Thursday - May 26, 2005

The WAH-shington Post Weeps

WaPo is crying in its cereal this morning, weeping over the fact that our government has made a decidedly “harmful” (according to them) tilt to the “conservative right” ....

GOP Tilting Balance Of Power to the Right

By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 26, 2005; Page A01

As Democrats tell it, this week’s compromise on judges was about much more than the federal courts. If President Bush and congressional allies had prevailed, they say, the balance of power would have been forever altered.

Yet, amid the partisan rhetoric, a little-noticed fact about modern politics has been lost: Republicans have already changed how the business of government gets done, in ways both profound and lasting.

The campaign to prevent the Senate filibuster of the president’s judicial nominations was simply the latest and most public example of similar transformations in Congress and the executive branch stretching back a decade. The common theme is to consolidate influence in a small circle of Republicans and to marginalize dissenting voices that would try to impede a conservative agenda.

Some of the changes, such as a more powerful executive branch, less powerful rank-and-file members of Congress and more pro-Republican courts, are likely to outlast the current president and GOP majority, they say. The Republican bid to ban the filibustering of judges made it easier for Bush to appoint conservatives to the Supreme Court and holds open the threat of future attempts to erode the most powerful tool available to the minority party in Congress.

“Every president grabs for more power. What’s different it seems to me is the acquiescence of Congress,” said former representative Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.), a government scholar at the Aspen Institute.

Bush has demanded similar loyalty from GOP lawmakers—and received it. Republicans have voted with the president, on average, about nine out of 10 times. Critics and some scholars charge that the Congress now seldom performs its constitutional duty of providing oversight of the executive branch through tough investigations and hearings.

This has coincided with a dramatic increase in overall government secrecy. In 1995, the government created about 3.6 million secrets. In 2004, there more than 15.5 million, according to the government’s Information Security Oversight Office. The White House attributes the rise in information the public cannot see to the security threats in a post-Sept. 11, 2001, world.

Now, the Republicans, with the support of the White House, are looking to reshape the courts in their image. The Senate’s bipartisan compromise on judges will cost the president a few of his nominees to the appeals court but will require him to secure only 50 votes for future picks for the Supreme Court and other openings. If Democrats filibuster, Bush and Republican senators can move again to pull the trigger on the “nuclear option” and, if successful, prevent the minority party from ever again using the filibuster on judges. “I will not hesitate to use it if necessary,” Frist said this week.

From the “Piling On The Luncay Department”: WaPo is trying to prop up Newsweek’s “Flushing Koran” story with more lies and accusations from anonymous sources (and “reliable testimony” from Al-Qaeda prisoners). They just never quit, do they?

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/26/2005 at 05:51 AM   
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Zen

It’s 2:00am.

Everyone in the neighborhood is asleep. Well, almost everyone. I wake up from a pleasant dream and feel like doing something naughty. Lacking a current “lady-friend”, my options are limited (applications are being accepted, however). On an inspiration, I pull on a t-shirt and gym shorts (I sleep commando). I sneak quietly down the stairs and silently open the front door. Quick glances left and right and a sudden dash in my bare feet out onto the lawn.

Aaaaaaaaahhhhhh ....

Suddenly I realize .... there is nothing bad that can happen to me during the day that can’t be cured by a 2:00am safari out onto the lawn with the moonlight beaming down, a silent city of millions around me and .... the grass tickling my toes.

Shhhhhhh. The dew is starting to settle on the green around me, shining in the silvery light. This is Nirvana.

Then it dawns on me .... there’s not enough grass in the Middle East. Too much sand. I smile.

Epiphany.

Back to sleep. Work arrives with the dawn .... but I have solved the world’s major problem.

I will gladly accept the Nobel Peace Prize for discovering the joy of toes in the grass after midnight.

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/26/2005 at 02:00 AM   
Filed Under: • Philosophy •  
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New ID Card

_{Bob Englehart, Hartford, Connecticut—The Hartford Courant}

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/26/2005 at 01:44 AM   
Filed Under: • Illegal-Aliens and Immigration •  
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   Wednesday - May 25, 2005

Photo Du Jour

“The Aegean Sea”
-by-
MODIS Team, NASA (Red Nova)

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/25/2005 at 05:51 PM   
Filed Under: • Art-Photography •  
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Who Ya Gonna Call?

