Sunday, 30 November 2008

J. D. Pendry

What do you think about the Russian analyst who predicted the demise and breakup of the United States? I have news for him. The breakup of the United States was completed the day that being a Hyphenated-American became more important than being just an American. I needed to clear that thought from my mind before moving on.

I recently scanned an article in a paper produced by a professional military association. It talked about the President-elect and what the military and veterans should expect from him. What the article amounted to was a regurgitation of talking points provided to them by a political campaign. I was rather disappointed.

One political statement made by President-elect Obama, or campaign promise, whichever way you choose to characterize it, concerns me a great deal. It should concern everyone.

Read the rest:

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Saturday, 29 November 2008

The death toll is still climbing in Mumbai, India where Islamo-fascist terrorists struck Wednesday, targeting American and British citizens, Jews and police. News reports say the carnage and chaos were well planned, and the targets were pre-selected.

Among the dead in the initial moments of the assault were police officials who would have been in a position to direct a coordinated counter-assault. As a result the terrorists roamed freely, killing, taking hostages, and digging in for a protracted battle.

The attacks in India point out tragically just how simple it is to turn normal life into unthinkable horror. And they underscore the extent to which free societies must exert themselves if they are to deliver a death blow to terrorism.

Although security officials believe the attackers were members of an extreme Islamo-fascist organization based in Pakistan, and presumably had terrorist dollars and organizational capabilities backing them up, their weaponry was mostly small arms, grenades, and assault rifles. Mumbai, formerly Bombay, sits on the shore of the Arabian Sea and the attackers arrived aboard motorized rubber rafts.

Depending on the point of origin and the route taken, it is about 600-800 nautical miles from the shore of Pakistan to the water's edge in Mumbai, far too long and uncertain for a voyage entirely by motorized rafts. Thus, Indian security officials surmise that the rafts were launched from a larger ship.

But even arranging for sea transportation is not that difficult in areas of the world where pirates roam. In short, although there was significant pre-planning and intelligence gathering to launch the assault on Mumbai, the level of organization necessary to do it was not that complicated.

With US forces victorious in Iraq, and the Iraqi parliament approving an agreement outlining responsibility for its own security, it is obvious that worldwide terrorist organizations are looking for softer targets. They also need some form of "victory" to draw attention away from their overwhelming losses in Iraq.

As the assault continued into its third day, international news organizations reported on the possible identity of the attackers.

Foremost among the organizations blamed was Lashkar-e-Taiba - which in the depth of hypocrisy means Army of the Righteous. Attempts were made to shift the blame to a heretofore unheard of domestic (Indian) terror group, calling itself Deccan Mujahideen, but evidence indicates that the attacks originated with Pakistan/Afghanistan based "traditional" terrorists.

Although the terrorists claimed to be citizens of India, analyses of tape recordings between the attackers and the media indicated they were speaking with Pakistani accents.

Lashkar-e-Taiba reportedly originated in Kunar, Afghanistan, on the border with Pakistan, adjacent to the wild and Taliban/Al Qaeda friendly Tribal Areas. Regardless of which splinter group actually did the shooting, it is obvious that with Al Qaeda defeated in Iraq, there is a shift in emphasis to targets closer to its last remaining stronghold on the Afghan/Pakistan border.

Herein lies the reference to Scotland. One of the saddest chapters in Scottish history is the brutal end of the clan system by which the Scottish Highlands were emptied of inhabitants, their way of life, the homes, their language, and their culture.

Scotland and England ceased to be separate countries beginning with the Union of the Crowns in 1603 - which actually placed a Scottish king on the throne of England - and their Parliaments united in 1707. Nonetheless, there was still animosity between and within both countries, based to a large degree on religious issues as well as politics and nationalism. Catholicism was favored by some, opposed by others, and wars were fought and monarchs toppled over the question of whether Scotland would accept Catholicism as its state religion.

(To this day the National Church of Scotland is Presbyterian, although it is not considered the "state" church.)

This animosity, and efforts to restore a Scottish monarch, led ultimately to the Battle of Culloden in 1746, in which the pro-government forces (backed by England) brutally defeated the outnumbered and significantly outgunned Scottish Jacobites. The loss on the battlefield was only the beginning, and the real impact came in the following years during the Highland Clearances, more than a century of unchecked brutality.

