Posts from — March 2005

They selected the Stryker light armored vehicle and the fun began. It was too wide to permit the space needed on both sides for the crew chief to walk around it and was at the upper limit of weight. It had to have waivers to be flown.

You couldn’t mount the guns on the vehicle and get it on and off the loading ramp of a C-130, so it wasn’t ready for combat for a half hour after being unloaded as weapons were installed.

The armor wasn’t adequate and had to be upgraded which made it too heavy to be flown on a C-130, etc.

Rumsfeld has based his New Model Army on this failed vehicle. His small mobile brigade force is supposed to move around in these things. Just another failure on the part of the Faith-based and their corporate sponsors.

For more on the Stryker: Global Security’s page, official Army site, and a Washington Post article on the problems.

If they had designed these things to be carried in Ospreys it couldn’t have gotten worse.

Because of my belief in the value of free enterprise I have no problem with people refusing to sell some things. Don’t go into a Kosher deli and expect to buy a ham and Swiss on rye, it isn’t going to happen.

The important point is that by designating itself as a “Kosher” deli, the business is informing the customer that there are restrictions. In the debate over pharmacies, the owner of the business is not required to carry all of the drugs that a doctor may prescribe. Frankly there are too many drugs, and some of them are very expensive with a short shelf life.

All that is necessary is to advertise the fact that you don’t carry certain drugs, if you, as the owner, object to the drugs on moral grounds. I’m not talking about anything large and expensive, perhaps just a recognizable symbol or sign at the desk to tell customers that you do not carry certain products. There is no need for a customer to get into a confrontation, and the doctors will soon know better than to use certain pharmacies for certain prescriptions and inform their patients.

The problem is that some people want to make a Federal case, literally, about what they perceive is their persecution by society. If a pharmacist doesn’t want to dispense certain drugs, don’t work for a pharmacy that sells them. There is no right for an employee to determine what the owner of the store sells. If you don’t like the way a store does business, you have the right to resign. If this was really important to you, you should have brought it up before you were hired. If you think that targets you because of your religious beliefs, consider that many of the women who were executed for witchcraft were essentially pharmacists dispensing natural medicines. They were usually executed by people holding your beliefs.

It’s a terrible thing that Orthodox Jews can’t work in McDonalds, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices for your religion.

These people don’t have the first clue as to what they are getting themselves into moving along the 370-mile border. They may have the camo clothing, but it is the wrong version for the most part [forest pattern] and just makes them more obvious. They have guns, which doesn’t mean they know how or when to use them. They have vehicles, but probably haven’t made the modifications necessary for use in the desert. They have communications, but they haven’t been tested under the conditions in which they are going to be used.

I see a lot of amateurs wandering out into an environment that can and does kill people every year, without the training to survive. They are going to meet drug smugglers, people smugglers, annoyed locals, and assorted other people who do not want them there. Many of these people have no moral problem with killing the outsiders and leaving the bodies for the buzzards.

Steve Gilliard quotes a certain professor of law, on why, for the Republicans, the Woodside Hospice was a “bridge too far”.

The election in 2006 will be the best indicator of how much damage has been done to the GOP, but the professor isn’t happy about the actions of people he helped get elected.

On the other side, people need to store up these golden moments and bring them out in the Fall of 2006 to remind voters what’s at stake. The Republican primaries may be the most fun you can have without buying a ticket. It is possible that several incumbents will face challenges in their primaries.

Back to CBS for a thought provoking report: Medicaid Could Cost You Your IRA.

“The truth is out there”, and it tells us that the crisis is medical care in the United States. You can’t afford to get sick in this country, no matter how well you have planned your life.

All of the safe-guards that once were in place to help people with disasters have been dismantled. The state has the power to strip you of everything you own before they’ll consider helping you, and then you have to sweat out every legislative session to find out if your state will continue to support the medical care your family needs.

The marsupial master of miniscule, skippy, has managed to sneak a few posts passed the Blogger meltdown that you should see.

Just Go, the picture is just wonderful and should remind people why the “Magic Kingdom” has a branch in Florida.

Pudentilla, who posts at skippy point to 18 U.S.C. § 912 – False Personation: Officer or employee of the United States for those ejected from Dubya’s dog and pony shows by fake Secret Service agents. Also available from your Federal government are 18 USC § 241 – Conspiracy against rights or 18 USC § 242 – Deprivation of rights under color of law, if it involves local law enforcement.

What they’re doing isn’t simply annoying, it’s illegal.

On the topic of pharmacists who have “moral issues” about doing their job, you will learn an alternate method of dealing with the problem: moral beliefs, schmoral beliefs, it’s just bad customer service. Essentially don’t make it a battle of rights, make it an issue that the store management can deal with without pickets: customer service. There is nothing easier for a store to deal with than a rude clerk. Anyone who thinks a drug store chain wants to deal with employees who annoy customers has never worked in a store.

