Wednesday, July 02, 2008
The “New” Old Battlefield
Following the deadliest month for the Coalition in Afghanistan, what does it all mean?
Look for the coming Surge in Afghanistan:
The Pentagon predicts the pace of attacks in Afghanistan by a resurgent Taliban is likely to rise this year, despite U.S.-led efforts to capture key leaders.
“We’re going to increase troops by 2009,” Bush said, without offering details about exactly when or how many.
It amounted to a reiteration of the promised buildup of U.S. troops before Bush leaves office in January. He said coalition forces have doubled in size over two years, and pledged that the twin strategy of fighting extremists and supporting Afghanistan’s civil development “is going to work.”
In terms of public attention, the war in Afghanistan has been obscured by the far costlier and deadlier one in Iraq.
But it is a matter of consensus within the Bush administration, and between the U.S. and key allies, that there are far too few troops in Afghanistan to fight the accelerating Taliban and to train Afghan soldiers and police.
Overall, roughly 32,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan, including 14,000 serving with NATO forces and 18,000 conducting training and counterinsurgency.
That’s the largest U.S. presence since the war began
Recall if you will that the war in Afghanistan is also known as the War that Pretty Much Everybody Generally Agrees On and we did everything that the Left bitterly complains that we did not do in Iraq: we were retaliating for an attack on our soil as opposed to launching a pre-emptive war, we have provided humanitarian aid, we went in with our allies, have worked closely with the UN, and we have used diplomacy with neighboring countries (specifically Pakistan) in the region.
The Fall of the Old Grey Lady
I’ve fallen… and I can’t get up!
The Los Angeles Times has set another record, by being the first newspaper to suffer from amazingly low circulation and a constant game of firing whoever they can just to say in business. Case in point:
The Los Angeles Times plans to cut 250 positions, including 150 jobs in the print and online news departments, amid a continuing industrywide slump in ad sales, the paper’s editor said Wednesday.
The decline in advertising, fueled by a weak real estate market, has boosted the copy-to-ads ratio above the industry target of 50-50, giving readers more stories than they can digest, while the paper competes for attention with the Internet and TV, editor Russ Stanton said.
As a result, the paper will undergo a makeover by the fall that will cut pages by 15 percent per week, eliminate some sections and trim story length, Stanton said.
“The number one reason that people cancel the L.A. Times is, they tell us, they don’t have enough time to read the paper that we give them every day,” Stanton said. “We’re going to be more picky about the stories we choose to write long and a lot more picky about the ones we write shorter.”
Actually, Mr. Stanton, the reason people don’t read the LA Times is because the newspaper sucks. It’s a left-wing propoganda piece, it trashes anything that doesn’t fit its agenda, and the pretentious writers and editors make our skin crawl.
McCain’s Greatest Hope Was Also Bush’s
Remarkably, there are voters who Barack McGovern Obama isn’t far enough Left for.
Via CNN:
CNN polling director Keating Holland notes that Tuesday’s survey confirms what a string of national polls released this month have shown: Obama holds a slight advantage over McCain, though not a big enough one to constitute a statistical lead.
“Every standard telephone poll taken in June has shown Obama ahead of McCain, with nearly all of them showing Obama’s margin somewhere between 3 and 6 points,” Holland said. “In most of them, that margin is not enough to give him a lead in a statistical sense, but it appears that June has been a good month for Obama.”
But the new CNN/ORC poll shows that the race gets even tighter when the two most prominent third-party presidential candidates are considered.
In a four-way matchup that includes independent candidate Ralph Nader and Libertarian candidate Bob Barr, Obama’s lead over McCain dwindles to 3 percentage points, 46 percent to 43 percent. (Nader registers 6 percent, and Barr gets 3 percent.)
Frankly, I am stunned by the notion that 6% of voters do not think that Obama’s plans for pacifism, wealth redistribution, and expansion of government services go far enough. Similarly, Barr’s polling at 3% shows that he has not even been successful in gathering up those wonderful Ron Paul supporters (oh, how I will miss them and their spammed polls, blog trolling, poetry, and truly inspiring YouTube videos). This may have something to do with Barr telling the white nationalists to get bent, but who can say?
We have heard a lot about how fractured conservatives are nowadays, but Barr is not making much headway; this is surpising considering the antipathy they have towards McCain.
I’ll make a prediction here: just as in 2000 when Nader was accused of handing the White House to Bush, you will hear implications from liberals that Nader is somehow a racist for trying to prevent a (semi) black guy from getting elected. Does anybody think I am off-base here? Given the derangement we have seen on the Left, first presented as blind hatred of Bush and then transformed into blind worship of Obama, I would not rule it out.
The Media on Iraq: “Damn It, Damn It, Damn It!”
It is an AP story, so it is no wonder that the tone of it is a tad pessimistic.
