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, July 08, 2010

The Spy Fix is In


A few posts back, a comment came up that I was not interested enough in the big knock-down of the Russian spy ring. That was correct then. It did not make sense to me and I said as much. They were never really charged with anything. Now we learn they are being deported and have served enough time for their crimes.

Enough time? Lindsay Lohan is getting more time for her crimes. Can't we throw her into the deal and send her to Russia. She will find all the alcohol and drugs she needs to launch her into an early haghood fast enough.

Big spy scandal indeed.

___________________________


Spy suspects could plead guilty, be deported soon
By the CNN Wire Staff
July 8, 2010 10:47 a.m. EDT

New York (CNN) -- Ten suspected Russian spies in the United States could enter guilty pleas Thursday and be swiftly deported, possibly as soon as Thursday night, a source with detailed knowledge of the investigation told CNN.

The source said the suspects are expected to plead guilty in federal court in New York to one of the current charges against them -- failing to register as a foreign agent -- and will likely be sentenced to time already served since they were arrested at the end of June.

The development comes amid reports of a possible exchange of the accused Russian spies in the United States for convicted Russian spies in Russia. One of those convicted spies possibly on a list for the swap left Russia earlier Thursday and arrived in Vienna, Austria, Russia's state-run news agency RIA-Novosti reported. The scientist's family told CNN he was part of the exchange.

A lawyer involved in the plea deal negotiations for the suspects in the United States said that the legal case involving the accused Russian spies is expected to be resolved by Thursday afternoon.

The hearing will combine the five suspects arrested in New York with five others picked up out of state.

Wednesday, a federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, ordered that suspects Mikhail Semenko, Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills be moved to New York "promptly," according to court documents.

Suspects Donald Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley, who were being held in Boston, Massachusetts, also were to be moved to New York, a federal judge there ruled.

All five were being transferred to New York by the U.S. Marshals Service, a senior law enforcement official said.
Zottoli and Mills have admitted that they are Russian citizens and have been living as a couple under false identities in Virginia, investigators say. Prosecutors said that they made the admissions soon after being arrested and authorities have found evidence to support that information.

Semenko is accused of aiding the plot by allegedly conducting private wireless computer links to communicate with a Russian government official, court documents said.

In all, 10 suspects were arrested in the United States in connection with the alleged spy plot. An 11th suspect was detained in Cyprus and released on bail. His whereabouts are unknown.

Meanwhile, a lawyer for Igor Sutyagin, who was convicted in Russia in 2004 for spying for U.S. intelligence services, said Sutyagin arrived in Vienna Thursday, RIA-Novosti reported.

Attorney Anna Stavitskaya said her client could be part of a swap involving the suspected Russian spies detained in the United States in late June.

"Igor's father received a phone call at approximately 16:30 Moscow time (8:30 a.m. ET), and he was told that he [Sutyagin] was seen getting off a plane in Vienna," the news agency quoted her as saying.

Sutyagin's mother and brother also have raised the possibility that he could be exchanged for one of the spy suspects in the United States. They talked to him on Wednesday at a prison in Moscow.

Svetlana Sutyagina confirmed to CNN Wednesday that her son said he will be released from jail and sent to London, England, by way of Vienna on Thursday.

According to Sutyagina, her son was on a list of 11 names submitted by the United States for the exchange of the Russians detained in the United States the alleged spy ring. She said her son remembers just one other name on this list -- Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer sentenced for spying.

Igor Sutyagin was convicted in 2004 of passing secret data to members of U.S. intelligence services acting as employees of a British company called Alternative Futures, in exchange for monetary rewards in 1998-1999.


71 comments:

  1. Just another day in Paradise during rainy season. The mangoes have never been better.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jim Hanson, BlackFive's Uncle Jimbo, puts an end to the resident knucklehead's nonsense that Pat Tillman was murdered: http://bigpeace.com/jhanson/2010/07/04/the-truth-honors-pat-tillman-best/

    ReplyDelete
  3. Quirk said...

