Abu Zarqawi will be caught alive. But he will hang himself in his cell when Reuters reports that Iraqi authorities found the director's cut of Brokeback Mountain in his portable DVD player.And The Anchoress has predictions, too. My fave:
Maureen Dowd becomes an eharmony.com success-story commercial.
Air America will finally go under, ironically undermined by "competition" from the taxpayer-supported NPR that they vigorously support. Distraught listeners in search of liberal viewpoints will be forced to turn to CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, The New York Times, etc...
The California branch of the American Civil Liberties Union makes a shocking discovery: Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco have Spanish names meaning "The Angels," "Holy Cross," and "St. Francis." It sues to rename them "The Angles," "Cruising," and "Frank."
5) Some people will look at New Orleans, Detroit, Philadelphia and other cities wherein liberalism has become entrenched, and they will discover that the Great Society has done little good for poor urban communities, in all these decades. They will begin to suggest that the Democrat party has for too long held too much power within those communities while giving them nothing but lip service and paranoid suggestions. As some black Democrats become Republicans, Wolf Blitzer will wonder how they can leave the party in good conscience, when they are “so poor and so black.” Morgan Freeman, having finally had enough, will smack him silly.I definitely wanna see it when Blitzer gets bitch-slapped. My favorite Blitzer moment of all-time was during the 2004 election eve coverage when CNN initially predicted Florida would go for Bush. I swear to Gaia I thought Blitzer was going to burst into tears. The man was distraught!
GOOD news in time for Mozart’s 250th birthday next month: listening to his music, according to the latest research, boosts IQ, squeezes more milk out of cows and makes rats more loveable.At the risk of identifying myself as a classical music tyro, Mozart is my favorite classical composer. Although I don't think his music has made me any smarter, it certainly has given me hours of enjoyment. Austria's Mozart Year will feature a tremendous amount of his music:
Judging by the frenzied commerce in the narrow streets of his birthplace, Salzburg, it also makes the cash tills ring.
Austria is gearing up for a year-long celebration of its best-known composer. With 500 events planned for 2006, it hopes to use Mozart to rebrand itself as a serious European player, the place where the big issues of European identity can be hammered out.
“It will be an artistic feast,” says Inge Brodil, a former set designer who is helping to co-ordinate the programme for the Mozart Year. Salzburg alone will host 260 concerts and 55 masses. “For the first time, all 22 of Mozart’s operas will be staged,” Frau Brodil says.Some quick Wolfie facts:
Born in Salzburg on January 27, 1756An amazing man with an amazing body of work for someone who died just before his 36th birthday.
Educated by Leopold, his father, a professional musician
First musical piece written aged 5; first stage work aged 11
Mozart spent a third of his life on tour
He is said to have suffered from Tourette’s syndrome, a disorder compelling him to repeat obscene words
The Abduction from the Seraglio, written when he was 26, was Mozart’s most successful musical work during his lifetime
He died on December 5, 1791, from a fever
... the president ought to open his State of the Union Address by asking Congress to give him official authority to approve warrantless searches of known and identified terrorists, or of people in regular contact with those terrorists whom authorities reasonably suspect of plotting to commit acts of murder, terror or sabotage. These activities ought to be subject to monthly review by the attorney general. The administration also ought to be required each month to brief the top four congressional leaders, both intelligence committees and the head of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.Ooh, it's good.
...
Note who has not spoken against the NSA program since the Times story broke. The list includes Harry Reid and Dick Durbin in the Senate; Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer in the House; and members of both intelligence committees. In other words, Democrats in the know either have supported the surveillance program or just kept their mouths shut.
Attacking the CIA is common when covert programs are exposed and controversial, said Gerald Haines, a former CIA historian who is a scholar in residence at the University of Virginia. "It seems to me the agency is taking the brunt of all the recent criticism."All too true. I'm old enough to remember the dark days of the late 70s and early 80s when the CIA was essentially gutted. We're paying the price today for that over-reaction. Let's hope the Left's current faux outrage over "spy scandals" doesn't result in similar counter-productive investigations, legislation, and the resulting exodus of intelligence professionals from the CIA and like organizations.
Duane R. "Dewey" Clarridge, who directed the CIA's covert efforts to support the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s, said the nature of CIA work overseas is, and should be, risky and sometimes ugly. "You have a spy agency because the spy agency is going to break laws overseas. If you don't want it to do those dastardly things, don't have it. You can have the State Department."
Ah, yes, the president and his people have a lot of enemies out there, but his friends are just as exercised. A reader from San Diego offered a view that was repeated in many forms: "Most liberals and some Democrats hate this president and will do anything to bring him down, including siding with terrorists against the president."On the whole, not a bad column. I would suggest to Mr. Dionne if he has any influence at all in Washington, he direct the comments in his last two sentences towards people who make statements such as "the war is unwinnable" and "our troops are terrorizing Iraqi families" (both quotes paraphrased). Perhaps if the usual suspects toned down their rhetoric we on the right wouldn't "view (our) political adversaries as something close to traitors." Honest disagreement with, and debate on, policy issues are completely different than providing aid and comfort to the enemy, ya know. Just sayin'.
And here is where I start worrying about our national mood. I don't mind being assailed myself -- even by a theologically minded reader who called me a "badly catechized Catholic." (Blame me, not the nuns and priests who taught me!) But when big chunks of the country begin to view their political adversaries as something close to traitors, we have arrived at a very dangerous time. For this badly catechized Catholic, it's a reason to pray hard for something better next year.
Sociologists like to point out that the percentage of those describing themselves as "happy" or "very happy" has remained virtually unchanged in Europe and the United States since such surveys were first conducted in the 1950's. And yet, this January, like last year and next, the self-help industry will pour forth books promising to make us happier than we are today. The very demand for such books is a strong indication that they aren't working.I'd like to see a survey delineating "happiness" by political affiliation. I'd venture a guess that conservatives are a helluva lot happier than liberals. Not for nothing are entire liberal communities known as "The Perpetually Offended."
Should that be a cause for concern? Some critics say it is. For example, economists like Lord Richard Layard and Daniel Kahneman have argued that the apparent stagnancy of happiness in modern societies should prompt policymakers to shift their priorities from the creation of wealth to the creation of good feelings, from boosting gross national product to increasing gross national happiness.
But before we take such steps, we might do well to reflect on the darker side of holiday cheer: those mysterious blues that are apt to set in while the streamers stream and the corks pop; the little voice that even in the best of souls is sometimes moved to say, "Bah, humbug." As Carlyle put it, "The prophets preach to us, 'Thou shalt be happy; thou shalt love pleasant things.' " But as he well knew, the very commandment tended to undermine its fulfillment, even to make us sad.
How will the Democrats use the war issue?Let's hope the Dems take Kos' advice. Kos is also down on John McCain, calling him "the Republicans' Joe Lieberman." Damn, but I'm glad the Dems still don't get it. I believe a lot of independents and socially-liberal Republicans would vote for Lieberman in a heartbeat.
This is a little frustrating for me. Here’s a perfect opportunity for Democrats to have led on an issue, and they haven’t. The problem is that part of the Democratic caucus thinks it’s manly and tough to be for the war. They are afraid to basically state what the reality on the ground is.
Did Congressman John Murtha’s criticism of the war embolden the Dems?
The Democratic caucus should have rallied behind Murtha. That was all the cover they needed to come out on this issue. But they were sill weak. The reason I loved Paul Hackett in the Ohio (2005 House) race is because he didn’t equivocate about war. Hackett is an Iraq war veteran who ran as a Democrat in Ohio’s Second Congressional District outside Cincinnati—one of the most Republican districts in all of Ohio. He was viciously critical of George Bush and how he’s handled the war. Hackett lost, but only by 2 or 3 percent of the vote, which is an incredible margin in that district. [Hackett is now running for the U.S. Senate from Ohio.]
Life expectancy for a man has sunk to 58 years (72 for women), the lowest bar two of the 52 countries in the WHO European region.Those are apalling statistics for a nation that had aspirations of world domination only 20 short years ago. Poor health care, rampant alcoholism, AIDS, and low birth rates are cited as the primary causes. Most of which are symptoms of despair, in my eyes, although the Guardian doesn't come right out and say it.
Russia's population has plummeted by almost 7% to 143 million in the last 15 years, and is predicted to drop by another 20 million by 2025. And as Moscow gears up to take over the presidency of the G8 on January 1, the Kremlin is being urged to meet the crisis head on.
Let's now bring in two lawyers involved in potential cases. Edward Macmahon is lawyer for Ali Al-Timimi, a Muslim scholar who is serving a life sentence for inciting followers to wage war against the U.S. overseas.This is a classic example of why some enclaves in the Fourth Estate seems more like a Fifth Column. Read the whole thing.
And John Zwerling is representing Siefullah Chapman, a follower of Al-Timimi, currently serving a 65-year sentence in federal prison.
Let me ask each of you briefly, does this now mean—you guys are lawyers for these clients—that the president is going to be sued?
EDWARD MACMAHON, ATTORNEY FOR ALI AL-TIMIMI: Well, I can't say that Al-Timimi is going to file a lawsuit against anybody, but I'm sure that somebody that's the target of this warrantless surveillance will in fact sue the president. It's just a matter of time.
O'DONNELL: John, do you think the president will be sued?
JOHN ZWERLING, ATTORNEY FOR SEIFULLAH CHAPMAN: Well, not my client in the near future. He's more concerned with his liberty. He's more concerned with getting out of the trap than nibbling on the cheese.
O'DONNELL: But you have read this story now which is a huge story about what the NSA has been involved in. On what grounds now do you believe you have legal recourse for your clients who are currently serving jail time and have been convicted for terrorist ties?
MACMAHON: Well, I listened to Pete's intro. If the government has evidence in its possession that would help a defendant defeat charges—these guys essentially are serving life—the government doesn't have the right because of national security of any other reason just to sit on evidence that would help somebody in a criminal case.
O'DONNELL: Of course. But as Pete pointed out, you're never going to know because it's secret. That's the point of it, that they used this stuff. They didn't have to go through FISA in order to get this, so they may have obtained some information about your clients that you'll never know about it. What makes you think that you're ever going to find out about it?
...in the first survey that directly addresses the controversial program. The online Zogby Interactive poll, taken Dec. 20-21, found that nearly half of likely voters, 49 percent, say Bush has the constitutional powers to approve such a plan, while 45 percent say he does not.Or, the approximate split demonstrated in the 2004 election. If MSNBC and their fellow-travelers have their way, more Americans will be hostile to surveilling terrorists. I have faith in the public, however, to resist defeatists and Bush-haters.
