Category: Stupid

Why Chris Christie Will Not Be the Republican Nominee

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In many ways, Christie’s putative Presidential campaign reminds me a lot of Rudolph Giuliani’s in 2008.

Governor Christie  he suffers much the same problem as Guiliani,* which is that the better that people know him, the more that they will dislike him.

He is clearly too liberal for the nut-jobs who caucus in Iowa, and his actions in the rough and tumble of New Jersey Politics show that he is someone who people in New Hampshire will dislike when they see him in person.

Case in point, it now appears that one of his appointees shut lanes to the George Washington Bridge in order to punish the Democratic Mayor for not endorsing him:

It would seem a minor whodunit for a small suburb: On the first day of school in September, three access lanes leading from Fort Lee, N.J., streets to the George Washington Bridge were unexpectedly and mysteriously shut down. Cars backed up, the town turned into a parking lot, half-hour bridge commutes stretched into four hours, buses and children were late for school, and emergency workers could not respond quickly to the day’s events, which included a missing toddler, a cardiac arrest and a car driving into a building.

 But the George Washington Bridge is the world’s busiest, and New Jersey is led by one of the nation’s most pugnacious and prominent politicians, Gov. Chris Christie — who also happens to appoint the people who control the bridge.

 So the unfolding story of the lane closings has become something of a cause célèbre, resulting in a hearing before the New Jersey Legislature on Monday, as well as a window into the proudly aggressive and often secretive dealings of Mr. Christie’s team.

 The mayor of Fort Lee, a Democrat, complained in a letter in September that the lane closings were “punitive” — Mr. Christie, a Republican, was leaning heavily on Democratic mayors to endorse him for re-election so he could present himself as a presidential candidate with bipartisan appeal, but the mayor was not going along.

 Mr. Christie laughed off the idea that he had been involved in a matter as small as closing bridge lanes, and his chief appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees the bridge, insisted that the lane closings were simply part of a traffic study.

 But on Friday, the man who ordered the closings — a high school friend of the governor’s who was a small-town mayor and the founder of an anonymous political blog before Mr. Christie’s appointee created a job for him at the Port Authority — resigned, saying the issue had become “a distraction.”

The people of New Jersey might understand (though the indications are that they aren’t, because their commutes were f%$#ed with in a major way), the people of most of the rest of the country (pretty much everyone but New York and New Jersey) won’t.

*Also, Christie has not been zinged the way that Joe Biden zinged Rudy that, “There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, and a verb and 9/11,”

Your Tax Dollars at Work

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Yeah, whoever wrote proposal this is still laughing

It has been disclosed that the NSA and the CIA were aggressively monitoring:

Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents.

 Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels.

 The spies have created make-believe characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, while also collecting data and contents of communications between players, according to the documents, disclosed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. Because militants often rely on features common to video games — fake identities, voice and text chats, a way to conduct financial transactions — American and British intelligence agencies worried that they might be operating there, according to the papers.

 Online games might seem innocuous, a top-secret 2008 NSA document warned, but they had the potential to be a “target-rich communication network” allowing intelligence suspects “a way to hide in plain sight.” Virtual games “are an opportunity!,” another 2008 NSA document declared.

 But for all their enthusiasm — so many CIA, FBI and Pentagon spies were hunting around in Second Life, the document noted, that a “deconfliction” group was needed to avoid collisions — the intelligence agencies may have inflated the threat.

I kind of think that the pitch for the program went like this:

Even if you do not have privacy issues with NSA spying, the fact that they were paying people to play video games indicates that they have way too big a budget.

This Just In: Devil Asks Rush Limbaugh to Tone It Down. He Doesn’t Want Him in Hell, It Would Ruin the Neighborhood.

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Yes, Limbaugh is calling the Pope a Marxist, and I do not mean Groucho, Chico, Harp, Zeppo, or Gummo:

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh last week called Pope Francis’ economic views laid out in his Vatican mission statement “pure marxism.”

“I have been numerous times to the Vatican. It wouldn’t exist without tons of money,” Limbaugh said in a show titled “It’s Sad How Wrong Pope Francis Is (Unless It’s a Deliberate Mistranslation By Leftists).” “But regardless, what this is, somebody has either written this for him or gotten to him. This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope.”

