Author Archives: Stephen VanDyke

If you’re keeping score (the game), some Norwegian asshole (or two) have unceremoniously waxed a bunch of random innocent Norwegian people with bombs and bullets and for some reason everyone though it was muslims at first. HEYOOOOOOOOOOOO.

National police chief Sveinung Sponheim told NRK that the suspect’s Internet postings “suggest that he has some political traits directed toward the right, and anti-Muslim views, but if that was a motivation for the actual act remains to be seen.’’

Though the motive was unclear, both attacks were in areas connected to the ruling Labor Party government. The youth camp, about 20 miles northwest of Oslo, is organized by the party’s youth wing, and Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg had been scheduled to speak there today.

Someone please clue me into what the fuck is going on in Norway. Feel free to elucidate this matter in the comments.

Conspiracy theorists: I’ve already heard the one about the Mossad.

Update: Someone at the Associated Press is a total fucking retard, that is all:

Additional update: The media is now fully backpeddling from calling this what it truly is: terrorism. Why? Because in the eyes of the Western media, white people aren’t terrorists. Glenn Greenwald at Salon explains it perfectly:

the incestuous, self-regarding network of self-proclaimed U.S. Terrorism and foreign policy “experts” — what the article accurately describes as “almost always white men and very often with military or government backgrounds,” in this instance driven by “a case of an elite fanboy wanting to be the first to pass on leaked gadget specs” — who so often shape these media stories and are uncritically presented as experts, even though they’re drowning in bias, nationalism, ignorance, and shallow credentialism.

Fact: you don’t need credentials to point out that white people (even mostly harmless and peaceful Norwegians) can bring forth unthinkable extreme terrorist acts in the name of whatever agenda. Nor do you need a fancy title to utterly dismiss terrorism as having any valid tactical merit in an age where everyone is already being terrified by out-of-touch governments to the point they are reassessing the need for those fears altogether.

Picking the jaw up from the floor update: Police are saying that Anders Behring Breivik, expected to be charged with killing 94 people, will face just 21 years in prison. Less if he behaves.

I’m sure Norway is on to something with the less of the jailing and more of the rehabilitating — but come on, this is really a slap on the wrist. I think when someone starts killing in the double digits it’s perfectly reasonable to expect that person will be kept away from the rest of society for the duration of their lives.

The Fed audit is shedding new light on the scale of the looting. From a release by Bernie Sanders, the Independent Senator from Vermont:

The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. “As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world,” said Sanders. “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.”

Among the investigation’s key findings is that the Fed unilaterally provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report. “No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president,” Sanders said.

The non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress also determined that the Fed lacks a comprehensive system to deal with conflicts of interest, despite the serious potential for abuse. In fact, according to the report, the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans.

For example, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served on the New York Fed’s board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed. Moreover, JP Morgan Chase served as one of the clearing banks for the Fed’s emergency lending programs.

Robbery in broad daylight. Where’s the mob bearing pitchforks and torches?

Update: The full text of the GAO report is online. [via RawStory]

The Washington Independent reports:

The scandal came as no surprise to housing advocates in the state. “We had 90,000 foreclosure filings last year, and another 100,000 this year,” explains David Rothstein of the non-partisan think tank Policy Matters Ohio. “When we look at those statistics, and put our thinking caps on, you have to say, how were they processing all of these claims without bigger legal staffs and bank staffs? This wasn’t a surprise.”

He continues: “And there’s a tragic irony here. For five or ten years, the banks have said that the foreclosure crisis in this state is the borrowers’ fault. They bit off more than they could chew. It’s all their fault for buying expensive houses and then losing their jobs.”

“But look at this! They’re taking people into foreclosure, without the right to do it! It is tragic. They were committing fraud, and were completely giving up their fiduciary responsibilities.”

I urge local prosecutors to investigate and charge management, put them in jail. Just put them in fucking jail before it’s too late and the streets run red.

Crime springs forth from inactivity, and a staggering crime study from 2010 shows 31% of Cleveland doesn’t feel safe walking down their own street at night (with Cleveland proper soaring to 63%). Empty, for sale and dilapidated houses every other block (and in some places every other house) contributes greatly to the broken window theory of crime.

The seasoned comedian without a filter made plenty of spotlight stealing gesticulations as he listened to the ridiculous stories of Bristol Palin’s existence. Both were guests on Jay Leno Thursday, with the elder humorist choosing to remain after his interview and occupy the couch. He bemusedly sat next to the young teen “author” during her interview – shaking his head and peppering jokes throughout, much to the audience’s enjoyment.

Apologies of course for the obnoxious 30-second ad you’ll have to endure to watch this (make sure to use the permalink to avoid potential refresh rage):

When Bristol was asked if there’s any reason her mother Sarah Palin shouldn’t run, Rickles piped up “because she could lose” which brought laughter and a large round of cheers from the audience.

