Shots Across The Bow

The first rose of spring

Sometimes, you just have to stop and smell the roses.

I can't believe this bush came back. It died back to the ground last year after a disastrous attempt at pruning. Nature is certainly resilient.

Knoxville Radio

You know, we have it pretty good here, despite a lot of complaints. Yes, we have our generic syndicated stations, playing all the latest crap pouring out of Hollywood, prepackaged for mind-numbing hours of drool-inducing listening, interspersed with adds for the latest sugar infested treat or designer tampons and what-not. Star 102.1 and B97.5 spring to mind

We have our university station, carrying NPR and classical music, where all the DJ's sound like they're on tranqs and decaf, unable to get excited about anything.

We also have the "Classic Rock" stations who've kept the same play list for the last 30 years, although the DJ's have changed, the music hasn't.

Before I joined the Navy in 1984, I used to listen to WIMZ. They played the best mix of rock, carrying all the latest cuts. When I came back to Knoxville in 1995, they were still playing the exact same songs.

The word pathetic springs to mind.

Then there's 104.5 The Bone where you can practically hear the mullets growing.

So that's the downside of Knoxville radio. But there is an upside.

We'll start with WDVX, a very small, independent station that plays just about any music under the sun, with a strong leaning towards roots music, Americana, blues, bluegrass, alternative country, and anything else that feels right. You can count on hearing something different there. They are publicly supported, and are setting up a fundraising music festival in my neck of the woods at the Dumplin Valley festival Grounds. A quick look at the acts they have lined up will give you a good idea of what this station is all about.

Next is a long time Knoxville radio station that's recently gone in a new direction. WOKI has become 100.3 The River, and abandoned the classic rock format to bring an eclectic mix of new and old, blues and rock, Americana and reggae to the Knoxville radio scene. Longtime Knoxville DJ Phil Williams returned to radio at the River with new partner Frank Murphy. It's nice to listen to a local morning show, rather than some syndicated zoo that has nothing to do with Knoxville. WOKI brings local programming together with some of the best syndicated programming available. Locally, they produce the Americana Cafe, a weekly tour of the bet and latest offerings in Americana music. Syndicated offereings include Acoustic Cafe, House of Blues Radio Hour, and E-town, all featuring music heard only on the River.

One of the things I like about the station is that they play new music from old artists. For example, Tom Petty's latest album, The Last DJ has gotten extensive airplay.

But the strength of the station is in new music from new artists. Jack Johnson, Norah Jones, Susan Tedeschi, Lucinda Williams, and John Mayer have all been introduced to Knoxville listeners by WOKI. Even better, The River has sponsored concerts by most, if not all of these artists, many of them free.

It doesn't get much better than that.

WDVX and WOKI both support local musicians, providing venues for acts that otherwise would have to rely on word of mouth to get their music out. Both stations have studios that they use for live performances, and sponsor events around town.

Glancing at the AM side of the dial, we have WNOX, Newstalk99. The format is tried and true; news, weather, and sports, with a heavy accent on the sports, please. What's different is that while many talk radio stations have cut down on original programming in favor of syndicated stuff, WNOX has moved in the other direction. Mornings are run by Hallerin Hilton Hill, followed by Frank Cagle for a 6 hour block of local programming. After three hours for Rush Limbaugh, local programming resumes with Sports Talk with John Wilkerson and Jimmy Hyams, then a variety of local shows until 9PM, when syndicated shows take over, including the bizarre but entertaining Coast to Coast AM. If you want to know what is going on in Knoxville, this is the station to turn to.

There may be some other good radio stations out there that I'm not listening to. If so, let me know and I'll give them a chance.

Anything to avoid Britney and Christina, n'sync, and all their clones...

More on SARS

I was listening to NPR on my way into work and they had an update on the SARS epidemic in China. According to the report, Biejing is averaging 100+ new reported cases per day, and that is not counting the cases in rural areas where tracking is scarce. She reported that the mass exodus from Beijing has exported the disease to those rural areas, and new infections are appearing there.

She also brought up an interesting point that the seriousness of the epidemic is in no small part due to the attempts of the Chinese gov't to cover it up.

Also, Fox is reporting that some patients in Hong Kong have suffered relapses after being pronounced recovered.

Here are the latest figures from WHO on the SARS outbreak While the disease appears to have peaked in most areas, it's still roaring through China. I expect that when the full extent of the rural cases is known, the total number of cases will explode upwards. Given that care in rural areas will be significantly less than that in Beijing, we can also expect the death toll to rise.

Living glass

I first learned of Dale Chihuly through Ben, an artist friend of my ex wife. He had taped a special on the artist, and we watched it one night over at his house.

Chihuly turns glass into living, breathing sculptures of light and fantasy.

Entry to one of his studios.

Another ceiling installation.

I'm not much of a fan of most modern art; it leaves me cold. I don't know the vocabulary, and too many of today's artists feel insulted if you expect them to provide a glossary. Chihuly makes pieces that grab your eye, and bring you inside the art; he stil,subscribes to the old school, that art is about beauty.

I can get into that.

Take a stroll through his site, and see just how soft and warm cold, hard, glass can be when shaped by a master.

Todays post...

... is over at HobbsOnlineAM. Here's a taste:

A newspaper is supposed to report the news, not distort the news. In a move worthy of the worst of the tabloids, the News-Sentinel took Sen. Burchett's comment out of context, stating that he was calling for the deportation of all who voice their dissent, which simply was not the case. When a journalist slants his coverage so baldly, he sacrifices his credibility, his stock in trade. He causes the paper he works for to lose credibility as well, and once a paper has lost it's credibility, what is it good for?

I write a blog. I am not neutral or unbiased, nor have I ever claimed to be.

But I am honest, a claim which seems to me the News-Sentinel cannot make.

A puzzle

There are 9 people in the picture below. How many can you find?




from Grand Illusions

UPDATE: I've added a potential solution in the comments. If you want to solve it on your own, don't read them. If you find something different, let me know...

I'm convinced...

To prove they were sincere in their apologies to President Bush, the Dixie Chicks posed naked on the cover of Entertainment Weekly.

I know I always take women more seriously when they're naked.

More on SARS

Yesterday, I posted a piece making fun of Michael Fumento, who downplayed the significance of SARS. Also yesterday, as part of the Volunteer Tailgate Party, I linked a piece by manish of Damn Foreigner, who argued that SARS is not a significant threat.

Diversity is a wonderful thing, but even more wonderful is the fact that we both are correct.

How?

Well, it's a matter of perspective. My problem with Fumento is he was arguing that the reaction to the SARS outbreak was driven by greed, not any genuine concern, and that SARS was a minor problem. Manish argued that the individual has relatively litle to fear from SARS, at least right now. The two arguments don't conflict, because they are from different perspectives.

Manish argues from the individual point of view. 140 cases out of a population of 4.7 million means that the average person has little to fear. The risk is negligible.

However, from an epidemiological stand point, a virus with a mortality rate of 15% is quite serious indeed. Particularly when the virus mutates as frequently as this one does. While the variants today appear to be diffcult to transmit, that could change quickly, leading to devastation equal to the pandemic of 1918. Therefore SARS is a quite legitimate concern for the WHO and CDC.

It's all in the perspective.

Volunteer Tailgate Party

Welcome all to the Volunteer Tailgate Party. We hold it every two weeks, rotating among the members of the Rocky Top Brigade, a group of bloggers from Tennessee. We cover the spectrum from political commentary to fine arts, and everything in between. We count lawyers, homemakers, programmers, students, and artists among our members, and while we all share a Tennessee connection, our far flung membership extends from Canada to California, and from East Tennessee to Australia. But enough of my blather; follow the links below and enjoy some of the best of the Rocky Top Brigade. I'll meet you again when you're done.

• First up is Andrew from Pathetic Earthlings, who shares his thoughts the day after the Columbia broke up.
  

  For fifty years, engineers could tell us how to get to Mars. But people need to tell the politicians and the contractors why. If one good thing is coming out of Columbia and the loss of her crew, it’s that we're ready to tell our politicians: because we can, because it’s there, because we’re Americans.

  
  
• Next we have a Southern Belle by the name of deb at Sugarfused. Deb shares her dietary downfall, then cruelly tempts the rest of us to join her.
  
• Now we turn to sayuncle, who shares two entries. First, he condenses the conundrum of abortion, then has a brief discussion of The Agonist and plagiarism
  
• Next up is Barry, from Inn of the Last Home, who writes a nice piece about overly zealous Christians, who drive people away from the church with their high pressure recruitment.
  

  [O]ne's decision to become a Christian is always an internal one - you can't be baptized and become a Christian, anymore than taking communion or just attending church - it's a deliberate, personal decision. It can't be coerced, it can't be bargained for, it can't be threatened and it can't be bartered.

  
  Barry's links may not work (thank you blogspot) If the link fails, go here, then scroll down to April 14.
  
• Now we come to Rex Mundi of Damn Art Diary, an artist and teacher to be, who poses a biblical puzzle . Again, if blogspot misbehaves, go here and scroll down to Mysteries of the New Testament
  
• Next up is Troy, from Jaded Journal and Troy Sounds Off. Troy shares his feelings immediately after Sept 11, 2001, feelings that are relavent today, as we work towards building a new Iraq
  
• Our next contributor is manish from Damn Foreigner, who posts about SARS, and the near panic reaction
  
• Next we have the founder of the Rocky Top Brigade, an anonymous gentleman who goes by the name of South Knox Bubba. He favors us with a parody of the newly updated and expanded Patriot Act. At least, I think it's a parody. These days, who can be sure?
  
• And last is me, your friend and humble narrator, I'll leave you with this remembrance of Easters past, affectionately called Easter Eggs and Pump Organs

And that's all for this edition, folks. See you again in two weeks.

Fumento strikes again!

Remember Michael Fumento? He's the guy who says the Atkins diet doesn't work.

Well, he's at it again. He now claims that SARS isn't really a threat, that it's a scam to scare up more dollars for biotech companies.