During this time land speculators from England, backed by the English Army, invaded traditional Scottish Clan lands, threw the inhabitants out of their homes and communities, shot many, hanged many, and forced others to the coasts where they lived in abject penury. Tens of thousands were forced onto ships heading anywhere else in the world.

To accomplish this the Highland Scots were ordered to disarm, a violation of which brought instant death. To facilitate the army's access to the highland clans, many located in inaccessible areas where they had thrived for centuries, the English built roads and bridges to enhance the movement of troops.

But one of the most effective tactics used by the English in the Highland Clearances was not the brutality, which often has the affect of uniting the afflicted, but the practice of separating the clan chiefs from the clans.

The English did this by inviting the highest and most powerful chieftains to London, where they were assimilated into the English society. Their children, especially those born in England, were educated in English schools, taught English customs and within one generation any attachment to the Highlands was removed from their collective consciousness.

Today, if you travel north along Scotland's east coast, and then inland from the town of Helmsdale, to the lands once populated by the most northern clans you will find ... next to nothing.

If you go to the Helmsdale home page on the Internet you will find references to the emptiness of the land between the coast and the next inland settlement. Where the clans once thrived, now there are only scattered domiciles, and little to remind travellers of what once existed there.

I am not advocating using these tactics on the inhabitants of the Tribal Areas on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. I don't advocate ripping people away from their homes, their families and their heritage.

But if the leaders of those tribes are going to conspire with extremists seeking world domination, then I do advocate separating the head from the body. One way or another, the leaders of these vicious attacks have to be separated from the people they are recruiting for their dirty work.

The Highland Clearances are a historical blot on the history of England, and a devastating era in Scottish history. But, from the standpoint of English rulers who wanted to ensure that they were never again threatened with invasion from the wild clansman of the Scottish Highlands, they were devastatingly effective.

The attacks in Mumbai have shown that no one in the free world is safe from terrorist attacks, launched by zealots who use murder, torture and mayhem as a means of imposing their will on everyone else.

But if free world forces can figure out a way to achieve the same level of effectiveness as the Highland Clearance, separating the head from the body and redirecting the energies of those doing the fighting - without brutalizing innocent civilians - there may still be some hope for the human race.

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Friday, 28 November 2008

The Sands Of Christmas

I had no Christmas spirit when I breathed a weary sigh,
and looked across the table where the bills were piled too high.
The laundry wasn’t finished and the car I had to fix,
My stocks were down another point, the Dolphins lost by six.

And so with only minutes till my son got home from school
I gave up on the drudgery and grabbed a wooden stool.
The burdens that I carried were about all I could take,
and so I flipped the TV on to catch a little break.

I came upon a desert scene in shades of tan and rust,
No snowflakes hung upon the wind, just clouds of swirling dust.
And where the reindeer should have stood before a laden sleigh,
eight hummers ran a column right behind an M1A.

A group of boys walked past the tank, not one was past his teens,
Their eyes were hard as polished flint, their faces drawn and lean.
They walked the street in armor with their rifles shouldered tight,
their dearest wish for Christmas, just to have a silent night.

Other soldiers gathered, hunkered down against the wind,
To share a scrap of mail and dreams of going home again.
There wasn’t much at all to put their lonely hearts at ease,
They had no Christmas turkey, just a pack of MREs.

They didn’t have a garland or a stocking I could see,
They didn’t need an ornament-- they lacked a Christmas Tree.
They didn’t have a present even though it was tradition,
the only boxes I could see were labeled “ammunition.”

I felt a little tug and found my son now by my side,
He asked me what it was I feared, and why it was I cried.
I swept him up into my arms and held him oh so near
and kissed him on the forehead as I whispered in his ear.

There’s nothing wrong my little son, for safe we sleep tonight,
our heroes stand on foreign land to give us all the right,
to worry on the things in life that mean nothing at all,
instead of wondering if we will be the next to fall.

He looked at me as children do and said its always right,
to thank the ones who help us and perhaps that we should write.
And so we pushed aside the bills and sat to draft a note,
to thank the many far from home, and this is what we wrote,

God bless you all and keep you safe, and speed your way back home.
Remember that we love you so, and that you’re not alone.
The gift you give you share with all, a present every day,
You give the gift of liberty and that we can’t repay.

©Copyright December 2003 by Michael Marks
Used with the author's permission.

