Category — Uncategorized

That taking vehicles to a desert with 120+ degree temperatures and sand storms and driving them 24/7 while they are being hit by small arms fire, RPGs, and shrapnel from IEDs might increase the amount of maintenance costs and reduce the assumed life cycle of the equipment.

Apparently Rummy classed that as an “unknown unknown” because CBS reports that Army Equipment Costs Triple, and Donny forgot to put that in his regular DoD budget request.

I’m beginning to suspect that the Pentagon still hasn’t figured out the implications when the Iraqis failed to throw rose petals and start building Wal-Marts after Rumsfeld’s invasion-on-a-dollar-a-day.

The problem is that Rumsfeld never read the right book: The Science of Victory [Наука Побеждать] by A. V. Suvorov.

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Day to Day has an interview with Doyle McManus of The Los Angeles Times about the decision to run the story about tracking financial transactions.

The bottom line for the newspaper was they don’t trust this administration to tell them the truth, and don’t believe that there is any other way of providing oversight of what the government is doing. The Congress has abdicated its duty to monitor what the Executive is doing, so the press has an obligation to tell people what is going on with their government.

“Trust Me” doesn’t cut it any more.

From CNN: Democrats vow to block pay raises until minimum wage increased.

Harry Reid says he’ll block the Congressional pay raise until the minimum wage is increased. He reminded people that he knows the rules of the Senate and since there hasn’t been anything important happening lately, expect a problem for the “cat killer”.

Any newspaper who wants to increase their circulation need only hire James Wolcott to write their headlines:

Gripes of Wrath

Rush Corks His Bat

Poetry!

Publius has a fine rant and Karen provides the meat from a Bob Herbert op-ed in the New York Times on the coming transformation of the withdrawal from Iraq that the Republicans have spent days in the House and Senate calling “Cut and Run.”

Now that the Iraqis have called for withdrawal and General Casey has outlined a draw down that seems to have more to do with the American election cycle than conditions in Iraq, we will see the Republicans claiming that this was the “plan” all along but the Democrats had to be shown to be “politicizing” Iraq, before this “Republican plan” could be introduced.

If politicians stopped wrapping themselves in the flag, people might stop thinking that the flag had become so tattered, tainted, and ill-used that it needed to be purified by burning.

Update: they couldn’t find the final fool to screw up the First Amendment, so we are safe for the moment.  One vote too few, is too close.

Over at Glenn Greenwald’s place, Barbara O’Brien reminds everyone why the world was so certain that Saddam had WMDs: because Reagan and Bush I gave them to him. Yep, when Donnie Rumsfeld met with Saddam he had more than a pair of golden spurs in his saddlebags.

Tbogg has a nice little find from December 4, 2001: Treasury official Jimmy Gurule explaining how the Bush administration tracks financial transactions that benefit terrorists.

Billmon takes an in depth look at the old media reporting on Markos. I think the fear of change is a powerful motivator.

Filling in at Liberal Oasis, Avedon Carol wants to know why newspapers think they’ll increase subscriptions by endorsing the Republican party line in predominately liberal cities. I think stockholders should start asking that question. Fewer subscribers means lower ad revenue and reduced profits.

Something named Quin Hillyer was apparently assigned to write about the existence of blogs for American Spectator and did such a bang up job of missing the entire point that both Echidne and P.Z. Myers felt annoyed enough to take note.

It would appear that Quin is unfamiliar with search engines or satire. While discussing his opinion of the quality of writing on blogs, he puts forth a nonsense question: “What the heck, for instance, is ‘Echidne of the Snakes’ or ‘Nyarlathotep’s Miscellany’?”

His intent seemed to be to indicate that people have unusual names, occasionally from mythology or literature, for blogs, which is true, but what is the point? How, precisely does the name of a blog reflect on the quality of writing. Does calling his blog Whiskey Bar reduce Billmon’s ability to craft a sentence?

I should just ignore Quin, but people who fail to understand Fafblog shouldn’t be permitted near a keyboard. Mosaic was the beginning of the end of the Internet. Once people started to make it easy to use, the undesirables have been flooding in and being annoying.

Everyone should just leave Lee Siegel alone for a while. He may be an obnoxious clueless newbie when it comes to the Internet, but anyone who has been “noticed” by both James Wolcott and Michael Bérubé should be given some quiet time to heal.

Come on, he can’t help it, he works for The New Republican. Every one occasionally has to take jobs they don’t like to pay the rent. Some day you might be that desperate. If this doesn’t work out, it will be ad copy for Wal-Mart.

Watertiger has your snark round-up over at Fire Dog Lake.

It’s time for mandatory sports analogies [it’s an insulting guy-thing].

If you are going to throw the ball right down the center of the plate just below shoulder height, don’t expect the batter not to take a cut at it.

If the ball rebounds towards a lone player and the goal is open, don’t expect the player not to take the shot.

If the deflected pass lands in the hands of a defender and there’s no one between him and the end zone, don’t expect him not to run with it.

If the “paper pundits” are going to feed straight lines to the unwashed masses of the Internet, don’t expect blogtopia™ ^{[skippy the bush kangaroo]} to give them a free pass.

Squadrons of rabid lambs is just too absurd a target to ignore. Technically “squadrons” are mounted: horses, armor, aircraft, it doesn’t matter. Mounting lambs is frowned upon. While “rabid” has multiple meanings, lambs attacked by rabid dogs or coyotes die an extremely painful death if not put down immediately. It sounds like someone needs to discuss a childhood trip to a petting zoo with a professional.

If they are going on the attack they really need to read some decent attack authors to learn the flow of insults. At a minimum rent a few film noir videos to pick up a few phrases. Consult William Safire, he did some fun stuff for Agnew. Vicious voles of virulence is Safire’s type of thing: alliteration and it covers the bases.

They really need to avoid being labeled hysterical hamsters of hypocrisy for their pathetic use of insults. Come on, you are supposed to learn this stuff at recess in elementary school.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication is probably not thrilled to be showing up in newspaper articles. Financial institutions in Brussels are not known for enjoying the limelight. They didn’t have much choice, as they received seemingly legitimate subpoenas from the US Treasury Department, but they will now have to answer questions from their member institutions who will be very put out about this entire affair. The Wall Street Journal might be acceptable, but articles appearing in common general newspapers like the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times [a California newspaper!] is really not how things are done.

[Links to the newspaper reports are at the bottom of the Wikipedia article.]

This is no surprise to al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden is a Saudi millionaire who owned several international companies and started his extremist career moving money around to finance anti-Soviet operations in Afghanistan. He is well versed in international money laundering, and is aware of the monitoring points.

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In a Newsweek interview with Merle Haggard, he’s asked about the Dixie Chicks:

I don’t really understand it. I don’t know what’s new about girls not liking war, first of all. And second of all, they have a right to say what they want to. Third, I’m an American, and I’ll back everything they say. I’m not for the war in Iraq because I don’t believe they’ve explained why they’re doing it.

Later in the interview, Mr. Haggard says his wife doesn’t want him to write political songs because they’ll send the IRS after him, and he thinks she’s probably right.

A second Newsweek article covers Maliki’s Master Plan which includes a timetable for US withdrawal from Iraq. The new head of the Iraqi government seems to believe that Iraqis won’t believe they have a government while the country is occupied by foreign troops.

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Andante started with the adventures of Pippin the Chihuahua, but now Karen has Poe the long-hair dachshund.

Note: puppy blogging is only a substitute for cat blogging when there is no other alternative.