Posts from — November 2006

Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

You know, now that he has an election under his belt as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee; and he has demonstrated his ability to raise money nationwide; and he has proven himself a winner on a national stage; I think there is one logical next step for him if he gets tired of the sniping and bitching going on in the Party – retain his position as the head of the Party by running for President.

Now he has name recognition and the basis for a nationwide organization, which he was lacking in 2004. He has retained his support on the ‘Net and knows the people who he would be running against.

As for the “scream”, he should request that the media use qualified technical people who know how to accurately cover a political event, and not present the feed off a single, noise-canceling microphone as representative of reality…or he could say, that he gets worked up when he’s right.

Something to think about.

Just what the families of the National Guard wanted to hear in Veterans Day: More National Guard units may get second tours in Iraq.

Because they participated in the initial invasion, it looks like the 30^th Infantry Brigade from North Carolina, the 39^th Infantry Brigade from Arkansas, the 53^rd Infantry Brigade from Florida and the 76^th Infantry Brigade from Indiana may get sent back to “the sandbox.”

Just another broken promise to veterans.

Who can afford to keep these guys on their payroll, if every three years they leave for over a year? How can anyone expect the Guard to maintain their numbers, when people get screwed around like this? How are governors who depend on the Guard for natural disasters supposed to plan when the Federal government keeps taking their manpower and equipment?

There should have been an expansion of military manpower after 9/11, but they depended on their own delusions instead of reality.

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918 the guns fell silent. The Great War, The War to End All Wars, was over…for a couple of decades.

The red poppies of Flanders fields became a symbol of that war and the veterans that returned from it. Known as Remembrance Day in much of the world, the poppies will be in evidence. Remembrance Day observances have more in common with the American Memorial Day as day to honor those who have died in war.

First called Armistice Day in the United States, the name was changed to Veterans Day, and its purpose changed to honoring those who are serving, or have served in the military. The change was made to avoid a conflict with the existing Memorial Day observance that goes back to the Civil War era.

A heart felt salute to everyone who managed to survive basic training. We can hope that sooner, rather than later, there will be no need for another generation to put on uniforms.

First off you have to understand that the Democratic Party not only won control of the House and the Senate, but there is now a Democratic majority among governors, and nice gains in state legislatures.

Rahm Emanuel of the Congressional Committee only worked on House campaigns. Chuck Schumer only worked on Senate campaigns. Howard Dean worked on all campaigns.

As Ellroon reports in this Kommuniqué from Kommander Kos, Before the Democrats get all full of themselves and forget, everyone helped and everyone deserves credit.

With those realities in mind, this move by the “DC Democrats” to seize control of the Democratic National Committee from Howard Dean is not acceptable. James Carville and the DLC are losers without Bill Clinton as a candidate. Bill Clinton won, not the DLC. The “spoils” and jobs belong to the people who win elections, not those who lose them.

Shakespeare’s Sister discusses this effort in her post, Today In Great Ideas; NTodd calls his, Democratic Pharisees; Digby calls it turning Winning Into Losing; and MJS gives us a song, I Drove My Car to Carville.

John Emerson has a trilogy: Mr. Matalin wants to fire Howard Dean, Let’s sort it out, and The DC Democrats.

[Read more →]

A big thanks to the Shrubbery and his political genius for delaying the one thing that might have saved the Senate for the Republican Party, the resignation of Rumsfeld, until after the election. I’m sure that there are a few Republican Senators who will show their own version of “gratitude” during the lame duck session.

The only thing the Congress really has to do every year is pass a budget by 1 October, so it should surprise no one that they still haven’t bothered to do it. One would hope that the myth of efficiency in one party rule has been buried.

It would seem that just to prove that “bipartisanship” was only a passing fancy, the Shrubbery is attempting to get John Bolton, Robert Gates, and the “tap any phone I feel like” measures through Congress during the dying 109^th Congress. I hope the Republicans have figured out that you can be a Republican without being a Bushevik, because the Busheviki don’t really care about the Republican Party.

