Move

From the Nosek article:

"Obviously, such research does not speak at all to the question of the prejudice level of the president," said Banaji



Geeee, ya think?

Maryland Went to Kerry So I'm Not a Racist

Seen that Washington Post article by Brian Nosek regarding
evil Republican Racists? No? How about the first time it was published? (a year ago)

See, it didn't cause enough of a stir the first time around so they figured a way
to add George Bush to the equation and republished it. Well, no, not to a scientific
journal yet. No, it's not ready for that yet.

I downloaded the study and I wonder if it's ever going to be ready for
peer review. Look at this chart:

Main thing is that the description doesn't match the graph labels. But regardless,
look at the explicit (what they claimed) vs. the implicit (what we measured).
It would appear that the strongly liberal are maybe 25-30% less biased than
the "strongly conservative" but they claim to much, much less biased.
Look at the gap between what liberals claimed and what these Democrat scientists
found. And look at that, the gap between what is claimed and what is measured
gets less and less the further you travel towards "strongly conservative." How did
these good Democrat scientists miss the obvious conclusion: that liberals lie
more. (and the "strongly liberal" lie the most)

The "study" is at ('harvesting.GroupDynamics.pdf')
Scroll down to "harvesting"

Cold day in DC

64861405_201001578_0, originally uploaded by lumberjack.

This is why I wasn't enthusiastic about the kid marching:

I figured I'd feel better about it if I was with. But then pop-pop's inability to
do a doctors appointment without upsetting hospital operations pulled me
away at the last minute. So the kid went alone and of course everything went
fine. We don't have the same crazies here as they've got in SF. Well, we do but
we keep them locked up in the Cannon, Longworth and Rayburn House office
buildings.

For Her a Killer Was Freed?

From Reuters:

Report says ransom money found on Osthoff
Sat Jan 21, 2006 2:35 PM GMT
BERLIN (Reuters) - Part of the ransom money alleged to have been paid by the German government to win the freedom of Iraq hostage Susanne Osthoff last month was found on Osthoff after her release, the German magazine Focus said on Saturday.

Without citing its sources, Focus said officials at the German embassy in Baghdad had found several thousand U.S. dollars in the 43-year-old German archaeologist's clothes when she took a shower at the embassy shortly after being freed.

The serial numbers on the bills matched those used by the government to pay off Osthoff's kidnappers, the magazine said...

This, by the way, is the same Susanne Osthoff who campaigned to stop the looting
of artifacts and brought reporters to areas where looting was still going on after the
US invasion.

So was she part of the kidnapping? I mean, the planning part, not the
getting kidnapped part. She, who said, “poor people [and I] cannot blame them for
kidnapping me, as they cannot enter the [fortified and heavily guarded] Green Zone
[in Baghdad] to kidnap Americans. I was treated well … they were not criminals
[and their action] was political”
Yeah, and quite profitable for all concerned.

PCs

I finally saw it, knew it was coming, only a matter of time.
I got a Tiger Direct ad in the mail and on page one there
it was; a computer, and a video card, and the computer was
selling for less than the card.

I may skip the next upgrade. By then they may be giving you
free computers with every fill-up. Hope macs get that cheap
one day.

My Oprah

Oprah finally throws in the towel:

In a stunning switch from dismissive to disgusted, Oprah Winfrey took on one of her chosen authors, James Frey, accusing him on live television of lying about "A Million Little Pieces" and letting down the many fans of his memoir of addiction and recovery.

She was beginning to remind me of the Black Knight from the Holy Grail.

King Arthur: [after Arthur's cut off both of the Black Knight's arms] Look, you stupid Bastard. You've got no arms left.
Black Knight: Yes I have.
King Arthur: *Look*!
Black Knight: It's just a flesh wound.

Course Oprah finally admitted the obvious. She didn't do a Dan Rather
Black Knight; she didn't "it's-just-a-scratch" all the way down to total
limb removal. So kudos Opie, you woke up while you still had a leg
to stand on.

More ACLU

From My Way:

HASBROUCK HEIGHTS, N.J. (AP) - A male high school student can wear a skirt to school after the American Civil Liberties Union reached an agreement with school officials.
The ACLU announced the deal Tuesday. It will allow a Hasbrouck Heights School senior to wear a skirt to protest the school's no-shorts policy......

The ACLU, protecting your right to be beat-up, wedgied, wet-willied,
Indian-burned, noggied, and laughed at. Good news: this kid will
be protected from unsafe sex, and safe sex, for the foreseeable future.

New Position

LATimes:

Warriors and wusses
I DON'T SUPPORT our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car. Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on.

I'm sure I'd like the troops. They seem gutsy, young and up for anything. If you're wandering into a recruiter's office and signing up for eight years of unknown danger, I want to hang with you in Vegas.

And I've got no problem with other people — the ones who were for the Iraq war — supporting the troops. If you think invading Iraq was a good idea, then by all means, support away. Load up on those patriotic magnets and bracelets and other trinkets the Chinese are making money off of.....

Didn't read the rest; I got the idea. And it's one I heard the famous
boater Sean Penn allude to: I hate this war but I'm not a pansy.
Whatever other drivel he spews, the not a pansy part was what this guy,
Joel Stein, wanted to get out there.

Nobody called you a pansy. Stop denying it, or, well Joel, embrace it.
Let your inner pansy blossom.

galloway

Seems that Saddam's hand puppet has gone into dignity-who-needs-it mode.

Why bother

From an AFP story on Yahoo:

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Well before President George W. Bush said in 2003 that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger, a high-level State Department intelligence assessment deemed the deal "unlikely" for several reasons, a US daily reported.

Who said that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger? Bush never did.
What he said, and what American, French, and British intelligence
services were saying was that Iraq had *sought* to buy uranium
from Niger. It was the 16 words we heard so much about. There is
still no good reason to believe that they weren't trying to
buy yellow-cake.

So why pretend that the
president said Iraq was buying uranium?