EckerNet.Com

A few rules…

1) Copying someone else’s entire post into your blog is considered bad form, especially when you add no content or commentary of your own about said post. Instead it is acceptable to quote a few lines and then direct any interested party to the original post. This post by Rew is an excellent example

2) If you are gonna break rule #1, at least mention the persons name somewhere in your post. Especially if you’ve already copied the entire post into yours there is no reason for someone to follow a hyperlink….which most people don’t anyway.

3) If you are gonna break rules #1 and #2, don’t then attribute credit to someone else entirely.

Because it’s Christmas, I’ll leave it at that. You know who you are.

NEWS FLASH : Pot calls kettle black, then invokes the race card.

Saddam Hussein again grabbed center stage at his mass murder trial Wednesday with claims that Americans beat and “tortured” him and other defendants while in detention.

The deposed leader’s lengthy complaint came after witnesses graphically described how their captors administered electric shocks and used molten plastic to rip the skin off prisoners in a crackdown following an assassination attempt against Saddam in 1982.

A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad called Saddam’s allegations “completely unfounded” but said “we are prepared to investigate.”

Considering the circumstances, you gotta wonder what Saddam considers torture. Especially torture to the extent that he can compare himself to someone that had their skin ripped off.

Well because this is EckerNet you don’t need to wonder any longer. I put my crack research staff to work. It took a few illegal wiretaps and the outing of one or two secret agents, but we got what we wanted. Here from the files of a Baghdad prison are the alleged torture techniques that Saddam has been exposed to:

During a prison game of Twister, “left hand green” was called.

Forced to spend an entire day without raping or killing anyone.

Was not told to expect the Spanish Inquisition

Forced to use a non-solid gold toilet

Death Squads have been replaced with Candy Stripers (not strippers you pervert!)

Forced to endure the “Comfy Chair”

72 virgins awaiting him in heaven are only getting older

Well let that be a lesson to you. If you ever have a chance to become a deranged homicidal dictator, you might want to pass if you can’t stomach the above torture methods.

Man, most bloggers would be thrilled that you thought one of their posts was worth commenting on. But because I screw up on link to one of his posts, Andy has to whine.

So because I don’t want to hear it any more about how deserving he is of a proper link, this post is all about how great Andy is.

Pawlenty Challenger is - Coming Wednesday : Here Andy is pimping himself about how he’s going to reveal the second coming to us later in the day.

Insomnia : Then he start a whole series of posts about how he’s too good for sleep unlike the rest of us mortals.

All That From Little Old Me : Ok then he strokes his ego for awhile.

Best Candidate’s Christmas/Holiday Card : He gets so many Christmas cards apparently it deserves it’s own post.

6 in 10 MNies Think Pawlenty is Tops : Here he disputes a poll because he knows better than us what we think.

You Are All Going To Kill Me : Oh, now he’s backing out of his promise to reveal some exciting news.

Democrats Cannot Be Trusted - PERIOD : That’s right, after backing out on a promise it’s the Democrats that can’t be trusted!

The Challenger - Sort of : Oh great…more excuses.

There…have I shown sufficient linking prowness Oh Great Blogging Master?? Oh and just because I know it’s what he wants to see…I invoke the powers of the AOL chat rooms.

Now I suppose I have to relinquish a comment thread for his own personal use.

Mostly because Mexico doesn’t like it…

“We learned to believe in the United States. We have a binational life,” he said of Zacatecas, a state that has been sending migrants north for more than a century. “It isn’t just a feeling of rejection. It’s against what we see as part of our life, our culture, our territory.”

Our territory?!?? The United States is not YOUR territory. You have no entitlement. Perhaps that’s part of the problem. You’re pissed off that we’re building a wall on our property because you think it belongs to you?? Well, allow this to be a dose of reality.

Mexicans are outraged by the proposed measures, especially the extension of the border wall, which many liken to the Berlin Wall.

