Jim Rittenhouse's semidaily journal of news, commentary and reports
There are now more contractors in Afghanistan than soldiers; just another part of the dumb practices that I’ve seen over and over again in the US government – all the way back to my mom’s job with the feds in meat and poultry procession oversight. When in doubt, contract it out, and claim that that’s [...]
From the Coming Anarchy site: projected maps of Europe in the future and the former Yugoslav areas, along with their tag on microstates. Personally, I strongly doubt some of this; France has been doing a thorough stomp of its minority groups (linguistics-wise, especially) for the last 100+ years to Make Everyone Parisian, and the Bosniak [...]
Iraqi PM to Obama: If you release those unreleased photos from Abu Ghraib, my electorate will go up in blue flame and demand that the US get out yesterday.
I’m beginning to think that Dick Cheney and company can’t tell the difference between repeats of 24 and reality. Of course, it’s coming to look a lot like he had the idea from the beginning that there had to be a pony at the bottom of that dungpile – er, that there had to be [...]
Another note on torture issues. This post seems to put it all together that the prime people who got good, reliable information in World War 2 were people who followed the same gold standard we followed before George W Bush changed things around; that torture is only good for causing people to suffer and say [...]
There’s now a monument in Iraq to the shoe-throwing seen round the world. Paul Krugman is a fan of Charles Stross, which makes sense to me. I’ll just wait for Krubman’s first AH novel… How many ways can you force-stuff the Roman Empire into science-fiction? At least a dozen.
HBO production and presently running on that network. My take on it is that it’s a once-funny; I have a hard time watching gangster movies because I really don’t get off on people beating and killing each other, especially if the people involved doing the beating are serious scum. This is SOPRANOS GO BAGHDAD; [...]
He also mooted the possibility that the Russian government would buy some of its metal products to shore up falling demand. At under $50 a barrel, the Russian government is taking a beating, because their Big Ticket was oil and gas. The entire economy was not based on industrial production, but in raking in petrodollars. [...]
Details after the cut.
4/07 – MRS. BUSH: Oh, I know that very much. And believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this, and certainly the commander in chief, who has asked our military to go into harm’s way. 4/07: BUSH, interviewed by Charlie Rose on Maliki possibly wanting the US [...]
The interesting part of the last week, of course, was to watch McCain be seriously stupid in the face of Obama’s trip to the Middle East and Europe. The whole thing started off with McCain double-dast-daring that gormless Obama guy to be a real man and walk down a Baghdad street like he did, and [...]
After the last week of major screwups from McCain, including the whole “surge is when I say it is, ignore history business”, and things like accusing Obama of being responsible for the rise in gas prices and willing to ‘lose the Iraq war deliberately in order to win the 2008 election’, it looks as if [...]
McCain: And not only, that, but Obama’s chicken to go to Iraqi like I did. Chick-en! Bgawk! Obama: Wha? Army: Do we need to get all those armed guards ready again for the trip through the marketplace? McCain: (makes more chicken noises, flaps around) Obama: Cripes, what a loon. What the heck, let’s go. Various [...]
Bushco: Ok, just sign here that we can stay as long as we like, do whatever we want in Iraq without being bothered, and sign over all your oil to our pals for development. Iraqi PM Maliki: Screw that noise. No deal. Bushco: Dude, we own you. For good. Iraqi PM Maliki: ‘Fraid not. Hey, [...]
…and besides, unlike the wife, I’ve never gotten through his works. Regular readers will note that the tags I put on posts are plentiful and sometimes sound goofy; that may be because it’s conceptual shorthand to me. ‘kubler-ross’, ‘renmin’, or ‘sep_reality’, for example. The first has to deal with posts on death and dying, the [...]