Tuesday, April 15, 2003
I noticed something odd when I read this AP story
about Kentucky Governor Paul Patton. The Guv may have had his hand in
the cookie jar, and a few other places as well. But as I said, there
was something odd about the story; something missing.
There was no party affiliation mentioned.
I did a little more digging and finally turned up this UPI story.
UPI begins their piece with the words "Democratic Kentucky Gov. Paul
Patton has formally denied..."; nothing left to guess here! But this
UPI piece seems to be a rarity. Several local news outlets (WTVQ Lexington, Courier-Journal, Louisville, WAVE, Louisville) also fail to mention the Governor's party; something that would be automatic were he a Republican.
Using Google's news search, I looked up the terms "Republican governor"
and "Democratic governor". The former turned up 504 stories while the
latter only turned up 362 uses of the phrase. While this isn't as
dramatic a difference as searches of the terms "Arch-conservative"
versus "Arch-liberal" would be, it is still interesting. Reporters are
more inclined to identify GOP politicians by their party than they are
Democrats. Also, a quick glance at those stories that use the phrase
"Democratic governor" shows that in most cases the story was about
politics or elections; cases where one would expect to see party
affiliations mentioned.
(I've started this thread on FreeRepublic for discussion.)
Monday, April 14, 2003
style="font-weight: bold;">nervous feeling about Dubuya that I do.
Why the nerves? Because someone in the White House is href="http://www.charleston.net/stories/041203/wor_12bushguns.shtml"
style="font-weight: bold;">toying with gun owners by suggesting that the President would support the continuation of Bill Clinton's soon-to-sunset Assault Weapon ban. (I just can't
bring myself to believe that this come from the top. It just style="font-style: italic;">has to be someone else's idea of
"strategery".) Will we be seeing another one-termer named "Bush"?
This "strategery" is a horrible idea. Gun owners put Bush over the top
in 2000. That's not my opinion, nor does it come from the NRA, nor from
any other group seeking to make some political hay. style="font-weight: bold;">Bill Clinton gives gun owners the
credit for Gore's defeat. And he's right. Gore lost his home state and
West Virginia largely because gun owners feared his anti-gun policies. style="font-style: italic;">Had he won either of those normally
Democrat states, "chads" would not be a part of the American political
lexicon. Hillary(!), the presumed '04 Democrat candidate, will
need to pick up only one of these states to win. If Bush pisses off
enough gun owners, they simply won't vote. If they stay home,
especially in states like Tennessee and West Virginia, he's toast.
He'll go from conquering hero to one-term loser as quickly as his
father did.
Dubya, it's time to dance with the one what brung ya.
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
Helloooooo... IT'S A WAR!
People get killed in war. Some get taken prisoner by the enemy. The enemy doesn't necessarily play by our rules or follow our game plan. "Stuff" happens. It's to be expected.
Some of the Chicken-littles were, for some reason, expecting a cake walk. If things were going to be that easy, Bush would have sent Rumsfeld by himself armed with a baseball bat. No one expected this to be easy. Fast, perhaps, but not easy. Why? Because a considerable chunk of the Iraqi population have hitched their fortunes to Saddam's. If he goes, they're ruined. They've made their way in the world by torturing and oppressing their countrymen. They could find their necks stretched when this is over and thus have nothing to lose by fighting.
However, they will be overcome.
The stiff resistance in places like Basra and Umm Qasr are being led by Iraq's societal elites. They are, ironically, the most westernized group in Iraq. This is why they're able to function without command and control from Baghdad. But the troops fighting under them are not so westernized. They don't do well on their own; they need to be told what to do and when. When the Special Republican Guard and other Baathist elements in these pockets of resistance are taken out or their communications disrupted, the resistance will falter. The troops under them cannot function independently at those moments and are vulnerable.
These stories of Iraqi resistance aren't worth all the running around and screaming that some are doing.
Friday, March 21, 2003
Another reason why the cam may not be visible is that it could be damaged. Some stray Iraqi AAA almost hit it! The crew picked up the camera for a bit a moved it out of harm's way.
(I'm undoing the embed. I guess that CBS thinks that the war's over! 4/14)
...or click here
Thursday, March 20, 2003
MSNBC has been streaming that night-vision equipped camera in Baghdad. When I catch it running, I'll embed the player. Otherwise, I'll have the SkyNews feed running...
Update: I had just proofed the HTML code for this when the AAA started during this last raid. It's being reported that this was another "target of opportunity".
Update: I've switched over to SkyNews from the UK. When MSNBC re-establishes the link to the live cam, I'll put it back on.
Update: OK... so two players at once might be risky. Stop one if you have to!
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
It's official: The UN is an irrelevant "talk shop". (To borrow Tony Blair's words.) The UN has refused to live up to its obligations and the US must do the job of disarming Iraq "alone". (Just us and our 45 friends!)
This leaves me with a question that was at the back of my mind as I wrote last Tuesday's post. Perhaps Bush was doing a Br'ar Rabbit all along with the UN. Perhaps the purpose of the negotiations wasn't to give the UN one last chance to redeem itself. Perhaps the aim was to give it one last chance to hang itself. In any event, that's precisely what it did. The UN has proved what many of us have been saying for years. It's a paper tiger with lots of fierce words but no resolve. It's good at producing anti-Israeli or anti-American bluster, but little else. In short, it's a waste of US tax dollars.
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
spitting-mad at George W. Bush about Iraq and the UN
"They should be mad?" you're asking. Yup. And not for a
reason you'd expect. There are plenty of 'em who are mad; mostly mad
that the war hasn't already started. They're mad because the Bush
administration keeps trying to get the UN to give Saddam his actual
"last" chance. (i.e. one where "last" really does mean "last"!) But in
actuality, Bush isn't trying to give Saddam one last chance. He's
giving the UN one last chance.