Xan at Corrente answers that eternal question: Who is obnoxious enough to drive a pacifist to minimally violent action? Conservative pundit William Kristol during a speech at Earlham College, a private Quaker institution, was nailed by a student with a pie.

I would have used a cow pie, but I’m not a Quaker.

A World War II bomber pilot [B-24s flying from Italy], with a Distinguished Flying Cross, McGovern was attacked as unpatriotic, and weak on defense for his opinions on the Vietnam War.

Take the time to read his words and compare his experience with what is happening today, especially in light of those calling for liberal gravitas on security issues.

No one who compares the number of retired military officers who stood with John Kerry as compared to George Bush, and, more importantly, the success of the officers backing Kerry as opposed to those backing Bush, can reasonably assume a weakness on defense on behalf of the Democratic Party.

Abraham Lincoln’s advice: “It is much better to remain silent and let everybody think you are a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt”, is applicable to the use of force. Bush has demonstrated the weakness of America’s military as directed by Donald Rumsfeld. US enemies now know that the US is not invulnerable, an assumption they didn’t make before Bush started his preemptive war.

Something people forget is that three people have been involved in all the US disasters in the Persian Gulf area. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz all go back to the Ford administration.

They were there when the US policy was to introduce nuclear energy to Iran. They were there when the US provided weapons to Iran in exchange for hostages. They were there when the US jumpstarted Saddam Hussein’s WMD programs. How long and how much evidence is required to conclude that they are incompetent bunglers.

Every guy standing in line to get their traditional “scalping” on the first day in boot camp has more military experience than these three “national defense wizards” combined.

Well someone from the “barracks” being built behind us complained to the bureaucracy and they gave my neighbor grief, so I connected the line to the sewer.

She’s still waiting for the contractor to fix her roof from the hurricane so she doesn’t have to worry about water pouring into her living room, but these jerks want to complain about how she waters her petunias.

Anyone who still thinks, for whatever perverse reason, that Dubya’s piracy accounts are the way to go should read this heartwarming story about 401(k) surprises for the newly retired. Maybe it’s there, and maybe not.

You might be better off investing with these guys or these, they are least required to tell you the odds of getting anything for your money.

They should change the name of this aircraft from the Osprey to the Vampire. No matter how many times it crashes, or many people it kills, it keeps coming back to life.

I worry about it because it is scheduled as the replacement for the Special Operations aircraft that current fly over my house at low altitude on their way to the firing ranges. I would just as soon not have an unscheduled landing in my immediate vicinity.

Lean Left has the story of Juan Carlos Merida, a Panamanian national who went out of his way to help the FBI in an investigation, and found himself on the “persons of interest” list.

There is apparently no one who can edit the list to remove people who shouldn’t be on it, and no indication whether the people on the list are good or bad.

Hint: there are a lot of American IT people unemployed by companies shipping their jobs to Asia. I’m sure that the government would be able to hire any number of them to clean up the list. These are native-born Americans who can actually receive security clearances.

The BBC tells us that Whisky bosses search for new cat. They have put out a call for a new cat and hope to find a feline more in the mold of Towser whose “Guinness Book of Records tally of 30,000 mice still stands”

A statue has been erected in Towser’s honor in front of the distillery she protected for her 24 years.

The Beeb has gotten carried away as research shows that Towser only actually caught 28,899 mice.

For those not familiar with Britain: whisky is the spelling for the Scottish product, while whiskey indicates what Americans call rye.

This one is for Andante at Collective Sigh, noted Chihuahua herder:

ABC News reports that a Chihuahua Terrorizes Postal Workers. It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

Vestal Vespa provided the link to the South Park Studio which allows you to create your own South Park character.

According to the site, the Flash program was designed to provide people with Gravatar images.

It isn’t much, but it is more than they will get from the oilman, former Texas governor, and current resident of Texas who sits in the White House.

On the Saturday edition of All Things Considered, March 26, 2005, Debbie Elliott interviews Representative Steve King [R-Iowa] in a segment called: “Congressional Republicans Target ‘Activist’ Judiciary”.

In spite of his lack of any particular credentials, Mr. King sits on the House Judiciary Committee and he discussed various options for making “un-elected judges accountable”. Among the ideas were eliminating all of the courts except the Constitutionally mandated Supreme Court, not funding the Federal courts, adjustments like that.

Go and listen to the man, it starts at about 1:15 into the segment. I don’t guess he’s heard or seen the polls about what American voters think about Congressional action.

There have been numerous complaints received regarding the services provided under the current regime and we would like to take time to respond to these complaints and to help those of you in the outlying areas understand the true situation.

