Zee Links and Minifeatures: November 2006 Archives

neo-neocon on future consequences of present decisions.



Big Lizards on movement Libertarians. I haven't been welcome at Libertarian Party meetings in a very long time, but I remain a libertarian. I have huge problems with anyone - even those with whom my sympathies lie - advocating policy without a clear understanding of what happens next, or alternative methods for accomplishing the same necessary goal.



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Only the poor minority folks without other choices join the military? Not so fast



For some people, it's still 1968.



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Been under the weather now for weeks, but it intensified over the weekend. Have a short new article for tomorrow, but don't know how soon I'll be able to write more.

Classical Values has a post about, among other things, fake SWAT teams and the immunity of police and the insanity of disarming citizens.



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Poisoned Spy Blames Putin for His Death





The Health Protection Agency said the radioactive element polonium-210, which is extremely hard to detect, had been found in Litvinenko's urine.





Now how did that get in there? He must have ingested it while cleaning his weapon collection, and he slipped and shot himself 357 times with bullets of varying caliber, after which thieves made off with every last piece of the weapons collection, vanishing in the 29 seconds before the police got there.



Polonium is such a minute part of the environment that the weapons scenrio above is vastly more plausible than that Litvenenko wasn't intentionally poisoned. Do we know who did it? No. But there is a logical suspect.





Goldfarb said the attack on Litvinenko bore "all the hallmarks of a very professional, sophisticated and specialist operation."



"The very fact that experts are still at a loss to say what poisoned him tells you it is not a sleeping pill that has been given to him," he said.





Circumstantial evidence, to be certain. But it does point in the direction of the Putin government.





The Russian government has strongly denied involvement, and Putin told reporters at a European Union summit Friday in Helsinki, Finland, that British medical documents did not show "that it was a result of violence, this is not a violent death, so there is no ground for speculations of this kind."





Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. These are not the droids you're looking for.



Motive, Opportunity, and Method points squarely at the Putin government. It is very possible that someone else did it as a frame job, but in that case, the Putin government had better devote some serious resources to discovering he real culprit. Absent a smoking gun pointed at someone else, the chances of a reasonable person believing anyone other than the Putin government did this are nil. Of course, Russia has no free press, so why would they Putin government care?





"You may succeed in silencing me but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed," Litvinenko said in the statement read by his friend and spokesman Alex Goldfarb. The former spy said "the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life."





Let us hope so. The Russian people deserve better than Putin. They should have had better than Putin, and if we had invested more heavily in democracy in Russia, as opposed to keeping apparent friends in power, both the US and the world would be in a much stronger position today.



Democracy: It isn't perfect. But it beats the alternatives.



If you ever wonder why I have nothing but contempt for the "accommodate the tyrants" school of diplomacy (as exemplified by James Baker, Warren Christopher, and Madeline Albright), you have only to look at the results of its machinations in Russia. As well as a couple score other nations.



Yes, it's an imperfect world, and you've got to pick your battles. But that doesn't mean being unwilling to confront the tyrants in order to improve things, so that you've got better choices next time.



The last time our leadership tried to make certain we got better choices next time was just after World War II, with the Marshall Plan. And everybody knows what a miserable failure that was, right?



While they are at it, the Putin government has now Russia sent an air defense system to Iran, so that if our politicians ever do get the gumption to actually deal with an Iranian nuclear threat, they'll be better able to shoot down the planes they send.



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Ex-employee says FAA warned before 9/11





In the years leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Dzakovic says, the team was able to breach security about 90% of the time, sneaking bombs and submachine guns past airport screeners. Expensive new bomb detection machines consistently failed, he says.





The FAA is a culture of patronage, not a culture of service or results. The problem with cultures of patronage is not just that they waste money and resources, but when a challenge happens, they view it in terms of the the mordida they can extract, not in terms of the best or most effective way to deal with the challenge. Before 9/11, they could fool themselves that there was no challenge. Unfortunately, they are still fooling themselves.





Eventually, the FAA began notifying airports in advance when the Red Team would be doing its undercover testing, Dzakovic says. He and other Red Team members approached the Department of Transportation's Office of the Inspector General, the General Accounting Office and members of Congress about the FAA's alleged misconduct regarding the Red Team's aviation security tests. No one did anything, he says.





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Could well be the longest drive in history (to date) Cosmonaut hits golf ball into space



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Anti-Syrian Christian Leader Pierre Gemayel Assassinated in Lebanon





Gemayel, the industry minister, was the fifth anti-Syrian figure to be killed in the past two years and the first member of the government of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora to be slain.





Is there anyone who is actually surprised by this?



Gateway Pundit notes that Hezbollah got involved after it was "insulted" at Gemayel's funeral.