The few of you who were amused by the fact that Burns and Allen were the last two Senate elections to be settled will appreciate “Say good night, George.”

[Note: outline of the graphic courtesy SillyBill.com, the additional political variations are my fault.]

United States Marine Corps

1775

Of Course It’s A Catwalk

Is that a moth?

I guess I’ll have to wait.

[Editor: My Mother just found these pictures of Koshka playing on the top of the kitchen door. I always had to check before shutting doors, but I didn’t have to worry about dusting them.]

Friday Ark

Apparently we are not going to have Ken Mehlman to kick around any more.

Understand that this was already in the works, for ever and ever, and as nothing to do with the results of the recent elections. Ken’s garden has apparently been looking really bad, and he needs to tend to it. Oh, he also needs to do something about his kitchen.

Jazz at Lincoln Center, 60 Minutes, Vietnam and Cambodia…a truth speaker for people most of the world ignored.

He is missed.

He didn’t get any help from the Democratic Party, but Joe Roberts ran a good, clean campaign in District 1 against a well funded incumbent who even received Presidential visits.

Joe, managed to get 31.5% of the vote, which may not seem like much, but keeping a Republican incumbent below 70% in this area without an indictment involved is a major accomplishment.

I join the Pensacola Beach Blog in thanking you for your work. Maybe next time we can get the Party interested in providing a little support.

Cruella de Harris rise to prominence was because of a suspect election, and now the election to replace her is mired in controversy.

CBS carries the Associated Press report, Deja Vu: Another Florida Recount Likely

The touch-screen voting machines Katherine Harris championed as secretary of state after the 2000 presidential recount may have botched this year’s election to replace her in the U.S. House, and it’s likely going to mean another Florida recount.

More than 18,000 Sarasota County voters who marked other races didn’t have a vote register in the House race, a rate much higher than the rest of the district, elections results show.

Republican Vern Buchanan has a 373-vote lead over Democrat Christine Jennings, less than 0.2%. Anything less than 0.5% generates an automatic recount, which is meaningless with touch screen machines.

More information in the local Herald-Tribune story, and the raw data from the Sarasota County elections office.

My guess is that the race wasn’t visible in the ES&S machines. You may have had to scroll down to find it. That is based on looking at the numbers for absentee ballots [on paper ballots], and comparing it to early and election day voting on the machines.

It would appear a poorly designed ballot can occur on machines as easily as punch cards. “Nothing is foolproof: fools are too ingenious.”

Andante of Collective Sigh just remembered it was her third blogiversary™ on Sunday, November 5^th.

She was responsible for my first post outside of comments, so this is her fault.

It took a bit for me to figure out who Robert Gates was, and he was someone I was trying to forget. Holden over at First Draft has several posts that you should read, and since he makes this “open source”, I can talk about it.

First off, Gates made the entire US intel community look like amateurs in regards to the Soviet Union. He buried the crumbling of the CCCP to maintain funding for the Company, which made the fall look like it took the intel community by surprise. Folks there wasn’t an FM stereo radio station in Moscow until 1970, that’s tells you how far behind the curve Soviet technology was. Their space and missile program was based on refinements of German WWII designs, which overlooked the advances their own people had made. Intel knew that the Soviet Union was in trouble, but Gates buried the signs.

Gates is also the US “father of al Qaeda,” in his push to attack the Soviets in Afghanistan. He was responsible for American funding, training, and equipment pouring in to supply the mujahadeen. He is the person who gave Stinger ground-to-air missiles to Islamic militants.

You are probably aware of his memory and truth problems during his testimony on the Iran-Contra affair.

Like North, Poindexter, Elliot Abrams, et al., he should have been left under a rock.

We don’t need another lying re-tread at the head of the DoD, we need someone who can add up columns of numbers accurately and speak in truthful declarative sentences. William Cohen comes to mind as he is a Republican and he seemed to be able to do the job.