Happiness is a Warm Gun

Yes it is.

Well, it's done. The SCOTUS has gunned down DC's ban on gun ownership under constitutional grounds. Bang!

This is the first major SCOTUS ruling on the Second Amendment. The argument?

DC claimed that the Second Amendment was meant to maintain militias. Everyone else claimed that there was no such thing, that it applies to everyone.

The pro gun lobby is ecstatic. The anti-gun lobby is shitting a brick.

The common DC folks are wondering when the first gun stores are opening, and what kind of bullshit law they have ready to try to offset this ruling.

Across the river, here in Virginia, business is as usual. We have had Fairfax County Police question citizens that are openly carrying firearms, which is something that is not regulated by Virginia law. The only thing Virginia law dictates is rules for concealed carry and areas where it is unlawful to carry a firearm. These incidents are an embarrassment for the Police because it shows a lack of training on the laws that they are expected to enforce.

What about my household?

My late father was a policeman for over 30 years. I lived at home until 18 and visited from college almost every weekend until I was 21. During that time my father never had to lock his service revolver (mostly snub-nose .38 Specials, last one was a 4" .357).

Why?

He was not worried that we would even look at it. If we did, and did not end up killing ourselves with it, we would get the Mother of All Beatings. As far as I can remember, it was even rare to see him cleaning it if we were around.

After that, I enlisted in the US Army, where I was taught how to kill with an M-16A1 rifle and how to run around with it loaded without killing either myself or one of my squad mates. The training was not particularly fun, but it worked, so it was very rare to see somebody do something stupid in a firing range. I think most of the people that got hurt in firing ranges back then (1992 or so) was from falling into the permanent foxholes in the firing ranges. The foxholes are lined with thick wood, so if you don't break your back or both of your legs, you will still stand a good chance to break your neck or arms on the way down.

Here I would love to have a couple of rifles, but PJ is just too much a challenge when it comes to locking things. If I wanted to own a couple of rifles I would have to find a proper secure location offsite, which means spending money just to own the damn things. It's not worth it. If he wasn't autistic I could try to get him enrolled in a firearms course for children as soon as he met the age requirement, his mother be damned.

Dick Cheney is scowling at you

Air Force may reopen $35B tanker bid at government bidding

Congressional auditors urged the Air Force to reopen bidding for a new fleet of aerial tankers Wednesday, finding the service made 'significant errors' in awarding the $35 billion contract to Northrop Grumman.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) opinion is a major victory for aerospace giant Boeing, which protested the February decision to award one of the largest contracts in U.S. military history to its rival. The Air Force said it is reviewing the decision, which was welcomed not only by Boeing, but also by several members of Congress with Boeing (BA, Fortune 500) plants in their states."

[From CNN: Air Force may reopen $35B tanker bid at government bidding]

I wrote back in March about the uproar with the tanker contract. What were the odds that the mighty Boeing defense apparatus was going to simply let this pass and not only let that contract go to Northrop Grumman, but to also open the possibility of Airbus assembling commercial aircraft on US soil. None.

They'll fight tooth and nail against it.

For those of you that missed this whole when it started, here is the short version:

1. The USAF is overdue new tankers, some of which are already close to 50 years old.

2. The USAF has been struggling to get this project going since 2001.

3. First major player is Boeing, who wants to base it on the 767 commercial platform.

4. Second major player is Northrop Grumman, who wants to base it on an Airbus airframe.

5. The contract is worth $35 billion and involves up to 179 aircraft for quite a few years.

6. If Northrop Grumman takes the contract, their new facilities open the possibility of expanding operations to Airbus commercial aircraft, not just military tankers.

7. You can easily guess who is in favor of which contract by plotting current Boeing facilities and newly proposed Northrop Grumman facilities on a map.


That's all there is to it, simple math. The main difference is that Boeing is already here, while Airbus is a foreign competitor.

Bosses Nuked, Some Air Force Missileers Cheer | Danger Room from Wired.com

Defense Secretary Robert Gates didn't just kick the Air Force's two top leaders to the curb yesterday. When he fired chief of Staff General "Buzz" Moseley and Secretary Michael Wynne, he was telling the service that the long, slow decline of its nuclear corps is officially over.

Hallelujah, says one Air Force nuclear missileer.