What was said? I can't see how it's possible to insult Hezbollah. The worst things I can possibly say about any organization are no more than the truth about Hezbollah.



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Democracy Versus Freedom



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In keeping with my earlier rant about Russia, A Doctrine Worth Saving



Max Boot: Cutting and running on our allies



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Wizbang: You can't keep a bad idea down.



Ladies and gentlemen: If you want to freeze the pharmaceutical state of the art right where it is, the proposal to re-import price controlled drugs back from Canada has a lot going for it.



Pharmaceutical companies do all this research because they want to make money. They make money by selling the drugs they research for what people will pay for the first seventeen years those drugs are on the market, after which, the patent expires and the generics swoop in.



If the company cannot make money, there is zero motivation for them to spend all that money researching it, getting FDA approval, etcetera. If they cannot make as much money, there is less motivation than currently, which means it will happen less often and there will be fewer new drugs - potentially, none. If the drug doesn't get invented and approved and patented in the first place, there will be no cheap generics in seventeen years.



The pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars per year bringing new drugs to market. They do this because they can make more billions doing it - and as a corollary, tens of millions of people in this country lead better, less painful, more productive lives because of it. Hundreds of thousands of lives are extended, by which I mean that they survive a critical incident, such as a heart attack or blunt instrument trauma every year.



Now they'll still spend money on stuff with obvious potential for profit. A new headache medicine? Sure. But a new medicine that saves the lives of people with a disease that strikes maybe five people per million? Emphatically not.



We are footing the bill for socialized medicine in Canada. If the US Congress had any guts, we'd prohibit sales abroad at a per dose cost less than the best that can be negotiated in a free market. In other words, let's say Company X has a brand new wonder drug, and they're charging $100 per dose here in the US, and the lowest that anyone can persuade them to offer the product for is, let's the the VA hospital system, for $80 per dose. If they sell the drug anywhere in the world for less than $80 per dose, they get hit with some appropriate penalty like a fine for the difference, in the form of free product, distributed in accordance with prchasing percentages.



The US Health Care consumer has long shouldered the burden of funding development for the rest of the world, which. Of course Congress isn't going to do anything about it. But that's the real crime of the present system.



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What American journalists (and others) should be thankful for



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According to my server logs, I hit my millionth visitor sometime Tuesday, November 21st.



Thank you all for stopping by.

Carnival of Real Estate



Carnival of The Capitalists



Carnival of Personal Finance



UPDATE: Rino Sightings. Obviously the host has already eaten Thanksgiving Dinner, and is too bloated to be witty.



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Now this might cause people to accept $1 coins: U.S. Mint to unveil presidential coins



After it became blazingly obvious to anyone that the previous $1 coin was a product of affirmative action and political correctness, not merit, people weren't interested. I've got nothing against Sacajawea, but why should one of Lewis and Clarke's guides be featured on currency when Lewis and Clarke themselves aren't?



Susan B. Anthony started a noble cause, but her coin was too subject to confusion with the quarter. People didn't want it because they were handing out dollars when they thought they were handing out quarters. It was also one of the ugliest coins in the modern era - It even managed to make the Eisenhower dollars look good.



If the US wants to make a $1 coin popular, they need to take a lesson from the UK. They've got a 1 pound coin that looks and feels like no other coin. It's thicker, it's a different color - there is no way of mistaking it for any other coin. They also need to put some person who's part of our American consciousness on it. Susan B. Anthony is deserving, but not popular. This one might have it right, as many others did: Eisenhower (the dollar), Franklin and Kennedy (fifty cent pieces), Washington, Roosevelt, Jefferson, Lincoln. Before them, various Liberty figures. The previous nickel and penny were both Indian head (the nickel before Jefferson is also known as the buffalo nickel after the reverse). What do all of these have in common? Every schoolkid understands the part these figures played in our national history.



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Condition of Former KGB Spy Worsens





Doctors said Litvinenko was seriously ill after being given the deadly poison thallium - a toxic metal found in some types of rat poison that can cause damage to the nervous system and organ failure. Such poison has been outlawed in Britain since the 1970s, making it highly unlikely any could have gotten into his food by accident.





Every time the Clinton Adminstration had a choice between supporting democratic systems and supporting Yeltsin, they supported Yeltsin. Result: We now have Putin to deal with, and one of the most powerful countries in the world, with thousands of nuclear warheads, has gone from a nascent democracy in 1993 back to almost completely totalitarian. And people have to ask "what's wrong with the realism school of diplomacy?" Thank you, yet again, Warren Christopher and Madeline Albright. And they're trying to give us another...





