Posts from — September 2007

A very nice CNN article, Brzezinski: U.S. in danger of ‘stampeding’ to war with Iran

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski likened U.S. officials’ saber rattling about Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions to similar bellicose statements made before the start of the Iraq war.

“I think the administration, the president and the vice president particularly, are trying to hype the atmosphere, and that is reminiscent of what preceded the war in Iraq,” Brzezinski told CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer” on Sunday.

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Before the GOP brought up their blatantly anti-free speech campaign talking point on September 20, they were offered a resolution by Senator Barbara Boxer, No. 2947:

Statement of Purpose: To reaffirm strong support for all the men and women of the United States Armed Forces and to strongly condemn attacks on the honor, integrity, and patriotism of any individual who is serving or has served honorably in the United States Armed Forces, by any person or organization.

The GOP filibustered this resolution with Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Joe LIEberman (Likud-CN) the only crossover votes.

It was never the troops or military service, it was always a political attack on MoveOn.org.

Holden Caulfield at First Draft responds to James Taranto’s claim that the use of “Mandela” in reference to Iraq wasn’t a mistake, but an excellent metaphor.

Actually, to be a good metaphor, people really have to understand the connection, and that obviously didn’t happen. The Shrubbery has been trying for some time to find an analogy for his war with little success because he doesn’t understand the basics of the situations he alludes to. Frankly before the Hedgemony starts running down the list of figures of speech, they might want to take the Shrubbery aside and brush up on the parts of speech, and things like subject-verb agreement. Even with the earpiece, I don’t think his short-term memory is good enough to deal with metaphors.

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Badtux, the snarky penguin, is concerned about the ability of law enforcement in the Bay State to recognize real threats so he has produced: A tutorial for the Boston Police Department and Massachusetts State Police.

No word if he’ll explain to the Connecticut police agencies the difference between flour and anthrax. Well, it’s not as if the Hash House Harriers is large group [international, in fact, and they have a chapter in my town]. They shouldn’t have started this [they have been using flour or chalk dust to mark routes for over a decade]. If that were the case the authorities would have been notified [the FBI and HSD have both put out fliers in the practice].

[Note: They use flour because it doesn’t kill anything, doesn’t add any litter, and washes away with the next rain.]

Fear makes people stupid, which is the whole point, because no thinking person would have elected the current administration.

Look, if you’re attempting comment spam with an innocuous message body, “This sounds interesting, but I don’t understand the details” is just not going to fool anyone when you link to Cat Blogging.  It’s the picture of a cat, no great involved message, just the picture of a cat, so everyone knows you are using a ‘bot.

Subtropical Storm Jerry has formed to annoy the fish in the northern Atlantic.  It is generally stationary.

Invest 94L is on the North coast of the Yucatan due South of New Orleans about to enter the Gulf where it might become something…or not, but it has to be watched as it moves Northwest.

Invest 96L just came off the coast of Africa and is sitting South-Southwest of the Cape Verde Islands due West of French Guiana.  It is moving West towards the Antilles.

Invest 97L has formed North of Suriname and West of the Lesser Antilles and is moving West.

It is very normal for these areas to be popping up at this time of year, and they have to be watched, but the majority will fizzle out.

You can watch the arrival of the equinox at Archæoastronomy. It takes place at 4:51AM CDT this morning.

It’s time to man the rakes in northern climes.

Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

You may have heard about an incident with Israeli aircraft did something in Syria on September 6^th. This article from Counter Currents, Israel’s Air Raid On Syria: Another Threat To Iran, covers much of the reporting and speculation about the attack. [Note: I won’t guarantee that the article is anything more than raw speculation outside of the quotes from news sources.]

Syria has complained, but the Israeli government had maintained a strict “no comment” policy until Joe LIEberman’s party chairman, Bibi [Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud], blabbed about it in a TV interview, apparently to prove he was relevant.

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A quick way of coming up to speed on this case is to read the Wikipedia entry on the Jena 6. It is about a whole series of incidents in the small town of Jena, Louisiana culminating in the charging of six black high school students.

Chris Kromm of Facing South asked Why the ‘progressive’ blogosphere silence about the Jena 6?

I would ask Chris why he thinks that liberal blogtopia™ consists of a half dozen “A-List” sites that generally discuss politics? I have seen stories about the Jena 6 for a long time at the sites I visit, maybe Chris should stop by over here and start clicking down my blog roll.

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Invest 94L
Position: 18.5 N 86.3 W. [2PM CDT]
Movement: Northwest [325°] near 9 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 25 mph.
Wind Gusts: 35 mph.
Minimum central pressure: 1010 mb.

Currently over the Yucatan Peninsula. May come ashore around the Texas-Louisiana border as a tropical depression or storm on Monday.

Normally I wouldn’t bother with this, but then it occurred to me – these clowns write laws, words have meaning.

I like to spell people’s names correctly. I was taught from an early age to do this, and I get a little annoyed at all of the correspondence I get with my name misspelled, so I looked up House GOP Leader John Boehner. While I was copying down his name from the GOP Leader’s Page I noticed the number one story on the Top News section is: House Dems Condone Slanderous Moveon Ad, Refuse to Consider Resolution Condemning it.

As someone who writes laws, Mr. Boehner should be aware that a printed advertisement cannot, by definition, be slanderous, it might be libelous, but slanderous is out.

For those who don’t know: slander is spoken; libel is written. Not an important distinction for a guy in a bar, but fairly major for people who write the laws.  The best path is to stick with defame; it’s always good.

Actual factual reporting from Dana Bash and Lisa Goddard of CNN: Republicans again block Iraq withdrawals

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Republican senators on Friday were again able to block a Democratic amendment that would set “definite timelines” for bringing home American combat forces from Iraq.
…

GOP senators have filibustered every Democratic-led push to bring troops home from Iraq. They used a procedural vote Wednesday to kill a proposal that would have required the Pentagon to give troops returning from Iraq stateside time equal to their time in the combat zone.

Six Republicans joined Democrats in voting for the plan, but the final vote was four short of the 60 needed to break a filibuster.

Facts and numbers and truth – I don’t know if I can stand it. What will they do next – label lies as lies?

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo thinks the people complaining about Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s desire to visit “Ground Zero” and lay a wreath when he comes to New York for the UN meeting should just Grow Up.

Josh doesn’t understand the problem – no one remembered to send Iran a thank you for all of the assistance they provided in pushing the Taliban out of Afghanistan and rounding up al Qaeda and Taliban people who tried to escape through Iran. I mean you could sort of ignore the condemnation of the attack by all levels of the Iranian government including the Supreme Leader, because most of the world did that, but Iran provided real material assistance to out our allies, the Northern Alliance, and actually captured terrorists, so a note really was called for.

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