About a decade ago, when he was vice president, Al Gore explained that our national motto, e pluribus unum, means "from one, many." This was a sad day for knowledge of Latin among our political elite—and after all those expensive private schools that Gore had been packed off to by his paterfamilias. It was the kind of flagrant mistranslation that, had it been committed by a Republican, say George W. Bush or Dan Quayle, would have been a gaffe heard round the world. But the media didn't play up the slip, perhaps because they had seen Gore's Harvard grades and figured he'd suffered enough, perhaps because they admired the remark's impudence. Though literally a mistake, politically the comment expressed and honored the multicultural imperative, then so prominent in the minds of American liberals: "from one," or to exaggerate slightly, "instead of one culture, many." As such it was a rather candid example of the literary method known as deconstruction: torture a text until it confesses the exact opposite of what it says in plain English or, in this case, Latin.and later:
After 9/11, we haven't heard much from multiculturalism. In wartime, politics tends to assert its sway over culture. In its most elementary sense, politics implies friends and enemies, us and them. The attackers on 9/11 were not interested in our internal diversity. They didn't murder the innocents in the Twin Towers or the Pentagon or on board the airplanes because they were black, white, Asian-American, or Mexican-American, but because they were American. (Although I bet that for every Jew they expected to kill, the terrorists felt an extra thrill of murderous anticipation.)
Multiculturalism likes to assert that all cultures are created equal, and that America and the West have sinned a great sin by establishing white, Anglo-Saxon, Christian, heterosexual, patriarchal, capitalist—what's next, hurricane-summoning?—culture as predominant. The problem with this argument is that it is self-contradictory. For if all cultures are created equal, and if none is superior to any other, why not prefer one's own? Thus Huntington's preference for Anglo-Protestantism—he never establishes it as more than a patriot's preference, though as a scholar he tries to show what happens if we neglect it—is to that extent perfectly consistent with the claims of the multiculturalists, the only difference being that he likes the dominant culture, indeed, wants to strengthen it, and they don't.There's much more here than a critique of multiculturalism. Mr. Kesler discusses the interplay between culture and the concept of "creed," and the historical origins of these concepts as applied to America. You could look upon this essay as an intellectual explanation of the "Culture Wars." It gave me some insight as to how the political mind of the Left works.
Of course, despite their protestations, multiculturalists do not actually believe that all cultures are equally valid. With a clear conscience, they condemn and reject anti-multiculturalism, not to mention cultures that treat women, homosexuals, and the environment in ways that Western liberals cannot abide. Unless, perchance, such treatment is handed out by groups hostile to America; for Robert's Rules of Multicultural Order allow peremptory objections against, say, the Catholic Church, that are denied against such as the Taliban. Scratch a multiculturalist, then, and you find a liberal willing to condemn all the usual cultural suspects.
Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, the Canadian professors of philosophy who wrote Nation of Rebels, are men of the Left. "The reason we're leftists," Heath told the Nation of Rebels, "is that we actually share the core left-wing critique of capitalism…. [When] it comes to the environment, the stability of the banking system and the importance of macro-economic stabilization, labor-market policies, welfare, unemployment, health insurance—the Left has been absolutely right on every single issue."Voegeli closes with:
Their sensibilities, however, are conservative. Nation of Rebels can sound Burkean: "[The] only way we are able to go about our business in society is by trusting other people…. One way in which people establish the requisite trust is by demonstrating their willingness to play by the rules in small symbolic ways. This is the core function of courtesy and good manners." At one point Heath and Potter say to their allies on the Left, "[We] really need to stop worrying so much about fascism. What our society needs is more rules, not fewer." Elsewhere they contend that for adolescents the sexual revolution "was not liberation, it was hell. The absence of settled rules meant that no one knew what to expect from anyone else."
The 2004 election results triggered dismay and incredulity across the Left. Liberals have begun saying, "We've got to get serious." A 2004 article in the radical journal LiP, for instance, echoed the Nation of Rebels thesis: the Left has been undone by its own "activistism," an ideology combining "moral zeal" with "political illiteracy." The antiwar movement, for example, understands "success" to mean that "actions take place, conferences are planned, new people become activists," even though "it's no longer clear what war we're protesting." Details, details. "[It] turned out to be important to have something to say to skeptics who asked: 'What's your alternative?'"And there's lots of good stuff in between. All in the service of understanding, ya know.
Is an ameliorative Left possible? Heath and Potter are participants in an interesting experiment. If liberals' self-marginalizing narcissism is an accidental quality, one that can be cut away to leave behind a stronger determination to enact a better reform agenda, their efforts might succeed. If it's an essential attribute that can't be removed without killing the patient, then the task is hopeless.
For conservatives, the easy part is to agree with the book's devastating critique of countercultural inanities. The hard part is to know what to think of its authors' political project. A serious Left could be: a welcome change from the gassy self-righteousness of the transformative Left; a newly formidable adversary; or people one can do business with, to borrow Margaret Thatcher's remark about Mikhail Gorbachev. Of course, a serious Left may turn out, instead, to be simply impossible—a contradiction in terms.
Predictably, there's lots of gnashing and thrashing on the Left (and the Right, too) on the subject. Kevin Drum writes a piece that is representative of the Left's point of view, here. A couple of grafs:Defense lawyers in some of the country's biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.
The lawyers said in interviews that they wanted to learn whether the men were monitored by the agency and, if so, whether the government withheld critical information or misled judges and defense lawyers about how and why the men were singled out.
The bottom line is the government and prosecutors are required under a Supreme Court ruling known as Brady v. Maryland to provide defendants with all "material" information affecting their case, including derogatory information that could impact the credibility of prosecution witnesses. This includes information that might impact their guilt or their sentence.In a previous post I pointed both of my faithful readers to an article by former Federal Prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy that discusses the points Mr. Drum makes. Let's review:
Another Supreme Court case, Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419 (1995) held that the duty of disclosure is not limited to evidence in the actual possession of the prosecutor. Rather, it extends to evidence in the possession of the entire prosecution team, which includes investigative and other government agencies.
Under discovery rules that apply to American criminal proceedings, the government is required to provide to accused persons any information in its possession that can be deemed "material to the preparation of the defense" or that is even arguably exculpatory. The more broadly indictments are drawn (and terrorism indictments tend to be among the broadest), the greater the trove of revelation. In addition, the government must disclose all prior statements made by witnesses it calls (and, often, witnesses it does not call).I'm no lawyer; I have, aside from my divorces, zero experience with the American legal system. Still, as a relatively well-informed and interested citizen, I don't see much, if any, good coming out of the impending legal challenges mounted by lawyers defending accused terrorists. There are some bad actors in the legal biz, two come immediately to mind: Lynne Stewart and Ramsey Clark. Both of these individuals are classic examples of intelligent but misguided (at best) practicing attorneys working against the "greater good" of American society.
This is a staggering quantum of information, certain to illuminate not only what the government knows about terrorist organizations but the intelligence agencies’ methods and sources for obtaining that information. When, moreover, there is any dispute about whether a sensitive piece of information needs to be disclosed, the decision ends up being made by a judge on the basis of what a fair trial dictates, rather than by the executive branch on the basis of what public safety demands.
It is true that this mountain of intelligence is routinely surrendered along with appropriate judicial warnings: defendants may use it only in preparing for trial, and may not disseminate it for other purposes. Unfortunately, people who commit mass murder tend not to be terribly concerned about violating court orders (or, for that matter, about being hauled into court at all).
In 1995, just before trying the blind sheik (Omar Abdel Rahman) and eleven others, I duly complied with discovery law by writing a letter to the defense counsel listing 200 names of people who might be alleged as unindicted co-conspirators—i.e., people who were on the government’s radar screen but whom there was insufficient evidence to charge. Six years later, my letter turned up as evidence in the trial of those who bombed our embassies in Africa. It seems that, within days of my having sent it, the letter had found its way to Sudan and was in the hands of bin Laden (who was on the list), having been fetched for him by an al-Qaeda operative who had gotten it from one of his associates.
“But having money stolen from us is not the only way in which our identities seem to be under greater assault than for some time. In many ways the most amazing story of 2005 concerned the 15-year-old boy, conceived from donated sperm, who found his anonymous biological father through two internet searches. In possession of nothing more than his own DNA profile and his father’s date of birth and graduate status (presumably supplied to the mother by Spermulike as proof of the youth and genetic quality of her purchase) he checked out matches on FamilyTreeDNA.com, and found two men with similar names. He then fed their names into Omnitrace.com along with what his mother knew — and Bob’s your dad. Some guy who was paid a tenner a shot way back got a call he hadn’t been expecting.”I think Mr. Aaronovitch nails it. We do more to damage our privacy than the government ever could. Any Main Street merchant knows more about you than your Mom, when you come right down to it. Any business owner or potential employer can run an Equifax or Trans-Union check and find out where you live, how big your mortgage is, how much you make today and how much you made ten years ago…on and on, ad nauseum. These folks, and others, have the power to delve into your life, with or without your permission. And we’re worried about the government reading our e-mail?
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Harrison County, the home of Biloxi, and Jackson County, where Pascagoula is located, each had about 10 million cubic yards of debris to clean up. Both counties took up the federal government on its offer to foot the bill.If anyone is surprised at this revelation they've either been in the cave way too long or else they are politicians with "(D)" after their names. Here's a wonderful illustration:
But while Harrison County and all but one of its cities hired contractors on their own, Jackson County and its cities, at the urging of the federal government, asked the Army Corps to take on the task. Officials in Jackson County said it was a choice they had regretted ever since.
The cleanup in Jackson County and its municipalities has not only cost millions of dollars more than in neighboring counties, but it is also taking longer. The latest available figures show that 39 percent of the work was complete in Jackson County, while 57 percent was done in Harrison County and its cities that are managing the job on their own, according to federal records.
In Hancock County, Miss., where the Army Corps is in charge, contractors in protective suits carefully open refrigerators and meticulously clean them out, sanitizing the interiors with a cleaning solution. Workers remove Freon gas. Quality-control supervisors watch every step. Army Corps officials would not say how much the operation costs, but in Louisiana they are paying more than $1.8 million to process and dispose of these so-called white goods.I've thought, from time to time, that a biohazard suit would be appropriate attire for cleaning out my fridge. Whereas I'm just joking, the Feds apparently are serious. Never underestimate the power of a bureaucracy to drive costs up and slow things down.
In neighboring Harrison County, once the refrigerators are dropped off at a landfill, the government's financial obligation ends. A recycling contractor, eager to get the scrap metal, removes the Freon. In most cases, the spoiled food is removed by lifting the refrigerator atop a lined dumpster and shaking it. No biohazard suits are involved.
Some local officials said they were glad that the Army Corps was spending the extra time and money.
"Twenty years from now I don't want young mothers giving birth to kids with birth defects because we found out we did not do proper dumping," said Representative Gene Taylor, a Democrat from Bay St. Louis, Miss., where the Army Corps is in charge of cleaning up.
