.:. Da Blog .:.

Football Fans For Truth

It's not that I even particularly like football or even watch it. It's that these pictures are priceless.

posted by Lori @ 2:01 AM 0 comments

"Lucy Ramirez" and Burkett's Sci Fi story about the documents

USA Confidential
The link above is worth reading to the end in that creepy "City Confidential" voice over. But USAToday, for once, is actually reporting on something, as silly as it may be. I feel sorry for Burkett in some ways -- he's a pathetic character. I feel more sorry for his wife -- "honey, we've lost it all" -- than him.

Some are giving this thing a "deep throat" quality that doesn't ring true because the existence of these memos, even if they were real, just doesn't matter -- just like Kerry's military service -- who cares? Let's just grant that both of these candidates are rich little boys who benefited from their family's monetary or political status.

When Kerry had enough video and medals to throw away, he applied for permission to leave Vietnam. Granted, three Purple Hearts and you're out. But after he came stateside, he again applied for permission to be relieved from desk duty before his service time was up (and, miraculously, that was granted too). Maybe he had is own campaign to work on. Don't you think his early release from desk duty took some string pulling?

But all this happened THIRTY YEARS AGO. Guess what? I'm resigned that the government is going to be run by people in power. Powerful people get strings pulled. Duh.

So what does this whole episode show us about either candidate? Well, one of them has spent four years working in the White House. The other? Who knows what Kerry will do? Let's look at his record in the Senate. There's no national media hype or See BS story about that.... Ah, sorry for the rant. Read the article, it's a hoot.

posted by Lori @ 1:16 PM 0 comments

Macaulay Culkin Drug Bust - September 17, 2004

If you are tired of being home alone, and decide instead to hang out with Michael Jackson, this is what *could* happen to you. Sorry, but this pic is just so pathetic that I couldn't help myself.

posted by Lori @ 1:33 PM 0 comments

Kerry, Cheney and Halliburton: None Dare Call it Fascism

Sen. Kerry, along with apparently many other Americans, is suffering from the misconception that the Vice-President of the United States has been fixing no-bid contracts for Halliburton. The Congress of the United States has looked into these allegations and determined that they have no basis in fact. Given Mr. Cheney’s historically close ties to the government-contracting giant, accusations of this nature were perhaps inevitable. What is most disturbing is the dangerous naivety they reveal.

John Kerry likes to remind voters that Dick Cheney is still receiving substantial payments from Halliburton while he has been in office. In the same breath he points to recent contract and billing disputes between Halliburton and the Federal Government as if mere rhetorical juxtaposition constituted proof of correlation. The clear implication of Mr. Kerry’s remarks is that Halliburton is paying large amounts of cash to the Vice-President in order to insure favored treatment and enable limitless opportunities for unsupervised graft at taxpayer expense. This might provide an oversimplified plot line that Kerry can sell to voters suspicious of crony capitalism; unfortunately it is a fiction whose promulgation masks a far more profoundly deplorable reality.

Vice-President Cheney has indeed been receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in deferred compensation as part of his “retirement” package from Halliburton. These payments are not, as Sen. Kerry suggests, bribes; but rather are a far more common American tradition, the tax dodge. If Mr. Cheney had accepted a single lump sum payment upon retirement from his role as CEO of Halliburton, his tax obligations would have been astronomical. Dick Cheney’s behavior is a resounding example of why Candidate Kerry’s policy of raising the marginal tax rate of the upper 2% won’t work. Once you are making millions of dollars a year, you can afford the hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees required to create trust funds, foundations and deferred compensation packages custom designed around the latest iteration of the tax code. That a lifelong Republican politician has an aversion to taxation should come as a surprise to no one.

