Posts from — September 2007

Sundown tonight marks the beginning of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, for Jews, and their most important holy day. It is a day of fasting and contemplation.

For my Jewish friends, I bid you peace and forgiveness.

The GOP has a lot of damn gall claiming they have respect for the troops when at their 2004 convention they openly denigrated those who had won a Purple Heart for wounds received in combat: Delegates mock Kerry with ‘purple heart’ bandages. The Purple Heart was first awarded by George Washington during the Revolutionary War and is the oldest medal for combat in the United States military.

When GOP House Leader John Boehner says that the loss of nearly 4000 of America’s military men and women is a small price to pay for the war of choice in Iraq, he again demonstrates how much respect his party has for the troops.

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Invest 93L has become Subtropical Depression Ten …and fades away at 10PM [updated]

Position: 30.6 N 87.1 W. [10PM CDT]
Movement: Northwest [325°] near 9 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 30 mph.
Wind Gusts: 40 mph.
Minimum central pressure: 1005 mb.

Currently 10 miles Northeast of Pensacola, Florida.

It came ashore in Santa Rosa County as not much more than a heavy rainstorm.

Concentration

They won’t escape today!

[Editor: Every morning Sox comes into the office to stare intently at the mini-blinds hoping to catch the shadows of the doves that land on the edge of the roof. The window faces East and the rising sun casts a shadow on the blinds as the doves’ tail feathers hang over the edge. I have a large stock of mini-blinds and they are rarely totally trashed when he leaps into action.]

Friday Ark

Keith Olbermann has a Special Comment on Bush’s hypocrisy for condemning Petraeus ad.

He starts with excerpts from the Shrubbery’s press conference:

“I thought the ad was disgusting. I felt like the ad was an attack not only on General Petraeus, but on the U.S. Military.”

“And I was disappointed that not more leaders in the Democrat party spoke out strongly against that kind of ad.

“And that leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like Moveon.org or more afraid of irritating them, than they are of irritating the United States military.”

“That was a sorry deal.”

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In news from Danger Room, David Axe mentions that Ospreys Iraq-Bound and I had seen this from Associated Press:

The Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263 and 10 Ospreys left Monday from New River Air Station next to Camp Lejeune aboard the USS Wasp, Marine Maj. Eric Dent said. A typical Osprey squadron has roughly 200 Marines.

USS Wasp and the other vessels in her class are some of the handiest things around as they have great search and rescue capabilities in addition to their primary military purpose. These are the vessels of choice if there is a disaster with water access. The USS Bataan could have done great things in New Orleans after Katrina if the Hedgemony had allowed it.

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I went over to the Senate Vote page to see how individuals voted on three items today: the Webb amendment, the habeas corpus amendment, and the “we hate free speech” sense of the Senate resolution¹. I gave Senators a point for a “yes” vote on each of the two amendments, and a point for a “no” vote on the resolution, and built a table. The people with a “2” voted “yes” on all three.

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Badtux, the snarky penguin, has an easy to understand table comparing universal Medicare and the Hillary Clinton proposal [which is a re-packaged version of the plan Mitt Romney introduced in Massachusetts].

Have a look at RomneyHillaryCare vs. Medicare For All: A comparison, kick the tires.

The good news is that there is time to look at what’s happening in Massachusetts to see how this might work out.

According to the BBC, Osama bin Laden [number one on all of the charts with a bomb] found time for another recording date and just released his latest cut: Bin Laden urges Pakistan holy war

Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden has called on Pakistanis to overthrow President Pervez Musharraf.

In a new audio tape, Bin Laden promised what he called retaliation for the storming of the radical Red Mosque in the capital, Islamabad, in July.
…

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Invest 93L which may, at some point, become tropical storm Jerry is a collection of low pressure areas around Florida. One of them is in central Florida, one off the coast of Jacksonville, and an associated upper level low in the same area. It is probable they will all merge into one system in the Gulf.

Other than the fact that they are generating a lot of rain, they bear watching by everyone from Texas to the Florida Panhandle as they are expected to turn tropical in the Gulf. How much of a storm develops is dependent on too many variable at this point, but they can’t pull an Humberto yet.

Every other storm in the name list is male this year, and I wouldn’t want to have a beer with any of them.

…for the troops.

Following their sterling performance in the drowning of the Constitution, 43 Republicans and the LIEberman voted to filibuster a bill that would have given the troops an even break.

Democrats’ Push To Limit Troops Thwarted

(AP) Democrats’ efforts to challenge President Bush’s Iraq policies were dealt a demoralizing blow Wednesday in the Senate after they failed to scrape together enough support to guarantee troops more time at home.

The 56-44 vote — four short of reaching the 60 needed to advance — all but assured that Democrats would be unable to muster the support needed to pass tough anti-war legislation by year’s end. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., was seen as the Democrats’ best shot because of its pro-military premise.
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Right in their headline the legacy media™ gets it wrong: Senate Rejects Expanding Detainee Rights. A majority of the Senate voted to reverse an unconstitutional law that affects a basic right of everyone in the country. The Repubs filibustered the restoration of habeas corpus, the only right important enough to be in the body of the Constitution.

The 56-43 vote fell four shy of the 60 votes needed to cut off debate on the bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa.
…

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of the architects of the law, said the system includes checks and balances to determine whether a person is being held unlawfully. Granting a ban on habeas corpus petitions would allow terrorism suspects to go “judge shopping” around U.S. courts to find a sympathetic ear, he said.

Added Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.: “Never has such an unprecedented legal right been granted to a prisoner of war or detainee.”

Graham told a blatant lie. You can’t shop around, if you apply in the wrong court you lose automatically. Kyl neglects to mention that there is no precedent in American law for “detainee,” a new classification dreamed up by the Hedgemony.

They refuse to admit they don’t like the Constitutional system or the basic rights enjoyed in the United States.

Where did people get this absurd idea that universities and colleges were open fora for free speech? They are aristocracies, plain and simple, as anyone who failed to note the difference between a garden variety professor and a professor of an endowed chair would find out in short order. They are medieval institutions still clinging to the feudal system. the nobility faculty normally ignore the grumbling and bleating of the peasants students, but they can come down hard if someone becomes annoying.

If you wish to survive, you quickly memorize the system of academic rank used by your institution.

The problem at the University of Florida could have been resolved immediately if the “monarch” had intervened, but he was busy preparing the team for a game this Saturday.

PortlyDyke at Shakesville pointed this out and I checked on my own to be sure – there were two stories about crime in Florida that got play recently: the student at the University of Florida and the arrest of an assistant US attorney in a child rape sting in Detroit. For whatever reason the legacy media™ decided the U of F story needed to be covered by everyone, but a public official looking for 5-year-olds to rape wasn’t important.

The Atchinson story was covered by the local media in Detroit and the Florida Panhandle, but the national media ignored it. Everyone seems to have an opinion about the judgment of a few cops, but no one is very upset about the judgment of the MSM.