But there's fame, fortune, and big budgets in sounding the "emerging infection" alarm and warning of our terrible folly in being unprepared. The classic example is Ebola virus, which is terribly hard to catch, remains in Africa where it's always been, is now usually non-fatal, and – despite what reporters love to relate – does not turn the victims' internal organs "into mush."

Yet you'd almost swear that every outbreak of Ebola in Africa is actually taking place in Chicago. Laurie Garrett rode Ebola onto the bestseller list and talk show circuit with her book The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World out of Balance.
Since then, the U.S. government and various universities have also seen these faux plagues as budget boosters. The CDC publishes a journal called Emerging Infectious Diseases, though in any given issue it's hard to find an illness that actually fits the definition.

Apparently, the WHO is jumping on the scam bandwagon.

As a result of ongoing assessments as to the nature of outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Beijing and Shanxi Province, China, and in Toronto, Canada, WHO is now recommending, as a measure of precaution, that persons planning to travel to these destinations consider postponing all but essential travel. This temporary advice, which is an extension of travel advice previously issued for Guangdong Province and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China will be reassessed in three weeks time.

As is the Chinese government:

It said all primary and secondary schools in the capital would be closed for two weeks from Thursday, a move which will affect an estimated 1.7 million children.

Armies of disinfection squads in masks and rubber gloves and armed with spray guns spritzed down airports and planes, buses and terminals, trains and stations across the nation.

Earlier, the government shortened its Golden Week holiday in early May to discourage travel and prevent the further spread of SARS. But that will mean far less expenditure during one of the country's most popular vacation times.

Who knew the WHO was in league with the pharmas and biotech companies? To say nothing of the Chinese government which will lose billions in revenues over the SARS flap.

Current WHO estimates assign a mortality rate of 6% to SARS, while Fumento prefers a more conservative 4%. Others put the number much higher, as high as 15-20%, which is comparable to the flu epidemic which killed 20 million in 1918. For the sake of argument,let's use Fumento's number. He implies that 4% isn't all that bad, and that seems reasonable until you look at the the mortality rate in the US for all flu/pneumonia cases, which is .024%. Suddenly, 4% looks a lot bigger.

Fumento passes this off as due to poor healthcare availability, yet Canada is facing a greater than 10% mortality rate, with 15 deaths out of 140 reported cases.

To be fair, Fumento wrote his article before the Chinese gov't came clean and admitted the true extent of the problem, but I haven't seen or heard him issuing any retractions or clarifications.

I'm beginning to think that Fumento takes up a contrarian position reflexively, rather than from conviction. After all, you don't get headlines by agreeing with everybody. I think his credibility ranks right up there with The Center for Science in the Public Interest. They're the geniuses who figured out that fast food is bad for you. On second thought, they were right about that. Fumento slips further down the credibility ladder. Next stop, used car salesmen.

Slow posting today

I'm getting the Volunteer Tailgate Party together. If you haven't sent me an entry yet, hurry!

You don't want to miss it...

Get those criminals out of my living room!

Bill Hobbs has a story on a Tennessee version of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Apparently, the MPAA isn't satisfied with ramming federal legislation through, they want to hit the states as well.

If you use a firewall, if you archive music, if you listen to CD's on your computer, if you time shift shows off cable or satellite, if you think you have the right to wtch what you want, when you want, and that it is nobody's business what you watch, then you have a stake in stopping this legislation.

I have about 10 gigs of music files on my computer. They come from my CD collection (somewhere north of 300) and my cassette collection (also north of 300, although with some duplicates). Once I get my turntable repaired, I'll archive my albums as well. (Albums were round vinyl discs used to play prerecorded music before CD's took over the market. Ask you dad; he'll tell you all about them. Ask about 8 track tapes too.) These archives are perfectly legitimate under the fair use doctrine. It would also be legit for me to generate new CD mixes using these archives for my personal use.

However, this new legislation will require manufacturers to put security measures in place that would make it impossible. Bill has the links; contact your congress reps and senators and tell them to kill the state DMCA.

Get those criminals off the streets!

Yep, our police force has taken steps to make the streets of Knoxville safer for all of us. They are arresting and jailing parents whose kids skip school.

From KnoxNews.com:

Garren warned the children that they could be charged with truancy if they're 14, 15 or 16 years of age. She also warned parents that they could be summoned to court and put on probation to assure that their children attend school. About two dozen parents have violated that probation and have had to serve five or 10 days in jail, most on the weekends, she said.

The fact that our police spend any time on this, not to mention jail space for the parents, is ludicrous.

With jail space at a premium, shouldn't it be reserved for the ones who need it, you know, murderers, rapists, robbers, investment bankers, and other scum? Why waste a cell on some poor schmuck working two jobs to make ends meet whose kid sneaks out of class?

Yes, parents need to be accountable for the actions of their children, but is jail really the answer?

Shots from the home place

Just thought it was time for something a little different.

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

There's an easy one for ya Bubba!

A sad day on Rocky Top

Felice Bryant, the lyricist who wrote Rocky Top with her husband Boudleaux, died today.

She and her husband wrote songs for everybody from Buddy Holly to the Grateful Dead. Their music formed the soundtrack of a lot of lives over the years.

She was 77.

Arafat and Abbas

Arafat has rejected the reformist cabinet proposed by his Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas, leading to speculation that the Road Map to Peace is stillborn.

I have a solution that will prevent this problem.

The US, EU and UN should recognize Abbas' cabinet as the legitimate cabinet of Palestine, pending elections to be held once Arafat is out of power. Further, the US should use their influence to 'encourage' (force) Israel to recognize the new Cabinet.

Problem solved. In one stroke, Arafat is removed from power, joining OSama and Saddam in irrelevance, the Palestinians have a reformist government, and there will be a legitimate basis to begin peace talks.

Sure, it's bold, but these times require bold measures. Arafat will object, but he'll do so no matter what we do. Why keep him on the stage? A political assassination like this one is much cleaner than an actual one, and this way, he doesn't even get to claim matyrdom. He's just shoved to the side while the big boys get to work.

Bush has the stones to pull it off, but I doubt Kofi does.

Too bad. It really could work.

More vacillation from NOW

Mavra Stark claimed she was "thinking out loud" when she said she opposed charging Scott Peterson with double homicide in the murder of his wife and unborn son.

I doubt that.

"Thought" is obviously a foreign concept to this woman.

NOW responds to every issue with a knee-jerk pattern that's all too predictable, and Stark's comments were right in line with that pattern. A woman's right to choose is inviolate, trumping all other concerns, and must be vigorously defended whenever challenged. Only after assessing public opinion should that position be modified. The firestorm of criticism is what lead to Ms. Stark's rather anemic clarification, and the national organization's silence on the matter, not some deeply held conviction.

NOW is damaged goods, particularly after their unqualified support for Bill Clinton during the Lewinski affair. If feminists want to be taken seriously, it's time for NOW to be replaced by a more rational organization, one without the baggage of yesterday's battles.

Another win for Bush

Here's a surprise. Just yesterday, france and Russia were opposed to lifting sanctions on Iraq. Today, there's a different story:

In a surprise move, France on Tuesday proposed immediately suspending U.N. sanctions targeting Iraq civilians, an important step toward the U.S. goal of ending trade embargoes that have crippled the country's economy.

Imagine that; the french abandoned their allies in the Axis of Weasels, the Russians, in a transparent attempt to join the winning side.

Will anybody trust the french when this is all done?

Free speech only applies to those we agree with...

otherwise it's repression, oppression, and horrible.

While I've seen this from both sides, the left have raised it to an art form. Robin Williams is perfectly free to calim Bush is a dictator, but should somebody dare to question the wisdom of accepting political commentary from a comedian, and they are labelled as a Nazi out to stamp out the rights of ll good Americans.

Why is that, I wonder? Why can't the left tolerate a little dissent and why are they so threatened by the idea that unpopular opinions may carry consequences? The paranoia is real, just check out the hate mail received by a site which criticizes the hollywood activists and their lame pronouncements.

Let's try to nail this one down once and for all. A public boycott does not equal governmental suppression of free speech. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say you have a right to voice your opinion without any consequences from other citizens. This is a fabrication of the left, who like to play victim whenever possible.

The most ironic part of this whole thing is that the boycott has been the weapon of choice of the extreme left. The NAACP boycotted South Carolina in an attempt to force them to change their state flag. I don't recall anybody on the left crying about the crushing of dissent then. Lefties threatened boycotts of advertisers on Dr Laura's TV show, and succeeded in getting it cancelled. Did anybody cry about the repression of her opinion?

Obviously not.

You want free speech, you got it. Speak your mind, shout it from the mountaintop, get yourself a blog, preach it on the street corner.

Just be prepared to accept the consequences, particularly if your opinion is controversial or unpopular. If you are an entertainer, be aware that if you use your job as a soapbox, the views you express will become associated to your performance, and you just may alienate your audience.

Hypocrisy, thy name is UNSC

Specifically France and Russia. The two countries which pressed hardest to ease sanctions before the war are now pushing to maintain sanctions now that Hussein is gone.

Why?

It's called blackmail:

The council alone can determine whether those conditions are met and members like Russia and France have already signaled they would oppose lifting the sanctions without a broader role for the UN in Iraq than has so far been suggested by the United States.

But bluntly, unless the US allows France and Russia to profit off the sacrifice of Coalition soldiers, they'll allow the Iraqi's to starve.

Do we need allies such as this?

France and Russia profited for decades off Husseins regime. Lest we forget, even though America has been accused of arming Iraq, during the war we faced Kalishnikov rifles, not M16's. We found French missiles and rockets, not American. The Iraqi Air Force flew MiGs and Mirages, not F-15s and F-16s.

There is credible evidence that both Russian and French countries continued to support Husseins regime in violation of UN sanctions. And now they want to maintain the sanctions in a naked attempt to blackmail the US, holding the people of Iraq hostage.