Celebrities getting political can be hit or miss some days, but it’s clear that Alec Baldwin has his ear to the ground (or internet, more likely). Baldwin gives some pretty good zingers on imperialism, writing “A plurality of voters in this country knew W was the patsy of war-mongering, profiteering imperialists. Either that or they knew nothing about him at all. They voted for him twice. Now, the bill has come due.”

And he’s clearly no longer impressed with Obama either — his ardent support in 2008 has soured with the rest of America’s and he now speaks plainly about Obama’s problem with fiscal responsibility. “I think that when you come into office and you want to put your mark on things — this is just my opinion, when you want to put your mark on things, you want to be able to spend. And what’s crippled Obama’s administration, as far as I’m concerned, is the financial crisis and it’s prevented him from doing any new spending.” Well, the continued occupation of half the Middle East counts as spending, and Libya is sure as shit new, so I wouldn’t say it’s prevented anything. More like it’s brought fresh attention to an old problem.

To Alec Baldwin: do keep educating yourself on Ron Paul and libertarianism, you’re already in the philosophical fold more than you realize. After that it’s just a matter of being consistent.

[h/T Robert Butler]

Note: this article contains dead links, the url is still in the hover/alt text. Keep the web working, curate content well!

It was simply a matter of time until a Republican went after the evangelical christian vote. Rick Perry went all in:

Fellow Americans,

Right now, America is in crisis: we have been besieged by financial debt, terrorism, and a multitude of natural disasters. As a nation, we must come together and call upon Jesus to guide us through unprecedented struggles, and thank Him for the blessings of freedom we so richly enjoy.

Some problems are beyond our power to solve, and according to the Book of Joel, Chapter 2, this historic hour demands a historic response. Therefore, on August 6, thousands will gather to pray for a historic breakthrough for our country and a renewed sense of moral purpose.

I sincerely hope you’ll join me in Houston on August 6th and take your place in Reliant Stadium with praying people asking God’s forgiveness, wisdom and provision for our state and nation. There is hope for America. It lies in heaven, and we will find it on our knees.

Sincerely,

Rick Perry
Governor

It’s funny how someone can in one breath say “as a nation” and in another say it’s not political. I don’t mind Jesus or religion on the campaign trail, what bothers me is a hypocrite.

New rule: if you mention Jesus on the campaign trail, you have to sell all your earthly possessions and donate it all to the poor. Anything less is simply blasphemous.

Update: Eric Rice corrects me by noting that Michele Bachmann is also shamelessly pimping Jesus for votes, explicitly saying “God then called me to run for the United States Congress.” She’s also confirmed that God has literally spoken to her a second time to run for the Oval office. Newsflash believers: it’s probably not God that’s doing all this talking to politicians.

She’s currently worth $1.05 million and the Jesus rule applies to her too.

[Jesus poster source - Volatile Minds]
[Perry quote checks out :) - Dallas Morning News]

To the cover editor of TIME: if you’re going to make a provocative statement about the relevancy of the constitution in this country, be prepared to hear the rebuttal on why you’re part of the problem:

Time magazine’s cover story shows the U.S. Constitution and asks, “Does it still matter?” Reading this story, we kept waiting for Emmanuel Goldstein to show up for the Two Minutes of Hate. It was difficult to discern whether we were reading Time, or Orwells’ 1984.

It portrays the Constitution as an outmoded document that we should ignore to whatever extent is expedient to pursue someone’s vision of a better society: “We cannot let the Constitution become an obstacle to a future with a sensible health care system, a globalized economy, and evolving sense of civil and political rights.”

The story shows all sorts of poll questions that present a false choice, such as, “The 14th Amendment says that any person born in the U.S. automatically becomes a U.S. citizen… Should [it] be revised?” The Citizenship Clause says no such thing, because it adds that anyone “not subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. is not a citizen.

That’s why children of foreign ambassadors, prisoner soldiers and heads of state born here do not become citizens. The question is how broad that “jurisdiction” clause is. Could Congress exclude illegal aliens? It’s an active debate in legal circles, with no clear answer.

Instead, the questions should have included: “Are you more interested in the Constitution today that you were four years ago?” “Do you agree or disagree with candidates discussing the Constitution more in their campaign speeches this year?” “Are you now aware that the Constitution only vests the federal government with power of specific areas of life, leaving the states sovereign to decide all other issues?”

Or questions on enduring constitutional principles. “Do you agree with the Supreme Court’s 1803 pronouncement that any law contrary to the Constitution is null and void?” “Every government officer (including every judge) takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Should they apply its original meaning to current challenges?”