Lompoc AFSPulitzer Prize winner Quindlen had given voice to the Cultural Sputter of the bien-pensant, a well-known reaction afflicting people of taste forced to live in a world of vulgarities. It’s an act with a very long pedigree. Eighteenth-century aristocrats by the palaceful were appalled when professional writers first appeared. Writing in exchange for money, they thought, would be the ruin of letters. John Ruskin, King of Victorian Sputterers, couldn’t stand Rembrandt because the Dutch master’s paintings lacked "dignity": All those paintings of self-satisfied, bulbous-nosed burghers made Ruskin gag.and this:
The sputter is endlessly adaptable. A notorious space-age version choked Norman Mailer half to death. He was watching astronaut Alan B. Shepard walking on the moon in 1971, when Shepard suddenly took out a secretly stowed golf club and launched a drive at the lunar horizon. Mailer was spiritually mortified. Humankind should have been humbled, literally on its knees, as it entered the cathedral of the universe; instead it drove golf balls through its windows. What’s the matter with people? Give them infinity, and they make it a fairway. Give them liberty, and they reach for a Lucky. Or they go shopping.
The West has never been comfortable with its own cultural vulgarity. Such anxiety is arguably strongest in the United States, which has long nursed a cultural inferiority complex vis-à-vis more-established British and European practitioners of high art. Popular, commercial forms are not thoughtful. Rather, they are temporary, noisy, intense, ecstatic. They are sensual and disruptive. Because they are frequently set in motion by powerless and even despised outgroups, they appear subversive. They not only threaten social morals, but challenge established power relationships.
The result is that such ecstatic forms are attacked not only by the West’s left-liberal critics for their commercial origin, but by the West’s conservatives for their disruptive power. Cultural ecstasy may have billions of participants, but it hardly has a single friend.
For the last 200 years, vulgar forms and subcultures have often set off a series of "moral panics" among those who perceive a threat to their own cultural power and status. The popular novel, when it first appeared, set one off. So did penny dreadfuls and pulps. So did melodramatic theater. So did the music hall. So did the tabloid press, and the waltz, and ragtime, and jazz, and radio, movies, comic books, rock music, television, rap, and computer games.
All of these -- and more -- led contemporary critics to declare the end of civility, to worry over some newly identified form of supposed "addiction" (to novels, to TV, to video games, to pornography, to the Internet, to Pokémon, etc.), to announce that the coming generation was "desensitized," and to rail about childishness and triviality. It’s the cultural sputter that never ends.
NY TIMES: CLAUS OK'D ILLEGAL SURVEILLANCE
The New York Times reported today that Polar authorities are engaged in a secret program to conduct warrantless monitoring of private communications and activities among U.S. minors. Anonymous sources within the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency said the program, codename "Operation Coal Lump," dates as far back as 1879, and recieved approval at the highest echelon of Polar administration, including President Santa Claus himself.
The disclosure of the program sparked an immediate furor among civil libertarian organizations and brats right groups. ACLU spokesman Dan Knaggs said "that chill in the air isn't December -- it's Big Brother Kriss Kringle unconstitutionally watching, and following, and evaluating your every move."
Josh Cleland, 9, a spokesboy for the Council For Misbehaving Americans, decried the program as "a looming threat to the economic rights of millions of young Americans, many of whom may be guilty of nothing more than a wedgie or Indian burn of self defense."
EXPERTS WARN ON SEASONAL RAGE TRIGGERSAnd you know there's MORE.
The American Psychology Association released its annual ranking of causes for seasonal rage today, and for the seventh consecutive year the list was topped by the "Lexus Holiday Sales Event" commercial.
"For whatever reason, exposure to this stimulus can transform a normal, well adjusted adult into a cauldron of destructive psychopathy, harboring lurid fantasies of sneaking through the snow on Christmas morning to destroy bow-tied gift luxury cars with a tire iron," said APA scientist Rachel Sternthal. "This is usually accompanied by associated desires to hide in the bushes and laugh maniacally when the recipient uncovers his or her eyes to find $70,000 of smashed precision engineering burning to a crisp in the snowy driveway of their McMansion."
Great God A’mighty what was wrong with meIris Dement's "Wasteland of the Free"
I know the money’s good but buddy can’t you see
You can’t take it with you and that ain’t no lie
I don’t wanna let ‘em get me I’m too young to die
If I ever get home to Houston alive
Then I won’t drive a truck anymore
We kill for oil, then we throw a party when we winJohn Fogerty's "Deja Vu All Over Again" (2003)
Some guy refuses to fight, and we call that the sin
but he's standing up for what he believes in
and that seems pretty damned American to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free
(Chorus)
While we sit gloating in our greatness
justice is sinking to the bottom of the sea
Living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free
Day by day I hear the voices risingKPFT publishes their playlists, but they're a week in arrears. You can see Larry's entire oeuvre here. A casual scan of the playlist(s) reveals Larry's an equal-opportunity protester. Granted, most of his songs are decidedly anti-right-wing, anti-war, but there's a lot of social-ills protest, too. Like Brando replied when asked "Johnny, what are you rebelling against?" Larry will say "Whattaya got?" This is good. You don't want to be a one-note anything in life, let alone a one-note protester!
Started with a whisper like it did before
Day by day we count the dead and dying
Ship the bodies home while the networks all keep score
Did you hear 'em talkin' 'bout it on the radio
Could your eyes believe the writing on the wall
Did that voice inside you say
I've heard it all before
It's like Deja Vu all over again
Ms Renshaw may be the most unusual social worker in Britain: as head of player services for Camelot, the operator of the National Lottery, her job is to offer advice and support to people who have become suddenly, unexpectedly and fabulously rich. She is Britain’s foremost wealth counsellor.We've all heard stories of suicides, rapid descent into alcohol/drug abuse, divorce, and other calamities befalling the winners of big lottery jackpots. "Wealth counseling" sounds like a pretty good idea on the surface, but the ol' adage about horses and water immediately comes to mind.
A POLE ON MSNBC STATES 87% of RESPONDANCES WANT BUSH IMPEACHED. WAKE UP ROYAL SCRIBES, THE MINISTERY OF INFORMATION (US MAIN STREAM MEDIA) IS OUT OF TOUCH WITH AMERICA. TIME FOR A LITTLE SOVIET STYLE ROTATION??? FOR ALL OF YOU????Perhaps the commenter saw Zbigniew Brzezinski on MoreStoriesNotingBushCrimes and confused him with a real Pole? Nah. Don't think so.
Posted by: IMPEACH BUSH Dec 24, 2005 8:34:39 AM
Yesterday on dailykos (I believe the most popular Democratic website), there was a piece entitled Slouching Toward Kristallnacht, outlining all of the eery parallels between pre-nazi Germany and contemporary America. For the hundreds of frightened posters that commented on the article, it is not a matter of if, but when Bush suspends the charade of democracy and imposes a fascist state on us. As Kos himself wrote, "It won't come in the same form. It never does. But it's coming. The lure of fascism is too powerful for men like the ones currently pissing all over our Constitution."Dr. Helen writes a note to the American Psychological Association:
I am writing because I would like to stay a part of the APA--but when I see articles advocating diversity--but only if one is politically correct--I feel discouraged about the future of psychology. Left leaning politics may fly within APA and the academic world but in the real world--there is a mixture of people who share all kinds of world views. How does it help our profession, its students, and our clients when we tout diversity but only if it is the left leaning kind?Varifrank offers Congratulations (to) Time Magazine, wherein he takes exception to Time's "Person(s) of the Year" (Boy, does he ever!) and offers some alternatives...
Administration critics, political and media, charge that by ordering surveillance on communications of suspected al Qaeda agents in the United States, the president clearly violated the law. Some even suggest that Bush has thereby so trampled the Constitution that impeachment should now be considered. (Barbara Boxer, Jonathan Alter, John Dean and various luminaries of the left have already begun floating the idea.) The braying herds have already concluded, Tenet-like, that the president's actions were slam-dunk illegal. It takes a superior mix of partisanship, animus and ignorance to say that.
On Dec. 18, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, released a 250-page report detailing Bush's misconduct and, on his Web site, called for the creation of a select committee to investigate "those offenses which appear to rise to the level of impeachment." Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., said in a radio interview that he would support trying Bush. "If there is a move to impeach the president, I will sign that bill of impeachment," he said.The moonbats over at DU are all over this, as one might imagine. I spent some time this morning reading a few threads on this subject and it's all too typical. No link; I won't dignify the batards by linking to them.
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) sent a letter to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), asking that the House pass the new version of the budget by unanimous consent, ending the need to summon lawmakers back to Washington.{sigh} Where to begin? I've not seen any counter-proposals (other than repealing tax cuts) from the Democrats on how to rein in federal spending. Instead we have "a coalition of labor unions and liberal interest groups" who seem to be driving the Democrats. But, what's new? The interesting thing about these so-called budget cuts is the "cuts" reduce the growth of spending over the next few years, rather than implement actual spending reductions. And these proposed cuts are modest, at best.
But even before the request, Pelosi had promised to force another vote.
"Democrats believe this Republican bill has the wrong priorities," she said in a statement. "That is why we will request a recorded vote where all members return to Washington to make clear their values to the American people."
A coalition of labor unions and liberal interest groups immediately swung back into gear, drafting a list of 18 House Republicans in hopes of persuading eight to change their vote.
"Well you see, Norm, it's like this. A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.Or single malts. Or martinis.
In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Now, as we know, excessive intake of alcohol kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine.
And that, Norm, is why you always feel smarter after a few beers."
The bill for being thoroughly plugged in to entertainment and communications runs more than $200 a month for a third of the households in this country. Four in 10 spend between $100 and $150 a month, according to the poll of 1,006 adults taken Dec. 13-15.
Sounds about right. I'm right at $150.00 a month when you add up the bills from cable TV (basic, not digital), internet (a 300Kb connection) and my cell phone (I don't have a land-line for what should be obvious reasons). I don't call myself a "gadget guy." I don't have a BlackBerry, an iPod, a TiVo, a stand-alone DVD player, nor an XBox or equivalent. I don't think I'm a Luddite, either. I just have no need, interest or desire for the things I don't have.
Try as I might (and I tried, believe me) I cannot find the breakdown on this poll. The Ipsos site doesn't have the data and it looks like you need to be a subscriber to get details, anyway. I think the details, rather than the generalities, of this poll would be fascinating!
But cataclysmic changes were ahead, and their harbinger was President Jimmy Carter’s acquiescence in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Here, for the first time, Congress and the courts undertook to regulate the gathering of national intelligence, particularly by electronic eavesdropping, against agents of hostile foreign powers. In the Nixonian afterclap, it was adjudged that the executive could not be trusted unilaterally to wield this power, which might secretly be used against political opponents.And this:
Of course, such wiretapping was already illegal, and the Nixon experience had amply demonstrated the political price to be paid for engaging in it. No matter. Henceforth, the executive branch would not be allowed to use whatever tactics it, as the branch with the most expertise and information, determined were necessary to protect the nation. Rather, it would be compelled to go to a federal FISA court newly created for the purpose, and, as with the procedure for criminal wiretaps, it would need to establish probable cause that the target was an agent of a foreign power. Electronic surveillance would be permitted only if the judges approved.
