Posts from — December 2005

Via Avedon Carol, the official US Navy site on the Pearl Harbor attack.

There will be a memorial service aboard NAS Pensacola that features an ever smaller number of survivors of the attack.

The other difficulty is that they host the Blogger Status and Blogger Buzz on the BlogSpot servers, so they had no way of telling anyone what was going on and when it might be repaired.

You would think that a large Internet concern like Google would know better than to do that, especially being based in an earthquake zone.

The case against Sami Al-Arian, 47, had been seen as one of the biggest courtroom tests yet of the Patriot Act’s expanded search-and-surveillance powers.

[snip]

Two co-defendants, Sameeh Hammoudeh and Ghassan Zayed Ballut, were acquitted of all charges. A third, Hatem Naji Fariz, was found not guilty on 24 counts, and jurors deadlocked on the remaining eight.

The U.S. Justice Department had no immediate comment.

Days worth of wiretaps and they couldn’t convince a jury to convict on anything. And people wonder why the 9/11 Commission won’t give them a passing grade.

Sami Al-Arian is an obnoxious jerk, but Ann, Rush, et al. had better hope that never becomes a crime. Oh, he was also a Bush supporter in 2000, big enough that there are pictures of the Shrubbery and Laura with Al-Arian’s family.

The question is: are they going to waste any more tax dollars on the charges that the jury couldn’t decide? I don’t know if he’s innocent or guilty, but this Justice Department is obviously not competent enough to prove their case.

The first is an interview with Peter Galbraith, the former ambassador to Croatia and an advisor to the Kurds. Mr. Galbraith makes the point that it is obvious that when repressive governments are removed from countries that are collections of disparate national groups, nationalism will kick in and the artificial constructs will break down into their inherently more stable “natural states”. This happened in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, so it should have been obvious that it was going to happen in Iraq.

In the second, Ex-CIA Agent Robert Baer talks about the new movie Syriana, which draws on his experiences working in the Middle East. [Listen to the interview to understand his involvement with the picture.]

He makes a makes a passing comment on the end of the interview that everyone knew that Iraq would come apart if Saddam was removed.

He implies that the reason that he parted ways with the CIA in 1995 was because he was suspected of being involved in a plot to assassinate Saddam, to the point that the FBI hauled him in for questioning.

[Edit: This was my 1000^th Post.]

The delay in the Federal response to the disaster was explained today when a member of the White House staff discovered the Louisiana governor’s request for Federal assistance in the lint trap of the dryer.

A spokesman remarked, “You know how it is. Someone hands you a note while you’re on vacation, and you put it in your pocket. Next thing you know it gets thrown in the washer.”

Louisiana governor Blanco has just released all of the state’s documents concerning the Katrina response and it contained this gem:

Five days after one request from the governor for federal help, a presidential aide told Blanco in a memo that Bush never got her letter.

The aide told Blanco, “We found it on the governor’s Web site, but we need ‘an original’ for our staff secretary to formally process the requests.”

Sunday evening, Blanco’s aides told CNN that the governor personally handed the same letter to the president when he visited New Orleans on September 2.

I thought I was kidding.

Those who are accepted as the Republican leaders and spokespersons can be correctly characterized as crude, rude, uncouth bullies. Being a loud-mouthed braggart is considered an asset to the inner circle of the current Republican Party.

As they view having manners to be a point of weakness to be attacked, it is well past time to stop trying to be “reasonable”. The Republicans have no intention of listening to anything or anyone that does not slavishly follow their “talking points”. Stop wasting time looking for middle ground or agreement – there isn’t any. Avarice for money and power characterizes those in control of the Republican Party and their minions.

These people created a façade of lies to attack another nation; they have contravened laws and treaties to torture people; they endorse “Star Chamber” proceedings; they subvert religion to serve their ends; they pander to the worst in humanity to achieve their goals.

While they harp about protecting the nation from “terrorism”, the 9/11 Commission has produced another report telling us that the U.S. not ‘well-prepared’ for terrorism. This should not be news to anyone at all familiar to the failed response to hurricane Katrina. The Department of Homeland Security was unable to respond in a competent fashion to a natural disaster that was predicted. Imagine how badly they would react to a terrorist attack. There is no preparation in evidence, everything must occur after an event.

Terry is fed up with being civil towards raving liars. Bob Geiger is not going to put up with having his patriotism questioned.

These people don’t want a conversation; they want a conversion. They have progressed in their delusions to demanding obeisance rather than just obedience.

The entire crew and their toadies can kiss my grits.

Feast of Saint Nicholas

December 13^th

Feast of Saint Lucia [the immolation of the youngest daughter]

December 16^th

Birth of Ludwig van Beethoven

December 21^st

Winter Solstice [1335 Eastern Standard Time]
HogWatch

December 23^rd

Festivus

December 25^th

Christmas
Birth of Mithras
First day of Hanukkah [begins at sundown which is the night of the 26^th on Jewish calenders]

December 26^th

Boxing Day
Feast of Saint Stephan
First day of Kwanzaa

January 6^th

Feast of the Epiphany
Día de los Reyes

January 7^th

Orthodox Christmas

[When the Julian solar calendar replaced the old lunar calendar the Winter Solstice was December 25^th. When Pope Gregory corrected the calendar he only corrected it by 10 days and not the full two weeks it was out of synch with the sun, so the date of the Solstice is now the 21^st. Most Orthodox Churches continue to use the Julian calendar which is why their Christmas is on January 7^th.]