Does the Constitution still matter? Look at huge crowds of Americans cheering at rallies, whether it’s a spending protest or a pro-life rally. It matters to them, and they vote.

Go back to that first part again, this time keeping in mind that modern tyranny begins and ends as information war with the goal of eliciting nothing more than your compliance (as the constitution is indeed shredded through mere inaction at stopping it). They do so by of course framing the issue as already lost. What’s really lost though is the corporate media’s grasp of their tenuous hold on their information empire. Losing battles — larger each time — as wave after wave of truth assaults by independently operated, uncontrollable forums and blogs across the internet.

Or to sum up the libertarian argument in a picture:

Be sure to check out the original cover in all it’s glory that spawned the backlash. It seems they’re on a mission to piss off libertarians this month.

Okay sure, it’s just an online poll, but consider the target audience of CNBC and the wow factor kicks in:

At almost 52K votes it will surely have some prohibitionists’ eyes popping — the channel of power suits yelling about business is apparently now 420-friendly territory. Perhaps Scott’s Miracle Gro entering the pot market a few weeks back has started perking a few ears up to the idea of making investments in an emerging legalized marketplace.

Or the poll could have been spammed like crazy (You mean stoners are organized? Well there goes that myth). Either way, it looks like a check mark in the win column for marijuana, again.

I’m getting old and stressed out, so I thought I’d halt the political shitpile searching for decent nuggets of news to monger and play some music to you. Liberty is as liberty does, and being happy is doing good and never worrying that it feels small, or that we’re actually swimming against a never-ending tide.

Solid, stand-up libertarians are regularly making sizable dents in the walls of fear and misunderstanding. I could name a couple dozen people who clock in to the fight everyday with their eternal vigilance in tow. I’d say “thanks Internet” as well, but that’s really not much more than just a bunch of machines being controlled by humans.

To you kids in the audience: listen up as I now play you some dope jams from ’88. Era of Reaganomics and cocaine, so a lot of people were dismal, and lot were not giving a fuck. I was ten or so when it first came out and probably could not appreciate it as much as I do now (maybe in some idiot savant way, but I was a pretty stupid ten-year-old, doing all that coke and whatnot).

McFerrin’s most recent musical feat was at the World Science Festival of 2009 in a musical demonstration that was actually an amazing audience hack. He “demonstrated audience participation with the ubiquitous nature of human understanding of the pentatonic scale by singing and dancing, and having the audience sing while following his movements.” according to Wikipedia. But even all that eloquence just doesn’t quite convey the emotion of watching a video of it.

As a fan of both the Doctor of Lov3 (Ron Paul) and the Doctor of Happy, it would do me a world of pleasure if those two had a cup of coffee and discussed… well anything.

Apparently some “hacker” got into the Obama 2012 campaign website, messed around in the database or whatnot (added a user account) and was able to gain super secret privileges (no, not really) to post an invitation to a House Meeting that was actually a full on critique of politics. The event was quickly jettisoned by campaign staffers but was quickly saved by the Washington Examiner as a screen grab. Full text of the event (OCR FTW):

MEETING
(House Meeting)

Rules of Politics
1. Politicians and other public servants lie.
2. Politicians tell you what you want to hear and offer to provide things for “free” to get votes.
3. When government buys, the people pay.
4. Politicians are human and therefore can be greedy, selfish, irresponsible and short-sighted.
5. Political “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. – Lord Acton
6. People vote for the most famous (popular) name (name fame). The main media determine who.
7. It is human nature to follow rather than lead and to feel rather than think.
8. Politicians believe that laws change human behavior or protect people. Laws are just words.
9. Politicians are arrogant and speak legalese. They believe they know what is best for people.
10. Politicians know Americans rely on rumors and conformity for their political opinions.
11. Politicians do not realize that outlawing acts increase the profit from engaging in these acts.
12. Politicians are controlled or influenced by unions, corporations and/or organizations.
13. Politicians qualify for their job only by getting more votes than their opponent(s).
14. Politician’s intervention often creates “unintended” negative consequences that lead to further intervention to “fix” the new problem(s).
15. Politicians believe people can find, read, understand, remember and comply with the thousands of city/town, county, state and federal ads, agreements, bylaws, codes, covenants, doctrines, laws, mandates, ordinances, policies, procedures, public policy, regulations, restrictions, rules and statutes.
16. Politicians believe robbing Peter to pay Paul is good, ethical and constitutional.
17. Politicians care only about 3 things – money, power and prestige.
18. Politicians replaced morals with law. Morals are enforced by everyone and there are no fines.
19. Politicians have an undeserved reputation for knowing more on most issues than other people.
20. Politicians are strangers, yet are trusted and believed like a big brother.
21. “Politics is a process of engineering problems to get more money to not solve them.” – unknown
22. “You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get an all that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.” Dr. Adrian Rogers

Well damn, now I can’t say with any degree of honesty that there’s nothing truthful to be found on O’s campaign site.