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Thursday, 27 November 2008

This post will remain at the top of the site through Thanksgiving day.
Please scroll down to see newer content. Posted 2008.11.11.

It's that time of year again folks. Time for a partial payment on some debts we can never repay in full.

Learn more about Project Valour IT here, then, please, pick a link above and give till it hurts. Then give some more.

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Michelle Malkin ran an article on her blog the other day about the National Park Police hassling a Vietnam veteran for handing out Buddy Poppies on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

The veteran, John Miska, served in Vietnam and is active to say the least in his Veterans of Foreign Wars Post in Arlington, VA. But the park police say that because he accepts donations from some people who take a poppy, even if he doesn't ask for them, he is thus a panhandler, and that makes him a lawbreaker.

You can read the entire article at Michelle's blog here: http://michellemalkin.com/2008/11/25/disabled-vet-branded-panhandler-for-handing-out-memorial-poppies/

I'm certain I met John on one of my many trips to DC in the past few years and there is a good reason why I remember the encounter.

John was distributing the Buddy Poppies, which are little paper imitation flowers that that VFW uses to remind people of the blood shed in war. On that particular day I was looking to see how many people were wearing VFW or American Legion garb. We were standing up to the pro-terrorist coalition ANSWER, and there were damn few representatives from the major veterans organizations standing with the thousands of veterans who took it personally that the pro-terrorism crowd wanted to deface our memorials.

So when I saw a guy wearing a VFW hat and offering the poppies I took note. I also am the Buddy Poppy chairman for my local VFW post and organize our annual vigils in my town on the weekend before Memorial Day. My community, unlike the National Park Police, has an abundance of generous people who appreciate and support veterans and we thus are able to help the less fortunate among us - which is the sole purpose of the Buddy Poppy program in the first place.

The poppies harken back to World War I and specifically the poem On Flanders Fields, which talks of the horror of war and the need to remember veterans who fought in those far off battles.

I guess all that is lost in the government bureaucracies that are running our country right down the sewer.

But, John has friends like Michelle Malkin and she isn't one to let an issue like this go unchallenged.

From her blog: Now the Charlottesville-based Rutherford Institute has stepped in and filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the National Park Police.

John Miska enjoys volunteering and spends most of his time helping injured veterans and distributing "Buddy Poppies."

"They're handed out as a remembrance of veterans' sacrifice. The poppies are red, representing the blood the soldiers shed and it's a reminder and it gives people pause to think," said Miska.

"People see me standing there and they approach me and ask 'may I have a Poppy' and I give them a Poppy. If people are moved to offer a donation we accept the donations," said Miska.

According to president of the Rutherford Institute Miska hasn't done anything wrong, he has only expressed his First Amendment rights.

"People occasionally give him money. There's a statute, it's a D.C. law, that says you can't aggressively solicit money, but he doesn't do any of that. We feel it's a violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution which guarantees you the right to assemble or guarantees you the right to free speech to hand out Buddy Poppies," said John Whitehead, President, Rutherford Institute.

Miska says this experience isn't going to stop him from his mission and that it will only encourage him to do more.

"I took an oath to the constitution to preserve, protect and defend and I feel if you don't stand up for you rights you will lose those rights," said Miska.

I took the same oath as John and I feel the same way. And as I normally do on Thanksgiving I would like to call your attention to the fact that millions of American servicemen and women are not at home today. Many are in combat zones, facing enemies who not only don't celebrate our national holiday, they would spit on it if they had the chance.

These defenders of our country, our freedoms and our way of life are not here to speak out for themselves so it is up to people like John Miska to do it for them.

Think for a moment if you will, that right now there is a soldier standing a lonely watch in a desert outpost. He might be thinking of turkey, but even if he gets it, he won't really be able to enjoy it as he would at home.

Elsewhere a Marine is pulling his field jacket closer as he braces against a bitter mountain wind, looking for signs that terrorists are about to launch an attack. He is keeping one eye on the sky, hoping a resupply helicopter will be coming to his area, possibly loaded with hot meals for the grunts.

Across the world American sailors are standing watch on vast oceans, while airmen are refueling patrol aircraft in distant and lonely airfields, and coast guardsmen are intercepting drug runners, terrorists, or saving the lives of those in peril.

Right here in America, veterans who have served their country honorably are hoping for a crumb, or a warm place to spend the night, not even daring to think of sitting down to a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner. Except those who have found John Miska or been found by him.

