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Gman's Journal
Operation Brimstone ended only one week ago. This was the joint US/UK/French naval war games in the Atlantic Ocean preparing for a naval blockade of Iran and the likely resulting war in the Persian Gulf area. The massive war games included a US Navy supercarrier battle group, an US Navy expeditionary carrier battle group, a Royal Navy carrier battle group, a More.. French nuclear hunter-killer submarine plus a large number of US Navy cruisers, destroyers and frigates playing the "enemy force".
The lead American ship in these war games, the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN71) and its Carrier Strike Group Two (CCSG-2) are now headed towards Iran along with the USS Ronald Reagon (CVN76) and its Carrier Strike Group Seven (CCSG-7) coming from Japan.
Northrop X47b UCAS's over the Operation Brimstone flotilla
They are joining two existing USN battle groups in the Gulf area: the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN72) with its Carrier Strike Group Nine (CCSG-9); and the USS Peleliu (LHA-5) with its expeditionary strike group.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=704_1218207... ------------------------------------- Read more. The article has a very long list of naval flotillas headed for the Persian Gulf. This could be it. We knew Bush & Cheney would not go quietly.
that if Obama wants to win he'd best pick Hillary for VP. I'm afraid you're reading entirely too much into this little sentence. I think my feelings about Hillary are pretty well known here and I do not at all like the tactics Obama used to get the nomination. But be clear about one thing. I will vote for Obama. I'm still not enthusiastic about him but he has my vote. My problem is that this is the ninth presidential election I will vote in. I was very enthusiastic about every single Democratic nominee in the last 8. I was a Clinton delegate to the DNC in 92 and a Kerry delegate in 04. I stopped having the blind faith that the Democrat would win with Dukakis. I felt the same way about McGovern as you do about Obama. After Gore, for me it quit being about the candidate and became who has the best chance of winning. I agree completely with Karl Rove, Dick Morris, et al that Obama is the weakest candidate of all the Democrats in the primary. I think that adding Hillary to the ticket will completely solidify and re-energize those 18 million voters which includes a great many white working class voters that voted for Hillary. Hillary locks down the white working class vote and states that should be Democrat including WV, PA, OH. I think those same white working class along with the Black vote could make SC, NC and even GA too close to call with Hillary.. I think that Hillary will lock down the Hispanic vote in NM, NV and CO putting these states in play as well. You may say, "Well, that's not so because the polls say...". Screw that. You may say, "Well Hillary will motivate the RW to go vote against Obama and her". Screw that. You don't think the RW has already decide they have to keep "that n****r" from winning any way they can (and I fear for his safety if he's up by 10 points in mid-October)? Hell, I live in S. Texas so I hear stuff like that not only from the whites, but from the hispanics who supported Hillary and (IMHO) are more racist than any white I've ever run across, and that racism is against both whites and blacks. And if anyone coughs and sputters at that statement, come live in Texas south of Interstate 10 for a year or so and you'll see what I mean, if you can handle it. We all know this election is different. I've never seen anything at all like this. My 90 year old aunt says these times are "just like it was with Hoover", and she was a little kid then but she heard the talk. To you and me it makes no sense not to vote for Obama for a plethora of reasons. But base human instincts, including fear (and including fear of someone of a different color) can cloudy people's judgement. There was a reason 18 million people voted for Hillary. I think that if Obama ties into that energy, along with his own energy, those judgements become clear again and that ticket will be unstoppable. You shouldn't read so much into a little sentence. 
nor was I alone in saying there (isn't) wasn't a dime's worth of difference between Obama's positions and Hillary's positions. Hillary talked issues and solutions. Obama talked the nebulous "hope and change", or at least that's all that came through.
Although I may appear "partisan" to people here, I am essentially about who can win. My passion for Hillary was all about the fact that she was essentially the same as most all the other candidates on policy (except for Kucinich) and that I felt (and still do) that she could win in November. So I support who I think can win in the GE. My "partisan" view is never about "my candidate has a better ideology than your candidate" unless your candidate is a complete nut. I'm driven by getting a Democrat elected.
