Global Warming, Fait Accompli?

Not so fast, my friend! as Lee Corso, of ESPN's College Game Day, would say.

Check out this article sent to me by my friend Bill Carroll.

I wonder if Al Gore will give back his Nobel Peace Prize.

Is This What The Media Call A Recession?

Cribbed from "Best of the Web", who got it from a piece in The Washington Post, if these are the hardships the media are touting as signs of an economic downturn, then they have a tough sell on their hands.

The last thing Marti Tracy wants to do on a Saturday is clip coupons. But last month the 34-year-old Bowie resident felt she no longer had a choice. She'd already given up organic meat and decided to buy organic milk only for her 2-year-old son, not for the whole family.

Tracy and her partner also stopped buying the cereals they like in favor of whatever was on sale; stopped picking up convenient single-size packs of juice, water or crackers; and, in order to save gas, stopped going to multiple stores. "I find the whole thing a huge hassle, but I've reached a tipping point," said Tracy, a government human resources specialist who is pregnant with her second child. "Clearly, I'm not unable to feed my family. But I just can't feed my family the way I'd like to feed them."

Reading Recommendation

I am up early this morning and catching up on the emails in my Inbox, many of which are the Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web", edited by the brilliant James Taranto.

One such email contains a link to a video which purports to expose Senator Barack Obama's links to The Weather Underground's William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who the video claims helped launch his political career.

This got me to musing about why so many young people of that era developed such hatred and revulsion for a country that had given them nothing but affluence and opportunity. I think that Robert Bork's Slouching Towards Gomorrah offers the best explanation.

My reading of Bork's thesis is that these young people, who had not earned their affluence by dint of facing the twin hardships of the Great Depression and World War II, felt guilty for their (in their minds) ill-gotten gains. They couldn't make sense of a world with so much cruelty and suffering for some but not others (themselves included mainly among the latter group). Having forsaken religion (a potential source of comfort and guidance), and rather than work constructively within the system created by their forefathers that had served them and their country so well for so long, they lashed out at it for saddling them with their guilt.

I can't think of a better, more cogent explanation. The book is a good read, even if Bork does let his contempt for these 60s radicals shine through unabashedly.

As The Old Saying Goes...

..."Denial ain't just a river in Egypt".

Reuters reports on a U.N. employee who taught science and practiced engineering:

By day, Awad al-Qiq was a respected science teacher and headmaster at a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip. By night, Palestinian militants say, he built rockets for Islamic Jihad.

The Israeli air strike that killed the 33-year-old last week also laid bare his apparent double life and embarrassed a U.N. agency which has long had to rebuff Israeli accusations that it has aided and abetted guerrillas fighting the Jewish state.

In interviews with Reuters, students and colleagues, as well as U.N. officials, denied any knowledge of Qiq's work with explosives. And his family denied he had any militant links at all, despite a profusion of Islamic Jihad posters at his home.

But militant leaders allied to the enclave's ruling Hamas group hailed him as a martyr who led Islamic Jihad's "engineering unit"--its bomb makers. They fired a salvo of improvised rockets into Israel in response to his death.

A Plea to Parents

I like - no, strike that - I LOVE going to the movies.

So, if you are the parent of a small child, and are unable to make your child behave

STAY HOME!

Bringing a small child to a movie is selfish and punishes ME for your poor parenting skills.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do the movie-going public a favor, stay home with your kids until they are old enough to behave!

Please write your Congress Critters

Below is the text of a letter I sent to my Senators and Representative. I urge you all to do the same.

Dear Senator Warner,

With gas prices setting records at the pump, I urge you to work with the President to begin drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

The political left has consistently mis-characterized the effort to drill for oil in ANWR. I believe that oil companies can drill for oil in a way that minimizes the impact on the surrounding environment. My reading of the proposed effort is that an area the size of Dulles Airport will be the footprint of the oil drilling effort.

Also, another thing that I think you should bear in mind is that the inhabitants of ANWR want the economic benefits that exploring for oil will bring.

Again, I urge you to work with your colleagues in the Senate, the House of Representatives and the President to begin drilling for oil in ANWR.

Sincerely,

Alain DeWitt
Arlington, VA

Personal Update

I don't usually write much about what is going on with me personally in this space, but as this is my 300th post, I thought it somewhat a propos.