He helps organize dinners at his VFW post, and makes certain that wounded hospitalized vets are not forgotten. That's a big, big job but Miska does it, and only asks that he not be hassled.

I don't think that's too much to ask. Somewhere today a veteran will go hungry because there aren't enough John Miska's in this world. But somewhere else a veteran will have an opportunity for a meal and a few hours away from the cares and woes of daily life, thanks to people like John.

Do you think the Park Police bureaucrats who don't understand the meaning of Buddy Poppies could take a few minutes to look them up on the Internet and for just once try to lighten up? Maybe at the same time, if it isn't too taxing mentally, they could reflect on the fact that 93 percent of all living Americans are free to live their lives because a mere 7 percent have served in the military - going all the way back to WWII and earlier.

If that 7 percent hadn't sacrificed, and continue to sacrifice to this very minute, the bureaucrats who are stuffing themselves today just might understand the true meaning of hunger and want.

Maybe, for a change, they could go to John Miska's VFW post and help serve meals to deserving veterans this holiday season. Maybe they could accompany him to a hospital when he visits the wounded and disabled.

Maybe then they would get an idea of the real meaning of Thanksgiving.

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Wednesday, 26 November 2008

J. D. Pendry

I was going to write something different this evening, instead I will share this from my archives. I wish all of you and your families a joyous and blessed Thanksgiving day. - JD

On Thanksgiving Day 1971, I was a 19-year-old Private in basic combat training at Fort Ord, California. My military career did not have a grand beginning. For that matter it never had a grand middle or end either, but that’s a story for another day.

In September of that year, just before my 19th birthday, I stepped down from a Greyhound bus onto Fort Ord’s sand and ice plant. It wasn’t the type of greeting that folklore and movies primed me to expect. A Corporal wearing heavily starched cotton fatigues, spit shined boots and a glossy black helmet with large white Corporal stripes painted on the front greeted the few of us arriving from San Francisco Airport. He wasn’t loud and ornery as we expected, but he did walk so fast that most of my small group had to jog to keep up. His first stop with us was an Army Mess Hall where we ate our first Army meal of warm soup and cold sandwiches. A week later, all hell broke loose for us when the cattle car we were crammed into stopped in front of our basic training company.

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Sunday, 23 November 2008

J. D. Pendry

I just returned from a two-week trip to Korea. My jets are still lagging, which might explain why I was wide-awake at 0300. If my jet lag runs its typical course, I should be sleeping soundly somewhere mid-sermon.

Korea is an interesting place and an interesting lesson. My history there goes back to 1972 when I was an Army Private in I Corps stationed at Camp Red Cloud in Uijongbu, Korea. Uijongbu is just down the road a piece from communist North Korea and the world’s most heavily fortified and defended border along the 38th latitudinal parallel north, which if your curious about such things also passes through Wild Wonderful West Virginia where I sit this early Sunday morning. Although today’s average public school product probably could not tell you this, the Korean War never ended officially. There exists only a cease-fire. In 1972, dirt streets and roads were common to many areas. Most Koreans had neither a telephone nor a car. Women wading through the flooded paddies mostly planted rice by hand. In the countryside, thatched roofs were common and many rural areas still had no electricity.

Read the rest:

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Friday, 21 November 2008

Not really OWD matter but I have to tell the world anyway. My little girl had a little girl this morning! Now I have two -- count 'em, two -- grandkids. (More here as I learn more.)

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Thursday, 20 November 2008

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We work, we toil through every day,
Seeking somehow to make our way.
We pay our taxes as we should,
To contribute to the greater good.
We honestly try to observe the rules,
Even the rules bad made by fools.
But why in the world should it ever be,
That we’re the ones required to pee?
 
As employees we must pass that test,
To bleed our bladders on request;
Proving that we’re fit to pay
Our taxes that somehow go astray.
And end up in the hands of those
With no demand to drain their hose;
No urine needed for them to collect
My drug-free funded welfare check.
 
Somehow I think there’s something missing
When only producers must prove by pi**ing.
 
Russ Vaughn

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It's not fun any more, folks. Maybe it's post election burnout, maybe it's just the fact I have a lot of other things to occupy my time and my attention right now. On the good side, my daughter is headed for the hospital in a few hours to have a baby, even if they have to induce labor or perform a C-section. On the down side, I'm physically exhausted from the amount of time I've been spending outside overseeing some repairs on the house and feeling pretty helpless, after the election, to have any impact on the world anyway.