Litvinenko, who has been a thorn in the Russian government's side since the late 1990s, fell ill after a meal with a contact who claimed to have details about the slaying of another Kremlin critic - Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian investigative journalist who was gunned down Oct. 7 in her Moscow apartment building.



Litvinenko blamed her killing on Russian President Vladimir Putin.





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Key Democrats oppose renewing military draft



Oh, those wonderful Democrats, protecting the country from the rapacious draft of the Bush Administration. Except that, down in the fourth paragraph, we are told that the Bush Administration didn't ask for a draft - it was a powerful Democratic legislator, incoming committee chair Charles Rangel.



Next, we're going to hear that the Democrats want an average of twelve hours per day of sunlight, favor trial by jury, and want to keep the First Amendment.



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Gingrich '08: The stealth candidate



The Republicans have been missing Newt, whether they realize it or not. Furthermore, for the past two years plus, he's been building support nationwide for his ideas. Yes, he's a polarizing figure. So was Ronald Reagan in 1976 and 1980 and throughout his Presidency, and for that matter, Lincoln in 1860 and throughout his presidency. Neither of those two men built any political alliances that lasted, did they? (The Republican interest alliance Lincoln built lasted until the Depression, and while Reagan's thirty year old alliance may be wounded, Gingrich supports it)



He appears to be trying to back the presidential campaign off a level. Instead of the war of personalities and supporters of particular candidates, he's trying to create a the demand for a presidential candidate whose views are compatible with his, and while I'm certain it wouldn't break his heart if he were he party's candidate in 2008, I think that if the Democrats win in 2008, by 2012 his ideas may be irresistable. Look at the parallels: An unpopular war effort, Republicans getting trashed in 2006 (1974). That's what we've got so far. Then a cosmetically appealing but incompetent Democrat wins the Presidency in 2008 (1976). By 2010 the Republicans are winning back seats (the Republican freshman congressional class of 1978 was huge), and in 2012 (1980) an ideas driven Republican wins office.



Would I vote for Gingrich? I honestly don't know. He's a bomb thrower, but at least you always know where you really stand with him, what his real take on the issues is, and he's not afraid to go to the mat - even in the face of a hostile press - and fight for what he believes is right.



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Palestinian human shields give Israel pause





In perhaps the most effective act of nonviolent protest in the six-year Palestinian uprising, hundreds of Gazans forced Israel over the weekend to call off airstrikes on the residence of a militant leader by swarming the house as human shields.





Why don't we ever hear about human shields volunteering to protect innocent Israeli women, children, and other civilians? I'll tell you why. Because there is no chance it would work. The presence of additional targets would be an inducement to the Paleosimians. "The normal women and children, plus some infidel volunteers? Wonderful!"



So while Israel lets the guilty go lest they attack the somewhat innocent, the Paleosimians light off a few extra rockets, because the presence of more innocent bodies in the area makes it more worthwhile to their way of thinking.



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I have my older daughter with me this week due to school closure this week, so new articles are going to be fewer as I have less time to write. Thanksgiving week traffic is pretty sparse anyway, but if you've got a question, please ask it.

Michael Barone on why Pelosi is supporting Murtha over Hoyer, and the risks she is taking. We'll find out sometime tomorrow who gets the nod for majority leader.



Later: House Democrats name Hoyer to No. 2 post





WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats picked Rep. Steny Hoyer to be House majority leader on Thursday, spurning Rep. Nancy Pelosi's handpicked choice moments after unanimously backing her election as speaker when Congress convenes in January.



A Marylander and 25-year veteran of Congress, Hoyer defeated Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania in a vote of 149-86.





Credit where credit is due: The Democrats have dodged one bullet. But in the week since the election, they've stepped into the path of several others. So have the Republicans (Trent Lott? Give me a break!). I'm considering a recurring section called "Stupid Congresscritter Tricks"



Via Wizbang, looks like Abramoff has fingered Harry Reid.





A source close to the investigation says Abramoff told prosecutors that more than $30,000 in campaign contributions to Reid from Abramoff's clients "were no accident and were in fact requested by Reid."



and



The AP also reported that Abramoff's billing records showed extensive contact with Reid's office over a three-year period in which Reid collected more than $68,000 from Abramoff's firm, partners and clients.





Ham Nation (video) psychoanalyses both parties post election.



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Plutonium Found in Iran, and people are surprised?



I am only surprised 1) that someone actually looked, and 2) reported it when they found it.



The Europeans, Russians, Chinese, and IAEA have all decided that the Official Truth is that the Iranians are not developing nuclear weapons. The people in those governments (and the IAEA) are likely to be roasted alive by mobs after Iran nukes Israel and Israel nukes Iran back, catching half the world population in the fallout patterns. But hey, it relieves them of having to do anything the least bit difficult now.