As of April 30th, I am no longer employed by Stanley Associates as an Installer/Trainer on the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs' Installation and Training Project. My tenure on ITP was the longest of my professional career to date. I spent six and a half years living out of a suitcase and clocking United frequent flier miles and Starwood points. During the six and a half years I was on the contract, I believe that I traveled more than anyone else across the three traveling teams. In 79 months, I made 79 deployments.

But all that is in the past now. Beginning June 22, I will be working for Northrop Grumman (NG) as a System Administrator. NG has a contract with the Army to install and maintain the Biometric Identification System for Access (BISA). I will be administering said system at Camp Speicher* in Iraq. BISA uses biometric identification technology to provide secure access to Army facilities for non-American civilian employees.

Let's say you are an Iraqi whom the Army wants to hire to work on a base. In order to enter an Army facility, you need a badge. In order to get the badge, the Army will take your photograph and fingerprints. The photograph is taken using a digital camera and the fingerprints are taken electronically.

These images are then transmitted to a facility in the United States. There, checks are run against several databases to make sure that you aren't a criminal or a terrorist. If there are any "hits" against any of the databases, these are reviewed by an adjudicator who must then decide whether the person in the "hit" is you or not. If the adjudicator decides the person is the "hit" isn't you, then the request for a badge is approved and you get your badge.

Your badge has a chip in it that contains the images that were taken previously. Then, each time you show up to work, you put your badge in a smart card reader and put a finger on a fingerprint scanner. The fingerprint scan is compared to the images stored in the chip and software determines if the fingerprints match. The Security Forces airman** also will compare the photo stored in the chip to the person seeking entrance to the base to determine if it is the same person. (Although I imagine the fingerprint comparison is more determinative.) If everything checks out, you go to work.

The system runs on top of plain networked PCs running Windows XP and it will be my job to keep them up and running, along with the associated peripherals (the cameras and fingerprint scanners).

Everyone has asked me why I am doing this. Obviously, the money is good. But, it's not just that. My time on the ITP contract was spent working alongside Foreign Service Officers (FSOs). Almost to a person, FSOs are a bright, driven, hard-working lot. Most of them tend to be from the "liberal internationalist" school of political thought. In my opinion, they seem to feel ashamed of the current administration and America's behavior during that time. One of the things I am most looking forward to in Iraq, is working alongside people that are unabashedly proud of America.

Additionally, there is the challenge of the work environment. I want to find out if I have the courage to work in a war zone.

* Camp Speicher is named for Navy Captain Michael "Scott" Speicher. During the first night of the First Gulf War, January 17, 1991, then-LCDR Speicher's F/A-18 was shot down over Iraq. There are conflicting reports of how his aircraft was downed, and over whether he was even killed. Originally, the Navy reported him as KIA, his aircraft having been downed by a SAM. A conflicting report by the CIA concluded that he was shot down by a missile fired from an Iraqi aircraft, most likely a MiG-25. There are also conflicting reports as to whether or not Captain Speicher survived the downing of his jet. In January 2001, the Secretary of the Navy changed his status to MIA and he was subsequently promoted to Captain.)

** According to my friend, Nick Keck, a lot of the physical security for Army facilities are provided by the USAF's Security Forces.

Aerial tanker dogfight

Ok. I did a bit of light reading on the tanker brouhaha this evening and this is what I learned:

Boeing proposed a tanker based on the 31 year-old 767 airframe instead of the 24 year-old 777 airframe which is technically much more advanced than its older brother. This decision seems to have a lot of people baffled.

EADS' proposed tanker aircraft is based on the A330 airframe which was introduced at about the same time as the 767 but is considered more advanced (for reasons not known by me). Apparently the technical contest was a dead heat.

In favor of EADS award is the fact that there will be a technology transfer of the engineering involved in building the new(-ish) aircraft. Also, the aircraft will be assembled in the United States by Northrop Grumman, although this is a very small part of the overall contract.

A fact that argues against the EADS award is that they have never built a tanker aircraft before. The current USAF tanker fleet is comprised of aircraft based on the Boeing 707 (the KC-135) and McDonnell Douglas (which merged with Boeing in 1997) DC-10 (the KC-10) airframes. So, there is a lot of tanker expertise on the Boeing side of the equation.

