Should come as no surprise that a man who has spent his entire career as a REMF*, only to be tagged as the next coming of Sargent Alvin York by the wingnuts, plagiarized significant portions of the counter-insurgency manual that he “authored”.
While agree that a military doctrine manual need not be as meticulously footnoted as a PhD thesis, but direct quotes should be marked as such, and any source should be in the bibliography, if just to help people who might want to tweak this later.
The most interesting thing about this case is that it would be directly applicable to any member of the press who publishes something liked to them.
It’s a pity that a bunch of stupid rightwing pukes like AIPAC are at the center of this.
It’s called the Bhut Jolokia, and it rates 1 MILLION Scovilles*. The next hottest is a habanero at 577,000 Scovilles.
It’s grown in India.
I’m pretty sure that this would more than I could possiubly bear, and the experience 12-36 hours later might be even less pleasant.
*A measure of the spicy-hotness of peppers
I never knew that there was such a thing as a pencil geek, but I found one, and he shows us the world’s most disturbing pencil sharpener.
Here.
Also, he has dismissed (again), Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, the chief justice of Pakistan’s supreme court, and opposition leader Imran Khan has been placed under house arrest.
This is not good.
While we are trying to cut a sweet deal for Westinghouse and the rest of the moribund nuclear power industry, India continues to advance their military nuclear arsenal, this time with a test-fiuring of the Agni-1 missile.
Truth be told, I believe India’s nuclear arsenal to be reasonably secure. The problem is that as they develop this arsenal, Pakistan feels compelled to develop their nuclear arsenal, and I think that the whole of Pakistan is insecure.
The British have tested an all composite 155mm munition. The obvious advantage is weight, the round weighs 30kg instead of 40 kg, which could also translate into greater range, though one would it only expect to be used for specialized rounds (submunitions, etc), as the fragmentation of the steel casing is where much of the lethality comes from the standard round.
I’m not sure if the courts would shoot this one down, the SCOTUS lately has been very much in favor of “commercial speech”, but it could be tied to the expedited drug approval processes used. His point is a valid one though, many of these drugs have, at best, a limited improvement on effectiveness for some people (tests on blood pressure medication found no benefit from the newer drugs.
It is the consumer who pays for these ads, both just covering the costs, and through people demanding new drugs from their doctors when the old drug works as well.
There are a number of states in which the pig felching greedheads in the phone companies have managed to make municipal broadband and WI-Fi illegal, and a number of other states where they are trying to.
We have good news, the Senate Commerce Committee has passed a bill out to the floor that overturns these laws with broad bipartisan support.
Bad news is that there is no similar effort right now in the house, so call your congresscritter, and tell them to support the Community Broadband Act.
I would also add as an addendum, that he likely expects to authorize such behavior, and an admission that it is torture would be an admission of guilt.
More unrest in the Niger Delta. This time, the local rebels hit a Nigerian navy ship successfully.
Oil is not to be found in stable places with competent, non-corrupt, and transparent government. Look at Texas to see how oil makes a place backward and corrupt.
Normally, I’d go with something “earthier” but, I’m trying not to be crude.
They are voting to support Mukasey’s Nomination.
With Shcumer, I think that it’s just that he doesn’t want to admit that he’s wrong. As to Feinstein, she always seems to do this. I think that it may come from the fact that when she first (or 2nd, I can’t recall) she ran against some Republican Rich pig, and had to mortgage her house to have enough money to compete.
Her ostensible argument, that this is the best we could possibly expect, while likely true, is also not her real motivation. She’s gone this route way too many times for me to believe.
*Full disclosure, my great grandfather, Harry Goldman, and her grandfather, Sam Goldman were brothers.
I have no clue as to what this means, but it can’t be good.
Good.
Every time this happens, the Republicans are brought that much closer to whiny baby Mr. 24% popularity as the guys who want children not to get medical care.
Let them choke on it.
This could get very interesting. Does anyone know the law regarding debts that are incurred as a result of fraud by the creditor.
I could see this going in any number of ways.
The Amazon entry for Jonah Goldberg’s book, Liberal Fascism, got hacked:
You can click for the full sized image (not taken by me), but the text reads “Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from When I Got My Advance Until I Finally Hand in the Manuscript in 2011.”
This is particularly amusing because even among the nepotism blessed children of the original Neocons, Goldberg is an embarrassment.
Wwell, it appears that Mr. Sanctimony is being investigated because of contributions by a mobbed up garbage collector.
Schadenfreude
I have commented earlier about the difference between Naval and Army officers. In the Navy, it is expected that one would have made professional enemies before becoming captain, where in the army, there is more of an Eddie Haskell ethos.
Now that Admiral Michael Mullen is chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff, we are seeing an honesty that was previously lacking:
Seems the incoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Michael Mullen, has banned the use of the phrase “Global War on Terror” (GWOT) and has prohibited using it “in any future correspondence,” according to a Sept. 27 e-mail from a Mullen aide.
Personally, I’ve been using Total War Against Terrorism for some time.
Let me be clear, the issue of the Kurds is a thorny one. As what is arguably the largest ethnic group in the world without a nation, there is clearly a moral case to be made for statehood for some of the areas in which they live.
However, there is also a compelling counter argument to be made that any such arrangement, or process toward such an arrangement would be severely destabilizing to the region*.
Let me make this clear, this post is NOT about a solution to the “Kurdish Problem”†, though I do favor a homeland for the Kurds.
Rather it is a commentary on on the Bush administration’s foreign policy failures, and while I agree with its basic thesis, that the Bush Administration has ruined everything that it touched, I am concerned about the disdain that is shown regarding the Kurd and Kurdish nationalism.
I would note this paragraph comes to mind:
The Iraqi leadership, already presiding over a failed state, agonized at being caught in the crossfire. The Iraqi president, the avuncular Kurd Jalal Talabani, hypocritically condemned al-Assad for urging a foreign military invasion of an Arab country, even though he himself had supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Massoud Barzani, the pudgy turbaned leader of the Kurdistan Regional Authority, warned that his government would defend its citizens and not sit idly by if Turkish troops rolled through Kurdish cities in Iraq. On Sunday, the Iraqi Parliament, having been unable to agree on virtually any internal issue or enact any benchmark legislation, promptly passed a resolution condemning the Turkish Parliament.
(Emphasis mine)
Let me be clear, the basic facts of the situation are accurate. What struck me was that fact that these were the only people who had their motivations described (hypocritically condemned) or were described physically at all (the “avuncular Kurd Jalal Talabani” and “Massoud Barzani, the pudgy turbaned leader).”
This appears to be a conscious decision to diminish these figures. And I would note that whenever I read Juan Cole‡, it is the rule, rather than the exception to feel the same sense of disdain dripping from his keys as regards the Kurds.
*Truth be told, before Bush and His Evil Minions™ got their hands on US Middle East policy, I would have thought that it was impossible to make the region less stable, but they have exceeded my wildest expectations.
†Yes, I am aware of the historical reference being made.
‡Truth be told, I do not do so as often as I should, he knows his stuff.
Well, it appears that botnet of compromised machines are sending out email pimping for Ron Paul.
It should be noted that the article does note that the researcher who discovered this has no evidence of any connections between the Paul campaign and the botnet spammers.
Given the genuinely altruistic bent of spammers, it is possible that these people are just acting out of the goodness of their hearts, just like Dick Cheney does.