Sadly, No!

A friend sends us a link to Bug Me Not:

What’s this all about then?
BugMeNot.com was created as a mechanism to quickly bypass the login of web sites that require compulsory registration and/or the collection of personal/demographic information (such as the New York Times).

Why not just register?

It’s a breach of privacy.

Sites don’t have a great track record with the whole spam thing.

It’s contrary to the fundamental spirit of the net. Just ask Google.

It’s pointless due to the significant percentage of users who enter fake demographic details anyway.

It’s a waste of time.

It’s annoying as hell.

Imagine if every site required registration to access content.

NewsMax writes (in an email:)

In September 2000, President Bill Clinton asked the U.N. to delay the opening of the General Assembly out of respect for the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur (the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.)

The answer was an emphatic “No.”

Clinton boycotted the General Assembly’s opening day and spoke the following week.

What happened:

US President Bill Clinton is to address the session today, having delayed his address by a day because of Yom Kippur.

The United States, Israel, and the American Jewish Congress had lobbied the UN to delay the start of the assembly session, but the 188-member General Assembly refused to change the date. –Jerusalem Post, September 21, 1999.

We congratulate NewsMax on very nearly getting a story right.

Elections for the European Parliament were held across the EU. Andrew Sullivan called the results A European Protest. (Followed by an “analysis” that looks only at Britain and Germany.) Michael “The J. means Just a Liberal” Totten titled his post European Earthquake. Here is the composition of the European Parliament following the elections, compared to the 1999 results. [Arranged from right to left, following the EP’s order.]

Some earthquake. As for Schroeder’s party’s performance, this article does help make sense of what is going on in Germany:

The dilemma for the opposition Christian Democrats is obvious. If the economy picks up, Schr?der?s chances will improve. If they refuse to cooperate and demand the implementation of their own reform proposals, proposals which are more sweeping than the government’s, the electorate may well opt for the devil they know, rather than the devil they do not. Chancellor Schr?der could then come out on top in 2006.

[Sources: 1999 and 2004. Distribution of seats for 2004 provisional.]

Yesterday, we linked to a BBC article brought to our attention by The All Spin Zone:

“Anyone out there holding – as I gather Prime Minister Blair has recently said – the prospect that, in fact, the Iraq Survey Group is going to unmask actual weapons of mass destruction, are really delusional,” he [David Kay] said.

Because some things are worth hearing with your own ears, here is a MP3 file of the relevant segment (4-minute clip, 3MB file.) Things to look forward to:

Kay: “I was absolutely flabbergasted … I was appalled based on the evidence I’d seen that anyone would think that [WMD evidence in Iraq] a slam dunk.”

“Fundamentally George [Tenet] is an expert in the craft of politics, not in the craft of intelligence.”

“The unwillingness to take the responsibility of saying, a few simple words: we were wrong.”

Via Blair and G.A. Cerny we hear of this:

Insurgents are stepping up attacks on Iraq’s fragile infrastructure even as the U.S. pumps in billions of dollars to rebuild it. But with electricity in Baghdad flowing at less than half prewar levels and a scorching summer ahead, many Iraqis see the struggle to ensure adequate power as a metaphor for a U.S.-led reconstruction mission gone bad.

As G.A. Cerny notes, we have been on this beat for some time now. In our most recent post, we noted that the CPA no longer releases electricity production figures, due to “operational security concerns.” Reading articles like the one above, we wonder what kind of “security concerns” prompted this change.

The high point of power production in Baghdad was 1,553MW, on May 15. Even taking half of that leaves electricity production well below Baghdad’s post-war average (1,290MW, with only 7 days since August 1 below 1,000MW.) How good (or bad) are things countrywide? We have no idea. This article offers a few hints, though some of its facts are (demonstrably) wrong (and CPA-friendly:)

After a $1 billion American aid injection, Iraq’s national grid briefly topped prewar levels of 4,400 megawatts in March and averaged about 3,900 megawatts in May. Baghdad’s problem is that American authorities redistributed electricity evenly across the country ? everybody now gets 8-12 hours a day.

