writer's block is a bitch.

Jdasjkh f alsdjkhouiwenjlnasc ljn - News - MSNBC.com

My Rattlesnake Bite-Pictures

Never get bitten by a rattle snake.

Justin's Rattlesnake Pics

After Sept. 11, there was an external enemy, "evildoers" against whom to summon fear and fervor. Now, instead, the flood has brought to the surface the deepest national questions of race, class and inequality. On Aug. 30, the day after the hurricane hit, the Census Bureau released figures showing that the poor had increased by 1.1 million since 2003, to 12.7 percent of the population, the fourth annual increase, with blacks and Hispanics the poorest, and the South remaining the poorest region. Since Bush has been in office, poverty has grown by almost 9 percent. (Under President Clinton, poverty fell by 25 percent.) As these issues began to receive serious attention for the first time in years, Bush reiterated that it was inappropriate to "play the blame game."

Meanwhile, his aides sought to blame New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco. On Sept. 3, the Washington Post, citing an anonymous "senior administration official," reported that Blanco "still had not declared a state of emergency." Newsweek published a similar report. Within hours, however, the Post published a correction; the report was false. In fact, Blanco had declared an emergency on Aug. 26 and sent President Bush a letter on Aug. 27 requesting that the federal government declare an emergency and provide aid; and, in fact, Bush did make such a declaration, thereby accepting responsibility. Nonetheless, these facts have not stymied White House aides from their drumbeat that state and local officials -- but curiously, not the Republican governors of Mississippi and Alabama -- are ultimately to blame.

Salon has had some really good coverage of the flood porn aspect of other peoples' misfortunes. Earlier this week they pointed out how Geraldo Rivera made some poor elderly woman walk from the heliport to the Superdome twice just so he could get another take for the newscast. Now we have a look at all of the self congratulating in the current Administration, who thinks that they've done everything right once they started.

'What didn't go right?'

The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."

So iraq's a myth and so is sub $70/barrel oil prices.

So do they have to redact the "mission accomplished" image?

This infact a good article I'm just too mad to write up a good thing about it.

U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq

I just wanted to say that I passed my second qualification exam (oral exam) on Tuesday, and am now officially a PhD candidate. Yay!

w00t indeed good job and remember only your brians can defeat the alien horde.

w00t!

[ For anyone that ever watched Alton Brown, this site's got a similar approach... -k]

Nerd Power.

Science of Cooking

Straight from the AP -> CNN -> memestreams -> YOU!

So this former FBI agent claims he's deep throat. Neither Woodward, Berstein, or Bradlee are confirming. So we won't know definitively until he dies... I'm not advocating murder, but at some point someone please just drop dead so we can finally know. Otherwise the conspiracy nut jobs will just keep breeding.

Ex- FBI official says he was 'Deep Throat' - May 31, 2005

] The sauce is named after its score on the chilli heat
] measure, the Scoville Unit.
]
] Reserve scores 16 million units, while a Red Savina, the
] world's spiciest pepper, measures just 570,000.

Chilli sauce is real killer

] Nochee deploys several dozen BlackBerrys on Thursday
] nights so patrons can swap text-based flirtations using
] the devices' built-in keyboards and brightly colored
] screens. Users sport numbered stickers corresponding to
] their gizmos, so spotting and pinging a potential date
] from across the room is straightforward.

KRT Wire | 04/27/2005 | Mobile flirting via BlackBerry

] ``Thanks for not staring at my adam's apple.''

--timball

I Fucked Ann Coulter in the Ass, Hard