Prior to our primary, I had a conversation with a woman who is an African-American state legislator and a long time friend. She was trying to win me over for Obama. I asked her, "How do I choose? They're essentially the same on policy so how do I choose? Either way we go, ground-breaking history will be made. So how do I choose? A Black man on one hand and a woman on the other." She replied, "I know, isn't it great?!" I said it was fantastic. We never thought we would ever live long enough to see it.
But, I was completely disgusted with the local Hillary vs. Obama infighting this year which very much mirrored DU. (I got to see the usual snakes in the grass at their finest and found a couple I didn't realize were there.) Disgusted is a kind word. The only reason I even went to our state convention this year as a delegate was to help a couple of friends (one an Obama supporter, one a Hillary supporter) get elected to the positions in the party they were seeking. I pissed off my a lot of my county delegation which was overwhelmingly Hillary to get an Obama person elected, and we won it. I split off enough of the Hillary delegates that we were able to get this person elected. This person deserved to be there, had been there for a long time, and it wasn't about Obama vs. Hillary, it was about the party.
I got a bad impression about Obama from the very beginning of his campaign because it appeared (and still does) that his primary campaign was long on rah-rah and short on substance that was over and above what his other opponents had to say. The rah-rah kind of fluff doesn't cut it in the GE. Personality cults don't cut it in the GE. And a freshman Senator who was a state senator not that long ago would be chum in the water for the Republicans in the GE.
But Obama is now showing me he can articulate the policy message that most all the candidates in the primaries supported and he can do it very well and in an unwaivering way. He's showing that his leadership ability can command attention on the world stage.
I don't know if Obama has matured in this race or if he's being extremely well coached. Maybe both. But you reallly can't coach charisma and he has tons of that. Always has. And now he's looking better and better for the GE.
The NOAA National Weather Service in association with the COMET Program offers a large series of free distance learning products. Modules available for download (flash player usually required) include: A Convective Storm Matrix: Buoyancy/Shear Dependencies, Basic Terminal Forecast Strategies, Fire Weather Forecasting: Clear Communications, and a whole bunch of others. I'm just selecting some at random here. Yesterday I completed a module called "Polar Satellite Products for the Operational Forecaster: Microwave Analysis of Tropical Cyclones, and Remote Sensing of Ocean Wind Speed" and another module called "Direction: An Introduction to Scatterometry", both with a passing grade! I already have a better understanding of how tropical storm systems are analyzed and the stuff I read in discussions means more. The modules show a level number which I can't find an explanation for except it appears that the higher the level, the greater the difficulty and probably the greater the need for some background prerequisite-type stuff. Courses available are listed here: http://www.meted.ucar.edu/resource_downloa... . (Registration is required to begin the courses). Info about the COMET Program is here: http://www.comet.ucar.edu/aboutus.htm
This story in they NY Times today among many others starting yesterday describe the accelerated pullout of Iraq of up to three brigades before Bush leaves office. The main reason mentioned is the need for more troops in Afghanistan. But we were misdirected in 2002 about what was going on with the Iraq buildup. I personally watched C-5 cargo planes leaving the local BRAC'd AFB climbing and headed East in the summer of 2002 and thought to myself, "Those SOB's are building up to invade Iraq." Denials of an Iraq buildup were everywhere including this article from a military mouthpiece, GlobalSecurity.org. This article was written in August 2002. I watched the C-5's starting in early July 2002. Google has plenty of other stories about the Iraq buildup and the denials. So now when John Bolton tells us that Israel will attack Iran before a new president is sworn in I sit up and listen. Labor Day is coming quickly. We were told by Bush's chief of staff in September 2002 that "From an advertising point of view, you don't launch a new product line until after Labor Day," But product production has already started. Get ready.
Welcome to the most grassroots-driven platform development effort in the history of American politics!
