July 2004 Archives

Hat tip to Little Green Footballs for running with this story and tracking down some photos... bq. The Marines � two in uniform and two off-duty � were polite but curt while chatting with Kerry, answering most of his questions with a �yes, sir� or �no, sir.� bq. But they turned downright nasty after the Massachusetts senator thanked them �for their service� and left. bq. �He imposed on us and I disagree with him coming over here shaking our hands,� one Marine said, adding, �I�m 100 percent against [him].� bq. A sergeant with 10 years of service under his belt said, �I speak for all of us. We think that we are doing the right thing in Iraq,� before saying he is to be deployed there in a few weeks and is �eager� to go and serve. It seems that Kerry and Edwards and family were in a Wendy's eating a meal and Kerry spotted some Marines -- he invited himself to their table and proceeded to chat "to" them (as opposed to "with" them -- you know the difference) and the Marines were not pleased by his use of them for political gain. I am conservative but I don't like some of the things that Bush is for. The idea of Kerry in presidential office really gives me a case of the willies though. There are many leftists who are A.B.B. "Anybody But Bush". I am A.B.K.

Overheard on CNN: bq. Soon afterward however the DNC director begam to panic. bq. "Jesus, we need more balloons. I want all balloons to go, goddamn. No confetti. No confetti. No confetti. I want more balloons. What's happening to the balloons? We need more balloons. We need all of them coming down... balloons. bq. "Go balloons, balloons... what's happening balloons, there's not enough coming down. All balloons - where the hell - there's nothing falling," Mr Mischer said, before finally exploding: "What the f... are you guys doing up there?" Heh...

Nice Obituary at BBC News

A quick heads-up for some readers. There are some people who are using the commenting system here to place advertisements for various things that have zero relationship with this Blog and its readership. I consider this to be SPAM of the worst order and when I see these pustules, I delete them. Your attempts to use my personal forum as a "cash-flow" for your benefit will avail you not. Please be a human and don't waste my time... For the record, when someone places a comment SPAM, the address of their system is recorded. I am starting to trace these, saving copies of the SPAM and will start to contact the individual's ISP's asking the ISP why they allow such activity. Do not holler censorship - your posts have zero to do with the overall content and since this is a personal Blog run on a system that I pay for, I have the complete right to do as I please. If you do not like this, find some other rock to crawl under and leave me the F*&% alone. set RANT=OFF

Finally done with getting the Seattle house ready for market and we are now up here full-time. Things should be a bit less hectic and blogging will resume it's usual frantic pace. I have two local places for walk-in broadband so blogging will be more frequent. One of the things I have been doing regarding personal broadband is to see what options are available for getting a T1 and sharing the expense with neighbors. The best long-range Ethernet extender that I have found is the Motorola Canopy system. Range is up to five miles in line-of-sight conditions. Made the wonderful discovery that the local (Bellingham) industrial communications store not only carries the Canopy system, they have a unit they could loan me for a week or two to check range and to demo to any interested neighbors. COOL!!!

From FOX News comes this report on Saddam's WMDs: bq. An upcoming report will contain "a good deal of new information" backing up the Bush administration's contention that Saddam Hussein pursued weapons of mass destruction (search), Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (search), R-Va., said. And more: bq. "I'm not suggesting dramatic discoveries," Warner told reporters Tuesday, but "bits and pieces that Saddam Hussein was clearly defying" international restrictions, "and he and his government had a continuing interest in maintaining the potential to shift to production of various types of weapons of mass destruction in a short period of time." Hmmmm... And what about the truck conveys that went over the border into Syria just before the Coalition invaded??? This story will take a couple more years to develop and it will be very very interesting to follow.

How do you handle a one million dollar oopsie? From Slashdot comes this story of a Technology Refresh gone bad, way waay bad... bq. The Chicago Tribune, which hasn't missed an edition since the Great Fire of 1871, came perilously close to doing just that Monday. bq. Because of a computer breakdown, about 40 percent of subscribers received no paper Monday. And those that did got a truncated version with strange page numbering and unusual placement of some features. bq. The problems occurred after a flaw in software installed over the weekend crashed the newspaper's production system. After struggling through the night, the newspaper managed at daybreak to begin printing an abbreviated Monday paper. The article quotes the loss (advertising revenues, etc.) at $1-Mill It might be interesting to check their HR website for the next couple days...