Stay classy, at least when you are not doing sex tourism in the Dominican Republic.

Yes, I Watched the Washington-New York Football Game

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I normally do not make comments about the outcome of sporting events on this blog, and at 3-8 (now 3-9) their playoff chances before the game were about the same as John McCain christening the Gerald Ford class carrier Barack Obama.

However, there was the worst officiating error I have ever seen in the game.

It was worse than the scab referees that they brought in last year:

The NFL’s officiating director said Monday that the officials should have stopped the game during the final minutes of the Washington Redskins’ 24-17 loss Sunday night to the New York Giants to clear up confusion over what down it was during the Redskins’ last drive of the game.

 “In this situation where there is obvious confusion as to the status of the down, play should have been stopped prior to third down and the correct down communicated to both clubs,” Dean Blandino, the league’s vice president of officiating, said in a written statement released by the NFL. “This should have occurred regardless of the fact that Washington had no timeouts and it was inside two minutes.”

 Blandino said the “ball was correctly spotted” by the officials and referee Jeff Triplette correctly “signaled third down” but the head linesman “incorrectly motioned for the chain crew to advance the chains, which caused the down boxes to read first down.

 “Following a Washington incomplete pass, the chains were moved back and the down boxes correctly reset to fourth down,” Blandino said.

 ………

 [Referee Jeff] Triplette told the pool reporter that the officials didn’t halt the game to sort out the confusion “because that would have given an unfair advantage,” apparently to the Redskins, in his view, by stopping the clock. Triplette said he couldn’t respond to Shanahan’s contention he’d been told by an official it was a first down because he was unaware of that situation.

No.  If you have an unclear ruling on the field, you halt play, and Mr. Triplette needs not to work in the NFL any more.

Instead, the Redskins took a 1st down play, a long pass, on 3rd down.

It’s OK for refs to make a mistake.  Sticking with the mistake, even though you are aware of it at the time, because of its effect on the game, means that you should not be a referee.

Of course, this will be handled through the a process agreed upon by the NFL and the Referees Association, so the consequences of Triplette’s decision are a part of a negotiated collective bargaining agreement, and I support this.

But if there is a way to keep this guy away from making on-field decisions, it would be appreciated. 

And while you are at it, how about making the Referees full time employees, so they can train the whole year. 

This whole part time thing ain’t working.

Yes, the Administrators at My Alma Mater are Complete Prats

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At UMass, the administration has banned electronic music parties because concerns about XTC use:

The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMASS) has banned all Electronic Dance Music events from its campus, in response to a surge in MDMA use in the United States.

MDMA, or ‘Molly’ as the drug is referred to in the US is being categorised as a health and safety risk to students and EDM is seen by College administrators as the reason for its rise in popularity.

In a campus wide email the UMASS interim Vice Chancellor, Enku Gelaye said, “We have grown even more concerned about the ongoing reports of overdoses…The Molly taking culture at these shows is real and now exceedingly dangerous to the health and safety of concert attendees.”

The response from students at UMASS has been strong, with a number of petitions being set up and a flash mob started outside the students’ union in protest. Many feel the majority are being punished for the actions of the few.

When I was at the school, I got a good education, audited a thoroughly corrupt athletic department, and dealt with an administration that was a miasma of incompetence and hypocrisy in their attempts to eliminate the “Zoo Mass” reputation of the institution.

Let me repeat something to tweak the administration and the search engines:  Zoo Mass, Zoomass.

I am seriously considering adding it to my metadata.

Please note that nothing here should be construed as an endorsement of Electronic Dance Music.

Yes, Arne Duncan is a Bigot

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We all are on some level, but his latest comment where he complains that white suburban moms complaining about Common Core testing shows that this attitude permeates his attitude on education:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan tried Monday to quell the outrage sparked by his comments that injected race and class into the debate about the Common Core academic standards taking root in classrooms across the country.

Duncan said Friday that he was fascinated by the fact that some opposition to the standards was coming from “white suburban moms” who fear that “their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were.”

The remark lit up social-media sites, prompting pointed responses from bloggers, an open letter from a school superintendent, digital images of Duncan’s official federal portrait with the word “bigot” emblazoned across it, and one congressman’s call for Duncan’s firing.

Duncan, whose office declined interview requests Monday, posted a statement late in the day on his agency’s Web site.

