Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough in the Washoington Times this morning:
” A senior Defense Department official tells us one of the alarming after-action intelligence reports that reached the Pentagon is that the communist government of Cuba shared intelligence on the United States with Saddam Hussein’s regime.
The reports stated that Cuban intelligence, which is known to have extensive ‘coverage’ of U.S. military bases, supplied information to Saddam’s intelligence service on the movement of troops and other military activities.
The intelligence ties are believed to be an offshoot of Cuba’s covert oil-purchasing arrangement with Iraq under Saddam. Those deals have been under way since the late 1990s and involve oil tankers that were sent to Mexico. The oil then was pumped from the tankers to smaller boats for delivery to Cuba. “
That’s an interesting and potentially dangerous dynamic to all of this. I can see why the left is annoyed Saddam is gone.
Tags: BitsBlog
No, I couldn’t bring myself to watch the thing. Trying to convince myself these people (?) are American and sane doesn’t work and only serves to make my butt hurt. I’ll skim the text files when they show up in the morning.
Why? Simple.
Remember the line I posted from Drezner’s earlier this week:
“Don’t be surprised by volitility among the candidates. The number one criteria of a sizable number of Democrats (myself included) is who can win in November. All other considerations are secondary. Who has the best health care plan? Who has the best economic stimulus plan? Who has the best whatever? Who Cares! The important thing is to win.”
If it doesn’t matter, why have a debate?
Tags: BitsBlog
One of the things I’ve been looking at is my page stats, because I’m looking at putting these pages on a commercial site. I’m trying to calculate bandwidth needed. I’ve been noting a lot of bloggers using SITEMETER, and since it’s free, I thought I’d give it a try. The code’s been included today, and will start spitting useful numbers in a week or two.
Tags: BitsBlog
“The last recession may have started in the last months of the Clinton administration rather than at the beginning of the Bush administration”
May have?
Idiots.
Tags: BitsBlog
A few days ago, I made reference to the idea that the states were no longer in the financial problems that they once were.
HobbsOnline has the details of one of those states… Tennesee, which at the moment comes out around $170m.
Funny how you never hear the news people talking about this.
Tags: BitsBlog
Anyone who doesn’t understand that Dr. King’s call for racial equality is being twisted, need look no further than the reaction of the idiots running WestSide High in Omaha, as depicted at Omaha.com:
“A small group of Westside High School students plastered the school Monday with posters advocating that a student from South Africa receive the ‘Distinguished African American Student Award’ next year.
The students’ actions on Martin Luther King Jr. Day upset several students and have led administrators to discipline four students.
The posters, placed on about 150 doors and lockers, included a picture of the junior student smiling and giving a thumbs up. The posters encouraged votes for him.
The posters were removed by administrators because they were ‘inappropriate and insensitive,’ Westside spokeswoman Peggy Rupprecht said Tuesday. “
The problem?
The students were suggesting a WHITE African student get the award, and apparently went to some lengths to describe this student’s merits, of which there were many.
Apparently, the Omaha kids making this suggestion were more grown up then the ones running the government school, there. Dare I say they were racist?
Tags: BitsBlog
As an owner of about 25,000 LP’s and a similar number of 45’s, along with all the digital stuff (MP3’s and CD’s), you can imagine this one tweaked my interest a bit.
ELP Laser Turntable: plays vinyl records without a needle
A Laser? For vinyl? Hmmm.
But there’s more; The sales thingie says:
“The LT’s beam of light can read the record’s groove in places that a conventional stylus cannot. This means that the LT performs high quality sound reproduction even on vinyl that has been worn by a needle. The Laser can also read below the depth of surface scratches, which improves playback.”
Now the turntable itself is a belt-driver, with wow/flutter rated at .07%, which, alas, is audible to me. More, one has to wonder a bit at the >55db weighted noise level which is nigh on 20db worse than a CD. I also wonder what kind of rumble is induced by the table… and how the pickup reacts to it. I mean, other than the S/N ratio, the real trick of digital recording was to eliminate the influences of the room and the equipment. Sounds like they haven’t quite gotten that one down, yet, but certainly the technology holds that promise if they ever develop it. I can see, for example, a record being laser swept, even without playing it in real time, and processed to eliminate noise… that audio run through a D/A converter and streamed. Hey, looks to me like it could be done.