    "But if over 85% of the Congress is reelected, folks are satisfied …"

    The rat, America’s only honest man. The rest, the other 319,999,999, are merely waiting for the opportunity to lie to pollsters.

    Perhaps in the alternate reality of rat-World, but one needs to deal with things as they exist in this universe young Skywalker.

    You’re magnificent leaps to illogical conclusions are often a thing to behold. While one can argue which is preeminent among them there are elements of all of the following logical fallacies contained in your simple assertion: “The Categorical Statement”, “Special Pleading”, “Stopping Short in Search for Causes”, “The False Assumption”, “The False Dilemma”, “Avoiding Conclusions”, and “Simplistic Reasoning”.

    Monumental.

    A thing to behold.

    But then why let logic intrude on a good food fight?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Video: The nice young man Eric Holder let off the hook

    Lovely.
    Someone’s crackers, and I’d say it’s the people who decided to drop the case against this lunatic.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Jeeze:

    Long ago I listened to Beck:

    Never cried when I was listening.

    ---

    Now that he's famous, seems to happen all the time.

    ...KRLA started carrying him...
    I just heard him cry.
    Again

    ReplyDelete
  6. Note the title of that post by Hanson on Brietbart's Big Peace - THE TRUTH HONORS PAT TILLMAN BEST

    Regarding the Russian spies, only Obama would be in a rush to trade them for US spies. Why? Because it embarrasses him immensely, although only when he is in the company of his Russian friends. His narcissism cannot tolerate that embarrassment. Getting those spies out of the US press limelight by sending them back to Russia eliminates that embarrassment most effectively.

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  7. Thanks for the link assist Deuce. I've gotten in the habit of emailing myself links to articles from my Blackberry that I have read and want to bookmark. In email those links are automatically hyperlinked. Will try not to let that habit carry over here in the future.

    Short rant - why the f*ck doesn't Google improve Blogger? At all? With all those smart-as-sh*t engineers, one of them could seriously improve this pitiful blogging service in the course of a single work day by adding auto-hyperlinking or point-and-click hyperlinking, numbered comments, comment linking, etc, etc, etc. See Wordpress for how to do it right. Surely the employees of Google are embarrassed by the the constant inferior comparison of Blogger with Wordpress. Rant over.

    ReplyDelete
  8. whit said...
    From the CDC:

    During 1980--2002, the homicide rate in Brazil more than doubled, from 11.4 per 100,000 population to 28.4. In São Paulo city, the rate more than tripled, from 17.5 in 1980 to 53.9 in 2002 (Figure 1). In 2002, a total of 49,570 homicides were documented in Brazil. Firearms and sharp objects were the weapons used in 34,085 (68.8%) and 6,728 (13.6%) of all incidents, respectively. In 2002, the homicide rate was 53.1 among males and 4.3 among females, and adolescent (aged 15--19 years) and young adult (aged 20--29 years) males accounted for 52.2% of homicide victims. By age group, the homicide rate was highest among young adult males (121.0).

    ---

    Seems like there must be a cause for figures as radical as that.

    Any guesses?

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  9. Thanks jwillie for clearing that up.

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  10. "Regarding the Russian spies, only Obama would be in a rush to trade them for US spies. Why?"

    I repeat.

    I do not think embarrassment has anything to do with it.

    The embarrassment is that there is no end of these people out there and we do not take it seriously.

    We didn't under the last admin, nor the one before it. We don't take it seriously enough to address it in any rigorous fashion.

    But if you want to make some pretense to determined counterespionage, this is the way to go.

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  11. Prime Minister Thatcher said, "...and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess.

    They [socialists] always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them."

    ReplyDelete
  12. No debt problem here:

    The nation's debt leapt $166 billion in a single day last week, the third-largest increase in U.S. history, and it comes at a time when Congress is balking over higher spending and debt has become a key policy battleground.

    The one-day increase for June 30 totaled $165,931,038,264.30 - bigger than the entire annual deficit for fiscal year 2007 and larger than the $140 billion in savings the new health care bill will produce over its first 10 years. The figure works out to nearly $1,500 for every U.S. household, or more than 10 times the median daily household income.

