Price at the pump driven by aging U.S. refineries
Attention American motorists: It is not ExxonMobil or Middle Eastern oil producers who are driving the price of gasoline you pay at the pump.
It is shortages of gas and other problems at aging refineries in your neighborhoods.
Well DUH! We haven’t built any new refineries in over 30 years, while demand for gas has increased. Get a clue!
Johnson won’t be attending re-election fundraiser
From Dave Krantz in the Argus:
An invitation to an upcoming fundraiser for Sen. Tim Johnson’s re-election leaves the impression with some that the senator, not seen in public since a brain hemorrhage in December, will attend the event.
That is simply not the case, says Julianne Fisher, Johnson’s press secretary. Fisher told me the two-term Democrat is not scheduled to be there.
With all the glowing and optimistic reports on the Senators recovery from Donk exSen Daschle and others, one MIGHT think that something would be heard from the Senator himself. One is sure that there are excellent reasons for this not happening yet, but then that might tend to make one think that the state of recovery is reported…reflecting a more optimistic rather than realistic view.
Seven dead, more than 60 injured in Minneapolis bridge collapse
A busy highway bridge that spans the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed during rush hour Wednesday, killing seven people, injuring more than 60, and sending dozens of cars, tons of concrete and twisted metal crashing into the water below.
Minneapolis Fire Chief Jim Clack said the death toll could rise. He said officials could see at least 50 vehicles in the water.
With a still undetermined number of vehicles that went into the river, unfortunately the toll is likely to go higher.
Kind of makes you think…how often do we drive over/under a bridge?
Clyburn: Positive Report by Petraeus Could Split House Democrats on War
When the Chief heard this one on the radio this afternoon, he KNEW that it had to be grist for the blogging mill! This Donk Cong is showing his true colors…and they ain’t red, white, and blue!
House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Monday that a strongly positive report on progress on Iraq by Army Gen. David Petraeus likely would split Democrats in the House and impede his party’s efforts to press for a timetable to end the war.
Clyburn, in an interview with the washingtonpost.com video program PostTalk, said Democrats might be wise to wait for the Petraeus report, scheduled to be delivered in September, before charting next steps in their year-long struggle with President Bush over the direction of U.S. strategy.
Clyburn noted that Petraeus carries significant weight among the 47 members of the Blue Dog caucus in the House, a group of moderate to conservative Democrats. Without their support, he said, Democratic leaders would find it virtually impossible to pass legislation setting a timetable for withdrawal.
No comment on the fact that a positive report from the General would indicate progress toward winning in Iraq. Ooooooh, no! THAT’s not important. What IS important is that this would interfere with the Donks’ imagined divine right to advance their political agenda at all costs, including the failure of the nation’s military efforts.
Sedition if not treason. ’nuff said.
The REAL importance of that would be that it would interfere
NASA Insiders Propose Stepping Stone Path to Deep Space
No, this one isn’t a thermonuclear war, or the set of military events prophesied prior to the appearance or reappearance of the Messiah, but a more banal reference to the Bruce Willis movie that featured a space mission to land on an asteroid & destroy it.
Other than being a showcase of some hideously erroneous physics, the one thing from the movie that is being seriously proposed is a manned landing on an “earth crossing” asteroid to take place sometime between the currently planned goals of returning to the moon, and then later going to Mars.
…there’s ongoing discussion of mounting a piloted mission to an asteroid – a voyage by astronauts to a near-Earth object, termed NEO for short. These proponents feel certain of the scientific payoff from reaching, first-hand, an asteroid – perhaps even becoming able to exploit these chunks of celestial flotsam to further humankind’s plunge into the cosmos. Space technologists argue that a NEO trip could be a valuable shakeout of people, equipment, and procedures prior to hurling astronauts beyond the Moon to the distant dunes of Mars.
For others, NEOs are viewed as downright dangerous, in terms of a head-on collision between Earth and a space rock. It’s best to get to know these incoming beasts ahead of time.
This would be a sort of neat project…and would have some real scientific merit on its own well beyond that of another robotic mission.
Junk Science: A Green Sings the Renewable Energy Blues
Another moonbat mugged by that nasty old reality!
Rockefeller University’s Jesse Ausubel introduced his new article on renewable energy by openly worrying about “hereticide† the all-to-common historical phenomenon of putting heretics to death.
