furiousBlog

I've just placed my first order with Threadless. I bought the following three shirts:



Woo hoo!

furiousBlog has been existence for 1 year and 19 days today, and I've never gotten around to posting the entry that prompted me to start blogging. Maybe this year...

Man, they just can't get enough citizen's private data!

Bush zombie on rampage, no citizen is safe (via boingboing)

From the article:

Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.

... The program is grounded in part on the president's emergency economic powers, Mr. Levey said, and multiple safeguards have been imposed to protect against any unwarranted searches of Americans' records.

The program, however, is a significant departure from typical practice in how the government acquires Americans' financial records. Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift.

The Bush administration is going outside of established legal norms?!? Shocking!

"The capability here is awesome or, depending on where you're sitting, troubling," said one former senior counterterrorism official who considers the program valuable. While tight controls are in place, the official added, "The potential for abuse is enormous."

The Bush administration is meddling with powers it can't possible hope to control?!? It's opening the door to the slippery slope towards a police state that we can never hope to close?!? Again, shocking!

Officials described the Swift program as the biggest and most far-reaching of several secret efforts to trace terrorist financing.

Oh! It's part of the 'War on Terrorism'! Why didn't you say so? If you're fighting terrorists who have killed at least as many Americans as bathtub slipping accidents, then it's ok! Civil rights don't mean anything if you're dead, right?

...right?

I just took a fun little quiz that lists several quotes and asks you to attribute them to either Ann Coulter (right-wing wacko) or Adolf Hitler (also a right-wing wacko). I did pretty well, only missing three.

Here's a sample quote:

"Hence it is that at the present time the liberal is the great agitator for the complete destruction of America. Whenever we read of attacks against America taking place in any part of the world the liberal is always the instigator."

I incorrectly guessed Ann Coulter on that one. The funny part is that it's a crapshoot--all of the quotes could really go either way. There's really no difference between Coulter's rhetoric and Hitler's. Obviously, that's the whole point of the quiz.

I'd be interested to see a quiz between some current left-wing wacko and one from history. I bet it'd be just as much a crapshoot.

Wackos are fun.

We had an open house on Saturday. I took the day before off to prepare and to finish up a few projects around the house. These included resodding a patch of grass that had died, repainting the door frame with non-glossy paint (I wasn't thinking when I painted it a couple of months ago), putting down quarter-round in the two bathrooms we just painted, and some other little things.

At 1 on Saturday a realtor from my realtor's office shows up and we go away for pizza and a movie*. When we got back at 4:30, the realtor was gone (the open house was 1-4). So we didn't know if anyone had come or not. We hadn't thought to count the number of information packets we had set out or anything. But, as we looked around, we noticed a couple clues that someone had come: the master bathroom door was closed, while I had left it cracked; and the shower curtain in the kid's bathroom was opened a few inches, while we had left it closed. So, at least one person had come.

My realtor called yesterday to give the report. He started out by saying "well, we didn't sell your house on Saturday." It turns out that two different people came to see the house. The first one was just some looky-loo from the neighborhood, taking the opportunity to snoope around someone else's house. She's probably selling her house and wanted to check out the competition. The second was a lady who is currently renting and looking to move up to owning. She must be the most forward thinking person ever, though, because her current lease is up in eight months.

So, two people, no leads. At least I get to update the tracker...



* We saw Cars. It was awesome. Great story, great characters, great animation.