A Minor Mystery and the Usual Stuff

(Note: mystery solved following a mere 15 minutes of googling after I initially wrote this first piece.)

What happened to Mike Fay? His blog, Fire and Ice, went dormant earlier this year without explanation, although I heard he was back in The Sandbox (not true). Now it appears that someone named “Cunnigham” (no typo, that) has commandeered Fire and Ice. Here’s a sample of the writing:

We no longer can swear United States Congress to impeach and take a awful president. The American Capital Post have published an op-ed piece by Henry Martin Robert Dallek that suggests a constitutional amendment to let "ouster by the people" for removing a president other than by impeachment or because of incapacity. Considering the dingy public presentation of Saint George W. Shrub and his disposal and the trouble in obtaining impeachment, this is a mulct idea.

Here are the chief characteristics of the amendment: The recollection process would get by obtaining a 60 percentage ballot in the Senate and House. Populace pressure level on United States Congress could assist it switch determination devising to the electorate. Congressional support would originate a national referendum that would be unfastened to all eligible electors in state elections. Clearly, it should be done fairly quickly.

This is an example of a total, complete waste of bandwidth, and not because of the ideology expressed, and I use “expressed” very damned loosely. It’s the piss-poor writing I’m upset with. Fire and Ice is neither who nor what it once was, and the interloper is gone from the blogroll (and replaced with the url of the real Fire and Ice). Not that the current squatter gives a damn, I’m sure.

I wonder if Mr. Fay knows what’s happening here.

Well, yes…yes he does. It took me a while, but the real WO Fay’s blog is here…he’s alive, well, and producing his usual high-quality stuff. As to the interloper…here’s the story:

First, my original blog, mdfay.blogspot.com, was blogjacked. As my previous post announced, thanks to a BBC link, my site's viewership went stratospherically off the charts. This, it turns out, was a mixed blessing. Someone decided that perhaps they could make a little extra fun money off of Fire and Ice. So they hacked in, changed the password, and made it theirs, sort of. There is no content at my old site, just a variety of links which I suppose are earning someone about three cents a month. Blogger was good enough to locate my content and repost it to mdfay1.blogspot.com with a new password.

Blogjacking. Who knew?

Now it can be revealed…the REAL reason Rove quit:

(2007-08-13) — Karl Rove, the chief adviser to George Bush since 1993, in a new interview with the Wall Street Journal, said he would resign from the Bush administration effective August 31, to spend more time with family and to head up the presidential campaign of Democrat front runner Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY.

Mr. Rove called the move “a cold calculated decision to remain in charge of the U.S. government indefinitely.”

“I crave power,” Mr. Rove told the Journal, “and I can’t get my fix working for a lame duck president. I’ve been informally advising future President Clinton for about a year. I have a lot in common with Hillary — mostly notably the ice water that flows through our veins and the unbridled lust to rule the nation with an iron fist.”

Heh. I think the moonbats would kinda like it, if it were true. But then again, Her Hillaryness has her very own Rove-analog…no need to outsource. Which is one of the things that scare me. Just one, mind you.

I haven’t seen today’s weather report from Hell, but one could safely bet it’s cold down there. Via David’s Medienkritik… a link to a lengthy (eight pages!) article in Germany’s Der Spiegel, a positive article about Iraq. A couple of excerpts:

In October, 90 "incidents" were reported in Tameem, an area no larger than a few city blocks in Berlin. Twenty of those incidents involved attacks on US troops by gangs of insurgents. Wherever the Americans went they were shot at from apartment buildings, three times with rockets and four times with rocket-propelled grenades. Sixteen remote-controlled bombs exploded along the neighborhood's streets, 14 homemade explosive devices were found and defused, snipers attacked the occupying troops twice and one hidden car bomb was found, ready for use. And so the story continued: throughout November, December, January and February.

[…]

Since June, Ramadi residents have only known the war from televison. Indeed, US military officials at the Baghdad headquarters of Operation Iraqi Freedom often have trouble believing their eyes when they read the reports coming in from their units in Ramadi these days. Exploded car bombs: zero. Detonated roadside bombs: zero. Rocket fire: zero. Grenade fire: zero. Shots from rifles and pistols: zero. Weapons caches discovered: dozens. Terrorists arrested: many.

Ramadi is an irritating contradiction of almost everything the world thinks it knows about Iraq -- it is proof that the US military is more successful than the world wants to believe. Ramadi demonstrates that large parts of Iraq -- not just Anbar Province, but also many other rural areas along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers -- are essentially pacified today. This is news the world doesn't hear: Ramadi, long a hotbed of unrest, a city that once formed the southwestern tip of the notorious "Sunni Triangle," is now telling a different story, a story of Americans who came here as liberators, became hated occupiers and are now the protectors of Iraqi reconstruction.

A remarkable turn-around, especially for Der Spiegel. If you follow the link to Medienkritik, you can see examples of previous Der Spiegel articles that aren’t so…um…positive. And there’s also a link to Victor David Hanson’s latest column where VDH says the turn-about in attitude isn’t all that surprising, given that the same sort of thing is happening, albeit slowly, in the US Congress. Both the Hanson piece and the Spiegel article are worth your time…

 

Today’s Pic: Another photo from this year’s vay-kay, similar to another pic previously posted. SNs One and Three posed with the mo’sickles, just before departure to points both known and unknown. A good time was had by all…

Fort Collins, CO. May. This year.