It seems Bill O’Reilly became incensed at some recent remarks by the liberal Moonbats at the LA Times and made some remarks about what would happen if terrorists captured the Times owner and beheaded him. The LA TImes and their Barking Moonbat gallery are up in arms screaming that they will unleash the Secret Service on O’Reilly ....

HUH?

The US Secret Service? Which is charged with protecting the President? When did they get hired to protect MSM editors and publishers?

It all started with a Times editorial urging the shutdown of the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and access to attorneys for detainees.

That set off O’Reilly. During the broadcast of “The Radio Factor with Bill O’Reilly” on May 17, he declared:

“How can they think this way? How can anyone think this way? You know, ‘Shutting down Guantanamo and giving suspected terrorists legal protections would help restore our reputation abroad.’”

Said O’Reilly: “That’s like saying, ‘Well, if we’re nicer to the people who want to kill us, then the other people who want to kill us will like us more.’”

Then he fired off the big gun, saying the paper’s editorial board will “never get it until they (the terrorists) grab Michael Kinsley out of his little house and they cut his head off. And maybe when the blade sinks in, he’ll go, ‘Perhaps O’Reilly was right.’”

The Times counterattacked in a May 24 editorial. Questioning why people the U.S. has liberated from tyranny “don’t love us,” the paper stated: “It doesn’t seem worthy of decapitation to suggest that ghastly stories (not all fabricated by Newsweek) about abuse of prisoners don’t help.”

For the moment, O’Reilly is in the liberal paper’s crosshairs, warning: “O’Reilly should be careful. Any further decapitation fantasies could get him in serious trouble with the Secret Service.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/25/2005 at 05:32 PM   
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Honeymoon Or Prison?

Jennifer Wilbanks was indicted today for giving phony information to police ....

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. - The runaway bride could be heading off to prison instead of going on her honeymoon.

Jennifer Wilbanks, the 32-year-old woman who hopped a bus and vanished just before her wedding day, was indicted Wednesday on charges of telling police a phony story about being kidnapped and sexually assaulted.

Wilbanks was charged with making a false statement and making a false police report. She could get up to six years in prison and $11,000 in fines if convicted. She could also be ordered to reimburse authorities for the more than $50,000 cost of the search set off by her disappearance.

A warrant will be issued for Wilbanks’ arrest within the next few days, and arrangements will probably be made for her to turn herself in, the district attorney said.

Wilbanks’ family has said she checked into a medical facility after her return for treatment of “physical and mental issues.” The have not said where.

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/25/2005 at 04:12 PM   
Filed Under: • Crime •  
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Advance Warning For Sarah Connor

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute Of Technology (MIT) have invented an army of robots that can think for themselves ....

The Robot Army That Thinks For Itself
21 May 2005

Swarms of independently-minded collaborative robots are no longer the stuff of science fiction - they may soon be patrolling national borders and exploring space

James McLurkin has a novel party trick - he can coax 20 small autonomous wheeled robots to form herds, disperse again, wheel in neat circles, sing a harmonic rendition of the theme from Star Wars, and automatically recharge from a power station.

McLurkin, a postgraduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is trying to design robots that will work together and make collective decisions. If he succeeds, swarms of robots could one day be put to work in the home, in space and by the military. “A swarm or a team can collaborate to overcome what a single robot might not be able to do,” explains Paolo Gaudiano, who works on swarms at Icosystem in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Soon teams of up to 40 robots could be employed as border security guards and outside airports.

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/25/2005 at 12:44 PM   
Filed Under: • Science-Technology •  
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Rhyme For BMEWS Members

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/25/2005 at 11:38 AM   
Filed Under: • Personal •  
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Extinction Level Event

What with abortion on demand and high homosexual populations, what do you think will happen eventually? You guessed it, the population will disappear. In San Francisco, that is now the case.

San Francisco has the smallest share of small-fry of any major U.S. city. Just 14.5 percent of the city’s population is 18 and under.

It is no mystery why U.S. cities are losing children. The promise of safer streets, better schools and more space has drawn young families away from cities for as long as America has had suburbs.

