Posts from — March 2007

The Associated Press report on the ceremonial start: 82 teams, 1,000 dogs hit Iditarod trail.

Wikipedia provides some background on the biggest event in Alaska: Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race^®.

As always the Anchorage Daily News provides the daily coverage.

Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

CNN carries an Associated Press report Ammo, weapons, tunnel found in California home:

More than 1 million rounds of ammunition, a cache of weapons and a tunnel were found at a man’s home after an explosive fire that forced a neighborhood evacuation, authorities said Friday.

…

Dozens of metal and cardboard boxes filled with ammunition for shotguns, small handguns and assault rifles sat in a driveway. Two of the assault rifles were illegal, [Riverside County Sheriff’s Deputy Juan] Zamora said.

The man had no permit for 75 pounds of black gunpowder that was also recovered, Zamora said.

[Read more →]

You constantly hear references to “the short bus” that are misinformed. The point is that the people on the “short bus” or in “special education” are not there as a result of personal choice, whereas the people usually referenced in these comments have made a choice.

I used the Association of Retarded Citizens [ARC] for years to provide services and can highly recommend them if your needs fit into their programs. The workers do what they do very conscientiously. You may be able to find someone who will be faster, but you won’t find anyone who is more thorough. The people in the program didn’t choose to have these limitations; the reductions in capability were imposed by nature or accidents.

As a case in point is Democratic Senator Carl Levin of the Senate Armed Services committee in this 02/27/07 exchange with the new director of National Intelligence:

[Read more →]

As the marsupial master of minuscule and coiner of the word “blogtopia”, skippy the bush kangaroo, notes, the winger study of profanity is tragiclly flawed by that scourge of the pundit classes –Innumeracy:

The term innumeracy was coined by cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter and popularized by mathematician John Allen Paulos. Possible causes of innumeracy are poor teaching methods and standards, and lack of value placed on mathematical skills. Even prominent and successful people will attest, sometimes proudly, to low mathematical competence, in sharp contrast to the stigma associated with illiteracy.

Consequences of innumeracy:

* Inaccurate reporting of news stories and insufficient skepticism in assessing these stories
* Financial mismanagement and accumulation of consumer debt, specifically related to misunderstanding of compound interest
* Loss of money on gambling, in particular caused by belief in the gambler’s fallacy
* Belief in pseudoscience, particularly when people use pseudoscientific information (i.e. astrology, etc.) to plan one’s life.
* Poor assessment of risk, for example, refusing to fly by airplane (a relatively safe form of transport) while taking unnecessary risks in a car (where an accident is more likely)
* Limited job prospects

Pathological innumeracy, known as dyscalculia, is often associated with neurological lesions.

Of course, no one who pontificates ever expects to be subjected to the scientific method, where others repeat your experiment and compare results, as that is a cruel feature of reality.

Of course, this does nothing to assuage the disappointment of some on the Left who felt they deserved a much higher ranking in the original results. They might consider not wasting their profanity in other people’s comments, and save them for their own site, to improve their chances next time. I also think we should expand beyond the “unholy seven,” as they are certainly dated.

It is just possible that Robert Gates understands what kind of trouble the Department of Defense is in because of the Rumsfeld years.

The rumors are that he fired the Secretary of the Army because Harvey went on the defense in reaction the problems at Walter Reed. First the wounded were pulled on base and told not to talk to the media to prevent any bad news leaking out, with the daily inspections thrown in as a threat. Then Maj. General Weightman was fired, despite only being in the job for about six-months, and Lt. General Kiley was put in charge, even though Kiley was the commander when the problems were first reported years ago and did nothing about it. This was a standard stall tactic. Harvey was planning to form a committee to study the issue until it faded from public notice, the standard Rumsfeld/Republican response to problems.

The Shrubbery has announced he is forming a panel to study the issue, so he can avoid responsibility for what he has done for the last six years. The Snowman will be telling reporters how the White House can’t comment on ongoing investigations, the standard dodge.

I think Gates has figured out that this isn’t going away, because Congress and the Washington Post [they love the smell of that Pulitzer] won’t let it go away. This isn’t going to swept under the rug, like Abu Ghraib, to fester, as Gates understands that he is going to have budget problems if progress isn’t made. The Democrats are investigating the problem, and Gates has to know by now that the entire military medical system is screwed up because of the lack of planning by Rumsfeld. Gates is dealing with a lot of political flag officers and he is going to have fire them before the remainder understand that they are going to have to do their jobs and not just brown nose.