Yeah, you see there is one major difference. The Berlin Wall was built to keep people in. Our wall is to keep you out. No offense, it’s the whole “This land is our land, this land ain’t your land” thing.

You’d think Vicente Fox would get it, but no…

Fox said the measures were hypocritical for a country made up of immigrants.

“When we look at their roots, the immense majority are migrants, migrants that have arrived from all over the world,” he said.

You see the problem is we’re a country made up of LEGAL immigrants. There’s an important distinction there. We have no problem with legal immigrants. We take in thousands upon thousands each year. It’s the whole illegal thing we’re not happy about. Something about someone breaking our laws doesn’t sit well in a law-abiding society. I know your country of thugs and criminals doesn’t understand that, but we don’t care.

Sounds like their foreign secretary suffers from the same blindness

In a radio interview, Luis Ernesto Derbez said U.S. legislators who approved the bill are turning a blind eye to the contributions millions of migrants from Mexico and elsewhere make to the U.S. economy and culture.

Actually we’re well aware of your contributions. And while we appreciate the high-volume testing you put our criminal justice system through, I think we can breed our own criminals. Yours can try out your….um, justice system instead.

Derbez said he is confident the bill will not make it past the U.S. Senate, which he said is not as easily swayed as the House.

If they want to keep their jobs they will be.

When four of Santa’s elves got sick, and the trainee elves did not produce the toys as fast as the regular ones, Santa was beginning to feel the pressure of being behind schedule.

Then Mrs. Claus told Santa that her Mom was coming to visit. This stressed Santa even more.

When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two had jumped the fence and were out, heaven knows where.

More stress.

Then when he began to load the sleigh one of the boards cracked, and the toy bag fell to the ground and scattered the toys.

So, frustrated, Santa went into the house for a cup of apple cider and a shot of rum. When he went to the cupboard, he discovered that the elves had hidden the liquor, and there was nothing to drink.

In his frustration, he accidentally dropped the cider pot, and it broke into hundreds of little pieces all over the kitchen floor.

He went to get the broom and found that mice had eaten the straw end of the broom.

Just then the doorbell rang, and irritable Santa trudged to the door.

He opened the door, and there was a little angel with a great big Christmas tree. The angel said, very cheerfully, “Merry Christmas, Santa. Isn’t it a lovely day? I have a beautiful tree for you. Where would you like me to stick it?”

And so began the tradition of the little angel on top of the Christmas tree.

Sue Ek has been forced out of the race for the House seat in St. Cloud (H/T Andy)

The Minnesota Supreme Court has ordered Sue Ek’s name removed from the Dec. 27 special election ballot.

Ek was the Republican candidate for an open House seat in District 15B. The decision came after a 75-minute hearing this morning. She was running against Stearns County Commissioner Larry Haws, the DFL-endorsed candidate.

On Friday, a lower-court judge ruled that Ek did not meet the residency requirement to run for the Legislature in St. Cloud. The Supreme Court agreed with the findings. State law requires a candidate to live within a district for six months. Ek signed an affidavit July 9 saying she lived in St. Paul.

Good. She wasn’t eligible. Her running would have been a clear violation of the rules. Get your ass out of the race and stay out.

Triple_A had the following commentary:

I hope we can all agree this is terrible news for the GOP, and great for the DFL. (Not that I am happy with this.)

Boo f-ing Hoo. Sorry, I have no sympathy for the GOP. I realize this is a loss for them and I realize what this means at the state level, but I still say good.

I have no room in my heart for incompetence. I mean seriously, residency requirements aren’t exactly rocket science. If you can’t be trusted to do the simple things, then perhaps you don’t deserve a seat on our government. How can I trust you to balance a state budget if you can’t even remember your address??

Who I do have sympathy for, is anyone who contributed money to her campaign or that district. You entrusted your party with your hard earned cash and they f-ed it up. Hope you learned from it. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Translation : keep your eyes open next time, because sure as hell they aren’t.

