Monthly Archives: September 2007

Uncategorized

Iran Wrap

Iran vows to use ‘smart’ bomb on enemies

Conventional sword-rattling again.

Iran vowed Sunday to use a new 2,000-pound “smart” bomb against its enemies and unveiled mass production of the new weapon, state television reported. The government first announced development of the long-range guided bomb Thursday, saying it could be deployed by the country’s aging U.S.-made F-4 and F-5 fighter jets

Iran: Nuclear activities have not halted

Meanwhile, in addition to conventional sword-rattling, they keep up with the nuclear sort, also.

Iran said Sunday its nuclear activities have not halted or slowed down, rejecting reports that it has not significantly expanded its uranium enrichment program this summer as planned. “There has been no slowing down, no halt and no retreat. Our activities continue on the same basis we began our peaceful nuclear program,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters.

So, take them at their word. Then, the question becomes, given the ideology of the Mullahs and their political mouthpiece Ahm-mad-on-a-jihad Ahmadinejad, can the world accept a nuclear Iran?

Israeli says Hamas is training hundreds abroad

Hamas has sent hundreds of its fighters abroad for military training, most of them to Iran, the Israeli Army’s deputy chief of staff says, and Israel has the names of more than 100 of them.

In addition to Iran’s contributions, Ham-ass has a lot more going on than this…which bodes no good for Israel.

Uncategorized

Rice? (Not Condie!)

New cash crop for South Dakota

Xingyou Gu, an assistant professor of plant science and rice geneticist/breeder, explained, “Based on my experience over the past 20 years, I think that it’s possible to develop new varieties (of rice) that are suitable for the South Dakota environment.”

Interesting. Could give the area a bit more agricultural diversity, if it all works out.

National Insecurity

Same Judge, Same Case, Same Result: Same Sedition

Judge Strikes Down Part of Patriot Act

A federal judge struck down a key part of the USA Patriot Act on Thursday in a ruling that defended the need for judicial oversight of laws and bashed Congress for passing a law that makes possible “far-reaching invasions of liberty.”

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero immediately stayed the effect of his ruling, allowing the government time to appeal. Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said: “We are reviewing the decision and considering our options at this time.”

As an alternative philosophy the Chief would offer this tag from Cicero:

SILENT LEGES INTER ARMA. (In time of war, the laws are silent.)

Uncategorized

Your Tax Dollars at Work…or Not.

Homeland Security falls short, GAO says

The Homeland Security Department has failed to meet even half of its performance expectations in the four years it has been in existence, congressional auditors concluded in a draft report obtained by The Associated Press.

Predictably enough the response of the agency is ¡No problemo!

The department disagreed with the findings of the Government Accountability Office report, which was to be released Thursday, particularly with the way auditors defined and measured progress.

How sneaky, to actually look for and expect measurable results! In spite of the hemming and hawing around in Cong hearings this week, HS Secretary Chertoff summed the situation up:

“But if you ask me is the job of keeping us safe done, the answer to that is no,” Chertoff said. “It is not done. And it may not be done within our lifetimes.”

OK. If that’s the case, quit dinking around, and let us carry guns to defend ourselves…wherever…including at airports, etc.

Dang! There I go, thinking again! Foolish error, when dealing with bureaucratic minds.

Defense Matters!

US Attacks on USMC?!

Haditha Video Doctored by Investigators

The Chief has been following this for some time…and has noted with satisfaction that the case against the Marine “boots on the ground” has started to unravel. It looks like this process is continuing, with these reports of doctored video evidence.

A video taped from a Scan Eagle unmanned aerial vehicle – purported to show the action that took place in Haditha when 24 Iraqi civilians and insurgents were killed – was heavily edited by government investigators, a NewsMax investigation reveals. The reason, according to an inside source: to avoid showing anything that exonerates the Marines who were accused of murdering the victims. Four Marines originally faced murder charges stemming from the Haditha incident. Charges against three of them have since been dropped, but Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich is still facing a court martial.

What was actually recorded leaves a very clear history that the Marines’ actions were fully justified by the rules of engagement. What WAS actually recorded?

