Posts from — April 2006

It is a well-known disease with a vaccine and effective treatment, but we can’t control it: Air travelers eyed in mumps outbreak.

If it were bird flu or SARS we would be in major trouble.

You Looking At Me?

You looking for trouble, buddy?

[Editor: The Junk Yard Kittens came out. They have been moved to a new location by their Mom, so I may not see them again.]

Friday Ark

We’ll start with the Christian Science Monitor: Retired generals speak out to oppose Rumsfeld, which covers General Merrill McPeak [USAF], General Anthony Zinni [USMC], Lieutenant General Greg Newbold [USMC], Major General John Batiste [USA] and Major General Paul Eaton [USA].

Then NPR picks up with Major General John Rigg [USA] and CNN finishes with Major General Charles Swannack[USA].

General Eric Shinseki talked about the need for twice as many troops as Rumsfeld wanted, so he was forced out.

I feel certain that we are all aware of General Wesley Clark’s feeling about the current Defense Department.

There has been a rash of negative views of Rumsfeld and the current administration from retired general officers because nothing is getting better and now they are talking about using nukes.

This is what it looks like when people start thinking about the International Criminal Court and the possibility of real investigations of what has been going on for the last five years.

This did not happen after Vietnam. Senior officers did not speak out, and it is amazing to those of us who spent a great deal of time in and around the military. These guys are really asking Congress for investigations. They really want to talk on the record, not to the media, but only Congress can provide the forum.

Update: I missed Lieutenant General William E. Odom (Ret. USA) and the crew that opposed Alberto Gonzales: Brigadier General David M. Brahms (Ret. USMC), Brigadier General James Cullen (Ret. USA), Brigadier General Evelyn P. Foote (Ret. USA), Lieutenant General Robert Gard (Ret. USA), Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn (Ret. USN), Admiral Don Guter (Ret. USN), General Joseph Hoar (Ret. USMC), Rear Admiral John D. Hutson (Ret. USN), Lieutenant General Claudia Kennedy (Ret. USA), General Merrill McPeak (Ret. USAF), Major General Melvyn Montano (Ret. USAF Nat. Guard), and General John Shalikashvili (Ret. USA).

Kevin comments on people looking to solve the military recruitment problem by using immigrants. He’s worried that this will turn the US military into a mercenary force.

Okay, a lot of people don’t know about the draft, but immigrants were drafted and have always enlisted to help themselves with the process towards citizenship. This is the way it has always been in this country, non-citizens can join the military, and it probably does help them with immigration issues.

Steve Gilliard pointed this out earlier.

Via Jack K., the story of a group of meat cutters for Wolverine Meat Packing who have been fired for attending the immigration protests.

I would suggest that there are many choices for meat products and Americans should patronize those that show a due regard for American values, like “…the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

If you see Wolverine or Royal Gold in the meat aisle, do you really want to support a company that fires people for exercising their First Amendment rights?

The BBC reports: Natural light ‘to reinvent bulbs’.

The organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) are actually red, green, and blue layers that are combined to produce a white light that is close to natural daylight and doesn’t produce much heat.

When I did my Obviousman riff, I knew other people must have come to the same conclusion.

Through the wonder of the Internet, in comments Steve Bates pointed me to the Fallenmonk, who credits Susie Madrak with locating this Union of Concerned Scientists animation on nuclear bunker-busters.

They agree with me, or rather I agree with their conclusion that was posted in November, 2005 and they show you what I was talking about.

I think it’s time to send a DVD of The Andromeda Strain to the Pentagon. Michael Crichton is in favor with the Shrubbery, so maybe they can figure out from the movie what they have been unable to glean from reality.

Poor Scotty got his shorts in a knot about all of the nasty media saying that the Shrubbery knowingly lied about the WMD trailers.

Professor Cole takes a facetious swipe at the trailer business by wondering how you could do work in those trailers.

When I first heard about the trailers I automatically knew the story was bogus, but it took a very long time for me to figure why I knew the trailers weren’t being used as labs.

We used trailers for a lot of different things in the military, and trailers, called “portable classrooms”, are common at local schools. I knew there was something wrong with the trailers, but it took a long time for me to figure out that it wasn’t what was there, but what was missing.