Nope, not gonna happen, Pierre. The solution to this dilemma is simple, achievable, and benefits all concerned parties.

Except for France and Russia, that is.

The US should begin open trade with the interim Iraqi gov't as soon as possible. The sanctions were against the gov't of Saddam Hussein; he's gone, so are the sanctions. The UN can recognize this, or continue their quick march into the footnotes of history.

The NYT or Rummy...

...who's telling the truth? Time will tell.

According to the Times, The US wants to establish 4 military bases in Iraq:

The United States is planning a long-term military relationship with the emerging government of Iraq, one that would grant the Pentagon access to military bases and project American influence into the heart of the unsettled region, senior Bush administration officials say.

American military officials, in interviews this week, spoke of maintaining perhaps four bases in Iraq that could be used in the future: one at the international airport just outside Baghdad; another at Tallil, near Nasiriya in the south; the third at an isolated airstrip called H-1 in the western desert, along the old oil pipeline that runs to Jordan; and the last at the Bashur air field in the Kurdish north.

Now Rumsfeld has denied that there are any plans for such action. From the Times

Mr. Rumsfeld said no such discussions had reached his level at the Pentagon.

"The impression that's left around the world is that we plan to occupy the country, we plan to use their bases over the longer period of time, and it's flat false," Mr. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news briefing.

Mr. Rumsfeld said neither he nor Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, nor any other Pentagon official at what he considers a senior level had been involved in any discussions about a future military relationship with Iraq, or about using bases there.

"There has been zero discussion among senior Bush administration officials, the way I define senior, on that subject," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld was a little more outspoken, as quoted by WorldNet Daily:

"Let me just get this off my chest," Rumsfeld said in response to a question about the article. "I have no idea who these people talked to. But I'll tell you, if I were a journalist, I would ... remember who they are, and I'd write their name down, and I would rank them right at the bottom in terms of reliability, credibility, judgment [and] knowledge."

"The people peddling that stuff are wrong, and the people writing it should check things out better," he added later.

and

"The impression that's left around the world is that we plan to occupy the country, we plan to use their bases over the long period of time, and it's flat false," said Rumsfeld. "Now, what is going on? There are four bases that the U.S. is using in that country to help bring in humanitarian assistance, to help provide for stability operations. And are they doing that? Sure. But does that have anything to do with the long term footprint? Not a whit."

This one will be easy to follow up on. We'll see who's telling the truth and who's falls to the bottom of the credibility gap. Politicians rarely speak so definitively, so I'm giving the nod to Rummy for now.

Bush diplomacy in action

Syria looks like they are going to work with us instead of against us.

The Bush administration underscored its newly positive stance on Syria Monday with praise for Syria's closing its border with Iraq and stopping Iraqi diplomats from boarding flights to Damascus.

Are they our friend and ally? Not hardly. But neither are they allied with Hussein. Saddam's son-in-law by some accounts was hiding in Syria before returning to Iraq and turning himself in. Why the change of heart? Perhaps the changing climate in Syria was not to his liking.

In any event, Syria is growing more cooperative, choosing the carrot over the stick. Now it is up to the Bush administration to ensure that the carrot remains the more attractive inducement by including Syria in the Middle East peace process.

Terrorism is like a disease, and has to be fought with a dual appraoch. You have to treat the symptoms as well as the root cause. It will do no good to take out Hussein if we allow the conditions which breed terror to continue. We've eliminated a present terrorist threat in Iraq, treating the symptom; now we have some breathing room to try and address some of the root causes: poverty, ignorance, and repression.

And the problem with that would be...?

Rick Santorum accidently got it right the other day:

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything," Santorum, R-Pa., said in the interview, published Monday.

What happens in the bedroom of two consenting adults is nobodies business but theirs. I'll even take it a step further and say that the gov't has no right to restrict marriage based on gender or number. Civil Marriage is a binding contract between two or more adults. As long as all parties are part of the contract, why shold the gov't have an interest in the details of the agreement?

Now, religious marriage is another beast entirely, but once again, the gov't has no business interfering there either. If a church wants to recognize same sex marriages, great. If they don't, also great.

Loaded words

I was listening to NPR All Things Considered on my way home last night, and I kept hearing them use the phrase, "Iraqi reconstruction."

Maybe it's just because I'm a Southerner, but "reconstruction' has a specific meaning to me, and some fairly unpleasant connotations, and it started me wondering.

We didn't talk about 'reconstruction in Kosovo, or Afghanistan, or anywhere else we've dropped bombs. I don't recall any talk of 'reconstructing' romania when Ceausescu was deposed. But now every third word out of CNN/ABC and the rest is "reconstruction." Heck, even Fox has used the word. You'd think that a news agency conceived and headquartered out of Atlanta would be a little more aware of the emotional loading of the word, and choose a more neutral word like "rebuilding," or even a positive word like "restoring."

Then again, maybe there was a reason for the choice. To a large number of people, "reconstruction" carries the same subconscious reactions as "occupation", without being overtly antagonistic. After all, Republicans did oversee the rape of the South known as reconstruction, and with elections right around the corner, it couldn't hurt to play on those old resentments.

Or am I just being paranoid?

Just out of curiousity...

How is the EU fixed to handle members who wish to withdraw? Will they have to fight a Civil War, or can they leave the Union as freely as they entered it?

Anybody have the answer to this one?

UPDATE Answered my own question. A quick google search found this:

Radek Khol is an analyst at the Czech Institute of International Relations. He agrees with Vahl that there are no current legal mechanisms to allow members to leave the EU. "Within the current treaty on the European Union, [leaving the EU] would be effectively impossible. Nevertheless, the new constitutional treaty, which is prepared by the Convention on the Future of Europe, is already putting such a clause into the relevant chapters [of the text]," Khol said.

However:

Khol said, however, that withdrawing from the EU will not be easy. Candidate countries will be receiving substantial EU financial support, and their economies will be closely integrated into EU structures. Divorce, he said, would be a complicated matter. "If any of the future EU states decides at some point that it wants to leave the union, it would be, indeed, fairly complicated, in political, economic, legal, and financial aspects. And I think that most of the states would probably try to avoid such a prospect," Khol said.

Khol said the EU, from the beginning, was created as a one-way street and counts on close political and economic integration.

"Yes, you can leave, although there's no rules on it just yet (we'll get right on drafting those rules and get back to you) but be assured, if you want to leave, we'll work something out, although we will make it as painful and expensive as we possibly can."

Hmmm. A quick history lesson might be in order. It's generally better if these things are worked out beforehand...

A prediction

France will reveal herself over the next couple of years not only as a false ally, but as an active enemy. The double cross of Colin Powell, and the obstruction of the war on Iraq were symptomatic of a shift in global alliances. France has never been satisfied with playing a secondary role in world politics, and is willing to do just about anything to regain her past glory. Quite correctly, she sees the US as her main obstacle to achieving this goal, so her foreign policy is bent on weakening US influence while strengthening her own.

Until recently, france has taken a subtle approach, working behind the scenes at the UN and EU, working to lessen US influence in the former, while shifting the latter to oppose America not only economically, but politically as well. Now france is taking a more active role, wanting to be seen as the leader in the battle against the cowboy American imperialists.

In the future, look for france to move ever closer to anti-American powers, particularly in the Middle East. France already has close ties to syria, and we find out more every day how close she was to Saddam Hussein. Despite all the lefty claims that we armed Iraq, almost all of their most modern weaponry was either french or Russian.

That wasn't an accident.

France wants to dominate Europe at the very least, and the Western Hemisphere if possible, and she sees the Middle East as the means to achieve that dominance. Every move france has made makes sense in this light, from her covert support of Saddam Hussein, to her overt antagonism to the US, to her willingness to weaken NATO and the UN itself.

If you're looking for imperialists, check the french. It's in their blood.

Easter Eggs and Pump Organs

Easter was always a big deal around the Hailey home as I was growing up. The night before, we'd dye eggs for the Easter Bunny to hide the next morning. I always wondered about that bunny. What does a rabbit have to do with Easter?

I asked my priest about that one day.

"My son," he said, "Jesus was scourged, crucified, died, and buried. If rising from the dead three days later ain't pulling a rabbit out of a hat, I don't know what is!"

Those Jesuits always had an answer for everything.

Anyway, we would spend the night before Easter waiting for the eggs to cool enough to dye. Now, there's a special property about eggs you have to understand; they hold heat.

Forever.

Second degree burns from grabbing a too-hot egg can really slow down your hunting technique the next day. Just a friendly tip from me to you.

Dying the eggs is always a lot of fun. But you have to throw out those little wire hoops they pack in those kits. Those things are worse than useless. You put the egg on it, bring it over to the cup where your dye is, begin to lower the egg gently, when it rolls off the wire, drops into the cup, splashing dye all over the table, your shirt, the floor, and the dog. We had a miniature poodle called Choo-Choo, because he used to tear around the yard in circles, and after two or three drops, he looked like a LeRoy Neiman painting.

Dying eggs requires a strong spoon, preferably slotted, to allow the dye to run out, and a steady wrist. Oh sure, you can just dump the egg into the dye and let it be one color, but where's the fun in that? You have to dip the egg halfway into one color, then halfway into another color to get that lovely two tone effect. The more daring go for the tricolored eggs, but that does require some knowledge of the colorwheel to avoid the dreaded brown band, which results from adding two many colors. After all, eggs come in brown naturally, why dye them that color?

Along with a strong spoon, the right cup for the dye is important. It has to have a wide mouth, otherwise the egg won't fit. A bowl is too big because the egg can't be covered by the dye. A coffee cup is perfect, but a word of caution: The dye can seep in and stain the cup, so you might want to stay out of the fine china cabinet.

True artists will use the little crayon that comes with the dye kit to make intricate designs and drawings on the egg, transforming a simple egg into an amazing work of art. The rest of us are lucky to be able to scrawl our initials legibly on the egg.

