Posts from — August 2005

What I don’t like is waiting on a Flash animation by Quaker Oats blocking my view of the news headlines at the ABC News site, nor the Flash-launched pop-up that I had to kill. [Yes, folks, Flash can avoid your pop-up blocker and throw up an extra ad in the background.]

I hope ABC made some money on that ad, because it has cost them my clicks for the foreseeable future. As for Quaker Oats, there are other people who make rolled oats and don’t make obnoxious ads.

They missed the artificial deadline, agreeing only that they would continue to call the country the Republic of Iraq, but they have been taking lessons from the US:

They invoked Hasert/DeLay Time for the vote on a constitution, interpreting by the end of August 15^th to mean the end of August 22^nd, and Blackwell of Ohio voting rules by intuitively know that a show of hands was three-quarters plus one votes necessary to change the rules without having to actually count, since there were a lot of extra people in the chamber who weren’t supposed to be voting, like American officials.

Steve Bates of Yellow Doggerel Democrat reported on this with The Skittish Are Coming, but the Day to Day segment in which Alex Chadwick talks with Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) adds an interesting element.

In response to questions, Culberson admits that the Shrubbery has done nothing about the problem: the Border Patrol hasn’t been expanded as authorized by Congress; $6.8 billion in money for Homeland Security hasn’t been spent; there has been nothing done in response to the drug war going on in the frontier zone of Mexico.

Culberson admits that he has introduced his bill to address a problem that has been totally ignored by a former governor of Texas who has the power and resources to do something.

Finally, people need to know that there are good people in Texas in addition to those who blog.

When a movement started to close the road to Bush’s ranch and move Mrs. Sheehan’s protest out of sight, she reports that a landowner on the road has offered her the use of his land.

I’m not going to assume that the landowner is a liberal or a Democrat; I would rather believe he is displaying the traditional manners of a Southerner. I realize that the manners I was taught as a child have been little in evidence, but I would hope that there are still pockets of traditional values, even under rude reign of the Religious Reich.

[Update: Apparently the county can’t legally take any action for 30 days for public comment, so this isn’t a problem, as the protest will be over when Bush returns to Washington.]

1. Coined by Rook’s Rant

I was outraged by what Bush and Rove did to him. The smear was the worse thing I had seen since Katherine Harris ran for Secretary of State. It was despicable enough when they attacked Max Cleland, but to do it to another Republican was outside the pale.

During the early years of the Shrubbery’s reign, John remained a man of principle, but then when the 2004 campaign started he forfeited all claim to my regard. I could understand not openly opposing your party’s candidate, but to actively campaign for the slug that had slimed your family was too much.

James Wolcott in There’s only one Maverick, and his name is James Garner chronicles the latest episode of John McCain selling his soul to the Busheviki. He doesn’t seem to understand that they have no respect or regard for him.

If you have any interest in post and beam construction you should definitely check them out. They are three guys, Al, Andy, and Mickey, who have retired to rural Georgia and are building barns, houses, and workshops.

Lots of details, graphics, and pictures about the buildings with an occasional political post.

It is, of course, possible that this was a prank by the mischievous Sergeant.

What struck me was that he was an artilleryman, not in the infantry. They had already run out of infantry and were cross-training other specialties to fill slots. He died doing a job he hadn’t really been trained to do. He wasn’t eligible for the Combat Infantryman Badge, but that was the job he was given.

This is the result of Rumsfeld’s belief that people are “fungible”, that all you have to do is put whoever is available into whatever job that needs to be done, and things will be fine. Rumsfeld doesn’t believe that military jobs require specialized training because they are all just “cannon fodder” and “trigger pullers”.

Political leaders may waste the sacrifices of the military, but the individuals who make those sacrifices are doing their duty and nothing the political leaders do can alter that reality. You honor them by providing for their family, not by mouthing platitudes.

The deaths in Southeast Asia did not win a war, but they changed the thinking of the American government for a very long time. That may not have been the “goal” of those who started the war, but that was the result. The deaths had meaning. If the war had been won, would those people be any less dead, would the parents have less grief?

I want someone who claims that soldiers can die in vain to find a Virginian who had an ancestor die in Pickett’s Charge and who thinks that the ancestor’s death wasn’t honorable and worthy, that it was in vain.

The NARAL ad incident is indicative of a major misunderstanding among people who should know better.

NARAL is a single issue organization and would be unfaithful to their membership if they failed to give their support to politicians who support their views without regard to party. They would also fail if they didn’t vigorously attack those who oppose their views.

Asking NARAL to automatically support one party over any other makes them part of that party, subject to the whims of that party’s leadership. They have no such obligation, and given the recent decisions of the leadership of the party seeking orthodoxy, NARAL would be failing in their basic responsibility to do it.

Lost in this episode is the right to privacy. Reproductive choice is not the only issue that is tied to the right to privacy, and the easiest way to limit reproductive choice is by limiting the right to privacy. You can’t give ground on Roe v. Wade without weakening the right to privacy.