Now, the initial $11,000US price tag, plus the $400 shipping may be an issue….. but you know how those prices tend to fall once the technology catches on and grows. Consider, for example that $39 DVD player you saw at the store last week.
Here’s hoping.
I’m thinking it was partially the problem. Bootrz points out today:
“By the way … has anyone bothered to ask what this all means for Al Gore? Al throws his support behind Dean, and it’s a sleigh ride to poll hell from there. Who would want the endorsement from a man who couldn’t carry his home state in a presidential election anyway?”
The boy’s got a point. It can’t be denied that once Gore and for that matter Harkin stood up with him, that Dean started down the long slide.
And, speaking of Harkin, was it just last June that I blogged about Harkin trying to pull rank on people waiting in line at an airport security checkpoint? One of my first blogging efforts, that. I’d forgotten all about it until last night.
I linked, at the time to Lloyd Grove in the Washington Shaft….
(The changed look in the Blog will give you an indication of how far this blog has come in 6 months!)
Addendum, 13:00hrs: It should also perhaps be pointed out that Lieberman, the other half of the Losers, didn’t fare too well either. For all that Dean’s more vocal supporters scream about Dean being the outsider, and complain that Dean’s defeat signals a lean toward Democrat business as usual, let’s face it; Dean looked and looks, for all the world, like a Democrat insider. Associating with the party’s biggest losers may have irreparably hurt his chances at being nominated.
Drudge is reporting today that:
“The senator from North Carolina ‘strongly opposes investing Social Security in the stock market,’ according to his campaign website.
In a page titled ‘seniors,’ Edwards takes a stand on the controversial issue, declaring how he ‘strongly opposes recent efforts to privatize Social Security, which would jeopardize benefits by risking our Social Security funds in the stock market.’
But before he decided he was going to seek the Democratic presidential nomination, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal, Edwards supported investing Social Security funds in the stock market!
In a speech on October 6, 1998 in Raleigh, Senator Edwards told a group of senior citizens that Social Security surpluses – money not needed immediately to pay benefits – should be invested and kept separate. A portion of the money, up to 10 percent, could be invested in the stock market and the remainder put in secure investments such as treasury bills, Edwards explained.
On September 27, 1998, Edwards told a gathering at Elon College how a small part of the Social Security fund should be invested in stocks and bonds ‘to see the kind of returns it would produce.’ “
Amazing what a little research can do.
And so, once again, Matt’s point about why he (and other bloggers after him) are doing so well, while the mainstream press’ following dwindles…. the mainstream press, had it done it’s homework, and eliminbated it’s inherent liberal bias, would have been reporting this months ago, and eliminated this slimeball from the race beore he got rolling.
This flip-flopping without consequence does seem to fall in line with the thoughts I posted at Drezner’s yesterday. (Scroll down to find it)
The real thing here is this: When a Democrat claims a position on the issues, ask yourself; can you trust him to continue to hold that posiiton?
Daniel Weintraub is reporting a bit of an upset going on in California:
“Dean and Clark are atop what looks like a two-man race for the Democratic presidential delegates from California, but President Bush holds at least a narrow lead in hypothetical matchups with all the Democratic contenders. So says the latest Field Poll.”
The implications to Weintraub’s point, go well beyond California. Consider the money situation. Even with millionares like Soros trying to overcome all the small donors putting their hard-earned money into RNC coffers, they’re going to have a hard time to come up to what the RNC already has in the bank, much less the support being picked up on the fly. If California stays close, or if (Snicker) W starts pulling away out there, the Democrats will be forced to start spending their smaller bank accounts in California to hold it’s electoral votes. Which means they won’t be able to spend it elsewhere… and thereby even if they pull off an upset in California, the Democrats won’t be in the running anywhere else but NY, and parts of New England.
Meaning, W for another term, no matter what they do.
Tags: BitsBlog
BBC NEWS is reporting this morning about how closely government workers are monitored:
“A tax office official in Finland who died at his desk went unnoticed by up to 30 colleagues for two days.