As a long-time Green, Ausubel has good reason to be concerned given his article condemns renewable energy as “wrecking†the environment. “Renewables are not green,†is how Ausubel begins the article published in the International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology. It’s a remarkable statement coming from someone who beat his fellow Greens to global warming alarmism by at least 10 years.
Note that this is NOT just some guy spouting off…it IS a peer-reviewed scientific paper.
Great debate/conversational ammo to lob at your friendly fiendly neighborhood enviros.
A new entitlement for illegals
The total, unmitigated idiocy of the Donks’ proposals like this is so far out in left field that it beggars the imagination to think that they can seriously propose this sort of stuff.
Unsatisfied with thwarting a Republican effort to authorize $3 billion for a border fence, congressional Democrats are trying to enhance the incentive for illegal aliens to enter the United States by removing the citizenship requirement from the popular State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)….
This doesn’t come as much of a surprise, of course, from the perspective of either immigration or health-care policy. Recall that SCHIP was born out of a failed attempt at government-run universal health coverage. Indeed, the Democratic expansion of SCHIP will actually allow children who currently have private health insurance to switch to the federally subsidized program, saddling taxpayers with yet another entitlement burden. In the wake of the defeat of the immigration amnesty bill last month, open-borders advocates are attempting to implement their agenda using a piecemeal approach. (Last week, for example, Democrats were looking for support for an agriculture-worker bill that included a path to citizenship for workers in the country illegally.) They should not be permitted to get away with using SCHIP to funnel more taxpayer assistance to illegals.
What’s even sadder than the proposal itself, if the fact that given the nature of the Donks, it’s not even surprising any more.
Freed prisoners return to jihad, says US military
At least 30 former prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have been killed or recaptured after taking up arms against US and allied forces following their release, the US military says. They have been discovered in Afghanistan and Pakistan but not in Iraq, a US Defence Department spokesman said yesterday.
Commander Jeffrey Gordon said that while in custody the men had falsely claimed to be farmers, truck drivers, cooks, small-arms merchants, low-level combatants or had offered other false explanations for being in Afghanistan.
WHAT!?? You mean that GITMO isn’t just filled with innocent camel drivers and date farmers as the anti-war moonbats would have us all believe?
Shocking, simply shocking!
Scientists breed world’s first mentally ill mouse
Scientists have created the world’s first schizophrenic mice in an attempt to gain a better understanding of the illness.
It is believed to be the first time an animal has been genetically engineered to have a mental illness. Until now they have been bred only for research into physical conditions such as heart disease. It will allow researchers to study the disease and develop treatments using a limitless supply of laboratory animals.
Of course, there is the obligatory “viewing with alarm”:
Animal rights campaigners have condemned the research, saying that it is morally repugnant to create an animal doomed to mental suffering.
Why then is there no objection to liberalism?
On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs
This is something that the Chief had first encountered a while back in one of Bill Whittle’s essays at Eject! Eject! Eject! The proposition seemed to make a whole lot of sense at the time, and it still does, as the nightly sound of coyotes howling around the countryside here at the Chief’s home location reminds.
Greywolf, posting at Mudville Gazette also commented on the premise of the article, and helpfully linked to the original source, an essay by a LTC (RET) Dave Grossman.
This is really good stuff, worth the read, and worth some serious thought. Just a little bit to hopefully whet the mental appetite:
One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me: “Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident.”…
“Then there are the wolves,” the old war veteran said, “and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy.” Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial.
“Then there are sheepdogs,” he went on, “and I’m a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf.”
If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen, a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath, a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? What do you have then? A sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero’s path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed
That kernel is the basic premise of the whole discussion, which leads to this conclusion:
And so the warrior must strive to confront denial in all aspects of his life, and prepare himself for the day when evil comes. If you are warrior who is legally authorized to carry a weapon and you step outside without that weapon, then you become a sheep, pretending that the bad man will not come today. No one can be “on” 24/7, for a lifetime. Everyone needs down time. But if you are authorized to carry a weapon, and you walk outside without it, just take a deep breath, and say this to yourself…
“Baa.”
This business of being a sheep or a sheep dog is not a yes-no dichotomy. It is not an all-or-nothing, either-or choice. It is a matter of degrees, a continuum. On one end is an abject, head-in-the-sand-sheep and on the other end is the ultimate warrior. Few people exist completely on one end or the other. Most of us live somewhere in between. Since 9-11 almost everyone in America took a step up that continuum, away from denial. The sheep took a few steps toward accepting and appreciating their warriors, and the warriors started taking their job more seriously. The degree to which you move up that continuum, away from sheephood and denial, is the degree to which you and your loved ones will survive, physically and psychologically at your moment of truth.
