Posts from — September 2007

September 11^th, 2001

On September 11^th, 2001 approximately 3,000 people died and the individual most responsible is still at large – why?

In the intervening six years we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars, trampled on peoples rights, created huge new government bureaucracies, and can’t respond as well as the third world to a natural disaster.

Richard Clarke: “Your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard. But that doesn’t matter, because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness.“

The BBC reports on a Viking ship ‘buried beneath pub’.

A 1,000-year-old Viking longship is thought to have been discovered under a pub car park on Merseyside.

The vessel is believed to lie beneath 6ft to 10ft (2m to 3m) of clay by the Railway Inn in Meols, Wirral, where Vikings are known to have settled.

Apparently the ship was originally found in 1938 when the current pub was rebuilt, but the contractor dumped fill over it so the job wouldn’t be delayed.

I think that we can all agree that a pub is a place where you would expect to find Vikings, that parking wasn’t a known Viking skill, but there is no way of knowing if they sang the Spam Song.

The blog will be down from about Noon Pacific Daylight Time today, Monday, for four to eight hours while my host changes data centers.

Rook of Rook’s Rant caught the Shrubbery’s liar-side chat™ from Austria Australia and noted that Bush Urges Unity for his newest plan for Iraq.

What is missing is any indication as to what this plan entails, but Democrats and Repubs should just decide to back it unanimously because it’s another great plan from the Hedgemony which has yet to produce a single success in the last 6½ years.

Rook notes that 7 out 10 Americans agree that the Shrubbery is a failure. Having a general and an ambassador present this plan isn’t going to make it any better, because it came from the Decider™ who hasn’t gotten anything right since the Supreme Court selected him.

Whig reminds us that Canadians know how to Support the troops.

[This is too true. It’s amazing how often we’ve been subjected to this on the so-called news.]

So General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are starring in a two-man show for Congress tomorrow written by the people responsible for the Shrubbery’s speech at the OPEC APEC conference in Austria Australia, the Cheney Apocalyptic Agitprop Workshop. Everyone needs to remember that it is filed under fiction.

If you are looking for nonfiction, you might read Leila Fadel of McClatchy Newspapers who offers us, Security in Iraq still elusive.

BAGHDAD — When President Bush announced in January what the White House called a “New Way Forward” in Iraq, he said that Iraqi and American troops would improve security while the Iraqi government improved services. Responsibility for security in most of Iraq would be turned over to Iraqi security forces by November.

With better security would come the breathing room needed for political reconciliation, Bush said.

With less than a week to go before the White House delivers a congressionally mandated report on that plan, none of this has happened.
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Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

Position: 33.1 N 75.7 W. [10PM CDT]
Movement: Northwest near 12 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 40 mph.
Wind Radius: 105 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 1008 mb.

While the rain bands are coming ashore now, and the center will reach the Outer Banks tomorrow, it doesn’t look like it will be much of an event, and will affect coastal North Carolina and Southeast Virginia before turning to the Northeast and back out to sea.

You have to admit Osama is the product of his class, i.e. sons of wealthy families who never held a real job and embrace religion after years of hell-raising. He knows how to appeal to the class, as Sharon Weinberger of Danger Room points out in her post Read Osama’s Lips: No Taxes, Ever.

I thought is was satire, but sure enough if you read the SITE Intelligence Group transcript [PDF] on page 7 you find:

There are no taxes in Islam, only a limited Zakaat (alms) totaling 2.5 percent.

Wow, a 2.5% flat tax! Grover Norquist and Steve Forbes must be conflicted.

Fallenmonk provides the facts from a Fortune magazine article:

The Hedgemony is going to report a deficit of $ 158 billion, but that doesn’t include the $ 78 billion Social Security surplus, or the $ 108 billion in interest owed to the Social Security trust fund, or the $ 97 billion in IOUs for principle and interest on Federal pensions.

The real deficit is $ 441 billion, and all of their other stated deficits were off by a similar amount, around $ 280 billion, in unreported deficit every year.

BTW, I complained when Clinton reported a surplus, noting that it was really just the build-up of the Social Security trust fund, and not a surplus in tax revenue. I wanted the Social Security monies separated from the other Federal monies, so that there was no confusion, but the Repubs were planning on looting the treasury by claiming that too much tax was being withheld.

Position: 30.5 N 72.5 W.
Movement: West-Northwest near 10 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 45 mph.
Minimum central pressure: 1011 mb.

I’m not sure why they call this a Subtropical Storm, rather than Tropical Storm, but it looks like it’s headed for the Carolinas.

So Dave Johnson at Seeing The Forest found out that he was on a list, and enters TSA purgatory when he tries to fly.  Mary at Pacific Views notes that 60 Minutes did a piece on Flight Risks, talking to a number of people named Robert Johnson, another name on the list.

CBS found out that the “Robert Johnson” on the list is actually a known alias of a whacko convicted of plotting to blow up a Hindu temple in Canada, which makes the list worthless.

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Beginning on Monday, September 10^th, at around 2PM CDT this site will be down for 4 to 8 hours for a scheduled move by my hosting company. Having several unplanned interruptions caused by circumstances beyond their control, Nearly Free Speech is going to shift their operations to a new data center where they will have control.

Steve Bates of Yellow Doggerel Democrat uses the same host.

Via Susie, CNBC report on the Job Losses for August. You need at least 150,000 new jobs to take care of new people entering the job market, but there was a net loss of 4,000 jobs in August and June was revised down to 69,000, and July to 68,000.

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