Posts from — June 2005

The local Memorial Day service was dedicated to the memory of two young local men who were killed in Iraq while serving with the Marine Corps during the week before the service.

The Special Operations Command will hold a memorial at Hurlburt Field Friday for the four airmen who died when an Iraqi Air Force plane crashed this week North of Baghdad.

Monster

Lind notices the similarity between corporate raiders who take over a company, loot its assets, and then leave as it collapses with what Rumsfeld is doing at the Pentagon.

Enlistments are well down, damaged equipment is not being repaired, and needed equipment is not being purchased. Rumsfeld is pursuing his vision of a “new, more cost efficient military” and couldn’t be bothered with reality. Remember: Rumsfeld didn’t even bother to interrupt his meeting when an airliner slammed into the Pentagon on 9/11/01. If it isn’t part of his plan it doesn’t exist.

We have plants that don’t belong crowding out the native species, insects that don’t belong eating everything in sight, and animals that don’t belong wandering free.

I fought a battle with Muscovy ducks a couple of years ago that showed the basic weakness in the state and Federal system.

The ducks were breeding like crazy and “eliminating” on everything in sight. I called Animal Control and was told they were “migratory waterfowl” and the problem of the Federal Fish and Wildlife Commission. The Feds said that the ducks were imported [Brazil] domesticated animals and not their problem. Animal Control bounced back with the claim that since they had been determined to be domesticated animals and on my property, I probably needed licenses for them.

In the end, I located and destroyed nests wherever I could find them and trapped adults and gave them to a sanctuary after the local Oriental restaurant refused to put them on the menu. [I can’t serve those ducks. Those ducks are dirty. Those ducks eat cat food. No one will pay for a duck that eats cat food.]

So I appreciate the dilemma of these people: Peacocks Swarm Couple’s Florida Home. No one will help them, even though the birds don’t belong in Florida.

Deport the birds! It’s not like they came from Cuba and vote Republican. Let’s close our borders to these aliens.[/rant]

Apparently the fact that there are documented instances of torture by the US should never be mentioned or alluded to by anyone claiming to be an American. This is along the lines of the mind set that feels there would be no deaths in Iraq if Gary Trudeau and ABC Nightline don’t mention them.

These are the people that claim that Newsweek is an “enemy of the people” because none of the five instances of abuse of the Quran that the Pentagon admits to involves a flush toilet. The Pentagon doesn’t say if any of them involve a “slops bucket”, but that wasn’t the specific claim made.

When government spokesweasels start picking their words with extreme care, it is time for follow-up questions because what they are denying is true in every particular except one small point. When a spokesweasel says “the victim wasn’t run over by a tank from the 117th Armored Regiment”, it means that the tank was probably from another unit, not that the victim wasn’t run over by a tank.

After years of reading Soviet propaganda, I am all too familiar with this technique for lying with facts. Most are old enough to remember that immortal line: “that depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is”.

For people who don’t know: poor people are stuck in a cash economy because they can’t afford the fees on checking accounts. The people willing to loan money to the poor charge rates that are often into triple digits and some still remember as the criminal offense of “loan sharking” or usury.

The products that poor people can afford to buy are more expensive in the long run as they are less efficient and don’t last as long as the slightly more expensive models. The housing poor people can afford is less secure and efficient as the next level up.

A character in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series refers to it as the law of boots: $50 boots will keep your feet dry for 20 years, but the $10 boots you can afford fall apart in a year. Over 20 years the rich man has spent $50, but the poor man has spent $200 and has damp feet.

People who need money can’t borrow it at a reasonable rate, but people who don’t need it can buy cars with 0% interest rates. The system is geared toward gouging the poor.

With a 62.8% voter turn out the “Dutch say ‘No’ to EU constitution”. The No/Nee vote was 61.6% against 38.4% for the Yes/Ja.

Following the French No/Non, the EU constitution has little chance of ever being adopted without a major re-write and another round of elections.

[Update: Still no reaction from the Shrubbery, and the President of the EU says “it’s only a flesh wound”.]

Take that you foolish Texas person!

[I’m sure that French President Jacques Chirac would not do this to annoy Dubya…probably, I mean he doesn’t look like a man with that kind of sense of humor. Ruling a country is serious business, and rulers don’t go about making decisions based on personal pique…ummm, never mind.]