Posts from — February 2009

Update: Danger Room confirms that the Pentagon blew it, they thought the Kyrgyz were just negotiating, and not serious.

The BBC is reporting that Kyrgyzstan ‘to shut key US base’

Kyrgyzstan’s president has said his government is closing a key US air base on its territory.

Kurmanbek Bakiyev made the announcement in Moscow, where he was promised more than $2bn (£1.4bn) in aid by Russia.

Despite this officials in Washington said the US was still hoping to continue using the Manas base.

Logistics are about to get a whole lot more “interesting”, as attacks on the land route through Pakistan are constantly taking place. The drone attacks inside Pakistan are not helping the situation, and should probably be halted to concentrate on establishing a secure supply route, if possible.

Perhaps someone should give General Petraeus a copy of a good biography of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur to read before he does something silly.

It wouldn’t hurt if the White House started displaying a portrait of Harry Truman in the Cabinet Room, just to remind people who is in charge.

MacArthur was probably three times more popular than Truman when he was fired, and was being talked about as a candidate for the Republican nomination for President, while Truman was a lame duck. MacArthur “just faded away” after the episode.

The CBS site is carrying this story: Secret Report Urges New Afghanistan Policy

(The Politico) The Pentagon’s top military officers are recommending to President Barack Obama that he shift U.S. strategy in Afghanistan – to focus on ensuring regional stability and eliminating Taliban and al Qaeda safe havens in Pakistan, rather than on achieving lasting democracy and a thriving Afghan economy, officials said.

This is a brain-dead attempt to undercut the new administration if it is true. This will result in some very nasty blow-back in Pakistan and endanger the security of their nuclear arsenal. We will probably lose the land link to Afghanistan in the near future. There will be a coup and riots in Pakistan. International support for the Afghan mission will be lost and we won’t have gained a thing, while al Qaeda will have two countries and possibly nuclear weapons with which to threaten the world.

[Read more →]

On the economy:

“Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.”
Albert Einstein

On the new RNC chairman:

“It is much better to remain silent and let everybody think you are a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”
Abraham Lincoln [restating Proverbs 17:28]

On the GOP in the House and Senate:

“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.”
John Stuart Mill

As expected, the BBC reports that Russian Church enthrones leader

Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad became the 16th leader of the Church, succeeding Patriarch Alexiy II, who died in December.

Kirill is supposed to be a “liberal” because he talks on television, as opposed to Alexiy who was waiting to see if it was a passing fad before getting involved with it. This may mean a major leap forward for the Russian Orthodox Church, possibly even to the 18^th century. “Liberal” is a relative term.

Why does the media assume that the views on the economy of an individual with a BA in English from Yale are worth hearing. Amity Shlaes is a writer, not an economist. It doesn’t make any difference who prints her columns, she doesn’t have the credentials to be taken seriously.

On Saturday, July 12, 2008, she had a piece on page A13 in the Washington Post titled. Phil Gramm Is Right. She was defending the former Senator’s remark that Americans were “whiners” for questioning the health of the economy. Her main argument was her belief that you couldn’t call it a recession unless there were two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth and that hadn’t happened.

Except that the National Bureau of Economic Research has declared that the recession began in December, 2007, more than six months before her article appeared. While two consecutive bad quarters is definitely a recession, those are not the only criteria, which Ms Shlaes would know if she were an economist, or just some guy with a blog on the Gulf Coast of Florida, rather than an English major.

[Read more →]

Griff Witte of the Washington Post probably didn’t intend to make it so obvious, but his article on the election campaign, Key Israel election issue: Did war end too soon?, certainly points to the election as the main reason for the attack on Gaza.

So long as the leaders of all of the major parties in Israel delude themselves into believing that you can bomb your way to peace, there will be no peace.

Netanyahu apparently thinks that it would be a wonderful idea to attack Iran, a move that could cost the US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan major casualties. The Hedgemony encouraged this kind of foolishness, and the US had better come down hard on this, or withdraw all forces from the area.

It’s Groundhog Day and some of the militant marmots object to being disturbed.

Update: The most famous varmint in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania predicted six more weeks of winter [and returned to watching the new plasma TV “donated” by the local fuel oil dealers].

Demonstrating the form of democracy they learned from the Hedgemony, the local government in Tikrit ordered Bush shoe sculpture ‘taken down’.

Using the Yooified version of their constitution, you have freedom of expression in Iraq… until someone finds out what you are expressing.

February 1, 2003

Commander:
Rick Douglas Husband, Colonel, USAF

Pilot:
William C. McCool, Commander, USN

Payload Commander:
Michael P. Anderson, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

Mission Specialist:
Kalpana Chawla, PhD
David M. Brown, MD, Captain, USN
Laurel Blair Salton Clark, MD, Captain, USN

Payload Specialist:
Ilan Ramon, Colonel, Israel Air Force