The Chief heartily concurs.
Guard numbers on border to be halved
Support mission to end entirely by Sept. 2008
Now that the brouhaha concerning the immigration reform bill Mexican Migration Support Act is done with, the administratin apparently sees no need to even continue this inadequate effort to render lip service to the concept of border security.
The number of National Guard troops along the Arizona-Mexico border will be trimmed in half by the end of next month.
As the presidentially mandated Operation Jumpstart mission begins its second year in support of the U.S. Border Patrol, the number of troops is being reduced as planned. It will be trimmed from 6,000 to 3,000 nationally and from 2,400 to 1,200 in Arizona, said National Guard Capt. Kristine Munn. The pullout began July 1 and is scheduled to be completed by Sept. 1.
What a joke! One would HOPE that the public uproar about the immigration reform would have given them a clue about having enough intestinal fortitude to enforce American soveriegn control over its own border.
If one did so hope, one would be wrong.
Congress to Protect Citizens Who Report ‘Flying Imams’-Type Suspicions
After nearly a week of intense, behind-the-scenes wrangling, congressional negotiators late Tuesday agreed to include in the pending Sept. 11 security bill sweeping liability protections for citizens who report to authorities suspicious activity they fear might be linked to terrorism.
This is the provision that Pelosi, Reid, et al had thought they killed off last week, at the behest of the trial lawyhers, and the illegal immigration support lobby.
House Democrats, led by Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, sought changes in the immunity language but were ultimately overwhelmed by the Lieberman-GOP coalition on the conference committee.
Good for Sen. Lieberman. He always did “get it” on issues pertaining to the war.
“This is a huge winâ€â€a hard-fought victory for House Republicans and, more importantly, for the American people,” said Rep. Peter King, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee. “In a post-9/11 reality, vigilance is essential to security. Despite the Democratic opposition to this important homeland security measure, I’m thrilled to announce that common sense has prevailed and heroic Americans who report suspicious activity will be protected from frivolous lawsuits.”
Couldn’t say it any more clearly than that!
Hollywood Quickly Bringing the Iraq War Home
The NY <s>Times</s> Slimes reports here on a half-dozen or so anti-war films planned for release before or during the upcoming election season, with the openly stated objective of trying to swing the outcome to the left. Read the article for the gory details, if you have a high tolerance for Ho’wood moonbattery.
The Chief still has a mental disconnect trying to figure why the Ho’wood types want to support the triumph of the Islamofascists. Can’t they look at Iran’s Revolutionary Gurards, Saudi Arabia’s “Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Suppression of Vice”, and the Taliban’s record to realize that they would rapidly be “up against the wall” if the Islamofascists are able to achieve their goals?
One has to conclude that their loathing of their defined political enemies takes precedence over the prospects of their own survival.
F.E.T.E.
Carbon Offsets  Buyer Beware
This whole “carbon offset” thing is a scam from the get-go in the best tradition of the medieval Church, designed by the manipulative to flummox the good-intentioned into buying themselves absolution from the guilt of their own existence by making indulgence payments for having the nerve to exhale the dread pollutant CO2.
Congress began investigating the carbon offset industry this week. The inquiry could produce some “inconvenient truths†for Al Gore and the nascent offset industry.
Carbon offsets ostensibly allow buyers to expunge their consciences of the new eco-sin of using energy derived from fossil fuels. Worried about the 8 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted each year by your SUV? Similar to the indulgences offered by Pope Leo X in the 16th century, you can absolve yourself of sin by purchasing $96 worth of CO2 offsets – typically offered at $12 per ton of CO2 emitted – from offset brokers who, in turn, supposedly use your cash to pay someone else to produce electricity with low or no CO2 emissions.
Last year, offsets representing 23.7 million tons of CO2 were sold to businesses and consumers. Sounds like a lot of CO2 emissions were avoided, except when you consider that annual natural emissions of CO2 amount to hundreds of billions of tons.
The physical world aside, the CO2 offset marketplace itself is questionable – hence this week’s congressional hearing entitled, “Voluntary Carbon Offsets: Getting What You Pay For.†The hearing is particularly notable since it was called by a Democrat-run Congress, concerned that global warming alarmism is being jeopardized by dubious marketing and consumer rip-offs involving offsets.
