The Democrats are back and...

...is it possible that the Democrats are actually worse than I remembered? That does not mean the Republicans are a box of chocolates, but golly gee whiz one afternoon of c-span and one does come to some very scary conclusions. First, Nancy Pelosi believes in whatever she says. There is no cynicism or even a smirk. She is a convicted believer.

Second, the Democrats are very inclusive. They are highly represented by the Congressional Black Caucus. Now, to belong to that august body you need only be black and obviously to get elected from their districts, that is also the only qualification.

The Democrats are in white knuckle terror over the Black Caucus. Just look at The House Democratic Caucus who gave Rep. William Jefferson, D-Louisiana, a seat on the House Homeland Security Committee. This comes after the Republican controlled caucus stripped Jefferson of his seat on the powerful Ways and Means committee last June. You will recall that Jefferson thought his freezer was a bank deposit box and he hid fifty thousand next to the frozen gumbo.

These Dems don't believe in segregation.

There are some real dopes there, but then when you get to a lot of the white non-caucus dems, many with real nice hair, they get dumber. I do not think John Murtha is dumb but he needs to get hold of his emotions.

So not to give the impression that I am not inclusive, I am beginning to like Maxine Waters and Charlie Rangell. They speak with conviction especially Charlie, and Charlie is one dapper dresser. I do have some visual prejudices. I cannot get past the face of Henry Waxman to even concentrate on his nonsense.

As to the new breed of freshman Democrats, the war veterans included, not a spit of difference between them and any of the hacks of elections past. The entire spectrum of the Democratic rainbow is various shades of puce.


Had the Republicans governed like Republicans instead of the greedy pigs at the trough they were, and had George W. spent more time in the office instead of the gym, this may not have happened. History will not remember he had nice pecs.

Here is what the unionleader.com
has to say :

Sapping the surge: Dems set their deadline

Well, after complaining that President Bush second-guessed the generals in Iraq, House Democrats second-guessed the very general their Senate colleagues overwhelmingly approved just two months ago.

On Friday, the House passed by only six votes (218 to 212) an emergency Iraq war spending bill that requires withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by August of next year. That's exactly the type of arbitrary deadline Gen. David Petraeus has said would be counterproductive. But never mind what the general in charge thinks, the House has to embarrass Bush. Priorities, priorities.

What was the significance of August 2008? There was none. It was just a date to put on a calendar. As First District Rep. Carol Shea-Porter said, "I signed on because this bill had a date on it."

What date? Didn't matter. Any date would do.

That is wholly irresponsible. But don't take our word for it. Sen. Barack Obama said so. Well, at least he did last summer, when he voted against Sen. John Kerry's plan for pulling out of Iraq by this July, saying an "arbitrary deadline" could make the situation worse. Now he's all for an arbitrary deadline. Gotta get that anti-war vote.

Opponents of the war keep saying that there is "no military solution" in Iraq. Well guess what? President Bush has said that all along. That's why he focused on creating an Iraqi constitution and getting a representative government elected. And that is why his troop surge is being implemented alongside a push to bring warring factions together to stop the fighting.

But what Bush recognizes is that there is no political solution without a military presence. At least not for now. And unless the Democrats have a crystal ball, there's no way they can know that the situation will change by the time they call for the troops to leave.

Besides all that, the House is meddling in the affairs of the executive branch. If House Democrats want to end the war, they can vote to defund it on whatever date they want. But they cannot otherwise dictate the behavior of troops in the field. That is the job of the commander in chief. Our Founding Fathers rightly ensured that there would be only one commander in chief, not 535. The Democrats, as usual, are ignoring the Constitution to do what they think will win them more votes.

That's no way to run a war, or a country.

Of course "Iran planned to snatch sailors."

25 March 2007Daily Mail
IRAN 'PLANNED TO SNATCH SAILORS'
Hostage crisis escalates as Tehran accused of plotting kidnap at sea
By Norman Silvester

IRAN was last night accused of planning to snatch 15 Royal Marines and sailors to use as "bargaining chips".

Intelligence sources claimed the plot to take Royal Navy personnel hostage on Friday had been agreed five days earlier.

Eight sailors and seven marines - including one woman - were captured on Friday while carrying out anti-smuggling patrols in the Arabian Gulf.

But military sources in Iran's capital Tehran - quoted in reports in Israel - said the kidnap had been agreed on March 18.

The captured sailors and marines were to be used to try and force release of five Iranians taken prisoner by US troops in Iraq.

The seizure also comes before the United Nations' Security Council votes on tougher sanctions linked to Iran's nuclear programme.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already cancelled a planned trip to New York to address the UN before the vote.