But kids are even more scarce in San Francisco than in expensive New York (24 percent) or in retirement havens such as Palm Beach, Fla., (19 percent), according to Census estimates.

San Francisco’s large gay population — estimated at 20 percent by the city Public Health Department — is thought to be one factor, though gays and lesbians in the city are increasingly raising families.

One voter initiative approved up to $60 million annually to restore public school arts, physical education and other extras that state spending no longer covers. Another expanded the city’s Children’s Fund, guaranteeing about $30 million a year for after-school activities, child care subsidies and other programs.

“We are at a crossroads here,” said N’Tanya Lee, executive director of the nonprofit Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth. “We are moving toward a place where we could have an infrastructure of children’s services and no children.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/25/2005 at 07:34 AM   
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Journalistic Jealousy

Virginia Postrel has an excellent editorial about journalists and their view of bloggers in Forbes Magazine ....

Something about blogs makes a lot of respectable journalists hyperventilate. News pros seem terribly threatened by online amateurs.Blogging is a “solipsistic, self-aggrandizing, journalist-wannabe genre,” writes David Shaw in the Los Angeles Times. Shaw, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1991 for his media criticism, declares that bloggers are “practitioners of what is at best pseudo-journalism” and that “many bloggers--not all, perhaps not even most--don’t seem to worry much about being accurate.” (Emphasis added.)

Shaw doesn’t follow the basic journalistic formula of backing up a generalization with names and quotes, so we can’t be sure who he’s talking about. But he needs to do more reporting. Generalizing about blogs is like generalizing about books. A blog is simply a Web page whose author adds new content, or posts, over time. Blogging is a format, not a genre.

As Web-based publications, blogs generally link to the sources they cite, including other blogs. That gives the blogosphere the self-referential quality Shaw finds “solipsistic” and the Project for Excellence in Journalism calls “an echo chamber.”

But all that linking makes public the conversations and connections that have always informed journalistic discussions. You can follow ideas as they percolate through the system and easily find multiple sides of any debate.

Linking also keeps bloggers honest. If Shaw’s article were a blog entry, readers would wonder why he didn’t link to specific examples of the evils he bemoans. Other blogs would demand answers, and Shaw’s site would lose credibility if he didn’t start backing his assertions with hyperlinks.

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/25/2005 at 07:24 AM   
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WMD Found!

_{Monte Wolverton, The Wolvertoon}

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/25/2005 at 07:22 AM   
Filed Under: • Terrorists •  
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   Tuesday - May 24, 2005

Nightcap

Before you retire for the evening, here is the latest Moonbattery for the day ....

• Naked Zorro is on the loose in Philadelphia. Residents urged to remain calm and try to stay out of reach of his “sword”.


• Everything you ever wanted to know about alcohol. Did you know that the U.S. Marines’ first recruiting station was in a bar?


• Zurich, Switzerland has banned a giant teddy bear balloon from its parade. (with pics) Do you think it could have been because the ursine zeppelin was “a giant dominatrix teddy bear wearing a leather mask and brandishing hand-cuffs”?


• Strange state laws still on the books puzzle many of us. In Minnesota a person may not cross state lines with a duck atop his head. In North Carolina, it is illegal to sing off key. In Idaho, you may not fish on a camel’s back while Ohio makes it unlawful to get a fish drunk or to fish for a whale on Sundays. In Kentucky it is illegal to marry outside the family . OK, I made that last one up.

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/24/2005 at 08:21 PM   
Filed Under: • Stoopid-People •  
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In Memorium:  H.M.S. HOOD

BATTLE OF THE DENMARK STRAIT
HMS HOOD OPENS FIRE
24 MAY 1941
by Marii Chernev

http://www.milartgl.com/HTML_2/hms_hood_opens_fire.htm

Battle cruiser Hood, popularly known in the Royal Navy as the “Mighty Hood,” was the largest warship in the world on commissioning in 1920.  She was perhaps the ultimate symbol of British imperial strength between the wars, and at the outbreak of World War II, she was likely the most famous warship afloat.