Labs are a controlled environment. Labs designed to produce chemical or biological weapons would have an even more controlled environment to prevent contamination. What was missing was air conditioning. With 120° air temperatures and dust storms, you would need some serious air conditioning and air filtration systems. You would need airlock entry and positive interior air pressure to do lab work in the trailers.

Professor Cole puts the Iran uranium enrichment claim in perspective. Short form – they are years from having the capability of building a bomb and the Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei says that nuclear weapons aren’t halal [that’s kosher for Muslims].

For those that don’t know what’s going on: You have to enrich uranium to use it in a nuclear reactor, just like you have to refine crude oil to use it in a car. The Iranians want to have their own processing facilities. They are in the oil business and know all about screwing people by withholding products at inconvenient times. They don’t want to be on the receiving end of a boycott. After what Russia did to the Ukraine and Georgia with natural gas this winter, they don’t want to be dependent on the Russians. They have to forget a thousand years of conflict to deal with the Russians in the first place. [Read more →]

The First Lady of the State of Florida was born in Mexico and she doesn’t appreciate the Mexican bashing. She gets unhappy when people burn the Mexican flag and make racial slurs about Mexicans. She expresses her unhappiness to her husband John Ellis “Jeb” Bush who then must make negative statements about conservative Republicans or learn to live in the garage.

Peter Wallsten, a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times needs to do a little more research before appearing on Florida Public Radio to talk about immigration. Peter, Puerto Ricans aren’t immigrants. Puerto Rico is a US territory and its people are American citizens.

The Whiskey Bar is open and Billmon is pounding out wit and wisdom at a prodigious rate.

Michael calls them: Persecution ninnies, the Christians who demand special treatment based on their version of “Christianity”.

If these whiners really supported religious freedom they would be helping Wiccans have their symbol become one of the approved emblems for grave markers at veterans’ cemeteries.

The Wiccans have a problem with religious persecution, the “ninnies” want societal permission to be rude and crude.

Rumsfeld: Iran attack talk in ‘fantasy land’. While I can certainly respect Don Rumsfeld’s knowledge of ‘fantasy land’, as he seems to have spent a great deal of the last five years at that location developing a strategy that was supposed to make the United States more secure, I certainly cannot take his word for anything. The man lies. It should be front page news if any prediction he makes turns out to be true.

It is time for Congress to “Just say NO!”

No more preemptive strikes and absolutely, positively, unequivocally NO NUKES!

These are the flags of the parents of my grandfathers, who were both first generation Americans. They both married women whose families settled in this country before it was a country. This allows me a certain perspective that many lack, not as good as a Native American, but fairly long term.

Listening to some of the people screaming about the “immigration problem”, I’m reminded of American [Know Nothing] Party of the mid-19^th century, as well as the second coming of the Ku Klux Klan during World War I.

In his closing remarks at the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton, Dale Bumpers made the point:

H.L. Mencken said one time, “When you hear somebody say, ‘This is not about money,’ it’s about money.” And when you hear somebody say, “This is not about sex,” it’s about sex.

Now they are saying “This is not about race.”

It is not a coincidence that Facing South reports: Southern states crack down on immigrants.

It is not a coincidence that the people doing all the screaming are fixated on the Mexicans, as if the Central Americans, Caribbean islanders, Asians, Africans, and people from Eastern Europe don’t exist.

With deepest respect for Wiley Miller and his creation, Non Sequitur, it is time to jump into the phone booth and become: OBVIOUSMAN!

A bunker is an underground chamber, usually heavily fortified, occasionally blasted out of solid rock. They are very difficult to locate, and tough to destroy – except, if there is no access to the outside, they are a grave.

Bunkers might contain nasty things, like chemical or biological weapons; things you don’t want in the environment.

Instead of attempting to “bust” bunkers, why don’t we seal the entrances and leave all of the nastiness inside?

Our standard penetration weapons should be more than adequate to seal the entrance and ventilation tunnels which we can certainly locate with more accuracy than the underground bunkers themselves.

If there were an enemy who had developed a short range Star Trek transporter system it might make some sense to plan on going after these bunkers, but since that hasn’t happened, you seal them off and let whatever is in the bunker rot.

The floor is open for anyone to challenge my conclusions.