Posts from — January 2006

Unitary Executive Theory – Republican Party newspeak for dictatorship

This was the first of several incidents when my chance of survival was a good deal less than 1 in 2. This wasn’t the scariest, but it was the first, and following on the heels of the terrible events of 1968, it had the biggest impact.

In the end the only “death” was an airplane, Rivet Ball, the Air Force’s only RC-135S. The military version of the Boeing 707, the fuselage broke in half, like an eggshell, on impact. A very talented pilot, John Achor, the aircraft commander, was responsible for that miracle.

™ ^{[Kevin Drum]}

Cat Wars

I win, Sox, I win!

[Editor: The shot that I missed because the flash didn’t recharge quickly enough was Ringo getting flipped onto floor when Sox used his rear legs.]

Friday Ark

Mrs. Alito “bursts in tears” because the bad old Democrats are picking on her husband – except, she did it while her husband was being questioned by Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, her husband’s “drama coach”. What was Graham doing coaching a man who was going to testify before the Judiciary Committee? How is this ethical? Did Graham “coach” Mrs. Alito on bursting into tears?

Ted Kennedy was being uncivil to Arlen Spector? Kennedy sent Spector a request to look at certain documents and the documents hadn’t been received. Spector goes off on a riff about just because Kennedy sent the request, doesn’t mean that Spector received it – except Kennedy had Spector’s response to the request in his pocket, so he knew Spector received the request.

These melodramatic flourishes by the Republicans add nothing to the business of the republic and are, frankly, sophomoric. This smells of Rove. The world will be a better place when Fitzgerald reserves Karl’s place at a federal gray-bar motel.

Following the usual pattern I expect the Congressional Republicans to put forth a new law, that should be called the Jack & Tom Law to “prevent this problem from recurring”. This is SOP [standard operating procedure] for politicians: pass a law to convince people they take the problem seriously and have done something.

Laws don’t make people honest and decent, they punish people who aren’t. Laws are totally worthless unless they are enforced. We don’t need more laws; we need more law enforcement. What occurred was illegal, so a new law won’t help. There are plenty of ethics rules in Congress, but as CNN notes: Mum’s the word for ethics committee. This shows how little regard the current Republican controlled government has for ethics or the rule of law.

1. Jack has a quick rundown of some of the other “unprecedented” behaviors in the past.

American officers are a bit upset with the Brigadier, but that is essentially what happened when the 82^nd Airborne went into the city of Fallujah in the Spring of 2003. Without a translator, they didn’t understand what the local people were protesting when the military took over a local school. The protest turned violent; local people died; and the sad history of the destruction of Fallujah had begun.

Then he makes his big mistake: “The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see it.”

Based on all of the recent polls, a majority of the American people don’t think the Shrubbery is up to his job. It would be irresponsible for the representatives of that majority not to openly question the policies that have gotten us into this mess. A majority of the American people think that it is time to change.

“We will stand down when the Iraqis stand up” is not a strategy, it is a bumper sticker.

Laurie Mylroie is another pundit who keeps getting quoted and taken seriously in face of her history of being consistently wrong.

It’s almost as if the people in the media are telling themselves that these people have been so totally wrong so consistently, they must be right this time. I can’t follow the logic involved in selecting people to be put forward as “experts”. If I were wearing a stainless steel colander™^Аня, I might assume they are doing this to convince the audience that no one understood the situation, so you can’t blame the Shrubbery.

Now it’s becoming apparent that he believes in the “divine right of Presidents”, that the separation of powers is not an important concept if it interferes with a President doing whatever he/she feels like.

FDR was, by all accounts, including those of many relatives, a good President dealing with some of the worst problems the country had ever seen, but the Supreme Court was right to put the brakes on him.

We are seeing the effect of a single party in control of all three branches of government, and it isn’t pretty. Historians are going to be savaging this period in our history for a very long time. The country may not be as “efficient” when the power is divided, but the rights of all of the people and their taxes are much safer.

Alito has done nothing that would require his impeachment, but the republic will not be well served with a monarchist on the Supreme Court.

Other than the fact that I stopped drinking alcohol about 15 years ago because it was no longer fun, I don’t know what people would consider weird.

Well, since I rarely meet with clients face-to-face, as the Internet generally makes it unnecessary, I don’t bother with haircuts much, not that I have a lot hair to cut. That was the result of my regular barber running off to get married about 5 years ago, and I haven’t found another barber I like well enough to spend $20 for as little work as is required.

Hmmm? I guess the fact that I tend to live near the coast when I have no interest in water sports of any kind is weird. I’ve tried scuba diving and surfing, and did a lot of things in the water as a child, but I lost interest.

There are people who think that managing the local feral cat colonies is strange, but they don’t understand the balance that was upset by the removal of all of the large snakes that once controlled the rats. You have to have population controls or things get out of hand.

Other than that I’m pretty much the same as every other military brat who has lived all over the world, speaks a few foreign languages, spent some time in military intelligence, and now works with computers.

Nothing to challenge Karen’s position as an Oral-B preferred customer.

Arnold’s California Highway Patrol escort said he didn’t need one because he had a sidecar on his motorcycle.

But the California Highway Patrol website says:

What is a motorcycle?

A motorcycle is a vehicle whose motor displaces more than 150 cubic centimeters and has a seat or saddle for the use of the rider. It is designed to travel on not more than three wheels in contact with the ground and weighs less than 1,500 pounds.

This seems to indicate that he does need the endorsement.

Except the California Department of Motor Vehicle’s California Motorcycle Handbook says:

Class C -You may operate a motorcycle with a sidecar attached, a three-wheel motorcycle, or a motorized scooter.

A Class C California Driver’s License is the normal license that you get when you move there.

Well, I’m glad we cleaned that up and California clearly states what is required. This kind of garbage goes on all the time because of the lack of definition in the laws. Maybe they will decide to clean up the law now that the governor has gotten caught up in it.

According to the homeowner, the mouse was dead when he threw it on the fire, which he shouldn’t have started because of the high winds.

It is assumed that the wind blew sparks into the house, causing it to burn.

Update: Len at Dark Bilious Vapors was properly skeptical.

As veterans and soon to be veterans, you have placed the nation’s security before your own lives. You took an oath to defend our flag and our freedom, and you kept that oath underseas [sic] and under fire. (Applause.) All of us who live in liberty live in your debt, and we must never forget the sacrifice and the service of our veterans.

Apparently his mind rejected the oath that you take when you enter the military – you take an oath to support and defend the Constitution, not the flag. He seems to have a personal problem with the Constitution, almost as if he is rejecting its existence in his alternate universe.

Don’t ask me why he said “underseas”, I assume he was just mumbling again or the reception on his earpiece was bad.

I have nothing against the flag, but it is a battle signal, not an object of adoration. It’s a violation of the Flag Code to put it on uniforms, but they do it anyway, and he signs small flags with a marker, which is also a violation. I certainly never took an oath to defend the flag for the military, law enforcement, or public service: all three were to support and defend the Constitution. The Shrubbery and the country would be better off if he stopped waving the flag and started reading the Constitution.

Trick Flag Question: how many stripes on THE Star Spangled Banner, the flag that Francis Scott Key wrote about in the poem.