Category — Uncategorized

Posting over at Crooks and Liars, Barbara O’Brien reports in Next: Bread and Circuses, that as much as $2 billion may have been wasted in the response to hurricane Katrina.

Scout of First Draft has been following this story since the hurricane struck and she reports on one of the problems with debris removal.

FEMA signed a contract for debris removal that pays $23/cubic yard, but by the time it went through multiple layers of subcontractors, the people who are actually removing the debris are making $3/cubic yard. That is absurd. How can someone who has no experience with debris removal win a major government contract for the service? Why is a company from New Jersey doing the actually removal, when there are companies along the Gulf Coast who do this all the time, and they needed work after the hurricane?

Over at Bark Bark Woof Woof Mustang Bobby ran his standard Sunday Reading article, but this time he quoted the poem, A Visit from Saint Nicholas by Clement Clark Moore.

When you see the Santa impersonators loitering around at this time of year consider these lines:

…

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

…

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

…

Do you see anything there that suggests it would be appropriate to hire someone over four-foot tall?  I think not. Another example of height discrimination. No one accepts that elves might be productive under one of their own.  No, they have to be lead by a full-sized human.

Today marks the 100^th anniversary of radio broadcasting with the first “program” consisting of O Holy Night played on a violin and readings from the Bible by the Canadian inventor of AM radio, Reginald Fessenden from a station at Brant Rock, Massachusetts.

NPR noted the event: Marking a Radio Centennial .

From The Times [the real one in London, you’ve seen their font]:

Christians in the Middle East are being put at unprecedented risk by the Government’s “shortsighted” and “ignorant” policy in Iraq, The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, says today.

[snip]

Dr Williams, writing in today’s Times, says that one prediction that was systematically ignored was that Western military action would put the whole of the Middle East’s Christian population at risk.

[snip]

Dr Williams, who is visiting Israel with Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, Bishop Nathan Hovhannisian, the Armenian Primate of Britain and David Coffey, the head of the Baptist World Alliance, returns to Britain today with a call for all British churches to take action to raise the profile of Christians in the Middle East. Dr Williams said yesterday that the Israeli-built wall around Bethlehem symbolised what was “deeply wrong in the human heart”.

The little town of Bethlehem was a majority Christian location until the last decade. After centuries surrounded by Muslims, Christian families have left because there is no longer anyway to make a living in the town. Once an important destination for pilgrims and tourists, the quest for “security” has made it extremely difficult reach.

I guess the Archbishop is another “hippie” who can’t be trusted because he was right.

I generally listen to The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge every year, but there is no way I would wait 32 hours in line to see it in person.

It is a very nice traditional service that embodies the Christmas season, but I can’t believe someone had 32 hours available at Christmas to wait outside in a Cambridge winter.

Not going to happen, the Shrubbery says so.

This story from the Associated Press is just about routine “testing”: Official: Agency testing machine, but draft not imminent.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Selective Service System is planning a comprehensive test of the military draft machinery, which hasn’t been run since 1998.

The agency is not gearing up for a draft, an agency official said Thursday. The test itself would not likely occur until 2009.

Meanwhile, the secretary for Veterans Affairs said that “society would benefit” if the U.S. were to bring back the draft and that it shouldn’t have any loopholes for anyone who is called to serve. Secretary Jim Nicholson later issued a statement saying he does not support reinstituting a draft.

It’s just a coincidence that the Shrubbery talks about increasing the size of the military, the VA head waxes nostalgic about the draft during Vietnam, and then a test of the Selective Service System is announced. There are no trial balloons being launched.

“Nope, not going to do it. Wouldn’t be prudent.”

I have been unable to get to the BBC News site all night. I can get to the main site, www.bbc.co.uk, but when I try to go to the News site, it just times out without connection. It is really annoying and there is no indication that anyone else has noticed.

If you would be interested in how the situation in Lebanon is viewed by a German ex-pat who has lived in Beirut for several years, check out EDB’s lastest post at Anecdotes from a Banana Republic. She expresses sympathy for Shi’ia based mainly on their social status in Lebanon, and is not impressed with the power sharing electoral system in the country that divides the parliament based on religion.

As for the major players, without regard to their religion, she thinks they are all a bunch of wankers, including the Shi’ia politicians. To be honest, I don’t think she likes politicians of any kind or nation.

In the CNN report you will learn:

Niyazov had led the desert nation since 1985, when it was still a Soviet republic. After the 1991 Soviet collapse, he retained control and began creating an elaborate personality cult and turning Turkmenistan into one of the most oppressive of the ex-Soviet states.Statues of him were erected throughout the nation. He is listed as the author of the “Rukhnama” (Book of the Soul) that was required reading in schools, where children pledged allegiance to him every morning.

Earlier this year, the eccentric leader announced he would provide citizens with natural gas and power free of charge through 2030. But he has also tapped the country’s vast energy wealth for outlandish projects — a manmade lake in the desert, a cypress forest to change the desert climate, an ice palace outside the capital, a ski resort and a 40-meter (130-foot) pyramid.