“I used some clumsy phrasing that I regret — particularly because it distracted from an important conversation about how to better prepare all of America’s students for success,” he wrote. “I want to encourage a difficult conversation and challenge the underlying assumption that when we talk about the need to improve our nation’s schools, we are talking only about poor minority students in inner cities. This is simply not true. Research demonstrates that as a country, every demographic group has room for improvement.”

The subtext here is profoundly racist, and I do not mean that it is “racist against whites”, as the clowns on the right are insisting.

Please follow what was clearly his line of reasoning on this. 

Basically he is saying, , “I understand how poor/minority/otherwise disadvantaged people can oppose my policies, after they are ill equipped (too stupid) to understand my brilliance, but white suburban moms, they are my peeps.  They are smart enough to know better.”

Duncan is very much a creature of the Wall Street entities who wish to create a for-profit educational industrial complex, and he simply cannot imagine that other “people like him” disagree with his goals.

Here is a clue:  Most suburban moms are not overpaid Harvard educated creatures of the finance industry.  They aren’t “people like you.”

Additionally, the push-back against NCLB and Race to the Top, is becoming increasingly stronger broader, and the opposition is moving up the socioeconomic pyramid.

No Child Left Behind is a failed program,which is no surprise, since the Bush adminiatration was at the heart of creating this legislation.

Once again, I am compelled to make the repeat the wisest thing that I’ve read this century:

But it does inspire in me the desire for a competition; can anyone, particularly the rather more Bush-friendly recent arrivals to the board, give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics:

1. It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration
2. It was significant enough in scale that I’d have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it)
3. It wasn’t in some important way completely f#$@ed up during the execution.

Why Does Richard Cohen, and His Editor, Still Have a F%$#ing Job?

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As if Richard Cohen had not jumped the shark before, he is now claiming that people are nauseated by the sight of an interracial couple: (No link to the original article, ever)

Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.

And Fred Hiatt, his editor?  The guy who let this through?  The guy who apparrently thinks that racism is OK at the Post?  His response is, “Oops!”

Editorial page editor Fred Hiatt took the blame for outrage, telling TheWrap: “Anyone reading Richard’s entire column will see he is just saying that some Americans still have a hard time dealing with interracial marriage. I erred in not editing that one sentence more carefully to make sure it could not be misinterpreted.”

Dude, this guy is the Racist Uncle who you have to tiptoe around every holiday season!

If you want him at the table, you need to figure out how to keeping him from sh%$#ing in the f%$#ing punch bowl?

And by the way, Richard Cohen has a sad about being called a racist bigot:

“The word racist is truly hurtful,” he added. “It’s not who I am. It’s not who I ever was. It’s just not fair. It’s just not right.”

Dude, you said that it was OK for merchants to lock blacks out of their stores. You said that Trayvon Martin to be shot for wearing a hoodie!

You are a f%$#ing bigot, even if your publisher, Katherine Weymouth, calls your column genius.

Jeff Bezos, I have three people you could fire and improve the paper.

Ezra Klein, who also works for the Post, and always gives me the sense that he is walking on egg shells, felt compelled to call Cohen’s bigotry out, noting that 87% of the population approves of interracial marriage.

BTW, a quick examination of how this exploded across the Twitterverse is rather amusing and informative.

This one is my favorite:

Imagine how much Jeff Bezos would have had to pay for the Washington Post if Richard Cohen didn’t work there.
— Matt O’Brien (@ObsoleteDogma) November 12, 2013

The Triumph of Wicked Stupid Ideas

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It appears that the US Marines are to replace the C-2 carrier onboard delivery (COD) aircraft with the V-22, because increased orders should lower the unit price of the V-22 and allow the Marines more of the expensive, crash prone, and maintenance intensive dog.

The Marines have been very good at lobbying for really bad ideas lately, the EFV,* adding STOVL to the JSF, and now, this:

“The C-2 makes us so much more flexible that we could support three separated groups, if necessary,” boasted Rear Adm. Marshall White, commanding air forces in the Western Pacific.

