The ravens are looking a bit sluggish. Tell Malcolm they need new batteries.

Morals Or Money

Instapundit suggests that Paypal are becoming the Web Morality Police:

Beginning Friday, PayPal will begin penalizing users who buy things it doesn't want them to: prescription drugs from unverified pharmacies, material with even a whiff of sex and gambling or lottery services. . . .

Its policy on adult materials is especially stringent, banning not only any material or services suggesting sexual activity but also "non-adult services whose Web site marketing can be reasonably misconstrued as allowing adult material or services to be purchased using PayPal."

I rather suspect that this has nothing at all to do with morality - and everything to do with customer complaints. Unverified pharmacies? Read "scam artists". (And spam artists, judging from the state of my inbox.) There are legitimate (if that's the word) adult services online - Playboy now has an online service - but the area is rife with scammers and spammers as well, because it has a solid track record of actually making money. I don't know whether online gambling is profitable, but it has attracted the spam-and-scam crowd too.

I don't think Paypal give a damn about what you spend your money on; what they do care about is giving refunds. They hate giving refunds.

And note these paragraphs from the article at inernetnews.com:

A year ago, eBay paid $10 million to settle charges by the U.S. District Attorney that it violated the U.S. Patriot Act by transmitting funds earned through online gambling. When it announced the acquisition, eBay said it would stop PayPal's gambling payments.

Merchants using PayPal to sell pharmaceuticals online must be certified by the National Association Boards of Pharmacy's Verified Internet Pharmacy Practices Site program.

It's not about morals, it's about money.

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News From The 21st Century

After two injections of the vaccine, sheep burped 8 per cent less methane in a 13 hour test.

(New Scientist, 25 September 2004)

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What The New York Times Meant To Say

Sometimes you have to read between the lines:

After days of expressing unfounded confidence about the obviously bogus documents used in a deeply biased "60 Minutes'' report that might have raised new questions about President Bush's National Guard service were the evidence in question not transparently false, CBS News officials finally have admitted to grave doubts about the authenticity of the material, network officials said last night.

The officials, who asked not to be identified because if this gets out they will lose their jobs, said CBS News would most likely make an announcement as early as today that it had been deceived about the documents' origins which was obvious to any reasonably bright nine-year-old. CBS News has already begun intensive reporting on where they came from although here we are using the word intensive as the direct opposite of the term extensive, and people at the network said it was now finally possible that officials would open an internal inquiry into how it moved forward with the report when anyone with the intelligence given to the average jellyfish would have canned it in the first five minutes. Officials say they are now beginning to believe the report was too flawed to have gone on the air and that Dan Rather may not, in fact, have brought the commandments down from Mount Sinai as he previously claimed.

But they cautioned that CBS News could still pull back from an announcement and resume their absurd attempts at a bluff when they no longer hold any cards. Officials met last night with Dan Rather, the anchor who presented the report, to go over the information it had collected about the documents one last time before making a final decision and see if he was willing to go quietly. Mr. Rather was not available for comment late last night as he had to be restrained following the meeting.

(For the irony impaired, the words in italics are mine. The words not in italics are not mine.)

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Democrats Suck!

Three-year-old Sophia Parlock cries while seated on the shoulders of her father, Phil Parlock, after having their Bush-Cheney sign torn up by Kerry-Edwards supporters on Thursday, Sept. 16, 2004, at the Tri-State Airport in Huntington, W.Va. Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards (news - web sites) made a brief stop at the airport as he concluded his two-day bus tour to locations in West Virginia and Ohio. (AP Photo/Randy Snyder)

(Yahoo! News via comment at Ace of Spades)

Update: LGF has more. Sharp-eyed lizards noted that the guy at the left is holding part of the girl's sign.

Update: Okay, everybody in the world had this story before me. So here's a picture of a kitty.

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Bored Now

From: Reverend Pixy Misa
To: Dan Rather

You're dead. Fall down.

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One Day At A Time

The sky is blue, the sun is warm, the water in the harbour sparkles in the light.

I spent the day with my family. We had lunch, and talked, we saw a movie, we had dinner and watched videos.

But though I go on with my life as we all must, I shall never forget what happened in New York three years ago today.

Jennifer, Sarah, and Ted offer their thoughts.

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Clippy Weighs In

Okay, my last post on this particular brouhaha, I promise, but this is hysterical!

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Two Thoughts On Yesterday's Kerfuffle

First, CBS News says:

60 Minutes consulted a handwriting analyst and document expert who believes the material is authentic.

To anyone who has the slightest idea of how documents were produced in the early 70's, the memos scream fake, and a clumsy and childish fake at that. So either CBS are lying and they did not bother do get the documents authenticated at all, or their handwriting analyst and document expert is a retarded hamster.

