Open post for those with something to share, updated through the day. New, complete posts come in below this one. Note: If trackbacking, please acknowledge this post in your post. That's only polite.
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Oh, this was a fun weekend for politics! And it's still reverberating...
The first post-Biden-selection poll is up, and he hasn't had the hoped-for effect. It'll be interesting to see what the other polls say...
Actually, the bewildering (for some) selection of Biden has a possible explanation: He wasn't the first choice. And I can't help but think there are some very good reasons why. I was stunned by the choice, in part because of this point, ably made by a relative of mine:
Confirmation of what has been assumed about Margaret Thatcher in recent years. So sad.
I don't understand the author's seeming allusion that it repudiates Title IX, but this is a fascinating discussion of some peoples' complete inability to acknowledge the reality of gender differences.
This is a useful look at the truth of the Sadr Brigades (or whatever you want to call them), from someone right in the middle of the fight. Defender of the People or brutal terrorist leader? I think we know the answer, but this is a good counter to the media-assisted rehabilitation we've been seeing (not that he ever needed "rehabilitating" in certain quarters of the media...).
This is a great interview of a very cautious but informative General Petraeus. The interviewer asks good, educated questions and generallly gets honest and substantial answers. But it was interesting to see Petraeus dance around the fact that the minute we declare the war a success, all it will take is one significant attack for the media and politicans to call it all a lie. It's amazing to see the interviewer more positive about developments than the General himself. I suppose that's the strategy that must be taken these days...
Over the weekend, I saw some very interesting articles about health: The first one discussed the connections between depression and exercise, and the paradox that what can help depression is harder to do when depressed. And here's one the Atkins-lovers are going to celebrate: Carbs not only make you fat, they kill cells that help keep you thin.
For the dog lovers of the Castle: Living with Humans has Taught Dogs Morals. Frankly, I always thought it was the other way around... ;) And for the spider and photography lovers... - FbL
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Heh. This is... well, funny. Very funny. Unless you're a fan of the man from Chicago and his running buddy from Delaware - have a steaming hot cuppa Joe . -the Armorer
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What Could Possibly Go Wrong Dept. -- Pentagon Begins Fake Cat Brain Project. Complete with a pertinent Lolcat illustration. Next up, countermeasures such as catnip-flavored chaff and wiggling string decoys
-Bad Cat Robot
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Oh, this was a fun weekend for politics! And it's still reverberating...
The first post-Biden-selection poll is up, and he hasn't had the hoped-for effect. It'll be interesting to see what the other polls say...
Actually, the bewildering (for some) selection of Biden has a possible explanation: He wasn't the first choice. And I can't help but think there are some very good reasons why. I was stunned by the choice, in part because of this point, ably made by a relative of mine:
I am close to the age of Joe Biden, and I have lived in both areas from which he hails. When I was five, my family moved from Philadelphia to the Eastern Shore part of Maryland. When Biden enthusiastically described Barak Obama as “articulate and bright and clean,” I knew immediately what he meant. [more]In other news...
Confirmation of what has been assumed about Margaret Thatcher in recent years. So sad.
I don't understand the author's seeming allusion that it repudiates Title IX, but this is a fascinating discussion of some peoples' complete inability to acknowledge the reality of gender differences.
This is a useful look at the truth of the Sadr Brigades (or whatever you want to call them), from someone right in the middle of the fight. Defender of the People or brutal terrorist leader? I think we know the answer, but this is a good counter to the media-assisted rehabilitation we've been seeing (not that he ever needed "rehabilitating" in certain quarters of the media...).
This is a great interview of a very cautious but informative General Petraeus. The interviewer asks good, educated questions and generallly gets honest and substantial answers. But it was interesting to see Petraeus dance around the fact that the minute we declare the war a success, all it will take is one significant attack for the media and politicans to call it all a lie. It's amazing to see the interviewer more positive about developments than the General himself. I suppose that's the strategy that must be taken these days...
Over the weekend, I saw some very interesting articles about health: The first one discussed the connections between depression and exercise, and the paradox that what can help depression is harder to do when depressed. And here's one the Atkins-lovers are going to celebrate: Carbs not only make you fat, they kill cells that help keep you thin.