Yesterday, the Foreign Office held crisis talks with Iran's ambassador Rasoul Movahedian in London and demanded the unconditional release of the prisoners.

The 15 crew members were said to have been flown to the country's capital Tehran for questioning.

Iranian armed forces spokesman General Ali Reza Afshar said the sailors and marines have admitted to being in Iranian waters illegally.

He said: "Personnel are being interrogated and have confessed to aggression into the Islamic Republic of Iran's waters."

The 15 sailors and marines serve on Plymouth-based HMS Cornwall, which patrols Iraqi territorial waters in the northern Gulf to combat smuggling and protect oil rigs.

They were surrounded by six Iranian gunboats on Friday as they reboarded their two small dinghies after searching an Arab craft.

The Cornwall's commander, Commodore Nick Lambert, said: "There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that they were in Iraqi territorial waters.

"Equally, the Iranians may well claim that they were in Iranian waters. The extent and definition of territorial waters in this part of the world is very complicated.

"Hopefully, we will see the early release of my people."

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell insisted: "The UK will not be blackmailed. Iran has a choice - to act responsibly, or face greater isolation."

UN takes a swipe at Iran. Iranian people will tire of this.

UN backs fresh sanctions on Iran

The UN Security Council has unanimously voted in favor of new sanctions against Iran for its refusal to suspend its nuclear enrichment program.
The 15-member panel's decision to back Resolution 1747 broadens the limited sanctions imposed in December 2006.

The new sanctions block Iranian arms exports and freeze the assets of individuals and companies involved in Iran's nuclear and missile programs. That may have some interesting application for both Iraq and Lebanon.

Iran insists its nuclear program is purely peaceful in purpose. Of course it is.

This may not sound all that significant, but it will cause some problems for Iran and will further reduce direct foreign investment into Iran. It will also encourage domestic resistance to a regime that is bringing nothing but trouble to the Iranian people. Not quite the body slam I had hoped for, but there is time for that in the future.

Iranians want trouble again . Give it to them.

Iran has said that British naval personnel seized at gunpoint in the Shatt-al-Arab waterway had confessed to illegally entering Iranian waters.

"The investigation, and confessions that we have, shows they have been arrested in Iranian waters," an armed forces commander told state radio.

The 15 captured British naval personnel were today reported to have been moved to Tehran as Iran raised the stakes in the escalating diplomatic crisis.

Many pundits are wondering who is behind it. Why? Why now? What do they want? Westhawk makes the observation that the incident is manufactured and...

Naturally, it is a risky business to manufacture international incidents to cover up bad news elsewhere. Perhaps a different junior officer with the British boarding party, under slightly different circumstances, might have chosen to resist capture. In that scenario, the day could have ended with a surface naval engagement, an air strike on an Iranian naval base, and lots of blood and oil on the water. Next would come statesmen on all sides pondering what must be done to protect their nations’ prestige.

Senior leaders in Tehran must now be wondering what trouble their president will blunder into next. And whether he or Iran will be able to wriggle out from the next incident without gunfire and explosions. Military escalation, even if blundered into, plays right into the air and naval power dominance of the Americans. From this perspective, President Ahmadinejad may be America’s best friend and Iran’s walking time-bomb.

Blunder or purposeful. It is time to bite on the bait. Punish Iran and use some steel teeth.

Why Jim Webb could be the next President of the US.

First, there is not much hope of the American people wishing for another Republican president. That can be open for argument, but I cannot think that any Republican will have an advantage by being a Republican. GWB has tarnished that coin.

People are open for a change. The Democrats are capable of doing something ridiculous, but assume that will not happen. We can also assume that Bush will do something spectacular that will change everything. Not a money bet.

Barack Obama is unlikely to win if he gets the nomination. That will be obvious by polling. His chances are not realistic.

Hillary Clinton has peaked in popularity. She is not going to win any converts and has problems with her Iraq vote over on the very significant left side of the party

Yet the Democrats are very determined to win. It will become obvious that the Democrats have one candidate that can hold onto existing Democratic states and add the red states, of Virginia, Ohio and Florida. That is Jim Webb.

Who do the Republicans have that can keep those three states , win Pennsylvania and possibly New York?

Do the math.

Maine-4
Vermont-3
New Hampshire-4
Massachusetts -12
Rhode Island -4
Connecticut-7
Pennsylvania -21
New Jersey- 15
New York - 31
Delaware-3
Virginia- 13
Ohio- 20
Michigan-17
Wisconsin-10
Illinois-21
Iowa- 7
Minnesota-10
Florida- 27
Washington- 11
Oregon- 7
California- 55
Hawaii- 4

306,and it is President Webb.

Wishing you were here. American forces needed in Africa.