    ReplyDelete
  13. jwillie said...
    Jim Hanson, BlackFive's Uncle Jimbo, puts an end to the resident knucklehead's nonsense that Pat Tillman was murdered: http://bigpeace.com/jhanson/2010/07/04/the-truth-honors-pat-tillman-best/

    Thu Jul 08, 11:51:00 AM EDT




    You are a glass-half-full kind of personality? :)

    ReplyDelete
  14. Deuce, we probably had a large "payroll tax" collection in June, and the government took the money, and issued "bonds" to the SSA. That likely coincided with a public debt offering, rendering the large number.

    BTW, for those that would like to know, the Social Security Account has more money in it now than it did at the beginning of the year. Those that have been hyperventilating about it "going broke" have been overlooking the interest that has been paid on its bonds.

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  15. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  16. That is the second official account of the story.

    Told by the same fellows that lied in the first account of story, the version that awarded Corporal Tillman a Silver Star for his reported gallantry.

    It does not address the shot grouping at 150 meters, 3 rounds in a 3 inch circle, on Corporal Tillman's forehead.

    When that reality, written by the doctors that performed the autopsy, is addressed then the perpetrators story can have some fragrance of validity.

    But no one can place three rounds in a three inch circle on a standing targets' forehead with an M4 on either full or semi auto mode at 150 meters, uphill.

    That was not addressed by a single word of rebuttal, either by J Wahhabi or Mr Hanson.

    No harm, no foul.

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  17. the Rat states like he stayed in a Holiday Inn last night...

    "But no one can place three rounds in a three inch circle on a standing targets' forehead with an M4 on either full or semi auto mode at 150 meters, uphill.:



    I am starting to wonder if ole Rat ever FIRED a M4?

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  18. "Multiple weapons systems from the vehicle engaged and killed him. During this Tillman and another American took cover behind a rock.

    There was a lull in fire after the Afghan was killed and Tillman stood up to identify himself shouting “I’m Pat Fu**ing Tillman, why are you shooting?”. Unfortunately all the Rangers in the vehicle saw was another silhouette and a possible threat and they shot and killed him."

    ---

    Looks like multiple weapons were involved.

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  19. ...but what if all those soldiers knew that Tillman was really an agent for the Federal Plot to...

    ReplyDelete
  20. Nice Work if You Can Get It

    ...The default option pressed on a vast, ever-growing segment of the American population, however, is to "round up every warm body and send it to college, then to the cubicle," commencing four or five "enervating" decades as so-called "knowledge workers." The result, writes Crawford, is, "Many of us do work that feels more surreal than real. Working in an office, you often find it difficult to see any tangible result from your efforts. What exactly have you accomplished at the end of any given day?"

    By contrast, he says, "people who do work that is straightforwardly useful" satisfy a "basic human need." De Botton agrees, contending that "the longing to act meaningfully in our work seems just as stubborn a part of our make-up as our appetite for status or money." Thus, "the adults who feature in children's books" are "shopkeepers, builders, cooks or farmers—people whose labour can easily be linked to the visible betterment of human life." No such book leads children to dream of becoming regional sales managers or "brand supervision coordinators."

    * * *

    Both authors make acute observations about the knowledge worker trapped in his cubicle. Crawford earned a doctorate in political philosophy at the University of Chicago before quitting a job at a Washington think tank to open his own motorcycle repair shop in Richmond, Virginia. ("For me, at least, there is more real thinking going on in the bike shop than there was in the think tank.") He notes that, in political terms, the vast modern organization has come to be governed in an inscrutable, baffling manner:

    Given our democratic sensibilities, authority cannot present itself straightforwardly, as authority, coming down from a superior, but must be understood as an impersonal thing that emanates vaguely from all of us. So authority becomes smarmy and passive-aggressive, trying to pass itself off as something cooperative and friendly; as volunteerism.