Meanwhile: Iran says about to take "final step" in atomic plan





Ahmadinejad did not say what the final step was, but he repeated comments he made this week that Iran would celebrate its "right to nuclear technology" by March, the end of the Iranian year, the official IRNA news agency reported.



Tehran, which says its nuclear aims are peaceful...





Dead people and nuclear wastelands are very peaceful, as well as consistent with the goals of Iran's governing mullahs.



Likely related: Airport arrest turns up nuclear info





DETROIT (AP) — A man was arrested at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after officials say they found him carrying nearly $79,000 in cash and a laptop computer containing information about nuclear materials and cyanide.





He arrived from Nigeria by way of Amsterdam, and he is a US Citizen, but the article doesn't mention whether he was born or naturalized, or his religion. My money is on Shiite or Wahhabi Moslem. Anybody want to bet?



lgf notes that he's actually Ethiopian, which is mostly a christian nation, but doesn't mention his actual religion.



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OK So I'm Not Really A Cowboy with some real analysis on "Faith in people versus Fear"



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Fare thee well, Milton Friedman. You will be missed.



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McCain offers Republicans road to recovery. Nice talk. But if he really wants the party base, he's going to have to admit that McCain-Feingold was a mistake.



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I'm sure this is going to make all the difference: U.S. urges restrictions on anti-vehicle mines. From the same minds that brought us the war on drugs, no doubt. I had to look twice before I realized that said "US", not "UN".



Yes, they are a major problem. But people have been trying to restrict and ban weapons since the crossbow in the twelfth century. Not once has it worked.



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Iraq the Model notes evidence that the Iraqi government may be taking the November 7 wake up call seriously.



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Dr. Sanity explains that Arabs are not born idiots. Their rulers make them study.



I like this! Terrorist Death Watch (a body count of dead terrorists since November 1)

Dems Keep Senate Leaders, Split on House





In the House, a bitter battle was under way after Pelosi said she would prefer Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania to be majority leader over her current lieutenant, Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland. Critics accused Pelosi of backpedaling on a pledge to scrub the House of corruption.



Both Murtha and Hoyer claim to have commitments from a majority of Democrats, but the balloting Thursday will be secret and commitments often change.



Murtha, a decorated Vietnam veteran who favors an immediate drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq, has fought charges for years of using his senior status on the defense appropriations subcommittee to award favors to campaign contributors. He voted against a Democratic package of ethics reforms earlier this year and was touched by but never charged in the Abscam bribery scandal a quarter-century ago.





Not just Murtha, either. Hastings (impeached and removed from a federal judgeship), Waxman, and Conyers have been picked for committee chairs. Pelosi herself needs to answer some influence peddling questions, which the Democratic press gave her a pass on during the campaign. In the Senate, Reid's land deals don't look right to me.



What they didn't say about the so-called "culture of corruption" was that the change the Democrats wanted is their own side getting the majority of the spoils.



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I suppose I should mention my take on the now infamous NAR ad, that spent Realtor dues to try to build primary demand for Realtors: "Great time to buy or sell a home." Well, they got it half right, at least for my local market. It is a Great time to buy, but it's a putrid time to sell. If you don't have to sell, put it off for another day. On the other hand, enough people have to sell that there are some really great bargains out there.



California has all kinds of boards that are where old politicians who can't get elected any more (if they ever could) get appointed to high paying positions that really have no necessary function. These boards collect fees from farm and dairy producers, and they way they try to show them that they're earning the money those farmers and dairy folk pay is by advertising to build primary demand (for milk, for eggs, for avocados, for almonds - you name it). It doesn't work for them. It won't work for Realtors, either.



Great times for buyers never happen at the same time as great times for sellers. It's just one of the realities of economics. Not that the NAR has any great amount of credibility, but they're certainly not increasing it by saying such things.



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So chocolate really is a health food, at least in a way.



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Trent Lott wins back a slot in leadership. I always did think his crime was not thinking when he tried to be nice to an old man who was retiring, and then digging himself in deeper rather than issuing a mea culpa. I'm no fan of his, but far be it from me to assist the partisans on the Democratic side of the aisle in their ongoing attempts to kneecap the opposition. How many calls for have there been for Reid to resign? Murtha? Hastings? Pelosi? All of these have committed worse violations than "Open Mouth, Insert Foot, thereby offending an interest group." The Dems wanted Rumsfeld gone because he was good at his job - he forced the generals to organize correctly to fight insurgency, with field and company officers taking the lead. Don't believe me? Compare our casualties the last three years with British casualties in the North West Frontier Province when they ran India. The Dem partisans want Cheney gone because he supports the president as a vice president should. They want Rove gone because he's beaten them in elections every time but one. Any time a member of the opposition does a good job, look for the Democrats to try to kneecap them.