The impact on intelligence collection was serious. Previously, it would have been laughable to suggest that foreign enemy operatives had a right to conduct their perfidies in privacy—the Fourth Amendment prohibits only "unreasonable" searches, and there is nothing unreasonable about searching or recording people who threaten national security. (The federal courts have often recognized that the Constitution is not a suicide pact.) Now, such operatives became the beneficiaries of precisely such protection. Placing so severe a roadblock in the way of a crucial investigative technique necessarily meant both that the technique would be used less frequently (thereby reducing the quantity and quality of valuable intelligence) and that investigative resources would have to be diverted from intelligence-collection to the rigors of compliance with judicial procedures (which are cumbersome).
This was only the start of the debacle. Courts and the organized defense bar soon began to ply the FISA statute with hypothetical governmental abuses. What if, they worried, a national-security wiretap yielded evidence of an ordinary crime—not an unlikely event, given that terrorists tend to commit lots of ordinary crimes, including money laundering, identity fraud, etc. This was no problem under FISA as written: intelligence agents could simply pass the information to agents of the criminal law, who could then use the damning conversations in court. But what if such law-enforcement agents, for their part, were to try to use FISA as a pretext to investigate crimes for which they themselves lacked probable cause to secure a regular criminal wiretap?
In one sense, the suggestion was not out of line—wiretap conversations are devastating evidence, and defense lawyers routinely strain to have them suppressed. But the notion was logically absurd. If a criminal investigator was going to act corruptly, it would be far easier for him to fabricate evidence showing probable cause for a regular wiretap (by pretending, for example, to have an anonymous source who had bought illegal drugs from the target) than to trump up a national-security angle necessitating an additional set of internal approvals. Nor was there any indication that such chicanery was actually afoot. But reality is rarely an obstacle for those who see life as an ongoing law-school seminar. Gradually, courts rewrote FISA, grafting onto it a so-called "primary purpose" test requiring the government to establish not only probable cause that it was targeting operatives of a foreign power but also that its real reason for seeking surveillance was counterintelligence, not criminal prosecution.
In 1995, just before trying the blind sheik (Omar Abdel Rahman) and eleven others, I duly complied with discovery law by writing a letter to the defense counsel listing 200 names of people who might be alleged as unindicted co-conspirators—i.e., people who were on the government’s radar screen but whom there was insufficient evidence to charge. Six years later, my letter turned up as evidence in the trial of those who bombed our embassies in Africa. It seems that, within days of my having sent it, the letter had found its way to Sudan and was in the hands of bin Laden (who was on the list), having been fetched for him by an al-Qaeda operative who had gotten it from one of his associates.The conventional wisdom is our intelligence apparatus is broken. The truth is we probably don't know the half of it. Mr. McCarthy provides a brief history of, and the reasons behind, the decline of the U.S. intelligence community. He also offers opinions and specific recommendations about what can and should be done to fix it. An invaluable read.
So how do the revelations in the Times help the terrorists? Think it through — if you were a terrorist and you believed (as most people seem to) that the NSA would ignore your communications if they crossed U.S. borders, your best move would be to set up communications relay stations inside the U.S. Terrorists are well known for their ability to find and exploit loopholes in our laws, and this would be a natural. For all we know our intelligence agencies have been exploiting these types of communications for years without the terrorists knowing it. Now they will fall silent, because now the bad guys know better. So New York Times writer James Risen will sell his book, the Times will increase circulation, politicians will beat their breasts and send out fundraising letters, and who will pay in the end?Kevin Drum, in The Washington Monthly:
You can answer that one.
It seems clear that there's something involved here that goes far beyond ordinary wiretaps, regardless of the technology used. Perhaps some kind of massive data mining, which makes it impossible to get individual warrants? Stay tuned.In the end, these two points illustrate perfectly why the NYT's disclosure is so devastating. First and foremost, our ability to exploit Al Qaeda communications has been dealt a severe blow. I'd give you a dollar to a donut Robbins is right on the money. The bad news is our abilities have been compromised. The good news is it will take AQ a lot of time and effort to reconstitute communications and develop alternate networks and/or means of coordinating activities.
People familiar with the process say the problem is not so much with the court itself as with the process required to bring a case before the court. "It takes days, sometimes weeks, to get the application for FISA together," says one source. "It's not so much that the court doesn't grant them quickly, it's that it takes a long time to get to the court. Even after the Patriot Act, it's still a very cumbersome process. It is not built for speed, it is not built to be efficient. It is built with an eye to keeping [investigators] in check." And even though the attorney general has the authority in some cases to undertake surveillance immediately, and then seek an emergency warrant, that process is just as cumbersome as the normal way of doing things.It's all about speed.
Lawmakers of both parties recognized the problem in the months after the September 11 terrorist attacks. They pointed to the case of Coleen Rowley, the FBI agent who ran up against a number roadblocks in her effort to secure a FISA warrant in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the al Qaeda operative who had taken flight training in preparation for the hijackings. Investigators wanted to study the contents of Moussaoui's laptop computer, but the FBI bureaucracy involved in applying for a FISA warrant was stifling, and there were real questions about whether investigators could meet the FISA court's probable-cause standard for granting a warrant. FBI agents became so frustrated that they considered flying Moussaoui to France, where his computer could be examined. But then the attacks came, and it was too late.
If a reporter, even a TV reporter, can't see the difference between the Patriot Act and how the Ba'athists or Zarqawi supporters would crush dissent, then the guy should take a break from writing while he goes out and finds a clue. I would point out to Mr. Shales that the so-called "draconian" Patriot Act has been in effect for over four years and I haven't noticed that dissent against Bush has been crushed. Could Mr. Shales please point out all those who, opposing Bush and the war in Iraq, have been arrested, thrown in a dungeon, tortured, had their tongues ripped out, their families attacked, and daughters raped?Those dissenters are in one of The Chimp's secret European prisons, no doubt. Wise up, Betsy!
Christmas is a comin' and the geese are getting fatWow! Thanks, Nancy! I immediately turned the TV off just as she began her anti-Rethuglican rant and went to sleep. I did catch her saying something about "Shame! Shame!" before the remote went {click}...
Please put a penny in a poor man's hat
If you haven't got a penny, a ha'penny will do
If you haven't got a ha'penny, then God Bless You!
Working through the night, the House early today voted to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling as part of a military measure and narrowly approved a $40 billion budget-cutting plan as bleary-eyed lawmakers concluded a marathon weekend session.It's nice to see our Congresspeople hard at work to get things wrapped up before the holidays. Things that should have been done, oh, say, TWO MONTHS AGO. But, what the Hay. Everyone needs to pull an all-nighter every once in a while. Impresses the Hell out of the constituents, I suppose.
The Pentagon spending bill, adopted on a 308-106 vote shortly after 5 a.m., also included a $29 billion hurricane recovery package for the Gulf Coast, a $3.8 billion proposal to prepare for a potential flu pandemic and a 1 percent across-the-board cut that shaved a total of about $8 billion from current federal spending.
...
The budget cuts were approved 212-206 just after 6 a.m. After assembling the budget plan Sunday, congressional Republicans had pegged the savings over five years at nearly $42 billion but last-minute changes on health and agricultural policy made to attract more votes lowered the figure to $39.7 billion - about $10 billion below the initial House target. The Senate could take the measure up as early as today.
"Cloudy with light freezing rain in the morning. Areas of fog early. High 48F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of precip 40%."There's also this cute little graphic of a black cloud spitting rain with the word "Ice" overlayed on the cloud. The legend says "AM Ice."
Home is Where You Park It (Click for Larger)The president's emphatic defense yesterday of warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. citizens and residents marked the third time in as many months that the White House has been obliged to defend a departure from previous restraints on domestic surveillance. In each case, the Bush administration concealed the program's dimensions or existence from the public and from most members of Congress.
...
Since October, news accounts have disclosed a burgeoning Pentagon campaign for "detecting, identifying and engaging" internal enemies that included a database with information on peace protesters. A debate has roiled over the FBI's use of national security letters to obtain secret access to the personal records of tens of thousands of Americans. And now come revelations of the National Security Agency's interception of telephone calls and e-mails from the United States -- without notice to the federal court that has held jurisdiction over domestic spying since 1978. (emphases mine)
The activities I authorized are reviewed approximately every 45 days. Each review is based on a fresh intelligence assessment of terrorist threats to the continuity of our government and the threat of catastrophic damage to our homeland. During each assessment, previous activities under the authorization are reviewed. The review includes approval by our nation's top legal officials, including the Attorney General and the Counsel to the President. I have reauthorized this program more than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks, and I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al Qaeda and related groups.It appears to me the administration covered its bases as far as (a) informing the Congress of ongoing surveillance activities and (b) reviewing and certifying surveillance actions are being conducted in accordance with the law. It also appears to me the administration was proactively trying to correct one of the principal findings of the 9/11 Commission, that being the "stove-piping" of intelligence information and the lack of coordination between Federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies, long before the findings of said commission were finalized and made public. Additionally, it's been noted in testimony before Congress that the FBI, the federal agency authorized to investigate and monitor domestic threats, has been sorely lacking the technical means and capabilities to effectively conduct domestic surveillance.
The NSA's activities under this authorization are thoroughly reviewed by the Justice Department and NSA's top legal officials, including NSA's general counsel and inspector general. Leaders in Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this authorization and the activities conducted under it. Intelligence officials involved in this activity also receive extensive training to ensure they perform their duties consistent with the letter and intent of the authorization.
(again, emphases mine)
While the FBI has always been among the world's best collectors of information, for a variety of historical reasons, the Bureau never established a formal infrastructure to exploit that information fully for its intelligence value. Individual FBI agents have always capably analyzed the evidence in their particular cases, and then used that analysis to guide their investigations. But the FBI as an institution never elevated that analytical process above the individual case or investigation to an overall effort to analyze intelligence and strategically direct intelligence collection.Doesn't it seem prudent and necessary for the President to leverage existing technical means to conduct surveillance designed to identify and eliminate domestic threats to national security? Especially if the agency charged with conducting said surveillance (the FBI) lacked the necessary means to do so? If we had suffered another attack, post-9/11, and it became apparent the government had existing means to identify threats through surveillance and monitoring but did not do so, would the President have been held responsible? You know the answer to that question.
Today, an enterprise-wide intelligence program is absolutely essential. The threats to the homeland are not contained by geographic boundaries and often do not fall neatly into investigative program categories. Consequently, threat information has relationships and applicability that crosses both internal and external organizational boundaries. Counter-terrorism efforts must incorporate elements from -- and contribute toward -- counter-intelligence, cyber, and criminal programs. In order to respond to this changing threat environment, we are building our capabilities to fuse, analyze and disseminate our related intelligence, and to create collection requirements based on our analysis of the intelligence gaps about our adversaries. (Robert S. Mueller, III, Director, FBI. Before the Select Committee on Intelligence of the United States Senate, February 24, 2004)
The Senate on Friday refused to reauthorize major portions of the USA Patriot Act after critics complained they infringed too much on Americans' privacy and liberty, dealing a huge defeat to the Bush administration and Republican leaders.The renewal of the Patriot Act failed because the Republicans could not obtain the 60 votes necessary to defeat Sen. Feingold's filibuster. The final vote was 52-47 in favor of closing debate.