Hood possessed the fine lines of the battle cruiser that she was, slender, long-hulled and elegant.  Many still consider her the most beautiful capital ship ever built.  Her main armament of eight 15-inch guns placed her, in terms of hitting-power, on a par with the strongest battleships of her day, and her power plant gave her a speed on trials of 32 knots.  This made her the fastest capital ship of her day, faster by seven knots than the Royal Navy’s fastest battleships, the Queen Elizabeth class.

At the outbreak of World War II, Hood was still among the world’s fastest capital ships.  However, she bore the insufficient protection of the battle cruiser that she was, and on 24 MAY 1941 in the Battle of Denmark Strait against the Bismarck, Hood paid the price within minutes of opening fire.

Capital ship designers always had to arrive at a compromise involving the weight and space requirements for offensive power (armament), defensive power (primarily armor), speed (power plant), and sea-keeping ability (accommodations for the crew and the supplies necessary to sustain the ship at sea, particularly fuel).  Until the advent of the fast battleship classes of the World War II period, battleships were typically built to stress offensive and defensive power at the expense of speed.

The battle cruiser, however, was designed to stress offensive power and speed at the expense of defensive power, i.e., protection.  It was thought that the speed of the battle cruiser, which would make it a more difficult gunnery target, could provide it with as much protection, for all practical purposes, as a heavy citadel of armor.

At Jutland, however, three battle cruisers (Invincible, Queen Mary, Indefatigable) paid the price for this reasoning.  All blew up when German shells penetrated their inadequate armor protection and reached their magazines.

Hood was building at the time (May 1916), and her construction was halted and her design altered, in order to incorporate the lessons of Jutland.  Hood’s armor was considerably strengthened, but mostly on her sides, as opposed to her decks.  Her comparatively weak deck armor, in the end, was her Achilles heel.

The highlight of Hood’s career in the interwar period was her famed “Empire cruise” in 1923-24.  This cruise took Hood to the Far East, Australia, Hawaii, the United States, the Caribbean, and Canada, among other places.

While at Hawaii, Hood’s commanding admiral learned that a Boy Scout bound for a convention in Denmark had missed passage to the mainland, and he gave the lad free passage aboard Hood, earning wide commendation in the American press.  Hood’s visit to San Francisco commanded national press attention, and so did her transit of the Panama Canal, on her way back into the Atlantic.

Valuable as such cruises were to the imperial image and strength, Hood served her country in another crucial way between the wars.  As Ernle Bradford notes in his biography of the ship, The Mighty Hood (Cleveland: World Publishing, 1959), “…thousands of officers and men…were taught the seaman’s trade in the Hood during those years…The body of trained men which such a ship gave as a legacy to the nation was well worth…her upkeep.  If the Hood had been scrapped before the next war broke out she would still have paid her way.”

Hood served with the Home and Atlantic Fleets until 1936, when she was transferred to the “Med.” During the Spanish Civil War, Hood acted to protect British shipping endangered by the combatants.  She was due for a major refit in 1939, including the removal of her 600-ton conning tower and improvements to her deck armor.  But with too few capital ships available, and with war clouds darkening Europe, she could not be spared.

On the outbreak of war, Hood was based at Scapa Flow, in the Orkney Islands, with the Home Fleet.  In June 1940 she was allocated to Force H, based at Gibraltar under Admiral James Somerville, and assigned to take over duties in the western “Med” formerly borne by the French Navy.  Force H’s first task was a distressing one, a task to neutralize (and in the event, destroy) a French squadron based at Oran in Algeria, in order to keep it from falling into German hands.  In this engagement, on 3 JUL 1940, the elderly battleship Bretagne was blown up, and battleships Provence and Dunkerque badly damaged.

After several months in the “Med,” Hood returned to Scapa Flow and the Home Fleet, and on 19 MAY 1941 she sailed with the brand-new battleship Prince of Wales (King George V class, ten 14” guns) to intercept the German battleship Bismarck and her consort cruiser, Prinz Eugen, on their attempted breakout into the North Atlantic.  Based on reports signaled by cruisers Suffolk and Norfolk, which had picked up Bismarck on her way through Denmark Strait, Admiral Holland in Hood made contact with Bismarck in Denmark Strait on the morning of 24 MAY 1941.

