31 October 2008

AMF: Just the Facts, Ma'am

Just the news this morning. I want to get to work early today.

The BBC has another "audio slideshow", this time about a Babylon exhibit at the British Museum.

Three stories out of Afghanistan. First, Afghan women from around the country have spoken up against negotiating with the Taliban - and if you'll remember how women were treated by the Taliban, and how they're treated in Taliban-controlled areas, you can't blame them. With all of this talk of negotiations with the Taliban, the Pentagon has made it clear that one Taliban leader they won't negotiate with is Mullah Omar, who headed the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan prior to the 2001 coalition campaign that ended that entity's existence - wow, that was some nice alliteration. There's also a Taliban tribe in Pakistan that has pledged to stop fighting - though it's worth pointing out that we've heard this before and it didn't exactly work out.

The BBC also has an article about a journalist's eco-tourism hike through Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Considering that the Bekaa Valley is Hezbollah Central, something tells me that it's not quite the eco-tourism that Saif al Qaddhafi is developing in Libya.

I've talked several times about the use of shipping containers for various purposes. It looks like they've found more military applications for them, and that's a great thing.

Is it just me, or do Libyan press releases/articles read like spam E-Mails? I was actually pretty interested in the substance of that article, but I can't even figure out what most of it means, let alone the part at the end about the Prime Minister of Malta, Dom Perignon.

A couple of quick politics articles, and then I'm done. First, and from an exceptionally unlikely source, there's an op-ed in the Times that dropped my jaw: a London Times writer tears Barack Obama a new one while analyzing Wednesday's "I enjoy frivolously spending campaign money" infomercial. People were saying that the ads were extravagant, but that they were probably going to be effective. I think Senator McCain likely hit the nail on the head with his jovial response:

"No one will delay the World Series game with an infomercial when I'm president!"

My guess is that the infomercials probably cost Obama some votes. This morning, I spent the first twenty minutes (of about twenty-five) of my drive to work listening to Surat Luqman. When it was over, I turned on the radio, and in five minutes or less I had to change the radio station no less than five times because every station had either an Obama commercial, or people talking about him. Now, I'm an admitted partisan, but I can't be the only person who's sick of hearing this guy's voice, or people talking about him, or the media fawning over him. A half hour "closing argument" infomercial that delayed the final game of the World Series? Come on. There also have to be a number of different kinds of voters out there who are saying, "Do I really want to hear that voice for the next four years?"

On the lighter side, the Onion has an article that really made me smile: Obama: "I would make a bad president.". They also have a fairly entertaining video lampooning Obama's inexperience. The media wants Obama to win, eight out of nine Americans polled think the media wants Obama to win, and as far as many people are concerned, the election is over. Because of that, the media is going to try to drag this thing out by adopting a veneer of fairness in the final days, trying to make it appear to be a more competitive race than they believe that it actually is. The surprise for them is that it actually is more competitive than they've been making it. One way or another, next week is going to be interesting.

I'm swamped this weekend, folks. Enjoy it, try to avoid the television and the radio. Pick up a book - maybe even something light that will make you feel good when you finish it.

Fly Report: 31st October 2008

Good morning. There's a memory of a window, looking through I see you searching for something I could never give you. There's someone who understands you more than I do, a sadness I can't erase, on the look on your face.

It's 7° Centigrade and rainy in Kirkwall. In Cody, the forecast calls for a high of 69° Fahrenheit with partial clouds.

A barrel of oil is trading at $63.47. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at 9180.69. The exchange rate is $1.63 for £1, or £0.61 for $1.

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is cool. The picture at the Orkneyjar Photoblog is not new.

Today's scripture reading is Leviticus 21. The Fly is currently reading the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5.

I'm a man, I'm not a child. I'm a man who sees the shadow behind your eyes.

30 October 2008

Election Thursday and Chinese Waitresses

Hey folks! Some stories, some comedy, and some politics. Buckle in, it's Election Thursday.

A couple of days ago, I carried a Times Online article about Kim Jong Il, who is currently Kim Jong Ill. There have been a number of reports lately about his medical situation, from the AP, the BBC, and another from the Times. There are claims that his eldest son visited a French brain surgeon to inquire about treatment, and the Japanese and the South Koreans are apparently claiming that he's been hospitalized, but is cognizant and healthy enough to continue running the country. It'll be interesting to continue watching how this whole situation plays out. For those who didn't know previously, Chairman Kim's succession is expected to be a mess.

I've been paying some attention in the last several days to the upcoming presidential race in Iran. I had originally wondered if it would be a match up between Mohammed Khatami, who is moderate, and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, who is crazy. Apparently Khatami has basically announced that he doesn't plan to run. Too bad.

To be honest with you, most of the rest of the news for today is actually pretty soft. The sister ship of the Titanic, which served as a hospital ship until it was sunk in World War I, is going to be turned into an underwater musem where it rests off the coast of a Greek island. With the exception of one novel cover that's in exceptionally poor taste (guess which one?), there's a Longmire-esque popup at the Guardian in which classic books have been given new genres. Aside from the "housemaid" one at the end, I think my favorite was the re-tooling of "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac, a book I have no familiarity with, as "An intergalactic voyage fraught with angst." Awesome. And as if that wasn't enough, one of the Times Online's "pictures of the day" came from the International Best Bottoms (read: women's buttocks) Contest: NSFW. Sometimes, the news makes a concerted effort at redeeming itself. And, in an article for the geeks, the Times has an piece about a zombie plague gone awry in the World... of Warcraft. All of those nerds must have lost hours of their life dealing with that, that they would have otherwise lost just playing the normal game.

The BBC has a couple of audio slideshows (don't ask me where they got that phrase, they're British, they don't need a reason). The first is a narrated slideshow of archaeological specimens from Herculaneum, three hundred years after the discovery of the city that was buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius alongside Pompeii in 79 AD. The second is a collection of images from a couple of Bond flicks, narrated by the production designer. If you've seen the old Bond flicks You Only Live Twice (1967) and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), you'll enjoy this slideshow.

Speaking of James Bond, the new flick, Quantum of Solace, premieres in a few weeks. The BBC has a couple of pieces on the subject. The first is an interview with the new Bond girl, Olga Kurylenko, who apparently hates doing love scenes. She was also born with twelve fingers, and nobody asked her her opinion on the subject (the BBC reporters don't count as people). If you want to watch the final trailer, it's available at the BBC's review of the flick. I can't wait to see this movie.

Okay, so before the politics, a few quick stories. (Stop laughing, Mo.)

I have this ex-girlfriend who I've been speaking with occasionally over the last few weeks. There's apparently a Middle Eastern restaurant near her flat in [Metropolis], so she took a picture of the sign and sent it to me. So, I looked up the word: مطعم, prounounced "matehm" or "matehma", I think. It means "restaurant" - not surprising, considering the source. What makes it interesting is that I actually saw the word on that satellite image of the Saudi/Bahraini passport island from Tuesday's post. I was also able to recognize the word for "border" (حدود, pronounced "hedood"), that I'd learned from my Little Beige Book on Iraqi Arabic. I had a similar experience a few months ago, when I recognized the word for "camp" (معسكر, pronounced "muaskar"), also from the Little Beige Book. These may seem silly to some of you, but you have to keep in mind that I'm trying to learn this language on my own, in my spare time, using only what's available to me online and in print. When I can actually recognize a word, and infer something else from it, that's a big deal.

And, just for good measure, even if you don't read XKCD, yesterday's was worth checking out. If you wonder WTF (mate?) is going on, check the previous two comics for context. The parts about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and pleading the third? Priceless.

Speaking of restaurants, there's a sushi joint across the street from work. God only knows how long they'll be open, since I've never actually seen the place packed despite their awesome lunch prices, and the fact that they serve more than just sushi - they really should have called the place "[Name] Japanese Restaurant and Sushi Bar" instead of just "[Name] Sushi". At any rate, in case most of you didn't know, many Asian restaurants that are labeled Japanese are actually run by Chinese (or occasionally Korean) folks. If you think about it, Japan has a shrinking population and is industrialized and modern, whereas much of China is still pretty primitive and they basically have more people in the country than they know what to do with. And, mainly for entertainment but also to back up my point, I feel compelled to repost a conversation between myself and the Crypto King, my own personal reference on all things Japanese, from a few months ago.

The Fly: You'd be entertained to know that I went to a Japanese steak house in town with some friends on Saturday night. It wasn't my birthday, but the chef thought it was, so they put a lei on me and put a balloon on my jacket, and they did a polaroid with a card, et cetera.
Crypto King: Is that the one across the street from [the] Mall?
Crypto King: and when the hell did you get friends?
The Fly: I started going to church. Four of the seven people I was out with were from church. I didn't know two of the other ones, and the last one is a friend of two of the people from church.
Crypto King: Ah, that makes sense.
Crypto King: How was the food? I never went to that place.
The Fly: I'm not sure if it's the one you're thinking about, it's a ways off the parkway. The food was good.
Crypto King: Name?
The Fly: Geisha
Crypto King: Seriously, who the hell thought that was a good name for a restaurant? Fucking koreans.
The Fly: *shrug* Maybe it's because they have Asian women in kimonos scurrying around delivering drinks and taking orders?
Crypto King: just like every other japanese steakhouse run by koreans or, worse, chinese?
Crypto King: Those manage not to name their restaurants "Hookers!"
The Fly: I'd never been to one, so I don't know.
The Fly: LOL
Crypto King: Might as well call it "Happy Ending Steakhouse and Massage Parlor"
The Fly: You say all of this... But wouldn't you want to eat there if it was called Happy Ending Steakhouse and Massage Parlor?
Crypto King: Yes, yes I would.

Okay, so back to the topic at hand. I tried the sushi joint a month or two ago, and it wasn't too bad, so I've been back a few times. At this point, I probably average a lunch there once a week. Well, pretty much all of the waitresses are attractive, semi-lanky Asian girls, who I'd guess to be Chinese. So, last week, I went in there, and the waitress in question wasn't my actual waitress, but there were a couple of times when she came over, and I wasn't sure if she was flirting with me, or possibly mentally retarded. Today I was there with a couple of friends from work, and unless they were screwing with me, they confirmed that she was "hovering", looking for things to make small talk about.