    This problem didn't beset the "man in the gray flannel suit" 50 years ago, when deep thinkers worried about a crisis of conformity. Over 16 million Americans served in uniform during World War II. The experience of life in the military, modern nations' least democratic institution, was democratized. An entire generation of American males returned to the civilian world accustomed to giving and taking orders.

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  21. Today's manager, shaped by the anti-establishment 1960s rather than the command-and-control 1940s, would be mortified if anyone compared him to a drill sergeant. As a consequence, writes Crawford, "He is not so much a boss as a life coach." Rather than communicate clear, objective goals by which a subordinate's job performance will be evaluated, the manager extols and transmits the "corporate culture," urging and constantly helping "team members" identify with and "buy in" to the organization's "mission." "This higher purpose typically remains on a meta-level, vaguely specified," notes Crawford. "But the absence of specific content to this higher purpose is its main feature. All the moral urgency surrounding it seems to boil down to an imperative to develop a disposition of teaminess." Clear directives to do X but not Y would actually hinder the team member's crucial progress in personal discovery and transformation.

    They would, moreover, require the boss to take risks it is crucial for him to avoid. In Crawford's words,

    A manager has to make many decisions for which he is accountable. Unlike an entrepreneur with his own business, however, his decisions can be reversed at any time by someone higher up the food chain (and there is always someone higher up the food chain). It's important for your career that these reversals not look like defeats, and more generally you have to spend a lot of time managing what others think of you. Survival depends on a crucial insight: you can't back down from an argument that you initially made in straightforward language, with moral conviction, without seeming to lose your integrity. So managers learn the art of provisional thinking and feeling, expressed in corporate doublespeak, and cultivate a lack of commitment to their own actions. Nothing is set in concrete the way it is when you are, for example, pouring concrete.

    The infuriating absurdity of workplaces shaped by such imperatives was captured by the 1999 movie, Office Space...

    ReplyDelete
  22. 34. Josh
    Rush is just on a role these days … marriage must agree with him.

    regarding this “aspen ideas summit” or whatever, Rush says,

    “When Barbra Streisand is making more sense about things than the Republican party, you know we’re in trouble.”

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  23. It is said that Tillman was also an atheist and follower of Noam Chomsky, who in my opinion is anti everything concerning US policies.

    Hey, I'm just adding food for thought regarding Rat's conspiracy theory. I suggest, you decide.

    The Bar instructs us to keep it interesting.....

    ReplyDelete
  24. William Voegeli

    William Voegeli is a visiting scholar at Claremont McKenna College's Henry Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World, and a contributing editor for the Claremont Review of Books.

    He is the author of
    Never Enough:
    America's Limitless Welfare State

    ReplyDelete
  25. Whole damn fambly is liberals, Gag, them troops in the vehicle knew exactly what they were doin.

    Protecting us from the Enemy Within.

    ReplyDelete
  26. William Voegeli

    William Voegeli is a visiting scholar at Claremont McKenna College's Henry Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World, and a contributing editor for the Claremont Review of Books.

    He is the author of
    Never Enough:
    America's Limitless Welfare State


    Articles on this Site

    The Meaning of the Tea Party


    Voegeli, Taxed in California

    Nice Work if You Can Get It

    Failed State

    Look Out for the Union Label

    The Wilderness Years Begin

    The Roots of Liberal Condescension...

    etc

    ReplyDelete
  27. Whole damn fambly is liberals, Gag, them troops in the vehicle knew exactly what they were doin.

    Protecting us from the Enemy Within.


    o christ, doug, that's almost too much

    ReplyDelete
  28. WiO,

    Re: Tillman and M4

    The Rat started this nonsense with Tillman having been killed by the M-16. I corrected the record, later.

    ReplyDelete
  29. @ BC:

    "Anyone who thinks that bad habits will end overnight should look at Illinois. The Chicago Tribune notes that the state is bankrupt. But you wouldn’t know to look at it. The giant spending machine continues to churn long after financial death, like some fiscal zombie stalking the earth.

