COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Thursday, May 31, 2007

And The 2007 Award for Most Stupid Architectural Firm goes to..


Berger Devine Yaeger Inc.

Baghdad embassy plans turn up online
USA Today
WASHINGTON (AP) — Detailed plans for the new U.S. Embassy under construction in Baghdad appeared online Thursday in a breach of the tight security surrounding the sensitive project.
Computer-generated projections of the soon-to-be completed, heavily fortified compound were posted on the website of the Kansas City, Mo.-based architectural firm that was contracted to design the massive facility in the Iraqi capital.

The images were removed by Berger Devine Yaeger Inc. shortly after the company was contacted by the State Department.

"We work very hard to ensure the safety and security of our employees overseas," said Gonzalo Gallegos, a department spokesman. "This kind of information out in the public domain detracts from that effort."

The 10 images included a scheme of the overall layout of the compound, plus depictions of individual buildings including the embassy itself, office annexes, the Marine Corps security post, swimming pool, recreation center and the ambassador's and deputy ambassador's residences.


34 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. What about roof top landing pads, for the evac copters?

    We're gonna get some great video.

    The last bird out.

    Just like Korea, but with no permanent bases.

    Who's kiddin' who?

    Back to Baker-Hamilton, back to the future!

    Arm yesterday's enemy, he's an ally, today.

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  3. That it was purposeful misinformation is too much to hope for, I suppose. What a fine display of either brazen stupidity or wilfull anarchitecture. Same roots and results, of course.

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  4. They'll pay attention to THIS! Donations to RNC Down 40%.

    Now you're hitting them where it hurts.

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  5. Ya beat me, Rufus!
    Stick around, I'll get a GOOD LINK you'll like!
    ---
    Fire The Messenger

    There has been a sharp decline in contributions from RNC phone solicitations, another fired staffer said, reporting that many former donors flatly refuse to give more money to the national party if Mr. Bush and the Senate Republicans insist on supporting what these angry contributors call "amnesty" for illegal aliens.

    "Every donor in 50 states we reached has been angry, especially in the last month and a half, and for 99 percent of them immigration is the No. 1 issue," said the former employee.

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  6. The RNC says, oh no, it's not related.

    The Republican National Committee, hit by a grass-roots donors' rebellion over President Bush's immigration policy, has fired all 65 of its telephone solicitors, Ralph Z. Hallow will report Friday in The Washington Times.
    Faced with an estimated 40 percent fall-off in small-donor contributions and aging phone-bank equipment that the RNC said would cost too much to update, Anne Hathaway, the committee's chief of staff, summoned the solicitations staff last week and told them they were out of work, effective immediately, the fired staffers told The Times.
    ...
    "The phone-bank employees were terminated," RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt wrote by e-mail in response to questions sent by The Times. "This was not an easy decision. The first and primary motivating factor was the state of the phone bank technology, which was outdated and difficult to maintain. The RNC was advised that we would soon need an entire new system to remain viable."


    In fact the RNC lady claims the entire story to be false!

    The RNC spokeswoman denied that the committee has seen any drop-off in contributions.
    "Any assertion that overall donations have gone down is patently false," Miss Schmitt said. "We continue to out raise our Democrat counterpart by a substantive amount (nearly double)."


    Do not be decieved brothers, save your souls, support the New World Order.

    That or face eternal damnation by the Republican Party, it's President and God, himself. The very soul of the United States needs these reforms. Do the hard thing, it's for your own good.

    Michelle blaming Mr Rove, not the boss, how quaint.
    She is just discovering that she is a RINO, after all this time.
    A rude awakening, for Ms Malkin.

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  7. O/T Here's a fun site with a multitude of tests that are dot-the-circle answer..Have fun

    tests

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  8. Jane is on target but like so many of us today we have begun to question everything in this administration.

    In reading the article from USA Today my immediate thought was disinformation. I find it hard to believe they are THE real plans. Fortunately nobody else knows if they're the correct ones either.