...
But the Patriot Act's critics got a boost from a New York Times report saying Bush authorized the National Security Agency to monitor the international phone calls and international e-mails of hundreds — perhaps thousands — of people inside the United States. Previously, the NSA typically limited its domestic surveillance to foreign embassies and missions and obtained court orders for such investigations.
"I don't want to hear again from the attorney general or anyone on this floor that this government has shown it can be trusted to use the power we give it with restraint and care," said Feingold, the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act in 2001.
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the domestic spying "clearly and categorically wrong" and vowed to hold oversight hearings on the matter when the Senate reconvenes early next year after its holiday recess.A final bit of insult-to-injury gloating from the ACLU:
"This administration feels it is above the law, and the American people and the Constitution pay the price," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). "There is no accountability. There is no oversight. . . . This is Big Brother run amok."
"Mr. President, it is time to have checks and balances in this country," thundered Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the Senate Judiciary Committee's top Democrat. "We are a democracy!"
"Today, fair-minded senators stood firm in their commitment to the Constitution and rejected the White House's call to pass a faulty law," said Caroline Fredrickson, the director of theDon't you just hate it when that happens?
American Civil Liberties Union' 's Washington legislative office. "This was a victory for the privacy and liberty of all Americans."
Supply-siders asserted that cutting taxes on the wealthy -- and especially on savings and investment -- would help everyone, including the poor, by promoting economic growth. Tax cuts would produce so much growth that they would pay for themselves. Since government programs were flawed, private investment was always more productive than government spending. And deficits, if they did come, need not worry us very much.and
As a result, the Republican Party is fracturing before our eyes. Moderate Republicans know these cuts in programs for the poor are unsustainable. Very conservative Republicans want to cut spending far more than the rest of the party (or its voters) will allow. Republican leaders tilt this way and that, juggling this tax cut with that spending cut. In the process, they alienate just about everybody. The old faith is dying.Well, E.J., the tax cuts are working. The economy is incredibly healthy, booming even. And Republicans, at least some of us, are irritated at the rate government spending is growing under Mr. Bush.
To be sure, Holocaust denial and calls for Israel's destruction are commonplace in the Middle East. They can be seen every day on Hezbollah TV, in Syrian media, in Egyptian editorials appearing in semiofficial newspapers. But none of these aspiring mass murderers are on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons that could do in one afternoon what it took Hitler six years to do: destroy an entire Jewish civilization and extinguish 6 million souls.Scary stuff. And no one is doing a damned thing about it. No one.
Everyone knows where Iran's nuclear weapons will be aimed. Everyone knows they will be put on Shahab rockets, which have been modified so that they can reach Israel. And everyone knows that if the button is ever pushed, it will be the end of Israel.
"There is no one Democratic voice . . . and there is no one Democratic position," Pelosi said in an interview with Washington Post reporters and editors.Exactly. We have the Dean contingent of the party telling us we can't win (heavy back-pedalling here), Murtha telling us the Marines should withdraw from Iraq to Okinawa, Kerry reverting to his Winter Soldier days, and Joe Lieberman saying the President's strategy is working. I say it's a case of multiple-personality disorder, Pelosi says it's a strength. You decide.
...to rapidly monitor the phone calls and other communications of people in the United States believed to have contact with suspected associates of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups overseas, according to two former senior administration officials. Authorities, including a former NSA director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, were worried that vital information could be lost in the time it took to secure a warrant from a special surveillance court, sources said.The NYT is the source of this article. The Times said they delayed publishing the article for a year at the request of the administration. The other noteworthy aspect of this article is there are no "on the record" sources, everyone with supposed knowledge of the program requested anonymity.
The revelations come amid a fierce congressional debate over reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The Patriot Act granted the FBI new powers to conduct secret searches and surveillance in the United States.and
Public disclosure of the NSA program also comes at a time of mounting concerns about civil liberties over the domestic intelligence operations of the U.S. military, which have also expanded dramatically after the Sept. 11 attacks.The House renewed the Patriot Act Wednesday; there's a threat of a filibuster in the Senate. Curious timing, indeed.
Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said she is "dismayed" by the report.It's a good sign the ACLU is "dismayed." These days I'm FOR whatever the ACLU is AGAINST. It's not a hard and fast rule here at El Casa Pennington, just a guideline. And it's usually correct. Your Mileage May Vary.
"It's clear that the administration has been very willing to sacrifice civil liberties in its effort to exercise its authority on terrorism, to the extent that it authorizes criminal activity," Fredrickson said.
The extent to which the homeless, the hard-core unemployed, the drunk and the addicted, and general shabby personalities of all kinds are deployed about the city is something to bring even the most hard-core liberal from elsewhere up short. If the myriad policies and millions man-years of effort, coupled with untold billions of dollars in funding deployed in San Francisco over the last four decades have created the current visible result, something is seriously askew with the city's basic social engineering. It is as if the entire region has spent 40 years and 400 billion building a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge on Ocean Beach intending to span the Pacific. A good intention, but a city's gotta know its limitations.I'm no liberal, but I too was appalled at the sheer numbers of SFO's homeless when I arrived there back in 2000. I worked in the heart of the Financial District, three doors up from the intersection of Market and Montgomery Streets. The Financial District is prime panhandling territory. It's no exaggeration to say I saw literally hundreds of homeless men and women every day.
Dishonor the soldiers?And why do I say I lost my temper? Because I posted this in reply. I'm putting it here because Dr. Sanity runs a very temperate site; she may be tempted to delete my comment. Here 'tis:
There's an inherent honor in joining an organization that must destroy free will and independent thought in order function properly?
Sorry to disillusion you chumps, but striving to be a drone among thousands of other drones doesn't, by any logic, seem honorable does it? It seems like the the sort of endeavor that would appeal to the insecure and incompetent--Not able to go it on their own in life. Need the group identity and all that... I've known plenty of dedicated soldiers and they do have a tendency toward imbecility.
I was just reminding you that your moronic sentimments about the laughable undertaking in Iraq, and 'supporting our troops,' is actually supporting the sacrificing of these revered (by you) young people for a highly questionable cause.
For myself, I see it as a handy sort of Darwinism. We're overpopulated anyway. But the army is undermanned--I'm sure everyone who responded could come to such terms with local recruitment officers that you all could ship out within a few months and go help spread freedom. What's keeping you? Are you homosexuals? Or just dispensers of bullshit and cowards?
Site Author Email Homepage 12.14.05 - 3:06 pm
Site Author:Read the comments to this post. And there's more here. Sometimes I'm beyond amazed, I'm incredulous. Where the HELL do these people come from?
If you're still reading these comments I have something to say you may understand:
Them's fightin' words.
I'm one of those "third rate humans" you're going on about, what with 22 years of active duty, now retired. I'm the father of two career military officers. Any one of the three of us would dearly love to show you the errors of your thinking. Any time, any place. You name it.
Some things just cannot be debated, ya know.
Buck Pennington Email Homepage 12.16.05 - 12:25 am #
Festivus time in PalestineMore unintended comedy here. Or maybe this is satire? Nah. Just stupidity.
Thsi is just a quick post to remind all teh reader ship of STNDM blog that the holiday season is hear and while every one is being a consumerist capitalist swine and ading to the economical hegemony which Wallmart holds over all Americans (even neocons) their are million of Palestenian children who are too poor to get Green Day CD"s for Christmas.
It is important to remeber the plight of the opressed palestinan children who are kept in concentration camps by Israel soldiers who are totaly opressing the palestinians people and children by denying them there constitutional right (human rights ect) to have acess to constumer goods (especially culturally valuable things like music etc).
A the best way to remember the plight of palestianian children and ease there terrible burden is to donate generuosly to a charity project like my own GDCD4PCP project (Green Day CDs for Palestinian Children projecT).
Please remember that maybe for some palestinian children their may not be a Christmas this year unless you give generously so that they can have Green Day CDs for christmas!
BAGHDAD, Dec. 15 -- Iraqi voters, undeterred by early violence, went to the polls in force Thursday to elect the country's new National Assembly, which in turn will ultimately form a new government.
Among the voters were many Sunni Arabs in western insurgent strongholds taking part in national elections for the first time, in contrast to previous election boycotts by Sunnis.
If I read the news reports correctly, "violence" means a single mortar or rocket shell landed in the Green Zone as the polls opened; no casulties reported. An Iraqi hospital guard was also killed in Baghdad. Overall, turnout is reported as "high" and Sunni "insurgents" have declared an election day moratorium on attacks.
The Times opens with a contrasting description of last January's election and then goes on to say:
As Iraqis prepare to cast their ballots today, there is already a tangible sense that they have reached a milestone, not only in Iraq’s history, but also in the region’s.The polls are still open. This is, as Drudge would say, "developing."
...
But today, if predictions are correct, more than 70 per cent of Iraq’s 15.5 million eligible voters will cast their ballots, selecting 275 representatives in Parliament from more than 7,000 candidates. That would far exceed the turnout in most Western democracies, including Britain and America.
One of the blessings of our free society is that we can debate these issues openly, even in a time of war. Most of the debate has been a credit to our democracy, but some have launched irresponsible charges. They say that we act because of oil, that we act in Iraq because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. Some of the most irresponsible comments about manipulating intelligence have come from politicians who saw the same intelligence we saw, and then voted to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein. These charges are pure politics. They hurt the morale of our troops. Whatever our differences in Washington, our men and women in uniform deserve to know that once our politicians vote to send them into harm's way, our support will be with them in good days and bad, and we will settle for nothing less than complete victory. (emphases mine)Those remarks are aimed primarily at Mssrs. Dean, Reid, Kerry, Murtha, and Madame Pelosi; and to a lesser extent the bomb-throwers on the Left, primarily the MoveOn, kossack, DU, and Code Pink crowds. All of the intended recipients of the President's remarks are completely tone-deaf; I don't expect anything other than more nay-saying political point scoring exercises in response. Case in point; the AP, in its wire report on today's speech, quotes Senator Kennedy (D-Chappaquidick):
"There was no reason for America to go to war when we did, the way we did, and for the false reasons we were given," said Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass.::sigh:: I suppose I'll find similar, if not worse, comments from the Democrats' leaders once I go looking.
"The president's mea culpa was accompanied by a robust defense of the divisive war.""Mea culpa?" Is the man in the dock? Why not "acceptance of responsibility?" Why not "statement accepting responsibility?" "You're guilty, Bush, and it's time you gave us that mea culpa!" And "divisive war?" Isn't just plain old "war" good enough? Or if one wants differentiate between Iraq, Afghanistan, and the general war against radical Islam, one could simply say "Iraq war." But, no! We must be reminded the war is "divisive."
