Va. Senator Warner is out for 2008, and Fred Thompson is in for 2008.
Neither big surprises. Warner raised something like 12 cents in the past few quarters, and Thompson has been under investigation by the FEC for “exploring” too enthusiastically.
*No, I mean not running for re-election, not Senator Craig out.
So, Moqtada al-Sadr orders a freeze in operations of his militia, but the US Military is continuing to aggressively raid his offices.
Sadr’s message came the day after he issued a public statement to his Mahdi Army to cease its operations for up to six months so he could restructure the group. But Sadr was forced to reconsider after a raid Thursday by U.S. and Iraqi forces on his office in the southern city of Karbala led to the deaths of six Mahdi Army members and the arrest of 30 others, the officials said.
It’s almost like someone in the White House or Pentagon is looking for a fight to excuse the failure of the surge or to have an reason to attack Iraq.
Oh
My
God
The judge subsequently stayed his order, but one marriage was conducted in the interim.
Iowa??? Gateway to the big square states?
Not the place I expected to be at the head of this train,
10 Years ago, I was sitting on the computer, reading Usenet (remember that? I still use it*), and my wife rushed in and said that Diana, Princess of Wales, was in an accident, and was seriously injured.
I replied, “Let there be no kings”, paraphrasing George Washington.
Another friend was later informed by his distraught wife that Diana had died, and he replied, “I had no that the two of you were so close.”
As to her life, for the British republicans (i.e. those who support abolishing the monarchy) the breakup of the marriage was cause to say, “I told you so”.
The best comment I ever heard on the marriage was a girlfriend of mine, “It’s a marriage between the biggest welfare recipient in England with its only remaining virgin.”
In a very real way, this is an accurate description.
Charles was not allowed to marry the woman he loved, and hoped it would work out, and Diana, who was all of 19 when she was married, was in love with Charles, Prince of Wales, not Charles Philip Arthur George Mountbatten-Windsor.
I never understand why so many people seemed interested in her. She dressed well, but I never saw much behind it.
*And it’s a heck of a lot safer to get workarounds and cracks and WaReZ off of Usenet because it is pretty much an ASCII only medium.
China is implementing a law that requires state permission for reincarnation.
It appears that this is all a cunning plan * by the Chinese government to game the system for finding a successor to the Dali Lama when he dies.
Then again, it could just be bureaucratic bloody-mindedness, something the Chinese quite literally invented over 3000 years ago.
*A plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel!
Well it looks like the cover up masquerading as a court martial is finished.
So they acquitted Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan of everything but talking about the investigation, for which he will receive a reprimand.
So, no regular army officers, Jordan is a reservist, were convicted of anything, and the only thing an officer got was a slap on the wrist.
My someone with a star had to know, and explicitly approve of it, and someone at a higher level had to give tacit approval.
Based on reports, we already know that Rumsfeld viewed the Geneva conventions with contempt, and as the saying goes sh&% flows down hill.
So, let me get this straight, a group of beer swilling runners are marking a trail for a run, and it gets treated as a possible terrorist attack?
If the goal of terrorism is to create terror and panic, Osama bin Laden has already defeated us.
Two people who sprinkled flour in a parking lot to mark a trail for their offbeat running club inadvertently caused a bioterrorism scare and now face a felony charge.
The sprinkled powder forced hundreds to evacuate an IKEA furniture store Thursday.
New Haven ophthalmologist Daniel Salchow, 36, and his sister, Dorothee, 31, who is visiting from Hamburg, Germany, were both charged with first-degree breach of peace, a felony.
Story continues below ↓advertisementThe siblings set off the scare while organizing a run for a local chapter of the Hash House Harriers, a worldwide group that bills itself as a “drinking club with a running problem.”
We are a bunch of scared rabbits, aren’t we?
Not the delivery so much as the content, I think.
He’s noting that the while the party in power typically has the lead in corruption, because they are the ones with the ability to get corrupt stuff done, Republicans still hold a convincing muck advantage.
It appears that a draft of a GAO report has been leaked to the Washington Post.
Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration.
It’s been leaked because one of the writers knew that it would be censored by Bush and His Evil Minions™ in its final version.
In a related note, the Pentagon, “Said Wednesday that it won’t make a single, unified recommendation to President Bush during next month’s strategy assessment.”