The Marine intelligence officer who monitored the Scan Eagle’s video transmissions throughout the day told NewsMax that therewas continuous video feed from the Scan Eagle for 8 to 10 hours. Yet barely an hour of it was provided to the Marines’ defense teams by the prosecution or the Naval Criminal Investigation Service. “This 8 to 10 hours, viewed in its entirety, shows men in black, with weapons, fleeing the neighborhood of houses 1, 2, 3 and 4 [the area where the civilians and eight of the insurgents were killed]. It follows their route as they meet up with other insurgents throughout the city. It clearly demonstrates the magnitude of the insurgents’ organization, skill, and timing in attacking Marines.”

The video, he recalled, “shows them parking, exiting the vehicle, and entering the housing complex. It shows Marines assaulting the building, insurgents fleeing out the back of the building, and Marines falling back from the assault as the insurgents defend the house.” Finally, the intelligence officer revealed, the full, undoctored Scan Eagle video “shows an insurgent, at the end of the day, under continuous observation from the air and under continuous pursuit and fire, emerge from a family’s home holding their children hostage, in order to protect himself from further air strikes.”

What was actually used as “evidence” and which was released to CNN, who played thr role of the willing fool in helping the prosecution, was somewhat less that this:

“Someone, under the supervision of NCIS, screened this video feed, and made the conscious decision to preserve only four segments of approximately 15 minutes each – according to the defense attorneys who received it upon discovery release,” our intelligence source confided.

What the Chief really CANNOT wrap his mind around, is an understanding of the attitudes and motivation of any bottom-feeding, slime-sucking, traitorous scum who would do this to our own troops.

Execution is too good for them. One needs to hearken back to the old-style penalty of the British monarchs to APPROACH justice: hung by the neck, taken down while still alive, racked, disembowled, with the innards still attached and then thrown into a fire, and only then beheaded, with the body quartered, and the fragments placed on public display as an instructive lesson.

Uncategorized

New Machinery to Replace Ag Workers

Robots May Become Essential on US Farms

This is one way to deal with undocumented illegal alien workers: mechanize their former jobs.

With authorities promising tighter borders, some farmers who rely on immigrant labor are eyeing an emerging generation of fruit-picking robots and high-tech tractors to do everything from pluck premium wine grapes to clean and core lettuce. Such machines, now in various stages of development, could become essential for harvesting delicate fruits and vegetables that are still picked by hand.

Sounds like a plan!

Uncategorized

Mex Pres’ Imperialism & Freewheeling Cross Border Trucks

Teamsters continue to battle Mexican trucks

The plan to let Mexican trucks operate throughout the United States has prompted a war of words and legal papers between the Bush administration and Jim Hoffa, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

Hoffa and his allies at the Sierra Club and Public Citizen have sued in federal court to stop the government from issuing permits to Mexican freight haulers. Their lawyers argued in court that Mexican trucks pose a danger on the roads and threaten increased human and drug smuggling. “Dangerous trucks should not be driving all the way from Mexico to Maine and Minnesota,” said Hoffa in a prepared statement. “What is it about safety and national security that George Bush doesn’t understand?”

The Chief has some more or less direct interest in this, since he lives 2.75 miles from an officially designated North American international trade route (I-29).

The government argued that stopping the trucks would unsettle a key trading partner in Mexico and delay U.S.trucks from operating south of the border.

So, the Mexicans could become unsettled. The point is…?

This goes right along with another item:

Calderon blasts U.S. immigration policies

President Felipe Calderon blasted U.S. immigration policies on Sunday and promised to fight harder to protect the rights of Mexicans in the U.S., saying “Mexico does not end at its borders.”

This reminds the Chief of the sort of things that Germany was saying in the 1930’s as it moved to implement “das Grossdeutches Reich“, or Greater Germany, incorporating large parts of Czechoslovakia, the entire nation of Austria, most of Poland, and targets on the then USSR up to the Urals. Indeed, Germany did NOT end at its borders…it kept marching as long as it could get away from it. One fears Mexico is moving in the direction of going for anything it can get, as long as we continue to “assume the position”. BOHICA!

Admittedly Calderon is no Hitler (yet), but imperialism is imperialism…and asserting claims of extraterritorial rights historically is one of the tried and true arrows in the imperialistic quiver.

He also reached out to the millions of Mexicans living in the United States, many illegally, saying: “Where there is a Mexican, there is Mexico.”

This is the Mexican version of the doctrine of “Once a German, always a German.”

“We strongly protest the unilateral measures taken by the U.S. Congress and government that have only persecuted and exacerbated the mistreatment of Mexican undocumented workers,” he said. “The insensitivity toward those who support the U.S. economy and society has only served as an impetus to reinforce the battle … for their rights.”

