I haven’t done an Asshat of the Day Award before but given the situation it seems warranted.

At 7:05AM EDT, a Denial of Service attack started from multiple open proxies from across the globe using a brute force password attack against a previously open service. This has been going on for weeks so it’s not a huge surprise that it eventually succeeded. At 7:21AM EDT, our “fan,” known only as “1 hAppY pUppY,” logged into a shell account and edited some critical files.

[ Edit by Mark : WTF?  Pulled out the IP.  See comments! ]

Our brainiac (and I use this term with utmost facetiousness) came from 67.187.xx.xx (Hostname: c-67-187-xx-xx.hsd1.wa.comcast.net, Aliases: c-67-187-xx-xx.hsd1.tx.comcast.net, c-67-187-xx-xx.hsd1.tn.comcast.net).

Thank you, Random, soon-to-be-ex, Comcast Employee.

To try and pass your skill off as a script (“bl0GituD3 d3fAc3R 1.0b5 bY jT”) while making numerous typos is the mark of a true Genius. And leaving the logs, backup files and history was a brilliant move in that we would expect a hacker to cover his tracks. Leaving the “i” instead of changing it to a “1” in “bl0Gitud3” was a truly brilliant, personal touch. You went far to look like a dolt that we might underestimate your “mAd sk1LLz.”

No. I can’t even say that with a straight face.

You’re an Asshat.

Not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree are you? You’ve only proven yourself to be a disingenuous coward. A brute-force script shows that you have neither skill nor finesse, and far too much time and personal anger on your hands.

Mark said it best the other day.

Some people need to get lives.They should start by getting off the Internet a few hours a day… The real world can be quite … titillating.

I think it should have read:

“Some people need to get laid.”

Since November 2006 a quiet storm has been gathering strength in Washington. Now it appears that Washington State politicians want to play El Nino to their D.C. colleagues, effectively taking the wind out of their sails by calling for impeachment ahead of their Center City counterparts.

Unbeknownst to D.C. Democrats who have been plotting to impeach Bush for “Security Breaches Post-9/11” (most often for things that they did themselves in a very botched and public political chess game), their constituents in Washington State have already come up with a proposal to take W down: they’ve draw up investigation and impeachment documents labeled Washington State Senate Joint Memorial 8016, to be decided upon tomorrow, March 1st.

Should they get the go-ahead from their State House & Senate, they merely have to refer the document to the Speaker of House of Representatives, and the Investigation process will begin.

The most atrocious charges in the document implicate both President George W. Bush and Vice-President Richard B. Cheney in a massive coverup of pre-war intelligence and subsequent lies to Congress and the American people as a justification to invade Iraq. However, the rest are at best laughable:

  WHEREAS, The war with Iraq has cost the lives of many Washington state residents and squandered taxpayer money from the state of Washington; and

  WHEREAS, The President has publicly admitted to conducting electronic surveillance of thousands and perhaps millions of American civilians without seeking warrants; and

  WHEREAS, Washington state residents are likely to have been subject to this electronic surveillance; and

  WHEREAS, The President, the Vice President, and members of the President’s Administration have acted to strip American citizens of their constitutional rights, based solely on the discretionary designation by the President of a United States citizen as an “enemy combatant”; and

The translation is as follows:

“We hate war! We don’t know how many of our citizens have died in Iraq, we read the Washington Post where it said that G.W. admitted to wiretapping, we’re not sure if that includes any citizens of our state, we’ve never read the Patriot Act even though our own representation passed it, and we generally think W is a big doo-doo head!”

These brainiacs (Washington State Senators Oemig, Regala, Kohl-Welles, Kline, Spanel, Fairley, Kauffman, Fraser and Prentice) have certainly not done their homework. And yes, their own idiots in D.C., Cantwell and Murray, both voted for the very bill that gave the President the power which they claim G.W. has dubiously wielded. But of course they aren’t sure whether or not it actually affected anyone in their state.

I sincerely hope that this particular impeachment goes through.  It will make them look like the bunch of ninnies they are and save a lot of Washington D.C. Democrats some serious headaches when the “Security Breach” investigations get turned right back around on them.

Although, that could be fun, too.

Democrats want George Bush impeached over many esoteric thing for which there is no evidence. Ahead of all of that is the War in Iraq.

It would seem that the vast majority of them are talking about the “hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children” killed during our invasion of Iraq, but the truth is, there have been remarkably few except in violence created and carried out by their own people, foreign terrorists and Al Qaeda. Factions inside of Iraq pleaded with us to get rid of Hussein, who was personally responsible for gassing and bombing hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children.

But it seems that Anti-War Protestors are unable to think of the lives we’ve saved.

