Al Qaeda Chatter at Pre-9-11 Levels . Is that due to some impending terror attack or something else
Posts
A Familiar Face? I think so. What does this mean? Too soon to tell. However, it's clear that the Iraqis knew who he was well before the war and before the attacks on America. We need to see more, release the documents. They can hold back plenty of stuff for strategic and intelligence value and still give us a much bigger picture than we have now.
Africa's New Ocean: A Continent Splits Apart . The hed is a bit misleading as the continent has not yet split. However, geologists say it is imminent. "Imminent" for geologies is measured in centuries. When I hear "immenent" it means, turn on CNN and you'll see it after the break. On a serious note: I have a hard time wrapping my brain around this one. Will it be a navigable waterway? If so, how large a vessel will fit? I'm assuming from the word "ocean" it will be very very large. Could VLCC's fit? Will it be a new Panama Canal? I assume any attempts to move through there would require some protection. Anti-piracy initiatives would be vital. Currently, said pirates are terrorizing commercial and leisure vessels from Indonesia to Africa. It will be some time before anything happens but it certainly is interesting.
Saddam's Secret Strategy & What to Do Now . Ed Koch recounts the widely overlooked NYT story about how even Saddam's Generals believed they had WMD's. I asked a lefty on another blog, how we were supposed to know if even his own guys didn't. The response was that we can know all these things from IMINT. This is, of course, stupid and wrong. A great many of these facilities can be hidden in other places. In "Baby Milk" factories .
The Geography of Seinfeld . I've always wondered where some these places are (or at least, where they're supposed to be.). For anyone who knows NY, you know there's NO WAY anyone who lives below Midtown would go to the Bronx to go to a diner. Most New Yorkers won't go more than 3 blocks from where they are when hunger strikes.
New Sisyphus has jumped ship. He is correct that Iraq is not monolithically one way or another and that the Iraqis are anxious to settle blood fueds now that Saddam is gone. That said, to suggest that we have the choice of sacrificing our sons and daughters for Iraq is strawman. We must see this through. Anything less than a functioning democracy is failure and will bring us back in a decade to start all over again.
Interesting. I'm listening to Cell by Stephen King now and the protagonists were just accosted by a fire and brimstone woman trying to preach to them about the Tribulation and repentence. They threaten her with violence and decry her and her ilk for having protested outside abortion clinics in the past. They go further and say "your right to free speech ended around 3:00 today." Interesting that King's instinct is to silence her with threats of force and deny her right to speak! Very odd and I think, telling. I find that a grea many leftists would very quickly silence (or at least, marginalize to the point of invisibility) anyone who would discuss faith in the public square. I've always found King's ideas about religion muddled at best. He's clearly a spiritual person. A side of him that emerged in his writing after his stint in rehab. He talks frequently of "The White" and "Order" as opposed to the forces of darkness "T
Brooklyn Daily Eagle was a paper in New York around the turn of the century. Reading through the archives is fascinating. Growing up in the shadows of Gotham, I was always struck by the bit and pieces of old New York that survive to this day. Street signs in Staten Island from the 1920's. Mile markers in Brooklyn and Queens from the 30's and 40's. Manhole covers in Manhattan that had their dates worn smooth by a billion footsteps. It's all there, layer upon layer. Build and destroyed and built again. Like Shiva's own personal playground.
Finally ! I find myself cautiously hopeful. It is going to take some serious yeoman's work to make sense of this when it's released. Looks like something for Jayna Davis or Claudia Rosette. Here's hoping. Related thought: Where is Mark Bowden of late? Seems to me Iraq and Afghanistan are fertile ground for a guy like him.
USCCB has posted a website called Jesus Decoded to deal with the Davinci Code. For those of you who just arrived to this planet, The Davinci Code posits that Jesus was not divine, was married to Mary Magdalene and fathered children. Further, the Holy Grail refers to Mary, not a chalice that caught the blood of Christ when Longinus pierced his side. To keep this ("the biggest secret in history") the Vatican dispatches an Opus Dei "monk" who is both albino and a practiced assassin. No, seriously. That's what it says. Further, Mr. Brown says, with a straight face, that the book is grounded in fact. I guess somewhere along the line missionaries returned from Japan and passed along the ninja skills they learned while converting the heathen assassins during the Edo period.
The crazy hermit that runs North Korea is rattling his sabre again . I guess he's not getting enough attention now that talks have stalled. Donald Sensenig once remarked that a South Korean Colonel told him that the US was there not to keep the North from going south, but rather, to keep the South from going North. This is a problem with no easy answers. More on this later.
http://haloscan.com/tb/delawarewatch/114227941616027661 I'm not big on meta blogging. That is, blogging about other blog posts. However, I'm going to do it anyway. Why? I think it's often illustrative between our politcal differences but mostly because I'm lazy. Dana is a fellow First Stater and writes a quality blog. His posts are well written and topical. I totally disagree with him on pretty much everything but I think he's good blogger. He's a partisan lefty and I often think that skews his perception wildly. In this post, he's indignant that the FBI interviewed a college professor about Venezula and the local Venezuelan population. Much of Dana's effusiveness for Venezuela come from a program to give free oil to "poor" people. This imbues Hugo Chavez with imperviousness from all criticism. The corruption and persecution of political opponents is ignored. Giving $1,000,000 to al Qaeda is ignored. Lefties like Dana rail about
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So I took a header down the stairs this weekend. I didn't get hurt aside from some bruising to my muscles and my ego. What happened you ask, pull up a chair and I'll tell you. It's Saturday evening and my kids have finished dinner and are off to the bath. My wife is going out to some craft/fabric store to buy things we in DIRE need of. What these things are I cannot tell you because they involve a subset of English that is incomprehensible to men. I have never been to a fabric store and have no idea why they need an entire store for one. Have you ever, in your life, said, well, I wish I had some fabric right now. Me either. Anyway, back to my story.... I get the kids into the bath and my wife heads out to buy well, whatever it is. (Could "I need to go to the fabric store be some elaborate ruse that women use nationwide to meet in secret for nefarious or purile reasons? Don't laugh, it would work. What man would say, "Great. I'll come with"