And that 's what should be putting a
twist in any conservative's knickers!
George W. Bush is making a heroic effort to save the UN from itself.
He's trying to make it relevant. Most conservatives think, correctly I
should add, that the UN has been the "Unimportant Nations" for quite
some time. It has been America's liberals that have been keeping the
life support plugged in for all of these years. Now, when a
conservative has a chance to kick the plug out of the wall, he's
greasing up the paddles to give the ol' gal another shock or two.
Here's the way things stand in the UN. We're going to kick the snot
outta Iraq whether the UN's bureacrats like it or not. This is an issue
of America's national security. UN votes don't matter here. We cannot
allow the Baathists to provide weapons of mass destruction to our
enemies. Period. UNproductive babbling not withstanding, America will
attack Iraq. It's just the right thing to do. The UN style="font-style: italic;">should be standing by a member
nation who's under attack, namely us. They're not. They're standing
with Saddam, Osamma, and the other aggressors. They're on the wrong
side.
Bush is trying to lead the UN back to the right path. He's giving them
a chance to do what's right. If they can be led back, then the UN will
have been brought back from the grave, something that most
conservatives agree is not a desirable outcome. style="font-weight: bold;">
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
Tuesday, March 04, 2003
Thursday, February 27, 2003
(Yes, FreeRepublic is really sloooooow today. John says that he's looking into it.)
Long story short, these 9 people made hundreds of phone calls to Washington (~1200!), sent hundreds of FAXes and sent thousands of emails... all on company time! (And before you ask, SirFishalot is an independent contractor using his own laptop and a cellular modem. As he puts it, he's stealing from himself when he's online; not the company.) This company has a very plain, easily understood policy on the use of computers and phones for personal business: DON'T! They also make it clear to their employees that they monitor the usage of these systems.
Now these 9 have plenty of free time to participate in the pro-Saddam demonstrations!
Sunday, February 16, 2003
Monday, February 03, 2003
in the comments about the loss of the Columbia:
What if... If you go to target="_blank">FreeRepublic.com, you'll find dozens of posts that
involve brainstorming about possible was the tragedy could have been
avoided. This is, I think, human nature. We want to fix things. The idea
that this was simply an unavoidable accident is unpaletable to many
people. No one likes that helpless feeling.
Granted, it's only been about 48 hours since the accident, but it's
looking more and more like damage to the left wing's thermal tiles was
to blame. About 24 hours after the launch, reviews of the launch films
showed a piece of debris striking the left wing. Worse still, it looks
like the exact point of impact may have been the gear well door. This is
a weak point in the wing; the worst spot to have a burn-through. href="http://qs240.pair.com/sfnvideo/sts107/030203e212_qt.html"
target="_blank" title="QuickTime needed to view clip">A clip of the
impact is here. This was about 80 seconds into the flight. If I
remember correctly, the shuttle is supersonic at that point. Even a
light object will hit with considerable force. The clip shows just such
a violent impact.
Back to "what if...". Some people have wondered why they just didn't
abort the flight. NASA maintains landing sites in Africa and Spain for
just such a contingency. The problem, as stated above, is that they
didn't spot the problem until the next day. They have a ~4 minute window
to bail out of a launch and land at a "TAL" site. "Couldn't they have
used the arm to look under the wing?" This mission didn't require the
arm. It was removed to save weight. "Couldn't they have spacewalked
under the wing?" This brings us to the $64,000 question: Even if they
could, what would they have done next? Assuming that they could reach
the underside of the wing without causing more damage, the shuttle crew
isn't equipped to repair the orbiter's tiles. (Though this leads me to
my own personal "What if": What if they had a thermally resistant
version of Bondo to trowel into a damaged tile.) Confirming the damage
wouldn't have saved the crew. There's currently no way to repair damaged
tiles in situ and no way to
protect the damaged area during reentry. Rather than surprise at the
unexpected loss of the orbiter and crew, we'd have all been treated to
the horror of knowing that a
crew was about to be lost.
accident caused by insulation breaking off of the External Tank, what
next? After the Challenger was
lost, NASA shut down the shuttle program for over two years. I don't
think that such a shut down is necessary this time. When the style="font-style: italic;">Challenger was lost, a "cultural"
flaw at NASA was to blame; they were grandstanding. They launched when
it was far too cold. NASA's "can-do" attitude had morphed into a
"must-do" attitude. That doesn't seem to be the case here. No one could
have known that the insulation would break off. And even if we all
wince at their estimate of the size of the gash in the tiles, there
wasn't anything that could have been done. There wasn't a cultural
failure as happened with the Challenger.
Thus there isn't a need for a protracted shut down. The bonding method
for insulation on the ET needs to be improved. Perhaps a
"better-than-nothing" tile repair technique should be designed. But
that's about all that needs to be done. NASA could be safely flying by
the time the ISS crew needs a ride home.
the time that the Challenger
was lost, my wife was working with the same material that went into the
boosters' O-rings. She and her co-workers all assumed that the launch
would be scrubbed because of the cold. They all knew that the rubber
became brittle at cold temperatures. They were shocked to hear that the
launch was going ahead.
Saturday, February 01, 2003
I remember Columbia's first flight. I was a senior in high school. The day that it returned to Earth, a friend and I ditched school to watch it land at Edwards AFB. That was back in the days before everyone started to think that shuttle flights and landings were mere routine. I still remember the way she looked high overhead when we all heard the twin sonic booms with two chase planes in tow.