To hear Sen. Kerry tell it, Halliburton was just a little oil drilling company from Texas until Dick Cheney entered the White House. Regrettably, nothing could be further from the truth. A closer look at Halliburton reveals an over thirty-year relationship with the Pentagon that was born in the era of Lyndon Johnson. Halliburton has spent the better part of four decades grooming Defense Department personnel to move seamlessly back and forth between their company and government. They hire retired generals and other officers responsible for procurement and logistics to enable them to develop unique suites of services for the United States military. This is how it works: a general at the Pentagon works with Halliburton to develop a request for a proposal. Halliburton submits the perfect response to the RFP. The general signs off on the contract for the Pentagon. The general retires and goes to work for Halliburton fulfilling the proposal he designed to “outsource” his own job. The general is generously compensated by Halliburton, allowing him to make more money in a few years than he made during his entire military career.

This practice reached its epitome when Dick Cheney moved from Secretary of Defense to CEO of Halliburton. As Secretary of Defense, Cheney advocated a leaner, meaner post Cold War military in which “outsourcing” was a key component. As CEO of Halliburton, it was Mr. Cheney’s role to procure the very same new contracting opportunities he had just created in his former position. Surprise, surprise, he was very good at it. However, there is more to running a Fortune 500 than golfing with your buddies at DOD and securing the inside track on government contracts. While Cheney was heading Halliburton, there were problems with inadequate management and fulfillment of contracts government and otherwise. The company was mired in litigation that was compounded by persistent “accounting irregularities.” These “irregularities” were not limited to the billing department. Halliburton repeatedly overstated earnings estimates and eventually irritated stockholders with its fraudulent practices. By the time most of these mismanagement problems came to light, Dick Cheney had “retired” with an unprecedentedly generous package that was so large that he could not “afford” to accept it all at once. It seems clear that while at Halliburton, Dick Cheney behaved in a fast and loose fashion that was characteristic of the era, but that today would get him thrown in jail by his own attorney general, or at the very least, hauled up before Congress to answer embarrassing questions or plead the fifth like his friends at Enron.

Over the last forty years Halliburton has joined the ranks of an elite group of government contractors whose very existence has become essential to the maintenance of the defense of the United States. Companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Rand and now Halliburton have become virtually indistinguishable from the Department of Defense itself. Few would dispute that if all these companies disappeared overnight, this would present a severe impediment to the adequate defense of the nation. The question is what should the nature of their relationship to the government be? Once a private company becomes too “important” to fail, then how is it to be held accountable?

Any company that does billions of dollars worth of high risk contracting with the Federal Government is going to run into hundreds of millions of dollars worth of billing “disputes.” The complexity of the tasks at hand, along with the highly charged political atmosphere in which procurement decisions are made, is guaranteed to yield this result. It is hard enough to determine the real value of goods when the government is buying tangible hardware like airplanes. It is harder still when it is purchasing “services” like those provided by Halliburton. While hawkish Republicans may like to refer to the “market” to determine the price of goods, that calculus simply does not apply to companies that have a defacto monopoly on the goods and services that they provide. Halliburton is just such a company. Thanks to forty years of revolving doors between it and the Pentagon, as well as with the White House’s of both parties, we are now dependant on it to do things that were formally done in house. The cost of completely reorganizing our military infrastructure as well as the time that it would now take to revert is prohibitive, not to mention politically untenable.

The problem is one whose name neither of the major political parties dare speak. There is a word for a system in which government subsidized, privately held monopolies are regulated and contracted by the state. Invariably, in such a system there is always a revolving door between the management of these companies and the government that enables and oversees them. With that revolving door comes conflicts of interest, waste of resources and with them an inevitable distrust of government and corporations. What is the name of that status quo system that none dare speak? Fascism.

Until socialist leaning Democrats and laissez faire capitalist leaning Republicans are both willing to acknowledge that they have promised their constituencies one thing and delivered another, the status quo will remain. It should concern all Americans, left and right, that our military industrial complex is defacto a fascist system. I use this word advisedly and with no intent of hyperbole. Let me make it clear that I do not think that the patriotic Americans who comprise our military are anti-Semitic, sadistic, power crazed, thugs. Rather, I believe that they are, like the rest of Americans, victims of a system that has been created over several decades by Republican and Democrat administrations alike, beneath the radar of the American people in general. Most of us have yet to experience the jack-booted totalitarian tyranny associated with this word. But in a time when we are told to fear the invisible enemies without and within, when our government argues to suspend habeas corpus and finesse the Geneva Conventions, the prospect of a fascistic military industrial complex should at least give one pause.

