Russian Economist Suffers Mysterious Illness

After what happened to Alexander Litvinenko with terminal radiation sickness from Polonium-210, here’s yet another case of a Russian critic of KGB Chairman First General Party Secretary Czar President Putin.

The architect of Russia’s market reforms is being treated in a Moscow hospital with a mystery illness. Yegor Gaidar fell unconscious with unexplained symptoms on November 24 – a day after the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko died from radiation poisoning.

Instead of Bird Flu, maybe the real danger is this sort of Putinosis.

RIAA and MPAA Merger Announcement

H/T to John Haller.com on this item of interest to anyone who is a media user – and hey, who isn’t?

Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA) chairman Dan Glickman and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) president Cary Sherman today announced the historic merger of the two organizations. The newly-created entity is being called the Music And Film Industry Association of America(tm), Inc. (MAFIAA(tm)).

“The RIAA and the MPAA have been pursuing very similar avenues with respect to their fight against piracy of music and movies for many years now,” Glickman said. “It just made sense to combine our efforts for maximum effectiveness.” Sherman agreed saying that “there’s definitely been some overlap to our methods recently. It took a while for the MPAA to go after its customers as strongly as we have, but they eventually came around.”

The newly formed organization’s first priority will be to continue the fight against fair use rights and open technological advances that do not meet with organization approval. “Consumers should not be able to listen to any music or enjoy any movie anywhere without our approval,” said Sherman.

In addition to coordination of anti-piracy efforts, a key benefit of the merger will also be reduced costs. “We no longer have to have both the movie and music industries buying up senators and congressmen to get restrictive copyright laws passed,” Glickman explained. “Now the representatives will be getting one sack of money from one organization. The cost savings to us will be tremendous.”

One final note from the Chief: “Warning: Satire Alert!)

Lincoln Mem. Closed Over Note, Liquid

Authorities briefly closed the Lincoln Memorial on Monday after finding suspicious bottles in a restroom and a note reading “Do you know what anthrax is?” and “Do you know what a bomb is?” Authorities found a bottle appearing to contain a liquid in a basement ladies’ rest room, along with the note. None of the objects was found to be a threat, said Wayne Benson, a batallion chief with the District of Columbia fire department.

No harm no foul…but…a test of our response to something happening, to improve the probability of a future attack? Hmmmmmm.

Bolton: Future of Mideast ‘may well be decided’ in days

John Bolton is possessed of reason:

“The future of the Middle East, certainly the future of Lebanon may well be decided in the next several days,” U.S. envoy to the United Nations John Bolton told BBC radio. “A successful re-emergence of democracy there is being directly challenged by the terrorist Hizbullah and those who support them, Syria, Iran and others.”

In addition to that, there is this atypical signs of cluebat activity among the Foggy Bottom Boys over at the State Department:

The U.S. dilemma is whether or not to provide up to $200 million in military aid to Lebanon over the next year. Officials said the State Department intends to determine the stability of the government of Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora before the aid is sent to Beirut, Middle East Newsline reported.

Looks like someone over there remembered “Once burned, twice shy”.

Ahmadinejad Predicts Collapse of Israel, U.S., U.K.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted the collapse of Israel, the U.S. and Britain, attacking what he called their oppressive behavior. “The Zionist regime is on a steep downhill towards collapse and disgrace,” Ahmandinejad told supporters at a rally of Basiji militia forces near Tehran today.

Yadda yadda yadda.

The Iranian president also called on neighboring countries to drive out “foreign occupiers,” in a reference to U.S.-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The people of the region are well able to establish regional security,” the president said in the speech near the shrine of the Islamic Republic founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

In other words, except for the presence of those pesky US & NATO troops, Ahm-mad-on-a-jihad Ahmadinejad could be about the business of setting up for the revived Caliphate imposing it’s own brand of “stability”.

He went on to state “The presence of foreigners is the source of discord and conflict.” meaning in fact “The presence of non-moslems anywhere in the world is the source of discord and conflict.”

F.E.T.E.

“Do Those Nitwits…Think This Is Going To Have” The Same Impact As Cronkite?