The March average was (per the CPA’s data) 4,024MW, with a peak (March 18) of 4,356MW. 4,356 for a day does not “briefly top” 4,400. To its credit, this US News & World Report story gets it very right:

The Coalition Provisional Authority missed its June 1 goal of raising peak generation to 6,000 megawatts from the recent level of about 4,000. Reappointed to the interim government on June 1, Minister of Electricity Aiham al-Sammarae headed home to suburban Chicago, where he owns an electrical engineering consulting firm, and to the United Nations seeking release of money due Iraq under the oil-for-food program. He’s due back in Baghdad this week.

The Star Telegram (AP) story provides more information:

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The Wanna household lives by the timetable of the Baghdad power supply.

Bedtime is around 11 p.m., when the electricity is cut off. It returns at 2 a.m., and the streetlights shine through windows deliberately left uncovered, serving as an alarm clock for Bahija Wanna, the mother. […]

At 7 a.m., as her bank executive husband, her children and much of the rest of Baghdad are rising, the power takes another break, and the house returns to swelter mode. […] Suddenly, at 11 a.m., the fluorescent lights come on, the refrigerator hums to life, and the ceiling fan begins to turn.

Enjoy your summer dear Iraqis.

David Kay may be about to get personally acquainted with some of the finer canine members of the British forces:

Mr Kay told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that British and American leaders should simply apologise and admit that they were wrong. […]

“Anyone out there holding – as I gather Prime Minister Blair has recently said – the prospect that, in fact, the Iraq Survey Group is going to unmask actual weapons of mass destruction, are really delusional,” he said.

“There is nothing there. There is a programme there. There was an intention of Saddam Hussein at some point to reconstitute it.

(Via The All Spin Zone.)

Following up on an earlier post (click here or scroll down,) we offer this:

The U.S. population is estimated at close to 300 million right now, and we’re supposed to get worked up over what 1,230 people who are registered voters have to say? Hell, I only just registered yesterday, so I would’ve been ineligible. And if the margin of error is plus or minus 3%, and 53% of these 1,230 people thought war was not necessary, then perhaps only 615 people in the whole USA said this. [Emphasis added]

There’s dumb (D.) There’s fucktard dumb (FD.) And then there’s clueless fucktard dumb (CFD.) That was somewhere below CFD.

Bonus points (added:)

The Times Poll contacted 1,477 adults nationwide, including 1,230 registered voters by telephone June 5 through 8, 2004.

We do have to remember that the war in Iraq ended less than five months ago, so some patience is in order.

–Saul Singer, National Review Online. September 2, 2003.

Ready? Set. Go!:

It’s no lie that everywhere in the world that there’s conflict, Muslims are somehow involved.

(Go here and scroll down if you want to see the post.)

Just for fun, please also see.

Yes, we’re back. Yes, we were gone. Well, kind of anyway. The award-winning content was still here, but we couldn’t login and post new crap. To add insult to injury, you couldn’t leave comments anymore. Though at least the comments were totally broken at the start. For a short period of time today, you could load the comments and type a new one, though trying to post resulted in an error. Anyway, all those problems are gone. For now.

You see, our ISP (Scott) would have you believe it was a simple technical problem. Really? Sadly, No! What Scott sometimes pretends isn’t true is that he is, in fact, Dutch, while the staff of Sadly, No! lives in Germany. Germany – Holland. Mean anything to you? Of course you exclaim, Germany is playing against Holland on Monday Tuesday [thanks to Mr. Orange] in the 12th European Football Championship. Obviously, the Dutch have decided to take the first shot by temporarily disabling Sadly, No! to give their team an edge. This subterfuge will not be rewarded. On Monday, Germany will teach the Netherlands a lesson. And then, Sadly, No! will be deleted from our ISP’s servers. Enjoy us while you still can.