I love how the media just wants us to be in a recession… I mean, how else is ClintonObama going to get elected, but if the country is in shambles?

Even the report of news to the contrary, they can’t let go:

The bruised economy limped through the first quarter, growing at just a 0.6 percent pace as housing and credit problems forced people and businesses alike to hunker down.

(emphasis mine)

A “recession” is successive quarters of negative GDP. So we’re not in a recession. No where near one.

And we won’t be in one before the next election. Sorry, dems.

Hmmm…

The Story of Two Houses
Look over the descriptions of the following two houses and see if you can tell which belongs to an environmentalist:

HOUSE # 1:
A 20-room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house all heated by gas. In ONE MONTH ALONE this mansion consumes more energy than the average American household in an ENTIRE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and Natural gas runs over $2,400.00 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not in a northern or Midwestern “snow belt,” either. It’s in the South.

HOUSE # 2:
Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university, this house incorporates every “green” feature current
home construction can provide. The house contains only 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on arid high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in winter and cools it in summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas, and it consumes 25% of the electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Flowers and shrubs native to the area blend the property into the surrounding rural landscape.

HOUSE # 1 (20 room energy guzzling mansion) is outside of Nashville, Tennessee. It is the abode of that renowned environmentalist (and filmmaker) Al Gore.

HOUSE # 2 (model eco-friendly house) is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas. Also known as “the Texas White House,” it is the private residence of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.

via e-mail, checked.

I can’t believe this story is getting any airplay at all:

The National Security Agency’s Internet site has been placing files on visitors’ computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most of them.

That’s the first sentence of a AP article that’s getting front-page play on all major news sites over the past 24 hours:

• ABC: NSA Web Site Places ‘Cookies’ on Computers
• MSNBC: NSA used banned data-tracking on Web site
• CNET: NSA catches heat over cookies
• CBS: NSA Web Site Uses Banned ‘Cookies’
• Fox News: NSA Caught Placing Cookies on Web Visitors’ Computers
• Breitbart (via Drudge): NSA Web Site Puts ‘Cookies’ on Computers
• Yahoo! News: NSA Web Site Places ‘Cookies’ on Computers

The media, in typical fashion, is so desperate to run a “Look how scary our government is” story that they don’t even bother to fact-check it.

Sorry, but “cookies” just don’t work the way this story implies that they do. This is very similar to the “cookies are bad because they can infect your machine with viruses” junk that went around in the mid-90’s.

It’s painful that the general population knows so little about the technology they’ve come to rely upon. Including the reporters in these stories that speak as though they thoroughly understand what they’re talking about. But, as usual, the problem is we live in a headline-driven society. And now popular blogs are picking up the story and reporting it as well, driven only by the desire to have something to criticize the current administration about:

• HD For Indies: Way OT - your government in action (UPDATE: Mike removed this story after I commented that his site placed 3 cookies on my browser, one with an expiration date of 2033)
• Slashdot: NSA Caught With The Cookies

This story is only interesting to left-leaning organizations/blogs, those that are desperate to pile-on the current wire-tapping stories that are going around (which is a whole ‘nother pile-o-smelly that I just won’t go into now).

Let’s make this simple:

1. Cookies are simply snippits of text that a website can ask your browser to send back the next time you visit. They’re not executable code. They don’t carry viruses. They don’t propagate.
2. Cookies are controlled by the BROWSER, not the web server. A browser (i.e. the user) can decide not to accept cookies. Or can toss their cookies at any time (pardon the pun).
3. Cookies will only be sent back the web server that sent them in the first place. A server cannot “poll” a browser for all it’s cookies. The browser sends the cookies that a server sent to it when a page on that server is requested.

Getting a little more technical: cookies are persistent state devices that allow the web to have a session oriented experience. Without them, most of the web wouldn’t work.

If your desperately looking for someone to be afraid of, look to the media agencies themselves: the ad agencies, google, etc. Because of the ubiquitous presence of these ads, they can truly track where an individual browser is going, because references to their servers are embedded in the pages you visit. I don’t know of many sites that embed image references directly to the NSA in their pages.

Think before you panic, and read past the headline before you jump to conclusions.

Uh, well, duh: Study finds colleges are mostly liberal. What was their first clue?

As suspected, now that the election is done the truth comes out, only not the truth the left wanted to hear:

The last word on Bush’s bulge

Call off the conspiracy freaks. Now it can be told: That mysterious bulge on President Bush’s back during the first presidential debate was not an electronic device feeding him answers, but a strap holding his bulletproof vest in place.

Speculation about the bulge on the Internet only increased since Georges de Paris, the Washington tailor who makes Bush’s suits, told The Hill last month that it was nothing more than a pucker on the back of Bush’s coat caused when he crossed his arms.

But sources in the Secret Service told The Hill that Bush was wearing a bulletproof vest, as he does most of the time when appearing in public. The president’s handlers did not want to admit as much during the campaign, for fear of disclosing information related to his personal security while he was on the campaign trail.

(the quote is about half way down the page)

I said to the wife as soon as the story of the bulge broke that it was probably a vest, but of course the left couldn’t use common sense and had to jump to the “natural” conclusion that Bush needed a little help from Rove during the debate with Kerry.

The comic I saw about the bulge actually being the pull string (ala Woody from Toy Story), was especially funny ridiculous. Unfortunately, I can’t find a copy of it on the net to link to.

Oh, there you go:

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Disgruntled Democrats seeking a safe Canadian haven after President Bush won Tuesday’s election should not pack their bags just yet.

Canadian officials made clear on Wednesday that any U.S. citizens so fed up with Bush that they want to make a fresh start up north would have to stand in line like any other would-be immigrants — a wait that can take up to a year.

Hehe.

Now Kerry is set to concede at 2:00 Eastern. Old habits are hard to break.

Why haven’t we heard from mac-awful? Could it be that the dems will finally dump him?

Well, after Kerry called Bush to concede, Fox went ahead and called Nevada, putting Bush at 274 to 242 electoral votes.

Kerry concedes publically at noon Eastern, and Bush claims victory at 3:00 Eastern.

phew.