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Today: 58 articles and 167 comments as of 17:07.
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Area: WoT Operations    WoT Background    Non-WoT        Politix   
Police tear-gas Iran protesters during prayer
Today's Headlines
Headline Comments [Views]
Page 4: Opinion
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2 00:00 Zhang Fei [1] 
6 00:00 Mercutio [4] 
2 00:00 Besoeker [2] 
3 00:00 AlmostAnonymous5839 [5] 
1 00:00 OldSpook [3] 
Page 1: WoT Operations
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Page 3: Non-WoT
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7 00:00 lotp [3]
5 00:00 Procopius2k [34]
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Page 6: Politix
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3 00:00 Pappy [16]
6 00:00 Steve White [9]
-Short Attention Span Theater-
The latest in outsourcing
E-mail from my brother who got it from gawd-knows-where. Can't resist.
Washington, DC -- July 18th, 2009 -- Congress today announced that the office of President of the United States of America will be outsourced to India as of September 1, 2009.

The move is being made in order to save the President's $500,000 yearly salary, and also a record $750 billion in deficit expenditures and related overhead that his office has incurred during the last 3 months. It is anticipated that $7 trillion can be saved to the end of the President's term.

"We believe this is a wise financial move. The cost savings are huge," stated Congressman Thomas Reynolds (R-WA). "We cannot remain competitive on the world stage with the current level of cash outlay," he noted.

Obama was informed by email this morning of his termination. Preparations for the job move have been underway for some time.

Gurvinder Singh, a tele-technician for Indus Teleservices, Mumbai, India, will assume the office of President as of August 1, 2009. Mr. Singh was born in the United States while his Indian parents were vacationing at Niagara Falls, NY, thus making him eligible for the position. He will receive a salary of $320 a month, but no health coverage or other benefits.

It is believed that Mr. Singh will be able to handle his job responsibilities without a support staff. Due to the time difference between the US and India, he will be working primarily at night. "Working nights will allow me to keep my day job at the Dell Computer call center," stated Mr. Singh in a web-cast interview. "I am excited about this position. I always hoped I would be President."

A White House spokesperson noted that while Mr. Singh may not be fully aware of all the issues involved in the office of President, this should not be a problem as Obama also had never been familiar with the issues.

Mr. Singh will rely upon a script tree that will enable him to respond effectively to most topics of concern. Using these canned responses, he can address common concerns without having to understand the underlying issue at all.

"We know these scripting tools work," stated the spokesperson. "Obama has used them successfully for years, with the result that some people actually thought he knew what he was talking about."

Obama will receive health coverage, expenses, and salary until his final day of employment. Following a two-week waiting period, he will be eligible for $140 a week unemployment for 26 weeks. Unfortunately he will not be eligible for Medicaid, as his unemployment benefits will exceed the allowed limit.

The President has been provided with the outplacement services of Manpower, Inc. to help him write a resume and prepare for his upcoming job transition. According to Manpower, Obama may have difficulties in securing a new position due to a lack of any successful work experience during his lifetime. A greeter position at WalMart was suggested due to Obama's extensive experience at shaking hands as well as his special smile.
Posted by: Steve White || 07/18/2009 13:01 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  A good start. Next we could replace Nancy Pelosi with a small slime mold.
Posted by: DMFD || 07/18/2009 13:11 Comments || Top||

#2  This was first done using Bush's name. It's a lot more apt using Ogabe's name.
Posted by: Zhang Fei || 07/18/2009 15:49 Comments || Top||


Monkeys smarter than humans



OK, I learned something new today and thought I'd share. >:-[
(Dem leadership is still wondering what all the fuss is about.)
Posted by: gorb || 07/18/2009 01:27 || Comments || Link || [5 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Rantburg U - is there anything you can't learn here?
Posted by: lotp || 07/18/2009 9:07 Comments || Top||

#2  Species with superior tool-making skills can use knives.
Posted by: Glenmore || 07/18/2009 10:28 Comments || Top||

#3  Brittany saw him struggling (GUFFAW! Is that what the kids call it these days? SNORK!) with his BANANA! Yep, that's what he was doing alright! So, just pinch the end! UH-HUH!
Posted by: AlmostAnonymous5839 || 07/18/2009 12:56 Comments || Top||


Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Marina Kalashnikova's Warning to the West
Meet Marina Kalashnikova: a Moscow-based historian, researcher and journalist. Last August she criticized foreign "experts" for suggesting that a conflict with Moscow will not happen because Russia's elite is too closely associated with the West. According to Kalashnikova, "The West does not care to wake from the dream of its wishful thinking, even when Moscow turns to ... reanimating Stalin's cult of personality together with the ideology of the Cheka [i.e., the secret police]."