This means that they don’t want to be Bush’s bitch on Iraq any more.
A few years back…I can’t put my finger on it….Those things that Bush and His Evil Minions™ have been saying about Iraq Iran,”And Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust,” sounds strangely familiar.
It’s almost like I’ve heard this before, maybe about 5 years ago.
On another bipartisan note, monkeys will be flying out of my butt.
It appears that we have a number of papers (here, and here) suggesting that George Bush will reach across the aisle in a non-partisan spirit.
What the frack are they smoking? Did they see the official announcement? It was angry announcement was angry and petulant. He’ll flip the bird to the congress.
My guess is that it will be Ted Olson, since his wife was killed on 9/11, it allows them to pull out that card.
Of course, there that whole lying under oath thing, where he claimed to not to be close to R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. under oath, the guy who manufactured the Paula Jones crap, despite the fact that he was best man at his wedding.
I won’t bet on that, but I would bet that whatever choice it is, it will be a big $%#@ you to Congress.
I’ve posted before on what I see as Japan’s return towards its militaristic past, and now we have the JapaneseDefense Tech: Japan launching an aircraft carrier.
I present to you the the Hyuga, 18,000 tons of naval pulchritude:
Of course, it’s not a “real carrier”, like the American super-carriers, or the France’s smaller deGaulle.
Right now, it will carry 4 helicopters, 3 Blackhawk types, and 1 Ch53E Super Stallion, though in a pinch, more can be accomodated.
If the Japanese get the JSF, I can see them getting some of the STOVL versions and operating them from these boats, if just for training for a possible future, and larger, carrier of Hermes size.
But still, the idea of Japanese getting back into carrier aviation does not fill me with anticipation.
From Politico.com.
If I bet on politics, and I don’t because my record sucks, I’d guess that he’s not running.
I came across The Valley of the Whales, a fascinating sight in Egypt that appears to be a treasure trove of fossils of whale origins.
Among other things, they have found a complete skeleton of Basilosaurus.
Definately a “wow” in my book.
Unfortunately, they found it in in Manhattan, in the UNMOVIC files.
It appears to be Phosgene, and luckily no one was hurt. It was taken from an inventory of a 1996 inspection in Iraq.
Some more updates on how the Bush administration is making what is currently the worst threat to global security even worse by helping India increase its arsenal, with the obvious consequence of the almost failed state of Pakistan following suit.
First, it turns out that Pakistan is going with mobile launch systems, which are more likely to fall into terrorist hands, and India is working on technologies to take out buried facilities.
Lovely arms race there, and Bush is fanning the flames so that American nuclear companies can make a few bucks.
Basically, Bush is winking at India’s nuclear weapons program, but it’s not enough for the more bellicose and nationalistic members of India’s body politic.
Delightful.
Well, it turns out that if you need work done on your house, your contractors will show up on time, and may finish the work on budget and ahead of schedule.
They might even ask to show up ahead of schedule.
Used to be, if the contractor finished the same year as promised, you counted yourself lucky.
These guys are seriously hurting right now.
CNN has an article on the mess that Bear Stearns has Found themselves*.
They go into a number of reasons, but at its core, Bear Stearns*, and the rest of Wall Street have fallen victim to one of the favorite bogeymen of the right wing, moral hazard.
The right wing insists that things like minimum wage laws make us lazy, and public health care delivery makes us hypochondriacs.
While it is certain that minimum wage laws raise the cost of low value employees, and that there would be more use of the healthcare system if it were sane, the most extreme case illustrating the risks moral hazard is in the financial markets.
It turns out that Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan did the same with financial markets: There was never a market failure that he would not bail out over the past. As a result, people have become far more accepting of risk in the pursuit of greater return.
Whether it be the bailout of LTCM, or the floodgates being opened after the crash of 1987, or the dotbombs, Alan Greenspan has insulated people from the consequences of their decisions, and so we have people loaning dogs money to buy a house.
FWIW, I do not think that this serves as a good argument against socialized healthcare, which I support (I support a NHS over a single payer), but it is a good argument against socialized capitalism.
*Just to remind you, I have predicted that Bear Stearns cease to exist as an independent entity sometime before August 2, 2008.