    I can tell you from personal experience that many operations are totally false. There may even be a series of false operation/plans. The firm begining sited maay not even be the firm that is actually doing the plans.

    That is a world of mirrors and few know which one is the two way mirror or if there is a two way mirror.

    I personally worked on operations that were totally bogus, expensive but bogus. Thats the way the game is played. Nothing is as it seems, and very few know what the endgame is.
    The real plans, I doubt it.

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  9. Only through these hardships, my brothers, can we save the soul of our country. Through our pain and sacrifice, we will find redemtion and save the US. Making it part of an ever greater America. From the Artic Circle to the Isthmus.
    One continent, one people.
    AMERICANS ALL!


    Truely united in our diversity. Open your mind brothers, then you will see the opportunities!

    Do the hard thing, for America, for your soul.

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  10. I am one with the People of the Earth/Universe.

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  11. Immigration Poll
    "Education"/Propaganda has an effect.
    (as well as whose Ox is being gored)

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  12. OT,

    Obviously, the 50-stone hog photo is real, but amateurish. Taken close up, so the hog fills (even more than fills) the frame, the short focal length exagerating the hog in foreground at the expense of the boy behind the hog. Just as a close up photo of a dog makes his snout look comically oversize.

    As valid a question would be, Is the boy really that small?

    A photo taken at distance, and then enlarged, or a photo taken at distance via zoom lens would have given a more accurate representation of relative size between hog and boy.

    500 lbs. of sausage, ain't that about right, Possumtater?

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  13. Those testicles are tightening at the Republican National Committee, Rufus.

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  14. Good news, Brothers and Sisters!

    The Annointed One has now swallowed a 55-gallon drum of "Climate Change" Kool-Aid.

    Bush in U-Turn on Climate Change

    If he approaches this with the zeal and vision of immigration, the earth out to heat 400 degrees by next fall.

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  15. db2m--where are the bullet holes?If I had been hit by eight .50 caliber rounds, my guts would be leaking all over creation.

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  16. You don't mean to say that Ms Schmitt may not be tellin' the whole truth, bob, when she says that donations are not off, even though the phone room operation is closed.

    Come on, if we can't believe Ms Schmitt of the RNC, who can we believe?

    Get on board, before the soul train leaves the station, there may not be much time left, to help US find redemtion, through the hardship we will cause ourselves.

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  17. Citizens! Write no checks to the Republican National Committee, pending the outcome of the immigration debate.

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  18. Lordy, lordy, I hadn't thought of it that way, rata del desierto.

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  19. Ah, there it is, right towards the bottom of deuces quote--"the swimming pool"--any well constructed embassy should have a real good swimming pool, these days.

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  20. A Green Card in Every Pot
    Ann Coulter

    Americans -- at least really stupid Americans like George Bush -- believe the natural state of the world is to have individual self-determination, human rights, the rule of law and a robust democratic economy.
    On this view, most of the existing world and almost all of world history is a freakish aberration.

    In an astonishing exchange on Fox News last weekend, Dan Henninger of The Wall Street Journal responded to Heather MacDonald's point that Hispanics in this country have a 50 percent illegitimacy rate, the highest teen pregnancy rate of any group and the highest high school drop-out rate of any group, by asking: "Why don't we feel we are under cultural assault in New York City? You have no sense of this at all here."

    You also have no sense of the existence of a middle class in New York City. The rich have hidden the evidence, transplanting all but the massively wealthy to the suburbs. Manhattan is white and getting whiter, while the boroughs are noticeably less white and more dysfunctional.
    ---
    To the contrary, immigrants are replacing American culture with Latin American culture. Their apparent constant need to demonstrate is just one example.

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  21. Brother D,
    Have yet to read, but if W says I'm responsible for Hell on Earth, who am I to judge?
    Esp not the great W,
    Master Climatologist,
    Social Engineer,
    Welfare High Priest,
    Defender of our Enemies,
    etc.