[From Bosses Nuked, Some Air Force Missileers Cheer | Danger Room from Wired.com]

This is probably the less cryptic article about this subject that I have found over the last couple of days. The infighting between the fighter and nuke camps is interesting, it almost reminds me of what the US Navy went through right before the Pearl Harbor attack.

Back in the day there were two camps: the Battleship Admirals (the establishment) and the Aircraft Carrier Admirals (the newcomers). The Battleship Admirals saw the political dangers of the aircraft carrier, it would eventually become the center of the standard Navy battle group arrangement, instead of battleships. So their solution? They fought it like hell.

Pearl Harbor came, and most of the battleships were sunk. The aircraft carriers were away, so WWII in the Pacific was an aircraft carrier war. The end of WWII saw the rise to power of the Aircraft Carrier Admirals.

Now we are going to see a showdown between a camp that is holding weapons they can't use (the nukes), and a camp flying jets that have no real adversary, so many question why we need to buy so many.

Air Force officials ousted over nuclear gaffes - CNN.com

The top military and civilian leaders of the U.S. Air Force were forced out Thursday over the handling of nuclear weapons, the Defense Department secretary said.

Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley and Secretary Michael W. Wynne resigned over the department's concern over two incidents, including the August flight of a B-52 bomber that flew across the country with nuclear weapons.

"Focus of the Air Force leadership has drifted" in terms of handling nuclear weapons and equipment, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said.

In August, a B-52 bomber flew from North Dakota to Louisiana with the crew unaware that six nuclear-tipped missiles were on board. Four officers were relieved of duty afterward, including three colonels.

Gates also cited this year's discovery that components designed to arm and fuse nuclear warheads were accidentally shipped to Taiwan in 2006.

[From Air Force officials ousted over nuclear gaffes - CNN.com]

And here I was worried about airmen and pilots pounding the ground with the Army and the Marines.

What we have here is an exercise of politics as usual. Fire the top guy(s) as a way to tell the people that actually run the show to get their act together and fix whatever needs to be fixed.

The bigger question here is why, after all those very public fuckups, did the USAF "drifted" in their focus? There was a tradition of hardcore paranoia (in all services) when it came to nuclear accountability. Now we are flying nukes without knowing, we are shipping restricted components to an enemy country and there are security guards playing video games in their cell phones instead of paying attention to their god damn jobs.

How come we never hear of a Marine pulling that kind of stunt during guard duty? Training. I have no clue how the Navy and the Air Force do it, but both the Marines and the Army burn into your head guard duty as one of the more basic soldiering skills.

Top two Air Force officials resigning - Military- msnbc.com

WASHINGTON - The nation's top two Air Force officials are resigning, and military sources told NBC News Thursday that they were being forced out.

At the White House, press secretary Dana Perino said President Bush knew about the resignations of Air Force Chief of Staff Michael Moseley and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne, but that the White House “has not played any role” in the shake-up.

Moseley, a general, is the Air Force's top uniformed officer. Wynne is the top civilian official.

[From Top two Air Force officials resigning - Military- msnbc.com]

Oops.

The article later claims that they were given the choice between resigning or be fired.

So here we are, six months before a major leadership change, with all of those soldiers and Marines killed on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we are shaking off the USAF leadership? What the hell was so wrong that they had to push out the top uniformed and top civilian officials of the service? It's not like they were asked to give their pilots rifles and rucksacks and send them to ride resupply convoys in Iraq.

It isn't about axing the F-117 as an excuse to free up funds and ask for even more funding for the F-22. So what else is left?

Tin foil hat watch: Titanic Was Found During Secret Cold War Navy Mission

The 1985 discovery of the Titanic stemmed from a secret United States Navy investigation of two wrecked nuclear submarines, according to the oceanographer who found the infamous ocean liner.

Pieces of this Cold War tale have been known since the mid-1990s, but more complete details are now coming to light, said Titanic’s discoverer, Robert Ballard.

“The Navy is finally discussing it,” said Ballard, an oceanographer at the University of Rhode Island in Narragansett and the Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration in Connecticut.

[From Titanic Was Found During Secret Cold War Navy Mission]

Somehow the tin foil hat brigade is going to find a way to give a negative spin to this story.

The story, in a nutshell:

1. Scientist(s) have a cool robotic sub.

2. The US Navy has two missing nuclear subs.

3. The US Navy pays scientist(s) to look for the nuclear subs.

4. The scientist(s) mention that RMS Titanic happens to lie between the two sunken subs.

5. The US Navy basically could care less as long as the mission to look for the subs is completed first.

That's pretty much it.