Once the eggs were dyed and stacked in their cartons, we'd go to bed, and Mom would hide the eggs, usually in the house so they wouldn't be eaten by the neighborhood dogs. The next morning, we'd get up and rush to the kitchen to find our Easter baskets, filled with candy and chocolate rabbits. A solid chocolate rabbit makes for an excellent breakfast, by the way.

Once Mom and Dad were up, we began the search for the eggs. We'd scour the house to find the eggs, having a great time. Eventually all the eggs were found, and then an ugly reality would set in.

What do you do with 3 dozen hardboiled eggs? Even CoolHand Luke would have trouble with 3 dozen hard-boiled eggs. Mom would peel all the eggs and make egg salad with them.

I can't stand egg salad, and neither could my brother and sister. It would sit in the fridge for a week or two, then Mom would throw it out. Eventually, she saved herself the aggravation and threw the eggs out immediately without going through the intermediate egg salad phase. It seemed to work out better for all concerned.

I think I started this to tell you about my last Easter Egg hunt.

I was about 10 or 11, and this was before Mom gave up on the egg salad maneuver, so the eggs were still there after church. Mom and Dad went to take a nap, and my brother, sister, andI decided to hold our own Easter Egg hunt. We took turns hiding the eggs for the other two, and passed a happy afternoon.

What none of us noticed was that, after several games of "hide the eggs", we finished with fewer eggs than we'd started. When Mom made the egg salad, she assumed we'd eaten a couple eggs, so she made the egg salad and life went on.

For several months.

Now, in this house where we used to live, we had an old pump organ. For those of you who haven't seen one, a pump organ is a small pipe organ that you play by pumping two pedals with your feet. It was pretty cool, and we would play on it every now and then, but keeping the air flowing was pretty hard work. My mom wanted to play it though and came up with a creative way to avoid the work. She looked all over the organ until she found the vent for the air, and she hooked up a vacuum cleaner to the vent. The vacuum pulled air though the pipes so she didn't have to pump the pedals.

Anyway, one July afternoon, Mom decided to play the organ, and didn't go to the trouble of riggin the vacuum cleaner. She started pumping the pedals and playing the organ, and noticed a foul smell coming from the organ. Apparently one of us kids had hidden an egg under one of the pedals, where it sat and fermented, just waiting to release one of the foulest odors it has ever been my misfortune to experience.

Dad was out of town on business when this happened, but the sulfurous stench still clung to the drapes when he got home. Mom explained about the egg in the organ, and Dad decreed that there would be no more Easter egg hunts in the Hailey house. I do have to give him credit though; despite what must have been a terrible temptation, he didn't make any jokes about how Mom's music stunk.

Volunteer Tailgate Party

OK, friends and neighbors, I'm hosting the 2nd Volunteer Taigate Party, scheduled to go to press next Thursday, April 24. Please have your submissions in by Tuesday, April 22, and I'll have them all posted by Thursday Morning. Be bold! Be bright! Be brilliant!

But then, you always are!

Once again, we see that we don't need embryonic stem cells.

Adult stem cells have been used in more successfull therapies than embryonic. The latest from New Scientist:

Treatment with adult stem cells has cured mice suffering with a form of multiple sclerosis, say Italian researchers. Almost a third of the mice recovered completely from paralysis of their back legs, and the rest all showed substantial improvement.

"It was amazing," says Angelo Vescovi, of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan. He has now begun experiments giving human adult stem cells to monkeys with the nerve and brain damage seen in MS. But he warns that success in mice does not guarantee success in humans: "I wouldn't want to raise expectations."

With success after success for adult stem cell therapies, and setback upon setback for embryonic stem cell therapies, why is there such a push to do such ethically troubling work? Could there be a political agenda?

Naah. I'll leave the dark conspiracies to Bubba. He's better at them than I am.

Time to outlaw PVC and Hairspray

Here's a true idiot.

A teenager has lost his sight after being struck in the face with a frog, shot from a so-called "potato gun."

Daniel Benjamin Berry, 17, received the injury after he looked down the barrel of the gun's PVC pipe barrel and was hit in the face by the frog. His mother, Lisa Berry, said he's now blind in both eyes. She hopes her family's tragedy serves as a warning to other parents.

First, what the hell was he doing putting a frog in a potato gun. That alone tells me he deserves waht he got.?
Second, why would you look down the barrel of a loaded gun that misfired? This indicates terminal stupidity.

Cruel and stupid?

He got off easy.

Morons in action

A bookstore owner hung an upside down US flag outside his shop as a protest to the war. Hanging a flag upside down is the standard symbol for distress, and he used that to proclaim his anti-war feelings.

While I disagre with his stance, I have to say that I love the way he shose to express it. It is clear, without being disrespectful to the flag, the nation, or the troops supporting it.

Then, the cops showed up.

They threatened to arrest him for "contempt of the flag" if he continued to fly the flag upside down. Apparently, none of them were Boy Scouts, since it's expplained there that an upside down flag is a distress signal and does not desecrate the flag.

Fortunately, in a rare instance of actually doing the right thing, the ACLU stepped in and educated the police, and the flag is back, flying proudly upside down.

I like this idea.

The governor of Arizona wants to rename Squaw Peak after Pfc Lori Anne Piestewa, one of the US soldiers killed in the ambush at Nasiriyah. Private Piestewa was a member of the Hopi tribe, who greeted the governor's announcement with cheers. nfortunately, some boneheaded Republican is standing in the way:

"I think it sets the tone for what her governorship is going to be like," GOP state Rep. John Allen said. "It's going to be a very Clintonesque style in the sense where you take advantage (of the situation), no matter whose grief it is."

That's pathetic. We've got a name which can best be characterized as racially insensitive, and a wonderful oppotunity to replace that name with one which honors not only Native Americans, but the military. What's not to like?

Mr. Allen, lay off the grandstanding and back this plan.

Idiot!

There is another prblem, though.

Even before legislators weighed in, the chairman of the Arizona Geographic and Historic Names Board threatened to block Napolitano's plan. He cited a requirement that people must be dead five years before their names can be used on geographic features.

Napolitano asked the board to waive the waiting period, arguing federal policies prohibit the use of derogatory racial terms on landmarks. Although some linguists disagree, critics say "squaw" is derived from an Indian word for female genitalia.

But Richard Pinkerton, a board member for 19 years, said he has never seen the panel grant a waiver. And it is unclear whether the board's national counterpart, which makes the final call on name changes, ever approves waivers.

It's time to set a precedent folks. This needs to happen. I'll get the names and e-mail addresses of the folks involved and post them in an update. Let's let Allen, Pinkerton, and any other obstructionists that this is a good idea, and should happen now, not in 5 years.
UPDATE: Here are the e-mail addresses I promised. Y'all know what to do. remember, be polite, no rants, just express your support for Gov Napolitano and Pfc Piestewa.

Gov Janet Napolitano Snail Mail and Telephone
The Honorable Janet Napolitano
Governor of Arizona
1700 West Washington
Phoenix, Arizona 85007

Telephone 602-542-4331
Fax 602-542-1381

Rep John Allen jallen@azleg.state.az.us
Snail Mail
Rep. John M. Allen
House of Representatives
1700 W. Washington Room 127
Phoenix, AZ 85007

Tim J. Norton
Chair, Arizona State Board on Geographic and Historic Names
Arizona State Capitol
1700 W. Washington, Suite 200
Phoenix, Arizona 85007
Phone: 602-542-4035
Statewide: 1-800-255-5841
Fax: 602-542-4972
Email: aznames@dlapr.lib.az.us

Why am I not surprised?

Could this be why france is so cozy with dictators, thugs, and murderers?

The French government and banks owe at least $94.7 million (U.S.) in reparations to Jews whose assets were seized by France's pro-Nazi regime during World War II, a commission said today.

However, the finding by the Commission for the Indemnity of Victims of Despoliation, or CIVS, is not binding. It will be submitted to the government — which created the commission in 1999 — for a final review.

I guess it just makes good business sense.

I'm betting france tries to to get the EU to pay this...

Signs of the Collapse

Airline sued for nursery rhyme. From CNS news:

A Southwest Airlines flight attendant's use of a popular children's rhyme - "Eenie, meenie, minie, moe" - has resulted in a federal racial discrimination lawsuit against the airline filed by two African American women asking for unspecified financial damages.

One of the two women suing over the allegedly offensive nursery rhyme claims hearing the rhyme caused her to be bedridden for three days and suffer from "unexplained memory gaps," according to court documents.

I think I can explain those memory gaps. It's a sypmtom of recto-cranial insertion.

Bush wins again

So much for those who say the President is incompetent or inflexible. North Korea has proposed talks with the US and China.

The United States and North Korea will try to resolve their six-month standoff over Pyongyang's suspected nuclear weapons program in talks arranged by China, the communist North's closest ally, U.S. and South Korean officials said Wednesday.

The Beijing talks could happen as early as next week, officials said. Japanese media, citing unnamed sources, said they would start April 23.

Earlier, NK had insisted on one-on-one talks with the US, refusing any multilateral talks with other powers in the region, a US prereq for talks. The US wanted China to take the lead in reigning in NK. There was no movement on either front until recently. China suspended oil shipments to NK for three days, blaming it on 'technical matters." NK got the message, and the pressure from China, along with the results of the War on Iraq, helped convince NK to soften their stance, and accept China as host of the talks. Bush compromised by aggreeing to the talks, even though other regional powers, like Japan, are not involved.

As I said earlier, our action in Iraq will yield diplomatic benefits far beyond the Middle East. As Teddy Roosevelt said, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." America dropped the stick over the last 12 years or so. President Bush picked it back up.

I'll bet they will oppose this one as well

President Bush called for an end to UN sanctions on Iraq.

The lifting of sanctions will require the agreement of the Security Council, a body that foiled a U.S. effort last month to win U.N. support for its military mission in Iraq.
But despite the U.S. demand for quick action, diplomats say the debate at the Security Council over lifting the sanctions is likely to be long and difficult.
Lifting the sanctions is linked to U.N. certification that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction have been destroyed — and that issue is part of a broader debate on what the U.N. role will be in postwar Iraq. The sanctions question also hinges on the sensitive issue of the return of U.N. weapons inspectors.

