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, February 23, 2012

Guess Who Pays the Price for Stupidity.

Two U.S. troops have been shot to death and four more wounded by an Afghan solider who turned his gun on his allies in apparent anger over the burning of Korans at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, an Afghan official tells CBS News.

A statement from the International Security Assistance Force - Afghanistan, the international coalition in the country, confirmed that two troops were killed in Eastern Afghanistan on Thursday by "an individual wearing an Afghan National Army uniform."

ISAF does not typically give the nationality of casualties until family members have been notified, but the CBS News source in the Afghan government said those killed and injured in the attack in the eastern Ningarhar province, along the border with Pakistan, were Americans.

The source also said the shooting appeared to be motivated by the burning of Korans at the sprawling U.S. Bagram air base, north of Kabul, but he did not provide additional details as to what led him to that conclusion.

The suspect apparently joined other protesters already demonstrating against the U.S. at an American military outpost and opened fire with an automatic weapon, according to the Afghan source.

There have been violent anti-U.S. protests for three days across Afghanistan, since the American military apologized for what it said was the accidental "improper disposal" of religious materials, including Muslim holy books, at Bagram. The U.S. is cooperating with the Afghan government to investigate the incident.

The protests Thursday at U.S. and NATO military bases around Afghanistan and in the capital city of Kabul saw renewed clashes between demonstrators and police, with security forces in Kabul reportedly opening fire and wounding several protesters. Five protesters were reportedly killed by police at protests in the north and south of the country.

For U.S. and NATO commanders in Afghanistan, the main concern is what may come after Friday prayers in 24 hours. Friday is the holy day in the Muslim week, and protests are typically much larger as thousands of Muslim men flood out of mosques and converge in cities and towns in protest.

While calls from some Afghan parliamentarians for citizens to try and attack Americans are unhelpful - especially coming from an ally - they pale in significance against the potential damage which the religious leaders could inflict if they urge similar attacks in their Friday prayer speeches.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office said Thursday that President Obama had sent a letter to him formally apologizing for the incident at Bagram, and top U.S. commander Gen. John Allen, who ordered the investigation, is making intense efforts to keep that probe as open as possible, but the investigation is not appeasing Afghans, who are tired of apologies.

64 comments:

  1. Why Obama does not have the commander of that base sitting outside an office back at the Pentagon is beyond my comprehension.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Instead, Obama is apologizing between golf games.

    ReplyDelete
  3. What other ME country can we fix today?

    ReplyDelete
  4. We posted this on Tuesday and two young Americans are dead today because of the unbelievable stupidity and not recognizing the potential severity of the blowback.

    ReplyDelete
  5. We have an existential threat from stupidity.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Time to go.

    We don't have the time, nor money, for this nonsense.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Sure it's the gal's fault for wearing too short a dress...

    Sure its the west's fault for disposing of a quran in a fire.

    That's really great logic.

    We should be respond to attacks by strapping korans ON the walls of our bases, on the roof tops of our humvies...

    To fight IED's?

    Just strap a quran on everyone's chest...

    how stupid can you get...

    ReplyDelete
  8. tell ya what, for every American wounded by islamic nutjobs across the globe I shall cut up a quran and use it as cat litter liner...

    ReplyDelete
  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  10. You KNOW what is stupid?

    Trying to teach people that property crimes are equal with life.

    (that is EVEN if it was hateful, which it was not)

    Now it is true that the Catholic Church USED to kill jews for suspecting them of burning host crackers in the 15th century....

    But golly miss molly that was 500 years ago...

    ReplyDelete
  11. Rufus II said...
    Louisiana Light Sweet Crude $127.89


    Drill Baby Drill...

    Betcha those Okies and Texans are reaping a bundle!

    ReplyDelete
  12. We are going on the 8th year of virtually Flat Global Production, during which time the Price of Oil has Doubled, and the drillers have "drill, baby, drilled."