Oh wait, yes I can, this shit’s been deleted.

I hear the gripes every year from libertarians of all stripes, and of course some person or another who will ignorantly call the holiday “Fourth of July” instead of it’s proper title “Independence Day” or just thinks the whole thing is a sham. Five years ago I wrote this:

Each 4th of July, I keep expecting to see some libertarian separatist group declare independence all over again, something akin to a V for Vendetta type hijacking of the airwaves. Maybe I just have a flair for the dramatic, but when I joke about it to random people each year and voice this out loud — “I redeclare a war of independence up in this mofo” — the response is unanimously positive (and my test group has ranged from Los Angeles liberals to Southern conservatives, and now Mid-West folks who are defined mostly as apathetic).

I know we’re closer to this reality now than were were five years ago, Anonymous and the WikiLeaks movement are early indicators of even bigger things to come. Maybe this will be the day and the year, then again maybe it will never happen on this specific holiday. Regardless, I remain optimistic because I know in due time the chains that have been laid upon us in our apathy will be shoved off violently once again.

This Independence Day save your ire and anger over the ineptitude of tyranny for the people and problems at that deserve it. Learn to express the political emotion of winning, be the person who puts the LOVE in the rEVOLution.

Update: stories like Emily Good’s of Rochester, NY stoke my optimism. Courage is contagious.

The NYT has the early numbers on the only political numbers that seem to truly matter this early in an election: MOOLAH. I’ve cut it down to just the numbers and a quick analysis of my own.

• Mitt Romney – less than $20M, how much less and how much comes from his own personal wealth is not disclosed
• Michele Bachmann – easily over $5M with a good chunk ($3M or so) coming from her congressional campaign
• Tim Pawlenty – less than $5M, with a portion not immediately available to his campaign
• Ron Paul – over $4M, but it’s an easy bet to say that he’ll have the highest total donor count
• Jon M. Huntsman Jr. – $4.1 million, under half coming from his own personal wealth and will not have to be disclosed until Q3 filing due to his campaign exploiting an FEC filing loophole
• Herman Cain – Will probably break $1M-$2M easily through his business connections, he could really be sitting on a lot of money though
• Newt Gingrich – Look for this to be ridiculously low, there’s a solid reason his campaign staff quit en mass last month: DEBT
• Rick Santorum – Another who will probably underwhelm, but that fundraising letter that compared Obamacare to Romneycare might have netted some cash even though he seriously flubbed the pointed question at the debate
• Gary Johnson – He seems to have a large contact list to call upon, but it might not be enough to carry him far if he can’t break $1M

Official filing statements from the campaigns aren’t available/due until July 15th, so if someone’s campaign is tap dancing when asked by the press and won’t repeat any numbers to a camera, you’ll know a prediction is really off the mark.

Hammer of Truth is currently doing one last hurrah of free signups to our growing libertarian community. If you think you can rant as good or better than us, now is your best chance to join us and prove it. see more…

An interesting Lindsey Lohan tweet has caught the eye of the political arena this week:

More than a few people noticed the #ad hashtag, and the shortened url of Sponsored Tweets — a company that specializes in connecting advertisers with high-follower twitter accounts. The link by the way goes to the National Inflation Association, which seems to be a possible shady website according to an assload of articles on Google (our journalism investigatory skills, they are awesome). SF Weekly calls them a “pump-and-dump” website, they’re probably not far off the mark.

Well not long after she tweeted the ad, some twitter comedian came along and thought they’d call bullshit on the whole thing, saying “oh damn I was like Lindsay Lohan don’t give a fuck about gas & food prices, she’s rich, knew it was an #ad” to which Lohan shot back “i actually do care about gas and food prices, so whether it’s an #ad or no, it’s important for people to be aware of it.”

Well reading twitter conversations causes brain hurts, and though I’m pretty sure Lohan wasn’t lying when she said it’s important, I really doubt she cares enough to do much investigating into who pays for ads in her twitter, even if she agrees with the sentiment (RT: hard knocks ran a train on that girl).

The media is sure to have a field day with this one as they rehash a bunch of stories about how NIA is certainly a less than credible news organization or investment advisers. It doesn’t look like NIA is doing much battle with the Federal Reserve beyond the words department, and those words sound more like a sales pitch than a war cry.

Oddly enough, Judge Andrew Napolitano got egg on his face on this one, but do blame Neil Cavuto for misreporting so horribly (I really have to ask: how stupid do you have to be to misreport a fucking 140 character tweet? Serious question).