Faster-flying, longer-ranged and more capacious than the predecessor C-1 cargo plane, the ungainly C-2s and their crews were the unheralded heroes of the naval crises of 1968 and countless incidents since. Produced in a second batch in the 1980s and since upgraded, today a force of 35 C-2s based in key locations allows America’s 10 carriers to range the globe, waging aerial war and responding to diplomatic crises without planners having to worry about stranding the vessels beyond range of aerial resupply.

Rarely have so few airplanes of a single—and relatively unsophisticated—type been so vitally important to the conduct of a superpower’s global affairs. “The C-2A allows carriers and the fleet to maintain a ready position by supporting the vital supply line,” says Brian Scolpino, who oversees the C-2 force for the Navy.

But the Navy could end up retiring the C-2s and replacing them with a far inferior plane—one that’s not really a plane at all, but a controversial hybrid craft. The Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey can take off vertically and cruise like an airplane thanks to its rotating wingtip engines, but lacks the C-2’s far-flying efficiency and its ease of use rooted in nearly 50 years of institutional experience.

………

The Pentagon is no stranger to pricey, ill-advised weapons development scheme, but even in this wasteful institution the plan to scrap the C-2 stands out as especially self-defeating. America’s world-spanning carrier fleet is one of its key advantages over its enemies. Constraining the flattops’ resupply could force them to stay closer to their home ports, reducing Washington’s options in the event of war and diminishing U.S. influence during peacetime.

………

The Navy is well aware of the Cod’s enduring qualities. “The C-2A has not experienced any limitations as the Cod aircraft,” Scolpino writes. But concerted lobbying by the Marines and Boeing have practically forced the sailing branch to at least consider buying the V-22. If politics triumph and the tiltrotor takes the C-2’s place, the fleet could find itself moving backwards in time, to a state of constrained fighting ability not unlike that that preceded the Cod’s arrival in 1966.

………

But the V-22 has less range and less payload than the C-2: Northrop’s prop plane can haul five tons of stuff 1,500 miles, but the V-22’s range with the same load could be as little as 50 miles, according to Navy statistics and Bell and Boeing’s own literature. That’s in part because the V-22 has just over a third the internal space of a C-2 and in the case of bulkier supplies would likely need to haul them slung by a rope suspended from the fuselage—a huge source of drag.

………

Extending the tiltrotor’s flying distance would require the constant attention of Air Force aerial tankers, which can cost up to $10,000 per hour to operate. The V-22 is also slightly slower than the C-2, can’t fly as high because it’s unpressurized and costs more: $68 million for a new V-22 compared to an estimated $50 million for a new C-2.

Note that the Marines succeeded in delaying the CH-53K, which had been under budget and ahead of schedule, in order to secure more orders for the V-22 as well.

This is a complete clusterf%$#.

*Full disclosure, I worked for General Dynamics, the prime contractor, on this vehicle when it was called the AAAV.

Heck of a Job, Barry………

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What a surprise we do another drone strike, a “success”, and transformed the person that we assassinated from public enemy number one to a martyr and hero:

In life, Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, was Public Enemy No. 1: a ruthless figure who devoted his career to bloodshed and mayhem, whom Pakistani pundits occasionally accused of being a pawn of Indian, or even American, intelligence.

 But after his death, it seems, Pakistani hearts have grown fonder.

 Since missiles fired by American drones killed Mr. Mehsud in his vehicle on Friday, Pakistan’s political leaders have reacted with unusual vehemence. The interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, denounced the strike as sabotage of incipient government peace talks with the Taliban. Media commentators fulminated about American treachery. And the former cricket star Imran Khan, now a politician, renewed his threats to block NATO military supply lines through Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa — a province his Tehreek-e-Insaf party controls — with a parliamentary vote scheduled for Monday.

 Virtually nobody openly welcomed the demise of Mr. Mehsud, who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Pakistani civilians. To some American security analysts, the furious reaction was another sign of the perversity and ingratitude that they say have scarred Pakistan’s relationship with the United States.

 “It’s another stab in the back,” said Bill Roggio, whose website, the Long War Journal, monitors drone strikes. “Even those of us who watch Pakistan closely don’t know where they stand anymore. It’s such a double game.”

 To many Pakistanis, though, it is the United States that is double-dealing, and sentiments like Mr. Roggio’s exemplify typical American arrogance. Shireen Mazari, a senior official in Mr. Khan’s party, has urged the Pakistani military to shoot down drones.

Does anyone really really think that this makes us any safer?