One can only hope for some rationality on this for a change, but given that it’s involving the Congress, the Chief isn’t holding his breath in anticipation of it.
The Highlights From The Democratic Debate
This is a dirty business, worse even than the cable TV show that features the world’s dirtiest jobs. We can all be grateful to Right Wing News for manageing to sit through the Donk debates, and add appropriate commentary. The Chief had other things to do than watch this, but was able to get all he wanted of it from this posting.
Even with the antidote of the commentary, the Donk candidates’ efforts are still almost more than a rational person can stand.
Check it out if you’re in the mood for some self-inflicted nausea resulting from a high dosage of unalloyed liberal demagoguery strainght from the horses’ mouth end of the Donkey opposite to the mouth.
Iraqi tribes reach security accord
U.S. forces have brokered an agreement between Sunni and Shi’ite tribal leaders to join forces against al Qaeda and other extremists, extending a policy that has transformed the security situation in western Anbar province to this area north of the capital.
This is a good thing, if it holds up.
Members of the First Calvary Division based at nearby Camp Taji helped broker the deal on Saturday with the tribal leaders, who agreed to use members of more than 25 local tribes to protect the area around Taji from both Sunni and Shi’ite extremists.
…Immediately after Saturday’s agreement, soldiers from the Seventh Regiment of the First Cavalry Division calmly walked through Jurf al-Mila and nearby Falahat, both Sunni areas, to demonstrate the change since the tribal leaders first approached them. Men from the village, most of the them carrying weapons, greeted the soldiers warmly, shaking hands and kissing cheeks in traditional Iraqi fashion
No doubt most of the US MSM and certainly the Donks will do their level best to ignore this…but in spite of opposition, their inconvenient truth is that the war in general is making real progress.
What’s this? Some more signs of the possible evolution of a spinal column in the GOP? One can only hope so.
Senate Republicans are preparing to take aim at Majority Leader Harry Reid over the August recess for being “all talk but no action” and helping drag the Democrat-led Congress’ approval rating to a historic low, according to a document distributed to caucus members.
This should be like shooting fish in a barrel.
Chavez to expel foreign critics
In addition to some rather obvious instances of media suppression, and the noted promise to crack down on any foreigners in the country that have the nerve to speak out about the Chavez government, there is a proposed governmental reorganization that literally adopts the soviet model (no doubt via Cuba).
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has vowed to expel foreigners who publicly criticise him or his government. “No foreigner can come here to attack us. Anyone who does must be removed from this country,” he said during his weekly TV and radio programme.
Mr Chavez also ordered officials to monitor statements made by international figures in Venezuela. His comments came shortly after a senior Mexican politician publicly criticised the Venezuelan government. “How long are we going to allow a person – from any country in the world – to come to our own house to say there’s a dictatorship here, that the president is a tyrant, and nobody does anything about it?” Mr Chavez said during his “Hello, President” broadcast on Sunday.
Hmmmmm. If WE applied that standard to Chavez, we should have stuck a #12 cork in his pie-hole when he came to New York a while back and called President Bush “the devil”.
Anyway, this all seems to have been stimulated by comments from a leading Mexican politico who attended a recent conference on democracy in Caracas:
He did not mention any names, but his comments came on the same weekend that Manuel Espino, president of Mexico’s ruling National Action Party, criticised Mr Chavez at a pro-democracy conference in Caracas.
Mr Espino told the conference a plan by Mr Chavez to end term limits on Venezuela’s presidency were a threat to democracy. He accused Mr Chavez of trying to extend his rule indefinitely with the proposed constitutional reform, which would let Mr Chavez run for the presidency again in 2012.
Ooops. Not how to get on Chavez’ good side. Now for the “soviet” part:
Mr Chavez said the reform package would increase the influence of local community councils and student groups as part of his “21st-Century socialism” revolution. (emphasis added)
There is a Russian word for this: Soviet, which literally translates as “council” As developed in Russia, and as applied in other Communist countries, the Soviet provided a fig-leaf of popular feedback and participation, while at the same time providing a very effective way of identifying, isolating, and targeting of any who had the temerity to oppose or question the (generally) pre-determined course of action desired by the designated party leadership.
