Thoughts Of The Moment from Katie's Dad

Name:
Location: Near Reading, Pennsylvania, United States

"Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither." Benjamin Franklin

Sunday, April 30, 2006

Immigration


One comic says it all!

Iran and the Bomb

Good article in this Sunday's New York Times that explains a little of what is going down. Worth the read.

"Iran and the United States have begun to reveal new strategies in their nuclear dispute that seem bound to escalate their confrontation, as both nations seek to turn to their advantage a highly critical report that portrays a nuclear program proceeding at full tilt, in growing secrecy.

Washington's episodic saber-rattling — from the president's vague comments that "all options" are on the table if diplomacy fails, and the increasingly public discussion of whether he or the Israelis will ultimately opt for a military strike — has so far failed.
The Iranians have responded with threats of their own, knowing that even the specter of confrontation rattles the oil markets and sends prices to new levels, enriching Iran and heightening the pain for Mr. Bush and American consumers."


Iran Strategy: Cold War Echo - NYT

Saturday, April 29, 2006

Spanish Star Spangled Banner?

OK I have to back-peddle a little bit from my last post. I have found something I agree with President Bush on. I understand the whole immigration argument. I can agree with parts of both sides opinions. My theory is if you are here, you register, and you aren't a criminal in any other way you stay. Than I make the borders as tight as money will allow. End of story.

Two things have pissed me off today though. One was somebody on one of the news channels (some immigrant leader I think) talking about illegals going on strike. The better to round them up I would think.

The other is this Spanish version of our national anthem. That just pisses me off! Called "Nuestro Himno" -- "Our Anthem" -- the Spanish version rewrites some of the English version. For instance, the second stanza says, "My people keep fighting. It's time to break the chains." I'll say no more and let the president speak for me.

"Asked at a news briefing in the Rose Garden on Friday whether he believed the anthem would have the same value in Spanish as it did in English, Mr. Bush said flatly, "No, I don't."
"And I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English," Mr. Bush said. "And they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English."

Bush Enters Anthem Fight on Language - NYT

Friday, April 28, 2006

Another Example Of Our Failed President

A peice in Daily Kos about New Orleans eight months after Katrina. I keep looking but I am hard pressed to find anything our President is doing right. Maybe it is just my mood ... maybe it is true.

"This is the reality of the rebuilding process. For eight months, we've seen piecemeal funding--drip, drip, drip--demonstrating that Congress and the President refuse to acknowledge that this may well be the costliest disaster in American history. Their actions reveal that they simply have not accepted that part of America has been utterly destroyed, that Americans are still scattered across our nation living as nomads without a home, and that slow action is just as much of a failure as no action at all."

Daily Kos Things Aren't Going Swimmingly In New Orleans

Your Tax Dollars At Work - Mars Edition



In an article in the February 23rd issue of Rolling Stone Bejamin Wallace-Wells writes about another of President Bush's ideas to make us great. The article, "Mars or Bust" , is about Bush's plan to take us to Mars. I have to ask ... Is there oil on Mars?




"When the president announced that NASA would send astronauts to the moon by 2020 as practice for a manned landing on Mars, the idea was dismissed as election-year grandstanding, a laughable attempt to cast Bush as a figure of history. "An unserious proposal," predicted The Washington Post, "succeeding merely in sounding big and capturing newspaper headlines.".....

Impressed by such leaping aims, Congress has endorsed the Mars mission as NASA's sole goal, even though the effort is expected to take fifty years and cost at least $500 billion. To pay for the mission, the agency is threatening to cancel other, less flashy projects -- like the Hubble telescope and the Voyager satellites -- that have resulted in some of America's most valuable and groundbreaking research. .....

With the exception of the astronauts and engineers involved in the Mars mission, few scientists think the Vision is a particularly good idea. If you polled scientists, most would say there is "no real scientific justification for a manned trip to Mars," says Joseph Alexander, senior staff officer of the space studies board at the National Academy of Sciences. The Congressional Budget Office concluded that the Mars mission will cost more than the $104 billion that NASA has projected through 2018, forcing the agency to cancel more promising experiments. Abbey, the former Johnson director, says the price tag will ultimately run as high as $500 billion. "The projections they've put together for budgets are pipe dreams," confirms one NASA insider. "You're talking about a project on the order of $500 billion, and right now they're budgeting $1 billion per year for it. Sooner or later, the Vision will either have to swallow much of the science funding or it will die."

Than again maybe there is no oil on Mars. Just lots of pork.

Rolling Stone - Mars Or Bust

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Govenor Ed and Windfall Profits


In a letter to President Bush, Govenor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania called for a windfall profits tax on oil company profits. The proceeds of which would be returned to the american people as tax refunds next year.

Is this an idea whose time has come? Don't hold your breath.


"The profits are ungodly; there is no excuse for this," Rendell said. "Oil companies should not be permitted to drain Americans' bank accounts to collect record-breaking profits."

Philadelphia Inquirer - Rendell Wants Federal Tax On Windfall Profits

Your Tax Dollars At Work

I just read two articles that have me convinced the crazies are running the asylum. After reading them I have to wonder how long the American people will put up with this crap! Incompetence, greed, or maybe pure hubris I don't know. It will all make for some very interesting elections in the next two years.

I don't mind spending the money if were getting something done. But to just throw it at Halliburton stockholders .... No Way! If we had only planed the post-invasion the way we planned the invasion. It all just seems such a waist when there is so much to be done.

The two articles are the rolling Stone cover story "The Worst President In History" and a New York Times piece "Rebuilding of Iraqi Oil Pipeline as Disaster Waiting to Happen ". Both are great reading if you want to get depressed.

