the defeatists!

Brothels have an association?

IOZ commented recently that he was amazed at how prurient a nation we are. Well, nothing in Nevada surprises me -- hell, remember what I think of deserts. But, this is still silly...

"We're calling it double your stimulus," said BunnyRanch owner Dennis Hof. "The brothel industry is having to get more creative just like all consumer products in America. Everybody has got to deal, and we're doing the same thing."

Now, back in 1996, I drove US 95 through Nevada. I recall the searchlight in the Sky for the Shady Lady Ranch, and the Red Light hanging from the mail box. Coin didn't drop -- I was tired -- and I wondered if it was a restaurant. Spouse was not pleased, and couldn't believe I was being stupid as opposed to being obnoxious. Obviously a class operation all the way...

Cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good,

Gulfport was protected by a levee rated to withstand a 100-year flood. Although it wasn't designed to protect the town from a flood on the scale of last week's, it was enough protection that the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not require business or homeowners to purchase flood insurance.

Some residents told CNN they felt misled about the risks of not having flood insurance. They said they thought the chances of a catastrophic flood were miscalculated.

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, agrees. He supports legislation that would require anyone living in an area protected by a levee to have flood insurance.

"I don't know how you define 'protected' or call that protected when you're telling people 'you don't have to have this; you don't need it' ... and you're watching families being devastated," Dodd said. "But the opportunity to get on their feet again is going to be very difficult for many families. And that's one of the major shortcomings in the flood insurance program."

Listen, I feel bad for these folks.  But a greater than a 100 year storm is a historical event.  The logic as I see it goes like this: no private insurer will insure your home if you live within the 100 year floodplain.  Therefore, "we" stepped in to protect/support/reimburse people when the 100 year storm, which comes around every 100 years or so, came around.  "We" all get to pay for these people to live there.  In fact, the government forces us to pay for them to live there.  (I want to live in your house then, since I'm paying for it.)  Have you ever tried not paying that portion of your taxes that goes towards these folks? 

Back on point: "we" set up FEMA and created floodplain maps and said that "you" need insurance (FEMA's insurance, since no one else offers it.) if you are to live there.  So "we" enable this behavior.  Still, the levee's were designed for the 100 year storm.  The recent rains created, let's say, a 200 year storm.  This event overtopped and broke the levee and the town was flooded.  I'm not really certain that 100 year flood insurance provided by FEMA will cover storms of greater strength than the 100 year storm: why would it?  They've insured you up to the 100 year storm.  Anything above it is out of their control and out of their purview.  You can't sue the municipality for the 200 year storm because legally they're only responsible for the 100 year storm.  So Dodd, being the political creature that he is, is making himself look good by lamenting that no one had insurance.  The levee was the insurance, you fucking dolt.  Dodd looks good by lamenting and proselytizing for the poor people that, in truth, we're fucked by a 200 year storm. 

It's like arguing for safer roads and stricter rules at a bicycle accident that was caused by a flat tire.      

Not sure they got this whole global warming, peak oil thing down...

Well, I was thinking about new cars again. I was driving across the desert at 60MPH, and thought this is not only taking too goddamn long, it's boring. I'm not burning so much gas, but I am burning brain cells dying from lack of stimulation...maybe the solution is to find something that makes driving at 60 feel like driving at 80 in my current car. The Quality Guy suggested I do some modifications to the AXE Mobile to get it to run more efficiently. I'm wondering if this is what he has in mind...if so, I think it would fuck up the aerodynamics a bit. I know it's possible to retrofit a A/C unit but somehow I don't think this is the ideal way.

Frankly, I'd be disappointed if they hadn't cooked this one!

Remember all that nuttiness about the invasion of Iraq being to secure it's oil? Damn, the nuts were right! Getting rid of Saddam was just the cherry on top of the whipped cream.

A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say. The disclosure, coming on the eve of the contracts’ announcement, is the first confirmation of direct involvement by the Bush administration in deals to open Iraq’s oil to commercial development and is likely to stoke criticism. (Damn, ironic understatement or pompous punditry? I'd like to say the first but probably the latter. You'd don't say...AXE Emphasis!)