He is due to present the proposal to Venezuela’s National Assembly next month. The assembly consists solely of politicians who back the president.
This of course is exactly comparable to the “Supreme Soviet”.
Pity the Venezuelans…they’re on what increasingly looks like a sad, downhill path to a new “dictatorship of the proletariat”.
The Non-Intelligent Response Or, the Salvation of the West
Some singularly salient points made by Phanarath the Dane in a guest posting on Gates of Vienna.
The West has become a very civilized place.
We have become used to dealing with people of reason and good morals. So even when we have enemies we tend to look for something good in them, something they would like to happen, something that would make it worth their while to make peace with us. We think that a reasonable deal can usually make things better for everyone involved.
And this is because we are clever and civilized. We don’t run around attacking people for no other reason than that they are unknown to us. We try to talk to them, thinking that a common understanding will benefit all parties. However, we didn’t arrive at this way of doing things in a peaceful manner. We had to fight many wars and share many stories with our former enemies before these ideas dawned open us….
However, we seem to fall somewhat short when dealing with Muslims. It seems that all the resources and the justifications tend to fall their way.
This IS a major problem.
But when empires were still around there was another way of dealing with things. From the Romans to the Nazis (in eastern Europe and Russia) it was the custom to execute a number of civilians whenever a soldier was killed by what might be a fraction of the local population. The British empire had the same way of dealing with such things. If a British soldier was killed ten or a hundred would be swinging on the gallows indiscriminately the next day.
Today we know that this kind of punishment is immoral and unjust.
War is hell. Killing civilians in air raids could be equally defined as immoral and unjust. Oh well. to quotes Cicero Silent leges inter arma. (In time of war the laws are silent.)
But back then people counted on it. And it became the natural order of things. So when the Romans, the Brits, or the Nazis killed off a village, people would tend to blame those that had made them angry.
I would love to be a “good†person. But at the same time I have come to understand that morals are no good if they don’t do any good.
When we try to respond intelligently to the threats the Western world is faced with today, we ignore the fact that we are dealing with barbarians. Any of the old empires would have done a lot better then us. The danger we face is Muslims, and they are not as civilized as we would like them to be. They have no self-interest that we can try to understand, not as a group anyway. The intelligent response will not work. It will only be exploited.
Yep, sure enough. It’s pointless to try to negotiate with psychopaths.
Soldiers of an empire would be expected to kill any commoner who looked at them in a wrong way. They would only be held responsible if they happened to kill someone “importantâ€Â. The USA is not behaving anywhere near the way an empire would. So basically the US especially, and the West in general, is getting all the blame for being an empire without getting any of the benefits, and it is not working very well for us.
What will work is a predictable response to any Muslim offense, and the response must be repeated every time the offense happens. And I suppose that the time for killing innocent people is past.
There are several useful suggestions as to possible “predictable responses”. Unfortunately, we haven’t YET been bloodied enough to REALLY take the war seriously.
Taliban says two German hostages killed
Can you understand a mentality that BRAGS that it committed murder, even when evidence indicates that this was not the case?
Neither can the Chief.
A purported Taliban spokesman said yesterday the Islamic militia had killed two German hostages and would trade 23 captive South Koreans for imprisoned Taliban fighters.
The spokesman offered no proof for his claim of the kidnapped Germans, which was disputed by both Afghanistan and Germany.
Afghan officials said one of the Germans appeared to have died from a heart attack, while the other is still alive.
“Everything indicates he was a victim of the stress of the kidnapping,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in Berlin.
In reversal, Canada dabbles with health care privatization
As Michael Moors latest cinematic fantasy illustrates, the US left is driving full tilt for
Canada, once considered the bedrock of national health care systems, is in the beginning stages of change toward free-market health insurance. But in a country where free health care is an afterthought, change comes slowly.
For the first time, private health care clinics are proliferating throughout Canada and arguments for allowing private physicians to practice freely are being heard.
“You are seeing the Medicare orthodoxy of the last 30 years being questioned in Canada,” said Dr. David Gratzer, a registered physician in Canada and the U.S., and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a nonprofit public-policy think tank. “Over the last two years, the health care system has dramatically changed to allow more private health care.”
Now, if we can just keep Hillary et al from shoving the failed socialistic model down our throats…
Some Tortured Thoughts on Torture
Ken over at South Dakota Politics shares some of his thoughts and concerns stimulated by the President’s recent order banning torture by the C.I.A. He (rightly) states his general agreement with same. Nevertheless, this posting raises several points of possible divergence with my reading on the situation.