This morning on radio and MSNBC, responding to NBC’s decision to characterize Iraq as a “civil war,” Don Imus said: “He and Brian Williams and all those other nitwits and Griffin, they all sit around and they make this command decision, and Zucker and all of them, and maybe bring ol’ Wright in there?”

More: “Do these nitwits at NBC News think this is going to have the impact of when Walter Cronkite came back in Vietnam and said we can’t win, and Lyndon Johnson famously said ‘well if we’ve lost Walter Cronkite, we’ve lost the country?'”

This is good. The Chief concurs. No further comment needed!

England wants its independence

There may always be an England…but that doesn’t necessarily apply to the UK according to recent polling conducted and reported by the London Telegraph.

The United Kingdom should be broken up and Scotland and England set free as independent nations, according to a huge number of voters on both sides of the border.

A clear majority of people in both England and Scotland are in favour of full independence for Scotland, an ICM opinion poll for The Sunday Telegraph has found. Independence is backed by 52 per cent of Scots while an astonishing 59 per cent of English voters want Scotland to go it alone.

It may well be a moot point if the Brits (united or not) can’t keep themselves out from under the thumb of the Eurocrats.

Lebanon on the Brink of Civil War

This reported from MEMRI:

Against the backdrop of the worsening crisis in Lebanon, Lebanese Minister of Industry Pierre Gemayel was assassinated yesterday (November 21, 2006). Pierre Gemayel was the son of former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel, and he served as the representative of the Phalange party in the Al-Siniora government and was a senior figure in the “March 14 Forces” political alliance.

OK. Typical mid-eastern political action again…the language reminds one of the sort of thing heard in Germany just before the Austrian anschluss, and again before the seizure of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.

In the days preceding the assassination, there had been a sharp escalation in tensions in Lebanon, and especially in statements by Hizbullah spokesmen. Following Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah’s speech before the popular action committees on November 19, 2006, in which he called on his followers to take to the streets and to topple the government, Hizbullah’s website declared that within a few days a government would be established in Lebanon that would represent the true majority in the country. In addition, a daily close to Hizbullah promised that if the government did not fall within 40 days, it would receive a “decisive blow” that would topple it. For their part, senior figures in the “March 14 Forces” warned that Lebanon was on the verge of a political putsch, and said that it was Syria and Iran that had ordered Hizbullah to create the crisis.

China bought bomber secrets

Hey, the ChiComs are caught here again acting like…ChiComs.

China obtained secret stealth technology used on B-2 bomber engines from a Hawaii-based spy ring in a compromise U.S. officials say will allow Beijing to copy or counter a key weapon in the Pentagon’s new strategy against China.

Details of the classified defense technology related to the B-2’s engine exhaust system and its ability to avoid detection by infrared sensors were sold to Chinese officials by former defense contractor Noshir S. Gowadia, an Indian-born citizen charged with spying in a federal indictment released by prosecutors in Hawaii.

As for the case of the allegedly naturalized Northrop engineer who helped them out…that’s another case. The title of the old Clint Eastwood western movie comes to mind…”Hang ’em High”.

December 7, 2008

Words fail…just read it & pass it on!

H/T to Barking Moonbat E.W.S.

Rice: U.S. Concerned About Rising China

The United States has some concerns about a rising China, including a military expansion that may be excessive, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday.

DUH! It’s past high time!

Beijing has spent heavily in recent years on adding submarines, missiles, fighter planes and other high-tech weapons to its arsenal and extending the reach of the 2.3 million-member People’s Liberation Army, the world’s largest fighting force. Its reported military budget rose more than 14 percent this year to $35.3 billion, but outside estimates of China’s true spending are up to three times that level. “There are concerns about China’s military buildup,” Rice told a television interviewer. “It’s sometimes seemed outsized for China’s regional role.”

Now…for policies to recognize this reality…

A number of science & technology related items have snagged the Chief’s attention – I’m not sure why these have all popped up out of the background all right now…but there are some pretty far-out

things going on.

Mechanical Mole Men, Attack!