In their role as advisers to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, American government lawyers and private-sector consultants provided template contracts and detailed suggestions on drafting the contracts, advisers and a senior State Department official said. (Here have it say Shell, here EXXON and here BP, Inishallah! -- Let me buy you a Mercedes. AXE emphasis)

It is unclear how much influence their work had on the ministry’s decisions.( 0ne of those bigger than good things; if god were real, and appeared in true scale to us, would we be able to comprehend it? Doubt it.This is the land of Baksheesh, remember... AXE emphasis.)

If gas was $2.25 a gallon, those of us bothered by this would be just carping idealists. However, it didn't fucking work! Or, it worked really well...what I want to know is who has the oil field service contracts? Who's going to build the pipelines and infrastructure? If it's KBR or Haliburton, a Dubai corporation, at least a couple of people in the Executive Branch need to be on planes to the Gulf immediately preceding Inauguration Day, or the influence peddling sentences could be breathtaking.

 

If you want to know what'll happen next, history can be a pretty good guide

Crusader AXE has avoided commenting on China of late because in a society that moves at warp speed, the knowledge and experience I have is irrelevant. That said, historically the Chinese people are very patient until things get so bad that the people are no longer willing to quietly go about their business of being exploited and victimized. Ted Koppel has a special coming up about the People's Republic of Capitalism; whatever the system is in China, it's not Communism. It never was. It was Stalinism -- Stalin did some dumb ass things, no doubt, but not with the withering consistency of Mao; and, he was loyal to his initmates who didn't betray him. Mao was barely loyal to himself.

When I visited China to teach, I saw the contrast between opulence and poverty. However, my students and fellow faculty members kept telling me that I needed to see more, to see western China. My closest companion and minder, Alex, showed me his home town on the map, way up a tributary of the Yangtze. The river was being dredged to make it a deep water port. Kind of like making El Paso a deep water port by dredging the Rio Grande/Bravo. Think about that for a while...industry, exploitation, or hubris.

So, exactly what is happening there? We have riots, protests, and now what looks like a mini-insurgency in a place  have ever heard of. The baldest statement of the facts is damning...it rings of politically corrupt places anywhere. Hell, this is out of Huey Long's Louisiana.

The state-controlled New China News Agency published a short story on the incident Sunday morning that said the chaos broke out after people were "dissatisfied with the medico-legal expertise on the death of a local girl student."According to Internet and news service reports, the student's body was found in a river last week. After a brief investigation, police declared her death a suicide. The girl's family, however, said there was evidence she had been raped and most likely murdered. Three suspects who had been seen with the girl shortly before she disappeared were brought in for questioning but released the next day. Two of the suspects are relatives of local public security officials, the reports said. Last week, the girl's uncle went to the public security bureau but was severely beaten by people who relatives believe are connected to the police, according to Internet reports. The uncle reportedly died from his injuries Saturday afternoon, sparking the demonstration. Calls to a family member were not answered Sunday. (Because they are probably either dead or in hiding... AXE Emphasis)

Well, what we can figure out is that this riot occurred in the Weng'an county seat of the prefecture of Qiannan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture in Guizou province. Han Chinese make up less than half the population. The province is poor, largely rural and disadvantaged. The Communist(not)Part of China lives in fear that the inbalence between the wealthy provinces and the poor ones as well as the ethnic tensions and inbalences between the Han and the other 17 or so officially recognized minority groups who make up China will explode. So, here's AXE's simplest analysis -- the dead student was either Buyei  or Maio , the suspects Han and the police Han. Used to getting away with anything, they stomped down on this one, literally, and it all went badly wrong much to their shock and dismay. That we know about it means it's bigger than we think. 

Should we care? Yeah, I think so. China has bankrolled the war in Iraq and our standard of living for the last 10 years or so, if not longer. No China, and Walmart is fucked. The country is under strain between earthquakes, Tibet and regional unrest. All it will take is an epidemic of bird flu and a shortage of electricity elsewhere so the Olympics can go on, and shit will get ugly. Oh, China officially stopped being in need of food aid from the UN in December 2005. I know, because I was there and watched them get excited and brag about it on CTV's English service. The price of gas and heating oil has gone up, the cost of electricity will go up, and the cost of food will go up. It doesn't take much to make people on the edge already get over the top. There could be a lot things go south, and then the world could get startingly more interesting.

Oh, China's too big for this to make a difference. I recommend history, and look up these expressions -- Tai-ping, Society of Harmonious Fists, and the Long March. Lots can happen. At this juncture, it's almost reassuring to remember that other leaders and groups besides Twitshit de la Dweeb and the neocons can get it all fucked up.

