Back-asswards...

…as in I watched the sun come up this morning and then went to bed. I need to get a handle on this sleep thing. There are some back-asswards things in the news today, too. Let’s begin!

So, AlGore shot his mouth off in Jeddah. Among other things, AlGore claims:

Gore said Arabs had been "indiscriminately rounded up" and held in "unforgivable" conditions. The former vice president said the Bush administration was playing into al-Qaida's hands by routinely blocking Saudi visa applications.

WTF was he thinking? Has he not heard, or perhaps forgotten, that “politics stops at the water’s edge?” What possible point could he be making by saying something so incendiary in front of a frickin’ ARAB audience? Even if the charges were true (and I don’t think they are, not for even a millisecond), what possible benefit could accrue by repeating these charges in front of folks who live in a society with one of the world’s most miserable human-rights records?

At least one Islamic news service has picked this up and published it. More to follow, you can be assured. To his credit, AlGore also assailed the nut-jobs running Iran, and for that he gets an “attaboy.” But, you know the rule of thumb: “One awshit cancels ten attaboys.” You’ve been in the hole for a long time now, Al. It’s past time to stop digging.

In other shooting news, of the firearm kind, Cheney wounds a hunting partner and the Left goes ballistic (no pun intended, of course). Keep things in perspective is always good advice. Here’s some perspective:

In Montana, gun-related accidents were about equally divided between those who inadvertently shot themselves and those who were shot by someone else. Nationally, the numbers are not as even: Of the nearly 1,000 shooting accidents reported in the United States and Canada in 1998, only 319 were self-inflicted, while almost double that, 668, were the result of one hunter shooting another. In two-- party accidents shotguns were far more commonly involved than rifles (483 versus 159) [emphasis mine].

Talk about “much ado about nothing.” But, we should never miss an opportunity to expose an attempted cover-up, right? But, hey, Cheney was probably drunk. Just goes to show ya what irresponsible bastards those Rethuglicans are… (Sheesh. You can’t make this stuff up, ya know. Sh*t really DOES happen, especially in Lefty blogs.)

The Strategy Page explains why terrorism incidents are down in Iraq, “down,” of course being in contravention to the received wisdom. Here’s a quote:

Terrorism has become difficult because there are more Iraqi soldiers in action, and more elite Iraqi troops are pulling off operations previously only carried out by coalition troops. These include night raids and airmobile (moving troops via helicopter) attacks. The U.S. is providing the helicopters, the Iraqis are providing the planning, leadership and troops. These operations are much more devastating for the terrorists. The Iraqi troops speak the language and can read the body language. So it's much more difficult for terrorists to get away, or keep stuff hidden, during these raids.

The article is worth a read; it’s basically good news. But there’s bad news, too. The bits that seriously concern me are the existence and utilization of various Iraqi “militias.” I see militias as a problem; private armies who swear allegiance not to the country but to a specific tribal or religious leader are not a good thing. One could speculate about a whole host of evils just waiting to happen where militias are concerned.

Blogger seems to be slow today. Certain blogs I tried to access to get fodder for this post took forever to open. I write in Word and then paste the copy to my blog. I’m holding my breath here, hoping I can get this post up. It’s 1345 as I write; Lord, but it’s weird to think I haven’t even finished my “morning” coffee yet! I still have remnants of my Type-A workaholic personality to deal with, and it ain’t easy, sometimes!

Worry confirmed: Tried to put up the post at 1355, received the following error message: “This server currently experiencing a problem. An engineer has been notified and will investigate. Status code: 1-500-11.” Yeah, right. THAT does me a lot of good. I can’t even open the Blogger status page. This is not good.

Update, 1415 hrs. Deleted my blogger cookies and things are back to normal. WHY does this happen?