Posts from — February 2007

Terry at Nitpicker is a year older.

Scorpio at Eccentricity celebrates a third blogiversary™.

Steve Gilliard at News Blog is in the hospital.

Maru at WTF is it now? has lost a friend.

The joys of just clicking around on sites:

BBC Washington correspondent Matt Frei talking about US media: Washington diary: Martians and celebs. It’s nice to know that other people share my opinion of the “feel good, short attention span” of the American media scene.

About those “ignorant towel heads” in the Middle East, the BBC has a report, Advanced geometry of Islamic art, that tells us: “Researchers in the US have found 15th Century examples that use the concept of quasicrystalline geometry.” If you are not familiar with “quasicrystalline geometry”, it’s probably because the West didn’t “discover” it until the end of the 20th Century.

Melanie at Just a Bump in the Beltway noticed Dana Millbank’s follow-up of the Walter Reed story in the Washington Post: Painting Over the Problems at Walter Reed’s Building 18.

Living in Florida I have a lot experience with roaches and the other problems, and I do house rehabilitations. I know what it takes to do the job, and what is described in the article won’t cut it.

First you need to get all of the people out of the building because you have to fumigate, but you don’t waste any time or money on that until you remove the carpets, curtains, furniture and, especially, mattresses. You can sort the furniture and mattresses and treat them separately, but they can’t be reused for an extended period.

Next you check and make sure you don’t have any roof leaks or plumbing leaks. Both roaches and mice need water, so if there is no available source inside, they will go outside. Water is also the culprit in most deterioration of buildings. There is no point in going further until you stop the leaks.

[Read more →]

The Republan leadership in the Florida legislature thinks that it would be a wonderful idea to eliminate all property taxes in the state and replace them with an increase in the state sales tax from 6% to 8%. [Florida Public Radio Capitol Report]

For some reason local governments have not jumped on this bandwagon.

Via Maya at Suburban Guerrilla, The Guardian reports the shocking news that US Iran intelligence ‘is incorrect’.

For some reason the IAEA is unable to find any of the installations or activities in Iran that the US claims are there. It’s eerily like the chicken farms that the weapons inspectors in Iraq kept finding that the US “intelligence” said were WMD sites.

Next someone will report that a law professor at a border state university has been advocating the murder of civilians based on these faulty reports.

In response to the seemingly annual rumors that the Vatican is about to modify its stand on the use of condoms to combat the spread of AIDS, the BBC decided to ask a couple of Catholics to comment. [BBC World Service radio]

Supporting the wider use of condoms was Brian Haill, President of Australian AIDS Fund, a former Church-sponsored outreach initiative, and on the other side was the noted victim of anti-Catholic bigotry, William “DonoWho”.

In response to DonoWho’s claims about the success of the abstinence only program in Uganda and the permeability of condoms to the AIDS virus, a “Haill” storm erupted. It was a terrible thing to hear, even though no “naughty” words were used.

You did get the feeling that Mr. Haill would not have objected to someone pulling a condom over DonoWho’s head to prove that not even air could get through, not that I’m advocating doing that. I’m not a law professor.

I guess the BBC and Australian Catholics are now anti-Catholic bigots.

First is was some small-minded librarians having fits because an author of the latest Newbery Medal winner used the word scrotum and now, Dog Store Sign Angers Seattle Residents, because the store uses the proper term for a female dog.

A little advice, it isn’t the word, it’s the mind of those who object to the word. I know they didn’t watch the recent Westminster Dog Show, because they use the word frequently.

Next they’ll faint when someone says “male puppy”.

Laptop Cases

Ahh, just right.

[Editor: The key to getting the proper laptop bag is having enough stiffness in the sides to form a bowl and large enough to hold the entire cat. Of course you need to find someplace else to put the computer.]

Friday Ark

US supplies are primarily coming by road from Kuwait. Southern Iraq is where the UK troops are based.

Over at Sic Semper Tyrannis Wayne White wants people to consider the implications for the US supply line of A Phased UK Withdrawal.

Steve Gilliard of News Blog has talked about the US supply line problems if there is an attack on Iran for months, and now the force that has been protecting a major portion of that line is leaving.

This is how it’s done.

According to the BBC: Harry Iraq deployment no surprise

And so, just as the prime minister announces the start of Britain’s phased withdrawal from Iraq, Second Lieutenant Harry Wales of the Household Cavalry, is preparing for a tour of duty in that country.

[snip]

But Second Lieutenant Harry Wales will be there, doing his duty with the rest of his regiment, while his father, elder brother and grandmother will – with several thousand other British families – suddenly have a very personal stake in the progress of this particular campaign, and an insight into the stresses that it can provoke.

They may even find themselves reflecting that not a single senior member of this government, the ministers of the Crown who committed Britain to the Iraqi intervention, has had an equivalent experience.

Strange how the real supporters of this mess can’t seem to find the time to serve. It doesn’t take much courage when you are risking the life and limbs of strangers. Lieutenant Wales is going because it’s his job, his duty, not because he thinks it’s a good idea.

From Keith Olbermann’s The News Hole a wonderful bit of information on the War on Terror™ as practiced by the Shrubbery in KEEPING THE WORLD SAFE FROM SHAM MARRIAGES:

Federal prosecutors counted immigration violations, marriage fraud and drug trafficking among anti-terror cases in the four years after 9/11 even though no evidence linked them to terror activity, a Justice Department audit said Tuesday.