It might temporarily increase the safety of our imperial contingent in Afghanistan, but our incessant drone strikes, and the resultant terror that this engenders in the population creates people who want to kill us.

It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.

Petition to Arrest Teabagger Reps is Both Stupid and Unconstitutional………

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It’s been floating around the internet for a few days, and it is wrong on every level.

First, criminal charging your opponents for being your opponents is wrong.

We have hundreds of years of history to document that.

And then there is Congressional immunity, which guaranteed freedom from criminal or civil liability for official actions of Congress critters, no matter how mind boggling stupid those actions are.

Done with rant.

Awwwww!!!! The NSA Has a Sad.

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Longtime NSA operatives feel that Barack Obama has not been vocal enough in supporting on their spying on the rest of us:

Gen. Keith Alexander and his senior leadership team at the National Security Agency (NSA) are angry and dispirited by what they see as the White House’s failure to defend the spy agency against criticism of its surveillance programs, according to four people familiar with the NSA chiefs’ thinking. The top brass of the country’s biggest spy agency feels they’ve been left twisting in the wind, abandoned by the White House and left largely to defend themselves in public and in Congress against allegations of unconstitutional spying on Americans.

 “There has been no support for the agency from the President or his staff or senior administration officials, and this has not gone unnoticed by both senior officials and the rank and file at the Fort,” said Joel Brenner, the NSA’s one-time inspector general, referring to the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md.

 The weak backing from top administration officials has aggravated the relationship between Alexander and the White House, where he has never been warmly embraced. The NSA now finds itself without the strong, visible support of the President at a time of extraordinary political vulnerability, with the agency’s secrets laid bare and its future in doubt.

 ………

 Obama has only made one set of substantial remarks about the NSA’s collection of Americans phone records and monitoring of Internet and email data, during a news conference in August. He did not distance himself from the programs, but he has not made a point of reminding the American people or lawmakers that he thinks they are vital. Neither the president’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, nor his top counterterrorism adviser, Lisa Monaco, have given any public remarks arguing that the NSA programs are legal and necessary. And no Cabinet official has mounted a concerted effort to back the agency in public.

 Former intelligence officials who remain in regular contact with those still in government say that morale at the NSA is low, both because of the reaction to leaks by former contractor Edward Snowden, which put the normally secretive agency under intense scrutiny, and because of budget cutbacks and the continuing government shutdown, which has left some employees furloughed without pay.

 Brenner, who also served as the government’s director of counterintelligence, said that Obama could have lifted morale had he gone to Fort Meade and made a speech vigorously defending the NSA’s work. “A president who had real feeling for the intelligence business and the people laboring in that vineyard would have paid them a visit,” Brenner said.

 Instead, said former senior CIA official Mark Lowenthal, “They are hurting.”

Three words:

Suck
It
Up!!!!

What a bunch of f%$#ing whiners.

Get over yourself.

The head of your agency (Keith Alexander) lies for you, and his boss (James Clapper) lies for you even more, and you are upset because Barack Obama isn’t playing cheerleader for the folks in Fort Meade.

Like the chicken said, “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.”

Thank You Megan McArdle………

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I frequently write about Meghan “Math is Hard” McArdle, and when I do, I frequently portray her as  one of the most completely useless pundits out there.  (which says a lot)

I have finally discovered that she serves a purpose.  She is an excellent reverse barometer:  If you reflexively disagree with her, you are almost certain to be right.

Case in point, her Op/Ed suggesting that police blotters should be made private.

Because some scumbags on the internet are posting people’s mugshots online, and demanding extortion a fee to remove the pictures, she wants to further restrict public records.

My initial reaction was, “I’m against it.”

Then I looked at her examples.  They were all hipster trustifarians who got caught with a joint, or some X, or got busted for drunk driving, like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, and because daddy has some money, they lawyered up and got a deferred adjudication.

We as a society need to have this information, even if there are ratf%$#s are out there who are attempting extortion.

I knew I was right as soon as I knew that I disagreed with McArdle, and on closer examination this was confirmed.

So, Now We Know What Makes Andrea Mitchell Go Postal………

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It was former “Real World” cast member and current Congressman Sean Duffy, who was arguing that Obamacare is to blame the Republicans holding military death benefits hostage: (at about 11:20 in the vid)

With all due respect, this is about military death benefits to kids, 19-year-old kids who died in Afghanistan and who are not returning home, this is about what their families are entitled to by law and what they are not getting.