A couple days ago, a paper was published that showed the results of a nine-year study of CO2 uptake (1989 through 1998) in the world's oceans and it showed that the oceans are absorbing more CO2 than thought and that this would help to buffer the increased output from developing nations. Now, supposed 'environmentalists' are looking at the increased absorption, comparing it with the amount of CO2 produced by human activities (as opposed to the much greater amount produced naturally) and saying that the Ocean's Absorption of "Anthropogenic" CO2 is causing shifts in the Ocean's pH and will cause problems with coral and shellfish populations. As if the Ocean is able to differentiate... About five to ten percent of the CO2 in the atmosphere today was produced by humans over the entire course of human history. For first-world nations, CO2 production has dropped since the 1940's because CO2 production means expenditure of fuel and this is expensive -- we have gotten better at industrial processes. Why can't the Environmental business enjoy some good news for a change, they always have to make a crisis to sell their agenda...

Been pretty much offline for a few days so apologies for the lack of posting. Went to pick up two Mohair sheep for Jen to use for her weaving plus taking care of a bunch of Seattle house-based issues. More blogging tomorrow...

John Hawkins at Right Wing News posts a list of 40 well-researched and documented (with links and verify-able quotes) reasons why George Bush makes the better choice for President in the upcoming election. Some examples: bq. 7) If you believe it's important to increase funding for education, "President Bush's overall Fiscal Year (FY) 2005 budget represents a 49% increase for elementary and secondary education since FY 2001". bq. 10) George Bush's five-year, $15 billion Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is the most significant strike against the spread of AIDS/HIV in the history of mankind. bq. 12) John Kerry missed 64% of his votes in the Senate last year and has missed more than 80% of them this year. If John Kerry isn't bothering to do the job he has, wouldn't it be a mistake to give him a promotion? bq. 17) Kerry did, in fact, vote over 350 times for higher taxes. bq. 33) "Hundreds of former commanders and military colleagues of presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry are set to declare in a signed letter that he is "unfit to be commander-in-chief." They will do so at a press conference in Washington on Tuesday. bq. "What is going to happen on Tuesday is an event that is really historical in dimension," John O'Neill, a Vietnam veteran who served in the Navy as a PCF (Patrol Craft Fast) boat commander, told CNSNews.com. The event, which is expected to draw about 25 of the letter-signers, is being organized by a newly formed group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. bq. "We have 19 of 23 officers who served with [Kerry]. We have every commanding officer he ever had in Vietnam. They all signed a letter that says he is unfit to be commander-in-chief," O'Neill said." -- Every commanding officer John Kerry had in Vietnam says he is unfit to be President There are 35 more -- check it out...

Denny Wilson at Grouchy Old Cripple had this wonderful letter to Presidential hopeful John F. Kerry: bq. July 10, 2004 Dear Senator Kerry, bq. I would first of all like to congratulate Senator Kerry on his nomination and also thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak my mind. I lost my job this past year. When Clinton was president, I worked in a prosperous enterprise. But in this last year, we had to close our operations. Far worse, I lost two of my sons in Bush's evil war in Iraq. They gave their lives for their country, and for what? bq. My pain of losing my sons is indescribable. While it is trivial next to the loss of my sons, I regret to say that I also lost my homes. I simply had nothing left. bq. I am a senior citizen with various medical problems. I'm not in a position here I can begin a new career. I was reduced to the point where I was homeless, all because of President Bush. And when the authorities found me, did hey have any compassion for my misfortune and ailments? No, I was arrested. If I had any money left, I would donate it to the Democratic party. If Al Gore had been elected in 2000, I guarantee you, I would still have a job, a home, and most importantly, my sons! bq. Regards, Saddam Hussein

From Yahoo/AP comes this heartening story of some followers of Islam -- the Religion of Peace -- and their dealings with a French mother and child on a train: bq. A gang of young men attacked a woman riding a suburban train with her infant, cutting her hair and drawing swastikas on her stomach. Other passengers watched but did nothing, police reported. And more: bq. Police said the gang of six set upon the 23-year-old woman on a suburban train north of Paris and grabbed her backpack where they found identity papers that showed an address in the capital's well-to-do 16th district. "There are only Jews in the 16th," one of the group of attackers said. bq. The young woman, who was not identified, was not Jewish and no longer lived in the district, police said. bq. The gang then pushed her and cut her hair "to keep a souvenir," police said. The attackers opened her shirt, reportedly with a knife, before drawing swastikas on her stomach with a marking pen. The 13-month-old infant fell from its stroller in the m�l�e. Neither the mother nor infant was seriously hurt, police said. bq. Police described the gang as ages 15 to 20 and said some appeared to be of Muslim North African origin. One of the things that makes America so strong is that the people who emigrate here assimilate quickly. The Vietnamese father who moves here makes sure that his kids attend college and become professionals and speak only English. Because the Europeans have such strict laws regarding labor -- wages, benefits, hiring and firing, they have taken to importing loads of "cheap labor" from Africa without urging them to assimilate into French culture and society. Now this is coming home to roost...