Speaking of which, I was in the zone in the gym this morning with some great stuff in my ears that made me work like a horse, grinning all the while. Well, except when I was grunting. Anyway, while doing my "favorite" arm routine, this intruded. I don't know how to say it in Chinese, and I'm pretty sure the great firewall blocks this one out. But, to any of my Chinese friends who happen to wander into Defeatist Central, courtesy of Mr. Kris, 不要让坏蛋研您下来!!!

Tripping over facts in the face of euphoria, stupidity, ignorance and hubris

“The Army, as the service primarily responsible for ground operations, should have insisted on better Phase IV planning and preparations through its voice on the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” the study noted. “The military means employed were sufficient to destroy the Saddam regime; they were not sufficient to replace it with the type of nation-state the United States wished to see in its place.”

If you want to know what went wrong with Iraq, read the studies  being published by the Combined Arms Center and the Combat Studies Institute. The Army, Navy and Marines have a tradition going back to WWII if not further of being ruthlessly objective and straight in their studies of conflicts. Euphoria and stupidity gets soldiers, sailors and marines killed, so it's better to learn the lessons of the past that are really there than the one's you wish were there.

This war is no exception to that rule; if anything, it's the rule after years of strength training, meditation and martial arts exercises. One statement by General Jack Keane who was Vice Chief of Staff says it all...“I said, ‘Jesus Christ, John, this is a recipe for disaster,’ ” General Keane told Army historians. “I was upset about it to say the least, but the decision had been made and it was a done deal.” I wonder how many catastrophes have been the results of done deals that were too hard to unscrew...

National Corvette Day? Really...

They aren't quite supercars, they aren't affordable, they aren't even very good sportscars anymore. I mean, I remember riding crammed in the back of a '58 Vette from Worcester to Newport Rhode Island to go to a mixer in 1969, thinking this was cool, although not as cool as it would have been if I were driving the thing. Today, they're bloated and huge. So, logical time to declare a day for it. Or, for the same money you can get a new Boxster with better mileage and more stuff... I believe in buying American cars but damn it to Tiffany's boudoir, wouldn't make any sense at all. Hell, for $10K or so less, you can get a top of the line ZCar convertible. On the other hand, how could a guitarist in his 50s pass on a band called Nikki Corvette and the Stingrays?

From my cold, dead hands...

WASHINGTON, June 27 (Reuters) - The just-ended U.S. Supreme Court term gave President George W. Bush a historic victory on gun rights for Americans but handed him a bitter defeat on his war on terrorism policy regarding Guantanamo Bay prisoners. As those two landmark 5-4 rulings illustrated, the nation's highest court remained closely divided between conservative and liberal factions, with Justice Anthony Kennedy often casting the decisive vote in the most important cases.

Our friend Monsieur IOZ has a trenchant piece on the existential and surreal implications  Supreme Court's gun decision that I largely agree with. He skewers them in passing with an excellent point, (unintended AXE pun, but hey, it's Saturday)although it's really a bit of irony as well as criticism of the intellectual dishonesty of the gun control advocates which he identifies with the liberals on this issue.

"...although I'll note that if liberals really wanted to ban guns, they could try to ammend the Constitution, rather than pretending that it says something other than what it plainly says."

There's an excellent reason why the left has never tried a constitutional amendment to ban guns or revise the 2nd Amendment -- it wouldn't work. Shot down, as it were, in flames...

Now, a lot of folk with whom I largely agree have been hysterical about this. Which to me means that they didn't bother to listen to the informed commentary or read the goddamn decision. (Below I wonder about having philosophical agreements with the Bulgarian Prime Minister; finding myself agreeing with Scalia, known to the boys at the Y as Tony Scales, is even more bemusing.) The decision allows the residents of DC to have guns in their homes. Dodge City has not descended on the district. 

Like Monsieur, I haven't shot at anything in years although I am a pretty good shot. I routinely shot expert in the Army with pistol and rifle, and I grew up with and around guns. I still have a M1911A2 clone by Springfield arsenal in a case in a drawer someplace. I don't shoot anymore because it's an expensive hobby...and, hypocrite that I am, I won't shoot game. I eat meat, although less than I used to, but I draw the line at killing under the pretext that it makes me more of a man or that I like the taste of it. But, if the state or the county or the city decides that I can no longer have a gun, I'm going to buy more of the damn things. So would a lot of rational, libertarian types.

