Links and Minifeatures 2005 08 07 (Sunday)

To leave the field clear for RINO Sightings here tomorrow, other posting will be light. No daily personal finance post, and any links/minifeatures I do will not post until Tuesday. I will continue with the saga of the illegal Border Patrol Agent if I find out anything more. Also, it seems I'm back at the "Large Mammal" level, and likely to stay there this time (Whether Powerblogs or Sitemeter is correct in my traffic count, the former saying about 250 per day, the latter saying 110, Large Mammal is good, and I'm not likely to go higher for a long time, if ever. I do tend to believe the figure that determines how much I pay in bandwidth charges, however).

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Mudville Gazette has a moving tribute to some Every Day Heroes. If it doesn't move you, my utmost condolences.



Blackfive has a different take on the same subject, and also a Poem that should cause certain people to go into hiding if they had any kind of a conscience. If you think it's all about political gain, you should maybe step aside and let others talk, because you certainly don't understand what's going on. A turning point in the Byzantine empire was the battlefield betrayal of an emperor by a politician general who wanted his ally to be emperor. The battle turned out to be a disaster for the empire from which it went steadily downhill. These days, it doesn't have to happen on the actual battlefield to be a betrayal.



Makaha Surf Report explains things very well to a willful ignoramus.



365 and a Wakeup has an article about the infantry, and one about golden tracework repairs.



Michael Yon has the Boots on the Ground take; good, bad, and simply too sad for words at least twice.



Castle Argghhh! has an extended version of General McCaffrey's report on Iraq to the Senate Foreign Relations Comittee. I thought the predictions were interesting.



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Armies of Liberation has more on the situation in Yemen.



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Texas Best Grok links to a book review by a friend of mine, William H. Stoddard, on The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe

by Sydney Anglo. Bill is a wonderful encyclopedic synthesist, easily the best I know. Of course, it doesn't hurt that he's spent most of his working life as an editor for academic books and journals. And he writes and runs excellent RPGs, too.



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State of Flux has an excellent article on failure of oversight.



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Say Uncle has an article about 20 synonyms for canine flatulence. As a dog owner I found it tears-in-the-eyes hilarious (and no, neither of my two dachshunds was responsible for the tears. This time.).



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Politburo Diktat has more, relevant, information on the ACVR, whose report alleged greater Democratic than Republican voter intimidation. I agree now that there are serious concerns about the group's bipartisan or non-partisan nature. So we have to examine the report itself that much closer. Just because a report is assembled by a partisan group doesn't mean it's wrong. If the report is that partisan, why did it report some Elephant dirty tricks? So I need to find the time to look at the report critically. I do suspect the balance is off, if nothing else. But is there any serious allegation of the ACVR making stuff up, or is it more in the line of "they say they're non-partisan and we don't believe it" like every left winger I've read keeps harping on without touching on the allegations themselves? Invalidating the report of Donkey wrongdoing just because it's reported by an Elephant group is equivalent to invalidating reports of criminal activity like rape or assault because the victim is the one reporting it. This is what is known to logical people as an "ad hominem," with perhaps a bit of "red herring" mixed in. Now let's have a Donkey report on Elephant shenanigans. Then have a good long public examination of the evidence, and what sorts of verifications of data and whether independent confirmations or contradictions exist then let us agree to and fix the real problems brought to light by both reports, while debunking the hype. That's the intelligent tack to take, not "Let's keep our heads in the sand and pretend it didn't happen" because the person reporting the crime happened to be the victim.



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You should probably check out Jihad Watch every few days. Go ahead. I'll wait.



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There has been a lot posted on the good and the bad of the atomic bombs, preceding and with the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasakai. I haven't paid much attention; I considered the situation in depth years ago and made up my mind that knowing what Truman knew at the time, he made the right decision. Even with greater information available later, he made the right decision. Not that there wasn't a huge downside, but usually the choice war gives you is which option sucks the least. Even so, what the man put up with in the way of second-guessers the whole rest of his life (and it's only gotten worse since he died) should qualify him for sainthood right there, and I'm not exactly the biggest Truman fan in the universe. So I'm just not interested in plowing the ground for the millionth time unless you push your ignorance in my face to the point where I get angry enough to disassemble your pathetic pronouncements.



Pigilito says, however, has a unique angle that I hadn't considered before. His family were Dutch colonists of Indonesia under Japanese rule at the time.



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Strange Fictions has a worthwhile take on the Intelligent Design thing. I'd link to a couple of others, but they've already sent them to me for RINO Sightings.



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Dean's World has a great article on offshoring. I think it's simply that those who have been getting bonuses from offshoring other jobs are next on the list to be offshored. Mind you, I have no objection to american investors getting benefits from worldwide profits of formerly american companies, but many "american" companies don't produce anything in the US anymore. Nor do they research in the US. When only their corporate boardroom has an american address, you have to ask, "how american is this company, anyway?" Just keep moving offshore but don't object when we start treating you like a foreign company as we likely will within the next few years. Meanwhile, the people here will keep on creating jobs, and going to work at them. It's what we do. The corporate world is becoming less and less relevant to us.



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