First of all, waterboarding is an extremely unpleasant experience. Ken’s post describes the set-up and execution of same in detail.
It’ is also, as he notes, very effective at inducing the sharing of information without any physical damage (bloodshed, wounding, broken bones, etc).
There is another point concerning this type of interrogation that the Chief has never seen mention of: the US military is in the business of routinely torturing it’s own personnel during training exercises.
During the Chief’s naval career, he had a Commanding Officer who was a former carrier pilot. Pilots, air crewmen, and others who have a higher than usual probability or possibility of being captured must complete training that is referred to in the best tradition of military abbreviations as SERE, standing for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. In other words, it is a realistic and practical introduction, up close and personal, of what could be expected if captured by typical enemy forces.
After some preliminary orientation, the trainees are taken into a field environment, and are given the opportunity to try to escape being captured by the “Aggressor” or enemy force, which is very realistically enacted by fellow US personnel. Resistance is futile. Even if the trainee is a former Boy Scout, and able to evade, after a time loudspeakers direct “surrender”.
Then the REAL fun begins, with aggressive and hostile interrogation by the enemy “re-enactors”, INCLUDING at times direct application fo physical force (non-damaging beatings), unpleasant temperature exposures for extended periods, sleep deprivation, denial fo food and water, isolation, and other forms of unpleasantness INCLUDING WATER-BOARDING.
It was the stated opinion of the officer that virtually anyone subjected to this would eventually crack, and threat the purpose of the training was to prepare our guys so they wouldn’t be surprised by their poor treatment, and that if/when they did give in to the inevitable, it wouldn’t totally destroy their sense of worth to themselves, or to the nation.
This officer added in conclusion, that although the (then future) Chief was not in a category that ordinarily received SERE training, that he still had connections that could get me into that if I wanted to. I passed on the opportunity, but crazily enough, as I think about it I almost which I hadn’t…just to know that I could have faced it and survived. Oh well.
Note that none of these aggressive interrogations PERFORMED AS ROUTINE TRAINING IN THE US MILITARY were considered to be torture.
What DOES constitute practical torture? Check out Sen. John McCain’s (and others’) experiences.
So…where does this leave things? The Chief would submit that if it is something that we were willing to put ourselves through, then there should be no problem with using the same procedures on REAL enemies, especially in light of the circumstances of WW-IV/Great War on Terror, as so aptly described in Ken’s conclusion:
If a weapon of mass destruction were to go off on American soil, it would put the nation into a state of emergency such as it has never seen. The army and all police forces, state and federal, would proceed to do whatever they could to make sure that it doesn’t happen again, without bothering with such conveniences as due process.
And if it were made public that we could have stopped the disaster if only we had been willing to use more brutal means, I can assure you that both parties would immediately cleanse themselves of any scruples they might have had about torture. Nor would anyone who opposed the use of torture for state security have a chance to be elected dog catcher ever again. I am not telling you what should happen. I am telling you what will happen.
If you want to preserve a republic that can afford scruples about torture, you have to prevent the unthinkable from happening. And that may mean making some hard choices now.
Hear, hear!
This comes from the UK, referred to in Orwellian terms as Airfield One, and was posted on a site called The Devil’s Kitchen, detailing some sad details of the operation of the Blair/Brown iteration of EngSoc.
If we thought that OUR welfare system has problems, it’s nothing compared to what seems to be happening over there. In addition, their media coverage of the situation is apparently also seriously screwed up.
The situation is so FUBAR, the Chief suggests checking it out directly, if you’re curious. Be warned, the language is sometimes diabolically hot, but generally the situation deserves it.
Sex Ed for Kindergarteners ‘Right Thing to Do,’ Says Obama
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told Planned Parenthood Tuesday that sex education for kindergarteners, as long as it is “age-appropriate,” is “the right thing to do.”
“‘Barack Obama supports teaching sex education to kindergarteners,'” said Obama mimicking Keyes’ distinctive style of speech. “Which — I didn’t know what to tell him (laughter).”
“But it’s the right thing to do,” Obama continued, “to provide age-appropriate sex education, science-based sex education in schools.”
This is what passes for mainstream in the Donk party these days? Apparently the MSM thinks so!