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U.S. Commander Warns Against Iraq Cutoff





The top U.S. commander in the Middle East warned Congress Wednesday against setting a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, putting him at odds with resurgent Democrats pressing President Bush to start pulling out of the violence-torn country.





Anyone want to bet that the opinions of generals suddenly become unimportant to the Democrats?





Asked directly what effect he foresaw on sectarian violence if Congress legislated a phased U.S. withdrawal starting in four to six months, Abizaid replied, "I believe it would increase."





Well, duh





Abizaid said he believes U.S. troop levels, now at about 141,000, should stay steady but may have to rise temporarily to train and advise Iraqi military units. No reductions are advisable until the Iraqi security forces become more capable of dealing with the insurgency, securing Baghdad and dealing with the Shiite militia problem, he said.





I doubt the Democrats are going to listen. They've got most of what they want (the Presidency wasn't on the ballot last week), and now they are quite likely going to do what they want. The good of the country has no more to do with it than it did for the Republicans. I hate to sound like a Republican shill, but the main reason I voted Republican last week was that they have something much closer to a rational strategy in the War on Terror. They also espouse something closer to rational economic policy. When the Democrats start actually thinking about military, strategic, political, and economic consequences of what they do, and not merely how they can get more votes, they'll be able to compete for my vote on very favorable terms, unless of course the Republicans have gotten rational in the meantime about the things the Democrats are currently better on. My money is on the Republicans improving first and by larger increments in more important ways.



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Report: Scarlet Fever Spreads in N.Korea



There is nothing I can say that adequately describes to communist government of North Korea and how it has failed the people of North Korea.



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Some good news from Pakistan: Pakistan votes to roll back Islamic law on rape



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UPDATE: Wizbang is hosting the 2006 Weblog Award Nominations. Get over there and nominate your favorites!

RINO Sightings



Carnival of Personal Finance



Carnival of the Capitalists Recommended: Gongol (report card on economic credentials of likely 2008 presidential candidates)



Carnival of real Estate recommended: Blue Roof (the power of reputation). Maury Properties (the limitations of on-line evaluations)



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T-shirt turns air guitar into music



Okay, I see the attraction for certain people, but on those occasions I actually played air guitar I was glad nobody could hear the results of me torturing some poor instrument.



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Lebanon crisis reignites wider 'cold war'



Letting places like Lebanon fester, as we have done for the last twenty years, merely makes the damage worse.



Lebanese Government OKs Hariri Tribunal



Hariri was the former Prime Minister assassinated upon Syrian orders a while back.



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Prognosis not good for bipartisanship: Pelosi supports Murtha for majority leader Hoyer, the current minority whip, worked hard on the campaign trail getting moderate Democrats elected. Furthermore, while a Democratic partisan, he has been at least reasonable in his opposition to the Bush Administration. Murtha has nothing to recommend him except his blanket opposition to the Bush Administration on Iraq, an opposition which has led him into multiple misrepresentations, and even flat out lies, and the fact that he's a political ally of Pelosi's. While you're at it, run "Murtha Abscam" through a search engine or two. Were it not for the fact that Democratic partisans control the media, he would have been out of Congress over twenty years ago. Along with Robert Byrd (and to be fair, Ted Stevens and Bud Schuster), he's a poster child for the "culture of corruption" that the Democrats said they wanted to change. Except that the only change is that they really want is control of the lion's share of the spoils.



Extreme Partisan: check. Completely corrupt: check. Has had any sense of integrity or fair play he may once have possessed surgically removed: check. Yeah, Murtha's got it all. I said a few days ago that if the Democrats play partisan games like in 1986 or 1997, the spanking the Republicans got this year will look like a mild case of voter disapproval compares to what happens to the Democrats in 2008, and it looks like the Democrats are already doing their best to insure that it happens.



Bush stands by his man for U.N. envoy



John Bolton has done more for this country in the UN the past year than all our other UN Ambassadors combined. Failing to confirm him would be criminally stupid.



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Moonbats to the left of me, Wingnuts to my right: Calif. suspect in threats due in court.



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Bush calls for Global Isolation of Iran. Oh, he's so unilateral:



"If they continue to move forward with the program, there has to be a consequence," Bush said. "And a good place to start is working together to isolate the country. And my hope is, is that there are rational people inside the government that recognize isolation is not in their country's interest."





Of course, Russia, China and France all wield UN Security Council vetoes. I'd actually like to see France's taken away and given to Japan, as that would be more representative of the real world.