    “Illinois stops paying its bills, but can’t stop digging hole.” … Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes says the state owes billions to schools, rehabilitation centers, child care, state universities and he told The New York Times, “it’s getting worse every single day.” He calls the state’s inability to pay for essential services “obscene.” The real obscenity — in Illinois, California, New York and especially Washington, D.C. — is an inability to live within the means taxpayers provide. Despite record high taxes in these states and more coming at the federal level, government never has enough of our money. But it isn’t all government’s fault. Too many Americans have come to rely on government to take care of them, and government has passed the point where it can do so any longer."

    ---

    Ferguson added:
    “The critical point is if your policy says you’re going run a trillion-dollar deficit for the rest of time, you’re riding for a fall…Then it really is goodbye.” A dashing Brit, Ferguson added: “Can I say that, having grown up in a declining empire, I do not recommend it. It’s just not a lot of fun actually—decline.”

    The destruction of private enterprise and its substitution by government spending creates the danger that too many people will find there’s nothing left but to stay on the needle. Only when it the needle absolutely positively bone dry; bent, corroded and blood encrusted will the alternative be considered. In the meantime there is the terrible momentum of promises, the fatal attraction of hope and change. Will there be enough reserve buoyancy to surface? Or will the Ship of State, like some gigantic version of Illinois, keep racing for the depths?

    ---

    Rufus says No Problemo:

    We can always rely on that great Social Security Piggybank in the sky for reserves.

    Aye aye, Captain!
    Full Speed Ahead!

    ReplyDelete
  30. I'm not sure I'm entirely agains all the aspects of this economic turn down, which has hit here too. For instance, the county road department has now failed for three years in a row to plow the old dirt road through the old homestead place. Grandpappy opened it up to let some old grain wagons through, but nowadays, with trucking, it's not needed, and I'd like to close it off, but the county seems to think they own it, though there was never a deed giving it to them. So, we are going to have a fight, my new lady lawyer is on it, and there is case law in Idaho that says, if the government doesn't keep it up, after three years, they have abandoned it. We're going to have a fight, because all that road is used for now is beer drinking, poaching elk and deer, and illicit sex. I don't mind the illicit sex so much, it's the poaching that gets me.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Allen said, "You are a glass-half-full kind of personality? :) "

    My wife sees it the other way - glass half empty - and tells me so quite regularly.

    I call it realism.

    Bottom line - if it had not been Pat Fucking Tillman, no conspiracy controversy would exist, as such incidents regularly occur in the course of battle and constitute one of the reasons Gen Lee said that "it's a good thing war is so terrible, less we grow fond of it".

    Instead of this faux controversy, why doesn't Hollywood make a movie out of Marcus Luttrell's "Lone Survivor" story? (Short version by him given in talk here.) Because the good guys are clearly identifiable as American soldiers, while the bad guys are clearly identifiable as a bunch of Taliban Islamic extremists, that's why. No confusion or controversy thru which to advance their anti-American, leftist agendas.

    ReplyDelete
  32. jwillie,

    You are correct. Hundreds of paratroopers of the 82nd were "accidentally" killed and wounded by the US Navy over Sicily. I doubt anyone here can name a single one.

    ReplyDelete
  33. We've got to win these mid term elections big time and stop all this non-sense.

    Dick Morris thinks we might even take the Senate.

    Let's pray.

    After this November, in the next two cycles, the democrats are defending a lot more seats in the Senate than the Republicans, so the ship of state may right itself.

    ReplyDelete
  34. It's ALWAYS our fault, Allen.

    But what can you expect given that we're run by a diabolical cotorie of Joos?

    ReplyDelete
  35. Frankenstein real estate market –

    $3.5 trillion in commercial real estate debt and $10.3 trillion in residential real estate debt.
    Will we reach a 50 percent underwater market where 25 million Americans sit in homes worth less than their mortgage?

