Here you go  - with segments to ignite your appetite.  Sorry I've been so out lately.

Full statement of the British sailors

Let me be absolutely clear, from the outset it was very apparent that fighting back was simply not an option. Had we chosen to do so then many of us would not be standing here today. Of that I have no doubts.

. . .

"The Iranians are not our enemies. We are not at war with them. Our rules of engagement at that time stated that we could only use lethal force if we felt that we were in imminent danger of a loss of life. By the time the true intent of the Iranians had become apparent - and we could have legitimately fought back - it was too late for action.

The disciples of the new religion have got to be upset, because that whole global warming hysteria thing just doesn't seem to be playing in their favor.   For one thing, heavy snow stopped the Mariners-Indians baseball game yet again, and whether you're a sports nut or not, it's hard to keep pounding the global warming drum when folks all over the place are buried in snow.

It kind of makes you look like a doofus.

Of course, there's always the Oscar-winning meterologist AlGore to hide behind.  Or not. 

"He's one of these guys that preaches the end of the world type of things. I think he's doing a great disservice and he doesn't know what he's talking about," Dr. William Gray said in an interview with The Associated Press at the National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans, where he delivered the closing speech.

Hat tip to Dafydd at Big Lizards for pointing out this most excellent post from Gates of Vienna, concerning something I alluded to in a recent post; Moral Equivalancy:

Everyone knows what Moral Equivalence is. We get a big dose of it every day from the newspapers, from the TV, from the teachers in our public schools, and from our government officials.

Moral Equivalence is the worldview tells us that there’s no real distinction between good and bad, between God and the Devil.

It says that there’s no difference between Us and Them.

We see the examples of it all the time. The Israelis and the Palestinians — the “cycle of violence” and the “peace process”. Islamic terrorists and the American military — they kill civilians, but, hey, so do we. The capitalists and the communists — sure, the Soviets were bad, but we interned Japanese-Americans! And look what we’re doing to the environment! And the poor people in our inner cities have no health insurance!

Former, and once again, Democrat presidential hopeful John Edwards has a new and exciting idea to make your life easier:

Courtesy of the Herald-Sun; Edwards wants IRS to complete up to 50 million tax returns

Edwards says the U.S. tax code is unnecessarily complicated and full of loopholes that favor the wealthy over the working class.

Under his plan, the IRS would gather tax information for 50 million Americans with relatively simple returns, including those who don't need to file itemized deductions to record charitable contributions or capital gains.

The IRS would calculate their tax bill or refund and mail a final report to the taxpayer. That person would be able to just sign and return the form.

So, rather than try to do something about the complexity of the tax code, Edwards wants you to put your financial fate in the hands of the IRS.

Though typically being something of an early adopter, I have stayed away from HD video disks to date, due to the format war that is going on right now, between the two “standards”: HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

For those of us old enough to remember the original format war of VHS vs. Betamax, this is deja-vu all over again.  Like that conflict, one format has slightly better technical specifications, but the other is more industry friendly, and less expensive.  In the first format war, VHS eventually won out, even though Betamax was a superior format, with better run times on smaller tape catridges, with superior resolution.

In essence, the technical differences in HD formats (like most things) boils down to size… or at least capacity:  HD-DVD (dual layer) stores about 8 hours of HD video; Blu-Ray stores about 9.  Now, there are various tweaks being looked at, like triple or quad layer, but these would end up being Data functions, not Media for entertainment purposes.  Unless you wanted to put the entire Lord of the Rings movie trilogy (extended versions) on one Disk…