The Republican Party is seeking your input as we develop the policies and principles upon which we should stand for the next four years. On this website, you can share your thoughts, participate in polls, and communicate directly with the policymakers who will be shaping the party's agenda. All comments and feedback will be reviewed and taken into full consideration as we prepare for our convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
We hope that this process will guarantee the greatest amount of public input into any platform in American history!
http://www.gopplatform2008.com/intro.aspx ------------------------------ I don't think you can have too much fun with this! Have at it!
Yeah, McCain was captured and spent some bad time in the Hanoi Hilton. Ok, fine. That does NOT make him automatically and unquestionably qualified to be president. What no one wants anyone to say is that McCain was a lousy pilot. The guy sucked at flying. Not long after being commissioned, he crashed a plane into Corpus Christi Bay while in training at the naval air station there. Then, he crashed while taking out power lines "over the Iberian Peninsula". As if that wasn't enough, he later crashed again while flying a government plane back from attending an Army v Navy football game. It's all there at McCain's Wikipedia entry. (Except the McCain campaign has done a marvelous job of insuring there's no mention of the fact McCain was returning from a football game when he says he flamed out.) Then, McCain is said to have been shot down over North Vietnam by ground fire. I'm no Navy pilot, but how low do you have to be to be shot down by ground fire? Shouldn't he have been higher than ground fire can be effective? So was McCain a war hero or was he incompetently stupid? Or was he dangerously irresponsible? Prior to being shot down over North Viet Nam, there was the famous USS Forrestal Fire which McCain played a part in. It appears that McCain, was being the hotdog, showboating juvenile when he when he "wet started" his A4E Skyhawk. You see, the starter motor switch on the A4E Skyhawk that McCain was in allowed fuel to pool inside the engine. If you wanted to phuck with the guy in the plane behind you, you could "wet-start" this plane and an impressive flame would shoot from the tail. Apparently, it was this cook off that launched an M34 Zuni rocket that tore through the Skyhawk’s fuel tank, released a thousand pound bomb, and ignited a fire that killed the pilot plus 167 men. Before the tally of dead and dying was complete, the McCain, the son and grandson of admirals had been transferred to the USS Oriskany. (See this article) McCain was also the only Forrestal crewman to be immediately transferred after the fire. See this article. Now, the only thing official I can find is this cleaned up, typical military version of the Forrestal fire. From the link: "Lt. Cmdr. Robert "Bo" Browning one of the pilots due for launch with many others, he was seated in the cockpit of his fueled and armed Skyhawk; the plane was spotted way aft, to port. Lt. Cmdr. John S. McCain III said later he heard a "whooshy" sound then a "low-order explosion" in front of him. Suddenly, two A-4s ahead of his plane were engulfed in flaming jet fuel — JP-5 — spewed from them. A bomb dropped to the deck and rolled about six feet and came to rest in a pool of burning fuel. A "whooshy" sound? A "low-order explosion"? That's probably what it sounds like when you wet start an A4E Skyhawk. Maybe you want to google "Manual of the Judge Advocate General Basic Final Investigative Report Concerning the Fire on Board the USS Forrestal", which is a 7,500 page report to find out more? Don't bother. It only has one link that's mostly irrelevant. And his youth while in the Navy is not unlike Bush's. (Although I do give McCain credit for being active duty and not hiding out in the Guard, as if he had a choice with his dad and granddad.) While there are no known cocaine possession convictions in Houston, as was the case with Bush, he dated an exotic dancer named "Marie the Flame of Florida" and it was said of him that "being on liberty with John McCain was like being in a train wreck." Now I've nothing against exotic dancers and I'd love to have partied with someone that parties - train wreck - hardy just like I would have loved to have partied with W. There's got to be some great stories there. But would I want either one to be president? I don't think so. Did I mention that MCCain graduated 894th out of 899 from the Naval Academy? That puts him in the good company of General George Armstrong Custer who graduated last from West Point. So is McCain presidential material?
you stupid bastard.
While Bolton's arguments about why Iran's options are "less broad" come from a perspective that Iran would react rationally, he completely discounts the primary, Political Science/Force in International Politics 101 notion that perceived irrationality makes a nation's leader powerful.
