Category — Uncategorized

Michigan has joined Florida in the DNC penalty box for scheduling an early primary. No delegates from Michigan, and the candidates are pulling out to avoid problems with the party rules.

This whole thing is bollixed up – they voted for the current rules, and then try to change them when they get back to their home states.

Personally I’d prefer no primaries until the Spring to shorten the entire process. It would certainly make the convention more meaningful, because lately everything is decided before the convention starts making the cost of putting it on a real waste of money.

The guys coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan are getting a great kidney specialist, which is good.

My Mother has to find another kidney specialist, which is always a pain.

The real problem is that her current specialist is too damn old for the military crap. He did his bit and got out, but he’s been recalled because they are short-handed. He’s willing to serve, but wonders when some of the others are going to get to sacrifice for this mess.

I’m waiting for them to tell him to get a haircut. He is not exactly a diplomat.

Newsweek says U.S. unintentionally empowering warlords. Gee, you think? I mean, how could anyone have guessed that giving Sunni sheiks big money and weapons would empower them?

I’m not making this up: Senator Craig To Join Idaho Hall Of Fame. I’m also not going to wonder if it should be “Stall of Fame.”

From the junta’s very own newspapers in Burma: Junta: Weapons Seized From Monasteries. A minor question – if they had all of these weapons why weren’t they used? Shouldn’t there be some reports or footage of the monks gunning down the police, instead of pictures of them being brutally stomped, beaten, and shot?

The Washington Post has a report about how we did things, when we did them right: Fort Hunt’s Quiet Men Break Silence on WWII

For six decades, they held their silence.

The group of World War II veterans kept a military code and the decorum of their generation, telling virtually no one of their top-secret work interrogating Nazi prisoners of war at Fort Hunt.

When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.

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The New York Times reports: War-Crimes Prosecutor Quits in Pentagon Clash

In the latest disruption of the Bush administration’s plan to try detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for war crimes, the chief military prosecutor on the project stepped down yesterday after a dispute with a Pentagon official.
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The prosecutor, Col. Morris D. Davis of the Air Force, was to leave his position immediately, a Defense Department spokeswoman said.
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Colonel Davis, a career military lawyer, had been in a bitter dispute with Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, who was appointed this summer to a top post in the Pentagon Office of Military Commissions, which supervises the war crimes trial system.

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McClatchy Newspapers has a report on the new line of generals in the Pentagon assembled by Secretary Gates and you know it isn’t good for the Hedgemony when the headline is: New military leaders question Iraq mission.
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Via Candide’s Notebooks, Andrew J. Bacevich [Colonel, US Army retired], professor of history and international relations at Boston University, has written the title article about General Petraeus for Pat Buchanan’s The American Conservative magazine [October 8, 2007 issue]: Sycophant Savior. Interesting review of “political generals” and very telling main point – if the surge were working wouldn’t the recommendation be for more troops?

[Before he retired from the Army he would have said “ass-kissing chickenshit,” but as a university professor he chose “sycophant.”]

The BBC reports that the ‘Gay bomb’ scoops Ig Nobel award:

Pioneering research into a “gay bomb” that makes enemy troops “sexually irresistible” to each other has scooped one of this year’s Ig Nobel Prizes.

Other winners included work on treating hamster jetlag with impotency drugs, extracting vanilla from cow dung, and the side-effects of sword swallowing.

Complete list below the fold.
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Today there is a call for bloggers to respond to the situation in Burma in an organized fashion and I believe that pressure should be kept up on the junta. I doubt that the actions of organizations like Amnesty International will have any immediate effect, but it will serve to remind them that they are being watched.

On October 4, 1957 people all over the world tuned in to hear the beeping from the first man-made object to orbit the planet, Простейший Спутник-1 [Elementary Satellite 1].

NASA has a WAV file of the sound at their site on Sputnik.

The BBC has a Q&A: Sputnik and check out the Russian Space Web [in English, if you insist].

The Space Race was on, and we referred to the competition as a race, not the War on Space.

Encouraged by the Senate of the United States making decisions about the government of Iraq, the Chamber of Deputies of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick has passed a resolution noting that the American Electoral College is a rather stupid idea, and that including Alaska in the United States makes no sense at all as it is obviously part of Canada.

The decision on Hawaii and the island territories was tabled as it was felt that global climate change would eliminate them anyway.

Fallenmonk is watching events in Burma and offers other reports on the crack down.

David Axe writing in the World Politics Review reports that Satellites Help Spot Human Rights Abuses in Burma:

In the past week, up to 200 of people have died in Burma in the government’s violent suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations, according to various reports. But thousands more in Burma are routinely forcibly relocated and their villages burned by the army in an ongoing campaign against the country’s ethnic minorities. Now the Washington, D.C.-based American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is using commercially provided satellite imagery to catalogue the abuses.

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Jack at People’s Republic of Seabrook wants to know When is enough too much?.

It is being reported that some Austin volunteer dog-walkers have quit over being required to put up with background checks. These are people who are giving up their personal time to help out at the dog pound by taking the “inmates” out for a walk, and now they are supposed to give up their personal information so a background check can be performed.

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From the BBC which is still able to make limited contact with people inside Burma:

Heavy army presence in Burma city

Thousands of heavily armed soldiers are patrolling the streets of Burma’s main city, Rangoon, with no sign of further protests against the military junta.

Troops are stopping young men on the streets and in cars, searching for cameras that may be used to smuggle out images, correspondents in Burma say.

Most internet links are still down and mobile phone networks disrupted.

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You already knew Chocolate ‘cuts blood clot risk’ and Chocolate ‘lowers’ blood pressure, so it’s not much surprise to learn that Chocolate ‘aids fatigue syndrome’: “A daily dose of dark chocolate may help reduce the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome, say UK researchers.”

I wonder if they have researched hot fudge banana splits as a cure for cancer?