    We better get on "Plan B" real quick.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Rufus II said...
    We are going on the 8th year of virtually Flat Global Production, during which time the Price of Oil has Doubled, and the drillers have "drill, baby, drilled."

    We better get on "Plan B" real quick.


    Time to switch to a natural gas truck and bus fleet...

    cheaper than teaching jihadists to be modern, literate and Jeffersonian.

    ReplyDelete
  14. The Greek debt crisis, now past its second year, has laid bare many of the structural weaknesses in the setup of the euro, which is governed by a single interest-rate policy yet has no common finance ministry to steer money from rich countries to poor.

    Despite Europe's vast wealth, it has gone to the International Monetary Fund three times for aid—for Greece, Portugal and Ireland—and is going back again for additional assistance for Greece. Euro-zone officials have pressed emerging markets such as China for help by having these countries purchase euro-zone debt or bonds issued by the bailout fund.

    ...

    Political leaders in Germany and Greece have openly sniped at one another in recent days, with Germans warning about the futility of pouring money into Greece and Greeks expressing outrage at what they perceive as insulting proposals out of Berlin for Athens to give up control of its finances.

    ReplyDelete
  15. The general view about last night's debate is that Rick Santorum didn't do well. Rich Lowry put it best: Santorum spent too much time "explaining why he voted for things he opposed (NCLB, Title X)," got "tangled up in his Senate record," and was in general "too defensive, too insider, too complicated."

    ...

    I suspect Santorum's fate may come down to voters' judgment of this statement, from his impressive account last night of the costs and consequences of family breakup:

    We can have limited government, lower tax—we hear this all the time, cut spending, limit the government, everything will be fine. No, everything's not going to be fine.

    ...

    Or, to put it another way: Probably the two most courageous and candid Republican presidential candidates—the two most courageous conservative leaders—in modern times were Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. Republican primary voters will have to decide this: Politically speaking, in a general election, is Santorum likely to be Goldwater? Or Reagan?

    ReplyDelete
  16. On this day in 1997, scientists announced the first cloning of an adult mammal, a sheep named Dolly. She was born in July 1996, but wasn't announced to the public for another seven months.

    ReplyDelete
  17. More than a dozen members of the House are also slated to participate in breakout-session panels, including Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and Ranking Member Howard Berman (D-Calif.). Other notables include pro-Israel House stalwarts Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) and Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), and Israel missile defense Appropriations advocate Steve Rothman (D-N.J.).

    They’ll converge upon a center that will be teeming with American supporters of Israel, surrounded by Occupy AIPAC demonstrators ready to defend Iran, and permeated by the reality that this could be three days that go down in history.

    As the sand in the nuclear hourglass runs out, what will the final message be from Netanyahu and Peres — and, when faced with the bipartisan voices of support for the Jewish state, where will the White House stand?

    ReplyDelete
  18. Palin, Gingrich say to hell with this apology crap, Gingrich says apologize to us for the dead troops or f you we leave.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Here is the proper reaction to the killing of our troops --

    PALIN DEMANDS AFGHAN APOLOGY FOR DEATH OF US TROOPS...

    -- instead of apologizing all over the place over some books.



    Gingrich picks up where Palin left off -

    SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) -- GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Thursday a U.S. apology to Afghan authorities for burned Qurans on a military base was "astonishing" and undeserved.

    Gingrich lashed out at President Barack Obama for the formal apology after copies of the Muslim holy book were found burned in a garbage pit on a U.S. air field earlier in the week

    Obama's apology was announced Thursday morning. A few hours later, news organizations reported that an Afghan soldier had killed two U.S. troops and wounded others in retaliation for the Quran burning.

    Campaigning in Washington state, Gingrich said Afghan President Hamid Karzi owes the U.S. an apology for the shootings.

    "There seems to be nothing that radical Islamists can do to get Barack Obama's attention in a negative way and he is consistently apologizing to people who do not deserve the apology of the president of the United States period," Gingrich said.