President Bush is now treading the dangerous ground that led to the assassination of one president and the impeachment of his successor: reconstruction of a defeated foe. Iraq has assets that a lot of people want. There's all that oil, and the contracts for rebuilding the infrastructure, not to mention new trade agreements as the Iraqi people begin to share in the wealth created from their oil. Everybody wants a piece of that pie, and the more ruthless among them will do whatever it takes to get it.

You can count on sanctions continuing while the UN (read france, Russia and Germany) struggles to get some major role in the rebuilding of Iraq.

More evidence of the UN's irrelevance

Remember how Libya took over the Chair for the Human Rights Commission? Well, we've now seen that our concern was warranted.

African nations lined up behind Sudan to help defeat a U.N. Human Rights Commission resolution today that would have kept the militant Islamic Khartoum regime under special scrutiny.

snip

The outcome could have been worse, however, Shea maintained.

She and her colleagues had feared that Libya, aided by France, would succeed in a procedural move that essentially would have moved Sudan from the status of a country with "special problems" to a nation eligible for new U.N. funding. In the end, the resolution was introduced under Item 9, "human rights violations," rather than Item 19, "advisory services and technical cooperation in the field of human rights."

Once again, France champions the rights of thugs and murderers. Do we really want them as allies?

Posted by Rich at 10:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Twisting the Knife

As if France hadn't been tortured enough over the last month for their obstructionism in the UN and EU, now we hear this:

TONY Blair yesterday increased speculation that he wants to become the president of Europe when he claimed that the European Union must speak with a single voice on foreign policy.

The call was the clearest sign yet that Mr Blair could pitch to become the future president of Europe after stepping down as Prime Minister.

While I have reservations about a string, unified Europe, particularly since their agenda appears to have coalsced around blind opposition to the US, having the EU under the control of Blair could change all that. I don't want a Europe that is subservient to the US; I'd much prefere a Europe that is capable of handling their own continent, which would leave us free to pursue our own interests. However, rather than competing with each other, we should be able to cooperate with each other. A US/EU cooperative would be a juggernaut in the world economy, able to compete with the rising Pacific Rim nations.

And as a bonus, just think of how it would piss of Chirac and his stooges!

Baghdad Bob is gone...

...or he could be lying again. It's hard to tell.

It could just be more of Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf's trademark disinformation, but there were reports this week that he committed suicide.

Two Iranian newspapers reported that Saddam's notorious spinmeister, whose outlandish briefings on the state of the Iraq war earned him the nickname "Comical Ali," hanged himself shortly after the fall of Baghdad last week.

The newspapers Al Wifaq and Mardomsalari said the story of al-Sahhaf's "suicide" came from unnamed Iraqi war refuges in the town of Dehlorn.

Like every other word we heard from this idiot, it's probabaly a lie. WE'll have to wait and see.

Actually, I hope the story is false. With his ability to lie so sincerely on international TV, he'd be a fine addition to the Democratic Presidential slate.

Why do I blog?

Like I said below, I don't expect to change any minds, so why do I do it?

Another war, one much more vital to the future of America than the one in Iraq is being fought right now, and it's being fought here, in this country. It's being fought to determine the future of America. Will we be a nation of free men, or nation of vassals to an overweening federal government, controlling what we do, what we say, and even what we think?

This war transcends politics, as their are bad guys on each side, left and right, and it is a war which ultimately, we will lose. The odds are stacked against us, both by history and biology, but if I can in some way help stave off the inevitable, I'll do it. (Dang, this is getting melodramatic! Where's my cape? After a line like that, I need a cape to flourish dramatically.)

Melodrama aside, let's look at the facts, shall we?

The left seeks to restrict our thoughts, speech, and actions. Hate crime legislation, hate speech legislation, diversity legislation, affirmative action legislation, anti-discrimination legislation, and on and on, all restrict our freedoms an enumerated in the Constitution. Don't get me wrong, many of these laws were enacted with the best of intentions, but you know what they say about the road to Hell. Oops, religious speech might offend somebody. Good thing I'm not a federal employee. (Although a federal employee did leave money in my tip jar. Once. I don't think that counts. Maybe I should consult my lawyer.)

Assault and battary is already a crime, and I have to think that some degree of hate is present in all assaults. You sure as heck don't go upside somebody's skull because you're in love with them. Why should it be a worse crime if the reason you hate is because of the victim's skin color, accent, sexual preference etc? What we're actually doing is criminalizing thought. The thought may be reprehensible, or morally repugnant, but should it be criminal? Apply the same logic to art. Should art which is reprehensible or morally repugnant be illegal?

Obviously not. You can't legislate thought. Even more importantly, you can't change people's minds through legislation. The abyssmal failure of forced bussing has proven that. Neighborhoods are not much more integrated now than they were 60 years ago. What progress has been made has come in spite of bussing, not because of it.

The left also attacks property rights, usually in the name of the environment. Again noble intentions, but poor practice. Ownership has become less real over the last few decades, as agencies of the federal government tell property owners what they can and can't do on land they own, often to the point of rendering valuable property worthless. The pwner receives no compensation for this loss, mind you; he's left holding the bag.

Before my buddies on the right get too comfortable, the record there is hardly a shining one. The right also seeks to limit our freedoms, based usually on their notions of morality.

Blue laws anyone?

Why should there be ANY law concerning the activities of two consenting partners? If the right to privacy covers a woman's ability to kill her unborn child, then surely it covers what two (or more) people do in their bedroom.

Let's talk about obscenity for a minute. Forget the fact that the definition is vague, subjective, and flat out worthless; why should we worry about it in the first place? Certainly, obscenity should be regulated, to protect the rights of people who don't want to see it, but it shouldn't be illegal in itself.

Now we have the war on terror, which is being used as an excuse to gut many of our freedoms. Here's a fine example:

WASHINGTON — DNA profiles from juvenile offenders and from adults who have been arrested but not convicted would be added to the FBI's national DNA database under a Bush administration proposal.

Under current law, only DNA from adults convicted of crimes can be placed in the national database, which is used to compare those samples with biological evidence from the scenes of unsolved crimes. As of January, there were about 1.3 million DNA samples in the database, U.S. officials say.

Adding profiles from thousands of adult arrestees and juvenile offenders would greatly expand the DNA system's worth by increasing the number of potential matches, administration officials say. Justice Department officials have discussed potential changes in federal DNA law with key members of Congress and are pushing for legislation this year.

In other words, if you are arrested, then later acquitted, your DNA will be maintained on file. This mirrors the current practice with fingerprints, which is also an intolerable breach of privacy, but has been allowed to slide by. Now the government says that the DNA will only be used in their database, and that nobody else will have access to it. Of course, they also said that the Social Security Number could not be used as an ID number.

Try to get a credit card without giving yout SSN. Good luck.

How about the drug laws? Why should drug use be illegal? If some stoner wants to waste his brain cells on drugs, have at it. Just don't expect me to pay the tab for the inevitable crash.

Which brings me to the reason I and those like me will lose this war.

Both parties subscribe to the 'nanny state' theory. In their minds, government exists to take care of us, the little sheep who can't manage to take care of themselves. Speed limits, seatbelt laws, helmet laws, smoking laws, gun laws, drug laws, drinking age limits, social security, welfare; the list goes on and on. All of these are aimed at 'protecting us' from ourselves.

And we buy into it every damn day. Like the punk kid during the Clinton/Dole Debate, who asked how the government, "our father" was going to take care of us, we look to Washington to make everything all right, like Mommy kissing a boo-boo. We refuse to take responsibility for ourselves, because that involves hard work and the risk of failure. We refuse to accept that responsibility, and look for somebody else to bear it. We refuse to accept accountability for our actions. We have people filing lawsuits when they burn themselves with hot coffee, criminals sueing homewners for injuries received while breaking and entering, felons sueing the police for arresting them. And they're winning those lawsuits.

We're acting like children, so our government is treating us like children. It's insulting and offensive to adults, but too many of our citizens welcome that treatment. Like the man said, we get the government we deserve.

Democracy works only as long as those who vote are able to put the best interests of the country ahead of their own interests. Once the plebes start voting for their own interests over the interests of the nation, the long slide to oblivion is inevitable.

And it's already started. Special interest groups now dominate national politics. They lobby for themselves and they're interests, with no concern for the best interests of the nation. Instead of choosing the best course for our country, politicians are choosing which special interests to appease to further their own re-election bid. And it seems that each special nterest group wants a pice of my freedom. The gay lobby wants to force me to rent to them; the Christian lobby wants to prevent me from seeing a Playboy centerfold; the atheists want to keep me from praying at a football game; the NAACP wants me to throw out my Confederate past; the Italian lobby wants me to stop watching the Sopranos; the PETA folks want me to eat tofu and sit on naugahyde couches; and on and on and on.

Like Jefferson Davis before me (oh god, he's quoting a Confederate. He must be a real red-neck racist hillbilly.), all I want is to be left alone to live my life as I see fit, without impacting my neighbor's right to do that same thing. If I stumble, I'll learn from my mistake, pick up the pieces, and carry on. I'll accept help when it's offered, but if the price of that help is my freedom, I'll do without. If I see a fellow traveller who needs help, I'll lend what assistance I can, but not if I'm compelled to do so by the gov't. In short, I'm an individualist.

I post here because I hope I'm wrong. I hope that people like me are the majority, and that we all, left and right, still believe in self reliance and individualism. Through this blog, I've met people on both sides of the political fence who believe as I do. We may disagree on how to get there, but we have the same destination in mind. Maybe there are enough of us left to make a difference. The only way to find out is to keep posting, keep putting the word out there, and hope that the message find fertile ground.

That's why I blog.

It certainly isn't for the chicks and money...

More Iraqi violations...

found here.