While The Core remains the all-time worst science movie of all times, part of it’s basic concept is not too far out for the Air Force to be actively looking at:

Throughout the ages, bad guys have loved bunkers, whether they’re in Nazi Germany or Jihadist Iran. With good reason: the suckers are hard to find, and even tougher to blow up. Even the most bleeding-edge, experimental bunker-busters can penetrate, at most, 10 meters down. Which is why the Air Force is considering a new approach: teams of foot-long “subterranean vehicles” with new-fangled ways to dig.

To quote a USAF document:

A subterranean vehicle could engage these types of targets in an effective manner, avoiding both collateral damage and unnecessary risks to our troops. It could be deployed a safe distance from the target and autonomously navigate itself to the target while detecting, identifying, and then avoiding buried obstacles such as pipes, wires, boulders and even other buildings. This vehicle would be able to penetrate the surface either through deployable techniques or on its own.

But “conventional digging techniques” will not get the job done, the Air Force warms. “It’s more likely that a revolutionary approach to digging, involving biologically inspired and/or unconventional physical and chemical approaches, would provide better results.”

It’s a deep subject!

Going in the opposite direction is this idea from NASA. (At least NASA going into space is more logical sounding than the AIR FORCE operating underground.)

NASA Studies Manned Asteroid Mission

NASA is appraising a human mission to a near-Earth asteroid-gauging the scientific merit of the endeavor while testing out spacecraft gear, as well as mastering techniques that could prove useful if a space rock ever took aim for our planet. Space agency teams are looking into use of Constellation hardware for a human Near-Earth Object (NEO) mission-an effort underway at NASA’s Ames Research.

Remember the movie Armageddon? NASA does! After noting the science associated with this project, NASA scientist Chris McKay goes continues…

“Then there’s the whole, what I call the ‘Bruce Willis factor’…the star in the movie Armageddon…and the ability to send significant assets to an asteroid. There’s a lot of public resonance with this notion that NASA ought to be doing something about killer asteroids…to be able to send serious equipment to an asteroid,” McKay observed. “The public wants us to have mastered the problem of dealing with asteroids. So being able to have astronauts go out there and sort of poke one with a stick would be scientifically valuable as well as demonstrate human capabilities,” he said.

Finally, how about communication…backwards in time…for bleeding edge science?

Going for a blast into the real past

If his experiment with splitting photons actually works, says University of Washington physicist John Cramer, the next step will be to test for quantum “retrocausality.” That’s science talk for saying he hopes to find evidence of a photon going backward in time.

“It doesn’t seem like it should work, but on the other hand, I can’t see what would prevent it from working,” Cramer said. “If it does work, you could receive the signal 50 microseconds before you send it.”

And the point is…?

If the UW experiment succeeds at demonstrating faster-than-light communication and reverse causation, the implications are enormous. Besides altering our concept of time, the signaling finding alone would almost certainly revolutionize communication technologies.

Communication FTL (faster-than-light) and BACKWARDS IN TIME? For real? No longer just science fiction? Phew!

Can warp drive be far behind? “…to go where no man has gone before…!”

Did this cat breed with a dog?

This is Mimi, the first cat to give birth to puppies, her owner claims. Brazilian Cassia Aparecida de Souza, 18, says three of the cat’s six offspring, which were born three months after Mimi mated with a neighbour’s dog, have canine traits.

WOW! If they could only talk! What an opportunity it would be for Oprah!

Seriously though – this is EXTREMELY unlikely. A wolf-dog or coy(ote)-dog, or liger is one thing, but the genetic probabilities of a dog-cat thing are vanishingly small.

Some sort of strange adoption is more likely – cat replacing kittens that died.

Admiral says sub risked a shootout

CINCPACFLT Admiral Fallon finally found his way out from behind his desk to try to talk over the shoddy performance of the USS Kitty Hawk’s anti-submarine screen that was highlighted by recently reported ChiCom sub incident.

His remarks, as reported, are an interesting and somewhat contradictory tap-dance around the subject.

For one thing he notes:

…that a Chinese submarine risked setting off a military confrontation by closely shadowing a U.S. aircraft carrier sailing near Japan.