    "And, candidly, if Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, doesn't feel like apologizing then we should say good bye and good luck, we don't need to be here risking our lives and wasting our money on somebody who doesn't care."

    ReplyDelete
  20. I don't want Afghanis to apologize for our dead troops, I don't want any more dead troops.

    ReplyDelete
  21. We should be respond to attacks by strapping korans ON the walls of our bases, on the roof tops of our humvies...

    Once again, the neo-con moron thinks Muslims actually believe that stuff rather than use it for an excuse to kill. That's why he thinks nuking a rock will change them. The fucking assholes turn their mosques into pillboxes and minarets into machine gun nests.

    ReplyDelete
  22. They wrote tactical messages in the margins of the "holy" book and passed them to their jihadi brothers in other cells, but no one talks about that. They only talk about NATO destroying this medium of enemy communication.

    ReplyDelete
  23. David Cohen, the Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, called the groups a threat to global finance.

    ...

    Thursday's move, though, wasn't done as part of a coordinated action with other governments, he said.

    "We will work with our counterparts around the world and through our criminal authorities—the Justice Department—as appropriate to pursue things like arrest and extradition. Our authority is geared toward freezing assets," Mr. Cohen said.


    Crime Group

    ReplyDelete
  24. .

    Here is the proper reaction to the killing of our troops --

    PALIN DEMANDS AFGHAN APOLOGY FOR DEATH OF US TROOPS...

    -- instead of apologizing all over the place over some books.



    Gingrich picks up where Palin left off -



    Talk about stuck on stupid.

    Palin and Gingrich are nitwits. Apologies aren't going to do those kids or their families any good. If Palin or Gingrich had any sense at all they would have been calling for us to get out of Afghanistan years ago. Now, on this subject, they put themselves in the same boat as Graham and McCain. On other subjects, they are even worse.

    .

    ReplyDelete
  25. Did the Obama write to the families of the dead US soldiers expressing his regret and apologies that they died due to the foolish behavior of other US service personnel?

    SCORE BOARD

    Afghanistan nation building: failure
    Iraq nation building: failure
    Libyan nation building: failure

    And name one Muslim nation swept by "Arab Spring" that has not been taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood, often accompanied by their allies, al Qaeda.

    Islam and democracy are antithetical.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Speaking of the Mormon Brotherhood:

    A bill to allow Utah schools to drop sex education classes — and prohibit instruction in the use of contraception in those that keep the courses — moved significantly closer to becoming law Wednesday. The House passed HB363 by a 45-28 vote after a late-afternoon debate that centered largely on lawmakers’ differing definitions of morality.

    ReplyDelete
  27. the wasp. the ms t, the teresita, the zena says:

    Once again, the neo-con moron thinks Muslims actually believe that stuff rather than use it for an excuse to kill. That's why he thinks nuking a rock will change them. The fucking assholes turn their mosques into pillboxes and minarets into machine gun nests.


    Tell ya what toots... Take out the Rock then tell us your opinion.

    btw I notice you dont have any ideas on how to deal with jihadists,,,

    ReplyDelete
  28. btw I notice you dont have any ideas on how to deal with jihadists,,,

    Put everyone whose name contains some variation of Mohammad Barack Faisal Hussein ibn-Farouk Seffeya al-Haran on a no fly list. UN envoy? Tough shit, try a cruise liner.

    ReplyDelete
  29. O for Christ sakes Quirk they are reacting to Obama's groveling, that is all.

    Quit trying to enlarge the subject to overall geopolitics.

    I tell ya what, nit, you make yourself out to be a great moral arbiter on all things, so tell me, o wise one, what is the moral price to pay for leaving all those women to the tender mercies once again, cause you know damn well what is going to happen. And what moral responsibility do we have after being there for so long? To leave and let that happen? Let's see your moral formula, including to those who have worked with and for us there.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Our "moral responsibility" to any Afghani, living or dead?