Frankly, as far as the Chief is concerned the only right that ILLEGAL immigrants have, is to not let the door hit them in the ass on their way out.

Uncategorized

“…the new boss, same as the old boss”

Chinese donor sounds like ’96

Donks, and especially Clintons, will do what they do.

Questionable donations to Democratic officials and presidential candidates from a Chinese-American businessman highlight past concerns over Chinese political influence-buying operations. Apparel executive Norman Hsu, who turned himself in last week to authorities in California to face fraud charges, donated more than $1 million to senior Democrats, including the presidential campaigns of Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois.

Could anyone with any common sense at all REALLY expect anything different from the Donk crew?

Uncategorized

Moonbat Judge Halts Immigration Screening

1 Comment

Judge Halts Illegal Immigrant Notices

The Social Security Administration has sent out “no-match” letters for more than two decades warning employers of discrepancies in the information the government has on their workers. Employers often brushed aside the letters, and the small fines that sometimes were incurred, as a cost of doing business.

But this year, those letters will be accompanied by notices from the Department of Homeland Security outlining strict new requirements for employers to resolve those discrepancies within 90 days or face fines or criminal prosecution, if they’re deemed to have knowingly hired illegal immigrants.

The judge’s ruling Friday temporarily prohibits the government from enforcing the new rules, which were scheduled to take effect Sept. 14.

This is just nutso. The suit was brought by the AFL-CIO, no doubt preferring new workers to organize, but ignoring the situation of their CURRENT workers who are losing jobs, having wages driven down, etc. due to the loose state of our borders.

Uncategorized

Shock and Awe 2, or something more?

Pentagon ‘three-day blitz’ plan for Iran

From The Times of London:

THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

Hmmmm. Time will tell. Unfortunately, the historical record indicates that air power without boots on the ground doesn’t work really well.

Uncategorized

UK Dairy Predicament Update

The Chief earlier posted on an article From the London Sunday Telegraph examining the apparently perilous state of the British dairy industry, and noting that the UK’s losses have resulted in some gains right here in Moody County, SD.

Now comes a piece from the Times of London, commenting at some length on the same situation.

How dairy herds yield the milk of human blindness

Should anyone ever want a perfect example of what short-termism has done to the world, they just need to go and look at a dairy cow. If they can find one. The domestic British milk industry is in tatters, systematically dismantled over recent years by a retail food industry that has pushed farmers to the edge by paying them less and less for their product.

The mantra is familiar to us all. Give the customers what they want. Give the shareholders what they want. And hell mend the future � if anyone even considers it, given they don’t teach anything over the immediate horizon at most business schools. So vicious has been the squeeze that as many as a third of family dairy farmers have now quit, dispersed their herds and sold their farms. Spirits have been broken, generations of family history binned. Those who struggle on with their 14-hour days and their 4am starts do so on incomes from milk of as little as £5,000 � well below the poverty threshold and just a fraction of the average wage.

And, while this process has been going on, did anyone care? Did its longer-term economic significance register? No, of course not, because we, the public, take a limitless supply of milk totally and utterly for granted; and indeed there is probably a significant proportion of the modern population that believes it is sourced from a tap somewhere.

Sadly, there’s more. Looks like they really are getting to have a serious problem.

Uncategorized

ACHTUNG! Ve vill be healthy! Or else!

Edwards backs mandatory preventive care

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care. “It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care,” he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse.

How much more totalitarian could he be than THIS!??? Think about it a bit. What if you DON’T go? The Medical Enforcement Police will have to be sent out to drag you into the penal hospital system for examination and treatment?

The attitude of mind that can produce this proposal assumes that we are unable to care for ourselves at all, and that the Big Brother state has to step in to do it for us. Also implicit in this is the assumption that since we are all “human resources” we can be managed like any other economic resource in order to maintain our social utility.

This represents an practical denial of any right to individual free agency…and IMHO this is a form of ultimate evil.

It’s rare that a politician openly rips the lid off of hell and directly offers it to us as a supposed benefit.

Uncategorized

Why British Dairymen come to Moody County

1 Comment

Milked dry: British dairy farmers uncovered

The ag economy is so out of kilter in the UK that dairymen are forced to work at a loss…is it any wonder they are literally seeking greener pastures, like Moody County’s recently acquired British originated dairies.