Then he turns around and states

“It illustrates the primary reason why we are trying to push to have better military-to-military relationships” with China,

Ooookay! Lets play a bit of deconstruction here. The Chinese are sneaking in on a US carrier, so we need to try harder to be “nice”. Meanwhile, he sought to downpedal the problem:

Adm. Fallon sought to play down the incident. He said describing the covert underwater tracking of the carrier as “stalking” was “sensational.”

If it wasn’t stalking, then WTF was it? An accidental crossing of paths? This attitude is of the same ilk as those who have a battery of Pentagon lawyers decreeing the rules of engagement that can be used by forces out on the sharp end of things.

It’s essentially a bureaucratic and/or policy-wonk mentality, when the warriors need to be allowed to do thier job.

Bitter France

It’s always interesting to see that not all the Euros have gone totally soft in the head regarding the Islamoterrs…even to the extent of very literally risking their lives by openly stating non-politically correct positions regarding the Religion of Piss “Peace”.

This is a semi-long piece, but is worth the read.

On November 13th, Lt. General James T. Conway was promoted to General (4-stars) and assumed duties as Commandant of the United States Marines.

The Chief recalling that General Conway and he both attended Roosevelt High School in St. Louis at the same time, (I graduated in ’64, Conway in ’65) dug out an old HS yearbook, and there it was, written in his own hand on the page with the basketball team, of which he was a member: “Good luck to a great guy. – Jim Conway”

There you have it! General Conway says the Chief is “a great guy”!

OK, so he wasn’t quite the USMC Commandant YET…but we’ll take what we can get. I count it a privilege to have known General Conway back in the all too distant days of youth, and based on his record and accomplishments since then, there’s definitely many reasons why he is the Commandant, and yours truly retired from the Naval Reserve as a humble Chief Petty Officer – which I nevertheless still count as no shabby accomplishment in it’s own right.

Anyway, congratulations to General Conway – he has a serious piece of work in front of him given the conditions for war, and world…or is it World War IV?

Hezbollah’s thirst for added powers threatens peace

Demands by Lebanon’s militant Shi’ite Hezbollah movement for more power and influence are driving the country’s latest political crisis, one that could lead to a renewal of the bloody ethnic and sectarian battles that have long plagued the country.

The crisis deepened in Beirut yesterday as U.S.-backed Prime Minister Fuad Siniora pushed through an endorsement of a special tribunal to try the men suspected in the slaying of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, despite the resignation in the past three days of six Cabinet members linked to Hezbollah and its patron, Syria.

Amazing how they’re all already starting to kick up their heels and get frisky just after the election results.

Strategy 101 for American defense planners

Lev Navrozov is up to his usual outside the envelope analyses, this time relating to US defense planning.

He lists six realities that it would behoove defense planners to be aware of, along with some exposition as to WHY these really, really need to be significant to us:

1. Know Your Enemy, However Insignificant Your Enemy Seems to Be Before the War!

2. Know the Military Era We Are Living In!

3. Know the Geostrategic Scene of Today!

4. Know What Dictatorship Is!

5. Know How to Prevent the Annihilation of the United States or the West in General

6. Know the Sources of Attack and Defense: the Super Weapons!

While some of these seem to be fundamentally simple, the devil is in the details, which LN elaborates on for each of the points. Check out the full piece. He has reason!

Defenses on subs to be reviewed

Better late than never:

Navy officials confirmed yesterday that an aircraft carrier battle group failed to detect a Chinese submarine that surfaced within weapons range of the USS Kitty Hawk. Anti-submarine defenses for the carrier battle group will be reviewed as a result, they said.

“It was not detected,” said one Navy official of the encounter with a Chinese diesel-powered attack submarine. “And we’re concerned about that, obviously.”

DUH!

What’s just as bad, if not worse, yet another intelligence failure seems to be involved:

The submarine encounter also took U.S. intelligence agencies by surprise because of years of analyses that continue to portray a benign China, said a defense official. “Our China analysts appeared to be stunned that China would shadow a U.S. carrier as far away as Okinawa,” the defense official said.