The Left simply went orgasmic when western sanctions toppled Ian Smith and the white settlers that ran Rhodesia. For over thirty years they have been making excuses for African incompetence, blaming the residual white legacy, but slowly and inexorably the all new wonderful Zimbabwe rotted into just another African cesspool. Whites were killed and property expropriated by the use of a new and pure and excusable black thuggery.

Now, even the most ardent liberals are having doubts, and they should. It will not be too long before South Africa will follow the trek to the sewer.

If you thought the call for American intervention has past the scene, well you were wrong.

Will America deliver the final shove that topples Mugabe?

By Con Coughlin The Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 23/03/2007

When Steve Biko, the charismatic South African Black Consciousness leader, died naked and manacled in a fetid prison cell in Pretoria in 1977, his brutal demise ultimately sounded the knell for apartheid.

Those countries, such as Britain and America, that had continued to maintain relations with the South African regime realised that the Vorster government had gone too far; David Owen, the then Labour foreign secretary, led the chorus of international protests, attending a memorial service held in Biko's honour in London, and making Britain's distaste for Biko's death at the hands of the security forces publicly known.

The resulting international isolation of South Africa as a consequence of that single incident led to the collapse of apartheid a decade later and the takeover of the country by Nelson Mandela's ANC.

There is an important parallel to be drawn between the impact Biko's death had on South Africa, and the implications of the brutal treatment recently meted out to Zimbabwe's opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. Just as Biko's death led to the collapse of apartheid, the latest abuse of power by Zimbabwe's equally malevolent security forces may prove to be a similar tipping point in the removal of Robert Mugabe's dictatorship.

Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, appears to have survived the violent assault he suffered at Harare's central police station following his detention for participating in an anti-government protest. Like Biko, Tsvangira suffered severe head injuries - a fractured skull. Unlike Biko, who was left naked and chained to a grille on the prison cell floor, the prompt intervention of Tsvangirai's lawyers meant he received emergency hospital treatment.

Even so, the damage inflicted on Chairman Bob's Marxist dictatorship by this single act of state brutality may well prove decisive. For the 27 years that he has presided over the slow ruination of his country, Mugabe has managed to cling to office despite being responsible for some of the worst outrages seen in the recent history of that benighted continent. He escaped any meaningful censure when he launched his genocidal campaign against Joshua Nkomo's Ndebele tribe in the late 1980s, when his North Korean-trained troops massacred upwards of 20,000 innocent civilians in Matabeleland.

Not even the racist campaign that Mugabe launched to evict thousands of white farmers from land that their families had owned and farmed for generations succeeded in mobilising international opinion. Zimbabwe was finally expelled from the Commonwealth in 2003, but only after years of wrangling in which the majority of the member states argued that Mugabe's misdemeanours did not merit punitive action. It is only now that people are seriously questioning Mugabe's ability to cling on to office.

The most trenchant criticism of his latest excess has come from America, which in itself is surprising, given that Africa's unpleasant little local difficulties have been low down the pecking order of Washington's priorities. But now the Bush Administration seems determined to apply as much pressure as possible against Mugabe, in the hope that it can succeed in achieving its ultimate goal of effecting regime change in Harare.

This would explain the strength of the comments on the current crisis made this week by Christopher Dell, Washington's ambassador to Zimbabwe, who has been a thorn in the side of the government with his criticism of Mugabe's almost wilful destruction of what was once one of Africa's most thriving economies, and the ageing dictator's total disregard for the rule of law.

Zimbabweans were "losing their fear", said Mr Dell, and there were signs of mounting discontent within the ruling Zanu-PF party at the country's increasingly parlous economic plight - inflation is expected to hit 4,000 per cent by the end of this year. "What I think we have seen in the past week is that people have turned a corner," he said. "They're not afraid any more."

So why is American influence rising in Africa? Partly it is the result of the woeful lack of leadership the British Government has provided in curbing Mugabe's wilder excesses. As the former colonial power and the architect of the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement that gave Zimbabwe independence, Britain is well-placed to take the lead in reminding Mugabe of his obligations both to the people of Zimbabwe and to the outside world.

Even the South Africans, decidedly reticent about openly criticising a former comrade from the liberation struggle, had condemned Mugabe's latest excesses before Tony Blair and Margaret Beckett, his anonymous Foreign Secretary, were moved to do so. South Africa, it seems, has finally woken up to the fact that Mugabe's regime is in danger of spiralling out of control, with the disastrous implications for the wider region. But they, too, have been a great disappointment in dealing with the Zimbabwean crisis.