Surprisingly Saparmurat Niyazov, President for Life, Turkmenbashi [Father of all Turkmen] has reportedly died of a heart attack. The smart money would have doubted the existence of a heart or brain. Niyazov was on the same level as only one other leader in the world, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il, in terms of human rights and sanity.

[Read more →]

It’s official the last book in the series will be called: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I was successful in locating two Englebert Humperdinck Christmas CDs my Mother wanted [although Amazon.com will never permit me to forget it] as well as the Chia Cat and Mark Martin NASCAR T-shirt. I would note that the CDs are for her, but the Chia thing and T-shirt are gifts for a neighbor whose has been very helpful. I might even get to finish my shopping before Sunday.

The battery in my UPS died Tuesday, so I had to buy a new UPS because you can’t buy just the battery locally, and I can’t run a computer without a UPS. Then the new database software I had to buy to comply with a client’s preferences refused to install until I updated to Win-XP service pack 2, something I have been avoiding because it is a resource hog and flaky when first released, so I have been crawling under tables and watching mindless update screens for hours.

In dealing with sheetrock repairs in the rehab project I discovered that there is 3/8-inch sheetrock in two rooms and 1/2-inch in two others. The joy of old construction.

Everyone wants things finished before the end of the year, but they don’t mention it until after Thanksgiving.

The CNN article, Blair urges tougher action on Iran, covers the main points and I heard bits and piece from the BBC coverage earlier this morning.

Tony “the poodle” Blair is in the very undemocratic United Arab Emirates complaining about Iran interfering with the promotion of democracy in the Middle East the day after an election in Iran.

The head of Fatah calling for new elections less than a year after Fatah lost at the polls promotes democracy, but Hezbollah calling for new elections 18 months after the last election is a coup attempt?

Iran is interfering with democracy by supporting political parties in the region in which it is located, but the US and UK is promoting democracy by supporting opposing political parties in those countries which are on different continents?

The friends of the US and UK in the region are not exactly beacons of democracy, most are autocratic regimes or monarchies, which is why most of the people in the region don’t believe us when we say we are promoting democracy. Iran is one of the more democratic governments in the area with elections that actually cause a change in policies and the people in charge. This is why the US and UK have a major credibility problem with the Arab street.

Over at Blonde Sense the Jersey Cynic combines information from The Carpetbagger Report and a Paul Kiel post at TPM Muckraker to produce a list of government reports and information that is no longer available because the facts didn’t agree with the press releases produced by the Shrubbery.

When the Democrats take over Congress, their oversight hearings are going to be eye opening. There are going to be a lot of people testifying that they don’t have the information to answer questions, because the data is no longer collected, even when the collection of the data is required by law.

The current administration doesn’t know what is going on, and doesn’t want to know.

By now everyone should have heard of the New York Times article about Donald Vance, the American in Iraq who was thrown into prison for three months by US authorities after he reported on the illegal weapons trading of the company he worked for in Iraq to the FBI. Mary of Pacific Views calls her post: Guilt by Association.

There is another “evil” that is part of what the military did that goes a long way to explaining why they have made no progress in fighting the insurgency in Iraq: this is no way to treat people who give you hard information about activities you are trying to stop.

The most valuable “tools” an “investigator” has are his/her informants, the people who provide him/her with information about what is occurring on “the street.” If your street is in Baghdad and you are chasing insurgents instead of burglars, you still need informants, especially if you can’t blend in with the local people. What the US military did was punish an informant.

In Iraq there is grave danger if you are seen to be tied to the American military, so providing information requires a lot of risk on the part of individuals. Some people may be willing to take the risk for a lot of reasons, but when you throw them in prison if they volunteer information, you can forget any cooperation. You can’t defeat an insurgency without street-level intelligence. Throwing people in solitary when they provide you with intelligence is not a winning strategy.

From CNN: Pentagon: Militia more dangerous than al Qaeda in Iraq.

Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army has replaced al Qaeda in Iraq as “the most dangerous accelerant” of the sectarian violence plaguing Iraq for nearly a year, according to a Pentagon report.

Attacks by Iraqi insurgents and sectarian militias jumped 22 percent from mid-August to mid-November, and Iraqi civilians suffered the bulk of casualties, according to the quarterly report released on Monday.

Okay, real slowly, Muqtada al-Sadr is the only major figure in Iraq who actually wants Iraq to continue as a single nation. He is also the only major figure who distrusts Iran. He maintains contacts with Sunni and Kurdish factions trying to form a true unity government from people who think that breaking Iraq into separate ethnic states is a bad idea. He is currently the most popular leader in Iraq because of his independence from both US and Iranian influence. He is the last, best hope for Iraq emerging from the violence as a nation. Attacking him would be the ultimate in stupidity, so I expect them to do it because they have consistently made the worst possible choices.