Mistaken analyses? That’s the fruit of pandering to political correctness instead of keeping a weather eye on geopolitical reality.

Very recent Iranian-North Korean nuclear collusion revealed

This item from DEBKAfile speaks for itself:

A disturbing piece of US intelligence was due to be laid before the US president George W. Bush’s strategy review conference with the Iraq Study Group and talks with the visiting Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert in Washington. It was bound to color the two events which both took place Monday, Nov. 13: Twelve days before North Korea’s first nuclear test on Oct.10, a secret Iranian military delegation of nuclear and missile experts was present in Pyongyang. The visitors were taken round North Korea’s Yongbyon reactor and the Punggye-ri testing site in the far north amid the preparations for the coming North Korean test.

Some US officials received the impression that the Iranians were briefed on some of North Korea’s secret preparations for the test. If true, this would point to three developments in North Korean-Iranian relations:

• First, China was in on the Iranian visit, but ignored it, preferring Pyongyang to carry the can as Iran’s nuclear partner rather than Beijing.

• Second, China must also have known about the coming North Korean nuclear weapons test and only pretended to have been taken unawares by Pyongyang’s ten-minute advance notice.

• Third, North Korea not only agreed to open its most secret nuclear installations to Iranian scrutiny, but is also willing to instruct Iranian scientists and technicians in Pyongyang or on their home ground on how to set up and execute a nuclear weapons test.

Plutonium found in Iran waste facility

International Atomic Energy experts have found unexplained plutonium and highly enriched uranium traces in a nuclear waste facility in Iran and have asked Tehran for an explanation, an IAEA report said today. The report, prepared for next week’s meeting of the 35-nation IAEA, also faulted Tehran for not cooperating with the agency’s attempts to investigate suspicious aspects of Iran’s nuclear program that have lead to fears it might be interested in developing nuclear arms.

Coupled with Ahmadinejad’s recent announcements concerning the state of their nuclear program, the picture is pretty clear about where things are. With the Congress under control of the appeasement party, it remains to be seen whether the President will exhibit the cojones to do the heavy lifting to deal with this. Of course then there is always Israel….

Senate leaders ask Rounds to cancel special session

Senate leaders on Tuesday asked Gov. Mike Rounds to cancel a special session that was called to investigate a state senator accused of groping a legislative page.

The request came after Sen. Dan Sutton sent a letter to Rounds in which he resigned the remainder of his current term in the Senate – roughly the next seven weeks of his two-year term. At the same time, Sutton, a Flandreau Democrat who won re-election last week, said he would reclaim his seat when the new Legislature takes office in January.

Looks like the former and future Senator Sutton doesn’t want to be troubled by pesky hearings over the holiday season. The whole maneuver sure does suggest some weaseling going on though.

Giuliani Takes Step Toward ’08 Bid

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, a moderate liberal Republican best known for his stewardship of the city after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has taken the first step in a 2008 presidential bid.

While Rudi Giuliani admittedly did a great job as NYC’s mayor, that’s about the extent of his ability as far as the Chief is concerned.

As President? Thanks, but NO THANKS! Not in this life, nor in the next! The LAST thing the GOP needs at this point in time is another RINO. He even makes McCain look pretty good by comparison!

China sub stalked U.S. fleet

The ChiComs are taking a page out of the old Soviet playbook – NOT considered a way to impress one with their overall peaceful intent!

A Chinese submarine stalked a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group in the Pacific last month and surfaced within firing range of its torpedoes and missiles before being detected, The Washington Times has learned.

The Chief did active duty on a DDG (guided missile destroyer) that deployed to the 6th (Mediterranean) Fleet during the Vietnam War period when the Cold War was going full tilt. My ship was primarily an AAW (anti-air warfare) platform, but like all destroyer class ships, she was also set up for ASW (anti-submarine warfare).

We generally had tasking that left the ASW to other ships that did not have the AAW capability. It was a regular feature of the time that the USSR threw everything they had at the carrier battle groups – just for stalking practive, to see if they could get inside of the USN defensive perimeter.