The man in his 60s died last Tuesday while checking tax returns, but no-one realised he was dead until Thursday.”
Several others followed this story as well, this morning… Apparently, there were 30 other workers in this office… and nobody noticed for two whole days that this guy’s nap was a bit longer than usual, or that his productivity was a bit off.
The Austrailian papers are suggesting that his co-workers were off at meetings, and so didn’t notice, thinking he was silently working on tax returns.
All of them? For two days?
Only in government….
Looks like Conservative Issues/Com has gone dark. The address still shows on my DNS as going to SimpleHost, but the SimpleHost server rejects all requests.
Sad to see him go; CI was running echoes of my weekly column there for a while, and had a nice start on things. No word on what’s happened. I’ll let you know. Of course if YOU have info, drop me a line. E-Mail button’s on the upper right corner of this page.
I’m prepareing this site to be moved to a commerical host. As such I’m trying to trim the un-needed bandwidth a bit. An easy way to deal with that is not to display a whole month of posts each time I get hit. I’ve made changes in the archive structure for one week intervals, and changed the main display to scroll ten (10) days worth. That should help with the bandwidth.
One problem with those settings, of course is it’ll be a bit harder to find stuff.
Fear not; (grin) I’ll be adding a search engine pretty soon… in the next day or two. Likely, it’ll be Google. Atually, I tend to prefer Alta-Vista for a lot of seearch times, and tend to alternate between them. But for this site, Google will likely be the best and most up to date, since Google owns Blogspot. (Shrug)
I’ll keep you posted.
Update: I’ve moved it back for now; the transition wasn’t a smooth one. It quote the Pope, it is as it was.
BET.com – The Country’s Most Segregated Cities:
According to BET, they are:
10. Philadelphia
9. Chicago
8. New York City
7. Buffalo-Niagra Falls, N.Y.
6. Cincinnati
5. Newark, N.J.
4. St. Louis
3. Cleveland-Lorain-Elyria, Ohio
2. Detroit
1. Milwaukee-Waukesha, Wis.”
Black Entertainment Television (BET) goes on, on their site to whine:
Why are we still separating ourselves? Shouldn’t we be able to live, work, go to school and church together? Tell us what you think.
OK, three points;
First notice none of them are southern towns.
Second, all of them are Democrat dominated.
Third, let’s not whine about ‘racial seperation’ until we see an end to BET, the very purpose of which is to deepen and to exploit the very cultural seperation they claim they’re decrying, here.
In doing some basic research on Weasely ClarkBar, I’ve stumble onto a story originally run on the Voice of America in early August of 1999. Much has been suggested about why Clark got canned, along with many denials that he WAS canned. There are there options given only one of which makes any sense. The one involving making a hole for Ralston. Let’s face it; Clinton never did anything that didn’t benefit him politically.
Here’s what the US Government news outlet under Bill Clinton, had to say near the end of Clinton’s last term:
DATE=8/4/1999
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
TITLE=CLARK-NATO-U-S
NUMBER=5-43999
BYLINE=ANDRE DE NESNERA
DATELINE=WASHINGTON
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: Near the end of last month, the Pentagon forced U-S General Wesley Clark to retire from his post as NATO supreme allied commander in Europe in April of next year, three months before the end of his official tour of duty. In this report from Washington, National Security Correspondent Andre de Nesnera looks at General Clark’s contributions in the Kosovo air campaign and discusses some of the reasons why the Pentagon may have decided to remove him from his senior NATO post.
TEXT: General Wesley Clark has been NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe since July 1997. In that capacity, he was responsible for conducting the western alliance’s successful 78-day air campaign against Serb forces in Kosovo – NATO’s only offensive military endeavor in its 50-year history.
Retired Colonel David Hackworth – a decorated U-S veteran from the Korean and Vietnam wars – says General Clark has not received the necessary accolades for his Kosovo campaign.
/// HACKWORTH ACT ///
He is a winner. He is the first General in U-S military history who fought a war, sustained – as we know – no friendly casualties and at the end of the war didn’t get a bunch of medals, didn’t get a victory parade down (New York’s) Fifth Avenue and ended up getting the sack.
