Posts from — August 2005

They also have a monthly hour-long show called Florida on the Line which allows people to call in with questions for the people on the panel for the monthly topic. Tonight’s subject was the Federal Energy Bill that Shrubbery just signed.

The panel consisted of: Jim Smith, President of the Florida Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association, Holly Bins, with the Florida Public Research Interest Group (Florida PIRG), and Greg Laskoski, with AAA Auto-Club South.

Ms. Bins made the point that this might have been a good bill in 1975, but it does nothing for today’s problems.

I was taken by the comments of Mr. Smith. He represents the independent gas station owners and they aren’t happy with the bill. He noted the problems that were encountered trying to get fuel to the Panhandle after hurricane Dennis and asked how anyone thought they were going to be able to sell ethanol. Apparently there are no local sources, so the independents would have to buy it from processors in the Midwest or Brazil, which means higher prices.

A small bit of information I picked up in conversation with gas station people: they make a fixed amount on a gallon of gasoline, generally a dime. They make a dime when the gas sells for a $1/gallon and they make a dime when it sells for $3/gallon. Every one else in the system makes a percentage. The state gasoline tax is a fixed amount on a gallon, but they also collect sales tax, which is a percentage. As always the people you can complain to have no power and make no money from the price increases.

The corporations make larger profits while the consumers and small businesses pay for it.

I have only recently installed a wireless network so that my brother could have broadband while staying at my Mother’s house. I did a lot of tuning and messing around to extend coverage, but the only computers that can use my network are those I have granted access to. It was a minor bit of extra work, but I don’t have to worry about people “borrowing my bandwidth”.

If people leave their networks open they are inviting you to use it. The Wi-Fi systems use a public frequency that is shared with some cordless phones. If you use the frequency, you must make your own provisions for privacy. If you leave the keys in your car with the motor running, don’t be shocked if it ends up missing.

Go! Print! Locate the crayons! Create!

Ms. Harris officially entered the primary for the Senate seat currently held by Bill Nelson [nominal Democrat] today, so this is surely a clue to the tenor of the coming campaign.

Gary Bernsten is a retired CIA agent who was in charge of the effort to capture Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. He has written a book, Jawbreaker about the effort and is now suing to get the CIA to complete its review of the book so it can be published.

Apparently Gary missed the problems that Richard Clarke had getting his book, Against All Enemies, cleared for publication. Like Clarke, Bernsten is not going to praise the Shrubbery, so, unlike Tommy Franks or Bob Woodward, the CIA has already taken more than twice as long as Agency rules require to clear the book.

Obviously they need extra time for the meetings to create the talking points to be used for responding to another negative book by an insider about the incompetence of the Shrubbery and his minions.

The people at the top get medals and promotions while the people at the bottom get indicted. The intelligence gathered by the CIA was good and sufficient for the proper decisions to be made. We knew who was responsible for the September 11^th attacks, we knew where they were, and we had them cornered, but the mission was compromised to prepare for attacking Iraq.

The intelligence community had plenty of skepticism about the WMD claims, but it was ignored and marginalized by political appointees. George Tenet claimed responsibility for the yellowcake in the State of the Union, in spite of the facts, to get his medal and a pat on the head.

By this time everyone should know that they cooked the books. The intelligence that was claimed as justifying the war was hand selected – the fix was in.

A Safe Return

They landed at Edwards, so if I’m really lucky I will see it when it lands here to refuel as it is carried on the back of a 747 to the Cape. Eglin is the normal stop for these missions.

So, I’m driving around and Tony Blair is discussing this on the hourly newsbreak on NPR, and in response to how you determine what is political speech and what is incitement, Blair invokes “common sense”.

If you are not a fan of Rumpole of the Bailey that may not mean much to you, but if you have watched as many episodes as I have, hearing a British authority figure invoke “common sense” as a means of discerning the niceties of a legal definition required a quick stop until I stopped laughing.

I had this picture of Blair with a Bolton mustache, a “dead lamb” on his head, wearing a black bathrobe pronouncing the value of “good old British common sense”. Judge Bullingham has moved to Downing Street.

NSA is a joint services Defense agency, and I was part of it. We gathered and analyzed intelligence, which is very definitely a “really-based” business.

As General Odom points out the situation in Iraq with us there is already as bad as it would have gotten if we had left after deposing Saddam, so there’s really no point in being targets. More men and materiel are not going to make a difference at this point; we should cut our losses and leave.