For the dog lovers of the Castle: Living with Humans has Taught Dogs Morals. Frankly, I always thought it was the other way around... ;) And for the spider and photography lovers... - FbL
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Heh. This is... well, funny. Very funny. Unless you're a fan of the man from Chicago and his running buddy from Delaware - have a steaming hot cuppa Joe . -the Armorer
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What Could Possibly Go Wrong Dept. -- Pentagon Begins Fake Cat Brain Project. Complete with a pertinent Lolcat illustration. Next up, countermeasures such as catnip-flavored chaff and wiggling string decoys
-Bad Cat Robot
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*A term of art from the artillery. Harassment and Interdiction Fires. Back in the day, when you could just kill people and break things without a note from a lawyer, they were pre-planned, but to the enemy, random, fires at known gathering points, road junctions, Main Supply Routes, assembly areas, etc - to keep the bad guy nervous that the world around him might start exploding at any minute. Not really relevant to today's operating environment, right? But, it *is. The UAVs we fly over Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for targets of opportunity are a form of H&I fires, if you really want to parse it finely. We just have better sensors and fire control now. Of course, now I have to call them UAS's, because someone got a Legion of Merit for the name change.Anyway, I call the post H&I Fires because it's random things posted by me and people I've given posting privileges to that particular topic. Another term of art that might be appropriate is Free Fire Zone.
no, really, that dude needs some better plugs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_Crime_Control_and_Law_Enforcement_Act
*Especially* when tracking coyotes sprinting across the pasture.
Stray Dog Rescues Abandoned Newborn Baby
Now if this old dog could learn these new tricks you'd think Obama could.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/08/22/argentina.dog.tale/index.html
well, it was bad enough even a liberal democrat front-site was appalled.
From "The Moderate Voice"...
themoderatevoice.com/media/journalism/22092/dnc-discourse-with-michelle-malkin-did-the-msm-get-it-right/
D'ye think they'd have been so bold if she'd had a .45 instead of a camera?
"I knew immediately what he meant." Yeah, me too, but it didn't take growing up in the poor rural area to know it. I was raised in Philly, was mostly poor before my mom married again (and again, better each time), and I lived in a project for 4 years from '63-'67. When we moved in, it was pretty evenly split between whites and blacks, with some asians and hispanics. When we moved out, it was mostly blacks living there. I had to be escorted home from school more than once in the latter years because of the racial tension, and a couple of times I got to look down on race riots from behind the chain link fence on the balcony of our 12th story apartment. Funny thing was, we were all poor as dirt, and since the balcony ran the length of the building, there were always all colors of people standing out there watching the turmoil. It was odd, in retrospect, but at the time, it was just all of us neighbors watching the crazies.
After we moved from the project, we lived in a mostly white, mixed immigrant blue-collar neighborhood, but I went to a JHS and then a HS that had children from all economic and racial slices of the city (from poor to affluent, white to black and everything in between). I also got to see race riots and ethnic tension close-up, and once in the late 60s, my best friend Ray (who was black) and I had to make run for it into a diner to avoid getting swept into the tide of HS crazies fighting in the park and on the main street in our area.
Suffice to say, while I like to think I grew up unprejudiced (ethnic slurs were death on utterance in my house then, just as they are now); nonetheless, I was and am very sensitive to color and ethnicity. And of course the Army helped heighten that sensitivity, what with all the race relations classes I attended.... But by sensitive, I don't mean uncomfortable or negatively judgemental, rather that I do not see anyone as just a person, but rather as a package of influences and experiences, and I absolutely make some judgements and bias my behavior based on outward appearance. I do so to avoid making a dumb-a$$ gaffe like Biden's, which your relative called absolutely correctly, FBL. I do not routinely class anyone as 'clean,' but I absolutely understand where that comes from, and the implied comparison, because that is one of the things I did grow up hearing.
What amazes me most (though not really, I suppose), is how the Democrats and the ethnic liberals can overlook Biden's lying and not-so-subtle racisms. It's as if they are willing to lie down with the devil if it means getting a deomcrat nut-job elected to the white house, just to prove they aren't a party of perennial losers and no-hopes. Ha. Micheal Moore is the quintessential example of those kinds of folks.... Hey, I'm surprised no one has recommended him for VP.
Or maybe they did, but he didn't accept?
Oh well, time for work, gotta go....
Me, too. I saw a picture of Michelle Obama hugging Joe Biden. I couldn't see her face from that angle, but it occurred to me that consideirng her background and philosophies it must've nearly made her ill. As I wrote on my post. I'm just stunned at his selection.
And then yesterday I heard a recording of him from the last ten years or so talking about how Ohio schools were better than DC because they had only 1% minorities. "It's all in what you've got to work with, what you start with." He went on to more than imply that black mothers didn't talk to their kids and didn't read to them and that's why black children had poor vocabularies. I was amazed. The sad thing is, he's half right but it's a socio-economic issue, not a racial one (the links between income level and average vocabulary in pre-school children are startling--differences in income parallel differences of vocabulary size in the thousands).
Did I mention that I'm stunned at his selection? One thing I've tended to think about the left wing in this country is that they were sincere in their radical racial ideas/sensitivity, albeit wrong. This selection seems to make it all just a political power game. Heh. I could also take it as an insult ot the very white people Obama is courting--"i know how to make those white people like me... I''ll put a racist white man on the ticket!"