GM to close 4 factories, may drop Hummer - Autos- msnbc.com

WILMINGTON, Del. - General Motors is closing four truck and SUV plants in the U.S., Canada and Mexico as surging fuel prices hasten a dramatic shift to smaller vehicles.

CEO Rick Wagoner said Tuesday before the automaker's annual meeting in Delaware the plants to be closed are in Oshawa, Ontario; Moraine, Ohio; Janesville, Wis.; and Toluca, Mexico. He also said the iconic Hummer brand may be discontinued.

[From GM to close 4 factories, may drop Hummer - Autos- msnbc.com]

Natural selection at its worst.

Are we repeating the late 70's? After that fiasco we should have learned that size doesn't matter, but the running costs do. When the big SuV shift started a decade ago, we had plenty of time to push for efficient engines powerful enough to push the damn things. Instead we said screw it, the market can bear it.

The problem is somebody forgot to look ahead more than a few years. You can't expect to pour millions into a bunch of factories, retool them for SuVs and trucks and not worry about how long it will take to recover their cost. Did anyone bother to study the market the way the Japanese and the Germans do?

After getting their asses kicked by small vehicle makers, the least they could do was pay attention to how they work. Take a look at the Japanese car makers, how many carry full-size SuVs? What is the proportion of SuVs to smaller vehicles? What's the average fuel consumption of theirs versus ours?

Notice that the argument here is not the usability of the SuV. We need the damn things, same as we need full-size trucks. The problem is that the US car industry as a whole was reckless on its long term view of the market.

The end result is that now it is going to be harder for the people that really need these SuVs to get what they need at a proper price. It also means loss of jobs in two american factories (screw Canada and Mexico).

Of course, there are good news too. I am sure that if you go on the market for a used SuV you can make a killing. I always wanted a big sonofabitch, like a Suburban or a Tahoe, but they are too expensive, and they are gas guzzlers. In another few months I should be able to walk into a used car dealership and have them beg me to take a nearly new Suburban for a killing. Of course, I'll have to be careful with the gas, and the hippies will probably key it and spit on it.

Photo Credit: Photo by edenpictures, used under the terms of a Creative Commons license.

Korean War executions unearthed - Asia-Pacific - msnbc.com

Not exactly how I expected to start my Monday news reading:

DAEJEON, South Korea - Grave by mass grave, South Korea is unearthing the skeletons and buried truths of a cold-blooded slaughter from early in the Korean War, when this nation's U.S.-backed regime killed untold thousands of leftists and hapless peasants in a summer of terror in 1950.

With U.S. military officers sometimes present, and as North Korean invaders pushed down the peninsula, the southern army and police emptied South Korean prisons, lined up detainees and shot them in the head, dumping the bodies into hastily dug trenches. Others were thrown into abandoned mines or into the sea. Women and children were among those killed. Many victims never faced charges or trial.

[From Korean War executions unearthed - Asia-Pacific - msnbc.com]

I don't know how it is done in other countries, but in the United States it is common practice to seal certain classified materials for 50 years, to make sure that those involved are either dead or at least gone from government service by the time the material is released to the public. 50 years used to be enough, but nowadays it feels like just yesterday, so it wouldn't surprise me if the powers-that-be are already fighting to increase that limit to 75 or more years.

The sad thing is that whatever uproar this could create is going to get drowned by politics, the end result being that nothing will be done about this. After all, our position will be that we didn't do anything, we just saw it and decided to shut up (plus what the hell, the Democrats were in charge). The North Koreans will say they didn't do anything, it was THEIR people that got executed. The South Koreans will try to blame the North Koreans for it, or ask why the Americans did not stop them.

Assholes of the Week: The Myanmar Ruling Junta

YANGON, Myanmar - Myanmar's military regime distributed international aid Saturday but plastered the boxes with the names of top generals in an apparent effort to turn the relief effort for last week's devastating cyclone into a propaganda exercise.

The United Nations sent in three more planes and several trucks loaded with aid, though the junta took over its first two shipments. The government agreed to let a U.S. cargo plane bring in supplies Monday, but foreign disaster experts were still being barred entry.

State-run television continuously ran images of top generals — including the junta leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe — handing out boxes of aid to survivors at elaborate ceremonies.