"(Mr. Bush's speeches)...included descriptions of fixes for early mistakes and sober assessments of remaining challenges.Oh, that's rich. Ms. Loven apparently has no sense of irony. Who confronts the majority of Americans "with daily doses of bad news and rising death counts in Iraq?" Might it be you and your peers at the AP, the NYT, the LAT, the BBC, and Al-Jazeera, Ms. Loven? When you're feeding the people their daily dose of gore and mayhem, do you expect them to be optimistic? Of course you don't. That's not your intent, after all. Let's look at your track record for one day this year (link, but hurry, publicly available WSJ articles expire in about a week):
That reflects the majority of Americans who, confronted with daily doses of bad news and rising death counts in Iraq, disapprove of Bush's policies there and question the outlook for victory. For instance, a new poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that most people see progress in areas such as establishing democracy and training Iraqi security forces but are split on whether the United States is defeating the insurgents.
No slant there, eh?About a year ago, concerned that he might have been exaggerating when he made this assertion on the basis of his "gut feeling," Mr. Chrenkoff decided to check it out more scientifically. So he did "a little tally" of the stories published or broadcast all over the world on a single average day (which happened to be Jan. 21, 2005). Here are some of the numbers that, with the help of the Google News Index, he was able to report from that one day:
2,642 stories about Condoleezza Rice's confirmation hearings, in the context of grilling she has received over the administration's Iraq policy.
1,992 stories about suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks.
887 stories about prisoner abuse by British soldiers.
216 stories about hostages currently being held in Iraq.
761 stories reporting on activities and public statements of insurgents.
357 stories about the antiwar movement and the dropping public support for involvement in Iraq.
182 stories about American servicemen killed and wounded in operations.
217 stories about concerns for fairness and validity of Iraqi election (low security, low turnout, etc.).
107 stories about civilian deaths in Iraq.
123 stories noting Vice President Cheney's admission that he had underestimated the task of reconstruction.
118 stories about complicated and strained relations between the U.S. and Europe.
121 stories discussing the possibility of an American pullout.
27 stories about sabotage of Iraqi oil infrastructure.
As against all this, the good news made a pathetic showing:
16 stories about security successes in the fight against insurgents.
7 stories about positive developments relating to elections.
73 stories about the return to Iraq of stolen antiquities.
Obviously, then, the reporters and their editors in the mainstream media have been working overtime to show how badly things have been going for us in Iraq.
(click for larger)That file footage fired off some long-dormant synapses in the ol' brain.
Travis AFB, 1951 - 1952.
My father was stationed at Travis during that time, and my family lived in base housing. The neighborhood boys and I used to ride our bikes all over the base...down to the BX, the theatre for Saturday matinees, over to the flight line, and out to the end of the runway to watch planes take off. The take-offs were the best. Especially B-36 take-offs.
I was always one of a gaggle of small boys, standing beside our Schwinns about 200 yards from the end of the runway. We always stood silent, pie-eyed in wonder and awe at the spectacle before us. We were silent because talk was literally impossible; we could have screamed at each other and we wouldn't have heard a word over the incredible noise made by the combination of six huge Pratt and Whitney piston engines and four GE jet engines winding up in front of us. Each one of those Pratts put out 3,800 hp! The ground literally shook, and when I say "shook," that's exactly what I mean...as in earthquake. The exquisite, Norse-god like sound and feel of large reciprocating mass is simply unbelieveable. Nothing compares, there are no modern analogues.
We'd put our fingers in our ears and wait. After about 30 seconds of engine run-up, the big bomber would begin to move, imperceptably at first, speed increasing to a crawl, then a walk, then a run. Sometimes we'd have to brace ourselves against the prop wash, even at that distance, depending on where we were standing. Most of the time we'd stand off to the side, becaue prop wash isn't pleasant. A minute or two later the bomber would lift off the runway and disappear into the sky, trailing sooty black exhaust from the jets on the ends of the wings. Our ears would ring for five minutes after the plane was gone.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the only remaining large piston-engined bomber still flying. I saw her back in the early '90s when she flew into the Detroit area, along with a B-25, for an airshow. And I told my buddy about standing at the end of the runway at Travis after we watched her leave. "Just imagine," I said, "add two more Pratts and four jets to the sound we just heard..." I wonder if he could. Imagine, that is.
The Airwaves, They Are A-Changin'
Bob Dylan -- singer, songwriter, former counterculture figure and voice of a generation -- has added another line to his rsum: radio DJ.
The enigmatic troubadour has signed on to host a weekly show on XM Satellite Radio, the D.C.-based pay-radio provider. Dylan will select the music, offer commentary, interview guests and answer e-mail from listeners during the one-hour program, which will start in March, XM said yesterday.
Jesse Helms is a U2 groupie. The uber-conservative former Republican senator from North Carolina dined with singer and activist Bono before the band's performance in Charlotte on Monday. The unlikely pair met several years ago and have since become close allies in the fight against the AIDS epidemic in Africa.That's it, just what you see above. Nothing else. Has Bono lost street-cred? First the White House, now Jesse Helms? I mean, How could you! [ed: you said you were taking a break... I know, shaddup, already]
CANNES, France -- On this rocky stretch of Mediterranean coast, playground for the glitterati, where the day begins with lunch and lunch gives way to a nap, cocktails and the discotheque, France is attacking its national unemployment crisis with a dream that seems positively un-French: It aims to cultivate a new Silicon Valley.Well, now. It starts out good, n'est ce pas? I mean, given the choice of working in Cannes or, say, Cupertino, Redwood City, or anywhere on Route 128, what would you choose? Then they go and screw it all up by bringing in the gub'mint. The French gub'mint! Zut, alors!
At a research-and-development park overlooking the sea, scientists in futuristic campuses develop a system that could allow doctors to monitor patients' vital signs and drug regimens at home. Others master technology allowing shipping companies to track inventory on rail, road and sea. Lunch is rushed. Coffee is carried to labs in paper cups. Talk is of wireless and satellite, of Internet protocol and the architecture of computer chips.
...
The notion of a notoriously bureaucratic French government stage-managing innovations in the high-tech sector -- typically known for fierce competition and a libertarian ethos -- seems paradoxical. But in France, business remains a risk-averse activity in which industry looks to the government for succor. Proponents say this is precisely what makes the initiative necessary: France has proven skilled at research but weak at transforming ideas into money -- a step requiring government orchestration.
I am being asked to give more UK taxpayers money to an EU which for years can not produce properly audited accounts. Mon ami Jacques with the support of most of you is nagging me to give the EU more money while the refusing to surrender an inch or even a centimetre on the CAP - a programme which uses inefficient transfers of taxpayers money to bloat rich French landowners and so pump up food prices in Europe, thereby creating poverty in Africa, which we then fail to solve through inefficient but expensive aid programmes. The most stupid, immoral state-subsidised policy in human history, give or take Communism.
As for the new member states, we like you so much that we are proposing in the Budget a huge new transfer of funds to you on a scale which will give your people the greatest boost in 1000 years. I will be attacked by my scary new teenage Tory opposition for building roads and hospitals in Poland and Hungary, rather than in poor areas of the UK. We - unlike most other old EU MS sitting here – have opened our labour markets. HMG have created more jobs for Poles in the past year than the Polish Government. Yet not one of you nor a single newspaper in any of your capitals has expressed a single word of gratitude or appreciation for the UK position in all this. So much for solidarity.
A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. Descending a bit more he shouted, "Excuse me, can you help? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago BUT I do not know where I am."Sounds about right, speaking as a non-barrister, but one who is very familiar with corporate hierarchies.
The woman replied, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above the ground. You are between 40/41 degrees latitude, north, and 59/60 degrees west, longitude."
"You must be an Associate", said the balloonist.
"I am", replied the woman, "How did you know?"
"Well", answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct but I have no idea what to make of your information and the fact is, I am still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help at all, if anything, you have delayed my trip."
The woman below responded, "You must be a Partner."
"I am," replied the balloonist, "But how did you know?"
"Well," replied the woman, "You don't know where you are or where you are going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problem. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it is my fault."
In 1987, the average American household received 29 pieces of Christmas mail, said U.S. Postal Service spokesman Gerry McKiernan. By 1994, the number dropped to 23. In 2002 it bounced back to 27, but a year later fell to fewer than 20 cards per household. In 2004 it rose to 21.6 cards. And this year? It is expected to remain stable at about 21.5 cards, he said. (WaPo)My parents had a huge Christmas card list, and they received like numbers in return. Our house was literally festooned with cards...on the mantle (if the current house had one) and on every table or any other reasonably clear flat surface. Mom dreaded writing the things because it literally took her hours, nay, days, to work through the list. But she did it faithfully...year in, year out... including a mimeographed "family year-end summary" for those folks she only communicated with at Christmas. I used to think the only reason one sent cards at Christmas was to catch up with those folks you never talked to but were still on "the list." That may be true for a lot of people.
You may think that I’m being rather hard on you, Jeremy, but there are young men your age that are at this very moment experiencing tougher things than being slapped down by women who are the age of their mothers. That’s not a slam on you for not being in the military (it’s a choice), however the duty of all good citizens is to use the weapons with which God has inclined us to pick up. Sometimes those weapons are physical; in other instances, the weapons are cerebral. Which ever weapon that God has endowed you with, don’t waste your ammo as you did here. Live, learn---and then tell.Hopefully young Jeremy just received a much-needed wake up call. But I kinda doubt it.
No word on Lehrer's response.Jim Lehrer interviews Donald Rumsfeld:
I looked at the public opinion polls the last, recent ones that mention you. And you don’t come out very well in terms of the public. I couldn’t find one where the public had approved of the job you were doing, less than 50 percent. Does that bother you?
And Donald Rumsfeld interviews Jim Lehrer:
If you look where the news media is, it’s down very low at the polls. If you want to get into public opinion polls, people in that business are right down near the bottom. You know that. Yeah, does it bother you?
The mob is the mob, there’s no “our” mob or “their” mob, it’s a single destructive, mindless, useless force and the cops are perfectly within their rights to baton them into submission and hurl them into the back of the paddy wagon with the rest of the local Brains Trust who thought it’d be patriotic to kick a passing girl in the head because she was different.A couple of American takes: one reasonable, one not. Ace has video and some good background links; the Anti-Idiotarians have creative and not-so-creative racial and religious slurs in the comments. The Nice Doggies are living proof the Right can be just as mean and nasty as the Left.
Now having said that, I would also be very strongly in favour of the selfsame police grabbing any “youth of a certain ethnic origin” who had just called a white Australia girl wearing a bikini a whore and a slut, or who had just bashed a guy trying to protect his girlfirend from being menaced by thugs saying they would rape her; dousing the little bastard with capsicum spray, and hauling him off for a guest appearence before the local beak alongside his equally brainless pals who’ve been doing pretty much whatever they feel like for a long time now.