Second, as Dean Esmay noted yesterday and others have noted since, the Democratic National Committee was busy pumping this story at the very moment it was melting down:

Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 22:42:39 -0500

....

Back in February, President Bush sat down in the Oval Office for an interview with Tim Russert and spoke about his service in the National Guard. Bush told us, "I put in my time, proudly so." He said, "And I'm telling you, I did my duty."

But now we know that Bush dishonored the Oval Office by lying to the American people.

New investigations from multiple media sources have revealed the truth about President Bush's service. New military documents show that Bush disobeyed a direct order from his commander to take a flight physical and "failed to perform to U.S. Air Force/Texas Air National Guard standards" — and was grounded as a result.

New evidence supports claims that Bush missed months of service and that he never showed up for service with the Alabama National Guard.

New evidence shows that Bush received special treatment. His supervisor wrote that he felt pressured from above to "sugar coat" Bush's records.

This stands in stark contrast to the Republican Party's distancing itself from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Very very stark contrast. So stark that some people are wondering:

From the Kerry perspective a scandal involving forged documents is a disaster. Kerry had yesterday to get in front of the story and he missed that boat. Instead of being able to stay on message and trying to beat down the post convention pulse which has sent Bush several points ahead in various opinion polls, Kerry is likely to face questions about who was responsible for the forgeries. While it would be astonishing if anyone inside the Kerry organization had a hand in them, it is a question that will be asked. Moreover, the spectacle of Kerry announcing that his campaign organization and the Democratic Party had nothing to do with issuing those documents will occupy several critical news cycles and focus attention on character -- exactly where Kerry does not want to be.

At the bottom of the story, though, is this point: CBS have been extremely, extremely stupid in their handling of this. The Democratic Party have been nearly, if not equally, as stupid. Whether they involved themselves in this mess deliberately, or were unwitting dupes of the forgers because they wanted to believe, it is transparently clear that they are not particularly bright.

Tell Me Again Why I Need You, Karl.

Damned if I know.

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Set The Wayback Machine To 1972!

So, the TANG memos from '72 and '73 critical of the then Lt. Bush are forgeries. CBS got a little 'splainin to do.

As usual, Scott Ott and Jim Treacher are all over the story.

For those looking for more serious stuff, Stephen Macklin has more here and here, and Powerline is covering the story in detail: here, here, here. here, and here. INDC Journal does the work CBS should have done and follows up here.

Dr. Rusty notes:

Forget the swiftie thing, it took us weeks to get the mainstream press in on the story. This...this took a matter of hours. We are the press now.

Steve the Llamabutcher has something to offer CBS. Triticale speculates on the evil genius of Karl Rove... Though admittedly it's easy to look like an easy genius when your enemies are total morons. Nick Queen informs us that CBS is now doing what it should have done before running the story. Ace points out that even Associated Press - they of the missing "boo" - quote an expert dismissing the documents as forgeries. The quote is actually kind of funny:

Independent document examiner Sandra Ramsey Lines said the memos looked like they had been produced on a computer using Microsoft Word software, which wasn't available when the documents were supposedly written in 1972 and 1973.

Yeah. It's like someone trying to peddle photographs of King Henry VIII. Ace has more here, here, here, here... Heck, just go to his blog and read from the top.

Nathan of Brain Fertilizer has a question on the etymology of "CYA". And annika is angry. We still like her when she's angry, of course.

Dean Esmay notes that the DNC doesn't read blogs. Ilyka needs to quit being such a pessimist. And Tim Blair notes that the documents were checked by phone. That is, the "experts" that CBS relied on never actually looked at the documents.

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John Kerry's Bad Day Out

Pentagon to check Kerry war record:

In a fresh blow to John Kerry's flagging presidential campaign, the Pentagon has ordered an official investigation into the awards of the Democratic senator's five Vietnam War decorations.

News of the inquiry came as President George W Bush opened an 11-point lead over his rival - the widest margin since serious campaigning began - according to the first poll released since last week's Republican convention.

A question mark has been raised over one of John Kerry's awards

The highly unusual inquiry is to be carried out by the inspector-general's office of the United States navy, for which Sen Kerry served as a Swift Boat captain for four months in 1968, making two tours of duty.

He was wounded in action and subsequently awarded three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star. But for the past month, the exact details of Mr Kerry's military service in Vietnam have become shrouded in a controversy that the navy has now decided warrants a full-blown search for the truth.

Can we gloat just a little bit?

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