02:12 AM 
Politico Let's just kill'em all

Arab journalist killed on live TV by U.S. helicopter

I understand the need to keep the military hardware out of the hands of the opposition. But this is ridiculous. Who's making these kind of decisions over there? That's a rhetorical question, I guess. There's so many factors involved in this, extended duties, calling up reservists, the kind of mentality in the Administration that leads to Abu Ghraib, the wrongness of what we are doing to our own people, the wrongness of what we are doing to Iraq, clearly highlighted in this stupid wrong waste of life.

What exactly does Bush think we have achieved? A bright and shining example of a democratic government in Iraq? Can he really be that deluded?

Yes, that's a rhetorical question too.

01:54 AM 
Observatorium· TV Praise the doctor and pass the low-fat no-fry chicken fried steak!

Four years ago after I quit my 9-5 job, I started watching Oprah now and then. I discovered that every Tuesday (I think it was Tuesdays) was Dr. Phil day. I had never heard of this guy before but he had a good down to earth, common-sense style, a bit of a Texas Twang and he didn't expect to solve everyone's problems in seven minutes (he even said so :)).

So I made sure to watch or tape Oprah every Tuesday. Then two years ago, he got his own syndicated show and I started watching that. I didn't catch it every day tho because it got to be a bit much going from once a week to five times a week. A little advice goes a long way.

Last winter I started watching a bit more regularly, he had moved from a problem of the day format to following various couples and families for weeks/months and so it had a bit of a plot going on. One day each week was the family with the pregnant teenager and another day each week was the couples from the relationship retreat he'd done and another day each week was the Morman couple with four kids, one from the wife's affair and a fifth kid on the way and he filled in the other two days with miscellaneous things.

These families/couples were all kind of depressing because he couldn't fix them all in fifteen minutes in between commercials, so I only watched now and then. In the last couple years, he's become a male version of Oprah, he's gotten two more books out, one's a cookbook, he's got a magazine, a website, a web-board and all sorts of stuff. He gives away money and stuff to help the various people who turn up on his show, just like Oprah. He hustles troubled kids off to all sorts of expensive treatment centers and schools, all paid for by Dr. Phil, he gives them vacations and pays bills and gives them exercise equipment and kinds of things, he's become a regular miracle worker.

I watched his show today and (as he noted loudly) it's the first show of his third season and I see now he's completed the transformation to book-thumping psycho-preacher! He went to a town somewhere in the midwest, I missed which state, and gave a better sermon than any holly-roller could have done. Pat Robertson should be taking lessons from this guy. He's gonna fix this town, he's gonna cure every ill, he's gonna stop the wife-beating husband, he's gonna sober up the alcoholic, he's gonna get those kids back in school, he's gonna un-pregnate those teenagers! (well, maybe not that last one :))

Oh my, it was something to see, he had that crowd up on their feet, clapping and a-swaying and lawd almighty, singing that old-time religion and a-pledging their solemn promise to follow Dr. Phil!

It was really sumpin' to see...we ain't had us no good preacher-men on the teevee in ages. So you tune into him, y'heah? Dr. Phil will save your soul, I ain't gotta single doubt!

09:55 PM 
Music Want a free iPod?

I do! :) I've been watching reviews of this freeiPods website to see if it's for real and I've see two reputable bloggers try it out and get their free iPod or gift certificates (one chose the iPod, the other chose the gift certificates). So I did it too, I signed up for the Blockbuster DVDs (similar to Netflix), it'a a two week free trial and I'll cancel before the end of the two weeks (since I already use Netflix) so it won't cost me anything to do this. The other offers I could have chosen were things like Columbia House DVDs (get 5 DVDs for 49 cents), BMG Music Service (get 12 CDs for the price of one), Netscape Unlimited Internet Service (one month free), the NY Times home delivery, Stamps.com and others.

If you're interested, please use this link to check it out, you can be one of my five referrals.

(and then post your referral link in your blog to get your friends to be your referrals. :))

Note - this offer is only good for US citizens, I believe and you will most likely need a credit card to sign up for one of the offers, even if you are signing up for a free trial period, they still want your credit card.

Edited to add one more caveat: Use a disposable email address like at Hotmail or Yahoo for signing up, one that you can simply abandon once you're done with freeiPod. I got spammed within literally minutes by three "partners" of theirs, I opted out of all three but since I did use a special address for only freeiPod, I'll just delete it once I'm done with them.

03:41 PM 
Internet Sometimes they see the light...

Techdirt: Major Spam ISP Kicks Off Spammers All of this is correct - the "former employee" is on the Spam-L list I'm on and he published the internal memos to the list as well as his whistleblower site. He also worked with Spamhaus' Steve Linford who talked with the Savvis CEO and explained the consequences of hosting spammers, ie., being shut off from the rest of the internet.

So sometimes it does work, sometimes the bad guys who give spammers access to sent out spam can see the light and understand that while the short term money from the spammers looks very nice, the long term money from legitimate customers will disappear because of blocking and then the spammers will disappear too because they're blocked as well. And poof, no more company.

07:59 PM 
Weather Bonnie, Charley, Frances...and Ivan?

Ivan Approaches

Eesh, what is this - "Pick on Florida Year" for the weather gods? If this hurricane hits them, that's what? Four hurricanes in about a month's time??? Yowza.

Then again, the sucker could continue more westerly and hit me. eek.

07:39 PM 
Books Story of the Day

artificialbutter: shut up... really? a short story by a friend of Jon's, the husband of dooce.com's Heather B. Go read it, it's got a Twilight Zone type of thing going on.