New Zealand engineer and inventor Bruce Simpson spent last year pursuing a hobby idea. He realized that all the components of a cruise missile were available Cheap and Off The Shelf. Engineers call this C.O.T.S. He then set about to build his own Cruise Missile whereupon the N.Z. Government came down on him like a tonne of bricks, basically going after everything he owns. In his website here, he is offering to travel to any country and build cruise missiles for anyone who wants them with the sole proviso that he will not work for any one planning or committing terrorist acts... Interesting dilemma -- the technology is out there and there are probably lots of other people doing the same thing but without the stir of media attention...

In another excellent essay, Steven DenBeste analyzes the failed campaign of Muqtada al-Sadr and compares it to the current Anti-America campaign of filmaker and 'documentarist' Michael Moore. Neither come out looking very good... al-Sadr: bq. To prevent the uprising from spreading, the response was slow, methodical, and relatively cool. 1st Armored Division got the job of fighting against the Mehdi Army, and it refused to give al-Sadr the provocations and incidents he needed and hoped for. Even when members of the Mehdi Army used major holy sites and at least one major cemetery for military purposes (a war crime, just in passing), the Americans didn't respond by flattening them. bq. Thus it was that the average uncommitted Shiite saw that the Americans treated those holy sites with more respect than the Mehdi Army did. bq. Shiites did consider those holy sites to have been desecrated. Sistani publicly condemned the desecration, and those responsible for it: al-Sadr and his forces. There was no general Shiite uprising. Moore: bq. Moore has planted his flag smacko in the middle of the Holy City of anti-Americanism. To defend that position, the LL's will now vocally proclaim something many have long believed but avoided admitting: they hate America and everything it stands for. That is not a message that will sell well to the broad electorate. They will proclaim that they love this nation, but... and then make clear that they despise most of the people who live in it, and despise the very features of this nation that the majority of us see as its greatest virtues. And they will poison the leftist political position even for non-loonie leftists. (Since Moore's supporters constitute a significant base of support for the Democratic Party, they're going to represent an ongoing headache for the Kerry campaign by their antics. And that will force him to continue to equivocate about his position on major issues, to avoid alienating them, and at the same time avoid alienating the broad electorate.) Heh...

From CNN/AP: bq. James M. Doohan, the actor who played Scotty on the '60s "Star Trek" TV series, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, his agent confirmed Tuesday. bq. Doohan, 84, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's "within the last couple months," agent Steven Stevens told The Associated Press. bq. He said Doohan is in the beginning stages of the disease, a progressive neurological disorder that afflicted former President Ronald Reagan, who died June 5. bq. Doohan, who lives in the Seattle suburb of Redmond, also has suffered for some time with Parkinson's disease, diabetes and fibrosis, the latter due to chemical exposure during World War II when he was a soldier in the Canadian military, Stevens said. bq. One of Doohan's sons, Chris Doohan, of Thousand Oaks, California, said the Alzheimer's diagnosis stemmed from his father's increasing loss of short-term memory. bq. "His longterm memory seems to be intact," said Chris Doohan, 45. "If you ask him how he got his role on 'Star Trek' or (about) D-Day, he can talk for an hour about that. But if you ask him what he had for breakfast," he can't say. Always a fond place in my heart for Scotty. Picard _is_ the better Captain though... [grin]