I've seen a number of cartoons referring to this decision as an example of activist judges making law in the face of  some interpretation that now holds that the second amendment is clear and concise. It's not. Congress having oversight over the executive branch is clear and concise. Keith Obermann did a rant saying that well, the only weapons that were allowed were those in use at the time of the Constitution. You can have as many flintlocks, matchlocks, blunderbusses and Chinese hand cannons as you want, but that .44 Magnum you carry when you go out to check the calves in Montana at night when there have been mountain lion attacks lately, nope. Get some .44 dueling pistols... If you apply the same logic, then no free speech on radio, TV or internet. No regulation of phone companies, electrical grids, oil pipelines, etc at the Federal level. Sorry, no national safety standards for emissions, environment, and so on. The framers didn't envision this stuff, so it's obviously not covered.

Usually, Keith is  more rational than that, but I can see that this one hurts. An activist judge is any judge who rules differently than you want. The swing voter in both cases was Justice Kennedy. How can he be lauded as a man of integrity in the Gitmo Habeas Corpus decisions and ignored as one of a cabal of right wing nuts in this one?  It's possible that as an honest man and a honest judge, he's doing what he thinks is right from a non-ideological perspective. (Perish the thought...an honest man, an honest judge and a non-ideological one at that? As Tiberius, Marshal of Jerusalem says in Kingdom of God, " I hope Jerusalem can survive a perfect knight.")

As that great American camp figure Charleston Heston used to routinely say, "From my cold, dead hands!" Scratch a right-wing republican, find a Fascist; scratch a left-wing  democrat, find a Maoist.

Reuters, Sofia Bulgaria....About 60 Arrested At Bulgaria's First Gay Parade

REALLY?

"SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgarian riot police detained about 60 far-right extremists on Saturday who threw a petrol bomb and tried to break up the country's first gay parade..."

They arrested the protesters? Not the Gays? Bulgarians got civil liberties?

"The head of the Christian Orthodox Church called the march "immoral and sinful" and the Muslim Chief Mufti said homosexuality was a disease.

"A far-right group has called for a "week of intolerance of gays" and together with other groups threatened violence. Even Socialist Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev said he did not like "the manifestation and demonstration of such orientations."

Ok, well this is recognizable. The Muslim-Orthodox Ecumenism is abnormally normal. But we have the PM who opposes this display still protecting it. (Oh, by the way, so does the AXE, largely on  aesthetics but, bizarre extremes of anything irritate me. That said, I spent my life protecting the rights of people to adhere to victimless bizarre extremes. So, CRUSADER AXE is like the Bulgarian Prime Minister? What the fuck is going on in the world that I appear to have more in common philosophically with a fucking recovering Communist Party Apparatchik in Bulgaria who's national motto is "Hey, compared to Albania, we look pretty cool..." than I do with the fucking President of my own goddamn country?) And, the "week of intolerance" has a decidedly 1984ish-Maoist ring to it. Well, those of us who have some fondness for Marxism and believe that the Soviet-Maoist-Korean-etc. debacle was more a form of fascism than anything else --kind of like comparing the Vatican's administration of stuff to Joshua ben Joseph's preaching -- have to be touched. The far right in Bulgaria resembles the far left in Maoist China...

Although homosexuality has become legal in eastern Europe after the collapse of communism, same-sex couples rarely make a public display of their affection.
Despite the general public disapproval of homosexuality, Bulgarians have a gay idol -- pop and folk singer Azis . The Roma gypsy, who wears women's clothes and boasts penis enlargement, married his partner at a mock ceremony two years ago.

OK, eat your heart out, George Michael and Indigo Girls...

The first time is tragedy, the second is tragi-comedy...

While there have been an amazing number of issues bubbling up over in IraqIranAbsurdistan (OK Twitshit de la Dweeb, we need some presidential wisdom on the response of Afghanistan to Pakistan's security services trying to take out it's president. Do they invade? Using our troops perhaps?) (Tell me why we are in that godforsaken shithole when the troops get in a firefight with one of the city councilors at the dedication of a fucking park? And, why can't we even get our own body count right?) and lots of other places. Frankly, my cynicism meter is about whacked. Having said that, here's a OBG that puts it in some sort of perspective.