Posts from — September 2006

The BBC is stating the obvious in: ‘Coup’ sparks Thailand emergency. I would certainly think that having the military take over the government would tend to be an “emergency”, especially when they use tanks and such.

Riots in Hungary after the Prime Minister admits politicians lie to win elections. [You can tell this country is new to democracy when they are shocked to find out politicians lie.]

Amazingly enough, there were no Muslims involved in either of these problems and no tapes from al Qaeda claiming credit. Oh, neither the Shrubbery nor the Pope were involved. There are still countries that can make life miserable for their citizens without outside help.

It’ll be double rations of grog all around in the galley as ye throw the pasta and pesto down your gullet for the final day of Pasta Week, on Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Arr…
Belay that! ‘T’would be better done by swilling lambrusco directly from the flask!
Arr…

Keith Olbermann scores another direct hit with: Bush owes us an apology.

Go and read it. You’ll need IE and Windows Media to see it on the MSNBC site, but I have confidence that it will be converted to other formats soon.

Via Watertiger [a nice person, but she should review her use of the word, Cracker, as Chambliss doesn’t make the cut] we arrive at Raw Story on Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia)

According to Roll Call‘s source, Chambliss said, “We need better intelligence. If we had better intelligence in the Civil War we’d be quoting Jefferson Davis, not Lincoln.”

A spokesperson for Chambliss said the story wasn’t correct and that what the Senator actually said said was, “If Gen. JEB Stuart had had better intelligence, we’d all be meeting in Richmond right now.”

How can a Senator from a Southern state makes such egregious errors? How can he blacken the memory of Major General James Ewell Brown Stuart, CSA? How can he call Lincoln’s Invasion [The War Between the States is acceptable if there are Yankees present], the Civil War?

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That’s the old symbol of Civil Defense, but these days you would have to visit a museum to see it, although some states and localities still use it in conjunction with their emergency management systems.

As Andante notes, those of us who attended school in the 1950’s and 1960’s still remember air raid drills and hiding under our desks.

This was the period of Mutually Assured Destruction, Nuclear Winter, Thermonuclear War. If I’m not terribly impressed with threat mongering, it is because I remember vividly what it was like knowing the planet could be rendered uninhabitable. The situation portrayed in On the Beach was the push of a button away. Dr. Strangelove means a whole lot more to those of us who remember Kennedy and Khrushchev.

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The Pope finally figured out what he had to do. and his personal apology seems to have calmed things down for the moment, but the Muslims are still edgy and their version of the Religious Reich are still stirring things up around the world.

It is a sad fact that the once famous Islamic tradition of learning and scholarship has been degraded to the point that much of the Islamic world is illiterate and dependent on their Imams for their news, rather than a diverse media.

People in the West act unaware that for much of the world there is no freedom of the press and the media reflects only what the government approves. This was evident in the Danish cartoon episode. The Danish government didn’t seem to understand that the people most upset were those who assumed the cartoons were printed with the approval of the government, because that is the system in place in much of the Islamic world.

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I didn’t want to get into this because it really was a totally irrelevant event. Yes, it would be nice to have a chat with Bill Clinton, but he’s a former President and is no longer the leader of the Democratic Party, and isn’t really going to be much of a factor in the coming election or the US government.

My reading of the event was that Peter Daou [no link because I don’t read him] has taken a position with Hillary Clinton’s political organization and was looking to generate some positive moment for Hillary in blogtopia™ ^{[skippy the bush kangaroo]}.

People got upset because all of the faces in the photo op were white. Hell, the people in that picture were able to get to New York City for an afternoon meeting during the week, which means they are well off and, if they are working, have flexible work hours.

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Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

Laura Rozen reports on the return of the Office of Special Plans, version 2, the Iran plan. It’s the same concept: exile groups to supply “evidence” of nefarious plots that advance the plan to attack Iran.

While Iran/Persia did battle the Roman Empire for an extended period, their last major battle involved war elephants and chariots. The decade long war with Iraq had all of the drama of the average dispute between neighbors over a hedge. A lot of people died, but there isn’t going to be a grand movie nor many doctorates awarded over the study of the conflict.

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There was a time when Osama was really worried, because it looked like the US really wanted his head and were in hot pursuit, but then life got a lot easier. These days, he makes do with a couple of videos a year and the rest is downtime.

As Billmon points out he has all kinds of people in the West doing his job for him, including the Pope.

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Día de la Independencia
Estados Unidos Mexicanos

¡Viva México!

Some background on 16 de Septiembre and El Grito de Dolores.

Things have been going so well in Iraq that, according to the BBC, the Iraqis have devised a Trenches plan to secure Baghdad. Cutting trenches around the 50 mile circumference of the city will certainly be an interesting civil engineering project for a country that still doesn’t have a reliable electricity supply, fresh water system, or sewer, although it might provide some help with the sewage problem.

No word on whether they are planning World War I trenches, the Medieval moat, or the fashional ha-ha when they talk about “trenches.”

Funneling the population of the city through 28 checkpoints should be an interesting study in urban gridlock.

I’m sorry but this whole concept reminds me of Bob the Builder and Tonka trucks, not serious attempts at solving problems…no, Bob is too good at building and fixing to be associated with these people, and Tonka trucks are better built than what Rummy has been shipping to Iraq.

Fresh spinach is suspected in an E. Coli outbreak across multiple states, so you better buy the slimy, yucky canned variety – or skip it.

Hundreds of thousands of containers of Similac bottled baby formula are suspected of not being sealed properly, so they are being recalled. The manufacturer says the formula loses vitamin C over time if the bottles aren’t air tight, but I have to think that baby formula would be an excellent growth medium for all kinds of nasty stuff if the bottles aren’t sealed properly.

But none of this will matter if immigration raids are shutting down food processors anyway.

It might be time to look at urban gardening if you’re cramped for space.

The Day of His Noodly Appendage

The holiest of holidays for Pastafarrians, is of course the birthday of His Most Holy Prophet, Marco Polo (b. Sept 15, 1254), who brought the word of his Noodly Appendage back from the East. As Talk Like A Pirate Day falls on September 19th, this five-day period constitutes Holy Pasta Week, during which spaghetti is consumed liberally. With a nice Chianti, of course.