Overall, nearly all of the terrorism-related statistics on investigations, referrals and cases examined by department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine were either diminished or inflated. Only two of 26 sets of department data reported between 2001 and 2005 were accurate, the audit found.

Can we just stop pretending they care?

Melissa wonders Why the government allowed the situation to deteriorate so badly at Walter Reed, and Colonel Lang calls it Bureaucracy’s Cost as he notes that head should roll.

People may remember that Rumsfeld put Walter Reed on the the base closing list. I objected at the time because it would be stupid to close a military hospital during a war with casualties being flown in daily.

Apparently buildings that weren’t being used daily were allowed to deteriorate to save what funds that were available to be used for those buildings that were in steady use. Mold, mildew, mice and cockroaches can readily overtake an unoccupied, unheated building near bodies of water. It takes a lot less time than most people would believe. The money in the Pentagon budget for maintaining military bases is being plundered for other projects.

Be that as it may, as Colonel Lang points out, people must be held responsible, I would point out that this has been going on for a very long time, and was first reported by people stationed at Fort Stewart¹ years ago. The current resident at the White House and his minions just don’t give a damn.

1. Transcript of Kris Osborn reporting on Fort Stewart for the Lou Dobbs Tonight show 10/21/2003 on CNN.

I have spent three hours on the telephone having an individual repeat a three-letter sequence that I had given to him to type in. During the last half-hour I was beset by three cats inside and a dozen cats outside wondering where dinner was.

Then this individual asks “what does LTP mean?” I responded that I didn’t have the faintest idea, and wondered why he had asked. He responded: “if you don’t know, why do you want me to type it in?” To which I responded: “excuse me, but I have been telling you to type in LPT which is an abbreviation for line printer, which is, after all, what we are attempting to get to work.”

Ten minutes later the cats were being fed.

[Read more →]

Robert at Interstate 4 Jamming notes that the Republan Party of Florida is not only not going to have a straw poll, but they intend to charge candidates $100K to debate at a forum co-sponsored by Faux News.

This is a bit outrageous and jacks up the cost of the election. I don’t think it’s illegal, because parties can pretty much do what they want within their own ranks, but requiring this kind of money to get heard in a state like Florida that is already expensive to campaign in, is not a high point in the democratic process.

Update: Robert reports that today the Republans reversed their fee decision. Apparently a lot of people complained after reading the newspaper report.

There hasn’t been a single Department of Defense funding request that hasn’t been approved by Congress during the Shrubbery’s residency and yet the Department of Defense doesn’t have the money to pay it’s electric bills or to repair equipment that has been damaged.

Given the way they have repeatedly tried to cut benefits, I’m sorry to say that Lurch’s post, Abusing Veterans, that provides links the recent Washington Post series, doesn’t surprise me in the least. This didn’t just happen, these people have been ignoring the people and infrastructure since they came into office.

As Scout highlights, they hire people like Michael J. Wagner, until recently Chairman of the Military Veteran and Family Assistance Foundation, who was working on his own private Phoenix Foundation while accepting a government paycheck. These people don’t care about the “vulgar peasants” who fight wars.

On All Things Considered Mara Liasson did a report on the John McCain campaign, McCain Back to Square One: South Carolina, and during a gathering at Spartanburg a woman got up and essentially accused Congressional Democrats of wanting to cut off the troops’ paychecks while they were fighting in Iraq. It isn’t the Democrats who are asking people to pay for the body armor that was cut off during their evacuation from the battlefield, or to pay for their meals in the hospital, or to repay allowances that weren’t stopped when they were evacuated state-side, or who failed to pay the National Guard and Reservists in war zones for months, that was the Republans in charge of this disaster. That’s how the Republans support the troops.

Everyone needs to understand that these people have no problem forgiving KBR for billions in overcharges, but a corporal who lost limbs is supposed to come up with thousands that the government claims it overpaid him while he was in the hospital. In case you are wondering, they don’t pay interest when they underpay you.

The only reason this administration can’t have an escalation of 20,000 people and follow the rules that Jack Murtha is proposing is because they have mismanaged the Department of Defense since they came into office. While you go to “war with the army you have”, if you are competent you immediately begin building the army you need.

[Updated to extract an “ic” for an “ic”. If you listen, McCain has the same pronunciation problem as the Shrubbery.]

The last day before the beginning of Lent on the Gulf Coast that once belonged to France, it is Mardi Gras, “Fat Tuesday”: Laissez les bon temps rouler!

It was first celebrated in Mobile, Alabama, but the big show is in New Orleans, and it is a holiday in the state of Louisiana, because people wouldn’t show up for work anyway, so why fight it.

The tradition is to serve King cake, which is generally a circle of cinnamon bun dough with a white frosting on top sprinkled with sugar colored purple, gold, and green. If that weren’t bad enough, they put the figurine of a baby in the dough, and whoever finds it in their piece is supposed to be lucky. Actually if you find it and don’t choke on it, I guess you are lucky. You should use a small ceramic figurine, as some of the cheap plastic versions melt in the oven [yummy].