[From Myanmar junta hands out aid boxes with generals' names - Yahoo! News]

This is far beyond irrational. First their country gets slaughtered by a natural disaster. Then they refuse the free flow of aid workers, and refuse the shipping of help shipments. Why? Probably paranoia that the powers-that-be are going to try to use the disaster as an excuse to topple the junta.

Then they allow aid flights, but confiscate the material. Why? This one puzzled everyone, until now. The aid was eventually distributed, only plastered with pro-regime propaganda.

This is just plain dumb. All they had to do was allow the shipments, then after the aid was distributed use their monopoly on communications to claim that it was the regime that helped their people. The UN gets to help people in need, the local ruling group gets to save face, and the victims get some relief. Everyone wins.

But no. With fatality figures approaching the 500,000 mark in a country with an estimated population of almost 48 million, these people decide to run a political exercise.

Assholes.

The sad thing is that with China sharing a 2,000 Km border, it makes you wonder why the Chinese haven't sent a subtle word to these people to get their acts together and stop drawing so much attention to the area. They are just probably straddling the fence, seeing how this mess develops to see how THEY can take advantage of it.

MADD v. Grand Theft Auto IV

GTA 4 barely launched and the politics have already started. The problem is when good intentions clash with misinformation. I support MADD 100%, they are one of those precious few special interest groups (yeah, MADD is an interest group) that are no brainers: drunk driving kills.

The problem this time? Somebody at MADD did not bother to play the game before they put out their official stand against the game. Had anyone bothered to play the game first, they would had noticed that "drunk" mode in GTA 4 is a complete pain in the ass. I tried it last night and for the first few minutes I could not even play, the screen shook so much that I was a hair away from motion sickness. And even after the character felt like he had sobered up, within seconds of getting into the car it was already surrounded by cops. I don't know how the hell one can hit drunk mode and actually drive more than a street or three.

Politics are funny

These are my results from the survey at http://www.politicalcompass.org :

The idea here is that a left/right plot is not good enough, and that the historic left/right alignment is actually an economics measure, so they added the second variable for Authoritarian v. Libertarian. It gets interesting because the survey is designed to take into account your subconscious efforts to tweak your answers so they fit what you think is your political stance. I tried to, and I failed.

This is their sample plot with some historical figures for comparison:

UPDATE: Brad just answered the survey too.

South Korea to use cloned dogs to sniff for drugs and explosives

INCHEON, South Korea: The country that created the world's first cloned canine plans to put duplicated dogs on patrol to sniff out drugs and explosives.

The Korean Customs Service unveiled Thursday seven cloned Labrador retrievers being trained near Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul. The dogs were born five to six months ago after being separately cloned from a skilled drug-sniffing canine in active service.

Due to the difficulties in finding dogs who are up to snuff for the critical jobs, officials said using clones could help reduce costs.

[From South Korea to use cloned dogs to sniff for drugs and explosives - International Herald Tribune]

I had tuned out these cloning-related news in the past because they all seemed to focus in pure academic research and the morons that oppose it without as much as trying to read the description of what is it that the scientists are trying to do. I have no idea if this is the first mainstream announcement about cloning animals for a practical purpose, but if it is I hope they get away with it.

Of course, this is the kind of thing that we can't do in the United States. Even if the dogs in question were trained as guides for the blind, or as rescue dogs, a political element in this country will effectively seize the opportunity to crush the scientists simply to make a few cheap headlines.

This is a real world application to a controversial scientific discipline, not one more attempt of soulless Science trying to destroy God, or whatever the hell is it that these people think cloning is all about.

I am eagerly awaiting for South Korean scientists to find the perfect pig with the perfect body composition for maximum bacon processing. Then it can be cloned and we can solve world hunger with delicious bacon.

My Way News - Gates Orders Inventory of US Nukes

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered a full inventory of all nuclear weapons and related materials after the mistaken delivery of ballistic missile fuses to Taiwan, the Pentagon said Thursday.

Gates told officials with the Air Force, Navy and Defense Logistics Agency to assess inventory control procedures for the materials and to submit a report within 60 days.

Earlier this week, Gates directed Navy Adm. Kirkland H. Donald to take charge of a full investigation of the delivery mistake in which four cone-shaped electrical fuses used in intercontinental ballistic missile warheads were shipped to the Taiwanese instead of the helicopter batteries they had ordered.