Russian pilots flew Soviet supplied aircraft out of Egypt, Syria, and Libya to see if they could sneak into range. This was NOT something that was well received when it ever occurred. (Faces WERE red during a memorable NATO joint exercise when the Spanish Air Force successfully penetrated close enough to disrupt our carrier air ops by flying out at wavetop level in WW-II era Heinkel-111 twin-engine prop bombers that had been supplied to Franco by the Nazis in the late 30’s! They were so rickety, that one couldn’t even make it back to base, but they DID get through the defensive perimeter.

There was the same concern for allowing Soviet subs into striking range of the carriers, too, and the USSR took thier submarine force seriously indeed at that time, as the ChiComs apparently do today. There is another aspect of this one that is even more disturbing:

The surprise encounter highlights China’s continuing efforts to prepare for a future conflict with the U.S., despite Pentagon efforts to try to boost relations with Beijing’s communist-ruled military. The submarine encounter with the USS Kitty Hawk and its accompanying warships also is an embarrassment to the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, Adm. William J. Fallon, who is engaged in an ambitious military exchange program with China aimed at improving relations between the two nations’ militaries.

Fallon SHOULD be embarrased. He reminds me of those like Lindbergh, and Ambassador Joseph Kennedy who thought that the only realistic attitude of the US towards the Nazi Reich was to be friendly and accomadating with Herr Hitler and his minions. We all know how well THAT turned out!

Now, that same attitude comes at us in the current context – from Admiral Fallon and his ilk, and the ultra free-traders that want to see the US spread wide open for the ChiComs to have their way at our expense.

How does one abbreviate “aid and comfort to an enemy”? T-R-E-A-S-O-N.

Waxman ponders pursuing opposition

The President’s schmoozing with SanFranNan Pelosi, and Dingy Harry Reid, and his anticipation of a new bi-partisan cooperation all looks like an exercise in vanity and wishful thinking in light of this heads up from Donk Cong Henry Waxman:

The Democratic congressman who will investigate the Bush administration’s running of the government says there are so many areas of possible wrongdoing that his biggest problem will be deciding which ones to pursue.

“I’m going to have an interesting time because the Government Reform Committee has jurisdiction over everything,” Mr. Waxman said yesterday, three days after his party’s retaking of Congress put him in line to be chairman of the panel. “The most difficult thing will be to pick and choose.”

Yep. More bi-partisanship in the Daschle/Clinton tradition: BOHICA!

Rumsfeld is casualty of war

A goodly part of the administration’s election blues IMHO can be traced to discontent with the course of the war on Islamofascism’s Iraq Front.

From the Chief’s perspective there were some basic truths of warfare that were overlooked, or ignored by the administration in their conduct of the war.

Firstly – it needed to be recognized that this REALLY is WAR – not a political game or police action of some kind. The objective of war is in essence to kill enough enemy and break enough of his things that he no longer is willing to fight you. The Islamofascists have no misunderstanding of this.

Our failure to aggressively use the military tools and troops at our disposal to do this, is our largest blunder. We have been trying to play a game on the cheap, without making the committment of force necessary to crush (did I really say CRUSH? YES!) the enemy in decisive warfare.

Going along with this is the failure to turn the professionals of the military loose, and let them do their job without bureaucratic micromanagement. There are two damaging forms of this micromanagement:
• One is the control of battlefield tactical decisions from a remote higher command echelon. This is exemplified in a number of ways, from rules for after-action reports justifying firing rounds at the enemy, legal second-guessing on the use of appropriate force in combat, and the simple fact that the Army’s overall MIDDLE-EAST command center is in (of all places) Tampa, Florida. I mean, talk about uber-rear echelon run amok! Sheeesh!
• The other big problem is the unwillingness to do what is necessary tactically to deny the enemy the opportunity for effective action. This CAN/COULD be done…but it would have higher cost. We need to get rid of the bean-counters and bureaucrats in this process. It’s criminally immoral to ask our military to put their lives on the line with restrictive rules of engagement that increase their risk just to satisfy some bureaucratic requirement dreamed up by D.C. suits that would have trouble finding their own posteriors with the help of GPS and a computer map system, to say nothing of making TACTICAL (not strategic, but on the ground tactical) decisions form 6,000 miles away.

