Category: Politics

OK, Is This a Sign of the Apocalypse?

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Republican Florida Governor Charlie Crist just extended early voting hours in Florida, from 8 hours a day, and 8 across the weekend, to 12 hours.

I’m not sure why he did it, I’ve heard reports of the McCain campaign saying that this will kill them in Florida.

I think that after hearing the 50th story about folks waiting for hours at early voting stations, Governor Crist either decided that lengthening the hours was the right thing to do, or he realized that there was significant political blowback from this.

What Hilzoy Says

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In the entire matter of the false accusation of politically motivated assault, I agree with what Hilzoy said:

I’d also like to give a shout-out to all the people who held off on this, and to Michelle Malkin, who did a lot to keep this story from getting completely out of hand.

Michelle Malkin did the right thing, which is is something that I never expected to say.

One final note, I do not know whether the woman who did concocted the report is mentally ill or not, but in either case, she should spend an extended time in confinement.

If she is mentally ill, she is clearly a threat to herself and others. If she is not mentally ill, then she did something ¼ step removed from an attempted lynching.

Why We Love the Rude Pundit

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The Rude Pundit nails it again:

  1. Barack Obama must be an anarcho-syndicalist because he believes in the power of unions.
  2. Barack Obama must be a Whig because he believes in the government’s role in building infrastructure and education.
  3. Barack Obama must be a Gaullist because he believes in regulating banks.
  4. Barack Obama must be a neo-Aristotelianist because he was a community organizer.
  5. Barack Obama must be a Dadaist because cow.

RAND Gets Paid to Support Bloated Defense Budgets

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In looking at the Rand study, I neglected part of the bigger picture, that they are to a large degree paid by the Department of Defense to provide data supporting larger defense budgets.

Thus their study on the F-22 and F-35 showing that China would do them like a drunk sorority sister was part of a policy of pumping up the Chinese threat in order to justify larger budgets:

A new RAND study suggests U.S. air power in the Pacific would be inadequate to thwart a Chinese attack on Taiwan in 2020. The study, entitled “Air Combat Past, Present and Future,” by John Stillion and Scott Perdue, says China’s anti-access arms and strategy could deny the U.S. the “ability to operate efficiently from nearby bases or seas.”

I think that some of the problems, particularly with a defense procurement system that is as dysfunctional as the Bush family, are real, but the intended audience of this is Congressional appropriations committee.

It’s not a call for military reform, it’s a call for more of the same.

Overheard on Stellar Parthenon

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I should note that the private BBS, Stellarparthenon.org, frequently supplies me with ideas, or at least a direction in the generally civil and well informed discussions there.*

It turns out that even the musings on conspiracy theories tend to be pretty literate and well reasoned.

Case in point, SP member “Pickapeppa” made the following observation:

So just for the sake of discussion, let’s say Bush does intend to declare martial law and become it’s first dictator.

What do you think would be the first thing he’d want control over besides the military (which he already has).

Perhaps the banks?

Well, I’m sleeping like a baby tonight.

*The “closed” bit is why there are, “generally civil and well informed discussions” there.

Viktor Yushchenko Calls Snap Elections in Ukraine

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Fissures in the “Orange Revolution”.

The short story is that Ukranian President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko are on different sides of the ideological divide.

Yushchenko thinks that they should do everything possible to piss off the Russians, so that they will attack, and Tymoshenko looks at Georgia, and though she hates Russia too, she saw what happened in Georgia, and thinks that needlessly tweaking their nose, and overt hostility to the large Russian ethnic minority in Ukraine is stupid, and will not be to the benefit of the country.

Basically, Tymoshenko is saying that she is not opposed to wars, “just stupid ones,” to quote the next President of the United States and Yushchenko is approaching the issue with the calm demeanor of the current President of the United States.

Speaking from experience here, let me advise the Ukrainian people that having a leader with a messiah complex is a double plus bad thing.

See hrere, here, and here.

They Have Emails

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And the US Attorney prosecuting Ted Stevens wants them:

Even as Sen. Ted Stevens’ corruption trial nears an end, federal prosecutors are still asking for correspondence between the Alaska senator and his wife, Catherine, as well as e-mails she may have sent to 37 people connected to the couple’s home renovation and other gifts the senator may have received.

Stevens’ legal team filed a motion over the weekend asking that a judge intervene and prohibit the government from subpoenaing thousands of documents from Catherine Stevens’ law firm, Mayer Brown. They’re looking for conversations between her and anyone with a U.S. Senate e-mail address, as well as documents relating to anything of value given or provided to Stevens, his wife or his daughter, Lily. That includes “any documents relating to diamond earrings,” according to the motion.

Yeah, this guy is as pure as the driven snow.

That being said, the prosecutors are lucky that Stevens is not just guilty, but unbelievably guilty, because they have run a piss poor case.

Big Surprise, IP Monopolists Pull Numbers out of their Tuchus

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One of the frequent refrains about the “costs” of “piracy” is, “750,000 and $200 to $250 billion”.

Well Aris Technica took a look at this number to figure out where it came from, and the answer is: Nowhere.

The Commerce department did a study recently, and said, “$60 billion,” but the authors admit that this is a guess, based from data collected from self selected respondents who are overhwelmingly tied into IP intensive business models.

All they could show on their own was $23 billion.

Of course, $23 billion ain’t chicken feed….That’s what 50 days in Iraq?

Well Knock Me Over With a Sledge Hammer

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The investigation of Sarah Palin says the she abused her powers for personal considerations, which is not a surprise, and the Republican-dominated legislative council voted unanimously to release the report, which was a surprise.

My take on this: they know that McCain is going to lose, and the Republican primary for governor of Alaska just started.

Palin may not realize it, but her political career is over.

Rolling Stone on McCain

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John Sidney McCain III must be walking funny (funnier?) after Rolling Stone got through with him, because they just cut him a new asshole, and from reading the article, it’s clear that if they were using the Jarvis Bung Dropper* (see picture), then they must have used the jumbo extra large model.

This article looks in detail at every aspect of John McCain’s life, and finds that the truth is much less than heroic.

They absolutely eviscerate his claims of service and heroism, and they don’t even have to go into the rumor that he caused the Forrestal fire.

*Full disclosure, I actually worked for Jarvis Products Corporation in the early 1990s, and actually worked on issues with the blade for the larger models of the bung dropper, which goes from chickens all the way up to bulls.†
†Yes, I have worked everywhere. Maybe I can’t hold down a job, but more likely this has been my role as “technical hit man”, where you are parachuted in to take care of a specific need.

He Came, He Saw, He Queered the Deal

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Silly me. I figured that McCain’s “suspension” of his campaign was a completely empty gesture which would contribute nothing to any bailout deal.

I was wrong. John Sidney McCain III’s high profile involvement, and the White House meeting that his his campaign engineered, just had a deal blow up, because John McCain allied with conservative Republicans in the house to propose yet another tax cut.

About the only good things to come out of his involvement are a couple of bon mots from Democrats, the first from Christopher Dodd, who said that the entire affair sounded more like, “a rescue plan for John McCain than one for the financial system,” and the other from Barney Frank, “Senator McCain has said he had to interrupt his campaign and couldn’t do a debate because he had to come here to help us. God save us from such help. But in any case, there is no sign whatsoever that Senator McCain’s got any real role here, so he certainly ought to feel free to go back and debate.”

In the mean time, Boehner aHis Evil Minions&trade make it clear that this is just another exercise in dick swinging for purely partisan gains.

Lovely fellows, I’m glad that I have a daughter, so that I can forbid her to marry them.