Jihadist terrorism presents a real threat to the security of this country. It is likely to continue to do so for at least the next couple of decades. It has been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of innocents in our lifetimes. But state sponsored militaristic totalitarianism has been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of people over the same period of time. Terrorist thugs can harass but not defeat the United States. What can defeat us is the indefinite tolerance of a fascistic infrastructure in the name of a War on Terror. Liberty can be lost with the stroke of a pen, but it takes the shedding of blood to regain it from a totalitarian. The price of maintaining our Liberty is vigilance not only against enemies from without, but also from our own fears and profiteers within.

Sen. Kerry would better serve the country if he would tell the American people what he would propose as an alternative to Halliburton-style fascism, rather than simply taking the cheap shot at Vice-President Cheney’s guilt by association with it.

--------------------------
This is, of course, a Joe post. It was summarily deleted by FreeRepublic.com within 5 minutes of posting. I guess it's just not "republican" enough for them. The truth is tough.

posted by Lori @ 11:59 AM 0 comments

The Shape of Days: The IBM Selectric Composer

The Shape of Days: The IBM Selectric Composer
Just to jump on the bloggin' bandwagon - here's a link to an in-depth analysis of why those silly old memos are fraudulent. It's the best, most factual account of how the memos make RatherGate unravel. Also, this guy is really not impressed with Dan's journalistic integrity (to say the least).

posted by Lori @ 1:12 PM 0 comments

Senator Kerry’s Secret Plan for Ignominy in Iraq

In a speech before the VFW Sen. Kerry assured veterans that “I know what we have to do in Iraq. We need a President who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side, because that’s the right way to get the job done in Iraq and bring our troops home.”

While it is reassuring to hear that the Democrat aspirant “knows what to do,” we would all take considerably more solace if he would deign to share it with us. In a deja vu reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s secret plan to “get us out of Vietnam,” John Kerry promises a guaranteed outcome to an unknowable situation. Nixon’s secret plan was the pattern bombing of North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. This was a horrific and cynical gesture that amounted to little more than a fig leaf for an ignominious retreat, and the abandonment of the South Vietnamese people to what seemed their inevitable fate. In light of this, one shudders at the prospect of Sen. Kerry’s secret plan and the perhaps justifiable reasons he has to keep it that way.

For a man that has recently suffered a precipitous drop in the polls, Sen. Kerry seems to have an unwavering confidence in the power of his own winning personality, since that is presumably what he means by his reference to “credibility.” Indeed he proffers no other reason why our “allies” will come to bail us out of a war that every politician in France and Germany has staked their very careers on opposing. While the junior senator from Massachusetts’ continuants may have a high tolerance for 180-degree policy shifts, his European comrades might find their constituencies expect a certain degree of consistency when it comes to spending their nations’ blood and treasure. But Sen. Kerry looks like the cat that swallowed the canary. He has implied that he has been involved in secret talks with his potential new colleagues in Europe, a la October Surprise. Just what has he promised them in return for their “support?” My guess, it will, at the very least, be Halliburton’s share of the graft opportunities of Iraq. More importantly, what have they offered in return for Sen. Kerry’s unauthorized concessions?

If that was all it took to get the French to open their checkbooks and military morgues most Americans would consider it a square deal. However, does anyone want to take any bets on the French and Germans actually doing their share of the heavy lifting in a conflict they so vehemently opposed? The most likely outcome is the non-coalition Europeans will get a substantial portion of the most lucrative contracting opportunities. France’s oil giant and Col. Khadafi’s business partner, FINA, will return to Iraq and undermine the coalition’s political agenda on the ground leading to further bloodshed and instability. Not a single French or German soldier will ever see the sunrise in Iraq. Monies (if any) contributed to the rebuilding of Iraq will amount to an infinitesimal fraction of what the new looting opportunities will have yielded for non-coalition “allies.” Finally, France and Germany will agree to reduce the shrill tone and volume of their anti-American rhetoric by 50% while maintaining a sustained deafening roar. Sen. Kerry’s agenda for “allied” support amounts to little more than paying extortion money to a criminal in the hopes that he will slander you with only half the news outlets in town.