Folks, there is no compromise to be found on the other side of the political spectrum, so stop wasting credibility looking for it. You don’t give up basic rights to please the views of others. It’s time people understood that the other side wants people to give up the Bill of Rights. They want to limit speech, bring religion into the government, and put the government in your doctor’s office and your bedroom. This isn’t about accommodating their values; it’s about giving away your rights.

If you have a problem with choice, you need to understand that you don’t support the right to privacy.

Just because you didn’t read the signs properly and supported the invasion of Iraq is no reason to continue to support it now that you have ample proof that you were lied to and the Busheviks “fixed” the intelligence to justify their actions.

There is no reason to stay in Iraq. It isn’t going to get any better.

The Shi’ia are going to align with Iran, as should have been obvious. They were screwed over by the US after Gulf War I, so they don’t feel they owe us anything.

Most of the damage and deaths were in the Sunni areas, so they certainly hate the US more than any of the other groups.

The Kurds have been screwed over by every Republican administration from Nixon forward, so they don’t acknowledge any obligation to us.

The Iraqi women are about to be set back about a millennium with the imposition of Sharia law, so there is no support there.

Turkey and Syria are looking at the emergence of a Kurdish state, so we can forget any help from them, even if we weren’t constantly trying to pick a fight with Syria.

The biggest hoot I’ve heard are the people who claim they couldn’t believe that the Bush administration would be this incompetent. Excuse me, but where, exactly, in Bush’s Curriculum Vitae do you find any indication of competence in any field other than slimy political campaigns?

President and Mrs. Carter were afforded the opportunity of a dive and tour of Mr. Carter’s namesake, SSN-23, a Seawolf class nuclear submarine.

In addition to its formidable capabilities as an offensive weapon, the Jimmy Carter has research and reconnaissance capabilities only dreamed of when Mr. Carter was a young Naval Academy graduate working for Admiral Hyman Rickover.

There’s no further word on the George W. Bush dental chair, although there was a rumor that it will have document shredding capabilities.

My Dad like RC modeling, and I have bought a few for the children in the family, so I wondered why these things were so expensive. I checked on the cost of wireless cameras and RC models and still don’t know.

They are talking about a three to four week training course, when Christmas afternoon seemed to be sufficient in my experience.

I will have to do more research on the wireless camera in the model airship. Gulf Breeze is a hotspot for UFO sightings and with the right paint job and LED lighting, that airship could get me in a lot of trouble.

Herve Vandrot, 24, who studies botany at Edinburgh University, left his trusty crystal ball on a windowsill while he sauntered off to the city’s Royal Botanical Garden.

He returned surprised to find his top floor flat ablaze and suffered blistering to a hand after dashing in to rescue some course work.

Herve was studying psychic phenomena and claimed the fire must have been the fault of an overheated power cord for his computer, but firemen said it was sunlight focused by the crystal ball on some laundry.

He must have been a grad student, an undergrad would never have tried to save their course work when they had a great excuse like a fire.

[™ Kevin Drum]

New Kid Explores

What are those things?

[Edit: Venturing off the porch to investigate grass and mushrooms like a lot of young people.]

Friday Ark

They can’t seem to up-armor vehicles; they can’t buy enough bullets; they can’t supply troops with the necessities, much less the niceties, of life in a combat zone; but somehow they can manage to organize a concert to celebrate the tragedy of the attack on the Pentagon on September 11^th, 2001.

The America Supports You Freedom Walk has got to be one of the worst concepts to ever come out of the Pentagon, including the blue and silver striped tie for the Air Force uniform, wearing ascots with fatigues, and making mukluks Southeast Asia critical equipment.

I don’t remember reports of anything other than solemn remembrances of December 7^th, 1941 during World War II. I don’t understand how a large group of people assembling at the Pentagon to be frisked and then walking to the Mall for a concert shows any concern or support for people who died at the Pentagon or for those people deployed in a combat zone doing their best to stay alive. Apparently if you had planned to visit a grave in Arlington National Cemetery on that Sunday, you are out of luck.

The best way to have honored the people who died on September 11^th would have been to capture the man who planned the attack or, at least, to have attended their funerals, many obviously within walking distance of the Pentagon.

“Our shop is closed because all our beer has been sold out,” said a message on the abbey’s answering machine, which it calls the “beer phone”.

The abbey has no intention of boosting its capacity to satisfy market demand.

“We are not brewers, we are monks,” the father abbot said on the abbey’s website. “We brew beer to be able to afford being monks.”

Monk Mark Bode told De Morgen newspaper: “Outsiders don’t understand why we are not raising production but for us life in the abbey comes first, not the brewery.”

If you’re not a fan of the brewer’s art you may not be aware that every time you increase the size of the brewery you decrease the quality of the beer. Not every system “scales”, and breweries definitely don’t. All a modern megabrewery can guarantee is consistent mediocrity.

The monks have been using the same formula and methods to brew beer for a very long time. They pay attention to what they are doing and produce a superior product. If they became a business they would start to cut corners and the quality would disappear.

From the top: the North wall of the house, the front lawn, and recent additions.

If the lawn dries enough to support a mower, the mushrooms will be gone shortly. I’m going to be forced to use chemicals on the wall, and more “mildew resistant” paint additive in the Glidden mildew resistant paint that was applied 18 months ago.