"The Fatah project went ahead despite warnings from experts that it could not succeed because the underground terrain was shattered and unstable. It continued chewing up astonishing amounts of cash when the predicted problems bogged the work down, with a contract that allowed crews to charge as much as $100,000 a day as they waited on standby. The company in charge engaged in what some American officials saw as a self-serving attempt to limit communications with the government until all the money was gone". NYT

NYT - Rebuilding of Iraqi Pipeline as Disaster Waiting to Happen
Rolling Stone - The Worst President In History?

If you really want to get into it:

Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction
SIGIR assessment Al Fatah Crossing pdf.

Friday, April 07, 2006

Bubba Update


From The New York Post gossip section by Cindy Adams. An update on my man Bill Clinton.

"BILL Clinton. I hate to say it but quietly, unknown to the masses, the man's into new little tasties. His latest pickup place is 54th Street. Between Fifth and Mad. An eatery called Papillon. His ennabler is the owner. A very thin Clinton, in jeans, cowboy boots and more Texan than that hombre now in the El Rancho Oval Office, got out of his chauffeured vehicle, sauntered inside, and ordered fish and chicken. For three. To go. While he waited he killed two vodkas with lime standing at the bar with the owner. Bill Clinton, former Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, Leader of The Free World, brown-bagging it."

New York Post - Cindy Adams

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Thoughts Of War - John Kerry And Wonkette

Ok so one of my favorite blogs is Wonkette. I normally just link to a site after a little taste but this is too good to pass on. So here it is in it's entirety. Visit the site for more of this great stuff.

Wonkette




Forget It, Kerry! You're Outta Your Element!


Congratulations to John Kerry for coming up with a sensible Iraq policy worthy of a loyal opposition party, only 17 months after it would've been useful. Great work, John! The plan: GET THE HELL OUT. But, you know, give 'em another month to get ready. Honestly, Iraq has already turned the lights on and started picking up the bottles, and here's America, asking if there's any beer left and still trying to find someone to go home with. But John, let's see what you have to add to the debate:


"WE are now in the third war in Iraq in as many years. The first was against Saddam Hussein and his supposed weapons of mass destruction. The second was against terrorists whom, the administration said, it was better to fight over there than here. Now we find our troops in the middle of an escalating civil war.

Half of the service members listed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after America's leaders knew our strategy would not work. It was immoral then and it would be immoral now to engage in the same delusion"

The Dude: "Everything's a fuckin' travesty with you, man! And what was all that shit about Vietnam? What the FUCK has anything got to do with Vietnam? What the fuck are you talking about?"

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Thought Of The Day - April 2, 2006

Put this article from the Washington Post under the heading "Just What We Need Right Now":


Russians Sense the Heat of Cold War
Intensifying U.S. Criticism of Government and Its Role in Region Evokes Resentment

"The idea of admitting Ukraine into NATO is hammering the final nail into the coffin of Russia as an independent great power," Rogov said. "We go out, you go in. Unfortunately, it's almost a consensus in Russia, that the West is trying to isolate Russia."

Russians Sense the Heat of Cold War - WP

Also today on Meet The Press:
"McCain: Russia deserves ‘harsh treatment’
Senator says U.S. should respond harshly to Russia’s anti-democratic moves."

McCain: Russia deserves ‘harsh treatment’ - MSNBC
2006 Meet the Press transcripts & resources
(The transcript of today's show was not available yet but should be there soon)

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Grups


I started reading an article from New York Magazine and I decided this is the planet for me. Growing up is all in your head anyway. You are as old as you feel and more importantly as old as you think. This is a long article so I haven't finished it yet. I wanted to post a link while I thought of it and had the time.

"* Also known as yupster (yuppie + hipster), yindie (yuppie + indie), and alterna-yuppie. Our preferred term, grup, is taken from an episode of Star Trek (keep reading) in which Captain Kirk et al. land on a planet of children who rule the world, with no adults in sight. The kids call Kirk and the crew “grups,” which they eventually figure out is a contraction of “grown ups." .......

This is an obituary for the generation gap. It is a story about 40-year-old men and women who look, talk, act, and dress like people who are 22 years old .....

There’s that tricky word again: passion. What’s with the Grups and passion? It’s all anyone wants to talk about. Passionate parents, passionate workers, passionate listeners to the new album by Wolf Parade. Even Rogan lights up when he talks about touring Japanese textile factories to find the perfect denim for his jeans. And I start to realize: Under the skin of the iPods and the $400 ripped jeans, this is the spine of the Grup ethos: passion, and the fear of losing it. "

Up With Grups* - New York

Thoughts Of War - What the 9/11 Plotter Tells Us

Great piece written by William Arkin in his Washington Post blog "Early Warning." It is a thought provoking piece about something I really hadn't seen anywhere else. Maybe I just wasn't looking.

"We have Zacarias Moussaoui's defense team to thank for forcing this information to light. While the government refused to produce Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for live testimony, it did make available CIA debriefings of KSM (as intelligence insiders call him), the highest ranking al Qaeda figure in U.S. custody."

"He says, according to the CIA, that he and other al Qaeda plotters "had no idea ... that the damage would be as catastrophic as it was, and he did not plan on the U.S. responding to the attacks as fiercely as they did ... "
In the category of historic misjudgments, thus al Qaeda and the Bush administration have something in common. The Bush administration similarly had no idea that defeat of Saddam Hussein's army would be as catastrophically successful as it ended up being, and they did not plan on Iraqis responding to the war and the American occupation as fiercely as they have."


Early Warning - What the 9/11 Plotter Tells Us - WP