    Absolutely fucking zero.


    next question.

    ReplyDelete
  31. A formula, not some sloganeering.

    Start with

    N1w = projected number of women who will undergo clitorectomy

    N2w = projected number of women who will be stoned to death

    N3w = projected number of women who will be raped

    You get the idea......becomes a big formula once you begin to think about it. Give it a try.

    ReplyDelete
  32. Gosh I'm surprised to hear you say that, Rufus.

    ReplyDelete
  33. You forgot the sarcasm/con.

    /sarc

    ReplyDelete
  34. $100 Billion/Yr?

    Let's invest That "moral responsibility" in healthcare for our OWN people.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Or, a THOUSAND Cellulosic Ethanol Refineries - so we can tell that crazy fucking bunch to kiss our collective asses en masse.

    ReplyDelete
  36. We have 46 Million people on Food Stamps, and we're wasting $100 Billion/Yr on those crazed fucking animals?

    Blow Me.

    ReplyDelete
  37. Pipelines are the safest, most reliable, economical and environmentally favorable way to transport oil and petroleum products, as well as other energy liquids, throughout the U.S. Nearly every gallon of gasoline or diesel fuel used in Nebraska is transported via pipeline.

    Check The Facts

    Obama recently blamed the Republicans for the pipeline decision.

    Rufus probably believes him.

    ReplyDelete
  38. What Y0U don't understand, Bob, is when the pipeline goes through my gasoline gets More expensive.

    ReplyDelete
  39. Pipeline goes to New Orleans or Vancouver, either way China gets the tar sands oil and we don't get none.

    ReplyDelete
  40. Right now, we have that Bakken/Tar Sands oil bottlenecked at Cushing, and we're benefiting greatly.

    Part of that advantage is going away in just a couple of months as they get the Seaway Pipeline reversed, and flowing from Cushing to the Sea.

    Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana are, also, benefiting greatly from this bottleneck with some of the lowest prices in the country.

    ReplyDelete
  41. As for the XL, and the Northern Gateway: they'll do'em both. It just makes sense.

    As for jobs - we'll get about 2,300 temporary jobs. The pipe has already been purchased - from China, and Korea.

    ReplyDelete
  42. 3 bucks a gallon in Wyoming, 4 and a quarter in Cali.

    ReplyDelete
  43. That big BP Refinery going down in Wa hurt. They were shipping a lot of product to Cali.

    We've closed down 700,000 barrels/day of refining capacity in just the last couple of months.

    ReplyDelete
  44. Mitt Romney had a good night at the debate in Mesa last night. But after the debate (as well as during) the Romney campaign flooded the press with the kind of emails that make the candidate so hard to love.

    ...

    Another email release carried a statement from Romney surrogate Bob Dole. Like the Michigan Leaders, Dole thought that Romney had a very good night.


    Pravda Edition

    ReplyDelete
  45. Public still heavily against Obama/RufusCare -


    Quinnipiac 2/14 - 2/20 2605 RV 52 39 Favor Repeal +13
    Rasmussen Reports 2/18 - 2/19 1000 LV 53 38 Favor Repeal +15



    Favors repeal by 13% and 15% in last polls.

    ReplyDelete
  46. Obama/Rufus energy plan -

    Bam’s gas-price plan


    Posted: February 23, 2012

    As oil hits $105 a barrel, the White House is getting defensive — fearing that $5-plus gasoline this summer might imperil the president’s re-election.

    So President Obama is to publicly address the subject today. But does he even have a plan?

    Perhaps as prelude, the White House yesterday declared that the president had no “responsibility” for gas prices — a hilarious take, given the gasoline-price scourging Obama laid on George W. Bush in 2008.

    We’ll stipulate that pump prices are driven by many factors — not the least being Middle East uncertainty.

    But if the American people think Obama hasn’t done everything possible to buffer oil shocks, there’s reason: He hasn’t.

