I obviously don't get it

The Daily Caller has an amusing story about a Pennsylvania state house Democratic party primary race in which Gregg Kravitz claims to be bisexual while his opponent, Babette Josephs, counters that Kravitz is a "closeted straight man" trying to curry favor with gay voters.

The part I don't get is a quote from Kravitz:

I want to be completely open with how I am proud of my bisexuality.

Why does one feel the need to express pride in their sexual preference? Isn't that a bit like expressing pride in your preference to, say, brunettes over redheads?

Linux tech talk

Since I'm between jobs at the moment, I'm also between laptops. And since Mrs. Poolbar wanted a new (smaller) laptop, we went out and got her a new one, and I took her 2-year-old Toshiba Satellite, which is a great machine but roughly the size of an aircraft carrier. It also had the misfortune of coming with Windows Vista.

As soon as I got all her e-mail, files, pictures and music transferred to her new laptop, I installed Ubuntu Linux 9.10 on the old one. I've used Ubuntu off and on for the past few years and found it to be by far the easiest Linux distribution to deal with. And since it's Linux, it's FREE.

Installation took about half an hour and required only a minimal amount of Q&A, nearly all up front so that once it began the install routine took over and did the rest. The installation was flawless, and much to my surprise, this version recognized every bit of proprietary hardware on the system, including all the external controls for audio volume and media playback (play/pause, reverse/fast-forward, etc.). I'd found with earlier versions of Ubuntu that those things typically didn't work and you'd just have to either live with it or hunt down manufacturer-specific drivers to make them work, which often involved a lot of tedious effort.

Boot time is unbelievably fast, especially when compared to most Windows-based systems. The laptop goes from a powered-off state to fully up and usable in about 60 seconds.

Ubuntu installs Firefox as its default web browser, but since I'd become fond of Google's Chrome browser, I installed that one and set it as the default. I noticed right away that page loading was unbelievably slow. So I tried pulling up some pages with Firefox, and observed the same behavior. But when I ran network speed tests, the throughput was right where it was supposed to be. Further confusing me was that, once a page finally loaded, embedded YouTube and other video clips loaded in a snap. I obviously wasn't having a network performance problem, so I started paying closer attention to what was happening when loading a web page.

I noticed almost immediately that the status bar of the browser would get stuck on "resolving host" for extended periods of time. Now, the DNS settings coming from Comcast had never been a problem in the past, and didn't seem to be an issue for any other computers in the house. It had to be a problem with how DNS was implemented with this version of Ubuntu Linux.

This morning I finally got fed up with the problem and started poking around on the Ubuntu forums, and came across this discussion thread. As I suspected it was a DNS issue, but only because of Ubuntu's implementation of IPv6. From the discussion thread:

It has to do with DNS lookups via IPv6 occuring before DNS lookups via IPv4. So the workstation (or app) has to timeout on the IPv6 request before it will make a new request on IPv4. OpenDNS gives an immediate response for the AAAA record query which eliminates the timeout problem.

In short, most DNS servers right now only resolve to IPv4, and not to IPv6. But since Ubuntu first attempts an IPv6 lookup, that request has to timeout before the IPv4 lookup can occur. The OpenDNS fix mentioned in the quoted comment is described here, and after making the changes web pages are loading nice and fast.

At least I didn't have to deal with firmware cutters this time around.

Consequences

Got this in the e-mail today and had to post it. Unfortunately, I don't know who gets the credit for producing it.

Thanks again, AB!

Smart power

These three images from this week's Nuclear Security Summit tell us all we need to know about Obama's foreign policy stance:

Here's Obama bowing before a Communist dictator:

And here's Obama embracing the Marxist president of Brazil:

And finally, here's Obama lecturing the Prime Minister of a close ally, Canada:

Thanks and a hat tip to my friend A.B. for e-mailing me these pics.

Red Sox watch

I had to stay up last night to catch the end of the Red Sox's win over the Evil Empire on opening day...it was just too sweet to miss.

It started rough for Boston, with Josh Beckett giving up two home runs in the second inning, one each to Jorge Posada and Yanks newcomer Curtis Granderson. It got downright ugly by mid-game, with the Evil Empire extending their lead to 5-1.

But thanks to a miscue or two by the Yanks and some heroics from Pedroia and Youkilis, the good guys prevailed, 9-7. Nice way to start the season.

Banditos

It's been a while since I've posted a music video, so here's a blast from 14 years past.

The Refreshments' most-played song is probably the theme music from "King Of The Hill", but this is unquestionably their best song, and one of my personal all-time favorites.

"The danger to America is not Barack Obama..."

A friend e-mailed this to me today, and it was tagged "Author Unknown":

The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the presidency. It will be easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to an electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails us. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.

If you know who wrote it, please leave something in the comments.

About those Tea Party "racists"...

Ever since the Tea Party thing launched about a year ago, Democrats and their loyal media have attempted to paint the entire movement as a pack of racists. The theme has become so pervasive that casual observers have come to believe it, upholding Vladimir Lenin's theory that "a lie told often enough becomes truth".

Last Sunday during the health care debate on Capitol Hill and the attendant Tea Party demonstration there, a number of black Congressional leaders claimed to have been jeered with racial slurs, and one even claimed to having been spit upon. Not to be left out, Rep. Barney Frank claimed to have been targeted with homophobic epithets. Naturally, the media took every unsubstantiated claim, packaged them up nicely, and reported them as undisputed fact.

Now supposedly, these acts occurred repeatedly as the accusers were walking to the Capitol building from a nearby Congressional office building on the Capitol grounds. Since the underground tunnels connecting the buildings is the preferred route, their presence on the grounds was unusual enough that there were dozens of members of the media and their cameras covering their walk. And yet not one video tape of any of these alleged incidents has surfaced. Not one.