The gang at MSNBC took some time out from their usual daily routine of keeping the candles lit at the Barack Obama Shrine in Chris Matthews’ office and keeping Keith Olbermann from stalking college girls to note that the Iraqi government accomplished fifteen of the eighteen benchmarks for success set for them by our Congress. Of course, you would not have guessed that this is good news from reading the first two paragraphs:
No matter who is elected president in November, his foreign policy team will have to deal with one of the most frustrating realities in Iraq: the slow pace at which the government in Baghdad operates.
Iraq’s political and military success is considered vital to U.S. interests, whether troops stay or go. And while the Iraqi government has made measurable progress in recent months, the rate at which it’s done so has been achingly slow.
Unfortunately, this is the kind of reporting we have come to expect from major news outlets and the reason that Iraq coverage dropped as quickly as the violence did.
The White House sees the progress in a particularly positive light, declaring in a new assessment to Congress that Iraq’s efforts on 15 of 18 benchmarks are “satisfactory” — almost twice what it determined to be the case a year ago. The May 2008 report card, obtained by the Associated Press, determines that only two of the benchmarks — enacting and implementing laws to disarm militias and distribute oil revenues — are unsatisfactory.
Naturally, the Democrats in Congress were enthusiastic to praise the progress being made acting like their usual selves:
Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., who requested the administration’s updated assessment, scoffed at the May report, which he says uses the false standard of determining whether progress on a goal is “satisfactory” versus whether the benchmark has been met. He estimates that only a few of the 18 benchmarks have been fully achieved.
I suppose now we are going to have to start debating what the meaning of the word “satisfactory” is.
Democrats also say more solid progress could have been made had the administration starting pulling troops out sooner.
“We’ve tried repeatedly to get the administration to shift responsibility to the Iraqi leaders for their own future, since there is broad consensus that there is no military solution and only a political settlement among the Iraqis can end the conflict,” said Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Well, I know that many people would like to have pulled the troops out so soon that they never actually went in, but the “less troops” strategy did not work quite as well as that Surge thing (the word “surge” is notably absent from the article). Consider this AP story from almost exactly a year ago:
Iraqi leaders warned Monday the country could collapse if American troops leave too quickly as pressure mounts in Washington to draw down U.S. combat forces. More threats to Iraqi stability could be looming to the north with Turkish forces gathering in a possible prelude to a cross-border attack against Kurdish rebels.
Iraq’s foreign minister said Turkey has massed 140,000 soldiers near Iraq _ a figure immediately disputed by the Bush administration, which said satellite photos indicated no such buildup. Nevertheless, Turkey has been deploying troops on the border for several months, and the country’s foreign minister said last week that the government and military had agreed on detailed plans for a cross-border operation
The White House said President Bush is not considering a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq now despite an erosion of support among Republicans for his war policy. A report is due Sunday on whether the Iraqi government is meeting political, economic and security benchmarks that Bush set in January when he ordered 21,500 more U.S. combat forces to Iraq.
The Iraqis were quite explicit one year ago that prematurely withdrawing troops from their country would be a disaster and they were not yet ready to go it alone. We now see that sending in more U.S. troops absolutely did result in the accomplishment of more of the Iraqi government’s goals, despite the naysaying of Congressional Democrats and some faint-hearted Republicans. Bush--and McCain, of course--had it right. The Iraqi people and government still want us to stay until the country is stabilized.
According to Senator Levin (D-MI):
“The administration, however, has repeatedly missed opportunities to shift this burden to the Iraqis and appears willing to do so again,” Levin said.
Let me help you understand, Senator:
The Iraqis are taking control of this fight. Their own defeat of the Mahdi Army in Basrah (which the Western press did their best to characterize as a defeat for the Iraqi Army) and beyond has shown that security can be accomplished provided that a neutral, unbeatable force remains to keep things fair among the factions and offer support for the duly-elected government. Unfortunately, that happens to be us. Everybody wants to see us end our combat obligations in Iraq, but there is no sense whatsoever in vacating the battlefield while we are still needed by our allies and winning a great victory. Progress has been made in nearly all areas over the past year, in spite of the wishes of some spineless members of Congress and a certain presidential candidate I could name.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Book Plug
Steve better sign my copy for this...
My awesome blogger buddy Steve H. Graham has a new book on the shelves titled Eat What You Want And Die Like a Man. Get it. If all else fails, at least you’ll know that you’re almost as manly as the guy in this Old Spice commercial. And if you’re already as much of a man as that guy, then you might be able to become as cool and manly as Bruce Campbell… but don’t bet on it.
Bottom line - get your copy of Eat What You Want And Die Like A Man. Liberals everywhere are counting on you to make them look wimpy and metrosexual, and this book has every recipe to make that dream come true.
The “F” Doesn’t Stand for “Fantastic”
I am about as pro-law enforcement as one can be, but this is just sad...