I realize my side lost, but I didn’t sell my soul when I embraced conservatism. A dumbass is still a dumbass, and what I see is a dumbass. Our dumbass lost. Their dumbass will probably win. At least theirs can remember their zip code.

Hopefully lesson learned. Just don’t expect a sympathy card.

Well since it is customary, I should probably do some sort of “heh here’s a description of what happened last night at the MOB gathering” post. At the same time I fully realize that most of the people who are going to read the post were the same people who were there last night and saw it all for themselves.

So I’ll keep it short. It was fun. There was beer, and it was good. There was food, it was also good. There were lots of bloggers, and they were good (and occasionally scary). It was crowded. And it last for a long time….basically until the band started up around 11 and had their volume up WAY too high and chased everyone out of the bar where we could at least hear someone else talk.

Ben was like a ninja jumping all over the bar taking photos of the event. You’ll have to check out his photo album of (most?) the attendees.
Mob Gathering Photos
Mob Gathering Photos 2
Mob Gathering Photos 3
Mob Gathering Photos 4
Mob Gathering Photos 5
Mob Gathering Photos 6
Mob Gathering Photos 7

Notable events:
Marty handed me a CD containing “The Lost Archives Of EckerNet”. A relic for which many bloggers have paid with their lives. It is now in my keeping and it is good.

Nightwriter brought the whole Stewart clan. I offered to buy both of his daughters (Mall Diva and Tiger Lilly) a beer. Mrs. Night Writer laughed, Mr. Night Writer did not.

Finally meet Learned Foot, who lives nearby me and to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for freeing me from the clutches of the MAWB Squad.

Finally met Jeff (Peace Like A River) who apparently is in the same Masters program I was in and have chronicled my adventures since here and here. Turns out several of my co-workers are his classmates. Small world.

Surly Dave is the most un-surly person I know.

Cathy did not try to hurt me! YEAH!

Kathy also did not try to hurt me! And her “I’m mean and will hurt you” reputation is clearly misplaced.

Andy was there again. Bastard shows up everywhere I go. He had a very disappointing argument for the Patriot Act. If I didn’t already support the Patriot Act, I would probably have opposed it on principle alone from his argument. He does do alot better job here.

Noodles and I discussed hunting and guns and beer and manly stuff for quite awhile. It was fun.

As I said before, Ben was a ninja. He is therefore evil.

Ok I’ve probably overlooked enough people to make my life a living hell at the next MOB event so my work here is done. Enjoy.

Okay a big thank you goes out to Marty, who tonite handed me a CDtome of “The Lost Archives Of EckerNet“. As legend would have it these lost archives carry many ancient secrets of our world. Great study will be needed to uncover the mysteries that lie within. However, caution must be used….the mere knowledge of these secrets has been known to cause things to explode (such as the harddrive they were stored on) and grown men to go insane (such as my hosting provider). So I’m going to don my scholarly cloaks, and lock myself in my study to recreate “The Lost Archives Of EckerNet” ( Note To Self : Must find some really cool music for that phrase).

If I get a chance I’ve got what I hope to be a couple fun posts on :

What people keep getting wrong about Israel
AND
The worst reason I’ve ever heard for the Patriot Act…if I wasn’t already for the Act, I would be against it on principle alone because of this reasoning.

Look forward to that….or I’ll just get lazy and not actually write them.

UPDATE 8:40 PM : Entries restored. I skipped restoring the comments. There just isn’t a real easy way of doing that and doing about 250 of them the hard way didn’t sound appealing. This sounds like a good time to make another backup

On this day in 1777, France formally recognized the United States as a sovereign nation and quickly allied with it against the British.

Which is in interesting contrast to today, where the United States reluctantly recognizes France as a barely functioning nation that has the odd habit of carrying a white flag-shaped “blankey” around with it everywhere it goes.

History is an odd thing sometimes.