I'm going to quit doing my daily roundups for the foreseeable future; I may or may not put up an occasional single-topic post. I may decide to decide to resume my normal routine in a few days, or maybe after The Obama moves into the White House and the new Congress is seated, or maybe not at all. Time will tell.

Fellow Dogs, I won't ignore the site entirely. I'll be checking my email and taking a look at the site at least once a day. If you have any problems with the new TypePad interface, or with anything else technical that I might be able to handle for you, don't hesitate to ask for help.

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Wednesday, 19 November 2008

The TypePad people have decided it's time to "improve" their WYSIWYG editor, whether it needed improving or not. The most likely effect you're likely to notice is text -- in particular hyperlink text -- they've automatically color coded. When I remember to I can override their changes by using MS Front Page to create HTML that looks like I want it to look but I can't promise I'll remember to do it every time I update a post.

Fellow Dogs, if you want to you can just do what you can with the "improved" editor, then if your posts don't come out looking like you wanted them to shoot me an email and I'll clean them up for you as soon as I have a minute.

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In case you missed them yesterday:

• How Obama Got Elected
• Video: How Obama Got Elected

Also worth knowing about today:

Continue reading "2008.11.19 Politics and National Defense Roundup"

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Tuesday, 18 November 2008

Absolutely awesome. (Hat tip fellow vet Al Shirley). This version ain't bad either.

Also worth knowing about today:

Continue reading "2008.11.18 Politics and National Defense Roundup"

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Monday, 17 November 2008

I haven't been covering the Detroit bailout discussion up to this point but it's time to start. Obama and Pelosi think it's a good idea, a lot of key Republicans don't. To me the situation looks pretty simple; The Big Three are in trouble because over the years they've agreed to ever more ridiculous contracts with the UAW. If they go bankrupt whoever picks up the pieces can offer the autoworkers who lose their jobs new jobs at reasonable salaries, with reasonable benefits packages.

Worth knowing about today:

Continue reading "2008.11.17 Politics and National Defense Roundup"

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After the presidential election results were in, the mainstream media, apparently realizing it had gone further overboard than usual in its despicable treatment of Alaska Governor and GOP Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, decided to cut her some slack.

In an effort to make voters forget that it had gone on an orgy of character assassination and voter manipulation through bogus "polls" and savagely inaccurate "stories," the media suddenly backed off a bit. But just a bit. We even had a mini-outbreak of positive publicity about Gov. Palin.

Americans, those who truly are Americans and usually don't work in the media, were way ahead of the non-Americans who do work in the media. Suddenly the non-Americans in the media have produced new "polls" that aren't really any more reliable than the bogus polls used before the election, but the new ones now say her popularity is rising. How incredibly surprising.

This mind you, in the wake not only of some of the most vicious personal assaults since the heyday of Stalin and Hitler's propaganda machines, but also from remorseless attacks on Palin from the incompetents - or Democrat plants - who ran John McCain's presidential campaign.

Can you believe that these Nimrods - the same people who without Palin's authorization went on a spending spree in Manhattan's priciest clothing stores and then blamed Palin for spending too much on clothes - tried to cover their own asses, after McCain fell through his, by saying she brought the campaign down?

Let's get it all out on the table shall we? The one thing the pollsters were accurately predicting before the election was an Obama landslide and the only reason he didn't get it was McCain's choice of Palin for his VP running mate. If she hadn't been on the ticket, McCain would have fared just about as well as Mondale vs. Reagan in 1984.

Meanwhile, as reporters, editors, producers and publishers suck up to political elitists in the hopes that in the next election the media won't be a non-entity - as it should have been this time - the public is responding by turning off the media in a big way.

In Connecticut, two daily newspapers that at one time were stalwarts of the region's fourth estate - The Bristol Press and the New Britain Herald - are on the auction block and slated for closing if no one will buy them. This is not an anomaly.

The Journal Register Company has hired a broker to sell newspapers it owns not just in Connecticut, but in Pennsylvania and Michigan too.

Then we have the Hartford Courant, Connecticut's largest daily newspaper which bills itself as the country's oldest in continuous publication. The Courant has shrunk physically to the point that it looks like an enlarged roll of paper towels with gag writing on it instead of news.

