Posts from — February 2007

Sam Gardiner at Left Coaster has a post on the Iranian show and tell, Iranians Reveal Evidence, which demonstrates that they can organize a dog and pony show.

Their stuff looks realistic if you didn’t know that those generic 20-round boxes of 7.62 ammo for an AK-47 were likely available any day of the week on the Iraqi black market, as is the rest of the stuff. I don’t doubt that some of came from the US, but that doesn’t prove anything. A relative of Chalabi got the contract for supplying that sort of thing, so I wouldn’t bet my life on it working, only that it was over-priced.

When you see boxes like that at gun shows you find that its re-loaded, usually with Soviet bloc casings. As long as you’re just wasting your money punching paper, it’s not bad, but you can expect dud rounds and need to pay extra attention to cleaning your weapon after you use it.

I don’t doubt the US is supporting the MEK, or that the MEK are continuing to cause trouble in Iran, but it’s frankly not a serious attempt at anything, and the Iranians have been dealing with them for decades. The only problem would be if anyone were using the MEK as a source of intelligence. That’s not what they do.

Quiddity makes an interesting catch in Lieberman walks – Joe comes to the Senate during the Sabbath, something he never does, to vote against cloture.

The Senate rules on cloture require that you get 60 votes, so not voting is the same as voting no. The only reason for making a special effort would be to vote yes, and yet, Joe makes this exceptional trip.

I can’t believe that Joe doesn’t know the rules, but it’s possible that he thought the rule was 60% of those present.

If you believe in elitism and aristocracy, you view the vulgar as bad, because you have taken the word and used it to express your disgust for the majority of people.

If you look at a dictionary you will note the earlier meanings of vulgar:

Spoken by or expressed in language spoken by the common people; vernacular;

Of or associated with the great masses of people; common.

Interesting that these people object to the common people in a representative democracy. They seem to believe that the majority of people need to lead by a small elite, rather than making their own decisions.

Ellroon’s post, The vulgarity of common bloggers, deals with the horror of the elite over the presumption of bloggers who believe they should have a voice in their country.

I realize it isn’t very comfortable for the elite when the vulgar bloggers delve into the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary to express their displeasure at the fact that the elite have benefited from the policies of the Shrubbery: the commoners are watching their own die and become disabled in a war the elite started.

I have no forgiveness for the politicians or the media who went along with the war in Iraq. As the elite, they are the ones with the access to knowledge that the government was lying. It was there if you were paying attention. You cretins didn’t simply embrace the excrement pouring out from the White House, you spread it over the truth. The mainstream media is certainly not vulgar, it is obscene.

We’ve all heard it – the country has never faced a bigger problem than the War on Terror™.

Digby covers part of it in: No, We’re The Greatest Generation, which deals with nostalgia for the Cold War as a simpler time.

I wrote about this last May, and it was bit disconcerting when the Baader-Meinhof gang made it back into the news, as in Meinhof gang killer to be freed: “A German court ruled that Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 57, qualifies for early release after serving a minimum proportion of her five life sentences.”

Now I have no way of knowing if Brigitte was in the dark blue Bimmer that went flying by on the right on the Autobahn, to be followed shortly by a green Polizei Porsche passing us on the left, but you have a tendency not to forget trying to duck as automatic weapons fire is taking place while you are driving at 120 KPH. You have to clean the upholstery after something like that.

Baader-Meinhof [Red Army Faction] had a tendency to make a trip to a bank or a drive to a shopping district an adventure during the 1970s, but I’m asked to believe that al Qaeda is a bigger threat to me. My brief in the military was the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces – I know about threats. Just because the Shrubbery is terrified, doesn’t mean I have to be.

[Update: Link fixed thanks to Alice in Comments.]

Representative John Murtha is going to introduce a radical plan to military funding: the Pentagon must follow its own rules. That is the sum and substance of what Rep, Murtha is proposing to write into law. Deployments limited to one year with a two-year break for the Army, and seven months in theater followed by fourteen months at their home base for the Marines. No more “Stop-Loss” orders, when your enlistment is up, you get to leave. You will be fully trained and equipped before being deployed to the combat zone.

Jack Murtha is going to force the government to abide by the contract and rules they agreed to when people enlisted. The government must keep its half of the bargain and stop screwing the troops.

The Republicans are going to have to explain what is so radical about requiring the government to abide by a contract, because that is all Murtha is proposing.

Why do Americans insist on electing people to Congress who can’t conceive of the concept of linear time, i.e. things could only be used or owned after they had been invented?

How long is it going to be before Congress understands that you need to weigh your words before making them part of the Congressional record?

