Posts from — October 2006

Digby has a fine piece, Primed For McCain, that covers the delusional thinking that passes for gravitas these days.

First of all, even if they could be found, and extra 100,000 troops in Iraq are too few at this point to even provide security, much less achieve anything that looks like a victory. If they had been there at the beginning to provide security for the people and prevent the looting of the ammo dumps, things might have worked out, but at this point they would just provide more targets.

While McCain, and other veterans in Congress, have been watching, Rumsfeld has been transforming the US military into a force that can win every battle, but is totally incapable of winning a war.

By paring the military down to units that only have one function, combat, and outsourcing all of the support functions, he has created a force that cannot sustain itself in the field for any extended period of time, and is totally incapable of security and peacekeeping missions.

Rumsfeld demanded planning for the Iraq invasion that was predicated on beating the Iraqi army, but did not even plan for a surrender, much less an occupation.

The current US military is all tactics and no strategy. It is the equivalent of a criminal justice system consisting of only SWAT teams: they can catch the criminals, but have no plan to deal with them after the capture.

The Department of Defense [DoD] was created by National Security Act of 1947 by combining the War Department and the Department of the Navy. It was originally called the National Military Establishment [NME], but the name was changed after someone said the initials aloud. Under Rumsfeld and the Shrubbery, it might be a good idea to revert to the original name.

Jillian of skippy the bush kangaroo reported on the The San Diego Union-Tribune story about the food distribution on San Diego county military bases. The story mentioned the families of Marine Lance Corporals and Corporals, which are military pay grades E-3 and E-4 respectively.

I thought I would give you the numbers so you have some real idea of how we pay our military. These numbers are for a Corporal [E-4] with three years of service stationed in Iraq, who has a spouse and two pre-school children.

[Read more →]

Both Watertiger and Julia have excellent rants today. Don’t miss them.

My Lap Runneth Over

You need longer legs.

[Editor: Dot decided to try a new orientation but has to hook a claw in the armrest to keep from sliding off.]

Friday Ark

So far I’ve decided, for a lot of reasons, that I’ll be voting for Jim Davis for governor, Skip Campbell for Attorney General, Alex Sink for Chief Financial Officer, Charley Bronson for Agriculture Commissioner and Joe Roberts for Congress.

There are a couple of local races I’m not sure about, and one race in which I’m abstaining.

I still haven’t received much campaign literature, and don’t watch television, so it has been a very quiet election cycle.

Not a headline you will see in the Pensacola News Journal as the Pensacola Beach Blog points out in his coverage of the trial of Kent Hovind: [part one] and [part two].

Hovind is a local Elmer Gantry wannabe who has been fleecing the flock and failing to pay taxes on his “amusement park” or church or mission, or whatever he calls it over in Pensacola. He hasn’t been paying his local, state, or Federal taxes because “he’s on a mission from G-d”, which sounds like a copyright infringement to me.

Maybe they are saving the “good stuff” for a book, but PBB is getting pretty annoyed with the Jack Webb reporting in the News Journal.

While Pensacola might be a suitable replacement for Dayton, Tennessee, I don’t see the potential for popular interest that was stirred up by H. L. Mencken, William Jennings Bryan, and Clarence Darrow.

On January 14, 2000 the Dow-Jones Industrial Average closed the day at 11,722.98. That meant it would cost you $11,722.98 to buy the stocks listed in the DJIA group. Recently the DJIA has surpassed 12,000, but that’s 12,000 year-2006-dollars. To have the same value as the 11,722.98 year-2000-dollars, the DJIA would have to be at 13,715.89.

The stock market is still running behind inflation.

Fun unemployment fact: if you add new jobs, but the unemployment rate stays the same, there are more unemployed people.

Consider: if you have 100,000,000 people in the work force with a 5% unemployment rate, you have 5,000,000 unemployed people.