He also ignores the fact that 1) Iran has enough money that they don't have to export oil for many years and they will do just fine, 2) Israel's sorry performance in Lebanon doesn't make Iran afraid of anything from Israel. However, #3 is the one thing none of us are sure about, the US response. We all know these bastards are unquestionably insane enough to hit Iran with nuclear weapons (talk about perceived irrationality...) Fortunately, deterrence from Russia who is a strong trade partner with Iran and from China who needs Iranian oil likely takes the nuclear option off the table for the US.
One thing is crystal clear now. The plan that will be set in motion sometime between now and the end of the year is for Israel to hit Iran. Then the US waits for Iran to retaliate and then the US jumps in and hits Iran with everything up to and including possible nuclear weapons if deterrence doesn't work because they truly are irrational and insane.
I think the most rational and smartest way for Iran to react to an Israeli attack is to go straight to the UN and build a consensus against the US and Israel up to and including sanctions against both.
Another random thought on Russia and China deterrence against the US... if it doesn't work and if either of these do strike the US with a limited nuclear strike, it would be fantastic for Bushco business. The neocons really want a strike on the US. They've said as much while lamenting that 9/11 was a one-time event. It would completely destroy the world economy, but then again, they have all the money already and would make even more. So you just really can't say what they will or will not do.
-----------on edit------------------
Something about hitting "submit" that makes you review your post completely differently than when you first proof-read it.
Scotty's conscience just couldn't take it anymore. He tried to but he just couldn't handle it any longer. Scotty knows the damage he caused, he obviously feels he has an awful lot to make up for, and he's doing something about it. If there is any doubt here (which there was a small amount with me), consider that he didn't have to very sincerely apologize to Richard Clarke. But he did. Scotty was complicit in covering up impeachable offenses, felonies and war crimes. But I can forgive just about anyone when they appear to be this sincere and full of this much regret, if not grief. I can and do forgive Scotty. We all should. He's acknowledged he did wrong and he's doing his best to fix it the best way he knows how. None of this makes what he did as press secretary right. It doesn't excuse him from being complicit in the above mentioned crimes and he may still have to stand trial for his part in it. But just like the family that finds it in their hearts forgive someone who murdered a family member, I forgive him.
I like to use the analogy of money being like blood. Money flowing through the economy is like blood flowing through your body. If blood doesn't flow to a certain part of your body, that part gets sick (gangrene) and soon will have to be removed. If blood "pools" somewhere in your body, you get bloated there, swelling, etc. Money, like blood, is generally of a finite amount.
Right now, there is a huge pooling of money in the energy and defense industries. The pooling is to the point that the rest of the economy does not get enough money to keep it healthy. You can see that in the way prices are going up radically because those areas are starved for money to keep them alive. ONe way the economy tried to get the money it needed was through cheap credit. Another way was through credit cards and home equity loans. Now, those are collapsing because the economy could not be sustained artificially that way. The tax rebates are intended to redirect some money to other areas of the economy. Or, said another way, the tax rebates are intended to redirect more "blood" to other areas of the economy that are starved for money.
The tax cuts have served their likely purpose of extra money available for defense and energy. IN the short term, I think the sudden cutting off of the defense industry through pulling out of Iraq and raising taxes back to pre-Bush rates would shock the economy probably the rest of the way into a depression much like the way the economy crashed during Jimmy Carter. No one ever writes about it, but I feel that after being in a wartime economy since 1942, the end of the VietNam war and a wartime economy caused a collapse of many systems within the economy that relied on that money flowing into them while Carter was president. (I think that would have happened to Ford or Carter regardless of who was president. It was going to happen once we wound down from VietNam.) Although I would like to see us out of Iraq now, and I've voiced that many times, I think a gradual withdrawal would be best.
Long term, more money becomes available for those other areas that need the money flowing into them and the economy recovers. Bringing back jobs that have been shipped overseas through tax incentives would bolster our economy even more with more money flowing through the economy domestically rather than being sent overseas. That brings up the issue of the trade deficit which is a hemorrhage for the economy, but that is another topic, albeit a related topic.