Every time that Bob and his team at Henden Manor Farm in Kent milk the cows, they lose money. This is because the price the farm gets paid for its milk is around 1.5p per litre below the cost of producing that milk. This morning’s session alone has cost the farm around £50.

This account from the London Sunday Telegraph gives a thorough account of one Brit dairyman’s situation, as an example of a serious problem over there… with their loss becoming Moody County’s gains.

Uncategorized

A New Pyramid Scheme?

German town wants its own Great Pyramid

What to do when you have an economically depressed east German backwater? Here’s an idea:

The pharaohs may have set the standard, but German entrepreneurs are hoping to challenge Egypt’s pre-eminence in monumental self-indulgence by building the world’s largest pyramid.

wdessau102.jpg
The pyramid of tombstones planned at Dessau

They have secured €90,000 (£61,000) in state funding to assess the feasibility of building a 1,600ft tall “Great Pyramid” near the town of Dessau, in the impoverished east German state of Saxony-Anhalt.

OK. Whatever….It WILL be interesting to see if it gets off the ground at all.

Uncategorized

Brit “Educational Reform”?

Cameron: Hold failing primary pupils back

The Chief was bemused to see that the Conservative leader in the UK was proposing a radical new suggestion to improve educational quality:

Poorly performing children would be forced to stay on to resit their final year at primary school under plans to drive up classroom standards unveiled by David Cameron today.

WOW! What a concept! Repeat the content to learn it better! Why haven’t WE thought of that? (Oh, right. We DO do that, at least in some places.)

But wait! They’re on a roll:

The Conservative leader calls for a “genuine schools revolution”, including improved discipline, a concentration on the basics and a better chance for pupils from deprived backgrounds. In an article for The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Cameron backs plans for an “advantage premium” which would see schools given an extra payment per child, on top of existing state funding, for taking pupils from disadvantaged families. This could mean schools being granted up to £6,000 for each disadvantaged pupil they took – making them more attractive “customers” for a range of schools.

This is what now passes for “Conservatism” in the UK. £6000 is a pretty healthy chunk of change…somewhere near the $10K-12K range these days. This is an EXTRA payment also. By comparison, the US Bureau of Indian Affairs formula for per student expenses at its boarding schools TOTAL is less than half that, speaking of “disadvantaged”.

How did the once proud UK reach this sad state? Maybe this has something to do with it:

Its most eye-catching initiative is a call for the worst performers at the end of year six – the final year at primary school, when children reach the age of 11 – to catch up either by attending summer schools or in some cases resitting the entire year. This would lead to children of much more widely differing ages becoming classmates than is usual in the present system, which is strictly delineated by age. (emphasis added)

THIS, sports fans and fun-seekers is what happens when the schools are “dumbed down”, but surely this can’t happen HERE, could it?

At least there IS some positive sounding direction behind the proposals:

In his article, Mr Cameron vows to use school reforms to help tackle Britain’s “broken society”. He adds: “Educational failure lies at its root. Labour’s obsessive micro-management and rigid attachment to old-fashioned ideas has entrenched deprivation, shut doors and closed minds….We need a new approach: one that offers real hope and opportunity; harnesses aspiration and opens minds; and gives children from poor backgrounds the chance to get on in life….I know what parents want for their children because it’s the same thing I want for mine: schools with a disciplined learning environment; focus on getting the basics right; tailored teaching according to each child’s ability; and emphasis on rigorous teaching standards. I wouldn’t – and we shouldn’t – expect anything less.”

SOUNDS good…the devil, as usual, will be in the details, along with the fact that this is dealing with government schools. Meanwhile the current Labor goverment toots it’s own educational horn, with a tune that sounds strangely familiar to the Chief:

Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, said: “Our investment and reform is driving up standards after the neglect of the Tory years. We will do even more to help kids who are falling behind with our Every Child a Reader and Every Child Counts programmes.

Hmmm. Any similarity there to “No Child Left Behind”? (Another reason why Dubya got along so good with Blair?)

One hardly knows whether there is any hope at all for Britain any more. For that matter, is there any hope for US?

National Insecurity

Getting Loose from the Tar Baby

Endgame: American Options in Iraq

George Friedman at StratFor has given some thought to possible outcomes in Iraq, given the current state of affairs over there. He makes too much sense as he develops his favored scenario:

The new U.S. mission, therefore, must be to block Iran in the aftermath of the Iraq war. The United States cannot impose a government on Iraq; the fate of Iraq’s heavily populated regions cannot be controlled by the United States. But the United States remains an outstanding military force, particularly against conventional forces. It is not very good at counterinsurgency and never has been. The threat to the Arabian Peninsula from Iran would be primarily a conventional threat — supplemented possibly by instability among Shia on the peninsula.