(getting fired)
/// END ACT ///
Colonel Hackworth – now a military analyst – is referring to U-S Defense Secretary William Cohen’s decision to replace General Clark as Supreme NATO Commander in April of next year – three months before his three-year term expires.
Colonel Hackworth says Mr. Cohen’s decision to replace General Clark can only be interpreted as a slap at him.
/// SECOND HACKWORTH ACT ///
From my experience, looking over the past NATO Commanders, the average time that people like (General) Bernard Rogers, General (Lyman) Lemnitzer, General (Lauris) Norstad, was a five-year tour of duty – General (Alexander) Haig. So it wasn’t – as it is being put out now by the Pentagon – (seen) as a three-year tour. This guy envisaged staying there until he could move back to the U-S-A and become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
/// END ACT ///
Many analysts and military experts agree with Colonel Hackworth’s assessment. And the question they are asking is why was General Clark fired?
One interpretation is that General Clark advocated a much more vigorous military campaign against Serb forces in Kosovo including the introduction of ground forces.
Retired Colonel Dan Smith – a West Point classmate of General Clark – says the NATO Commander believes the only way you can achieve success militarily, is to have troops on the ground.
/// CLARK ACT ///
He is of the school which in the United States is generally attributed to General Colin Powell: if you are going to fight, you go in with both feet and you go in fast and you go in hard with overwhelming force – and I think that was what Wes was trying to push NATO into.
/// END ACT ///
During the 11-week air campaign, there were signs of friction between General Clark and senior Pentagon officials – especially over the use of ground forces.
That option was essentially rejected by the Clinton administration, putting General Clark in direct opposition to current US policy. Paul Beaver – senior analyst with the British publication “Jane’s Defense Weekly” – says General Clark disagreed with another senior NATO officer about the use of ground troops in the Kosovo campaign.
/// BEAVER ACT ///
Certainly he wanted to be more robust in the Kosovo landing operation. He wanted to go and confront the Russians at Pristina airfield. And that was actually a matter of some debate between him and the ground force commander (British General) Sir Mike Jackson in which Sir Mike Jackson won, because in his words it would have started World War Three and we weren’t quite ready for that.
/// END ACT ///
Sources in the U-S and British military say the confrontation between General Clark and British General Mike Jackson happened June 24th – 12 days after Russian troops occupied Kosovo’s Pristina airfield, surprising NATO officials. According to the sources, British Prime Minister Tony Blair backed General Jackson, while General Clark did not receive the support from senior Pentagon and White House officials – another sign of their eroding confidence in the senior NATO Commander.
But U-S officials have dismissed any notion that disagreements with General Clark led to the decision to retire him early.
Analysts say another explanation for General Clark’s early departure was US Defense Secretary Cohen’s desire to place a trusted colleague – Air Force General Joseph Ralston, vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – into a senior NATO post.
Retired Colonel Dan Smith (from the Washington-based Center for Defense Intelligence), says General Ralston could not be re-appointed as vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff since he has held that post for two consecutive terms. So the Pentagon had to find him another posting to keep him on active duty – and Colonel Smith says General Clark’s European Command was the logical choice.
/// SECOND SMITH ACT //
The European Command, which has been (reserved for the) army for many, many, many years. I think you have to go back to the early 1950’s to find an Air Force officer (there) (General Lauris Norstad, 56-62). But that is one in which an Air Force officer could logically serve in and I think it came to – well, if we are going to keep General Ralston, the only place he could go to was the European Command – and that means that General Clark was going to have to leave three months before his basic term is up. Of course most EUCOM Commanders are extended into their fourth year. So it looks a little strange.
/// END ACT ///
In the final analysis, according to sources, General Clark’s premature departure from his senior NATO post was due to a combination of factors: first, the Pentagon’s displeasure with his – as one analyst said – more bellicose views. And the need to find a suitable position for a well-liked, senior US officer who otherwise would have to leave active duty.
So as one analyst put it: “General Clark had to go.”(Signed)
NEB/ADEN/KL
04-Aug-1999 14:37 PM EDT (04-Aug-1999 1837 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
.