A former FBI agent has come forward to describe just how poorly handled the 2001 Anthrax investigation really was and why the guilty party still remains at large.
The anthrax investigation, almost from the beginning, was hampered by top-heavy leadership from high ranking, but inexperienced FBI officials, which led to a close-minded focus on just one suspect and amateurish investigative techniques that robbed agents in the field the ability operate successfully.
I’ll sum it up for you: micromanagement from the Director, over-aggressive surveillance, leaks, and too much public focus on one suspect. Given the high profile of the case, I could almost forgive the political-types for involving themselves, but the idea of information being leaked to the media by a law enforcement agency as professional as the FBI is troubling. I mean, we expect this kind of thing from the over-politicized CIA and State Department, but the FBI?
What bothers me most about this story is that of all of the counter-terrorism agencies in the United States, the FBI should have been the most prepared to handle such a domestic terror plot (if that is what it was) given their ultimately successful investigations of the Oklahoma City and the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, among others. The suspect, Dr. Steven Hatfill, won a 5.8 million dollar settlement last week against the FBI for violating his privacy and harrassment. How could the FBI forget the example of the unfortunate Richard Jewell so soon?
Granted, this happened seven years ago and the investigation is still underway, but my confidence is hardly bolstered in FBI Director Mueller when he pops off with something this inane:
FBI Director Robert Mueller on Monday criticized the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, saying it may harm efforts to deter violent crime.
Specifically, he claims that his interest is in keeping lawfully owned firearms away from campuses. Why?
He said college campuses and small communities could be “potential incubators of terrorism” even while major cities such as New York and Los Angeles remain primary targets for terrorists.
That’s right. There may be some maniac running loose right now with anthrax that the FBI cannot seem to find, but we are supposed to believe that the real problem is honest citizens who choose to protect themselves with firearms? Frankly, the major concern I would have about terrorism on college campuses has more to do with cyberterrorism than a shooting spree carried out by a lone nut. It is well-known that gun-free zones do little more than disarm would-be victims. Armed citizens have proven quite effective in the past against active shooters, while there is not one example of an active shooter being stopped by either a university police officer or even a school resource officer in a public school that I am aware of.
As one researcher found:
In RTC (Right-to-Carry) states, civilian justifiable homicides were relatively more common when compared to the number of police justifiable homicides.
Also:
In RTC states, a firearm was used in 86.9% of all civilian JH, compared to 64.6% in non-RTC states.
Finally:
Criminals were 27.3% more “successful” in completing violent crime, and 33.3% more “successful” in completing murder attempts, in non-RTC states which highlights the effectiveness of employing a firearm as a self-defense tool (as opposed to becoming a violent crime statistic).
Does the Director of the FBI not read his agency’s own statistics on self-defense with firearms?
Monday, June 30, 2008
The Dust Has Settled and Out Steps…
Me!
For those who are not familiar with me, I’m a longtime daily reader of this site. I think I’m best known for being an incessant troublemaker over on Right-Thinking From the Left Coast, but I will not be using Drum’s place as a platform to carry on my arguments with Lee.
I was deeply honored that Drumwaster invited me to become an Author here at the Rants, as this is something I have been wanting for a long time. I look forward to being active with no less than two or three posts per week and I will always aim to keep them as informative, entertaining, and original as possible.
Thanks again, Drum; I won’t let you down!
Time to get to work…
John Aravosis: Honestly, besides being tortured, what did McCain do to excel in the military?
What a dick.
Meet the latest asshole to enter the liberal publishing world, John Aravosis.
It’s not “nice” to ask the question, but it’s actually a pretty good question. Yes, we all know that John McCain was captured and tortured in Vietnam (McCain won’t let you forget). A lot of people don’t know, however, that McCain made a propaganda video for the enemy while he was in captivity. Putting that bit of disloyalty aside, what exactly is McCain’s military experience that prepares him for being commander in chief?
Hey John, this is all I’m going to say to you: you’re a dick.
Enjoy your five minutes of fame. If you’re looking for find out what a sucker John Aravosis is, read about it here. He’s nothing more than your typical liberal bomb tosser looking for a little bit of attention.
h/t Patterico
UPDATE: Via Matt Welch in the April 2007 Reason:
Any young McCain worth his salt could convert a grudge into motivational sustenance and torment his tormentors with defiant lip. So after being shot out of the sky during a risky raid over Hanoi in 1967, then pummeled by a mob of local Vietnamese and detained at the notorious prison nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton, McCain comported himself heroically despite two broken arms, a mangled knee, and innards wracked by dysentery and other maladies. Every morning for two years a guard the prisoners called The Prick would demand that McCain bow to him. Every morning McCain would refuse, then brace for his beating. Herded into a made-for-propaganda Christmas Eve service in the prison yard, McCain punctured the enforced silence with repeated shouts of “Fuck you!” while raising his middle finger to the camera. Beat senseless for days on end for refusing to divulge information or accept early release (which would have given the North Vietnamese a propaganda victory and violated the Navy’s honor code), he would reveal only the names of every player he could remember from the Green Bay Packers. “Resisting, being uncooperative and a general pain in the ass,” he wrote, “proved, as it had in the past, to be a morale booster for me.”