Pentagon Rebukes Sen. Clinton on Iraq
The Pentagon told Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton that her questions about how the U.S. plans to eventually withdraw from Iraq boosts enemy propaganda. In a stinging rebuke to a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman responded to questions Clinton raised in May in which she urged the Pentagon to start planning now for the withdrawal of American forces.
A copy of Edelman’s response, dated July 16, was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.
“Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia,” Edelman wrote. He added that “such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks.” (emphasis added)
YES! It’s high time this has been highlighted instead of supinely accepting Hil’s seditious (if not treasonous) conduct.
Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines called Edelman’s answer “at once outrageous and dangerous,” and said the senator would respond to his boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Yeah. Dangerous to her image as a responsible candidate for the office of President.
Clinton has privately and publicly pushed Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace two months ago to begin drafting the plans for what she said will be a complicated withdrawal of troops, trucks and equipment. “If we’re not planning for it, it will be difficult to execute it in a safe and efficacious way,” she said then.
First, planning ANY military maneuver is NOT a part of the responsibility of Congress collectively, or any individual member thereof, no matter what sort of demi-god status is granted by the MSM.
Second, there is no way to withdraw from Iraq under current conditions in “a safe and efficacious way” as far as the US national security is concerned, to say nothing of the probable fate of our in-country allies and associates after a US retreat.
Edelman’s letter does offer a passing indication the Pentagon might, in fact, be planning how to withdraw, saying: “We are always evaluating and planning for possible contingencies. As you know, it is long-standing departmental policy that operational plans, including contingency plans, are not released outside of the department.”
Quick! Somebody get the cluebat out and slap her to MAYBE get a clue about a concept she is apparently incapable of understanding: “operational security”.
Of course since she evidently doesn’t care about homeland security, or national security, why should the troops actual operational security be any different.
Plame Lawsuit Dismissed in CIA Leak Case
Former CIA operative Valerie Plame lost a lawsuit Thursday that demanded money from Bush administration officials whom she blamed for leaking her agency identity.
Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had accused Vice President Dick Cheney and others of conspiring to disclose her identity in 2003. Plame said that violated her privacy rights and was illegal retribution for her husband’s criticism of the administration.
U.S. District Judge John D. Bates dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds and said he would not express an opinion on the constitutional arguments.
this never even got into the salient point that Plame’s “secret status” had been a thing of the past, and at the time of her so-called “outing”, she was a desk analyst, no longer subject to the legal protections afforded to secret field agents.
This whole deal is really much ado about nothing, except an attempt to throw so much mud at the Bush administration that SOMETHING might stick – which didn’t happen except for the side-splatter that hit Scooter Libby.
Asian Parasite Killing Western Bees
SOme good news for beekeepers, but correspondingly bad news for enviro moonbats who have been predicting TEOTWAKI (see this site jargonology section) due to the imminent loss of pollination from honeybees.
A parasite common in Asian bees has spread to Europe and the Americas and is behind the mass disappearance of honeybees in many countries, says a Spanish scientist who has been studying the phenomenon for years.
The culprit is a microscopic parasite called Nosema ceranae said Mariano Higes, who leads a team of researchers at a government-funded apiculture centre in Guadalajara, the province east of Madrid that is the heartland of Spain’s honey industry.
What’s the science?
He and his colleagues have analysed thousands of samples from stricken hives in many countries.
Sounds about right to the Chief.
“We started in 2000 with the hypothesis that it was pesticides, but soon ruled it out,” he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.
Pesticide traces were present only in a tiny proportion of samples and bee colonies were also dying in areas many miles from cultivated land, he said.
Ooops! There goes one of the enviro moonbats’ favorite hypotheses!
They then ruled out the Varroa mite, which is easy to see and which was not present in most of the affected hives. For a long time Higes and his colleagues thought a parasite called Nosema apis, common in wet weather, was killing the bees. “We saw the spores, but the symptoms were very different and it was happening in dry weather too.”
So much for several possible biohazards.
Then he decided to sequence the parasite’s DNA and discovered it was an Asian variant, Nosema ceranae. Asian honeybees are less vulnerable to it, but it can kill European bees in a matter of days in laboratory conditions.
“Nosema ceranae is far more dangerous and lives in heat and cold. A hive can become infected in two months and the whole colony can collapse in six to 18 months,” said Higes, whose team has published a number of papers on the subject.
Another theory points a finger at mobile phone aerials, but Higes notes bees use the angle of the sun to navigate and not electromagnetic frequencies.