    ---

    The real estate market has morphed into a beast that is largely sinking the overall economy into the ground. If we combine the commercial real estate market ($3.5 trillion in debt) with residential outstanding mortgages ($10.3 trillion) we arrive at a figure that nears the annual GDP of our country. What makes the figure even more troubling is the amount of leverage found in the real estate market. Many of these loans will default yet banks are maintaining the notion that at some point par value will be reached; for many the par value scenario is the worst case they have mapped out, and this is highly optimistic. We have created a real estate Frankenstein that now has a mind of its own and will do everything it can to stay afloat going forward, even at the expense of the real economy. In fact, the real estate monster thinks it is the economy.

    ReplyDelete
  36. South Korea investing big into Panama

    I for one am happy that we have South Korea investing heavily in the country. Even though only 1% of their exports come to Central America, 80% of that is to Panama. Of course it is then distributed throughout Latin America. But now they are putting real capital into the country with a number of projects, the largest, a 20% stake in the copper mine.

    ReplyDelete
  37. There is some truth, that when thousands die, the friendly fire casualty rates increase.

    But when so few US casualties are taken, friendly fire casualties are not so common.

    Besides, the analogy avoids totally the ballistic evidence found in the autopsy. Wonder if they autopsied all the KIA, in Sicily over sixty years ago.

    Besides, that conflict in Sicily was not about controlling the heroin trade, in Russia, not at all.

    ReplyDelete
  38. Another allen analogy, bites the dust of inconsequential blather.

    ReplyDelete
  39. La Prensa

    The Caterpillar heavy equipment multinational firm began building its training and demonstration center in the Panama Pacifico Special Economic Area, Howard's former base.

    Chris Martinez, media liaison in Latin America for Caterpillar, said that work began on June 1 and be completed in the first quarter of 2011.

    While noting that total investment has not been defined yet, said the purchase of 100 hectares where you build the center represents an investment of 60 million dollars.

    ReplyDelete
  40. A Federal Appeals Court has refused to reinstate Obama's moratorium on off shore drilling.

    He could be finding that Imperial decrees don't always work in this country.

    ReplyDelete
  41. NEW ORLEANS, July 8 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Thursday rejected the Obama administration's request to put on hold a ruling that lifted a temporary moratorium on deepwater drilling in the wake of the BP Plc oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

    The ruling is a setback for the White House which had sought to suspend deepwater drilling of new wells for six months while it investigated the cause of the April 20 explosion aboard the Transocean Ltd. rig and adopt new stricter safety regulations.

    It will likely prompt the Interior Department to quickly issue a revised moratorium order on deepwater drilling below 500 feet (152.5 meters) to address concerns raised by the federal courts.

    A department official said earlier on Thursday that such an order would be issued 'immediately' to address any deficiencies, but that could spark yet another legal battle and leave drillers on the sidelines again.

    Already some oil services companies have said they would not begin new drilling operations in the region until the legal matters were resolved, and some were moving rigs and workers overseas for projects.

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, based in New Orleans, ruled about 90 minutes after hearing arguments over the administration's request to put on hold a lower court ruling that lifted the six-month moratorium.

    U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman lifted the suspension on new deepwater drilling after finding it too broad and arbitrary because it failed to take into account the economic impact it would have on the industry and communities.

    The Obama administration appealed and asked for a stay pending the appeal amid fears that another blowout of an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico would be catastrophic and further devastate the region.

    The appeals court, in a
    2-1 decision, ruled that the administration had failed to show that it would be irreparably harmed if the stay was not granted and that it offered no proof that drilling companies had planned to resume operations during the appeal.

    Arguments on the government's appeal seeking to reinstate the original moratorium order were set for the week of Aug. 30.

    ReplyDelete
  42. Hey, I'm just adding food for thought regarding Rat's conspiracy theory. I suggest, you decide.

    And I've decided, rat's a Cretan, and I'd never go with him, even if he paid me, he never backs up our boys, it's always blah blah blah and a bunch of bullshit

    Svetlana

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  43. It just pisses me off, let me tell you this story. When I go to Coeur d'Alene, I always take my daughter out to the best restaurant in town, which is the Hagadone Resort, by the lake, and when we were deep into the salmon, she broke down and cried, telling me about her friend in English class in high school, his father is a lawyer here, my heart goes out to the mother, he could have just as well gone to law school, but he joined up, and died in Irag. So it touchs us all, and it just pisses me off, anyone dissing the US Military.