    The administration on Tuesday blamed last month’s shelving of the Keystone XL pipeline on “political” acts by Republicans in Congress. In fact, Obama ditched Keystone — which would have brought Canadian crude oil to Gulf Coast refineries — to keep his greenie base happy.

    And the pipeline is but one of many Team Obama decisions that have left America’s oil supply more vulnerable to the vagaries of world events.

    * Under Obama, the American Petroleum Institute notes, leases on federal lands in the West are down 44 percent, while permits and new well drilling are both down 39 percent, compared to 2007.

    * In the wake of the BP oil spill, Obama shut down most Gulf of Mexico drilling; there’s been a 57 percent drop in monthly deepwater permits over the last three years, according to the Greater New Orleans’ Gulf Permit Index.

    * The EPA continues to block drilling off the coast of Alaska — where an estimated 27 billion barrels are waiting to be tapped.

    Actually, perhaps there is a plan.

    In a pre-nomination interview in 2008, now-Energy Secretary Steven Chu told The Wall Street Journal, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

    Mission accomplished?


    nypost.com

    ReplyDelete
  47. Rufus was telling us the other day how Santorum was like the Taliban on women and reproductive rights -


    Romney also managed to tie Santorum up in knots on his votes, which included funding for Planned Parenthood.

    That is for Planned Parenthood

    Some Debate Analysis

    ReplyDelete
  48. Rufus II said...
    We have 46 Million people on Food Stamps, and we're wasting $100 Billion/Yr on those crazed fucking animals?

    Blow Me.



    lol.....

    Now that's something I will tell my "friends" in DC next week....

    If only your hero Obama felt the same way

    ReplyDelete
  49. .

    O for Christ sakes Quirk they are reacting to Obama's groveling, that is all.

    Quit trying to enlarge the subject to overall geopolitics.

    I tell ya what, nit, you make yourself out to be a great moral arbiter on all things, so tell me, o wise one, what is the moral price to pay for leaving all those women to the tender mercies once again, cause you know damn well what is going to happen. And what moral responsibility do we have after being there for so long? To leave and let that happen? Let's see your moral formula, including to those who have worked with and for us there.



    Nit? My moral formula?

    Here is my moral formula.

    Try Reading This

    Malaria:

    At risk: 3.3 billion, half the worlds population.

    Cases Annually: 240 million

    Annual Deaths: Nearly a million, 85% of them children under five.

    Annual Need to Fully Fund Treatment: About $5 - $6 billion a year.

    Lives saved under full treatment: Up to an estimated 4.2 million lives could be saved by 2015 in the 20 highest burden African countries alone.

    We waste $100 million a year in Afghanistan alone. I repeat waste. As soon as we leave, the whole shithole goes to pieces.

    I tell ya what, nit, you make yourself out to be a great moral arbiter on all things, so tell me, o wise one, what is the moral price to pay for leaving all those women to the tender mercies once again, cause you know damn well what is going to happen.

    You besotted loon. What do you think will happen the day we leave? Hell, what do you think is happening right now while we are there?

    I'll tell you. The same damn thing that is happening in Iraq where we wasted a $1 trillion and what did we get for it, 5000 dead, 50,000 wounded, 150,000 - 800,000 Iraqi dead, between 2 and 4 million Iraqi refugees created.

    And between the two countries, number of friends created for the US: 0

    Number of enemies created: Anybody's quess.

    We are pumping trillions into wars that give us nothing when we could be pumping a few billions into health programs each year and savings millions of lives, most of them children's. And we could be making friends for the US not creating enemies, offsetting efforts by the Chinese. Take a look at the economic costs caused by malaria.

    And that is just malaria. Don't even start on hiv/aids, dungue fever, etc.

    .

    .

    ReplyDelete
  50. Only a small puddle of oil at Cushing is priced at $105.00/bbl. The World Price is approx. $125.00/bbl.