[From My Way News - Gates Orders Inventory of US Nukes]

This is one of these things that you never heard of back when I was in the service in the 90's. From the day we put on the uniform it was burned into our brains that all of our equipment must be accounted for at all times. The company commander basically signs for every item within his command, down to each trash can, chair, etc.

One of the classic punishments for misbehaving lieutenants was to have them re-inventory everything, starting with the office supplies closet.

The more sensitive the item, the more controls are put into it. If they could get away with it, they would have us count spent brass before we turned it in before leaving a firing range. If the item was remotely classified, then you had to push a LOT of paper because of each individual item. This was institutional, you couldn't just say screw it, I am not going to document it.

Fast forward to the late 2000s, and suddenly people are fucking up, either by accident, incompetence or dereliction. How are we expected to believe that something as sensitive as these fuses can simply be misplaced during a foreign transfer? It is not like the damn things were sitting in a shelf at an airport and somebody picked the wrong boxes. Or maybe they were?

Letter from the Editor: The Passport Breach Scandal

By now most of my readers have learned that some people within the U.S. Department of State have improperly accessed the passport records of some of the current presidential candidates.

Searching Google News for "presidential candidate passport breach" yields 2,239 results.

We would like to let our readers know that my passport records at the Department of State have NEVER been breached. Of this we are 100% confident, but we decline to disclose our source for this information since this mess is in full blast.

Comcast: FCC lacks any authority to act on P2P blocking

The man who spoke for Comcast at Harvard last month has told the Federal Communications Commission that the agency has no legal power to stop the cable giant from engaging in what it calls "network management practices" (critics call it peer-to-peer traffic blocking). Comcast vice president David L. Cohen's latest filing with the Commission claims that regulators can do nothing even if they conclude that Comcast's behavior runs afoul of the FCC's Internet neutrality guidelines.

"The congressional policy and agency practice of relying on the marketplace instead of regulation to maximize consumer welfare has been proven by experience (including the Comcast customer experience) to be enormously successful," concludes Cohen's thinly-veiled warning to the FCC, filed on March 11. "Bearing these facts in mind should obviate the need for the Commission to test its legal authority."

[From Comcast: FCC lacks any authority to act on P2P blocking]

In other words, "Fuck the FCC."

That's the funny thing about common sense: you can't teach it. If you find a loophole in federal law, why brag about it? All you are going to do is draw attention to yourself and the loophole, and before you know it, the loophole will be closed.

Do you really think that a government agency is going to let a private company give them that UFIA out in the open? And in an election year?

Of course not.

Here's what I don't understand: why act so bold when they are no longer the only game in town when it comes to broadband? Here in North Virginia they are still strutting around as if they own Fairfax County. Seems their suits haven't figured out that Verizon has been selling FIOS here for a while.

The other thing I can't understand is their billing. Every month the bill is different, and my tiers never come out straight. Are these people actually interested in making money? The one thing I know for sure is once I call them to tell them about my new FIOS line they'll start throwing discounts at me, as if it is going to make a god damn difference.

FCC spectrum auction is completed with $19.6 bln in bids - MarketWatch

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- A sale of communications airwaves by the federal government to the commercial wireless industry closed Tuesday, after 261 rounds of bidding and $19.6 billion in bids.

The end of the auction means that, within a short period of time, the Federal Communications Commission will reveal who the winners of the valuable radio spectrum licenses are, and where in the country they acquired airwaves.

The proceeding was conducted on a blind-bidding basis, which means that, throughout the sale, bidders have been anonymous. The FCC put this in place after some potential participants in the auction argued it would enhance competition.

[From FCC spectrum auction is completed with $19.6 bln in bids - MarketWatch]

As one of the many customers that made the jump from analog to digital, which is what allowed this bidding to happen, I would like to say the following:

"Where's my cut?"

And by cut I don't mean two discount coupons to buy ATSC tuner boxes.

Actually, I don't care, I was hoping they would make like bandits. Now I hope they can take that freed up bandwidth and do something creative with it, maybe solve the last mile problem for rural america once and for all.

Costs soar for Marine One fleet - Washington Post- msnbc.com

A year after Sept. 11, 2001, the White House set out to build a fleet of state-of-the-art Marine One helicopters for the al-Qaeda age that would be safer, faster and more reliable than the iconic white-topped aircraft that have landed on the South Lawn for decades.