Even though Connecticut's population has increased along with the nation's, the Courant's daily circulation has shrunk substantially and last summer it reduced its editorial staff by 25 percent. That was on top of less obvious shrinkage in staffing and coverage that had been going on at the Courant for years.

Nationally, the New York Times is suddenly a shining example of larger papers that no longer are considered viable investments. It too has shrunk to the point that its motto, All The News That's Fit to Print should be changed to Just What Fits. The reason is the same one as the decline in readership at papers like the Courant, the Herald and the Press. The public no longer trusts the media, and with good reason.

The Times' pro-communist, pro-terrorist bias is well known. Its treasonous publications of national security matters that put our troops who are fighting the War on Terror in even greater danger has been well documented. But even on a regional level the bias is equally intense, it just covers a smaller area.

The Courant gave overwhelmingly favorable coverage to Democrats in the recent election, including imposing a virtual blackout on coverage of the GOP candidate for Congress in its own district. In fact, the absence of coverage of the GOP candidate was so blatant that a case probably could be made that the Democrat received unreported in-kind donations of free "advertising."

It bears noting here, however, that there were bright spots in the darkness of the media blackout. Dennis House from Channel 3 television did a great job of covering both sides of the Congressional election.

And Steve Collins of the Bristol Press was out front every time with his blog column. In fact, when others refused to even mention that a Republican was in the race for Congress, Collins was writing in-depth articles giving fair coverage to both sides.

It is unfortunately true though, that Collins and House were the exceptions rather than the rule.

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin is finally free of the constraints of campaign handlers who obviously didn't want her on the ticket, and the results are clear. America is seeing the real Sarah Palin and discovering why she had such high favorability ratings in her home state before the Democrats' media propaganda machine kicked into high gear.

As Palin goes about the business of building a solid foundation for whatever may transpire in four years, the Republican Party is said to be working to reestablish itself. Some factions are saying the party has to be reformed and redefined with a broad liberal agenda to make it palatable to a wider ranger of voters.

I agree with the other side that says there is nothing wrong with the core values of the party, but there sure as hell is something wrong with offering up candidates who don't live up to them, don't adhere to them when they are in office, and turn out to be something else, even though they wear the GOP label.

If this last election was lost because the GOP didn't attract enough women and minorities, then the real job ahead of us is to communicate with women and minority voters exactly what the GOP has to offer them, versus the Democrats. We also have to communicate with - or write off - Jewish voters who went for the Democrats nationally in a big way, despite McCain's claims that he would cut into that demographic.

But first and foremost the GOP has to field candidates who really are Republicans and adhere to the values of the Republican Party.

Sarah Palin is at the top of that list, as is Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. I don't expect either of them to get much of a break from the media. It has its own agenda and will follow it lemming-like right down the sewer.

Republican candidates will have to find new ways to communicate with the voters and circumvent news organizations that will never give them a fair break or anything remotely resembling competent, unbiased reporting.

If the GOP is to reemerge as a true competitor it doesn't have to redefine itself, it just has to live up to its own definition, and do a far, far better job of communicating that definition to the next generation of voters.

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Saturday, 15 November 2008

Quote of the week (Helmet tip: Gunship II):

"Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions… Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the ‘new, wonderful good society’ which shall now be Rome’s, interpreted to mean ‘more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.’ Julius was always an ambitious villain, but he is only one man."

– Cicero

Also worth knowing about this weekend:

• Three more years?
• Iraqi Cabinet Approves Security Pact With U.S.
• The Audacity of Victory: How To End a War
• One Down, One To Go
• Familiar Refrain on Afghan Surge

Continue reading "2008.11.15-16 Politics and National Defense Roundup"

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Friday, 14 November 2008

Worth knowing about today:

• Maliki now on board with “withdrawal agreement”
• Video: The surge worked
• “The war is over and we won”

Continue reading "2008.11.14 Politics and National Defense Roundup"

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Thursday, 13 November 2008

Aside from being depressed about the fact this country seems to be headed straight to Hell, I have a super-pregnant daughter and a major outdoor project I'm trying to get finished before the weather gets worse. I'll continue to try to do a short roundup every day but it may be a while before my output returns to normal levels.

Worth knowing about today:

Continue reading "2008.11.13 Politics and National Defense Roundup"

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Wednesday, 12 November 2008

Worth knowing about today:

Continue reading "2008.11.12 Politics and National Defense Roundup"

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