Before the war, Syria was said to be receiving as much as 200,000 b/d of oil through the pipeline, paying as much as $1 billion/year to Iraq, making it the single largest source of revenue for Baghdad outside the UN's oil-for-aid program.

But the US action put an end to that arrangement, ending Washington's formerly benign policy towards Syria's illicit imports of Iraqi oil.

Not that anyone will care. I've realized that those who are against the war are against it, period. It won't matter if we find NBC weapons or proof that Iraq helped fund 9-11. Hell, to most of 'em, it wouldn't matter if we caught Hussein himself launching a chemical tipped Scud at Israel. They'd just say he did it because we attacked, and make it our fault.

Terror threat reduced

We just dropped from Orange to Yellow. I'm predicting Blue inside of a month.

We got lucky?

There's been some commentary from the left, saying that our battle plan was poor, that we only succeeded because we were facing a third rate army, that we were very lucky to win as easily as we did.

Military profesionals, on the other hand, have a slightly different take on the campaign, as demonstrated by this report:

Like its Soviet prototype, Iraq's Army was huge but made up mainly of young, poorly trained conscripts. Its battle tactics called for broad frontal warfare, with massed armor and artillery, and a highly centralized command structure. But those forces were trounced in a few days by relatively small numbers of US and British forces, who punched holes in the Iraqi front using precision weapons and seized the country's power centers more rapidly than traditional military thinkers could have imagined. "The military paradigm has changed, and luckily we didn't have to learn that lesson firsthand," says Yevgeny Pashentsev, author of a book on Russian military reform. "The Americans have rewritten the textbook, and every country had better take note."

Machiavelli or Moron? You make the call!

Isn't it fun, seeing how the left paints President Bush with either brush, depending on it's utility? Sometimes we hear that Bush is too dumb to be president; we make fun of his malapropisms when he speaks extemporaneously, as if that is an indicator of his intelligence. We hear how he wasn't a good student, although he did graduate from Andover, Yale, and Harvard Business School.

Other times, we hear about Bush, the Dark Prince of American Politics, leader of a global cabal designed to subjugate us all in abject slavery. Every move he makes is plotted on at least three levels, advancing hidden agendas, while only appearing to be a bumpkin. That those hidden agendas often work at cross purposes never seems to bother the DUpes very much. They hint of counter conspiracies and cover ups, and mutter about misdirection.

This irrational hatred of the man is leading otherise intelligent people into realms of lunacy formerly occupied by whack jobs like Timothy McVeigh and Theodore Kaczynski.

Let's have a breath of reality for a minute, OK?

George W Bush is not the most articulate president we've ever had. Deal with it. He's not a Rhodes Scholar, but he's no moron either. He's a man of above average intelligence, but not exceptionally so. He's been moderately successful through his talent for picking able men and women to be his aides, then allowing them to do their jobs. Pity more people can't learn that lesson.

Neither is he a student of The Prince or Sun Tzu. He's not some puppeteer, guiding the world into a design of his choosing. The giveaway is simple. He does what he says he's going to do.

And he makes it work. Hard to be sneaky when you're up front like that.

I was going to go into a long list of foreign policy successes, but the Columbia Law Review did a better job than I could, sI'll direct you there instead. Link via Instapundit

Now I do have some problems with some of the actions the Bush Administration has taken, notably the entire Homeland Security Dept. It is overkill, unnecessary, and takes an unnacceptible chunk of our freedoms. But do I think that some forces behind the Bush Administration orchestrated or allowed 9-11 to occur in order to pass the Patriot Act? Nope.

While there are forces leading us to a reduction in our freedoms, those forces are based on human inclinations, not attributable to one man, or even some global cabalist conspiracy, but to all men, liberal or conservative, democrat or republican, but that's a post for another time.

Did it again!

I wrote a whole bunch of stuff that would be great here, but I wrote it in comments over at SK Bubbas. It's a conspiracy on his part to grab all the traffic!

Now I gotta come up with some good stuff for here. Back in a bit.

It's important.

Go here.

Now.

The First Volunteer Tailgate Party is Underway!

Barry, over at the Inn of the Last Home, is hosting the First Volunteer Tailgate Party, a collection of posts from the RTB, in the mode of the Carnival of the Vanities. Go over and take a peak at the assorted wisdom of the gang.

CNN: Cowards, Hypocrits, and Liars

Now, we find out the truth. CNN's Eason Jordan has admitted knowing for years of outrageous human rights violations in Iraq, including the kidnapping and torture of their own employees. Yet CNN said nothing.

The excuse was that they had to be silent in order to maintain a presence in Iraq. Forgive me if I sound stupid, but if you aren't allowed to report the news you find, why do you need to be there? By allowing Hussein to censor your news, you have become a propaganda service for that brutal regime, and lost all credibility as a news source.

I wonder, what else did they know that they haven't told us?

The first 24 hour news network took mortal wounds to their credibility over this. The saddest thing is that the wounds were self inflicted. Now CNN will be known as the Cowardly News Network, ot the Collaborator's News Network, possibly the Coverup News Network, or, with any luck, the Collapsed News Network.

North Korea blinks

I was listening to NPR this morning on my way into work (I needed to recover from my day off) and heard that North Korea had backed off their demands for one on one meetings with the US about the nuclear issue, and were willing to accept a multilateral meeting. This represents a major shift for Kim Il Jong. I wonder what caused it?

It looks like three factors came together. After dozens of requests from the US to get involved, China sent a message to their client state by shutting off their oil for 3 days. They blamed it on "technical difficulties," but I think the message was clear.

Second, Russia told them they would face economic sanctions if they persisted in pursueing nuclear weapons.

Third, they've been watching a little thing on TV caled the Gulf War, and Jong is about to wet his pants.

It seems that President Bush's strategy of Iraq first is paying dividends, which probably irks the liberals to no end. By demonstrating his commitment and resolve in disarming Saddam Hussein, Bush sent a clear message to N Korea, as well as the world. As I posted earlier, the benefit of having a credible Iron Fist is the ability to use the Velvet Glove. We won't have to take military action against N Korea, because China knows we could, and would if we had to.

Now we'll see diplomacy in action.

POW/MIA's found!

This is simply fantastic.

Iraqi troops released seven captured U.S. soldiers — some wounded but in good condition — to Marines on Sunday, a surprise discovery near where U.S. troops were entering Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.

Fox goes on to report that family members have identified six of the seven as previously identified POW's, and describes how they were recovered.

Capt. David Romley said Marines marching north toward Tikrit were met by Iraqi soldiers north of Samarra who approached the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Company, and the seven Americans were with them.

Another spokesman for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, Capt. Neil Murphy, said the Iraqi soldiers who had brought the Americans had been abandoned by their officers and "realizing that it was the right thing to do, they brought these guys back."

That's why, despite the rioting and looting, despite the difficulties ahead, we will succeed in Iraq. Once the Ba'ath party is gone, once the Iraqi people live in freedom, not fear, they'll do the right thing.

Welcome home, heroes!

UT Orange and White Game

Well, spring practice is over, and if you paid attention to the Spring Orange and White game, you may be justified in feeling a little cocky about next season. The first team offense was dominant as the Orange beat the White 69-7.

But let's look a little closer.

Last year's Orange and White game revealed the total lack of offense that was to dog the Vols for the entire fall season as the first team defense shut out the first team offense. This time around, Fulmer chose to put the first team offense against the second team defense, augmented by the practice squad. The resulting offensive explosion was as predictable as the bread landing jelly side down on the new carpet. To make matters warse, the defense wasn't allowed to play. Their play selection was limited to vanilla, low pressure schemes.

So, as long as Florida brings their scout team defense, and never runs a blitz, we're in good shape.

Looking a little closer at the numbers, Clausen was 16-26 with 1 INT and 3 TDs.

Against the scrubs, mind you. Had he pulled that off against the first team, then I'd be impressed.

There were some truly good signs, though. The first team offensive line looks good, as evidenced by the improved output of second team running backs when they got to play behind the frst teamers. Gerald Riggs carried 9 times for 10 yard while playing behind the second team, but carried 4 times for 94 yards behind the first teamers. Mark Jones looks to be a breakaway threat at wide receiver, and Cedric Houston looks fully recovered at running back.

Still, the lopsided score may also indicate a depth problem. If there truly is a 62 point difference between the first and second teams, we'd better pray for an injury free season.

Spring pick: 9-3 regular season, and a bowl win.

Too long...

The list of heroes to the right has been updated.

All the men and women in our military are heroes, willing to pay the ultimate price for America. Those listed on the right have paid that price. We don't know what kind of people they were; as a Navy vet, I know that I served with some truly wonderful people, and a few dirtbags. Joining the military does not grant some kind of angelic status, where each and every soldier becomes a paragon of virtue. There are wife beaters in the Army, and drunks in the Navy. The Air Force has rapists, and the Marines have thugs. Just being in the military does not automatically make you a good person.

But it does offer a shot at redemption.

After the movie Black Hawk Down came out, I remember some flap about how one of the heroes of the movie wasn't such a nice guy in real life. I think he was accused of spousal abuse, or something similar. I'm sure once this war is over, we'll start hearing things like that about the people whose names are enshrined to the right. There are some who hate America or the military so much that they will feel justified in kicking a corpse. They don't believe in heroes, and will try to drag these men and women down . To those degenerates, I have only this to say:

Regardless of what these people did in life, no matter how venal they were, their final actions on this earth redeemed them; their ultimate sacrifice payed their debt in full.

Ya gotta love it!

from Yahoo, via Instapundit.

Another early report...

we'll see if this one stand up.

In the story I linked to below, the Marines discovered a huge nuclear complex below the one we knew about in Al Tuwaitha. While the site was searched repeatedly, there's no indication that the underground facility was ever included in the search. Indeed, we don't know if the IAEA even knew about the underground facility.

That story has now been updated to include a possible discovery of weapons grade plutonium. My buddy and I were talking about that possibility when we looked at the dose rates reported. Radiation onset within three hours of exposure indicates some very high dose rates, too high to be from normal operations. Exposure rates like that mean either an exposed core, simply massive quantities of uranium, or highly enriched uranium or plutonium.