Just for the purpose of making it a bit more entertaining, allow me to demonstrate in transcript form what happened last week.

Chinese Waitress: You need something else? You not full.
The Fly: Oh, I think I'm good, thanks.
Chinese Waitress: Okay. [smiles and brushes The Fly's arm with her hand]
The Fly: [waits five minutes for someone, anyone, to clear his plate and bring him his check]
Chinese Waitress: You ready to order?
The Fly: Oh, I think I'm ready to go, actually.
Chinese Waitress: Ohhh, okay. [tries to hand The Fly a menu]
The Fly: No, no, I'm ready to leave, to walk out of here. [makes walking motion with his fingers]
Chinese Waitress: Ohhh! I sorry, I thought you mean you want to order somesing to go. I go get your check. [smiles and brushes The Fly's arm with her hand]

And after that, the second waitress brought me my check. Mind you, I'm not complaining; and in fact, the statute of limitations on talking about ex-girlfriends is almost up on the little jabbering foreigner (who was actually Japanese), so between her and the Whore, I actually do have a history of dating foreign chicks. I'm just saying, that first attempt was pretty clumsy even by my standards.

I will, of course, report more about the Chinese Waitress as I return to [Name] Sushi for subsequent work lunches. I've never been a sushi kind of guy before, but their California rolls are to die for - and at just four bucks, they're a lunch time steal!

* * *

I'm going to try to keep Election Thursday to a dull roar today; and since there will be plenty of things to post in these waning days before the election, don't think it's over.

A lot has been made of Senator Obama's supposed widespread adulation from abroad. One important, popular, and influential figure who appears to be conflicted about Obama, though, is French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy has been at the front lines of negotiations between Russia and Georgia, and France has taken a leading role in the failing negotiations with Iran over the Iranian nuclear program over the last several years. If there's anyone who understands this stuff, it's him. Haaretz reports that President Sarkozy has expressed that he has a critical attitude toward Obama's positions on Iran. To quote Haaretz:

Sarkozy has made his criticisms only in closed forums in France. But according to a senior Israeli government source, the reports reaching Israel indicate that Sarkozy views the Democratic candidate's stance on Iran as "utterly immature" and comprised of "formulations empty of all content."

Fars News Agency, one of several Iranian mouthpieces, points out that the French embassy in Israel has denied the report, but let's be honest: even if I, the Fly, have good reason to believe that Barack Obama's not going to win the election next Tuesday, the world is still poised for it. What are the French going to do, acknowledge it, and set themselves up to get off on the wrong foot with Obama in the unlikely event that he actually wins the election? My guess is that the Haaretz article, even if the quote was intended to remain behind closed doors, probably has merit to it.

Think about it this way. Obama's position is that he'd meet with the Iranian government, in the first year of his administration, without pre-conditions. When asked previously, Obama has waffled on whether or not he'd keep military force on the table, but his solution to the problem was "aggressive personal negotiations" - as if the Iranian government would be so awed by Barack Obama's charisma and majesty that they'd immediately surrender all of their Uranium, centrifuges, and reactor parts. Obama claimed that Iran was a "tiny [country that] doesn't pose a serious threat", until someone called him out on it. He pointed out their miniscule military budget compared to ours, apparently ignorant of the fact that Iran funds and supplies Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, the Jaish al Mahdi Militia, and has been known to cooperate with al Qaeda in the past (no, I'm not making that up) - apparently ignorant of the bang you get for your buck when funding terrorism instead of developing an F-22 or a fast attack submarine.

Meanwhile, Sarkozy and his government, along with the Germans and the Brits, have been engaged in "aggressive personal negotiations" with Iran for the last four or five years, basically since Barack Obama was a legislator in Illinois representing South Chicago. The negotiations have gone nowhere. That's not to the discredit of the "EU3", as they're called - on the contrary, these three countries have backed us up, and done something that we weren't capable of doing due to our necessary position on Iran and Iran's unreasonable position on us. Then Obama comes in, obviously doesn't recognize the threat, doesn't recognize the way to deal with that threat, and seems to have this belief that all will be will if he's voted into office. If I were Sarkozy, I would have said something much more colorful behind closed doors.

I've discussed Senator Obama's fiscal policies, compared to Senator McCain's, with a number of people over the last few weeks. I don't think I've seen it summed up quite so well as it is in this article by one of my favorite FSM contributors, KT McFarland:

In simple terms, McCain is more concerned with growing the pie, rather than the size of the pieces. He favors policies that encourage the private sector of the economy to grow. His proposals favor small business, where the majority of new jobs come from. His tax policies reward investment in new technologies, building new companies and creating new jobs. Although he doesn’t say it this way, he figures that if the pie is big enough, everyone gets a decent sized piece. He doesn’t believe in giving everyone the same sized piece, but rather a piece reflective of their overall contribution to growing the pie. He is a free market conservative.

Obama is more concerned with the size of the pie pieces, rather than the size of the pie as a whole. As he said to Joe the Plumber, he wants to spread the wealth around. He favors more government aid to the lower classes – in health care and tax refunds. He wants to use government programs – taxes, rebates, mandatory programs – to make sure everyone gets a more equitable size of the pie. He calls this a trickle up plan – that if the lower classes have a bigger piece of the pie they will stimulate the economy to grow. When questioned whether these policies will shrink the pie, he dismisses the very thought. He is a big government liberal.

Now it’s up to you to decide. Do you think it is more important to grow the pie in hopes that everyone gets a bigger slice down the road? Or that it matters more that everyone gets a more equitable slice right now? Or that bad as things are now, they would be even worse if the pie shrinks. Those aren’t easy decisions, but then again, these aren’t easy times.

What an excellent way of putting it. I write for a living, and I don't think I could have put it better myself.

I'd like to close with a couple of pieces in defense of Sarah Palin. For various reasons, and following various interviews in which journalistic integrity was essentially non-existent, people have made a big point of maligning Sarah Palin. They've claimed that she doesn't have the experience, the intelligence, or the perspective to be a good leader in the unlikely event that something would happen to Senator McCain. There's one op-ed, and one quote from an unlikely source, that should give pause to those who are skeptical of Sarah Palin, yet fair in their outlook. The first is an op-ed from Elaine Lafferty, former editor-in-chief of Ms. Magazine. She's a Democrat, and she's supporting the McCain-Palin ticket. The article is entitled Sarah Palin's a Brainiac, and here's one of the money quotes:

Now by “smart,” I don't refer to a person who is wily or calculating or nimble in the way of certain talented athletes who we admire but suspect don't really have serious brains in their skulls. I mean, instead, a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had. Palin is more than a “quick study”; I'd heard rumors around the campaign of her photographic memory and, frankly, I watched it in action. She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts. What is often called her “confidence” is actually a rarity in national politics: I saw a woman who knows exactly who she is.

That, folks, is called "integrity". The other quote, from another unlikely source, comes from Saturday Night Live Executive Producer Lorne Michaels. Some of you may remember that Governor Palin was on SNL a couple of weeks ago, and I was surprised to see the following quote from Michaels:

"I think [Sarah] Palin will continue to be underestimated for a while. I watched the way she connected with people, and she's powerful. Her politics aren't my politics. But you can see that she's a very powerful, very disciplined, incredibly gracious woman. This was her first time out and she's had a huge impact. People connect to her.

These two things are precisely what I've perceived from Governor Palin since she was introduced mere months ago to the national political scene. Not only is this a lady who's generated a number of impressive accomplishments during her relatively brief time in office, but she's a gracious and intelligent woman who's not putting up an act. And at the risk of alienating voters by comparing the McCain-Palin ticket to the Bush-Cheney ticket of several years prior, that's one of the things that I've liked most about President Bush. With President Clinton, you never knew what he was really thinking behind that calculated, smooth, charismatic exterior; and I see a lot of that from Senators Obama and Biden, who appear to say one thing to one group of people, and the exact opposite to another - particularly when they think they're not being recorded. With President Bush, even when I disagreed with him (and there were plenty of times, just as there are and will be plenty of times when I disagree with John McCain), I was always pretty confident that President Bush wasn't lying to me. That's what I see out of John McCain, who has a proven record of straight talk, and Sarah Palin, who I believe is quickly generating the same type of record for herself (on a national level - I think she already has that reputation in Alaska). It's part of the reason why I'm confident in this ticket, and in my choice to support it.

Alright, folks, that's it for today. Check in tomorrow for AMF, and have a great day.

Fly Report: 30th October 2008

Good morning. I'm my own best friend, you're your own Ophelia.

It's 6° Centigrade and rainy in Kirkwall. In Cody, the forecast calls for a high of 68° Fahrenheit with sunshine.

A barrel of oil is trading at $67.44. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at 8990.96. The exchange rate is $1.63 for £1, or £0.61 for $1.

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is lame. The picture at the Orkneyjar Photoblog is not new.

Today's scripture reading is Leviticus 20. The Fly is currently reading the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5.

Don't look before you laugh.

29 October 2008

Halberds and Flintlocks in Days of Yore

Hey folks! Let me apologize up front: there's a brief election section in this post. For those of you who are more sick of the election than I am, it's the middle section, and it's separated by asterisks. First, the news.

The BBC, generally purveyors of sorrow, cynicism, and bad news, have an article about America's unlikely allies among the Afghan populace. Now, they put the typical asinine BBC spin on it, but the fact that they're highlighting the fact that there are Afghans who are still strongly pro-American after seven years of ISAF presence in the country, and who acknowledge the efforts by America and the allies to rebuild and promote prosperity in the country, is good in my book.

There are three interesting articles about the recent American raid on the Syrian side of the Syrian/Iraqi border. The Times reports that the raid "damaged British talks with Syria", which is a topic I hope to cover later in the week. Danger Room has a good, no nonsense post on the subject that gives concise details about the raid and its target. Meanwhile, the always excellent Michael Yon has a new article about the raid - it's insightful, it's concise, and it's worth reading.