I'm afraid that Marina Kalashnikova is right. The West has been dreaming, and the West will suffer the consequences. If the Kremlin likes Stalin, then there will be trouble. If KGB officers have established a sophisticated form of dictatorship in Russia, they have done so for a reason. We should remind our politicians, with their short memories, that Stalin and his secret police did not run a Sunday school. Furthermore, the recent trail of blood and radiation leading back to the Kremlin is like a finger pointing to the greatest danger of our time -- nixed from the news media's prattle of the hour. (A retired KGB officer recently told me that "nobody is easier to buy than a Western journalist.")

Russia has built an alliance of dictators, what Kalashnikova calls an "alliance of the most unbridled forces and regimes." Extremists of all kinds serve the purpose of breaking the peace, damaging Western economies, and setting the stage for a global revolution in which the balance of power shifts from the United States and the West to the Kremlin and its Chinese allies. "Among the ideas that animate general staff analysts in the Kremlin, there is the idea of diffusion," says Kalashnikova, "It is not that the Kremlin should strive for territorial expansion and the dissemination of its [political] model. The critical thing is power and the fulcrum of an overall strategic context. In that case, even if the Americans appear influential in the post-Soviet countries, Moscow remains in charge. The [Russian] General Staff therefore has successfully expanded Moscow's position beyond and above the old Soviet position in Africa and Latin America." What prevails, she says, is Moscow's "assertiveness and determination without fear of a reaction from the West."

In other words, the West has already been outmaneuvered. The KGB and the Russian General Staff have taken our measure, and they are laughing at us. Our leaders do not realize the sophistication of their enemy. They cannot see or understand what is happening. They blink, they turn away, continuing to use concepts gifted to them long ago by Soviet agents of influence. As a nation we are confused and disoriented, believing that the world is beholden to the West's money power -- and therefore, peace can be purchased.

"The Kremlin has activated a network of extremists in the Third World," wrote Kalashnikova. "[At the same time] Russia has managed to shake off nearly all international conventions restricting the expansion of its military power." In this situation, the only counter to Russian power is American power. Yet the American president is preparing to surrender that power in a series of arms control agreements that will leave the United States vulnerable to a first strike. Placing this in context, nuclear weapons are ultimate weapons, so that the West's superiority in conventional weapons is therefore meaningless. Whoever gains strategic nuclear supremacy will rule the world; and the Russian strategic rocket forces are in place, ready to launch, while America's nuclear forces are rotting from neglect.
Balance at the link. Well worth the read.
Posted by: Whomort Angineper3541 || 07/18/2009 11:18 || Comments || Link || [4 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Obama will be the last to realize it - his arrogance and narcissism masks any ability to make him realize just how stupid he is, and there is no hope that the press will ever do anything to reveal the truth.
Posted by: OldSpook || 07/18/2009 12:43 Comments || Top||

#2  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-3X5hIFXYU

Russia is not looking inside.
Posted by: Art || 07/18/2009 12:46 Comments || Top||

#3  Consider North Korea and Iran. Time after time the Russians and Chinese block effective action against these so-called rogue states. But are they rogues or are the doing the bidding of puppeteers in Moscow and Beijing? Then compare the combined nuclear throw weight of Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran and North Korea to that of the United States and you can get as paranoid as you want especially when we have feeble minded politicians of questionable loyalty in the White House.
Posted by: Abu Uluque || 07/18/2009 13:26 Comments || Top||

#4  "In other words, the West has already been outmaneuvered. The KGB and the Russian General Staff have taken our measure, and they are laughing at us. Our leaders do not realize the sophistication of their enemy. They cannot see or understand what is happening. They blink, they turn away, continuing to use concepts gifted to them long ago by Soviet agents of influence. As a nation we are confused and disoriented, believing that the world is beholden to the West's money power -- and therefore, peace can be purchased. "

This is an article that ought to be read by every thinking American, and hopefully it's being distributed far and wide - I know I'll be sending the link to NRO and Instapundit after I finish posting this comment. That said, I have an ever-so-slightly more optimistic take on the situation than the author expressed above. I think Mr. Nyquist, and perhaps Ms. Kalashnikova herself (wonderful name, BTW...wonder if she's related to this guy?) have confused America's "leaders" with America's people. Just remember what happened to the American psyche after 9/11 - it took the fifth-column media five full years of 24/7 effort to force that genie back into the bottle.