    ReplyDelete
  44. That was a surprisingly normal thread, as Bar threads go.

    All are to be congratulated.

    Even Svetlana.

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  45. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  46. It does not "dis" the "military" to say that a soldier was murdered.

    It does "dis" those in charge, those who knowingly awarded a Silver Star for an action they knew did not occur.

    Which Stan the Man certainly did allow to happen in the Tillman case.

    Ask yourself why.

    The motives are as nothing, when compared to the reality of the shot grouping.

    The shot grouping gives lie to the second scenario that is presented by the perpetrators as truth, accepted by the Lifers, as well.

    Or did the Doctors do a faulty autopsy?

    Could it be the Army Doctors are as incompetent as the Coast Guards' Admiral Allen is presented as being, here at the EB?

    Celebrate that young man's life and death, boobie, you certainly supported his being there in Iraq, in harms way. He is one of 4,300 of so US soldiers, sailors air men or Marines that have died to install an Islamic Republic, in Iraq. A policy you have whole heartedly supported, as you've said, often enough.

    This time it is you and yours that paid the piper.

    It ain't nothing but a thing.

    ReplyDelete
  47. DR said,

    "Wonder if they autopsied all the KIA, in Sicily over sixty years ago."


    No, DR, there were none. There were also no charges brought. This was the case because the men (our fathers) running the war were adults, who understood that bad stuff happens.

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  48. Well, allen, the men running the wars today, men like Stan "the Man" McCrystal are not the men our fathers are or were, as the case may be.

    Seems that is the point I've been making, glad you've come on board.

    ReplyDelete
  49. It's not the 20th Century any more.

    Welcome to the brave new whirled.

    ReplyDelete
  50. dr needs to stop his silliness already. his fixation on the 3 rounds as proof of some sort of "hit" made by his imagined "heroin protection agency" is simply dr projecting.

    the M4 has a 3 round burst mode to it. 3 rounds in a 3 inch circle is what you would see on a target should you shoot in burst mode.

    dont forget this is the same entity that suggested hiring illegals to knock people off that done him wrong.

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  51. Not done me wrong, anon, but some one that had raped my daughter.

    They'd die for that transgression of civil behavior. That you do not feel that way, about your own daughter, well that's bad on you.

    It is not the capacity of the M4 to fire three rounds on auto fire that is in question.

    It is the spread of those rounds, at 150 meters that is being questioned.

    There will not be a 3 inch grouping. No matter how many times you try.
    Guaranteed.

    Even a minimal angle of variation at that range will create large impact area. That is the purpose for which full auto fire was designed.
    To provide volume of fire, at area targets, not extremely accurate fire.

    An old debate, but one that has been settled.
    Firing at a "silhouette" at 150 meters, you will not obtain a 3 inch grouping with three rounds with an M4 on full auto.
    No one will.

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  52. Now, at nine meters, you could get a three inch impact area.
    With a M4, on full auto, three round burst.

    ReplyDelete
  53. It is what you'd expect to see, at close range, a range of nine meters, like the autopsy said.

    You're right about that, anon.

    ReplyDelete
  54. But then, at nine meters, you'd be able to identify the target, wouldn't you?

    ReplyDelete
  55. Desert Rat, really, I don't care what you did down there in Central America, I simply don't care, you may have done right for all I know, in the stress of the times, things are complex, and sometimes people have to get tough. I know you are a man that supports the military, in a way I haven't, I've never been in, but I think Tillman probably got shot by friendly fire. Not everything is a conspiracy.

    ReplyDelete
  56. I did not bring it up, bob.

    Mr Hanson did not address the issues at hand, he merely retold the second story that was deemed worthy of public consumption.

    It is fictional, based upon ballistics and the medical evidence, as reported by the AP.

    ReplyDelete
  57. you believe whatever suits your fancy, troll. That you rely on the AP as your source of credibility and authority speaks volumes.