CNN reports Army secretary quits in wake of hospital scandal:

Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey resigned Friday in the wake of recent reports of substandard conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a key facility treating troops wounded in Iraq.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced Harvey’s resignation at the Pentagon, just a day after Harvey removed the hospital’s commander, Maj. Gen. George Weightman, from his post.

A statement from the Army said it had “lost trust and confidence in the commander’s leadership.”

Harvey had been the Army’s top civilian official since November 2004. Before President Bush appointed him to the position, he spent much of his career working for defense contractors, according his Army biography.

Rumor has it that Gates fired Harvey when Harvey said Lt. General Kiley would be in charge of Walter Reed. Kiley is in line to be axed according to “reliable sources.”

Everyone is trying to get into world domination. According to an Associated Press report Swiss Accidentally Invade Liechtenstein:

According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers wandered just over a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

A spokesman for the Swiss army confirmed the story but said that there were unlikely to be any serious repercussions for the mistaken invasion.

“We’ve spoken to the authorities in Liechtenstein and it’s not a problem,” Daniel Reist told The Associated Press.

I think they are going to need to do a little more work on map reading, and someone needs to bring along a GPS receiver. It’s really embarrassing when you accidentally invade another country…especially if the country doesn’t notice.

On Day to Day Mike Pesca has a report ‘Times’ Gets Faked Out on ‘Diary’ Entry : “The New York Times unwittingly put a phony story in their “Metropolitan Diary” feature recently.” This details the reaction by the Times to being conned into running a fake anecdote, not news, but a fake fluff piece.

After you listen, consider the reaction of the Times to Judith Miller and her reporting.

Laptop Cases II

It’s big enough, really.

[Editor: If Ringo does it, Sox will try, even if his butt hangs off the end.]

Friday Ark

The Shrubbery keeps saying that “all options are on the table” and some Democrats are parroting that phrase. It’s a lie, and everyone should know it. The only “options” the Shrubbery is interested in is killing more people and blowing things up. The option that never seems to appear on his table is real diplomacy – talking to people.

Telling people you won’t talk to them until they agree with you is not diplomacy. It shows no respect for your adversary. Setting pre-conditions for talks defeats the purpose of talking. It’s like having a debate where both sides must agree to the proposition before the debate would be held.

The US has not, in point of fact, agreed to talk to Syria and Iran. The US, at most, is agreeing to attend a multi-party conference to which Syria and Iran have also been invited.

The recent agreement with North Korea has told Iran and Syria that they must possess nuclear weapons before the US will talk to them. That is the message. The US didn’t talk to North Korea until North Korea conducted a nuclear test. That is not a good message to send.

The weather has been nasty all day, as a front is moving through. The tornadoes that have devastated communities inland are forming over the Gulf and getting sucked to the northeast. The power keeps going out as transformers arc in the cloudbursts. We have been under tornado watches or warnings all day, and the thunder is really getting on my nerves.

The radar looks like it may finally passing us, so we can get some sleep tonight.

My problems are nothing to compared to Enterprise, Alabama. Schools are used for shelters down here, and most are not up to the task. The area will be a long time healing, because almost everyone in town would have known one of the people who died.

From the article below we learned that Congress knew:

In 2004, Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) and his wife stopped visiting the wounded at Walter Reed out of frustration. Young said he voiced concerns to commanders over troubling incidents he witnessed but was rebuffed or ignored. “When Bev or I would bring problems to the attention of authorities of Walter Reed, we were made to feel very uncomfortable,” said Young, who began visiting the wounded recuperating at other facilities.

Beverly Young said she complained to Kiley several times. She once visited a soldier who was lying in urine on his mattress pad in the hospital. When a nurse ignored her, Young said, “I went flying down to Kevin Kiley’s office again, and got nowhere. He has skirted this stuff for five years and blamed everyone else.”

So, who is Congressman C.W. Bill Young? Wikipedia tells us that Charles William “Bill” Young:

… is currently the most senior Republican member of the House of Representatives. From 1999 to 2005, he was the Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations; he gave up the position because of Republican-set term limits. He is currently ranking minority member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.

He was chairman of the House Appropriations committee when this happened. Not a penny gets spent that doesn’t go through that committee, and the chairman sets the agenda. He could have held up the entire defense budget to get improvements, but he chose to go to other facilities because he and his wife “were made to feel very uncomfortable.” I doubt they were as uncomfortable as the wounded.

Update: Steve Soto of the Left Coaster noticed this last night.