This is not about what you want in Obamacare and not about what the president wants on the debt ceiling.

And yes, for Andrea Mitchell, this is going postal.

Also, how did this guy get elected when he is too stupid to cut his own meat?

He keeps going back to the his belief that Jon Stewart gave a puff interview to Kathleen Sebelius, head of HHS as evidence that journalists are biased.

Hello, Jon Stewart is a f%$#ing commedian. Jeebus.

Why You Should Not Listen to the United States Air Force, Part 29

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Because, once again, they are trying to kill the A-10 again. (Paid Subscription Requited)

The USAF has been trying to kill the A-10 since they first entered service, since “real pilots” don’t fly dedicated close air support platforms.

Thankfully, a bunch of people who have not drunk too much of the Wild Blue Yonder juice are pushing back:

Now that the Air Force has placed the A-10 Thunderbolt II under consideration for cuts in a worst-case budget scenario, a grassroots movement is building to keep the aircraft, flying since 1977, around longer.

The A-10 is not one of those programs, like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter or the KC-46A tanker, that the service wants to protect. In fact, a chart from Air Combat Command shows the entire fleet of close-air support aircraft may be divested by 2015.

The A-10, affectionately known as the Warthog, does have a following. The lumbering aircraft was designed to loiter over the battlefield until it unleashes firepower that can shred through tanks. Originally made by Fairchild Republic, it carries a 30 mm Gatling gun that can fire up to 3,900 rounds per minute. The service’s A-10s can carry all kinds of bombs, including laser-guided ones, joint direct attack munitions, and the AIM-9 Sidewinder. Ground troops love it.

They are not alone. From a Save-the-A-10 Facebook page with 2,722 likes, to the back room of a military base bar and even on Capitol Hill, the proposal to scrap the aircraft is meeting resistance.

………

Coram himself recently published a column on the Project on Government Oversight’s website articulating the case: “No $160 million F-35 is going to get down in the weeds where a single bullet can take it out. A host of small arms fire hitting an A-10 can be fixed with what amounts to duct tape,” Coram writes. “No F-35 can maneuver under an 800-foot ceiling with two-mile visibility as can an A-10. No F-35 has more than three combat trigger pulls before running out of ammo. The A-10 has twenty. No F-35 has the battlefield survivability of the A-10.”

Whether the efforts will make a difference within the Pentagon remains to be seen as high-level budget politics on Capitol Hill and in the Obama administration are sorted out.

But lawmakers have been working to maintain the A-10 fleet, at least in the short term.

Last year the Air Force recommended carving out nearly a third of the A-10 fleet, much of it from the Air National Guard. Congress slowed that suggestion by creating the National Commission on the Structure of the Air Force.

Yet more evidence that the independent Air Force does not serve our defense needs.

Air power is essential in modern warfare, but I do not think that the pilots are up to running their own branch of the service.

It’s Official, the Nobel Peace Prize is a Joke

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First, they give the following people Nobel Peace Prizes:

  • Henry Kissinger
  • Barack “Drones ‘R Us” Obama
  • Jimmy Carter (Bought a civil war and plunged Afghanistan into 30+ years of hell just to f%$# with the Soviets).

And now we have the, “International Academy of Spiritual Unity and Cooperation of Peoples of the World,” Nominating Vladimir Putin for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Of course, the Nobel committee has not awarded him the prize, but the fact Russian President “Cuddles” has been nominated does indicate that their credibility is shot.

No this is not The Onion.

Captain Obvious Strikes

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It appears that his secret identy is Nancy Pelosi:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sought Friday to lay the blame for a possible government shutdown on congressional Republicans, saying that they refused to negotiate on the issue.

Pelosi pointed to the GOP’s inability to reconcile their competing factions as the reason that the federal government is a few days away from shutting down.

“It’s impossible for Democrats to negotiate with House Republicans when they can’t negotiate with themselves,” Pelosi told reporters. “We don’t know what we’re going to vote on from one minute to the next because I don’t think they know what they’re going to vote on.”

“I don’t know that they even know what they’re doing,” she added.

Well, duh!