    ReplyDelete
  58. The Cost of Manufacturing Rising In China


    There's only $6.00 Chinese labor in assembling a $600.00 IPhone4.

    ReplyDelete
  59. Well, whatever Rat is, and we've argued like hell about everything there is to argue about, he is not a troll.

    Along with Rufus and me, he is one of the founders of the mighty Elephant Bar.

    He will probably be here when I've gone to heaven, as I so wish, to be translated to the realm of pure song, and Melody.

    ReplyDelete
  60. The Oil in "Floating Storage" is about Gone.


    Le'ssee, that's about a million barrels/day that we won't have much longer. What effect might that have on oil prices, do you reckon?

    ReplyDelete
  61. The Cost of Manufacturing Rising In China


    There's only $6.00 Chinese labor in assembling a $600.00 IPhone4.

    Fri Jul 09, 03:50:00 AM EDT

    The Oil in "Floating Storage" is about Gone.


    Le'ssee, that's about a million barrels/day that we won't have much longer. What effect might that have on oil prices, do you reckon?

    Fri Jul 09, 04:40:00 AM EDT



    While the rest of America sleeps (or surfs porn) rufus maintains watch over global developments.

    ReplyDelete
  62. Why, rufus, you're a true geek!

    ReplyDelete
  63. Not a link:

    http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/07/mental-health-break-3.html

    Too fucking funny.


    Okay, it's 6 AM already and there are important things I should be doing but would prefer to procrastinate for an hour or so.

    New post for those of us not there in paradise among the mangoes?

    ReplyDelete
  64. I think he had Two brownies.

    ReplyDelete
  65. I had thoughts along the exact same
    lines.

    Never having had even one. But I kinda get the gist of the thing.

    ReplyDelete
  66. J Wahhabi, never lets a fact get in the way of his predisposition.

    The story Mr Hanson retells, does not hold water. It is full of holes. Three of them, to be exact, in Corporal Tillman's forehead.

    Sorry, J Wahhabi, but you rely on the perpetrators of the crime, for your reality. A reality that does not match the forensic evidence available.

    Nor does it match the behavior and actions of Stan the Man, during the shake out over the awarding of the Silver Star, to Corporal Tillman, for an action that never occurred.

    ReplyDelete
  67. Our "allies" in Kurdistan, well, Iraqi Kurds ...

    Look at what they are up to, now...

    PENJWIN, Iraq — Even as the United States imposes new sanctions on Iran, one of the biggest gaps in the American strategy is on full display here in Iraq, where hundreds of millions of dollars in crude oil and refined products are smuggled over the scenic mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan every year.

    Day after day, without formal authorization from Baghdad, more than a thousand tankers snake through this town on Iraq’s border with Iran, not only undercutting recent American sanctions but also worsening tensions with the Iraqi government over how to divide the country’s oil profits.

    The scale and organization of the trade has raised concerns among American officials here, said one senior American official in northern Iraq, who would speak about the Iran oil trade only anonymously, following diplomatic ground rules. They fear that proceeds from the sales could be flowing to corrupt Iraqi politicians and benefiting the Iranian government ...

    ReplyDelete
  68. The stream of tankers into Iran continued without interruption during an Iranian military campaign last month against Iranian Kurdish separatists operating at the border. Hundreds of tankers, each with a capacity of at least 226 barrels of crude oil and refined products, enter Iran every day from Penjwin and two other border posts in Iraqi Kurdistan, Kurdish officials say.

    While much of the refined product is used in Iran, which sorely lacks refinery capacity, the crude oil is trucked all the way down to the Persian Gulf ports of Bandar Bushehr, Bandar Imam Khomeini and Bandar Abbas, where it is emptied into reservoirs or loaded onto ships, according to drivers.

    The trade is supported by an estimated 70 mini-refineries, known in the industry as topping plants, said the Kurdistan region’s oil minister, Ashti Hawrami. They are dotted around the Kurdistan region and Kurdish-controlled areas in nearby Kirkuk and Nineveh Province, he said, and many of them are unlicensed.

    ReplyDelete