Writing for UPI, Stefan Nicola claims that Germany can be a strategic asset for the next president. I've written previously about Germany's recent de-pacification, but the Germans have also had a very lackluster record during their deployments to Afghanistan. As I've noted a couple of times recently, one hundred KSK commandos spent three years in Afghanistan without going on a single mission, and the Afghan deployments remain unpopular with German voters. Although the election of Angela Merkel to the chancellorship several years ago was a good sign, we can rest assured that German citizens won't support sending additional troops anywhere (or letting them fight) at the request of a President McCain. And if, God forbid a thousand times, we end up with a President Obama, something tells me that the Hasselhoff-esque support he enjoys among Germans would collapse entirely if he asked them to take on a larger military role. Most of the reason that so many Europeans like Obama is that they think, and probably rightly so, that he's a pacifist like them. Pacifism happens to be a luxury of the defended, and even the anti-military President Clinton realized that sometimes, military force is the only option. That having been said, I think that it's tough in retrospect to justify his decisions to deploy troops to Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, and Iraq*, but the point is that an idealistic Senator Obama would have to either compromise, or fail with regards to foreign policy if he refused to use American troops for anything beyond what they're already doing.

A few days ago, I reported that the MEK had won an EU court case, which is a diplomatic blow to the Iranian regime. Almost like clockwork, Iran has formally criticized the West for its "new approach toward terrorism". This from a country that supports the Taliban. And Hamas. And probably the FARC in Colombia. And basically owns the Jaish al Mahdi militia and Hezbollah. And I think there's some more. Speaking of Iran and Hezbollah, Michael Totten also has a new article up about Lebanon, Israel, and Hezbollah titled Lebanon's Enemy Within that's very much worth reading if you have any interest in the region.

And, on a lighter note, archaeologists believe that they may have found King Solomon's mines; however, Allan Quatermain could not be reached for comment.

* * *

I was on the phone with a close friend of mine last week, and both of us are shooting enthusiasts for many different reasons. He made it clear that while he was ambivalent about Senator Obama, the Second Amendment was an important issue to him. Hoping that he'll have a chance to read the blog prior to casting his ballot, I decided to get some actual facts to make the case that Obama has little or no respect for the God-given right to keep and bear arms.

I started with a standard Google search, and came up with a page at On The Issues. I also checked the Factcheck.org site on the subject, even though Factcheck.org's reliability and neutrality have taken a hit in this election due to their ignorance of a number of "misstatements" by Obama and Biden during the debates. Although the Factcheck.org write-up does impressive acrobatics to paint Obama as being reasonable on the Second Amendment, even they admit the following:

  • Obama has called for national legislation against carrying concealed firearms
  • Obama would revive and make permanent the expired ban on semi-automatic "assault weapons" - both rifles and handguns
  • Obama favors government registration of handguns

    I'm uncomfortable about all three of these positions. So, I decided to go check out the NRA site on the subject. The thing about sites like Factcheck.org is that they tend to be run by the same sort of folks who do the research and fact-checking for major media outlets - the point being, they're not experts on guns. I can't tell you how many times I've been furious to hear a .223 Remington round described as a "high-powered .22". If there's one group that can be trusted to actually know about guns, ammunition, and the laws that impact them, it's the NRA. So, even if you come to the conclusion that Senator Obama's voting history with respect to guns is somewhere between what Factcheck.org and the NRA say, I'm still terrified. One item that the NRA points out that should be considered important:

    FACT: Barack Obama opposes four of the five Supreme Court justices who affirmed an individual right to keep and bear arms [in DC v. Heller, the decision that reversed the DC gun ban by one vote]. He voted against the confirmation of Alito and Roberts and he has stated he would not have appointed Thomas or Scalia.

    When I was on the phone with my friend, I mentioned an exchange that I heard on the Michael Medved Show between Medved and someone who had briefly discussed the issue with Obama when he was a law instructor at the University of Chicago. The same gentleman was on again on Friday, I heard the podcast on Monday, and he recounted the exchange once again. Now remembering his name (Professor John Lott), I was able to find a description in writing.

    This evidence should be sufficient, but I have yet another reason to be skeptical. I knew Obama during the mid-1990s, when we were both at the University of Chicago Law School, right around the time that he was running for the Illinois State Senate. Indeed, when I introduced myself to him, he said, "Oh, you are the gun guy."

    I responded, "Yes, I guess so." His response, as I recall it, was, "I don't believe that people should be able to own guns."

    When I said it might be fun sometime to talk about the question and his support of Chicago's lawsuit against gunmakers, he simply grimaced and turned away, ending the conversation.

    Lott has articles published by Fox from April '08 (during the primaries), the Washington Post from August, and the Philadelphia Inquirer from a couple of weeks ago. The three articles are similar, but they're each unique and worth reading.

    I'll make this final point, and then let the issue rest. The Second Amendment protects hunters, but it's not about hunting; it protects sportsmen, but it's not about sports. The historical context of the Second Amendment, which you'll remember to have been written in 1787 (four years after the American Revolution ended), was the American Revolution. During the Revolution, independence was declared and won by a handful of citizen militias that rose up against the British government, and the Founders believed so strongly that Americans had the right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of rising up against their government, if necessary, that they wrote it into the Constitution to make it clear that the right was inalienable. The Second Amendment has statements about a "well-regulated militia", but the underlying purpose and intent of the Second Amendment was to give citizens not only the right to stand up against a tyrannical government, but also the deterrent to prevent an American government from becoming tyrannical in the first place. I'm not advocating another violent revolution; I'm pointing out that uninfringed ownership of weapons by a patriotic body of law-abiding citizens is what prevents such a need in the first place. Any politician who wants to chip away at that freedom is a politician who shouldn't be trusted, whether for nefarious reasons or for simple historical ignorance and poor judgment. It's just one of several important reasons why Senator Obama won't be getting my vote.

    * * *

    In lieu of any other chicanery, the entertainment portion of today's post is a conversation between myself and Mrs. Mike Nelson. For those of you who used to flip out when I would post conversations between myself and CCG, let it be known that Mrs. Mike Nelson gave me permission to post this.

    The Fly: [sends Mrs. Mike Nelson a picture of Godzilla requesting pudding - inside MST3K joke]
    Mrs. Mike Nelson: AWESOME! I needed that...
    The Fly: Glad to help.
    Mrs. Mike Nelson: You know, jelly beans make me happy.
    The Fly: So, if there are jelly beans the next time we hang out, that would be good?
    Mrs. Mike Nelson: Very good. But I only mention that right now because I am eating them and they're making me smile :)
    The Fly: Oh, okay. That makes more sense. I'm stoked because I ate half of a delicious sandwich for lunch, I'll eat the other half of a delicious sandwich for dinner, and I didn't have to spend a dime on it.
    Mrs. Mike Nelson: Free food rocks! When I was interning in Richmond at the General Assembly, we NEVER had to pay for food. People fed us for free. It was a beautiful thing.
    The Fly: At the risk of one-upmanship (not that you'll be jealous), I think I can beat that. The Army ALWAYS has food, and usually too much of it to make sure that all of the soldiers get enough. [One time when I was training soldiers in California], I dug a hole to hide in while waiting for the unit that was there training (elements of 1CAV, I think) to come to my position [for a training event]. Several days in a row, I literally ended up with "hot" breakfast (that had cooled by the time it arrived at my position) delivered directly to my hole. I called it hole service. Awesome. I think I still have a picture of the last "hot chow" breakfast I ate out there on my phone. I ate off the hood of my HMMWV.
    The Fly: Sometimes I hate that I can't tell short stories.
    Mrs. Mike Nelson: Hmm...yeah, I think my story is more...shall we say...civilized.
    The Fly: I can be civilized. You've never even asked me about that time when I wore a powdered wig and shot a guy at fifty paces with a flintlock pistol for insulting that young lady's honor!
    Mrs. Mike Nelson: Sometimes, when I really think about the things you say, I worry about you.
    The Fly: I guess the powdered wig was a bit too much?
    Mrs. Mike Nelson: LOL...not really what you said, but the speed in which you typed it and emailed it back. Makes me wonder, that's all.
    The Fly: Keep in mind, I type at about ninety words per minute, and faster in short segments.
    Mrs. Mike Nelson: Good for you!
    The Fly: So there I was, pistol in hand, and boy howdy! Those pantaloons were sure riding up...
    Mrs. Mike Nelson: I take it you won?
    The Fly: Of course I won, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who's a better shot than I am. Even while wearing pantaloons and a powdered wig.
    Mrs. Mike Nelson: And with a wedgie.
    The Fly: That Colonial-era duel was hell on the both of us. Mostly him, though. You know, on account of the gunshot wound.
    Mrs. Mike Nelson: What happened to the girl?
    The Fly: While she was on her way to India to become a governess for the children of a high-ranking British official, her ship was hijacked by Somali pirates and she was never heard from again. Also, I learned later through a third-party intermediary that she actually hadn't possessed the requisite degree of honor to warrant that degree of flintlock-oriented satisfaction. I didn't protest, though, because the guy was an insolent cur.
    Mrs. Mike Nelson: Ah, so because she wasn't pure enough to your satisfaction, you transferred your "duty" as that of killing a jerk. Some things never change :)
    The Fly: Who said anything about killing? These are flintlock pistols we're talking about, not Colt .45s. Once he stopped limping, he knew not to cross me again! Or to call me "fancy pants" when I'm wearing pantaloons, to be more specific.
    Mrs. Mike Nelson: Excuse me, next time I will be more accurate with the weapons of yore.
    The Fly: To be fair, and simultaneously anal retentive , I don't know that I'd describe flintlock pistols as having come from the days of "yore". Halberds, maybe, or claymores.
    The Fly: Then there was that time that I single-handedly saved President Roosevelt (the first one, not that wanker FDR) from a herd of stampeding water buffaloes.
    The Fly: Seriously, it's like I'm playing Mad Libs.
    Mrs. Mike Nelson: Introduced about 1630, the flintlock rapidly replaced earlier firearm-ignition technologies, such as the matchlock and wheellock mechanisms. It continued to be in common use for over two centuries, replaced by percussion cap and, later, cartridge-based systems in the early-to-mid 19th century. The Model 1840 U.S. musket was the last flintlock firearm produced for the U.S. military although there is evidence obsolete flintlocks were seeing action in the earliest days of the American Civil War. In fact, during the first year of the war, the Army of Tennessee (Confederacy) had over 2,000 flintlock muskets in service. While technologically obsolete, flintlock firearms have enjoyed a renaissance among black powder shooting enthusiasts and many fine flintlock rifles and pistols are being made today.
    Mrs. Mike Nelson: Sure sounds "yore" to me...
    The Fly: That was literally the perfect response.

