Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary

Wrong Analogy

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The inevitability about Hillary Clinton seems to be becoming an inevitability of her defeat in the primaries. Ron Fournier has a piece about her abandonment by her former allies/cronies/sycophants as Obama continues to build momentum:

“If (Barack) Obama continues to win …. the whole raison d’etre for her campaign falls apart and we’ll see people running from her campaign likes rats on a ship,” said Democratic strategist Jim Duffy, who is not aligned with either campaign.

Actually, I think that a better analogy would be a sinking ship abandoning a pair of rats.

But I think that he underestimates both the power and the ruthlessness of the Clintons. Perhaps after losing enough primaries, she’ll bow out, but if so, I’ll be very surprised. She’s been working for this for decades, and I don’t think that she’ll give up without a very vicious fight, including a convention fight to seat the Michigan and Florida delagates, and a lot of behind-the-scenes pressure. In addition, we don’t know how many FBI files they actually had access to back in the nineties, or whose they were, or what was in them. It’s certainly conceivable that this is a weapon that they can hold over the head of the super delegates.

And even if she ends up not getting the nomination, I suspect that the Democrats will still have an ugly election in the fall. There are many ways that Billary can sabotage Obama’s run without it being obvious that that’s their intent (just as in fact Bill may have sabotaged Hillary’s primary campaign, perhaps out of fear of being shown up by his wife as president). After all, if he wins, it makes it a lot harder for her to make another attempt in 2012. No matter who wins the nomination, I won’t be surprised, nor will I be displeased, to see the civil war within the Democrat Party (that was started by the Clintons) continue.

Humor, Political Commentary, Satire, War Commentary

No Thynge Coold Plese Me Moore

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…than a blogge by Sir Iowahawke on that ArchBisheoppe Of Canterbeerry:

25 Sayeth the pilgryms to Bishop Rowan,

26 “Father, we do not like howe thynges are goin’.

27 You know we are as Lefte as thee,

28 But of layte have beyn chaunced to see

29 From Edinburgh to London-towne

30 The Musslemans in burnoose gowne

31 Who beat theyr ownselfs with theyr knyves

32 Than goon home and beat theyr wyves

33 And slaye theyr daughtyrs in honour killlynge

34 Howe do we stoppe the bloode fromme spillynge?”

35 The Bishop sipped upon hys tea

36 And sayed, “an open mind must we

37 Keep, for know thee well the Mussel-man

38 Has hys own laws for hys own clan

39 So question not hys Muslim reason

40 And presaerve ye well social cohesion.”

Reade, thee, the reste.

It cood be only the product of an undhimmified English major.

Political Commentary, Space

A Billion Here, A Billion There

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There’s an interesting post on military aircraft procurement over at Winds of Change today (interesting if you’re interested in such things, that is).

Norm Augustine, former head of Martin Marietta (now part of Lockheed Martin) wrote an amusing (and insightful) book back in the eighties called “Augustine’s Laws” (it’s now on its sixth edition, last published about a decade ago). One of the things he did was to plot the growth in cost of military fighters over the decades since the war, and extrapolate it out. He predicted that in some year of the twenty-first century, the military would be able to only afford a single multi-purpose aircraft, and the Air Force and Navy would have to share it.

One point made in comments over there is that the reason these things cost so much per unit (I was shocked to read that the Raptor is a third of a billion dollars per unit) is because it includes amortization of the development and fixed production costs–if they had decided to purchase the originally planned seven hundred, the price per aircraft would be much lower. The problem is that, though we get more bang for the buck, we never want to spend that many bucks.

We did the same thing with the Shuttle. It was about a five-billion-dollar development program, in seventies dollars, but when the fleet size was cut from seven to five during Carter-Mondale (Mondale actually wanted to completely kill the program) as a cost saving, the price per orbiter went up a good bit. It would have probably only cost an additional billion or so to get the two extra vehicles, and we’d be in a lot better shape now (all other events since being equal) with a remaining fleet of five, instead of three. Having had two more might have made us more willing to continue to press forward even in the face of the losses, because even if the president hadn’t decided to end the program next year, we’d probably have to do it anyway, particularly if we lost one more, and had only two left. In fact, one of the few smart moves made on the program in the eighties was to order “structural spares” (things like the titanium keel and spar) before the production was shut down and tooling dismantled. That allowed us to build Endeavor after Challenger, something that would not have been possible otherwise, and in the absence of that new vehicle, we’d have been down to two after the Columbia loss.