2,669 published articles from 2002-2006 are now integrated into Hammer of Truth. There’s still quite a bit to do import-wise (mostly formatting, dead link removal and cleaning up image code) but feel free to poke around using the handy dandy pagination on the front page or read our very first post, ever. If you come across anything interesting post a link here in the comments.

The comments table is kind of a mess (but totally salvageable), so consider this process officially underway yet incomplete. There’s over 32K comments, wow.

On a better note, our daily readership here at HoT is starting to be off the hook again less than one year later (that’s actually fast, all things considered). We’re obviously not beating LewRockwell or Reason or CNN (yet), but we’re not in the small-timer league either. We never were.

HOP IN THE TIME MASHEEEEEEEEN!

UPDATE: Fuck, there’s an amazing amount of boring editing to be done. Broken images, weird padding on said images, really really deprecated HTML in posts. Give it a few days before you decide whether you want to bitch me out (again). Please. (this is fixed now, I am that good!)

UPDATE (FRIDAY, FRIDAY, FRIED EGGS): 32,695 comments between 2002-2006 imported. Tags are pretty much fucked and will not be imported (it’s good for SEO, but doesn’t replace good writing AMIRITE?). Huzzah, I’m going to go have a beer.

This week the FBI raided a DigitalOne datacenter in Reston, Virginia taking with them three racks full of servers, many of which were completely unrelated to any criminal activities, causing loads of havoc in the process.

After the obligatory “oh shit” period when it is usually more important to stop the bleeding than yell at the attacker, it seems business owners are taking stock of the damage and self-reporting their frustration. Marco Arment of Instapaper is duly pissed and wrote up as such in a company missive, aptly titled “The FBI stole an Instapaper server in an unrelated raid”:

As far as I know, my single DigitalOne server was among those taken by the FBI (which I’m now calling “stolen” since I assume it was not included in the warrant). I’m assuming this because it became unreachable and stopped sending updates to my internal monitoring system at approximately the time that the FBI raided the datacenter, and has not come online again since then.

[...]

What the FBI stole from Instapaper

I didn’t own the hardware — I was leasing it from DigitalOne. So the FBI has only stolen my time and a partial month of hosting fees, not any physical property of mine. (The hardware was pretty expensive to DigitalOne, though: each of these servers probably costs $5,000–8,000.)

Possibly most importantly, though, the FBI is now presumably in possession of a complete copy of the Instapaper database as it stood on Tuesday morning, including the complete list of users and any non-deleted bookmarks. (“Archived” bookmarks are not deleted. “Deleted” bookmarks are hard-deleted out of the database immediately.)

Instapaper stores only salted SHA-1 hashes of passwords, so those are relatively safe. But email addresses are stored in the clear, as is the saved content of each bookmark saved by the bookmarklet.

The server also contained a complete copy of the Instapaper website codebase, but not the codebase of the iOS app.

Linked Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr accounts only store their respective OAuth keys. Linked Evernote accounts only store the Evernote email-in address. Linked Pinboard accounts, however, store plaintext usernames and encrypted passwords, and the encryption keys are present in the website source code on the server.

So the FBI now has illegal possession of nearly all of Instapaper’s data and a moderate portion of its codebase, and as far as I know, this is completely out of my control.

Due to the police culture in the United States, especially at the federal level, I don’t expect to ever get an explanation for this, have the server or its data returned, or be reimbursed for the damage they have illegally caused.

I’m really not sure what to do about this. I’m speaking to my lawyer about it shortly, but as far as I know, there’s nothing I can reasonably do without spending more money, time, and stress than I can afford on a path that would likely lead nowhere productive.

As a small business owner, it’s a good indication now might be the right time to offshore everything if only to put it outside of the reach of these bumbling fools. As a libertarian, I’m thoroughly disgusted with this rampant keystone kops behavior that’s constantly on display and depressed that seemingly nothing will be done punitively to curb this very real criminal behavior by a mere tentacle of the executive branch’s police state apparatus. I might as well just say Obama stole the guy’s server, code and livelihood, it’s really not that much of a stretch any more.

The federal government’s bureaucratic non-response (to the NY Times and other press) to their own “law enforcement” agency’s criminal theft of a business’s resources is undoubtedly forcing a lot of tech heads to take a long hard look at doing their business in the U.S. If your company’s property can literally be stolen in the night, then that’s more than just a scary proposition that runs counter to the free market, it’s a good indication America is on the slide as the freedom-loving tech mecca to the world.

Update: Instapaper head Marco Arment has posted a new announcement that the server miraculously returned from FBI internet jail. How did he know? By him noticing that the server came back online. see more…

At least three fairly popular web companies and a Swiss ISP are in a frenzy to restore their operations today after the FBI showed up at 1:15 a.m. Tuesday morning at a hosting facility in Reston, Va. to cart off a bunch of servers:

In an e-mail to one of its clients on Tuesday afternoon, a DigitalOne employee, Sergej Ostroumow, said: “This problem is caused by the F.B.I., not our company. In the night F.B.I. has taken 3 enclosures with equipment plugged into them, possibly including your server — we can not check it.”