Ultimately then, Rummie deserves to get the hook. One only can hope that some form of military sanity may be found, before we wake up one day to find out that the problem is fighting the terrs right here, instead of in Baghdad. Based on their record to date, and the lack of judgement in the disloyal Donk opposition,the Chief is not optimistic that anything short of truly total national security disaster can turn us around to face the realities of the War on Islamofascism, once and for all.

Whitehall withdraws its clause for cat lavatories

Some Brit bureaucats apparently REALLY need to get a real job, or at least find something actually useful to do with their current job. If this wasn’t a problem they couldn’t have even gotten so far as to even propose something like this.

A government guide that tells pet owners to provide private lavatories for their cats – and “mental stimulation” to prevent them getting bored -is to be withdrawn. The draft code of conduct for cat owners was drawn up by the Department for Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) alongside the Animal Welfare Bill, which received royal assent in Parliament yesterday.

The 17-page document lays down rules that cat owners should abide by to ensure the health, safety and happiness of their pets. The provisions of this remind one of something like a Monty Python gag:

It says cats “need to go to the lavatory somewhere where they can behave naturally and feel comfortable”. Like humans, it says, they value their privacy. “Your cat should have somewhere private to go to the toilet with sufficient clean litter.”

Equally vital, its says, is the need to provide entertainment and mental stimulation to cats. “Cats that are kept indoors or prefer this lifestyle rely on you to provide everything for them. “You should ensure your cat gets enough mental stimulation from you and from its environment so that it does not become bored and frustrated.”

Not only were these to be helpful suggestions, but failure to observe these provisions could be a factor in prosecution for cruelty to animals!

The code states that a breach of its recommendations would not constitute an offence in itself but would be taken into account when judgments were made on whether an offence of cruelty had been committed.

This did not go without notice in Parliament, either:

Ann Widdecombe, MP and cat-lover, who protested about the “lunacy” of the code in the House of Commons this week.The former Tory Home Office minister said it was the product of a government that interfered in all aspects of life.

Now THAT’s an example of English understatement!

Miss Widdecombe, who has two cats, Arbuthnot, 12, and Pugwash, 11, said she was also flabbergasted to read in the code that all cat owners should be aware of the exact weight of their animal if they were to be safe from prosecution. She told MPs: “I am now being told that I commit an offence if I cannot say – which I cannot – how much my cat should weigh in order to keep me within the law, relevant to its bone structure, its size and its breed.”

M.P. Widdecombe was later gratified that the overall absurdity of the regulation became so obvious to the bureaucats that the whole thing was dumped into the litter pile.

Now, if we can get rid of the GPF (gallons per flush) toilet regs over here, there may be hope for a contagious outbreak of reason on both sides of the Atlantic.

SEEING THE UNSEEN

Phew! Just in the nick of time, to get a positive lift to counteract the election results, Bill Whittle has his latest essay posted, under the above title.

His current writings are constituent parts of a full book, AN AMERICAN CIVILIZATION, which will be serially posted. Whittle is a master at this – in the Chief’s opinion the best political essayist since Thomas Paine. Well worth the look and read!

A mixed bag at best, with a definite down side – Speaker Pelosi? Yech! Cough! Gag! Retch! Ptoooi!

If the Donks take the Senate too – time to buy a case of ammo and batten down the hatches – just to be prudently prepared ya know. For what? Hopefully nothing…but then again…who knows.

Recently recieved from one of the Chief’s correspondents, unfortunately without attribution, so I offer it for your possible edification without further comment. Anyway…a picture is worth a thousand words:

Subject: Ancient Democrat Unearthed

Boston, MA (AP) In an archeological dig somewhere in southeastern Massachusetts, scientists have unearthed an ancient Democrat. Scientists have validated the find by the posterior – cranium position indigenous to ancient as well as modern day Democrats.

During his 3rd hour Election Day program, Rush took note of the Orson Scott Card piece that was featured in my previous post to this. He noted also that they were linking the piece on his own web site.

This is a profoundly significant article – if you haven’t read it – do so!