I'll leave you with a quote from Herman Wouk's War and Rememberance, noted in James Hornfischer's magnificent history of the Battle off Samar:

"The vision of Sprague's three destoyers - the Johnston, the Hoel, and the Heermann - charging out of the smoke and the rain straight toward the main batteries of Kurita's battleships and cruisers, can endure as a picture of the way Americans fight when they don't have superiority. Our schoolchildren should know about that incident, and our enemies should ponder it."
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) || 07/18/2009 15:56 Comments || Top||

#5  Our leaders do not realize the sophistication of their enemy.

Not certain why this is, Barry talks about the Fox Network nearly every week.
Posted by: Besoeker || 07/18/2009 15:57 Comments || Top||

#6  TEST
Posted by: Mercutio || 07/18/2009 18:55 Comments || Top||


China-Japan-Koreas
Dear Leader, Dead Leader?
North Korea's coming transition presents dangers and opportunities.
by Claudia Rosett

Will North Korea's ailing Dear Leader soon be the Dead Leader? Speculation has been swirling around recent North Korean television footage of a haggard Kim Jong Il, his face gaunt, his once-thick hair receding. Believed to have suffered a stroke last August, Kim, now in his late 60s, has recently been described in South Korean media reports as stricken with pancreatic cancer.
He looks like death warmed over, or at least we hope ...
As ever with North Korea, which has no free press or free speech whatsoever, much remains murky. These latest reports on Kim's health attribute the cancer information to unnamed Chinese and South Korean intelligence officials. The U.S. State Department has refused to comment, apart from such stuff as a spokesman's quip Monday that Kim "didn't look in the pink of health."

Among U.S. policymakers, lists have been circulating of likely candidates to succeed Kim. High-profile names include Kim's 26-year-old son, Kim Jong Un, and Kim's 63-year-old brother-in-law, Chang Song Taek, a top-ranking official.
Jong Un is a lightweight. Chang's a player.
The BBC has background on Chang Song Taek ; the North Korean Economy Watch blog wrote a piece back in 2005 about Chang Song Taek's career.
But how a transition of power might play out inside North Korea is even less clear than what's wasting Kim. Unlike a democracy, North Korea's totalitarian regime has no clear transition process. Kim Jong Il has ruled as pretty much a one-man show. He has been godfather of North Korea's global rackets, including its nuclear program, since inheriting the helm in 1994 from his late father, Kim Il Sung--who ruled for 46 years after being installed by Stalin when North Korea was founded, in 1948.

According to a March 16, 2009 report from the Congressional Research Service, since Kim fell ill last year, "A collective decision-making apparatus has emerged, apparently headed by his brother-in-law, Chang Song-Taek." But even that won't tell you much about what comes next.

What is clear is that more than ever, there's an urgent need in Washington for contingency plans on this rogue state. North Korea's regime has established itself as a hub of trouble in Northeast Asia, trafficking missiles and nuclear technology to the Middle East, producing nuclear weapons and issuing apocalyptic statements such as recent threats to wipe America off the globe and drown South Korea in a nuclear "fire shower." Pyongyang's officials have become expert over the years in translating all this into diplomatic shakedown rackets that help sustain the regime.
Posted by: Steve White || 07/18/2009 00:00 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Gotta believe that someone will lose their temper and instead of being tossed out of power will instead toss a war shot across the border into Seoul.
Posted by: OldSpook || 07/18/2009 12:44 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
Peggy Noonan: Sarah Palin Jealous
delicious takedown of Noonan - I won't read her any more.
Posted by: Frank G || 07/18/2009 18:58 || Comments || Link || [6 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Yeouch....talk about being B*itchslapped!
Posted by: Silentbrick || 07/18/2009 21:05 Comments || Top||

#2  And deserving it. Whatta RINO. I wonder if Reagan knew.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble || 07/18/2009 21:11 Comments || Top||

#3  Mods - I posted this late - can you carry over for tomorrow?
Posted by: Frank G || 07/18/2009 21:46 Comments || Top||

#4  Palin is a shining example what is wrong in the republican party. We are WAY TOO MEEK and ww will not inherit anything. Sarah Palin is a GREAT person but nobody in the RINO camp (GOP) will hold the door for the lady. She has been relentlessly attack for being a conservative mother who we mere mortals could only dream of becoming. She has it all and it would only take a few MEN in leadership to hoist her up and make her our queen. No they back off and denounce the mention of her like she is Eva Braun. If she does (as is rumored) breaks away to form a new conservative party, I will be going with her. Truth is we aren't winning with this leadership (sic) so why throw good moiney after bad.
Posted by: Cyber Sarge || 07/18/2009 22:29 Comments || Top||

#5  If she does (as is rumored) breaks away to form a new conservative party, I will be going with her.