    So, can you folks name all of the inside references I made in that exchange? The MST3K one should start you off with one. Any guesses?

    Have a great day, and check back tomorrow!

    * President Clinton's decision to attack Iraq was legitimate. Or at least, it would have been if he'd actually followed through with it, instead of doing some half-assed unilateral air strikes. He also should have done so earlier in his administration, instead of timing Operation Desert Fox coincidentally close to the time of his legal troubles over the Lewinsky scandal. The major utility of Desert Fox was to demonstrate the double standard that the media and leftist partisans (not to be confused with regular Americans with a D next to their name) show to military operations when they're ordered by a Democrat, versus when they're ordered by a Republican. Bosnia wasn't our fight to get involved with, and as far as I can tell, Clinton may have actually intervened on the wrong side in Kosovo. Anyway, I digress.
  • Fly Report: 29th October 2008

    Good morning. In my day, the Internet didn't have all of this garish brickabrack. It was text, and images. And if you wanted sound, you had to spend half an hour downloading it like everybody else... And we liked it that way!

    It's 6° Centigrade and partly cloudy in Kirkwall. In Cody, the forecast calls for a high of 68° Fahrenheit with partial clouds.

    A barrel of oil is trading at $62.60. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at 9065.12. The exchange rate is $1.56 for £1, or £0.64 for $1.

    Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is cool. The picture at the Orkneyjar Photoblog is not new.

    Today's scripture reading is Leviticus 19. The Fly is currently reading the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5.

    I'll be with you now.

    28 October 2008

    Aramco Brats... And Somali Pirates!

    Hey folks! A few stories, a couple of quick and fun items, and then I'm off.

    In business news, the Guardian has two stories from last week that I'm just now getting a chance to post. The first reflects something that followers of the Fly Report have already noticed: the British Pound Sterling has been rapidly dropping in value lately, particularly compared to a strengthening dollar. Lousy for the United Kingdom at the moment, but these things run in cycles; also, it's somewhat likely that the UK will hold elections within the next year or so, and as much as I liked Tony Blair, it would be interesting to see what improvements a Tory government could make if given a few years. That was likely before, and it seems ever more likely as global finances contract. The other article from the Guardian discusses the "absurd green/eco-friendly claims" made about some consumer products. My thoughts are that the absurdity of the eco-friendly claims pretty much match the absurdity of the eco-catastrophe claims. Thus, all is right with the world - particularly if I'm able to travel to England in the next couple of months!

    Speaking of the financial crisis, and moving to the countries ruled by brutal dictatorships, former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has warned Iranians against celebrating the global financial crisis, pointing out that contracting economies mean a rapid decline in oil revenue for Iran. Iran's infrastructure and economy have been in decay ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and while Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and his cadre could gloat, showboat, and spurn international pressure while oil prices were high and coalition troops were being challenged by Iranian-made EFPs in Iraq, Iran is in a much weaker position with the Iraq campaign succeeding and oil revenues collapsing. Ahmedinejad himself is reportedly suffering from either sickness or exhaustion, though how severe is yet to be determined. There are also further indications that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il's health may be worse than previously reported.

    French marines have had their hands full in recent days... Capturing Somali pirates! I've linked to a number of stories lately about various countries sending naval assets to the area around the Horn of Africa in a bid to stem the rise of Somali piracy(!) in the area. It appears that Blackwater Worldwide may be taking up the slack, negotiating an arrangement whereby they would undertake the task of escorting ships through the dangerous waters off Somalia (UPI, Danger Room). Yarrrrrr.

    Today's video is the latest installment of Cute with Chris. I think that Mighty Mo should send Chris some pictures of Delighla.



    This weekend was great. I spent all day Sunday writing (to the point of not actually leaving Van Diemen's Station, putting on pants, or even showering - I can't remember the last time that happened), and Saturday was consumed with a combination of responding to Gus, napping, a haircut, and grocery shopping. Remember last week, when I posted that Maniac Mansion video? Well, Maniac Mansion actually started out as a computer game (Wiki) by what was then known as Lucasfilm Games. It was then ported to Nintendo. The original game was a bit more raunchy, in several respects. Douglas Crockford was tasked with managing the game's conversion from raunchy computer horror game to family-friendly NES cartridge. If you ever played Nintendo as a kid, The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion for the Nintendo Entertainment System is a must read. The other thing that some of you children of the eighties may remember is a animated series called The Mysterious Cities of Gold. I forgot about this show for years, maybe a decade or more, until a couple of years ago. I won't mention how, but I watched nearly the entire series to its conclusion this weekend. It brought back memories, not only of the cartoon itself (which was well produced, and still fascinating eighteen or twenty years later), but of a day when cartoons actually had substance to them. With few examples, the cartoons of today are absolute garbage, and mostly just used for the purpose of merchandising. Just out of curiosity, does anyone other than me remember this show?

    Unfortunately, I did not see Mayor Giuliani and Teve Torbes. I had a late night on Friday, and too much to do during the week. And in fact, I still have a great deal to do this week, although what I was able to accomplish over the weekend took a good chunk out of it. Some of you may also be interested to know that I hit the pool again yesterday, after an absence of about a week and a half. This morning, I'm going to stage things so that I can swim again today, إن شاء الله. I'm going to consider this the introductory week that I've been waiting for, with the first real week starting next Monday. I'll keep you posted - you keep me accountable.

    Today's satellite picture is the Passport Island on the King Fahd Causeway that connects Saudi Arabia to Bahrain. Although I wouldn't expect any of you to translate the Arabic (I'm impressed that I can even figure any of it out - including the "Kudu Restaurant", "restaurant" being a word I just taught myself today), some of the areas are written in English. The reason I post this in particular is that this weekend I used it to make a married woman squeal without even touching her. Now, I'm sure I would have enjoyed the whole sequence much more if she'd been single and I had touched her, but you can't have everything. You see, I was checking on a couple of things at my apartment management office on Saturday, and I asked the girl behind the desk what the sticker on the back of her car meant. It was the word "BRATS" backwards, and unbeknownst to me, the "A" was actually the Saudi Aramco logo. Apparently she was born and raised in Dhahran, being the daughter of an American oil worker. When she told me that she'd lived right next to the causeway, I was able to pull up that map in thirty seconds or less, and I left her as she was exploring the Aramco area of Dhahran, looking at places she used to know as a kid, and, yes, squealing. Oh well, I suppose a good deed is its own reward.

    That's it. Get back to work! Oh, and check back tomorrow for more from TSTF.

    Fly Report: 28th October 2008

    Good morning. I once had a girl tell me that I reminded her of the song "Caress Me Down" by Sublime. Wow, I wish I'd handled that whole thing differently.

    It's 1° Centigrade and rainy in Kirkwall. In Cody, the forecast calls for a high of 67° Fahrenheit with sunshine.

    A barrel of oil is trading at $62.52. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at 8175.77. The exchange rate is $1.55 for £1, or £0.65 for $1.

    Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is cool. The picture at the Orkneyjar Photoblog is not new.

    Today's scripture reading is Leviticus 19. The Fly is currently reading the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5.

    We lie on a cloud.

    27 October 2008

    Silent Monday

    You know what? Spent all weekend writing for this blog, either for my response to Gus, or for my article about al Qaeda. I'm going to have a pass at it today, and I'll be back tomorrow. Go check out either of those posts, and have a great day.

    Fly Report: 27th October 2008

    Good morning. What are you doing?

    It's 7° Centigrade and windy with heavy rain in Kirkwall. In Cody, the forecast calls for a high of 59° Fahrenheit with sunshine.

    A barrel of oil is trading at $61.19 - go **** yourself, OPEC! The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at 8378.95. The exchange rate is $1.58 for £1, or £0.63 for $1.

    Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is cool, even though it looks like a Nintendo game. The picture at the Orkneyjar Photoblog is not new.

    Today's scripture reading is Leviticus 18. The Fly is currently reading the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5.

    He's falling, he's falling, and outside the buildings are tumbling down.

    26 October 2008

    The Current State of al Qaeda

    Note: This is my latest submission for my parallel writing endeavour. With this, the amount of pages I've written this weekend on things that aren't my novel comes to a total of about twelve, counting my response to Gus. Good grief, I wish I could make this kind of progress on that damned book. Anyway, enjoy! I hope everyone finds this enlightening.

    On September 10th, 2001, average citizens around the world had never heard of a terrorist network known as al Qaeda, Arabic for "the Base". While many remembered the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the simultaneous bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the bombing of USS Cole in 2000, few were familiar with the name "Osama bin Laden" or the greater al Qaeda network. By the end of the next day, "Osama bin Laden" and "al Qaeda" were household names. During the subsequent months and years, the United States and a handful of allies laid out an ambitious agenda for neutralizing the al Qaeda network. More than seven years later, as the world watches and waits to see the outcome of the second American general election since the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, the direction of this ambitious task is once again a prominent question.

    The two candidates in the American election have diametrically opposite views of how to continue prosecuting the war against al Qaeda and its affiliates, though both seem to agree that Islamist terrorism is a continuing threat that must be confronted. Among many other contrasts between the two, their contrasting views on how to eliminate al Qaeda, its affiliates, its support networks, and its associates have become a central issue in this campaign. In order to determine which strategy is more likely to succeed in countering al Qaeda, a review of the current state of al Qaeda can be helpful.

    Although coalition military leaders are reticent to use the word "victory" to describe the status of the war against al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), al Qaeda has all but admitted defeat. Both al Qaeda and the coalition gambled a great deal in the Iraq conflict. As it stretched on, the situation became as much a public relations war as it was a competition of military force. Both the core leaders of al Qaeda, and the leaders of AQI, underestimated the coalition's endurance. In the end, a quick coalition procurement process for innovative military systems, combined with a coherent strategy as spelled out in the Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual, has been able to counter the brutality of AQI in areas like Anbar and Diyala provinces. Now, the coalition is facilitating al Qaeda's final defeat in and around the northern city of Mosul.

