Posts from — April 2009

Only 30 hours late due to an “anomoly” the NWFDN reports F-35 lands at Eglin, and includes the important part:

Sound level meters on the ground registered about 107 dB as an F-35 and an F-16 flew overhead. That compares to between 76 and 86 dB recorded from the curb of Racetrack Road during traffic.

Kudos to the newspaper for not only taking a sound meter with them for the arrival, but providing a standard point of comparison.

Lest anyone believe that we are running out of whackos down here, the Local Puppy Trainer has another candidate for Countdown: Obama sign pops up on Hollywood Boulevard

FORT WALTON BEACH —- Richard Tona said the two signs he’s posted in front of Tona Auto & Collision Center on Hollywood Boulevard aren’t meant to attack President Barack Obama, rather, it’s to inform residents about where their tax money is going.

“I think a lot of taxpayers don’t know,” Tona said. “It’s a matter of standing up for what is right and speaking up about it.”

The larger sign states “$789 billion stimulus. Killing human embryos.”

Tona said he’s just “repeating what’s happening in the White House.”

These signs have better spelling and typography, and the same distortions.  Rest assured that Mr. Tona has more than a few “fish” slapped on his vehicles and property.

Once again with feeling: George W. Bush was President when the bank bailout was passed by Congress with the approval of the Republican candidate for President, John McCain. The need for the stimulus package is because the George W. Bush administration didn’t regulate the financial institutions, and didn’t investigate the crimes they were committing. The current depression belongs to the George W. Bush administration which took the surplus of their first year and plunged the nation into massive deficit spending by launching needless wars against people who were absolutely no threat to the United States, while not pursuing the people who had attacked the United States on 9/11/2001.

A lot of people have noticed Charles Pierce’s contribution to Eric Alterman’s last Slacker Friday post.

I first saw it at Lambert’s, who saw it at Avedon’s who first saw it at Patrick’s, but Susie’s version is the most readable.

I’ll let Charlie bring the band, but I’ll just take up knitting, it’s more traditional.

Just moving on doesn’t solve anything.  If there is no punishment, it will continue to occur.  There is no point in having laws, if you aren’t going to enforce them.  Throwing inner-city kids in prison for using drugs, while letting white collar monsters who orchestrate the assault and death of innocent people is not the hallmark of a good nation, much less one that claims to be great and a world leader.

She’s the only planet we have, if we blow it, we can’t pack up and move.

Wikipedia as a brief Earth Day entry, but links to other sites.

General Hayden, former Director of both the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency has ignorantly claimed that the President of the United States has endangered national security, because the memoranda that were just released were marked “Top Secret”. Information in that category would cause “exceptionally grave damage” to national security.

That definition is contained in EXECUTIVE ORDER 13292 of March 25, 2003, which covers classification. It is an executive order of the Office of President of the United States, who is the ultimate arbiter of security classification. If the President declassifies something, as happened in this case, it is no longer “Top Secret”. Nothing remains classified forever, and these memos should have already been reduced from “Top Secret” to “Secret” based on the normal schedule.

Further, General Hayden should study Sec. 1.7. Classification Prohibitions and Limitations. which says:

(a) In no case shall information be classified in order to:

(1) conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error;
(2) prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency;

These memos were classified to avoid US laws that prohibit torture. The fact that agencies of the US government were torturing people would at a minimum be embarrassing.

Even ill-informed people like Gloria Borger, who wants A little outrage, please, Mr. President

Case in point: When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used the podium at the United Nations conference in Geneva on Monday to call Israel a “cruel and repressive racist regime,” we might have said something.

What might we have said, that the ultranationalist Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, is just kidding when he calls for the expulsion of Arabs from Israel? Do you read any Israeli newspapers other than the Jerusalem Post, do you know what the Israeli government does, even when it isn’t actively bombing the Palestinians?