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Aravosis.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Talk about weird
I was going through some of the files that I have recently gotten, and I was deep in the S’s, and I saw two directories side by side.
“Spaceballs” and “Supersymmetry in Particle Physics - An Elementary Introduction”.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Dust Clouds on the Horizon
Big changes coming in the next few days here at the Rants…
Stay Tuned.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
YES!!!!!
It is now official. The Heller case has been decided, and Justice Antonin Scalia has written the majority decision. (You can read the pdf file here, if you wish.)
Held
1. The Second Amendment protects and individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
There’s lots more, and I’ll be skimming through it today as circumstances allow, but this is a BIG win for the Second Amendment.
One small concern that Patterico correctly points out.
5-4. Let that sink in, folks. Even though it was expected, it’s now official. Ponder it for a moment.
If the Democrats had appointed just one more Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, there would be no individual right to possess firearms in the United States of America.
And the Revolution would have been kick-started into gear, sooner rather than later. Count on it.
Update 1:
3. The handgun ban and the trigger-lock requirement (as applied to self-defense) violate the Second Amendment. The District’s total ban on handgun possession in the home amounts to a prohibition on an entire class of “arms” that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense. Under any of the standards of scrutiny the Court has applied to enumerated constitutional rights, this prohibition—in the place where the importance of the lawful defense of self, family, and property is most acute—would fail constitutional muster. Similarly, the requirement that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional
They don’t address the licensing requirement (which I have no beef with, anyway), nor does it touch any of the CCW/OC issues. Just that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
78%, beeyotches!
OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets
I’m a geek, not a nerd. Keep ‘em straight.
Let’s punish those “Evil Oil Speculators”
I mean, since they are obviously the very, very wealthy just fucking with oil prices to line their own pockets, we have every right to tax them punitively, right?
Isn’t that what the Democrats, out there working hard for “the little guy”, want to do?
Errrr, not so much.
Not the “not so much” that the Dems want to heavily tax those nasty evil speculators, but the “not so much” it being only the very wealthy.
CalPERS is the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, and provides retirement and health benefits to approximately 1.5 million public employees, retirees, and their families and more than 2,500 employers here in the State of California. And they have been investing in Commodity Speculation for the last two years. Including Crude oil.
SACRAMENTO, CA – The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) set the stage today for a potential foray into direct natural resources commodities futures and related investments in energy, metals, agricultural products and other raw materials.
At a half-day workshop, the CalPERS Investment Committee explored possibilities for a new asset class for the $210 billion pension fund besides public equity (stocks), private equity, fixed income (including bonds), and real estate.
“There may be serious money to be made by taking advantage of accelerating world demand for commodities and compelling investment opportunities in alternatives to diminishing resources, including cheap oil,” said Charles P. Valdes, CalPERS Investment Committee Chair.
Teachers. Cops. Firefighters. Retirees. These are the ones doing all that evil speculating.
When Democrats say “the rich”, they mean YOU.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Okay, I’m stumped
I’ve found a really cool mp3 file that I want to use as my custom cellphone ringtone, but I have no idea how to upload it to my phone.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to do this that doesn’t cost me anything (or very much) and doesn’t put my phone number on multiple spamming text lists? (I have enough people calling me, and have spent five years to almost completely purge my fax machine from such lists after signing up for ONE thing that “required” the number.)
Lots of sites only too happy to do it ”FREE”, but they seem REALLY eager to do it ABSOLUTELY FREE OF CHARGE JUST ENTER YOUR CELL PHONE NUMBER HERE
(By the way you will also have to sign up for our newsletter at only $0.49 per hour charged to your cell account and by downloading this ringtone you agree to put up with this scam to empty your pockets for as long as you or anyone you know own a ringtone, or you agree to pay us triple damages plus lots of other legal mumbo-jumbo you will certainly regret not reading before you click the link.)
Help?
Update: My granddaughter (God bless her) took about three minutes of punching buttons on my cell phone to send a picture of herself to my email account, and then (in another 45 seconds) managed to reply to it, including the really cool sound attachments.
So the younger generation to the rescue!
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Y’all still interested in the new trivia contest?
I’ve been putting the finishing touches on a new trivia contest, similar to what we had the last time. (To be honest, I was going through some old files and found my incomplete trivia list, and want to put this one on the web.)
Let me know, folks. Real cash on the line… 