The outcome in which the non-coalition Europeans get something tangible and our bonafide coalition allies get virtually nothing in return is actually one of the more optimistic scenarios. In WWII, France had relatively little enthusiasm for fighting but plenty of ambition when it came to division of the spoils. Ho Chi Min and his forces had consistently and reliably cooperated with American forces to rout the Japanese from Vietnam. America at that point was closely allied to Min and had promised him support for Vietnamese independence from colonial French tyranny after the war. When Japan and Germany surrendered, the French stepped forward with their list of demands for French acquiescence to Gen. Marshall’s plan for a New World Order in Europe. At the top of this list, France’s demand that her dominion over the enslaved peoples of Southeast Asia be ratified by the world’s democracies. In a disastrous gesture to appease our “ally” France, we betrayed our ally Vietnam. Ho Chi Min was maneuvered ever closer to Russian influence by our desertion, and through this to a more militant and virulent brand of revolutionary Marxism. We all know what happened to the French in Vietnam, and that ultimately the United States ended up spending our blood and treasure in a misguided attempt to clean up a French and Russian mess. In light of the lessons of history, it seems unlikely that appeasing France and Russia is, as Sen. Kerry says “the right way to get the job done.”

This brings me back to John Kerry’s secret plan. His principle criticism of the prosecution of the War in Iraq, other than we didn’t let the French veto it, seems to be that we need more troops. This sounds more like LBJ’s policy of escalation than the dovish image Sen. Kerry seeks to project to his base. What concerns me more however, is his obsession with dates certain for ending conflicts as well as his priority for getting the troops home. When an army is sent into the field, its first priority is victory. Richard Nixon’s secret plan also entailed ending a war in a hurry through a combination of escalation of hostilities, retreat and appeasement. Just one problem, Nixon ended the war but failed to, as Sen. Kerry put it, “get the job done.” Today hundreds of thousands of the victims of Vietnamese Communist atrocities lay buried in unmarked mass graves. Millions of people there live in abject poverty and under oppressive tyranny to this very day. America itself is still traumatized by the memory of a war in which victory was not the first priority and hence not achieved. For the sake of the people of Iraq as well as the United States, I sure hope Sen. John Kerry’s secret plan turns out better than Tricky Dick’s.

posted by Anonymous @ 8:44 PM 1 comments

GMail Invites

I've got 4 invites for free GMail accounts. Let me know if you'd like one.

posted by Lori @ 10:06 PM 2 comments

Hurricanes...

Some of our friends in Florida have been hit by Frances, and are blogging up a storm (heh) about it:

• Florida Cracker
  
• Eye of the Storm
  
• Hurricane Blog

The looting has commenced, a ton of folks are without power, but at least I-Hop was open most of the day.

I don't mean to be flip about it, it is a dangerous and scary thing, but the folks in Florida have such courage and a great sense of humor about this whole terrible thing, that their spirit has elevated my rainy mood. If you're in Florida, try to stay dry and well-rooted -- Ivan's on the way!

posted by Lori @ 4:29 AM 0 comments

Every Man Needs a Good Woman

Believe it or not, I'm JUST Ten Minutes from Normal

Although you might think I'm going to compare Theresa to Laura, you could be wrong.
Hey, just for fun, let's compare Mary Beth Cahill with Karen Hughes. These are the broads that are really running this campaign. Bush's speech read better than he delivered it. Kerry should have never "reported for duty." And Mary Beth, no matter how qualified she is, is in deep doo-doo.

posted by Lori @ 2:31 PM 0 comments

Logic & Sanity: School seized in Russia.

Unbelievable translation of Russian News
Here's a guy who translated Russian newspaper to give us a blow by blow account of what was going on during the terrorism at the school in Russia. He's continuing to update the account here.

UPDATE: New Updates to this situation can be found here.

posted by Lori @ 3:37 PM 0 comments

Answerbag.com - All the FAQs you can use

Answerbag.com - All the FAQs you can use

Some poor soul asked "What is the purpose of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions?"

