2003-01-17 7:34 p.m.
you've crossed the line, you're gonna pay

"The wider issues of the day
Don't interest you, you'll have to pay..."
--Belle & Sebastian

More insanity from our headlines:

--The United States government wants its citizens to seriously believe that we are likely to come under attack from Iraqi or Iraqi-affiliated hackers. Am I the only one pissing myself laughing at this "news"?

Even Mr. Vatis, the former head of the FBI's cybercrime division, cast aspersions on the validity of these findings:

Mr. Vatis cautioned that tracing an electronic attack is a notoriously difficult task. In the case of denial-of-service attacks, hackers can hide their identities by penetrating hundreds of computer networks and turning them into "zombies" to use against a target system, he said.

He pointed to an episode in 1998 in which hackers penetrated United States military computers and briefly disrupted troop exercises in the Persian Gulf. The authorities originally suspected Iraqi agents, but they ultimately traced the attack to two California teenagers.

"You can't assume that your military adversary is responsible," Mr. Vatis said.

Think those kids are going to vote to re-elect Bush when they get out of the stockade?

--Thanks for shesajar for pointing me to Helen Thomas' tearing Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, a new orifice. In this press briefing, Fleischer barely avoids admitting that we have, in fact, NO reason to be invading Iraq, that they've taken no aggressive action towards us. (The eleven warheads they've found � completely empty warheads, mind � are most likely circumstantial. If you're planning a major campaign against any of your neighbors, let alone an "enemy" across the Atlantic, are eleven warheads really going to do so much?)

Reading the news lately makes me want to buy brass knuckles and do some really horrible, disfiguring damage to the distinguished *snort* gentleman from Texas' delicate Ivy League features. This whole debacle makes me feel neutered and full of steroids at the same time, pumped full of hormones and ready to do damage.

Will I get to?

Goddamnit, no. There's a little thing called Secret Service protection that'd get in the way. However, if anyone knows the right guys to bribe to get in position to pop the Big Cheese in the nose, just once, just so you can yell on TV afterwards, "6% Homeless! 6% Jobless! Go America!", lemme know.

Well, until the Secret Service guys mash my teeth into the pavement and hail me off to jail.

(Wait, is aggravated (and I mean that word sincerely) assault against the president considered treason, or is it just a plain ol' felony? Where's a damn lawyer when you need one?)