Posts from — June 2006

I came across this public service advertising sticker from the German state of Baden-Wüttemberg, which the home of the Black Forest.

It says: We can speak everything – except standard German.

Germany has a standard form of the language, Hochdeutsch, that is taught in school and ignored outside of the media. “High German” doesn’t appeal to Southerners.

When people talk about English being the standard language in the US, I would ask “Whose English?” because the language certainly isn’t standardized. If you take someone from the south side of Boston and drop them in a Louisiana parish, you’d better include a translator.

Like most things, language grows or it dies.

One of the biggest problems we face in intelligence gathering is the lack of bi-lingual Americans. The “enemy” doesn’t have to learn encryption because Americans can’t understand their language. Foreign language study should be a national security asset, not a reason to discriminate.

[Edit to correct translation.]

Yes, Blogger has problems today.

Apparently while fixing the problems from last week something else broke and they are trying to fix that, so service will be interrupted occasionally today.

In an apparent hope to hang on to the quarter of the voters who refuse to see the writing on the wall, even after the wall has collapsed on them, the Shrubbery is pushing his hate agenda attacking the Constitution.

As far as the “marriage amendment” goes, the Evangelicals should look to their own house. Florida has a “no-fault divorce” to avoid hiring all the judges they would need to handle the old-style divorce. People were waiting longer for a divorce than they spent married under the old system. Looking at the divorce statistics it’s fairly obvious that the “Red states” have a problem with marriage that isn’t going to be solved by passing amendments.

When they have finished talking about marriage, which has never been a Federal concern, they want to talk about “flag burning” which is, yet another waste of time and resources. There has never been a massive amount of flag burning, burning is the proper method of disposing of the flag under current rules, we don’t even have a law establishing the rules for making a flag, so this is a totally stupid waste of time and resources, that we do not have in any great quanity.

[Read more →]

I stumbled across the Vermont State Guard while doing some research on the Alabama National Guard deployment.

They are a volunteer group that takes up the slack when the National Guard is deployed. The majority seemed to be former military people, many retired from the regular military, and they can’t be tapped for national service.

After what the Shrubbery has done, I can see this model taking hold in many states. Losing the people and equipment they had planned on having during disasters, has affected the states negatively.

The current structure of the National Guard didn’t anticipate Rumsfeld and the Shrubbery. Perhaps the states should consider their options.

Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

We are having our local festival for tourism this weekend, so naturally there are fireworks because everything down here is celebrated by blowing things up.

When I was living in San Diego the annual celebration was the re-trial of the mayor, Roger Hedgecock, who like all convicted Republican crooks is now a talk radio host.

You have to wonder: do they become Republicans in California because they are crooks, or does becoming a Republican make them crooks?

When they caught Randall Harold Cunningham the surprise was he got caught, not that he wasn’t very ethical, and now they are following the web that was spun around him.

ABC notes that there are questions about Charles Jeremy “Jerry” Lewis a California Republican but, naturally, Lewis Denies Wrongdoing in Lobbyist Case. The case involves Bill Lowery, who I remember as a guy who couldn’t balance his checkbook and who was replaced by “Duke” Cunningham when Lowery decided he needed to spend more time with someone’s kids before things reached the discovery stage.

Now skippy has a bit about Republican congressional candidate Jim Galley, who can’t seem to remember when he’s married or if he has kids.

You’d think that after all this time the voters in San Diego county would figure out that it doesn’t matter which Republican you vote for, because they are all crooks.

Obviously the start of the Hurricane Season is the time to send the Guard to Iraq. The 226^th Area Support Group of the Alabama National Guard is on its way for the second time. This is a “voluntary” deployment, because it is illegal to order guardsmen overseas more than once every five years.

When does the media start calling a lie, a lie. If the military had enough people we wouldn’t be sending same Guard units over every three years.

The 226^th is important to hurricane preparation because they were the unit that established the Alabama Guard command center after Katrina. They are a logistics unit that gets everything to where it’s needed.

On the other hand they can check on all of their equipment, which they had to leave in Iraq at the end of their first tour.