Wretchard at The Belmont Club does another excellent analysis of the situation in the Middle East and compares it to other historical elements of warfare: bq. A Tale of Long Ago When Napoleon reconnoitered the Duke of Wellington's position at Waterloo on June 18, 1815 he remarked to his Marshals that beating the English would be no more serious an affair than "eating breakfast". It was the Emperor's habit to disparage the enemy in front of his men, but inwardly his heart misgave him. Napoleon knew that if Wellington's ally Field Marshal Blucher could concentrate his additional forces on Wellington's left before the close of day that "France was lost". There remained but one chance: to rout Wellington before Blucher arrived. He ordered D'Erlon's corps forward at the pas de charge in one last desperate throw of the dice. bq. In 2004, French audiences flocking to Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 to laugh at the stupidity and weakness of their enemy are subconciously participating in a gambit of equal desperation: the notion that if George Bush's reelection can be prevented by a John Kerry victory; that the liberal project which had been thrown off the rails by the September 11 attacks can somehow be set in motion again and the world restored to its proper course. Absent is the Napoleonic self-awareness of the man concious of impending tragedy yet daring it nonetheless. bq. Waterloo had been lost before Napoleon set foot on the battlefield. The principal Napoleonic innovation of the Army Corps, which enabled combined arms manuever at a subordinate level and proved decisive against the inflexible and unitary command structures of his enemies had been copied and bettered by the Prussians. With characteristic efficiency, the Prussians took Napoleon's inspired improvisations and created a general staff system and restructured their armies so that their brigades were combined arms units, French Corps in miniature. And as for Wellington, he had of old time beaten all of France's Marshals in Spain. Napoleon entered the field at the peak of his powers backed by an army of veterans yet he was not to win. It was not that Napoleon had grown smaller; it was that his enemies had grown larger. bq. The transnational liberal project and the dream of radical Islam are alike pursuits after a lost glories. In its eighth century heyday, Islam wielded a two-edged sword. Not only were their mobile tactics superior to those of the petty kingdoms around them, they brandished a creed and social structure which was in many ways superior to the barbarian modes which they encountered. Similarly, while Napoleon wielded the levees en masse; he rode on the greater wave of revolutionary France before whose ideas the dynastic houses of Europe trembled. But at the dawn of the 21st century, these two mighty blades had dwindled into single-edged fillets of rusted iron. Islam no longer the representative of a prosperous and tolerant society and the idea of France shrunken to a kind of petty socialism peopled with legions of pensioners. Ouch and Ouch again... Pitty to be them in this century. I cherry-picked Wretchard's essay, check out the whole thing here Good stuff!!!

Crap... From the SanJose Mercury News/AP: bq. 2 Wildfires Threaten Arizona Observatory Firefighters widened a defensive ring around a mountaintop observatory Monday to try to hold back two wildfires and protect one of the world's most powerful telescopes under construction. bq. Crews used bulldozers and fire retardant around the Mount Graham International Observatory, which has two operating telescopes and the $120 million soon-to-be-completed Large Binocular Telescope. bq. Researchers from around the world use the observatory, which is an extension of the University of Arizona. bq. "The building's not going to burn, but the smoke and heat could do some real damage to the instruments inside," said Pruett Small, a fire official. The buildings will not burn but the smoke damage will take a while to recover from -- smoke particles do no good to optical surfaces, they will need to be cleaned and recoated.

There is a very interesting set of technological advances being fostered by the U.S. Navy. Wretchard at the Belmont Club has a good pr�cis on them: A very brief excerpt -- talking about rail guns bq. To put things in perspective, our current 5-inch gun has a muzzle energy of 10 megajoules. ... In contrast, naval rail guns will achieve muzzle energies from 60 to 300 megajoules. ... Research indicates that a notional first-generation naval rail gun could deliver a guided projectile with an impact velocity of Mach 5 to targets at ranges of 250 miles at a rate of greater than six rounds per minute. What is being talked about here is the comparison between a conventional powder-fired gun and a gun whose projectile is launched by electrical forces. This will be very interesting to follow in that the projectiles are inert with minimal chemical or radiological 'issues' but the energy they deliver can be calibrated to the task at hand and aimed with precision...

Last May, Bill Cosby delivered a serious clue-bat to members of the Black community. He did it again last Thursday -- from Yahoo/AP: bq. Bill Cosby went off on another tirade against the black community Thursday, telling a room full of activists that black children are running around not knowing how to read or write and "going nowhere." And more: bq. Cosby made headlines in May when he upbraided some poor blacks for their grammar and accused them of squandering opportunities the civil rights movement gave them. He shot back Thursday, saying his detractors were trying in vain to hide the black community's "dirty laundry." bq. "Let me tell you something, your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day, it's cursing and calling each other n------ as they're walking up and down the street," Cosby said during an appearance at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition & Citizenship Education Fund's annual conference. bq. "They think they're hip," the entertainer said. "They can't read; they can't write. They're laughing and giggling, and they're going nowhere." bq. In his remarks in May at a commemoration of the anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision, Cosby denounced some blacks' grammar and said those who commit crimes and wind up behind bars "are not political prisoners." bq. "I can't even talk the way these people talk, 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' ... and I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk," Cosby said then. "And then I heard the father talk ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth." So true... The place I worked for in Seattle has about 50 engineers on staff. They are expanding and are always looking for new people. We have men, women, people from India, China, all over. Number of Blacks? Zero. Why? No applicants... Get off the 'street' and get into college.