I had an Obama national campaign asshat tell me that Hillary should drop out because there's no way she can win. He said that's because Obama has won the popular vote, he has more delegates and has won more states. That is nothing but BS that compares apples to oranges to pears. 1) Popular vote? From the Huffington Post: Late Update: There are some discrepancies between the figures for the popular vote between different news sites, and would alter my calculations substantially depending on who you believe. For example, in Kansas, CNN claims that 36,887 STATE DELEGATES represented the Kansas voters, whereas Real Clear Politics claims that 36,887 VOTERS represent the total. In contrast, CNN claims 406 STATE DELEGATES represented Alaska, whereas Real Clear Politics claims that 8,868 VOTERS represent the total. This, of course, is the reason to pursue the truth in these matters, and if Real Clear Politics says that only 36,887 'actual voters' came out to vote in Kansas, as opposed to, say, the 302,612 voters who came out to vote in Arkansas, which has virtually the same population, then I stand corrected. But it shouldn't stop the DNC from making a clear attempt to make sure these turnout numbers are correct.Many DNC insiders fear that if Hillary Clinton manages to lose the pledged delegates, she may still take the lead in the popular vote, thereby causing the superdelegates to make a hard decision as to which candidate they should choose come August. Their fears are rooted in the notion that Clinton is only behind by roughly 800,000 votes, and that she could feasibly catch up with a big win in Pennsylvania. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shawn-christ... 2) Pledged Delegates?? What? 150 delegates makes a mandate? 3) Number of states??? Ha! That reminds me of the RW'ers that claim Bush had an overwhelming mandate because he won more counties in the country. Check this out:  That's a helluva lot of red. If this was the measurement, 100,000 votes in Ohio didn't amount to a hill of beans. To argue that Obama won more states and therefore should be the nominee is as laughable as that map.
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The Democrats have found a way to insure defeat in November
Nothing Obama or Hillary does or says now will change anyone's minds about support. I've had about all the faux outrage from Obama people I can stand. Is there nothing that Hillary does or says that Obama people won't scream and faint over? Take for example Hillary's mortal sin of criticizing MoveOn. Oh, they say she will really lose a lot of votes over this because MoveOn is this omnipotent power that controls everything and all 3.2 million members now hate Hillary.
Gimme a break. For anyone at this point to actually make the claim that when Hillary does or says anything that gives Obama folks the vapors she will lose all this support is either 1) completely naive or 2) totally disingenuous. Anyone supporting Hillary right now is a rock hard Hillary supporter. Anyone supporting Obama right now is a rock hard Obama supporter except in the states that have not had primaries yet. And even in those states collectively, the breakdown is gravitating towards the national 50-50 lines. The fact is that this is a complete Democratic Party civil war. The party is now ripped right down the middle. Nothing can change that now, neither side will give an inch.
That being said, the superdelegates should do what they were originally intended to do. That is, they all need to now endorse Hillary and the adults need to take over the party and salvage what we can for November. It will be hard enough now for either candidate to win in November but Hillary is still the best choice for the voting public. Frankly, right now I think it's pretty likely McCain will be the next president regardless of who the Democratic nominee is. However, I think the American people will also likely give the Democrats another 20+ seats in the House and another 5+ seats in the Senate just to balance things out with McCain.
There are so many people that are supporting Obama that are completely clueless as to just what the American people want. Of course, Americans want out of Iraq. Americans want health care. Americans want gasoline to be affordable. But Americans that vote also want a lower capital gains tax. Americans want business investment because Americans want jobs (something foreign to Obama supporters that still live with Mom and Dad). Americans don't want the corporate run government we have now, but they do want a pro-business agenda because they want to work. Americans want a plan for bringing jobs back to the US. In fact, Americans want a pro-business agenda, that encourages investment and creates jobs here. Americans want concrete answers and not some "hope" rhetoric that has now worn out and carries no value. Too many Obama people haven't a clue what Americans really want.