Via Bark Bark Woof Woof you can see the latest Doonesbury cartoon, which is reason enough to visit, but below the cartoon is the “Say What?” feature that today is this gem:

“Could you picture Davy Crockett at the Alamo looking at his BlackBerry, getting a message from Congress? ‘Davy Crockett, we support you. The only thing is we are not going to send any troops.’ I am sure that would really be impressive to Davy Crockett.”

Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo.

David Crockett of Tennessee resigned in a snit after not being assured of re-election to Congress and with a group of 12 friends rode to the Mexican province of Texas to participate in a revolution. A group of 12 constitutes a squad in military terms, which would make Crockett a corporal, sergeant at most. He went to San Antonio where Lieutenant Colonel Travis was ignoring the order of his commander, Sam Houston, to destroy the fortifications of the Alamo. Houston knew he didn’t have the men or materiel to defend the site and was attempting to mass his forces for a major battle.

The Congress may have supported Crockett’s action, but as they were taking place in foreign country, the Congress was not about to send troops the US did not have to become involved in a battle that wasn’t supposed to happen.

While I will assume that Congressman Akin was aware that Blackberries didn’t exist at the time, it may come as a shock that Congress is not in the habit of sending messages to junior non-commissioned-officers in other people’s armies.

Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

Year of the Red Pig

Ding Hai

Chinese New Year
[Spring Festival]

Via Oliver Willis: Countdown has a blog: The News Hole.

Via Laura Rozen: a piece in The Forward, Iranian Scientist’s Death Stirs Talk of an Atomic ‘Whodunit’, that I probably wouldn’t have read if Quiddity at UggaBugga hadn’t mentioned someone was talking about sending in assassins to take out Iranian atomic scientists. While this is indeed a developing story, I wouldn’t read too much into it. Just a coincidence. No need to send agents to the campus and ask about it. No need to tap phones, read mail, etc. I mean putting a keylogger on his computer would be over the top.

First people should take a look at the Iranian government’s power structure at the BBC.

Then you can read about the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to understand that they are really the Iranian equivalent of America’s original militias, except they never went back to their day jobs. They consider themselves “protectors of the Revolution,” not just part of the Iranian military.

The money issue also comes into it, as at the Wikipedia entry on the Military of Iran it is reported:

Iran’s 2005 defence budget was estimated to be $6.3 billion by London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies. This was $91 per capita, a lower figure than other Persian Gulf nations, and lower as a percentage of gross national product than all other Gulf states except the United Arab Emirates. Still, Iran’s military was called the Middle East’s most powerful by the senior U.S. commander in the region.

At that rate, the US defense budget would be $27.3 billion, not the $400+ billion it actually is.

So, they are the biggest threat in the area, and they manage to do it on the cheap. Maybe someone should find out how they do it?

Over at Candide’s Notebooks Ohio Dave and Pierre have a conversation, What Is a Blog? An Exchange, which is interesting in both form and content.

At some point every blogger looks at their inner reason for writing, and it is an individual reason. There is no one-size-fits-all, [or even -most], when it comes to blogging. Blogs disappear for personal reasons, at the point at which they no longer satisfy the inner reason.

If getting a job with a political campaign is not part of your reason, being offered such a job creates a problem. Accepting a political job requires that you abandon your personal voice for the voice of the campaign. If you were hired because of your personal voice, the campaign kills what they value.

There should be a way of supporting voices on the left, as the voices on the right are supported. The funding requires a cut-out that allows for deniability, because unless the voices are truly independent they will not ring true.

You may have heard about that Fake Lincoln Quote that Frank Gaffney had in a column in the Washington Times, and Rep. Don Young [R-Alaska] read into the Congressional Record during the House anti-surge debate.

“Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.” — President Abraham Lincoln.

I seem to remember in my reading about the Civil War something similar, perhaps a believable quote would be:

“Journalists who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.” — General William Tecumseh Sherman.

Actually, “Uncle Billy” Sherman had the power to do it, and was on the verge of doing it several times. Of course, he would have actually used much stronger language, but his attitude was remarked on by journalists of the day, like Henry Villard.

In his most frequently quoted comment Sherman said: “I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast.”

I tend to be behind the curve on some topics because I want open source information before I discuss them. The problem with ever having worked in a classified field is that you don’t want to reveal classified information [unless you are an unprincipled political hack, who wants to smear people who expose your lies] even by accident.

The other problem is that I don’t want to give information to whackos who would use it to hurt people, even themselves. If some things don’t seem clear, it is because I don’t want them to be clear [or I messed up, which is possible].

A cannon is nothing more than a pipe that is closed at one end, filled with a chemical that burns or explodes, and has an object jammed down the open end. When the chemical is ignited, the pressure created pushes the object out of the pipe with a good deal of force.

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Tummy Rubs

Come on. Do it neowww!

[Editor: Sox is apt to flop down anywhere, if he wants his stomach scratched.]

Friday Ark