    Although a few isolated incidents (most notably that at Abu Ghraib prison) severely damaged the coalition's credibility with the Iraqi citizens, al Qaeda's savagery proved not only to be far worse, but systemic. Even the core leadership of al Qaeda realized this, and al Qaeda deputy commander Ayman al Zawahiri sent a message to AQI leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi in 2005. One of the most telling lines of this message was the following:

    However, despite all of this, I say to you: that we are in a battle, and that more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media. And that we are in a media battle in a race for the hearts and minds of our [community]. And that however far our capabilities reach, they will never be equal to one thousandth of the capabilities of the kingdom of Satan that is waging war on us. And we can kill the captives by bullet. That would achieve that which is sought after without exposing ourselves to the questions and answering to doubts. We don't need this.

    The brutality of Zarqawi, his successor Abu Ayyub al Masri, and their subordinates led the people of Anbar province to rise up against them and ally with the United States Marines. This movement, known as the Awakening, has spread throughout Iraq. Now, only remnants of al Qaeda remain in Iraq, and foreign fighters that had previously been going there are being re-routed to Afghanistan - a tacit admission of al Qaeda's collapse in Iraq. Another telling sign of this came in early October, when the second-in-command of al Qaeda was killed in a coalition operation, demonstrating that al Qaeda's ability to operate with secrecy and security in Iraq has been appreciably degraded. As AQI collapses, Iraq's security grows stronger with each passing week. In a recent address to the Heritage Foundation, General David Petraeus (Commander, CENTCOM) gave a detailed report on the state of Iraq that clarified the extent of the coalition's success there.

    The strategic failure of AQI is a severe blow to the network, but al Qaeda and their Taliban allies have attempted to regroup in Afghanistan and western Pakistan. It is important to understand that there are two independent (but related) conflicts occurring in Afghanistan and Pakistan at present. The larger conflict is the fight against the Taliban, a native force motivated by a combination of radical Islamist beliefs and ethnic/tribal nationalism. The majority of the fighting in the region since 2001, both by the ISAF forces in Afghanistan and the Pakistani military on the other side of the border, has been a fight against the Taliban. A smaller, more specialized hunt has been waged by Western special forces seeking al Qaeda leaders who are believed to be hiding in the dense jungles of western Pakistan. While these conflicts are distinct, they are also inexorably connected: to lose the fight against the Taliban, the West and the Pakistani government would also allow al Qaeda to maintain its ability to reconstitute itself in the Pakistani wilderness.

    The fight against the Taliban continues to be a great challenge for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the name for the Western coalition currently engaged in Afghanistan. Despite the presence of the members of NATO, the troops of only five countries are engaged in combat operations: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Denmark, and the Netherlands. The resolve of the ISAF member nations to stay the course has been severely shaken during the past several years.

    In August, ten French soldiers were slain by the Taliban while performing reconnaissance east of Kabul. The French public almost immediately called for a withdrawal of French forces from Afghanistan. The German government has pledged to continue its deployments and send additional troops; however, it was recently revealed that one hundred special forces soldiers of the German Kommando Spezialkrafte spent three years in Afghanistan without going on a single mission. Although the Japanese government has extended its naval mission to refuel ISAF support ships in the Indian Ocean several times, even these deployments remain controversial with the Japanese public. Recent debate in Canada, one of only five nations participating in actual combat operations, indicates that Canadian participation in ISAF may end by 2011.

    The unwillingness, or inability, of NATO countries to send their troops into combat has led to both a continuous request for support from combat commanders, and a reliance on precision air strikes that has increased civilian deaths. These civilian deaths severely compromise the credibility of the ISAF forces with the local populace, making it difficult to wage a successful counterinsurgency campaign. As a result, the incoming commander of the British Army has called for a troop surge similar to that which was successful in Iraq. A larger force, specially trained in counterinsurgency techniques, could reverse this trend. Afghans are famously loyal to whichever side they believe to be more likely to win. At present, the feelings of the Afghans are mixed: as ambivalent as they are toward the Taliban, civilian casualties and questionable resolve from ISAF have shaken the confidence of rural Afghans in the West's ability to provide security and prosperity.

    While coalition diplomats claim that the Afghan mission is failing (Guardian, Times), NATO's Supreme Allied Commander - Europe accuses the alliance of "wavering" in their resolve (Guardian, Times). This internal NATO crisis has emboldened the Taliban, thus undermining the hunt for al Qaeda's core leadership.

    The fight against the Taliban and the hunt for al Qaeda have been harsh, but not without their successes. ISAF forces killed Mullah Dadullah, a Taliban commander, in May of 2007. The coalition has also captured several top al Qaeda leaders in recent years, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 2003 and Abu Farraj al Libi in 2005; and killed several more in raids or air strikes, notably Abu Laith al Libi in January of 2008. Ayman al Zawahiri has nearly been captured or killed on several occasions, though he remains at large to this day. There are also rumors that Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud died in late September - an indication that Taliban leaders hiding in Pakistan do not have the freedom of movement needed to seek medical treatment.

    The Taliban have one major advantage: while Western forces cannot openly cross the Afghan-Pakistan border, Taliban forces recognize no border. As a result, Taliban forces are able to attack from the Pakistani side with relative impunity, or stage raids in Afghanistan before escaping across the border to the safety of the Pakistani jungle. The Pakistani military, and by extension the Pakistani government, have no dominance in Waziristan, the Northwest Frontier Province, or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas that make up th Pakistani side of the border. As a result, the Taliban are able to use Pakistan as a safe haven to stage attacks, while al Qaeda is able to use the same areas as a base to reconstitute its forces and wage a propaganda war against the West.

    Afghanistan's status as the world's leader in opium production further complicates the situation. Motivated by both threats from the Taliban and the need for cash to support their families, Afghan farmers cultivate opium instead of subsistence crops. Even if they wanted to, Afghans could not abandon poppy farming due to a shortage of coalition troops to provide sufficient security oversight. The coalition is also prevented from simply destroying the opium crops, because to do so would destroy the economic security of many neutral Afghan farmers. Suggestions that the Afghan opium fields be re-tasked for pharmaceuticals have been ignored, partly because allowing any opium production would allow the Taliban to capitalize upon it, and partly because Afghan opium growing capacity exceeds global demand for opium-based pharmaceuticals. Although this year saw an opium bumper crop, research indicates that actual opium cultivation has declined appreciably, due in large part to Afghans growing wheat due to shortages and rising global prices for wheat. These developments indicate progress, but crippling the Taliban and al Qaeda's financial security is contingent upon the ISAF coalition seizing control of the Afghan opium fields.

    War makes for strange alliances. Despite having nearly gone to war with the Taliban in 1998, the Taliban has been reported on several occasions to be receiving supplies from elements within the Iranian government. (Reuters, AP, BBC, BBC. Although there are no indications that Taliban forces have received such specialized weapons as the explosively-formed penetrators that Iran has supplied to Shii militias in Iraq, the Taliban have allegedly received special Iranian AK-47 rifles capable of firing grenades, among other weapons. Like the problem of the opium, foreign suppliers like Iran (and, allegedly, the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency) must be effectively countered if the coalition hopes to defeat the Taliban and locate al Qaeda leaders.

    After the initial weeks and months of the campaign in Afghanistan, with al Qaeda's core leadership isolated in Pakistan, and its finances cut off by a concerted investigation of both international banks and Islamic charities, al Qaeda resorted to its own flavor of franchising. Al Qaeda provided public support and allegiance to the leaders of various regional terror groups, while eschewing operational ties for security reasons. The most prominent al Qaeda franchise was that of al Qaeda in Iraq, led by the aforementioned Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Additional franchise cells carried out attacks in Madrid in 2004, and London in 2005. The group also allied with groups like Jemaa Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf in Indonesia and the Philippines. (An excellent description of Operation Enduring Freedom - Philippines can be found in the fourth chapter of Robert Kaplan's Imperial Grunts.) As law enforcement and intelligence agencies have made great progress in crippling al Qaeda's ability to operate in Western countries, specialized military units have embraced the task of fighting the rise of al Qaeda in the wildernesses of the world. At present, al Qaeda's strongest franchise is al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb - the al Qaeda branch in the Saharan nations of North Africa.

    Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) began as the Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC). A regional Islamist group whose formation resulted from the events of the Algerian Civil War of 1991 to 2002, the GSPC began as an Algerian terrorist network aimed at replacing the secular Algerian government with an Islamist republic. In September of 2006, al Qaeda deputy commander Ayman al Zawahiri issued a statement announcing that al Qaeda and the GSPC had aligned with one another. In January of 2007, the GSPC officially changed its name to al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM). The network was subsequently joined by the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a cadre of Libyans who had fought Soviet forces in Afghanistan who wished to overthrow Colonel Qaddhafi's regime.

    AQIM has operated primarily in Algeria, and their attacks have focused on Algerian government and military targets. Their most noteworthy operations have included a suicide bombing in a crowd waiting for a visit from Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, and a car bomb attack on naval barracks in September of 2007; and an attack on the Algerian Supreme Court and the Algiers office of the United Nations in December of the same year. Their attacks have been sporadic, but well coordinated and deadly.

    AQIM forces have also carried out several high-profile attacks in neighboring Mauritania. Mauritania is one of only a few Middle Eastern nations to have full diplomatic relations with Israel. In December of 2007, gunmen fired shots at the Israeli embassy in the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott. In February of 2008, terrorists linked to AQIM murdered four French tourists (AP, BBC, Times), forcing the cancellation of the 2008 Dakar Rally. After a military junta overthrew the Mauritanian government in August of 2008, AQIM issued a message urging Mauritanians to rise up against the coup leaders. In mid-September, AQIM gunmen kidnapped and murdered twelve Mauritanian soldiers (AFP, BBC), before escaping across one of Mauritania's borders into Western Sahara, Mali, or Algeria.