In case anybody is unaware, if Iran carries through on its repeated threats to nuke Israel, the fallout patterns will make a large portion of the Middle East uninhabitable, and quite likely a significant portion of the Balkans, not to mention Egypt. If Israel nukes Iran in retialiation, the Turks, the Indians, the Pakistanis, and of course the Afghans are all in potential fall out zones. Not to mention provinces of Russia and China. You'd think the leadership of those countries would have the intelligence to realize what Iran getting atomic weapons would mean. But judging by the evidence, they don't.



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Right Wing News interviews Mark Steyn (via Instapundit)





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Michelle Malkin on a Bangladeshi moderate Moslem and his likely fate.



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Asymmetrical Information on what a national health care plan would almost certainly look like. No thanks.



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Out of time! It does look like the Project VALOUR IT exceeded its goals, and so there will be an additional 225 laptops for wounded veterans unable to use their hands. Thank you to anyone reading this who donated.

Day By Day Sunday, November 12. This may soon be the only place American credit is good.



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Q and O on the new Democratic majority.



Iraq the Model on the middle eastern perception of the election.



There's Still Life In The Lame Duck



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Mark Steyn: US Must Prove it's a Staying Power



Bruce Thornton at VDH Private Papers





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Volokh Conspiracy notes that Raich vs. Gonzales may have given a (future) Republican congress cover for a partial birth abortion ban.

Project VALOUR IT

| | Comments (0)

I know I'm behind the power curve in posting this. I'll put Team Marines on my other site, San Diego having large numbers of both.



This will stay on top until the weekend. Scroll down for new posts.



Explanation here





Every cent raised for Project Valour-IT goes directly to the purchase and shipment of voice-activated laptops for wounded servicemembers. As of October 2006, Valour-IT has distributed nearly 600 laptops to severely wounded Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines across the country.



During its initial phase, Valour-IT created "libraries" of laptops equipped with voice-controlled software for the severely wounded staying at major military medical centers. In many cases a laptop was provided to a wounded hero for permanent use.



Valour-IT is continuing to accept donations of any amount to supply the "libraries" of laptops at major medical centers and gifts to individuals, but has also added the option of an individual or organization directly sponsoring a wounded soldier by completely funding the cost of a laptop and continuing to provide him or her with personal support and encouragement throughout recovery. This has proved to be an excellent project for churches, groups of coworkers or friends, and members of community organizations such Boy Scouts.



Most recently thanks to the efforts of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, Valour-IT is now able to reach personnel in VA hospitals who would benefit from a Valour-IT laptop.



Wounded military personnel can request a laptop through the sign-up form if they are recovering at home or in military hospitals, or through the Valour-IT/Soldiers' Angels representatives if they are patients at the following medical centers:



Balboa Naval Hospital



Brooke Army Medical Center



Madigan Regional Medical Center



National Naval Medical Center (Bethesda Naval Hospital)



Naval Hospital, Camp Pendleton



Robert E. Bush Naval Hospital (29 Palms)



Walter Reed Army Medical Center





Prevent this shame from happening to us:



The Last of the Light Brigade






There were thirty million English who talked of England's might,

There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.

They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;

They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.



They felt that life was fleeting; they knew not that art was long,

That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.

They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;

And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four!



They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and grey;

Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;

And an old Troop-Sergeant muttered, "Let us go to the man who writes

The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites."



They went without bands or colours, a regiment ten-file strong,

To look for the Master-singer who had crowned them all in his song;

And, waiting his servant's order, by the garden gate they stayed,

A desolate little cluster, the last of the Light Brigade.



They strove to stand to attention, to straighten the toil-bowed back;

They drilled on an empty stomach, the loose-knit files fell slack;

With stooping of weary shoulders, in garments tattered and frayed,

They shambled into his presence, the last of the Light Brigade.



The old Troop-Sergeant was spokesman, and "Beggin' your pardon," he said,

"You wrote o' the Light Brigade, sir. Here's all that isn't dead.

An' it's all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin' the mouth of hell;

For we're all of us nigh to the workhouse, an, we thought we'd call an' tell.



"No, thank you, we don't want food, sir; but couldn't you take an' write

A sort of 'to be continued' and 'see next page' o' the fight?

We think that someone has blundered, an' couldn't you tell 'em how?

You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now."



The poor little army departed, limping and lean and forlorn.

And the heart of the Master-singer grew hot with "the scorn of scorn."

And he wrote for them wonderful verses that swept the land like flame,

Till the fatted souls of the English were scourged with the thing called Shame.



O thirty million English that babble of England's might,

Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night;

Our children's children are lisping to "honour the charge they made-"

And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade!





Rudyard Kipling



Please help if you can.