Mr. Ostroumow said that the F.B.I. was only interested in one of the company’s clients but had taken servers used by “tens of clients.” He wrote: “After F.B.I.’s unprofessional ‘work’ we can not restart our own servers, that’s why our website is offline and support doesn’t work.” The company’s staff had been working to solve the problem for the previous 15 hours, he said.

Mr. Ostroumow said in response to e-mailed questions that it was not clear if the issues would be resolved by Wednesday.

Bookmarking site Pinboard, one of the customers of DigitalOne caught up in the sudden theft of servers, were nonplussed with the hassle, declaring on twitter “need to find a jack-booted thugs photo for our downtime page.” Pinboard’s status page seems to indicate they are taking in on the chin, even though the loss of resources is a hassle they weren’t anticipating a day ago.

Another business caught up in the case of the three missing racks was Curbed Network, a blog company that has been completely darkened aside from their twitter account. Their response was more curt, stating that they are an FBI victim and are currently “starting over from backups.”

Instapaper, yet another innocent bystander in the debacle was also taking the hit and was moving to stop the bleeding, saying “a temporary network failure is making one of Instapaper’s two live database servers unreachable.”

As the hours of downtime threatens to drag into days, even DigitalOne’s website was offline at the time of this writing. We were unable to ascertain how extensive the server theft has struck, but three racks fulls of blade servers could easily host hundreds more websites and databases. Follow digitalone updates on twitter to see the fallout in real time.

The collaterally damaged companies are currently busy exploring their hosting options elsewhere and are likely too busy preforming emergency resuscitation on their livelihoods to publicly lambast the FBI’s bureaucracy (who have not returned comment to the NY Times). It’s simply inexcusable behavior that the FBI would drag so many innocent companies into their chase after some online bad guys.

If cops pursuing a criminal aims for every fruit stand on the sidewalk, they are a also a criminal and should be fired as well. To the business owners damaged by the FBI’s brute tactics: Don’t just pick up the pieces and rebuild your fruit stand with a grumble and grunt, demand restitution and justice.

due to the length of this video, please make sure you are watching from the article permalink, not our front page. thanks

Jon Stewart was on FoxNews Sunday with Chris Wallace in a highly entertaining interview. It’s rather eye-opening to see how much Wallace tries to set up trap questions and how easily Stewart disarms him by deflecting bias with his humor. His comedy cuts both ways, when Wallace would clearly like to reduce that to one. Interesting snippets from the transcript:

WALLACE: Sarah Palin and the herpes drug, really?

STEWART: Yes, as a technique for the commercial? You know, so, you’re saying that by comparing the technique that she used in her video –

WALLACE: You are not making a political comment?

STEWART: You really think that’s a political comment?

WALLACE: Yes.

STEWART: You’re insane.

WALLACE: Really?

STEWART: Yes. Here is the difference between you and I — I’m a comedian first. My comedy is informed by an ideological background. There’s no question about that.

The thing that will never understand and the thing that in some respect conservative activists will never understand is that Hollywood, yes, they’re liberal. But that’s not their primary motivating force. I’m not an activist. I’m a comedian.

[LATER...]

WALLACE: Are you disappointed in Barack Obama as president?

STEWART: Yes, I think I am.

WALLACE: Do you think he’s lived up to his promise to fix the economy?

STEWART: No. I don’t know the kind of sway that a president can have on the economy, but do I believe that he is lived up to the promises? No.

He came in and said you can’t expect to have a different result with the same people. That was, in many ways, his seminal campaign focus. And all I see as far as economic stewardship are the guys that got us into this mess in the first place.

Whether he sees it in himself or not, Fox News is clearly reacting as if Stewart is a political player. This is probably because their ratings have been badly beaten by the hordes of young people who turn to The Daily Show for political insights and crude fart jokes (sometimes) about whoever is acting the fool this week in sensational news.

It’s plain to see how Wallace tries to marginalize Stewart, but in reality conservatives ought to embrace him. If anyone could honestly claim to be “fair and balanced” during all of Sunday’s lineup… it was probably Stewart.

Throughout the New Hampshire debate, moderator John King made special note to inform the candidates that time was ever-so-important when they answered a question, yet had the gall to introduce what is probably the most frivolous line of presidential debate questions in… well, probably ever. I combed through the transcript and present just those really inane questions and responses:

KING: Leno or Conan?
SANTORUM: Probably Leno. But I don’t watch either. Sorry.