While there is a chance that there is an alternative, ie the massive quantities, it's more likely that we've found weapons grade material.

As always, though, we'll have to wait and see what comes out in a couple of days.

A role for France

My buddy and I were talking about the latest discovery of a hidden nuclear facility in Iraq, one which appears to be highly contaminated, with some areas exceeding lethal levels.

So far, Marine nuclear and intelligence experts have found 14 buildings that have high levels of radiation, Prine reported Thursday.

His report noted that some of the tests have found nuclear residue too deadly for human contact.

The Marine radiation detectors go "off the charts" a few hundred meters outside the nuclear compound, where locals say "missile water" is stored in enormous caverns, reported Prine, who is embedded with the U.S. 1st Marine Division.

The French have more experience with nuclear power than any other nation, and they sold the Iraqis their reactor, which was used to enrich uranium to weapons grade, prior to its destruction by Israel.

Who better to clean up the mess than the French? Have at it, boys!

Where to next?

That's an easy one:

Home.

Despite the ambitions of the hawks and the fears of the doves, President Bush will bring the troops home after the new Iraqi run government is in place.

Forget Syria; forget Iran; forget North Korea, or Saudi Arabia, or Libya, or Lebanon. Barring some major league aggression by the above, President Bush will not invade or attack any of them.

Why not?

Because he won't have to.

Diplomacy has often been called an iron fist in a velvet glove. The metal in America's fist has been called into question over the last several decades. For far too long, the world has believed that the West lacked the will to close it's fist and strike. While that assessment may be true of much of the West (read France, Germany, Canada, Mexico, et al) the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Poland, and our other allies, notably most of eastern Europe, have now demonstrated not only the will to use the iron fist, but the capability to do so with devastating impact on our enemies with an accuracy unprecedented in warfare.

Never forget that all diplomacy is basically intimidation backed by the credible threat of force, whether military or economic. For years, the US has lacked credibility in the exercise of that force. This perception of weakness directly contributed to the attacks of Al Qaida, from our embassies, to the USS Cole, to the attacks of 9/11. Now that the world knows the iron fist is there, we can pull on the velvet glove of diplomacy.

The danger, and we're seeing symptoms of it in the hawks already, is that our new resolve could lead to arrogance or imperialism. Continuing our war, moving troops into other Middle Eastern countries, would demonstrate that arrogance. Liberal caricatures and presidential malapropisms aside, President Bush is nothing if not a highly skilled and sensitive politician. He knows that expansion of the war front will end the tacit acceptance of the rest of the Middle East for this war, uniting them against him.

Yes, I did say tacit acceptance. Despite the rhetoric coming from the other Arab nations, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, etc, check out the oil production from OPEC and the price of oil over the three weeks of the conflict. If they were really opposed to the US entering Iraq, oil would be $40/barrel right now.

Back to the point. Barring a major provocative move, or the emergence of a significant threat, expansion of the war would be counter productive. No country presents a significant threat at this time, including North Korea.

Yes, they have a couple of nukes, but should they launch one, their existance as a country is over. Our newly demostrated resolve is already paying off on that front. Prior to the start of the Gulf War, China refused to get involved in the nuclear standoff. Since then, their attitude has changed 180 degrees. They are now pressuring North Korea to acceded to a multilateral conference on disarmament.

Coincidence? Not likely.

Our other enemies, both nations and terrorist organizations, do not represent serious threats, particularly with the elimination of Iraq and the Taliban. In short, there's no reason to continue the campaign, and every reason to let it end.

New UN resolution

France is demanding that the UN take the lead in rebuilding Iraq after the war. The aren't satisfied with US and British assurances that they will play a vital role in the new Iraq. Recently, a compromise resolution was offered through abck channels to France and Germany. Through top notch work by a team of crack Shots Across the Bow Operatives, I obtained a copy of this compromise resolution.
Put before the UN Security Council on this day:

• Whereas Iraq has failed to comply with the forty-leven resolutions imposed by the UN, and
  
• Whereas Iraq has pursued acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, and
  
• Whereas the UN Security Council issued one final, last, and ultimate chance for Iraq to comply with the other forty-leven resolutions, and
  
• Whereas Saddam Hussein responded to the final, last ultimate resolution by sticking out his tongue, putting his fingers in his ears, and saying "Lalalalalalala I can't hear you," and
  
• Whereas the UN Security Council, cowed by France (embarrasing enough on it's own) refused to respond to Hussein's flouting of the forty-twelve resolutions against him, and
  
• Whereas a coalition of nations, lead by the US, Britain and Australia, nations that recognize that the root of a resolution is resolve, have acted under the auspices of the final, last ultimate resolution to enforce those forty-twelve resolutions, and
  
• Whereas said coalition has kicked Hussein's butt all over the map, while winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, and
  
• Whereas The UN Security Council has been shown up to be the useless debating society we knew it to be,
  
• Be It Resolved that
  
  • The UN will be consulted on all matters pertaining to the rebuilding of Iraq.
    
  • Said consultations to occur on the occasion of the blue moon, or the twelfth of Never, whichever occurs last.
    
  • On the off chance that such consultations occur, the advice given will be duly considered before being rejected.
    
  • In the extremely unlikely chance that the UN actually comes up with a good plan, the Coalition will appropriate that plan, giving all credit where it's due. To the New Europe.
    
  • Under no circmstance will France, Germany, or Russia be allowed to profit from their oparticipation in the rebuilding of Iraq. However, any charitable donations will be accepted with gratitude.
  
  

And that's the nice version. Think they'll go for it?

Heard on the radio:

A woman bought a new car.

She brought it back the next day, complaining that the radio didn't work. The salesman explained that it was a voice activated radio and demonstrated.

"Nelson," he said.

"Ricky or Willie?" the car responded.

"Willie," said the salesman.

Instantly the radio began playing a selection of Willie Nelson tunes.

The blonde drove off, happy with her new purchase. She listened to all of her favorite tunes on the way home, until at an intersection not too far from her house, a car filled with kids cut her off.

She honked the horn at thenm and yelled "Buttholes!"

The French National Anthem began to play over the radio.

Report Card

Ok, the war is officially 3 weeks old today. How's it going?

• We own the skies.
  
• Umm Qasr is ours.
  
• Basrah is owned by the Brits
  
• Three separate columns of Coalition troops crossed three hundered miles of desert, through a nasty sandstorm to encircle Baghdad ina campaign which wrote new rules of warfare.
  
• Baghdad didn't just fall; it disintegrated.
  
• The Iraqi people are dancing in the streets, greeting Coalition troops with smiles, waves, and chants of "Bush Yes, Saddam No!"
  
• Coalition forces have carried out the most impressive example of precision bombing the world has ever seen.
  
• The oil fields are not burning out of control.
  
• Israel was not hit with missiles from Iraq.
  
• WMD have not been used, although they have been found.
  
• Children's prisons have been liberated, reuniting families for the first time in years.
  
• Coalition KIA have been held unbelievably low, despite the use of unlawful tactics by the Fedayeen Saddam.
  
• Speaking of Saddam, he's either worm food, wounded, or cowering in a bunker somewhere, watching "Three Stooges" videos with Moammar Khaddafy.
  
• Uday Hussein is gone.
  
• Qusay Hussein is gone.
  
• Chemical Ali is gone.
  
• Thousands of Islamofascists are flocking to Iraq, earger to achieve martyrdom for Allah. Coalition forces are more than happy to oblige.
  
• Non-combatant casualties are at unprecedentedly low levels.

It's hard to find anything to argue about.

Which irks the BBC and NPR to no end I'm sure.

From the Daily Rant

Happy birthday to Al Gore. Al Gore is 55. Although Florida counted and only got 48.

Easter funny

Via e-mail from a co-worker:

The Anti-War movement

Summed up in one picture....

Same song, different day

You'd think that the press would have learned their lesson, but nope, in their eagerness to get the scoop on the competition, they're more than willing to go to press with unsubstatiated rumor. I guess they've forgotten election night 2002.
"We can now project that Florida is going for Gore."
"We are removing Florida from our list of projected Gore states and putting it back in the undecided column."
"We can now project that Florida has gone for George Bush."
"We are removing Florida from our list of projected Bush states and putting it back in the undecided column."
"We don't just have egg on our face; we have the whole omelette."

Now we are getting a similar song and dance about WMD.

Military:"we might have found some chemical weapons."
Fox:"Military finds smoking gun!"
Military:"Upon further review, the call made on the field is overturned. There are no WMD."

Since when did the war become subject to instant replay?

I've heard the claims that we've found WMD several times, and I refuse to get excited about the latest flurry until they go at least 2 days without retraction.

However, the latest news is too big to wait. According to MSNBC and FoxNews we just dropped 4 "bunker buster" bombs on a location where we believe Saddam Hussein and his sons were hiding out.

Haven't we been here before?

Let me get this straight.

It's legal to burn the US flag. It's alright to desecrate the symbol of our nation. But burning a cross is too hateful to be allowed?

Give me a break. If it's good for one, it's good for the other. Burning a cross on somebody else's property is already covered under trespass and vandalism laws. Burning a cross on your own property, as long as you have any permits required, should be fine and dandy. I don't give a darn if the whole KKK rallies around the thing, whooping and hollering and generally showing their ignorant redneck butts. As repugnant as the sight may be, it's their right. Just like it's the right of anti-American idiots to burn the flag, or atheist 'artists' to crap all over a painting of the Virgin Mary.

Having offensive and hateful thoughts is not illegal. Expressing those thoughts, no matter how morally repugnant they may be, should not be illegal either. Only when you act on those thoughts, engaging in threatening or intimidating behavior, does it become illegal. Not all cross burnings fall under the heading of threatening or intimidating. Just because we detest the Klan, and what it stands for does not give us the right to abolish their symbols. Should we make display of the swastika illegal as well? How about the Hammer and Sickle? Millions were tortured and died under those symbols. Surely they are at least as hateful and offensive as the burning cross.