Admiral Holland ordered his ships to close the range, and shortly before 0600 both sides opened fire.  Bismarck’s fifth salvo hit the Hood amidships, piercing her inadequate deck armor and penetrating a secondary armament magazine.  Its detonation touched off the after main armament magazine, resulting in a catastrophic explosion which tore the ship in half.  The wreckage sank in a matter of minutes.  Of Hood’s crew of over 1400 men, there were only three survivors.

The shock of Hood’s loss stunned Britain, as if a pillar of the Empire itself had been knocked away.  Prime Minister Churchill instantly gave destruction of the Bismarck priority over every other operation, and the Royal Navy mounted the epic pursuit of the Bismarck that culminated in her loss, and the removal of a dire threat to the North Atlantic supply lifeline that sustained Britain.

For more information, visit the HMS Hood Society at http://www.hmshood.com.

Posted by Tannenberg     on 05/24/2005 at 01:49 PM   
Filed Under: • War-Stories •  
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Viewpoint: Nuts!

am not pleased with last night’s “compromise” by Senate Democrats and Republicans. From where I sit, the Democrats are “The Party of NO!” and Republicans are “The Party Of NO BALLS!”. I’m convinced John McCain is “The Manchurian Candidate”. Something happened to him while a prisoner in Vietnam and I am pretty sure he was brainwashed to come back and destroy America. Why else would he stand up in front of that microphone last night and talk about what a great statesman Robert Byrd supposedly is? Gag me, OK? Then ol’ Bob “KKK” Byrd himself doddered up to the microphone and quoted Benjamin Franklin. My teeth started to itch, listening to that senile fool.

Even worse was John Warner gushing over ol’ Bobby Byrd. What in the hell is wrong with Republicans in the Senate nowadays? For God’s sake, guys! Read my lips: Republicans won the election .... Democrats lost. Got that? No? Well, let me make it easy for you - the American people (that would be me and the other assorted citizens of this great republic) voted in November and a majority of us decided we wanted a government that was conservative and mostly Republican. We tried to send you deaf idiots a message that we’re fed up with all this liberal, politically-correct, multi-national, anti-heterosexual, anti-Christian crap. Why aren’t you listening?

HELLO? CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

What choice are you giving us, sirs? Must we defect from the Republican party? Do you really wish to give the Democrats back full power to continue to bankrupt the country and destroy the Republic? That is what will happen if you persist. Caving in to the Democrats is an insult to the millions of votes we cast for all of you. We asked you to go to Washington to work on our agenda, not the Democrats’ agenda. We’re tired of their madness.

While we’re on the subject, who gave any of you the right to use the words “Senate”, “good faith” and “trust” in the same sentence. That is so wrong. The English language was never meant to be abused like that. You know good and well the Democrats will never live up to their word. They only know two words: “NO” and “WAAHH”. They will stab you in the back before they’ll give an inch and when they drive the country’s car off the road into a lake, they will leave the rest of us to drown. Just ask Teddy Kennedy.

Here’s what we want you to do: grow a set of nuts, OK? Hillary Clinton has a set (just ask Bill). Monica Lewinsky has a set (that belong to Bill). Barbara Boxer has a set(on loan from Teddy Kennedy). Howard Dean has a set (OK, in all honesty he is completely nuts). In fact the Democratic party and their liberal friends are all nuts. Without nuts, you can’t get these idiots under control. Grow a pair, OK?

You are surrendering to these nutcases without even a decent fight - a fight we engineered in the last election. We paid for this fight and we won’t be satisfied until we get it. Don’t surrender to them another inch, you hear? What you did last night was surrender to their whining, weeping, complaining, crying and lying. That is a slap in the face to an American tradition. We never surrender. We never give up. We don’t give a damn what the consequences are. We are Americans and we never give an inch.

Don’t believe me? Just hark back to the night of December 22, 1944 in the little town of Bastogne, France where the 101st Airborne was holding on to the town by the skin of their teeth against overwhelming German forces and when asked to surrender, American General Anthony McAuliffe sent the Germans a message .... ”NUTS!”

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/24/2005 at 09:36 AM   
Filed Under: • Editorials •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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