Both the 767 and A330 production lines are up and running, so that seems to be a wash (unless you live in Washington State - pun intended).

I think the fact that this intertwines our defense industry with the moribund European one is a big factor. Germany and France in particular, and the EU in general, are making noise about wanting to get more involved militarily around the world. I think this award takes away one of their excuses for not doing so.

Remember, we keep hearing how thin our forces are stretched. If this gives an incentive to the EU to help shoulder some more of the burden, this would seem to argue in favor of the EADS award. That would be a subtext, though, and not technically germane to the competition.

I have a source who works in the defense industry. I wrote him this evening and asked him his opinion but at the time of this writing haven't heard back yet.

In the interest of full disclosure, I recently accepted a position with Northrop Grumman who are the main subcontractor on the EADS team.

Quick hitter

I just got this in my Inbox from CNN's Breaking News email service:

-- The leader of al Qaeda in Iraq has been arrested, an Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman tells The Associated Press.

But, that can't be right. Al-Qaeda has nothing to do with Iraq. Wait, could this mean that The New York Times and most of the prominent Democrites are...wrong?

Nahhhh. Couldn't be.

Time to take action

Today I wrote my Senators as well as President Bush regarding the case of Army Sgt. Evan Vela Carnahan. Below is the text of the email I sent to the White House. I urge everyone to do the same.

Dear Mr. President,

I recently learned of the case of Army Sgt. Evan Vela Carnahan. From my research on the internet, it appears that Sgt. Vela Carnahan was part of a five-man sniper team operating in dangerous territory in the Iskandariyah area of Iraq. A military-age Iraqi male and his son stumbled upon the team’s hide. They were detained and restrained. When it seemed that the senior Al-Janabi was trying to give away the team’s position, Sgt. Vela Carnahan’s commanding NCO, Staff Sgt. Hensley, ordered all of the team but Sgt. Vela Carnahan out of the hide. He then ordered Sgt. Vela Carnahan to kill Al-Janabi.

While SSgt. Hensley was acquitted of murder charges, Sgt. Vela Carnahan was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Mr. President, it seems inconceivable that, while his commanding NCO was acquitted of the same charge, Sgt. Vela Carnahan was convicted. I implore you to use the power of the presidential pardon in the case of Sgt. Vela Carnahan.

Sincerely,

Alain DeWitt
Arlington, VA

Today is a sad day indeed

I just saw on the internet that legendary science fiction writer, Arthur C. Clarke, died today at his home in Sri Lanka.

Arthur C. Clarke was the last of the writers that formed what I regard as the "Holy Trinity of Science Fiction" (the other two being Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein). Clarke's passing marks the end of an era, truly.

On a personal note, he was one of my favorites and I will mourn his passing. Hopefully, his spirit is now free to roam this wondrous universe and explore all those places he imagined and invited us to imagine with him.

I'm shocked - shocked!

So, now Al Sharpton is against counting votes? I could have sworn he was one of the ones leading the cry in 2000 that all votes must be counted since not counting them would "disenfranchise" blacks (a misuse of the word since no-one was prevented from voting).

This item from the New York Sun says that Sharpton is threatening to sue the Democratic National Committee if they seat the Florida delegates from the Democratic primary. Recall that the DNC ruled that if Florida and Michigan held their primaries before Iowa and New Hampshire, their delegates would not be tallied.

Wait. It gets worse:

Rev. Sharpton is traveling to Florida today to compile lists of residents who skipped the January contest because they thought their votes would not count. He plans to have those residents sign affidavits saying they would be disenfranchised by the seating of the Florida delegation, in the event the Democratic Party allowed that to happen.

There's that word again. However since this is was a party primary and not a genuine election, again, no-one was disenfranchised. (Someone please get this man a dictionary.)

Now, what do you suppose is the reason for the abrupt about-face? It couldn't be because counting those delegates would benefit Hillary Clinton (who is white) and would be to the disadvantage of Barack Obama (who is not), could it?

No. Couldn't be. We all know Al Sharpton to be such a principled individual.

A little levity

I received a nice comment on my last post from 'AtypicalHeroine'. In order to return the favor, I checked out her blog and found this. She posted this in response to the Eliot Spitzer sex scandal and I just couldn't resist!