Yep. Same here. Read something by a commenter on HotAir I think. They posited that the GOP was filled with RINO's because these folks were refugees from the Democrat Party driven out when the Commies took it over.

That made a lot of sense to me. Trouble is, too many real Republicans and Conservatives won't admit that their Party is now gone. We need a new Conservative Party, and we need to keep the Moderate squishes and Centrist wobblers out.

Just my .02¢'s worth.
Posted by: Gomez Sluper6441 || 07/18/2009 23:00 Comments || Top||

#6  Ooh, that had to leave a mark!

(Or perhaps a monstrous carbuncle.)
Posted by: Cornsilk Blondie || 07/18/2009 23:13 Comments || Top||

#7  You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. And, worst of all, Sarah Palin is not.

Ouch!
Posted by: CrazyFool || 07/18/2009 23:17 Comments || Top||


Aging and Cultural Implosion
From Steyn:

Leonard Stern writes: A nation that doesn't replace itself becomes an aging nation, and that's why economists are terrified. Old people no longer generate wealth, yet they require huge amounts of state support in the form of health care, pensions and other programs...

The transformation of developed societies - either into old folks' homes (like Japan) or semi-Islamized dystopias (like Amsterdam, Brussels, etc) - will lead, in fact, to emigration. A young German or Japanese circa 2040 will have no reason whatsoever to stay in his native land and have most of his income confiscated in a vain attempt to prop up an unsustainable geriatric welfare system. So many will leave. Where will they go? At one time the obvious answer would have been America - but Good King Barack seems determined to saddle us with the same unaffordable entitlements that have scuttled the rest of the west.

There is another potential answer: redefine aged. Before the 'Progressive' era people did not (could not) leave the work force at 65, or even 50; they would work doing whatever they could until they actually couldn't work. 80 year old farm laborers may not have been the most effective but neither were they entirely ineffective. Likewise, we did not always store our young workers in 'educational' centers for 10 years after they learned everything actually useful that they ever would.
Posted by: Glenmore || 07/18/2009 10:32 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  makes you wonder if a lot of the world's leaders won't quietly welcome a big die-off from a pandemic like the flu
Posted by: Frank G || 07/18/2009 11:22 Comments || Top||

#2  Barry's new gov't "I mean it!" healthcare program will embrace both immigration and euphanasia the big "die-off".
Posted by: Besoeker || 07/18/2009 11:29 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
40[untagged]
6Govt of Iran
2Iraqi Insurgency
2Govt of Pakistan
2Taliban
1Lashkar e-Taiba
1TTP
1al-Qaeda in Iraq
1al-Qaeda in Pakistan
1Hezbollah
1Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh

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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has dominated Mexico for six years.
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Meet the Mods
In no particular order...
Steve White
Seafarious
tu3031
badanov
sherry
ryuge
GolfBravoUSMC
Bright Pebbles
trailing wife
Gloria
Fred
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Two weeks of WOT
Sat 2009-07-18
  Police tear-gas Iran protesters during prayer
Fri 2009-07-17
  At Least 4 Dead in Bomb Explosions at Hotels in Indonesia
Thu 2009-07-16
  Qaeda threatens China over Uighur unrest
Wed 2009-07-15
  Hezbollah arms cache goes kaboom
Tue 2009-07-14
  US ambassador to Iraq escapes kaboom
Mon 2009-07-13
  Report sez Kimmie has pancreatic cancer
Sun 2009-07-12
  Ghazni Governor Survives Assassination Attempt
Sat 2009-07-11
  Uzbekistan arrests 10 after suicide bombing
Fri 2009-07-10
  Martial law in Urumqi
Thu 2009-07-09
  Egypt arrests terrorist cell of 25 members
Wed 2009-07-08
  2 suspected US missile attacks kill 45 in Pakistan
Tue 2009-07-07
  Taliban launch counteroffensive against U.S. Marines
Mon 2009-07-06
  China: At Least 140 Killed in Uighur Riots
Sun 2009-07-05
  British Forces Join Afghan Operation
Sat 2009-07-04
  US forces repel Taliban suicide assault, kill 22 Taliban fighters


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