The NightWriter has begun an excellent preliminary investigation into the crash of the EckerNet server. His round up of suspects is indeed an impressive and suspiscious bunch. All of them worthy of jail time regardless….well, except for the Mall Diva, who is probably more “jail bait” than worthy of jail time herself. But I digress (and have probably pissed off my chief investigator NightWriter by now).

As you well know EckerNet has an extensive staff of writers who plug away night and day. I merely pick the most pointless and mediocre pieces for publication. Since EckerNet was down, I instead assigned those same writers to conduct our own biasedcompletely independent conservative hacknon-partisan investigation.

While we commend the fine work done by the NightWriter, and believe he is on the right track, he must present some of our findings regarding his investigation.

MN Publius

They already hacked one site. They claimed to have learned their lesson. But did they? I removed them from my blogroll following that incident, so they do have motive….because we all know how much traffic EckerNet commands. Their previous sabotage was simply hacking in via the login. This most recent sabotage would have required them to physically punt the RAID into a vat of boiling (and electrified) acid. Impressive. We have clearly over-estimated our young saboteurs across the aisle.

A stray shot from the Mall Diva’s Desert Eagle, that Kevin insisted she have.

The Mall Diva did in fact shoot at Kevin inside EckerNet HQ…however, it was only because Kevin got her drunk and then tried to take her margarita away. In retrospect, I should have taken her Desert Eagle rather than her drink.

Fortunately, since the Mall Diva doesn’t possess the body mass required to compensate for the recoil of a Desert Eagle, her shot wasn’t that accurate and she only nicked the corner of the liquor cabinet…NOT the server. No harm done.

The rest of the alcohol was consumed as a precautionary measure.

Cathy in the Wright turned the Governor loose in the nerve center, or hit it herself with a snow plow.

Cathy’s spawn, the “Gov”, and I get along…mostly because we have the same maturity level. So it is unlikely that he was the problem.

Regarding Cathy, the EckerNet HQ is surrounded by wide open space. So without buildings and trees to careen off of, she would be unable to navigate the plow all the way to HQ.

While Cathy is a prime suspect, and has surplus motive, we cannot currently indict her….unless we can get the names and addresses of the jury that indicted Tom DeLay.

Dementee, forced to withdraw from the MOB mayoral election, is working his way through Doug’s cabinet (or else he just wanted to be Master of the Hunt.)

Dementee did in fact try to take out EckerNet. However, I merely mentioned that Greenpeace was holding a tofu rally at the local community diversity center and he took off with murder in his eyes. Once I cleaned up the drool, everything was good as new.

However, should Dementee be motivated by political aspirations, I would like to point out that since I had my conscience shot, and I suffer from deficiency of moral fiber, I can be easily bribed. I accept payment in the form of beer, firearms or cash (in unmarked non-sequential bills).

IMAO wants his schtick back.

Yes, now that he got married to the lovely Sarahk, Frank J has been domesticated. He envies me certainly, but is he jealous enough to take out my site?? We may need to subpoena the entire IMAO staff.

Jesse Ventura, after hearing that Kevin used his “action figure” for target practice.

Ever since EckerNet was labeled “more accurate than the mainstream media” I’ve expected an attack by Jesse “The Ego” Ventura. However, this is too rational for him to have done it. I mean if someone had filled the harddrive with egg yolk and attached it to a ostrich with Seran Wrap, then yeah….he’d be my first suspect.

Prairie Dogs (similar reason as Jesse “the Target” Ventura).

The Prairie Dogs have already made their intentions clear. They shot back at us once already. And a varmint will never quit - ever. They’re like the Viet Cong - Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. On that note, all I want for Christmas is a .50 cal mounted in my front window.

Clearly more investigation is needed. I demand that the MOB mayor appoint an independent investigator to look into the incident. If you ask me, my chief suspect is those sneaky Fraters. They’ve been jealous of me for years.