Not too shabby, huh?

Unfortunately, her blog doesn't allow comments, so a "Thanks, 'Heroine'!" is the best I can do.


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Thoughts on the judicial confirmation process

I just finished reading an excellent book, "Supreme Conflict" by Jan Crawford Greenburg. Greenburg is an attorney and Supreme Court analyst for Newshour with Jim Lehrer and CBS' Face The Nation.

It's a good read that focuses on the recent history and controversy over the confirmation process for federal judicial nominees and Supreme Court Justices in particular. It starts with Sandra Day O'Connor and continues on through the confirmation of Samuel Alito.

I was left with one searing impression: my contempt for Senate Democrats is confirmed and strengthened. What a feckless, unprincipled lot they are, led by the likes of Patrick Leahy, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin and Ted Kennedy.

I won't go into the infamous and scandalous attack on Robert Bork by Ted Kennedy (the infamous "Robert Bork's America" speech). That was a shameful episode, but it set the stage for all that comes after.

Instead, I want to compare and contrast the judicial confirmation process during the Clinton administration with a Republican-controlled Senate and the Bush administration with a Democrat-controlled one.

Bill Clinton appointed two Justices to the Supreme Court: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. Neither were pilloried by any Republican on the Judiciary Committee or in the Senate as a whole. Neither were vilified for their left-wing judicial philiosophies. Ginsburg was not dragged through the mud for her work as General Counsel of the ACLU. Rather the issue before the Senate during her confirmation was her suitability as a Justice. Did she have the academic credentials and work experience to do the job? It was easily determined that she did, and she was easily confirmed. 93-7, if I am not mistaken. Likewise, Breyer had a relatively easy time of it.

Now contrast that with the scurrilous treatment of so many of the Bush appellate nominees, and the rhetoric from Democrats in reference to the Roberts and Alito nominations. The Democrats decided, unilaterally, to change the rules. No more would the judicial confirmation process be about a nominee's suitability for the bench. Now the issue would be the nominee's judicial philosophy.

This, and the misuse of the filibuster, really makes me angry. It is understood that one of the prerogatives of being president is the power to nominate judges and justices whose philosophy most closely matches the president's. It's absurd to suggest that a Republican president must nominate someone who is ideologically acceptable to Democrats. Certainly that thought never crossed Bill Clinton's mind when he nominated Ginsburg and Breyer.

And, yet they got away with it. The reputations of sterling nominees like Miguel Estrada were dragged through the mud at the behest of People for the American Way and the Alliance for Justice because Estrada was a Hispanic who dared to be conservative.

Of course, the Democrats were ably aided and abetted by the major news media organizations in this effort. But even more disappointing than that was that Republicans were so ineffectual in countering these despicable tactics. I ached for someone, anyone, to say, "Well, of course the President nominated conservative jurists. It's one of the things he was elected to do." It never happened. Instead we got John McCain and the Gang of Fourteen.

This game of "one set of rules - anything goes as long as we say so - for us, and another for them" is why I have zero respect for most Democrats.

Write your Congress critters

I just read that S.C. Senator Jim DeMint's bill calling for a one year moratorium on earmarks failed by a vote of 29-71.

I was very disappointed to learn that one of my Senators, John Warner, voted against the bill. (I expected it from Jim Webb.) I just visited both Senators' web sites and registered my disappointment. I urge you to see how your Senators voted and do the same, if need be.

FYI, Senators Clinton, McCain and Obama all voted for the bill.

More on the Obama-Ferraro kefluffle

"Folks are hatin' on Barack Obama. He doesn't fit the mold, he ain't white, he ain't privileged. Hillary fits the mold. Europeans fits the mold. Giuliani fits the mold. Rich, white men fit the mold. Hillary never had a cab whiz past her and not pick her up because her skin is the wrong color. Hillary never had to worry about being pulled over in her car as a black man. I am sick of Negros who just do not get it.

"Hillary was not a black boy raised in a single parent home, Barack was. Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich, white people! Hillary can never know that. Hillary ain't never been called a nigger. Hillary has never had her people defined as non-persons. Hillary ain't had to work twice as hard just to get accepted by the rich, white folk who [indiscernible] everything just to get a passing grade when you know you are smarter than that C student sitting in the White House.