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  22. An immigrant laborer in every man's garden--until the next election.

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  23. Wel nowd da bestest I can sez is dat my Tater clan been in da bogs and bayous frum da Okfenokee to ole Muddy's delta. I dun gues i hurd 'bout ev'r story on swamp and woods critters an ear cud hold...ain't a one talk 'bout no hog bein dat big.

    once we got UncleLy'inTater in a big one 'bout a gator dun eat a jon boat, moter n all..turned it were a air mattress a drift'n.

    but iff'n i sees one dat big I ain't stay'in. i knows you'll excuse me fo it but even a good size 300 pound hog mess ya up bad. but iff'n miztuh Habu kill one we eats real gud after he dragg it a few miles a-hind his truck to sof'n it up

    fo you folk dat miss out seeing PossumTater bog place here she be

    TaterBog

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  24. AlBobAl admits to Green Tendencies:
    My Inner Green woulda plugged that vacuous faced toe-head's father for "teaching" him the "sport" of a perfect 50 Caliber Rump Shot placed 4 feet from the heart, followed by assorted others as fatheadboy christian school attending fauntleeroy played with his gun and toy hog.

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  25. From Sam's post last thread--there we go, finally some protests breaking out.

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  26. From Buddy Larsen's Bible:

    Mr. Henniger, refered to by Coulter, Misses the obvious:
    The best of all possible worlds would be a return to Slavery!


    What this in turn suggests is that the best way to stanch the flow of illegal immigration would be to drive the growth rate of U.S. GDP back toward zero.

    No wonder it's hard to pass a bill. It's hard because Congress is trying to elevate one American value, respect for the law, by demoting an American value that up to now has been an unambiguous, uncontested ideal--respect for work, for labor. The tension here is especially difficult for conservatives.

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  27. This should be an offer that the Wall Street Journal can’t refuse — debate the editors of National Review on the immigration bill.

    We hereby challenge the Journal’s editors to debate the immigration bill in a neutral venue with a moderator of their choosing — two or three of us versus any two or three of them. We propose to do it in Washington next week so it will have the maximum impact on the Senate’s consideration of the most sweeping immigration reform in decades (time and place to be worked out in a mutually satisfactory fashion).

    It shouldn’t be a problem for the Journal’s editors to take up this challenge, since opponents of the bill aren’t “rational” on the question, have no arguments, and are “foaming at the mouth,” as they explained in a videotaped session of one of their editorial meetings last week. Click here to watch — you have to see it to believe it.

    We urge them to come out of the shadows, and hope defending the bill in this forum is not another one of those jobs that no American will do. (We would challenge President Bush himself to a debate on behalf of the conservatives he has maligned, but we fear he hasn’t read the bill.)

    So who at the Journal is willing to debate the merits of the legislation rather than cast aspersions from afar? We await the answer. To keep us posted in the meantime, we hope they videotape their consideration of this challenge.

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  28. I feel that the effort to expose this bill for what it is has also uncovered Bush for what he is. This amnesty bill was his agenda coming into office. 911 interrupted it. His failure to enforce immigration laws shows him to be an ideologue with little care for new facts and disregard for the people that supported him. His intuitions are laughable if not tragic. From Putin to the fantasy of changing the Arab world to this disgusting disregard for the laws of the United States, this man has been wrong. Every day of his presidency is worse than the previous. The Republicans need to take a walk to the office of this foolish stubborn man and tell him that he is through. I do not believe that there is one serious Republican career politician that will risk anything and walk the plank for Bush.

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  29. He had some great speechwriters in 2002, however.
    Got those of us who wanted to believe quite revved up, they did.

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  30. All hat no cattle,
    became no hat, know nothing.

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  31. Like all the shortsighted
    "hard-headed realists"
    at the Journal, Henninger neglects to take into account the "efficiencies" of a labor pool whose housing costs are negligible (ranging from none to 25 to a household) and whose education, medical, and welfare needs are paid for by OTHERS.

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