If you add 95,000 new jobs and the unemployment rate stays at 5%, there are 5,000 more people on the unemployment rolls, because there must have been an additional 100,000 people looking for work in the period. If the “new” jobs aren’t decreasing the unemployment rate, the actual number of unemployed people has to be increasing.

While not up to the standard of Keith Olbermann, Jack Cafferty is not afraid to speak his mind, and tonight at 7PM ET on CNN he starts a new six-part series, Broken Government.

CNN hosting a series about governmental problems just before an election – will wonders never cease?

By-the-by, the thought that the Shrubbery’s last trip on Air Force One could be to Guantanamo is mildly diverting. I thank Keith for that image.

Lambert read it in The Guardian and I heard about it on the BBC: the complete works of Charles Darwin on-line, everything, including the notebooks, not just the printed works.

Most people are blissfully ignorant of Kazakhstan, once a Republic within the Soviet Union. Space fans might have picked up on the fact that Russian space launches and recoveries take place in Kazakhstan, or maybe you came across it in a crossword puzzle as one of the three Eurasian countries, Russia and Turkey are the other two.

Then a British comedian, Sacha Baron Cohen, created the character of Borat Sagdiev [Борат Сагдиев], a fake Kazakhstani journalist, and the government of Kazakhstan became really upset at the image of the country that was being displayed on British and American television sets.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev was so annoyed, that he filed diplomatic protests with both the US and the UK. Mr. Nazarbayev is attempting to convince the world that Kazakhstan is a stable, modern country ready to take its place among the community of nations.

So one of the last things you want when you are trying to avoid being the butt of jokes around the world is have your central bank misspell the word “bank” on the new bills they just printed.

If you look at this image of a 2000 tenge note [$15.63, 128 tenge = $1 US], you will see “БАНКI” printed on the left side. The new notes have “БАНҚI” printed on them. Non-Kazakhi wouldn’t notice the difference, but there is a pronunciation difference between the Қ and the K. When transliterated into the Latin alphabet the Қ is rendered as Q, while the K is just a K.

Compared to the other Turkic former Republics, the government of Kazakhstan is sane and free. Well, Ludwig of Bavaria was sane compared to the leader of Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan would make Nazi Germany look like Berkeley.

When NASA created this patch for its Mars mission, I thought is was a cute cultural reference, but I was warned that the Shrubbery was about to go “Daffy.”

Back in 1967 we signed The Outer Space Treaty that made the militarization of space a big no-no. Space was to be used for peaceful purposes, not an alternate arena for war.

Via Shakespeare’s Sister I have found out that the Shrubbery has unilaterally decided that he can ignore that treaty.

According to the BBC article, US adopts tough new space policy, he authorized this change in August, but the policy was not released until now.

No consultation with anyone, he just did it.

Normally I would ignore this sort of thing, but Watertiger, Norbizness, and Clif are all reporting that a guy named “Sanitarium”, or something close, who thinks he is a US Senator from Pennsylvania, is claiming that a couple of “Hobbits” are on their way to the middle of US to have a ring re-sized or repaired.

This “Sanitarium” guy seems to think that while NSA is tied up watching terrorists in the Middle East, the real threat is in the US, something like that.

It’s a confused story from a confused man, who has read too many fantasy novels. Next they’ll be telling us that an old money Connecticut Yankee decided to run as a Republican by sounding like LBJ and buying the same breed of dog as FDR.

[I’ve moved this post up as I’ve added more links.]

Attaturk and I are not alone in being unhappy with this new law:

In blogroll order: Lisa, Kevin Hayden, Mustang Bobby, Flame821, Chicago Dyke, Watertiger, Christy, Scout, Digby, Swopa, Mary, Paul the Spud, Pat Lang, TBogg, Maru, and Steve Bates are also unhappy campers.

Update: Avedon posted a little later, and Charles has a post with a link to Keith Olbermann interviewing Jonathan Turley about the death of the Bill of Rights.

Don’t miss Juan Cole, lettres de cachet and the Borg in the same post.

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