Victor Davis Hanson weighs in with another excellent essay -- this time it's on the difference between reality and what is promoted by the likes of Michael Moore, Richard Clarke, Al Gore et. al... bq. Fantasyland We live in an upside-down civilization of hit Michael Moore conspiracy films, of novels about how to kill a sitting President of the United States, of elite American newsmen ridiculing brave Iraq democrats, and of allied peoples abroad who tell pollsters that they prefer beheaders and fascists to win in Iraq. Perhaps we should take a hard look at this current mythic world. bq. The �Iraq Was a Mistake� Canard Richard Clarke now lectures his newfound paying audiences�including the revered nonpartisan American Library Association� that Iraq was an enormous mistake. Was it really? bq. Our problems are tactical and manageable, not strategic and fatal. After 9-11, ridding the world of a mass killer who wished to recycle petrodollars to remake his arsenal to replay prior invasions was no error. Nor was it an �enormous mistake� to put democratic reformers in his place rather than a Mubarak-like �moderate� or Royal Family. Iraq now is what the Left all throughout the 1960s and 1970s said America should be doing�and nothing is more saddening than to see earnest and courageous reformers of the new Iraqi government being grilled and pilloried on TV by smug American pundits and reporters. Read the whole thing -- he is always good but this is one of his better ones.

The groundbreaking for rebuilding the World Trade Center started this Sunday, July 4th with the installation of a 20 ton slab of granite. More story at Yahoo/AP: bq. A 20-ton slab of granite, inscribed to honor "the enduring spirit of freedom," was laid Sunday at the World Trade Center site as the cornerstone of the skyscraper that will replace the destroyed towers. bq. The ceremony marked the start of construction on the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, designed as a twisting glass and steel tower that evokes the Statue of Liberty, including a 276-foot spire resembling her torch. bq. Gov. George E. Pataki said he chose July 4 to begin rebuilding to show that the terrorists who attacked New York on Sept. 11, 2001, didn't destroy America's faith in freedom.

There is a wonderful cartoon strip "The Boondocks" whose author, Aaron McGruder has a definite liberal slant. He published a number of cartoons criticizing President Bush's policies. Last weekend though, he took a very sharp shot at Presidential wannabe J. F. Kerry stating that Kerry supports terrorism. Check it out:

The title for this post comes from Wretchard's comments at the Belmont Club It seems that someone joined the International Solidarity Movement and spent a bit of time being trained The article is here: Behind the Curtain bq. Lee Kaplan at Frontpage relates his training experiences with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). That's the same organization that fielded Rachel Corrie to the Gaza strip. Kaplan pretended to be a volunteer for their "Freedom Summer" program which aimed to deploy American and Europeans to run interference for Palestinian combatants in Gaza and the West Bank. bq. At the Palestine Solidarity Conference held at Ohio State last year, Adam Shapiro told me that the ISM has Palestinian "handlers," or undercover supervisors at all demonstrations against Israel. These supervisors direct attacks against the separation fence that is being built to keep suicide bombers and armed terrorists from infiltrating into Israel and other targets. One of the handlers leading the current attacks on the security fence at the start of this summer�s campaign is a veteran of the Marxist terrorist group PLFP named Hisham Jam Joun. The ISM website, www.palsolidarity.org , openly proclaims that the organization is �Palestinian-led.� bq. I signed up for the ISM training session, after seeing their Internet announcement calling for volunteers for their new campaign, which they called "Freedom Summer 2004," after the nonviolent campaign of the civil rights movement in the American south in the 1960's. There were similar announcements on local websites run by the ISM all over the United States. bq. The phone number I dialed put me in touch with Paul LaRudee, a 68 year-old retired Berkeley professor who, along with his Lebanese wife, has been a leader of the ISM movement in the Bay Area. LaRudee assured me that they welcomed everybody, no matter how old or inexperienced. "Most of our volunteers are in their sixties," he said. I was advised if I wanted to train with the ISM I needed to attend an orientation lecture at The New College of San Francisco which was being given by an Arab-American named Jess Ghannam, a psychoanalyst and professor at the University of California Medical School. Wretchard's final comment is priceless and apt: bq. One of the grandest educations in life is to observe the hard Left operate in cold blood at close quarters. While it may not confirm your belief in the god of history it will infallibly cement your conviction in the existence of the Devil. Read Kaplan's whole article and then look out the window. Is it the wind or is it them out there?

Checked the local library (small building; open three days/week) and found that they do indeed have a broadband connection and they have one terminal available for people to use. The librarian on duty did not know if the CD-ROM could be used for uploading or downloading and the support staff was unavailable (it was the Saturday before the Fourth so this was not expected). Better than nothing and a start... (grin)

Michael Moore's latest film grossed about $21 Million on its opening weekend. Talk to any leftie and they are more than happy to relate that fact to you. Tell them that the D- film "Dodgeball" grossed $30 Mill its opening weekend (the weekend previous) and they stop talking and start muttering for some reason... Heh...