Someone given to conspiracy theories might even think that their very choice of an outdoor route among the Tea Partiers was premeditated just so that they could make such accusations.

But not me.

File under: "Told ya so"

Nearly four years ago, I wrote a post here in which I speculated on a "take no prisoners" policy forced upon us by the Left's (and the Democrats', but I repeat myself) position on Guantanamo Bay. Well, kiss my ass and call me Nostra-fucking-damus.

Without a location outside the United States for sending prisoners, the administration must resort to turning the suspects over to foreign governments, bringing them to the U.S. or even killing them.

In one case last year, U.S. special operations forces killed an Al Qaeda-linked suspect named Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in a helicopter attack in southern Somalia rather than trying to capture him, a U.S. official said. Officials had debated trying to take him alive but decided against doing so in part because of uncertainty over where to hold him, the official added.

It's not that I'm going to shed any tears over these guys, but it'd be nice to squeeze a little intel out of them.

Barack Obama campaigned on this issue, and one of his very first acts after taking office was to issue an executive order to close Gitmo. I can't believe 53% of American voters wanted this walking disaster as President.

Pelosi: Do it for the Bohemians

If you ever thought that the health care reform debate was simply about health care, this little bit from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow should put that to rest:

So, you can‘t—everybody has so much to gain from this, small businesses, as I said, seniors, young people, women, our economy. Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance or that people could start a business and be entrepreneurial and take risk, but not job loss because of a child with asthma or someone in the family is bipolar—you name it, any condition—is job locking.

That's right, folks. Your Democratic betters in Congress think ObamaCare simply must pass so that artists can quit their day jobs. Left unsaid, of course, is who shoulders their fair share of the cost burden.

Pelosi's little slip of the tongue reveals that this is more about creating permanent wards of the state.

File under: "What if Bush did it?"

Yet another entry in the WIBDI file, this one coming from Wired.

Now there’s DNA sampling. Obama told [America's Most Wanted host John] Walsh he supported the federal government, as well as the 18 states that have varying laws requiring compulsory DNA sampling of individuals upon an arrest for crimes ranging from misdemeanors to felonies. The data is lodged in state and federal databases, and has fostered as many as 200 arrests nationwide, Walsh said.

The American Civil Liberties Union claims DNA sampling is different from mandatory, upon-arrest fingerprinting that has been standard practice in the United States for decades.

A fingerprint, the group says, reveals nothing more than a person’s identity. But much can be learned from a DNA sample, which codes a person’s family ties, some health risks, and, according to some, can predict a propensity for violence.

Note that this is upon arrest, not upon conviction. Setting aside for a moment the question of civil liberties, this would be a hideously expensive proposition. As noted over at Ace's place, there are around 38,000 arrests per day nationwide not counting traffic violations, so this would require massive infrastructure.

Is he or isn't he?

Yesterday afternoon Twitter was buzzing with news that the tubby American traitor Adam Gadahn, aka Abu Al-Babee Fhat (OK, not really, but I like the name) among other aliases, had been captured in Karachi, Pakistan. Then came the buzz-killing news that maybe it wasn't Gadahn who'd been captured, after all.

This morning, ABC is carrying an article that seems to claim conclusively that the captured terrorist isn't Gadahn. Well, sort of.

A Taliban leader who goes by the name Abu Yahya, just like American-turned-al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn, was picked up in Karachi in recent days, but that person is not Gadahn, a senior Pakistani government official told ABC News.

But there are conflicting reports about whether it is notorious Adam Gadahn.

Reports of the capture of an American-born al-Qaeda member by Pakistani authorities gave rise to speculation over whether it was Gadahn, the 31-year-old California-born Muslim convert who has been wanted since 2004.

The official told ABC News the leader who was arrested was possibly Abu Yahya Mujahdeen al-Adam, said to be another American member of al Qaeda, but the Pakistanis have yet to make that identification positive, the official said.

Dawn, an English-language newspaper, reports that Abu Yahya Mujahdeen al-Adam is an Egyptian-born U.S. citizen from Pennsylvania who helps command foreign militants fighting in Afghanistan and coordinates activities from Dubai.

I dunno...seems fishy. Granted, these guys claim more names than they do wives so there's sure to be some overlap. But to have two upper-echelon guys so similarly named? Possible, I guess.

Still, this is exactly the way I'd play it if I were the US intel guy on the spot and the captured figure was Adam Gadahn, given that Gadahn is a US citizen with a federal treason indictment.

He was captured by the Pakistanis and is in their custody subject to their interrogation, and Pakistani intelligence can squeeze the guy in ways we can't. So the US and Pakistan can play the yes-he-is, no-he-isn't game for a while and let Pakistani authorities get whatever intel they can, and then turn him over to US officials. At that point, as a wanted US citizen, he'd rightfully be turned over to the federal criminal justice system and have the right to shut up and get a lawyer.

Well, here's to hoping, anyway.

The wrong way to eat an elephant

There's an old expression that goes something like this: "What's the best way to eat an elephant? One bite at a time." That, of course, would be as opposed to trying to swallow the whole thing at once, which is effectively what Obama and congressional Democrats are trying to do in their comprehensive health care reform efforts.

The problems with health care (and there are problems) are a collection of separate issues, each of which can be fixed independently of the others. So why not eat this elephant one bite at a time by crafting focused, targeted, separate pieces of legislation to address each one?

Over the course of a couple of years we'd see noticeable, incremental improvements for millions of Americans. Instead, Democrats want to make history by passing sweeping, pork-laden legislation and as a result, either nothing at all will get done, or all the wrong things will get done.

This is stupidity, narcissism and hubris on display on a grand scale.