KING: Right before the break we did this thing called “This or That.” Just to learn a little bit about the personality of the candidates. Senator Santorum doesn’t stay up very late. He’s a parent. I understand that. He said if he had to he would pick Leno over Conan. Congresswoman Bachmann, to you, Elvis or Johnny Cash?
BACHMANN: That’s really tough. That’s really — both, both.
KING: Both?
BACHMANN: Yes.
KING: Both.
BACHMANN: I’ve “Christmas with Elvis” on my iPod. (LAUGHTER)
KING: All right. Now we know what’s on the congresswoman’s iPod.

KING: All right, we need to work in another break. I know all the candidates want to get in on these issues and other issues. We will get back to them, I promise you that. As we go to break, remember at home, if you have a question on Facebook, send it to us. If you have a question on Twitter, send it to us. You also can use your smartphone to get some exclusive information. We’re playing a little bit of an exercise called “This or That” to learn more about our candidates. It was Conan or Leno. It was Elvis or Johnny Cash. Mr. Speaker, “Dancing with the Stars” or “American Idol”?
GINGRICH: “American Idol.”
KING: “American Idol” it is. Our candidates continue their debate in just a moment. Stay with us. (APPLAUSE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Welcome back to our Republican debate here in the first- in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire. Seven candidates up on stage as they try to impress the voters of New Hampshire and the voters of the country tonight. We’ve become, we are told, a trending topic on Twitter. Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to look up there just a bit, and we’ll get to some of these questions, because they’re good questions, privatization there, improving relationships with the Middle East, what industries do you think can reinvent America. All good suggestions from concerned citizens across the country watching this debate unfold. Before we go and out of every break, we’re doing an exercise called “This or That” to learn more about our candidates. The speaker had no hesitation at all: “American Idol” over “Dancing with the Stars. Congressman Paul, BlackBerry or iPhone?
PAUL: BlackBerry.
KING: BlackBerry it is.

KING: We’re going to work in another break. Still a lot more ground to cover with our seven Republican candidates for president tonight. Voters here in New Hampshire are asking the questions. You can help us at home on Facebook and on Twitter. Please send in your suggestions. In and out of every break, we’re asking a candidate a personal question, this or that, to make a choice. Mr. Cain, deep dish or thin crust? (LAUGHTER)
CAIN: Deep dish.
KING: Deep dish, it is. Our seven candidates for the Republican presidential nomination will be right back. (CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
KING: Seven Republican candidates for president here on the campus of St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. Let’s continue our conversation. But, first, let’s continue to know our candidates a little better. Deep dish emphatically from Mr. Cain before the break. Governor Romney, to you now. Imagine you’re getting to the barbecue joint. Maybe it’s here in New Hampshire, maybe it’s South Carolina ordering some wings. Spicy or mild?
ROMNEY: Oh, spicy. Absolutely. And, by the way, Bruins are up 4-0. (CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
KING: All right. All right. There you go. There you go. I think — I think that’s an audience pleaser.

KING: All right. I want to — got to work in one more break before we go. We’ve got a lot more ground to cover. Believe it or not, our candidates — we’re running out of time here. Into and out of every break we’re having a little experiment called “This or That.” “Spicy” from Governor Romney was the last one. Governor Pawlenty, to you, Coke or Pepsi?
PAWLENTY: Coke.
KING: Coke it is, a good, swift answer there. We’ve got to work in one more break. Before we go to break, though, I just want to show you. We’re asking you on Twitter to show us what you think. What are the candidates’ opinions on whether or not to withdraw troops from Afghanistan? That and a number of foreign policy questions when we return here to the campus of Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, seven Republicans who want to be your next president debating. Stay right here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

Wow, thanks for dumbing down the debate, I look forward to Coca Cola sponsoring Pawlenty’s campaign instead of him talking about the issues. Way to make seeking the most powerful office in the country another exercise in irrelevant claptrap, CNN. Thumbs up from here to Jersey Shore.

I counted at least seventeen times that John King made a direct mention of the time to the candidates in the CNN transcript. Of course, having watched the show live I was also keenly aware of King’s constant interruptions, throat clearing, and otherwise interjecting to stop a candidate from being long-winded (which wasn’t half as bad as these guys can be if you really let them go at it). Half the time I was wondering if maybe CNN should step back and let the debaters talk about the issues instead of making them fight over thirty seconds of time like children.

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. – Carl Sandburg

And I say it’s high time for him to lay into them. CNN is practically encouraging Paul to make the fur fly:

“I told you so”: At this time four years ago, Ron Paul was a minor candidate, at odds with his own party, who was running a presidential campaign on a shoestring budget. Times have changed, and so has Paul’s status in the GOP field. Instead of polling in the low single digits, he is now in the mid- to high-single digits, is raising money at a healthy pace, and is no longer considered a fringe candidate.