The mission would be to position forces in such a way that Iran could not think of moving south into Saudi Arabia. There are a number of ways to achieve this. The United States could base a major force in Kuwait, threatening the flanks of any Iranian force moving south. Alternatively, it could create a series of bases in Iraq, in the largely uninhabited regions south and west of the Euphrates. With air power and cruise missiles, coupled with a force about the size of the U.S. force in South Korea, the United States could pose a devastating threat to any Iranian adventure to the south. Iran would be the dominant power in Baghdad, but the Arabian Peninsula would be protected.

This goal could be achieved through a phased withdrawal from Iraq, along with a rapid withdrawal from the populated areas and an immediate cessation of aggressive operations against jihadists and militia. It would concede what the NIE says is unattainable without conceding to Iran the role of regional hegemon. It would reduce forces in Iraq rapidly, while giving the remaining forces a mission they were designed to fight — conventional war. And it would rapidly reduce the number of casualties. Most important, it would allow the United States to rebuild its reserves of strategic forces in the event of threats elsewhere in the world.

This is not meant as a policy prescription. Rather, we see it as the likely evolution of U.S. strategic thinking on Iraq. Since negotiation is unlikely, and the three conventional options are each defective in their own way, we see this redeployment as a reasonable alternative that meets the basic requirements. It ends the war in Iraq in terms of casualties, it reduces the force, it contains Iran and it frees most of the force for other missions. Whether Bush or his successor is the decision-maker, we think this is where it must wind up.

If this doesn’t seem to be a very tidy outcome, check out the alternatives detailed in the piece. It could be FAR worse.

Uncategorized

Terrs Taking Care of Business?

$1 Billion in suspicious stock activity reminiscent of pre-9/11 conditions

Unusually for the Chief, I offer the following intact blurb from NE Intelligence Network:

In the weeks preceding the 2001 attacks on America, there were very significant financial warning signs that something big – and bad – could be about to happen. Huge surges in purchases of “put options” on stocks of United Airlines and American Airlines, the two airlines used in the attacks, and “put options” on Merrill Lynch & Co., and Morgan Stanley, stocks of two financial services companies hurt by the attack were noted. Put options are essentially “bets” that a stock or stock index will drop on or before a certain date; the larger the drop, the bigger the gain for the purchaser of the option.

Fast forward to the present day, and we have the same type of trading that took place in the days that preceded the 9/11 attacks – but on a larger scale. Nearly $1 billion of “put options” have been purchased, basically betting that Standard and Poor’s 500 index will fall significantly by the third Friday in September. A large number of these options have also been purchased calling for 50% decline by September 21, 2007. For example, a 5% drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average would be the current equivalent of about 670 points. A decline of 11% would equal about 1,470 points in today’s market. Obviously, larger drops, such as a 50% decline, would cause an unprecedented market collapse. Money would be made for the purchaser(s) of the put options – but the same purchaser(s) stand to lose over $1 BILLION in the investment if the market remains relatively static through September 21, 2007.

The questions are: who can stand to lose $1 BILLION, who will gain in the wake of such a devastating collapse, who are the investors, and what do they know that we don’t?

Sounds sort of alarming to ME, but hey, what do I know about high finance? (Not a whole lot!)

Uncategorized

GlowBull Warming Update

Runaway Climate Captured?

Runaway global warming, the climate alarmist fantasy let loose on the public, has not yet been captured, but it certainly appears to have at least been cornered by new data from researchers at the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH).

Yet more “inconvenient facts” for AlGore.

In a study published in the American Geophysical Union’s Geophysical Research Letters on Aug. 9, the UAH researchers provide more real-world evidence of the atmosphere’s self-regulating nature. If this particular self-regulatory mechanism is confirmed by additional research, it will represent yet another deal-breaker for the scientific hypothesis that has propped up climate alarmism thus far.

Global warmers claim that increasing levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases are raising global temperatures. But even if this claim was true — and there is ample reason to be skeptical — greenhouse gases by themselves could only warm the planet by so much.

FYI, there’s quite a bit of the technical and scientific background for this in the article. IMHO, it looks pretty good, but check it for yourself…or not.