    Although the majority of media buzz about al Qaeda has focused on Iraq and Afghanistan, numerous articles have been written about the growth of AQIM. Articles on the subject have appeared in der Spiegel, the London Times, and the Weekly Standard. Analysts have claimed that al Qaeda's global strength is strongest in Pakistan, Somalia, and Algeria. While Algeria is considered a so-called "new front for al Qaeda", East African nations like Somalia and Sudan are seen as a veritable "new Afghanistan". The United States has countered al Qaeda's operations in North Africa with two divisions of the global Operation Enduring Freedom mandate: OEF-Horn of Africa, and OEF-Trans-Sahara. These operations are similar to the OEF missions in other nations, in that they seek to cut off the terrorism-financing drug trade, carry out counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations, and train North and East African military forces to secure their own countries. (An excellent description of Operation Enduring Freedom - Trans Sahara can be found in the fourth chapter of Richard Miniter's Shadow War.)

    As mentioned by Ayman al Zawahiri himself, a great deal of the war between al Qaeda and the West is being waged in the form of propaganda and public relations releases. During the course of the Iraq War, AQI initially made a point of showing brutal killings in their propaganda videos. When AQI developed a reputation for indiscriminate mass killings of civilians with suicide bombers and vehicle-borne IEDs, the AQI propaganda wing responded by perpetuating the image of the so-called "al Qaeda in Iraq Baghdad Sniper" - aimed at painting al Qaeda as a precision force, aimed only at killing American troops. In the wider, global war, al Qaeda benefited from the talents of the American takfiri Adam Yahiye Gadahn, otherwise known as Azzam the American/Azzam al Amriki. Using his talents, and his native English fluency, the al Qaeda propaganda wing (known by the name as Sahab, Arabic for "The Clouds") has made a name for itself by producing multimedia products aimed at spreading al Qaeda's radical message.

    If one of al Qaeda's greatest strengths is propaganda, a collapse of its propaganda wing would likely signal serious dysfunction within the organization as a whole. Such a collapse has become noticeable in 2008. Following the January air strike that killed Abu Laith al Libi and others, the quality and frequency of as Sahab productions declined noticeably. Officials began to wonder at the possibility that Gadahn had died in the same air strike until he appeared in an October video that referenced recent events.

    Even with the re-emergence of Gadahn, al Qaeda's propaganda machine has suffered dramatically in recent weeks and months. The editors of the Wired.com Danger Room blog noted this as early as September. In October, Fox News reported that al Qaeda's network of propaganda websites and forums was hanging by a thread. This was subsequently reported by both the Guardian and the BBC several days later. The combined decline in as Sahab's production quality and language translations, and the collapse of al Qaeda's Internet resources, suggest that al Qaeda's core may be succumbing to pressure from outside.

    For all of the political and media rhetoric claiming that al Qaeda is stronger than ever, there are multiple indications that al Qaeda is enduring great turmoil. As early as February of 2008, American military analysts believed that AQI's attempt to defeat the coalition in Iraq had become a lost cause. A gallup poll of Muslims around the world showed that while most Muslims take issue at having Western ideals imposed upon them, they still want democracy - a system that al Qaeda claims to be against Islam, leaving little room for compromise.

    On the occasion of the seventh anniversary of the September 2001 terror attacks, the Jerusalem Post carried an article highlighting the fact that, while al Qaeda itself was in disarray, the "idea and franchise remains healthy and is still a threat". Meanwhile, al Qaeda appears to be losing support and facing a backlash against the Islamist militants that once supported the movement (BBC, Digital Journal, New York Daily News). In a development that few would have hoped possible seven years ago, former bin Laden allies have come together to denounce the movement, a major blow to al Qaeda's credibility in the Middle East. In Afghanistan, there are indications that increasingly effective security operations by coalition and Pakistani forces on opposite sides of the border may be reducing foreign fighters' ease of movement into and out of Afghanistan. There have even been rumors that moderate figures among the Taliban may be negotiating with Afghan authorities - a development that could leave al Qaeda bereft of allies in the region.

    Osama bin Laden and his movement are far from defeated. Indeed, while the rest of the world suffers through the global economic crisis, al Qaeda is allegedly insulated from the effects of the turmoil. Whether al Qaeda is weakening or not, a BBC poll indicates that many around the world believe that al Qaeda is as strong as ever. As is the BBC's style, they recently released a documentary asking this very question without coming to any particular conclusion.

    The bottom line is that although the Global War on Terror has been effective on many levels, only continued resolve will finish this campaign. Beyond this resolve, victory requires a comprehensive and coherent counterinsurgent approach: security and prosperity for those who are friendly or neutral to the cause of defeating terrorism, and overwhelming force against the true believers who can not be convinced to abandon violence against their neighbors and the West. The survival of Western civilization will almost certainly depend upon such a strategy. And lest one make the mistake of believing that apprehending and prosecuting Osama bin Laden, and completing the campaign in Afghanistan, will herald the final conclusion of this global challenge, Americans would do well to heed the words of independent journalist Michael Totten:

    Hardly anyone wants to think about the monumental size of this task or how long it will take. The illusion that the United States just needs to win in Afghanistan and everything will be fine is comforting, to be sure, but it is an illusion. Winning the war in Iraq won’t be enough either, nor will permanently preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons or resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. The war may end somewhere with American troops on the ground, or, like the Cold War, it might not. No one can possibly foresee what event will actually put a stop to this war in the end. It is distant and unknowable. The world will change before we can even imagine what the final chapter might look like.

    So stand fast. The war won't end with the impending victory in Iraq, nor will it end with an eventual victory in Afghanistan. Depending upon which strategy the next American president embraces, the West could be in for a long and exhausting struggle, well into the future.

    25 October 2008

    Special Election Coverage: An Answer to Gus

    Ladies and gentlemen,

    It's not election Thursday, but we've had a lively debate going on between me, the Fly, and my best friend, Gus, in the comments section to the Election Thursday post. Last night, I posted a response that HaloScan was apparently too busy to post all of. Wankers. At any rate, I'm reproducing that comment as a regular post, and we will continue accordingly. I haven't bothered to actually put links in here, but if anyone's curious on specifics, either comment or E-Mail your specific queston and I'll respond

    Very Respectfully,
    The Fly

    * * *

    Gus,

    1. Gus: "Obama is only planning to let the tax rate revert to what it was before Bush's cuts, which amounts to 3 and 4.5% more on the top two brackets, respectively."

    First, I don't think your figures are wholly accurate, but I don't have the numbers in front of me. The point I would make in response to this is that when President Bush enacted those tax cuts, two things skyrocketed: the American economy in general, and federal tax revenues in particular. That's right, cutting taxes increased tax revenue - I'm not making this up. If these things hadn't happened, we would have likely stayed in the situation that President Bush inherited from President Clinton: a recession that followed the burst of the Dot-Com bubble. If we go back to these levels, we can expect, at the very least, that the economy under an Obama administration would be less prosperous than the first six years of the Bush Administration.

    Also, there's a difference between a "loophole" and a "giveaway", no matter which perspective you're from. Save for jealousy, I have no reason why anyone should be jealous of someone exploiting a tax loophole - that money is theirs to begin with, and I think that we can all agree that the government takes too much of our money - not the government's money, our money, because the government doesn't generate wealth. The specifics of Senator Obama's tax plan are true giveaways because they call for extensive "tax rebates" for people who already don't pay taxes. That's not a tax refund - it can't be, because those people aren't paying taxes. Neither is it a tax break or a tax incentive. It's wealth redistribution. In some cases, you're right that it's a matter of perspective. When you're taxing the most productive parts of society, which already pay more than their fair share due to the asinine tax bracketing system, and you use that money to redistribute wealth to those who are unproductive and don't pay taxes, you'd better believe that it kills profit motive.

    Want to know a perfect example of this? In situations where government/socialized health care is expanded to include children who were ineligible before, parents will actually stop paying for their kids health care because there's no point in doing it if the poor schmuck taxpayers will pay it for you. As a result, costs increase, and more people are suckling at the government teat. This is a different side of that same coin, and you and I both know from history that when programs like those that Senator Obama has proposed (and would be able to pass with a friendly majority in Congress) are enacted, people either get lazy or figure out how to cheat, while others get lazy to avoid being the schmuck who's forced to pay more for some other freeloader.

    I'm all for civic duty. If the government took less of my money every two weeks, I'd be in a far better position to practice it through churches and charities, which is where the real obligation belongs. It's part of the concept of freedom: letting me keep more of my money, instead of redistributing it to causes I disagree with, allows me to donate to those causes which I see fit to support.

    Also, I think you'd be surprised how many people make $250k per year (or in many cases, $125k per year for singles, as $250k is Obama's mark for married couples and small businesses). I think you'd also be surprised not only at how much of the national tax burden is borne by people making at or above $250k, but also with the number of people who were taken off the tax rolls altogether as a result of the Bush tax cuts.

    (You said "agree to disagree" and "last point", but if you want the last word, I'll give it.)

    2. I'm not sold on a straight flat tax myself, but I think that it would be far simpler and far more equitable than the current system - my opinion is that the current system is infamous not for the amount of loopholes and tax breaks it has, but for the amount of opportunities it opens up for the government to screw you out of your money through complex and unnecessary regulations and caveats. You may or may not remember that during the primary season, Governor Huckabee was advocating the "fair tax", which is sort of like a flat tax, but serves as sort of a national sales tax. The benefit of the fair tax is that it acts as a tax on consumption, not on income; and that certain products like food would be exempted. Either way, a fair tax or a flat tax would be far more equitable, simple, and reasonable than the current federal tax system. I hope that whoever invented the tax bracket is being gang-raped by overweight former jihadi suicide bombers in Hell right now. At its core, though, I don't disagree with you - there's a lot to consider, and all I really know is that pretty much anything is better than what we've got now.

    3. With respect to fairness with gaffes, one more point I'd make is that while each side has gaffes, my feeling - accurate or not, my feeling, but I think it has some merit - is that part of what makes Senator Biden's gaffes so much more interesting and questionable is that they seem to serve as an indication of what he's really thinking, as if what I perceive to be his outright lies are sometimes interrupted when his real ideas escape the filtration process. However, point taken.