Oh, I am so glad that I have a God who knows what it's like to be a poor, black man in a country, in a culture that is controlled and run by rich, white people. He taught me, Jesus did, how to love my enemies. Jesus taught me how to love the hell out of my enemies and not be reduced to their level of hatred, bigotry and small-mindedness. Hillary ain't never had people say she wasn't white enough. Jesus had his own people siding with the enemy. That's why I love Jesus, y'all. He never let their hatred dampen his hope."

- Reverend Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ where Barack Obama has been attending services for some 20 years

Oh, for Goodness' sake! Again with the old canard about cabs not picking up black people? First of all, as black men commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime, cab drivers have a perfectly rational reason for being reluctant to pick up black men. Second, if not being able to hail a cab is the biggest challenge facing black men in America, then I think we have the racism problem licked.

Also, I wasn't aware of any Europeans in the race for president. To my knowledge, all the candidates are American. It's kind of a prerequisite for the job.

Some tongue-in-cheek humor about the Ferraro kerfluffle

"Former Congresswoman and Walter Mondale's choice for his Vice Presidential running mate in 1984, Geraldine Ferraro, pointed out in a speech that Barack Obama is Black saying: 'If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position.' (She) was forced to step down from the Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign for those remarks, a decision which I wholeheartedly endorse. What she should have said was: 'If Obama WERE a white man.' It is that kind of grammatical error up with which I will not put."

- Rich Galen of Mullings.com

Oh for Pete's sake!

With all due respect to my sister Beth, who is a librarian, (which means I am getting ready to say something really bad about librarians) but if librarians as a group are confused as to why our government needs (but has yet to exercise) the power to examine library records authorized under the Patriot Act, I give you exhibit A.

Now, just what important civil liberty was Biesterfield's [sic] supervisor defending?

From an employment standpoint, the fired librarian probably does not have a legal leg to stand on. The library and the county will claim that she was fired for disobeying her superior's directive and not for reporting a suspicious male viewing pornography in a public place.

(Why isn't that illegal, by the way? I can recall a similar incident when I worked at Arthur Andersen in Washington. Our company did a lot of work for the city government. I helped set up for an event at a DC public library once and my colleagues and I were shocked to see a boy of about 12 browsing hard core pornography right under the noses of the librarians! They could see what he was doing and either they didn't care or were precluded from doing anything (more likely). Heck, not only was he viewing the material, he was printing it out! And at his age, what he was doing was patently illegal.

I forgot. The men and women of our military fight and die to defend the right of adolescents to view pornography.

By the way, not being a library employee, it wasn't against the rules for me to tell the little fella to shove off, so I did.)

This kind of bad publicity may very well make the library rethink its decision and re-hire her (assuming she would even want to work there again). After all, who is going to want to patronize a library that is 'pedophile friendly'?

OTHER than pedophiles, I mean.

Sacrificed on the altar of political correctness

I could give two figs about Geraldine Ferraro. Prior to being plucked from obscurity by Walter Mondale, she was a nobody. After she became Mondale's running mate in 1984, she became a footnote in history.

Now it looks like she may rate a second footnote. Ferraro was just fired by the Clinton campaign. What was her transgression?

She told the truth.

Ferraro was sacrified on the altar of political correctness for saying that Barack Obama would not be where he is [at the threshold of the Democratic nomination for President] if he weren't black.

Excuse me? This is news? Eight years ago Obama was a state senator from Illinois. In just under 10 months he could be our 44th President. Americans, as a whole, don't give fast-track promotions like that to just anybody. We generally don't award the highest job in the land to first-term Senators.

Given the level of Obama's rhetoric and policy prescriptions, I don't think anyone could seriously argue that he is where he is because of his race.

The irony here is that Hillary wouldn't be where she is if it weren't for the fact that she's a woman.

Go figure.

Ding, dong, the witch is dead!

I can barely contain my glee at disgraced NY governor's Eliot Spitzer's resignation. This should effectively kill any ambitions Spitzer may have had for national elective office (i.e. the Presidency).

On another note, did you see that Spitzer was shelling out $4,300 (plus trainfare, cab fare and mini-bar costs) for a tryst with "Kristen"? Holy schnikes! For $4,300 a throw her t*ts better have hot-and-cold running cocaine.