The vast majority of these Americans don't read the blogs every day, they don't read the obscure "news" sources that report faux outrages by Hillary. Only that small percentage of Americans that even care to look, read these things and become caught up in this swirling mass of sentiment that becomes more bitter by the moment, caught up in the centrifugal force of the like minded.
I am reminded of being here at DU in November 2002. We were online, we were doing things and we were saying the right things. We were so absolutely confident that by November of 2002 people would be so absolutely outraged with the Bush "administration" that we would win back Congress and we could start to turn things around. There was no doubt in our minds whatsoever. Then the returns started coming in, we were shocked at what was unfolding before our eyes. We just could not understand how we could have lost. After all, we were here, we were doing and saying what we needed to be. But we were losing. How could that be? It just couldn't be.
The fact is that we were all caught up in our own world here at DU. We were in this microcosm that was disconnected from the real world. We had posted all this stuff why Democrats needed to be elected and no one read it! How could that be?
It's no different now. People are now caught up in the microcosm of this online world and they read their own posts and nod with agreement or flame away on behalf of their candidate.
Democrats are now doing what they do best. That is snatching defeat from the formidable jaws of victory. Good job, all.
and every working class Democrat needs to take notice. If you have stock from your company and you sell it, you have a paper gain that is now taxed at 15%. Did you earn that paper gain? No, but if you're trying to pay medical bills with it or keep your house from being foreclosed on, you need that 15%.
The capital gains tax hits working class Americans hard. The answer is to cut the capital gains tax, not raise it and punish working people trying to make ends meet. Anyone that is gainfully employed and has any stock in their company cannot argue with this. Anyone else,.. well consider the source.
Want to pay the government more? Nominate and elect Obama. Obama shows just how clueless he is about the middle class. Will Hillary cut the capital gains tax? I don't know, but I sure as hell hope so.
If you're a working class stiff and you get screwed for 15% on a paper gain on your stock you cashed in and you don't like it, don't let it get to you that the fools here at DU call you a DLC'er. They don't know WTF they're talking about and most never had a real job anyway. Maybe it's daddy's money or something they live off of. The DLC may look out for those that make good money, but a lot of us get carried along for the ride too. All working people win when capital gains tax gets cut.
I guess we did our job. We shut the Obama people down and out completely tonight. They didn't even get a delegate to the county convention. Over 10% of the eligible voters tonight turned out at our precinct convention for Hillary in addition to voting for her in the primary. Hillary won our precinct primary vote 75% - 25%
One would think that Obama would run from Rush and Hannity like the devil from Holy Water but that's not the case. You see, here in Texas, there's not a lot of Air America coverage so there's millions of us that have no other talk radio when we're out and about but to listen to Rush and Hannity and then cuss the radio. The Obama campaign knows that. Is this an attempt to get the Obama message out in an efficient way to people like me, or is there something more to it? I noticed back in December that Rush and Hannity were relentless in their attacks on Hillary while they coddled Obama. That's also when I first realized that Obama was implementing the Pity Strategy. That is, Obama went about making himself the victim of the evil and cunning Hillary. Rush goes on at length about what a wonderful person Obama is and how horrible Hillary is. Hannity gushes like a silly school girl with a crush about how wonderful Obama is and how evil Hillary is. And, I documented much that was out there about how Obama made himself out to be the victim and how the right wing along with the far left led the charge while demonizing Hillary. Is there some kind of unholy alliance here? Why is Obama advertising on far right wing talk shows? It appears to be almost certain that there is an alliance between the right wing and Obama. But is this also a financial quid pro quo? Is it that these right wing extremists promote Obama, and then Obama spends advertising dollars on their show? At this point, one has to ask what kind of deals has Obama cut with the far right wing? I'm going to go listen to Neil Boortz in the next day or so just to see if Obama is advertising on his show too. Maybe some Hillary supporters (surrogates to you Obama people) can let us know what's going on else where in states like Pennsylvania or Ohio. Lots of questions and likely no answers other than what the excuses the Obamabots and Obama staffers will post here. Imagine in November having to wonder if you're going to be voting for someone that might have cut a deal with the right wing.
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