    4. I'm not sure that I agree that the "percentages are skewed towards McCain" with respect to questionable fundraising. All accounts are that because of his career-long refusal to seek earmarks (and the fact that he killed that bogus Air Force tanker program - ouch!), he's basically a lobbyists' worst enemy. I'll agree that he received some questionable donations - sometimes hard to track on a person-by-person basis, so I'm sure some of that goes with the Obama campaign as well. However, with respect to widespread fraudulent donation attributions, the ball is firmly in Obama's court. In addition, my understanding is that he may have actually received (or at least, someone tried to send) donations collected by groups like Hamas. I think that in the interest of fairness, both candidates' campaigns ought to be audited by an independent investigation; but in Obama's case, I think there's far more necessity to do so due to indications of both fraud and questionable foreign contributions to his campaign. (If I remember correctly, it's illegal for a candidate to accept donations from foreign sources.)

    5. I'm going to have to agree to disagree with you on point five. I think that the various aspects of Senator McCain's experience are undisputed, and will admit that his experience running finances and in administration stopped with his Navy command, although he has chaired the Senate Commerce Committee - basically, I think he has experience in most or all pertinent areas, but his large scale exeutive/administrative and financial management credentials are admittedly soft. Governor Palin's tenure in state-wide government has been somewhat brief, but I feel that she's accomplished a great deal during that time, and similar accomplishments and success can be observed from her time as Wasilla mayor. Little if any foreign policy experience, but as we discussed last night, impressive executive, administrative, and fiscal experience despite her somewhat abbreviated political career.

    I don't see that at all with Senators Obama and Biden, and I don't think I'm playing a double standard or trying to have it both ways on this. In fact, I've actually asked several friends who are committed Obama voters to explain to me what it is that qualifies this guy for the presidency, and none of them have produced anything of any substance whatsoever despite repeated attempts to ask them about it. My understanding of Senator Obama's career is that he was an unremarkable high school student, he went to Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard Law. Not to overstate on the race issue (because I think it's almost wholly irrelevant), but I understand that Obama himself has acknowledged that he benefited from affirmative action, even though none of his ancestors were ever slaves and by all accounts he encountered little if any racism growing up. Between Columbia and Harvard, his first "real job" was as a "community organizer", which basically translated to Democratic party recruiter, and part of his job actually included pressuring banks to make sub-prime loans. I'm not going to bother looking for the quote unless you specifically ask me to, but I've heard the quote from his community organizer boss several times saying that during this three years, people liked him, but he didn't really accomplish anything, and the community he was organizing saw no real benefit. So at this point, we've got a guy with a B.A. in Political Science from Columbia who spent three result-free years as a community organizer in Chicago.

    From there, he went to Harvard Law School - I won't knock it, it's something I'll never do, but I also don't feel that it gives someone a special qualification to be president. He did fine, got good grades, was elected as editor of the Harvard Law Review - great. He does summer associate work for a couple of Chicago law firms, gets a job at a civil rights law firm and as an instructor at the University of Chicago Law School with the understanding that his job there is really to facilitate his intent to write a book and get involved in Chicago politics. During this time, he attends a radical church that claims that Jesus was black, allegiance should be pledged to Africa, that the United States is evil, that Hamas should triumph over the Zionist invaders, and that the American government invented AIDS and crack to keep the black community down - later, he'll claim that he never had any idea of this extremism, despite the fact that Jeremiah Wright is on record saying these things in numerous recordings, Obama describes Wright as his "spiritual mentor", Wright married the Obamas and baptized their children, Obama's second book (also allegedly ghost-written by Bill Ayers) takes its title from one of Wright's sermons, and I think there's some more.

    So, after sort of teaching at the University of Chicago, working for a civil rights law firm, possibly writing a book (during which time he and Michelle spent months in Bali on the publisher's dime), he does two things. First, he gets involved in a couple of radical "education reform" groups with ultra-radical Chicago "professor" Bill Ayers (best known for his involvement in the Weather Underground terrorist group during the Vietnam War, best known for bombing federal buildings - Ayers is quoted in 2001, right after 9/11, as being unrepentant for these actions). The groups essentially involve soliciting money, and then using that money to indoctrinate Chicago students with far-left curriculum. Obama will later claim that Ayers was "just a guy who lived in my neighborhood", that Ayers "did those things when I was eight years old", and that Ayers is "just a college English professor". However, the truth is that Obama's political career was launched in Bill Ayers' living room at a reception that preceded Obama's candidacy for the Illinois state senate; and although Ayers may have participated in the bombings during the Vietnam War, he went on the record as being unrepentant in 2001, while Obama was in the Illinois state senate. So, not only does Obama have very close associations with radicals like Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, but he's either A) oblivious to their radicalism, or more likely, B) willing to lie about his cognizance for political expedience. Second, and more prominently, he gets involved in Chicago politics.

    In 1996, Obama is elected to the Illinois state senate. Normally a difficult and hard-fought process, Obama accomplishes this when the notorious Chicago Democrat political machine uses electoral trickery and bullying to knock every one of Obama's opponents out of the race, allowing Obama to run uncontested - likely with the campaign slogan, "When there's only one candidate, there's only one choice!" As a state senator, Obama represents south side Chicago, one of the most liberal districts in Illinois. His politics are totally representative of his district. When he's not voting "present", as opposed to the standard "yea" or "nay", his political positions are radical - to include the most radically barbaric pro-abortion legislation possible. When challenged on his support for such unnecessarily loose stance on abortion, Obama answers that he voted for it because he felt that voting against it would "undermine Roe v. Wade", as if a state law can trump a US Supreme Court decision - maybe he should turn in his law degree. The reason that this is important is that Obama's big line is that his support for abortion revolves around the "health of the mother" - this is a lie, because he's supported such loose abortion laws that issues like the health of the mother, rape, incest, and other such reasonable justifications for abortion are irrelevant. He paints himself as a supporter of abortion under only reasonable circumstances, but he actually supports abortion under all circumstances, regardless of the actual conditions.

    At any rate, during this time, he fails to author any noteworthy legislation. In 2002, he gives a speech which he now terms "politically courageous" in which he goes on record opposing the Iraq War. In reality, he was taking the standard liberal position (remember all of the protestors on campus in '02/'03?) as one of the most liberal state senators in one of the most liberal towns in a solidly blue state. There was nothing courageous about it at all - it was wholly unremarkable, save for his excellent skills at delivering a speech (as long as there's a manuscript or a teleprompter in front of him - without one, and specifically when answering challenging questions, Obama's oratorical skills fold like a cheap card table).

    In 2004, Obama seizes an opportunity opened up by turmoil on the Republican side of the US Senate race in Illinois, and runs. Republican candidate Jack Ryan is disgraced when his divorce records are made public, and he has to drop out of the race. Obama runs unopposed during most of the general election sequence before the Republicans throw up a Hail Mary with the eleventh hour substitution of perpetual embarrassment and all-around stooge Alan Keyes, who would go on to cement his legacy in American politics by being one of only two American politicians stupid enough to be interviewed by Borat for the 2006 film. Obama gets something on the order of double the votes that Keyes is able to pull in, and in another (essentially) uncontested election, Obama finds himself in the United States Senate.

    Obama's US Senate tenure is every bit as mediocre as his Illinois state senate career. He authors no legislation, and he fails to hold even a single hearing of his sub-committee on European Affairs. At one point, he gives a speech on religion in which he, a "Christian", basically dismisses the entire Bible and compares James Dobson to Al Sharpton. Although he co-sponsors a handful of high profile bills on non-partisan initiatives with some prominent Senate Republicans, his actual record is rated the most liberal in the Senate by the non-partisan National Journal magazine. Obama is asked shortly after taking office whether he'll run for president in 2008, and he responds that he won't, because he's only been in the Senate for a few days at this point, and to run for president would require him to start running almost immediately, without any real Senate experience. Contrary to his word, he officially launches his presidential campaign in 2006, and the rest is history. I could go with more, but let's recap:

  • unremarkable high school student
  • good college student, good law student
  • three years as "community organizer" in which his own boss said that he didn't accomplish anything
  • mostly absent law instructor, mostly absent civil rights lawyer
  • very closely associated with radical preachers Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger, unrepentant terrorist and radical education activist William Ayers, now-convicted felon Tony Rezko
  • uncontested election and mediocre tenure as Illinois state senator, highlight of which was a "courageous speech" that wasn't really courageous at all
  • uncontested election and mediocre tenure as US Senator from Illinois, highlight of which has been running for president

    In addition to what I feel to be a fairly mediocre, and often troubling and radical personal and political history, the theme that I see in Obama's history is that he's essentially been given everything he has. I'll give him credit for graduating from Columbia and Harvard Law - two things I'll never do, and I'm sure that he studied hard - but even he says that affirmative action helped to get him in. There was no challenge for his Illinois state senate or US Senate seats: he's a far-left liberal black man running first in far-left liberal black South Chicago, and then against Alan Keyes for US Senate. I see no history of sacrifice, no history of challenges, nothing. I see a guy whose mother was a flake (for example, his time "on food stamps" occurred when his mother was going to school to get a PhD in Anthropology - great, but not what food stamps were intended for, and in that light, highly misleading for him to cite as evidence of his modest upbringing), but whose grandparents were very successful. Nothing in this sequence suggests to me that this man has done anything that warrants his election to the presidency; not to mention that most of his political positions echo those of Jimmy Carter, one of the two most failed presidents in American history. If you'll remember, at the end of Jimmy Carter's worthless presidency, the American economy was in shambles, there was an oil shortage due to the OPEC embargo that was Carter's fault in the first place; Carter's solution was to lower the speed limit, not to actually fix the cause of the problem. Carter was directly responsible for the collapse of a friendly and Westernized regime in Iran, to be replaced by the current radical Islamist dictatorship we know and loathe. The Soviet Union was winning the Cold War with a then-successful invasion of Afghanistan and robust assistance to Marxists in Central and South America - Carter's solution was to boycott the Olympics. Carter raised taxes, and the unemployment rate was the only thing that rose. Everything I learn about Obama suggests to me that he is Carter Redux, not Kennedy Redux. Obama wants to meet personally with dictators in his first year in office without preconditions. When he describes the crisis in Afghanistan and Pakistan, his descriptions leave me wondering if he could even find them on a map. Am I missing something? If so, what?