So, after a tortured editing session, this is what we came up with for the poor guy (sorry for all he asked):

"The original purpose of a National Convention (Republican or Democrat) was to nominate a candidate for the party and to negotiate a party platform. This result may seem a foregone conclusion today, as the National Conventions we watch on TV are largely scripted affairs, funded by taxpayer dollars. So you may rightly ask, “What created this historical artifact and why should I care? What madness is this?”

"When a candidate wins a primary election in a state, all the delegates allotted to that state vote for him at the National Convention. If no primary candidate seeking the nomination has a majority of the delegates sent to the National Convention, then the purpose of the convention becomes to negotiate whom the party will pick to run in the election and what policies will appear in the party platform. Minority candidates in this circumstance can have substantial impact on the party platform in return for recommending that their delegates support a particular primary candidate. At past conventions (i.e. Democrats in Chicago in ’68) riots broke out inside and outside convention halls.

"The addition of limitless funds combined with scientific polling and campaigning techniques have reduced the current role of conventions to taxpayer funded partisan political advertisements for the two principle candidates, deliberately excluding all others (Libertarians, Greens, etc.).

"In the modern era (last 25 years), conventions are anticlimactic as incumbent candidates invariably go unchallenged by their party, and challenging candidates tend to focus their attention in the primary season on winning in particular states that have a large number of delegates to send to the convention. But during the primary season, once a candidate has lost one or two of these super states (states that carry a large number of delegates), he now finds it virtually impossible to raise funds to continue the campaign all the way to the convention. Hence, only one fund-raising survivor makes it to the National Convention. The historical influence of other viable contenders for the nomination is now virtually non-existent at a contemporary convention.

"Off the convention floor, National Conventions also bring all the politicos into one place; so all the lobbyists can have access at one time. During the week of a convention, hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent by corporations and special interests groups to entertain and court legislators and regulators, where they can gingerly explain their concerns regarding legislation affecting their interests. Hundreds of millions more will be promised to candidates for future election campaigns once casual accords are reached at these "parties." That is politics. After all, why do you think they called Democratic and Republican political associations “Parties” in the first place?"

The site is really a hoot to browse. First, you notice that some of the posed questions are either not answerable, poorly formed, or posed by some middle school kid who's trying to find an easy way to answer their homework. Then, if you look closer, some of the answers are a lot of fun as well. Worth keeping around if you're bored and want to know all about Mormonism, fer instance.

posted by Lori @ 7:15 AM 0 comments

Mothers Opposing Bush: Join The MOB!

Check out Mothers For Kerry. You know, I don't have a problem with Mothers Opposing Bush -- in fact, I understand it really well -- I mean, why mothers wouldn't want Bush to win. What I don't understand, is why the default action is to support Kerry. Of all people! There's a long list of possible candidates -- see here. ( I really want to know about the National Barking Spider Resurgence candidate -- see this.)

posted by Lori @ 3:36 PM 0 comments

Intellectual Conservative Politics and Philosophy

Intellectual Conservative Politics and Philosophy

Joe's article is posted here now, too.

posted by Lori @ 11:02 AM 0 comments

Kerry Honored by Vietnamese Communists

www.wintersoldier.com - Kerry Honored by Vietnamese Communists

OK, so like, I *really* like this guy. By golly, he should be our next Prezident. Sure. Right. Go vote.

posted by Lori @ 10:02 PM 0 comments

The New Soldier

Finally! The Kerry book, New Soldier, is available in PDF! A copy of this goodie goes for over $400 on Ebay, but you can get it, sans Kerry's photographic "talent" - just text only PDF - here:
New Soldier Intro
Part Two
Epilogue
Although the book has been described as a "photo essay," there's quite a bit of text here, folks.

This link is where I found the PDFs of the book. It's a really good timeline of JK's career. Everyone should read it.

I don't particularly like his opponent, he doesn't particularly speak for me, but I will vote for him just to avoid this jerk becoming Commander in Chief. Report for this, dude.

posted by Lori @ 5:43 PM 0 comments