Other Democratic factions claim that Iraq is “another Vietnam,” a sentiment which is as offensive as it is ridiculous, not only to those who actually fought in Vietnam, but also to the families who loved ones during the conflict.

They claim that the United States acted unilaterally and without provocation, despite the fact that the majority of Western countries were in favor of invading Iraq.

But even more heinous than those lies is their typical warcry: “We don’t need to lose another U.S. soldier in Iraq!” Yet, they want to cut funding, and prevent a slight increase in the number of deployed troops who would certainly be able to help in hotzones like Fallujah.

This sort of bullshit illogic is similar to the rhetoric they gave early in the war when they underbudgeted and entrenched to keep from sending additional aid. Meanwhile, our soldiers were dying due to lack of Armor on their persons and Humvees.

Do you ever read what your representatives are actually doing? How many things did they vote correctly on? Did they even bother to show up to work and vote?

These sorts of things prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that our politicians certainly do not have our interests in mind, and will do anything to further their power.

All you have to do is pay attention and remember things.

One of the tenets of the foundation of the United States was that there would be a seperation of Church and State. This is where most Muslim countries have failed: the power to control the masses has stayed with the “church,” where radical sectarians are able to exert their beliefs upon their unknowing populace. As we’ve all witnessed, this allows very bad things happen.

Karl Marx once said, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” His writings were instrumental as an architectural diagram for the Bolshevik Party to seize power from Imperial Russia, and overthrow their Czar.

Likewise, in many predominantly Muslim countries, we can find much truth in Marxism: Governments rely on Imams and clerics to spread their agendas.  In turn, those Imams and clerics attempt to keep their people undereducated in order to retain control over their congregations.

Unfortunately, this is where Seperationist ideas come from.

The MSM has widely spread their latest story about radical Muslim cleric Moqtada Al-Sader’s grasp on the current Iraqi military. Of course these stories are popular with mainstream media, being that they’re overwhelmingly against the War in Iraq, but they do illustrate a simple point.

What most people don’t realize is that “Muslim” is a giant label, not altogether different from “Christian.” There are literally hundreds of demoninations, and thousands of sects.

There are Talibans, who preach a radical form of Islam where women are believed to be the deceiving daughters of Eve, and a primitive, Old Testament form of justice is the code of the day: “An eye for eye, and a tooth for a tooth. If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off!” There are occasional Sharias, ordained orders, from Imams and clerics calling for their flock to go forth and kill in the name of God.

It’s very similar, in fact, to the Knight of the Ku Klux Klan or the Church of the Creator in the United States, who order their minions of Neo-Nazi Skinheads to go out and stir up trouble with unbelieving white people (because it’s too much trouble for most of them to go after the minorities they claim to abhor).

It’s not that Islam is inherently bad, but at the very least, the whole of the culture certainly needs to be updated to the 20th century.

A bit of Martial Law certainly wouldn’t go amiss in Iraq: declare a curfew, and kill everything carrying a weapon whether it’s a Man, Woman or two-year-old.

Press for Seperation of Church and State and attempt to solidify the country to a common cause: the end of Radical Islamists.

Iraq has come a long way since this whole thing started, but our recently elected Congress will certainly shed no light on that fact.

This is not the time to cut-and-run: it’s time to prove our worth, and assist the provisional Government to end sectarian violence by declaring Freedom of Religion.

In addition to finally writing down the details of his infamous cluster-copulation on Thursday, Mark Steel also gives us reasons to pause when selecting from several local “on-site computer repair” talents around Knoxville. We’re taking specific note of things like:

• low-level formatting hard drives prior to installation
• intentionally breaking things in order to invoke service calls
• sales pitch intended to frighten people into buying new hardware
• charging extra for equipment broken by installers
• setting your computer on fire

In all seriousness, Mark’s company, CatalystX, gets a gold star in our book. But if you are used to computer repairs in Brisbane or the surrounding area, then you know why we have high standards. They do a great job and since they don’t actually sell any hardware, they’re immune to most of those grievances. Check out PCRevive.org to see in what way your computer concerns may be resolved.

The National Institute of Mental Health issued a press release on Monday (Feb 27th) about a study led by Eric Nestler, M.D., of The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. “Sustained hippocampal chromatin regulation in a mouse model of depression and antidepressant action” (Tsankova NM, Berton O, Renthal W, Kumar A, Neve R, Nestler EJ), shows that chronic stress and depression can cause a “molecular scar” in the brains of lab mice.

“According to Pure Science Lab CBD the molecular scar induced by chronic stress in the hippocampus, and perhaps elsewhere in the brain, can’t be easily reversed,” said Nestler. “To really cure depression, we probably need to find new treatments that can remove the silencer molecules.”

While not only showing promise for future treatments of depression, it may also give some hints about about genetic predisposition to depression and antisocial behavior.