    And what about Joe Biden? He claims that he's a "blue collar", "lunch bucket" Democrat, but the very basis for his election to the Senate is bullshit. Far from being blue collar, his father was white collar management, and you can confirm this by looking up his father's obituary on the Internet. Biden went to Delaware's most expensive prep school, Archmere Academy, where he was a lousy student and spent most of his time playing football and basketball (this will come into play later). He then went to the University of Delaware, where he spent most of his time playing sports and socializing, and was just a few spots above having finished in the bottom quarter of his graduating class with a BA in history and political science - you and I were both history majors, so we both know how hard one must work to finish that low in the class rankings. From there, he went to Syracuse University College of law, where he not only admits to having underperformed, but was also disciplined for plagiarism - a bad habit that he would continue with well into his tenure in the US Senate.

    Following graduation from law school, and five student draft deferments, he finally made his decisive escape from the threat of going to Vietnam by getting a medical waiver based on "childhood asthma" - the same childhood asthma that hadn't stopped him from being an athlete in high school and playing sports in college. With respect to his "blue collar" roots, Biden himself said that he didn't join the anti-war movement because he "wore sport coats, not tie-dye". I loathe Al Gore and John Kerry, and I think that John Kerry's exceptionally brief Vietnam service was a joke and a disgrace, but I'll at least give him credit for going. Biden couldn't even bring himself to salvage what little honor he had left and do what Dan Quayle and George W. Bush did by serving in the National Guard - hell, he could have been a JAG lawyer.

    The closest thing that Biden has ever come to a real job came upon graduation from law school, when he practiced law for several years in Delaware. He didn't like corporate law, and criminal defense (a la Johnny Cochran?) didn't pay well enough, so he ran for city council and then, in 1972, he ran for US Senate. He was elected, even though he wasn't constitutionally eligible (too young) during the time in which he was running.

    Now, the next item is a bit of a toss-up, but I think it's worth mentioning. Shortly before he was to take office, his family was in a horrible traffic accident. His wife and young daughter were killed, and both of his sons were severely injured. He considered resigning his Senate seat, but he was convinced by Democrat leaders not to do so, and was famously sworn in at his sons' bedside. Now, I understand better than most people that when your loved ones die, at some point life must go on; but to take a Senate seat and commute daily from Delaware to Washington while not one, but two of your sons are convalescing? That strikes me as remarkably poor judgment.

    As a US Senator, Biden has been on the wrong side of numerous foreign policy issues. He opposed the now-crucial ballistic missile defense program, voted against the 1991 liberation of Kuwait, voted for the Iraq War (he considers it a mistake, I just consider it a vote in bad conscience for political expediency), and opposed the surge. He suggested before the surge that Iraq should be divided up into three pieces with a weak central government, apparently ignoring the fact that the three pieces would be dominated by their powerful regional neighbors (Turkey/Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia). Despite his "experience", he continues to be wrong on foreign policy well into recent history. Whereas Obama is rated as the most liberal Senator, Biden comes in at number three.

    When he's not training his sophisticated palate to appreciate the subtle differences in various types of boot leather, Biden is also well-known for being one of the poorest members of the Senate. Despite his $300k+ per year salary, and having received the equivalent of the same (adjusted for inflation) since 1973, his personal assets are estimated at between $59k and $366k, with no outside income or investment income. With all of the self-made tycoons out there, as far as I'm concerned, this alleviates any obligation anyone may have felt to listen to him on fiscal and tax matters. He's also run two presidential campaigns, both of which failed abysmally due to a complete lack of political or financial traction. And yet, even though even the Democrats, his own party, didn't want him to be president in 2008 (his poll numbers never went above single digits), he's now supposed to be a good choice for VP, whose major job is taking over if the president dies?

    Biden has excellent ratings from the ACLU, the NEA, and the AFL-CIO. He also has a history of voting for environmentally protectionist legislation, and he is against the privatization of Social Security.

    So, to recap on Biden:

  • lies about working class roots, actually from a white collar family
  • shitty high school student, shitty college student, shitty law student - points to overall laziness
  • stayed in school and lied to get out of going to Vietnam, or even serving in the National Guard, even though his colleagues like John Kerry and Al Gore went
  • closest thing to a real job was a few years of practicing law in the late 1960's/early 1970's
  • elected to Senate in 1972, been there on the public dime ever since, has almost nothing financially to show for it
  • has a history of plagiarism, voting on the wrong side of history, firing off his mouth*

    Now, in Senator Biden's defense, my understanding is that despite his intensely liberal voting record and views, he is apparently well-liked by most of his colleagues in the Senate on both sides of the aisle, to include Senator McCain.

    So, in Joe Biden, we have experience and foreign policy expertise, if you call being on the wrong side of history with respect to numerous issues, having shitty personal finances, plagiarism, making shit up in debates and speeches, and a complete lack of a filter between his brain and his mouth "experience and foreign policy expertise". Am I missing something here? If I am, once again, please tell me.

    Now, you implied that I'm trying to have it both ways, or live by a double standard. I don't think that's the case. I see a man in his late forties who has been handed much of his success in life, whose only real personal accomplishments are graduating from college and law school, and writing two autobiographies (if it was him who wrote them, and not his buddy Ayers as been alleged by some literary analysts who have compared the literary style of Obama's books to Ayers' book); and whose policies mirror those of failed president Jimmy Carter very closely. I see another man in his sixties who was lazy in high school, college, and law school; who didn't like actually practicing law so he ran for Senate; whose history in the Senate has produced few, if any, real accomplishments; no occasions in which he showed singular wisdom, vision, or leadership; and no personal wealth despite having been paid the equivalent of about $9.6M by the public treasury since 1973.

    Compare that lack of experience (and again, correct me if I'm wrong) with Sarah Palin. She's run a successful business, run a small town, been the Oil and Gas Commissioner of an oil- and gas-producing state, and run that state. She's decisively ousted an incumbent governor in her own party, eliminated corruption in her own party, cut government waste, and actually administered something. Despite her relatively brief tenure, she has a list of impressive accomplishments, and she's been able to accomplish it with bi-partisan support by cooperating with political rivals and independents. Her parents weren't successful bank executives like Obama's grandmother, or white collar managers like Biden's dad; she didn't go to prep schools like Obama or Biden. She's gotten where she is with only three things: a solid family, hard work, and good old fashioned gumption, you betcha. I'm not saying she's perfect, and there are certainly areas where her experience and background are very thin (the big one being foreign policy). However, when you compare Sarah Palin's accomplishments in a short time to Obama and Biden's lack of real accomplishments during ten and thirty-two years in office respectively, I don't know how you can even compare.

    So, to recap once again, we have:

  • McCain-Palin: McCain's military and foreign policy experience, economic experience on the Commerce Committee, and experience in Congress in which he's been on the right side of nearly every issue. Sarah Palin's business ownership experience, executive experience as a mayor and governor, energy expertise as Oil and Gas Commissioner, numerous accomplishments during her brief time in these roles.
  • Obama-Biden: No noteworthy accomplishments for Obama, save for being friends with radicals, winning uncontested elections, and writing two autobiographies. No noteworthy accomplishments for Biden in fiscal, domestic, social, or foreign policy despite thirty-two years of trying.

    I don't think that's a double standard. Again, if I'm missing something, or you have some perspective that I ought to try and see, I'm open to it.

    Also, I'd like to make one more point on this one. I know that I mentioned numerous times how liberal Barack Obama and Joe Biden are according to non-partisan analysts. I have plenty of friends who are either centrist, left-leaning centrist, or flat out liberal. I can work with, enjoy, and appreciate all of them. For me personally, "liberal" is a "soiled" (vice "dirty") word, but that's not the point of citing it. In the last several elections, the American people have been begging for candidates who can abandon partisanship and bickering, and come together for the common good of all Americans. The reason why the Obama-Biden ticket's partisanship is so troubling to me is that they have displayed no real willingness to compromise on divisive issues, which is what the American public so desperately wants and deserves.

    During the Republican primary, the favorite to win was Mitt Romney, who commentators claimed was the "real conservative". Ron Paul, who's hyper-partisan (and bat shit crazy), was also able to do massive fundraising (lots of money in those neo-Nazi and 9/11 Truther groups, I guess!). Who won? Was it the guy with all the money, or the guy who was the most partisan? No: it was John McCain, the guy who the media had dismissed early on because his campaign nearly went broke. Why did he get the nomination? Among other reasons, it was because Republicans and independents liked that he had a long and proven record of accomplishing important things by working closely with political rivals, and doing so without compromising his conservative principles (unlike Romney, who flip-flopped on the abortion issue and ushered in a massive government entitlement program in Massachusetts). It demonstrated that the guy who could work with his opponents was a more desirable candidate than the ones who were the most partisan (like Paul or Tom Tancredo), or the one who spent the most money (like Romney).

    Now, ask yourself: is there any evidence of this from Obama or Biden? Obama essentially got the nomination because nobody knew anything about him, and many voters were conflicted about Senator Clinton. Once people actually began to learn just how radical Obama was, they flocked to Clinton's campaign in droves, but by then it was too late. Senator Clinton won primary after primary, particularly in battleground states and districts, but between the Michigan and Florida fiascos, and Obama's early surge, it was impossible for her to recover. At any rate, the point is that Americans are desperate for someone who can unite us, the contested 2000 election prevented President Bush from accomplishing that, and now could be our opportunity. I don't see that potential for compromise, bi-partisanship, and cooperation from the most and third-most liberal senators in America.

    6. No disagreement on the composition of the House of Representatives, or Joe Lieberman.

    7. We agree on checks and balances, gun control, the composition of the House, and Joe Lieberman! That's progress!

    8. I think it's Obama's to lose, too, but I still think he's still going to lose it. In 2000, the race was Gore's to lose, and he lost it, albeit narrowly and essentially by the Atomic Bomb of legal technicalities, the Electoral College. In 2004, it was John Kerry's to lose, and lose it spectacularly he did. All indications say that this should be a banner year for Democrats, but I think I see it slipping through their fingers like so many grains of sand. Interesting thing about the kids, though.

    9. I had a Sam Adams Octoberfest, a gin and tonic, a California Chicken Burger, and I got to shut Police Fan out of horning in on a conversation he had no business horning in on. Game, set, match.

    The Fly

    * * *

    Well, at least I didn't have to write all of it from scratch. Have a great weekend, folks.

    * I know what you're going to say. The difference is, I'm not running for public office.