The Wen Ho Lee case has finally been settled with the media paying $750K and the Feds paying almost $900K for destroying the Doctor’s reputation and holding him in prison for 9 months.

I haven’t heard that the data analyst at the VA has been thrown into solitary confinement, nor branded a spy, for a more serious breach of data security than the Doctor.

The FBI has been out of control for a long time. Something needs to be done to convince them that they are supposed to be enforcing the laws, not breaking them.

For some reason the governor of Texas is known as “Good Hair”. I don’t think it looks much better than Ann Richards’s hair, but I guess Rick Perry will take what he can get.

From this BBC article, Web users to ‘patrol’ US border, I conclude that he will be giving more than taking.

He’s planning to install a network of webcams along the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo river that will be streaming to the Internet and people can log on to a web site and monitor the border from the comfort of a cantina with a Dos Equis in their hand and figure out where La Migra isn’t working and plot a path appropriately.

Of course, others will be sucking down a Pearl in bar and planning on coming up the other way, throwing a bag over the camera, stealing it, and flogging it on E-Bay.

I hope they’re solar powered and the whole system is sold as a unit.

When I driving across the country while I was in the service one of the “guilty pleasures” of the process was gorging myself at truck stops. It is a right enjoyed by highway warriors to have a couple of chicken-fried steaks with mashed potatoes and beans awash in pepper gravy before going to bed and then waking up to a short stack, scrambled eggs, hash browns, and a slab of ham. Of course, it’s terrible for your continued health, but you only do it when you travel, right?

So I was disturbed when I read Jack’s piece at Wagon Tongues on a push by the Feds to cut portions.

Then I considered the process and relaxed: Denny Hastert will never allow this to happen.

Back to the Basics

You must believe you’re a circle. Tighten it up, I see an ellipse

[Editor: Under Sox’s professional eye, Ringo practices sleeping positions.

Friday Ark

Almost as bad as Ho-tel cutting a record was the new soft drink promotion being run locally. It’s something in a green label that looks like the water it essentially is, but the vehicle the “demonstrators” were using is beyond obscene. Go and view this abomination.

A semi tractor with a pick-up bed on the back. Why would anyone buy such a thing, other than to crush Hummers?

I started at Laura Rozen’s place and followed her links and then came across it again at the BBC with the article, Europeans hail US offer to Iran:

On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said “as soon as Iran fully and verifiably suspends its enrichment and reprocessing activities, the United States will come to the table”.

The move was to show US commitment to a diplomatic solution and “to enhance the prospects for success”, she said in a statement.

Ms Rice also urged Iran to “thoroughly consider” a package of currently being agreed by the US and EU nations aimed at persuading Tehran to abandon its nuclear plans.

Ms Rice recognised Iran’s right to a civilian nuclear programme, but condemned what she called Iran’s support for terror.

This is totally fraudulent. Kevin Drum notes it is right out of Diplomacy 101, if you don’t want to negotiate make an unacceptable precondition for talks.

Bobby notes that the only reason the US is making any offer is that the world doesn’t believe us anymore.

Predictably, Iran is cautious over US talks offer. The US is telling Iran to concede all of the points under contention before talks can begin. The whole point is to make it look like the US is being reasonable, when the US hasn’t changed its position at all.

CNN says: Reid will no longer take free boxing tickets. There’s a problem with that headline that you can figure out if you read very closely – Reid was never given boxing tickets.

Promoters are required to reserve an area at boxing matches in Nevada for the state boxing commission. Access to that area, by law, has no value and it is illegal to pay for access. McCain didn’t pay for his “tickets”; he made a donation to charity. He wasn’t given a ticket; like Reid, he was given credentials as a VIP to sit in the commission area by the ring.

The thing about Nevada is they have some really strict laws about what state employees and agencies involved with gambling can and can’t do. Don’t seek a job there if you enjoy gambling, because businesses aren’t allowed to treat you like the every day off the street gamblers who get free food and drinks.

Is fact checking so difficult?