Darn! Another moonbat fave bites the dust!
Other elements, such as drought or misapplied treatments, may play a part in lowering bees’ resistance, but Higes is convinced the Asian parasite is the chief assassin.
Why? DNA apprehends another perp!
“We’ve no doubt at all it’s Nosema ceranae and we think 50 percent of Spanish hives are infected,” he said.
Spain, with 2.3 million hives, is home to a quarter of the European Union’s bees.
His team have also identified this parasite in bees from Austria, Slovenia and other parts of Eastern Europe and assume it has invaded from Asia over a number of years. Now it seems to have crossed the Atlantic and is present in Canada and Argentina, he said. The Spanish researchers have not tested samples from the United States, where bees have also gone missing.
OK. If N. ceranae is the culprit, it’s hard to deal with, right? I mean TEOTWAKI must still be on schedule for the moonbats to be justified, right?
Wrong.
Treatment for Nosema ceranae is effective and cheap — 1 euro (US$1.4) a hive twice a year — but beekeepers first have to be convinced the parasite is the problem.
Science comes through!
OK. So what’s the fix?
Democrats cut ‘John Doe’ provision
Congressional Democrats today failed to include a provision in homeland security legislation that would protect the public from being sued for reporting suspicious behavior that may lead to a terrorist attack, according to House Republican leaders.
WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THESE DONKS?!
“This is a slap in the face of good citizens who do their patriotic duty and come forward, and it caves in to radical Islamists,” said Rep. Peter T. King, New York Republican and ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee.
Couldn’t have said it any better myself.
A couple of related items concerning the recent Senate vaudeville act by Dusty Harry Reid, et al.
The tidy cots, the earnest speeches, the candlelight vigil. After staging a 21-hour debate over the war in Iraq on Tuesday night, Sen. Harry Reid pined for drama, publicity and pundit chatter. Did the Nevada Democrat’s dream of buzz and popular appeal come true?
Well, not exactly.
“It was a smoke screen. Senators talk all night of ending the war and bringing our troops home, and they still give Bush billions,” peace activist Cindy Sheehan said yesterday.
“This was a buzzless venture if I ever saw one,” writer Lucianne Goldberg said. “I think Reid just made people mad.”
The end result of the theatrical production?…:
The Democrat-led Senate yesterday failed to set a spring deadline for withdrawing most U.S. troops from Iraq after a rare all-night debate did not sway Republicans united behind giving President Bush’s war strategy through September to show progress.
The amendment died 52-47  falling shy of the 60 needed to advance it to a simple-majority vote. Democrats’ months-long push to attract support to end the war garnered one new Republican, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, who co-sponsored the bill last week.
“Last night’s theatrics accomplished nothing,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “We could have had the vote on the [amendment] without any of this fanfare. And that’s really all it amounted to: sound and fury.”
SO, net result: Presidential polls climbing, Congressional polls sinking:
The Senate action took place as a Zogby poll released yesterday showed that 14 percent of likely voters rated Congress’ performance as excellent or good  20 points below Mr. Bush’s 34 percent and the lowest ever recorded by the pollster.
And they say there ain’t no justice!
New death plot chills relations with Putin
Reported from the Times of London:
The murder of a second Russian dissident on British soil was averted last month when police and intelligence agencies intercepted a suspected killer in London, it was confirmed last night.
In a move likely to damage already strained relations between Britain and Russia, Scotland Yard said that officers arrested a man on suspicion of conspiracy to murder on June 21 and held him for two days. He was later handed over to the immigration service and deported back to Russia.
Stuff like this always makes the Chief recall that Putin was the last head of the old Soviet KGB. Just as a refresher – the KGB was the Soviet analog of the Nazi Gestapo. Imagine a Martin Bormann or a Heinrich Himmler as head of government of a major power.
Let yourself just imagine the type of “apprenticeship” experiences and the types of “ticket punching” required for someone to (virtually) claw their way through the apparatchik nomenklatura of the USSR to become head of the KGB.
Trust me on this…it doesn’t make a pretty picture. If you DON’T trust me on this, fine – go read Solzhenitsyn’s GULAG Archipelago. for some of the (literally) gory details.
Keeping this in mind, who then could be surprised by by this case, or the earlier case of Litvenenko (killed by radioactive poisoning), or the reporters regularly assassinated in Russia.