(click for larger)The statecraft that America is called to practice in today's world is ambitious, even revolutionary, but it is not imprudent. A conservative temperament will rightly be skeptical of any policy that embraces change and rejects the status quo, but that is not an argument against the merits of such a policy. As Truman once said, "The world is not static, and the status quo is not sacred." In times of extraordinary change such as ours, when the costs of inaction outweigh the risks of action, doing nothing is not an option. If the school of thought called "realism" is to be truly realistic, it must recognize that stability without democracy will prove to be false stability, and that fear of change is not a positive prescription for policy.This is the type of exposition that has been sorely lacking from the Administration in the past. I hope we see more thoughtful pieces like this in the future.
Same here... I grew up in a diverse neighborhood my whole life. It is this reason that I have so much disdain and dislike for the KKK, white supremacy, eugenics, intelligent design, neocons, bush, sellout shills like miller (dennis and zell), lieberman, crony capitalism, corporate welfare, wage slavery, debt slavery, the diamond trade, regressive taxes, sweat shops, the confederate flag, and the fact that there are more slaves in existance right now on earth than at any other point in human history. And americans are bitching that 'christmas is under attack'. Does ANYBODY in this country actually have their head out of their ass?
by Ghur AtteH on Sun Dec 11, 2005 at 06:56:18 AM PDT
The Air Force changed its mission statement yesterday. The old MS reads:I'll begin with the only good thing about the new mission statement: at least The Management incorporated the old, unofficial mission statement: "To Fly and To Fight." So much for the good stuff.
The mission of the U.S. Air Force is to is to defend the United States through control and exploitation of air and space.
The new mission reads:
The mission of the United States Air Force is to deliver sovereign options for the defense of the United States of America and its global interests -- to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace.
I told her redneckness has got to be a diseaseAnd on the other side of the coin, one can't help but note the catastrophic effects of BDS. I see it every day. It's all just so sad. Really.
You catch it on your fingers and it just crawls right up your sleeves
"Senator Reid has a lot of respect for Senator Lieberman," said Jim Manley, a Reid spokesman. "But he feels that Senator Lieberman's position on Iraq is at odds with many Americans."Yeah, Ol' Joe is out of step with the MoveOn crowd, Code Pink, Cindy Sheehan, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, John Kerry, and Jack Murtha. Gotta admit that. On the other hand, one is known by the company one keeps. Or doesn't.
"At a time when the American people are turning against Bush's war for oil Lieberman is just as out of touch as those with an "R" after their names and even more so than some." (link)Then I went and read a few diaries over at dKos (no link. I refuse. You know how to get there.) And it was all downhill from there.
"Just writing about Joe Lieberman makes me feel dirty. If you haven't been paying attention Joe has ratcheted up the administration ass kissing of late." (link)
And now, some in the party, incredibly including the Senate Minority Leader are making it inhospitable for their former Vice Presidential standard bearer, Joe Lieberman. Here's some news for them - they are not only telling Joe that the Democratic Party does not have room for his views, they are also communicating to millions of Americans who might support this war or not, but find defeat unacceptable, that they are not welcome in this exclusive political club. There are some progressive hawks in this country, but it is unlikely that they will pull the Democratic lever with the message that it is being sent by the leaders of the party.Exactly. Or at least one hopes this is the case. It's hard to tell when the polls seem to indicate the public buys into the Dem's emerging anti-war policy. I know I wouldn't trust the defense of America to the party that essentially advocates surrender. Would you?
My answer: First, thanks for letting us know the counter-protest is working. We understand the enormous implications of the fight that we are in and that Code Pink's campaign to retreat is dangerous. If we "silence them" (which won't happen, they are in the business of making noise), we'll continue to show real, tangible support for the troops. Care packages, letters, patriotic displays, and most important: our allegiance to continuing the mission.
I'm a troop and I don't need Code Pink telling me that patriotism "confuses me." Code Pink does not support the military or speak for the military. They are a reactionary anti-American organization, and should be treated as such.
We are winning but we have got to maintain constant pressure over time with the international community and across the US government agencies. No one is afraid that we can't defeat the enemy. Our troops have the confidence, the courage, and the competence. We need the will of the American people to be sustained for the long haul.The first hour of call-ins to C-SPAN's Washington Journal program this morning was reserved for service members who served in Iraq. Unfortunately, I only saw the last ten minutes of the (first hour) show this morning. That will teach me to sleep in. C-SPAN usually re-runs WJ later in the day, and the entire program is available in streaming video, the day following the broadcast.
What a class act! But one would expect no less of The Captain. Steve Yzerman has played with the Red Wings since the 1983-1984 season, and has been Captain since 1986, wearing the "C" longer than any other player in the NHL, ever. Yzerman pretty much stands alone as The Ultimate Sports Hero in a town where sports really matter. I say "ultimate" in terms of the modern era. The Detroit Tigers' Ty Cobb may have been bigger in his day, but there's no one around who could argue that point. Cobb's been dead for a long time. Isiah Thomas? His 13-year career with the Pistons falls short of Yzerman's career by eight years. Barry Sanders? Ditto for longevity. It's arguable that neither Sanders nor Thomas excelled in their sports to the extent Yzerman has. The only rivals The Captain has in the "Detroit Sports Heroes League" are the legendary Gordie Howe, another Red Wing, and Joe Louis. It remains to be seen if Detroit will erect a statue in Yzerman's honor, but I'd put money on it. But, to get to the point, Yzerman's withdrawal from Team Canada consideration, when he was all but guaranteed a place on the roster, is fairly representative of professional hockey players as a group....the news that veteran Detroit captain Steve Yzerman had withdrawn his name from Olympic consideration. Yzerman, 40, not playing up to his high standards this season, told Gretzky by phone Sunday.
"It was the right thing to do," Yzerman said following Detroit's 5-2 win over New Jersey on Tuesday night. "I would've loved to play in the Olympics again, but I believe it's time for me to step aside.
"It's time to let other guys play."
Yzerman scored his fourth goal of the season in the victory, the 682nd of his illustrious NHL career. Yzerman was asked whether he would interested in a non-playing role with the Canadian team.
"I've offered my services as a sommelier," Yzerman joked.
They call Ted Lindsay Scarface, and he’s earned the name: No athlete has ever taken more stitches—over 500 in his head alone, he claims. “You get some cocoa butter and vitamin E oil and you can rub a lot of those scars away,” Lindsay laughs. “In fact, I'm better-looking now than I was back then…which ain’t very good!”
If you followed the Lindsay link, scroll on down and read about Yzerman's knee.
Pro football players play a maximum of 21 regular season games, assuming they go all the way to the Super Bowl. In a worst-case scenario, a hockey team would play 28 games in the playoffs alone; a best-case scenario would win The Stanley Cup in "only" 16 games. (It wasn't always this way.) Speaking of The Cup...there isn't a more-storied trophy in all of sports. Period.
I could go on. You get the point, I'm sure. But there's one more thing.
Values.
You'll never see a Terrell Owens in hockey. There are no Dennis Rodmans. Yeah, there are NHL cheap-shot artist like Todd Bertuzzi or Claude Lemieux. There are also bona-fide heroes like Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Mark Messier, and yes, Steve Yzerman. Men of honor and integrity. Role models for our kids. Have you ever seen a post-game hockey interview? The interviews are so squeaky clean they're almost boring. It's all about "the team," "we got some good breaks," "things are going our way, we're working hard" and so on. True humility. How refreshing, eh?
But...what about the fighting? How does that fit into values? The fights are real-world lessons. Lessons such as "actions have consequences" and "take care of your own." Fighting is a part of life, and it's an integral part of hockey. Exciting, too. Nothing brings a crowd to their feet faster than two players dropping the gloves and squaring off. Nothing. Well, maybe except a game-winning goal in the final 15 seconds of a play-off game.
Steve Yzerman's actions this past week say a lot about him and the game he loves. He's near the end of a brilliant career. He knows he's not playing up to his standards now, no one else's. That's what matters. Standards. Honor. Integrity. Yzerman will step aside with his head held high. True class. There's a lot of it in hockey.
There are places I'll rememberRIP, John.
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all
But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
In my life I love you more
(click for larger)How inadvertantly revealing. No, they aren't afraid of demoralizing the troops. No, they aren't afraid of losing the war on terror. They're afraid of a political backlash for having spoken from their hearts.Cam Edwards, on the other hand, asks us to identify who said what:
Quote #1- “The idea that the Americans are going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong.”OK, you've got Quote #1. You may not be surprised when you learn who said #2.
Quote #2- “There is no doubt that the space in which the terrorists can move has begun to shrink and that the grip around the throats of the enemy has begun to tighten. With the deployment of soldiers and police, the future for the terrorists has become frightening.”
Sixty-Four Years Ago
Today is the anniversary of the second-most deadly attack on US soil. Sunday, December 7th, 1941 began quietly; by the end of the day 2,409 Americans had died and 1,178 were wounded. Three years and a little over eight months later the Japanese surrendered unconditionally on the decks of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. The United States had over 16 million men and women under arms in World War II; 291,557 of those service members were killed in action and another 369,267 were wounded.
My father was a corporal in the US Army Air Corps, stationed at Buckley Field, Colorado, on December 7, 1941. When the end of the war came he was a First Lieutenant on occupation duty somewhere in Germany. He died in 1989.
More and more WW II veterans slip away every day; soon the "Greatest Generation" will be gone. If you know a WW II vet, today would be a perfect day to thank him or her for their sacrifices...you won't have many more chances.
Today is also a good day to thank our current service members, if you know any...we are at war, after all. I'll start: Thanks, Buck. Thanks, Sam.
Update: Michelle Malkin has an interesting post about our collective fading memory. Lots of good links to Pearl Harbor related posts.
I'm Not Ready for This!
I suppose one is never ready for that first bone-chilling blast of winter. {Sigh} So winter arrives. The upper Mid-West has already had their blast of Arctic air, and there's some rather humorous discussion of same over at Ann Althouse's blog. Ann responds to a predictable comment about snow/cold from Florida:
Scraping windows and shoveling snow isn't exactly like a hurricane, but I suppose one would get tired of having Floridians, and others from tropical climes, rubbing it in on you. I know I did when I was in Rochester and other too-cold places. The nice thing about our cold snap is just that: it's a snap. All will be well next week. Right? {crosses fingers}As to the nah-nah-ing from Florida: You know, we don't do that to you when you have your hurricanes. Should we? If the answer isn't yes, then back off.