And we'll hold YOU accountable

Protestors tried to disrupt longshoremen loading ships with supplies destined for our troops in Iraq.

“Whether or not war cargo is there on that day, we are trying to send a message to APL that we oppose their profiting off this unjust and illegal war,” Sasha Wright, an organizer with Direct Action to Stop the War told MSNBC.com last week. “We will hold them accountable.”

And if your actions jeopardize the lives of our troops?

“We feel like the war is what’s putting their lives in danger. This is an effort to save lives by stopping the war as quickly as possible.”

So not only do our troops have to contend with Iraqi irregulars trying to cut their supply lines in the desert, they also have to worry about idiots like Sasha cutting the supply lines here at home.

Don't just fire rubber bullets next time; arrest these vicious dolts and put 'em away for the duration. Political protest is one thing; attempting to hinder our military, placing American lives at risk is another.

Ooops!

I don't know what I did, or if I did it, but my images directory is loaded with garbage, and none of my pics are there. I've sent a query to Hosting Matters to find out what I did, if I did it, and how to fix it, buit for now, the site will look a little bare. Sorry about that.

Home at Last!

Peter Arnett has finally found a network that won't fire him:

Dubai-based Al Arabiya television said on Saturday it had signed up veteran U.S. reporter Peter Arnett to help cover the U.S.-led war in Iraq (news - web sites) days after he was fired by U.S. network NBC.

The news channel said Arnett, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his Vietnam War coverage, joined its three-man team in the Iraqi capital Baghdad two days ago and that he had already appeared on live broadcasts.

"Peter Arnett is a professional correspondent and is known for his coverage of the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites). His presence is a good thing," Al Arabiya news editor Salah Nejm told Reuters.

Sorry for the silence

I've beenworking overtime in the comments section over at Bubba's and jane's. I;ll post some here tonight.

I should have known

I was reading the latest dead tree edition of reason, and I came across a rant about Zell Miller and his rampage against CBS for developing “The Real Beverly Hillbillies.” Now, as y’all know, I’ve teed off on Reason a time or two when I thought they’ve missed the point, but this time, they’re dead on the money.

The author says that Zell doesn’t have to worry about hillbillies being exploited by Hollywood, since we’ve shown a knack for exploiting the exploiters.

Been to Dollywood lately? I rest my case.

Anyway, he has another good point: (Sorry, no links, it won’t be available on-line for another month)

But there’s a more fundamental reason why Miller should welcome the experiment. The family depicted in the original 1960’s series, The Beverly Hillbillies, turned out to be wiser, kinder, and more intelligent than the city slickers around them.

He goes on to say:

If there were an official hillbilly creed, it would be:

• Leave us be.
  
• Be kind to strangers.
  
• If somebody threatens your kinfolk, don’t be afraid to get the shotgun.
  
• Everybody’s at the same level. There are no classes.

Yes sir! He got it right the first time. I wondered who could have written such a perceptive piece about us, so I looked to see the author.

Joe Bob Briggs.

I’ll bet he never thought watching B movies would lead to a gig writing for Reason. I’ll bet his Momma would be proud.

Our Fighting Men in action

From Lt. Smash, via Donald Sensing

The answer to Savidge's question is "They come from right here in the USA."

The most amazing thing about this story is that it isn't really amazing to a vet. Selfless devotion to duty and your team is the rule.

Y'all make me proud to have served, and proud to be an American.
UPDATE This story was a hoax. Damnit.

But like the man once said, "If it isn't true, well, it oughta be."

PFC Lynch...warrior

We're learning more about the ambush that resulted in the death or capture of at least 13 US soldiers, including Jessica Lynch. From the Washington Post:

Pfc. Jessica Lynch, rescued Tuesday from an Iraqi hospital, fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers after Iraqi forces ambushed the Army's 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition, U.S. officials said yesterday.

Lynch, a 19-year-old supply clerk, continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die around her in fighting March 23, one official said. The ambush took place after a 507th convoy, supporting the advancing 3rd Infantry Division, took a wrong turn near the southern city of Nasiriyah.

The article goes on to say that she was also stabbed when her position was overrun. Accoring to FoxNews, when rescued, she hadn't eaten for 8 days. Her injuries are variously described as two broken arms and a broken leg, or two broken legs and a broken arm, several gunshot wounds, and stab wounds.

"PFC Lynch performed her duties in an exemplary fashion. Her achievements reflect great credit upon herself, and are in keeping with the highest traditions of the US Army."

Words similar to the above will no doubt be spoken as she recieves several medals for her conduct in Nasiriyah. After her performance, there can be no doubt that women are equally as capable as men in combat, and if called upon to do so, are fully able to acquit themselves honorably.

I honor her courage, and her fighting spirit, and salute the first hero of this war.

OK, CSS isn't all bad

As you can see, the changes went much better this time. I've added a few new features, while removing some that I didn't use.
The calander is gone, although it might come back on my homepage, which is my next project.
I added links to the five branches of our military to the template.
Most importantly, to the right, I've added a list honoring those who have lost their lives in service to our nation, or who are missing or captured. Thankfully, that list grew shorter yesterday with the rescue of PFC Jessica Lynch. Sadly, tomorrow's list will grow longer with the downing of one BlackHawk helicopter, and an F-18 tonight.

I can see clearly now...

and that's a problem.

Conventional thinking is that space and time can be thought of together as a sort of foam. As light travels through the foam, it ought to be disrupted, ever so slightly, such that by the time it crosses much of the universe it would render only blurry pictures when gathered by a precision telescope. Put simple, Hubble ought to see a pixilation effect when photographing distant objects.

It does not. Hubble pictures are crisp and clear, no matter the distance to the object.

"So what," you say?

Well, if the quantum foam doesn't exist, then neither do we. You see, the current dominant theory for the origin of the universe involves special properties of this quantum foam, namely it's tendency to "blow up."

Here's how it breaks down:

Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle tells us that below a certain size, it is impossible to know both the momentum and position of a particle. Even further, it tells that those quantities are undetermined until we measure one of them. As contra-intuitive as it sounds, a sub atomic particle does not have a defined position or momentum until we measure it.

Physicists have used that indeterminacy to derive a theory for the origin of the universe. Basically, the universe was at zero. There was nothing. But zero is subject to uncertainty, so there were quantum level fluctuations around zero, called the quantum foam. Under certain circulstances, those fluctuations in the foam could blow up, creating massive amounts of mass/energy, or spacce/time, depending on your frame of reference. Such an explosion is theorized to be the origin of our universe.

The problem is that quantum foam should be detectable as perturbations in light, which would appear as distortions in images captured by the Hubble telescope. The absence of the distortion indicates the absence of the quantum foam, which has disastrous implications for our theory of the origin of the universe. While it is early yet, it appears that the quantum foam may well join aether as a failed scientific model.

As a side note, aether is making a comeback of sorts, with proponents ranging from crackpots to serious scientists.

Well, we may not know how we got here, but at least we know we are here. Unless you are a philosopher, in which case, you might not be too sure about that either.

Come to think of it, I know I'm here, but I'm not all that sure about you. Tell you what; confirm your reality by hitting the tip jar to the left.

Just a side note

I've decided I hate css. As you may have noticed, I tried to add a new feature to the site, and it didn't work out exactly as planned. Now I've restored the code to what I had before, but everything is still screwy.

Back to the drawing board!

She's coming home!

The POW rescue was real, and the soldier rescued was Jessica Lynch.

The announcement was terse:

In a brief statement, Brooks said: "Coalition forces have conducted a successful rescue mission of a U.S. Army prisoner of war held captive in Iraq. The soldier has been returned to a coalition-controlled area."

But the reaction was enormous:

"You would not believe the joys, cries, bawling, hugging, screaming, carrying on," said Lynch's cousin, Pam Nicolais, when asked Tuesday about the rescue. "You just have to be here."

Amazing how just a few short words can change your whole life.

Let's hope that more families get similar news.

Good news from the front

According to the AP, we've got one of our own back.

An American prisoner of war has been rescued in Iraq (news - web sites), U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said U.S. Central Command was announcing the rescue in Qatar later Tuesday.

I hope this doesn't turn out to be a mistake, like so many other reports have been.

So much for Jihad

It is ironic that on the day when a speech by Hussein calling for Jihad was released, two would be suicide bombers surrendered to the British Army.

Two Iraqi soldiers who said they were sent on a suicide attack mission to the country's largest port have turned themselves in to British troops, the British commander said Tuesday.
"We had two suicide bombers turn themselves in yesterday because they didn't want to be suicide bombers any more," Col. Steve Cox, commander of the Royal Marine Commandos running Umm Qasr, told reporters. "We are accommodating them."

Tragic and unecessary

7 Iraqi women and children were killed as their van approached a US checkpoint. The van refused several orders to stop, and continued even after warning shots were fired.

According to an account by the Central Command, the van approached the Army checkpoint Monday afternoon. Soldiers motioned for the driver to stop but were ignored. They then fired warning shots but the vehicle kept moving toward the checkpoint. Troops then shot into its engine. As a last resort, the military said, soldiers fired into the passenger compartment.

Two other civilians were wounded, according to the U.S. military, which said it is investigating the incident.

There's no excuse for this. Almost every rule of society can be boiled down to "Women and children first."

Men are expendable. We can afford to lose 75% of all men and the race will survive. The same cannot be said for our women and children.

Deliberately placing them in harm's way is despicable, and one more reason Saddam has to go.

April Fool's Day Quiz

I got 13 of 16. See how good you are at spotting the fake. I wish they would have used Bubba's though.

Excellent basic reference for war information

The good folks over at Winds of Change have compiled links to basic military information concerning the war with Iraq. If you have a hard time telling the difference between a division or a brigade, if you don't know the difference between cavalry and infantry, if you want to know which US forces have been deployed, you will find your answers at the end of one of these links. I'm adding this to my reference section.