No, this is not "Pick on Airbus" week, but FedEx drops A380 order, buys Boeing 777s. Not very long ago, it was looking like Airbus had Boeing on the run, but they are unable to deliver on their promises, and most especially unable to deliver on time and on price. Airbus has all the problems of being a state run patronage system. Boeing does get some subsidization but not nearly to the degree that Airbus does, and with nowhere near so may strings attached, so Boeing is beating them everywhere it counts.



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Chris de Burgh buys rare WW1 letter



It describes the Christmas 1914 truce. It is unknown what happened to the author.



Where Peaceful Waters Flow, my favorite of the ones youtube has of his.



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Via Tinkerty Tonk the How Democratic Are You? and How Republican Are You?. I came out 4% and 12% respectively, indicating there isn't a true dichotomy.



I tend to vote for whichever candidate is less stupid. Right now, that's mostly the Republicans. But neither party is doing well and both have an excellent chance at my vote in 2008. It's not like they have a high bar to get over...



And before I read anything about anybody freaking out (or celebrating) with exit polling this year, I have three words to say: Get. A. Grip. The only poll that counts is going on right now. The results will be released later today. Exit polling is skewed, for several reasons. I may or may not cover my reactions to election returns tonight.



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America blog is noting that Laura Ingraham may have suggested her listeners call the Democratic voter fraud hotline for purposes of jamming it. While not election tampering, if this allegation is true, it is despicable.



Gateway Pundit covers the other side: people voting despite being unable, or trying to vote more than once.



The Llama Butchers covers one of the largest and most influential voting blocs.



the dirty election tricks thread at aol elections



Opinion Journal has a time line of poll closings. Of course, it's based upon East Coast time. Subtract appropriately for your location (3 hours for California)



neo-neocon hopes that if they win, enough Democrats will remember what happened last time we left a war unfinished.



Wizbang catches the Pennsylvania Democrats breaking about six major electoral laws.



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Enemies of the internet: No surprises here.





The 13 countries are: Saudi Arabia, Belarus, Myanmar, China, North Korea, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Uzbekistan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan and Vietnam.



Three countries were removed from RSF's 2005 list -- Libya, the Maldives and Nepal.





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Cool! The San Diego Reader is going to feature my other site http://www.danmelson.com/, and there just happens to be a Project Valour IT sticky-taped there, too (I did Team Marine over there). What's more, they say they're going to give me $50 which I will pass on. I took them at their word and added a $50 donation.



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Dr Sanity about WMDs and a recipe for what looks like a killer chocolate cake.



Opinion Journal and the Press at War



Bill Whittle over at Eject! Eject! Eject! may be months behind with the new book he promised us, but there's a new chapter up that worth the wait. He completely shreds many of the worst jingoistic responses of today's political climate.



Thank You, Bill.



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LGF catches Daily Kos saying "We hate Jews, but can't say so until after the election."



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Best messing with a telemarketer ever.


Carnival of Personal Finance



Carnival of Investing



RINO Sightings Recommended: Danegerus (trends in retroactive abortion)



Carnival of The Capitalists Recommended: Sox First (how accounting firms are trying to win protection from the government, after first winning the Sarbanes Oxley windfall)



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Saddam, Co-Defendants Sentenced to Hang



Or maybe not:



Iraq's former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison.



Three defendants were given up to 15 years in prison for torture and premeditated murder. Abdullah Kazim Ruwayyid and his son, Mizhar Abdullah Ruwayyid, were party officials in Dujail, along with Ali Dayih Ali. They were believed responsible for the Dujail arrests.



A local Baath Party official Mohammed Azawi Ali, was acquitted for lack of evidence.





This is dealing with the past. Much more imnportant is how the Iraqis handle their future, and they are having difficulties with that.



Note that AP couldn't resist this snark:



Lost in the drama of Sunday's death sentence was any mention of the failed search for the alleged weapons of mass destruction that President Bush said led the United States to invade and occupy Iraq in March 2003.





That's because it's not relevant to the case at hand, which had to do with a massacre in the Kurdish north, and the Iraqi ABC programs were not relevant.





The United States has denied direct involvement in the trial, but some legal observers believe it was tainted by association with the American presence. Miranda Sissons, head of the Iraq program at the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York, said: "There will always be some doubt as to how much influence it exerted on the trial."





If President Bush had wanted to, he could have had Saddam Hussein tried anywhere. It was, after all, our soldiers that captured him and that hold the balance of power in Iraq. And the independence of the Iraqi government has been well established (you don't think we took down the checkpoints searching for our kidnapped soldier because we wanted to, do you?)