We’re not just penny-wise pound-foolish in production. The Shuttle has a similar problem in ops. If we’d had more vehicles, and made the investment in facilities for them, we could have doubled the flight rate, without that much of an increase in annual fixed costs (perhaps a billion more a year). Which would have been a better deal: four flights a year for three billion a year (a typical number), resulting in a cost of three quarters of a billion per flight, or eight flights a year for four billion, with a cost of half a billion per flight?

Neither number is attractive, but the taxpayer would have gotten a lot more for the money if the purse strings had been loosened on the program. It might have made it a lot more sustainable.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

Down A Big Cup Of Duuuhhhh

43 Comments

Some intelligence agencies are starting to think that maybe bin Laden hasn’t been alive for a long time:

Questions about Bin Laden are being raised by intelligence officials who say that without a specific time mark with a photo of Bin Laden, his presence cannot be confirmed and the most recent statements could have been put together from older audio.

Yes, and that has been true since Tora Bora. Haven’t these people ever wondered, or speculated why bin Laden, who was second only to Senator Schumer when it came to being a camera hog, all of a sudden switched from video to audio about six years ago? Even if he said things that seemed to indicate knowledge of recent events, that could have been done by splicing and manipulating an audio tape, or finding someone to imitate his voice. Maybe they’ve been using voice prints, but I don’t know how reliable they really are. I do know that it’s a lot harder to fake a video, and when I consider the fact that we’ve heard only audios, and not seen a new video (at least one that can be shown to be from a post-2002 period) I have long thought that he’s been pushing up poppies since then.

Of course, the other reason that I’ve long thought that he’s dead is that our so-called intelligence agencies–the same ones that subverted our pressure on Iran last fall with their “intelligence” estimate that they’re not building a bomb–have continued to tell me that he’s alive. To me, the question is not whether or not he’s alive, but why so many in the so-called intelligence community have been so determined to continue to attempt to convince us that he is for the past six years.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

The Cairing Party

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The misspelling is deliberate:

Perhaps some members of Congress had been fooled by CAIR’s deception. But now they have no excuse. Now Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who saluted CAIR’s “important work,” and Sen. Paul Sarbanes, who applauded “CAIR’s mission,” know better.

The criminal briefing should also disabuse Rep. John Conyers, who’s trumpeted CAIR’s “long and distinguished history.” Rep. John Dingell, who said “my office door is always open” to CAIR, now has an obligation to slam it shut.

No red-blooded American lawmaker wants to do anything that would facilitate the support of terrorists, not even Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who’s gushed “CAIR has much to be proud of.”

And shame on the (much fewer) Republicans on the list as well.

Moderate American Muslims need to form and promote an organization that truly speaks for them, and not for radicals and terrorism. But if they do, will the Democrats pay any attention, or will they remain enthralled with CAIR?

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Big Lie Continues

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I don’t generally agree with Paul Krugman (to put it mildly) and in fact I don’t agree with much in this piece, either, except for one thing:

I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality.

But the real reason I put this post up is to note the lie that will not die (mostly because the media liars, or at least deranged, such as Krugman, who may actually believe it, continue to promulgate it).

The prime example of Clinton rules in the 1990s was the way the press covered Whitewater. A small, failed land deal became the basis of a multiyear, multimillion-dollar investigation, which never found any evidence of wrongdoing on the Clintons’ part, yet the “scandal” became a symbol of the Clinton administration’s alleged corruption.

There was abundant evidence of wrongdoing found, and it can be found in Bob Ray’s report. The fact that he chose not to indict was not because there wasn’t “any” evidence. It was because he didn’t think that he had enough (and indeed, he may have thought that no amount would have been enough) to successfully prosecute and convict them, given the fact that it would only take a single Clinton cultist to hang a jury, as happened in the Susan MacDougal case.

Just to clarify the record. I won’t bother to fisk the rest of Krugman’s Clinton-defending nonsense today.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

Boo Hoo

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Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is very demoralized:

In the Anbar document, the author describes an al-Qaida in crisis, with citizens growing weary of militants’ presence and foreign fighters too eager to participate in suicide missions rather than continuing to fight, said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a U.S. military spokesman.

“We lost cities and afterward, villages … We find ourselves in a wasteland desert,” Smith quoted the document as saying.

The memo cites militants’ increasing difficulty in moving around and transporting weapons and suicide belts because of better equipped Iraqi police and more watchful citizens, Smith said.

The author of the diary seized near Balad wrote that he was once in charge of 600 fighters, but only 20 were left “after the tribes changed course”_ a reference to how many Sunni tribesmen have switched sides to fight alongside the Americans, Smith said.

No thanks to Harry or Nancy. This is a real problem for the press. There may not be enough foreign fighters left to create the new Tet that they’re dying to report.

[Update early afternoon]

The WaPo has more detailed account. Apparently the diary was from the October time period.