I got to thinking today (a dangerous pursuit, for me) that what this blog needs is a few war stories to spice things up a bit. After all, I spent 22 years in the Air Force, so I should have some pretty good stories to tell, right? Not really. Or, to put a finer point on it, most of my war stories aren't suitable for publishing in a family-rated blog. And I do want to keep this blog rated PG-13, at the very most. And then there's the other problem: memory. Unlike a lot of folks my age I don't have a treasure-trove of memory-jogging photos, documents, pins, ball caps, and all that other good stuff one accumulates over the years. Most of the photos from my AF days are in the custody of my first ex-wife, the rest I boxed up and sent to Number Two Son for safe keeping when I downsized life to fit into the RV. So, no joy there! I have to rely on my diminishing supply of brain cells, nothing else. Scary thought.
Ah. But there's the web! I googled "Wakkanai Air Station" to begin my trip down the memory hole and hit pay dirt. Indulge me for a moment before I tell you about Wakkanai; I'm gonna go off on a tangent.
Tangent: All military careers could arguably be called "different," especially for my generation. Guys in my cohort got sent all over the world; the travel opportunities today, compared to what I experienced, are very limited. Most USAF people spend their careers going from AF base to AF base. And that's where my difference comes in. In 22 years I was "permanent party" on only two Air Force bases: Yokota AB, Japan ('75 - '77) and Tinker AFB, OK ('83 - '85). You can add Keesler AFB, MS if you like - I was in a school squadron there in '63 -'64. The rest of my career was spent on Air Force Stations, literally on mountain tops (or the highest ground around) in the case of my Air Defense Command radar assignments, and isolated overseas locations during my tours on surveillance and monitoring (read that: spook) sites. Which brings us to Wakkanai!
Wakkanai AS (WAS), Japan is on the northern tip of Hokkaido, as far north as you can go in Japan without getting your feet wet. The unit had various designations over its lifetime, but it was mostly the 6986th Security Group, a unit of the late, great, USAF Security Service. Wakkanai was a surveillance site, with a (then) state of the art system known as a FLR-12. The FLR-12 had a huge antenna farm. Wakkanai opened in the mid-1950s as an Aircraft Control and Warning (AC&W) radar site, it ceased operations in late 1971 and closed in 1972. I was there twice, from 1968 - 1970, and again in 1971. WAS was an "isolated" tour, dependents were authorized, but the tour length was short: 15 months unaccompanied and two years, accompanied.
The one thing people always remember about Wakkanai is the snow: we had an average annual snow fall of 275 inches. Do the math...that's a tick shy of 23 feet of snow. Every year. And it was cold. The snow began falling in late November and stayed on the ground until late March or early April. All bases are surrounded with at least eight-foot high chain link fences, usually topped with three strands of barbed wire. In mid-winter the the WAS fences were useless. Even though it was illegal to leave the base through anything but the main gate (and if you got caught you were in trouble!), we routinely scrambled up and down the snow banks that used to be a fence and went "across the street." "Across the street" was a euphemism for the three dive bars that were literally across the street from the base...the Club Seven, The Inferno, and The Shadow. And Man! - were they ever fun! "Hey Buck! Where ya goin'?" "Across the street!" That's all the further I'm gonna go: PG-13.
There wasn't a lot to do in the winter. POVs weren't allowed on the roads in the winter, so you became semi-isolated, except for busses or taxis into town. We worked, partied, worked. Rinse. Repeat. Summer was another story altogether. Summer was racing season! Wakkanai was where I learned how to ride motocross, and my buddies and I raced all over the island of Hokkaido, mostly on the sides of mountains that were used as ski slopes in the winter. We practiced on Saturday and raced on Sunday. After practice there was usually a formal dinner and serious partying with our hosts at the races, usually the local Motorcycle Federation of Japan (MFJ) affiliate club. Americans were a rarity in that part of Japan in the late 60s, so we were feted a lot. And those Nipponese racers were some sneaky guys...every single party I went to they tried (and sometimes succeeded) to get us falling-down drunk. Racing with a hangover isn't recommended. Don't try it at home.
It would be easy to go on and on. Wakkanai was certainly one of the best, if not THE best, assignments in my AF career. I traveled all over Hokkaido, learned to love sushi, banged handlebars with some very cool dudes, acquired a taste for Sapporo beer, and learned to stay away from all but the best Suntory whiskies. And I loved my work, too. I won't talk about what we did, but it was important. Nuff said.
Do go visit the Wakkanai Air Station web site. There's history, momentos, and literally hundreds of pictures, and you know what they say about pics and words... David Lynch, the Website Facilitator, has done a great job of putting together a site that captures the feel of the place and the people that were stationed there. Well done, David!
Yeah, right. There's a group of URLs I'll click on. I think I'll go read the Noam Chomsky Book Summary RIGHT NOW! I might be behind on the ol' Marxist's latest Commie apologia or Bushitler rant. Could be.Sponsored Links
George W. Bush Are You Happy Bush Won? Cast Your Vote and Get $250 at Starbucks
bush.peel.com
Support our troops Draft the Twins - ribbon ribbons bumper stickers shirts etc.
dontblamemeivoted4kerry.com
News from the White House Flying Blind: Team Bush in Turmoil What's Next?
www.newsweek.com
Noam Chomsky Book Summary Save time with the summary of "Hegemony or Survival"
CapitolReader.com
...with a straight face? And expect rational man-in-the-street Americans to believe?As the many actions planned show, the Strike aims to bring women (and men) together across many divisions. As the statement says, "It begins with those of us who are invisible as workers: mothers and other caregivers, grassroots activists; subsistence, migrant and family farmers; those struggling on disability benefits, welfare, social security; child laborers; immigrants with or without papers; bonded laborers; domestic and homecare workers; sex workers; prisoners and ex-prisoners; refuseniks; students; rape survivors & others working for justice; community volunteers and more; whatever our sex, race, nationality, religion, age, sexual choice."
We salute the efforts of Global Women's Strike and all the many and valiant organizations coming forward to defend the rights of women and take their stand to change society. As the statement concludes, "Many of us are shocked that Bush and his genocidal henchmen are in charge of the largest military machine in the world for four more years. But as Joe Hill, a great working class fighter, said when he was framed for murder by the US police and got the death sentence, `Don't mourn. Organize!'
Ameriprise (We're the new financial consultants from American Express!). Oh-so-wrong, on so many levels. Blatant pandering to the overly-absorbed-with-themselves Boomers, what with the kitschy 60s video clips and "oh weren't you COOL" voice-overs. And they ripped off the Spencer Davis Groups great "Gimmee Some Lovin'," an unforgiveable sin.I was talking about ads that irritate me. In Friday's WSJ, Melanie Wells writes:
...the tone of ads from Ameriprise Financial? The company--a financial-advice unit spun off from American Express--clearly buys into the idea of boomers' tireless obsession with youthful pursuits. Its print ads show these folks in their VW-bus-driving, cheerleading, do-the-twist past. The TV spots appeal to the boomers' inner child, juxtaposing images of them skateboarding and playing the guitar when they were young. There are shots of them doing the same now but with thinning hair and--in the case of the aging skateboarder--a broken arm. "Retirement is like a second childhood," one ad says.You heard it here first. Remember that! Ms. Wells, however, isn't complaining solely about Ameriprise. She takes apart ad campaigns from the financial services industry, in general. Not a bad read, if you're so inclined.
...we have embarrassing spectacles like the 2005 highway bill. Costing $295 billion, it is 35% larger than the last transportation bill, fueled by 6,371 earmarks doled out to favored political constituencies. By comparison, the 1987 highway bill was vetoed by Ronald Reagan for containing relatively few (152) earmarks. Overall, even excluding defense and homeland security spending, the growth rate of discretionary spending adjusted for inflation is at a 40-year high.Armey argues that there is precious little difference between the Republicans and Democrats these days. I'll agree with him with one exception, that being the GWOT. There's a wave of discontent out here in Red State Land, and it ain't all about the war. I would certainly hate to see the Democrats gain control of the House or the Senate in 2006, or the White House in 2008. But it's entirely possible. When wise old men like Dick Armey speak out, Frist, Delay (yeah, I know. But he's pulling the majority's strings behind the scenes. Bet on it.), and the rest of the Republican leadership better listen. That goes for Dubya, too.
Outstanding Airman of the Year Ribbon, awarded to airman nominated by the MAJCOMs, FOAs, and DRUs to HQ AFPC/DPPPRS for competition in the 12 Outstanding Airmen of the Year (12 OAY) Program. Device: Oak leaf Cluster, and Service Star.It's not enough to win a "special trophy or award" or be nominated (not WIN, nominated!) as an Outstanding Airman of the Year, you get a ribbon, too! Been assigned overseas? Short or long tour? There's a ribbon for either. You add a ribbon to your collection just by virtue of being in place outside the US. (Full disclosure: The AF Overseas Ribbon existed before I retired; it's one of my nine.) Or how about this?
Air Force Recognition Ribbon, awarded to named individual Air Force recipients of special trophies and awards except the 12 Outstanding Airmen of the Year nominees. Bronze oak-leaf clusters will be worn on the ribbon bar to indicate subsequent awards.
Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal, who subsequent to 31 December 1992, perform outstanding volunteer community service of a sustained, direct and consequential nature.That used to be a line-item in a performance report, not a flipping medal.
Well, it was. Cold was the operative word at Fortuna AFS, North Dakota. Even during the summer, the talk invariably turned to "cold." War stories about things freezing...cars, pipes, people. Today's weather forecast for Fortuna is typical for December: the high will be 15 degrees, the low 6 degrees. Right now it's 3 degrees...at Williston, ND, the reporting station for Fortuna. Williston is about 85 miles south of Fortuna.
I was stationed at Fortuna from 1977 - 1978...12 months, three days, eight hours, and ten minutes. One of the fondest memories of my Air Force career was watching that checkerboard FPS-35 antenna fade into a dot in my rear-view mirror as I left Fortuna, headed west to North Bend AFS, Oregon. All that said, I did have a good time while I was at Fortuna. Like everywhere else I've been in the world, Fortuna was what you made it. The people I met there were great and we had tremendous fun!
My good friend Lori, who was a young two-striper while we were at Fortuna (I was a young TSgt), will be arriving in Portales in about an hour. We'll reminisce, laugh, and have a few beers. One of the best things about a military career is the friends you make, and the friends you keep. I can't wait!
Oh, there's more. A LOT more. Eleven stupid questions. Eight wacko conspiracy-theory links. A list of films you should "check out." Want to read it all? Go here and search the page for "scorpiototally." Is it any wonder we on the right call these people moonbats?Arianna,
Could you please please please investigate the REAL story that has caused all of this mess???The US government was at least complicit in the 9/11 disaster...If anyone disbelieves this, then you need to educate yourself. Now that we the people have lost over 2100 brave men and women and over 15,000 have been maimed by this George W. Bush war of choice. It is imperative of you as an American citizen especially if you are a young American who will inherit this national debt and the shame of these government activities, that you search the sources and discover the truth. I have done months of research, and I am personally convinced that the leaders of this country committed the most heinous of treasonous acts, by murdering their own people for ideological themes and great personal monetary gain.