Pretoria nurtures pretensions of becoming the region's dominant power, but Thabo Mbeki, the South African president, has studiously avoided taking any position that could be deemed hostile to Harare. When the ANC did finally pluck up the courage to speak out, its muted criticism was hardly likely to have Mugabe quaking in his boots. Aziz Pahad, the deputy foreign minister and a veteran of the liberation struggle, simply called on Harare to respect the rule of law and the rights of all political parties. Ouch!

South Africa has badly let down the Bush Administration, which at one point believed Pretoria would be pro-active in resolving the Zimbabwean crisis. President George W. Bush said as much when he invited Mr Mbeki to the White House in 2005 and described him as his "point man" in southern Africa.

But the South Africans have failed to deliver, and with Mugabe threatening to run for another term of office, it falls - once again - on Washington to provide the muscular leadership that is necessary to deal with deranged dictators.

Desertion. Now and then.

The headline over at Drudge was worrisome, "More Soldiers Deserting than Previously Reported."

"Oh no.", I thought. I pictured brigades leaving equipment and units behind and going to Canada and Sweden. Then I read the article behind the banner. It seems as if a total of 3,196 active-duty soldiers deserted the Army last year, or 853 more than previously reported, according to revised figures from the Army.

The new calculations by the Army, which had about 500,000 active-duty troops at the end of 2006, alter the annual desertion totals since the 2000 fiscal year, but are they significant?

In 2005, for example, the Army now says 2,543 soldiers deserted, not the 2,011 it had reported earlier.

The revised figures show 2,543 desertions in the fiscal year 2005, an 8 percent increase from the 2,357 the year before. Previously, the service said 2005 desertions dropped by 17 percent, to 2,011 from 2,432.

But from the fiscal year 2000 through 2003, there were hundreds fewer desertions than the Army had previously reported. The Army’s revised data, while reflecting significant errors in year-to-year desertions, showed a total of 22,468 desertions since the fiscal year 2000, nearly the same as the old count of 22,586. There is no explanation for the change but I suspect it could be the result of adjudication of status between awol and desertion.

Desertions, always present in all armies in all times, now account for less than 1 percent of active-duty soldiers. There were 33,094 soldiers, 3.41 percent of the total force, who deserted the Army in 1971, during the last days of the Vietnam War.

My suspicions are that most desertions are personal and not ideological. Someone gets a "Dear John", or has emotional or drinking problems. Financial considerations or personality problems would be high on the list. Surely, the increase in woman in units where they just do not belong adds to the numbers.

The numbers are minor compared to earlier wars. I found this link where a Civil War historian investigated desertions in some small Pennsylvania units during the Civil War. Desertion in Pennsylvania Civil War Units. It is interesting and timeless as it looks as the small but very important reasons soldiers desert their units. The author finds the reasons behind desertions are rarely political:

...Again, an immediate and personal decision, rather than a political one. This is also bolstered by the fact that desertion tended to be highest from the regiments with a reputation of being poorly led. I also studied, in detail, a local company in the Philadelphia Brigade. This four-regiment unit was made of the same stuff -- working-class Irish and native-born soldiers, recruited in Philadelphia and the smaller industrial cities in its vicinity.

The four regiments in the Philadelphia Brigade served together until the very late stages of the war, fought the same battles, slept on the same campsites. Yet their desertion rate ranged from only 10 percent in the 106th Pa., to 19 percent in the 71st Pa. (California Regiment). Not coincidentally, the 106th had a reputation from the opening weeks of the brigade's term in service as the best-led, and the 71st as the worst-led, regiments in the brigade.

[Gottfried, "Stopping Pickett" is a good study of the Philadelphia Brigade that I wish had been in print when I did my work on it].

"My" part of that outfit was Company K of the 71st, one hundred or so Irish immigrants or sons of immigrants from the Schuylkill River iron mill town of Phoenixville. In Company K, there were 27 desertions, a rate of 25 percent. There was no meticulous records-keeping, as there had been in the 97th, so I turned to the county relief records, on which an astounding one-third of Company K was represented. Unlike the majority of the 97th Pa., these soldiers had families at risk.

The families on relief got one dollar per week for a wife or other adult dependent, sixty-five cents for each child under 12. Rates fluctuated, but generally grew smaller as the war went on, as more and more men with families were in the ranks while the county cash contribution did not keep pace. A family's relief also was slashed if a child was put out to live, or died, and wives could be dropped for "improper conduct."

As early as March 1862, the Phoenixville relief directors reported to the county that many under their charge were "extremely needy, not having BREAD to eat unless given by the hand of charity." All of which gives some context to the 25 percent desertion rate, and to men like Pvt. Patrick McKenna, 39, an iron mill worker with a wife and two children on relief who deserted, came to Phoenixville, took his family and went to New York.

No large political issue to worry about then or now.

North American Union Traitors Include Chertoff, Rice, Bush