    There are more rigs drilling in the Gulf of Mexico than at any time in our history.

    No one is blocking drilling off the coast of Alaska. Shell has a fucked up project up there that they keep screwing up the paperwork on.

    We're at Peak Oil, Bozo. An undulating production plateau with ever-increasing demand out of Asia.


    Not to worry; Obammie will hit the old "Strategic Reserves" in a month, or two. That might buy us another summer.

    ReplyDelete
  51. .

    Start with

    N1w = projected number of women who will undergo clitorectomy

    N2w = projected number of women who will be stoned to death

    N3w = projected number of women who will be raped



    Grow a brain.

    What do you expect to happen the day we leave. We spend a $100 million a year protecting poppy fields while millions die because of lack of mosquito nets.

    Rapes?

    A women is raped in South Africa every 17 seconds. Why aren't we there?

    Try looking up the statistics in Darfur, Somalia, Kashmir, the Congo, or the Sudan. Hell in the Sudan even the Un peacekeepers get in on the act. Why aren't we there?

    Take your formulas and shove them up your ass.

    You are fixated on helping women but you offer nothing but bromides and pompous bullshit about our moral responsibility. Come back when you actually have plan.


    .

    ReplyDelete
  52. 800 page transcript of Breton Woods meeting found in bowels of Treasury Department.

    This is amazing, the professors are going over it now. Previously all that was had was the memories of some of the participants.

    Material for many a PhD dissertation.

    ReplyDelete
  53. Dungue Fever -

    That's what I get the morning after I have a couple of bowls of my red-hot homemade chili.

    ReplyDelete
  54. .

    Pipeline goes to New Orleans or Vancouver, either way China gets the tar sands oil and we don't get none.

    We've discussed this before and she still doesn't get it.

    .

    ReplyDelete
  55. I think the UN peacekeeper deal was in the Congo.

    ReplyDelete
  56. .

    O for Christ sakes Quirk they are reacting to Obama's groveling, that is all.

    Quit trying to enlarge the subject to overall geopolitics.




    They are pandering, you moron.

    Soundbites for the hicks.

    .

    ReplyDelete
  57. Corn dropped, set for a weekly loss, after the U.S. government maintained its outlook that the country’s farmers will boost acreage to the most since 1944, adding to global supply as Ukraine forecasts higher shipments.

    May-delivery corn declined as much as 0.7 percent to $6.3825 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, before trading at $6.40 at 10:59 a.m. Singapore time. Futures are set for a 0.8 percent loss this week.

    Planting will rise to 94 million acres (38 million hectares), Joe Glauber, chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture said at a conference yesterday. Exports from Ukraine, vying with Argentina to be the second-largest shipper, will jump 20 percent as farmers expand planting, said Andrew Druzyaka, adviser at the State Food & Grain Corp. of Ukraine.

    “When you do look at these numbers, they’re showing that global production is looking strong for the season ahead,” said Michael Creed, an agribusiness economist at National Australia Bank Ltd. Bigger acreage in the U.S. and higher shipments from Ukraine have “some bearish influence on prices,” he said.

    Inventories in the U.S., the largest grower and exporter, may rebound as growth in biofuel demand slows, helping relieve some volatility that has roiled markets, Glauber said.

    ReplyDelete
  58. Well, the oil companies have played us for the stone, rube-ass hicks that we truly are.

    We will, later in the year, have E85 selling for $2.40/gal, and Unleaded selling for $4.00/gal, and there's not an ethanol-optimized car in sight.

    We're drilling 18,000 feet below a mile of water, and cracking rocks to get the last little drabs of oil out of the ground, and paying landowners Not to Plant 30,000,000 acres.

    This, in spite of the fact that the X-Prize, and Indycar/Nascar Drivers have proven that, with the technology in place, we can get as many miles per gallon with ethanol as with gasoline (and with more power.)

    We're the stupidest animals in the Solar System.

    ReplyDelete