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This may be what kills Airbus: Airbus plans to cut 80 percent of subcontractors



Airbus is dependent upon political gravy for its subsidies. If they are no longer subsidizing 2500 subcontractors, that's a lot of political support they are tossing.



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Remember to vote tomorrow (if you haven't already)!

Looks like somebody has decided to spoof my email at this domain. My catch-all e-mail was full of returned spam again. As far as I know, there is no way to prevent spoofing.



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Armies of Liberation has yet another story on Yemen's problems: Children, in adult jail, as hostages for their relatives.

Torture on inmates. Real torture, not just forcing them to listen to Air America (or form human pyramids).



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Baghdad on alert awaiting Saddam verdict



On Wednesday, one of Saddam's lawyers said a death sentence would "open the gates of hell" to the roughly 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.





Illustrates the issue, although I think it's indicative of someone who should be in jail himself.



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Looks like the media black-out surrounding the New York Times article is over: Scientists protested Web site nuclear data: report



With the original article, the New York Times single-handedly refuted the "Bush lied" idea most of the media has been pushing for over three years. No wonder the wire services didn't want to cover it. But thanks to blogs etcetera, the story got enough attention that they can cover it, or watch everyone else cover it.



The Times said they were going to turn the results of the election. However, it looks like their intent to make it a Democratic run has backfired. Okay, mistake on the part of a low level bureaucrat putting actual nuclear data on the web. But Iraqi data can't help anyone less advanced than them. If Iraq had no nuclear program, their data wouldn't help anybody. Therefore, they did have a nuclear program, not to mention the Biological and Chemical programs. Therefore, President Bush did not lie.



All for:



A senior federal official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Times that scientists at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory protested some of the weapons papers on the site to the National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of the Department of Energy, in October. But the objections "never perked up to senior management," the Times quoted the official as saying. "They stayed at the mid-levels."




Quick word about something I'm running into a lot: Lenders that sell the note but retain servicing rights. So when the note goes south, and my client wants to buy into a distressed situation, the servicers are rejecting offers without checking with the actual investor, because they could get sued (for misrepresentation and bad underwriting) if they accept less than they loaned. On the other hand, if the property sits on the market (thereby costing the investors even more money), they don't get sued because, hey, the asking price is enough to cover the note. Now there is a legal deadline involved with lender owned properties, and nobody is going to offer enough to bail them out. But it's kind of like the old joke: "A lot can happen in a year. I may die. The King may die. And perhaps the horse will sing." Corporations don't die. Even if it were an individual investor, someone's going to inherit the right to payments. I do not think this horse will sing - it probably won't even whinny. In other words, nobody is going to offer enough to bail the lender out of their fix. Near as I can figure, those controlling the corporations holding servicing rights are evidently hoping that by that time, they will have moved on to other jobs and can't be held liable as individuals.



One more reason to be very careful investing in trust deeds.



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North Korea wants bank accounts unfrozen.





North Korea said Wednesday it would return to nuclear disarmament talks in an effort to get access to frozen overseas bank accounts, a vital source of hard currency for the impoverished and isolated communist nation.





I get email from Nigerians every day who would be pleased to help the North Koreans out...



But I suppose they can't email Kim Jong Il, can they? No internet in North Korea! D'oh!



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While we're on the subject of rogue nuclear powers, Russia says won't back draft text on Iran sanctions





Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday Moscow would not support a draft U.N. sanctions resolution on Iran proposed by European states, Russian news agencies reported.





Can't support a UN Draft resolution? So much for it being the capitalists that sell the rope to hang themselves with.



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U.S. fails to protect illegal workers: petition



Far be it from me to want to see the poor lawbreakers exploited. I think that if we deport them like we should, they won't be exploited in the United States.





"By not protecting undocumented workers, the government is sending the message to employers that they can abuse and harass immigrant women, and that our lives are not as valued as other workers," one of the workers, identified as Melissa L., said in a statement.





How about "abusing" them by not hiring them? Fact is that these folks willingly accept the jobs. I know that if I were to ever do illegal work, it would certainly cross my mind that they could maybe deport me instead of paying me.



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Nine shot at San Francisco Halloween street party



But San Francisco has strict laws regarding firearms. Only the politically connected are allowed to carry handguns. So if only those with permits actually carry guns, because we know that criminals won't carry guns if it's illegal, then obviously the guilty party is the only person I'm sure has a San Francisco concealed carry permit: Dianne Feinstein.



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Captain's Quarters on one of the many reasons I hope the Republicans retain control of the House next week: Alcee Hastings. Successfully impeached by a democratically controlled House and Senate for corruption, Ms. Pelosi has tapped him to head the House Intelligence Committee if Dems take the House.

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This page is a archive of entries in the Zee Links and Minifeatures category from November 2006.

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