Posts from — October 2007

Badtux, the snarky penguin, wonders if the “Reich wing” will loose the hounds on the latest child, a toddler, who is an example of the good SCHIP can do?

Of course, they’ll do it – they are scorpions, it is their nature.

The GOP view children as props. They are to be used when necessary and then ignored. They know that normal people view all children as precious beings to be loved and nurtured, so they are useful for PR, but they take forever to earn their keep.

If you hop into the Wayback Machine to last year, Tom Reynolds [R-NY26], then head of the GOP House election committee, shows how the GOP uses children. Faced with a press conference about the Mark Foley mess and his actions, he used them as “human shields” to prevent the reporters from asking questions about the sex scandal. His supporters, the parents of the children, didn’t seem to have a problem with their children being used to prevent their Congresscritter from answering questions about misconduct with teenagers.

You didn’t really think things couldn’t get any worse? You didn’t really believe the we had hit bottom?

The BBC reports that Russia backs Iran nuclear rights

Russian President Vladimir Putin has met his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for historic talks focusing on Iran’s nuclear programme.

Tehran is seeking Russian help in fending off UN sanctions and completing its first nuclear reactor at Bushehr.

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A few days ago Juan Cole asked the question: Who Lost Turkey? He discussed the situation and wonders why the current Turkish government is so resistant to admitting a crime of the Ottoman Empire. The current Republic of Turkey arose after a revolt against the Empire, which was collapsing as a result of being on the losing side of World War I.

If you don’t know, the principle criminal was Enver Pasha, the Ottoman minister of war. He had command of the Ottoman troops on the Caucasian Front in World War I and was soundly defeated by the Russian forces which included Armenian volunteer units. At the Battle of Sarıkamış his forces suffered 80% losses, approximately 75,000 troops. As a military commander he made Ambrose Burnside look like George S. Patton.

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John McKay has tagged me for The Pharyngula mutating genre meme

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”. Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

• You can leave them exactly as is.
• You can delete any one question.
• You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change “The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…” to “The best time travel novel in Westerns is…”, or “The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is…”, or “The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is…”.
• You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”.
• You must have at least one question in your set, or you’ve gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you’re not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.

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But you might want rethink the swimming and surfing.

From the Associated Press some good news about fishing in the Gulf south of me: ‘It was like ‘Jaws” — 844-pound shark caught

The fight by Adlee Bruner and friends to pull the 11-foot mako shark onto the boat from the Gulf of Mexico took more than an hour on Saturday. But when they made it back to land, it was a record for the decades-old Destin Fishing Rodeo.

And when they cleaned the shark they didn’t find anything that could be readily identified as a swimmer or surfer…that they reported about…if they found a watch or cell phone they would have reported it…probably. Hemingway gave them a bad rap just because one ate the old man’s fish. Okay, so that leaping into boats thing isn’t very nice, but they didn’t ask us to visit.

If you are wondering why the generals don’t say anything until after they retire:

Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice

Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

This is something that people have to keep in mind – you can’t bitch about the boss when you are an officer or you will be subject to a court martial. Remember, active duty officers, by military law, can only give you the good news, which makes their testimony rather worthless.

I have several things backed up to talk about, but between helping a relative resolve some computer issues, dealing with an ISP that is becoming increasingly strident about e-mail addresses, and conning a cat into getting into a carrier to take a trip for “the operation,” I haven’t had time.  Hopefully things will start resolving themselves tomorrow.

Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

McClatchly thinks Bush, aides ‘grossly misjudged Putin’

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration’s failure to win Russia’s consent to install U.S. missile defenses in its European backyard and a growing list of other disputes suggest that President Bush and his aides have misread the man whose “soul” Bush thought he’d divined when they first met six years ago.

Bush’s strategy on Russia assumed that Russian President Vladimir Putin embraced democracy, wanted integration with the West and sought a “strategic partnership” in which Moscow would acquiesce to U.S. policies such as NATO expansion. Feuds could be resolved through the close personal relationship that Bush believed he had with his Russian counterpart.

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CNN reports on Australia’s election: Howard sets November elections

SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) — Australia’s next federal election will be held November 24, Prime Minister John Howard announced Sunday at a news conference in Canberra.

The results could see one of the United States’ staunchest remaining allies in Iraq lose power to the anti-war opposition.

“This country does not need new leadership, this country does not need old leadership. It needs the right leadership,” Howard said in making the announcement.

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Before reading this or you could lose it to the overload. Jillian made it into a test, but Natasha gives you both barrels to the midsection.

I provide it as a public service, but turn down that meter before looking below the fold.

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NBC reports on the remarks of yet another retired general: ‘A nightmare with no end in sight’

ARLINGTON, Va. – A “failure of the national political leadership” is responsible for the “nightmare” of the Iraq war, retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said Friday.

If some of America’s political leaders were in the military they would have been relieved or court-martialed long ago, Sanchez told a conference of military journalists.

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The BBC notes US rejects Russian missile call

Talks between the US and Russia about a US anti-missile system in Europe have ended acrimoniously and without any sign of progress.

The US rejected Russian appeals at the talks in Moscow to halt the scheme.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said his country would take steps to neutralise the threat posed by the missile system if it went ahead.

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The number of people I’ve seen who don’t understand the connection between climate change and conflicts that resulted in the Nobel committee selecting Al Gore and the IPCC for the Peace prize is amazing.

Does anyone think that the US would know where the Persian Gulf was, much less be occupied with war there if it wasn’t for a scarce resource?

Do they not understand that the people of Darfur are being forced out because they have arable land?

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