Do you have no idea why Hugo Chavez hates the US? Are you unaware that the Bush White House was wide open to the people who led a coup against Chavez? Have you missed all of the threats directed at Chavez by the Bush administration?

FYI: Obama has since labeled the Ahmadinejad comments as “appalling”, but has nothing to say about Lieberman’s plan to institute apartheid in Israel.

It is a bad time to be a public employee in Okaloosa County. People are starting to ask questions and look at the books.

The Local Puppy Trainer reports that the FWB golf course director forced to retire

Jim Frazier, director of golf at the Fort Walton Beach Golf Course, has been forced to retire.

The action comes as city officials say they’ve found evidence Frazier has given away at least 20,000 free rounds of golf since 2005.

City Manager Bob Mearns said the reason Frazier was facing termination was for insubordination. He was allowed to retire at his own request, Mearns said.

In a letter he forwarded to the Fort Walton Beach mayor and City Council, Frazier called Mearns’ hounding him about complimentary golf rounds a “witch hunt.” He accused former City Councilman Mike Minich, who records indicate played about 40 free rounds, of sicking [sic] Mearns on him.

Frazier works for the city. Mearns is the City Manager. Mearns is Frazier’s boss, but Mearns is new, while Frazier is not.

Frazier claims it is a “computer error”.  The “error”, as Frazier explains it, does overstate the number of free rounds, but it also would overstate the total number of rounds played, and make the golf course seem busier than it actually was.  You have to wonder: is that a bug or a feature?

The city recently spent a lot of money upgrading the golf course, based on the use figures supplied by Frazier and it still loses money.

The Pensacola News Journal has a fashion tip for mothers picking up their children at school: Trench coat, guns, knife

A woman wearing a trench coat outside Gulf Breeze High School was arrested Monday after police found she had brought two guns and a knife to campus.

Judy Hall’s arrest came on the 10-year anniversary of the Columbine High School shootings that left 12 students and a teacher dead in suburban Denver. The two students who carried out the massacre were dressed in trench coats.

Police are not sure why Hall, 61, brought the guns to campus on the anniversary of the Columbine shootings.

“The mother did not identify that she was trying to make a connection to Columbine,” Gulf Breeze Police Chief Peter Paulding said. “But it did involve a trench coat and guns, and this is the 10th anniversary.”

Hall of Finch Drive in Gulf Breeze was booked into Santa Rosa County Jail on Monday on charges of carrying a concealed gun, bringing a gun to a school, and resisting arrest without violence. She still was in custody Monday night.

I don’t remember June packing heat to pick up Wally, even if he was with Eddie Haskell. Well, it was only 77° yesterday with a few clouds, so she probably thought a rain coat was necessary, and she did bring two guns, so maybe it was going to be a parent/child bonding experience.

There are still people who wonder why the St. Petersburg Times has a separate section called: Bizarre Florida.

Torture was sold to the American people based on the “ticking bomb” scenario: “Wouldn’t you go all Jack Bauer on a guy if he knew where the bomb was?”

Based on this New York Times article, Waterboarding used 266 times on 2 suspects, we now know that everyone died when the bomb blew up, because as every real professional interrogator who was ever asked about torture has said: IT DOES NOT WORK!

In the time the sadistic bastards working for the US government took to destroy the psyches of these two individuals, a competent professional interrogator would have gotten the truth from them.

The only two groups who really think torture works, are people who enjoy it, and people so frightened that they would spill their guts on the threat of torture, i.e. the same people who fall for the “good cop/bad cop” routine.

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The CBC issues an update on the level of flooding: Manitoba flood has submerged twice as much land as previously thought

Officials had been saying the Red River had spread across an area of 800 square kilometres in southern Manitoba. On Monday, they said 1,680 square kilometres [650 miles²] are actually under water.

During the so-called flood of the century in 1997, the river’s span was 2,000 square kilometres [770 miles²] — an area equivalent to the size of Prince Edward Island.
…

The crest of the flood is between Morris and St. Adolphe, about 60 kilometres [37.3 miles] south of Winnipeg.