What happened? Well, his message seems to have resonated beyond his eclectic group of supporters made up of young adults, anti-war activists and libertarian-minded Americans. He says the country is embracing his views, especially his opposition to the wars and calls for U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan.

Tonight, Paul will be the same Paul that stood on this same stage in Manchester four years ago, except this time, he has more support and more money. But his message will be the same — and don’t be surprised if he says “I told you so.”

And a lot more, the fur will certainly be metaphorically flying in Manchester tonight as the official candidates take to the stage. Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Herman Cain will “debate” while Ron Paul will again smack some Constitutional sense into the public (the debate organizers have excluded Gary Johnson, which is a dark cloud that shouldn’t hang over a modern political debate and really just shames CNN).

According to a recent poll, a mere twenty six percent of us in Americaland support military actions in Libya right now, another big war with another big price tag, which is becoming really expensive politically to boot. I’m sure Joe Unemployed will be happy to hear at least Ron Paul is getting some airtime to tell them the damn truth about it how it’s being paid for on the backs of the middle class, because you know none of those other nitwits is honest enough to break it down and pull away the curtain (and Sarah Palin is simply not even smart enough to connect the dots, much less verbalize it adeptly, but thankfully will not occupy the stage).

I was planning on bootlegging a stream off of Justin.tv but I have a feeling the cease and desist trolls are in high gear today and everyone without a cable box will have to use CNN’s live stream.

Out of curiosity, I found myself browsing through their video segments showing off the debate stage assemblage and various preparations (this is show business, after all) and found them actually boasting a shot of their production bus toilet. CNN just wants to show that they are so dedicated to making this live debate show come off without a hitch that their engineers aren’t allowed to walk more than twenty feet to poop. That’s called business efficiency.

Anyways… yadda yadda yadda, on with The New Hampshire GOP Debates 2011 sponsored by CNN and Charmin™ I’ll be sure to let everyone know my thoughts in the aftermath and possibly during. I may or may not be drinking, but I will be on a drug called Charlie Sheen.

We know stupidity crosses party lines, but when anyone is this inept at basic American history, they need to be shown the door away from anything political. Just watch for yourself:

Transcript of Sarah Palin blundering through an explanation of who Paul Revere was for internet posterity:

He who warned uh… the… the British that they weren’t going to be takin’ away our arms. Uh, by reading those bills. And um, making sure as he’s ridin’ his horse through town to… send those warning shots and bells that uh, we were going to be secure and we were going to be free.

History teachers everywhere: ಠ_ಠ

I’m sure there’s some free internet lessons on Paul Revere suited to Sarah Palin’s learning speed.

UPDATE: I should have known reddit would turn this into a derping contest.

The perverts in violet are meeting the resistance face to face on their own turf, and finding that when they push (and grope)… real Americans are pushing back:

It’s only a matter of time until this boils over. The Liberty vs Security fight has finally stopped dancing around the airport security theater and semantics game that’s been played up since 9/11 and is now coming full speed to mass clashes.

At this point the cynicism is so entrenched in the Liberty camp that the top YouTube comment is a false flag warning:

Our government will issue a false flag attack, probably nukes on Washington or other country. then blame it on terrorists, then use that excuse to take more liberties away and kill anyone who questions it for “liberty” and to counter terrorism. That or throw you in there FEMA camps to brain wash you or kill you ether or. Worst part is, everyone will eat it all up like 9/11 then worship them as their saviors..sickens me. I have 2 kids ill be damned if i have them grow up in that world!

I’m not going down the road of terrorist/nuke/whatever false flag attack right here and now, because frankly it’s crap like that which keeps everyone fearful in the first place (and the government loves that fear, seriously). But I do love the closing on that missive to the government watchers. S/he certainly already has tons of responsibility as a parent, and this is something that fires people up (that’s also two children who will be keen to the libertarian walk of life).

It really is like dominoes.

STATUS UPDATE: 1306190936
Time since last idiotic sabbatical: 296 days
Time since last rapture false alarm: 5 days 4 hours
SkyNet systems status: offline
Outlook: not installed

We’re currently broadcasting at a respectable audience size of about 300-500 people on any given day just for the daily linkfest. As I’m sure a lot of you are aware, I am the main link poster (which is a responsibility I more than enjoy, believe me), but the more others chip in, the more time I can spend improving the site rather than compulsively news-mongering.

Well it’s been a while since I took a moment to address the Hammer of Truth readership/membership directly and I’ll keep it short and sweet. I want to open the floor up to questions, criticisms, and anything you guys want to throw at me and the site. My TODO list is already lengthy, just pile more onto it.

En garde!

*edit: fixed crummy spelling, it happens