But the al-Qaeda age has met the military acquisition process. Six years later, the cost of the new helicopters has nearly doubled, production has fallen behind schedule, and the bulk of the program has been put on hold while the government tries to figure out how to salvage it.

[From Costs soar for Marine One fleet - Washington Post- msnbc.com]

My very first reaction was that was just one more sign that the Republicans were going to lose the White House ("no shiny new helos for the next guy!"). The amusement at how funny I thought I was quickly went away once I saw that each of these new helicopters costs more than the last Boeing VC-25.



Yes, a helicopter that costs more than the most exclusive VIP airplane in the world. This is actually a good thing, because it shows, with extremes, how much dangerous helicopters are in comparison to fixed wing aircraft. This is of course a blanket assumption, but think about it: Air Force One is already ultra-secure, as secure as we can make it to protect the current President plus an entourage of hundreds, yet it costs more money to build just one helicopter to carry him and maybe a dozen people total with a reasonable degree of security.



If you would like a very quick explanation on why helicopters are much more dangerous than fixed wing aircraft, take a look at Phil Greenspun's take on the subject.

Photo Credit: Photo by culhanen, used under the terms of a Creative Commons license.

Music Industry Proposes a Piracy Surcharge on ISPs

Having failed to stop piracy by suing internet users, the music industry is for the first time seriously considering a file sharing surcharge that internet service providers would collect from users.

In recent months, some of the major labels have warmed to a pitch by Jim Griffin, one of the idea's chief proponents, to seek an extra fee on broadband connections and to use the money to compensate rights holders for music that's shared online. Griffin, who consults on digital strategy for three of the four majors, will argue his case at what promises to be a heated discussion Friday at South by Southwest.

[From Music Industry Proposes a Piracy Surcharge on ISPs]

This is the stupidest idea in the still short history of stupid ideas in regards to online piracy. For starters, why is everyone getting taxed? What would happen if the feds said "you know what? Let's make everyone with a driver's license pay $5 a year to pay for people that don't get caught speeding..."?





There would be riots.



Here in the Commonwealth of Virginia we went up in arms simply because they asked us to pay more money as the moving violation got worse.



Also, wouldn't this legalize all online piracy? After all, if we are paying the $5, it means that the owner of the copyright is not suffering damages, right? Not so fast, because this piracy surcharge would only affect music piracy, they are not collecting the $5 to pay Microsoft for all of the Vista licenses being pirated, or Vivid for all of the porn sales that they lose to piracy.

Nope, it is all about the music.



How much do you want to bet that somewhere in a dusty desk drawer there is a music sales market research study that says that, with zero piracy, the average US household would consume $5 in music CDs every month?



Dumbasses.

Photo Credit: Photo by ndh, used under the terms of a Creative Commons license.

Cut Abercrombie name from ER, advocates say - CNN.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- A children's advocacy group wants to keep a children's hospital from putting clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch's name on a new emergency room.

art.hospital.ap.jpg

The children's hospital in Columbus, Ohio, is named for Nationwide Insurance Co.

Abercrombie, known for its racy marketing campaigns aimed at teenagers, has pledged $10 million toward the construction of the emergency department at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus.

The Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood on Tuesday urged the hospital to drop any plans to put Abercrombie's name on the project, pointing to research that has shown a link between sexualized images of teens in the media and mental health problems in girls.

The advocacy group made its position public in a letter to the hospital Tuesday that was signed by about 70 pediatricians and academics from around the United States.

"Given this company's appalling history of targeting children with sexualized marketing and clothing, no public health institution should be advertising Abercrombie & Fitch," the letter states.

[From Cut Abercrombie name from ER, advocates say - CNN.com]

Paraphrased: "Please let us keep the $10 million without us giving you any kind of god damn credit. Thanks."

Maybe this is all a communications disconnect, I bet they were confused by the difference between the Hippocratic Oath and Hypocrisy. This is what happens when people freak out over stupid things and don't bother to try to think them through. A smart person would had first tried to find an acceptable donor to match the $10 million, then worry about bitching and whining about Abercrombie & Fitch. This way the hospital only loses a little face, instead of a $10 million donation.

If I was running a competing hospital in the area, I would damn well be on the phone right now calling Abercrombie & Fitch and promising them to STFU if they even send the hospital as little as a quarter of that $10 million promised to Nationwide Children's Hospital. Dumbasses.

Photo Credit: Photo by drewcipher, used under the terms of a Creative Commons license.