The flood is the equivalent of a strip 10 miles wide and 65 miles long. For me, it would be as if a little more than half of my county was under water.

The CBC has the latest on the Manitoba flood status. Currently Winnipeg is stable with no major flooding problems, but the rural, small town, and First Nation areas both to the North and South aren’t as lucky, with flooding caused by other rivers in addition to the water from the Red River.

The people who have to rebuild might want to look at the model used on the Gulf Coast barrier islands which feature building on pylons with the ground floor used for vehicle parking. Another option would be mounding, i.e. creating an artificial hill for your house.

Unfortunately, I don’t think these events are going to be as rare as they were in the past.

There is still another crest on its way, the crest that threatened Fargo is working its way North.

EBW of Wampum has been talking about the appointment of a Chief Technology Officer [CTO] for a while as he attended various Internet related conferences and noting a number of heavy hitters in the tech world interested in the job.

The Washington Post reports that the choice has been made and it is Aneesh P. Chopra, the Virginia Secretary of Technology.

EBW is not impressed with the choice.

This is probably the most annoying part from Dotgov Buzz

Having not quite reached middle age, Aneesh Chopra has already accomplished more than many of us in our careers. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University in public health, with a Masters degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, he has been a venture capitalist, managing director of a large healthcare think tank, appointee of two governors to high-level committees, and the elected head of groups of entrepreneurs.

In 2006, despite his lack of formal IT training, he was appointed as the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Secretary of Technology at age 33. He was expected to “expand our internal use of technology to better serve our citizens” and “effectively promote Virginia’s business-friendly climate to technology companies,” Governor Tim Kaine said in announcing the appointment.

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The Local Puppy Trainer has a article on Okaloosa’s tarnished image which is totally devoid of a connection to the real world. They need to do a little traveling to find out what people have always thought when you mention Northwest Florida. The county’s image hasn’t been “tarnished”, for most of the rest of the world it has been confirmed.

The Panhandle has been called the “Redneck Riviera” for a very long time, and most people are not smiling when they say that. When people visit, they want to stay in Destin, because they see it as divorced from the “trailer trash” that inhabit the rest of the county. The unregulated development, and total lack of urban planning has turned the “Miracle Strip Parkway” into a long strip mall with a collection of ugly commercial buildings.

The revelations about out local officials being corrupt is nothing new, the original “He-coon” of Southern politics, Robert Lee Fulton “Bob” Sikes, set the tone, and older people remember it.

The next election should see a new Sheriff, Tax Collector, and member of the Florida house. It is to be hoped that NWFSC trustees will start looking for a new president, and there are some changes on the county commission. It is highly unlikely that the new people will be any better than the old, because the “good ol’ boy” network isn’t about to let in outsiders.

Sorry, but we have never had a reputation that could be tarnished.

In addition to his recent indictment for official misconduct [malfeasance] and perjury, NWF Daily News noted that the “esteemed” president of Northwest Florida State College, Bob Richburg is a “double-dipper”

Richburg retired as president of the college in 2007 and received a lump sum of $553,000 for his 30-plus years of service to the state.

He turned around 30 days later and got rehired at a new base salary of $221,450 – a 3 percent raise over the approximately $215,000 he’d been making before retiring.

And a year after being rehired, Richburg started collecting $8,546 a month in additional retirement pay.

Once again the bill that was supposed to make this practice illegal has disappeared in the state senate, so even if “Fast Buck Bob” is convicted and sent to prison, he will still continue to receive his $100K/year state pension at a time of fiscal meltdown for the state.

After this, no one will dare to back any funding for anything at NWF State College. It will become the pariah of the system. It was once a nice little community college that served the needs of the area, and now it will be shoved to the back of queue for everything, because one guy wanted to build an empire, instead of educating students.