I want to disabuse anyone of that impression. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Jeb Bush of Florida are Republicans and are suppressing the scope of Federal mismanagement.

Folks, I was here. When my personal cache ran out after a week, I got water and ice from the Bank of America, not a government agency at any level.

The Pensacola Beach Blog just had a post, Little Matchstick Girls, about the insurance problems and local governments can’t finish the clean up from Ivan because FEMA can’t make up its mind what it wants them to do.

MSNBC has a continuing feature on its web site, Raising From Ruin, which focuses on the problems in Mississippi. In a recent entry you can read the story, Flabbergasting, of a woman who was turned down for FEMA assistance because she didn’t suffer enough damage. As the pictures with the article show, her house is gone, totally washed away, but according to FEMA she didn’t have enough damage.

Just because the Republican governors don’t talk about the incompetence of FEMA, doesn’t mean that FEMA did their job, it means the governors have more loyalty to their party, than their people.

This is a real guy, although he was the Duke of Bohemia, and not a king, he was a real member of the 10^th century aristocracy, and he is the patron saint of the Czech Republic. He is revered as a kind man for the way he treated children and slaves. Apparently owning slaves is fine as long as you don’t kill too many.

His mother had his grandmother, her mother-in-law, strangled, and he forced his mother out at sword point. He sounds more like he was ready for Dr. Phil, than canonization.

So then we get to the song. The song says that on Saint Stephan’s Day, the day after Christmas, he sees one of his peasants out scrounging up fallen limbs to heat his humble hovel, and Wenceslas carries food and a few logs to the peasant’s abode to brighten up the holiday.

At the time commoners weren’t allowed to cut trees for firewood nor hunt, as those were the rights of the aristocracy. They were allowed to pick up dead limbs in the forest to heat their homes. They would have a fire in their shacks and a smoke hole in the roof, not a fireplace, so the logs weren’t going to be useful unless they were split.

On the day after Christmas there were sure to be a lot of leftovers that would go to the kennels, so the “Good King” Wenceslas was carting dog food to a peasant, who was expected to be overcome with gratitude at the beneficence of his Duke.

There is a happy ending: Wenceslas was murdered by his brother’s goons after five years of showering the peasants with the happy life that had them out seeking firewood in the middle of a blizzard.

The Church felt kindly towards Wenceslas because his mother was rather repressive towards the Church, while he wasn’t, so he became a martyr.

™ ^{[Mercury X23]}

Of course there was a time when the Solstice sacrifices were more visceral and the evergreen was covered in things that pleased only ravens and such, but we have put all that behind us by opting for the possibility of electrocuting one another and causing chaos on the power grid.

What a brilliant idea: moving a large supply of pre-kindling soaked with highly flammable resins into your house, loading it down with petrochemical-based ornaments, lacing it with heat-producing electrical devices, and surrounding the base with cardboard boxes and tissue paper. You just can’t have a traditional celebration without a proto-bonfire in your living room.

I do think that followers of Mithras might want to curtail their typical birthday service in light of Mad-Cow Disease, but global warming will certainly make the services in the oak wood in traditional druidic robes more comfortable.

When you put up your stocking on the mantel and put out the turnips for Gouger, Rooter, Tusker, and Snouter as well as the pork pie and sherry for the Hogfather, you can rest assured the Sun will come up, because it just slipped around back to return the lager it rented.

Enjoy! You have nothing to fear, except that sniveling little creep with the camera/phone at the office party or the eggnog that was put out rather early causing you to suspect that the bits on top aren’t nutmeg. [The pictures probably won’t appear on the ‘Net and the brandy will surely take care of the salmonella.]

[Note: Mercury X23 has graciously re-posted the meaning of NODWISH.]

The short version of Nixon’s speech: “as the South Vietnamese stand up, American troops will stand down”.

This was Nixon’s “secret plan” to end the war. About 10,000 names were added to The Wall between this speech and the final pull out.

There were 3 Tropical Depressions, 12 Tropical Storms, and 14 Hurricanes. A total of 26 named storms is a record, 14 hurricanes is a record, 3 category 5 hurricanes [Katrina, Rita, Wilma] is a record, and hurricane Wilma established the new record for the lowest barometric pressure recorded in the Atlantic Basin at 882 millibars.

Hurricane Epsilon is still spinning out in the Atlantic, but it doesn’t seem to be threatening land.

It is to be hoped that all of these records are unmatched for a very long time.

10 Marines killed near Falluja

A roadside bomb Thursday killed 10 Marines and wounded 11 others while they were on nighttime “foot patrol near Falluja,” the Marine Corps said Friday.

The bomb was “fashioned from several large artillery shells,” the Marine Corps said.

The attack is one of the deadliest in recent months. In August a homemade bomb killed 14 Marines and a civilian interpreter just south of Haditha in western Iraq.

The Marines attacked Friday were from Regimental Combat Team 8, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward).

My condolences to their families and the Corps.

™ ^{[Kevin Drum]}

Kung Fu Sox

Feel my power, grasshopper!

[Editor: Sox deflects another attack from Ringo without breaking a sweat and without extending claws.]

Friday Ark