We lost the peace when the decision was made to replace Jay Garner with Paul Bremer. Bremer exercised no oversight over anything and the situation spiraled out of control.

The ABC announcement.

[Update: The Associate Press on the CBS site has a more complete obituary.]

It would appear that the normally docile New York Post thinks that the Shrubbery should visit Brook Park, Ohio, the home of the Marine Reserve unit that has taken so many casualties lately in Iraq, and doesn’t understand why he is going to West Texas to cut brush rather than visiting the families of the Marines.

Contrast:

The June 1998 issue of the Air Force Association has a lengthy article on the Khobar Tower bombing. On the 25^th of June, 1996 a truck bomb with the explosive power of 10 tons of TNT went off near a building housing US military personnel causing 19 deaths.

Although the local commander was cleared of any negligence, the Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, felt that someone had to be held accountable and blocked the pending promotion of the officer. The Wing Commander resigned, as did the Air Force Chief of Staff. They were responsible because they were in command and it happened on their watch, not because they had done anything wrong.

Twelve local airmen died. They were members of the 58^th Fighter Squadron of the 33^rd Fighter Wing of Eglin Air Force Base.

Most of America isn’t aware of it, but at the memorial service for those who died was their Commander in Chief, William Jefferson Clinton. If you aren’t from this area you aren’t aware of this because he didn’t bring any reporters with him and didn’t answer questions from the local press. He was paying his respects to the friends and families of those who had died.

It was 1996 and he was running for re-election, but he didn’t use a memorial as a photo opportunity.

Apparently female voices are more complex and melodic than male voices and the brain uses the areas normally associated with music to process them. The processing required for a male voice is much simpler.

It was also noted that the “voices” heard in hallucinations are almost always male, which, if you were going to be sarcastic, might lead to you to hazard a opinion about the dominance of male gods, but I would never do that.

The governor, Bob Reilly, is a Christian Republican, but he actually read the New Testament and has tried to improve the lot of the less fortunate in his state. For his efforts he will probably lose in the Republican primary to former chief justice Roy “Moses” Moore who will descend from his mountain to oppose Reilly.

If you have the bandwidth, Mark Fiore has an interesting cartoon on the issue.

After the first few days the lawn erupted with corpse-white mushrooms. As things continued a green mold began appearing on the mushrooms and now the black blotching of mildew is appearing on the mold.

Frankly the look and smell reminds me more of my grandmother’s basement in upstate New York that the Gulf Coast of Florida. Hurricanes, sharks, rip currents, and now the mold monster – I can’t wait to see the newest Visit Florida commercial.

The Priz, literally “prize”, vehicles are used for submarine rescue work and are designed for depths of 1000 meters, the problem is that there are very few of the vehicles in the Russian Navy and the vehicle was trapped at 190 meters, below the safe level for other methods to be used.

Based on the reports, the AS-28 became entangled in a fishing net that was entangled with a military communications and detection system anchored to the bottom. The Super Scorpio had to cut the cables to free up the vehicle for ascent. An earlier Russian attempt to raise the vessel using cables also became enmeshed in the antennae of the communications system.

The various reports on how long the crew could survive were the result of having the figures for the vehicle under the normal conditions of three crewmembers, but actually having seven members on board for a training mission.

The US also flew two Super Scorpios and deep diving teams to Kamchatka, but arrived after the British team. The Japanese sent several vessels, but they can’t be in the area until Monday at the earliest.

This MSNBC report has the outline of information. I held up because there have been so many faulty reports coming out on this, and most events from Russia.

In spite of reality and the facts this BBC report, Mosque chairman sparks fresh row, will result in problems for Britain’s Islamic community.

Dr. Mohammed Naseem, chairman of the Birmingham Central Mosque:

“A government is entitled to take measures to safeguard the country and the nation, but the problem is that the government speaks with so many tongues that one is confused.

“Up to last week, we were given to believe that the terrorists were home-grown, ‘clean-skinned’ and Muslim.

“The measures being taken are against those who come to this country who are asylum-seekers and they are supposed to be misusing or abusing hospitality.

“Mr Blair told the Cabinet last week that people blame anything but faith, including poverty, discrimination and the war on terror for the bombings, so the message seemed to be that they are blaming everything else, but they should be blaming faith.”

I fear that Dr. Naseem is about to discover that having facts and reality on your side is not enough to hold out fear and prejudice.

[Update: See “FRINGE” by Publius at Legal Fiction.]