It has been noted that several individuals purporting to be the “Easter Bunny” do not seem to be authentic. Of course they’re not authentic. We don’t do personal appearances or take requests. As the anthropomorphic personification of a blended holiday we are entirely too involved in attempting to fulfill the unreasoning expectations of various groups. Besides which, we noticed that many of the requests came from people with French surnames, and I don’t think it is necessary to remind people what happens to rabbits in France. Remember: in Britain bunnies are found in children books; in France in cookbooks.

We had what we thought was an excellent solution, but then discovered that due to his existence as a pookah, Harvey was not visible to major segments of the population and, to be honest, he had a problem staying away from tipple for any major block of time.

As for the quality of the costumes, we are certainly not going to recommend anyone “donate” their pelt so these obvious frauds can have “genuine rabbit fur” costumes.

There have been other complaints following the change from solid to hollow chocolate statuary. The Chocolate Cartel has been jacking up prices for years, and while we agree that problems like the disruptions in the Ivory Coast have had a negative impact on the pricing of the raw materials, we suspect the price increases have more to do with avarice than insurrections.

We had to choose between offering smaller, solid figures, or larger, hollow figures. Research showed us that the target audience, small children, only actually ate the ears and nibbled a bit from the toes. The majority of the figure was consumed by parents: “to prevent the kids from getting sick from all that candy.” Our thinking was the kids would be impressed with the initial size of the figure, and the parents needed to lose weight anyway.

Hollowing the figures took more time and you have to keep in mind that the staff is already pretty weird from the massive doses of sugar, gelatin, and dyes they have to ingest to produce jelly beans. Nonetheless, the illusion is preserved.

Regarding the “grass” and “baskets”: hey, wake up and smell the polypropyl vinyl! The days of people having a basket out back and grass around the house are gone. We ask for baskets and find the concept apparently doesn’t translate well as the suppliers move further to the East. But the grass? Grass is grass all over the world. It’s green, it is almost always the definition of green in every language. So we ask for grass and we get shredded plastic in almost every color except green. We know it’s wrong. We complain every year and every year we are told that this is “the new green”.

So, suck it up and get out there and deliver.

Update: Easter Bunny Gets Pummeled by Boy at Mall – Be careful out there.

He’s done it again, waiting until after the media starting running stories about his failure to mention the deaths at the Red Lake reservation, to make a telephone call. He promised them Federal aid, as if he was doing them a favor.

Somebody tell Dubya that it is a Federal issue. Murders on reservations are Federal crimes, tried in Federal courts. He isn’t doing them any favors; it’s his job.

The cretin can spend taxpayer dollars to fly back to Washington to sign hastily passed bills to interfere in matters that have been the province of the states since the Constitution was signed, but can’t rouse himself to offer his obviously faked sympathy in a matter that is a Federal concern.

In his discussion of Adam Nagourney’s paean to Jeb Bush, James Wolcott notes Mr. Nagourney’s comparison of the Bush family to the Adams family. I believe that this has to be a spelling error. Surely Mr. Nagourney meant the Addams family.

Having said that, there are places where guns should not be permitted. I oppose arming airline pilots. That is a controlled situation and the fewer things that can puncture a pressurized aircraft, the better. If you had ever been in an explosive decompression of an aircraft, as I have, you would know why you don’t want that to happen.

Another place where I do not want to see guns is in schools. This wire story, NRA Leader Advocates Guns for Teachers is an example of why I have never belonged to the NRA, and never will. These people are idiots.

Carrying a weapon in a peaceful situation, as opposed to war, is a major risk. You have to worry about controlling that weapon and the ammunition. You forget just once and someone can die.

At the police academy we spent more time on when not to shoot, than when to shoot. In the training you didn’t have to start over if you didn’t shoot when you should have, but if you took one unreasonable shot, it was back to the beginning.

Who covers the cost of the weapons and training? Who pays for the background checks? Who pays for the liability insurance? Why should teachers accept this? We have made them babysitters, counselors, probation officers, nurses, and now, this idiot wants to make them cops.

[^TM Kevin Drum]

Sox

Of course cat hair is good for computers. Why do you think the tops are cat-sized?

[Edit: For territorial reasons Dot & Sox were confined to the computer room until Koshka relented, and now I can’t get them to leave while I’m working.]

Friday Ark

The IRS finally figured out that if you what to get a lot of back taxes you need to investigate people who actually have money. MSNBC tells us that the IRS gets $3.2 billion from wealthy tax dodgers.

This has to be more profitable than hassling leftie non-profits. Hint: non-profits shouldn’t have a lot of spare change. If you know that they do have a lot of money, then maybe you should take a look.